Don't Speak

For a brief period in my life, I got somewhat serious about playing chess.  I bought and studied books on the game, joined a local club, and even played in a few tournaments.  I never got great--it could be argued, with some justification, that I never even got good.  But I got better than I was when I started, and I enjoyed the process tremendously.  Eventually, I came to a point where I felt like I had to focus my time and energy on either chess or writing, and for me the choice was an easy one.  

While I don't study chess rigorously any longer, I still play the game recreationally, and it influences the way I see and think about the world in some respects.  For example: every move in a game of chess has a gain and a cost.  Move your knight to a new square, and you've gained an attack on enemy pieces that were previously safe.  On the other hand, you've endangered pieces or squares your knight was defending.  This may seem like a rather obvious observation, but it's a useful way of thinking about choices.  What am I going to gain, and what do I have the potential to lose?

A friend who coached me in the game--and who happens to be one of the top-ranked players in the state--told me something when I was starting out that has stuck with me as a particularly valuable lesson: "You're going to lose a thousand games before you win one that means anything."  Anybody can luck into a win if your opponent makes a blunder or simply isn't paying attention, but a win like that isn't significant.  It's a fluke.  The only way to truly get better at the game, and to win games that feel significant, is to play people better than you are and get your brains kicked in, time after time after time.  Failure is built into the process.

This has fairly obvious parallels with writing.  We tell beginning writers that they can expect to get drawers full of rejections (or rather, these days, email folders full of rejections) before they get an acceptance.  Every successful writer I've ever talked with recalls the months and years of toiling away without ever seeing their name in print.  As in chess, it's learning from failure that makes this experience essential.  If you're serious about the craft, you use rejections to figure out what works and what doesn't.  You build on your strengths, and find ways to minimize your weaknesses.  (If you're not serious about the craft, like one member of a long-ago writing group convinced she was the next Toni Morrison, you threaten to sue the editors who had the temerity to reject your divinely inspired prose, never mind that it jumps between first and third person twenty-seven times for no reason.)

If you're determined, and lucky, you'll eventually reach the stage where you're getting acceptances on a regular basis.  Once you reach that stage, how do you keep growing?  What's the writing equivalent of continuing to challenge players better than you?

You find ways to challenge yourself.

I love writing dialogue.  It's one of the most fun parts of writing crime fiction, maybe in part because most of the writers I came up idolizing (Robert B. Parker, Donald Westlake, Sue Grafton, Elmore Leonard, Rex Stout, etc.) were themselves masters of the craft.  I don't pretend to be on their level, but I like to think I have a certain ability to turn a memorable line or convey information through dialogue in a painless way.

(On reflection, it's interesting that there's such a strong connection between crime writing and dialogue, going all the way back to "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."  Are there science fiction or horror writers who are especially admired for the ways their characters speak?)

So last month I set myself a challenge to do something I'd never done before: write a story without dialogue.  In the attempt, I drifted into using a collective narrative voice, something else I hadn't done before.  The story is structured as a shared flashback, using description and narration, but no dialogue, to revisit a tragedy that happened to a group of people decades earlier.

The thing is, I failed.  Near the end of the story, the villain has two lines of spoken dialogue.  I wrestled with this for a couple of days, but in the end I just felt like I needed to "hear" that voice, almost as a counterpoint to the way the rest of the story is structured.  A better writer probably could have found a way to stick to the original mission, but then a better writer probably wouldn't need to set themselves such hoops to jump through.

Is the story successful?  I like it, but in this game that doesn't count for much.  We'll see what the editor thinks.  Either way, I feel like I learned something, simply by forcing myself to frame a story in a way I never had before.  It's something I'll try again, though not immediately.

Have you written stories without dialogue, or set yourself similar challenges?  What did you learn by doing so?

Murder and Mayhem, Canadian Style! The 13th Letter

with Lisa de Nikolits

Some readers here might know that we Canadians burned down The White House during the War of 1812. Now, I'm pretty sure we won't do that again, but I mention this to support my premise that while sporting a somewhat quirky sense of humour, we Canucks can be rather fiendish. My friend and colleague Lisa de Nikolits is here to introduce proof to that.

When I was asked to contribute to The 13^th Letter, something spooky happened. Gina Gallo and her wacky cousin Nico, who had been impatiently waiting for their next appearance in The Goddaughter series, decided to horn in and take over. So in my case, this post title could also be "When Novel Characters Go Short Story."

Lisa de Nicolits

Take it away, Lisa!

Thank you Mel!

My printed copy of The 13^th Letter landed in my hot little hands just over a week ago at our fabulous launch at the Sleuth of Baker Street, and I can't wait to read the stories again in print. One of my favourite treats is to snuggle up on the sofa with a lovely paperback. The fragrance of ink and paper, the rustle of turning pages, and the feel of holding a book really makes stories come alive for me. All the troubles of the world fall away as I get caught up in the magic of someone else's imagination.

Authors are magicians, movie directors, make-up artists, hustlers, wrestlers, casting directors, comedians, satirists, historians, spies and sociologists. We dabble in horror, cozy, literary fiction and police procedurals. We follow the trails of fraud and fantasy with wry irony, hardboiled noir and side-splitting comedy. We tap into jealousy, rage, fear, envy, obsession, lust and greed, but there's also true love, a dash of kindness, and a satisfying sense of justice.

And that's what make an anthology by the Mesdames and Messieurs of Mayhem so very special. Because our promise to you, Dear Reader, is to deliver all of the above, in each of our anthologies.

Founded by Donna Carrick and Madeleine Harris-Callway in 2013, our collective goes from strength to strength. The 13^th Letter is our sixth anthology. "M" is the 13^th letter of the alphabet (and also our lucky number!) We used "M" to stand for mayhem, maple syrup, mischief, mystery, Marilyn Monroe, murder, and of course, moolah, but we've also come up with all kinds of other creative ways to work with thirteen messages and letters.

Instead of giving you a synopsis of each story, we thought we'd give you a taste of the fun to come, with a few one-liners to showcase the variety and creativity. Enjoy!

The Midnight Boat to Palermo by Rosemary Aubert (to whom our anthology is dedicated.)

The unforgettable story about a sugar factory in Palermo where no one is permitted to taste the sweet wares, and how a deadly family secret finally comes to light.

The Lifted Letter by J.E. Barnard

An ancient, illuminated letter M goes missing from a bootlegger's library, and only Gloria Gamm, Girl Gumshoe, can get it back before there's a bloodshed.

M is for Memory by M.H. Callway

Memory is an unreliable trickster, as the hero of The Boy in the Picture learns when she find a mysterious photograph.

M is for Moolah by Melodie Campbell

Someone has trashed great-uncle Tony's crappy house in The Hammer, and who but family could know he still worked as a bookie, stashing moolah in all the wrong places?

If You Should Fall by Donna Carrick

M is for maple syrup in this uniquely Canadian thriller, as sugarbush tapper Marlene MacDougal scrambles for her life, proving that justice can be both swift and sweet.

The Curse Scroll by Cheryl Freedman

Half-ogre/half-human private investigator Goslin and her partner Marlow, a bipedal, talking, fedora-wearing ferret, are tasked by Goslin's fairy godmother to find the hidden scroll cursing Goslin's cousin, the king of Carcassone, with impotence.

In a Cold Country by Lisa de Nikolits (a sonnet of sorts!)

There was a little girl
from a land far away
not a very nice little girl
she always got her way

and now that little girl
is so, so alone
in a cold country
like a dog without a bone

old dog, old dog
one day I’ll make you pay
you won’t see me coming
but you can't get out of the way

(The 13^th line concludes with a location, date and time for the deadly meet-up.)

27 by Blair Keetch

The body of a prestigious entrepreneur is found in a warehouse in the middle of the night, leading to more suspects than there are letters in the alphabet. Can a clue scrawled in blood point to the killer?

One Helluva Lady by Rosemary McCracken

"When two Toronto police officers took chairs across from my desk, I wondered what trouble I was in." Pat Tierney returns in this riveting tale of murder.

Where are you, Marilyn? by Sylvia Multarsh Warsh

In 1962, plain teenager Sophie moves next door to glamorous Marsha and tried to help her find her mother, a Marilyn Monroe Lookalike, who abandoned her family years earlier, hoping to be discovered in Hollywood.

Scamming Granny by Lynne Murphy

This clever title can be interpreted two ways. Charlotte is almost the victim of a 'granny scammer' but her friend decide to rally round and try to defeat his nasty scheme.

A Hollywood Tale by Ed Piwowarczyk

In Hollywood in the 1930s, a gossip columnist becomes entangled in the murders of a film producer and two young actresses.

On Moon Mountain by Lorna Poplak

On the mountain, in the moonlight, a vengeful bully prepares to push an unconscious enemy over a cliff. Can the unexpected appearance of an eyewitness prevent him from carrying out this dastardly crime?

Murder and Marilla by Madona Skaff

The Bell Tolls Once Again is the third installment of the continuing adventures of ex-conman, Lennie, who solves murders...with the help of the victim. This time it's murder on board the ghost ship, Marilla.

Cardiopulmonary Arrest by Melissa Yi

Do you want to know how you're going to die? For Rainier Hetherington, M stands for a machine that will predict his manner of death, as an inheritance from his ghastly father.

CHRISTMAS IS COMING!

Where to buy the book: https://tinyurl.com/w9h7vhp2 and amazon.ca and amazon.com for print copies.

For more information about us: visit https://mesdamesofmayhem.com

There's a documentary about us which reveals our deepest and darkest secrets: https://gem.cbc.ca/the-mesdames-of-mayhem/s01e01

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Henry VanderSpek is the photographer of the group photo. He was also the official photographer of the documentary, The Mesdames of Mayhem, by director Cat Mills and producer, Felicity Justrabo.

Taboos

Back at the end of the 20th century, I received a rejection letter from a magazine that had started to publish my short stories. I was assured that it was a good piece (it later appeared in 1998's The Best American Mystery Stories) but they declined to publish it because their readers did not like this sort of thing.

"This sort of thing" was about a small girl and her mother, undocumented Irish immigrants. They are very much under the thumb of their "protector," their landlord and the proprietor of the restaurant where the mother works, who uses his power to extort sex from the mother. The events in the story are precipitated when he turns his attention to her small daughter. 

There was nothing graphic in "Secrets" but the sexual abuse of children was taboo in some publishing quarters. And, as we now know, such abuse had long been a forbidden topic elsewhere. The Me Too Movement was not so much the start, as the culmination, of a series of scandals involving schools for Native Americans, Junior Hockey players, elite female gymnasts, and religious institutions of nearly every persuasion.

Nowhere has the breaking of this taboo been more significant than in Ireland if recent Irish journalism, films, novels, and short stories are any indication. The title of Fiona McPhillips new novel, When We Were Silent, says it all. Secrecy, a culture of sexual shame, and the immense power and prestige of the Catholic Church conspired for centuries to hide the sins of the powerful and, instead, to punish their victims.

That's very much the deal in When We Were Silent which presents two story lines. Now- when Lou (Louise) Manson is a successful teacher living with her daughter, Katie, and her wife, Alex, and Then, when Lou was repeating her level six year at tony Highfield School, where as a poor girl she is definitely an outsider.

 Lou at 17 is tough and clever, a good student and a gifted athlete. Besides her poverty and her lack of a posh accent, she has two other distinguishing features, both well hidden from the powers that be. She is attracted to women and she has a secret agenda: getting the goods on the swimming coach whom she believes ruined her best friend's life.

McPhillips is very good on the inner lives of adolescent girls and on their passionate friendships and rivalries. In general, the girls' characterizations are superior to those of the Highfield adults who are vividly one dimensional and even to the adult Lou, who is perhaps necessarily less dynamic than her reckless early self.  

Also good is McPhillips account of Highfield School which is very nearly a character itself. Of course, exclusive private schools and colleges, the more isolated the better, have long been a favorite of mystery writers. Their inbred cultures, their sense of social and intellectual superiority, and their distasteful entitlement not only inspire thoughts of homicide but provide a good deal of satisfaction when institution and/or perpetrators are brought down to earth.

So is it with When We Were Silent – but not for a long time. McPhillips novel reflects the changes over the last 30 years that were essential before teachers, parents, authorities, church officials would listen to children and before same sex relationships ceased to be considered a damnable catastrophe. 

When the situation that ended in near disaster for Lou at 18 is replicated with another accusation of sexual misconduct and another coach, Lou and her friends find themselves with big decisions: to remain silent and become complicit or to speak out and reawaken old wounds and old dangers. The contemporary section both opens and closes the novel as McPhillips skillfully presents the costs of silence – in both the past and the present of her characters' lives.

This is a mystery writer to watch.

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 at:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-man-who-met-the-elf-queen/id1072859654?ls=1&mt=11

The Dictator's Double, 3 short mysteries and 4 illustrations is available at: 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-dictators-double/id1607321864?ls=1&mt=11

Opportunity Makes the Thief

 Ever been robbed?

 Yeah, me too.

At gunpoint?

For me, luckily, no. 

Seen the face/faces of the thief/thieves who robbed you?

 Not me.

 The first time I got robbed someone stole the stereo out of my car, along with a case full of cassettes (yes, I know, I'm dating myself.).

 The second time I got robbed someone stole the stereo out of my truck, along with a case full of CDs (yes, I know, still dating myself.).

 The third time I got robbed someone broke one of the windows on my Jeep, stole the stereo (I had the detachable face with me in my pocket, so I'm not sure what good the player by itself was going to do them, without the face and the controls to work it.), and this time they didn't bother with the CDs (Don't say it. It's not even funny anymore.).

 Of course, in this, the Age of Streaming, I currently run nearly zero risk of being parted from any one of a car stereo or CD/cassettes collections. I have an app for that (and it's TIDAL, not Demon Spotify).

And that tracks, because thieves today, they've gone digital, too.

I've taken all of the recommended steps (and then some!) for protecting myself, my identity, etc., online. That's not where the most recent incarnation of thieves to cross my digital path and darken my virtual doorway have struck.

Not at all.

Instead, when these cyberfootpads strike, they steal pieces of me, and can't even be bothered to sell them. Nope. They offer these chunks of Brian gratis on the web, and their profit mechanism to ask people who download these Brianparts to "buy them a coffee," if they like what they took.

 For FREE.

I'm speaking of course, of my own catalogue of books. These latterday pickpockets pirate the content, converting it to downloadable PDFs, and collect "tips," for "doing the world a favor."

You got that last part right. These cyberhousebreakers are posing as altruists.

But don't just take my word for it. Let's go to the site of the most recent gang of banditti to lift my shit and peddle it on the web.

The site is OceanOfPDFs. I'm not linking to it because I don't want these jackwagons to get the idea I support their "cause."

Get all that?

Pretty pious sounding, and yet it's NONSENSE.

A quick story from my more tender years: when I was a kid I loved the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, etc.). One of my prized possessions was a first edition of one of Tarzan's books, published in 1928 by Frank A Muncey & Company.

My work.

One of my grandmothers was living with my family at the time. and wound up taking this book and giving it to one of my cousins. One that I did not particularly like.

So when I saw this cousin reading my book, and asked where she had gotten said book, only to be told my grandmother had given it to her because she thought she might like the adventure element to it, I had to explain to my teenaged, very bright, but somewhat obtuse cousin, that the book wasn't my grandmother's to give. She didn't own it.

I did. 

So it wasn't hers to give.

Also my work.

It was mine to give, should I have chosen to do so.

My cousin and I cleared up what turned out to be the result of a number of misunderstandings.

The only misunderstanding between myself and every other author whose work is illegally featured on that site and the site owners, is their muddle-headed notion that they are somehow entitled to give away the works of the authors they feature on their page, including mine.

They aren't. I've already asserted my extant copywrite on these guys (and not for the first time. I've run afoul of them before). And if you are a published author as well, take a moment to peruse their site. If you need to register a complaint and get your illegally taken work removed from the site, look for me a link to the appropriate form for getting that done in the comments.

And since we had a serious wind-storm related power outage yesterday, and I and my family are some of the victims of said Act of God, that's gonna be it for me this go round. More when next we gather together here among the SleuthSayers!

See you in two weeks!

 

Double Event

I have had an unusual experience recently.  For one thing, I have a story, "Welcome to JFR!", in the November/December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. That's unusual all by itself since I have only sold them 4 stories in 48 years of trying.  But I also have a story, "Christmas Dinner," in the same issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.  Talk about serendipity.

"Welcome to JFR!"  barely qualifies as a story.  It is the editor's introduction to an issue of a rather unusual journal - my revenge on 35 years of being an academic librarian.

"Christmas Dinner," on the other hand, is a novella, the third about Delgardo, the beat poet detective, and set in 1958. My narrator, Thomas Gray, is experiencing homesickness because it is his first December away from home, so a friend takes him for a traditional Manhattan Christmas dinner - in a Chinese restaurant.  Naturally, murder happens.

Now here is the really weird thing.  Back in 2009 I had a story in the July/August issue of AHMM and another in the August issue of EQMM.  So, this is the second time I have doubled my pleasure, so to speak.

 But there is another coincidence (a double double event).  I recently learned that  Otto Penzler put one of my stories in his Other Distinguished list at the back of The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2024. And now I discovered that Steph Cha put one of my tales in the Distinguished list in Best American Mystery and Suspense.   

The coolest part is they were two different stories.

Penzler, who is among other things, a historian of our field, chose "The Accessories Club," (AHMM March/April),  which plays with some of our subgenres.   Steph Cha, when she took on the editorship of her series said we might expect to see more stories by women and people of color.  I am neither but "Memorial" (Black Cat Weekly #95) does feature a strong female protagonist. 

You might say both editors were on-brand.  I'm just happy they liked my tales.

By the way, extra credit to anyone who recognizes the source of the title for today's blog.

  

Crime Scene Comix Case 2024-11-030, Bank Robbery

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.

The ineluctable modality of the memorable.

            I just came back from a trip to my hometown, King of Prussia, PA, a suburban ring city about fifteen miles outside Philadelphia.         

When we moved there in 1958, it was a somnambulant country town, with cow fields, a couple of gas stations and a single supermarket, now a misnomer, since that A&P could fit into the produce department of an average Whole Foods.  Two buildings held K- 6, and junior and senior high schools.  Now there’re a half dozen elementary schools, and the high school looks like Stanford University, after it opened a satellite campus on Mars.  There’s also a shopping center, purportedly the third largest in the country, and the kind of sprawl William Gibson might have imagined after consuming a handful of magic mushrooms.    

            Though that’s not the point of the essay.  It’s more about memory.  I hadn’t seen the place in a few decades and the transformation was so complete I kept getting lost.  The roadways had changed, as had the route numbers, many of my familiar landmarks were gone, and while place and street names were mostly the same, they were lined with alien structures with strange logos and grotesque encroachments on adjacent properties.  I’d gone forward in the Time Machine, and the Morlocks had learned to live in the sun and taken over. 

            My wife says I have the directional sense of a carrier pigeon.  Before GPS we traveled all over Europe and parts of Asia and Australia with only maps and dead reckoning.  But in this situation, I was constantly befuddled.  Surprisingly, knowing a little is worse than knowing nothing.  Throw in a twenty-plus-year absence, and I was done for, so systemically disoriented I even had trouble finding our hotel room.  My wife asked, “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” 

            Anyone who quibbles over factual errors in a memoir knows nothing about brain science.  Aside from outright fabrication a la George Santos or James Fry, and some argue William Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley” (one of my favorite books), if the author is earnestly trying to recall what they experienced, they’re only recounting what they think happened, what they sincerely believe is true, with little chance of getting it right.

               I’ve made peace with this.  I’m simply happy that I remember anything at all, however illusory.  If my brain has put a nicer polish on the experience, that’s fine.  Why not.  The insight that matters for writers is that the line between fiction and non-fiction is pretty fuzzy.  My admiration for the work of historians is boundless, but earnest research won’t make what they're citing less flawed, incomplete, and often wildly inaccurate. 

            What was the best of times for one guy was the worst of times for the guy in the next apartment, or office cubicle, or bunk bed. 

            If you want to take this to the logical extreme, you can invoke quantum mechanics.  Physicists will tell you with a straight face that reality is all just an approximation, a frothy admixture of probabilities determined only by the perspective of the observer, which may conflict with other observations, none of which describe any objective truth.  Heisenberg proved you’ll never know anything with absolute certainty, and no one has yet proven him wrong, even Albert Einstein, though he sure tried (it turns out God does play dice). 

            We’re told to write what we know, which is basically good advice.  All works of fiction are semi-autobiographical, since we mine our own lives for material.  Yet those experiences may or may not have happened.  Your brain has played tricks on you, having you believe things that are distortions at best, and very likely contrivances made in whole cloth without your awareness or approval. 

            So what?  What matters is the quality of the story, the skill with the language and the effect it has on the reader, who has permission to distort all of it to their own liking. 

Service with a Guile

Recently I came across a conversation about process servers filming or photographing handoffs with the words, “You’ve been served.” I don’t know how long or limited the practice is, but I opined visual evidence of service is wise.

Not everyone agreed, responding that taking time to record could make a tense situation worse. Furthermore, one said, a process server’s oath prevented them from lying. In a YouTube cast from last year, favorite YouTube lawyer Steve Letho seemed to say faulty service is virtually nonexistent.

I’m aware of at least two cases– personally aware.

Huissier de Justice

If you’ve been on either side of a legal case– adoption, divorce, eviction, foreclosure, small claims, or other non-criminal matter, you or someone on your behalf likely sent or received papers demanding a respondent’s presence and participation in a hearing. Courts provide a number of options, but hand delivery is popular and relatively foolproof– most of the time. Plaintiff may choose a deputy for the job or hire a private process server.

Professional Florida servers may be certified by county court or appointed by the sheriff’s office. Servers must be local permanent residents, at least 18, drug, disease, disability, and felony free, of good character, pass a background check, and pass a certification exam administered by the court of the sheriff’s department.

Notifications other beyond process service may include publishing or posting. More on that in a moment.

Case 1, Mind Your Pronouns

A party listed me in a suit. When I didn’t respond, an attorney for a fellow defendant called to ask why. I knew nothing about it.

Umm…

“But you were served,” he said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“But you were.”

I insisted I had not been served, so he opened an inquiry. The process server wrote something like, “Neighbors at 5601 Hobbit Habitat identified her by name and she received service at 1:38pm.”

There were only two problems. There was no 5601 and… as must be abundantly clear… I am not a she or a her. To my surprise, the court did nothing, merely saying, “Well, you’re here now and that’s what counts.”

Unless some discipline took place out of the public eye, I believe the court had a problem processor on its hands.

Case 2, No Good Deed

My consulting client, Westinghouse Europe, took over a Florida subsidiary. I knew I’d be leaving Minnesota where I owned another small business. Rather than layoff and liquidate, an employee asked to buy the company subject to seller financing. I agreed. I worked closely with her to take over the concern, then left for my job.

Upon my return, I found mail stating a judgment against me of some ten thousand dollars. Apparently, the former employee found the shop more difficult to run than she’s thought. In violation of our agreement, she laid off remaining employees, closed the doors, liquidated assets of several thousands of dollars, and then sued me.

For what? I hired a lawyer. He confirmed the suit and judgment. Unsatisfied with profiting from the sale of stock and equipment, the former buyer realized she might profit another way. She claimed in court she was still an employee now owed nine months of wages. She knew I was working overseas and couldn’t defend a suit I knew nothing about.

The process server wrote that he identified the residence by mail and a newspaper at the door with my name on it. He said the house was occupied as evidenced by smoke from the chimney and a television playing inside, but residents refused to come to the door.

My home was in a state forest. I had no rural mail delivery because I maintained a post box in a neighboring town and never subscribed to a newspaper. I didn’t own a television and couldn’t answer the door because I was working an ocean away.

If we assume the server was an honest man and the plaintiff knew where I lived (which was doubtful), then I suspect the plaintiff deliberately misdirected him. I don’t know how long she planned hijacking the business, but she waited until I was well out of the country.

Courts don’t like to undo judgments, but to my attorney’s surprise, they agreed to hear arguments if I made an escrow deposit of twelve thousand dollars, which I did.

The case languished. For a couple of years, hardly a peep arose from the other side. When another former employee confronted our plaintiff, she claimed her boyfriend made her do it.

That made little sense. I collected the escrow and moved on.

Posting

Evictions and perhaps foreclosures may require a copy of the complaint be affixed to the door of the dwelling. Photographing the attachment is wise although I don’t recall a tenant ever denied service. However, one story made the rounds of a particularly lazy server required to issue summons to residences in a gated community. When denied entry to homes beyond the fence, he simply dumped the papers in a culvert by the entry. Later he attempted to justify it by saying that was the closest to the front door as he could get. The court was not pleased.

But other process servers could be far more dedicated. I discussed ‘Dr. Bob Black’ (not his real name), a disbarred lawyer and defrocked judge who plagued the Orlando area with pesky cons and scams. Dr. Bob (the ‘Dr’ is as phony as the rest of him) bragged about being judgment-proof with his funds out of reach of the courts.

Nonetheless, I was brought in as a witness by a New York homicide detective who sued the fraudster. Unfortunately, the processor found it nigh impossible to catch the subject out of his house. Serving him became a matter of pride.

Picturing the scene without knowledge of the landscape is difficult, but the summoner reported he hid in a tree. When Black didn’t emerge, our man edged up to the house, turned off the water, returned to his tree, and called the water company to report an outage.

Twenty five minutes later, a service truck pulled up to the house. Our dedicated server slipped down from his tree. When Black appeared in his doorway, the process server shot forward, jammed a thick envelope into his hands and galloped off, shouting, “You’ve been served!”

Publishing

In bygone eras, villagers could find notices ‘published’ in their town square with perhaps a crier to draw the attention of those who couldn’t read. These days, some situations require parties to publish notices in a local paper.

Florida has more code enforcement agencies than any other state. If by chance a resident wasn’t afflicted with a home owners association, code enforcement could step in to keep life miserable. ‘The décor police’ is an apt description. Their lobby, er, professional group FACE (Florida Association of Code Enforcement) lobbied for their ‘officers’ (inspectors) to carry badges and guns (likely in dire situations of color clashing paint protestors or an outbreak of pink plastic yard flamingos). Serious looking police-type badges are now de rigueur, but thus far, code enforcement inspectors remain unarmed (Joel Greenberg’s tax collector’s office nonwithstanding).

Not so long ago, Orange County’s Code Enforcement had a deeply corrupt pocket of ‘officers’ who used their agency to wage personal battle. They violated their own rules and regulations and statutes. Expectations like due process, equal treatment under the law, and trespassing meant little to them.

And they used a dirty trick. When required to publish notices they didn’t want the public to see, they indeed published in a local paper… The Heritage Florida Jewish News. When confronted about this obscure paper, Code Enforcement giggled. They tittered. They sniggered. They chortled. As one Jewish lawyer said, even Jews didn’t read the newspaper. Legal notices still make up a substantial section of its pages.

These days Code Enforcement has become more professional and I was pleasantly surprised to see inspectors following the law. I’ll never become a fan; if a pink plastic yard flamingo makes my neighbor happy, then I’m happy, but plenty of teapot potentates think otherwise. At least I can no longer complain about abusive and corrupt practices.

Accepting

You may find yourself served. If so, I suggest accepting politely and gracefully, i.e, don’t shoot the messenger.

If you have to serve someone, you usually have a choice between using a deputy or hiring a professional process server. You may choose to send a non-verbal message with one or the other, or if you have safety concerns, you may use a deputy.

Be safe. Be respectful, and don’t let anyone fib about service. It’s all part of the process.

Going Golden, Committing Capers, and Getting Cozy

We've been talking quite a bit at this blog about writing stories for anthologies--mostly mystery/crime anthologies. It's easy to see why: there have been a lot of them out there, recently.

I think writing for mystery anthologies is fun, for several reasons: (1) most of them have a challenging theme (besides just crime), (2) they often contain stories by other familiar names, so it's sort of a party, and (3) there do indeed seem to be more markets for them, at the moment, than for magazines. Besides, as a writer friend once said to me, anthologies are real books, that you can put up on your shelf and look at from time to time. I still love the magazines, and send stories to them regularly--but not as often as I once did.

As luck would have it, several crime anthologies containing my stories have been published in the past couple of weeks, and two of those--Shamus and Anthony Commit Capers and Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy--were edited by the same dynamic duo: Andrew McAleer and Gay Toltl Kinman. In fact, the McAleer/Kinman team has, to my knowledge at least, edited three "awards-based" anthologies, and I've been fortunate enough to have stories in all of them. Here's some info about all three of those books:

Edgar and Shamus Go Golden: Twelve Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection from the Golden Age of Mystery and Beyond (Down & Out Books), edited by Andrew McAleer and Gay Toltl Kinman and published two years ago, on December 5, 2022. 

This was a book of original stories by writers who had won, in the past, either an Edgar Award (presented by Mystery Writers of America) or a Shamus Award (Private Eye Writers of America). Contributors were me, Doug Allyn, Lori Armstrong, O'Neil De Noux, Brendan DuBois, Martin Edwards, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Kristen Lepionka, Lia Matera, John McAleer, P. J. Parrish, and Art Taylor.

My story was called "Old Money," and featured a New Orleans private eye named Luke Walker. (This was Luke's first appearance, but I later put him to work in two more stories.) This one is set in 1940s Natchez, Mississippi, where Walker goes to investigate the mysterious death of a reclusive millionaire and the possibility that Walker's young client from New Orleans might be the only heir to the old man's fortune. It's actually a couple of different mysteries in one story, which is something I like to do now and then if possible, and it was especially fun to write because (1) Natchez has such an interesting history and (2) I'm familiar with most of its streets, landmarks, etc.

Shamus and Anthony Commit Capers: Ten Tales of Criminals, Crooks, and Culprits (Level Best Books), again edited by Andrew McAleer and Gay Kinman, published November 5, 2024. 

I haven't yet held this book in my hands, but I think its cover is one of the best I've seen in a long time. This is another anthology of original stories by past award winners, this time of the Shamus Award and/or the Anthony Award. Contributors: me, Lori Armstrong, Libby Cudmore, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, Verena Rose, John Shepphird, Shawn Reilly Simmons, and Marcia Talley.

My story, "Skeeter Done Shot Billy Bob," doesn't involve a detective, just a large contingent of the required criminals, crooks, and culprits. It also involves a heist, and not a usual one at that. A group of wannabe gangsters is trying to steal back a bag of diamonds that was taken from them, which they'd stolen earlier in order to repay a debt to yet another--and far more deadly--gang. And of course time is running out and very little of what they try goes as planned. (Billy Bob Kelso, who has done got shot, would agree.)

Of the three stories, this was probably the most fun to write, and a bit different from most of my stories because in this case the idea for its title came before the idea for the story. Matter of fact, the title came verbatim from a dead-serious but weirdly funny statement I heard in a TV news interview, from a witness to a local shooting--although I changed the names to protect the guilty. It's strange, sometimes, the way these things happen.

Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy: Thirteen Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection (Down & Out Books), the third anthology edited by Andy and Gay, published November 11, 2024.

I also love the cover of this one, and I understand Shawn Reilly Simmons designed it and the one for the Shamus/Anthony anthology. (Great job, Shawn!) Once again this is a book of original stories, not reprints, by past winners of--this time--either the Agatha or the Derringer. True to its title, these stories are (or at least mine is) more lighthearted than gritty, and feature crimes that take place mostly off-screen. Contributors, besides me: Barb Goffman, Tara Laskowski, B. V. Lawson, Robert Lopresti, Kris Neri, Alan Orloff, Josh Pachter, Stephen D. Rogers, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Marcia Talley, Art Taylor, and Stacy Woodson.

In my story, "Sunlight and Shadows," I used two characters that have now appeared more than eighty times in other publications: a retired teacher (and amateur sleuth) named Frances Valentine and her daughter Lucy, who is also the sheriff of their small Southern town. In this story, Fran travels to San Francisco to visit her cousin, a journalist who happens to be covering a local murder investigation--and while Fran's there, Lucy is wrestling with a church-office robbery back home. Through several phone calls, Fran helps her sheriff daughter deal with her case while also butting in on the California investigation. Like "Old Money," this is sort of two mysteries in the same story, one dealing with big-city homicide and one with small-town theft, and of course my two heroes (heroines?) manage to solve both.

In closing, I hope you'll check out all three anthologies. Andy and Gay did an outstanding job. (I like reprint anthologies, but there's something extra special about anthos that feature all original stories, written specifically for those projects.) Again, the last two of these books just came out and are available now at Amazon, the publishers' sites, etc.

And that's that. See you on the 30th. 

Have a great Thanksgiving!