The International Herald-Tribute

by James Lincoln Warren

Nero Wolfe
Illustration by Carl Mueller
American Magazine, November 1940

I just finished a project that took several years to come to fruition, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. I first had the idea for it when reading The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia by Peter Hopkirk (Kodansha International, 1992) more than a decade ago. Although I’ve never been able to find the passage again when looking for it, I remember Hopkirk mentioning that the British used doctors as spies in Afghanistan, because they were worth more to the natives alive than dead. That got me thinking. What famous literary doctor served in Afghanistan in the 19th century? Yep. John H. Watson.

I started writing something using this idea almost immediately, but I wasn’t all that happy with the result and shelved it. I didn’t get interested in it again until I finished my most recent (and as yet unpublished) Treviscoe story, “The Satan League”. I had committed to writing a novel, and had gotten a good start, but soon it was going very slowly—still is, but it hasn’t been shelved—and my invariable rule is that when you have trouble writing something, then whatever else you do, don’t stop writing—just write something else. So out came the Holmes pastiche for another look.

I already had a title for it, “Shikari”. The draft was bad, but not as bad as I remembered. I fiddled with it some more, decided that it would have two narrators instead of the original one, and then promptly got stuck. It probably would have waited another ten years at that point, but at Bouchercon I told Janet Hutchings at EQMM that I might have a story for her annual Sherlock Holmes tribute issue later in the year. The logjam broke. When I got back to Los Angeles, the whole story was mostly ready in my head. During the actual writing, I came up with probably the best twist in the plot and incorporated it. (That’s what inspired me to write “Garden Plot” here two weeks ago.)

And then I got to thinking about the Black Orchid Novella Award, an annual contest governed in tandem by the Wolfe Pack (as the Baker Street Irregulars are to Sherlock Holmes, so are the Wolfe Pack to Nero Wolfe) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Linda Landrigan, AHMM’s editor, had first told me about it four years ago before it had even been announced, hoping that I would enter. I didn’t. As a rule, I’m not crazy about contests, and I didn’t have any plots running around in my head that I regarded as Wolfesque enough.

But having my story “Shanghaied”, which is based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, picked as one of the “Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 2009” by Otto Penzler, and having just now written another story using characters invented by somebody else, I decided maybe I should give the Black Orchid another look. The way I see it is that I’ve already written two tributes. Why not a third?

Now, the Black Orchid isn’t for fan fic. Our pal Dale C. Andrews may be the latest person to write as Ellery Queen, but right now Nero Wolfe himself is off limits. One of the guiding principles provided by the WP is “We’re not looking for anything derivative of the Nero Wolfe character, milieu, etc. ” On the other hand, Dave Zeltserman’s now very popular Julius Katz (Get it? Nero/Julius, Wolfe/Katz) got his start as an entry for the Black Orchid. “Julius Katz” did not win, but it did get published in EQMM to great acclaim and won the Ellery Queen Reader’s Choice Award and a Derringer. There’s at least one other JK story that has appeared in EQMM, and last summer, Zeltserman told Ed Gorman that a JK novel was almost finished.

Hm.

So I pulled out the copy of AHMM with the most recent winner, “O’Nelligan’s Glory” by Michael Nethercott—incidentally the same issue containing John M. Floyd’s story “The Powder Room” (which made Otto’s list along with “Shanghaied”), and Rob Lopresti’s short story “Shanks on Misdirection”—to see how he had handled the whole Nero-Wolfe-Tribute idea. His characters are different, but there’s the Nero/Archie dynamic going on between his characters Mr. O’Nelligan and Lee Plunkett. And Nethercott also informs us that an O’Nelligan novel is in the works, too.

Hm again.

Somebody once told me that in my Cal Ops series, Carmine Ferrari was sort of like Archie and that Custer Malone was sort of like Nero, and I wonder if that wasn’t in the back of my mind when I wrote the first story. It is true that Carmine is definitely more active than Cus and Cus is definitely more cerebral than Carmine, although the whole Cal Ops flavor is much more hard-boiled than Nero Wolfe. But the resemblance is there, even if I hadn’t consciously intended it. So in a sense, I had already written a Nero Wolfe tribute or three.

But is it really a good idea to write these tributes, to put one’s own spin on someone else’s idea?

Well, in the case of Dale Andrews, the answer is a resounding yes, because if he didn’t write an Ellery story or two, he probably wouldn’t have published anything at all in terms of fiction, and the stories are very good. Dave Zeltserman I have already mentioned.

So I’ve decided I’m going to give it a crack. Accordingly, I’ve already come up with my own alternative version of Nero Wolfe.

I think she’s very interesting.

PROFESSIONAL TIPS– Israel Zangwill

by Leigh Lundin

I finally got around to an often overlooked classic, The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill (downloadable here or here). The title comes from its setting in Bow, England, not the American West or a cosy of Little Bo Peep in a large pink ribbon. Perhaps the story might have been more clearly titled Bow’s Big Mystery, but I won’t attempt to match wits with Israel Zangwill, who wields an abundance. He steeps his writing in sly observations and asides. He often writes obliquely like Chaucer, saying one thing while implying something very different. You see a hint of his humor when he defends using William Gladstone as a character in the story on the grounds that Gladstone is "largely mythical."

Like many other authors of the era, Zangwill wrote stories in installments for newspapers and magazines. As you’ll note, he claims to eliminate suspects one by one as readers try to deduce the guilty party, finally settling upon the last remaining character readers have yet to guess. (I wondered if the writers of Twin Peaks took him seriously.)

In the mechanics of writing, Zangwill barely gives a nod to paragraphs, as if writing so intently, he occasionally remembers to break for a paragraph when he dips his pen in the inkwell. But he’s funny and he gives the essential writing tip for mystery writers.

Of Murders and Mysteries by Israel Zangwill

As this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or favor. The Big Bow Mystery seems to me an excellent murder story, as murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it contains more humor and character creation than the best. Indeed, the humor is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create. Humor is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a somber note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humors, and mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic.

The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy.

Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the dénouement is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been robbed of his breath under false pretenses. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new circumstance upon his reader at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard.

The only person who has ever solved The Big Bow Mystery is myself. This is not paradox but plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later, during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper, anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him with a more original piece of fiction.

I might have refused, but there was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work seriously, though the Morning Post subsequently said the skit was too labored, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say something by way of acknowledgement.

Thereupon I wrote a letter to the paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:

To the Editor of The Star. Sir: Now that The Big Bow Mystery is solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your readers who have favored him with their kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask this more especially because great credit is due to them for enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself.

When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of the characters got ticked off as innocent— all except one, and I had no option but to make that character the murderer.

I was very sorry to do this, as I rather liked that particular person, but when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do? You can’t let anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen the course most consistent with the dignity of my profession.

Had I not been impelled by this consideration I should certainly have brought in a verdict against Mrs. Drabdump, as recommended by the reader who said that, judging by the illustration in The Star, she must be at least seven feet high, and, therefore, could easily have got on the roof and put her (proportionately) long arm down the chimney to effect the cut.

I am not responsible for the artist’s conception of the character. When I last saw the good lady she was under six feet, but your artist may have had later information. The Star is always so frightfully up to date.

I ought not to omit the humorous remark of a correspondent, who said: "Mortlake might have swung in some wild way from one window to another, at any rate in a story." I hope my fellow-writers thus satirically prodded will not demand his name, as I object to murders, "at any rate in real life."

Finally, a word with the legions who have taken me to task for allowing Mr. Gladstone to write over 170 words on a postcard. It is all owing to you, sir, who announced my story as containing humorous elements. I tried to put in some, and this gentle dig at the grand old correspondent’s habits was intended to be one of them. However, if I am to be taken "at the foot of the letter" (or rather of the postcard), I must say that only to-day I received a postcard containing about 250 words. But this was not from Mr. Gladstone. At any rate, till Mr. Gladstone himself repudiates this postcard, I shall consider myself justified in allowing it to stand in the book.

Again thanking your readers for their valuable assistance, Yours, etc.

One would have imagined that nobody could take this seriously, for it is obvious that the mystery-story is just the one species of story that can not be told impromptu or altered at the last moment, seeing that it demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate dovetailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, New Zealand: "The chain of circumstantial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing." After that I made up my mind never to joke again, but this good intention now helps to pave the beaten path.

I. Zangwill

London, September, 1895.

Note

The Mystery which the author will always associate with this story is how he got through the task of writing it. It was written in a fortnight—  day by day— to meet a sudden demand from The Star, which made "a new departure" with it.

The said fortnight was further disturbed by an extraordinary combined attack of other troubles and tasks. This is no excuse for the shortcomings of the book, as it was always open to the writer to revise or suppress it. The latter function may safely be left to the public, while if the work stands— almost to a letter— as it appeared in the "Star," it is because the author cannot tell a story more than once.

The introduction of Mr. Gladstone into a fictitious scene is defended on the ground that he is largely mythical.

I. Z.

About Israel Zangwill

Israel Zangwill (21 January 1864 — 1 August 1926) was an English humourist and writer. Zangwill was born in London to a family of Jewish immigrants from Czarist Russia. His father, Moses Zangwill, came from what is now Latvia. His mother, Ellen Hannah Marks Zangwill, came from what is now Poland.

Zangwill was educated in Plymouth and Bristol. At age nine, Zangwill enrolled in the Jews’ Free School, a school for immigrant children in Spitalfields in east London. The school supplied clothing, food, and health care for students, and offered a strict course of secular and religious studies. At this school, young Israel excelled and taught part-time, moving up to become a full-fledged teacher. Still teaching, he studied for his degree from the University of London, earning a BA with triple honours in 1884. Later, the school named one of its four houses Zangwill after him.

Israel Zangwill, part of a talented family, dedicated his life to championing the oppressed. His brother was also a writer, the novelist Louis Zangwill. His son became the prominent British psychologist, Oliver Zangwill. In later life, Zangwill’s friends included well-known Victorian writers such as Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells.

A HARD WAY TO MAKE AN EASY LIVING

by John M. Floyd

Last week I listed several quotes from a documentary I saw recently, called Tales From the Script. In it, Hollywood screenwriters gave their opinions on the craft, perception, disappointments, and rewards of their often-misunderstood profession. I don’t see too many documentaries, as a rule — I’m too busy watching gunslingers, spies, UFOs, and PIs — but I thought this one was outstanding.

Since the column last week focused mostly on the actual writing of scripts, this time I wanted to show some observations of the “business” side of screenwriting. One of my favorites, from Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), was “I saw some quote about being a professional gambler, and it was ‘it’s a hard way to make an easy living,’ and I think screenwriting is kind of the same thing. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s the hardest thing I’ll ever do.”

That, like many of the other thoughts voiced by these veteran screenwriters, could apply not only to scripts but to fiction writing in general.

Anyhow, here are some more words from the wise guys:

Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost): It is the writer who gives birth to a movie — not the director. I don’t care what anybody says, the director is an interpreter, a conductor, they’re somebody who comes in and refashions the script, but they wouldn’t exist without the writer.

Ron Shelton (Tin Cup): You know, the business changes. The goalposts move all the time. You can complain about it or you can try to kick it through the moving goalposts, and that’s what I do.

Billy Ray (Flightplan): Somebody told me Warner Brothers has 360 movies in development. Just let that number rattle around in your head. They’re going to make ten a year? Twelve a year? So where are all those [other] scripts going? They’re going nowhere.

Larry Cohen (Phone Booth): Nobody gives you credit for the previous time at bat. They won’t say, “Oh you were so great yesterday we’re gonna let you go to first base without even having to go to the plate.” No, you’re going to have to get a hit every time you’re up.

Jonathan Lemkin (Shooter): What I try to do to maintain my sanity is alternate between artist and whore. If I was just an artist I’d be broke and if I was just a whore I’d be sad.

Stephen Susco: I’ve had two movies made, The Grudge and The Grudge 2, and I have a movie Red, which is being shot right now. That’s three films, and I’ve written 38 screenplays. The Grudge was my first film, and that was my 25th screenplay.

Mark D. Rosenthal (The Jewel of the Nile): I think the public would be shocked to see how many movies that end up horrific started out as pretty good screenplays.

Peter Hyams (Outland): I’ve been blazingly hot and I’ve been arcticly cold, and if you’re a director and that’s what you do, you have to wait for someone to say “We want you,” and that can never happen when you’re cold. However, if you’re a writer, you can always write.

Larry Cohen: You know, everybody talks about the writer being the low man on the totem pole out here. That’s nonsense. We get paid whether they make the picture or not . . . . They don’t make it, so what? I’ll write another one. The funny part about it is, if the picture comes out and it doesn’t do well, nobody comes to me and says “Hey Larry, the picture didn’t do well, can you send me back some of that money?” Never. You get to keep it all.

Peter Hyams: If you’re not prepared to do a lot of pushups, don’t enlist in the Marines. If you’re not prepared to get rejected, don’t try to make film or write film or direct film or act in film — because you’re going to be rejected.

Richard Walter (screenwriting professor): If you want to swap your daydreams for dollars, if you want to literally traffic in your own imagination, which is what writers are doing, why not expect that that’s going to be hard to do, why imagine that people are just going to come up and make that easy to happen for you, and be eager for that?

Doug Atchison (Akeelah and the Bee): The business doesn’t want you. There are too many people trying to do what you want to do. They need to weed you out. And they weed you out by making the walls very high and very hard to climb.

I suppose the lesson from all this, if there is one, is that we as writers — for screen or page — have to keep trying. Some of us make it over the wall, some don’t.

I do wonder what it looks like on the other side.

NOVEL CONCEPTS

by Steven Steinbock

At the beginning of October, I had pretty well completed the first draft of the novel I’d been working on since spring. By pretty well, I admit that there were still four chapters that consisted only of bullet points, including a few questions I had yet to discover the answers to.

So in the weeks leading up to Bouchercon, I switched gears. I traded in my writer’s gear for an editor’s briefcase and set out, page by page, to do the first phase of edits. My goals were to address logical and stylistic issues. Logical include things like continuity and consistency (making sure Eva doesn’t change her hair-color midway through the book, or that her Jetta doesn’t suddenly turn into a Saab). It also involved retrofitting characters or settings.

As I was writing the first draft, a lot of things surprised me. Two significant secondary characters arrived on the scene late. I honestly didn’t know who they were before they appeared on the page, but once they showed up, they demanded bigger roles. In the case of one of them, it meant that I’d need to introduce her much earlier in the book. There was also a setting that became pivotal to the climax of the book. Rather than dropping that locale in at the eleventh hour, I wanted to introduce it in the first quarter of the novel.

Stylistic editing included fixing typos, making sure the tone and voice were consistent, and killing off a few “darlings.”

The editing process presented some unexpected results. I expected that I’d be able to plow though twenty or thirty pages of manuscript each day. Turns out I was being overly optimistic. Three to five pages has been my average.

While writing the first draft, I measured my progress by daily word count. With the editing, I measure my progress by pages.

Perhaps a product of my age, I need to do most of the editing on a hard copy with a red pen. I know there are people who can think on the screen. I’m not one of them. So I began the process with a tall stack of printouts, and have slowly been covering each page with ink. I alternate between the pen-and-hard-copy editing and the word processor. Today, for instance, I’m typing up the changes in chapter thirteen, while marking up the hard-copy of chapter fourteen.

This seems like a lot of drudgery, and for the most part, it has been. But I’ve been surprised at how exciting some of the process can be. For one thing, when writing the first draft, it’s nearly impossible to see the forest for the trees. But in this rereading, I’ve been able to look down at the whole forest and see the entire landscape.

The process of discovery has been the most exciting part of the editing process. Two of those four unfinished chapters are now complete, and writing them went fast and fun. I also began seeing the characters in a deeper way. There are two characters in the book who are about as different from each other as two characters can be. But as I watch them grow on the page, I begin noticing parallel tracks in their lives. On some subconscious level, I may have known it all along, but I think that’s giving me more credit than I deserve. The discovery of the parallels between these two characters has been staggering. Had I subjected them to Jungian analysis, I’m not sure I’d have found more profound connections.

But that’s enough with talk. I’ve got a chapter to edit.

See you in a week with news about Tough Guys on Audio.

NANOWRIMO

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

National Novel Writing Month, better known as NANOWRIMO, has begun. The point of the “Writmos” who have accepted the challenge is to write a complete 50,000 word “novel” within the confines of the month of November.That averages out to 1,666.67 words a day.

On Day 4, I have 2,479 words written, which means I am behind already. The last week of October through November 9th is always a bit harrowing for me even without a new deadline to meet. We have three immediate family birthdays, our anniversary and Halloween thrown into the mix to make it a wild and crazy season in our household. None of this is new or a surprise, but I haven’t seemed to learn any lessons about planning ahead for these three weeks of juggling events.

NANO is a bit terrifying even for those of us who have completed books. Any book deadline is nerve-racking, even if you have months to complete one.

Probably the best things about NANO are:

• it gets your seat into the seat of the chair on a regular basis
• there are no excuses not to write something every day
• there’s a place to find “buddies” who got themselves into the same mess you did and will goad you into working harder

As encouragement, one of my NANO buddies from Kansas sent me a message, “We’re buddies. Now, write 50,000 damn words by the end of the month. Have a pleasant evening.” Another day he said, “I’m at nearly ten thousand miserable indecipherable words. Great concept, fantastic title. But pure B.S. (See you at the finish line!)”

I thought I knew what subject matter I would be writing for this project, but when the clock started ticking down to the starting time, I remembered a short story I’d began years ago and never finished. My heart ached often for the characters I’d left languishing in a computer file. It was time to reacquaint myself with the family and see what’s been happening with them. Like real-life people, sometimes characters mature differently than you assumed they would when you first met them.

NANO doesn’t require a perfect manuscript. It only requires dedication to writing. Writing fast and furious forces those of us who tend to edit as we go to stop thinking with the editor side of the brain and rely instead on just being creative. It’s quite liberating. Editing will be handled at a later date. Right now, it’s the writing that’s critical.

Everything worthwhile takes time. Writing a novel in a month (even a short one like this project) requires an investment.

I signed on to accept NANO’s challenge this year to complete 50,000 words by the last Tuesday of the month. I didn’t consider Thanksgiving would also happen again! this year. While many of you are enjoying that drumstick or another slice of pumpkin pie, think of the Writmos who will be feverishly pounding out their quota surrounded by family, friends and aromas that are trying to coax them ever so gently away from the computer. Please forgive us for ignoring you this month. Have a heart and save us a piece of pie, too.

Being involved with NANO is like riding a rollercoaster. It’s thrilling, exciting and more than a bit intimidating. What a ride this will be.

THAT SAN FRANCISCO TREAT

by Rob Lopresti

Robert and Terri Lopresti at Tarantino’s, talking to the Lawtons. Charles Todd is at right, sitting at the next table and talking to Janet Hutchings and Robert Levinson. Photo by Steve Steinbock

I have had a chance to recover from my trip to Bouchercon, dig through my notes, and bury the incriminating documents. So here are my thoughts about the highlights.

First and foremost, I enjoyed meeting some old friends for the first time, including co-bloggers Melodie and Angela, but also Robert Levinson and long-time e-buddy R. T. Lawton, both of whose work I admire greatly.

Kiti and R.T. Lawton, Jill Amadio (our moderator) at Tarantino’s. Photo by Steve Steinbock

At the Shamus banquet I sat between two Shamus nominees, Gary Phillips and Russel D. McLean. The conversation was not boring.

Two great CB-related events, both organized by our fearless leader, James: the short story panel (now available on audio right here on this page) and dinner at Tarantino’s (not available on audio, which is good. Thirty people talking at once would be confusing.)

But here are some panelish thingies that caught my ear.

Cigars and politics

One treat was hearing Lee Goldberg interview Bill Link who, with his longtime partner the late Dick Levinson, created Columbo, Mannix, Murder She Wrote, etc. Not surprisingly most of the talk was about Columbo and one of my favorite questions was: what exactly did Peter Falk contribute to the character? After all, the cigar, the raincoat, and the “one more thing . . . ” were all there in the stage play, long before he played the part. So, what did he contribute exactly?

“The sloppiness,” said Link.

I should make it clear he was not denigrating Falk’s importance to the show. He knows it was a match made in TV heaven.

There was a fascinating panel about politics that turned on one issue which had been raised by Barry Eisler: why is it that only right-wing media figures are fans of thrillers? Glenn Beck loves ’em — and as panelist Gayle Lynds noted, even has liberal writers like her on his show — but Keith Olbermann, and Jon Stewart, not so much.

All the panelists were self-declared liberals, so their comments had, shall we say, a certain viewpoint. When they asked if their were any conservatives in the audience who would like to question or comment. The only hand that went up was Our Melodie. Brave woman, that.

I have seen the future

A panel of editors and agents talked optimistically about the future of the publishing business. They thought the worst was over and predicted that authors, agents, and publishers would find a place in the brave new world of e-books — which, by next year, might be 10% of the market.

I got a little cranky and asked about the one element of the publishing equation that no one had mentioned: bookstores. Two of the panelists than praised the importance of bookstores and made some very general, and to my ear not very convincing, words about their future. Depressing.

On a related topic, there was a fascinating panel on e-books. Boyd Morrison was there, and he is known as the poster child for this format, because his first novel The Ark, is selling four thousand copies a month electronically, and now the paper rights have been picked up by Simon and Shuster. Another member of that panel, Lee Goldberg, flat out said that the independent bookstore is going the way of the dodo, and lamented the fact. Not what I want to hear, but at least he had thought about it.

Location, location, etc.

One of the weirder moments for me was a panel on east coast versus west coast. F. Paul Wilson began by stating that in mysteries the east coast means New York and the west coast means L.A. And, in fact, those were the only places represented by the panelists. There was grumbling from the audience and I heard one woman say later that if she had been near a door she would have walked out.

It got a little weirder because some of the panelists went on to make jokes about Staten Island – apparently not all of New York City qualifies. This led a member of the audience — panelist Walter Mosley introduced her but I didn’t catch the name — to say she taught English at a college in Staten Island. She said she couldn’t get her students to write anything positive about the place they live, because they never hear anything positive about it, only the kind of jokes we were hearing today.

Panelist S. J. Rozan apologized for being the first one to kid about S. I. and offered to come speak to the woman’s class. S. J. is a great writer, but she is first and foremost a mensch.

Bringing the funny

The last panel I saw was on humorous writing. That was where I heard the amazing Sue Ann Jaffarian who writes three books a year. I’ll repeat that for the hard of reading. Three publishable funny novels a year. My keyboard aches just thinking about it.

But the guy on the panel who impressed me most was Lenny Kleinfeld, an older playwright who just put out his first novel, Shooters and Chasers. That’s a great title, but the reason I want to read the book is something else Kleinfeld said: “Everything goes back to Saint Hammett and Saint Chandler.”

Amen. Until next year, brothers and sisters, keep the faith.

I, THE VILLAIN

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe and Claire Trevor as Mrs. Helen Grayle (Velma Valento) in “Murder, My Sweet” (1944)

I never liked Halloween. I think it’s because my childhood was one long Halloween night. However, I did love being a witch. When playing games of pretend I was glad to play the part of the “bad” person. The villain. I instinctively knew where the power lay.

This was made clear to me last week when a newscaster, trolling in a costume store, was interviewing children about what they wanted to be for Halloween. They all gave the usual answers from princess to Spiderman. But one little boy said, “ A monster!” And he meant it. The newscaster, taken aback by his vehemence, asked in that cloying adult voice of a woman who has never raised a child, “Why do you want to be a monster?” The little boy said, “Because it’s my turn to scare the adults.” “Why do want to scare the adults?” “Because they get to scare me all year long.”

To not be scared is to be in control, to not be dominated. So one night of the year this little boy will feel what that is like. Only a child can turn a scary monster into a positive, at least for one night. So can the mystery writer.

We depend on monsters. They propel our stories. We’d be out of business without them. If not for the villains, our protagonist would have nothing to fight, to fear, to triumph over. Like all evil doers they come in various shapes, sizes, and sex. And we have an ambivalent admiration for many of them.

I would rather watch Richard the Third connive, deceive, and kill than wait for Hamlet to make up his mind while he bumbles around the castle creating havoc. When Richard screams, “My kingdom for a horse!”, I’ve always longed for a stray steed to lope by so he could leap on it, and ride away to deceive for another day.

Greta Garbo was in the selected audience for the screening of Jean Cocteau’s film, The Beauty and The Beast. After the beast turned into the prince and the movie ended, it is said that Garbo’s low sultry voice could be heard in the still dark room moaning, “I vant my beast back.” The raging dangerous beast was more seductive than the perfect prince.

Richard had a hump and the prince was imprisoned in his furry animal body. But these qualities, some might say infirmities, makes them more human and more threatening. I think Richard M. Nixon had an invisible hump.

One of my favorite villains is Veda Pierce in the novel, Mildred Pierce. I must apologize because I read it many years ago and I’m afraid the movie (a must see) and the book have merged in my mind. Mildred has two daughters. The good one dies, the evil one lives. Veda is as conniving as Richard the Third. In the movie she kills, in the book she doesn’t. Her ruthlessness is captivating; a young woman without a conscience. In the novel she goes on to live her cruel life, in the movie she is arrested. Veda is completely free of principle and shame. She’s the monster we might want to be for one Halloween night.

Another villain is Waldo Lydecker in Vera Caspary’s novel, Laura. Again the book and movie blur. I remember him as a fat obsessive lurking antique dealer in the book. It is the villain acted by Clifton Webb in the film that I think is the best. He is urbane, loathingly honest, and brilliant in his brutal wit. A man who prides himself on the best and the perfect, except he makes one very human mistake and falls in love. Wanting to obliterate his love object, and with her all his human emotions, he kills the wrong woman. Another controlling monster disguised as a seductive charmer.

As villains go I find Gutman more interesting than “Miss Wonderly” in The Maltese Falcon. She’s clever in an instinctive ruthless way, but he is sophisticated and knowledgeable. I’m a pushover for a villain who is philosophical about what he has to do to get what he wants.

Hannibal Lecter is one of the best villains ever. He has all the characteristics I’ve already mentioned and more. He is King Richard The Third on steroids. It is also his relationship with the protagonist Clarice Starling that gives him a human dimension. Without these two beautifully drawn characters The Silence of the Lambs would just be another good serial killer novel. And I never would have read it.

The villains in Chandler’ s work don’t stand out to me in any grand way, except for Moose and Velma in Farewell, My Lovely. Moose is the exact opposite of the brilliant witty villains. He is an animal. He only knows how to get what he wants by being a brute; yet in that enormous frame is a heart and it yearns for Velma. He has to find her. Again, love for a woman is his downfall. Moose is a poignant thug. Velma is the epitome of the villainous woman of Chandler’s time. “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

Velma is running from her past and is struggling to keep her position as a wealthy man’s wife. Even in Los Angeles you can’t change who you are completely. There is always somebody to search you out. Together Velma and Moose make one fascinating villain.

There are so many good evil characters I could on and on, and I’m sure you all have your favorites.

If you’re a new struggling writer having trouble with your plot take a good hard look at your villain. See what he wants (villains are very goal- directed), figure out why he wants it, and how he can get it. Your plot will begin to gel. Remember, the villain moves the story.