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 Century Madison Avenue. And I’m not sure it’s even true.

After all, if this is my 200th column, and each column has measured around a thousand words, then I’ve written 200 pictures worth of columns – or 20 pictures if you use the larger figure. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t add up. Maybe because, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s about ads and not about adding.

But pictures are still worth something. As long as I can remember, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine has run a “Mysterious Photograph” feature in which readers are challenged to write a mystery story – in 250 words or less – based on the photograph provided. Note: it’s not a thousand words or ten thousand words. Rather, 250 words or less. Maybe AHMM is only supplying a quarter of a photograph.

Ah, words and pictures.

I have long admired Jack Finney (whose story “Widow’s Walk” appeared in the July 1947 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine). His stories are fun, fresh, and thrilling. His The Body Snatchers is well worth reading, and has a completely different tone than any of the three movies that have been based on it. If you think about it in terms of film adaptations, Body Snatchers is a book that has been worth three feature-length pictures. (Incidentally, if you’re serious about reading the book, I’d try to track down the original 1955 version rather than the revised 1978 version. Finney himself did the revision, but I think the book suffered from it.)

Getting back to pictures, Finney started out as an advertizing man. A lot of our favorites (Ed Hoch, Mary Higgins Clark, Darrin Stephens) got their starts that way. It was apropos that Finney cast the hero of Time and Again as a sketch artist for an advertizing firm. That novel is the first that I’m aware of to use historical photographs and newspaper sketches to illustrate book length work of adult fiction. And he did it rather well.

(Any readers who haven’t read Finney, I suggest that you close this webpage posthaste, switch off your computer, and run to the nearest bookstore. Any of his books are worth reading. In addition to Time and Again and Body Snatchers, I’d direct you to any of his collectons, such as About Time and Three By Finney).

This week I’m reading a new novel – so new that isn’t due to be published until this summer – that takes Finney’s process and more-or-less flips it over. Ransom Riggs, whom I first encountered when I reviewed his The Sherlock Holmes Handbook for The Strand Magazine a year or so back, is a collector of snapshots. He picks them up a swap meets and antique shops, and rarely knows the real story behind them. But he’s able to weave some fascinating original tales (a la Hitchcock’s “Mysterious Photograph”). This new novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, uses a stack of strange photos as a jumping off point for the adventure of a teen-age American kid traveling to a Welsh island to discover the mystery of his grandfather’s past. The book is intriguing, and has certain other similarities to Jack Finney’s work that I’d rather not write about lest I spoil anything. Be on the lookout.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the next two hundred Bandersnatches to be as invigorating as the first two hundred have been. Here’s looking at you.