The Matchless Swede

Last week, I published Anton Chekhov's 1884 short story, The Swedish Match, apparently not short enough for a few. To the regret of mystery fans, the anticipated payoff of a detective dénouement evaporated by the end of the story.

E.C. Bentley

The tale reminded me of Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley, a send-up of Lord Peter Wimsey, Ellery Queen, and the amateur sleuth genre. The Swedish Match seems less entertaining for modern audiences who must parse a Victorian translation of the original Russian.

When Louis Willis brought Chekhov's story to my attention, I wondered what a Swedish match was. I investigated and illustrated the story with the results, historical photographs of red phosphorus safety matches. In my research, I discovered one of the most interesting bandits of the past century was responsible for the real Swedish Match– and a strong case for murder.

Igniting Flickers into Flame

It turns out Swedish Match is a century-old Swedish company with much older roots and deep American connections. Prior to World War I, the match industry was already decades old and in Sweden alone comprised some twenty manufacturers.

Bear in mind matches were an essential of the era. Every business, every household, every government office needed matches daily for lighting fireplaces and furnaces, lamps and lanterns, and of course tobacco. Matches were a simple must-have product.

Through quiet buy-outs and mergers during the war, a dynamic businessman named Ivar Kreuger consolidated match manufacturers until only two companies remained. The one controlled by Ivar Kreuger became Swedish Match or Svenska Tändsticks, literally Swedish lighter-sticks.

Ivar Kreuger

Striking a Deal

This is how Kreuger worked it: His father already owned a match company, but Ivar wanted to merge with the nation's largest match-maker, Jönköping-Vulcan. The much larger company was not interested. Kreuger bought up numerous small competitors and controlling interest in raw materials, gaining control of the forest industry in Sweden. But then Kreuger did something that would set him on a path for future business– he inflated the stock value of his company. This time when he approached Jönköping-Vulcan, they believed his holdings much larger than they actually were and agreed not only to a merger but as a subordinate party, turning over control to Kreuger.

The tail wagged the dog. Svenska Tändsticks, now a monopoly, rapidly spread into Norway, Finland, and targeted the rest of Scandinavia. Swedish Match became so wealthy, it lent funds to governments in post-WW-I reparations, in exchange negotiating monopoly rights country by country. With other holdings in America, Kreuger secretly moved on the Diamond Match and Ohio Match companies, hiding his actions from federal antitrust watchdogs. At his zenith, Kreuger controlled roughly 70% of the world market and 100% in many countries. And that's just the tip.

Burning Motivation

Kreuger (or Kreüger– the family apparently used both) was one of those rare entrepreneurs blessed with multiple business talents and the ability to persuade others of his prowess. A fascinating character, he amorally manipulated the enormous sums invested with him.

Before becoming interested in his father's match company and other family businesses, Kreuger studied engineering in the US and, except for opening a restaurant in South Africa, he began working in America. There he came across a new pre-stressed concrete and steel construction technique developed by Julius and Albert Kahn. Kreuger returned to Sweden intent on exploiting this new method in Europe. He began a construction business with his cousin and a friend, soon landing a number of prestigious European contracts. Kreuger's company introduced the concept of completion date commitments and went on to earn hefty bonuses for every project.

A Bed of Coal

Using securities and stock in his own company, he began buying a virtual Monopoly board of businesses– banks, railways, real estate, manufacturing, timber, and mines, especially gold mines, iron and coal. In some industries he grew to dominate half or more of the world's market. He considered taking over Sweden's entire telephone system and owned more than half of a company you know, Ericsson. In fact, you know a lot of companies Kreuger controlled: IG Farben, Bayer, the Diamond and Ohio Match companies, and several banks, as many as 400 enterprises in all.

And while his companies consistently produced quality goods, Kreuger financed his acquisitions in ways that would leave Bernie Madoff gasping. In normalized dollars, Kreuger the engineer, fabricated the largest financial schemes in history.

Burning through Money

Indeed, Enron and the banks, brokers, and insurers that precipitated the 2006 Wall Street debacle used techniques pioneered by Kreuger. He invented many of the methods still in use today to avoid oversight and regulation.

Pause for a moment. I'm a devout believer in entrepreneurism and a market economy. But I'm also wary when lobbyists and politicians begin calling for deregulation and tearing down investor protections, claiming they learned their lessons and business needs to grow and expand unhampered by pesky regulations.

The one lesson you can bank on is that business is incapable of policing itself. And that's what regulators do– keep companies on the straight and narrow path.

Hot Stocks

Even so, companies continue to go out of their way to avoid oversight and they use the same arguments today Kreuger used a century ago, among them that investors don't need to know. Modern corporations today use off-balance sheet accounting justified by Kreuger. The rationalization is if you the investor makes money, what do you care if company officers use accounting sleight-of-hand to become extremely wealthy?

Kreuger invented a number of financial instruments in use today, among them convertible debentures, stock dilution, B-shares, unsecured debt, and junk bonds. As mentioned above, Kreuger would trade stock within his own company to buy other companies, but not just any stock. He invented B-shares worth 1/1000 of his own presumably A-shares. Like other high-flying CEOs each decade sees, Kreuger used companies as his own personal piggy bank, supporting toys and houses around the world and entertaining celebrities and movie stars of his day.

Where there's Smoke…

And then came the crash of 1929. Kreuger was heavily vested in America and America had invested heavily in him. He zipped country to country, continent to continent, trying to bolster his firms that in financial terms had become hollow shells, some worth fractional pennies on the dollar. His indebtedness to Swedish banks alone totaled half of that nation's entire gold reserve. In other countries, his debt was incalculable.

Snuff Said

In March 1932, Kreuger sailed for Europe from the US for the last time. On 12 March, two days before Kreuger was to meet with Riksbank's chairman, his personal maid found him dead in his Paris apartments, apparently shot through the heart. The French Sûreté concluded he'd committed suicide.

But not everyone believed it. Kreuger's brother Torsten contended Ivar's death wasn't suicide, but murder, noting a number of curious anomalies. Three decades later when documents became public, the mystery thickened along with certainty his death was a homicide, possibly by Soviet assassin Leon Birthschansky, thereby spawning numerous theories in articles and books.

The economic devastation following Kreuger's death and revelations his business practices had gone so bad resulted in the financial press giving the fallout his name, the Kreuger Crash, further fueling the now worldwide Great Depression.

The financial world portrayed Kreuger playing with other peoples' monies in a global Ponzi scheme. Some, more thoughtful and suspicious, challenged that notion, noting the man was a positive influence offsetting the rise of the far left and the far right, the demons of Stalin and Hitler. In that light, political forces of evil paid assassins to remove Kreuger from the world stage and then rewarded his complicit competitors like the Wallenbergs, allowing them to raid and gut his companies. Of course it's possible both contentions are true.

Enduring Flame

Ayn Rand

Kreuger's such a fascinating character, multiple authors claimed him as a subject, the most recent book coming out just three years ago. Movie makers and playwrights couldn't resist the topic either. And here we turn to another famous Russian author who wrote about the Swedish Match, Али́са Зино́вьевна Розенба́ум– Alisa Zinóvyevna Rosenbaum. You know her as Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand used Kreuger as a model for the character Björn Faulkner in her 1935 play set as a courtroom drama murder mystery, Night of January 16th. The play is notable for selecting members of the audience as jury members, who decide the verdict resulting in different endings, depending upon the jury's decision.

Thus we end like we began with another great author of Russian origin writing about the same product from the same company, but an entirely different crime. The drama is matchless.

A motley crew—and proud of it!

by Elizabeth Zelvin

SleuthSayers celebrated its second anniversary this week, and we were all asked to write something appropriate to the occasion. The topic that popped into my mind and wouldn’t go away was what a fascinating and diverse bunch of people my blog brothers and blog sisters are.

Elizabeth, Dale, David, RT

I had already been blogging weekly for five years on a group blog when Leigh Lundin, at the suggestion of editor Janet Hutchings of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, invited me to join the roster of “crime writers and crime fighters” that was rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the popular Criminal Brief blog. My blog sisters over at Poe’s Deadly Daughters are not exactly all of a kind as people or as mystery writers. However, we are all women, all novelists, and all write within a certain range of mystery fiction along the spectrum from cozy to traditional to medieval noir. Our readers, too, as far as we can tell, fall mainly in the category of mystery-reading women of a certain age.

So for me, part of the appeal of SleuthSayers was that it offered collegiality with short story writers, law enforcement and military professionals, and guys. I’d have been even more eager to sign up if I’d known that, like me, several of my new blog buddies were musicians, singers, and songwriters. And it’s not just that the profiles of my fellow bloggers were different from those of my fellow Deadly Daughters and most of the other bloggers I knew. I had no idea how widely the subject matter of the posts themselves would range and how different the whole flavor of SleuthSayers would be from anything I’d read before.

One of the topics I found the most mindblowing and unexpected was Dixon Hill on explosives and how to use them. Dix swears the information he posted is not detailed enough to make your own minefield in your least favorite neighbor’s backyard. But he said enough to make me nervous. Very few folks in my usual circles can say, as Dix did, “Now, I’ve fired all sorts of weapons,” and list a paragraph’s worth from sniper rifles to machine guns (“I can dance with one of these pretty well”) to light anti-tank weapons (“not reloadable, whatever you saw in that Dirty Harry movie”)—and follow it up with “I’ve used them in the desert, the jungle, the African bush, …the ocean, on the beach after swimming…in rain, snow and ice storms, and probably in more places than I care to remember!”

Now, I’ve been in a lot of these places, including the desert—Timbuctoo, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited—and the African bush, when I spent two years in the Peace Corps in Côte d’Ivoire. And I’ve just spent the summer riding the waves on an ocean beach in the Hamptons. But no weapons were involved. There was a period in my youth when I had a certain number of friends who owned copies of The Anarchist Cookbook. But as far as I know, none of them ever tried any of the recipes. It was more a harmless kind of showing off, like getting a tattoo today.

The colleague whose posts probably come the closest to what I’m used to are those by my Saturday blog buddy (we alternate), brilliant and prolific short story writer John Floyd. John’s the only one of the gang I knew before joining SleuthSayers. I had a story in an anthology he edited for Wolfmont Press. He’s a crackerjack editor with a keen ear for language and an eye for what makes a story work. And I’m not just saying that because he accepted “Death Will Trim Your Tree” for The Gift of Murder without changing so much as a comma. (Not that that isn’t one of the reasons I love him, along with his delicious Southern drawl and what a true gentleman he is.) We both post about writing, among other things. We both love movies, but we barely have a favorite in common. (Okay, John, Blazing Saddles and In Bruges are probably on my long list, and I bet you enjoyed Seven Psychopaths, as I did.)

I could go on about every one of my fellow SleuthSayers, but (unlike some of y’all) I like to keep my posts below 800 words. Reading and being one of them/you/us is a helluva ride, and I’m in for another year!

Happy Anni-Verthday!

SleuthSayers has hit the end of Year Two, and, over the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot of talk about our blog’s second birthday.

While, at times, our blog may seem to be a sort of online coffee house—Surely I'm not the only one to hit my morning caffeine (and in my case nicotine) when perusing SS after firing-up my computer at the start of each day!—today I'd like to look a bit more deeply into our blog than that.



Birthday or WHAT?

One thing I’ve noticed, however, is that some of us refer to the occasion as a Birthday, while others call it an Anniversary. For my part, I think we need a cake that looks more like this one, at this year’s annual office party.

To my way of thinking, birthdays are about individuals (excepting twins, triplets, etc., of course). And, while there’s an individual entity here: the blog, itself. It seems to me that this entity is the creation of several writers working in concert. Thus, though the blog may be an individual—of and in itself—that entity is also the interwoven, or perhaps “patchwork,” composite of many individuals working together.





And it seems to me that, when individuals come together, collaborating in intimate, or semi-intimate ways—as the writers who produce SleuthSayers have done for the past two years—the thing I’d like to celebrate may be less the birthday of that entity we call the blog, and rather more the anniversary of the writers’ creative collaboration.

Thus, the birthday wish at the top of my blog probably should be replaced with something more akin to this. Or, another illustration referring to an anniversary of writers who came together to breath life into our new digital entity: SleuthSayers.




Of Digital Offspring DNA

Perhaps the photo of the champagne flutes, flowers and cupcake aren’t what you envision when thinking of an anniversary. Perhaps some of our number think of an anniversary in terms like this:

While, for others, the term calls up a vision similar to this one... 

This one...

Or, this one. 

I sometimes think we're more like this.
Notice how the crazy guy seems to be jerking her arm?
That's a bit different than pulling her leg IMHO.

The more disturbed among us may even envision a scene similar to this one
(Which rather scares the willies out of me, with it's "decapitatedness" to be frank!)

It may certainly be argued, we are far more than “a pair” or “a couple”, so why not an anniversary photo similar to this one?

Perhaps this is what we should envision.  They just seem so mysterious to me --
Clothes retro, but shiny clean . . . as they stand where they don't seem to belong.

How about a photo similar to each, all, or none of these?

My resounding answer is: YES! 

All these, and many more, may be the way that writers and readers who contribute to our digital offspring individually conceive of the word “anniversary.” Which, I believe, is one of the greatest strengths of our collaborative effort. 

After all, a diversified gene pool is a critically important asset for any healthy brainchild. And, at SleuthSayers, our collective phsycho-verbo-experiential gene pool is delightfully vast and varied.

But … Kids Aren’t Clones 

As a parent, one thing I’ve learned is that children not only seem to be born their own individual personalities, but also that these sometimes rather alien personality traits often challenge good parents to extend themselves in previously unexplored directions.

Part of our blog entity’s character is that it encourages those who have—before this time—probably concentrated on primarily, or even only, the written word, to expand into other means of self-expression through the use of photographs, sound files, digital film clips, and other media not normally available for access through books or magazines.

Our blog: We are it, and it is us.

Thus, through our brainchild blog, we accomplish interdependent interaction.

While we transform the blog through the results of each writer and contributing-reader bringing his/her own baggage to work on it, the blog creates an impact on each of us through the exercise of its own transmogrifying digital DNA.

As the blog is transformed, it transforms us—its writers and readers. We are not the same people we would be, without the blog.

And, thus, I am confronted by the idea that—though I began this blog on a birthday note, then changed that note to one of an anniversary celebration—the final idea has (it’s just my luck!) come around full-circle. We find the blog writers and readers are an inherent component of the blog entity, just as the blog’s entity has become (and continues to magnify in proportion) its writers and readers.

Birthdays may seem to be reserved for individuals, while anniversaries may be more applicable to joint ventures.

However, at SleuthSayers:  Contributors (joint venture participants) and offspring (the birthday individual) evidently continue to meld into one. Thus it would seem that Birthday and Anniversary needs come to be conjoined in the phrase:

  

Happy Anni-Verthday!

To my fellow SleuthSayers:

Readers, Writers and Digital Tikes

ONE in ALL   &   ALL in ONE!

P.S.  This is a photo of Velma after last year's office party.
I found her near the exit, and -- after taking the photo-- got Leigh to pour her into a cab.

See you in two weeks!

--Dixon 

Writing Efficiency in Its Myriad Forms

by Brian Thornton

In his excellent piece This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Moseley gives the following advice: “The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do every day–every morning or every night, whatever time it is that you have. Ideally, the time you decide on is also the time when you do your best work.”

In his defense, Walter apparently has the luxury to plan out his schedule to quite a specific degree.

Along with “Write every day,” “Write fast” seems to be the mantra of this generation. “Writing fast and producing copious amounts of word product is the key to success,” so many “how to” books seem to say.

Bosh.

I’ll tell ya, I have had my share of 2,000 word-count days. Not a one of them came independent of either a hell of a lot of time spent thinking about what I wanted to write that day, or by a whole lot of later tweaking, editing, or outright re-writing.

Put simply, I can write fast, or I can write well. I cannot do both.

This is not to say that such a thing isn’t possible. It is! Just not for me.

I once wrote a pair of 40,000 word books (80,000 words total) in eight weeks. Tight deadline. Unreasonable (and unprofessional, and unhelpful) development editor didn’t make it any easier.

I was an unmarried, kidless apartment dweller at the time. I had (and still have) a day gig that required a fair amount of headspace. So it was work, home to write, bed, rinse and repeat.

Talk about a miserable couple of months!

Astonishingly these two books are still in print.

We spent longer on reworking what I’d written into something passable than it took to write the initial drafts, or, for that matter, for me to have written them well in the first place. But that was a different time in my career, and in my life.

If I were to find myself in that sort of situation today, I’d have to give the advance back. Seriously. I’ve got a marriage and a house and a wonderful one year-old son, all of whom require my time and attention.

More to the point, they command my time and attention. I enjoy the hell out of being married, being a father, and owning a home. I suspect the fact that I was in my mid-forties by the time I experienced any of these pleasures does nothing to lessen them.

Couple these aspects of my daily life with the fact that my day gig still requires a lot of my energy and attention, and I find myself left with the question, “How do I get anything written at all, let alone sold?”

The answer is that for I published my most recent book in 2011. That was also the year in which I collected and edited an anthology of crime fiction called West Coast Crime Wave. I got married and bought my house in 2010. My son was born in 2012.

So there was some adjustment involved in taking on these new responsibilities, adjustment time during which my publishing slowed to a stand-still.

This is not to say that I stopped writing during this time. Far from it. I figure that during the second half of 2011 and all of 2012, I easily wrote 50,000 words on my work-in-progress historical mystery.

I just won’t be publishing any of those words. They were intended to keep my hand in it, if you will, not to be part of the final equation.

And it worked.

You heard it here first: I’m just wrapping the sale of my first short story in years. I’m also nearly 2/3 of the way through the final draft of my current WIP, a historical thriller set in antebellum Washington, D.C. By this time next year, I’ll have this and another novel wrapped, in addition to writing three more new short stories, and publishing them along with some of my previously published canon in a collection.

And I won’t do it be “writing every day” or “writing fast.” With my schedule that’s just not feasible. So I do the next best thing.

I write when I can where I can as much as I can and as often as I can. Sometimes it’s 2,000 words a day. Sometimes it’s 2,000 words a week.

It takes a while longer to get my head back into the story once I’ve been away from it for a while, but I think that’s a small price to pay for making time to play with my son every day, spend quality time with my wife, and keep the house from falling down around our ears.

For example, I wrote the ending to “Paper Son,” my short story featured in Akashic Books’ Seattle Noir anthology, while sitting in Seattle Mystery Bookshop, waiting for my friend Simon Wood to finish up a signing there. What’s more, I wrote it on my Blackberry smartphone and emailed it to myself.

I’ve also been known to record story ideas while driving. My commute contributes to some terrific “alone and pondering” time.

Plus, I don’t tend to let story ideas fall by the wayside. This is especially true of short stories. I will get an idea, do some research (remember, I write historical mystery/crime fiction, after all), then begin working on it.

This has stood me in good stead. So far I’ve published five short stories (soon to be six), all with paying venues, out of a total of seven shorts actually completed.

In fact, the second story I sold to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, “Suicide Blonde,” was initially rejected. I reworked it, submitted it to the annual MWA anthology contest. They also rejected it.

But I believed in the story enough to resubmit it to Linda Landrigan AHMM, and this time she bought it. What a great feeling!

By the way, I almost never finish a short by working on it straight through. Usually the ones I’ve published have come from months or years of on and off development. Take the story I am about to sell. I first began work on it in 2007.

I guess in the end I don’t really disagree with Mr. Mosley’s excellent advice, at least in spirit. After all, while I can’t really generate new fiction every single day, I definitely do write every day (in various forms), and I believe I’m in complete agreement with the spirit of his advice, which seems to emphasize the importance of establishing a routine in order to help make you more efficient as a writer.

In that regard, I’m doing the best I can. And life is good!

What Was I Saying?

As you know, this blog's birthday was yesterday, two days before my birthday, which is also International Talk Like a Pirate Day.  Aaar!   So, all these festive occasions having put me in a reflective mood, I have been consdiering what all of us have been talking about here.

And it seems to me that each of us has his or her own themes.  I see emphases on: true crimes current, true crimes historic, professional experience (as cops, soldiers, spies, psychologists, etc.), childhood memories, current family news, book reviews, favorite books, authors, or films, and of course writing techniques.

In any given week any one of us might write about any of those subjects, and do, but we each seem to have favorites.  I suspected I knew what mine was but I tested it out by tossing all my columns for the past two years into tagcrowd, which pulls out the fifty most commonly used words.  (Incidentally, I also use Tagcrowd on any piece I am about to send to an editor.  It helps me spot words I have overused.) 

-->

ago author best book called case character course crime enough example fiction friends going guy happened hitchcock idea library lot magazine man mystery name novel people person piece plot point probably published read series short something start story stout think thought times used week wolfe work writer writing wrote year

created at TagCrowd.com

Which supports my theory: my main theme is the writing life.  I have been blogging here, mostly, about how it feels to get an idea, grind out a rough draft, edit, submit, get rejected, etc.  Here are a few examples, describing different parts of the process:

Restless Brain Syndrome
Backtalk
The Rising Island Method
RSI
Picking More Black Orchids 

My conclusion is that I use this space as a sort of writing diary and you good readers are my excuse for keeping it up.  I hope you don't mind.

And I hope that you will put up with me and my fellow bloggers for a long time.  Because they - and you - are good company.

SleuthSayers' Second Anniversary! Part 2

Happy Second Anniversary to all SleuthSayers contributors, past and present!  And to regular readers who have stuck with the blog throughout its run, thank you! 

This week, I'm continuing the "Best of SleuthSayers" list that Dale Andrews began last week.  As Dale said, this list is very subjective and constrained by space limitations.  I wasn't able to hold to our original conception of five articles a month, but I usually limited myself to eight. I think the list reflects both a breadth of subject matter and the depth of the SleuthSayers bench.  I hope Dale's list and mine will encourage readers new to the blog to browse our "back issues."

If I jumbled anyone's title or misspelled a name, I apologize.  Those of you who use a middle initial may find that it comes and goes (as they seem to do on the blog).   I'd also like to thank Dale for his leadership on this project.  He's a good man to follow on a desperate enterprise.  He doesn't daunt easily.

SleuthSayers -- The Second Year

September 2012 - Part Two

Notes from the Penitentiary – September 2012 -- Eve Fisher's offbeat and insightful notes.

Five Red Herrings III -- Robert Lopresti on truth stranger than fiction.

A Bouchercon Mystery -- Dale C. Andrews draws us in.
 
Adventures in South Africa -- Leigh Lundin reports from South Africa.

Playing Detective -- Deborah Elliott-Upton offers a paean to hardboiled men and women.


 October

A Non-iconic Writer -- Louis Willis remembers Shell Scott and Richard S. Prather fondly.

The Gifted Child -- John M. Floyd writes a great fan letter.

Things That Go Bump in the Night -- Dale Andrews stories for ghost story season. 

The Shrink is in . . . Cyberspace -- Elizabeth Zelvin's fascinating day job.

The Dadaist Enigma of Claire DeWitt -- Dixon Hill offers a unique take on an author's "mistakes." 

Mariel -- David Dean introduces one fascinating muse.

Developing the Series -- R.T. Lawton's great advice on keeping your friends close and your editors closer.

You Say Sensation, I Say Mystery -- Eve Fisher discusses the prehistory of the genre.  

Great Sentences -- Jan Grape's good writing on good writing.
                                             

 November

Ghost and the Machine -- Dixon Hill contrasts ghost stories and mysteries.

"The Unicorn in the Garden," or God Bless You, Mr. Thurber -- Eve Fisher remembers two comic geniuses:  Thurber and Benchley.

Sometimes It's Magic -- Robert Lopresti reveals the true thing that keeps a writer going.

Distractions -- Deborah Elliott-Upton battles our common enemy.

Alan Furst:  The World at Night -- David Edgerley Gates makes the case for Alan Furst.

The Great and Billowing Sea -- David Dean on great sea stories and a jaw bone.

Known Only to God -- Fran Rizer offers thoughts on Veterans Day for every day.

Not Being Preachy -- Elizabeth Zelvin on characters who carry the burden of an author's themes.


 December

Literary Mystery -- Leigh Lundin examines a Hemmingway mystery.

We're No Angles -- Eve Fisher on a minor Christmas classic.

Maze of Bones -- Dixon Hill spreads contagious enthusiasm about a series for young readers.

I Never Saw a Strange Red Cow -- Robert Lopresti's fascinating fragments of lost stories.

Cold War Berlin:  A Whiter Shade of Pale -- David Edgerley Gates evokes lost times and places.

The Dark Valley of Unpublished Stories -- David Dean describes a trip to a place where all writers have strayed.

Old Dogs and New Tricks -- John M. Floyd on old pros changing things up.

Tradecraft:  Surveillance 101 -- R.T. Lawton provides information every crime writer should know.


January 2013

The Art of Detection -- Dale C. Andrews' review of a new book on Ellery Queen sparks thoughts on a writer's immortality.

Chekhov Wrote Crime Stories? -- Louis Willis offers a new way of looking at a master of the short story.  

Rosemary &Thyme -- David Edgerley Gates celebrates a guilty pleasure.

Location, Location, Location -- David Dean's thoughts on location and the trap of writing from experience.

Doubt -- Janice Law explores the value of doubt in the mystery.

The Last Five Minutes -- Eve Fisher's last words on last words.

Professional Tips - John Lutz -- Leigh Lundin meets a favorite writer and discusses his writing tips.

The Silence of the Animals -- Dixon Hill tells a great story.

A New Project for the New Year -- Fran Rizer announces a very early Christmas present.


February

Bruce Lockhart:  Memoirs of British Agent -- David Edgerley Gates delivers another great history lecture.

Ripped from the Headlines -- Jan Grape shares more stranger-than-fiction truth.

I Was Just Wondering -- Louis A. Willis on the toughest job a "fictioneer" faces.

An Anniversary -- Elizabeth Zelvin provides great pictures, word pictures and real ones, on her parents' wedding anniversary.

I Owe It All to Rilke -- Brian Thornton devotes his SleuthSayers debut to the networking challenge.

Readers Choice -- David Dean places his literary future in the hands of his readers.

And the Beat Goes On -- John M. Floyd on Robert B. Parker's second coming.

Gone South (with Travis McGee) -- Dale C. Andrews on John D. MacDonald's return to print.

And Where is THAT? -- Fran Rizer discusses some fabulous real estate.


March

Stalker -- Dale C. Andrews on extreme fandom.

SleuthSayers, SleuthSayers -- Robert Lopresti shows off his poetry chops.

Setting as Character -- Brian Thornton discusses the importance of setting in the mystery.

Doyle When He Nodded -- Terence Faherty's debut explores Sir Arthur's fascinating lapses.

Framed -- John M. Floyd on a favorite story structure.

The IDES Are Coming -- R.T. Lawton lets the ides have it.

The Dean of SleuthSayers -- Leigh Lundin on David Dean and his new book.

No Goodbyes -- David Dean's last regularly scheduled post, for now.


April

I Found My Thrill -- Fran Rizer explores the thriller.

Creating Deception -- John Floyd gives tips on building a solid short story collection.

The After Story -- R.T. Lawton on continuing a story beyond the climax.

Gratuitous Violence -- Dale C. Andrews thoughts on violence that interrupts the story.

Reading to Learn -- Jan Grape shares writing lessons she learned by reading.

A True Story of Crooks and Spies -- Dixon Hill reviews a true tale of wartime intrigue.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Want Something -- Robert Lopresti reveals the secret to creating great characters.

The Current Crop of Clichés -- Elizabeth Zelvin considers the continuing devolution of the language.


May

Memorial Day 2013 -- Jan Grape on Memorial Days present and past.

He Wasn’t The Best But He Was Good Enough -- Louis A. Willis on an almost-master, Carroll John Daly.

The Bank Robbery  -- R.T. Lawton describes a bank robbery that never was.

Random Observations -- Eve Fisher's thoughts on travelling away from oneself.

The Double Dippers -- Terence Faherty revels in big screen minutiae.

Losing the Edge -- John M. Floyd examines the burnout phenomenon.

The Beachcomber -- David Edgerley Gates recreates a memorable interview.

Some Thoughts on "Cosplay" Fiction -- Brian Thornton coins a term for anachronistic characters in historical fiction.


June

Dumbing Down: Self-fulfilling Prophecies about the Loss of Culture -- Elizabeth Zelvin's title describes it and her essay nails it.

Some Thoughts on the Importance of Plot, Character and Conflict in Fiction -- Brian Thornton minces no words in his discussion of the interaction of plot and character.

Stay Creative  - Jan Grape passes on some good advice from Holiday Inn.

Adolescent Sexist Swill? --  Fran Rizer pulls a Tom Sawyer on her friends with the help of Richard S. Prather.

Jesse James and Meramec Caverns: Another Route 66 Story -- Dale C. Andrews considers the line between history and legend.

The Haunted Wood -- David Edgerley Gates sets another record straight.

The Death of Laura Foster -- John Edward Fletcher tracks a North Carolina legend.

Beginners -- Janice Law on the art of learning a craft.


July

Show Don't Tell -- Dale Andrews on the difference between paper and flesh and blood.

Voice? -- Fran Rizer talks about good writing's most elusive quality:  voice. 

The Detroit PI -- Louis Willis on Loren Estleman's Amos Walker.

Who's on First -- Terence Faherty addresses the challenges of the PI point of view:  first person.

Hiaasen on the Cake -- John Floyd's tribute to Carl Hiaasen.

Two Writers, One Set-up -- Robert Lopresti on Jack Ritchie and the starting gun.

The Crazy Crawl -- Dixon Hill on yet another technological innovation that makes life less intelligible.

Pam, Prism, and Poindexter -- Leigh Lundin hits a nerve with the subject of domestic spying.


August

Marketing 101 -- John M. Floyd reveals his marketing secrets in this very popular post.

You Can't Make It Up -- Eve Fisher opens her file of newspaper clippings.

The Hardy Boys Mystery -- Dale C. Andrews rediscovers a lost first love.

Going to Great (or Short) Lengths -- Janice Law on the lengths to which authors will go.
Lessons Learned -- Jan Grape discusses putting your writing on automatic pilot.

Fatherlands -- David Edgerley Gates on alternate histories.

Wherefore Art -- Toe Hallock on the fascination of words.

Some General Thoughts on Character -- Brian Thornton tracks down an elusive (definition of) character.

Anybody Down Range? -- R.T. Lawton helps mystery writers handle firearms.


September

Regrets, I've Had a Few.... -- Brian Thornton on the secret character ingredient:  regret.

Suddenly, I Got a Buzz -- Robert Lopresti on words that need watching.

 Criminal Book Covers -- Leigh Lundin on book covers that should be covered.

Baker Street Irregular

I keep a framed photograph of Jeff Baker in my desk drawer and sometimes I get all weepy. A lifelong native of Wichita, Kansas, Jeff learned to read from the comics page sometime around preschool and graduated to comic books, Robert Arthur and Thorne Smith shortly thereafter. After a misspent youth getting a B.A. in Communications and performing comedy in local clubs, he settled into a life of day jobs driving delivery trucks and writing stories spare time that have found their way into such venues as Over My Dead Body and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. Happily ensconced with his significant other Darryl Thompson, he is a near-constant reader of sites like SleuthSayers. You can find Jeff on his Facebook page. Read him and keep.

— Velma

Jeff Baker

Sleuthing and Saying

by Jeff Baker

I’ll start with something both writers and readers know, a cliché: “Has it really been two years?” (Spoiler alert: it has!)

SleuthSayers began two years ago. From the start, it launched as a blog for both writers and readers. Being both, a neophyte writer and a long-long-time voracious reader, the daily dose proved advantageous and fun from the very beginning.

SleuthSayers (the name always makes me think of Dorothy L. Sayers) began life as a successor to the much-missed pro blog Criminal Brief” which featured a rotating set of seven mystery writing professionals including, at one time or another, blog founder James Lincoln Warren, Melodie Johnson Howe, Steven Steinbock, Angela Zeman and SleuthSayers regulars John Floyd, Leigh Lundin, Deborah Elliot-Upton, Janice Law, and Rob Lopresti. Each one posted one column a week on subjects as varied as procrastination, anthologies, movies, and of course the craft of writing itself.

SleuthSayers doubled the number of columnists and changed the gestation period for a column to two weeks, giving the busy writers a breather and giving the readers a wider variety of experience and opinion. Contributions have varied from R.T. Lawton’s 25 years in law enforcement, Dixon Hill’s knowledge of explosives, and Jan Grape’s encounters with a live-in “alien.” Blended in are the wonky realities of writing and reading in the digital age, plus the ongoing saga of bizarre news from Florida.

Acceptances, rejections, book signings, publications, awards, and stumbling blocks have all found themselves subjects for columns over the past two years. Everything from professional to personal triumphs and tragedies have been laid bare daily for the site’s rapt readers.

From the beginning, the blog has not just entertained but served as a writer's resource. Speaking as a beginning writer myself, the site has served as a source of encouragement and enlightenment in my own attempts to put a good story– not just any story but a good one– on paper. Sometimes nothing helps as much as the knowledge that I’m not alone doing this. The advice and knowledge of our shared passion for the written word has shown itself invaluable. Reactions range from “omigosh! I didn’t know that!” through “Hey, I tried that!” or “I gotta do that!” and “Geez, that sure didn’t work when I tried it!” but the bulk of the knowledge brings about “I gotta write this down.”

So much for the past, onward to the future. Further columns (and deadlines) await the lucky reader or writer who scrolls by accident or design to SleuthSayers. The future looks bright and not just because the screen is glowing! Here’s to another year, another two years and more to SleuthSayers!