Seen in Seattle

 

I just spent a long  weekend in Bellevue, WA for Left Coast Crime: Seattle Shakedown, and I had a great time. More than 500 mystery writers and readers. Saw a lot of old friends (including SleuthSayers Michael Bracken and Brian Thornton) and made some new ones.  Excellent organization and a very nice hotel.

If I have a complaint it is that the out-of-staters will get a completely false idea about our weather.  It was dry and fiftyish the whole time.  I don't suppose the committee is responsible for that, though.

A few things you should never miss at LCC: The first is Author Speed-Dating. Forty writers have two minutes at each table to explain why you should buy their books.  Having been on both sides, I can tell you that listening is a lot more fun than being the one giving the same speech 20 times.  On the bright side you really hone your speech, because you get to see exactly what holds people's attention.

Next is the New Author's Breakfast. Each novelist gets one minute to dazzle you.  To me the standout at both events was Jason Powell, a young New York City firefighter whose novel about that occupation  sold out before I could get to the dealer's room. My wife ordered it from our local bookstore that day.  

And then there's the banquet.  I co-hosted a table with Steve Steinbock, who reviews books for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  Notice the cool display of mag covers he provided.  One of our fellow diners told me "Your novel Greenfellas is on my bedside table. I read two pages every night and fall asleep."  I said: "Thanks?"

But most of the wisdom is imparted at panels.  The ones I attended included: two on short stories (yay!), politics, social issues,  humor, slang, historical (2). villains, and editors.

A favorite moment from that last panel.  The moderator began by asking if there was anyone who had no idea what an editor did.  Zoe Quinton, a panelist, raised her hand.  Turned out she was lying.

Hennrikus, Witten, Other Guy, Corbett, Byron

And speaking of panels I got to moderate one.  We struggled for a title that was clear and came up with 20 Panels in One: YOU Choose the Topics.  But when I told people about it someone made a suggestion that was brilliant and I will use it if we ever do it again: Panel Improv!  

The idea is, audience members write  topics in a hat and we discuss whatever happens to be drawn out.  My intrepid associates were Ellen Byron, David Corbett, J.H. Hennrikus and Matt Witten and they were all brilliant.

Our brilliant audience

The first topic we received was "The Trials and Tribulations of Squirrels." With some anxiety I asked if any panelist wanted to discuss that.  David explained that his dog had killed  a squirrel and they had to hire a lawyer to sue the dog. And we  were off and running.  Got a lot of compliments about it.  

That's enough.  Next time I will, as usual, provide you with brilliant quotations from the authors I encountered. 

Davy the Punk

Bob Bossin has been an important figure in the folk music community of British Columbia for half a century.  I recently had the pleasure of reading his biography of his father. DAVY THE PUNK (2014) tells an amazing story of immigrant resilience, Canadian history, and crime.

The press and the law called Davy Bossin a gambler, but he never placed a bet.  They called him a bookie but he never took a bet either.   He managed to be a major part of the illegal horse-betting industry, while the government struggled desperately to prove that anything he did was illegal.

Among the supporting characters in this true story are Franklin Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, Frank Costello ("the prime minister of the underworld,"), and the Crew Cuts (remember their hit song "Sh-Boom?").

With Bob's gracious permission I am reprinting here the opening pages of Davy the Punk.  I suspect that after reading it you may want to buy the book.

DAVY THE PUNK, excerpt

by Bob Bossin

It is the summer of 1956 and I am sitting with my father, Davy Bossin, in the bleachers above first base in Maple Leaf Stadium, the old ballpark on the shore of Lake Ontario. Summer nights in Toronto are as humid as a Georgia swamp, and the stadium on the waterfront has been dubbed ‘the poor man’s air conditioning’. Davy is sitting in the comforting breeze off the lake, reading the newspaper. I am giving him a fervent play-by-play of the game between the Maple Leafs and the Havana Sugar Kings. I am ten.

Through the early innings, we are joined by one, then another of my father’s cronies, who gather in the evening air to swap stories, argue politics, and only incidentally watch baseball. By my father’s decree, my colour commentary stops when the friends show up. This is fine with me; I love hearing the men talk the way they do when they are away from their work and their wives. I make myself as small as I can, hoping that my presence will be forgotten and I will overhear some secret that would otherwise be withheld until I have been dispatched for peanuts or hot dogs. Toronto was known, in those days, as Toronto the Good, but the Toronto these men know is tantalizingly bad.

‘Did you see Benny Kaufman died?’

‘Benny the Shoykhet? With the book in the little butcher shop in the alley off Kensington?”

‘Yeah, exactly. Benny's gone, alev ha-sholem.’

‘Did he ever get pinched? I don't think he ever got pinched. He had a hell of an operation. You could make a bet, have a drink and buy a chicken.’

‘Did he actually sell chickens?”

‘Sure he did. They were good kosher chickens. Of course he always kept a few in the back in case of a raid. He had one of the kids out at the street, who'd whistle if the cop turned into the alley. Then the bubba would come downstairs and they'd stick the bottles in her apron and throw a couple chickens on top, and she'd shuffle down the alley, smiling and nodding at the cop. Benny stuffed his betting slips up the ass of one of the chickens. They never caught him.’

'Yeah, they did. Herbie Thurston pinched him. Remember, Harry Thurston’s boy who became a cop.’

‘Nah, you're all mixed up. Herbie never pinched Benny; the guy he pinched was Murray the Rug.’

‘In the old dry cleaner’s on Dovercourt!’

‘Exactly. When he was a kid, Herbie used to go in with his father, when the old man placed his bets. Then when he became a cop, he went to Murray, and he told him, “Murray, I'm a policeman now and I'll arrest you if I have to. You've done well, it’s time you retired.” Of course Murray didn't listen. He looked at Herbie, and saw the little pisher tagging after his old man. And nobody had ever been able to charge him, because they could never find his slips. But Herbie knew from his father that Murray kept them under his toupee. So he nailed him.’

The stories go back and forth, of this bookie who got busted, of that one who never did. My father sits there reading the paper. The conversation flows by him, like water around a rock.

“What was the name of the guy … the one they arrested over and over?”

Silence. Nobody remembers. Then a new voice says, ‘Shnooky Schneider. It was Shnooky Schneider.’

The voice is my father’s. When Davy speaks, it is as if he were a king. Heads turn. This is because he speaks so rarely. And because, when he does, he is a natural-born story-teller. He folds his paper, none too quickly, and begins to recount how Arnie the Shnook Schneider was busted for bookmaking sixty-seven times, every one a first offence.

‘In those days Amie was working for Manny Feder,’ my father begins quietly, `back when Manny and his brothers had the big horse room on Queen Street, before they opened the Brown Derby. It was a pretty smooth operation, as it oughta be, since Manny had half the cops in town on the pad.

`But every now and then, the heat would be on. Old Reverend Domm would get up in Bathurst Street Church and preach a fire-and-brimstone sermon on vice, and then Holy Joe Atkinson would publish the whole damn thing in the Star. “Sunday morning, in Bathurst Street United Church, the Reverend Gordon Domm warned of the wave of corruption loosed on the city by gambling racketeers."’

My father gives the Star the voice of Walter Winchell. As the plot heats up, so does his delivery.

`Then the next day they'd send some cub reporter down Queen Street to lay some bets at some of the bookie joints, as if that was news to anybody, and they'd run that on the front page. And that would get the Decent Citizens riled up, and they'd start demanding that the police do something. So the cops would call Manny and say, "Sorry, Mr Feder, but we're gonna have to raid.” And they'd tell him when. Then Manny would call Shnooky and tell him to get ready.'

Here my father pauses, pretending to some interest in what is happening on the field. The men around me wait for him to go on. It seems to me all Maple Leaf Stadium does.

`Manny's joint was on the second floor and it would be going full blast with punters betting, smoking their cigars, the phone ringing, odds coming in and getting chalked up, the loudspeaker blaring-- "They're at the post. And they're off…"

`But upstairs, on the third floor, there was another room with just a table, an unconnected phone and a folding chair. And that's where Shnooky would wait for the cops. They'd come charging in, up the stairs, past the horse room, straight to the third floor. They'd arrest Shnooky and grab the telephone, so they could report that `gambling equipment was seized." Then they'd go back downstairs, past the horse room again, and take Shnooky to the station, where Manny would be waiting with Shnooky’s  bail. Then, when Shnooky was convicted, Manny would pay the fine, which was, by standing agreement, a hundred bucks. It was like a tax.

`Of course the law said that, on a third conviction, bookmakers go to jail.  But the cops would misplace Shnooky’s priors, or the magistrate would be one of Manny’s customers, or both.  So every time, it went down as Shnooky’s first offence.  And the government got its hundred bucks, which was good money in those days.’

Sometimes the laughter from our section was so raucous the pitcher would turn and look up.

Waving at Plotholes

I have been helping an author, call them A., with a short story.  A. wrote a pretty good tale but it had one problem: near the end a character I'll call Vic Villain did something that seemed very odd but was needed to make the story turn out the way A. wanted.

A. provided a complicated explanation for Vic's actions, but that didn't help. I could think of two better and safer ways Vic could have gotten the same result, but they wouldn't have made the story turn out the way A. had planned.

My first thought was to suggest that the author hang a lampshade.  I have discussed this before.  It means disarming a plot problem by calling the  reader's attention to it.  It seems paradoxical but it can work.  

Think of the movie Rear Window.  For the plot to function Hitchcock needs Thorvald to leave his blinds up while killing his wife.  This seems like a ridiculous thing to do.  The Master's solution is to have several people comment on how unlikely it is that Thorvald would do that.  They consider it evidence that our hero must be  wrong about the killing.

So A. could have dealt with the issue by having the protagonist say something like "I guess we'll never know why Vic that" or "He must have been crazy to..."

But that didn't strike me as satisfactory either.  So I suggested that A. take the other route, which I call the Burning Storeroom Trick. 

Let's move to a different Alfred Hitchcock picture, Saboteur.  At one point the movie's hero is locked in the storage room of a mansion,  no way out.  But wait! He has a book of matches and the room has an automatic sprinkler. He lights a match under the sensor and alarms go off.  The next scene is an exterior, showing the mansion being evacuated.  A group of onlookers are watching  and one of them is the hero.

Clever! Obviously he used the fire to escape.

How?

Excuse me?

How did setting a fire allow him to get out of the storage room?

Umm...

Exactly.  In an interview Hitchcock admitted he didn't know either. 

In science and academia this known as handwaving. The Jargon File does a nice job of explaining it. 

To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic... If someone starts a sentence with "Clearly..." or "Obviously..." or "It is self-evident that..." it is a good bet he is about to handwave. 

Notice that I used the word obviously a few paragraphs ago? 

It is self-evident that all penguins can yodel, so I don't need to provide any recordings of them doing so...

By the way, handwaving is similar to the original meaning of the phrase begging the question.  There is a wonderful Wondermark cartoon on this subject here.

Anyway, I suggested to A. that he try that approach. 

Hero: Why did you do that?

Vic Villain: It was part of my cunning plan.

Hero: Why are you waving your hand like that?

Vic: Look! Yodeling penguins!

As it happened  A. found a different solution, changing Vic's plan to get the bad guy in the right place.I like it much better than being locked in a burning storeroom.

Music, Neat

Many SleuthSayers enjoy a music background. I’ve long known Rob’s interest in folk music dating back to the classic electric zitherphone. Our Fran Rizer, no longer with us, was an avid bluegrass fan and picker. Liz Zelvin released an album. And I gathered Brian Thornton and Steve Liskow stay active in the music scene. Turns out Eve Fisher and Chris Knopf keep up as well. And then I learned Stephen Ross pretty much operates a home recording studio.

“Stephen, Lady Ga-Ga on line 2.”

After intense cogitation, I mapped out a trailer for our first anthology based on Deborah Elliott-Upton’s book cover. I loaded up tavern sound effects– laughter, tinkling glasses, breakage, yelps and more laughter. I snagged karaoke tracks featuring Chris Stapleton, George Thorogood, and a little bit drunk Lady Antebellum. But as much as I like ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ (the song at least, thank you, Melayna), the cuts didn’t quite match the mood of the book. But I knew who could.

I put out a call and a half dozen SleuthSayers responded gleefully when I proposed a nearly impossible task– coming up with a bar song amid a time crunch. Using groundwork laid by Lopresti and Liskow, the team figured out how to pull off a global effort. Thank you, everyone. Here is the song, composed and sung by Rob Lopresti, instrumentals by Stephen Ross.

Murder, Neat

sung by Rob Lopresti, keyboards and percussion by Stephen Ross

Following are Rob's clever lyrics. No alcohols were unduly harmed in the making of this song.

Murder, Neat

lyrics and melody by Rob Lopresti

Come in the tavern and kindly ignore
The ax in the bar stool, the blood on the floor
You’re in no danger. Here death has no sting
For this is crime fiction and not the real thing.

There’s bourbon for burglars, and robbers get rye
Cocktail or blackmail? One vodka per spy.
Here partners may swindle and spouses might cheat
When SleuthSayers serve you up Murder, Neat.

The cops drop a beer in their favorite saloon
Where hardboiled detectives start drinking by noon
Amateur sleuths take red herrings and Scotch
While pickpockets covet your wallet and watch.

Femme fatales ask as they sip the champagne
Does gunpowder leave an indelible stain?
A dive bar is waiting down any mean street
Where SleuthSayers serve you up Murder, Neat.

Murder, Neat. Murder, Neat
That’s the name of the book
Where convict and constable, conman and crook
Will pour you a ninety proof story of crime
To make you turn pages way past closing time.

In the back room there are gangsters today
Planning a caper to steal cabernet.
If you aren’t driving the getaway car
They’ve got pinot grigio and plenty of noir.

The mastermind villain advances the plot
And chuckles that arsenic sure hits the spot.
Each cozy village has pubs so discreet
Where SleuthSayers serve you up Murder, Neat.

Murder, Neat. Murder, Neat
That’s the book you should choose
If you like your clues well-infused with some booze
You can buy it online or in bookstores downtown
But don’t steal a copy or we’ll track you down
When SleuthSayers serve you up Murder, Neat.

Stealing From The Best

 I hope you aren't sick of hearing about Murder, Neat, because here we go again. I am thrilled to teeny little sub-atomic bits to have a story in the SleuthSayers anthology.  

In "Shanks's Sunbeam," Leopold Longshanks has lunch in a tavern with a fellow mystery writer who tells him that a mutual acquaintance has been accused of Doing a Bad Thing.  It is probably not a spoiler to tell you our hero saves the day.

But what I want to talk about is the name of that lunch companion: Procter Ade.  I made up the first name but the last is a homage to my inspiration.

I have written here before about George Ade.  Early in the last century he was a midwestern humorist and journalist.  He is mostly remembered for his Fables in Slang.  These were a series of short stories he wrote which satirized human nature and social mores.  Since he wanted people to know that he knew slang didn't belong in a newspaper he capitalized all the guilty words and unusual uses (Much as I did above with "Bad Thing")

.  Here are three of his opening sallies:

"One Autumn Afternoon a gray-haired Agriculturalist took his youngest Olive Branch by the Hand and led him away to a Varsity."

"Once there was a home-like Beanery where one could tell the Day of the Week by what was on the Table."

"Once there was a Financial Heavy-Weight, the Mile-Stones of whose busy life were strung back across the Valley of Tribulation into the Green Fields of Childhood."

And since the stories were fables they all ended with morals:

"In uplifting, get underneath."

"A good Jolly is worth Whatever you pay for it."

"Give the People what they Think they want."

Dublin

Not too long ago I was thinking about one of my favorite Fables and I realized I could steal a plot device from it.  The result is "Shanks's Sunbeam."  If you would like to read my inspiration you can find it here. But I urge you to read my story first.  I'd rather spoil Ade's story than mine.

By the way, "Sunbeam" also involves memories of my pre-Covid trip to Ireland.  I'm sure that makes future visits tax deductible, right?

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Murder, Neat.

The Name of the Beast

 

I just want to make a weird little observation about that group of characters Earl Emerson once eloquently described as the Sociopathic Sidekicks (SS).  These are the men (I don't know of any female versions) who assist the hero (often a private eye) by being more vicious and less ethical than he is.  

Let's say there is a villain who keeps hiring thugs to kill our hero but whenever he is warned off promises to stop.  Then he does it again.  Hero Dude, with his firm code of ethics, can't kill the bad guy if the bad guy is promising  not to be a threat.  So the sidekick, untroubled by such ethical dilemmas, solves the problem with a well-placed bullet.

That exact scenario played out in a novel by Robert Parker, with the hero being Spenser and the sidekick being HAWK, who had made his first appearance in the novel Promised Land (1977).  Hawk is the earliest example of an SS I am aware of.  

In 1987 Robert Crais introduced private eye Elvis Cole in The Monkey's Raincoat. And faithfully at the P.I.'s side was ex-Marine, ex-cop, Joe PIKE.

Then Walter Mosley introduced MOUSE in Devil in a Blue Dress (1990).  He is Easy Rawlins' best friend, but so violent he even scares Easy.

I'm not sure in which of his novels about private eye Thomas Black the aforementioned Earl Emerson introduced SNAKE, but it was no later than The
Portland Laugher (1994).  This guy varies from the others I mention here because  he seems more like a parody of the stereotype.  Instead of helping Thomas out of trouble Snake's assistance usually makes things worse and he ends up needing to be rescued..

I bring all this up because I am reading S.A. Cosby's first novel (and if you haven't discovered Cosby, my word, jump on the train, the guy is brilliant.)  In My Darkest Prayer, Nathan Wayfinder gets help from a gunhappy pal named (wait for it) SKUNK.

So there's my question.  Why are so many sociopathic sidekicks known (and in many cases only known) by monosyllabic animal names? 

BSF (Best Stories Forever)

This is my fifteenth annual review  of the best short stories of the year, selected from my weekly-best choices at Little Big Crimes.  Feel free to cite this list but please refer to it as "Robert Lopresti's Best of the Year list at SleuthSayers" or similar phrasing, NOT "SleuthSayers Best..." because my fellow bloggers are stubbornly independent souls who occasionally disagree with me, as foolish as that seems.

There are sixteen winners this year, one more than last time. Thirteen of the stories are by men; three by women.  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine is the big winner, with six tales.  Black Cat Weekly scored two, as did an anthology from Random House. Five were written by my fellow SleuthSayers.  

Six of the stories are funny.  Five have fantasy or science fiction elements. Two are private eye stories.  Two are police stories.  Two are by foreigners.  Seven of the authors are repeat offenders.  

Enough. Please pass me the envelopes.

Aymé, Marcel   "Martin, the Novelist," in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2023. 

Martin is a successful novelist with one great flaw.  He kills off his characters. His publisher  extracts a promise that no one important will die in his next book, or no money.

That's hard enough for Martin to bear but even worse is a visit from one of his characters, who is very unhappy with the plot.  Everybody's a critic, right? 

Cody, Liza, "Never Enough,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2023.

This is Cody's third appearance on my best list.   

Sheena, the narrator of this tour-de-force novella, is a horrible person.  She never refers to her only child  as anything but "the annoying kid."  She has nothing but insults for her only two friends, one of whom she says "I don't like much."

But worse, when she decides that "the marriage was worn as thin as the hall carpet," she set her sights on an artist.  The fact that he had been in a  relationship for decades only made it more of a challenge. Sheena is a scary, narcissistic, probably delusional, menace.  You wouldn't want to meet her, but she makes a fascinating protagonist.

De Noux, O'Neil, "Of Average Intelligence," in Black Cat Weekly, #85.

My friend and fellow SleuthSayer is a retired police officer, and it shows.

"No offense, Office Kintyre.  But I'm smarter than you."

Have you taken offense yet?  I certainly have.  Attorney Matt Glick is the speaker and he has recently killed his wife.  The cops have a ton of circumstantial evidence against him and he has a ready explanation for every bit of it.

In fact the only thing Glick doesn't have  a ready work-around for is his own smug superiority,... 

Dean, David, "Mrs. Hyde,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,  March/April 2023.

This is my friend and  fellow SleuthSayers' fifth appearance on this list, which makes him champeen of the world.  No one else has been in more than four times. 

Dr. Beckett Marchland  is an alienist, which is to say, a Victorian-era psychologist.  He receives a troubling letter from a woman who reports that her once loving and kindhearted husband is being changed for the worse by a bad companion.

The woman is Mrs. Edward Hyde.  The wicked friend is Dr. Henry Jekyll.

Faherty, Terence, "The Incurious Man,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2023.

This is the fourth appearance here  by yet another .SleuthSayer alum.

Owen Keane is a private detective starting a new job.  On his first day, taking the train from New Jersey to New York City, he encounters something very strange.  Every day for a week a woman near Rahway has held up a sign for people on the train to see.  The signs seem ominous, if not threatening, and refer to Giovanni and Elvira, whoever they are.

Everyone on the train is fascinated by the signs except one man who ignores them.  His lack of interest interests Keane...

Finlay, C.C. "The Best Justice Money Can Buy,"  in The Reinvented Detective, edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek, Caezik SF and Fantasy, 2023. 

What if the whole justice system was for-profit?  Crimes would not be investigated unless the victims, or someone else, pay for the police time.  Criminals could shell out dough to get out of prison.  (Well, today we call that hiring a good lawyer, don't we?)  And so on.

Detective Chung is not a fan of the for-profit system but today it works in her favor, because she eye-witnessed the son of the wealthiest woman in the country committing a hit and run.  And this gives her leverage, if she can figure out how to use it...

Helms, Richard, "Spear Carriers,"  in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November/December 2023.

This is the third time   Helms had made my best of the year list.

Dave and Sam have bit parts in a Broadway play, as policemen.  They only show up at the very end which leaves them with a lot of time on their hands.  One night Dave goes out for a bite in his police uniform-costume and the clerk gives him his food for free. "Thank you for your service."

This happens because Dave is wearing his costume - which is to say, something that looks very much like a police uniform. . That gives Sam an idea...

 Hockensmith, Steve, "The Grown-Ups Table,"  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,   January/February 2023.

This is the third best-of-the-year appearance by SleuthSayer Hockensmith.  2023

It's Christmas dinner at a dysfunctional family.  Uncle Dan  can't stop spouting the philosophy of his favorite right-wing radio host.  And there is Cryptique who, until we turned goth a few months ago, was named Bobby.  

But the main character is Tia who has just graduated to the Grown-Ups Table.  And she is carefully orchestrating the dinner conversation to reveal who murdered the family matriarch, Gammy Bibi.   

Linn, Ken, "A Flash of Headlights,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2023.

Brody does yard maintenance.  A year earlier he was charged with a DUI.  He has been sober ever since, just barely. He makes a casual spur-of-the-moment decision to do what he considers a friendly gesture.  This leads to a tragedy which affects people he cares about. Every move Brody makes feels like it will make things worse. 

Narvaez, Richie, "Shamu, World's Greatest Detective,"  in Killin' Time in San Diego, edited by Holly West, Down and Out Books, 2023.

Shamu is an orca at SeaWorld (the eighteenth to bear that name) and thanks to new technology she is able to communicate with people.  Turns out she is, as the title says, a brilliant detective.  The story is narrated by her assistant, Angie Gomez.

One of the pleasures of this story is Shamu's dialog.  Here she is talking to her police nemesis: "I can solve the case in time for you to get home and rest your minuscule human brain."

Petrone, Susan, "The Silent Partner,"  in Cleveland Noir, edited by Michael Ruhlman and Miesha Wilson Headen, Akashic Press, 2023.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.

It's 1970.  The narrator writes about baseball history for the Cleveland Press.  He has to cover the 50th anniversary of the day a Cleveland player was killed by a pitch thrown by a Yankee.

The more he investigates  the more it appears that something weird happened.  Weird, like the beanball being deliberate?  Much weirder than that.

Roanhorse, Rebecca, "White Hills,"  in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk, and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Random House, 2023.

White Hills is everything Marissa ever wanted, right down to the welcome sign by the community mail drop reminding everyone of the HOA rules. Some people don't like HOAs, but Marissa loves them. 

Marissa is perhaps a bit shallow and self-satisfied with  her wealthy new husband.  She constantly rattles off  popular cliches and mantras.  But does she really fit in in White Hills?

One night she springs two surprises on her husband.  The one she is excited about: she's pregnant.  The one she didn't give a thought to before mentioning: she's part Native American.  And suddenly things change...

Sheehy, Edward, "Lavender Diamond,"  in Crimeucopia: Boomshakalaking! Modern Crimes for Modern Times, Murderous Ink Press, 2023.

I'm done writing first-person point-of-view stories.  My latest saga of a modern family stretching back several generations, voiced by 72 first-person characters including pet dogs and cats and a crow circling the narrative dispensing omniscient commentary, had been soundly rejected by dozens of publishers.

So says our protagonist.  But it gets confusing he visits a library where he encounters...

A tall dude, six-feet-four with a shaved head, wore a gold chain over a tight turtleneck that showed off a thick musculature gained from years of pumping iron at Cumberland Correction on a narcotics charge.  Inside the joint the dude known as Craz had been the leader of a brutal and murderous prison gang.

How does he know all this?  Have we wandered into third person omniscient narration?  Hmm...

 

Thielman, Mark,  "Steer Clear,"  in Reckless in Texas: Metroplex Mysteries, Volume 2, edited by Barb Goffman, North Dallas Chapter of Sisters in Crime, 2023.

 This is the fourth time  my fellow SleuthSayer has appeared in this list.  

 As punishment for an indiscretion with his boss's ex-wife  Detective Alpert of the Fort Worth Police has been assigned to look into the disappearance of a steer.  Funny story with a satisfying solution.

Van Camp, Richard, "Scariest. Story. Ever," in Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, edited by Shane Hawk, and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Random House, 2023.

The narrator has just made it to the finals of the "Scariest. Story. Ever." contest using a story he learned from a village elder.  Tomorrow he will be flown to Yellowknife for the finals.  He needs to find an even better story to tell, so he goes to another elder, his Uncle Mike, and tries to convince him to tell him a properly horrifying tale. Is this a crime story? Sort of. Definitely.  Read it and see. 

Walker, Joseph S., "A Right Jolly Old Elf,"  Black Cat Weekly, #120, 2023.

This is the third story by my friend  to make the best of the year list.  

Marty is a no-talent who manages to marry into an influential family.  Sounds good, right? Alas, the family happens to be the Irish mob.  They get tired of him being useless and decide he has to become part of a robbery.  He will attend an office party dressed as Santa while his two brother-in-laws, dressed as elves, slip off to rob another office. What could possibly go wrong?

Park It

Quick: What's wrong with this paragraph?

Logan turned onto Main Street and parked the car under a maple tree. He squinted his eyes against the sunset and saw Mary and Brown standing in front of the grocery store. Mary spoke and Brown nodded his head. He said something and she shrugged her shoulders. Finally Brown waved his hand and walked away. Mary turned to Logan and winked her eye. "I tried to warn you," he muttered.

Give up?

Well, for whatever other weaknesses it may have, it is 25% longer than it needs to be. The version below contains the same information and 18 fewer words:

Logan turned onto Main Street and parked under a maple. He squinted against the sunset and saw Mary and Brown in front of the grocery. Mary spoke and Brown nodded. He replied and she shrugged. Finally Brown waved and walked away. Mary turned to Logan and winked. "I warned you," he muttered.

As Will Strunk said: "Omit needless words. Omit needless words. Omit needless words."

Three Little Words

  Occasionally I am reminded of the paucity of the written word.  Of course there are wonderful things about the written word.  As Penn Gillette noted, it's digital, or can be made so.  It is permanent in a way that spoken words cannot be.  But it has inherent limitations...

Consider the movie Forrest Gump.  I assume I don't have to put in any spoiler alerts at this late date.  In the movie whenever Forrest, a "slow" child, asks why he has no daddy in his life his mother replies "He's on vacation." This is obviously a convenient excuse for his absence.  (In Winston Groom's novel, by the way, the father died in an accident.)

But when Mrs. Gump is trying to get her son into a normal class as opposed to a "special school" for the retarded, the principal asks smugly "Is there a Mr. Gump, Mrs. Gump?"

And Sally Field, playing the mother, replies: "He's on vacation."

See? Those three written words tell you almost nothing.  But what Field gets across in her performance is: To get my son into  school I'm going to have to sleep with this bastard. And I will.

It shows what acting can add to a text.

I was thinking of this because of another scene I saw recently.

For All Mankind is an alternative history TV show on Apple.  It asks the question: How would history have changed if the Russians reached the moon first?  And the short answer is: The space race would have gotten hotter and we would have moved out into the solar system much faster than we have.

But in a third season episode called "All In" there is a stunning scene in which one character utters a three word phrase (not "He's on vacation").  Then they say it again.  And a third time.

The first two times it's a cliche.  The third time the actor makes it clear that the character has realized that their life is about to take an unexpected and very unwelcome turn.

Same words given a completely different meaning by the actor's performance.

It sort of makes me wish my characters could hop off the page and speak for themselves.

Chatting with Shanks

 

"So," I said. "When did you decide to become a thief?"

Leopold Longshanks raised his bushy eyebrows.  "Seriously?  Talk about blaming the victim."

"I don't know what you mean."

He leaned on my kitchen table, pulling his coffee cup closer. "I mean I'm a fictional character and if I steal it's because that's what you wrote."

"True enough, I suppose.  I was just trying to open the conversation."

"Sure, and make me look bad in the process." He shook his head.  "The readers will know who's responsible."

"Well, what would you have said instead?"

Shanks looked at the ceiling.  "Let's see.  I would have pointed out that  you ride a bicycle every day."

"Unless there's ice on the ground.  I'm not crazy."

"The jury's still out on that.  For one thing, you're sitting here talking to a figment of your imagination.  But my point is, it's not surprising that you thought of a way to steal a bicycle."

I reached for my own coffee.  "Well, mystery writers' brains do tend to head toward crime, as you would know."

"Correct.  But since you are relatively honest--"

"Relatively?"

Shanks shrugged.  "Just because you haven't been accused of of plagiarism yet..."

"Very funny.  Go on."

"Well, you had to think of some way to use your technique for bike theft without risking jail time.  You thought of me even though I am somewhat exercise-averse."

"You're lazy, even for a writer."

Shanks waved a finger.  "Don't insult our peers.  The point is, you  realized that you could send me on a writer's retreat and they are often held in park-like settings, where there might be bicycles available for the guests. After that, the plotting was easy."

"It looks easy if someone else is doing it," I replied.

"Well." Another shrug.  "Easy for me.  I'm a much better writer than you."

"Only because I created you that way."

"As you often remind me." He sipped more coffee. "When does 'Shanks in Retreat' come out anyway?"

"The January/February issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  It's already available."

"Excellent.  Why don't you tell all those nice readers to turn off this blog and go get a copy?"

"I think you just did."

"Clever of me." He looked across the kitchen.  "Got any donuts?"  

 

A Christmas Carol Chronology

 I whipped this chart up a few years ago and have updated it every December.  Seems like this might be a good place for it.

One interesting thing I learned this year: "Up On the Housetop" (I learned it as "Up on the Rooftop"), which is apparently the oldest song about Santa Claus, was written by a minister, of all people.  Didn't he know that we aren't supposed to secularize Christmas?  The gentleman in question was Benjamin Hanby, who was also an abolitionist.  His second most famous song, "Darling Nelly Gray," is from the viewpoint of a enslaved man whose beloved has been sold away.  Some say it is the musical equivalent of Uncle Tom's Cabin in terms of converting people to abolitionism.

If you want a crime element consider that the music for the "Carol of the Bells" (one of my favorites) was composed by Mykola Leontovych, a Ukrainian, who was murdered by a Soviet spy.

And, while I didn't include it on my list, the murder that the song "Staggerlee" is based on  took place on December 25th, 1895, so I guess it's a Christmas carol?  If Die Hard is a Christmas movie, anyway...

Start pulling on the strings of folksongs and you find all kinds of interesting connections.

One more thing: What do these songs have in common?  Answer is in the comments.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Deck the Halls

Frosty the Snowman

Jingle Bell Rock

Jingle Bells

Let it Snow

Sleigh Ride

Winter Wonderland

It Seems There Was This Irish Policeman...

 Foil Arms and Hog are three very funny Irish sketch comedians.  They have dozens of videos available on the web but the first one I spotted happens to relate to our favorite genre.  Enjoy.

Courting the B Muse

Last month I took a deep dive into linguistics.  I'm back in the same waters today.

Back in 2013 I wrote a novella about a beat poet detective named Delgardo.  After it appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine I put up an e-version on Amazon, courtesy of James Lincoln Warren who was kind enough to prepare the text for me, and create the cover.

Last year AHMM published the sequel and I have been thinking about creating a similar e-text.  I was reading it over and I came across this sentence:

The poet shook his head, looking bemused.  

And it occurred to me to ask: what exactly does bemused mean? 

I wasn't sure and that bugged me.  Here I quote a different story I wrote, about mystery writer Shanks:

Discovering he was using a word he couldn’t define annoyed him, like a carpenter opening his tool box and finding a gadget he didn’t recognize.  

And I had not only used the word, but had it published.  

I thought it meant: mildly amused and surprised.  But what did the dictionary say?  Glad you asked.  

Merriam-Webster gives three meanings: 

1. marked by confusion or bewilderment

2. lost in thought or reverie

3. having or showing feelings of wry amusement especially from something that is surprising or perplexing

(Ahem... Is from the word they want in definition 3?  I would have used because of.) 

Clearly, #3 is what was in my head. I checked my 1961 copy of Webster's Third International Dictionary (the one Nero Wolfe so despised he burned it in his fireplace). #3 is completely missing, so apparently the lexicographers only acknowledged it in the last half century.

Jumping back to the Merriam-Webster website I found something interesting by looking up bemuse (without the d).    It provided this helpful note:

Many people link bemused with amused, believing that the former word carries the meaning “amused, with a touch of something else.” While this was not its original sense, bemused has been used in such a fashion for long enough, and by enough people, that the meaning “having feelings of wry amusement especially from something that is surprising or perplexing" has become established. You may use bemuse in this fashion if you wish, but bear in mind that some people find it objectionable, insisting that bemused and amused are entirely distinct and that bemused properly means “marked by confusion or bewilderment.”

I went to the Oxford English Dictionary and discovered that they only list two meanings (under bemuse):

1. To make utterly confused or muddled, as with intoxicating liquor; to put into a stupid stare, to stupefy.

2.  Humorously, To devote entirely to the Muses.

So the OED doesn't even recognize "lost in thought." 

 Intrigued, I went to Facebook and asked people to define bemused without checking any sources.  I promptly received 30  responses. Their definitions fell into three main categories:

CONFUSED: confused, puzzled, bewildered, quizzical.

AMUSED: Amused, entertained by an odd event, gently amusingly surprised.

BOTH: Confused and slightly intrigued, pleasantly puzzled, taken aback and amused by it.

My friend Peter Rozovsky, who is a copy editor (and excellent photographer... that picture of me above is his work) is firmly in the "confused" camp and he wrote: 

That so many people get this wrong is an interesting sociolinguistic phenomenon. An error repeated often and widely enough becomes correct, with the intermediate step of usage notes in dictionaries that the word in question "is regarded by many as substandard, but..." The elimination of copy editing by newspapers (and, from what I hear, its downgrading by book publishers) only accelerates "language change." And if you find this troubling, go have a lie- down on your chaise longue.

I would suggest that Peter was surprised and mildly amused by the comments.  Too bad we don't have a word for that.