Vive la Différence Part 2

by Leigh Lundin

© unknown

Straight from my eMailbox last week I mentioned a few reasons why women contend men are happy beasts. Naturally, scientists have developed a test to determine guynicity and naturally SleuthSayers proudly brings it to you.

Testing Your Man's Manliness

Give your man this scientific quiz to determine his GQ or Guyness Quotient.

1. Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:
1. Present it to the President of the United States.
2. Present it to the Secretary General of the United Nations.
3. Take it apart.
2. As you grow older, what lost quality of your youthful life do you miss the most?
1. Innocence.
2. Idealism.
3. Cherry bombs.
3. When is it okay to kiss another male?
1. When you wish to display simple and pure affection without regard for narrow-minded social conventions.
2. When he is the pope. (not on the lips.)
3. When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsmanlike way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.
4. What about hugging another male?
1. If he's your father and at least one of you has a fatal disease.
2. If you're performing the Heimlich maneuver. (And even in this case, you should repeatedly shout: "I am just dislodging food trapped in this male's trachea! I am not in any way aroused!")
3. If you're a professional baseball player and a teammate hits a home run to win the World Series, you may hug him provided that:
1. He is legally within the base path,
2. Both of you are wearing protective cups, and
3. You also pound him fraternally with your fist hard enough to cause fractures.
5. Complete this sentence: A funeral is a good time to…
1. remember the deceased and console his loved ones.
2. reflect upon the fleeting transience of earthly life.
3. tell that tasteless joke about the dead pedophile in the bar.
6. In your opinion, the ideal pet is:
1. cat
2. dog
3. dog that eats cats
4. alligator
7. You have been seeing a woman for several years. She's attractive and intelligent, and you always enjoy being with her. One leisurely Sunday afternoon the two of you are taking it easy – you're watching a football game; she's reading the papers – when she suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, tells you that she thinks she really loves you, but she can no longer bear the uncertainty of not knowing where your relationship is going. She says she's not asking whether you want to get married; only whether you believe that you have some kind of future together. What do you say?
1. That you sincerely believe the two of you do have a future, but you don't want to rush it.
2. That although you also have strong feelings for her, you cannot honestly say that you'll be ready anytime soon to make a lasting commitment, and you don't want to hurt her by holding out false hope.
3. That you cannot believe the Jets called a draw play on third and seventeen.
8. You have decided that you truly love a woman and you want to spend the rest of your life with her– sharing the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the tragedies, and all the adventures and opportunities that the world has to offer, come what may. How do you tell her?
1. You take her to a nice restaurant and tell her after dinner.
2. You take her for a walk on a moonlit beach, and you say her name, and when she turns to you, with the sea breeze blowing her hair and the stars in her eyes, you tell her.
3. Tell her what?
9. You get married. One weekday morning your wife wakes up feeling ill and asks you to get your three children ready for school. Your first question to her is:
1. "Do they need to eat or anything?"
2. "They're in school already?"
3. "There are three of them?"
4. "Children? What children?"
   
10. When is it okay to throw away a set of veteran underwear?
1. When it has turned the color of a dead whale and developed new holes so large that you're not sure which ones were originally intended for your legs.
2. When it is down to eight loosely connected underwear molecules and has to be handled with tweezers.
3. It is never okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly in case somebody – and we are not naming names, but this would be his wife – is quietly trying to discard his underwear, which she is frankly jealous of, because the guy seems to have a more intimate relationship with it than with her.
11. What, in your opinion, is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land?
1. He was being tested.
2. He wanted them to really appreciate the Promised Land when they finally got there.
3. He refused to ask directions.
12. What is the human race's single greatest achievement?
1. Democracy.
2. Religion.
3. Remote control.

How to Score: Give one point for every time you picked answer 'c'. A real guy would score at least 10 on this test. In fact, a real guy would score at least 15, because he would receive the special five-point bonus for getting the tasteless dead pedophile in the bar joke.

The shrink is in...cyberspace

by Elizabeth Zelvin

As regular readers of SleuthSayers know, my blog brother Dixon Hill knows all about explosives. My blog sister Eve Fisher visits prisons. And I too have an alternative identity. Am I Wonder Woman? Nope. Outrageous Older Woman? Well, yes, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. In the world of mental health professionals, I’m known as LZcybershrink.

That’s the monicker by which I do counseling and therapy online with clients all over the world on my eponymous website, LZcybershrink.com. I’ve even got the T-shirt. On the back, it says, “Shrink online…grow online.”

I started doing this work around the year 2000, after fifteen years as a clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and director of alcoholism treatment programs in New York. New York City is a therapy-rich town. Walk out the door and spit, and you’ll hit six therapists. So there’s a lot of competition for clients who sound like Woody Allen.

Since I went online, I’ve treated folks who would never have walked into a therapist’s office in their communities: the stutterer, the 400-pound compulsive overeater, the farmer’s wife whose husband is drinking again, the flasher, the rape survivor, the gay guy or lesbian in the military. I’m the only shrink in Manhattan who’s had a client in crisis because her pregnant horse got cancer. I’ve helped a lot of people by doing exactly what I do as a mystery writer: sit down at the computer and let those fingers fly.

Online therapy is still a new field. It attracts a lot of skepticism. How can you connect with people if you can’t make eye contact and hear their voices? How can clients express themselves and convey authentic emotions through the written word? I hope every writer and avid reader can answer that second question. Did Shakespeare convey authentic emotion in King Lear? I think so. Don’t you? My two professions have a lot in common. Both use the medium of the written word expressively. Both are all about connecting with other human beings on an emotional level. And both are careers about which everyone says, “Don’t quit your day job.” ;)

So what do we substitute for visual and aural cues? For one thing, the smileys, emoticons, and acronyms that already form the common currency of Internet communication. As I explain to clinicians for whom I provide online training in online practice skills, these can be more nuanced than you’d think. As an office-based traditional therapist, I would never have winked at a client.

But I can use a winkie to soften a hard truth when I think a client needs “tough love” or to add affectionate irony to what I say. The client can get mad at me and still feel safe by adding LOL to a critical or even hostile comment. That simple ;) or LOL can mean, “You said it’s okay to get angry, and I’m taking the risk of expressing my anger to you. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to quit therapy.” And see how I used the winkie in the line about “Don’t quit your day job” (above)? In that instance, it means, “Hey, I’m kidding—and not kidding.”

Beyond word choice and Internet shorthand, I’ve found I can connect with clients over time by developing shared vocabulary and an intuitive grasp of how each one uses text and pauses to convey resentment, sadness, humor, sarcasm, and a host of other subtleties. In other words, what mental health professionals call the therapeutic relationship springs to life in a chat room just as it does in a therapist’s office. As for clients who work with me by email, some folks naturally dig deeper in narrative, in reaching within and taking time to tell their story than they do out loud in the moment—as every writer knows.

Personally, I have an additional advantage. As all who’ve met me know, I was born to schmooze. I do it face to face at Malice, the Edgars, MWA and SinC events, and book tours, and online on mystery e-lists such as DorothyL and various social media as well as one to one via email. My, um, intense and lively personality comes through whether I’m there in person or keyboarding my way through cyberspace. And please note that well-placed “um.” What was I telling you about the statement it modified? That’s a pop quiz, not a rhetorical question. You can answer by posting a comment. :) My husband likes to tell people that every time he passes through the room, I’m smiling at the computer. LOL Not really. I’m smiling at you, if you’re on the other end of my fingertips at the time. :)

The Dadaist Enigma of Claire DeWitt

Of Novels and Noir

I’m a member (if you can call being a part of such a loose-knit group a member) of the Hardboiled Discussion Group at the Poisoned Pen bookstore here in Scottsdale.  I’m sure you understand how such a thing works: everybody in the group reads a certain novel each month, then we meet at the store, after hours, to discuss it.  In this case, a fellow named Patrick Millikin, who’s worked there for over a decade (and also edited the anthology Phoenix Noir), chairs the group and helps us decide which novels we’ll read for the month

I don’t always manage to get to the meetings, but I usually manage to read the book for the month.  So, over the past few months I’ve read several noir mysteries.  Of those, the two that stand out as the most wonderfully contrasting works are James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce and Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.  One a grimly realist work, the other a flight of fancy that still manages to be rather grim yet holds an artistic aspect I don't recall encountering before in literature.

James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce is probably the more widely known of the two,  of course, James M. Cain being the writer of  classics such as: The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.

Mildred Pierce has been around for decades, but I only met her this past summer—thanks to the group’s introduction.  Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, on the other hand, is a fairly recent novel – second or third  in a contemporary series, which I understand is planned for five installments.

I said the two works contrast wonderfully, and they do.  Which is . . .

 Almost the Point of this Post:

Among the books I've read by Cain, Mildred Pierce probably stands as one of the best examples of Cain holding himself in check, keeping a tight reign on his natural tendency to let everything devolve into a murderous blood bath. As such, I found it based in greater realism—the realism of its time, at least. Claire DeWitt, however, includes  magical thinking, a holistic approach to detection and hints of Voodoo -- all connected inextricably to the painful realism of post-Katrina New Orleans: a remarkably gripping combination.

The two novels easily compare, in my mind, because neither was what I expected, and both consistently diverged from paths I thought the novels were about to take.

In the case of Mildred Pierce, one of the first such occurrences took place soon after Mrs. Pierce’s husband left her with two daughters, and she was not easily able to find employment. “Okay,” I thought. “This is going to be a noir mystery or suspense plot, so -- This is going to be the story of an abandoned woman who winds up becoming a prostitute, then works her way to 'madam' of her own establishment. In the end, she’ll be laid low by the realization that her favorite daughter has become a sex worker in either her own establishment, or that of a rival.” I was, of course, wrong. How wrong? Well, if you haven’t read the novel, I encourage you to read it and find out.

There really isn't much of a "mystery" in Mildred Pierce, though there are plenty of quasi-legal shenanigans.  But, there is a mystery in Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.  In fact, I finally decided that there are at least two mysteries.

Sara Gran, author of the Clair DeWitt series

Claire DeWitt (the novel's protagonist) has studied to become a detective by reading Detection, a book written by supposedly great French detective (or "mad man", depending on who's doing the describing) Jacques Silette.  She then, as we learn in the book, apprenticed under a woman who had known Silette and had -- in her own turn -- apprenticed (as well as evidently doing other things) under him.

One of the tenants evidently set forth by Silette is: "The client already knows the solution to the mystery.  But he doesn't want to know.  He doesn't hire a detective to solve his mystery.  He hires a detective to prove that his mystery can't be solved."

When I hit this paragraph, at the top of page three, I got the idea it meant: A person close to a murder victim won't like learning why he was murdered, because it may reveal unsavory things about the victim's life.  And, those unsavory things may be what he was murdered for.  And, to an extent, I was right. The mystery at the core of the novel isn't hard to figure out; I had it pegged pretty early on -- as did many of the other group members.  But, the core mystery isn't necessarily what you want to read the book for.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill out of context: "This book is a mystery wrapped in an enigma."  The core mystery is wrapped in a kaleidoscope of clues, odd extraneous-seeming events and depictions, and pseudo-clues -- and the reason behind them is what makes the read worthwhile (IMHO).

Elements of the Enigma

At first read, ridiculous absurdities seemed to clutter the pages, squeezing the story out of my mind. Among them:

• A small boy has a .44 Magnum concealed in his pants at one point.  

• An off-duty police officer works as security while carrying only  "a .22 caliber revolver." 

• Complaining about having to give constant updates about the case status, the first-person narrator writes: "Scientists don't give updates.  As far as I know no one asks a painter for an update, or a chef."  

• At one point, Claire DeWitt recalls a past occasion, in which the police were unable to...  (Well, I'd better leave that one for you to see for yourself.  Let me assure you, however, that the resulting solution contains a massive absurdity.)

Now I've handled a .44 Magnum, and I can assure you that I -- a grown man -- couldn't possibly conceal such a side arm in my pants.  Not unless I wanted to walk around and have everyone ask me, "Is that a .44 Magnum in your pants, or are you just happy to see me today?"

When I asked some of my cop buddies if they'd carry a .22 revolver on off-duty security work, they looked at me like I had three heads and scoffed at the idea.  One actually said, "That'd be absurd."

For those who think scientists don't give updates, let me assure you that my relatives who conduct scientific work in universities have to give constant updates.  Otherwise the money funding their work dries up very quickly.  As for painters: Seems like folks ask my house painter friend "How long until you're done?" to the point that he sometimes feels all he's doing is answering that question instead of painting.  My wife continuously asks my son -- the artist type of painter -- for updates on his latest work in progress, just as she keeps asking me, "How long until you make enough money off your writing so that I can quit my job?"  As for asking a chef for updates....  Well, ask a chef and I think you'll find he feels constantly harassed while cooking.

These glaring absurdities at first caused me problems.  Does the author not realize how wrong she's got it? I wondered.

At the same time, Claire's rather holistic approach to detection made me recall another book I'd read, long ago: Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  The Douglas Adams book, however, was a comedy.  Claire DeWitt may be many things, but I don't think I'd call it a comedy.  On the other hand, I thought, maybe it is, but I'm just not getting it.  If this was the case, then Sara Gran wasn't letting us in on the joke, the way Douglas Adams had.  And, one reason I felt this way, was because too many of the occurrences were too similar to certain mistakes I'd seen ignorant writers make in the past.  Is Sara Gran ignorant? I wondered.  Or, is she doing this on purpose, for some reason?

I arrived at my book club still wondering.  About half the group that night, really didn't get the book (myself included), but the other half loved it.  At one point a woman said, "It's interesting that, though many of us say we didn't like it, we can't stop talking about it."  And, indeed, we not only had a much-larger-than-normal group, that night, but stuck around discussing the work for nearly twice the usual time.

Some of the members had seen Ms. Gran, when she came to speak on a book tour.  I asked them if she struck them as the sort of person who would make such mistakes.  Could she, in their opinion, be ignorant?  To the last, each ensured me she was clearly very intelligent, and they were convinced she had included these absurd occurrences very intentionally.

And, along the way, I discovered that those who loved the book really didn't love it as a mystery, per se.  Instead, they enjoyed some esoteric quality about the book, which they couldn't really explain.  I listened to them, thinking maybe they were onto something. And, on the drive home, I realized:

The Glaring Absurdities are the Point of the Story

I submit that Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is an example of a very specific type of absurdist literature.  Other examples of absurdist lit sprang to mind on that drive home, chief among them: The World According to Garp.  But, there was something different about Claire DeWitt.  The plotline was superimposed over the backdrop of post-Katrina New Orleans, a setting so strong that it seemed to grow out from the backdrop in a way that turned setting into an additional character.  And this character was harsh, glaring and pain-filled, as well as mysterious and magical.

That wasn't the only thing the plotline rested upon, however.  It also hung on very solid mystery elements, as if it were straddling a contemporary mystery line and the background-character at the same time.

Why?

Finally, on that drive home, I reflected on a Modern Art class I'd taken years ago in college.  There, I came to understand that appreciation for Modern Art required more than just viewing: it also required work on the viewer's part, and sometimes benefited from a little explanation.  In short, I had to alter the way I thought about what I was looking at (or: "interacting with").

Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase No.2, for instance, caused one reviewer of New York's Armory Show, in 1913, to write that it resembled "an explosion in a shingle factory."   Looking at the work (on the left), you can see why.  But, that critic was missing the point of the painting.  Duchamp's work was not meant to capture one moment in time, as a young lady with no clothing came down a spiral staircase; it was instead an attempt to capture her entire movement down that staircase.  Some of us could undoubtedly capture a similar image -- though probably more blurred -- by using a film camera loaded with very slow film, employing low light, and leaving the aperture wide open as a naked woman walked down a spiral staircase.  To get closer to Duchamp's final product, however (a relatively un-blurred collection of still shots), it would probably be necessary to shoot a series of still shots -- without advancing the frame, so that they all fell on the same negative -- as she came down.  Either way, the difference between comprehension and non-comprehension, concerning the painting, comes down to whether or not the person viewing (or interacting) with it understands the intent behind it.


Roughly seven years later, Duchamp created L.H.O.O.Q. which can be seen on the right.  He was said to have created this work by drawing a pencil mustache and beard on a postcard reproduction of the Mona Lisa, adding the letters L.H.O.O.Q. to the bottom.  The five letters are a bit of a quip.  In English, we can read them as "Look", but in french the pronunciation sounds like the french phrase meaning: "She has hot pants" (or a hot something else, if you want to be more literal perhaps).

L.H.O.O.Q. is generally taken as one of Duchamp's attempts at Dadaism, an art movement that arose from artist's negative reactions to the horrors of the First World War.  Dadaism (or Dada) largely rejected reason and logic, instead prizing nonsense, irrationality and intuition.  The word Dada, itself, may have been coined because it sounded like a "nonsense" word, or because it is the French word for Hobbyhorse, which one of the artists in the movement arrived at through random means.  

L.H.O.O.Q. fits into the Dadaist camp, in many people's minds, because it would appear to be Duchamp's slap in the face of an iconic art form (the Mona Lisa) while simultaneously pointing up the "unacceptable way" that icon had been used to line pockets.

And, I think it's important to note that, without the Mona Lisa image behind it, we'd be left with just a penciled mustache-beard floating in air, and the initials below. Still nonsensical, but hardly worthy of note nearly a century later. Earlier, I wrote that I believe Sara Gran's latest novel is a particular type of absurdist literature. Were it just a novel of absurdities – as I perceive The World According to Garp to have been – instead of being constructed around a more standard format, then I would simply list it as another example of absurdist literature. It's the mystery anchor, here, as well as the depth of setting, that I believe lifts it into another realm of literary art form. The two together, in my opinion, work in a manner similar to the Mona Lisa image in L.H.O.O.Q.

Thus, to me, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead fits the Dada mold, because it is a work of absurdity (or nonsense) prizing irrationality and intuition (the "holistic approach" detective methods used in the novel) and is superimposed over a standard mystery and deep background "anchor". (The mystery being: What happened to a guy everybody said was a nice, helpful, friendly person with no enemies, during the first days following Katrina's landfall in New Orleans? And, what has become of his remains?)

I'd say, if you want to look at glaring realism, in which the artist has worked mightily to hold himself in check – take a gander at Mildred Pierce. But, if you want to see a work that demonstrates just as much harsh realism, but in which the writer works equally hard to produce something perhaps even more transcendent – read Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead.

Or, do yourself a real favor – READ THEM BOTH!!

Either way, I'll see ya' in two weeks, buddy!

— Dixon

Thursday's Child

And Thursday's Child has far to go...

As always, I have questions.

Perhaps even more than the names labeling us from birth to beyond death inscribed on a tombstone, many believe our destinies arise from numbers, stars and on the dates we were born. Do they or is this more of mythology handed down from one generation to another so we believe it simply because it has been repeated enough?

Born on a Thursday on a hot summer's day, do I have far to go? If I'd entered this world on a crisp autumn Monday morning instead, would I be more fair of face? Would my personality be of a calm nature like the gentle breeze of an October's dawn?

Tuesday's child is full of grace.

Wednesday's child is full of woe.

I don't know which day Edgar Allan Poe was born, but I dare say his life sounds more like he should have been born on a Wednesday. Was he born on a cold winter's date? Some of his work reminds me of that time of year when wicked, cold winds send shivers down my spine much like his "Tell-Tell Heart".

Famous for the romantic novels that twist our feelings like an old-fashioned wringer washing machine, was Nicholas Sparks born on a Friday and loving and giving as the interviews I've read about him suggest?

Saturday's child must work for a living.



Surely one of the hardest-working writers seems to have been Rod Serling, hammering out episodes of "The Twilight Zone" week after week. Was he born on a Saturday by chance?

But the child born on the Sabbath Day is fair and wise and good and gay.

Going strictly by the dictionary of that era the poem was written (attributed by Anonymous, the most prolific writer of all time), I know this would be a happy person. Which writer would that be? Obviously, one who has a great track record with his publisher and no rejection slips ever.

Does it matter when a writer births his characters?

Fall seems to be when I most begin a novel and spring short stories. I am not sure if it's because I am comfy inside in autumn and don't want to venture outside so want to invest more time with plot lines and characterizations or simply that's how it's worked out so far.

Do I choose shorter works in warmer weather when I can type THE END sooner and head for outdoor adventures?

As humans are we who we are because of simple choices we can't control like when we were born, where and beneath a certain sky formation?

Are creative types more likely to share some of these circumstances?

It seems unlikely. Each day someone like Entertainment Weekly shares information on entertainer's birthdays. I don't remember any day that went without a celebrity having that particular birth date.

For that matter, do more architects share the same day they were born? Or lawyers or musicians?

I don't know. As I said, I have questions.

Spy Lie

by Robert Lopresti

I just saw the movie Argo and I feel like I should say something about it because I wrote about it several years before it was made.  Well, not exactly.  But I wrote a piece on Criminal Brief called A Real-Life Genuine Phony Hollywood Spy Story,which was about the bizarre true event that served as a basis for Argo.  If you aren't familiar with it here's the one-sentence synopsis: during the Iranian hostage crisis the CIA got six hostages out by pretending they were a Canadian film crew.

So here's my review: it's a good movie.  You'll like it.  But you'll like it better if you don't read my earlier piece first, because the more you know about what really happened the more likely you are to be annoyed by the parts the movie gins up.  Apparently a spy sneaking into an insane theocracy to slip out six civilians, knowing that a single mistake could get them all beheaded was not suspenseful enough for Hollywood without a few added gimmicks.  Sigh.

I blame it on Irving Thalberg.  I believe he was the producer in the 1930s who dictated that every movie had to end with a 99 yard dash for a touchdown.  Apparently Ben Affleck and friends decided that the ball wasn't quite far enough back for the climax so they had to libel the Carter administration (who apparently did not look quite bad enough in real life) and bring in a lot of machine guns.  Plus they invented an airline  pilot so oblivious to the world around him that he made those two clowns who flew a state or two past their destination a few years ago look like paragons of alertness.

Honestly what annoyed me most was not the lies they put in so much as the facts they left out to make room (or because they didn't fit the story they were telling).  Here are a few true incidents that did not make the movie (which remember, is both funny and suspenseful):

• The forgers put the wrong date on some of the passports, indicating that the carriers were travelers from the future. 
• The Canadian cabinet had to meet in secret to authorize false passports.  Then the authorities refused one to the CIA agent, because he had not been included in the vote.
• When the hero visited the Iranian consulate, he left his portfolio in the taxi cab.
• The CIA agents’ map of Tehran led them to the Swedish embassy instead of the Canadian one. 
• On the morning of the actual escape, our hero slept through his alarm. 

Wouldn't you think some of those items were worth including?  And then there was the equally suspenseful escape of the Canadian embassy staff which had to be perfectly timed, but didn't fit in with the phony scene the producers put in Argo.  Honestly, I liked the movie, but the more I think about it the more irritated I get.

And let me say that one reason I liked is that any flick which gives a juicy comic part to Alan Arkin does a service for mankind.  (And the fact that Arkin's character is a composite didn't bother me at all..)

Here's the irony, by the way.  I was at a songwriting group this week and  a woman had written a song about a real person.  I told her "you have to decide whether you're serving the person or the song."  In other words, she was cleaving too closely to the truth.  So call me a hypocrite, I guess.

Tangential episode: Speaking of the CIA, more than a decade ago I was at a dinner party and was seated near the new boyfriend of a woman I know.  I asked him what he did for a living and he said he was an engineer.  Well, practically everyone in my wife's family is an engineer so I asked what kind.  "Systems engineer," he said, and put so much unspeakable boredom into those two words that I changed the subject.

Later my friend told me that the guy was actually an analyst for the CIA.  And after he found out that I am a government documents librarian he was kind enough to send me a few books published by the CIA for my collection - nothing classified, I assure you.

Back when the CIA used to send a lot of paper documents to federal depository libraries like mine (now they don't because "everything is on the web," which it isn't but don't get me started on that), we used to receive pocket atlases of major cities in communist countries.  These  map books were highly prized because they were much more accurate and complete than maps of Peking and Moscow that you could actually buy there.  But nowhere on the entire publication would you find the publisher's name.  For some reason, people didn't wander around those cities carrying something that said CIA on it.  Go figure.

And go see the movie.  Just remember one thing that the film makes a point about: spies and movie moguls never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Mariel

By the time you read this, my story "Mariel" should be out in the December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. At least, I hope so as she, or it (the story), is the subject of my posting. I've written before that I've never found it necessary to make characters up out of whole cloth, as there are such an abundant number of inspirations running around. The character of my recurring clerical sleuth, Father Gregory Savartha, as I once posted during the final days of "Criminal Brief", is based on a wonderful priest with whom I was fortunate to have a friendship. The wise, dignified, and valorous Chief Julian Hall… well, I'm sure there's no need to explain where he was drawn from. But there have been many others… and Mariel is certainly one of them.

I once wrote to Janet Hutchings that I found the suburbs endlessly entertaining and fruitful ground for fiction. This was because she had just accepted a story of mine inspired (ever so loosely) on some neighbors with whom I had never spoken a word. The girl who provided the inspiration for Mariel comes from the same neighborhood, though her contributions to my creative process were more tangible. In fact, for a period of her young life, it seemed as if I was forever being made aware of her presence, either directly or indirectly. She had a way of appearing when you least expected it, and not being one to stand on ceremony, she never waited for an invitation. On more than one occasion, my neighbor two doors away awoke to find her sleeping on the couch in his living room. And he was sure that he had locked his doors. Being only eight years old, it was all rather troubling. It was only later that he deduced she had apparently discovered his emergency key (under a flower pot by the front door--first place burglars look). Clearly, the fact that she rarely spoke was not indicative of her abilities.

His was not the last house she visited during her leisure hours. My immediate neighbor to the north looked up from his computer one day to find her standing in the room with him. He said it scared the bejesus out of him. I should mention that she was not a conventionally attractive child, being quite large and heavy for her age. She also had an unblinking stare that could unnerve even the innocent. You can imagine what it did to the rest of us.

This little girl came from a family in crisis, which appears to be the state of about half the families in America these days. Her parents were involved in a stormy break-up and both had demons of their own to wrestle--they were not winning. She and her two brothers were the only kids in the entire neighborhood that had, during different stages of their development, ridden their bikes into my unmarked police car. Yes...each of them. Parked car...thank God. They were unhurt; the front quarter panel suffered only a little. These events were always timed to occur when I was at dinner and the car plainly in my sight at the curb. I'm convinced that this had somehow become a rite of passage. Oddly, I found the ritual itself pretty funny.

Once, when I was home during the day after a night shift, I witnessed her crossing my neighbor-to-the-south's back yard. He was away at work, as was his wife. Her body language was almost comical in its furtiveness. Just as she approached a shed on his property and began to open the door, I called out her name from behind a curtain, and in my best spectral voice intoned, "You don't belong there." She stepped back from the door as if burned, her Shirley Temple curls bouncing on her head. Surveying her surroundings carefully, she reversed course; returning the way she had come. Her expression was more troubled than frightened, containing a touch of stubbornness– she would be back, it said to me. Did I mention that she "collected" things left untended by her neighbors? "Untended" covered any unlocked door, or unsecured object. In this way she contributed to the security-mindedness of on our little street.

Though I did find a good bit of humor in her antics, it was the pathos of her situation that inspired me to write the story, "Mariel." It's completely fiction, of course. But the real Mariels of the world, sadly, are not. There are far too many feral children these days wandering the streets like wraiths–unsettling and terribly vulnerable.

I once responded to a call of two children found wandering– the little girl was three, and she was towing her year and half old brother along by the hand. When I arrived on the scene I recognized them from dealings with their parents– an alcoholic couple. I called for the youth and family services rep, and after turning them over to the bureaucracy developed to deal with such things, I went to their apartment. I found the father passed out on the couch, reeking of alcohol; the front slider open– the only way the children could have escaped. The mother was at work and we were alone. You might imagine the things that passed through my mind, having three kids of my own. I contemplated the many misfortunes that might befall such a person: He might resist arrest--many before him had done so. Or, he might flee through the closed half of the slider in his drunkenness. He might even fall down the concrete steps leading up to his porch being so unsteady on his feet. I thought a lot of things that could happen that morning… yes, it wasn't even lunch time, yet… but I didn't do them… I resisted temptation. And when I shook him awake all he could do was stare at me in bewilderment and fright. He didn't offer the least resistance and he was arrested "without incident," as cops say. In the end, I felt sorry for him, too; but not as sorry as I was for those kids, and way too many like them.

It's because of situations like that, and many, many more, that I wrote "Mariel," and why so many of my stories feature children dealing with adult situations. It's a tough world out there, and way too often, kids are left to go it alone. It rarely turns out well.

The Thirteenth Child

Okay, I confess I don't like writing reviews. For one thing, while I lie for a living, I refuse to mislead readers by glorifying books that, to me, don't cut it.

David Dean checks out his new novel.

The title of David Dean's new novel could have made me afraid this was an out-of-date story about The Dugger Family, but knowing the genre, I assumed The Thirteenth Child referred to the number of children who disappeared, were kidnapped, or murdered. Not so, but I won't clue you in on the meaning of the title, and I won't give away any of the secrets of the novel in this review. Read this book for yourself. You'll definitely be glad you did.

If you enjoy being scared to go to bed alone, this is your kind of read. With a well-written, well-paced, yet steadily climbing, plot, The Thirteenth Child is a terrifying journey that will make the reader crazy with intrigue that turns to fear and then crashes into sheer horror at the end. It's not the customary roller coaster ride mentioned in many reviews. Instead, it's a fast uphill trip in a
police cruiser.

David Dean doesn't bog the reader down with info dumps or excessive backstory. The characters come alive on the pages through their actions, thoughts, and feelings. As the main storyline progresses, they grow to be so captivating that the reader fears for them and shares their pains and apprehensions.

Preston Howard, a former English Literature professor, isn't interested in anyone or anything as much as his bottle of high quality scotch or rotgut whiskey, depending on how much money he's swiped from his daughter Fanny that day. Preston doesn't grow inebriated--he gets stinking drunk. In that condition, he prefers to sleep in a shanty hidden in the woods near an elementary school instead of in the comfortable bed his daughter provides. He befriends a feral boy named Gabriel who is dangerous as well as spooky. This lands Preston smack in the middle of the cases of a missing seven-year-old girl and two teenage boys.


Nick (Police Chief Nicholas Catesby) has more than his share of problems. Single since his wife stepped out on their marriage and then left him, he's attracted to Preston's daughter Fanny, but how will that work when her father becomes a person of interest and then a suspect? A leak in the police department further complicates his life while deceitful betrayal by one of his officers looks as though it might cost Nick his job as well as control of the investigation of the youngsters who have disappeared.

Fanny Howard, Preston's daughter, is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of supporting her father financially and worrying what kind of new troubles his drinking will bring them. About the time that the chemistry she shares with Nick Catesby fires up the pages as well as Fanny's bed, the relationship is forbidden because her father's situation creates a conflict of duty for Nick. Even more chilling, though Fanny is a grown woman, she becomes the monster's next target.

Tension begins on page one and rises constantly with characters and action that pull the reader in. There's a monster to be vanquished, and identifying who (or what) he is creates an urgency that makes it impossible to stop reading until the explosive final confrontation.

Author David Dean describes the book as a horror story with "a bit of police procredural woven into it. It's not a gore-fest, but it is scary."

Available from Genius Book Publishing as paperback or eBook, David Dean's The Thirteenth Child delivers in all areas. How many stars? On a scale of one to five, I give it six stars, and I'll read it again.

Here are links for your convenience:

• Amazon (Kindle)
• Barnes & Noble (nook)
• Kobo (Kobo)

Until we meet again...take care of you and treat yourself to a good scare with David's new book.

Vive la Différence Part 1

by Leigh Lundin

© unknown

I've written about the difference between men and women, a topic I find fascinating. It's fraught with danger (I don't think I've ever written 'fraught' before), laced with intrigue, and often enjoyable if not politically correct– which I don't plan becoming anytme soon. Besides, relationships shouldn't be political, despite becoming politicized through the decades.

For some time, I've received eMails titled Why Men are Happy and Why Men are Never Depressed. These have arrived in multiple editions over such a span that I noticed additions, deletions, and edits as these eMails passed through multiple hands. (Many versions can be found on-line.) Cathy Guisewite they're not, but some are fun.

Occasionally guys receive word they might not be pulling their weight in a relationship. Although the foolish might mount a vigorous defense, the wise will probably gather that 20% is not a reasonable balance nor does grilling or any other chore that might be considered enjoyable (fishing, winemaking, working on the car, sitting at the computer, watching basketball) weigh toward the ultimate accounting.

Yes, accounting, because there's a balance sheet and many other factors intrude and guys have a lot to account for. For example, here's a diary circulating on FaceBook:

Guys don't worry about the same things, snoring for example. A fellow can blissfully snore loud enough to crack ceiling plaster, but a woman will stay awake half the night waiting until her man falls asleep so he doesn't hear her snores set off car alarms. The thing is, a guy doesn't mind. First, it makes his woman human, but he also might find her snoring comforting and snap awake if she suddenly stops.

Guys irritate women in ways that are incomprehensible to men. Take finding things. Scientific American says the spatial parts of our brains evolved differently: cavemen traveled the hills and dales hunting mammoths and eventually found their way back home, while cavewomen kept their home running, wrestling leg-o-sarus into the cookpot, fried the bronto-burgers, mended woolies and loincloths for the family, and scrubbed the cave walls clean from their children's drawings. Whereas a male could find his way to a sabretooth carcass on flint ridge (without asking directions), he couldn't find the bone-handled knife in his own cave.

But his woman could, an effect Rosanne Barr in her stand-up comedy called the uterine locator. Back in our unevolved days, the cavewoman yelled, "Why do you keep asking me? Do I look like I know where everything is? Why don't you find it yourself, you're perfectly capable. What, you can't squeeze those big shoulders through the kitchen door? Because that's where it is, in the kitchen, under the sink, behind the second pot on the third shelf in the yellow box marked 'stuff.'"

There could be a wry Linda Ellerbee observation here, but let's move on to that balance sheet…

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Male

• Wedding plans take care of themselves.
• Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100.
• Your last name stays put.
• You can never be pregnant.
• The garage is all yours.
• You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
• Car mechanics tell you the truth.
• You can open all your own jars.
• Chocolate is just another snack.
• Your underwear is  $9.95 for a three-pack.
• You almost never have strap problems in public.
• New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. 
• Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
• One wallet and one pair of shoes, one color for all seasons.
• You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
• You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife.
• You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
• You can wear no shirt to a water park.
• You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
• The same hairstyle lasts for years, even decades.
• You don't have to shave below your neck.
• You have freedom of choice about growing a mustache.
• Hot wax never comes near your pubic area.
• Your bathroom has soap, towel, toothbrush, and shaving gear, nothing more.
• You don't have to dress up to get the mail.
• You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky.
• Wrinkles add character.
• Everything on your face stays its original color.
• People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
• One mood all the  time. 
• Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
• You can leave the motel bed unmade.
• You can kill your own food.
• You can shop in under two minutes.
• You know stuff about tanks.
• You don't have to know anything about celebrities and their relationships.
• You don't have to know anything about your friends' relationships.
• You are not expected to know the names of more than five colors.
• No maxi-pads.
• A five-day vacation requires one suitcase.
• You can drop by to see a friend without bringing a little gift.
• If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you just might become good friends.
• If someone forgets to invite you, they can still be your friend.
• You can call your buddy f•ckface and still be friends.
• You play with toys all your life.
• You wake up looking the same as you went to bed, maybe better.
• You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
  …and…
• You can ask a woman where to find things.

Boucherconnections

by John M. Floyd

Last weekend I had a rare opportunity to combine business and pleasure.  Actually I suppose you could call it pleasure and pleasure: (1) my wife and I visited our oldest son and his family in West Virginia and (2) while there I drove to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend Bouchercon 2012.

As most of you know, Bouchercon is an annual conference for writers and fans of mystery fiction.  This year's event was held at the Cleveland Marriott Renaissance Hotel from Thursday, October 4, to Sunday, October 7.  I arrived a day late (and yes, a dollar short) but I at least arrived in time to serve on the panel I'd been assigned--ours was called "Nuggets of Mystery"--on Friday afternoon.  I'm not sure the six of us offered any profound insights, but we had a lot of fun, and I hope our audience did too.

I was outclassed and outnumbered by my all-female fellow panelists: Barb Goffman, Shelley Costa, Laura K. Curtis, Terrie Farley Moran, and EQMM editor Janet Hutchings.  Janet in particular managed to educate all of us, and the crowd also, about recent trends in short stories, and it was interesting to me to hear everyone's take on the influence of short fiction on the mystery/crime genre.  I was honored to see in the audience my old buddy Jim Doherty, Short Mystery Fiction Society president Tom Sweeney, SleuthSayers friend Jeff Baker, and AHMM editor Linda Landrigan.

In fact I was able to spend quite a bit of time this year with Janet and Linda, and with Strand Magazine editor Andrew Gulli.  These three Head Honchos are not only effective at their jobs, they're good folks--interesting and smart and incredibly supportive of their authors.  I learn something new about mystery writing every time I talk with them.

I think it was Terrie Moran who said, in a SleuthSayers comment awhile back, that the best thing about conferences is not the time you spend in panels--it's the time you spend visiting with fans and other writers.  She's right.  This time I was able to catch up with old acquaintances like Terrie, Doherty, Steve Hamilton, Jane Lee, James Lincoln Warren, Jan Burke, and others--folks who have helped me a great deal over the years.  Other friends I somehow missed seeing, even though I heard they were in attendance, were Melodie Johnson Howe, Bill Fitzhugh, Cathy Pickens, and Kathryn Wall (although there is always the possibility that they spotted me from a distance and were avoiding me).

I did manage to meet in person several fellow writers I've often swapped emails and Facebook messages with--e-friends like Robin Burcell, Beth Groundwater, and the aforementioned Tom Sweeney, Barb Goffman, and Jeff Baker.  It's always fun to be able to finally put faces with names, and to see how accurate (or how far off the mark) you were in imagining what they look like.

I also met folks I'd not known before--too many to mention here.  Again, these were both writers and readers, which I think is one of the great advantages of a fan convention like B'con.  Writers' conferences are okay, and I've been to a few, but it's a lot better when fans are included.  Without them, after all, we writers would be forced to take up a different job/hobby/pastime.  Those of us who forget or neglect our readers, and cease to care what they like or want, probably won't be writers for very long.

Last but not least, I was fortunate enough to meet one of my favorite authors, Lee Child.  I'm an avid Jack Reacher fan--I've read all seventeen novels--and I admire the talent that can create and sustain such an entertaining series.  As I had suspected, Child turned out to be both friendly and charming.  When I babbled my thanks to him for his having designated one of my AHMM stories as a "Distinguished Mystery" in the Best Mystery Stories anthology he edited in 2010, he smiled and assured me that he remembered that story.  I'm not naive enough to believe that he actually did remember my story--he was almost certainly just being kind--but I was pleased anyway, and impressed that he would bother to offer praise and encouragement to someone so far below him on the literary ladder.  (I was already planning to do a column on Child and his novels soon, and my having talked with him, if only for a moment, will make that piece more fun to write.)

NOTE: A few quick questions for our readers.  Have you ever attended a Bouchercon?  Do you plan to go next year?  Are you a regular attendee of B'con, or of any other conference?  Do you consider them worthwhile?  What are some conferences that you've found to be particularly interesting, or helpful?  I've been thinking about Killer Nashville next summer--are any of you headed that way? 

As for this year's Bouchercon, I had a great time, and it was over all too quickly.  At noon this past Sunday, hopefully wiser and certainly poorer, I checked out of the hotel and drove the two hundred miles back to our son's home, and after a couple more days in WV my wife and I headed back south.  (Mixed emotions, there: it's always hard to leave your kiddos and grandchildren, but I was extremely pleased with the way the temperature rose steadily during the 900 miles back to Mississippi.  I don't do well in cold weather.)

Now I've got to figure out some way to combine a family trip with Boucherco next year.  I understand the Planning Committee isn't making it easy for me, since they've chosen Albany, New York, for the host city.

Maybe one of our kids will move up there between now and then.

Developing the Series

by R.T. Lawton

Kathleen Jordan, then editor for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, evidently continued to like my Twin Brothers Bail Bond concept because she sent a contract for "The Bond Market," second in the series. However,  before this story could be published, she passed away and Linda Landrigan took over as editor. Linda immediately requested changes in this already paid-for story, which left me in a writer's limbo, wondering if I were starting all over again. And in a sense I was, because it was a brand new relationship between author and editor.

If I wanted to break in with this new editor, I once again had to come up with something interesting and innovative. "The Big Bail Out," third in the series, had criminals employed at a financially troubled company skydiving onto a certain property at night. Yes, all of their parachutes opened and operated as they should, however as these employees had been marked for death, they came to a different and unexpected end. Naturally, as the gatherer of clues for the mystery solving proprietor, bail agent Theodore was on scene to witness their demise and report back the details. In following with The Rules for this series, the bail firm once again made an outrageous profit during the story's resolution. As for me, I got another contract and the series continued to live.

Still searching for innovation, I decided the Executive Secretary for the bail firm had recently expired, presumably of old age, a rarity in this group. The fourth story, "The Bond Servant," therefore opens with Theodore and the Proprietor preparing to conduct interviews with twelve candidates for the position of Executive Secretary. At the end of the day, it seems there is a thirteenth candidate, one who has shown up uninvited, in the waiting room. This interviewee is a tall, thin, cadaverous Hindu with a letter of reference from the proprietor's twin brother. We never do get resolved in the running series whether this twin brother has gone off on his own after an arguement as often alleged, or did the proprietor do away with his business partner twin as is sometimes implied in the stories?

The proprietor is paranoid about hiring the Hindu, whose international police record shows he comes from an old Thuggee family, however all the other top contenders for the Executive Secretary position seem to come to an untimely demise during this story. Only the Hindu is left as the prime candidate. Now, there are several threads of tension to explore and the bodies keep on piling up. As a character tag, the Hindu frequently comes up with sayings of Mahatma Gandhi, but by using them out of context these same sayings acquire a sinister meaning rather than the one originally intended.

Skip to the Bouchercon in Las Vegas, where Linda buys me a drink in the conference bar. I'm overwhelmed and not sure how to act. Actually, I'm probably more prepared to go undercover and negotiate with a criminal carrying a gun. If I make a faux pas in front of him, the worst he could do is shoot me. I sip my drink and try to make conversation with Linda. I inquire if there is anything she'd like to see in my future writing. She suggests a Moriarity type character as a foil for the proprietor of the bail firm.

"You got it ma'am."

Fifth in the series, "The Other Bondsman," introduces Herr Morden, an ex-East German agent who has set up a competing criminal enterprise in the Bay City area. The German word "ermorden" means to murder, but Herr Morden is almost the same phonetically, so....

The proprietor's life, and therefore Theodore's existence, keeps getting more tangled as the series expands to a total of ten stories so far, all of which have the word "bond" or "bail" in the title for easy recognition of the series. You can read the first nine stories ( 9 Twin Brother Bail Bond series) at either Amazon.com for Kindle or at Smashwords for other e-readers.

By now, you may have a fair idea how my brain works when it comes to brainstorming ideas for mystery stories and series progression. There may be more than what got put down on paper, but these are at least the high spots in my mind.

I have three other series going in AHMM (two historicals and a comedy burglar series), and depending upon how "Across the Salween" does in Linda's manuscript slush pile in the very near future, a fifth series may be in the making. Cross your fingers.

You Say Sensation, I Say Mystery...

by Eve Fisher

It was a dark and stormy night, and I've got to have something to read.  I'm sorry, but tonight, as the wind howls and the hail spatters against the window, I don't want anything new.  I don't want anything slick.  I don't want anything modern.  I want something familiar and satisfying.  Who do I fall back on? The Victorians:  Never underestimate the punch of a Victorian writer.  They pretty much began the mystery genre, under the much-maligned term "Sensation Novel", and don't get enough credit. If you have never read any of them, allow me to recommend three of the most famous and accessible:

Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.  Here two young women's identities are stripped from them as one is declared dead, one is dead, and one is sent to a madhouse for life.  What happened?  Who died?  Who lived?  How can the truth be proven?  Besides an endlessly twisting and turning plot, there are amazing characters:  a magnificent heroine in Marion Halcombe, the ultimate Victorian cold-hearted bitch in Mrs. Catherick, and the worst guardian known to man, Frederick Fairlie, who really should have been shot at birth.  And then there's Count Fosco, one of my favorite villains in all of history, with a face like Napoleon's and the heft of Nero Wolfe.  Watch him as he plays with his little pet white mice and, at the same time, his irascible "friend" Sir Percival Glyde.  Meet his completely subservient wife, who spends her days rolling his cigarettes, watching his face, and doing his bidding.  He loves sugar water and pastry and plotting, and he never, ever loses his temper or raises his voice.  His only weakness?  A passionate admiration for Marion.  But can that actually stop him?  Don't count on it. 
(NOTE:  Collins' wrote many other novels, including The Moonstone, which I don't care for, actually, and Armadale, which is even MORE full of plot twists and turns than The Woman in White.  And Lydia Gwilt should scare the crap out of anyone...) 

In Mrs. Henry Wood's East Lynne, the ostensible main plot - and a true Victorian corker it is! - revolves around Isabel Vane, an Earl's daughter who, unbelievably, is reduced to poverty and marries an attorney (SO much beneath her in birth), Archibald Carlisle.  Mr. Carlisle is such a miracle of common sense, rectitude, honor, and beauty, that I have to admit after a while I get tired of hearing how wonderful he is.  It almost makes you cheer when she is eventually unfaithful to him with a former suitor, who gets her to run off with him, impregnates her, and abandons her (the "Lady!  Wife!  Mother!" scene is worth the read in and of itself).  Lost - in every sense of the word - and alone, Lady Isabel is believed killed in a railroad accident.  However, she is only disfigured beyond recognition (isn't that always the way?), and comes back to be the governess in her old home, to her own children, and to the children of her husband and his new wife, Barbara Hare. 
That in itself would keep almost any soap opera running for YEARS.  But what really fuels this sensation novel is the second plot, about the murder of a local gamekeeper, whose daughter, Aphrodite Hallijohn, was "involved" with multiple suitors, among them the clerk of courts (I can believe that one), a mysterious Captain, and Richard , the brother of the second Mrs. Carlisle.  Richard and Barbara are the children of the local Judge, and Judge Hare does his best throughout the novel to find, convict and hang his own son.  Barbara's whole goal in life (other than being the perfect wife to Mr. Carlisle) is to clear Richard's name.  Each and every character is involved in the solution to this murder, and the shifting identities of various people - at least three people live in disguise for major parts of the novel - are obstacles, keys, and clues to what really happened in that hut.  
(NOTE:  Mrs. Henry Wood wrote over thirty other novels, and among the best of the rest (imho) is The Channings.)  

Mrs. Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret curled many a person's hair back in the day, especially once it was revealed that what they thought was the secret - a secret that should be solved by anyone of moderate intelligence early on - is not The Secret at all.  Let's just say that Lady Audley is a work of art, and perhaps the source material for all suicide blondes.  Once again, a spicy Victorian stew of bigamy, mysterious deaths, hidden identities, even more mysterious (and convenient) arson, betrayal, adultery, heartache, and suspense, all served up at (for a Victorian novel) a fairly rapid clip. 
(NOTE:  Mrs. Braddon was another prolific author; second best novel is probably Aurora Floyd.)


Sensation Novels are often given a bad rap, but they were very well written, intricately plotted, and take you into the Victorian world in a way that few other books do.  Let's also not forget that, in their day, the Sherlock Holmes books would have been considered Sensation Novels - I mean, come on:  Polygamy!  Murder!  Hidden identities!  Revenge!  Giant devil hounds!  Granted, Sherlock Holmes transcended the genre - every genre - but he started in sensation.  And I'd love to debate someone about why Dickens is literature and Sensation Novels are not. 

By the way, Sensation Novels are also proof, once again, that reality must be watered down to be acceptable fiction.  The Victorian authors were an interesting bunch.  Wilkie Collins was an opium addict who had at least two concurrent families, and married the mother of neither of them.  Mrs. Henry Wood was married to an unemployed alcoholic, and her writing supported the family.  And Mrs. Braddon was involved for years in an adulterous relationship with her editor.  And when Jane Eyre came out, it was widely assumed that Mr. Rochester was based on William Makepeace Thackeray, whose wife was in an insane asylum, and who was believed to be having a long-running affair with his governess...   

All of these books, and many more, are available either new, used, or on Kindle. Please, check them out.  Those dark and stormy nights are coming back...  Next time, more Victorian murder mysteries!

CHARLES McCARRY: The Tears of Autumn

[A late-breaking rant—

PBS.  It means to me, of course, TINKER, TAILOR, and DR. WHO, and THIS OLD HOUSE.  If you’ve got kids, it would conjure up Fred Rogers, SESAME STREET, and THE ELECTRIC COMPANY.  Some people first learned to read, or count, from watching these shows, and they introduced a framework for basic social skills, learning how to play well with others.

Quite a few years ago, the early ‘60’s, in fact, I worked as a cable-puller for WBGH in Boston.  This was back in the day of Julia Child and Joyce Chen, say, before they got to be household names, and before ‘GBH became one of the major PBS content providers.  It was pretty much a shoestring operation, and it wouldn’t have survived without viewer contributions and a subsidy from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

For reasons I’ve never understood, public television has been a target of the Right since the get-go.  Perhaps there’s a perceived Leftie, or elitist, bias.  Or, going in the other direction, the risk that so-called “public” broadcasting would simply be a government propaganda tool, like the Voice of America.  (In its early days, for example, the BBC was usually seen as a mouthpiece for whichever party was in power, Tory or Labor.)  But the most widely-used argument has always been the creeping Socialist one: taxpayer money shouldn’t support television programming.  PBS first got legs, it should be remembered, in the heyday of the commercial broadcast networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, their shows collectively labeled by Newt Minow as a “vast wasteland.”  The point of public TV, known back then as “educational” television, was in fact that it wasn’t market-driven, and this alone seemed to lacerate the Right into a fury---public TV didn’t pay for itself.

Well, it’s not supposed to.  Public television is like public transportation.  It serves a greater good---okay, that’s the creeping Socialist in me, but the benefits seem so self-evident, to society at large.  Public TV provides a window on the world that isn’t hostage to money, although they’re always short of it.  Some of it is pablum, while some of it might be outside your comfort zone.  Its purpose is to entertain, certainly, but also to provoke thought.  It’s not meant to numb, it’s meant to evoke your curiosity. That’s what makes it necessary.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled post.]

Charles McCarry doesn’t need me to plump him up.  I got turned on to him when a friend loaned me THE SECRET LOVERS ---one of the best titles in spy literature, if I may be so bold---and then another friend recommended THE TEARS OF AUTUMN.  (This is where I give a shout-out to Matt Tannenbaum and his long-running independent bookstore in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.  McCarry hails from Pittsfield, and Matt knows him well enough to call him Charlie.)

McCarry was career CIA, or close enough as makes no difference.  Reading, for example, THE MIERNIK DOSSIER, his first book, where farce veers into tragedy, you feel a visceral sense of how the real world unhappily intrudes on the hermetic calculations of the spymasters.  McCarry is nothing if not unsentimental.  Nor does he have much patience with the Ayatollahs of Langley.  His concerns are more parochial.  He works in the trenches.  This isn’t to say his books have no political dimension, and in fact McCarry is well to the right of, say, LeCarré, whose active dislike of the Thatcher regime, for example, pushes his compass off true north, as a storyteller.  McCarry shows a few of these same weaknesses, on occasion, although from the other side of the aisle.  We can take the longer view, and forgive a partisan outlook, if these guys simply tell a rattling good story. 

No single event, in my living memory, generated more sorrow and more controversy, than the Kennedy assassination.  I’m of course of a certain age.  There are people still alive who’d say nothing affected them more than Pearl Harbor, or the death of Franklin Roosevelt, and younger people who’d point to John Lennon, or Princess Di, or the attack on the World Trade Center.  It depends whose ox is being gored, or what importance we attach to it, and where our sentiments lie.  It’s easy to forget that Jack Kennedy wasn’t really a very popular president.  He was roundly hated in certain circles, foreign and domestic, so when he was shot, fingers got pointed in a lot of different directions.

The first to circle the wagons were the Russians, who of course didn’t want it laid at the feet of KGB.  Then there was Castro.  Lyndon Johnson apparently believed up to the day he died that the Cubans were behind it.  And then there was the mob, in particular the New Orleans boss, Carlos Marcello.  They said he’d hooked Jack up with Judith Exner, or even Marilyn Monroe.  But maybe that was Sinatra. 

The genius of THE TEARS OF AUTUMN is that it doesn’t speculate about any of this crap.  McCarry cuts right to the chase.  In late October of 1963, a plot to depose the Diem regime was floated by disaffected Vietnamese generals  and Kennedy signed off on it.  The coup was effected, and Diem didn’t survive.  Kennedy was by all reports shocked by what he’d put in play, not realizing what the consequences had to be.  THE TEARS OF AUTUMN suggests that Vietnamese personal family honor, not politics at all, was behind Kennedy’s death, and McCarry lays in an utterly convincing back story, from Cuban mercenaries in Angola—--a great scene where Paul Christopher half-drowns a guy in a latrine trench---to their Russian patrons.

Do we believe any of this?  Does in fact McCarry?  I don’t know.  There are a lot of big ifs.  If, however, you happen to believe that Oswald wasn’t the only shooter, or that he was a patsy, THE TEARS OF AUTUMN has credibility.  Not some horseshit scenario, not Oliver Stone and how Clay Shaw was a right-wing queer in the pay of the CIA, or Howard Hunt was in Dallas that day, wearing the same fright wig he wore at Martha Mitchell’s deathbed, or why Marina Oswald’s dad was a GRU general.  (Actually, an intriguing question, that last.)  None of this is answered.

My own opinion, Lee was a lone nutjob who got lucky.  He was a Marine, you shoot iron sights at three hundred yards.  He was a discontented cranklypants.  He couldn't get it up, he had thinning hair or bad skin, who would care less?  The plain fact is, he was just an asshole.  They always are.

Why, then, is McCarry’s book so compelling, and what makes it so convincing?  Well, because the mystery isn’t in the end the assassin, the guy who shot Jack Kennedy, or the Archduke Ferdinand, or Abraham Lincoln.  The mystery is, as always, the rough draft of history.