Driving a Boat into a Helicopter

Or:   Of Rubber Ducks, Double Ducks and Duck Recovery Ops

DUKW ("Duck")  Not this duck!

I've covered some aerial infiltration and exfiltration methods for land-based operations in the past two posts.  So, today, I thought we'd take a quick gander at some aerial INFIL/EXFIL ops that include water as a medium.

Zodiac Rubber Assault Boat with outboard motor.
Note the red fuel bladder. Everything on our boats
was black.          Photo courtesy: Kitairu Suppliers

I spent quite a bit of time on water operations teams, so I have quite a bit of experience with what the army calls Rubber Ducks, Double Ducks and Duck Recovery.

Now some of you may have seen the word Duck and thought of the vehicle in the photo at the top of the page: the GM-produced DUKW (pronounced "Duck") used by the US military during WWII. However, I'm writing about a different type of duck op.

The Rubber Duck

The Rubber Duck is an operation that parachutes team members onto a body of water (usually a sea, near a coastline) with a Zodiac Rubber Assault Boat.

Stack of standard pallets.  These may be
locked into the aircraft floor.

Since the pallet is going to be lost,
cheaper pallets --like this -- tend to
be used for ducks and double ducks.

It works like this: Team members strap a Zodiac to a pallet, which can be locked down on the aircraft floor.

The outboard motor is removed, and placed inside the boat, atop several layers of "crush material."



This crush material is usually composed of thick cardboard honeycomb, which is designed to expend the energy of airborne impact as it (the cardboard) collapses.  Thus, critical and sometimes fragile components of an operation (such as outboard engines for boats) are hopefully saved, arriving in usable condition after being tossed out the back of a plane moving at 125 knots, 1250 feet above the ocean.

How you push a pallet. (Zodiac pallet is shorter.)

One school of thought holds that it's okay to strap rucksacks down in the boat.  However, it's been my experience that this is a good way to lose equipment.  Consequently, my team nearly always jumped while wearing our rucks, loading them into the boat once we hit the water.

Once the boat is palletized, the team loads a C-130, C-141 or other similar aircraft with it.  And, once over the drop zone, they assist the aircraft Load Master in pushing the palletized Zodiac out the back ramp.

Don't think the load master is a coward, just because he's
strapped into the aircraft.

As the Zodiac's parachute deploys, the team chases the boat out the door, parachuting into the ocean behind it.  (Or, in front of it, depending on how you view things.)

This photo shows a different type of boat being parachuted.  However, it's probably about the same dimensions as a "Double Duck" which I'll get to in a minute.

If this were an SF Duck op, the team would be lined up on the right side of the ramp, waiting to run off.

After hitting the water, the team ditches parachutes, dons fins (and sometimes mask and snorkel) and swims to the boat.  This is why team members RUN off the ramp behind the boat: nobody wants to swim a mile and a half to reach the darn thing -- particularly in open ocean.

When preparing to jump, team members hold the fins together, usually under the left arm.  The fins are held firmly in the left hand (which also grasps the left side of the reserve chute in a standard jump), with the ankle straps wrapped around the left wrist.  The fins are also often "dummy corded" (tied) to the jumper's equipment.

Mask and snorkel may be carried in buttoned pockets, or lashed firmly to gear, or taped down with "100-mile-an-hour tape" (military duct tape, which is Olive Drab on the outside, instead of gray). Rifles are loaded with one magazine, then wrapped in two plastic garbage bags (see-through kind), leaving some extra air inside to provide assistance in firing from the bag, if necessary.  Weapons are slung upside down and dummy corded to the jumper.  Sidearms are placed in large plastic baggies, then holstered securely. [Some teams like to strap weapons and load-bearing vests (LBE) to the rucksacks, but I always worry about losing my ruck.  Hence I tended to wear my LBE and weapon.  After all, my LBE had canteens of fresh water, pen flares, and other important survival equipment.]

Our local scuba team liked to jump wearing their gear over T-shirts and UDT shorts, or else in wet suits. Most of the time, however, my team jumped in full uniforms, knowing we'd need to wear them when we hit shore. (Conducting a surprise fire-fight in shorts and a T-shirt would not be fun imho.  The SCUBA Team, of course, expected to wear SCUBA gear into the shore landing, so they looked at things differently, expecting to change into uniforms after landing.)

Rucksacks hang off the jumpers' fronts, clipped on with two clips, just below the reserve parachutes. Each jumper carries a 20 to 30 foot length of 1-inch nylon tubing (or a rope) snap-linked to his equipment harness.  The other end is snap-linked to the frame of his rucksack, in which all equipment has been sealed in large plastic trash bags with most of the air removed.  The nylon tubing or rope is S-coiled into a cargo pocket on the jumper's hip, or into a side pocket on the ruck, for ease of deployment when needed.

On the way down, jumpers try to "slip" their parachute, or drive their "steerable canopy" parachute, in the direction of the boat, to cut down on how much time it takes to put the boat into action and move out.

Upon hitting the water, jumpers remove their parachute harnesses, letting the chutes sink.  They swim a short distance away to avoid becoming entangled in parachute lines as this happens.  Then, they get their fins loose and put them on.  Fins NEVER go on bare feet.  (I had scars for over ten years, because I repeatedly swam with fins on bare feet in pre-scuba school, because booties were unavailable to me.)

Jungle Boots

Dive Booties

Fins may be worn over booties, or military boots.  However, standard combat boots are designed to prevent excessive ankle movement and, in my experience, consequently inhibit efficient swimming with fins.  Wearing booties tends to solve this problem, but booties provide limited foot protection when landing on coral, or when conducting initial patrols inland to secure the beach.  I have found that regular issue jungle boots tend to provide all the ankle movement I need for swimming with fins on, and they permit me to cross beach, hinterland, or even coral with no problems.  Just be sure to wear socks!

After donning fins, etc. the swimmer (who used to be a "jumper" but it no longer jumping -- that part's over) pays out the nylon tubing or rope, that's S-rolled in one pocket, and starts swimming for the boat, towing his rucksack behind.  If properly prepared, the air trapped in the trash bag, inside the ruck, will provide slight positive buoyancy, keeping it barely afloat.

Upon reaching the boat, team members unstrap the boat from the pallet and let the pallet sink.  They then remove the snap-link that holds the nylon tubing, from their gear, and clip their ruck rope or nylon tube to the boat. After the ruck is secured, and still floating, they climb aboard and remove the parachutes, letting them sink.  After this, the motor is cut loose and fastened to the transom -- the (about two inches thick) wooden board that makes up the boat's stern.

This boat design is different,
but you can see the engine plate quite well.

The transom has a metal plate on it, called an engine plate, because this is where you fasten the engine.  The outboard is held by what are essentially two permanently installed, large C-clamps, which you screw tight to the engine plate on the transom.  It usually takes two guys to do this, if you don't want to lose the engine overboard in high seas.  And, engines are heavy, made of metal, and sink fast!  So, you have to be careful not to drop it, or all those folks who USED to be your friends, are going to be helping you paddle miles into shore. (Some far-thinking team members dummy cord the engine to the boat, until everything is clamped firmly, just for this reason!  It's still a pain to haul the engine back up, and get it going, but it sure beats the alternative.)

The fuel bladder is then hooked up, using the clip valve on the end of the long, thin rubber tube that connects the bladder to the engine.  If you're smart, you lash down the bladder so you won't lose it in high seas.  Rucksacks are pulled in and loaded aboard, and everyone gets situated.  Then the engine is fired up -- and you're off!

All of this stuff is best conducted at night, of course, to prevent prying eyes from watching your movements -- which throws a very special monkey wrench into everything: including finding the boat and getting it ready to go.

For this reason, red chemical lights are usually attached to the boat when it is palletized, and "cracked" (turned on) just before pushing it out the door.  The first person to find the boat usually climbs on top and waves a red chem light as high as he can, to assist others in finding the boat at night, in high seas.  Red is chosen because this color is a bit tougher to see.  Make of this what you choose.


Once the boat is "up" and everyone is situated, the coxswain drives the boat across the ocean, aiming to land at a desired location.  Navigation may be based on lights seen ashore, GPS equipment, magnetic compass and chart references, nautical navigation tools (such as tide charts and whiz wheels), or a combination of any or all of the aforementioned.

Scout-swimmers seldom wear rucks.
While, technically, you can take an M-16
and fire it almost as soon as you take it out
of the water, you may have problems if
water is still in the barrel.  This is why we
trash-bagged our weapons, leaving room
for air and expended rounds in the bags.

At a few hundred meters from shore, two scout-swimmers are put into the water.  These are usually the team's best swimmers, and they'll swim into the landing site, ensure no enemy are present, then conduct a reconnaissance before taking up security positions over-watching each end of the beachhead, and signalling the boat to come in (usually by flashing a pre-arranged Morse letter signal, using a red-lens flashlight).

How the boats come in: HOT!

Once the signal is received, the coxswain cranks the throttle and drives the boat hell-for-leather into the beach, trying to make it climb the sand as high as possible.  Coral is highly destructive to a rubber boat, so it is avoided if possible.  If the boat must land on coral, this will be made clear with a signal from the scout-swimmers, and the coxswain will slow as he approaches the beachhead to minimize damage.

After the boat is beached, the team will carry it inland, often deflate it, then try to hide it: burrying it, and/or camouflaging its location.  The boat location will be marked in the standard manner used to note cache sites.

Double Ducks

Double Ducks are run just like Rubber Ducks, but two boats are used.

The reason for this is simple: One Zodiac fits about half an A-Team, with their gear.  Any more, and it gets overloaded, which causes problems.  So, the team jumps in with two Zodiacs, instead of one.

When palletizing, the two Zodiacs are stacked on top of each other on the pallet.  Everything is strapped and lashed together, to form one cohesive package for the drop.  And, once everybody's in the water, the boats are pushed apart and each team works on its own boat, readying it for the run in.

A Double Duck makes landfall.

Duck Recovery

Duck Recovery Operations vary, depending on the vehicle being used to recover the boat(s) and/or swimmers.  And it's a place where the SF mantra of "That's wild, and undoubtedly quite dangerous, but we can do it," becomes something more like: "You've gotta be kidding me!"

I've spoken to SCUBA team guys who waxed long about the exciting experience of having a submarine surface with the conning tower just astern of the long ropes holding the team's two Zodiacs together.  The sub kept moving slowly forward as it surfaced.  When the conning tower caught up to the ropes, it caught them, and the two boats were swept back over the rear deck area of the sub.  As the sub came farther out of the water, team members used paddles to keep the boats from being swept over the side, and were later able to step from their boats onto the (relatively) dry deck, deflate their boats, and go below.

I've never done that one, but I have driven a Zodiac into a helicopter several times, and been on board Zodiacs driven into helicopters several more times.

(At left is the photo of a model of a CH-47 Chinook.  Though it's a model, I think it gives you the best look at the overall bird.)





The secret here is that the CH-47 Chinook helicopter does NOT float . . . but it does sink slowly.

Special Operations puts this fact to use, by letting a Chinook "land" in a body of fairly flat, calm water.  This doesn't work very well in open ocean, but can be done in inland waterways, on lakes, or in coves, etc. where the waves don't get too tall.



The pilot puts his rear ramp down, when landing, and keeps the rotors running (there are two rotors, fore and aft: see photo).  This provides lift, increasing the helicopter's "float" time.  Meanwhile, the team on the Zodiac drives as fast as they can get that little rubber boat to go -- right up the ramp and into the back.  The chopper's got about six inches to a foot of water in it, by this time, so the boat has water to run across as it comes in.  Just before entering the ramp area (Remember: the ramp is down, and lying under the water starting about five or six feet back from the open rear of the chopper!) the coxswain cuts the engine as his assistant unlocks the engine, permitting them to hinge it up and forward, lifting the prop out of the water.  The boat continues to coast, but team members rapidly grab the wide nylon webbing of the troop seats that have been folded up against the interior sides of the helicopter.  Team members continue to grasp this netting -- hanging on for dear life! -- as the pilot lifts off, moving forward, and all that water spills out, running in a river right out the back of the open ramp.  As the water runs out, the boat settles.  Eventually, the ramp is brought up and locked closed, at which point the team can let go and stand up, getting out of the boat.

At this point, the Zodiac may be deflated and the troop seats may be lowered so team members can sit in them for the flight back to wherever they're going (usually an intermediate staging area, where they leave the CH-47 and board a large jet transport like a C-141 to make the long flight home).

In my experience, however, since this recovery operation usually comes at the end of a long, exhausting deployment, team members often opt to keep the boat inflated, then flop in,on and around it to fall deeply asleep until the chopper lands.  If the Crew Chief, Pilot or Load Master decide to deflate the boat, however: it gets deflated.  Anyone who complains is usually invited to walk or swim home.

Oh, one other thought: this is also usually done at night.  And the coxswain is usually equipped with goggles to help him deal with the sea spray kicked up by the Chinook.  Unfortunately, not only is it dark.  Not only is the chopper marked with dim chem lights.  But, also: those goggles are usually pitted and scarred to near un-usability.  Consequently, finding that chopper can be tough.

Once, in training, it took me so long, as coxswain, that when we finally got to the penultimate moment, my Team Sergeant suddenly lunged back at me, knocking me to the floor of the boat, just as we shot under the open ramp of the rising chopper, gallons of water dumping on us and swamping the boat.  The Chinook pilot had decided he either had to fly, or sink!  So he chose to fly, of course.  I hadn't been able to see through the dark night, sea spray and awful goggles.  The pilot came back, though, and we did it again -- successfully this time.

That's it for now.  See you in two weeks!
--Dixon

Anatomy of Revolution - Part 2

by Eve Fisher

Where we left off two weeks ago, was with the collapse of old regime governments and the rickety nature of the moderate governments that take over.  That rickety nature is because, as I said last time,

• The moderates fail to - and indeed cannot - satisfy those who insist on further changes (the radicals) because
• the moderates must maintain government, want to maintain government, and the radicals want to destroy it.

The Extremists 

Revolutions work in stages:  from moderates to extremists, until finally the lunatic extremists take over.  Now the lunatic extremists are always a minority, and such a tiny minority that everyone discounts them, because obviously they don't speak for the majority.  But the extremists are willing to do ANYTHING to get into power, including attending all those boring committee meetings that everyone else ignores, where they quickly become the secretaries, treasurers, and chairmen.  This means they run the bureaucracy of the revolution:  they control who gets elected, who gets jobs, who gets money.  And, as the extremists' candidates start winning elections, they change the voting rules - the electorate is shaved down, elections are rigged and eventually elections are eliminated, because the extremists have to stay in power in order to "maintain the revolution."

And then comes the Reign of Terror.  Ideological purity is made the touchstone of everything, which makes it increasingly dangerous to be different - and the lunatic extremists keep changing the goalposts, making ideological purity not just harder and harder to achieve, but impossible to achieve. Nobody is ever pure enough.  Let me repeat that point, and please remember it, because it's a dead giveaway, then and now and in future:  Nobody is ever pure enough for the extremists.



The Reign of Terror (and there always is one)

The Revolution has been very busy killing off its enemies:  the obvious Royalists, White Army, capitalists, bourgeois industrialists, or feudalists, Quakers, Anabaptists, Catholics, Huguenots, and whatever other category they deem dangerous.  But now it starts eating its own.  The last thing to be in a revolution is one of the first revolutionaries, because you are going to get killed:  Danton is guillotined; Trotsky gets it in the head with an ice axe; Liu Shaoqi - former President of the People's Republic of China - dies naked and alone in a windowless cell.  Robespierre, Stalin, and Mao all killed almost everyone who used to be their comrades in arms, as well as thousands to millions of innocent citizens.

The other fun things about the Reign of Terror are:

• Individual liberties are suppressed, if not made illegal, especially free speech and the right to dissent.  As I said earlier, elections are either obviously rigged or banned outright.  
• NOTE:  This is actually not hypocrisy.  The extremists know that they have the true answer to how men should live, and so any opposition must be wiped out for the good of the country, perhaps even the good of humanity.  To oppose them is to oppose God (or whatever term the extremists use).  
• Virtue is enforced.  They ban every vice, from gambling to drinking, whoring to theater, and a lot of stuff that just seems like it might be fun, like dancing or reading.  And it doesn't have anything to do with religion:  although some revolutions have been religious in basis (the English Civil Wars were quickly taken over by extreme Puritans, among others), even atheist revolutions (Mao's Cultural Revolution) are extremely ascetic.  



Robespierre guillotining the
executioner after having
guillotined everyone else in France

• NOTE:  This is why George Orwell's Big Brother banned sex; as Julia says to Winston, "When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?" 
• FURTHER NOTE:  Quite a few leaders of the extremists, like Robespierre and Thomas Paine, are Pure Young Men, which only increases the push for extreme virtue and terror, because nobody is ever pure enough for a Pure Young Man, who will, if pushed, kill maniacally in his cause.   For a definition of a Pure Young Man, see yours truly's article in SleuthSayers http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2014/06/emergency-pure-young-men.html.  For an example, watch the scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where Peter O'Toole's Lawrence starts shooting everyone in sight, with great bloody joy.
• Extraordinary courts and special revolutionary police are set up - no evidence needed, no lawyer provided, just a quick snatch off the streets, and a rubber-stamp of "guilty - condemned" for all who are unfortunate enough to be hauled before them. 
• There are mass exiles, imprisonments, and executions.  Endless executions.  Sometimes it seems if the extremists want everyone dead.  Sometimes they do.
• War is common, indeed necessary:  War is used to spread the gospel of revolution abroad and as a distraction from how bad things are at home under the extremists.  (Sometimes it's imaginary - North Korea's been battling the United States in its own mind for almost 70 years - but it's still effective.)  

The End of Extremism

Here comes the good news:  flesh and blood can only take so much, and eventually the extremists are ousted.  For one thing, the common man and woman just can't take being forced into early sainthood, and fear will not work forever, even if it seems like it.  Some, like Robespierre, call for one too many deaths and are executed themselves. Others, like Mao and Stalin, die of natural causes, and afterwards their supposed followers can't move fast enough to lighten things up.  In China, they arrested the Gang of Four, led by Mao's last wife, Jiang Qing, and blamed them - especially her - for everything; shortly thereafter, Deng Xiaping declared "To get rich is glorious!"



In France, once Robespierre was dead, people opened the bars, pulled out the wine, and women started dressing sexy again, which is how Josephine Beauharnais nabbed Napoleon.  It's a giddy time - everyone is free, free, free!

Madame Recamier, by David, bringing sexy back

Return of Absolutism

And then comes the Restoration.  Literally in England, with Charles II.  Brezhnev in Russia.  Calles in Mexico.  A brief empire under Napoleon Bonaparte in France, and then the Bourbons returned.  (Talleyrand said of them, "They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing," which is why the restored monarchy only lasted until 1848.)  The Chinese Communist Party clones, president after president.

      

And yet, something has changed.  Just as nobody survives a deadly disease without some change to their psyche, so no country survives a revolution without some changes to their society.  Not habits:  human habits are hard to change, or at least were before mass media required us all to mimic Hollywood images. But ideas did change, took root; civil rights were expanded; there was some redistribution of wealth and/or land.  In France, the Revolution left behind a secularization, universal education, the metric system of weights and measures, and governmental centralization that is still in place, and, thanks to the Napoleonic Empire, was spread all around Europe.  In both China and Russia, the peasants got land and permission to engage in some capitalistic behavior, in exchange for which the Party was allowed to stay in power.  What were once revolutionary symbols - the Pledge of Allegiance, the Star Spangled Banner, the Marseillaise, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" - become the national liturgy.  And each revolution "proves" that revolution can work - if you just get it right, so maybe next time...

And the memory of the Great Revolution is enshrined, if not downright embalmed in holy incense, as a sacred time when people were unified and pure.  Or as a time of amazing excitement and brotherhood, such as never has been known since.  It is a Golden Age.  Except, of course, to the families of those who were killed.  But who's listening to them?  After all, "You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs" - that came out of the French Revolution, too.

Dreadful - John Horne Burns

The big books that came out of the Second World War are THE NAKED AND THE DEAD, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, and THE YOUNG LIONS. They were successful at the time, and they're still read, if not the Irwin Shaw so much, which is a shame.

My dad, though, who was himself a Navy vet - the North Atlantic, the Med, and later the Pacific - had a soft spot for John Horne Burns' THE GALLERY, which is a series of linked stories about Naples, under Allied occupation. It's fallen between the cracks, these days.

I discovered an odd, tangential connection of my own to Jack Burns, when I went to the Loomis boarding school, in the 1960's. He'd taught at Loomis, after the war, and then got mired in a scandal of his own making. THE GALLERY had been published in 1947, and got terrific reviews. Jack was on the cover of Saturday Review. A little full of himself - or past caring - he gave an interview to the Boston GLOBE where he waxed snide about Loomis' provincialism. It didn't sit well with the headmaster, the imperious Nathaniel Horton Batchelder, who called Jack on the carpet. Not long afterwards, Jack and Loomis parted ways.

The next novel he published was LUCIFER WITH A BOOK, a poisonous diatribe about a thinly-disguised New England prep school. You wouldn't find it in the Loomis library. And by the time I got there, Jack Burns was the name nobody spoke out loud. There was something else, too.

Jack was gay. He didn't come out of the closet until after he'd left, but it was pretty much an open secret with most of the Loomis faculty, if not the boys. This isn't what put him in Dutch with Batchelder, one of those muscular Christians whose world-view probably didn't admit of Jack's persuasions, but it was one last nail in his coffin.

One of those odd coincidences, another guy who was at Loomis, a few years after I was, is David Margolick, who got interested enough in the Jack Burns mystery to write a biography, DREADFUL. David and I wrote a couple of letters back and forth, it happens, but I couldn't shed much light on the contretemps, other than the enormous silence that descended whenever Jack's name came up. To me, the interesting thing is that David's curiosity was put in play by that very silence. In other words, banishing Jack from living memory only served to whet our appetites, the temptation in the forbidden. You might even find there's a metaphor, here. Jack Burns drawn to the flame.

He wasn't, by all reports, a very nice guy to be around, and he certainly didn't suffer fools gladly. What struck me, re-reading THE GALLERY again, is how chilly it is, even contemptuous. His sympathies aren't invested. You begin to feel sorry for the characters because he so obviously isn't, which is off-putting, as if they really aren't worth his time. I'm not suggesting in the least that this is homosexual self-loathing, but the distance he puts between you and the book creates a disturbance. You wonder why you should care. I don't think this is a conscious effect. I do think it betrays a deep, glacial reserve in Burns. He won't let himself show any weakness. He may have been like that in life, brittle and guarded, all too vulnerable.

He drank himself to death, in Florence, in 1953. He was thirty-six.

http://www.davidedgerleygates.com/

Playing in the Shallows

by Janice Law

We all love profundity, heartbreak, piercing stories of love and loss and heroism, and some of us aspire to write them. But fortunately there is also the category of guilty pleasures, encompassing what used to be called “tired businessmen’s entertainment.” As far as television mysteries go, I refer to the pleasant shallows of predictable scripts, familiar characters, and faintly absurd premises.

NCIS, the most popular show on television as my husband reminds me, is strong on all three. Every week, the Marines and or the Navy takes a substantial hit to its personnel. If the show continues with its LA franchise, and opens, as planned, an NCIS New Orleans, I doubt we will have enough manpower to staff our ships.

Of course, the NCIS corps of detectives is charming. The cases ingenious. The action sporadic but exciting. But what I think really draws the public is the fantasy element: the smooth working of every conceivable technology from CCTV to the multitude of data bases at the fingertips of the clever NCIS techies.

Who hasn’t gotten lost in the wilds of cyberspace or wasted endless time in searches that go nowhere. Not the folks at NCIS. A photo or a license number or a blood type gets tapped in; almost instantly the screen blossoms with a complete dossier or photos of the getaway car or the crucial piece of information that links a drop of blood to – voila– some arch-villain of the terrorist persuasion. This is the sort of fantasy that writers, at least, can really enjoy.

At the other end of the spectrum is a guilty pleasure of my own, the British ITV import Midsomer Murders. Once again, the plots are complex, and if the cast is maybe less interesting than NCIS, the scenery – stately homes, thatched cottages, trout streams and woodlands– is considerably better. Besides, Midsomer Murders goes to the heart of the matter: the victims will generally, as the Lord High Executioner was wont to say, “not be missed,” while the killers are even less fetching. No pity needed!

Where Midsomer Murders even exceeds fantasy levels of NCIS, however, is in the reaction of the quaint and pretty Midsomer hamlets to a body count that would embarrass Detroit. The residents are shocked. The aristocrats (at least one per episode) are shocked to be questioned. The middle class is shocked to be suspected. The working class is shocked to be arrested. “Things like this just don’t happen here,” is the standard reaction by one and all.

And this is why, despite the fact that nearly every episode begins with either someone walking in the night forest – never to emerge alive again; or with an early morning walker out with a keen-nosed dog – soon to discover the latest corpse, the villagers continue to tramp the woods and venture out alone on lonely paths in the dark of night.

Worse yet, the locals continue to hold those most dangerous of human gatherings, the village fete. We didn’t expect anything better than a string of killing from the Film Festival which attracted outsiders and theatrical outsiders at that. The Literary Fest was almost as bad; the star attraction coming from London and literary feuds being notorious for their viciousness, but still the body count was more than even the most pessimistic organizer could have imagined.

We did, however, expect that the annual Garden Fete, featuring as it did innocent horticultural pleasures would prove harmless.

Not a chance. Gardeners were bumped off almost before the flower judging began, while both the Music Fest and the Midsummer frolic laid waste to multiple victims, some in the latter with ancient Celtic implements.

When even archeology is against you, there’s as little chance of survival in Midsomer as in NCIS’s supposedly more gritty urban D.C. But then neither show is realistic, despite the country charm in one case and the technical hardware in the other. Both deal with another commodity, an undemanding predictability. Lets face it, there are days then the shallows look pretty enticing.

A Week In The Glamorous Life...

Class, I'm not working on a particular writing project at the moment...have a couple of irons in the fire. But after this week, I need to get back to writing just to rest up.

On Monday, I had a horrible sinus headache, but managed my usual putting clothes in the washer, transferring same to dryer, folding and putting away. I did drive the 5 miles into town only to discover the major fact that I had forgotten...Columbus Day is a Federal holiday and the bank and post office were closed. The way I found out the bank was closed was I parked, jumped out and at the front door, I pulled. It was locked...why??? Then I saw the sign stating they would be closed for Columbus Day. I turned around and said out loud, "My first clue was no cars in the parking lot." This is a small regional bank and there's usually not many cars around. Back home to make dinner and cleaning up the kitchen, then shower and finally into bed, still nursing my aching head.

On Tuesday, I bowl in a bowing league. Now that probably doesn't sound too exciting to most of you, however, I have bowled once, twice or three times a week for over thirty years. Last year, the bowling center in my nearby town closed. Shortly after that I drove into Austin, 58 miles one way on a Thursday night to bowl. That wasn't fun.  This year a group of us bowling ladies started a league and are bowling in Fredericksburg, 39 miles one way. The best part is that one of my team members and I take turns driving. It's good fun and good exercise. We leave Marble Falls at 11:15am, bowl at 1:00pm and get home about 3-to-3:15p. Back in Marble Falls, I drive to the bank and PO and take care of a couple other errands that I missed out on the day before. I also called my primary doctor's office to see if I could get an appointment soon. The new federal law that went into effect on Oct. 6th says you must see your doctor and get a written prescription to get your Schedule 2 pain pills. Fortunately, they had had a cancellation and I could come in the next day at two p. Great, I say, put me in at that time.

On Wednesday, after showering and getting ready I head to Austin at 12:45p, this is for a 65 mile one way trip. I get 30 miles from Doctor's office and get caught in a huge traffic jam.  Finally, the traffic moves, but it's only 8 minutes until my appointment time. Never did see the cause for the jam but there is one of those over-size load trucks parked on the shoulder so guess that might have been part of the problem. I call the appointment person and am told they will informed the nurses in back. When I get to the doctor's office at 2:30, I wait a few minutes and discover that I won't be able to see the doctor but I can see the physician's assistant. That's okay because she can see me, then catch the doctor who will then write the prescription for me. But I do have to wait...and wait...and wait, for almost two hours. While I'm in with the PA we're talking about the new law and we agree it's necessary because too many people abuse it. And she said, with people like you, we know you and know you're not going out on the highway when you're caught in traffic jams and sell your pain meds. "You mean I could have done that? Darn I missed the boat." She almost fell off her stool laughing. With my precious prescription tucked into my billfold and inside my purse, I head west at 4:50p which is now rush-hour time in the city. This late I'll miss my music night out and dinner out so I stop and get BBQ to go and then stop and get gas for my car. By the time I get home it's ten to seven and I'm a bit draggy.

Thursday rolls around and I catch up on a little housework. Clean up hairballs from the cats and then get ready to go once again. I'm volunteering three hours (from 3 to 6p) at our little Cottonwood Shores library. Since I have a 5:30 committee meeting, I do manage to leave a little early for that. But I spent over two hours rearranging paperback books. We had a large number to add in, but not enough space where they were shelved. Some new shelves were added so it's a matter of adjusting them now and yet keeping them in alphabetical order. I'm getting good exercise however, bending up and down. Oh, my aching back. I get to my meeting only to find it's been postponed until next week. I hadn't checked my email in several hours.

Suddenly it's Friday. My male kitty, Nick (he and my female kitty, Nora, are 17 and a half) has been urinating in various and hidden places instead of the liter box.  Terrible for carpeting. I have an appointment with our vet who's been taking care of them for 9 years but is eighteen miles one way in Johnson City. Why don't you have Doctors and Vets that aren't so far away, Jan. Simple answer, when you find someone that you really like, it's just hard to change. So our appointment is at 2:30p and we leave at 2. Thank goodness no traffic problems. The attendant helps carry him inside and weighs him. He's lost about a pound since his visit back in the spring. That's not too good. Nick gets his yearly shots then they say they need to put him to sleep to draw blood. They do that and also give him some fluid IV because he's a bit dehydrated. No thyroid problems. Shall we do some testing for kidneys...we have enough blood for that but it will take about another 15-20 minutes and more charges. Go ahead, I say and start mentally adding up in my head what this will cost me. However, these cats are my fur babies. I've had them since they were 8 weeks old, they've seen me through a lot and I have to take care of them. Nick's back in his big carrier but complaining a bit and scrabbling in there. He's drunk from the anesthetic and acting goofy. Thank goodness, all the news was good. Nothing more than old age and perhaps a little infection that I get an antibiotic for and head home, after two hours. I did manage a quick stop for a couple of grocery items. When I got home I collapsed on the sofa and was happy I still had BBQ left over for my dinner.

On Saturday, I realized I didn't have to go anywhere for the next two days and I realized how tired I  was feeling. Thinking about my week was well, amazing. just full of adventure and glamour, like any other writer.  Don't forget, class I'm sixty-fifteen now and can only dance every other dance now. But at least I can still dance.

Until next time, don't forget to take out the garbage and all those other glamorous things we writers do. I'm off to watch a little TV, then to read a little more of Sara Paretsky's new paperback, Critical Mass before bedtime.

DuMont Episode 3 ~A Fate Worse than Death

Continued from last week…

The Fate of DuMont’s Library

Today, only 1½% of DuMont shows survive, one or two episodes of a series here and there, three or four of another. Of most programs, none at all remain. Only Jackie Gleason’s Honeymooners, which was stored separately, remains largely intact.

Often, recordings were simply recycled to recover the silver halide in the film itself. Even so, DuMont had saved more than 20 000 individual shows recorded by kinescope, a process where a broadcast is captured on film directly off a television screen. Through other acquisitions, this historic library ended up in the hands of ABC.

Edie Adams

Ernie Kovacs

Here is the testimony of Edie Adams, wife of DuMont television star Ernie Kovacs, before a Film Presentation Board public hearing:

In the earlier ’70s, the (former) DuMont network was being bought by another company, and the lawyers were in heavy negotiation as to who would be responsible for the library of the DuMont shows currently being stored at the facility, who would bear the expense of storing them in a temperature controlled facility, take care of the copyright renewal, et cetera.

One of the lawyers doing the bargaining said that he could “take care of it” in a “fair manner,” and he did take care of it. At 2AM the next morning, he had three huge semis back up to the loading dock at ABC, filled them all with stored kinescopes and 2" videotapes, drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay.

That corporate attorney destroyed the earliest and priceless television film library, 20 000 irreplaceable kinescope recordings.

And that concludes the story of the world's first television network.

---

Today’s Video

This is another for Dale Andrews and his friend Kurt Sercu, experts vis-à-vis all things Ellery Queen. Today, I present the third of three episodes of an early Ellery Queen television show from when Dale was a wee lad, an episode broadcast 08 November 1951.

Of the three available episodes, this is my favorite although Ellery appears dismayingly gullible. However, it had been only a decade since Mary Astor, in the form of Brigid O'Shaughnessy, planted the notion that occasionally women can be bad guys. The title sequence certainly sets an atmosphere. I doubt it was intended to be so noir, but I like it.

Note that Dale Andrews will return to SleuthSayers the 25^th of January 2015.

Fifty Mysteries by John M. Floyd, Master of the Mystery Short

by Elizabeth Zelvin

It's no surprise that such notoriously hard to crack writers' markets as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The Strand, and Woman's World keep gobbling up John Floyd's short mystery stories. His latest collection, Fifty Mysteries: The Angela Files (Dogwood Press, 2014), is no exception. The simplicity of these stories is deceptive. (It's no coincidence, perhaps, that his last collection was titled Deception.) They slip down as easily as a crême brulée: smooth as silk, but it's got plenty of flavor and crunch, and it leaves you wanting more.

The stories in Fifty Mysteries, almost half of which first appeared in Woman's World, avoid many of the tropes that crime fiction relies on. These fifty stories about the cases of Sheriff Chunky Jones and his former fifth-grade schoolteacher, Angela Potts, can't be called page-turners, because they're only seven hundred words long, not counting the solution to the mystery of the embedded clue. The protagonists are not psychologically tormented or even flawed, unless you count Sheriff Jones's figure ("Don't call me Chunky.") The stories eschew graphic sex and violence. They aren't long enough to twist or develop subplots or relationship arcs. Yet each one is a gem that has all a successful mystery needs: the elegant structure of crime, investigation, and fair-play solution, a setting that manages to be fully realized without many explicit details, and two extremely likable protagonists. The sheriff provides the cases, and the clever and observant Ms. Potts solves them.

John Floyd sketches a sleepy Southern town where everyone has known everyone else all their lives, and villains, bullies, victims, and the law all did their time in Angela's fifth grade classroom. Like a Chinese or Japanese brush painter, he achieves his effect with just a few strokes. Roscoe's Cafe: "Banjo music blared from a radio behind the counter" and Angela teases Roscoe about being "an extra in Deliverance." An escaped prisoner's grandmother's living room: "The old lady...took a seat in an overstuffed chair--on the table beside it were a teacup and a half-finished knitted potholder--and directed Angela to a second padded chair. The sheriff pulled up a footstool..." A scenario that would never occur in a big city: "Young Jeffy had crashed his pickup into the Civil War statue on the courthouse lawn in the wee hours and was now sleeping it off as a guest of the county."

Each of these elegantly executed flash stories is a solve-it-yourself puzzle, and the book's format discourages cheating by providing the solutions in a separate section at the end. I opened the volume with some trepidation, afraid I would find that Angela Potts is smarter than I am. To my relief, I was able to solve most of the mysteries without peeking--but by no means all of them. John Floyd is a pretty smart guy himself. May he never run out of puzzles--and I bet he won't--and may Ms. Angela Potts live forever--and I bet she will!

John Floyd's short stories and features have appeared in more than 200 different publications. A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, he won a Derringer Award in 2007 and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. John is also the author of five collections of short mystery fiction: Rainbow's End (2006), Midnight (2008), Clockwork (2010), Deception (2013), and Fifty Mysteries (coming in October 2014). He and his wife Carolyn live in Mississippi. More information about John and his writing can be found at www.johnmfloyd.com.

Arch Riordan

A few lawmen in the Old West became famous, like Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and Pat Garett, but what about the ones who didn't get written up in dime novels and didn't have some version of their lives and dramatic events turned into movies for the silver screen or into weekly episodes for television? What of those who went about their jobs in once growing towns which later faded into almost obscurity, those individuals who did not receive much recognition in the records of history?
Arch Wilder Riordan was one of those old time lawmen overlooked in most history books.

In late 1874, after gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota, prospectors started heading into the area. Many traveled north from Sydney, Nebraska, and then turned west where they followed the route used by buffalo herds making their way from the prairie into the hills and out again with the seasons. The great influx of people soon called for a town to be established at the beginning of this natural opening in the landscape. This town became known as Buffalo Gap.

Eleven years after the gold rush started, the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad reached Buffalo Gap and made it a shipping point for both cattle and travelers. At one point, the town claimed to have 17 hotels and eating establishments, 4 general stores, one hardware store, Bonesteel's Ready To Wear store, 2 drug stores, Van der Vort's furniture store, 4 Chinese laundries, 3 livery barns, 4 blacksmith shops and 2 large sporting houses plus several small ones. It also had a station stop established by George Boland for the Sydney Stage Line. As there were no churches, religious services were held in tents.

The quickly growing town soon attracted a collection of low-lifes and law-breakers. Since the local sheriff was not held in high esteem, the town's businessmen met in secret to discuss the problem of law and order. That's when they asked Arch to become their Town Marshal. The salary by 1886 became $75.00 a month.

Arch stood about six feet tall and weighed in at 240 pounds, had an easy manner and a southern accent. He'd come into the Dakota Territory as a cattle drover and found the community and surrounding area to his liking. Deciding to settle down, he opened up a combination drugstore and saloon, which became quite profitable. Believing that a good citizen should do his part in the community, Arch agreed to take on the job of Town Marshal.

Unhappy at the prospect of a cowboy turned Town Marshal riding herd on their rowdy activities, the local hoodlums had their own secret meeting. As a result, they hired Charlie Fugit, a gunman, to come over from Wyoming and take care of their problem. The plan was to start a fight in one of the dance halls, and then when Arch showed up, Charlie would kill him. All went as intended until Charlie confronted Arch in the dance hall. Turned out Arch was a deadly shot and faster than Charlie. Charlie did not survive the shooting.

In another incident, Arch took a gun away from a bad guy named Sam. (Sorry, Sam's last name didn't make it into the history book.) Sam got lodged into the Buffalo Gap jail, a ten foot by ten foot building with stout doors and bars on the windows. Arch turned his back and started to walk away, not knowing that Sam had a small revolver concealed in his boot top. The outlaw called out to Arch. As the marshal turned back to him, the outlaw shot and missed. Arch drew his own weapon, informing Sam that he would bear evidence of this attempted murder for the rest of his life, and then shot off Sam's left ear lobe.

Arch went on to survive several dangerous situations, never using his firearm without due provocation. In later years, he was appointed a U.S. Marshal.

Over time, the railroad pushed north up to Rapid City, the new hub for the Black Hills. Several businesses from Buffalo Gap then moved up the line. Buffalo Gap had peaked and soon faded into near obscurity.

---

Historical information for this article was taken from Our Yesterdays, the collected writings of oral histories from early pioneers by the Eastern Custer County Historical Society during the late 1960's.

Wut Werkz and Wut Duzn't in Historrikuhl Fikshunn, Part Deyuh

by Brian Thornton

We'll begin today's post with a quotation within a quotation, and end it by posing a conundrum for the reader. 

First the quote within the quote. The initial one comes from The Great Game, Peter Hopkirk's magisterial history of the Anglo-Russian struggle for control of Central Asia (and by extension, both India and all trade routes to the Far East). Within that quotation lies a telling quotation from the recollections of one of the so-called "Great Game's" most colorful players, a British army officer and diplomat named Alexander "Bokhara" Burnes:

Finally in August 1831, laden with gifts and compliments, Burnes and his companions crossed back into British territory, making for Ludhiana, the [British East India] Company's most forward garrison town in north-west India. There Burnes met briefly a man whose fate was to be closely bound with his own - Shah Shujah, the exiled Afghan ruler, who dreamed of regaining his lost throne by toppling its present occupant, the redoubtable Dost Mohammed. Burnes was not impressed by this melancholy-looking man who was already turning to fat. 'From what I learn,' he noted, 'I do not believe that the Shah possesses sufficient energy to set himself on the throne of Cabool.' Nor, Burnes felt, did he appear to have the personal qualities or political acumen to reunite so turbulent a nation as the Afghans. 

It almost goes without saying that not much has changed in or about Afghanistan over the 183 years since "Bokhara" Burnes wrote the bit quoted by Hopkirk above (Brutal terrain? Check. Unruly tribes with nearly no attachment to the central government? Check. Hostility to outside influences? Check. The list goes on...).

And yet so many things actually have.

"Hindoostan" and Environs - 1830s

Not least the fact that, as a result of events from 9/11 onward, most Americans have actually heard of Afghanistan and might even be able to find it on a map.

The same region today

Another thing that has changed is the cessation of the at times unintentional Occidental practice of  transforming proper names and other nouns into sometimes wholly other words, or at the very least, of mangling them so badly in translation as to render them nearly unrecognizable.

Not THIS Burns (Scottish poet Robert)

Take Burnes' reference above to "Cabool." Anyone who knows anything about the region (or hasn't been living under a rock for the past 13 years) is likely quick to realize that Burnes was, of course referring to modern-day "Kabul," the capital of Afghanistan. You see this all over the place, especially during the 19th century, and particularly when reading historical accounts written by British soldiers, sailors, explorers, scholars, etc.

At times seems as if this is nothing more than an extension of the old joke about English gentlemen being fluent in any number of languages, so long as it's understood that they'll speak them s-l-o-w-l-y and with an impenetrable English accent.

For example, at the mouth of the great Indus River that drains all of Pakistan, a large chunk of

THIS Burnes (actually a distant cousin, despite the difference in spelling)

Central Asia and a significant amount of Northwestern India sits a port city called Karachi. I have seen this spelled a variety of ways, including "Kurachee," "Carratchee," and "Kharatchee."

And then there's "Hindoo" (Hindu), "Hindoostan" (Hindustan), "Peking" (Beijing), and a host of other place-names. The British take on the world they set out to colonize and "make English" through the administration of British laws and forcing British customs on the locals seems to be forever misspelled, especially from a modern perspective.

Now, of course this sort of thing isn't really limited to the British. It's just fun pointing out a few choice examples from Britain's storied imperial past.

In fact to do this is to be human.

Remember these guys...

Everyone does it. Corrupting and breaking down and reshaping words is part of what keeps languages "living." Seen the capital city of Turkey referred to as "Nova Roma" ("New Rome") as anything other than a term of art lately? That's the name the Roman emperor Constantine the Great gave the city when he founded it during the 4th century A.D. Or when was the last time that anyone other than indie rock jingle writers They Might Be Giants referred to this self-same city by it's later Greek name of  "Constantinople"?

...who did this song?

(And now you've got it running through your head, admit it..."...If you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul!")

In fact the modern name "Istanbul" comes from an old Greek nick-name for the city: "eis tēn polin" ("into the city").

Confused yet?

Anyway, for me where it gets really sticky is when you're trying to write fiction. And not just fiction, but historical fiction about places with history such as these.

Allow me to refer yet again to Hopkirk's example above. Elsewhere in his book (and if you've not read it, you really owe it to yourself to give it a look. "Compelling" doesn't even begin to describe it.) he refers to the chief city of the Afghans as "Kabul," using the modern, accepted spelling.

But of course when quoting from an historical source it is of the utmost importance to preserve the text in its original form if at all possible. This is why actual misspellings tend to be quoted whole cloth (followed by a helpful "sic").

But what to do when writing, not history, but historical fiction?

Of course it really depends upon which person you're writing in. So much historical fiction these days is written in the form of a supposed first person memoir. This is especially true of historical mystery fiction.

If you're writing in the first person, you're golden. You can use any weird-ass, archaic derivation of one of the places you're discussing that pleases you. In fact if anything it's going to help establish your narrator as a product of the time about which they're (really you're) writing.

BUT

(Aaaaand here's the question with which we're going to end today's post)

What if you're writing a third person multiple point of view story?

What then?

Case in point: as part of my current novel-in-progress, I have my protagonist talk about a visit to the Fiji Islands during the year 1840.

Fijian (Feejeean? Feegeean?) Club Dance, as witnessed  by members of the United States Exploring Expedition, 18

During this time period the word, "Fiji", had nearly as many old misspellings as "Karachi" (see above).

Note the spelling in the map's title (Upper left corner).

Think about it. As I mentioned in my last post, a good cardinal rule of historical fiction writing (and of fiction writing in general) that you don't want to put anything into your work that will jar the reader out of the story. Scare? Sure. Frazzle? Absolutely.

But if you knock your reader out of the story, they may just give up on it.

So how about it? If I have my protagonist talking about his cruise through Fiji, should it read: "I sailed the Fijis?"

A view of Fiji (Feejee? Feegee?) in 1840

Or should it read: "I sailed the Feejees"?

Or: "I sailed the Feegees"?

See the problem? He's not writing it down. He's talking about it.

Maybe not that big a deal for some, but I have heard many readers complain about just exactly this sort of thing.

What works for you, Dear Readers? Which option is least likely to take the reader out of the narrative, and why?

Istanbul...Constantinople...Tomato...Tomahto....?

Ghost Story Story

by Robert Lopresti

You will no doubt be thrilled to know that the world is now richer by one more book.  I have just released into the wild Shanks on Crime, a self-published collection of thirteen stories about a curmudgeonly mystery writer named Leopold Longshanks.

It is available on Kobo and Kindle. If you consider buying it, bless your heart, I would recommend Kobo, since you can purchase it through your favorite independent bookstore and throw some much-deserved cash their way.  If you want an autographed paper copy, see me.  I can fix you up.

Most of the stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and I have written about each of them here or at Criminal Brief, So I thought I would  tell you about one of the four brand-new tales, and this being the month of Halloween I decided to introduce "Shanks' Ghost Story."

For the origin we have to go to Ramat Rachel, Israel in the summer of 2009, where my wife and I had volunteered for an archaeological dig.  (The photo above shows me finding a cup handle.)  It was great fun, but exhausting, and yet somehow the writer part of my brain found time to think up a story idea.  Being deep in a semi-tropical summer my thoughts turned to –  winter in Pennsylvania.

Hmm. How'd that happen?  Who knows?  The writer's brain is not particularly interested in logical patterns.

But somehow I got to thinking about one of my favorite gimmicks, the story-within-a-story, in which  a bunch of characters gather to hear one of them tell a tale.   I decided to try the English tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time.  (And let me urge you to read Jerome K. Jerome's Told After Supper, a hilarious Victorian book that pokes fun at half a dozen versions of the traditional ghost story.  Unlike mine, Jerome's is free.)

I decided that Shanks, my hero, would share my attitude toward the supernatural.  (We differ on many other points, by the way, like music and exercise.)  So, as a skeptic, Shanks attitude toward the ghost stories his friends tell would be polite disbelief.

Ah, but he is far too much the storyteller to let his turn pass.  So he decides to tell a story about being a ghost writer.   Early in his career, it seems, he was hired to produce what would supposedly be the last novel by a recently deceased bestselling crime writer.  

So, no ghost.  But hold on a moment.  Is that bestselling author really dead?  Because Shanks begins to get…

Well, that would be telling.   I hope those of you who are suffering from scorch marks on your clothing where currency has burst into flame will consider reducing your fuel load by picking up the book.  For the rest of you, tell your library to buy it for you. They are public servants, after all.  Command them.

From The Case Files Of Chief David Dean:The Affair Of The Dissappeared Man

When you police a resort town a lot of things can happen; especially during the summer months.  Mostly these things are what you would expect of the Jersey Shore: bar fights, noise complaints, drunk drivers, block parties, thefts, burglaries, the occasional domestic violence case, boating accidents, and sometimes a drowning.  People who vanish are rare.  Of course, lots of children wander away from the parents, but most are found within minutes by life guards or police.  So when an adult goes for a walk on a crowded, guarded beach, and simply disappears, it's what we  in the police business call unusual.
Shortly after I was promoted to the rank of chief, I arrived at the department one very hot July morning and, as was my habit, spoke to my second-in-command on my way to my office.  Being a good captain, he always arrived before me, scanned the incident reports from the previous evening, and briefed me on anything of note.  This morning seemed a part of that routine until he cleared his throat a little nervously, and said, "An older fellow was reported missing late yesterday afternoon.  Night shift said he still hasn't turned up."

I'm the grey guy with the grey beard in the grey suit

My captain, having known me for many years (hell, we had gone through the academy together), no doubt suspected what my reaction might be.  "Since yesterday?" I repeated, my blood pressure rising perceptibly.  "And nobody thought to call me, cap?"  "No sir.  Um...they didn't call me, either.  I just found out myself when I came in."  Every promotion brings it challenges, this was one it seemed.

The captain hastened to fill in the details: Sometime around four o'clock the previous day an elderly man had taken leave of his family to go for his daily walk on the beach.  They had seen him walking north from the 72nd street entrance.  When he had not returned within an hour they went looking for him.  By six o'clock they were in full panic mode, his wife and adult sons reporting the incident to the police.  This was during shift change, and the night shift (patrol worked 12 hour shifts from six to six) received the report.  The shift sergeant, newly promoted by yours truly, promptly contacted the beach patrol for their help in locating the victim.  All of the guards were polled and not a one remembered the gentleman in question, nor had there been any rescues involving someone matching that description.  Inquiries at the hospital proved similarly fruitless.  His car was still parked in the driveway, the keys hanging in the house.  He had no cell phone (these were still somewhat unusual at the time).  Worse still, the wife reported that her husband of more than half a century was in the beginnings of both Parkinson's disease and dementia. 

Beach Path Through High Dunes

As I mentioned in the beginning, it was a particularly hot July and, unusually for the shore, brutally humid, so dehydration had to be considered a factor here.  In other words, these were a bad set of circumstances.  A single witness had been found who thought, but wasn't certain, that she had witnessed an elderly gentleman who matched the description of the missing man, staring up at the dunes around forty-fourth street.  She thought he appeared confused.  Enlisting the aid of the volunteer fire department, the newly-promoted sergeant began a search of the dunes in the vicinity, but darkness overtook them.  And in spite of a brilliant bank of search lights provided by one of their ladder trucks, the firemen and police officers found the steep, heavily forested, dunes nearly impenetrable; the angled illumination only deepening the inky shadows.  The search had been halted around mid-night without a trace of its object, and I had been left in a similar darkness.

I set about to remedy this situation.  Declaring this an emergency operation, I requested the presence of the fire chief, rescue squad chief, beach patrol captain, the emergency management director, and the director of public works.  I also notified the mayor formally, though he was a member of the fire department so I knew that he would be on hand in any case.  Utilizing a bay of the fire department as a command post, we began to gather our forces as my senior detective, acting as my operations officer, set up tables and maps, and began to orient and coordinate the upcoming effort.  My captain was to function as my administrative officer responsible for the smooth functioning of the police department's routine operations, as well as supplying any additional police personnel I might request.  The sergeant on duty was placed in charge of logistics (vehicles, equipment, communications, etc…).  The rescue chief saw to it an adequate amount of water was distributed throughout the day, while keeping a rig dedicated to treating any searchers who were injured or overcome by the heat.  The borough finance officer was even on hand to approve expenditures for food and drink for the small army that was being assembled.

Within the span of a few hours, searchers provided by the fire department, public works, and beach patrol, as well as many other volunteers, were literally combing the town, block by block, house by house.  Considering the missing man's possible mental status, it was conceivable he could be anywhere, so I instructed the searchers to ignore nothing, including crawl spaces and to look beneath any object that he could fit under, such as a child's overturned wading pool, shrubbery, or in the back seat of an unlocked car.  It had been my experience with such cases that sometime persons being looked for hid in terror of their searchers.

As each block was combed, the various teams called in their lack of success, and the detective drew an X through another grid on the map.  Meanwhile, a state police helicopter performed aerial reconnaissance, K-9 units were sent out, and marine officers quietly patrolled the back bays in search of the worst possible result.

The day dragged on growing ever hotter and more humid.  Volunteers and officers alike were becoming fatigued and dehydrated.  Those in the dunes (which are some of the largest on the Eastern Seaboard) were exhausted from breaking brush in the  relentless heat.  By five o'clock, the mayor was growing worried about the hundreds of volunteers who had been at it all day.  So was I.  Both he and the fire chief suggested we call the search off and consider resuming tomorrow.  I was both reluctant to give up the remaining daylight, and flummoxed as to where this man could be.  By this time, we had covered nearly every possible area he could have reasonably reached.  I was looking at miles of x'd-out grids.  It was as if he had stepped through the looking glass...and this bothered me.  I didn't believe in a looking-glass.  He was still out there somewhere.  But where the hell could he be?  And I was deeply concerned about his physical condition under the circumstances.  Based on what I had knew of his advanced age and shaky health from his wife and family, I wasn't at all sure he could make it through another night.  My mind raced… then screeched to a halt. 

Going over to the map table, I asked the detective sergeant to show me exactly where the search of the previous evening had ended.  He pointed to the spot in the dunes where we had begun the daylight effort.  "They covered everything north of this point," he assured me.  I was looking at a fairly small area of extremely steep and rugged maritime forest; all that the night shift had been able to search before losing the natural light and giving up on the artificial.  Turning to the mayor and fire chief, I said, "We can start bringing the searchers back in, but I want a team to go back to the area of the dunes night shift covered and search them again while we still have the light."  The fire chief reluctantly nodded, then got on the radio to dispatch them. 

As the dozens and dozens of exhausted, dirty, and thirsty men and women began to filter back into the fire dept. bays, their despondency was palpable.  We all hated the thought of leaving another human being, especially one who couldn't fend for himself, to endure another night alone and afraid, possibly injured.  After having spoken with the missing man's wife and children earlier that day, I had gotten a sense of their anguish.  I dreaded having to tell them we had failed again and was considering what I should say, when suddenly my portable crackled into life with an excited voice crying, "We've found him!  I think we've found him!"  Leaping to my feet, I keyed my mike and asked, "Is he alive?"  The answer was immediate, "Yeah, I think he's okay."

The headquarters erupted into cheers, and I knew in that moment that this would always be one of the highlights of my police career– I had had one of those brief, shining moments that don't happen often enough.  In truth, I had only thought of the obvious when I sent the team back to the starting point, but at that moment, I felt like Sherlock Holmes.  As it turned out, he had been hiding under a bayberry shrub very near the start of the original search.  Fearful of the Chinese Communist troops he believed were pursuing him, he had remained hidden for over twenty-four hours.  His rescuer had spotted the toe of one his shoes jutting out from beneath the heavy brush.  They had passed right by him the night before.

Chinese Communist Troop–Korea circa 1950

When I drove to his home to break the good news to his family, the whole neighborhood was out on their decks and lawns waiting for the news. Being in uniform, and unable to keep from smiling, they easily guessed the outcome, and the entire block began to cheer. It was a good day to be chief.

Postscript: The following day I penned a general order that any time an agency outside of the police department was requested to assist in an urgent matter, myself and the captain were to be notified immediately as to the circumstances. No exceptions.

"Rules" and Comments

by Fran Rizer 

In 2010, a bargain-loving friend of mine found Stephen King's memoir/writing guide On Writing in a clearance bin at a dollar store. She bought every one of them and sent them all to me.  The problem was  that there were over twenty-five copies.  I sent one to almost every writer I knew personally.

Recently I introduced a young sci fi writer to the realm of Stephen King--not the movie or television version, but the world found in his written words.  As my friend read It, I wished I had one more copy of On Writing to share with him what King said about writing and the story about the baby sitter. I bought one for him, but I was also fortunate enough to locate a list of King's "rules" on writing.

I grew up a rebel child who hated "rules," so I'll call these suggestions. You've probably seen most of them before along with those that overlap Elmore Leonard's, but I found these gentle reminders worthwhile. I couldn't resist the color red for my comments though I graded papers in purple when I taught school. (Some of you may recall that I did, however, write "Dear John, go to hell" letters in red.)

Today, I share twenty suggestions from Stephen King.


1. First write for yourself, and then worry about the audience. “When you write a story,you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”  My next two books are a thriller in January and a horror in June, 2015.  I think I'm writing for myself these days and I have no idea what story is going to insist on being told next.

2. Don’t use passive voice. “Timid writers like passive verbs for the same reason that timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.” And for heaven's sake, learn what the passive voice is.  I've dealt with too many young writers who think linking verbs are passive voice.  No comment on the timid lovers.

3. Avoid adverbs. “The adverb is not your friend.” I add "most of the time" to this or maybe "usually" is a better choice.

4. Avoid adverbs, especially after “he said” and “she said.”  See number three.

5. But don’t obsess over perfect grammar. “The object of fiction isn’t grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story.” I always told students they needed to learn the rules as well as when to break them.  Sometimes those grammar rules are necessary.

6. The magic is in you. “I’m convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing.”  Here I differ with Mr. King.  Years ago, when I attended a large writers' group, we encountered several truly horrendous writers who positively knew they were fantastic and tried to justify why they shouldn't follow any suggestions.  It's not surprising that those folks still aren't published.

7. Read, read, read. ”If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” Amen!

8. Don’t worry about making other people happy. “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”  I'm struggling with this right now.

9. Turn off the TV. “TV really is about the last thing an aspiring writer needs.”  Why do we need television when we have shows in our minds?

10. You have three months. “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season.”  This is no problem for me since the Callie books averaged six weeks for the first drafts, but I don't see how King does it with some books over a thousand pages.  How about you?  How long does it take to get that first draft written or do you have some that "wrote themselves" in a short time and some that take forever?  

11. There are two secrets to success. “I stayed physically healthy, and I stayed married.”  Too late for me to accomplish either of those.

12. Write one word at a time. “Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the work is always accomplished one word at a time.”  I would add that commercial success is accomplished one reader at a time.

13. Eliminate distraction. “There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with.” There should also be no family members who constantly interrupt writing with insignificant questions and comments having nothing to do with the story (unless they are grandchildren).

14. Stick to your own style. “One cannot imitate a writer’s approach to a particular genre, no matter how simple what that writer is doing may seem.”  "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," but does flattery have any place in creative writing?

15. Dig. “Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible.  I like King's reference to the writer's toolbox.  The goal is to fill that toolbox with all possible skills and ideas and then develop the craft of knowing what to use where.

16. Take a break. “You’ll find reading your book over after a six-week layoff to be a strange, often exhilarating experience.” And sometimes, going back and reading it after a layoff enables a writer to think, "Dang!  That's pretty good!"  (Okay, I know Elmore said no exclamation marks, but I love them so long as there aren't more than two per page. I began this by mentioning my dislike of rules from a young age.  What really p-o's me is when participants aren't given the rules until they are reprimanded for breaking them.) Back to the subject:  Sometimes after that six-week rest of a manuscript, a writer goes back, reads it, and says, "Oh, s- -t.  I can't believe I wrote that."

17. Leave out the boring parts and kill your darlings. “(kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.)” Writing is also an excellent way to kill some people who are not your darlings.

18. The research shouldn’t overshadow the story.“Remember that word back. That’s where the research belongs: as far in the background and the back story as you can get it.”  I try to avoid this in writing and hate big info dump/back stories when I'm reading.  I don't like to read fiction that is obviously an effort to teach me a skill or history. (Janice Law provides an excellent example of writing historical novels that don't shove lessons down the reader's throat.)

19. You become a writer simply by reading and writing.“You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.”  I once knew a poet who refused to read other poets' works because he didn't want his "talent to be influenced by others."  He gave me a sincerely blank look when I mentioned "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," and the last time I saw him, he was coming out of a local pawn shop.  

20. Writing is about getting happy. “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid or making friends. Writing is magic, as much as the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.”  How about you?  I personally get a lot of happiness and pleasure from "falling into the page," but greater commercial success would take me closer to a happy ending.


See a fuller exposition of King’s writing wisdom at Barnes & Noble’s blog.

Your task for today is to let me know if you have a favorite among these twenty or if you have a suggestion you'd add to the list or if you flat out disagree with one of King's suggestions.

Until we meet again, take care of … you.