THE OTHER EDGE

by Robert Lopresti

A few weeks ago I wrote about the only soap opera I enjoyed as a kid, the mystery-oriented show, “The Edge of Night”. Today I want to talk about what the show taught me as a writer-to-be.

First and foremost I learned the essence of storytelling. It isn’t plot. It ain’t character. Ditto for setting, dialog, heightened language. It is simply this: keep the reader/viewer asking: what happens next?

Christie did it with plot; Stout did it with character (or more precisely, the interplay between two characters), Westlake with humor, others with suspense. But what all of them had is the ability to raise that basic human instinct to ask: what happened after that?

That’s why the big climax on the soap always built up on Friday afternoon and made you come back on Monday to find out who the mysterious caller was, whether the kidnap victim escaped, etc. Keep ’em hanging on the hooks as long as you can and they will love you for it.

The joys of evil

When I started looking at the fan-based website for “The Edge of Night” I looked up my favorite character and was amazed to find he had been on for a relatively short period of time. His name was Barrington (if he had a first name I never caught it) and this dapper, bearded man with a raspy voice was my first encounter with a criminal mastermind.

Barrington so enjoyed being nasty that it was a pleasure to watch him at his work, mentally tormenting people. He colors my whole memory of the show so I was surprised to find he lasted less than a year. What a pity it was when one of his victims finally snuffed him.

And from him I learned the valuable lesson: never trust a man with a beard.

Hard to play fair

Another thing that I distinctly remember from watching that show forty-plus years ago was that, at least once, they tried to play fair with a murder mystery. When the killer — a truly minor character — was revealed, they actually did a rare flashback to prove that he had said something months before that gave the detective the vital clue. (In a fit of anger he had revealed knowledge that the victim’s office had a dartboard — ah ha! How had he known that since he had never been there? And more crucially, how in the name of heaven can I remember that when I can’t remember where I put my keys this morning?)

I wonder whether anyone would dare to play fair like that on TV today when anyone obsessive enough to care can rerun every episode on Tivo (or eventually on DVD)? It would be depressing to plan to reveal a big surprise during sweeps week, only to have some over-eager fan announce on a website two months early that Clue X proves that Suspect Y is the killer.

As far as I know the only time someone tried this on prime time was a short-lived TV series called Murder One, which followed a single murder case through an entire season. As it turned out the killer was a minor character (I think he appeared in only one episode before the big finale) and rather than have a carefully investigated clue revealing his identity the heroes found a hidden video of the murder. Sheesh.

Two final notes

I have to repeat a mea culpa that I mentioned in the comments after my first column on this soap opera. I said “The Edge of Night” started on radio but my brother librarian Jon L. Breen caught my mistake. It was created to be a serial like the radio version of “The Adventures of Perry Mason”, but it started on TV. Please correct your scorecards.

Finally I didn’t mention that for many years the show was scripted by a wonderful mystery writer, Henry Slesar, who passed away just a few years ago. If you haven’t read his short stories, look him up.

And now we resume our regularly scheduled programming.