A True Story of Crooks and Spies

Lisbon in War Time 

The thriller writer John Masterman, who was also an Oxford history don, sportsman, and the chairman of the WWII British intelligence unit known as “Twenty Committee,” described war-time Lisbon as a “sort of international clearing ground, a busy ant heap of spies and agents, where political and military secrets and information -- true and false, but mainly false -- were bought and sold and where men’s brains were pitted against each other.”

Sir John Cecil Masterman

This is the Lisbon to which the British agent codenamed “Zigzag” traveled in March,1943. Zigzag was a double agent, who had first been trained as a saboteur and intel operative (codename: “Fritz”) by the Nazis, then parachuted into England to report on troop movements and blow up the factory where Britain turned out its Mosquito bombers.

As soon as he removed his parachute, in his native Britain, however, he walked to the nearest phone and turned himself in to MI5, volunteering to spy for England instead.

For months afterward, Zigzag had radioed his Abwehr masters whatever MI5 told him to. The master illusionist Jasper Maskelyne was even brought in. Working with his team, Maskelyne created a ruse that would dupe the Germans into believing Zigzag (“Agent Fritz” to the Germans) had destroyed the transformers providing electricity to the De Havilland aircraft factory that produced Mosquito bombers in England, putting the factory out of action for some time.

Everything had gone very well in England; the factory bombing ruse had worked so well, the Nazis even presented “Agent Fritz” with the Iron Cross. Then -- his German assignment complete -- Zigzag sent a message that indicated he was under suspicion and had decided to escape back to Germany. MI5 duly packed him off to meet a prearranged contact with the Abwehr in Lisbon, in order to begin spying for Britain within the occupied continent itself.

Now, however, reports reaching MI5 and MI6 indicated Zigzag had gone rogue. Having contacted his Nazi masters in Lisbon, as planned, he’d then ditched the British plan, instead obtaining high-explosive charges disguised as lumps of coal, which he volunteered to plant in the coal bunkers of the “City of Lancaster,” in order to sink the steamer that had transported him from Liverpool to Lisbon, and which carried supplies important for the British army in North Africa.

MI6 put a man on Zigzag’s tail, planning to kill the double agent if needed, in order to save the ship with its critical supplies, while MI5 scrambled to get one of Zigzag’s controllers on the ground in Lisbon to find out what was going on.

The stuff of fiction. Except that this is NON-fiction!

Breaking the Code

Ben Macintyre

My colleague, David Edgerley Gates, has written about code breaking in fascinating posts on SS in the past. One very specific fruit of this code breaking, during WWII, is detailed in Agent Zigzag, a great book I recently read, which was written by Ben Macintyre (associate editor at the London Times) and published in 2007. Even more amazing: the book is non-fiction.

Before the war, a low-born English villager named Edward Arnold “Eddie” Chapman was a thief, con artist and philanderer who managed to charm nearly everyone he met. During the war, he was recruited to work as a spy for the Abwehr, the Nazi intelligence apparatus. But, due to his nature – and the fruits of code breaking – he was doubled-back against the Germans as the British operative “Agent Zigzag.”

A Little Background 

During WWII, the Nazis encrypted their radio traffic using cipher gear known as the Enigma Machine. Essentially, cipher clerks would type a plain-text message into the Enigma Machine, and an enciphered text printed out the other end in 7-figure blocks, which were then forwarded to radio operators for transmission. 

Enigma machines were sent to all major commands, and even stationed aboard U-boats and other naval vessels. This was because the Nazis felt their Enigma machine rendered all encrypted messages “unbreakable,” and they wanted secure communications throughout the Third Reich.

However, Arthur Owens (Britain’s “Agent Snow”) managed to obtain one of the machines (or parts of it, depending on which account you read), along with a book of codes and signal operating instructions, for British intelligence. This gave the cryptographers and other brilliant professors working at Bletchley Park, England – also called “Station X” – a sort of running jump. And they managed to break the Nazi’s unbreakable cipher system quite early in the war, enabling the Brits to read the Nazi’s most classified radio signals from then on.

They called this secret ULTRA.

But, the Brits weren’t just using ULTRA to gather Wehrmacht troop deployment information. They were also reading all the secret transmissions sent out by the Abwehr – including transmissions that identified Nazi spies. Using this information, the intelligence services were able to capture most Nazi spies as (or soon after) they entered the country. Then, in a remarkable feat of ingenuity, they managed to “turn” a significant number of these spies, using them to transmit bogus intelligence reports back to the Abwehr.

The specific information those turncoat spies delivered was carefully considered and vetted by a committee formed from representatives from all branches of the military, the Home Office and industry, chaired by the eminent Oxford don John Masterman, mentioned at the beginning of this article.

This committee, charged with generating the information that would double-cross Germany’s spy masters, without giving the game away, was named XX, representing “double-cross”, and in that ineffable British humor, the name finally became “Twenty Committee” as a pun on the Roman numeral XX. Twenty Committee worked hand-in-glove with MI5 (using ULTRA intercepts) to identify, then turn, numerous agents throughout the war.

In February of 1942, these spy hunters began to intercept transmissions about a new spy codenamed “Fritz” who would be coming to England soon. But, while most of the spies the Brits caught seemed fairly inept, and none of them were native British sons, this one looked to be different.

ZIG

During the 1930’s, Eddie Chapman, and some of the nefarious friends he hung around posh London clubs with, learned to use Gelignite to blow open safes. ( I told you it sounds like fiction!)

The “Jelly Gang,” as they were quickly dubbed, realized they’d discovered a fantastic new way to nab stacks of quick cash. The gang blew a lot of safes -- and a lot of stolen money, in those posh London clubs. But, by February of ’39 the cops were closing in on the Jelly Gang, so they decided to evade pursuit by taking a vacation with Chapman’s girlfriend on the Channel island of Jersey.

Eddie Chapman, a man of many names

There, in the Hotel de la Plage, as Chapman sat to dinner with his girlfriend -- a Shropshire farm lass of eighteen, named Betty -- he looked up to spot two policemen pointing at him from the maitre d’ desk. Pausing only to kiss Betty and say, “I shall go, but I shall always come back!” Chapman jumped out through a closed window and ran away before the sound of shattering glass could die out.

Though he broke into homes and businesses to obtain cash and clothing, planning to get his hands on a boat and escape from the island back to London, Chapman’s freedom was short-lived. On March 11, 1939, the Royal Court of Jersey sentenced Eddie Chapman to two years hard labor for housebreaking and larceny -- which wound up being an incredibly lucky break for the guy!

ZAG 

The other members of the Jelly Gang had been arrested in their hotel rooms on the island, and were taken back to London, where they stood trial and got forty years for their safe cracking exploits.

But, because Eddie had committed crimes on Jersey, while on the lamb, the island authorities refused to let him be taken back to London before serving out his two year sentence on Jersey. This sentence was increased, somewhat, after Chapman escaped from the prison but was again arrested before managing to escape the small Channel island.

During Chapman’s incarceration, Hitler invaded Poland and Britain went to war. Before his release, the Nazi army invaded the small Channel isle of Jersey, which they occupied for much of the rest of the war. This made little difference to the inmates, except that the food went down hill.

Upon his release, Chapman found it impossible to leave the occupied island, so he and a buddy opened a small shop. Chapman had met this friend, Anthony Charles Faramous, when he had been thrown in the island pokey for a fairly minor infraction, and the two shared a cell.

Faramous knew a little about cutting hair, so he ran a barber shop in the front of the store, while Chapman dealt in the black market out the back. The two men longed to get back to London, but couldn’t find a way. Until Chapman suggested they volunteer to spy on England for the Nazis.

Their initial offer was met with a lackluster response. But, several months later -- after the men had been shipped off to a French concentration camp -- Chapman was interviewed and recruited by the Nazis, who gave him a 3-month mission of intelligence collection and sabotage in England, while they hung onto Faramous as a hostage.

Before it was all over, Eddie Chapman would gather intelligence and bed beauties across Occupied France, Germany, Norway and England. But was he really a German spy who tried to sink a merchant vessel laden with critical British war cargo?

I’m not about to ruin things by telling you. If you want the details, you’ll have to read the book.

Lord Victor Rothschild, inspiration for "Q"

I will give you a hint, however: His actions had something to do with a request from Lord Victor Rothschild, the man Ian Fleming reputedly based the James Bond character “Q” on.

In two weeks, I’ll be back to review another terrific espionage book -- a fiction novel with a story that sprawls from the closing days of WWII, to concentrate and finally conclude in Cold War Berlin. This novel, entitled Black Traffic, was written by our own David Edgerley Gates, whose prose style (imho) sings only the best notes of John le Carré and W.E.B. Griffin, combining to form a written concerto of suspense that kept me up nights until I was done.

See you then!
--Dix

Open the Gates for Black Traffic

by Dixon Hill

Imagine reading a novel with the feel of one of Mystery’s best: you’re reading along, caught up in the plot, caring deeply about the protagonist, whom you hope can save his/her lover from impending doom while trying to penetrate the darkness of the mystery; perhaps you’re even feeling a bit awed by the author’s abilities -- when, suddenly, the protagonist whips out a flying carpet and rides it into his next gun fight.

That flying carpet …. A bit startling isn’t it?

All too often, when mystery writers attempt novels in which a protagonist is in the military, or is an ex-soldier – or when authors write a novel in which the mystery itself runs across an active battlefield, or up against a military situation -- I get startled in a very similar manner. In fact, I’ve been known to throw books at the wall, after I found myself driven to distraction by said authors’ obvious ignorance of military life, tactical necessity, and proper soldierly conduct.

Now I’m sure more than one person reading this has just chuckled, thinking how inconsequential such items might seem when considered within the overall context of a novel. Unfortunately, however, these aspects ruin such novels for me, because my suspension of disbelief comes crashing down each time I read an offending passage.

Thus, when I learned that two of my fellow Sleuth Sayers had published books with military ingredients mixed in, it was with some trepidation that I read them.

Imagine my joy, when I discovered that they’d both gotten it RIGHT! And, that both novels were a joy to read: engaging, clever, well-plotted and suspenseful.

Janice Law’s excellent Fires of London has been reviewed on SS before, so I’ll skip it for now – except to say that her depiction of the Blitz is spot-on! and, that her choice of protagonist was not only daring, but one of the greatest ideas I’ve encountered on the written page in some time. If enough folks want to know why I feel this way, I’ll be happy to explain some other time. But, today’s post will concern the other book of the pair:

BLACK TRAFFIC

David Edgerley Gates’ novel Black Traffic is a sprawling espionage story that opens during the closing days of World War Two, then continues and concludes in Cold War Berlin -- with action going down on both sides of the wall!

In April,1945 Graf von Woldegk, a colonel in the Nazi intelligence apparatus, approaches members of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, offering to turn over an established network of German agents (cover name: AUROCHS) working under deep cover within the Soviet Union, if the Americans will promise safe haven for those in the network and their families.

Unfortunately for Woldegk, however, he’s been beaten to the punch by Reinhard Gehlen, a Nazi running another spy network against the Soviets. The OSS has already promised safe passage for the Gehlen Organization (one of many non-fictional elements in the novel) and their family members, and they figure one network is enough, so Woldegk is told to hit the bricks.

Fast forward to Berlin in 1966. Army CID investigator Andy Wye is trying to find out who’s stealing large quantities of alcohol from the Army Class XI ration supply and selling it on the black market. His investigation takes an unexpected turn, however, when a man who is a suspected KGB-controlled operative pops up in the mix, and Andy begins hearing hints about a tie-in called AUROCHS.

A particularly interesting note about Andy is that he’s a Spec-9 (which stands for Specialist 9). This means he draws Sergeant Major pay, but is NOT a Sergeant Major.

How is this possible? 

The Army created the “Specialist” category of soldiers, in response to a problem: certain military jobs such as cook, radio operator, intelligence analyst, etc. relied on enlisted soldiers with experience. The army knew it needed these folks to reenlist, in order to hang onto that necessary experience. Thus, these jobs required room for promotion. After all, who wants to stick around in a dead-end job?

Problem is: the soldiers who filled these positions were by-and-large not people who had ever led anyone. They had technical knowledge and technical experience, but no leadership experience. And the army didn’t quite trust them to effectively lead other soldiers; they wanted them to exercise their technical skills instead. It was that technical skills experience the army was paying to keep, after all, not leadership ability.

On the other hand, Non-Commissioned Officers (Sergeants) do lead other people. So, the army assigned NCO’s to the units these soldiers were in, in order to provide much-needed leadership. At the same time, however, the army also needed a way to promote technicians to higher pay-grades (E-4 through E-9), without promoting them above the authority level of their NCO leadership.

The solution was the creation of the “Specialist”: a soldier who does not have leadership authority, but can work his way up the pay grade ladder anyway.

Thus, Andy doesn’t have any of the command authority that would normally come with his pay grade. Nor, to an extent, does he get the respect that a Sergeant Major would enjoy. Instead, he’s worked his way up through the ranks, to a well-paying position, with a lot of perks, but he’s not really in charge of anyone. On the other hand, he has a lot of power when it comes to managing a criminal investigation.

Gates’ decision to make Andy Wye a high-level Specialist is a stroke of pure brilliance in my opinion.

Why “Brilliance”? A Couple of Reasons: 

I can think of a very successful mystery series that I can’t stand to read, because the protagonist is an ex-CID officer, but the author clearly has NO IDEA what Army CID personnel actually do, or how soldiers behave. And this is frustrating to me, because the plotlines, the characterization, and the tone are -- otherwise -- rather appealing (judging from the two books I’ve beaten against my walls).

To explain: CID stands for Criminal Investigation Division. Army CID is extremely similar in operational nature to a detective bureau in a municipal or state police agency. CID personnel investigate crimes that occur on military installations, or -- in certain, very limited instances -- crimes that occur off-post, but involve military personnel. Given: CID personnel are federally sworn, because they operate for a department of the federal government, but they are not FBI agents. And, the CID guys I’ve met never tried to claim they were. 

When it comes to combating espionage, however, this work is performed not by CID, but by CI: Counterintelligence. Army CI is subordinate to the Military Intelligence Branch, while CID is subordinate to the Army’s Military Police Branch. And almost never the twain doth meet … partly because the two jobs require different types of procedures, and -- of necessity -- are governed by very different rules of conduct. Only in extraordinary circumstances would the two elements work together.

In the mystery series I mentioned earlier, however, while the main character is an ex-CID officer, his history is one of having worked multiple counterintelligence operations, as well as other ops that would be more akin to something an officer in a Ranger battalion might do. Additionally, his attitude in one book, which was set back in time when he was still in the army, was much closer to that of an old (and I mean pre-1980’s here) Special Forces officer, than to that of an MP or CID officer. [In my experience: MP’s and CID tend to place a high value on law-abidance and maintaining order, while SF officers – particularly back before SF was an officially recognized army branch -- tend to value mission accomplishment more greatly than law-abidance and maintaining order.]

Thus, not only this protagonist’s experience, but also his behavior, was very improper, given the type of officer he was supposed to have been. I found him just as difficult to believe, as I would if I were to read about two police patrolmen who were widely respected, honest and efficient, and who then went to arrest a suspect and -- after cuffing him -- raided his liquor cabinet and got drunk while watching TV wrestling in his living room, leaving the suspect to lie on the floor at their feet. This behavior wouldn’t match the character aspects the two cops are supposed to have. I can believe they’re respected, honest and efficient, or I can believe that they’re bad cops who raid the liquor cabinet, get drunk and watch wrestling when arresting a suspect – but I CAN’T believe BOTH at the same time.

Just one more thing, ma'am..

I met probably a half-dozen CID or ex-CID soldiers, during my time in service. From what those guys told me, most CID personnel are enlisted folks; not officers. Which makes sense to me, because there are far more enlisted slots in the army than there are officer slots. Yet, authors sometimes seem to love casting their characters as officers. So, the protagonist of Black Traffic being an enlisted man was like a breath of fresh air. Honest air.

And, it also added a layer of detail and complication to the plotline.

Andy is an E-9, but he works for a First Sergeant. A First Sergeant is an E-8, one pay grade below Andy’s. But, the First Sergeant (sometimes called a “First Shirt”) is an NCO. He has leadership authority, while Andy is a Specialist and thus has none. This is why Andy works for the First Sergeant, even though he makes more money than his boss does.

Also, because he’s an E-9, people like myself immediately understand that Andy probably has a couple decades of experience, that he started out as a regular MP but was promoted quickly and reassigned to CID during his second or third enlistment, and that he’s quite intelligent, is a good soldier who does his duty, and has closed many successful cases. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be an E-9; he’d be a retired E-7 or E-8. That’s the way the system works.

The thing is: the First Shirt has the authority to pull Andy off a case. And, once CIA and British MI6 get involved, after that probable KGB-controlled guy pops up, that’s just what he wants to do. Andy, on the other hand -- though he has no authority -- does have a lot of unofficial weight he can lob around, because he’s an E-9. Plus, he’s got a lot of experience that the First Shirt ignores at his own peril. Andy doesn’t want to give up the case. To stay on it, he tells the First Shirt that he wants to find out who’s stealing government property and selling it on the black market. His argument is that he’s not interfering with an intelligence operation; he’s working to plug an illegal leak in the army’s supply chain. Beginning to see what I mean about added layers and complications?

Spooks on the Loose 

CIA -- at least, at first -- is happy to use Andy as a cat’s paw, letting him work his criminal case, because the criminal aspect is one of the few threads of the mystery that anyone can pull on to unravel the espionage knot lying hidden at the heart of things.

MI6, however, is not so sure they want that knot unraveled. And, before it’s over KGB, GRU, and East and West German police and intelligence agencies will begin muddying the waters for their own reasons. Some find it advantageous to help Andy, or at least not to hinder his efforts, while others will stop at nothing -- including murder -- to keep him from succeeding.

All of this goes on in a richly drawn, well explained world of the military and intelligence communities of that time, grafted onto then-existing real-life German cultural norms in Berlin, while Gates seamlessly weaves history, such as the Gehlen organization, into the fictional plotline of his story. In fact, this “procedural” aspect, coupled with the historical inclusions, are highly reminiscent of the best of John le Carré.

Meanwhile, David Edgerley Gates also gives us a prose that’s filled with the true to life vernacular of army soldiers -- much of it uproariously funny. And, he’s careful to keep to the straight and narrow, so that his characters remain soldiers if they’re soldiers, and spooks if they’re spooks. Though it’s impossible to predict what anyone is going to do next (and surprises abound!), nobody does something that flies against what might logically be expected of a person who was actually working that job in that place at that time – thought some do push the envelope. In fact, the way he handles the military and intelligence aspects of the book remind me of some of best-selling author W.E.B. Griffin’s best works.

I bought a lot of Griffin’s books when I was in the army, purchasing many at my local PX stores. I read and loved them, but they tend to be about military or police life and aren’t necessarily everybody’s cup of tea.

I believe Black Traffic, however, would not only do well at military exchange stores, I think it is a book that deserves to be read by anyone who enjoys well told espionage tales that reveal many of the complex procedures involved. It’s one of those rare works that is ‘gritty’ yet doesn’t leave a reader feeling soiled by what he’s read.

And, I downloaded my copy from Amazon, so I didn’t even have to drive across town to buy it.

See you in two weeks!
--Dixon

Spycraft, Old School

Zoo Station

Usually SleuthSayers learn spycraft from the invisible-ink pen of David Edgerley Gates. A month ago, Janice Law slipped past the yet-to-be-built Berlin Wall to recall David Downing. I depend heavily on my SleuthSayers colleagues for reading material, and I ordered up Zoo Station.

The tale has a much older ‘golden age’ feel of the 1960s and I had to double-check the copyright of the first in the series, 2007. The initial half of the book is slow paced but it builds tension out of proportion to pages turned. I wondered how the author accomplished that, and I’m not the only one. One critic’s comment on the back cover says, “Downing has shown that he can produce that creepy sense of paranoia along with the best of them.”

Furthermore, the book contains a feature I’ve rarely encountered outside a school textbook, a ‘Reading Group Guide’. Question 9 reads: “Given the relative lack of overt violence, how does Downing create the novel’s sense of menace?”

Yeah. How did he do that?

I have a few notions, but other readers will surely come up with better insights. Mostly I credit the immersive nature of the story where the author puts us in the scene with the perfect serving of detail.

The story’s set as the 1930s draw to a close. Perceptive people smell war on the horizon, but live in hope it doesn’t come. Kristallnacht has left its mark. Kindertransport is under way. Jews aren’t permitted to work, travel, or dine in restaurants. While the word ‘ghetto’ hasn’t yet arisen, Jewry are evermore isolated in restricted parts of cities.

The author has allowed history to do much of the heavy lifting. Much of life seems normal, ordinary, but it won’t remain so. We know the horrors that are coming; we want to warn the innocent, tell them to flee for their lives.

Whereas trains and train stations appear in backdrops and settings, mentions of government buildings feel eerily ominous. Downing mentions 15-foot high doors, evoking the architecture envisioned by Albert Speer.

No worthy espionage story would be complete without Soviet spies. One Russian spymaster isn’t so bad, but woe be he who crosses the path of Stalinist spymistress Irina Borskaya. She eats her young.

The novel’s protagonist, British journalist John Russell, advances through a character arc from somnambulance to getting his rear into gear, helping to get the word out while saving a life or two. His actress girlfriend suggests a hint of Cabaret, but with far more gravitas than Sally Bowles.

A minor note jarred me. Russell is virtually broke when we first meet him. He lives simply, but he drinks goldwasser. It seems a pretension more in line with 007 than our impecunious reporter. I excused the gold-flecked drink on the grounds it was a product of Gdańsk (Danzig), but the affectation seemed peculiar.

Along the line, our hero obtains a ten-year-old motorcar, a Hanomag. I thought myself reasonably familiar with cars of bygone eras, and those of the late 1920s are the peak of design– the Mercedes SSK, the Cord, the Packard, the Dusenberg, the Bugatti, and the gorgeous Auburn.

1928 Hanomag © Bonhams Auction

I hadn’t heard of Hanomag. I had to stop to look it up. It turned out to be one of the homeliest automobiles ever made. Easiest way to tell the front from the back is to look for the single, motorcycle-style headlight, on the left in this photo. Oh well, our hero’s Hanomag ran most of the time and many folks had no cars at all.

As Janice suggests, Zoo Station reads as old style spycraft with luggage storage and postal drops, suitcases with false bottoms, and shadowy men who make others disappear. Downing’s novels aren’t nearly as gloomy as those of, say, John Le Carré.

When you’re bored with the current digital library on your Kindle or Kobo, stop in a musty used book store and pick up a dog-eared copy of Zoo Station. Go old school.

ALAN FURST: The World at Night

by David Edgerley Gates

[I had thought to preempt this post with remarks about SKYFALL, the newest Bond picture, the best in years, and I decided, not; or to comment about the fall of David Petraeus, but anything I had to say would be speculation at this point.]

Alan Furst, no more than Charles McCarry, shouldn’t need an introduction, or at least I hope not.  He was, for a time, something of an acquired taste, but then a hot agent got ahold of him, he jumped publishers, and they turned him into a household name, at least in my household. 

He himself names Eric Ambler as a chief influence, and you can easily see it.  The darkened Polish railway stations, or perhaps French, the dubious alliances, the quiet men in the shadows who admit no loyalty either way, or the loud patriots that generally don’t survive chapter two.  This is the slippery no-man’s-land of real espionage.

The earlier books, NIGHT SOLDIERS, for example, work on a broad canvas: the Iron Guard, the Spanish Civil War, the world war itself, and even after.  The later books curl in on themselves, narrower, more hermetic, if no less fluent and convincing, but sideshows of sideshows, Greece, or Norway.  The trick is that we know how the war turned out. But in 1939, or 1940, or even 1943, nobody on the ground had any real confidence Hitler was going to be beaten.  And his proxies were everywhere, the Fascists going after the Italian press in exile (THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT), or a local cop trying to save Jews leaving Germany (SPIES OF THE BALKANS), knowing the Gestapo already have him in their sights.  They are often stories about everyday heroism, and if not bravery, then endurance.

THE WORLD AT NIGHT came out in 2002.  One reviewer remarked that it was like seeing CASABLANCA for the first time.  I think this is pretty much on the money.  “These papers have expired…”  Paris, the German occupation.  Gas rationing, and so on, ordinary and everyday life made inconvenient, if not always for the privileged.  The guy at the center of the story is a French movie producer, who keeps working under the Nazis.  He makes silly comedies, nothing politically inconvenient.  Because he can move easily between France and Portugal, or France and Italy, he comes to the attention of British intelligence, and this of course bodes ill.  But the point of the story isn’t the spook shit, it’s his increasing moral burden.  It reminds me of André Cayatte’s PASSAGE DU RHIN (TOMORROW IS MY TURN in American release, terrible title), which is also about the occupation of Paris, ambiguous loyalties, and difficult personal choices. 

The question posed in THE WORLD AT NIGHT is how we ourselves might behave, not in the face of inhumanity, per se (the Holocaust is far off the page), but in the actual daily humiliation of living under an occupying power. Why and how would we resist, or would we simply accept it?  The dog barks, the caravan passes.  The lights stay on, the cafés and brasseries are open, the wine gets poured, the choucroute garni is served. “This ought to take the sting out of Occupation,” Sam says in CASABLANCA, lifting his glass to toast Ilsa and Rick.  The difference, in Furst’s story, is the lack of romance– Casson, the hero, gets into bed with enough good-looking women, but it’s not romantic in the sense of being a fairytale, of taking place in a world of heightened, and reductive, passions.  The book is anchored in very simple, pedestrian realities.  What the guy gets sucked into could easily get him killed.  (There’s a terrific set-piece of a jailbreak, for instance.)  And something else, that his choices are incremental, as ours in life so often are.  They aren’t sudden.  They don’t add up to a turning of the earth, until it’s too late to go back on them.  Casson, essentially, backs himself into a place of no retreat.  It feels very real, but also entirely necessary, as if, without foreknowledge, he took the path of least resistance, and found himself, or honor, something he never expected.

The ending is a jaw-dropper, which I won’t give away.  Suffice it to say that it seems so uncharacteristic, but when looking back over the book, so utterly characteristic, it takes your breath away.  I was flattened by it.

Heroes, like spies, often wear odd uniforms, and change their clothes more than once, if not their stripes.  THE WORLD AT NIGHT is about a man who refuses to change his clothes.  It’s about the intransigence of human nature, or its resilience.  We’re mortal, and of course weak.  When we rise to the occasion, as some of us have, it’s generally accident.  Here, too.  But the occasion of accident doesn’t mean our motives are false.  Intentions count for little, in the end.  To my mind, this is why THE WORLD AT NIGHT is so compelling: a man’s worth is in what he does, not in who he hopes or imagines himself to be.

What Are You Reading?

As soon as I saw my fellow SleuthSayer, Dale C. Andrews post for Sunday, I knew I was on to something. I'd been wracking my brain for days to come up with something to write about today. Suddenly, I found myself staring at a stack of books on the lamp table next to my perch on the sofa. I'll tell you my reading pile this week and you tell me yours, Just a quick note on this Mother's Day to clue everyone in on what a fantastic and versatile group of writers who keep this site going each day. I knew there are award nominees and winners here and I thought it might be high time we tooted our own horns. So in no particular order check out these your daily sleuth sayers.

Eve Fisher: Her short story, "A Time to Mourn" was shortlisted for Otto Penzler's 2011 Best American Short Stories.

John Floyd: won a 2007 Derringer Award for short Story"Four for Dinner."
Nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize "Creativity" 1999 for Short Story
"The Messenger 2001 for Short Story and for a poem "Literary vs Genre" 2005
Shortlisted three times for Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories, "The Proposal," (2000)
"The Powder Room," (2010), "Turnabout" (2012)
And "Molly's Plan" was published in 2015 Best American Short Stories

Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for the short story "200 Feet" 2015

Janice Trecker: Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for Best First Novel years ago,

A Lambda award for Best Gay Mystery Novel for one of the Bacon Books a year ago and a

nomination for Best Local Mystery book on the History of Hampton, CT now my home town.

Dale Andrews: My first Ellery Queen Pastiche, "The Book Case," won second place in the EQMM 2007 Reader's Choice and was also nominated for the Barry Award for Best Short Story that year.

Rob Lopresti: I've been a finalist for the Derringer three times, winning twice.

I won the Black Orchid Novella Award.

I was nominated for the Anthony Award.

Paul D. Marks: won the SHAMUS AWARD for White Heat.
Nominated this year for an ANTHONY AWARD for Best Short Story for "Howling at the Moon."

David Dean: his short stories have appeared regularly in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, as well as a number of Anthologies since 1990. His stories have been nominated for SHAMUS, Barry, and Derringer Awards and "Ibraham's Eyes" was the Reader's Choice Award for 2007. His story "Tomorrow's Dead" was a finalist for the EDGAR AWARD for Best Short Story of 2011.

David Edgerley Gates: has been nominated for the SHAMUS, the EDGAR (twice) and the International Thriller Writers Award.

Melissa Yuan-Innes: Derringer Award Finalist 2015 for "Because" Best Mystery Short Fiction in the English Language
Roswell Award for Short Fiction Finalist 2015 for "Cardiopulmonary Arrest."
Won the Aurora Award 2011 Best English related Work and her story " Dancers With Red Shoes" is featured in Dragons and Stars edited by Derwin Mak and Edwin Choi. Her story "Indian Time was named one of the best short mysteries of 2010 by criminalbrief.com
Year's Best Science Fiction, Honorable Mentions for "Iron Mask," "Growing up Sam," and "Waiting for Jenny Rex."
CBS Radio Noon Romance Writing Contest- Runner-up
Melissa has also won Creative Writing contests and Best First Chapter of a Novel in 2008 and second place for Writers of the Future and won McMaster University "Unearthly Love Affair" writing contest.

Melodie Campbell: is the winner of nine awards: 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for (novella) The Goddaughter's Revenge. which also won the 2014 Derringer.
Finalist for 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Hook, Line and Sinker" and this story also won the Northwest Journal short story.
Finalist for 2013 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Life Without George." which took second prize in Arts Hamilton national short fiction.
Finalist 2012 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "The Perfect Mark" which also won the Derringer award.
Winner 2011 Holiday Short Story Contest for "Blue Satin and Love."
Finalist for 2008 Arts Hamilton award for national short fiction for "Santa Baby."
Third Prize 2006 Bony Pete Short Story contest "School for Burgulars"
Winner 1991 Murder and Mayhem and the Macabre, "City of Mississauga, 2 categories
Third Prize 1989 Canadian Living Magazine, Romance Story "Jive Talk."
Melodie is also a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for best short story for 2015 which will be announced on May 28th.

Robert Lawton: nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Right Track" in 2010
Nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Little Nogai Boy" in 2011.

Jan Grape: Nominated along with my co-editor, Dr. Dean James, for an Edgar and an Agatha Award for Deadly Women for Best Biographical/Critical Non-Fiction. 1998
Won the mccavity award along with my co-editor Dr. Dean James for Deadly Women for Best Non-fiction.
Won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story, 1998 for "A Front-Row Seat" in Vengeance is Hers anthology.
Nominated for Anthony for Best First Novel, 2001 for Austin City Blue.
Jan will receive the Sage Award from the Barbara Burnet Smith Aspiring Writers Foundation on May 17. This award is for mentoring aspiring writers.

We all have to admit, our SleuthSayer authors are a multi-talented group.

On this Mother's Day, one little personal note, my mother, PeeWee Pierce and my bonus mom, Ann T. Barrow, both taught me to be a strong, independent, caring woman and I was blessed to have them in my life and I still miss them. Both were able to read some of my published work and I'm glad they were.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

The Man Who Kept The Secrets

by David Edgerley Gates


Richard Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973, which makes him the longest-serving DCI in CIA history. He was also the first DCI to be appointed from the ranks, a career intelligence professional. Previous DCI's had been, in effect, political appointees, recruited from outside the Agency. Helms was DCI for Viet Nam, the Six-Day War, the overthrow of Salvador Allende, and Watergate---which is just the highlight reel. In other words, he knew where the bodies were buried.

He joined OSS during the war, and when CIA was established, in 1947, Helms came on board, one of the generation that included Larry Houston and James Angleton. These three guys, over the next twenty-five years, might be said to be CIA's institutional memory. They certainly shepherded, and shaped, the Agency and its legacy.

Helms is the only one who wrote a memoir, though, published after his death. It's too bad Houston and Angleton chose not to, it would have been interesting to contrast and compare, but keeping confidences was a habit of mind. They were secret men.

Memoirs of the spy community are a peculiar genre, and not always to be trusted. The most famous example is Kim Philby's MY SILENT WAR, written under KGB discipline, if not actually dictated by them. Philby settles a lot of scores, and spreads active disinformation. His book might best be seen as one last deception. Then, for instance, there's former CIA director William Colby's HONORABLE MEN, which is self-serving in the extreme, if not outright fabrication. The thing about the Helms book is that although he leaves much unsaid, what he does say is frank and transparent. (It helps, of course, to know the background, to fill in the blanks.) Helms doesn't give up operational details, or sources and methods, but he gives a solid flavor to the life, and his sense of duty.

One of the more disputed tangles in CIA's archive is the Golitsin-Nosenko controversy, which embroiled James Angleton's shop, the office of

JAMES ANGLETON

Counterintelligence, in the hunt for a double agent---shades of Kim Philby. The best explanation of this very convoluted story is Thomas Powers' excellent book, THE MAN WHO KEPT THE SECRETS. It's also the subject of Edward Jay Epstein's LEGEND, and David Martin's WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS (an expression attributed to Angleton). Helms covers Operation FOXTROT, the codename for Nosenko's defection, in just under seven pages, and doesn't assign it that much importance, his main point being that FOXTROT didn't tear the Agency apart, which is the premise of the Martin book. Helms goes out of his way to rehabilitate Angleton, whose forced resignation by Colby created a few lifetimes of bad blood.

It's a good demonstration of Helms' method. Don't gossip. Don't show off at somebody else's expense. Basically, be a gent. He obviously doesn't respect Colby much, but he stops of actually calling him a liar. The same is true of Nixon, even though Helms acknowledges Nixon's paranoia, and Nixon more or less stabbed Helms in the back, but Helms doesn't grudge Nixon his successes. This is, however, a place in the story where it turns dark. Nixon instructs Helms, in no uncertain terms, to get rid of Allende in Chile, and keep a lid on it. This leads to big trouble for Helms, later on, because his testimony in front of the Senate, touching on Allende and Chile, is clearly shown to be untrue. He was keeping the president's confidence, but under pressure, Helms pled to a misdemeanor charge in federal court, of being careless with the facts.

This speaks to one of the major themes in both the Powers and in Helms' own story, silence and duty, namely that the DCI only has one consumer, the

DICK HELMS 

president, and you only serve one president at a time. Helms isn't circumspect about this at all, and makes no apology for it. He has no reason to. We can argue about the function of the intelligence community, and whether or not the national security apparatus had overreached itself, but Larry Houston once remarked, in private conversation, that he never thought their intentions were dishonest. Helms was a principled guy. He kept faith. It cost him.

How 2 Big Sleeps Taught Me Magic

When Last We Met . . . 

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d seen the “pre-release” of The Big Sleep.

The film classic The Big Sleep was released by Warner Brothers in August of 1946. However, an earlier, slightly different version of this same film was completed about a year before that. This earlier “pre-release” was granted limited distribution for USO use in the Pacific Theater as WWII wound down. Virtually no one would see it again, though, for over a half-century.

Warner sat on that original version of The Big Sleep because they wanted to unload a back-log of WWII films before they became passé, and because Lauren Bacall’s agent wanted to change elements of his client’s performance in The Big Sleep, in order to counter negative reviews she’d received in a recent film.

Thus: Warner re-edited the movie, including about 20 minutes of new footage shot during the film’s year-long hiatus, before releasing the final version -- which is the classic we all (or, at least, many of us) know and love. Meanwhile, that original “pre-release” version -- long believed lost -- was found, late in the 1990’s, sitting in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Almost immediately, funds were raised for restoration, and a re-release was planned for the “pre-release,” which finally came out on video in 2000.

Which is how I happened to stumble across it one night, on a DVD, when I myself was feeling a bit cross-eyed from lack of rest. And, how I realized that a comparison of the two films served to illustrate an important facet of writing for me.

The Not-So-Femme Fatal 

In honor of the multi-layered-mystery element that (imho) helped propel The Big Sleep to greatness, I’ll begin my dissertation by invoking a different famous mystery film, which also starred Humphrey Bogart.

If memory serves me right: In The Maltese Falcon, while Peter Lorre’s character, Joel Cairo, is supposedly cooling his heels outside Sam Spade’s office door, Bogart (Spade) lifts Cairo’s card to his nose and sniffs. A humorous expression instantly explodes across Bogart’s face as he exclaims, “Gardenias!” He turns to his secretary and tells her, “Quick, darling, in with him!” (Or words to that effect.)

The way this scene is played out, a viewer is left with little question concerning Joel Cairo’s sexual preferences. Or, so it seems to me.

A similarly telling scene from the pre-release of The Big Sleep was cut from the 1946 version. At the same time, Marlowe’s search of Geiger’s bungalow -- where Carmen Sternwood (played by Martha Vickers) has been drugged and photographed -- is considerably shortened.

In commenting on my last post, David Edgerley Gates mentioned that the Hayes code (a sort of de facto censorship in operation at the time) made it necessary to change the film’s ending. He also helped explain why the changes in the Geiger bungalow scene were made, when he wrote: …[T]hey already had enough problems with the Martha Vickers character, trying to skirt the implication she was a nympho, not to mention a dope fiend.

I think David's very right. While the book makes it plain that Carmen is photographed in the nude, for instance, Martha Vickers is clothed in both versions of the film. All be it, she’s clothed in a Chinese-looking garment, which -- given social nuances then in vogue -- may have been construed as indicating her photo session involved sexual deviancy. But, there’s more sexual obfuscation than this going on.

After first reading this scene in the book, there was no question in my mind that Geiger was gay. Chandler’s description of Geiger’s bedroom clearly indicated its owner had a strong feminine side, at the very least. And, I’m pretty sure Chandler just about came right out and stated the fact when Marlowe described what the place felt like.

The final cut of the film, however, seems largely to gloss-over this idea. Though, I believe an argument could be made that love would be about the only motivation for Geiger’s assistant to go on his murderous rampage at Joe Brody’s apartment.

But, in the pre-release it’s a different story. After Marlowe finds the drugged Carmen Sternwood, he searches Geiger’s bungalow pretty thoroughly before he manages to discover the lockbox with Geiger’s sucker code. We even see where Marlowe finds the key to that box (a scene that I believe is missing from the final release). And, he goes to greater lengths, when it comes to covering up evidence that the girl had been in the bungalow.

During all this, we get a very good look at the feminine side of Geiger’s bedroom. The femininity is not overdone, but many of the book details do seem to be there. I believe this element, combined with the Chinese or Asian decorative influence, would have connoted the Geiger’s leanings fairly plainly to an audience of 1945. And, for anybody who somehow still missed the implications, the knowing smile on Bogart’s face, when he sniffs one of Geiger’s handkerchiefs, which he finds in that bedroom, would probably open the dimmest eyes.

Yet, almost none of this appears in the general release. Most of it wound up on the cutting room floor during final editing. And, while conforming with the Hayes code may well have played a part in deciding to make these cuts, I suspect another reasoning was also at work.

At first blush, Marlowe’s longer search made a lot of sense to me. To my way of thinking, mysteries are all too often replete with detectives who find what they’re searching for far too easily. So, it was refreshing to see Marlowe search for awhile before locating any valuable clues. Additionally, I remember thinking, “So THAT’S where it came from!” when he found the key to the lockbox, because the origin of this key had never seemed clear to me when watching the general release.

But, my excitement soon waned. I began to notice how long that search seemed to drag on. And, how such a lengthy search slowed the movie’s pace. Before long, I found myself changing my mind. I decided the editor had been wise to cut it -- even if the results left me puzzled about where Marlowe got that lockbox key.

A moment later, icy dread washed down through me.

I’d made similar mistakes in some of my own writing. Seeking to ensure verisimilitude, I’d been guilty of letting details stretch scenes too long. During rewrite, I’d noticed a resulting loss of tension, but my understanding of the mechanism involved was pretty sketchy. Watching this scene, however, and comparing it to the original film in mind, I was struck by a clear and concrete comprehension of the problem.

The solution, though, was still difficult to grasp. How to balance verisimilitude with the need to avoid slowing the action? Another difference between the two films would provide a key.

The Other Office 

There’s a scene in the pre-release that I believe runs about five minutes, and I don’t think it’s in the ’46 release at all -- though there may be a short minute or two that was re-shot to condense it. The stuff that wound up on the cutting room floor was replaced with a new scene, in which Bogart and Bacall enjoy a bit of a tête-à-tête in a restaurant (left), helping to establish a romantic rapport that serves to support the re-edited ending.


In the deleted scene (below) Marlowe meets with his cop buddy, the DA and some other guys, in the DA’s office. There, the PI has to explain why his actions, and letting him remain involved in the case (so he can continue to pursue those actions) would further the interests of justice, and the DA’s reelection. This scene was evidently intended to function as a thinly-veiled attempt to ensure that viewers understood the implications of what had transpired on-screen before it. This mid-film review, however, serves to bring the film’s brisk pace to a near screeching halt. And, it’s much worse than the lengthy search scene above, because there’s nothing new here; it’s all a rehash.

While I’m sure there are those who would appreciate this opportunity to gain a better understanding of the complicated double-or-triple-mystery unfolding before them: For me, the confusion created by unexpected occurrences within the film, is exactly what sucks me into the vortex of the plot’s wildly spinning fabric. In my view, this “review” scene provides such a vast breath of calm, still air, the film’s whirling vortex shatters against it, dissipating. Wildly careening plot elements flutter free and drift down to flop dead upon the ground.

Eventually, I came to see this scene as being somewhat akin to a magician stopping mid-act to say, “Okay. Now see, this is what I’ve really been doing.” When a magician reveals the slight of hand behind the trick, all the magic goes out of the thing. It dies.

Which is why I’m glad I saw this, because there's enough dead writing in this world; I don't need to kill more of it. But, I’m a guy who drives himself nearly crazy, ensuring that ta reader can understand why my characters are motivated to do what they’re doing, because I don’t want folks getting lost, or tossing down a book or story because they think I’ve got a character doing something s/he wouldn’t. On the other hand, I also know it’s important to keep a reader in the dark sometimes, and this why I found this scene so useful.

It serves as a clear reminder that the line between what I can tell and what I have to keep up my sleeve is clearly demarcated by the question, “Will knowing this shatter the magic?” At the same time, I realized this was also the answer to the question: How to balance verisimilitude with the need to avoid slowing the action?

The answer -- for me, at least -- is to keep my eye on the magic. If the magic thrives throughout the action, it’s fine. If it dies, or even just dies-down, I know it’s time to cut.

The trick in both cases is: Keep my eye on the magic. This phrase might not seem terribly concrete to you. Or, perhaps you’re not the sort of writer who needs to bear it in mind. But, for me: The simplicity of that phrase is something my mind can grasp and hang onto deeply. It’s a tool I can carry with me anywhere I go

Keep your eye on the magic! That’s what I learned from watching two versions of The Big Sleep..

See you in two weeks,
--Dixon

"Afternoons in Paris" by Janice Law

You remember Francis Bacon:

    No, not that one, this one:  

Francis Bacon, artist.  Francis Bacon, gambler.  Francis Bacon, bon vivant.  Francis Bacon, gay, asthmatic, Irish, autodidact, devoted to his Nan, louche, rough, crazy...

Well, HE'S BACK!!!!

Yes, my favorite gay artist adventurer is back in Janice Law's "Afternoons in Paris".  Francis is 18 and in the City of Lights, and very glad to be there after the craziness of Berlin (read Janice's "Nights in Berlin":  the book and David Edgerley Gates' review).  Now he's on his own, working for a decorator/designer by day (the somewhat susceptible Armand), visiting galleries with the motherly Madame Dumoulin, and cruising the city by night with the totally unreliable Pyotr, a Russian emigre who, like Francis, has a taste for quick hook-ups and rough trade.

Pyotr has two Russian friends, Igor, who's sinister, and Lev, who's quickly assassinated.  After getting robbed (by Pyotr), beaten up (by 'Cossacks') in Montparnasse, and finding two more waiting to do the same at his lodgings, Francis tries to avoid Russians by moving in with Madame Dumoulin and her brother, Jules, who needs a caretaker.  Well, it could be argued that Francis is the last person to be anyone's companion/caretaker, but our boy knows how to be appreciative.  And Jules, although a traumatized WW1 veteran, is an innocent (at least compared to Francis):  much like Mr. Dick in "David Copperfield", he builds complex machines and flies kites.  Francis can enjoy both.

And then Jules gets a chance to design machines for the theatre group Les Mortes Immortels, and it's back to Paris for all.  Jules' machines are the best part of a production about as audience-friendly as "Finnegan's Wake"; that and the character of Human Hope, played by Inessa, a Russian Helen of Troy who enraptures everyone around her.  Except for those who are using her.

Russians are everywhere, and they're all dangerous:  Pyotr; the NKVD assassin Alexi; the NKVD blackmailer Anoshkin; Inessa's missing brother, Pavel.  And, wouldn't you know it, who's up to his neck in all of this but Francis' Uncle Lastings?  Now known as Claude, art dealer and bon-vivant, but still up to his neck in intrigue, scams, sex, and spying.  Francis has a lot of fast talking, fast running, fast thinking, and fast acting to do to survive...

Soutine's Chemin de la Fontaine
des Tins at Ceret - Wikipedia

As always, it's fascinating to see the world through Francis' eyes, especially at 18, when he is still at the beginning of creating himself.  He has a knack for noticing details, from the "distinctive stink of French drains" to the "most brutal and vigorous thing I'd seen in France" - a dead rooster, painted by Chaim Soutine.  When he writes to Nan that "a glance at her makes me feel more hopeful", we know that Inessa is indeed a remarkable woman, someone to pay attention to.  And, when told that Pavel can't be wandering Paris without proper papers, Francis' reaction is "My own experience in Berlin led me to believe that Monsieur Chaput was exaggerating.  A teenage boy has a number of ways of eluding bureaucrats and busybodies."  And he would know.

Nan

Emotionally, Francis is still developing, or is he?  At one point he says, regarding his commitment to Jules:  "I had promised Jules, and I believe in friendship.  It tends to be more stable than romance." Not to mention family. As he writes to Nan about his uncle, "I know this is a surprise, but He Who Must Not be Named has secured a job for me, and this time, I have asked to be paid half in advance. You can see I am getting wise to the ways of the world." In fact, the only person Francis trusts implicitly is Nan, in "Afternoons in Paris", "Nights in Berlin", "Fires of London", "The Prisoner of the Riviera", "Moon over Tangier" and in real life.  She will always be the most stable person in his life, not excepting himself.

But even at 18, Francis is already witty, sarcastic, honest, observant, hungry, lustful, reckless, and utterly sure that he will never be among the bourgeoisie. (And how right he is.) He always gives a master class in the art of survival.  Francis Bacon and Paris in the 20s - it's hard to ask for anything more.

Resurrection Men

by David Edgerley Gates

Ian Rankin published his thirteenth Inspector John Rebus novel, RESURRECTION MEN, in 2002. The story is about a group of cops in a rehab facility - sent down in disgrace because of alcohol or domestic violence issues, or they've fallen afoul of Internal Affairs - but being Rankin, the book is of course about a lot more than that. The title is double-edged, a turn of phrase with a dark history.


In the early 19th century, medical schools relied on the dead bodies of executed criminals for anatomy studies. It was illegal, in that day and age, to leave your body to science. but the supply began to dry up, and it gave rise to a trade in fresh cadavers, and the graves of the newly buried were dug up by body-snatchers, who sold the dead for necropsies. They were known as Resurrection Men. 

Two of these entrepreneurs, Burke and Hare, resident in Edinburgh in late 1827, improved their market share by skipping exhumation and turning to murder. Their victims were the derelict, the sickly, women of the street - people who wouldn't be missed. Over the course of the next year, they killed at least sixteen people, and shopped their corpses to a surgeon named Knox, to use in his anatomical lectures. How much Knox knew, or suspected, is an open question, but certainly he turned a blind eye. After they were caught, Hare turned King's Evidence, in return for immunity, and Burke was hanged. His body, as it happens, was then publicly dissected at the University of Edinburgh. Knox, the doctor, was never prosecuted.

"A wretch who isn't worth a farthing while alive," Sir Walter Scott remarked, "becomes a valuable article when knocked on the head and carried to an anatomist." Scott was being ironic about economies of scale, but as far as I know, he never used this incident as material. Dickens wasn't so shy. One of

his characters in A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Jerry Cruncher, is explicitly a grave-robber. And in 1884, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a story called "The Body-Snatcher," which stops just short of naming Knox as a knowing accomplice. Stevenson's DR.

JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE is a reimagining of the Whitechapel murders, and there's been some conflation, in books and movies, of Burke and Hare's crimes with Jack the Ripper. The serial killer, as a figure of fear, is a mid-Victorian invention, I believe. Not that somebody might not claim many victims, but that he does it for the sick thrill.

Psychopathology wasn't well-understood, in the 1800's - the term didn't even come into general use until the early 20th century. One of the narrative engines of David Morrell's gripping recent novel, MURDER AS A FINE ART, which takes place in 1854 London, is the lack of any practical forensic approach, and the inability to process, let alone inhabit, the mindset of a serial murderer. It's not simply an unknown, but unimaginable, like an empty space on an old map, which simply states: Here Be Monsters. Burke and Hare took up their trade for the easy money, but the seeming

effortlessness of the murders gives you pause. They displayed no remorse. Burke, in fact, before he went to the scaffold, asked whether Dr. Knox would give him the five pounds he was owed for his last victim, so Burke could buy a new suit of clothes to be hanged in. 

"To know my deed, 'twere best not to know myself," Macbeth says. Burke and Hare apparently avoided any kind of self-knowledge. They denied the humanity of the men and women, and at least one child, that they murdered, but did they deny their own? Neither one of them were crazy, so far as we know, although they were probably a few cards short of a full deck. They were paid five to ten pounds for each dead body they delivered. In today's numbers, between six and twelve hundred bucks. Not too shabby, if you're desecrating a grave in the wee hours, but for a capital crime? The odd thing about these guys is that they were very far from the pathology of the Ripper. There was actually nothing out of the ordinary about them. They were simply dumb enough to get caught.

Maybe that's the thing. It isn't that Burke and Hare live on in our imagination because they were criminal deviants who've evaded detection for 125 years - is the Ripper case solved? More, perhaps,

that Burke and Hare touched a popular nerve at the time, and that a writer like Dickens or Stevenson gives them shelf life. (Burke's skeleton is still on display at the Edinburgh Medical School.) No, the dread lies in the open grave. 

http://www.davidedgerleygates.com/

Shameless Self Promotion

Just a quick note on this Mother's Day to clue everyone in on what a fantastic and versatile group of writers who keep this site going each day. I knew there are award nominees and winners here and I thought it might be high time we tooted our own horns. So in no particular order, check out these your daily SleuthSayers.

Eve Fisher:

Her short story, "A Time to Mourn" was shortlisted for Otto Penzler's 2011 Best American Short Stories.

John Floyd:

Won a 2007 Derringer Award for short Story"Four for Dinner."
Nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize "Creativity" 1999 for Short Story
"The Messenger 2001 for Short Story and for a poem "Literary vs Genre" 2005
Shortlisted three times for Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories, "The Proposal," (2000), "The Powder Room," (2010), "Turnabout" (2012), and "Molly's Plan" was published in 2015 Best American Short Stories.
Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for the short story "200 Feet" 2015.

Janice Trecker:

Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for Best First Novel years ago, a Lambda award for Best Gay Mystery Novel for one of the Bacon Books a year ago and a nomination for Best Local Mystery book on the History of Hampton, CT, now her home town.

Dale Andrews:

His first Ellery Queen Pastiche, "The Book Case," won second place in the EQMM 2007 Reader's Choice and was also nominated for the Barry Award for Best Short Story that year.

Leigh Lundin:

Won the Ellery Queen 2007 Reader's Choice award for his story “Swamped”.

Rob Lopresti:

Fnalist for the Derringer three times, winning twice. Won the Black Orchid Novella Award. I was nominated for the Anthony Award.

Paul D. Marks:

Won the SHAMUS AWARD for White Heat. Nominated this year for an ANTHONY AWARD for Best Short Story for "Howling at the Moon."

David Dean:

His short stories have appeared regularly in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, as well as a number of Anthologies since 1990. His stories have been nominated for SHAMUS, Barry, and Derringer Awards and "Ibraham's Eyes" was the Reader's Choice Award for 2007. His story "Tomorrow's Dead" was a finalist for the EDGAR AWARD for Best Short Story of 2011.

David Edgerley Gates:

Nominated for the SHAMUS, the EDGAR (twice) and the International Thriller Writers Award.

Melissa Yuan-Innes:

Derringer Award Finalist 2015 for "Because" Best Mystery Short Fiction in the English Language, Roswell Award for Short Fiction Finalist 2015 for "Cardiopulmonary Arrest."
Won the Aurora Award 2011 Best English related Work and her story " Dancers With Red Shoes" is featured in Dragons and Stars edited by Derwin Mak and Edwin Choi. Her story "Indian Time was named one of the best short mysteries of 2010 by criminalbrief.com
Year's Best Science Fiction, Honorable Mentions for "Iron Mask," "Growing up Sam," and "Waiting for Jenny Rex."
CBS Radio Noon Romance Writing Contest- Runner-up. Melissa has also won Creative Writing contests and Best First Chapter of a Novel in 2008 and second place for Writers of the Future and won McMaster University "Unearthly Love Affair" writing contest.

Melodie Campbell:

Winner of nine awards: 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for (novella) The Goddaughter's Revenge. which also won the 2014 Derringer.
Finalist for 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Hook, Line and Sinker" and this story also won the Northwest Journal short story.
Finalist for 2013 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Life Without George." which took second prize in Arts Hamilton national short fiction.
Finalist 2012 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "The Perfect Mark" which also won the Derringer award.
Winner 2011 Holiday Short Story Contest for "Blue Satin and Love."
Finalist for 2008 Arts Hamilton award for national short fiction for "Santa Baby."
Third Prize 2006 Bony Pete Short Story contest "School for Burgulars"
Winner 1991 Murder and Mayhem and the Macabre, "City of Mississauga, 2 categories
Third Prize 1989 Canadian Living Magazine, Romance Story "Jive Talk."
Finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for best short story for 2015 which will be announced on May 28th.

Robert 'RT' Lawton:

Nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Right Track" in 2010.
Nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Little Nogai Boy" in 2011.

Jan Grape:

Nominated along with co-editor, Dr. Dean James, for an Edgar and an Agatha Award for Deadly Women for Best Biographical/Critical Non-Fiction. 1998.
Won McCavity award along with co-editor Dr. Dean James for Deadly Women for Best Non-fiction.
Won Anthony Award for Best Short Story, 1998 for "A Front-Row Seat" in Vengeance is Hers anthology.
Nominated for Anthony for Best First Novel, 2001 for Austin City Blue.
Jan will receive the Sage Award from the Barbara Burnet Smith Aspiring Writers Foundation on May 17. This award is for mentoring aspiring writers.

We all have to admit, our SleuthSayers authors are a multi-talented group.

On this Mother's Day, one little personal note, my mother, PeeWee Pierce and my bonus mom, Ann T. Barrow, both taught me to be a strong, independent, caring woman and I was blessed to have them in my life and I still miss them. Both were able to read some of my published work and I'm glad they were.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.