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

The Place of the Lion

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.

A Roundup of Favorite Short-Story Writers

My post today is piggybacking on last week's column by Joseph S. Walker about several of his favorite authors, all of them writers that he hoped others might find and read.

I figured I'd try to add to that by listing some of my favorite genre short-story writers. I focused on genre for this list because SleuthSayers is a mystery blog usually targeting readers and writers of genre fiction--so I have NOT included some further-reaching favorite "literary" short-story authors like Hemingway, Faulkner, Chekhov, O'Connor, Munro, Carver, Maugham, Welty, Fitzgerald, etc., etc. 

The method I used to come up with these was simple: I looked around me here in my home office and counted the number of short-story collections I own from different genre writers. Most of them, it turns out, are by the twelve following authors. And these of course are also (as they should be), the authors whose stories I like to re-read:

Fredric Brown -- A name you might not be familiar with. His genre was mostly SF/fantasy, but he also wrote wonderful mystery/crime stories. Many of his shorts, among them "The Dangerous People" and "The Night the World Ended," were used in the anthology TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was especially well-known for what used to be called short-short stories (flash fiction), some of those only a page or two in length. My favorite of Brown's stories is still "Voodoo," which is only about 450 words. Others include "Arena," "Nightmare in Yellow," "The Geezenstacks," and "Earthmen Bearing Gifts." 

Jack Ritchie -- Another great shorts writer, Ritchie's stories can be found in a huge number of issues of old Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's mystery magazines--and also the anthology volumes later created from those two magazines. He wrote only one novel, Tiger Island, which might be one of the reasons so few current readers of fiction know his name. I have a lot of Ritchie favorites, including the stories "Shatterproof," "The Absence of Emily," "#8," and "The Green Heart," later adapted into the feature film The New Leaf with Walter Matthau and Elaine May.

Roald Dahl -- Probably better known for his children's books like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl also wrote terrific short stories, several of which were, once again, adapted into episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His story "Man from the South" is still one of my all-time favorites because of its plot--and the same can be said of the delightful twist-ending story "Lamb to the Slaughter." Other favorites of mine: "Poison," "The Landlady," and "Champion of the World."

Ray Bradbury -- This writer, whose name IS quickly recognizable, was an author of mostly science fiction stories, and I would argue that one of his collections, a brick-thick volume appropriately called The Stories of Ray Bradbury, is one of the best short-story collections I've ever read. Aside from novels like Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury wrote around 600 short stories. I think my favorites are "A Sound of Thunder," "The Veldt," "The Window," "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl," and "There Will Come Soft Rains."

Elmore Leonard -- Like many others in this list, Leonard is known mostly for his novels, many of which were also movies: Get Shorty, Hombre, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown, etc. That's certainly the way I first heard about him and got to know his work. But I love his short stories just as much. Examples: "Three-Ten to Yuma," "The Tall T," "Karen Makes Out," "The Tonto Woman," and (actually a novella rather than a short story) Fire in the Hole, which served as the basis for the neo-Western TV series Justified. I actually met him once at a booksigning, for about five seconds.

Louis L'Amour -- An American writer who specialized in Westerns, both novels and shorts. His novels are more famous, especially Last of the Breed, The Walking Drum, Haunted Mesa, Shalako, and the seventeen novels in the Sackett series. Many of his novels were made into films, and some of his short stories. One of those stories--my favorite of his--was "The Gift of Cochise," which became the 1953 John Wayne movie Hondo and then became a novel of the same name. Other well-known L'Amour short stories are "Skull and the Arrow," "To Hang Me High," and "Squatters on the Lonetree." 

Lawrence Block -- Another household name, Block is the creator of series characters Matt Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, the hitman Keller, and others, and has written many, many crime novels and short stories over the years. (Also, he's one of the two writers in this list who are still with us and who still, hopefully, are producing stories.) I own several of his collections, the best of which is probably Enough Rope (almost 900 pages of shorts). The stories I remember most are "A Blow for Freedom," "Sometimes They Bite," "By the Dawn's Early Light," and "Strangers on a Handball Court."

Edward D. Hoch -- One of the few writers who actually made a living from writing short stories. He wrote several novels as well, but is known almost entirely for his short fiction, and specialized in not only mystery/crime stories but traditional, puzzle-based mystery stories. Hoch used many pseudonyms and created many series characters, but one of the most amazing things about him, to me, is that he famously appeared in every single issue of EQMM between 1973 and his death in 2007. My favorite Ed Hoch stories are probably "Murder Offstage," "Captain Leopold's Birthday," and "The Oblong Room."

Shirley Jackson -- Her genres were mostly horror and mystery, and I suspect she's most often remembered for her novels The House on Haunted Hill and We have Always Lived in the Castle. My favorite of her many short stories, and one of the most memorable ever, is "The Lottery," which I taught in my writing classes as a perfect example of not only a surprise ending but the third-person "detached" POV. Other stories of hers that I like are "The Summer People," "The Possibility of Evil," and "The Witch."

Stanley Ellin -- Another relatively lesser-known name, Stanley Ellin was a fine mystery writer who produced more than a dozen novels but seemed more interested in short stories. He won, I believe, two Edgars for his short fiction, and many of his stories, like those of some of the writers listed above, were adapted and used in Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His most famous short story, which appeared first in EQMM, was probably "Specialty of the House," and though I enjoyed it, I think my favorites of his might be "The Blessington Method," "Kindly Dig Your Grave," and "You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life." 

Richard Matheson -- Matheson's genres were mostly SF/fantasy and horror, and he'll always be close to my heart because of all the stories he wrote for the Twilight Zone TV series--sixteen stores in all, I believe. Though he might be best known for his novella I am Legend, I most remember the movie Somewhere in Time, which was an adaptation of his novel Bid Time Return, and the short story "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Other excellent Matheson shorts were "Duel," "Button, Button," "Prey" and "Born of Man and Woman."

Stephen King -- I honestly believe this man is one of the world'd best storytellers. I have every one of his novels on my shelves, and all his short-story and novella collections. King's not much older than I am, and I think one reason I love his fiction is that many of his child protagonists (he uses a lot of those) experienced some of the same things I myself did: I watched the same TV shows, owned the same toys, read the same books. As for my favorites of his short stories, they're probably "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut," "Mute," and "The Raft," and my very favorite--one of the best stories I've ever read--is "The Last Rung on the Ladder."

A confession, here: I chose not to include some other favorite genre short-story authors because they're my friends and contemporaries--and if I did list and describe those, this post would become longer than anyone would read. But I must mention here that, seriously, you should search out and read the stories of writers like David Dean, Josh Pachter,  Doug Allyn, Barb Goffman, Dave Zeltserman, Michael Bracken, Art Taylor, Stacy Woodson, Adam Meyer, Melodie Campbell, O'Neil De Noux, Joseph S. Walker, Rob Lopresti, Steve Liskow, Elizabeth Zelvin, Ashley-Ruth Bernier, and many others, who are probably writing more stories at this very moment.

Now . . . Who are some of your favorite authors of short fiction--and especially genre shorts? Can you single out any stories of theirs, or anyone's, that are your all-time favorites?

As for me, I'll see you again in two weeks. I have plenty of reading--and re-reading--to do.

Have a great August.

The Case of the Waltese Falcon

Back in April I bought a bunch of craft books for writers in a StoryBundle charity offering curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The one that left the greatest impression on me was a book by Rusch’s husband, Dean Wesley Smith, entitled Writing Novels with the Waltese Falcon.*

That was the nickname of Walter, one of the couple’s cats at the time. (A pure-bred Red-Point Birman.) Mr. Smith had grown accustomed to writing in his office while the cat napped nearby. 

I know the feeling.

My writing partner, who contributes nothing to the word count

 but still gets fed. Go figure.

In this book, we watch as Mr. Smith writes three novels. One is a ghostwriting project that he is writing for an unidentified major author. Mr. Smith has already been paid to deliver a 70,000-word book. He budgets ten days of writing, and of course he nails it, writing on average 6,895 words a day. (Day #7 he “only” writes 3,005 words. Day #9 sees his greatest output: 9,373 words.)

In the second third of the book, he writes a book in seven days (a short novel of about 43,050 words), starting with a goal of hitting 3,000 words on Day 1, and adding 1,000 words each day after that. On the 7th day, he must hit 9,000 words. He “only” hits 7,000, but by then the story has neatly concluded.

In the last third of Waltese Falcon, Mr. Smith takes a vacation to hang with his poker buddies in Vegas, and manages to write yet another short novel (37,100 words) in five days. He doesn’t own a laptop, so he humorously seats-belts his giant iMac to the back seat of his Caddy, cushioning it with pillows, and barrels off to Sin City.

You might quibble with the lengths of the last two books, but he explains that he is a devotee of the great writers of the pulp fiction era, whose novels typically clocked in under 50,000 words. He argues that publishers in the modern era began contracting longer books from writers so they could charge more for them.

More significantly, he loves challenging himself to write at speed. He never plots anything in advance—not even the ghostwriting project—choosing to “write into the dark” each time. (During the writing of the ghostwriting project, he laments not knowing where this “stupid” book is going.) But each time he figures out the plot points and wraps each of these stories to his satisfaction.

He’s proud of the seven-day book because he had just turned 65 years old at the time, and was frankly wondering if he was too old to pull off an “add-1,000-words-each-day” challenge. He clearly wasn’t.

What made the biggest impression on me as a reader and writer is how much other work he accomplishes in his regular work days. He takes careful notes of all his activity, and shares his daily schedule with us. He usually wakes at noon, checks in at the offices of his publishing business—then located on the Oregon coast—and does all the things the head of a small firm usually does. Bank runs, dealing with movers, buying office furniture, keeping up with emails and bills. (I believe that during this period he may have also owned and operated other businesses in town, such as a collectibles shop.) So that work also consumes his time. And of course he’s hanging with his wife and pets, enjoying decent lunches and dinners with Rusch and friends, and watching a whole lot of television.

Usually he gets to his writing computer about 6 p.m. and writes in bursts of 50-minute sessions into the wee hours of the morning. He estimates that he required 42 such sessions to write the 43,000-word book. “In other words,” he quips, “I typed at the blazing speed of 20.5 words per minute.”

This impressed me because like everyone on the planet, I feel that I constantly have more on my plate than I can handle. When I am feeling stressed, the first thing to go out the window is my current creative goal.

Not my writing partner, but tasked with the job
 of decimating my spinach.

Mr. Smith has a full day of work at the day job(s), but still manages to write prodigiously in his creative work. The delightful conceit of all of this is that while he is writing each of these novels, he is also blogging about and writing the larger nonfiction book that details their creation.

Which of course sent me down memory lane. Back in 2011, Denise and I signed a contract to ghost-write the memoir of a man who was big in the world of pugilism. The manly art, as history so describes it.

At the time we signed, I was busy working on another ghostwriting project. Denise had finished the research and was drafting the book that would become The Girls of Atomic City. We did not have time to write the fight book just yet, but we did have time to schedule regular phone interviews with our client. This we did, once or twice a week, dutifully recording each call using the audio-record function that was a nice feature of old versions of MS Word.

Cut to February 2012. Both Denise and I had sent our manuscripts to our respective editors. Submission usually means that we have about a month to fritter away while the editors read the MS and write their editorial letters.

Great, I thought. Now we can finally put our heads together and write this damn fight book!

Not so fast. At the last minute, our agent poached Denise to ghost-write yet another memoir for a veteran Hollywood actress. The contract had been signed months ago, but the first writer bailed and left behind little copy that was usable. “I’m begging,” the agent said, and how often does that ever happen?

The money was good, and we knew what would happen.

Denise flew to Los Angeles the next day, planning to spend four weeks in the guest cottage behind the actress’s home and conduct daily interviews with her. I would write the fight manuscript, due in a month.

There are two things in the world I know nothing about: music and sports. But I am a Paganini and Gehrig in those domains compared to my knowledge of punching big men repeatedly in the face. Not to worry: Everything I needed was contained in 20 to 25 audio recordings, and my crappy handwritten notes. Or so I hoped.

Every day I stationed myself in front of the computer from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I took breaks and ate decently, but not as well as I probably should have. The problem with journalistic nonfiction is that you can barely write a paragraph or even a sentence without checking your facts. I sprinkled a ton of TKs in the text as I went, jotting down questions, and researching on the web during my breaks.

At night after I wolfed down dinner, I sat in the living room and listened to our audio recordings. Transcribing them faithfully would take far too much time, so I did the next best thing: I took short notes as I listened, marking the timestamps so I could go back and listen during my writing sessions if I needed to check facts or get the client’s exact phrasing correctly. I nearly wept when I discovered that one of those files was corrupted!

But I pushed on. Those nighttime sessions with the audio files usually took me close to midnight. I crashed into bed each night, and did it all over the next day.

Keeping track along the way.

I do not regard what I’m telling you as something to brag about, by the way. Each time I have told this story, I always say that it was like waiting too long to research a college term paper and then trying to cram it all in one night. Not good.

The thing is, it worked! Averaging 5,700 words a day, I had 40,000 words by the end of the first week. I was frankly astonished that it could be done. I was sure that I’d made mistakes, misspelled the names of the client’s colleagues, or screwed up his family chronology. Nervously, I hit pause on the writing for two days to reread and proof everything. The client was ecstatic to get the first half of his book, and within a few days, responded to all my queries. Those answers added about 4,000 words to the manuscript before the end of the second week.

By the time he was due to fly to Asia on the Thursday of the second week, he had a first draft as it stood, at 70,083 words. (I have no doubt that he told everyone on that flight—in a private jet?—that they really ought to keep the noise down because he was, ahem, busy Reading His Future Upcoming Bestselling Book. Fifty percent of the clients I get are like that.)

After I hit that 70K, I relaxed, for two reasons. One: I knew from past experience that clients always add more to a book when they read. And two, I also know that publishing contracts allow for a variance of 10 percent up or down. The contract asked for an 80,000-word book, but the editors would accept 72,000. The client could cough, and we’d hit 2,000 words more.

I really only had to write that first 70,000 to prime the pump. When the client read the manuscript, he was inspired to riff on topics that we had never touched upon. Before he was back in the states, he was firing off long emails expanding on anecdotes in the book. 

When he got back, he overnighted a pencil edit with still more recollections. We easily met the deadline at the end of the month with 78,393 words. The biggest chunk, that 70,000, was largely written over a 14-day period of time, with one day and a morning off to proof. 

Still, that’s about 5,800 words a day for me.

The biggest pain point for me were those damn audio files. Call me crazy, folks, but since 2012, has technology changed significantly, or what?

Today you can easily upload an audio file and have an instant transcript. At no time in my journalism career has that been possible until the last couple of years. You either laboriously transcribed audio yourself, or you paid someone else to do it. I could never afford hiring out. The rates were exorbitant because such services were aimed at the physician dictation market.

But you know what’s funny? A dead, lifeless transcript could possibly have meant more work for me. The key to the project was reliving our conversations each night before bed. When the client got stubborn about sharing his vulnerabilities, I could hear one of us—usually Denise—pushing him, saying that if he wanted people to understand what he had gone through in his life, he had to be honest.

I heard his voice crack a few times, but he always came clean. And I swear, I felt that as I wrote it. To this day, the reviews he gets for that book online all reference the sensitive side of his character that so few people knew existed.

That was my only experience with writing at speed. But the Waltese Falcon experiments got me thinking I should try something similar again. I’m 15,000 words into a nonfiction project that I’ve wanted to do for a long while. Currently, my average daily output is only about 3,000 words, but I’m not beating myself up. In summer, after all, I am apparently only a part-time writer yet a full-time farmer. But I want to get this done before I go on the road again for Denise’s book tour.

When the nonfiction speed test is over, I hope to try a fiction project. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

I will leave you with one last scene that made me laugh. On one of those nights in a casino in Vegas, Mr. Smith and his buddies encounter two very drunk girls who ask what they do for a living. He responds:

“I sit alone in a room and make shit up.”

* * *

* Writing with the Waltese Falcon has since been revised slightly and re-released as three titles: Writing a Novel in 10 Days: 2026 Edition; Writing a Novel in 7 Days: 2026 Edition; Writing a Novel in Five Days 2026 While Traveling.

Two fun pieces of news:

* Since I saw you last, a country western star released a single entitled Girls of Atomic City, inspired by Denise’s book. Did not know this was happening until a friend sent us the press release.

* Denise’s book, Obstinate Daughters, is now a National Bestseller.

Talk to you soon!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

Hammett in Celuloid

Readers of this blog may well recall that, like many of denizen of the SleuthSayers rotation (Eve Fisher, Rob Lopresti, Joseph S. Walker, Art Taylor, just to name a few), I am a long-time member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. And since our writing ideas can come from just about anywhere, it should come as no surprise to the savvy crew who constitute the Sleuthsayers readership that I get some of my best writing ideas from the SMFS email list.

Today's blog entry represents one of those times.

A thread about stories with great final lines begun, I think, by our own Rob Lopresti, morphed into another SMFSer (Bobbi Chukran) weighing in about finding a TV adaptation of Hammett's novel The Dain Curse available on both Amazon Prime TV and in abbreviated form on YouTube.

Yeah, this was NOT good.

As an unapologetic fanboy of the works of Samuel Dashiell Hammett, I am, of course, familiar with The Dain Curse (far and away the consensus choice among Hammett fans as his worst novel. I recently re-read it, and was reminded all over again how inferior it was to the rest of Hammett's canon. Of course, when you're comparing any novel to the likes of Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, and The Glass Key, odds are it will definitely tend to suffer by comparison.), and with the 1970s James Coburn fronted TV project referred to above.

And it got me thinking.

Linking to any number of existing Hammett adaptations which have made it to the big or small screen might be a helpful guide for our readers who enjoy films based on great (or in the case of The Dain Curse, not-so-great) crime fiction.

I mean, the nameless Continental Op acquires a name, and that name is "Hamilton Nash." Not even a tough guy like James Coburn could do much saddled with a mouthful like that.

Well look no further! Full disclosure, there is a lot to this subject, so I will be breaking my post on it up into two entries. 

The Adaptations

Every one of Hammett's five novels has been made into a movie (or in the case of The Dain Curse, a three-hour miniseries, I think? I was twelve the first time I watched it, back in the '70s) at least once. And that makes sense. After all, with every one of his novels, Hammett practically invented a subgenre of the crime fiction milieu: 

Red Harvest: The "Town Tamer" novel.

The Dain Curse: The "Psychological Suspense" novel.

The Glass Key: The "Machine Politics/Public Corruption" novel.

The Maltese Falcon: The "First True P.I." novel (Carrol John Daly fans be damned!).

The Thin Man: The "Crime Novel as Comedy of Manners."

But what about Hammett's short stories?

Hammett cut his teeth writing short stories in an age (the 1920s) where periodicals were constantly on the look-out for content and actually paid well (Ah, the Good Old Days!), and he quickly distinguished himself as a master of the form. Stories such as "The Tenth Clew," "The Gutting of Couffignal," "The House in Turk Street," and its sort-of sequel, "The Girl With the Silver Eyes," "The Scorched Face," and "Dead Yellow Women" made both a name and fair amount of money for Hammett before he turned his hand to writing novels full-time.

And one of his absolute best stories, "Flypaper," was actually made into an episode of a SHOWTIME anthology series of noir stories entitled, "Fallen Angels" in 1994. Christopher Lloyd starred as Hammett's famous nameless detective "The Continental Op" (an "operative" for the "Continental Detective Agency," a thinly-veiled fictional version of the Pinkerton Agency Hammett himself had worked for). The supporting cast is great, too: Michael Rooker, Peter Berg (before he gave up acting for directing) and the always wonderful Laura San Giacomo.

The best part? You can watch all 29 minutes of it here, for free, on YouTube. And it is well worth your time!

Okay, now for the novels!

First there's Red Harvest, Hammett's first novel, serialized in Black Mask magazine as four related novelettes before its publication in 1929.

There are several terrific adaptations of this novel, none of them under its actual name, although the incomparable Megan Abbott is reportedly working on a screenplay for a new adaptation with Scott Frank (responsible for a lot of great stuff coming out of Hollywood, not least the script for the film adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight  and the terrific Monsieur Spade). You can read more about their collaboration here.

The first of these is Akira Kurosawa's 1961 masterpiece: Yojimbo. It stars Toshiro Mifune as a masterless samurai in Medieval Japan, and follows the central premise of Hammett's novel (the Continental Op subverting expectations and manipulating competing factions in the town he's just arrived in, setting them up to take each other out). You can watch it here. It is well worth your time!

Up next is Sergio Leone's 1964 spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars, shot in Spain, with a largely Italian cast, it made Clint Eastwood a star (Leone is reported to have said of Eastwood's acting, "He has two expressions: 'hat on,' and 'hat off.'" That tracks.). It's nothing short of a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo. So not a direct adaptation of Red Harvest, but rather an outright theft of Kurosawa's adaptation. Kurosawa himself said in a letter to Leone not long after the film's release: ‘I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it’s my movie.'"

Did he really NEED to act?

Still an enjoyable movie. And you can, of course, catch it from any number of streaming services, including here.

Nearly forgotten these days is the great Walter Hill's take on the Hammett novel: 1996's Last Man Standing, starring Bruce Willis. It gives Kurosawa a writing credit, and yet is set in the same period as Hammett's book (the 1920s), with the location is moved from the frontier mining towns of Montana to the Texas Borderlands. Willis does a great job, it's full of action, and features solid performances all around, especially from Christopher Walken as the film's Big Bad. And he is (unsurprisingly) scary. You can find it lots of places, especially here.

It's Walter Hill, and it's Bruce Willis and it's Christopher Walken (And did I mention William Sanderson and Bruce Dern, too?), so it is also well worth your time!

And the final entry for this week's post is an early '80s entry very much in the vein of the aforementioned Monsieur Spade. A fictional take on the life of Hammett during the early years of his writing career, it's titled simply Hammett. Directed by Wim Wenders and the immortal Francis Ford Coppola from a script written in part by mystery writer and Hammett Scholar Joe Gores! Furthermore, it features the always watchable Frederick Forrest (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Hammett) in the title role.

The resemblance really is uncanny.

As if this wasn't enough, this film features the great Peter Boyle as the detective Hammett used as the inspiration for the Continental Op. Boyle is, as always, fantastic. As is Marilu Henner as Hammett's "inspirational" librarian neighbor. Fans of Hammett's work will find all manner of easter eggs in this one.

Definitely worth your time!

And the best part? It's available for free on YouTube. You can watch it here!

That's it for me this go-round. Next time we'll finish walking through the film adaptations of Hammett's work. See you in two weeks!