Where Will I Be, and Why?

By Dixon Hill



There is a surprising connection between what I've been looking at online, today, where I'm going this afternoon and next Wednesday, and the general topic genre of SleuthSayers.

Instead of telling you all about it, right off the bat, however, I'm going to give you a few pictographic clues, and let you sleuth your way to an answer.  (Bear the time of year in mind, along with the fact that I have 3 kids: 26,19 and 12, and you'll finish a step ahead.)

I'll let you know if you're right, at the bottom!

Photo 1

Ready for the clues?




You've already been seeing them.

(Or are some red herrings???)

Photo 2

Photo 3

Photo 4

Photo 5

Clues to the Photos:

 Photo 1:  Trainees running at the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Training Center.

 Photo 2:  Outside of the MCSOTC

 Photo 3:  Arizona State University (main campus) viewed from above south-western edge. 

Photo 4:  This badge is the sort that my daughter's boyfriend will recieve this afternoon, when he       graduates from the MCSOTC course for prison guards.

Photo 5:  The new building for Journalism at ASU, where the Walter Cronkite School is now housed, along with state of the art television studios used by KAET TV and the Cronkite students.  (Maybe this is a bit of a red herring, but I like the building.)

My daughter's boyfriend is setting out on a career as a prison guard -- which seemed apropos to our blog genre, given that this his where most culprits hopefully end up.  I don't know how long his career will last, but his brother is among many graduates who successfully used this training as a step toward becoming the police officer he now is.  So, who knows what the future holds in store for this young man.  My wife, kids and I are going to his graduation in just a few hours.

 Meanwhile, on Wednesday, my son's girlfriend will graduate from the Creative Writing program at ASU, and begin her foray into the print media world.  She hopes to eventually become an editor.  Again, something I thought suited our interests here quite well.

 Hope you enjoyed the game!  And, I'll see you in two weeks.
 --Dixon

Pagliacci, or, Killing Your Lover is as Old as the Hills

I went to the opera last weekend - The Met Live in HD at the Sioux Falls Century 14, big screen, great sound, and subtitles, what more could you ask for?  They were showing Pagliacci.  Now I'd heard about that opera all my life - everything from people on the old Ed Sullivan show singing their guts out to an Elmer Fudd parody.  But I'd never seen it, so off I went, and enjoyed it a lot.  Good old drama:   jealousy, threats, attempted rape, betrayal, adultery and murder.  What's not to like? Plus a play-within-a-play (which I am always a sucker for).

The plot is simple:  Act One:  Traveling players, commedia dell'arte, arrive in a small Sicilian town, and set up shop.  Canio (who plays the clown Pagliacci) is married to the beautiful Nedda (who plays the romantic heroine Columbine).  The foreshadowing was the joshing about how (on stage) Columbine cuckolds Pagliacci every night with Arlecchino (Harlequin), and Canio said, hey what's on stage is fine, but in real life, I'd kill her.  Cue the dramatic music, and they did.  On comes the big thug Tonio (who plays Taddeo, a servant in the play-within-a-play), who wants Nedda and tries to rape her.  She drives him off with a whip and he vows revenge.  So he overhears and then oversees Nedda meeting up with her real lover, Silvio.  He goes off, tells Canio, who gets drunk and weeps his aria, "I Pagliacci" while he puts on his white clown make-up.

Act Two:  The Harlequinade, as Columbine gets ready for her tryst with Arlecchino. Taddeo wants her, she drives him off.  Pagliacci arrives - but Canio/Pagliacci is murderously drunk and playing for real. (The audience, bloodthirsty as they come, is enthralled by his realism.)  He chases her around the stage, they fight, and he stabs her to death.  With her dying breath she calls "Silvio!" and, as Silvio fights his way up onto the stage, Canio/Pagliacci grabs him and stabs him to death, too.  And then turns to the audience and cries, "La commedia è finita!" – "The comedy is finished!"  Short, sweet, violent.

Pagiliacci, Cavallere Rusticana, and other operas were all part of the versimo movement of the late 1800's.  Naturalism!  Realism!  Lots of violence!  Lots of sex!  Bodies piled up on the stage!  (like that hadn't been done before - hadn't they ever noticed the Shakespearean body count?)  And, of course, everyone is no good.  Very much like film noir.  The literature of the day was the same:  whenever you want a good, depressing time among adulterers, thieves, murderers, whores and corrupt politicians, try Emile Zola's brilliant, harrowing, brutal Therese Raquin, Nana, and La Cousine Bette.

But if that wasn't enough excitement for you - not enough sex, not enough violence, not enough B&D, S&M - you went to the Grand Guignol, where the old tradition of violence on stage was revived.  Blood Feast, eat your heart out.  Even Titus Andronicus didn't quite reach the levels of violence porn that the Grand Guignol did in its theater on the Rue Pigalle.  From 1897 to 1962, they presented such upscale entertainment as Andre de Lorde's:

Grand Guignol, 1932

• Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations: When a doctor finds his wife's lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor's brain.
• Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous: Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate out of jealousy.
• L'Horrible Passion: A nanny strangles the children in her care.  (Synopses thanks to Wikipedia.)

(On the other hand, even the Grand Guignol didn't reach the heights of ancient Rome, where wealthy diners could and were treated to the entertainment of live gladiator contests, and theatergoers would be treated, in "The Death of Hercules", to an ending that included condemned criminal being burned to death in front of them.  Humans do love violence porn...)

And they also love magic, dance, and romance.  Which is also at the heart of Pagliacci.  The Harlequinade that Canio and Nedda perform in Act 2 is straight from the commedia dell'arte, a staple and source of European entertainment for centuries, which always involved romance and sometimes murder. Characters from the commedia show up in Mozart operas, Shakespearean plays, and innumerable other operas and ballets.  And mysteries:  Sir Peter Wimsey dressed as Harlequin for half the plot of Murder Must Advertise, and Agatha Christie used the commedia over and over again as a trope or theme or a plot point, and at one point even a character - Harley Quin, who appeared in at least a dozen short stories.

The original commedia dell'arte was all about lovers (innamorate) who wanted to marry, but were hindered by elders (vecchio) and helped by servants (zanni).  In the old companies (old being 1500-1700s) there would be 10 characters:  two vecchi (old men), four innamorati (two male/female couples, one noble or at least middle class, the other lower class or downright clowns), two zanni, a Captain and a servetta (serving maid).  That gave plenty of characters to interfere with the two classes of lovers.  

Papageno and Papagena

BTW, this structure of thwarted/thwarting/attempting to thwart lovers, operating on two levels, is an old plot device.  In "As You Like It", Rosalind and Orlando, the noble lovers, are balanced off by Touchstone and Audrey, the comic relief.  In "The Magic Flute", the noble lovers Tamino and Pamina are balanced by Papageno and Papagena.  In Anthony Trollope's "Can You Forgive Her?" there's a series of triangles:  in the noble group, Plantagenet Palliser and Burgo Fitzgerald vie for Lady Glencora (PP's wife), in the middle-class group, George Vavasor and John Gray vie for Alice Vavasor, and in the lower-class group, Captain Bellfield and Squire Cheesacre vie for the Widow Greenow, and the latter three (the most hilarious) are straight out of the classic comic commedia dell'arte:  smart woman, miser, and the captain.  

Anyway, the characters and plot lines went all the way back to ancient Greek and Roman plays, and were continually updated and remade.  The major characters were:

Harlequin (a/k/a Arlecchino) - in love with and the beloved of Columbine. Originally, Harlequin - and this is what makes him very interesting - was an emissary of the Devil, and was played with a red and black mask and the motley costume that the demon(s) used to wear in the old Medieval Mystery Plays.  An athletic, acrobatic trickster, he was transformed over time into a more romantic figure.  But he remained a magician, and he could either be hilariously clever or diabolically deadly...  Even to Columbine...

Columbine - beautiful, witty, often the wife of Pierrot (Pagliacci), but always in love with Harlequin, and always the smartest person in the room.  She was usually the only person seen on stage without a mask or clown make-up.

Pierrot (a/k/a Pagliacci) - a clown who somehow got Columbine to marry him. In the 18th century, he (almost) gave up Columbine, because he had his own Pierrette. But Pierrette often died young, leaving Pierrot always, always grieving - the sad clown.

Scaramouche - a clown, but "sly, adroit, and conceited".  Later he became swashbuckling, mainly because of the Rafael Sabantini novel in which a swashbuckling nobleman's bastard hides out (in a plot twist) in a commedia troupe.  BTW, the novel "Scaramouche" opens with the great line:  "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

Pulcinella a/k/a Punchinella a/k/a Punch (as in Punch and Judy) - a mean, crafty, hunchbacked clown who pretends to be stupider than he really is.  He is also incredibly violent:  with his "slapstick" (a stick as long as himself), he beats the living crap out of everyone, especially Judy.

As it says in the novel Mrs. Miniver:  "[Punch's] baby yelled and was flung out of the window; Judy scolded and was bludgeoned to death; the beadle, the doctor, and the hangman tried in turn to perform their professional duties and were outrageously thwarted; Punch, cunning, violent and unscrupulous, with no virtues whatever except humour and vitality, came out triumphant in the end. And all the children, their faces upturned in the sun like a bed of pink daisies, laughed and clapped and shouted with delight."  Perfect childhood fun.

"The Last of the Summer Wine" -
Foggy's in back

Pantalone - An old, ruthless miser who is trying to control everyone and everything.  Probably based on Plautus' "Aulularia" and both are the probable sources of both Ben Jonson's "Volpone", and Moliere's "The Miser."  And let's not forget that almost every bad guy in Dickens is an elderly, solitary miser who tries to control everyone and everything...

Il Capitano - The soldier, who boasts constantly (while being an arrant coward), knows everything, and is always getting into fights he has no real intention of fighting.  Il Capitano is still a major stock character in everything from Dickens (Nathaniel Winkle in the Pickwick Papers), Agatha Christie (think of  Major Palgrave in "A Caribbean Mystery"), E. F. Benson's Major Benjy, Flashman, and Foggy in the long-running comedy, "Last of the Summer Wine".

Actually, as I think about it, these are all stock characters, still used all the time.  You could say that Harlequin today is someone like Jack Reacher, Patrick Jane, Spenser, etc., and Columbine is Emma Peel, Elizabeth Swann, perhaps even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Make your own list.  But keep your eyes open:  the cast of the commedia dell'arte shows up in all sorts of times and places.  And where they come...  death often follows.

There's only one rule

At Left Coast Crime in Portland back in February I scooped a bunch of interesting books off the swap table.  The first three, after a few paragraphs or a few chapters, wound up on the swap shelf at the library where I work.  But number four was definitely worth a read.

My first surprise was that How A Gunman Says Goodbye by Malcolm Mackay is actually the second book in his Glasgow Trilogy.  I figured I would give it a try without worrying about the first book, and that worked out fine.

But the second surprise came halfway through the book when I happened to glance back at this blog I wrote about Long Beach Bouchercon last year and discovered that one of the freebies I scooped up  there was the first book in Mackay's trilogy.  Maybe at this year's Bouchercon I'll get volume three.

At the center of the trilogy (said the man who has only read the second book) is Peter Jamieson, who runs a criminal organization in Glasgow, Scotland (mostly drugs).   He wants to take on one of his larger rivals but first he has to flatten Shug Francis, a pretender to his throne.  (Little fleas have lesser fleas to bite 'em...)

And that requires the help of Frank MacLeod, who may be as close as Jamieson has to a friend.  In Britain where guns are not as prevalent as here, criminal outfits may only have one or two hit men, and Frank is one of longstanding.

But longstanding is exactly the problem.  He's getting old and just had a hip replaced.  Can he still do the job?

Without giving away too much of the plot, it becomes clear he can't, and for the rest of the book everyone has to debate the question: how can a gunman be allowed to retire?  This is a guy who literally knows where all the bodies are buried. 

That's enough about the plot.  What I want to talk about is something quite different.

First of all, the book is in present tense.  Generally I don't like present tense fiction at all.  It gets annoying pretty quickly.

Second, the book is multiple point of view, and entirely POV.  I don't think there is so much as a "It was raining" that doesn't come strictly from inside the skull of one of the characters.  That's not itself a bad thing, but-- Well...

My new book, out this summer, is multiple point of view.  Originally I planned to write a lot of short chapters, alternating between viewpoints, but I realized some of the chapters might be only a few paragraphs long.  So I opted for longish chapters, with different viewpoints carefully separated by spaces.

Mackay scorns such things.  When the action gets going he is happy to follow a paragraph from A's point of view with one from B's POV, and then back again.  It can be confusing.  There were a few points where I couldn't tell who's eyes I was looking through.

Here, for instance, is a meeting between a cop and a killer:

Fisher's gesturing for Frank to take a seat at the table.  To his relief, Frank does.  If this was a fix and he was going to kill him, it would have happened by now.

'Can I get you a cup of tea, Frank?" he's asking.  Being friendly with this old murdering bastard. 

"No thanks."

He can see that Fisher's making an effort.  He can see the strain that it's putting on the cop, too...

Highly unusual way of writing.  But - and here's my whole point - it all works.  Those other three books that I dumped on the swap table were much more traditional narratives, easier to follow, but they didn't keep me glued to the page.  Mackay did.

It turns out that all those writers who helpfully provided us with Ten Rules For Writing Great Fiction were lying.  The fact is there's only one rule: Keep the reader turning pages.  Mackay does.


 One more thing.  Last year I wrote about one way to deal with cliches in your writing.  Essentially, when you spot one you back up and choose a different direction.  It feels like Mackay does that.

You see, there are two hitmen in the book.  Calum is younger, an up-and-comer.  Naturally he is jealous of the more senior Frank and looking for ways to undermine and replace him--

New choice!

That's the cliche and Mackay dodges it.  His Calum is a free-lancer being reluctantly dragged into Jamieson's orgaization, who would much prefer for Frank to stay on as gunman-in-chief.  So his problem is: does he lie to protect the other man?

I recommend the Glasgow Trilogy, but you might want to start with the first book.  But that's not a rule.  There's only one rule.

All right, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my close-up

Los Angeles City Hall - 2013, Photo by Michael J Fromholtz

Or at least Los Angeles’ art deco city hall is ready for its close-up.

In its heyday, MGM’s slogan was more stars than there are in heaven. Well, there’s one movie location that’s starred in just about as many movies or TV shows as there are stars in heaven, Los Angeles’ City Hall.

From the time it was built in 1928 until today it can be seen in dozens, maybe hundreds, of movies and TV shows, including many crime films. One of my favorites is as the Daily Planet building in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman with George Reeves.
Besides the exterior, the interior rotunda, as well as hallways, offices and the council chambers, have all been used in many movies/TV shows as well.

George E. Cryer, LA’s 43^rd mayor, urged the residents of the city to build "a monument to the enterprise and progressiveness of the people of Los Angeles. Let us build a City Hall that will be a credit to the metropolis of the great West.”

LA’s new city hall was completed in 1928, with dedication on April 26^th of that year. It has 32 floors and is 454 feet tall. The concrete used is made of sand that comes from each of California’s fifty eight counties and the water to mix it from each of the twenty-one Spanish missions in the state. Until 1964, it was the tallest building in LA, via the city charter.

Supposedly it made its film debut shortly after it was completed in Lon Chaney’s While the City Sleeps. And it’s been a star ever since.

Not only has it played itself in movies, but it’s doubled for the Vatican and New York City, and for a municipal building in San Francisco. In Flags of Our Fathers, director Clint Eastwood doubled up, using one side of City Hall for a building in Baltimore. He used a different side of the building for a scene of a rally in a different part of the country.

It even makes an appearance in the video games, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto V and LA Noire, and others.

Since 1940 it has appeared on the LAPD’s badges. There’s even a scene in the 1960s version of Dragnet where a police officer from another state admires Joe Friday’s LAPD badge.
In 2006, there were about 50 shoots at LA’s city hall. Everything from movies to commercials to TV shows, causing workers to dodge the lights, cameras and action.

Here are some shots from various movies and TV shows “starring” Los Angeles City Hall.

War of the Worlds (1953) – in this one city hall was blown to smithereens by invading Martians – well, okay, they blew up a miniature of it:


The Black Dahlia


Gangster Squad


LA’s City Hall – interiors and/or exteriors – has also appeared in:

• Adam 12
• Alias
• Another 48 Hours (1982)
• Atlas Shrugged, Part I
• Barton Fink
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Black Dahlia, the (2006)
• Bodyguard, The (1992)
• Cagney and Lacy and Kojak had it filling in for New York City
• Changeling (2008)
• Chinatown had a scene with Jack Nicholson in the council chamber.
• Crash (2005)
• D.O.A. (1950 – the good version of this story) – one of my favorite noir films and imho the ultimate in “high concept”
• Die Hard 2 (1988)
• Dragnet – where it played police headquarters
• Eraser (1996)
• Escape from LA
• Evan Almighty
• Eye for an Eye (1996)
• Get Outta Town (1959)
• Internal Affairs (1990)
• Jimmy Hoffa Story, The – where it played the US capitol
• LA Confidential
• LA Law
• Liar Liar (1997)
• Matlock
• Mildred Pierce – the 1945 Michael Curtiz/Joan Crawford version
• Mission Impossible (TV show) (1972)
• Mission Impossible III
• Mobsters
• Naked Gun, The
• Nancy Drew
• National Treasure: Book of Secrets
• Perry Mason
• Ricochet (1991)
• Rockford Files, The
• Speed
• Straight from the Shoulder (1936)
• Thorn Birds, The – doubling for the Vatican
• Usual Suspects, The – substituting for a NY police station
• V
• West Wing, The
• XXX: State of the Union

And this is only a tiny sampling of the movies and TV shows that have been shot at LA’s city hall, Los Angeles’ real movie star.

***

Hope to you see at the California Crime Writers Conference
(http://ccwconference.org ). June 6^th and 7^th.
I’ll be on the Thrills and Chills (Crafting the Thriller and Suspense Novel) panel, Saturday at 10:30am, along with Laurie Stevens (M), Doug Lyle, Diana Gould and Craig Buck.

And please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my soon-to-be-updated website PaulDMarks.com
Subscribe to my Newsletter: http://www.pauldmarks.com/subscribe.htm

Noir at the Bar. Or, Why I Sometimes Dwell in the Heart of Darkness.

by Melissa Yi

Once, I made a new friend who asked me what was going on, and I said, “Oh, I don’t like to talk about problems with someone I just met.”

“I do,” she said. “I like problems. That’s where you find the truth.”

I immediately felt more comfortable with her. I still didn’t burden her too much, but I opened up more than I do with another friend who always says that everything is fine, great, jolly good. Pema Chodron has observed some religious members who are just “Barbie Dolling” around with the world’s biggest smiles, but you can feel the anger writhing underneath.

Cross. Photo courtesy of Morguefile.

So I feel quite at home joining Noir@Bar this Wednesday night. I’d rather stare at darkness head-on than claim, like a third friend, “I’m not angry. Oh, no. I’m just…annoyed.”

Really? I can hear your teeth grinding from across the room.

Maybe that’s why I like mysteries too. Is someone “annoying” you? Just kill the mofo already and let justice be served.

Admittedly, I can’t handle too much noir at once. I used to borrow Ian Rankin novels from the library. The books literally reeked of cigarette smoke. That, plus Inspector Rebus wading hip-deep into the seamy underside of Edinburgh, drinking, tossing relationships out the window and trashing his career even as he solves crimes, is sometimes too hard to handle on top of my day/night job as an emergency doctor.

When I was at the nadir of my life thus far, I read The Dark Side of the Light Chasers (thumbs down on the title, thumbs up for the content), which was my introduction to Jungian philosophy. Like Buddhism, the idea is that you should acknowledge and explore your shadow side instead of letting it fester and multiply. Carl Jung wrote, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

So once in a while, I’m like, I can’t pretend life is all cotton candy. Bring on the truth.

And if you want to join me in the shadows, I’ll be at Noir at the Bar in Toronto on May 6th at 7 p.m. Along with such luminaries as Andrew Pyper, Clifford Jackman, MH Callway, John Kenny, Bianca Marais, Jeff Markowitz, Tanis Mallow, and Rob Brunet.

"Pay attention to your shadow. If you keep distancing yourself, saying
"Heavens, it's not my fault!"– then heaven help you. Hell won't." —Katya Walter

Gone Girl

by Leigh Lundin

Many months after the film's release, my library finally came through with a copy of Gone Girl three years after the book came out. Now this isn’t a review, this isn’t an erudite analysis, but it’s a commentary and defense of sorts of Gillian Flynn's tour de force, one of the smartest of crime novels, touched upon by Dale Andrews when the tale hit the bestseller list. It’s also one of the most meticulously plotted stories I’ve encountered.

Warning: May contain spoilers.

Melodie Campbell mentioned to me some reviewers were warning readers off the book, saying it had no sympathetic characters. After our conversation, I looked up reviews and many readers complained they hated the characters. Like reviewer Sheila DeChantal, some more subtly said their positions softened toward Nick. They became more forgiving when it became clear his wife was incapable of love and Nick became susceptible to a warm outreach and a soft place to fall, not that it justified tumbling into an affair however unsolicited. That affair ruined Nick in the eyes of many and spoiled the reading experience, no matter how essential it was to the plot.

I know what they’re saying– I want characters I can empathize with. I’ve been listening to old-time radio broadcasts from the 1940s-1950s of a popular program called Suspense. Often the narrator is a bad guy, conniving, weak, or doomed in some way, and after daily listening over many weeks, I found a diet of that viewpoint disheartening and depressing.

But I disagree with the negative assessments of Gone Girl for a number of reasons, not least that the author cleverly manipulates our feelings. Although Margo, Nick’s loyal sister is admirable in her own way, I most liked Detective Rhonda Boney. The detective is not only open to an alternate hypothesis regarding Nick, she’s the one person not fooled by Amy’s machinations. (To be fair, one reviewer complained sidekick Gilpin's sole purpose was to make Boney look good.)

I think of Amy as a Hannibal Lector of the mind, a psychological cannibal who preys on the trust of others. The book makes that even clearer than the movie– Amy will go to any length to punish those who offend her in the least way, to teach them ‘lessons’. To bring home the point, the novel includes an unfilmed scene where Amy throws herself down a stairway to implicate a girl who displeased her. Amy is a pure sociopath; others exist only to fulfill her wants.

Do you know as a reader, you can purchase not just books, but third party book reviews for a mere $7-10?

Readers shouldn’t miss the irony of Amy’s parents using make-believe packaging of their precious daughter in their children’s books, Amy is neither their fictional character nor who they think she is. Amy is adept at molding her personality to exploit others. While pretending to embrace the little compromises that make up all relationships, we learn that Amy disdains and despises petty accommodation.

PoV Male

Another feat of the author is how well she wrote from a male point of view. I found only one quibble where my suspension of disbelief wobbled– I didn’t know what a Tretorn was and question how many men would know. But as I said, that’s a mere quibble in a virtually perfect characterization where a masculine viewpoint has to be spot-on. The author gives credit for the male PoV to her husband and others, but ultimately she was the one who assimilated it and made it work.

PoV Ghouls

Another aspect Author Flynn pegged perfectly was the warning Detective Boney gave Nick that some predatory women would come out of the woodwork to ‘console’ him. The writer perfectly understood the type of ghoul, the kind who read the obituaries looking for that next relationship.

PoV Film

The film tracks amazingly close to the book’s story line, although the novel’s ending is subtly different and I, for one, retained the impression that Nick might well be a match for Amy in multiple senses. He’s the one person who truly understands his wife.

The novel contains only one scene I couldn’t recall in the movie, but in one place, the film outdoes the book, where Flynn pulled her punches but the director didn’t. I’m not one who cares for gore, yet Desi Collings’ final scene, glossed over in the novel, will shock movie goers in a way the printed page does not.

It’s worth noting in the novel, the lovelorn Gatsby-like character of Collings is more emphasized and we don’t feel quite so sad for him as we might in the film. Collings’ mother… I can’t quite decide if I vaguely like her or am frightened by her. Again, she’s a well-drawn character.

PoV Writers

Without the least bit of author intrusion, it’s obvious Gillian Flynn is well-read and well-educated. She mentions a number of literary works: Twain, Bradbury, O. Henry, O’Neill, Sarte, Lincoln. In the guise of Nick’s character, she also presents several movie and pop culture references, plus she educates the reader about Punch and Judy.

(I attended a wedding in France where the families set up entertainment for children in a barn, which included a Punch and Judy show. I thought that charming!)

PoV Readers

Beyond the readers who dissed the movie for lack of a likable personality, some sought to understand the various characters. One or two suggested that forgiveness is at the core of a loving relationship, the one thing Amy was incapable of, despite her professing to forgive Nick.

One reader suggested the sequel should be titled Run, Nick, Run.

Presumed Innocent

I highly regard Gone Girl for the brilliant way the author laid down clues. It favorably compares with Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, one of the best modern mysteries.

It occurs to me they have a lot in common, though Presumed Innocent is a clever fair-play mystery and Gone Girl is different, more a howdunit than a whodunit. Both feature wives who set out to punish husbands who strayed. Not just any wives, but brilliant, unscrupulous perpetrators willing to go to great lengths to prove their point. These are not women squeamish about biological byproducts nor the taboo of killing. The word ‘scheming’ seems a loaded word in this context, but my emphasis is on the painstaking planning in these crimes, where no step can be considered too small or too large.

Final Analysis

My description of a Hannibal Lector devourer of thoughts and emotions may not change the mind of anyone dead set against reading the novel, but Gone Girl exemplifies outstandingly detailed plotting. I highly recommend it to other mystery writers and readers as well.

---

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell

Ruth Rendell, one of my favorite authors of mystery classics, died yesterday.

I’ve enjoyed her books but I'll never forget one story about the lady. In her early career, she worked as a reporter for a county newspaper in southeastern England writing up less than scintillating topics. She managed to get herself fired by failing to do two critical things: (1) failing to attend a club dinner she was reporting on and (2) failing to mention the dinner speaker died during his speech.

Blessed be Ruth Rendell.

Pace Yourself

In his book Story, screenwriting teacher Robert McKee says:

"Because a story is a metaphor for life, we expect it to feel like life, to have the rhythm of life. This rhythm beats between two contradictory desires: On one hand, we desire serenity, harmony, peace, and relaxation, but too much of this day after day and we become bored to the point of ennui, and need therapy. As a result, we also desire challenges, tension, danger, even fear. But too much of this day after day and again we end up in the rubber room. So the rhythm of life swings between these poles."

We all know that in a short story or a novel, the proper pacing is vital to its success. And in the case of mystery/crime fiction, the pace has to be fast. Nobody likes being bored, and nothing is so boring to a reader as a story that drags along and doesn't do something.

Ideally, this building of suspense has to happen throughout the narrative. A good, exciting opening is always important, but the challenge is then to keep up that pace afterward as well. Personally, I'd almost rather read a story or novel that starts slowly than one that starts strong and then bogs down in the middle; if it has a poor beginning I can at least stop reading sooner. As I've said before, there are too many good books and stories and movies out there for me to waste my time reading one or watching one that doesn't hold my interest.

So yes, good pacing is essential. But--as the little boy said to the magician--how do you do it?

At the risk of oversimplifying, here are three ways that we writers can control the pacing of our fiction.

1. Style

- Dialogue speeds things up; description slows them down

- Short, simple sentences speed things up; long, complex sentences slow them down (think Hemingway vs. Faulkner)

- Action verbs speed things up (sprinting vs. running, slamming vs. closing, gulping vs. eating, stomping vs. walking)

- The overuse of certain kinds of punctuation (commas, ellipses, parentheses, etc.) slows things down

- Active voice speeds things up; passive voice slows them down

- Short scenes/chapters speed things up; long scenes/chapters slow them down (think Patterson vs. Michener)

2. Action

As mentioned earlier, the best way to keep the reader interested is to make things happen--preferably exciting things and preferably often. There should be plenty of confrontations, obstacles, and setbacks. Internal struggles of course create tension, but in genre fiction the conflicts should be external as well. According to Jessica Page Morrell in her book Thanks, but This Isn't for Us: "If too many scenes in your story feature a character alone, the story won't work. Especially if in most of the scenes the character is thinking, musing, recalling the past, or sighing. Especially sighing."

3. Reversals

I'm a big fan of plot twists--and by that I don't just mean O. Henry-type surprise endings. I love it when the story takes a sharp and unexpected turn at any point, even near the beginning. It keeps me guessing and therefore keeps me reading. (Or watching. Reference the shower scene in Psycho.) I can't remember who said it, and I'm paraphrasing here, but if you're the writer and you think things might be moving too slowly, that's a good time to have someone burst through the door holding a gun.

Those are just a few thoughts--please feel free to contradict them or to add to the list.

Finally, no discussion of pacing would be complete without at least mentioning the concept of "scene and sequel." Scenes are units of story action, and sequels (in terms of writing) are breaks in the action--rest periods when the hero/heroine takes a timeout to think about what just happened and to consider what might happen next. Properly alternating scenes and sequels is a pacing mechanism, to allow the reader to--along with the protagonist--catch his breath and calm down a bit before facing the next challenge.

If you want to read some really fast-paced mystery fiction, I suggest stories and novels by the following authors: Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Robert B. Parker, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, Jack Ritchie, Joe R. Lansdale, and Elmore Leonard.

It won't take you long.

Grenada

Positioned northeast of Venezuela and southwest of St. Vincent lies the island of Grenada, also known as the Island of Spice. They have nutmeg, mace (made from the outside of the nutmeg seed), cinnamon, clove, ginger and cocoa. Nutmeg was introduced to the island in 1843 when a merchant ship bound for England from the West Indies left some nutmeg trees behind to start production in competition with the Dutch who controlled the world market for mace and nutmeg at that time. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the island changed hands several times between the French and British before the British got ownership in the Treaty of Versailles.

Clint saves the day

In 1974, Grenada was granted independence from the Crown with Eric Gairy as Prime Minister, but opposition to his rule soon broke out in the form of the New Jewel Movement, a leftist-leaning organization which favored Marx and Lenin. Five years after the island's independence, the NJM's leader, Maurice Bishop, launched a paramilitary attack on the government. Bishop then installed himself as Prime Minister, suspended the constitution and established relations with Cuba, the USSR and other communist countries. Over the next few years, other high ranking members of the New Jewel Movement, to include Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, a hardline communist, did not think Bishop was moving the island fast enough into a communist type of government, so they led their own revolution backed by the Grenadian Army. Bishop was put under house arrest, but soon escaped. When he tried to regain power, Coard's regime put Bishop and seven other Bishop officials, to include the pregnant Minister of Education, against the wall in Ft. Rupert and shot them. Not really a strong selling point for American tourism at the time.

U.S. Marine helicopter near abandoned Soviet
anti-aircraft weapon during the invasion

A military government was formed and the army declared a four-day curfew. Anyone violating the curfew by leaving their house would be shot. This government lasted six days. Seems that this particular way-to-the-left government caused President Ronald Reagan to have some grave concerns. The fact that the newly-built, extra-long runway the Cuban engineers had just constructed could be feasible for communist military activities inside the U.S. hemisphere didn't help the situation. Operation Urgent Fury went into action and as we all know from the movie Heartbreak Ridge, Clint Eastwood as Gunny Highway, won the war and rescued the medical students. The United Nations General Assembly was not impressed, calling the action a violation of international law. In the end, the Grenada constitution was restored, 17 members of the New Jewel Movement were incarcerated in Richmond Hill Prison and the ugly Americans went home, now returning on cruise ships to boost the island's economy.

Interesting Grenada Facts

Don't confuse the pronunciation of Grenada with Grenada. While the spelling is the same, the island country is pronounced Grenade-ah, while the city in Spain is pronounced Gra-nah-dah.

And, there's a couple of local slang terms you might enjoy knowing. One is "going up to the mahoganies" and the other is "liming."

In earlier years, mahogany trees were planted on both sides of the road leading up to Richmond Hill prison on the top of a ridge overlooking the harbor town of St. George. Thus when someone was being sent to prison, it was said that he was going up to the mahoganies. Those trees are all gone now, but the prison buildings still remain.

As we drove inland through mountain communities, we would often see from one to five men lounging against a building. This activity on Grenada is called "liming" and since the unemployment rate runs about 30%, we saw several instances of liming, usually around a rum house where moonshine was made. The official definition is any leisure activity entailing the sharing of food and drink and the telling of tall stories, jokes and gossip, providing the activity has no explicit purpose other than itself. Some say the term came from the old days when British sailors, known as limeys, stood around outside of rum shops while on shore leave.

French capture Grenada from the land side

Lastly, Grenada has a backwards facing fort. Seems that in one of the early battles for possession of the island, French forces came into St. George from the land side, over the mountains rather than sailing into the harbor. Since the British were expecting a naval attack, their cannons were facing the wrong way. Learning from their easy victory, the French then built Fort Frederick up on the mountain ridge as a backwards facing fort where their cannons were aimed inland while a different fort down slope covered the harbor.

Useful and Necessary Knowledge

I just finished a novel, always a satisfying moment, even if the product never quite lives up to the initial inspiration. Novels begin in careless rapture with hints of genius, run into complications toward the middle, and end, if one is lucky, somewhere in the realistic realm of ‘good enough.’
But this one, being set in the 1920‘s, got me to thinking about how one gets information for historical novels and the differences in what is needed for history, on the one hand, and a story, on the other. In my opinion, it comes down to minutia, and while I don’t like to criticize historians, whose ranks I’ve joined on occasion, they usually skimp of the day-to-day details that are the blood and bones of any novel.

Money, in particular, is always tricky. Not only did earlier eras have different coinage – the UK went decimal within living memory – but it is extremely hard to determine equivalents in today’s money. You don’t need to be a Jane Austen or a Karl Marx to feel that lacking a grasp of how much and what value leaves a gap in a manuscript.

Of course, historians venture into the realm of economics, but they tend to like the big scale and the overall trend. Only occasionally do they include the price of a modest lunch or the cost of a subway ticket or a ride on a mail coach. What would a woman pay for a dress and how much would her seamstress clear? These are often hard to determine.

Consider Weimar, the ill fated Republic and its rowdy capital, Berlin, where I’ve recently been spending time in the service of the very young Francis Bacon. It’s easy to find statistics on everything from housing to political preferences, but I really had to struggle to find out what was served in the local bars, where I’m afraid Francis spent a lot of time. Fortunately a memoir came to the rescue with the menu: pea soup, sausages and beer. Memoirists are notoriously unreliable about their personal history, but I think they’re probably trustworthy on fast food.

Memoirs, particularly Christopher Isherwood’s, were useful in another way, because Berlin suffered extensive bombing damage during the war. It was then divided by the wall, and ,when the wall came down, reintegrated with the east. All this has meant buildings lost, areas redeveloped, old haunts vanished except in the mind of the memoirist who helpfully resurrects forgotten districts and seedy cafes. Sometimes, though, one must finesse a problem. I read whole books on the so called combat leagues, the groups of political activists that slid from providing bodyguards to fueling street warfare. Their motives, their sociological backgrounds, their financial support, their aims, their resentments were all laid out in neat columns. But what about the colors of their shirts? Except for the Brownshirts, no dice.

Of course, occasionally one comes across a volume that seems written with other writers in mind. I can recommend two. Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic, the Erotic Worlds of Weimar Berlin is beyond lurid but the vocabulary and the venues, not to mention the goings-on of the notorious sex trade, are all usefully laid out. With pictures. Want to know who patronized the Cozy Corner, the “boy bar” beloved of Auden and Isherwood? Care to take a gander at the Eldorado, the great transvestite club and cabaret? Gordon has the info and the illustrations. A picture really is worth a thousand words in this case.

Not related to Weimar but useful for anyone who cares to dip into the Victorian world is Daniel Pool’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. Divided up by topic ranging from transportation to marriage to money to etiquette, it can help you distinguish a barouche from a victoria, and a ladies maid from a housemaid. A useful volume indeed.

But sometimes there are no useful memoirs or frivolous historians. Then the writer must improvise.

Soon after we moved to eastern Connecticut, I was asked to write a local history, and wanting to do something a little different, I came up with the idea of ending each chapter with short blurbs like what’s for dinner? what did they do for fun? travel time to some local town or attraction? how were they educated? and how did they die?

You can probably guess which ones were easy to discover, New England being proud of its education and mortality being popular with medical historians. Travel was another matter. I wound up checking with a local cross country coach to estimate how long it would take a tribal runner to cover rough ground and with the university equestrian center for the time it would take a decent horse to make a ten mile journey on dirt roads.

Historians need the big picture, bless them, but novelists have – or should have – their own big, or little, picture in mind. What we need are the details, the minutia and the ephemera that allow us to conjure the ghosts of the past.

The Golden Age of Murder

A special treat today.  I lucked into an advance copy of a terrific nonfiction book and when I realized the official release date was this week I invited the author to tell us about it.  Martin Edwards is the author of eighteen novels, and eight non-fiction books.  Plus he's edited two dozen anthologies.  He has won the Crime Writers' Association Dagger and the Margery Allingham prize for short stories.  I highly recommend his book, which has taught me a lot about the writers of the so-called Golden Age, and especially WHY they wrote what they did. — Robert Lopresti

The Golden Age of Murder

by Martin Edwards

Crime fans know better than anyone that appearances can be deceptive. And that idea is at the heart of The Golden Age of Murder, my just-published study of the British crime novelists who dominated the genre between the two world wars. There’s a widely held view that those writers were cosy, conventional folk who wrote cosy and conventional books. But the more I researched the men and women who wrote the best Golden Age mysteries, the more I became convinced that the truth was rather different – and much more enthralling.

I write crime novels set in the here and now, but I’ve always loved the ingenious traditional murder mysteries. Like so many other people around the world, my introduction to adult fiction was through the books of Agatha Christie, a writer whose work I still love. From her I graduated to Dorothy L. Sayers, and then other great names of the era, such as Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, and Anthony Berkeley.

Later I discovered that those writers, and a good many others whose books I enjoyed, were members of the Detection Club, a select and rather mysterious organisation which exists to this day. Led by Berkeley (who founded the Club) and Sayers, members yearned to raise the standard of crime writing, and strove to ensure that their own work was fresh and inventive.

Sayers, for example, wanted to take the genre in a new direction, and with a fellow Club member, Robert Eustace, she produced The Documents in the Case, an ambitious book in which Lord Peter Wimsey did not appear.  Writing as Francis Iles, Berkeley became the standard-bearer for the novel of psychological crime – the first Iles book, Malice Aforethought, remains a genre classic, and the second, the dark and deeply ironic Before the Fact, was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. But Club members also remained true to the game-playing spirit of the times. They collaborated in “round-robin” mysteries such as The Floating Admiral, each writing a chapter in turn. The book enjoyed critical and commercial success, which was repeated when it was republished recently

I became fascinated by the relationships between the writers – long before the days of blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the Detection Club was a remarkable social network. Seven years ago, I was elected to membership of the Club myself, and was asked to look after the Club’s archives. But since very little had been retained over the years, really I had to become a detective, finding out about the Club’s history. I talked to experts across the world, and travelled around, tracking down descendants of those early Club members.

Fresh mysteries kept arising, crying out for a solution. The Club’s members obsessed about their personal privacy, and many of them hugged dark and disturbing secrets. One pioneering novelist even made diary entries in an unbreakable code, so nobody could decipher what was in his mind. Clever people, well-versed in the art of mystification, Detection Club members deployed their skills to obscure the trail for anyone seeking to learn more about them. Agatha Christie’s controversial eleven-day disappearance in 1926 is by far the most high profile of the numerous disasters that befell Club members, and affected their writing as well the future course of their lives.

In The Golden Age of Murder, I’ve set out to solve the mysteries of the writers who in many ways were responsible for inventing the modern detective novel. It’s been an engrossing quest, and my greatest hope is that it will encourage people who have, in the past, been dismissive of traditional detective fiction to think again. Of course, plenty of bad books were written in the Golden Age, as in every age, but the best work of the time was exhilarating, innovative - and unforgettable.

All This Has Happened Before

by Jim Winter

Last night, I watched about an hour of CNN to see what was going on in Baltimore. I did like how police officers and community activists comported themselves when interviewed. However, two of the reporters discussed, without irony, how the constant coverage of rioting and burning after recent incidents starting with Ferguson might be fanning the violence each time. I say without irony because, while everyone spoke, CNN kept running video of fires.

Yeah, I'm sure that's helping calm things down.

They did this when Ferguson erupted. And in 2001, even the local news had round-the-clock coverage of the riots here in Cincinnati. Yes, my adopted hometown has been through this. That should give you some hope. We got through this. I won't kid you and say everything's fine here, but it's been a lot less heated in Cincinnati for years now than it has been in Baltimore of late.

But I also remember how opportunistic the Cincinnati Enquirer was in the months that followed. The normally conservative paper openly turned the police into its personal punching bag. It had less to do with any shortcomings of the police and more to do with selling papers. It did no service to race relations in Cincinnati. The local (and national) media did nothing to resolve the situation, only milked it to sell Toyotas.

Eventually, things calmed down. The police made efforts to reach out to the community. It's not all Kumbaya, but there's not this sense of rage that was palpable in the months leading up to the riots.

The spark that lit the explosion was the shooting of a Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old black man, by Officer Stephen Roach. The confrontation? It was over traffic citations. So an unarmed man ran because of traffic tickets. And the officer shot him as he ran away.

That was the match tossed into the powder keg.

I had a part-time job at a pizza place at the time. Many of my coworkers were high school students from Withrow High School, a predominantly black school. I occasionally gave some of them rides home. One guy, who had moved into assistant management when he graduated, told me he was worried because many of his classmates were getting harassed by cops. Being a pizza delivery guy, I also interacted with a lot of cops. And they were getting frustrated because they did not think they were getting much support from the city. Yeah, tempers were getting ready to blow. It would only take one incident to set off the whole works.

When the riots subsided, there was a boycott. There were police reforms. And eventually, peace returned to the city. If Cincinnati can get past it, so can other cities. I'm under no illusion that it can't happen here again. But things go in cycles. If you want the cycle to end, you have to work at it.

That's what Cincinnati did. There's no reason other cities can't. Might be nice if the media would help, but that might not sell enough Coca-Cola.

What Are You Reading?

As soon as I saw my fellow SleuthSayer, Dale C. Andrews post for Sunday, I knew I was on to something. I'd been wracking my brain for days to come up with something to write about today. Suddenly, I found myself staring at a stack of books on the lamp table next to my perch on the sofa. I'll tell you my reading pile this week and you tell me yours, Just a quick note on this Mother's Day to clue everyone in on what a fantastic and versatile group of writers who keep this site going each day. I knew there are award nominees and winners here and I thought it might be high time we tooted our own horns. So in no particular order check out these your daily sleuth sayers.

Eve Fisher: Her short story, "A Time to Mourn" was shortlisted for Otto Penzler's 2011 Best American Short Stories.

John Floyd: won a 2007 Derringer Award for short Story"Four for Dinner."
Nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize "Creativity" 1999 for Short Story
"The Messenger 2001 for Short Story and for a poem "Literary vs Genre" 2005
Shortlisted three times for Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories, "The Proposal," (2000)
"The Powder Room," (2010), "Turnabout" (2012)
And "Molly's Plan" was published in 2015 Best American Short Stories

Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for the short story "200 Feet" 2015

Janice Trecker: Nominated for an EDGAR AWARD for Best First Novel years ago,

A Lambda award for Best Gay Mystery Novel for one of the Bacon Books a year ago and a

nomination for Best Local Mystery book on the History of Hampton, CT now my home town.

Dale Andrews: My first Ellery Queen Pastiche, "The Book Case," won second place in the EQMM 2007 Reader's Choice and was also nominated for the Barry Award for Best Short Story that year.

Rob Lopresti: I've been a finalist for the Derringer three times, winning twice.

I won the Black Orchid Novella Award.

I was nominated for the Anthony Award.

Paul D. Marks: won the SHAMUS AWARD for White Heat.
Nominated this year for an ANTHONY AWARD for Best Short Story for "Howling at the Moon."

David Dean: his short stories have appeared regularly in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, as well as a number of Anthologies since 1990. His stories have been nominated for SHAMUS, Barry, and Derringer Awards and "Ibraham's Eyes" was the Reader's Choice Award for 2007. His story "Tomorrow's Dead" was a finalist for the EDGAR AWARD for Best Short Story of 2011.

David Edgerley Gates: has been nominated for the SHAMUS, the EDGAR (twice) and the International Thriller Writers Award.

Melissa Yuan-Innes: Derringer Award Finalist 2015 for "Because" Best Mystery Short Fiction in the English Language
Roswell Award for Short Fiction Finalist 2015 for "Cardiopulmonary Arrest."
Won the Aurora Award 2011 Best English related Work and her story " Dancers With Red Shoes" is featured in Dragons and Stars edited by Derwin Mak and Edwin Choi. Her story "Indian Time was named one of the best short mysteries of 2010 by criminalbrief.com
Year's Best Science Fiction, Honorable Mentions for "Iron Mask," "Growing up Sam," and "Waiting for Jenny Rex."
CBS Radio Noon Romance Writing Contest- Runner-up
Melissa has also won Creative Writing contests and Best First Chapter of a Novel in 2008 and second place for Writers of the Future and won McMaster University "Unearthly Love Affair" writing contest.

Melodie Campbell: is the winner of nine awards: 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for (novella) The Goddaughter's Revenge. which also won the 2014 Derringer.
Finalist for 2014 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Hook, Line and Sinker" and this story also won the Northwest Journal short story.
Finalist for 2013 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "Life Without George." which took second prize in Arts Hamilton national short fiction.
Finalist 2012 ARTHUR ELLIS award for "The Perfect Mark" which also won the Derringer award.
Winner 2011 Holiday Short Story Contest for "Blue Satin and Love."
Finalist for 2008 Arts Hamilton award for national short fiction for "Santa Baby."
Third Prize 2006 Bony Pete Short Story contest "School for Burgulars"
Winner 1991 Murder and Mayhem and the Macabre, "City of Mississauga, 2 categories
Third Prize 1989 Canadian Living Magazine, Romance Story "Jive Talk."
Melodie is also a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for best short story for 2015 which will be announced on May 28th.

Robert Lawton: nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Right Track" in 2010
Nominated for the Derringer Award for "The Little Nogai Boy" in 2011.

Jan Grape: Nominated along with my co-editor, Dr. Dean James, for an Edgar and an Agatha Award for Deadly Women for Best Biographical/Critical Non-Fiction. 1998
Won the mccavity award along with my co-editor Dr. Dean James for Deadly Women for Best Non-fiction.
Won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story, 1998 for "A Front-Row Seat" in Vengeance is Hers anthology.
Nominated for Anthony for Best First Novel, 2001 for Austin City Blue.
Jan will receive the Sage Award from the Barbara Burnet Smith Aspiring Writers Foundation on May 17. This award is for mentoring aspiring writers.

We all have to admit, our SleuthSayer authors are a multi-talented group.

On this Mother's Day, one little personal note, my mother, PeeWee Pierce and my bonus mom, Ann T. Barrow, both taught me to be a strong, independent, caring woman and I was blessed to have them in my life and I still miss them. Both were able to read some of my published work and I'm glad they were.

Happy Mother's Day, everyone.

David Dean's Starvation Cay

Take yourself out of this island, creeping thing . . . . Your voyage here was cursed by heaven! 

                                        Homer
                                        The Odyssey Book 10, lines 82-5

Little islands are all large prisons.

                                        Sir Richard Francis Burton

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea. 

                                        e. e. cummings
                                        100 Selected Poems 

       The sea has has always sung a sirens’ call. There is something about it -- that strange enfolding of tranquility nestled beside the threat of death -- that charms, tantalizing while terrorizing at the same time. Homer’s warnings are as apt today.  When you venture forth among the islands it is not all about beauty and tranquility.  The sea, after all, has the same salinity as our tears.  And blood, too, is an uncomfortably close cousin.

       For all of its promise of gentle breezes, coral reefs, and turquoise depths, the sea can turn on you in an instant; for all of its beauty it is still a most unforgiving mistress. Perhaps a more modern quote from Dave Barry needs to be added to the above list: There comes a time in a man's life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.

       Dave Barry’s warning could aptly have been whispered into the ear of Brendan Athy, the protagonist in Starvation Cay, David Dean’s latest thriller. David, too, has heard the sirens’ call, and understands that Caribbean islands and passages are not defined by travel brochures. His new sailing shanty, Starvation Cay, is quite a ride -- a yarn spun both in the light of the Caribbean sun and the dark of what can unexpectedly lurk in those waters, in that next ship closing in on you on a broad reach, or perhaps on that island lying low on the horizon ahead.

The islands of the Bahamas

       Starvation Cay finds Brendan, an unlikely hero for a sea yarn, on his own odyssey into the Bahamian seas of the Caribbean in a quest to rescue his sister, last heard from on a sailboat plying those waters. Brendan neither knows, nor suspects, what lies ahead.  He is an east coast small time New Jersey gangster, at home in streets and alleys, but completely adrift among Bahamian tides and reefs.

       Brendan is lucky enough, however, to stumble into a symbiotic alliance with Devereaux, a gnarled Haitian captain, and the challenges that lie ahead are left to this largely unwitting partnership to master. Devereraux knows, full well, that the beauty of the Caribbean is no Disney ride. The rules that govern the islands are few, and those that govern the waters between those islands are virtually non-existent. Brendan does not understand any of this.  But he will learn.

       But why take my word for it?  Starvation Cay can speak for itself just fine:

       Staggering out of the salon into the brilliant sun, Brendan raised a hand to shade his eyes. The sea stretched out from their vessel in all directions, rolling away in gray and, sometimes startlingly blue, hummocks of water…more water, it seemed to Brendan, than the world could hold; the horizon, a broken chain of barely visible green hillocks wavering in the distance. But for their presence, he thought, it might have been the first day of creation.

       When they had been within easy sight of shore, he had seen their journey as an exhilarating, if urgent, lark, but now, cast out upon this endless, heaving expanse of sea; it assumed epic proportions, grand and terrifying. In [his home back in] Elizabeth [New Jersey], man ruled the environment unchallenged, with only other men to fear; out here, he understood instinctively, man ruled nothing…and controlled little. 

       This bit of prose is but a small sample of what lies ahead. Starvation Cay is a tightly tooled well written adventure that deftly pivots between our vacation dreams and our midnight terrors. And that, as David Dean demonstrates, is the formula for a page-turner.

David Dean (right) and yours truly

       David, my long-time partner in crime here at SleuthSayers, brings to his tale a wealth of practical and writing experience. As a former New Jersey police chief of the beach-side town of Avalon, he knows all too well the criminal underbelly that has always been Brendan’s world. And David has also sailed the Bahamian water of Devereaux’s world, and therefore also understands full well the beauty and the dangers, always in tension with each other, that those waters hold.

       David is a master teller of short stories who, in 2007, won the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers’ Choice Award  for his story "Ibrahim's Eyes", (a fact that I remember very well since he pushed my story, "The Book Case", into second place that year!) David's stories have been nominated for the Shamus, Barry, and Derringer Awards. His story “Tomorrow’s Dead” was a finalist for the Edgar for best short story of 2011. And just last year EQMM readers rated three of his stories in the top 10 mystery short stories of 2014. David’s accomplishments in longer mystery formats include his chilling ghost story The Thirteenth Child, the Yucatan thriller The Purple Robe, and now Starvation Cay.

       I don’t like spoilers, and I have worked hard to ensure that you will find none here. Just suffice it to say that David has delivered an excellent Caribbean adventure in Starvation Cay. If you are looking for a poolside read this summer, look no further. You might also be tempted to take this thriller along as a beach-side read on that Caribbean vacation you have been contemplating. But if that is the locale where you settle into chapter 1, under a beach palm and with your rum punch beside you, well, a word of fair warning is in order: Don’t be surprised, as you read, if (notwithstanding that gorgeous beach and the swaying palm) you begin to experience a growing trepidation, a creeping unease followed by that un-ignorable need to frequently glance back over your own shoulder. And, as Brendan learns -- that might just be a good idea.

       Starvation Cay is bargained priced, and, in keeping with quickly evolving reading habits, is an e-publication, available now for downloading on Amazon.