Blockbuster

by Elizabeth Zelvin

blockbuster
1. an aerial bomb containing high explosives and weighing from four to eight tons, used as a large-scale demolition bomb.
2. a motion picture, novel, etc., especially one lavishly produced, that has or is expected to have wide popular appeal or financial success.
Dictionary.com

As a writer of both novels and short stories and a reader of both mysteries and other kinds of fiction, I was thinking about the differences among these forms and genres this morning and found myself musing about the nature of a blockbuster. When I looked it up, I found that the common usage most of us know is only the second definition. I was also surprised to learn that the novels to which it may be applied aren’t necessarily long, though they do have to be explosive.

I just finished reading a novel that could be called a blockbuster by any standards: Pat Conroy’s Beach Music. The original hardcover edition, published in 1995, was 628 pages and weighed in at 2.4 pounds shipping weight, according to Amazon. The trade paperback edition I read came in at 800 pages and still ranks under 25,000 on Amazon, which means a lot of readers are still buying it. (For comparison, the Kindle edition of my second book, published in 2009, ranks 467,500 and change.) Conroy, author of Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, is frequently referred to as a beloved American author. Extrapolating from the definition, part of what makes a blockbuster is an author’s prior best-seller status. But let’s look at what Conroy manages to cram into his story of a dysfunctional family that manages to love and come through for one another in the end (a surefire recipe in itself), along with the vividly detailed setting in the low country of South Carolina, described in lush and lyrical prose that would make the book a literary novel if it hadn’t sold so darn many copies.

Into the hopper:
suicide
alcoholism
schizophrenia
cancer
domestic violence
survivor guilt
the Holocaust
the Vietnam War
the 1985 terrorist attack on the Rome airport
the Catholic Church
the military
the South
Sherman’s march to the sea
a near-death-at-sea experience
the fight to save the loggerhead turtle from extinction

Have I missed anything? I don’t think Conroy did.

As I read, I couldn’t help thinking about how Conroy constructed his story in a way that wouldn’t have got past a good critique group, no less an agent or editor, if it were a debut manuscript: paragraphs and paragraphs of lush description, masses of information about cooking, fishing, and architecture, and backstory or flashback sections running as much as 100 pages between sections that moved the story forward. I also popped out of lost-in-a-book trance at a couple of psychological anomalies: the cheater’s shortcut he took in dealing with the suicide by saying upfront that in this rare case, everybody who knew the lovely young victim forgave her instantly; the portrayal of the schizophrenic as a lovable eccentric who remained manageable even at his most unmanageable; and how much love remained in this severely dysfunctional family. But maybe that’s no different from any fiction, including movies, where the rigid, intolerant, or obstructive character sees the light in time for the happy ending.

Truth in Fiction vs. the Changing Nature of Child-created Violent Crime

Apocryphal Grapes


When I was in grade school, we read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. And, someone (I’m pretty sure it was a teacher) told us that Steinbeck had originally been hired to compile a non-fiction account of Dust Bowl farmers during the Great Depression, but eventually turned the project down, telling his editor that the story couldn’t be fully dealt with in a non-fiction format. “This one’s going to have to be fiction,” he supposedly said.

I suspect that grade school informant was a little confused. After all, Steinbeck actually wrote a series of articles about the subject, called “The Harvest Gypsies,” for the San Francisco News in 1936. The articles ran from October 5th through 12th of that year.

Still, the idea of using fiction to address current social problems is neither nothing new, nor just relegated to Steinbeck. I’m reminded of a blurb on the back of my dog-eared The Big Sleep copy, which reads: “Chandler writes like a slumming angel.” It goes on to explain how he lays bare the underbelly of L.A.

I didn’t see how a writer could penetrate much deeper under that belly, until I read Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress. About half-way through, I thought: “Wow! This author didn’t just crawl under the belly; he slit that belly open, and all its guts poured out on my head. This is awesome!”


Mosley’s writing had the same effect on me that Elmina Castle had, when my A-Team toured it during our time in Ghana, West Africa (or perhaps it was Cape Coast Castle; we toured both and I can’t keep them straight these days). After both adventures (castle tour, and book reading) I found myself reassessing my mental construct of the world and the culture I’m immersed in.


My politics are probably quite different from Mosley’s, Steinbeck’s, or even Chandler’s. But, there’s no denying that these guys have (or: had) a firm grasp on fiction’s ability to influence a reader’s thoughts, ideas, and quite probably future actions.

Child Violence in Mystery Stories
Sometime ago, in the Readers’ Forum on TheMysteryPlace.com, Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (EQMM), raised the subject of children as characters in mystery fiction.

According to The Mystery Place website, their forum is currently unavailable, due to technical issues, so I couldn’t refresh my memory about the post.

As I recall, however, in part of it Ms. Hutchings suggested that EQMM prefers writers to downplay violence toward or from children, locating the violent scene off-stage if it is essential to the story line.

This didn’t really surprise me. After all, EQMM is a family magazine; writers have to approach stories knowing that underage people will undoubtedly read them. At the same time, this approach should probably be balanced by a desire to present honestly written stories, which sometimes creates a very fine line upon which to spin a tale. However, I think the folks at EQ and AH do a good job of walking that fine line, and of helping writers to walk it alongside them.

At the time of her post, I had recently read about the arrest of 14-year-old Edgar Jimenez Lugo by Mexican authorities. This boy, a U.S. citizen born in California, who moved to Mexico with returning family members, began killing and decapitating rival drug operators for the South Pacific Cartel in Mexico at age 11.

(Time magazine story on Edgar Jimenez Lugo)


Details of the case are confused, but it seems the cartel controlled young Edgar by getting him hooked on drugs and then issuing threats. They may also have paid him $3,000 per killing. His teenaged sisters (below, right) were also evidently hooked by the cartel, and used to lure Edgar’s targets to the kill zone. The cartel’s threats may have been directed at Edgar, but – at one point, at least – the boy said it was his sisters whom the cartel was threatening to kill if he didn’t act as their designated hit man.

According to a July New Yorker article , in Mexico: “At least thirty thousand minors have been recruited by cartels, which promise quick and easy money to kids who have been orphaned by … drug violence, or who lack schooling and regular employment. It’s not known how many of those children are becoming hired killers.”

Thus, when I read Ms. Hutchings’ post, I posted my own reply, in which I wondered how long it would be before drug cartels began using U.S. teens to do their dirty work north of the border.

Would $50 cover your risk, for running drugs up from Mexico?

If you were a Texas teen living near the border, it might. This past October, the Texas Department of Public Safety (TxDPS) issued a news release, stating that Texas high school students are being recruited by Mexican cartels to “support their drug, human, currency and weapon smuggling operations on both sides of the Texas/Mexico border.”

The release went on to say: "Parents should talk to their children and explain how the cartels seek to exploit Texas teenagers …”

According to CNN, TxDPS Director Steven McCraw said his department first noticed this practice in 2009, when they began encountering U.S. teens trying to smuggle drugs across bridge border crossings. “Texas teenagers provide unique compatibility to the cartels,” he said. “They’re U.S. citizens, they speak Spanish, they’re able to operate on both sides of the border, and they’re expendable labor.”

In the Fall of 2011, a 12-year-old boy was apprehended, driving a stolen pickup loaded with over 800 pounds of marijuana. According to McGraw, teenaged contraband drivers, such as this, are sometimes paid as little as $50 for the job.

Piecing together what I’ve found on the web, it appears that the teens and pre-teens involved are introduced to the job through an oblique recruitment method. High school gang members recruit their classmates to carry drugs over the border, by introducing those teens to a ‘friend of a friend.’ And that friend’s able to pay hard cash. This cash is funded by Mexican cartels, funneled through the local gangs and finally handed over when one school kid gives it to another.

The Feds say Mexican cartels are buddying up with U.S. street and motorcycle gangs to make this happen. According to the National Gang Intelligence Center’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment (NGTA): "Federal, state and local law enforcement officials are observing a growing nexus between the Mexican drug cartels, illegal alien smuggling rings and U.S.-based gangs.”

While, in the past, U.S. gangs usually obtained their drugs through a middle man—who stood between the gang and the Mexican cartels—evidence indicates that U.S. gangs are now working hand-in-glove with the cartels, in order to cut out the middle man and increase profits. But the connection doesn’t end there. A Drug Enforcement Administration report, mentioned in the NGTA, states that local Los Angeles gang members assist not only in drug operations, but also in kidnappings.

What does this mean for writers?
Ms. Hutchings had yet to write her post, when I submitted my short story “Dancing in Mozambique” (EQMM July 2010) to her magazine. Yet, like any good writer, I’d studied their guidelines and read many copies of the magazine. I worried my story wouldn’t be accepted because I had a scene where a guy cuts a kid’s hand off with a meat cleaver. You don’t actually see or hear the chop. But, you do see the guy standing there, blood all over and the little kid’s hand held in his, afterward. Pretty strong stuff for a family publication.

I worried so much, that I worked and thought for days about how I might change the subject matter of the scene and still make the story work. But, try as I might, I just couldn’t. Finally, I surrendered and sent it in. I was grateful that EQMM took the story, and believe Ms. Hutchings probably accepted it because the scene was absolutely critical to the story’s theme. Nonetheless, I don’t plan to inundate any publication with stories featuring child violence.

Which leaves me with a conundrum. Kids being obliquely recruited by cartels is an important social issue, which mystery fiction is in a special position to comment on. As Mexican cartels strengthen ties with U.S. gangs, the pressure to write such stories will increase. However, the time when our writing might make its greatest impact is likely to be now, rather than later.

Balanced against this sense of urgency, though, is the natural reticence of a publisher to accept stories in which child-violence figures prominently. This leaves me wanting ask SluethSayers readers:

(1) Do you believe such stories need to be written? Or, do you feel mystery stories should concentrate on simply telling a story—leaving social commentary to other venues?

(2) If you believe subjects such as these should be tackled in contemporary mysteries: How do you believe we can best approach these stories, as writers, in order to make optimal social comment and impact, while still meeting editorial needs?

I’m interested in all your thoughts and comments. And hope you’ll click the “email me with updates” button on the comments page, in order to join a dialogue about this subject. As for me, I’ll be doing my best to stay with it all day long.

Either way, I’ll see you again in two weeks!
--Dix

Naughty or Nice

I'm baking my grandma's recipe for cookies we only enjoy during the holidays. The scent brings me back to memories when I eagerly awaited a personal visit from St. Nick. All the while I hoped I had been good enough during the year to get exactly what I wanted from the jolly old elf, I remained a bit worried.

I'm wrapping gifts picked out for each person on my own list without checking to see if they were naughty or nice.

I'm listening to the GLEE Christmas CD and loving the idea, if not the reality of a Norman Rockwell gathering to look forward to this season.

I'm counting my blessings and having one heck of a time trying to think of a crime or imagine a criminal mind doing heinous things in the midst of feeling so blessed.

I know this a rampant time of year for burglars, grinches and car jackers to strike unexpected into our lives. I know that greed and commercialism is making louder statements in the world every day. I know that sometimes I am a bit naive about how the real world acts.

Last spring I was taken to task on Facebook when I said I wished the good guys could win on "Survivor." One of my friends scolded me online about it being a "game." A game, yes. I have to agree. I was gently reminded that when Colby did the right thing (in my mind), he lost the game and the million dollar prize. Last season I was once again disappointed and did not watch this season though I'd been a loyal viewer since the first episode.

This is my problem: I'm trying to be a nice girl in a naughty world. I try to play fair and then sneak off and write stories others may consider disturbing. Because I'm having fun playing both naughty and nice, do I need to see a therapist?

That's an interesting question I pose to myself often in the middle of writing a not-so-nice character. I feel a lot like Dexter. We share trying to live two highly different sides of our personalities in one lifetime. I think my "other life" as a writer isn't as dark as Dexter's as a detective/serial killer, but wouldn't he justify his choices, too? He's ridding the world of really, really bad people.

Do we all here share a naughty side? Do you enjoy the same sickness of loving to read about serial killers, tracking murderers and solving atrocious crimes we dare not undertake ourselves though we just may be able to get away with it if we tried?

Well, then, sit down. Have a cookie and I'll pour you a cup of coffee. We're going to be great pals. Wait until you hear what I'm planning to write next year. It's deliciously awful! I think you just may like the taste of a 2012 murder or two. I plan to write them more often than I bake Grandma's cookies.

A Little Sound Advice

by Neil Schofield

I have chosen this winter scene to begin with, because I am nothing if not obvious, but also for two other - interconnected - reasons. The first is that it was painted by Claude Monet about 130 years ago and about 10 miles from where I live in Normandy. I know this road near Honfleur and it hasn't changed that much. Today, you'd be likely to see an abandoned Renault Five in the foreground and - given the season - a UPS truck fighting its way up the road. Seriously, do we really entrust our precious, fragile belongings to a carrier whose name looks suspiciously like Oops!?

The second reason is that as, you can just perhaps see, it is a Christmas card. More pertinently, it is a card I received some years ago from Dell Magazines. Within are kind messages from Janet and Linda. It is a seasonal and constant reminder of how lucky I have been. Without the help of those redoutable ladies, I wouldn't be here now.
So a painting by Monet finds its way onto a Christmas card which in turn finds its way back to where it was painted. Is that synchronicity or co-incidence? Or simply a proof of the interconnectedness of all things? Whichever it is, it still pleases me.
Christmas is now ten days away, and grizzled and grumpy though I may have become, I still feel that same anticipatory prickling in the soles of my feet as the 25th approaches.

France is another country and they do things differently there. For instance, the celebration and heavyweight eating happen on Christmas Eve. Turkey is becoming more and more popular but the dish of choice has always been a leg of lamb - the Christmas gigot. So since living in France, I have had to change my habits a bit. For example, the Queen's speech on Christmas Day is not the same here. For one thing, the President of France speaks very little English. Perhaps that's because he is very little.

One habit I have never changed, and never will. What I shall be doing on Christmas Eve afternoon, is listening to the Nine Lessons and Carols  from King's College Chapel in Cambridge. And this via BBC Radio. Phew, made it.
Radio is what I really wanted to talk about. I am a radio man, and always have been. Very often, I prefer it to television. As that legendary small boy once said, "On radio, the pictures are better." And in the BBC's case, the small boy was right on the money.
The BBC - or "the Beeb" as we sometimes call it, or "Auntie" as we used to call it, has many different stations, both television and radio. I want to tell you about Radio 4 which is the station of the spoken word, or more particularly about Radio 4 Extra, its offspring, which is devoted to comedy and drama. Especially drama, and readings.
Here are some of the things I have listened to in the past several months on Radio 4 Extra. This is not an exhaustive list.

• The Complete Smiley - all eight books featuring George Smiley, dramatised and serialised with Simon Russell Beale superb as Smiley
• The Philip Marlowe Novels - with Toby Stephens - the megaheavy in 'Die Another Day' - as Philip Marlowe. Included, interestingly, 'Poodle Springs'.
• The Tom Ripley novels - also dramatised and serialised.
• Rogue Male read by Michael Jayston - who was Peter Guillam to Alec Guinness's George Smiley
• Busman's Honeymoon
• A Margery Allingham Albert Campion novel, again beautifully dramatised
• Deadlock by Sara Paretsky, with the amazing Kathleen Turner as a convincing Vic Warshawski
• The House of Silk by Antony Horovitz - the only new Sherlock Holmes novel to be authorised by the Conan Doyle Estate
• The Return of Inspector Steine - a comedy crime series by Lynne Truss (the very same)

I have also heard two  excellent series of short stories called 'Pulp Fiction' which included 'A Candle for a Bag Lady' (Lawrence Block), 'Forever After' (Jim Thompson) 'A Really Nice Guy'(William F Nolan) and 'So Fair, SoYoung, So Dead(John Lutz) All read by Peter Marinker who is a superbly talented American reader. I have more recently been listening to short stories by Bradbury and Colin Dexter.

Dear oh dear, how I am wittering  on. I know a list would lead to trouble.
What I really wanted to say to you is that you can dip into this trove anytime on

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4extra

Its extremely easy to find your way through the site. Just bring up the day's schedule, click on whatever takes your fancy and the player will pop up. (I think you will have to download the player but that's easy; the guidance is excellent)
If you're a born listener like me and like to read with your ears, I'm sure you'll find something to suit your criminous tastes.

So that, my beloved 'earers, is my Christmas present to you. If you already knew all about it, then pass it on to a friend.
That's the end of the radio commercial. We're handing you back now to your regular programme schedule.

And a very, very happy Christmas to all of you.

Crime Family

I have been fortunate (sort of) to have had two very different men influence my writing about crime: One was an uncle; the other a clinical psychologist.  They both knew a lot about crime because one was a practitioner of it; the other a specialist in the treatment of 'offenders' of various stripes: two men who never met, though I would love to have heard the psychologist's professional opinion of my uncle had they done so.

My late Uncle Jimmy often comes to mind when I am trying to craft a character whose behavior is less than desirable. He spent a great deal of his life in prison and, when not incarcerated, was involved directly, or peripherally, with many crimes of violence; even murder. He was scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia at one point, but had his sentence commuted to life when the death penalty was temporarily overruled by the Supreme Court in the early seventies. Did I mention he also had the luck of the devil?

Jimmy was a very good-looking man in his prime: tall, slender, charming, and well-muscled (lots of time in the prison gym). He had deceptively sleepy-looking blue eyes, which went well with his indolent manner, and he was usually smiling, as I recall. I was his favorite nephew, and I was glad. Mostly glad out of a vague dread of what might happen if I weren't.

My older brother, Danny, and I knew the stories about Uncle Jimmy; in fact, he once robbed a store at gunpoint just a few blocks from our house while ostensibly baby-sitting us. We found out later that this was why fetching us cokes and pork rinds took so long.

Mom always blamed her little brother's troubles on 'bad company'. He was also often a victim of circumstances… a staggering number of them by my count. But this was Annie Lou's opinion of most people who got into trouble; including her own boys, of course. Mom never met a 'bad' person. None of her other siblings were ever anything but good and kind people so maybe there is something to her line of reasoning. Of course, there’s always the ‘bad seed’ theory. But where we grew up did, in fact, provide a host of bad company and endless victimizing circumstances.

The Family Manse

 Lester's Meadows (isn't that an inviting name; just makes you want to move right into the neighborhood, doesn't it?) was packed with blue collar families; teaming with kids, and rife with violence, mostly of the domestic variety. For example, the first girl I ever had a crush on shot her father to death with his own pistol; she was sick of seeing her mother get beaten. She was only a young girl. It's hard to imagine her life after that, isn't it? But this was run-of-the-mill crime compared to Jimmy, who kicked it up a notch to open-throttled outlawry.

During the course of his career, Jimmy and his gang were involved in bank robberies, shoot-outs (He survived being shot twice– once by the police; the second time in more mysterious circumstances while living with a girlfriend… they broke up shortly thereafter. Remember the bit about luck?), high-speed car chases with guns blazing, escapes from prison, a stabbing while 'inside', a car crash during one escapade, and other incidents in which people were robbed, hurt, and killed. He was feared by both enemies and friends alike.

It's hard to know what makes someone like Jimmy tick. As a writer, I think a lot about his example. To my knowledge, he was never a victim of violence as a child, yet he was a fervent practitioner of it, going by the court records. His robberies were almost exclusively committed in the very mill-worker neighborhoods that he lived in and frequented (my psychologist friend would probably have made something out of that). I never sensed that he had any regret for anything he may have done, and he made me uneasy when he would visit or stay with us during his intervals of freedom.  I always felt he was studying us. It was little like keeping a snake in the house: fascinating, but a little nerve-wracking. I sensed that he was capable of anything.

The constants that I remember from his life were gambling and chance-taking: The workaday life was definitely not for him. I also don't think he had any vision of gaining great wealth as a result of his activities. I think it was the thrill of unbridled action, and the power of violence, that kept him coming back for more. But what do I know? Even when I questioned Uncle Jimmy about it later in our lives, he was evasive and sly; hinting that his actions were largely misunderstood; the police less than sporting. I found I couldn't believe him.

As a result of his actions our home was searched on more than one occasion; my parents questioned by police. Strange, and sometimes sinister, people would also show up on our steps from time to time; claiming to be friends of Jimmy; just looking to catch up, you know. We always gave the same answer: Don't know where he is or how to reach him. In Jimmy's line of work you could make dangerous enemies. We learned to be furtive when it came to my uncle; we knew that there were others just as ruthless out there.


Gangsterism was not new to my hometown of Columbus, Georgia. Our 'little' sister city just across the Chattahoochee River, Phenix City, Alabama, had been making the news for decades as an outlaw capital. Within this town a number of gangs had divided up the turf into various fiefdoms; each containing illegal casinos, bars, whorehouses and dope dens– heroin was the big money-maker in the forties and fifties. The sheriff's department recruited and ran a stable of prostitutes. Perhaps pay for law enforcement was not what it should have been. Citizens who protested their town being used in this manner were threatened and sometimes killed.

It all blew up in 1954 when the State Attorney-General Elect was assassinated there– he had campaigned on the promise of cleaning up 'Sin City'. Martial Rule was declared by the Governor of Alabama and he sent in the National Guard to clean out the vipers' nest. In the end, over five hundred indictments were handed down by the grand jury charged with the case; these included murder, voter fraud and intimidation, assault, bribery, illegal gambling, pimping, prostitution, narcotics trafficking, and kidnapping.

The racketeers' victims were largely textile workers from Columbus and GIs from nearby Fort Benning. People just like Jimmy's family… my family.  He could see Phenix City from his front porch growing up. Were these thugs his role models as a teenager and young man? He would have been the right age for it, but I don't know. He did admit to being an acquaintance of one of these racketeers in his youth… a protégé, perhaps? Maybe Annie Lou was right— it's all a matter of bad company. Or did he just like the lifestyle… period. Maybe it's that simple sometimes. I do remember my psychologist friend once saying, "People's behavior can be complicated, but their motives are usually very simple." I've always remembered that and I think he was right.

People like Jimmy, while dashing in a frightening sort of way, and entertaining, so long as you’re not on the receiving end, create a lot of misery in the world. Besides the obvious victims of violent crime, there are a host of unseen ones: wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, and children that will always suffer as an indirect result. Even the families of the criminals are affected. It’s a bit like poisoning a well— everyone that drinks from it gets sick; all become part of the crime family.

In the end, I fail to come to any positive conclusions about my uncle’s life of crime, though I suspect that you, dear reader, may have drawn some about me and why I chose a career in law enforcement. He did, inadvertently, give me a good education for police work.

As for crime fiction… I often feel that he is looking over my shoulder as I write… but then, so are his victims.

By the by, if you’re at all interested in those long ago events I referred to, there is an excellent book on the subject entitled, The Tragedy and the Triumph of Phenix City, Alabama by Margaret Anne Burns. It’s a riveting, factual account of a truly astounding piece of American crime history. There is also a movie from the fifties, The Phenix City Story (see poster above) that is pretty entertaining, if a little low on production value. It has popped up on TMC from time to time.

Finally, a shameless plug: My story “Ibrahim’s Eyes” is now on Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast and can be found on that website. Doug Allyn did me the honor of both reading it and creating the musical score; which he also performs wonderfully well. Please pass it on to your friends. Thanks, and happy holidays!

What's in a Word?

By Fran Rizer

In 2011, the English language passed the million word mark, and folks at the Global Language Monitor estimate that the language gains a new word every ninety-eight minutes. As writers, words are our primary tools. This is daunting.

When I think of the changing language, I confess my mind goes to changes in my lifetime--most of them as they relate to me. I confess I've been a cougar at times in the past, but I didn't know that was the word for it.

Some words "date" the speaker. Hardly anyone other than little old ladies in nursing homes use the word "rouge," as in, "That woman wore so much rouge she looked like a clown." (Or like a harlot depending upon who's talking.) It's been "blush" for years.

"Horrific" was created in my lifetime. A combination of "terrific" and "horrible," I refused to use that word for years, but I do now.

Eponyms are common words that are derived from proper names. Caesarian section was named after Julius Caesar, who was "plucked from his mother's womb." The saxophone was named for the Belgian inventor Adolphe Sax.

Since words have always fascinated me, I sometimes visit the Global Language Monitor. On December eleventh, the Monitor quoted Bill DeMain's 7/22/11 list of Fifteen Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent. I generally leave the lists up to John and Leigh, but I thought these were too great not to pass on.

1. Zhaghzhagh (Persian)

The chattering of teeth from the cold or from rage.

2. Yuputka (Ulwa)

A word made for walking in the woods at night. It's the phantom sensation of something

crawling on your skin.

3. Slampadato (Italian)

Addicted to the infra-red glow of tanning salons? This word describes you.

4. Luftmensch (Yiddish)

There are several Yiddish words to describe social misfits. This one is for an impractical dreamer with no business sense. Literally, air person.

5. Iktsuarpok (Inuit)

You know that feeling of anticipation when you're waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they're there yet? This is the word for it.

6. Cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish)

A word that would aptly describe the prevailing fashion trend among American men under

40, it means one who wears the shirt tail out of his trousers.

7. Pana Po o (Hawaiian)

"Mnn, now where did I leave those keys?" he asked, pana po o'ing. It means to scratch

your head in order to help you remember something you've forgotten.

8. Gumasservi (Turkish)

Meteorologists can be poets in Turkey with words like this. It means moonlight shining

on water.

9. Vybafnout (Czech)

A word tailor-made for annoying older brothers--it means to jump out and say boo.

10. Mencolek (Indonesian)

You know that old trick where you tap someone lightly on the opposite shoulder from

behind to fool them? The Indonesians have this word for it.

11. Famiti (Samoan)

To make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a

dog or child.

12. Glas wen (Welsh)

A smile that is insincere or mocking. Literally, a blue smile.

13. Bakku-shan (Japanese)

The experience of seeing a woman who appears pretty from behind but not from the front.

14. Boketto (Japanese)

The Japanese respect so much of the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking that they give it a name.

15. Kummerspeek (German)

Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

to give it a name.

Bakku-shan (No. 13) brought to mind that perhaps we need an English word for a guy with a fine behind who turns around and is actually U-G-L-Y. Or maybe a word for the ugly guy who just oozes appeal anyway. (My older son once told me that he'd figured out that men who appealed to me had "knowing eyes." I don't know exactly what that means. Maybe we need a word for "knowing eyes.") What about you? Can you think of an event or description that doesn't have an English word but needs one?

Note: Many thanks to those of you who communicated concern and best wishes for my mother. She's eighty-five, tiny, and fragile. The heart attack, broken hip, and cracked wrist took a lot out of her, and I spent almost two weeks at the hospital round the clock. She is, however, improving, and has just been moved to rehab. Thanks again.

No contest question today.

Until we meet again. . .take care of YOU.

Fresh Slices

One of the best blogs is Women of Mystery and my favorite word artist there is Terrie Moran, who may or may not be the great-great-great grandchild of Colonel Sebastian Moran. The WoM are smart, sassy, and damn fine writers. Many are members of the New York chapter of Sisters in Crime (SinC), which have a new book out with the creepy title Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices.

Read Terrie's article about the anthology and then read this book, cooked up by seasoned authors and peppered with excellent examples of the many ways to die in New York.

Terrie Farley Moran

by Terrie Farley Moran

Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices is the second anthology written by the New York / Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime. The heart of the twenty-two stories in Fresh Slices is the diversity of people and neighborhoods within the five boroughs of New York City—all very different, yet all very New York. Our goal was to introduce readers to places far off the tourist track. We are delighted that Derringer winner Anita Page kicks off the anthology in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, where we see the effects of a decades old murder in “Tear Down.” The anthology’s final story pulls readers east through Queens and into the lives of day laborers struggling to get through a particularly gruesome job. Written by Edgar and Anthony nominee K.j.a. Wishnia, “North of Clinton” is sure to leave an impression. Kindle readers might like to know that “Tear Down” is the free “first chapter” in the Kindle bookstore copy of Fresh Slices. I’m sure it will leave you wanting more New York attitude. 

East-side, west-side— In Manhattan there once was a meat packing district on each side of town. “A Countdown to Death,” by Deirdre Verne is set in a gorgeous building in Tudor City which was built on  the east-side meat packing site, while in “Taking the Highline,” Fran Bannigan Cox brings us inside the pulse pounding clubs and the lush elevated park that have taken over the meat packing district on the west-side.

In “A Vampire in Brooklyn” Leigh Neely not only helps us imagine life with vampires working as officers in the NYPD, she also share secrets about the Brooklyn Bridge that few people know.

It’s 9/11. You are standing on a rise in MacNeil Park in the Borough of Queens with the locals gathered to pray as they watch events unfold across the East River in “The Sneaker Tree,” my contribution to the anthology.

For a splendid taste of the kinds of odd locations and diverse stories you can expect to find here, click over for a free read of Clare Toohey’s story, “A Morbid Case of Identity Theft.” Clare starts her story in The Morbid Anatomy Library, “a private research library and collection of curiosities” and ends it in the streets of Brooklyn beside the Gowanus Canal.

On behalf of the anthology authors and all of the members of the Sisters in Crime New York/Tri-State chapter, many thanks to Leigh Lundin and the other SleuthSayers for inviting us to introduce Fresh Slices to your many friends and readers.

Information about the stories, the authors, and book availability is available at Murder New York Style: Fresh Slices. Be sure to click on the “small bites” tab to read the first one hundred fifty words or so of each story. And on the home page, please don’t forget to scroll down to see THE THONG.

See you in New York!

Square Pegs, Round Holes

Much has been said, in writers' magazines and at writers' blogs, about choosing names for fictional characters. But what about choosing actors for fictional characters?

Question: Have you ever gone to a movie that was adapted from a book or story you liked, and found that the hero/heroine didn't look or behave the way you had expected him or her to? Most of us have. I tend to be pretty lenient on that subject--give 'em a chance, right?--but now and then it just doesn't work. Miscasting does happen, and when it does I think the disappointment is even worse for those moviegoers who are also writers. My "belief" in the characters can make or break a piece of fiction for me, whether it's on the page or on the screen.

Worth a thousand words

I've heard that you should be careful watching music videos, for one simple reason: if it turns out you don't like the video, you'll never again enjoy the song quite as much, because the video will stay in your mind forever. The same thing can apply to books and movies. If you read the novel first, your imagination can roam free. If you see the film first, you're limited. Faces and settings have already been supplied, and by someone else. I remember having my own image of Vito Corleone in my mind when I read The Godfather; if I had seen the film first I would almost certainly have pictured Brando instead.

Bottom line is, I usually prefer to read the book before seeing the film version. But not always. I watched Lonesome Dove when it first aired on TV, and when I then decided to read the McMurtry novel, I enjoyed it just as much. But in this instance, the movie was so well done (and so true to the novel) I think it actually helped to later have the actors' faces (Duvall, Jones, Glover, etc.) in my head when I read the book.

Rockin' roles

I should mention that I think some actors were probably born to play certain characters, whether you happen to have read the book first or not. Examples: Gable and Leigh as Rhett and Scarlett, Peck as Atticus Finch, Sharif as Yuri Zhivago, Fonda as Tom Joad. It's hard to imagine anyone else in those parts.

Sometimes--not often--my thinking actually changes during the course of the movie. I had already read Robert Ludlum's three Bourne novels before I saw The Bourne Identity, and at first glance I just couldn't buy Matt Damon in the title role (he looked far too young, for one thing)--but he was so good at it, he won me over. The same thing goes for Alan Ladd, in Shane. Having read the novel in high school, I had a pretty clear picture in my mind of the way Shane would look: tall, slim, dark, sinister. I didn't see the movie until I was a freshman in college, and I remember sitting there in the theatre and thinking Whoa, this friendly little blond guy with the fringe outfit and fancy beltbuckle looked like some kind of sissy compared to the image I already had in my imagination. But the story and the acting were so good it made me a believer, and as a result I now think that Ladd (all five-foot-six of him) was the right choice. The same thing happened with Christopher Walken as Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone: I started out doubting him and ended up liking him.

Here, read these lines, and don't look at the camera . . .

Casting is an interesting topic in itself. It was a thrill for me, several years ago, to attend some of the auditions for the roles in a film adaptation of one of my short stories. (The movie never got made, but that's a column for another day.) One of the many things I learned was that it's far easier to try to cast someone "safe" in a certain part--a Sam Elliott in a western, let's say, or a Lee Marvin in a war movie--than to go against type and take a chance. But occasionally that risk can pay off. Who would've thought George Clooney would be convincing as a swordboat captain, or that Charlize Theron could be a Monster, or that Disney child star Kurt Russell could be believable as a scowling, eyepatched convict who rescues the President and escapes from a futuristic New York? Well, the filmmakers did, and I'm glad they did.

Sometimes, of course, that kind of close-your-eyes-and-leap innovation can backfire. It was hard for me to believe John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror, Charlton Heston as a Mexican detective in Touch of Evil, and Mickey Rooney as a Japanese landlord in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

But I digress. If we focus only on characters in novels who later become characters in movies, there are a lot of examples of what I think were good/bad casting decisions. The good ones many of us might agree on: Connery as James Bond, Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, Scheider as police chief Martin Brody, and so on. But the not-so-good ones . . . ?

The bad and the ugly

Since this is an opinion column, here are some examples of what I thought were poor casting decisions:

• Roger Moore as James Bond
• Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy (Bonfire of the Vanities)
• Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg (The Stand)
• Gregory Peck as Josef Mengele (The Boys From Brazil)
• Eriq La Salle as Lucas Davenport (Mind Prey)
• Dean Martin as Vernon Demerest (Airport)
• Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot (The Alphabet Murders)
• Joe Mantegna as Spenser (Small Vices)
• Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker (Dracula)
• Renee Zellwegger as Allison French (Appaloosa)
• Orlando Bloom as Legolas (the Lord of the Rings trilogy)
• Leo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes (The Aviator)
• Glen Campbell as Le Boeuf (True Grit)
• Marlon Brando as Sakini (The Teahouse of the August Moon)
• Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan (The Sum of All Fears)

And I honestly haven't made up my mind on some: Downey and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson, for instance--or Travolta as Chili Palmer. They weren't bad choices, but I think they could've been better.

A shorter reach

I will confess that I have doubts about the decision to cast Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in the upcoming movie version of Lee Child's One Shot. Since I've read almost all the Reacher novels, I know that good ole Jack is supposed to be six-five and two-fifty--and his size is actually a factor, in what he can do and not do in the books. Cruise can play a tough guy, no question about that, but for me he just doesn't fit the image. I think I'm going to find myself wondering how Jerry Maguire could possibly overcome all the incredible hulks that cross Jack Reacher's path.

I'm also not convinced that Katherine Heigl will be an effective Stephanie Plum in 2012's One for the Money--I had always pictured somebody more like Sandra Bullock. (And I've heard Debbie Reynolds will play Grandma Mazur, which I'm hoping was just an unfortunate dream I had after eating too many chili dogs.) On the other hand, the actors in the trailers I've seen for the upcoming version of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games look terrific. I loved that novel, so I hope the producers/directors get it right.

More questions

For those of you who are writers, do you usually have an image of a real actor's face in your mind when you create a character? (I don't.) Do you picture an actor's face for a character when you read about him or her in someone else's novel or story? (I do.) Not that it matters a whit, but the person I usually see as Jack Reacher is Russell Crowe, and Miss Plum's boyfriend Joe Morelli has always been actor John Stamos. I have no idea why, but those are the faces that first popped into my brain when I encountered those characters.

What are your thoughts, on this earthshakingly-important subject? Are there any actor/role matchups that you think are motion-picture perfect? Are there any that you wish you'd never even heard about, much less seen with your own eyes? Are you beginning to wish you'd never seen this article?

At least it won't be made into a movie.

to e- or not to e-

Today's bit is part personal experience in the e-publishing arena and part BSP. You may skim over the BSP part if you like, but it allows me to speak with a modicum of authority on various information I've acquired concerning the e-publishing world. By now, just about everyone has heard that e-books are outselling print books, which means some of the rules and procedures are changing fast. Authors, readers, book sellers and publishers find themselves in the position of trying to figure out the future of publishing and how it affects them now or may affect them tomorrow.
My first venture in was about four years ago when I signed a contract for a non-fiction work for hire under one of my undercover aliases. The advance was a nice high four figures, the main print royalties were running at ten percent and the e-book royalty was about the same. What did I know? Two years later, I'm conversing with a print novelist and find she is getting twenty to twenty-five percent e-royalties on her newly contracted print novels. Another year goes by, and this same novelist has her agent going back to older contracts and getting her previous ten percent e-royalties also increased to twenty-five percent. Then a couple of months ago, I hear that her new print contracts now provide for a forty percent e-royalty. That's pretty good, especially since the publisher does all the e-formatting, cover art and advertising.

As for me, I'm prinarily a short story author. Okay, so I know an Edgar Nominee who started out writing short stories and who now has an e-collection out consisting of previously published stories, some in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and some in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Since stories in those two publications tend to have a life span of about one month on the racks, it makes sense to expand their reading life via another form. My inquiries into the how-to-do-it led me much deeper into this new e-world.
Choices for e-books without print contracts:
1) Learn to do your own e-book formatting for Kindle and Smashwords (Nook, Sony, Apple, Kobo, etc.) and find your own cover art. Pro: you get 70% royalties. Con: you have to do your own advertising, marketing, promotion.
2) Do your own formatting and pay someone for the cover art. Same Pros and Cons as above,
except you're out front on the cost of the art.
3) Pay someone to do the formatting and cover art. Same Pros and Cons, except you're out
the cost of formatting and art as front costs.
4) Go with an e-publishing company who will do the formatting and cover art. In this case, the
author usually receives 42% royalties. Pro: the e-publisher does everything, to include
advertising. Con: the royalty is 28% less than if you could do it yourself.

NOTE: Formatting is different for Kindle than for other e-readers. My suggestion is to do both, but get the Kindle format up first. It seems that Amazon has much higher sales than Smashwords formats.

So, much of this equation comes down to how good are you at networking and marketing, and how much of the technical work can you or do you want to do on your own?

To receive payment for Kindle sales, you set up an EFT system with your local checking account. Smashwords requires a Paypal account to get your monthly e-book sales money. Or, the author can request a snail mail check for either e-market if so desired. Print and e-publishers have their own systems for paying e-royalties.


I happened to mention all this info to my Huey pilot buddy who in the past has parked us on pickup sized mesa tops for pit stops looking straight down at the lower landscape, dropped us out of the sky in auto-rotation, and flown nape of the earth where I could reach out and almost touch....oh, never mind. In any case, when he mentioned he could figure out how to do the formatting, I tended to trust him. Plus, he's the one who creates my annual custom Christmas card to Linda Landrigan, based on one of the stories she buys from me that year for AHMM.




Thus, in July 2011, we got 9 Historical Mysteries up on Amazon, quickly followed by 9 Twin Brothers Bail Bond Mysteries, 9 Chronicles of Crime and 9 Deadly Tales. Within two months, the same titles went up on Smashwords for other e-readers. Several of these stories were previously published in AHMM, Easyriders Magazine, Outlaw Biker Magazine or elsewhere. Some are seeing print for the first time. When I write two more stories in my AHMM previously published Holiday Burglars series, we'll put up a 5th e-book collection. The cover's already made.

How are e-book sales going? Aaaaahhhh, I need to do more promoting, because while the money is free, I'm not close to getting rich. However, according to my first ever e-book review for 9 Historical Mysteries( http://www.overmydeadbody.com/rtlawton.htm ), I am now a "consummate story teller." No, she is not a relative and has no financial interest in the success or failure of the book. I don't even know the lady, but I surely do admire her taste in short stories.

Not too long ago, Rob Lopresti gave me an excellent review ( http://tinyurl.com/3hrhvrb ) on another of his blog sites for one of my Holiday Burglar stories in AHMM's October 2011 issue. He and I occasionally swap stories for critiques before subbing out to market. Whereas I consider Rob's clever stories to be in a more literary vein than mine, I see myself as merely telling stories to friends in a bar for laughs and grins.

By now, you've probably noticed this article hasn't addressed the issue of quality writing for e-books. Previously published works and those coming out from publishing houses naturally assume a higher level of copy editing quality than one put up as self-published by its own author. With self-published works, the potential reader risks a "buyer beware" situation. To counteract this, most e-book sellers offer a percentage of the book as a free sample download. The customer can then decide if the e-book is up to their reading standards and interest before they put their money down.

If you are a novelist, you are probably already involved in some aspect of e-publishing, even if it is merely the signing of your print contract. As a short story author, you may enter this arena by being accepted into an e-anthology or by deciding to put up your own e-collection of stories. For readers, your biggest decision is figuring out which e-reader works best for you, but you should know that those things are updating and changing rapidly with new technology. My current black and white Kindle 3G will download on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, and now there is already a color version for Kindle.




I can hardly keep up.

Smart Writers and Stupid Writers

All Gaul may have been divided into three parts, as any beginning Latin student knows, but as far as I am concerned, all writers are divided into two groups - smart writers and stupid writers. Alas, I am firmly, and I might add unrepentantly, in the latter group at least when writing fiction. Even mystery fiction.

We all know the smart writers. They plan ahead. They have file cards of characters' personality features, elaborate back stories, and flow charts. Although it may be apocryphal, I rather like the story about Agatha Christie lying in her long British bathtub eating apples, until, the top of the tub lined with cores, she had worked out another of her fiendishly complex plots. That's my idea of a smart writer, one who leaves nothing to chance and has a clear map of where the story is going and who's going to do what to whom.

I find this sort of planning impossible, even though I happen to live with a smart writer. My sportswriter husband was capable, in the old days when dictation was necessary, of dictating a sports story, complete with all punctuation, from a few notes in his reporter's book. I found this astonishing, given my own troubles even with pen, paper, and typewriter. His was a hard act to follow, and perhaps you can understand why I didn't start writing until I was in my thirties.

And then, despite his good example, I turned out to be a thoroughly stupid writer. I get an idea, and because at least the beginnings of beginnings are easy, I plunge in. A character whispers in my ear, and I write down what he or she says. They tend to be obsessives with homicide in mind, although I get a few nice folk who are shocked at evil and want to set the world to rights.

The first few pages go swimmingly. There is really nothing better than starting a story (or a novel) with a flourish. How clever one feels, how creative. But then comes a difficulty, The Plot. While a smart writer would have looked into this little detail early on, the stupid writer trusts to the beneficence of the Muse, who, like all divas and goddesses, has her off days. Story comes to a halt. Writer goes for a walk in winter, a swim in summer, a sleep in the evening. And hopes.

But the Providence, as the Scots used to say, that looks after bairns and drunkards, has a soft spot for stupid writers. Gradually the story unfolds. And this is good, this is interesting. Every morning the stupid writer gets up with a little more material and she has to write if she is going to discover how the story comes out.

Forget all the writerly delays, the websites to check out, the email to answer - how modern technology has expanded the pencil sharpening and paper straightening of yesteryear. But if I want the end of the story, I have to get to work.

I find this salutary, though it may not be the case with every stupid writer. But I really aspired to be a reader, not a writer, and I must confess that if I knew the whole plot, the victim, the murderer, the exact placement of the crucial chase, the romantic moment, etc, etc, I would never sit down at the computer.

I find such smart certainty boring in the nth degree, while discovery is interesting and gets the juices going. I like to be surprised by everything from a character's sexual orientation to the identity of the killer, though I must admit that I left the latter very long in The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed. I reached 260 pages and was still dithering between two plausible candidates, but at least my work day wasn't boring.

Of course, there are disadvantages to being a stupid writer. Certain classic forms of the mystery are a closed book as far as I am concerned. Even thinking about a locked room puzzle gives me a headache and anything involving railroad or train schedules or precise timing is out of the question. Who can think that far ahead?

Plots can take a long time to resolve, too. I started a story called The Great Choreographer years ago and it only fell into shape earlier this spring. I have a suitcase full of money (strictly literary, of course) that offers all sorts of possibilities but has not yet found a good home. A story that I just finished considered two different victims and a couple of different murderous operandi before it reached its final form. This is not efficient.

Still, stupid writing has its advantages. Characters that develop as they go along are, I think, less liable to be easy stereotypes, and if plots take a while to develop, they sometimes provide nice surprises along the lines of 'I didn't think he'd ever do that!'

In any case, I suspect one writes as one must. And if one writes to know what one is thinking, then one always has a good strong motive to get back to the writing desk.

At the end of your trope

So, all you writers out there: have you ever been tempted to hang a lampshade on  a weak point in your plot?  Have you ever been reduced to the use of oven logic?  Or do you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about?
If the latter than you might want to discover a cool webpage called TV Tropes.  It is a wiki and, as the home page explains, it is "a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction."  Don't think it is limited to TV, by the way.  There are plenty of examples from literature, movies, comic books, and even video games.

If I have a problem with the execution it is that they love clever names for the tropes, which can make it hard to find the one you are looking for.  (If you find one that is almost what you are looking for, check the related tropes at the bottom.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Absence of Evidence  In mystery fiction this is known as the dog in the night-time. 
Black Best Friend  Doesn't need much explanation, I guess.
Bolivian Army Ending  As in Butch Cassidy.  Nobody here gets out alive.
Bond Villain Stupidity.  I found this one in the index by typing in "Goodbye, Mr. Bond."  The villain (not necessarily in a Bond movie) at long last captures the good guy, sets up an elaborate death trap, and then doesn't stay to see if it works.  The movie Austin Powers mocked this perfectly.
Bus Crash  A character is killed  retroactively, that is, after the actor has left the show (and therefore doesn't get a dramatic death scene).  Most famously, I think, Henry Blake on MASH.
Crazy enough to work  As the wiki noted, this is practically Captain Kirk's middle name.  I hate when it shows up in a story, but what about when it happens in real life?  Apollo 13, anybody?
Lampshade Hanging You have a plot point so weak or unlikely the audience may refuse to bite.  So, illogically, you call their attention to it.  As the page points out, even Shakespeare hung a lampshade or two.
Mr. Exposition  Hello, hero.  Let me tell you everything that has been going on, which you probably know, but the autdience doesn't.
Oven Logic  Old comedy  premise.  We need to cook it faster so double the temperature and half the time!

Red Shirt Army  If you ever watched Star Trek you understand this one.  Why can't the storm troopers ever shoot straight?

Tomato Surprise  A specific kind of twist ending, one that depends on the audience suddenly learning something that some of the characters have known all along.

And finally....
Not worth killing   The bad guy lets the puny mortal go, as not worth his attention.   But what I was looking for and couldn't find was the situation where the hero is about to destroy his career/violate his code by killing the bad guy in cold blood and the side kick says "Don't do it!  He's not worth it!"

I hope you find TV tropes to be worth your time.

Oops!

(with a lot of help from Kurt Sercu)

3. 11/22/63 (Scribner, $35)

By Stephen King.   A modest English professor is offered the chance to change history — by preventing the JFK assassination.

Washington Post, description of the number 3 book on the bestseller list, December 4, 2011

*    *    *    *

Add to that sense of ho-humness the fact that the secret in question turns out to be rather murky, and many readers will be left wondering exactly what is “the most dangerous thing” referred to in the title. (Beats me.) 

 Quoted from Maureen Corrigan’s review of Laura Lippman’s “The Most Dangerous Thing,” Washington Post, October 9, 2011

     What do these two quotes from the Washington Post have in common other than referring to two recently published bestsellers?  At least one other thing:  they each contain errors unpardonably obvious to anyone who has actually read Stephen King’s 11/22/63 or Laura Lippman’s The Most Dangerous Thing.  In King’s book the protagonist is a high school English teacher, not a college professor.  And no reader who actually finishes Laura Lippman’s latest novel The Most Dangerous Thing (which I liked a lot) could have the smallest doubt as to what the most dangerous thing is.  That question (and the title) is explicitly explained, for anyone who hasn’t already figured it out, in the last sentence of the book.  (You know me, no spoilers – just telling you where you can find it, not what it is!)

    I am pretty unforgiving about errors such as those discussed above.  I mean, all the journalist assembling the list of bestsellers for the Washington Post had to do was write one correct sentence about 11/22/63.  And all Ms. Corrigan had to do was to actually read the book that she was reviewing, start to finish.  One can be more forgiving, however, when it is Mr. King or Ms. Lippman who get something wrong, or seemingly wrong, during the course of their novels.  These, after all, are not factual reviews, they are works fiction, and they come to us with the established leniency of poetic license. 

    One of the funny things about such seeming mistakes, therefore, is that sometimes they are not errors at all.  Laura Lippman, for example, in an afterward, discusses the liberties she has taken with the real-life town of Dickeyville, Maryland in The Most Dangerous Thing.  And Stephen King is famous for dropping snippets of information into his works that could be historical errors but that could also be references to other King works, usually clues hearkening back to his seven (soon to be eight) volume Gunslinger series.   Notwithstanding this, however, Stephen King can be a bit defensive when it comes to defending his own research. 

    In The Colorado Kid (which, as noted in a previous column, is not my favorite work by King) there is a reference to a Starbucks coffee shop in Denver, Colorado in 1980.  When a USA Today review of the book mentioned that there in fact were no Starbuck stores in 1980 Denver, Mr. King bristled, and posted the following retort on his website:  "The review of  The Colorado Kid in [the October 7, 2005] issue of . . . USA Today  mentions that there was no Starbucks in Denver in 1980. Don’t assume that’s a mistake on my part. The constant readers of the Dark Tower series may realize that is not necessarily a continuity error, but a clue.”

    Hmmm.  Allow me to digress for a paragraph.  For many years my brother and I gave my mother a gag gift as the last gift of Christmas each year.  These were really stupid things – a three foot tall plastic goose that lights up, a kit kat clock, an autographed picture of Dwayne Hickman (“Dobie Gillis” -- remember?).  We always told my mother that each gift was a clue to a secret message that would be revealed over the course of future Christmases.  We continued this silly stunt for twenty five years and every year my mother would fret over what the growing number of “clues” had in common, what they might point to.  Get the picture?  We were just winging it.  No secret message, just stupid disparate gifts.

    Okay – back to the issue at hand.   I have read all of Stephen King’s books, including all of the Gunslinger series, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how the presence of a Starbucks in 1980 in Denver has anything to do with Roland’s grand quest in the Gunslinger.   So was that Starbucks a clue, or was it an “oops?”

    With all of this in mind, let’s poke around a little in Stephen King’s latest novel 11/22/63.  As I wrote two weeks ago, I think this is a stand-out novel, to my mind the best thing Stephen King has done in over ten years.  And I don't want to detract from the novel by trolling for errors.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with it!

    Given the novel’s time travel theme King in 11/22/63 is called upon to describe and re-create life in the era from 1958 to 1963.  Let’s take a look at how he does on just one aspect of that quest, his repeated references to another of my favorite authors (and characters) Ellery Queen. 

    I suspect that Stephen King is an Ellery Queen fan.  After all, Ellery pops up in many King novels, including in the aforementioned The Colorado Kid.  Indeed, in explaining that there will be no solution offered up in that novel to the mystery that is at its core, the heroine is admonished by one of her mentors that she should not expect Ellery “to come waltzin’ out of the closet” with a solution.  The solution to the mystery in The Colorado Kid remains a mystery to me, but so too the connection, if any, between that Denver Starbucks store and the Gunslinger.

    11/22/63 also contains several references to Ellery Queen, most notably to the NBC series “The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen,” which aired from 1958 through 1959.  The timing of certain events in the novel (I’m carefully avoiding spoilers here) are critically dependent on the timing of an episode of the series that, according to the storyline of the novel, was aired on Halloween night, 1958.  At the first mention of the television show in the novel I wondered whether the Ellery Queen series had, in fact, aired on Halloween night in 1958.  This sent me off to Kurt Sercu’s repository of Queen information, Ellery Queen – a Website on Deduction.  (Kurt’s site was the focus, many will recall, of an earlier article.)  And I was immediately rewarded – according to Kurt’s website on Friday, October 31, 1958 The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen, starring George Nader as Ellery presented the following episode:

George Nader as Ellery Queen

Cat of Many Tails

         10/31/58 With John Abbott, Paul Langton

The mayor of New York City calls on Ellery to help solve a series of strangulations for which the police can find no motive but which they believe to be the work of one killer.

The story, based on Queen’s 1949 novel of the same title, is a perfect one for Halloween.

    However, about 100 pages further into 11/22/63 the hero secures a copy of TV Guide to check on the timing of the Halloween broadcast, and there the episode is described as follows:

8 PM, Channel 2:  The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, George Nader, Les Tremayne, “So Rich, So Lovely, So Dead.”  A conniving stockbroker (Whit Bissell) stalks a wealthy heiress (Eva Gabor) as Ellery and his father investigate

     What happened to Cat of Many Tails?  Kurt’s website in fact identifies an episode of the series titled “So Rich, So Lovely, So Dead,” and that episode otherwise meets the description in King’s book.  Except for one fact:  the episode aired one month later, on November 28, 1958.  “What is going on, here?” I thought.  Then I immediately sent an email across the pond to Belgium posing that same question to Kurt.

 

    Kurt dove into his archive of Queen documentation and came up with pretty irrefutable evidence that it was, indeed, “Cat of Many Tails” that aired on Halloween in 1958.  First Kurt pointed out that Francis Nevins lists the episode as the one appearing on Halloween in his definitive article "Ellery Queen on the Small Screen" which appeared in The Armchair Detective volume 12, 1979.  Second, the episode is also identified as having aired on Halloween according to the television archives maintained by the Theatre Arts Library at UCLA.  Third, from Kurt’s own archives he uncovered a 1958 NBC press memorandum that also identifies Cat of Many Tails as the Halloween episode.  And fourth, Kurt supplied me with a TV listing from Halloween week, 1958 also identifying Cat of Many Tails as the episode that aired that night. 

Halloween Week 1958

Halloween Week 1959

Another funny thing – 11/22/63 describes that Halloween issue of TV Guide as one “with Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase on the cover.”  This time I hit the internet, and uncovered the actual TV Guide cover for Halloween week of 1958.  It's reproduced on the left, and, as is obvious, it featured George Burns on the cover.  So what about Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase?

   After all of this Kurt and I sort of had a burr under our saddle so we went back to trolling the internet.  Just as the heroine in The Colorado Kid tried to solve her unsolvable mystery, so too Kurt and I got a little obsessed with what was going on back in the 1950s, at least according to King’s view.   Lo and behold, we eventually found the TV Guide cover above on the right.  Yep, it features Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase, and it was published on the week of Halloween.  But Halloween of 1959, not 1958.

    And that’s as far as we got.  So, just like the heroine in the The Colorado Kid, you should not expect Ellery to come “waltzin out of the closet” tying together all of those clues and making sense out of the 1958 TV schedule as set forth in 11/22/63.  Did Stephen King encounter a (minor) researching “oops” that caused him to miss the date of the Ellery Queen episode he refers to by one month, and the date of the cover of TV Guide by one year?  Or is the Gunslinger and his ka-tet sleeping just a bit easier under a desert moon in an alternative 11/22/63 universe where history has been set right and Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase’s Halloween TV Guide cover exists where it was supposed to, in 1958?

Oops?  or Ka?