“What Did You Just Say?” (by Frankie Y. Bailey)

Posted on June 25, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Frankie Bailey’s first short story for EQMM appears in our July 2014 issue, and a podcast of the tale, which she read for us at the Malice Domestic Convention in May, will feature in our podcast series starting this Friday. The story belongs to the Lizzie Stuart crime-historian series, which includes five novels. Minotaur Books also recently released her new police procedural novel, The Red Queen Dies (2013), which is set in the near future. Booklist called the book a “strong start to a projected series.” The next in the series, What the Fly Saw, will be published in March 2015. Fiction-writing, however, is only one of Frankie Bailey’s careers. She is a professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany, and her knowledge of crime history is evident in this enlightening post.—Janet Hutchings

Place: Fast food drive-through in upstate New York. I swerve my car away from the drive-through window and jump out. As the guy in the window stares as me with mouth open, I reach through his window and grab him by the collar of his uniform. Dragging him toward me, I explain to him in cold, precise language exactly why “Here you go, sweetie” is not an acceptable way to complete a transaction with a customer. As he struggles in my grasp, I point out that if he had been observant enough to notice the gray in my hair, it might have occurred to him that I might be one of those Baby Boomer feminists who consider being called “sweetie” by a strange male a sexist insult. Or, if he called me “sweetie” because he did see that gray in my hair, he might have considered the fact that I am not his grandmother and might not be in the mood to be patronized after spending ten minutes in a fast-food drive through. And—although he might not have gotten this if he didn’t recognize my Southern accent—it might also have occurred to him that someone who grew up in the South, where a waitress calling you “sweetie” as she brings your order to your table can make you feel like you’ve gotten a great big hug, might be offended not only by his “sweetie” but by the bland way in which he’d delivered it. As his eyes bug, I tell him that he is no Southern waitress. And, by the way, buster, “Thank you” is what you say. Not “Here you go.” I let go of his shirt collar and dust off my hands. I get into my car and check my order to make sure I’ve been given salad dressing, utensils, and napkins. As the police car responding to the call about an assault in progress turns into the parking lot, I drive away. The cop barely glances at the calm-faced woman in the gray sedan leaving the scene of the crime.

Okay. This happened only in my Wanda Mitty daydream. The truth is, I didn’t even utter a sarcastic “You’re welcome, darling” in response to that “Here you go, sweetie.” I may even have mumbled “Thank you” as I accepted my bag through the window. But the exchange did provide food for thought (you may groan). I, who have never been in a fight, who shudder at the thought of causing a scene, had fantasized about “breaking bad” on a guy in a drive-through window. Back at the office, as I sat at my desk eating my salad, I began to think about acts of violence—real and fictional—that might grow out of an annoyance or perceived insult. That’s what you do if you’re both a criminal justice professor and a mystery writer. You think, “That’s really interesting. I should see what research has been done on that.” And then you think, “Hey, maybe I can work this into a story idea.”

Historically, “insult” has often been linked to “honor.” Edgar Allan Poe—raised if not born in the South—opens “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846) with these words: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” Montresor, the narrator, never reveals the nature of the thousand injuries or the final insult. But he perceives himself as the victim of conduct that must be avenged. The nature of his retaliation (walling the unsuspecting and inebriated Fortunato up alive in a crypt) suggests the cunning Montresor is a madman. Even though he explains that he must escape punishment or the wrong will be unredressed, what rational man could carry out such a diabolical plan as his victim begs for mercy? Moreover, Montresor has engaged in private treachery. In Poe’s nineteenth-century South, a “gentleman” affronted by an insult and concerned for his “honor” might have been expected to challenge an equal to a duel or to deliver a sound caning or whipping to an inferior. From the perspective of the “culture of honor,” Montresor is a coward because he does not engage Fortunato in a public confrontation.

The tendency to link honor to manhood and insult to potential loss of reputation was not confined to the South. In the era between the aftermath of the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the Civil War, antidueling reformers waged a propaganda campaign aimed at upper class men in both South and North who engaged in duels that the reformers argued were ritualized murder-suicide. The reformers pointed to the infamous case of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr who met in Weehawken, New Jersey to settle their political and personal differences. According to the antidueling propaganda, Hamilton, who was killed, had committed suicide.

Whether the story that Hamilton had fired into the air rather than at his opponent was true or not, Hamilton might have both saved face and avoided the duel. During the negotiations leading up to a duel, the person accused of the insult could offer a carefully worded public (and published) apology offering his regrets about the misunderstanding. When men chose to fight, they saw the duel as an opportunity not only to avenge an insult, but to display their own sense of self-worth and courage by risking death. Whether fighting a duel—or engaging as lower-class men did in “no-holds barred” fights that resulted in the loss of an eye or an ear—nineteenth-century men were willing to fight to preserve status and reputation. In the twenty-first century, violence in response to perceived insult is still common, particularly among young men. In our modern world, an insult may result in a “war of words” among those who consider themselves too civilized for fisticuffs or weapons. But the connection between insult and aggression remains.

Writers know this. Since the birth of “tough guy” crime fiction in the 1920s, how many guys have walked into how many bars in how many books, short stories, and movies and gotten into a “beef” with some other guy? Sometimes the insult is related to clumsiness on the part of the offender (e.g., a spilled drink) or a remark to or about a woman. Sometimes one guy challenges the other guy’s right to be there. In crime fiction, insults happen and characters respond. Occasionally—if the insult comes from someone they know and cuts deeply enough, a character may respond with a carefully thought-out scheme.

Research on the topic suggests that if an aggrieved person has some time to “ruminate” on a public insult, the next person who gets in his or her way may suffer the consequences. Scholars call this “displaced aggression.” Back in 1945, writer Ann Petry depicted this kind of displacement in a short story titled “Like a Winding Sheet.” Although not genre fiction, the story ends in violence—domestic violence. The story opens with the line, “He had planned to get up before Mae did and surprise her by fixing breakfast.” By the end of that day—after the husband has suffered racial taunts from his white female supervisor and what he misinterprets as discrimination when he is told that he will have to wait for coffee in a restaurant—he is tense and angry. When his wife teases him about being grumpy, she inadvertently “triggers” his rage. He strikes her. He sees the blood on her face and realizes what he has done. But he goes on hitting her as he thinks that it is like “being enmeshed in a winding sheet. . . .And even as the thought formed in his mind his hands reached for her face again and yet again.” That’s the last line, but in real life, it would probably not have been the last incident.

In real life—and in fiction—the person who takes offense often perceives the sometimes-unintentional offender as attempting to humiliate and/or dominate. Power differentials, individual characteristics, and the setting come into play. With regard to violence, gender often trumps other factors. From the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, from Western frontier to urban inner city, being ready to respond physically to an insult has been an aspect of American masculinity. Women may anger, may respond to an insult verbally, but are less prone to physical violence. This, of course, is not to deny the juvenile girls and young women who do answer an insult with a punch.

I didn’t grab the guy in the fast-food window by his shirt collar. But my character in my story might do that and end up in jail. And then what? Or, he or she might go back to work and spend the afternoon ruminating on that insult and later have a confrontation with someone else. Of course, one intriguing aspect of an “insult” is that what one person perceives as an insult, another person may take as a compliment. Maybe what my character is annoyed about is that his friend or relative, someone he cares about, doesn’t realize she should be insulted. Maybe he takes action of her behalf . . .

I may actually get a story idea out of this. But that’s what writers do, isn’t it? We put the things that annoy us to good use.

Posted in Characters, Fiction, Genre, Guest, History, Story, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Talking The Talk” (by David H. Ingram)

Posted on June 18, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
David Ingram won the Mystery Writers of America’s Robert L. Fish Award for best short story by a new author for his January 2011 EQMM story “A Good Man of Business.” A subsequent story for EQMM, November 2013’s “The Covering Storm,” was selected for the 2014 volume of the anthology series Best American Mystery Stories. The author is not only a fiction writer (with a novel recently completed) but a book and movie reviewer. He’s had other work experience too, and he discusses one of the most interesting of his past jobs in this post. —Janet Hutchings

“I told you,” I said to McMullin, “you haven’t got anything on me or my client. You keep busting my chops ’cause you don’t have two clues to rub together.”

The big copper leaned in until his nose almost kissed mine. “You private dicks kill me, thinkin’ you’re special. Maybe I’ll throw you in holding until you lose the attitude!”

In novels, movies, and TV shows, confrontational scenes between police officers and citizens abound. It’s good drama; how many people would want to watch or read about the classic noir detectives or their modern equivalents having a nice chat with a police officer? However, it may have bled over into reality for some. When researchers looked into incidents where police officers were involved with violent confrontations, it was discovered that some officers accounted for nearly all the incidents, while others almost never had problems. The culprit, it turned out, was how the officers talked to the suspects. The language they used naturally led to violence.

Enter Dr. George J. Thompson, who received his B.A. at Colgate, a Master’s and Doctorate in English at the University of Connecticut, and did postdoctoral work at Princeton in Rhetoric and Persuasion. He was well acquainted with detective fiction as he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Dashiell Hammett’s five novels, and later published it as Hammett’s Moral Vision. After all that study and ten years teaching English, he left academia and became a full-time cop.

Thompson noticed some of the old hands in the department were always able to get a suspect to comply with just a few words. From his training he recognized they were using complex rhetoric, even though they couldn’t have explained what they were doing. For them, it was a natural gift. Thompson’s education experience let him break down these techniques so that they could be taught to anyone, and he developed the program called “Verbal Judo.”

It’s an appropriate name. Judo is relatively modern, having been developed in the late 1800s by Jigoro Kano. Before that, jujitsu was the main martial art in Japan, with its emphasis on blows that could be used to disable and even kill. Judo, whose name means “gentle way,” was created as a sport to build character. Kano took a scientific attitude in the design of judo. It involves deflection and parrying force rather than meeting it directly. Dr. Thompson had a black belt in the sport.

In 1982, Thompson wrote an article that was published in an FBI bulletin about police rhetoric and how it could be a valuable tool for officers. He received over 600 letters in response to the article. One of the letters invited him to give a talk to police and corrections officers in Abilene, Texas. He accepted, and at the end of his presentation, he received a standing ovation. The officers told him he had to do it as a regular course, so in 1983, he founded the Verbal Judo Institute and set about training officers in the techniques.

The purpose of Verbal Judo is to de-escalate situations so they don’t turn into violent encounters. The course is taught over an intensive two-day period, and it breaks down into five steps:

1)    Ask: Treat a person with dignity and respect. 85% of people will comply when they are asked nicely to do something. As Dr. Thompson put it, “Treat people well, regardless of their differences.”

2)    Set Context: Explain to the person why you are making a request or placing them under arrest. People want to know why something is happening.

3)    Present Them With Options: Give the person scenarios of what can happen based on their behavior. In effect, it makes the person responsible for what takes place. All people want to be asked rather than to be told what to do.

4)    Confirm: Get their acknowledgement of compliance, if possible. If the person’s still refusing to cooperate, the officer might ask, “Is there any way to get you to comply with this?” Rather than threats, people prefer options.

5)    ACT: Follow through with actions. If the suspect still won’t comply, then the officer may need to escalate to using force. However, most people want a second chance when they make a mistake. If the desired effect is presented as a way to get that second chance, it can defuse what could be an explosive situation.

Verbal Judo has become a required course in many jurisdictions and at police academies across the United States, as well as internationally. Officers have multiple force options, from hand-to-hand combat through pepper spray and Tasers and on up to firearms. But words are the only option that can increase the safety of officers, and they won’t lead to liability lawsuits or physical injuries. Words can also improve relations between the public and the police. These days, the police have to expect that their actions will be recorded by someone with a cell phone. If you search YouTube for arrest videos, you’ll see over 800,000 results. (A trainer in Verbal Judo was scheduled to do a presentation for the Los Angeles Police Department in March of 1991, but the trip was canceled because of the Rodney King affair that happened that month. One wonders what a difference training in Verbal Judo may have made in that situation.)

To give cadets experience in Verbal Judo, police academies such as the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois incorporate extensive role-play into their studies. That was where I encountered the technique. For about a year, I was a role-player for P.T.I., acting out situations as a victim, witness, or perpetrator so the cadets could get experience in a controlled environment before their first street assignments. A training officer and a team of 6-10 cadets would watch as a couple of the trainees went through a scenario, and then discuss how they handled the situation. The role-playing would be repeated with variations until all the trainees had a chance to participate.

There were two situations in particular where cadets were helped by the Verbal Judo skills. One was Terry Stops, where the police are allowed to stop a person and check their identification if they think that person might have been involved in a crime that’s occurred. Using the Verbal Judo techniques can prevent the interview from turning into a confrontation. The other scenario where Verbal Judo can defuse an already charged incident is with domestic disturbance calls. During the role play, two cadets are dispatched to a report of a loud argument. If they were to become involved in the argument themselves it would defeat their efforts. Instead, the officers separate the combatants into different rooms (or take one outside) and get them talking about what triggered the fight. The cadets will then discuss what they’ve heard from each participant (while standing in such a way that they can keep an eye on both parties) and decide how best to proceed. If it was simply a loud argument, they might caution the couple to keep things under control, or have one of them leave overnight to allow time for tempers to cool. If physical violence was involved, usually they proceed to an arrest.

Dr. Thompson had an intense teaching style and picked up the nickname “Rhino” while doing the seminars in the 1990s. When he was introduced to two police officers who were scheduled to take the seminar, they said, “Oh, you’re the rhino!” Thompson asked what they meant, and the officers explained they’d asked an FBI agent who’d done the course what Thompson was like in class. The agent told the officers, “Imagine a Rhinoceros on amphetamines. . . . When you’re in his classroom, he’s in your face.” Doc Rhino trained over 175,000 law enforcement professionals himself and equipped teachers who’ve trained hundreds of thousands more. He passed away unexpectedly in 2011, but his work is continued by the Verbal Judo Institute, based in Auburn, NY. The institute has branched out to provide communication training for corporations based on Dr. Thompson’s teaching. Wherever negative stress can aggravate interactions between people, the skills of Verbal Judo can help.

Using Verbal Judo in a story won’t be as dramatic as the old get-in-your-face confrontations between cops and others in hardboiled novels and films, but this is one place where reality and fiction clearly divide.

Posted in Genre, Guest, History, Police Procedurals, Private Eye, Real Crime | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

“Underestimated” (by Joseph Wallace)

Posted on June 11, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Joseph Wallace’s short stories have appeared in a variety of anthologies, including Baltimore Noir, Hardboiled Brooklyn, and Bronx Noir, as well as in EQMM. His work is notable for unusual themes and settings, as well as for clever plotting. In this post, he lets readers in on one of his secrets.  The author also writes novels and in his latest, the thriller Invasive Species (Berkley), he crosses genres to include elements of science fiction.—Janet Hutchings

“Diamond Ruby,” the first of my stories published in EQMM, is set in 1930s Brooklyn and concerns baseball and the Great Depression. “Jaguar,” my second—coming out in next month’s issue—takes place largely in the rainforests of present-day Belize and focuses largely on human trafficking . . . and yes, on jaguars, too.

At first glance, the two stories seem to have almost nothing in common. After all, one’s a noir story set in Brooklyn and featuring Babe Ruth, while the other takes place largely in Belize and includes a cameo by a large jungle animal. But two crucial things tie them together: The protagonist of each is a teenage girl, and both of these tough, strong young women were created by a fifty-plus-year-old man.

My two stories for EQMM are far from the only examples of this direction in my writing. The short story “Diamond Ruby” became a novel—my first—a big historical seen entirely through the eyes of Ruby Thomas, an eighteen-year-old girl. Other stories of mine have also relied on female narrators, probably most notably “Custom Sets,” which first appeared in the Mystery Writers of America’s 2009 anthology The Prosecution Rests and later in The Best American Mystery Stories 2010.

So obviously writing from the POV of women has worked for me. The question is: Why do I do it? And why do I continue returning to it, as I have in “Jaguar”?

Having suggested writing about this topic for this blog, I figured I’d better come up with an answer. (Merely saying, “Because I like to!” wouldn’t be enough.) And then, just like that, I figured it out, or at least where it all began.

It all began with Dick Francis.

Wait, what? The Dick Francis who wrote about horseracing, often from a jockey’s point of view? The Dick Francis who never wrote a single of his forty or so novels from a woman’s perspective? The Dick Francis who always wrote in the first person, when my stories and novels are always third-person?

Yes. That Dick Francis.

I can explain. I began reading Dick Francis as a teenager (back in the early 1970s) and—even though his books nearly all follow the same formula, and even though I’m a fickle reader—I continued to read them for decades. I’ve finally figured out why: I find one essential part of the formula irresistible.

Not the part about horses, though that can be fascinating. Nor the part where each novel provides a different “information bonus” (photography, wine, survivalism, what it’s like to live with a ruined hand).

What kept me coming back to these novels for decades, when my tastes in fiction otherwise changed substantially, was a simple, consistent theme: Everyone always underestimates Francis’s heroes.

That’s the link to my own work, and the inspiration for me. In every Dick Francis novel, the protagonist is a quiet, thoughtful young man, always with little power: jockey (or ex-jockey), stable boy, freelance writer, painter, photographer. Invariably he comes up against villains in positions of far greater influence (horse owners, racetrack stewards, newspaper magnates). Just as invariably, the villains see only each protagonist’s youth, unflashy demeanor, and social status, and miss entirely his intelligence, bravery, and will to win.

And thus, by underestimating their opponent, the villains ensure their own doom.

Dick Francis was far from the first to employ this formula, but he did it better than most. When I started writing fiction, I found myself drawn to similar scenarios . . . but with one crucial twist: If quiet young men in non-influential positions are so easily underestimated, what about quiet young women in similar roles?

I’m the father of an extraordinary daughter now in her twenties, the uncle of a brave and intrepid teenage niece, and a writing mentor to a couple of dozen high-school students (mostly female) over the years. Without exception, these young women are smart, tough, funny, and resourceful. Yet many adults look at them and see only their clothes, their piercings, their smartphones, and, most of all, their gender.

Witnessing such shallow, judgmental reactions again and again in real life, I knew I could employ them in my fiction. In fact, I could exploit such knee-jerk responses in two equally effective ways. The first, of course, was the same way Dick Francis did: By creating likeable underdogs and pitting them against hateable, arrogant, powerful foes, he guaranteed that we’d have a rooting interest in the story’s conclusion.

My own variation on that, however, was to double down: Gauging reader reaction to “Liminal,” my early story featuring Tania, an unworldly Orthodox Jewish girl, I discovered that just as the villainous, controlling photographer in the story underestimated her, so did many readers.

Early on, we know that Dick Francis’s heroes are far stronger and smarter than the villains expect; much of the pleasure comes in seeing the bad guys’ realization set in too late. But my readers tell me that they never see my plot twists coming, because on some level (they confess) they’ve bought into the same expectations that the villains have. They’re surprised because they didn’t think that Tania, Ruby, Ana in “Jaguar,” and the rest of my female protagonists had it in them.

Simply put: This middle-aged man creates a teenage girl or young woman who appears vulnerable, and right away readers accept the characterization without question. And that makes pulling the rug out, defying expectations, both satisfying and fun for me—while simultaneously making the story more surprising and powerful for those same unsuspecting readers.

Posted in Characters, Fiction, Guest, Writers, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“The Hardboiled Notary” (by Kevin Mims)

Posted on June 4, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
In the following post Kevin Mims talks mostly about some of his occupations other than writing, so it’s worth mentioning a few specifics of his literary career. Kevin’s personal essays have appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times, on NPR’s Morning Edition, and elsewhere. His mainstream short stories and poetry have appeared in a range of literary magazines, and his short crime fiction has appeared in both EQMM and our sister publication, AHMM. Kevin is currently nominated for a Thriller Award for best short story for his July 2013 EQMM story “The Gallows-Bird.” —Janet Hutchings

Like a lot of guys my age (55), I grew up idolizing private eyes: Jim Rockford of TV’s The Rockford Files, John D. MacDonald’s beach bum turned freelance crime-solver Travis McGee, and various cinematic incarnations of Philip Marlowe by the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, and Robert Mitchum. I watched hundreds of TV crime shows and explored thousands of mean streets with dozens of recurring fictional detectives. I was less interested in police inspectors and FBI agents than I was in private eyes. Even then, I liked the idea of freelancing better than the idea of regular employment. My ideal was Harry Orwell, the private detective played by David Janssen on the short-lived (1974-76) TV series Harry O. Due to an injury suffered while on duty, Orwell received a monthly disability pension from the San Diego Police Department. The pension meant that he didn’t need to take on any work that didn’t genuinely interest him. He lived in a beach house and spent his days trying to renovate an old wooden sailboat called The Answer. He regularly became romantically entangled with beautiful women portrayed by the likes of Farrah Fawcett and Linda Evans. Except for the bullet in his back, Harry Orwell struck me as having a perfect life.

The TV detectives of the 1970s generally commanded $200 a day for their services. To a kid whose biggest expenses were comic books and pulp paperbacks, $200 a day seemed like a fortune. If you had asked me in 1973 what I wanted to be when I grew up, it’s likely I would have answered, “A freelance detective.”

Forty years have passed since then, and I have never managed to solve a single crime. Nonetheless, I have achieved at least a part of my dream. For much of my adult life I have been a freelancer. I have been a freelance merchant, selling used books and CDs and DVDs on the internet. I have freelanced in antiques, selling vintage collectibles out of a stall at an antiques co-op. I am a longtime freelance writer who sells fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to a wide variety of publications. The nonfiction writing can sometimes be a bit like private detective work. It often requires that I meet with some stranger and interview him about his life and livelihood. Alas, these interviews never result in my being menaced by thugs who threaten to cool me with their .28 caliber roscoes. No moll with great gams ever comes to my rescue by slipping a Mickey Finn to her old man and then lamming it with me to some cozy hideout in the high Sierra. Generally, when I finish interviewing a suspect—I mean, subject—I go home and write up a profile of said person for a local publication. Not exactly The Maltese Falcon.

I do have one freelance occupation, however, that occasionally simulates private-eye work. For fifteen years or so I have worked as a freelance notary public. I drive to houses and workplaces all over the Sacramento, California, area and help people sign legal documents, usually in connection with a home purchase or a refinance. These assignments bring in about $100 each. If I do two of them in a day I can earn what Jim Rockford earned for a day’s detective work (of course, Rockford’s $200 is probably closer to $500 today when adjusted for inflation). Rockford got much of his business via the telephone (each episode began with a different humorous phone message being woven into the opening title sequence). Harry Orwell’s clients often seemed to just wander up the beach to his oceanfront home and begin telling him their woes. Philip Marlowe’s clients tended to show up unannounced at his office on the sixth floor of the Cahuenga Building. My offers of notary work usually arrive via my home computer. If I accept the job, an escrow officer e-mails me the documents. I print them on my desktop printer, toss them into my briefcase, and away I go to my date with destiny. Alas, I drive a ’98 Corolla rather than a ’79 Firebird and I never have to punch my accelerator to the floor in order to elude a thug, jealous husband, or a crime boss who happens to be tailing me. I do, however, acquire a lot of personal information about the clients I deal with. While collecting signatures on documents, I usually learn how much my client paid for his house, what he owes on it, where he works, what he earns, whether or not he’s ever gone bankrupt or been sued, if he has unpaid tax liens or child-support payments or medical bills to deal with. This is all privileged information and—like a private detective, a lawyer, or a priest—I take care not to disclose the details to anyone.

Although you’re never likely to see a program called Kevin Mims: Mobile Notary on prime-time TV, notary work can occasionally be eventful. I once had to drive deep into rural El Dorado County to collect signatures at the home of a pair of survivalists who were refinancing their property. The husband’s name was on none of the official documents. He told me he hated all forms of government and did his best to avoid leaving a paper trail that could be traced through government records. Apparently he didn’t mind if his wife acquired a government paper trail. Everything they owned was in her name. The husband was a serious paranoiac. While I sat at the dining-room table collecting signatures from the wife, the husband sat and watched us like a hawk from a chair in the living room. A handgun lay on a small table beside him. He told me that if I tried to make a move on his wife, he would shoot me dead. I collected the signatures I needed and then hightailed it away.

And then there was The Case of the Dead Woman in the Next Room. This one occurred just a few weeks ago. My client was a 91-year-old man. He and his wife were selling the house they had lived in for most of the sixty-six years they had been married. Unfortunately, the wife was suffering from dementia and had recently been declared mentally incompetent. The husband was now the only one authorized to sign legal documents on behalf of the couple. I arrived at the couple’s house at ten a.m. Despite his advanced age, my client was in excellent condition both physically and mentally. It’s always necessary for a notary to copy information from a client’s driver’s license into the notary book. When this client saw me write the numbers 7-19-17 into my book, he mistakenly thought I was documenting his birth date. He said, “I was born in 1923, not 1917.” I told him, “That’s not your birth date I was copying, it’s the expiration date.” He laughed and said, “Oh, I’m likely to expire long before that.” When I informed him that I would have to collect a thumbprint from him, he joked, “You can try, but I’m so old that my fingerprints have all been rubbed away.” It turned out he was right about that; his thumbprint was mostly just a thumb-shaped black smudge without any whorls in it. “That’s what happens when you get old,” he said, “your identity starts to fade away.” I thought it was a rather poignant comment, considering his wife’s condition.

But it turned out that I was wrong about his wife’s condition. The first document he needed to sign was an addendum to the real-estate contract asserting that the wife was non compos mentis and that her husband would be signing all of the documents on her behalf. After I explained the addendum to him, my client said, “Perhaps we won’t need to sign this document anymore, now that Rose is dead.”

Like a TV detective after being told that his client has skipped bail, I did a double take. “Your wife is dead?” I asked, confused. The escrow officer had assured me just the previous day that the wife was alive but incompetent.

“She died about an hour ago,” he told me, and he pointed towards a doorway at the end of a hallway. The door was open and I could see a body lying on a bed inside the room. “I haven’t called the authorities yet,” he said. “I want to give my daughter a chance to come over and say goodbye to her mother first.”

Suddenly I felt as though I had committed some horrible social gaffe. “I can come back some other time, if you’d like,” I said.

But my client just smiled and shook his head. “It was a very peaceful death,” he said. “Her breathing gradually slowed down until finally it just stopped. Shortly after that her heart quit beating.”

And so we continued with the signing. In a single morning my client was forced to say goodbye to his wife of sixty-six years and to sign away ownership of the house they had shared for most of their married life. Not once did he display any bitterness or self-pity. When a private detective leaves behind a house in which a woman lies dead, he is usually in an unpleasant frame of mind. But I departed the house of this dead woman impressed by the composure and courage of her husband and determined to face the challenges and setbacks of my own life with similar equanimity.

On another occasion, I was supposed to meet a young woman at her house in Sacramento’s north area for a signing that was scheduled to take place at six p.m. The woman worked as a showgirl in Las Vegas but owned a home in Sacramento, which she was refinancing. She called me from the road at five o’clock and told me that she was running late. She was driving in from Vegas and had underestimated her travel time. “No problem,” I told her. “Just call me when you’re a half-hour away, and I’ll meet you at your home.” At ten she called and asked if we could do the signing at my house instead of hers. She thought it would be quicker that way. “Fine,” I told her. I gave her my address and told her I’d wait up for her. She finally showed up at my house at one in the morning. She was still dressed in some kind of showgirl outfit—sequined miniskirt, stiletto heels, scanty top. She carried a large purse with a small dog in it. When I opened my front door, I felt as if I were in a cheap detective novel. I found myself hoping she’d tell me that she had stolen $250,000 from a Vegas mob boss and then ask if she could spend a few days hiding out at my place. Alas, she had no interest in anything but signing her loan papers and hurrying home. I signed her up at my dining room table (her thumbprint had plenty of whorls). My wife was asleep in the next room, so I couldn’t even offer the showgirl a drink, the way Jim Rockford or Harry Orwell surely would have.

Being a notary isn’t as exciting as being a private eye. On the other hand, no mob boss is ever likely to show up at my house looking for his ex-girlfriend and the $250,000 she stole from him. And though it may not be an ideal apprenticeship for a life of crime-writing, being a freelance notary does occasionally prove useful to my crime fiction. Whenever Lew Archer or Philip Marlowe or (my personal-favorite among fictional detectives) Bill Pronzini’s Nameless walks into a stranger’s house, he usually makes a quick assessment of what he sees and then uses that information to try to gauge what kind of person he is about to be dealing with. I’ve learned to use this same skill in my notary work.

Posted in Guest, Noir, Private Eye, Story, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

“The Secret of the Ageless Girl” (by Leigh Lundin)

Posted on May 28, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
In a sequel to his post of May 7, award-winning short-story writer and blogger Leigh Lundin revisits another beloved character of the Stratemeyer Syndicate.—Janet Hutchings

“Why are you doing this to me?” Nancy struggled against her bonds. “All these years, I couldn’t figure out why bad men kept tying me up but now I learn you’re behind it. It’s been you all along.”

“Dear, dear, don’t fret. Someone will come by soon to rescue you.”

“How could you do this? I’m kind, helpful, smart, and resourceful. Yet you’re so mean, you . . . you . . . Miss Keene or whatever you call yourself.”

“I’m afraid Carolyn Keene is merely a disguise. My real name’s Mildred, and I don’t always tie you up. I’ve locked you in a closet, trapped you in a barn, run you off the road, lost you in a cave . . .”

“But why? You must really hate me.”

“No, I quite like you, or rather Edward and his daughters like you. Mostly, I like the money they pay. But I do well by you, don’t I, Miss Drew? Police departments vie to consult with you. The University of Iowa celebrates you. Well, actually they honor me, Mildred Wirt Benson, but because of you.”

Nancy struggled against the ropes. “That makes no sense.”

“Of course it does, darling. You’re pretty, you never age. I’ve given you a smart, well-off father, several sports cars, and a fashion wardrobe girls would die for. Did you know old Stratemeyer, Edward himself, persuaded Grosset & Dunlop to hire top fashion illustrators for you? You’re the envy of all the young women. Only the best for you, my dear.”

“I wouldn’t mind cheaper rope,” Nancy grumbled. “And why do I have to chase crooks in high heels? Nobody did this to the Hardy brothers.”

“Yes, well, it’s a girl thing. And I do give you adoring attention. You’re actually quite literate, you know. And fans love you, Nancy Drew. From the beginning, you’ve never been out of print.”

“You say his daughters like me?”

“Especially Harriet. I’m afraid she might replace me one day and then where will you be?”

“Maybe not gagged and bound.”

The woman who called herself Keene looked amused. “So you think. We all do what the Syndicate tells us. Oh, by the way, try to remember wild guesses aren’t always clues.”

“So call it intuition, okay?”

“I’ll make a note of that. I’m good, but I’m no Agatha or Dorothy L.”

“And a boyfriend. Can’t I have a boyfriend?”

Mildred sighed. “I suppose it’s inevitable. Just, you know, act with decorum. Comportment’s everything.”

“What fun’s that?”

“You can’t have too much fun, darling. You’re a role model. And no new Mrs. Drew for your father, either. The Syndicate likes motherless children. It’s a Harry Potter thing.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. You just keep the magic.”

***

Thanks to the genius of Edward Stratemeyer and the willingness of Grosset & Dunlap to invest in the series, Nancy led as a fashion trendsetter, always pictured wearing the latest styles, which didn’t go unnoticed by her young audience. Nancy’s attire was so cleverly chosen that as decades passed, her wardrobe never quite seemed to go out of fashion.

Harriet Stratemeyer Adams took over writing the series in 1955. She also revised and often rewrote the original 34 volumes, in the process changing Nancy from the impulsive, sometimes headstrong girl of Stratemeyer’s and Mildred’s vision, to a milder, more sedate and proper girl—more sugar and less spice.

The real magic and mystery is that whatever the era, Nancy Drew has captivated and influenced young readers for close to a century.

The Nancy Drew Convention runs June 2-8, 2014 in San Diego.

Posted in Adventure, Books, Business, Characters, Fiction, Genre, Guest, History, Novels, Publishing, Writers | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Ethics of Investigations: Real and Fictional

Posted on May 21, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

Privacy issues seem often to be in the forefront of the news these days, especially following the leaking of National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden, and the subsequent revelation in the media of the NSA’s phone surveillance program. People on both sides of this country’s political divide (and people around the world) have, understandably, reacted to these disclosures of what appears to be a governmental intrusion on privacy with alarm.

It isn’t only the government, of course, that has people worried when it comes to privacy. Other concerns have emanated from the growing awareness of social media users that the information they provide on such sites is being banked and sold, along with information about each user’s Internet browsing history, by companies seeking to market products. The resulting profiles have been shown to include a person’s sexual orientation, political opinions, and medical history—it’s hard to imagine a greater erosion of the concept of a personal life than these companies are effecting.

And then there’s the realm of private investigation. Cases of illegitimate or unethical snooping on the part of P.I.’s don’t as often make leading news, but there’s plenty going on—and plenty to think about—if you look for the stories. One important issue is GPS tracking. In October of last year a federal appeals court ruled that the police need a warrant to use a GPS tracker on vehicles. But, interestingly, there is no law preventing a private investigator from using the same device. And some private detectives apparently have no scruples about it. The incentive is easy to understand: following someone on a computer sure must beat long stakeouts. There are, however, many private detectives who have spoken out against this practice, reminding us that despite the unsavory reputation some P.I.’s have earned in recent years, the profession has plenty of ethical practitioners.

Long before NSA’s phone-surveillance program was revealed, back in 2008, private eye to the stars Anthony Pellicano was sent to prison for wire fraud, racketeering, and wire-tapping. Among his other breaches of the law, Pellicano had set up a computer program that worked in conjunction with taps in telephone main switchboards to record calls on a large scale. This didn’t seem to raise the kind of alarm NSA’s program has, even though we probably should be concerned that this was so easy for a P.I. to do.

This raises some questions for me about private-eye fiction, and what fans expect of a fictional P.I. I think most readers accept an investigator stepping outside of the law as long as it’s done in pursuit of some kind of justice. In fact, more of the private detectives I encounter in short fiction than not seem to consider a bit of illegal hacking—into DMV records, for instance—not only acceptable but part of the expertise their clients expect them to employ. But the key here really is the purpose for which it’s done. The famous case of Britain’s News of the World scandal involving private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was charged, in 2007, with illegally accessing voice messages to aides to the royal family and certain celebrities highlights where I think many readers would draw the line in fiction. It seemed pretty clear that Mulcaire did exactly what he was hired to do, and he took the fall along with an editor from the newspaper. But despite the convictions in that case, it seemed that the public did not consider the offenses of the newspaper or the P.I. very worrying. They were, after all, only invading the privacy of people who live in the public eye and who many believe should have no expectation of privacy. What made many change their minds was that a few years later it was shown that this probing by the private investigators and the newspaper into personal lives had extended to the teenager Milly Dowler, who’d gone missing several years earlier. When it was revealed that The News of the World had hacked into her phone messages and deleted some of them so that they could listen to new ones, the public was revolted.

I think readers of private-eye fiction expect a fictional P.I. to do at least some things a cop on a police force couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do. Some things, in fact, that are not within the law. But balancing this is the equally strong expectation that the P.I. will act in accordance with some kind of code of honor, and that ordinary people—people without power or privilege—won’t become collateral damage (as, in real life, Milly Dowler’s parents were) to whatever objective is being pursued. I wonder, though, what our readers, and especially the private-eye writers in our audience think about this. I know we have some writers who worked as private detectives before turning to fiction writing. It would be interesting to know what they think about the frequency with which real investigators break the law, and also about whether it’s acceptable for them to do so in fiction.

Also, what position ought a real P.I. take to a privacy-invading practice like GPS tracking? And even though private investigators are currently not restrained by law from using GPS trackers, would their use by a fictional P.I. violate the code of honor that’s so essential to the fictional form?—Janet Hutchings

Posted in Editing, Fiction, Genre, History, Politics, Private Eye, Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

A SEASON FOR AWARDS, GARDENS, AND MYSTERIES

Posted on May 14, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

Following EQMM’s busiest week of the year—the last week in April/first week in May, when the Mystery Writers of America holds its Edgar Allan Poe Awards banquet in New York, and immediately thereafter the Malice Domestic Convention in Bethesda, Maryland begins—what I most savor is the quiet of my garden. It needs a lot of work by the time I get back, but the silence of it after five days of partying and entertaining is restorative.

Prior to the Edgars each year, Dell Magazines gives a cocktail party at which we present the EQMM Readers Awards and honor our Edgar Allan Poe Award nominees. The celebrations this year were overshadowed a little by the need of two of the authors we’d very much hoped to see—one an Edgar nominee (Trina Corey) and one a Readers Award winner (Doug Allyn)—to cancel their trips to New York. But we had a great time with those who did manage to make it—and that included one of the Readers Award winners, Marilyn Todd, who traveled with her husband Kevin all the way from Cognac, France for the events; Readers Award winner Dave Zeltserman, who was in New York from Boston for a week with his wife Judy; and Edgar Award nominee Tim L. Williams who’d suffered a serious spinal injury just two weeks earlier but still made the trip (in a neck brace) from Kentucky with his wife Sherraine and kids Carson and Madelyn. The old friends we caught up with and the new people we met at the Edgars events are too numerous to name, but there are some photos at the end of this post where you might see some of the authors you know or read.

When I arrived at the Malice convention I discovered that my first appointment was scheduled for the same time Texas pharmacist Luci Zahray, otherwise known as “The Poison Lady,” was giving one of her talks about household and garden poisons suitable for perpetrating the perfect murder—in fiction, of course. This year her talk focused on plants (though she also has extensive knowledge of metals and chemical poisons), which I’m always interested to know about, and I’d certainly have attended had the timing been different.

I read in a recent interview of Luci Zahray by Kate Flora that oleander is one of the most toxic of garden plants, all parts of it being deadly, and three leaves enough to kill a man. I had plants on my mind all through the Malice Convention not only because my garden awaited at home, but because Art Taylor’s March/April 2103 EQMM story “The Care and Feeding of Houseplants” was nominated for the convention’s Agatha Award for best short story. And it won! (Congratulations, Art!) The story, as I’m sure everyone can guess from the title, involves plant poisons, but also a lot more, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Due to the extraordinarily long and harsh winter this year, gardening is just getting going in many parts of the country. Normally, daffodils have flowered and gone up where I live by the time Edgar Awards week arrives. This year there are a few still in bloom even now. I imagine this disruption of the season will make its way somehow into this year’s crop of gardening mysteries.

Though I like to garden, I tend not to pick up gardening mysteries at novel-length very often; that’s probably because those I read at short-story length don’t surprise often enough. A freshly turned garden bed is obviously an inviting place for disposal of a corpse, and almost any garden provides the poisonous means of ensuring that there’s a corpse to dispose of in the first place. If you doubt that, just do a little research on the plants in your garden.

A favorite ground cover of mine, lily of the valley, is a highly poisonous plant for humans. If swallowed even in small amounts, all parts of this delicately white-flowered perennial are poisonous, and it can be fatal if consumed in large quantities. According to a source I found, dose yourself (or someone else) with lily of the valley and you’ll suffer abdominal pain, vomiting, and reduced heart rate. On the other hand, this most innocent looking of plants can also be used as an antidote to poison, because of its ability to reduce an accelerated heart rate. I was at a plant sale this past weekend with a friend who picked up a tray of lily of the valley and became alarmed when I mentioned its poisonous qualities—wondering if it could kill a dog. It can, but of course, absent human agency, a dog is extremely unlikely to ingest it.

A multitude of other poisons are to be found in my garden or nearby, so I imagine you’ve got them in your vicinity too: the bulbs of daffodils, and of the hyacinth that bloomed here last month can cause vomiting and diarrhea, and prove fatal. Foxglove, in large amounts, causes dangerously irregular heartbeat and pulse, digestive upset, and mental confusion. All parts of the laurel, rhododendron, and azalea plants are also fatal in the right quantities, producing depression, difficulty breathing, and sometimes coma.

And let’s not forget the cherry tree, of both the wild and cultivated varieties. Even the twigs and foliage of my “Cherry Pie Tree,” apparently, contain “a compound that releases cyanide when eaten”; “. . . gasping, excitement, and prostration” are the common results (according to Aggie Horticulture). Be careful with any rhubarb pies you prepare, too, because consuming that plant’s leaves is known to cause convulsions, coma, and a speedy death.

I could easily go on; it just takes a quick bit of Googling to get this kind of information. But that, in a way, is my point. Someone who comes up with a poison we don’t know about, and an inventive way to use it, is part way to a good mystery. But it’s hard to come up with something little known, and even a truly ingenious method of murder is only part of the trick. A garden mystery, like any other mystery, has also got to provide an interesting motive for murder and intriguing characters. And that’s what makes Art Taylor’s Agatha winning story so good. I honestly can’t remember what plant poison was used in that tale, but I recall vividly all the characters involved and the tensions arising from their interactions, which, of course, provide the motive for murder.

I have crime on my mind at least forty hours of every week, so I’ve no wish to recall the potentially lethal uses of plants when I’m trying to get away from it all in the garden. Still, who doesn’t find such facts about things we cultivate for beauty or nourishment interesting? I think it’s that contrast between the serenity of the activity of gardening and the deadly use to which the knowledge associated with it can sometimes be put that accounts for continuing interest in a genre most of whose murder methods have been used time and again. I’m going to sit out under my cherry tree now, beside the lily of the valley, and try to forget about murder. I hope you’ll check out the picture of Art with his Agatha Award and the assortment of photos from our pre-Edgars party (below).—Janet Hutchings

Parnell Hall & Ted Hertel

Parnell Hall & Ted Hertel

Dell Editor Mark Lagasse setting the scene

Deanna McLafferty and Jackie Sherbow

Deanna McLafferty and Jackie Sherbow

V.J. Kemanis

Joanne & Lou Manfredo

Kate Stine and John Pugmire

Kate Stine and John Pugmire

Joshua Bilmes

Joshua Bilmes

Naomi Hirahara

Tom Savage & Linda Landrigan

Tom Savage & Linda Landrigan

Christine Begley & Meredith Anthony

Christine Begley & Meredith Anthony

Joseph Goodrich & Jane Cleland

Joseph Goodrich & Jane Cleland

Jay Carey & Ted Hertel

Jay Carey & Ted Hertel

Hilary Davidson & Frankie Y. Bailey

David Dean & Brendan DuBois

David Dean & Brendan DuBois

S. J. Rozan

S.J. Rozan

Gigi Vernon

Gigi Vernon

Carol Demont & Cristina Concepcion

Carol Demont & Cristina Concepcion

Lina Zeldovich

Lina Zeldovich

Steve Steinbock

Steve Steinbock

Carson, Madelyn, and Tim L. Williams

Carson, Madelyn, and Tim L. Williams

Peter Kanter; Charles Ardai, Dorothy & Cormac Flynn

Peter Kanter; Charles Ardai, Dorothy & Cormac Flynn

Janet Hutchings

Janet Hutchings presents the 2013 EQMM Readers Awards

Marilyn Todd

Marilyn Todd accepting her Readers Award

Dave Zeltserman back at home with his EQMM Readers Awards

the Chocolate Edgar

the Chocolate Edgar

Janet Hutchings and Art Taylor

Janet Hutchings and Art Taylor with his Agatha Award. (Photo courtesy of Terrie Farley Moran.)

Posted in Awards, Business, Conventions, Writers | 5 Comments

DIGITAL-EDITION SALE

Posted on May 8, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen

 

 

 

 

 

From now through Monday 5/12, enjoy 50% off a one-year digital subscription to EQMM or AHMM, as part of Magzter‘s Mother’s Day Sale!

Ellery Queen Magzter Mother's Day

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“The Mystery of the Writer’s Ghost” (by Leigh Lundin)

Posted on May 7, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Writing as L. Leigh, Leigh Lundin appeared in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in August of 2006 with the story “Swamped.” The tale went on to win that year’s EQMM Readers Award—in a competition in which first stories only very rarely place in the top three. Since that debut Leigh’s stories have appeared in both EQMM and AHMM, in the MWA anthology The Prosecution Rests, edited by Linda Fairstein, and in other publications. The Florida resident has recently been spending a lot of his time in South Africa, which has become the inspiration for some of his stories. He is one of the founders of SleuthSayers, the successor to the short-story blog Criminal Brief. Leigh describes SleuthSayers’ site as “bringing together professional crime writers and crime fighters.”—Janet Hutchings

“The syndicate’s behind it,” Frank said.

“Who?” asked Joe.

“The Stratemeyer Syndicate. For seventy years they kept their existence a secret. Our man disappeared into it, the most prolific mystery writer readers never heard of.”

“The guy who carried a Canadian passport and used aliases like Franklin W. Dixon and Carolyn Keene?”

“Pseudonyms, he called them, Joe. Noms de plume. Most people would call him a ghostwriter.”

“You’re talking Charles Leslie McFarlane?”

“Yes, the very one. He later authored mysteries and radio dramas under his own name, but his children’s books have never gone out of print.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Mainly us, the Hardy Boys. Our books continue to sell more than a million copies a year. McFarlane wrote twenty of the initial twenty-six novels. He penned the first sixteen given outlines by old Edward himself.”

“Edward Stratemeyer? The guy who founded the syndicate and brought the world the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and our brainy, fashionable friend Nancy Drew?”

“The same. His stable of authors mostly comprised newspapermen and women who agreed to write children’s books anonymously. Leslie McFarlane’s role remained a secret into the late nineteen seventies.”

“Wow.”

“He was a bit subversive when it came to authority figures. He once said, ‘Would civilization crumble if kids got the notion that the people who ran the world were sometimes stupid, occasionally wrong, and even corrupt at times?’ ”

“Cool! But that reminds me of Dad. We were forever saving him.”

“Although he worked to provide atmosphere and clarity, McFarlane didn’t like the books. He called them ‘the juveniles’ and considered the plots thin and the prose bad.”

“Really? Aren’t we the good guys?”

“Teachers and librarians disdained the syndicate novels. They complained about characterization.”

“Why? You have dark brown hair and I’m blond. That’s characterization, isn’t it?”

“Adults poked fun at the books’ excessive speech tags, calling them Tom Swifties. Such author intrusion left many people cold,” coolly pontificated Frank. “Robert Lopresti calls them unnecessary stage directions.”

“Hang it all,” responded Joe judiciously. He added heatedly, “That burns me up.”

“Speech tag verbs and adverbs form a slippery slope,” remarked Frank smoothly. “Whew! I’m glad we’re done with those examples.”

“Me too,” Joe repeated. “But the fact remains, Stratemeyer and McFarlane left a remarkable legacy.”

“Ontario named a public school after McFarlane and McMaster University archives his works. Our buddies Dale Andrews, Rob Lopresti, and Leigh Lundin have written about us and Tom Swifties.”

“And Stratemeyer, of course. Wasn’t he a scoundrel? (Hey, ya got to love that word.)”

“I think not. He was a brilliant businessman and entrepreneur. He not only admired Alger stories, he “completed” eleven boys’ novels under Horatio Alger Jr.’s name. That launched Edward into the publishing business and made him realize money could be made through ghostwriters. So began his syndicate, hiring writers like McFarlane, producing thirteen hundred novels in more than a hundred different series.”

“Wow, that’s a super story. Now we’ve got another mystery to solve.”

“What’s that, Joe?”

“How the editor let us get away with an article like this.”

Posted in Adventure, Books, Characters, Editing, Fiction, Genre, Guest, History, Novels, Publishing, Writers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

“Legal Mysteries: You Can’t Handle the Truth” (by Ted Hertel)

Posted on April 30, 2014 by somethingisgoingtohappen
Milwaukee attorney Ted Hertel is also a fiction writer whose first published story, “My Bonnie Lies” (from The Mammoth Book of Legal Thrillers), won the Robert L. Fish award for best first short story by an American author. He has gone on to sell a number of other stories, receiving an Anthony Award nomination along the way. He is also a historian of the mystery whose articles have appeared in many journals and books, and he frequently reviews mysteries for Deadly Pleasures magazine. One of Ted’s longstanding connections to EQMM derives from his being an expert on the works of Ellery Queen. His essays on the fiction of our magazine’s founders include “Queen’s Gambit: The Life and Times of Ellery Queen” (in The Tragedy of Errors, 1999) and “Ellery Queen: The American Detective Mystery” (in Crime Spree, 2004). He also assisted with the editing of The Adventure of the Murdered Moths (2005), a collection of Ellery Queen radio plays. Once other mystery writers have read this post, however, I suspect that it will be his legal knowledge, not his knowledge of mystery classics, that Ted will be most sought out for. —Janet Hutchings

With almost any occupation, whether it is medicine, private investigation, or the law, the fiction writer must take certain liberties with the way the profession is presented. For example, any story about a private investigator is going to contain a murder or two (or a lot more). But real private investigators do not go around solving murders. Cop Steve Carella, in Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel Long Time No See, recalls that “[t]he last time [I] had met a private detective investigating a homicide was never.” Taking this sort of liberty with the facts does not seem to bother readers overly. If what goes on in the day-to-day life of the doctor, the private eye, or the lawyer were accurately presented, it would generally make for a very dull story.

Imagine this real life scenario happening in one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason books: Perry shows up in court for a hearing for one of his clients. He sits around all morning staring at the walls, only to have his case adjourned for two months because of an overcrowded court docket. Della goes off to the Register of Deeds office to record a document, only to have it flung back in her face by an overworked clerk because of some minor technical violation having nothing to do with the substance of the paperwork. Paul Drake sits in his car all night long watching some divorce client’s spouse and then discovers that he does not have a big enough empty soda cup. Situations like this would make for some pretty boring stories, yet these incidents perhaps more closely reflect the day-to-day practice of the law than books like John Grisham’s or Scott Turow’s.

So, there is little that is actually thrilling about real-life legal work. In fact, there is probably little that is actually thrilling (or at least entertaining) about any type of work. Which is probably why it’s called “work.” As a result, a “legal thriller” naturally needs to be pumped up. Writers find that they must juice up the storylines in order to please the reading public. I suppose that there is really nothing wrong with this. If the author cannot sell a book by presenting events the way they occur in real life, then he or she must take steps to see that the story is publishable and entertaining.

I think that certain of these adjustments are perfectly legitimate. For example, the writer can quite properly condense the time frame of the story. Real life trials take much longer to get to final disposition than fictional ones. This is acceptable because the reader wants the story to move along smoothly and quickly. Actual attorneys always have other cases that they are handling at the same time, while fictional attorneys often seem to have only one matter (whether it is civil or criminal) that they must deal with during the course of a book. Again, failing to reflect this does no harm, since the main focus of the author and the reader is on that one big case.

Of course from the perspective of a real-life attorney, this sort of thing is laughable. How many times have we all seen in books or on television where the client walks into the lawyer’s office with a serious medical malpractice case and the lawyer is already in court the next morning arguing motions (or, God forbid, actually trying the case)? This raises a lot of unrealistic expectations in people. I cannot tell you how many of my clients cannot understand why some attorney on television can get her case into court right away (and in New York City, for example, on top of it!) and why it takes me a year or more to get their case to trial. So when I said “this does no harm,” I meant from the readers’ perspective, not from mine as a litigator.

Another real-life difficulty is raised by shows such as CSI. Crimes there are solved by DNA or other forensic evidence. Yet some actual juries have been known to acquit defendants in the face of other solid evidence proving their guilt because there was no DNA testimony presented. Once again, unrealistic expectations have been created.

Other problems can arise when authors throw actual legal procedure out the window and just make up their own to satisfy the demands of the story. Or worse, the author does not even know the correct language to use or the right motion to make. One of the more egregious examples of this was in a book by a very popular author who shall remain nameless, wherein (note use of “genuine” legalism there!) the attorney moved the court to dismiss charges against her client “without prejudice,” which means she was seeking a dismissal that was not on the merits. She should have requested that the dismissal be “with prejudice” (meaning the case against her client could never be brought again). In other words the result of this faulty motion would be that the state could then retry the lawyer’s client for murder. Now unless the attorney was looking for another big fat fee for a second trial, this is a totally incorrect request (not to mention the malpractice suit against her that would be sure to follow in the event the state did make the effort to retry the client). A simple check by the author with any lawyer who does litigation would have caught this error, which simply shows a lack of concern for detail on the part of the writer.

Errors like that creep into many books. I am not just faulting authors of legal mysteries here. I recognize that most readers will not be the least bit concerned with this sort of difficulty. However, there is no advantage to be gained by an author who does not check the facts when it is so easy to do so. Just pick up the phone and call a litigator. All of us would love the ego boost of seeing our names in the acknowledgement section of the book.

By the way, the real criminal almost never stands up in the back of the courtroom and confesses, just in case you Perry Mason fans were wondering.

So, sit back, relax, and enjoy some legal thrillers. Just do not plan to take the bar exam based on anything you read in them.

Posted in Courtroom Mysteries, Editing, Fiction, Guest, Setting, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 7 Comments