Ripped From Today's Headlines!

by Brian Thornton

As many of you know, I write crime fiction. In my case it's mostly historical in nature. And every once in a while, I have a reader pop up and tell me how they don't buy this or that situation in one of my stories. I've heard it over and over again.

"That would never happen," they say. "Who is that stupid?"

Now, we're not talking, "Slasher-flick–heroine–opening–the-front–door–after–finding–several–of–her–friends–run–through–a–vegamatic" stupid. After all, as far as I'm concerned, as a writer, I have an obligation to entertain my readers. And they have a right to trust that I won't stiff them once they've bought something I've written.

That's a funny word, "trust."

Webster's defines "trust" as: "belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc."

And how does the old saying go? "It's getting so you can't trust anyone, these days." You've heard it, I'm sure.

It's never been more true than today. Especially when it comes to the Internet.

Everyone knows the stories, or maybe even someone who has been taken in by some or other internet scam– you know, Nigerian doctors, Ukranian brides, twists on the phone scams that ran before it, and three card monty con games that were around before phone lines.

It all really boils down to this:

Tell us all about that bank crash, Grandma!

People who have given you no earthly reason to trust them, ask for your trust.

When you see it phrased that way, why on earth would anyone oblige them?

And yet it happens day after day after day.

E-commerce is built around a more honest permutation of this very principle. After all, money is a fluid commodity. And we as a society are well past the "I–don't–trust–banks–so–I–bury–my–savings–a–coffee–can" stage of a developing economy.

Besides, sometimes you forget where you buried the can (And then you never know what you might dig up!).

Yep, that's a Ferrari, alright. (File this one under #Firstworldproblems)

Who among us hasn't received a call (or several) from the fraud detection division of our bank, asking us about suspicious purchases made with our bank cards? It's just a reality of the age in which we live. Most people, if they don't consciously consider this notion, accept it when faced with incontrovertible evidence of it.

Case in point: several years ago (nevermind how many, although it was well over a decade ago), a friend of mine became romantically involved with a political operative who worked on several high profile political campaigns. Once they got serious, the campaign for which my friend's new boyfriend worked sent over some "security people" to speak with my friend about some of her private proclivities.

Boy, was she red-faced.

Nothing more came of it, they just wanted her to be aware of how open her online actions were to being monitored. Talking to me about it afterward, red-faced as she was, she said "They did me a favor. I had no idea."

(There's a happy ending. My friend eventually married the guy. They're still together.)

In the years since then, we've had the Anthony Weiners and the Chris Lees of the world (See what I did there? One Democrat, one Republican, both hubristic boobs who ought to have known better.) showing us hubris over and over again, via the magic of Twitter and Craigslist, respectively.

Trust me when I say NO ONE wants to see this....

...or THIS!

This kind of crap goes on because guys like Weiner and Lee believe they won't get caught.

I mean, hey, the two maroons cited above were public figures. Weiner especially was pretty high profile. He made the rounds of all of the Sunday talk shows, and was seen as a rising star in the House Democratic leadership at the time of his spectacular fall.

That these two were "indiscreet" would be to be to understatement.

When this sort of hubris is wedded to the "sucker" impulse listed at the beginning of this posting, that is where a certain manner of idiocy is brought drooling and dragging its knuckles into this 21st century world.

And that is when you get the Ashley Madison hacking scandal of the last couple of weeks.

If you're not up to date on what "Ashley Madison" is and why this is potentially such a big (and hilarious) deal, to read a quick overview of what's been going on, click here.

Demonstrating the type of willful, arrogant stupidity usually reserved for characters in a crime fiction novel (The works of Elmore Leonard, Donald E. Westlake–especially the "Dortmunder" novels– and Carl Hiassen all come to mind), a whole slew of people looking to cheat on their spouses signed up to cruise other people in the market for an extramarital affair, and in order to access the "special features" available only to paying member/customers, pony up their hard-earned ducats.

Usually by using a personal credit card.

Anyone else get the irony?

These people (and there are apparently thousands of them), looking to do something that most of society considers a fundamental betrayal of their wedding vows, looked around and saw a website hosted by a company that said: "Trust us" while demonstrating no quantifiable reason to do so.

And yet they did, in droves.

Apparently part of the sales job on the part of the folks at Ashley Madison was a guarantee that anytime a member wanted to quit and erase their cybertracks, such service would be cheerfully provided by the friendly folks expediting their screwing around on their spouse, and all for the low, low price of $19.00!

Uh–HUH....And let me know when *Elvis* gets here...

In an age where the names and social security numbers of hundreds of thousands of government employees can be hacked from such federal agencies as the Office of Personnel Management, where Target loses tens of thousands of the credit card numbers of customers, and where your bank calls you several times a year to ask whether you just bought a Happy Meal at a McDonalds' in Florida, nevermind that you're talking to them from your house phone at home in Minnesota, several thousand people believed the assurances of this company.

Turns out the folks at Ashley Madison (*gasp*) lied!

The $1.7 million the company made last year from offering this service alone is (along with the opportunity to unmask and publicly shame cheating spouses) a major reason why the shadowy group claiming responsibility for this hack decided to target Ashley Madison.

This is fact, not fiction.

And in the weeks and months to come, I am certain we will continue to hear about some of the fallout associated with the unmasking of these would-be philanderers. (Let me say up front that while I have little sympathy for those caught out by this hack, I have boundless sympathy for their spouses). I have no doubt that many of my colleagues in the crime writing community are already beginning to flesh out story ideas born from their research into this event.

So the next time you're reading a novel and you come to a point you find implausible, think twice before you dismiss it with a statement like, "That would never happen."

Because it can.

And it has.

Trust me.

The Case Against Charles Dickens

I won the prize of a proof copy of the novel, Death and Mr Pickwick by Stephen Jarvis, based on my comment on his April 12 post. I promised Leigh that I would write a review of the novel for SleuthSayers. By the time you read this review, the novel will have been published in the UK and the US. I didn’t read the reviews of the novel in the June 2015 issue of The Atlantic or the July 19 issue of the NY Times Book Review for fear they would influence my opinion.

Death and Mr Pickwick is based on the life of the 19th century caricaturist Robert Seymour. Mr Jarvis’s purpose is to correct the accepted version of who created Mr Pickwick and the pickwickian characters, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) or Robert Seymour (1798-1836). He argues that the accepted version is wrong. For him, "Seymour is THE key person in Dickens’s career; and in my forthcoming novel, Death and Mr Pickwick, which tells the story of the creation and subsequent history of The Pickwick Papers, Seymour is the main character."

I don’t challenge Mr. Jarvis’s argument. I leave that up to the Dickensian scholars. My concern is how the novel reads as fiction based on the lives of real people.

The novel is a biography of Seymour and a history of The Pickwick Papers using fictional techniques. In the framed narrative an old man who calls himself Mr Inbelicate is the inside narrator. He hires a young man, whom he nicknames Inscriptino, to write a book based on the documents, pictures, and drawings in Mr Inbelicate’s possession to correct the accepted version of who created Mr Pickwick and the pickwickian characters. Scripty, as Mr Inbelicate calls him, is the outside narrator. He tells the story of how the old man would explain the history behind each document and each picture. After Mr Inbelicate dies, Scripty reads his narrative of the history of The Pickwick Papers and the amazing effect the novel had on readers (Inbelicate is a compositor’s error of indelicate and Inscriptino of inscription).

In the accepted version, Robert Seymour might have played a minor part, but Dickens created Mr Pickwick. Mr Inbelicate claims Dickens, while not saying so outright, with help of his friend John Forster, used evasive techniques in prefaces to the various editions of the novel to deny Robert Seymour’s contribution in creating Mr Pickwick. The publishers Edward Chapman and William Hall also denied Seymour’s contribution and refused to pay his widow and two children what they were due based on the success of The Pickwick Papers. Since Seymour burned all his papers, including the contract he had with them, the widow could not prove her husband created Mr Pickwick. Dickens’s conscience bothered him when he learned the widow and children were living in poverty. Forster persuaded him not to help the family. However, Dickens did give the widow five pounds.

According to Mr Inbelicate, Seymour suggested such to Chapman and Hall and they accepted the idea of the gullible man who would wander through England with friends. They would form the Pickwick club and report on their exploits. Chapman, Hall, and Seymour searched for a writer to provide the words that would accompany the pictures. After reading Sketches by Boz, Seymour agreed to accept Dickens, who was familiar with Seymour’s work. In their first meeting, things got a little tense when Dickens commented on and altered one of Seymour’s drawings. Seymour didn’t mind the criticism but was not happy with Dickens’s altering the drawing.

In their second meeting, Dickens insisted Seymour draw pictures to his specifications. He also suggested Seymour redraw a clown that Seymour had previously drawn to be included in an episode. Seymour refused. He returned home, burned all his papers, and committed suicide. Before Seymour’s confrontation with Dickens, Chapman and Hall decided Dickens’s writings rather that Seymour’s drawings would sell the magazine. Thus, Dickens took ownership of the Pickwick project before the first installment was published.

The Pickwick Papers was first serialized. The magazine sold more copies after Dickens added the bootblack Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick’s Sancho Panza. After the final installment, the issues were collected into the novel that brought Dickens fame. If it weren’t for Dickens, Mr Pickwick would have died with Seymour. The case against Dickens is not that he stole the idea but that he refused to acknowledge Seymour’s part in creating Mr Pickwick. Dickens clearly played a major role breathing life into Mr Pickwick.

I enjoyed the novel not for its plausible argument that Robert Seymour created Mr Pickwick but for its depiction of Dickensian-like characters, real and invented, and the nineteenth century milieu. The characters and humorous situations in which they find themselves are a joy to read. The novel does the one thing fiction must do. It entertains, something it probably would not do if it were a scholarly treatise. Reading the 800 pages was well worth my time and effort.

Three Mistakes I Made as an Indie Writer

by Melissa Yi

Mistake #1. Long gap between releases

As an independently published writer, I can publish my short stories traditionally or independently. I like money, so I submit my stories to pro magazines first and then indie publish them when the rights revert back to me, generally a year later. There aren’t too many pro-paying mystery markets, and I’m not as assiduous as I should be at submitting them, which means the worst of all worlds: not submitted to markets and not indie published, just “rotting on my hard drive,” as another writer put it.

The argument for indie publishing is that you need to get your stories out there. Unless you’re, say, Catherine Coulter (#1 NYT bestseller) or Jenny Milchman (critically acclaimed and widely beloved), people can’t find you in the great online sea of stories if you don’t have enough product.

Accidentally photo-bombing Jenny Milchman & Catherine Coulter
at the Mysterious Bookshop (trying to keep my kids quiet).
Photo by Alison McMahan.

One of my writer friends “plays whack-a-mole,” alternating between submitting his stories and indie publishing them.

Either way, I had to do something.

I hadn’t released anything under the Melissa Yi name since I was a finalist for the Derringer Award in March. Stockholm Syndrome is currently making its rounds through traditional publishing while I pen the fifth book. My Ellery Queen story, “Om,” was just published in January and I’m waiting for the rights to revert. What’s a girl to do?

Mistake #2. Not putting my work on all platforms

If indies do Kindle Unlimited (KU), it means publishing only on Amazon. So there’s a lot of arguing about that (“I make more money on Amazon” vs. “long term, it makes more sense to distribute widely around the world”).

Some months, I made more money on Kobo than I did on Amazon, thanks to their Going Going Gone international promotion last year, where they commissioned me to write three short stories, so I haven’t really touched KU.

But wait. Those very same Gone Fishing short stories that Kobo commissioned last year…

The original deal was that Kobo had exclusive rights to the stories for six months, but after that, it’s non-exclusive rights.

 I’d always meant to publish them on all platforms, just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Oops. 

Mistake #3. Not promoting my work

You don’t have to advertise your work all the time. Kris Rusch thinks the best ads are short stories, for example, because then editors pay you and readers who enjoy your genre will find you. But if you never talk about your work, they won’t always find readers.

To tell you the truth, I was absolutely burned out on promotion in 2014. I like meeting readers. I just don’t want to feel like I’m constantly shouting, “Look at me! Buy my books! Wait, did you hear about my book? Why are you running away from me?”

So I’m just going low-key with this one. I bundled the stories together with some ‘behind the scenes’ stories and called it Family Medicine, which is available only on KU for the next 90 days, and only free for the next 48 hours.

Plus I’m making all the individual stories available for free on every other platform.

See what I did there? I’m doing KU but still doing Kobo, Apple, Nook, Oyster, Scribd, Tolino etc., with slightly different content. And I’m making it free so that people can download it and see if they like Hope Sze. Ideally, they’ll read her other books, too.

In the future, I may charge for Cain and Abel, Trouble and Strife, and Butcher’s Hook. And after 48 hours, the price goes back up to $2.99 on Family Medicine.

But in the meantime, I’ve corrected a few of my indie mistakes. And you can support me in my journey on Patreon.

How ’bout you? Are you traditional, indie, or hybrid? And do you care to share some of your lessons?

A Bunch of Grapes

Okay, so there's no mystery here unless you are mildly curious about a bunch of grapes. It's also not about wine making or the wrath of the grapes or even the hilarious Lucy episode of stomping grapes.

This is about the every three years gathering of folks who were born and named Grape or married to or adopted by someone named Grape. And there is really no writing classroom work this week either.

The Grapes

In 1975, my late husband, Elmer Grape, attended the funeral of his mother Leah Gertrude Love Grape, out in CA. All of his brothers and sisters attended except for his sister Ina who was in the hospital. With the siblings all together it was decided that it seemed like a dumb idea on only get together for funerals. Each sibling lived on the East coast or the West coast except for Elmer and I. We at that time, lived in Memphis, TN. Elmer, who never had trouble making serious decisions said, "let's have a family reunion, next year, at my house in Memphis." This was without any consultation with me, but he knew I would have no objections. So our first reunion was planned, for the first two weeks in August, 1976. That time frame was chosen because one brother worked where the company closed down and everyone employed there had to take their vacation the first two weeks of August, no exceptions.

The Grapes of our side originated in Sweden although the first Grape in Sweden was Arendt Reinhold Grape who came from northern Germany where the name in German means "Iron Pot." He had an iron ore smeltering business and settled in northern Sweden, moving to Stockholm later and becoming a Burghermeister (Mayor) of that city. We have met several of our cousins when visiting Sweden and some have attended the reunions. But that first year in 1976 in Memphis, John Stebbins  from CA attended. Uncle John was 94 and he was related to the mother of  the family Leah Love Grape. We were excited to have him attend and he had a wonderful time.

We didn't have a large house, 11,500 sq feet but we had a huge back yard. And we also had a school bus which Elmer had converted onto a camping RV. And we had some nice next-door neighbor who were going to be moving and their house would be vacant. They offered two bathrooms and empty floor space. We rented some army cots and made arrangements to have some type of sleeping space for everyone who would come. Some folks from PA and VA came in their own camping trailers. One brother, the oldest sibling, Harry flew in from Seattle WA bringing his sleeping bag, and he slept on the floor in the den. We had wall to wall cots in the living room after moving all the furniture against the wall.

Without getting too sugary about it, this was the first time some family members had been together in years and really talked to each other and many fences were mended. Four girls and three boys who grew up during the depression, sometimes having little or nothing to eat but defying all odds had survived and had good jobs and families. Two sisters lived in CA, one in VA one sister in NJ. There were nieces and nephews from NY, MD, PA, VA, and NJ. Elmer built a picnic table for the back yard and put it up against the kitchen window so food and drink could be passed through easily.

Sisters took turns cooking evening meals and one nephew cooked an Italian specialty one night. One sister was an expert at packing a fridge and we took turns cleaning up dishes. We all went down to the Mississippi River and took a trip on the Memphis Queen paddle boat and the Captain announced there were 52 members of the Grape Family on board. The cousins all had a night out going to a club and dancing the night away. Some of the family could only stay a week but the best thing of all was that there were no arguments or disagreements.

This family reunion is still going on, we meet every three years, meeting over the fourth of July for several years now and different family members host the event. Elmer and I hosted three more times: In 1979-Fairfax, Virginia, 1982-Corry, Pa, 1985-Houston TX, our house again and this time we had a wedding. Adopted sister Jeannie planned it all from CA and it was beautiful. In 1988-Austin, TX we hosted again and niece Dona who lived in the house behind me helped. We had a Swedish cousin come from Sweden, Reinhold Grape that year. 1991-Hyde Park, NY, 1994-Council Bluffs, IA, 1997-Bergen, NY, 2000-Nashville, TN, hosted by my daughter Karla, 2003-Inks Lake, TX niece Dona hosted. 2006-near Disney World, FL, is the only year I didn't go. 2009-Sacramento, CA, 2012-Little Falls, NJ

This year once again in TN just outside of Memphis, hosted by nephew David and his wife, Karen O. Grape. Each year there are sightseeing jaunts, going especially to parts of the USA where we've never been before and fun things for young and old. One sister, Esther, who is the only surviving sister at age 92, used to make t-shirts for everyone. She's in CA and didn't get to attend this year but we're a bit high tech and skyped with her. Esther drew a bunch of grapes and put the current year on one grape each time. We finally got smart, began having the shirts made letting each host design their own. The one surviving brother is Roger, age 85 and still lives in Corry, PA and he attended this year. David is his son. Upcoming in 2018 we will once again be in Austin with my son Roger and his husband hosting.

We have lost family but we also have gained through marriage and children born and it's exciting and gratifying to meet and talk to everyone. There is lots of great food and drinks both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and cakes and pies and cookies. We only stay a week now and most stay in nearby hotels because the host family can generally reserve a block of rooms at a reasonable price. We only had thirty-two attending as the California branches didn't make it. Sometimes there are new jobs or immediate family crises or even weddings that crop up and mess up reunion plans.

The major thing for me is we can all be together for a week without a disagreement although some conversations can get a bit heated. We somehow manage to have a week feeling love and a connection that we'd never have otherwise. A week with a bunch of Grapes just works for me.

Next Time: writing, mystery, intrigue, I promise.

The Spy Who Bagged Me

by Leigh Lundin

Zoya Voskresenskaya

Anna Chapman

Anyone who’s watched a James Bond or a tacky Derek Flint film knows the Russians have licentious taste in spies… well, perhaps not Rosa Klebb, more like famed Zoya Voskresenskaya (Zoya Rybkina, Зоя Рыбкина, née Воскресенская). Deported Anna Chapman wasn’t a very good spy, but her incompetence and stunning looks inspired the New York Post to ask “But can we keep her?”

Such a wistful propensity may have prompted other New York-based spies to opt for Hooters as a clandestine meeting spot. Hooters?

Code name Green Kryptonite

Meet Naveed Jamali. His parents owned a specialty store, Books & Research, in Dobbs Ferry, Westchester, New York. In the latter 1980s, a known Russian agent strolled into the bookshop and asked for arcane but legally obtainable reports available from a proprietary government database run by the Defense Technical Information Center. The FBI asked the family to fulfill those requests and notify the FBI as to Russian interests.

This continued for twenty years until young Naveed took over the store. Motivated by a desire to join Naval Intelligence, he leveraged his relationship with the FBI into becoming an amateur– but authentic– spy, complete with an audio recording watch Q himself might have designed.

Double-O-Nought

The FBI targeted the latest of a series of Russian agents, a trade mission attaché and seasoned operative, Oleg Kulikov. Diplomatic immunity meant the FBI couldn’t arrest Kulikov, but they could bring his career to a close. Considering occasional spy swaps, it was a smart move by the Feds.

The plan called for Jamali’s arrest at Pizzeria Uno in the presence of Kulikov, but at the last moment, the Russian opted to return to Hooters, putting the operation at risk. Nonetheless, federal agents swooped in and handcuffed Jamali in a fake apprehension, thus ending Kulikov’s espionage and usefulness as a clandestine operative.

Look for Naveed Jamali's book about his experience, How to Catch a Russian Spy. Fox Entertainment has negotiated film rights for the story.

Spies Through the Pages

Last year saw the release of a wonderful film about Alan Turing, The Imitation Game. For another great read and a chance to meet Turing’s competition in wartime British Intelligence, read Leo Marks’ autobiographical Between Silk and Cyanide.

The Park Is Open

As you probably know, this is a mystery blog. I know that too--after all, I work here. But today I'd like to veer off the mystery/crime/suspense path and down into the cross-genre weeds, and focus on suspense fiction only. (One out of three ain't bad, right?) I promise I'll get back on track next time.

Return with me to '93

A few weeks ago one of our sons and I went to see Jurassic World. Not on the day of its release; this was a week or so after its debut. I'm timing-challenged, but I do know better than to go see any movie rated less than R on its opening day. I like kids, but I also like to be able to hear the movie.

This film reminded me of my recent SleuthSayers column on movie taglines. The tagline for Jurassic World, according to its trailer on YouTube, is The park is open. I like that. It brought back, as it should have, memories of the excellent film Spielberg directed in 1993, the one that was "65 million years in the making." And although the word "sequel" is used a little loosely these days, this was most definitely a followup to the first movie. It pretty much ignores the second and third installments, but the original theme park is mentioned throughout this film, and is even seen via Jurassic Park logos on T-shirts and Jeep doors, and long-ago characters like founder John Hammond are mentioned as well. The old visitor's center, now abandoned and crumbling, even makes an appearance. As expected, the new tourist trap--an unfortunately accurate term, considering what happens--is bigger and better, as are the dinosaurs inside its walls. But they are just as deadly and unpredictable as before.

All creatures Crichton small

I truly enjoyed this movie. It had its faults, that's for sure, but it also had everything it takes to capture and hold my interest: a good premise, engaging characters, a lot of action, (fairly) sharp dialogue, humor even in tense situations (there are many of those), and a satisfying ending.

Other things to like:

- A score by Lost composer Michael Giacchino, and the occasional use of John Williams's original music. Some might say this is too much of a reminder, but in this case it works, since almost everyone has either seen Jurassic Park or has heard that theme, or both. It's comfortably familiar.

- Two new dinosaurs (the super-intelligent, super-evil Indominus Rex--one reviewer labeled it a Holyshitasaurus--and a shark-gobbling leviathan called a Mosasaurus) that make the T-Rex look like a teddy bear.

- A bad-boy, rough-around-the-edges raptorwhisperer hero who is shown to be both brave and compassionate, in an early scene where he rescues a colleague.

- A villain who sincerely thinks he's in the right even if he's not--they're always the best kind--and who gets what's coming to him, even if it is a predictable end. There's also an unpleasant-at-first character who later turns from the dark side and is not only won over by the hero, she becomes the heroine--how's that for a character arc?

- Nonstop action. This is one of those films where wetting your pants almost seems a better choice than taking a restroom break and missing something.

- Two lead characters (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) who are among the most appealing actors in Hollywood right now. It's been rumored that Pratt will play Indiana Jones in the next installment of that series, and Howard is Opie's daughter, so how could she not be likable?

- [Possible spoiler:] An ending in which the real villain (the genetically-designed behemoth that goes on a rampage) is finally dispatched by a combination of (1) a clever last-minute brainstorm and (2) the only thing on the island more fearsome than it is. You'll see what I mean.

The only downsides were maybe too many subplots, some cartoonish characters, and a silly scene where the hero takes a motorcycle ride alongside the normally deadly velociraptors . . . but I can live with that.

NOTE 1: As in the first movie, two of the visitors to the park are kids who are related to the Big Boss (Richard Attenborough in the original, Bryce Howard in this one, both of whom for some reason dress only in white). Here, in a great example of showing-vs.-telling, viewers find out how much danger the kids are really in when their assigned "guardian-for-the-day" gets eaten in spectacular fashion: she is snatched off the ground by flying pterodactyls, gets passed from one to another in mid-air, then is dropped into a water tank and devoured by a creature as big as a passenger train. Who would've thought babysitters deserve hazardous duty pay?

NOTE 2: The lady who plays Bryce Dallas Howard's sister, Judy Greer, also played her sister in the M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village. Too much information, right? Sorry--I can't help myself.

It's a monster mash

So that's my report. In my opinion, Jurassic World was not as good as Jurassic Park but it was better than Jurassic Park III, and it was about equal to Jurassic Park II (The Lost World). Have any of you seen the new one? Did anybody like it as much as I did? If you're looking for a summer blockbuster that's great fun, gets the juices flowing, and doesn't overburden your brain cells, I think you might. Apparently a lot of paying customers have, so far.

Dino DNA Q&A: Can a successful movie return in the form of a successful sequel, 22 years later?

You bet jurassican.

The Warped Relativity of Reading and Writing

By Dixon Hill

I'm always amazed by how long it takes me to write something, even if I know where it's going.
Something that only takes thirty minutes to read might take me a day or more to write.  And, that's just the first draft; I'm not including all the revisions here.

I don't know how many writers our there have this same problem.  Maybe most of you do.  On the other hand, some of you, reading this, might be asking, "What's this idiot talking about?  It only takes twenty minutes to write thirty minutes worth of material!"

As for myself, I can't help recalling something said by an English teacher during my Freshman year in high school.  We were reading Romeo and Juliet -- which I recall primarily because the entire Freshman class got to walk over to a nearby theater and watch a film version that we excitedly learned contained "a brief nude scene."  (This actually meant the film contained a split-second glimpse of "Romeo's" rear end, which greatly disappointed teen-aged me, as I had been salivating for a good long look at Juliet.)

What my teacher said, as she handed out the books, was: "Read this tonight, and we'll begin discussing it tomorrow.  Most productions of this play last less than two hours, and that's with an intermission added in.  So, you should be able to read this in two hours with no problem."

Right.  An English class of thirty run-of-the-mill chowderheaded teens.  And we're supposed to read Shakespeare's version of English, written in Iambic Pentameter no less -- and understand it! -- all within two hours.  Not like I had to worry about Algebra or Biology homework that night, either, eh?

Still . . . what she said, got under my skin.

I wasn't able to read the entire play that night.  I don't know how long it took me, but it took me more than just one night.  And that bothered me.  A LOT!  Because, I also knew she was right: most versions of the play probably didn't run even two hours.  So, why did it take me so long to read it? I'm no Einstein, but could a teen-aged Einstein have read it inside of two hours?  I began to wonder.

And, speaking of Einstein: That brings up another problem with time, the one we call "relativity," in which we start speaking of time relative to other things, such as space, location, velocity -- or in this case: writing vs. reading.

According to the theory of relativity, I don't believe we're able to move faster than the speed of light. This concept always rankles me, as I keep asking, "Really?  Like there's some cosmic speed limit out there imposed by physics?  What happens if we speed, do we get locked into another dimension?"


This provides great fodder for Science Fiction, of course, in which super-light travel is possible in another dimension, or can be equated by folding or (as they say in Star Trek) "warping" space-time" so that a ship can penetrate one layer of the fold and emerge on the other side without traveling over the entire length of the fold.

The pic on the left was created by Brandon Keys and posted on the IndegoSociety.org forum.  I thought that it, along with the pic below (from Wikipedia) showing a "worm-hole," did a good job of illustrating the concept.

While we're on the subject of warping space-time, let's also look at what happens when a reader gets immersed in a fascinating book, only to discover that the ten minutes s/he thought s/he'd been reading, has telescoped into several hours.  How did that happen?  Did the book warp space/time? Or, did the reading take "relatively" longer outside the world of the book, than it seemed to take while the reader was immersed within the book's world?

I have no idea.  Did Einstein know?  Does Stephen Hawking know now?

I've never met either one of them, and thus have no idea.

Nor do I know why it takes me so long to write something it takes so little time to read.  It doesn't usually FEEL like it's taking so long to write such a passage.  In that essence, perhaps writing -- like reading -- can warp space/time, or cause some sort of "relativity occurrence" to take place.  Maybe, for instance, time in the world I visit while writing passes differently than time in "normal space."

The only thing I can figure is that it might have something to do with the speed my fingers move over the keyboard, relative to the speed at which the computer can print on the screen.  I have noticed, in the past, that my fingers can sometimes strike the keys -- when I'm "in the groove" and my writing is coming hot and heavy -- faster than my computer seems to be able to print.  Occasionally I even have to stop and let the computer catch up to me.

The speed at which things take place inside a computer -- an electronic item -- surely must be close to the speed of light, since that's the speed at which electrons are supposed to move.  Thus, if my fingers are moving faster than my computer can work, my
fleshy digits must be moving at super-light speed.

NO WONDER what I write seems to take less time to read than to create!

The solution -- obviously! -- is that people (or at least their fingertips) can move faster than the speed of light, but the punishment is not imprisonment in another dimension.  It's the hell of working for two days, then learning it takes only thirty minutes to read what it took all that time to write!

Theory of Relativity Solved!

See you in two weeks.
--Dixon

The Strange Case of Connelly v. Connelly

by Eve Fisher

• Connelly v. Connelly - a minor divorce case.
• Connelly v. Connelly - a divorce case in 1849-57 Victorian England.
• Connelly v. Connelly - the most scandalous case you never heard of.
• Connelly v. Connelly - in which a Roman Catholic Priest sued a Roman Catholic nun for restitution of conjugal rights in London.  (Both of them were American.)

Look, I love weird cases and wild stories, and this combines the best (or worst) of both worlds.  Meet Pierce (1804-1883) and Cornelia Connelly (1809-1879) of Pennsylvania.  They met and married in 1831, and Pierce, who had converted from Presbyterian to Anglican, got an American Episcopal Parish in Natchez, Mississippi.  They moved there and were happy for a few years.  They had a son, Mercer, and a daughter, Adeline.  Cornelia was beautiful and witty; he was charming and erudite. And then, in 1835, Pierce decided that he was called to convert to Roman Catholicism.  So of course he had to quit his parish and his ministry, sell his house, and move to Rome.

  

Off they went.  Pierce - who had a taste for the flamboyant - waited, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church on Palm Sunday, 1836, in Rome, at a very fashionable church.  (Cornelia had been received before they left, in a small private ceremony in Natchez.)  The couple quickly became hugely popular in Rome. Pierce got an audience with Pope Gregory VI, supposedly moving the pope to tears with his fervent religious passion.  Pierce also became friends with the ancient, influential, and wealthy Borghese family.  And he moved his whole family into a palazzo owned by the Earl of Shrewsbury, who became his patron.

All was well, except that Rome was almost 100% Catholic, and probably 90% clerical, and all the power lay in the hierarchy of the church.  Pierce - who had a wee bit of ambition - is mulling over becoming a Roman Catholic priest.  There was a problem:  He was married, and his wife was pregnant.  There followed a hiatus in which Cornelia gave birth to their 3rd son (John Henry) in Vienna, they move back to Natchez thanks to a bank crisis (they're not modern phenomenon, folks - Pierce's family got wiped out in the crash), and Pierce became a teacher.

Tragedy struck:  they lost a newborn daughter, and then 2 year old John Henry died after falling into a vat of boiling sugar.  Eight months later, Pierce announced he was definitely called to be a Roman Catholic priest.  Cornelia urged him to think it over (she was pregnant again, so she might have had some doubts about his being called to celibacy), but he was adamant.  So, after their fifth child, Francis, was born, Pierce sold the house, and moved to England with Mercer, leaving Cornelia, Adeline, and Francis in a convent at Grand Coteau.

Palazzo Borghese, Roma

Pierce apparently thought that he'd show up in England, go to Rome, be ordained, and easy-peasy, all would be done.  Instead, Pope Gregory told him to get Cornelia there so they could discuss things with her:  after all, it was her life, too.  Pierce brought her, and they all settled into a large apartment near the Palazzo Borghese.  Cornelia consented, the Pope consented, Cornelia moved into a convent at the top of the Spanish Steps, and Pierce began his theological studies.  She had one final talk (I'd have had more than a talk, I think) with Pierce, begging him to reconsider what he was doing and take care of his family - but he insisted on taking Holy Orders, which meant Cornelia had to - and did - pronounce a vow of perpetual chastity.  In June of 1845, Pierce said his first Mass, giving his daughter and his wife holy communion.

But what next?  Well, Pierce became chaplain for Lord Shrewsbury in England and took Mercer with him.  As for Frank, well, Pierce wrote a letter in which he said, "You know the Prince Borghese has taken charge of Frank's education, and he will be put either here in the College of Nobles in Rome, or with Merty at Stonyhurst in England...  So far, you see, things have been ordered very wonderfully."

Meanwhile, the English Bishop Nicholas Wiseman called Cornelia to come to England to educate Catholic girls and the poor, forming the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.  (This religious foundation still exists and operates, teaching children.)  So off to England she went.  Soon she was settled in, teaching 200 children, and doing pretty well.

Cornelia Connelly, about the
time of the lawsuit

And then Pierce showed up.  Unannounced.  Cornelia would not see him, and sent him a letter asking him not to repeat his visit.  He wrote back, and they exchanged a series of fairly bitter letters.  Pierce was apparently jealous of Dr. Wiseman - Pierce was used to having total control of his wife, and didn't like it that now she was obeying another man's orders.  Even if it was Bishop to nun.  In December of 1847, she took her perpetual vows as a nun and was formally installed as Superior General of the Society she had formed.  A month later, in January of 1848, Pierce removed the children from their respective schools without asking permission or informing anyone.  To be fair, according to Victorian English law, children were the property of their father...  He put 6-year-old Frank in a secret home, and took Mercer and Adeline with him to the Continent, ordering Cornelia to follow.  Instead, she stayed put.  Pierce went to Rome, where he said that he was the real founder of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and attempting to take over as their Superior.  No one bought it.  He came back to England, and demanded to see Cornelia, to become the Society's priest for Cornelia to leave the Society and come with him.  NOW.  She didn't.

So he filed the lawsuit "Connelly v. Connelly", asking a Protestant court "that Cornelia be compelled by law to return and render him conjugal rights."  (He omitted mentioning to the court that he was a Roman Catholic priest.  That came up later.)  The scandal was huge.  Anti-Catholic sentiment was rife Victorian England.  The general opinion was that here was a man robbed of his wife by the Papists, who'd shut her up in a convent and wouldn't let him even see her!  And the only reason they (the Papists) hadn't taken the children was because Pierce was smart enough to take them away himself.  Cornelia and Bishop Wiseman were denounced from Protestant pulpits, burned in effigies on Guy Fawkes Day, newspapers were full of the usual tabloid trash.  After a year, the judge ruled that her Roman law wasn't binding in England, and gave Cornelia the option of forcible return to Pierce as his wife, or prison.  An appeal was launched to the Privy Council.  Now, as we have seen, Pierce had already won the in the court of public opinion, and the Privy Council was just as Protestant as the regular court - But in the end, Cornelia won.

At least, she won her liberty - she could never win her children back (again, they were legally considered Pierce's property).  In fact, she lost two of them forever.  Pierce sent Mercer back to Natchez, where he died at 20 in 1853 of yellow fever.  Pierce took Adeline and Frank abroad, where he renounced Catholicism and earned a living from writing venomously anti-Catholic tracts.  Years later, Adeline was spotted taking care of an aging Episcopal priest at the American Parish of St James Church in Florence, Italy.  That was Pierce, had who re-embraced the Episcopal church and served there, unknown and unimportant, from about 1870 until his death in 1883. He is buried in Cimitero Evangelico degli Allori.  Francis settled in Rome, where he became a painter.  He loved his mother, but hated the Roman Catholic Church for destroying his family.  He never married, but had a daughter, Marina, who ended up marrying into the Borghese family (Pierce would have been so proud).

Pierce Connelly in old age

   

Cornelia Connelly remained for the rest of her life in England, expanding her foundation, and dying in 1879 at the convent she founded in St. Leonards-On-The-Sea, Sussex.

But the memory of Connelly v. Connelly lingers as one of the strangest lawsuits ever to come up in British history.

How Green Was My Homicide

by Robert Lopresti

Two weeks ago in this space I explained how a silly radio quiz show inspired me to write a fairly serious short  story.  Today we're going the other direction: how a serious problem led me to write what I hope is a funny book.

As I have mentioned before, I m  a librarian at a university.  The students with whom I have the privilege of working the most major in environmental science and environmental studies.  It is inspiring to see these young students dedicating their careers to finding ways to improve our habitat, and it makes me wish I could do more to help the cause than just steer them to useful  data sources.  Alas,  I don't have the skills to study paleoclimatology or coral reefs.

But, it occurred to me, one thing I know a little about is writing crime fiction.  Could I do anything useful there?

The story idea I discussed two weeks ago came down like a bolt of lightning.  This one took longer to develop. It started with a character: Imagine a mobster, a wiseguy very happy with his place in the criminal world. Now imagine that on the very day he becomes a grandfather he hears a news report claiming that by the time his sweet little granddaughter is ready for college, climate change will have made the world a disaster area.  For my mobster that is unacceptable, so he decides it is up to him to save the environment.  Hey, how hard can it be?

My hero - well, protagonist -- turned out to be Sal Caetano, the  consigilere in a New Jersey Mafia family.  While Sal is officially just the number three man in the borgata he is known as the brains of the bunch and his opinion is respected.  But when he goes on his eco-kick he becomes a danger to everyone who has a stake in the status quo.  That turns out to include not only his partners and rival gangs, but also dirty politicians, th FBI, and even ecoterrorists.  So Sal is in for some dangerous adventures.

These arrived Tuesday afternoon.

A story like this had to be told funny, which is fine with me.  I have been known to do funny.

But the environmental issues were serious and I needed help with that stuff.  In the book Sal contacts an ecology professor named Wally and asks for a rundown on the biggest issues facing the environment.  To make that work  I contacted three professors at my university and explained the premise. Pretend you're Wally, I told them.  You have a smart, highly-motivated listener with no background in the field.  What would you tell him?  Based on their combined answers, and adding in my own off-the-wall opinions, I found the words to put in my ecologists' mouth.

Greenfellas was a lot of fun to write (and I have written about the process of doing so.  For example  here and here).  The book hits the stands this Friday and someone else will have to tell me if it is fun to read.

Farewell My Lovelies

For those of you who have been with SleuthSayers for a while you've seen this before: I tender my resignation, it's accepted rather too quickly, everybody has a round of high-fives.  Then, before you've had time to clear away the empties and dump the ash trays, I'm back; cardboard suitcase in hand. Well, not this time--this time it's farewell, my lovelies. 
Sometimes you just know when it's time for a graceful exit, and this is that time for me.  My years with SleuthSayers have been a great learning experience and I've enjoyed every minute of them.  The staff at HQ, Leigh, Velma, and Rob have been terrific and whenever I needed technical assistance it was forthcoming without additional charge.  In fact, during my time amongst the cast and crew of SleuthSayers I've come to consider them (you all) as friends.  Virtual friends in most cases, though it has been my pleasure to meet a number of our contributors in the flesh, but still friends, or at least fellow travelers.  After all, some of history's great relationships have been those of pen pals, and so it feels to me here.

When I look back over my contributions I find they fall into but a few categories--a reflection of my limitations, I'm afraid: Police procedure, New Jersey, Native American history, Catholicism, a smattering of historical murder investigations, and a bit now and then on writing.  In any event, you've had the benefit of my wit and wisdom on these subjects and I pray that no one was irreparably harmed by the exposure.  If you feel you may have been, Velma entertains all such complaints and will be happy to hear yours.  I understand that she takes such calls strictly between the hours of 11:39 and 11:41 AM on alternate Tuesdays of 31 day months.

For my part, I will be spending all this new free time waiting outside my local watering hole.  There's a sign in the window that reads, "Free Whiskey Tomorrow!"  Everyday I return, but the barkeep just points at the sign and shakes his head.  You can see why I have to prioritize--sooner, or later, tomorrow will come!  And I intend to be there with an empty wallet and a full glass.

            

           

Father Brown

by Janice Law

I realized lately that I am ready for a new man – at least in the realm of mystery fiction. Oh, there’s lots of good ones around, although I’ve never really forgiven Henning Mankel for saddling poor Kurt Wallander with Alzheimer’s. Some other good detectives have unfortunate habits, especially with regard to wives and girl friends. Aside from James Bond, it used to be safe for a woman to date a sleuth. No more; death or divorce are surely in her future.

 Consider the poor spouses of Inspector Lynley and George Gently, bumped off by villains. Shetland’s Jimmy Perez lost his wife to illness, Jackson Brody of Case Histories lost his to divorce, as did Wallander, while other significant others have faced assault, kidnapping, and worse. As for handsome Sidney Chambers of Grantchester, who carries a torch for his former girlfriend, he doesn’t recognize a promising woman when he finally meets one.

But there is a bright spot for me and, although my Calvinist ancestors will be stirring in their chilly Scots graves, it is Father Brown. Created before WWI by G.K. Chesterton, the pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in the Cotswolds, started out as a hyper-observant, hyper-logical sleuth in the Sherlock Holmes mold – if one can imagine the aloof and acerbic Holmes as a small, innocuous looking Catholic priest.

The stories are short, puzzle pieces, very clever  but longer on ingenuity than on characterization or psychology. The good Father is basically an observer with not a lot of personality, odd, given that he was apparently based on a real priest, indeed, the one who converted Chesterton. The stories are old fashioned with a fair number based on interest in, and fears of, ideas and people from the rest of the Empire – shades of Wilkie Collins’ great The Moonstone. Published from before the war up through the 1920’s they are very much period pieces, mostly in a good way.

Television, which so often spoils good stories, has in this case made something quite attractive. Cognizant of our bloodthirsty tastes, Father Brown now investigates mostly murders in contrast to the robberies that seem to have been a staple of the originals. The series has been moved into the post WW2 era, provided Father Brown with a supporting cast, and, thanks to Mark Williams, made him a dynamic and sympathetic character.

There’s more than a touch of Friar Tuck in this iteration of the sleuthing cleric. Rotund but energetic, Williams’ Father Brown likes to eat and drink, despite the efforts of his parish secretary, Mrs. McCarthy, to watch his waistline. He likes any kind of merriment, he is an indefatigable cyclist, and he has friendships with a wide range of characters, respectable and not. Is he full of angst and doubt? No way. Is he tormented by what one must say is a rather too enthusiastic pursuit of crime? Not at all. Confident that he serves a higher power, Father Brown is free to indulge his curiosity and to enlist the rest of his little circle in the pursuit of justice.

They are an odd bunch. Mrs. McCarthy is a self-important, narrow minded woman with a heart of gold, especially when pointed in the right direction by Father Brown. Lady Felicia, glamorous and intrepid with a wandering eye, manages to stay just on the right side of respectability. Sid, her chauffeur and a man who can turn his hand to everything from righting a motor to impersonating a seminarian, is an invaluable, if not always honest, assistant for Father Brown.
Add the usual bumbling officers – the ones in this series are addicted to the quick solution, a habit that opens the door wide for Father Brown’s interference – and you have a nice grade of cozy mystery.

What takes the best of the episodes out of the cute range, though, is something else, Father Brown’s optimism about people and about the ever present possibility for repentance and salvation. Not particularly orthodox and certainly not at all cowed by his ecclesiastical superiors, he nonetheless suggests that a deep and genuine faith is behind his joy in living and his patience with and pleasure in his neighbors. As such, the good father is a nice corrective to the doubt and depression that have become almost de rigueur for popular detectives.

Techno-dull

Edgy. It’s what a new USA Network television, Mr Robot, is trying for, so edgy that producers are getting ulcers trying to make it happen. And cyberpunk. It’s oh, so cyberpunk, rebel without a clause, pass the opiates please. It’s new, it’s now, it’s different, and it's supposed to be ultra-tech-savvy. It has exciting technology working for it… or does it?
One of Dorothy Sayers' novels, The Nine Tailors, is noted for its portrayal of campanology– professional bell-ringing. Sayers was largely complimented for her accuracy of detail. In a small way, she created kind of a techno-novel. Since then, many authors have created stories detailing technology of one kind or another– military, espionage, aerospace, medical, or computing.

Bluffing computer experts is tricky, especially the ‘leet’, the priesthood as it were, the 1% of 1%, the dei ex machina, code-slingers, bit busters, programmers of the programs that run programs. Rendering a story about computers takes more than networking verbiage and Unix gibberish. Bear with me as I wade into technical detail.

Going Viral

John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider introduced the concept of viruses, but most novels and virtually all movies get the technology wrong. That doesn’t mean a reader can’t enjoy some stories. Thomas Joseph Ryan’s The Adolescence of P-1 was a good read. 2001 A Space Odyssey was smart, the letters HAL being one displaced from IBM. And for hopeless romantics, Electric Dreams gave movie-goers a Cyrano de Bergerac love triangle featuring a computer named Edgar.

But a story shouldn’t pretend to be something it isn’t. An Amazon review about a computer novel by a top-rated mystery writer said the commenter got laughs reading aloud excerpts to employees in the company lunchroom. That’s not the kind of critique anyone wants.

Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park

Casting Stones

Casting is another problem with computer shows. Techno-geeks’ IQs typically run high, but that’s seldom how computer experts appear on the screen. One example of awful rôle selection occurred in Jurassic Park, that of an unlikely computer sysadmin, the oafish and creepy Dennis Nedry. We’re going to talk about lack of subtlety: Nedry / nerdy, get it?.

If Hollywood doesn’t stereotype a sallow, shallow wimp with taped glasses, they opt for the opposite, a busty beauty in a skin-tight action figure costume. Movie makers think an eye on the décolletage prevents audiences noticing thin characterization.

When I think of actual top geeks (someone without my movie star looks– stop laughing), I think of colleagues like my friend Thrush, programmer Bill Gorham, software architect Steve O’Donnell, or a handful of others. These ordinary guys possess the extraordinary ability to make machines dance to their own tune.

Robin Hoodie

The show’s idea of characterization appears twofold. First, dress the part: Make the protagonist, Elliot Alderson, sullen, slurring, antisocial, slouch through life in his hoodie. Have ruthless, junior exec Tyrell Wellick wear designer ties and suits. Decorate drug dealers with lots of tats. Mission accomplished.

The other part of the simplistic characterization is the creation of a polarized ‘them versus us’ atmosphere: hoodies v suits, punks v preppies, young v old, crackers v hackers, morphine users v tweakers v coke-heads, Anonymous v the establishment, bad guys v the other bad guys, capitalists v socialists v nihilists v anarchists… which might be interesting if someone had bothered to delineate a bit.

Elliot, the main character, is a morphine-addicted presumed programmer– he once mentions source code. The guy is a pathological liar who lies even to himself, then follows up by telling people in slurred speech, “I’m just being honest.” He drinks ‘appletinis’ and tells his shrink he’s not a junkie, even as he snorts his drug of choice. Supposedly this doesn’t impair his ability to dig into the bowels of computer networks.

A major problem here is that mainly druggies find drug users entertaining. One shouldn’t have to be stoned to appreciate a television show, but drug use and overuse underlies a major theme of Mr Robot. Elliot’s Asperger’s syndrome one can deal with, but his continuous mumbling is hard to stomach.

Of all the cast, only the female characters appear likable and worthwhile, Elliot’s shrink, Gloria, and his childhood friend and co-worker, Angela. Elliot and Angela telegraph to the audience their unrealized attraction as in a third-rate romance novel.

Tyrell Wellick represents the only alpha male in that universe, a ruthless junior exec but one who keeps his eye on the prize. As the best drawn character, he’s a sadomasochistic and exploitative bisexual who goes all out for what he wants. The actor speaks fluent Swedish but god-awful French, more than once butchering the word ‘bonjour’. Wellick does win on other points: When his pregnant wife asks for a bondage session, he’s reluctant to proceed, trying to be gentle.

Anonymous

A major factor– or malefactor– in the series is Mr Robot, a sociopathic anarchist played by Christian Slater looking exceedingly bored throughout. ‘Mr Robot’ is the name of a tech support company, passed on to Slater.

He’s formed ‘fsociety’, a squad of hackers patterned after the group Anonymous. Instead of Guy Fawkes masks, fsociety uses the likeness of that Parker Brothers’ mustached tycoon, Rich Uncle Pennybags aka Mr Monopoly.

Uncle Pennybags © Parker Bros.

In reality, fsociety is disappointingly unlike Anonymous. The latter is focused on justice and exposing inequity and corruption, not anarchy for its own sake. Anonymous gives an impression it values human life, unlike the show's producers who suck hours out of your life never to be returned.

Unsubtle

Those of us in the US tend to confuse and conflate capitalism with a free market economy; Mr Robot drops any distinction at all. Fsociety is dedicated to gutting Evil Corp (which deserves it) within a larger goal of bringing down the economy.

• E: Evil Corp– that’s its unimaginative nickname– is the company that Elliot, Angela, and Tyrell work for. Obviously, subtlety isn’t held in high regard among the writers. The company’s E logo simultaneously hints at an actual secretive government provider and evokes ‘E for everyone’ entertainment ratings.


• F: Two guesses what the F in fsociety stands for, subtle like a sledgehammer.

I tried to imagine the original cocaine-fueled pitch for the series. I think it went something like this:

“Like okay, man… (sniffff) There’s this guy, hacker dude, we’ll dress him in a hoodie so everyone thinks Robin Hood, see. (sniffff) And there’s this evil corp, we’ll call it Evil Corp so the audience can’t miss it. (sniffff) Listen, I confuse free markets and capitalism, but let’s say we burn down the economy… What do you mean, how would I cash my paycheck? What does that have to do with anything? Oh, irony, I get it. That’s good, that’s good. We’ll include irony.”

Verisimilitude

The series makes a stab at hi-tech realism, not particularly savvy, better than some shows, not as good as others. Writers drop a few Unix buzzwords (Gnome, KDE, TOR) and gloss over how their network was penetrated.

Elliot identifies a supposedly infected file that fsociety wants him not to open: fsociety00.dat. Amusingly, the IP address associated with the bogus file is 218.108.149.373, an impossible address like movies using 555-1234 as a phone number. (Geekology trivia: An IP address resolves to four bytes in binary, so each number of the group must be less than 256.) Mr Robot offers no specifics how Elliot tracked down the file in error, but the date and a bogus IP address should have clued in even a noob, never mind our ersatz hero.

Elliot passes the file on to a colleague, saying he’s done the hard work and ‘all’ that’s left is the encryption, as if that’s nothing. *bzzz* Wrong answer.

The program promulgates the notion that if someone has a root kit or hacker tools, they’re somehow an ultra-savvy user instead of being like any other mechanic with the right toolbox. The real guys with the smarts are the black hats who write the hacker tools and the white hats who find ways to combat them.

The show also advances the prejudice that ‘old people’ (presumably over 25) can’t deal with technology. A little reflection would have shown that the very systems Elliot and his hacker friends are using were designed by the old guys who themselves built on the shoulders of greater giants. (Articles on Anonymous have shown that the inner core of the organization isn’t strictly young guys as popularly imagined, but largely socially conscious programmers from the late 1960s and early 1970s who range upwards in age into their 50s and 60s.)

Elliot sneers at the CEO of E-Corp for carrying a Blackberry, ignoring the fact that an executive can run a company or tinker with technology, but probably not both, not at the same time. The US State Department deliberately uses Blackberries because they’re less susceptible to hacking… but that sort of realism would cut the series short.

Later, Elliot denigrates a hospital IT manager, William Highsmith, but even as he’s disparaging the IT guy, Elliot uses his supposed superior hacking skills to type the word NEGATIVE into his drug screen. Nothing screams phony like spelling out a presumed binary value instead of clicking the bit setting like true experts and their grandmothers would have done.

In the third episode, Elliot gives a stoned soliloquy on debugging. He’s correct in that finding a bug is usually the hardest part of the problem, but then he awkwardly extends an analogy of bugs into the real world of people and society.

Halt and Catch Fire

Based on a single episode, a competing series Halt and Catch Fire has a much better and more realistic grip on technology and story-telling. Their team planned how to fake an AT&T computer by kludging together parts from a Commodore 64. Unlike the vague buzzword-dropping, watch-the-other-hand unexplained ‘magic’ in Mr Robot, the HCF scheme could actually work.

From both a writing standpoint and a hi-tech background, Mr Robot disappoints. I expect more… more characterization, more plot, more realistic tech. And less morphine, please, much less. I’m a minority, but my tech-savvy friend and colleague Thrush, who still keeps his hand in the land of Unix, also expressed dismay, finding the show dark and dismal with a poor handle on technology.

Mr Robot is like a 1960’s drug culture anti-establishment film, entirely unentertaining. But that’s my take. What is yours?