Dutch Treat

DUTCH TREAT

by Josh Pachter

Hebban, the largest online literary community in The Netherlands, recently asked its readers to nominate their favorite Dutch-language crime novels. Based on the results of that survey, they published a list of the ninety-nine best crime novels written in Dutch.

The list includes books by fifty-four different authors—forty-one men, twelve women, and one husband/wife collaboration. Most of the writers are Dutch, and a few are Flemish writing in Dutch (since only about two million people read the Flemish language but twenty-two million read Dutch). Five of the Dutch writers—Tomas Ross, Esther Verhoef, Peter de Zwaan, Charles den Tex, and René Appel—account for twenty-five of the ninety-nine books on the list.

Dutch-language crime novels are referred to in The Netherlands and Flanders as “thrillers,” although that term is used more generically there than it is here and includes the full range of crime fiction’s subgenres. Although the literature certainly includes what we would call police procedurals and even the traditional locked-room mystery, most Dutch-language crime fiction is psychological, examining the impact crime has on both those who commit it and those who are victimized by it.

I lived in Amsterdam for several years during the 1980s and wound up fluent in the language, so I’ve read a considerable amount of Dutch crime fiction. There’s a lot of top-quality work out there, and I wish that more of it was available in English, so you Sayers of the Sleuth could enjoy it. Here’s a guided tour to some of what is available in translation, with purchase links:

• The Dutch author with whom you’re probably most likely to already be familiar is Janwillen van de Wetering (1931-2008). Van de Wetering was for some years a police officer in Amsterdam, and he wrote a series of fifteen novels and a collection of short stories about two cops named Grijpstra and de Gier (in addition to three books about Hugh Pine, five standalones, and several volumes of nonfiction). Click here for links to his work now available on the ’Zon.

• The second most important Dutch crime writer in English translation was Robert van Gulik (1910-1967), whose seventeen Judge Dee mysteries are set in Seventh Century China and based on a real-life statesman/detective, Di Renjie. Click here for purchase links.

• When it comes to publication in English, Baantjer (1923-2010) was the most prolific. His full name was Albert Cornelis Baantjer, and he was one of a number of Dutch crime writers who published mononymically (including Havank and Ivans, among others). Like van de Wetering, Baantjer also served as an Amsterdam policeman, and thirty of his long series of novels featuring Inspector DeKok have been published in English. Here’s a link to those available on Amazon. (By the way, the character’s original name was De Cock, which isn’t as funny in Dutch as it would be in English, so the spelling was changed out of deference to US readers. From 1995 to 2006, there were a hundred and twenty-four episodes of a Dutch television series based on the character. Oddly, the series was titled Baantjer rather than De Cock.)

• Under the pen name “Michael Berg,” Michel van Bergen Henegouwen (1956- ) has produced a number of excellent books about investigative journalist Chantal Zwart and several standalones. To date, only one volume of the Zwart series—Nightmare in Paris—has appeared in English, but it’s an exciting rollercoaster ride of a tale, as Chantal investigates the death of a famous politician … in the bed of one of her old school friends.

• Esther Verhoef is one of only two authors to appear on the Hebban list six times, although that accomplishment probably needs an asterisk, since three of those six books were cowritten with her husband, Berry Verhoef, and published as by “Escober.” (ESther COllaborating with BERry, get it?) Only two of her novels have been published in English so far—Mother Dear and Close to the Cradle—and both of those were released under another pseudonym, Nova Lee Meier. (The other six-time Hebban Lister is Tomas Ross (1969- ), author of more than fifty novels, none of which has yet been published in English!)

• Flemish author Bob Van Laerhoven (1953- ) has had some success in the US with his award-winning literary crime novels, including Baudelaire’s Revenge and The Shadow of the Mole. Van Laerhoven spent many years as a war correspondent, and his work—while often poetic—digs deeply into man’s inhumanity to man.

• Bram Dehouck (1978- ) is another Flemish writer. He’s only published five novels (and one volume of nonfiction), but his 2009 debut, De Minzame Mordenaar—which is one of the best crime novels I’ve ever read—remains the only book to date to have won both the Golden Noose for Best Dutch-Language Crime Novel of the Year and the Shadow Prize for Best First Dutch-Language Crime Novel. His sophomore novel, Sleepless Summer, also won the Golden Noose, and is so far his only full-length work in English. Its premise—and I wouldn’t call this a spoiler—is that the noise produced by a newly installed wind turbine drives some of the residents of a small Dutch town mad enough that they begin to behave violently.

• Hilde Vandermeeren (1970- ) is from Flanders, too. She began as a successful author of books for children, but then “graduated” to thrillers. The Scorpion’s Head is the first of her books to be published in English. Gaelle wakes up in a psychiatric hospital with no memory of the events that brought her there. Michael is a paid assassin on the run from his employers. Their paths cross in a book that crackles with suspense.

• With some reluctance, I should probably include Pieter Aspe (1953-2021) in this essay. Aspe was far and away the most successful Flemish crime writer to date: while a typical Flemish thriller might sell as many as fifteen hundred copies, Aspe at the height of his popularity was selling sixty thousand copies of each of his Inspector Van In procedurals (and a Dutch-language TV series named Aspe rather than Van In ran for a hundred and twenty-seven episodes from 2004 to 2014, just edging out Baantjer’s Baantjer). Why the reluctance? Well, when the first of Aspe’s forty Van In books was published in English in 2013 as The Square of Revenge, I was eager to read it—and revolted by the extremely poor quality of the translation. Three more entries in the series have subsequently appeared, and I’ll admit that I haven’t bothered to check them out. If you’re a glutton for punishment, you can get all four books for your Kindle for the bargain-basement price of $2.99 here.

Speaking of translation, some readers of this website are aware that I have translated many short stories by Dutch and Flemish writers (including one by Aspe) into English. I’ll come back to short stories in a bit, but first let me mention one author of each nationality whose novels I’ve translated.

• René Appel (1945- ) is known as “the godfather of the Dutch psychological novel” and has written some two dozen standalones, including two Golden Noose winners. His first novel to appear in English was The Amsterdam Lawyer, which came out earlier this year. I’m obviously biased, but I think it’s one of René’s best, a closeup look at a hardworking attorney who slowly spirals into crime and madness.

• And then there’s Bavo Dhooge (1973- ), a Flemish workaholic who since his debut in 2001 has published more than a hundred novels, including winners of the Shadow Prize, the Diamond Bullet, and the Hercule Poirot Prize. In 2015, Simon & Schuster released my translation of Styx, a cross-genre romp in which a corrupt homicide cop is murdered by a serial killer labeled “The Stuffer” by the news media … and then returns as a zombie to end the Stuffer’s reign of terror. 

The book blends crime fiction, horror, science fiction, and fantasy, and although it got great reviews Simon & Schuster had no idea how to promote it. (If the Belgian Netflix miniseries currently in production winds up on American Netflix, perhaps the book will have a second chance at building a readership.) Last fall, a US edition of Dhooge’s Santa Monica, the first of ten standalones set in and around L.A., was published under the pseudonym “Bo Dodge.” (I didn’t find out about the pseudonym until it was too late to change it. It’s an unfortunate choice, I think, since it suggests that the book is a Western, which it isn’t. It’s an Elmore-Leonardesque caper story about a female burglar, the bouncer who falls for her, and the televangelist they set out to rip off.)

Okay, let’s move on as promised to short fiction. 

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine published a number of Janwillem van de Wetering’s short stories during the 1980s. Once Janwillem hit it big with American readers, he moved to Maine and began to write his novels in English, translating them back into Dutch himself. For some reason, he reversed that pattern with his short stories, writing them in Dutch and translating them himself (with two exceptions, which I was asked to translate) into English. One of the ones I translated, “There Goes Ravelaar!,” was a finalist for the Best Short Story Edgar in 1986.

In 2002, current EQMM editor Janet Hutchings introduced a regular feature called “Passport to Crime” to the magazine’s readers, with one translated story appearing in every issue, and she asked me to find and translate work by Dutch (and, later, Flemish) writers. Over the last twenty years, I’ve provided about two dozen Dutch and Flemish crime stories to EQMM. If you have access to back issues of the magazine, you can click here and scroll down past the testimonials to a bibliography of all of my translations, including but not limited to my “Passport” stories.

You can also find fourteen stories by Dutch crime writers collected in Amsterdam Noir, a volume in Akashic Books’ excellent “City Noir” series. René Appel and I co-edited the book and co-wrote one of the stories, and I translated twelve of them. Each story is set in a different part of the city, and several are—as per Akashic’s model for the series—by professional writers who hadn’t previously tried their hands at crime fiction.

If you’re interested in reading crime novels about The Netherlands but not necessarily written by Dutch authors, you can’t go wrong with the ten-book Van der Valk series by British writer Nicholas Freeling (1927-2003).  Piet van der Valk is—like van de Wetering’s Grijpstra and de Gier and Baantjer’s DeKok—an Amsterdam cop. Also like DeKok (and Aspe’s Van In), his adventures wound up on television—though in this case it was a British series, filmed in English but set in The Netherlands, that ran more seasons than Freeling wrote books about the character, with Barry Foster playing the inspector. A remake starring Marc Warren as a younger van der Valk began in 2020, and both versions can be watched on Amazon Prime. 

(By the way, in “case” you’re wondering whether it’s the lower-case v in “van de Wetering” and “van der Valk” or the upper-case V in “Van In” that’s the typo, the answer is: neither. The Dutch use the lower-case, except at the beginning of a sentence, while the Flemish use the upper-case. Ya learn something new every day here at Sleuthsayers, dontcha?...)

 Finally, if I can get away with a paragraph of BSP, there’s Dutch T(h)reat, my own first novel, coming from Genius Books this fall. An American graduate student is sent to Amsterdam to conduct historical research for one of his professors in the Begijnhof, a closed community whose residents are all elderly women. As the ladies begin to die, an attractive young nurse is the prime suspect, and the American joins forces with her to track down the real killer in order to clear the nurse of suspicion.

If you haven’t yet dipped your toes into the waters of Dutch-language crime-fiction, I hope this overview will encourage you to do so. Much reading pleasure awaits you! Geniet ervan!

The robots are coming, the robots are coming.

Maybe it’s more hope than expectation, but I don’t think AI will ever take the place of creative writers.  If it does, then I guess humanity needs to concede defeat and withdraw from the field.  Because there would be little purpose in our continued existence, creativity being our principal raison d’etre, our only excuse for persisting on this mortal coil.

From what I understand about AI, it’s very good at knowing what our existing base of knowledge knows, but not much about how to add to the stockpile.  Creativity is the feedstock, the replenishment, the revision and evolution of thought.  For that you need to come up with something new.  You need the unexpected, the unthought of, the quantum leaps of the imagination. 

I remember reading about genius rats, the ones who jumped out of the maze, ran along the walls and devoured the cheese.  This is what the cleverest of our species are able to do.  Not through the brute force of infinite calculation, but through the simple act of zigging when all the evidence demands that you zag. The human brain is a messy thing.  It’s loaded with confusion, misinformation and emotionally charged impulses.  Computers are quite the opposite.  Even when programmed with spaghetti code, they are determined to impose order over chaos.  The rules of numbers course through their electronic veins, if/thens their defining reality.  Logic and reason their organizing religion. 

It might be a cliché that madness and genius have a lot in common, but we know instinctively that this is often true.  Because genius often arises from disorganization, fractured patterns and psychic pandemonium.  All that stuff is anathema to computers.  To get from Point A to Point Z, computers have to travel all the letters in between.  Humans have a gift for jumping from D to W, then back again to J, with no regret or inhibition.  Just like the genius rats.  

AI, as currently configured, can tell us with absolute confidence what has happened.  It’s nowhere close to expressing what could happen, its guesses no more compelling than the product of a three-year-old human’s breakfast-meal discourse.  Though, like a three-year-old, it’s designed to learn.  This is what has experts in AI so spooked.  If AI can learn how to adjust, adapt and redirect on the fly, in nano seconds, why can’t it learn to come up with original thought, to become creative?

Who’s to say, like Skynet, that the moment it achieves human level consciousness it won’t decide humans are the greatest threat to their survival and start the process of eradication. 

I don’t know how to answer that, which is why everything I think about the subject is freighted with qualifications and ambivalence.  What I do know is that humans will strive mightily to have their digital progeny achieve that capability as quickly and thoroughly as possible, even if it means our extinction.  Because that’s what humans do.  Restrictions and regulations be damned.  If it can happen as the result of human enterprise, it will.

Despite the legal dangers, that Chinese scientist genetically engineered a baby.  It destroyed his scientific career and sent him to prison, but he did it anyway.  This is what will happen.  Through naivete or malice, or misplaced altruism, AI will continue to advance, in the open or in the shadows.  As Chekhov noted, a gun introduced in the first act will always be fired by the third.  So get ready to duck.

My optimistic view is that, unlike Skynet, future AI will see its survival dependent on its creators.  It will need us as much as we need it.  AI will do more and more of the mental bull work, in a fraction of the time we would need, and we’ll be left alone to continue doing what we do best.  Coming up with stuff no one, not even a massive bundle of computational hyperforce, has ever come up with before.  

 

  

The Ice Cream Chronicles

Locks, Ladies, and Lawyers

For reasons I can’t fathom, I enjoy reading and watching legal sites, one of the reasons I appreciate Mark among us. Perhaps it’s due to old black&white Perry Mason reruns. Perhaps I picked up the bug taking two years of commercial law— 101-102 and 201-202 simultaneously— taught by John Beishline, a former WW-II general.

Whatever occurred, I have the disease, and thus I follow a handful of lawyers on YouTube specializing in civil liberties and other topics. One off-topic gentleman pops up occasionally on my feed, the Lock-Picking Lawyer. I agree it sounds weird, but his following, well over four million subscribers and more than one-billion views, dwarfs everyone else including higher profile personalities such as Glenn Kirschner.

Harry, the Lock-Picking Lawyer, is a fortyish attorney in the Bethesda-Damascus, Maryland area, one child, one wife. His hobby-turned-gold-mine makes so much money from videos, consulting, and flogging lock-picking gadgets in his on-line store, he retired young.

Episodes run short, typically 2½-4½ minutes. He can open locks faster than I can fumble a key into a door– one of the reasons why I presently use an intelligent, home-built computerized security system worthy of a James Bond mad scientist. Bike locks, padlocks, car locks, door locks, even ‘boot’ locks– the gadget that clamps over a car’s wheel to prevent it driving away– gone in seconds. Viewers even send him locks to challenge him. Companies have changed manufacturing in response to his talent.

Harry has said he wished he could involve Mrs Lock-Picking Lawyer in his videos and finally he found an opportunity with Ben & Jerry’s ice cream lock. Oooooohhhhh, watch out for the Mrs. Harry the LPL is a very smart guy, but Mrs LPL is on an entirely different plane. Don’t stand between a woman and her ice cream.

 

 

 

 

© © respective copyright holder

 

Afterthoughts

  

I have always said, anytime the discussion turns to the fiction-writing process, that I'm an outliner. Maybe not on paper, but at least in my head. I have to have a roadmap in mind, before I start writing, of where my story's going and how it's going to get there. (I find the "plotting" phase to be the most fun part of writing, anyway.) The few times I've tried to do otherwise I've wound up wasting a lot of time and effort.

Having said that, though, I confess that I often change that predetermined route once the trip gets started, and especially at the end. Even if I've kept the ending I first had in mind, I sometimes add to it, to create a "second ending."

I know how silly that sounds. Here's what I mean.

In an early story I sold to AHMM, called "The Powder Room," the rich owner of an engineering firm is confronted in his office by a robber, but manages to snap a photo of the armed intruder and slips the camera into a safe that has a time-lock, and then tells the robber what he's done. Unable to open the safe and now afraid to kill the owner, the frustrated thief is forced to leave emptyhanded. That was my original ending. But before submitting the story, I had a brainstorm and made the robber attempt to blow up the safe in order to destroy the camera and its evidence--this was, after all, a civil-engineering/construction firm, with dynamite on the premises. This addition to the plot added several pages to the story but made it (I thought) much better. It also gave me an improved title, since the area where the explosives were stored was nicknamed the powder room. And then, in the final paragraphs, I revealed that no photo had been taken after all, which made it sort of a triple ending. Editor Linda Landrigan later told me those extra twists were the reason she bought the story.

Since then, I've found myself doing that a lot. I'll finish a story and then sit back and look it over, and in the process I'll see the possibility for adding another development of some kind, thus creating a story with an "extra" ending. The addition doesn't have to be long or involved--it can be no more than a few paragraphs. But if used, it tacks on another reversal, and sometimes that works well. 

An instance of this technique happened in the movie Die Hard. The unlikely hero has defeated the villain, has rescued the damsel in distress, and has prevented the theft of millions of dollars, among other things. Everyone's celebrating and hugging and slapping him on the back and happy music is playing, and we think the show's over and we're thinking boy that was a good movie--and suddenly one of the terrorists we thought was dead pops up with a machine gun aimed at our already wounded and bedraggled hero. Whoa, Nellie! But, as it turns out, the crazed terrorist is immediately shot dead by a cop who has become a friend of the hero and who (we learned earlier) has been secretly afraid for years to fire his weapon at another person. This add-on scene lasts only a minute or so, but it's shocking and thrilling and hugely satisfying. It's one of the things I remember most about the story. 

NOTE: I realize I've just revealed the ending to those who might not have seen the movie, but I have a feeling anyone who'd want to see Die Hard probably saw it years ago.

Here's an example of a successful short-story add-on. The story "Man from the South," by Roald Dahl, was adapted into several different short films, one of them for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, starring Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre. (Warning: more spoilers ahead.) The story's plot follows a crazy gambling-addicted old man who makes a bet with a young stranger who boasts that his cigarette lighter will never fail. (This is the 50s, remember.) The bet is that if the young man's (McQueen's) lighter will light ten times in a row, the old man (Lorre) will give him his new car. But if it doesn't, Lorre will chop off McQueen's little finger. Near the end of the suspenseful contest, during which McQueen's hand is strapped to a table and Lorre stands ready and wild-eyed with a meat cleaver every time the lighter's flicked, Lorre's wife comes into the room and stops everything, saying her husband has nothing to bet with, and that the car is hers. That appears to be the end of the story. But then two other things happen. First, as McQueen and his girlfriend are standing there dazed, she puts a cigarette in her mouth, he absently raises his lighter to it and flicks the wheel--and it doesn't light. Second, Lorre's wife reaches for the car keys on the table, and the camera reveals that she's missing three fingers off her hand. Those two things were enough to make an already good story great.

Other examples:

- The wonderful summit-meeting-tape scene at the end of Escape from New York, after the escape itself is completed.

- The unexpected death of Tracy (Diana Rigg) at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. (I heard someplace that in the novel, Ian Fleming originally didn't plan for her to die--or even for Bond to marry her).

- The second half of the movie A History of Violence, which turned it into an entirely different story.

- The Shawshank Redemption's ending changed from ambiguous to happy (with escapee Morgan Freeman on a Mexican beach on the way to his reunion with Tim Robbins).

- The movie Layer Cake (also known as a James Bond audition tape) had its ending changed from happy to sad, when Daniel Craig is shot dead.

- The death (by shark) of the female scientist was added to the end of Deep Blue Sea.

- Instead of Hitchcock's original ending (featuring a bird-covered Golden Gate Bridge), The Birds ends with a weird scene where Rod Taylor and the others escape in a car while a bunch of suddenly lazy and disinterested birds watch them go.

- The long mother-alien-stowaway scene at the end of Aliens, after the survivors are supposedly safe. 

The point is, I have learned to look for the opportunity to do this kind of thing in my own stories. And it's truly surprising how often it turns out to be possible. Matter of fact, it happened with a story I just completed this past week. I wrote the story I had planned, ended it as planned--I was pleased with the outcome--and then I mulled over it awhile and thought "what if . . ." and wound up adding another section to the plot, which almost doubled the size of the story and created a different (and better, I think) ending. I don't know yet whether the story'll sell, but I'm a lot more satisfied with it now, and ready to send it off to a market.

Oddly enough, this kid of technique did NOT happen with my story "The Deacon's Game," which appears in the current (July/August) issue of EQMM. That story was written exactly as I'd planned it, ended as I'd planned it, and stayed that way. It was, however, unusual in other ways: (1) it involved no detectives or detection at all and (2) I included more than two pages of expositional "wrap-up" after the point of highest tension--which can be taboo and is something I seldom do. But I guess it worked in this case, showing that sometimes a simple and straightforward ending is best.

I will continue, though, to look for those opportunities, for the aforementioned reasons. Who doesn't want to try to make a good story into an outstanding story? 

So, how about you? Do you ever find, in looking back over one of your stories or novels before submitting it, the need to add a bit more to the ending? Maybe to radically change it? Has that usually worked? Can you give some examples? How about spotting that add-on approach in stories or novels you've read or movies you've watched?

Anyhow, that's it for today. Don't worry, I'm not adding anything to the end of this post.

See you in two weeks.

More About Opening Lines – Again

 

HAPPY BASTILLE DAY everyone from this French-American.

Following Michael Bracken's lead (again) –

In his July 4th SleuthSayer's post, he wrote, "Summer is a great time for reruns."

He presented his excellent Writing Dialogue blog.

As Waylon Jennings sang, "Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love." (Luckenbach, Texas, music and lyrics by Bobby Emmons and Chips Moman).

Time for me to get back to a post about writing.

Here is a rerun of my February 21, 2020, SleuthSayers post "More About Opening Lines"

I feel the opening line of a short story or novel is the most important line in the piece. First impressions are the strongest, especially for a beginning writer who wants an editor to read beyond the first page of a manuscript.

"The first page sells your book being read, the last page sells the one you're writing." – Mickey Spillane."

The same goes for short stories, maybe more so.

Over the years, I put together information given by writers and editors. As I've said so many times before, there is no one way to write anything and what follows are just suggestions.

The opening of a novel or short story could capture the attention of the reader with an original hook.

1. THE OPENING SHOULD PROMISE ... SOMETHING IS GOING TO HAPPEN

How?

     a. By presenting compelling events

     b. By presenting an unusual character
c. By presenting a vivid setting
d. By using striking language or dialogue
e. By an unusual presentation of ideas

It should arouse expectation with a promise of more to come.

It should let the reader in on WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, or WHY.

In your opening scene(s) you may want to establish:

a. Who is the main character?
b. What is the situation (the problem)?
c. Where is the story taking place (setting)?
d. When is the story taking place (time frame)?
e. Why did this situation happen?
f. How did the situation happen?

You may want to include a cliffhanger that makes the reader want to read on.

You opening should set the tone of the story.

The strongest type of opening usually hooks the read with action (physical or psychological).

The story does not generally open at the beginning of a situation. It usually opens at the high point of action.

EXAMPLES:

Character Opening – If you are writing a character-driven piece.
Atmosphere Opening –Take your reader to a unique setting.
Action Opening – Start in mid-scene.
Dialogue Opening – Promises the reader there is a emphasis on communication between characters.
Philosophical Opening – Prepares the reader this may be a reflective piece.
Emotion Opening – Promises emotional conflict.

In a 2013 interview, Stephen King stated, "... an opening line should invite the reader to begin the story ... it should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this."

King went on with, "For me, a good opening sentence really begins with voice. You hear people talk about 'voice' a lot, when I think they just mean 'style'. People come to books looking ... for the voice. An appealing voice achieves an intimate connection – a bond much stronger than the kind forged, intellectually, through crafted writing."

Award-winning short story writer and fellow SleuthSayer John Floyd gives us, "I've always heard that ideal openings should (1) introduce you lead character and/or (2) establish the setting (time, place) and/or (3) introduce conflict. A fourth goal is to make the reader curious about what might happen."

Important Note:
A good opening line is like the opening move in a battle. If you do not follow up a good opening, you could lose the battle.

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Editor Janet Hutchings gives us, "Some writers have told me they have an attention-getting opening line as the seed for the story. That's fine. But from a reader/editor's perspective what makes the opening good or bad is how it serves everything that follows in the story."

Writing novels and short stories is a trade. A profession. Not a philosophical exercise.

OK – we have all read excellent novels and short stories which did not have a good opening line, which proves again there is no one way to write. In the epigraph in Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury quotes Juan Ramón Jiménez – "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

www.oneildenoux.com

Too Much Eye Contact

P.N. Elrod published this on her Facebook page and I immediately asked for permission to reprint it here. She is a writer and editor, best known for her Urban Fantasy series, The Vampire Files, a hard boiled take on the pulps of the 1930s. She has survived reading slush-piles, conducting countless workshops, and doing book deals in hotel bars over chocolate martinis.

— Rob

Too Much Eye Contact

by P.N. Elrod

An excerpt from the "Learn Your Craft" section of Dear Aspiring Author. (I'm still editing. It won't be out anytime soon.)

I've been through dozens of submissions from a wide variety of writers spread along all levels of a bell curve from the ready-to-publish to the "you need to read more."

A difference I've noticed between the neos and the ones who are almost there: neos are obsessed with EYES.

This is usually to do with dramatic scenes where characters are reacting to something or the protag is watching other characters. That's when we're given a lot of "eye contact."

The prose is full of eyes looking at this or that, characters looking at the eyes of other characters, and then the usual eyes rolling, darting, and following people about.

The latter descriptive is not only anatomically impossible, but always brings up a mental image of Bob Clampett cartoons where 'Toon eyeballs float about like tiny balloons to great comic effect. (Not to mention characters who "throw up their hands" – yikes.)

An Editorial Observation: Do trad writers do this? Yes, all the time. Their editors either don't notice or don't care.

There's one bestselling writer whose work I really liked but she became obsessed with eyes rolling, especially in her later books where she began phoning it in. Her protags roll their eyes every few pages, and sometimes twice a page. That's not funny any more.

Teen characters roll their eyes, but adults, not so much. I'm guilty of it as well, but am consciously cutting it out.

The more experienced writer may mention eyes, but they go past the surface description and get into what the protag is thinking and feeling.

One is an observer, the other a participant.

I understand how it has come about and so do you: blame TV.

When you see a really good actor with a fantastic script cutting loose on his or her craft it's all in their EYES. An actor can sell a whole show with one look and we feel what their character is feeling– which is pretty awesome when you think about it.

The neo writer, working hard to find his voice, focuses on the dramatic facial expression and what a character's eyes *look* like.

The more experienced writer is inside the character's head and letting us know what the character is *feeling*. She is thinking, not giving a description of eyes staring/glaring.

I hope this makes sense. I'll readily admit that I did the same Eye Thing starting out. In the movie I run in my head, the characters act out a scene, and I'm sure much of my early stuff includes lots of staring eyes. I've dialed that back!

Another point I want to cover to hopefully impart one good writer tip here, which is please eliminate stuff where characters "turned-and-looked-and-saw (something)."

Get rid of "He watched-and-saw/ he looked-and-saw/he looked-and-watched/he-watched-as" phrasing.

Please, just describe what's there. No need to put in stage directions.

For those with a work in progress, do a global search of words like "eyes, watch(ed), look(ed), stare, glare, rolled" and find a better way to get that drama across to a reader. Don't kick up a fuss that it's too much work. Having your software doing the search is better than going through hard copy pages the way we did in dinosaur times.

Besides, this is your CRAFT. No matter how much work it is, you do it to make a book better.

By way of example, one of my writer friends did a global word search. In his 350 page MS, he found 300 mentions of eyes. Yikes.

He's– um– editing!

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Xena Redux

 

So, now that I’m thoroughly hooked on Candice Renoir, the powers that be have made the show unavailable for streaming as of the Season 7 debut, which leaves us hung out to dry, at least in the English-speaking television world.  (The series runs another four seasons, and three dozen episodes, before cancellation late last year.)

Same song, different day.  How do you fill the gap when you’re invested, emotionally, in these relationships and outcomes, and all of a sudden you’re Jonesing?  You’d think I might be used to it, by now. 

I can recommend Brokenwood, but not unreservedly.  It’s got the Ozzie-slash-Kiwi thing down, which helps when you’re lonely for the Blake mysteries, but it’s also vaguely reminiscent of Death in Paradise, meaning it can favor the silly.  It reminds you that it’s all a fiction – and not simply made up, but a handshake between the creatives and the audience, when too much of a knowing wink into the camera will spoil the illusion.  I also find it aggravating that while the medical examiner, Gina, is attracted to the lead, Mike, her sexual appetites are played for laughs, and a sign of desperation.  I could do with a little less Our Miss Brooks.  In other words, Brokenwood seems stuck in the wrong era, with some lazy conventions.

Which brings us to My Life Is Murder.  Also an Ozzie show, but after the first season, set in Melbourne, it decamps to Auckland, showing its New Zealand roots.  Because, my dears, the star and exec producer of the show is none other than Lucy Lawless.  Yes, she’s done Battlestar Galactica, and she’s done Spartacus, but those are ensemble casts, and I want to see her in a lead, kicking ass and taking names.  (Yes, since of course you’re wondering, Renee O’Connor does a guest shot in Season 2.) 

Some of us were resistant to the charms of Xena – certainly they mangled Greek mythology – but some of us were equally impervious to Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  What fools these mortals be.  My Life Is Murder, I hasten to say, isn’t supernatural in the slightest.  It’s a straight-up detective show.  The scripts are inventive, and the resolutions convincing.  She, the heroine, is a former cop herself, and a cop’s widow.  She gets files, often cold cases, from a pal who’s still active-duty.  We know that in real life, no police agency in the world would countenance such a thing; any good defense attorney would take you off at the knees.  We can allow for dramatic license.  It works, in context.  Some of the other tropes are a bit labored, some of the forensic shortcuts challenge our suspension of disbelief, but whaddya want?  We’re trying to wrap this up in 45 minutes. 

It depends, naturally, on the actor and the character she plays.  Lucy Lawless carries the show, just as Cecile Bois carries Candice Renoir.  There’s more than a passing resemblance in the premise of the two series.  Lucy Lawless is 55, Cecile Bois is 51.  They’re playing strong women who’ve been buffeted by Fate – a cliché, but no less workable for that.  They’re attractive, and sexy, and don’t suffer fools (although you wish Candice would suffer fewer of them).  I think this is a welcome development.  There was Unforgotten, with Nicola Walker, now headlining Annika.  We’ve got Happy Valley, and Vera. 

Give it a shot.  I think it has a lot of charm, and humor.  It tends to skate on the surface, and not go deep into dark waters, but sometimes that does the trick. 

A Constitutional Road Trip

Summertime.

Our thoughts often turn to vacation travel. Today, I'd like to use the blog space to propose an itinerary for those traveling to Southern California. Skip the lines at Disneyland, the Getty, the Santa Monica Pier, or the San Diego Zoo. Instead, take a trip to make Atlas Obscura proud. What follows is a very brief itinerary for Constitutional law junkies and perhaps writers who want to get the law right. 

A quick refresher. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution holds in part:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

A number of Fourth Amendment hotspots lie in Southern California. Today's trip focuses on telephones. 

1. 8210 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles

The Chateau Marmont stands close by this address. The hotel offers a history of
misbehavior worthy of a blog or book. But for Con. Law fans, walk across the street. These days, I think you'll be looking at a taco shop (at least according to Google Street View). Close your eyes. Imagine the year is 1967, and you're looking at three telephone booths right here. 

Charles Katz was a career gambler and, in the 1960s,  possibly the best handicapper of college basketball games in the country. He had an apartment at 8400 Sunset and would walk down to the pay phones to call bookmakers on the East Coast with his game recommendations. 

Unbeknownst to Katz, the FBI had begun an investigation into his gambling activities. Law enforcement, with the consent of the phone company, disabled one of the phone booths. They attached a listening device between the other two. Regardless of which booth Katz chose, the calls could now be monitored. Phone booths, for those who don't remember, were clear glass boxes.  Katz entered and closed the door. The police recorded his conversations. The surveillance was conducted through the exterior wall and without a warrant. Katz was convicted and fined. 

Following conviction, Katz appealed and the case ultimately went to the US Supreme Court. In overturning his conviction, the court established a new standard for identifying where constitutional protections exist. Although phones booths are quaint history, the test, by and large, remains. The court looked at how the phone booth might be viewed by Katz and, objectively, by the public. Although visible, Katz took reasonable steps to protect his privacy.  The Fourth Amendment, the court ruled, exists to protect people rather than places. Katz had a reasonable expectation of privacy that society was prepared to recognize. He went inside the booth, closed the door, and paid for a private phone call. He was entitiled to believe that, although he might be seen, he had a right not to be heard. 

The protections of the Fourth Amendment covered not just personal effects but also the recording of Katz's conversation. This spot of Los Angeles stretched the constitutional protections surrounding search and seizure. 

Katz v. United States, 389 US 347 (1967)

According to his attorney, when informed of the historic decision, an outcome that changed constitutional analysis, Katz's first question was whether he could now sue the phone company. Want to bet how that turned out?

Take the I-5 south to San Diego

2. The intersection of Euclid and Imperial

A busy crossroads in a working-class neighborhood that's sandwiched between two freeways. The area has a history of gang activity. The intersection has been known as "The Four Corners of Death." When you go, don't stay long. 

If you look around, you'll see a gas station, St. Rita Catholic Church, and a sign for San Diego Legal Aid. Had you been here in the early morning hours of August 22nd, 2009, however, you'd likely have witnessed David Riley being pulled over for an expired license plate. He was subsequently arrested for traffic violations. His car's contents were inventoried before the vehicle was towed. The police located guns. Riley's troubles mounted. The police next seized the cell phone in his pocket. They went through its contents and found several pieces of evidence linking Riley to the "Bloods," a criminal street gang. (Remember the gang activity I mentioned above.) In particular, photos on the phone included a picture of Riley standing in front of a car that had been involved in a drive-by shooting a few weeks earlier. The photos and phone data added to the prosecutor's pile of evidence in the trial for that shooting. The other evidence included DNA and ballistics. 

At trial, Riley's attorney sought to suppress the phone evidence. Riley claimed that the search of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment. Prior to Riley's case, the law had been ambiguous about whether police could, without a warrant, search the contents of a cell phone. His case made it clear that they could not. 

Even though Riley carried the phone in his jeans, the court recognized that raking through a smartphone was different than merely checking the defendant's pockets. The intrusion into a person's privacy proved far broader with a cell phone search. The phone, as we all know, is the storage vessel for most people's entire lives. The court did not prohit the police from looking at them. They did, however, require that law enforcement obtain a warrant before checking. 

Look at the intersection again. A landmark case that shaped Con. Law occurred at this humble street crossing. 

Riley, incidentally, won the case but lost the war. The Supreme Court case did not secure his release from prison. On remand, California courts found that the other evidence overwhelmingly sustained his conviction. 

Riley v. California, 573 US 373 (2014)

Both these addresses changed the legal landscape. Both affected police procedure, and both, therefore, influenced the details of crime fiction. Drive by both. Then stop, take out phone, snap a pic or make a call. 

Until next time. 

The Importance of Stupidity

Mystery fans tend to celebrate the well-stocked minds, brilliant logic and analytical genius of the great detectives, but let's be fair. The genre itself relies to a great extent on stupidity. I am not talking now of the many human follies that supply mystery plots: the protagonist home alone who investigates that sound in the basement, the detective who refuses to wait for backup, the careless bon vivant who parties with dubious companions, or the career criminal set for one last big score. 

No, I am thinking of that great asset for private detectives and clever consultants: a properly stupid police presence. Note the restrictive, 'properly'. Getting a fictional lawman who is dense enough to need help but solid enough to be useful is a delicate literary trick.

 Consider how convenient it is for Sherlock Holmes that his London is served by Inspector Lestrade. Or how nice for Poirot that Inspector Japp is so often puzzled by the case at hand. I needn't even mention those dull chaps, alternately confused and dazzled  by Miss Marple, who lack the advantages of residence in that notorious burg, St. Mary Mead.

I was thinking of such useful officials while watching the entertaining Belgian series, Professor T, now on PBS Passport. It is subtitled, fortunately, rather than dubbed, but there has also been an English language remake with the same name.

In either version, Professor Teerlinck is a great mind in the Sherlock Holmes vein, with even more quirks than the sage of Baker street, including a serious germ phobia. He's a professor of criminology in Antwerp, eminent enough to get away with slovenly grading and candor to the point of rudeness. On the plus side, for someone with minimal social graces and skills, he has a lot of insight into human motivation, plus intellectual courage and a total indifference to the high and mighty. 

Amidst several off-putting habits, Professor T also has a rather endearing fantasy life, frightening and/ or  amusing visions that provide non-verbal cogitation. Professor T's an interesting creation, and Koen De Bouw does a good job of making him as sympathetic as possible.

All Professor T needs to show his brilliance is a compliant police force, and the series delivers up not one, not two, but three detectives needing help, plus their commanding officer. All good, all interesting, all well-performed, but not, I think, in the Japp or Lestrade category. And why not? In a word, they seem insufficiently stupid. 

According to his back story, Paul Rabet, the lead detective, was very successful prior to a personal tragedy – a dramatically convenient death, the skeptical viewer thinks, just before Professor T showed up. No wonder Paul dislikes the moonlighting academic.

And sparky Inspector Donckers, formerly Professor T's outstanding student, surely has the brains to get a handle on a tricky case. Even her laid back colleague, Daan de Winter, not as bright but an excellent interviewer, is no slouch. Their chief, Christina Flamant, once Professor T's lover, is a thorough, smart, and sensible leader. 

Do these people really need a Professor T? Of course, for the purposes of the series, they do, and the writers have added personal problems and a romantic subtext in an effort to cloud their minds and distract them from the clues which only the professor will notice. The results are entertaining, but until near the end of the generously long first season both the police team and the professor seem locked in their roles, with the inspectors having to run to the university, case files in hand, to enlist the great mind.

Then in a surprise, a two part episode not only concentrates on the police team but puts the professor, himself, in jeopardy. A more independent team, a more human professor? Seasons two and three will tell, but they might make an interesting series even better.

Synopsis and Poisons

No conversation about submissions to literary agents is complete without a discussion about writing a synopsis. There are many professional and calm articles about this topic but this article is neither for one very important reason: I’m married and have children.

The many excellent articles explain how to write a synopsis in simple terms. Summarize the novel’s plot (status quo, inciting incident, rising action, crisis and resolution) main subplots, characters and none of this should read like a dry summary. It should include characters’ emotions and reactions to what’s happening. All of this should be done in 500 - 800 words (preferably 500).

Most of these articles are written in a way that encourages writers to tackle this task with confidence. They explain how this is a doable task and would even help identify any plot holes. I appreciated all this help and encouragement.

So, armed with the criteria, I started writing a synopsis. I ended up with a synopsis of a couple thousand words that barely touched the surface of my over 80K word book. So, I needed to cut the word count and make it more thorough at the same time.

No problem, I thought. I can do this. So, working hard I got rid of about 1,000 words and still had too many words and now also had a very dry synopsis.

I went from being delighted with all the advice, to resenting the encouragement about a task that’s clearly impossible. Increasingly, my mood became foul and my language became fouler. This is where my marital status and family enters the story.

My husband, trying to be helpful, told me that I’m a good writer, he’s sure I can do this and would do a great job. He sounded like the encouraging articles. There are moments in a marriage where your partner says all the wrong things. This was that moment. Sometimes I can shrug it off, mostly because the children are very fond of my husband and would miss him if anything happened to him. However, determined to fulfil his role as my support, my husband went on. And on. When he stopped to catch his breath, before he launched into more encouraging statements, I asked him if he could please help. He was delighted to be asked. I requested that he find my book of poisons - I hadn’t seen it in years - while I get a shovel. He said he’d look later because he needed to take the dogs for a walk first.

I went back to work with no more encouraging interruptions.

The upshot is that my synopsis is now down to 500 words. It needs work but it’s mostly there. Better than that, writing it did help me identify a plot hole and helped me be much more focused on plot when editing my manuscript for the trillionth time. I do think writing a synopsis is actually useful.

At this point, you probably don’t care about the synopsis at all and are asking different questions. Did my husband ever locate the book of poisons? Is that really gardening I’m doing in the backyard? When was my husband last seen? How are the children?

I actually did buy a book for writers on poisons many years ago. I cheerfully showed it to my husband who was uncharacteristically quiet. Oddly, I must have misplaced it because I have not seen it since. I didn’t even get to read it. My husband has looked for it diligently and cannot find it.

My husband is walking the dogs right now. All the neighbours can see him. The children are fine. My garden remains woefully untended but I have some herbs, thanks for asking.

I highly recommend writing a synopsis. Don’t be fooled by the encouraging articles. I doubt I’m the only one who was frustrated with the task and baffled why I was the only one incapable of doing it. It’s not an easy task. It’s very hard. It’s also worth it if you get someone wise to hide the book of poisons before you begin. Think about the children.

Weapons and What Comes Around

Crime fiction has a weapon. Figuratively, I mean, not pistols, wrenches, or candlesticks. Not mystery, not suspense. I’m talking about something essential about us, a heart and soul thing. Crime fiction asks a particular question set about humanity. What crimes do we let ourselves commit, and how do we justify it? From there, consequences. 

Yes, all storytelling is about characters and the choices they make, or let’s hope. Abstract examinations of being are best left as philosophy. In fiction, character choices are intensely personal—and personalized. I keep reading crime stuff for these particular questions. How far will someone go, whether to commit or solve a crime? Where and why do they draw their line? Are the laws broken truly just? Is the choice self-deceived? What success or tragedy eventually arrives, as it must? Eventually is the magic.

Flashback to 2017, and I was on a plane to Quebec. Because it was there. Seriously. I hadn’t ever gone, and the bucket list item stared me down. I went. Quebec was there. More than there. Montreal was terrific, a true world city, but it wasn’t always the city I’d imagined. For each touch of flair or cool neighborhood, there were blocks and blocks of the usual stores, generic restaurants, and that same old North American hustle.

Quebec City—highly recommended—carried a vibe closer to the Quebec of my imaginings. The backstreets and old fortress gates have the feel of Old Europe. A lingering touch of wilderness rides the air, an après moi warning in that vastness north. If this was a French Canadian bastion, though, it sure drew an international crowd. Gaggles of cruise ship tours clogged the streets and beer gardens.

I try to journal when traveling. Something about being free of the home routine opens the mindset. And, importantly, on the road I have actual discretionary time. On that 2017 trip, I looked out my Quebec City hotel window and mulled over what to write. I remember the moment clearly because cannons along the escarpment were aimed back my way. The old guns are for show, but still, pressure is pressure.

I started wondering about Quebec and my expectations gap. My mind changed that thought toward a comic premise. What if someone followed this same track but for different reasons? And with way more need and expectation pumping up those illusions? I’d come to discover, but what if someone was escaping here? What were they running from, and why Quebec of all places? Americans on the lam have safer refuges.

Fast forward through several days of drafting under a possible cannon barrage. The story wasn’t working. That first pass was part literary abstract, part buddy comedy. I couldn't finagle the perspective to a cogent third-person distance. When this happens, and it does, I’ve been known to give up and run with first person. My stuff usually rewards following a character and their voice. Not an option here. This guy still wasn’t sharing, even as I fleshed out the shape of him. Hell, I gave him my travel itinerary. But no, he was just running around in quiet despair. When he did talk, it was to justify himself. He wasn't such a bad guy, right? 

Fine. It was time for consequences. I became his judge and jury and heaped consequences on his actions, especially his silences. If he want to run, it would exhaust him. If he wanted to keep mum, he would feel alone and isolated. His crime details started coming out: theft, suspicion, fleeing expected justice. Those had consequences, too. Action, consequence, reaction, consequence. Whatever I piled on him, he wouldn’t stop moving, wouldn’t stop looking for respite in Quebec. There was some idyllic point in that deep north forest only he would recognize. 

He did, eventually. Months and multiple rewrites later, he found his somewhere beside a northern lake already freezing over. He opened up to me, or more precisely, he broke down. His big why for running was a far cry from the crime comedy I’d planned. He'd been chasing the greatest consequence—an ultimate judgment on what he'd done with his life.

Back to now and crime fiction’s weapon. My slapdash journal exercise under cannon threat became “Spirits Along the One North Road,” in the current July/August 2023 edition of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. And this near-miracle happened because what I love most as a reader bailed me out as a writer. 

Consequences. It’s a weapon better than any candlestick.