THE TRICKY ART OF SUSPENSE

by Janice Law

Joseph Cotton as Howard Graham, Everett Sloane as Kopeikin, and Orson Welles as Colonel Haki in the 1943 film version of Journey into Fear

I used to tease some of the less enthusiastic readers in my sophomore level lit course that Jane Austen was one of the great masters of suspense. The women in the class found this amusing; they almost always found her novels funny and surprisingly relevant. The men in the class preferred Ralph Ellison and Charles Dickens and were inclined to reserve judgment on the Divine Jane’s suspense cred.

Clearly, a lack of imagination on their part! But correcting such deficiencies is what the classroom is all about. Consider the stakes, I used to point out: one wrong move and the heroine doesn’t just lose the guy, she loses her future. Think of the obstacles, poverty, disapproving relatives (most seriously those with the cash), and other young women out on the husband hunt. As for them, think lionesses on the veldt and you won’t go far wrong.

Still, a certain skepticism lingered that was not simply due to our 8 a.m. meeting time. Well, we can’t all be working writers, or for that matter, fast, enthusiastic readers, so some of Austen’s skill will go unnoticed. But consider that most of her heroines’ time is spent in chat, in visits, in social gatherings of greater or less boredom; that there were no car (or carriage) chases, no bodies in the basement, no shattering scandals and definitely no zombies, and that her people are, by and large, exceedingly polite, if not always well behaved, and you can see that she had her work cut out for her.

And how well she succeeds. How exquisitely she draws out crucial matters. Will she or won’t she succeed? Will he or won’t he show up? With what imagination she prolongs the resolution of her character’s difficulties, using the minutiae of social life to build a real drama, a drama on which her heroine’s whole future life teeters. On one side, success, a good marriage, a chance for happiness; on the other, disaster, the wrong man, misery, or almost worse yet, no marriage at all and a lifetime of dependency.

Austen had a talent for suspense, that is for prolonging a pleasurable uncertainty about favorite characters, even if she did not write what we’d now label ‘suspense’ novels. These have become a genre of their own, marked by a gargantuan exaggeration of danger ( saving the world—or at least a major city—is de rigueur) and featuring non-stop action, firepower, and high body counts, all within three inch-thick tomes.

It was not always thus. Consider the god of suspense, Eric Ambler. His classic Journey into Fear is a masterpiece that might, by today’s standards, be judged too light on action and too short by half.

The hero, Graham, is returning by ship to the UK from Turkey, where he has been working on an armaments contract. World War II has begun, and the night before embarkation he is almost murdered for his knowledge. Spirited aboard an obscure merchant vessel by the Turkish security forces, he appears to be safe, but after a brief stop in Athens, a new passenger comes aboard, the putative assassin.

Trapped on the boat and sure to be murdered when he leaves—if not before—Graham struggles to hide his fears, deceive the killer, and find a way of evening the odds.

For most of the novel, events are low key, a matter of awkward dinners, tense conversations, and uneasy meetings that have Graham wavering between near panic and nonchalance. Journey into Fear only needs violent action at the climax, because like Austen, Ambler was writing about a shame culture. Austen’s young ladies must watch for any compromising social misstep; Graham operates within a strong culture of courtesy and hierarchy. Unlike our present culture, where shamelessness is almost a requirement for celebrity, gentlemen in Graham’s world have a certain attitude and code of conduct to maintain.

Journey into Fear unfolds within a culture of restraint, privilege, and complacency that brings its own tensions. Graham fears embarrassment as well as death, and one of the features of the novel is the awkwardness of having to evade a killer while avoiding both discourtesy and ‘melodrama’.

Published in 1940, Journey into Fear records the end of one type of life and the erosion of the former security provided its subjects by the British Empire. Graham, neither an imaginative nor a particularly sensitive man, finds that the world he thought he knew is full of pitfalls, that he is not safe, that his death is highly desirable in certain quarters, and that, the Empire and the pound sterling notwithstanding, his British passport is no guarantee of protection.

Ambler traces Graham’s psychological evolution with great skill. He manages to make the duel between the intelligent amateur and the ruthless professional plausible, in part because there are no supermen and superwomen in his novels, only smart, interesting people whose fate we are eager to learn. His novels may no longer fit Suspense Novel category, but Eric Ambler writes suspense.

FLORIDA CRIME NEWS

by Leigh Lundin

Naturally my home state, the only state with its own Fark tag, has to outdo the competition in weirdness. Consider this weathercast– some of us are so embarrassed we don’t admit we live here. (tch, tch, alisa, don’t go there.)

Number of Wives ___?

Who amongst us hasn’t forgotten a wedding or two? Who amongst us has forgotten our own? While still married? Okay, my good friend John Hyde managed to forget he still had a wife when he remarried and so did this Vero Beach man whose second wife is divorcing him, the ingrate!

Stop! I wanna get off.

It’s not unusual for cruise ships to drop anchor, but it’s very unusual when a drunk passenger drops anchor when the ship is under way (and under weigh). That could cost him 20 years and a quarter of a million dollars.

The 700 Club

Around 1890, socialite Ward McAllister published a list dubbed ‘The 400‘, the so-called crème de la crème of New York society, supposedly the number that fit comfortably in Mrs. Caroline Astor’s ballroom. An Alachua County couple settled on 700… cats. That rubbed the county the wrong way: It’s 600 more than the county allows and 698 more than common sense dictates. Guinness will make the award as soon as they get past the stench.

A Rear-Naked What?

For a moment I thought I read ‘near-naked choke,’ which was bad enough. A 63-year-old Boynton Beach husband kicked a robber’s butt using a ‘rear-naked choke‘. The name alone terrified the crook.

Miami Heat

Nevin Shapiro bilked investors nearly a billion dollars in a Ponzi scheme, then used much of those funds to illegally boost his favorite college team, the University of Miami Hurricanes. He funded prostitutes, gold jewelry, nightclubs, entertainment, abortions, and bounties for injuring players on opposing teams. After his arrest, many of the beneficiaries of Shapiro’s largesse stepped away from the plate, so now he’s telling all and it’s not a pretty tale.

And Around the Nation…

It’s true peculiar crimes happen elsewhere, just not in quality or quantity compared to Florida.

Puff Piece

It’s not often a guy faces life in prison for buying seafood. It’s also not often a guy contemplates killing his wife with seafood, as did an Illinois man who pled guilty to buying quantities of pufferfish tetrodotoxin, with an eye on his wife’s $20-million insurance policy. He faces possible life in prison.

Bonnie and Clod

This story has everything. Action: gunplay during high-speed chases. Romance: prison pen-pal marriage. Crime: bank robberies. Escape: car-jack, prison escape. Stupidity: can’t drive a stick-shift.

Extra Sugar

A New Jersey goil was arrested for peddling her muffins at the local Dunkin’ Donuts in an operation called Extra Sugar. Cops… doughnuts… that’s just asking for trouble.

Homicide Victims Rarely Speak Up

And finally, the Orlando Sentinel attributes the following article to the Easton, Pennsylvania Express-Times:

THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS (?) RIGHT

by John M. Floyd

A lot of writers will tell you they like writing, but they don’t like marketing. I’m an author, not a salesman, they say, usually with a haughty lift of the chin.

Well, the truth is, if we write for publication and not just for fun, we are salesmen. Like it or not, whether you’ve created a novel or a short story, in order to see it in print you’ll have to do at least some degree of selling—to the editor or agent or publisher beforehand and sometimes to the reading public afterward. And you’ll find that you have to sell yourself as well as your fiction. That could initially be in the form of a cover letter or a bio or a list of past sales—and later, if your project is accepted, you will probably (in the case of a novel or a collection of stories) be forced to get out there and scramble around in the trenches now and then. I’m not acquainted firsthand with self-publishing, but I know that marketing by the author plays a huge role there, and I do know firsthand that if you get an offer from a traditional publisher, large or small, you’ll almost certainly be expected to do a lot of interviews and appearances and booksignings.

Have ink pen, will travel

A couple of Saturdays ago I drove about 100 miles east to a large Books-A-Million store for an afternoon signing. They had plenty of copies of all three of my books and were kind enough to allow me to come for a no-particular-occasion event. Usually my publisher prefers, for obvious reasons, to schedule signings for the weeks preceding Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc., so the only thing notable about this gig was that it was a blazing summer day with 99% humidity and not a breath of wind and not a cloud in the sky, the kind of day that will melt your shoe soles to the pavement if you stand still too long. I think a lot of folks dropped by just to gasp a few minutes of industrial-strength air conditioning.

My time there was supposed to be from noon to four, but as always I arrived a little early and left a little late; I’m probably the only writer in the free world who has more fun at booksignings than the customers do. I saw a few old friends from school and IBM, and that’s always good, but what keeps me fired up at these things is the new people I meet. I realize I’m biased, but I think avid readers of fiction can be some of the most interesting folks you’ll ever run into. And I swear I learn something about human nature at every event I attend.

Rules of the road

I also usually confirm things that I already knew. Here’s one, and you can etch this one in stone: The people who stop and talk to you the longest at a signing are the ones who don’t buy a book. They chat with you about their jobs and their religion and their ailments and their families and their political views and their unfinished manuscripts, but it never once occurs to them to buy what you’re there to sell.

Another is that you can never fully predict who’s going to want to purchase a book and who’s not. It’s pretty safe to say (I’ve been doing this a long time) that most book-buyers these days, at least in my part of the world, are ladies between the ages of thirty and sixty. Don’t ask me why; it’s just another fact that you can write down and wrap up and put in the time capsule. But pleasant surprises do happen. At recent signings I’ve sold books to: a retired state senator, a girl in a soccer uniform and cleats, a giant biker with a snake tattoo and beard and ponytail, an Episcopal priest, a teenager with at least a pound of jewelry in her nose and eyebrows, an on-duty cop, an off-duty waitress, a guy just out of law school, and a ninety-year-old lady in a straw hat who later “friended” me on Facebook. I love ’em all. In fact, any author who isn’t sincerely grateful to newfound readers, or even to customers who buy his/her book to use as a gift for someone else, needs an attitude adjustment.

The downside

During this most recent signing, I heard the familiar and unanswerable question “Where do you get your ideas?” at least half a dozen times, and I was once more approached by a lot of aspiring writers who were convinced that my publisher would jump at the chance to see their books and stories. A couple of those storylines did sound promising, and I advised those folks to send a query letter, but most of the manuscripts were described as factual accounts of either (1) the author’s valiant personal struggles or (2) the fascinating life experiences of the author’s grandmother. I always try to be honest in my encouragement to other writers, but I can never quite force myself to reveal to them that a memoir written by someone who is not yet well-known and who has not yet done much writing will probably not sell a million copies in its first two weeks of release. No matter how interesting and difficult Grandma’s life was.

Thankfully, one thing I did not hear, this time, was anyone telling me how he would love to write if only he could find the time. (As if writing well must be so easy any idiot can do it, right? Not many things bother me, but this does.) The best response I’ve heard to this statement, although I’ve never had the guts to use it, came from my novelist friend Janet Brown. According to her, she was doing a booksigning someplace and a guy stopped at her table, looked down his nose at her, and said, “You know, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I’m a brain surgeon, and . . . well, I just never had the time.” Janet nodded, thought a moment, and replied, “I understand. I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon—but I just never had the time.”

The upside

Don’t get me wrong. As I mentioned earlier, most of the people I meet and talk with at these events are delightful. They’re folks I wish I’d known all my life, and certainly folks I wish I could spend more time with. Most are friendly and kind and, yes, sincerely interested in fiction, often on the writing end as well as the reading end. I remain in touch with many of those customers afterward, and I sincerely believe that my life is better for having met them.

I once heard that James Burrows and the Charles brothers chose to set their TV series Cheers in a bar because it would give them the perfect opportunity to show viewers a cross-section of humanity. In a neighborhood bar all kinds of characters show up, visit, and leave, and the possibilities for storylines are endless. The same can probably be said of booksignings.

It’s one of the things that makes them fun.

RUNNING FOR THE MONEY

by Steven Steinbock

When I was a lad in high school, there was this girl I liked. Back then there were a lot of girls I liked. But this one was especially cute. One time when I was dropping her off at her apartment—or maybe I was picking her up, although it doesn’t matter—I happened to meet her mother.

The next day the girl told me, “My mom liked you. She said if you lost the mustache, you’d have a real run for the money.”

I wasn’t so much flattered as floored. The comment knocked me on my proverbial keister. Surprisingly, it didn’t motivate me to lose the mustache. Those whiskers were my license to buy beer (in a state where I was still four years away from being of legal age). Stupidly, the ability to buy beer as a seventeen year-old was too important. Besides, as nice-looking as the mother was, it was my friend I wanted to impress and not her mom.

The words, though, had enough impact on me that they lingered in my mind to this day. Yet I was always puzzled at the idiom. What did it mean that I had a run for the money? It apparently has something to do with competitions, and possibly on placing bets. The general meaning is that one who has a run for the money—or one who causes a run for the money—has a nearly equal chance against the front-runner.

The bottom line is that the idiom run for the money has a muddled history, and equally muddled definition. And while it might be used as a compliment, it is just as easily value-neutral. But I still smile when I recall that girl and what she told me her mother said.

SURGE PROTECTION

As a fancier of language, the connections between two words of a common root rarely slip past me. Meditating on “equate” and “equator” transforms the globe into a mathematical wonder. “Linguini” and “linguistic” are a double treat for the tongue. Although the consonants went through a cosmetic shift, “combed” and “unkempt” share a toothy root. The spirit of Dante reminds me that “purgatory” is a place of “purging.”

Interestingly, the relationship between “urge” and “urgency” swooped right over my unkempt head until recently. This may belong in the Too-Much-Information Department, but I finally made the connection because, as a man of a certain age, Mother Nature whispered it in my ear.

Despite the obvious resemblance, “surge” and “surgery” are completely unrelated. (The former comes from the Latin surgere, “to rise,” whereas the latter comes from the Italian cirurgerie. But what about “emerge” and “emergency?”

KING LUDD

I once saw myself as being technologically progressive. I was keen on gadgetry, and at one time spoke BASIC almost as well as I spoke English. (I knew how to order coffee and ask directions in Assembly Language and COBOL, and in later years was pretty proficient in HTML, but to say I spoke them would be an exaggeration).

But these days I’m finding myself uneasy about using my Kindle. And the notion of texting still befuddles me. (I find it impossible to write a text without using proper grammar and spelling).

Does that make me a Luddite? That term gets bandied about a lot. But I think it’s overused. A Luddite isn’t just a person who avoids or dislikes technology. To be a true Luddite, a person must (1) believe that their livelihood is harmed by technology, and in response, (2) take action to sabotage or destroy technological equipment.

So no, I’m not really a Luddite. And most likely neither are you.

The movement was named after a figure of legend named “King Ludd” who is probably a variation on the Robin Hood legend. Like the green-hooded archer, Ludd was reputed to have lived in Sherwood Forest and was a fierce defender of the weak who destroyed the knitting equipment of the rich.

WORDS WITH AN ACCENT

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

A commercial for a cable company promises via a friendly-looking female, “I speak with a local accent.” To me, that says this company is not outsourcing their call centers and I can expect to speak to someone who understands my own accent. I am told I do have an accent, though to me, the sound of my voice sounds rather indistinguishable than at least the woman in the advertisement.

Many times writers are told their characters need to have their own voice. Beginning writers often take that to mean someone has to drop their “g’s” or resort to a dialect. Nothing is more bothersome than when too much dialect is coming from one person in a story. And if for some reason more than one character speaks entirely in a dialect, it gets downright confusing—and often boring.

I judged a contest where a writer had an excellent story to tell. His pacing was right on, his characters were fresh and exciting and I loved his style. The only off-putting feature was one major character’s every word was told in a heavy Irish brogue, so heavy it stilted the conversation and made the reader stumble over entire sentences, having to re-read again and again his dialogue. Unfortunately, this one thing kept him from winning that particular contest. A nod to an accent here and there would have been sufficient.

An editor advised me to “add some Texan” to my character’s speech. It was a simple idea that made all the difference. My friend, Nan, who is still a pure Californian spirit though she’s lived in Texas for twenty years said, “Just put in some of that stuff you always say. You know, “y’all” and “fixin’ to.” You are always saying those words.” She had a point.

I think part of the reason I adore noir stories (and the 1940s) is because of the hardboiled language that bespeaks the times. (Okay, it’s also because of the clothes!)

“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and like it.”

“I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”

—Sam Spade, in Dashiell Hammett’s
The Maltese Falcon

Though English phrases may show us the locale, dialogue still needs to differentiate between characters. We don’t confuse Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes’ in any of their conversations because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a master of distinguishing each character’s “voice.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

—Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, in A. C. Doyle’s
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

You can almost see Watson blustering about as he speaks, while Holmes is always a bit introspective.

Putting just the right accent on the right words mean the writer has drawn me into a particular locale where I felt quite at home, with or without my personal accent.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH II

by Rob Lopresti

We did this back in April, but it ain’t a summer rerun, because all the questions are brand spanking new. Each pair of actors played the same character, well-known in mystery fiction. The questions get harder as you go down the page. Answers are at the bottom. Have fun!

1. Sean Connery and Daniel Craig.

2. Nigel Bruce and Robert Duvall.

3. Edward Petherbridge and Robert Montgomery

4. Myrna Loy and Phyllis Kirk

5. Alec Guinness and James Mason

6. Val Kilmer and Roger Moore

7. Edna May Oliver and Eve Arden

8. Lou Diamond Phillips and Adam Beach.

9. Robert Lansing and Burt Reynolds

10. Samuel L. Jackson and James Coburn

And here are the answers, in case you possibly failed to get them all . . .

1. Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Sean Connery in 7 movies beginning with Doctor No, Daniel Craig in 2 movies beginning with Casino Royale.

2. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Doctor John Watson. Nigel Bruce in many movies, Robert Duvall in The Seven Percent Solution.

3. Dorothy L. Sayers’ Peter Wimsey. Edmund Petherbridge in TV’s Lord Peter Wimsey, Robert Montgomery in Haunted Honeymoon.

4. Dashiell Hammett’s Nora Charles. Myrna Loy in five movies beginning with The Thin Man, Phyllis Kirk on the TV series The Thin Man.

5. John LeCarré’s George Smiley. Alec Guinness in two TV miniseries starting with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and James Mason in The Deadly Affair.

6. Leslie Charteris’ Simon Templar. Val Kilmer in the movie The Saint, Roger Moore in the TV show The Saint.

7. Stuart Palmer’s Hildegarde Withers. Edna May Oliver in several movies beginning with Penguin Pool Murder, Eve Arden in A Very Missing Person.

8. Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee. Lou Diamond Phillips in The Dark Wind, Adam Beach in three TV movies beginning with Skinwalkers.

9. Ed McBain’s Steve Carella. Robert Lansing in the TV series 87th Precinct and Burt Reynolds in Fuzz.

10. Dashiell Hammett’s The Continental Op. Samuel L. Jackson in The House on Turk Street (No Good Deed), James Coburn in TV’s The Dain Curse.

DON’T CLONE ME, BRO!

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Yesterday morning as I was pouring 1% organic milk into my coffee, I asked Bones if he would have me cloned.

Without looking up from his Investor’s Daily Newspaper, he said, “No.” Then he paused, put his paper down, faced me, and said, “What?”

“Would you have me cloned?”

“Have you been reading science fiction?”

“No, the milk carton. It says no cows have been cloned to produce this milk. Would I know if I was cloned? Would I know that I was me?”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Then don’t clone me.”

“I wasn’t going to.” He rattled his Investor’s Daily, grumbled something that might have to do with the economy or me, and continued to read.

It seemed to me as I sipped my coffee that we have come a long way from the faces of lost or kidnapped children on milk cartons to the declaration that no cows have been cloned. I certainly didn’t get out of bed worried about civilization, but now I was. The milk carton had unnerved me. We were far from the disclaimer that “No actors have been cloned for this Got Milk? commercial.”

Could a writer be cloned? For those authors who have successfully created a cottage industry out of their books by having others write them, it might not be a bad idea.

“Can a clone create?”

Bones took off his glasses and rubbed his face. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. They haven’t cloned a human being yet.”

“Yet.”

“I suppose it depends on what kind of human they clone.”

“A writer.”

“I suppose so. Depending on what is going into the clone. But nobody knows.”

“You don’t seem very disturbed about this.”

“Huh?”

“I mean we’re talking about the essence of the individual.”

“It’s 7:30 in the morning the market is going up and down like a yo-yo, England’s just had a major riot, some European countries my go under financially, and you’re talking about cloning?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t even watch the sci-fi movies I like.”

“How many times have I sat through Solyent Green with you? And I like Blade Runner, with Mel Gibson.”

“Harrison Ford.”

“Are you sure?”

“Usually I would not question you about movies. but this I am sure about. And I’m sure that you don’t know anything about cloning and I don’t either.”

“But if they can clone a cow, can a human be far behind?”

“I’m buying a different brand of milk.” He shook his Investor’s Daily into submission.

I walked into my office and googled Harrison Ford and Blade Runner. He was right. How could I have gotten that wrong? I bet my clone would have known that.

I stared at my iPhone. I stared at my iPad, I stared at my monitor. I used to stare at a typewriter. Some writer long ago stared at parchment with a quill in his hand.

Would my clone stare at the monitor? Or would she sit down and just begin to write because she was programmed to. But how meaningless is that? No struggle. No soul searching. No individual voice. It’s taken me a long time to find my own voice. My own! And she, my clone, would have it with the snap of her fingers.

Would my clone get her roots done?

Stop, Melodie. I began to write.