INSPECT YOUR GADGETS by John M. Floyd Here’s a piece of advice we’re often given, as writers: to succeed in fiction, what you write must be different. If you want a readership—or even if you just want to get one story published—you’d better come up with something more than the same-old same-old. On the other [...]

I live in Los Angeles, but my father lives in San Antonio. The other day, I got a phone call from him—he’d been cleaning out a closet in his home and come across a box full of comic books. I had bought them back in the 1970s, and he wanted to know if I wanted [...]

EDITOR! EDITOR! by James Lincoln Warren I am fond of claiming that a writer without an editor is like a criminal defendant without a defense attorney. If you don’t have one, you’re probably going down. And along the same lines, the writer who steadfastly insists on being the sole editor of his own work has [...]

RUM-TITTY-TITTY-TUM-TAH-TEE by James Lincoln Warren It has happened to every one of us. It’s one of those common experiences that unites all of humanity in universal experience. It probably has some deep neurological foundation, and might provide profound insight into the very nature of consciousness. If only it weren’t so damn irritating. I’m referring to [...]

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN by James Lincoln Warren “Brevity,” ironically quoth Polonius (Hamlet, Act I scene ii), perhaps the most voluble windbag in all of literature, “is the soul of wit.” And as this website is called Criminal Brief, the Gentle Reader may excuse me for being uncharacteristically succinct this week. A lot of advice [...]

FOR LOVE OR MONEY by James Lincoln Warren Sometimes I have a taxonomic brain. There are all kinds of ways to classify fiction, and I think I use them all. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it is very tidy. Some time ago, I wrote a column on common crime fiction subgenres, wherein I [...]

THE SEVEN PER CENT SOLUTION by James Lincoln Warren Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon [...]