05 May 2021

Today in Mystery History: May 5


This is the eighth in my occasional series about the history of our beloved field.  I haven't run out of days yet. 

May 5, 1902.  Bret Harte died on this day.  He  was best known for his short stories about the California gold rush but in our field he is remembered for "The Stolen Cigar-Case."  No less an authority than Ellery Queen called this story "probably the best parody of Sherlock Holmes ever written." In the field of true crime, he wrote about the Wiyot Massacre, in which more than 100 Indians were slaughtered by White settlers.  Death threats followed and he had to leave the region.

May 5, 1950. This is the birthday of Susan Grafton's great character, P.I. Kinsey Milhone.  I'll bet you didn't send her a card.

May 5, 1961.  Today saw the publication of Ross Macdonald's ninth Lew Archer novel, The Wycherly Woman.

May 5, 1973.  Peter Falk was the cover boy at TV Guide today, playing a certain L.A. police lieutenant. 

May 5, 1980. The issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine with this date included Edward D. Hoch's very clever "The Most Dangerous Man Alive," which was an Edgar nominee.  I still remember it.

May 5, 1992.  Kinsey Milhone celebrated her birthday with the publication of I is for Innocent.  Exactly a year later came J is for Judgment.

May 5, 2014.  Trace Evidence, the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine blog, posted "Shanks Holds The Line," which I offered to them for free as a sort of public service announcement.

May 5, 2015. Craig Faustus Buck's novel Go Down Hard was published on this day.  It's about an ex-cop trying to solve the decades old murder of a rock singer.

04 May 2021

Family Bond


    Whether you're a fan of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum or Dog the Bounty Hunter, bail occupies a central place in criminal law as entertainment. Through literature, we can take discussions about bail back to Robin Hood. During my day job as a magistrate for the criminal courts of my county, I spend a fair amount of my day thinking about bail for particular defendants. Today, however, I'd like to widen the lens and, largely through the writings of bail reform advocate, Tim Schnacke, look at the history of bail development. 

    Let's jump way back to the Anglo-Saxon days of England. Those Germanic tribes were family-linked league of clans. Among clans, blood feuds and tribal warfare were the means to settle disputes. Kinsmen resolved the wrongs of kinsmen. This adjudication technique, however, proved brutal and inefficient. Eventually as system emerged establishing payment of a wergeld or man-price for a wrongful life-taking, the price dependent on a person's social standing. Over time, a tiered system emerged of valuations for death as well as a measure for injury and other wrongs. A complex restitution system replaced the frequent clash of clans. 

    Tribes lived close to one another. Justice was local and the resolution of these cases could be expected to be swift. In this familial, land-bound society, pre-trial detention was little needed. 

    Family members pledged to guarantee both the defendant's appearance in "court" and to pay the penalty should he default. The amount of the pledge was set at the amount of the debt which would be owed. The promise served to allay an Anglo-Saxon's concern that someone may flee to avoid paying the penalty. The familial willingness to bear the burden also fit within the collective worldview of a tribal culture. 

    This Anglo-Saxon system should not be confused with contemporary bail. As noted, the family members were largely pledging to pay the debt upon default rather than posting money to secure the accused's release from custody. The germ of the modern idea of a surety, a third-party, obligating himself on behalf of an accused, however, was becoming established in the forerunner to the English common law. The word "bail" stems from a Latin word baiulare, to carry a burden. 

    With the Norman conquest, however, the nature of English law changed. Justice gradually became more an affair of the state and less an individual settling of accounts. Capital punishment and other sanctions replaced the restitution schedule of the wergeld. Along with changing punishments, notions about who should remain free pending adjudication also transformed. The first to lose a right to liberty included those accused of homicide and those charged with violating the royal forest (We did make it back to Robin Hood.) Norman judges rode a circuit from shire to shire handling cases. Outlying jurisdictions may wait months between judicial calls. The shire-reeve "sheriff" became charged with guaranteeing a defendant's appearance upon the judge's arrival. Jails were miserable and costly. The delay from arrest to trial necessitated some form of pretrial release. 

    People were still land bound. Personal recognizance guaranteed by the pledge of family became the key to the jail door for most people accused of wrong doings. 

Sheriffs, however, as the bail setters were ripe for corruption. In 1274, Edward I sent commissioners throughout the realm to ask questions of knights and freemen. The commissioners recorded the answers. Although most questions dealt with landholdings and related to taxation, the commissioners also delved into criminal justice. Edward I learned of two abuses by many sheriffs: some defendants who should be released were required to pay money; and some defendants who, because of the offense, should not be freed were released upon payment of large sums of money. 

    Bail law developed to extend royal control over shire-reeves' discretion and potential corruption. Culminating in 1689, the English Bill of Rights stated that "excessive bail ought not to be required." The phrase used is similar to the language of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

    This shouldn't be surprising as English law sailed to America with the establishment of the colonies. Although the ideas of recognizance and community responsibility traveled to the new world, the changing times brought the necessity for a new system to emerge. 

    As punishments changed from the Anglo-Saxon notion of restitution to death, mutilation or imprisonment, the possibility of flight to avoid the consequences grew. Similarly, as society moved away from the pledge equaling the amount of the debt, it became harder to quantify, with accuracy, the exact amount of money to require as bail. The accused in America found it easier to flee troubles and escape to the western frontier. Finally, as people became more itinerant, finding kinsmen and neighbors willing to pledge also became more challenging. 

    Out of necessity grew a commercial opportunity. Businessman willing to pledge money to guarantee a defendant's appearance at court emerged. They, of course, charged a fee for their service. The first commercial bondsman in the United States was reported to be Pete McDonough who in 1896 established his bond business out of his San Francisco saloon near the Hall of Justice. 

    In 1274, Edward I wrangled with right-sizing the jail population. He sought a just mechanism for determining who gets out and who stays in custody. Bail reform advocates still grapple with these issues. Lawsuits and legislative fixes abound. We are still trying to get it right. 

    Until next time. 



03 May 2021

Sources of Historical Fiction: Trivia and Iconia vs Writing What You Lived


In a December 2020 post titled "Historical Fiction (Or Not)," SleuthSayer Steve Liskow made the case for Not by revealing he's a "trivia junkie" who must avoid research because for him it's "the best way to avoid actually writing." He then described the historical fiction he's written, all set in periods he lived through and drawing on powerful, even traumatic experiences of his own.

I was going to write a comment on Steve's post when it occurred to me that it provided several jumping off points for an essay of my own. For one thing, when I do research, I don't stray far afield of my topic, though I love collecting relevant information. I came to my Mendoza Family Saga after a lifetime of hating research. I was charmed by what I learned about my subject matter—the Jews of the Sephardic Diaspora, the Taino of the Caribbean, and the Golden Age of the Ottoman Empire. And I was astonished at how much I enjoyed learning it. For example, my mystery short story protagonist Rachel Mendoza is a kira in Istanbul. The kiras were Jewish women who served as purveyors or personal shoppers to the ladies of the Sultan's harem in the 16th and 17th centuries. I learned about them in a footnote in a book I found a reference to in another book I found in a bibliography I was given by a professor at my alma mater whom I contacted. Academics respond nicely to emails saying, "I'm an alumna; may I pick your brains?"

I googled "1950s trivia." In one multiple choice test, I had no trouble remembering that M&Ms "melt in your mouth, not in your hand"; Animal Farm was written by George Orwell; Audrey Hepburn played the princess in Roman Holiday; Dr Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine; Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus; and Roger Bannister first broke the four-minute mile. But I was stumped by the questions about the history of cars and credit cars and have no idea what year Disneyland opened. In another, I knew that JD Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye; that Nixon's "Checkers" speech referred to his cocker spaniel; that Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mt Everest; that Watson and Crick discovered the double helix of DNA; that Brown vs Board of Education prohibited school segregation; and that Congress added "In God We Trust" to American currency in (if they say so) 1953. I flunked the ones on cars, TV, where the Brinks Robbery took place, which general said, "Old soldiers never die," and the ad for Burger King. I wouldn't use any of these in a novel or short story.

Rosa Parks, the only name on both lists, was and is not trivial.

I don't necessarily think historical writers who look for their background material in books are looking for trivia. For a long time between the era of ancient Rome and that of modern quiz nights, the term connoted information of little value. That's not the same as detail. But besides detail, writers outside their own period and setting are looking for iconia (my own word—I googled it, and it's not there, except as a formerly inhabited planet in the Beta Quadrant). If you set your novel in ancient Greece, you'll look up the Parthenon and the Oracle at Delphi. If your period is 19th century San Francisco, you'll focus on the Goldrush, Chinatown, and Nob Hill.

But when you write what you know—the past as it occurred within your own lifetime—you can supply a unique perspective that can't be found in books.

I've reached an age when I'm willing to let others consider my high school years, the late 1950s, "historical" and enjoy writing about them. What it was like for me is similar to and different from what they say the 1950s was like. I googled "1950s fashion." I found plenty of poodle skirts. I didn't have one. There were plenty of saddle shoes. I didn't have those either, though I know they were hell to polish, white fore and aft and black in the middle. How a girl felt about her mother buying her brown oxfords instead of saddle shoes like the other girls– now that starts to get into territory that might interest a writer. Or let's consider Elvis and rock 'n roll. In my house, it was folk and union songs. My short story, "The Man in the Dick Tracy Hat," drew on an event that affected many and had haunted me for decades—the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953. I couldn't write it until I was old enough to write about the 1950s as a historical period; mature enough to put it into the context of the Queens I grew up in; and skilled enough as a writer to weave it into a story that added a memorable protagonist and themes of domestic violence and betrayal.

02 May 2021

Certifiable — Florida-Arizona News


         Arizona ‘fraudit’ Conspiracy Theories NEXT   Next

Popcorn time. I’ve been following the ersatz election audit in Phoenix. Viewing it from a computer wizardry background, I bring to the table a few observations and opinions.

not a genuine ballot
possibly not a genuine Arizona ballot

Recounting the Recounted Recount

After recounts and audits, people ask why yet another? The political goal isn’t to overturn the election, but to cast doubt upon it in a tantrum by politicians who didn’t get their own way.

Thus it has come to pass, a minuscule Florida computer assistance company has carved an outsized rôle for itself in a vain (either meaning of the adjective) attempt to smear the Arizona election. Cyber Ninjas, which sounds disturbingly like a Saturday morning cartoon show, claims to have between “2 and 10” employees. I’d hazard if it employed anywhere near six or eight, or even four or five, it would say so.

Nothing is wrong with small computer consulting companies. I headed one. Our client base comprised Fortune 500 firms, governments, and large foreign concerns. Previous to May’s events, Cyber Ninjas largely seems to advise customers to take backups, install anti-virus software, and don’t click on random download buttons, a ‘Geek Squad’ without Best Buy.

Who?

Douglas Jay Logan, the owner of Cyber Ninjas (I’m learning that’s a damn awkward company name to type), involves himself in Q•Anon-inspired politics, even devising a ‘Stop the Steal’ white paper of discredited talking points.

He’s probably a nice guy, indeed, he supports charitable ministries in Haiti. We share that much in common, helping Haitians.

But I don’t know Doug Logan. No one I’ve asked professionally seems to know his company, not Florida election people, not security experts, and certainly not within my sphere, computer forensics and fraud. It simply means he’s not a household name outside of vocal conspiracy theorists. Until now.

What?

The pubic face of a company is its opening web page. It shapes the impression it wants the public to have. Sometimes it reveals more than it intends. They make a big deal about web security and design. And they do it confusedly… their ‘about’ page is their home page.

I can say with certainty computer experts Cyber Ninjas aren’t very computer experty. Set aside the peculiar stock photos and peer at paragraphs 1 and 3 of their home page. Notice those odd characters? “we’ve” and “Ninjaâ„¢”?

Paragraph 1 with errors

Although their page HTML has been improved since I first viewed it, they still haven’t sorted out UniCode encoding. Best guess for the first error– they meant “we’ve”. I have no clue what they meant for the second unless it was “Ninja©” or “Ninja™”. Simple, junior-level errors like that don’t give me warm, secure feelings. But, let’s move on.

Paragraph 3 with errors

Man versus Machine

To be clear, I too have criticized voting machines, but with diametrically opposed conclusions. Logan’s approach is all about secrecy and sorcery. He’s refused in court to reveal his ‘trade secrets’, which computer people likely agree means he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

When it comes to the public, transparency counts. I advocate voting machines should employ ‘open source’ programming. Open Source means it’s open to anyone to be viewed and studied. Nothing in it is proprietary or secret. That’s the only way citizens can feel assured their votes are fairly counted.

hacker in winter ninja gear
genuine Cyber Ninja™
complete with winter gloves,
woollies, and balaclava toque

Mr. Logan… not so concerned. He wants a closed shop, closed source, and, if he had his way, a closed audit. As it is, he and his backers have fought to keep the recount out of the public eye. That’s understandable if, as many surmise, he doesn’t know how to run a recount. He apparently hadn’t read the Elections Procedures Manual.

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Queen of Hearts decrees, “Sentence first, verdict afterwards.” Most would have deemed it wise not to advertise the results of the recount before you’re hired. Sure, it helped win the no-bid contract, but it doesn’t make fair-minded people feel secure.

Capitol Stormer? Daily Stormer? No Problem

This attitude trickled down amongst the tabulators, which include Q•Anon conspiracists, Oath Keepers, and Anthony Kern, the latter who participated in the January 6 Washington DC insurrection. When a reporter noticed Kern’s presence, the reporter– not the Washington rioter– was ejected.

That has been a big theme of the recount– ban journalists. The initial reporter allowed in– because she registered as an observer and not a journalist– was banned for noticing workers on the floor were using black and blue pens, a huge verboten no-no around ballots.

Inspection at 365 nanometres

Another questionable bit of gear has been ultra-violet lamps. I speculated they might attempt to prove ballots were chemically altered, but mystified election experts point out UV light damages ballots. Others speculate the alternative light might be used to dazzle the public with ☆woo-woo☆ science.

Besides pens and far spectrum lamps, recounters are given something else– discretion. They are authorized to gauge intent, to interpret ambiguity, and personally judge whether or not ballots are illegal. Those, says the Secretary of State, would be discarded.

According to election officials, this should never be allowed. Ballots should be held to standards and not guessed at. Divination is not an option.

And yet…

Have you been following the recount? What is your opinion?

01 May 2021

Stagecoaches and Starships


  

We talk a lot at this blog about mystery/crime markets and which kinds of stores might fit which publications. I especially enjoyed Joseph D'Agnese's column the other day about using well-known figures from history in his mysteries, and I think it's cool that one of those stories of his is in the May/June issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Also, I liked Barb Goffman's recent post about a story based on a favorite song of hers, for Josh Patchter's new anthology Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Billy Joel. The truth is, knowing which magazines/anthologies to aim for with stories of certain content can be a task in itself.

That was one of the things that worried me a bit when I submitted a Western story, "The Donovan Gang," to AHMM eleven months ago. I'd read several Westerns published there over the years, but not many, so I remember thinking that I was taking a chance in sending them one. Be aware, this isn't a contemporary story set in the West, like Hud or No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water. This is a story set in southeast Arizona in the spring of 1907, with bandits and saloons and stagecoaches and rattlesnakes and ambushes, much like the kind of 1870s story I published last month in the March/April 2021 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. But (also like the Post story) I had researched it quite a bit, and it included enough real people and towns and other locations that I thought it might be able to sneak its way into the more respectable category of historical fiction, which does seem to be acceptable at most mystery markets. You say tomayto, I say tomahto.  Even so, I figured it was a long shot.

That's why I was all the more pleased to find out, a few days ago, that AHMM has accepted that story for publication. It probably won't be until 2022 that it finally sees the light of day, since I have three others queued up there also, in their accepted-but-awaiting-publication bin. Still, it's something to look forward to. 

There's another short story I have out to AHMM at the moment that I'm concerned about also, because it's a crime story with a science fiction element. Like Westerns, that kind of cross-genre story seldom shows up in AH--although one of my fantasy stories did appear there several years ago. Once again, if you rely at all on Otto Penzler's oft-quoted definition of mystery fiction, any story that has a crime central to its plot can be considered a mystery regardless of what other genres might be stirred into the mix. At least in terms of qualifying for publication in mystery markets. So I couldn't resist giving it a try.

 

In case anyone's interested, the following is my fairly unimpressive track record, with regard to cross-genre stories at some of the current mystery publications:

AHMM: one fantasy and one Western (upcoming)

EQMM: no cross-genre stories

Strand Magazine: no cross-genre stories

Black Cat Mystery Magazine: two Westerns

Mystery Weekly: one Western, one SF, one fantasy

Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine: no cross-genre stories

And several others--Tough, Shotgun Honey, Mysterical-E, etc.--also have not accepted any cross-genre stories. At least from me.


Four things I should note, here:

1. The above unscientific study should not be taken as an indicator of what kinds of stories these magazines will publish. It's just an indicator of what they've published that I've written.

2. I haven't considered humor or romance in this market list or in the overall cross-genre discussion, only because regular mystery/crime stories often include humor and/or romance elements anyway. You know what I mean.

3. My two mystery/Westerns at BCMM were before Michael Bracken took over as editor. I'm not saying Michael wouldn't consider one--but I am saying the Westerns I published there were before his reign.

4. If ever in doubt about this kind of thing, it never hurts to ask the editor beforehand whether he/she would be receptive to cross-genre elements in a submission.

So far I haven't mentioned anthologies, but it's probably worth saying that mystery/crime anthologies are indeed sometimes open to cross-genre submissions. One of my stories chosen for Best American Mystery Stories a few years ago was a Western, about a private investigator in the Old West (which first appeared in Paul Marks' and Andy McAleer's anthology Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea).


What are your views on trying cross-genre stories at the usual mystery markets? Have any of you done that? Any successes? Which publications have you found to be most receptive to stories with Western/SF/fantasy/horror elements?


Okay, time to sign off. I see that Holmes has put on his cowboy boots and is strapping himself into his jetpack, so he'll need my help.

A writer's work is never done.


P.S. (or maybe BSP.S.): April was a good month, publicationwise. I had a story in Strand Magazine (Spring issue, #63), a story in Woman's World (May 3 issue, released on April 22), a story in Only the Good Die Young (Untreed Reads), a story in Jukes & Tonks (Down & Out Books), a story in Behind Closed Doors (Red Penguin Books), a story in Black Cat Mystery & SF Ebook Club (Wildside Press), two poems in the anthology Moving Images: Poetry Inspired by Film (Bowker Publishing), and six of my WW stories in the new Mini-Mysteries Digest (Bauer Media Group). All except the poems were mysteries. 

 

P.P.S. I've not seen the list yet, but congratulations to all the 2021 Derringer winners!



30 April 2021

Paging David Simon and Ed Burns...


 We all loved The Wire, the gritty, realistic crime series based in a Baltimore whose underside is all too familiar to anyone living in a city with over 50,000 people. What made it so real was that many of the writing staff and some of the actors were the same cops, criminals, and bystanders who inspired the characters. The show featured not one (rotund Homicide sergeant Jay Landsman), not two (Sgt./Lt. Mello, played by the real-life Jay Landsman), but THREE Landsmans. (Richard Belzer appears in the finale as Baltimore/NYPD Detective Munch from Homicide/Law & Order, a fictionalized version of Landsman in David Simon's book Homicide.)

While the show devoted its third season to the corruption in politics in Baltimore, that thread started in Episode 1 and keeps rolling along in the final season-ending montage.

What if I told you just by watching Fox 19 and WCPO News here in Cincinnati, I've been watching a reboot of The Wire playing out for the past several years?

In a city that had its riots over police shootings in 2001, the most drama coming from that corner in more recent times stemmed from the ouster of Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell over mismanagement and poor morale among the officers. He was the second of two "outside" chiefs, chiefs hired from outside the police department after a referendum broke the local FOP's hold on promotions to the highest ranks. However, current chief Elliot Isaac is a longtime veteran of the CPD. His approach to last summers protests that followed George Floyd's murder was to announce the curfew at 9 PM, ask everyone to get to their cars by 9:30, and the force would see everyone the next day. That's not to say we don't have our own problems between police and the black community here, but we seem to handle it better than most.

Then we have Cinicnnati City Council. Four members of council have been indicted on corruption charges since 2019. Three of them - PG Sittenfeld, Jeff Pastor, and Tamaya Dennard - were all suspended by the Ohio Attorney General and booted from Council in 2020 and early 2021. A fourth, Wendell Young, found himself in hot water in the past month. Cincinnati City Council has nine members, which means now, nearly half of Council has been appointed by either their party or a judge.

I grew up in Cleveland back when La Cosa Nostra and the Irish mob were a thing there. Granted, Cleveland has a bigger, ward-based council, so what Cincinnati currently calls a crisis in leadership, my old city used to call Tuesday. And yet I'm reminded of the shenanigans that went on in Mayor Royce's office on The Wire, the backroom deals made to move one corrupt police commander after another into the commissioner's office, of Tommy Carcetti selling his soul piece by piece over three seasons until he bore more than a passing resemblance to Aiden GIllen's next major role, that of Littlefinger on Game of Thrones. No wonder Martin O'Malley hates that show. (Though I think O'Malley might have made a decent run for president if he'd learn to stop taking himself so seriously.)

But to have nearly half the people entrusted with running the city indicted on bribery charges? Three of these people had already declared  for this year's mayoral campaign. One is still running and insisting his innocence. Not very credible when you realize how tone-deaf that makes one seem. See Weiner, Anthony; Gaetz, Mark. 

Throw into the mix a local judge who was accused of mismanagement of her officer, a scandal complete with political intrigue, racial overtones, and a main figure every bit as colorful as the fictional Clay Davis, and Simon and Burns could easily squeeze at least two seasons out of the Queen City.

Is it life imitates art? Or the other way around? Growing up, I knew some older characters claim to be in the bar mobster Danny Green left before he was blown all over Cuyahoga County, a hit that would land anyone involved on Homeland Security's counter-terrorism radar today. I chatted with a former county commissioner at a coffee shop as he dished dirt on a few notables in Cleveland and other local governments. I played little league with a future local police chief who lost his job after a rape conviction. And I've known local politicians who just wanted to do the right thing, including a mayor who was my den mother in Cub Scouts and son is now mayor of the suburb where we grew up. Here in Cincinnati, the mayor of my current suburb used to be my bartender while a coworker sits on another town's council. While there's not much dirt to dish on those four, as characters, they could give a fly-on-wall view of what does go on behind closed doors. Not all of it is pretty, or Cincinnati would have more than five elected council members right now.


29 April 2021

Writing Pain


He felt the rib go, knew it would be a problem. Then the guy in front of him snap-kicked him directly above his bent right knee. He bit back a cry of pain as he rebalanced on his left foot. 

                     —Recently published thriller—title and author name withheld to protect the egregious 

How it Started
The quote above is inexact and from memory, but I do recall it pretty clearly. This was the point at which I stopped reading,

I had occasion to revisit this scene just yesterday morning—as I sat waiting be seen by a doctor at the emergency room. I'll relate in a minute why this particular passage sprang to mind at the time, but it ought to come as no surprise that, while sitting there in considerable pain, I began thinking about how we—as crime writers—deal with pain.

Before we start, I'll concede that I understand full well that what many of us in the industry strive for is realism, rather than reality in our fiction. "Realism" being a false-front building of a story, giving the appearance of reality rather than the actuality of it.

Not everyone in crime fiction strives for realism. Many crime writers work an absurdist or escapist vein. And that's okay. I'm not actually talking about these writers or their work here. For the purposes of this blog post, I am dealing solely with writers striving for realism in their crime fiction.

Back to how I got here. Yesterday morning I walked out to my new truck, unlocked it, and started to climb in. I slipped. I fell over backwards. As I was falling I managed to come down first on the ball of my left foot, with my backward momentum unchecked. Turned out this was a problem for both my left quadriceps muscle and a tendon that runs from my hip, through my knee, down to my ankle.

The Culprit


I am not sure whether I only felt the *POP* that followed, or whether I actually heard it as well. I know that I definitely felt it.

What came next? Agony. Sheer, crushing, all-consuming agony. I've felt pain like that before, but it's been rare. I did my best to straighten my leg, and I dimly remember the "Agggggghhhhh" sound I made as I did so. It HURT. Once I succeeded in straightening my leg, the pain lessened enough for me to be able to actually draw a breath. I realized at that moment that I had been holding it since the *POP* several heartbeats before.

I'd like to say that I struggled manfully to get to my feet, got into my truck, and toughed my way through the pain, worked my full shift, and came home with the barest of limps. But of course none of it happened that way. My wife and son came out in response to my frantic phone call (not cursing the advent of cellphones this week!), and helped me get up. Once I was standing, with my leg straight, the pain began to recede, and I actually said, "I think I'm okay. Scared me, but it already hurts less. I think I can go into work—"

That was as far as I got, because at that point I took a step, slightly bent my knee, and nearly collapsed again as a fresh wave of searing pain coursed through my lower left thigh. At this point my wife (the smart one in the marriage) shut down any notion that I would be able to shake this injury off and go to work.

And that was how I found myself waiting to see an orthopedist in a curtained-off room in the ER. I've heard it said that humans are conditioned by evolution to both be instructed by, and to forget the intensity of, pain. (This gets batted around a lot in relation to women and the remembered pain of childbirth. Turns out, neuroscience has pretty handily demolished that wives' tale.). 

If it's the case that we as a species are hard-wired to remember pain as part of a "burned child fears the fire" evolutionary prompt, then that begs the question: why are some otherwise decent writers so lousy at communicating pain and its effects on the nervous system in particular and the human body in general?

I pondered this question in the ER while I waited for the orthopedist and tried hard not to move my injured leg. The slightest shift the wrong way practically knocked the wind out of me. The first doctor to see me initially thought I might have completely torn the tendon. There were certain ways I simply could not move my leg when he prompted me to do so.

Reflecting on the passage quoted at the top of this post, and not even addressing the notion of being able "feel the rib go" and noting it with all the flair of marking down what time the mail carrier dropped a package on your neighbor's doorstep, I confess to being floored at the notion that someone could take a hard kick to the knee as described above and remain standing (all while nursing a freshly broken/separated/cracked rib?). This line of thought took me back to one of the other times I had taken a hard blow to the knee.

The summer after I turned eighteen I took a glancing shot on my right knee from a 600 lb. cement block. A coworker on the construction site where I was working had talked naive teen-aged me into steadying it on the blade of a forklift. The aforementioned coworker then proceeded to pop the clutch on the lift, and I lost hold of the cement block we were attempting to move. 

In retrospect I was lucky that my knee only swelled to the size of a watermelon. It hurt, but there was no structural damage to the joint, and the swelling went down after a while. My coworker got fired on the spot. My boss had to wait to fire me until I came back from a workman's comp-funded recovery period.

I still recall everything about that moment except for my coworker's name. I remember that he smelled bad- a combination of body odor and the unmistakable sickly sweet smell a body processing alcohol out of its system gives off. I remember I didn't like him very much even before he pushed me to "steady that block" while he lifted it. Heck, I even recall the the make and model of the forklift in question.

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you the Pettibone Mulliken Super 6 All Terrain Forklift

I remember the pain when that block glanced off my knee and knocked me on my back. It was bad, but what I felt yesterday morning in the flowerbed beside my truck was worse. And  I shudder to think what might have happened had that block landed squarely on my knee, instead of bouncing down the side.

"Go on without me!" vs. "I've been shoooot!"
Maybe what I'm trying to get at is the point that comedian Eddie Murphy so effectively made in one of his stand-up specials years and years ago. Click here to hear him talk about the reality of getting shot versus how it's portrayed in the movies. Yeah, it's funny (and profane), but there's a grain of truth in that clip. The notion that someone would say, "Go on without me!" as opposed to the real world notion of someone responding to getting shot with a drawn-out "I've been shooooooooooooooot!!!!!" makes for great comedy because we can all relate (Not to getting shot—I make no assumptions about our readership here at Sleuthsayers—but to having that "Awww that would never happen!" reaction to something so patently ridiculous.). Who was it that said that all great comedy arises from pain? There might just be something to that. Admit it, you laughed when you listened to the portion of Murphy's stand-up linked above.

And yet this sort of twaddle gets unfunnily, unironically purchased and published over and over again in fiction that purports to be "realistic." And again, yes, a lot of fiction is "escapist" (some might even say "wish-fullfillment"): a double conceit played to full effect in the Tom Selleck movie Her Alibi (1988), where Selleck, playing a a popular author of unrealistic wish-fulfillment thrillers, actually gets shot in the buttcheek with an arrow. The scene is played realistically (and hilariously) , and the laughs pile up when Selleck, like so many writers, mines the experience for a scene in his current work-in-progress. It's all the funnier when Selleck's literary hero avatar nonchalantly pulls the arrow out his *bicep* all by himself, before going about the business of methodically taking out bad guys.

Check it out. It's hilarious. Maybe all great comedy does arise from pain? Or maybe I enjoy it more than some people because I'm also a writer of the sort of fiction Selleck's character so successfully peddles bad pastiches of? Maybe it is just one big inside joke. You be the judge. I still find that bit really funny, over thirty years later.

All I can say is that if someone managed to put the sort of hurt on me that the combination of my truck and a wet patch of ground after a rainy night did yesterday, I wouldn't be saying, "Go on without me!" Once I could talk again, I'd be focused solely on trying to get the pain to stop.

And speaking of the fall I took yesterday, as it turns out, I got lucky. The muscle and ligament damage turned out to be partial as opposed to total. The difference between these two states of damage is the difference between recuperation/a hip-to-ankle brace/eventual physical therapy, and a surgical reattachment/reconstruction of the injured area.

So it looks like I have a lot of THIS in my near future:

How It's Going (That's my son watching Jackson Browne with me—the day ending on a much better note!)

See you in two weeks—and in the meantime, be careful out there!

28 April 2021

A Narrow Margin


  

One of the side effects of a year in suspended animation is a lot of bingeing.  We indulged ourselves.  We fashioned a cocoon.  There was cooking.  A fair amount of cheese was involved, and root vegetables.  But we spent a lot of time under the covers, too.  Books, movies, and TV, revisiting old favorites and auditioning new ones, trying on stuff we might not have given an ear to previously, but often enough falling into a familiar comfort zone.

Which isn’t to say you don’t discover something fresh or unexpected in the tried and true.  I ran across a couple of tight little noirs directed by Richard Fleischer that were new to me, The Narrow Margin and Violent Saturday.  Fleischer’s the son of animator Max Fleischer, who’s probably best known for Betty Boop, just as the younger Fleischer is probably most famous for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings, two terrific Kirk Douglas vehicles.  Later, he did Soylent Green, but although his career lasted forty years, it’s pretty much littered with dogs.  He hit the sweet spot with those earlier B-pictures, and never matched their feral energy afterwards.

The Narrow Margin is as brutal as any Anthony Mann from that postwar period, and stars Charles McGraw, a guy Mann almost always used as a heavy.  Here, he’s the lead, a tough cop with a face like a cinderblock.  But he meets his match in the eye-popping Marie Windsor. 


 










It’s not, I don’t think, dismissive to call Marie Windsor a dame.  She’s all that, and more.  She has a hundred and seventy-two credits on IMDb, between 1941 and 1991, a lot of them in television, from the 1950’s on, but she made her bones in Poverty Row, the bottom half of double-features.  She did a couple of dozen walk-ons before she paints on the radar as a ganglord’s wife in Force of Evil, trying to get Garfield on the wrong side of temptation.  In a picture with a lot of great lines, she has some doozies.  “A man could spend the rest of his life trying to remember what he shouldn’t have said,” she tells Garfield.

She was typecast, more often than not the whore with a heart of stone, but she never lacked for work, nor did she seem to mind.  She was in fact a lifelong Mormon, but she got a kick out of playing bad girls.  She’s a certain kind of character actress.  Somebody like Dorothy Malone or Ann Sheridan can start out in supporting parts and turn themselves into stars.  Somebody else might get a shot at it, Gail Russell, Frances Farmer, but something happens, nerves, alcohol, a manipulative relationship, and they flame out.  Marie keeps her head above water.  She reminds me of Fay Spain, younger but with a similar career arc, sultry and splashy, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.  (Fay’s biggest part is Al Capone, opposite Rod Steiger, still the gold standard.)  You recognize the actress, but you remember the character she’s reliably established.  How could Marie Windsor not be devious?

Narrow Margin has a neat and convincing twist, which I won’t give away here, other than to say Marie is it.  She and McGraw trade loaded barbs, Earl Felton’s script a crash course in hard-boiled. 

Him: “You make me sick.” 

Her: “Well, use your own sink.”

The tension is moral, and the sexual undercurrent isn’t animal magnetism, but contempt.  There’s no subtext.  Narrow Margin wears its heart on its sleeve, which makes it all the more sudden, savage, and claustrophobic.


27 April 2021

The Pause that Refreshes


Since the beginning of the year, I have read submissions to Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties, Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 3, and the special cozy issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine.

I then read, in quick succession, Sara Paretsky’s Brush Back, John Sandford’s Gathering Prey, and John Grisham’s Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer. 

When I finished them, I started reading the May/June issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, which contains work from a significant number of SleuthSayers.

What I didn’t do is write.

That’s almost four months without finishing a new short story, a significant productivity gap considering I’ve had year-long stretches when I produced at least a story a week.

This weekend—only a few days before this post appears—I began writing again. Though I’ve not yet finished anything in my two days back at the keyboard, I’ve made progress on a trio of stories.

STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS BEFORE

Write every day.

I’ve seen this advice repeated ad nauseam, and it’s good advice. Some writers need this structure in order to be productive, and other writers use it as a way to build a wall between them and their other responsibilities. (“I can’t do that now, this is my scheduled writing time!”)

But writing every day isn’t the only approach to productivity. Over the years I’ve had many writing gaps lasting from a few days to a few weeks. Sometimes real life demands our attention elsewhere, whether it’s a health issue, a family emergency, mandatory overtime at the day job, or a weather-related incident. And stepping away from the keyboard can be—when done by choice—a way to recharge one’s batteries and return to writing refreshed

In my case, time away was the result of a combination of things: a Snowpocalypse, editing responsibilities, and a week or so of binge reading to cleanse my literary palate.

I have returned refreshed, but I see another writing gap in the near future: All those stories I accepted for Groovy Gumshoes, Mickey Finn, and Black Cat need to be edited and prepared for publication.

With any luck, I can squeeze in a good bit of writing before the next pause.


April has been filled with good news:

“Last Waltz Across Texas” appears in the May/June Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

“Soiled Dove” appears in Crimeucopia: We’re All Animals Under the Skin.

“The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” appears in Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the songs of Billy Joel (Untreed Reads), edited by Josh Pachter.

“If You’ve Got the Money, Honey” appears in Jukes & Tonks (Down & Out Books), edited by Gary Phillips and me. The anthology, which released Monday, April 19, appeared on Amazon’s Hot New Releases list that day (the Kindle edition at #65 and the paperback edition at #67), dropped off, and reappeared the next day (Kindle edition at #29 and the paperback edition at #36).

And the ITW Thriller Award nominees were announced. Two stories from Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir, vol. 1 (Down & Out Books), which I edited, were nominated for Best Short Story: Alan Orloff’s “Rent Due” and Andrew Welsh-Huggins’s “The Mailman.”

26 April 2021

No, No, No, No-no, No-no-no...Banned Books


 by Steve Liskow

I'm jumping the season a little. This year, Banned Books Week will be late in September. During that week, we are reminded how many of the classics are or were on somebody's hit list in an effort to protect innocent (?) minds from the corrupting influence of new ideas. If you're of a certain age, you probably read many of these in school or even on your own. I did.

Obviously, the list expands as new authors produce new work, especially work challenging our assumptions about issues like race and sexuality. Unfortunately, few books get removed from that list, even if it's only in some miniscule township or school district ten miles east of Oblivion. 

I directed the play with this poster. 

I don't like censorship and have been known to push the envelope myself. I understand the concerns, but hate the blind fear that often inspires it. When I student-taught in a suburb of Detroit, the school system had a standard form a parent had to fill  out if he/she objected to their child's reading a particular text. I wish I had a copy of it now, but I still remember the first two questions on the form:

1. Have YOU read the entire book?

2.  Are you aware of the critical responses to the book?

I still think that's a good starting point.

I found a list of the most-banned books over the last ten years. I've only heard of two of the books currently in the top ten and haven't read either of them. That makes sense because parents tend to focus on YA books to "protect" their children, which means the books show up in the classroom. I assigned several older titles still in the top 50, including Brave New World, Of Mice and Men, To Kill A Mockingbird, 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, The Things They Carried, and that constant target, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

When I started teaching, the only systemic censorship I encountered was for Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Someone complained about the book (To this day, I don't see the problem) and the school's principal, never one to take a stand, ordered the English teacher who maintined the book inventory to burn all the school's copies. Really. That teacher explained why he thought it was a bad idea and donated the books to the local veteran's hospital and various other venues. The principal had him removed and I got his job the following year. True story.

That was fifty years ago. Over the following years, I encountered a few parents and students who objected to certain books, but it was never an organized group effort. 


My first full year, two classes voted to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and buy it from one of the many paperback book clubs common at the time. I'd never read it, and when I opened  the first page, I saw trouble brewing and turned to the seasoned veterans for advice. One told me to compose a letter to all the parents explaining why I thought the book merited study and have them sign and return it to confirm their approval. Only one parent objected, and when I invited her in to discuss her concerns, she signed the letter instead.

I taught in a town with a population that was about 1/3 Hispanic and 1/3 black, with a few Asians, too. The students in our district spoke seventeen different languages at home. Given that demographic, it's amazing I didn't start more brushfires, but the only other battle, which became routine, concerned Huckleberry Finn. Some of my black students refused to read it because of the 214 uses of the "N-word."

I gave those kids a choice of three alternative texts, and they could write a two-to-four-page essay about their experience reading the book OR present a five-minute oral discussion to the rest of the class. The three books were Native Son by Richard Wright, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison or Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. All three writers are black, and two of those books are considerably longer than Huckleberry Finn. Invisible Man is also pretty complex. I used this approach for six or seven years, and it worked well. After about three years, more and more kids decided to read Huckleberry Finn after all. 

When I retired from teaching, both Wright and Hurston were part of the curriculum. 

I actually objected to one book myself. In 1999, Robert Fagles produced a new translation of The Odyssey to enthusiastic acclaim. My school had been using the Lattimore translations of both The Iliad and The Oddysey for decades, and at the first department meeting of the new year, a younger teacher (pretty much anyone in the department was younger than I was) suggested replacing the older translation. I raised my hand.

"Has anyone besides me read the Fagles?" I asked.

No one had.

"OK," I said. "It reduces the poetry to informal chat and weakens the majesty of the Lattimore. That may or may not matter to you. But let me point out that 3/4 of the teachers in this department are female. Odysseus always addresses Circe and Calypso, the two women he has sex with while he's away from his wife, as 'Bitch.' If that works for you, I'd like to visit your classrooms to watch you discuss it with your teen-aged students." 

The suggestion died then and there.


It reminded me of the commotion years ago over Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho. His original publisher rejected the MS because of the violent and misogynistic content, and people rushed to both sides of the debate. Finally, one critic--I wish I remembered who--pointed out that the violence and ideology were secondary issues. 

The book simply wasn't very well-written.

That still strikes me as the line we don't cross. Is it violent? Sexy? Political? Disturbing? Maybe, and maybe it hits a few of your personal buttons. But those things matter less if the author does his or her job well. I don't read some books because I don't like them. But that doesn't mean I won't let you read them. I wish more people felt like that. I still remember a comment Maurice Sendak made years ago in a writing workshop I attended.

"We teach children taste. What do we teach them when we give them bad books?"

25 April 2021

The Hat Trick


When a hockey player scores three goals in the same game, he is said to have performed "The Hat Trick." There are several myths as to where the term came from, however, it appears that the term was first coined in December 1933 when The Winnipeg Free Press described a hockey game in which Romeo Rivers of the Monarchs scored his third goal when he received a pass from his team mate who had drawn the opposing goalie out of position.

The term has since moved into other sports, referring to a player scoring three times in the same game. If the player happens to score two goals, it's called a "brace," and if he scores three consecutive goals in the same game, without another player scoring in between any two of his goals, that feat is then called "A Natural Hat Trick."

Transposing the above logic into the game of writing for AHMM, I think I can claim the simple version of The Hat Trick. To borrow someone else's phrase, someone a lot more famous than I am: "So, here's the deal."

1st Goal

The Nov/Dec 2020 issue of AHMM published my short story "A Matter of Values." Originally, I intended this Prohibition Era tale about an Irish bootlegger and his vice cop buddy to be a standalone. However, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I am now under pressure to turn the standalone into a series. To date, I have two story starts, "Whiskey Curb" and "On the Pad." Both are based on actual places and/or happenings in NYC during that time period. We'll see if either makes it to the finish line.

2nd Goal

The Jan/Feb 2021 issue of AHMM published "A Helping Hand," 8th in my 1660's Underworld series. This story involves a young, orphan, incompetent pickpocket trying to survive in a criminal enclave in Paris during the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King. Constantly being hungry, he is often drawn into the schemes of others in hopes of getting something to eat.

3rd Goal

The Mar/Apr 2021 issue of AHMM published "St. Paddy's Day," 12th in my Holiday Burglars series. In this one, Yarnell and Beaumont are hired by a woman to steal her husband's body and get it to the funeral home in time for his services the next morning. It seems the deceased's drinking buddies stole the corpse at the wake, bungee-corded it to a refrigerator dollie, stuck a drink in his hand and proceeded to wheel him through all his favorite bars on St. Patrick's Day. Our two protagonists took on the job because the deceased was a fellow burglar, not to mention the fee for doing so.


And, there you have it. I'm considering that writing for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine as one game, while writing for any different magazine as a separate game. Since I have a story in three consecutive issues of AHMM, I am hereby claiming a Hat Trick in the field of writing mystery short stories.

Hey, in our business of writing short stories, you aren't going to get rich, so you have to find glory where you can.

Now, get out there and write/submit/sell your own short stories and claim your own Hat Tricks.

24 April 2021

Arrest that Cow! Warning: Canadian Humour


 It's a crime about Covid.  (Ha! I knew I could make this a crime column.)  But truly, The News is so completely obsessed with Covid, that other world events are hardly getting a glance.


For instance, I bet you didn't know that during the Trump reign, a near rebellion took place mere hours north of Toronto.  Sure, this didn't have the scope of the January 6 attack on the White House.  But we do things a little smaller in Canada.  And perhaps with a certain style.  And then, there's our high-school-good-looks Prime Minister, who may or may not have a stream of PR bungles behind him.

So in the interests of fair play (because we always feel a little second fiddle to you Yanks) here's my take on how this might have gone down in the True North.  (Yes, this event actually happened.  Mine is simply a creative nonfiction play by play.  Apologies in advance for any in-jokes.  Heck, for the whole thing.)

 The Independent State of Penetang

09:36, Parliament Building East Wing, Ottawa

"This is weird," says Mark, flipping through screens.

"Hmmmm?"

"It says here that Penetang has declared independence."

The other civil servant head looks up.  "Where is that?  In Africa?"

"Northern Ontario.  Somewhere north of Orillia, I think.  Or maybe Parry Sound.  I'm looking it up."

The older man frowns.  "You mean the county of Penetang?"

"Seems like it.  They've blocked the roads, it says here.  Just a sec."  He scrolls further.  "They're using tractors and farm equipment.  And cows."

A gasp.  "They're sacrificing cows?"

"Nope.  Herding live ones.  The cars can't get by."

"Merde.  We need to inform the Prime Minister."


11:00, Live from Penetang

"This is Mandy Flambeau, reporting from rebellion headquarters, at the Puckyew community hockey rink in downtown Penetang.  It's sort of quiet here, Len.  Maybe they're all out on the protest lines?  Oh wait -- I see somebody!  Sir, sir...over here.  Can you tell us what this rebellion is really about?"

"Taxes. Sick an' tired of those federal freeloaders takin' our taxes and spending them in the city.  Want our tax money spent here.  Not on subways and free daycare for city folk."

Gasp.  "Daycare? You're against daycare?"

"You see any kids around here?  No young people in Penetang anymore.  No jobs for them.  Only seniors now."

"So you want free daycare for seniors?"


13:43,  The Prime Minister's office

"Mr. Prime Minister, we have a situation."

(groan)  "Not another Tweet from the Twit."

"This is local, sir.  I need to brief you on the rebellion in Penetang.  PETA have moved in.  Because of the cows."

"Say what?"

"The rebels in Penetang have blocked the roads with cows.  And now PETA has established protest lines to protect the animals."

"Hmmm... Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Sir, I think we have an opportunity here."

"A photo op?  Oh goodie!  What do they wear in Penetang?"

"Uh...overalls and flannel shirts?"

"Awesome.  Get Holt Renfrew and Nordstrom on the line.  We want these Canadian made."

"Yes sir.  Will you be leaving immediately?"

"I'm texting Sophie and the kids.  Maybe we can make a vacation out of it.  Does the Aga Khan have a place up there?"


14:00, Back at the East Wing

Mark puts down the phone.  "Is it even possible to charge cows with sedition?"

The other civil servant head looks up.  "Mark, are you from farm country?"

"Nope.  Born and bred in Ottawa."

"There may be a fault in their plan.  The cows."

"What about them?"

"They're Jerseys.  They'll simply go home at five to be milked."


Melodie Campbell knows a thing or two about sedition-er-cows.  She also gets paid to write very silly comedy for unsuspecting publishers.  You can find The Goddaughter series at all the usual suspects.


 

 

 

23 April 2021

Making Fudge


Back in the 1980s a college English professor of mine shared a “stupid Hollywood” story with our class. Some genius producers released a TV mini-series on the life of the outlaw Jesse James. Whoever wrote the script read a bunch of history books to do their research. Only problem was, one of the books wasn’t nonfiction. It was (oops!) a novel. In Hollywood terms, history is free for the taking; fiction isn’t. “So now the lawyers are talking,” the professor said, his voice oozing schadenfreude.

I was much older when I finally encountered the 1983 novel the professor was probably referencing: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The author, Ron Hansen, frequently incorporates nonfictional elements in his fiction, with astonishing results. His book was the (intentional) source of the 2007 Brad Pitt/Casey Affleck movie, which reproduced much of Hansen’s gorgeous language. One of my favorite parts of both the movie and book is the lyrical description of Jesse’s character that opens Hansen’s book. (You can read much of it using Amazon’s Look Inside feature here.)

I’m a sucker for the fiction/nonfiction mind-meld. I remember reading E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime as a kid and hitting the part where magician Harry Houdini enters the life of the fictional family at the center of the book. After about a page of this, sixth-grade me stopped dead in his tracks, obsessed with knowing, “How much of this is true?”

Here’s the answer older me would impart to that young reader: Who cares? It’s fiction!

My latest story (“Mr. Tesla Likes to Watch,” AHMM, May/June 2021) features Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain working independently to solve a mystery in 1890s New York. The men have a gentleman’s wager going. Whoever cracks the case buys the other a dinner at Delmonico’s.


I’ve wanted to work them into a story ever since I discovered a truly atmospheric photo of the two of them together in Tesla’s workshop. (No, not the ones shown here.) I’m linking to the photo rather than post it here, on the advice of counsel at the firm of Sleuth & Sayers, Esq. Go look at the pic. I’ll wait. Cool, huh? That photo alone sent me on a research spree.

Things I did before writing the story:
  • The two men were members of the co-ed Players Club in New York City, founded by actor Edwin Booth as a social club for professionals in the arts. The club, located on Gramercy Park, still exists and accepts members who fit the fill and are willing to cough up the scratch. I read the modern club’s website.
  • I consulted timelines of both mens’ lives to figure out when they might have been in New York City at the same time. This was complicated by the fact that the debt-ridden Twain was living abroad during the 1890s, but somehow the pair became friends during this period.
  • I read one academic paper that summarized their correspondence.
  • I spent half a day poking around the lives and characters of the two men, limiting myself to taking only one page of notes on each.
  • Daily I prayed before the Edison/Tesla shrine in my living room. (Okay, I’m kidding about that. But for reasons involving the unwise decision to visit a local brewery on the same day it hosted a flea market we do have a shrine-like shelf in our home that memorializes that legendary feud.)

I stopped researching there. I’ve learned over the years that I’m an obsessive over-researcher. Once, determined to write a book set in Vietnam-era New York City, I convinced myself that I could not possibly start writing a word until I’d read a 900-page volume on the administration of Mayor John Lindsay. No sooner had I finished that book than I was certain—certain, I tell you!—that I had to read two of a three-volume biography on Richard Nixon. Thankfully I stopped before I did, realizing that maybe I had a little problem.

My brain now marinated in Twain/Tesla lore, I set aside my notes, and wrote the damn thing, choosing deliberately to fudge facts along the way. For me, the freedom to fudge was the only way to have fun writing such a story. Fudged fact: in the story I say Tesla walked Manhattan daily, dropping a thermometer on a string into the Hudson and East rivers, to see if their temperatures varied. Totally not true, but it seemed to fit his eccentric character, so I went with it.

I know many writers have devoted much of their work to the historic-figures-as-detective subgenre. Tesla, because of his seeming wackiness, shows up in tons of novels, often in the science fiction and fantasy genre. (Did you catch the late David Bowie’s portrayal of Tesla in the 2006 movie, The Prestige? That film was based on a novel by author Christopher Priest.) But that’s just a start. Without really trying, I poked around online and found mysteries that team Tesla with Arthur Conan Doyle, or Doyle with Houdini. I bet I would love reading those books, but I’m not sure I could maintain enough interest in a specific real-life figure to devote more than one of my own stories to them. A complete mystery series? No way.



For me, the joy of using a historic figure boils down to nailing those peoples’ eccentricities, and finding neat ways to play with them. Twain is legendary for his witty one-liners. In writing his dialogue, I repurposed some things he did say, and invented a few of my own.

My social life is filled with news of the exploits and projects of various narrative nonfiction writers. The journalist in me loves reading their work and seeing how they pulled together mountains of abstruse research to fashion a highly readable historical account. But historical mysteries are freeing precisely because they can be whimsical. 

Also, in writing this story, I experienced a difference in focus. In a typical story, I’m primarily working to fit together pieces of a plot. In this story, that primacy shifted to character. I had these parts (i.e., a real person’s known tics or backstory) and I was working to see how I could layer them into the story. How would Twain sound talking about a case? How would each man’s expertise impact the way he investigated that case? Who would be more methodical? Who unwittingly becomes the Watson?

I answered these questions for myself, as you’ll see. But now that I’ve done so, I’m not sure I could return to those characters again. The novelty has worn off, in a sense. On a second outing, I worry that their behaviors would come off as shtick, not charming. And of course, I’m wary that other writers have used these men as fictional characters.

But who knows? There was one amazing letter real-life Twain wrote real-life Tesla that blew my freaking mind. It could be easily turned into a story…or a book…or a movie… The only problem is, it’s so strange no one would ever believe it was true. Which how we got here in the first place.




* * *

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com