Travel Notes from the Maybe Someday Pile

Whenever I travel somewhere new, this writer's reflex kicks in, and I can't possibly be alone in this. I look around at the place and the people. I listen harder. I take a deep breath and try to sense the vibe, the history, the stuff that isn't likely in the travel guides. Then I think: What kind of story could be set here?

And sometimes, I write one. That question has inspired a good number of my stories, whether the place was utterly new to me or newly strange because I was seeing it from a new angle. "Queen and Country" (Mystery Magazine) was an immersion into a world alien to me: the badlands swamps of southern France. The funeral home in "Star of Zoe" and the small town in "On Loan from the Artist" (both AHMM) are places I'd been before, but it took a new life experience to spark their ideas.

For vacation season, here are a few literary-feeling places that stuck with me. Plot twist: I've never set a story in any of these locations.

Edinburgh

I read somewhere that Edinburgh feels like it has always been there, seeping up era by era from its volcanic slopes. That rang true for me. Each neighborhood and new architectural style could be just more flow from the same ancient source. 

Around it, the mood. The place really has that old Scottish tension: part refined, part rough, part rational, part random--and everywhere wet. It's a place of welcome but also shadows. And maybe Edinburgh Castle sits atop that old underground source. The castle looms over the town, and as night comes on, the air takes on another charge. You're not sure what's being guarded, or from whom.

No wonder the town inspired The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You wouldn't be at all surprised to come across the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Why I've never tried a story there: Probably timing, and probably intimidation. We visited Edinburgh for less than a week, years before I wrote my first short story, and more recent travels claimed that brain space. Also, Edinburgh is a singular stage. It's not enough to stroll around some and think you know the place. The words would hit with all the power of a Target fog machine.

Monterey

For my money, California is the most beautiful state in the U.S., with everything from rugged mountains to farmland to dramatic shorelines. You get all that along the drive to Monterey, but as you arrive, you get my favorite California: that cloudy, kelpy, salted-over harbor town. Monterey hasn't been an industrial fishing hub since the Steinbeck days, but they keep up appearances.

These days, tourism is the big deal, but you might not notice it. The foot traffic is roughly comparable to Savannah, but the Savannah Waterfront crowds press together in stately close quarters. In Monterey, the crowds fan out over the region and one aquarium. The result is an unusual quiet for such a well-traveled place.

A writer knows that quiet isn't emptiness. Often, it's anything but. It's Monterey's quiet that stays with me.

Why I've never tried a story there: Being a landlubber, seaside town settings aren't a first reflex. And you can't recreate this kind of atmosphere from photos and Google Earth. I'd have to write the piece experientially from Monterey itself. Which is an artistic burden I would courageously bear, if anyone wants to fund that.

Winslow

There is a whole lot of nothing in this part of Arizona, but a whole lot of people have passed this way. Route 66 is mostly I-40 these days, but you still find the roadside diners, the sleep-in-a-wigwam motels, and the roadside grifts to check out dinosaur footprints. Like really small footprints. The main attraction is Arizona itself. This is the Painted Desert, and it stretches out in dreamlike reds and purples.

I could've selected almost anywhere on Arizona's stretch of Route 66. I chose Winslow since that was our home base. It's a fine town, proud of its heyday and a particular corner, dusty, as if scratched out of the desert and fighting not to be reclaimed. We stayed at the Mission Revival La Posada, a restored Fred Harvey-era gem. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe doesn't stop there anymore (Amtrak does, daily), but the freight trains rumble past your windows all day long.

I should point out that I'm a light sleeper.

Why I've never tried a story there: We were driving through the desert, probably fifty miles from any kind of settlement, and here came the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. I'm not topping that.

Tromsø

You can't get to Tromsø by train. The flight is two hours and 1100 kilometers northbound from Oslo. The ferry will get you there in about a day. This is north of north, above the Arctic Circle. Tromsø is gorgeous, an overgrown village set against fjords and mountains, and still with the feel of a last outpost. It's a gritty place, but only partly by choice. The Arctic conditions take their toll. As for the rest, it's a college town, and the Norwegians love their death metal.

We stayed there for several days and got out into the fjords. This was during the midnight sun. I watched one of those stubborn midnights from a campfire out in the tundra. The light went low, the kind you get with an eclipse, and there it stayed in total dimness for hours. I know all this because I wasn't sleeping. Neither was much of Tromsø. Ferries came and went. Students walked to wherever students walk at 3am. When I did sleep, it was thanks to the tender mercy of blackout curtains.

It was a bleary few days. And I'd go back tomorrow.

Why I've never tried a story there: I sort of did. My "Crossing the Line Twice" in AHMM came from this trip, but the story is set out on a boat. I used the American grandkids of a Norwegian tough guy because that worked for the story--and also I could pull it off without risking a Viking curse.

Wrap-Up

Life is more interesting when you stay curious. It's that curiosity that both draws me to places and when you leave room to learn what the place has to say. Those are the stories I bring home, not used in my stuff but hardly forgotten.

The Abandoned Places

Every town has their own Marsten House from The Shining. Every rural place has a Sleepy Hollow nearby where the urban legends about the man with the hook or even cousins to the Headless Horseman lurk. If you've ever driven through Nevada, you've seen whole towns abandoned. Incidentally, my one experience with Beatty, Nevada, which looked like dozens of towns I've driving through in Ohio, minus the scrub desert and wild asses, turned out to be an annex of Area 51. So that speeding ticket went to fund stealth fighter research, according the Annie Jacobsen. But like a certain pundit, I digress.

 In Ohio, we have all types of abandoned places. These are the most famous. 

The Peters Cartridge Family

 I discovered this one by accident while riding the Little Miami Bike Trail. The Peters Cartridge Factory has its own haunted history. Four major explosions took place there, many related to the nearby Little Miami Railroad (now the aforementioned bike trail.) A rail collision in 1890 killed 12 and leveled serveral buildings on site. A machine accident set off the 1922 blast. While no one was killed, eight were injured, including one worker who was blinded. In 1942 and 1943, at the height of the war effort, two more explosions which remain unexplained, the 1942 blast shattering windows thirty miles away. Which means windows in Kentucky sustained damage.

When the plant closed after World War II, the building deteriorated, becoming a ruin not unlike Detroit's Packard Plant. It also became a magnet for ghost stories. A horror movie was filmed there in the 1990s. But ruin explorers have also run afoul of collapsed floors and left over debris.

The site, however, is a retired part of this list. Over the last decade, the hairpin road to the factory was redone with straightened curves and  the buildings renovated as loft apartments and a brewery. So instead of being a location for Ghosthunters, it's now a local tourist trap.

 Helltown 

Once upon a time, there was a town called Boston near Cleveland. Then the Department of Interior created the Cuyahoga Valley National Forest for 1974. The town was abandoned and closed off. Portions remain restricted. But grafitti in the town's former church gave rise to rumors of Satanic cults sacrificing humans in the former city, giving it a Salem's Lot aura. Further, rumors spread that the government bought out the town to cover up a chemical spill that created all manner of mutated monsters, including the Peninsula Python, a monster snake found in a nearby suburb. The best legend was the haunted bus. A schoolbus left behind. Legend has it that cult members attacked and slaughtered a bus full of children. Funny how that never made the news when mobster Danny Green's personal unscheduled rapid disassembly made the national news. (Green was a noted Irish mobster in Cleveland.)

The National Park Service razed most of the town, which is now open as picnic an hiking areas.

 

The Lockland Incinerator

If you drive south on I-75 through Cincinnati's northern suburbs, you come to a section of the freeway known as the Lockland Split. The northboard lanes veer off to go around the site of the former Stearns & Foster Mattress plant. The southbound lanes go between the walls of the former C&O canal. Before the two sides merge just above Ronald Reagan Highway, there lies a swatch of overgrown vacant land. Vacant, that is, except for a lone brick building seemingly alone in the middle of a wooded area. The smokestack has been covered in grafitti. This is the former Lockland Incinerator. 

One intrepid urban explorer dubbed it "The Well of Souls," fancying himself as a modern-day Indiana Jones. After a couple searches on the building, I did find minor legends about the place, namely another blogger who called the place creepy and having a "dark vibe." 

In reality, motorists, even residents of Lockland, have been asking what the hell that thing was. The incinerator handled trash, some from a closed landfill at the end of Reading, Ohio's Davis St. and the West Mill Creek. Our intrepid explorer found trash, grafitti, and... A motorboat? There was a motorboat lying along the remains of that section of Davis St. The building began operation in 1936 and shut down roughly when the Big Red Machine peaked in the mid-1970s. 

Alas, the building's days are numbered. By 2032, the land will be taken to run I-75's northbound lanes alongside the southbound, closing the Lockland Split and opening up the land east of the former Stearns & Foster site.

I've also written about Chippewa Lake Amusement Park, which has a more storied history about all these except maybe the Peters Cartridge Plant. Whereas Peters is apartments, a brewery, and businesses, Chippewa Lake is an actual park now, its ruins part of a hiking trail. 

The Strange Novels of Charles Williams

by Eve Fisher 

A long time ago, there was an informal group of writers, theologians, and intellectuals who collected (mostly) at C. S. Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, or The Eagle & Child Pub: The Inklings. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkein are the most famous, but in his time, Inkling Charles Williams was highly praised by Lewis, Tolkein, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and others for his amazing studies of Dante (The Figure of Beatrice inspired Dorothy Sayers' translation of The Divine Comedy), unique Arthurian poetry (Taliessin Through Logres), even more unique theology (Descent of the Dove and He Came Down From Heaven) and some almost completely unexplainable supernatural thrillers that I simply adore.

Charles Williams
by Kimberly Ferguson

Williams was a strange duck. A devout Anglican, he was known as the Magician, and was part of a mystical Christian group that practiced occult rituals while refusing to seek occult powers. Friends described Williams as a bundle of nervous, dynamic energy with 'raw charisma'. He was both passionately faithful to his wife, and carrying on a passionate, unconsummated affair with an Oxford University Press librarian. (He had to have influenced certain characters in Susan Howatch's Starbridge series.) And he wrote some of the best villains ever.

NOTE & WARNING:  Williams wrote his novels in the 1930s and 1940s, and was a man of his time, so he writes some things which are / can be offensive today: racist, sexist (although often his heroines save the day - and the world), etc.  I still enjoy them.  

My personal favorites (and I have read them all) are War in Heaven and Descent into Hell: 

War in Heaven - Opening line: “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.” That's one way to keep you reading.

Villains: Sir Giles Tumulty (who also shows up in Many Dimensions) - His book is being published by Persimmon Publishing, where the corpse was found. He's an explorer and antiquarian, with all the charm of a cobra. See how many insults you can find in this meeting between Sir Giles and a police inspector:

"Rackstraw?" Sir Giles had said impatiently, screwing round from his writing-desk a small, brown wrinkled face toward the inspector, "yes, he came to lunch. Why not?"

"No reason at all, sir," the inspector said, "I only wanted to be sure. And when did he leave you—if you remember?"

"About half-past two," Sir Giles said. "Is that what he ought to have done? I'll say two, if you like, if it'll help you catch him. Only, if you do, you must arrange for me to see the hanging."

"If he left at half-past two, that's all I want to know," the inspector said. "Did you happen to mention to anyone that he was coming?"

"Yes," said Sir Giles, "I told the Prime Minister, the Professor of Comparative Etymology at King's College, and the cook downstairs. Why the hell do you ask me these silly questions? Do you suppose I run round telling all my friends that a loathsome little publisher's clerk is going to muck his food about at my table?"

"If you felt like that," the inspector said, holding down his anger, "I wonder you asked him to lunch."

"I asked him to lunch because I'd rather him foul my table than my time," Tumulty answered. "I had to waste an hour over him because he didn't understand a few simple things about my illustrations, and I saved it by working it in with lunch. I expect he charged overtime for it, so that he'd be two shillings to the good, one saved on his food and another extra pay. I should think he could get a woman for that one night. How much do you have to pay, policeman?"

The inspector at the moment felt merely that Sir Giles must be mad; it wasn't till hours afterwards that he became slowly convinced that the question was meant as an insult beyond reach of pardon or vengeance. At the time he stared blankly and said soberly: "I'm a married man, sir."

"You mean you get her for nothing?" Sir Giles asked. "Two can live as cheaply as one, and your extras thrown in? Optimistic, I'm afraid. Well, I'm sorry, but I have to go to the Foreign Office. Come and chat in the taxi; that's what your London taxis are for. When I want a nice long talk with anyone I get in one at Westminster Abbey after lunch and tell him to go to the Nelson Column. We nearly always get there for tea. Oh, good-bye, policeman. Come again some day."

And there's Mr. Gregory Persimmons - Head publisher, fascinated by the occult, domination, control, little children, and the Holy Grail. Sir Giles is fascinated with Persimmons, more as an experiment than anything else:

"You're going mad, you know, Persimmons, and I like watching you."

"Mad?" Gregory said, with another snigger. "You don't go mad this way. People like my wife go mad, and Stephen. But I've got something that doesn't go mad. I'm getting everything so." He stretched out both arms and pressed them downwards with an immense gesture of weight, as if pushing the universe before and below him. "But I want the ointment."

"Better leave it alone," Sir Giles said tantalizingly. "It's tricky stuff, Persimmons. A Jew in Beyrout tried it and didn't get back. Filthy beast he looked, all naked and screaming that he couldn't find his way. That was four years ago, and he's screaming the same thing still, unless he's dead. And there was another fellow in Valparaiso who got too far to be heard screaming; he died pretty soon, because he'd forgotten even how to eat and drink. They tried forcible feeding, I fancy, but it wasn't a success: he was just continually sick. Better leave it alone, Persimmons."

"I tell you I'm perfectly safe," Gregory said. "You promised, Tumulty, you promised."

"My lord God," Sir Giles said, "what does that matter? I don't care whether I promised or not; I don't care whether you want it or not; I only wonder whether I shall get more from—" He broke off. "All right," he said, "I'll give you the address...  It'll save you some time and energy if you mention me. He's a Greek of sorts—I've forgotten his name. But he doesn't keep tons of it, you know. Now, look here, Persimmons. This is two things you have got out of me, and I've had nothing in return. You'd better ask me down to wherever you hatch gargoyles."

The Greek Chemist - Unique in all the characters I've ever read, because he's...  well, read and see:

"Who sent you here?" the Greek asked.

"Sir Giles Tumulty," said Gregory, "and others. But the others I cannot name. They say"—his voice began to tremble—"that you have an ointment."

"I have many precious things." The answer came out of an entire weariness which seemed to take from the adjective all its meaning. "But some of them are not for sale except to buyers."

"I have bought everything." Gregory leaned forward. "The time has come for me to receive."

Still the other made no movement. "The ointment is rich and scarce and strange," he said. "How do I know that you are worth a gift? And what will my master say if I mistake?"

"I cannot prove myself to you," Gregory answered. "That I know of it —is not that enough?"

"It is not enough," the other said. "But I have a friendship for all who are in the way. And priceless things are without any price. If you are not worth the gift, the gift is worth nothing to you. Have you ever used the ointment?"

"Never," Gregory said; "but it is time, I am sure it is time."

"You think so, do you?" the Greek said slowly. "There comes a time when there is nothing left but time—nothing.* Take it if you like."

*BTW, that line haunted me ever since I first read it. It was the center on which I built my story "For Blood".

Later, when the Grail has been found and taken and taken again, the Greek is even more infintely weary when someone suggests taking and destroying the Grail because it's a stronghold of power, and all such strongholds must be destroyed...  

"We can do it if you like," he acquiesced. "If it is worth while."

"It is a stronghold of power, and we can tear it to less than dust. I do not understand you."

"It doesn't matter," he answered. "You will understand one day. There will be nothing else to understand...  It is all one; in the end it is all one. You do not believe each other and neither of you will believe me. But in the end there is nothing at all but you and that which goes by. You will be sick at heart because there is nothing, nothing but a passing, and in the midst of the passing a weariness that is you. All things shall grow fainter, all desire cease in that sickness and the void that is about it. And this, even for me, is when I have only looked into the bottomless pit. For my spirit is still held in a place of material things. But when the body is drawn into the spirit, and at last they fall, then you shall know what the end of desire and destruction is."

And another character's reaction to Persimmons' attempt to tempt him with the "delights of worshipping treachery and malice and cruelty and sin":  

"Satanism?  Satanism is the clerk at the brothel."  

There's some words to live by. 

Descent Into Hell - Another masterpiece of supernatural thriller, complete with dopplegangers, dancing bears, Lilith, and a man who provides a new definition of Gomorrah; also a hanged man, a hanging man, a succubus, a martyr, a poet, a dying woman, a dead man, and a few rippling graves.  

Ere it shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,

Met his own image

Walking in the garden.

That apparition, sole of men, he saw.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound

OTHERS:

The Place of the Lion - Platonic Ideals burst through in raw form in a small English village...

Many Dimensions - Sir Giles Tumulty is back, seeking the Stone of Solomon that gives its possesser access to other space, worlds, dimensions, and times...

The Greater Trumps - The original Tarot deck, and a chess set to die for...

All Hallows Eve - Two dead women, walking through London, looking for...

and more...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

I happened to find some of my short stories – in fact of most of us SleuthSayers - are appearing on Amazon Kindle for $0.99 with semi-bad AI covers.

Did I miss a contract? Not read the fine print? Should I / we be getting a nickel or a dime each, or is this simply the secondary market?  

Inquiring minds want to know.

PS:  I call it a semi-bad AI cover because there isn't a robot or android anywhere in "For Blood."  I know, details, details...  😉

The Walls of Providence

 Have you ever found yourself wondering: Am I the first to notice this or the last?  Does no one mention this because it is so obscure or so obvious? (And why did the Federales let Lefty go so long?)

I mention this because the situation has come up again and I am wondering if I should place a big SPOILER ALERT over this whole column.  If you have never read Don Winslow's Danny Ryan trilogy you might want to stop now.  Or not.  Your choice.

The first book, City on Fire, describes a war between two mob families, one Irish and one Italian, for control of Providence, Rhode Island in the 1980s.  The next two novels explain  the aftermath of the battle.  And they are great.  I highly recommend them to anyone who likes fiction about organized crime. 

I should say I didn't actually read the novels. I listened to the audiobooks. I like to think that if I had been reading them (and paying more attention to the epigraphs) I would have caught on more quickly to what Winslow was up to.

As it is, I was perhaps a third of the way through City on Fire (the first hospital scene, for those who remember it) and considering the relationship between two of the characters.  I remember thinking: "You know, they are like... But that means... Oh my gosh, it's the Trojan War!"

Which it is. Winslow  transferred the Illiad to modern New England.  

I grabbed a pen and started writing down Winslow's characters next to their Homeric equivalents. Unlike Christopher Nolan's movie, which I wrote about last week, most of the gods are present and accounted for (in human form, of course.)

By the way, City of Dreams and City in Ruins combine the Aeniad, the Odyssey, and the Oresteia. Danny Ryan, the protagonist, is Aeneas.

I was astonished to read one reader on the web complaining that if you know your mythology there are no surprises in the books.  I felt exactly the opposite: because I knew the myths I was excited to see how he fit Homer's and Virgil's incidents into his story line.  For example: What is the 1980s U.S. equivalent for the Trojan Horse?

Whenever I identified the classical model for one of Winslow's characters I found myself thinking, ooh, I know what's going to happen to you. (Spoiler: it probably won't be good.)

I was reminded of a passage in one of my favorite plays, Antigone,  which is Jean Anouilh's take on the tragedy by Sophocles.  The Chorus (who in the play is one person) distinguishes between tragedy and melodrama.  I wish I could quote his whole speech but, alas, I was the copyright officer for my university for a while and know better. So here is just a taste:

In a tragedy nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. This makes for tranquility... In melodrama you argue and struggle in the hope of escape. That is vulgar; it's practical. But in tragedy, where there is no temptation to try to escape, argument is gratuitous; it's kingly.

Which is how I felt about the characters in Winslow's novels.  This was especially true in the last volume as we watch two men who both want peace being dragged into inevitable conflict (with a little help from Winslow's version of Juno).

Anyway, I think you will enjoy the books even if the only Homer you know is Simpson. But if you grew up on d'Auliare's Book of Greek Myths, like me, you'll love them.

And now,  a completely different but oddly connected subject.

Rex Stout's eight novel about Nero Wolfe, Where There's A Will (1940) centers on the death of Noel Hawthorne, a wealthy businessman.  Among the suspects are his three sisters. June, the eldest, is married to the Secretary of State. May is a college president and Archie jokes that "they are thinking of prosecuting her under the anti-trust laws for her monopoly on brain cells."  April is a movie star.

But get this. The two younger sisters nickname the eldest Juno.  Juno (Hera)  was Jupiter's wife, queen of the gods.  Minerva (Athena) was the goddess of wisdom.  Venus (Aphrodite) was the goddess of beauty and sex.  

So is it a stretch to say we have:

*June (Juno), married to a powerful man

* May (Minerva), dispenser of wisdom

* April (Aphrodite), the beautiful.

But wait there's more.  Those three goddesses fought over the Golden Apple of Discord, leading to the Trojan War.  And Noel Hawthorne, in his will, left his sisters nothing but, respectively, an apple, a pear, and a peach.  The reason for this is never explained in the book except as a "token of his regard."

And that same dead brother?  Many years earlier he had accidentally shot his wife with an arrow, leaving her face so scarred that she always wears a veil.

Put this all together and it certainly seems like Stout is trying to connect it all to some myth, but I've never been able to make sense of it.

Next time I am in Delphi I will stop by the Temple of Apollo and ask the Oracle.

Coming Up with a Story Idea to Fit a Prompt

I enjoy coming up with short story ideas from prompts, such as an anthology's theme. A theme can get my brain cells firing as I try to think of a story idea that will not only work plotwise but will also be different from the other submissions, be fun to write and read, and have some emotional oomph or insight.

It's not often easy.  

I experienced the struggle once again when I tried to come up with a story idea for What the World Needs Now: Mystery Stories Inspired by the Music of Burt Bacharach. This anthology, edited by Martin Edwards, was released last week. When invited to submit, I went through the list of songs (so many songs--Bacharach was incredibly prolific, writing songs for decades that were recorded by others as well as himself in multiple genres). I picked a song that I love, one that was sparking ideas. And I set about to plot out the story. I usually try to have at least a page of notes about what would happen, including what the end would be. Things could--and often do--change during the writing process, but I like knowing I have a workable idea.

Alas, in this case, my story idea ended up being serviceable. It would work, but it wasn't wonderful, and it wasn't fun. It was, in the end, rather blah. And that is not what you want an author to think about their own idea.

I returned to the song list, but by that point, none of them were sparking any good ideas. I had begun psyching myself out. So I decided to approach the problem differently. Rather than try to be inspired by a song, I looked through my story-idea file to see if I already had any that would work with one of Bacharach's songs. (I often get ideas for stories that I don't have time to write, so I take detailed notes and put them in a file for a day I do have time.) 

 

 

That's when I came across notes for a story about a chat bench. I had read a news article about how, in 2019, a British police officer was concerned about online scammers targeting senior citizens. He came up with the idea of a chat bench--a place where lonely people in need of companionship could safely meet others in real life. It sounds wonderful. But when I read about the growing popularity of these benches, my devious side reared its head. What's to keep a scammer from targeting people in person? 

I had a lot of story ideas in the file to choose from, but this was the one I found most exciting at that moment. This would be a story that would be fun to write, and I hoped readers would find it fun to read. Then I went through the list of Bacharach songs still available and found one that could work with my chat bench idea: "All Kinds of People." I asked Martin if I could switch songs, he kindly agreed, and here we are.

So the moral of this tale about coming up with a good story idea is this: if an anthology prompt doesn't give you a great story idea, see if you already have an idea that could fit the prompt. This is why you should never dismiss your ideas. Write them down. Save them. Sometime down the road, they might come in handy. 

 

Difficult Crimes

There are certain serious crimes that seem resistant to the mystery genre. Environmental crimes, for example, are mighty hard to fit into a conventional pattern. Just how hard I discovered when I attempted a submission to fellow Sleuthsayers Rob Lopresti's ambitious anthology, Crimes Against Nature. 

     Sure there were candidates going right back to the near extermination of the buffalo, the loss of the once sky-darkening passenger pigeon, the ruination of many mountains in Appalachia, and the decimation of forests from the Pacific northwest to the Amazon. But many hands contributed to all this destruction, and it proved hard to find a plausible single criminal or criminal entity. 

    

 By their very size and scope, such crimes seem destined to escape both literature and justice, and it is far easier to pick a smaller crime, preferably with interpersonal violence, for a story. For this reason, I admire Australian novelist Jane Harper's Last One Out, which manages her usual high level of mystery plot while tracing the impact of an open pit coal mine on the environment, the local community, and, eventually, on longstanding ties among the citizens. A real tour de force, Last One Out manages to be gripping despite a minimum of action. No gun battles, no fights, no car chases in this novel. It begins in conventional fashion when Sam Crowley disappears on the evening of his twenty-first birthday, after a visit to several abandoned homes on the edge of the town of Carralon Ridge.

 

     This once idyllic rural community is under threat, both physically and financially. The enormous, unsleeping mine is steadily chewing its way toward outlying homes, but even those living in the center are aware day and night of the rumble of the works and of the fine, omnipresent coal dust drifting onto every surface.

 

     Sam had been doing a college paper on the town, interviewing residents on past and present life in Carralon Ridge and on their reactions to the town's increasingly precarious situation. The easy answer to the mystery would be to connect his disappearance to the mining company, to something incriminating he discovered, but Harper has other ideas in mind, and Sam's disappearance remains unsolved. 

 

     Five years later, grief over his loss has dissolved his parents' marriage. Ro Crowley, a medical worker, now lives in the city. Her husband, a fire watcher, remains, but now, instead of working for the town, he does the same work for the all encompassing mine. The Crowleys are only temporarily reunited when Ro returns for the annual commemoration of their son's disappearance. 

 

     What she finds is an eerie, half- deserted town. The medical center where she worked is boarded up, various businesses, likewise. Even the pub is only open irregularly. Houses are deserted, there are strange bangs and noises, coal dust is everywhere, and the town feels so strange and foreign that she is relieved when her husband messages her that he can see her through his binoculars from his fire watching post. 

    The feeling of incipient danger, of strangeness and decay, of a familiar place being out of joint, is really what makes the novel work. Yes, there are suspects, red herrings, promising speculations, but what is gripping is the spectacle of slow moving destruction on every level. 

 

     The mine machines are moving ever closer. Outlying houses have already been bought up by the corporation and leveled. Cherished farms, gardens and houses closer to the center are becoming steadily noisier, dustier, and less habitable, even as financial offers drop because who else but the mine would want the properties now. 

 

    This creeping devastation infects the human world on a more intimate level, too. All who sell save themselves at the cost of their neighbors, whose homes and life work are made more vulnerable. The devastated natural landscape produces a devastated human landscape with toxic results ranging from feral children to adult despair – to murder. 

 

    Last One Out is a good mystery. It is also a picture of the follies of certain types of progress and of in inescapable consequences of environmental destruction.

AIn't Necessarily So, Part 2

Part II — A Rigorous Approach to Identifying AI‑Generated Writing

Last time, we focused on fuzzy ‘soft’ clues in determining AI fingerprints in text, especially identifying common phrases and constructs. Computer people refer to fuzzy methods as heuristics.

We noted triplets.

“He was tall, dark, and handsome.”

We noted parallel negatives.

“It wasn’t black. It wasn’t white. It was charcoal grey.”

We noted common phraseology.

“It’s not just warm, it’s burning.”

Today we slide away from soft dissection to hard facts and more scientific methods. Assertions have been made that combining hard and soft techniques can result in 80-90% accuracy. Google claims it can identify close to 98%.

Note that I used Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot to research and organize this, part 2 of this article. Thus throughout, you’ll notice artifacts as unintended examples.

Objective Linguistic Signals, Statistical Profiles, and Computational Methods

While intuitive reading can reveal stylistic quirks that feel artificial, a scientific approach to AI‑text detection relies on measurable linguistic properties. These properties emerge from how large language models generate text: token by token, guided by probability distributions learned from massive corpora. By analyzing those distributions, we can identify patterns that differ from human writing in consistent, quantifiable ways.

This section outlines the major pillars of a hard, objective approach — the kind that complements your Part I by grounding intuition in data.

➀ Lexical Analysis: Measuring Word‑Level Patterns

Lexical analysis examines the words themselves — their frequency, diversity, and distribution. AI‑generated text tends to exhibit:

• Lower lexical diversity — measured via type–token ratio; AI favors mid‑probability vocabulary.
• Function‑word overuse — glue words like however, moreover, indeed, additionally.
• Uniform vocabulary patterns — humans spike unpredictably into slang, rare words, or idiosyncratic phrasing.
• Rare‑word avoidance — models avoid low‑probability tokens unless prompted.

These signals arise because AI models optimize for clarity and coherence, which pushes them toward “safe,” middle‑probability word choices.

➁ Syntax Analysis: Sentence Structure and Rhythm

Syntax analysis examines how sentences are built — clause structure, punctuation, and rhythm. AI text often shows:

• Consistent clause length — sentences follow similar patterns and pacing.
• Over‑regular grammar — few deviations, few fragments, few stylistic breaks.
• Predictable transitions — Moreover, In addition, Ultimately, However.
• Low syntactic entropy — humans vary complexity more dramatically.

This uniformity reflects the model’s goal: maximize coherence and minimize confusion.

➂ Punctuation

Perhaps I give less credence to punctuation than I should because the Macintosh option key makes typographical life easy. Instead of two hyphens to simulate an n-dash, option-hyphen plugs in a real dash. Likewise, option-colon drops in a true ellipsis instead of typing three dots.

Even without a Mac, word processors like Microsoft Word performs conversions such as transforming flat quotation marks to curly quotes, thus my reluctance to attach too much attention to perfected punctuation.

That said, AIs sprinkle in more m-dashes than a breathless self-published Mary Sue story. Current AIs throw in a lot of dashes, the really wide ones.

Perfected Punctuation

character	human	proper
ellipsis	...	…
n-dash	--	–
m-dash	--	—
single quote	'	‘’
double quote	"	“”



➃ Semantic Analysis: Meaning, Depth, and Conceptual Structure

Semantic analysis looks at how ideas are organized and expressed. AI text tends to exhibit:

• High semantic consistency — few contradictions or digressions.
• Topic over‑coverage — AI exhaustively lists subtopics to “cover the space.”
• Shallow originality — limited conceptual leaps unless prompted.
• Generic framing — broad, universal statements anchoring paragraphs.

Humans, by contrast, often wander, contradict themselves, or introduce unexpected angles.

➄ Perplexity: Statistical Predictability of Text

Perplexity measures how surprising a passage is to a language model.

• Low perplexity → predictable → typical of AI
• High perplexity → surprising → typical of humans

AI‑generated text tends to have very low perplexity, because it is produced by the same statistical engine used to measure it. Tools that use perplexity include:

• GPTZero
• OpenAI’s classifier
• Cross‑entropy scoring

Edited AI text, however, can raise perplexity — making detection harder.

➅ Burstiness: Variation in Sentence Length and Complexity

Burstiness measures how much sentence structure varies.

• Humans show:
• Long sentences
• Short fragments
• Abrupt shifts
• Irregular rhythm
• AI shows:
• Low burstiness
• Smooth, even pacing

Burstiness is one of the strongest statistical indicators of human authorship, especially in long‑form writing.

➆ Stylometric Fingerprinting: Author Identity Through Writing Style

Stylometry analyzes the “fingerprint” of an author’s writing style — their idiolect, quirks, and habits. AI text typically lacks:

• Idiolect — no personal quirks or signature phrasing.
• Stylistic variability — humans shift tone depending on mood, audience, or genre.
• Natural digressions — AI rarely meanders.

Stylometric tools include:

• JStylo
• Writeprints
• Signature stylometric analysis

These methods are especially powerful given long samples.

➇ Structural and Metadata Clues

Even when prose looks human, structural patterns can reveal AI origin. Common signals include:

• Perfect paragraph symmetry
• Overuse of enumerated lists — AIs love lists
• Overuse of bulleted lists — Consider this an example
• Predictable section ordering
• Lack of temporal markers — humans reference time, place, personal context.

These clues often appear in polished AI essays and reports.

➈ Hybrid Detection Tools: Combining Multiple Signals

Modern detectors combine perplexity, burstiness, stylometry, and semantic analysis. Examples of tools include:

• GPTZero
• DetectGPT
• Turnitin AI
• Copyleaks
• QuillBot AI
• Grammarly
• HuggingFace detectors

These tools go beyond analyzing basics, they compare text against known AI‑generation patterns.

Conclusion: Hard Detection Complements Soft Deduction

Part I focused on intuition — tone, phrasing, emotional cadence, suspiciously neutral voice. Part II provides the science — statistical regularities, lexical smoothness, syntactic uniformity, semantic predictability.

Together, they form a dual‑system framework:

• Soft heuristic detection: “This feels like AI.”
• Hard science-based detection: “Here’s measurable evidence.”

This combination is far more reliable than either method alone.

Note: Wikipedia is exceptionally vulnerable to AI contamination. They operate a project to identify and mitigate AI effects. Their article, Signs of AI Writing, is well worth a read.