TAKING IT PERSONALLY

by Rob Lopresti

A few months ago I had to work on the weekend. Not such a tragedy, but it was a rare thing in Bellingham: a May Saturday that was warm and sunny. (Old joke: In Washington state what do they call the day after two days of rain? Monday.)

No problem. I spent the morning at the farmer’s market downtown and then rode my bike up to the university. I long ago realized that the money I save by not paying to park a car on campus allows me to buy a nice bicycle every few years.

However, the operative part of downtown is down and the university is on a hill. So I parked on the edge of campus and took the elevator in the Student Union up six floors to get to the main level.

A few hours later I came down and the bike rack was empty. No bike. Not even a scrap where the lock had been presumably cut.

A stinking annoyance, for sure, but again, not such a tragedy. When I checked the records I discovered that my bike was more than six years old. Definitely time to replace it anyway.

But suddenly, it’s not quite so easy to write funny stuff about crime.

There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Maybe a noir writer is a cozy writer who had the same experience?

Garfield Gets Mad

Many years ago Brian Garfield parked his convertible in New York City and came back to discover that the roof had been slashed and a coat stolen. Now, as it happened, the coat was worthless and the roof was worn out and ready to be replaced.

But here is Garfield’s reaction as he described it in the wonderful book I, Witness:

“I knew the vandal had done us no real harm. At worst we’d have a chilly drive home.

“Yet my first response to the discovery of this mindless violence was swift and stark. No need here for an essay on the American and his car; by intimate extension this act of savagery had been committed against me. ‘I’ll kill the son of a bitch.'”

From this moment of blind rage Garfield built the bestselling novel Death Wish. His protagonist has a better reason for his fury, and he acts on it. And that, generally, is how mystery writers deal with this kind of thing. When life hands you lemons, write about lemonade.

The Library Thief

A year ago some person with a hideously deformed growth where his conscience should be vandalized our library and stole some material he probably hoped to sell. The rage I felt over that was not as homicidal as Garfield’s, but it wasn’t pretty.

But it still wasn’t a tragedy, right?

Oh, by the way …

Within twenty-four hours of the theft of my bicycle, and about a block away, a young man was killed by a hit and run driver. The alleged driver had allegedly spent the evening in four different bars.

Perspective isn’t everything, but it helps.