Mysterious, Thrilling, and Criminal

I've heard that the late great Elmore Leonard, who was at one point named Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and who won an Edgar for his novel LaBrava, once confessed in an interview that he'd never written a mystery in his life. He said he wrote crime stories, thrillers, suspense novels (and short stories)--but never what might be a called a "traditional" mystery.

Does it matter? Not to me. I love Leonard's books and stories--all of them, including his Westerns--and I couldn't care less how they're labeled. Besides, mysteries are not always whodunits. I maintain that mysteries are puzzles, in the sense that any good story is a puzzle--we want to see what happens, how things turn out--but the identity of the villain doesn't always have to be withheld from the reader until the end. Look at the Columbo series, where the bad guy was always identified in the first five minutes of the episode. It was still considered a mystery show, and one of the best.

The criminal element

This question of what a mystery is--or isn't--seems to come up a lot, in literary discussions. One way to address it is this: Next time you're in a bookstore, take a look at the "Mystery" section. Stacked upon those shelves are hundreds and even thousands of volumes containing murder, mayhem, and misbehavior on all levels. But all of them aren't traditional mysteries, and certainly all of them are not whodunits. I doubt that half of them are. What they are is crime fiction.

If you need further proof, consider the short-story submission guidelines for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Both of them used to say (I'm paraphrasing, but this is the gist) that a story qualifies as a mystery if a crime is central, or essential, to the plot. In other words, if there's no crime, the storyline would fall apart. I also think I remember once reading in their guidelines that a story can be categorized as a mystery if it includes a crime, or even includes the hint of a crime.

In light of these observations, I dutifully went back and examined some of the stories I've had published over the past twenty years. As it turns out, only about twenty percent of my mystery stories have been whodunits. The rest were howdunits, or whydunits, or howcatchems. In those, there's no question about who killed whom. The question is, will the good guy(s) win out, and--if so--how?

Bottom line: Are whodunits good examples of mystery stories? Of course they are, and they'll always be around. But mysteries, whether long or short, don't have to be traditional. They just have to include criminal activity of some kind.

Puzzle vs. suspense

What, then, are some differences between so-called mysteries and so-called thrillers? Here are a few that come to mind:

1. In a traditional mystery, the protagonist (detective, usually) knows more than the reader. In a thriller, the reader knows more than the protagonist--or at least knows it sooner. I once heard it put another way: in a mystery the reader is a step behind the hero, and in a thriller the reader is a step ahead.

2. Traditional mysteries are often told in first person, which supports the "conceal the facts from the reader" approach. Thrillers are more likely to be told in third person, which can heighten suspense. It's "thrilling" for the reader to know, before the FBI agent does, that the terrorist is ready and waiting, just around the corner (or in the root cellar). Or, as Hictchcock is famous for saying, that "there's a bomb under the table."

3. In a thriller, the protagonist's world gradually grows larger, to include more and more tense situations. In a mystery, his world narrows, until only the solution remains.

4. In a traditional mystery, we wonder who committed the crime. In a thriller, we wonder if the hero will survive.

The big question is . . .

Which of the two do you prefer? The answer might not reveal only your reading tastes, but your writing preferences as well. It's been said that crime fiction writers who prefer using third person naturally tend to write more suspense/thriller stories, and that crime fiction writers who prefer first person lean more toward traditional mysteries. I admit that in my case that might be true. Some of my favorite stories of my own were written in first person, but I usually feel more comfortable writing in third--and I've written far more suspense stories than whodunits.

What are your thoughts? Which had you rather read? Which had you rather write? At a guess, what percentage of your own stories or novels are mysteries and what percentage are thrillers?

On the one hand, who cares, right? They're both fun to read, and to create. And we're all different. As Lt. Frank Bullitt said, "You work your side of the street, and I'll work mine."

On the other hand . . . tell me your secrets. End the suspense.

To do less would be a crime.

Creeping Crud From Lower Slobbia

I've had crud before and dang if I haven't had it again. I know none of you want to hear my litany of complaints so I won't enumerate them. Suffice it to say my crud hasn't been the flu or even rotten enough to carry me off to a doctor, thank goodness. I just wish I owned stock in Aireborne, Zinc, Vitamin C and Slippery Elm tea and Allegra D and whatever brand of sinus medicine I can find that does NOT have Tylenol in it because I take a pain medicine that has Tylenol. I've learned you just don't want to add too much to your system.  I'm finally on the road to recovery and strangely enough everyone I speak with or read about on Facebook or run into at the grocery store or drug store have been fighting some form of the crud. Hope you've all been healthy.
I've managed to get quite a bit of reading done and one of the best new books was A SONG TO DIE FOR by Mike Blakely. You may not have heard of Mike before, but he's a local singer/songwriter/musician who also writes historical westerns. If you haven't read him, look for COMANCHE DAWN as that one blows me away. He's won Spur Awards from Western Writers of America for SUMMER OF PEARLS. He also won a spur for a song, "The Last of The White Buffalo," which was the first Spur ever given for a song.   A few years ago he did a book with Willie Nelson, titled A TALE OUT OF LUCK. Last year he did a book with Kenny Rogers, titled, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES.

A Song To Die For is the closest to a mystery as you can get from a western writer.. It's set in 1975 and features a guitarist/singer Creed Mason who is hoping to ride the wave of new Austin style music. His last hope is to team up with a washed-up legend named Luther Burnett. If you enjoy Music lore and a little romance and mob-killers from Las Vegas, give this one a try.

One thing I read about this week and it's been my stand-by for a few years, when you're asked to do a reading at an author event, please don't just read from your work.  I mean, you can and should read from your work but read a little, then stop. Talk a bit, about where that particular scene came from or the trouble you had with it until you finally realized a solution came from. Then you're ready to read a bit more. You don't want your listeners eyes to glaze over do you?

No matter how interesting your own writing sounds to you and I know you love every word you have written, but to just read can be way too boring. Another thing if you can...use a bit of acting expressions as you read. When you use a male voice (and you're a woman) lower your voice a bit. And if it's a female voice then speak a bit more in a feminine voice. If there's action going on, then make your voice sound excited. If it's a quiet and reflective scene, read it quietly but try your best to not read too many lines of quiet.

I think this is something I learned early on, maybe even before I read any of my own work. But a writer who came to my bookstore, Judy Jance (aka J.A. Jance) brought it home to me and to a couple other writers who attended the book signing. Ms Jance read a bit, then talked a bit, the read a little more. Everyone in the audience seemed to hang on every word. And she made everyone there want to read her book.


Book signing events can be a lot of fun or a real drag if you're at one of those big chain stores. If you've been asked to do a reading, try to make it as interesting as possible. If you're just sitting at the front of one of those big box stores, try to catch people's eye and engage them in conservation. A large number of writers are basically shy and have a hard time speaking in public. Most would rather just stay home and write. But you have to do something to help get your name out to the book buyers. If you are shy, try to imagine that you're an actor who has taken on a role of a writer. That you will act out this book signing event as a role you're playing and once it's over, you'll quietly go back to your office and write. It's not the easiest  thing if you are shy, but you do want to sell your books.

Okay, class, that's all for this time. Hope you're not suffering from the crud and if you are, that you're over it soon.

Genre & Its Discontents

There was a recent newspaper article on the wire services - courtesy of the Houston CHRONICLE - about video games now being treated seriously as an academic subject. Not simply gaming design, which is a career path, but themes and narrative, studying the art of the medium. The first thing that struck me was there's sure to be pushback, from more conservative circles, a sense that this is frivolous, or another sign of the impending doom of Western Civilization.

What's the world coming to, that we seriously look into the origin story of Batman, for example, and the dark graphics of Bob Kane, or the influence of MAD Magazine on American culture? There was a time, not that long ago, when comics were seen as a malign presence, poisoning youth. (See SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT, published in 1954, which led to mutterings in Congress.) The comic book industry got ahead of the curve with the so-called Comics Code, akin to the Hays Office in the movie biz, which self-censored content. These days, Archie Andrews takes a bullet and dies in a pool of blood. What's next, Nancy Drew comes out to her dad as a lesbian dominatrix, or the Hardy Boys cook meth in their garage? The mind boggles.

This goes back to an older division of the spoils, low-brow vs. high-brow. Or the related question, does commercial success compromise literary integrity? ULYSSES got

tied up in court for a dozen years, remember, over whether it was obscene. Its publication in the U.S. led, for better or worse, not just to LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER seeing the light, but MY GUN IS QUICK. Spillane's books were wildly successful, and struck a deep chord, but the critics took him over the coals, the brutal sadomasochism, the perceived contempt for women, the casual Red-baiting. Not that Mickey gave a rat's ass. He wrote a book in three months, and spent the other nine months fishing off the beach.

The issue is their staying power. Who would you rather read, Spillane or Melville? No disrespect to MOBY-DICK, but most of us are gonna go with the more lurid and accessible.

G.K. Chesterton once remarked that any informed person knows the difference between literature and printed matter. (Chesterton, of course, wrote the Father Brown mysteries, so you couldn't call him a snob.) Genre writing - gothics, Westerns, thrillers, SF and fantasy - has for a long time been condescended to. So have novels themselves, for that matter. Early on, they were thought of as unserious, books for women, who were frivolous by nature. Maybe it's the comfort zone. There's a shapeliness to fiction, unlike life, say. Fiction of itself is a construct, a pattern, a design. Life is messy, and unresolved. Stories are rounded and complete, and usually have a satisfying punchline, mystery stories in particular. I don't think of this as a weakness. There's something to be said for the familiar. That doesn't mean it's paint-by-numbers, or unoriginal. You don't let it get stale. You write faster and smarter. You don't settle for less, although sometimes less is more. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We'll leave the last word with Spillane. (Spoiler ahead.) I, THE JURY ends with Mike Hammer and the killer alone. They have a sexual history together. She tries working her wiles on him yet again. Hammer isn't having any. He shoots her in the belly. She sinks to her knees. "How could you?" she asks him tearfully, holding in her stomach, blood leaking through her fingers.

Mike looks down at her. "It was easy," he says.

http://www.davidedgerleygates.com/

My Arizona Home

So, last night being New Year's Eve, and given that my family could benefit from a little added side income, I found myself driving a cab from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am.

Yes, I picked up several folks who'd had a bit too much to drink (though perhaps fewer than you might imagine), along with a few rather odd folks who had clearly been up to rather interesting activities, and two different groups who'd had blow-outs, wrecking their cars.

And, yes, I made some money.  Humorously enough, my smallest tip came from a guy who kept telling me he was wearing a $1200 suit.  He tipped me less than two bucks for a $14.00 trip.  But, I guess that's why he has the money to buy expensive suits.

What surprised me, however, was that I had to chip ice away from the edges of my car door, after I'd turned in the cab this morning, and gone to retrieve our family sedan from the parking lot, before I could pry my frozen-shut door open to drive home.

We don't get a lot of ice like that, here in the Valley of the Sun.

I'm sure a lot of you out there are thinking: "A little ice.  Boo hoo.  Deal with it Desert Boy!"  And, frankly, it can be hard to explain how odd this is, to someone from -- oh, say: Minnesota perhaps.

Which has me thinking of a rather remarkable little book called My Arizona Home, written by a fellow named Desé R. Trat.  Trat does a nice job of capturing both fact and flavor, when it comes to his description of the Phoenix area and Scottsdale, so I thought I'd share some excerpts with you.  Happily, Trat was glad to give me permission to do so.

Trat's book begins with an explanation (if you could call it that) about why desert dwellers develop sort of love or "fever" for the place, with this rather odd opening note:

“In the upper soil levels of much of the desert southwest, there is a mildew-like fungus known as Coccidioidomycosis, or Cocci. You’ve probably heard it called 'Valley Fever.' Believe it or not, if you’ve lived in The Valley all your life, you’ve probably already had Valley Fever. Valley Fever can be dangerous …”

 —Public Service Announcement Televised in the Phoenix area, 1967-1978

(You may be interested to know that I remember seeing this ad on television. He then begins his winding roam through desert life.   :)

 Things in the desert are farther away than they appear. This is why a picnicker with a broken down car might die of thirst while walking to a near-by highway, and why his bleached bones might later be found twenty miles from the nearest paved surface.

 But don’t think the desert sets traps for the unwary; it doesn’t.

 The desert just has a dry sense of humor and likes to play practical jokes.

 People who respect the desert stock their cars with little practical joke kits including: several gallons of water, a small shovel and a few boards for getting out of sand traps—plus maybe a flare gun, in case the joke starts growing old. Consequently, those who respect the desert tend to survive its practical jokes and often wind up developing a certain fondness for its sense of humor.

 Those who don’t respect the desert, however, don’t usually develop this fondness—possibly because they are too busy having their bones bleached.

 The Valley of the Sun (‘Hoozdo’ or ‘The place is hot’ to the Navajo Tribe) is really a huge basin area, occupying hundreds of square miles, surrounded by low mountain ranges and dominated by the Salt River.

 This river (called ‘Onk Akimel’ or ‘Salty River’ by the Pima Tribe) drops 10,000 vertical feet from its origins in the White Mountains (the sacred ‘Dzil Ligai’ of the White River Apache Tribe) to enter the valley from the east and run across its width, pouring out to the west.

 In the final years of that time period denoted by the initials B.C., the Hohokam—a prehistoric tribe of Native Americans—established the first known civilization in the Salt River Valley, building large communities and over a thousand miles of canals, which moved water from the Salt River to their farm fields.

 The latest remains of the Hohokam indicate that their civilization died out, or significantly changed around the year 1450. Today, two tribes in the area claim the Hohokam as their ancestors: the Tohono O’odham (meaning Desert People) and the Akimel (meaning River People).

 The Tohono O’odham are often called the Maricopas, while the Akimel are often referred to as the Pimas (evidently, this is because the Akimel word for "I don't know what you are saying," sounds like "Pima" and was heard quite often by early settlers in the area, who took this as the tribal name.)

 The two tribes share The Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, which is very nearly surrounded by Scottsdale, Mesa, Chandler and Fountain Hills.

 The Hebrew word ‘Jehu’ (pronounced Yay-hoo) means ‘reckless driver’. In the 1800’s when Arizona was still part of the New Mexico Territory, this word was used to designate a man who was a stagecoach driver—perhaps a strong indicator of the way those men drove their coaches.

 Jack Swilling, born in Anderson County, South Carolina on April Fool’s day of 1830, entered the area now known as Arizona as a Jehu, helping to build Leach’s Wagon Road around 1850. After that, he became a miner, then a soldier and later an Indian scout. In 1867, after rounding up enough backers to make it possible, he revived the Hohokam canals, making Phoenix a viable place to live and farm.

 Swilling died before a town site was incorporated, in 1881, on the north side of the Salt River. However, his friend picked the name Phoenix from Swilling’s dictionary—the only dictionary in the settlement. Thus, Jack Swilling is credited as the founding father of Phoenix.

 With the spread of irrigation, due to Jack Swilling’s revived Hohokam canals, other cities and towns began sprouting up all over the Salt River Valley. Though it would not actually be incorporated until 1951, the city of Scottsdale was founded several miles northeast of Phoenix in 1894 by Winfield Scott, a retired army chaplain.

 The current city of Scottsdale has spread north from that original location, climbing up into the foothills of the McDowell Mountains, Pinnacle Peak and other parts that rim The Valley.

 Composed of bare rock, overlaid with a thin sheet of dirt, scrub plants and cacti, these mountains have no way to soak up rainwater. Thus, when it rains, the majority of the runoff does just as its name implies and runs off, right down the mountainside, onto the flatlands below. 

 The result is that—somewhat perversely, perhaps—though Scottsdale is located in the desert, the major natural problem confronting city planners is flooding.

 The desert is crisscrossed by hundreds of sand-bottomed wash beds—some as small as two feet across and a foot deep, and others as large as eight feet across, by six feet deep. These wash beds are usually bone dry. After a heavy rain, however, the water sheeting down from the mountains, joins in these washes. There it forms into solid rivers—fronted by a wall of water, up to six-feet-high—and can rush through the larger washes at freight train speeds.

 These flash floods have been known to carry away people, cattle—even large trucks. The victims are often recovered miles downstream, drowned and battered by rocks, wreckage and other effluvium carried along at bone-splintering speeds by the raging waters.

 Water, not blessed with a natural ability to ignore the effects of gravity, tends to run downhill. Thus, all that water, in all those washes, heads down off the mountains and flows south through the length of the city.

 Natural drainage within the topography has created a sort of super wash—a runoff superhighway, if you will—that knifes through Scottsdale, up to a quarter-mile wide. Usually, this super wash just takes the form of a boring, dry wash bed, but occasionally it transforms itself into a dangerous raging torrent of turbulent dark flood waters. Those who lived in Scottsdale before the sixties, called this super wash “The Slough,” pronounced “Slew.”

 The Slough runs through south Scottsdale between Miller road to the west, and Hayden road to the east. It runs through the city and then out of the city into Tempe, where it dumps into what used to be the Salt River, almost immediately south of the border between the two cities.

 The river bed the slough dumps into was bone dry for decades, because the Salt River, which once ran deep and wide, was dammed up in a series of seven reservoirs north and east of the Superstition Mountains, in the early part of the Twentieth Century. The original damming of the Salt River, and creation of the concomitant reservoirs, was a massive federal project akin to the Tennessee Valley Authority. The organization created to oversee all this was designated The Salt River Project.

 Today, SRP, as it is popularly known, provides water and electricity to a major portion of the Valley of the Sun; without it, most of the people who live here, would have to live somewhere else.

 Heavy rains can cause SRP to open the floodgates and let water out of the reservoirs, in order to keep them from overtopping the dams. The half-mile wide riverbed then fills with deep, running water. When I was a kid, if SRP opened the floodgates, the Salt River would flow deep and muddy. Traffic running over the two-lane Mill Avenue Bridge, the only bridge over the Salt River back then, would back up for hours. And, when it rained that hard, a fast-flowing river usually ran down The Slough, which would dump its own quarter-mile-wide load into the Salt River bed just west of Hayden road.

 There were no bridges at all over The Slough, meaning that Scottsdale was effectively bisected by a river of fast-flowing runoff. Scottsdale school teachers, who largely tended to inhabit the lesser-expensive housing found in Tempe, had no way of getting to the schools. When that happened, the schools would close for the day and thousands of children—myself included—would cheer.

 In the Seventies, Scottsdale undertook an ambitious program to deal with the flooding of The Slough. The land that held The Slough was bought up from the farmers and others who owned it. Then the city dredged the bottom of The Slough and built earthen retaining walls, where needed, and constructed a series of bridges and large but unobtrusive culverts to carry the roadbeds above the flood waters.

 Having effectively canalized and bridged The Slough, they then set about beautifying it. A long, interconnected series of parks and golf courses was constructed down the length of the flood area. Today, this area is known by the name designated by those far-reaching planners of the Seventies as the Scottsdale Greenbelt.

The Greenbelt in small flood time.

 The Greenbelt provides golf, parks, picnic areas, tennis courts, a skate park, miles of bicycle and jogging trails and many other forms of exercise and recreation for Valley Dwellers. When it floods, those few roads that still run through the bottom of the wash are closed. The raging waters run down over the parks and golf courses, and the repairs afterwards are fairly simple and comparatively inexpensive. Overall, the Greenbelt is a masterwork of form following function, which would have made Frank Lloyd Wright proud, if he had been involved in its construction.

The lake from the air.

 A few decades after Scottsdale created the Greenbelt, the city of Tempe created Tempe Town Lake.

  Today, much of the old Salt River bed in Tempe is filled by this lake, retained by the banks of the

The lake as Tempe residents tend to see it, near Mill Ave. Bridge.

river bed on the north and south sides, and by inflatable dams on the east and west ends. When SRP opens the floodgates, the dams can be deflated, and the Salt River flows, once more, through its historic channel.

See you in two weeks!
—Dixon

The Cell Phone as Murder Weapon

Melodie Campbell's post on December 6th gave me the idea for this post, so if you don't like it complain to her.  Because it's her fault!  (Just kidding of course.)

Surely everyone has read about cell phones being used to detonate improvised explosives, but I'm not going to address that issue in this post.  Clearly, too many bad guys already know how to set up such triggers, and -- though I think I have a pretty good idea how to rig one up -- I am not going to propagate such knowledge among more of them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

There is an aspect about cell phones, however, that some mystery writers may be unaware of, which could potentially render them highly useful as items involved in fictional extortion plots, arson plots, and even potential murder plots.

I don't feel I'm letting anything out of the bag by writing this, because:

1. This aspect is widely reported on the internet, complete with accompanying photos.
2. Recent television newscasts have covered this aspect, and its associated potential for downing aircraft.  
3. I have certainly never been trained in using a cell phone as an explosive device, as this aspect did not exist -- or, at least, was not nearly as wide-spread -- during my military career.
4. Having a certain rudimentary knowledge that something is possible, is a far cry (imho) from having the technical expertise and equipment to successfully execute that thing.

The aspect of cell phones that I'm addressing is:  Exploding Batteries.

Now, you may have just scoffed, and asked, "How much damage could one little battery do?"
Below is a photo of a house reportedly gutted by the fire an exploding cell phone battery started:

Is there any question in your mind, now, that a cell phone battery could figure prominently in the plot of a mystery concerning arson?

These two photos show folks who have survived phone battery explosions or fires:

I recall being told of a case, in which terrorists set up a booby trap, which fired a small explosive device mounted behind the mirror on a car's sun visor.  The daughter of a man, whom the terrorists were trying to influence, owned the car and often used the flip-down mirror (which had lights on either side, that came on when it was flipped open) to do her makeup.  The idea behind the attack, was not to kill the daughter, but to maim her.  To mar her face.


This is a horrible thing to do to someone, but since we write about horrible people perpetrating crimes, consider:  Imagine how organized crime members might use a cell battery to carry out their threat to maim family members of someone they were trying to extort into doing something illegal.

Sound like part of a plot?

What if the explosion that hurt the man's ear, in the photo above, were amped-up to be more powerful?  The target gets a call, and when he answer it -- WHAM!  Of course, the device would probably be more effective if the battery detonated five to ten seconds after the target answered, increasing the likelihood that the phone was tucked tight to the target's head (Charge-to-target contact -- remember?).  Now, we could be talking about fictional murder.


To watch a BBC clip concerning exploding cell batteries (along with some interesting demonstrations) CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE to read about ways to prevent cell phone batteries from exploding.  The idea here is: Learning what prevents them from exploding, might help you get started, when it comes to plotting techniques that your fictional character can use to make his/her targeted cell phone battery explode, wreaking fictional havoc upon the opposition.

CLICK HERE for Times of India information about "call bombing" and how this might help a cell phone to cause damage.  Scroll down to "How and why do mobile phone blasts happen?" for the requisite information.

Now: Let's be frank.  If you've read through some of the links above, then you know that most phones and batteries are well designed and manufactured, and very seldom explode.  Further, even if a battery were to explode, I think it would be quite difficult to rig up a system that would make it explode at a specific time -- which is an important consideration when working with explosive or assassination devices.  After all, if the thing blows up when it's nowhere near the targeted individual or structure, the blast will not accomplish the desired results.

On the other hand, we're writing fiction here.  So . . . maybe -- using the links above, and possibly others -- you might figure out a way to sell such an exciting plot, in a way that's convincing to readers.  If so, I hope you "Have at it!"

See you in two weeks,
--Dixon

Piano of Mystery Sold

The Monday before Thanksgiving, a very special piano was auctioned off at Bonhams in New York.
Yes, this is primarily supposed to be a mystery writing web site, but sometimes inanimate objects are central to mystery plots.  Small, odd little objects may sometimes even point a detective to perceive the complex Rube Goldberg device behind a locked-room mystery.

Pianos also fit here in SS, I believe, because we have authors here who are just as passionate about their music as they are about their writing.  This auctioned piano combines mystery, adventure and music -- along with love.  In fact, it played a central role in all four at one time.  A seminal role, one might say. Which is perhaps not abnormal for certain inanimate objects.

This is the small, 58-key upright piano, probably made in 1927, that a production company altered slightly in 1942, by relocating some hinges, so that the character Rick Blaine could hide letters of transit inside.

That's right.  It's the piano that drummer Dooley Wilson, playing "Sam," sat at when Ingrid Bergman, as "Ilsa Lund," told him, "Play it, Sam.  Play, 'As Time Goes By,'" in the movie Casablanca.

This is the one.  He's not really playing, but he is singing.

Hiding the Letters of Transit

How central can an inanimate object really be to the heart of a film, or the plot of a novel?

Well, let's look at just a few of the roles this piano (and its brother) played in Casablanca.

"Play it for me, Sam."

The movie's "brother piano" used in flashbacks.

In the end, the piano reportedly sold for $3,413,000.00 which included a 12% commission.

I have no idea who bought it, though I've searched the web.

You can click on this New York Times article here for more details.










Mystery lovers might also like to know that a certain Maltese Falcon has the honor of having grossed more at auction, than any other movie prop, reportedly landing  $4,085,000.00 during Bonham's TCM auction last year. (This statistic should not be confused with the "overall record for a piece of movie memorabilia," which goes to the Aston Martin [$4.6 M] driven by Sean Connery's "Bond" in Gold Finger.) 

See you in two weeks,
— Dixon

The First Female Detective

In my August post, “An Homage To Poe,” I discussed Andrew Forrester (pen name of J. Redding Ware) and his short story “Arrested On Suspicion.” I also mentioned The Female Detective, a collection of stories that he supposedly edited. I couldn’t find the book on Project Gutenberg. I found and downloaded it from Google Play. Because I couldn’t increase the small text in the scanned edition, I bought a print edition (released in 2012). The Female Detective was originally published in 1864.   

In the introduction to the 2012 edition of The Female Detective, Mike Ashley accepts Forrester as the author of the stories, though the scanned edition shows him as the editor. When  the book was published, there were no women detectives, either private or police, in Britain. It would be 50 years before women detectives appeared. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Pinkerton agency employed a woman detective in 1856, and the first policewoman appeared in 1908 in Portland, Oregon.

However, women as amateur detectives had appeared in stories prior to 1864, but “These works...involved women who, by circumstance, were forced to investigate matters.” According to Ashley, THE FEMALE DETECTIVE features the first professional woman detective: "Whether inspired by real events or entirely fictional it is clear that the mysterious 'G' is first and foremost the pioneering female detective.” 

G, as the police refer to her (she calls herself Gladden), is retired from the detecting business and was wise enough to allow a “literary editor” to revise her manuscript. G wrote the “book to help show, by my experience, that the detective has some demand upon the gratitude of society.”

The first case in the collection, “Tenant For Life,” is about a five year old inheritance fraud that G feels she must expose. Her round-about way of telling the story at first annoyed me until I accepted that she, like many of us old folks, likes to talk. She considers herself “a good talking companion, and “women are in the habit of talking scandal, with me for a hearer, within three hours of my making their acquaintance."

From a cabman and his wife, she learns the story of how, five years earlier,  the cabman bought a baby from a poor woman who appeared to be in distress. Shortly after the transaction, a lady ran after him looking for a woman with a baby and hears the baby crying in the cab. She offered him thirty pounds and he sold the baby to her. After hearing the story, G suspected the lady wanted to substitute the child for one who had died and that possibly an inheritance fraud was involved. She feels it is her duty to “deal out justice” and see that the property is return to the rightful owner, if it is in fact an inheritance fraud. 

I like the story for the way in which G goes about the investigation. Researching the birth and death records of the village where the cabman had sold the baby, she discovers it was born close to the same time a wealthy lady, Mrs. Shedleigh, in the village died. Armed with this information, she locates a family consisting of a five-year-old girl, her father Mr. Newton Shedleigh, and his sister Miss Shedleigh. Disguising herself as a seamstress, she gains entrance into the Shedleigh household and learns all she can about the Shedleighs. 

From her research on the law on inheritance, she learns that if the children of a husband and wife die before the wife, and she dies before the husband, he inherits her possession and becomes a “tenant for life.” If she dies without children, her property passes to her father’s brother. Her investigation of the Shedleighs leads to the dead wife’s uncle, whom she suspects is the rightful heir.

I like G even though she seems to be a meddlesome woman who interferes in other people’s lives to prove that detectives are necessary. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the remainder of her sleuthing adventures.

So long until next month when I must say goodbye.

Important Thinking On British Televsion Mysteries

Being a trained observer from my police days, it has not escaped my notice that many of my fellow  SleuthSayers are fans of British television mysteries.  It helped that several of you wrote articles on this very subject--these were my first clues.  I suspect that many of SleuthSayers' readers are fans, as well.  I don't have enough evidence to make an arrest, but I think that it's a reasonable suspicion.  So, knowing that I am in good company, I am ready to confess without benefit of counsel, that I, too, enjoy these programs from the misty home of the English language.

English TV Policemen with authentic accents

I've heard, or read, several very good reasons for liking the Brit mysteries (as well as some of their other programming such as "Call The Midwives"), and I have a few of my own which I'm anxious to share.  Firstly, everybody speaks with these really great accents, though sometimes they are difficult to understand.  I have advocated subtitling, but this has not yet been enacted.  What is it about their accents, anyway?  There are dozens of "English" accents being spoken around the globe, from the U.S. to South Africa, but not one of them sound as smart as Englishers themselves.  That's just not fair.  I want to sound smart, too.  But since I can't, I like to watch the British being cultured and savvy.  Sometimes I try on an English accent at home, but Robin either studiously ignores me, refusing to respond to any of my extremely pithy observations, or tells me to stop embarrassing myself.  I feel smarter when I do this, though she says that I don't sound, or look, smarter at all.  She is of Irish descent on both sides of her family and is unreasonably hostile to the English, I think.  Things only get worse when I switch to an Irish accent.


Dreaming Spires

So, the accents are cool, but that's not the only reason I like British television.  There's also the locations.  My absolute favorite is Oxford, the setting of the Inspector Morse, and latterly, the Inspector Lewis, series.  Notice how I worked in "latterly"?  That's how they talk.  Besides being an incredibly beautiful city with its "dreaming spires" (don't ask), it also puts the lie to British weather being lousy.  It's sunny nearly every episode--and this show (in both its manifestations) has a decades-long history!  I can't understand why all the Brits want to move to Spain when they've got Oxford.  If you follow the adventures of Rosemary and Thyme, you'll find that they too walk in beauty beneath a glorious sun and flawless sky.  As soon as Robin retires, we're saddling up for some of that gorgeous English weather!  To hell with Ft. Lauderdale!



Rosemary and Thyme

But the main reason that I like British programming may surprise you.  Yes, the wonderful acting is certainly a draw, but that's not it altogether.  It has to do with the casting.  Have you ever noticed that, unlike American television, British actors are not uniformly attractive?  In fact, in many cases even the actors and actresses in the leading roles of British shows are not in the least bit glamorous.  They're allowed to look like me over there, and still work.  Inspector Robbie Lewis would never be confused for an American television detective.  He might, however, be mistaken for an actual police officer.  Neither Lewis and Hathaway, nor the inspector/sergeant duo on Midsomer Murders appear as if they run ten miles a day and spend an hour every morning in the gym.  I've never seen any of them beat anybody up, which is a daily requirement of their American TV counterparts, and very calorie-consuming.  And since they don't carry guns, they can't shoot any villains.  They actually say that, you know--villains.  As for R and T, they spend all their time investigating murders at various castles, hotels, and estates across England while doing some light gardening, and taking numerous breaks to snack and drink wine.  These Brits appear to drink a lot of wine!  I always thought they were big on warm beer, but no, it's wine for these folks, and it's always being served at things called fetes, which no American knows the meaning of; though they look a lot like parties.  They seem to be held mostly on village "greens" or in gardens.  Though, when the weather doesn't permit (which is almost never--see above) they are held in drawing rooms.  No American knows what kind of room that is either, but it doesn't matter.  This is another thing I like about English life on the telly (sorry, Robin, old girl); they do a lot of partying!  The down side is that the guys almost always have to wear a tux, though they call them something else, I think.  Anyway, it's kind of nice to see men and women who could pass for what I call "normal" populating the screen, with nary a "six-pack" ab between them. 

So there you have it, all the good reasons to watch British television.  Oh...were you thinking it was the clever writing and convoluted plots that form the centerpieces of these programs?  How the hell would I know?  I can't understand half of what they're saying.  I just like how they say it.   
                   

The Joys of Miss Fisher

Leigh's recent quips about cricket, coupled with Rob's mention of a "sexy cozy" triggered this post about Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, an ABC (um … that's: Australian Broadcasting Company, in this case) television series, which I've been watching on NetFlix.

Kerry Greenwood

This two-season (so far) TV series -- which I think could be accurately called a sexy and humorous cozy -- is set in Melbourne and based on a series of books by prolific Australian author and defense lawyer Kerry Greenwood.


Ms. Greenwood has penned no fewer than 20 books about Miss Fisher, plus several more novels spanning the YA, Sci-Fi and mystery markets.  If Wikipedia is to be believed, she's also a playwright.

The series' titular "Miss Fisher" is, point in fact, Miss Phryne ("Fry-nee") Fisher, a young upper-crust Australian woman of the 1920's who evidently served in the ambulance corps during the First World War.  It seems that the horror she encountered there stripped away her innocence, baring a wry and often humorous cynicism that I, as a viewer, find delectable.




In a word, I'd say she's "cheeky."
Delightfully so!

Dot quietly feels
Miss Fisher drives
far too recklessly. 

Having returned to Australia from England, in the first episode, young Phryne pronounces herself a lady detective.

And – stylish detective that she is – she even sports a gold-plated revolver, when needed. As well as a gorgeous Hispano-Suiza, which she drives at breakneck speeds.

The mysteries here are not mind-bendingly difficult to solve.



Nor do people running around with fancy metal-plated weapons usually entice me to watch a show.  Quite the opposite on both counts. But, if I'm honest, I'll have to admit I don't watch Phryne to test my wits against hers, as I might with a good Sherlock or Miss Marple. And, the fact is, the gold-plated revolver works in this case.  It's just the right weapon, with just the right feel of "decorative accessory," that would make it seem likely to strike the character's flair for the unique and stylish -- two things Phryne Fisher definitely personifies.  But, I really don't watch shows because of weapons.


So, why do I watch Miss Fisher?

Frankly, because the show is so much fun.

The characters are delightful.  First, there's Phryne's friend and assistant, Dorothy, often called Dottie or Dot.  Little Dot is devoutly religious, and frightened by technology.  One of my favorite scenes, which occurred in the first episode, involved Dot trying to answer a telephone.

.

As the young woman had earnestly explained to Phryne earlier, the priest at her church had told everyone that the electricity in the phone lines was building up in the center of the earth, and that – one day – one telephone connection too many would be made, causing the world to explode. Thus, as Phryne's phone rings, Dot, charged with answering it in Phryne's absence, is torn between doing her duty to her friend and employer, and her fear that answering the instrument might trigger a cataclysm that  destroys the entire planet.
The results had me rolling.

Then there's Phryne's female doctor friend: Dr. Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan.  The good doctor dresses in men's clothing, as many women of the time actually did.  It had nothing, necessarily, to do with their sexual leanings; it was simply a style fad in the post-war years, according to my professor at ASU, when I took a class on this time period in Europe's history.

This taste in clothing may actually be associated with the view that women with bodies that looked "good for breeding" were thought of, at the time, as being similar to cows, or even "breeding machinery" (a connotation much distrusted in the wake of a war that saw the horrific effects of combat mechanization for the first time).  Consequently, "le garçon" arrived on the scene in Europe -- women whom the French called, literally: "the boy" because of their thin hips, flat chests and "masculine" behavior (such as smoking in public).  The wearing of men's clothing, according to one line of thinking, was an extension of such new social norms.

On the other hand, there is strong evidence (albeit off stage) that "Mac" may enjoy the company of women in her boudoir – something that bothers Phryne not one whit.  Mac also harbors a deep grudge against the male establishment, which would be perfectly understandable for a female M.D. of that time period. She's quick to anger, slow to trust, but is fast friends with Phryne, whom she evidently trusts implicitly.

Detective Inspector John "Jack" Robinson carries on a – so far – unrequited love affair with Phryne, though the femini Phryne doesn't appear to let this interfere with her bedroom gymnastics with other, more immediately willing, partners.  Robinson is quite conservative, but he clearly can't get this remarkable woman out of his mind.  And, the fact that she keeps showing up at the scenes of crimes that he's charged with investigating does little to alleviate this problem.

Robinson is assisted by Constable Hugh Collins, an innocent new police officer who soon begins dating Dot.

Add in Bert and Cec, two rather rough-around-the-edges manual
laborers with hearts of gold, who do some of Miss Fisher's heavy lifting, and Phryne's dowager aunt Prudence, along with a few other characters, and you've got a gold mine of humor, conflict and fun.

I highly recommend the show, if you haven't seen it already.

Phryne Fisher: Not only can she drive, and fly a plane…
She's also not afraid to fan dance!

See you in two weeks,
—Dixon

Why do you write Crime Fiction?

Friday afternoons drag. If you work in an office, it can feel like the devil has planted one of his hooves down on the minute hand of the clock, slowing down time to the point where it starts to hurt. The happiness you felt earlier in the week has gone, the bright colors of life have faded, and all that remains is a seemingly endless, black and white, nothingness. Punctuated by the random antics of work colleagues, who are even more insane than you are (miniature remote-controlled helicopter racing, anyone?). Friday afternoons are a good time to start thinking about the next SleuthSayers article.

And then Friend K asks: Why do you write crime fiction? This is not a question I've been asked often; in fact, I can recall only one other instance. And I didn't really know how to answer it then, either. The short answer is: That's the way I evolved.

First of all, I actually think of myself as a mystery writer, not specifically a writer of crime fiction. I like mysteries, and at the heart of every story I've written you'll find one. It's a fundamental "human thing" to look for meaning in things we don't understand, to want to bring order to the chaos of life. Who, as a kid (and I mean everyone who's ever lived), hasn't looked to the stars at night and wondered what's out there? My foremost pleasure in writing a story is engaging the reader in a mystery; some kind of problem or enigma that needs/demands to be unraveled and solved. Seeking resolution is what makes readers keep turning the pages. I know it's why I do.

Danger! Conflict ahead! 

It's no surprise, then, that I grew up watching dozens of TV shows and movies about detectives and police officers. The mystery of who did it, how they did it, or why they did it, is central to any story in this arena; it's their raison d'être. I also grew up loving science fiction, because in Sci-Fi, the mystery can be as big as the universe. In fact, my favorite TV show of all is The Twilight Zone.

The thing I like about the Twilight Zone is that no matter how "out there" the stories were, they were mostly stories about real people. Rod Serling (the show's creator and principal writer) even said so. Setting stories in the "twilight zone" enabled him to explore almost anything about the human condition, that placed in a "realistic" or contemporary setting, he would never have gotten past the network censors or advertisers.

I don't write a lot of science fiction because I mostly prefer realistic settings and situations. I'm more interested in the girl hiding her dead boyfriend's body after she strangles him, rather than the girl who has three eyes and a luminous tail.

So, mysteries and stories about real people.

Picture a classroom in a suburban high school. The building is barely three years old and everything still has the feeling of the new and the modern about it: spacious, large windows, well lit. Teacher H is standing at the front of the room. She's middle-aged, has dark hair, glasses, and curious sense of humor. She's written "What makes a story work?" on the blackboard. It's English class, the last class before lunchtime on a Friday. The class is filled with a bunch of tired students, daydreaming about the weekend, their sandwiches, or the cute boy or girl seated in front of them.

This was a question that caught my attention and woke me up. And no one had an answer. No one put up his or her hand. No one had a clue, not even Student D, the cute girl who sat in front of me, in the front row -- the class Hermione, who usually had an answer for everything. In fact, she turned around to see if anyone else was putting up his/her hand. We traded vacant shrugs.

"Anyone?" Teacher H asked.

Nope.

She defined story: The plot, or everything that happens in a book, or a movie, or a TV show.

Teacher H, by the way, was the teacher who entered class one morning and announced: "The king is dead". I was proud that I was the only one in the room who knew what she was talking about. It was the day Alfred Hitchcock died.

She wrote the answer on the blackboard. "Conflict". She explained. Stories work when people are in conflict with someone, something, or themselves. What makes a story work is conflict. She cited three examples from our reading that year:

• Romeo and Juliet's happiness in their love is prevented by the conflict between their two families.
• The conflict in The Importance of Being Earnest is the misunderstanding (lies and confusions) that exist between most of the characters.
• In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus' decision to defend a man he believes to be innocent in a rape trial threatens his family's safety.

Teacher H summed it up: Conflict is a problem to be resolved. The conflict and its resolution ARE the story. A story about a man who wakes up on a nice sunny day, goes out and buys groceries, and then comes home again, is not going to be very interesting or memorable. Without conflict, there's nothing to be engaged with.

You don't forget teachers like that.

So, mysteries, realistic people in realistic situations, and conflict -- the evolution of my writing gained mass around the nucleus of these three core components.

There are, of course, degrees of conflict. A misunderstanding where a guy asks a girl on a casual date and she misinterprets his intentions is at one end of the conflict scale. A man murdering another man because he stole his girlfriend is at the other. The scale itself is one of life endangerment -- the higher the risk, the more extreme the conflict.

As a writer, I tend to lurk around the extreme end of the scale. Heightened conflict engages the reader (and me). I simply find it more interesting to write about people in deeply dramatic situations -- more often than not, that involves some kind of crime. Had I not been so inclined, I might have become a romance writer, or a writer of literary fiction.

I don't know if my scale of conflict (illustration above) actually holds any water, I only just made it up (on the day before you read this) so I haven't had time to really think about it. Feel free to shoot it full of holes.

Anyway, that's why I write crime fiction.

Be seeing you!


www.StephenRoss.net