TALK TO ME by Deborah Elliott-Upton slang—n. Nonstandard vocabulary consisting typically of arbitrary and often ephemeral coinages and figures of speech. — Webster’s New Dictionary Words and their meanings—whether the “respectable” ones we learned in school or the “other” ones we learned in schoolyards—are a part of our life and shape our generation. Slang changes […]

NO EXCAPE by Rob Lopresti You are, it goes without saying, a wonderful person. Nice, reasonable, easy-going, and a general pleasure to be around. So why is it, that every once in a while, you will be in a conversation and find yourself losing your temper, biting your tongue, wanting to shout . . . […]

WHEN HOLLYWOOD GETS IT RIGHT by Melodie Johnson Howe I saw a trailer on TV about the remaking of Mildred Pierce to be released in spring as a five part mini-series on HBO. My heart sank, my stomach dropped, my chest tightened, my lips drew back, my heart, even though it had already sunk, now […]

COMPOST by Janice Law It’s been a hard winter here in the northeast, with a good four feet of snow on the ground for several weeks. Though we are getting more this morning, the stone walls have emerged, along with the various shrubs, the roses, and the compost pile. These welcome signs of eventual spring […]

CRACKERS by Leigh Lundin The British series Cracker aired from 1993 to 1996, with a two-hour special in 2006. Robbie Coltrane starred as Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, a character based upon criminal psychologist Paul Britton, a star in his own right in the ‘Met’, the Metropolitan Police we know and love as Scotland Yard. Unfortunately, Mr. […]

NOW AVAILABLE IN TWO FLAVORS by John M. Floyd If there’s one question about writing that seems to come up over and over again at meetings and blogs and conferences, it’s this one: what’s the difference between genre fiction and so-called “literary” fiction? We’ve wrestled with it several times here at Criminal Brief too, but […]

WORDS AND PICTURES by Steven Steinbock Welcome to my Two-Hundredth column on Criminal Brief. They say picture is worth a thousand words. Or maybe it’s ten-thousand words. Or so they say. Says who? According to one source, the ancient adage is Japanese in origin. According to another, it’s Chinese. Then again, it’s probably early 20th […]