WEEKDAY UPDATE

by James Lincoln Warren

In the last few months, I’ve promised to keep the Gentle Reader informed regarding my progress in a few ventures, not because I think that any of you are particularly obsessed with my life, but because the progress of those ventures may be of some small assistance to others contemplating the same sorts of things.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite scenes in the film version of From Russia with Love: Bond has just trussed up Benz (Peter Bayliss), a Bulgarian agent, in a train compartment on the Orient Express and left him under the watchful eye of Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendáriz), the British Secret Service’s man in Istanbul. The Bulgarian sits on the floor, bound and gagged, his eyes wide with apprehension.

Lighting up a cigar, Kerim Bey says, “I’ve had a particularly fascinating life. Would you like to hear about it?”

Benz grunts, obviously unwilling to be forced to listen to Kerim Bey brag, to which Kerim Bey replies with delight, “You would?”

The Kid of Kindle

Yesterday, Leigh asked me how my “experiment” in selling my short stories as Kindle downloads was going. My reply was, “I wouldn’t call it an experiment. I would call it putting my short stories up on Amazon for sale as Kindle downloadables. There have been a few sales but not many.”

But it was a fair question. As far as I can tell, only three of my stories have been sold, and then only once each, and two of them to the same person. Today I put up another, “Shanghaied”, which the Gentle Reader may recall was selected by Otto Penzler as one of the “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009” in The Best American Mystery Stories 2010, which he co-edited with Lee Child. At Otto’s famous post-Edgar party this year, he told me again how much he had loved that story and that if it had been strictly up to him, it would have made the cut into the anthology. I thought that was very gracious of Otto.

I thought that perhaps the burgeoning market in eReaders might be a windfall for us writers of short fiction. My unspectacular success thus far should not be taken as evidence that I was wrong. In the first place, I haven’t yet bothered to format my stories for any other platform than Amazon’s Kindle, and I think that’s a necessary step. In the second place, and far more importantly, I have done exactly nothing in the arena of marketing the Kindle versions except mention that they were available during my panel at Malice Domestic this year and mention it here on Criminal Brief—but that panel wasn’t about me at all, because I was the moderator, and bringing up the matter on CB is truly preaching to the choir. So obviously, I need some sort of publicity plan.

If that fails, assuming I get around to it, it still doesn’t mean that I’m wrong about the future of short stories on eReaders. It only will mean that people aren’t that interested in my short stories.

Black Orchid

Last November, I told the Gentle Reader that I was embarking on an entry for the Black Orchid Novella Award competition in a column titled “The International Herald-Tribute”. I hinted that I was working on a female version of Nero Wolfe set in Los Angeles. Now, this idea was hardly original with me: our own Melodie Johnson Howe wrote two novels based on the exact same premise, The Mother Shadow and Beauty Dies, featuring Claire Conrad (Wolfe) and Maggie Hill (Archie), the former of which books was nominated for an Edgar. But I was confident enough that our styles and brains were significantly different enough that my story wouldn’t come across as imitating Melodie’s.

Well, I was right about that, but not necessarily in a good way. I found I had real trouble finding my Archie-substitute’s voice, especially because she was young and female and I’m middle-aged and male. I wrote about those struggles in a column called “Hearing Voices”. Several months later, after consulting both Melodie and my friend Nora McFarland on finding my inner girl, I had something of a breakthrough, which I described in “Little Things”.

It still took me a good while to finish the story, but a couple weeks before the submission deadline, it was in good enough shape to send to readers for vetting. This is my custom: I do not belong to a writers’ group, but when I’ve got something close enough to the finish line, I will send it to several readers whose opinions I respect for feedback. For me the key is if any two of the vetting readers point out the same thing wrong, but I also find that I get excellent advice on things I may have missed or miscalculated.

So I sent the completed draft to Rob, Steve, Melodie, John, and Nora. Interestingly, to me at at least, none of them had the same criticisms and all of them offered one or more subtle means to improve the story (except for Melodie, who had already given me some invaluable advice). (The not-so-subtle ones I really did not have time or space to address, alas.) After getting their comments and making whatever changes were needed, I then showed the typescript to my wife Margaret, who is at once my best and most thorough critic. When all she did was change one sentence and correct a few typos, I knew the story was ready and off it went in the mail.

The most gratifying thing to me is that all three women who read the story gave their stamp of approval to Erica, my female Archie Goodwin character, and every one of them told me how appealing they found her. Music to my masculine ears.

L.A. Noire

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the video game “L.A. Noire”, which occasioned my purchase of a Sony PlayStation 3 console.

Margaret and I played the game together, taking turns with the controller. I am pleased to announce that my driving and marksmanship have improved dramatically, although I’m still nowhere near on par with my nephews.

We have finished playing the game, but not playing with the game. The gameplay is divided into five stages: Patrol, Traffic, Homicide, Vice, and Arson. After you complete each stage, there is a feature called the “Cases” menu, which allows you to revisit particular game scenarios, accessible in folders respectively labelled to each stage. After you have finished the entire game, though, a new scenario is added to each one of the folders: “The Streets of L.A. (Free Roam)”, which enables you to drive around and do all the extras without worrying about the plot. This includes answering emergency dispatch calls, finding rare automobiles to drive around in (and some of these are ultra-cool, especially to people like me who really love old cars like Cords and Deusenbergs and the like), and collecting golden movie reels. So we probably have several weeks of fun to go.

But a word about the game’s plot: it’s very well done, and culminates in a perfect ending that is completely true to the genre.

And that’s all the news from the desert to the sea to all of Southern California (that being the famous opening line of the late Los Angeles pioneer TV anchorman, Jerry Dunphy.)

CASEY ANTHONY TRIAL

Caylee Anthony

by Leigh Lundin

Three years ago this month, a devastating drama began in Orlando now playing out in local court. I pay scant attention to local news, but details stick in my mind from the early days of a family residing at the ironically named Hopespring Drive:

• Caylee, a missing toddler
• Casey, a distraught mother
• Cindy and George, distraught grandparents

George Anthony attacked

By late summer, network news trucks crowded the neighborhood at Hopespring Drive as attention– and suspicion– focused on the family. Local toughs literally stoned George Anthony, grandfather of the missing girl, and dragged him into the street for a beating. Cindy strove to maintain as much dignity as possible with cameras jammed in her face. Their older child and problem solver Lee Anthony organized volunteer efforts, searches, and media events.

Casey Anthony landed in jail, initially suspected, then accused, and eventually indicted for murdering her tiny daughter. Last week began her murder trial.

Other than criticizing the eighty-some ‘psychics‘ who misdirected search efforts, I haven’t commented on the case, though it’s dominated local news for 35 months. Miss Anthony requires a fair trial and I am sorely disappointed by lawyers hired by local television stations as their experts, blithely condemning the accused before hearing the evidence, instructing audiences what we should think. Shouldn’t televised attorneys teach the public to withhold judgment until all the evidence is in?

Cindy Anthony
George Anthony

The Science of Air and Hair

Many years ago, Judge Belvin Perry and Prosecutor Jeff Ashton took part in the nation’s first use of DNA in court, setting a landmark case. Judge Perry has shown he favors scientific evidence and it’s likely this hearing will establish new ground in scientific evidence testing, specifically air analysis and hair analysis.

Hair root death banding has been noted by researchers at the Body Farm. The idea is that hair roots show dark bands as body tissue decays. It seems likely Judge Perry will allow this evidence.

Air samples were drawn from the trunk of the Anthony’s Pontiac Sunbird, although the Anthonys opened the car’s windows and trunk to air out a terrible stench. Crime scene investigators closed the trunk and took air samples, which they sent off to University of Tennessee‘s Oak Ridge Laboratory and their famous Body Farm. Even though human body decomposition shares certain emissions with gasoline, human putrefaction contains a number of unique factors, which the prosecution wishes to demonstrate.

Investigation and Trial

Yuri Melich

Orange County detectives and crime scene investigators garnered the respect of residents (setting aside early reliance on ‘psychics‘). One detective prompted followers to coin WWYMD, meaning "What would Yuri Melich do?" Corporal Melich, sometimes called Dick Tracy Orlando, was among the first detectives who took– and took apart– Casey Anthony’s story.

Seeing George Anthony testify was difficult but watching Cindy Anthony on the stand was excruciating. They lost their tiny granddaughter and if the state has its way, they could lose their daughter. It’s sad and amazing how well the Anthonys managed to hold up, fighting back tears and pain in the glare of worldwide broadcast television.

grandmother
Caylee
mother and daughter

Local sentiment has been harsh, demanding how a registered nurse and a retired homicide detective couldn’t have known. Armchair experts insist a 22-year-old girl couldn’t kill and discard her child, therefore it must have been the father or brother or unspecified boyfriend.

I think a tiny sliver of the grandparents’ subconscious minds did know, the part that made Cindy Anthony say on her 911 call that the car smelled like a "dead body". But I also think the human brain has a remarkable ability to push back the horror your daughter may have murdered your granddaughter until dawning realization can no longer be denied.

Death Certified

With 400 condemned on death row, Florida is an extremely aggressive death penalty state, a state that will even execute for drug trafficking. In our factory-like system of capital punishment, some felony court judges annually handle more homicide trials than entire states, more than many nations. Until recently, hectic time frames required filing certain appeals in as little as seven days. Such rush-to-judgment procedures brought Florida into second place behind Texas in the race to execute.

Recent DNA exonerations brought pressure to bear on Florida to remove sloppiness from the system, and to its credit, Florida has done that. It comes too late to rein in, say Governor Bob Martinez as he hurried to execute Willie Darden, a likely innocent man. When the governor learned people nationwide, even worldwide, believed (a) the trial was racially unfair and (b) Darden was probably innocent due to unheard witnesses, Martinez infamously replied, "I could care less."

On their web sites, letterheads, and business cards, our attorneys brag if they are ‘death certified‘, meaning the Florida Court certifies qualifications to handle capital cases. Defense lead José Baez, a rookie attorney hired the second day of Casey Anthony’s incarceration, is not death certified. This is one of the reasons he brought in more experienced attorneys seen at the defense table.

Casey Anthony

Like a Rug

One aspect that has been proven, even admitted by the accused, is that the defendant is extraordinarily talented at lying, once bragging "I’m such a good liar." She extemporaneously invents imaginary names, events, extensive histories, and complex relationships, and the girl remembers them months and years later.

Psychologically, it’s fascinating like studying an elusive virus under the microscope. Detectives describe her as ‘credible’ and ‘convincing’ and I have to agree. With a couple of exceptions, I find it nigh impossible to tell she’s lying and I already know the answers. (On the other hand, I’ve learned I can’t get away with lying without everyone realizing it, so it’s better I keep my mouth shut.)

If the live rolling blogs are anything to go by, women may be less gullible than males. There’s a lot of "She’s lying. You can tell the bitch is lying." But now, of course, we have the benefit of hindsight.

Documentation

time line

Check out our time line and other articles below:

• Criminal Brief timeline of the Anthony case
• articles • daily collection
• documents • audio/video
• live web casts of trial
• Investigation Discovery articles

© photo credits: original publisher as identified by links

POLICE STORY

by John M. Floyd

Now and then I re-watch—or discover, if I’m fortunate—a movie that is both entertaining to me as a crime-fiction fan and instructive to me as a crime-fiction writer. I’ve done columns on a few of them over the past year or so. One was Double Indemnity, another was Blood Simple.

A movie that I saw last week for the third time—L.A. Confidential (1997)—reminds me of those two, but is different in many ways. For one thing, it’s categorized as film noir, but rather than having the action take place almost entirely after dark, or in rooms so dimly lit it might as well be, this movie was blazing with color. Except for a few scenes, one of which is a final nighttime shootout at an abandoned motel, LAC spends most of its time in the sunlit and not-yet-congested grandeur of Southern California in the early 1950s.

A great story, period

Be aware, it wasn’t filmed in the fifties; it was set in the fifties. And the fact that it’s a period piece is one of the reasons it nearly didn’t get made at all. It’s my understanding that Hollywood studios in the 1990s were reluctant to shoot a movie set in the forties or fifties, for three reasons: they’d been done too often, they were expensive, and they were rarely successful. But somehow the project sold, and when you watch it you will believe you’ve been transported to the Los Angeles of sixty years ago.

I did notice, though, that the period setting wasn’t overdone (as it sometimes is). It supplied the necessary mood and authenticity, but—thanks to the director, who said he made a conscious effort in this area—the surroundings were never allowed to intrude and take away from the really important things: plot, characters, and emotions.

Confidential observations

Another plus was that the director and producers chose relatively unknown actors for the two lead roles. In truth, this was probably done more for budget reasons than anything else, but director Curtis Hanson has said that casting Australian newcomers Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce kept audiences from forming opinions about the characters too early in the movie. Hanson said he wanted viewers to instead “discover” them as if they were reading the novel. That was a wise approach. In the theatre, viewers didn’t know at first whether to like these people or not, and were also unsure whether they would live or die or turn out good or bad. I can’t tell you much more about LAPD cops Bud White (Crowe) and Ed Exley (Pearce) without giving away plot secrets, but the two of them were the driving force behind the movie.

Some of the rest of the cast were better known at that time—Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito, James Cromwell—but even so, there was no superstar in the group, and that probably helped as well. Audiences could allow themselves to be swept along in the story without feeling that the whole thing might be no more than a vehicle for established stars. If you see a lot of movies I think you know what I mean. The same thing happened—and worked—with Reservoir Dogs, Body Heat, Miller’s Crossing, The Usual Suspects, and others.

Character building

The plot is probably too complicated to describe here, but I assure you this was a story that kept me interested throughout, and the characters were well-written and well-played. The smooth and sleazy tabloid editor; the millionaire “manager” of a group of celebrity-lookalike hookers; the corrupt policemen who have blurred the line between right and wrong so often they don’t remember where it is anymore; the slick detective who rubs shoulders with the rich and famous and has—as a result—lost his soul; the smart, ambitious straight-arrow who comes to understand that justice doesn’t always go by the book; the reckless, tough-as-nails cop with a soft heart and a secret in his past; and the glamorous woman who’s used by almost all of them, and yet is probably the only person in the movie who truly understands who she is and what she believes in. And every single character (at least those who survived until the final credits) learned life-changing lessons from the events he or she experienced.

A quick word about the movie version as compared to the book: less than half of James Ellroy’s novel wound up making it to the screen. But what’s there, and what was added to it, is outstanding. LAC was nominated for nine Oscars (including Best Picture) and won two, one of which was for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Memorable moments

As with almost all movies that I really like, a few quotes and at least one scene stand out in my mind. The line I most remember was spoken by police captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), while watching Officer White roar off in a blind rage after finding out he’d been betrayed by the woman he loves and Lieutenant Exley. The captain thoughtfully said to a colleague: “I wouldn’t trade places with Edmund Exley right now for all the whiskey in Ireland.” And the scene that I recall most is one with Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Captain Smith in Smith’s kitchen, about two-thirds of the way through the film. If you’ve seen the movie you’ll remember that scene, and if you haven’t seen it I promise you’ll remember it after you do. It was one of those stunning surprises that turns everything upside down, like Janet Leigh’s shower in Psycho.

To Pearce a Crowe?

I love to talk about movies, and I learned long ago never to assure anyone that he or she will enjoy or hate any particular film. But I’ll stick my neck out at least this far: if you’re reading this blog, you probably like mystery/crime fiction, and if you like mystery/crime fiction you’ll almost certainly like L.A. Confidential. It might not kill any mockingbirds or silence any lambs (those would be hard to top), but I think you’ll find it worthwhile.

As for me, I might just watch it a fourth time.

YOUR CHOICE

by Steven Steinbock

She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed (who paradoxically refers to herself on this forum as Steve’s Wench) stared at the stack of old review books on the kitchen counter. It had gotten so high that in a process of literary mitosis had become two stacks before her very eyes.

“Hon,” she said. (That’s “hon” which is short for “honey” – and not “The Hon” that one might find in a Wodehouse novel which is short for “The Honorable.” But as I was saying. . .)

“Hon,” she said. “Can I bring any of these in to my receptionist?”

“Sure,” I said. “What kind of book does she like?”

“Everything. She says she’ll read anything.”

Anything and everything is a tall order, even taller than the book piles on my counter. But I picked through, and found a dozen that looked like they might appeal to an effervescent hospital administrator.

She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed returned home after the next day of work and said, “Now I need some for my nurse.”

“Sure,” I said. “What kind of book does she like?”

“Thrillers, I think. Or maybe Suspense. I think she likes supernatural suspense. Or maybe its supernatural thrillers. But not medical thrillers. I wonder if medical suspense would be okay. She might like cosies.”

I complied.

People are often asking me to recommend authors. When I ask who they like, the most common answer is, “I don’t know.” Even when I ask if they prefer cozy or hard-boiled stories, they look at me blankly as though I’m speaking Phoenician. Then they brighten up and say, “I watch CSI.”

All this got me thinking: Is there some kind of test that can be administered to potential readers that would reveal exactly what kind of book they would most enjoy? Just a set of simple questions, like a Briggs-Myers Personality Survey except for book genres. Of course not. The idea was ludicrous.

But I kept thinking about it just the same.

Then one night I was watching “Fairly Legal,” a cute TV series about a cute legal mediator (Kate) who still occasionally sleeps with her cute almost-ex-husband. There’s not much to the show, but it’s . . . cute. Anyhow, in this particular episode, Kate’s almost-ex asks Kate’s assistant Leonardo for advice about what to get her for their anniversary. “When we were together, we agreed there would be no anniversary presents,” he tells Leonardo. Or something to that effect. “But now that we’re getting a divorce, I’m no longer bound by that rule. So what would be the perfect gift?”

Leonardo provides the almost-ex-husband with a series of four questions to ask Kate. The first two questions are:

Godzilla, Mothra, King Kong, if you had to pick one, first instinct, no wrong answer.

Heat lamp, electric blanket, or thermal underwear.

We never hear the other two questions, but the answers Kate gives are “Corderoy” and “Plutonium.”

From Kate’s answers, Leonardo is able to deduce the perfect gift for her. (He tells the almost-ex-husband that the perfect gift is an iPad, but the actual perfect gift is a boat toaster—a non-electric bread-toaster to use on her yacht. Leonardo keeps the iPad for himself as payment for services.)

So I started to wonder, maybe there’s something to be learned here about perfect subgenres. What questions would I ask? Here’s my first attempt:

Bourbon, Guinness, or Port?

Fedora, beret, or wedding veil?

Used book store, golf course, or strip-club?

Letter opener, curare, or Glock?

What do you think? Could this work? Is there a place in the world for a “Frumious Bandersnatch Subgenre Selection Test”? What other questions (or trinary choices) would you include?

MYSTERY TRIP

Deborah Elliott-Upton

When we were kids, my parents often took us on Sunday drives. Back then no one worried about the cost of gasoline much and just driving around, cruising the city or countryside was a rather nice pastime. Dad enjoyed picking a different child each Sunday to be the “mystery guide.” Whoever won the guest selection would hide their eyes and be filled with anticipation at the adventure we were about to embark. Dad would drive to wherever he wanted, and then announce the guide had to direct us back home. He would turn right or left as we said and most times we made it home in not too long a time. I have a great sense of direction and can only deduce my time playing this game, whether as a participant or an observer (no one was allowed to hint any directions to the guide), led to my being able to find my way home.

As in any good story, the setting and weather also played a part in our game. We played more often in spring and summer and maybe that’s one of the reasons I enjoy those seasons more. Winter’s bad weather kept us inside more often and fall was fraught with being busy with getting back into the school mode, football games, and holiday get-togethers. Our city wasn’t all that large (still isn’t) but when I was a kid, it seemed like endless miles and directions to discover. Twists and turns. Wrong directions taken yet finding our way back on the right track. Wonderful “new to us” places within our town that reeked of history we had not yet learned and fabulous out-of-the-way spots to dine were added incentives to keep playing the game.

I think we stopped playing the game close to when we became teenagers. Gasoline costs were rising and our parents were more occupied with outside interests as we were at coming-of-age points in our life. Maybe our parents thought we’d tired of the Sunday afternoon drives and perhaps we even said that out loud. I think we secretly missed those drives, even if we had grown to an age when we didn’t relish spending all that much time with family and especially our parents.

In hindsight, those drives were one of my favorite childhood memories of our family.

This was when I gravitated toward spending more time alone and reading mysteries. Mickey Spillane became my buddy and Agatha Christie the one I wished I could talk to and ask the questions popping up in my mind. I longed to know someone who could show me the way my life should take. I needed direction, I thought. But, actually, I’d already been taught that I would be able to find my way if only I trusted my gut instinct and not be afraid to take a chance on making a wrong turn now and again.

There’s nothing like finding a good summer mystery to read. Whether lounging at the pool, sinking into a comfy chair, or reading on a plane or in the backseat of a car, there’s nothing like a good book to take you away to somewhere you have not yet been. You’ll find your way home soon enough. For now, enjoy the ride. The excitement is as much in the journey as it is in the destination, and sometimes there are the most delightful surprises along the way.

We have a special treat today. I have written before about James Powell whom I think is one of the best current writers of mystery short stories. A few weeks ago I reviewed his latest story, and that led to an e-chat, and that resulted to this lovely piece. By the way, the story he mentions about the dental student is “The Friends of Hector Jouvet” (in PDF format) and you can read it for free. Enjoy.

—Rob Lopresti

THE SHORT STORY SERIES: SHOULD YOU SAY IT AGAIN, SAM?

by James Powell

When EQMM published “A Dirge for Clowntown” someone at the magazine asked if I planned more Inspector Bozo stories. Surprised by the question I said no, I thought I’d used up all my clown-mime ideas in that one shot. Besides, a story where a clown is murdered by being hit in the face with a poisoned custard pie was a hard act to follow. (By the way don’t forget that Clowntown was also inhabited by mimes, although some clowns didn’t care for them because they wouldn’t give you the time of day, and the rough clown element went in for mime bashing: pretending to punch a mime who then had to pretend he’d been punched and throw himself back against a wall or onto the ground until he hurt himself.)

And in fact although “Dirge” was one of my most popular stories in terms of reprints and reappearances in other forms I wasn’t sure there was space enough for another story within Clowntown’s original borders. It was 20 years later before I returned. I’m not too sure why except that I liked Bozo. We are kindred spirits, he and I. Perhaps it was the image I had of a war between an army of mimes and an army of clowns. This meant I had to get the mimes out of Clowntown by bringing their hereditary ruler Queen Mum back from exile to rally her people around her and found the city of Mimeapolis. Hence “Clowntown Pyjamas.” I’m not sure what inspired “Last Laugh in Floogle Park” but it was expanding the whole idea. I like all three stories. But “Dirge” is my favorite, perhaps because it has a unity and logic that I like. At the moment I have no ideas for another Bozo story, though that of course might change tomorrow.

Here is another way that a series might develop. Forty-five years ago I wrote a story about a Canadian dental student who lost more than he could afford to lose at the casino in Monte Carlo. But I’d only spent an afternoon there several years before and didn’t think I could get the true flavor of the place or my facts straight. (I had an inordinate fear of those pale denizens of the library stacks from hell who emerge, blinking into the daylight to catch innocent writers on questions of fact.) So I decided to invent San Sebastiano, my own Riviera principality. It became my first published story. I didn’t plan it as a series. Canadian dental students wear thin pretty quickly.

A few stories later I returned to San Sebastiano to write about a private detective called Ambrose Ganelon whose ancestors had rid the principality of all serious crime. His great-grandfather was a detective of the armchair sort, his grandfather of a scientific bent, his father of the hard-drinking, two-fisted school. This made my detective of the out-of-work persuasion but not even able to close down the detective agency and find honest work elsewhere because if he did the master criminals of the world would descend on San Sebastiano whose police force, after so many generations of no serious crime, would be unable to cope with them. Again I didn’t mean that story to be part of a series either.

But then I thought it might be fun to write about the Ganelon family. It is very comfortable to write about a country whose history and geography you have invented. By the way, just in case I should make a mistake about where a street is there or a building I have placed a geological fault (St. Felix Fault) across the center of the city so that with a quake or two I can rearrange things if I have to. (Eat your hearts out, pale stack denizens!)

At the moment I am trying something I seldom do, set a Ganelon story somewhere else, in Upper Canada in 1859. I don’t know if I’ll finish the story. I am, of course, a Canadian. But still it has cost me a good amount of time in research which I enjoy but the problem is to know when to stop.

Again, in 1975 I published a short story called “Bianca and the Seven Sleuths,” a take-off on Snow White. No sane person would write a short story with seven detectives in it even if one of them has a day job driving a bread truck which meant they could all travel around at night in his step van. I never wrote another but I liked one of the detectives by the name of Grundig (I won’t tell you which one of the seven dwarfs he was) who called himself Aardvark Investigations so he’d be first in the private detective listing in the phone book. So I’ve gone back to him in another three stories and am trying to finish another.

By the way, while researching the Ganelon story in Upper Canada I discovered this. In Toronto in 1855 occurred what was described as the Clown Riot. An American circus came to town and some of the roustabouts who set up the circus and then performed as clowns during the performances (Talk about multitasking) went to a brothel where they cut in line in front of some members of the Toronto fire brigade. Fistfights ensued and the fire fighters got the worse of it. The next day the fire brigade came and burned down the circus. This looks like a case for Inspector Bozo, a voice inside me says. But then another more authoritative voice said, “No, it does not.”

Maybe I’ll write that story in heaven. But then I remembered a story about Oscar Wilde. He admired a woman’s poetry and told her she should try to get them published. But she was too busy raising a family and doing church work. “Perhaps in heaven,” she said. He shook his head. “There are no publishers in heaven,” he replied.

DRAPED

by Melodie Johnson Howe

In crazed moment I went to Bed Bath and Beyond (I never understood what the Beyond meant. Heaven? Hell? No Returns?) and bought some drapes for my office. I pounced on a wonderful silk stripe that looked like a man’s dressing gown from the 1930s-40s. Perfect!

Now the drapes are hanging across from my desk. And the fabric that looked like something Zachary Scott would wear while fixing himself a highball now appears like something out of the Addams’ Family Book of Interior Decoration. What was I thinking? Every time I look over my monitor there they are. RED, GOLD, GREEN, stripes garishly flaunting themselves at me.

Like editing your own writing, you have to know when you’ve made a mistake, gone off track. But there is always the possibility that it sill might work. My writer friend Kathleen Sharp and I were going for a walk, which means heading for Starbucks and sitting for an hour and a half talking. I had her come into my office to give me her honest opinion on the drapes. She gasped. Not a small sucking in of the breath but a loud inhale tapering off into a moan and ending in gales of laughter.

Finally she said, “Well, the concept is good.”

I know what that means. Your writing sucks. Or in decorator terms: “Take them down and burn them, you tasteless oaf.”

I have taken much criticism in my life and I could handle this. I would take them down and burn them.

That was two weeks ago. The drapes remain beckoning me like a Lothario, who is so slick he’s dripping oil, whispering, “You really mean ‘yes’ when you say ‘no’, Melodie. Let me fix you another highball.”

The drapes make me feel cheap. But they remain. I tell myself I’ll replace them when I find a fabric I reall y like, except I know this swag of a bad boy is slowly seducing me. I can hear my mother’s voice, “He’s not good enough for you. He only wants one thing. He’ll never amount to anything.”

Speaking of mothers, I wrote a play called “The Lady of the House.” It was produced in Los Angeles. Elizabeth, the mother, snaps at her daughter, “Décor is a necessity.” The audience laughed every time the actress said the line. It’s a great feeling to actually hear the response of an audience to what you have written. Especially when they laugh where they are supposed to.

I peer over my monitor and wink at my garish finger-snapping drapes and wonder if I really do mean “yes” when I say “no.”