The Big Sleep

 

I was sitting at a light, and the guy in front of me had a “Dude Abides” bumper sticker, and having just watched The Big Lebowski not long before, I couldn’t help thinking that the Dude doesn’t, really.  All due respect to Jeff Bridges – who’s terrific in pretty much everything he does, Hell and High Water only the most recent example – Lebowski dates really badly.  On the other hand, Miller’s Crossing seems timeless.  This is to take two examples from the Coen oeuvre.  Robert Towne.  Tequila Sunrise, from 1988, is stuck there; Chinatown, released in ‘74, has no such issue.  Why is Altman’s The Long Goodbye, Chandler updated to the contemporary L.A. of 1973, left behind, but the Chandler of The Big Sleep (1945) as present and real as a dime?

You could say that Miller’s Crossing and Chinatown are intentional period pieces, yes, and that Tequila Sunrise and 1973’s Long Goodbye are trying intentionally to be timely, but we should remember that The Big Sleep, in 1945, was in fact contemporary.  Take a look at the Woody Van Dyke much-celebrated adaption of Hammett’s The Thin Man, in 1934, Powell and Myrna Loy.  The leads are terrific, the dialogue snappy, the runtime comes in at an hour and a half, but you’re still completely aware that you’re watching a picture from 1934.  Not nearly as true of John Huston’s adaption, in 1941, of Hammett’s Maltese Falcon, which still reads as immediate.  But so does Casablanca, in my opinion.  Maybe the difference is Bogart.

Bogart went from second leads to movie star with High Sierra, in 1940 (even if he’s actually billed second, after Ida Lupino).  He did Falcon in ‘41, and Casablanca in ‘42. He worked with Hawks for the first time – and famously, met Bacall – in To Have and Have Not, in 1944.  Bogart and Bacall fell in love while they were making the picture, you can see it happening.  The Big Sleep was the second movie they made together; it wrapped in early ‘45, but released a year later.  Thereby lies a tale.

The first cut of the picture has more Martha Vickers (the little sister), and less Bacall.  Hawks went back and shot extra scenes, and recut the movie.  Vickers got less screen time, Bacall got more, by about twenty minutes.  It made Bacall’s career, and Martha Vickers never got another part as good, to make it up to her.  The plot actually makes less sense, in the re-edited version; Carmen, the baby sister, turns out in the book to have murdered Sean Regan (spoiler alert), but they had to change the ending for the movie, so the whole thing doesn’t hang together.  None of this matters.  The picture is dreamlike: Hawks later remarked that the audience reaction made him realize that if you kept things moving fast enough, nobody cared whether any of it made sense.  This isn’t quite true.  The plot almost comes together.  You paper over the holes because of your giddy pleasure in its exhilarating surface tension.

My point about The Big Sleep being contemporary to its own era is that an audience back then would recognize both specific detail and things left unspoken.  They’d notice, for example, the gas ration stickers on Marlowe’s windshield – the war was only just over.  They’d realize that when Dorothy Malone pulls the shades and pours Marlowe a drink, there’s more on offer than just what’s in the glass.  They’d know what the cop, Bernie Ohls, was on about when he says about Sean Regan, “Oh, you mean the ex-legger Gen. Sternwood hired to do his drinking for him?”  (They weren’t that far removed from Prohibition, and Repeal.)  They could figure out what kind of books Geiger was selling, in brown paper wrappers, and why Carmen was vulnerable to blackmail, and what the relationship was between Geiger and Carol Lundgren, the kid who cleans up after the murder, and dresses the dead man in his Chinese pyjamas, and lays him out on the bed.  None of it had to be spelled out.

There’s also the still-shocking violence.  The death of Elisha Cook.  The moment in the garage, Canino flipping the roll of coins in his hand, Marlowe taken by surprise, his arms pinned to his sides with the spare tire, and Canino with the sucker punch, straight to the jaw – Canino opens his balled fist, and the loose coins spill out.  And the killing of Canino himself, as cold-blooded as anybody could get away with, at the time. 

The test, I think, is whether we recognize their attitudes as like ours, their choices, their motives, their reactions, not so much the fashions in clothes, as their manner.  Do they feel genuine to us?  I think Marlowe does.  I’m not a big fan of Chandler’s down-these-mean-streets prescription, but if anybody can live up to it, Bogart certainly can.  And he does it without being performative, or self-conscious – it’s natural and lived-in, someone he’s familiar with.

Bacall, too, is a very assured presence.  You get the feeling that the characters, as thin as the script is, have a sense of their own back story, and don’t need to fill it in for us.  Hawks, knowing he’s onto a good thing, gives her the last word.  Bogart is finishing up the story, what’s happened and what has to happen next, and Bacall tells him he’s forgotten one thing: her.  What’s wrong with you? he asks her.  “Nothing you can’t fix,” she says.

Gunsmoked

     The television western, Gunsmoke, was a staple at my childhood home. Weekly, we watched Marshal Matt Dillon face down an outlaw during the opening scene. To a heavy and threatening drumbeat, the marshal stepped out onto the main street of Dodge City, Kansas. The camera focused on the revolver hanging low on his hip, the sheriff's right hand held steadily above the pistol grip. The music built as the camera panned to show the sheriff striding determinedly and wordlessly forward. His opponent, the outlaw dressed in black, entered the street from the opposite side. The two men squared to face one another. The music built to a crescendo. When they drew pistols, the camera angle shifted. Through the cloud of white smoke, we watched the grim-faced sheriff. We never saw the outlaw fall, but we knew the marshal had outdrawn his opponent. As the camera held the sheriff's world-weary expression, the announcer solemnly intoned, "Gunsmoke, starring James Arness as Matt Dillon." 

Marshal Matt Dillon, Gunsmoke
© CBS Television, public domain

    CBS Chairman William Paley, reportedly was a great fan of Raymond Chandler. Beginning with the radio show, ;Gunsmoke, and later with the television adaptation, he wanted to create a series centered on the "Philip Marlowe of the old West." The opening scene, with the stylized code duelo showdown, set a tone. It cemented the single combat gunfight in the middle of the town's dusty street as a trope of the American West.

    Such gunfights, however, rarely occurred. 

    The West had its share of violence, typical for a frontier. But the formality of the single combat duel was primarily the product of dime novelists and film directors. 

    There were, of course, exceptions. 

    In 1865, Wild Bill Hickok squared off with Davis Tutt in Springfield, Missouri. The two quarreled over gambling. To secure a debt, Tutt took a prized watch belonging to Hickok. Tutt prominently wore the watch, embarrassing Hickok. Later, the two men advanced on one another. Tutt reportedly drew first, fired wildly, and missed. Hickok shot more steadily and hit Tutt in the chest. History does not record whether the watch was injured. Tutt, however, died. 

    In his subsequent trial, a jury acquitted Hickok of manslaughter. In 1867, a story describing the event appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The exaggerated tale helped form the myth about Wild Bill Hickok and the single combat duel. Today, readers can get the details on the official Springfield, Missouri website.

    On March 9th, 1877, Jim Levy (sometimes Leavy) and Charlie Harrison argued over a game of cards in Cheyenne, Wyoming's Shingle and Locke's saloon. Levy challenged Harrison to "take it outside." There, as Bat Masterson, the western lawman, gunfighter, and writer, described the event, Harrison drew quickly. He fired five shots. Levy took his time and needed only one. (Although he only required one, reportedly Levy stood over the downed Harrison and shot him a second time in the stomach. This fact tampers with the honorable gunfighter trope but, perhaps, more accurately portrays the times.) Masterson used the Levy/Harrison battle to illustrate the importance of a gunfighter's need to remain calm and take one's time. In 1907, Masterson wrote in Human Life magazine:

    That Harrison was as game a man as Levy could not be doubted; that he could shoot much faster, he had given ample proof, but under extraordinary conditions he had shown that he lacked deliberation and lost his life in consequence.

    My adopted town, Fort Worth, also helped create the myth of the Western gunfight. Although the facts bear little resemblance to the stylized book or movie version.

    Longhair Jim Courtright had been the first marshal of Fort Worth. He was tasked with keeping the peace in Hell's Half Acre. The murder rate plummeted on his watch. He also, however, likely used his badge and gun to extort money from saloon owners as part of a protection racket. Following an election defeat in 1879, he moved to New Mexico. There, a dispute over land and cattle led to an accusation of murder against Courtright. There were, it seems, lingering questions about whether Courtright's involvement in the shooting had been as law enforcement or criminal participant. He returned to Fort Worth, a place far enough removed from New Mexico to avoid extradition. In 1884, he established a private detective office here. Besides investigative services, the office resumed operations as a protection racket. 

    Luke Short, another man experienced with guns, worked as the manager of the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth. Short refused Courtright's offers of protection. Allowing business owners to decline, however, would be bad for the detective's business. On February 8th, 1887, a drunk Courtright called out Luke Short. Together, they walked down the street on Fort Worth's north side as they attempted to settle their disagreement. Outside a local brothel, the negotiation apparently reached an impasse. The two men stood three to four feet apart. Courtright drew his gun. Short, however, fired first, and his bullet tore off Courtright's thumb. While Longhair Jim Courtright attempted to switch his weapon to his other hand, Short fired again. His subsequent shots killed Courtright, the former lawman, detective, and extortionist.

    Luke Short was investigated for the shooting. The charges were subsequently dismissed. The Courtright/Short gunfight is one of the legends of Fort Worth. This town's stories are part of why I like living here. When the local chapter of Sisters in Crime began compiling an anthology, Notorious in North Texas, I used this tale as my jumping-off point. This week, we celebrate the release of that anthology. Many of the fine authors who contributed tales set their stories in Dallas. But I wanted to put my story here in Fort Worth, where the West begins.

---

(Thanks to Legends of America for the details about the gunfights.)

    Until next time.

Nine Levels of Pickpocketing

 Here's a cool video on  how to be a pickpocket.  I trust you will only use it for good.

Punishment For the Rich and Powerful: How Do we Stop Them?

As a society we think - or at least hope - that punishment for a crime serves as a deterrent for others but will also deter offenders from re-offending.

A recent high profile case that’s all over the news suggests that convictions may serve to embolden, anger and worsen behaviour, making the person more dangerous. 

A Canadian case illustrates how the powerful are hard to stop: Peter Demeter, who was rich and vengeful, became more dangerous after his conviction.

In 1973, Canadian real estate developer, Peter Demeter, hired a hitman to kill his wife and mother of his three-year-old child, but this horrifically violent murder was just the start of Demeter’s spree of hiring people to commit crimes for him. 

Demeter had a rocky marriage, a mistress and had just taken out a one million dollar life insurance policy on his wife. However, he also had an airtight alibi. Once it was discovered that he hired a hitman to kill his wife, Demeter was sentenced to life in prison on Dec. 6, 1974. 

Prison only increased his anger and need for vengeance. In 1983, Peter was paroled and that same year hired and paid another former inmate, Tony Preston, $8,000 to burn down his house. And he was sentenced for plotting to murder his cousin’s teenage son (the cousin had taken custody of Demeter’s daughter after he murdered her mother.). Peter plotted to have his nephew kidnapped in order to collect the ransom and then have the nephew killed. He was handed two new life sentences.

This was not the end of Demeter’s vengeance. In 1985, while in prison, he was tried for yet another murder-for-hire scheme, this time for conspiring to kidnap and kill the daughter of his lawyer. 

As the judge noted, Peter has shown he has a capacity for some truly dangerous behaviour, regardless of his status as an inmate or a free man.

He was eventually clinically labelled as a psychopath, diagnosed with narcissistic and antisocial features and deemed an indefinite risk to the public.

In 2019, at the age of 85, Demeter attempted to get parole and parole was denied:

“Your history of counselling others to seek revenge for you makes you more of a risk of recidivism than your age and physical ability to harm others would suggest.

It is the Board’s opinion that you will present an undue risk to society if released.”

Despite a heart attack, stroke and several bouts with cancer, all while behind bars, he continues to live and is now in his 90s. 

The Demeter story illustrates how anger, mixed with a need for vengeance, served on a bed of immorality, is a dangerous combination. It also shows how the rich and powerful can bypass prison bars and hire people to do their dirty work. Or, if they have political power, they can attempt to inspire people to hurt or kill others. 

So, punishment for a crime may inadvertently end up hurting or killing innocent people and I wonder how one stops the rich, powerful and immoral among us. 

If someone writes a novel - or even a true story - about how to stop crimes by the powerful with punishment, that’s the story we need today. At this point, I’m at a loss. 

A Golden Age of the Guest Star?

I just streamed my way through Elsbeth, the new CBS howcatchem series, and it has me wondering if we're amid an important renaissance. Folks, we might be witnessing another Golden Age of the Guest Star.

You need some years on you to remember the Columbo era. This was my parent's prime time era, that Sunday Night Mysteries era, today's well-ripened pop culture cheese. You know the drill: Grab a bankable actor, give them a persona for sleuth, and each week load on the not-quite-A-List suspects. 

In Elsbeth, the True Blood guy (Stephen Moyer) arranges a fatal stage accident, Blair Underwood poisons a tennis star, and even an Agatha Christie-like murder conspiracy led by Jane Krakowski (30 Rock) takes out a co-op tyrant. It plays out in inverted mystery fun. In Columbo's howcatchem day, it was Janet Leigh (1975), Julie Newmar (1973), Leonard Nimoy (1973), Vincent Price (1973), and Dick Van Dyke (1974), among others. Roddy McDowell did an episode (1972) because of course he did. 

I'm not being flip about this. Yes, many of these stars had shined brighter in earlier days. Some guest actors were, shall we politely say, long awaiting the next vehicle. Others were working actors or taking advantage of runs in other series. We loved that guy or lady in that other thing, and here they are tonight with murder in mind. And they're totally getting busted.  

It's easy to understand why the guest stars sign on. It's a decent paycheck, and in today's content-hungry, gotta-stay-relevant world, opportunity abounds. But importantly, the howcatchem is uniquely a character. There isn't a cast of suspects. We watched that week's main guest do it. Onscreen, with motive, means, and opportunity laid right out there. These are stories about a dark heart, their machinations, their cat-and-mouse with the persona sleuth. I tune in for character more than for puzzles, so this format is my kind of entertainment (I blogged last year about loving Poker Face, Peacock's comic--and yes, guest star-studded--howcatchem). 

There are other suspects, of course. It's the sleuth's show and ultimately their character test, so the format doesn't work unless the sleuth engages the problem, encounters the red herrings, and hones in on the truth. These side tests are one reason Columbo ages well. He sparred with bit parts or third billings like Kim Cattrall, Jamie Lee Curtis, Martin Sheen. Jeff Goldblum was an extra. 

Whodunnit franchises are in on the act. Today's "I know them" stars feed the Benoit Blanc and Kenneth Branagh Poirot formulas. But older whodunnits were playing Columbo's game, too. McCloud had Don Ameche (1975), Milton Berle (1972), and Ricky Nelson (1972), among others. The original Hawaii 5-0 fed on guest appearances, including Patty Duke, Helen Hayes, and William Shatner. 

Monk, one of my favorite crime shows ever, brought the guest star angle regularly. Jason Alexander was a two-bit investigator. Stanley Tucci was a method actor who came to believe he was Monk. James Brolin, Snoop Dogg, and Jon Favreau all had turns. 

As for Poirot, the revered David Suchet ITV/PBS series has its own power list of guest stars: Elliott Gould, Barbara Hershey, and Elizabeth McGovern, to name a few. Two future Doctor Whos appeared, Christopher Eccleston and Peter Capaldi, as did pre-breakout Emily Blunt ("Death on the Nile"), Jessica Chastain ("Murder on the Orient Express"), and Michael Fassbender ("After the Funeral"). 

Then again, whodunnits don't come and go from fashion. There may be fewer classic mysteries running from time to time, but there's always a core set going. And if I googled more, I would no doubt find whole databases of the guest star scene. 

Such evidence suggests maybe we're not seeing a renaissance of guest stars but my noticing them more. Doesn't matter. It feels like howcatchems and their one-and-done casts are having a moment, and I hope it sticks around.

Catch-22

 Usually, when a novel becomes classic, it's often serious, almost intentionally humorless. No one's really laughing at The Great Gatsby or anything by Toni Morrison. The exceptions, of course, are Dickens, Twain, and Washington Irving. Dickens infuses whimsey into even his darkest tales (though it's hard to find in A Tale of Two Cities, which is unremittingly dark.) And if you can't find Twain's tongue planted firmly in his cheek somewhere in one of his books, you weren't paying attention. Irving, of course, suffers only because the television hadn't been invented yet to give him a job on Saturday Night Live.

But if you go through Harold Bloom's list of novels from How to Read, not one of them (except maybe Don Quixote) have anymore than unintentional humor.

And then we come to Joseph Heller's World War II novel, Catch-22. At the time, stories of World War II focused on the valor of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought, the brutality of the Nazis and the Japanese, and rightness of the cause. Heller skewered military bureaucracy mercilessly in his short book about a bombardier named Yossarian, who just wants to go home.

He can't, of course. Every time he comes close to reaching his quota for missions allowing him to rotate out, the vainglorious (and let's be honest here, stupid) Colonel Cathcart raises the quota again. It's forty-five at the beginning of the novel. It's eighty by the end. I actually rooted for Cathcart to be unceremonious shoved out a B-25's bomb bay in an "accident." Oh, um, spoiler alert. Doesn't happen.

Yossarian is surrounded by the insane. Stationed on the island of Pianosa off the coast of Italy, he's beset by all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense which gets men killed and even has the mess officer paying the Germans to bomb the airbase to keep his black market enterprise going. Because nothing is more American than profit. (I'm thinking Heller didn't vote for Reagan.)

Everyone in Yossarian's wing is killed over the course of the novel, except one who turned out to be living in neutral territory at the book's end. The book is absurdist about this at the beginning, but retells events from various characters' points of view, getting progressively darker. One character, who starts out as a rather oblivious jerk is revealed to have raped and murdered a woman in Rome, shrugging it off as, "Hey, I always get away with it."

The brass are absolutely worthless, with Catchcart obsessed only with looking good and making general, not that his superiors are much better. His adjutant, the aptly named Lt. Col. Korn, seems reasonable at first, but then reveals slowly how much he enjoys being the power behind the throne. Intelligence officer Captain Black has nothing but contempt for the pilots and is angry about being passed over for promotion in favor of a major named Major Major (middle name, Major. Clearly, Heller read the 87th Precinct books.) Major is an ironic choice for wing commander because he uses his power and position to avoid as much human contact as possible. Yossarian even dives through his office window to force the issue.

Perhaps the most despicable character (outside the rapist/murderer pilot) is the mess officer, Milo Minderbinder. Milo builds a black market initially to supply all the mess halls in southern Italy. Soon, its tentacles reach past the Axis lines, north to England and liberated France, over into Russia, and even back to America. Whenever confronted about his questionable deeds, Minderbinder justifies himself with long lectures about profit and his "syndicate," of which, "Everyone has a share." 

Heller is definitely a Dickens fan with his Meyer Meyer-like Major Major, Milo Minderbinder, and so on. His villains are completely oblivious to their malice. And it becomes obvious why Heller chose 1944 Italy as his setting. Most heroic tales of World War II come from France, from Stalingrad, and from the Pacific. But 1944 Italy was a hurry-up and wait front. The absurd and the horrific comes from confused men and women who aren't sure what's going on because Allied commanders are busy elsewhere grinding Hitler and Imperial Japan to pulp.

Catch-22 is often on banned book lists because of a knee-jerk "How dare you?" reaction. The Army Air Corps (now the US Air Force and, more recently, Space Force) is made to look incompetent. But like Lower Decks to the rest of the Star Trek franchise, where the Cerritos must follow where someone else boldly went, these people have followed the battle to pry Italy out of Nazi Germany's bloody hands. So while Band of Brothers and Midway are happening elsewhere, the people in pacified Italy have no idea what's going on.

This plays out later when writers combined Catch-22's absurdity with the play Stalag 17 to create Hogan's Heroes. In that, the enemy is bungling and incompetent, since they're far from the English Channel, Africa, and the ominous Russian front. This allows a motley crew of Allied prisoners to function as an underground and pitting self-important German brass against each other.

But it comes to fore with both the movie and television series M*A*S*H. Richard Hornberger (as Richard Hooker) wrote a novel skewering the Korean War's hurry-up-and-wait situation, which led to the same issues as depicted in Catch-22. As the Vietnam War erupted, the novel M*A*S*H provided ample anti-war fodder for Robert Altman's movie. The television show focused more on humor, but made the bureaucratic morass a prominent feature. ("No, Colonel, I'm looking at the map right now, which is up-to-date, and I can assure you, you are not being bombed." Meanwhile, Henry Blake is hoping a mortar shell doesn't land in his office as he's on this call.)

War is hell. Sherman said it, and every book worth reading about war, from The Winds of War and The Longest Day to Catch-22 makes clear. But for every Saving Private Ryan, which shows the courage and tenacity of those under fire, there has to be a M*A*S*H or a Catch-22 to remind us how the Office Space mentality isn't just for civilians.

Locked Rooms

Although the narrator of Seishi Yokomizo's The Honjin Murders claims that, "The locked room murder mystery [is] a genre that any self-respecting detective novelist will attempt at some point..." I must confess not only to quite disliking the genre but to have no ambitions whatsoever to attempt one.

Nonetheless, recently I found myself reading three novels that contain locked room mysteries. What was interesting, even to a non-connoisseur ,was how the puzzle was embedded in different sorts of books, and how all three toy with deaths that might be murder that looks like suicide or suicide that might be murder. 

Yokomizo was a great admirer of western golden age mysteries, with a particular fondness for the puzzles of John Dickson Carr, and, it appears, for cerebral detectives of an eccentric nature. The Honjin Murders, published shortly after World War II but set in 1937, was his first to feature what would be his long running amateur sleuth, Kosuke Kindaichi.

Rather than beginning with the detective, Yokomizo uses a crime writer as his narrator ( a tactic that Anthony Horowitz has used to great effect in his Tony & Hawthorne novels) and presents the ghastly murders at the Ichiyanagi family compound in an almost documentary fashion. He describes how he learned of the case, quotes various official documents, and finally gives what he describes as accurate a reconstruction of his sleuth's detecting as possible.

The brutal murder of a couple on their wedding night presents a stiff challenge, and the solution is a masterpiece of ingenuity if scarcely plausible. But this is detection as escapist fiction, a bloodless puzzle despite the many gruesome details. It is only in the aftermath, when Kindaichi ponders the why, rather than the how, of the crime, that we get into the psychology of the characters and the peculiarly Japanese elements of the situation that make The Honjin Murders quite different from some of its prototypes.

I came across this interesting period piece, because Anthony Horowitz mentions a couple of locked room mysteries in Close to Death, a mystery that, yes, incorporates a locked room case. The novel also marks a deviation from the format of the earlier, and to my mind, more successful, Tony and Hawthorne mysteries. 

Close to Death delays Hawthorne's arrival on the scene by relying on an ambiguous case from several years earlier which involved Hawthorne and Tony's predecessor. This was perhaps a decision taken in the name of realism, as poor Tony has been rather endangered and damaged in prior outings. But just as Sherlock is senior partner to Watson, so Hawthorne is the really key figure in Horowitz's outings.

The switch does, however, enable Horowitz to construct a nicely complicated puzzle set among the well heeled and elegantly housed, a sort of urban Midsomer, with, like the Midsomer Murders series, a good helping of social comedy and satire. Misdirection and red herrings abound, something Yokomizo does nicely as well, and if plausibility is stretched, the book is amusing.

Robert Dugoni, whose many novels include the Tracy Crosswhite series, features a tricky locked house killing in Her Deadly Game, featuring Keera Duggan, an ambitious young lawyer handling her first homicide defense and her first really high profile case. She is also juggling an alcoholic father, a vengeful ex-lover and various difficult siblings– the sorts of personal baggage now almost required of the modern sleuth.

The crime is ingenious and the solution very nearly as complex as the one Kindaichi comes up with in his case. The difference is that this locked room is embedded in a careful and plausible account of police procedures, forensic examinations, and legal strategy. Curiously, though, the resolution of Kerra's personal problems is perhaps less convincing than the rather glum conclusions of the old Japanese mystery.

The Honjin Murders, Close to Death, and Her Deadly Game are all ingenious and, in their own ways, revealing of the attitudes and values of their times and places. What is crucial in each is different and so are the techniques employed, although all rely on close looking and careful listening. Honor, respectability, money, safety, and revenge play out in different ways, but in each story, a powerful motivation leads to an elaborately organized death and a challenging puzzle.

A Completely Unhelpful Guide to Being Published in Japan

Last week I wrote about my publication history at Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and I mentioned being reprinted in Japan.  Several people asked me how I went about that.  I think I have discussed most of it at this site before but it might be best to put it all in one place. Unfortunately I doubt it will be of any use to you.

I self-published a book of my stories, Shanks on Crime, in 2014.  It contained 13 stories, most of which had first appeared in AHMM.  Two years later the same magazine published another  tale in the series, "Shanks Goes Rogue."

Not long after that I received an email from a literary agency in Japan. Did I own the international rights to the book and would I be interested in being published in Japan?  I answered yes and youbetcha. Turned out Tokyo Sogen, the oldest mystery publisher in Japan, wanted to translate and publish  my book.  (How did this happen? My speculation is that the publisher has readers going through AHMM and other magazines and one of them liked "Shanks Goes Rogue" and read in my bio note that I had a book available.)

They published Shanks on Crime (with the "Rogue" story added) using a title that the computer translates as Sunday Afternoon Tea With Mystery Writer. To promote it they asked my permission to reprint one of the stories in their magazine which is titled Mysteries! Exclamation point in the original.  No pay, by the way.  I said, youbetcha.

The book sold well enough that they published a collection of my otherwise uncollected non-Shanks stories called The Red Envelope and Other Stories, or in Japanese Solve Mysteries in the Coffee Shop on Holidays (according to the AI translator). Both books made lists of the best foreign mysteries of the year, he said modestly.

I have had several Shanks stories published since them.  One of them, "Shanks' Locked Room," appeared in AHMM in 2021 and the Japanese publisher  decided to buy it for their magazine.  I am under the impression that Japanese readers like locked room stories (although mine was not traditional. The puzzle was: why would someone steal a room key and not use it?)  That one they paid for.

So now you know how to get a a story published in a Japanese mystery magazine.  It's a simple three-step process:

1. Get the story published in the USA.

2. Wait for an email from a Japanese literary agency.

3. Respond to the e-mail.

I said it was simple.  I never said it was easy.  Youbetcha. Ganbatte.

The Force of Star Wars

James A. Hearn visits us again to discuss the inspiration behind one of his recently published stories.

—Michael Bracken 

The Force of Star Wars:

The Story behind “An Evening at the Opera House”

in Private Dicks and Disco Balls: Private Eyes in the Dyn-O-Mite Seventies

by James A. Hearn

Using the Force, Jedi Master Yoda lifts Luke Skywalker’s stranded X-wing fighter from the swamps of Dagobah and sets it gently on the shore. Luke, having failed to move the ship himself, stares at Yoda in wonder.

LUKE

I don’t… I don’t believe it.

YODA

That is why you fail.

— The Empire Strikes Back, 1980

It’s May 13^th again, and my phone is blowing up with texts, pictures, and videos of my older brother, Sidney. There he is dunking my sister Barb underwater in her hot tub, “baptizing” her for probably the thousandth time. He went to live with Barb’s family after our Dad passed away in 2007, as some of you may have read in a previous SleuthSayers post about my Dad. Someone sends a video of Sidney “doinking” whoever’s behind the camera, and I’m laughing along with him. (For Three Stooges fans, the doink is the gag where Moe asks Curly to pick two fingers, then uses those fingers to poke his fellow stooge in the eyes.) Sidney’s doinks—his made-up onomatopoeia for this joke—could travel across the room and even through telephones. “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk!”

The Village Opera House in old Fort Worth.

The phone messages are flying in from across the country, as they do every May 13th, from our far-flung family members. It’s been five years since Sidney’s passing, and we’re remembering all the goofy, laugh-out-loud, crazy shit he used to say and do. (Apologies to Mom in Heaven, but shit is the best word here. Not dirty things by any means, just outrageous.)

Sidney-isms, we call them. He had his own unique language, and while strangers sometimes had a difficult time understanding him, we were native speakers. Out of all our family, I may have understood him best, for reasons I’ll explain.

Cooking hamburgers in
my backyard with Sidney.

As you can probably tell from the photos, Sidney had Down syndrome. This is a genetic condition caused by trisomy of the twenty-first chromosome, where the body’s cells have three separate copies of chromosome twenty-one instead of the usual two. Trisomy produces the telltale features common to all people with Down—such as small ears, almond-shaped eyes, and a wide range of health challenges of varying profundity–and occurs in about one in 700 live births.

Sidney couldn’t read, write, or count to ten. In his twenties, he needed a cane to walk because of a degenerative hip. In his thirties, the hip was replaced, and he graduated to a walker. And toward the end of his life, reaching the ripe age of fifty-nine, he needed a wheelchair. There was no way Sidney could ever hold a job or be self-sufficient, as some people with Down can. But my big brother had other, more important talents and abilities. His hugs drove away our troubles, and his jokes made us laugh so hard we cried. And he had the most gifted imagination I’ve ever encountered.

After graduating from Jo Kelly School (a facility in Fort Worth specially designed to educate students with disabilities), his “work” was looking at his comic books, playing his records (read-along storybooks and soundtracks composed by John Williams), and watching his favorite TV shows and movies.

Sidney as Yoda.

The Six-Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman were among his favorites. Others were Battlestar Galactica, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Twilight Zone, Batman, and The Adventures of Superman to name a few. He watched hundreds of shows, and since we shared a bedroom, so did I. And not just shows with ray-guns and rocket ships, but Westerns and detective shows. The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, The Rockford Files, and Magnum, P.I. Throw in comedies like Looney Tunes, The Three Stooges, Sanford and Son, Happy Days, I Love Lucy, and Gilligan’s Island.

A million cultural references were filed away in his brain, to be used as the situation warranted. For example, whenever something exciting happened, he might clutch his heart like Redd Foxx and yell, “Elizabeth! Honey, I’m comin’ to join ya!” He was the original meme generator before the Internet was a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye.

The pantheon of Sidney’s Imaginarium—a sort of holy trinity—was Superman, Star Trek, and especially Star Wars. He watched and listened to these adventures over and over and over again. For Sidney, there was no such thing as too much of a good thing. He would often act out entire scenes, where he voiced all the characters, provided his own sound effects, and put himself in the starring role. He was Clark Kent, Captain Kirk, and Luke Skywalker all rolled into one.

Growing up in the seventies, I shared a room with Sidney. If he watched Star Trek late nights on channel 39, so did I. (Woe to the person who touched his TV!) If he was “reading” his comic books, I read mine. Together, we consumed thousands of hours of cop shows, comedies, science fiction, and fantasy.

Doink!

Please don’t think this time was wasted or spent idly, by either of us. These stories enabled Sidney to live out his dreams, to take his mind places where his body could never go. And by experiencing these things with him, I was able to understand what he was saying when others couldn’t. To borrow a concept from Star Trek, I was his universal translator in years to come.

By osmosis, I absorbed his world and became a part of it. I played Jimmy Olsen to his Superman, Spock to his Kirk, Darth Vader to his Luke. We acted out our favorite scenes and played at being heroes. We routinely leaped tall buildings in a single bound, performed the Vulcan mind-meld on each other, and blew up the Death Star. In Sidney’s productions, the Good Guys and Gals always won.

Sidney was my best friend, and I owe him a debt of gratitude not just for being a great brother, but for giving me a desire to create my own stories. I never would’ve been a writer without him, and life would’ve been a dreary, shadowy reflection of itself without Sidney to brighten things up.

When I heard about Michael Bracken’s seventies-themed private eye anthology, I knew I had to write a story about someone like Sidney, for Sidney. “An Evening at the Opera House” was born. The Opera House was a real-life theater in our hometown of Fort Worth where we saw Star Wars together for the first time. A New Hope was born in each of us that day, long before George Lucas gave his most famous movie that title.

Like my characters with Down, Sidney was fine just as he was. Perfectly imperfect, and thus as fully human as anyone. And like my private detective Harvey Lisch—a pretentious, arrogant, and slightly neurotic version of myself—whenever I feel the malaise of life tugging at my heels, I stop and think about a very special brother whose unparalleled imagination shaped my life.

This story’s for you, Sidney. In Heaven, are you flying through the clouds like Superman? Visiting strange new worlds as Captain Kirk? Wielding a lightsaber in a duel with a dark lord? I think you are, and you’re doing it with gusto.

Sidney’s headstone is right between our parents,
as they wished. The “S” stands for a
Super Brother.

After Sidney passed, I sometimes wondered what he would’ve been like if he’d been born without Down. What if he could’ve unleashed that powerful creativity and shared it not just with the family, but with the world? Would he have become a novelist? An actor? A composer like his beloved John Williams, whose records were the soundtrack to his life?

I don’t ask that question anymore. To do so implies there was something wrong with Sidney. That he was somehow, well, lesser than someone born without Down. But there was nothing wrong with him. He was loving, kind, funny, and fun-loving. He was unabashedly, unapologetically himself, and that’s a lesson we all should take to heart.

Thank you, Sidney. Like Yoda to Luke, you gave me the power to imagine a better world. You gave me the power of belief. May the Force be with you, Brother.

<

James A. Hearn

---

An Edgar Award nominee for Best Short Story, James A. Hearn (www.jamesahearn.com) writes in a variety of genres, including mystery, crime, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He and his wife reside in Georgetown, Texas, with a boisterous Labrador retriever who keeps life interesting.

A taste of honey. Or vinegar. Pick your poison.

There’s no accounting for taste, thank God.

The discrepancies provide an incredible richness of opportunity, a cornucopia of variety, bottomless choice. That doesn’t mean I’m not constantly bewildered by people’s preferences in books, art, love and lighting fixtures.

I’ve long since abandoned the notion that someone’s devotion to something I find utterly without merit denotes a lack of character. I hope others allow me the same tolerance. If you believe ABBA represents the pinnacle of musical achievement, I respect that. Even if you fail to appreciate the profound importance of Grand Funk Railroad to the triumph of 20^th century American Popular Music.

Granted, I tend to associate with people who share many of my tastes and predilections, as every person does. We’re a self-organizing social species. It’s natural and expected. That’s why it can be unsettling when one of my close cohort professes a love for Jonathan Livingston Seagull or the Cowsills.

Speaking of lighting fixtures, go into the biggest lighting store you can find and look at the stuff hanging from the ceiling, then imagine any of it lurking above your dining room table. Or better yet, leaf through one of those gargantuan books of wallpaper samples. Be aware they only sell this stuff because people buy it. Oh, the humanity. Some people are utterly devoted to avant-garde music. I try to imagine setting up a romantic evening of good wine, fine food, comfy couches and an hour or two of a John Cage composition featuring a bucket of bolts thrown on the piano strings. I admire people who admire this stuff, but I don’t understand them at all.

Much poetry escapes me, though I don’t read enough, I admit. When I stumble on a nice poem, I’m smitten, even if I don’t know why. I feel the same way about opera; while much of it sort of grates, the right aria can make me weep. If I’m in the right mood.

I’ve never met a mystery short story I didn’t like. Yet I’m confounded by many of the general short stories in publications like The New Yorker. I think, what’s the point? Is there a point? What am I missing?

As to literary fiction (a definition I’d argue with), I feel if you don’t have much of a plot, the writing better be fantastic. I love words, perfectly constructed sentences and clever metaphors and similes. When those are present, I really don’t care what happens. Though give me a stem-winding thriller with a few clunky turns of phrase and I’m all in. When the writing and the story are well rendered, I’m in heaven.

Clothes have nothing to do with writing, but I’ve worn basically the same style my entire life. The Harris Tweed sport coat I wore for my fifth-grade class picture, and my high school senior portrait, is still hanging in my closet, having suffered a few alterations. It’s disintegrating, so maybe it’ll have to go to the dump, though not without a small ceremony.

I agonized mightily in the early seventies, when everything sartorial turned to shit. I used to cut down the heels of platform shoes with a hot wire, and had tailors reduce lapels and pocket flaps. I had a decent stockpile of thinner ties from my father’s business career that kept that segment alive. If you see me in a leisure suit, I’m a corpse. Everyone thought I was just being contrary, but I held firm until things shifted back toward the sane in the 1980s.

Back to good writing, it’s always been there, you just have to seek it out. And more has been written in the past few thousand years than I’ll ever be able to read, so the well never runs dry. Political speech has rarely been worse, so that category has suffered serious degradation. On the other hand, there are a lot of very talented political journalists who revere the language and demonstrate it with every column. Again, you just have to hunt around for the gems.

As a cabinetmaker and house designer, I keep up with trends, and lately interiors have all been white or grey. Light grey, with no natural wood to be found (my houses are loaded with cherry and mahogany, oak floors and the occasional chestnut beam). Fashionable exteriors tend to board and batten siding and black window frames. The most recent house I designed used those elements, because that’s what the client wanted. It looks fine, though I had to go well outside the contemporary mood to convey any distinctive style.

Which tells you all you need to know about taste. It’s the tyranny of the popular, and the poverty of individual imagination.

My First Story

First story I recall telling happened in 1^st Grade. I didn’t plan a tall tale, nor did I intend to entertain anyone, only myself. As mentioned back on Criminal Brief, our teacher, Miss Ruth, who’d been in place since the War of 1812, taught the dangers of gossip and rumors in a Game of Telephone, aka Telegraph aka Game of Whispers.

She paraded us down to the gymnasium, where we took off our shoes. Lining us up alphabetically in a row, she seated us on the floor. Then she explained the plan: Teacher would whisper a short story to Sara Arnett, who would in turn would whisper to Roger Batton beside her, and so on across the row, passing through me, dead center in the middle. Mike Young, seated last, would hear the final iteration. Finally, Sara and he would stand and deliver what they heard, Versions 1.0 and 1.16, so to speak, thus we could grasp how inaccurate rumors were.

The story took a few minutes to reach me, a tale about a wee bonnie bunny on a bicycle. At that moment, lightning struck and Igor babbled in my ear.

I’ve always been a mad scientist. It dawned on me I could run a double experiment. I related a story to Walter Meyers about an ice-skating ducky with an umbrella. Snap. Bunny Version 1.8 ended and Ducky Version 2.0 came to life, moving on and on.

Then I panicked. What if the teacher did a trace-back? Had I just sinned, lied in some way? Surely worse than lying, what if they kicked me out of school? Forever? What if no one hired me, would I skulk on the streets while my classmates ran solar farms and worked at big name companies?

Then Sara and Mike stood. She repeated Story 1.0, after which Michael rattled off Story version 2.16. Poor Miss Ruth looked dumbfounded. With a slightly stunned expression, she mumbled, “I’ve never had this happen before.” Probably wishing she retired half-a-century earlier, she muttered, “Let’s… Let’s go upstairs.”

Without realizing it, I’d just told my first story.

Titles, Titles Everywhere, and Not a One Will Work

I like story titles. They not only catch the eye, they sometimes provide a look ahead, and if they're good enough, they can make the story better. The main thing is, titles makes a difference to editors and publishers, and in turn, to readers. 

I especially like cool titles, the ones that are witty or grand or "different" in some way. When I see one of those I find myself wishing I had come up with it. You know what I mean: The Guns of Navarone, "The Gift of the Magi," To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath. That list could go on and on, and almost did, in a column I posted here at SleuthSayers early last year, called "A Sense of Entitlement." Those kinds of titles inspire me to try to create good ones for my own writing. 

With my short stories, I've found it's best to come up with a title early on, either before the writing starts or soon afterward. It can then serve as sort of a guide or compass to me during the course of the story. But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes I charge off into battle with no hint of a title in mind. (Apparently I'm in good company there: Larry McMurtry once said in an interview that he had already written four hundred pages of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel before he came up a title for it. He eventually solved the problem while on a trip to Fort Worth. He was leaving a restaurant when a bus passed by with the name LONESOME DOVE CHURCH printed on the side--and suddenly he had his title.) In my case, several of my recent stories were completely finished before I had suitable titles, and I spent a looooong time trying to find some that fit the bill. 

Does that ever happen to you? What do you do when it does? How do you come up with satisfying titles at all, whether before, during, or after the writing, and avoid those that just don't do the job? (All of us have at some point "settled" for a lesser title, and that's never a good feeling.) What are some of your coolest titles? What are some titles by others, that you especially like? Let me know your thoughts on all this, in the comments.

Here are some things I usually think about, when I'm wrestling with a title choice. With each of these, I've included twenty examples from my own published stories, mainly because they were easy for me to find. 

1. Titles that are character names or nicknames:

Annabelle, Frankie, Lucifer, Sneaky Pete, Diamond Jim, Sweet Caroline, Purple Martin, The Jumper, Checkpoint Charlie, Mr. Unlucky, The Cookie Monster, The Sandman, The Messenger, The Locksmith, The Barlow Boys, King of the City, Billy the Kid, Shrinking Violet, Tomboy, Mustang Sally. 

(If your story's finished and you're stumped, you can even go back and substitute a catchy name/nickname for your protagonist or another main character and make that the story title. That's what I did to create some of the above. Sometimes even the villain's name will work. Think Hannibal, or Goldfinger.)

2. Titles that are place names:

Dentonville, Ship Island, Blackjack Road, Turtle Bay, Sand Hill, Rooster Creek, Palm Canyon, Hardison Park, Lookout Mountain, Mythic Heights, Dreamland, Redemption, The Starlite Drive-In, Silverlake, Shadygrove, Plymouth West, Crockett's Pond, The Rocking R, Bad Eagle Road, The Pine Lake Inn. 

(Same thing here. If finished, you can go back and set your untitled story in a neat-sounding location. Title problem solved!)

3. Titles that are times or time periods:

Flag Day, From Ten to Two, An Hour at Finley's, Summer in the City, 200 Days, Twenty Minutes in Riverdale, Run Time, War Day, Midnight, The First of October, Intermission, Nap Time, Valentine's Day, Flu Season, Break Time, Ladies' Day, Dry Spell, While You Were Out, A Day at the Office, A Night at the Park. 

4. Titles that are "possessives":

Molly's Plan, Thursday's Child, Bennigan's Key, Nobody's Business, Lindy's Luck, Lucy's Gold, Hartmann's Case, The Deacon's Game, Merrill's Run, Dooley's Code, Rosie's Choice, Dawson's Curse, Hildy's Fortune, Button's and Bo's, The Governor's Cup, The King's Island, Walker's Hollow, Lucian's Cadillac, Fool's Gold, The Devil's Right Hand.

(Like the others I mentioned, this can also be a last-minute bailout, and save you when you just can't decide on a good title otherwise.)

5. Titles that are a play on words:

Gone Goes the Weasel, A Bad Hare Day, Murphy's Lawyer, A Cold Day in Helena, The Rare Book Case, The Three Little Biggs, Henry's Ford, R.I.P. Van Winkler, Andy Get Your Gun, Della's Cellar, Escape Claus, Don't Mansion It, Ex Benedict, Mattie's Caddy, Snow Way Out, A Loan-ly Murder, Low Technology, Take the Money and Ron, North by Northeast, Amos' Last Words.

(My favorite kind of title.)

6. Titles with a double (or hidden) meaning:

Weekend Getaway, Tourist Trap, A Warm Welcome, Old Soldiers, High Anxiety, Quarterback Sneak, Burglar Proof, Gas Pains, Pocket Change, Spell Check, The Big Picture, Deliver Me, True Colors, Poetic Justice, Cat Burglar, The Coldest Case, A Sterling Event, Conventional Behavior, Business Class, A Trivial Pursuit.

7. Titles that are familiar phrases:

Little White Lies, In Other Words, Batteries Not Included, Nothing but the Truth, Not One Word, Eyes in the Sky, Better Late than Never, One Less Thing, Some Assembly Required, Eight in the Corner, A Stitch in Time, Name Your Poison, This Seat's Taken, No Strings Attached, The Outside World, In the Wee Hours, Unlucky at Love, A Shock to the System, The Noon Stage, The Gospel Truth. 

(My least-favorite kind of title--even though "The Noon Stage" was one of my favorite stories to write. BTW, I left out the ones with familiar two-word phrases, of which there are many.)

8. Titles that use "and" to connect two things or names:

Rhonda and Clyde, Bourbon and Water, Pros and Cons, Moonshine and Roses, The Browns and the Grays, The Ghost and Billy Martin, Art and Poetry, Punch and Judy, Lost and Found, Gert and Ernie, Camels and Starships, Friends and Neighbors, Trial and Error, Outfitters and Critters, Hearts and Flowers, In-Laws and Outlaws, Sunlight and Shadows, Lewis and Clark, Ducky and the Shooter, The Miller and the Dragon. 

9. One-word "summary" titles:

Survival, Ignition, Clockwork, Driver, Stopover, Oops!, Premonition, Creativity, Oversight, Turnabout, Partners, Trapped, Mailbox, Diversions, Sorcerer, Lightning, Proof, Fantasyland, Teamwork, Cargo.

10. Titles with "ing":

Burying Oliver, Getting Out Alive, Saving Mrs. Hapwell, Wronging Mr. Wright, Remembering Tally, Just Passing Through, Traveling Light, Mugging Mrs. Jones, Splitting Christmas, Playing with Fire, Going for the Gold, Cracking the Code, Saving Grace, Spending Money, Fishing for Clues, Catnapping, Waiting for the Bus, Stealing Roscoe, Driving Miss Lacey, Pushing Joe Carter. 

(Once again, this kind of title can be a good lifeline when you can't come up with anything else. Invent an appropriate action and add "ing.")

11. Titles (usually long) that have a "rhythm":

Debbie and Bernie and Belle, The Early Death of Pinto Bishop, On the Road with May Jo, The Friends of Lucy Devine, Liz and Drew and Betty Lou, The President's Residence, Romeo and Isabelle, An Evening at the Robertsons', What Luke Pennymore Saw, A Surprise for Digger Wade, A Nice Little Place in the Country, Everybody Comes to Lucille's, The Moon and Marcie Wade, We Can Work It Out, Turn Right at the Light, Last Day at the Jackrabbit, Whatever Happened to Lizzie Martin?, Billy Dinkin's Lincoln, From the Hill to the Park, Bad Day at Big Rock.

(One of my favorite "lilting rhythm" movie titles is Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.)

12. Three-word "Robert Ludlum" titles (like The Bourne Identity, The Holcroft Covenant, etc.):

The Zeller Files, The Jericho Train, The Donovan Gang, The Winslow Tunnel, The Pullman Case, The Plimpton Scholar, The Artesian Light, The Midnight Child, The Foreverglow Case, The Nelson Enigma, The Ironwood File, The Sallisaw Blowout, The POD Squad, The Delta Princess, The Florida Blues, The Willisburg Stage, the Navarro Principle, The Dolan Killings, The Long Branch, The Cado Devil.

There are of course many, many other types and sources of titles, but the above twelve "prompts" are some that I've found to be handy. Looking back over my stories, I also found a lot of titles that use "of the," "in the," "to the," "from the," "at the," "with the," "for the," and so forth--but hey, enough is enough.

If somehow you're still reading this, I'll mention one of my most recent accepted stories--its title came from a local TV news broadcast I saw not long ago, about a shooting in a nearby city. When the reporter asked a wide-eyed bystander what happened, the guy--a friend of both the suspect and the victim--solemnly said, "Bubba done shot Jasper." Those weren't the actual names he used on the air (I've changed them here to protect the innocent, although one of them wasn't), but I admired that profound observation enough to steal it and use it myself. Several weeks ago, thanks to that news report, I sold a mystery story called "Skeeter Done Shot Billy Bob" to a crime anthology to be published this fall. 

Titles really are everywhere.