A Greatness of Their Own

Aaron Burden via Unsplash

Anyone who writes knows—or thinks they know—what readers are expecting when it comes to characters. The Big Why.

Why is this make-believe person the way they are? What made them this way? And we writers have two tricks up our sleeve for giving readers what they want. (At least, I think there are two. Feel free to debate.)

Method #1: We can dig our heels in and stubbornly refuse to give any backstory. We set down on the page a person who is a cipher, and we let the reader determine who they are on the basis of the character’s actions.

Remember that classic scene in The Silence of the Lambs—the book, not the movie—when young Clarice Starling goes to administer a questionnaire to Hannibal Lecter? The sadistic doctor toys with her, mocking the notion that a “blunt tool” can dissect the mysteries of his personality. “Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.”

The sound you hear you is the cheering of writers up in the nosebleed section of the literary pantheon. Good for you, Thomas Harris! Way to create evil on the page. Don’t tell us anything! No back story. No exposition. Yay!

And what did poor Harris do? The more popular his Lecter became, the more he yielded to popular demand. His 1999 novel, Hannibal, hinted at Lecter’s childhood in war-torn Lithuania. His 2006 novel, Hannibal Rising, is all prequel. Critics have said that the last two books are the weakest in the series, perhaps because they fill in the blanks on Lecter’s past.

Don’t blame Harris. He did exactly what writers are expected to do when wielding Method #2: something in our character’s childhood shaped them into the person they become. Usually it’s some sort of trauma. I don’t want to get into Lecter’s. Suffice to say it’s, um, delicious?

The point is: Bad thing in past equals character.

I suppose you could play with this paradigm and change it up. Good thing in past equals character. Bad thing in one’s recent adult past—a divorce, a call to God, beating alcoholism—equals character.

The paradigm is strictly cause and effect. Because this happened, I happened, to quote Dr. Lecter.

Ages ago I read an interesting book that has had me questioning the nature of literary character ever since. Is it possible that we writers have absorbed lessons about character that derive from schools of thought outside the realm of literature? Is our view of character distinctly American?

We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—And the World’s Getting Worse consists of a series of conversations and essays between the arts journalist Michael Ventura and the Jungian psychologist James Hillman. The book is 256 pages long, and filled with provocative concepts, but I always think of the idea that is expressed on one page of the text.

HILLMAN: The principal content of American psychology is developmental psychology: what happened to you earlier is the cause of what happened to you later. That’s the basic theory: our history is our causality. We don’t even separate history as a story from history as cause. So you have to go back to childhood to get at why you are the way you are. And so when people are out of their minds or disturbed or f*cked up or whatever, in our culture, in our psychotherapeutic world, we go back to our mothers and our fathers and our childhoods. No other culture would do that. If you’re out of your mind in another culture or quite disturbed or impotent or anorexic, you look at what you’ve been eating, who’s been casting spells on you, what taboo you’ve crossed, what you haven’t done right, when you last missed reverence to the Gods or didn’t take part in the dance, broke some tribal custom. Whatever. It could be thousands of other things—the plants, the water, the curses, the demons, the Gods, being out of touch with the Great Spirit. It would never, never be what happened to you with your mother and your father forty years ago. Only our culture uses that model, that myth. 

VENTURA (appalled and confused): Well, why wouldn’t that be true?
… 

HILLMAN: Because that’s the myth you believe.

Kristina Gadeikyte via Unsplash

Hillman gives a couple of examples. Winston Churchill stuttered as kid, and struggled with language. The great bullfighter Manolete was once a frightened boy who clung to his mother.

If you were creating a fictional character named Churchill or Manolete, you’d spin that person’s story using Method #2: Because he was weak speaker as a child, Churchill applied himself—and lo and behold, he became a great orator! The frightened mama’s boy overcompensated and fought bulls in manhood! Ta-da! Character tied up in a bow, fully and thoroughly explained.

Bull dinkies, says Hillman. No freaking way. 

When a puny acorn falls from a tree, it’s coded to become a mighty oak. Likewise, each of these men came into the world with a soul that knew from Day 1 what its purpose was. Of course the soul called Churchill had trouble speaking. It knew that its destiny was to save the western World through the power of speech. 

The soul called Manolete clung to its mother because its future terrified it; it knew from Day 1 that it was destined to step into a ring to fight massive angry creatures with horns.

Stephane Yaich via Unsplash

Hillman suggested that therapists learn to “read a person’s life backwards.”

“Suppose we look at the kids who are odd or stuttering or afraid, and instead of seeing these as developmental problems we see them as having some great thing inside them, some destiny that they’re not yet able to handle. It’s bigger than they are and their psyche knows that.”

In the course of the book, Hillman expounds on his theory, going as far as saying that every person has a daimon, “guiding ghost,” angel, or genius that leads them on their path.

I love this concept, but I admit that I have trouble knowing how to apply it to characters I’m creating. Yes, readers have come to expect the Big Why as childhood backstory. But wouldn’t it be fun sometimes to work with a convention that breaks the mold? 

Hillman, who died in 2011 at age 85, is no longer around to help writers bring this concept to fruition in their work. But I think a writer can perform a mental exercise inspired by Hillman as they are creating a character. Do the links in the chain of the character’s life make sense in both directions?

Not every character is destined for greatness. But every character has the right to a greatness that is uniquely their own.


* * *


I first shared the work of Michael Ventura in my New Year’s Eve 2021 post.

You can read more in We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—And the World’s Getting Worse, by James Hillman and Michael Ventura (HarperCollins, 1992).

Best of luck on this most palindromic of Februaries!

See you in three weeks!


Joe


josephdagnese.com

The Human Condition

I watched a segment on CBS Morning News where they talked to David Magee about his new memoir Dear William, about losing his son to an accidental drug overdose. I agree that it was tragic, that the family dynamics played a role in everything, that the combination of teen depression and availability of drugs to freaking everyone played a role - However, one thing that struck me was that everyone agreed that "this generation is different", because they're facing so many crises, and there are so many drugs, and etc.  Really?  

Welcome back to the 1960s. 

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis increased the number of active nuclear defense drills - "drop and cover" - against a nuclear annihilation that seemed ever more imminent. 

1962 - Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, beginning the long battle to save the planet - and ourselves - from ourselves. 

1963 - John F. Kennedy's assassination.

1961-1975 - The Vietnam War: endless deaths, endless napalm; Buddhist priests setting themselves on fire; watching as prisoners were shot in the head; My Lai massacre; naked girls running screaming down the road; "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"; all broadcast nightly while we ate our dinners and pretended everything was going great. 

the 1960s - the Civil Rights movement; watching dogs, hoses, bats, set on groups of non-violent protesters, live on TV. 

1965 - the Watts Riots. Makes everything since pale in comparison. 

1966 - Richard Speck AND Charles Whitman the same damn year. The Boston Strangler throughout the 1960s. And many, many more. 

BTW, the first death of a person my own age was when a 14 year old fellow student died of an illegal Mexican abortion. (We all knew she'd been knocked up by someone in the family.)

The first non-relative's dead body I ever saw was another fellow student who died of a heroin overdose. Before fentanyl.

1968 - The assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. I was 14, and both - along with the death of the girl mentioned above - gutted me. And the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention was enough to make our Founding Fathers throw up in their graves.

We've forgotten the level of acceptable violence towards women and children in the 1960s, 1970s, even early 1980s. It was quite common to see black eyes, swollen jaws, bruised arms, etc. in the grocery store. Everyone ignored it. Children were whipped to bruises and cuts - just discipline, that's all. 

Speaking of what you could do to women and children, as I've said before, in 1961 my neighbors' college-aged son tried to molest me when I was six years old. No repercussions, other than my father built a fence between our houses and they never spoke to the neighbors again. God only knows what that frat boy got up to in later life. 

And catty-corner across the street was a family which took in foster kids. All of us kids knew that the dad was molesting the girls, but we also knew that if we said anything, we were going to be in trouble, because we weren't supposed to even know such things could happen. 

Also across the street were Annie, Mabel, and Frank, two silent movie actresses and their live-in boyfriend (not sure if he was he or she) who were doing just fine, thanks to royalties, cigarettes, and wine. Perhaps the most normal people in the neighborhood. 

Oh, and there was the overwhelming legal use of liquor in public. Public drunkenness was taken for granted. Take a look at the characters in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and in The Best Years of Our Lives.  ("the sixth martini" in The Thin Man...)  Suburban housewives like my mother drank because they were bored, lonely, not allowed to get a job or a degree, and perhaps came from a long line of violent alcoholics, and there was nothing else to do. Drunk driving was no big deal - depending on who you were, the most that would happen is you'd get stopped and they'd drive you home. MADD wasn't even founded until 1980. 

And you combine that alcohol with prescription drugs - well, we may not have had oxy, but there was Darvon, Valium, Seconal and Miltown for the anxious, amphetamines (Benzedrine, Dexadrine, etc.) for the tired housewife and long-haul trucker. All the over the counter diet meds were straight up dexy. There were a lot of accidental overdoses then, too, including Judy Garland's.  And a few deliberate ones.  And all the kids knew where the liquor and the drugs were, and helped themselves... 

Different? I don't think so. 

"Our ignorance of history makes us malign our own times:  People have always been like this." - Gustave Flaubert

***

Meanwhile, Florida man is back!  

NO TITLE COULD EXPLAIN THIS CASE, BUT THE DETAILS WILL… WELL, IT’S BEST TO JUST READ ON:  TRAIN vs VEHICLE vs HOUSE

38-year old Bradford Weitzel, of Port St. Lucie, told Martin County Sheriff’s Detectives that he couldn’t find his car after leaving a Martin County bar early this morning, so he stole one in a good faith effort to locate his own. He said he somehow ended up on the train tracks along Indian River Drive. That’s when Weitzel claims the vehicle he stole suddenly stopped dead on the tracks as a train was coming. So he said he got out and ran, leaving the car on the tracks. Within seconds, the train hit the car, catapulting it into a nearby home where the homeowners were sound asleep. Fortunately, they were not physically injured, although the explosive sound of a driverless car smashing into the side of their home was clearly jolting. Meanwhile, Weitzel continued on to a nearby fruit stand, where he vandalized the business then tried to steal a forklift. In the end, Weitzel said he thought it was best to flag down the responding deputies to let them know he was still looking for his car.  Bradford Weitzel was arrested and charged with Grand Theft, and Criminal Mischief. Additional charges are expected.  We told you a title was not possible."  

(LINK)

***

BTW, Our South Dakota legislature passed, and our Governor Noem signed, a bill that bans transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams. (Link)  Meanwhile, the best transgender athlete in the State is a transgender boy who plays football on the boys' team and is really good. 

In February, after an hour of testimony during which lawmakers and parents aired their fears of letting trans students play sports on teams that conform with their identities, a few opponents of the bill were allowed to speak. In his confident voice, Kris beamed in over Zoom: “One of the many things I've learned in my life is that people do not say anything until you do.”

He detailed his experience, having had to switch schools to play football. He said no kid should fear playing sports because of their gender identity, their race, or anything else. “No child should ever have to go through that kind of hurt—being shunned because you did not fit the standards of their expectations…. All I want to do is be a kid and play what I love, which is football and sports in general.” (LINK)

So far, he's not included in the law, but... give it time. He's got a hard row to hoe, damn them. 

More later, from South Dakota, where we talk like Mayberry, act like Goodfellas, but hey, at least we're not stealing forklifts to find our missing car. Yet.

A Thousand Steps

  

T. Jefferson Parker’s Laguna Heat came out in 1985, and I gobbled it up.  Two years later, he released Little Saigon, which I thought was even better.  I skipped the next six books, for a reason so trivial as to invite scorn, and with apologies, here it is.

Laguna Heat was adapted into a made-for-TV movie.  It’s got a good script, it’s well-directed, it has two-thirds of a solid lead cast.  Unhappily, the other third is Harry Hamlin, who conveys the hero’s moral conflict with furrowed brow and a general air of unplumbed gastric distress.

Now, of course, we both know that the last person to be held responsible for this is the writer.  I don’t have to quote Bill Goldman.  Jeff Parker is innocent of the wrongs done his novel, but he was somehow guilty by association.  I think this was partly unconscious – if I’d thought about it at all, I would have seen how ridiculous it was, but the effect lingered. 

So, cut to Silent Joe.  Fifteen years later, if you can believe it.  I pick it up in a bookstore and flip it open, thinking, I remember reading this guy.  The book sucks me in, no hesitation, and I’m like, where have I been?  And then, to my chagrin, I remember the back story.  This leads me to catch up with many of the books I’ve missed.

Then, in 2009, the Edgar nominations for best short story include me, Jeff Parker, Laura Lippman, Sean Chercover, and Dominique Mainard - and Linda Landrigan, my editor at Hitchcock, invites me to their table at the awards dinner.  Had a great time.  Didn’t win the Edgar.  Parker did.  “The fix was in,” Laura Lippman mutters to me.  But here’s the thing, which she and I would both readily admit.  It’s disappointing not to win, for sure, but it’s better to lose to somebody you like and admire, not just some chump.

Kept right on reading the guy.  All six Charlie Hood novels, which stack up with Don Winslow’s border trilogy. 

I have to say I’ve written about this neck of the woods as well, and about what Parker has called the Iron River, money and guns going south, drugs and human traffic coming north.  We three would probably agree that the War on Drugs is a failure, but nothing we’ve written is prescriptive.

Which brings us to A Thousand Steps. 

Jeff Parker is a California boy, and his books have a local specificity, particular to a place and time.  A Thousand Steps takes us back to Laguna, but the Laguna of 1968, the summer of a thousand Zig-Zags.  The book is, yes, a mystery thriller, but I’m inclined to think of it as a quest story first and foremost.  The departure here is that the hero is sixteen, and Parker inhabits the kid’s voice with absolute authority.  It doesn’t feel made-up or inauthentic in any way.  Parker was that age, in Laguna at the time, and he’s said in interviews that he didn’t have to conjure up much – that it was a matter of reimagination.  I believe it.

The thousand steps of the title are metaphorical, but they refer to a beach just off the Pacific Coast Highway, on the south end of Laguna.  I have another tangential connection here, which is that my pal David Price, himself a native Southern California boy, is the architect who designed the public restrooms for Laguna’s beaches.  (Both the restrooms and the flights of steps are being rehabilitated.)

A Thousand Steps, the book, is immersive.  It’s both a journey inward, and an embrace of the larger world, at high velocity.  I didn’t hesitate.  Neither should you.

Addressing Social Issues in Fiction

One of the greatest benefits of reading is it allows you to be an armchair traveler. You can visit distant lands without leaving your couch. You also can get an inside look at the lives of people (real and fictional) who are far different from you. Both types of travel are important because they can help readers have a fuller view of the world and all the people in it. With such knowledge can come understanding and empathy, and humanity can always use more of both things.

With my short stories, I often focus on the second type of travel. I find a good way to bring readers into a character's world is to focus on details, showing how the character lives or things that happen to him or her, and showing how experiences affect the character emotionally. Including the emotional effect is vital because it's something readers will remember.

My newest story, "Five Days to Fitness," allows me to illustrate my point. The main character, Bree, is an attorney. She's heard that if she doesn't slim down, her chances of advancement at work will be negatively affected. Bree is good at fighting for other people, but a lifetime of putdowns has left her hesitant to stand up for herself. Instead, she attends a fitness retreat. While there, she meets several other people who also carry a lot of emotional baggage with them—often weight-related. Their experiences are revealed as the whodunit unfolds. 

The story also has a lot of humorous moments—I didn't want it to be a downer—and, as you can expect with a whodunit, justice is served in the end. But on the way to the end, the reader gets an inside look at the rude, thoughtless, and embarrassing comments overweight people can experience and how it affects their self-esteem. I hope the story sparks compassion and understanding in readers who don't have these experiences in their own lives.

You can read "Five Days to Fitness" in the anthology Murder in the Mountains, released last Tuesday. The anthology also includes stories by Gretchen Archer, Leslie Budewitz, Karen Cantwell, Eleanor Cawood Jones, Tina Kashian, Shari Randall, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Cathy Wiley. The stories (mostly whodunits) are set on mountains spanning three continents, during all four seasons of the year. And, if you like trivia, the anthology publisher is running a game with some fun prizes (including a $25 Amazon gift card) through Feb. 15th. Just click here.

Turning back to addressing social issues in fiction, here are some other of my stories through which I've tried to provide an inside look:

• "The Case of the Missing Pot Roast" portrays the emotional effect of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. (Published in the 2017 Bouchercon anthology, Florida Happens.)
• "Ice Ice Baby" shows how powerless a victim of sexual harassment can feel. (Published in the September/October 2021 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.)
  
• "For Bailey" addresses how fireworks scare animals. (This story is scheduled to be published in May in the anthology Low Down Dirty Vote: Volume 3.)
• "A Tale of Two Sisters" touches on gender expectations. While the issue isn't the focus of the story, it is addressed. (This story appeared in the 2021 anthology Murder on the Beach. You also can read it on my website by clicking here.)
• "A Family Matter" delves into ... well, I'm not going to say what it delves into because that would be a spoiler. But you can find out for yourself. The story is posted on my website. Just click here. (The story was first published in the January/February 2021 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.)

Two important things to keep in mind when writing a story touching on a sensitive topic is you want to engage your readers and not preach to them. There's a fine line between showcasing a problem and standing on a soapbox and lecturing about it. While you can have characters talk or think about an issue, you don't want to go on too long about it. Give readers the inside look you desire, and they'll draw their own conclusions.

***

Before I go, a little BSP. I'm delighted that I had two stories nominated for this year's Agatha Award: "A Family Matter" and "A Tale of Two Sisters." You can find links to read both stories in the bullet list above. The Agathas will be handed out at the Malice Domestic mystery convention in April.

A New Cross-Genre Hero: Murderbot

After reading mysteries for sixty years and writing them for twenty, I've become an appallingly picky reader. I seldom discover a new-to-me author whose book I want to read all the way through, much less one on whose series I rush to binge. Yet that's exactly what happened when I heard about fantasy author Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries on DorothyL, the venerable e-list for mystery lovers. Someone said, "They do have 'murder' in the title, and they're wonderful!" Someone else said, "I love Murderbot!" Others chimed in enthusiastically, pointing out that crimes and at least one murder mystery could be found in the series. So I picked up the first novella, All Systems Red, and I was hooked. I literally bought and read straight through the whole series before going on to any other reading. And I was in good company. All Systems Red won the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards for Best Novella.

Murderbot is not your typical antihero. If I said it's the most lovable android since R2D2, you'd get completely the wrong idea. First, you'd better not call it Murderbot. That's private. It's SecUnit to you. Second, don't touch it. Pats on the head, the shoulder, the back, or the arm are not welcome. Third, if you value your life, don't ask it how it feels. It has a thousand ways to kill you, and it doesn't give a damn that you meant well.

Murderbot is a rogue SecUnit who's hacked its governor module and is making a break for freedom. As the story arc unfolds, we begin to understand what being controlled by a governor module was like for a sentient being and why Murderbot is chronically grumpy and doesn't trust humans. Unlike the humanoid androids in most science fiction, the last thing it wants is to be human itself. Humans are stupid. They think slowly. They invariably do the wrong thing in a crisis. They constantly put themselves in danger, from which SecUnit is programmed to rescue them, even at the cost of its own life. Somehow, even without its governor module to punish it for failing, it can't help doing that.

In the course of its adventures, Murderbot gradually comes in contact with a few humans who treat it as a fellow being rather than as a piece of equipment. It doesn't want to care about any of them. Caring isn't in his programming. It tells itself this unfamiliar response must be a system glitch. But caring as well as curiosity keep leading it into new friendships (sorry, Murderbot, I didn't mean to use the F word) with both humans and other machine entities as it hitchhikes through space investigating the mysteries in its own past.

Because Wells is a highly experienced and imaginative writer who serves up a unique brew of world-building and character and humor and plotting that is superior to all the "gripping, compelling, if-you-like-Martha-Wells-you'll-love" imitators I'm sure will come along if they haven't already, she avoids easy solutions. For example, at the end of one of the novellas, the human SecUnit finds the least intolerably stupid, slow, disorganized, and irrational, one who's almost possible to work with in a crisis involving humans, offers it a home. Her world is free from the corrupt influence of Murderbot's former corporate owners and of bigotry toward bots. But our hero is not a bot. It's a SecUnit—a valuable piece of lethal equipment—and although its not-a-friend might call it her teammate or family member, whichever it prefers, she would have to be its legal owner to get it onto the planet. In other words, it would be a slave again. So Murderbot, who can't possibly be feeling a bit conscience-stricken, slips away to have more adventures. Since these include investigating murders as well as stopping various bad guys from preying on both humans and sentient machines, Murderbot fans can rejoice. By the way, don't tell Murderbot it has fans. It would be so embarrassed. If SecUnits could get embarrassed.

Artificial Condition, the second in the five novellas that make up The Murderbot Diaries, also won the Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Novella.

Network Effect, the Murderbot novel, won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for Best Novel and was a New York Times bestseller.

Rumor has it that Wells has signed a contract for several more Murderbot works.

Mailorder Murder

Few things are sadder than suicide, the hopeless decision to end one’s life. Amazon is making it easy with an old product marketed in new ways. The same sort of web sites that promote foolish vaccination theories also promote ways to commit suicide. Sadly, that information is a bit more accurate.

Anyone familiar with wines knows of sulfites, nitrates, and nitrites. One or more is thought to cause red wine headache (RWH) although the evidence is contradictory and white wines often contain more of the compounds than reds.

Sodium nitrate and nitrite figure heavily in chocolate, coffee, and processed meats. Sodium nitrite and nitrate are used as a food preservative and give hotdogs and corned beef that unique pinkish hue. Sodium nitrite can kill Clostridium botulinum (botulism) and Listeria, helping to prevent food poisoning.

But it’s not all good news.

Sodium nitrate occurs naturally in some vegetables, fruits, grains and converts to sodium nitrite, an antioxidant, upon the tongue. Medically, sodium nitrite can treat cyanide poisoning, one of the great ironies. It can be used to bring about suicide and prevent suicide.

The New York Times reveals a scandal

As the New York Times reports, those intent upon suicide are turning to on-line ordering sodium nitrite. Consumers can buy a $10 bottle or a 25kg bag of sodium nitrite.

Amazon is taking the brunt of on-line orders, although other social media platforms disseminate instructions along with suicide ideology. But once Amazon’s buying pattern algorithms kicked in, it began to suggest items to aid in suicide.

As history has shown, what can be used for suicide can be used for homicide. We live in a fictional world, but we have to be mindful of the real planet where miscreants wander among us.

The New Yorker reveals a mystery

As for suicide, the claim of a painless passage isn’t true. An intriguing deadly mystery in New York in 1944 described eleven men who’d succumbed to the poison.

Victims capable of reporting their status mention headaches, sometimes splitting headaches.

Symptoms include:

• Bluish skin from a lack of oxygen,
• Difficulty breathing,
• Nausea, diarrhea, vomiting,
• Dark brown blood,
• Dehydration from loss of bodily fluids,
• Fast pulse, dizziness, weakness,
• Abdominal pain,
• Convulsions,
• Coma.

Importantly, here are a few ways from the CDC to treat sodium nitrite poisoning.

• Intubation and oxygen treatment,
• Gastric lavage,
• Methylene blue, antidote for nitrite poisoning.

Please, live long and prosper.

Why Tock-Tick Doesn't Sound Right

For today's post, I'm using something my wife told me she saw on Facebook the other day. As you know, some FB posts aren't exactly worthwhile and/or entertaining. (I'm sure some of mine aren't.) I thought this one was both.

I saw no byline on the following, but it was posted at the For Reading Addicts site, and they said it came from an unnamed BBC article. Some of the piece sounds correct and some sounds a little iffy, but I found it interesting. I love this kind of thing anyway.

Here it is:

WHY TOCK-TICK DOES NOT SOUND RIGHT TO YOUR EARS

Ever wondered why we say tick-tock, not tock-tick, or ding-dong, not dong-ding; King Kong, not Kong King? Turns out it is one of the unwritten rules of English that native speakers know without knowing. 

The rule, explains a BBC article, is: "If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O. Mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, shilly-shally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac, sing song, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong.

There's another unwritten rule at work in the name Little Red Riding Hood, says the article. 

"Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac.

That explains why we say "little green men," not "green little men," but "Big Bad Wolf" sounds like a gross violation of the "opinion (bad)-size (big)- noun (wolf)" order. It won't, though, if you recall the first rule about the I-A-O order.

That rule seems inviolable: "All four of a horse's feet make exactly the same sound. But we always, always say clip-clop, never clop-clip."

This rule even has a technical name, if you care to know it--the rule of ablaut reduplication--but then life is simpler knowing that we know the rule without knowing it.

One thing I'm not sure about is the part about the order of multiple adjectives. Maybe opinion-size-age-etc. is the preferred order, but saying the adjectives have to be in that order sounds a little tock-tick to my ears. And the supposed rule that the order has to go I, A, O for three-worders sounds funky also. Big Bad Wolf indeed fits the bill, but Little Orphan Annie, sweet Mother Mary, big fat liar, Jolly Green Giant, little old lady, etc., don't. Maybe the I, A, O sequence just sounds more pleasing to the ear.

I should add the fact that I did locate the article from which the FB post appears to have been taken--"Ablaut Reduplication," written two years ago by Romit Limbu, at ALM Translations--and, to be fair, the original article does say there are exceptions to the adjective-order rule.

What do you think about all this? Comments welcome!

P. S. Maybe you would say Kong King in a roll call. ("Present," he roared . . .)

The Last Time I Saw Harlan

Looking back as I write this on January 28, 2022, two years after Harlan Ellison died on this day in 2018, I realize the last time I saw Harlan was his visit to New Orleans in 2001. I drove Harlan and Susan Ellison to the French Market and other places around town, including the Chalmette battlefield site of the Battle of New Orleans, and back to the French Quarter to check out where writer Sherwood Anderson lived in the Upper Pontalba Apartments in 1924.

Sherwood Anderson entertained and influenced William Faulkner, Carl Sandburg, Edmund Wilson and others. Harlan influenced me and many others.

I remember we went to the lower French Quarter where my character Lucien Caye lived on Barracks Street as well as where another of my recurring characters, Dino LaStanza, lived with his wife Lizette on Exposition Avenue at the edge of Audubon Park.

While uptown, we went to Lafayette Cemetery and checked out a two-story yellow frame house across the street from the cemetery where F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in 1919-20, where he wrote his "Letters to Zelda."

Harlan wanted to eat at a wonderful, small restaurant, a favorite of New Orleanians – Guy's Po-Boys on Magazine Street.

Of all the photos I took of the visit, these are the only ones not destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Some of these are stained but that's the way it goes.

I managed to lose a lot of this weight, thankfully.

In the French Market, Harlan talking with one of the stall owners.

In front of the statue of Saint Expedite, inside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church (which includes the Shrine of St. Jude), North Rampart Street, at the edge of the French Quarter.

Outside le Richelieu Hotel in the French Quarter.

Guy's Po-Boys, 5259 Magazine Street. It's still there.

Susan was a gracious, patient, intelligent woman with an cool sense of humor. Anyone married to Harlan needed a sense of humor. She died in 2020.

Brings me back to the first time I met Harlan at the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival. We sure were young back then.

Harlan, Chris Wiltz, George Alec Effinger, me

For those you who haven't read much Harlan Ellison. He is essential. A master of the short story whose influence on other writers, including me, is enormous. We all know writers influence one another. I see a lot of it today online, here at SleuthSayers and on other social media. A good thing. Writers linking up, maybe never meeting, but interacting and sometime influencing one another, maybe even inspiring each other.

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

You Sank My Submarine With....Potatoes?

Not a dead cow in sight...

 You've heard the stories: damned near anything can and has been made into a projectile. During the
Middle Ages besieging armies would frequently use their siege engines (catapults, trebuchets, the first crude cannons) to toss stones, bits of masonry, pots of flaming oil, even rotting animal carcasses over the walls and into the streets of the city they were trying to take.

Seems human beings can be pretty inventive when it comes to making the everyday into a weapon. During World War I, when the airplane was still in its infancy, planes were first utilized solely to observe enemy troop movements. Pilots from opposing sides were even known to wave at each other as they passed.

As the body counts mounted, though, and Belgium and Northern France became one vast killing field, that sense of bonhomie quickly faded. Pilots started tossing things at each other: bottles, rocks, even bricks. Within months they were engaging each other in vicious aerial combat utilizing machine guns engineered specifically to fire through the revolving propellers of their aircraft.

Whether or not they threw food–fresh or rotten–at each other (Which is likely-seeing as they threw nearly everything else) in those early days before every plane was outfitted either a Lewis or Maxim machine gun, there is no record of them using potatoes specifically in an attempt to get past the guard of an enemy.

Oh no. 

For that, you need another war–the next World War, and the United States Navy.

USS O'Bannon (DD 450)

Specifically, the crew of the USS O'Bannon. 

Here's the story:

On the evening of April 5th, 1943. The O'Bannon, a destroyer on anti-submarine patrol in the Pacific, comes upon a Japanese submarine stalking the convoy the O'Bannon is tasked with guarding.

The sub has surfaced, and is running parallel to O'Bannon when the destroyer discovers her. The O'Bannon's captain considers ramming the sub, thinks better of it–too tricky. The ship's guns won't lower enough to actually open fire at the sub–the two vessels are that close to each other. 

But the Japanese have a deck gun capable of firing on the O'Bannon, and her skipper gives the order to man it. The O'Bannon's captain orders the ship on a new heading, wanting to increase the distance so he can bring O'Bannon's five-inch guns into play.

But that will take time, and the Japanese gun crew could well be able to get off several shots before the destroyer is able to respond in kind. To make matters worse, the O'Bannon only has deck guns–no mounted machine guns, or even small arms such as pistols or shotguns as part of her armament.

So in order to buy time for her own guns to be brought into play, the destroyer's deck crew get creative.

These.

They start throwing potatoes at the Japanese gun crew.

Potatoes. 

As the story goes (and what sort of "sea story" would it be if it didn't go this way), getting pelted with spuds so distracted the Japanese gun crew that the O'Bannon was able to get far enough away to bring her own guns into play. At the first salvo, the Japanese sub crash dived, and the O'Bannon gave chase, eventually sinking her with a barrage of depth charges.

Of course, this story often gets dismissed as a literal "sea story" (click here if you don't get it immediately). None other than the O'Bannon's captain, Edwin Wilkinson claimed it never happened. It didn't go into his initial report, and Wilkinson maintained to the end of his days that the story of the potato barrage grew out of the observation by a member of the bridge crew that when the O'Bannon and the sub were initially sailing parallel to each other, they were in fact so close that "you could throw a potato and hit that sub," or words to that effect.

And while the O'Bannon is credited with sinking the sub in question during this encounter, other sources maintain that the sub escaped, only to be sunk the next night by the O'Bannon, working in tandem with another American warship.

Sea story or fact? Historical fiction or history?

Which is more fun? Let us hear what you think in the comments!

Tasty tuber or deadly weapon? YOU be the judge! See you in the comments!

A special "thank you" to my friend David Corbett for bringing this little gem to my attention. He's one hell of a writer, to boot. Check out his website here. Thanks again, David!

See you in two weeks!

All the Best to You

Personal request: If you cite this list (and I would be happy if you do) please refer to it as "Robert Lopresti’s ‘Best of the Year’ list at SleuthSayers,” not as the SleuthSayers' 'Best of the Year' list.  It's just me bloviating here, not the whole gang.  Thanks.

It is time for the thirteenth annual list of the year's best mystery stories as determined by yours truly.  It goes without saying that the verdicts are subjective, personal, and entirely correct. 

Sixteen stories made the list, one fewer than last year.  Ten stories were by men, six by women.  The big winner was Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine with five stories.  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine had four.  Two more came from the Mystery Writers of America anthology.

Four of the stories were by my fellow SleuthSayers, a talented bunch.  With no further ado, here is the hit parade:

Allyn, Doug. "Hit and Run," in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November/December 2021.

This is Allyn's third appearance in my best-of list.

Imagine you are stuck in traffic on your way to an important, even life-and-death meeting. Now imagine you get rear-ended by a woman who is not paying attention. But the frosting on the cake is that the accident makes your trunk fly open, revealing the bag of cocaine you are bringing to the meeting.  Many twists and turns...

Aymar, E.A. "The Search for Eric Garcia,"  in Midnight Hour, a Chilling Anthology of Crime Fiction From 20 Authors of Color, edited by Abby L. Vandiver, Crooked Lane Books, 2021

The protagonist's life is going down the tubes.  His daughter died in an accident that he feels responsible for, although the authorities disagreed.  His wife is living with Eric Garcia, who owns the store where our hero works.  Eric is everything he is not: a confident, successful man.  And our protagonist feels that the world isn't big enough to hold both of them. This is a very clever story, one where the telling is  essential to the plot. 

Benn, James R., "Glass,"  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

A superconducting super-collider goes boom and a piece of 21st-century technology is blasted back through time to 1965 where it is discovered by hapless recently-fired salesman Guy Tupper.  Guy brings it to his cousin Jerry who runs a repair shop.  Together they figure out just enough to get the device working, and then...  One plot twist made me gasp out loud. 

 

 Cummins, Robert.  "The Phone Message," in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2021.  

This is the author's first story.  The beginning may remind you of Columbo.  In the first scene Carole Donaldson calmly kills her husband.  Later, and just as calmly, she tells the police officer leading the investigation that she had tons of motive.  But she also seems to have an unbreakable alibi...

Fisher, Eve.  "The Sweet Life,"  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

Eve Fisher is, of course, my fellow SleuthSayer.

Carrie is a teenager who has had a rotten life.  She considers her time with Ethan to have been a highlight because, while he made her sell drugs, he didn't force her into prostitution. 

When that arrangement collapses she lucks into a gig with an agency that cleans houses.  She likes the work, even though some of the customers are a little weird.  But then someone from her previous life threatens to ruin everything.

Goffman, Barb, "A Family Matter," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2021. 

Barb is another fellow SleuthSayer.

It is 1962 and Doris lives in a very nice suburb called The Glen.  Most of her friends are married to men who work for the big pharmaceutical corporation in town.  The neighborhood has standards.  

And the new neighbors do not meet them.   They raise chickens and hang laundry in their yard.  Doris is determined that these offensive violations of community norms will not be permitted.  But when she realizes a very different norm is being broken she has to determine what really matters in the neighborhood.

Harrington, Karen. "Boo Radley College Prep," in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2021. 

Tony is fifteen years old, short on luck and, he will tell you, short on brains.  A hurricane has forced him and his mother to move in with the brother of his deceased father, and it isn't a happy or healthy home. 

Right down the block, however, is what his uncle calls "the Boo Radley house," a spooky-looking joint whose owner never appears in public.  Curiosity - and the hopes of earning chore money - causes Tony to visit.  He meets a grouchy old man with a lot of brains and good reasons to hide.  Can these desperate souls help each other?

Haynes, Dana. "The Waiting Game," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

This is my first encounter with Fiero and Finnigan who run  St. Nicholas  Salvage & Wrecking, which is actually a bounty hunter firm that chases international bad guys.  Finnigan has been kidnapped by very nasty Russians who want Fiero to revert to her old occupation of assassin. A cunning plan, but neither of the partners intend to play by the rules. I was reminded of that classic TV show The Avengers.

Helms, Richard, "Capes and Masks," Mystery Weekly Magazine, June 2021.

This is Helms's second appearance in my annual best-of-list.  

"You know the story. Stolen by aliens who crashed my fourth birthday party.  Returned when I was seventeen, but I was somehow... different than when I left.  Well, duh,  I was thirteen years older, had all this weird hair growing where it never had, and my voice sounded like I was shaving a cat with a cheese greater."

If that sounds a bit... hardboiled... for a superhero story it is no accident.  He is Captain Courageous but his cover identity is Eddie Shane, private eye.  He mostly deals with divorce work but when a caped dude named Sunburst is found mysteriously dead, this is no job for a superhero.  We need a gumshoe to save the day.  

Jacobs, Tilia Klebenov , "Perfect Strangers,", in When A Stranger Comes To Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021.

Gershom is finishing his second prison term for armed robbery when his cellmate Dougal points out the new gold mine: marijuana dispensaries.  Cash-rich and security-poor, they are a robber's dream.  So when he gets out Gershom begins to plan an elaborate robbery, because he does not intend to go down a third time:  "If this went sideways, they'd lock me up and melt down the warden." 

Lansdale, Joe R. "The Skull Collector," in Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block, LB Productions, 2021.

He was a tough old guy, Ruby said.  Big, could crack walnuts with harsh language, chase a squirrel up a tree with bad breath. She had to use an axe handle to sort the guy out a little.  It wasn't too bad.  He was able to leave on his own, though not without a certain amount of pain and difficulty...  

That tells you a lot about Ruby, sure, but we also find out a lot about the narrator, especially that "It wasn't too bad." What does she consider a real problem?  How about having to steal a skull from a cemetery?

Light, Larry. "The Trouble with Rebecca,"  in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2021.

Max is a "tech geek," working for a company that does hush-hush security stuff.  Because he hates the social side of work he invents Rebecca, a non-existent wife.  This imaginary person is his excuse to avoid after-work events and the like.  

Works great until he falls in love with a co-worker.  How do you rid yourself of a wife who does not actually exist? 

Thielman, Mark. "Catch and Release," in The Fish That Got Away, edited by Linda M. Rodriquez, Wildside Press, 2021.

This is the  third appearance in this column by my fellow SleuthSayer.

I let a murderer go today. That's how the tale begins. You might feel that the prosecutor is being a little hard on himself, because he did try his best to get Thomas Edmonds convicted.  (Didn't he?)

He walks you through the trial, through every maddening moment that caused his case to slip away.  And through it all Edmonds sits there, as cool as a bystander at a church picnic.  No wonder the narrator is so upset.  But then unexpected things happen...

Walker, Joseph S.  "Crown Jewel," in Moonlight and Misadventure, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, Superior Shores Press, 2021. 

The publisher sent me a copy of this book.

Keenan Beech is a compulsive collector of vinyl, and his golden fleece is The Beatles, better known as the White Album.  The first few million copies have a number stamped on the cover and collectors like Keenan keep buying, buying, buying them, trying to get closer to the elusive lower numbers. 

But his big problem is his identical twin Xavier.  Keenan is a hard working guy; Xavier is an unsuccessful scoundrel.  And when a record store offers Keenan a rare copy of the White Album for a mere five grand Xavier somehow gets his hands on it first by, duh, pretending to be Keenan.

Witt, Amanda, "Relative Stranger,"  in When A Stranger Comes To Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021.

Glory Crockett lives on a farm and one day a stranger knocks on the door.  What's disturbing is that he resembles her husband, Owen.  Turns out his name is also Owen Crockett.  He's the bad-news cousin who has spent most of his life in prison, "a one-man crime spree."  Now here he is, with a glib charm that rings completely false.  And somewhere outside  is Glory's husband and four young sons...

Zelvin, Elizabeth.  "Who Stole the Afikomen?" in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2021.

My fellow SleuthSayer has written a hilarious story.  Andy is a Catholic and he is about to meet his new fiance's extended family at their Passover dinner - his first experience at a seder.

Uncle Manny kept saying, "Focus, people, focus.  We've got a goal here."

"To get the Jews out of Egypt?" I whispered.
"To get past the rabbis to the gefilte fish," Sharon whispered back.
"Is that the Promised Land?"
"The pot roast is the Promised Land."

X Minus 15

Working in the district attorney's offices for both Dallas and Tarrant Counties, a prosecutor always had the benefit of an investigator to help put our criminal cases together. The investigator, usually a retired cop, would serve subpoenas, help locate witnesses, accompany assistant district attorneys to witness meetings in sketchy parts of town, and generally do what was necessary to help make a case prosecutable. 

They also drank coffee, lots of it. 

In Dallas, a cluster of investigators would gather each morning in Big Steve's office. There, they'd tell their old cop stories. Most rarely washed their coffee cups. Instead, they'd shake the stray drops into the trash can and set the cups aside in preparation for the next morning's "intelligence briefing." 

A part of the conversation invariably involved making lunch plans. DA investigators tended to go to lunch early. Real early. 

It made sense when you view the typical business model of those offices. Courts usually had morning dockets. The prosecutors would arrive, gather up their files, and later their laptops, and then disappear to court to negotiate with the defense bar. During dockets, prosecutors placed few demands on the investigators. If they ate early, the investigators could be back in place when the assistant DAs returned from court, well-fed and poised to aid the prosecutors in case preparation. They went to lunch early as a favor to the prosecutors. 

At least that was the story. 

From listening to old cops and assistant district attorneys, the golden era of crime-fighting was always today's date minus 10-15 years. 

When I started, I "shoulda been here a decade ago." 

When I stopped, the new hires, "shoulda been here a decade ago." 

And so the cycle continued. 

Jim, the retired motorcycle cop, had a great story about using his bike's police radio as a polygraph when interviewing witnesses. They'd put their hands on the bike's Dallas Police Department emblem. The radio would squawk when the interviewee was prevaricating. 

Paul, a diminutive man with a slow drawl, had the reputation as a cop who could handle himself in a crisis. If Paul called for backup, officers raced to his location. If he needed help, things were serious. Paul had a bucketful of stories. 

Sometimes they told tales of old prosecutors. Frank had arthritic fingers and a drawl to match Paul's. They'd tell about him in court, standing before the jury and pointing his fishhook of an index finger toward the defendant. Over the top of his glasses, he'd stare down the accused and call him a "malefactor." Back in the day, the jurors might not know what "malefactor" meant. From Frank's poisonous tone, they knew they didn't want to be one. 

Paul, Steve, Vicki, Art, Jim, and many other old-timers enriched my life with stories about their golden eras. I'm grateful for the tales they told. I wished I'd listened more and better. 

My story, "The Family Cycle," in the SINC North Dallas anthology, Malice in Dallas, taps into some of those long-ago memories. The story isn't a retelling of any one person in particular but rather a mosaic pieced together from a number of the folks with whom I had the pleasure to work during my time at the Dallas County District Attorney's office. 

I'd be remiss at this point if I didn't thank Barb Goffman, the editor of the anthology, for helping to make my mishmash of memories and thoughts into a coherent and workable story. 

Turning a distant memory into a short story offers several distinct advantages. I had the seed of an idea. The process allowed me to step back into that golden era for a little while. The hazy nature of my recollections made them easier to combine and craft into a piece of fiction. I couldn't get too hung up on any of the details. The cumbersome bits have been lost to time. 

I imagine we all have a tale about an overheard conversation at a Starbucks, a snippet that turned around in our heads and re-emerged in a story we've written. Big Steve's, I recognized now, was my neighborhood coffee shop serving Folgers and memories. 

If I'd known then that I'd be spending my time these days trying to tell crime stories, I'd have spent more in Steve's office soaking up the tales. Some of them were probably even true. 

I'd also have bought the coffee. 

I'll be traveling on the day this posts. 

Until next time.