ONWARD AND UPWARD
AND THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

by Janice Law

More literary spelunking this week with a descent back to 1910 and the birth of Lady Molly, that’s Lady Molly of Scotland Yard should you have a number of titled lassies on your speed dial. She was one of the later characters created by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, a titled Hungarian whose family left their country during a period of unrest and wound up in London.

Later, Emma eked out a living as an illustrator and translator. Her first writing ventures were only modestly successful, but she hit her stride with The Scarlet Pimpernel, a play written with her husband. Its dashing hero subsequently appeared in the series of novels that made her fortune. Good Americans get to Paris when they die, but good Hungarians buy a villa in Monte Carlo, where she and her husband lived happily ever after.

My interest, however, is another of her characters, Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk, whose adventures are narrated by her worshipful assistant, Mary Granard. This detective and narrator format had been made popular by Arthur Conan Doyle, and it was one Orczy liked, using a similar strategy for her more famous Old Man in the Corner stories.

Lady Molly has some distinctive qualities of her own. If not the first detective formally attached to the police, she was one of the first, heading up the Female Department of Scotland Yard. Just what this department did or who it consisted of besides Lady Molly and her deferential sidekick is left vague.

In the opening story, The Ninescore Mystery, Lady Molly has been entrusted with a murder, and like all good Edwardian detectives, she is thrilled with the prospect, as is the narrator: “We of the Female Department are dreadfully snubbed by the men, though don’t tell me that women have not ten times as much intuition as the blundering and sterner sex . . .” She concludes with the belief that many “so-called mysteries” should be “put to the test of feminine investigation.”

From this paean to feminine intuition and to a distinctively feminine approach to detection (both doubtless articles of faith for Orczy’s contemporaries) one might expect a high quotient of inspiration in Lady Molly’s proceedings. Not so. She’s rather a tough copper.

She’s not opposed to badgering a suspect and lying in print (The Mystery at Ninescores). She’s fond of disguises and quite willing to employ them to trap the guilty, and she is even up for a mild bit of bodily violence (The Irish Tweed Coat). In The Fordwych Castle Mystery, she employs search and seizure tactics that would surely have gotten her case thrown out of court. Fortunately for Lady Molly, her creator was fond of summary justice; a number of her perpetrators commit suicide instead of lawyering up.

But credit where it is due. The plots of these short stories are often ingenious, and if Lady Molly likes to maintain an air of mystery (the better to impress the impressionable Mary Garnard, I suspect) she does an honest job. True, she makes use of distinctly feminine wiles in The End, but she may perhaps be excused there, since she is attempting to rescue her imprisoned husband from a murder rap.

When she clears his name, she retires, as her original audience probably expected, to a future of domestic felicity. Despite her beauty, fascination, and intelligence, I wonder if this particular investigator would make a tranquil domestic partner.

But it is a brave popular writer who bucks audience expectations. I remember that, when I was constructing my detective, Anna Peters, back in the seventies, my first thought was to make her a woman with two children. No way, though recently I read a Swedish novel starring a superwoman investigative reporter with, yes, two children plus a philandering husband. Undeterred, she was out tracking down neo-Nazis and assorted terrorists. How times change.

Back in Baroness Orczy’s day, women were moving into new roles and new jobs, but for leisure reading, conventions could only be pushed so far. Lady Molly has her own particular turf; she understands mothers and ladies’ maids and the psychology of her own sex in a way her male colleagues do not.

Less appealing to the modern reader are the stereotypes that were taken for granted, at least in the upper ranges of UK society. Clever and admirable people are “the right sort,” members of the upper classes and the wealthy bourgeoisie. They may be criminal (and often are) but it is taken for granted that they are more important and intelligent than their servants, the poor, or the foreign.

Lord Peter Wimsey’s invaluable Bunter and the irreplaceable Jeeves of the Bertie Wooster stories, themselves transitional figures, were not yet in print, while no one seems to have envisioned a female detective from the servant class. With her title and her confident air, Lady Molly belongs firmly in the Edwardian world of class distinctions and conventions. But as a member of Scotland Yard and as a savvy copper, she has a foot in the door that many subsequent female sleuths would open.

FLORIDA CRIME NEWS

by Leigh Lundin

William Dillon

Melbourne, Florida.  Thirty years ago this month, William Dillon of Brevard County, Florida was convicted of first-degree murder based upon eyewitness identification, testimony from the handler of a scent-tracking dog, claims of a jailhouse snitch, and testimony of a girlfriend. Everyone was wrong.

The ‘eyewitness’ had only one eye and despite having had sex with the apparent murderer, failed to accurately describe Dillon, which didn’t overly bother investigators. Apparently the tracking dog was also handicapped where it counted, identifying the wrong scent with the wrong person. In fact the handler, John Preston, could be depended upon to tell police anything they wanted to hear, a man the Arizona Supreme Court had dubbed ‘a charlatan’, working a dog that couldn’t pass the simplest of tests.

In exchange for pointing the finger at Dillon, rape charges were dropped against the jailhouse snitch who claimed Dillon broke down and confessed solely to him. Dillon’s girlfriend not only was a little peeved at him to claim she saw him in a bloody T-shirt standing over the victim’s body, it turns out she was banging the lead investigator in the case.

Wilton Dedge

Melbourne, Florida.  Three months later another Brevard county man, Wilton Dedge, was convicted of raping a woman six ways from Sunday, based upon eyewitness identification, testimony from the handler of a scent-tracking dog, and claims of a jailhouse snitch. Everyone was wrong.

In fact, the dog and handler were the same as in the Dillon case. The victim told police the perpetrator was at least six feet tall, muscular, and solidly built. At 5’5 and 125 pounds, Dedge was short and skinny.

Nonetheless, with the help of the phony scent dog and the lies of the jailhouse snitch, Dedge was convicted of the rape.

The Innocence Project

Fifteen years later, William Dedge became one of Florida’s first applicants to the Innocence Project. Through DNA testing, the Innocence Project conclusively proved Dedge could not have committed the rape. If the defense team thought they had a slam dunk, they were wrong.

As we’ve mentioned before, Newt Gingrich’s AEDPA, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, severely cuts off avenues of appeal, even when ‘actual innocence’ becomes established fact. Supporters of the AEDPA argue ‘closure’ is more important than evidence of actual guilt or innocence. Chief Justice Roberts expressed fears this new-fangled DNA testing risks "unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice."

Prosecutors used the new AEDPA and an argument that because Dedge was DNA tested before Florida enacted a law governing testing, Dedge was not entitled to benefit from the new law or be allowed to present new evidence of innocence to a court. For three years, state attorneys fought against allowing Dedge his freedom, admitting to a judge that even knowing Dedge was innocent, they still opposed his release under any circumstances. Finally, a court ordered another round of DNA testing which again proved Dedge conclusively innocent.

The Price of Prison

Tallahassee, Florida.  Florida so often gets convictions wrong, in an effort to stave off lawsuits, the legislature passed a bill awarding the wrongfully convicted $50,000 per year spent in prison. Except now legislators choke at the thought of paying William Dillon more than $1.3 million dollars after the Innocence Project also freed him.

After diddling Mr. Dillon for three years, the State of Florida wants a 40% discount on Dillon’s ‘windfall’. They voted to pay him only $30,000 a year, as if he served only 16 years instead of 27.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos was heard to grumble that some of the sanctimonious legislators should spend a couple of terrifying years in prison before voting what they think another man’s time is worth.

Corrections with a Firm Hand

Bartow, Florida.  Polk County kinky detention deputy Robin Pagoria shared videos spanking handcuffed and naked juvenile girls with a leather paddle. She may suffer a little punishment herself when she is called to explain in court.

Pretty Wom… What the hell?

Winter Haven, Florida.  In Operation Curtain Call in April, Polk County Sheriff Judd arrested sixty people suspected of prostitution and gang activity. If your notion comes from Petty Woman that hookers are lookers, Miami’s J. Camm’s take might change your mind.

Anti-Bullying Campaign Not Working Out So Well

Sanford, Florida.  After school officials failed to stop bullying of her daughter, a calm and composed Laura Booker climbed on the first step of the school bus to face the driver, Roy Hooks, at his place of business… his bus. Within moments, the driver became combative, rude, and nasty to the mother, yelling at the mom her daughter was a liar. At one point the mother says "If you have such an attitude with me, how are you treating my daughter?" The driver had the mother arrested by police who pulled tasers and threw her to the ground. Make your own call why Seminole County has a bullying problem.

Case of the Kidnapped Parrot

DeLeon Springs, Florida.  Police charged Mark Bausch, a Volusia County man, with a peck of trouble for rough handling a blind woman and her 81-year-old mother who squawked about him stealing back a small parrot he regretted trading them.

Cheech, That Van’s a’Smokin’

Cape Coral, Florida.  After a concerned motorist piped up, police arrested bong-smokin’ Phillip Winters whilst driving five children ages one to six. We cannot confirm rumors he said "Children? Oh, wow, man. When did that happen?"

A LITTLE HELP FROM YOUR FRIENDS

by John M. Floyd

A couple days ago I got a message on Facebook from my old writing buddy Fran Gatewood. She told me her husband Larry had just returned from a business trip and brought her a copy of John Grisham’s collection of short stories, Ford County. Reportedly, Larry said as he handed it to her, “He’s no John Floyd, but I thought you might enjoy it anyway.”

Believe me, I have enough sense to realize he was joking, but it still made me feel good. And it made me realize, not for the first time, how fortunate I am to have close friends who support me and my writing (even when they’re as crazy as Fran and Larry).

Quirks in progress

All of us need encouragement, in this line of “work.” Most important is probably the support of family; I can’t imagine trying to be successful at writing — or at anything else — if your spouse or parent or child resents or belittles your efforts. My wife isn’t herself a writer, and has never had any desire to be, but thank God she’s always been patient and understanding when it comes to handling, or bearing, or ignoring, my many peculiarities. Let’s face it, there are plenty of things about the writing life that are hard for a spouse or partner to live with: the odd hours, the clutter, the blank stares, the deadlines, etc.

The most difficult things to put up with, I imagine, are the mood swings. When the words are flowing and the sales are plentiful, writers are generally a happy bunch, but there are a great many times when the words just don’t want to cooperate, and when the SASEs from editors seem to confirm your secret suspicion that (1) they don’t like you and (2) your writing just might, if read aloud, be bad enough to scare the cat. Those kinds of doubts are probably the reason that a lot of successful writers are/were also hopeless alcoholics. And although I don’t know the statistics, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that authors of fiction aren’t far behind dentists and policemen and air traffic controllers on the Top Candidates for Suicide scale. We’re almost certainly a little unbalanced to begin with; how else could we expect folks we don’t even know to like — and pay good money for — the things we dream up in the middle of the night?

Painful truths

This makes it even more important that we have the acceptance and support of the folks we do know. Don’t get me wrong: my wife doesn’t like everything I write. It’s a good thing for me that she doesn’t, because when I show her my final drafts she corrects the errors I make before others get to see how stupid I can be. The main thing is, she sincerely wants me to succeed, and without that attitude on her part, I doubt I would have been able to achieve any level of success or satisfaction at all.

That kind of encouragement is needed outside the home as well. Many of us attend writers’ groups, and the responses we receive there sometimes determine whether we continue as writers or whether we quit and take up woodworking or needlepoint. I’ve often said that if you really want to write, you’ll write, no matter what others say, but I also think positive comments by fellow writers makes a lot of difference in how fast you progress . . . or not. In my writing classes and at meetings like these, I make it a point to be honest in my criticism of students and peers, but I also make sure I give them a few positive comments (there are always some positives to point out) before giving them the negatives. Some teachers and critiquers disagree with that idea, I know, but that’s the approach I try to take.

Yoda to Count Dooku: “Much to learn, you still have.”

One more thing. I’ve always been surprised at how accessible and accommodating successful authors are. Most are more than willing to offer help and advice to aspiring writers, whether it’s on craft or marketing, and whether they’re acquaintances or strangers. I’ve probably been more on the receiving end than the giving end, in the advice department, and I owe a great debt to those authors who have been kind enough to give me the benefit of their knowledge and experience.

The opening words of the Beatles song “With a Little Help From My Friends” says: “What would you think if I sang out of key? Would you stand up and walk out on me?” Well, if you write out of key, that’s exactly what your readers will do.

I need all the friendly assistance I can get.

KINDLE MY SHORTS

by Steven Steinbock

I finally broke down – or in this case, a better metaphor might be melted-down – and bought a Kindle. I looked at other options, and am still not 100% sure I made the right decision, but so far I’m happy with it. Other products have touch screens, color, and backlighting, all of which would be nice. But the Kindle has the best battery, and seems to be the simplest of the eBook readers. No bells or whistles.

The two primary reasons for the purchase both revolve around Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The first is that with my new job as book critic for EQMM, I’m reading a lot of books, and having to lug them around with me. I thought that if I could get Galleys or ARCs electronically, I could cut down on the clutter and have greater ease doing my reading. More on that later.

The second reason is that EQMM and AHMM (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine) both do really nice electronic editions of the magazines. Sometimes the e-version will even include a bonus article or photos not found in the print edition of the magazine. An eBook reader is an ideal medium for reading short stories. Devices like the Kindle are ideal for travel, commuting, and catching a bit of quick reading whenever an opportunity arises. Short stories fit the bill perfectly.

Having said that, I need to qualify. Yes, being able to read an entire issue – or individual stories from – EQMM or AHMM on a hand-held device is pretty cool. But as I said – or at least I implied – that the Kindle only operates in black and white. When I open the free Kindle app on my phone, all the cover art of the magazines is in color. The newest issue of EQMM (Sept./Oct.) includes my article “Seven Anniversaries” in which I leap, a decade at a time, to every ten-year anniversary issue and summarize the contents of the issue and the changes in the magazine over the years. (I’m not sure if the article appears in the print edition. I haven’t seen it yet. But eventually it will be posted on the EQMM website). On my Kindle, the cover art is in small, drab, black and white. On my phone, even with the tiny four inch screen, the seven magazine covers glimmer in full color.

That brings up another caveat: If you use the free Kindle app on your computer (as I do), or have any desire to do so, you’re out of luck if you want to read EQMM or AHMM. At present, the Kindle for PC app, and I assume the Kindle for Mac app, do not support magazines. This means that no matter how much I try to get my purchased electronic issue to show up on my computer, it won’t work. Something for Amazon to think about for the future.

REVIEWER’S REMORSE

When I began reviewing books for newspapers almost twenty years ago, I was giddy at the prospect of free books. Whenever one of my reviews appeared in print, I would mail a tearsheet (fancy publishers word for a torn out page) to the publisher along with a note. Soon my mailbox and front porch were inundated with packages of books. At present, I probably receive twenty to thirty books each week. That’s more than ten times what I’ll ever be able to read, let alone review. And week after week they accumulate. I give them away, slip them on the bookshelf at the local coffee house, donate them, and yes, keep some for myself.

I never thought I would say this, but there is such a thing as too many books.

The accumulation of books is also a constant source of marital discord. She-Who-Calls-Herself-Wench demands clear space everywhere. To her, piles of books are an anathema. Books are meant to be read and then given away or taken back to the library. Otherwise they just collect dust. Of course, I don’t agree with She-Who-Calls-Herself-Wench. But if I’m to continue living in her house, I need to limit my book-accumulation habit.

An eBook reader would seem to be the perfect solution for the book reviewer. The Kindle (or Nook or Kobo or Sony eReader) allows a reviewer to read whenever convenient, to carry a lot of books without any excess weight, and to make notes fairly easily. Alas, so far very few publishers have caught on to the idea of sending electronic editions to reviewers. One outfit, NetGalley, is serving as a mediator between publishers and reviewers, providing electronic editions of galleys. But the selection is pretty slim.

Beside me is a stack of twenty-two (physical) books that I plan to review. I’ve checked through NetGalley’s index to see if I could whittle the pile down by reading on my Kindle. Of the twenty-two titles, one of them was available as an electronic galley.

That’s okay. It’s gonna be the future soon.

Next time, unless something else kindles my fancy, I’ll share some electronic reading gems I’ve found in my travels.

EASY READING

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Easy reading is damn hard writing. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne is best known to most high school students as the author of The Scarlet Letter—probably with a vision of Demi Moore (from the movie version) rather than the writer who created her character, the adulteress, Hester Prynne. That’s probably how it should be. The character should spring forth like a newborn baby into the reader’s mind. It should be an easy delivery with none of the author’s labor visible or even imagined.

Hawthorne’s close friend James Thomas Fields persuaded him to turnThe Scarlet Letter into a novel instead of a short story. I wonder if Fields wanted to know more about the characters and setting because Hawthorne had written the short story so easy for the reader to imagine that he must simply have more.

Easy reading is like listening to a song that touches your soul. The words don’t simply leave the memory and instead hang on like a lengthy monsoon season, impossible to ignore.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. ~Joan Baez

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

When a friend and I collaborated on a nonfiction project, others asked us why we thought we could when we’d been strictly fiction writers. Though we’d been working together quite well, doubt crept over us like an ugly pimple appearing on prom night. We shook it off, backed our ears and just wrote. The piece sold and became the first nonfiction either of us sold. A barrier was broken and it felt good. But, surprisingly not as good as when my fiction sells. Nonfiction is writing spelled-out, plain truth; fiction is where I can make up anything I want.

I would like to tell Sylvia Plath I did have the guts to write about crime, just not the will to do it in reality. I would like to tell Joan Baez I too, have had words crawl down my sleeve and end up on a page often to my amazement. I would like to thank Hawthorne for considering the short story as much a viable medium as the novel.

WORKING VACATION

by Rob Lopresti

So we went on a week’s vacation and, as I wrote here, my plan was to spend as much time as possible writing. I have a full-time job and I am a slow writer, so this was a precious opportunity to get some time in on what Rex Stout once called the alphabet piano.

How’d I do? Well, that’s what I want to discuss, because it was pretty interesting. To me, anyway.

We arrived on Sunday. Monday morning my wife went off to her music class and I sat down in front of the laptop to work on a first draft. It went great, but after an hour my thinker was thunked out. I went for a trip around town, making sure that the pizzeria and ice cream shop had survived since my last trip to years ago. After lunch I decided I didn’t feel much like working on a first draft, so I switched to editing some paper print-outs I had brought with me. That took a big chunk of the afternoon. After dinner, even that held no appeal, so I switched to the grunt work of typing a handwritten text into the computer.

You see the pattern. Creative work in the morning. Editing later in the day. Copying in the evening. Less and less brain work as the day rolled on.

That seemed pretty reasonable, and I stuck to it in the main, throughout the week. But there were definitely some shifts.

My mornings got longer as the week went on. As I stretched the old mental muscles I found I could write first drafts for several hours without cramping up. And when we went for an afternoon concert one day I brought a notebook and scribbled on a draft.

By the end of the week when my wife started making dinner (it was her turn, and there was no room in that kitchen for two) I eagerly cranked up the laptop to squeeze in another half hour of first draft. That would have never happened at the beginning of the week.

So my habits changed—and improved—the longer I worked on them. The question is obvious.

MRS. DALLOWAY AND STARBUCKS

by Melodie Johnson Howe

Excerpt from the manuscript of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

I left Bones copy editing the first half of my novel and drove to Kathleen Sharp’s house. He had not read much of the book and I was worried about his reaction.

Kathleen and I walked to the Farmers Market where we bought flowers. I thought of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway buying flowers. Planning her party. She would have been wearing a bias cut dress and spectator shoes popular in the twenties, her decade. I was in yoga pants, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. And I wasn’t planning a dinner party. I was doing the final revisions on my novel. In reality, I was more like Virginia Woolf, a writer. But it was her character I thought of. That’s the best compliment you can give an author.

I decided on dark blue potted flowers. Kathleen bought a red spray of uncut gladiolas. Cradling them in her arms she reminded me of Katherine Hepburn in the 1930’s movie Stage Door. “The calla lilies are in bloom,” Hepburn announced as she walked on stage. When learning to act she said the line flatly; but when her friend commits suicide, she understands the emotion behind the line—finally becoming a true actress. I don’t remember her character’s name, I only remember Katherine Hepburn.

Laden with our flowers we headed to Starbucks. This is the most important part of our walk. Because walk really means talk. The place is filled with people and every time Kathleen turns she whacks somebody with the glads. Sitting in big leatherette chairs we fuss with where to put our flowers. I look around. Most everyone in Starbucks is young. Most everyone is on a laptop. One girl is sound asleep in a chair while her friend stares intently into a monitor. Across from us is a young man and, I think, his girlfriend. It’s hard to tell. He’s wonderfully nerdy looking with thick black- framed glasses and curly dark hair. She has the same look but manages to make it pretty and vibrant. They are both concentrating on his laptop. I am in the world of the movie, Social Network. A film I can’t quote from.

Kathleen and I begin our long stream of consciousness, which is filled with politics, women, age, husbands, books, and our work. We toss around ideas for her new book. We talk about how I feel about my book. Good but always with trepidation. Worried about Bones’ reaction. I look around and I don’t see anybody reading a book. Should this bother me? Even if it did it wouldn’t stop me from writing.

“Excuse me, ladies. I have to unplug.” A woman with bleached blond hair reached behind our chairs to pull out her computer cord. She was disconnecting.

I thought of Mrs. Dalloway saying, “Excuse me, I have to unplug.” But she was unplugged and trying to reconnect in her own way. To reboot, to restart, or just stay on line. But these words have nothing to do with her world. Her environment was complete, impenetrable. The new can’t change it. Mrs. Dalloway is of her time. Life will take over these young women smoothing and bruising them. And one day they will find themselves buying flowers for a dinner party, trying to create order from emotional chaos, trying to plug in again.

I get in my computerized car and drive home. Two words bleat from the radio, “Debt Ceiling.” I push a button and Willy Nelson fills my car croaking, “Some Enchanted Evening”.

I walk into the house. Bones is holding a chunk of my pages in his hand. “This is a really good novel, Melodie.”

Elated, I hug him. Then I put my potted flowers into a silver wine bottle holder and place them perfectly on a table. Mrs. Dalloway would be proud. But it was Virginia Woolf, the writer, I was thinking about now.