A Night Court

Bowery, NYC, 1910

 I recently remembered this piece which I put up at Criminal Brief in 2009 and thought it was worth repeating.  

Frederic DeWitt Wells was a magistrate in New York City. In 1917 he published a book called A Man in COurt, trying to explain the legal system to the layman.  Remember that people in those days didn't get weekly doses of legal dramas on TV.  MOst of the book is didactic and not very interesting today, but the first chapter, describing a session of Night Court still has the power to fascinate.

Before we get to that, a couple more things about Wells.  In 1913 he wrote a letter to the New York Times about a woman  who had stored  all her family’s belongings in a storage warehouse. She wound up in the hospital for the insane. Her daughter Mary Shriver, paid fifty cents a month for the next two years to keep up the fee on the storage. As the Times reported: “All of her worldly possessions were in the trunks, but because of the fact that they were stored in her mother’s name and because of the latter’s mental condition, there was no way in which to obtain their release. She sought relief in the courts, with the result that, through the law’s delays, she lost her employment and her condition has been rendered even more precarious.”  Because of Wells' letter an anonymous person donated the $200 needed to get Schriver's property out of storage.

Two months after the stock market crash in 1929 Justice Frederic DeWitt Wells was hit by a car in Manhattan and died at age 56. 

 

A NIGHT COURT

1

In the Night Court the drama is vital and throbbing. As the saddest object to contemplate is a play where the essentials are wrong, so in this court the fundamentals of the law are the cause of making it an uncomfortable and pathetic spectacle.

The women who are brought before the Night Court are not heroines, but the criminal law does not seem better than they. It makes little attempt to mitigate any of the wretchedness that it judges; in many cases it moves only to inflict an additional burden of suffering. The result is tragedy.

The magistrate sits high, between standards of brass lamps. His black gown, the metal buttons and gleaming shields of the waiting police officers, the busy court officials behind the long desks on either hand tell of the majesty of the law.

In front of the desk but at a lower level is a space of ten or twelve feet running across the court-room in which are patrolmen, plain-clothes men, detectives, women prisoners, probation officers, reporters, witnesses, investigators, and lawyers. Beyond in the court-room a large crowd is on the benches. There are witnesses, brothers and sisters, friends of the prisoners waiting to see whether they go out through the street entrance or back through the strong barred gate seen through the door on the left. Also there are the “sharks” waiting to follow out the released prisoners, to prey upon them as the circumstances may favor; and a number of curiosity seekers watching intently. For them it can be nothing but a morbid dumb show, for they are so far from the bench that not a word of the proceedings could be heard. Only once in a while the shrieks and imprecations of a struggling hysterical woman as she is hurried out of court can enliven the scene.

Fortified with a letter of introduction to the judge and a disposition that will not be too easily shocked at seeing conditions of life as they actually exist, the spectator may find his way past the policeman at the gate in the rail. It clicks behind him ominously and he wonders whether he will have difficulty in getting out. Finally through clerks and officials who become more kindly as they learn he is a friend of the judge, he is seated in a chair drawn up beside the bench. The magistrate is a hearty round-faced man who seems almost human in spite of his gown and the dignity of his surroundings. The court looks different from this point of view and he may easily watch the judicial enforcement of the law supreme.

The organization of these courts is simple. There are not many rules or technicalities. The judges are patient, hard working, understanding, and efficient. The trouble is with the laws they are called upon to administer: Laws which are as absurd, as farcical, and as impracticable as the plot of the lightest musical comedy.

At first the visitor can hardly understand what is going on. A pale-faced man is in the witness chair, on his left a bedraggled little woman is standing before and below the judge, her eyes just level with the top of the desk. Clerks are coming with papers to be signed: “commitments,” “adjournments,” “bail bonds”; others are trying to engage his attention. In the meanwhile the case proceeds.

“I inform you,” says the judge to the woman, “of your legal rights, you may retain counsel if you desire to do so and your case will be adjourned so that you may advise with him and secure witnesses, or you may now proceed to trial. Which will you do?”

She murmurs something. She is pale-faced with sullen eyes, drooping mouth, an over-hanging lip. A sad red feather droops in her hat.

“Proceed,” says the judge; and to the policeman who is called as a witness, “You swear to tell the truth, the whole truth mm-mm-mm–you are a plain-clothes man attached to the 16th Precinct detailed by the central office, what about this woman?”

“At the corner of Fifteenth Street and Irving Place,” says the witness, “between the hours of 10:05 and 10:15 this evening I watched this woman stop and speak to three different men. I know her, she has been here before your Honor.”

“What do you say?” the judge asks the woman. She is silent.

“What do you work at?”

“Housework, your Honor.”

“Always housework; it is surprising how many houseworkers come before me.” She smiles a sickly smile.

“Take her record. Next case,” says the judge. Outside it is a cold sleeting night in early March.

“Witnesses in case of Nellie Farrel,” calls the clerk.

Nellie Farrel stands before the desk beside a policeman; she is tall with fair waving hair. She must have been pretty once; even now there is a delicate line of throat and chin. But her eyes are hard and on her cheeks there are traces of paint that has been hastily rubbed off. She looks thirty; she is probably not more than twenty.

A callow youth, who seems preternaturally keen, swears that on Thirteenth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place the woman stopped and spoke to him; and he tells his story as though it were learned by rote.

“Do you know the officer who made the arrest?” the judge asks him.

“I do.” A suspicion arises that there may be an interest between the witness and the policeman.

A dark-haired, smooth-faced woman who is standing by the prisoner says: “Your Honor, she’s my sister. I’m a respectable woman, my husband is a driver. I have three children. It’s disgrace enough to have the likes of her in the family. If you’ll give her another chance I’ll take her home with me; my husband is here and he’s willing.” The accused looks down piteously.

“Discharged on probation,” says the judge, and the family go out.

“That’s the third time that’s happened to her,” whispers a clerk. “Every time the sister comes up like a good one.”

A horrible old woman with straggling gray hair, shrivelled neck, and claw-like hands grasps a black shawl about her flat chest. “Mary,” says the judge, “thirty days on the island for you.”

“Oh, your Honor, your Honor, not the workhouse. Oh, God, not the workhouse,” and she is borne out screaming and fighting and invoking Christ to her aid. The judge turns and says in explanation, “an old case, an example of what they all may come to.”

A dark-haired little French woman is brought in with crimson lips, bold black eyes, and expressive hands. A detective testifies that he went with her into a tenement house on Seventeenth Street west of Sixth Avenue. Charge: Violation of the Tenement House Law.

“Qu’importe,” says the woman. “I go in ze street. I am arrested. I stay in ze house. I am arrested. I take ze room. I am arrested. Chantage—Blackmail. C’est pour rire.”

Who are these women who are brought in a crowd together? One of them older than the rest is a foreigner plainly dressed in black silk with a gold chain. She does not seem particularly evil, but rather respectable. The others are in long cloaks or waterproofs hastily donned and through which are glimpses of pink stockings. They have hair of that disagreeable butter color which speaks of peroxide. There has been a raid on a west-side street of a house of ill repute. Some testimony is given and the older woman, the “Madam” is held in bail for the action of the Grand Jury while the rest are held for further evidence. The judge tells us there will probably not be enough testimony and they will be released in the morning. But unless bail is found they will spend the night in cells.

A nervous, excited woman comes in—two policemen are with her. She has been arrested for disorderly conduct on Sixth Avenue near Thirty-first Street. She has been fighting with a man who has also been arrested and taken to the men’s Night Court. Hers is a hard, tough face of the lowest type.

“Why should you try to scratch the man’s face? What did he do?” the judge asks. “Is he your husband?”

“My husband, your Honor? Yes, I guess you can call Al that. We lives up town and when I went out he says to me, ‘Hustle, kid, you got to hustle, the rent’s due and if you don’t get the money I’ll break your neck.’ The slob won’t work. Well, a night like this you couldn’t make a cent and I only had half a dollar and I wanted to get a bite to eat. I hadn’t had a thing since four o’clock, and then I met Al going down Sixt’ Avenue an’ he tries to swipe me fifty cents off me and I was that wild I wanted to tear him. I’m sorry; I guess it was my fault. I don’t want to see him jugged, so please let me off, your Honor, and I won’t make no trouble.”

“Take her record,” said the judge, “and hold her as a witness against the man.”

A string of women are brought in for sentence who have been having finger prints taken in the adjoining room. The judge proceeds to impose sentences according to the previous records which are shown. Some of the women are those who have passed in front before. The little bedraggled woman with the red feather has been arrested seven times in sixteen months. Another has spent eight weeks in the workhouse out of a period of seven months; another has been sent already to the Bedford Reformatory; another has been twice to houses of reform. Before the judge gives his sentence he refers the prisoners to the probation officer, who talks with them in a motherly way.

After talking with the little prisoner she addresses the judge. “She says its no use, your Honor, she does not want to reform—it will not be worth while to put her on probation.”

“Committed to the Mary Magdalene Home,” says the judge, and the name brings a startling surmise as to what He of Galilee would have said.

The foregoing is only a typical session of the court. Night after night, from eight o’clock until one in the morning, the scene is repeated. The moral effect and its reaction upon those who conduct the proceedings—the judges, officers, and the police, cannot but be deplorable; the evil done to those forcibly brought there could not be over-estimated.

Substantially the law is that the women may not loiter in the streets nor solicit in the streets, or in any building open to the public. They may live neither in a tenement house nor in a disreputable house. The law makes it a crime for the women to walk abroad or stay at home. Their existence is not a crime, but only in an indirect way the law makes them outlaws. Anyone wishing to prosecute or persecute finds it easy to do so. The worst enemies of these unhappy women are to be found, curiously enough, among both the best and the most evil people in the community. The unspeakably depraved are the men who, either as procurers, blackmailers, or the miserable men who live on a share of their earnings. The excellent people who oppose any remedial legislation which might relieve the situation, seem equally responsible for the present condition, however well-intentioned they may be.

Wednesday on the Thursday Schedule

A few years ago I read a short story whose protagonist was a high school student. One of the early scenes took place in class and that got me thinking.

It might be cool to write a story which followed a teenager through his day, with different facts about his life coming out in each class. Since no teacher or other student would see all of these actions, only the reader would come to realize what was going on.

Neat idea, I decided.  But I write crime fiction so I had to figure out what crime would be involved.  The obvious choice, I am sorry to say, is an active shooter situation.  That is, somebody bringing a gun to school. But that was not something I wanted to write about. 

So I found a different solution.  I titled the story "Wednesday on the Thursday Schedule" which, to me, suggested bureaucracy at work, and something being out of whack.  

I sent the story off to the usual markets and, in much longer than it takes to tell you, it was rejected.  Very sad, but I tucked it into my memory files and waited.  

Last year D.M. Barr announced she was looking for stories for an anthology of tales inspired by the songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Hmm...

I realized that with a little revision my story would connect with "The Cage," an obscure song from Elton's first album.  Heck, I already had a mention of wild animals!

So revise I did and Barr bought my story.  "The Cage" appears in Better Off Dead, Volume 1,  which will be published on August 25th..

The moral, I guess, is be patient and the right market may come along.  I hope you like it. If not, don't go breaking my heart. 

Who Ever Imagined?

 
I don't suppose what follows is much use except as an exploration of how a writer's brain works.  How this writer's brain works, at least.

I have mentioned before that I listen to a lot of podcasts from the BBC.  They occasionally do radio episodes of the TV show Doctor Who.  (If you are not all familiar with the show I have prepared a brief primer in the sidebar.)

Why go audio with a video show?  For one thing audio is a helluvalot cheaper.  (Compare the cost of building an alien courtroom to the cost of having an actor say "Gosh, this seems to be an alien courtroom.") But it also allows actors who have "aged out" of their parts  to return.  Fans can visualize what they looked like many years ago.

Some Doctor Who episodes involve actual events in Earth's history (I don't know how many explanations we have seen there for the destruction of the dinosaurs).  A few years ago there was a nice one about Rosa Parks.  Of course there had to be a science fiction element - in this case a space-bigot who wanted to prevent the Civil Rights movement.  I noticed the show runners were very careful to avoid suggesting the Doctor and companions had influenced Parks' actions (They didn't want anyone saying: "It was actually White British aliens running things all along!")

So, one day I was listening to yet another BBC podcast, this one about history and I thought "Hey, that would make the perfect setting for a Doctor Who episode!"  So I started figuring out the premise.

And then for the next two days as I pedaled around town on my PlotCycle(tm) I figured out how the science fiction element fit in.  Finally I had it perfect!

And then what?

Then nothing.  Because I have never written a radio drama, have no connections with the BBC, and I don't write fan fiction.

All of which I knew when I first had the idea.  But I still had to prove to myself that I could work the whole thing out, because that's how a writer's mind works.  At least this writer's mind.

Now, back to a project I can possibly sell.

Talking in Italics

 

Roman Centurion

Something is bugging me and I would like your opinion.

I have been listening to an audiobook of a novel by an American author.  It is set in Italy, the characters are Italian, and they speak, you'll never guess, Italian.

Which is fine.  But when there is dialog the actor doing the narration gives the characters Italian accents.

And that's what bugs me. They are speaking in their own language. Why do they have accents?

That would make sense  if there were people speaking two languages.  Think of all those World War II movies where the Americans speak English with good 'ol midwestern, southern, or New York accents, but when we switch to German soldiers talking to each other we know they are speaking in German  because of their Deutschland accents. 

But if all the characters are supposed to be speaking German then, says me, they shouldn't have accents. What do you think?

I mentioned this to someone and she suggested this could be seen as  mocking the (in this case) Italians.  I'm sure that was not the intention of the narrator.

Slightly off topic: as far as I know George Lucas was the first director to decide, in the original Star Wars movie, that American actors would speak with American accents and the Brits would talk British. Heck, they were all in a different galaxy, anyway.  And then Star Trek decided that a Frenchman named Jean-Luc Picard could speak like a Shakespearean actor.  Why not?

And sticking to the United Kingdom for a minute, twenty-five or so years ago there was a Britcom called Coupling. In one episode a character is trying to chat up a beautiful Israeli woman but she only speaks Hebrew.  We see their entire conversation... and then we see the same event from her point of view, so in that version she appears to be the only one speaking English.  The entire thing is hilarious but all I can find to show you is this little clip in which our hero thinks he has learned her name, but actually he suffers an unfortunate misunderstanding.*

Back to our main topic: Should those Italians be speaking with Italian accents?  Whatcha think? 

* If you have access to the Roku channel you can watch Coupling for free. The scene I am describing starts around minute 17 of an episode called "The Girl With Two Breasts."  Hey, they also have one called "The Man With Two Legs."  

The Pen of the Teller

Because I write reviews a publisher occasionally offers to send me a novel. I usually respond that I only review short stories, not novels, so no thanks. I made an exception recently, because Akashic Press wanted to send me the new crime novel by Penn Jillette.

In case you don't know, the author is the tall loud half of Penn and Teller, certainly one of the best magic acts in history. Teller, the short one, is silent on stage. He is a walking encyclopedia of magic tricks and a master of sleight of hand. Penn, on the other hand, describes himself as carny trash and a juggler. They have been the subject of some controversy, being rejected by the Magic Circle because of their habit of showing how tricks are done. For example:

They have their own theatre in a Las Vegas casino. They also have a delightful TV show called Fool Us in which some of the greatest magicians in the world are invited to try to, uh, fool them. On average, slightly more than 1 in 4 succeed.

I have seen them perform twice in their fifty years together, as recently as last year. (One interesting fact: if you see the same trick twice, once on TV and once live, you may discover that something that seemed random isn't. Hmm...)

Oh, they are also active in the skeptic community, mocking pseudoscience in its many forms. They made this film many years before COVID. I doubt if RFK Jr. would approve.

So I was eager to read Penn's novel (normally I would call an author by his last name, but I can't think of him as Jilette). And it is a treat.

The narrator is Poe Legitte, and he is a tall, loud juggler. Does that sound like someone we know? The first question we face is how much of this book is autobiographical. The answer appears at the end of the novel. (I should say an answer, because Penn, as he cheerfully notes in his act, lies a lot. Talk about an unreliable narrator.)

The first almost-third of the book traces our hero in the seventies from high school on through various adventures. (He wanted to follow the cross-country wanderings of Bob Dylan, not aware that Dylan made them up.) But one day in Philadelphia he gets involved in a crime and that turns his life upside-down. He goes on the lam, trying to create a new life for himself and wondering if he dares to risk exposure by doing the thing he is best at: juggling. You can probably guess that his guilty past catches up with him, although not in the way you might expect.

But this book is not really about plot. It's more a chance to spend some time with a fascinating character who is never at a loss for words: funny, vulgar, fascinating words. Here is Poe talking to a very angry criminal who could have him killed:

"I don't want to be caught. The... do you use the term 'pigs,' or is there some other colorful term you use nowadays for law enforcement? Is it now 'five oh?' Is 'pigs' too old-fashioned collegiate? Is it like I just said, 'You're the bees' knees?'"

I do have a few quarrels with the book. Most important, I don't believe how easily Poe was convinced to participate in the crime. And the distribution of loot makes little sense. But those are small issues that won't stop you from enjoying a roller coaster ride through the mind of Penn Jilette.

You Have to Start Somewhere

Back in March I started a review of a short story at Little Big Crimes as follows:

What should the opening sentence of a short story do?  The only thing it must do is make you want to read the second sentence. But it can do so much more.  For instance:

* It can set the mood.

* It can tell you something about the plot.

* It can introduce one or more characters.

I then provided the first sentence of the story I was examining, "Come Forth and Be Glad in the Sun," by Mat Coward.

"Of all the people we have ever kidnapped, you are by far the rudest."

Lovely.  But thinking about what I wrote I remembered that way back in 2009 I and some of the other bloggers at Criminal Brief created lists of our favorite opening lines from our own short stories.  I decided to update it.  So here are some of my best opening gambits from 2010 on.

Stephen Shane's gun went off twice while he was cleaning it, accidentally killing his wife and her lover.

The best day of my life started when I got arrested.

What am I?

Dr. Rayford Mason Pantell, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., current holder of the Lorenzen Endowed Chair for Biology, stared down at the naked corpse of his graduate student, Natalie Corsuch.

I am often asked who is responsible for what the Fourth Estate refers to as my “career in crime.”

When Domici walked into the office , Coyle stepped out from behind the door and hit him with a sap.

The Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.

Sean was running late even before he ran into the corpse.

"What is it," Leopold Longshanks asked, "about women and bad boys?"

The drunk made a speech as he climbed on board the All Nighter bus, explaining at the top of his lungs that he was Patrick X. Sorley, multimillionaire hedge fund manager, and the first thing he was going to do bright and early the next day when he returned to his corner office high above Montgomery Street would be arrange for the firing of the bartender who had taken his car keys and then kicked him out after pouring only one more measly bourbon.

 When Randolph was six years old he discovered he could control gravity.

Tourists wandered down the Ramblas like sheep waiting to be fleeced. 

 Lorrimer didn't realize he was in a fight until the little man kicked him.

Leopold Longshanks blamed it on a terrorist plot.

"Here's the story," said the man who's name was probably not Richard.

 

In Pod We Trust

 I enjoy podcasts, a fact that I have written about before.  I want to tell you about some of my recent discoveries, related to our field of study.

Empire City.   Chenjerai Kumanyika takes us on a tour of the history of the New York City Police Department from the days of slave-catchers to the trial of Eric Adams.  Spoiler alert: His thesis is that there aren't just a few bad apples but the whole barrel is rotten.  9 parts.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wonder. Fantasy writer Katherine Rundell looks at the history and purposes of children's literature.  It's full of fascinating reflections on the writing process and writers. "It's easier to trust a writer who writes good food. They are a person who has  paid attention to the world." Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien intentionally made his lectures difficult to listen to, in the hopes that his students would drop out and he could go back to writing? 5 parts.

 Underfoot in Show Business.  Helene Hanff is best remembered for 84 Charing Cross Road, her book about a 20-year correspondence with a London bookseller.  It was made into a movie.  But before that she wrote Underfoot in Show Business, about her attempt to become a Broadway playwright. The BBC recently dramatized it and it's all charming but I point it out here mostly because she talks about breaking into television - by writing for The Adventures of Ellery Queen.  

The Blackburn Files.  The BBC created this lighthearted private eye series in the 1980s.  It is northern England at the time that Thatcher is closing down the coal mines.  Stephen Blackburn is a young ex-pitman who lives with his mother and takes over a PI business.  The result is comic, sometimes slipping into farce, usually because of our hero's ability to misunderstand people.  (When his intern/secretary mentions Nietzsche he replies "Gesundheit.") 5 parts.

Main Justice.  This award-winning podcast is hosted  by Andrew Weissmann, and Mary McCord, both former high-ranking DOJ attorneys, now legal commentators for MSNBC.  The show began as Prosecuting Donald Trump but following his re-election the focus shifted to analyzing the actions of the Justice Department.  Fascinating and infuriating stuff.

The Mystery Hour.  Have we mentioned this one on the blog before?  Prize-winning podcaster Rabia Chaudry grew up on Alfred Hitchcock's and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazines and each week she reads a story from one of those fine journals aloud. Among those whose works have been honored here are R.T. Lawton, Joseph S. Walker,  and myself. There are probably more SleuthSayers in here but one flaw in this podcast is that Chaudry only lists titles. You have to listen to find out who the author is.  Maybe some kind soul will create an index?

Taxonomy of the Modern Mystery Story.  Big-brained Canadian Malcolm Gladwell is a fan of our genre and  wants to understand it.  He is especially interested in the link between detective stories and our view of real-life cops.

Speak Nothing but Good of the Dead

 

I don't like to write bad reviews.  They serve a purpose  but somebody else can do that work, thank you very much.  There is a reason that every week I review the best short story I read.  What would be the point of attacking a story which will probably be gone from memory in a month or two?

I bring this up because of a novel I read recently.  It is actually a good book and I will probably say some nice things about it at a later day.

But, boy, is the text a mess.  I am talking about the Olympic prize for typos.  

A friend had warned me in advance so I actually started counting them from the beginning.  I counted 114 errors in 296 pages.  That's a typo every 2.6 pages.  And I was being conservative.  For example, when two characters spoke in the same paragraph ("Hello," Larry said. "Hi," Barry said.") I didn't count it.  

But what kind of goofs were there? Well, there were the typical homonyms that Spellcheck can't catch (you/you're, vile/vial, etc.) Once or twice a character changed their name and then changed back.  But what really freaked me out was a brand new type of typo, one that was clearly connected to a glitch in some automated system.  Look at the box to see an example I made up.

See what happened?  What I assume was an editing program occasionally and randomly decided that a capitalized word in the middle of a sentence indicated a new paragraph.  Rather disturbing.

Now, I am happy to say that the author of the novel got the rights back and has found  a different  publisher.  I trust the new edition will be a lot cleaner.  

I am not going to name the author or the book but I did intend to mention the publisher. I see no need to protect them.  But as it turns out they went out of business last year, so we go back to the title of this piece.

So let me wish you all typo-free reading and publication.

  

Mitchell and Webb say Watch Your Language

 My favorite British sketch comedians are back with  some advice for office workers.

Schrodinger's Finalist

 

"Well, Mickey, it's an exciting day here in Robert Lopresti's house."

"It sure is, Ray.  Maybe we better tell the people why."

"Good idea.  This is the morning of May first, when the winners of the Derringer Awards are announced.  And as you know, Lopresti has been nominated for best novella."

"Which of his stories was that for, Ray?"

"'Christmas Dinner.'"

"That's right! I believe it was his third story about Delgardo, the beatnik detective--"

"Beat poet, Mickey.  The character hates being called a beatnik."

"Right you are, Ray. And we are here waiting to find out whether Lopresti won the Award or bombed.  Say, isn't he usually awake by now?"

"I believe he is."

"So why is he sleeping late on today of all days?"

"Maybe because this is the big day.  I mean, he might be the winner or he might not.  As long as he doesn't check his mail you might say both states are possible. (Chuckle.) Sort of like Schrodinger's cat."

"I've always felt bad about that cat.  Somebody ought to call the Humane Society."

"There was never a real cat, Mickey.  It's just-- Wait! Here he is. Lopresti has left the bedroom.  I see he has his phone in his hand and he's scrolling down the screen."

"The suspense is incredible, Ray.  When is he going to--"

"And there it is!  You can see it in his face.  That's a man who just lost."

"You know what he'll say, Ray.  It's an honor just to be nominated."

"That's true, it is. What's he doing now?"

"It looks like, yes, he's making a cup of tea.  That's quite a bold move."

"What do you mean, Mickey?"

"If I had just lost I would be drinking bourbon."

"At seven o'clock in the morning? Are you out of your--  Well, never mind.  Go in and interview him."

"Right.  Will do.  This is exclusive, folks. The first interview after the big loss.  Excuse me, Rob, I wonder if you have a few minutes--"

"Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my kitchen?"

"I'm a fictional construct."

"Oh. Another one. I swear, I'm gonna hire an exterminator."

"The fans were hoping for your thought on losing the Derringer Award."

 "Were they? Okay.  It's an honor just to be a finalist."

"I thought you were going to say to be a nominee."

"The Short Mystery Fiction Society tries to avoid that word, because any member or editor can submit a story for consideration. Some people call that a 'nomination,' which leads to all kinds of confusion."

"I see. But about your losing, that must be a great disappointment."

"Well, sure, I'd rather win -- which I have three times, by the way -- but I am delighted that Stacy Woodson, a friend and fellow SleuthSayer, took the prize. She turned in a great story. There's no shame in losing to the best."

"That's very big of you."

"Thanks. Oh, and don't forget that the SleuthSayers book Murder, Neat won the Best Anthology prize, and that's pretty special.  And I found out today a story I submitted was accepted for the New Orleans Bouchercon anthology."

"So, you aren't retiring."

"Hell, no."

"And what's next for Robert Lopresti?"

 "Tea. Probably a Danish, too."

"And after that?"

"I have to write a SleuthSayers essay for next Wednesday."

"What will it be about?"

"No clue.  I'll think of something."

"And there he goes, folks. A true professional.  With a Danish. It's apricot, I think. Back to you in the studio, Ray."

More Musical Legal Advice

Here are those Texas attorneys, Hutson and Harris, back with more legal advice. (Do they hire new associates based on what instruments they play?)

Tillie, Gertrude, and Molly

 This piece has nothing to do with crime, but it certainly is related to writing. Or one specific writer.

Back in March came Purim and so my wife was fine-tuning her recipe for hamentaschen, the cookies that are traditional for the holiday. One of the texts she consulted was the Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook.  I knew a little about what led to the creation of that book but I wound up doing a deep dive, and here is what I brought to the surface.

Tillie Edelstein was born in New York City in 1899. Her father, a mediocre businessman, ran a hotel in the Catskills and part of Tillie's job was writing skits for the guests to perform.  She was required to create speaking parts for every child in attendance so one of her plays was "Snow White and the Twenty-Eight Dwarfs."

Tillie married Lewis Berg, an engineer, and when the factory in New Orleans where he worked burned down they returned to the city and Tillie started looking for a job.    Or rather, she decided to create one. 

In 1928 Gertrude Berg, as she now called herself,  managed to wangle an interview with the local CBS radio station and presented a script she had created about two sales clerks at a department store - a show about working women? Pretty radical.  Effie and Laura was cancelled after the first episode because one of the clerks decreed "Marriages are not made in heaven." 

A year later she sold another idea to the NBC station. The Rise of the Goldbergs was about a Jewish family in New York. Molly and Jake were immigrants with thick accents.  Their children were typical first-generation Americans.

Berg wrote the scripts, produced the show, and was reluctantly corralled to star as Molly.   She had one week to write the scripts for four 15-minute episodes.  She wrote them - and many of the thousands more that followed - in the Main Reading Room at the New York Public Library, because her own apartment was too noisy.  The series premiered in November, 1929, just after the stock market crash.

This was long before sophisticated methods of checking who was listening to what so no one knew at first whether the show was a hit or  flop.  But three weeks into the scheduled four-week run Berg got a sore throat and the show had to be dropped.  The station received over 100,000 letters of complaint - and remember, this show was running on one station, not yet a network. NBC promptly bought The Goldbergs, as it was renamed, for the whole season. 

The show ran, on radio, live stage, and then television (starting in 1948) for more than two decades. Fortunately for Berg she had kept ownership rights to the characters.  In the beginning The Goldbergs was sometimes funny, sometimes melodramatic.  (If a female character was to be written out she got married.  A male character got sick.  When an script called for an actor to cough he would ask Berg "How long have I got?")  By the time it reached TV it was definitely a sit-com.

The show was always recorded live, leading to some bizarre adventures.  During one TV episode two of the three cameras failed so the actors, on the fly, had to revise the story to take place in only one room.  Talk about improv skills. When one of Berg's TV scripts called for a baby elephant and the critter refused to get in an elevator, they had to rebuild the apartment set on the ground floor.

Berg was loved by her audience but some people described her as ruthless.  For example, Himan Brown helped her get in the door at NBC but she canned him after a year in favor of a more experienced actor. Brown, who became a legendary producer of radio drama, never forgave her.  She was also the defendant in the first ever intellectual property case involving radio - which she won.

Glenn D. Smith, in his biography of Berg asks the reasonable question: was she more ruthless than other producer/stars like Bob Hope or Groucho Marx -- or was she just the only one in a dress?

In 1950 Philip Loeb, who played her husband on TV, was accused of being a Communist and blacklisted.  Berg did her best to defend him but The Goldbergs was cancelled.  Four years later Loeb committed suicide.

Berg's career continued in a diminished state.  She appeared in summer stock and on Broadway but, not surprisingly, was only invited to play Jewish women, usually mothers.   She died in 1966.

Oh, remember that cookbook?  That's how I got into this mess.  Because Molly was a great cook a lot of fans had requested her recipes.  The book was published in 1955 and Gertrude Berg was listed as co-author with Myra Waldo.  Waldo did the recipes because Berg was no cook.

And finally there is a sort of mystery in her autobiography which I invite you to solve.  Around 1940 the Berg family moved to Bedford, Connecticut.  She wrote about  a mystery writer who used to visit them there:

According to the writer, nothing in the whole world was right and life seemed to be a losing battle, from childhood on it was a downhill fight that we were all in except himself.  He was above the crowd, a lonely observer, born too soon or too late or something.

The writer was a short man, a little too stout, and every time he "drove by" the house it was in a different car with a different woman.  The cars he borrowed from friends, who, it seemed couldn't say not to him.  The women he borrowed also. They, too, couldn't say no, but they were all of  a pattern.   They were disappointed modern-dancer types who wanted to study with Martha Graham but never quite made the grade.

We are also told that this author didn't like Shakespeare.  "For Othello he gives Shakespeare A for effort."

Eventually a "husband who didn't agree with the writer's views on sharing the wealth (car and wife) manhandled him one night and the writer left New York for the coast."

So there is my final question for you: Who was this mysterious mystery writer? Gertrude Berg, who told so many thousands of stories, does not reveal the end of that one.

Oh, and finally....

 

The Two-Sentence Trick

 

I sold a story to an anthology this week.  I can't tell you about that yet but I want to tell you about a tool, new to me, which I used.

I have always been a plotter rather than a pantser, but I don't usually outline.  I knew this would be a longer story than I have been writing lately -- it turned out to be 7,500 words which I then had to (shudder) edit down to 6,000 -- so I decided to outline it.

But here's how I did it: For each scene I wrote two sentences. The first told what happened.  The second explained why it was important. Or putting it another way: How did this scene advance the plot? (Because if it doesn't, why is it there?)

This was particularly appropriate because this mystery story really was a mystery story, meaning my protagonist had to solve a crime.  My system made it easy for me to keep track of the clues.

For example: 

Scene 6. Chickie, the manager,  confronts them and says he doesn’t want Hilda back because she caused them trouble by getting arrested.  They learn that  Surebank is the insurance company involved in the theft.

Got it? The first sentence is what happens in the scene.  The second sentence tells me what the protagonist got out of it. 

Worked for me. This time.  Who know what will happen next time around?

Today in Mystery History: April 2

 

Time for the 14th stop on our tour of the genre's past.

April 2, 1879. Hulbert Footner was born in Ontario.  He explored the northern part of the province (Lake Footner is named in his honor) and then became an actor, traveling across North America in a play called Sherlock Holmes.  He wrote adventure stories and more than 30 detective tales about Madame Rozika Storey who solved crimes with her less-brilliant assistant.  Some of his other crime novels were made into movies.

April 2, 1914.  Alec Guinness was born in London.  He starred in some wonderful films in our genre (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Our Man in Havana, The Lavender Hill Mob) but to me he is immortal for the greatest performance of John LeCarre's master spy, George Smiley, in TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.

 

April 2, 1920. Jack Webb was born in Santa Monica, CA.  In 1949 he starred as an unlicensed private eye in the radio show Pat Novak, For Hire. In 1950 he performed in  two classic genre movies: Sunset Boulevard and Dark City. But you know darned well what he is remembered for: he created and starred in the radio show Dragnet (1952-1957) which also played on TV from 1952-1959.  Yes, he played Sgt. Joe Friday on radio and TV at the same time.  He brought the show back to TV from 1967 to 1970.  The highly-stylized police procedural was much quoted, copied, and mocked.

 

 April 2, 1931. The birth date of another Ontario mystery writer.  Howard Engel wrote sixteen novels about Toronto private eye Benny Cooperman. In Memory Book the detective suffers a blow to his head (as have how many other fictional sleuths?) but this one resulted in his inability to read.  This was based on the results of an actual stroke Engel suffered.

 

April 2, 1950. This Week Magazine featured Ellery Queen's short story "The Sound of Murder."

 

April 2, 1974. The Sting won the Oscar for Best picture.  Can you hear "The Entertainer?"

 

April 2, 1980. The Long Good Friday was released.  The wonderful Bob Hoskins as a gang boss  under attack.  "You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!" 

April 2, 199?. On this date Detective Mike Hoolihan tells us about the case she can't let go of.  Thus begins Kingsley Amis' novel Night Train.

 

April 2, 1999. Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune  was released.  Glenn Close and Julianne Moore starred in a movie about the results of an old woman's death on a small town.  It was nominated for an Edgar.

 

April 2, 2002. Henry Slesar died in New York City, where he was born.  In between he wrote  mysteries and science fiction, but is best remembered for the adaptation of his work to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.  His first novel, The Gray Flannel Shroud, won the Edgar Award. He also won an Emmy as head writer for the only crime-focused soap opera, The Edge of Night.

 

April 2, 2012.  On this day New Jersey mobster Sal Caetano told a gang of Mafiosi that he wanted a screw-up killed.  Thus begins Greenfellas, written by somebody named Lopresti.

And there we draw the veil.