Great Mistakes in Criminal History / Mystery

Some days you run across things that just make you go, wait a minute, that's not right.  And I'm not talking about Florida Man or South Dakota Man.  I'm talking about people who have actually planned crimes, meticulously, and made some of the stupidest mistakes you can imagine.

For example, a married Colorado dentist who fell in love with another woman started looking up things on the internet like, “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy?” and “how to make murder look like a heart attack." (Yes, I know we at SleuthSayers have all probably done something like that, but at least we had the excuse that we're crime writers, right?)  But this guy not only left a suspicious internet trail a mile long, but he actually ordered a rush shipment of potassium cyanide that he told the supplier was needed for a surgery. To his office.  Where, of course, an employee opened it and went, "Wait, what does a dentist need with cyanide?" And that wasn't the only poison he ordered delivered. Sadly, all of this did not come out early enough to save his wife's life.  (AP News) 

But from it we can learn three things:  

• Never use your own computer; 
• Always delete the cookies and the history on the browser; 
• Never have poison, etc., delivered to your office or home.  

Another example is researching Amber Alerts, watching a movie about a woman’s abduction, and writing and delivering to 911 a pretty believable script about finding a white toddler all alone on the side of the road and then vanishing, leaving the car open and running and her cell phone, and having law enforcement searching for her and the toddler, and two days later showing up, claiming to be kidnapped and held hostage but escaping - for nothing?  Ten days later, her attorney shows up and recites a flat statement that it was all a hoax. ??? (AP News)  Honey, if you need a couple of days off, just take off!  

And then there's other things that people have obviously written meticulously, carefully, and made a bestselling novel or movie out of it and... there's a major flaw.

I've talked about the 1998 movie A Simple Plan before.  Very good, understandable, greed and stupidity win over planning.  BUT, when an FBI Agent named Baxter arrives in this small town, Sheriff Carl Jenkins asks the "heroes" to work with him without ever having checked Baxter's credentials.  This does not happen in the real world.  No rural county sheriff would ever just say, "Nice to meet you, what can I do for you?" to someone claiming to be an FBI and wanting to investigate something.  Sadly, if Sheriff Carl was that dumb, he deserved what he got. 

(BTW: The fact that Sarah the librarian does and figures out who Baxter really is makes perfect sense to me but then I know that librarians can find out anything in the world, given enough time.)

This fact that rural, state, and national law enforcement do not always work smoothly together - indeed are often loath to listen to each other - explains a lot about some of the disastrous decisions made in recent years.  The latest is the video from Circleville, Ohio, where State Highway Police had Jadarrius Rose surrendered, hands up, while a Circleville City Policeman arrived on the scene with a German Shepherd K-9 and totally ignored the state trooper yelling three times, "Do not release the dog with his hands up!" and released the dog, which promptly mauled Mr. Rose. (Link)  I believe the city policeman figured he didn't have to listen to some state trooper.  

But a while back I figured the most egregious example of mistake that ruins the whole plot (for me) is in Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile.  Heiress Linnet Doyle is murdered at night in her cabin.  Everyone is a suspect.  Linnet's maid, Louise, is the second victim.  And that right there is a major flaw, because (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Louise knows who Linnet's murderer is, and has already pried money out of the murderer.  But murdering her right then and there makes no sense at all. You're the goose that lays the golden eggs, and she's a maid. She'll keep her mouth shut until everyone gets off the boat, because she wants more money. She'll follow you anywhere and keep your alibi, because she wants your money!  You don't kill the goose that has the golden alibi.  Instead, you pay her off for the next year or so, and then, away from Hercule Poirot, you kill her and make it look like an accident. 

Finally, though, my favorite is from The Big Bang Theory, in "The Raiders Minimization" Amy Fowler shatters Sheldon's favorite movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark by pointing out the major plot flaw:

I still like the movie, but she's right.

Billy Friedkin

The director William Friedkin died this week.  Over a fifty-year career, his movies included, most famously, The Exorcist, as well as The French Connection, The Boys in the Band, To Live and Die in L.A., the notorious Cruising, and the hugely underrated Sorcerer, a moody, Gothic remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s bristling existential thriller, The Wages of Fear.

It’s easy to misremember what a jolt The French Connection was, when it came out.  For context, Bullitt had been released in 1968, Midnight Cowboy in 1969, M*A*S*H in 1970.  There was still plenty of room for the traditional -Westerns, musicals, rom-coms – but the new American cinema, so-called, was opening up, and the European influence was strong.  Friedkin specifically mentions Z, the Costa-Gavras political thriller, as a direct influence on The French Connection.  He and his DP, Owen Roizman (who shot The Exorcist, as well), were looking for a documentary feel, a sense of the randomly found.  Particularly in the first act, when Popeye and Buddy are following the hoods around, not knowing what it might lead to, but knowing it could lead to something, they’re shot from a distance, but with a tight zoom, as if they’re themselves under surveillance.  They’re being eavesdropped on; it’s a violation of privacy; the camera is stealing glimpses.

Everybody knows the celebrated car chase, when Popeye commandeers a civilian’s TransAm to run after the train on the elevated tracks, but less celebrated is the way the picture internalizes Popeye’s obsessive, manic fury.  The script is by Ernest Tidyman, best known for Shaft, and it’s elliptical, circling the objective.  The structure is formal, but it’s deceptive, because the story isn’t linear.  It seems intuitive, or somehow organic, just lifting off the pavement like the steam coming through the subway grates.  It’s about street sense.  Popeye and Buddy are like, Oh, we know those creeps, what are they doing out so late?  And what are doing with those other guys, since when do they hang together?

The whole story, in other words, hangs on a hunch, and it proceeds by small, dogged increments, routine footwork, ear to the ground.  And like that other marvelous observer of New York’s particular urban energy, Sidney Lumet, Friedkin taps the nervous, animal muscularity of the city to manifest a sense of dread, a presence, just outside the edge of the frame.  Roizman later said what he and Friedkin were after was to make you uneasy.

They were helped enormously by Gene Hackman.  He gives the character terrific physicality, and his single-mindedness is close to pathological.  You begin to wonder whether Popeye is just plain nuts.  Even though you know he’s right about the Frenchman, he does in fact go over the edge.

William Goldman once said his obituary would lead with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and of course he was right, even though he’d written plenty of other stuff – and me personally, I’ve never liked Butch Cassidy that much.  Billy Friedkin’s notices led with The Exorcist, natch.  I guess that’s fair, but The French Connection put him on the map.  You could do worse. 

More great books I've read

Earlier this year, I talked about three books I'd read and enjoyed. Here are three more I highly recommend.

A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen 

This book set in the late 1700s in a small English town has a premise that might sound ludicrous. Tiffany, an unmarried woman, lives with her half-brother, keeping his home. He is an unlikeable person, to say the least, but she has little choice in the matter, being (as I mentioned) single and a woman. Then he dies at home. Fearing she is about to be cast out of her home, and knowing she and her brother look a lot alike, she secretly buries him, then dons a disguise, and pretends to be him, going to his work every day. (He's a librarian at the manor home in town.) The premise sounds unbelievable, like farce, but damn if the author didn't pull it off.

The murder mystery (because of course there's a murder (maybe more than one)) has a lot of fun twists that made me laugh aloud and propelled me to keep turning the pages. The characters were interesting with good voices. The book has a solid ending. I did see the solution coming, but I don't think everyone will. And I didn't mind having guessed correctly. (Oh, and if you're thinking Tiffany is a modern name, an anachronism, it's actually not. It was a popular name at the time.)

The author addresses important social issues--sexism, classism, and racism--without coming off as preachy. And if you like a little romance in your crime stories, this one has a budding one. The book, which came out in May of this year, is the author's first crime novel (she's previously written romance under another name), and I'm delighted it won't be her last. It's book one in the Lady Librarian series published by Crooked Lane. May there be many more.

Buried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry

Divorced mom Tess and her fourteen-year-old daughter Gertie move to Tess's late grandfather's cabin in the woods of a small Washington (state) town for the summer. They haven't even moved in when when, you guessed it, they discover a dead body. But they don't  just come across it. Nope. This body falls from the sky in the first of many humorous situations. While Tess is worried about how this murder mystery will impact Gertie (who is thrilled to land an internship at the morgue), Tess isn't exactly unhappy about getting up close and personal with this mystery herself. You see, she's a successful thriller author, and she loves using things from her real life (be it research she conducts or bodies that fall from the sky) in her books. Less thrilled is the town police chief, who strongly resembles Tess's series hero, Detective Gonzalez, and who wishes she would keep her nose out of his business--and stop comparing him to Detective Gonzalez.

We encounter a lot of cozy-mystery tropes in this book, but that's okay because the author's voice is delightful and witty. She made me laugh aloud. The mystery is well plotted and interesting, even if it is over the top. Heck, it's because it's over the top that it works so well. The book came out last year from Poisoned Pen Press, and this spring it won the inaugural Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Prize. It's book one in the By the Book Mysteries series.

Books two and three have come out already, but, sigh, the publisher will not be continuing the series beyond there. I know some of you may not want to pick this book up because there are only three books in the series, but I'd reconsider. Don't deprive yourself of the happiness reading this book will bring you. It's plain old fun.

Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

Imagine a secret college where you can go to learn not only to kill the person you hate (if they deserve it) but how to get away with it--or die trying. Set in 1950, the dean of this college (in an undisclosed location, of course) has penned a book about his school and three of its students, and the book you're reading is the book the dean has written. (Meta? Oh, yes.)

This book is incredibly witty and clever. It has a strong plot with interesting details baked in, complex characters, and a setting readers who love college towns will wish they could see. The book's concept is so good, I wish I'd thought of it. Overall, it's a delightful read. 

The book came out in February of this year from Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, and of all the books I've read this year that have been published this year, it's my favorite. If you like audio books, then definitely listen, because the readers (Simon Vance and Neil Patrick Harris) are great. Oh, and if you're thinking, Rupert Holmes, Rupert Holmes, where do I know this author from? Well, he's written a lot before--he's even won the Edgar Award--but you might have recognized his name from "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." Is that song now in your head? You're welcome. (Hey, I'm not going to feel bad. I like that song.)

Tired of Gun BS

I saw this piece on FB and it really struck a chord with me. Because we still have not passed even the simplest gun restrictions:

A-restrict ownership of AK-47, assault style, bumpstock, high-velocity rifles meant for warfare.

B-background checks for felonies or assaults with a weapon.

C-30 day delay in granting permits.

D-passing a gun safety class.

E-must be 21 before any gun purchase.

F-Gun shows & online sales follow same restrictions as gun shops.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

Our children & young people are being slaughtered. No other way to say it.

- Jan Grape

TIRED OF GUN BS

by Leonidas Christian Mixon (used with permission)

We have a gun problem and a bullshit problem in the United States. Let me start by saying I am a gun owner. I have been since I was 6. I’ve had jobs that required me to carry a weapon. I’ve been shot at more than once. I’ve disarmed people who were trying to kill me. This isn’t coming from someone who doesn’t understand guns. It’s precisely because I do understand them that I’m going to call out the bullshit that stops us from having the reforms to gun laws that we needed years ago. If you want to debate any of the points below, I have no problem. These are simple facts.

1) I need an assault rifle for home defense. No, you don’t. A short barreled shotgun is the best tool for home defense. And that only counts if you’re insanely proficient with it and you get incredibly lucky. The likelihood you will get the chance to use it is next to zero. If you do, you’re very likely to kill a member of your family accidentally. In a REAL altercation, you don’t get to choose your field of fire. It happens incredibly fast, usually in the dark. If you’re popping off with a rifle, you are going to hit things you don’t intend to. Guns are tools. Period. Assault Rifles are intended to be used on a battlefield. Battlefield tactics don’t work in your house. It’s a bullshit argument.

2) I need to protect myself from a tyrannical Government... Holy Shit that’s stupid. That idea was from a time when the state of war was much more level. It isn’t now. At all. If an armored transport shows up on your front lawn with a 50 cal on the roof, you and your AK are fucking toast. Soldiers train, and their weapons are an extension of their body. You will instantly lose. And before you bring up guerrilla fighters in Afghanistan or Iraq... you need a reality check. Those people were born in a country that was at war, on their soil, for their entire lives. You don’t compare to that on your best day. And they die in FAR greater numbers than they kill.

3) Gun registration, background checks, etc are a slippery slope to confiscation. Bullshit. We register cars. We have to prove proficiency to operate them. We are required to have insurance in the event we cause damage with them. It’s been that way for decades, and no one is “coming to take your car”. Making sure people have the barest minimum of responsibility doesn’t lead to loss. Fear of loss leads to fundraising and bullshit. It’s not rational.

4) My gun is a right that can’t be modified. Again, utter bullshit. You can’t own a howitzer unless the barrel is full of concrete. You can’t own a cannon manufactured in the last century. You can’t own a fully automatic weapon without a FFL. That’s why those things are rarely used in crimes. And all of that is based on an amendment to our constitution that can be changed if we as a country see fit to do so. We have changed amendments before and we will again. If you don’t understand that you need a history lesson and a dictionary.

Creating common sense laws that put speed bumps in the way of lunatics helps. Every time. Automobile licenses, speed limits, etc don’t end accidents, but they make them less frequent and less deadly. It’s a proven concept. The time for bullshit excuses is over. It’s time to step up and take responsibility. Fuck this stupidity.

English, English

Romance writer friend Sharon sent me English usage questions to ponder, which sparked a discussion. I’ll share some of our notes.

• Double negatives are a no-no.
• In the word scent, which letter is silent, the S or the C?
• Isn’t spelling the word queue just a Q followed by four silent letters?
• When abbreviating refrigerator as fridge, why does a D appear?
• If womb and tomb are pronounced ‘woom’ and ‘toom’, shouldn’t bomb be pronounced ‘boom’?
• What is the pronunciation rule for words ending in ‘ough’? I.e, tough, through, thorough, dough, cough, bough?
• And what about bow, row, and sow that rhyme with how; and bow, row, and sow that rhyme with low?
• And why is read pronounced like lead and read pronounced like lead?
• Sharon’s correspondent says the pronunciations of Kansas and Arkansas trouble her more than it should.
• And why are all three letter ‘A’s in Australia pronounced differently? And likewise two letter ‘A’s in Stephen Ross’ New Zealand?
• Why do bologna and bony rhyme?
• Even if it’s spelled baloney, why doesn’t it rhyme with money?
• In childhood, I fretted that ‘W’ should be called double-V instead of double-U. (French and Spanish pronounced ‘W’ as double-vé and doble ve respectively.)

And finally…

• How do you console a sobbing English teacher ready to throw in the towel? “There, their, they’re.”

Wait, Wait…

Notes and jokes for those techies out there who pronounce the ‘www’ of World Wide Web as “Dub-dub-dub.”

• The three most common languages in India are Hindi, English, and JavaScript.
• Many people in India know 11 languages: Hindi, English, and JavaScript.^†

What is your favorite Engish quirk?

---

^† It’s unfair not to explain ‘in’ jokes. The punchword 11 refers to binary: In English, we count 1, 2, 3, but in binary we count 1, 10, 11.

Sequels, Not Equals

  

Question: Have you ever seen a really good movie, hoped afterward that someday there would be a sequel to it, and then been sorely disappointed when that happened? Join the club. 

The Rule is . . .

Most sequels fall short of the originals. Here are some that come to mind, that I had actually looked forward to seeing:

Jaws 2

Return to Snowy River

Escape from L.A.

Speed 2: Cruise Control

Be Cool

Wonder Woman 1984

Staying Alive

Independence Day: Resurgence

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

The Sting II

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory

Return of the Seven 

The Jewel of the Nile

Grease 2

Evan Almighty

Rocky II

Blues Brothers 2000

There are many, many more. By the way, for this post, I'm focusing on immediate sequels. Movies like Robocop 3, Moonraker, Lethal Weapon 4, Police Academy 6, Jaws: The Revenge, and Jurassic World: Dominion will have to be covered elsewhere. Well, hopefully not.

The Good, the Bad, and The Good

Something worth noting, about sequels: Occasionally, the second installment in a series can be terrible and the third can be excellent. Examples:

Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III 

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade

Men in Black, Men in Black II, Men in Black III

But only occasionally. In most cases, nothing after the first movie is all that great. My opinion only.

Creative names

One thing that movie sequels do have going for them--they can have clever titles (some of them a little too clever). Here are the ones I remember:

Oceans Twelve

102 Dalmations

Hot Shots, Part Deux

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

Another 48 Hours

Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

The Dentist 2: Brace Yourself

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous

Honey, I Blew Up the Kid

The Whole Ten Yards

Beethoven's Second

2 Fast 2 Furious

Finding Dory

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Mama Mia: Here We Go Again

Any Which Way You Can

The Lion King 1 1/2

Daddy Day Camp

The Net 2.0

Sharknado 2: The Second One

Look Who's Talking Too

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

The Naked Gun 2 1/2

After the Thin Man

House II: The Second Story

Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money

Can I Do It 'Til I Need Glasses?

Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd

But a cool title doesn't mean a good story. 

Dumb and Dumberer

Exceptions to the Rule

Thank goodness, some sequels seem to defy the odds. Here are ten that I think were better--a few of them far better--than the first in the series:

From Russia with Love

The Godfather Part II

For a Few Dollars More

The Road Warrior

The Silence of the Lambs (yep, it was a sequel: Lecter first appeared in Manhunter)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

The Empire Strikes Back

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

A Shot in the Dark

And in my humble opinion, the absolutely all-time best movie sequel:

Aliens

A question, and a reassurance

Which movie sequels, good and bad and ugly, do you remember most?

Promise: Don't worry--I'm not planning a sequel to this post.

 

Opening Lines – OK, here we go again

In his July 30^th posting, R.T. Lawton gave us new insights in the setting the hook in a story. Other SleuthSayers, including me, have posted about opening lines. Robert Lopresti posted about one of his opening lines (May 17^th posting).

So, I thought I'd share opening lines that worked for me in recent short stories and novels. Why not?

SHORT STORIES:

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

    opening line of   

"The First Annual Atchafalaya Coyote Hunt; or, Is There a Sleuth in the House"

    Black Cat Mystery Magazine Issue 11, March 2002

Damn car wouldn't start.

    opening line of

"The Obsidian Knife"

    The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories,

 Mango Press, July 2022

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

    opening line of

    "Blue Moon Over Burgundy"

    Black is the Night

Maxim's Jakubowski's Cornell Woolrich Antho, Titan Books, October 2022

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

    opening line of

    "The Other French Detective"    Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 67. Nos 11 & 12, November/December 2022

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

    opening line of

    "A Jelly of Intrigue"Edgar and Shamus Go Golden Anthology, Down & Out Books, December 202

(A Jelly of Intrigue is a finalist for this year's SHAMUS AWARD for Best Private Eye Short Story)

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

    opening line of

    "Of Average Intelligence"

    Black Cat Weekly

#85 April 2023

Billy found the trunk release button and popped open the trunk.

    opening line of

    "A Pretty Slick Guy"

    Black Cat Weekly #92 June 2023

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

    opening line of

    "The Little Iréne Escapade"

    upcoming in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

NOVELS:

She came in at one o’clock sharp on Decoration Day, Friday, May 30th, just as a light rain began falling outside.

    opening line of

        The Spy Who Used My Love

 Big Kiss Productions, March 2021

The high-pitched shrill of a police whistle turns Detective Mike Labruzzo around.

    opening line of

        Gilded Time

 Big Kiss Productions, March 2022

I drop the uncut gemstone back into the leather bag with the others and tell her, “Emeralds. Every one."

    opening line of

        Hardscrabble Private Eye

 Big Kiss Productions, June 2022

The body hung from the low branch of a live oak in the Bayou Sauvage swamp about thirty yards from Chef Menteur Road.

    opening line of

        New Orleans Heat

 Big Kiss Productions, March 2023

May not be the best opening lines but they hooked the editors enough for them to read on. Of course, the follow-up from the opening line needs to keep them reading.

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

CSI Auckland

I’ve never written a story that involved forensics. Sure, I’ve mentioned fingerprints, crime scenes, and DNA, but only in simple, blink-and-you'd-miss them sentences. I've never dug down into the nitty gritty of how a fingerprint is lifted or DNA is swabbed. I've never hung a plot on forensic science.

My avoidance of this realm of crime fiction writing has been plain and simple: I have had no idea. Also, only a handful of my stories have featured a police detective in the protagonist seat. I've never yet written a police procedural.

I could have YouTubed these CSI things, I guess. I'm no stranger to the Tube and have spent quite some considerable time learning how to pack a pipe, hot-wire a car, become an RA (Royal Academician), and so on. Honestly, if you can think it, there's probably a YouTube video for it (and for many things you probably don't want to think of).

Write what you know—

… the mantra and T-shirt slogan of all writers. And if you don't know, then stay away from it. Which is a double-edged sword for us crime writers--we write about people murdering people. I, for one, can report I have no practical experience in that sort of thing. Which reminds me of an excellent New Zealand novel that explores the premise. Paul Cleave's psychological thriller, Trust No One (2016 Niago Marsh Award winner for Best Crime Novel).

Anyway, I've finally gotten some hands-on experience in crime scene investigating. Really, really good experience.

I went on a training course in forensic science here in Auckland with a handful of work colleagues (software). Team building, CSI edition. A four-hour, immersive masterclass in crime scenes: fingerprints, shoe prints, blood splatter, trace evidence, and DNA. Our teacher was the real deal--

an actual CSI professional, fully qualified, with 32 years' experience (Scotland Yard and New Zealand Police). 

We examined a simulated crime scene (a life-size mannequin/dummy for a dead body), replete with murder weapon, shattered skull, blood splatter, and a roomful of clues. We budding Poirots and Marples were kitted out in proper crime scene PPE: scene suit, gloves, and blue booties that slipped on over our shoes. Working in teams of two, each team was provided with a hefty carry case full of field equipment needed for gathering evidence: fingerprint powder & brushes, lift tape & cards, tweezers, UV light, evidence pouches, scissors, swab sticks, distilled water, and so on.

We lifted and documented fingerprints from tins, cups, and a windowsill. We swabbed beer bottles for DNA and collected up fibres and a shoe print left by the murderer. We even determined the murderer was left-handed, based upon fingerprints left on the weapon and from the tell-tale flicks of blood on the wall. At the end, we ran the fingerprints we had collected through a computer database to look for a match. And we got one. All our teams of two correctly identified the killer from a pool of about thirty suspects.

Needless-to-say, the afternoon was not for the faint of heart.   

In addition to the hands-on experience, we also learned a lot about the history of forensics. Forensic, from the Latin forēnsis, meaning "of or before the forum." Back in ancient Rome, criminal cases would be decided based upon the evidence presented by the accused and the accuser. Whoever of the two presented the best argument and delivery would win.

We learned about Edmond Locard, the father of modern forensic science and criminology. He set up the first crime scene investigation laboratory in 1910 and pioneered many of the CSI methods still in use today. He also coined Locard's Exchange Theory, which is: Every contact leaves a trace. That's a handy piece of theory to remember. Writer Trivia: Georges Simenon is known to have attended some of Locard's lectures, circa, 1919. 

I'm not, nor will ever be, a hardcore forensics writer, but having a better understanding of the processes will certainly lead to its inclusion (in more depth) in my future stories. 

Tell me if you have something similar in your town up there in North America. Do the FBI or RCMP run courses like these?

---

Where we went:

Forensic Insight Ltd.

Something I prepared earlier. An article I wrote back in 2014 about fingerprints and an infamous Auckland robbery/murder. 

---

www.StephenRoss.net

Hobo Blues

  I am delighted to have a story in the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  "Law of the Jungle" is the second story I owe to Utah Phillips.  (Or possibly the fourth.  We'll get back to that.)

As I have written before, Bruce Phillips, also known as U. Utah Phillips the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, was many things: veteran, pacifist, anarchist, Wobbly, singer, songwriter, raconteur, and railroad bum, to name a few.

His song about the Orphan Train movement inspired me to write "Train Tracks,"  which also appeared in AHMM. In fact, he wrote an entire album of songs about railroads and hoboes.

So when I heard about the book by Ian McIntyre it was inevitable that I bought it.  On The Fly! is a collection of literature about railroad hobos, written by the hobos themselves. The publcations run 1879 to 1941.  The most famous author included is Jack London (although, oddly enough, his piece is about a trip by boat).  The book includes everything from cartoons and poetry to a death-row interview with a serial killer.  It is utterly fascinating.

I was almost halfway through it when the part of my brain that looks for story ideas, the entity I call the Miner, finally woke up and said : "Hey! Write about this!"

So I did.  "Law of the Jungle" is set in 1910 and centers on a teenager who runs away from home and meets an older hobo named Scottsdale Hank.  They ride the rails and encounter a crime and the kid, who takes the moniker or road name Jersey White, learns about life on the bum.

Oh, why did I say I might owe Phillips for four stories?  Well, since he was the highlight of the first folk festival I ever attended I give him a lot of credit for turning me into a folkie.  And if that hadn't happened I wouldn't have written two stories about Kentucky fiddler Cleve Penny.

And I may have more reasons for gratitude because I am currently writing another story about Scottsdale Hank.  Turns out I have a lot to say about hoboing.

I also wrote an essay about a different aspect of  "Law of the Jungle" and you can read it at the AHMM blog, Trace Evidence.

The Mystery of Hamhock Jones

THE MYSTERY OF HAMHOCK JONES

by Michael Mallory

It is safe to say that most people have never heard of the TV show Hamhock Jones ─ The World’s Most Amazing Detective, even though its inspiration is obvious. While there have been myriad Sherlock Holmes parodies in all media over the past century, this particular iteration has a unique place in television history: in 1948, during television’s infancy, Hamhock Jones was poised to become TV’s very first original cartoon character. 

While Hamhock Jones dressed like Sherlock Holmes, smoked a pipe, carried a magnifying glass, and spoke in an imitation of Ronald Colman, he was more like the big city detective stereotype that was popular in the late 1940s. He lived on the 234th (!) floor of the Greystone Building (alone; he had no “Watson”) and wielded a snub-nosed revolver. His was one segment of a proposed series called The Comic Strips of Television. 

The project was devised by a young San Francisco animator named Alex Anderson ─ the nephew of Paul Terry, founder of Terrytoons, which produced “Mighty Mouse” and “Heckle and Jeckle” cartoons ─ and his longtime friend Jay Ward. The two dubbed their fledgling company Television Arts.

Hamhock’s sole recorded adventure, from the series pilot, was titled “The Case of the Siamese Twins.” It involved a diminutive client named “Professor Soufflé” who told Jones the bizarre story of conjoined brothers, one a world-famous scientist named “Otto,” and the other a bad-to-the-bone criminal named “Blotto.” 

Working with the good twin, Soufflé invented a gas called “Votaine” which can turn Republicans into Democrats and vice versa, and allow campaigning politicians to gas babies instead of kissing them. The problem with Votaine (outside of its off-the-wall absurdity), was that if it were to fall into the wrong hands, the results could be catastrophic. Needless to say, evil twin Blotto fully intends to put Votaine into the wrong hands, chiefly an unnamed foreign power (but in 1948, there was little doubt who it was supposed to be). He kidnaps Otto…not difficult, since they are conjoined…and makes off with the formula. 

What will the World’s Most Amazing Detective do to save the American political system, if not the world? Well, that’s the problem: the pilot segment was nothing more than a teaser for the story, which ends there, so we’ll never know. 

While The Comic Strips of Television is the first attempt by anyone at an animated TV series (and until William Hanna and Joseph Barbera devised the template for successful television animation in 1957, tooning was most frequently seen in commercials), there’s a reason it was not called The Cartoons of Television. It was animated only in the most rudimentary definition of the term. The pilot was little more than a story reel──a series of stationary drawings photographed and edited to present the story visually. Voices were heard without the characters’ lips moving, and except for a couple shots in which quick-cuts between two poses were done to give the illusion of animation, any movement in the show was accomplished by panning or zooming the camera. 

Which one of the four credited voice actors, all Bay Area radio performers, played Hamhock has been lost to time, though it’s safe to assume it was not Lucille Bliss, who decades later earned fame as “Smurfette” on Hanna-Barbera’s The Smurfs. Bliss’s major contribution to the pilot was as the voice of “Crusader Rabbit,” one of the other pilot segments. The third component was a seminal version of “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties.” Producer Anderson felt that Hamhock Jones had the best chance of becoming a series, perhaps because of the parody name recognition, but he was wrong. After looking at the pilot with an eye for syndicating it to their affiliate markets, NBC was interested only in Crusader Rabbit. 

The first Crusader Rabbit series suffered from erratic scheduling and did not last long, though it was revived in 1959, with better animation, but without Anderson and Ward. By then Anderson had drifted out of animation altogether and into advertising, while Ward was about to launch a new career as the producer of a string of witty, intelligent cartoon shows beginning with The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. Even though Hanna and Barbera would become the kings of TV animation, Ward would carve a major niche in the medium through such mordantly funny and pun-filled shows as George of the Jungle, Super Chicken, and Hoppity Hooper. With his new partner, writer and actor Bill Scott, he would also successfully repackage Dudley Do-Right. Hamhock Jones, however, was never heard from again.

The Hamhock Jones segment of The Comic Strips of Television can currently be found on Vimeo, and watching it reveals just how far TV tooning has come over the last 75 years. Its most startling revelation, though, is the plot device of a foreign power seeking to influence U.S. elections.

The more things change…

Open Books. Open Minds.

 

There’s a lot of commentary out there over a surge in book banning.  I know this practice has been going on for a long time (in the past, arguably worse), but there's good evidence we're in a real book banning frenzy.  Either way, there’s nothing about book banning that’s any good. Not at all, at no time, not ever. 

The notion that the tender moral and intellectual sensibilities of the average school kid could be irrevocably harmed by a saucy, blasphemous or retrograde work of art is preposterous.  Kids are a whole lot smarter and worldly than anyone knows, especially their parents.  If there are, in fact, those utterly devoid of critical judgement, easily swayed by some loony, anti-social thought, then all book bans do is delay the inevitable.  Meanwhile, you’re denying the vast majority the opportunity to form their own opinions and triangulate their sense of where they fall on the socio-political-ethical spectrum. 

And by the way, books aren’t really banned in the US.  They’re merely kept off the shelves of schools and libraries.  Any half-intelligent kid can get her hands on any book published in the world, and she will, if she wants to.  Book banning is a fool’s errand. 

You may think book banning is a favorite right-wing sport, but there’s plenty of it happening on the left.  Worse, some of the banning is done by publishers themselves with revisionist versions of classic works.  They don’t seem to realize that this is just as censorious and illiberal as banning Gender Queer.

When I was pretty young, I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer.  Both were beautifully written and nowhere near as salacious as I was hoping for at the time.  I also read Mao’s Little Red Book, and at no time did I feel compelled to murder capitalists or throw the intelligentsia into re-education camps.  I read all of Ayn Rand, which was lousy literature and had no influence on me whatsoever, though I wondered what all the fuss was about.  If you were corrupted by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Catcher in the Rye, you’ve got bigger problems than your choice of reading material.

I got a lot out of Ezra Pound’s commentary and obtuse poetry, though no fascist impulses emerged.  I think he was a traitor of the first order, but I still occasionally flip through The ABC of Reading, since it’s sort of humorous and full of compelling literary insight. 

Our son had a free-range education.  That doesn’t mean we didn’t offer opinions on what he was reading, providing some perspective, but he was never told how to think about the content.  I would only ask him to keep a big grain of salt nearby when facing various arguments.  Resonate to what moves you, but maintain a healthy skepticism.  You may at some time change your mind, and you’ll feel better about it if you didn’t first succumb hook, line and sinker. 

He turned out fine.  We don’t agree on everything, but that’s what independent thought is all about. 

It’s no accident that autocratic regimes ban books as a matter of course.  They all do, and always will, because they are trying to control their subjects’ minds.  Does history look back fondly on Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities, or Hitler’s book burning?  That should tell you all you need to know about censorship. 

The same applies to the news media.  I read everything, and always have.  Left, right and center.  I want to know what the political and cultural commentators are saying.  All of them.  Knowledge isn’t agreement.  It’s just knowledge. 

The most important impulse is to keep ones mind open.  Confirmation bias is absurd.  If you think you know everything already, don’t bother reading.  Use the time to ferret out trigger warnings in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood or put horns on your head and charge the US capital. 

Setting the Hook

Stone Age Fish Hook
Photo from Wikipedia

In his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short fiction book, Twice Told Tales for Graham's May 1842 magazine issue, Edgar Allan Poe had this to say about the beginning of a short story: "...If his very initial sentence tend not to be outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step..."

Even though they spoke and wrote English in those days, they sometimes wrote and talked a little funny as compared to today's use of words. To me, Poe was writing about hooking the reader, or getting the reader interested in your short story by the wording of your very first sentence. Of course, if you care to wade through all the words Poe wrote for that review about 180 years ago, feel free to Google said review and come up with your own opinion.

Poe was referring to a narrative hook, but several of us have started a short story with dialogue and if done interestingly enough, the story start can also be done that way. And, if you can't set the hook in the first sentence, then the hook should be placed no later than the last line of the first paragraph.

Think about the situation. If you open a magazine or an anthology and start to read a short story, which is going to encourage you the most to continue reading, a plain, boring, no excitement opening or one which makes you wonder what's going to happen next? That what will happen next is the hook and that hook is what pulls you, the reader, further into the story being told. And, if it work this way on a reader, then imagine how this hook works on an editor who receives 100+ submissions a month. How far do you think that editor will read on a submission if the story doesn't grab their interest early on? It is a shrinking market out there for short stories these days and therefore tough enough for a writer to avoid a manuscript rejection without making this common error.

Rob mentioned in one of his recent blog articles that I had critiqued one of his short stories and had suggested that the story's beginning was boring. He then changed the opening to imply the possibility of future violence. The story subsequently sold, which may or may not have been a result of setting the hook early. A couple of weeks later, I critiqued a story from a different author. Same problem, but the author had already wondered about his opening and was considering rearranging the order of his story to start with an event closer to the action (an early hook). Both of these authors had multiple acceptances from AHMM and EQMM, yet somehow the setting of the hook in the opening had slipped by them in the writing process. You can bet I will be more careful in my own story openings now before I hit the SUBMIT button on short story manuscripts.

Damn, I shouldn't be reminding you people about setting the hook early. You all are my competition for this shrinking short story market.

Oh well, too late now.

Have a good one.

Here Come da Judge

 

True story: While I was trying to figure out what to post for today, I was asked by a writer friend to serve as a judge for an upcoming fiction competition. This kind of thing would probably be nothing new for you, and wasn't for me either--I've judged dozens of fiction-writing contests over the years. (That says nothing about my qualifications; it's just something that happens when you've been around and writing for a long time. In any case, I was honored to be asked.)

I'm sure you know the types of contests I'm referring to. Some are local, some regional, some have solo judges, some are judged by committee, some have cash prizes, some are sponsored by groups or conferences that have the winning stories appear in an anthology. Arguably the most prestigious competitions (certainly for mystery writing) are those for national awards like the Edgar, Shamus, etc.

Anyhow--long story short--since opportunity has knocked, I figured I 'd use that for today's post.

To me, judging writing contests is a mix of fun and work. Fun because some of the entries you have to evaluate turn out to be great stories; work because most of them don't. But I assure you I've learned a lot about writing from each of these endeavors, and I've also learned quite a bit about what I suspect editors, agents, and publishers have to go through every day in the process of selecting which stories/novels to publish.

An example, and some observations:

Assume you have been asked to be a judge, and you find that you'll have a hundred short-story manuscripts to consider, and your task is to pick the best three.

When your stack of entries arrives, I predict that about a fourth of them, maybe a fifth, will turn out to be good, well-written stories. That's just usually the way it happens. Also, another fourth of the stack will be terrible stories. Those that are left--about half--will usually be somewhere in between. I realize that's a big generality and that there's nothing certain about what you'll find in any set of manuscripts to be judged, but so far I've found that the old 25-50-25 percent division is pretty close. Strange but true.

Another observation: whether you're one of a group of judges or if you're doing it all yourself, you'll probably find that your first read-through of the stories is to weed out the bad ones. That sounds like a negative way to approach all this, but it's natural, and is pretty much the way editors do it. If/when you find things in a story that just don't work at all, that story goes in the reject stack and you move on to the next one. The stories that are left when you're done are the ones that'll be re-considered. (This, by the way, is the whole premise of Noah Lukeman's excellent book The First Five Pages. It says that a publisher/agent/etc. can usually decide in the first five pages of a novel manuscript whether to reject it. For short stories, it's obviously a much shorter span--maybe the first page or two, or even the opening paragraphs.

Once the rejected manuscripts are put aside, you'll probably then re-read the others and do the same thing all over again, this time comparing them with each other in terms of quality. Again, I predict you'll end up with anything from fifteen to twenty-five out of a hundred that are truly good stories, and then you'll have to decide which of those are the very best.

One thing that I find difficult is when the contest organizers require you to fill out a detailed scoresheet evaluating different parts of each story, assigning points to things like plot, characterization, dialog, setting, viewpoint, and theme, and coming up with an overall total to determine the winners. I'll do that if I'm forced to, but I think it's unnecessary work. Good stories don't always hit the normal checkboxes. Some of the best stories I've ever read do strange and unusual things with plot, POV, and so forth--you know what I mean. I prefer contests that allow the judges, solo or teamed, to come up with which stories they think are deserving of the top honors without resorting to the detailed "Fiction Writing 101" lists and rules and checkboxes. But that's just me.

I also don't like it when contest organizers tell me I must read every story all the way to its end. That's a terrible waste of time. If you're going to trust me enough to be a judge, trust me enough to know when to reject a story, and--as mentioned earlier--that decision might happen early in its reading. 

As for whether the judging is "blind"--some contests withhold the authors' names--that precaution honestly doesn't make any difference to me. Some of the best stories I've seen have come from writers whose names I didn't know at the time, and some stories by known authors have disappointed me. As it turns out, the upcoming competition I mentioned will feature blind entries, which is of course an effort to assure entrants of its fairness. But I think it rarely matters to a judge.

NOTE: One thing I try not to do (although I have, when I didn't know it at the time) is serve as a judge for a competition that requires entrants to pay fees. I don't agree with that practice and I don't enter those contests, just as I don't submit stories to markets that charge submission fees. 

Questions:

Do you often participate in the judging of writing competitions (big or small)? Have you ever done so? Did you enjoy the experience? Did you learn anything from it? Are there any past judging gigs that were particularly fun or interesting for you? Did you have a set routine by which your evaluations were made? If a team effort, what did you think of working with other judges? How about the scoring process? Did you find it overly restrictive, or were you given free rein?

I've already mentioned that this kind of request (to be a judge) was nothing new. Well, neither is the fact that I said yes. When the person asking is a friend, it's hard to say no.

I'm hoping I'll find some great stories.

Poisoned Pen

A friend of mine sent me this article asking if I knew anything about it. The long, tortured affair took place in Circleville, one of those small railroad towns that dot the Midwest. This one is north of Columbus and not on any of the Interstates. I grew up on the fringes of the Cleveland area, spent six months in Amish country, and have lived in Cincinnati ever since. So, no. I barely knew of Circleville.

Which is interesting because of the town's long-standing mystery. Who's writing all the nasty letters?

It began in the 1970s. A bus driver named Mary Gillespie began receiving letters accusing her of having an affair with the school's vice principal. The harassment continued for some time until her brother-in-law and his wife tracked the letters back to one of Mary's coworkers, a man named David Longberry. Longberry was never charged, though he was later charged with sexual assault in an unrelated case.

But before the letters stopped, Mary's husband received a phone call. Angry, he went to confront Longberry with a pistol. Almost an hour later, police found his pickup off the road, him dead.

While Longberry was never charged, he came under some unwanted scrutiny. The letters stopped.

For a time. Then they started up again, along with signs on Mary's bus route detailing her alleged affair. The number of letter recipients increased as well, as more and more Circleville residents began receiving their own poisoned pen letters. Things escalated when Mary attempted to rip down a sign along her route only to find one crudely booby-trapped with a pistol.

The perpetrator attempted to file off the serial number, but a forensics technician recovered it. The gun traced back to a brewery employee in Columbus, who in turn sold it to his supervisor, who then sold it to someone else. The gun belonged to Paul Freshour, Mary's brother-in-law and the one who fingered David Longberry.

Before long, the sheriff began looking at Freshour.Eventually, he was convicted and sentenced to prison. The letters stopped.

Again, only for a time. Eventually, Unsolved Mysteries got involved, sending a production team to the small town. Soon, producers received their own poisoned pen letters threatening the crew if they showed up. Spoiler alert: Robert Stack totally did a segment on the unknown letter writer. Perhaps feeling the heat, the letter writer soon went silent for good.

Longberry and Freshour have both since died. Curiously, letters continued after Freshour went to prison. Only when Unsolved Mysteries showed up did they stop. The long story sounds like the beginnings of a Stephen King story, although King would have made the perpetrator supernatural or had him run afoul of the supernatural. More likely, it has much in common with SA Cosby's semi-rural Virginia tales, should Cosby opt to write an homage to Sherwood Anderson.

The motivations and machinations behind such episodes are familiar to anyone who grew up in small towns, exurbs, and even suburbs. Like the Cleveland-area town where I grew up, Circleville is exactly the type of American or Canadian town described in the song "Subdivisions," existing between the bright lights and the far, unlit unknown. Most of us who grew up there hear whispers, half-heard gossip. So-and-so is having an affair with someone-or-other. The bus driver grows pot on an abandoned farm. The undertaker enjoys his work too much, or the small bank president is skimming the receipts. Undoubtedly, the original letters arose from something like this: misplaced outrage or perhaps jealousy. Over the years, someone else became a copycat, the way some serial killers or burglars will copy some of the more outlandish of their chosen crimes. This person or persons saw a way to lash out at small-town hypocrisy. Unlike burglars, robbers, and worse, their crime is one of nuisance. It can flare into deadly confrontation, but the reason the person or persons behind Circleville's ordeal could continue for so long is one of resources. Small town police and rural/semi-rural departments are understaffed while urban agencies have a higher number of murders, rapes, robberies, and property damage to deal with.

And of course, now I have a pitch for Down & Out Books.