AMAZING! BRILLIANT! ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!

by Janice Law

Short mystery fiction may represent the absolutely last frontier of hype, a lonely headland free from multiple adjectives and dangling participles. Consider novels which in the bad old days were considered good, bad or indifferent, pleasant or stimulating or boring things to read. Now no novel worth an ad is anything less than an experience: shattering, heart breaking, gripping, miraculous. One hesitates to venture beyond the covers.

Well, you say, that’s advertising. So I thought. But a recent switch during my back exercises from CNN, which used to cover news and now covers celebrity, has opened up a new world and informed me that hype has escaped all rational bounds. I refer to the food and home shows.

I always thought of cooking as a functional activity, hard work certainly during canning season when my mother, like other rural women, “put up” a dazzling variety of veggies and fruits during the hottest months of the year. The food was good – she was an excellent cook – but among our friends the highest accolade was that some Scottish treat tasted “just like what you get at home,” home being, of course, the Auld Country. A clean plate said the rest.

Julia Child, one of the originators of the cooking show format, was scarcely more fulsome. She used good ingredients, explained everything clearly, and ended with “bon appetit!” What else was needed?

It turns out, quite a lot. Someone whips up some cream. “It’s amazing!” I doubt that very much. Potatoes get mashed with a bit of garlic and rather more butter than is good for the arteries: “Perfect!” I sense a lower standard than usual. Crabmeat is stirred with an avocado: “This is unbelievable!” Clearly, a person of wild credulity.

And my favorite, usually produced by deserts: “You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted this!” The accolades of current novels begin to look, if anything, on the modest side.

Home shows have opened my eyes still further. The chefs, usually laboring alone in their studio kitchens, have to provide their own blurbs, rather as if writers had to produce a story and then rave about it themselves. The home shows have the invaluable Homeowner, who not only foots the bills but celebrates the results, often nonverbally.

Jumping up and down in excitement is good. This makes the designer du jour feel appreciated. Tears of joy are better, and failing those, hugs for the designer and cries of “Oh, my God” are de rigueur.

Who knew that the secret of happiness lay in granite counters, an expensive and unforgiving product, formerly associated with the gray architecture of Aberdeen and with curling stones? But, yes, their presence almost guarantees cries of ecstasy, while their absence leads to airs and complaints any duchess would admire.

Glass tiles, another tricky installation, are also a bringer of delight. Add in some recessed lighting and some stainless steel and we’ve entered the realm of the mega-adjectives: All Amazing! Brilliant! Absolutely Fabulous!

One can hardly remember that we are talking about a kitchen, here, a functional space where on good days all the appliances work, the clutter is under control, and the health inspector is nowhere in sight.

Thinking it over, how much more deserving of a few plaudits are those who make something out of nothing, spinning yarns for fun and, maybe, profit? I just finished reading the May Alfred Hitchcock, where Robert Lopresti has a story and yours truly does, as well. All the stories are given modest, informative introductions, and the editor assures us they made her chuckle and thinks the reader will enjoy them as well.

It’s low key and I like it, but my Sundays with the New York Times Book Review, my trawl along our library’s new books’ shelf, and afternoons with the home and food channels tell me that the whole genre is seriously behind the times. Short fiction needs to get with the program, and there are plenty of models to steal from. A little story about “a socially inept genius”? “Dazzling and insightful. Heartbreaking!”

A carnival story about the theft of ancient bones? How about “extravagantly witty and smart?” Murder at a therapy group? Maybe not “High Voltage Shocks” but certainly we could go with “A literary miracle.” A law officer troubled by motivation? “Unassuming brilliance” fits the bill, while considering the importance of the telephone in another story, “Sizzling” seems apt.

If we were cook show hosts, we could add these bite sized encomiums as we wrote. Lest anyone miss my clever opening, I could add, “This is brilliant”, perhaps in italics. A good bit of action could carry the tag line “paced faster than a speeding bullet” and some nice dialogue could be dubbed, like that in one recent novel, “strong as steel.”

Now as writers, we would naturally worry about repetition. No worries. It’s repetition that does the job. Keep telling folk the stuff is brilliant, whether it’s countertops, pasta, or plot, and if this catches on, short mystery fiction will have joined the 21st century.

DAY of the GOOD BOOK

by Leigh Lundin

Maundy, Maundy

Today is Easter Sunday when people relax and celebrate one way or another. Scholars may be nearing resolution regarding a discrepancy when the events actually occurred, arguing the date should be fixed on the first Sunday in April. Apparently the problem is that the Gospels (arguably written as much as 50 to 200 years after) relied upon different calendars. It’s all part of a plan to keep the East in Easter.

World Book Day

But yesterday, the 23^rd happened to be World Book and Copyright Day, recognized in Europe but relatively unheard of in North America. The event honors the deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, 23 April 1616, although, trivia lovers, not on the same day! They too used different calendars.

People coming to Criminal Brief read and probably read a lot. Sadly, many of our friends, students, and acquaintances don’t. Don’t let the Americas fall behind other countries. Tell everyone:

Read a good book, damn it!

Little Giant Girl

Life is good, isn’t it? In researching an article for next week, I stumbled across an unrelated magical video from a few years ago. YouTube has a version, but sadly it’s low resolution. À propos of nothing but enjoyment, I include the Little Giant Girl here.

French marionettes have long transcended mere puppets. The art of natural movement is so difficult, Disney employs seasoned animators to bring their theme park animatronics to life.

How do they manage to inject personality? Daughter of a friend and 4.0 college junior Lindsay Brunt sums it up: "It’s amazing to see how life-like they could make something that large. At first, all I noticed were the red coats, after a while I got really caught up in her expressions and movement. It’s truly captivating."

RADIO ACTIVITY: A TRUE STORY

by John M. Floyd

As my friends and family and some of our Criminal Brief readers know, I’m hopelessly addicted to movie and TV trivia — especially mysteries and westerns. In fact, my CB co-columnists are probably the ones who razz me the most about it.

Over the years my wife has learned to tolerate my obsession, at least most of the time. Once, not long after we were married, we received a phone call in the middle of the night from an old friend at a party who had bet someone twenty bucks that he knew the alternate title to Dr. Strangelove, and had locked himself in the bathroom long enough to use me for a lifeline. I gave him the answer, even though he sounded too drunk to remember it long enough to pass it on — and my bride, who had been happily snoozing until the call came in, was not amused. The good side to all this is that my vintage-movie talents are rarely called upon anymore, mainly because of the World Wide Web. Want to know who led three lives in I Led Three Lives? Just check the Internet Movie Database.

From today, flash backward almost 34 years. I was working for IBM, and driving to work one morning, pretty much on autopilot, my sleepy brain wondering (which it still does) why I chose to stay up quite so late the previous night (which I still do). My destination that day was a client bank’s operations center on the north edge of Jackson, Mississippi, where I’d been working for weeks with their software team to install a pilot ATM at one of their remote branches. I was pulling into my usual parking space when a voice on my car’s radio said:

“Want to take your wife or husband to a great restaurant today? You’ll receive two free lunches if you can answer the following question: in the old TV series The Texan, what was Rory Calhoun’s character’s name? If you know the correct answer, call within the next ten minutes and –”

I switched off the radio, gathered my papers and books, climbed out of the car, and trudged up the steps to the center. I had my own desk in a huge office containing maybe a dozen bank employees (I was there so much that some folks thought I was a bank employee too), and when I pushed through the door I saw at least eight or ten of them gathered around a radio at the far end of the room. Their manager wasn’t there. I dumped my cargo onto my desk and heard the same morning-show announcer say, “No correct answers yet. Come on, folks, your prize awaits.” (Remember, these days were pre-iPhone and pre-Google.)

“Where do they come up with these questions?” a programmer named Jerry mumbled. He spotted me and said, “Hey John, you ever heard of a show called –”

“Bill Longley,” I said.

All of them turned and looked at me. “What?”

“The answer’s Bill Longley.”

Jerry blinked. “He was The Texan?”

“Yep.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

He snatched up the phone and dialed the number. After a short wait, he said, “I have the answer to your trivia question: Bill Longley.” He frowned, then pointed to the radio and whispered to a co-worker, “They say turn the volume down so we can hear each other.”

I remember walking over to a box of doughnuts, finding one with lemon filling, and taking it back to my desk. Jerry was still on the line, listening. The room had gone quiet. Finally he looked up at me, clapped his palm over the receiver’s mouthpiece, and said, “They say that’s wrong. Correct answer’s Bill Langley.”

I shook my head. “Longley.”

He removed his hand and said, into the phone, “It’s Longley.”

Another wait. Finally he covered the phone again. “They say close but no cigar. It’s Langley.”

“Tell ’em I think they better check again,” I said.

He told them, “I think you better check again.”

He leaned forward in the chair and waited, the phone in his ear. The rest of the office seemed to be holding its breath. While everybody was still sitting there like kids around a campfire the manager stomped through the door, saw the crowd, and said, “What the hell’s going on?”

Jerry held up a hand to silence him and kept listening. The manager stood there frowning and tapping his foot. Everyone else was watching the phone as if expecting air-raid instructions. I just kept eating my doughnut. Thinking back on it, I was not yet thirty years old then, and still a kid to many of the veterans I worked with at the bank — and I was beginning to get a little nervous. It’s easy to act nonchalant when you know you’re right, but I didn’t have much confidence in the “experts” at the radio station.

Pretty soon Jerry sat straight up. He listened, grinned like an idiot, and said into the phone, “Of course it’s correct. I told you it was correct.”

Everybody starting cheering. You’d have thought we were Mission Control during the moon landing, and we’d just been informed of a successful touchdown. The manager rolled his eyes. I heard him mutter something that sounded like “computer people.”

Someone cranked the radio’s sound back up, and we heard the announcer congratulating Jerry for winning the prize. Enjoying my fifteen seconds of fame, I insisted that Jerry and the manager take the two free lunches, which they did. The rest of us ate meatloaf as usual at the op center cafeteria that day. I remained something of a hero for several weeks, and twenty-something years later, when I ran into somebody from that group — I swear this is true — the first thing he said was, “I remember the day you answered that trivia question.” It’s funny, really. During the summer of 1977 our little team at that bank successfully installed the first IBM ATM in the state, and the only thing they remember about me is my knowledge of useless information.

I think a lot of writers have that same love of, and knack for recalling, insignificant facts. On the one hand, I wish I could clean out my brain’s cobwebby storehouse of that stuff, and maybe make more space available for worthwhile info — and on the other hand, I sort of think the unconscious retention of that kind of nonsense is fun. To this day, I sometimes forget while on the way to the grocery store what it was that my wife sent me for, but I can always remember the name of the lady who owned the saloon in Lawman — and what she looked like. I can even hum the theme song.

Who knows when that kind of thing might come in handy?

By the way, the alternate title of Dr. Strangelove is How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. If you already knew that, you can probably start worrying. You might be as hopeless as I am . . .

ED’S WORLDS

by Steven Steinbock

I think it’s fair to say that Edward D. Hoch was best known for his tradition mystery stories. The stories about Dr. Sam Hawthorn are all impossible crime “problems.” Most of his other series characters also dealt with impossible crimes or paradoxical situations. Nick Velvet was cast from the mold of A.J. Raffles but given the twist of only stealing valueless items and then answering the mystery of why he was hired to steal them. Simon Ark, his first series character and the hero of his first published short story, was a seeker of supernatural evil who always found a rational explanation behind the spectral illusion of impossible. Even the spy stories featuring Jeffrey Rand had plot-twists and situations that went beyond the standard espionage fare.

That’s only part of the story. Readers familiar with his stories in Manhunt, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, or Off-Beat Detective Stories, or who have read his stories in the anthologies The Night My Friend or People of the Night know that Ed was also adept at writing dark, tough-edged, and atmospheric hard-boiled crime and detective stories.

My guess is that most readers familiar with Ed’s name through Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine don’t know that he also wrote a respectable number of science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. In the late 1950s he had stories appear in the pulps Fantastic Universe, Future Science Fiction, and Original Science Fiction. The very first issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine featured a futuristic story of corporate espionage between competing biogenetics labs. In the late 1960s he wrote a story (“Computer Cops”) about a computer forensics team. Those cops would return in three of Ed’s novels. Ed’s most frequently anthologized story, “Zoo,” is a short-short about an intergalactic traveling animal show.

Many of Ed’s science fiction stories featured impossible crime plots set in the future. Most of these future worlds are high tech. But one story, “The Wolfram Hunters” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, March 1964) features a post-apocalyptic tribal society in which an outcast wise-man solves a mysterious disappearance during a religious festival. Ed wrote several stories about dystopian futures, usually giving them a “Twilight Zone” style twist ending. “Versus” (Fantastic Universe, June 1957), “The Forbidden Word” (EQMM July 1972), and two stories that appeared in anthologies – “God of the Playback” and “Unnatural Act” are all examples of this theme. Religion plays an interesting and complicated role in a lot of Ed’s science fiction stories, as does youth counterculture.

One motif that pops up several times in Hoch’s science fiction/fantasy oeuvre is the historical What-If theme. Not exactly alternate history stories, these tales suggest alternate explanations for historical (or pseudo-historical) events. “The Last Unicorn” (Original Science Fiction Stories, February 1959) is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of how the unicorn went extinct. “The Maiden’s Sacrifice” (Famous Science Fiction, Fall 1968) gives an alternate explanation for evidence of human sacrifice among the Aztecs. One of my favorites, “Who Rides with Santa Anna?” (Real Western Stories Feb. 1959), provides a hauntingly anachronistic explanation for the outcome of the Battle of the Alamo.

ETERNAL COMPANIONS

While we’re on the subject, I was saddened to learn of the death earlier this week of Elisabeth Sladen, who played “Sarah Jane Smith” in the long-running science fiction program “Doctor Who.” She died of cancer.

Between 1973 and 1976, she appeared in the series alongside the third (Jon Pertwee) and fourth (Tom Baker) incarnations of The Doctor as they journeyed through time and space. In 2006 she reprised the role in the “Doctor Who” episode “School Reunion.” Shortly afterward, the BBC launched a children’s science fiction series, “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” in which The Doctor’s former companion battles unearthly evils with the aid of three teenage companions of her own. “The Sarah Jane Adventures” ran for four years. A fifth season was in production at the time of Sladen’s death.

The BBC has a short tribute video of Lis Sladen on their website. Tom Baker, who played what for many fans was THE Doctor with his fluffy-hair, floppy coat and hat, and long scarf, wrote about Sladen on on his blog.

A LIFE WITHOUT DANGER

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Some days I feel like the Roadrunner, but more often I walk in the footsteps of Wile E. Coyote. That coyote has been trying to catch the roadrunner for a long time and though he’s mail-ordered probably every gadget the Acme Company has in its catalog, he hasn’t gotten the succulent dinner he longs for yet. But, he keeps trying and that’s why I still root for him – and no, I have nothing against roadrunners, but a food chain is in existence for a reason.

Why do we continue to read story after story about the “good guy” catching the “bad guy”? Because it’s human nature for us to still seek truth, honor and justice in a not-so-honest, truthful or just world. In our Walter Mitty lives (and yes, most of us live there ), we want a redemption of sorts.

It’s the same in mystery fiction. The detective, amateur sleuth or private detective has become one of us: the underdog thrown into some bit of danger we never expected, yet hoping to be triumphant in the end with justice being served. As a reader, I want to be drawn into the fray and forced to find the answers. I want to be the hero, to save the day and to outsmart the very genius of the “bad guy” because in my everyday life, I probably have little chance to accomplish any of that.

I’m not a take-no-prisoners attorney who makes criminals pay for their crime. I’m not a savvy detective who tracks and arrests killers. I’m not even an amateur sleuth who thinks faster than trained professionals and traps a murderer not just into a confession, but also a corner where there is no escape.

As a writer and a reader, I can become the one who outsmarts the police and the criminal and come through the experience without a scratch—and do it as fast as I can read. It’s a lovely place to live and I think the coyote might agree. If only he wasn’t famished. Maybe Acme can mail him a roadrunner dinner on ice. But, where’s the fun in that?

THE HILLSIDE BANDIT

by Rob Lopresti

Twenty-five years ago my wife and I, along with our daughter were living in Hillside, New Jersey, a nice little town, only one block from Newark, the state’s largest and arguably scariest city.

Not the safest place in the world to live, perhaps, but we had a nice little neighborhood, and I never felt scared.

Until one night.

What’s the difference between Mystery and Suspense? A Mystery focuses on crime in the past—what happened? Suspense focuses on crime in the future—what will happen?

We were in bed and crash came from the back yard. A garbage can had fallen over. Loudly.

I threw on some clothes and went downstairs. When I reached the back door I made as much noise as possible. Whoever—or whatever—was out there, I wanted to give them the maximum chance to be elsewhere.

I turned on the yard light. No one visible. I walked slowly down the steps. Despite my earlier resolution to be loud I found myself getting very quiet. The yard was still.

I said we lived in a nice neighborhood and we did, mostly. We had one neighbor, whose backyard connected to ours, who we sometimes heard screaming over the phone at someone. Whoever she was arguing with had never shown up, as far as we knew.

Not yet anyway.

Mystery is about trying to figure out what happened, the how and the why. Suspense is about the terror of uncertainty. What will happen next?

Not a sound. I guess my noisy neighbor was asleep. As I should have been. But instead I was wandering in the dark, about to meet God knows what.

The metal garbage can was lying on its side, halfway across the yard. I took two steps toward it and—

One thing Mystery and Suspense have in common is a fondness for Twists, the surprise that makes you go back and look at the story again from a different angle.

Something like a dark basketball shot out of the trash can, scurrying away from the house. I jumped back a foot. It was the biggest, fattest, raccoon I had ever seen.

When my pulse had gotten down to double digits I counted my blessings. As the old saying goes, the little devil had been as scared as I was. With shaking hands I went over and turned the garbage can right side up.

That’s when the second raccoon leapt up from the interior of the can, clinging to the side, and looking straight at me.

Believe me, I jumped a lot higher than the beast did. The bandit leapt overboard and hightailed it after his or her buddy.

The best kind of twist is the double twist.

EGOLESS

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Director Sidney Lumet died earlier this month at the age of 86. The April 11th issue of the Los Angles Times had a thoughtful appreciation of the director’s films from his first, “Twelve Angry Men” in 1956, to his last, a little known film titled “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” released in 2006.

For me Lumet defined one decade, the 1970’s, perfectly with such films as “Serpico”, “Dog Day Afternoon”, and “Network,” written by Paddy Chayefsky. (A great writer not talked about much anymore.) Lumet’s films were about adults facing moral dilemmas. The only moral dilemma we seem to have in movies today is, can the man-boy grow up or not? And why should he? Hey dude, who needs a moral dilemma?

What fascinated me about the article on Lumet was the photograph the newspaper used. It’s a picture of Lumet directing Paul Newman in “The Verdict.” The two men are standing close on the set, Lumet is gesturing with his hand—thumb touching forefinger. Both men are looking straight into the other’s eyes, their expressions intense. The photographer caught a moment of the creative process in action: The director guiding the actor. The actor is listening, absorbing his words, then transforming them internally, trying to figure out how to make them his own. A performance is being created

Studying this picture, I couldn’t get over how egoless the two men are in a business driven by egos. But the act of creating has to humble. The problem is getting to that point.

Ray Bradbury said that when he sits down to write he thinks, “poor Shakespeare.” And he should, because it takes that kind of chutzpah to even begin. Once the writer has crossed over into his creative world he has to let go of the bravado that got him to his office chair in the first place. And that is not always easy.

John Cheever said he could tell when a “touch of the sherry” had gotten into a writers work. I think many readers have sensed when the writer’s ego has taken over his novel. This seems to happen more in “literary” fiction than in mystery fiction. But there are authors in our genre whom I have stopped reading in the long form because I think they are preening and not writing

In a previous column I’ve written about another great director, Peter Hall. He had staged a play staring Alex Guinness and Ralph Richardson. Opening night was a huge success. The audience adored the two great actors. When Hall went back to see his play after it had been running for sometime he found the actors had fallen in love with themselves and the applause. Their performances had turned into pandering that made the audience clap even more. If I remember correctly he compared them to performing seals.

Alas, this narcissism can also happen with the non-pro. I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I am, when unpublished writers come into one of my workshops and can’t believe I’m asking them to rewrite or even to edit. Where does this unearned self-love and know-it-all attitude come from? I went to writing classes to learn. I took my knocks, I swallowed back my pride back, and I listened. I grumbled and complained all the way home from class, but I did what they advised. And I learned the craft.

Study this photograph of two great pros creating. There is a calmness, and a trust in each other because they both know there is no net to catch them if the fall.

It’s the same for the writer. He has to peel away the ego that got him there and trust his unruly unconscious to drive his creative instincts.