SleuthSayers

My sis sent me a Philip Kerr book she spotted, The One From the Other, and although I thought I’d read all the Bernie Gunther novels, this turns out to be one I missed. Philip Kerr died in 2018, so the last book published in the Bernie series was Metropolis. There aren’t any more to come.

If you don’t know Bernie, here’s the short version.

He’s a former homicide bull in the Kriminalpolizei, who’s turned private. When we meet him in 1936 Berlin, Weimar has rolled over and died, and the Nazis are now in the saddle. The hook is that Bernie is trying to navigate a maze of opaque signals and ambiguous rivalries, a hierarchywithout any structural consistency or guiding principle except brute force. The world seems to have collapsed around a single dynamic, that the weak are prey, and you can’t protect yourself. The strong will take whatever they want, whenever they want, because they can.

The gangster ecology is familiar from noir convention, but it feels different, in this terrain. It’s not individual – or entrepreneurial – although that flourishes, too, in the contaminated, feverish atmosphere: the opportunities for random cruelty are everywhere. The menace, though, is institutional. It’s built-in, the mechanics of behavior part and parcel with the political climate. Terrorism is a tool of the state.

Some things worth noting.

The books aren’t chronological.

They slide around in time, from book to book, and sometimes within a single book. This has a counterintuitive effect, that when we zoom in, the immediate focus is even tighter. The idea of a larger context, or that historical distance might soften the moment, is rarely any comfort. Bernie the acerbic Berliner is always ready with some gallows humor, but the gallows itself is never far from his mind. Before whatever it is happens, he anticipates the worst, and it never fails to be more devious and infernal than he’s prepared for.

Which leads to a second observation, about historical or dramatic ironies.

We learn early on in the series that Bernie survives the Nazis, that he survives the war, but he can’t overcome memory. The similarities to Alan Furst’s spy novels, or Eric Ambler’s, of a generation before, are striking; a character, thrown into the deep end of the pool, keeps their head above water by grabbing anything that floats into reach. More to the point, it’s very much of the moment. We, the reader, know Hitler dies, and the Reich goes down in flames, but the people in the story don’t. Philip Kerr never lets Bernie, who’s narrating the books, use a device like Had-I-But-Known. He rarely, if ever, foreshadows. Bernie meets a sociopathic snake like Reinhard Heydrich, chief of security, and his main concern is hoping the Reichsprotektor forgets his name – not Heydrich’s looming date with destiny in Prague, although seven books later, Bernie will show up just in time to turn the final page, and survive to walk on Heydrich’s grave.

As to the matter of voice.

Bernie seems to be talking out of the corner of his mouth, with a lit smoke burning down in the other corner, the ashes ready to fall behind his teeth. He confides in us. And the vocabulary! Kerr was Edinburgh-born. He read for the law, like Scott and Buchan, and began a post-graduate fascination with things German. Here’s a trick, in the Bernie books. Bernie uses a lot of slang, and to my ear, it sounds like idiomatic Berliner Deutsch, rendered as an English equivalent. It isn’t, in fact. I’ve heard some of the real thing, and what Kerr is up to is creating a kind of parallel idiom. It sounds right, and it feels right, in the context, but it might as well be Klingon: he’s making it up, umlauts and all. Which isn’t to say it’s not convincing. And that’s the point.

Kerr wrote the first three Bernie books, the Berlin noir trilogy, and then Bernie dropped out of sight. The One From the Other came out fifteen years after A German Requiem, book three. Kerr just says stuff got in the way. There it is. I wish there were more books, of course. But the best thing about my sister happening on The One From the Other, is that as soon as I finished it, I went straight to the library and took out March Violets, the first of the books, and I’ve started the series again, from nose to tail. Trust me on this one.

I’ve recently read a great many private eye short stories, both published and in manuscript form, and I’ve recognized three character traits many of these PIs share:

They’re broke, drunk, and horny.

They have money problems and stress about paying their rent, their bills, and their gambling debts.

They drink heavily, with a bottle in their desk drawer and a perpetual hangover. Or they are recovering alcoholics who attend AA meetings and stress about falling off the wagon. Again.

They have a healthy sexual appetite and poor judgement, which leads to carnal knowledge of their clients, their clients’ significant others, and/or other inappropriate relationships.

While not every private eye in the stories I read had all three of these characteristics, many had at least one and often two.

The broke, drunk, and horny private eye is a trope that verges on cliché, and writers who find new ways to use the tropes or, better still, avoid them entirely, usually write more interesting stories.

ALWAYS THE OFFICE

A great many private eye stories begin with a description of the private eye’s office, usually as a way to inform the reader about the poor schmuck’s financial state, and, during a rumination about the sad state of the furnishings, a potential client arrives with a case the PI doesn’t want but agrees to take for the financial renumeration or because it involves repaying a debt to an old friend who may or may not be dead.

A private eye story that begins anywhere else—a bar, a coffee shop, the client’s home, a zoo, an amusement park, or anywhere other than the PI’s office—stands out.

And a story in which the PI accepts a case for reasons other than financial desperation or to repay a real or imagined debt also stands out.

TOO MUCH BACK STORY

Too many private eye short stories begin with several paragraphs or pages describing how the protagonist became a PI, much of which has little or nothing to do with the story to come. Because of this, the actual story doesn’t begin until page three or five after the expenditure of too many words.

So, a private eye short story that begins with an inciting incident rather than a meandering backstory stands out.

LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN

Here I am throwing stones while I live in a glass house. I have written about broke, drunk, and horny private eyes, started stories with private eyes sitting in their squalid little offices desperately awaiting the arrival of a client—any client—and bogged down beginnings with backstory while delaying the inciting incident until page five.

And thought I was oh so original.

Now that I know better, I’ll try hard not to let my tropes show, try to avoid dressing my private eyes in clichés, and try to find better ways to ensure inciting incidents occur on the first page.

* * *

February started with a nice one-two punch.

“Coyote Run,” the eighth episode of Chop Shop, was released by Down & Out Books on February 1. On February 2, “A Dime a Dame” appeared in Black Cat Weekly #179.

Also, on February 1, The Short Mystery Fiction Society announced the nominees for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology. Murder, Neat: A SleuthSayers Anthology, which Barb Goffman and I co-edited and which contains work by many current and former SleuthSayers, made the shortlist.

If you follow the news even superficially, you’ll be aware that the world has a very uneasy relationship with rapidly advancing technology.  This tension has been with us since the first Luddite took a cleaver to a water-powered loom, and it will likely never go away.

           The difference now is the speed at which things are changing.  At best, it can give one a sort of psychic vertigo, at worst, it can throw you into abject terror.  For many, it feels as if the machines are on the march and we’re all about to be trampled under their cybertronic bootheels.

I take a somewhat sunnier view.  I’m glad it doesn’t take a week to travel from Connecticut to Philadelphia while being jostled around in a poorly sprung carriage over rocky, rutted roads. Rather, I can board an airplane, that on the ground looks impossibly huge and ungainly, and complete the trip in the time it takes for my courtesy coffee to cool down. 

I understand writers who compose longhand with specially curated pens.  Or use an Underwood inherited from their great uncle.  Long ago, I knew a writer who could only start a new project sitting in her car, and only after cleaning the ashtray.  I have my own superstitions, such as always writing in the same font and point size, using indents and paragraph breaks with no space, and sticking to the same word count per page.  But otherwise, I’m all in on the Microsoft Word app living here on my Lenovo PC.  The first computer I wrote on was a Wang Word Processor, and the fact that I could quickly type out the words, while immediately backtracking, deleting, correcting, inserting and all those other wonderful manipulations felt like a form of magic.  Not unlike flying at 35,000 feet in a metal tube that weighs as much as a small commercial building. 

To me, it’s not the technology, it’s what you do with it.  Nearly anything can be used for good or evil.  I can use a hammer to drive a nail or to put an aperture in my neighbor’s prefrontal cortex.  The same airplanes that deliver me to Ireland brought down the World Trade Center.  They transport Doctors Without Borders and arms merchants.  The machines have no moral agency, they just do as they’re told. 

The current obsession is with AI, understandably.  It’s a very powerful tool, and it takes little imagination to foresee how it will change things in our lives, for better or worse.  I’m guessing the better will win out, in areas such as medical research, energy development and space exploration.  The downside is also there before us, especially if you’ve seen the Terminator.  There are commentators who think Schwarzenegger is already at the door, sawed-off shotgun and titanium skeleton poised to strike.

This may change in about five minutes, but as of now, AI is simply a super-aggregator, not really an intelligent being.  It’s wicked fast, comprehensive and clever at impersonations, but still doesn’t have the power to CREATE anything.  So far, only human brains are capable of making those quantum leaps, short-circuiting the deliberative process, jumping the walls of the maze and grabbing the cheese. 

If AI ever does come up with an original thought, entirely original and paradigm shattering, we better watch out.  But I wouldn’t hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.  

I’ve been thinking about all this because for the last few weeks I’ve been dealing with computer upgrades and the vagaries of assembling a new home entertainment system. The process is maddening and humbling at the same time.   But I’m sticking with it, because at the other end I’ll have something unattainable only a few years ago.

 

Technology is not my friend, but it’s not my enemy.  It’s just a thing, without a mind, without a will.  Ready to serve, but impartial to the master.  Humans still get to decide what to do with it all.  How they decide will still be a matter of morality and good sense, and likely dumb luck. 

That’s what we need to be afraid of.

Does anyone else wonder if 2025 will change the nature of mystery and crime novels, as well as literature as a whole? 

Where to stand during an earthquake is one question, how to write during and after one is an entirely different question. Readers gravitate to the genre of mystery and crime novels for many reasons and, though the novels vary from the slow unraveling of puzzles, to the fast paced action to save the innocent or capture the dangerous, at the core of all of them is a world where there is right and there is wrong, where justice is served or, if it's not served, then it still exists as a beacon to light the way and where Orwellian newspeak is called out in the plain language of truth.

Rather than dwell on specifics, because goodness knows we've been inundated with them, I'd rather focus on principles that are often lost in the noise. If someone is convicted in a court of law, then serving their time in jail is something we expect, we rely on. If they are released for no legal reason but, rather, on a wish and whim, is there still a rule of law? If the free press, a pillar of democracy, faces retaliation for printing facts in a democracy, then is it still a democracy when this pillar falls? If the most sacred role of democratic governments - to keep their citizens safe - is eschewed by defunding and inserting an anti-science control over the health science that keeps citizens safe - what other roles no longer matter? If a democracy embraces the Latin term imperium, which originally indicated unrestricted authority of a single person, is it still a democracy?

If all this is changing - how do you write that? Literature must be reflective of the times. Will post-2025 mystery and crime writing, as well as literature in general, change by incorporating - by the osmosis that writers are famous for - the new world we find ourselves in? If settings and characters remain impervious to change, then the literature becomes irrelevant to readers who live in the setting of the day and are, indeed, the characters who live there. If literature ignores the changes in society, it inadvertently becomes historical fiction.

It is not merely the United States that has changed. The world is changing. As the U.S. withdraws from crucial health organizations like the World Health Organization and threatens – for the first time – to take over the countries of allies, the world is realigning. Long time alliances are being questioned. Many thrillers involve international settings and international law enforcements and one must ask, how will those change?

We've seen many authors of mysteries and thrillers become political – some of the biggest names in the business, from James Patterson, Don Winslow, Stephen King to Celeste Ng, have spoken out. Authors speaking out politically in such large numbers is something that we haven't seen since the 1930s. Given the rise of book bans, it takes courage to speak up and the muzzling of authors will also be something all genres will have to contend with. To become irrelevant or be silenced is the question that authors will have to grapple with and, many will speak out knowing that book bans are temporary but valuable literature lasts for generations. Further, history has shown us that, in times when there is much harm being done, those who are silent are judged harshly. 

All these changes feel new and we'll have to see how they play out - it's only February for goodness sake! – but I truly don't believe that the genre will be the same after this. It doesn't feel like a blip in time but, rather, a fundamental change – an earthquake beneath our feet that is reshaping the literature of our time.

Kill your adverbs. Stephen King says it, your creative writing seminar instructor says it, and even that one guy from the meet-up critique group says it. Kill 'em dead. And they're right, though the critique group guy didn't have to harp on it so much. Adverbs are crutches for weak word selection. A power verb or a better adjective says more alone than any adverb can modify. 

So, kill 'em all. Right? Right.

Although…

Records show adverbs have been around since at least the Sumerians. That makes adverbs remarkably survivable. In fact, adverb-like things exist in every modern language. The adverb's importance led to a high water mark in 1974, when adverbs landed their own Schoolhouse Rock! segment.

It's helpful to remember there are all kinds of adverbs, and killing the good kinds takes out writing quality as collateral damage.

Merriam-Webster defines "adverb" as: 

A word used to modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a preposition, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence and often used to show degree, manner, place, or time.

A word. That's what has everyone on the warpath, the one-word kind. A word such as "often," which I could point out wasn't killed at Merriam-Webster's editorial committee. Often, such adverbs are extraneous. 

All photos © carnivalofchaos.com

Today, I want to talk about arson. When we're not on about writing, language, books, or writing, we usually like to blog about murder and theft. Sometimes both. But arson is its own thing. Sometimes, it's for money. Sometimes, revenge. Just as often, it's because, to paraphrase Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, someone just wants to watch the world burn.

In the case of Chippewa Lake Park, we may never know why someone, or several someones, began torching the buildings in the idle amusement park. 

For perspective, Chippewa Lake Park was a destination only a few miles from my childhood home. In fact, my uncle began his farming career by working for a dairy farmer whose property overlooked the lake and its coasters. Evenings, one could often hear music coming across the lake, and not just your local band trying to gain a career while playing cover songs. In the park's last year of operation, Cheap Trick played a sold-out concert there.

These days, as the property converts to a county park with some of the rides and buildings still standing, Chippewa Lake is known as a ruin, increasingly overgrown, trees growing through the Ferris wheel. Until 1978, it was mentioned in the same breath as coaster meccas Cedar Point and King's Island. The company that owned the venerable amusement park needed to modernize. However, the village of Chippewa Lake, one of three villages along the eponymous lake, would require an upgrade to local infrastructure. So the park closed at the end of summer, 1978. Even Cheap Trick never knew it was their last gig there.

For about four years afterward, many of those who owned individual rides and attractions stayed within the park. Some lived there, moving to open parks in Florida in the winter. The closure simply became a warm-weather off-season.

Until 1982. Up until 1982, everyone concerned felt the park's eventual reopening would happen, even if it took a decade. That year, someone burned the Penny Arcade. In modern parks, Six Flags, Cedar Fair, and Disney own everything in the park. In more traditional parks before the modern era, many of the businesses and rides were owned by individuals and families. When the Penny Arcade went up, the hotel and grand ballroom were still prepped for a still-unscheduled reopening. Sadly, many vintage arcade machines were destroyed, and the family who owned the arcade lost everything. At that point, people realized the park might not open again.

A second fire in 1988 destroyed the picnic pavilion on the lakeshore. By then, nature had started to reclaim the park. The actual death blow came in 1991, mere weeks before I moved to Cincinnati. 

One weekend, a group of vandals were caught trashing the Chippewa Lake Hotel, one of the largest structures left in the park. Police ran them off. However, they came back after sunset and lit the hotel up. It was one of the biggest fires in surrounding Lafayette Township in recent memory.

The 1991 Hotel fire. You could still smell it a week later when I visited.

A coworker was also a volunteer firefighter for the department shared between the three villages along the lake. We worked third shift together, and the Saturday morning after the fire, he invited me out to see the damage. Hardly anything remained of the hotel, once considered a local landmark. But more jaw-dropping was the state of the park. Trees not only grew up through the Ferris wheel, but they had encroached on the Big Dipper, the park's wooden roller coaster. It no longer looked like an amusement park. It looked like an ancient ruin.

My friend said he didn't believe this or the pavilion fire were accidents or vandalism. He suspected someone intended to cash in on the insurance money, though he wouldn't say that to the press.

The last fire occurred in 2002, when the Grand Ballroom went up. (Cue "Smoke on the Water," minus Frank Zappa and the Mothers.) No, a guy with a flare gun or spiteful vandals did not set it off. It was a child playing inside who accidentally started it. Normally, beyond the child's safety (he escaped unharmed), the fire would not have posed a threat to the surrounding village. Only the summer cottages inside the park had become permanent homes. The ballroom's destruction threatened to spread to the cottages, forcing residents to flee. Firefighters were able to contain the blaze. But any idea of clearing the trees and brush and salvaging the park went up in smoke.

This last fire had clearly been an accident. The earliest fire, a tool shed in 1980, had also been accidental and might even have happened if the park had remained open. However, in between, the arcade, the pavilion, and the hotel all fell to arsonists. No one was ever caught, aside from the hotel.

Other parks in Ohio disappeared. Geauga Lake, eventually a Six Flags park before closing for good in the 2000s, simply couldn't compete with Cedar Point, Northern Ohio's huge coaster mecca. Similarly, LeSourdesville Lake, called Americana when I first arrived in Cincinnati in 1991, would close for a season, make a two-year stab reverting to its original name, then find itself stripped for parts before the New Millennium dawned. And Coney Island, originally the parent of King's Island, finally closed its doors in 2024, making way for a new facility for the Cincinnati Pops.

None of them succumbed to arson, though, the way Chippewa Lake had. Chippewa's ruins were finally demolished in the 2020s with the Ferris wheel (and its attendant trees) sections of the Big Dipper, and a few other rides serving as artifacts in a new Medina County park. So once again, Chippewa Lake welcomes summer visitors, but not thrill seekers or music fans. That might have changed if a handful of firebugs put down the matches.

https://www.carouselofchaos.com/chippewa-lake-park-demise/

In case you haven't noticed, there's a lot going on right now.

We at SleuthSayers are trying to set up a BlueSky account – and have – but are still working out some of the kinks, as in who the **** can actually post something on it. Right now you can join, and you can follow, but we haven't been able to fix the administrator problem, which sounds so much like modern politics it's scary.

There is a small risk of a small asteroid – 2024 YR4, which has an "interesting orbit" and could hit the planet sometime in the next decade. It's about the same size as the Tunguska asteroid which, in 1908, flattened trees over an area of about 1,250 AFTER it exploded in the sky above Siberia. (News) Party time!

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Sunday and predicted six more weeks of wintry weather. I swear, we have got to stop depending on captive rodents for our weather forecasts.

In Greece, a 2,000 year old statue was found in "an abandoned garbage bag" (NEWS). Not sure why anyone would want to throw this out:

This one makes me sad: "Last 4 escaped monkeys are captured in South Carolina after months on the loose." If you remember, I mentioned that 43 macaque monkeys had escaped from Alpha Genesis, a facility that breeds them for medical research — known to locals as “the monkey farm.” They were lured back "with food and were given peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and “monkey biscuits” — a high-protein Purina Monkey Chow specially formulated for the rhesus macaques."

And here I'd hoped they'd make it out there, populating a whole new macaque breed in the wilds of South Carolina. Well, you tried, little monkeys, you tried! (News)

This is a headline that proves that these days, you can never tell what's the Onion or for real. Yes, this is for real:

Italian soccer club Lazio fires falconer for posting photos of his penis implant. (News)

Not so surprising REAL headline:

Pro-RFK Jr. letter to the Senate includes names of
doctors whose licenses were revoked or suspended.

Lots of them.

BTW, in case you're wondering why Mexico and Canada (our two biggest trading partners, our only two neighbors, and constant allies) got slapped with 25% tariffs:

Prove me wrong.

Also, objective view: to anyone who thinks Elon Musk is selflessly working for the country as a “special government employee,” who is "not paid a salary", all I can say is you really need to think about how Musk got to be a billionaire in the first place. He knows where there's money to be made.

Rule #1 of life: Never, ever, ever, EVER trust a trust-fund baby. Sooner or later, they will screw you over.

Two men went out into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, located in the southwestern part of Washington state, to hunt for Sasquatch. They died of "exposure, based on weather conditions and ill-preparedness." So, if you're going Sasquatch hunting, prepare for the trip. Remember, "there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing."

BTW, my favorite part of this story is "In Skamania County, harming Bigfoot is punishable by a $1,000 fine and can include jail time, a law meant to protect the mysterious creature and to prevent hunters with large beards from accidentally getting shot." (Link) (Jason Kelce, be careful out there!)

Also,

"Ancient predatory worms have scientists
rethinking the history of life on Earth"

"500 million years ago, the world was a very different place. Basically all life lived in the water, which held a lot of animals that looked pretty different from the ones we recognize today. One of these was a group of predatory worms with throats covered in spines, hooks and teeth to trap their prey. They built tubes around themselves and lived inside of them, waiting for their next victim to crawl by." (Link)

1. Ugh.
2. Are we sure they're extinct?

In the meantime, always remember:

"Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

"This too shall pass; like a kidney stone, but it shall pass."

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

!!!HUZZAH!!!Our first SleuthSayers anthology, Murder, Neat, is one of the six finalists for the Derringer Award in the new category of Best Anthology!

Available at Level Best Bookshop or, of course, Amazon.

photo by Peter Rozovsky

 You have probably encountered Anthony Horowitz in one format or another.  He is a master of television, creating Foyle's War, being one of the first writers of Midsomer Murders, and so on.  His Susan Ryland novels and Alex Rider young adult books have been filmed for TV.

Recently I have been listening to audio versions of his Hawthorne novels.  They are deliberately odd books, featuring a narrator named Anthony Horowitz who writes novels and TV shows, and plays reluctant sidekick to Daniel Hawthorne, a former cop who was kicked off the force because he may (or may not) have thrown a pedophile down the stairs.  They are delightful fair play mysteries.

 Each book plays with the genre in different ways.  In the fifth book, Close to Death, Horowitz is on deadline to write another book but there are no convenient crimes to work on so he attempts to build a volume out of one of Hawthorne's former cases.  This means that big chunks of the book are in third person, since our narrator (Horowitz the narrator, not the audiobook's narrator.  Got it?) was not present for the events.

And that's where I got a big surprise.  At one point we are told that Hawthorne looked off and noticed something.  I don't have the exact wording because, as I have said, I was listening to an audio-book and it wasn't convenient to go back and find it. But I actually jumped a little when I heard that sentence.

Because we have never been allowed into the detective's head before.  That made even this tiny excursion there seem like a violation.  From then on I was paying attention and was able to copy down another example: "He didn't like to be close to people he didn't know." That is not narrator-Horowitz speaking but the omniscient third-person narrator, and it just felt like a violation.

The reason is that Hawthorne himself is a mystery (each book reveals a bit more about him, not all of it necessarily true) and also he is the detective.  We are not allowed to get into his head, because if we knew what he knew, the mystery would be over long before the end of the book.

This reminds me of something Mick Herron said at a Bouchercon I attended a few years ago.  He was talking about his Slow Horses series and he said he could never let the reader into the head of the main character, Jackson Lamb.  If he did we would know how much of his vulgarity, insults, racism, misogyny, etc. was real, and how much was put-on to annoy people.  So while we can get into the skulls of his other characters, Lamb must remain sphinxlike.  

I planned to end this there but I have been reading The Night the Rich Men Burned by Malcolm Mackay (what a title!) and he brings up a slightly different issue.  This Scottish author has a unique style.  I would guess that each of his books has almost twice as many words as another novel with similar page count, because there is almost no dialog.  Everything is happening, present tense,  in the heads of the characters.  If we learn that it is raining it is because a character notices it.

And he is quite casual about head-hopping, moving from one person's thoughts to another as easily as changing paragraphs.  Usually this would drive me mad but Mackay makes it work.  

So how do you feel about writers prying too closely into their characters' skulls?

I've had some good news recently that I am happy to share with you. 

Derringer Award nomination

First up is news that applies to all of us here at SleuthSayers. Our first anthology, Murder, Neat, is one of the six finalists for the Derringer Award in the new category of Best Anthology. Woo-hoo!

This book came out last February from Level Short and was edited by Michael Bracken and me. It includes twenty-four new stories from current and retired SleuthSayers, all set at locations where alcohol is available for sale. We are all pleased as punch--or something with a bit more kick--that we made the shortlist for this honor. 

The other Derringer Award finalists--for individual short stories in four categories based on length--will be announced on April 1, and then eligible members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society will have all of April to vote for all five awards. If you love short stories, I recommend you check out all of the finalists. You can find the full list by clicking here.

Murder, Neat can be purchased most anywhere you buy books. If your favorite physical store doesn't have it on the shelf, I bet they can order it for you. You can get the trade paperback and a Nook version from Barnes and Noble by clicking here. Like shopping at indies? You can use Bookshop.org to get the paperback from your local favorite. Just click here. And there is always Amazon. For them, click here. Cheers!

 

Agatha Award nominations

Yesterday, the Malice Domestic convention announced the finalists for this year's Agatha Awards. I am honored and delighted to share that I have two short stories that are nominated. 

First is "A Matter of Trust," which was published last April by Wildside Press in the anthology Three Strikes--You're Dead! In this story, when an emotional eater cycles past a donut shop, his weight-loss plans--and so much more--go awry. If you haven't read this anthology, I recommend it. It was edited by Donna Andrews, Marcia Talley and me, and it has fourteen new sports short stories. The book is available in trade paperback and ebook from all the usual sources, including Barnes and Noble and Amazon. If you would prefer to read my story only, it is available on my website. Just click here.

Second is "The Postman Always Flirts Twice," which was published last November by Down & Out Books in the anthology Agatha and Derringer Get Cozy. This anthology has all new cozy whodunits, each written by an author who has won the Agatha Award, the Derringer Award, or both. The book was edited by Gay Toltl Kinman and Andrew McAleer. 

In "The Postman Always Flirts Twice," someone murdered Hazel's mailman and hid his body in the woods behind her cul-de-sac. Fearing the police might look too closely at her, Hazel decides she needs to point them in another direction. So she starts her own investigation, focusing on her neighbors. If you haven't read this anthology, you can pick it up from Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, or Amazon, among other places. I hope the publisher will allow me to share the story online for Agatha voters. I will let you know should it come to pass.

The full list of Agatha Award finalists is available here. Attendees of Malice Domestic will vote during the convention in April. If you've never been to Malice Domestic, I recommend you check it out. It is a fan convention that celebrates the traditional mystery, though you will find authors in attendance who write other mystery subgenres too.

Happy reading!

I've been brushing up on my French, learning all the latest argot and idioms; poking my nose into coins (corners) as various as oyster farms and châteaux, the Louvre and tiny islands like the Ile de Yeu with its unspoiled natural beauty and the Ile de Ré with its salt marshes and seventeenth-century fortifications; and frowning over the befuddling complexity of the French criminal justice system till my head spins—all via some wonderful French TV series I've been watching via streaming services in French with English subtitles.

When I say "latest," I mean the language as it's developed since the Sixties, when I spent two years in French-speaking West Africa in the Peace Corps and a month in the idyllic village of St Paul de Vence before it was spoiled by plate glass windows in the shop fronts and hordes of tourists in the narrow cobbled streets that meander up and down steps and through arches within the medieval walls. And when I say "developed," yes, Virginia, the French language has grabbed the bit and bolted from its handlers, the rigid Académie Française. Twenty-first century French not only uses plenty of English, clean and dirty, but its own vulgarities have evolved. I'm sure they didn't say, ça chie for "it sucks" in the Sixties; in fact, "it sucks" as used today didn't come into popular usage till the Seventies or later. Then there's verlan, the slang of reversal (l'envers is "the reverse"), in which someone's girlfriend is a meuf instead of a femme (woman) or petite amie or copine (old terms for girlfriend), and if you do something crazy, it's ouf instead of fou.

My French has gotten quite rusty over the years. I haven't visited France since 2014, and I speak and write to my remaining French friends mostly in English. But after watching an hour or more of French TV every night, paying as little attention as possible to the subtitles, I've found my comprehension improving. There are plenty of French on the Upper West Side where I live and even more in Central Park, my neighborhood backyard. I've always caught scraps of conversation I could identify as French. Now I understand the words as they scoot by. I even occasionally find myself thinking in French, which I think is very cool. ("Cool" is tied with "okay" for the word most universally used in other languages.)

But you don't have to know French to understand the wonderful crime shows that are available on MHz Choice (through Amazon Prime), Acorn, and Netflix. Unlike the Korean dramas, in which some of the translations are risible, the French shows have excellent English subtitles. Here are three I recommend highly.

Murder in. . .
Eleven seasons of standalone 90-minute dramas, each in a different town or region of France. Some are well known, some remote. All are beautifully filmed. Viewers get to know as many of the top French actors by sight as we do British actors by watching season after season of Masterpiece on PBS. The shows are uniformly well written and well acted, the plotting complex. Within the framework of a police procedural, two often ill-matched partners must learn to work together as they conduct an investigation (une enquête). Because the criminal justice system is complicated, the teams vary. There's the local gendarmerie, which has a military structure. There's the police judiciaire, which is national, where a juge d'instruction, yes, a judge, may be sent from outside to investigate along with the police. There's the procureur, the prosecutor, who has authority over the investigation. Then there's the drama that comes with the crime and the setting. One of the team may be concealing local ties with the crime or a witness. A family reconciliation may be involved. These stories go deep, and there are plenty of twists before the solution to the crime and often—these are the French, after all—a kiss at the end.

The Art of Crime
Seven seasons so far. The setting is Paris, where Captain Verlay is a homicide detective whose short fuse has landed him in the OCBC, the division of the police judiciaire that investigates the illegal trafficking of cultural goods. Unfortunately, he is not only ignorant but phobic about art. His partner is Florence Chassagne, a brilliant art historian who works at the Louvre. She sees a psychoanalyst, talks to imaginary artists (whichever one's work is implicated in the crime du jour), and has a brilliantly conceived and acted narcissistic father who by turns clings, criticizes, and competes with her. Together, Verlay and Chassagne make a terrific team, especially when art theft turns to murder.

Candice Renoir
Ten seasons, plus an eleventh consisting of two 90 minute specials. I've written about Candice before. A lush divorcée with four kids, she uses being underestimated as an interrogation technique. However, if a member of her team tries to keep something from her, she says indignantly, "What do you think I am, an idiot?" Or as they say in French, Tu me prends pour une quiche? She wears pink rubber boots to crime scenes, flashes her police ID in a pink holder when she knocks on doors, and has her own methods of disarming suspects both literally and figuratively. She drives her superiors crazy, but she gets results.

From Candice Renoir and from the many, many women in positions of authority in Murder in. . ., I've also caught up on how feminist language has progressed in France. Candice's rank at the beginning is Commandant, one step above captain and head of her investigative team. The traditional form would have been le commandant, as in "Oui, mon Commandant," even when women started being advanced to that rank. But thanks to the women's movement, it's now Commandante Renoir. That "e"—and other changes, such as la dentiste, when I was taught long ago that it's le dentiste even when the dentist is a woman—makes a small but very significant difference in women's prestige and authority.

You remember that larcenous prisoner pal Shifty. Turns out his brother-in-law, Shaky, the crime ring’s explosives expert, was in the penitentiary and looking for a way out. He discovered the prison updated their security system at midnight.

At zero-hundred hours, the computer initiated the cycling process. Exactly 45 seconds later, it shut off the electrified fence and alarms for mere moments, whereupon it was fully reactivated with fresh recording media. If Shaky could breach the fence at the 45-second mark, he could escape. Three seconds early or late, and his goose was cooked. And by goose, we mean an electric Shaky.

There was just one problem. A bell always clanged at midnight, but how could Shaky time 45 seconds without a watch or cell phone, both banned by incarceration rules.

Having studied under explosives master Dixon Hill, Shaky felt confident he could figure out a way. He discreetly assembled fuses in the prison workshop. Although each length burned exactly one minute, they burned unevenly. The first half of this homemade det cord might burn in forty seconds while the second half would race to the finish in twenty. He couldn’t depend that three quarters of a fuse would give him 45 seconds and not risk his life.

But then Shaky saw the answer. Armed with two one-minute lengths of det cord and a lighter, he affected his escape. How did he do it?

Rules

1. The prison’s system reset begins at midnight when a tone sounds. Exactly 45 seconds later, the fence deactivates and mere moments later it re-electrifies.
2. Shaky carries only a lighter and two lengths of fuse cord.
3. Each cord will burn exactly one minute. However, burn rate is not proportional or even.

How did Shaky escape?

Here is an entertaining three minute Ted Talk presentation and answer to the puzzle.

	© SleuthSayers

Solution

  

Much has been said at this blog lately, by me and others, about anthologies. We've talked about everything from submission calls to themes to editing to publication schedules. That's probably because there seem to be so many anthologies being produced these days--especially crime anthos. And because of that, as I have also mentioned before, I've been doing more writing for anthologies over the past few years than for magazines.  

But there are exceptions. At this moment, as luck would have it, I have short stories in the current issues of five magazines, and those particular markets have been among my favorites for a long time. I hope I've been good for them; I know they've been good to me.

Here they are, in no particular order:

 

1. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

One of the most pleasant surprises of my so-called literary career is the fact that I've been published fairly regularly in a magazine that I had read and enjoyed long before I started writing and submitting stories--and it was one of the first major publications to buy my stories, early on. My first sale to AHMM was a 1200-word short story called "Teamwork," in early 1996, bought by then-editor Cathleen Jordan--I think I ordered about two dozen extra copies and gave one to everybody I knew, including the mailman. Since then--mostly in the last ten years--I've sold AHMM a lot more stories, far less than those of my friends Rob Lopresti, R. T. Lawton, and Doug Allyn, but still enough to gladden my mystery-lover's heart. Probably because of the magazine's long response times, I don't submit as many stories to AHMM as I once did, but I still send them fairly often, and it's always a thrill when one is accepted.

My story in the current (Jan/Feb 2025) issue is called "The Cado Devil," an average-length short story that's almost all dialogue, set in the present-day Mississippi Delta. If you want details, here's a piece I did for AHMM's Trace Evidence blog that describes a little about the story. My next story, "Heading West," is scheduled for their May/June 2025 issue--it's about a young couple, a tornado, and a train robbery in the 1880s. Yes, the magazine does sometimes consider Westerns--I had another one published there a couple of years ago. As most of you know, AHMM's editor is Linda Landrigan, one of the kindest and most professional editors I've known.

2. Strand Magazine

My first sale to the Strand was in 1999, shortly after their "rebirth" here in the U.S.; the previous incarnation of Strand Magazine had been published in London for many years, featuring names like Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. I've forgotten how and where I heard about the new Strand, but somehow I did, and snailmailed them a story called "The Proposal," about a Houston oil executive who'd hired a hitman to kill his wife. The editor contacted me by phone several weeks later to accept the story--it appeared in their second issue, and was the first of the many stories I've had published there. As I've mentioned before in discussions about markets and submissions, most of my Strand stories have been in the 3000- to 5000-word range, contain no otherworldly elements, feature more suspense than mystery, and are heavy on plot twists and reversals. (I'm not saying that's what everyone should aim for, but those things seem to have worked well for me.) So far, my Strand stories have been nominated for an Edgar, won two Derringer Awards, and were selected for three editions of the best-of-the-year mystery anthologies--so the magazine has been kind to me. Also, managing editor Andrew Gulli and fiction editor Lamia Gulli are a dream team to work with. Seriously.

My story in their current issue (#74, December 2024) is a 3200-word tale called "Lizzy in the Morning." It's set in the desert Southwest and includes a bank robbery, a scheming wife, a sneaky cop, a prison guard, an escaped convict, and long-buried loot. Again, as with almost all my Strand stories, it includes multiple surprises and has a plot that's more howdunit than whodunit. I hate it when I hear writers say a story "almost wrote itself," but this one did--it was great fun to put together.

3. Black Cat Mystery Magazine

I remember well the very first issue of BCMM, almost eight years ago--I loved the cover--and the magazine remains a quality publication. My first story for them was in that issue, a long (7600-word) Western called "Rooster Creek," one that I believe was submitted to then-editor Carla Coupe. In the years since then, one of my BCMM stories was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories and another won a Shamus Award, and for those honors I will always owe a debt both to BCMM and to editor Michael Bracken. The only thing tricky to remember about the magazine is that it's irregularly published and has a relatively short submission window, so I've always tried to have a story ready and waiting when those submission calls are announced. (Sometimes I can deliver, sometimes I can't.) At least one of my stories that was accepted by Black Cat Mystery Magazine was later diverted to the also-great Black Cat Weekly instead. More about BCW in a few minutes. 

My story in the current BCMM issue (#15) is "A Cold Day in Helena," a heist tale set in a snowstorm and told through the POV of one of two bank thieves--and it'll probably be no surprise to readers that the bad guys' carefully-planned robbery doesn't exactly go as expected. This serves as even more proof to writers--and to me--that the "complication" part of the problem/complication/resolution template is usually the most important of the three. If my records are correct, I have another story, "Ship Island," coming up soon at BCMM. One final note: As many of you know, Michael is an excellent and (thank goodness) patient editor.

4. Woman's World

Yep, WW is still around, and as long as it is, I plan to send them a story now and then. Usually a mini-mystery; I've had better luck there with mysteries than with romance stories, over the years (they publish one Solve-It-Yourself Mystery and one Five-Minute Romance in every weekly issue). I first sold WW a story in the spring of 1999, back when both the mysteries and the romances were a bit longer and paid a bit more than they do now, and I've been fortunate enough to be a more-or-less regular contributor ever since. Most of my Woman's World stories have been installments in a mystery series featuring a smart, bossy, retired schoolteacher and a not-so-smart but good-intentioned sheriff who was once her student in their small Southern town--she helps him solve mysteries whether she's invited to or not, and (not so helpfully) corrects his grammar in front of his deputies. One reader told me my Angela Potts/Chunky Jones stories remind him of a Mayberry in which Aunt Bee is always trying to tell Sheriff Taylor how to do his job. I hope that was a compliment, but I'm not sure.

My story in the current (February 3, 2025) issue is called "Sure as Shootin'," and it involves a farmer, a trick-shot artist, a preacher, a computer guru, a psychic, and of course a puzzle that needs solving. I haven't yet seen the issue but found a picture of the cover, which--as expected--features an attractive lady and a pointer to weight-loss secrets. Editors I can thank for my good fortune at this magazine (and I do, sincerely) are Sienna Sullivan, Maggie Dillard, Patricia Gaddis, and the long-retired but fantastic Johnene Granger.

 

5. Black Cat Weekly

Among all these print markets, there's an online magazine that's also close to my heart. Several years ago Wildside Press began a daunting venture: a weekly e-zine featuring stories of several different genres--and it's been a great success. My first story there was called "Debbie and Bernie and Belle," back in 2020, when it was known as Black Cat Mystery and Suspense Ebook Club. I believe it became Black Cat Weekly in 2021, and has included works not only from current writers but from some long-ago authors like Jack Ritchie (one of my all-time favorites). Another difference is that BCW features a mix of original stories and previously published works--something for everyone. (Not only do I have an original story in this week's issue, I'm scheduled to have a reprint in the one coming up next week--but that is, one might say, another story.) I'm sure a big reason for the magazine's success are the folks on the masthead: John Betancourt's the publisher and Barb Goffman and Michael Bracken are co-editors.

My short story in the current Black Cat Weekly (Issue #178) is sort of a weird Southern coming-of-age adventure/fantasy tale called "The Dark Woods." It involves a couple of schoolboys, Kevin Parker and Tommy Ward, who're planning a day at the movies, but Kevin's having to hang around for a while beforehand, waiting for his pal to finish his chores. During that time, Tommy's granddad tells Kevin a long and creepy story about one of the old man's childhood adventures, and, well, it turns out to be scary in more ways than one. This story, which at 2,000 words is pretty short, was a special treat for me to write because some of it really happened to me and one of my childhood friends when the two of us were wandering the backwoods one day on an ill-fated adventure of our own. (The true or almost-true stories are almost always the most fun to write.) 

What are some of the markets that you focus on first, with your story submissions? Are they the ones that have been the most receptive to your work in the past? Are they the ones you feel more "comfortable" submitting to, and maybe more optimistic about your chances? Do you have some magazines that are high on your target list simply because they present a challenge? (Personally, I like to submit stories to EQMM but I'm not as successful there as I'd like to be: half a dozen sales out of a zillion tries. Do you have similar mountains to climb?) Do you have a bucket list of magazines or other markets? (Mine includes Asimov's and Analog, although I have few hopes of ever actually selling them anything.) Do you find yourself writing to, and submitting stories for, more anthologies than magazines? Why? If you're in a confessional mood, let me know in the comments. 

And that's it--I'll be back in two weeks. Meanwhile, keep writing, keep warm, and keep sending out those stories. Good luck to all!