Boob Tubery

The Belgian Original

Let's talk TV.  Not long ago I finished watching a  series. Then I watched it again, but different.

(Old philosophical question: Can you step into the same TV series twice?)  But Professor T is sort of a set of  non-identical twins.

The first iteration of Professor T was a Belgian series (2015-2018) starring Koen De Bouw as a highly eccentric but brilliant professor of criminolgy at the  University of Antwerp.  He assists the police there while struggling with his considerable assortment of neuroses, especially a germ phobia.  He also has an unfortunate addiction to telling the truth, no matter who it hurts.

Professor Teerlinck is an example of the Holmes school of annoying genius detectives.  Fun to watch but hell on the people who work with them.   One of the entertaining aspects of the show is that we see the Professor's active fantasy life acted out before our eyes. So the police officers will suddenly start dancing, or a rival professor might explode...

The British Version

I have been watching the show on PBS and now you can also go there to see  its relative, the BBC version. In this one Professor T is Jasper Tempest, a Cambridge scholar played by Ben Miller (the original star of Murder in Paradise.)  All of the plots are borrowed from Belgian episodes, with significant differences, of course, and those changes are what fascinates me. For example, in an episode called "The Perfect Picture" the plot is mostly the same but the motive and murderer change.  It feels very much like the authors of the British episode had a grudge against a certain profession and modified the plot accordingly.

The biggest change, though, is the story that ends Season Two in both series.  It feels like the English team wimped out on this one, although to be fair, this may relate to a difference in the laws in the two countries.

On the whole I liked the Belgian version better, largely because of the main actors. Miller plays the professor with only two expressions: Man With Toothache, and Man Pretending Not To Have Toothache.  De Boew on the other hand, has mostly one expression: supercilious superiority, which  fits the character better.  (To be fair, he has one more facial tic: terror when he is around his mother.)

British Fantasy Scene

And that brings up one area where the British version wins: Frances de la Tour plays Mom and if you don't love Frances, fie on you. Another place where the Brits prove superior is the surreal scenes from Prof T's imagination, although they seem to have forgotten to include them in the last few episodes.

You might want to compare our own Janice Law's take on the Belgian version.   Oh, apparently there are German and French versions too, but they haven't shown up on my screen so far.

Now I would like to talk about  the new reboot of Matlock. There are spoilers ahead so if you plan to watch the show please stop reading now or jump down below the picture of my cat.

Okay?  Everybody gone?

The new Matlock is a Trojan horse.  It cheerfully promotes itself as a reboot of the old show but it is nothing of the kind.  All the two series have in common is a senior citizen lawyer with a Southern accent (very occasionally in the latter version).

Kathy Bates plays a lawyer pretending to bear the name of the old TV show (which is fictional in her universe) but she is carrying out a convoluted scheme and a lot of what she says turns out to be lies.

The series this reboot resembles more closely is Mission: Impossible.   At the beginning of each episode of that old spy show we learned a little about the team's cunning plan.  But at some point (usually just before a commercial break) something would appear to go disastrously wrong.  Only after the ad for corn flakes or whatever would we learn whether the disaster was 1) part of the plan, 2) not part of it  but a contingency that had been prepared for, or 3) uh oh, we're in deep doodoo.

The same thing happens frequently in the reboot.  For example, Matlock gets caught in someone's office.  Is she in big trouble, or was this part of her scheme all along?  Cool stuff.

As other viewers have said this plot feels like it can't run for years.  I hope it is intended for a limited run.  Also the underlying story lacks the grim realism of, say, a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

But I keep watching it, largely because of  Kathy Bates, who each week offers a master class in physical acting.  When she is silent her face reveals more than the other actors do when they are speaking.

Okay, as promised, here are  my cats.

Quickies on two more crime shows I have been enjoying:

A Man on the Inside (Netflix). Ted Danson plays a widowed professor who is hired by a private eye to move into a senior complex and find a jewelry thief.  He isn't very good at it but the show is warm and funny and the elder actors (including Sally Struthers) are having a great time.

Where's Wanda? (Apple+) is in German with subtitles.  When the Klatt family's teenage daughter disappears the parents decide to plant spy cameras in every house in their lovely suburban neighborhood. They soon find that almost everyone has secrets, including members of the family.  The show is funny and sad and intriguing. But I have to say: I was almost at the end of the series when characters began behaving in such offensively stupid ways to keep the plot going that I gave up on the show.

Wishing you better luck. 

  

 

Type-ology

 

As I’ve reported numerous times, I’ve returned to work as a part-time criminal magistrate.

            Mostly, I do it for the money. Although the exorbitant sums paid to short story writers meet most of my daily needs, the extra paycheck helps when the servants need bonuses, or the Ferrari's oil requires changing. I also like to splurge on locally sourced pate and not limit myself to the bulk container at Costco. Although I'm told that the blue vests issued to Walmart greeters make my eyes pop, I've reclaimed the magistrate gig instead. The occasional court session keeps my bar card from getting dusty.

            The work also allows me to build my collection of typos and misunderstoods that crop up occasionally in police reports. Often, these mistakes happen when a patrol officer in the field calls in their report using the department’s voice-to-text system. Other errors appear when line personnel use a word and, perhaps, aren't entirely clear on the definition. In either case, the results can be entertaining.

            What follows are a few of the recent examples of reporting errors. Besides a bit of fun, I hope they remind writers and citizens that police officers are human. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. Rarely are the errors cataclysmic breaches or deliberate violations of constitutional norms. More commonly, they are the mistakes we all make--failing to proofread carefully or assuming that what they said was what they meant to say. Anyone who has ever dictated a text message will understand. We have all seen auto-correct go crazy. The typos are a harmless way to remember that police officers are flesh and blood people. We want cops who can empathize with the individuals they encounter. That humanity makes for better police/community relations and more effective law enforcement.

That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it when that humanity is displayed.

“I activated my lights to imitate a traffic stop.”

That's something trainees do at the police academy. They imitate traffic stops, arrests, and searches. In the field, they usually initiate the real thing. Maybe this officer had just graduated.

“Julia starched the victim.”

If you could read the remainder of the police report, you’d see that the victim had four long red lines running along his left cheek. It's safe to assume that Julia scratched him. Starch, however, may have antiseptic properties of which I’m unaware. Or perhaps she didn’t want the red lines to wrinkle.

“Oscar collaborated part of the story.”

This one is likely both a typo and unintentionally correct. The evidence rules in Texas require that an accomplice’s statements be corroborated. Independent evidence must support the truthfulness of a co-defendant. But conspirators might also get together and agree in advance on their excuse. Oscar may have only worked to craft part of the alibi. Next time, stay for the whole meeting, Oscar. The parts you missed will land you in jail.

“I saw her restraining his waste.”

My inner eight-year-old laughs every time at this bathroom humor. I reported a similar typo several months ago if you're keeping score. This mistake seems to be trending upward. But again, it may also be a typo and unintentionally accurate. If the woman squeezed his waist hard enough, she might restrain his waste. Don’t form this mental picture around mealtimes.

"Juan was able to interrupt at times for his mother."

This is the last of my unintentionally accurate misquotes. Juan is bilingual, and his mother speaks Spanish. Although the officer intended to say that Juan helped interpret for his mother, the officer could truthfully write this sentence. At most family violence scenes, a whole lot of interruption occurs. 

“A pre-summit field test.”

Officers in the field typically perform a presumptive field test on possible narcotics they’ve seized to confirm that they are genuine. This officer performed his test before reaching the top of the mountain.

“Due to his eradicate behavior.”

Benefiting from the entire police report, I can tell you that his erratic action aroused the attention of the local constabulary. They intervened and got the situation under control before any eradication occurred.

He drove with wonton disregard.

This one only applies to Uber Eats drivers who wantonly ignore the local traffic regulations and still deliver the wrong order.

As you imitate your day, may you do more than starch the surface of your potential.

Until necks time.

A Prince of Detection

I made the acquaintance of a Prince last week. This was somewhat belated, as Florizel, Prince of Bohemia, had made his London Magazine debut in 1878. Later, seeing his stories plagiarized, Robert Louis Stevenson collected the four stories comprising "The Suicide Club" in the hardback New Arabian Nights.

His Highness is a lively character who forms an interesting comparison to his near contemporary Sherlock Holmes, who appears in 1887. Both inhabit similar, mostly masculine, worlds, have a good-hearted companion, and confront a criminal mastermind.

The Prince lives in London. Despite his marked affection for his homeland, Florizel prefers to reside in the British capitol where he collects interesting experiences and usual characters alongside his Master of Horse, Colonel Geraldine.

In this set up, the Colonel, though younger than the prince and very much the faithful subordinate, is easily the more prudent and sensible of the pair. Indeed, Florizel's adventures would have ended with his initial outing, "Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts", if Geraldine had not, for once, taken matters into his own hand.

Do not, by the way, be deceived by the cozy suggestions of this title. As in the later adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the whimsical and trivial is often reveals some deep and sinister matter. In this case, 'cream tarts' lead direct to the Suicide Club, which, starting with film rights in 1909, has showed up on film, on stage, on TV, and as recently as 2017 in a Caliber Comic.

The Colonel plays a big role in this story, not so in most of the others. Unlike Watson, that most famous of detective companions, Geraldine does not narrate the stories. Rather, his function is to offer good advice and reminders of the political responsibilities of a prince. These Florizel usually ignores, pulling rank and so precipitating the complications that inspire a good story.

Although an intelligent, socially astute, generous, and gentlemanly character, Florizel is young and very far from the coolly analytical Holmes, who was destined not only for monstrous popularity but for a long life post-Doyle, acquiring not only new authors but a wife and child as well.

By contrast Florizel inspired seven stories in New Arabian Nights, all good. In them he is perhaps as much fixer, if that term is not insulting to a royal personage, as investigator. And unlike Holmes, he is not onstage the majority of the time. Indeed, he sometimes appears only toward the end of the narrative to sort matters out.

Florizel is less a sleuth than a collector of interesting people. If they prove to be in difficult straits, he tries to tip the scales toward the good. He is generous with his help but very much the entitled royal when facing the criminal element.

Throughout, Florizel is brave and capable, a man of the world with an admirable sense of humor, a bit of a philosopher, and fond, like Sherlock, of disguises. Since Stevenson was a fine writer, a master of atmosphere, characterization, and plot, and always very much in need of money, the Prince would seem to have been a good candidate for many more stories. Might he also have become a great detective?

Stevenson did bring him back in More New Arabian Nights, written with his wife, Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson, but by this time, Florizel has lost his kingdom after too much time away from Bohemia. He is now running the finest tobacconist shop in London and clearly does not have the resources and agency he enjoyed as prince.

Perhaps the seriously ill Stevenson ran out of energy for Florizel; perhaps the prince's station and character proved limitations, or perhaps Stevenson simply decided to keep him part of an ensemble rather than the star of the show. In any case, Florizel's fame, if lasting, if modest, and, having settled him comfortably as a merchant in his beloved London, Stevenson spared himself the artistic conflicts that so bedeviled his fellow writer, Conan Doyle, who eventually could not rid himself of his greatest creation.

And here, a Stevenson type of story suggests itself: an astute author who spies Conan Doyle's error in sending Holmes over the falls but failing to produce a body. A character can return from the dead, it seems, but not from becoming a tobacconist in London.

---

Coffin Dancer

When James Lincoln Warren launched CriminalBrief.com , he assigned nicknames to our fellow bloggers. Mine was ADD Detective, a riff on Monk’s OCD Detective. During a workday or when wanting to sleep, I imbibed litres of caffeine, self-medicating without realizing it.

A common trait of ADD/ADHD is inventiveness thinking outside cubicle enclosures. Gradually I came to view ADD as a superpower, a garden of creative seeds, yet this isn’t about me, but a stranger than fiction experience. Literally.

Dr Ronald Malavé © CBS 48 Hours

Until then, I found most doctors almost as clueless as I was and occasionally dangerous. During a discussion among colleagues at Disney, a few friends suggested I visit their doctor, a Dr Ronald Malavé, who numbered some of Disney management among his patients. He wasn’t known for useless blathering, but for digging into chemical problems in the brain.

He resembled David Suchet, not a handsome man, definitely more Hercule Poirot than Richard Castle. Fastidious, conservatively dressed, short with thinning hair, he was no one’s idea of a love icon.

His main office differed from others in his field. It was awkwardly placed next to a busy corridor in a business building where conversations and footsteps echoed up and down the hall. His secretary chatted up patients more than he did. When she stepped away, lost people opened the door interrupting discussions.

No soothing hues and bland prints covered the walls. No artsy rugs, no couch, no pot of tea. File cabinets and a laptop dominated the décor. Fine with me. I wanted a diagnostician, not a fuzzy wuzzy chatty chemist.

But things turned weird.

Barely did I get two visits under my belt when I arrived and found the office in chaos. Dr Malavé had been arrested.

I listened as the staff gathered at the secretary’s desk. Hereafter, I’ll refer to the complainant as CD. She was a highly intelligent, highly troubled patient diagnosed with multiple personalities, referred to Malavé because of his talent and track record of success with hard cases, and this was a very difficult case.

“How could someone accuse him?” the receptionist said. “He’s such a good man.”

His secretary burst into tears. “He cared so much. Never would he do that with a patient. Plus she’s… I’m not supposed to say it, but she’s off the deep end.”

As they commiserated, I listened quietly. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and I couldn't turn away from this train wreck. As if the situation wasn't peculiar enough, the story grew even stranger. I don’t recall exactly when, but a little nugget dropped into my ear.

"So weird. She keeps using that nasty email ID.”

“What's that?”

“Coffin Dancer.”

What?

Now they really had my attention. Eventually someone realized I wasn’t supposed to be there. The staff headed for a bar and I headed home.

During the next several weeks, I chatted with the secretary. She was loquacious, unprofessionally voluble, but she was deeply wounded.

The accuser had provided a calendar when she claimed to have had sex with the doctor in that severe but servicable office, and the secretary had been the one to comb their records, discovering some dates didn’t match. Investigators attributed this to confusion of a mentally disturbed person.

The secretary confided the accuser had stalked Dr Malavé for months. CD had trailed him home, learning where he lived. She began a habit of going through trash set out on the curb, learning what she could about the residents.

At least three major investigations ensued. The secretary had to wind down both offices, effecting layoffs, and idling operations until the State of Florida permitted him to see patients again. She warned clients police would interview us. In my case, they did not, but good news arrived. The criminal investigation and jury trial ended with Dr Malavé declared not guilty.

In the Sunshine State, licensing of physicians and critical healthcare workers is controlled by two entities, the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Board of Medicine. They stalled, refusing to return his licence to practice as they reinvestigated. Some physicians published open letters asking Board and Department to restore his licence. The secretary suggested the obstinate Board was caught up in ‘Believe the Woman’ fever.

I wasn’t so sure, but my interviewer could not have been more disinterested. I felt someone wanted to bury Dr Malavé. My impatient interviewer gave me the feeling they didn’t want evidence vindicating him but sought evidence to kill his career. I had something to say.

“I’m told the accuser used the handle Coffin Dancer.”

“I don’t know anything about that and it doesn’t matter.”

“I disagree. Author Jeffrey Deaver writes a series featuring Lincoln Rhyme. He’s a forensics and crime scene expert.”

“That sounds like a made-up name.”

“It is a made up name. One of the novels is titled The Coffin Dancer.”

“So…?”

I grow tense and frustrated when I’m not heard.

“Don’t you agree using a title about DNA harvesting and violent murder is a bit odd?”

“Dancing on someone’s grave is a common expression. People can use any handle they want.”

I realized I was making no headway at all. It turned out another major inquiry was under way, the season premier of CBS News 48 Hours Investigates. It’s still featured on the CBS web site.

They focused on DNA. CD provided police with a number of panties containing secretions from both parties. However, local news reported at least some (plural) had not been available for retail sale until after the date in question. An unsatisfactory suggestion of a mixup surfaced. At least one reporter indicated CD had taken condoms from Malavé’s garbage bins, but if true, that report passed into obscurity.

CD was described as having a brilliant mind, but suffered from borderline personality dissociative identity disorder (DID), once referred to as multiple personalities and Sybil’s Syndrome. CBS experts dismissed multiple personalities out of hand, but Malavé’s attorneys believed at least three of CD’s internal characters conspired to accuse Malavé of having sex with CD.

Following professional medical training, she worked for a urologist, harvesting and working with semen. She had the knowledge, she had the experience of working with and manipulating seminal and vaginal DNA.

☛ Curiously suggestive, a central plot point in the novel The Coffin Dancer is collecting DNA from semen by going through trash bins.

Nonetheless, 48 Hours hired their own expert who concluded the ratio of male secretions indicated intercourse, not transfer. 48 Hours Investigates season premiere ended with a gleeful assertion the show had vindicated Coffin Dancer.

The Florida Board of Medicine leaped upon the 48 Hours conclusion rather than police reports and a jury’s conclusion, and denied reinstatement of his licence to practice.

Maybe CBS got it right, but I wonder if Board members read Deavers novels. They might have reached a different conclusion. I wonder if Coffin Dancer, the accuser, outsmarted them all.

---

References

• Open Letter by a Fellow Physician

Links in the CBS News articles are broken. Use the following to navigate the three segments.

1. A Crime of the Mind, Part I
2. A Crime of the Mind, Part II
3. A Crime of the Mind, Part III

Hey, Watch THIS . . .

 

My topic today is something I don't often talk about, or even think much about: experimental fiction.

You know what I mean. Stories or novels that are unusual in some way, most often in format, technique, or structure.

When I think experimental, I'm reminded of Faulkner writing a short story in first-person plural POV ("A Rose for Emily"), or Cormac McCarthy leaving quotation marks out of his novels, or Ernest Vincent Wright writing an entire novel (Gadsby) without using the letter e. Truth be told, I'm not fond of that kind of thing. 

But . . . what if it's not something too weird or too difficult? What if it's just writing a story in a new and different way, maybe venturing beyond your comfort zone, just to see if you can do it? (And maybe to keep from getting bored.) I doubt any of my stories will ever be written without paragraphs or quotation marks or upper-case letters--but there are some kinds of literary experimentation that are almost too tempting not to try.

So, here are a few of those. This is a list of my own attempts at experimental fiction, none of them too drastic and each one followed by an example:

- An entire story told backward, scene by scene, with the ending first and the beginning at the end. "The Midnight Child," Denim, Diamonds, and Death (Bouchercon 2019 anthology).

- A story that takes place within the span of one hour, using three different points of view: the first third is seen through the eyes of the antagonist, the second third the protagonist, the last third an onlooker. "An Hour at Finley's," Amazon Shorts.

- A story with three completely different cases and solutions within the same story. "The POD Squad" and "Scavenger Hunt," both at AHMM. 

- A story written with no dialogue at all. "Bennigan's Key," Strand Magazine.

- A story written using nothing but dialog--not even an attribute, like he said or she asked. "George on My Mind," completed (last week) but not yet submitted.

- A story with three equal parts, each from a different POV, each part beginning and ending with the same sentence. "Life Is Good," Passport to Murder (Bouchercon 2017 anthology).

- A story set entirely in one small, cramped location. "The Donovan Gang," AHMM (stagecoach), "The Red-Eye to Boston," Horror Library Vol. 6 (airplane), "The Winslow Tunnel" Amazon Shorts (passenger train), "Teamwork," AHMM (car), "Silent Partner," Crimestalker Casebook (rowboat), "Christmas Gifts," Reader's Break (elevator), "Merrill's Run," Mystery Weekly (car trunk). 

- A long, rhyming poem (256 lines) in story form. "Over the Mountains," Dreamland collection.

- A story whose title is the same as its length. "A Thousand Words," Pleiades.

- A story in letter form (epistolary). "The Home Front," Pebbles.

- A story told entirely in flashback: "Cargo," Black Cat Weekly.

- A story featuring only one character. "Windows," Land of 1000 Thrills (Bouchercon 2022 anthology).

- A story about a countdown, using a time (8:10, 8:14, 8:26, 8:27, etc.) as a title for every scene. "Twenty Minutes in Riverdale," Pulp Modern.

- A story about a historic event that's revealed only at the end (spoiler alert!): "Premonition," Pegasus Review (Lincoln's assassination); Stopover," T-Zero (Mount St. Helens); "Custom Design," Lines in the Sand (Noah's ark); "Partners," The Oak (the Alamo siege); "A Message for Private Kirby," Green's Magazine (Battle of the Little Bighorn); "A Place in History" Scifantastic (Pearl Harbor); "Tourist Trap," Pulp Modern Flash (Pompeii); "The Barlow Boys," Mystery Weekly (deaths of Bonnie and Clyde).

- A 26-word story in which each word begins with a different letter of the alphabet, in order. "Mission Ambushable," online contest. (I won!)

 

 - A story that references more than a dozen MacGuffins from other stories/movies. "Mayhem at the Mini-Mart," AHMM.

 

Have you tried any so-called experimental writing? Anything more challenging than my stellar efforts? (I would hope so.) How often have you done something like this? Did you find those stories/novels fun, or at least interesting, to write? Were any of them published? What are some types of experimental fiction that you've enjoyed reading?

And that's that. I'll be back in two weeks. Meanwhile, experimental or not--keep writing!

The Power of Reviews

I am delighted to be the newest member of the SleuthSayers community! Over the years, I have learned so much from posts written by this esteemed group. It is an honor to be a contributor and share what I have learned during my writing journey.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’m going to talk about love, LITERARY LOVE, the kind we can spread by writing thoughtful reviews while, at the same time, giving a little literary love to ourselves.

Here’s more on my experience with the power of reviews.

Writing Reviews

When I began writing, I wanted to understand what made a story great. I’m an avid reader, but I realized learning craft through reading wasn’t enough. I needed a deliverable with a deadline. When I was offered an opportunity to review books for Publisher’s Weekly, it was exactly what I needed, and I accepted. This set the stage for my writing career.

Publisher’s Weekly has specific style guidelines for their reviews, and I learned how to analyze books and convey my overall impression in a tight and succinct way. Page citations were required for proper names, major plot points, and other details that substantiated my conclusions. 

This deep dive taught me about structure, how to develop character, the importance of stakes, and how to use conflict to keep readers engaged. I learned why some stories held together and reasons why others fell apart. The experience not only taught me to read with purpose, but writing the review helped me internalize lessons that I later applied to my own stories.

It has been years since I contributed to the magazine, but I still write reviews, both novels and short fiction. They aren’t public. I keep a reading journal with lists of interesting twists, setups and payoffs, character motivations, and unique approaches to story structure. There are also notes about stories that didn’t resonate with me. Both provide learning opportunities that are helpful.

Reading Reviews

Reading reviews has taught me a lot, too. We are fortunate to have wonderful contributors in our community who write reviews and essays that are mini masterclasses in storytelling.

Art Taylor’s, “The First Two Pages,” is a great resource. The blog series, originally created by B.K. Stevens, hosts craft essays by short story writers and novelists who analyze the opening of their own work. In “Little Big Crimes,” Rob Lopresti reviews his favorite short stories each week. He is a talented writer and editor, an avid reader, and former librarian. If a story makes his blog, you know it’s something special. 

Lifting up the Community

Anne van Doorn and Ed Ridgley review short stories on Facebook. I look for their posts each week and discover new writers this way.

Kevin Tipple is also dedicated to shining a light on short fiction. Through his blog, "Kevin's Corner," and social media posts, he is always promoting authors from the short fiction community.

Recently, I was working on a story that was crushing my soul. We’ve all had them, right? A friend forwarded a review of one of my stories that I hadn’t seen. It was an unexpected gift from the universe and reminded me that I could still do this thing called writing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on the dark side of reviews. Of course they are out there. However, I believe when we review stories by fellow writers, we have a responsibility to highlight the positive, to lift up each other, and should share our perspectives with this in mind.

Have you written reviews? Do you keep a reading journal? Have reviews influenced your writing? 

                                                                           ***

Speaking of reviews, if you want to learn about my latest short story, “A Rose for a Rose,” from Mickey Finn: 21st Century Noir Vol. 5, edited by Michael Bracken, check out Ed Ridgley’s recent review on Short Mystery Fiction Society.

In Defense of Kindness (Or: This Time I Only WISH I Were in Hawai'i!)

 Way back in the Before Times (we're talking the tail end of 2019 here!) My wife, our son, and I took a long overdue vacation in Maui. While there I penned the blog post below, accompanied by vacation pics that had nothing whatever to do with my subject: the notion that it is absolutely fair that customer service get to rate their interactions with customers in much the same manner that customers have been empowered by the internet to do. Bear in mind this is pre-Covid and I'm pretty sure right around the time of the Dawn of the "Karen."

This post seems timely in light of so many goings-on in this country-and by extension, the world-right now. Where phrases such as "the cruelty is the point" get bandied about non-stop. Me, I'm for kindness. And this year I'm MISSING Maui, instead of visiting it-a pre-fire Maui, no less, with an intact Lahaina, and an unscorched Banyan tree. I say if you're gonna go nostalgic, why not go all in?

So please enjoy the repost below. I've got a longer, craft-related piece in the works for my next turn in the rotation! - Brian

Aloha from Maui!

Every time I've driven past the signs for Kihei in the past week, I've thought of old pal and fellow Sleuthsayer R.T. Lawton, and his better half, Kiti. (And they know why!).

As I sail toward the end of the first real vacation my family has taken in years, my thoughts have been on an amazing and amusing thing that happened to me during the final week of the school year a couple of weeks back.

One of my students (hard-working, charismatic, a real leader, just a fine young lady) informed me that her mother works for the credit union where I and my family do most of our banking. "Oh," I think to myself, "Small world."

Turns out there was more.

"My mom finally remembered where she recognized your name from," this amazing kid went on.

"From the credit union?" I said, still not quite getting it.

"Yep. She sees your name quite a bit there."

These are vacation pics and have zero to do with this post: that's the island of Kaho'olawe across the bay.

Casting back in my memory to try to recall whether I had any recent NSF fees (Hey–no judgement. Most of us have been there at one time or another, after all.), I asked, "What does your mom do at XXXX Credit Union (Not its real name)?"

"She's Quality Control for Customer Service."

This information sends my thoughts in a new direction. Have I complained about the service I've received lately? Nope. Does that mean someone's complained about me? Is that even a thing customer service folks even do?

I asked myself this last question because a few decades back, I was one of those people working in a variety of entry-level customer service jobs. It was some of the hardest and least rewarding work I've ever done. I worked in food, in hospitality, in transportation, all while working my way through college so that I could embark on a different–yet–not–all–that–different type of customer service: teaching.

Back in those days (and we're talking the early '90s here) one customer complaint could mean the end of your employment (I didn't have a union job until I started teaching, everywhere I worked was a one-counseling session and you're fired kind of place.). I know this because at least once I got fired because of a customer complaint.

Well, that and the fact that the guy who fired me (someone who really put the "ass" in "assistant manager.") was a real piece of work.

But that's another story.

These and other memories were washing over me during my conversation with that awesome student of mine. So I said: "Quality Control, huh? She fields complaints, things like that?"

"Yep," Awesome Kid (not her real name, but it might as well be) said.

"Does she like her job?"

"She does. And she likes you."

I cudgel my brain trying to recall whether I've ever met Awesome Kid's mom. Nope. I'm pretty sure I'd remember. She didn't come to conferences, and I didn't see her at Open House. So that surprises me.

"She likes me?" I ask, all intelligence and awareness, now.

"Yes. You're one of the highest-rated customers they have."

I blink at her, not comprehending. "They rate customers?"

She nods. "And the customer service reps all really love you. You get high marks all the time and you're near the top of their list."

And just like that, with this small kindness, Awesome Kid made my year.

The island of Lana'i (left) and the West Maui Mountains (right) framing a spectacular sunset

My early experiences with the downside of customer service (being the one to catch the irate call, or get someone's order wrong, or commit one of thousand small errors) have informed my interactions with the people who work in those positions ever since my own days in customer service, lo those many moons ago.

In the years since I've striven to be patient, to be polite. To be courteous and respectful, even when I'm pretty pissed off about something.

Because, nine times out of ten, it's not the fault of the person I'm talking to. They're there because they picked up the phone, took the chat request, what-have- you.

I've never forgotten what it's like to be on the other end of that call, and I hope I never do.

So it did my heart good to know that customer service reps are getting a chance to rate their interactions with clients: getting a voice in how that back-and-forth went. Because, hey, it's a hard job. And it usually doesn't pay all that well.

Plus, I gotta admit, I like that someone on the other end of that phone call notices how I try to treat them well.

After all, Couldn't we, each and every one of us, use a little more humanity in our daily interactions?

This is why I've been tipping people left, right and center (something I do religiously anyway) over the last week, and will until we head for home.

Like I said before, it's a tough job, and people don't get paid a whole lot to do it.

And that's all I've got for this go-round. I hope you're all having a wonderful and productive July.

Mahalo, and see you in two weeks!

The One From the Other

My sis sent me a Philip Kerr book she spotted, The One From the Other, and although I thought I’d read all the Bernie Gunther novels, this turns out to be one I missed. Philip Kerr died in 2018, so the last book published in the Bernie series was Metropolis. There aren’t any more to come.

If you don’t know Bernie, here’s the short version.

He’s a former homicide bull in the Kriminalpolizei, who’s turned private. When we meet him in 1936 Berlin, Weimar has rolled over and died, and the Nazis are now in the saddle. The hook is that Bernie is trying to navigate a maze of opaque signals and ambiguous rivalries, a hierarchywithout any structural consistency or guiding principle except brute force. The world seems to have collapsed around a single dynamic, that the weak are prey, and you can’t protect yourself. The strong will take whatever they want, whenever they want, because they can.

The gangster ecology is familiar from noir convention, but it feels different, in this terrain. It’s not individual – or entrepreneurial – although that flourishes, too, in the contaminated, feverish atmosphere: the opportunities for random cruelty are everywhere. The menace, though, is institutional. It’s built-in, the mechanics of behavior part and parcel with the political climate. Terrorism is a tool of the state.

Some things worth noting.

The books aren’t chronological.

They slide around in time, from book to book, and sometimes within a single book. This has a counterintuitive effect, that when we zoom in, the immediate focus is even tighter. The idea of a larger context, or that historical distance might soften the moment, is rarely any comfort. Bernie the acerbic Berliner is always ready with some gallows humor, but the gallows itself is never far from his mind. Before whatever it is happens, he anticipates the worst, and it never fails to be more devious and infernal than he’s prepared for.

Which leads to a second observation, about historical or dramatic ironies.

We learn early on in the series that Bernie survives the Nazis, that he survives the war, but he can’t overcome memory. The similarities to Alan Furst’s spy novels, or Eric Ambler’s, of a generation before, are striking; a character, thrown into the deep end of the pool, keeps their head above water by grabbing anything that floats into reach. More to the point, it’s very much of the moment. We, the reader, know Hitler dies, and the Reich goes down in flames, but the people in the story don’t. Philip Kerr never lets Bernie, who’s narrating the books, use a device like Had-I-But-Known. He rarely, if ever, foreshadows. Bernie meets a sociopathic snake like Reinhard Heydrich, chief of security, and his main concern is hoping the Reichsprotektor forgets his name – not Heydrich’s looming date with destiny in Prague, although seven books later, Bernie will show up just in time to turn the final page, and survive to walk on Heydrich’s grave.

As to the matter of voice.

Bernie seems to be talking out of the corner of his mouth, with a lit smoke burning down in the other corner, the ashes ready to fall behind his teeth. He confides in us. And the vocabulary! Kerr was Edinburgh-born. He read for the law, like Scott and Buchan, and began a post-graduate fascination with things German. Here’s a trick, in the Bernie books. Bernie uses a lot of slang, and to my ear, it sounds like idiomatic Berliner Deutsch, rendered as an English equivalent. It isn’t, in fact. I’ve heard some of the real thing, and what Kerr is up to is creating a kind of parallel idiom. It sounds right, and it feels right, in the context, but it might as well be Klingon: he’s making it up, umlauts and all. Which isn’t to say it’s not convincing. And that’s the point.

Kerr wrote the first three Bernie books, the Berlin noir trilogy, and then Bernie dropped out of sight. The One From the Other came out fifteen years after A German Requiem, book three. Kerr just says stuff got in the way. There it is. I wish there were more books, of course. But the best thing about my sister happening on The One From the Other, is that as soon as I finished it, I went straight to the library and took out March Violets, the first of the books, and I’ve started the series again, from nose to tail. Trust me on this one.

Broke, Drunk, and Horny

I’ve recently read a great many private eye short stories, both published and in manuscript form, and I’ve recognized three character traits many of these PIs share:

They’re broke, drunk, and horny.

They have money problems and stress about paying their rent, their bills, and their gambling debts.

They drink heavily, with a bottle in their desk drawer and a perpetual hangover. Or they are recovering alcoholics who attend AA meetings and stress about falling off the wagon. Again.

They have a healthy sexual appetite and poor judgement, which leads to carnal knowledge of their clients, their clients’ significant others, and/or other inappropriate relationships.

While not every private eye in the stories I read had all three of these characteristics, many had at least one and often two.

The broke, drunk, and horny private eye is a trope that verges on cliché, and writers who find new ways to use the tropes or, better still, avoid them entirely, usually write more interesting stories.

ALWAYS THE OFFICE

A great many private eye stories begin with a description of the private eye’s office, usually as a way to inform the reader about the poor schmuck’s financial state, and, during a rumination about the sad state of the furnishings, a potential client arrives with a case the PI doesn’t want but agrees to take for the financial renumeration or because it involves repaying a debt to an old friend who may or may not be dead.

A private eye story that begins anywhere else—a bar, a coffee shop, the client’s home, a zoo, an amusement park, or anywhere other than the PI’s office—stands out.

And a story in which the PI accepts a case for reasons other than financial desperation or to repay a real or imagined debt also stands out.

TOO MUCH BACK STORY

Too many private eye short stories begin with several paragraphs or pages describing how the protagonist became a PI, much of which has little or nothing to do with the story to come. Because of this, the actual story doesn’t begin until page three or five after the expenditure of too many words.

So, a private eye short story that begins with an inciting incident rather than a meandering backstory stands out.

LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN

Here I am throwing stones while I live in a glass house. I have written about broke, drunk, and horny private eyes, started stories with private eyes sitting in their squalid little offices desperately awaiting the arrival of a client—any client—and bogged down beginnings with backstory while delaying the inciting incident until page five.

And thought I was oh so original.

Now that I know better, I’ll try hard not to let my tropes show, try to avoid dressing my private eyes in clichés, and try to find better ways to ensure inciting incidents occur on the first page.

* * *

February started with a nice one-two punch.

“Coyote Run,” the eighth episode of Chop Shop, was released by Down & Out Books on February 1. On February 2, “A Dime a Dame” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #179.

Also, on February 1, The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the nominees for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology, which Barb Goffman and I co-edited and which contains work by many current and former SleuthSayers, made the shortlist.

I won’t try convincing Sarah Connor.

If you follow the news even superficially, you’ll be aware that the world has a very uneasy relationship with rapidly advancing technology.  This tension has been with us since the first Luddite took a cleaver to a water-powered loom, and it will likely never go away.

           The difference now is the speed at which things are changing.  At best, it can give one a sort of psychic vertigo, at worst, it can throw you into abject terror.  For many, it feels as if the machines are on the march and we’re all about to be trampled under their cybertronic bootheels.

I take a somewhat sunnier view.  I’m glad it doesn’t take a week to travel from Connecticut to Philadelphia while being jostled around in a poorly sprung carriage over rocky, rutted roads. Rather, I can board an airplane, that on the ground looks impossibly huge and ungainly, and complete the trip in the time it takes for my courtesy coffee to cool down. 

I understand writers who compose longhand with specially curated pens.  Or use an Underwood inherited from their great uncle.  Long ago, I knew a writer who could only start a new project sitting in her car, and only after cleaning the ashtray.  I have my own superstitions, such as always writing in the same font and point size, using indents and paragraph breaks with no space, and sticking to the same word count per page.  But otherwise, I’m all in on the Microsoft Word app living here on my Lenovo PC.  The first computer I wrote on was a Wang Word Processor, and the fact that I could quickly type out the words, while immediately backtracking, deleting, correcting, inserting and all those other wonderful manipulations felt like a form of magic.  Not unlike flying at 35,000 feet in a metal tube that weighs as much as a small commercial building. 

To me, it’s not the technology, it’s what you do with it.  Nearly anything can be used for good or evil.  I can use a hammer to drive a nail or to put an aperture in my neighbor’s prefrontal cortex.  The same airplanes that deliver me to Ireland brought down the World Trade Center.  They transport Doctors Without Borders and arms merchants.  The machines have no moral agency, they just do as they’re told. 

The current obsession is with AI, understandably.  It’s a very powerful tool, and it takes little imagination to foresee how it will change things in our lives, for better or worse.  I’m guessing the better will win out, in areas such as medical research, energy development and space exploration.  The downside is also there before us, especially if you’ve seen the Terminator.  There are commentators who think Schwarzenegger is already at the door, sawed-off shotgun and titanium skeleton poised to strike.

This may change in about five minutes, but as of now, AI is simply a super-aggregator, not really an intelligent being.  It’s wicked fast, comprehensive and clever at impersonations, but still doesn’t have the power to CREATE anything.  So far, only human brains are capable of making those quantum leaps, short-circuiting the deliberative process, jumping the walls of the maze and grabbing the cheese. 

If AI ever does come up with an original thought, entirely original and paradigm shattering, we better watch out.  But I wouldn’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.  

I’ve been thinking about all this because for the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with computer upgrades and the vagaries of assembling a new home entertainment system. The process is maddening and humbling at the same time.   But I’m sticking with it, because at the other end I’ll have something unattainable only a few years ago.

 

Technology is not my friend, but it’s not my enemy.  It’s just a thing, without a mind, without a will.  Ready to serve, but impartial to the master.  Humans still get to decide what to do with it all.  How they decide will still be a matter of morality and good sense, and likely dumb luck. 

That’s what we need to be afraid of.

2025: Reshaping the literature of our time.

Does anyone else wonder if 2025 will change the nature of mystery and crime novels, as well as literature as a whole? 

Where to stand during an earthquake is one question, how to write during and after one is an entirely different question. Readers gravitate to the genre of mystery and crime novels for many reasons and, though the novels vary from the slow unraveling of puzzles, to the fast paced action to save the innocent or capture the dangerous, at the core of all of them is a world where there is right and there is wrong, where justice is served or, if it's not served, then it still exists as a beacon to light the way and where Orwellian newspeak is called out in the plain language of truth.

Rather than dwell on specifics, because goodness knows we've been inundated with them, I'd rather focus on principles that are often lost in the noise. If someone is convicted in a court of law, then serving their time in jail is something we expect, we rely on. If they are released for no legal reason but, rather, on a wish and whim, is there still a rule of law? If the free press, a pillar of democracy, faces retaliation for printing facts in a democracy, then is it still a democracy when this pillar falls? If the most sacred role of democratic governments - to keep their citizens safe - is eschewed by defunding and inserting an anti-science control over the health science that keeps citizens safe - what other roles no longer matter? If a democracy embraces the Latin term imperium, which originally indicated unrestricted authority of a single person, is it still a democracy?

If all this is changing - how do you write that? Literature must be reflective of the times. Will post-2025 mystery and crime writing, as well as literature in general, change by incorporating - by the osmosis that writers are famous for - the new world we find ourselves in? If settings and characters remain impervious to change, then the literature becomes irrelevant to readers who live in the setting of the day and are, indeed, the characters who live there. If literature ignores the changes in society, it inadvertently becomes historical fiction.

It is not merely the United States that has changed. The world is changing. As the U.S. withdraws from crucial health organizations like the World Health Organization and threatens – for the first time – to take over the countries of allies, the world is realigning. Long time alliances are being questioned. Many thrillers involve international settings and international law enforcements and one must ask, how will those change?

We've seen many authors of mysteries and thrillers become political – some of the biggest names in the business, from James Patterson, Don Winslow, Stephen King to Celeste Ng, have spoken out. Authors speaking out politically in such large numbers is something that we haven't seen since the 1930s. Given the rise of book bans, it takes courage to speak up and the muzzling of authors will also be something all genres will have to contend with. To become irrelevant or be silenced is the question that authors will have to grapple with and, many will speak out knowing that book bans are temporary but valuable literature lasts for generations. Further, history has shown us that, in times when there is much harm being done, those who are silent are judged harshly. 

All these changes feel new and we'll have to see how they play out - it's only February for goodness sake! – but I truly don't believe that the genre will be the same after this. It doesn't feel like a blip in time but, rather, a fundamental change – an earthquake beneath our feet that is reshaping the literature of our time.

Adverbs Live On, As I Shall Explain

Kill your adverbs. Stephen King says it, your creative writing seminar instructor says it, and even that one guy from the meet-up critique group says it. Kill 'em dead. And they're right, though the critique group guy didn't have to harp on it so much. Adverbs are crutches for weak word selection. A power verb or a better adjective says more alone than any adverb can modify. 

So, kill 'em all. Right? Right.

Although…

Records show adverbs have been around since at least the Sumerians. That makes adverbs remarkably survivable. In fact, adverb-like things exist in every modern language. The adverb's importance led to a high water mark in 1974, when adverbs landed their own Schoolhouse Rock! segment.

It's helpful to remember there are all kinds of adverbs, and killing the good kinds takes out writing quality as collateral damage.

Merriam-Webster defines "adverb" as: 

A word used to modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence and often used to show degree, manner, place, or time.

A word. That's what has everyone on the warpath, the one-word kind. A word such as "often," which I could point out wasn't killed at Merriam-Webster's editorial committee. Often, such adverbs are extraneous. 

But there's also the unhyped adverbial clause. Oh, they're out there doing their thing, modifying verbs and such. Since we're defining things, "adverbial clause" is a group of words 1) containing a subject and verb and 2) functioning like a single-word adverb except it doesn't have to watch its back. An "adverbial phrase" is the sawed-off version without a subject and verb.

Here is an adverbial clause that clicks:

"They kicked me out of school because I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself at all." — J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

To be obvious, "kicked" is the verb being modified, and "because" triggers the modifying clause with the why behind the kicking. I love the dead simplicity in construction and style. Simple isn't easy. "They kicked me out of school" is accurate as a sentence but incomplete. Connecting the why then and there gives the sentence an unfolding power. Great stories don't come down to somebody getting kicked. They come down to the "because."

Another one: 

"Richard Parker and I spent a week on the island, until the day I noticed millions of dead fish on the shore." — Yann Martel, Life of Pi

I dig this kind of switcheroo. One minute you're baited into island relaxation, and then comes the "until" twist. This sense of paradise lost works better as a single sentence entity than two chopped-up ideas.

Closer to our genre home:

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -- Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Sign of the Four" 

Holmes is explaining a process, an ongoing and difficult process, so the main clause ("whatever remains") sounds hollow without the deepening elements. "When" signals that depth of thought and opens the sentence up to its classic juxtaposition: impossible versus improbable, with improbable carrying the weight of truth.

And yet, a good yet, that sentence has an air of mystery, a craft trick that helps explain why adverbial clauses aren't marked for death. 

The adverbial clause has a near-identical twin, the adjectival clause. Those buggers play the same modifying role except they attach to nouns and pronouns. One could argue that the "when" in Holmes' quote above describes the elimination resulting in--modifying--the noun "whatever." It doesn't, by strict grammar. "When" indicates the time of the end action "remains." But that's the sort of thing strict grammarians fight about, not readers enjoying the richness of a layered sentence. 

Which is the point, to write something that people enjoy reading. So, kill those fluff adverbs. Don't tell the Lollys, but my last round of manuscript edits includes scrubbing for excess adverbs. Many don't survive. 

Still, let's not get lost in the blood-letting. Not all adverbs are one-word menaces. Some are complex ideas that imbue critical elements of conflict, time, and character. If you look closely, you might find those adverbs everywhere, hiding in plain sight, making writing worth reading.