The Curious Incident of the Dog in the My-Time

A man named Karl who lived in Germany in the 19th Century was a jack-of-all-trades. A skinner at a local slaughterhouse. A dog catcher. A tax collector at a time when one literally went door to door collecting cash payments. And a night watchman. Anything to make ends meet.

Karl (left) with friends, canine and human.

Karl needed to keep himself and the town’s funds safe as he strolled or patrolled the streets of the burgeoning industrial city of Apolda in Thuringia. Since Karl and his buddies loved dogs, and often frequented the city’s annual “dog market,” he hit upon the idea of breeding himself an animal to accompany him on his rounds. A four-footed security guard who would stick by his side and keep strangers at bay. A dog bred not for the field but for city streets. When Karl died in 1894, his canine-loving friends perfected that breed, which they named in honor of their departed friend, Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann.*

Cut to Summer 2019. I am standing at the edges of a decimated vegetable garden in North Carolina. Just as our veggies reach perfection, they become a banquet for the neighborhood’s rabbits and wild turkeys. The chief culprit is a groundhog who resides under our shed. Some days, I spot the plump marauder sunning itself in the yard. The effrontery! One day, I spot two.

“It’s a female!” I tell my wife. “She just had babies!”

Judging from the number of groundhogs we spotted over the ensuing years, Lady Whistle-Pig was popular with the gents.

One day, after surveying another truncated zucchini plant and chomped tomatoes, my wife announced, “We need a dog!” 

I resisted. What do parents always tell their kids before bringing that puppy home? It’s a big responsibility. I wasn’t sure I wanted that. Except for the garden, I had perfected the art of sedentary living and marriage to my keyboard. A dog would wreck that.

Weeks passed, and Denise refined her requirements. We needed a smart dog. “I’m not going to have a stupid dog,” she said adamantly.

Two friends of hers had each recently gotten German shepherds, which appear prominently on lists of the world’s smartest breeds. These lists vary slightly, depending on who’s drawing them up. Anthropocentric to a fault, humans equate canine intelligence with trainability. The border collie is always No. 1, the standard poodle No. 2, the German shepherd No. 3. Also popular are golden retrievers (N0. 4) and Labrador retrievers (No. 7). The Australian cattle dog always makes the list too, around No. 10. Damn smart dogs, the Aussies.

A friend of ours—a canine and equine artist—dissuaded us from the German shepherd. “Do you like the idea of cleaning up rolling tumbleweeds of fur around your house?” he asked.

We didn’t.

He recommended a Dobie. As a former vet tech, he believed Herr Dobermann’s breed ticked three basic boxes: They were among the Top 10 intelligent breeds, usually ranking at No.5. They were less unpredictably bitey than shepherds. They shed minuscule amounts of eyelash-sized hair. And as an artist well versed in canine anatomy he regarded them as drop-dead gorgeous.

I grew up in a family with dogs; a golden retriever and later a mutt. Like Archie Goodwin, I had formed the erroneous impression that all dogs loved me. It never occurred to me to ask someone, “Is your dog friendly?” before approaching them.

In short, I was an idiot, and remained so until the day a neighbor’s Rottweiler took me for a snack. As the dog’s jaws clamped on my wrist—I still have the scar—two thoughts occurred to me in quick succession:

1. Gee, he’s strong enough to crush my wrist.
2. Huh—I probably should be wary of dogs.

Getting a Doberman to protect one’s vegetables seemed like overkill. Any yapping canine would do. During the pandemic, I surfed the web to research Dobermans, which in my uninformed view were just as fearsome as the pooch that bit me.

I learned that Karl’s breed are the only dogs created for personal protection. He and his friends believed that they were breeding “police-soldier dogs.” In World War II, the breed became a dog of choice for the Germans and the U.S. Marines. The latter used them as cave explorers, messengers, scouts, and bomb-sniffers. Twenty-five dogs, mostly Dobies, lost their lives on Guam, where a regal statue of a reclining Doberman stands in the U.S. war dog cemetery there. (More on this story in a future post.) They served as police dogs, too, until police forces moved on to breeds like German shepherds and the Belgian Malinois.

Doberman fanciers and police dog handlers love to pontificate on the reasons for that shift. Dobies have short coats, they say, so they aren’t great for outdoor police work in cold or hot weather. Taping their ears so they grow into the “correct” position is time-consuming. The dogs are too independent. They take too long to mature. Their bite style—bite and shred—makes them undesirable compared to shepherds, who bite and hold a suspect until they can be formally arrested.

On forums frequented by police dog handlers, people insist Euro-dobies are tougher animals. The European Dobermann is bigger and beefier. The American is more gracile. In their zeal to breed a safe family pet, goes the argument, Americans have winnowed the dogs’ natural aggression out of them. Breeders have created animals for show, not street work as originally intended. The American dogs were Little Lord Fauntleroys compared to der Dobermannpinscher.

Which sounded fine to me. It comforted me to see videos of American Dobermans patiently enduring the hugs of human toddlers, babysitting infants in swings, playing in kiddie pools, and serving as therapy and seeing-eye dogs.

Okay, I told Denise, let’s try to get a sit with some breeders. But that became impossible in 2020, when breeders halted their programs for fear that their animals would contract Covid-19 from prospective adopters, or vice versa. I gave up trying. It seemed like a pain in my tailless rump.

So when Denise revisited the dog issue again last summer, I told her we should select a rescue dog from the local shelter. Getting the eyelash-shedding dog of her dreams was unlikely to ever happen. Breeders required you to submit an application to judge your suitability. Did we have a yard that was completely fenced? (No.) Did we have experience taping Doberman ears? (No.) Had we thoroughly researched the dog ordinances in our municipality? (Um, what?) Sheesh.

“It’s way too complicated,” I said.

In early June 2022, we were sitting outdoors, again surveying our trampled garden. Denise peeked at the web on her phone for about three minutes, dialed a number, and in a matter of minutes was speaking with a lovely woman in South Carolina—three hours from our home—who had recently helped her champion female bring nine puppies into the world.

I am at heart a pessimist. If it was that easy to find a puppy, there had to be some catch. You don’t just pick a breeder off the web, I informed her, though that’s exactly what I had attempted to do in 2020. Turns out, she had unknowingly picked the oldest continuing Doberman kennel in the United States. A breeder whose late founder is mentioned lovingly in most textbooks on the breed. When the nine-pup litter was old enough to accept visitors, we drove south, and fell in love with one of the males. The kennel took a deposit, and promised to begin using with him the name we planned to bestow upon him.

I also learned that once in the kennel’s history, one of their dogs achieved fame prancing through the plotlines of this (fictional) detective’s adventures.

Hillerman will always be Simon Brimmer to me.

Well, shoot, I thought, I needed to break out my stash of Hawaiian shirts, and start growing a luxurious mustache. However, I wasn’t sure about sticking my ample keister into a pair of 70s-style short-shorts. But I had time to drop some weight; we would not be getting the dog for another six weeks.

While waiting, I dove back into the research. The breed was known for docked tails and cropped ears, to better reduce handholds for criminals. Ironically, in the 1980s European kennel clubs banned the practice of surgically altering dogs of any breed. They now regarded the practice as cruel and inhumane. Naturally, the erect ears and short tails remain the breed standard in the United States.

Hearing this, my own ears perked up. I had watched numerous videos on how to insert and wrap posts in my future puppy’s ears until his cartilage grew to support them in the customary position. We’d need to do this every five days, for 10 months at minimum. It looked daunting, fiddly, and prone to error.

We shot a note to the breeders. Please, oh pretty please, could we have our dog intact? The floppy ears issued at birth were perfectly fine with us. We never intended to show the dog. We just wanted him to protect our damn tomatoes.

Sorry, said they, the ears are already done. We cannot sell a dog that does not conform to the breed standard.

I haven’t talked much about this publicly, but during this period my doctors gave me a troubling medical diagnosis. Luckily, the cancer was eminently treatable. But I would be shuttling daily to two different facilities for treatment. Did we really want the responsibility of a puppy as I endured chemo-radiation? Should we forfeit our deposit and walk away?

We couldn’t abandon this face.

When I was sick and wasting away, I’d wake from an unplanned nap to find the little guy asleep on my belly. When I woke mornings dreading the day, the only thing that got me out of bed was the thought that we had to walk the dog.

Months have passed, and the world looks different. I have grown accustomed to people stopping to say, “Sir, you have a very pretty dog.” (For some reason, it’s always hefty Southern gentlemen who use this phraseology.) I’m in remission, healthier, and stronger. I’ve gained back some of the forty-five pounds I lost, but constant walks and puppy training sessions have kept excess poundage at bay. I know the trails in the woods behind my house far better than I ever did before, and walk about 10 miles more a week than I ever have. My cholesterol’s dropped. Even my eyesight is better.**

Without hesitation I can say that this animal has saved my life.

Still, it’s challenging living with an 80-pound lap dog who doesn’t know his own strength. True to Herr Dobermann’s vision, the dog follows me everywhere—except when on a leash. He chases fish and tadpoles in the pond below the house, even though he’s too heavy to swim gracefully. He detests the rain, and won’t deign to walk in it. He peers curiously at passing hawks, crows, airplanes, but growls at the occasional Chinook helicopter. After each morning’s walk, he insists upon sitting perfectly erect in the front yard, head swiveling to check the perimeter of the entire neighborhood.

The groundhog under the shed is long gone. I must have missed the moving truck. Rabbits, turkeys, feral cats, and squirrels do not tarry long within our fenceline.

But since Mother Nature is a prankster, we have new problem.

The dog’s new favorite thing? Tearing up and scattering tomato plants to the four winds. Who can blame him? It’s the best fun ever.

* * *

* In Europe, kennel clubs retain two N’s when referring to the breed; in the U.S., it’s one N. The Europeans also reject the term pinscher, which means terrier, as inaccurate; Americans continue to use it.

** I know this sounds incoherent at first glance. But conditions such as ocular hypertension are apparently reduced by something called exercise. Never tried it until now.

Query: If anyone knows of dog handlers who have worked with the breed in law enforcement or military settings, kindly get in touch. I’m collecting interviews for a future nonfiction project.

See you in three weeks!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

A Strange Sort of Mourning

By now, most of you know that I volunteered at the Sioux Falls prison for 12 years (Alternatives to Violence Project and the Lifer's Group), and then for the last year have been working from home in a kind of advisory capacity for the Lifer's Group.  I still hear most of what goes on from those who are still going into the prison, both news and gossip, so I don't feel too isolated from it, and I'm glad of that.

I've gotten to know a lot of inmates very well over the years.  I know a lot about their families as well as their crimes. I've gone to hospital when they've had surgery.  I'll never forget showing up at one inmate's hospital room (with my bona fides to let me in), and the surprise on the guard's face.  Inmates just don't get many visitors. Some inmates have stayed in touch after they've gotten out either on parole, or flatting (slang for doing all their time).  And I've written letters in support of some inmates' applications for parole.  

But there's a lot of sadness.  

The 18 year old kid, coming down off meth, who's still trying to think straight (and not succeeding), and trying to grapple with a 40 year sentence for the manslaughter he committed while tweaking, and he really doesn't remember much of any of it, because he was tweaking so hard and then he crashed so fast, and when he came to he was being arrested, and...  he doesn't know what the hell he's going to do.  

The 56 year old guy who used to be one of those 18 year old meth-heads who got federal time because he used a gun and had too much meth in his possession, and is at the pen because the feds are moving him - again - from one facility to another because that's what they do, and he's lost track of his family so many years and prisons ago, and there's no sense in making friends in prison because they just keep busting everybody up and moving them, and he's just there at AVP because it's something to do, but his eyes are freaking dead.  

The 75 year old guy who's been in for 45 years and ain't never getting out, because this whole "compassionate release" thing doesn't happen, not really, unless you have family who will take you in OR you are so close to dying they can just send you to hospice, and he's not there yet, so he's still working because you lose points and privileges if you refuse work, and he takes care of people in the hospice area of the pen, and so he knows exactly where he's going to end up and how it's going to be.  (He was the model for Papa Bell in my story, "Cool Papa Bell" in Josh Pachter's anthology, Paranoia Blues.)

The years pass slowly / quickly in a penitentiary.  Twentysomethings change into Fortysomethings into Sixtysomethings, and all that time they've been in a cement and metal world with 40 minutes outside rec once a day except in winter.  South Dakota winters are long.  And in those years, everything's changed, from technology to cultural norms to dress codes to their health, and after enough decades, they're seriously frightened of getting out.  

The Vietnam Vet in his 70s who was fixing to flat (finish his time) and talked to me that last AVP weekend about his PTSD, never treated, and how certain sounds still made him want to curl up in a ball and hide under his bunk, but he never dared do that in prison because someone would kill him sure or worse.  And when he finally was released, he asked to be taken to a nondescript motel which rented rooms by the week or the month, and there he is, holed up with his small remittance - enough for the rent and his fast food - and his TV, and plans to never see anyone ever again.  

Did I mention health problems.  Enough years on prison food and just about everyone has hypertension and diabetes, because it's heavy on carbs, low on protein, and very low on fresh fruit and vegetables.  The stud muffin of 18 is now 50 pounds overweight, and worried about a having a heart attack.  There's HIV and hepatitis everywhere, from prison tattoos (the tattoo artists brag about using new needles, but there's no guarantee) or blood-to-blood contact (gang fights, gang rape, gay sex).  And there's cancer.

Recently I found out that an inmate had died in a local hospital. I wasn't surprised.  He'd been part of Lifer's Group since it was restarted in 2017, and he'd had cancer then. Aggressive cancer.  He looked like a bone thin Alun Armstrong (Brian in New Tricks) in a wheelchair, with a strong speech impediment and a bad temper.  We watched him get thinner and weaker, but still showing up - wheeled in by one of the other guys - and trying desperately to communicate (it was throat cancer).  He could be a pain in the ass - when he got on a rant, he stayed on it - but he could also make valuable contributions.  God knows he knew what the prison hospital and hospice (ideally) should have been.  

Because of all of this, I've thought a lot over the years about how horrible it would be to grow old, get sick, to battle loneliness, guilt, mental illness, addiction, heart disease, cancer in prison.  And to die of it, ANY of it, in prison.  

Prison Alun was a felon, guilty of a terrible crime - but he paid for it.  He paid a lot, and it was more than just time.  

That San Diego Treat

 I am writing this on the plane back from San Diego after having enjoyed the 2023 Bouchercon.  It is, I think, the eighth I have attended  and it was at least as well-run and fun as any of the others.

Here is one big improvement they came up with (at least, I have never been to a con where they did this).  Instead of stuffing the attendees’ swag bag with free books, each member was given three tickets which they could take to a room called the Book Bazaar (NOT the dealer's room) and swap them for any three new books they chose.  Once the organizers knew how many books were coming from publishers the freebie count went up to five.  As you can imagine this resulted in a lot of boxes of swag being shipped back home.  I myself made a little pilgrimage to UPS.

One of the highlights of the weekend (for me) was a panel I moderated.  I stole the idea from the World Science Fiction Conference where it is called “45 Panels in 60 Minutes.”  We called our version “20 Panels in One.” The idea is that audience members write down topics and toss them into a hat and panelists pick them out and have less than a minute to bestow their wisdom on that subject.  

At Worldcon this turns toward comedy but here the questions were serious and the brave panelists (Mike McCrary, Eleanor Kuhns, Steve Von Doviak, and Keir Graff) did a great job.  The result seemed to me to be close to an mini-unconference.  Instead of the usual panel arrangement (moderator asking questions for 40 minutes, followed by 10 minutes from the audience) this was 40 minutes of audience queries, with me finishing up. 

Sample questions: “What is your protagonist most afraid of?  What are you?”  “Donald Westlake. Discuss.” 

It was an interesting experiment.    One audience member told me she thought it should be repeated at every con, but I don’t plan to be at the Nashville con, so someone else would have to take that on. I can think of two improvements: instead of using a floppy sun hat, I should have brought the dapper fedora you see in the picture.  And instead of going down the row each time I would ask the panelists to speak up if they have anything to contribute on the topic.

And speaking of reactions… I have mentioned that I was once on a panel with a very chatty moderator.  Afterwards a stranger came up and said “I attended your panel.  I wish I’d gotten to hear you.”

Well, after “20 Panels in One” a stranger said “I wish you had spoken more.”

I replied “The moderator isn’t supposed to.”

“But in this case it would have been okay.” Maybe she was right, since none of us had been chosen for our expertise on the topics.  

I also got to be a panelist on “What Librarians Wish Readers and Writers Knew,” with Sarah Bresniker, John Graham, Leslie Blatt, and Michal Strutin.  This turned out to focus on three main topics: how to get books and book events into libraries, doing research in libraries, and coping with the recent attacks on libraries by conservative groups.  The question period turned into mostly passionate defenses of libraries from audience members.  One author said it was the most useful panel of the weekend. And being librarians we even created a webpage with useful resources to go with it.

Librarians Panel

Still on the subject of libraries, I did an Author Spotlight (one person blabbing for 20 minutes) on how we caught the guy who stole rare books from over 100 libraries.  I had good attendance which I attribute to creating posters (that is, 8x11 pages).  I left 20 on a freebies table, they were all picked up, and 15 people came.  That’s a good sell-through rate.

I attended two panels on short stories (three if you count the Anthony nominated anthologies panel, and four if you include Josh Pachter’s Spotlight about editing music-themed anthologies.)  

More highlights were two humor panels, one of which featured one of the best and rarest conference moments: the point at which all the panelists suddenly discover something together.  

An audience member had asked if any of the panelists used a sensitivity reader for their books.  All of them said no.  Then each of them got thoughtful and acknowledged:  “But when I write about a certain group, I ask my friend to read it…” Donna Anders summed it up: “We don’t call them sensitivity readers.  We call them people who know things.”  When I told my wife this she said “Volunteers are undervalued.”

Another highlight: there were more people of color than I have ever seen at a mystery event.  This may be in part because of the geography, but I’m sure some of it is due to Crime Writers of Color.  CWoC sponsored a reception called Underrepresented Voices and bragged that while they started with 30 members in 2018 they are now over 400.  That’s great.

As former president of the Short Mystery Fiction Society I had the honor of announcing the Derringer Award winners and giving out the medals and certificates to those present.  I was especially delighted to give Martin Edwards the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement.

One great point of any con is making new friends and meeting up with old ones.  I won’t try to name all the ones I shared a meal or a chat with, except to mention fellow SleuthSayers Michael Bracken, R.T. Lawton, Travis Richardson, and Barb Goffman.  I left Barb for last so I could single her for congratulations: she won a well-deserved Anthony Award for her short story “Beauty and the Beyotch.” Whoo-hoo!

Let me end with one more gathering of friends.  Jackie Sherbow, the managing editor of both Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazines, invited all of the Dell magazine writers present to join her poolside for a drink.  I won’t try to name them all but if you read AHMM and EQMM you would recognize the 20 or so names.  

I looked around and said: “Boy, if a bomb went off right now the face of mystery short fiction would be changed forever.”

Because, hey, that’s the way we think, isn’t it?

Join me here in two weeks for my favorite quotes from San Diego.

Oh, one more thing: I have a story on TOUGH which you can read for free.

Bouchercon takeaways: being a successful panelist

Like some of you reading this, I recently attended this year's Bouchercon, which is touted as the world's largest mystery convention. It's held in a different city each year. This year, approximately 1,700 crime/mystery readers and writers converged in San Diego, where--among other things--we participated in and attended panels devoted to crime fiction. 

I like panels. I like learning new things and finding new-to-me authors whose books I'm excited to read. I probably attend more panels on average than many other people do at conventions like this. Some people actually leave the convention hotel to tour the city! Me, wherever we go, I attend the panels. This is partly a byproduct of having been the program chair of Malice Domestic from 2008 - 2014. If you live and breathe panels for as long as I did, you get attached and you like going to ones that sound good. Of course, I became program chair because I loved going to panels and thought I could do a good job at creating and scheduling them, so I guess this is a chicken-or-the-egg situation. But I digress.

Bouchercon started on Wednesday afternoon this year instead of the usual Thursday morning. The extra half day of panels really made a difference. It made the convention seemed less rushed. It enabled more authors to be on panels. It gave attendees more chance to see panels on topics they were especially interested in because there often was more than one panel on a similar topic. For instance, this year they had several panels devoted to short stories, to which I say: two thumbs up.

This is all a lead-up to say that I attended a lot of panels at Bouchercon, and I noted some problems occurring in panel after panel after panel. The biggest one: too many panelists far too often do not speak into the microphone. That makes it difficult for people in the audience to hear you or hear you clearly. So, for future reference, here are my handy dandy tips for being a successful panelist:

• 
  Speak into the microphone. Either move the microphone so it is CLOSE to your lips or EVERY TIME you speak lean forward so it's close to your lips. If the mic is sitting in the middle of the table and you're sitting with good posture, chances are your mic is a foot away. That's too far. It will not pick up what you're saying well. Pretend the mic is your high school crush. Get up close and personal. A couple of inches between mouth and mic is about right.
  
  
• Speak to the audience. Look to the front. When you do that, you have a much better chance of speaking into the microphone. I can't tell you how many times panelists turned their head, talking to their panel moderator or fellow panelists when answering a question. When they did that, their lips were not near their mic. I understand the inclination to want to look at the person you're responding to, but this is not a conversation between two friends. Think of the moderator as a stand-in for the audience. Look at the moderator if you like when the question is posed, but then look to the audience when you answer. They're the ones who chose this panel to hear what you have to say. Make it easy for them.

• 

  Image by rawpixel.com

• If you're considering standing your book up on the table during the panel so audience members can see it, make sure it is not a hindrance to the audience seeing your face. If a book is a short mass market paperback, it probably won't block you. If it's a hardback, it very well might. And if you set your book on a little holder, the chances are even greater you'll be blocked by your book. So, before the panel starts, set your book up and have a friend sit in various spots in the audience and let you know if you're visible. If your book is blocking you from any spots in the audience, then I would hold it up while you are being introduced and then set it down. You might think you don't care if the audience can see you, that you want your book to be seen. But as an audience member, I beg to differ. It can be hard to connect with an author if I'm annoyed that I can't see them, no matter what they say or how charming they are. Think of the audience as your annoying relative who brushed your hair from your eyes when you were a kid. Bubby, we want to see your face.

• When an audience member asks a question, repeat it before answering it. This is a moderator responsibility, but sometimes questions are posed directly to a particular panelist, and the panelist will jump in to answer. If you do, try to remember to restate the question first (speaking into the mic) so everyone in the audience can hear it. I know it can be easy to forget to do this. I'm guilty of it myself. All we can do is try our best to remember.

• The best panels I attend often have conversations between the panelists. Rather than having a question posed and each panelist answer it down the line, saying their piece and waiting quietly until the next question is posed, see if you have something to add to what other panelists say. Engage in conversation.You'll probably end up with more interesting and less canned answers. (But don't talk too much. If you are talking twice as long or twice as often as anyone else, it will be noticed by the audience members and not in a good way.)
  

  

  Thanks to photographer
  John Thomas Bychowski.

  
  

I hope to see (and hear) you at Bouchercon next fall in Nashville (and Malice Domestic next spring in North Bethesda, Maryland, as usual). 

And before I go, a little BSP: I was delighted to win the Anthony Award for Best Short Story of 2022 at Bouchercon for "Beauty and the Beyotch," originally published in issue 29 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Thanks to the magazine's editor, Carla Coupe, who helped make the story better.

What Is A Hack

The answer, like the answer to so many questions, depends on how old you are. If you were born before the Flood, or even before the War (what Flood? what War? see what I mean?), a hack is a New York taxi cab. If you're a Boomer, a hack is an uninspired writer, for example, a journalist, who churns out derivative or formulaic drivel without inspiration, passion, or creativity. If you're a millennial, it's an illegal but brilliant incursion into the best guarded secrets of cyberspace. If you're Gen Z, apparently, a "hack" can be anything.

Because I was born before the Flood (okay, before the start of the Baby Boom), I remember the old game "coffeepot," in which you replaced any chosen word in a sentence with "coffeepot" and the other players had to guess from context what you were talking about. I also read Alice in Wonderland, in which Humpty Dumpty says, "There's glory for you!" He explains to Alice that when he says it, glory means, "there's a nice knock-down argument for you," because "when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."

If I thought that Gen Z were emulating Humpty Dumpty, I'd have no quarrel with them.

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "Which is to be master---that's all...They've a temper, some of them---particularly, verbs, they're the proudest---adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs---however, I can manage the whole lot!"

I doubt the Gen Zers who use "hack" to coffeepot language can explain what Humpty Dumpty means. I've seen a video of an "omelet hack" displayed on the wall of my local subway station. An article in the Harvard Crimson, of all places, referred to another online article about "life hacks every student should know" that led to articles on such important coffeepots as "hacks for DIY manicures, hacks to survive delays at the airport, and even hacks for what to do when you just can’t finish those last three pieces of sushi." Remember real language, when we used such terms as "life skills" and "recipes?" And when you didn't send your kids to Harvard to figure out what to do with the last three pieces of sushi? Oy gevalt.

If these kids think Chatbot is going to let them relax while they let it write their term papers and emails and still take over the world with their Harvard degrees and sublime sense of entitlement, they're deluding themselves. They're clearing the field for Chatbot and the more sophisticated AI that's sure to follow it to take over the world. And AI doesn't drink the water or breathe the air, so don't expect its goals to be the same as ours. It's not there yet by any means. I was reassured to see on a giant bus shelter a digital poster that claimed, "Montrealers are non-stop festivals!" It was lousy copywriting, and I understood why when I read the fine print: "AI-generated review of Montréal, based on thousands of visitor comments." AI will learn. Will human kids? Not if they lose the skills to hack language before time coffeepots out. There's glory for you!

Toby or not Toby...

If you thought we were finished with weird English, I'm back with an even more… erm… entertaining take. You can blame the usual suspects, ABA and Sharon, who pass on interesting articles.

Aaron Alon is a musicologist, composer, song writer, script writer, director, filmmaker, professor, and humorist. Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic, he assembled a video about making English consistent, a huge task. This is the result.

 

 

 

 

© respective copyright holder

 

I particularly like the Hamlet reading, don't you? But wait, there's more.  Alon wasn't done.

Following comments and critiques, he came up with a supplemental video in which he, well, sings a classic. Here you go.

 

 

 

 

© respective copyright holder

 

What did you think? Aaron said he might consider a video about making constants consistent. I'm still figure out, "I tot I taw a puddy-tat."

Okay, I promise no more weird English slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For at least a week.

The Scene of the Crime

Pachter in the Begijnhof.

The Scene of the Crime 

by Josh Pachter  

As readers of this blog may remember, I have been selling short fiction to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and other places since the late Sixties. This September, fifty-five years after my first appearance in EQMM, I finally had a novel come out. It’s called Dutch Threat, and it is set in Amsterdam—where my first wife and I lived from 1976 through 1982. 

During those years, I worked as an editor for Excerpta Medica, which published medical textbooks and conference proceedings in English. Their offices were located on the Keizersgracht (“Emperor’s Canal”), one of the Dutch capital’s main ring canals, a short walk from one of my favorite places in the world: the Begijnhof. More often than not, I’d spend my lunch break in this oasis of calm in the middle of the bustling city, and when I sat down to write my first novel I decided to set most of the action there. 

Het Houten Huys.

In fact, the Begijnhof is an ideal location for one particular subgenre of the traditional crime story: the closed-community mystery. 

Just in case anyone here is unfamiliar with the term, a “closed-community” (or, as it is also sometimes called, “closed-circle”) mystery is one that takes place in a location which, by its own nature or due to external circumstances, can only be accessed by a specific and limited group of people—which means that any crime occurring there can only have been committed by one of the people who had access to the scene. 

Agatha Christie’s 1939 novel, for example—originally published as Ten Little N-Words and later retitled And Then There Were None—takes place on a small island off England’s Devon coast. There are ten people on the island, and one by one they begin to fall victim to a murderer. Since no one else is on the island, the murderer must be one of the ever-decreasing number of survivors. In the 1965 film version—titled Ten Little Indians—the island is replaced by a snowbound mansion. Either way, it’s a closed-community mystery. 

And the Begijnhof is a classic closed community. Originally established during the Middle Ages—we don’t know exactly when, but it is first mentioned in print in 1389—it is a ring of forty-six gabled brick townhouses (and one of the only two wooden houses remaining in central Amsterdam) built around a central courtyard to house beguines, who were religious women who chose to live in a communal setting without taking vows or fully separating themselves from the world outside. The complex also includes a large off-limits grassy area (known as the “bleaching green” because the beguines laid their laundry there to dry and be whitened by the sun, and now off limits because some of the beguines were buried there), a lovely Dutch church that’s much larger on the inside than seems possible from the outside and—of all things—the English Reformed Church, which holds services in English and sometimes hosts free concerts of religious and secular music. 

The bleaching green.

The last beguine died at the age of eighty-four in 1971, but even today the Begijnhof’s one hundred and five residents are all women, mostly elderly, and the waiting list for a space is years long. 

Originally, there was only one entrance to the complex, though a second was added in 1574 and a third in 1725. Although two of the three access points are open during the day and the courtyard is much more heavily touristed today than it was when I worked nearby, all three doors are locked at night—so a nighttime murder would have to have been committed either by one of the residents or by someone in possession of a key. 

In my book, American graduate student Jack Farmer is sent to The Netherlands to do historical research in the Begijnhof and is granted special permission to move into Het Houten Huys (“The Wooden House”) for the two weeks of his stay. He finds himself—if you’ll forgive an old-fashioned word—smitten with Jet Schilders, the young nurse who checks in regularly on several of the elderly residents … and when one of them is murdered and Jet turns out to be a suspect, Jack teams up with her to investigate the killing and clear her name. 

There are a number of major characters in the book, and one of them is the Begijnhof itself. One of my goals in writing Dutch Threat—in addition to providing a perplexing whodunit with some twists and turns and a satisfying resolution—was to present a compelling portrait of one of my favorite places in the world. If the next time you visit Amsterdam you put the Begijnhof on your must-see list, I’ll feel that I’ve accomplished at least that part of what I set out to accomplish! 

Dutch Threat is available directly from the publisher, Genius Book Publishing, at this link, and also from the usual clicks-and-mortar booksellers.

 

As You First Hope

Again, another inspiration from a SleuthSayer's column – Chris Knopf's What could go wrong? (28 August 2023).

Chris said, "A better way to describe my projects is a series of screwups and miscalculations, strung together by intermittent moments of good luck, and relentless revision."

About the same for me. And I am drawn to a writer I've always admired and what she said:

"Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped."

                                                                                                            – Lilliam Hellman

Lillian Hellman, 1939

Born in New Orleans, Lillian Hellman is a revered playwright, fiction writer, screenwriter and memoirist, best known for The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, Toys in the Attic, The Children's Hour, The Autumn Garden and her long relationship with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, as well as her political activism. Like Hammett, she was blacklisted during the communist witch hunt of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

This New Orleans writer, like many of my writer friends, acknowledges Hellman's statement is spot on.

While most of my story stories stick to an outline (often little more than a sketchy idea), my novels have never. Even my early books, which I composed after putting together detailed outlines, did not end up the way they were intended.

These days, I don't use an outline with my novels. I create the characters, figure what time period and setting, come up with a starting point and what I think will be the end scenes and let the characters find their way to the end. I follow along and write what they say and do. There are surprises along the way, and new characters change from bad guys to good guys.

Smooth, my latest novel published on September 5th, is a good example. New Orleans Private Eye Lucien Caye is up front with wife Alizeé, daughter Jeannie and the usual supporting cast of NOPD detectives and neighbors in the lower French Quarter. I laid out the cases he works in the book and watched him work.

Yes, his character evolves as the series moves forward. Songwriter Alizeé also works as a lingerie model and part-time private eye with Lucien. The book gives a view of this private eye's homelife as much as his gumshoe work. It's a kick to write and ends up close to where it was intended, but it did not come out as I first imagined.

That's all for now.

www.oneildenoux.com

The Sincerest Form of Flattery? Part 1

 “There’s a nice little girl,” I told myself out loud in the car, “for a guy that’s interested in a nice little girl.” Nobody said anything. “But I’m not,” I said.

*    *    *    *    *

“She’s a nice girl. Not my type.”

“You don’t like them nice?” He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand.

“I like smooth, shiny girls, hard boiled and loaded with sin.”

“They take you to the cleaners,” he said indifferently.

“Sure. Where else have I ever been?”

                 - Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

The above nearly sums up one half of the secondary conflict for detective Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s 1942 classic, Farewell, My Lovely. For all his protestations about what he does and doesn’t want in a woman, he is clearly as equally drawn to “nice girl” Anne Riordan as he is to “smooth, shiny” and “loaded with sin” Helen Grayle.

And the novel derives as much of its power from the tension this Devil’s Triangle generates as it does from the primary, more action-oriented conflict. Chandler, a writer of considerable skill, fed the tension expertly, and Marlowe gets jerked back and forth for pages at a time as a result.

Many crime fiction aficionados consider Farewell, My Lovely Chandler’s best work. Personally I can’t pick a clear favorite from among his novels (although I certainly have a least favorite: the slight and underwhelming Playback, written toward the end of Chandler’s life). But I do think Farewell, My Lovely is damned good.

And one of my reasons for this opinion is the character of Anne Riordan. In many ways she is the opposite of the classic hard boiled femme fatale: accomplished in her own right: an investigative reporter following the moral example of an incorruptible cop father. Anne Riordan proves a match for Marlowe in so many ways, and is both a delight to encounter, and impossible for the reader to ignore.

So imagine my delight when I heard that the latest Marlowe novel commissioned by the Chandler estate would feature a returned Anne Riordan, this time running her own detective agency, and set to both compete with and cooperate with Marlowe once again.

I am, of course, talking about Scottish author Denise Mina’s new novel, The Second Murderer: the first Marlowe novel commissioned by the Chandler estate to be written by a woman. This book comes in the footsteps of such previous post-Chandler novels as Robert B. Parker’s execrable Perchance to Dream, Benjamin Black’s solid if unspectacular The Black-Eyed Blonde, Lawrence Osborne’s interesting-yet-ponderous Only to Sleep (an over-the-hill Marlowe limping around 1980s Mexico), and most recently Joe Ide’s The Goodbye Coast, an attempt at a “modern update” of Marlowe, which Washington Post literary critic Maureen Corrigan neatly summed up thusly:

“Unfortunately, apart from its moody, Chandler-esque title and a main character called Philip Marlowe, ‘The Goodbye Coast’ has as much connection to Chandler’s novels as Rome, N.Y., has to Rome.”

Each of these efforts, as noted above, was commissioned by the Chandler estate, and each was written by a man, with uneven results. So, of course it’s high time the estate sought out the talents of a woman to take on this task.

And for my money, Mina’s novel is far and away the best of the lot. And it’s not at all close.

Which is saying something, because Mina’s Marlowe, although hardly a carbon copy of the original, really does a fine job of taking up the same spiritual space as Chandler’s iconic character. No mean feat.

Lots more to say on this topic, will have to pick it back up next time.

See you in two weeks!

The Prigozhin Effect

 

Yevgeny Prigozhin didn’t fall out of a window; he fell out of the sky.  In a terrifying nosedive, from 28,000 feet.  I hope he had just enough time left to know who ordered it.  And just for shuffles and grins, they took out Dmitri Utkin too, the guy who gave Wagner its name, after his callsign.  Few people, inside Russia or out, are in any doubt that Putin pulled the trigger.  The Kremlin issued a denial, but that’s what plausible deniability is all about, a smooth lie and a sly wink.  The point of the exercise is its utter shamelessness. 

Putin eulogized his onetime best bud as “a man of difficult fate,” which is an interesting locution.  If a literal translation, we might put a different construction on it, someone who sailed under a troubled star.  They went back a ways together, to Leningrad in the late 1990’s, the Boris Yeltsin years, when the oligarchs were raking in cash, over and under the table, and the siloviki – current and former members of the defense and security apparat – had both feet in the trough along with them.  This is what’s come to be known as gangster capitalism, and Vladimir Putin is now the capo di tutti capi.

Wagner Group certainly had its uses.  Murder for hire in Syria and central Africa, leveraging gold, oil, and diamond concessions.  It generated high yield at low risk, even as they normalized war crimes, terror a common instrument, but Wagner wasn’t a state actor, at least on paper.

What seems to be happening now is that they’re being brought under discipline, specifically the central military intelligence chain of command.  There’s of course a lot of intentional confusion about Progizhin’s death and who authorized it, but reliable indicators suggest the job was assigned to Gen. Andrei Averyanov’s special purpose unit inside GRU.  This is the crew that went after defector Sergei Skripal in the UK, with a nerve agent, five years ago.  They’ve never been known for subtlety.  And as luck would have it, Gen. Averyanov has reportedly now been given command of Wagner’s Africa mission.

On a different front, in what we can consider the Russian asymmetrical war effort, Prigozhin was also the founding partner of the Internet Research Agency, the Leningrad troll farm best known in the U.S. for social media influence operations to promote Trump for president.  IRA is supposedly being dismantled in the wake of the Prigozhin mutiny, but we can be sure its assets will be repurposed. 

In other words, although the Wagner coup attempt was widely heralded by Kremlin-watchers as seismic, an exposure of Putin’s fatal weaknesses, it seems more like a fart in the bathtub.  Nothing much has really changed.  “Death is our business,” Wagner’s recruiting pitch went, “and business is good.”  Is it ever. 

Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine grinds on, and Russia’s weakness makes it even more dangerous, like a wounded animal in a trap.  The disinformation campaigns are being redoubled (with China slipstreaming alongside), and God help us, we’ve got Trump taking up all the air in the room, again.  If anything, Putin is stronger than he was before Prigozhin’s mutiny.  No amount of wishful thinking can make this go away. 

A Day for Nothing

Yesterday, September 11th, marked the 22nd anniversary of the attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and the nation. Commentary about Patriot's Day might better come from those who were called to serve on that day or in the conflicts that followed. I spent the day as a prosecutor in Texas. A while back, in a different forum, I wrote about my 9/11. I'm offering a quiet reflection from the middle swath of America. 

In 2001, my children were toddlers. Tuesday morning was spent with the television turned off, if there was news, we didn't hear it. The many and varied tasks associated with getting us out the door and our children prepared for the day consumed our attention. The tasks of our everyday activities kept the outside world at bay. 

Betty and I were in the car, mere blocks from the Criminal Justice Center when her father called. A plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He had little additional news, just the first glimpse of an unfolding tragedy. We had just parked and made it to our office when the South Tower was struck. 

Around the DA's office, televisions, radios, and computers focused on learning additional news. What we heard was catastrophic and getting worse. 

On September 11th, 2001, I was the chief prosecutor in the 372nd Judicial District Court. We had defendants summoned for trial. Jurors had been called. The court's docket had been prepared weeks in advance. Justice was waiting, but no one was capable of working. After a time, Judge Wisch, the presiding judge of the 372nd, brought the jurors into court. He explained as best he could where America stood. Then, he dismissed the panel. "Pray," he told the prospective jurors. "Pray for the soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Pray for the first responders of New York City. Pray for our country." 

The rest of the day was hollow. At another time, I worked in the office on the day that the elected district attorney succumbed to cancer. Although sad and signaling a change that affected the professional life of every employee, cancer was something we understood. We did what we needed to do. 9/11 was an event beyond our ken. We have a national hymn about alabaster cities undimmed by human tears. No meaningful work was done. Instead, we gathered in small, silent groups and traded rumors. Fort Worth is the corporate home of American Airlines. Everyone knew someone who worked for the airline. We worried for our neighbors. We all knew someone living in Manhattan. We worried for our far-flung friends. Everyone knew someone serving in the military. We worried about their future. 

That night, Betty and I kept the television off so as not to upset the boys. We made calls seeking news from our friends and neighbors. We gathered at a hastily arranged church service to add corporate prayer to the many individual entreaties for the dead and injured. In the days that followed, we donated blood and contributed to the Red Cross. We bought a share of American Airlines stock. We read and talked about how to answer a four-year-old boy's question, "Why did those men crash the planes into that building?" 

Church services and donated money and pints of blood, we stood in America's heartland and tried in our ways to recompense for the broken planes, broken buildings, broken bodies, and broken hearts. 

My clearest memory, however, of a fitting memorial to 9/11 occurred several weeks later. By then, here in the heartland, life had largely resumed. New York's recovery had become a topic of the evening news. We were back in the 372nd, prosecuting criminal cases. The defendant up in the dock, coincidentally that week, was named Mohammed Koran. He was charged with sexual assault. Had we culled through our case lists, we might never have found a name more likely to push Islamophobic buttons. On the morning of the trial, his attorney, Matt King, approached the bench and asked that a continuance be granted. He had no reason he could articulate except that a postponement was "in the interest of justice." 

Justice, however, has multiple sides. Sexual assault victims need to get past the trial so that they can resume their lives. The victim had done nothing to provoke any prejudice against the defendant. She deserved the trial for which she had waited. We should, as her advocates, press the court to go forward. 

In the end, the prosecution stood mute and allowed Judge Wisch to decide. He considered the "t'ain't fair" argument of the defense. (T'ain't is the local double-apostrophed word meaning "that is not"). Ultimately, he sided with the Defense. In the end, Judge Wisch was right. 

The nation had broken planes, broken buildings, broken bodies, and broken hearts. What the case reminded me, however, was that our institutions and our foundational principles remained intact. Our system of due process for all remained. We did not surrender to xenophobia, scapegoating, or misplaced revenge. To my mind, the court presented America at its best.  By doing nothing. 

Until next time.