OUR AMERICAN GODFATHER

by Janice Law

Edgar Allan Poe helped father not one, but two, types of mystery story. The line featuring puzzles and a super rational detective comes via works like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” with the redoubtable C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin, like the later Sherlock Holmes, comes equipped with a friend who narrates the stories and asks questions so that the great man can elucidate the case. We also have Monsieur G _, the Prefect of the Parisian Police. Condescending and clueless, the Prefect formed a template for Holmes’ Inspector Lestrade as well as for countless bumbling officials.

The literary descendents of the Rue Morgue and of Dupin and his associates are legion. All are characterized by intricate plots and ingenious crimes. The detective, almost invariably male, is a coolly rational figure with an encyclopedic knowledge of whatever seems to be needed, whether blood types or imported cigarette papers or the habits of obscure mammals. In the case of the most successful of all, Sherlock Holmes, extraordinary ingenuity and intellect were given just enough in the way of humor, eccentricity and human warmth – usually via Dr. Watson– to make the character beloved as well as admired.

For inspiring much of this, we would already owe Poe a big debt. But our American ancestor was clearly a highly complex character. The obverse of the hyper-rational Monsieur Dupin are all the obsessives and hysterics who populate the other side of his fiction, stories like “The Black Cat,” “The Telltale Heart,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.” These are people whose rationality has gone the way of all things and who have embraced folly and madness.

Few of us are as versatile as Poe, who was, whatever his personal issues, a genius. Most of us come down on one side or another of the mystery divide: rational solutions and a certain personal chill, or errors leading to crime and lives spiraling out of control. One’s choice depends on skill and temperament. The ingenious lean, I suspect, to the clever plots; those like me, who depend more heavily on atmosphere and character, see more to love in stories like “The Cask of the Amontillado,” to my mind a perfect thing of its type, the sort of story a writer could die happy having written.

Sure there are other contenders, including Conan Doyle and Ruth Rendell, but “The Cask” has everything. I’ve taught it to ninth graders and to college juniors and seniors with equal success, because it has all the ingredients readers love. It’s short – a big point with students and not irrelevant for older readers, either. It starts without delay, setting the plot in motion with the very first sentence, and with the same paragraph introduces the narrator as adequately as is needed for the story.

And then, the setting. All right, it’s gothic: Venice at carnival time, dusk, a chill outside, and worse in the vaults under Montresor’s palace, and yet there is not a line that is too much – and Poe was prone to pile on the cobwebs and literary shivers. The increasing damp and darkness as the story progresses makes it a claustrophobic’s nightmare, but subtly, for nothing is allowed to slow the drunken Fortunato’s progress toward his end.

The dialogue is supremely efficient. A word or two from each man is sufficient to move the narration forward, as Montresor alternately cautions his erstwhile friend about venturing further and raises the promise of the rare amontillado. Which of us would have been as restrained?

The ending is similarly apt. The horror of Fortunato’s entombment is emphasized not only by the careful description of Montresor’s work with blocks and mortar, but the details: The ringing of the bells on Fortunato’s jester’s cap, the man’s desperate conviction that this is an elaborate jest, even the narrator’s admission that his heart grew sick when Fortunato fell silent – and his quick explanation that it was merely “on account of the dampness of the catacombs”.

Most writers would have ended there, but Poe goes one step further and reveals that the narrator is remembering this event from half a century before, setting the tale securely back in time and space and giving it some of the same resonance as the old border ballads.

Asked about early influences, I usually mention Dorothy Sayers, Eric Ambler, and Raymond Chandler, one for smart women, one for suspense, and one for atmosphere. I think I’ve unjustly neglected to credit Poe. “The Cask of the Amontillado” was surely the first top class mystery I ever read, being a staple of junior and senior high school English classes. Beyond that, it cuts the pattern for a certain kind of story, distinguished by brevity and by the quality of its dialogue, character, and atmosphere.

“The Cask of the Amontillado” is one of a handful of stories that once read are never forgotten, to my mind the highest accolade. But for this very reason, Poe is often associated with what might be called the ‘young adult’ mind, as teachers have understandably seized on him as a sure fire classroom hit.

I’m one of the guilty, so this is to say a belated “thank you” to one of the ancestors of us all.

SAILING CLOSE to the WIND

by Leigh Lundin

It’s been a while since we last looked in on our friend, Travis Erwin. He shared with Criminal Brief a story of trials, travails, and tribulations. It’s not that Travis isn’t a good story-teller; he is. But he does something few males dare try– he writes romance under his own masculine name.

You might think he could justifiably cry sexism, but that’s not the masculine way and besides, Travis enjoys tremendous support from women writers and readers. In the face of adversity, Travis hunkers down and strives harder. In fact, he’s currently at work on his next book, a humorous memoir of the stomach, titled Lettuce Is The Devil : The Culinary Dogma Of A Devout Meat Man. To learn more, visit Facebook.

But wait… Travis wants to share good news.

Texas: Tall Tales and Tall Ships

by Travis Erwin

Unexpected turns. Life throws them at us all the time. It’s no different when you’re a writer and often times it’s only years later after your boat crashed into that unseen coral reef that you understand sinking at that particular time was the best thing for you. 

I was three unpublished novels into this path when an editor friend shot out a name to me in an email. She described this person as the perfect literary agent for me, personality wise and writing style wise. So I fire up the internet and see that this particular agent is not accepting queries. Not to be deterred, I check out her schedule for the next year figuring I can catch up with her at a literary conference and make my introduction that way. 

That’s when my ship really began to take on water and list to the side. You see, she was only attending one event. In Arizona. A doable trip from Texas but this particular writer’s function was more of a workshop than a conference and they only accepted 12 writers. I read the criteria and thought– what the hell, I’ll never know unless I try. I fired off my resume, weak as it was, a rather lengthy writing sample, and settled in to wait. Never did I think I’d make it in. Then the email came.

Suddenly I have a bilge pump for my leaky vessel. I was one of the chosen few.

Day One in Arizona

We meet the editor who put the thing together. He was a rather stiff and brusque man of definite opinions. His first words to me at the airport were, “I hope just because you are from Texas doesn’t mean you were stupid enough to have vote for Bush.”

The next morning we gather together, the editor and we dozen writers. Introductions are made. I listen as three or four people talk about their MFA’s from Harvard, Stanford, and other hallowed institutions. I decide not to mention I never finished my BA in Wildlife biology from West Texas State. One guy stands up and talks about his day as a former member of the White House Press Corp and his days as a foreign correspondent in Zimbabwe and Kenya. 

My turn is coming and my confidence lists to the side like a dingy in a typhoon. I stand and say, “My name is Travis Erwin. I’m a native Texan that writes Romance and Women’s Fiction.” When the laughter dies, I say, “No, I’m serious.”

Day Two and …

Over the coming days I bond with my fellow writers. I believe I prove to them I have the chops if not the resume. I also learn the intimidating editor isn’t intimidating. I meet that agent and although we came this close and still correspond with every project I write, she has yet to become my agent.

One might conclude from this that my ship sank. I spent time and money traveling to a weeklong writer’s workshop and seemingly gained nothing for the effort. 

Wrong. I made friends, which in this business is often all you have and two, I received one pearl of wisdom from that gruff, opinionated editor. On the last day he sat me down and had this to say, “Travis, you are a talented writer with a great voice, but your words on the page aren’t half as entertaining as the stories you tell each night when we’re all sitting in front the of cabins drinking a beer or three. I want you to go home and write a story, but pretend you are sitting on a bar stool somewhere instead of at your computer. Pretend there is a beer in front of you and there is some sad lonely man sitting on the stool beside you. Write your story as if you were telling it.”

Harbor Lights

That’s how Plundered Booty was born. 

I wrote it as a modern day pirate story. A tale of love, lust, and brand new automobiles. I told it from the viewpoint of Hank Petty Zybeck.  

My name is Hank Petty Zybeck: Hank, after the greatest country and  western singer of all time. My dear departed daddy’s description, not mine. Petty for the king of all race car drivers. Again, my daddy’s opinion, but one I happen to share. And Zybeck, because I’m my father’s son. Least that was my momma’s claim to her dying day.

I let a few writing friends read Hank’s tale. Every last one of them told me to turn Hank’s story into a novel. I did. That ship sank. I couldn’t get agents to read it much less agree to represent me. I abandoned the manuscript like treasure at the bottom of the sea.

Several years went by and I got wind of a new project being put together by Mark Terry, the bestselling author of the Mark Stillwater series of thrillers. The project was to be a crime anthology. Not exactly my normal genre but I’d been toying with an idea for awhile. I started writing this new story. Several hundred words into it, it hits me. Plundered Booty was about a crime. But even the original short story version was long and since writing the novel, there were things I wanted to add to the original. 

So, I donned my scuba gear and dove deep into my computer files. I hauled the story to the surface, scrubbed off the barnacles, put shine to the brass, and sent it to Mark.

I’m proud to say Plundered Booty had wind in her sails after all. It can now be found as the closing story in Deadly By The Dozen : 12 Short Stories Of Murder and Mayhem.

Plundered Booty blends the first person narrative style of a Kinky Friedman novel with the laid back vibe of a Jimmy Buffet song. It goes well with either a cigar or a margarita, but don’t lose that shaker of salt. You may need a few grains. 

Pirates, rum, and Ford automobiles. Hank Zybeck is an expert on all three. He’s yearned to visit the Caribbean for so long he can practically taste salt in the air. But his wife, Rachel, doesn’t give a damn about his lifelong obsession. Her idea of exotic is Branson , Missouri, so she ain’t about to traipse off to some tropical island only to get sand in her bikini. After thirteen years of marriage, Hank hasn’t given up on changing her mind, but when Junior takes over the Ford dealership where Hank works, vacation spots are the least of his worries. Junior is a skilled salesman himself, but he reserves his talents for talking women into the back seat. And the woman he wants most — just happens to be Hank’s wife. 

Under siege from Junior, Hank remembers history’s most infamous female pirate, Anne Bonney and the last words she spoke to her lover, ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham “If you had fought like a man, you needn’t be hang’d like a dog.” In this tale of a man pushed to fight back or walk the plank, Hank sets out to prove that he is no dog. And even he doesn’t how far over the edge he will go for the sake of love and the chance to fulfill his Caribbean dreams.

Deadly By The Dozen is now available as an e-book from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. A print version will soon be available as well.

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

by John M. Floyd

As writers, we know we have a “voice.” I don’t mean a set of opinions that need to be heard, I mean a fingerprint of style and content that identifies each of us. Or at least identifies our work. It consists of many things (structure, rhythm, imagery, pacing, etc.), and it’s rarely something we’re conscious of, as we write. It’s just a natural result of putting words on paper.

With that in mind, is it advisable — or even acceptable — for us to study the work of others, and attempt to learn and use their techniques? Does that interfere with, or in any way dilute, the voice that is so uniquely our own? My answer to that is simple: of course we should try to learn from those we admire, and incorporate their “secrets.” How else can a writer (or any artist or craftsman) expect to improve? Be assured, our voices — the words we use and the way we fit them together — will remain our own; we’re not plagiarizing, here. And the writers from whom we borrow (steal?) won’t mind a bit. Imitation, in this case, can be a good thing.

What, then, are some of the hints and tips we can get from reading other authors? What are the things they do particularly well? Here are a few observations:

Charles Dickens — Characterization. Every time I read Dickens I’m amazed at the way he defined his characters. Too much description can backfire, but his approach always seemed to work, and his creations will live forever.

Ray Bradbury — Settings. Like Frank Kafka, James Rollins, and many others, Bradbury loved placing his stories in magical and unforgettable locations. This isn’t possible in every case, but when it is it’s a plus.

Ernest Hemingway — Simple, direct style. I’ve heard that academics never use a short word when they can use a longer one instead. Hemingway did just the opposite, and to good effect.

Stephen King — The “everyman” protagonist. One reason I think so many of us relate to King’s fiction is his ability to spin gripping tales about average, ordinary people — or at least they’re ordinary when we first meet them. What a great way to get readers to identify with, and root for, a character.

Elmore Leonard — Dialogue. Many writers do a good job of writing the way people “really” speak — George V. Higgins, Dick Francis, Joe Lansdale, Robert B. Parker, and Richard Price come to mind — but Leonard is widely considered to be the master. And I believe the best way to learn to write great dialogue is to carefully read those who write great dialogue.

James Lee Burke — Descriptions of scenes and places. One of the pleasures of a JLB novel or short story is his presentation of multicolored sunsets or moss-covered courtyards or shaded bayous. In addition, his use of this as a pacing mechanism should be informative to all of us.

Herman Melville — Symbolism and poetry in prose. Moby Dick, for instance, contains vivid examples of the use of meter, rhythm, and alliteration. I’m not good at this, and will probably never be, but I admire it nonetheless.

Janet Evanovich — “Visual” writing. In addition to humor and characterization, this lady is wonderful with action verbs. People in Stephanie Plum novels never merely “walk” into a room; they stomp in or blast in or charge in. Drivers wrench open their doors and squeeze themselves into seats; diners wolf down their food.

James A. Michener — Historical research. Much of this was due to the subject matter he chose, but the depth and extent of that knowledge made his novels unique. And educational.

Pat Conroy — Elegance of language. Conroy, Proulx, Cheever, Faulkner and many other “literary” authors amaze me with the seemingly-effortless beauty and sophistication of their prose. This is more appropriate to some stories than to others, but when it happens it can heighten both the enjoyment and the meaning of a piece of fiction.

O. Henry — Surprise endings. This became a trademark of his, and I still love the thrill of anticipation when I read one of his short stories. Some say twist endings have fallen out of fashion, but in genre fiction I think they’re still alive and thriving.

James Patterson — Short chapters. Enough said. I did a column about this a few weeks ago.

Michael Crichton — Fiction based on scientific fact. Dinosaur DNA, deep-sea exploration, artificial intelligence, etc. To his credit, this was always presented as supportive information only — he never allowed it to stand in the way of the story.

Nelson DeMille — Humor in otherwise serious fiction. I think he’s probably the best at this technique. It requires a special talent, and makes an already good story even more fun to read.

Harlan Coben — Plot twists. These are not so much the O. Henry kind; Coben’s reversals happen not only at the end but throughout his novels. I try hard to do that in my own stories.

Ian Fleming — Details. This ranged from exotic locations to food and drink and fashion. I still remember Bond’s favorite brand of cigarettes and his Sea Island shirts. This is another of those techniques that can be overused (shaken and stirred?), but Fleming did it well.

Almost all well-known authors — Fitzgerald, O’Connor, Wharton, McMurtry, Burroughs, Wolfe, Ritchie, Maugham, Welty, Rowling, Poe, Chandler, Doyle, Finney, Christie, Salinger, the list is endless — are worthy mentors to those of us who want to learn and thus improve our writing. Comb through their work, discover their secrets, then go and do likewise.

That kind of studying can be fun.

CURRYING FLAVOR

by Steven Steinbock

Words intrigue me. Food sustains me. Words about food take me to the supernal heights.

The word “epicurean” has become synonymous with food, which is unfortunate. “Epicurean” has a long history that I won’t go into, but for more than two millennia it implied hedonistic gluttony. That’s also unfortunate, since the ancient Greek writer, Epicurus, taught of a spiritual quality in everyday material pleasures, a lesson I appreciate.

(Incidentally, for those of you attending a Passover Seder ten days from now, the meal will conclude with the search for the missing dessert matzah – a deserted dessert, as it were. The missing matzah is called the Afikoman, which comes from the Greek word epikomion, meaning “that which comes after” – i.e. dessert).

I’m not sure where Epicurus got his name. Epi- is Greek for “on” or “upon.” Koureios sounds a lot like “curious.” It also has a hint of “curry.” But it’s probably just a name. In any event, it’s all Greek.

Which brings up the curious topic of spices. Curry is a blend of various spices, usually turmeric, cumin, and coriander among other ingredients. The word curry comes from a Tamil word meaning “sauce.” While I was in Northern England prior to the 2005 Bouchercon, I was surprised at how many pubs included “Yorkshire Pudding Curry” on their menus. Another Tamil word – masala – is less common, but is perhaps a better term to describe spice-blends.

Allspice is not a blend. Allspice refers to the dried berries of a specific plant, the Pimenta dioica (which, despite the similar name, is not related to the Pimento in your martini olives).

In a strange concurrence, last month allspice came up on three separate occasions with three different people. In each case the person with whom I was speaking believed that allspice was a blend of spices (and in one of them, the person also assumed that curry was a single, specific spice). On one occasion, a man claimed to be mixing his own “allspice” by blending cinnamon, ginger, and clove. I didn’t have the heart to disavow him of the notion. On another occasion, I brought a bottle of whole allspice berries home from the store and met with the challenge, “you have a whole cabinet full of spices; what do you need ‘all-spice’ for?”

I have no clever stories about the origin of the name “allspice” like, as instance, I could provide for “grapefruit.” English settlers in the Caribbean simply came up with the name in the 1600s because they thought it smelled like so many other spices. Clever.

The expression “to curry favor” has nothing to do with spices. Curry in this case is derived from the Latin corrodium, meaning “to provide.” While I can’t prove the lineage, I’m guessing that words like “carry,” “courier,” and “car” may be related.

(“Carry” and “car” both derive from the Latin curritor, while “courier” comes from the Latin word for “runner,” curritor – which is also where we get the word current. The small raisin called a currant has nothing to do with either, but it does have a curious origin of its own).

I don’t mean to carry on, but it strikes me that the two meanings of curry give new meaning to the notion that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

Time for some curry.

CONNECTIONS

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

I’ve been researching and it involves me living in my car. Not totally, but this is exactly what I’ve done from 8 to 5 for several days. It’s an interesting turn of events for someone like me who isn’t into “roughing it.” I did find you can camp out in your car in a small town college parking area and no one particularly cares – even if you fall asleep mid-afternoon. It isn’t even an oddity as I wasn’t the only tired person on these sunny spring days.

This particular college requires no parking permit and though I imagine there is some sort of campus security, I have yet run into anyone questioning my being there or even policing the area. My mind wanders to crimes that could be happening on the grounds or inside the buildings, none which are more than two stories. I sit safe and relatively secure in my locked sedan.

I have seen inquiring looks from professor types coming and going, but the students don’t seem to notice me. Maybe I’ve developed that cloak of invisibility I so covet from the Harry Potter series. Maybe I am like other adults and fade into the landscape of those young enough to be my children.

I have brought snacks and a lunch with required amounts of beverages and sticking mainly with bottled water, fruit that isn’t sticky and sandwiches. I have a cell phone, a book, a magazine and a thick spiral notebook and too many pens.

This environment has proved perfect for many things I can’t do at home. There are no real distractions. A minimal sound of wind rustles leaves on the trees and hedges. Students come and go in waves and then disappear into their vehicles and out of my realm within minutes. As they exit the classroom buildings, almost all of them have a cell phone attached to an ear. They are chatting with someone, yet are oblivious to those around them, who in turn are also oblivious of their fellow students. Everyone is connected, yet detached.

I lean my seat all the way back and stare through the windshield at three flags swaying in the breeze. Old Glory, the state flag, and the college flag flutter independent from the others, yet are connected by their placement five feet from each other and centered on the main instructional center building. Like the students on their phones, each is important in its own right atop their respective flag poles. Connected and separated. I keep remembering the line from HBO’s Temple Grandin where the title character says those with autism are “different, but not less.”

I watch the groundskeeper carefully pushes a fertilizer spreader across the plush lawn. A few sprigs of dandelions mar the grass from being a perfect specimen. The bright yellow of the blooms of the flowering weed and the grass are connected, but separate from each other. Each has a separate identity. The groundskeeper will soon eliminate the weed from the yard. But one weed is another person’s flower.

Sometimes, I feel like short story writers are dandelions in the midst of a well-manicured lawn of the novelist and the literary world. Our glory is short-lived because we are weeded out as more and more magazines cut fiction from their lineups. Yet, we’re bright attention-getters who are plucked up in handfuls by young-at-heart folks who still dance barefoot on grass just because it feels good. We may not have secure spots in bookstores, libraries, or newsstands, but we have won many readers over to thinking our short stories are worthy of their time.

Sitting in a car in a college parking lot in the middle of a spring day, I munch on an apple and wonder what it would be like if I had to live in my car and steal apples from someone’s backyard during the correct season just to have something to eat. Isn’t that crime?

A short story writer has her moments of grandeur, too. Times when we see our story in print or hear someone saying, “I remember that story. It was fabulous!” It’s times like these we feel like a dandelion bursting onto the scene with a brightness no one can ignore.

I am alone in a crowded parking lot. I open my magazine and read the short mystery that transports me to another place and time. The characters and I are connected and it is not until I am finished reading, do I understand how the moment of that connected between the writer, his characters and the reader has melded us together if only briefly. Independence is good, but making the right connections is even better.

ISLAND OF SPIKES, WORLD OF COPS

by Rob Lopresti

I discovered James McClure in college when I took a course on mystery fiction. The professor used him as an example of one type of mystery: the one that tells you about some culture or occupation. We read The Steam Pig, the first in McClure’s series of police procedurals set in South Africa and the world of apartheid.

It’s a great book and I recommend it highly, but today’s topic is actually two non-fiction books McClure wrote. Spike Island (1980) is a detailed look at the Liverpool Police Department. Long before David Simon’s Homicide or Fox-TV’s Cops McClure embedded himself in A Division, a long narrow strip of downtown Liverpool, or to put it another way, “a sort of Band-aid stuck over where they ripped the heart out.” McClure describes the constables’ lives as only a master storyteller can do.

“We’ve got x amount of men,” says one of (the detectives), pushing the stairs door open, “but they’re only there on paper! I mean, come Christmas – or the next government inspection—and we’ll have twenty-five detectives and seven cardboard replicas stood in the corner, and they’ll count heads, y’know…

“There’s only one way to stop crime payin’,” he says, holding the ground floor door open. “and that’s to bloody nationalize it. Which is true, isn’t it? Because straight away there’ll be something wrong with the bloody job, and they’ll all be out on bloody strike, won’t they?”

One of my favorite stories in the book involves a man who was arrested for stealing some rope from a building site.

“Occupation?”

“Ah God, this is goin’ to cost me my job, y’ know,” the man says despairingly, turning a shade whiter. “I mean, I know you fellas have got yer duty to do and all, but – y’know, can’t I just put it back like or something?”

The bridewell sergeant shakes his head. “No way, Mr. Morgan,” he says. “You took what didn’t belong to you, and you’ve got to go to court, see.”

Mr. Morgan winces, awed by the absolutes of the law, and plainly mortified by being caught in an act or dishonesty.…

“I suppose I’ve got to say?”

“Yuh.”

“I’m – I’m a school caretaker.”

“Clerk,” says the bridewell sergeant, entering the word on the charge sheet.

“Er, sorry – caretaker’s what I said” Mr. Morgan corrects him politely. “Only been in the job three months, see? And if me bosses—”

“Clerk,” says the bridewell sergeant, very firmly.

The last half-hour has been very confusing and upsetting for Mr. Morgan, so it takes a few seconds longer for the penny to drop.

After finishing Spike Island McClure went looking for an American police force that would give him the same free access he had had in Liverpool. After many rejections he discovered San Diego, where the bosses made only two demands: provide insurance and wear a bullet proof vest.

Not such a surprise, because this is the time and place that Community Oriented Policing was being developed. San Diego was creating a new style of policework, and McClure described it in Cop World (1984).

This is a Hispanic cop explaining his success in the barrio:

I talk to anybody I see – the guy could be the next victim you meet, the next witness, the next informer. If you get along with them, good guys or bad guys, they’re going to tell you what’s going to happen. I MAKE them like me. Some that hang around with the gangs ‘have something’ – I don’t know what it is. Anyway, you know they don’t belong there, and you wish you could save them. I try, but it doesn’t always work. My biggest problem is that I’m an idealist.

Here is a cop explaining the phenomenon of “attitude tickets.”

Say you stop somebody, and you say to yourself you’re going to warn this guy. You walk up to the car and you say, ‘Sir, you just went through the red light. I’d appreciate it if you’d watch it, as it could save your life or somebody else’s.’ And the guy goes, ‘I’m so sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I won’t do it again…’ Well, that’s it. But if the guy goes, ‘What the hell you stop me for? You guys are always harassing me! I didn’t do nothin’!’ – you write him a ticket.

Well, you could say that’s bad, because you do it because of the way he acted. But obviously he doesn’t care what you say to him, so the only way you’re going to get the point through to him IS by giving him a ticket.

A San Diego officer explains why guts are more important in a female cop than weight and height:

And when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, I’m more worried about intestinal fortitude than about size. I mean, Christ, you can take a baton and hit a guy on the kneecap and totally incapacitate him – and you don’t have to be too damn tall to hit most people on the kneecap!

Inevitably you have to ask how the two police forces compare. Most of the differences McClure notes can be boiled down to one thing: In California both the good guys and the bad guys have guns. In England they generally don’t.

[There is] an obvious contrast between being a British bobby and working as an American cop: the former goes out on the streets hoping not to get hurt; the latter, in hope of not being killed.

I wish someone would go back to Liverpool and San Diego and tell us how things have changed there in the last 30 years.

MELODIE’S MEDLEY

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Not to beat a dead horse (what a terrible expression) or a dead Mildred Pierce but the HBO series is sloooow and shot in amber or dark shadows. I feel like I need a flashlight to watch it. The director Sidney Pollock invited Billy Wilder to see his version Sabrina. (Wilder had directed the original starring Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn.) Pollock sat nervously next to Wilder wondering what he was going to say. When the movie ended Wilder turned to him and asked, “Why is the film so dark?” And that was the only comment he made.

However there is a new mystery series on AMC titled The Killing. (Not to be confused with Ernest Hemingway’s short story that was turned into a great movie staring Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.) This is a good series. It has been compared to Twin Peaks, but only in it’s edginess. This is a quirky well-done detective story with superb acting. A must see. Yes, the lighting is dark, but since it’s shot in Washington State where it’s always raining there’s a reason for it.

I had to go back to yoga. My body wasn’t running to fat, it was sitting to fat. Getting older is bad enough, but I in a profession where sitting down is a major requirement. I spend most of my time in an ergonomic chair (whatever that means) that makes be feel like I should be wearing a seat belt when I’m settled into it. It has arms that go up and down and a back that has an adjustable lumbar thingy. One came with a headrest but I put my foot down. I hate them in cars and now they have them on desk chairs? The only whiplash I get is when I receive a rejection letter. The chair is supposed to support me in all areas of my body except my stomach. It does nothing in that area at all. The salesperson told me curtly that I would have to take care of that myself.

Also I was told that I am not sitting properly in my chair. My feet are supposed to be flat on the floor, and my body straight against the back of the chair. I start out that way, but I end up teetering on the edge of the seat while hovering over my keyboard with my shoulders hunched and my legs curled around each other. I am unaware of this contortionist position I have gotten myself into until I try to stand up. There is a moment of horror where I think I will never be able to unknot myself. Once I do I am left with a body that feels like it’s been sitting in a stern Presbyterian pew for a week.

So I went back to yoga. I have written about my yoga experience before. I love the stretching movements of yoga, but I am not a calm personality. And I have trouble with Sanskrit. At the end of a class when the teacher says Namaste, I thought she was saying, have a nice day. I had to be gently corrected. Okay, I thought it was some kind of wacky Southern California interpretation of Sanskrit.

The teacher thought it best to have a private session before I entered a class. She knows my over achiever personality forces me to compete with the other students, and she didn’t want me to hurt myself the first time out.

She came to the house and we stretched slowly. When we got to my favorite part the corpse position, or as the yogis call it savasana, she grabbed the throw from the sofa and covered me with it. Then I heard her gasp. I knew she wanted me to be in some kind of tranquil transcendental state so I only opened one eye to peak at her. She had a very disconcerted expression on her face.

When the session was over and I was picking up the throw, she asked, “Is that fur?”

“What?” I’m looking at the dogs that have now bounded into the room now.

“That.” She’s point to the throw.

“Yes. It’s mink.”

“Mink?” The disconcerted look was back.

“Mink fur.”

“It’s fake, right?” Nodding at me, hope fills her eyes.

A moral quandary. Do I lie to her and say yes, or do I tell her the truth. And if that weren’t bad enough, I’m feeling a little offended, in a very petty way, that she thinks my mink is fake.

“It’s real fur. I had it made from a coat I had that I wasn’t wearing because . . . ” I stopped, deciding it wasn’t smart to get into the whole PETA thing. Taking another direction, I continued, ”Back in the eighties when I bought the coat we thought fur was okay to wear. We thought a lot of things were okay to wear including shoulder pads that were so wide you entered through a door sideways. And if you think about it, the minks that became my coat, had they been allowed to live, would be dead now anyway.”

She looked confused and so was I. But I went doggedly and defensively on:

“When you think about it, I was recycling, which is a environmentally responsible thing to do. Because it saves other minks from being killed if I had . . . ” I finally gave up and asked, “You think its bad karma, don’t you?”

She laughed, “Not for you.”

She left with her symbols, restorative bolsters, and special oils. The smell of lavender oil lingered in the living room as I sat on the couch snuggling under my furry throw.

“What’s that odor?” My husband sauntered into the room sniffing the air.

“Lavender.”

“It smells awful.”

“Oh, God, we’re hopeless,” I sighed.

Now he looked confused.