The ineluctable modality of the memorable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Service with a Guile

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

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

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

Huissier de Justice

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

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

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

Case 1, Mind Your Pronouns

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

Umm…

“But you were served,” he said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“But you were.”

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

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

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

Case 2, No Good Deed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posting

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

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

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

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

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

Publishing

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

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

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

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

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

Accepting

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

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

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

Going Golden, Committing Capers, and Getting Cozy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Penguin

Source: Max

My most recent binge, which ended this week, has been Penguin, Max's spin-off of the current DCU. Currently, there is no Jim Gordon. Batman is mentioned as "that costumed vigilante," and the more comic book elements of the DCU are only mentioned in passing. This is a mash-up of The Godfather and The Wire. In lieu of Stringer Bell, we have Oswald Cobb, a partially crippled knockaround guy for the Falcone crime family. And boy do they have issues.

What makes Penguin and The Batman so different is they eschew the over-the-top supervillains for a gangster story. Falcone is very much Carlo Gambino with serial killer overtones. Their rivals, the Maronis, are almost the Montagus to the Falcones' Capulets in a Shakespearean rivalry that's undone about halfway through the season. All the while, an unrecognizable Colin Farrell plays a fat, crippled Oswald Cobb, aka "the Penguin," once a personal driver for the Falcone family now looking to take over himself. He's a schemer, and he's ruthless. 

Slowly, the source of Cobb's sociopathic drive is revealed over eight episodes. Some of this is reworking of the Gotham premise, where the Penguin is a naive kid looking to make his mark in the city's underworld. In both versions, Cobb's mother is his weak spot. But where the previous series depicted her as an aging immigrant mother (played by Carol Kane), we're treated to a woman in the throws of dementia trying to make sense of her son's bizarre moves.

Source: Max

But the most interesting character in the series is Sofia Gigante, nee Falcone. Played by Cristin Milioti, Sofia is the daughter of Carmine, and in the wake of his death, she is caught up in the power struggle to fill the void. At first, she and Oz (as the titular Penguin is commonly called), team up after her brother's death to overthrow the Falcone hierarchy and go after the rival Marones. Sofia has just spent ten years in the infamous Arkham Asylum, accused of being the serial killer Hangman. Only her father Carmine was the Hangman, and his first victim was Sofia's mother. When the rest of the family (both blood and mob) attempt to exile her to Italy, Sofia kills them all off. But now she's also in a battle with Oz for control. She declares to the remaining organization they are no longer the Falcone Family, they are the Gigante Family, based on her mother's maiden name and possibly a nod to late Genovese crime boss Vincent "the Chin" Gigante. She is a woman enraged, having her mother and her life stolen from her. It's not hard to sympathize with her.

But Oz is also carrying his own demons, some of his own making. His quest to be the top dog starts within his own family. By the finale, he has already dodged execution by Sofia three times, escaping from right under her nose. 

There is none of Burgess Meredith's dapper Penguin, with the monocle and the tuxedo. Maybe in a later Batman movie, but not now, and not with Meredith's quacking duck laugh. Neither is Oswald Cobb Danny DeVito's angry mutant. Yet, Farrell channels some of DeVito's attitude, look, and even voice in his Penguin. Writers improved on Gotham's "Kapelput," both attempts to make him more realistic. But whereas Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder made the Joker an evil version of Neil Gaiman's Lucifer, Penguin's evil is understandable. He repeatedly wins over our sympathy only to dash it against the rocks, especially in the finale.

But best of all, it jumps off The Batman showing the city recovering from the events of that movie and mentioning Bats in passing, goes full-on naturalistic, and only returns to the DC Universe at the end of the finale. Selina Kyle is introduced by letter, and the Bat Signal is seen in the closing scene, Batman somewhere else in the city, probably streaming Deadpool and Wolverine with Alfred. 

It doesn't really compare to Gotham after that show's first season. Gotham abandoned the realism for camp after mid-season 2. If I had to compare Penguin to anything, it would be Paramount+'s Tulsa King.

"But Where is Everybody?"

Internationally renowned physicist Enrico Fermi was walking to lunch one day in the 1950s with physicist friends Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski, discussing recent UFO reports and the possibilities of interstellar travel.   

They all agreed that it was possible, but Fermi asked, "But where is everybody?"  It was a good question:  still is.  And there have been a lot of answers to it over the years:

Extraterrestrial life is rare or non-existent because it's hard to get life going. 

 It takes more than a warm bath of saltwater and a little electricity...  

Periodic extinction by natural events prevent it. 

 Think meteorites, gamma-ray bursts, massive volcanoes, etc. There have been many major extinction events on Earth that wiped out almost all life. And it could happen again.

Intelligent alien species who do exist haven't developed advanced technologies. 

 They're still in the Stone Age, or the Renaissance. Great art, no radio or rockets.

It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself. 

 How can that be? Well, here on this planet, we're trying to navigate between nuclear annihilation, human-caused climate change, faulty (to put it mildly) AI, population explosion combined with resource depletion, global pandemics, oh, the merry list goes on and on and on...

It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others. 

 Huh? Well, you could say that all of human history is a history of wars and conquest. 

PLUS:   "In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a threat."

Civilizations only broadcast detectable signals for a brief period of time. 

 So far, we've missed them.  

The Dark Forest Hypothesis: 

 There are aliens, but they are both silent and hostile. (see Liu Cixin's novel The Dark Forest).

Alien Life May be Too Incomprehensible

 This seems to me to be the most probable (and is the whole theme of Stanislav Lem's Solaris. See also "The Devil in the Dark" from the first season of the original Star Trek, where no one can recognize that the Hortha are living beings, a silicon based species). After all, alien life forms might not be carbon based, or look like us, and might even have transcended the physical and/or actually live in other dimensions...  Who knows?  For that matter, maybe they're the viruses that currently inhabit most of us.

Earth is being deliberately avoided or isolated:  

We're too dangerous, we're a slum, we're a simulated universe, we're a zoo, we're contagious.  Who knows?  

We're invisible.  

Meanwhile, I have a few questions back:

Why do so many people want to see aliens / UFOs?  What are we looking for?  Saviors?  Killers?  Something new to fall in love with?  Something new to conquer?  Something new to have sex with?  Something new to kill?  

Once you have your alien, what are you going to do with it?  

Once you have your alien, what is it going to do with you?  

I have a feeling that you'd be better off with Siri...

SIDE NOTE:

Headline of the day:  

1 monkey recovered safely, 42 others remain on the run from South Carolina lab. (SOURCE)

Short Cut to Hell

Seriously, how could you resist?  There are pulp novels, and B-pictures, with titles made for the bottom half of a double bill on the drive-in circuit.  (A phenomenon that doesn’t exist anymore, of course, and that’s half the point.)  It’s a marketing ploy, sure, but it’s a conscious esthetic choice.  I Spit on Your Grave, from 1951, falls somewhat short of its lurid promise, while I Married a Monster from Outer Space delivers quite nicely – never an expressive actor, Tom Tryon is as flavorless as a boiled rutabaga – although you never know.  Sometimes the tease is exactly that, an empty handshake.

Short Cut to Hell, which I stumbled across on YouTube, is less than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are pretty juicy.  The opening shot, with Yvette Vickers sashaying down the hotel corridor in a skintight dress, is a visual the rest of the movie can’t begin to live up to, the male gaze made flesh.  And the long third-act set piece on the assembly line of the aluminum foundry is terrific.  Short Cut to Hell is the only picture James Cagney ever directed, an oddity by itself, apparently as a favor to the producer, A.C. Lyles.  It’s a remake of This Gun for Hire, and doesn’t even come close.  The lead isn’t bad, but he’s got nothing on Alan Ladd.  The two actors that show the most chops are Georgann Johnson, who did a lot of TV, early and late, and should have gotten better parts and more airtime, and Orangey the cat, a two-time winner of the Patsy award (Rhubarb and Breakfast at Tiffany’s).  The rest of the cast is wallpaper. 

The rewrite is credited to Ted Berkman and Raphael Blau (collaborators on Bedtime for Bonzo), based on a screenplay by W.R. Burnett and Albert Maltz, who shouldn’t need an introduction - The Asphalt Jungle and High Sierra are Burnett’s; Maltz did Mildred Pierce and The Naked City – and they adapted the Graham Greene novel.  The director of photography is Haskell Boggs, best known for three Jerry Lewis pictures (along with I Married a Monster from Outer Space, as it happens), and he shot Short Cut to Hell in black-and-white VistaVision.  I’ve talked about this process before; it was a widescreen competitor to Cinemascope, that lasted from the middle 1950’s into the middle 1970’s, and has been used since mostly for special effects work, Star Wars, for example.  VistaVision used two frames, side-by-side, which gave it enormous depth of field, and color saturation (Hitchcock loved it).  When you shoot with it in black-and-white, you get deep, deep blacks.  For example, in Short Cut to Hell, in the factory floor scene, the patrol cops are wearing leather jackets, and you see the light catch the folds in the leather.  That, boys and girls, is good cinematography.  You have to wonder what John Alton, the great black-and-white DP who shot Raw Deal and T-Men, among others, might have done with it, if he’d had the chance.

You see where I’m going.  Short Cut to Hell is a great title, but it isn’t a great picture, by any stretch.  There are plenty better.  All the same, it’s got bits that stick to the ribs.  I wouldn’t call it adventurous; Cagney uses a pretty conventional format, and except for Georgann, as noted, the acting is generic.  The best thing about it is the look Haskell Boggs brings to the shadows.  So, watch the beginning, and then skip through, until about 58 minutes in, to the factory chase scene, which is gonna hold your attention.  The rest, not so much.

Bad Dates—I’ve Had A Few

My newest short story was published yesterday in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy: Thirteen Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Master Detection. The book’s cozy mysteries are all written by winners of the Agatha and/or Derringer awards. My story is “The Postman Always Flirts Twice.”

You may be wondering about the title. Maybe you’re guessing that since The Postman Always Rings Twice was noir, for my cozy mystery, I decided to change Rings to Flirts because Flirts sounds cozy. To that I say ... buzz! (Think of the buzzer sound when a contestant gets something wrong on a game show.) I used the word Flirts because it makes for a much catchier title than The Postman Pressured Me Into a Date.

Say what?

To steal from Sophia on The Golden Girls:

Picture it. Indiana. Summer 1994.

I had my first full-time job as a newspaper reporter. My apartment complex had all the tenants’ mailboxes in one spot near the complex entrance, along with two newspaper boxes, one for each of the two—two!—dailies that small city had back then.

One day I stopped to get my mail while the postman was finishing filling the mailboxes. He started to chat. I’ve never been a fan of small talk, but I participated for a minute or two. The social niceties, you know. Then he glanced at the mail in my hand.

“I know your name from somewhere,” he said.

Wondering if I was being punked, I said, “Yeah, from the mail.” And I pointed at the envelopes in my other hand.

“No. That’s not it.”

So I nodded at one of the newspaper boxes. “I’m a reporter. You probably saw my name in the paper.” Back then, before everything was online, a lot more people read newspapers—on actual paper.

“No. That’s not it.”

I shrugged. “Well, those are the only ways I think you’d have heard my name. See ya.”

As I turned to go, he said, “Would you like to have dinner sometime?”

I offered him an uncomfortable smile. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

“Aw, come on. You gotta eat.”

That was true. But I didn’t have to eat with him. I shook my head.

“You sure? It’s just one dinner.”

Maybe it was his tone. Maybe it was my imagination. But I suddenly thought, if I don’t go on this date, I may never get my mail again. I was in my midtwenties, nowhere near as assertive as I am now. And back then, all your bills came in the mail. I needed my mail. So, reluctantly, I said yes. We agreed to meet the next evening at that hot spot of romance, Denny’s.

All of you who love meet-cutes are probably thinking the dinner must have been wonderful. Sparkling conversation, love in the air, the beginning of happily ever after.

Dream on.

The conversation was forgettable. The food was … Denny’s. And the only future I was looking forward to was getting home.

As the meal wound down, he said, “What would you like to do now?”

It wasn’t even 8 p.m., but I yawned and said I was going to have to call it a night. I had to get to work early the next morning. You’d think my meaning was clear. Subtle but clear. Not interested. And maybe it was, but he was determined to go out swinging.

“How about if I come back to your place and give you a massage?”

I may have wanted my mail, but I didn’t want it that badly.

I thanked him for my burger, went home—alone!—and called my best friend to fill him in on the date. When I got to the bit about the massage, his outraged voice boomed through the line. “If that isn’t a sex invite, I don’t know what is!”

In the end, I never heard from my mailman again, thankfully, and my mail kept coming. Now, all these years later, I put the experience to good use in “The Postman Always Flirts Twice.” If you read it, you’ll recognize some of the details. It’s a whodunit about love, family, and friendship. Someone murdered Hazel’s mailman and hid his body in the woods behind her cul-de-sac. Desperate to point the cops in another direction so they don’t discover her secret, Hazel starts her own investigation—focusing on her neighbors.

Who killed the mailman? What’s Hazel’s secret? You have to read the story to find out. 

Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy also has stories by fellow SleuthSlayers John Floyd and Robert Lopresti and SleuthSayers alum Art Taylor. The other ten authors with cozy stories in the book are Tara Laskowski, BV Lawson, Kris Neri, Alan Orloff, Josh Pachter, Stephen D. Rogers, Shawn Reilly Simmons, Marcia Talley, and Stacy Woodson. The book was edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer and published by Down & Out Books in trade paperback and ebook. I am including links to the book at the end.

So, if you’re wondering if it’s a good idea to mine your past for story ideas, yes, it is. If you’re wondering if I killed my mailman, no, I did not. 

With the caveat that I write fiction, that is my story, and I’m sticking to it. 

---

In addition to purchasing Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy from your favorite indie bookstore, you can buy it from:

• The publisher (buy the trade paperback and the ebook is included). Click here.
• Barnes & Noble. Click here.
• Amazon. Click here. 
• Amazon UK. Click here. 
• Kobo (ebook only). Click here.

Tartan Noir

I’m writing about novels again, this time about a group of splendid Scottish novelists (yes, yes, they all write short stories too) whose work is collectively known as Tartan Noir. Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, and Denise Mina are the three best known to Americans. I could focus on the women, who include Lin Anderson, Alanna Knight, and Alex Gray, self-titled Femmes Fatales. Anderson and Gray are co-founders of Bloody Scotland, Scotland's leading international crime writing festival. But today I’d like to share my enthusiasm for two terrific male authors: Christopher aka Chris Brookmyre, who’s long been one of my favorites, and Doug Johnstone, whose work I discovered by chance (in fact, while reading the Acknowledgments in Val McDermid’s latest Karen Pirie book) last year.

Both Brookmyre and Johnstone are Scottish to the core. Brookmyre is a satirist and master of humor who’s often been compared to Carl Hiaasen. His earlier novels rant a bit about Scottish politics, which may baffle or bore the American reader, but as his work comes into its full power, he brings ample compassion as well as keen observation to his characters, giving them wit and emotional intelligence, and brilliant plotting to his stories. Johnstone brings to his fiction an eclectic background as a nuclear physicist and rock drummer that adds breadth and depth to the crime and mayhem. Besides dealing with their lives, their relationships, and the extraordinary situations they’re thrust into, his characters reflect on the meaning of the universe and the fragility of human life and planet Earth.

My highest recommendations for Christopher Brookmyre go to the three final novels in the Jack Parlabane series, not counting “Easter eggs” that appear in some of his later books. The Parlabane books really function as standalones, because Jack’s life changes so much from book to book.

Dead Girl Walking Jack’s career as a journalist has just been destroyed by a scandal when he’s asked to find a young rock superstar who’s gone missing. An immersive plunge into the world of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and a nuanced blend of character and mounting suspense.

Black Widow One of the twistiest psychological suspense novels you’ll ever read. Jack investigates the death of the husband of surgeon Diana, who’s been doxed on the Internet in revenge for her blog about sexism in medicine. I defy the most skeptical, after reading Diana’s voice, to say a man can’t write a feminist woman authentically. But is Diana the victim, or is something else going on?

The Last Hack (Want You Gone in UK) Jack teams up with a young hacker whose mother is in prison, leaving her the sole support of a sister with Down's. Hacking, social engineering, twists and turns wrapped up in surprising bonds between unusual people and the empathy that cushions Brookmyre's razor-sharp satire and diamond-hard brilliance.

Doug Johnstone's The Skelfs is so far a six-book series set in Edinburgh about a three-generation family of women who combine two occupations: funerals and private investigation. The first is A Dark Matter. Dorothy, the matriarch, plays drums and nurtures talent in the young. Her daughter Jenny struggles to find herself when a marriage that seemed perfect turns into a relentless fantasmagoria.  

Granddaughter Hannah, a graduate student of astrophysics, ponders the nature of the universe as well as her place in the family. Johnstone is another male writer who can speak in authentic women's voices. He also invites the reader to explore an authentic insider's Edinburgh, dark corners, glorious views, numerous cemeteries, warts and all.

In the course of the series, social, philosophical, and environmental issues get a good airing and a brisk shake along with the family drama and the ins and outs of undertaking. In the latest volume, Living Is A Problem, the Skelfs are getting into eco-friendly burials, and the investigations involve drones, Ukrainians, panpsychism, and a lot more.

Switch Hitters

 by Janice Law

I recently read Red Comet, Heather Clark's fascinating biography of poet Sylvia Plath. Aside from thinking that the prevention of so complete and probing a book might make an excellent motive for a literary mystery, I was interested that Plath sold some illustrations to The New Yorker before the editors bought her poetry.

That made me think of other notable artists who moonlighted in another discipline: Michelangelo wrote sonnets, Van Gogh, wonderful letters; novelist Gunther Grass did handsome etchings, while both Bob Dylan and Tony Bennett paint, not to mention several present and former Sleuthsayers who compose songs and perform music.

I am a minor member of this interesting fraternity, being a semi-serious painter of long standing. Although I have done the occasional illustration for my own pleasure and, years ago, did cover drawings for a number of Anna Peters novels when I participated in the Back in Print opportunity, I have rarely combined the two arts or even treated the same subjects.

But about a year ago, writing a short story focused on the Tour de France gave me a little insight into the differences, at least for me, between writing and painting. 

I have long been a fan of grand tour cycling and had done quite a number of paintings inspired by the grand tours. For non-cycling fans, these events, even on TV, are a visual feast. They traverse spectacular scenery in France, Italy, and Spain, with, increasingly, well-chosen visits to other cycling mad countries.

 

The colorful array of team uniforms proves a real challenge to the fans, who themselves favor wild costumes–dinosaurs and inflated fat suits are popular this year– along with Borat style tiny bathing suits, big fluffy wigs in team colors, and, of course, at Le Tour, the giveaway shirts and caps from the sponsors' Caravan, in white with red polkadots (the King of the Mountains jersey) or bright yellow (the maillot jaune– the famous Yellow Jersey of Tour leader). You can imagine how promising all this is to a painter!

 

A short mystery story was a different matter, and though I had often thought of writing something set in the cycling world, there were always technical difficulties. A body can be dropped anywhere in a story, so can forbidden drugs or an act of violence. But timing is difficult around a cycling race. People consuming the equivalent of 4 or 5 bananas an hour just to keep pedaling are unlikely to get into much trouble, while riding along at up to 70 kilometers an hour just inches away from other bikes does not lend itself to anything but the tightest focus.

 

Commentators, professional observers that they are, are trapped in their booth watching multiple screens, while understanding the duties and techniques of the professional security people would have required serious research. It was not until I thought of a favorite former rider, himself a terrific writer, who does color commentary for Le Tour and blogs on  random topics during the race, that I found a plausible protagonist.

I decided that someone along his lines would do. Only the crime remained, and that was easy. A mystery about the Tour had to involve the Devil. Not, you understand the genuine Hadean item, but the fan who for years has danced and capered along the sidelines in horns, red top and tights, a pitchfork, and in recent editions, a black cape, which, one commentator remarked last month, he wears to breakfast.

With these ideas in hand, I struggled as usual to construct a plot, as I like mysteries to be plausible and am more at ease with interesting characters than unforeseen twists and turns. As usual the beginning went swimmingly, the end was at least vaguely visible, the middle, a struggle. It was finished, revised, fussed over, sent out and sold. Thank you, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

About a year later, I got an idea for a painting on the same subject: the Devil at Le Tour, which is actually the name of the short story. I had been taken with the dinosaur costumes and the sea of yellow and polkadot t-shirts and thought the brilliant red of the devil costume would serve to pull it all together. One day as the TV camera panned along a group of fans, devil gave a hop and there was the picture. 

I made some drawings, pinned a satisfactory one up next to my easel, picked up a small brush and, using burnt umber, sketched out the design. At this point, I really should wait a day or so to be able to spot the inevitable little errors. But no, although I can wait for a literary idea to develop, an image, once arrived, must be gotten down fast. I use inch wide brushes and rough the whole thing in as fast as possible.

For better or worse, I usually have a good sized (20 x24 or 24 x 28 inch) board covered in an hour. Then I spend probably 50% more time looking at the picture than I do physically painting, and, I must admit, a fair bit of time making corrections that could maybe have been avoided with a less impulsive and more professional and craft wise approach. 

However, I am not sure one can change one's working style too much. Little modifications, yes, complete change, no. Too much of creative work is beyond conscious control, and while I have sometimes thought that I would have done better with a more careful approach to painting and a more colorful approach to writing, change of that magnitude is not possible.

"The Devil at Le Tour" may or may not have appeared in AHMM by the time this emergency piece runs, but the painted version appears below.

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

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

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

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

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

Grim Reaper: An Ode to Editors.

 

I just came back from a funeral I never wanted to attend. Courtney Tower was a family friend who was the last of the Greatest Generation. Yes, he was old but, damn, I’m going to miss him. 

People shape us. Some sow seeds in our growing up and then continue to water them. That was him. There are many things I could tell you but this isn’t that article. This is an ode to editors because it’s time they were celebrated. 

While growing up, I admired Courtney. He had worked with Pierre Trudeau, was an editor and, ultimately a newspaper man as he stated poignantly, "I work 60 years in the same Press Gallery where I started. However tenuous it was, I liked to be at the fringe at least of the political action. That was the main reason. The extra money was fine, and I loved walking through the buildings.

There’s something about this place. There truly is."

As a young woman I often butted heads with Courtney on many issues. He was one of the few adults who I enjoyed arguing with because he had a sense of humour to match his stubbornness, had an unshakeable commitment to democracy and always doing the honourable thing. 

When I wrote my first article for a national newspaper, I excitedly told Courtney and he asked to see the article before I submitted it. I sent it to him with high hopes that he would like it. He returned it full of corrections, explained that I had a lot of facts first, summarized the story at the end and the facts presented like that bored him greatly. He told me to tell the story first and then the reader will be hungry for the facts when they're presented. He also told me to write to the reader in that way always: make them curious enough that they want to read what comes next. There were other corrections and he signed it all "Grim Reaper". 

The edits were presented in his usual gruff manner but, oddly, I was not offended but, rather, enchanted by the fact that he took such an interest in the article and in improving it. They say that all politics is local and Courtney's deep commitment to democracy politically started with his relationships. He took a completely novice writer of articles like me as seriously as he would a proper journalist. 

We went back and forth with my corrections and his critiques until he was satisfied. I sat down and compared the first article with the last edit and there was no question about how much better the final version was and how much I had learned along the way. 

In the last few years, Courtney asked me to write an article to publish in his community newspaper. I was too busy to write it so, of course, I put everything aside and wrote it immediately. As I structured the article and edited it, I heard Courtney's voice because he honed many of my skills. Courtney critiqued the article, of course. I was grateful for more wisdom generously coming my way. Then, when we were done, he published it. 

I've heard many writers bemoan working with editors, claiming they feel insulted by the changes suggested. Quite apart from what skills Courtney taught me, he taught me to be grateful for editors. They are someone who, unlike most people on the planet, are actually reading your work and taking it seriously. The critiques that appear to come out of left field are actually the best ones of them all, because they teach you a new way of looking at writing. 

With his tough, newspaper guy approach to editing, Courtney was the best editor of all. There was such empathy in his signing his edits "The Grim Reaper" because he knew I would be taken aback by the extent of the changes, the many criticisms and humour was the best way through that. 

I will deeply miss my "Grim Reaper" and will continue to write with his voice in my ear. 

        Thank you for the edits, Courtney.