We have done this before and we are doing it again. These are quotations from crime movies, alphabetical by the titles of the flicks. Only one of the posters references a movie on the list. Answers in two weeks. Have fun!
Remember you're old.
You said to me this is a family secret, and you gave it up to me, boom
just like that. You spill the secret family recipe today, maybe you
spill a little something about me tomorrow, hm?
-Aren't you worried?
-Would it help?
When they send for you, you go in alive, you come out dead, and it's your best friend that does it.
-You can't give back what you've taken from me.
-OK, then... Plan B, why don't we just kill each other?
-I didn't kill my wife!
-I don't care!
-In this family, we do not solve our problems by hitting people!
-No, in this family, we shoot them!
The competitor is our friend and the customer is our enemy.
How did you ever rob a bank? When you robbed banks, did you forget
where your car was then too? No wonder you went to jail.
It takes more than a few firecrackers to kill Danny Greene!
Men would pay $200 for me, and here you are turning down a freebie. You
could get a perfectly good dishwasher for that.
A man abandoned his family and wrote his son a story. He wouldn't be
the first to cloak his cowardice in a flag of sacrifice.
You can add Sebastian's name to my list of playmates.
-There's a ninety-five pound Chinese man with a hundred sixty million dollars behind this door.
-Let's get him out.
We should all be clowns, Milly.
You get four guys all fighting over who's gonna be Mr. Black, but they
don't know each other, so nobody wants to back down. No way. I pick.
You're Mr. Pink. Be thankful you're not Mr. Yellow.
- I am a moral outcast.
-Well, it's always nice to meet a writer.
Frank, let's face it. Who can trust a cop who don't take money?
-Looks like trouble.
-Looks like Christmas.
If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.
- I read where you were shot five
times in the tabloids.
- It's not true. He didn't
come anywhere near my tabloids.
To protect the sheep you have to catch the wolves and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf.
-Not everyone loves us, Rex.
-Save the punditry for someone whose paid to have an opinion.
-I'm cool with censorship, I know the American people love that.
I do favors for people and in return, they give me gifts. So, what can I do for you?
-Man, I get so mad I want to fight the whole world. You got any idea what that feels like?
-I do. I decided to fight
the feeling instead. Cause I figured the world would win.
A few years ago I started a website called Today in Mystery History, listing one event in our field for every day. It turned out that the amount of Fame and Glory generated was not sufficient to balance the effort, so I stopped adding to it. But that left me with a whole lot of date-specific data. I decided I will occasionally use some of it here. So, take a gander at what happened on this date in previous years...
March 15, 1861. Rodriguez Ottolengui was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He was a pioneer in the field of dentistry (x-rays, root canals, etc.) but he was also an author of mystery novels and short stories. Ellery Queen listed his book Final Proof as a major step in the history of the mystery short story.
March 15, 1946. On this day Kenneth Millar left the navy. A year later he published his first novel, Blue City. Eventually he settled on the pseudonym Ross Macdonald.
March 15, 1948. On this date the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote to his friend the mystery writer Norbert Davis: “Your mags are wonderful. How people can read Mind if they could Street and Smith [Detective Story Magazine] beats me."
March 15, 1950. Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train was published.
March 15, 1972. Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather was released. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
March 15, 1985. On this date Ian Rankin conceived his great character, Inspector John Rebus.
March 15, 1989. Sue Grafton's F is for Fugitive was published.
March 15, 200? On this date 22-year-old singing star Cherry Pie suffers yet another overdose in Miami Beach. Thus begins Carl Hiassin's Star Island..
You can call this my good deed for the day, or an act of flagrant narcissism. Possibly it is both.
A while back a friend asked if I had ever written any tips on writing short stories and I had to answer yes and no. Or rather, no and yes. I had never written any formal advice on that subject but in ten years of blogging I had covered a lot of related topics.
So here is my informal textbook, selected from several different blogs. It leans heavily toward mystery fiction, naturally, and some of it is about novels rather than short stories. But hey, you can't beat the price. New pieces from 2024 appear in red.
I hope some of you find it useful. Enjoy.
CHAPTER 1: THE WRITER'S MIND
How It Works. Creativity requires two parts of your brain.
This piece may not be of use to most readers. It's a niche thing, I guess. I am writing it for two reasons.
First, recently someone wrote an email to a list for mystery fans that went vaguely like this:
I
just wrote a parody of a well-known crime novel. It's not a REAL
mystery so I don't want to send it to mystery magazines. Where do you
recommend I submit it? I immediately thought of a few things I wanted to say. But I felt that if I did it would
sound like I was piling on, trying to discourage the newbie. Not at all my goal. So I decided to expand my thoughts, and write some advice today for people thinking
about submitting a story for publication for the first time.
The
second reason I'm writing this will become obvious in two weeks when my
next blog appears. Suspenseful, huh? Tune in, same bat-time, same
bat-channel...
Okay. Five thoughts for the newbies out there.
1. If all you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails.
If you go to a list of mystery fans/writers and ask about markets,
they are likely to tell you about mystery markets. If that isn't what
you want you should probably ask somewhere else.
2. Don't try to read tea leaves when the ingredients are listed right on the box.
You want to know what a magazine editor is looking for? They show you detailed
examples in every issue. Before you submit to a magazine, read it. If
you peruse a few issues of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, for example, you will probably determine that they are not averse to parodies.
3. There are times to think outside the box, and times not to. Creativity
and originality are wonderful things in your story. They do not belong
in your text-formatting. If you use an unusual font, strange margins,
or other gimmicks you are basically offering the editor a written invitation to drop your story in favor of something more professional. If the editor hasn't made
specific recommendations (you did check their website, right?) then go with William Shunn's Proper Manuscript Format, which is considered an industry standard.
4. Even if you're paranoid there is probably no one out to get you. If you are determined to convince the editor that you are 1) an amateur, and 2) way too
much trouble to bother with, you can't do much better than filling your
cover letter and manuscript with copyright notices and dire warnings to
anyone who might dare to steal your idea. Trust me; they see hundreds of ideas every year; they aren't going to risk career suicide and personal disgrace by swiping yours.
5. There is a time for patience and a time for the other thing.
What do you do if you submit a story and never hear back? Again, you
have checked the publication's website, right? It will tell you how
long they expect to hold onto a story before they get back to you.
Alas, they tend to be optimists. You might want to try Duotropea site with records which
come from actual submissions. If your story is long past its expected
return date, send the editor a polite query. By the way, some
publishers say flat out that they won't bother to notify you that they
have rejected your story, which I think is disgraceful, but people
submit there anyway. Keep in mind that if you haven't heard back from a market and you decide to send a story somewhere else it is
good policy to send an email saying "I am withdrawing the story."
And that is
everything I know about submitting a story to a magazine or other
market. Read the comments for advice that will likely pour in from
wiser heads than mine. And good luck!
Here they are, folks. The top ten reasons you should be grateful your latest short story was rejected.
10. Unless you asked the editor out on a date, nobody rejected you. They rejected some pages with words on them. For example, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine rejected the first seventy-six stories I sent them, but that didn't stop them from buying the seventy-seventh, when I finally got the words on the pages that they wanted.
9. You have a new opportunity to look at the story, checking for flaws, typos, or new aspects.
8. You have had a valuable reminder of the fact that rejection does not kill you.
7. You
have a new opportunity to examine available markets.
Of my seventy-plus published stories, fifteen eventually appeared in paying markets
that did not exist when I first started submitting that story.
6. You just learned something about that market/editor.
5. Your skin just grew a millimeter thicker.
4. Your
story is closer to finding its proper home. My stories have
received some sort of honor ten times. Eight of those were for stories that had been
rejected by at least one market.
3. Be proud that you are submitting. As they say in basketball, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
2. Be proud that you are finishing what you write. That puts you light-years ahead of millions of wannabes.
1. Be proud that you are writing.
That's what you're doing it for, right? Because if the goal is wealth, try buying lottery tickets instead.
And a Bonus Reason, for those who sell most of what they write: If your success rate is very high, maybe you need to experiment more, or try more ambitious markets. Then you can have the satisfaction of failing sometimes, like the rest of us.
I was somewhat surprised to discover that this is my tenth annual list
of the best short mysteries of the year, as determined by me. I will
have to do something to celebrate that in a month or two. I should remind you that these reviews are taken from the longer weekly summaries I do at Little Big Crimes.
This
year was 16% worse than last, insert political joke here, based on my
best-of list dropping from 18 to 15. Writers, was it you or was it me?
Speaking of writers, eleven were men, five women. (One story had two authors.) Two authors were British, one Canadian. The big winner this year was Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, with four stories. Three other sources supplied two each: Akashic Press's Noir Cities series, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and the anthology Deadlines: A Tribute to William E. Wallace.
Three
stories are historical, two are funny, and one has fantasy elements. Six have surprise endings. Remarkably, five of the authors are making repeat appearances. All
right, let's dig down into the data.
Brookmyre, Chris, "The Last Siege of Bothwell Castle," in Bloody Scotland, edited by James Crawford, Pegasus, 2018.
There's
a historical reenactment going on at Bothwell Castle in Scotland and
the place is crowded with tourists. Some very bad people take
advantage of the confusion, and soon they are taking hostages and
making demands.
The cops arrive but the hostages's best chance for rescue might be Sanny and Sid, two young sneak thieves
who were scooped up with the tourists.
Brosky, Ken. "The Cold Hunt," Mystery Weekly Magazine, August 2018.
Roxy
is a young American biologist, studying tigers in Siberia. She and her
mentor, Dr. Siddig, have been called to investigation what appears to
be a killing by a big cat. The evidence of footprints and corpse show
that the tiger had a big meal of the flesh of a local man. But the
evidence does not prove that the man was alive when the tiger arrived.
The villagers are ready to hunt and kill the beast. Can the scientists prove it is innocent of the killing - if indeed it is?
Day, Russell, "The Icing on the Cake," in Noirville, Fahrenheit Press, 2018. Gareth is a gofer for Mr. Driscoll, a British crime boss. Today his mission is to drive a Jaguar dow to a prison where the car's owner, Harry the Spider Linton, is being released after seven years for robbing a post office. It turns out that Harry thinks he owes his incarceration to the stupidity of Mr. Driscoll. Harry's rage is so feverish that it seems like the trip may end prematurely. Gareth might be in danger. What will happen if/when Harry arrives at his old mate's mansion, and encounters the man he sees as the cause of his lost years?
Greenaway, R.M. "The Threshold," in Vancouver Noir, edited by Sam Wiebe, Akashic Press, 2018.
The publisher gave me a free copy of this book.
Blaine
is a photographer. Perhaps a bit obsessive about it. And one morning,
just at sunrise, he's out snapping pictures at the Vancouver waterfront
and he find a very fresh corpse. Of course he knows he should call
911, but the lighting is perfect for capturing the corpse, and how long
will that last? Surely it won't hurt if he just changes lenses and
takes a couple of artful frames...
And then the body twitches, and things get complicated.
Hallman, Tom, Jr. "Kindness," in Mystery Weekly Magazine, April 2018.
Phil's
family moved to an inner city neighborhood that is gentrifying. Great
house, nice neighbors. But then the old man across the street dies and
his house is inherited by a jerk who parties all night The jerk is a
huge guy who "reminded me of one of those men featured on cable shows
taking viewers inside America's roughest prisons."
When
this guy takes an unhealthy interest in Phil's teenage daughter things
seem really desperate. But then Phil meets Deke, a member of a
criminal motorcycle gang, and helps him with a problem... Twice I thought I knew where this story was headed. Twice I was wrong.
Lang, Preston, "Top Ten Vacation Selfies of Youtube Stars," in Deadlines: A Tribute to William E. Wallace, edited by Chris Rhatigan and Ron Earl Phillips, Shotgun Honey, 2018.
Michael
Roth used to be a reporter. Or maybe we should say he is currently a
reporter without a job, struggling to survive as a freelancer, writing
Internet clickbait. (See the title of this story.)
He
gets a call from somebody named Brack who used to be a hitman. Would
he like to meet and talk about Brack's illustrious career? He would.
But Brack, as it turns out, has another, more dangerous offer to
make...
Law, Janice, "The Crucial Game," in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January-February 2018.
This is the fourth appearance on
my annual best-of list by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer. No one
else has made it to the top of the heap more than three times, so far.
Since
his wife died Frank has been lonely and somewhat obsessed with hockey.
Walking through Manhattan he sees a "little makeshift stand offering
sports CDs and DVDS..." The merchant is "thin, almost gaunt, and very
dark so that his large eyes gleamed above the bold cheekbones and the
wide, and to Frank's mind, somewhat predatory nose." Sounds a bit
spooky? How about when he calls out: "I have what you need"?
Neville, Stuart, "Faith," in Blood Work: Remembering Gary Shulze: Once Upon A Crime, edited by Rick Ollerman, Down and Out Books, 2018.
The day I lost my belief was the same day Mrs. Garrick asked me to help kill her husband.
The
narrator is an Irish clergyman, five years a widower. Mrs. Garrick's
husband was brutally maimed in a terrorist attack. Our protagonist
tries to comfort her and one thing leads to another.
Classic noir, right? But Neville has a surprise or two up his sleeve.
Page, Anita, "Isaac's Daughters," in Malice Domestic Presents: Murder Most Geographical, edited by Verena Rose, Rita Owen, and Shawn Reilly Simmons, Wildside Press, 2018.
The
narrator is an old woman, relating how she came to America from Russia
at the age of fourteen in 1911. The reason for the voyage is that her
mother has just received a message that "your Isaac has taken up with a
whore from Galicia."
They start out on the difficult
voyage, and things happen. The family is divided between the father and
narrator who you might describe as new-world rationalists, and the
mother and sister who are subject to old-world superstitions, believing
in demons and lucky charms. Which side, if either, will win?
Perks, Micah, "Treasure island," in Santa Cruz Noir, edited by Susie Bright, Akashic Press, 2018.
The publisher gave me a free copy of this book.
Mr.
Nowicki is, he tells us, "a seventy-two-two-year-old retired middle
school assistant principal who has lived in Grant Park for forty
years." He is furious about what is happening in his neighborhood so
he has gone to a website called Good Neighbor!(tm) to report what he
sees.
And he has strong opinions about
that. For example he has a problem with his neighbor who is (the
internal quotation marks are his): "a 'writer' who 'works' from home.
('Writer' always takes morning tea on his porch in his pajamas and at
five p.m., takes cocktail on porch, still in his pajamas. You've
probably seen him on your way to and from actual work.)" Pronzini, Bill and Barry N. Malzberg, "Night Walker," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March-April 2018.
Henry
Boyd's life changed forever when a moment of his own carelessness
destroyed his family. He hoped to be sent to prison but the courts
thought otherwise. He can't face the thought of suicide so now he
walks through the night, hoping some criminal will do to him what he
lacks the courage to do to himself. But something else happens.
Richardson, Travis, "Plan Z," in Deadlines: A Tribute to William E. Wallace, edited by Chris Rhatigan and Ron Earl Phillips, Shotgun Honey, 2018.
This
is a simple story of three guys who "decide to up their game from
B&E and liquor stores." We don't learn much about them except what
positions they played in Little League.
So, not a lot of
character development. What the story has is a wonderful way of
unwrapping the adventures of our luckless trio. Plan A is to rob a
check-cashing joint. They throw that over for Plan B which is to rob
an armored car that Uncle Arnie drives. But Arnie gets fired which
leads to Plan C. When Arnie shows up drunk we move on to Plan D...
Rusch, Kristine Kathryn, "The Wedding Ring," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2018.
Serena
is a classics professor and after a bad breakup she goes to Las Vegas
for what she calls her Liberation Vacation. There she meets the man of
her dreams. Shortly after that they are married. Shortly after that
he disappears, taking her cash, self-confidence, and much more.One cop says about the crooks: "They're not in it for the money. They're in it to destroy their marks."
Serena replies. "They didn't destroy me... I'm right here. And I'm going to destroy them right back."
Rutter, Eric, "Hateful in the Eyes of God," Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2018.
It
is London in the 1830s. John Alcorn is a freelance reporter, a
"penny-a-liner." His specialty is the criminal courts because, then as
now, scandal is always popular. He is in the gallery when Charles
Stanbridge is brought into the courtroom. This fine, outstanding
married gentleman has been accused of indecent assault, which is a
reduced version of the charge of "the infamous crime," alias,
homosexuality. That greater offense could get a man sentenced to exile
or even death.
Alcorn offers to sell his story on the
case to the defendant rather that to the press, a form of extortion
which was perfectly legal. But when Stanbridge apparently kills
himself the reporter feels guilt and tries to learn more about the
case. And so he, and we, find out a good deal about the secret life of
what we would call gay men, but what in this era were called sods or
Mary Anns.
Thielman, Mark, "The Black Drop of Venus," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2018.
This is Thielman's second appearance here, both for historical mysteries that won the Black Orchid Novella Award.
It is 1769, deep in the South Pacific. Our narrator is Joseph Banks, chief naturalist on theHMS Endeavour, which
has been sent on a scientific investigation to observe the Transit of
Venus. When one of Banks's assistants is found with his throat cut
just as they arrive at Tahiti, Banks is ordered to investigate the
crime by none other than Captain James Cook. He is handicapped by his
lack of knowledge of navy ways and nautical vocabulary, but he brings
back the facts which allow Cook to cleverly determine the identity of
the murderer.
In a little over
a week, the new semester begins at George Mason University, and I’ll be leading
an Advanced Fiction Workshop for the first time—emphasis on Advanced. I’ve taught Intro to Creative
Writing in years past, and more often now I’m teaching the standard Fiction
Workshop—each of those courses focused on building the skills and honing the tools for
students beginning to write short stories: crafting character, shaping scenes,
navigating a plot through conflict, climax, and resolution. Stepping stones, each course. Walk before you run, as a friend of mine recently told
me.
So how to put
the Advanced into the Advanced Workshop?
beyond simply admitting students who are already bringing as much skill as
enthusiasm to their work?
Back over the
holidays—just before Christmas, then just after the new year—a couple of questions
online got me thinking about specific aspects of short story writing, how I
teach students to write them, and how I write them myself. First, Amy Denton
posted a question on the Sisters in Crime Guppies message board: “Depending
on the length, is there enough room in a short story for a subplot?” Responses
ranged widely, and the discussion was extensive, but with no clear consensus. Then, reviewing a couple of short stories from a recent
issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery
Magazine, Catherine
Dilts wrote, “A rule beginning writers encounter is that multiple points of
view can't be used effectively in short stories…. How does telling a tale
through more than one narrator work?” A story by fellow SleuthSayer Robert
Lopresti, “A Bad Day for Algebra Tests,” offered Dilts one example of how well
that approach can succeed.
Another of our SleuthSayers family—Barb Goffman, a master of
the short story herself—has a great piece of advice for writers: namely that the short story is about “one thing.” (I’ve heard other writers repeat her words and I've repeated them myself down the line.) And
our good friend and former SleuthSayer B.K. Stevens and I were both big fans of
Poe’s ideas about the “single effect” in the short story, that everything in a tale
should be focused toward one goal, toward having one effect on the reader: "In the whole composition," Poe wrote, "there should be no word written, of
which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one
pre-established design."
When I’ve taught workshops on short story writing, I often
put Poe’s words and Barb’s on back-to-back PowerPoint slides, emphasizing the
resonance between the two points. (Both authors are in good company!) And
several assignments in my classes are geared toward these ends. I have students
write a six-sentence story as a first day exercise, for example. When they turn
in their full drafts, class discussion begins with charting out the escalation
of rising conflicts (Freytag’s Triangle, not to be too academic!) and ferreting
out anything that doesn’t fit. And as we move toward revision, I have them reduce
those drafts down to three sentences (three sentences of three words each!) to crystallize
their understanding of the story’s purpose and arc.
Focus on the “one thing” is always the goal. Efficiency
along the way, that’s key. “A short story is about subtraction,” I tell them.
“Cut away anything that doesn’t belong.”
And yet…
Many of the stories that have stuck with me most vividly
over the years are those that maintain that focus on “one thing” and yet also
stretch further beyond it too: multiple points of view, intricate time shifts,
a braiding together of several other elements in addition to whatever the
central plotline might be. Here’s a sample of some favorites just off the top
of my head:
“All Through the House” by Christophe Coake, with multiple
points of view and a reverse chronology
“Ibrahim’s Eyes” by David Dean (one more SleuthSayer!),
balancing two time frames with storylines that each inform the other
“The Babysitter” by Robert Coover, a wild story in so many
ways, veering off into fantasies, desires, and what-ifs while still circling
back to what actually happened (I
think)
“Billy Goats” by Jill McCorkle, which is more like an essay
at times, drifting and contemplative—in fact, I’ve passed it off as nonfiction
in another of my classes
“How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and
Began My Life Over Again” byJoyce Carol Oates (full title of that one is “How I Contemplated
the World from the Detroit House Of Correction and Began My Life Over
Again—Notes for an Essay for an English Class at Baldwin Country Day School;
Poking Around in Debris; Disgust and Curiosity; a Revelation of the Meaning of
Life; a Happy Ending” so you can see how plot and structure might be going in
several directions)
(All of these are about crimes—though some of them would
more likely be classified mysteries than others. (Don’t make me bring up that
“L” word.))
Even looking at my own fiction, I find that I’ve often tried
to push some boundaries. My story “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants,” for
example, alternates three different points of view, three characters bringing
their own pasts and problems to bear on a single dinner party—with a couple of
secrets hidden from the others, of course. Another recent story,
“English 398: Fiction Workshop”—one
I’ve talked about on SleuthSayers before—layers several kinds of storytelling, centered around a
university-level writing workshop, with a variety of voices and tones in the
mix. (The full title of the story makes a small nod toward Oates in fact: “English
398: Fiction Workshop—Notes from Class & A Partial Draft By Brittany
Wallace, Plus Feedback, Conference & More.”) And a story I just finished revising
earlier this week, “Loose Strands,” also has three narrators, an older man and
two middle school boys, their stories coming together around a schoolyard fight,
colliding, combining, and ultimately (at least I’m aiming for this)
inseparable.
As I commented in the discussion forum in response to Amy
Denton’s question: “I often try to think about how the characters involved each
have their own storyline—the storylines of their lives—and how the interactions
between characters are the intersections of those storylines. And I challenge
myself to try to navigate a couple of those storylines as their own
interweaving narrative arcs, each with its own resolution, where somehow the
end of the story ties up each thread.”
Maybe the idea of multiple points of view and subplots
collapse together in several ways, thinking again of Catherine Dilts’ review of
Rob’s story and of another, “Manitoba Postmortem” by S. L. Franklin. And in my workshops
at Mason, I’ve used Madison Smartt Bell’s terrific book, Narrative Design, to explore modular storytelling, experimenting
with shifts in chronology and points of view, layering several strands of story
together. Some students catch on quickly, love the opportunities provided by
this kind of storytelling. (But as beginning writers, it’s important—as I
stressed—for them to build a firm foundation first in storytelling elements,
techniques, and more straightforward structures. Walk those stepping stones
first.)
So in thinking about the discussion Amy’s question sparked
and the review Catherine wrote and my teaching and my writing, I find myself
pulled in a couple of different directions: committed to Barb’s (and Poe’s!)
ideas about the short story, always striving to stick as close to the core
armature of a story as I can, but also occasionally testing those boundaries,
pushing them to see what happens.
So…
some questions for readers here and for my SleuthSayer buddies as well: How
would you answer the questions above about subplots and multiple points of
view? How closely do yourself stick to the idea of the single-effect in the
short story—to the story being about one thing? How do you balance those
demands of the form with interests or ambitions in other directions?
As for my
advanced fiction workshop ahead… I’m still going to keep the students
concentrating on the “one thing” that’s the core of their stories—focus and
efficiency always, and credit again to Barb. But as much as a workshop should
be about learning the rules and following best practices, it should equally be
a place to take some risks and have some fun. And so I also want them to play
with structure and storytelling, to stretch their talents wherever they want, and
to see where it takes them.
Any suggestions
for the course—those are welcome too!
I recently had an experience that carried me off on a cheerful wave of nostalgia. Our current TV package provides access to an obscure channel called TubiTV. And on it I was able to make my reacquaintance with The Sandbaggers, a spy series from Britain's ITV. I had watched it on PBS back around 1980 when it premiered. I was surprised at how much I remembered and how well it held up. (It also seems to be available on Youtube.)
The series revolves around the Secret Intelligence Service (never called MI6 in the show), and it's Director of Operations, Neil Burnside (played by Roy Marsden, before he became better known as Adam Dalgleish). Burnside is in charge of all the British agents in foreign countries around the world, but his first love is the Special Operations Section, known as the Sandbaggers. These are the smash-and-grab boys, the ones who get sent to perform an extraction or an assassination (or prevent one). Please don't compare them to James Bond or Burnside will slit your throat. He hates Ian Fleming's famous creation.
And as for slitting your throat, he is himself a former Sandbagger, and as ruthless as they come. And yes, this crowd is pretty ruthless. In the 20 episodes you will see virtually all the characters lying to each other, and often doublecrossing their superiors and allies. Burnside would defend himself by saying he is true to the service and to his ultimate goal: destroying the KGB. And he is willing to destroy his own career to do it.
An example of Burnside's charming personality. In one episode he is in a restaurant and someone informs him: "I just saw your ex-wife out on the street."
"Best place for her." Like I said, charming.
One thing I love about the show is the title. I like to imagine it made John Le Carre, the master of fictional spy jargon, terribly jealous. His name for the same type of group was the Scalphunters, but Sandbaggers is so much better. "To sandbag" means "to launch a sneak attack" but it also means "to build emergency defenses." Clever, eh?
The show had its flaws, of course. The SIS is seen to be strangled with personnel shortages but it felt like that had more to do with TV budgets than anything else. The inside sets look like a high school drama club production. So many of the international crises take place in Malta that one can only assume ITV had a deal with the local tourist board. And the last episode of the show only makes sense if you forgot everything that happened four episodes earlier.
None the less, it has been called one of the best spy shows of all time, and I'm not arguing.
The show was created, and most episodes were written, by Ian MacKintosh, a former naval officer. Because of the series' sense of realism there was speculation that he had been involved in the spy world, but he played coy about it. The series ends with a (hell of a) cliffhanger, because MacKintosh died unexpectedly and the network decided no one else could do it justice.
But I oversimplified when I said MacKintosh died. In reality he and his girlfriend disappeared in a small airplane over the Pacific Ocean after radioing for help. The plane disappeared in a small area where neither U.S. nor Soviet radar reached.
I wonder what Burnside would make of that.
Oh, the show also has a great musical theme (just about the only music ever used in the program). Listen all the way to the last note.
But wait, there's more! In the midst of my Sandbaggery I discovered a very different spy show which is, curiously, both older and newer than The Sandbaggers. Available on Netflix A Very Secret Service (Au Service de la France) was created in 2015, but is set in 1960. And now let's give Grandpa a moment to marvel here over the fact that The Sandbaggers is set closer in time to 1960 than to 2015.
The series (in French, with subtitles) tells the story of Andre Merlaux, a naive young man who is forcibly recruited into the French Secret Service, which promptly makes it clear that they don't much want him. It is a rather peculiar agency where doing your job is much less important than turning in proper receipts and wearing suits from the correct tailors.
This show is wildly and wickedly funny. In one episode Merlaux assumes that a suspect cannot be a terrorist because she is a woman His tutor firmly instructs him: "In cases of terrorism women must be considered humans!"
In another episode the French capture a German on his way from Argentina and suspect he is a Nazi. Fortunately they have a scientific survey which allows them to detect such barbarians. (Sample question: "Adolf Hitler: pleasant or unpleasant?")
The best spy in the bunch is Clayborn, who will never get promoted because she is a woman. All her operations are described as "courtesy missions," which means they involve getting naked with someone, but don't think that means they don't also involve theft, blackmail, and murder.
At one point Merlaux pours out all his troubles to Clayborn. She is, of course, sympathetic: "You feel out of place. I understand. This is the women's bathroom."
Happy
New Year! To celebrate the occasion some of the regular mob here
decided to offer a resolution for you to ponder. Feel free to
contribute your own in the comments.
It
has been an interesting year at SleuthSayers and we hope it has been one
for you as well. We wish you a prosperous and criminous 2019.
Steve Hockensmith. My new year's resolution is to write the kind of book that I
would really enjoy reading but which will also have a decent chance of finding
an enthusiastic publisher...which might be the equivalent of resolving to lose
30 pounds by only eating your favorite pizza.
Eve Fisher. Mine is to break my addiction to distracting myself on the
internet.
John M. Floyd.
1.
Read more new authors.
2.
Write more in different genres.
3.
Let my manuscripts “cool off” longer before sending them in.
4.
Read more classics.
5.
Search out some new markets.
6.
Cut back on semicolons.
7.
Go to more conferences.
8.
Go to more writers’ meetings.
9.
Get a Twitter account.
10.
Try submitting to a contest now and then. This one’s low on my list—I
avoid contests like I avoid blue cheese—but I probably should give it a try.
(Contests, not blue cheese.)
Paul D. Marks. I
resolve to watch fewer murder shows on Discovery ID and murder more people on
paper.
Barb Goffman. My new year's resolution is to finish all my
projects early. Anyone who knows me is likely rolling with laughter now because
finishing on time is usually a push for me. Heck I'm often writing my
SleuthSayers column right before the deadline, and I'm probably sending in this
resolution later than desired too. But at least I'm consistent!
Janice Law. I resolve to start reading a lot of books- and
only finish the good ones.
Stephen Ross. My New Year resolution is to FINALLY finish a science
fiction short story I started two years ago, but have yet to think of a decent
ending!
Steve Liskow.
I love short stories but find them very difficult to write.
I've resolved that I will write and submit four new short stories in
2019. My other resolution is to lose 15 pounds. That will be
tricky since I don't know an English bookie...
Art Taylor. My
resolutions are pretty regular—by which I mean not just ordinary but recurrent;
for example, I’m redoubling my resolution to write first and to finish
projects—keeping on track with some stories and a novel currently in the works.
I fell short on my big reading resolution of 2018 (reading aloud the complete
Continental Op stories—still working on it!) but I did keep up with reading a
list of novels, stories, and essays set in boarding schools (related to my
novel-in-progress) and that’s a resolution that’s continuing into 2019 as well,
with several books recently added to the list, including The Night of
the Twelfth by Michael Gilbert and A Question of Proof by Nicholas
Blake. I know these might seem more like “things to do” than “resolutions” but
that’s how I plan, I guess! For a real resolution, how about this one? Be nicer
to our cats. (They’re demanding.)
Robert Lopresti. Back
in 2012 I won the Black Orchid Novella Award for a story about a beat
poet named Delgardo, set in October 1958. I am currently editing his
next adventure, which takes place in November 1958. In 2019 I want to
write "Christmas Dinner," which will be set in... oh, you guessed.
Melodie Campbell. This
fall, we found out my husband has widespread cancer. He isn't yet
retirement age, so this has been a shocking plot twist. In the book of
our lives together, we have entered a new chapter.
That metaphor has become my new resolution, in that it is a new way of looking at
life in all its beauty and sorrow. I am a writer. I have come to
view my life as a book. There are many chapters...growing up, meeting
one's mate, raising children, seeing them fly the nest. Even the
different careers I've tried have become chapters in this continuing
book. Some chapters are wonderful, like the last five years of my
life. We don't want them to end. Others are more difficult, but
even those will lead to new chapters, hopefully brighter ones.
May
your book be filled with many chapters, and the comforting knowledge that many
more are to come.
Leigh Lundin. Each year my resolution is to make no resolutions. A logical fallacy probably is involved.
R.T. Lawton. I tend not to make New Year’s resolutions
anymore. Why? So as to not disappoint myself. At my age, there are fewer things
I feel driven to change, and for those circumstances I do feel driven about, I
make that decision and attempt regardless of the time of year.
For instance, there is the ongoing weight
concern, but I hate dieting or restricting myself from temptation. Other than
working out, my idea of a dieting program these days is not using Coke in my
evening cocktails. Instead, I’ll merely sip the Jack Daniels or Vanilla Crown Royal
straight or on the rocks. Not many calories in ice. On the days I gain a pound
(weigh-ins every morning), I can usually guess why. On the days I lose weight,
I have no idea why. My best weight loss (usually five pounds at a crack),
mostly comes from some health problem I did not anticipate and which involved
minimal eating for a few days. Naturally, I’m eating well these days, so we’re
back to the temptation thing.
As for any writing and getting published
resolutions, that’s a constantly renewable action, however, I can only control
the writing and submitting part. The getting published part is up to other
people and beyond my control, except for e-publishing.
For those of you making New Year’s
resolutions, I wish you much success and hope you meet your goal. And, to spur
you on with your commitment, let me know in June how well you did.
Before we get started: I have an essay up at Trace Evidence, the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine blog, discussing "A Bad Day For Algebra Tests," my story in the current issue of AHMM. Now, on to our regularly scheduled piece...
It happened like this.
I
was reading a nonfiction book and enjoying it very much. And then one
day, it happened to be a Sunday, a little switch in my brain flipped and
a voice asked: Can I get a crime story out of this?
The more I thought about it the more it seemed like the answer was: Yes. Maybe a whole bunch of them.
On
Monday I pondered characters, names, premises, and the shreds of a
plot. Pretty soon I had all the basics except one. I wanted this to be
a fair-play mystery, andthat required a clue.
I
hate clues. They are the bane of my writerly existence. I have
several stories that will never be finished because I literally could
not get a clue.
On Tuesday I figured out a clue.
Wednesday
I had to make a trip to Seattle, two hours away. (If you must know I
had been invited to lecture at the University of Washington about my own
nonfiction book. There, you dragged it out of me.)
My
wife drove. She prefers to do the driving on long trips because she
suspects that when I'm driving part of my mind is busy dreaming up
characters, names, premises, plots, and clues. She isn't wrong.
So
I was free to open my Surface and start to work on my story. The
tentative title is "Law of the Jungle," which is all I'll say until it's
published. (Notice how he said "until" like it was a sure thing.
That's confidence, folks. Or bravado.)
As I have said here many times I am a slow
writer. This is exacerbated by the fact that I have to rewrite and
rewrite to translate my work into English from the original Gibberati.
Because of this I always try to write first draft as fast as I can. It
doesn't need to be perfect because quite likely not a single sentence
will remain untouched through the final edit.
But there
is another reason. I will never be as in touch with the original
inspiration for the story as in those first few days. I want to get the
whole story done before the fever wears off and I am back to my normal
self.
And this time I succeeded. I finished the
draft on Monday, still hot with my idea. 6,300 words in five days. For
me, that's light speed.
I know there are months of
work ahead. One scene needs to be set in a different location. A
character needs a new name. Some information needs to be better hidden.
But
I can see the road ahead. In six months or a year this story will be
flying off in search of a good home. And it will be a better tale
because I wrote the first draft at a fever pitch.
One more thing to add: In retirement I have decided to try to learn to play the guitar. My first lesson came just about the same time as the idea for this story. Now every time I start plunking out a few chords I find myself thinking about my characters. Has something like that ever happened to you?
