Trouble with Girls, Crows, and Hurricanes

by Robert Lopresti

I am happy to announce that I have a story in the first issue of Malfeasance Occasional, a new ebook series from the folks at Criminal Element.  The idea is that each issue will have a theme and this issue is "Girl Trouble."  It is available now.  Follow the links and get your hands, uh, hard drive, on it.

Oh, I should mention that I learned about this opportunity through Sandra Seaman's webpage My Little Corner, which is indispensable to anyone who wants to publish short genre fiction.  I have already told her I owe her a coffee.

Having said all that, I don't know whether this will really turn out to be a series or a one-off.  When they announced it in August 2012 they intended to move at a breakneck pace, with the first issue appearing in December of that year.   Obviously with one thing and another (one big thing being Hurricane Sandy, which blew through their offices like a, well, superstorm) the deadline has slipped a tad.  I suppose M.O. will turn out to be a series if the first book sells enough.  So. follow the links and get your-- did I already say that?

I know I haven't talked about my contribution, so let's go there.  "Crow's Lesson" is my first story in many years about Marty Crow, a private eye in New Jersey.  Marty was my first series character, and he was a reaction to my native state's decision to allow casinos in Atlantic City.  I'm not a huge fan of them.  (One of the reasons Jerry Izenberg was my favorite sports columnist in the Garden State was that he kept hammering on how much the state received on gambling (millions) and how much they spent on people with gambling addictions (zero).)

So I invented Marty Crow, a native of A.C. and a private eye.  He is a pretty sharp guy with one huge blind spot: he refuses to admit that he has a gambling problem.  And that winds up twisting things up for him as surely as if he insisted on walking with a fake limp.

Marty's first three appearances were in P.I. Magazine, which is still around, but stopped publishing fiction decades ago.  (S.J. Rozan's Bill Smith made his first showing in one of the same issues, oddly enough).  Since then Marty has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and anthologies. One of those tales earned me my only Anthony Award nomination. 

And you can even hear (for free) dramatic performances of two Crow stories, thanks to the Midnight Mystery Players, who carry on the great old tradition of radio drama. 

This particular story was inspired by a story I read in the New York Times many moons ago.  Some boards of education were so concerned about the possibility of children from other districts sneaking in to use their (presumably better) schools, that they hired private eyes to trail kids back to their homes.

Hmm, I thought.  Sounds like a case for Marty Crow.  As it happens, the young lady he follows leads him into a very bad situation.  (The other inspiration for the story was Dashiell Hammett's classic Continental Op story, "The House In Turk Street."  For some of you, that's a big hint as to what happens to Marty.)

So let me wish the best to my fellow M.O. authors (Brendan DuBois, Eric Cline,  Hilary Davidson, Chuck Wendig, Patricia Abbott, Jeff Soloway, Charles Drees, Sam Wiebe, Cathi Stoler,  Milo James Fowler, Caroline J. Orvis, Ken Leonard, Travis Richardson), and to all  those who choose to get in trouble with us.

Eastward in Eden

by Terence Faherty

In a recent post I mentioned that the first new novel in my Owen Keane series to appear in fourteen years, Eastward in Eden, will be out this fall.  A last-minute delay at the printing plant kept the book from making it to the Albany Bouchercon (where I served on a panel with some eminent Sherlockians and met SleuthSayers guest columnist Herschel Cozine), but barring a reversal of Earth's magnetic field, the book should arrive this week.

Owen Keane was the protagonist of my first novel, Deadstick, which was published in 1991.  But he and I have been together even longer than that.  I created Keane for a short story I wrote for a night-school writing class in 1979.  He falls into the category of amateur sleuth, but he's an odd bird even in that very diverse group.  Keane is a seminary dropout who compulsively investigates little human mysteries hoping to find clues to the larger spiritual mysteries that haunt him.

In Eastward in Eden, those little human mysteries are less little than usual.  Keane is in Kenya in 1997, trying to solve the murder of a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of a famous warrior chief.  If that weren't enough, the remote valley where the murder occurred is under attack from a group of paramilitary land raiders.  Quite the spot for a non-violent ex-seminarian (who never once fired a gun in the series' previous seven titles) to find himself.

If you're wondering why I decided to return to the character of Keane after a break of fourteen years, you may not be a regular reader of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  He's appeared in the magazine seven times since the last Keane novel, Orion Rising, came out in 1999.  (Some of those stories were collected in 2005's The Confessions of Owen Keane.)

I can't even claim that Eden is a return to the Keane character in long form.  It's the novel I was working on in 2001 when St. Martin's Press decided to drop the series.  I stubbornly continued to write the book after I'd gotten the bad news, in part because 9/11 happened and having something to work on was a break from that.  Inevitably, the terrorist attack reshaped the book.  Two of its major themes became tribalism and the related tactic of dividing people into warring groups in order to manipulate them.

So Eden isn't an attempt to revive the series.  It's the book I intended as the next title back when the series was a going proposition.  When I finished the manuscript, I put it away and wrote other things (including two Keane novellas for Worldwide).  Then Jim Huang of the Mystery Company, a good friend to all mystery writers and especially this one, began to bring out e-book and print-on-demand editions of the earlier Keane novels, a process I touched on briefly in a post last May.  Jim read the Eden manuscript and decided to publish it. 

I have no idea whether Eastward in Eden will be the last Owen Keane novel or whether removing that plug from the pipeline will result in a gush of new book ideas, though the smart money has to be on the first horse.  Either way, I'm very grateful to Jim Huang for guiding it into print at long last.   
    

First of All

        

First lines are always interesting, and several SSers have written about them.  Last year, I shared the 2012 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest in this blog, and here I am again, this time with some of the winners for 2013.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University.  The contest is named for English novelist and playwright Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who penned the immortal first line of the 1830 novel Paul Clifford
which was probably the inspiration for Elmore Leonard's rule not to begin a novel with the weather.

In case you haven't had your first cup of coffee yet and don't remember it, that opening line reads:

     It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents,
     except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by
     a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it
     is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the
    housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the
    lamps that struggled against the darkness.
                                              Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

The first year of the contest, it received three entries.  One year later, after much publicity, there were more than 10,000 entries. Now there are numerous categories, the admissions are astronomical, and in addition to winners there are Dishonorable
Mentions.

Here are a few of the 2013 winners:

Grand Prize Winner 

Okay, this picture isn't exactly what
the sentence describes, but Lady
GaGa's meat dress was my first thought.

    She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.
                 
                   Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI



Crime Category Winner

   It was such a beautiful night; the bright moonlight
   illuminated the sky, the thick clouds floated leisurely by 
   just above the silhouette of tall, majestic trees, and I was 
   viewing it all from the front row seat of the bullet hole
   in my car trunk.
                                          Tonya Lavel, Barbados, West Indies

Crime Runner Up

I do believe this is the first time SS
has had a plumbing fixture
illustration.

   Seeing Mrs. Kohler sink, Detective Moen flushed as he plugged the burglary as the unmistakable work of Cap Fawcet, the Mad Plumber, for not only had her pool of
assets been drained, but her clogs were now missing, and the toilet had been removed, leaving them with absolutely
nothing to go on.
               Eric J. Hildeman, Greenfield, WI

Crime Dishonorable Mention

   Observing how the corpse's blood streaked the melting 
   vanilla ice cream, Frank wanted to snap his pen in 
   half and add drops of blue ink to the mix, completing
   the color trio of the American flag--or the French flag,
   given that the body had just fallen from the top of the
   Las Vegas Eiffel Tower onto a creme glacee cart.
                                    Alanna Smith, Wappingers Falls, NY

Vile Puns Runner-Up

   Niles deeply regretted bringing his own equipment to
   the company's annual croquet tournament because those
   were his fingerprints found on the "blunt instrument"
   that had caused the fatal depression in his boss's skull
   and now here he stood in court accused of murder, yes,
   murder in the first degree with mallets aforethought.
                                                   Linda Boatright, Omaha, NE
                                        
For more of these, a lot more including Detective Fiction, Romance Novels, Western Novels, and Purple Prose, go to 
www.bulwer-lytton.com/ 

The opening line of my most recent Callie adventure, Mother Hubbard Has A CORPSE IN THE CUPBOARD, is: 

James Brown burst from my bra just as I took a sip of Coors from my red Solo cup– the kind Toby Keith likes to sing about.  

I'll save the first sentence for my October, 2013, release, CORPSE UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE until it's out.

What about you?  Care to share some first lines? Your own or your favorites for Honorable Mention or Dishonorable Mention?

WARNING:  The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest intrigues me. I'll share the 2014 winners with you next year.  Meanwhile, I may try writing some intentionally horrendous first lines.  Let's just hope I have enough sense to recognize them, enter them in the contest, and don't use one for the horror novel I'm finishing now.

Until we meet again, take care of… you!

So Soon?

by Louis Willis

Happy Second 

Anni-verthMONTH

When I started this article, I didn’t know whether to wish us “birthday” or “anniversary.” Dixon’s post on September 20 solved my dilemma, only I changed his word a little since my post wouldn’t be on the 17th. Thanks Dixon. It seems like it was only a few months ago that we celebrated our first anni-vertmonth. 

This, our second means it’s 

So, where is the PARTA?


With the many outstanding and enjoyable articles, we had a good second year. I’m looking forward to an even better third year and maybe a party.

A Series Discussion

A couple of years ago, I discovered a good way to watch mysteries. It's actually a good way to watch many different genres--though most of my time's spent with mystery/crime/suspense. I'm talking about the wide availability now of TV series on Netflix and other outlets, via either snailmailed DVDs or streaming video. So far, I've found the best of these to be made-for-cable series (especially those created by HBO) but I've also seen some great productions from places like A&E and BBC. Two excellent series that I've watched recently--House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black--were produced by Netflix itself.

In the past I've posted often about favorites of mine: authors, novels, short stories, novellas, movies, sequels, remakes, directors, actors, villains, sidekicks, even soundtrack composers. Today I'm at it again. Here, in no particular order, are twenty TV series that I've watched and thoroughly enjoyed over the past few years. (Again, most are mystery/suspense offerings, but I've included a few comedies, fantasies, Westerns, etc.) I've not included those that I didn't like, or that for one reason or another I just stopped watching after the first episode or so, like Continuum and Vegas and Shameless. By the way--and as always--I'd be interested to hear your take on the following shows, and any recommendations you might have for series I have not yet discovered.

Here are my favorites:

Longmire (A&E) -- The adventures of Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming. Aside from the gorgeous scenery, the title character is the reason for watching: he's a dedicated, complex, and conflicted guy, a bit like police chief Jesse Stone.

The Newsroom (HBO) -- A behind-the-scenes look at modern-day newscasts, set in the offices of the fictional Atlantis Cable News channel. I think Jeff Daniels won an Emmy the other night for his portrayal of anchor Will McAvoy.

Orange is the New Black (Netflix) -- Based on the book by Piper Kerman, this is a comedy/drama about life in prison, seen from the viewpoint of a thirtyish woman arrested for transporting drugs. Surprisingly good.

Rome (HBO) -- Okay, I know this is way off the usual fare--but it's an outstanding series about Rome in the first century B.C., filmed mostly in Italy. It ran for only two seasons.

Dexter (Showtime) -- Proof that a serial killer can be the hero of a show. The secret? Unlike Hannibal Lecter, this dude hunts down criminals that evaded justice. Another quirk is that this weird vigilante's day job is blood-spatter analysis for the fictional Miami Metro PD.

The Wire (HBO) -- One of the best-made TV productions ever. Set in Baltimore, this series presents an truly authentic view of police work through the eyes of both cops and drug dealers. A little slow getting started, but it's well worth it.

Downton Abbey (BBC) -- Who says I don't put some variety into these crazy lists of mine? This is a show I thought I would hate, and watched only because I knew my wife would love it. I found it fascinating. A chronicle of the lives of the Crawley family and their servants in early-twentieth-century England.

Weeds (Showtime) -- The polar opposite of Downton. This is a hilarious comedy/crime drame about the zany adventures of a suburban widow who decides to start growing and selling marijuana. Sort of a low-voltage version of Breaking Bad. I watched all eight seasons via Apple TV, almost back-to-back.

24 (Fox) -- How many ways can counter-terrorist agent Jack Bauer find to save the world (or at least save the nation)? Plenty of them. I especially liked the always fast-moving plots and the real-time narration technique.

Veep (HBO) -- Another comedy, this one with Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the U.S. Vice President. Better than you might think--and I'll watch anything anyway that features Seinfeld alumni.

House of Cards (Netflix) -- The betrayals, blackmailings, and backroom politics of U.S. Congressman Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey). A unique feature: he sometimes "breaks the fourth wall" and speaks directly to the camera.

The Sopranos (HBO) -- Simply the best of the best. Gandolfini did one of the finest, most convincing protrayals I've ever seen by an actor. No description needed.

Boardwalk Empire (HBO) -- Has there ever been a more unlikely leading man than Steve Buscemi? Doesn't matter--he's great. He plays politician/gangster Enoch (Nucky) Thompson in this authentic look at Atlantic City during the Prohibition era.

Game of Thrones (HBO) -- Seven families battle for control of the mythical continent of Westeros. Based on a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin. A well-done production, and another that I didn't think I'd like before seeing it.

Copper (BBC) -- A super-authentic historical mystery series. This is the story of an Irish cop in New York City's Five Points district in the 1860s. Dark but interesting.

Californication (Showtime) -- The life and times of Hank Moody (David Duchovny), a novelist who suffers from writer's block and a Porscheload of other problems as well. There's something in this series to offend just about everybody, but (God help me) I like it.

Breaking Bad (AMC) -- The story of Walter White, a brilliant high-school chemistry teacher who's diagnosed with lung cancer and starts cooking and selling crystal meth to pay the bills. I'm only two episodes into this one, and it's already good.

Borgia (HBO) -- This is almost as much a crime show as a historical drama. Set amid the nonstop corruption and violence of the Italian Renaissance, it deals with the infamous Borgia family and its struggle to gain and retain power. You'll never see another Pope like this one. (Not to be confused with the Showtime series The Borgias, which I've not yet seen.)

Fringe (Fox) -- Sort of a J. J. Abrams version of The X-Files. A female FBI agent teams up with an institutionalized scientist to investigate unexplained phenomena. The title refers to their use of "fringe science" to solve mysteries involving a parallel universe.

Magic City (Starz) -- Another behind-the-scenes story, this one about the world of hotels and gangsters in Miami Beach in the late 1950s. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a great job as Isaac (Ike) Evans, manager of the fictional Miramar Playa hotel.

In my opinion, the top five of these are HBO products: The Wire, The Sopranos, The Newsroom, Boardwalk Empire, and Rome. I absolutely loved those--although I should use present tense in the cases of The Newsroom and Boardwalk, where there are apparently (and hopefully) more seasons upcoming.

Other series that I enjoyed a great deal over the years, and that I faithfully watched every week on TV rather than later on DVD, were Hill Street Blues, ER, and Lost. And six that I somehow never got around to seeing regularly but that I now wish I had, were Heroes, Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Mad Men, 30 Rock, and Castle. So many shows, so little time. For what it's worth, I still think the alltime best-written comedy series were Cheers, M*A*S*H, and Frasier.

Anyhow, there you have it. I think I've now managed to list my favorites in every visual and printed medium except maybe video games.

Anybody remember Pac-Man?

First in a Series

by R.T. Lawton

Let's say you've been writing for a while. You have some stories out there. You're comfortable with what's familiar in your writing, but at the same time you like the excitement and challenge of something new. You know if you continue with the same familiar characters in your series then you have a certain amount of baggage to carry forward, which also means you need to find new ways to insert the same old background. This process can become tiresome and take the fun out of writing. So now you're wondering what to do for your next creation.

Why not start a whole new series? You get the fun and excitement of working with new characters and inventing new plots to get them involved and moving right along. Plus, by the time you write the second story, you get the best of both situations; you have these new characters to collaborate with and you have the comfortable feeling of being familiar with them, yet there is still room for them to surprise you with what actions and reactions they may have to the next conflict coming up in their lives.

The Start

Everybody generates story ideas differently. There is no right way, only the way that works best for you. Sometimes I start with research for a setting, sometimes with a character who then gets into a situation, sometimes with a scene in search of a character, and rarely, with an ending in search of a story. Sometimes my idea gets a one-page plot line from opening to climax (those usually have a higher percentage of being completed) and sometimes the idea gets a mere start in writing, which may then take up to several years of ripening before finding an ending.

Here's how I came by the latest series.

Research

For years, reports crossed my desk about on-going politics, intrigues and battles in the mountain jungles and poppy fields of the Golden Triangle located in Southeast Asia. I had also kept some clippings from English language newspapers out of Thailand and Hong Kong concerning events in that area of the world. It appeared to be an interesting and fertile backdrop for potential stories. Then, a few years ago, our neighbor who runs a Chinese restaurant made it a practice to come out to our table, if he wasn't too busy, and talk Chinese history with me. Since his English was not the best, his wife sometimes had to translate the discussions from Mandarin to English. One advantage for me was that he could Google a person or historical event from the Chinese viewpoint of history and I then got a translation. Turns out that facts and viewpoints of parties involved could vary.


The Next Story Characters

There were many different opium warlords with varying political ties who vied for domination of the opium trade in the Golden Triangle during the 50's, 60's and 70's. One real life warlord who stood out was known as Khun Sa, but then he had several names. His background, name and birth varied depending upon who wrote the facts. Most agreed he came south out of Yunnan Province when Mao's Red Army defeated the White Army Nationalists during China's civil war. Many of those White Nationalists, also known as the Kuomintang, who didn't go with Chiang Kai-shek to take over the island country of Taiwan, moved south into Burma and Thailand where they became involved with the opium and dragon powder trade. After all, a standing army has to do something if it is to survive in a foreign country while it is cutoff from the motherland. In this case, crime paid very well for whoever had the men and weapons.

Khun Sa was alleged to have had a Chinese wife, a Shan wife or maybe both. This provided fodder for my story characters. What if an opium warlord had a son by each wife and the sons were now vying to become the heir apparent? The half-Shan son would have the edge with the local Shan hill tribes and that portion of his father's Shan Army, while the full-blood Chinese son would have the edge with that portion of his father's Kuomintang Army remnants. One son would be raised in the jungle camps of the Shan State in eastern Burma, while the other son attended British private schools in Hong Kong. Therein lies the instant clash of culture and education. Ready made conflict, you gotta love it for storytelling.

The Running Story Line

Told from the Point of View of the well educated, full-blood Chinese son, the reader watches that son's attempts to adapt to the jungle life he has been thrown into after the death of his mother in Hong Kong, and observes how he rationalizes his actions for survival while trying to overthrow his half-breed Elder Brother. But, Elder Brother has his own agenda to become the next warlord. And, if the current warlord and his two sons aren't careful, there are several rival groups with their own reasons to remove these three from the playing field.

"Across the Salween"

He was late.
For two days now, I had squatted back on my heels in the damp greeness of this mist covered jungle slope like any hill tribesman would with my thighs resting on the back of my calf muscles and an old French rifle across my lap. The rest of my squad lay fanned out in concealment on the slope, smoking black market American cigarettes and digging in their packs for rice balls wrapped in banana leaves. But, I could also hear occasional rustling in the brush and whispers of complaint as they grew restless.

And so the first story in the Shan Army series begins. The second ("Elder Brother") and the third ("On the Edge") manuscripts are currently setting in AHMM's slush pile. It is now in the hands of the editor as to whether this becomes a series like my other four in Alfred Hitchcock, or this one remains as a standalone story.

Got any ideas for a new series on your own part?

PS ~ Thanks to Rob Lopresti for his critiques on all three stories. I sometimes suspect that my way of writing occasionally drives him to distraction, him being more on the literary side of the scale, while I'm more on the telling-stories-to-friends-in-a-bar type of guy. (Come to think of it, I still owe Rob a beer from our meeting at Bouchercon in San Francisco.) Anyway, I also believe that some of Rob's suggested revisions/corrections have bettered the quality of these stories. Seems like it never hurts to get that one more informed opinion before sending off the latest brain child to fend for itself. So thanks, Rob, for hanging in there.

Born Bad. Or Not.

by Eve Fisher

I am, hopefully, on vacation for the next two weeks (mostly off-line), so here's something to chew on for a while.

Many people think philosophy is an esoteric subject, a plaything, a hobby, irrelevant to daily life: but the one place where the rubber hits the philosophical road is when it comes to criminal justice.  Basically, there are only two theories of how human beings tick:  (1) we're born bad; (2) we're not.  In the Western World, these were the (classical - not current!) Conservative v. Liberal views.  In Asia, this is Legalism v. Confucianism.  In every world, it's the divide between (1) those who believe that human beings need to be kept under tight control, with strong laws and punishments and (2) those who believe that humans respond well to education, encouragement, rehabilitation.  Original sin; good at heart.

This is more than a question of religion or philosophy.  It's also a question of laws.  The idea of  "innocent until proven guilty" was first postulated in Ancient Rome - but it did not apply to slaves, which were a large percentage of the population (some calculations say 40% during the height of the Empire).  And in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages, it crumbled entirely, as crime became linked with sin, and the general impression was that, at the very least, if accused, you had to undergo some kind of trial to prove your innocence.  Walk on burning coals; drink contaminated water; hold a red-hot poker for a certain length of time; sink when thrown in the water.  If you were innocent, your burns would heal without festering, you would not become ill or die from the water, and someone would fish you out before you drowned.  If your burns went gangrenous, if the water made you sick, or if you floated, you were guilty, and you would be punished, usually by death.  It wasn't until Cesare Beccaria's 1764 book "Of Crime & Punishment", that sin and crime were unlinked, with the idea that perhaps sometimes you stole because you were hungry, not because you were evil.  He said some fairly radical stuff:  that the corruption and injustice of society could provoke criminal activity, that punishment should lead to rehabilitation, and that capital punishment should be abolished.  Yes, he was a softie.  He was also the first to be called a "socialist" - although it didn't have today's connotations.

In the East, in Asia, Confucius (551-479 BCE) said that men were educable, and perfectable.  That we are indeed born good at heart, and as such persuasion and education were what was needed.  (This did not apply to women or servants:  "if you are too familiar with them, they grow insolent; if you are too distant with them, they grow resentful."  Awwww....)  He was a great believer in benevolence (ren), ritual a/k/a in correct behavior (li), and, of course, filial piety (xiao).  Perfect fidelity to these three things would lead to a perfect man, from whom one could find the perfect rulers, including that elusive philosopher king that everyone since Plato has been seeking.  Confucius was the basis of almost all Chinese education, political science, economics, and law until Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1960's.  And there was a resurgence after the death of Mao. 

Confucius' antithesis was Legalism, which argued that men are basically selfish, fundamentally amoral, and barely worth the trouble of ruling them.  One of the chief Legalist philosophers, Han Fei Zi (280-233 BCE), said that the purpose of government was to serve the interests of the ruler, because men were such beasts they couldn't recognize good government when they saw it.  (We have a local civic leader that likes to remind everyone that we live in a Republic, not a Democracy, and thus we don't have to be told everything that's going on...  Legalism lives.)  Legalism was enthroned by the Qin Shihuangdi Emperor (ruled 221-207 BCE), who was the great unifier of China in everything from land to language to weights and measures and, in addition, built most of the Great Wall of China.  The Qin Emperor tried to wipe out Confucianism, with massive book burnings and slaughter of scholars.  And, under his rule, the idea of collective responsibility was made a permanent part of Chinese law:  if you committed - or were accused of - a crime, your entire family, perhaps your entire clan, was shamed, arrested, tortured, and/or killed as deemed appropriate by the authorities.  After all, if they had raised you better, you'd never have become a criminal.

Collective responsibility may seem extreme, but when you think about it, it's universal.  Privately, who would want to be the relative of the Unabomber?  Arial Castro?  Ted Bundy?  There are all sorts of people wrestling with the shame of having a family member in prison.  (For that matter, even in our enlightened age, there's a whole range of things, like mental illness and addiction, that still carry a stigma, and not just for the sufferer.)  And then there are the "good wives" who stand by their man (and, I'm sure, also "good husbands" who stand by their wives, though they don't get the press), and nowadays have to defend that decision... 

And then, nationally:  How long will the Germans be guilty for the Holocaust and WWII?  What Germans who were alive at that time could claim innocence?  How about the Japanese during WWII, with comfort women and concentration camps and Unit 731?  What level of culpability do the people of a nation hold for that nation's acts?  And for how long?  Is there an expiration date on slavery, or war, or genocide? 

Cruel and unusual punishments:  what's the definition?  Was the 17th century idea of execution for everything, including stealing a handkerchief, excessive?  Is no death penalty unbelievably soft?  (Norway, for example, reinstated the death penalty to execute Vidkun Quisling and other WW2 Nazis, and then promptly re-abolished it.)  Today the United States is the greatest incarcerator and last Western country with capital punishment (some states with an express lane, others abolishing it)...

It all depends on whether you think people are capable of rehabilitation or not.  If people are born bad, well, why not kill criminals?  If people are born good, though, and we do not pursue rehabilitation (turning, for example, to for-profit prisons) what does that say about what we really believe?  Or are willing to do?  This isn't about history, it isn't really even about crime:  it's about philosophy.  What we believe.