Sidney Reilly: The Bottom of the Deck

Although novelty has its rewards, one of the dividends of leafing through the streaming services, PBS Masterpiece, BritBox, Acorn, MHz, and so on, is rediscovering previous favorites, a few of which have held up pretty well.  One is Lovejoy, still lively and clever, Ian McShane very much a treat, as always; and another, if showing its age a bit, is Reilly: Ace of Spies, first broadcast on PBS in 1983.

Reilly was a risk for Thames Television, they’d never done a mini-series, but they got a good return, selling the show in every major market.  Although it’s been outpaced in the export market by Thomas the Tank Engine, Mr. Bean, and Benny Hill, it was a commercial success at the time, and it made Sam Neill a star. 

Sam Neill

Sidney Reilly was a real guy, and while the scripts played a little loose with the facts, the storyline was in many ways less fanciful than the rake’s progress of Reilly’s life.  You could also be forgiven for playing up his charm, and playing down his murderous opportunism.  Reilly was written by Troy Kennedy Martin, based on a book by Robin Bruce Lockhart – Lockhart the son of R.H. Bruce Lockhart, a famous spy in his own right, resident in Moscow after the Bolsheviks came to power, and credibly linked to Sidney Reilly in a 1918 plot to assassinate Lenin.  Half the stuff Reilly got up to never even makes it into the TV show. 

He was born Rosenblum, in Odessa, in 1873.  Or not.  His given name was Sigmund, or Georgy, or Salomon.  He was the illegitimate son of Perla and Mikhail, fathered by the cuckold Mikhail’s cousin Grigory.  Or perhaps the last heir of a Polish-Jewish family with an estate at Bielsk, on the edge of empire, the frontier of Belarus and Poland.  He first shows up in official paperwork in 1892, eighteen or nineteen years old, when he’s arrested by the Okhrana, the secret police, for political indiscretions, and the best guess is that he turns informant to avoid jail time.  This shape-shifting is a pattern that emerges early.  He fakes his death, in Odessa, and beats feet for Brazil.  He claims to have saved the life of a British officer, who rewards him with a passport and 1500 pounds sterling, but when he shows up later in London, in 1895, the money may well have been stolen from two Italian anarchists on the train from Paris to Fontainbleau, who had their throats cut.  How much of this is fiction?  The two Italians are dead enough to make the local paper.  Sidney is clearly inventing himself as he goes along.  In the trade, this is known as a legend, creating a false biography for cover.  It might simply be convenience, but it seems to be a developing habit of mind, Sidney shedding his skin.

Sidney Reilly

He takes a lover, Ethel Boole, later Voynich, who writes a roman à clef about him, The Gadfly, which goes on to enormous success, in Russia!  Because of her Russian émigré connections, it’s suggested Sidney was actually spying on her for Special Branch.  By this time, he’s gone undercover for Scotland Yard’s intelligence chief William Melville, and it’s Melville who comes up with his new cover identity, Sidney George Reilly.

He’s also gotten married.  His wife is the recent widow of a clergyman.  They’d been doing the horizontal mambo before the husband’s death; her husband changed his will a week before he died; his death was certified as influenza by a doctor resembling Sidney, and no inquest was held; the rev was buried thirty-six hours after he died.  The young woman inherited £800,000.  Sidney married her four months later. 

Reilly reconnoiters in the Caucasus, and here’s where the series first picks up his story.  He’s working for the Admiralty, but he’s also being paid by the Japanese, and he eventually shows up in Port Arthur, in Manchuria.  This is later on the first strike of the Japanese against the Russian navy – the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.  Reilly has gained the reputation of an international adventurer.  He makes a deal to secure Persian and Iraqi oil concessions for the Brits.  He infiltrates the Krupp works at Essen, and steals German armament plans.  He spends the war years in New York, selling weapons to both Germany and Russia, until the U.S. enters the war and embargoes the German market, and then the Russian Revolution deposes the tsar.  Sidney keeps an eye on American radicals, reporting to British military intelligence, and takes on some industrial espionage.  It gets him recommended to SIS, in London.

1918.  Sidney Reilly had come full circle, when the Secret Intelligence Service recruited him and sent him back to Russia.  His job was to assess and report on a chaotic situation.  Kerensky’s provisional government had fallen to the Bolsheviks six months before, but civil war had blown up between the Reds and the right-wing Whites.  Reilly immediately put his energies into a counter-revolutionary plot to murder Lenin and overthrow the Communists.  He had support from British Naval Intelligence, Lockhart, acting for the Foreign Office, and SIS.  Allied troops had landed at Archangel and Murmansk.  The coup looked plausible.  But it fell apart when a former anarchist, on her own, made a premature attempt on Lenin’s life, and the Cheka struck back savagely.  Feliks Dzerzhinsky, head of state security, had informants everywhere, and it’s been suggested - even by Lockhart – that Reilly could have been a provocateur, in Dzerzhinsky’s pocket.  Reilly, as it happens, bluffed his way out of Petrograd, and got to London by way of Helsinki.  Others weren’t so lucky.

Lenin, Stalin

He was back, not long after, assigned to reconnoiter the anti-Bolshevik forces in southern Russia, along with Capt. George Hill.  (Hill was another clandestine intelligence operative with nerves of steel and a price on his head, a celebrated agent in both world wars, who’d worked covert with Reilly in Moscow and Petrograd, and helped him escape to Finland.)  They attached themselves to Gen. Denikin’s army, which along with the Cossack cavalries, made up the White resistance in Ukraine and the Caucasus.  Reilly reported back to London that with Allied military support, the Whites stood a chance, but he probably didn’t have that much effect on British policy.  Reilly is really only a footnote in the White story, which is a sad and complicated narrative – well told, most recently, by Antony Beevor, in RUSSIA: Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921 – but the problem for the Whites wasn’t half-hearted and inconsistent help from the West.  The problem was that they had no real internal consistency, themselves.  They opposed the Reds, but they were stitched together out of monarchists, and democratic socialists, and conservative Tsarist army officers, along with fanatic anti-Semitic reactionaries like the Black Hundreds.  It was a marriage of convenience, and an inconvenience to everybody it touched.

The most interesting part of Reilly’s story comes at the end, and his undoing came not through his own perfidy, slippery and unscrupulous as he was, but by keeping the faith.  The triumph of Bolshevism was never a foregone conclusion, they could have been strangled at birth, if their adversaries had been ruthless enough – it was Lenin who turned out to have the necessary iron in his pants – but there were a few who banked the fires, even as late as 1925, when the Communists were securely in control, and Stalin had succeeded to power.  One of these was Winston Churchill, who was at this point in and out of government, and another was Sidney Reilly.  Reilly took a meeting in Paris, accompanied by a representative of SIS, with a small cadre of White partisans.  The counter-revolutionaries in exile were disenfranchised, with little political leverage, and no credible intelligence sources inside Russia, but Reilly somehow convinced himself they could organize a grass-roots guerrilla campaign through their underground movement, the so-called Monarchist Union of Central Russia, known colloquially as the Trust. 

It was, of course, a trap.

Dzerzhinsky’s OGPU – the Cheka went by many different worknames, over the years – had developed the Trust as a long-term deception, loading it up with backstory, and peopling it with characters, like salting a worthless mine with gold nuggets.  They fabricated an alternate reality, where a stubborn resistance movement, burning with righteousness, held out against the Communist devils to bring back Holy Russia.  Utter poppycock, but it was constructed to lure in anti-Bolsheviks of exactly Reilly’s stripe, the unrepentant, who dreamt of turning back the wheel of history, and he fell for it.  Smuggled across the Finnish border, he was arrested two days later, the mission compromised from the outset.

Dzerzhinsky

He was interrogated at the Lubyanka, and after a couple of weeks, he was ready to give up any and all, regarding the American and UK spy services.  Even allowing for embroidery on Reilly’s part – the problem with enhanced interrogation being that the subject tells you what they think you most want to hear – this would have proved useful to Soviet espionage, but in spite of his obvious value to the Russian security apparat, he wasn’t persuasive enough.  There was that luckless conspiracy to assassinate Lenin, back in 1918.  It proved the final nail in his coffin.  Dzerzhinsky was overruled by Stalin.  Reilly was taken out and shot. 

The question most of us would ask is, Why did he go back, that last time?  He was never an idealist.  The answer seems to be that he heard what he wanted to hear.  He must have suspected, he knew he was a marked man, but he thought he still had the moves, that he could dazzle the crowds with his footwork.  And there was always the chance it was real, that the Trust was what they claimed, that the days of the Red Terror were numbered, and Sidney Reilly would be the man who frustrated their Destiny. 

Not every story we wish to be true is false, the fabled spy-hunter James Angleton once remarked.  He meant that a deception, to have legs, needs to be more than simply convincing; it needs an element of the unreachable, of the fantastic.  Reilly was drawn to the flame because he read his own story as myth.  A lesser man wouldn’t have believed it, and been able to save himself.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

After a troubling start to the year for writers of short crime fiction—Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine changing ownership, leading to distribution delays for print issues; Level Best Books restructuring after a partner retired, causing delays in release dates for anthologies; Tough going on indefinite hiatus; and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine changing to an annual publication focusing on Sherlock Holmes material and closing to other subgenres of crime fiction—mid-October brought a wave of distressing news: Down & Out Books, publishers of several anthologies each year, announced their closure; Unnerving Books, which published anthologies and a magazine, closed; and Black Cat Weekly announced that its last issue would be the 2026 Halloween issue unless someone takes over the publication.

There’s no good way to spin bad news. Except: Shit happens.

I’ve been writing short fiction professionally for half a century. I’ve seen genre markets contract—I’ve even seen an entire genre disappear—and I’ve seen new markets arise.

I lost three key mystery markets in the 1980s when Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, and the revived The Saint Magazine ceased publication. (I had multiple stories published in Mike Shayne and Espionage; had one accepted but not published by The Saint.)

I lost several magazine markets during the late 2000s and early 2010s as the rise of the internet led to the demise of several men’s magazines, and survivors reduced the amount of fiction they published.

Around the early 2010s, I lost several anthology markets when Cleis Press changed owners, and when StarBooks Press and Xcite Books ceased publication.

And I suffered significant loss when the last two confession magazines—True Confessions and True Story—shut down in 2017. (The confession genre had been good for multiple short story sales every month for years, but the entire genre disappeared after the last two magazines closed, leaving me with several unsold stories.)

After each of these setbacks, I took a deep breath, spent time studying the markets, and adjusted what I wrote and where I submitted. I persevered.

So, after you’ve cried in your beer or cursed the gods, or however you deal with setbacks, it’s time to get back to work.

It’s your writing career. Take charge of it.

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

Anyhow, in the middle of all this month’s bad news, I received some good news: I had two stories accepted—one for an anthology, one for a magazine—checked edits for a story upcoming in Dark Yonder, read page proofs for a story upcoming in Lunatic Fringe, and saw the cover for The Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology, which contains one of my stories. I also reached an oral agreement with a publisher to take on the anthologies I had in the production pipeline at Down & Out Books.

* * *

“Black Velvet” appears in Lunatic Fringe (White City Press), edited by J. Alan Hartman.

“4:13 a.m.” appears in The Vigilante Crime Pulp Fiction Anthology (Vigilante Crime), edited by Matthew Louis and Philip M. Smith.

Elementary.

             I’m always vaguely annoyed at the expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”  It raises a lot of questions.  I want to know if those thousand words adequately conveyed the same information as the picture.  Would a million words have done a better job?  How about a hundred?  And whose words anyway?  What if James Joyce described a painting by Claude Monet.  Would the result be an exact facsimile, of either the picture or the text?

             The problem is a picture is a picture and words are words.  Composers are always telling you their symphonies are renditions of literature, or historical events.  The 1812 Overture has lots of percussion and heavy brass, symbolizing canon fire and the like, but I bet the Russian soldiers defending Moscow would pick the timpani and cymbals any day over the real thing.  I’ve heard The Rite of Spring, and though I think the concertgoers who rioted over the symphony’s debut might have taken things a bit too far, it’s a pretty poor substitute for daffodils, butterflies and frolicking fawns. 

            I probably lack adequate imagination, but I prefer works of art to be judged by the distinctive, and irreplaceable, qualities of their form. The best film adaptations of books render both the story and emotional feel of the original, a real accomplishment.  I’d count the film versions of The English Patient and Mystic River among those that pulled it off.  But they’re not the books.  Doesn’t make one type of work any better than the other.  I’ve preferred some movies over their inspiration. Blade Runner, for example.  Philip K Dick was a genius, but his novella that spawned the movie is so so.  The movie’s a masterpiece. 

            The greater point is that these are separate works of art with the same title, each using a distinct form of media.  How lucky we are that such things exist.

            This is a long-winded introduction to the actual thought behind this post.  I’m thoroughly enjoying TV cop shows of late, in particular nearly anything on Brit Box, which exquisitely elevates the police procedural to it’s most riveting and involving expression.  And the British actors, with their precise speech, understated delivery and stiff upper lips, are ideally suited to the task.

            I’ve never read Anne Cleeves, whose books make for first-rate TV shows, and I’m sure she’s an excellent novelist.  But there are other Brit Box shows orchestrated by creator/writer/director/showrunners that are just as compelling and addictive.  Since I’m a partisan of the mystery writing gig, I’d make a case that mysteries are ideally suited to the TV series format.  They’re taut, contained and bursting with human drama.  The stakes are usually life and death, and the potential for moral hazard is endemic to the genre.  Police procedurals also trade in conflict between established power structures, intractable bureaucracies and tangled legal conundrums opposing the valor and hardheadedness of individual players.  Lone wolves, iconoclasts, denizens of the borderland between defending the law and vigilantism are its bread and butter.

            I don’t have to convince this audience that solving puzzles is the most satisfying of intellectual pursuits.  Brit Box serves up theirs as a dish both precisely calibrated and piquant.  While never shying from a gruesome murder scene, or burst of violence when called for, the point isn’t the action, but rather the shrewd doggedness of its protagonists.  Modern technology is ever present, though in the service of the quest, never an end in itself.  The heroes are physically brave, though their courage is more manifestly moral.  I’m not immune to the charms of a good shoot-em-up, but having the fastest gun or most effective right hook is the shallowest of heroic accomplishments.  In all this, the British have the proper sensibility.

And if in the midst of the highest drama and ugliest of dilemmas someone has the good sense to put the kettle on, I’m fine with that.

A Head in a Jar

head in a jar version 1.0

Each month, we SleuthSayers exchange an internal letter, usually light-hearted nonsense in which we celebrate Rob’s dashing out another schedule to keep wheels and cogs moving behind the scenes. I happened to mention creating a head in a jar for a beautiful friend with an October birthday and a Día de los Muertos fetish.

Janice and, umm… was it Eve? … touched upon it, which gave me the idea of showing how you can make your own jarhead (not to be confused with the United States Marines). I’ll include suggestions how you might improve upon my design.

I’ve made props before for Halloween and a Jacob’s Ladder (that spark-buzzing thing in all the classic horror movies) used at the Terror on Church Street attraction. I displayed one prop in a previous SleuthSayers article.

I’ve been thinking about a head in a jar for some time and even bought a pair of 2-gallon (8 litres) glass picnic jugs, the kind you load with lemonade and has a spigot, convenient because wiring can be threaded through the hole machined for the valve stem. After pondering how I might float a brain in a jar, I concluded actual liquid in the container would become a maintenance nightmare. My solution is no solution– that is, find a coating that would give the impression of a liquid medium without using water (or formaldehyde).

In the meantime, my eye and appetite were drawn to large plastic jars at Walmart stuffed with delicious cheese balls similar to delicious puffy Cheetos. And that raised the notion of creating a preliminary head in a jar, a prototype before attempting a more ambitious floating brain.

An unfortunate fact of life is that heads to use in jars are difficult to procure since the sad passing of Burke and Hare. Finding brains in this political era is even more difficult, so I settled upon a rubber Halloween mask, available from Amazon. At least they said it was latex… it had an odd texture and a horrible smell, and a mole near the ear had hair sprouting from it. Anyway, click the following pictures to enlarge them.

Parts List

Jar

At Walmart or Sam’s Club, look for delicious giant size Utz Cheese Balls. Your jug won’t look quite like mine because the company somewhat squared their packaging design immediately after my purchase. Funny thing– the new containers contain 18% less product.

The project is nearly the same, but you can give Utz hell for inconveniencing those of us who stuff heads into bottles. In the meantime, feed your children 18% fewer delicious cheese balls and carefully peel off the label. Lick delicious cheese ball crumbs from your fingers and wash out the jar.

Mask

Besides buying the last cylindrical Utz jug from Sam’s and Walmart, I apparently bought the last mask of its kind from Amazon. That’s okay. The damned mask they sent is huge and a smaller size might look better. Also the mask really did stink to high heaven. I set it out as the flesh cured… Er, I mean as polymer vapors floated away.

Ping-Pong Balls

Ordinary tennis table balls were part of the plan, but Amazon happened to carry inexpensive glow-in-the-dark balls. Hey, why not? Perfect. When I was a grade school mad scientist (I’m not kidding), I used 3-ring binder reinforcement discs to create irises on ping-pong balls, but here I chose to leave these eyes blank giving a washed out stare.

Duct Tape

Useful against those who change their minds about donating their, well, their minds, I ordered duct tape from Amazon for the sole purpose of positioning the ping-pong eyes inside the mask. Any nearby bodies featuring duct tape constitutes mere coincidence.

Polyester

The same stuff (or stuffing) used in pillows, cushions, and rag dolls can also be used to fill out the hollow cheeks of corpses lying in state. Really. Seven ounces (200g) was good enough for my model. Once again, Amazon carried the day.

Ballast

The mask was so big, I needn’t worry about it flopping around, but I wanted to mount it stably. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time or money to create a form, but I grabbed a cylinder of baby butt wipes, about the diameter I needed. Even a can of peaches would have worked.

DIY

The plan called for positioning the container upside down for a dome effect. I’d considered using a styrofoam head like hair salon beauty schools use, but the protrusion of the nose prevented sliding the form into the jar. At that point, I switched gears and opted for a latex mask.

From inside the mask, I duct taped ping pong balls into the eye sockets. I considered drilling LEDs into the rear of the eyeballs, but the glow-in-the-dark ping-pong should suffice. I considered using heavy black thread to sew the lips, but I left that decision to the recipient. I had no idea if the device would outlast the season.

Polyester rounded out the cranium of the mask, and I worked more fiberfill around the ballast canister as I slid it into place. The nose tended to flatten, but weird creases and crevices only served to make the head look like it came from a decaying body. Neighbors began whispering the mask might conceal a real head, which would have been simply ludicrous if obnoxious Mr. Sauersnorkle hadn’t gone missing two days earlier and subsequently his widow brought me a generous tray of cookies. 

With mask, polyester padding, and ballast in place, I could just slip my hand inside the jar opening to push uncooperative bits into place. After taking the first photo above, I tucked in the dangling material seen on either side of the neck. Perfection took distant second place to [sur]realism. Once satisfied, I replaced the top and turned the gadget over, resting it on the lid.

The polyester had arrived in a cloth pouch sealed in a plastic packet. The pouch happened to precisely match the height and circumference of the jug, making it a perfect dust cover.

The head-in-a-jar seemed welcomed at the pre-Halloween birthday bash, but oddly, no one wanted to store the gizmo in their bedchambers, not the birthday girl, not her boyfriend, not her son, not her mother, not even Widow Sauersnorkle. Should I be offended?

Deja Vu All Over Again

  

NOTE: Today I'm posting, mostly because of laziness, a modified version of a column I posted here at SleuthSayers almost 14 years ago. And since I'm recycling it, its title should probably be "Deja Vu All Over Again, All Over Again." But I'll leave well enough alone. Here goes . . .

Some time ago, I heard a newsman on National Public Radio say that someone "shared this in common" with someone else. That wording bothered me. (Not enough to make me move the dial to a rap or gospel music station, but it did bother me.) I've forgotten exactly who he said was sharing something in common with whom, but--to use an example--if you and your father are both baseball fans, you either share a love of baseball with your father or you and your father have that in common. You don't share it in common, and if you say you do, you've created a redundancy. 

This kind of error can probably be forgiven more easily in speech than in writing. We writers are supposed to know better. (And so are NPR newscasters.) Not that I am guiltless. Right here in this blog, I can remember using the term added bonus--which is a little silly. If it's a bonus, it is by definition added, so to use both words is redundant. And in real life I'm always talking about something happening the exact same way it happened earlier. Other phrases I use a lot are final outcome, plan ahead, and free gift. Imagine how much time I could save and how much smarter I could sound if I cut out the words exact, final, ahead, and free.

Alternative choices

I know what you're thinking. Sometimes phrases containing redundancies are used intentionally, to add emphasis. Examples: completely surrounded, truly sincere, each and every, definite decision, cease and desist, direct confrontation, forever and ever, and so on. Redundancies also come into play when using certain abbreviations, like UPC code, HIV virus, please RSVP, iOS operating system, and AC current. My favorite is PIN number. But I still use the term. The technically correct PI number just wouldn't roll well off the tongue, unless maybe you're referring to a phonebook listing for Philip Marlowe, or how many peach cobblers your aunt Bertha made this year.

A working awareness of this kind of thing can be handy to writers, because cutting out redundancies provides us with another way to "write tight." An argument can even be made that such common and inoffensive phrases as sit down, stand up, nod your head, or shrug your shoulders are literary overkill as well, and do nothing except add extra work. Why not just say (or write) sit, stand, nod, and shrug? Where else would you stand but up? What else would you shrug except your shoulders? (Wait, don't answer that.)

Unintentional Mistakes

Even if you're not a writer, here are a few more redundancies that come to mind:

twelve noon

sum total

commute back and forth

mental telepathy

advance reservations

drowned to death

merge together

observe by watching

armed gunman

visible to the eye

hot-water heater

overexaggerate

false pretense

hollow tube

disappear from sight

myself personally

a future prediction 

safe haven

during the course of

regular routine

a variety of different items

filled to capacity

pre-recorded

a pair of twins

unexpected surprise*

the reason is because

originally created

red in color

few in number

poisonous venom

* could also mean a pair of twins

Do you ever find yourself using these (or similar) phrases when you speak? More importantly, do you embarrass yourself by using them when you write? I try to watch for, and correct, them in my own manuscript, but I'm sure some of them manage to make it through intact. Can you think of others I forgot to mention? Are there any that you find particularly irritating?

The end result

Time for a confession: I will probably (and happily) continue to use many of these redundancies in everyday conversation, and even in writing if they're a part of dialogue. Sometimes they just "sound right." But I wouldn't want to use them in a column like this one.

In point of fact, lest any of you protest against forward progress, past history reveals an unconfirmed rumor that a knowledge of repetitious redundancy is an absolute, necessary essential, and that the issue might possibly grow in size to be a difficult dilemma. If there are any questions about the basic fundamentals, I'll be glad to revert back and spell it out in detail. And even repeat it again.

Or maybe postpone it until later.

I'll close with a quote from my fellow SleuthSayer Robert Lopresti: "This program was brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department, which brought you this program."

Ha Ha! Charade You Are!

While working today, I had on Pink Floyd's Animals, probably the least known of the band's classic run. The other three are Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here. I wouldn't count The Wall because the band began its long, slow breakup during the recording of it. It's more a Roger Waters project featuring members of Pink Floyd.

The album's premise is there are three types of people in the world: "Dogs," who are go-getters, predators, and pack animals; "Pigs-Three Different Ones"-in which the rich and powerful shove their snouts in the trough to the exclusion of everyone else who needs to feed; and "Sheep." The last is self-explanatory.

But it's "Pigs…" That strikes me as the most, well, criminally oriented. "Dogs" depicts someone who is ambitious, aggressive, and greedy, but is eventually brought down by everything they attain. "Sheep," of course, while musically being the best song on the album, is yet another screed telling us that all is hopeless for the common man. But "Pigs…"? The all-consumer elites are a staple of noir, hardboiled, and thrillers.

Waters is vague in his first verse. It's the rich and greedy in general. To me, Lex Luthor of Superman fame is a classic example. Since the nineties, he's been a billionaire of various stripes, the most recent movie making him the classic tech bro with absolutely no compassion or sense of responsibility and utterly self-absorbed. Nicholas Hoult plays Luthor as a nuanced, but clearly evil, villain. You understand him, and that only makes you want to punch him in the throat harder. Last week's industrial fat cat is yesterday's media mogul is today's tech bro.

Waters gets more specific with verse 2, which is openly about Margaret Thatcher without naming her. But I think it applies more to today, where the demagogue (which Thatcher was not, though I get why people might disagree) has become a new low in leadership around the world. But even they are common villains in and out of crime: the corrupt politician or sheriff, the real estate mogul squeezing his tenants. Kingpin from the Marvel franchise is a great example. In more recent versions, he's not even a supervillain. He's the son of an abusive gangster who's actually trying to rise above his past, but that pesky Daredevil keeps messing up his illegal efforts. Vincent D'Onofrio, like Hoult, makes Kingpin much more nuanced. He's a lonely man trying to rebuild a neighborhood. We even see him meet his wife and show a human side. But he is a villain. He doesn't hesitate to use his father's tactics to get what he wants.

Waters names names in his third verse, going after moral crusader Mary Whitehouse, the subject of a LOT of satirical lyrics in British rock back in the 1970s. Whitehouse, while having a rather cheerful demeanor, was described as the classic definition of a puritan: Lying awake at night worried someone somewhere was having fun.

If you want to see a real-life version of this, look no further than Cincinnati's own Simon Leis, a man who tried to frame Barnes & Noble as selling porn to minors, then having a temper tantrum on the radio when the county prosecutor simply told the offending store, "Oh, just put that magazine behind the counter with the Playboys and Penthouses." Leis's most infamous act was to attempt to shut down the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum of Contemporary Art. It went to trial for obscenity. The museum, in famously conservative Hamilton County, Ohio, won. But Leis had a long history of such behavior. His attack on Larry Flynt was depicted in The People Vs. Larry Flynt (with Flynt playing the judge in that scene.)

 So there you have it, a classic album about three types of people who pathologically can't understand other people don't like being told what to do. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to be watching for Pigs on the Wing.

Let Them Eat Grass

I ran across this clip of an interview with Peter Thiel, multimillionaire financier of JD Vance, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and creator of Paypal:

Apparently, the billionaire tech bros aren't sure that humans (other than themselves) should survive.  Probably totally utilitarian.  We're simply not needed, once AI and robots take over all the jobs, and create / grow all the things they need, from yachts to tomatoes.

BTW, According to the New York Times and The Guardian, Trump reportedly said in a campaign meeting that if it were up to Stephen Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the United States, and they would all resemble Miller.  This would mean that 200 million people in this country will have to be either forcibly migrated or killed to satisfy his vision.  Last I heard, that's called genocide.  But then, the KKK, Proud Boys, White Christian Nationalists etc., want the United States to be freed of anyone of color, Jews, and anybody who has commingled with them.  

Now I have, sadly, read The Turner Diaries, and I know that its fans really are all salivating over mass murder / genocide that will take them back to a white paradise where everyone has 40 acres and a thousands guns to protect it.  One of them, after the Oklahoma City bombing, came rushing into the courthouse to crow that war had been declared and there were no innocent victims.  

But I would expect no less from billionaire tech bros like Thiel, Musk, et al, because they really don't like humans, even each other.  And as for us: we're inefficient, we require resources (like food and water), we need sleep... basically, we're grungy and unimportant.  We are the peasants to the tech bros' Renaissance Princes.  

But it has been ever thus.  In Barbara Tuchman's brilliant A Distant Mirror:  The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, she writes of how the peasants were seen by the upper classes 600 years ago, with this virulent excerpt from the contemporary Le Despit au Vilain (vilain = peasant):

"Tell me Lord, if you please, by what right or title does a peasant eat beef? And goose, of which they have plenty?  And this troubles God.  God suffers from it and I too.  For they are a sorry lot, these peasants who eat fat goose!  Should they eat fish?  Rather let them eat thistles and briars, thorns and stray and hay on Sunday and pea-pods on weekdays.  They should keep watch without sleep and have trouble always; that is how peasants should live...  It is they who spoil the common welfare."  

It's important to remember that throughout the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and well into the 19^th century, it was the peasants who did all the hard work and paid all the taxes, not the royalty, nobility or the church.  Their rights were limited, they had no say (much less something like a vote) in their government, and their property was always at hazard of being seized.  And I mean seized, as in the clearing of the Highlands in Scotland (1750-1860) and the Enclosure Acts in England (between 1604-1904 there were 5,200 Acts passed) which drove peasants / crofters off their land and replaced them with profitable sheep...  

And then there were the peasant revolts during the Calamitous Fourteenth Century - a time when one-third of Europe died from the Black Death - as the peasants tried to get more rights and more money for their hard labor. The reprisals for the Jacquerie in France, and the Wat Tyler Rebellion in England were savage. Historians cite the slaughter of about 20,000 peasants for each revolt. Keep those peasants humble and eating black bread and beans.  Or grass.  

And, about 100 years later, during the Reformation, Martin Luther was stunned and appalled by the German Peasants' Revolt of 1525, when the peasants took Martin Luther at his word ("there is neither slave nor free," etc.) and rose up against their overlords, in search of actually being paid by the nobility / church for all their hard labor, instead of being taxed into oblivion. Instead of being on their side, Luther condemned them as un-Christian and urged the princes to crush the revolt without mercy, saying that "there's nothing more poisonous than a rebel -- killing one is like killing a mad dog." The nobles took him at his word. As many as 100,000 peasants were killed before it was all over.  

"Should peasants eat meat? Rather should they chew grass on the heath with the horned cattle and go naked on all fours."(Spielvogel's Western Civ. I text, p. 195.)  They pretty much did during the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1849), when the potato blight killed off the main source of food for Ireland. 

 

NOTE: The reason the Irish were living almost exclusively on potatoes was because the English overlords who'd claimed all the land took all the other crops - grain, meat, etc. - for taxes. One of the great scandals of the Great Famine is that Charles Trevelyan, who was in charge of the administration of government relief, limited the Government's food aid programme, claiming that food would be readily imported into Ireland once people had more money to spend after earning wages on new public-works projects (which may or may not have existed). In a private correspondence, he explained how the famine could bring benefit to the English; As he wrote to Edward Twisleton: 

"We must not complain of what we really want to obtain. If small farmers go, and their landlords are reduced to sell portions of their estates to persons who will invest capital we shall at last arrive at something like a satisfactory settlement of the country". (Wikipedia)

Meanwhile British landlords continued, throughout the Famine, to export grain at a profit from Ireland while a million people died of famine and another million or two emigrated to escape.  The emigrants received the usual warm welcome:  

And now it's back (as if it ever died).  How else to interpret our current society where billionaire Elon Musk, for example, pays no taxes, while my husband and I pay taxes even on our hard-earned Social Security?  Where Congress has Cadillac health insurance and pensions, while saying the US can't afford the universal health care that every other industrialized nation has?  Where the BBBill "requires the leasing of at least 50% of public lands that private companies desire to lease for drilling, mining or logging"?  Where the estate, gift, and generation-skipping and transfer tax exemption will increase from $13.99 million in 2025 to $15 million in 2026? (LINK) If we're so damn useless, why do they need our money, our public lands, our health care?

Curtis Yarvin
photo by David Merfield

NOTE:  Curtis Yarvin, influential philosopher among the tech bros, is all about the "Dark Enlightenment", a society in which democracy is abolished and city states are back, run by corporations, with absolute rulers subject only to the corporate board.  And you will take what wages that Corporate State is willing to give you and like it, or you will be cast into outer darkness. 

But, on a good note, Mr. Yarvin is spooked.  Just last week he wrote:

The second Trump revolution, like the first, is failing. It is failing because it deserves to fail. It is failing because it spends all its time patting itself on the back. It is failing because its true mission, which neither it nor (still less) its supporters understand, is still as far beyond its reach as algebra is beyond a cat. Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive." (LINK)

    Please, Curtis, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

NOTE: Peter Thiel gave private lectures on Christianity that connected government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future, according to recordings reviewed by The Washington Post. He argued that those who propose limits on technology development not only hinder business but threaten to usher in the destruction of the United States and an era of global totalitarian rule, according to the recordings. And he said that “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta [Thurnberg] or Eliezer [Yudkowsky, a prominent critic of the tech industry’s approach to AI].

Thiel, whose net worth is around $27 billion, also used his private talks to criticize financial regulations. He said such rules were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.  “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money,” Thiel said, according to the recordings. “An incredible machinery of tax treaties, financial surveillance, and sanctions architecture has been constructed... Wealth gives the “illusion of power and autonomy,” Thiel added, “but you have this sense it could be taken away at any moment.”  (LINK) 

MY NOTE:  Memento Mori Peter, and the world's smallest violin playing for you.  

The fact that what wealth "We, the People" (hi! remember us?) have can be taken away at any moment is irrelevant, of course.  They are the Renaissance Princes, we are the peasants, but with AI, robots, etc., they can get rid of most of us and have AI and robots do all the work.  New Enclosure Acts, new Clearances, and  AI will do all the programming, robots will build and repair all the worker robots, and all things will go tickety-boo like superior clockwork.  Whoever thought that billionaires would be the ultimate optimists?  Once you get over the idea that icky humans have got to be killed, I mean, culled. 

(LINK)

If that's the future, I'm with the Antichrist… and apparently I'm going to be in good company.

Bright Babble From The Bayou.

Two weeks ago I wrote about Bouchercon in New Orleans last month.  Here are some words of wisdom I gathered there:

"Historical fiction is very liberating because you don't have to explain why the cell phone doesn't work." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"Writing is a hobby that I don't have to buy golf clubs for, or worms for fishing." - Josh Pachter

"What if I write about that but not at all about that?" - Brandi Bradley

"I have killed my ex-husband about twelve times." - Pamela Ebel

"I love editing. I love publishing. I love bookselling. I hate writing." - Otto Penzler

"Research is a deep dark rabbit hole that I just love." -Wendy Gee

"We fistfight a lot in the South because everything's so far apart we can't wait for the police to show up." - S.A. Cosby

"I've never seen a writers' block problem that couldn't be solved by conversation with other writers." - Jonathan Maberry

"What's romance without a good murder?" - Meredith Anthony

'If you find my stuff funny it says more about what's wrong with you than what's wrong with me." - Jeff Markowitz

"I was tired of the Civil War before I was born." - Henry Wise

"A great opening line is a cheap magic trick." - Ivy Pochoda

"I've built a career on sarcasm." - Gini Koch

"You're writing a story to entertain people, not put them to sleep.  We have Ulysses for that." - Charles Todd

"What are you saving your time for?" - Polly Stewart

"How can you write about crime fiction if you don't do crime?" - William Boyle

"In school I read 'The Lottery' and it broke me.  I don't think you should read it at the age I read it." - Jason Powell

"That which we call a dead body smells the same in all time periods." - Laura Joh Rowland

"All of America has become the South." - Ace Atkins

"My editor always calls my books cozies on crack." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Deadlines are the writer's friend." - Thekla Madsen

"My agent and I had a difficult divorce." - Bonnar Spring

"Only Elmore Leonard was born Elmore Leonard, but we can all get closer." - Mysti Berry

"The pillars of the South are religion, class, sex, and race." - S.A. Cosby

"Can her friendship survive being a serial killer?" - Emma C. Wells

"What do you kids call dancing these days? Just dancing? You're letting us down on the slang." - Gini Koch

"If I'm stuck in the doldrums I give my characters a side quest." - Brandi Bradley

"Sometimes the tipping point doesn't tip for many years after the pre-tipping." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"I go to the library because that's where the cool kids are hanging out." - Jonathan Maberry

"The adage that it's a privilege just to be nominated is bullshit." - Don Bruns

"Write about characters, not caricatures. We're not all Boo Radley. We have shoes now." - S.A. Cosby 

"I don't think you can have a story without character development." - Steve Steinbock

"I'm very much a Joseph Campbell meets Save the Cat kind of writer." - Rachel Howzell Hall  

"A crime novel without a bar is like a day without sunshine." - Eric Beetner

"I have a lottery ticket. It proves that math education in public schools is a failure." -Wendy Gee

"Humor comes from a place of trauma. You figure if I make the guys laugh, maybe they'll stop hitting me." - Libby Klein

"Scanty-cladness is a futuristic trope." -  Laura Joh Rowland

"My grandmother made the best sweet potato pie in Virginia and I will fight you about that." - S. A. Cosby

"I was going to say something unflattering about myself but I'm vain." - James Lincoln Warren

"Everything you cede to a machine is something you are not learning to do. You are the passenger, not the driver." - Jonathan Maberry

"My Victorian series you can blame on PBS." - Laura Joh Rowland

"I was born in the 1960s, so how is that a historical period?" - Nancy Herriman

"Books that have no humor in them I find unrealistic." - Matt Goldman

"Hopefully this novel that I'm working on right now will be out before we're all dead." - Rob Byrnes

"I google great first lines. Sometimes I see my friends' lines there and I get sad." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

"Someone said I like your books but I don't like your main character at all. I said, you know that's me, right?" - Libby Klein

"Aristotle also wore a Snoopy hat." - Tim Maleeny

"If you're trying to be timeless, good luck. "We've already got Pride and Prejudice." - Elizabeth Rose Quinn 

"It's like la la la, oh shit." - Rachel Howzell Hall 

Looking for Tips about Writing and Submitting Mystery Short Stories? This is the Blog Post for You

You want to start writing crime/mystery short stories? Great. Jump right in. After all, you've gotta start somewhere. Every long journey begins with a single step. So don't be afraid to put yourself out there when you put pen to paper. But be sure to think outside the box and avoid cliches like the plague. If you do all that, before you know it, you'll live happily ever after.

If you're a new or newer writer, you may be wondering if my word choices in the prior paragraph were ironic. They were. But the sentiment behind them was not. It is important to take risks and try to achieve your dreams, and you do have to start somewhere. 

I started my fiction-writing journey more than twenty years ago by taking a workshop in writing a mystery novel. I wasn't aiming to write short stories back then, but the skills I learned were applicable. I was fortunate to have found a workshop that exactly fit my needs a five-minute drive from where I lived. I recognize that might not be the experience of everyone who is reading this now.

But here is something you all do have in common. You can sign up for a free online webinar being held this Saturday, October 18, where you can hear from some seasoned writers and editors, as well as some successful newer writers, about writing and submitting crime/mystery short stories. It doesn't matter where you live or your experience level or what your ability to pay is. If you have an internet connection and are interested in the topic, you are welcome.

You're also welcome even if you aren't new to writing short stories. This advice could be useful no matter how many stories you've had published.

The webinar, titled Mystery in the Midlands: Writing Short Mystery Fiction 2025, is sponsored by the Palmetto Chapter of Sisters in Crime and the Southeastern Chapter of Mystery Writers of America. Here is the schedule (note that everything is Eastern Time):

11:15 a.m. Welcome

11:30 a.m. Plotting Short Stories

12:30 p.m. New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction

1:30 p.m. Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected

2:30 p.m. Conclusion

 

Segment Descriptions and Participants

Plotting Short Stories

John M. Floyd’s short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, Best American Mystery Stories, Best Mystery Stories of the Year, and many other publications. John is an Edgar nominee, a Shamus Award winner, and a six-time Derringer Award winner.

 

New Voices in Short Mystery Fiction — Michael Bracken, moderator

N.M. Cedeño writes across genres. Her short stories have appeared in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, After Dinner Conversation, Black Cat Weekly, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and Crimeucopia. “Predators and Prey,” was selected for the “Other Distinguished Mystery and Suspense of 2024” list in The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2025.

LaToya Jovena's crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Best American Mystery and Suspense. She writes about the DC suburbs a lot, because that’s where she lives.

Tom Milani’s first story was published in 2022. Since then, his work has been short-listed for a Derringer Award, and he has published an additional nine stories, a novella, and his debut novel.

 

Intriguing an Editor: So Your Writing’s Remembered Even If Your Story’s Rejected — Paula Gail Benson, moderator

Barb Goffman has won the Agatha Award four times, the Macavity twice, and the Anthony, Derringer, and Ellery Queen Readers Award once each, as well as the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s lifetime achievement award. She’s been a finalist for major mystery awards forty-nine times. She has edited or co-edited fifteen anthologies with another in progress, and she received a Derringer Award for Murder, Neat.

Sandra Murphy is a Derringer-winning writer whose stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and several other publications. Additionally, she is the editor of four anthologies, including, most recently, Sex and Violins: An Erotic Crime Anthology and Yeet Me in St. Louis: Crime Fiction from Under the Arch.

Josh Pachter is an author, editor, and translator. A two-time Derringer winner and the 2020 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement, he is the editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including four Anthony Award finalists. 

 

Are you eager to watch? If so, it's easy to register. Just click here. 

Thank you to the organizers for inviting me to participate. I hope you join us. 

Extraordinary People

Everyday New York midtown crowd

A lot of crime fiction writers I know describe their process as one of taking ordinary people and putting them in extraordinary circumstances. Such prototypical ordinary protagonists are jolted out of their comfort zone into sudden danger. The writer keeps putting the pressure on and raising the stakes. Their characters must be resourceful to survive. All they want is for things to return to normal. They want those they love to be safe and their lives to be exactly as they were before. But circumstances change them. Either they rise to the occasion and become heroes, or they are sucked into violence and criminal behavior from which there is no way back.

In cozies, the stakes are less dramatic than in thrillers—a domestic murder, a group of people under suspicion. Again, the premise is that the characters are ordinary people. The amateur sleuth is a divorcee with kids, a bakery owner, a book club or knitting circle member. The law enforcement antagonist and/ or love interest is a police chief, sheriff, or detective, also an ordinary person doing their job. The story starts when the amateur sleuth’s circle is thrown out of their comfort zone by the murder. The death has consequences, and the investigation stirs up suspicion and uncharacteristic behavior in a community that may have seemed untroubled on the surface.

Define Normal, Central Park

It has never occurred to me to say that I write about ordinary people. The great John Floyd has affectionately called my characters "zany." But John lives in suburban Mississippi, and I live in New York. My characters, like New Yorkers in general, don’t seem zany to themselves. They range from interesting to extraordinary, which is how I like them. How else could they leap off the page crackling with life and feeling? How else could their dialogue sizzle with wit? My favorite characters are clever, but they're also long on empathy. They have heart as well as humor. Like other writers’ ordinary characters flung into danger, they're resourceful survivors. But my premise is that they survive and triumph against odds because they're extraordinary from the start.

My first series, the Bruce Kohler Mysteries, has a protagonist and two sidekicks to begin with, his friends Jimmy and Barbara, and eventually a third, his girlfriend Cindy. Bruce is a recovering alcoholic with a New York attitude, a smart mouth, and an ill-concealed heart of gold. He is in the gutter in the first novel, and by the twelfth and latest short story, he's almost ten years sober. He's never relapsed, and he's grown up. He's become a mensch, as we say in New York. That's extraordinary. Barbara's a nice Jewish girl, smart and funny and a born rescuer. She's never met a needy person she didn't want to help. At first, she was a lot like me. But as a writer, I realized that didn't work. So did I tone her down? No. I took her over the top. Unlike me, Barbara never learns from her mistakes. She has to help. She has to investigate. She sniffs out murder like a bloodhound. She drags Bruce and Jimmy into danger. She's extraordinary—and hilarious. Jimmy, another alcoholic, has "been sober since Moses was studying for his bar mitzvah." He's a computer wiz, an obsessed history buff, and a New Yorker who freaks out if he has to leave Manhattan. Not ordinary. Nor is Cindy, an NYPD detective who gets her gold shield before she's ten years sober and has also done a lot of growing up.

Sultan Bayezid II welcomes Jews to Istanbul

My second series, the Mendoza Family Saga, is about an extraordinary Sephardic Jewish family. My real-life family is Ashkenazic, ie Eastern European Jews, but they inspired the Mendozas to some extent, as did Louisa May Alcott's fictional March family from Little Women. In 1492, young Diego Mendoza sails with Columbus on the same day the Jews are expelled from Spain. A year later, he and his sister Rachel join the second voyage. The family ends up in Istanbul, where the Ottoman Empire welcomes the Jews. Rachel marries the last surviving Taino and has a family. She is arguably the best traveled woman of her time. By 1520, she is working as a purveyor to the ladies of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent's harem. She is also solving mysteries in partnership with the Kizlar Agha, the Chief Eunuch of the Harem.

Esperanza Malchi, a kira who sought 
wealth and power and was murdered 
by sepahis in 1600

Rachel is my favorite character, but all the Mendozas are extraordinary. They have intelligence, resilience, flexibility, compassion, and integrity. The family's outsider perspective as dispossessed Jews allows me to explore the theme of cultural relativism in an age of absolutism. Rachel's children are brought up to be at ease with both Judaism and Islam. As Rachel tells them, “If we had not learned to tolerate a great deal of inconsistency, not a single Mendoza would have made it out of Spain alive back in 1492, much less reached Istanbul to prosper and produce such cheeky children.”

Kizlar Agha, 17th c painting
by J-B Vanmour

The Kizlar Agha, the Chief Eunuch of the Harem, is an extraordinary character in himself. Rachel's—and my—Kizlar Agha is fictional, but the office existed from 1574 until its abolition in 1908, carrying a range of ceremonial and practical duties and political power in different eras.Other than women and the Sultan himself, only he and the black eunuchs under his supervision were permitted to enter the royal harem. In my portrayal, he is a figure of great intelligence, magnificence, and gravitas, but very lonely. It is not surprising that he and Rachel begin by matching wits and come to enjoy each other's company—and their investigations—immensely.

Being the first woman to do the job doesn't mean they'll like you.

Normally, one starts a story at the beginning, but this is best understood by its ending. In 1930, Frederick Griffen wrote about a funeral in Hamilton Ontario that may still hold the record for the largest, most flamboyant funeral the city has ever seen with over 20,000 attendees.

The article seems, at first glance, full of over the top descriptions but, history has confirmed the accuracy of the details.

"She had lain in state, like a princess, for three days and nights while ten thousand people filed in to see her… The massive coffin of bronze, with heavy silver steel trimmings, was scarcely to be seen, hidden, as it virtually was, with flowers. What flowers! I am not an expert in funerals but, personally, I never saw anything to equal them."

Her two daughters "had to be borne aside in a semi-comatose state of bewilderment and woe." and from the cellar below, her German Shepherd bayed loudly.

"At the head of the coffin was a magnificent pillow of mixed flowers, orchids, roses, gladioli and other blooms, literally hundreds of them, [with] a wide ribbon of gauze. And on it in letters of gold were the words, “To my wife.”

The man who organized and paid for the funeral, Rocco Perri, sat, overcome with grief between her daughters but he was not the father of her daughters nor, despite the gold inscription he wrote on the ribbon, was the woman his wife and, although the funeral he organized and paid for was a Jewish funeral, Rocco was not Jewish but, rather, an Italian immigrant.

The woman he was burying was Bessie Starkman, the first female Canadian organized crime boss. She was gunned down, at the age of forty, in the garage of the home she shared with Rocco, who was referred to as "Canada's Al Capone" and was one of the most prominent Prohibition-era crime figures in Canada.

Bessie Starkman was born into a Polish Jewish family, immigrated to Canada at about the age of ten. At age eighteen, she married Harry Tobsen, a driver at a bakery, and had two daughters. In 1912, they took in a boarder named Rocco Perri. After a brief romance, Starkman left her husband, children and Jewish faith for Perri. They lived in St. Catharines, Ontario, where Perri had a labourer job, and then moved to Hamilton. Perri worked as a travelling salesman until the couple opened a small grocery store.

They went from ordinary, low paying jobs to becoming mob bosses with a lavish lifestyle, including diamonds and expensive cars, because of the Ontario Temperance Act of 1916; boot legging became a new money maker. Perri became the 'King of the Bootleggers' and, ignoring the rule that women can't join the mob, he made Starkman the first female crime boss. She negotiated orders of liquor and beer, laundered money and dealt with other gangs. They operated in Kitchener, Toronto, Windsor, Hamilton and Niagara, ran bootleg liquor to Detroit, Chicago and New York State and were involved in prostitution. When prohibition ended in 1927, the couple then moved on to illegal drugs and gambling.

The Italian-Canadian journalist Antonio Nicaso wrote: "Up to that time, a woman's role in the underworld was relegated to wife and mother, or mistress and prostitute. Until Bessie came along, none had been in a position of authority in a major crime gang-let alone entrusted to manage a massive flow of dirty money."

Of course, being a mob boss, even the first woman mob boss, meant that Bessie was involved in violent interactions with people. Her relationship with Rocco was also troubled and she left him and returned a number of times. Despite his progressive views of women in the mob, Rocco had an old fashioned wandering eye. He had an affair with Sarah Routledge, beginning in 1918, and had two daughters with her. He maintained a home and paid child support. Sarah, when falsely informed Rocco was married to Starkman, committed suicide in 1922.

Bessie's murder was never solved but much was written about it:

"Bessie died after being ambushed by two men with shotguns in the garage of their home, Aug. 13, 1930. She had alienated so many people, including possibly her own husband, police could not narrow the list of potential suspects to a workable number."

Though the 'alienated' husband was not married to her, he threw a heck of a funeral for her. Or was it her actual husband, who she never divorced, who killed her?

The first woman to do any job often garners respect and admiration. Not so with Bessie Starkman. The qualities that made her successful were the same as any mob boss: she was ruthless, greedy and had emotionally volatile relationships. The 20,000 people at her funeral were not devoted friends but were mostly strangers drawn to the spectacle of a very expensive funeral. The title of the article by Frederick Griffen says it all:

Grotesque Ceremony Becomes Free-For-All of Morbid Curiosity

Twenty Thousand Mill and Fight to See Bessie Perri’s Magnificent Funeral