Admin_99
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Son of a bitch!
Lynch leaned back in his chair after he slipped his phone back in his jacket pocket. He should have known better than to trust Chodan. He’d been fighting for years in these mountains to lure his brother back to his village and away from Beijing’s influence. Now that he could see how close Lynch was to negotiating a settlement where he’d failed, he wasn’t about to let him leave. Chodan might not have lied, but he wouldn’t have balked at turning away and presenting a more pleasant view of Kendra’s situation if it was more comfortable for him.
Which left Lynch not knowing what the hell was happening with Kendra, but realizing it wasn’t good. He’d been lucky that she’d told him even this little she had. It would be useless to probe to get more out of her when he was obviously not one of her favorite people at the moment. Better to go around her and get the full picture. Griffin? Metcalf? She’d mentioned FBI, but she would have referred to them directly if she was receiving help from either of them. What else did he know? The only other clue she’d given him was that she was not in San Diego but in L.A. where Jessie lived.
Why L.A.? Call Jessie?
Think about it, but right now he had to wind up these negotiations here in the mountains before they blew up in his face. The chances were he wouldn’t be able to get out of Tibet alive if he didn’t finish what he’d started. So go top speed and still do what he had to do here while working to find out what was happening to Kendra in L.A. Strike the balance as he’d done so many times before.
But none of it was going to get done by him sitting here. He got to his feet. Move! He threw open the front door and strode out into the driving snow.
Jessie handed Kendra her coffee when she jumped into the passenger seat fifteen minutes later. “One time-sensitive cup of coffee for the road,” she said as she backed out of her drive- way. “But since you declined my offer of a meal, have you got a better suggestion where we can pick up a sandwich or doughnut to go with it?”
“Maybe.” Kendra took a sip of her coffee. “How about the 7-Eleven on National Boulevard?”
“Interesting choice.”
“Adrian’s girlfriend said he’d bought another phone, one that presumably couldn’t be traced.”
“A burner phone.”
Kendra nodded. “Everything else about his departure was in a last-minute panic. I’d say it’s likely he bought his phone between the Bowl and her place. Between four thirty and five thirty in the morning, options are limited.”
“Not so limited. This is L.A., remember? There are hundreds of convenience stores and gas stations open at that hour.”
“But we know he went to 7-Eleven, probably one very close to his house.”
“How do we know that?”
“There was a 7-Eleven coffee cup in the kitchen trash can, translucent enough that I could see it was still about two-thirds full. He probably bought it nearby and brought it inside with him. I didn’t see any cell phone packaging in the trash, though.”
“Maybe he hadn’t opened it yet.”
“Possible. Or maybe he opened and activated it before he left the store.”
Jessie nodded. “Are you proposing a dumpster dive?”
“If the packaging gives us the phone’s serial number, we can track his location with the carrier.”
“Oh, it’s definitely worth trying. I’m just saying, I hope the parking lot trash can hasn’t been dumped yet today.”
“I told you it was time-sensitive. I tried to call 7-Eleven to find out, but they kept putting me on hold. If I’d had my wits about me, I would have been able to put this together before I left the house this morning,” she added in disgust.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Did I ever tell you about the time I found a human hand in a dumpster?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Funny thing was, it wasn’t even connected to the case I was working. We never got an ID on that thing. I did find the ammo cartridge I was looking for, though. It helped break the case.”
“Did I see that on the wall of your living room?” “Yes. Probably looks better than the hand would’ve.”
“I’m sure it smells better.”
“Most likely.”
Jessie pulled onto National Boulevard and two minutes later turned into the 7-Eleven parking lot. They parked in front of a brown cylindrical trash receptacle at the far end of the store’s front sidewalk. Kendra saw with relief that the huge can was still practically overflowing with trash. “Pickup must be every other day.”
“Yep.” Jessie reached into her center console and pulled out latex evidence gloves. She threw a pair to Kendra. “You’ll want to use these. Watch out for diapers and needles.”
Kendra made a face as she pulled on the gloves. “Great. Let’s get this over with.”
They pulled out the trash can and dumped it on the pavement. Receipt time stamps told them it hadn’t been emptied since at least early the previous day. As Jessie warned, there were indeed used diapers and hypodermic needles amid numerous coffee cups, snack wrappers, and discarded lottery tickets. But soon Kendra spotted the distinctive pink-and-white packaging of the prepaid mobile phones carried by the store.
She picked up the torn cardboard packaging and held it up to show Jessie. Affixed to the carton with sticky blue Slurpee juice was a store receipt.
Jessie cocked her head to read the receipt. “Paid in cash. Five sixteen a.m.”
“Promising . . .”
“And he also bought a large coffee.” Kendra smiled. “It has to be him.”
Jessie pulled out her phone and snapped a shot of the carton’s underside. She inspected the photo on her screen. “Perfect. We have a serial number and the bar code.”
“Shall we call Kelland?”
“We could. But then we’d have to wait for a warrant, then wait for the carrier to send along tower data.”
“Got a better idea?”
“Yeah. I know a guy.”
“Naturally.”
“It’ll be faster.” Jessie was already tapping a text into her phone. “He’ll give me a full readout first thing in the morning. Maybe even earlier.”
“Good.”
A shadow fell over the pile of garbage in front of them, and Kendra and Jessie looked up to see a pimply-faced counter clerk dressed in his polo-style 7-Eleven shirt. He was staring at the mess they’d made on the sidewalk.
Kendra gave the kid a sheepish look and shrugged. “Lost earring.”
__________________________________
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How’d you get like this?
*
One night, I’m talking to my three older siblings—Linda, Karen, and Lee—about our proximity to heinous crimes and mysterious deaths over the years.
We talk about our neighbors in Oakland who plunged to their death off an icy mountain road on Thanksgiving, 1972. Husband, wife, two children, a lone surviving son. A tragedy. Forty-nine years ago now. They’re buried across from our grandparents in a Jewish cemetery in Portland. Whenever I’m up there, I leave a stone on their graves, though I have no memory of them, just a memory of the story. “Mom said it was a mob hit or a murder-suicide,” Karen says and we all sort of agree: That was a thing Mom said. But looking online now, it seems like it was just a car accident.
“And then there was the serial killer who murdered everyone at the house next door to us in Capitola,” Lee says.
Wait. What?
And then the outlines of a vague memory start to filter in. This was that period when the greater Santa Cruz region was home to several working serial killers, the most notable being Ed Kemper, who had a brief resurgence of national interest a few years ago for his portrayal on the HBO show Mindhunter. But Kemper didn’t kill our neighbors. It was one of the other guys. My brother says this was when we had a vacation house on the river—which is actually Soquel Creek—before we moved into the painted houses that front the ocean, the houses you think of when you think of Capitola, if you ever do. We showed up one weekend and the house next door was taped off, cops and media everywhere, bodies pulled out in bags.
Just one of those things.
Not that I have any memory of this. Could have happened before I was born, in fact. Because when I go looking up the crime, it fits the description of a killing that happened in 1970—a year before I was born—plus one in 1972 and another in 1973. No one remembers our exact address and Lee only remembers that hippies or hitchhikers might have been involved, which, in context, doesn’t really help.
*
Lock the door, my mom says, unless you want the East Bay Rapist to break in.
It’s the mid-1970s and then the early 80s. We live in Walnut Creek, the kind of bedroom community in the Bay Area that, in a few decades, will become so expensive to live in that it’s hard to imagine a single mother of four, working as a journalist at the Contra Costa Times, could have ever afforded a house here, even back when she was married to our dad, who worked in TV news. But he’s long gone, a voice on the phone every few years. I know the Zodiac Killer as well as I know him.
But then the Zodiac is a more pressing concern.
I’m profoundly dyslexic, so when I try to write, it’s all symbols and letters and everything is backwards. Words for me are a jumble of angles and points. I see them one way in my head. I see them another way when I try to write them. The frustration is so profound, I find myself doing things I immediately regret. Cutting little hunks of flesh from my stomach. Peeling skin from my toes. Biting things and people I shouldn’t bite. One day, my mom is on the phone with someone and I hear her say, “It’s like he’s the Zodiac. Nothing makes sense when he writes. I don’t know what to do.”
But back to the East Bay Rapist.
You know him now as the Golden State Killer. Back then, he had several different names. The East Bay Rapist is what we called him in Contra Costa County. The East Area Rapist is what they called him up in Sacramento. Before that he was the Visalia Ransacker. Afterward, he became the Night Stalker, then the Original Night Stalker, after Richard Ramirez co-opted his nickname, then the Diamond Knot Killer, then the Golden State Killer, and, finally, Joseph James DeAngelo, currently incarcerated at North Kern State Prison.
In the summer of 1979, he hit twice in our neighborhood. First a 17-year-old girl on El Divisadero Drive. Then a 13-year-old girl on San Pedro Court. From our house on Cochise Court, you go down Quiet Place for four blocks, then turn left on San Carlos Drive, and the houses, they’re right there, the rows of Eichler homes. Modernist dream homes built in 1959. They were neighborhood curiosities in the 1970s because they were impossible to sell, what with their double front doors, low ceilings, and spooky courtyards that became inordinately expensive and desirable in the 21st century. We’re talking million-dollar single family homes on postage stamp lots. Never discount the inflated cost of nostalgia.
How many times had we rode bikes past those addresses? Trick-or-Treated? Walked alone at night after soccer practice? Hundreds. Thousands.
So we locked the doors.
*
I had some pretty specific fears as a child. Quicksand. Lock jaw. Disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle, likely while looking for the lost city of Atlantis. Getting cancer from eating raw cookie dough.
Being abducted like Steven Stayner.
You remember Steven Stayner. He was abducted in 1972 and then escaped in 1980 with little Timmy White, after White had likewise been kidnapped. They made that movie about him. I Know My First Name Is Steven. This all happened in Northern California at the same time all this other stuff was happening. I can still see the newspapers with Steven and Timmy on the front page. For weeks, months, eventually years, their story was told across all media, that one photo of Timmy draped over Steven Stayner’s shoulders appearing everywhere. What it must have been like to go from being completely hidden to totally seen.
All that, and yet, I had a pretty normal childhood, even if I thought Toll House was trying to kill me.
I did all the normal suburban things. Soccer on Saturdays. Riding bikes to the creek to catch crawdads. Sleepovers and RISK and Dungeons & Dragons and eggings and sitting on the shag-carpeted floor listening to records and tapes and talking about the things we’d be and do. Rearranging my sister’s spoon collection to see if she’d notice. Standing in front of the gelato shop pretending to be punk, wearing a t-shirt of a band I’d never heard.
But growing up in the Bay Area also meant that from a very young age, we’d take BART into Berkeley or the City and just wander around. You remember: Holding your breath when the train went under the Bay. Being yelled at by Ferlinghetti for spilling a waxy cup of Coke on the floor of City Lights. Pizza at Blondie’s. Rummaging through the bins at Rasputin’s. That was hella cool. Did our parents even know? Or care? I guess, intellectually, I assume they must have, but in my own home, the question of where we’d been or what we’d been doing was never asked by our mother, sick as she was with lupus and an as-yet-undiagnosed (and thus unmedicated) bipolar disorder, prone to her own ultimately self-destructive fits of petty violence – she was a slapper, a thrower, a breaker, a ripper, a stomper, a scream-until-the-dogs-shit-in-the-hallway-er. A woman so lonesome that our crowded house was perpetually filled with strange men for a night or two or five or a month or he became our stepfather and then he wasn’t.
Our neighbors were good and kind people, mostly. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can see them all standing in front of their homes, frozen in polyester relief. The Hayworths. The Halls. The Hobsons. The Dalanders. The Sorensens. The Goodsons. The Ostranders. The Browns. The O’Neils, until their house burned down. There were also the Saputos, whose son was such a bad motherfucker that the rumor was he’d kicked his parents out of their master bedroom and claimed it for himself, though I can’t imagine that was true. The Schags, whose son would get high and blare Van Halen out of his second story window, until even their Doberman would get tired of hearing side one of “Diver Down” and, presumably stoned to the tips of his pointed ears, would try to crawl out the window. You could almost predict the timing of it. “Oh, Pretty Woman” would start for the third time and then you’d look outside and that fucking dog was half-way out the window, a shirtless, stoned teen with feathered hair trying to corral him back in. Up the street were our married elementary school teachers, the Pates, who were just the nicest people you could imagine, the kind of elementary school teachers they make movies about, that instill a love of reading in you, who held hands even at school, who remembered you years later when you ran into them in a mall, long after you’d moved away, all Goth’d out, your teen years a bit of a challenge once you left Walnut Creek. There was a Stephen King-level sadistic bully who lived a few blocks away, but I guess he didn’t like to ride his Mongoose uphill because he never showed up on our block and primarily left his brand of domestic terrorism for the bike racks after school or Halloween or out front of McFarland’s candy and ice cream shoppe where he’d shake you down for your stash.
One of my favorite memories of childhood was watching the Big Game—the annual football tilt between Cal and Stanford—the year of The Play and seeing my neighbor, Mariet Ford, Cal’s star receiver, right in the middle of it all, lateraling the ball to Kevin Moen, who then trucked through the Stanford band to victory. The next day, Mariet was at his parents’ house, whooping it up with friends and family, and the neighborhood kids came out in force. A Nerf football was produced and for thirty minutes, we ran The Play over and over again, right there on the street. Some real Norman Rockwell Americana shit…but also a pretty good claim to proximity-of-athletic fame, so it was a story I told all the time growing up, or whenever that highlight would be played.
Until 1997, anyway, when Mariet Ford bludgeoned his pregnant wife and toddler son to death and then burned their bodies.
*
I’ve never been the victim of violence, apart from ill-advisedly choosing the wrong people to fight when I was a drunken frat boy. I haven’t been in a fight in about thirty years, though in that time I’ve learned how to shoot guns, how to spin a car out in a chase, how to turn my Crockpot into a bomb, how to clean blood from any surface you can imagine. My bookshelf looks like I’m a crazy person: The U.S. Army & Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Guide… Combat Leaders Field Guide (13th edition)…What’s Toxic, What’s Not…On Killing…Marine Force Recon…Cause of Death…The CIA World Factbook…The Anarchist’s Cookbook. On the page, I’ve killed more people than I can count. Men, women, children. Still, statistically speaking, at this point in my life, I’m probably in pretty good shape to avoid a dramatic fate. I’m nearly fifty. I’m not a drug addict. My riskiest behavior these days involves going to Target in the middle of a pandemic and glaring at people who can’t figure out how to cover their noses with their masks.
Well, that and being a full-time troll on my NextDoor, where I like to bait racists and conspiracy theorists. Because unlike when I was a kid, I don’t actually know my neighbors personally. I only know them by the compendium of their fears: White vans, brown people, 5G towers, mysterious forces stealing their Trump signs, socialism, immigrants, George Soros, people who don’t pick up after their dogs, short-term renters.
Don’t poke these people, my wife says. They know where you live!
What’s the worst that could happen?
*
It’s 2000 and my wife and I buy a house in a small town in the Coachella Valley, near Palm Springs. I’d gone to high school in Palm Springs after my mom moved us from the Bay Area so she could take a job as a gossip columnist at the local newspaper, which primarily meant she went to parties for a living and dated mid-level criminals—the kinds of guys who did Ponzi schemes, robbed banks, emptied out the bank accounts of old ladies, things like that—or retired mobsters, living out their golden years poolside, the bullet holes in their gut healed over but still, wow, those are some scars.
But before I make back to the Coachella Valley, my wife and I live for a few years in Las Vegas, which is a nice place to live if you’re a DJ or like to smoke in grocery stores. This was not a great period in our lives. I owned several shiny shirts and one long, leather duster, like I was Donnie Brasco. We spent a lot of time drinking in bars until the sun came up. We’d pull up to our condo as our neighbors were taking their kids to school. And even though it was Las Vegas, where everyone makes terrible choices, our neighbors still seemed to view us with real skepticism. Maybe they were right, because one morning we’re at a bar called Big Dogs with our friends, who are rolling on about thirty different substances, and who are having a conversation that primarily involves how they’ll outwit the cops having breakfast near us—it was the kind of bar that had a really good breakfast; it’s Vegas, just go with it—to make it to their cars and we both came to realize, at exactly the same moment: We need to get the fuck out of Las Vegas.
Our house is behind a gate on a giant manmade lake, which is our new, permanent speed. The community has an absurd name: Laguna De La Paz. It means “lagoon of peace.” Is that a thing? I don’t know. What I can tell you is that while our home is lovely, the community is infested with Norwegian roof rats and real estate agents. The roof rats operate through a network of fruit trees and low walls, traversing between houses like they’re on I-5. One day, your house is a tranquil haven far from the maddening world. The next, your attic and your walls are filled with rats. If you set up twenty traps around the perimeter of your house, you’d wake up in the morning with twenty dead rats, but you’d be no closer to eradicating the problem.
The real estate agents are just as insidious. Each morning, you’d see them pulling out of their garages, their smiling faces plastered on jaunty magnet signs affixed to the side of their cars. There’s a least five agents who live on our horse-shoe block, including this guy Paul. He’s actually my mom’s real estate agent. Got her into a nice house just down the street. Which is another story. His house backs up to the community pool, so we see him all the time. He’s one of those guys who solely wears clothing purchased from Tommy Bahama. Sits on his patio, smoking cigars, having drinks, playing yacht rock. He’s 61, tall, tanned, and perpetually in sandals. He leaves his garbage cans out too long, but whatever, we all have our issues, right? It’s not like it’s a capital offense…unlike on that one afternoon in the late summer when Paul murdered another real estate agent—a 33-year-old woman he worked with—in a house four homes over. It was supposed to be a murder-suicide, but Paul fucked that up and just managed to blow half his face-off, which happens more often than you might think.
Six months later, real estate agents were parading prospective buyers through Paul’s house and soon enough a nice new couple moved in, the garbage cans were brought up in proper order, and for a while, we sort of forgot about it all, everyone more interested in a somewhat notorious pop star who lived inside the gates. It was probably years before anyone even brought the killing up, likely not until a seventy-year-old woman in the house right next door to where the murder-suicide happened was bludgeoned to death by her seventy-three-year-old brother and his pal. Turns out it was both a murder and murder-for-hire. Or at least an accomplice for hire.
By then, we’d moved to a development with an even more ludicrous name. I’d tell you, but I still live there. All you need to know is that it is also on a giant manmade lake cut into the desert floor, but this time there’s also a golf course, and the name—inexplicably in Italian—reflects that. We bought our house as the development was being built, which lessoned the likelihood of the Norwegian roof rats, but increased the number of real estate agents for neighbors.
At this point, I was a seasoned crime writer, so I knew what to do.
I trolled through the Megan’s Law map.
Clear…except that five miles away, I see a guy I went to high school with. Sexual predator. Did time in a military prison. Had his medical license revoked. Playing in an 80s cover band now.
I checked all the crime stats.
Pretty good!
Even the family of mobsters who I grew up down the street from have all gone pretty straight, or died, or moved. I friend one guy on Facebook, just to check in on him. He’s doing great. Why, there’s hardly any organized crime in the desert anymore.
Well, save for the fact that a mile away from my new house is the home base of a notorious street gang cliqued up with the Mexican Mafia. I tell my wife not to drive down that street at night, or the day. Ever, really. She thinks I’m overreacting. And then one day the FBI raids the neighborhood and arrests a few dozen Sureno shot callers and it’s like the street doesn’t exist anymore. They could build Disneyland on that road and we’d never know.
So it’s a peaceful life, after all these years surrounded by all of my worst fears. Until one of our neighbors inside the gate is murdered by her boyfriend and is dumped on the golf course behind our house.
*
For a week after that initial conversation with my siblings, we continue to remind each other about all the terrible things that have happened to people in our sphere that we’ve sort of forgotten about. Murders, assaults, abductions, civil insurrection. Stories that my sister Linda and I were too young to be told about at the time, but that our older siblings Karen and Lee recall with surprising detail, in some cases fifty years later. (“Mom was pretty good in a riot,” Karen says.) Linda, in fact, is the only of us in the last ten years or so not to be a few degrees of separation from some kind of haunting murder…until a few days later, anyway, when Karen remembers she forgot to tell us two of her husband’s cousins was murdered last year. The killer was arraigned a few months ago. It’s going to be a death penalty case.
Slipped her mind. It was a busy year.
Maybe all families are like this?
Maybe all existence is lived in close proximity to the worst impulses of strangers.
Maybe because I spend more time calculating dreadful scenarios, putting them on paper, exploring the why and how and what and who, I’ve avoided being directly involved in anything terrible, but that’s likely hubris. You never know when you’ll be in the way of someone’s worst day.
The one thing I do know: I’m not the Zodiac.
Not that he’s ever been caught.
***
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“Conspiracies are melodramatic, my dear, especially when they’re made by rich people with too much money and time on their hands.”—The Smiler with the Knife, Nicholas Blake
*
Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood in July 1939 with a Mephistophelean beard and a clutch of potential projects. The facial hair was an artifact of Five Kings, a wildly ambitious synthesis of Shakespeare plays that had closed in Philadelphia. John Houseman, then Welles’s producing partner, wrote that “as a final token of defiance, Orson announced that he was retaining his beard and would not shave it off until he had appeared as Falstaff on a New York stage.” The affectation provided additional ammunition for carpers gunning for the 24-year-old wunderkind; at least one novelty song was written about the whiskers, and novelist Louis Bromfield offered a cash reward to anyone who “accidentally” singed them off Welles’s face. (Welles’s goatee is unscathed when he turns up as a character in The Sharpest Needle, the latest Edith Head mystery I cowrote with my wife Rosemarie Keenan under the pen name Renee Patrick.)
As for Welles’s debut film, the sky seemed to be the limit. RKO had signed him to a contract offering unprecedented creative freedom on the strength of his string of theatrical triumphs like the so-called “Voodoo Macbeth,” a landmark 1936 production with an all-Black cast transporting Shakespeare’s play to the Caribbean. The studio had hopes Welles would tackle a big-screen version of The War of the Worlds, which Welles had staged on the radio to stunning effect in October 1938. Highbrow properties like Cyrano De Bergerac were bandied about.
But Welles knew how he wanted to make a splash. As he absorbed all he could about film production, in part by watching Stagecoach (1939) repeatedly in the company of technicians who had worked on the seminal John Ford western, he readied a sprawling, complex adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He was familiar with the material, having already turned it into an episode of The Mercury Theatre of the Air. He planned on updating Conrad’s story to then-contemporary South America, using it to condemn Nazi Germany. He also intended to shoot the film subjectively, with the camera serving as the eye of the protagonist Marlow. A tall order for a tyro filmmaker.
Welles had often spent extravagantly on his theatrical productions. With RKO signing the checks, money was no longer an object. He dispatched a second unit crew to Florida’s Everglades as he had locations scouted in Louisiana. He put out a call for more Black extras than there were in all of Los Angeles.
It became apparent that Heart of Darkness would not be going before the cameras for some time. Welles needed another project to slot ahead of it. RKO had one in mind.
*
“She forced herself to remember that here, in the heart of England, England’s ruin was being planned.”—The Smiler with the Knife
*
Nicholas Blake’s 1939 novel The Smiler with the Knife opens with a dutiful homeowner finding a locket in a roadside hedge. This chance discovery leads directly to a nefarious plot to take over Great Britain, “a conspiracy organized by the friends of Fascism in the country to discredit this government and overthrow it by armed force—the last, desperate throw of those who saw the future slipping out of their hands.”
Blake was a pseudonym for Cecil Day-Lewis. In 1968, he would be named poet laureate of the United Kingdom. In the 1930s, he made his living primarily as a schoolteacher. Needing additional income, he set out to write a detective novel like those admired by his friend and mentor, W. H. Auden. 1935’s A Question of Proof introduced the gentleman sleuth Nigel Strangeways and made “Nicholas Blake” one of the premiere crime fiction authors of the era. Martin Edwards, in his definitive history The Golden Age of Murder, writes, “Tall, fair, and slender, (Day-Lewis) was described by Rebecca West as ‘a Greek Apollo,’ and his good looks and charm were inherited in due course by his Academy Award-winning son.” (Yes, “Nicholas Blake” is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.)
In Smiler, the fifth Strangeways novel, Blake changed his formula considerably. The protagonist isn’t Nigel but his wife Georgia. Once an explorer of some renown—Nigel regards her as “the Cat that Walked by Herself”—she finds herself feeling slightly restrained by the bonds of matrimony. The discovery of the locket presents an opportunity for her to return to her adventuresome ways by infiltrating an organization known as The English Banner. The E.B. is described by Nigel’s uncle Sir John, a Scotland Yard bigwig, as “a queer sort of semi-mystical society” dedicated to the notion “that they are really the best people in the country and therefore ought to be its rulers.” Sir John calls the group harmless but then adds, “if you wanted a good cover for a dangerous secret organization, what could you find better than a harmless ditto.” The English Banner is being exploited by a sinister cabal of people, the kind possessed of a conscience that “allows them to betray their country in white hoods but not in dinner-jackets.” Their intent is to establish a dictatorship in the U.K. What they need is the proper figurehead, a compelling figure who won’t appear to be a dictator. Sir John says:
“If the conspirators are as clever as we believe them to be, they’ll have chosen someone who can appeal to the ordinary Englishman’s romanticism and hero-worship.”
“Yes,” murmured Georgia, “there’s something in that. The inspired amateur. It’s part of our national romanticism to trust the amateur rather than the professional. But how do we find him?”
The answer is simple: Georgia will seek him out. She and Nigel stage a convincing break-up. Now apparently single, Georgia begins moving through society circles and soon encounters the man anointed by a shadowy syndicate to be England’s new ruler, one blessed with a singularly memorable moniker.
… Lord Chilton Canteloe. Chilton—‘Chillie,’ as he was affectionately known by the millions who had profited either directly by his philanthropies or indirectly from the way his horses justified their backers’ confidence—was a millionaire, still in his early middle age, but already something of a legend in the country, a figure as colorful in his way as the great Whig noblemen of the 18th century. Georgia, indeed, had suggested to her friend, half in fun, that he would be the ideal for the E.B. to have chosen as dictator, but Alison had replied, “Oh no. Don’t go barking up that gum-tree, my sweet. Chillie’s all right. He’s a grand chap. You wait till you meet him.”
Meet him Georgia shortly does, and an odd seduction ensues as she tries to ferret out Canteloe’s agenda. Blake generously supplies comic moments as well as camera-ready suspense sequences. His portrait of the aspiring strongman is particularly deft; Chillie is charismatic and even likable despite recurring flashes of sociopathic behavior. Georgia sizes him up early and accurately, observing, “Well, he was a millionaire: men did not accumulate all that money without hurting a lot of people, one way or another.” Cecil Day-Lewis had written extensively about the rise of fascism throughout the 1930s. As Nicholas Blake, he continued to sound the alarm under the guise of light entertainment, castigating his countrymen.
Like many highly intelligent people, Georgia was inclined to underestimate the enormous potential strength of stupidity. Like herself, millions of men and women in England, though the last ten years had given them so many object lessons in the way a few really determined, unscrupulous men can exploit this stupidity and apathy, were still saying “That sort of thing cannot happen here.”
Orson Welles biographer Simon Callow sums up the appeal of The Smiler with the Knife: “It was witty, topical—and cheap.” John Houseman, dismissing the book as “an English potboiler in the Hitchcock manner,” wrote that Welles “switched without protest but without enthusiasm” to adapting it. That diffidence seems unlikely, considering Welles’s affinity for the genre. “All his life,” Callow wrote, “he travelled with a suitcase full of pulp fiction, thrillers, gangster stories, crime stories, which he consumed at a rate of two or three a day.” Welles, who had bolstered his fame playing The Shadow on the radio, even claimed to have penned pulp stories under a pseudonym.
Welles immediately embraced the book’s potential. Biographer Patrick McGilligan writes that Welles viewed the story as a “cautionary tale about the spread of fascism,” one he would literally and figuratively bring home by transplanting the narrative to the United States, “turning it into an American political parable.” Georgia would become a madcap heiress out of a screwball comedy, with Sir John transformed into her G-man father-in-law. As for Chilton Canteloe, he would be rendered, in McGilligan’s words, as “a right-wing playboy industrialist who is active in the aviation industry.” Welles was upfront about his inspiration, telling writer Robert L. Carringer that his villain was based on Howard Hughes.
By late November 1939, Welles had completed a half-script consisting of a synopsis and several scenes. RKO was pleased enough to fold Smiler into the terms of Welles’s existing deal. Knowing he’d tried the studio’s patience, Welles refused a salary for his work on the film, taking only the share of the profits stipulated in his contract. RKO announced with fanfare that The Smiler with the Knife would replace Heart of Darkness as Welles’s debut feature. But Welles had already acquired the reputation that would dog him for the rest of his life; the Hollywood Reporter zinged Smiler as “Mr. Welles’s latest forthcoming picture.”
Welles had already acquired the reputation that would dog him for the rest of his life; the Hollywood Reporter zinged Smiler as “Mr. Welles’s latest forthcoming picture.”In a rare show of restraining his ambition, Welles said he would cast his Mercury Theatre colleague Joseph Cotten as Smiler’s villain, taking the smaller role of the heroine’s husband himself. But the prospect of Welles saying a few supportive words to his female lead then surrendering the spotlight seems dubious; after all, here was a man who planned on playing both Marlow and Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. It’s impossible not to picture Welles as Chilton Canteloe when reading Blake’s novel, from the “deep-set, audacious eyes that roved with interest among the company” to the bear-like clumsiness of his walk. When Canteloe makes his first appearance, “there was a stir and settling-down in the room as though some volcanic disturbance had taken place, cleared the air, altered every relationship there … (Georgia) felt the full force of his personality directed for a moment upon her, isolating them from all the others in the room.” The description calls to mind the quote by Geraldine Fitzgerald, Welles’s colleague and paramour, about being in his presence: “What was disturbing about this beautiful light was that it was rather like a lighthouse. When the beam turned, somebody else was illuminated, and you were back in the darkness.”
The prospect of a thriller blending suspense and comedy along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935)—which Welles regarded as “a masterpiece”—pleased RKO. What truly excited the studio was Welles’s choice for the lead role: Carole Lombard, the first lady of American screen comedy. Sadly, the in-demand actress wasn’t available. Welles had a viable alternative in mind, an actress already under contract to RKO. The problem was convincing their employer it was a good idea.
Lucille Ball had appeared in Stage Door (1937) with Katharine Hepburn but in the 1930s was primarily known for comic turns opposite the likes of The Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, as well as starring as pampered movie star Annabel Allison in a pair of RKO B-pictures. Welles was a fan—he squired Ball to various premieres in late 1939—and had no doubt she possessed the chops to handle Smiler’s dramatic moments. Welles had a flair for such counterintuitive casting; in 1941 he approached Charlie Chaplin about playing the notorious serial killer Henri Désiré Landru. Chaplin was sufficiently intrigued to purchase the idea, which became Monsieur Verdoux (1947), a challenging film that subverts nearly every aspect of Chaplin’s beloved “Tramp” persona. Welles vigorously lobbied his studio bosses to let Ball carry his debut feature. He also set about completing the script, enlisting a collaborator.
Herman J. Mankiewicz was already working for Welles. Laid up with a broken leg after a September 1939 automobile accident, Mankiewicz had accepted a job writing for the Mercury Theatre radio show The Campbell Playhouse, adapting Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd among other literary works. He didn’t receive credit for these scripts; Welles insisted on being billed as writer/producer/director. The acerbic Mankiewicz had torched many Hollywood bridges while amassing an impressive list of screenwriting credits, and working with Welles represented his last best chance at keeping his career afloat. Asking Mankiewicz to doctor his script, Welles jovially walked straight into a buzzsaw. Mankiewicz biographer Richard Meryman explained: “Smiler put Welles on Herman’s own turf. For Herman, a self-destructive personality who worried that he was a washed-up hack, the chance to deflate this boy wonder proved irresistible. According to Welles, despite their genial relationship, Herman set out ‘to show that writing a film script was one thing I couldn’t do and also one thing I had better come to him for. He destroyed my confidence in the script, sneering at everything I did.’”
Welles’s enthusiasm for Smiler waned. Having rejected Lucille Ball in addition to Welles’s other, lesser-known suggestions Dita Parlo and Uta Hagen for lead actress, RKO also soured on the project. The studio began to think that the film might be too political, and that a mere thriller would serve as an insufficiently prestigious introduction for their prized acquisition. Executives talked up Jane Eyre, or perhaps a drama about the Borgias. Unless Welles had any ideas?
He responded by pitching a film he and Mankiewicz discussed when they were meant to be polishing the Smiler script. A drama of suitably grand scale, detailing the life of a powerful American businessman. In February 1940, RKO chieftain George Schaefer shifted the money earmarked for script development and planning on The Smiler with the Knife to a project then called John Citizen U.S.A. The title Citizen Kane would come later. As it happened, Mankiewicz didn’t hate everything Welles had dreamt up for Smiler. The script opened with a newsreel recounting the life of the Hughes-like heavy; Mankiewicz found the idea clever and kept it in Citizen Kane. It’s worth noting that one of the coup plotters in Welles’s Smiler script was a press baron along the lines of Charles Foster Kane—and William Randolph Hearst. (Hearst also turns up as a character in The Sharpest Needle.)
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“The man in the street doesn’t give two damns for expert verdicts.”—The Smiler with the Knife
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Lucille Ball would prove her mettle in dramatic roles, achieving surprising success in film noir. She scored in The Dark Corner (1946), a funhouse mirror version of The Maltese Falcon in which her resourceful Effie Perrine must rescue a railroaded Sam Spade, and is even better in the Douglas Sirk-directed Lured (1947). As for Welles, thrillers would become a staple for him. His final film at RKO was the 1943 adaptation of Eric Ambler’s Journey into Fear. He directed The Stranger (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1947). His greatest success as an actor came in the near-perfect example of the form The Third Man (1949), directed by Carol Reed. That film’s screenwriter Graham Greene readily acknowledged that Welles concocted his most memorable speech as the villain Harry Lime. (“In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”) But in later years, Welles falsely claimed to have written all of Harry’s dialogue, as well as directed his own iconic on-screen introduction. He knew quality when he saw it, and couldn’t help taking credit for it.
Ball and Welles did work together, and not just on an episode of I Love Lucy. Ball and husband Desi Arnaz suggested Welles as the host of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents-style anthology series. Only a single episode was made, in 1956. It didn’t air until two years later, when NBC needed an emergency replacement for an allegedly rigged quiz show. The Fountain of Youth won Orson Welles a Peabody award, and is every bit as inventive with the nascent medium of television as Citizen Kane was with film. (The show is available on YouTube.) By the time the Peabody was bestowed, Ball and Arnaz owned the old RKO lot, which become home to Desilu Productions, and Welles had directed his final Hollywood film, another thriller, the baroque Touch of Evil (1958).
“What if” is a foolish game, but a difficult one to resist. Suppose Orson Welles had made The Smiler with the Knife in 1940 as he’d envisioned it. An early crowd-pleaser could have set his career down a different path. It’s possible we wouldn’t have Citizen Kane—or I Love Lucy. But it’s equally possible audiences would have spurned the film amidst the drumbeat of war. Certainly, a movie about homegrown fascism would have proven costly to Welles during the blacklist era. Still, the audacity to consider making that project at that time is breathtaking, and typical of Welles.
The Smiler with the Knife has never been filmed. But its dark message, hidden under deceptively bright packaging, about the ease with which demagoguery can overwhelm a nation remains relevant.
You can watch The Fountain of Youth here.
***
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Jane Harper’s authorial-origin story is both the stuff of a lifelong dream-come-true, and the outcome of professional focus, preparation, and planning. The seeming overnight international success of her debut novel The Dry, belies a keen backstory of Harper channelling her creativity via a highly pragmatic approach, the same combined effort with which she now plots her tightly-woven mysteries.
Even as a full-time business reporter, Harper knew she had a book she wanted to write, squeezing in fiction writing time before and after her journalism workday. In 2014, she pursued an online writing course, and, the following year, won the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript for The Dry. That award was instrumental in gaining publishing deals: The Dry debuted in 2016 in Australia, Force of Nature was published in 2017, and The Lost Man in 2018. “I didn’t know it was going to work out,” says Harper of that focused, pre-publication, and clearly productive time. “But maybe the realization of that was a really important mental step for me. I’d wanted to write a book for years, ever since I was a kid, really. And one of the things that held me back was this fear of putting in all this time and effort and not being successful and it being a waste of time. And, I guess, of seeing the disappearance of a dream not being realized. In hindsight, that held me back for years, really. But then my approach to it changed: I realized that actually I wanted to do it badly enough that I just wanted to write the book—it didn’t matter so much what happened afterwards—I just wanted to see if I could do it. I thought, ‘If I actually managed to write a whole novel, even if nothing happened with that one, I would have learned from it and improved my skills and gained some technique and then maybe I would use that to try again and write a better novel and maybe that one would go somewhere.’ So it was a shift in my own approach to it, that helped me just focus on it more consistently.”
Harper really shines in evoking the varied atmospheric landscapes of Australia. Whether she’s depicting murderous mayhem in some of the more remote areas of Australia—a cattle station here, a rural, drought-ridden town there, or simply a corporate Outward-Bound-type retreat far from cosmopolitan crowds—Harper’s mysteries are pleasurably immersive due to the close-knit communities and often downright claustrophobic environments that tend to be the settings of her books. “I do really love writing about Australia,” says Harper. “As a writer, I enjoy it because it gives you a beautifully visual setting to put your characters in, but the diverse terrain also quite often has the element of danger to it, so it’s quite easy for things to go wrong in a very plausible way. I also do like settings that are off the beaten track because I love a bit of a locked-room mystery myself: I like communities where there’s a fixed cast of characters, where you know that the action is going to rise and resolve within this group of people.”
Then there are the all-too-human underlying elements of the mysteries themselves: the bulk of Harper’s creepy plotlines tend to coalesce around familial damage and dysfunction, whether those family ties stem from being part of a local community, childhood friendships, or a nuclear family structure. Harper’s stories are a telling reminder that, all too often, people don’t consider how their actions—whether purposeful or accidental—might impact those closest to them. “When I’m thinking about a story, usually the thing that drags me in is actually the end point,” says Harper. “Something about people brought to an extreme moment, and what is it that’s brought them there, whether it’s something spontaneous or in their past or whatever. It’s that moment that makes me commit to writing that story; everything else is built in, layered on top, so the whole thing is moving towards that end point. In terms of the crimes themselves, the mysteries, I’m aiming for reasons that are, on some level, relatable, but that drive people to extreme actions. Everybody really is a mixture of good and bad, and we can all behave in ways under stressful situation that we would never behave in normal circumstances. What interests me is that people aren’t drawn to do terrible things because they are terrible people: in some way, they feel that they are forced into their actions because they have no other choice. And maybe the reasons for that are not good ones or sensible ones, but, in that moment, it makes sense to that person. That’s what I’m always trying to bring out, so that even if maybe there’s no sympathy for the person responsible, there is some understanding of what’s driven their actions.”
In her latest book, The Survivors, set in a tiny beach town on the Tasmanian coast, a body is discovered on the beach, and that gruesome discovery raises the unwelcome spectre of several previous local tragedies. Wielding a cast of multi-generational characters, Harper does a terrific job of delineating the tangled interpersonal web that evolves out of living in a small, dead-end town, and the family-and-friend complexities that develop when everyone has grown up together, dated each other, and is familiar with each other’s history and baggage. On top of that, an extra textual layer of the hyperlocal digital community message board adds an enticingly engaging, highly subjective level to the nefarious goings-on.
“My characters all have to pull their weight,” says Harper. “They all have to bring something to the story, and usually that’s a different perspective for the reader. Characters tend to find their way into the plot, but it’s also about accurately reflecting their community: in small coastal towns you often get that multigenerational family presence—a kind of dynasty, I guess. And in The Lost Man’s remote rural setting you find not so much a family business as a family vocation that gets passed on from parent to child and onwards because it is so all-consuming in their lives: there’s not a lot of space for outsiders there because it’s such a blood-ties-influenced, brutal lifestyle. You kind of have to grow up in it to do it.”
For Harper, setting and plot absolutely go hand in hand. “Quite early on, when I’m thinking about the story and where to set it, that setting element usually presents itself quite organically,” she says. “The rugged coastline in Tasmania felt like a natural fit for The Survivors. I’d been a few times on holiday but I did my usual research trip as well”—this trip included scuba diving lessons and in-depth interviews with a company that specializes in shipwreck diving. “I’ll do all the research I can from my desk,” she continues, “talking to people and reading, and I’ll know what specific on-the-ground details I’m looking for. Then I’ll go to the location to fill in the gaps. But at that point there’s also still plenty of flexibility in the story, so I can make adjustments depending on what I might discover or learn during the trip.”
It’s that kind of real-life research as well a journalism-honed attention to detail that give her mysteries their heft beyond simply unusual locations, puzzle-worthy plotlines, and intricately embedded red herrings. With four novels under her belt, and a fifth one in its earliest stages, Harper has certainly honed her technical approach to plotting, writing, and editing her books. And, she says, that structural piece and the research that supports it, allows her the freedom to indulge in the creative aspect of writing. When the time is right, she takes herself off for walks and lets her ideas unfurl and teases them out. Often, she says, they may be generated by something that appears to come out of nowhere. “I mean, it probably was part of a conversation that I’ve had or something I’ve read, but it might be from a while ago,” says Harper. “I do try to actively think: I’ll go walking and let ideas come through, and something will tend to stick. But I think the mistake I made before I wrote my first book was that I expected my ideas to be fully formed; now I’ve realized that the idea grows into the book through all the work I do.”
The original idea, she says, just needs to be something that hooks her. “Maybe, say, ‘Here’s an incident and what if it wasn’t X that happened? What if Y happened instead?’ Looking at something through a slightly different lens can change the whole complexion of things. And then from there you think ‘Well, is that interesting enough to build on. Are there enough layers to wrap around that so it would create a mystery?’ Sometimes you’ll have an idea for a great subplot that you know doesn’t stand alone—that it’s more of a supporting idea. So you need to go back to the drawing board and think a little more about the driving force behind the book. It’s really a process and you don’t get all the ideas all in one go.”
Harper, who was born in England, moved with her family to Australia as an eight-year-old due to her father’s software-sales work. Six years later, the family returned to the UK where Harper finished school, attended university, and began her career as a journalist. Then, she says, in 2008, she returned to Australia with the intention of staying a couple of years. “I was 28 and I had dual citizenship, so I decided to move to Australia by myself. I thought I’d travel a bit and work, so I got a job on a newspaper out here. And then, like it happens to so many people, I kind of fell in love with it all over again and two years has become 12—I’ve been here ever since.” And, for the past half-decade, finding fruitful settings for her literary adventures in her adopted homeland.
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My first novel gave me my breakthrough in Germany as an author of psychological thrillers. It was also a type of self-therapy, and all without my knowing it. When I gave my good friend Thomas the first draft to read, his eyes opened wide at me and he said, “You’re essentially describing exactly what we experienced with Paul.” That experience I had with my best friend and mentor back then was probably the decisive factor in my becoming interested in the mysteries of the human soul. I wouldn’t be an author today without it.
Due to our big age difference, Paul was like a second father to me. Unfortunately, Paul was very sick. It wasn’t like cancer eating away at you on the inside but a mental anomaly that my younger self either didn’t recognize or didn’t understand. I knew he drank. From his stories, I’d concluded he was doing so because of personal problems: custody battles, prohibited from having contact with his own daughter, etc. I felt sorry for him and his problems and loved him for his creativity.
Whenever I’d visit Paul, he’d tell me an interesting new story that was so unbelievable I simply wanted to believe it. For example, he would reveal to me that he was a famous author whose works had already been filmed, but he was writing under a pen name. His story was so lacking that any reasonable person would start having doubts about such a ludicrous tale. Why would a bestselling author, who in his own words was worth millions, reside in a completely ordinary two-room apartment while working at a moderately paid media job on the side? But Paul was such a good storyteller that not only I but many of our co-workers bought his star Hollywood author status and tried in vain to find out which famous name was his in the author world.
One day Paul invited me out to eat. I met his wife and his little daughter Emma. The mood was tense, but wasn’t that a normal thing when seeing each other again after a long separation? At least they were managing to get back on friendly terms with one another.
About two years later Paul called me, completely distraught and slurring. He was obviously on sedatives. His daughter Emma had been hit by a car and died. A hit-and-run, while she was with her mother in Berlin to visit Paul. They were hoping to get back together, then this tragedy. I was stunned. Paul sounded out of his mind. He wanted to locate the driver of the vehicle who’d fled so he could kill him.
I went over to his place and after a good deal of persuading was able to get him into a private psychiatric clinic where he started detoxing from the drugs and alcohol. The day after he’d checked himself in, the police showed up at my door. Wanting to know if I knew a guy named Paul. It had come to their attention that my friend had been asking around about a hitman, to have a man killed. I tried reassuring the police. Paul wasn’t thinking straight; he was still in shock from his daughter dying.
Then came, just like in my books, that one line. The turning point that cut my feet right out from under me: “What daughter?”
Paul had never been married. Had never had custody issues. Never even had a daughter. The woman he’d told me was his ex before entering the restaurant was really a former co-worker from early in his career. Emma was her daughter, but not Paul’s. (How could I know? Was I supposed to start interrogating them? “So tell me, were you two really married?”)
Paul was living in an imaginary world, in a lie that he himself believed.
Years later, without my realizing it, my subconscious crept in as the co-author of Therapy. I was writing about a girl who disappeared from a doctor’s treatment room without a trace, while the father is led to believe that she’d never gone in there.
It seems hard to imagine that I didn’t notice the parallels when writing it. But that’s exactly how it played out, I swear. Which is why my very first book taught me something: The readers aren’t the only ones having the unexplored universe of our minds revealed to them in a psychological thriller. It’s the author as well.
Probably one of the most pressing questions of humanity, one that readers keep asking more than anything and whose answer we search for in books among other things, is that of the meaning of life. Why are we here?
The “why” in that question creates issues, but so does the “here.”
What is here? Psychological thrillers reveal insights into the human mind in thrilling ways, along with the frequent realization that there’s no such thing as a universal here. A lot of people live in a different reality, such as Paul, who genuinely thought he was a famous writer who lost his daughter in a car accident.
In psychology there’s even the widely known phenomenon of codependency. Two people sharing the same delusions. Multiple people can therefore be living in the same here and yet in another universe as well.
People love to plunge into an unexplored universe, readers especially. And we’re even more astounded when we discover that this unexplored universe exists in our very close proximity. In my view, the fascination for psychological thrillers can be explained in part by the fact that they deal with one of the last unexplored universes of all, one we carry right inside us: the human mind.
For me, the soul is like a deep ocean. A region where barely anyone’s been but of which everyone has some diffuse notion. At the same time, it’s fascinating that so much of everyday phenomena hasn’t been explored. Scientists are still arguing about what’s happening exactly when we’re sleeping. It’s such a strange concept for us all to lose our consciousness for several hours a day. Who are you when you’re sleeping? That was the initial question behind my thriller The Nightwalker, in which a sleepwalker puts on a helmet cam at night so he can film what he’s experiencing in his sleepwalking state.
A psychological thriller has the ability to spirit us away, hundreds of pages deeper and deeper into this mysterious world that we all carry inside us and yet seems light-years away. And maybe we’ll never succeed in grasping all the mysteries. They’re so partly fantastical they display a nearly supernatural character. We only need to think of hypnosis, of near-death experiences, or of people who after severe brain injury are able to recite whole phone books by heart within minutes.
Basically, the exploration of our minds is a paradox. We’re attempting to decipher our brain using our own brain. That’s sort of like attempting to see our own eyes without a mirror.
Basically, the exploration of our minds is a paradox. We’re attempting to decipher our brain using our own brain. That’s sort of like attempting to see our own eyes without a mirror.Psychological thriller authors have a great responsibility, which is another thing Paul’s story taught me. We live in a society in which mental illness, like depression, for example, is often seen as taboo. A good psychological thriller, though, doesn’t stigmatize the patients using stereotypes but creates empathy for the causes and solutions surrounding their illness. It speaks to people who, out of interest in their world, wish to gain access to other worlds as well as understand those living in them. It can also have profound resonance for those affected. They feel understood and less alone, something I see reflected repeatedly in readers’ letters.
We all live in diverse worlds and are able to have such different sensory experiences within them. What a cruel moment it must be when a person becomes aware that the things they considered to be real were in reality only taking place inside their head.
The challenges involved in differentiating between delusion and reality is one of the main themes appearing over and over in my works. In The Package, a psychiatrist diagnoses herself as having all the signs of paranoia but simply isn’t able to treat herself. Telling a mentally ill person they should quit imagining things is somewhat like urging someone with asthma to not cough.
Why are we so fascinated by probing the human soul through psychological thrillers? Reading itself is a fantastical psychological phenomenon, comparable to hypnosis. We’re not staring at a pendulum while reading but at words. And the longer we do, and the better command the author has of their craft, the more intensely the reader’s imagination gains access to new worlds that they can hear, see, smell, feel and taste.
And sometimes, when things are really exciting, we get so far caught up in that fictional world that back in our own reality we even miss our bus stop because of it.
But don’t worry, I’m not aware of any case where a reader has gone so far astray that they can’t get out of their fictional world any longer. Although . . . when I think about it . . . are you certain you’re right now reading an article from a German author about how psychological thrillers probe the human abyss?
Hmm, well maybe you should think again . . .
***
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Pontoons crashed across ocean swells.
The Kokomo Cat II cut a straight bearing toward something in the distance: a single triangular orange marker amid whitecaps over the shallows. A handful of other boats were already scattered above the reef, attached to mooring buoys installed by the preservation authorities to prevent anchor damage.
Conversation among the divers quieted, a counterpoint to the boat’s hull loudly smashing up and down on the waves, shooting water over the railings. Many of the passengers—especially first-time visitors—watched over the side as the sea went by, getting naturally stoned on the Keys phenomenon of the rapidly changing palette of vibrant colors, from emerald green to turquoise, aqua and ultramarine blue.
The orange triangle grew larger as the Kokomo began to slow. Starboard passengers pointed at a giant shell of a loggerhead turtle bobbing remotely atop the depths. Others leaned over the port side to view silhouettes of stingrays a couple of feet under the surface.
“Coleman, listen up and learn something.” Serge turned around toward the captain’s console. “Katie, you’ll dig this. You know how Looe Key got its name?”
“Of course. The British ship.”
“Yeah, but I dug deeper because history is the shit! The name all started when some dude got his ear chopped off!”
“What?”
“I swear it’s all true!” said Serge. “In 1731, the Spanish boarded the Rebecca, a big-rigged English sailing ship, right off the coast of Florida. Then they cut off the captain’s ear because I guess that was supposed to be funny back then. But the British weren’t laughing, and the drums of war began beating, and there’s even a story that the severed ear was actually held up in Parliament to rally the base. I think that’s the natural progression of where Washington is heading today, so don’t be surprised when C-SPAN gets bloody. Anyhow, it started a conflict that raged around the coasts of Florida and Georgia, and one of the dispatched ships was the HMS Looe, commanded by Captain Ashby Utting. In 1744, it captured a Spanish ship and was towing it along the Keys, but both vessels ran aground because who would expect it to be so shallow this far from shore? Then it really does get funny . . .” Serge’s eyelids began fluttering like he was possessed.
“Are you okay?” asked the captain.
“Just throwing my imagination’s engine room into warp speed.” He began slapping his cheeks with both hands. “I’m overlaying eighteenth-century images on today’s vista up ahead. See all those dive boats moored at the buoys? Now imagine a wacky scene where they’re all chasing each other around like Keystone Cops.”
“If I’m lying I’m dying,” said Serge.“Are you making this up?” said Katie.
“If I’m lying I’m dying,” said Serge. “After the boats grounded, there were other Spanish ships in the area, and the British were sitting ducks. So they dropped the frigate’s three smaller patrol boats in the water, but they didn’t have nearly the capacity for the whole crew. And of course the Spanish are freaking out in the towed vessel, and one of the patrol boats spots a sloop called Betty—no insight there—and starts chasing it around, and other Spanish boats are coming in to join the swirling bumper-car madness.The sloop is captured, and the British offload onto it and set their ship on fire, and everyone scatters like roaches when the lights come on, with the various vessels ending up in South Carolina, the Bahamas and Cuba. Can you dig it? Can you see it?”
Katie just smiled in amusement as she throttled all the way down, and the first mate grabbed a long pole with a hook to snag one of the buoys.
“Hey, I got an idea!” said Serge. “Let’s chase the other dive boats! It’ll be fun!”
“Serge . . .”
“No, seriously! Look at them out there all relaxed, not expecting military conflict. We’ll come barreling down on them screaming about an ear! Imagine their delight at the extra-value entertainment from their trip as we disperse them in panic-circles!”
“Serge . . .”
“I’ll bet nobody’s thought of it before. It’ll become your signature feature, distinguishing you from the boring dive services that just dive. Next time we can even drag a shitty old boat to set on fire! You’ll make the news!”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“You’re probably right about fire,” said Serge. “But please consider scheduling a reenactment.”
“On another subject,” said Katie, “I know you’re good to go in the water, but do you think your friend needs a safety vest? He can always inflate it by blowing in that little tube if he gets in trouble.”
“In that case we’d better inflate it now.” Serge fitted the yellow vest over Coleman’s head and blew it up. “Okay, buddy, this is it. They’re about to unhook the chain and the captain will say, ‘The pool’s open,’ and you just follow me in.”
Serge zipped up his booties and strapped on the fins and mask. Then he sat coiled like he was about to parachute out the back of a troop transport plane.
The chain unsnapped.
“The pool’s—”
Serge plunged over the side.
“—open.” A laugh. “Mr. First-In-Last-Out lives up to his name.”
Serge popped back to the surface. “Coleman, what are you waiting for? The water’s great!”
“How do I get in?”
“Just step off the side and let gravity do the rest.”
“Here goes.” Coleman meant to drop straight in, but instead managed to pinwheel off the boat and belly flop. “Ow.”
Serge helped his buddy turn his mask back around. “You know what a grouper is?”
“A fish sandwich?”
“There are a couple of famous goliath groupers out here,” said Serge. “Huge suckers, five hundred pounds. They like the shade under the boat.”
“Cool.”
“I’m telling you this to prepare you,” said Serge. “I want you to enjoy the experience and not have a heart attack. There’s one under the Kokomo right now.”
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Imposters play a role in many contemporary novels, including Stephen King’s The Outsider, Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and others.
Imposters are part of our literary tradition, appearing as con men in crime fiction, as double agents in spy fiction, and in a variety of other guises in literary fiction. The imposter takes on another person’s identity, or makes up a false identity, and the usual motive is to gain the trust of others in order to exploit it. Deception can be an artful way to seduce, steal, enable the double agent to betray, and for some there is the allure of slipping into another life simply because it is more interesting.
Shakespeare used gender masking in several of his plays, particularly Twelfth Night (where Viola plays Cesario and is loved by both men and women) and the Merchant of Venice (where Portia portrays a learned lawyer). Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda tells the story of an English gentleman on holiday who stands in for the grievously ill King of Ruritania at his coronation. E.T. Hoffman’s The Devil’s Elixir explores the psychological dimensions of a murderer whose crimes are attributed to his double.
Our fascination with fictional imposters, I believe, comes from an urge to give up the life we are born into and become a different person—someone smarter, wealthier, better looking, more famous, or not constrained by social and ethical mores. It is a common human trait to admire the lives of others and wish to become those people. Imagine going into Goodwill, taking off a tired suit, and pointing to the rack of clothing worn by others, and saying, “I’ll take that life.” Fictional imposters give us the chance to vicariously exchange a dull, ordinary life for a more exciting and dramatic one.
The imposter trope makes for great fiction with its array of impersonators, decoys, poseurs, doppelgängers, and identify thieves. Here are 5 classic works whose memorable imposters still entertain and appall us.
Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey (1949)
Money is at the heart of Brat Farrar, Tey’s account of the Ashby’s, an English country-squire family whose estate sits in the fictional village of Clare, near the south coast of England. Patrick Ashby’s mysterious disappearance, and presumed suicide, sets up the younger son, Simon, to inherit the estate when he turns 21. The title character, Brat Farrar, has returned from America when he encounters Alec, a second-rate actor and Ashby family friend, who proposes a swindle. Alec suggests that Brat impersonate the missing son, and as the elder brother, claim the estate.
After much coaching, Brat presents himself to the Ashby family lawyer making his claim, saying he’d run away and changed his name. He gives an account of Patrick’s missing years. The skeptical lawyer seeks to verify the claim, but Bratt’s likeness to the missing son, his command of family detail, and the lack of contrary evidence, convince everyone except the younger son Simon, who it turns out had murdered his older brother. He can’t reveal the crime without implicating himself and so plots to murder his “brother” a second time. Tey, like other prominent mid-century British crime writers, draws readers in with ingenious puzzles, but her characterizations make Brat Farrar a worthy literary work.
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Thomas Mann (1955)
Mann’s protagonist, Felix Krull, is not a traditional con man. He doesn’t lie or deceive, but he makes his victims complicit in their undoing by exploiting their vulnerabilities. The novel is boastfully narrated by an older Krull, looking back at his life. As the novel opens, the handsome young Krull is down on his luck after his bankrupt father commits suicide, forcing Krull to take a job as a hotel elevator operator. He allows himself to be seduced by an unhappily married hotel guest, who then encourages Krull to steal her jewels, explaining that her husband is rich and will buy her more. Women young and old fall before his polished manners and Greek grace.
He begins to lead two lives. Servile hotel elevator operator by day, and at night a gallant who attends theater and dines in fine restaurants. He is fascinated by interchangeability. He muses that with a change of clothes and make-up, he can become a hotel guest who sits in a plush arm chair, smoking cigarettes. To improve his social standing, Krull befriends the Marquis de Venosta. Venosta is hopelessly attracted to a Parisian woman rejected by his parents, who arrange to send him away from Paris on a world tour. The Marquis suggests Krull become his double and that they switch lives. The self-confident Krull plays cool to the idea at first, but he allows himself to be convinced. The only effective lie, Krull says, is one that doesn’t involve deceit, but is the byproduct of a lively imagination in the mind of a complicit person.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith (1955)
Tom Ripley is the quintessential sympathetic scoundrel. To avoid police detectives in New York, Ripley eagerly accepts a wealthy businessman’s invitation to visit Italy to check in on his son, Dickie Greenleaf. The two young men are opposites and from the start don’t get along. Ripley is clever and intelligent, yet lacks a college degree, and he feels superior to most of the people around him. Dickie is educated, wealthy, and self-absorbed, having gone to Italy to paint, but he has negligible talent. During an outing on San Remo bay, Ripley impulsively strikes Dickie with an oar, killing him. The novel’s course suddenly shifts.
Ripley vaguely regrets the murder, suffers bouts of paranoia and some bad dreams, but he is able to convince himself that it was not his fault. He re-imagines the incident, draws alternate conclusions, and makes up different versions of what happened. And slowly, he begins to inhabit Dickie’s life, signing Dickie’s name on checks, selling Dickie’s boat, and soon Ripley begins to enjoy being Dickie. He takes on Dickie’s mannerisms, his tastes, and soon he is no longer impersonating Dickie—he is Dickie. He leaves behind his own shabby existence and steps into the life of the man he killed.
Spy/counterspy: The Autobiography of Dusko Popov, Dusko Popov (1974)
Dusko Popov’s autobiography presents a spy’s adventures during World War II, operating as an MI6 double agent against the Nazi’s and concurrently working for the FBI against Germany. Popov was not a fictional character. But his real-life wartime exploits were a role model for Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Popov and Fleming met in 1941 in Lisbon’s Estoril’s Casino, which would become an inspiration for Fleming’s novel, Casino Royal. Popov’s biographer, Larry Loftis, called Popov “Britain’s greatest World War II double agent and perhaps history’s best spy.”
Popov, a well-to-do Serbian, was recruited by Abwehr, German military intelligence to spy on England, and when he arrived in London in 1937, he presented himself to MI6, British military intelligence, offering his services. Popov was a British double agent codenamed TRICYCLE ostensibly operating as a German spy (codenamed SKOOT), all the while continuing to parade as a Yugoslav businessman preoccupied with the fate of his family. He was a flamboyant character who gambled and developed a playboy’s reputation, dating glamorous women in London, Lisbon, Berlin, and Washington. Loftis, commenting on Popov’s life and times, said that Popov belonged to an earlier world of intrigue, when “espionage, like rugby, was a ruffian’s game, played by gentlemen.” Popov’s life is an example of how a single spy can weave a web of deceit to create for himself a glamorous and dangerous imposter’s life that rivals the excitement of a fictional spy.
The Bourne Identity, Robert Ludlum (1980)
The Bourne Identity is a spy fiction thriller that turns the imposter trope upside down. It is the story of a man cast into the ocean when his boat explodes, causing total memory loss, who must then recover his identity. In the process, he encounters shady pursuers, a professional assassin, and the CIA, who want him dead. He thinks he’s succeeded finding his name when he follows a clue to Zurich and a bank clerk recognizes him as Jason Bourne. With that erroneous identification, he unwittingly becomes Jason Bourne’s imposter.
The story takes readers on a twisted and dangerous journey into a world of deceptions and conspiracies, offering a psychological portrait of a man who is uncomfortable believing that he is capable of the horrendous crimes committed by Bourne. He seeks to piece together the dangerous puzzle of his missing past. At the novel’s end, he proves that he is not the real Jason Bourne, but the only clue to his real identity is a first name—David. The novel ends as it began, with the protagonist living in a dissociative fugue state not knowing who he is.
(Featured image: Dusko Popov, origin unknown)
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My buddy Tex had witnessed two executions for his job with a wire service. He told me it was going to be no big deal. We had been out drinking at an oyster bar near St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, a marshy stretch of mudflats and alligators on the Gulf of Mexico. “They sit up straight when the juice hits them, and then they slump forward and they’re dead,” Tex told me, in his molasses drawl. “The worst part about it, babe—and I mean this—is the long, boring drive back home.”
That is not what happened to Jesse Tafero.
When the electricity hit Jesse Tafero, the headset bolted onto his bare scalp caught fire. Flames blazed from his head, arcing bright orange with tails of dark smoke. A gigantic buzzing sound filled the chamber, so deep I felt it inside the bones of my spine.
In the chair, Jesse Tafero clenched his fists as he slammed upward and back.
He is breathing, I wrote on my yellow notepad.
The executioner, anonymous in the booth, turned the power off. Jesse, in the chair. Nodding. Breathing. His chest heaving. Then—the buzzing again. Flames. Smoke.
His head nods. His head is nodding. He is breathing.
My prison-issued pencil dug into the page so hard that the paper ripped.
I can see him sigh.
Outside again, the daylight was a hammer. The van dumped us back out onto the field opposite the prison and drove away. I stood there trying not to blink. It had taken seven minutes from the time the executioner first turned the power on until Jesse was declared dead, and three separate jolts. Usually it took one jolt, one minute, no nodding, no flames, no smoke, no heartbeat, no sighs. I went back to my motel room to file my story, working at a table next to a window. One of the radio reporters who had been at the execution sat with me because he didn’t want to be alone. I propped open the door to my room so we could smoke cigarettes together while we wrote. My computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80, a Trash 80, about the size of a cereal box with a screen that displayed eight lines of text, and I typed fast on deadline and transmitted my report down to the city desk using rubber cups fastened around the handset of the motel room telephone. Twice it cut off before finishing. A buzzing on the line, the operator said.
I did not know this then, but I had picked up a ghost.
That summer, after the execution, my house in Tallahassee was robbed. I came home from the Herald one day to find my front door jammed open and everything I owned trashed on the floor. I moved instantly. My new place was in a forest by a set of railroad tracks, deep in a ravine. When the freight trains came through, the ground shook, a low rumble like a far-off growl, a sound that kept catching me off guard. Every morning, I ran up the hills of the city in the punishing heat. In July, I went back to Florida State Prison for a test of the electric chair. The prison officials had determined that a kitchen sponge they’d used in the headset during Jesse’s execution was to blame for the fire, and to prove that the chair was working they hooked up a metal colander to the same wire that they’d bolted onto Jesse’s head, put the colander in water, and turned the power on. The water boiled.
After I saw that, I stopped being able to run uphill, and then to run at all. When I tried, my breath turned to lead. I’d been seriously dating a reporter—beautiful, hilarious—from the Herald’s city desk, but I abruptly broke up with her and took up with Tex, getting wasted on beer with him on Saturday afternoons out on St. George Island. There was a high bridge out to the island, and I found that if I hit the top of it at the right speed there was a moment when the road disappeared and it felt like flying, white pylons flashing past and blue water shining all around. The heat out at the shore was so intense that on the drive home I sometimes stopped and threw myself into the Wakulla River, water the color of tea, cottonmouths in the trees.
Go see another one, Tex told me. That’ll get it out of your mind.
In August a serial killer stalked Gainesville just as the University of Florida was starting its fall term. Four young women murdered, one young man. Mutilated, decapitated. I was sent to cover the story. Everywhere I went in Gainesville, people told me I fit the profile, meaning I too was a young woman with dark hair. Like the victims. Like a lot of other people also, I said. An old man at the city morgue insisted: You could be next.
The following spring, I spent my days rereading my battered college copy of Les fleurs du mal in the rotunda of the capitol during the legislative session instead of taking notes in the committee meetings, which I decided were soul-crushing rodeos of blowhards and existentially irrelevant concerns. As opposed to French poetry, you see. It was all lies, I told my bureau chief, the one who’d never witnessed an execution. Liars and lies.
Being a journalist was what I’d wanted to do. From the time I first read Brenda Starr in grammar school to editor jobs on my high school and college papers to an investigative reporting internship at The Village Voice to a local news stint at a small Massachusetts daily to political reporting at The Miami Herald, I had devoted myself to finding the truth, making it public, holding the powerful to account. But after witnessing Jesse Tafero die, I could not tell if any of that shit mattered, at all.
It was purely by chance that I started working as a private detective.
In the winter of 1992, I packed all my belongings in my car, drove out to California, and got a job in construction. Tile setting. It wasn’t anything I’d ever thought of before. In this new life, I had a hose, a shovel, two five-gallon buckets, a pair of leather gloves for carrying things, and a pair of rubber gloves for cleaning up. My job was to load sand, lime, and cement into a mixing pan, add water, shovel the wet mud into the buckets, and lug the buckets upstairs without tripping over my own feet or gouging the walls. I liked it. With tile, a small mistake at the beginning could turn into a much bigger mistake at the end, one that would be impossible to change since everything was literally set in stone. I respected that. The zero-bullshit factor of the physical world. My new girlfriend had a big red dog, an Akita mix who looked like a giant fox, and he became my dog as well, riding shotgun in the front seat of my powder-blue Volvo sedan as I went from one high-end residential job site to the next. Palo Alto, Mill Valley, Hillsborough, Sea Cliff, Sausalito. A new world of Port-O-Lets, pallets, shards of Sheetrock everywhere like shattered snow. The hills above the Berkeley flatlands had burned to the ground the previous autumn, and on jobs up there I found myself in a blasted wasteland of melted glass and twisted metal. That felt familiar to me. I moved into a stilt house out on a marshland, and after work I watched night herons hunt in the shimmering shallows below my dock. I envied those birds. Their ability to tune everything out—and fly away.
Every day now ended in a layer of fine gray dust on my skin. A shroud, slowly lightening as it dried to white. At work I earned my pay sweating, with my heart pounding, my arms and legs on fire. I am alive. I listened to the radio, turned up loud. I hated the hardrock music that played on every job site radio and then I started to love it—the foolproof brainwashing of merciless repetition. Some of the clients spoke slowly to me, enunciating their words carefully as they stared at my cement-covered clothes. Others were kind; one blistering afternoon a homeowner appeared with a bowl of plums, cold from the refrigerator, burstingly sweet. A few of the job site guys were jerks, but I let it roll. Mostly I was invisible. It was all okay. I knew I was making myself pay penance for sitting in a folding chair like a spectator at a sports match and watching a man die. I just did not exactly know why.
One Friday evening, not quite two years after the execution, I was watching television in my living room. On ABC, the news program 20/20 was beginning, with Barbara Walters in a bright yellow suit. Suddenly a close-up of my front-page Miami Herald story about the execution—my byline, right there—flashed onscreen. “3 jolts used to execute killer.” An announcer asked: “Could the State of Florida have executed an innocent man?”
On my couch, I froze.
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Excerpted from Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, A Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice, by Ellen McGarrahan. Random House. Copyright Ellen McGarrahan, 2021. All rights reserved.
Featured image: Eastpoint, Florida: St. George Island Bridge: Looking north; Ebyabe, 2010.
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When I conceived When the Bough Breaks, the first Alex Delaware novel, in 1981, I had worked as a clinical child psychologist and medical school professor for several years and was astonished at the lack of anything close to an accurate portrayal of the mental health professions in fiction.
Back then, depictions of psychologists and psychiatrists in novels, plays, movies and T.V. shows tended to fall into two categories: evil, Svengali-like and often homicidal mind-rapers—think Dressed To Kill—or nerdy doofuses saddled with more tics, quirks and neuroses than their patients—think The Bob Newhart Show.
The absence of verisimilitude extended to the therapy process, which was typically presented as a cartoonishly Freudian enterprise, complete with goateed, Teutonic doctor sitting at the head of an antique divan and grunting enigmatically.
There were rare but welcome exceptions: Judd Hirsch’s psychiatrist in the beautiful film Ordinary People, though also a smidge quirky, was masterful and illustrated that psychotherapy went well beyond the couch. But, the emphasis is on rare.
(Interestingly, the preoccupation with Freudianism that began in the post-World War II era, endures in contemporary fiction, though the proportion of therapists who adhere to a strictly Freudian point of view is extremely low. That is because Freud was all about sex and writers love to write about sex.)
Several years ago, I was asked to the deliver the keynote address at the national convention of the American Psychological Association. I’d been out of the field for years and hadn’t come into contact with other psychologists but for a few close friends with whom I’d forged relationships during my time working at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. People I continue to hang out with who seem so…normal. But maybe that was just my peeps and I’d missed something. So, I approached the convention with my habitual curiosity.
Up on the dais, I spoke to an audience of several thousand psychologists from around the world and actually got to meet and talk to scores of psychologists. And, again, my impression was how ordinary they were. Brighter than average, yes, but for the most part, regular folk who loved their job and took it seriously.
That same day, I also came across several examples of multi-generational psychologists: grandparents, parents and children choosing the same profession. The kids spoke fondly of their parents and cited them as inspiration. This struck close to home, as two of my daughters are noted clinical psychologists and though I never actively encouraged them to enter the field, my satisfaction with psychology—with helping people—was obvious. So perhaps being raised by a shrink isn’t that bad!
When I conceived Alex Delaware and the notion of an accurate psychological thriller, I had no idea I’d get published, let alone create the longest-running contemporary American crime fiction series. The Delaware novels span four decades and nearly forty novels, an unforeseen result for which I’m immensely grateful to my wonderful readers. Perhaps part of Alex’s durability indicates that on some level there’s a desire to learn what it’s really like to be a working psychologist who’s not bad or crazy.
That’s not to say Alex is perfect; no one is. His childhood was anything but ideal and he was forced to escape a violent alcoholic father and a nonfunctional clinically depressed mother. He’s dealt with burnout and trauma and relationship ups and downs. He is compulsively driven and has his share of sleepless nights. But he’s risen above all that and has evolved into a gracious, highly functioning, emotionally intact, and, most important, compassionate human being whose compulsiveness is channeled into bringing justice to victims.
The same goes, of course, for Milo Sturgis. A gay cop—and back in ’81 they were invisible—but so what? Not the greatest dresser and yeah, he’s a got a tendency to bitch and moan. But he’s not venal, violent, or oafish. He’s a flawed human being with solid values and the noblest of intentions.
A pair of heroes. Not anti-heroes, just as I intended, because back in 1981, the anti-hero was a yawn-yawn-yawn cliché.
Given the longevity of the Delaware series, one might expect at least a few more accurate portrayals of mental health issues and mental health practitioners in crime fiction.
But, alas. Perhaps I’ve missed something but seems to me the same clichés dominate: evil shrink/screwed-up shrink. Sometimes a combination of both.
Other book series purporting to feature psychologist protagonists make no attempt to get within a parsec of accuracy and created a comical, jargon-laden hash. And in some cases, the quirks and tics have inflated to the point of ludicrousness. Think Wire In The Blood, a well-acted British series that can be entertaining but features a lampoon of a shrink who indulges in a host of annoying, borderline-autistic mannerisms as he muddles his way through crime scenes. In real life, this guy wouldn’t be allowed past the tape. But, apparently, he’s got an ill-defined and ill-explained gift for ferreting out the truth. Or worse, the truly execrable Cracker, featuring a stunningly obnoxious and corrupt psychologist whose slovenly, downright nasty and utterly unbelievable character would repel any patient, let alone the police. But he’s got…a gift.
Perhaps we like our fictional doctors vulnerable and troubled because when we consult real doctors, we’re in a state of vulnerability. But I suspect that some of the shortcomings of modern crime fiction in depicting therapists stems from the flat-out laziness. Premise-based writing is a whole lot easier than actually taking the time to research and develop believable characters. And as our attention span is hacked away further by a world that prizes split-second “likes” and internet “influencers” it’s unlikely that will change.
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Aside from writing, I have another huge passion—being outdoors, surrounded by nature, especially in winter. Feeling the bite of cold wind high in the mountains makes me feel so alive and when I can’t get outside, the next best thing for me is reading books which conjure that same feeling, immersing you in their setting so absolutely that you really do feel the cold slap of wind on your face or hear the crunch of snow beneath your feet…
The Sanatorium is set in Switzerland, high in the Alps, in a luxury hotel converted from an old abandoned sanatorium which gets isolated by a once in a generation snowstorm. It’s a locked room crime thriller where the remote mountain setting almost becomes a character in its own right.
The five books below were very much in my mind when writing and all capture something that I strive to achieve in my own work—a setting or landscape described so viscerally it comes alive inside your head. These books are all set in a wintery environment and gave me the chills in more way than one— not only from the twists and turns of the story, but from the extreme settings. Blankets and hot chocolate are essential when you start turning the pages of these chilling novels…
Thin Air, by Michelle Paver
Thin Air is set in the 1930’s, the golden age for mountaineering. It follows a doctor, Stephen Pearce, and his brother, Kits, as they travel to India to join an expedition of mountaineers who are about to climb Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world and the site of the doomed Lyell Expedition which ended in the death of the mountaineers. As the new expedition starts to climb the mountain it soon becomes clear that darkness lies ahead and that the souls of those who have previously died on the mountain might be stirring…
One of the most striking things about this novel is the way in which the mountain isn’t just a chilling setting but becomes a character in itself—something menacing and unpredictable. You find yourself immediately immersed in the eerie world of the novel through both Paver’s brilliant description of the mountain and snow and by how she develops the character’s fear and paranoia, heightened by the oppressive mountain setting they find themselves in.
The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo
The Snowman is a thrilling slice of Nordic Noir that kept me turning the pages well into the night. Jo Nesbo needs no introduction nor does one of his most popular characters, Norwegian Detective Harry Hole. In The Snowman, a boy called Jonas wakes up one morning after the first snowfall of the year and finds that his mother has disappeared. All that remains of her, a pink scarf, his Christmas present to her, is now adorning the snowman that has suddenly appeared in their garden. Harry believes that there might be a link between Jonas’s mother and a strange letter that he’s received, and he soon stumbles across a pattern: over the past decade, eleven women have vanished, all on the day of the first snow.
This is a gripping, suspenseful read and one of Nesbo’s most chilling as he flips what should be a symbol of childhood innocence and purity—a snowman—on its head and turns it into something macabre and disturbing.
The Frozen Dead, by Bernard Minier
Set in the high altitude of the French Pyrenees The Frozen Dead was a bestseller in France and is the first in a series. Commandant Martin Servaz is called to investigate an unusual case; the corpse of a decapitated horse found strung from the support tower of a hydroelectric plant high up in the mountains. Theories and suspicions immediately start to swirl about a nearby high-security institution, home to many notorious serial killers and Servaz is soon plunged into the high stakes case. Minier grew up in the foothills of the Pyrenees and his intimate knowledge of the region means he’s able to perfectly evoke the beauty and isolation of the region as well as the blind fear that the treacherous weather in the mountains can bring.
Snowblind, by Ragnar Jonasson
This is a chilling claustrophobic novel packed with twists and turns—the perfect murder mystery to read on a cold winter’s day. It’s set in an isolated fishing village in Northern Iceland and follows rookie policeman, Ari Thor Arason, on his first posting. Ari’s tasked to solve a crime in the community, but things take a darker turn when an avalanche and heavy snowstorms close the only access tunnel to the village. It’s such a brilliant novel—I love the sense of claustrophobia that Jonasson evokes throughout, using the isolated village setting and the all-pervading threat of the weather. The multiple viewpoints tease you as a reader, clues subtly dropped like breadcrumbs to keep you turning the pages.
The Quality of Silence, by Rosamund Lupton
The Quality of Silence follows a mother and daughter, Yasmin and Ruby, on a journey to find Matt, their missing husband and father as they venture into the snowy wilderness of the Alaskan tundra. Yasmin and Ruby start driving the isolated, icy roads of Alaska desperately searching for answers about Matt’s disappearance, but when a violent storm strikes, they start to fear that someone else might be out there…
Lupton conjures the icy setting so beautifully using wonderfully descriptive prose that really evokes the bleakness of an Alaskan winter. Page by page, you feel a chill setting in as the tension ramps in this haunting, suspenseful read.
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Alexa Donne
Author of Brightly Burning and The Stars We Steal, YA sci-fi romance retellings of classics set in space.
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First of all, agree with Kara and company on the overall tone and delivery (it WAS hard to sit through!), but I had to add a few more notes as follows.
1. The initial draft of the first novel will be pretty bad, yes, however, she neglects to add that they don't have to be. Any writer with reasonable intelligence, well immersed in their genre, and willing to learn, is able to develop and write a novel ms first draft that could well be a damn good first draft, and even a better second.
2. Nothing is original? False. The "Hunger Games" idea was original when first conceived for BATTLE ROYALE. It ceased any claim to originality once recycled into "The Hunger Games," but prior to that it was original. All story ideas currently extant were once original at one time in the past. Classic examples? WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE TIME MACHINE, HEART OF DARKNESS, etc., etc. Regardless, having seen this video, do we now assign a cutoff date for the appearance of original work? Let's say, 1986? 1973? Did all new ideas come to a final end with the appearance of a Jane Austen vampire novel?
Logic alone dictates that if a plateau of human civilization were reached that resulted in a pour of new story concepts, then why not another plateau, and another, and so on? Or why not a steady stream of new story ideas?
The essence of the "high concept" story is a condition of originality sufficient enough to be commercially marketable. To choose a well known super classic, TERMINATOR was in this category when compared to the old BERSERKER novel series by Fred Saberhagen, but the big T added "the once and future war" and further rewrote the Saberhagen story in other ways, enough that it achieved the pinnacle of high concept and went on to be a smash hit with endless sequels.
As for television, the GOTHAM story premise, taking us back to the origins of Batman villains in Gotham City when Commissioner Gordon was only a lieutenant, was indisputably brilliant. Of course, it played off sets and characters that already existed, however, it ingeniously baked them fresh in a premise pie that soared to high ratings.
You cannot maintain with histrionic "get over it" vigor that story ideas can't evolve and add parts and come up with new spins and angles, sufficient to create what can be considered, to all intents and purposes, a NEW STORY IDEA.
All one need do is go to Publisher's Marketplace and read over the high-concept hooks.
I finally wish to add that for new writers, this video might well lead them to believe there is no such thing as a high concept story in the first place because, let's be frank, how can you square even the existence of a high concept story with what is being said here?
You can't.
3. "No one will care." This feels more like the personality working out some issues rather than being a terribly relevant matter that requires the swing of an in-your-face hammer accompanied by a loving brow beating.
Same with memoirs. Yes, they are a tough sell, but high-concept memoirs, with elements the publisher is searching for, can sell. The difficulty is finding one.
As for the rest, real and debilitating "Writer's Block" does exist. Denying it won't help solve it. If a writer knows so little they get stuck on a particular scene, for example, the reasons for that are usually knowable and preventable. How many times have I seen writers who are miserably inept at their craft (due to false optimism and impatience) come to a screeching halt?
The block isn't imaginary, it's the result of lack of knowledge, often lack of planning, and that happens all the time. Writer's Block is a sign you need to put the blank page aside and commit yourself to learning how to write and develop a novel in the first place. Once you've achieved a certain plateau, block will vanish like a bad memory.
Her notes on the publishing industry, rejection, etc. do hit home.
Overall though, would not recommend this video to an aspiring author without asking them to read our reviews first.
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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks.
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Alison Wisdom, We Can Only Save Ourselves
(Harper Perennial)“Eerie and powerful. . . . the hypnotic storytelling and exploration of Alice’s character—and the character of Alice’s entire town—will draw readers in.”
–BooklistTod Goldberg, The Low Desert
(Counterpoint)“These are stories Elmore Leonard would love—not just because the razor-sharp Goldberg wastes no words in cutting to the heart of his stories, but also because he highlights the humanity and inner lives of even his most bent characters . . . A thoroughly enjoyable collection by a bona fide original.”
–Kirkus ReviewsWalter Mosley, Blood Grove
(Mulholland Books)“Mosley does a fine job highlighting a world of Black survivors who know how difficult their struggle remains, every day of every decade. This marvelous series is as relevant as ever.”
–Publishers WeeklySarah Pearse, The Sanatorium
(Pamela Dorman/Viking)“This spine-tingling, atmospheric thriller has it all: an eerie Alpine setting, sharp prose, and twists you’ll never see coming. A must-read.”
–Richard OsmanPaul Vidich, The Mercenary
(Pegasus)“Evoking without imitating classic le Carré . . . Vidich supplements the world-weariness we expect from cold warriors in the game too long by giving Garin a satisfyingly contrarian ‘contempt for Agency puppetteers.'”
–BooklistJane Harper, The Survivors
(Flatiron)“The latest stunner from Jane Harper…[She] expertly raises the reader’s pulse throughout the narrative, insinuating what happened that day but only revealing the truth slowly as Kieran comes to see past and present in a new light.”
–BooklistDaniel Pyne, Water Memory
(Thomas & Mercer)“Pyne keeps expertly mixing up his pitches long after you’ve stopped expecting anything but blazing fastballs.”
–Kirkus ReviewsElle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It
(Minotaur)“Part comedy of errors, part genuine thriller… Deftly balancing genre conventions with sly, tongue-in-cheek comments on motherhood and femininity, Cosimano crafts a deliciously twisted tale.”
–BooklistSusan Elia MacNeal, The King’s Justice
(Ballantine)“Vivid descriptions of devastated London and distinctive, emotionally flawed characters enhance a plot that builds to a wicked twist. This enjoyable effort will inspire those new to MacNeal to seek out earlier entries.””
–Publishers WeeklyJonathan Buckley, Live, Live, Live
(New York Review of Books)“Buckley’s fiction is subtle and fastidiously low-key . . . every apparently loose thread, when tugged, reveals itself to be woven into the themes [and] gets better the more you allow it to settle in your mind.”
–Michel Faber, The Guardian -
I like to check in on writer’s houses. Not in a creepy, hiding-behind-the-hedges way, just as a diversion during the work day when I’m stuck online and wishing I were somewhere breezy with nothing but time, mixed drinks, and books. There’s a vicarious creative thrill in seeing the places where our favorite authors produced their best work. That’s especially true when a writer and a place are entwined in your imagination. I’m thinking about Hemingway’s Paris apartment on Notre-Dame-des-Champs or the Dickinson Homestead in Amherst—addresses and edifices that have survived to our day and still manage to conjure up an artistic world. In the crime fiction realm, that’s John D. MacDonald’s Florida.
It’s hard to find an author with a deeper connection to place than the one MacDonald enjoyed. Through his standalone novels and in his long-running Travis McGee series, MacDonald’s characters traversed just about every inch of South Florida and its surrounding waters. (McGee was based out of slip F-18 at Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale, in the Busted Flush, a houseboat he won in a card game; not bad for a “salvage consultant.”) Florida was more than a setting for MacDonald. As Craig Pittman wrote for CrimeReads, it was a lifelong passion, and concerns over the state’s environmental degradation and overdevelopment were woven deep into MacDonald’s fiction, just as in his private life he helped organize the local community against damaging land deals. It was with that legacy in mind that I used to like looking in on MacDonald’s homes, one in particular: 1430 Point Crisp Road in Sarasota, Florida.
Point Crisp is a spit of land poking out into the bay off Siesta Key, in Sarasota. MacDonald lived there with his wife and worked in a small apartment above the garage. It was a classic, sprawling Florida house in a brilliant natural setting, with water views on three sides. You can easily imagine MacDonald walking its floors, working out the plot to the next McGee novel, ruminating on some intricate scam working its way through South Florida and deciding just how “Trav” is going to sort it all out and get his heart slightly more broken in the process. It’s a house conducive to a certain rogue Florida romance. Anyway, that’s what I’ve always thought. Back in 2016, when the house was last for sale, Robert Plunket from Sarasota profiled the house. He had this to say: “The home has no particular architectural style. It just rambles along in a 1950’s sort of way, with 4 bedrooms and 3.5 baths in the main section and 2/1 in the guest house. There’s a very nice pool, plus a boat dock. There’s a surprising amount of wildlife—sea birds of all sorts, plus dolphins and manatees and even a family of iguanas that hang around the dock.”
There were also a few photographs, which postdate MacDonald’s time but give you a good sense of the terrain.
Plunket also wrote that the listing was selling for basically land value, and that “it’s pretty much taken for granted that it will be replaced by one of the enormous mansions that JDM railed against.” Well, it’s happened. The other day, on one of my meandering trips around the various literary addresses I check in on now and again, I typed in 1430 Point Crisp Road and came across a new listing on realtor.com: four beds, five and a half baths, 5,302 square feet, all on a 0.7 acre lot, the land that once belonged to an icon. It’s a mansion. One of the “enormous mansions that JDM railed against.” And it’s already built.
The house is for sale now and it’s about what you would expect. Impressive, if you like that sort of thing, and gauche if you don’t. I’m not sure construction is done yet but the photograph tells you all you need to know.
There are more images, but I can’t bear to show them to you. There goes another piece of “Old Florida,” a piece that once belonged to John D. MacDonald, a man who captured the state like no other author, whose world lives on in his work even if the place where he created that work is gone forever, paved and neutered.
If you have a spare seven million or so lying around, you could buy the new property. Or maybe take that money, work on your poker game, enter a few hands with some idle Florida rich, find out which one has a houseboat, lure him in, make your play, win that houseboat, secure a slip, and move to Bahia Mar. Just a suggestion. In the meantime, let’s all pour one out for JDM’s Point Crisp.
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Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA offers an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. When I was getting my degree, I read countless essays where genre fiction was referred to as “escapist fiction.” The essays we read were (of course) written by proponents of literary fiction who made it clear that genre fiction was something common and vulgar which should only be sold from seedy shops in back alleys. Genre fiction wasn’t true literature (affect a snobbish accent and be sure to look down your nose). Genre or popular fiction was deemed insignificant and those who read it weren’t as cultured as readers of literary fiction. At the time, I didn’t pay the labels much attention. Different strokes for different folks. Sticks and stones… (you get my point). After all, what difference did it make what people read as long as they were reading? However, 2020 changed that for me.
Let’s start with the basics. Neither of these are real. Literary and genre are both fiction—imaginary.Not sure what the difference is between literary fiction and genre fiction? Me either. So, I looked it up and couldn’t find a good definition that I could wrap my mind around. Let’s start with the basics. Neither of these are real. Literary and genre are both fiction—imaginary. Yet, literary fiction is ‘supposedly’ more focused on character and emotion. I found definitions that described literary fiction using words like serious and artistic. Literary fiction is claimed not to provide an escape from reality, but to plunge readers even deeper into the “real world.” Of course, that would be the real world that the author has created (in case you forgot…it’s still not really real). Literary fiction is intended to make readers think about the real world, their place in it and…well, life. While Genre/commercial/popular fiction is much easier to define. Genre fiction typically is more plot driven and easier to categorize. There are somewhere between five and seven categories (depending on who you listen to) including: mystery/crime, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, western, and historical. These categories are pretty easy to figure out. If the book has a romance as the main theme, then…it’s most likely a romance. Got magic? Then, the book is probably fantasy. Of course, you could have a historical mystery with paranormal elements and a romantic subplot, but let’s stick to the easy stuff. These books create an imaginary world that the reader can escape into rather than focusing on the deeper realities/issues of the characters imaginary existence. The bottom line is, it’s all fiction. Confused, yet? Let’s forget about the labels for now.
Back to the reality of 2020 and 2021. In one year, we’ve experienced: social and political unrest, a global pandemic, suspension of big money sporting events (including the Olympics), and a society where Lysol, hand sanitizer and toilet paper were hot commodities that people were selling on the black market? I couldn’t have written that plot twist in a million years, and who would have believed it? Even Disney World closed its gates in 2020. If the “Happiest Place on Earth” is closed, what’s a person to do?
If ever there was a time to escape from reality, 2020 was that year. Does anyone really want to spend more time plunged into the serious reality of life in the middle of a global pandemic? Frankly, I can’t escape fast enough. So, given a choice between literary fiction and genre fiction, sign me up for escapist aka genre fiction. In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, award winning, bestselling, fantasy author, Neil Gaiman explained things this way:
“If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn’t you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with (and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.”
While quarantined at home, the thought of reading literary fiction never crossed my mind (I’m not that high-brow). I wanted/needed to escape and genre fiction held the key. The beauty of genre fiction is that there’s something for everyone. If you like to read books with the promise of a happily ever after, then there are tons of romance with heat levels that range from tepid (sweet) to bow-chick-a-bow-wow smoking (erotic). If you want to escape into a world with fantastic beasts, wizards and magic, then fantasy will be just the thing you need. For me, my escape is mystery. Sure, there may be dead bodies, but unlike the real world where people die and cases remain unsolved and justice is thwarted, in books mysteries are solved (at least most of them). Similar to romance, mysteries have a gage of a different type. There are clean/cozy mysteries with no sex, no bad words, no blood, guts and gore (you might even get a recipe for a good chocolate chip cookie and who doesn’t love a good chocolate chip cookie?). On the opposite end, there are true crimes, noir, or traditional mysteries. Mysteries (most of them) provide the satisfaction that justice will prevail. In a time of uncertainty and chaos, that promise is much needed.
A Tourist’s Guide to Murder, the sixth book in my Mystery Bookshop Mystery Series, provided an escape for me in many ways. My sleuth, mystery bookshop owner and aspiring writer, Samantha Washington, takes a trip to England along with her grandmother, Nana Jo, and ‘The Girls’ from the retirement village (Dorothy, Ruby Mae, and Irma), to research her next British historic cozy mystery. She takes a mystery lovers’ tour that includes everything from true crime walks at the places of Jack the Ripper’s murders. To a museum created for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, at 221b Baker Street (yes, there really is a museum for this fictional detective). After months in quarantine where the only excitement I had were my weekly trips to the mailbox (don’t judge), escaping into the British countryside was therapeutic. I’ve made a couple of trips to England, but there’s never enough time to see everything. In my books I spent hours (probably more than was necessary) researching locations, looking at pictures and getting lost in the research. Just because I couldn’t travel in real life, didn’t keep me from traveling and living vicariously through my protagonist.
Writing a murder mystery (even if it’s cozy) provided another level of escape. For a few moments I get to play god. I create the world, the characters and the rules. I am in total and complete control and I can mete out justice and retribution to those I deem worthy of it. The power of life and death is literally in my pen. What a rush. I may not be able to control what people do outside of the pages of a book, but inside those pages everyone wears a mask, adheres to rules of social distancing, and are kind to one another. Fail to follow the rules and risk the wrath of…the author. Now, that’s an escape.
Lovers of literary fiction can enjoy their artistic plunge into…realism. However, if you need a mental break from the real world (and who doesn’t), recognize that genre fiction serves a very valid/useful purpose. And, if anyone tries to make you feel that what you’re reading is common, unworthy, or somehow less important by labeling it “escapist fiction,” don’t listen and don’t allow anyone to belittle your choice of reading material. Gaiman goes on to quote, “As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.”
Don’t let anyone keep you imprisoned inside a global pandemic, a politically divided world. Take a break and escape into another land. Get lost in a good mystery. Solving a puzzling mystery can be invigorating and quite fulfilling. Travel, see the world from the comfort and safety of your home. For a few short hours, escape into the British countryside, tour museums, and visit the home of Agatha Christie. Follow the clues, sort through the red herrings and figure out whodunit. Trust me, escaping can be a wonderful thing.
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When considering the great artistic accomplishments of England, what often comes to mind first is English Literature. Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Jane Austen, Dickens—names that hold as much or more relevance today as they did when these authors lived. Their brilliance is as well-documented (the work speaks for itself, really) as it is undeniable. Their words live on era after era, with each subsequent generation of readers finding new meaning and understanding, new insight, and new revelations, in these centuries-old works. English literature is without doubt among the world’s great treasures.
A cultural treasure needs, above all, to be enduring, to withstand changing times and changing tastes. It needs, at the time of its inception, to have represented a kind of progression within its field, a groundbreaking excellence that allowed it to stand out from its contemporaries and shine as something special, something never before seen. Something that commanded attention.
Why are we drawn to a work of literature? A painting or sculpture? Oftentimes people can develop a taste for an artform, but I believe it’s only when art speaks to us on a level that transcends conscious thought that it becomes part of us, something that brings us joy without our quite understanding why.
That joy struck me one day when a package unexpectedly arrived at my home. It was a gift of four teacups that, in a surprising way, has changed my life. The story of why they were sent to me is a rather long one and not the subject of this article, but within the course of a single day I went from being someone who rarely collected anything and didn’t invite clutter into my home, to someone who became a devoted collector of sixty to one hundred year old English bone china—specifically, that made by the Shelley Pottery Works.
Gone since the mid-1960s but once one of Staffordshire, England’s, premier china producers, Shelley is yet another example of the ground-breaking excellence to be found in that country. Until that day, I had never heard of the Shelley Potteries and knew precious little about English china. Yet as I unpacked those four cups and saucers, molded in the Oleander shape with mint-green glaze on the outside and the delicate Bridal Rose pattern within the cup, I knew I held something extraordinary in my hands.
I immediately began educating myself. Staffordshire became the home of English china production thanks to the luck of its natural resources, among them coal, for firing the powerful kilns, and water, used in both clay-mixing and transportation of finished products. It’s the ratio of raw clay to stone to beef bone ash that makes English china, and Shelley china in particular, capable of being translucent-thin yet strong enough to survive years of daily use and washing. The thinness of Shelley teacups is rivaled only by Beleek of Ireland.
The more I learned about the process of mixing the clay, forming the molds and free-form shapes, the firing process, the transfer designs and hand painting, the more lovingly I collected examples dating as far back as the 1890s (When Shelley was still Wileman & Co.), through the 19-teens (when Shelley and many a company relied on commemorative designs and crests to boost sales during WWI) and each subsequent decade until Shelley closed its doors in the mid-1960s.
As a dedicated tea drinker, I use the cups in my collection on a daily basis. I consider my afternoon tea essential to my writing—for clearing away the cobwebs that form during a day’s work and allowing me a fresh perspective. Part of my afternoon tea ritual is the fun of deciding which cup and saucer I’ll use. With each one, I realize there is a story behind the pattern design, cup shape, and the history of the people who owned it decades before me. What were their lives like? Probably very different from mine, yet the way we center ourselves, find a moment’s peace, and steel ourselves to continue our day, is probably still much the same.
Yes, a cup of tea can do all that. From The Classic of Tea by Lu Yu (Tang dynasty, written between 760 CE and 762 CE):
“Tea tempers the spirits and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents drowsiness, lightens or refreshes the body, and clears the perceptive faculties.”
It’s no surprise that a writer’s thoughts would turn to the possible stories behind the china, or that I began to see the potential for stories yet to be told. And since teatime is, after all, a distinctly British phenomenon, it also made sense that any story I wrote would involve my English-set historical series, A Lady and Lady’s Maid Mysteries. What fun for the Renshaw siblings to travel to the china capital of England to commission a unique china service for their grandparents’ anniversary. Of course, intentions are one thing, but agreement, especially among four siblings with intensely contrasting opinions, is another matter entirely. Upon their arrival at the fictional Crown Lily Pottery Works, it becomes clear that choosing a pattern and shape will be no easy feat.
Their decisions aren’t made any easier when dealing with two designers who show no inclination to work together. Artistic people tend to be complicated, so it wasn’t hard to imagine how egos and ambitions might clash to create volatile circumstances that could potentially explode—much like kilns when not operated properly. Plotlines, complete with intrigue, artistic competition, rivalries, and yes, even murder, quickly took shape.
As history throughout the industrialized world has shown us, any factory is replete with dangers to life and limb. A china factory is no different. From the grinding pans to deserted warehouses to the fiery kilns, danger lurks in many places. Add in those resentments and rivalries, and opportunities for murder abound.
So while, on the one hand, A Sinister Service is a celebration of the artistry and excellence of English fine bone china, it remains foremost a murder mystery to be solved by the sleuthing team of Phoebe Renshaw and her lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, as well as by you, the reader, if you can.
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As the marshals’ search for the Commander sputtered during the first months of 2012, there was no way for them to know that the key to solving this mystery sat in a drawer of a metal filing cabinet at the New Mexico State Library in Santa Fe. Had Bill Boldin and his team known where to look, they could have found, alongside back issues of the Ruidoso News, the Carlsbad Current-Argus, and the Bernalillo Times, a blue-and-white box containing microfilmed issues of the Gallup Independent from July and August 1997.
As it had for more than three decades, the masthead on the August 8 edition of the local newspaper proclaimed that, inside, readers would find “The Truth Well Told.” Offering home delivery to most of the Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi Reservations, the Independent contained a wealth of news about the tribal communities that made up a good part of its readership. The front page that particular Friday featured an article about a probe into alleged corruption by the Navajo Nation’s president, while, on the next page, an unrelated photograph showed a Navajo council delegate named Alfred L. Yazzie, a man whose unusual surname, derived from the Navajo word for “little,” was common in these parts. Of course, not everyone bought the newspaper for the news. Readers planning a visit to Gallup’s annual powwow found a schedule listing start times for six days of Indian ceremonial dances, Indian rodeos, and Indian art marketplaces. Other, more industrious readers who planned to spend the coming weekend job hunting found numerous possibilities listed in the help-wanted section on the paper’s second to last page. The open positions advertised that day included a silversmith at Pow Wow Indian Jewelry, a Navajo-speaking teacher at the Cuba Independent School District, and a listing for thirty-five hazmat security officers at a company called Totem Security.
There was little that separated Totem Security’s solicitation, which appears to have run only that day and the next, from those surrounding it on the page. In the truncated language of the classified job ad, the company said it sought healthy candidates with a ged, a valid driver’s license, no felony convictions, and a willingness to consent to a full background check. Claiming it would provide full training to the right applicant, Totem offered annual pay of up to $50,000, along with medical and dental insurance, two weeks’ paid vacation, and a 401(k) retirement plan. In a town where the per capita annual income hovered just below $18,000, it was a compensation package certain to attract attention, and interested parties were asked to call a number in Portland, Oregon, for more information.Less than a week after the ad appeared in the Independent, completed applications began to flow from the newspaper’s circulation zone to an address in Northeast Portland, just across the Columbia River and the border with Washington State. They came almost entirely from Gallup and other nearby places with faraway-sounding names like Zuni, Gamerco, Mexican Springs, Sheep Springs, Thoreau, and Crownpoint in New Mexico and Saint Michaels, Window Rock, and Fort Defiance in Arizona. Once completed, the employment applications, which also served as background check forms, contained an applicant’s name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, social security number, driver’s license number, educational history, criminal convictions, passport status, and parents’ names. It was a lot of information to send off to an unknown company, but the fine print said it would be used to process the requisite background check for a security job that sounded like it was being offered only to the most trustworthy individuals. If job seekers needed additional assurance that this was all on the up-and-up, the form guaranteed them that “the information provided is confidential between myself, the Company and its agents.”
If potential applicants still had doubts, they could check and see that Totem Security had filed articles of incorporation at the Oregon secretary of state’s office in Salem. Printed on a do-it-yourself form produced by Self-Counsel Press in Bellingham, Washington, the two-page document gave the same Portland address that was on the company’s job application and listed the company’s registered agent and sole incorporator as one Bob Redbear. It was a name, like Totem Security, that seemed tailor-made to engender trust among the Native American applicants likely to read the company’s ad when it ran in the paper that weekend in August. But something wasn’t quite right. While the job hunters who sent applications to Portland would eventually go on to work at a construction company, a tribal water agency, an Indian hospital, a school district, and a Gallup liquor store called The Tropics, not one of them ever landed one of the lucrative hazmat positions advertised by Totem Security. In fact, Totem Security existed nowhere but in the corporate listings of the State of Oregon and in the imagination of the man who had composed the ad in the Independent. The address listed on the company’s applications was a mail drop at a Portland store known to forward letters and packages to its snowbird customers all across the country. The company’s articles of incorporation had been filed just eight days before the ad first appeared in the Gallup Independent as a back-stop in case anyone went to check its bona fides. Bob Redbear was an alias for a man the applicants never met. And the bogus security company and its carefully targeted help-wanted ad were just parts of a scheme this man had concocted to harvest a thick file of vital information that he could tap for a variety of purposes over the next fourteen years. Soon this man would reinvent himself as Commander Bobby Thompson.
The Commander had just turned fifty. The personal data he stole using his wanted ad in August 1997 was a perverse birthday gift he gave himself to prepare for a new life.The Commander had just turned fifty. The personal data he stole using his wanted ad in August 1997 was a perverse birthday gift he gave himself to prepare for a new life. In many ways it was also the seminal moment of the Navy Veterans scam, for he would use his bounty of names, birth dates, and social security numbers to create various identity cards to collect money, launder it, and, finally, mount his escape when the authorities closed in. Exactly how he did all this was a story spelled out in a trail of paper at government offices across the country and hinted at in an underground criminal bible that, like Totem Security, had, by 2010, been all but forgotten.
There were dozens of ways the Commander might have perfected his skills as an identity thief. One possibility was that he learned it in a book by Barry Reid. A one-time law school student, Reid’s legal career was cut short by a marijuana-smuggling conviction that landed him at Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison near Los Angeles that he later described as “a sort of criminal Harvard.” An enterprising young man, Reid took the knowledge he gained at this lesser-known Ivy and launched Eden Press, a publishing company that cranked out short, detailed manuals, dubbed “books for crooks,” whose titles included Classic Mail Frauds, How to Beat the Bill Collector, and Short Cons. Reid’s company was best known, however, as the publisher of The Paper Trip. This short paperback volume rose to such notoriety that in the mid-1970s it helped prompt a 781-page Department of Justice report titled The Criminal Use of False Identification. According to this government publication, fake identities were a criminal’s best friend, tools by which denizens of the dark could “appear and disappear at will by creating fictitious ‘paper people.’” The Paper Trip, some said, was the “underground textbook of phony ID that has become a counterculture bestseller.”
Filled with quotes from John Steinbeck, William Shakespeare, Lao-tzu, and the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the tone of The Paper Trip wavered between a straight-ahead how-to manual and a libertarian philosophical treatise that reminded Americans that they had a god-given right to go by whatever name they damn-well pleased. “Ever since the early days when the first Americans—the Indians—used the device of name-change to denote accomplishment (sort of like a tribal “promotion”), Americans have changed their names in order to gain some form of success and/or acceptance,” the author wrote. “What some people do not realize, however, is that the custom did not die with the closing of the frontier—and, in fact, is still flourishing today.” To ensure its readers could take part in this most American of pastimes, the book urged them to prepare and practice for the day of their escape. “Prior conditioning can seriously inhibit your ‘transformation,’” read one section of the manual. “No matter how much you long for a new identity, the comfortable familiarity of your original name can make you very uneasy about introducing yourself in your new ‘incarnation.’” To get over this uneasiness, the booklet urged readers to practice saying their assumed name out loud and writing out their adopted signature before the time to disappear actually arrived. “Like a chameleon, a Paper Tripper’s self-preservation depends upon his ability to blend harmoniously into his chosen environment,” read one section that was illustrated with a pen-and-ink drawing of dozens of identical businessmen. The main objective, it emphasized, was “to disappear into the crowd, to become inconspicuous.”
To do so The Paper Trip favored real identities obtained in someone else’s name over forgeries, and it outlined a technique for obtaining them. While Reid referred to this method as the “Birth Certificate Route,” law enforcement called it the “Infant Death Identity process.” This method involved obtaining a real birth certificate in a dead child’s name and using it as the “breeder document” with which one could then obtain a social security card, a state id, credit cards, and, eventually, an entire new persona. Readers were instructed to first identify a deceased individual with their same approximate birth date, sex, and race who died as a child “long before he got entangled in the paper morass you’re now trying to escape.” Potential names could be found by wandering through a cemetery, jotting down info from gravestones, or, more simply, by visiting a library with a good supply of microfilmed newspapers. There, readers were told to search editions from the years in which they themselves were children, looking for articles or obituaries about the recent death of a kid who, if now living, would have an age that was close to their own. Preferably, they would find a child who had died in a tragic accident. “Excellent possibilities,” the book noted in one of its more macabre moments, “would be those in which an entire family was wiped out, as there would be little remembered of them by now.” With a name in hand, the next step involved requesting a certified copy of the dead child’s birth certificate, a request one could make in writing by posing as the now-grown child or as his potential employer conducting a background check. Once the document was received, the tripper was on the path to a new name and all the freedom it promised. “With a ‘certified’ copy of a birth certificate, issued by some agency of state or local government, it is relatively easy to apply for and receive virtually any form of id desired,” Reid instructed. According to The Paper Trip, the rest was up to the reader who adopted Reid’s advice. “You are the new person, and never doubt it!” the book read. “If you don’t, no one else will, either! Ask yourself, who else would you be if you weren’t ‘you’? no one but who you say you are, that’s who!! Why, you can even prove it: ‘Certainly, just check my ID.’”
Whether or not he ever read the book, these were words the Commander lived by. Like any good con artist, he knew that most people he met, whether it was in a bar or in a government office, did not go through each of life’s million tiny transactions wondering if the person on the other end was trying to deceive them. He knew that most people believed what they were told or what they read on a piece of paper. With the confidence this understanding gave him, he fully inhabited the many identities he created over the years, becoming comfortable enough to slap assumed names all over state and federal forms, even audaciously using one such stolen identity to shake hands with the president of the United States on multiple occasions. As he once told his lawyer, “life is argument.” For him this ethos trickled down even to the name he called himself. I am who I say I am. Who else would I be if I wasn’t me? No one but who I say I am, that’s who. And while he would call himself by many names over the years, the way in which he created these identities evolved with the times.
At first, the Commander may have used names stolen from young boys who died when the con artist was himself just a child.At first, the Commander may have used names stolen from young boys who died when the con artist was himself just a child. There was Michael Hannon, an academic standout who died in 1960, at just nine years of age after suffering through a short illness. Then there was Gary Hixon, who drowned in a California pool in 1962 while traveling with his family to the World’s Fair in Seattle. Both boys were from Colorado, and in the years preceding the Navy Veterans Association scam, the Commander appeared to have used both their identities. Presumably, he had done so in the manner outlined in The Paper Trip—first obtaining their birth certificates and using them as breeder documents. But this way of creating an ID was not foolproof. It depended on a loop-hole, and loopholes could be closed.
For years paper trippers borrowing names like Hannon and Hixon took advantage of a system in which birth and death certificates were kept as completely separate records. But the 1976 Department of Justice report, partially prompted by The Paper Trip, made some suggestions. In addition to recommending passage of tighter laws and adoption of more stringent procedures for birth certificate applications, the commission suggested the creation of a new system that would cross-reference birth and death records so that the word “deceased” might be marked on copies of birth certificates belonging to people who had departed the earthly plane. Doing so would, in effect, make it impossible for a would-be ID thief to present a dead child’s birth certificate as the foundational document on which to build a new life. If they were already deceased, there would be no reason they would be applying for an ID card, after all. The Paper Trip warned that this new era of cross-referencing was coming and that computers would hasten its arrival. But, not to be discouraged, its author offered some backup plans. Among these was the use of vital information taken not from the dead but from the living. Appearing to have previously used the names of long-gone children, by 1997 the Commander himself had pivoted to the live-victim method. He was wildly successful in capturing a slew of identities with the Totem Security applicants in Gallup, specifically tailoring the language and placement of his help-wanted ad to ensnare the perfect victims.
As Bill Boldin had discovered on his trip west, the Commander had gone after a group of people almost as unlikely to raise an alarm as dead kids—live Indians. Not a single one of the Totem Security applicants was known to have ever reported that their name had been stolen or put to use. There was a likely reason why. “Well, us Navajos, we don’t check our credits,” said Richard L. Overturf, a Totem Security applicant who, by 2014, lived so far from civilization that, instead of a street number, his driver’s license listed his address as the number of miles one had to drive from a tiny highway junction to pay him a visit. Overturf had associate’s degrees in liberal arts and Diné, or Navajo, studies, a pedigree that made him one of the better-educated men whose names were among the sixteen Totem Security applications still known to exist in 2020.24 Most of the others were from high school graduates or ged recipients, one of whom would later freely admit, “I can barely turn a computer on.”25 Many of these job seekers were Native Americans, coming from the Navajo Nation, the Zuni Pueblo, and the Crow Tribe in Montana. Years later not a single one could remember reading the Totem Security ad in the Independent or filling out an application, but most said that the personal data was deadly accurate, and it was, for sure, their handwriting on the employment form. The year “1997, that was a while back,” Albert Gros-Ventre said when asked nearly twenty years later whether he knew how an application containing his information ended up in the Commander’s hands. “I’m guessing that it was probably at a job fair that was just hand carried to a receptionist. I’m not too sure.”
Like Gros-Ventre’s, many of the Totem applications that are still around came from men with memorable surnames like Bitsie, Booqua, Khweis, Mariano, Simplicio, and Yazzie. These were not easily forgettable names, like Smith or Jones, that a fugitive might hope to use to easily blend in before being forgotten altogether. These were second-tier names the Commander stockpiled as an emergency stash to be used only when better options had been exploited and burned through.
Four months after the hazmat security ad first appeared in the Independent, the Commander was in Indiana, where he put to use two of these better options: Elmer L. Dosier and Isaac N. Frazier. Though neither man’s Totem Security application was ever found and though it cannot be reported with absolute certainty that they even filled them out, both men lived in and around Gallup, making it likely that, along with many of their neighbors, they had inadvertently fallen victim to the identity-theft scheme in the summer of 1997. While little is known of how the transaction took place, on December 17 the Commander entered a branch of Indiana’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Indianapolis and obtained a state ID card in Dosier’s name. The next day he made another trip to a BMV office, this time carrying a copy of Frazier’s Louisiana birth certificate issued one month earlier. The man he pretended to be that day—Frazier—was, in actuality, an air force veteran born in New Orleans in August 1948, almost exactly one year after the Commander’s real birth, in a city nearly 1,200 miles to the northeast. Though their birth dates closely aligned, not all their vital statistics did. Unlike the Commander, the real Frazier was an African American and a long-time member of the NAACP. Perhaps hoping that the winter holiday season would leave the clerks working at the bureau that day distracted, the Commander waited his turn and presented Frazier’s birth certificate and an application for a state ID card in his name. Though this card would not allow him to drive as a license would, he seemed to prefer this type of ID. As The Paper Trip had advised, state identity cards were quicker and easier to obtain. The trip to the BMV proved to be a success, and soon the Commander had two Indiana ID cards bearing his picture under the names of both Dosier and Frazier.
Six months later, in June 1998, he strolled into a similar office, this time in his new home state of Florida, and obtained a third identity card, using the name of yet another man who had lived in the Southwest in the late 1990s: a Choctaw named Bobby Charles Thompson. It was in Indiana, however, that the con artist felt most at ease when obtaining ID cards. In January 2000 he returned to Indianapolis and got an ID in the name of a fourth likely Totem applicant, Gallup resident Ronnie Brittain. Perhaps he chose Indiana, the so-called crossroads of America, because it was smackdab in the middle of the country. Or perhaps it was because he had discovered it was an easy place to get what he needed. In 2004 the Indianapolis Star reported that problems at the state’s fraud- and corruption-plagued Bureau of Motor Vehicles had allowed “hundreds, if not thousands, of foreign nationals to obtain driver’s licenses and state identification cards illegally.” That same year news reports also revealed that in Marion County, home to Indianapolis, 10 percent of the state’s BMV employees had criminal records, half of which were for crimes involving theft or deception. This was the kind of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence a man like the Commander knew how to find and exploit, something he did on multiple trips to the city over the course of a decade. Between 1997 and 2008 he would obtain at least nine ID cards under four different names from the Indiana BMV. These trips of reinvention were well-planned affairs.
Between 1997 and 2008 he would obtain at least nine ID cards under four different names from the Indiana BMV. These trips of reinvention were well-planned affairs.In April 2002, months before he first applied to the IRS for tax-exempt status for the Navy Veterans Association, the Commander strolled into an Indiana BMV office with a thick beard and dark shirt and renewed the ID card he had received five years earlier in the name of deceased cop and former New Mexico resident Elmer L. Dosier. That very same day, after shaving his beard down to a handlebar moustache and changing into a white shirt, he again entered a BMV branch and renewed his Isaac Frazier ID card. In addition to making sure each name he assumed had its own look, he also took steps to ensure that he maintained that appearance across years when he went to renew an old ID card. For instance, when he first got a Ronnie Brittain ID card in 2000, he wore a wispy haircut, dark reading glasses, and a moustache that grew down his face into a hint of a goatee. When he returned five years later to renew the card, he was a bit grayer, but his moustache, haircut, and glasses remained the same. In case anyone at the BMV was paying attention, they would have seen that Ronnie Brittain might have aged and put on a few pounds, but, clearly, he still looked like the same guy.
Making sure that the photos on his ID cards looked just right required meticulous planning. It would later be revealed that the Commander traveled with eight pairs of wire-rimmed and plastic glasses; a beard trimmer; various hair clips, combs, and shears; Maybelline Great Lash mascara; a tube of Clubman moustache wax; and a plastic container of what appeared to be gray hair chalk. Though deeply planned affairs, these trips were still just a means to an end, journeys to get identities that would serve some larger purpose in his complex fraud. Some helped him perpetrate his crime. Others helped him escape from it.
In 2005, for instance, five months after going to Indianapolis to renew his Ronnie Brittain ID card, the Commander was back in Florida finalizing his initial agreement with the company that would become his main telemarketer, Associated Community Services. That July he passed through the oversized arch doorway at a branch of the First Commercial Bank of Tampa Bay that sat on a six-lane boulevard not far from the city’s airport. The small bank played fast and loose with its assets, making loans to the grandson of a New York crime boss and a local concrete magnate who would be imprisoned a few years later for tax evasion. Regulators would eventually shut down First Commercial.
But at this moment the bank seemed to fit the Commander’s needs. Inside the branch he visited, he told an employee he was there to open a checking account. When the bank clerk looked at his new Indiana ID bearing Brittain’s name, everything seemed fine. But the bank would still have to run Brittain’s information through their fraud-check system, a post-9/11 requirement meant to crack down on terrorist financing and money laundering. Mr. Brittain told the bank clerk that he was a public relations consultant and gave an address for an apartment a few miles north. Though their system failed to note that his so-called residence was actually a mailbox at a ups Store, it flagged the fact that someone with Brittain’s name and social security number also appeared to live not in Tampa but at a trailer park more than 1,600 miles away in Gallup, New Mexico. How could that be, the clerk likely wondered. Always quick on his feet, the Commander said that, like many Floridians, he was a snowbird. It didn’t matter that a snowbird was unlikely to be in the Sunshine State in July. This was all the bank needed to hear. Before long Brittain had a new account in his name at First Commercial Bank, and he knew just what he wanted to do with it.
Soon after making an initial hundred-dollar cash deposit, money intended for veterans started pouring into the usnva via its new telemarketer. After paying professional callers their exorbitant, but totally legal, cut, much of what was left over traveled a circuitous route through thirteen different bank accounts that had been opened for the Navy Veterans Association or under the name of Bobby C. Thompson. Much of the donated money would be converted to untraceable paper currency through ATM withdrawals or checks made out to cash. At nearly the same time that these withdrawals began, funds of unknown provenance were used to purchase money orders that were then deposited into Brittain’s new account at First Commercial Bank. Putting in a few thousand dollars each month, the balance grew to $45,000 in less than two years. From the spring of 2007 through the fall of 2009, it would remain at about this level. Though he made the odd ATM withdrawal and used the account to make a few small purchases, including a burner phone and refill minutes, this money was not for general operating expenses. It served another purpose. From the very beginning of the Navy Vets scam, the Commander had established the name Ronnie Brittain and this account as a parachute to safety. Both would be ready for the day Bobby Thompson needed to cease being Bobby Thompson and flee Tampa.
That time came in October 2009, when St. Petersburg Times reporter Jeff Testerman began asking questions about a phony voter registration in the name of a nuclear sub commander named Thomas Mader. Days after the reporter’s first Mader-related queries, Thompson dusted off the Ronnie Brittain ID and disappeared from his Tampa duplex. Records from the escape-fund account show ATM withdrawals that October and November along a path leading from Tampa to Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and, finally, to New York. There the initial Mader-induced panic seemed to blow over, and the Commander decided it was safe to once again stow away the Brittain identity and resume functioning as Bobby Thompson. He would continue to inhabit that assumed identity until his disastrous meeting with telemarketing boss Dick Cole at the Helmsley Hotel in June 2010. After that he scuttled the name Thompson for good, fled New York, and became Ronnie Brittain. As Brittain, he resurfaced days later in Boston, a city where he had lived many years, and many cover stories, earlier.
Upon his return to Boston that summer, the Commander stayed busy. He began hitting an ATM near Copley Square, a park in the city’s Back Bay neighborhood. He also used the Brittain identity to open three new accounts at a td Bank branch, listing his address as an apartment on a street nearby. After he had almost depleted the Brittain escape-fund account, bank records suggest that the Commander made a cross-country trip in late July and early August. ATM withdrawals this time revealed a path from Boston to Minneapolis, Seattle, Sacramento, Portland, and, finally, back to Boston. The purpose of this trip would remain unclear. Was he visiting mail drops and emptying them of incriminating evidence investigators might soon seek? Could he have been picking up or stashing Navy Veterans Association cash at various locations across the country? Had he become worried that authorities had found something that could point them to his Brittain ID? Or had he gone west to begin creating new identities?
Bank records showed that by Thursday, August 19, the Commander was back in Boston. A lot had happened while he was gone. Problems were mounting. In Florida state and federal agents had conducted their raid on the home of his assistant, Blanca Contreras, and in Ohio authorities had issued their first warrant for the arrest of the man they knew as Bobby Thompson on an identity-theft charge. The Commander knew he needed to act. Earlier that summer it appeared he had been contemplating fleeing the country. He’d gone online and visited a website offering fake passports from Australia, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and various European nations. But by the time he returned to Boston, he seemed to have settled on staying in the United States. He just needed some new names to help make that possible.
Upon collecting his Totem Security identity haul in 1997, the Commander first utilized the names of Thompson, Brittain, Dosier, and Frazier, then set aside a pile of names he had deemed either too hard or too recognizable to use. Now he no longer had the luxury of being picky. Days after returning to Boston, he went online and began obtaining credit reports on seven of the men who applied to be hazmat security officers thirteen years earlier. He was presumably looking for telltale signs that their identities had already been compromised or that they had delinquent accounts—two possible red flags that could mean they were more likely to monitor their credit history. In trying to find the best names to adopt, he also appeared to have made notes in pink ink on these men’s old, weathered applications. On some he jotted down contextual information, apparently preparing to answer the kinds of questions he might be asked when he assumed their names. For one man he made notes about the actual location of his hard-to-find rural address in case someone asked him, “So where exactly is that?” On another he noted that the man’s last name, Delaney, was derived from Gaelic for O Dubshláine, a nice piece of trivia to pull out if anyone ever asked, “Delaney, huh? Where’s that name come from?”
With his new list of names, the Commander soon began setting up emails, practicing signatures, and researching which victims’ birthplaces had the most lenient policies for the provision of birth certificates. He would eventually obtain one of these documents in the name of a man born in Arizona in 1951 and another in the name of a man born in Oregon in 1965. Both were stamped as having been issued within weeks of running the men’s credit reports. It’s unclear if these certificates were truly state-issued documents or if they were forgeries created by the Commander himself. Creating one’s own documents was something The Paper Trip warned against and something the Commander appeared to have avoided in the past. But now, on the run, he was running out of choices and running out of time. He was forced to create new ID cards himself using the second-tier names of the men he researched that weekend in August.
Eventually, his picture, in various states of disguise, would appear on documents proclaiming him to be Richard Overturf, Michael Delaney, Arthur Burrola, Lodi Bitsie, Kenneth Morsette, Lance Guy Martin, and Anderson Yazzie. These seven names would appear on six fake Department of Homeland Security permanent-resident cards, six fake social security cards, six fake driver’s licenses, four prepaid debit cards, one fake Massachusetts fishing license, and eight work ID cards claiming he was, variously, an administrator for Navajo Education Systems, a security consultant at LaRouche et LaRouche, a safety consultant at Boeing, an analyst at the Irish Times Corporation, a graduate assistant at Arizona State University, a transportation specialist at Interstate Storage Rentals, a sales manager at Alpha Omega Corporation, and a consultant at Guiness [sic] Records. Even on the run the Commander was a busy man capable of prodigious creativity.
Including this batch and his earlier names, the Commander used the identities of men from the Southwest dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times to establish mail drops, pay telephone-answering services, hire lawyers and telemarketers, rent storage and housing, check into hotels, open at least seventeen bank accounts, apply for insurance, incorporate two Florida corporations, make hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, and file various papers and applications with numerous states and the federal government. For instance, following the election of Barack Obama in November 2008, the always paranoid Commander appeared to have grown especially concerned that, after eight years of GOP rule, he might soon need to flee the country. Three days after the historic vote, he went to Orlando and used the name Isaac Frazier to apply for a U.S. passport. Apparently, the Department of State officials who reviewed his application were concerned that a man born in 1948 was using a birth certificate issued in 1997, a likely sign of fraud. His request was denied. This was the only known example of a failed attempt by the Commander to obtain an id, a record that spoke to the great care he took in planning these efforts and his long learning curve. He was, in fact, so good that the trained professionals tracking him never quite figured out that the key to understanding his masterful wholesale theft of identities was contained within a box of newspaper microfilm stored at the New Mexico State Library in Santa Fe.
“With the right information and skills, a person can use the selective revelation of his ‘background’ to achieve the desired identity or identities,” the author of The Paper Trip once wrote. “And like a master artist applying the final brush stroke, the individual can verify that identity with the proper documentation.” By the time he was on the run in 2011, the Commander was truly a master artist, but how had he attained this status? Was it by studying the underground bible that had taught these skills to a generation of criminals? Or could there have been some other explanation for his expertise?
By the time he was on the run in 2011, the Commander was truly a master artist, but how had he attained this status?For years the man who called himself Bobby Thompson had bragged of his connection to the world of intelligence, a world where the identity-creation techniques employed by the Commander and outlined in The Paper Trip have sometimes been utilized. In a newspaper article in 1968, intelligence experts David Wise and Thomas B. Ross outlined the use of the Infant Death Identity process by Russian spies living in the United States under assumed names without the benefit of diplomatic cover. “Although there are cases where Soviet intelligence provides an ‘illegal’ with a totally invented identity, current practice . . . is to clothe an ‘illegal’ agent in the identity of another person—often, but not always, a dead man.” According to a declassified article on the Central Intelligence Agency’s website, a Cold War–era KGB officer named Willy Fisher, whose story was told in the film Bridge of Spies, operated illegally in the United States as Emil Goldfus. Called by one reporter a “Soviet master spy whose impeccable English and intimate knowledge of Western ways permitted him to melt into American life,” Fisher had obtained a birth certificate in the name of Goldfus, a boy who had died several months after his birth in 1902. Then there was Albrecht Dittrich, another so-called KGB illegal, who lived on U.S. soil for years as Jack Barsky, a name borrowed from a Maryland boy who met an early end before attaining puberty.
While it’s possible the Commander learned his techniques on his own, the man leading the effort to find him would later wonder if someone else had helped him along. “This was somebody who was highly trained and highly experienced,” said deputy U.S. marshal Bill Boldin. “What is very clear is that he obviously had training, experience, and expertise in the creation of these fraudulent identities and the ability to live as a fugitive.” As the men chasing him had begun to realize, the Commander was more than just a typical white-collar criminal. They began to wonder if he really was that thing he had told friends and associates he was—a spy.
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On 1/28/2021 at 10:06 AM, elisehartkipness said:
My first reaction to this video is to ask whether these ten writing points are Stephen King’s or the creator of the video. The video is highly edited and draws from many different interviews over what appears to be years/decades. I would have more faith in the clip if it was assembled from a single interview and had more context around each point.
Very good points! And I agree with the balance.
In this book he trashes plotting also.
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For reference, this video personality's self-published book on Amazon:
THE ELYSIAN PROPHECY by Vivian Reis - Copper Hound Press
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1. IDEA... "With proper planning, any idea can be worth pursuing."
Unfortunately, this is far from realistic. "Any idea" means literally that "any idea" or story premise has an equal chance of succeeding in it's current genre market. First of all, we'd have to discard all those ideas that are stale and overdone. Richard Curtis covers this quite well in his Seven Sins of Novel Rejection (#6). This factor alone discounts a huge number of story ideas. I can testify to his testimony in this matter.
Next, we have story ideas that are middle concept, i.e., they sound like pretty good stories, not terribly trope-heavy, but they're not sufficiently high concept, therefore run the risk of thudding when compared to stories that are truly high concept, and therefore, more marketable.
The video personality here also fails to mention the necessity of immersing in one's genre and sufficiently comprehending it before daring to stew with story ideas. Failure to note this important fact might lead a new writer to believe that such a strategy isn't necessary.
"Any idea can be made into a great story."
This is a magnification of the initial comment, and now, "any idea" can transform into a "great story"? In whose viewpoint? The writer or the agent on the other side of the table who doesn't see it that way? Does "great story" mean a story that will sell? Or just a "great story" in the eyes of the author's writer group, or their parents?
The personality goes on to state that a lot of work and planning will work it's magic to evolve, by inference, even a bad story idea into a "great story." Let's be hyperbolic about this for the sake of example. Writer X has a story idea that pretty much mimics The Hunger Games... Need I continue to elaborate? After twenty years of workshops, I know this isn't unrealistic, and what is far more realistic is the fact that the vast bulk of aspiring novel authors don't have marketable story ideas no matter how many years they've put into it. One cannot finesse a bad story idea into a sale no matter how much lipstick is applied.
The video personality's commentary infers that low or high concept, it all comes out the same in the story wash. Just doesn't work that way. Never has. Never will.
Anyone with lingering doubt need only join Publisher's Marketplace and examine the story hook lines noted in recent deals.
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Pantsing vs. Outline
I find the monologue that follows to be a bit slapdash on the subject of pantsing vs. outline, as if she doesn't wish to offend or challenge anyone's ongoing misconception. She fails to note that publishing house editors want a rising action series of plot points--not exactly easy to create if pantsing rules the novel from start to finish.
As I've noted elsewhere, a certain amount of "pantsing" under certain conditions might be okay, but when it comes to efficiently plotting the whole novel in a manner desired by professionals, no... or not without a lot of rewriting (which then invalidates "pantsing" in the first place).
Writing
Yes, a good way to avoid writer's block in general is to brainstorm or sketch ahead of time what will be in the scene you're writing; however, I found elaboration on this section to be overly brief, as if she were on a time clock.
Editing
She infers that a writer seeking traditional publication can halt the ms editorial process sooner than a writer who is self-publishing? Did I hear that right?... It's so painful to imagine she actually said this.
She also notes that one should not edit in the least when writing out the first draft. I disagree. It's a good idea at the end of the writing day to go back over your pages and line edit the obvious flubs. This will create a cleaner and more productive second draft. But yes, when actually in the process of banging words on the page, don't keep stopping and editing.
I'll stop here. Where's my blood pressure medication?
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A Chris Stewart Classic from "Novel Writing on Edge."
I recently ran across an article in The Guardian, where authors were asked for their personal dos and don’ts. There was no indication of how or why certain writers were chosen and most of it is repetitious drivel, but let’s go through the first bunch and have some fun, and in my next post we’ll take on a sort of companion article in Salon, about readers’ advice to writers.
Here we go, starting off positive, with an open mind:
Big Yes! to Elmore Leonard’s rules about ‘said’ and adverbs. Been guilty of both transgressions myself. They just creep up on you and before you know it you are ‘gasping’ and ‘grumbling’ and ‘coaxing’ and, God Help Me, ‘trilling.’ Yes, I once used ‘trilling.’ You can’t hate me more than I hate myself for that one.
I love Diana Athill’s idea of looking at passages you love with ‘a very beady eye.’ She says to check which passages would be better dead.
Perfect lead in for a more updated version of Arthur Quiller-Couch’s ‘murder your darlings’ (it was Arthur Quiller-Couch, not Faulkner who said this, though Faulkner did change it to ‘kill your darlings') – which passages are Better Off Dead?
Think of your unhappy reader chasing after you like that paper boy on a bike, wherever you go, night and day, screaming, “I want my $14.95! I want my $14.95!”
Next! I’m sorry, but Margaret Atwood is just odd. I’m not a fan of her writing (I can hear you gasping with horror – Oh shut up; it’s a free country), I only liked The Handmaid’s Tale, but that’s not really relevant. What’s odd are her first few suggestions about taking pencils on a plane and how to sharpen them and a reminder to bring paper (DUH. For heaven’s sake, are we first graders here? We can handle the writing materials part, Margaret, make yourself useful!).
She wastes 5 of her 10 with nonsense, and the last 5 don’t contribute much either. Rudimentary stuff. The only useful thing: “Writing is work. It's also gambling. You don't get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you're on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don't whine.”
So I’ll stop whining about Margaret Atwood and move on to whining about Roddy Doyle, who seems to have a similar brain fog as Margaret, advising us to keep the online browsing to a minimum, use a thesaurus, and give in to temptation to do household chores once in a while. Wow, this is mind blowing stuff, isn’t it? These are almost patronizing suggestions for those of us who are looking for some meat on the bone. His useful bits, “Do feel anxiety – it's the job,” and “Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.”What’s odd are her first few suggestions about taking pencils on a plane and how to sharpen them and a reminder to bring paper (DUH. For heaven’s sake, are we first graders here? We can handle the writing materials part, Margaret, make yourself useful!)
If you haven’t given up on writing entirely and decided to go to medical school where at least you get to dissect dead people and SEE something, here we are at #5, Helen Dunmore. I’m sorry, who? I actually know who Helen is, but at this point I’m wondering if we’re ever going to hit a really heavy-hitting, popular, mainstream writer that most people know and would therefore listen to. We need some name recognition here. Not everyone reads Orange or Booker Prize winners.
(By the way I did that for a few months and was not impressed. I had to quit after Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which was wretchedly bad and is now being made into a movie! That book had more holes than a moth-eaten sweater.)
Her advice starts off promising, “Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue,” “Listen to what you have written” (for rhythm, because jagged places could be clues to what you don’t know yet), and “Read Keats’ letters” and then fizzles out into things like: read and rewrite, go for a walk, know that you can write and have a family, join a professional organization, and more of the same.
Yawn.
Geoff Dyer is next and his entry is a turn in a new direction – a turning of the top 10 pieces of advice into a flash fiction piece of such edge and wit that we’ll forget we wanted to read a list in the first place and just admire him instead. Every suggestion is couched in a personal story to show how clever he is. It was entertaining, I’ll admit. His best bit, “Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.”Neil Gaiman stopped at 8 but should have stopped at one. His first one was, “Write.” Is that supposed to be funny?
(Brief intermission: I think these writers should have had a word limit for each answer, and maybe some 'dont's' on how to give a good list so they didn’t get so deeply mired in the obvious suggestions that everyone and their grandmother can give you.)
Anne Enright does a little better, and I like her tone. She seems very sensible and down to earth and wry. The kind of person you’d like to have in your critique group. She would bring booze and brownies. How can you not like someone who says right off the bat, “The first 12 years are the worst”? I wouldn’t say her advice is earth-shattering, but there is a recognizable kernel of truth and feeling behind each one.
I will forgive her #9 (“have fun”) for #10, which is rather inspiring, “Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free.”
Do you hear that? Weekends off everybody!
Richard Ford’s list is more the kind of quote a reporter would get from someone if they caught him coming unawares out of the men’s room. It’s full of don’ts. It’s usually better to tell writers what to do than NOT do. Don’ts are easier to think of, and if you’re on the receiving end, checking them off in your head because you’re guilty of them, you pretty much lose the will to live, let alone write a book. Dos are harder to come up with and make people feel more empowered. His best, “Try to think of others' good luck as encouragement to yourself.” That’s a toughie, but it’s true.
Neil Gaiman stopped at 8 but should have stopped at one. His first one was, “Write.” Is that supposed to be funny? Or is Neil giving us The Zen of Writing Lists of Advice to Writers?I will forgive her #9 (“have fun”) for #10, which is rather inspiring, “Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you.
David Hare. PD James. Al Kennedy. No comment. In the immortal words of a Monty Python sketch, I’d be deliberately wasting your time. Hey, they should have asked John Cleese or Terry Gilliam!
Al Kennedy does give us something that I would suggest applying to these lists, "Older, more experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. Consider what they say. However, don't automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else; they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you."
I doubt that these are truly the rules by which these writers live. Maybe some of the ideas, but there’s a certain self-consciousness to writing a list like this. In compiling it, you’re not thinking of yourself only, you’re thinking of all the hungry writers who are going to print out your list and carry it around in their wallets, pulling it out on the dark nights of the writer’s soul (of which there are many) in order to cheer them, like The Little Match Girl with her matches.
And we know what happened to her, now don’t we? Who wants to be responsible for that?
So, no, I won’t be giving you my list.
Read the article here: Advice to Writers
Chris Stewart is program director for literary arts for the state Arts Council in Maryland. -
Isabelle Allende says writing technique, e.g. suspense, cannot be taught. The faculty at Algonkian say NONSENSE. Is Isabelle wrong? Or does she know something we don't?
Actually, she doesn't. I realize we're supposed to bow down before her god-ness... only just can't do it. She's a great writer, sure, no question, but that doesn't mean she's intellectually infallible.
Unfortunately, her viewpoint isn't unique. But who does it serve? Quite suddenly, we find ourselves face down and gasping for air in the dank pond of Iowa mantra: WRITING CANNOT BE TAUGHT.
If Iowa's mantra possessed any substance whatsoever, then why does it always take so many years for a novel author to hone their editorial skills, technique, and knowledge base, if not for the fact that they're teaching themselves and/or being taught? Apparently, writing is BEING TAUGHT quite often, and I might add, ALL OVER THE WORLD. Perhaps Isabelle and Iowa cannot communicate craft nuances to writers or engage them in a manner that is sufficiently instructive. But that does not mean the task is impossible because *they* can't or won't do it.
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DISCLAIMER: if you believe you are part of a fruitful writer group, Godspeed you. Most likely you are not, but it's a social distraction at least. Regardless, please consider the information below as being useful for reality checking your situation both now and in the future. If any of this rings true for you, you are advised to beware, especially if you are serious about writing a publishable novel.
"Traditional critique groups are looking at a work the size of a skyscraper with a magnifying glass. They lack the perceptual distance to see flaws."
Before we read my own dark, embittered opinion (just kidding) on the many downsides to writer groups, let's watch a video, then include a few reviews on this topic.Reviews of Sites Discussing Writer Groups - Inherent Fallacies
A writer site which shall remain anonymous due to the fact I utterly disagree with their criteria for judging any given writer group as beneficial, shall now be examined. According to them, the following five "qualities" must exist in order to judge any particular writer group helpful. As I note each category, I will also ( .. ) the fallacies inherent in each:1. Constructive Feedback(Amateur writers by definition cannot possibly know, under most circumstances, whether or not any advice concerning any element of their writing or story is valid in the first place. The chances of the advice being counterproductive are high, especially when a groupthink circumstance takes place. Also, studies prove that humans are far more likely to accept "critique" when it flatters them or corroborates what they wish to believe about themselves or their creations.)2. Positivity(What does this really mean anyway? At what point does advice become "negative"? Who decides? What are the group politics that define this term? Hearing the productive truth should set the bar, not what sounds or appears to be arbitrarily "positive." I can just hear one of the more erudite group members saying, "Now, Amelia, that's really not a positive way to look at Dan's work, is it?")Overall though, between being "positive" and wallowing in "chemistry," the writer group has beached itself on the Hopeless Coast.
3. Big and Small Picture Comments(Let's go back to number one above. The same logic holds. Additionally, the very act of dichotomizing the interweaving complexities of novel development into "big and small picture" is itself maddeningly arbitrary and functionally useless.)4. Thick Skin(Yes, by all means, we know this subject well. Avoid narcissist contamination by all means necessary. Still, thick skin presence does nothing to balance out the risks and downsides.)5. Chemistry(I understand what the author of this review of writer groups means, however, "chemistry" is yet another way of creating more risk. The more chummy the group, the less likely as a whole they will be to deliver that one "negative" comment (presuming it is also correct) once every few months that might actually do a bit of good. Overall though, between being "positive" and wallowing in "chemistry" the writer group has beached itself on the Hopeless Coast.)
Review Number Two - The Slow Boiling Frog Effect
This piece consists of a writer group review by a writer who seems to have plenty of experience with such groups. He loves Facebook as a source for finding groups. He goes on to name four different kinds of destructive writer group personalities (see our BAD EGG list below); however, his overall vision of writer groups is one of helpfulness and community. He fails to recognize the inherent shortcomings and risks in receiving potentially damaging advice when it comes to novel development and writing. My viewpoint on this is adequately expressed in the five points above.
I know this fellow means well, but his viewpoint is almost childlike. He will Pied Piper others into sanguinely tailing along with a writer group on Facebook, or wherever, until one day they either wake up or cross the line into seeing the group as an end in itself. At least the slow-boiling frog effect will comfort them.
Review Number Three - No Escaping Rank Beginners
I love the title of this one on Quora.Com: "How to find a creative writing group which isn't full of painfully bad writers?" Brooke McIntyre, Founder of Inked Voices, leads off by providing generic and maternal guidance on finding writer groups. Other members of Quora follow suit. None are critical of the writer group concept in the first place. They all seem to hold the belief that the significant risks the aspiring author faces in the midst of amateur group dynamics swirling with ill-formed opinions just don't exist, or at least not enough to matter.They all seem to hold the belief that the significant risks the aspiring author faces in the midst of amateur group dynamics swirling with ill-formed opinions just don't exist, or at least not enough to matter.
They recommend writing classes with competent instructors. Nothing wrong there, however, they fail to provide any kind of real litmus test for choosing one group over another other than to note being in one with similar genre interests might be helpful. But what about the credentials of people in the group? Publications? Reputations? The odds of hearing a bit of useful advice are increased in proportion to the quality of the members, especially if they're professionals (but how rare is that?). Unfortunately, the overwhelming mass of writer groups in their thousands, meeting at homes and in coffee houses all over the country, are filled with rank beginners (btw, who can still qualify as beginners after ten or more years).God bless them, they don't know what they don't know.
The Author's Review
For many years I've realized the futility of obtaining useful and project-evolving advice from the average writer group. In consideration of this epiphany, I recommend that writers limit any given writer group to a critique of prose narrative, and seek response in defined categories (e.g., clarity, imagery, dialogue, originality, pacing). Assuming the group members as a whole are reasonably intelligent, non-axe grinding, non-narcissistic, non-mentally ill people (and don't include the SIX BAD EGG TYPES below) as well as avid readers of your specific genre, they should, in theory, be able to provide a measure of helpful feedback to you regarding your narrative. Regardless, you must look for commonalities, and not take everything at face value.
At some future point, a dedicated novel writer should seek advice from a professional. Why? Because the professional can provide nuanced advice on proper narrative composition, openings, novel hooks, etc. that are beyond the reach of the standard writer group. Substantially better advice comes from successful acquisition editors or literary agents who have been in the business for many years. Their ability, honed by experience in the ms submission trenches, and via immersing in their chosen genres, outweighs the opinions of of even published authors who can only speak from a limited frame of reference.
In a recent Algonkian workshop, for example, an invited author recommended to one of the attendees that she start her novel in a car. Unknown to the author, this was terrible advice. Yes, terrible. Each year, thousands of new writers start their novels in cars. It's a running joke with agents, and I can't think of a better way to get an instant rejection than by starting a novel in a car. Even more ridiculous circumstances are created by money hungry colleges that match academic-trained literary authors as instructors with student genre writers.In a recent Algonkian workshop, for example, an invited author recommended to one of the attendees that she start her novel in a car. Unknown to the author, this was terrible advice. Yes, terrible.
A good example of this is the Stanford Online Certificate Program ($7000+ for six courses). Not only will the writers get highly questionable advice from non-professional instructors not in their genre, but they will pay through the nose for the privilege (while also receiving online "critique" from a group of non-professional writers, many or most of whom are also not in their genre).
From "Why Critique Groups MUST DIE":
Also, editing is best done on a keyboard, or with a red pen. Not out loud in a social group, where peer pressure and weird dynamics can screw up a draft in two seconds flat.
YOU MAY NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "HELP" AND REAL HELP.
Consider. Would you try to build a livable and quite stylish home on your own without an architect and a professional home builder simply because you had the ability to hammer a few boards together with nails? Of course not. You would acquire the expertise and skills before you began. And yet, new writers approach the creation of a thing equally or more complex, such as the writing of a competitive commercial novel, in the belief they can do so because they have a story idea, can type words on a page, and have read a few magazines about writing. They consult with other new writers as ignorant as themselves and proceed to build a house called a novel, but one that will not risk their lives because fortunately for them, it is all on paper.
Below are select and important views on writer groups culled from around the web. Naturally, we have chosen to keep the writers anon, cause it's safer for them.
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I found myself reviewing all the reasons why I hate writing groups (screenwriting or otherwise). In a nutshell, I find them to be anything but helpful to writers. Most of the participants are bad writers to begin with and have no real experience or expertise to offer other writers. Members typically are unpublished or unproduced, unschooled in screenwriting craft themselves (that’s why they’re in a group), and they almost never know how to give constructive criticism (i.e., “make the Mercedes a pickup truck”). Input from group members usually falls into three categories: empty praise, vicious critiques, or banal suggestions. I also find that, over time, familiarity within the group between members begins to undermine any real advice that might be offered, as cliques form...
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I know I’m not in the majority when I recommend that you get involved with a writers’ group. Dean Koontz apparently loathes them, Harlan Ellison despises them, and I’ve read advice from dozens of other pros whose work I love and whose opinions I value who say writers’ groups will do everything from steal your soul to cause your writing to break out in pox. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend that you get involved with a good writers’ group when you’re getting started. I credit what I learned from my early groups (plus enormous amounts of hard work and persistence) with leading me to publication...
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I’m also uncomfortable with the group-think I’ve seen develop whereby one person says, “This really isn’t a mystery. You should recast it as a mainstream novel.” And pretty much everyone else keeps making the same criticism, adding their own twist on it, even though you know in your gut that they are absolutely wrong. Yet the pile up continues and you start to doubt yourself. Then afterwards when you ask one of them about it, the person will say, “Oh, well, I didn’t really think that. Not really. I mean it might help, but I doubt it. You probably just need to make it more of a psychological mystery, you know?”
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Once a week reading fifteen pages only cleans up shoddy prose. Traditional critique groups are looking at a work the size of a skyscraper with a magnifying glass. They lack the perceptual distance to see flaws. A novel can have perfect prose page to page and yet have catastrophic faults. In fact, I would venture to say that most writers are not rejected due to prose, but rather, they meet the slush pile because of tragic errors in structure. Traditional critique groups can tell you nothing about turning points or whether a scene fits properly. They lack the context to be able to discern if our hero has progressed sufficiently along his character arc by the mid-point of Act 2. They have zero ability to properly critique pacing, since pacing can only be judged in larger context...
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I know two writers who stopped writing for years because critique groups convinced them they do not nor ever had “what it takes” (though the one of them who’s resumed writing has more what it takes than I do.) I’ve known a half a dozen writers who became obsessed with whatever the particular bugga boo of their group was, like “Don’t mix latinate and anglo-saxon words” to the marked detriment of their prose. I know writers who continue writing stuff that obviously will never sell, not because it’s what they want to do, but because their group has convinced them anything else is selling out. In fact, I’ve known more harm than good caused by writers’ groups...
THE BAD EGG TYPES (from Ebooks4Writers.com)Beware these types of writer group beings.Bad Egg 1: The “expert”. Often this person joins a group that they perceive as “amateurs” and get their satisfaction from tearing everyone else’s work to shreds. They seem to have met plenty of editors and agents, and know intimate details of what they’re looking for – never what you’re writing though. When you pin them down, usually they either don’t write at all, or write badly and have never been published (or not anywhere that counts).
Bad Egg 2: The “mouse”. She or he sits quietly, smiles, makes the coffee, brings cake. Is always working on something too big to bring for critiquing right now. And is way too polite to actually comment constructively on anyone else’s work. You’d almost forget they were there … except they are and you wonder why.
Bad Egg 3: The “boss”. This is the person who wants the group to take minutes, to form a “society” of some kind, to have a timer so no one gets a second more than their allotted time. Oh, and s/he decides how much time you’ll get, with his/her calculator. The group ends up spending so much time on official trivia that critiquing falls by the wayside.
Bad Egg 4: The “needy one”. This person means well, but their need for reassurance and encouragement leads to everyone in the group feeling like they can no longer give honest critiques. And that tends to leak outwards so that critiques generally become softer, less realistic and less helpful.
Bad Egg 5: The “defender”. Even if your group has a rule (a common rule, by the way) that the person whose work is being critiqued is not allowed to respond until the end, this person will argue and defend every comment you make. They always have to explain why their character acts that way, or says those words, or what that gaping plot hole is for. This can lead to some awful scenes all round!
Bad Egg 6: The “mentally ill”. Sadly, occasionally you will see this person in a writing group. When they are honest about their condition, it’s usually fine and the group can help. But often they refuse to acknowledge they have a problem, and can blow a writing group apart with their behaviour. I’ve experienced this personally, and we were lucky to save our group (and had to ask the person to leave).
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I found myself reviewing all the reasons why I hate writing groups (screenwriting or otherwise). In a nutshell, I find them to be anything but helpful to writers. Most of the participants are bad writers to begin with and have no real experience or expertise to offer other writers. Members typically are unpublished or unproduced, unschooled in screenwriting craft themselves (that’s why they’re in a group), and they almost never know how to give constructive criticism (i.e., “make the Mercedes a pickup truck”). Input from group members usually falls into three categories: empty praise, vicious critiques, or banal suggestions. I also find that, over time, familiarity within the group between members begins to undermine any real advice that might be offered, as cliques form...
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Traveling the world from the safety of our armchairs is the only travel most of us get these days, so it’s a good thing that publishers continue to bring out plenty of works grounded in far-flung locales to keep our imaginations, at least, from being stuck at home. This month’s offerings include a carefully plotted German thriller, a thoughtful Ghanaian mystery, a cynical Italian noir, and two new Scandinavian crime novels.
Melanie Raabe, The Shadow (Spiderline/House of Anansi)
Translated by Imogen TaylorMelanie Raabe made international waves with her tricky revenge thriller, The Trap, in which a shut-in author must venture outside after being granted a new chance to seek revenge for her sister’s murder, and her sophomore novel, The Stranger Upstairs, was equally as chilling. In her third novel, The Shadow, fans and newcomers will find another intricately plotted mystery. A woman desperately fleeing her past receives a mysterious message from a man on the street, telling her to be ready on February 11—to kill a man with good reason. And hey, that’s only two weeks away!
Roberto Perrone, The Second Life of Inspector Canessa (Pushkin Press)
Translated by Alex ValenteAnnibale Canessa was the Dirty Harry of Italy’s Years of Lead, but thirty years on, the country’s been stable for far too long, and he’s as bored as he is unnecessary. That is, until the death of a loved one brings him out of retirement and into hot pursuit of vengeance, as he tracks down a killer he once put away long before.
Katrine Engberg, The Butterfly House (Gallery/Scout)
Translated by Sarah ChaseKatrine Engberg’s irreverent contribution to Scandi noir continues in her second to feature the crime-solving duo of Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner. Jeppe is bouncing around Copenhagen, trying to determine the culprit behind an exsanguinated corpse discovered in a fountain, while Annette is bored at home at home during maternity leave and ready to do a little investigating on her own. Both will find themselves drawn into a complex tale of medical malfeasance centered around a deadly nurse at a local hospital…
Kwei Quartey, Sleep Well, My Lady (Soho Press)
Kwei Quartey’s second novel to feature irrepressible young private eye Emma Djan has the sleuth investigating the murder of famed fashion designer Lady Aruba with a list of suspects as long as a model’s evening gown, each one equally in love with the couturier, and with an equally powerful motive to want her gone. Was it the alcoholic lover? The hard-line religious father? The devoted gardener? Emma and her colleagues, hired by the murdered woman’s beloved aunt, are determined to find out.
Cecilia Ekbäck, The Historians (Harper Perennial)
Translated by Saskia MaarleveldIn neutral wartime Sweden, intrigue is the name of the game. A brilliant historian has been murdered, her thesis on Scandinavian supremacy a new weapon to be used against neutrality. Her coterie of fellow thinkers, led by a charismatic and dangerous ideologue, set out to discover what happened to their fallen comrade.
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There have been many times in the last ten years when I’ve watched a movie or read a book created before the twenty-first century and had the reaction, “You just can’t do that now.” Usually this was in response to a character who, for lack of access to a telephone, was in dire trouble with no way to summon help. Perhaps their phone line had been cut. Or maybe they were dodging a bad guy and couldn’t risk making a mad dash toward the nearest phonebooth.
I recently read Harvest by Tess Gerittsen (published in 1996) and was constantly aware of the aspects of the book that were dated due to advancements in how we communicate. With its medical setting, there was a prolific use of pagers, and the protagonist was able to check her answering machine, but only a couple of characters had early “cellular phones.” A lot of the tension in the story was derived by the main character’s desperate need to share information with an ally, often while she was alone or on the run.
If written today, the character—a medical resident—would have a cellphone at hand at all times. And if her allies were concerned about her whereabouts, now they could track her phone through GPS or by checking the signal as it pinged off nearby cell towers. Modern stories require new kinds of obstacles and more varied ways to build suspense; no longer can a book or movie involve a quest with the hero trying to get to a phone.
I’ve thought quite a bit about the potential demise of the “isolation trope,” as it’s something I explored in my recent novel, Wonderland, and lack of access to the outside world also plays a key role in my next novel, Getaway. In Wonderland, I had a family living in the Adirondacks in winter—a remote setting, to be sure—but I needed a touch of supernatural weather to fully justify how the family’s digital services could be shut off for weeks without someone coming by to fix the problem. In the middle of the Grand Canyon, where Getaway takes place, a person legitimately cannot get a cellphone signal, but that could very well change in the coming years.
It gets harder and harder as a writer to think of plausible reasons for how a plot might involve isolated characters. Already it requires extreme locations and mechanical failures in order to realistically leave anyone stranded. Could the future—with the possibility of ubiquitous satellite tracking and other technological advances—eradicate the “isolation trope” entirely? Or perhaps such stories will be relegated to fantasy, or historical fiction.
I remember being about thirteen, hanging out at Flagstaff Hill at dusk, and my best friend invited me to sleep over at her house. Unless I could call my parents and ask about rearranging our plans, they were scheduled to pick me up. First I asked my friends if any of them had quarters or loose change (the alternative was to make a collect call), then I headed across the street and down the road to the payphone. I punched in my home number, but the line was busy. I tried again and again, always getting a busy signal. I knew, by the length of the call, that it was my mom was on the phone—which meant my dad would soon be on his way to get me.
There was no such thing as call-waiting back then, or voicemail. After ten minutes of beep-beep-beep!, and growing increasingly anxious that I was running out of time, I took the action of last resort: I dialed the Operator and asked her to make an emergency cut-in on my mom’s call. My mother wasn’t alarmed when a stranger’s voice interrupted her conversation with the announcement that she had an urgent caller on the line. This was simply how we did things back in the day.
Each decade changes how we communicate, and in theory it gets easier and more convenient. But I can’t help but wonder what we’ll lose—in the real world, and in fiction—if no one in the future is ever truly out of touch. Just thinking about the potential for being constantly connected makes me want to go turn off all my devices…
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A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers.
Lisa Gardner, Before She Disappeared
(Dutton)“… a sharply-written, tension-filled yarn full of twists readers are unlikely to see coming. The most compelling element, however, is the character of Frankie, a recovering alcoholic whose obsession with the missing is a penance of sorts for the burden of guilt and grief she carries over a past trauma that took the life of a man she loves.”
–Bruce DeSilva (Associated Press)
Anders Roslund, Knock Knock
(Putnam)“With a story stretching from Stockholm to Montenegro and back, this is definitely a tense and detailed thriller, giving some interesting highlights into Swedish policework and their use of undercover agents … Though not overly violent, the ending is a twist and a shocker, and only a reader skilled in picking out details will guess this story’s finish. The last three sentences resonate with sad and shocking irony.”
–Toni V. Sweeney (New York Review of Books)
Ashley Audrain, The Push
(Pamela Dorman/Viking)“… taut, chilling … Blythe’s postpartum experience is familiar, and Audrain renders it flawlessly … Audrain has a gift for capturing the seemingly small moments that speak volumes about relationships … Audrain conjures the disintegration of marriage, along with the legacy of intergenerational trauma and the pain of parental grief, so movingly that the extent to which Blythe goes off the rails doesn’t seem that far-fetched … Occasionally the second person gets repetitive, and I found myself longing to hear Fox’s voice — or anyone else’s, really. But the chapters examining Blythe’s family’s past provide texture, and the narrative feels more balanced once Fox’s partner is tricked into dishing on their life, even asking Blythe for parenting advice. Finally, someone thinks she’s a good mother.”
–Claire Martin (The New York Times Book Review)
Todd Robert Petersen, Picnic in the Ruins
(Counterpoint)“Blending dark comedy and crime fiction, Petersen examines a moment in time that exquisitely reveals timeless and far-reaching themes … Throughout the novel’s adrenaline-filled external conflicts, Sophia is simultaneously considering deep, universal questions: To whom does this treasure really belong? Who owns this land? And, ultimately, who owns history itself? Picnic in the Ruins is an excellent read for those who enjoy thrillers set in the Southwest and readers interested in the preservation of history and culture.”
–George Kendall (Booklist)
Julie Carrick Dalton, Waiting for the Night Song
(Forge)“In her first novel, journalist Julie Carrick Dalton extols the virtues and beauty of the natural world and laments the forces that threaten it, passionately capturing the devastation that a fire can cause and the helplessness people feel in the face of such uncontrollable disaster … Though her style comes across heavy-handed at times, Dalton writes thoughtfully and poetically about a place clearly close to her own New Hampshire-based heart. Cadie and Daniela’s interrupted friendship forms the core of the novel, and Dalton captures that best-friend bond so intensely forged in youth … Through vivid and emotional imagery, Waiting for the Night Song speaks to the power that a place and its people can have over your life.”
–Melissa Brown (Bookpage)
P.J. Tracy, Deep into the Dark
(Minotaur)“… flirts with the fantastical while staying grounded in the all-too-real … Tracy introduces a lot of characters and story threads early in the going and then doesn’t stop adding them, which keeps the tension elevated … Stretches of downtime, in which characters just try to process what’s going on, feel very real. Sam and Melody both work at a bar; the tedium of repetitive work and their parallel efforts to build new lives and avoid attention make them a sympathetic if unreliable pair. And Tracy’s dry humor and the irony of such grim crimes occurring in sunny Los Angeles lend a grittiness to the story … The conclusion is a neatly timed, highly visual set piece that’s going to be killer in the inevitable movie adaptation. But even this feels like it has a sly wink to it, incorporating film tropes, such as the heroine with a twisted ankle, into a fight for survival in which a screenplay figures heavily. The layered storytelling and empathy offered to every character make Deep Into the Dark not just a hard-to-put-down thriller, but one that leaves the reader with much to think on, with no easy answers in sight.”
–Heather Seggel (Bookpage)
Chris Harding Thornton, Pickard County Atlas
(MCD / FSG)“In this debut novel, Thornton has skillfully created a hyper-detailed setting of the Nebraska plains … a gripping mixture of cop procedural and a psychological story of rebirth that gives one man the chance at leaving his past behind. Suspense builds as Harley realizes that redemption hides in the unlikeliest of places, and that the call is coming from inside the house — or in this case, a farmhouse on the edge of town.”
–Sheila McClear (The Star Tribune)
Allie Reynolds, Shiver
(Putnam)“Winter-sports fans are in for a treat here, as are all who enjoy a tale of extremes; the fierce competition between women characters is also a bonus. The answer to who’s pulling the strings here is a little incredible, but overall this debut is an atmospheric winter treat. Recommend it to those who enjoyed recent tales of reunions gone awry.”
–Henriette Verma (Booklist)
Joanna Scaffhausen, Every Waking Hour
(Minotaur)“Trauma underpins so many of the characters’ reactions and decisions in Every Waking Hour, and Schaffhausen addresses it with fascinating detail and great empathy, drawing on her background in neuroscience and Ph.D. in psychology. It all makes for a compelling countdown to a surprising resolution (several of them, really—there are numerous intriguing threads for reader-sleuths to follow). This book is the fourth Ellery Hathaway title, and the gasp-inducing goings-on in its final pages are sure to prime fans for yet another skillfully crafted, suspenseful installment.”
–Linda M. Castellito (Bookpage)
Melanie Finn, The Hare
(Two Dollar Radio)“… smart and atmospheric, with the pull of a literary thriller but with meat and heart … Rosie is an amazingly complex character, and Finn captures her porous self so well … I felt so close to the setting, too, I could often hear the fallen leaves crunching underfoot, or smell the woodstove smoke on a crisp winter evening. The complicated relationship between mother and daughter, cocooned together in a life of survival and secrets in a cabin in Vermont, is also captured well here. Finn is a master of complication made visible through taut and beautiful words. I highly recommend this book.”
–Katy Haas (Newspages)
The Girl from the Talk Shows: Jennifer Mee
in Crime Reads - Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Gun!
Posted
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The Life and Crimes of Jennifer Mee
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The whole thing seemed kind of silly if you didn’t look too closely. Here was a girl, on national TV, who couldn’t stop hiccupping! Her hiccups were short and high-pitched. It was kinda cute, right? She was only fifteen. She didn’t come from money. And now she was being flown all over the country to appear on every talk show imaginable; she was being put up in fancy hotels and given expensive manicures. She was experiencing that very specific sliver of the American Dream: fifteen minutes of fame.
Andy Warhol was the one who came up with that fifteen minutes of fame idea in the 1960s. But if you looked closer at the girl with the hiccups, you’d see that the swirl of attention around her looked like something else, something much older: the freakshow. Freakshows captured America’s imagination for a good hundred years, from the 1840s to the 1940s. There, anyone who seemed different, or strange was put on display, so that everyone else could gather around, and stare, and think, thank God that’s not me. Sure, the talk show hosts expressed sympathy for the hiccupping girl. But if you listened closely, you could hear the carnival barkers in the background: Come and see the Hiccup Girl, hiccupping 50 times a minute! What an oddity! What a curiosity! Here she is, in the flesh—for your viewing pleasure!
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The hiccups started in science class.
Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Mee, a white girl from St. Petersburg, Florida, was sitting in science class on January 23, 2007—when she hiccupped. And then she hiccupped again. She sat there in class, hiccupping, for fifteen minutes, and then she stood up to go to her high school’s medical clinic. She stayed at the clinic for five hours, but no one could cure her. So she went home.
There was no privacy at home. Jennifer had four younger sisters, a stepfather on disability, an unemployed uncle who was crashing on their couch, and a mom who supported the entire family by working the early shift at a local Denny’s. They were all crammed into a two bedroom—a two bedroom that was now filled, inexplicably, with the sound of hiccups that wouldn’t stop. The hiccups were coming almost every second, about fifty hiccups per minute. Jennifer’s mom, Rachel, thought they sounded like a chihuahua barking.
Jennifer was completely and thoroughly freaked out by what was happening to her. She tried every home remedy she could think of: holding her breath, drinking water in various complicated ways, eating spoonfuls of sugar, eating peanut butter. If she went out shopping, strangers would jump out at her in the aisles of Walmart, thinking they’d scare her hiccups away. She stopped going to school. She went to a pediatrician. She went to a neurologist. She went to a cardiologist. She had her blood drawn and her brain scanned. But she couldn’t stop hiccupping. Her chest was starting to hurt, and so were her hips. She couldn’t eat regular food anymore, so she switched to soft foods like Jell-O and applesauce, which she’d gulp down in between hiccups. She couldn’t sleep unless she took Valium or Benadryl. A curse of the hiccups, her mom called it. Jennifer told her mom that she was afraid no one would ever want to marry her. She started thinking about jumping off a bridge. Finally, desperate, her mother did something that seemed like a good idea at the time: she called the newspaper.
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For more about Jennifer Mee, listen to episode 41 of Criminal Broads.
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