FOUR PLAY

by James Lincoln Warren, Janice Law, Melodie Johnson Howe, Rob Lopresti, Deborah Elliott-Upton, Steve Steinbock, John M. Floyd, and Leigh Lundin

Stop the presses, put on your dancing shoes, and pop the cork on that bottle of champagne. Today marks the fourth anniversary of Criminal Brief: The Mystery Short Story Web Log Project. We have much to celebrate.

Two things are especially worthy of revelry. First, we welcomed the incomparable Melodie Johnson Howe back into our ranks after a long hiatus. Secondly, we embraced the astonishingly erudite and accomplished Janice Law into the fold. CB has never been better, and these two truly raise the bar. Three cheers!

But as in every joyous commemorative gathering, things would not be complete without a round of toasts. Last year, as the Gentle Reader may recall, each of us selected two columns from the entire collected corpus of CB columns to celebrate the particular breadth and depth of the blog, one by ourselves and one by another regular contributor. This year, we’re doing something similar: each one of us was asked to pick his or her favorite from his own oeuvre and a second Greatest Hit from one of the others, but the selections were limited to the past twelvemonth’s posts. You may think that we had some competition in picking columns from each other’s contributions, but in fact we all so admire each other that it was easy to ensure everybody was represented. Leigh and Steve cheated a little bit by picking more than one favorite by themselves, but as I was in a characteristically avuncular mood when they submitted them, and especially because I know only too well how difficult it is to choose among one’s brainchildren, I have let them stand. Consider it an embarrassment of riches.

As before, I will kick things off and we’ll go in order of our rotation.

JLW

As with last year, I can’t really claim that I favor any one of my offerings above the others—although I confess there are some that I look upon as being problem children. But as anniversary celebrations are of necessity times of refection, I direct the Gentle Reader’s attention to “Editor! Editor!”, since it gives a little history and a look under the hood at my primary function on Criminal Brief.

Speaking of editing, during our selection process for this particular column, I went first—not because of editorial privilege (which I guard with my life), but because I am selfish and an intellectual bully, and didn’t want anybody else to grab the girl I wanted for myself. I’ve been an admirer of Janice Law’s for years and years, and when she wrote and asked if I would pretty please consider her for a guest column, you could have knocked me over with that puff of air the machine hits your eye with when you’re being examined for glaucoma or cataracts or whatever it is when you visit the optometrist. Guest column, ha! I roped her in as a regular as fast as I could whip out my lasso.

I trust the Gentle Reader has perceived how skillfully I avoided using that tired old cliché, “with a feather” just now. What? You think I went over the top? Funny you should say that, because the column I chose was Janice’s “Amazing! Brilliant! Absolutely Perfect!”, which addressed a phenomenon near to my heart, the proliferation of empty hyperbole, and is certainly the greatest, most important, and significant blog column ever written in the history of the Universe since the Bible.

Janice Law

I have embarrassingly few columns to pick from, but one I enjoyed when it came into print was “Just the Right Amount of Reality.” This was not so much because of my brilliant, insightful prose as because of the wonderful illustration James found. And like Deborah’s column on slang (see below), the picture of what appears to be Queen Elizabeth II holding a large and lethal pistol has suggested some amusing literary developments: Grannies with Glocks, robbers in Queen Elizabeth masks, or the lethal matriarch of some criminal clan. Alan Bennett put the queen into library stacks, book stores, and mobile book vans in The Uncommon Reader. Could we take her a little further afield to housebreaking or Bond territory? Fun to imagine.

Just as some paintings make you want to pick up a brush, so some columns, like Deborah’s “What You Say?” of March 24th, make you want to hit the keyboard. And though I only rarely write historical pieces, her compendium of racy slang makes me think that a little something set in the twenties, when I could set characters looking like the bees knees in their glad rags off on the lam would be a lot of fun. The 30s beckon, too. I can see a few nice lines of dialogue along the lines of, “He was passing sour dough so we drilled him and put him in a Chicago overcoat.” Or moving up to the 50s, “An ankle biter interrupted a session of backseat bingo, which got me so frosted I had to buy another tube steak.” This stuff is irresistible—real whoopee for writers!

Melodie Johnson Howe

Choosing one of my own columns became an almost impossible task since I wanted to rewrite all of them. I managed to settle on “Macmelodie”. It isn’t one of my best, but I like it because I used humor to capture a woman out of her element, a marriage, and a writer beginning again.

I chose James because he is a particularly good purveyor of the art of our craft. He knows his stuff. He is also a man who takes his responsibilities seriously. His knowledge and his integrity are on full display in “The Code of the Warrens.” Written succinctly and simply, his column should be read by every new writer and as a reminder for every pro. Another reason I picked this column is the photo. James looks wonderfully silly, even endearing, with his top hat resting on his ears.

Robert Lopresti

“Nice Catch” by Rob Lopresti

I guess it’s the librarian in me, but I love pointing out interesting reference books. This was about The Oxford Dictionary of Catchphrases. What I love about catchphrases is their poetry-like compressing of ideas/moods/meanings into a few words. In the comments on the blog Terrie steered us to a wonderful page of misquotations, which would be worth a blog entry or two of their own.

“Drove my Chevy to the Levee but the Levee was Dry” by John Floyd

John is our blog’s listmaker-in chief. How can I resist this one, about story songs? He says he prefers instrumentals . . . “But these songs made me pay attention to the words. A good tune and a good storyline; what more could a listener ask?” Hear Hear! And a lot more great songs mentioned in the comments as well. How did everyone miss “Pancho and Lefty” (Townes Van Zandt), “And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (Eric Bogle), and “Ballad of Dan Moody (Roving Cowboy)” (Michael Smith)?

Deborah Elliott-Upton

Anniversaries are always a time of reflection. My stint with Criminal Brief brings only good memories amid reminders of certain columns requiring extra research time. “Who’s a Nimrod?,” my March 10th inclusion, was a joy to research and write. I was happy to incorporate history, writing and fun into one article. I hope you liked it, too. (I think the video caught a lot of attention from those who don’t care so much about history, but that’s okay. Marketing is marketing.)

One of my favorite columns this year was from Leigh Lundin (pronounced Lun-deen instead of like the city). Leigh is always on top of the news in the writing world, crimes and mysteries involving the two. Leigh is a watchdog that keeps us on our toes. His January 23 article, “Literary News” was one of those that I particularly enjoyed. I love the story of the mysterious visitor leaving gifts at Poe’s grave, tips shared from several writers and controversy concerning censorship of Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn. Leigh’s always a great read!

Steve Steinbock

Although my favorite of the past year’s Bandersnatches was “Leaves from the Queen’s Notebooks” (surveying some old issues of EQMM), I have to list “ Why Do We Read Mysteries?” It’s about as good a manifesto for detective fiction as I’ve come across, and anytime I’m able to relevantly invoke “The Wizard of Oz” is a good thing.

The task of choosing just one of Robert Lopresti’s columns as my favorite from the past year was almost my undoing. So many of his columns held both quality and interest. There was his September 1, 2010 column about the relativism of time. There were his November 3, 2010 recollections of our gathering at Bouchercon. And there was the deeply personal and rightfully proud column about his daughter Susan’s Ph.D (March 9, 2011). But ultimately I settled on “Chat Room,” from July 28, 2010. Written entirely in dialogue, it was funny, on topic (multiple topics), and like a good song, seemed to encompass all things.

John M. Floyd

My own favorite Criminal Brief column this past year? That’s a tough choice. Some are more fun to research and write than others, though, and I suppose the column I most enjoyed creating was “If You Don’t Know Your Burro From a Burrow”. Quirky facts and rules about language are not only interesting to me, they’re helpful too, now and then—and I need all the help I can get.

As for my favorite column by a fellow CBer, that’s even harder, since I enjoy reading my colleagues’ pieces much more than I enjoy reading my own. The one I’ve picked is Melodie Johnson Howe’s “When Hollywood Gets It Right”. I love movies and I love Melodie’s writing style, so her “insider” observations about the film industry are always fun for me, and in this one she provided some interesting opinions about movies and novels. (I also happened to agree with them.)

Leigh Lundin

Research takes a lot of work, which I can’t deny I enjoy, epitomized by, say, “WikiLicks,” my WikiLeaks article. The crime story that touched me most received only one comment, but I trust that “Virginia, Virginia,” about Virginia Christian’s century-old case, affected readers as much as it did me.

Steve Steinbock’s articles tend to be nearly as peripatetic as my own. Of all our colleagues literary suggestions, I tend to follow up more of Steve’s reading list, perhaps because of my enjoyment of traditional and classical mysteries. However, in June, Steve wrote about speed-reading or the lack thereof in “Read My Lips,” which spoke to me.

I used to have a superpower. Throughout middle and high school, I could burn through an adult novel in less than two hours. I never knew what my kryptonite was, but halfway through college I lost the ability. As Steve wrote, I learned to slow down and savor. That’s a good trade off. Best of all, reader Yasheve left a comment that’s hard to top:

“Blogs are stupid. But I happen to love this one, and the only blog I read regularly is a joy to read for the very reasons listed in this post. It’s a turn-on to read words strung together so beautifully they roll right off the tongue (if you read aloud) or create a symphony in the brain (if you read silently).”

And in conclusion . . .

There you have it. Bottoms up!