Opening Lines (Again)

A recent SleuthSayers posting by Barb Goffman about good first lines, drew me back to my previous postings (and others) about opening lines. Since I've said enough about the importance of opening lines, I thought I'd share the opening lines of my recently published books and short stories, opening lines which worked for me.

    NOVELS:

HARDSCRABBLE PRIVATE EYE (Jun 2022)

I DROP THE uncut gemstone back into the leather bag with the others and tell her, “Emeralds. Every one.”

NEW ORLEANS HEAT (Mar 2023)

The body hung from the low branch of a live oak in the Bayou Sauvage swamp about thirty yards from Chef Menteur Road. Detective Jacques Dugas swatted a mosquito on his neck and studied the scene before drawing a quick diagram with a pencil in his small leather-bound notebook.

SMOOTH (Sep 2023)

THE BURGLAR CROSSED the warehouse like a cat, with purposeful, careful steps, keeping his low-beam flashlight pointed to the floor in front of him.

SHORT STORIES:

The First Annual Atchafalaya Coyote Hunt: or, Is There a Sleuth in The House

Black Cat Mystery Magazine Issue 11, Mar 2022

I always wanted to be a sleuth. Pfft! As if.

 

The Obsidian Knife

The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, Mango Press, Jul 2022

    

Damn car wouldn’t start.

Blue Moon Over Burgundy

Black is the Night, Maxim's Jakubowski's Cornell Woolrich Antho, Titan Books, Oct 2022

    

Tom steps into the dark bedroom and waits just inside the door for his eyes to adjust

 

The Other French Detective

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 67, Nos 11 & 12, November/December 2022

“Ah, here is our French detective now,” Captain Joe Rathlee called out from his office door as Detective Jacques Dugas came into the Detective Bureau.

 

A Jelly of Intrigue

Edgar and Shamus Go Golden Anthology, Down & Out Books, Dec 5, 2022

A woman trying not to look beautiful stepped into my office a little after nine a.m.

Of Average Intelligence

Black Cat Weekly #85 April 15, 2023

“No offense, Officer Kintyre. But I’m smarter than you.”

When Baby Cows Go Bad

Mystery Magazine, June 2023 Issue

“Baby cows attacked me,” says the student sitting on the other side of my desk

A Pretty Slick Guy

Black Cat Weekly #92 June 3, 2023

 

Billy found the trunk release button and popped open the trunk

A Dirty, Dimly-lit Place

Black Cat Mystery Weekly #103, August 20, 2023

The woman sat at the last table near the side door where the dull lights in the cantina could not reach her and even the moonlight outside was blocked by the leaves of the banana trees.

 

The Little Iréne Escapade

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 68, Nos 9 &10, September/October 2023

A shadow beyond the smoky glass portion of my office door had me fold my newspaper and pull my feet off the desk before the door opened and a heavy-set man stepped in, looked around the big office

 

The Split Man

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 68, Nos 11&12, November/December 2023

The body lay in two pieces, neatly sliced at the waist, the top portion face down, the bottom portion turned upward. 

That's all for now,

www.oneildenoux.com

 

Ghost Dancers and Other Voices

by Eve Fisher

Governor Kristi Noem was back in the news last week with her trip to the Texas border, her promise to stand tall with Gov. Abbott, to personally provide more razor wire to put in the Rio Grande and to send more National Guard Troops to the Border.  Meanwhile, South Dakota has not been reimbursed the $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars that Noem spent on the last deployment, and she has just admitted that she never expected to be, so suck it up, taxpayers!  She's only doing it for our own good!  

And she gave a speech to the South Dakota Legislature on the warzone at the border and how, here in South Dakota, the Bandido's "sub-gang" The Ghost Dancers are selling drugs all over the Rez:  

“Murders are being committed by cartel members on the Pine Ridge Reservation, and in Rapid City, and a gang called the Ghost Dancers are affiliated with these cartels,” Noem said. “They have been successful in recruiting tribal members to join their criminal activity.” (SOURCE)

Many of us in South Dakota went into a Symphony in F-Major over this and other statements, and we're not getting over it for a while.  Let me explain:

THE GHOST DANCE

First of all, a little history on the Ghost Dance. It's a religious ceremony, a literal dance, begun in the 1880s by Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka (renamed Jack Wilson), who said that dancing it would "reunite the living with spirits of the dead, bring the spirits to fight on their behalf, end American Westward expansion, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region." It spread throughout the Native American communities of the West, and was - and is - very strong here in the Dakotas, among the Lakota people. (BTW, it even caught the interest of the Mormons, who had a tendency to believe in and listen to Native American prophets. One of the things that were used in the Ghost Dance, besides the Dance itself, was a Ghost Shirt that some believe to have been adapted from the Mormon temple garment.)  

The Lakota interpretation of Wakova's vision derived from their traditional idea of a "renewed Earth" in which "all evil is washed away". This Lakota interpretation included the removal of all European Americans from their lands:

They told the people they could dance a new world into being. There would be landslides, earthquakes, and big winds. Hills would pile up on each other. The earth would roll up like a carpet with all the white man's ugly things – the stinking new animals, sheep and pigs, the fences, the telegraph poles, the mines and factories. Underneath would be the wonderful old-new world as it had been before the white fat-takers came. ...The white men will be rolled up, disappear, go back to their own continent. - Lame Deer

Anyway, back in 1890 the US Government (warning, "spoiler" alert) broke a treaty with the Lakota by confiscating the Great Sioux Reservation and dividing it into 5 smaller reservations. They were making room for white homesteaders from the eastern United States; in addition, its purpose was to "break up tribal relationships" and "conform Indians to the white man's ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must". No more Native customs, language, clothing, or food - despite the fact that if you try to farm down around, say, the Pine Ridge Reservation, you are trying to farm a semi-desert. Hunting, yes. Farming? No...

(Above clip from the movie, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee")

So the Lakota started doing the Ghost Dance, and that scared the hell out of the US government. The local BIA agent claimed that Sitting Bull, the spiritual leader, was the real leader of the movement. A former agent, Valentine McGillicuddy, God bless her, saw nothing extraordinary in the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have overcome the agencies, saying:

"The coming of the troops has frightened the Indians. If the Seventh-Day Adventists prepare the ascension robes for the Second Coming of the Savior, the United States Army is not put in motion to prevent them. Why should not the Indians have the same privilege? If the troops remain, trouble is sure to come."  Wikipedia

Of course nobody listened to her, and thousands of additional U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. One of of Sitting Bull's men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head", striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull, hitting him in the left side, between the tenth and eleventh ribs; this exchange resulted in deaths on both sides, including that of Sitting Bull.

Sitting Bull

 
This was almost immediately followed by the Massacre at Wounded Knee (December 28, 1890), where 153 Lakota, mostly women and children, were murdered in cold, cold, cold blood. Twenty US soldiers were awarded Medals of Honor for their brave deeds, which were never rescinded.

Mass grave burial of the dead after Wounded Knee.  (Wikipedia)

 
The Ghost Dance movement went underground, but never died. During the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973, Leonard Crow Dog, spiritual leader of the the American Indian Movement (AIM), brought back the Ghost Dance, saying:  

"My great-grandfather's spirit gave me a vision to do this. The vision told me to revive this ceremony at the place where Chief Big Foot's ghost dancers, three hundred men, women, and children, had been massacred by the army, shot to pieces by cannons, old people, babies."  (Wikipedia)

And, after building a sweat lodge and doing a purification ritual, they did.  

So, when Governor Noem claimed that the Ghost Dancers are part of the Bandidos motorcycle gang... it infuriated a lot of people, and not just the Oglala Sioux Tribe. 

Although we might as well start with the Oglala Sioux Tribal President Frank Star Comes Out's announcement: 

“Due to the safety of the Oyate, effective immediately, you [Governor Noem] are hereby Banished from the homelands of the Oglala Sioux Tribe!" 

Star Comes Out said he took deep offense at her reference, saying the Ghost Dance is one of the Oglala Sioux’s “most sacred ceremonies,” and “was used with blatant disrespect and is insulting to our Oyate.” (AP News)

This is the second time Ms. Noem has been banned from the Rez.  The first time was in 2019, when Gov. Noem introduced bills and signed them into a law that basically criminalized the Lakota fervent opposition and peaceful protests to the Keystone XL Pipeline on tribal land, calling it "riot boosting", punishable by prison sentences of 5-25 years.  

And none of us will forget the beginning of Covid, when there were no vaccines and contagion rates were high, especially on the reservations, among the elderly. (The Lakota cherish their elders.) In March of 2020, the Cheyenne River Reservation tribal leaders established masked checkpoints on all the roads leading in and out of the reservation to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and barred some drivers from passing through or stopping on the reservation. Noem said the checkpoints on state and federal highways were illegal because they were interfering with interstate commerce.  (BTW, a lot of the "interstate commerce" was nearby white ranchers wanting to go hunting on tribal lands and/or take a shortcut to their own grazing land.)  Anyway, the lawsuit failed, but eventually, in 2021, when the vaccines came out, the Reservation finally opened the checkpoints (AP).  The Rez never banned her, but they sure don't like her...  

Trivia fact(s) of the day:  South Dakota has 9 reservations, covering 5 million acres.  Pine Ridge and Rosebud are the largest.  Flandreau, the smallest, has the big Casino and is the most prosperous.  They're all important to South Dakota.

Also, 

As Wonkette's Gary Legum wrote:  "You have to hand it to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who over the weekend found herself banned from the Oglala Sioux’s Pine Ridge Reservation for the second time in five years. She has now been banished from more Native land than the 7th Cavalry."

Meanwhile, Governor Noem has accused the Tribal President "of politicizing the issue".  

Honey, respect has to work both ways.  

That's it from South Dakota, where we talk like Mayberry and act like Goodfellas. And sometimes we just BS all over the place.

*****

Meanwhile, if you're in the mood for a good read, check out Josh Pachter's Paranoia Blues.  Nominated for Best Anthony Award for an  Anthology, with GREAT stories, including my own "Cool Papa Bell".  Available at Amazon!

 

And both my own "A Time to Mourn" and John Floyd's "Wanted" are in the latest issue of Crimeucopia:  Say It Again, also available at Amazon.  

The Name of the Beast

 

I just want to make a weird little observation about that group of characters Earl Emerson once eloquently described as the Sociopathic Sidekicks (SS).  These are the men (I don't know of any female versions) who assist the hero (often a private eye) by being more vicious and less ethical than he is.  

Let's say there is a villain who keeps hiring thugs to kill our hero but whenever he is warned off promises to stop.  Then he does it again.  Hero Dude, with his firm code of ethics, can't kill the bad guy if the bad guy is promising  not to be a threat.  So the sidekick, untroubled by such ethical dilemmas, solves the problem with a well-placed bullet.

That exact scenario played out in a novel by Robert Parker, with the hero being Spenser and the sidekick being HAWK, who had made his first appearance in the novel Promised Land (1977).  Hawk is the earliest example of an SS I am aware of.  

In 1987 Robert Crais introduced private eye Elvis Cole in The Monkey's Raincoat. And faithfully at the P.I.'s side was ex-Marine, ex-cop, Joe PIKE.

Then Walter Mosley introduced MOUSE in Devil in a Blue Dress (1990).  He is Easy Rawlins' best friend, but so violent he even scares Easy.

I'm not sure in which of his novels about private eye Thomas Black the aforementioned Earl Emerson introduced SNAKE, but it was no later than The
Portland Laugher (1994).  This guy varies from the others I mention here because  he seems more like a parody of the stereotype.  Instead of helping Thomas out of trouble Snake's assistance usually makes things worse and he ends up needing to be rescued..

I bring all this up because I am reading S.A. Cosby's first novel (and if you haven't discovered Cosby, my word, jump on the train, the guy is brilliant.)  In My Darkest Prayer, Nathan Wayfinder gets help from a gunhappy pal named (wait for it) SKUNK.

So there's my question.  Why are so many sociopathic sidekicks known (and in many cases only known) by monosyllabic animal names? 

A Farewell Song

     As I mentioned in my last blog, the end of January marked the last day of my service as a magistrate judge. When I cleared out my desk, I found a smattering of paper scraps. On these, I had jotted down the typos and misheards from police reports that I'd been asked to review. Sadly, this is likely the last of these blogs. I've been cut off from the taproot. 

    As always, I hope these tiny written missteps brighten your day. Also, as you think about crafting characters, I hope they remind you that police officers, like everyone else, sometimes make inconsequential mistakes. Police errors are not always substantial, case-turning blunders of constitutional proportions. They're not necessarily mean-spirited or corrupt. Sometimes, they're just typos. 

    I found the defendant engaging in a fistic encounter. 

Creative Commons

    To be fair to the officer, "fistic" is a word. He wasn't wrong in his usage. The arrestee was hitting another person. The OED states that "fistic" is an adjective "related to boxing." The OED also reports, however, that its high water mark for usage was approximately 1900. Clearly, the officer channeled his inner Damon Runyon or Grantland Rice. Or, he may have reached for grandiose prose when a more common phrase would have worked better. 

    And now, another typic encounter. 

   

    At home, my husband's girlfriend pointed a gun at me.

    Again, not a typo. Remember this sentence the next time you're challenged to tell a story in ten words or less. Plot, setting, conflict, and theme all set out in a single line. I'll let the rest of the story unfold in your mind. 

    I arrived at the scene and exited my vehicle. The defendant then attempted to flea from the police. 

    Although it is always possible that the officer encountered a character ripped from the script of an upcoming Marvel movie or, for those with a literary bent, a John Dunne poem, this one is likely a typo. I do, however, really like the imagery that jumps to mind. 

    On January 15th, while I was performing my duties as a Texas Peach Officer...

    Fresh, quality produce is important to us in this state. Our Agricultural Department works hard to keep it safe from all enemies, foreign and domestic. I hope you'll raise your glass to those hard-working men and women the next time you're having a bellini. 

    This officer, however, was not employed by the Ag. Department. She was one of our rank-and-file peace officers who called in a report before getting back out on the streets. Voice-to-text heard something different than intended. 

    I prepared a search warrant affidavit and presented it to the Honorable Judge [X]. After reviewing the warrant, he singed it. 

    I know that on your bucket list of Broadway shows, slightly behind Hamilton, Wicked, and Hadestown, you've got Search Warrant: The Musical. Once you see it, you'll come away humming the tune to "Probable Cause" and that slightly bawdy earworm, "Cavity Search." 

    Incidentally related, perhaps: 

    While frisking the lung area, I found a firearm. 

    The "lunge area" is the space in a motor vehicle immediately surrounding the driver or passenger. It is the zone from which a suspect might quickly grab a firearm or weapon. Clearing the lunge area is an integral part of officer safety. 

    Searching the lung area for a firearm, however, probably required a great deal of singing before the judge granted the legal authority to go that deeply into the body. 

    And with that, my scrap pile has been emptied. 

Creative Commons

    In conclusion, I will note that it is not just officers who occasionally risk misinterpretation. A word of caution: When you're writing thank-you notes to well-wishers on the occasion of your retirement, be careful with your cursive. If you are a tad sloppy with your handwriting, the sentence: 

    "It has been an honor to work with you."

Might easily look like the sentence, 

    It has been an horror to work with you." 

And that changes the meaning of the sentiment entirely. Trust me on this one. 

Until next time. 

The Fine Art of Collaboration

For some writers, collaboration is a fact of life; for others, it's a rare gift. I’m in the second category. I’m awestruck at the harmonious working relationship of writing duos who turn out seamless works, whether they’re bestselling series like the historical mysteries of Charles Todd and his mother Caroline (the other half of author Charles Todd until her death in 2021) or one-offs like the Edgar-nominated short story "Blind-Sided" (2021) by SleuthSayer Michael Bracken and James A. Hearn.

I've participated in a number of musical collaborations, starting in high school, when a friend and I achieved fame for presenting our parody of Hamlet to the tune of folksong "Putting on the Style," with guitars, in numerous English classes. For years afterwards, when I met someone who'd attended my very large high school, they'd say, "Ohh, you're the one who wrote "Hamlet!"

In the noughties, as Brits call the first decade of the present century, I took part in several songwriting workshops led by legendary singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, whose work defies classification, though he's received a couple of Grammy nominations in the contemporary folk category. Jimmie and the other members of his original band, the Flatlanders, hail from Lubbock, Texas, along with Buddy Holly and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. In a long career, he's learned a lot about creative collaboration. In his workshops, he makes songwriters work in groups. He believes the creative group process mirrors the process in the individual writer's head. As he put it, the dialogue in one case and the monologue in the other both go, "That's brilliant! No, that's stupid!" In my case, since I didn't get to pick the people, the group process ended in tears a few times. But I think he's right about how the process works.

Between 2010 and 2012, I had the great joy of collaborating with my friend Ray Korona on an album of songs that I'd written over the course of half a century. It's called Outrageous Older Woman. I produced the album, Ray co-produced and acted as sound engineer, and we collected a tremendously gifted array of backup singers and musicians to create an album of my music that sounded the way I'd heard it only in my wildest dreams. We spent many, many hours in Ray's basement recording studio in New Jersey, and every hour was a happy one. Ten years after Ray's untimely death from cancer, I still cherish a moment when we got exactly the sound we wanted for a solo passage from a fingerstyle guitarist (think Chet Atkins or Ricky Skaggs) after auditioning four different musicians for the descriptor "a git-tar picker who had lightning in his hands" in a song about a country music band. Ray and I exchanged a look of delight and perfect satisfaction that still warms my heart when I remember it. There's nothing like that "Got it!" moment in a good collaboration.

I've never collaborated on a pure writing project, as opposed to lyrics. Like the late Parnell Hall, I would have sold out and said yes to big bestseller Stuart Woods, if I’d gotten the call, or to James Patterson, like everyone else. Bestsellers aside, I’d do my best if invited to collaborate with a writer I respect and trust on a publishable project. But no one’s ever asked. I've had a handful of brilliant editors and quite a few bad ones, and I tend to trust my own judgment over that of most other writers. I hate writing by committee, and while I may dream occasionally of the perfect writing partner, I'm unlikely to encounter one.

My most recent collaboration was with fellow SleuthSayer and multi-talented writer, graphic artist, tech wiz, etc, my friend Leigh Lundin. After reading my post on my adventures checking out my DNA, Leigh had the bright idea of creating a cartoon that riffed on them. He thought it up and did all the work. I got to critique both the artwork ("My complexion isn't green." "Can you make the angry woman thinner?") and the text ("It's funnier if you mention the DNA." "No hyphen in storyteller.") as Leigh patiently produced one version after another. We were both busy with other projects, so it took more than a year, but we finally achieved our "Got it!" moment. Here's the result:

Une Humeur Noire

Matches with Patches

On a September Friday in 1984, a new crime series debuted on NBC. The plot of the program was subordinate to its glossy appearance. As a director said, “The show is written for an audience … more interested in images, emotions and energy, than plot and character and words.”

The program focused on style rather than substance. Producers literally specified a pastel color palette, while simultaneously banning earth tone browns, beiges, and the color red. Crews repainted buildings to match color patches. The show’s look and feel built a peach and sea-foam green monument to the gods of cars, cash, and cocaine.

Mocs without Socks

Their stars posed as much as acted. The five season run set styles in cars, boats, handguns and holsters, houses, and men’s fashion and accessories. The word metrosexual wouldn’t appear for another decade, but the cast defined the term: pink T-shirts under Italian unstructured jackets, French linen trousers, European mocs without socks, carefully groomed beard stubble.

By now you’re hearing Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice theme, and yes, they featured damn good music of the era. Wikipedia after-the-fact defines its genre as ’neo-noir’, whatever that implies, but it’s all about mood.

Noire Afar

Une humeur noire means a dark mood, on the off chance I managed the français feminine endings in the title correctly. Mystery writers know noir, but here follows a different take.

Sometime after Crockett and Tubbs committed their last heartbreak, heartache, and visit to the STD clinic, a couple of English bands came out with real noire but with a twist. Rather than write a novel or film a movie and then add music, these groups created music and subsequently filmed vignettes that set mood and hint at a story. They aren’t by any means recent, but their take on retro-noire remains intriguing.

A Plot it’s Not

Here now is the group Pulp.

 

 

 

 

This is Hardcore @ Pulp

 

A predecessor (and still active) group was Portishead. I’ve mentioned it before, a favorite of our colleague Paul Marks. Same idea– music first and then a video setting a premise and mood for a story– without the actual story, leaving you to fill in the blanks.

Here is Portishead.

 

 

 

 

To Kill a Dead Man @ Portishead

 

Even today, this approach remains unusual and controversial, the telling of a story without a story. How can noir become bleaker than that?

Waiting Is Another Story

  

This past week I got an acceptance from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, which of course made my day. (The knowledge that it'll probably be a long time until the story'll appear in print didn't dampen my mood a bit. Let loose the balloons--it's an acceptance.) I admit my insecurities: I need a pat on the head now and then, and it's always a warm feeling when an editor decides to publish something I created. 

But in the case of AHMM, I've often been asked it it's worth the wait. Sometimes it's a long one, from submission to response. 

How long? As most of us know by now, AHMM editor Linda Landrigan--one of the kindest and most professional editors I know--has said she reads every story herself. That must be a daunting task--I can't even imagine it--and for the writers who submit stories to her, it means a lengthy wait. Most of my submissions to the magazine over the past few years have taken from twelve to fourteen months to get a reply--this latest one took 410 days--and the thing is, not all of those responses were acceptances. Heaven knows, waiting an average of thirteen months only to receive a rejection can be pretty discouraging.

There's certainly no guarantee. As the old carnival guy used to say, as he chewed his cigar and showed you a raised eyebrow and three walnut shells (only one of which had a pea underneath), "You pays your money and you takes your chances." Are you willing to bet a year's time for the possibility of placing a story in a leading magazine?

I love AHMM, and I love writing stories for them, but my acceptance/rejection ratio hasn't been great there. Not for lack of trying; I started submitting stories to them (and to everyplace else) in 1994, when the wonderful Cathleen Jordan was the editor. The first one Cathleen accepted was in late 1995--I'll always remember it, a 1200-word bank-robbery story that appeared in the June '96 issue--and I've sold them 25 stories since then. Which sounds okay, at first--BUT there were a lot of rejections along the way. I don't know how many stories I've sent AHMM in thirty years to come up with those 26 acceptances, but I know it was a lot more than 26. Probably three or four times that many. I can thankfully say my success rate's better there now than it used to be--I was lucky enough to have six stories there in the past two years--but there were a lot of years when I had no stories published there.

So--again--is it worth it?

Consider the alternatives. There are at least half a dozen other mystery magazines out there right now that I think are respectable and worth our time as writers and readers. I submit stories to all of them pretty regularly, and I have been fortunate to have had stories published in all of them. And none of those magazines take as long to respond to submissions as AHMM does. Some are surprisingly fast. Should we mystery writers be sending the fruits of our writing efforts to those places, instead?

 

Some of my writer friends have chosen to do that. Several have said that a year or more (usually more) is just too long to tie up a good story that might've been submitted, accepted, and even published elsewhere in less time than it takes to receive a rejection from AHMM. Some of these are authors I admire a lot, and it's hard to say they're wrong.

As for me, I've decided to do both. I do submit stories to the other magazines--I think it'd be silly not to--but I also submit stories to Linda, and I plan to continue doing that. I realize the wait is long, and since I'm not as young as I used to be, I find myself more conscious of time, and of wasted time. I understand all that. And yes, my AHMM batting average isn't the best. But anytime I start thinking too hard about that, I think again about the thrill of getting an acceptance from them--and I send them another story. I can't resist it. I keep remembering the old saying that success isn't guaranteed if you try, but failure is guaranteed if you don't.

I hope their wait time decreases in the future. I'll welcome that, if it does. And I hope I'll get better at writing in the future, so I can be certain everything I send in gets accepted (ha!). But even if neither of those things happen, I plan to keep sending stories to all the mystery magazines, Hitchcock included. Why not?

What's your opinion, on this? Are you fed up with what some call unreasonable response times to submissions? Have you decided, however reluctantly, not to submit to AHMM anymore, because of that? (By the way, there are other magazines that also make you wait awhile.) Do you accept those long wait times as a necessary evil, sort of a cost of doing business? Do you compromise, and still submit to AHMM but not as often as you once did? Do you send them stories only as a last resort, stories that have been rejected several times elsewhere? (I'm not sure that's a good idea.) Either way, pro or con, please let me know in the comments. Am I--and Rob Lopresti, who's said he's also hanging in there--the only ones who've decided to hold the course?

Meanwhile, good luck with all your submissions, to any and all markets. I'll watch the sky for balloons.

Hey, nobody said this would be easy . . .

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

 For the first time since Poodle Springs, Philip Marlowe shows up in a Philip Marlowe novel and manages to stay well past Chapter 4. If it sounds like I'm giving damning faint praise to author Denise Mina, I'm not. Mina has written the latest authorized Philip Marlowe novel, and for once, we have an author who understands how to place Marlowe in context and not belabor the similes.

Like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, Philip Marlowe is one of those characters who won't die with his author. You have to go to science fiction to get anything else American like it. Star Wars is a Marvel-like franchise now instead of the story of a farm boy becoming Siegfried. Star Trek just avoids that fate by becoming a setting more than a story about set characters. Marlowe is...

Well, he's Marlowe. And he has dozens upon dozens of imitators: Lew Archer (more a means for Ross MacDonald to tell a story), Nameless, Spenser, Elvis Cole, Kinsey Milhonne, VI Warshawski. Even a certain Sleuthsayers contributor originally from Cleveland invented his own not-Marlowe. Which reminds me, there was another not-Marlowe from Cleveland by a much older writer from Cleveland. Seems like everyone wants in on the action.

But Bond and Holmes are larger than life, to the point where Holmes is recognizable the moment he appears, and Bond is now two Bonds: literary and cinematic. Marlowe is a working stiff, a guy in a corner office. If you reinvent him, you almost have to create a new character. Many have tried. The result has been not-Spenser, a book full of wisecracks and similes, or some guy named Philip Marlowe who happens to be or was a private detective. The closest anyone came to the original was Lawrence Osborne's Only to Sleep, featuring an elderly Marlowe in Mexico, though the story had an almost Miami Vice vibe to it. Denise Mina writes a story about the character Raymond Chandler created.

The similes and an odd metaphor or ten are there, but they need to be. That's how Marlowe talks. And he's in period. The Second Murderer begins with Marlowe wrapping up a case but wondering if he got it wrong: The death of a Western character actor on the eve of World War II. He has no time to think about it as an elderly man, in shades of The Big Sleep, summons Marlowe to Stately Montgomery Manor to hire him. He doesn't want the job, but Montgomery wants his daughter found. Because Montgomery is a Very Important Man(TM) from a Very Important Family(TM). And unlike The Big Sleep's General Sternwood, Marlowe doesn't like this guy. He's a shriveled monster who beats his family Yet Marlowe takes the gig. He finds the daughter, Chrissie, soon enough. But he also runs into Anne Riordan, a character so strong she could probably carry her own series. And Mina has made her a PI in her own right. Something's not right.

Marlowe and Riordan soon realize they're working at cross purposes here, and even the police are being played. Despite being at odds in their missions, the pair are soon walking a fine line between what they're tasked with and protecting Chrissie, who has a few secrets of their own.

Mina writes this in period. There's no overlay of modern sensibilities, although she does avoid some language Chandler might not have blinked at. But she's writing in 1938 and focused on the rhythms and the consequences of Hollywood trying very hard to pretend Hitler is someone else's problem. The dialog is in-period. However, the book comes from a Scottish writer, so the spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all UK. That takes about a chapter to get used to. As an editor, I've seen the challenge and once had to leave Australian rules in place. But there were occasional lapses. One particular instance has Marlowe describing the rain on his car's "bonnet" (hood to us yanks.) Fortunately, the Britishisms are few and far between, and Marlowe even makes fun of one characters' faux British accent.

Much is made of Denise Mina being the first female author to tackle Marlowe. But I find it interesting a a Gen X woman from Scotland did a far superior job resurrecting Marlowe than Robert Parker or some of the other writers who attempted to carry on the legacy. First off, she focuses on telling a good story. She organically adds in Anne Riordan as a callback to Farewell, My Lovely without being gratuitous about it. And the Marlowe in her book is the Marlowe Chandler wrote. Considering she's been doing this for over twenty-five years, she was a good choice to add a chapter to Marlowe's story. I'd read another by her.

James Cathcart & the Vicissitudes of Character Portrayal

This guy.

 Hail and well met again, fellow Sleuthsayers!

Sorry for the brief hiatus, our old friend COVID-19 chose to darken our door and Casa Thornton quickly devolved into Casa Sick-Sick-Sick, and when my last turn in the rotation circled around I was flat on my back, so called for a pinch-hitter. Thanks to my rotation mates for having my back! And now, as promised, the second part of my two-parter about a man who was either one of history's great memoirists or one history's great self-promoters, or, perhaps, some combination of the two?

Ladies and Gentlemen: James Leander Cathcart!

A quick refresher, quoted from last time around's posting:

Cathcart was born in  Ireland in 1768, sent to the American colonies to be raised by a sea captain uncle, Cathcart went to sea early, and in 1785 was taken captive by Algerian pirates while serving on a merchant brig, the Maria, out of Boston.

As with so many captives whose families didn't pony up ransom payments, Cathcart was initially put to work doing slave labor on construction projects in and around the port. Through a combination of good luck and pluck on his part, he was able to parlay a stint as a gardener in the palace of the dey (ruler) into a change of his status. Over the succeeding eleven years, Cathcart managed to claw his way up to working as the dey's secretary responsible for translating and leading ransom negotiations with the diplomats of "Christian" nations looking to conduct business in the Mediterranean unmolested by such pesky inconveniences as Algerine raiders.

In 1796 Cathcart was tapped to negotiate his own release in addition to that of his surviving colleagues from the Maria. Once a treaty had been drafted, the dey sent Cathcart to the United States to deliver it. It is a measure of Cathcart's success as a "slave" of the dey that he actually owned the ship in which he traveled to Washington, D.C.- bought with the profits Cathcart had raked in thanks to the contacts he made while in the dey's service.

Once freed Cathcart married the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia family, began having children (the couple eventually had twelve), and embarked on a career as a diplomat, filling minor posts in places such as Madeira (where one of his sons, a future U.S. Senator from Indiana, was born).

Oh, and he kept a journal of his time as an Algerine slave.

*    *    *

Let's get to it:

The Maria of Boston, on which I had embarked, was captured three miles southeast of Cape St. Vincent (Southeast point of Portugal) on the 25th of July, 1785, and arrived at Algiers on the 4th of August following.

The opening sentence of James Leander Cathcart's tale of his eleven years as first a captive, then a slave of the dey of Algiers ("dey," "bashaw," and "bey" being local Arabic terms for the military dictators who served as nominal representatives of the Turkish sultan). It is the most succinct his narrative gets. History does not present us a transcription of Cathcart talking, but if it's anything like his writing, "florid" would not be too strong a word. I can't help but wonder how anyone else ever got a word in edgewise. For example, a description of the conditions below decks on the xebec (literal pirate ship) that took them prisoner:

It is impossible to describe the horror of our situation while we remained there. Let imagination conceive what must have been the sufferings of forty-two men, shut up in a dark room in the hold of a Barbary cruiser full of men and filthy in the extreme, destitute of every nourishment, and nearly suffocated with heat; yet here we were obliged to remain every night until our arrival in Algiers and wherever we were–either chased or in chase.

Algerian xebecs in the foreground of this painting by Antonio Barcelo. Note both the sails and the oars.

And then they got to Algiers:

We arrived in Algiers on the eve of the feast that follows Ramadan (Eid al-Fitr- B.T.) and, being private property, were conducted to the owner of the cruiser's house, having first been entirely stripped of the remnant of our clothes which remained. I was furnished in lieu therof with the remains of an old dirty shirt and brown cloth trousers, which formerly belonged to a Portuguese fisherman and were swimming with myriads of vermin, which, with the crown of an old hat, composed the whole of my wardrobe. The rest of my brother sufferers were in no better condition.

Eventually Cathcart and several other American prisoners were bought by the dey (again, the local top kick and Sultan's personal representative), and he found himself tending animals in the dey's garden:

We were now taken to the hot bath by the other Christian slaves and cleansed from the filth of the cruiser. Our old rags were changed for a large shirt with open sleeves and large pair of cotton trousers, a pair of shoes and a red cap, all made in Turkish fashion, in which, no doubt, we made a curious appearance. We were allowed to remain together that night and fared sumptuously in comparison to what we had some time before, and, being clean. slept for several hours as sound as any people could do in our situation. In the morning, we awakened much refreshed and were stationed at our respective duties: two were retained as upper servants; one was sent to the kitchen: and myself and another were doomed to labor in the palace garden, where we had not a great deal to do, there being fourteen of us, and–the taking care of two lions, two tigers, and two antelopes excepted–the work might very well been done by four.

Hot bath? Clean clothes? Spiffy red hat? Cake day job? Things are going Cathcart's way, right? Well, he got bored, and started teaching his fellow slaves Spanish and French, and how to read. And thus, he ran afoul of the dey's right-hand man: his chief chamberlain "Ciddi Aly" (likely "Sidi Ali," or, in the local Maghrebi dialect of Arabic: "Master Ali."):

This (his educational efforts) procured me the title of the false priest, the moshabbe, and many other names of a similar nature from the chamberlains: and as the lower class, to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, generally imitate them, these appellations proved a great source of disquiet and involved me in continual disputes both the chamberlains and Christians. As I always refuted their arguments, it ultimately procured me many enemies, among them Ciddi Aly (sic), the chief chamberlain, who uniformly persecuted me through the rest of my captivity until he was ultimately expelled from the regency (the dey's government) by Hassan Bashaw (who succeeded to the throne as dey of Algiers in 1791).

Interspersed with his account of his personal adventures, Cathcart delivers description after description of life in 1780s Algiers:

A little more than two months after my admission to the dey's garden, the slaves were permitted to go out into the town in consequence of the great festival (likely Eid al-Adha) of which the first and last day is celebrated in the palace with feasting, music, wrestling, and fireworks of very poor construction, before the palace gate. In the morning of the first day, the banner of Mahomet (sic) is hoisted on the palace and the national flag on the fortifications are fired, those next to the sea with ball (cannon balls!).

Cathcart continues:

When the wrestling is ended, the officers of the regency and inhabitants kiss the dey's hand while [he is] seated on his throne, having the Hasnagi Agas ("khaznaji": "treasurer," and "Aga" is a term of respect akin to "sir.") at Hodga Beitelmel ("Bayt al-malji": "the keeper of forfeited property") and vikilharche of the marine ("wakil al-kharj": the official in charge of "maritime affairs," the de facto foreign minister of Algiers) standing on his left hand, and the chauxes ("shawushes": ushers or guards.) and other inferior officials behind them. After the Mussulmen [Muslims] have all performed this act of humiliation and respect, not even excepting the hangman and scavengers, the consuls have that honor conferred on them, next to them the head clerk, and then the chief of the Jewish brokers of the palace and their dependents (Nearly all banking and finances of any real significance in the North African Maghreb region was conducted by a vast network of Jewish banking families). The dey then invites the five grandees (bigwigs) to dine with him in his apartments; they are joined by the chief cook. After dinner they retire to their respective houses, and the dey generally goes to visit his lady if he is married; if not, he retires to sleep.

The crumbling interior court of the ruined remnant of the dey's palace in Algiers.

Cathcart's descriptions of settings, buildings, landscapes could also be quite vivid:

The Bagnio Beylique (the local prison) is an oblong hollow square, 140 feet in length and sixty in breadth, is three stories high, and may be about fifty feet high to the top of the terrace. The whole of the apartments are built upon arches and have no windows, except a small iron grating in each of the upper apartments, and receive the light and air from the doors.

This edifice he in turn peopled with a "colorful" and distinctive set of guards:

The gates of the prison were....shut for the night, a heavy chain was drawn across the inside of the outer gate, and the inner one was bolted and locked. The prison was now under the control of the Christian corporals, who were all deserters from the Spanish garrison of Oran, where they had been banished from their country, either for murder or theft, and, before their appointment here, had in general signalized themselves as the most hardened villains in the regency.

A prison completely manned by Spanish cutthroat deserters? Picaresque? Sure. But read the detailed exchange below that Cathcart recalls occurring between himself (once he had learned Arabic) and the head jailer at the bagnio, an aged scoundrel named Ibram Rais:

"You are all young and healthy and too well clothed for slaves. You shall have something to divert you tomorrow....I will show you how I was treated at Malta (where he had been a slave of the Christians there). Here, sbirro ("jailer"), put stout rings on these gentlemen's legs and let them be awakened and brought to me before daylight at the marine gate."

The head clerk then interfered and informed him that we had committed no fault and that the haznadar (a palace official) had ordered him to have them sent to the marine (the harbor). "They shall go to the marine," answered the surly guardian, "but from thence I will send them where I please. They don't know what slavery is yet; it is time they should learn. I have not forgot the treatment I received from Christians when I was a slave."

I observed that I was an American and that it would be extremely hard hard for me to suffer for the injuries he had received from the Maltese, who were situated at the distance of six thousand miles from my country and were likewise of a different religion (Cathcart was a Protestant, and Malta was then as now, overwhelmingly Catholic), which taught them from time immemorial to view the Mahometans (sic) with enmity; but that in America there probably had never been a Mussulman and that we had never been at war with any nation of that religion.

"True," answered he (curling his whiskers), "but you are Christians: and if you have not injured Mussulmen, it was not for the want of will, but for want of power. If you should chance to take any of our cruisers, how would you treat our people?"

"That will emtirely depend on how you treat those of my nation whom you have captured," I answered, "and you may be assured, sir, that my nation will retaliate upon those who treat their unfortunate citizzens with undeserved cruelty."

"Slave!" answered he, "I am not accustomed to listen to the arguments of infidels. You are too loquacious for a young man. Retire immediately, and for the future, be silent and obey."

"I shall obey, sir, but never be silent while there remains a higher tribunal to appeal to."

The above exchange beggars belief. While definitely written in the sort of melodramatic tone typical of much of the literature and even travel writing of the era, it is difficult to believe Cathcart would have been able to get through this dialogue without getting beaten, or at least knocked to the ground. He was, after all, a Christian slave speaking with a Muslim prison jailer in a far less enlightened age.

I mean, come on. The "villain" even strokes the ends of his mustache!

And therein lies the rub with a lot of what Cathcart tells us: he is in many ways the hero of every exchange, getting the last word or getting the better of an adversary. While his descriptions are valuable, his narrative is for the most part, highly suspect.

Which brings me to yet other accomplishments dubiously attributed to Cathcart: a wartime escape from a British prison ship during the Revolution, any number of expenses he racked up both as a slave secretary of the dey of Algiers and later as a diplomatic official both in North Africa and elsewhere. These accomplishments are dubious for us,  because it is only in Cathcart's own narrative that we find confirmation of them. The rest of the historical record remains altogether silent.

So was Cathcart writing this journal to inform or to lionize himself? Well....

Which is part and parcel of why I find Cathcart so fascinating. A flawed man, clearly talented and resourceful, and possessed of the gift of gab. And yet given to exaggeration?

This narrative becomes even more puzzling when one factors in the fact that Cathcart never attempted to publish his narrative. His daughter edited and privately published it fifty years after his death in 1843. So maybe he was "showing off" for family only, never dreaming his reminiscences about his time in Algiers might be subjected to any sort of serious scrutiny?

Cathcart did marry well, and spent decades in a number of minor diplomatic posts, then in semi-retirement, serving as a clerk in the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., all the while repeatedly petitioning for compensation of his "considerable expenses." His efforts in this endeavor came to naught. Bitter and disappointed, Cathcart wrote shortly before his death that he had spent years "faithfully serving an ungrateful country."

But boy, what a character, eh?