August 13th, A Thrilling Day

My phone, a reliably clever device, routinely tells me about newsworthy events that I should probably know happened that day.

            August 13^th has been monumental in shaping world affairs. If you're a fan of political thrillers, it should be a red circle day.

            Barbed Wire Sunday occurred on this date in 1961. Beginning at midnight, soldiers from the East German military arrived at critical points along the line separating East and West Berlin. They quickly unloaded barbed wire and concrete and began erecting the barrier that became the Berlin Wall. The government deemed the move necessary to stem the brain drain and hemorrhage of the workforce from communist East Berlin to the West. The East German secret police, the Stasi, blocked intersections between the sectors of the divided city. 

            Where would the Cold War political thriller be without referencing Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known crossing point between the city's two halves? Here, Soviet and American tanks squared off 100 yards apart in a showdown that brought the two sides perilously close to war. Prisoner exchanges occurred, and daring escapes were attempted at the thin space separating the two superpowers.

GZen, Creative Commons

Roger Moore, as James Bond, crossed through Checkpoint Charlie in Octopussy. Tom Hanks surveyed the wall in Bridge of Spies. Illya Kuryakin was frustrated in his attempts to rundown Napoleon Solo as he extracted Gaby to the West in The Man from UNCLE (the movie). Countless books have used the wall as a physical challenge or metaphor. And it all started on this date.

            The Manhattan Project got underway on this date in 1942. The research and development program that culminated in the atomic bomb was initially labeled the Development of Substitute Materials. The development project was run by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Engineering districts routinely took the name of the city where they were located. The Development of Substitute Materials had temporary offices on Broadway. Thus, they became the Manhattan District. The term “Manhattan” gradually substituted for the name of the atomic project. Always concerned about spies, Manhattan was believed to attract less attention and reveal less about the nature of the bomb's development.

            The Manhattan District was officially created on August 13^th under orders signed by Major General Eugene Reybold.

            The movie Oppenheimer most recently explored the Manhattan Project. Since the project's creation, the name has become synonymous with any apocalyptic device. Biological weapons and crippling computer viruses have all been labeled the Manhattan Project. The program established a model for government-sponsored, project-specific, big science. The world may be in more jeopardy, but the thriller writer has had an efficient tool for warning the reader about a developing doomsday mechanism since August 13^th, 1942.

            German-born Klaus Fuchs was a theoretical physicist. As part of the Manhattan Project team, he worked on developing the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. During his work, Fuchs spied on the project for the Soviet Union. After the war, he moved to the United Kingdom and continued his weapons research. In January 1950, he confessed to passing atomic information to the Soviets. Upon his release from a British prison in 1959, Fuchs migrated to East Germany. There, he became the deputy director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Physics. His work undoubtedly took him to numerous meetings in East Berlin, within easy walking distance of the wall.

            And thus, we're brought full circle.

            Fidel Castro and Alfred Hitchcock were both born on this date. Both impacted thrillers in differing ways. Finally, a shout out to William Caxton, who was also born on this date in 1422. He set up the first printing press in England. His first publication is believed to be an edition of The Canterbury Tales. 

Ilgar Jafarov, CC

            Where would writers be without publishers?

            Until next time.

            Postscript:

            In my last blog, I discussed the upcoming Olympics and made fun of rhythmic gymnastics. I've watched some of the individual and team competitions. While I'm still unclear on the ribbon, the routines performed with the ball and, later, the hoop grabbed my attention. I'd like to offer a sincere apology to all rhythmic gymnastics fans and athletes.

No obits necessary for the life of the mind.

These are times when optimism is about as easy to sustain as the suspension of disbelief during a superhero movie.  Especially in the face of all the media fury, of which I consume way too much.  So I won’t add to it here.  Rather, I’d like to address one small slice of the public debate, at least among those who are literate enough to ask:  Are we moving into a post-literate society?

Maybe, though it might depend on how you define literate. 

Just as there’s a natural distribution of bad hairdos, nice teeth and athletic grace across the population, there’s a percentage of people who like to read, absorb information and artistic expression, and formulate their own opinions from the swelter of competing views.  Let’s assume that the qualities described above are encouraged, for some, by achieving at least some education.  This means the percentage of the thoughtful and inquisitive is larger than ever:  In 1940, only about five percent of the country had graduated from college.  Now it’s over a third.

  You’ll hear it said, “People don’t read anymore.”  That’s not exactly true.  While overall book sales and reported reading habits have slid a bit, they’re certainly not gone.  After a long bloodletting of independent bookstores, their numbers have actually increased, if you discount some fatalities of the pandemic.  Barnes & Noble is still in operation, and doing pretty well, even if their big box competitors have mostly disappeared. 

          Social media and other forms of media engagement have eroded book reading, for sure, especially among the young.  But that’s an understandable outgrowth of the surging digital environment.  But as with all fresh trends, this too will stabilize and a new balance of wider choice will emerge.

Movies didn’t kill books.  Television didn’t kill movies (even streaming).  CDs didn’t kill records.  For that matter, the novel didn’t kill poetry, jazz has survived rock ‘n’ roll, synthesizers didn’t wipe out drums and guitars and song writers are still writing beautiful melodies and captivating lyrics.

There are temporary swells of artistic fashion, but the end result is additive, not wholesale extinction.   

Journalism is another institution that is supposedly dying on the vine, and print media is particularly under huge duress.  Though for every daily newspaper that goes under there are hundreds, if not thousands, of fresh news outlets appearing online.  You may rightly assert that many, or most, are poorly managed and edited, and filled with uncurated dreck.  That still leaves so much worthy and enriching information, and commentary, that you’ll never be able to absorb it all.

You can make a case that the once and possibly future cretin in the White House has caused an upsurge in media consumption, however polarized individual outlets have become.  Trust in the media favored by Democrats has actually improved in recent times.  I submit this is because people are paying more attention, that they’re reading more. I also believe that responsible journalism, in an era of propaganda and phony news, is trying harder to keep their facts straight and their commentary thoughtfully nuanced. 

A good friend of mine has a theory of the human mind:  “People have a tendency to extrapolate current circumstances indefinitely into the future.”  Even the scantest understanding of the past ought to unburden you of this fallacy.  We are, no doubt, going through some monumental changes, occurring at an unprecedented pace.  This is much of the problem, since rapid change makes it feel like everything is going to hell in a hand basket.  The originators of Chaos Theory, a scientific paradigm that explains the behavior of complex systems, say that nature moves from order to disorder, and back again, in irregular, but relentless, cycles.  They call the state between these cycles “phase transition”, when things become the most chaotic. 

            This is where we’re living today.  It’s not a post-literate society, it’s a society making a painful adjustment to the Information Age, finding its way through the torrent of books, articles and essays, along with posts, podcasts, online rants and blogs, just like this.

If you believe civilization is worth preserving, you have to believe that wisdom and critical thinking are essential ingredients in that preservation.  Thought in isolation from information is valuable, but closed-ended.  You can only go so far on your own.  I maintain that the richest source of revelation and enrichment are books.  Whatever form they take, physical or electronic, books will save us from annihilation, from the foolishness – economic, military, environmental, cultural – that is also an irredeemable aspect of the human experience. 

Don’t despair.  Publishers are publishing, readers are reading. Thus, thinkers keep thinking. 

 

Sleeping Giants

Mysteries rely, perhaps more than we like to admit, on evil. Murder and violence are essential to the genre and often simply a given. Not so in the novels of Rene Denfeld. Yes, there is violence, including violence against children, and murder pops up as often as it does in most mysteries. What makes her four novels different is an obsession with the the roots of evil.

In Denfeld's work, evil stems from evil with the inevitability of Greek tragedy, and it has its roots in the same institution: the family. The sacrifice of children in the House of Atreus caused a cascade of blood violence. In Sleeping Giants, as in Denfeld's terrific The Enchanted and the Child Finder stories, cruelty to children produces monsters who, in turn, terrify and traumatize the next generation.

All this may sound rather grim and formulaic, but Denfeld is an excellent writer with a real knack for creating rounded characters, especially young ones. She also produces sensitive portraits of characters who are more or less outside the norm. These range from the poetic, but truly psychopathic, hero of The Enchanted to Amanda, the dedicated zoo keeper of Sleeping Giants, whose mind, as she admits, does not work quite like other people's.

Amanda has trouble with clocks and making change and simple math, but she understands her charge, Molly, an unhappy polar bear. She proves to be brave and resilient and, though no great student, a very competent researcher.

Unsurprisingly, her twin areas of interest both involve families. She wants to know just how Molly came to be orphaned in the far north of Alaska, and she wants to know what happened to her older brother Dennis, who, unlike her, was not adopted as an infant, but confined in Brightwood, a supposedly progressive facility for disturbed children and youth.

Located on the wild northern coast of Oregon, Brightwood is an abandoned relic by the time Amanda sets foot in it. But the reader knows from the opening pages that Dennis was indeed incarcerated there and that, subjected to holding time, a popular crank therapy, he committed suicide by running into the treacherous and dangerous surf. All that's left is a gravestone and the general reluctance of locals in the small town to discuss Brightwood, although they have some good things to say about Martha King, the former superintendent.

Amanda might well have become discouraged but for another well drawn character, Larry, an ex-cop who is mourning his late wife and falling into depression in his remote cabin. A chance meeting with Amanda arouses his protective instincts, and he adds his expertise and some of his former professional contacts to her search.

The unraveling of the mystery of Dennis's life is nicely done, but the heart of the book lies elsewhere, in the glimpses of the difficult and withdrawn child's life, his friendship with Ralph, the custodian, and his brief moments of joy. Denfeld has some surprises with her adult characters, too, and despite the grim events and the narrowness of many of the characters' lives, the novel eventually comes down on the side of cautious hope.

Rene Denfeld

Evil generates evil, but goodness has its powers, too, if much less spectacular ones. Evil flashes out in violence, all is quick and final. Goodness is slow, patient, in for the long haul. Not too many books in any genre illustrate this contrast as well as Sleeping Giants, which manages to produce an entertaining mystery as well.

---

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

The Man Who Met the Elf Queen, with two other fanciful short stories and 4 illustrations, is available from Apple Books.

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is also available from Apple Books.

A Title So Good I Couldn't Use It

Years ago, I came across a great story idea. A half-idea. Okay, a title for a half-idea. For our purposes, let's say the awesome title was "I Gotta Use This." The real inspiration was way better than that, trust me. A title as spectacular as "I Gotta Use This" must surely propel an equally glorious story. I played with plots and characters worthy enough, but nothing cleared that mark. Finally, in 2022, a glimmer came--and also the notion that I'm not getting any younger. I did it. I put words to page under "I Gotta Use This." What follows isn't a tale about its glorious quest fulfilled. This is about how I had to let it go.

Rewind to me reading an article on game-playing and gamesmanship. Bam! There it was, a concept wrapped in a killer turn of phrase. That's how the spark happens, some phrase or concept grabs my attention. If the idea gels enough, I'll give it a try. 

I don't usually get attached to titles. "Needs A Title" has topped several early-draft manuscripts that went on to publication. My story in the MWA anthology Ice Cold started as "The Hungarian Thing." I have early manuscripts titled "Drinkin' Story" and "New Project." The final title emerges as the manuscript rounds into collective shape. More than half of my published stories had a major title change along the way. But that also leaves a chunk where the working title survived, and if words could glow on a page, "I Gotta Use This" glowed.

Cut forward to me and the title. A title about gameplaying, so the story innards needed to be about games somehow. Progress! Me and a title and a kind-of form already. And while I'd always envisioned "I Gotta Use This" headlining a Serious Achievement, my premise glimmer was hardly Serious. I was setting a goofball in motion. For the comic innards, I considered and dismissed all kinds of games that could hold a goofball slant. Cards? Too easy. Sports? Too structured. Video games? Another of my long-held ideas has dibs on gamers. Eventually, I decided on a bet. 

Other decisions sprung from there, landing on two small-time crooks making a small-time bet over who is the better small-time crook. The protagonist's specialty is shoplifting frozen foods. The antagonist buys shoes online with stolen credit card numbers. All of that is important to their story, but the important part to this story, the one about "I Gotta Use This" crashing and burning, is that I was making all those plot and character decisions. Like any idea worth the chase, their story was finding a life of its own. The author's job is to recognize it and roll with it.

Which I thought I'd done. My edit rounds sharpened things to a proper balance of goofball. I focused on depth and relatability, on local backdrop and fuller context. I didn't switch the title. Never considered it. It was, after all, perfect.

"I don't get the title," my critique group said. "It's not working for me," they said, and this was even after I explained its perfection. 

We'll skip past the stages of denial and the switching of gears. I had to confront that I'd written a solid piece with real acceptance potential. It just had the wrong title. 

Stories are singularities, and a great title springs from the oneness, frames it. Mine didn't. Titles reveal the story's core. My didn't. "I Gotta Use This" was merely catchy, something I'd read once.

So I changed it. Was I bitter about a perfect title going splat? No. Much. I was more palm-to-forehead like in those old V-8 commercials. I should've spotted the problem. Me, the guy who starts pieces with placeholders like "Vernon Story #4." But you do have to roll with it in this work, and the group did me a huge favor. If they didn't get understand the title, no editor would, either. So long, acceptance potential. 

The piece ended up titled "Bet You're Wrong." Not great, but it speaks to what the story is about, a bet, and its deeper level, that both goofballs are sure to lose. The only winner is whoever walks away. Off "Bet You're Wrong" went on blind submission. It's in the new Sisters in Crime East Tennessee anthology, Smoking Guns. 

As for "I Gotta Use This," it helped get another story born, so there's that. There's also the reason I haven't shared the actual title idea: Because that thing is still awesome, and as it happens, it's still available.

Crime Scene Comix Case 2024-08-025, Blast

Once again we highlight our criminally favorite cartoonist, Future Thought channel of YouTube. We love the sausage-shaped Shifty, a Minion gone bad.

Yikes! In this Crime Time episode, only one outcome is possible.

 

 

 

 

© www.FutureThought.tv

 

That’s today’s crime cinema. Hope you enjoyed the show. Be sure to visit Future Thought YouTube channel.

Bridge of Birds

One of my favorite historical fantasy / thriller / mystery novels of all time is Barry Hughart's Bridge of Birds: A Novel of an Ancient China That Never Was. I read it when it first came out in 1984, and almost immediately went right down to my local bookstore and ordered it (no Amazon then, folks!) in hardcover.

Why my love of this book? For one thing, the pace never slackens, the cultural and historical references are impeccable, there are enough twists and turns in the plot to make almost any modern thriller look really unsurprising, and there are characters that you will never forget. It's chock full of Chinese mythology, fairy tales, and history. And best of all, it is so witty and hilarious that, no matter what happens, you can't help but laugh at least once a page, and often more. But then I have, like one of the two heroes, Li Kao, "a slight flaw in my character."

The narrator, Number Ten Ox, the tenth son of a peasant family, is without guile, but willingly does what Master Li tells him to, from (after an exhausting, grueling, and hard first quest) relaxing in the bedroom of the concubine of the town miser (Miser Shen), to killing... well, quite a few villains.

Ten Ox is the one who tracks down Master Li when all the children of the village of Ku-Fu between the ages 8-13 fall into a coma plague, thanks to the two pawnbrokers of the village (Pawnbroker Fang and Ma the Grub) who have decided to get and keep ALL the money in the village by poisoning the mulberry leaves so all the silk worms die. The pawnbrokers fake their own deaths, and we meet them again and again and again... (as in real life, so in fiction.) One of my favorites is when the pawnbrokers go forth with "his mother's ashes", and on the road, they spot the cow.

"Mother!" he screeched. "My beloved mother has been reborn as a cow!".. The cow's eyes were streaming with tears of joy as she lovingly licked the bald fellow's skull. "Mother! What joy to see you again!" he sobbed, kissing her hairy legs. What choice did the farmer have? ... He was only a gentleman farmer, and he was quite surprised when he was informed that cows always weep when they lick salt...

"Lies, all lies!" screamed Pawnbroker Fang.

"We demand compensation for slander!" howled Ma the Grub.

Or Doctor Death:

We walked through the open door into a room that was littered with carcasses, and where a little old man with a bloodstained beard was attempting to install a pig's heart into a man's cadaver while cauldrons burped and kettles bubbled and seething vials emitted green and yellow vapors.

Doctor Death sprinkled the heart with purple powder and made mystical signs with his hands. "Beat!" he commanded. Nothing happened so he tried yellow powder. "Beat, beat, beat!" He tried blue powder. "Ten thousand curses why won't you beat?" he yelled and then he turned around. "Who you?" asked Doctor Death.

"My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao and there is a slight flaw in my character, and this is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox."

"Well, my surname is Lo and my personal name is Chan, and I am rapidly losing patience with a corpse that absolutely refuses to be resurrected!"

Doctor Death is trying, desperately, to resurrect his late wife. "Don't worry, my love, I'll have you out of that coffin in no time!" He is also a wonderful source for the Elixir of Life, which will surely allow you to live forever, unless, of course you get the distressing side effects, so it's best to try it first on a cat, a crow or a cow... Just in case... It fells an elephant in 20 seconds.

Then there's Henpecked Ho, the unfortunate husband of the Ancestress' daughter, and who one day has finally had enough of living with a mother-in-law who is a 500 pound genocidal maniac. Almost as ancient as Li Kao, the Ancestress, is still waiting for grandchildren and decides Number Ten Ox will be a good son-in-law. In her already prepared schoolroom for the grandkids is written:

HEAVEN PRODUCES MYRIADS OF THINGS TO NOURISH MAN;
MAN NEVER DOES ONE GOOD TO RECOMPENSE HEAVEN.
KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!

And she lives by what she preaches. Until one day, thanks to Li Kao and Number Ten Ox, Henpecked Ho realizes that an axe can be an excellent relative remover. When he dies, successful, his last words are

"Immortality is for the Gods. I wonder how they can stand it."

Of course, there is a major villain in the piece, the Duke of Chi'in, a thinly disguised Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi (259-210 BC) whose empire barely survived three years after his death. He left a holocaust of victims behind him and a mausoleum that (in real life) is the source of the famous terracotta warriors. And in the novel... well, his one and only punishment is death.

The Duke of Ch'in has an Assessor (the ultimate tax man), Key Rabbit, who is married to a peasant girl, Lotus Cloud, who has "fallen victim to insatiable greed." Every man who meets her falls in love with her except for Li Kao, who again explains "I have a slight flaw in my character."

There's a fairy tale about the Star Shepherd and Jade Pearl, the Chinese version of Psyche and Eros, and Jade Pearl's mentor and guardian, the Queen of Ginseng.

There's the story of how a stretch of the Great Wall called the Dragon's Pillow was built 122 miles away from the rest of the Great Wall, on orders of the Ruler of Heaven, the August Personage of Jade, who delivered the plans in a dream to the builder. And of Wan the soldier, buried in the Dragon's Pillow to guard it for all eternity from his lonely watch on the Dragon's Tower.

There's the… oh, there are so many stories... and they all intertwine and mingle.

Jade plate,
six, eight.
Fire that burns hot,
Night that is not,
Fire that burns cold,
First silver, then gold.

And the ending is a knockout, that rises for a whole chapter in a glorious symphony in words and images, and mixes, somehow, laughter with wet eyes, and is totally satisfying. That is rare.

The beautiful Bridge of Birds was climbing slowly toward the stars, and a great song was spreading across China. Faster and faster we sped through the sky, and on the ground below the peasants were running from cottages and lifting little children in their arms to gaze at glory.

"You see?" said the peasants. "That is why you must never give up, no matter how bad things may seem. Anything is possible in China!"

Indeed it is in Bridge of Birds.

Today in Mystery History: August 7

 

Welcome to episode 13 in our continuing investigation of our genre's history.

Bruce

 August 7, 1885.  Dornford Yates was born.  Besides being a soldier and attorney he was a writer of humor and then of very successful thriller novels, known as the Chandos series.  He was apparently a nasty piece of work, not even accounting for his typical 1920s attitudes toward foreigners and women. 

August 7, 1924.  John E. Bruce died on this day.  He had been born a slave. He grew up to be a journalist and civil rights activist.  His novel The Black Sleuth is one of the earliest mysteries by an African American. 

August 7, 1937. San Quentin premiered.  This movie was actually partially filmed in  the famous prison.  It starred Humphrey Bogart as a prisoner and Pat O'Brien as a guard who is dating Bogie's sister.

August 7, 1940.  "The Case of the Gentleman Poet" was published.  It was the last of the series of stories Eric Ambler wrote while waiting to be enlisted in the British armed forces.  They were collected in a book called, logically enough, Waiting for Orders.

August 7, 1949. Martin Kane, Private Eye premiered on radio.  During the three years it was on the air the P.I. was played by William Gargan, Lloyd Nolan, and Lee Tracy. The TV version started a month after the radio series and starred the same three actors, plus Mark Stevens, all playing the same part (though not in the same episodes, I hope.)  On TV Kane was always smoking a pipe. By sheer coincidence, I guess, the sponsor was a tobacco company. 

August 7, 1951. Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" appeared in Reporter Magazine.  It is sort of science fiction, sort of crime story, and all social commentary.  Still worth reading (you can find it on the web, but I don't know about copyright status so I won't link to it.)  Bradbury, you may remember, said "I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm trying to prevent it."

 August 7, 1953. The Band Wagon premiered. It was a Fred Astaire/Cyd Charisse dance movie.  So why is on my list? Because it includes "GIRL HUNT: A Murder Mystery in Jazz."

August 7, 1962. On this date Archie Goodwin received a blood-stained necktie in the mail.  Thus began Rex Stout's "Blood Will Tell," a Nero Wolfe novella which appeared in EQMM and was reprinted in Trio For Blunt Instruments. (Stout liked that latter title so much he offered the man who suggested it part of the royalties.)

August 7, 1962. On the same day in South Africa, Trompie Kramer met Mickey Zondi.  The unlikely partnership of White and Black police officers fueled James McClure's excellent novels about crime under apartheid.  Confusingly, this meeting was reported in the last McClure novel, The Song Dog.

August 7, 2011. Publication date for Murder in Havana, by Margaret Truman. Or should I say "by" Margaret Truman?   Donald Bain and William Harrington both claimed to be the ghost writer of her Capital Crimes series. 

Don’t Worry. Write Happy.

In a recent Zoom presentation, Linda Landrigan, editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, recommended Joni B. Cole’s Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier, so I read the revised and expanded edition released by University of New Mexico Press in 2022.

Linda recommended the book because of Cole’s advice about, as Linda put it, “writing from the middle.” Cole advocates that you “dive into a first draft by writing any scene or memory or passage that asserts itself in your consciousness and feels like it might belong somewhere, anywhere, in the story” (p 79). Further, you should “[w]rite the hot spots—the stuff that feels vivid and demanding of your time now—and figure out later how they flow and fit together” (p 79).

Though I nearly always write the first scene first—without it I have nothing—I often do something similar to what Cole advocates: I write scenes out of order, leaving notes between the scenes to let me know what I think should move the reader from one to the other, be it a simple transition or a complete scene or sometimes even multiple scenes.

Writing out of order is one of the ways Cole suggests that we can avoid writer’s block. Putting anything—anything at all—on a page indicates that the muse is still with us, even if not focused on what we wish it to focus on.

Cole also notes that staring at the computer screen until she “came up with a brilliant idea” was for her and is for us counter-productive because “writing is what happens when we are busy looking away from the page” (178). Many of us know this, and it’s why we walk the dog, take extra showers, rearrange the refrigerator’s contents, hang out in coffee shops, and do other things when we are vexed with a piece of writing. The solution often comes when we aren’t trying to force it.

One theme that runs through the entire book—it’s right there in the subtitle—is the belief that happiness and productivity go hand-in-hand. A happy writer produces more and better work and that, in turn, feeds the writer’s happiness. (Don’t we all feel better when we’ve had a good day at the keyboard?)

“Happiness can be an elusive goal,” Cole writes (p 219-220), “and while we have the inalienable right to pursue it, what often remains in doubt is whether we have the gumption and energy to do so. To cultivate a sense of well-being, and open ourselves up to joy, requires a commitment to positive practices.”

So, stop being a writer who claims not to be happy writing, but only happy having written.

Instead, find joy in the creative process itself.

Reward yourself for a well-turned phrase, pat yourself on the back for drafting a complete scene, and celebrate devising the perfect plot twist. In short, find happiness in each step of the process.

If you do this, you will be eager to return to the keyboard, and you will return again and again and again. You will be more productive, you will write better, and you will be happier.

When Shocks Met Yocks: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

WHEN SHOCKS MET YOCKS: THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN>

by Michael Mallory

A while back I wrote about the film that gets my vote for the worst ever made, an exercise in masochism titled Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967). It’s a little-known “scare comedy” that’s about as scary as PAW Patrol and funny as Sophie’s Choice. But there is a film at the other end of the scale that is probably familiar to most, at least by title: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. Released in 1966, it’s an old-style family-friendly comedy that has some genuinely creepy moments. It’s not a great movie, but it might be the perfect one to show the kids on Halloween as they’re working off their first sugar rush. 

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken employs a time-honored formula: a murder mystery disguised as a horror film in which the creepy goings on are investigated by an endearing but hapless coward who, when push comes to shove, turns heroic and saves the girl. Bob Hope owed his early success in film to such a blueprint. While the concept already had whiskers by the time Mr. Chicken took a crack at it, it demonstrated that it was still possible to whip up a satisfying soufflé using old ingredients, if you knew how to mix them.

Produced on a modest budget by Universal Pictures, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken starred Don Knotts, who had recently left television’s The Andy Griffith Show. Griffith, in fact, was an uncredited story consultant on Mr. Chicken. Knotts plays Luther Heggs, the timid typesetter of a small-town Kansas newspaper who learns the background of a terrible murder that occurred in an old abandoned mansion in the town, which is reputedly haunted. He writes a filler piece about the crime that generates so much attention he is dared by the paper’s smug star reporter Ollie (Skip Homeier) to follow it up by spending the night inside the “murder house.” Luther does, and is literally scared unconscious by the horrifying sights and sounds.

Surviving the night, he publishes his experience in the paper and becomes the town celebrity overnight, even making headway with the woman he’s desperately in love with, who is also being courted by the overbearing Ollie. But then the heir of the man who built the house─ who supposedly murdered his wife and then took his own life─ shows up and, intent on razing the place, sues Luther and the paper for libel because of their coverage. Things don’t go well for Luther in court, so the judge decrees that the interested parties will visit the house themselves and decide whether Luther is lying or not. The visit takes place at night, and Luther leads the group to each location where an incident occurred…but nothing happens. After everyone has left, the dejected Luther once more hears the organ music and overcomes his fear to rush back in, and solves the secrets of the house, the ghost, and the murder.

Director Alan Rafkin and writers Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum had all worked on The Andy Griffith Show, which meant they knew how to bring out the best in Don Knotts, and his best is what he delivered. The actor plays his awkward courting scenes with the object of his affection Alma (former Playboy playmate Joan Staley) with charm and warmth, but in the main set-piece of the film, the haunted house sleepover, Knotts trucks out every shaky, quaky, nervous man shtick he’d developed since his days on The Steve Allen Show. The sequence also provides jump scares galore and very creepy organ music played on a blood-spattered keyboard by an invisible organist. Composer Vic Mizzy’s eerie theme was reused in Curtis Harrington’s genuinely disturbing chiller Games the following year.

What distinguishes The Ghost and Mr. Chicken from other films of the time (particularly for Boomers who watched a lot of TV) is its cast. Dick Sargent (Bewitched’s second “Darren”), Liam Redmond, and Philip Ober round out the main cast but practically every supporting role, down to the bit parts, is filled by a Hollywood familiar face. The parade of old pros includes George Chandler, Charles Lane, Reta Shaw, Hal Smith, Ellen Corby, Dick “Mr. Whipple” Wilson, Lurene Tuttle, Hope Summers, Harry Hickox, Jesslyn Fax, Robert Cornthwaite, Sandra Gould, Nydia Westerman, James Millhollin, Phil Arnold, Al Checco, Herbie Faye, Florence Lake, Burt Mustin, Jim Boles, J. Edward McKinley, and Eddie Quillan. Those names might not ring any bells, but if you were to go online and look up their photos, a response of, “Oh, him!/her!” is all but assured.

Each seasoned actor makes the most of their moments on camera, be it a substantial role or a sight gag. True film buffs might even recognize the haunted house façade on the Universal backlot as the Dowd family’s Victorian edifice from the 1950 film Harvey (and not the Bates house from Psycho or the home of The Munsters).

There is a flaw connected to The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, but it’s not in the film itself, rather on the original poster which manages to tip off the identity of the culprit. But today’s audiences would have to seek out the poster, and there’s no reason to do so. Just enjoy the film, which after nearly sixty years is still a lot of fun.

To ée or not to e

Stolen Valor

Michael has another anthology in the pipeline and he sent out his most recent Bracken Manual of Style. He spent a paragraph on blond versus blonde. The instruction makes perfect sense in that when writers get it wrong, it jolts the reader out of her– or his– immersion in the story.

American English is heavily influenced by French in major and minor ways. For example, the British word for courage is ‘valour’, but Americans use the French spelling, ‘valor’. Canadians, um… they slap their foreheads, grumble about their silly cousins, and flip a coin.

English has embraced hundreds, more likely thousands of French words, although I’ve noticed a shift in pronunciation. Funny thing about the internet; it allows mispronunciations, misspellings, and incorrect meanings to disseminate to millions around the world in an instant.

For example, Rob has pointed out how the ‘new’ meaning of nimrod resulted from a cartoon misinterpretation. My mother used to refer to dried floral room perfume as ‘pot pourri’, pronounced POH-puh-REE, but she and others have given up and shifted to POT-pour-ee. It now sounds like a product found in a cannabis store. Generations X, Y, Z, and α tend to pronounce ‘chic’ as an infant poultry homophone of ‘chick’, no thanks to a 1970s Chic jeans ad campaign.

One of my favorite French expressions fading fast from English dictionaries is “d’accord”. It’s pronounced ‘DAK-or’ and means, “I agree.” For example: “Let’s have dinner.” “D’accord.” It can also be used like the common phrase, “Of course.”

Blondes have more Fonetics

In many languages, an –a, –e, –i vowel ending often implies a feminine presence. Consider the name Michael or better yet, Michèl Yost, the famed composer. Add an E and we’re now talking about a niece, Michèle. Adjective or noun, he might have been blond or brunet, whereas she’s blonde or brunette.

In theory, you could write, “The blonde slapped the blond.” To rephrase, you would properly describe your male main characters’ shock of hair as blond and her tresses as blonde. For example:

his blond mop
his brunet wig
He is a brunet.

her blonde coiffure^†
her brunette curls
She is a blonde.

^† Note the feminine ending.

Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter

Most European languages divide nouns into two genders, masculine and feminine. Latin and Slavic languages have three (masculine, feminine, neuter), Asian languages none except for Hindi and offshoots. I attended the last of the Latin schools, so three genders make sense to me.

In the British Isles, Old English used genders identified with the articles ‘se’ (masculine) and ‘sēo’ (feminine). If we were speaking of savage canines and humans, this would be akin to us saying she-wolf and he-man. The prefixes and genders were lost over time as aggressors raided and invaded the wee island.

In middle school English classes, we were taught English is a genderless language. That is anything but true. Indeed, some linguists argue English has four genders: masculine, feminine, and two types of neuter: common and inanimate. Here ‘common’ refers to creatures of mixed or unknown sex that cannot be sorted into obvious genders. Examples: dog, cat, bird, and operator, doctor, programmer, and sibling, parent, and child.

English offers hundreds and hundreds, a thousand or more words, not to mention names, that imply gender. Words ending in –ess, –ette,  and –trix are usually feminine. In the table at right, students begin with a basic pronouns and obvious words:

he, him, his
man
boy
father
husband
son
brother
uncle
mister
sir
king
count
abbot
monk
heir
hero

she, her, hers
woman
girl
mother
wife
daughter
sister
aunt
madam
ma’am, madam
queen
countess
abbess
nun
heiress
heroine

 

 

–o, –u, –y

–a, –e, –I

What about the E?

Most people are aware of the difference between fiancée (feminine) and fiancé (masculine), and of course bride and groom are gendered nouns.

For several years, I contracted with Westinghouse. Their HR department was run by an elegant lady, AvaNelle Blankenship, who put out notices and newsletters. I’ve never known anyone else to use the word employé with a single trailing E. She used it for men and used the plural employés for groups, de rigueur within the company. Women remained employées with a double E.

Devotee is a curious word, which often, but not always, implies a feminine fan or follower. Occasionally we see devoté that refers to a male enthusiast.

Devotee is curious because it looks French but isn’t. Some wit decided a double EE ending looked more frenchified. The correct words en français are dévote (feminine) and dévot (masculine). Note how the accented É we see in French endings in ée jumped from the tail of the word to its head. Think of it as a pronunciation aid implying the sound of an English long A.

Just for You

côte
forêt
hôtel
hôpital

coast
forest
hostel, hotel
hospital

Speaking of diacriticals, if you don’t know these French words, I’ll help you with a clue. Note that each has a circumflex and that mark hints that a letter is missing from the original Latin. That letter is usually S.

For example, the actual name of the French Riviera is Côte d’Azur. If we realize the word used to have an S making it sound like ‘coste’ and azure is the color blue, we conclude the French meaning is Coast of Blue.

Note: I have to issue a warning that as an elementary student of languages, I’m not particularly au fait with French and my Latin has faded into obscurity, so I likely introduced many, many mistakes.

Okay, You've Been Warned

About ten years ago I wrote a post here at SleuthSayers about the technique of foreshadowing in fiction. My intention today was to provide a link to that column, but it turns out some of the illustrations in that post have disappeared, so I've updated and expanded the whole thing here. (Partial plagiarism of my ownself.)

First, a definition. Merriam-Webster says foreshadowing is "a suggestion of something that has not yet happened." In the literary world, it's a little more complicated. Among other things, it means the early inclusion of information that makes later action believable. Because of this, and because our fictional plots must always be (or appear to be) logical, this writing technique is one of the most useful items in our toolbox.

I love foreshadowing. I like to read short stories and novels that use it, and--probably because of that--I like to use it in writing my own stories. An example of that is my story in the current (July/Aug) issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, called "Moonshine and Roses." I mentioned it in an SS post a few weeks ago, but I didn't talk about the foreshadowing part of it. I won't spell it out in case you haven't yet read the story, but if you have, I hope my early planting of vital information made the plot more interesting--or at least the conclusion more satisfying.

Give 'em hell, Larry

Mystery author Lawrence Block once told a joke about the use of foreshadowing. I'm paraphrasing here:

Officer: Okay, soldier. Suppose an enemy submarine surfaced and ran aground on that beach over there, and suppose it offloaded fifty enemy troops. What would you do?

Soldier: Sir, I'd blow 'em off the sand with concentrated mortar fire, sir!

Officer: What? Where would you get the mortars?

Soldier: Same place you got the submarine.

Foreshadowing, according to Block, is the technique of making both the submarine and the mortars acceptable to the reader.

It's a mystery to me

Mystery stories probably lend themselves to foreshadowing more than any other genre, because the clues in the narrative of a traditional mystery usually lead to the solution to the case--and if the reader pays attention, he is ideally given enough facts to come up with the answer himself. This is true of most crime/suspense stories, not just whodunits; the foreshadowing in thrillers and other non-traditional mysteries is sometimes used to telegraph to the reader the means by which the protagonist will get out of whatever fix the writer puts him in. Maybe there's an hidden gun in the kitchen drawer or a sudden curve in the highway up ahead that the carjacker doesn't know about, or maybe the killer's henchman is actually an undercover cop or the radio button on the dashboard is really the trigger for the ejection seat, or . . . you get the picture. 

And foreshadowing isn't always used just to "explain" later events. It can also be a way to generate suspense and anticipation, sort of a "ticking bomb" effect. If you read a story or novel or see a movie that mentions, during its first half, a particularly scary place or an especially fearsome enemy, then you as the reader/viewer will dread any situation that might put your hero in that dangerous location or put him in contact with that terrible person or entity you've been told about. Consider this: A group of hikers sees a razor-wire fence, or maybe a skull-and-crossbones sign or a row of scarecrows, on a ridge as they pass through the valley below, and one of them points and asks their guide what that means. The guide looks up and frowns and says, "Oh, that? That's the border of the Forbidden Zone. Don't worry--we won't be going there." That vague warning is a kind of foreshadowing, and the Forbidden Zone is of course exactly where the poor hikers will wind up, before the story's done.

What does foreshadowing really look like, in some of the movies and novels and stories that we see or read? (NOTE: the following examples contain spoilers . . .)

Hiding in plain sight 

The Usual Suspects -- As Verbal is questioned by the police, he sees a number of photos and newspaper clippings posted on their bulletin board. Those "clues" later add up to a great surprise ending. 

Psycho -- Norman Bates tells his motel guest, early on, that his mother is "as harmless as one of these stuffed birds." Which turns out to be true, since she turns out to be as dead as they are. It's her son who isn't harmless. 

Wait Until Dark -- The blind lady remarks to a visitor in her apartment that her old refrigerator growls and gurgles when its door is open because it needs to be defrosted. Later, after the lady has escaped from a killer in her apartment and has frantically knocked out all the lights in every room so he'll be in the dark as well, the killer quietly opens her fridge's door so the light will come on and he can see. She, of course, doesn't know he's done this--but then the refrigerator growls. She now knows the door's open, and knows that he can see her but she can't see him. (I saw this movie while in college, and I'll never forget that scene.)

The Empire Strikes Back -- "Much anger in him," Yoda says to Obi-wan, "like his father." He's talking about Luke Skywalker, who turns out to be the son of Darth Vader. 

Jaws -- Hooper warns Chief Brody about the potentially explosive nature of the compressed-air tanks, and Quint says something like "What good is all this equipment? Maybe the shark'll eat it." Later the shark winds up with one of the tanks in its mouth (its jaws?) and Brody shoots the tank, thus blowing Great Whitey to bits.

Reservoir Dogs -- An orange balloon is seen floating along in the street behind a car. As the story progresses, the man code-named Mr. Orange turns out to the impostor who's infiltrated the gang. 

The James Bond novels and films -- Before most of 007's missions, the armorer demonstrates the newest lethal gadgets developed by Q Branch. Later Bond uses them to save his skin (and the world).

Fatal Attraction -- When Dan Gallagher says he has to go walk his dog, the lady to whom he is fatally attracted replies, "Just bring the dog over--I'm great with animals and I love to cook." She later cooks Gallagher's daughter's pet bunny. 

Once Upon a Time in the West -- Several brief flashbacks show a mysterious blurred figure approaching the protagonist, in the desert. At the end of the movie, that image clears to reveal the villain, and the reason the protagonist has been searching for him for all these years.

The Edge -- An Alaskan guide explains to a group of tourists what a bear pit is, and points one out, saying, "Be careful--don't fall in." Afterward, when the two main characters are alone in the wilderness, and one is about to shoot the other, the gunman falls into a bear pit. The viewer accepts this sudden and convenient turn of events only because of that earlier explanation. 

The Shawshank Redemption -- During the search of an inmate's cell, the prison's warden picks up a Bible and says, "Salvation lies within." It's later revealed that the rock hammer used for the breakout is concealed inside the hollowed-out pages of that Bible. 

Goodfellas -- "Tommy's not a bad kid," Paulie Cicero admits. "What am I supposed to do, shoot him?" Which is exactly what later happens.

Citizen Kane -- The word rosebud is spoken at the first, and its meaning is revealed only at the end. 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- At one point, a wealthy collector notes that they're only one step away from locating the Holy Grail. Indy replies, "That's usually where the ground falls out from underneath your feet." When at the end of the story they find the Grail, a huge earthquake splits the earth and swallows some of the party.

"The Lottery" -- The pile of stones at the very beginning of this short story later takes on a whole new meaning.

Cool Hand Luke, Ghost, Love Story, Casablanca -- Bits of early dialogue are repeated at or near the end, for closure: "What we got here is a failure to communicate," "Ditto," "Love means never having to say you're sorry," "Here's looking at you, kid." 

L. A. Confidential -- Captain Smith asks Ed Exley whether he would be willing to plant evidence, beat a confession out of a suspect, or shoot a criminal in the back. Exley says no. By the end of the movie, though, he has done all three. 

Back to the Future -- In the opening credits the camera pans across dozens of clocks, one of which shows a man hanging from its hands, as Harold Lloyd famously did in the silent movie Safety Last. Later, as Marty McFly tries Doc Brown's experiment to go back to the future, Doc winds up hanging from the hands of the giant clock in the tower on the town square.

Aliens -- Lt. Ellen Ripley, who during training demonstrated her proficiency with a powerloader, later uses a powerloader to battle and defeat the alien queen. (This is, by the way, a fantastic movie.)

Signs of things to come

Two of my all-time favorite examples of foreshadowing:

The Sixth Sense -- There are a number of clues throughout the movie that I never suspected would point directly to what the audience eventually saw. I think this was the only time the Best Picture Oscar was ever awarded to a movie that was totally dependent on a surprise ending.

Signs -- There are at least half a dozen facts (signs?) presented during the course of the story that seem to make very little sense at the time, and later serve to make the unbelievable ending believable. I think of this film every time I see a really clever use of foreshadowing.

Questions for the class

Can you think of other stories, novels, or movies that demonstrate the effective use of foreshadowing? As a writer, do you incorporate foreshadowing in your own plotting? Have you, like me, ever used it to "rescue" a hard-to-believe plot and thus make your ending more logical? Which of your stories have featured it?

I have a few short stories coming out soon that rely heavily on planted clues that (I hope) make the endings better, and I'll probably report on those here, when they're published.

How's that for foreshadowing?

Does It Have to Be Murder?

Warner Bros.

I've been chatting with a podcaster about the upcoming season for her and her husband's show, where they read mysteries live. The husband, who handles the music, tries to solve the mystery by the end of the show. She can't because she reads every story before it's even accepted.

This year, they're doing something different. Anything but murder. Which got me thinking (and about more than my proposed story.) Does every crime fiction story need a body count?

This summer, I'm editing anthologies. A lot of anthologies. Plus, I read an ARC for the upcoming Bouchercon anthology. Virtually all the stories in that and two of the anthologies I've copy edited involve murder. My next anthology short story? Murder. The last three crime fiction novels I've read? Murder. Hell, one was the basis for Season 1 of Bosch.

While I've never agreed with Donald Maas's philosophy of increasing the body count with each book in a series – Let's call that what it is: a cheap ploy eventually leading to bad writing – I do concede murder is the highest of stakes. You're taking a life. If you ask most people how many of the Ten Commandments they've broken, the more honest will likely say, "I ain't killed anyone. Yet." Everyone lies at one point or another. Most people have taken something that wasn't theirs, broken with their parents, and that most underrated of the Big Ten, envied. I'm reading Cormac McCarthy right now, and boy, does he give a writer a case of envy. Leaving out the "God commandments," we continually break the Sabbath. Hell, I'm writing this on a Sunday morning. And while most people get through life without cheating on a lover or a spouse, more do than will admit it. But murder?

Murder is the big one. The taking of life. Most people quote that commandment as "Thou shalt not kill," but really, the original word translates as "murder," the deliberate taking of life. Killing in war or self-defense doesn't count because that other person is trying to kill you, or at least, inflict grievous harm. Accidents? You might get sued, but you won't go to prison unless you did something really stupid, like drive drunk or neglected some obvious bit of safety. But the deliberate taking of life? Either in a fit of rage or through (allegedly) careful planning?

I don't care what religious creed you follow, even if you're an atheist -- or maybe especially if you are one – that's the big kahuna. Taking life deliberately and without any mitigating reason is a huge crime against humanity.

But is it possible to write about crime and not murder? Does it really need a body count?

It takes a bit of skill, and quite often, it goes toward comedic. Oceans 11 is a prime example. It's the heist. It's George Clooney and Brad Pitt being smartasses. The source material is an excuse from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. to play cops-and-robbers.

Catch Me if You Can, the Tom Hanks-Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle based on real life, focuses on Leo's cat-and-mouse game with Hanks's FBI agent and their later collaboration. Murder is not a primary plot device.

Cannonball Run

And if you want to get to the heart of it, the two Cannonball Run movies are really light-hearted (and admittedly light-headed) crime movies. The crime just happens to be an illegal road race that turns into a bunch of comedy sketches sewn together.

But notice the tongues firmly planted in cheeks for these movies. There are relatively few bodies in these films. And when there are, it's often an accident or natural causes, sometimes the inciting event.

Yet if you go all the way back to one of the first modern detective stories, Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the plot does not center on a body but a missing letter. Our intrepid detective, Dupin, foreshadows Sherlock Holmes in his talent for looking beyond the obvious. The letter is soiled and wrinkled, looking like an old, well-worn paper and not a recently written missive that could bring down the French government. Doyle would revisit this time and again. The stories are not comedic, but neither do they depend on a body.

So, does it have to be murder? For the same reason we all rubberneck at a traffic pile-up or a train wreck, murder grabs our attention faster. Someone's life ended because someone else deliberately ended it. But there are plenty of ways to spin up other crimes: Theft, fraud, adultery (not a crime, but a dirty deed.) It's all in how you handle it. Instead of bleeding, someone simply needs to ask, "Are you in or out?"

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to sketch out a story of the adventures of Florida Man!