A Non-iconic Writer

She came into my office like a gal out in the woods in one of those sexy movies, smiled at me, flowed across the room with fluidity of hot molasses, sank into the big leather chair opposite my desk, and crossed her legs slowly, gracefully, gently, as though taking care not to bruise any smooth, tender flesh.

… is how Hollywood PI Shell Scott, the sole owner of Shelton Scott Investigations, describes the lady who enters his office in “The Guilty Pleasure,” the first story in Richard S. Prather’s The Shell Scott Sampler. The lady turns out not to be a bimbo or floozy or dame or babe or gal, but a very rich, respectful lady asking for help.  

Richard S. Prather (1921-2007) introduced readers to his hardboiled detective, Shell Scott, in the 1950s. I don’t remember when I began reading his stories, but it was about the time I also discovered Hammett and Chandler. I liked his novels and stories best  because “he also saw the banana peel on the sidewalk. And then he dispatched his Hollywood private eye...to take a little walk” (thrillingdetective.com). It is the banana peel on the sidewalk that separates Shell Scott from the other hardboiled PIs. He doesn’t take life too seriously. Like all hardboiled detectives, He uses his fist, gun, and intuition to solve crimes and catch criminals. Though he’s always thinking about sleeping with which ever woman comes his way, he is no sexist.

“Eye Witness: Richard S. Prather: 1921-2007” an article by Kevin Burton Smith in Mystery Scene Magazine (No. 99, 2007) reminded me of how much I enjoyed the Prather stories. After reading the article, I exhumed from one of the boxes of books where they were buried the four books of Prather’s that hadn’t been lost in my move from California back home to Tennessee and put them in my to-be-reread box. I didn’t think of him again until I started reading Stephen King. They have nothing in common, except both are writers, and I can’t explain why reading King reminded me of Prather.

To revive my interest in this non-iconic writer, I reread the five stories in The Shell Scott Sampler. The best story is “The Guilty Pleasure” in which Lydia wants Shell to find out what the little thing she found under her bed is. No spoiler here, so I’m not saying what it was. Okay, I know some of you will guess.

The worst story is “The Cautious Killers” in which Shell has to find out who shot at him and why as he and his date and another couple exited a restaurant. Too much descriptive baggage surrounds an acceptable plot. More telling than showing, especially the descriptions of the women, which slows the action. I thought maybe Prather was writing to increase the payment for the story, you know, a penny or two per word. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the story.

Shell seems more familiar to me than Hammett's Continental Op or Chandler’s Marlowe, so much so that I feel comfortable referring to him by his first name. Of all the hardboiled PIs, Shell is the one I would rather have drink with in a bar in Hollywood as I listened to his stories about his cases, provided I could keep his attention from straying every time a beautiful woman walked into the bar.

Dean Davis' excellent Prather web site appears off-line at the moment, but for more on Prather, try Eddie Stevenson's Gold Medal pages on Prather.

Warning to all writers of murder mysteries: do not plan any murders on Halloween. I have it on good authority that the victim will come back to haunt you. This authority also warned me not to use my computer on Halloween because the gremlins that cause so much frustration– frozen hard drives, lost files, missing fonts, etc.– become zombies and vampires and werewolves and attack the user– namely me.

You have been warned!

Have a 

The Gifted Child

by John M. Floyd

Like most of my writer friends, I enjoy reading different genres.  In fact I read books and stories in almost all genres, except maybe romance novels--and now and then I even like a good love story.  As for authors, my favorites run from Bradbury to King to McMurtry to Cormac McCarthy, with a lot of offbeat writers in between.  One of my absolute favorites will probably always be Nelson DeMille--I love his novels and his style--and only a couple of years ago I discovered another great author, someone most crime/suspense readers have known about for a long time: Lee Child.

For some reason I didn't start reading his Jack Reacher series at the beginning.  I started with the twelfth installment, a novel called Nothing to Lose.  But after that one I was hooked.  I went on to seek out and devour every Reacher novel I could find (no Child left behind?), and I only recently finished the latest, A Wanted Man.  Unlike any other series I can recall, this one had not a single misfire; I enjoyed every one of these books.  Yes, some were better than others--I consider The Killing Floor, The Enemy, Die Trying, and The Hard Way to be among his best--but all of them are darn good.  Apparently a lot of readers agree.

If you don't know Jack . . .

Reacher is one of those rare characters that both men and women seem to like.  He's a former West Point grad and Army major who has since lost most of his respect for authority and conformity, and has a strict personal code of honor that sometimes reminds me of Robert B. Parker protagonists like Spenser and Jesse Stone.  Reacher is tough, smart, and resourceful; he owns nothing but a foldable toothbrush, an ATM card, and whatever clothes he happens to be wearing at the moment; he has no attachments, no home, no car, not even a driver's license; and he travels mainly via bus or hitchhiking.  Maybe that's why he's so appealing--he's nothing like the rest of us.  He also doesn't talk much.  One of the few criticisms I've heard of Child's writing style is that the sentence "Reacher said nothing" happens too often.  But, hey, Reacher often does say nothing.

The only drawback I've found to the series is that the titles usually aren't related at all to the content, which means I sometimes can't remember what title goes with what adventure.  And in the grand scheme of things, that ain't much to complain about.

Child psychology

The author, I'm told, is a native of England and a former television director--and I would guess that his background in TV probably influenced the entertainment value of his novels.  His books are always smooth, fast reads; there's a lot of action and excitement, and very few slow spots.  That's exactly what most TV productions strive for (although they don't always deliver), and is a perfect illustration of one of Elmore Leonard's famous Ten Rules of Writing: leave out the parts that people skip.

I think the best thing about Child's writing is that the stories themselves are fascinating, with plot reversals throughout.  I once heard that the creators of Cheers chose a Boston bar as its setting because in a neighborhood tavern different people would be coming in and going out all the time, thus there would always be stories available.  I would suggest that Lee Child made Reacher a drifter so that he could have limitless opportunities to run into interesting situations.

Short (?) subjects

As a movie lover, I must say a few words about the upcoming and long-awaited film adaptation of Child's novel One Shot, called (believe it or not) Jack Reacher.  I was a bit surprised by the casting of Tom Cruise in the lead role, mainly because Reacher's size--six-five and 200+ pounds--is, in the novels, a big factor in what he can accomplish and the impression he makes on the other characters.  I don't doubt for a minute Cruise's star power or his acting ability, but from a physical standpoint he does seem an odd choice.  (Russell Crowe isn't a giant either, but it seems to me he would've made a perfect Reacher.)  Having said that, I do understand that Child himself approved of the casting decision, and that helps dispel some of my doubts.  I suspect that I'll wind up enjoying the movie.

Something else that's close to my heart is short stories.  There are now two shorts starring Jack Reacher: "Second Son" and "Deep Down."  Both are available on Kindle, and I heard that the paperback version of The Affair contains a copy of "Second Son."  Apparently there is also one more Child short story featuring Reacher, although not as the main character: "James Penney's New Identity."  I look forward to reading all three.

Reaching Reacher readers

Have any of you read Lee Child?  If so, do you like his work?  Which book in the series is your favorite?  Your least favorite?  Are you familiar only with his novels, like me, or have you read his short stories as well?  What do you think of the Reacher character?  If you were producing the new movie, who would you choose for the part?

For those of you who haven't read the novels, here they are, in order of publication:

Killing Floor

Die Trying

Tripwire

Running Blind

Echo Burning

Without Fail

Persuader

The Enemy

One Shot

The Hard Way

Bad Luck and Trouble

Nothing to Lose

Gone Tomorrow

61 Hours

Worth Dying For

The Affair

A Wanted Man

Next up: Never Go Back

I can't wait.

It Lives !!!

According to the old story written by Mary Shelley in the early 1800's, Dr. Victor Frankenstein stitched several body parts together in order to make his creation a whole being. Then to give it life in his laboratory, he jolted it with bolts of lightning on one dark and stormy night. At that pivotal moment (in the movies) as his creation began to stir, he cried out, "It's alive." How great to see one's creation live. Hey, it's five days to Halloween and I needed a theme, so hang in here.

I, for one, don't have a laboratory, only a study where I write. However, I have on separate occasions, in the not too long ago, taken two very dead short stories into my study and laid their little rejected carcasses out for autopsy in the dead of night. After much contemplation, and perhaps a jolt of Jack Daniels (sorry, but that's as close as I can get to white lightning in furtherance of this Frankenstein analogy), I went to work on resurrecting their possibilities.

The first corpse was a reject from Woman's World magazine. Because of the strict structure for these 700 word mini-mysteries, a second paying market is rather difficult to find for these creations. I poked it here, prodded it there, and tried to slide a whole new skeleton underneath the flesh of the story, but it just wasn't working. In the end, I left the old skeleton in place for the structure, massaged the body a little and spruced up the outside for appearance's sake. I then, surprise, surprise, sold it to an editor named Dindy at a little known market, Swimming Kangaroo, for the grand sum of $25. Yeah, I know, $25 is quite a come down from the $500 that Woman's World pays, but at least this was better than having the little monster running around loose in inventory. Amazingly, this editor liked the WW structure, plus I would now be published internationally. Think Dindy. Think Swimming Kangaroo. Had to be Australia. Right? I was gonna be an internationally published author! Time to get out the bubbly.

And then the check came. Turns out the return address was in Texas. So much for the international part. Even so, I was preparing to send Dindy another one of these resurrected mini creatures, when Swimming Kangaroo evidently lost a stroke (or had one) and went under.

My next attempt at bringing life to the recently deceased came when Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine rejected one of my standalone stories. It was one which Rob had critiqued approximately nine months earlier and had made some good suggested changes. I thought we had it made after my 2011 re-write, but nope, here it came back in a body bag during the middle of February 2012. It may have been cold outside, but the timing for the deceased' toe-tagging and autopsy turned out to be quite fortuitous.

A few months before, when the call for submissions to the 2013 MWA anthology came out, I had not been able to brainstorm any ideas for the anthology's theme of something mysterious in a box. And then at the last moment, right here on the autopsy table in front of me was laid out a corpse named "The Delivery." Oddly enough, it was about something mysterious in a box, a story written long before MWA's call for submissions. Kismet was obviously knocking at my door. Who was I not to answer?

I gave my dead creation another jolt. It stirred, so I packed it up along with five of its clones and shipped them back to New York City just before deadline. And waited. And waited. And waited, just like any anxious mad scientist would whose creation had gone off to the Big City.

At last, notice arrived back through the ether. My creation had been accepted. It was then that I knew for sure and cried to the heavens, "It lives, it lives!"

Coming to a book store near you, the Mystery Writers of America anthology The Mystery Box, April 2013.

The Victorians, Redux

Victorians loved a good mystery.  Quite a few Victorian authors used murder, theft, financial malfeasance, and investigations as a major plot device.  Certainly Charles Dickens did in Edwin Drood, Bleak House, and Martin Chuzzlewit.  More unexpectedly, Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, revolves around a murder mystery, as does Charlotte Yonge's The Trial.
But today I would like to give special attention to Anthony Trollope, that unbelievably prolific author, who for some reason has long been labelled a "serious", even dull author.  All I can say is that he had a wicked sense of humor, and understood - and wrote about - women better than any other Victorian author I've ever read.  Granted, his novels were the opposite of fanciful, set in the realities of middle-class and upper-middle-class Victorian life. Yet he used a lot of sensational material, including murder, arson, forgery (Orley Farm), theft, bigamy, and illegitimacy.  He did the most realistic portrait of a working prostitute (as a major character!) in The Vicar of Bullhampton that I've ever run across in Victorian literature.  So where did he get his reputation for respectability?  I have no idea...

Anyway, some of my favorite novels, which revolve around crime, are:
The Eustace Diamonds:   Lizzie Eustace, is a very shady Lady; she marries a baronet for his money and gets it all when he dies of consumption very early in the novel, including a fabulous diamond necklace that is the bone of contention between her and her husband's attorneys.  They say it's an heirloom, and belongs to the estate; she says possession is ALL of the law, and it's hers.  When the necklace is stolen, everybody is under suspicion, and the repercussions of the investigation range from the tragic to the hilarious.  (One of the great subplots of this, by the way, is Lizzie's suitors - a wealthy baronet's widow, no matter how scheming, is going to be sought after.  There's the Corsair, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; Lord Fawn, who is only one minim of intelligence above Bertie Wooster; and her cousin, Frank Greystock, the standard strong-jawed Victorian hero; and the Reverend Emilius, the Victorian equivalent of a televangelist.  Don't count on knowing who will end up with whom...)

In the sequel, Phineas Redux, a hero from another novel, Phineas Finn, returns and is accused of murdering political rival Bonteen by bludgeoning him to death on a dark night (and you thought politics was dangerous today...).  But Lizzie Eustace is back (how I love that character!), and has parked herself with the victim's widow, where they condole and support each other until Lizzie's current husband turns out to be one of the other major suspects... 

Moving from murder to high finance, there's The Way We Live Now, which is all about stock manipulation (mostly stock in railroads in Patagonia and elsewhere, all mythical, but the London pounds are real) by the masterly dastardly Augustus Melmotte.  Everyone is up to their neck in financial malfeasance, life is sweet, profits are high, and no one can understand what's wrong with it- until the whole thing comes crashing down.  This was made into (imho) an excellent PBS miniseries with a scenery-chewing David Suchet as Melmotte (which must have been a nice change for him after the tight-buttoned Poirot).

Besides crime, women, hunting, and politics, Trollope did madness and obsession frighteningly well:

The Reverend Josiah Crawley in The Last Chronicle of Barset.  A recurring character in the Barchester novels, Crawley is desperately poor, fiendishly proud, with a wife and children who are always on the verge of starvation, and for whom he will accept nothing in the way of charity.  In this novel, Crawley is accused of theft - and as the investigation goes on, he comes to believe that he may well have done it. 

But Crawley has nothing on Louis Trevelyan in He Knew He Was Right who becomes so jealous of his wife - on such extremely insufficient grounds that Othello seems fairly reasonable - that he takes their baby away and flees to the continent.  Nor on Frank Kennedy, whose descent into madness is charted over two novels, Phineas Finn and Phineas Redux.  By the end of them, Mr. Kennedy has become a religious monomaniac who demands that his wife return simply so they can suffer together - and who tries to kill Phineas in the name of God and morality. And, just to prove that Trollope was no sexist, there is Mrs. O'Hara in An Eye for An Eye, who, when the dastardly Fred Neville seduces and does not marry her daughter, pushes him off a cliff.  (Yes, she goes insane afterwards, but personally I think she was just trying to avoid a hanging.)

So, for those of you who are looking for some old-fashioned crime and punishment and madness, check out Anthony Trollope - available in paperback and on Kindle.

NOTES:

1. We are, God willing and the creek don't rise, on a cruise as this is published, so forgive me if I haven't responded in a couple of weeks to any postings!
2. Links to novels on one of the many sites offering free Trollope eBooks have been included.

Flash Fiction

I walked up to the counter in the public library. "Excuse me.  Did anyone turn in a thumb drive yesterday?"

"Several," said the clerk.  "What color was it?"

"White. Well, more of a cream."

She nodded and sorted through a box behind the counter.  "One of these?"  There were five, almost identical.

I gave them a careful look-see.  "That's the one!"

She handed it to me.  I said thanks and took it back to my seat.  I plugged the flash drive into my laptop and started scrolling through the files. Based on their titles the drive's previous owner had had a great interest in knitting and cake recipes.  Not much of a speller either.

Pretty boring.  But I would keep looking.

There had to be a story idea in there somewhere.