COMPOST

by Janice Law

It’s been a hard winter here in the northeast, with a good four feet of snow on the ground for several weeks. Though we are getting more this morning, the stone walls have emerged, along with the various shrubs, the roses, and the compost pile. These welcome signs of eventual spring have gotten me thinking about compost of several types.

Take the gardener’s friend: the repository of autumn leaves and summer weeds, of vegetable scraps and corn cobs, and also for forgotten stalks of celery and heads of broccoli. Unlike some rabid horticulturalists, I can’t get into ecstasies over this biological gem, but I never have to feel too guilty when some neglected veggie can be composted.

While microbes do their work, the pile is a resource for hungry possums and raccoons, and a hunting ground for the Carolina wrens who, in turn, too often fall victim to the resident cat. Over the winter, the stalks and stems, the pulp and parings will be transformed into a light, chocolate colored loam, food for the many vegetables enjoyed by the rabbits, deer, and woodchucks who employ me as their gardener.

That’s the physical compost in my life, very good for reminding me of my age and, paradoxically, for encouraging the expansion of various floral designs. The other compost resides indoors, in a series of beat up and stretched-out-of-shape notebooks. In case of emergency, forget the bound volumes, the magazines with published stories, maybe even some unsold manuscripts – those are all the past. Grab the notebooks; the compost is the future.

Because, yes, like garden plants, novels and stories need feeding and mulch. Those clippings about a weird robbery, an intriguing disappearance, or the death of a mobster are to be laid down to mature gently like the autumn leaves. And what about a particularly pungent bit of overheard dialogue or glimpse of a distinctive face? Surely both deserve to be noted.

Then there are the ideas which all too rarely come full blown, but which are nonetheless worth adding to the pile. “Disposal of a murder knife in a restaurant’s dishwasher” was one. It took me a long time to fit that to a suitable crime with a suitable perpetrator.

Another notable idea grew out of many years of going to the local nude drawing group. Not as racy as it sounds, the meetings were a chance to draw, at modest cost, from professional figure models, an essential of art instruction. We met at the local state college in a handsome older building with an attached parking lot.

Being of a perverse turn of mind, I thought how interesting if someone came out late after classes one night, opened the car trunk, and found a body. Good idea! But the plot, always my weakest point, refused to develop from that moment of surprise. What I referred to as “the body in the trunk of the parked car” languished in first one notebook and then another. By the time I came up with a suitable victim, a suitable car owner, and a plot, cars had pretty much been converted to lock only trunks, a little difficulty I had to finesse.

Other provocative ideas have not come through for me – or not yet. One summer years ago when we were on vacation in France, I read about the massacre of a family. The killer was the father’s estranged brother. I made notes on how to manage this for years, constructed a plot in which the one survivor had become a major choreographer, had a fine “detective figure” in a male dancer who was sweet on the rehearsal pianist, and threw in the creation of a new ballet. No dice. This one did not work.

On the other hand, there are happy accidents. Watching a nature program one night, I saw a sequence with a Steller’s sea eagle, a monster bird from northeastern Asia with vast wings and searchlight eyes. For some reason this was just the very thing the character of the moment, a nice old guy who’d suffered a stroke but kept all his marbles, liked watching on TV. That eagle, along with lions from a show on the veldt, became the inspiration for his increasingly serious surveillance and detection efforts.

That’s an example of an easy transition from literary compost to the publication garden. Usually, there’s another step. When I want to write some short mystery stories, I trawl through my various notebooks and make a list of the possibilities. Some ideas show up time after time without coming to fruition. Others make a work list of three or four and turn into short stories or chapters in a new novel like well behaved mulch.

Why do some bits of compost come through and others fail? I haven’t a clue, but I do know that the process is important. Just as the tending of a compost pile signals that the gardener is serious, so the acquisition and upkeep of literary compost tells the gremlins of the subconscious to get to work. Hopefully, they come through soon, but better late than never.

CRACKERS

by Leigh Lundin

The British series Cracker aired from 1993 to 1996, with a two-hour special in 2006. Robbie Coltrane starred as Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, a character based upon criminal psychologist Paul Britton, a star in his own right in the ‘Met’, the Metropolitan Police we know and love as Scotland Yard. Unfortunately, Mr. Britton played a key rôle in a notorious real life case with less than stellar results.

That case was the July 1992 homicide of Rachel Nickell, a pretty mother out for a mid-day walk with her two-year-old son, Alex. A murderer attacked her in a frenzy, raping while inflicting 49 stab on the young mother. When passer-bys happened upon the scene, they found little Alex clinging to her blood-soaked body, crying, "Wake up, Mummy! Wake up!"

Pressure was brought to bear. Among thirty-two suspects, police ruled out Nickell’s fiancé (father of Alex) and another man turned in by his own mother. With little physical evidence, police turned to criminal psychologist Paul Britton to create a likely profile. Thanks to the BBC Crimeline, operational investigator Inspector Keith Pedder turned his attention to a loner, Colin Stagg, whom Britton said was certainly a candidate.

Colin matched Britton’s profile beyond police expectations. He was socially inept, still a virgin at age thirty-two, with non-traditional taste in art and music. One of the walls of his flat was painted black where he’d hung a print of the troll-like Cerne Abbas rude giant from a Paleolithic historical register hill carving in Dorset. He was a self-described misfit who answered ads in lonely hearts columns.

Operation Edzell

Inspector Peddler, with the assent of Superintendent Bassett and Chief Inspector Wickerson, focused on Stagg as their sole suspect. With him in mind, they devised a ‘honey trap’ operation and a pretty police woman volunteered for the rôle under the assumed name ‘Lizzie James’.

She contacted Stagg, saying she’d learned his name from a friend in the lonely hearts club. Colin found her hard to resist. During the first half of 1993, the beautiful ‘Lizzie James’ wooed Colin Stagg, sweeping him up in a romantic and sexual experience beyond his most intimate dreams.

They spoke daily. Lizzie James mailed dozens of torrid letters detailing her sexual fantasies that, shall we say, weren’t exactly mainstream, which included to be “completely in your power, defenceless and humiliated”. She mailed him a tape in which she fantasized she wanted a man to hold a knife to her skin as he had sex with her.

Reality blurred for Colin Stagg. He was smitten by this beautiful woman. Miss James’ performance could have fooled many men, but Colin was a virgin, unused to dissembling, and particularly susceptible. He was in love. He would have done almost anything for her. Anything.

Except confess, and that’s what police wanted.

Lizzie James’ fantasies grew wilder, gorier, and more violent. She confessed to the ritual killing of a woman and child and said she’d hoped he’d done something similar.

Stagg tried to meet her appalling expectations. He wrote her a fantasy story, appending a postscript "I’ve written the story on the lines of what I feel you are into."

When she threatened to leave him because he wasn’t violent enough, he said, "Please, Liz. I live a quiet life. If I have disappointed you, please don’t dump me. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before."

Still she pressed and played him. "If only you had done the Wimbledon Common murder, if only you had killed her, it would be all right. … It would have been great if you had done it. … It’s a turn-on, to think about the man that did it."

Miserably, Stagg replied, "I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t."

The most he’d confessed to was nude sunbathing and that– along with black wallpaper– was enough for police. They placed him in gaol (jail) for fourteen months.

The Case Against Colin

The government indicted and Crown Prosecution Services went to court. There things didn’t go as planned.

On the first day of trial, Mr Justice Ognall threw the case out. He went on to scold the entrapment as “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.”

Police let it be known they still considered Colin Stagg to be their prime suspect, an opinion tabloid newspapers were happy to pass on to readers, describing him as "runtish and rat-like." One of the worst offenders was Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, which three years before the murder deliberately misreported the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. Later, several tabloids would be criticized for siding with police against the interests of an informed public.

Despite his best efforts, Mr. Stagg could not find work. His house was vandalized. He was spat upon and verbally abused. Unsurprisingly, his closest friend was his dog, which he walked late at night to avoid being reviled. For more than a decade, in fact for sixteen years, Stagg suffered imprecations and vilification from his fellow man.

Crack in the Case

A decade after the death of Rachel Nickell, a cold case team comprised of officers, retirees, and volunteer experts took the case apart and began to reassemble it. Exactly eleven years following after the murder, police reported they’d found DNA evidence that didn’t match Rachel’s boyfriend, her son, or Colin Stagg. That didn’t stop some people from remaining suspicious.

In 2006, fourteen years after the killing, police interviewed a man suffering from Asperger syndrome and paranoid schizophrenia who’d spent the past decade in prison, Robert Napper, who’d killed another young mother and her small daughter. As mentioned early in this article, his own mother tried to turn him in, but investigators were too focused on Stagg. It would take another two years, but in December 2008, Napper admitted guilt in the Rachel Nickell case. At last, Colin Stagg was absolved of the crime and able to get on with his life.

And So It Goes

The case has a few curious footnotes.

Honey Trap

After ‘Lizzie James’ took eighteen months leave, she sued the Metropolitan Police. She claimed she gained weight and lost interest in sex because of post-traumatic stress. She settled for £125,000 ($200,000). To understand why the British public might have been outraged, consider Rachel Nickell’s two-year-old toddler, who witnessed his mother’s violent death, was offered only £22,000.

Paul Britton Inquiry

The British Psychological Society held a misconduct disciplinary hearing into whether ‘crack’ psychologist Paul Britton was guilty of professional misfeasance in advising in the Nickell case. Colin Stagg was allowed to attend the proceedings but was not permitted to address the board or answer Mr Britton’s claims that Colin indeed showed guilt.

When a frustrated Colin Stagg bumped into the famous criminal psychologist on the steps of the Society’s headquarters, he called Britton a "pervert" on camera. Britton said that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen and went on to say "I’m considering whether or not to make a complaint," presumably against Mr. Stagg.

After Napper’s arrest, Britton said Napper could have been arrested "within half an hour" if investigators had listened to cops on the beat and clues he’d provided earler.

Crack in the Façade

Follow me a moment: As mentioned in an earlier event, 96 people died in the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper managed to offend the entire city of Liverpool with an infamous front page that screamed TRUTH, headlining three accusations that turned out not to be true at all. Staff members universally testified that Murdoch and editor Kelvin MacKenzie knew the headlines were false, but moved forward with their own agenda. Liverpudlians were so offended, Merseyside circulation dropped by more than 200,000 to a reported base of 12,000, which hasn’t improved much over time. Nor did editorial policy: unapologetic editor MacKenzie led the media charge against Colin Stagg.

In reality-meets-fiction, the second season of Cracker opened with To Be a Somebody in which the Hillsborough disaster serves as a backdrop. Serial killer Albie Kinsella targets The Sun’s unsavory reporter, Clare Moody, who fabricated the false TRUTH front page, insisting "it’s the truth" while knowing it wasn’t true.

One More Word

A terrible mistake resulted in a grave injustice to a vulnerable man. One shouldn’t conclude that criminal psychology is hokum, bunkum or bunko, but sometimes professionals can grow too confident in their abilities, especially in the ‘soft sciences’. Paul Britton talks about the craft in the article "Why Do Killers Kill?"

NOW AVAILABLE IN TWO FLAVORS

by John M. Floyd

If there’s one question about writing that seems to come up over and over again at meetings and blogs and conferences, it’s this one: what’s the difference between genre fiction and so-called “literary” fiction? We’ve wrestled with it several times here at Criminal Brief too, but it’s been a while since our last column on that subject.

On the surface, the difference seems pretty simple. Genre fiction, also called commercial fiction or popular fiction, deals with (insert drumroll here) . . . genres. Western, romance, sci-fi, mystery, horror, etc. Literary fiction has free rein, and focuses mostly on emotions, relationships, and the human condition. Because of that, the conflicts in literary stories are more internal than external.

Other litmus tests come to mind: genre fiction is entertainment- and action-driven, uses simpler language, and often features a definite and clear ending; literary fiction is illuminating and character-driven, sometimes uses more sophisticated language, and might have an unresolved and therefore thought-provoking ending. And there’s the character-arc issue too – the hero/heroine of a genre story (James Bond, Nancy Drew, Indiana Jones) is pretty much the same person at the end of the tale as he or she was at the beginning, while a literary protagonist (Tom Joad, Scout Finch, Nick Carraway) usually undergoes a profound psychological change in the course of his or her “journey.” And so forth and so on.

(A quick word about the vague and overused term “character-driven,” when used to describe literary fiction. It might be more accurate to say that characters in literary stories are generally more interesting and compelling than their plots, while in genre fiction it’s the other way around. If any of you have thoughts regarding that, I’d be pleased to hear them.)

Between the Hook and the River

I think one way to illustrate the difference between the two types of fiction is by using examples. The first is a Hemingway short story called “Big Two-Hearted River.” It’s about a guy who heads out into the woods, makes camp, fishes for trout the next day in a stream, catches a few, cooks them, thinks awhile about life in general, and that’s that. There’s plenty of symbolism, in that the flowing river is a metaphor for the relentless passing of time, etc., but there’s not much of a plot. Nothing really happens. The main character and his internal thoughts and struggles are more important than his actions, and that’s a hallmark of literary fiction.

On the other end of the spectrum is a story that I’ll call “The Hook,” although I doubt it ever had a name. It’s just a tale I heard when I was a kid at school, about a teenaged girl and boy who go out on a date while there’s a psychotic killer on the loose who has only a meathook instead of a right hand. Remember that one? The two students park in a deserted lot, and just as they get down to business they hear footsteps in the dark right outside their car window. Spooked, the boy starts the car and roars away, spraying gravel. No longer in a sparky mood, they drive to the girl’s house, the boy gets out and walks around the car to open his date’s door . . . and finds a hook hanging from the doorhandle. This silly but memorable story still gives me goosebumps, and I think it’s a good example of genre fiction: what the people are doing and what happens to them is more important than who they are and what they stand for. Characterization is minimal; plot takes center stage.

All of us tend to gravitate toward one or the other of these two types of fiction. I like both, now and then, but I write more genre stories than literary because that’s what I usually prefer reading. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the litmag protags of Pat Conroy and John Cheever and Annie Proulx. I do. But I probably read more Lawrence Block and Robert B. Parker and Carl Hiaasen. And I sure have a lot more copies of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine lying around than copies of The Atlantic Monthly. Which of the two types of fiction do you prefer to read, and write?

The Washed vs. the Unwashed

Another point: many critics seem to believe that the gap between literary and genre is always huge, and compare it to the difference between Rembrandt portraits and stick-figure drawings, or symphony concerts and hillbilly hoedowns. What they don’t mention is that the two sometimes mix and overlap, and when that happens the result is better than either extreme. I think an example of that kind of hybrid is To Kill a Mockingbird, which is both literary and genre. On the one hand, it’s a courtroom/ mystery/crime drama — it even features a surprise ending — but it also teaches a “life lesson” via what the viewpoint character sees and learns in the course of the novel. Another example is Mystic River, which in my opinion is a literary story with a great mystery at its core.

It’s no secret that critics prefer literary fiction and the general public prefers genre fiction, and many genre writers are quick to defend their chosen field. Loren Estleman, one of my favorites, says in his book Writing the Popular Novel, “. . . If the word ‘literary’ raises its egg-shaped head, the manuscript is as good as in the return envelope. Literary novels (even when packaged as literary Westerns or literary detective stories) are perceived to appeal only to the university professors who write them.” And I believe it was Elmore Leonard who replied, when asked in an interview why his short stories had never appeared in The New Yorker, “My stories have endings.”

In closing, I think the best definition of literary vs. genre is one I heard in a YouTube interview with Stephen King. According to him, “Literary fiction is about extraordinary people doing ordinary things. Genre fiction is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

Long live the Kingster.

WORDS AND PICTURES

by Steven Steinbock

Welcome to my Two-Hundredth column on Criminal Brief.

They say picture is worth a thousand words. Or maybe it’s ten-thousand words. Or so they say. Says who?

According to one source, the ancient adage is Japanese in origin. According to another, it’s Chinese. Then again, it’s probably early 20th Century Madison Avenue. And I’m not sure it’s even true.

After all, if this is my 200th column, and each column has measured around a thousand words, then I’ve written 200 pictures worth of columns – or 20 pictures if you use the larger figure. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t add up. Maybe because, if you’ll excuse the pun, it’s about ads and not about adding.

But pictures are still worth something. As long as I can remember, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine has run a “Mysterious Photograph” feature in which readers are challenged to write a mystery story – in 250 words or less – based on the photograph provided. Note: it’s not a thousand words or ten thousand words. Rather, 250 words or less. Maybe AHMM is only supplying a quarter of a photograph.

Ah, words and pictures.

I have long admired Jack Finney (whose story “Widow’s Walk” appeared in the July 1947 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine). His stories are fun, fresh, and thrilling. His The Body Snatchers is well worth reading, and has a completely different tone than any of the three movies that have been based on it. If you think about it in terms of film adaptations, Body Snatchers is a book that has been worth three feature-length pictures. (Incidentally, if you’re serious about reading the book, I’d try to track down the original 1955 version rather than the revised 1978 version. Finney himself did the revision, but I think the book suffered from it.)

Getting back to pictures, Finney started out as an advertizing man. A lot of our favorites (Ed Hoch, Mary Higgins Clark, Darrin Stephens) got their starts that way. It was apropos that Finney cast the hero of Time and Again as a sketch artist for an advertizing firm. That novel is the first that I’m aware of to use historical photographs and newspaper sketches to illustrate book length work of adult fiction. And he did it rather well.

(Any readers who haven’t read Finney, I suggest that you close this webpage posthaste, switch off your computer, and run to the nearest bookstore. Any of his books are worth reading. In addition to Time and Again and Body Snatchers, I’d direct you to any of his collectons, such as About Time and Three By Finney).

This week I’m reading a new novel – so new that isn’t due to be published until this summer – that takes Finney’s process and more-or-less flips it over. Ransom Riggs, whom I first encountered when I reviewed his The Sherlock Holmes Handbook for The Strand Magazine a year or so back, is a collector of snapshots. He picks them up a swap meets and antique shops, and rarely knows the real story behind them. But he’s able to weave some fascinating original tales (a la Hitchcock’s “Mysterious Photograph”). This new novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, uses a stack of strange photos as a jumping off point for the adventure of a teen-age American kid traveling to a Welsh island to discover the mystery of his grandfather’s past. The book is intriguing, and has certain other similarities to Jack Finney’s work that I’d rather not write about lest I spoil anything. Be on the lookout.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to the next two hundred Bandersnatches to be as invigorating as the first two hundred have been. Here’s looking at you.

WHO’S A NIMROD?
by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Nimrod – n. a skillful or enthusiastic hunter —Encarta Dictionary

Many of grew up believing being referred to as a “nimrod” was an insult. And yes, it probably was in grade school. By middle school years, we may have wised-up and found the correct definition while we were also looking up all those other words we weren’t learning in school from teachers, but from our classmates. I remember this one kid who kept saying dam and hell because he looked them in the dictionary and knew they had double meanings. “My parents can’t do a thing about it,” he boasted during homeroom. (He was an early incarnation of Bart Simpson). Maybe his parents couldn’t do anything, but the principal had a remedy for his outbursts. He liked to call everyone a nimrod and I don’t think he meant to imply the skilled hunter definition.

Nimrod, great-grandson of Noah, is known for building a ziggurat to worship God with a temple at the top of the structure. Scholars differ in their assumptions of whether Nimrod was a great warrior or an arrogant king. He may have been either a renowned hunter, but it is not known if he hunted only animals or also men to use as slaves.

What is clear is that Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry consistently publish short stories worth reading in their magazine and promote a contest each year. The Nimrod Literary Awards include the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction. (Information can be found at) The University of Tulsa also sponsors the Nimrod Literary Awards Conference for Readers and Writers. Not bad for a bunch of Nimrods, huh?

Would I enjoy being called a Nimrod? I think I just might.

A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

by Rob Lopresti

For the past two weeks I have been celebrating things in this space. I hope you will indulge me if I extend the streak, even though this one has little to do with mysteries or fiction. I would argue that it is, in a certain way, about storytelling.

I hope you will join me in celebrating the fact that the world is a little better this week then it was last. It is richer by one Ph.D. in biology. My kiddo has a doctorate. In the first blog I ever did at Criminal Brief I promised not to boast about my daughter all the time and I have stuck to that, but I think you will agree I can make an exception for this.

Susan’s specialty is the behavior of eusocial1 insects; and if you want to know anything about paper wasps, she’s your gal. I would try to explain more of what she’s working on but if I did I would be able to hear her rolling her eyes from here. “That’s not quite right, Papa.”

No story, telling stories

Having said that, I don’t know what else to add. Oh, I could say plenty. I could tell you tales about her childhood and so on, but why embarrass her on this great occasion with the kind of stories parents find adorable and offspring find mortifying?

But this is a blog about storytelling and the fact is that scientific research is useless unless the results are communicated. The last thing Susan had to do was give an oral presentation of her research to her peers, and then defend her work before experts. All about communication.

But I don’t want you to think my kid only writes scientific papers. Here is an example of her less scholarly writing:

One final note. After the defense of her dissertation there was champagne. Susan announced “This tastes better than it tastes.” I’ll bet it did.

1. I had never run into this word before reading it here, so I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary: “Characterized by, pertaining to, or designating an advanced level of social behaviour in animals, spec. that occurring in certain species of social insect.” —JLW [↩]

THE QUICK READER

by Melodie Johnson Howe

I discovered in my library a very small paperback book called a Quick Reader titled Time Out for Murder. I can’t remember where I bought it. Inside are four mystery short stories, each preceded by a great illustration.

From the photograph you can see how small the Quick Reader is compared to a regular sized book. It’s almost the size of an iPhone, about 3”x 4”. In fact when I read the short stores it was like reading on my iPhone only with the feel of very old toast-colored paper between my fingers. Even the name Quick Reader sounds like the Kindle where you can download thousands of books on it. But this only holds four short stories and is a comforting gem.

The publishers of Quick Reader were Royce Publishers in Chicago, Illinois. On the inside of the back cover is a list of authors and titles produced in the Quick Reader form. Not only do they have short stories by De Maupassant, Benchley, Parker, etc. but they also have novels such as Nana by Zola and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I don’t know, but I would assume they’re abridged. Also listed is a Ben Hecht novel, The Florintine Dagger.

This first short story in the Quick Reader is “The Pathologist to the Rescue,” by R. Austin Freeman, featuring the pathologist Dr. Thorndyke. Since it was written in 1927, Dr. Thorndyke does not have the use of DNA to catch a murderer. But using the clue of a disease found in a blood sample left at the scene of the crime, he is able to detect what happened. Today Dr Thorndike would be a character on CSI or Bones.

The second story is titled “Absolutely Elsewhere” by Dorothy Sayers and features Lord Peter Wimsey. It’s a locked room mystery where the use of telephones is very important. When Parker says to Wimsey that all the suspects where elsewhere, Wimsey gives this priceless response:

“What do you mean by ‘elsewhere’?” demanded Wimsey, peevishly. Parker had hauled him down to Wapley, on the Great North Road, without his breakfast, and his temper had suffered. “Do you mean that they couldn’t have reached the scene of the murder without traveling at over 186,000 miles a second? Because if you don’t mean that, they weren’t absolutely elsewhere. They were only relatively and apparently elsewhere.”

“The Teakwood Case” by Ellery Queen is the third story. There is a very surprising moment in the story, and along with Sayers’, it is one of the best.

The fourth story is “The Cigaret,” by Ben Ames William, an author I had not of heard of before. There is glaring serendipity in the opening page; but what is noteworthy about this story is that it follows the murderer planning and executing his terrible deed and how an observant policeman catches him. I could not help but think of Colombo while I was reading it.

If any of our dear readers, dear book collectors, and dear writers know anything about the Quick Reader I would love to hear your comments and learn more about these charming little books.