The Top Fifteen Crime Films of the 1940’s.

by William Burton McCormick

As I said in my listing of my favorite crime films of the 1930’s, lists are silly.  Making lists, however, can be a useful exercise for authors studying a genre. At best, it forces serious analysis on what works and what doesn’t, allowing an author better perspective on the elements of a successful thriller or mystery. At worst, it is a wonderful excuse for watching and re-watching countless old films, re-appreciating classics and unearthing obscure gems. 

So, here I am again with a new decade to discuss, the era of the Second World War, film noir’s first Golden Age, when authors like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett held sway and English director Alfred Hitchcock burst onto the American scene (his previous films, including my 30’s top film The 39 Steps (1935) were made in England. Now Hitch had Hollywood budgets and stars at his disposal. Look out!).  Warning! Spoilers are ahead.

The number of outstanding crime films in this decade was exponentially greater than the preceding one and reducing it to fifteen was a painful affair. A list of honorable mentions reads like a collection of classics and near-classics: The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Key Largo (1948), Song of the Thin Man (1947), Mildred Pierce (1945), This Gun for Hire (1942), The Blue Dahlia (1946), Laura (1944), They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), The Naked City (1948), High Sierra (1941), Gaslight (1944), The Dark Corner (1946), I See A Dark Stranger (1946), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Out of the Past (1947), and The Postman Always Rings Twice(1944).

Several legendary directors had multiple films I was forced to omit: Fritz Lang (whose M (1931) nearly topped my earlier list) had the excellent pictures The Woman in the Window (1944), Hangman Also Die! (1946) and Scarlet Street (1945) left off. Akira Kurosawa wrote and directed two fantastic crime films Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949) but they were unseen outside of Japan, and I use this as the flimsiest excuse to omit them. (For a discussion on Kurosawa’s crime films go here.) 

Alfred Hitchcock, well-represented on this list, was productive enough to have several excellent films not make the cut: Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rebecca (1940, his only career Best Picture winner), and Suspicion (1941, often called his ‘flawed masterpiece’ as producer David O. Selznick forced Hitch to change the ending and make Cary Grant’s character innocent, much to Grant’s chagrin who wanted to play a villain). 

Carol Reed, who has a film high on this list, also produced two excellent thrillers I’d recommend: Odd Man Out (1947) and The Fallen Idol (1948). Orson Welles’s The Stranger (1946) was probably the most painful cut from this list, while his The Lady from Shanghai (1947) has scenes of absolute genius tempered by Welles’s typical money problems and egregious studio interference. (And Welles insisted his wife and costar Rita Hayworth cut her luxurious hair and bleach it blonde, a sin against humanity that must be penalized).

Lastly, several great films with crime elements but ultimately residing in other genres are excluded: Casablanca (1942, a romance), Arsenic and Old Lace (1945, a farce), To Be or Not to Be (1942, a war comedy), His Girl Friday (1940, a screwball comedy), Rebecca (1940, a gothic romance), and The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948, a Western). 

All these films I watched or re-watched before composing this list. So, enough about what’s not here. On to our main event:

15. Gilda (1946)
American gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is hired by Ballin Mundson (George Maceady) to run his Buenos Aires casino and watch over Mundson’s rebellious wife Gilda (Rita Hayworth), who often cavorts with other very dangerous men. When two German mobsters seek control of the casino, Mundson fakes his own death leaving Johnny and Gilda to contend with each other and the mob. Hayworth’s Gilda is the very visual definition of a femme fatale. Her entrance in the film is legendary, as is her singing “Put the Blame on Mame” in a hormone-popping strapless black dress designed by Jean Louis, a performance still bewitching seventy-six years later.  An Esquire photograph of Hayworth in that dress with “Gilda” stenciled above decorated the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tested in July, 1946. The 23-kiloton bomb was the most powerful exploded up to that point and the decoration meant to honor Hayworth “as the world’s ultimate bombshell.” When Hayworth found out she was highly offended. 

14. The Glass Key (1942)
The second of four films pairing Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, The Glass Key edges out This Gun for Hire from the same year and The Blue Dahlia (1946) as the finest picture to feature both stars.  Based on the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, The Glass Key tells the story of Ed Beaumont (Ladd), the “problem solver” for corrupt political boss Paul Madvig (Brian Donlevy).  Madvig has fallen in love with Janet Henry (Lake), and is determined to get Janet’s father, Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen), elected governor despite the objections of mob kingpin Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia). A tale of temptation in many forms, Ladd’s Beaumont stays loyal to Madvig despite sexual advances from Janet and bribes, threats and torture from Varna. As election day approaches the bodies pile up, including Ralph’s son Taylor (Richard Denning). Despite Ladd being third-billed, Beaumont is the film’s central character. The Glass Key was rushed through production to capitalize on the chemistry between Ladd and Lake in This Gun for Hire and Hammett’s name after The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the successful Thin Man series. The timing was right, and it paid off handsomely at the box office.

 
13. Rope (1948)
Inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murders, director Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope tells the story of two roommates Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) who kill a friend (Dick Hogan) for the sheer intellectual thrill of it. They then host a party using an unlocked chest housing the body as a serving table. Among the guests are the victim’s father (Cedrick Hardwicke), fiancée (Joan Chandler) and their old prep school professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), whose gallows humor and promotion of Nietzschean superman theories greatly affected the killers in their youth. By the end of the night, Phillip is coming apart, Brandon is making threats and Rupert regrets his irresponsible teachings.  

A modern BBC review called Rope “technically and socially bold.” This is certainly true. The characters of Brandon and Phillip are a homosexual couple which the film hints at often. In reality, Dall was gay, Farley bisexual, and Hitchcock hired openly gay writer Arthur Laurents to craft a screenplay with appropriate subtext (Laurents and Farley would begin an 18-month relationship soon after production). The character of Rupert was also supposed to be gay, though the hints more subtle. (There is no evidence Stewart knew he was playing a gay man.)  A film in 1948 with three homosexual characters, two villains and the hero, was daring even if the Hays Code prevented mentioning homosexuality explicitly.  

Technically, Hitchcock was also pushing the envelope. In his first color picture, he shot long, continuous scenes only limited by the amount of film that could be placed in camera. Hitch disguises the ends of these eleven-minute “long takes” by panning or tracking into objects and then starting again from the same position. Some of these seams are clumsy (especially when you know the trick) but it allowed the film to appear to play out in real time. This was influential on director Fred Zinnemann and producer Stanley Kramer, who would use the illusion of a real time story to great effect in High Noon (1952). Except for one exterior establishing shot, the entire movie takes place in Brandon’s and Phillip’s Manhattan apartment. Hitchcock’s experiments on how to tell a gripping thriller in static limited space in Rope and the equally confined Lifeboat (1944) would pave the way for a masterpiece of the form in 1954’s Rear Window.

12. Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
The fourth Thin Man film keeps the winning streak alive. In San Francisco, Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) head to the races only to find a jockey who has thrown a race was murdered. (“My, they’re strict at this track,” says Nora.) With the day at the races ruined, they head to a wrestling match where Paul Clarke (Barry Nelson) is framed for killing a reporter and Clarke’s girlfriend Molly (Donna Reed) pleads for help. Are the two murders connected? The trail leads to Claire Porter (Stella Adler, future founder of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting) who, failing to seduce Nick, tries to outsmart him and steal evidence. Twists, turns and much laughter ensue. 

The best scenes include a brawl in a restaurant and a recurring joke where Nick’s underworld contacts mock Nora’s hat. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot Ava Gardner as an uncredited extra in one scene, her debut in film. (We’ll see more of Ava on this list soon.) The first Thin Man film not based on a Dashiell Hammett story or treatment and without a screenplay from the husband-wife team of Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich (who claimed they had exhausted every witticism they knew in the first three films) new writers Harry Kurnitz and Irving Brecher stepped in without missing a beat. It is also the first film after canine actor Skippy was retired and the role of Asta given to a descendent. More changes were ahead. Pearl Harbor was attacked two weeks after the film’s release and Loy would forgo acting to serve in the Red Cross as Director of Military and Naval Welfare, while Powell would be devastated by the death of his ex-wife Carol Lombard in a plane crash two months later. But never mind those grim future troubles. Put on your best screwy hat, order the seabass, and enjoy because “Baby, you’ve arrived.”
 

11. Green for Danger (1946)
Based on the Christianna Brand novel of the same name, Green for Danger is a classic “closed environment” mystery set in an English countryside war hospital during the German bombings of 1944. In the first scene, we are witness to an operation performed by a staff of six people: surgeon Eden (Leo Genn), anesthetist Barnes (Trevor Howard), Sister Bates (Judy Campbell) and nurses Linley (Sally Gray), Woods (Megs Jenkins), and Sanson (Rosamund John).  A voiceover tells us within five days “two of these people will be dead and one of them a murderer.” What follows is a tense mystery where duties and bombings force suspects together and ratchet up the anxiety to deliciously tortuous levels. This tension is nicely counter-balanced by humorous-but-clever Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim), who arrives to catch the murderer. Great fun.

10. Foreign Correspondent (1940)
After leaving London for Hollywood in 1939, director Alfred Hitchcock burst onto the American cinema scene with two films released in 1940 that would receive Academy Award Best Picture nominations: Rebecca (the winner) and Foreign Correspondent. 

 The latter is a cracking good thriller of Europe teetering towards war.  American journalist John Jones (Joel McCrea) is sent to Europe to interview a Dutch diplomat (Albert Basserman) only to witness his assassination. Or was it faked? And if so, for what purposes? Adventure, international intrigue and a surprising amount of comedy follow. 

This film has a plethora of memorable Hitchcockian visuals: the chase in the rain through an umbrella-packed square, the mysterious windmill that turns opposite direction of others, the assassination on the steps mimicked by Francis Ford Coppola in the Godfather and Hitch’s first great set piece for American audiences, a plane shot down in the stormy Atlantic where the survivors cling to the wings as the waves wash over them. 

After filming was complete, Hitch visited England and found the German blitz was soon to come. Back in Hollywood, he hired Ben Hecht to write a new closing scene where McCrea’s reporter broadcasts a warning to the world. It impressed even the enemy. German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels called Foreign Correspondent "A masterpiece of propaganda, a first-class production which no doubt will make a certain impression upon the broad masses of the people in enemy countries". Hitch was fighting Nazi propaganda fire with a fire of his own. Rebecca may have taken home the Oscar, but for my money Foreign Correspondent is the better film. It’s certainly more reflective of what was on Hitchcock’s mind in 1940.

9.  White Heat (1949)
Possibly James Cagney’s greatest film, each act of White Heat explores a different crime subgenre – gangster, prison, heist.  Cagney plays mobster Cody Jarrett, a psychotic Mama’s boy worthy of the later Bruno Antony or ;[;[Norman Bates. After killing four men in a train robbery, Jarrett confesses to a lesser crime committed elsewhere to give him a false alibi for the murders.  While serving a year in prison, members of his gang plot against him and the group is infiltrated by an undercover agent (Edmund O’Brian). After Jarrett’s release, they undertake a payroll robbery at a chemical plant unaware of the traitors and lawman in their midst.  A perennial entry on all-time great films lists, White Heat is one of the darkest masterpieces to come out of the ‘40’s.  And that ending. Wow! Say it all together: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”  Boom!

8. The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy, as if you didn’t know by now) leave Nicky Jr behind and visit Nick’s parents (Harry Davenport and Lucile Watson) in rural New England.  Word quickly circulates that the famous detective is on a case, rumors fanned by Nora to impress Nick’s father, who thinks little of sleuthing and wanted his son to be a doctor like he is. Then a man is shot dead on the Charles’ doorstep and the fictious case becomes real. One of the best in the series, the cast of colorful small-town suspects makes it the most engaging mystery since the 1934 original. 

The fifth film, it was the first entry without series director W.S. Van Dyke who died in 1943. With Loy off supporting the war effort, MGM announced in pre-production that Irene Dunne would be cast as Nora. Horrified fans started a mail campaign demanding Loy. As Powell said: “The fans wanted Myrna, and they didn't want anyone else...And I wanted Myrna, too…I've never seen a girl so popular with so many people.” When Loy did return (her only film of the war years) she donated her salary to the war effort.  The Thin Man Goes Home would be followed by a final sequel in Song of the Thin Man (1947) a darker, noirish picture which could have made this list too. Is there any mystery series (or comedy or romance series) that is this good, this long? If you can think of one put it in the comments below. 

7. The Killers (1946)
Expanded from an Ernest Hemingway short story of the same name The Killers starts out in tense and riveting fashion. Two hitmen (Charles McGraw and William Conrad) arrive in Brentwood, New Jersey and murder a gas station attendant nicknamed “the Swede” (Burt Lancaster).  Insurance investigator Jim Reardon (Edmund O’Brien) looking for a motive for the killings, delves into the Swede’s past, unearthing a rogue’s galleries of suspects including gangster-gone-straight “Big Jim” Colfax (Albert Dekker) and old flame Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner).  

As Reardon moves closer to the truth, the Swede’s story is told in Citizen Kane-style flashbacks. Lancaster, terrific in his film debut, and Gardner, given a chance to shine after years of bit parts, both deservedly became stars. The music written to accompany the hitmen at every appearance would later become the Dragnet theme. 

With a screenplay by Anthony Veiller (and an uncredited rewrite by John Huston), The Killers would go on to beat out such other classics as Notorious and The Big Sleep for the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Picture.  But the truest praise came from Hemingway himself who called The Killers “The only good picture ever made of a story of mine.”
 

6. The Big Sleep (1945)
“Ah ha!” you say, you’ve caught an error. Every cinephile knows The Big Sleep (based on the 1939 Raymond Chandler novel, with a screenplay by William Faulkner and starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as widow Vivian Rutledge) came out in 1946, not 1945. Well, have faith true believers, this requires an explanation. When director Howard Hawks filmed The Big Sleep, World War II was coming to a close. Warner Bros. Pictures had a backlog of war films the studio wanted to release before the fighting ceased. So, with the film in the can, The Big Sleep’s theater distribution was pushed back. Warner Bros. did, however, play it to Allied servicemen fighting in the South Pacific in early 1945. 

Then a funny thing happened. Thanks To Have and Have Not, Bogie and Bacall became Hollywood’s hottest couple on and off screen. Bacall’s agent asked if Hawks and the studio would be willing to film new scenes to capitalize on their chemistry and increase the role for Bacall’s character. Twenty minutes of new footage were shot, mostly featuring the couple exchanging sexually charged banter. Scenes were re-ordered, others removed, and two key characters dropped to accommodate the new footage. 

This version, released in 1946, was the classic we’ve all come to know. A terrific film, but even its most fanatic admirers will admit the plot is confusing. (When Jack Warner cabled Chandler asking if a character was murdered or had killed himself, the author replied “Dammit, I don’t know either!”).  

In the 1990’s, a copy of the original 1945 cut was found in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Hugh Hefner, a fan of Chandler’s work, paid for a restoration and theater distribution of the 1945 print. Since then, the debate has raged: ’45 or ’46?  Roger Ebert preferred ’46, caring more for “feel” than story. The Washington Post thought them both masterpieces but very different films. Me? I watched both versions again for this article. I’ll side with Hef and the servicemen. There is enough interplay between Bogie and Bacall in the ‘45 cut for my taste and with the scenes in proper order and those two other characters present, the plot makes much more sense. Have you seen both versions? If so, which do you prefer? Please tell me in the comments.

5. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
One of Hitchcock’s finest films of any decade, Shadow of a Doubt is the story of Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Teresa Wright) and her visiting uncle Charles “Charlie” Oakley (Joseph Cotten). The two Charlies share a special bond, one that is tested by the terrible secrets Uncle Charlie brings with him when he arrives at the family home in Santa Rosa, California.  

Wright’s Charlie is easily my favorite Hitchcock heroine, and the actress is a joy to watch in the role. No icy blonde bound for humiliation, the character is a plucky, warm, and highly intelligent brunette who follows the clues to discover what her uncle really has been up to on the East Coast with all those “merry widows” who seem to be dying off. When the secrets are revealed, she matches wits with her uncle and ultimately defeats him while sheltering her family from the horrible truth. 

That family is excellently portrayed and I’m particularly fond of Henry Travers as her father, a bored banker and mystery fan who plots murderous scenarios with family friend Herbie (Hume Cronyn) over the dinner table. Their humorously imagined killings are a perfect balance to the real threat Uncle Charlie has brought into their home. Cotten is flawless in the role, charming enough to fool everyone, but his niece, and chillingly sinister when cornered.  Hitchcock would say for the rest of his life this was his favorite of all his films. Who can argue with the Master? Well, maybe I’d dare to argue (a little) as I have another Hitchcock film at number four.  

4. Notorious (1946)    
Poor Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). She loves American agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) but he wants her to sleep with and ultimately marry another man, Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), so she can spy on Sebastian and his circle of German conspirators in Rio de Janeiro.  

Alicia obeys partially because she is a patriot and wants to stop the Nazis from restarting the German war machine, partly because her German-American father was a spy and traitor and she wants to atone for his actions, but mostly because she loves Devlin and he asks her to do this. Devlin, while directing her actions, resents her obeying his carnal orders and treats her in a jealous and passive aggressive manner. How dark and twisted is that? But it’s for national security, right? 

Sebastian, despite being implicitly a Nazi (the word is never used), is portrayed as a sympathetic character for a villain. He truly loves Alicia, and she is using that love to destroy him. What it amounts to his one of the blackest and most suspenseful love triangles ever put to screen.  

Notorious marks a major development in Hitchcock’s career. Midway through pre-production, he finally jettisoned producer David O. Selznick. From here on out, Hitch would produce his own films (as well as direct and develop the stories with his writers).  With this freedom, starting with Notorious his movies would become more psychological in focus, an aspect that has given his best work a true timeliness. There is always something uncomfortable going on underneath the surface now. 

Not that the magic is all subtext, visual storytelling remained a strength. For example, the legendary tracking shot from the top of a high staircase down to a key in Alicia’s hand far below. (A prop Bergman would keep as a memento).  Or one of the most famous MacGuffin’s in history, the uranium ore that Sebastian is storing in the wine cellar, implying his team is working on an atomic bomb. (Notorious was filmed shortly before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the American government was very leery about uranium references in the media.) Hitchcock claimed he and his screenwriter Ben Hecht were followed by the FBI during shooting.) 

How good is Hitchcock at pulling the strings in Notorious? Consider this. It has no gunfights, no chase scenes, no onscreen murders, not a punch thrown or shot fired, yet it undoubtedly a superb example of the thriller genre. How? It’s all psychology and suspense. The Master playing the audience like a violin.  Critic Roger Ebert regarded Notorious as Hitchcock’s best work and one of the ten best films of all time. 

3. Double Indemnity (1944)
I’m glad I doubled down on Double Indemnity. The first time I viewed Billy Wilder’s film, years ago, it would have not made this list.  Having grown up watching reruns of My Three Sons, and Disney live action fair like Follow Me Boys! and The Absent-Minded Professor, Fred MacMurray to me was a gentle, fatherly everyman not a murderous heel spouting risqué dialogue as he is here. This really threw me. 

And Barbara Stanwyck in a cheap wig was not as dangerously beguiling as femme fatale sirens like Veronica Lake, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner or Ava Gardner. I didn’t understand why MacMurray’s insurance salesman would destroy his life for her. (Wilder would say that the phoniness of the wig was meant to hint at the phoniness of the character beneath it.) 

On a second viewing, those biases fell aside. This is one great film, rocketing up to its current position. The best of a noir sub-subgenre featuring evil women seducing weak men to gain help murdering husbands or sugar daddies, this trope is found in The Woman in the Window (1944), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and countless other films to this day. (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine editor Janet Hutchings once told me this plotline is the most frequently submitted to her magazine. One wonders how many are influenced by Double Indemnity?)  

The difference is in the high quality of the performances by MacMurray and Stanwyck (once all biases and wigs are ignored), a fantastic screenplay by Wilder and Raymond Chandler (based on the James M. Cain novel of the same name), and perfect direction by Wilder, with suspenseful sequences that may equal anything Hitchcock did in the 1940’s. (Not an easy admission for a Hitchcock devotee like me.)  Among these are a sequence on a train where MacMurray cannot find privacy to fake a suicide, or the moment after dumping the body when Barbara’s car refuses to start, or when a character places a gun under a pillow that you know will be used later, or the extended tension when MacMurray’s friend and colleague, insurance investigator Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson, never better), recruits him to help solve the murder MacMurray himself committed. I could go on forever. Even a conversation in a grocery store is fraught with danger and suspense. For many, this film is the apex of film noir’s Golden Age. I can see why.

The last two films, flipped back and forth for the top position a half-dozen times during the drafting of this list. Oh, the agony, we arbitrary list makers go through! But the piece has to be finished, so the positions must be set. He takes a breath.  So… 

2.  The Third Man (1949)
“The dead are happier dead,” remarks a character in The Third Man. The statement reflects not only the speaker’s sociopathic views, but the exhaustion of a war weary Europe in the late ;40s. Director Carol Reed made two excellent thrillers in the years preceding this film, Odd Man Out (1947, Roman Polanski’s favorite film), and Fallen Idol (1948), but The Third Man is his masterpiece.  

Written by the great Graham Greene (who drafted both screenplay and novella), The Third Man tells the story of Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a naïve American Western author who arrives in post-WWII Vienna to work for his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to discover that Lime was killed by a passing car days before Holly’s arrival. 

Martins finds the accident suspicious and seeks to discuss it with two witnesses (Ernst Deutch and Siegfried Breuer) who carried Lime’s body away and a mysterious “third man” who was also at the scene. His search for this third man brings him into contact with Lime’s girlfriend, actress Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli), a German-speaking Czech who lives in dread of being deported to the Soviet Zone, and British military police officer Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) who tells Martins that Lime was an unscrupulous raconteur operating in all zones of divided Vienna.  

In an era when most filming was done on sets and studio backlots, The Third Man was filmed primarily onsite in still-rebuilding Vienna, giving it greater realism and vibrancy than other pictures of the time. Indeed, the divided city has an authentic character as strong as any flesh and blood actor. It is a beautiful film for the eyes and ears with harsh lighting and Dutch angles from expressionist cinematographer Robert Krasker and a distinctive score by local zither player Anton Karas (whom Reed discovered playing one night in a Vienna wine-garden and invited him to score his film.)  

Despite rumors, Welles did not direct any of the second unit filming, though he did provide the famous “cuckoo clock” line. The actor performances are starling modern, and Greene’s dialogue is imbibed with depth, ironic humor and a real despair.  A speech by a villain looking down from the heights of the Wiener Riesenrad Ferris wheel, the people below resembling mere dots, is one of the most memorable and chilling ever given. “Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax.” 

The rare thriller to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Third Man was voted by the British Film Institute as the greatest British film of all time (of any genre or era). They aren’t wrong. I love this film and can’t believe The Third Man is second to anything.

 But there is another film I love as much, and it defines crime cinema in the ‘40’s like no other.

1. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Ah, that black bird. The greatest MacGuffin of all. John Huston’s directorial debut was the third filming of Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel, but this is definitive. Those other films took liberties with the story and were of mixed success, so Huston decided “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” and writing the screenplay himself, followed the book scene-for-scene, dialogue-for-dialogue. 

It was an enormous hit launching Huston’s career as both director and screenwriter and turning B-list gangster actor Humphrey Bogart into a major star. (Coupled with Casablanca released the next year Bogart was on a fast track to becoming a Hollywood icon.) More than any other film, it ushered in the era of the film noir and Sam Spade (Bogart) became the archetype for a hardboiled detective. The Maltese Falcon tells, in essence, two interlocking stories: one is a mystery about who killed Spade’s detective partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), the other is a game of wits with a quartet of crooks seeking a statue of a falcon which is supposedly encrusted with priceless jewels beneath its enameled skin. 

With one of history’s most sublime casts, each of those actors perfectly defines their crooked characters: the duplicitous femme fatale Miss Wonderly/Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), the over-dressed, treacherous fop Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), the gluttonous, talkative criminal leader Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and the unhinged youthful gunman Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook, Jr.). 

To watch the five main characters, try to outmaneuver each other for the priceless bird, each spouting Hammett’s snappy dialogue, is one of the great joys of cinema. At the center of the storm is Spade juggling crooks, police and Miles' widow Iva (Gladys George) who is infatuated with Sam. He trusts nobody and plays it straight with no one except his secretary/side kick Effie Perrine (Lee Patrick).

 Bogart’s other great film detective, Philip Marlowe, may have gone down the “mean streets”, but Sam Spade is plenty mean himself. As in the book, Sam keeps his thoughts private from other characters and audience alike, and much of the tension comes from wondering if Spade will fall in with the crooks and become one of them. He is on the edge of being an antihero. It’s a corrupt world, but is our hero corrupt? 

At the denouncement, Spade steps back from the abyss at last revealing his cards and telling O'Shaughnessy: “Don’t be too sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be. That sort of reputation might be good business, brining high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy.” 

In a sentimental age, when the male and female leads were supposed to go off together hand-in-hand (even Notorious, as black as it is, ends with Grant and Bergman together), The Maltese Falcon throws a curve. When O'Shaughnessy admits to killing Miles, Spade tells his lover: “Yes, Angel, I’m gonna send you over. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”  It begins a speech many can recite from memory. Some film historians think Psycho (1960) is the great severing point between the Age of Sentimentality and the Age of Sensation in cinema. I’ll maintain that The Maltese Falcon did that nineteen year earlier.
Why is The Maltese Falcon number one? I’ll quote the film’s last line, one improvised by Huston from Shakespeare on the set.

“It’s the stuff dreams are made of.”

Any films I missed either on the list or Honorable Mentions? Give me your own favorites from the 40’s.

Now’s the time when the blog author normally plugs some work. I like to keep my shameless promotions relevant to the article. Fortunately, I had a thriller short story set in 1943 published this year. “Locked-In” was in the January/February 2022 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. If you liked this article, please revisit my story in a back issue or Magzter or wherever you read AHMM and tell me if it fits in with the era. You can read Rob Lopresti’s review of “Locked-In” here.

Second Chances

 

A common question for fiction writers is Do editors often ask you to revise and resubmit a short story?

The answer, in my case, is no. Most of the editors of the magazines and anthologies I submit to tend to either accept a story or reject it, period, with no reasons mentioned and no second chances. 

But not always. Occasionally I'll send a story in and get back a note from the editor saying the submission almost made it but not quite, and asking if I would consider changing such-and-such and resubmitting? In that case, my answer is usually yes. In fact I can't think of a time when it wasn't yes. I make whatever change(s) they want, whether it's deleting something controversial, adding something that relates more to their theme or their market, revising the ending, etc. I have two reasons for trying hard to do what they ask me to: (1) it always results in a sale--at least it has for me--and (2) if/when I later sell that story as a reprint or use it in a collection of my own, I can change it right back to the way it was at first. So, simply put, why not?

I know a lot of folks who don't agree with giving in that easily, who resist/decline most editorial suggestions to revise and resubmit. To them I would say Fine--do what you want. But--again--I like to sell what I write, and I want to please the editor if I can. I also try to be agreeable when editors ask for changes after acceptance. Chances are, I'll be sending more stories to that publication in the future, and I'd prefer to be labeled Easy to Work With.

All this is not to say I've never suggested some alternative ways of changing things. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. And to argue at all depends on how strongly I feel about the changes.

Most after-acceptance requests for revision are too minor to ever think twice about. An editor once asked me if I could change "He cut his eyes at me" to something else because she wasn't familiar with the concept of eye-cutting. I changed it to "He gave me a suspicious look," which in my opinion wasn't as effective but which I also didn't consider worth fussing about. Other requests (whether pre-acceptance or post-) have involved revising story endings to be more upbeat, less happy, more concise, etc. In every case I can remember, I have saluted and merrily made that kind of change. And, as I said earlier, sometimes changed it right back again after publication.

One editorial discussion I recall--and I think I've mentioned it before at this blog--happened when Strand Magazine editor Andrew Gulli phoned me after the first story I ever submitted to him, back in 1999. He said the story was under consideration but he had a question about a poison I used in the story to do away with a main character's wife. "None of us here have ever heard of that poison," Andrew said. "Where'd you find out about it?" As it turned out, there was a reason they hadn't heard of it: I made it up. So after a long and awkward silence, I answered, "I made it up." Another pause. Andrew said, "You made it up?" I said, "Yep. I made it up." Yet another long silence dragged by. Finally he said, "Okay." And that was it. The story was published with my imaginary poison, which I think was derived from the oscolio blossoms of East Africa or some such thing, and the story went on to be listed by Otto Penzler in Best American Mystery Stories as one of the top 50 mysteries of that year. I learned a valuable lesson from that exchange: if you need something to perform a particular task in fiction and there's nothing available in real life that fits the bill, sometimes it's okay to dream up something believable that does work, plug it in, and go happily on your way. But I still remember how scared I was as a fairly new writer, saying what I said to a real editor.

I have so far never been asked to make structural plot revisions or change things like POV or my choice of the viewpoint character. Those would, after all, be major requests--if those things were wrong I suppose the story would probably have been rejected outright. I have, however, been asked now and then (by one market in particular) to change a story's title. Again, I almost always agree to that. And--very honestly--my titles are sometimes changed at that market without their ever even asking my permission. When that happens it always makes me feel a bit like Rodney Dangerfield, but the resulting paycheck seems to help a lot in soothing that discomfort.

The funniest dispute I've heard about, between editor and author, was described to me awhile back by one of my oldest and most-admired writer friends. I won't use names here, but the editor asked the writer to change the way one of the characters in a story set in the middle ages addressed a local warlord. The character said "milord" and the editor preferred "Sir Knight." The writer said "Sir Knight" sounded clumsy, and preferred "milord." The editor also objected to the phrase "like shit through a goose." The writer replied that the speaker was a soldier and should sound like one. After a long pause (I can relate to those) the editor sighed and said, "Tell you what. I'll trade you the milords for the shits." And that's what they did.

Question: What are some your own experiences, with regard to editorial requests? Are you often asked to make changes to a submitted short-story manuscript, either before or after acceptance? If so, have you usually agreed, or resisted? Did you win or lose the argument? What's the oddest/funniest thing you've been asked to change?

As my friend said to me following the description of his above encounter with the editor, sometimes that kind of back-and-forth game can be fun. After all, how many things in life are negotiable anymore?

That's it for today. Keep writing, and keep negotiating.

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real. The appearance.

It's what writers strive do in fiction. Harlan Ellison once said, "I want it to seem real ... to hold up the mirror of life and turn it slightly so you can see things from a new angle."

Create credible characters for readers to follow, to like, to hate, to worry about.

Give the reader fictional hyper-realism. Magic-realism. Hell, anything to show it, to elicit emotion in the reader. Fiction is liberating. It allows us to make up stuff, create people, create worlds, re-create our cities the way we want them to OR show the way they are through eyes with a different vision.

It's easy to screw this up by not paying attention to the details of life, by not showing those details, by taking the lazy way out – such as writing "it was sunny outside" instead of showing sunlight reflecting off a store's window. Pay attention. Observe life and take notes and give it back to the reader with the mirror tilted.

Crime fiction is realistic. The big problem I have, especially with movies, is characters acting illogically (better described as stupidly). I know people make mistakes and do screwy things, but leaving a machine gun on the ground and running off with a revolver with only two shots left in it isn't logical. Why didn't they take the bag of food? They haven't eaten in weeks. Why didn't they take a moment to fill up their canteen? Why don't they call the police right away?

Good ficiton is no easy to write. A writer just needs to give the appearance.

I've quoted Harlan before but I love this one: "I'm a professional liar, folks. I write fiction for a living. I make up weird crap and people pay me for it."

Other tidbits:

Did you know Mike Nesmith of The Monkees wrote "Different Drum" (recorded by The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt)?

Did you know Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb (The Bee Gees) wrote "Islands in the Stream" (recorded by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton)?

Did you know Sony Curtis of The Crickets (of Buddy Holly and the Crickets) wrote "I Fought The Law" (recorded by The Bobby Fuller Four)?

Pretty sure we all know Neil Diamond wrote The Monkees hits "I'm a Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You."

That's all for now.

Indexes and Other Treasures

When I heard the title of Dennis Duncan's new book my reaction was basically to pedal my bike to the local independent bookstore and yell "Take my money!"

I am fond of popular histories of scholarship.  So I have decided to tell you a bit about some of my favorite books of this type, with random anecdotes from each.  It has nothing to do with mystery fiction, so feel free to ignore me if you wish.  I get that a lot.

Dennis Duncan. Index, A History of the. The index is one of those things we take for granted.  Haven't they always been there, hiding at the back of nonfiction books, making them more usable?  Of course, the answer is  a lot more complicated.

Duncan points out three key ingredients you need before you can have an index.  First, comes the ABCs.  I don't mean the alphabet (duh), but the concept of organizing words in alphabetical order, which is a different thing.  Then, you need the codex, which is what we think of as the structure of a book, (indexes don't work well with scrolls).  The third essential we can date specifically: page numbers were first used in books in 1472.

This book includes all kinds of oddities: Indexes so long they had their own indexes.  Indexes to novels.  A short story in the form of an index.  Indexes created by authors' political enemies to mock their books. A picture index of envelope fragment shapes (and that was in a book by a well-known author.)

Oh, and how about this fact: ancient librarians used to glue a scrap of parchment with author and title to the back of a scroll.  The Greek term for that device was sillybos, from which we get the word syllabus.  The Latin word was index.

Denis Boyles.  Everything Explained That is Explainable.  The eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1910-1911) is considered one of the greatest reference books.  Its creation was part scholarship, part marketing scheme, and part con game.

The head publicist was Henry Haxton.  Earlier in his career, working as a reporter for William Randolph Hearst, he tested the lifeboat system of the Oakland ferryboats by "accidentally" falling into the Bay.  Fortunately the safety system turned out to be good enough.

The main editor for American entries was Franklin Hooper, who is drily described in the current edition of the Britannica as "undaunted by his own lack of scholarship."

The Americans who were running the encyclopedia project in coordination with the Times created something brand new: the Times Book Club.  They sold books much cheaper than had previously been legal, causing mob scenes known as "bookstore madness."

And speaking of the Times, the entire encyclopedia project almost fell through because of the obstinacy of a family whose mighty power came from their owning one-seventh of one-third of one-fifth of three-sixteenths of that newspaper.  This resulted in a lawsuit that was heard by Mr. Justice John Charles Darling, about whom, well…

Around the turn of the century barrister F.E. Smith was defending in capital case. After he gave a long and complex explanation of a point of law Justice Darling, complained: "Well, after all that, Mr. Smith, I am none the wiser."

Smith replied: "Perhaps none the wiser, m'lud, but certainly better informed." His client was executed.

Simon Garfield. Just My Type. Fifty years ago no one outside the publishing and design industries knew or cared much about printing fonts.  Then came personal computers and now everyone has an opinion.  I have seen college students argue furiously over serif vs san serif.

Garfield's book is a fascinating journey through the history of fonts. For example: in 1908 Thomas Cobden-Sanderson killed his classic Doves font by taking all the metal letters and throwing them into the Thames, so his partner could not profit from it.

In 1979 Japanese designer Eiichi Kono was selected to revise the iconic font used in London's subway system.  Rather dryly, he first demonstrated his work with the word underglound.

The first thing I did when I got this book was search the index (there's that word again) for The Prisoner, because that science fiction TV classic was the first place I ever really noticed a font.

Turned out the unusual lettering used in the surreal claustrophobic Big-Brotherish Village is Albertus, the same one used on street signs in the City, which is the financial district of London.  Hmm…

Garfield dedicates an entire chapter to the much despised  Comic Sans.  The title?  "We Don't Serve Your Type."

Simon Winchester.  The Professor and the Madman. When James Murray took on the task of creating the Oxford English Dictionary in 1857 he knew he would need help from hundreds of volunteers to track down unusual words and meanings in thousands of books.  He had no way of knowing that his most useful contributor would be Dr. W.C. Minor, an American Civil War veteran imprisoned for murdering a stranger during a bout of paranoia.  

This is the only book on my list which was made into a movie (starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, no less).  The flick is worth watching although it does get Hollywoodish, even adding a love story to provide a motive for some of Minor's bizarre actions.  (Here's a better motive: the man was crazy.)

Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton. Cartographies of Time.  For hundreds of years people searched for a way to visualize the passage of time.  This books shows dozens of examples.

Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, cracked the problem in 1765 by inventing the timeline.  Since the timeline, like the book index, is so much a part of our lives it is hard to grasp that someone needed to dream it up. This made me wonder: Did it seem just as natural to the people of Priestley's time as to us, or are we just used to it?  

It turns out the former is true.  Other authors started using timelines immediately.  And it only took twenty years for William Playfair to add a y-axis and create the line graph.

 Violet Moller.  The Map of Knowledge. Moller says that when she was studying the history of science  she was taught something like this: "There were the Greeks, and then the Romans, and then there was the Renaissance."

Moller thought a piece or two had to be missing from that story.  Surely the Classical texts hadn't preserved themselves for a millennium.  As she demonstrates there were thousands of rulers, scientists, scholars, publishers, and librarians who cataloged, preserved, and used those texts.  Many of them spoke Arabic.  (Of course this relates to the Chicon panel I mentioned last month, where scholars complained that the Middle Ages received a bad reputation because of Renaissance propaganda.) 

You have probably heard of the great library of Alexandria, but you may not know of what we librarians would call their acquisitions policy: they wanted everything.  Each ship which landed in Alexandria was searched and all books confiscated.  When they borrowed texts from other libraries to copy they kept the original and sent back the duplicate.  Sneaky, sneaky, librarians.

In the tenth century the library in Cordoba, Spain, had 404 volumes.  That doesn't sound too impressive but I'm only talking about the  catalog of their collection.

In the eleventh century Salerno, Italy, was considered the center of modern medicine in all of Europe.  But a North African merchant who got sick there was so appalled by the ignorance of the doctors that he trained as a physician in his native Carthage and  returned to Italy with hundreds of up-to-date medical texts. 

In Venice, Italy, in 1502, a printer named Manutius started using a dolphin and anchor logo on his books, apparently the first "product brand."  It was such a recognized symbol of quality work that other publishers began counterfeiting it.

About half of the texts of ancient Greek we have were written by the physician Galen.  But since he was a doctor we can't read his handwriting.  (Rimshot! Sorry...)

And now I shall go read a mystery.

Holding Back the Tide (Putin's Folly, Pt. II)

The story of King Canute trying to hold back the tide by royal decree is sometimes framed as a fable of kingly vanity, but it’s in fact the reverse.  Canute was rebuking the flatterers in his court who pretended to believe the king’s powers were so absolute he could command the waters to obey.  Canute plunked his throne down on the shore and waited for the tide to come in, and of course got his feet wet.  His point being that only God had the final word, and the power of kings was for naught.

It’s nothing short of amazing that the vanity of princes keeps leading the rest of us to the precipice of doom.  Mitch McConnell clearly thinks Trump is a parasite and a clown, and a danger to the republic, but you won’t hear him say it, because Trump’s base are still useful idiots. A similar paralysis apparently holds sway in the upper reaches of the Kremlin apparat. Putin is dangerous to Russia because Putin has a dangerous idea of Russia, rooted in an imperialist, pan-Slavic, and imaginary czarist past. 

The clamor and the crazy don’t abate.

The voices on the Russian nationalist right are only getting louder.  I don’t know whether Ramzan Kadyrov, the puppet caudillo of Chechnya, or Yevgeny Progozhin, shadow commander of the Wagner Group, are trying to give Putin cover from the right wing by sounding crazier than he does, or positioning themselves as kingmakers for the succession, but their public rhetoric probably mirrors private sentiment, namely, Off With Their Heads, with no lack of fall guys.

Not that heads haven’t already rolled.  No fewer than eight one- and two-star generals have been killed in action this year in Ukraine.  This is a consequence of the Russian army’s institutional dysfunction: there is no professional NCO corps, and junior officers aren’t trusted to make command decisions; generals have to be on the battlefield, which gets them killed.  More to the point, the actual theater commanders are being relieved, retired, or packed off in disgrace.  Dvornikov, given ground command in April, was fired in June.  Serdyukov, commander of the airborne, shown the door.  Zhuravlev, commander Western Military District (responsible for the security of European Russia), got the boot last week. 

The new guy, and the first Russian general in Ukraine to be given sole command and complete responsibility, is Sergei Surovikin, known for tactics in Syria that included two months of airstrikes on Aleppo.  What this means for the war in Ukraine is anybody’s guess, but the Kremlin seems to measure success by the numbers of Russian dead.

Which brings us to the media hysteria.  It’s tempting to compare this to the MAGA bubble, the Fox echo chamber, but we’re not talking about Rupert Murdoch, we’re talking about Russian state media.  RT, Russia Today, is supposedly independent, but that’s a complete fiction, they channel the Kremlin id. Just today, after Russia went after dozens of targets across Ukraine, many if not most of them obviously non-military, Putin’s on-air cheerleaders were nothing if not gleeful.  Labeling the attack on the Kerch bridge an act of terrorism, they eagerly recommended a scorched earth policy, and targeting Zelensky and members of his government specifically and personally, to rid us of these “roaches.” 

I don’t know how to read this as anything other than panic. I think they’ve actually lost their marbles. Putin’s position, both inside and out, is now so weak that his stooges are using language that sounds like a parody of Kim Jong-un’s scripted praise.

I said this before, and I’ll say it again. Putin is a dead man walking. It can’t happen soon enough.

Bail at the Bar

      For most people charged with a criminal offense, the top priority is their release from jail. It's a hierarchy of needs– protestations of innocence, lawyers, trials—all those issues follow the primal urge to escape the confines of incarceration. The rest will come later. Around these parts, release usually involves making bail.

            We've talked about bail before, but I'd like to spend some time focusing on the development of the idea in the United States.

            Black’s Law Dictionary defines “bail” as “the surety who procures the release of a person under arrest by becoming responsible for his appearance at the time and place designated.” In practice, we tend to think of bail as the amount of money that must be pledged to secure a defendant's release pending the disposition of the case. A "bail bond" is a written promise that the defendant will, while at liberty, appear as required or that the signers of the bond will pay the amount of money specified in the order fixing bail.

            Black's definition of bail is personal. It hearkens to an Anglo-Saxon notion and a time when English society was clannish. Justice was private, an affair between individuals. The government did not prosecute crimes. Individuals did. To prevent blood feuds, a system of personal remuneration emerged. Values were established for the loss of lives, limbs, or livelihood (a weregild or bot). Guilty parties were expected to pay. To guard against flight, the defendant was required to find a clan member to act as surety. The sponsor's pledge equaled the amount of the penalty.

            With the arrival of the Normans, things got muddied. Law enforcement increasingly became the responsibility of the royal authorities. Corporal punishments, rather than remuneration, became accepted practice. Accurately setting the value of bail, as punishments moved away from cash payments to mutilation, (ear notching, branding, incarceration) became harder. The Normans also identified classes of offenses that they considered non-bailable. Contraction and expansion of bail followed through the ensuing centuries. Parliament stepped in when over-zealous or corrupt local authorities limited the access to bail. For example, local judges sometimes thwarted the pre-trial detention laws by setting unaffordable bail amounts. To safeguard against this, the English Bill of Rights stated that excessive bail ought not to be required. A similar phrase was written into the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

            The English bail system that emerged contained a pledge to appear, enforced by the threat of a reasonable penalty due upon failure. Exceptions were carved to continue incarceration for a variety of cases.

            The colonists carried the English notions of bail to America. Most states, however, wrote liberal laws regarding bail. Most of the English exceptions were ignored. This makes sense. Jails were expensive to maintain. Law enforcement resources were sparse. Keeping all but the most dangerous pre-trial defendants incarcerated was a difficult task. Colonists, furthermore, fled an oppressive government. The Federal Judiciary Act, enacted in 1789, and most state constitutions provided an absolute right to bail in all except capital cases.

            The English bail system transported to America encountered a new problem. Think back to that definition of bail from Black’s Law Dictionary. It incorporates the Anglo-Saxon notion that bail is a pledge by a person that the defendant shall appear. In the tight-knit communities of medieval England, a friend or clansman pledged attendance. Although nearly all crimes were bailable in the United States, who would pledge? On the frontier, most defendants lacked close friends or relatives to act as the personal custodian for the charged individual, especially when flight was readily an option. Sanctuary was always to the west. The combination of problems presented an entrepreneurial opportunity. The commercial bail bond business emerged in the United States.

Kai Schreiber, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/

The brothers, Pete and Tom McDonough, are usually credited with establishing the first bail bond business. The two ran their father's bar located at the corner of Clay and Kearney streets in San Francisco. The saloon stood near the Hall of Justice.

As a result, it served as a convenient watering hole for local attorneys. When a client got arrested, the bar owners began running down to the courthouse to make a defendant's bail. If the lawyer didn't have to leave "The Corner" to secure his client's release, he could keep drinking. When the brothers learned that the attorneys charged a fee for the bond, they saw the business opportunity. The McDonough brothers expanded the service, making the bail for non-drinking patrons.

            The McDonoughs developed an elaborate system of wireless communication. When an outlying jurisdiction made an arrest, they would be alerted. A payment, here and there, helped with access. Within minutes they would find a judge, secure an order setting bail, and post the cash. The defendant would be released, poorer for McDonough’s efforts. The business became known as “The Old Lady of Kearney Street.” Time Magazine once wrote:

"The Old Lady helped San Francisco be what many a citizen wanted it to be – a wide open town. She furnished bail by the gross to bookmakers and prostitutes, kept a taxi waiting at the door to whisk them out of jail and back to work."^†

            Not surprisingly, the McDonough brothers expanded into corruption and bribery. A local grand jury once reported,

"No one can conduct a prostitution or gambling enterprise in San Francisco without the approval, direct or indirect, of the McDonough brothers."^†

            Pete McDonough was convicted of bootlegging during Prohibition. Later, he was stripped of his bail bond license. The business closed. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted:

"The Old Lady … will take to her rocking chair, draw her shawl about her … But many a citizen thought simply: Good riddance."^†

            The commercial bail bond industry's original establishment retired. The Old Lady may have gone away, but she created a uniquely American business.

            Until next time.

^† (For the quotations, I am indebted to Corruption Central @Found SF.org and Schnacke, Jones, and Brooker, "The History of Bail and PreTrial Release")

They came for the plot, and stayed for the characters.

  

 

Some things are essential, yet not of the first order of importance.  You need to get paid for your work, but generally, people choose a type of work and stick with it for less tangible reasons than compensation.  A functioning cardio-vascular system is pretty handy, if you want to survive, but most of us concentrate on the life of our minds, and emotions.

Likewise, a book needs a good plot.  I’d argue that, in the mystery world, it’s as important as a beating heart.  Yet for me, the characters are the most valuable return on a reader’s investment.  Characters capture our attention, hijack our feelings and infect our memories. 

Starting with the protagonist.  A protagonist ushers people into the most intimate, and deceptive, corridors of a human being’s mind.  First person, third, or whatever, the reader is invited to tag along with an individual’s mental process, her ruminations, flights of mental chaos, her cold calculations.  The reader is a parasite feeding off an alien brain, and thus escaping ones own.  (I mean this in only the best way, not excepting vampire books, of which I’ve read exactly zero.)

Though the transaction is also observational.  The reader sees other people through the protagonist’s lens, who selects which qualities the other folks in the play expose, and which to ignore.  That’s why capable writers suggest you don’t write “He had a full head of brown hair and green eyes, and had a funny look on his face,” but rather, “He looked like he’d just swallowed a poisonous fish and was almost happy about it.”

I consumed a lot of door-stop popular novels in my youth, since they kept showing up in our house as the result of my mother’s feverish compulsion to keep pace with the Book of the Month Club.  To wit, James Michener, Leon Uris, Arthur Hailey, Irving Wallace – masters of engaging plots, characters made of mud and straw.  It’s not easy to write these books, and I’m glad they at least kept big publishing in business, but can you name a single compelling character emerging from all that tonnage of spilled ink and paper pulp? 

Meanwhile, my mother and I both tackled Ulysses.  What’s the plot?  Guy gets up in the morning and wanders around Dublin for a day, sees a few things and thinks about his life.  No one, despite heroic efforts and warehouses full of doctoral dissertations, has fully dissected the richness of this character, and side characters along for the ride, which is why Ulysses will be forever consumed and Arthur Hailey is a forgotten name. 

If you want to write fictional characters of any kind, the good news is you don’t have to invent all that much.  We all live in a deep sea of human experience.  Everywhere you look are brilliant characters.  Your crabby sister, muscular palates instructor (the one with the lisp), retired special ops commando with a house full of cats, earnest supervisor of public works, cross-dressing carpet salesperson, too-chipper young bank teller, crew-cut lawn-cutter heading for the Marines, sociopathic next-door neighbor (also with a house full of cats) – the world’s bursting with them.  You just have to write it down.

Millions love mysteries, initially because they’re literary puzzle games.  But at the end of the day, people are mostly interested in other people.  The wonderful thing about mysteries is they put people we recognize into impossible situations.  We’re allowed see how they endure extreme circumstances, how they react and behave often in ways that exceed their apparent capabilities.  Mysteries are the ultimate vicarious thrill ride.

It's one of the reasons I’m so fond of mysteries and thrillers.  Humans stress-tested to their limits, revealing deep wherewithal, surprising weakness and trials of moral fortitude.    

 

###

 

Stories

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," Dickens wrote at the start of A Tale of Two Cities. He was thinking of politics and the run up to the French Revolution, but modern mystery writers might well echo his sentiments. Never has there been more opportunity to see one's darlings in print, but rarely has it been so hard to make a decent profit.

And then while narrative – factual, counter-factual, frankly fake – is a crucial part of our present turbulent culture, writing stories and studying them is certainly taken less seriously than the all important STEM disciplines. 

In this atmosphere, Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is a cause for modest celebration: a fine novel that unabashedly celebrates stories – even silly ones like the fanciful ancient tale that fascinates so many of his characters.

Based on The Golden Ass of Apulieus, the story of a shepherd who longs to become a bird and fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land, opens the wonders of literacy for Anna, an impoverished apprentice embroiderer in  Constantinople just before its fall to the Turks. It will later fascinate Omeir, an illiterate Muslim conscripted with his two beloved oxen for the Sultan's siege army, who comes to see the book, now carefully hidden, as a source of magic. 

Researching the Greek story causes Konstance, alone on an inter-planetary starship, to regard her supposedly complete library with a skepticism that will change her life, while presenting the shepherd-turned-donkey to the next generation proves consolation and purpose for Zeno, traumatized soldier and talented translator.

Doerr, whose Pulitzer prize winning All the Light We Cannot See also featured youngsters on the cusp of adolescence, again writes with special perception about children, whether his two 15th century juveniles facing poverty, war, and possible enslavement, or modern day Seymour, clever but mildly autistic, whose only friend is an owl, or Konstance, whose peculiar life is definitely in science fiction territory.

 A situation further away from the Ancient Greeks than hers could hardly be imagined, yet the old story about a man who wants to be a bird and is mistakenly tranformed into a donkey captures Konstance, too, just as it does the school children who, with Zeno's help, will transform the old tale into a little play.

Indeed, the many uses of stories, the wonder of literacy, and the perfection of the printed book bind together the disparate narratives in Cloud Cuckoo Land, suggesting the application of another old bit of wisdom: Man does not live by bread alone.

---

The Falling Men, a novel by Janice Law with strong mystery elements, has been issued as an ebook on Amazon Kindle. Also on kindle: The Complete Madame Selina Stories.

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations and The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations are available from Apple Books

Haunted Hearts and Trapped Souls: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

October has crept around, and again for the season I'll risk a toe in gothic waters. Last year, I analyzed Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. To stay with the author, I'll delve into my favorite of Jackson's novels: We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962). 

First edition (Wikipedia)

Hill House was written in third person, often in a sweeping omniscient perspective that amplifies the narrative distance. Jackson never wanted us to understand Hill House's ghost. Instead, the novel explores how worse things than the supernatural walk our world. Persecution, isolation, fear-mongering, self-destruction. Jackson wrote about ordinary cruelty.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is no ghost story. There's not a scrap of actual magic, however much protagonist Merricat wishes otherwise. Castle is a crime novel. Humans are humans, and the dead are dead but never out of mind. The holds of the dead and our past are what gives Castle its unsettling punch. This time, Jackson wants us to meet cruelty up close and personal.

Consider this your spoiler alert.

The opening paragraph:

"My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead."

Masterful construction. Straight out, the voice invites a bond with this Wednesday Addams-ish Merricat. Her interests promise quirks and raise questions, lots of questions. Death stalks the paragraph. Unlayering the moving parts takes reading Castle closely more than once. If you haven't read it, hold two thoughts. First, Merricat believes magic exists--with a preference for a violent sort--though good luck might not. Second, every single word is about herself.

Merricat and Constance are the last Blackwoods alive after arsenic-laced sugar poisoned the family. The only other survivor, Uncle Julian, had gone unusually light on the sugar and was left an invalid. Merricat had been sent to bed without dinner--again. Suspicion lands on the otherwise-saintly Constance, the family cook and famously averse to sugar. But why use obvious means when she had a garden's worth of poisons? Why kill without a motive? A jury acquits Constance from lack of evidence, and the Blackwoods retreat to their hilltop confines.

Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2006

The novel opens six years later. Constance is captive to agoraphobia and a mother role to Merricat and the slowly-dying Julian. Julian obsesses with the unsolved crime and dedicates his addled brain to document it. Merricat runs errands and helps keep the house just as their parent left it. Between chores, she dashes around semi-feral with her cat, marking daily rituals and burying talismans against outsiders.

Her sympathetic magic protections aren't without cause. The village, sure Constance got away with murder, amps longstanding class friction into a cold war and Blackwood monster myth. Merricat endures vicious taunts on her twice-weekly supply runs. The grocer only serves her because she pays in Father's gold coins.

Constance is still young and attractive– and rich. Scandal cloud or not, a loyal upper crust connection wants Constance eased back into society. Constance is tempted. Merricat can't process Constance's restless thoughts or why any Blackwood might want to leave home.

Into the mix comes gold-digging cousin Charles after Constance's hand. Charles isn't the sharpest blade around. His charms and bluster work on Constance alone. Worse, his tactics make the wrong enemy in Merricat.

Underneath her endearing fails at magic, underneath her Blackwood grit, Merricat is stone cold cruel. She takes great lengths to follow strict house rules, such as parental belonging she can't touch. She can't enter Uncle Julian's room. She isn't allowed to light matches. She isn't allowed to prepare food. She states the rules simply, as if handed down from Constance or parents six years dead. But those rules aren't placed on Merricat. They're self-imposed. As Charles malingers, Merricat's changing attitudes show how her rules make shapes around darker things--not least a control mechanism over Constance. 

Jackson planted that seed in the opening paragraph. Merricat uses "I" eight times in six brief sentences. Constance is mentioned almost as a possession. At eighteen, Merricat is an indulged girl-child full of daddy issues and Blackwood privilege. Discipline is for less perfect children. Woe to anyone who disturbs the fantasy.

Merricat's cruelty isn't evil. Her obsessive routines and lack of expression and antisocial struggles hint at someone on the autism spectrum. She was born into Blackwood expectations and taught by formidable and vain parents. Her mother, a villager, had the Blackwood grounds sealed tight over Father's hesitation. It's not the last time her parents disagreed. One such argument rattled the manor that night of the tragic meal.

In the Jackson way, cruelty begets cruelty. A family friend from town makes her periodic visits. Merricat, no proper hostess, complains how terrible everyone in the village treats her. The guest correctly suggests that the townsfolk would be nicer to Merricat if Merricat was nicer in town. Constance asks for the same truce with Charles– and a bath and clean dress wouldn't hurt, either. 

Merricat never developed such emotional intelligence. Instead, she escalates her empty magic. When that doesn't scare off Charles, she uses his smoldering pipe to start a house fire. The town gathers to gawk and celebrate the fast-spreading blaze.

When the night is done, Charles is gone but so is most of the Blackwood finery, looted by the villagers. The upper floors are a burned hulk. Julian is dead of a smoke-induced heart attack.

In the aftermath, and in case anyone missed what's been in plain sight, Jackson clears up the murder mystery. Merricat did it– out of childish revenge for simple discipline. Merricat is fine with murder and fine letting Constance take the blame. Merricat is fine with burning the manor down, come what may.

Merricat wins, such as it is. Constance isn't going anywhere. The Blackwoods remain. The sister bond is sealed, if doomed. In a literary turn, vines grow over the wrecked manor. The sisters live in darkness and on meals left hurriedly by remorseful townsfolk. Merricat has achieved her self-image, a light of lights to be brought offerings. Sacrifices, more like. She's become the village bogeywoman from those rhymes. 

Technically, Merricat is an unreliable narrator. I don't read her that way. Mary Katherine Blackwood is honest from that opening paragraph. Stunted and dangerously arrogant--but honest in what she says and what she withholds. She feels no more need to share uncomfortable truths with a reader than she does in the village. We can't be sure how much guilt she feels, but Jackson doesn't spare the torture. Guilt is everywhere in the house. Guilt is Julian's main character function, a withering reminder Merricat can neither avoid nor internalize. Those rules become a coping mechanism.

The novel's secret sauce, though, is Jackson herself. The main characters are the sister figures caught in complex circumstances– sister figures often based on her daughters. The setting is again her New England stomping grounds, where years as a Bennington wife left her agoraphobic and feeling undervalued despite her track record. She tinkered with witchcraft. When Jackson wrote We Have Always Lived in The Castle, she wrote from her soul.

The Pros And Cons of Rideshare

 I've done rideshare for a while now. It's an easy way to make exrra money and get a leg up on bills. Gas hasn't been too bad for me. But I live in Ohio, and my car gets decent mileage.

But lately, the job hasn't been as much fun as it once was. Some of that comes from not driving so late. I don't do the 12-3 drunk rush on Saturday nights. The people who get into my car are generally sober. They're also rather subdued.

But that's not a stressor. I drive less now partly because the service now pays bonuses for twenty runs a weekend. That's good. I get tired more easily these days. And that's one reason I want to wind down my rideshare career.

• Fatigue - I always got tired driving. But I used to drive set times, some of them until the wee hours on Saturdays. Now I notice it more knocking off at 10 or 11 PM. 
• Wear and tear - This is a nice car I drive. I'd like to not buy another one for a few more years. Yet that dreaded 100K number is coming up.
• Driver shortage - You'd think this would be a plus. Fewer drivers mean more money. But the runs are longer. At one point, I got sent almost into Dayton. I live fifty miles south of there. Not a good night.
• Karening - I had a passenger who complained when I slowed down to look for an address. She reported me for falling asleep at the wheel. I reported her for being disruptive. I got $100 for having my account suspended for an evening. 
• Violence - It's in the news. Violence is escalating. Random shootings have happened in Over the Rhine, the bar district where I've made a lot of money. It's not been a problem. Yet. The shootings tend to happen after I log off for the night. Still, one evening, I stopped at a Shell Station in Cincinnati's Price Hill neighborhood. Literally, it looked like a scene from The Wire. There was no question what was going on. I had four toddlers in the backseat while their grandmother ran inside to pick up something. I never locked the door during a shift before. I did this time.

Some would say, "Hey, this is a great opportunity for crime fiction." True. But if you've read just my stories, you know being in the story is not much fun. 

Choosing the Right Weapon

(Short post this week, because we've got family coming for the first time in years!  Huzzah!)

Elmer Fudd © Looney Tunes

I was down at the Farmers' Market a couple of months ago, and there was a booth that the city had put up, asking people for suggestions to make downtown Sioux Falls better. I put in my two cents – we desperately need a large Central Park that everyone can use, that is quiet, not on any interstate, and has actual landscaping.  So did everyone else, including a lady who was telling every woman who stopped that "you need to empower yourself and get a gun. You will feel so safe."

Well, if you insist. I feel pretty empowered as it is.

I've never owned a gun, but I've known a lot of people who did and do. I've shot quite a variety of them myself, because in my younger days I attended dynamite parties down South, where it was quite common for people to show up with a few cases of beer, some stuff to grill, and a trunk full of firearms.

I quickly learned that I don't have the heft, the sheer mass, to use any kind of assault weapon without spraying bullets around like an old man in a barroom urinal after five beers. And some rifles have the kind of kick that leave you with a bruised shoulder (yep) and/or a cracked cheekbone (Nope – I would NEVER do the classic TV/movie/ad pose where you lean in with your face on a firearm. What, are you nuts?)

But I had good marksmanship with weapons that were more my weight. I could hit a distant target, and even a moving target, like a ping-pong ball hanging from a tree.

I also learned about shotguns – I could use one, if I aimed low and was ready to be knocked back, say, flat on my back to the ground. From that I learned that (at my weight) if you aim at someone's knees, you're bound to hit something serious as the shotgun kicks up, like their gonads, stomach, chest, or even head.

Which is why, to this day, if a woman asks me what kind of gun should she buy for self-defense, I always tell her to avoid any kind of handgun. If your hands shake (and they will, especially late at night in the dark), you're not going to hit your target, and you're just setting yourself up for worse than the whatever your assailant had planned. For home self-defense, buy a shotgun. Just racking the damn thing will scare the crap out of most people. Aim low, and you will hit something on the way up.

NOTE: One of my partners in crime, Leigh Lundin, pointed out that I really should tell people to keep a shotgun "pressed against their hipbone or thighbone to absorb shock and prevent the stock from slamming hard into the bone."  He's right.  Here's the thing, folks – if you never have fired a specific weapon you need to learn how to use it BEFORE you actually bring it home.

And I don't really believe in packing 24/7, because it gives too many people the idea that it makes them invulnerable, and they often do foolish things because of it. There are many true stories of a handgun falling out of a purse or a pocket and going off in the restroom. I know one armchair Rambo who managed to screw things up in the time of crisis and, while he survived, has never yet lived it down. Frankly, I've always found that a quick tongue or a quick run will get you out of most trouble, and I've lived in dicey neighborhoods in both LA and Atlanta. 

And I don't really feel like the karma or the cleanup from shooting someone, perhaps to death. I'm sticking to a baseball bat in the bedroom. Actually, I'm sticking to calling the police when I hear gunshots in the neighborhood (and I have), and otherwise trusting that the porch lights keep the critters away.  

So far, 100% success rate. 

Elmer Fudd with shotgun © Looney Tunes, Warner Bros.

Quotable Chicago... In Space!

 

As promised last month, here are some quotations from Chicon 8, the World Science Fiction Conference which I attended in Chicago in September.  Unfortunately, all context for the quotes had be quarantined due to covid concerns.

 "Science fiction is about upsetting society.  Mystery is about restoring it."        - Roberta Rogow

"I wrote this book but in a way the book wrote me.  It was cheaper than therapy." - Shelley Parker-Chan

"Every medievalist's favorite movie is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  It's the only accurate one." - Jo Walton

"Terrorists are political illiterates." - David Gerrold

"Neil Gaiman could write a haiku about his intestinal issues and it would be made into a hit movie about one man's struggle with colitis." - John Scazi

"Writers have a sort of Stockholm Syndrome with the protagonist." - James Patrick Kelly

"A lot of scriptwriters think of a published novel as a piece-of-shit first draft they can work from." - Meg Elison

"I can really sell integrity." - Adam Stempel

"How does time work?  Ask your grandmother.  She's seen more of it than you." - Joe Haldeman

"I have a five part answer to that.  The first part has sixteen parts. " - John Scalzi

"Rule Number One: Do not time travel to a war." - Connie Willis

"I'm a child skeptic.  Do they really exist?  They're always fuzzy in photographs." - Paul Calhoun

"Use problematic authors as a motivation to write a better book." - Suzanne Palmer

"Who among us has not wanted to be a pregnant horse?" - John Scalzi

"You hear about someone who does bad things and it turns out they had a bad childhood.  So what?" - David Gerrold

"The urge to always have novelty leads, ironically, to the oldest conspiracy theories." - Kenneth Hite

"The current scam is  cryptocurrency.  It's tulips." - Connie Willis

"My mother was a car and we lost her in a terrible space rotary accident." - Suzanne Palmer 

"I have a hard time watching Star Wars.  Those poor stormtroopers.  Did they all volunteer?" - James Patrick Kelly

"How do you write time travel stories?  With a manual typewriter." - Joe Haldeman

"You can put whatever you want in a burrito.  This is a free country." - John Scalzi

"If not us, who?  If not together, how?" - Suzanne Palmer

Opportunity Abounds

We met Mary Tyler Moore
on the streets of
Minneapolis.

I returned home from Bouchercon Minneapolis with two things: Covid and a renewed appreciation for the value of in-person Bouchercons.

A mere 1.4% of Bouchercon attendees reported contracting Covid at the convention, which places me among the select few. I don’t know from whom I caught it, but I’m pretty sure I know at which unofficial event it happened. A handful of the other attendees at that event also reported positive Covid test results post-convention.

The disease hit me hard, knocking me back the first week I was home. The second week I operated at about half-speed. As I write this, I’m three weeks post-diagnosis, and I’m almost back to full speed.

It’s a good thing, too, because I came away from Bouchercon with many new and renewed connections. From preplanned dinners to impromptu lunches to coincidental breakfasts, and from late night poker games to hotel bar confabs to hallway howdies, I spent a great deal of time with writers I knew well and those with whom I have worked on various projects. Additionally, I met many writers for the first time, writers with whom I may work on future projects.

I came home from every previous in-person Bouchercon (beginning with Toronto) with a new project or opportunity that I likely would not have had had I not attended Bouchercon. This time was different, but no less exciting.

I had the opportunity to spend time with an anthology co-editor, had the opportunity to refine an anthology concept I’m working on with another co-editor, and had the opportunity to discuss potential future projects with several writers to gauge their interest level. I also had the opportunity to discuss editorial needs for Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, and other projects already in progress.

Additionally, and no less important, Temple and I had the opportunity to get away from the daily grind, to experience a new city, and to spend time with people who enjoy the same things we enjoy. Though it’s difficult to quantify the value of all of this, it has clearly rejuvenated me.

Once I pushed through the impact of Covid, I dove into the backlog of projects piled atop my desk and atop the dining room table, and I’ve already diminished the piles by half. If I maintain this pace, I’ll be ready to pitch a slew of new projects come the new year.

---

Black Cat Mystery Magazine #12, the special cozy issue, released last month. It features new stories by K.L. Abrahamson, N.M. Cedeño, Debra H. Goldstein, Darren Goossens, Gordon Linzner, Charlotte Morganti, Alan Orloff, Bev Vincent, Stacy Woodson, Elizabeth Zelvin, and a classic reprint by Johnston McCulley.