I was out of town this weekend, but my absence was more than compensated by this timely essay by Ellery Queen Expert (and Author!), previous CB contributor Dale Andrews. —JLW

THE ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERIES

by Dale C. Andrews

This week the December edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine hit my mail box on the same day that the temperature in Washington, D.C., spiked to 90 degrees. We subscribers have long since become accustomed to these monthly episodes of time warp dictated by the publishing world’s conclusion that an “old” magazine will not sell on the news stands. But while the front cover of EQMM, as usual, defied the season in which it arrived, the back cover was completely timely. It announces in a full color spread that on September 28, 2010, NBC’s 1975 Ellery Queen series will be released in a six DVD set, containing all 22 original episodes, the two hour pilot, and an interview with William Link, who, along with his long-time writing partner the late Richard Levinson, created this one-year television gem.

Some of you who have read my sporadic contributions to Criminal Brief may remember that it was just a little over a year ago that I offered up a piece on the NBC Ellery Queen series. That ode to the series accompanied the publication in EQMM of my Ellery Queen pastiche “The Mad Hatter’s Riddle”, EQMM March/April 2009, which featured Ellery as a consultant to the series and takes place during the filming of “The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party”. That episode, originally aired on October 30, 1975, was the only episode of the series (aside from the two hour pilot) that was based on an Ellery Queen story, the classic 1935 short story of the same name. “The Adventure of the Mad Tea Party” has been heralded by Ellery Queen fans and mystery critics alike as probably the finest filmed version of an Ellery Queen work, but this is not to disparage the other episodes of the NBC series. They are uniformly fine—tight writing, clever plots, nice acting, and a wonderful theme by Elmer Bernstein (The sheet music is on my piano as I type!) I have always loved the series, but little did I suspect one year ago when I wrote that last Criminal Brief piece that 2010 would bring forth remastered DVDs of this wonderful portrayal of Ellery.

So it seems to me this event is a cause for some reflection and, perhaps, a bit of nostalgia. It’s been a long 35 years since we last encountered Mr. Hutton’s portrayal of Ellery Queen.

Television (and the movies, for that matter) fretted a long time trying to get Ellery right. The movie attempts of the 1930s and 1940s are basically unwatchable, portraying Ellery comically as a slap-stick blunderer. As my friend and sometimes collaborator Kurt Sercu, proprietor of “Ellery Queen, a Website on Deduction” has observed, “None of the films in the series is really worthwhile, a distinct disappointment to the mystery fans who came to regard the Ellery Queen stories as top-grade in the mystery genre.”

Early television attempts to bring Ellery and the Inspector to the small screen on the Dumont network and ABC were more successful, but it took Levinson and Link, long-time EQ fans, to finally get it right. And even they took two tries.

I pause here to note what is already evident to those who have read my few contributions to this site and my fewer-still published short stories. I am an Ellery Queen fan. My fiction successes thus far have been works that feature Ellery Queen. Thankfully we have a name for these—pastiches. (It sounds so much better than “fan fiction.”) I did not come to this affection for the works of Queen late in life; I’ve been a fan since my early teens. So it was with great expectation in November, 1971, when I was a senior in college, that I tuned in to the first attempt by NBC to bring Mr. Queen to the small screen. It should have been a dead give-away that trouble was brewing, however. Even though the pilot had been announced as a Levinson and Link production, the credits indicated that it had been written by “Ted Leighton.” It was not until years later that Messrs. Levinson and Link admitted that they had been so under-whelmed by NBC’s re-working of their script, originally based on the EQ novel Cat of Many Tails, that they had insisted the project could only go forward under the banner of a non-existent script writer. Hence the birth (and death) of Mr. Leighton.

It is difficult to imagine a worse Ellery Queen than Peter Lawford, who portrayed Ellery in that pilot as a mod Brit sporting a constant Nehru jacket. Harry Morgan (earlier of Pete and Gladys, later of M*A*S*H) was more credible as the Inspector, but since he was only seven years older than Mr. Lawford he had to be cast not as Ellery’s father but as his “American uncle.” The script took the basic and rather dark premise of the book, referenced it once as a throw-away line, and otherwise abandoned it. The totality of the result was terrible. Thankfully this sorry exercise never made it to its intended berth as one of the recurring series under NBC’s Sunday Night Mystery umbrella. (It was MacMillan and Wife, starring Rock Hudson and Susan St. James, that instead got the nod.)

After that debacle in 1971 I figured that would be it for Ellery on television.

But Link and Levinson were determined, unbowed and undaunted. It was four years later, when I was a second year law student, that their second attempt was screened in March of 1975 as a two hour NBC movie. This pilot for the series that followed was based on Queen’s The Fourth Side of the Triangle, published in 1965. (That novel, while edited by Manfred Lee, was written during his famous “writer’s bloc” era, and in fact, was “ghosted’ by science fiction writer Avram Davidson from a 71-page detailed outline by Frederic Dannay.) The pilot re-set the story in 1947, casting Jim Hutton as Ellery and David Wayne as the Inspector. The pilot also removed an awkward element from the novel—there Ellery, Mycroft Holmes-like, solves the mystery largely from a hospital bed. In the NBC version, Ellery is present front and center for all of the action.

Joyously, NBC responded to the decent ratings the pilot garnered by picking up the series and giving it a then-coveted berth at 9:00 on Thursday nights.

The series opened on September 11, 1975, with “The Adventure of Auld Lang Syne”. This may not have been the wisest gambit since Ellery has less of a rôle in the episode than in subsequent ones. In fact, production notes indicate that the first episode filmed was likely the previously-discussed “Adventure of the Mad Tea Party”, an episode that was not aired until October 30. In any event, the series gained good reviews but attracted a mediocre audience. Its ratings climbed, however, and in October NBC renewed it for a full season. But then, in an ultimately disastrous decision, the network moved the show to Sunday nights at 8:00. There the series was scheduled opposite The Six Million Dollar Man on ABC (a perennial top-ten show at the time) and (unbelievably) also opposite CBS’s revamped Sonny and Cher show, which to much anticipation, paired the then newly-divorced singing duo in a remake of their previous top 10 series.

NBC had previously tested the Sunday night berth with one Ellery Queen episode, titled, perhaps presciently, “The Adventure of Miss Aggie’s Farewwell Performance”, on October 19th. The regular Sunday night episodes began on January 4, 1976 with “The Adventure of the Black Falcon”, which, opposite a re-run of Six Million Dollar Man, scored number 11 in the weekly Nielsen ratings. This proved, however, to be the high water mark for Ellery Queen. One week later The Six Million Dollar Man offered a new episode, Sonny and Cher premiered, and Ellery Queen’s ratings sank to unreported depths. At the end of 1976, after 22 episodes, the series was cancelled.

So, other than luck of the draw, why did this series, one of the most nimbly executed whodunits ever, fail to find an audience? As I noted in my article last year, the belief of Levinson and Link was that the show was simply too well done, too cerebral for its intended audience. It demanded a lot if you were intent on watching it over a beer.

In his 2002 article “Confessions of a Mystery Writer”, William Link wrote: “Thinking back, the Queen series was too complicated for its own good. I remember spending an entire afternoon with Dick [Levinson] trying to figure how keys on a keychain would fall into what configuration in one’s pocket when placed there.” When audiences didn’t respond the lesson was learned: “[o]ur failure with Ellery Queen was our template” for future efforts, Levinson observed. “We deliberately made the clues on Murder She Wrote easier to decipher, including a very guessable murderer now and then. Part of our psychology was to reward the focused viewers because they might then be motivated to return the following week. Another unexpressed reason was that it was far easier to come up with facile clues than sweating bullets over keys in a pocket…. The upshot was that Murder She Wrote thrived for 12 seasons, Ellery Queen [only] one.”

In short, the Queen show simply refused to write to wide denominator. It played to a higher appreciation level.

And now, after so long, the series is back. How long has it been? Well, speaking personally, the college student who watched Mr. Lawford in 1971, and the law student who faithfully watched Mr. Hutton every week, is now retired.

While I have attributed the memories set forth above to my personal experience with the series, my recommendation that fans of this site purchase the new DVD set is not based solely on 35-year-old memories. In my family room I have a set of DVDs with all episodes of the series, purchased some years back on eBay and recorded from the A&E network re-broadcasts of approximately 15 years ago. My copies are grainy and have bad edits; in some instances the commercials were not even removed. Some of the introductions are missing as well. But I can promise you that even in that sorry state all of the episodes are gems—at times they outshine Queen’s own stories in cleverness and fair-play. And the production values hold up amazingly well in 2010 (which should be even more the case with re-mastered originals instead of the grainy recordings I and everyone else until now has been relegated to). Somewhat paradoxically, even though the series is set in 1947 it is not at all dated. In other words it doesn’t look like a 1970s series since it was never intended to be a 1970s series.

It is interesting that while the intricate and intelligent whodunits that comprise the NBC series were too much for audience demographics in 1975, when all television was comprised of three networks and PBS, they likely will play very differently today. Unlike the 1970s, multiple cable outlets and affordable DVDs tempt producers to play to niche markets rather than abandon them. I hope that is the case with The Ellery Queen Mysteries, but I know that it will, in any event, be the case in the niche market that is my family room.

The Ellery Queen Mysteries should be in video stores tomorrow. The set is also available for on-line ordering from Amazon.com. Welcome back, Mr. Queen!

Virginia Christian

VIRGINIA, VIRGINIA

by Leigh Lundin

Thursday, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed the first woman in nearly a hundred years. Although women commit 41% of domestic homicides, fewer than 1% of people sentenced to death will be women. But, travel with me back to 1912.

The Case of Virginia Christian

A century ago, a young Virginia girl, Virginia Christian, faced a death sentence. She unintentionally suffocated her employer who frequently mistreated the girl.

On 18 March 1912, the employer, a white woman named Ida Virginia Belote, beat her laundress ‘Gennie’ with a spittoon until it broke. The two grabbed broom handles used to prop open bedroom windows. The girl struck Belote’s forehead and the woman collapsed. To stem Belote’s shrieking, Gennie Christian stuffed a tea towel in her mouth, not realizing she forced the woman’s tongue down her throat. The girl fled the house, taking the woman’s purse.

Police apprehended Gennie who readily admitted striking Belote, but she was shocked to learn Belote was dead. Gennie insisted she did not intend to kill Belote, but was hurt, angry, and wanted to stop the beating.

Her attorneys received no compensation and paid fees and expenses out of their own pockets. In an angry atmosphere, Elizabeth City County (now Hampton) Court condemned the 16-year-old girl to death in the state’s new-fangled electric chair. The commonwealth executed Gennie the day after her seventeenth birthday as noted on her death certificate.

The Letter of the Law

Gennie’s mother wrote the Governor of Virginia. I leave you with her note and challenge readers to remain untouched:

My dear mr governor

Please for give me for Bowing low to write you a few lines: I am the mother of Virginiany Christian. I have been pairalized for mor then three years and I could not and Look after Gennie as I wants too. I know she dun an aweful weaked thing when she kill Miss Belote and I hear that the people at the penetintry wants to kill her but I is praying night and day on my knees to God that he will soften your heart so that She may spend the rest of her days in prison. they say that the whole thing is in yours Hands and I know Governer if you will onely save my child who is little over sixteen years old God will Bless you for ever … If I was able to come to see you I could splain things to you better but I cant do nothing but pray to God and ask him to help you to simpithise with me and my truble

I am your most umble subgeck,

Charlotte Christian.

BOND FANS ARE FOREVER

by John M. Floyd

I grew up with James Bond. I read all the Ian Fleming novels as a teenager in the sixties, snapping them up from the library’s “bookmobile” that rumbled into our small town once a week, and throughout college I eagerly awaited every new movie in the series (all of which I have now seen multiple times).

I realize none of the Bond books were mysteries, and few contained short stories, but all were crime (or at least spy) fiction, and left me—how shall I put it?—stirred but not shaken. To a kid in Mississippi, those secret-agent thrillers were a connection to barely-imagined things like Rolexes and Aston Martins and exotic settings, and I’m sure they probably influenced my later decision to write tales of suspense and deception.

Like all fans of superhuman Bondage, I have strong opinions about both his novels and his films—I loved most of the Connerys and tolerated most of the Moores—but for this column I plan to jettison my personal feelings and try to report a few trivial things that some folks might not know about the 007 phenomenon.

Drawn mostly from references like Deborah Lipp’s fascinating The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book and partly from my own foggy memory, here are some little-known (or at least lesser-known) facts:

For Your Eyes Only was the only Bond movie that did not feature “M.” This was shortly after the death of actor Bernard Lee, and M was said to be “on leave.”

“Goldeneye” was Ian Fleming’s name for the Jamaican beachfront retreat where he wrote all the 007 novels.

Tomorrow Never Dies was originally titled Tomorrow Never Lies. A typo in the early promotional material prompted the change, which the brass thought would be easier than going through the expense of replacing all the material.

The “Q” character, played by Desmond Llewelyn and others, appeared in all but three Bond films: Live and Let Die, Casino Royale (the 2006 version), and Quantum of Solace.

Sean Connery wore a toupee in all his Bond movies.

In Goldfinger the voice of Gert Frobe, who had a heavy accent and knew very little English, was dubbed by an actor named Michael Collins.

At the end of You Only Live Twice, when the submarine was supposed to rise underneath Bond’s and Kissy’s raft and wind up with the raft resting on top, it wouldn’t work: the submarine’s waves kept pushing the raft aside. Finally they filmed it by putting the raft on top of the sub, then making the sub dive . . . and then reversing the film.

“The James Bond Theme” was written by Monty Norman, not John Barry.

Ian Fleming is said to have produced each James Bond novel by writing two thousand words a day for six weeks, once a year, at his house in Jamaica.

Never Say Never Again, the only “unofficial” Bond movie since it wasn’t part of the EON franchise, was a remake of Thunderball. NSNA and the 1966 spoof of Casino Royale are almost never counted when someone mentions the number (22) of Bond movies.

The view-through-the-gunbarrel sequence at the beginning of Bond films was invented by title designer Maurice Binder, who really did aim the camera down a gunbarrel.

Roger Moore drove or rode in a motor-powered boat in every Bond movie he was in.

John Barry did a cameo in his final Bond film: he was the orchestra conductor in the last scene of The Living Daylights.

Countess Lisl Von Schlam in For Your Eyes Only was played by Cassandra Harris, the late wife of Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan first met the Bond producers (his future bosses) when he was visiting his wife on the set.

The Sylvia Trench character in Dr. No was to have been a Bond love interest throughout the series, but she wound up in only the first two films.

I believe “All Time High” from Octopussy is the only “title” song in which the movie name isn’t used. (I’m not counting instrumentals.)

The only Bond film without a major villain was Tomorrow Never Dies. Elliot Carver was a power-mad media mogul, but wasn’t as overtly evil as most of Bond’s main adversaries.

In all the movies (except one) featuring the Felix Leiter character, Felix was portrayed by a different actor, and in every case the audience was left to wonder who this stranger was, until Bond greeted him as an old pal.

Christopher Lee, who played Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun, was Ian Fleming’s cousin.

Licence to Kill was released as Vendetta Privata (Personal Revenge) in Italy because, twenty-seven years earlier, the Italian title for Dr. No was Licenza di Uccidere (License to Kill).

“We Have All the Time in the World” from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was the last song ever recorded by Louis Armstrong.

In Diamonds Are Forever, when Bond’s and Tiffany’s red Mustang escaped pursuit by tilting onto two wheels to drive through a narrow alley, the car goes into the alley balanced on its right wheels and exits the alley balanced on its left wheels. Probably the biggest goof in the franchise’s history.

“Bond—James Bond” is said to be the best-known movie line ever spoken.

When Ian Fleming asked his friend Noel Coward to play the villain in the first Bond movie, Coward is said to have replied, “Dr. No? No, no, no.”

Producer Albert Broccoli once stated that half the world’s population has seen at least one Bond film. (It has since been estimated that a third—approximately two billion—is more correct.)

The first actor to play multiple characters in the Bond series was . . . Sean Connery. It’s true: in the pre-credits “teaser” scene in From Russia With Love Connery played a SPECTRE agent who was wearing a James Bond mask.

The martial arts instructor for Never Say Never Again was Steven Seagal.

No Bond movie has ever received an Oscar nomination in any of the six top categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, or Best Supporting Actress.

M’s temporary quarters in Licence to Kill was Ernest Hemingway’s famous home in Key West.

In The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990), Fleming was portrayed by Sean Connery’s son Jason.

“Always have an escape plan” is the last line ever spoken by Desmond Llewelyn as Q, in The World Is Not Enough.

The skiing-off-a-cliff stunt at the beginning of The Spy Who Loved Me is widely recognized as the best onscreen, non-CG-enhanced stunt over performed. The setting was Asgard Peak on Baffin Island, Canada.

The Ernst Stavro Blofeld character in both From Russia With Love and Thunderball (unseen except for his hands, petting a cat) is played by Anthony Dawson, who played Professor Dent in Dr. No.

Moonraker had a bigger budget than all the previous Bond films combined, and marked Bernard Lee’s last appearance as M.

Among the actors considered and rejected for the Bond role in Dr. No were James Mason, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison, Trevor Howard, and David Niven. Trevor Howard???

Licence to Kill’s original title was Licence Revoked. It is said to have been changed because Americans might be too stupid to know what “revoked” meant.

Only two Bond movies lack a “teaser” scene before the title sequence: Dr. No and Never Say Never Again.

The only time that years were specifically referenced—1943 and 1969—was on the headstone of Bond’s widow’s (Tracy’s) grave in For Your Eyes Only.

Scaramanga’s Island in The Man With the Golden Gun (actually Khow-Ping-Kan in Thailand) was re-named James Bond Island and became a major tourist attraction.

Cameos in Die Another Day included Justin Llewelyn (Desmond’s son) as a witness to a swordfight and Deborah Moore (Roger’s daughter) as a flight attendant who served Bond a drink.

More facts than you wanted or needed to know, right? Hey, I said they were trivial.

Did I also say I’d keep personal feelings out of this column? I lied. In my opinion, the best Bond movies by far were Goldfinger and From Russia With Love, and the worst (also by far) were A View to a Kill, Moonraker, and The Man With the Golden Gun.

But what do I know? I still think Blazing Saddles should’ve been up for Best Picture in 1974 . . .

STORY-DRIVEN

by Steven Steinbock

At the risk of repeating myself, I’m going to weigh in on the plot-driven versus character-driven debate. My conclusion, the debate itself is drivel-driven. Plot and character are two elements that fit into a balanced system that we call fiction. Comparing it to the Yin and Yang of Taoism isn’t woo-woo hokum. It’s a practical reality.

I find that when people claim that they write character-driven fiction, they’re showing off a pretension that says they’re somehow above genre writing, that their books might get shelved with mystery and suspense, but it’s really better than all that. Drivel. On the other hand, I don’t hear many people claiming to write plot-driven fiction. There are those (and I’m among them) who extol the virtues of plot, mainly because no one else does.

In a moment I’ll share with you a personal anecdote – something that recently occurred during the course of my own writing – that illustrates the interrelationship of plot and character.

I can’t pretend to understand the complexities of this thing we call story. I have read and listened to a variety of theorists who claim to have the formula. Some of them offer ideas and strategies that make sense, and may actually help writers to write better fiction. But most of the theories and systems have a reek of snake oil. It makes me wonder, if these gurus know so much, why aren’t their novels and screenplays on any blockbuster lists?

But I do think – and I apologies if this starts to sound spiritual – that Story is something that, once created, exists as a very real entity that hovers in the space between the writer, the reader, and the printed page.

In writing my current fiction project (a novel), I recently had an experience that reminded me how plot drives character, which drives plot, which drives character, ad infinitum. I was stuck at an action point in the book. In order for the plot to move forward, I had to get my lead character to go alone into a house at night, a house that had just had the crime scene tape removed a few hours earlier. I was caught in a plausibility trap. In order to keep from sounding like something from a Mary Roberts Rinehart or Carolyn Wells (with all respects to Mmes. Rinehart and Wells), I had to come up with a good reason for him to go in.

The reason, of course, was that the owner of the empty house asked my lead character to go in. Why? Because from the neighbor’s house, where she and her daughter were staying ever since a murder occurred there, her daughter saw lights coming from the house.

I’d already established that the owner of the house (whose ex-husband was found dead in her darkroom) is something of an artsy and spiritual type, while her teenage daughter is the straightforward, and in some ways, the more responsible one. But I had to ask myself, if the daughter had seen lights in the empty house, why the hell wouldn’t they call the police rather than calling my lead character? The obvious reason is that if she called the police rather than my lead character, I wouldn’t have much of a story. But I had to discover the reason within the story. There had to be a real, practical, and plausible reason why the woman wouldn’t want to call the police.

When I was at the point of giving it up for the day I had a eureka moment. What if . . . the neighbor, seeing that her friend was unable to relax after the discovery of a body in her darkroom, suggests a little marijuana. So the two middle-aged women smoke a joint. When the teenage daughter reports that she saw lights in their house next door, the two women are feeling a little too high (read “paranoid”) to call the police. They call my lead character instead. Now I had a broad, three dimensional tableau of characteristics, attitudes, interactions, and responses to play with. We get to see the teenage daughter annoyed at her mother’s irresponsible behavior. We get to see another dimension (in literally an altered state of consciousness) of the mother. We get to see my lead character’s surprise at the whole scenario. Most importantly: the plot problem was solved AND we see the characters in an amusing and very believable situation.

One final note: Out of curiosity, I checked online to see if anyone else out there is using the expression story-driven. Yes, it turns out. But only among video-game developers. Go figure.

THE BIG SLEEP

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

An article in Sunday’s newspaper grabbed my attention as all headlines should. “‘Big Sleep’ author to get wish.” It seems although Raymond Chandler allowed his hard-boiled detective, Phillip Marlowe, to quip that it didn’t matter where you lay when you were dead, in real life Chandler did care.

He’d planned to spend eternity next to Cissy Chandler, his beloved wife of three decades, but a fluke of no mention in his will about his remains left the Chandlers separated since his death in 1959 at age 70. The couple wed in 1924. She died after a long illness in 1954. In his depression, he wrote The Long Goodbye.

Chandler, known for his tough guys and language in his pulp fiction, was actually a romantic and devoted to his wife. Instead of being side-by-side for eternity, they were about a block apart with Chandler buried in a grave and Cissy’s cremated remains on a mausoleum warehouse shelf. On Valentine’s Day 2011, the two will be reunited with Cissy’s remains being placed next to his.

Chandler’s San Diego grave is modest with the word “author” carved on his tombstone below his name.

Does it matter where we’re buried? Or even if we’re buried at all? Most people tell me they haven’t thought that much about it, but now that I’d asked, they were considering their prospects.

Except for when he was married to my grandmother, my grandfather lived most of his life in St. Cloud, Missouri on his small farm. Shortly before his death, he requested to be buried next to my grandmother who’d died decades prior. He’d never remarried, and although she dated several men, she never remarried either. They are now side-by-side in a Texas cemetery. Does that matter?

My mother-in-law was cremated and her ashes spread on the farmland where she and my father-in-law first lived. This was not their property when they were newlyweds , nor when she died more than forty-six years later. Her memorial service was in Texas where she’d lived most of her life, then the ashes transported to Oklahoma where she was born, married, and gave birth. I remember my father-in-law and their three sons each taking a turn at carrying out her last wish, spreading her ashes on the farmland where she’d been the happiest.

Imagine my surprise when the owner strolled out to the field and asked what was going on and I discovered no one had first asked his permission. He was nice about it and left us after an explanation, but then, what else could he do? The deed was done.

My father-in-law has since remarried and I wonder what he wants us to do after he passes. I am hoping he’s told someone, but it hasn’t been me. Should his loyalty lie with the current wife or his first? I’m sure religions differ on their takes.

“Till death us do part” takes on more relevance to me now. Of course, my father-in-law may outlive his second wife, too.

Characters close to our protagonist sometimes die while our hero lives on. Many times, it fuels him to right the wrongs of life in their honor, or keeps him on the straight and narrow in order to meet up with his own beloved in the “sweet by and by.” Other times, he may be driven to drink or use drugs or behave badly because he’s an emotional wreck because of their passing. I haven’t thought much of what would happen when my character died if I dared let him, à la Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. If I had a series that popular, I’m afraid that even if I grew tired of writing his exploits, I would probably never let him die.

Would I (or my readers) care where my detective would be buried—or if he were not buried at all? I think that depends on the character and how he might want to go. I’d hope he left a will or a letter explaining his last requests. Sometimes characters tell you important things if you listen carefully enough. I’d think where he’d want to take his Big Sleep might be one of them.

THIS IS NOT A RIP-OFF

by Rob Lopresti

I recently read “Shell Game” by Neil Schofield in the November issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and I recommend it, but that’s not why I bring it up.

You see, as I read it I had a nagging sense of familiarity. I guessed— correctly, as it turned out—exactly where the story was headed. There was a reason for that; I had driven that road myself.

Schofield used a plot device that I had used in the second story of mine that was published in Hitchcock’s way back in the 1980s. Put it this way; if you read my story first and then his (or vice versa) you would immediately know what was going to happen.

Some of you may expect to hear I am contacting a lawyer, hoping to deprive Neil of the vast wealth he acquired by swiping my story. Well, no. For at least two excellent reasons.

Going legit

First of all, I don’t believe for a minute that Schofield read (or remembered) my story that appeared decades ago and decided to steal a plot gimmick. I’m sure he came up with it on his own.

Second, and this is more important, even if he had done exactly that, it would still be legitimate theft.

The first time I came across that phrase was in the book Telling Lies For Fun And Profit by Lawrence Block. (And if you are interested in writing fiction you should definitely read all three of Block’s books on the subject. Telling Lies is the best.)

Block explained that he got a phone call from writer Brian Garfield telling him how much he had liked a novelette Block had recently published in (yes, again) Hitchcock’s.

What he said next was faintly unsettling, however. “I liked it so much,” quoth he,”that I managed to figure out a way to steal it.”

“Steal it?” said I. “Steal it?”

“Oh, it’s a legitimate form of theft,” he assured me. “You’ll see when it comes out.”

I countered by quoting Oscar Levant. “Imitation,” I pointed out, “is the sincerest form of plagiarism.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Brian, and rang off.

Block prefers the term creative plagiarism to legitimate theft, and when he read the story he agreed that that was what Garfield had accomplished. “His story directly derived from mine, but he had so adapted the idea as to create a completely different story.”

“The acid test, it seems to me,” Block adds, “is whether the plagiarist contributes something significant of his own devising to what he has borrowed.”

Unpleasant surprise

This is not the first time I had an experience like this. Not too long ago I read Lee Child’s excellent novel Killing Floor and had a startling sense of déjà vu. The opening page strongly resembles my “The Hard Case,” which appeared in (did you guess?) Hitchcock’s. Both begin with a stranger in a diner (eating eggs!) and being arrested on suspicion of murder. Surely Childs hadn’t copied me?

I checked the publication date and got a shock. Childs wrote his book almost a decade before I wrote my story. If anyone had done the copying it was me, and I swear on a stack of royalty checks I had never read his book until long after my story was published.

So, just as in the Schofield case, two writers came up with the same idea. Fortunately, my story goes in completely different directions from Child’s novel. But it is a scary reminder that there are only so many ideas out there.

The interviewer has a final question

But, tell the truth, Mr. Lopresti. Don’t you resent Mr. Schofield’s story at all?

Well, yes. I suppose I do.

Ah ha! Because it uses the same plot device as your story?

No. Because it’s better than mine.

WHILE I’M WRITING…

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Like Steve I was going to show pictures of my office today. But I’m not sure I’m ready for my close-up.

I went on the Murdurati Site and looked at some of the author’s offices, which I enjoyed very much. But I was struck by the sameness of the writing spaces. An empty chair is an empty chair. A desk is more or less like any other desk. Computers and lamps may vary in style and name brand but they all work basically in the same way. A stack of papers, a pile of boxes, a web of cords and wires look pretty mundane. Except for a couple of them there was something missing in most of the photos that would make one different from the other, and that was the author. The living breathing human being who saunters or creeps into her/his works space, sits down, and transforms it from static to vibrant. It’s like an actor walking onto an empty stage and suddenly it becomes what the actor wants it to be. Even the coffee shop photos had a sameness. But it wasn’t until Steve put up the picture of Gayle and himself that brought Starbucks alive.

I suppose if you really wanted to photograph a writer’s office you’d have to somehow crawl into her imagination.

I saw the new Ben Affleck move, The Town. I highly recommend it. It’s a good old fashioned Hollywood movie where you actually care about the people involved and it has a great car chase that finally out does the chase in Bullitt, the movie starring Steve McQueen and directed by Peter Yates.

But what holds The Town together and keeps it from being a slick, high tech, shoot-’em-up special effects wonder is the writing and the scene work. The characters relate to each other. They fall in love, they betray, they fear for their lives, and even try to change. It is also an homage to the gangster movies of the thirties. I expected James Cagney to come dancing down the sidewalk with both barrels blasting. I realized how much I love a good entertaining movie and how few of them there are.

On the way home from the movies Bones and I were discussing if this September and October were going turn into months of inferno. Yes, the rest of you have a fall season, we in Southern California have a fire season. I was beginning to panic about the possibility of another conflagration.

Trying to console me he said, “There isn’t much left to burn.”

“A fire will always find a place to burn,” I replied.

We drove in silence for then he said, “Remember that.”

“What?”

“A fire will always find a place to burn. It’s a good opening line.”

I thought about it. Yes, it set atmosphere, tone and created a sense of tension. What does it mean? I don’t know. Yet.

I wondered what I would do without Bones. I ramble on, words flowing more freely from my mouth than my pen. I am not one of those quiet writers that sits back and observes. I talk and observe. I’d talk to a tree if I had to. Alas, I don’t always listen to what I say. This of course can be deadly socially. I realized at that moment in the car that Bones has become my pointer-outer, my sieve that filters the good words from my endless stream of consciousness and yammering.

That night Bones and I tried to watch the Martin Scorsese HBO series Boardwalk Empire. We couldn’t get through it. The 1920’s costumes seem to be wearing the actors. There was a gratuitous sex scene that reminded me of the sex scenes from the 1970s when it was de rigueur to show women naked even if it wasn’t relevant to the script. But more importantly, I didn’t care about anybody. You still have to be able to identify with a character even in a Scorsese film.

Yesterday I was walking the dog and trying to take a picture of him at the same time. When I returned to the house I looked at what I had captured on my iPhone. It was then I discovered I have a video camera with sound. (Obviously high tech gadgets are lost on me.)

On the cell’s small screen I watched Dr. Watson’s furry ass with his long feather tail at half-mast scurrying in front of my legs as they strode in and out of frame. And then I head the sound of my voice ostensibly talking to the dog. But does he really care about the name of the tree he is lifting his leg on? Or how beautiful the pelicans are in flight? And then I head myself laughing, chuckling away like a crazy woman. Oh, God. It’s happening. And I’m unintentionally recording it all.

I am now revising my novel. When an author revises two things happen. First you read what you have written, and then you want to commit suicide. I had to remind myself, once again, that this is the process of writing. What did Ray Bradbury say? “Throw up in the morning, clean up at night.” The bulimic school of writing.

Over the trauma of seeing the reality of what I have written I begin to see the small wonders, the good scenes, even some gems. And my excitement sirs and my grasp of the book begins to take hold.

The odd thing is when I’m writing a novel I have trouble reading suspense or mysteries. During this period of time I usually read “straight fiction”. Joanna Trollope is my cup of tea right now and Kate Atkinson, who has become a mystery writer with her Jackson Brodie books. I like Atkinson because she has remained doggedly “literary” while diving into the genre. She dares to take her time and let her characters think and remember while confronting the shocking murders of loved ones.

It irritates me when I read what I think is a bad mystery. I’m not one of those writers who build myself up by knowing how bad some other writer is. Good work breeds good work. And that’s what keeps me going when I’m writing a novel.