James and The Giant Peach Tar Baby

Sorry to say, but I’m clutching my pearls, here.  Roald Dahl’s publisher, Puffin, an imprint of Penguin, has released new editions of Dahl’s children’s stories with the nasty bits smoothed out. 

We can concede, from the get-go, that Roald Dahl wasn’t the nicest guy, and a lot of it leaks into his writing.  His heavies, primarily bullying adults, are thoroughly unpleasant and scary, but in a way that kids can identify with.  His grotesques are all too genuine; they rival Dickens.  The darkness, however, and the violence, are part and parcel.  Roald Dahl isn’t Roald Dahl without them. 

Now, we know Little Black Sambo is offensive, and it wasn’t all that long ago that the Nancy Drew books were edited to make her more relevant to the contemporary audience, and to eliminate the more egregious racial and class stereotypes in the originals.  For that matter, has anybody read Dr. Dolittle lately?  I thought they were wildly inventive, when I read them (I was, what, eleven or twelve?), but I’m guessing they don’t pass the smell test, nowadays, at least in terms of the way native peoples, say, are presented. 

I’m talking more about bowdlerizing stuff that doesn’t seem to require it.  The Telegraph published an exhaustive list of the changes made the Dahl’s books, and Helen Lewis has a terrific piece in the Atlantic.   [Links below]  One edit that caught my attention was in Matilda, where her choice of reading is changed from Kipling to Jane Austen.  I have nothing but respect for Austen, but eliminating a reference to Kipling – because he’s now considered an apologist for colonialism, or white supremacy? – when with all his faults he’s still one of the great children’s writers, is petty.

Roald Dahl, while we’re on the subject, is one of the most borrowed writers in the British library system.  He’s consistently in Amazon’s top five best-selling children’s authors. 

 His sales to date are reported to have topped 250 millions books.  Why does he need re-branding? 

Thirty years after his death, Dahl’s family publicly apologized for his perceived anti-Semitism.  I don’t mean “perceived” to be a weaselly adjective; he said a lot of ill-thought-through and provoking things, and it’s safe to say he subscribed to any number of cruel stereotypes.  Many of his villains, and especially villainesses, are grossly obese.  He’s a fat-shamer, no question.  He draws an equivalency between obesity and moral weakness.  A close reading probably demonstrates casual racism and a reflexive misogyny. 

I’m not trying to excuse any of this.  But why whitewash it?  What seems to catch and hold Dahl’s younger readership is his anarchy and irreverence.  Leave it be.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-offensive-matilda-witches-twits/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/without-nastiness-roald-dahl-isnt-roald-dahl/673141/

Canine Inspiration

A couple of years ago, I was brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, thinking how grateful I was that in our current home, my beagle/basset dog, Jingle, couldn't escape from our backyard. Things had been different at our prior home. The six-foot-high split-rail fence in the backyard had wire over it, and that wire was secured into the ground, so you'd think Jingle would have been contained. But where other dogs would see an obstacle, Jingle saw a challenge.

Regularly, he pushed at the wire, testing it for weak spots at ground level, then shoved through when he could. Friends nicknamed him Houdini. Over and over, I took steps to prevent Jingle from escaping, but he kept besting me. One day, after yet another escape, my good friend Donna Andrews (yes, Donna Andrews the author, who lived two miles away from my old house) suggested I buy some large heavy rocks to put on both sides of the fence wherever it was weak. She was going to the garden store and could pick them up for me. I said, yes, please. Soon, I found myself the proud new owner of a lot of rocks.

The dog otherwise known as Houdini

So, circling back to the start of this story, I was brushing my teeth and thinking about how Jingle used to escape from the backyard at our old house. After spitting my toothpaste out, I said, "Before I owned a dog, I never would have imagined I'd spend $37 on ROCKS." (Yes, I often talk aloud to myself.) Then I started thinking of all the other things I never would have done before I owned a dog, like buy a pink pig outfit--that was for my prior dog, Scout. It had been October when I adopted him, and that was the only extra-large Halloween costume I could find at that late date.

My old neighborhood had a Halloween party each year in our cul de sac, and when I took Scout that first year, one of the neighbors laughed at him--not with him, at him--trying to make me feel bad for dressing my large male dog in a pink pig costume. I brushed it off, but all these years later, I remember. So, I was thinking about all of this as I finished getting ready for bed that night, and my writer's brain kicked in. What if I created a character who adopted an escape-artist dog? And what if she had a mean neighbor who did worse than laugh at the dog? What might she do next? And "The Joys of Owning a Dog" was born. 

Look how cute he was!

The story is written in listicle format. It opens with: "Fifty things I never anticipated doing before I owned a dog." The rest of the story is told via a list, including buying rocks to contain my houdini of a dog, dressing my dog as a pig for Halloween, and dealing with a neighbor who hates my dog. (You gotta love real-life inspiration.) It's a crime-fiction story, with each element of the tale building on the prior one. Lest you fear, no animals were harmed in the writing of this story. I can't promise the same about mean neighbors. 

Thanks to editor Michael Bracken for publishing the story. You can read it in issue 13 of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, released last week in trade paperback. You can purchase it by clicking here. The ebook should be out soon. The issue also includes stories from fellow SleuthSayers Eve Fisher and John Floyd, which I'm looking forward to reading.

And now, I have to go. Jingle is demanding royalties for partially inspiring this story. Thankfully, he takes his payment in treats.

Never Too Old

My birthday is February 28th, the end of our shortest month. I was born way back in the 1900s. I don't intend to tell you the exact year but it was after the Great Depression. What I will tell you is after having published over thirty-five short stories, three novels, co-editing two anthologies and co-editing two non-fiction books. After nominations for several mystery awards and winning a couple, I now have a new publishing credit. I've co-authored a song. 

 

My good friend, john Arthur martinez, singer/ songwriter/ guitar player/ musician/ producer and I wrote and published a song titled "The Phone Call." 

 

It's now out on his fifteenth CD, titled Three White Spanish Horses, yes 15th. This on the heels of number 14, For The Love of Western Swing which was awarded Western Swing Song of the Year in 2020, by The Academy of Western Artists. He also performs the song and if I'm in attendance at his gig,  gives me recognition as his co- writer. Which is nice.

I first became aware of john Arthur (and yes, he usually doesn't capitalize his first or last name) in 2003 when he was a contestant on Nashville Star, an American Idol-styled country artist television show, set in, you guessed correctly, Nashville TN. My husband, Elmer and I visited our daughter and family in Nashville and Karla asked if we had watched this television show. I said, "no." So happened it was playing and she turned on the TV while telling us about this young man from the Texas Hill Country. Actually, he'd said he was from Marble Falls. We were living in our RV and camphosting at a State Park twenty miles away. After we got back home, we continued watching the show and voted each week for john. He came in 2nd on the show, beating out 3rd place, who was a 19-year old Texas girl named Miranda Lambert. You may have heard of her because she is the one who became and still is really FAMOUS.

Flash forward to 2007, I was newly-widowed, had gone thru a mastectomy, 4 months of chemo, to insure against re-occurance, which worked because I am still cancer free after 17 years. I was still in my RV but was 10 miles closer to Marble Falls. A mystery writer friend, Russ Hall who  Elmer & I knew from our bookstore days,  knew of my Elmer's passing, knew of my cancer & chemo. He also knew I had recently fallen smashing my right humerus, which needed surgery, and that I was looking for ways to keep busy. 

 

Russ had encouraged me for a couple of months to go a local restaurant, he often attended, which featured local singer/songwriters. One, john Arthur, from the aforementioned television show, was gigging on Thursday nights, and the other Mike Blakely, also a western/historicalnovelist, sang on Tuesday nights. I had met Mike  several years before when he and I were on a writer's panel one night at Austin Community College.  We both had been invited, along three other writers of different genres to talk to a creative writing class. Plus when Elmer and I owned Mysteries & More bookstore in Austin, we had carried some of Mike's books.

I began attending both music nights at River City Grille and over time became fairly good friends with both Mike and john Arthur.  They each had previously been offered a record contract in Nashville but each had decided on their own to go the outlaw way of previous Texas outlaw singers, like Merle, Waylon and Willie. That meant some leaner times but they are free to write, sing and record their own work at their own pace. They were friends who wrote songs together and harmonized on each other's CDs. 

In 2011, I moved into a house in Cottonwood Shores and realized JAM lived five streets over and almost directly behind my house. I banked where one of  john's sisters is Vice-President, and where his mom also works. His wife, Yvonna, is my hair stylist. She  is one of my BFFs and the Martinezs are my Hill Country family.

For several years, JAM & I have talked about writing songs together, but it seemed as though the time was never right. He gigs in Central Texas locations, several afternoons or evenings each week, sometimes traveling to Fort Worth, Waco, or Austin. He also sings in New England, Florida, Montana, California or Arizona each year. Once a year he toured France, Germany, Austria & Switzerland until Covid shut down travel. European tours in 2020, 2021 & 2022 were cancelled. During that time, he upgraded his home studio becoming a producer for several central Texas artists. It also gave him more time for writing songs so we got serious about writing together. 

One song idea I had was about a person you loved who could sense your mood or thoughts. Sort of like a mindmeld.  JAM's creative brain sent him to remember a long ago friend who kept him on the phone one long night when he needed reassurance about his music. We chatted or texted & he wrote the music, then we had to rearrange or change some words to fit the rhythm or to make the words rhyme. 

"The Phone Call" is that song and just out on john's latest CD, titled Three White Spanish Horses  available now on his website; johnArthurmartinez.net.  Or you can buy the song for 99 cents here.

Florida News – Fakes and Frauds Edition

Whenever I finish one of the Florida news articles, out of sheer exhaustion, I doubt I’ll write another. But when one lives in such a state with a cornucopia of crazies, it’s impossible and ungrateful not to embrace such riches.

As before, items here are ‘news’ only in the sense events have transpired since the previous edition. If nothing else, you must read the last item.

No Dead Lawyer Jokes, Please

Pinellas County, FL.  The attorney who defeated the state’s helmet law dies in a motorcycle crash while, wait for it, not wearing a helmet.

That Father-Daughter Relationship

Nassau County, FL.  Two stand-your-ground road-rage warriors decide to settle matters with a gunfight. Their aim is as poor as their judgment as they accidentally shoot each other’s daughters.

The War Postponed

Putnam County, FL.  Dude wants to ignite a war on Sunday. He’ll have to wait– he got himself arrested.

The War Continued

Polk County, FL.  Good Samaritan rings doorbell to deliver mis-delivered medication … stand-your-ground something …  recipient and son arm themselves, figuring the coming Sunday war has arrived … shoot up innocent woman on her cell phone … Celebrity Sheriff Grady Judd explains it better than I.

Mathematics in Black and White

Leon County, FL.  You may have heard our governor banned more than 4 out of 10 math books (7 of 10 under grade 6) because of BLM and CRT and, um, dark arithmetic stuff. People who actually read all 54 rejected books found only one possible reference to the dark arts and sciences… but one commonality seemed to be black authors. Meanwhile in response to think tank recommendations, the governor said he is considering shutting down all advanced placement programs to prevent indoctrination of our precious students.

FBI Raids Orlando Museum of Art

Orange County, FL.  In a town in a county in a state that confuses family entertainment with the arts (or the lack thereof) and confuses black with binomial, the FBI forged ahead with a raid of Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings (or not) that raises interesting questions.

Yo-Yo Car Dealers

Sumter Co, FL.  Know that feeling when you purchase a bright and shiny automobile and before the new-car smell wears off, the dealer calls you back in, saying you have to negotiate a new deal with worse terms? No? You must not live in Florida.

Thieves Call 911

Polk County, FL.  Genius criminals call 911 for help hauling goods and catching a flight.

Operation Nightingale

Date County, FL.  FBI raids again! This time they’ve taken on a number of nursing schools in South Florida, which have churned out 7600 falsified nursing certificates amid a number of legitimate certificates. (Reports claim three schools are affected, but the real number is five or six schools under three different legal entities.)

Sign of the [Tampa Bay] Times

Hillsborough County, FL    At Brad Raffensperger’s press conferences, I found myself fascinated by one of his sign language interpreters, the bald guy with the white beard. His listen-up, wimps, don’t make me repeat myself, no-nonsense demeanor hammered home the rivets of the Georgia Secretary of State’s message.

Not Florida (Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger press conference)

That’s sign language! Here in Florida, uh, not so much. A television press conference sign language interpreter volunteers for the Sheriff’s department and turns out to be… well, not an interpreter. She is a fake, a marvelous forgery in the flesh. Note: Authorities aren’t certain if she was a former nursing student.

A Sense of Entitlement

  

Creating titles is something all writers have to tackle at some point, whether you do it before or after the story, whether you want to or not, whether you're good at it or not. Every baby has a name and every story has a title. And yes, some sound better than others.

I enjoy the process of coming up with story titles. I guess I do an okay job of it--I think my titles accomplish what I want, and that's to describe (at least to some degree) what the story's about or to make a reference to something in it. Having said that, I confess I'm not madly in love with some of my own titles. I do like a few of them--one was "The Early Death of Pinto Bishop," the title of a story I first published in a Canadian literary magazine and is still available (I think) at Untreed Reads. Others were "The Starlite Drive-In," "The Daisy Nelson Case," "Rhonda and Clyde," "A Surprise for Digger Wade," "Eight in the Corner," "Andy, Get Your Gun," "The Delta Princess," and a few more. I also liked "Take the Money and Ron," the title of a story about a robbery/kidnapping, but the editor chose to change that one. I wasn't thrilled about the substitute, but I happily took the money and ran (leaving Ron behind).

As for other writers' titles, there are many, many of those that I love. Some are classics that I would guess everyone likes: East of Eden, Gone with the Wind, Atlas Shrugged, The High and the Mighty, Double Indemnity, Back to the Future, etc.--that list is as long as a politician's nose.

My absolute favorites, though, are those I've listed below. Some are funny, some have double meanings or hidden meanings, some are just cool. All of them are titles I wish I myself had come up with.

NOTE: The titles of movies and books are in italics, short-story titles are in quotes, and movies have the release dates attached. There's a lot of overlap--some are movies adapted from novels or stories.

See if you remember these:

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia -- 1974

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot -- 2018

"The Perfect Time for the Perfect Crime" -- Edward D. Hoch

Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man -- Ed McBain

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun -- 1970

Here's Looking at Euclid -- Alex Bellos

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead -- 2007

"The Saints Go Stumbling On" -- Jack Ritchie

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- 2005

Tequila Mockingbird -- Tim Federie

"Lamb to the Slaughter" -- Roald Dahl

Don't Look Up -- 2021

Apocalypse Pretty Soon -- Alex Heard

Once Upon a Time in the West -- 1968

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl -- 2015

"The Kugelmaas Episode" -- Woody Allen

A Walk Among the Tombstones -- Lawrence Block

Shangai Noon -- 2000

Lie Down with Lions -- Ken Follett

"Mary Poppins Didn't Have Tattoos" -- Stacy Woodson

At Play in the Fields of the Lord -- 1991

A Big Hand for the Little Lady -- 1966

"The Last Rung on the Ladder" -- Stephen King

"Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" -- Ray Bradbury

The Devil at Four O'clock -- 1961

The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker -- Ron White

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead -- 1991

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai -- 1984

Midnight in the Garden of Evel Knievel -- Giles Smith

One-Eyed Jacks -- 1961

Shoot Low, Boys--They're Riding Shetland Ponies -- Lewis Grizzard

"Boo Radley College Prep" -- Karen Harrington

A Hearse of a Different Color -- Tim Cockey

How to Win Friends and Influenza -- Edward Kurtz

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? -- 1970

That's the kind of list an avid reader/moviegoer could update several times a day, and I probably will, but for now that's my best effort. 

To wrap up this title wave . . . What are some of your favorites? Let me know in the comments below (include your own titles, if you like).

And make your next title your best ever.

More Random Thoughts

PRIVATE EYE STORIES and NOVELS

When I was a real-life private eye, I worked a lot of insurance cases, some divorce work, but I was hired on a few homicide cases because I was a former homicide detective. My brother, a former NOPD detective who has been a PI for over thirty years, has worked some high-profile investigations involving white collar crime, corrupt politicians and missing person cases. Things were different in the 1940s and eraly 1950s where PIs worked a myriad of cases. From what my old NOPD detective friends told me, the quality of detective work in the first half of the twentieth century wasn’t that good. Many police detectives then were hard-nosed, fisticuff street cops put in suits to do follow-up work in a suit. Only a few were brainy, which is one of the traits of the fictional Private Eye.

I've kept this in mind in writing my 40s-50s private stories and novels.

 

NEW ORLEANS

As for New Orleans, she is so complex, different from any other American city, more European. She is not big and there’s nothing easy about her. Many, MANY writers get her wrong. I blame editors and publishers of the big houses for much of this. I had a number of editors prod me to write more touristy books about the city (Murder at Mardi Gras, Death in the Above-ground Cemeteries, Killings at Jazz Funerals), rather than more accurate depictions of New Orleans.

 

Screenwriters are worse. Cliché after cliché. No one here speaks with a southern accent unless they migrated here. I speak with a Brooklynese flat-A accent. Mardi Gras is only a small part of the city and the French Quarter is small as well (although the Quarter is the heart of the city). My only character who lives in the Quarter is PI Lucien Caye and he lives on the edge, in the run down lower Quarter of te 1940s.

 

EROTICA

I started writing erotica when I began writing short stories in the late 1980s. It paid better than regular fiction, unless one was fortunate enough to sell a story to a big magazine. Writing erotica taught me to write short, descriptive pieces without any fluff. It was just scene after scene. Sex sells and the billions of humans on this planet came into existence because of sex. I’ve heard of only one virgin birth.

PRIVATE EYE NOVELS WITH SOME EROTIC ELEMENTS

Most of my novels have a love stories and the characters get intimate. Covers have been titillating over the years.

SELF PROMOTING

I'm a pain in the ass. I dislike promoting myself on social networks, although I have to. There's nothing wrong with a writer promoting their work. It's the only way to get word out sometimes. I'm just not good at it.

Couple days ago I received an offer to be interviewed on an international English Literature site. I replied I might be interested. They came back with it would cost me $50 to be interviewed on their site. I have never paid to be interviewed. Have any of you?

I declined.

I thought I'd posted this earlier but cannot find it on SleuthSayers, so here are more quotes from actor/stand-up Comic Dimetri Martin (I like this guy). He jokes about putting up flyers in coffee shops:

So, you want to learn how to play the saxophone?

I can stop you

call immediately

Babysitter Available

experienced

cheap

young

good at keeping secrets

Spacious. Clean. Cheap

Apartment

Available

never

good luck, Dipshit

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

 

The Definitive Marlowe?

 So as of Valentine's Day there is a new Phillip Marlowe film in theaters. It's called Marlowe, with the great Liam Neeson in the titular role as Raymond Chandler's iconic Southern California gumshoe, in an era when "gumshoes" were highly likely to actually wear "gum shoes."

An Irish actor playing a quintessentially American character, the 20th century's greatest example in fiction of the private eye. It does seem fitting in this instance. After all, the source material for this newest Marlowe movie also comes to us courtesy of the Emerald Isle. 

Specifically, from the pen of John Banville. An Irish novelist acclaimed for many works of literary fiction, Banville had been tapped by the estate of the late Raymond Chandler to write a new Marlowe novel. The Black-Eyed Blonde, the novel on which the new Marlowe movie is based, was the result, published under Banville's crime fiction nom de plume, Benjamin Black. 

A sequel to the first Marlowe novel–The Big Sleep–the novel takes its title from a Marlowe short story written by another author (Benjamin M. Schutz), which aside from the title, bears no resemblance to Banville's work. Banville is hardly the first author to take on Chandler's greatest creation. He isn't even the first one authorized to do so by the Chandler estate. That honor falls to the prolific Robert B. Parker, the author of many novels, but most famously of a series featuring one of Marlowe's spiritual descendants, Boston private investigator Spenser ("Spelled with two 's''s like the poet." Get it? "Marlowe"? "Spenser"?). Parker both finished Chandler's Poodle Springs, a Marlowe novel Chandler left unfinished at the time of his death in 1959, and wrote his own sequel to The Big Sleep: the poorly received Perchance to Dream.

Talk about working a theme.

The Chandler estate has authorized two further Marlowe novels since The Black-Eyed Blonde was published in 2014. The first, 2018's Only to Sleep by British author Lawrence Osborne imagines an elderly Marlowe still in the P.I. game in 1988 Mexico. The most recent, American author Joe Ide's The Goodbye Coast (2022), billed at the time as "not so much a reimagining as a reinvigoration," places a modern day Phillip Marlowe, updated to fit into his new setting: 21st century Los Angeles.

I have not read Ide's update on Marlowe, but it has received good reviews (as has Osborne's book), and in one aspect carries on an interesting post-Chandler tradition with the character of Phillip Marlowe: the modern overhaul. In fact Ide's crack at updating Marlowe is the fourth such crack at an update. The previous three were all films.

The first one, 1969's Marlowe (Yep, the Neeson vehicle is the second such imaginatively titled film) starred a post-Maverick/pre-Rockford James Garner wisecracking his way through a surprisingly faithful screen adaptation of Chandler's The Little Sister. There's a stellar supporting cast, too, headlined by a never-better Rita Moreno, Gayle Hunnicutt, Carol O'Connor, and a pre-stardom Bruce Lee.

Yep, THAT Bruce Lee.

Watching this film it's easy to see the roots of Garner's epic turn as Jim Rockford throughout the '70s. Marlowe is "tougher," and not quite as fast-talking. But there are many similarities between his Marlowe and his Rockford.

The next such "update" of Marlowe came in 1973 at the hands of legendary auteur film-maker Robert Altman. He chose the Chandler novel The Long Goodbye for his take on a modern update of the character, with a mumbling, shambolic Elliott Gould playing Marlowe bouncing around contemporary Southern California (and Mexico), chain-smoking his way through scene after scene in an ever more rumpled suit. As with so much of Altman's work, the film is uneven, often in spite of its top notch supporting cast, which included Henry Gibson, Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt and former big league pitcher (and author of Ball Four, one of the greatest sports memoirs of all time) Jim Bouton.

The third "updated" Marlowe film was a late-70s money grab, featuring a far past-his-prime Robert Mitchum playing an expatriate Marlowe working in the UK(!?). I plan to discuss this one (as well as Mitchum’s vastly superior-and era appropriate-first bite at the Marlowe apple- 1975’s FAREWELL MY LOVELY) at length in my next installment.

In the mean-time I'm going to see the new Marlowe. I'll weigh in on it, and every other film Marlowe next time, a couple of Wednesdays from now.

And on that note, I'm off!

See you in two weeks!

A Fox in Lamb's Clothing

Back in December Eve Fisher wrote about discovering Mick Herron's Slow Horses series.  I'd like to talk bout one aspect of these excellent books.

If you aren't familiar with them, the conceit is that Slough House is a rundown office building where MI-5 dumps its incompetents, giving them almost-worthless busywork (e.g. This car model was the most popular with terrorists five years ago, so check out everyone in England who bought one that year.) in the hopes that they will quit.  Because of the name of the building they are known as the Slow Horses.

And their leader is Jackson Lamb.  Ah, Jackson Lamb.

Imagine the worst boss you can conceive of.  Double it. Now you're getting there.  Lamb is vulgar, sloppy, lazy, vain, unhygienic, snide, malicious - and it's hard to tell whether he is really racist and misogynistic or just says such things to be as unpleasant as possible.

What type of things does he say?  

Well, when a member of his group complains about being left out of the loop: "You're always out of the loop.  The loop's miles away.  Nearest you'll get to being in the loop is when they make a documentary about it and show it on the History Channel." 

Here is Lamb mourning the death of a member of his crew: "Even when he was good he wasn't any good.  And it's a long time since he was any good."

His idea of a pep talk: "Don't anyone get shot or anything.  It goes on my record."

Please notice I did not say he is stupid or incompetent.  Because he isn't.  He slides through the dangerous waters of the spy world like an eel (okay, a corpulent. flatulent eel.)  And if he has another  redeeming quality  it is while the bosses at headquarters see their agents as pawns to serve their personal ambitions, Lamb does not. "A handler never burns his own joe.  It's the worst treachery of all."

In short, Lamb is a great, three-dimensional character and he makes me think about how genre literature is stuffed with great characters who we love to read about but would loath having to live or work with.

I mean, seriously: if you were Watson how long would you have tolerated Holmes before you smashed that insufferable egotist's head in with his own violin?

I think also of Nero Wolfe, Horace Rumpole, Gregory House, and others who insist on doing things their own way and get away with it because they are usually right.  (And now I am trying to think of any female characters that fit that description.  Surely there must be some?)

One of the reasons we love these types of people is that they do the sorts of things we would never have the nerve to do. And  they get away with it.  Mick Herron himself says of Lamb: "He says things I would never say.  I look back at some of these lines and think: My God, did I write that.  My mother reads this stuff!"

And now Mr. Lamb has come to television.  When I heard that Apple+ had chosen Gary Oldman to play our hero I immediately signed up for the channel.  I have not been disappointed.  (This is the second great British spy character Oldman has played. I enjoy his performance in Slow Horses much more than I did his version of George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.)

I have read the first four books in the series.  That means I am only halfway through, and more are expected. Hot diggity!

A Valentine List

St. Valentine is the patron saint of affianced couples, beekeepers, epilepsy, fainting,
greetings, happy marriages, lovers, plague, travelers, and young people. 

Since this blog appears on February 14th, let us focus on the part of that resume dealing with love and marriage. 

A bit of background. According to a medieval legend, a Roman priest named Valentinus was arrested during the reign of Emperor Claudius Gothicus. Valentinus landed in the custody of Asterius, a nobleman. Valentinus used his time in this imperial hoosgow to preach about the salvation of pagans. Asterius, the legend says, challenged the priest. If Valentinus could heal Asterius's blind daughter, the nobleman would convert. 

The priest gently laid his hands on the girl's eyes. He began to pray and chant. When he drew back his hands, her sight returned. Asterius, true to his word, adopted Christianity for his entire household. The emperor, however, was not entertained by the story. He ordered everyone executed. Valentinus was beheaded on February 14th. 

Maybe he carried love letters between the cells. Maybe he married Roman soldiers to their girlfriends. No one is sure. History isn't clear that this is the right Valentine. 

A second possible Valentinus was the bishop of Terni in Umbria, Italy. He, too, sought a conversion, healed a child, and was beheaded by Gothicus for his troubles. 

There was a third possible Valentinus. He died in Africa, and next to nothing is known of him except his name and date of death, February 14th. 

The first Valentine's Day mystery. 

Little in the aforementioned has anything to do with romantic love. That association begins later, likely with Geoffrey Chaucer. But to be fair, there is little in the Valentinus story having to do with beekeepers. That also is an English addition associated with the promise of Spring. 

In German, the saint's name is pronounced Fallentin. The similarity to the word "fallen" likely links him to epilepsy and the plague. These diseases, incurable in the medieval period, both required saintly intervention. 

Crime fiction has its own fallen. And there is that element of mystery surrounding the saint's origin. These connections will serve as my jumping-off point. While many crime solvers involve romantic entanglements, let us narrow the field in honor of the holiday. Who makes the best crime-solving couples? Possible spoiler alerts run throughout the following list. 

    1. Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf (Peter Tremayne)

    "...[W]without your advice, your ability to analyse, I would not have succeeded in many of the investigations we have undertaken...you will forever be my soul-mate, my anam chara, and if you go my soul will die."

(Fidelma to Eadulf in The Chalice of Blood)

    These stories, set in the 7th Century, contain criminal investigation, analysis, Catholicism, soul mates, and drops of Irish. This couple seemed the perfect place to begin in honor of the religious roots behind St. Valentine's Day. Eadulf, from the Roman tradition of the early church, is matched with Fidelma, a dalaigh and nun from the Irish tradition. Their differing perspectives on religion, a central component of their shared lives, allows for debate. Their alternative viewpoints offer distinct ways to sort out possible bits of evidence. Both Fidelma and Eadulf aid in the solution of the crime. They are a pair. 

    2. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane (Dorothy Sayers)

    "If anyone marries you, it will be for the pleasure of hearing you talk piffle." 

    (Vane to Wimsey in Strong Poison)

        Harriet Vane, a mystery writer, meets Lord Peter, a detective, when she is on trial for murdering her lover. The lover was poisoned, the same method Vane had been researching for her next book. Wimsey helps her get acquitted by proving who really committed the murder. The couple moves from courtship to marriage, solving murders along the way. 

    3. Albert Campion and Lady Amanda Fitton (Margery Allingham)

    Fitton: "So you've decided to come clean at last." 

    Campion: "Metaphorically speaking." 

    (Fitton to Campion in Sweet Danger)

    Red-haired Amanda brings passion and expertise to complement the character of Albert Campion. She provides mechanical skills as an aircraft engineer and a spark to Campion, a man other characters describe as "bland". Neither superhero nor purely rational thinking machine, Campion relies upon her technical abilities to aid in his work unraveling knots. 

    4. Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Laurie King)

    "You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing." 

    (Holmes in The Beekeeper's Apprentice)

    Besides the beekeeping, which gives this book an extra check in the St. Valentine box, the first book paired a fifteen-year-old Mary Russell with a mid-fifties Sherlock Holmes. A mentor-to-mentee relationship deepens across subsequent books. Eventually, they marry. Her quirks and intellect proved Holmes equal. King's Mary Russell stories give Holmes a life-blooded passion. 

    5. Nick and Nora Charles (Dashiell Hammett)

    "Listen, darling, tomorrow I'll buy you a whole lot of detective stories, but don't worry your pretty little head over mysteries tonight." 

    (Nick to Nora in The Thin Man) 

    I'll confess that I remember Nick and Nora far better from the Thin Man movies than the Dashiell Hammett story. My Nick is always William Powell thin and owns a wire-haired terrier. This couple is distinct from the others. While the previous pairs generally offered a partnership of relative equals, Nick does the detecting and is cheered on or pushed and prodded forward by his rich, thrill-seeking wife. Despite the detection imbalance, Nora regularly proves to have more brains and metal than haute couture appearances suggest.

    William Powell and Myrna Loy shaped the trope of the romantically involved, crime-detecting duo. Even if the couple isn't a traditional partnership, they must be on this list. To see the murder solved is not why we watch, but rather to enjoy the boozy, wise-cracking interplay between Nick and Nora. 

    Do you have other crime-solving Valentine's couples to propose? Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley? Or a more contemporary duo? I look forward to reading your thoughts. 

    Until next time. 

Writing habits I’ve fallen into. Ignore at will.

Never end a sentence with a preposition?  That is the sort of pedantry up with which I shall not put. (Winston Churchill)

Sometimes it's okay to savagely split an infinitive.  (Me)

And if it sometimes feels right to start a sentence with 'and' or 'but,' do it. 

Subject, predicate, object is almost always the right order.  Until it gets boring. (Strunk and White)

Anglo-Saxon words make for sturdy, yeoman-like prose.  The Romance words add, well, romance,

even insouciance, but use them sparingly, n’est-ce pas? (S&W)

The S&W team also said to never use “However” at the start of a sentence.  They preferred “Nevertheless”.  However, this proviso rarely works in common English discourse, so thank them for their service and use that however however you want. 

Elmore Leonard also had a list of writing rules.  They’re mostly worth following, but not starting a novel with weather?  What if it’s snowing?  Never use a word other than “said” to carry dialogue?  Okay, except “said” looks funny after a question mark.  “You don’t agree?” I said. 

Regarding books on writing, Stephen King’s book is a lesson in why you’ll never be as prolific a writer as Stephen King.  Go read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.  You’ll actually learn a few useful things. 

Whom and shall are oft-neglected, beautiful words.  For Who the Bell Tolls?  You may eschew such seemingly atavistic terminology, but I never shall.

 My English teachers said to leave out the comma in front of the word 'and' in a set - do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti and do.  And I'm sticking with it, won’t change and to hell with Oxford University.  And I'm putting commas in front of adverbs, no matter what modern copy editors say, derisively.

I agree with Lewis Thomas that the least appreciated punctuation mark is the semi-colon; how this precious tool slipped into obscurity is anyone’s guess.  

I also love his equating the exclamation mark with an annoying child who’s just interrupted an adult conversation.  Touché!

I can never remember if the period is supposed to go inside or outside parenthesis (which bugs the hell out of my stickler of a wife.).

She also taught me to read what I’ve written out loud.  You’ll know right away if it’s working or not.  Writing and music are cousins.  Both benefit from proper pacing, rhythm and variable dynamics.  And sounds that fall agreeably on the ear. 

English speakers, even the most polished and pretentious, use contractions.  “I cannot believe how many writers do not understand this,” she said, derisively. 

We also speak in short, clipped phrases.  No one delivers paragraphs of dialogue, unless they’re priests, college professors or your drunk, pontificating uncle.

As to paragraphs, shorter are better, but not too many that are too short. 

Use quotes, not dashes, to define dialogue.  Unless you’re James Joyce, who can do anything he wants. 

The only rule of writing is there are no rules.  Listen to advice, then do what feels right.  It might work, it might not.   Readers are the ultimate arbiters.  Writing is an art, boundless and unpredictable.  I only suggest that you learn all you can about what’s been done.  The greatest improvisors are those who’ve mastered the form before launching out into the untried, the startling new.  

 

Lost puppies and the consequences of silence

I often write about the lost puppies – the issues that impact our lives but are lost in silence.

I’ve written a few articles on grief following the death of Carol, my dearest friend. The immense loss and prolonged grief of losing a friend is not on most people's radar, so many don’t ask, don’t talk about this and leave it in the realm of silence.

Silence is the worst prescription for healing. I say this as a doctor with expertise and decades of clinical experience in mental health. Yes, I’m that kind of doctor and that is exactly why I write about the lost puppy issues – to bring them out of the dark, silent places into the chatty, healing light.

Here I am again, on a lost puppy issue and this one is literally, and not just figuratively, about puppies.

Let me introduce you to Kai, my 100 pound Bouvier.

We met her as a tiny 15 pound puppy and, when flying her home from Toronto, Carol met us at the airport because she was always the first to meet all my dogs and children. Carol held Kai and, when she saw my look of longing to hold the pup, Carol responded by saying, “You have a lifetime to hold her, let me have this.” Yes, Carol was that kind of friend who could read my mind.

When Kai came home, she refused to be crated or even lie on the floor quietly. Unlike any other dog I’ve had, she wanted to be carried. At some point that night, out of sheer exhaustion, I carried her onto the bed and fell asleep with her. She slept the whole night, didn’t wet the bed and our nightly routine of sleeping together began. Kai was the first dog in 30 years of living with dogs that had done this. 

From the start, Kai was a calm but ardent student of language - a true kindred spirit. She listened carefully and developed an understanding of many words and phrases. As a family, we have had to modify our conversations so that Kai didn’t get excited about things we talked about in the past. We tried spelling words, but she soon picked up spelling too so woe to anyone who mentioned or spelled ‘car’ because that’s where you’d end up taking her.

Kai proved to a dog who not only remembers language but also music, so watching TV became difficult. She would rush into the room if she heard a familiar tune for an ad with a dog and then bark at the intruder. Kai also understands the meaning of music, so any music that sounded violent or frightening during a film would elicit barking. Luckily, I'm happier reading than watching TV.

When Kai went to obedience classes, she progressed so quickly that she was kicked out of advanced obedience because of boredom and put into a more challenging therapy dog course at the age of seven months. She sailed through that. She was a natural student, curious and calm.

When Carol got a cancer diagnosis, I flew back and forth to Toronto and Kai knew when I was leaving and that displeased her. She’s a bouvier, so her displeasure was signalled not by whining or acting out but by a calm, sad look. When I got back, I was often gutted, more so as it became evident that Carol was dying, and Kai was there by my side. Refusing to leave me even for a minute. Bouviers are work dogs and I suspect she was trying to fix me. I appreciated the effort. 

In my mind, Carol and Kai are forever linked. I spoke to both of them constantly and both understood the important things I felt. 

 The last few weeks have been difficult. Kai was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy - the normal prognosis is six months to a year - much shorter than our expectations of having her for 5 years more.

We’re working off the hypothesis that this may be food related and reversible but it may not be. Regardless, I will lose this dog one day - sooner or later.

All the research on loss of a beloved pet shows that it can impact us as much as any loss with one important difference: the ability of those around us to understand the extent of this loss. When we experience grief, our brains undergo physical changes that can affect our thought processes and emotions. If the individual who is sick and dying is a husband, wife or child, people understand more easily and allow us to speak. This social support is a crucial ingredient in recovering from grief of all kinds but, as we know, many people think that pets are less important than people so many pet owners grieve in silence. 

If we stay silent, then all sorts of things grow: loneliness, bitterness, cynicism and anger. The consequences of silence are not merely unpleasant - they can be dangerous if they blossom into mental health issues like depression and suicidal ideation or even anger management issues.

There are consequences to silence on all issues of import and that is why we should all be brave – speak up.

I Am Digging Poker Face

I read the news, and in the news there is hype. A bunch of hype recently touted a new mystery series on Peacock, Poker Face. The reviews were good enough, varied enough, and legit enough. A throwback to Columbo and the case of the week, they said. I was interested, largely because you can't beat the creative pedigree: Rian Johnson, lately of Knives Out and Glass Onion.

Still didn't watch it. I only clicked play when Poker Face cleared my real test: family screening. If family likes a show, I go from curious to intrigued. Family liked Poker Face a lot. And call me sold, six episodes in. Yeah, it's a throwback down to old school credit fonts and an awesomely shambolic sleuth.

The show takes its name from said sleuth, Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne). Benoit Blanc, she is not. Charlie is a heart-of-gold, drifter type whose drifting led to a Laughlin, Nevada trailer park. Episode One opens with her fetching comped drinks at a mid-grade casino. She got the job because the casino boss (Ron Perlman) caught her not-quite cheating at a poker tournament and wanted her off the circuit. Charlie's superpower is she knows when someone is lying. She has no idea what's true, but falsehoods she can spot. To avoid spoilers, circumstances and a sense of justice force Charlie to use that skill for solving a murder. 

It turns out Charlie missed her calling. Comic premise becomes a series formula when Charlie goes on the lam from Very Bad People. Every week, she hits a new town and new offbeat turn at murder. Charlie's sleuthing rambles between utter inexperience, missed inferences, and downright brilliance, with plenty of it's-right-on-the-edge-of-her brain shtick. The format is a howdunnit, with the crime played out first over 15 minutes of motive, means, and opportunity. Charlie's presence and accidental sleuthing emerge later, a perfect choice. Charlie is no cop. No one's calling her to a crime scene. She has to trip over a corpse, and our knowing the truth puts the spotlight on Charlie's dogged pursuit. In the end, at that shecaughtem, Charlie has stumbled a step ahead. If Lyonne is riffing Peter Falk, it's lovingly subversive. 

Your content warnings: This is no cozy. The murders are on-screen and sometimes violent, though the camera cuts away from most blood and guts stuff. The language is salty. The humor is slant and situational, not constant one-liners. It all suits the vibe.

Every week also brings a new crop of guest stars. No A+ Listers here. Even if the budget could swing one, an A Lister kills the working actor homage to the 70s mystery heyday. Columbo had his William Shatner, Julie Newmar, Roddy McDowell, and Valerie Harper. Charlie Cale goes up against waves of folks you'll know or maybe recognize--and more's the fun. 

And damn, Poker Face is fun.

I'm In That Book, Aren't I?

 Ah, yes. We get that question all the time, don't we? We write a book and immediately, the main character is always the author. Yeah. I'm a 21-year-old interstellar spy of Indonesian descent according to the scifi book I released today. Or I based that character on someone I know. Or the person asking the question. Or some celebrity.

Of course, I did. Because never, in the history of writing, has any author anywhere made something up. Well, someone had to. I'm currently reading Gilgamesh as I write this, and even characters in Greek mythology would say, "Dude, that's just too weird to be real." 

That's not to say writers don't base characters on real people. Some inspire them. I had a bubbly, party girl neighbor once who became a villain in a Nick Kepler novel. But no one would mistake the character for the real person. There are even whole novels where the characters are thinly veiled versions of real people. These make up a genre known as the roman a clef. 

And most of them are awful.

The most famous example is Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. It's still a bestseller, but I can't imagine how happy Judy Garland (who died not long after the book appeared), Ethel Merman, or Dean Martin could have been when Valley hit the bestseller lists. Certainly anyone who knew Carole Landis at the time of her death squirmed reading about Jennifer North's suicide. It might have been a bestseller, but it was never a classic. In one memorable scene from Star Trek IV: The Search for Nuclear Wessels, Leonard Nimoy, playing the emotionless, unflappable Spock, can't keep the sarcasm out of his voice when Kirk rattles off the names Susann and Harold Robbins. "Ah," he says in a dry tone that does nothing to hide what Nimoy the actor is thinking, "the giants."

Jacqueline Susann did manage to sell a lot of books. But try basing a character on a real person and getting it to work in the framework of a fictional story. I have tried. I always have to either reduce the character to a walk-on, emphasizing personality traits that made this sound like a plan, or throw out the character altogether. The fact is, when I or most writers create a character, the character doesn't care where I got the idea that brought them into being. They are in a fictional world I created, and they're going to go do what they want. So, you're weird friend from high school whom you thought would make a comedic version of Jeffrey Dahmer ends up being the annoying used car salesman instead. (Actually, I think my one weird, creepy friend does sell used cars now. Bad example.) 

I did successfully pull it off one time. There is a very short Nick Kepler novel in the drawer that has Nick dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He goes into a restaurant called Candy's Home Cooking, owned by a short, vivacious Kentucky girl named Candy. I just happened to marry a short, vivacious Kentucky girl named Candy who used to cater. It did work, but notice the book is not published and not likely to be in the near future.

I've had characters people assumed were me. Jeff Kagan from the Holland Bay series. JT Austin from my scifi. But Kagan is the son of one of the Mafia's pet cops. JT stormed out of a life of wealth and privilege only to blunder into an interstellar war. My parents were neither rich nor knew anyone in the Mafia. At least, not enough that it affected them directly. And anyway, I have more in common with Jessica Branson, the once-disgraced detective trying to revive her career. But I married a short, vivacious Kentucky girl who used to cater, not shacked up with a lovable hairy nerd.

The fact is, most characters come from the ether. There might have been a real person there in the beginning, but even obvious avatars of real people end up with their own histories. It goes back to a possibly apocryphal story about Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci had an enemy he so despised that, while painting The Last Supper, he put the man's face in for Judas. But he could not get the painting to work. He used a different face, and now the painting hangs in a convent in Milan that is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. So, if da Vinci couldn't do the roman a clef, it's probably a hard no for anyone else.

Da Vinci was nearly sued by Moe over use of his bar, as well as being portrayed as Judas.
Said the master artist, "D'oh!"
Source: Fox