Roman à Clef? Murder, Neat: A Former Model Confesses

MURDER, NEAT… and a little bit twisted.

Who could guess that my past would be all over the short story, ‘The Mob, The Model and The College Reunion’, in the anthology MURDER, NEAT?

A few years ago, I was on stage for a book event, hearing happy applause. A hand went up, and a young gal with somewhat questionable social skills said, "You don't look anything like your protagonist."

I swallowed my wounded pride, dug deep into the wit-basket and quipped: "Not only that, I don't look anything like my author photo!" That brought the biggest laugh of the evening, of course.

But the incident prompted me to rethink a related question I get asked frequently. How close is the protagonist to the real me?

I've written 18 books and over 60 short stories. If the protagonist was me in all of those, it would be a pretty boring adventure for readers. And for me, as well. Part of the fun of being an author is putting yourself into the skin of others. Becoming the character you are writing, for just a little while. Leaving yourself behind.

However, sometimes I just want to write myself into a fun story (always a fun one...never a fearful one!)

So in ‘The Mob, The Model and The College Reunion’, I let the real me show through.  Okay, I may be older now than Donna di Marco, the protagonist, is in this tale, but she carries my background, my on again – off again modeling career, my outlook on life, and definitely my wit.  She even looks surprisingly like me.

Have you ever wanted to write a character who says what you're thinking?  The things you don't actually say out loud?

Donna does that for me! And oh, it was fun to write them.

College reunions?  I'm not a big fan.  There were few women in my Commerce program, and the misogyny at the time was pretty brutal.  Competition was savage between the young men, and my memories are mixed at best.  Sometimes I was the bone to be fought over.

But I've discovered an interesting thing.  Reunions sure are good for setting conflict.  Old grievances resurface, even among the bank executives and corporate buccaneers of my class that have done so well financially. They don't forget the old days.

So I had a bit of sport, writing what might have happened if I had gone to our last reunion.  In fact, I didn't go.  Maybe self-preservation?  Maybe I was too busy celebrating my recent marriage to an old college classmate?

Yes, the John of this story is the John Michael O'Connell who persuaded me to the altar not long ago.  And yes, our classmates were shocked.  So you can see how easy it might have been to concoct such a tale, and to lace it with the loopy humour I just can't seem to leave behind.

Not to mention the mob elements that always seem to sneak into my work.

Roman à clef? I'll leave that to your imagination.

The author at college:

The author today:

• Buy link for MURDER, NEAT   

Bad Whiskey

A lot of stories take their cues from music. I listen to music when I write, and I often say I can't write listening to Carrie Underwood or Roger Waters because they're telling stories in their songs. Actually, I can't listen to Roger Waters on anything after 1980 because... Okay, that's another rant I'll save for elsewhere. But Carrie Underwood writes entire novels in her music. "Blown Away" and "Two Cadillacs" come to mind.

And then there's southern rock. Ever listen to some of Skynyrd's songs and see a story unfold in your mind? "Two Steps" is a good one and might have spawned a different story had I heard it around the time we started planning the Murder, Neat anthology. Instead, a friend of mine sent me this video of her husband's band. For a group who played mostly bars (though they did open for the likes of Black Country Communion a few times), they did a rather professional video. When it opened, I thought, "Cool. Johnny Lynn's playing slide!" But they had a few stories to go with the verses, many of them fitting that southern rock vibe half of Johnny's bands embrace. (Johnny is the aforementioned friend's husband.)

I had a video, awaiting the CD, and I had an email from either Leigh or Robert and a follow up from Michael Bracken: Write a story set in a bar. Put a murder in it. I had a soundtrack, an inspiration, and marching orders. This is why I love anthologies as a writer. When the prompt hits just right, the stories spin off on their own.

The song is called "Bad Whiskey." How's that for a southern rock title? And if the video shows the ill-effects of bad whiskey in general, the story flows backward and reveals just how bad one man's whiskey was. 

And in case you were wondering, here is the aforementioned song that inspired the story, "Bad Whiskey" by the Russell Jinkens XL Band.

Bad Influence

The Norseman's Bar is the oldest in Laskin, South Dakota. That doesn't mean the building is old or impressive. The original Norseman's was a sod house, and when that finally collapsed, its replacement was a board shanty, which burned in the dirty 30s, and up went the cinderblock building. But it's always been in the same place, same name. As well as a lot of the same names sitting in the same place, being served by the same people year after year. Norwegian Lutherans don't like change. As Detective Jonasson once said, "The main similarity between the Norseman's and the Lutheran church is that everybody knows their pew and keeps to it."

— Eve Fisher, "Bad Influence."

In case you haven't heard, Murder, Neat: A Sleuthsayers Anthology dropped on Tuesday, February 13th, and the above is from my story: "Bad Influence."

Now I have a long history with bars, beginning with parents who loved to go to Tahoe and Las Vegas to gamble (back in the days when big goombahs watched 24/7 to make sure no one stole any money or messed with the kids whose parents were busy losing at slots or cards). And later, I too have pulled all- nighters with friends, ending up with a last beer in a dive bar at 7AM. (Too old for that now. Shudder just thinking about it.) And I've been living in South Dakota for over 30 years now, and I have been a number of different bars all across the state, because... where else are you gonna go?

Here's the deal: South Dakota has 436 towns, 350 have a population of under a thousand, and over 100 of those have a population of less than 100 – and they all have a bar. And in those small towns, the bar is often the only place to get something to eat. Beer, whiskey, burgers, fries and chislic are the staples.

Beef chislic at a restaurant in South Dakota. Wikipedia

If you're lucky, they might have a grilled chicken sandwich, but I wouldn't count on it. Some places do have a special on Saturday nights: one place has prime rib, another (don't ask me how) really good Indonesian food, another hot roast beef sandwiches to die for. But by and large, no. Just the standards.

But really, what else are you going to do in a small town where the reception is poor, there is no cable, during the long Dakota winter nights, or the even longer summer late afternoons? Granted, you're going to pretty much talk about the same stuff you did last night, last week, last year… But there's something about the rehearsal of dreams, grudges, stories, and suspicions over a cold beer and hot fries that warms the soul. And can trigger the occasional fight, where everyone invites themselves to watch, until their cojones freeze, their beer runs out, and/or the cop(s) show up, and they have to go back inside. It's even better when a Poker Run comes to town, or there's a street dance. More opportunities for mayhem, mischief, and multiple arrests.

One thing that is certain is that the people serving and the people drinking remain pretty much the same. Sometimes a waitress or a bartender gets fed up and moves on to the next small town bar. Sometimes a waitress or a bartender is let go, and rumors of sexual assault, embezzlement or other misconduct fly. But here's the thing: they'll always get hired again. You'll see them down the road, at the next bar, the next town. South Dakota, especially rural South Dakota, just doesn't have enough of an employment pool to find new blood.

So what happens when old blood, bad reputations, an ex-con, and a Poker Run all combine on a long hot summer night in Laskin, South Dakota? Well, you'll just have to read "Bad Influence."

Enjoy!

Murder, Neat on Kindle and in paperback, is now available at Amazon HERE.

A great, great read, all the way through!

Stealing From The Best

 I hope you aren't sick of hearing about Murder, Neat, because here we go again. I am thrilled to teeny little sub-atomic bits to have a story in the SleuthSayers anthology.  

In "Shanks's Sunbeam," Leopold Longshanks has lunch in a tavern with a fellow mystery writer who tells him that a mutual acquaintance has been accused of Doing a Bad Thing.  It is probably not a spoiler to tell you our hero saves the day.

But what I want to talk about is the name of that lunch companion: Procter Ade.  I made up the first name but the last is a homage to my inspiration.

I have written here before about George Ade.  Early in the last century he was a midwestern humorist and journalist.  He is mostly remembered for his Fables in Slang.  These were a series of short stories he wrote which satirized human nature and social mores.  Since he wanted people to know that he knew slang didn't belong in a newspaper he capitalized all the guilty words and unusual uses (Much as I did above with "Bad Thing")

.  Here are three of his opening sallies:

"One Autumn Afternoon a gray-haired Agriculturalist took his youngest Olive Branch by the Hand and led him away to a Varsity."

"Once there was a home-like Beanery where one could tell the Day of the Week by what was on the Table."

"Once there was a Financial Heavy-Weight, the Mile-Stones of whose busy life were strung back across the Valley of Tribulation into the Green Fields of Childhood."

And since the stories were fables they all ended with morals:

"In uplifting, get underneath."

"A good Jolly is worth Whatever you pay for it."

"Give the People what they Think they want."

Dublin

Not too long ago I was thinking about one of my favorite Fables and I realized I could steal a plot device from it.  The result is "Shanks's Sunbeam."  If you would like to read my inspiration you can find it here. But I urge you to read my story first.  I'd rather spoil Ade's story than mine.

By the way, "Sunbeam" also involves memories of my pre-Covid trip to Ireland.  I'm sure that makes future visits tax deductible, right?

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Murder, Neat.

Murder, Messy

My fellow SleuthSayers had been discussing a group anthology long before I graduated from occasional guest poster to a regular spot in the rotation. They had a theme (crime and drinking establishments) and a title (Murder, Neat), and Paul Marks had agreed to serve as editor. Unfortunately, while the anthology was still in an embryonic stage with only a few stories written, Paul became ill, and the anthology went into a holding pattern.

Given that many of my fellow members have edited at least one anthology, I’m uncertain how the editorship landed in my lap, but once it did, I asked Barb Goffman to join me. I think I’m a good editor, and I know Barb is a great editor. We worked together to solicit stories from the other SleuthSayers, to edit them for publication, and to organize them in a way that takes readers (those who actually read anthologies from front to back) on a literary journey through crimes that happen in and around drinking establishments.

This is the first time I’ve edited an anthology where no publisher was attached prior to soliciting stories, so the work—from contributors writing their stories to Barb and I editing and organizing them—was an act of faith on all our parts.

Once we had a finished manuscript, I created a proposal and pitched the anthology to various publishers. While other publishers dawdled with their responses—or didn’t respond at all—Level Best Books accepted the anthology the day after I pitched it.

Between the time they accepted Murder, Neat and its release, Level Best Books established a new imprint—Level Short— specifically for anthologies and collections, and Murder, Neat is the inaugural title for the new imprint.

I wish Paul had been able to see the project through to completion—unfortunately, he passed away shortly after Barb and I stepped in—and I think the twenty-four exceptional stories in Murder, Neat honor the work he did to get the project started.

BAR NONE

“Bar None,” my contribution to Murder, Neat, finds the protagonist caught between a disastrous disagreement between a bar’s manager and his alcoholic brother.

The Kindle edition of Murder, Neat was released February 13; the trade paperback edition will be available soon everywhere books are sold online.

Messing with Your Mind: Where Cons and Conspiracies Meet

When Kolchak: The Night Stalker premiered on ABC in 1974, pre-teen me was primed and ready.

The show starred Darren McGavin (TV's first Mike Hammer) as a frumpy Chicago news reporter who inadvertently got tangled up in the supernatural, only to have his stories quashed and the truth covered up by higher powers.

In other words, every episode was a mini conspiracy theory. Chris Carter, X-Files creator, was paying attention.

The spooky element lured me in, but the show promised more. Kolchak presented zombies and aliens and Aztec mummies as verifiable truths that could be brought into the light with journalistic reporting, as well as by Kolchak's trusty Rollei 16 camera. The real bogeymen were the FBI agents, police chiefs, and politicians who but the kibosh on Kolchak's news stories.

Pre-teen me subscribed to Official UFO magazine, various marvel comics, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Starlog. Kolchak was just what I was looking for. A few years later, so was In Search Of. By the time Art Bell and X-Files rolled around, I was far from convinced that flying saucers and little green men were real, but I still found purveyors of the unknown totally entertaining.

I've become much more of a skeptic, but I haven't lost my love of a good conspiracy theory. I recently listened to the ten-episode run of Who Killed JFK, the excellent podcast series created by actor/director Rob Reiner. Each installment left me on the edge of my seat. Its conclusions are based on decades of multiple investigations, and there are interviews aplenty. Who Killed JFK makes a compelling case that sinister forces in our government were much more involved in Dallas than in Area 51.

Art Bell

I can't say that many of the big conspiracy theories making the rounds these days are grabbing me. Many, including those fueled by a certain school of on-line political discourse, seem like they are purely in the service of demonizing prominent Democrats and casting doubt on the 2020 election. These conspiracy theories have hi-jacked the stuff I'd stay up for when Art Bell was hosting his late-night radio show Coast to Coast AM. Art Bell dealt not only in UFOs and JFK, but all things out there, including clones, satanic groups, and even time travel. He was Kolchak with a microphone and 50,000 Watts.

Those currently playing politics with conspiracy theories are doing them a great disservice, and "Deep Time" is my opportunity to hi-jack them back.

"Deep Time" is my contribution to the SleuthSayers crime anthology Murder, Neat, edited by Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman. Murder, Neat features crime fiction set in drinking establishments. I set "Deep Time" in the fictional upscale pub The Burke, located in Yorba Linda, CA. It's important to note that Yorba Linda is the most conservative city in California, according to the Sacramento Bee. When the events of "Deep Time" occur, The Burke is open illegally during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic.

The Richard Nixon Library
Yorba Linda, CA

In "Deep Time," a team of con artists descends on The Burke. Their mark is a regular who is also the
founder of the alt-right conspiracy blog Deep Time. He's a self-proclaimed expert on "tracking the Deep State through time, space, and all dimensions in between." He's also the scion of a wealthy businessman, and the grifters aim to blackmail him. Things get strange when what could be a genuine unexplained phenomenon shows up in The Burke's men's room.

To quote Carl Kolchak, "Judge for yourself its believability and then try to tell yourself, wherever you may be, it couldn't happen here."

---

Lawrence Maddox is happy to be once again roaming the hallowed halls of SleuthSayers, though he swears he's being followed. For more tales of cons and marks, check out The Down and Out, Lawrence's installment in the excellent A Grifter's Song series, from Down and Out Books. You can reach Lawrence at madxbooks@gmail.com.

Razing the Bar

Imagine if you will a lonely pub, a neighborhood taproom caught between urban blight and city renewal, the setting for my story in the first SleuthSayers anthology, Murder, Neat. Its owner Barney and his loyal friend and assistant Grace serve those who wander in. One taciturn customer takes a table by himself. He rarely speaks and never removes his baseball cap.

As Barney locks up, baseball man thrusts a revolver in Barney’s throat. He demands Barney serve up Glenfiddich, an under-the-counter scotch far outside the affordable range of local patrons. Sipping his drink, the man commences a pattern of checking the time with his cell phone.

As menacing clues accumulate, Barney grows alarmed. He realizes robbery isn’t on the stranger’s agenda but his life is. Our bartender has minutes to figure out who the stranger is and why he wants him dead.

Plot Points

This is one of my shorter stories, weighing less than 2000 words. Almost a one-act play, it’s a quick read. The idea for it came quickly, too.

I’d been working on another story, one that hasn’t yet sold. In a flash of inspiration, I realized its crucial plot point could be applied to this new project in an almost unrecognizable way.

The original tale features a broken hi-tech genius in a gradually evolving twist. Now in a faster paced narrative, this new story in Murder, Neat centers around a bartender who struggles to count down a cash drawer. Place the two stories side by side, they are so different, few readers– including me– could identify the nexus, and yet without that plot point, the story would be entirely different.

Title Bout

John Floyd is especially adept coming up with smart titles. The hazard for many writers is the risk of an almost clever name, a title that sounds smart at first blush, but proves gratuitous and not particularly applicable.

Three miles down the street from me abides a tavern called The Bar Code. Its outdoor signage features a large scannable UPC code.

I toyed with a title of Bar Code, stretching its context to disguise the ragged gap in its meaning. It was cleverish, but not satisfactory. And then inspiration struck:

Razing the Bar

I was pleased. Best of all, you, my reader, will discover the title is especially apt. Do enjoy the read.

Two Dozen Writers Go into a Bar . . .

 

Last Tuesday was publication day for Murder Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology, by the Level Short imprint of Level Best Books. As others this week have said, this project is close to our hearts here at SS. Discussions about it began long ago, and thanks to our two fantastic editors, our "team" anthology is finally here. 

All of us talked, mostly via emails, about everything from what the theme of the anthology should be (besides crime, which is a given) to what the title should be, and in our case the title--Murder, Neat--came from the theme: All twenty-four of these stories are set in some kind of bar, tavern, pub, dive, honkytonk, or waterhole. (Not that any of us are at all familiar with those kinds of places.)

I think one of the reasons we decided to use a drinking establishment as our linchpin was probably the same reason the creators of Cheers set their TV series in a bar. It's one of those meeting-places that attracts all kind of characters at some time or another--good, bad, simple, complex--and all of them have stories to tell.

At the beginning of my story in the anthology, which has the misleading title "Bourbon and Water" (I love double meanings), the bar is in a place yet unknown and the two characters sitting at a dark corner table--a man and a woman--are themselves a mystery. We don't know who they are or why they're there. What we do know is that the woman has had a terrifying dream about a couple who seems much like the two of them, and her dream is my story-within-a-story, the one she tells to the man.

Because of that structure, this is, in a way, one of those "framed" narratives we've discussed often at this blog, the kind of tale that starts in the present, goes someplace else (usually the past), and ends once again in the present. The difference here is that the woman's dream--her glimpse of a of a life-changing event--serves not as the primary story but as sort of a setup. The crime is revealed later.

Not that it matters, but the dream sequence is the part that first popped into my head, when I started brainstorming the story. It happens that way sometimes: the crime part of a crime story needs to be central to the plot--we are, after all, sayers of sleuth, not sooth--but the Evil That Men Do is not necessarily the first thing I think of. Also a part of all this, in the planning stages, was the "bar" theme. How could I mix the required location with a crime and a twisty plot and come up with something that makes sense? Well, that's the fun of all this, isn't it? Create characters who are (hopefully) interesting, put them some kind of unusual location, throw in some criminal activity and other life-threatening incidents--there's a BIG one in this story--and see what happens.

I hope those of you who read it will find it not only mysterious but satisfying. It was certainly satisfying to write. 

I can't wait to read the whole book.

By the way . . .

To all you loyal friends and readers who stop in to visit us here at SleuthSayers: Thank you for that. Sincerely. We have a good time here, and hope you do too.

I think you'll like the anthology.

Drink On, Drinkers!

 

Available wherever fine anthologies are sold. (Booze not included.)

Some years ago, I had this brilliant idea for a novel that never came to fruition for reasons that will become painfully obvious. I was absolutely convinced that before I could write a word of this hot new project, I needed to read a 400-page biography on the life of the political cartoonist Thomas Nast. We’ve all been there, am I right?

In that book was a reference to Nast’s favorite New York watering hole, Pfaff’s, a coffeehouse/cafe/bar that was popular with a burgeoning class of colorful artists, writers, and theater folks in Greenwich Village in the mid-19th century. Its heyday would have been the 1850s and 1860s.

In its lifetime, Pfaff’s had at least three different incarnations. Two locations—on Broadway near Bleecker Street—were situated in the neighborhood where I had worked for Scholastic back in the day. In my mind’s eye I could picture those old buildings with little effort. But I probably wouldn’t have done much with my newfound knowledge if it weren’t for synchronicity.

You know how you read about some obscure thing and it begins popping up everywhere you look? As months turned to years, whenever a piece about Pfaff’s appeared, I’d tuck that fresh article away on my hard drive.

Pfaff’s worked its magic on me. For a time, it was a rathskeller with vaulted-brick ceilings located under a busy hotel. (See images here and here.) Giant hogshead beer barrels. A gas lamp chandelier. Foreign-language newspapers on every table. It was an epicenter for America’s blooming literary and artistic culture. The round table before there was ever an Algonquin.

It was also New York’s first gay-friendly establishment, where male and female same-sex couples could hang out in a darkened vault in the back without fear of judgment. Patrons declaimed poetry, argued politics, drank heavily, and pleaded with Mr. Pfaff to let them ride the tab till their next payday. He often acquiesced, because thanks to these beautiful loons, Pfaff’s had become famous coast to coast.

Early on, I had the barest ghost of a story idea. Nast hung out here. So did Edwin Booth. But by far the most famous Pfaff’s regular was Walt Whitman, who left behind one unfinished poem about the joint. (One line of that poem inspired the title of this post.)

Cool, I thought, there’s a murder at Pfaff’s, and Whitman and Nast team up to solve it. Easy-peasy.

But I couldn’t possibly start writing based on such a flimsy premise, could I?

I am on the record as a serial over-researcher, knowing that my process often teeters close to obsession. I usually research until everything I read starts to sound repetitive. Then I know it is time to stop. This ritual is propelled by a fear that I will get something wrong, and incur the wrath of those who know better. This grew out of my years in journalism, when there might have been serious repercussions for getting a fact or assertion wrong. An old journalism professor of mine offered this advice on research: “You’ll never become an expert on a new topic. But with enough reporting, you can become a semi-expert.”

Fiction often doesn’t demand that level of research, but old habits die hard. This time around, however, there were signs that I had grown weary of my own shtick. I had just investigated the heck out of Manhattan in the days of the Dutch (1625 to 1660) and New York during the protest era (1960s) for two other fiction projects. I’d written an 1890s New York crime short, and a 1970s Serpico-like crime fantasy short, both of which were pubbed in AHMM. Thanks to that Nast book, I knew a ton about the artist, but I didn’t know if I could spare the time to “become a semi-expert” on Whitman. Indeed, I doubted such a thing was even possible.

Then came a call for submissions. Our editors challenged us to write a short crime story involving…a bar. If this was not fate knocking, I didn’t know what was. Thankfully, I had plenty of time to procras—er, I mean embark on a sensible course of research. The pandemic was still raging, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

I cracked open my Pfaff’s file. To whet my appetite, I read two long scholarly papers, and browsed a Pfaff’s-dedicated website maintained by Lehigh University. (Yes, Pfaff’s is that well known and revered.) I perused articles about an NYU professor who guides people on Whitman tours. It appears that one Pfaff’s location still exists. The current renters of the space sometimes allow Whitman geeks to parade through the basement so long as visitors are careful not to disturb the boxes of merchandise destined for their Korean grocery upstairs.

I had not read Whitman since high school. I bought two modern volumes, The Portable Walt Whitman and The Collected Poems. Digging into those introductions and hearing his voice in my head again gave me one of my story’s conceits. I would presume to write bad poetry in Whitman’s style, only to have my fictional character reject them as they came to his mind. Among other things, I learned that he loved walking the city, as anyone who adores that island does. Like any good flatfoot, he would have known his nabe like the back of his hand.

I supplemented the literary research by reviewing some of his letters and photos at The Walt Whitman Archive, and a couple of decent articles about his relationships. It broke my heart to learn that at the end of his life, knowing that his papers would be scrutinized upon his death, he edited his journals, changing the pronouns of some of his lovers from him to her. I read one piece about the playful cross-dressing that most likely went on at Pfaff’s, which planted the seed for my plot. I found a long, shocking article that claimed that many of the encounters Whitman described in his encoded, private notebook involved males of an age that would greatly concern us today. (Before you judge Walt, consider the relative ages of Mr. and Mrs. Poe; he age 26, she age 13 when wed.)

I was not qualified to assess those claims. I needed just enough details to write a detective story. I shifted to assembling my prosaic details. What sort of food did Charles Ignatius Pfaff offer his patrons? (Slabs of roast beef, German pancakes, Frankfurter wurst, raw clams and oysters, salt herring with black bread, and so on.) What sorts of drinks? (Fancy European tipples, of course, along with the delightful new style of beverage immigrant German brewers had gifted their new American neighbors: lager.) I researched old Hoboken-New York-Brooklyn ferry lines, the old NYPD Tombs building, New York’s horse-drawn transit systems, the first Bellevue Hospital, and the protocols for visiting early city morgues, 

I talked to a doctor about how one might successfully stab an obese man in the back. I researched how early physicians diagnosed various forms of cancer. I re-read a book by the historian Harold Holzer on Abraham Lincoln’s famous February 1860 speech at Cooper Union, because that (nonfiction) book was set in the very same neighborhood at about the same time as my proposed story. Holzer’s descriptions of Lower Broadway were incredibly helpful.

At the end of all this, our modern pandemic was still raging, I had 45 pages of copious, pencil-written notes, and had not written a single word of my story.

Instead of freeing me up, my much-vaunted “process” failed me. I was now terrified to write this thing, for all the wrong reasons. I am not a poet. I am not a historian. I am not a literary scholar. I am not gay. I was just a guy who loved beer and old New York bars.

I should have embraced those credentials and run with them. But no. I had just come across a book specifically about Whitman’s place in the bohemian world. Essay after essay written by People In The Know. In other words, academics. Oh cool, I thought. Maybe these experts could teach a wannabe semi-expert what he needed to know.

Skimming even just a few pages of that text convinced me to stop this bullsh*t already and write the damn story. It dawned on me that I had absorbed so much Pfaffian history that I could write the story blind. And I would need to, because that tome made my eyes bleed.

All of which to say, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bled” is now out in Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology. Go forth and read it lustily. It pairs well with a cool lager, pork schnitzel, and a robust German mustard. And yes, I probably left too much of my research on its pages, but you know what? Totally cool with it.

Let me assure you that I’ve long since recovered from my dubious labors, and am happily collecting material for two other historical “shorts.” One set during the American Revolutionary War, the other in Renaissance Italy.

Mark my words: I have resolved to never over-research again. In fact, I’m pretty confident that I’ll have both of these pieces wrapped in time for the 2068 SleuthSayers anthology. Go SLEUTHS!

See you next time!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

The Summer That Almost Was, and Definitely Wasn't

Obie looked around. From his perch overlooking the stage from the sound platform he could easily see out over the heads of the rapidly dwindling crowd. For the first time he noticed gumball lights strobing the upper parts of the Dipper’s walls—light coming in through the club’s floor-to-ceiling front windows.

He jutted his chin in the direction of the front doors. “Wonder what that’s all about.”

Hoffman shrugged. “Spokane’s Finest,” he said. “They show up around Last Call from time to time. ‘Showing the flag,’ and all that. Shoulda seen ’em a couple of months back. Mudhoney was here. Place was packed to the rafters. Fire marshal came and shut things down before the band even took the stage. Cops hauled in a lot of people on possession beefs that day.”

“You were here for that?”

“Nah. A buddy of mine is their guitar tech. Heard about it from him. We had Blues Fest up at Winthrop that weekend. Plus, with us being out of Seattle now, don’t get over here as often as I’d like. But I’ve seen them pull this kind of shit before. Plenty of times.”

Obie said, “Doesn’t really change, does it?”

Hoffman lit a cigarette. “What’s that?”

“The cycle. The spinning wheel. What goes up must come down. Art pushes society. Society pushes back.”

Hoffman nodded and offered the pack to Obie. Obie shook his head and jutted his chin again, meaningfully. “Got one in, thanks.”

– From "The Catherine Wheel," featured as part of the new Murder, Neat: A Sleuthsayers Anthology

A genuine Spokane institution

One of the most memorable concerts in the Dipper's more recent history happened on a warm July night in 1991. A mass of alt-rock-loving kids packed into the venue to see Seattle's up-and-coming grunge group Mudhoney. Before the band even took the stage, the Spokane fire marshal shut the venue down.  

                                                                                                      – The Inlander, February 27th, 2014

I was at that Mudhoney non-event. I was not one of those arrested for possession of marijuana. (Weed has just never been my thing.). 

And over thirty years later, I made a tangential reference to it in a crime fiction story.

As readers of this blog will know by now, Murder, Neat: A Sleuthsayers Anthology dropped a couple of days back, on Tuesday, February 13th. I have a story in it, entitled "The Catherine Wheel" (excerpted above.), wherein I tried to recapture the feel of that certain summer within the context of a fictional event: a closing time shooting in the dive bar across the street from the live music venue highlighted above, The Big Dipper.

Writing fiction set in the past requires an awful lot of sense memory transcription: the way the strobe lights hanging from the ceiling blossomed into dozens of rainbows refracted by the prism of the sweat running into your eyes as you laid everything you had down on that massive dance floor at the Dipper. The way the cigarettes that guy smoked always stank. the way that girl stood. The look on your friend's face that he only got when he was struggling to not pass gas.

Not these guys-my story's about a mysticism-embodying tattoo. not a nineties English shoegaze band.

In the end these are moments, flashes we remember, or have convinced ourselves we do, and which we try to preserve like flies in so much amber. A love letter, if you will, to that magic summer between my junior and senior years of college. The summer when Mudhoney never quite played the Big Dipper. The summer when someone got murdered across the street in the Manhattan. A summer of late night philosophical discussions. A summer when there was just enough money left in your pocket for one last round to close out the evening. A summer of secrets. A summer of watching the way this girl took a drink of her beer. A summer of seeing that guy again, going home with a new one. A summer of cycles. Of eliptical orbits.

A Catherine Wheel summer.

Betwixt Cup and Lip

Years ago, I lived in the Berkshires out in western Massachusetts, which was pretty much a stone’s throw from the New York state line. And we had occasion to go over there, once in a while. It wasn’t totally an unknown country. There was a Japanese restaurant in Kinderhook, Martin Van Buren’s birthplace. There was Steepletop, the Edna St. Vincent Millay writers colony, in Austerlitz And one time, when I went to drop someone off at the train station in Hudson – you could catch the New York Central, and go down to the city – somebody else told me, Oh, that’s where Legs Diamond was shot. I thought to myself, Hmmm.

Things you store away, for later. As it turns out, Legs wasn’t shot in Hudson; he was gunned down in a drunken stupor at a rowhouse in Albany, on Dove Street. Supposedly, it was a uniform patrol sergeant named Fitzpatrick, who was afterwards named chief of police, in return for the favor. Still, it stuck in my mind. New York gangsters, on the lam from the city, would cool their heels upstate, until the heat died down. They wouldn’t go far, just a short train ride out of town. If you kept your head down and your nose clean, nobody was any the wiser. Obviously, the mistake Legs made was to try and muscle in on the local syndicate’s action, and they rubbed him out.

This little nugget, stored away, was the basis for “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” my Mickey Counihan story in Murder, Neat.

The theme of the collection is that the stories take place in a bar. It sounds like the opening line of a joke, which reminds me of something Mark Billingham once said. He got his start in stand-up and sketch comedy, and he later remarked that open mic and thriller writing have a lot in common. You only have a brief window to establish yourself with the audience, for one. And secondly, it’s about having an effective set-up, that winds you up for a punchline. The punchline of a joke most usually depends on the reversal of expectations, and so does developing a cliff-hanger scene. You set a snare, to invite the reader in, and then spring the trap on them.

One difference is that you could easily start the scene with a hook, without knowing how to finish. The pope, a rabbi, and the Dalai Lama walk into a strip club. What’s the kicker? Beats me, I don’t have a clue.

The way it works in practice, though, is that you have a little nugget, and it bumps around in the corners, and picks up other little bits and pieces, and pretty soon it’s turned into a bigger package altogether. You’ve got some ungainly mental figure, a shape, like a dressmaker’s dummy, and you can hang a suit of clothes on it.

Some of us outline, some of us are pantsers. Meaning there are writers who block out the whole story arc in advance, and then fill in the cracks, and there are writers who fly by the seat of their pants. This isn’t to say we don’t take advantage of lucky accident, or that there aren’t always unexpected moments. Those, in fact, are what you live for. But either way, you start with a name, or a turn of phrase, an image, or simply how the weather was.

The curious part, which borders on the magical – even if in practical terms it amounts to stamina – is that when we’re done, both the story itself and the process of getting it over the finish line seem inevitable, by which I mean inevitable to the reader as well as to the writer. We ask that the story be fully formed, woven by the Fates, cast by the dice: of all possible worlds, this one alone is true.

Each story makes a promise, and we'd like it to be kept.

Raise a Glass for Our First Anthology: Murder, Neat!

An author, an author, and an author walk into a bar, along with twenty-one more of their colleagues. The bartender serves 'em all. In the process, he learns they all blog together.

"What do you write about," the barkeep asks.

"Murder," they reply in unison.

The bartender gives 'em a big smile and says, "Neat."

In case you haven't heard, today's the publication date for Murder, Neat, an anthology with twenty-four short stories all written by members of this blog. Every story lets the reader belly up to a bar and settle in for a good tale. Most of them take the reader to actual bars--regular, dive, college, even a gastropub--but we have restaurants and a winery in the mix too. We have stories set in the US as well as in other countries and on other continents. We have stories occurring in the current day and stories set long before you could kick back with a beer and root for your favorite team on a tavern's big screen. But what all the stories have in common is crime--and alcohol, of course.

I had the pleasure of editing this anthology--the first SleuthSayers anthology--with Michael Bracken. We had the honor of taking on this task when the man originally tapped to edit the book, our dear friend Paul D. Marks, handed over the reins after falling ill. Paul died in 2021. On this day, we raise a glass in remembrance of him, as well as two other fellow SleuthSlayers whom we lost too soon: Fran Rizer, who died in 2019, and Bonnie (B.K.) Stevens, who died in 2017.

You may be wondering who this "we" is. Who are the authors with stories in the book? Let me direct your attention to this nifty graphic created by friend Gabriel Valjan, which lists not only the authors but their story titles in the order they appear in the book. I've read all of these stories multiple times, and I'm pleased to say they're all perfect for settling down by a fire, with a drink in your hand and the book in your lap.

Before I go, I'll share a little about my story, "Never Have I Ever." It's March 1989. Tamara and five college friends are at their go-to Thursday night bar, deep in their cups, playing their favorite drinking game, Never Have I Ever. Even as the secrets fly, Tamara has some she'll never share. Because she's obsessed. Because she's haunted. Because she has a plan.   

Murder, Neat is coming out today, February 13th, in trade paperback and ebook from the fine folks at Level Best Books. Here's a link to buy the Kindle book (the only option available as I type this, but the book should be out in trade paperback too when you read this). To everyone who picks up a copy, we raise a glass in your honor too. Cheers!

Solitary confinement.

            Novels, short stories and poetry may be the last bastions of solitary writerly pursuits.  With the exception of the rare co-author team, most fiction writers labor in isolation, islands unto themselves.  In other creative fields employing writers, notably film and TV, and advertising, creativity is a team sport.  Playwrights usually start out on their own, but in the course of production, others are likely to stick their hands in the cookie jar. The playwright still gets all the credit, but she knows that others had their say.

            I’ve written alone and as part of a team and each has its charms.  This may be self-evident.  When working alone, all you have is yourself, and you can write what you want.  No one is over your shoulder, no one is scowling at one of your ideas (except your editor, who usually comes in at the end of the game).  It’s you alone, all by yourself, the god of your world, immune from interruption or censure.  It’s what I also love about fine woodworking and single-handed sailing. 

            But few places on earth are more fun and exhilarating than a writers room.  In advertising, we usually worked in teams of two – a copywriter and an art director, where our specialization would dissolve at the conceptual stage and each would throw in ideas for art or copy without restriction.  I might have a half-baked notion that my partner would slice into a fine part and add something interesting.  I’d take this fledgling thought and add something else, and it would go from there.  Before we knew it, something workable would emerge, and when the creative director came into the room, we’d have something to show for the time spent.           

            When writing alone, all the talk is inside your head.  In a writers room, the talk is usually about anything other than the thing you’re supposed to be working on.  If this was recorded, most strict administrators would fire us for wasting precious business time on nonsense.   But we knew we were actually circling the idea, finding context, getting to the destination via a circuitous route.  That’s because we were always thinking about the task at hand, and any nutrition from the conversation went directly into the conceptual efforts.  Ideas beget ideas.  Talk gives birth to lines of thinking that spew out concepts.  This is how it works. 

            Advertising might not be the noblest of pursuits, but it’s not that easy to do well, and when it all comes together, the adrenalin flows just as strongly as when you compose a satisfying piece of fiction (though some would argue advertising and fiction are not that different from one another).

            In his book The Innovators, Walter Isaacson maintains that the most important common element of all history-making digital advances was collaboration.  He makes his case vividly and convincingly.  Though he also cites iterations as key components.  One idea building on another.  You could apply this to fiction.  Where would the modern detective novel be without Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade?  What constitutes inspiration versus simply cribbing from an earlier work?  

             Discerning readers know the difference.  They can spot a derivation, which can be rewarding, and just as easily condemn a book as derivative.  I once wrote a book that was heavily influenced by the first chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses, which my editor mentioned to a Joyce scholar he knew.  The scholar was offended, telling the editor that my work had nothing to do with Joyce.  Okay, but I knew how I felt when I was working on that book, the same way I felt reading about Stephen Dedalus.  In the quiet of my private mind, I told the Joycean snob to stick it where the self-importance doesn't shine.  

            I think it’s fair to say that an iteration, at its most benign, is a form of collaboration.  Musicians will tell you at least half of popular music is based on the traditional 12-bar blues - tonic, sub-dominant, dominant - format (Steve Liskow, please weigh in).  That doesn’t mean so many priceless songs are illegitimate.  

Often when confronted with two equally appealing alternatives, I vote for both.  Working alone is the best, except when working in a team.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

           

             

Why Y: Connecting chromosomes and surnames

There have been many articles discussing the difference between men and women but this one is all about differences in chromosomes - men have XY chromosomes and women are XX people. This Y chromosome has become increasingly used in innovative ways to catch criminals, even in cold cases decades old.

Many of us inherit our father’s surname and men, specifically, also inherit their father’s Y chromosome and their father, in turn, usually gets both from their father who in turn - you get the point - Y and surnames generally go together. As I wrote about previously, we now have a massive data base of DNA from various ancestry sites, voluntarily submitted by millions, and this can be used to connect surnames and DNA.

Does this all fall apart if the murderer is a woman? It does and it doesn’t. Although women do not have a Y chromosome, women transfer mitochondrial DNA from mother to offspring. The male mitochondrial DNA is, except in very rare cases, eliminated, providing a clear way to trace maternal inheritance. This maternal inheritance allows ancestry sites to trace our maternal ancestors. However, women historically have taken their husband’s name and this makes it difficult to use surnames with the same confidence as we do with males.

Recently, a cold case was solved by using Y chromosomes and surnames, finally giving the family closure after almost fifty years. 

In 1975, a sixteen-year-old Montreal teenager, Sharron Prior, went to meet friends at a Pizzeria. On the way she was abducted by Franklin Romine, who brutally beat, raped and then killed Sharron. Despite having DNA from Romaine’s shirt at the murder scene, for almost fifty years law enforcement was unable to identify the murderer. 

In 1974, a man named Franklin Romine had broken into a house and raped a woman in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Two months later, he was released on a $2,500 bond, fled to Canada, brutally murdered Sharron Prior and, a few months later was captured by Canadian border officials, extradited back to West Virginia and was sentenced to five to ten years in prison for sexual assault in the Parkersburg case. He returned to Canada where he died in 1982 and his body was buried in West Virginia. 

In 2023, this difficult murder was solved using Romine’s Y chromosome’s connection with his last name. In this case, the Y chromosome found at the murder site was connected with the surname ‘Romine’ found on ancestry sites of voluntarily submitted DNA and, it was ascertained that Franklin Romine lived in Montreal at the time of the murder. Although he was dead by this time, he still had two living brothers and both provided a DNA sample that showed a strong match. On the basis of this evidence, the body of Franklin Romine was exhumed and his DNA proved to be an exact match for the DNA found at the crime scene. 

Although the cold case is solved, no charges will be laid because Franklin Romine is dead. For the family of Sharron Prior, this matters: “You may never have come back to our house or Congregation Street that weekend but you have never left our hearts and you never will," Sharron's sister Moreen said."We love you Sharron, now may you truly rest in peace.”

Fun Crime Movies I (Kinda) Forgot About

As 2023 wrapped up, I had this sinking feeling I hadn't watched many crime movies lately. It was late December. A guy likes to tally up the year. I did better than feared, though the count was heavily weighted to traditional rewatches like The Maltese Falcon and Clue. 

FOMO set in, and I started Googling around for recent crime movies. As will happen, I fell into internet rabbit holes and wound up checking out films from years past. Movie after movie elbowed back into my short attention span. Here with rewatch and supplemental research are five from back yonder that pretty much slipped my mind.

Disclaimer: My filter was crime comedies over a decade old and that slipped my mind, not what's up there with The Sting. These are varying shades of good fun, though, and all worth a first or second watch.

In Bruges (2008)

This artful, darker-than-dark comedy earned its share of attention.Colin Farrell won most of that attention as the hitman main character hiding in Bruges and haunted by accidentally killing a kid. This was Farrell's turn toward Serious Acting, and fate brought him writer/director Martin McDonagh and a role worth treading the boards. Still, Ralph Fiennes is gold in everything he does. He was a perfect choice for M, he was magnificent in The Grand Budapest Hotel (one hell of a crime movie), and he was the best character here, a crime boss unshakably convinced that violence should stay among criminals. The comedy is there but so bleak that sometimes it hits as drama. This is a complex film, powerful and aware of itself, but worth taking in if you're ready for a challenge. Bonus watch joy if you've been to Bruges. I've climbed that tower--twice.

Grosse Point Blank (1997)

Continuing on with hitman comedies...

Grosse Point Blank has a hitman going to his ten-year high school reunion. Jon Cusack stars in what, at first glance, feels like a vehicle outside his wheelhouse. "Ex-CIA assassin-turned-sociopath-freelance" isn't Cusack's, but suddenly he's doing it just fine. There's a sometimes-darkness to his acting that he calls on here for comic impact. In a movie about remembrances, this one is better than you might remember. Minnie Driver nails it as the girl he stood up at senior prom. Now, a failed marriage later she's a DJ querying her indie audience and reunion arrivals about whether he's worth another try. Her father, it turns out, is Cusack's contract. It's a concept comedy but with genuine wit and something to offer.  

Midnight Run (1988)

Okay, this one I had forgotten about. My bad, because it's a buddy comedy done well. Yes, Midnight Run leans into genre. There are mobsters, there's a dirty accountant, there's extended train action, but there's also real feeling and real chemistry. Robert De Niro, having made his bones at dramatic powerhouse, wanted to try his hand at comedy. Big was the movie he angled for, but Midnight Run is what he landed. The idea was to pair him with Bruce Willis or Robin Williams, but Charles Grodin was the choice after his acting sparks with De Niro at audition. A hard choice, apparently. Paramount backed out of the movie over Grodin's casting. Their mistake. Light comedy is Grodin's thing, but I can't think another film that gave him this much deeper to do. The result is chemistry indeed and a relentlessly entertaining ride. 

Heartbreakers (2001)

Con movies have a special place in my heart. The longer or deeper the con, the better. Con stories are psychological studies, and while Heartbreakers is too broad a comedy to explore the psyche in depth, an old soul works beneath the caper shenanigans. Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt are a mom-daughter team fleecing would-be husbands of mini-wealth. It's time for Palm Beach and a whale, Gene Hackman's chain-smoking Big Tobacco CEO, and the con refuses to lay straight. Part of the problem is Ray Liotta as a past mark who can't let things go. Boil away the easy jokes and the period Florida excess, and what's left is prospective lovers jousting in the marriage game toward an all's-well ending. Shakespeare? No. Funny and at times charming? Yes. It's light fun when light fun can be healing. Shakespeare made a few of these comedies, you know.

Intolerable Cruelty (2003)

I'm a major admirer of the Coen brothers. I've watched the hell out of The Big Lebowski, and maybe that's not even their best crime comedy. True Grit might be, if you call it a comedy. Or Fargo is their best, or O Brother, Where Art Thou, or I could keep going. Intolerable Cruelty never tops anyone's list. Mine, either. But Intolerable Cruelty is good conniving fun, with a tone unique for the Coens. The brothers didn't start out to make this movie. They were hired as script doctors after the project had bounced around Hollywood. It kept bouncing even then until it landed back with the Coens. George Clooney is his syllable-perfect as the divorce attorney extraordinaire engaged in a battle of wits with Catherine Zeta Jones' professional wife. The stakes rise comically out of control in a tale about love's travails and its rare moments of grace.