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Galveston, Texas – named after an 18th-century Spanish military leader, port of the one-time Texas Navy, an entry point for African slaves and European immigrants. Known as the “Queen City of the Gulf” until 1900 when a hurricane all but destroyed the entire place, one of the deadliest storms in US history. Galveston recovered and rebuilt. In 1910, The Galveston Daily News also reported that Galveston was known throughout the world as “The Oleander City”. It was also known for its speakeasies, illegal casinos and rum-runners during Prohibition. So, of course, there’s some good crime writing from and about Galveston and the Gulf Coast. Back to that hurricane. Matt Bondurant’s Oleander City (2022), a crime story based on a supposedly true story, is set in the wake of the 1900 Galveston hurricane. A devastated city looks to rebuild. Three lives converge despite persecution from the Ku Klux Klan, a bare-knuckle boxing match gone wrong, and the recovery efforts of the American Red Cross. The fight was between veteran “Chrysanthemum Joe” Choynski, the most successful Jewish boxer in America, and Jack Johnson, a young hometown hero known as “the Galveston Giant.” But in the aftermath of the hurricane terrible crimes have occurred. Texas native best known for his Hap and Leonard series Joe R Lansdale’s The Big Blow (2000) also has a pugilism theme. Galveston, Texas. In this tale the hurricane is brewing offshore as boxer John McBride arrives from Chicago to challenge the local heavyweight champion, a 22 year-old Jack Johnson, as-yet unknown to the broader boxing world. Problem is, Johnson is black and the local Sporting Club doesn’t want him to leave the ring alive. Around the fight is a town filled with prostitutes and gamblers, storm-tossed sailors and everyday citizens. It’s full of local color from an author who has been called ‘the bard of East Texas’. Galveston recovered and enter the roaring twenties apparently roaring louder than most. Flappers, Flasks and Foul Play (2013), the first in Houston-based writer Ellen Mansoor Collier’s Jazz Age Mystery series is full on 1920s Galveston: the “Sin City of the Southwest.” Jasmine “Jazz” Cross, a 21-year-old society reporter, suspects foul play when a bank VP collapses at her half-brother Sammy’s speakeasy. Was it an accident or a mob hit? Jazz wants to know, as does Prohibition Agent James Burton. Jazz is back in Bathing Beauties, Booze and Bullets (2013). Now it’s 1927 in Galveston and Jazz is the society reporter for the Galveston Gazette who tries to be taken seriously by the good-old-boy staff, but the editors only assign her fluffy puff pieces, like writing profiles of bathing beauties. Agent Burton is still rousting speakeasies and facing down the Oleander City’s underworld mob bosses. Jazz is back once again in Prohibition Galveston in Gold Diggers, Gamblers and Guns (2014), a travelling vaudeville show comes to town in Vamps, Villains and Vaudeville (2015), and finally one last time in Deco Dames, Demon Rum and Death (2018), by now in a relationship with Prohibition Agent Burton, who’s still chasing rum-running gangsters. Galveston’s Roaring Twenties come to a crashing halt with the Great Depression in James Carlos Blake’s Under the Skin (2003). An illegitimate son of an infamous Mexican revolutionary serves as the bodyguard to a pair of gangsters who hold sway over Depression-era Galveston, before he falls in love with the young wife of an aging put powerful Mexican warlord. Blake writes the tough-as-nails US-Mexico border novels featuring Eddie Gato Wolfe but this Galveston-set stand alone is a fantastic read too. And into the 1940s with Galveston ’44 (2020) by BW Peterson. It’s 1944, and Sheriff Sam Baker has his hands full enforcing the laws of the wide-open town of Galveston, patrolling its quasi legal casinos and cathouses. A wartime murder, someone close to Baker in the frame and the city a den on iniquity. And so to contemporary Galveston and the Gulf Coast…. Right along that East Texas coast is the setting for Attica Locke’s terrific Highway 59 series (the road that basically traverses the state). In Bluebird, Bluebird (2017) Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger patrols the backwoods towns of Highway 59. In the town of Lark, two murders have been committed – a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman. It’s a mess threatening to explode into racial tensions that are not far below the service in this part of the world. Ranger Matthews returns in Heavan, My Home (2019) when nine-year-old Levi King finds himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake and a town suffering a new wave of racial violence in the wake of the election of Donald Trump. A black man is a suspect in the possible murder of a missing white boy: the son of an Aryan Brotherhood captain. And a few more Galveston/Gulf Coast set crime novels…. Rachel Cochran’s The Gulf (2023) is set in the fictional town of Parson, Texas, a small town ravaged by a devastating hurricane and the Vietnam War. Murders, Vietnam vets, the long-estranged returning to town and a big dollop of Gulf Coast atmosphere. Texas journalist-turned-novelist Julia Heaberlin heads to the Gulf Coast in Black-Eyed Susans (2015) with a chase from the Gulf Coast to Waco involving Tessa Cartwright, the only survivor of a notorious serial killer. From Sugar Land, Texas, Kristen Bird worked as a teacher in Galveston before writing The Night She Went Missing (2022) is set on nearby Galveston Island where cracks and deep class divides are showing in the residents seemingly perfect lives. And finally, something extra special and a personal favourite of mine – Nic Pizzolatto’s Galveston (2014). A perfectly formed and executed short noir from the creator of True Detective, with all the atmosphere and febrile tension you’d expect from the man behind that TV show. Roy Cady is by his own admission ‘a bad man’. With a snow flurry of cancer in his lungs and no one to live for, he’s a walking time-bomb of violence. He’s on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, a journey of seedy bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pick-up trucks. Read the book, soak up the Gulf Coast atmosphere and then watch the great movie they made from it too. View the full article

Nature can be a harsh partner for the novelist. Trying to integrate it into a passage or entire plot is a daunting effort that doesn’t always succeed. I don’t refer to snapshots of snow-capped mountains or purple sunsets tacked onto a scene for casual color, but rather the more ambitious weaving of the land and nature into a tale to drive plot, develop character or convey underlying themes. Inviting the power and beauty of nature into a novel can be a humbling task, complicated by the many ways people experience it. “Nature and books,” Emerson aptly observed, “belong to the eyes that see them.” The cry of a loon may be a haunting summons for some, but just background noise for others. Some novelists elevate nature to the role of a major actor in their drama. The title character in Melville’s Moby Dick is a profound example, in which the character arc of nature’s leviathan evolves from ocean-dwelling thug to cunning opponent and ultimately to an instrument of destiny. Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea is a two character drama, with only one of them a human. Conrad’s Lord Jim opens with an unforgiving act of nature which defines, and torments, the protagonist for the rest of his life. In other contexts some natural phenomenon or the land itself is posed as foe or immutable obstacle to a protagonist’s goal. Few can match Willa Cather’s deft use of the natural world to shape and mirror characters, reflected again and again in O Pioneers with portending passages like “the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society.” Her characters, and her invocations of the earth, give poignant emphasis to Emerson’s observation of nature being a subjective experience, variously reflecting how it can be a source of uplifting spirituality, despairing defeat, or unfulfilled promise. Under her seasoned pen the land takes a measure of the human soul, and some souls fail. This visceral connection to the earth can also be found in classics like Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and Conrad Richter’s The Awakening trilogy. The results are works of profound insight into the pioneer experience. William Faulkner expertly wove nature into many of his tales, as reflected in his classic Go Down Moses. The swamp dwelling protagonist in Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing is defined in many ways by her coastal marshes. Owens’ novel is an example of how nature can be leveraged for a powerful role in mystery and crime novels. It is an actor without motive or conscience. It can be an arbiter of spiritual and physical strength. It can be a vehicle for concealment and terror. It can give refuge, inflict injury, kill and heal. Set a bewildering murder in a raging tempest, swamp or wilderness and it becomes an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Nature can be a potent partner in crime. The character arcs in these books correlate with the respective character’s perception and experience with the natural world. My own Native American characters demonstrably sag in both body and spirit when they are too long in an urban environment, separated from their natural milieu. All of my Bone Rattler books incorporate such tribal figures and the intertwined roles of native and nature often become a vital element of both plot and character development. My protagonist arrives in the New World with popular preconceptions of the wilderness and its natives as terrifying and savage. This begins to feel like a hollow, even guilty, place in his conscience as his experiences suggest otherwise. His complex encounters with natives and raw nature gradually fill that hollow, and this dynamic plays an important role in his becoming more American. Learning to see nature as a constant stream of miracles, surviving its adversities and acknowledging the natives’ cryptic connection with the earth became, I suggest in my novels, important ingredients in developing the inquisitive self-reliance and love of freedom that anchored the evolving American identity. These elements are underscored by sources from the period. One of my favorite touchstones in researching my novels are newspapers of the time, which have survived better than those of the 19th century because their paper was made from durable cotton fiber and not the acidic newsprint of the next century, which over time renders some papers too brittle to handle. Seldom do I find a paper from the 18th century that does not prominently feature some “natural news” on, for example, wind and current affecting sailing conditions, reports on farming challenges, weather generally, or some discovery in nature such as a giant tree. The people of the time lived much closer to nature than we do today. Ninety-five percent of the colonial population were farmers, meaning they lived close to the earth and the cycles of nature. Even the urban population was much closer to natural phenomenon than it is today, often focusing on lightning, a popular topic for both entertainment and science. These points were brilliantly illuminated in Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous 1893 essay on The Significance of the Frontier in American History, the first scholarly effort to trace how this engagement with nature shaped America. Turner described America’s challenging encounter with nature as a process of “perennial rebirth.” It was the “crucible of the frontier” that “Americanized” the colonists and created new “intellectual traits of profound importance” to the rise of democracy on the continent. From the perspective of the novelist, in no other context is the old writer’s adage of “show don’t tell” more relevant. The reader can’t be instructed to engage with nature, he or she has to feel engaged. Too many writers simply toss in curt descriptive phrases reflecting a natural condition and move on, leaving the moment unfulfilled and losing the opportunity for a richer reading experience. The first step in inviting nature onto the page doesn’t have to be arduous. “Hannah stepped into the rosy dawn and saddled her horse,” as a simplistic example, is not nearly as engaging as “Hannah stepped out into the dawn to find the larks awakening. She whistled toward the meadow and smiled as they replied, then lifted her saddle to the mare.” In both, the central action remains the same—Hannah steps outside and saddles her horse—but the latter passage reveals Hannah as someone connected with nature and offers the hint of deeper revelations to come. Ultimately, when well executed such novels can lure the reader into a new appreciation of, even a new relationship with, the natural world, a satisfying experience for both writer and reader. We need the wild, which exists not just in wilderness, but in meadows, groves of trees, the flight of a bird, an urban elm, or the smallest of gardens. It offers seeds of imagination and the breeze for soaring high. As a writer, a reader, and a fellow traveler on the human journey, I have learned how important it is to recognize that we are one small part of a vast spectrum of life, that there are wonderful discoveries to be made in every forest, that nature indeed offers up one mysterious miracle after another. Once, as writer or reader, you tap into this natural resonance, you will realize there is much of nature in human nature, and that some of its mystery lies within ourselves. If you need to be convinced, then take a moment to contemplate one of the most wonderful facts I have ever encountered: fifty percent of our human DNA is shared with trees. *** View the full article

After the greed of studio bosses led to what The Simpsons would call a “scary couple of hours,” crime and mystery TV is back this year in a big way, from a chilly new season of True Detective to Clive Owen as a retired Sam Spade to Sofia Vergara as legendary cocaine queenpin Griselda Blanco. Amid the embarrassment of riches, however, one of the decade’s most underrated crime yarns quietly gears up for its third and final season, the perfect time to catch up. In an era where most premium cable makes at least some stabs at awards bait, Starz has stayed solidly populist, for good and for ill, with its biggest cash cow the pulpy 50 Cent-produced “Power” universe of shows or the time-travel bodice-ripper “Outlander.” “Hightown,” which premiered a couple months into the coronavirus pandemic, is something different. The dark side of both a quaint small town and an idyllic resort is one of the oldest tropes in the book, from “Twin Peaks” to “The White Lotus.” “Hightown” adds a new dimension, however, with its setting of Provincetown, the iconic queer hotspot on the tip of Cape Cod. Actual geography situates Provincetown at the far end of the Cape, but it has symbolic weight in the show as well: as the title suggests, it’s largely about the opioid epidemic spreading its claws throughout New England, including the farthest point you can hit without falling into the sea. Our heroine, National Marine Fisheries Service Agent Jackie Quinones (Monica Raymund), is herself a 20th-century twist on a classic noir anti-hero. She gets too personally connected to cases, drinks and does drugs too much and fucks people she shouldn’t, like her forebears in the genre. But Jackie’s also a Latina lesbian, the kind of character an oversensitive writer might feel the need to make a flawless paragon rather than, to put it bluntly, a total mess like Jackie. Indeed, her skills as a sleuth are another layer to her pathology, as she gets involved in an investigation of murders and organized crime that have nothing to do with her actual law-enforcement mandate as a way of displacing her addictions. Like any good noir protagonist, Jackie’s also a consummate outsider. Not only does she stand out in the heavily white Provincetown and broader Cape, she actually lives there, one of those places like Hollywood or Washington that we assume no one is actually “from.” It also means the show, with its Dominican and Cape Verdean villains, avoids evoking potentially racist tropes of sinister non-whites invading the little seaside patch of heaven—Jackie’s not white either and she also understands the town’s imperfections already. She’s an ideal viewpoint figure through which to explore this darkness in paradise; her addictions and her outsider status both mean she lacks the illusions of people who only come to party for Pride or the Fourth of July. Boston, of course, has a rich tradition of noir and mystery, as befitting a city of tight-lipped tough guys and intimidating Catholic architecture. The region’s rambling rural landscapes, meanwhile, have their own spooky vibe that captured the imagination of the likes of Lovecraft and Stephen King. Not so for its sunny resort towns, which have always been sort of the minor leagues of beach noir compared to heavy hitters like southern California and Florida. It’s not for lack of material, either—Provincetown’s darker historical legacy includes the notorious, newly-solved “Lady of the Dunes” murder case and a Manson-esque serial killer known as the “Cape Cod vampire.” Growing up, my younger brother and I only knew the Cape during the summer months, when we visited as guests of my grandparents. It wasn’t until my honeymoon in October 2012 that I set foot in Provincetown in the off-season for the first time and I really grasped something I intellectually knew, that this place kept going after I left. The slight chill in the air and the largely empty streets added a vague danger to this understanding, like the town itself was some great, hibernating beast that would wake up if we made too much noise. “Hightown” gets that vibe and captures it, and what is noir itself but a vibe spun into a good story? View the full article

Once a place of movie-making fantasy, a decaying movie set became the starting point for vengeance on Hollywood. Known as “Spahn Ranch,” this crumbling and deserted Western soundstage was the ramshackle home and headquarters for what eventually became known as “The Family.” The moniker represented the delinquent and motley crew of outcasts who abandoned their suburban and city lives to follow the scripture according to Charles Manson. There, living away from society and hidden away in the San Bernadino Valley, Manson and his Family came to commit the unthinkable in the summer of 1969. The carnage started on August 8 when the clan brutally killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate (alongside four others) in a Hollywood home high in the hills. The killers went on a crazed rampage and scrawled the word “PIG” in her blood on the wall before they left. The very next day, the members slaughtered a supermarket executive, Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, writing “death to pigs” in blood again as their calling card. The murders completely shook the American psyche. Sitting at a complicated juncture of Hollywood and celebrity, a spectacle of death and violence, and a backdrop of uninhibited social mores and “free love,” the crimes unnerved a nation at a time of ever-increasing social emancipation. Joan Didion, writing in her well-known paean to the era “The White Album,” said a “paranoia” was fulfilled by these murders. The 1960s were indeed now over. When Mason and the Family were finally apprehended months later, their trial only saw a wild and carnivalesque display staged for an unnerved but fixated public. Manson proclaimed himself a messiah, warning of impending destruction on the social fabric of America. Female members, meanwhile, shaved their skulls and adorned their foreheads with crosses (then later swastikas) in literal and figurative protest to the proceedings they saw as a crime itself. It was deputy district attorney, Vincent Bugliosi, who was tasked with prosecuting Manson and followers for the gruesome Tate-LaBianca crimes. Since Manson didn’t commit the crimes, it was up to the attorney to build a case that implicated Manson in them and wholly demonstrate his culpability. These convincing court arguments were memorialized in the 1974 book, Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders, which now celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. Taking cues from his own investigation and prosecution of the case, Bugliosi advanced the idea that Manson and his followers committed the murders to instigate a race war between black and white people in America, foretold by the lyrics of the Beatles’ 1968 White Album. The record ostensibly carried a coded message of an impending apocalyptic conflict—and it needed a spark to start. Bugliosi argued that once this war between the races was over, Manson and the Family believed they would emerge from a bottomless bunker (called “the Pit”) nestled in the Californian desert and soon control the remaining population who survived the bloodshed. When Helter Skelter was published in January 1974, it became an instant bestseller. (It also enjoys, decades on, the title of most popular true crime book of all time.) Serving as an official judicial and investigative narrative, it sought to authoritatively explain the reasons for the murders that confounded and alarmed so many. And the volume did so very successfully. The motives went unchallenged for decades. There was not only the crime’s extremity and abruptness, but also its extraordinary ability to target what many thought were untouchable: celebrities. Bugliosi’s contention, a facsimile to his court arguments, was this: the crimes were committed by Manson’s drug-addled young followers to ignite the prophesized race war—slaughtered elites would be the gasoline to start the blaze. Such an explanation has indelibly influenced public perception of the the crimes now some five decades since. So much so that it helped perpetuate the mythologizing of Manson, advancing a largely misleading narrative of him as a crazed prophet-like figure and his followers as unhinged and Dionysian-like. Recent investigative efforts, however, have begun to poke holes in Helter Skelter. Scratch a little and the polish on Bugliosi’s grand narrative of a messiah seeking to start civil conflict—argued successfully at trial—appears less omnipotent and compelling than it once was. Books such as Tom O’Neill’s Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties (2019) and Jeff Guinn’s Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (2013), have been thorough and illuminating reckonings on the official Manson murders. Indeed, for O’Neill, it became a twenty-year personal obsession to better understand the motives of the infamous slayings that motivated his own probings. Bugliosi, as both trial prosecutor and official custodian of the story for the public, troubled O’Neill the most. It’s easy to see why. In his investigation, O’Neill learns that Bugliosi tampered with witnesses during court proceedings and may have covered up evidence. (For the record, O’Neill’s book was published after Bugliosi had died. Bugliosi had threatened to sue O’Neill after he learned of O’Neill’s angle.) The preamble to Helter Skelter can be troubling when viewed from this contemporary revisionist angle: For months, Bugliosi collect[ed] and sift[ed] through the grisly evidence, listen[ed] to the chilling testimony of murders and accomplices. Slowly, he put the puzzle pieces together. Readers are told it was the DA that seemingly uncovered the vast conspiracy that motivated the crimes—not the police. With Bugliosi building one main motive, O’Neill suggests that more benign reasons—just out of sight but nevertheless legitimate—may have been missed, or intentionally left out of the sanctioned script. One of most compelling explanations unexamined in Helter Skelter was that the Tate murder was a revenge attack gone bad. Manson had previously developed a friendship with Terry Melcher, a successful record producer working in Los Angeles. The allure of a record deal was too tantalizing for the aspiring rock star Manson, who doggedly pursued Melcher to secure a contract, even uses his coterie of young and sexualized girls to entice (and entrap) Melcher into making it so. The deal was never done, with Melcher later trying to rid himself of the sycophantic Manson and weird band of groupies. (Rumor has it that Melcher’s mother, Doris Day, apparently laughed at the suggestion of having Manson signed to the label.) With Tate now living at the same house that Melcher had previously resided, the frenzied and spontaneous confrontation squared up to vengeance from an aggrieved Manson whose ego had been badly bruised. This is a sentiment echoed by writer Guinn, who says that the house likely represented a rejection from the musical establishment Manson so desperately wanted to access. Why the carnage and brutality? It may be owed to the chokehold Manson had over these adolescent and twenty-something adults, who had become indoctrinated and enamoured with Manson’s fanaticism. This all bolstered by a heady diet of alcohol and drugs, isolation from mainstream society, and a belief-system that leveraged conspiracy and paranoia of society to unite its members to the “Family.” Anyone surviving the night, career criminal Manson surely told his followers, wasn’t an option. There is also more damning evidence unearthed by O’Neil. There are interviews with witnesses that were withheld from the defense team and testimony with former detectives who insist that important evidence was destroyed by their superiors during the court proceedings in the early seventies. Does that evidence support the “helter skelter” theory or another motive? We’ll never know. Elsewhere, conspiracy seems a foot in the crimes, as we learn that Shahrokh Hatami (Tate’s personal photographer) admitted to being notified of the murders over the telephone by a CIA agent—some ninety minutes before the police were even called to the scene. Still, be warned that there are other strange tangents O’Neill pursues, including apparent plans the CIA had to use unwitting hippies in San Francisco to study the effects of LSD, which may have played a role. Others who have retraced the crimes say there is a grain of truth to the claim that Manson thought there would be an all-out race war one day. James Buddy Day, in Hippie Cult Leader: The Last Words of Charles Manson, argues that after a drug deal had become bloody involving a member of the Family, Manson’s paranoia set in. At the isolated Spahn Ranch, there was a fear that the rebel organization, the Black Panthers, would attack in retaliation. The Tate–LaBianca crimes were therefore part-diversion and part-reprisal. Manson himself spent a lifetime denying involvement with the Tate–LaBianca murders until his death in 2017. “I didn’t have nothing to do with killing those people. They knew I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Manson told Day before his death. While Manson was never present for these heinous acts, he always had culpability. A half-century on, no single motive now neatly explains these crimes. Bugliosi, drawing on his far-reaching narrative offered in the courtroom of a fantasy racial conflict, may have offered one exhaustive and comforting explanation in 1974. But now thanks to more discerning investigative efforts—on both Bugliosi’s book and the crimes themselves—the reality of Tate-LaBianca is far murkier than what many were led to believe. Helter Skelter helped shed remarkable light on crimes that completely upended the American psyche in 1969. But in striving for a uniting and cohesive motive—one incriminating Manson and explaining unexplainable violence—the book likely obscured a mess of contradictory and banal realities lurking just out of sight in America’s most infamous crime. View the full article

In the world of crime fiction (and fact) Adam Plantinga is an authority figure. A twenty-two-year veteran of law enforcement, he began his career with the Milwaukee Police Department in 2001 and has spent the last fifteen years with the San Francisco PD, where he is a sergeant assigned to street patrol. Drawing on that specialized knowledge, he authored two non-fiction books on policing and procedure—400 Things Cops Know and Police Craft; the former won a 2015 Silver Falchion award, was nominated for an Agatha, and has been called a bible for crime writers. This month, Plantinga made his debut as a novelist with The Ascent (January 2, 2024; Grand Central Publishing). When former Detroit street cop and recent widower Kurt Argento finds himself wrongfully jailed in a Missouri prison, he doesn’t think he has anything left to lose. But after the facility’s maximum-security system begins to fail, he and a group of strangers—including the governor’s soon-to-be-married daughter—must join forces to face off against the pen’s most violent inmates, many of whom have been released from their cells. In a bid to reach the safety of the roof, Argento will either rise to the top or die trying … John B. Valeri: The Ascent is your first novel after having written two non-fiction books on policing. What compelled you to make the transition to fiction – and how did you find the process of melding authenticity with creative license now that you’re not beholden to fact alone? Adam Plantinga: After my non-fiction books, I felt I’d said most of what I wanted to say about the job. But I had a story in me I wanted to get out. So I figured I’d make the main character a street cop. Since it was fiction, I could take the narrative any which way I chose, but I could still use my experience in urban law enforcement to inform the main character and add an authentic skin to the plot. JBV: Your lead, Kurt Argento, is a former police officer who feels he has nothing left to lose following his wife’s death. How did you endeavor to understand the depths of his grief and render it believably on the page – and in what ways does Emily serve as a presence throughout the book despite her physical absence? AP: As a cop, people often call you on the worst days of their lives. You bear witness to how a tremendous loss can take apart someone’s life from the inside out. I tapped into some of that. I also know how a spouse or a partner can make you feel like the best version of yourself so when that’s ripped away, it leaves a debris field. As for Emily, I wanted to use the flashbacks to their life together as a way to help illuminate and humanize Argento. Although she’s gone, Argento tries to act in ways that she would approve of. She’s still his guide. JBV: The narrative largely alternates between Argento’s perspective and that of grad student/governor’s daughter Julie Wakefield. In what ways do these POVs enhance our understanding of each character as seen through the eyes of the other? AP: Argento recognizes strength in Julie, even during the height of the peril of Whitehall, that she may be slow to recognize herself. On the other end, Julie sees humanity in Argento that he’s buried deep. Overall, it was important to me to show Whitehall through both the eyes of a seasoned street cop and a wide-eyed novice. JBV: The book’s title works on literal and figurative levels. How did the idea of ascension serve as a guiding point throughout the writing (or rewriting), both in terms of action and emotion? AP: When the book starts, Argento is already in a dark place that only gets darker as the book progresses. I realized early on that the only way he could pull himself out of the pit he’s in was to do something for someone else—namely, to help the survivors in Whitehall get to safety (although I tried to create Whitehall with a kind of warped funhouse quality to it where the higher you climb, the more dangerous the floors get.) With The Ascent, I knew I was writing a meat-and-potatoes thriller, but that doesn’t preclude giving Argento what I hope the reader finds to be a satisfying character arc. JBV: As a representative of policing/law enforcement, what do you feel is your responsibility in depicting the complexities of the criminal justice system? Please share a few examples of how you show this juxtaposition of ideals and flaws throughout the book and what kinds of dialog you hope it might inspire. AP: The criminal justice system is indeed complex, which I spoke to in my first two nonfiction books. With my novel, I didn’t feel the need to write a message book, or trumpet reform. But I still wanted to acknowledge some of the currents in criminal justice. So there are righteous cops and some criminal cops, just like in real life. Police body cameras end up playing an important role, racism rears its head, and Argento muses on poverty and gang life, like how, when you start as a drug lookout before you’re ten, you’re already on a doomed trajectory. JBV: As with policing, there is a communal spirit (or familyhood) that exists within the writing community. How have your fellow creatives helped you along your own author’s journey, both in terms of craft itself and the unique landscape that is a writer’s headspace? AP: They’ve been great. I’ve had writer friends help with every step of the process, from shaping rough drafts to navigating the agent and publishing world. Then there’s been the established crime writers who were willing to roll the dice on a new guy and consider the book for a blurb. I’m grateful for their time and generosity. JBV: In addition to being a writer you are a family man and a sergeant with the San Francisco PD. What have you found to be the key(s) to achieving some semblance of balance in your personal and professional lives – and what advice would you offer those who struggle with finding the time to pursue their own creative ambitions amid other responsibilities? AP: I married well. Above my station. So that’s been key. Without the support of my wife (who is also one of my best editors), this book doesn’t get off the ground. My advice is something I heard that I think either came from coach John Wooden or might as well have. It goes like this: Most people know what they need to do to be successful. They just won’t do it. They won’t pay the price. Dreams are fine, they can inspire and fuel us, but if you want them to turn into something tangible, you gotta put in the sweat equity. JBV: Leave us with a teaser: What comes next? AP: A follow-up to The Ascent, with the working title of Hard Town, is slated to come out in 2025. While he’s housesitting for an old SWAT buddy in a small Arizona town, Kurt finds himself in a new kind of trouble, because he finds it hard to relax. Hard Town has a much larger scope than the first book and goes in what I think are some unexpected directions. I’m excited about it. View the full article

The publication date for my debut novel, The Devil’s Daughter is days away. In a sense it’s the apotheosis of my writing career. I’ve spent decades as a working Hollywood screenwriter, which turns out to be something of a mixed blessing. The money is good. The creative experience, not so much. After years of being critiqued by studio and network executives, The Devil’s Daughter was finally my chance to write exactly what I wanted to write. The noir hero, Jack Coffey, lives in 1950s New York, a city of great jazz clubs, glamorous women, big city corruption and mob violence. It’s written in a style very much my own, but influenced by the time I spent working with Michael Mann. I was sitting in my office at the old Warner Brothers/Hollywood studio, when the phone range. My assistant (I had an overall writing deal at the time that came complete with an assistant), called out, “Gordon, Michael Mann for you.” Now, I knew Michael socially, not professionally. Our wives were friends and, like Michael, Elinor had gone to The University of Wisconsin/Madison. The four of us would have dinner occasionally, and listening to Michael talk about filmmaking was fascinating. He had recently been the Executive Produce on “Miami Vice” and “Crime Story”—seminal noir-ish TV shows of the late 1980s. Through those shows and his earlier work, he had created both an unique action and design style. Rather than trade inside-the-industry gossip, which is pretty standard among writers and directors over dinner in L.A., we talked style, characterization, and the kind of story structure that works most effectively in the neo-noir genre. When Michael called that morning, he wanted to ask a favor. He had just finished a miniseries for NBC, “Drug Wars: The Camerena Story,” and before he “locked picture”—which is to say when no more changes could be made in the editing room—he wanted a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at the piece. He didn’t have concerns really. Rather he wanted to make sure the miniseries had both the depth of story and character he intended, and the propulsive narrative that we’ve all come to know as his signature. I had a connection to this project that was independent of Michael. I knew the writers, Rose Schacht and Ann Powell, and the director, Brian Gibson, was a friend. I knew they were working with Michael and I was anxious to see how the project turned out. I was not disappointed. It’s a powerful story of an American DEA agent, KiKi Camerena, trying to bring the cartels to heel, and paying for it with his life. Though Michael received only a “story by” credit as well as that of Executive Producer, he was very much the driving creative force and the final edit was his. This was in the days of the VHR and the show’s cassettes were delivered to me the next day. I watched all six hours in one sitting and was blown away. The story was incredibly compelling, the action heart-stopping, and the death of Camerena in the end heart-breaking. I called Michael to congratulate him. We discussed minor tweaks to the picture and I thanked him for letting me see it. The show went on to great success earning a primetime Emmy for outstanding miniseries. At the time, I had a deal with Aaron Spelling. Although I was quite fond of Aaron, a real character out of old school Hollywood, it wasn’t a very rewarding creative experience. It was profitable though, and thinking I had made my deal with a very sweet and personable devil, I intended on riding out my contract doing the best I could under the circumstances. Then one afternoon my agent at CAA called and said Michael wanted me to write and produce what was to be a sequel to The Camerena Story. I thought I was creatively saved. And in a very real sense, I was. Michael want to do a piece about the Columbian drug cartels, specifically the one in Medellin. They were an incredibly brutal violent gang who were responsible for processing and exporting most of the cocaine that was ravaging American inner cities at the time. The Medellin cartel was led by the infamous Pablo Escobar, who, despite his murderous criminality, seemed untouchable. And at the time, Escobar was still on the loose. I left Spelling and moved into Michael’s offices. His incredible meticulousness and attention of detail was clear from the start. I was given notebooks crammed with information about the cartel that Michael and then Time Magazine reporter Elaine Shannon, who covered drug trafficking in Central and South American, had compiled. In those notebooks was every aspect of the story was outlined. As were the characters: not only the obvious villains like Pablo, but heroic Columbian National policemen who had lost their lives trying to bring Medellin to ground. And there was the story of American DEA agents working in a deadly environment in Colombia, living in fortified apartment complexes in Bogota virtually always in danger. They would be the focus of the miniseries and in that regard we not only interviewed agents in the field who rotated through Los Angeles, but Michael and I traveled to Washington to see agents there and meet with the head of the DEA. It was only after I was completely conversant with the information in those notebooks, the very real people fighting the drug wars, and my own interview notes, that I began to write. And what I wrote initially wasn’t the script. It wasn’t an outline either, nor a treatment. It went far beyond those traditional forms. Michael wanted the entire story with all its elements except dialogue written first. Most screenwriters, myself included, approach their work in something of a literary fashion, often prioritizing character. Michael’s approach is deeply visual. When we talked through potential scenes, he wanted to know what I thought the scene looked like. What was the setting? What did the space look like? What was the lighting like? What were the colors, the chroma as he like to call it? If you watch Mann’s movies or television shows, you can immediately see how that visual approach impacts the final product. I had to adjust my own writing style to meet his criteria. And it was only when that mega-treatment was completed, did we talk about characterization and dialogue. Michael is a demanding producer and as much as I loved working with him, he isn’t much for the niceties. I had to be secure as a writer, open to ideas, but willing to go toe-to-toe with Mann creatively when I thought he was wrong. In giving notes on my first draft, he might bracket a whole page of dialogue and write “this is shit!” in the margin. To be fair, when he liked something, the marginal note would read, “this is good!” By the time we went to film, Michael was prepping “The Last of the Mohicans.” As the Co-Executive producer, I was left to wrangle the production. When we went into post-production, and I had finished my edit, Michael did an editorial pass of his own. Editing both picture and sound is his forte, and the end result was brilliant. We were nominated for an Emmy award, but sadly didn’t win. This process took more than a year and it was, until writing The Devil’s Daughter, the most interesting and creatively challenging year of my life. I’ve moved on to novels like the Devil’s Daughter but, at eighty-years-old, Michael is still making compelling and fascinating movies, which anyone who has seen “Ferrari” will attest. *** View the full article

You can tell me anything. When you’re in this room, and we’re sitting across from each other, and your mind is reeling with all the bad things you’ve done to people, and all the bad things they’ve done to you, you can let it all out into the air between us. All the weird sex stuff, the compulsive jerking off, the period blood staining the gym shorts when you were thirteen, the infidelities, the regret about having kids or not having kids. You can tell me about the time you did mushrooms and made out with a window for three hours, or that time with your dad’s friend, that time you felt a stranger’s boner press against you on the subway, how you wish your mother would just die already, how you accidentally screwed that IT girl in the conference room, how the rape scene in Deliverance turns you on, how you obsessively think about sex or food or death, how you should get more sleep and make more money, how you should eat more ugly foods and buy more reusable bags, how you lied about voting for Obama. How you wish you were a better person, a better spouse, a better parent, a better worker, a better citizen. How there is something else you should be doing, how you feel trapped in this life and in this body and every day it’s like you’re living and reliving that Talking Heads song. Well, how did I get here? You can tell me any of it; you can make a list ahead of time or just barf it all up when you sit down, and I will never tell anyone. Imagine weighing yourself on a bathroom scale, and all the little black lines represent all the things you can tell me-the dial can bounce up and down as many times as you want, and your secrets will be safe with me. There’s only one red line we have to worry about, only one little tick mark where the dial has to land in order for me to break my promise, and that would be if you told me you were going to kill someone. My anorexics love this metaphor. And yes, of course, if you were going to harm or kill yourself, I’d have to make a call, but if you’re telling your shrink in person you’re planning to do yourself in and didn’t happen to stash your chosen weapon in your purse, chances are you are open to being talked out of it. My patients call me Dr. Caroline for a couple of reasons. One, because the goal is to make them comfortable, to convince them I am like their smart, impartial friend who has their best interests at heart. Two, because of the Marvel thing. There is a superhero, Doctor Strange, who travels through time/space and knows physics, I guess? I’ve only seen a couple of those movies with my family and don’t care for them. All that Sturm und Orang, so much emotion and wrestling with life choices. I get that day in, day out, eight-thirty in the morning to eight-thirty at night, so when I go to a movie, I just want to see cars blow up and perhaps a nice pair of tits I can admire wholesomely from afar. I live in a wealthy neighborhood in a wealthy city. Where Botox meets craft butchery, and even the homeless people can do a mean upward-facing dog. It’s Brooklyn, so there is still a little edge here and there-the tall, thin vape twins who can barely keep their eyes open even as they blow smoke into your face as you pass them on the sidewalk; the guy with the elaborate facial tattoo asking for coffee money in front of the pediatrician’s office; the lady who sits on a tuffet of garbage bags in the bank vestibule. I like this about where I live. I grew up in a sleepy Wisconsin suburb where the most exciting thing that ever happened was two rival dentists got into a fistfight at a sports bar once. When I came to New York City for school, I never looked back. My patients are primarily from the privileged masses: Prospect Park soccer moms and aging hipster dads, anxious gainfully employed millennials and their oddly relaxed unemployed counterparts. The lot of them were silenced for a few weeks by the collective sonic boom of the pandemic. In the beginning they resisted the Zoom sessions, but then they caved one by one, and those first appointments were cacophonies of panic; whatever trivial transgressions they’d experienced or caused in their former lives were crushed like a kombucha can under a Prius tire. Very few of them got the virus or knew anyone who’d died, but still, their wild fear seeped through the screen, and I was there to absorb it. I felt extra-useful in those days, shepherding them from one day to the next, so many of them moving through the most precious realizations (I should spend less time on social media and more time with my kids!, I should listen more than I talk!, I should stop forcing people to look at my dick!). But then, after a couple of months, they realized they would probably not die, that they were safe in their little corner of the world, so they went back to old habits and old complaints, running out our time together wringing their hands about emotional affairs with their work husbands, or how Dad had yelled too much, and I’d send them off with a virtual pat on the head and a prescription for their Lexapro/Klonopin refills. So it’s not triage in the ER, who cares? This is my job, and, not to put too fine-tip a point on the scrip pad, all those complaints and meds paid for the brownstone where I live with my family on the parlor and upper levels and meet with patients in the ground-floor office. I still get a flutter of excitement when I see a new patient, because it really is like a blind date in many ways: will we gel; will we click; will he recognize me as a fellow human and show me something. But between you and me, it doesn’t matter if he decides to show me anything, because I’ll see it anyway. I watch the hands; I watch the legs crossing; I watch the gazes toward the window. I listen for the vocal modulation when he’s speaking about money/sex/Mom/Dad. Give me an hour, I’ll tell you who you are. Second thought, make that fifty minutes. It’s a steaming June day after arguably the worst year humans have seen in a good long while, and a new patient is coming without a referral, which is even more exciting, a blind-leading-the-blind date. There is an internal staircase leading from my home down to my office, but I walk outside and down the stoop and enter through the door under the stairs just so I can see what he will see: in front of the windows, a cream-colored couch with a small cylindrical table at one end where he can place his phone and water bottle. Also on the table are a box of tissues and a dimmable-display alarm clock, which is for me to keep track of the time. He will also have an identical clock to look at, on another cylindrical table next to my wood-framed chair, an office chair that isn’t supposed to look like it belongs in an office. But he has a choice-on the other side of his table is a plush swivel chair. Where he sits will tell me the first thing. Most people will take the couch because it is more directly positioned in front of me. They’re not thinking too much about it. But those who choose the swivel chair don’t mind sitting at an angle, or they enjoy swiveling, or they don’t want to feel like a patient; they’ve been taught to associate couches with shrinks and they don’t want any part of that. So if they choose the swivel chair, they’re making a little statement, crossing their arms and digging in their heels: Nope, not gonna tell you anything. There are two doors behind my chair, one leading to the kitchen, where I keep a Nespresso machine for myself, and the other to a half bath that patients can use. There’s a full-length mirror hung on the door of the patient bathroom, and how long they spend in there after the business is done, scrutinizing, muttering, fixing hair, and checking teeth, also tells me a great deal. I don’t use the patient bathroom—for that I’ll go upstairs to my home-but I do like to review myself in the mirror. I wear a white suit for my sessions every day. Alexander McQueen wool blends—single-button blazer with boot-cut pants. The white is for both of us: for them, to see me as a blank sheet of paper on which they can write whatever they want; for me, an extra boundary. I’ve known therapists who wear distressed-hem jeans and cowl-neck sweaters with their patients, who sit cross-legged on beanbag chairs, and that is just not for me. It’s not a fucking square dance; it’s work. The patients need the boundaries, even if they buck against them. And some, I would say most, end up appreciating them. Where will Nelson Schack fall? I position the two linen-covered pillows, one to either side of the couch. Only certain patients use the pillows, always for support—clutching for emotional, tucked behind them for lumbar. I adjust the temperature on the split AC unit by one degree. Some patients expel their sadness through sweat instead of tears, I’ve found, so better cool than hot. I check myself in the mirror once more. The suit is pressed, but the silhouette is simple-I don’t look like I’m going to a Wall Street hedge fund or a wedding. Every morning I blow out my hair and style with a rotary brush; the result is natural but controlled, which is the goal. Then come the three tones of the digital doorbell. I open the French double doors into the hallway, where there is a single chair and a small table with recent New Yorker magazines in a fan. I answer the front door, and here is Nelson Schack. An inch or two taller than me, slender. Hair almost buzz-cut-short but not quite. Swimming-pool-blue eyes and clean-shaven except for a spot missed under the nose. Collared polo shirt, sweat circles in the pits. Khaki pants with slanted lines crisscrossing at the knee, ironed haphazardly. “Hi, Nelson,” I say. “I’m Dr. Caroline.” I hold up my hand in a still wave. Even though he and I have sent each other copies of our vaccination cards via email, I don’t need to put anyone through the pros and cons of a handshake with a stranger. “Hi,” he says, only meeting my eyes for a moment. “Come in,” I say, warm but professional. I hold the door open for him, and he walks past me, giving off a scent of a musky deodorant with a little BO spike. He stands in the hallway as I close the door, and then turns to me for instruction. “Please, have a seat,” I say, gesturing toward the office. I know he’ll take the couch before he takes the couch. He’s nervous; he’s never done this before; he won’t even think about it. He sits on the couch, the middle cushion, and crosses his arms over his chest, his fingers cozy in the twin saunas of his pits. I slide the double doors shut and take my chair. “Before we begin, I need to make you aware of one thing,” I say. He gets a caught-raccoon sort of look, so I don’t keep him in suspense. “You can tell me anything,” I say, turning my finger in a small circle. “This is a safe space.” Then I smile, and he smiles, relieved. “What brings you here today, Nelson?” He laughs and puts his hands on his knees, then says, “It’s a couple of reasons, Doc. I’m just not sure which one to talk about first.” I nod, because I know. Their first time in therapy, they don’t know where to start. How did my life end up this way? is a big old rabbit hole to fall into, every rock you hit another loved one to blame. “Why don’t you try just saying whatever comes to the surface first?” I ask, as if I’ve never suggested it to a patient before. “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” he says. His voice is unexpectedly high, as if he’s leading up to a question. Then he pats his knees with an air of decision and says, “Well, here goes.” I give him another smile meant to convey the tell-me-anything rule, and he must truly understand it, because then he says something that I never could have predicted he or any other patient would ever say to me, not in my thirteen years of primary and high school, twelve years total in undergrad, med school, residency, and eleven years of private practice: “I think I’m going to kill someone, Doc,” he says in that strange high register, his eyes scanning the corners of the room. Then he looks straight at me and says, “And I know who you really are.” I’ll tell you a little bit about narrative omission in therapy. All of us—you, me, your mom, the dry cleaner-we all rewrite the stories of our lives as we tell them to other people. Sometimes we change things, but more often than not we just omit. We tell our listeners what they need to know, and nothing else. We do that because it’s human nature to get to the point, and to a lesser extent not bore the listeners. Why? Because we want them to keep listening to us. No one cares that a Paleolithic-era caveman took a dump in a hole or was on the receiving end of a nut-cracking BJ from the missus. We care that he killed the bison, and somehow, even with his underdeveloped Neanderthal brain, he recognized that, so that’s what he painted on the wall. My patients do this all the time; however, there’s a slightly more devious edge to it. I have a patient, let’s call her Meandering Marjory. Marjory drinks too much and pretends she doesn’t, which makes her as unique as half of America. So sometimes she’ll come in and tell me all about her day leading up to our appointment, how she got coffee in the morning and dropped the kids off at school and went grocery shopping and walked the dog, and it takes her twenty minutes to get through this much of the story and she keeps blowing air out, her upper lip flapping like a doggy door, and adopts a street accent arbitrarily (“You feel me, girl?”), and yet it takes me about thirty seconds to get her to admit that she also drank a pint of dark-and-stormies before showing up. If you have been in therapy, you have done the same in some way. Sometimes you do it to cut to the chase; sometimes you do it because you don’t want your therapist to know something. Here’s a hot tip: we know. But rest assured, we do it, too. Because we’re all cavepeople together! All of us shitting in holes and performing/receiving fellatio, and yet we only pick up the charcoal to draw that pesky bison. So when I said I grew up in a sleepy Wisconsin suburb where the most exciting thing that ever happened was a fight between two dentists at a sports bar, that wasn’t the whole story. Dr. Brower and Dr. Nowak did get in a fistfight at Gator Sam’s, but the town is known for something else entirely. It made national news at the time, but Jeffrey Dahmer had been caught only two years before, and people on the coasts can only take so much news about the goings-on in the middle, even if it’s bloody. But in the Upper Midwest it was a big deal for a while. In late June of 1993 in the village of Glen Grove, Wisconsin, a man murdered his family with a pair of hedge shears. The wife was thirty-eight at the time of her death; the children sixteen and thirteen. The blades on the shears were eleven inches long. About now you’re rushing, skimming, skipping-you want to know it all, don’t you? You’re desperate for details-how did he do it with the shears, did he stab them, cut off their fingers or their heads? Or worse, you think, did he cut out their hearts . . . did he cut out their hearts and eat them whole, did the police find a pentagram drawn in blood on an altar in the basement?? No, wait, did he . . . no, it’s just too awful, he couldn’t have . . . did he have sex with their headless fingerless hollow corpses??? We all think we’ll be the ones so mature and self-realized that we won’t look at the car accident, but of course we look; we hope to see something horrible in order to capture the relief that it didn’t happen to us. It’s natural! Don’t beat yourself up about it, but really, satanic-inspired cannibalism and necrophilia are not that prevalent, despite what some swaths of the intellectually damaged population would tell you. Yes, the Glen Grove murders were gruesome and gory and worse than the worst images from the first slasher movie you saw, which have burrowed into your unconscious so deeply you sometimes wonder if you didn’t actually imagine them yourself-Jason chopping off his mom’s head, Freddy gutting Johnny Depp (before he was Johnny Depp). And I happen to have a personal connection to the event, which is not exactly a secret but also not exactly broadcasted, and so when Nelson Schack offers this pair of confessions, I think it best to focus on the one that feels more urgent. “How long have you been thinking about killing someone?” I say. He laughs, but not nervously. He seems delighted by my question. “This one?” he says. “Not long.” He touches his face, fingers to lips and around to the back of the neck. They are the moves of an anxious person, but again, he does not project anxiety. His eyes flicker like candlelight, and his smile, though slight, is genuine. Someone with a wonderful secret. He dropped “this one” thinking I may not notice. This one, as in there have been others. Though I’m always driving, I sometimes like to let my patients think that they are. It occurs to me that Nelson could use a sudden turn. “Have you decided whom you’re going to kill yet, this time?” I ask, casual as can be, as if I were asking one of my older son’s idiot friends which extracurricular sports he’s doing in the fall. He stops moving his hands around, and they stay at the back of his neck. Something doesn’t please him. Loses the smile. “Yes, I have.” Excerpt continues after cover reveal. I realize now would be the time for me to get nervous, if I got nervous. Which I don’t. Nelson Schack may be a few inches taller than me but doesn’t look like he works out like I do. I can’t make out his biceps, but from what I see of his forearms, I doubt he’d make it through a single resistance class at Pure Barre. The way his clothes hang suggest he’s not carrying a weapon, and if he is, it’s slight and ineffectual. Likely similar to his genitals and/or prefrontal cortex activity. “Is that information you’d like to share with me?” I ask. “Uh, no, not yet.” “Okay,” I say. “We can pause on that. Have you decided the method of how you’re going to kill this person?” “Oh yeah,” he says, as if a familiar song has just spun from the playlist. “Pretty sure I’m gonna just let her starve.” “Hm,” I say, because if it wasn’t Twenty Questions before, now it is. “So does this person live with you?” He grins. “No.” “Is this person a relative?” “Uh-uh, no. She lives in the neighborhood, and I’ve been watching her awhile. You know her, too, Doc.” He certainly likes a challenge! In residency I treated a handful of real grade-A antisocial personality disorders-people you would call sociopaths and psychopaths. What they all shared was an absence of remorse, a tendency to lie, and, more specifically for the psychos as opposed to the socios, a pattern of manipulation and aggression. But then there are those I call the fanboys. These are the ones who’ve gobbled up books about the Zodiac Killer and Ted Bundy, who obsessively watched and rewatched The Silence of the Lambs and possibly Manhunter; maybe even kicked back with a High Life on Wednesday nights to watch Criminal Minds, but that really is scraping the bottom of the serial-killer-narrative barrel. Nelson Schack reads more fanboy than psycho to me. His intention is to provoke, daring me to join the game. He might have done some cursory research about me, but he doesn’t know enough about me to know that I have won nearly every game night my family has had since my sons were old enough to fit the little plastic wedges inside the Trivial Pursuit piecrusts. I say nearly, because I’ve had to throw quite a few games. Child psychologists will say it’s important to let your children lose because it prepares them for coping with failure in the world, and ultimately I agree, but sometimes they just need a win. Boys especially. And yes, I let my husband win some, too. Because I also like to get laid. So okay, Nelson, I’ve got the empty pie, my seven letter tiles (all consonants, by the way), a full set of chess pieces, and a fire-engine-red gingerbread boy from goddamn Candy Land. Winner goes first. I smile and say, “I know a lot of people. You mind narrowing it down for me?” He brushes his chin with his fingers and says, “You know who she is but you might not know her personally.” “Is she a local celebrity?” Quickly I flip through the mental Rolodex of famous and semi-famous in our neighborhood, which may be larger than you’d think. Mayoral candidates, actors, musicians, restaurateurs, writers. Once I saw Padma from Top Chef at the roller rink in Prospect Park. She was nine feet tall on skates. “No. Some people know her name.” “You could say that about anyone, I think,” I offer. His face sinks and sags. Suddenly he looks jowlier than he did when he first sat down. “You don’t believe me,” he says. “What makes you say that?” “You know, the way you’re joking around.” “Nelson,” I say. “All I know is what you’re telling me, and I take everything you’re saying very seriously. However, I notice that you’re only telling me a little bit at a time, which implies you’d like me to take some guesses and make some observations.” He nibbles his lips into a pout, and whatever might have been edgy about him dissolves. He’s like every other one of my patients, especially the men, awaiting the kitten licks to whatever fragile wound is throbbing just beneath the surface. It will take me, as always, being the bigger person. I’m sorry I’ve misunderstood you,” I say. “If you like, we can start over. You can even leave the room and come back in,” I say, waving in the direction of the door. “We can pretend we’ve never met.” He smiles now, charmed by the idea and my apology. “Do people do that?” he says, letting his head down so that it’s almost resting on his shoulder. “Start over?” “Of course. Getting off on the wrong foot is part of being human. I can’t tell you the number of times a new patient has decided to come through the door for the first time twice.” I will tell you the number of times: zero. He lifts his head and appears to be thinking about it. Even though I just came up with the idea, it’s fairly irresistible: To reset. Wouldn’t we all like it, even if it’s just from this morning, would we waste less time reading garbage on the internet, would we eat the muffin, would we call our mothers? The answer for me for all three would be no, but I’ll agree that at least to have the option is intriguing. “Okay,” he says. “Okay?” “Yeah,” he says, brushing his fingers over his chin again. “I’d like to do that. Go out and come back in.” “That’s great,” I say, standing, as if this is all pro forma. He stands, and he stares blankly past me, no longer engaged. “Please,” I say, gesturing toward the door. “I just go out and come back in again.” “That’s right, Nelson. Just start over.” Something about that lands right where it should, because he brings his focus back to me, blue eyes lighting up. Could he be attractive? Not in his current state, to be sure, but maybe some baggier clothes, a tattoo here or there, hair a little longer-he could be a moderately cute bartender. He heads for the double doors and pulls them open, and I follow, still surprised we’re doing this little bit of sitcom staging. Then he passes through the hallway and goes through the front door. “Thanks, Doc,” he says, fully outside now. “For all the great advice.” “You’re most welcome.” I shut the door and wait a minute, don’t watch him through the peephole so he can’t see the glass grow dark. He doesn’t buzz or knock. I finally look through the peephole, and he’s gone. I open the door and walk through the small paved yard, through the front gate, and look left, then right, and I see him, arms heavy at his sides, trudging toward the corner. I stand still, waiting, but he doesn’t make a move to return or even turn his head back to look at me. I cough up a closemouthed laugh. The turn of events is refreshing. Well done, Nelson. Good job sticking the landing on Gumdrop Pass. I have at least a half hour before my next appointment, Churlish Charlotte, since Nelson didn’t take his whole slot. I give all my patients little nicknames, as alliterative and Garbage-Pail-Kids-like as possible as a means to remember them, of course, and maybe also keep myself amused. Churlish Charlotte runs a yoga-studio-slash-custom-tea-shop, and has been a patient for four or five years. For someone who should be blissed out on endorphins from pigeon pose and turmeric-cinnamon blends, she’s generally pretty whiny and pissy. Even during the darkest pandemic days she found something petty to obsess over in every session, like how Whole Foods kept running out of the chickpea pasta she has to have because whole grains give her gut-bloat. I walk up the steps of the stoop and press the passcode into the keypad, go inside. The parlor level of my house smells like rosemary and mint, from a spray I instructed the cleaning lady to spritz in the air and on the chairs and couches. The living room is furnished in what I would call modern-but-not-statement: a curved sectional with tapered legs, an Eames chair, a cowhide ottoman. There is also some art. My husband is Jonas Eklund the sculptor, and he is well-known in certain circles. He sells two or three pieces a year, which, for a working artist, is considered very successful. He also has pieces in the permanent collections of the Whitney and the Tate. If you are not familiar with these circles, you might think this success pays for our lifestyle significantly. I would say instead he contributes in a quaint way to our household income. I walk through the kitchen, which is an open plan and was a nightmare of renovation (how many mistakes, how much half-assery, can one contractor commit? the answer is a lot) but now is so beautiful with the white quartzite countertops and mosaic marble backsplash imported from Italy that I barely think of that dark time when plaster chunks covered the floor and every surface was wet and gluey. Now I just want to touch everything. I didn’t grow up poor but I didn’t have much, so now I truly take nothing for granted. I believe there is nothing wrong with relishing the bougie-ness I’ve worked my whole life for. I don’t practice any kind of organized religion, so I will pray at the altar of my Bosch oven and anoint myself with a single dot of Amber Aoud behind each ear. Through the kitchen windows, I see my husband sitting on the deck, wearing his summer uniform: white drawstring wide-leg pajama pants, no shirt. His hair, still more blond than gray even though he’s five years my senior, is wet from his daily swim and shower at the Y. He is striking even when he doesn’t try to be, tall and tan and lean and looks every inch a Swede, which he is. Effortlessly hot. Women fall at his feet and always have. I had to step over quite a few to get to him. I slide the glass door open and step onto the deck, and Jonas looks up from his phone and his small paper cup of espresso, one corner of his mouth pinched in a smile. “Your new patient ended early, Doctor?” It’s a joke in our family-everyone calls me Doctor. It started with Jonas teasing me whenever I curbed toward bossiness, and then the boys picked up on it when they were little. Now we have a selection of stories to tell at functions and events, such as when our oldest, Elias, was in kindergarten and insisted that the second Sunday in May was actually called “Doctor’s Day.” “Yes,” I say, sitting in the chair opposite Jonas at the patio table. “He was a little something different.” “Ah,” says Jonas, not listening. His smile grows as he views the screen on his phone. Then he hands it to me. “Elias is doing tennis again.” I scroll through the pictures. Both of our sons are at sleepaway camp in Vermont for four weeks. We give the people who run the camp thousands of dollars, and in return they send us a steady stream of pictures of our kids doing fun things. Elias is thirteen and looks and acts like Jonas. He had his first girlfriend at age nine. In the photos, he is smirking as he waits for the ball in a neutral stance, long limbs sprouting out from his white shirt and shorts, blond hair falling over one eye. “Any of Theo?” I ask. “Oh yes, keep looking.” I swipe until I see our younger. Theo is eleven, tall and blond like his brother and his father, but emotionally more like I was as a child: forever analyzing and therefore a little nervous. But I figured out how to balance the two, and I have confidence he will as well. It just may take some time. In Theo’s pictures he is holding a small clay coil pot in one hand and a wire-head loop tool in the other. He’s concentrating hard. I zoom in on the pot. “Those coils are a mess,” I say. Jonas sips his espresso, says, “I didn’t see.” I flip the phone around so he can see. He lets out a snort of laughter. “He’ll fix it up,” he says. “If you say so.” I place the phone on the table and slide it to him. “What are your plans for the day?” He stretches his arms behind his head. “Studio for some time. Then David Layton has an opening-signing thing at Sapirstein in West Chelsea.” My husband goes to one or two exhibition openings a week. Sometimes he knows the artist, and sometimes he doesn’t. He says he goes to support his friends and also meet potential buyers. “Art is connection,” he has said, in every meaning the words can have. Of course I believe him, but I know he also likes to go and drink cheap rose and flirt with twenty-five-year-olds. And that is fine, too. I know who I have married, and he knows me. Considering how many of my patients come in and whine about the lack of understanding in their relationships, I have come to see it as a rare thing. We talk for a minute more and then look at things on our phones. I pull up Nelson Schack’s intake form he’d emailed ahead of time. His address is not far from mine, in Sunset Park. I check to see that his deposit hasn’t budged on Venmo. I google him, but there is a Peruvian economist with the same name and he takes up all the search space. I think about calling the police. I’ve actually never had to do it before. I’ve heard countless musings of suicidal ideation and homicidal fantasies-I would argue these are normal. The urge to not have to wake up at five forty-five and go to work every day and live in your pesky body with all its aches and flabbiness is strong for most people at least some of the time. Or fantasies about your ex-wife dying-maybe it’s by your hand or maybe she gets hit by the street sweeper on the way to her candle-dipping class or whatever. Normal. As it turns out, I’m guilty of a little narrative omission myself, you see—next to the big red line on my bathroom scale indicating a necessary breach of doctor-patient privilege, there are actually three skinnier rosy pink lines: the expressed thought that a patient wants to harm himself or another specific person (“I want to kill my mother”), an articulated plan to commit the act (‘Tm going to kill my mother by poisoning her tea”), and obvious intent (“I’m intending to kill my mother by poisoning her tea tonight”). If you tell me anything like that, I would have to make a call. But nothing so detailed from Nelson Schack. So I forget about him. My job takes total compartmentalized focus. If you’re on my couch (or in my swivel chair), you have my attention. I go back downstairs to fluff the pillows for Charlotte. She is five minutes late and complaining about the CVS pharmacy line that caused her to be late (she would never actually apologize for being late, you see), and drinking from a gallon jug of water with motivational messaging printed at every eight-ounce-mark (“You’ve Got This-Keep Chugging!”). But her hour starts and passes, and I don’t get anything new from her in this session except that she thinks she might have a UTI but hasn’t had it checked out; apparently she’s been meaning to find a new ob-gyn because her current lady has “weird alien fingers.” Charlotte leaves, and next is Sad Sober Rahul. Still sober, always sad. Every time I see him we talk about meds, how they might change things for him, how we could start on the lowest dose, but Rahul is adamant about being on nothing, no drugs, no meds. Doesn’t even take a multivitamin. I find his commitment admirable, but there comes a time when you can say, I think today I would not like to be so miserable. After Rahul we have Amanda Demanda. What does Amanda Demanda do? you wonder. Well, she demands. And asks, and pleads, and whines: Why can’t things be easier? Why is it all uphill, why does it feel like I never get picked first for kickball? Funny thing, she has valid reasons to ask these questions. She’s had some tragedies, some loss, some pain like most of us, and, hell, after the last year we can probably expand that “most” to “all.” But you have to do more than simply demand, more than give your desire a name and admit you’re angry or sad. It’s the same for all of us, now more than ever—our demands, our prayers, our pleas-they’re nothing, as weightless and invisible as the cotton-candy-scented smoke from the vape twins’ pens. So I try to impress upon her in the kindest and gentlest of ways, your hope should not be that conditions improve but that you find the strength to meet your own demandas, dear Amanda. After Amanda, I run upstairs to grab a snack of grapes and almonds and then hurry back down for Dig Doug. Doug works for the Parks Department and is still in the mire of grieving his brother, who died when they were kids. He rarely indulges in self-pity. I’m not a neurologist (though I knew quite a few in school and, boy, are they a quirky bunch), but I believe that when someone is grieving for so long, the pathways of sorrow are burned in the brain so deeply it’s nearly impossible to pull him out. I’ve tried all the thought-pattern tricks, pulled every cognitive behavioral rabbit out of my shrink hat—nothing has stuck for poor Doug. But still he shows up, so then, so will I. My day would not be complete without a weeper. Today it’s Weepy Jasmine. She does not get a more creative name because if you met her at a party or worked with her (she’s a middle school teacher, God help her students), your only takeaway from the interaction would be that she cries at everything. When she’s happy, when she’s sad, when she’s angry, when she thinks something is hilarious. She has spent whole hours with me barely getting words out past her sobs. I nod and hand her the tissue box, which she cradles on her lap like a sick cat. She pays me my rate whether or not she speaks, so she can spend her hour however she chooses. This is when people think being a mental health professional is easy—I could listen to someone cry for an hour, you think. I give my girlfriends good breakup advice and was really nice to that guy I met on the ski lift that time. Let me tell you something: It takes a particular sort of person, not to mention years of studying and practice, to be able to listen. Just listen. Just be in the room and not share anything from your own life or offer a suggestion, to actively listen to another human being be is nearly impossible for an average person to do. As I’ve said, I did a ton of work with a more acutely disturbed section of the population, people who score literally off the chart on the Psychopathy Checklist, who would have exploded the bathroom scale in my analogy to bits with all the dark shit they thought and said. Do these people ever get better? Some, maybe. With a lot of coaching and a lot of meds, maybe a couple of days a week they don’t feel as stabby as they do the rest of the time. In the end, though, when it came time for me to build my practice, I chose the people who just needed someone to actually hear them. And who could cover my full fee before hitting their out-of-network deductible. After Jasmine’s hour, as is my habit every time she leaves, I empty all the discarded tissues from the small wastebasket. I dump them, like a flock of flightless snot-ridden birds, into the larger garbage can in the kitchen, and then my door chimes, and I’m taken aback. My last appointment, Bambi Ben, isn’t due for another hour. Ben is a wisp of a fellow, gay and southern, with the dewiest doe eyes you’ve ever seen. He’s different from most of my patients because I think he is actually interested in change, committed to the work of being happier. He brings a large coffee to our sessions and will take notes, gliding over the traumas of his gay southern childhood as things that happened and were terrible but are over now. I sometimes wish I could drag him in front of my other patients and say, You see? It’s possible. You don’t have to move on but you can move forward. But Ben never gets the time wrong and is never this early. I go to the front door and squint through the peephole and see two strangers standing there. I open the door, and they show me their badges. Then we begin. __________________________________ From TELL ME WHO YOU ARE. Used with the permission of the publisher, MCD/FSG. Copyright © 2024 by LOUISA LUNA. View the full article

When I was writing The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years, a novel of haunting love and loss set in an Indian community on the east coast of South Africa, it didn’t immediately occur to me that it was a gothic novel. Looking back, it seems obvious—it had all the conventional genre tropes—the haunted house on the hill, the wild landscape, odd characters, ghostly elements and the disjointed rhythm of unease. It didn’t occur to me because these were simply features from my life growing up in my South African Indian home. It was only when I started to pick at the origins of the genre that I realized how much of the gothic existed not only in my life, but also far beyond the western world it is associated with. The gothic with its deep European roots was born from many things, but it was particularly a historical anxiety of the time that brought it to life. However, historical anxiety drove the ideas and development of many places, especially colonized countries that included South Africa and India. The stories that arose in those countries used local cultural, religious, mythological and superstitious beliefs to encourage haunting stories that would be classified ‘gothic’ in nature from a western point of view. Stories featured haunted homes, ghostly spirits, omens and a growing terror that much like the gothic was able to articulate the social, cultural and economic upheaval of a new world order. But when writers outside Anglo-Europe and North America write about the gothic, a genre usually associated with western literature, it is still common to say they are ‘reimagining’ or putting a ‘new spin’ on an old classic. It gives the impression that these stories would not exist without the genre to begin with; that without the western conventions that define it, there would be no structure for these stories to build upon. However, these stories were there, they were just not being told in the west. My grandfather arrived in South Africa from India in 1935 and though he was a traveling salesman, he was mainly known as a storyteller, one who gathered his grandchildren around to hear his tales. His stories ranged from Indian folktales to more ominous ones about thieves lying in wait in dark palaces. The stories we read from the Quran had djinns, otherworldly creatures made from smokeless fire who were invisible to the human eye. My family, especially my aunts had frightful tales; about djinns under trees that stalked them at sunset, tokoloshes (a spirit from Zulu folklore) that visited them at night and ghosts or spirits that wandered their homes. All story-telling is, of course, an escape, but stories told to frighten or thrill speak to a different kind of escape; one where you need a world more disturbing than your own to exist. Many of my relatives in the generations before me had lives filled with struggle and these were the ones who told the most magical and sometimes, most terrifying stories. My grandfather was a boy who had come from a small village in a country where the British had plundered and dominated the subcontinent to a new, unfamiliar country where the British were still ruling and where apartheid was just burgeoning into existence. We didn’t know it until we read his notes—but my grandfather was an anxious person and after my grandmother passed away, he took up reading and story-telling with an intensity that made it seem like he needed it to exist. My aunt told the most incredible ghost stories, including of a female ghost who watched her from the foot of her bed at night, and also told us the stories of how her mother fled Burma when the Japanese invaded and how she had to abandon everything and begin an impoverished life in India and then South Africa. The story tellers in my family used stories to escape reality—the creepier they were, the further we moved from reality. Early in his essay, Why We Crave Horror Movies Stephen King mentions that one of the reasons we watch horror is to re-establish our feelings of essential normality, that no matter how horrible the scenes in front of us get—we know we are ‘light years away from true ugliness.’ In that sense the stranger the story, the safer reality feels and perhaps this is why people who are prone to anxiety are drawn to horror. In The New York Times piece, How Horror Stories Help Us Cope With Real Life, Coltan Scrivner, a researcher at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhus University says that when you watch a horror movie, you can “switch the source of your anxiety.” The haunting of homes, places and people in the stories I heard growing up were often intrinsically linked to persecution by those in power. An aunt who had to leave her home in Mayfair, South Africa because of apartheid’s group area act that forcibly moved non-whites into other areas, complained her new home in Vrededorp was haunted by ‘something’ and my mother describes seeing shadows circling the room. My mother’s family who were forced to move from their large house on lush land filled with fruit trees into a block of flats built hastily by the apartheid government, complained the building was haunted. The rooms were tiny and damp and the building bordered an overgrown field with a dilapidated flour mill rumoured to contain the graves of workers who had been crushed there years ago. My mother and her family constantly heard furniture being moved in the middle of the night, some said they saw spirits walking the passages, one aunt said a ghost would try to strangle her and one flat in particular seemed to host a myriad of spirits from ghosts to djinns to tokoloshes. Another aunt who lived nearby in a house next to a river said at night she would look out her window and see ghosts ploughing the fields and hear them singing. The lives of so many around me who had felt the effects of displacement and colonization were filled with vengeful spirits, haunted homes and surreal landscapes; the very things that give gothic stories their essence. Ghosts, one of the central features of the gothic, featured heavily in the stories I heard growing up. In a 2018 article for the The New York Times, the editor and critic, Parul Sehgal wrote, ‘The ghost story shape-shifts because ghosts themselves are so protean—they emanate from specific cultural fears and fantasies … However, ghost stories are never just reflections. They are social critiques camouflaged with cobwebs; the past clamoring for redress.” Ghosts are markers of unspeakable tragedy, heartbreak, unfulfilled desire and incomprehensible rage; colonized countries, stolen land and places of deep sorrow, teem with them. What are ghosts, if not the hurts we cannot let go of? The ghost in southern gothic novels like Tony Morrison’s Beloved speaks to the horrors of slavery, how a history of unspeakable pain can take its own form. Jesmyn Ward’s Sing Unburied Sing uses spirits to comment on the social crises of African Americans in the south and how the undead have to sing their own songs to move on. Ghosts then, are not only the dead walking, they are also deeply political messages. South Africa, with its traumatic history of colonization and apartheid, is full of ghosts. And the country’s African magic realism is rife with the supernatural—witch doctors, ancestors’ spirits, tokoloshes and black magic—which creates an ideal environment for the gothic to flourish. This terror even spreads into class, inter-ethnic and economic tensions in the country argues Fred Botting and Justin D. Edwards in Globalgothic who refer to the example of a mob in South Africa in 2008 who threw three migrant workers to their death calling them witches who stole their jobs. Witchcraft and zombification are linked to African immigrants by a society ‘dramatically changed by the social, cultural and economic impacts of globalization,’ they write. This same societal fear even carried over to my novel and drove us to change the title of the South African edition because my local publisher pointed out that South Africans were superstitious and the word “djinn” in the title could deter readers from the novel. Decolonizing the gothic should not mean to reimagine traditional gothic stories with new characters in new places—it means to recognize that these gothic stories were happening in other cultures and places outside the western world. That common western gothic tropes exist as their own version in other parts of the world, or as Glennis Byron puts it in Globalgothic, there is a “…growing awareness that the tropes and strategies Western critics have associated with the gothic, such as the ghost, the vampire and the zombie, have their own counterpart in other cultures, however differently these may be inflected by specific histories and belief systems.” It is to acknowledge that gothic literature—with its haunted homes, lonely landscapes, broken characters and longing borne of deep despair—has always been a universal story, not a western one. *** View the full article

People sometimes ask me why I write cozy mysteries. It’s not a hard question to answer. At least I didn’t think so the first time I was asked. My response was I wrote cozies because that’s what I read. Yet that’s only partially true. I also read other types of crime fiction. But in the end, I always return to cozies. In writing cozies, whether historical or contemporary, I want the reader to be able to leave the real world behind. In Deadly to the Core (January 16, 2024), I take the reader into the world of Orchardville, Pennsylvania. Apple orchards, a café, a candle shop, a tea shop, and the somewhat mysterious, handsome owner of a neighboring orchard—who wouldn’t want to go there? There’s a murder of course, but the reader knows it will all turn out in the end. What is it about cozy mysteries that so many readers love? For me, it’s the non-scary factor. I confess that I hate to be scared. I can’t watch horror movies or anything that’s too intense. Some people relish that adrenaline rush and pounding of the heart. Not me. I’ll close my eyes, or if I’m reading, skip those parts. When I read a cozy, I know I won’t be terrified. I know it’s just a matter of time before the sleuth figures it all out. Unlike real life where justice doesn’t always prevail, in cozy mysteries the villain always gets their comeuppance. Readers like the fact that the bad guys aren’t going to get away with their crimes. There’s comfort in that, especially in the crazy world we live in these days. Out of curiosity, I posed the question of why cozy mysteries are important and got some great responses. “I love cozies…it’s like visiting friends. I’m not always as interested in the mystery as I am the characters. As long as the author stays true to the characters, I am willing to read any story about them.” –Kimberly Hon Kurth-Gray, author of North by North Pole Beach, a Christmas novella “It is a form of escape. With a series, we’ve built a relationship with the characters and each book we see their progress, especially their sleuthing.” –Dru Ann Love, Dru’s Book Musings “I feel cozy mysteries offer a place where we can escape, exercise our brain a little with the mystery, but know the dog isn’t going to die. A safe scary place.” –Anne Tiller “I read a lot of different genres, from really dark thrillers to romance to horror. I always come back to cozies for comfort. You never have to worry about the characters you love and you have the comfort of knowing everything will be resolved in the end.” –Amber Camp, author of the Horse Rescue Mysteries “…these are the literary equivalent of comfort food. Yes they are formula, but with each having its unique twist or flavor. The formula is done well. One knows they are going to get appealing characters, a fun, engaging story, and a good resolution at the end.” –Rigel Ailur “The cozy is a family friend to me. Not too many books can give me emotion when I read them, but cozies do…It’s something to escape in (all books are), but the cozy feels real, because you get to know the elements in the book on a personal level. They feel real, like you can imagine them living in your town, maybe even next door to you.” –Tammy Barker “Really good cozies can elevate your mood, teach you about locations or jobs or just totally suck you into a type of relationship that other genres don’t really do. And I read a lot of genres, but since the pandemic, I have more respect for cozies, I couldn’t take anything too brutal or realistic during all that…the cozies have remained. –Louise Pierce “I read cozies as a palate cleanser from all the other genres I read that are grittier. They are in an odd way peaceful. It’s a quaint location. The characters aren’t inherently evil. There is a murder, but there isn’t a graphic description… There is satisfaction in knowing justice will be neatly served and the story resolved and the village is once again safe and everyone goes back to life as usual at the end.” –Diana Hurwitz, author of Story Building Blocks “Murder, especially in a cozy kind of setting, brings chaos to a peaceful world. And solving that murder makes the world feel safe again. The fact that the sleuth is usually an amateur empowers me by making me feel that an average person–bookseller, baker, mother, teacher–can step up during perilous times. When the world is chaotic, and I feel powerless, a cozy comforts me and encourages me to take whatever action I can.” –Toni L.P. Kelner, author of the Laura Fleming and the Family Skeleton series I love the quote that cozies are the literary equivalent to comfort food. I wholeheartedly agree. When the whole world is going crazy with wars, wannabe dictators, oppression of anyone who is perceived as different, and just general chaos, it’s easy to lose hope. Cozy mysteries show us an alternate world. A world that can be fixed in three hundred pages. Cozies give us characters we can fall in love with and root for. They show us places, real or imagined, where we’d like to live or at least visit. Some of my best friends can be found within the pages of cozy mysteries. Maybe yours are waiting for you. *** View the full article

From the beginning of my writing journey in 2000, I have always written sleuths with moxie and plenty of spunk. As Misty Simon I started with Ivy Morris, who was working hard to not be a door mat. Then I moved on to Mel Hargrove, who was corralling a junkyard full of ghosts while making sense of her life. Next came my big break at Kensington with Tallie Graver, who was looking for a second chance while making amends for her past. Moving back into paranormal, I wrote The Magically Suspicious Mysteries, where we ride along with Verla Faeth and her friends at a Renn Faire. Now, as Gabby Allan, I’m writing Whitney Dagner, who is finally where she belongs, solving nautically themed mysteries with her cats Whit and Whiskers. All my girls are fighting every day to not only figure out life in the present, but also deal with the past—plus, they’re solving murders and mysteries, navigating relationships, and making you snicker all the while. My first introduction to reading these types of mysteries came from devouring Bubbles Yablonsky’s adventures as a talented hairdresser and plucky sleuth by Sarah Strohmeyer. I was caught off guard by her character’s antics, and so involved in the mystery that I forgot I should probably eat dinner. Characters and authors who can do that for me are my go-to escape. I adore being caught up in a good story as the sleuths muddle their way through obstacles, clues, questions, red herrings, misdirects, and the usual suspects. Life is rarely without issues, but these wonderful people are doing their best to navigate their current circumstances, all while chasing murderers, righting wrongs, and fighting for justice. To give you a taste of what you’ve possibly been missing out there in the wide world of cozy mysteries, I present to you my list of authors who are doing it in spades… Oh, and if you need a pass to be able to read whenever you want without guilt, I also have a Reading Pass (much like the old hall passes from back in the day) as a get out of jail free card. ENJOY! Flared Stiff by Julie Anne Lindsey First up is Julia Anne Lindsey’s Bonnie and Clyde series. The laughs, the hijinks, the relationships, and solved murders. It’s all a recipe for me to be pulled right into this series and away from anything I’m actually supposed to be doing. I love the setting, the charm, and the way that the author gives us such an enchanting view into the living room of Bonnie and her cat Clyde that I want to go see if she’s available for a quick dinner! After she finds the killer, of course. Donna Andrews, Crouching Lizard Leaping Loon Donna Andrews is next with her delightful Meg Langslow Mysteries. Crouching Lizard Leaping Loon was the first book I read in this series and then I had to go back and start from the beginning and wait (im)patiently between each release for the next one. I love the way Meg handles things and how she puts the pieces together. I often finish the books in this series and think “I could have figured it out if I hadn’t been snickering so much!” Miriam Allenson, When She Gets Hot I mean, who doesn’t love a book with the tagline: When she gets pushed too far, even her hot flashes won’t hold her back. If you like women of a certain age, you will be highly entertained by Tootsie and her entourage as they get into some of the hottest water and most hilarious situations in cozy fiction. Kimberley O’Malley, A Dress to Die For A Dress to Die For by Kimberley O’Malley features Addie, one of my favorite characters. Gutsy and a go-getter, she gets the job done, even when the going is seriously rough. I love the premise and the pets in this one as much as I love Addie. Make sure you’re prepared to not be able to put it down as we race to a satisfying conclusion that I did not see coming (perhaps because I was laughing too much). Jennifer J. Chow, Mimi Lee Cracks the Code Last, but certainly not least, I can’t have a list of sass and spunk without mentioning a cat with both! Jennifer J. Chow’s Mimi Lee Cracks the Code: A Sassy Cat Mystery is not only highly entertaining, it also takes place on Catalina Island where my very own Whit and Whiskers live. I wonder what they’d do if they met each other? I laughed and then I sighed and then I laughed some more at this book. It’s a delightful tale with twists and turns that I absolutely loved. And that cat is quite the character! *** View the full article

So, you got locked up? No wonder you look like shit,” said Paul. “I better fix that,” said Bimbo. “Don’t want folks thinking I’m related to you.” The crew was back together, and so was the banter. We were sitting under some red paper lights and an AC vent that had been collecting dust for a decade. El Paraíso Asia was Bimbo’s favorite restaurant. A Chinese joint that was somehow the best place for Chinese food and also the best place if you were in the mood for Puerto Rican fare like tostones al ajillo. The joint had been in business for generations, and everything they made was great. I was digging in to my plate of fried chicken with fried rice and a side of tostones al ajillo (also fried) when Paul finally asked Bimbo how he’d gotten locked up. “Baby mama drama, papi,” said Bimbo, his lips glistening from the oil of the tostones. “The hell does that mean?” asked Paul. “Remember Jessica?” asked Bimbo. “The woman you had a baby with and then she told you you’d never see your kid again and took you to court and you wanted to murder everyone while the whole thing was going down and we couldn’t even talk to you? Nah, I forgot about her,” said Paul. “You talk so much shit you should call your mouth your asshole, P,” said Bimbo with no meanness in his voice. “Well, after they killed my mom, I kinda forgot about Jessica, the baby, and that whole child support thing. I worked with the construction folks Gabe hooked me up with for a week or so, but then I stopped going. It was too fucking hot and humid out there, and all I wanted to do was stay home and get high until my mom’s face stopped floating in front of me, you know?” We all stayed quiet. Bimbo took a deep breath and went on. “Anyway, I stopped paying and the bitch came at me through El Departamento de la Familia instead of reminding me with a text or something. The usual sh —” “You got locked up for not paying child support?” asked Tavo. “My cousin Rubén has half a dozen kids with different women, and the son of a bitch doesn’t pay any of them. Getting thrown in jail for that in this country is next to impossible, man.” “Well, not exactly,” said Bimbo. “I mean, they don’t arrest you and take you to jail. They sent me letters, you know. I went to court. Tried to explain the whole thing. I thought the judge would cut me some slack with my mom getting killed, but…you know, I was really sad and nervous and wanted something to calm me down, so…I showed up high and drunk. I don’t remember what happened, but apparently, I told Jessica to go fuck herself and then told the judge to go fuck himself. A guard grabbed me to kick me out and I swung at him. That’s how I ended up in jail. Oso Blanco. They can only keep you for six months for shit like that, but when my sis found out, she…somehow convinced my uncle Pedro to put up the bail money, so they let me out and here I am.” “So, you just got out?” I asked. “Nah, got out a week ago, but—” “And you’re only letting us know now, you fat fuck?” asked Paul. “No…well, yes — but listen,” said Bimbo. “I had to take care of some stuff first. Plus, I got no phone. It got cut off when I got locked up and stopped paying it. Point is, I met a dude inside. José Luis. A Dominican. Good guy. We shared a cell and talked a lot. He got caught writing bogus checks for ghost employees for a company that didn’t exist, but he has all kinds of things going on. One of them is hooking up Dominican women with single boricua guys, yeah? They hook up, live together for a while so they can get to know each other, and then get married so the woman can get citizenship. Then, a quick divorce. It pays twenty keys, man.” We looked at each other. “You’re really gonna do that?” asked Tavo. Bimbo smiled slightly. I didn’t think citizenship was that easy to get, especially if you got divorced right after, but said nothing. “¿Te vas a casar con una dominicana?” said Paul. Paul was always sliding back into Spanish whenever he was scared, drunk, angry, or surprised. In other words, often. Since Tavo’s family hadn’t moved to Puerto Rico until he was ten, he’d never really picked up Spanish, and we mostly talked in English for his sake. We had all picked up English skills elsewhere, and we loved that it made our conversations feel private at school, but we still switched back and forth. Paul did it more than the rest of us. Luckily, Tavo had gotten used to it and almost always got the gist of things. “I’m already living with her,” said Bimbo. “That’s part of the stuff I had to get squared away.” “Where are you living now?” I asked. “Same place,” said Bimbo. “My sis is living with her new boyfriend. I have the house to mys —” “What’s her name?” asked Tavo. “Altagracia.” We looked at each other again. Altagracia was the name of a Dominican house cleaner who had appeared in a comedy show on local TV when we were kids. She was always the butt of the joke in every skit. Puerto Ricans always make fun of Dominicans, which is stupid because we’re all in the same brown boat, but some boricuas feel superior to them even though we’re second-class citizens from a colony where we can’t vote in US elections. At least our colonizers hand us a blue passport when we’re born. That gives us a chance to get off the fucking island, which leaves more space for the Dominicans who come in yolas to our shores, looking for the same better life we seek in the US. Las gallinas de arriba se cagan en las de abajo, pero todas son gallinas, my abuela used to say. The chickens on the top branch shit on the chickens at the bottom, but they’re all chickens. “¿En serio, cabrón?” asked Paul. “I’m serious. She’s not bad looking, either,” said Bimbo. “We have to talk to each other a lot, you know? So we have a story to tell when they ask us, because if they think we’re faking it, they won’t give her the papers and they’ll send her ass back to la República Dominicana and probably throw me in jail for trying to fool Uncle Sam. So, we’re practicing our story. You know, where we met and what we like and all that shit. I think she likes me. We’ll see how it goes.” “Tu estás loco pa’l carajo, Bimbo,” said Paul. Tavo laughed and spat rice. Even he could understand that. Bimbo just nodded. “You’ve always known I’m crazy, papi,” said Bimbo with a smile. “Tú sabes cómo nosotros lo hacemos. Now, if you fucking pigs are done with your food and asking me questions about my love life, how about we get down to business?” “What do you need, man?” asked Tavo. “Not here,” said Bimbo. “Let’s get into Gabe’s car.” We picked up our plates, threw away our trash, and waved to the woman who worked as a cashier and translator at El Paraíso Asia, although she mostly used her hands and we had never heard her say a single word in Mandarin or Cantonese, not that we’d know the difference. Excerpt continues below cover reveal. Studio portrait of Man dressed in black turtleneck looking at camera against dark background. Shaved whiskey. Shot on film camera We walked to the parking lot and got into my car. Bimbo climbed in the front with me, and Tavo and Paul got in the back. I turned the car on and started the AC because late summer in the Caribbean gives you two choices: AC on full blast or death. “So, what’s this serious business you wanted to tell us about?” The red neon letters that hung above El Paraíso Asia reflected on his eyes and made him look sick and strong at the same time. Bimbo didn’t reply straightaway, just looked at each of us. He had something in mind, something I was sure had to do with his mom, but I was also pretty sure none of us wanted to hear it. You can fool yourself into thinking bad things will stay away if you don’t talk about them, and we were all experts at doing just that. Hablar del diablo lo hace venir porque decir las cosas las hace nacer. Talking about the Devil makes him come because saying things brings them to life. Bimbo cleared his throat and started talking. “I drove by Lazer the day after they let me out. There was a skinny motherfucker working the door. He was standing right where my mom used to stand. It was…weird. Anyway, I’d never seen that dude in my life, so I know he’s new there. I wanna talk to him.” “You wanna talk to him because you think he knows something about your…about what happened?” asked Paul. “About my mom,” said Bimbo, anger creeping into his voice. “About the motherfuckers who killed my mom. Yes. And y’all can talk about her, say her name. Maria. I say it a million times every fucking day. Maria. Maria. Maria. I’m gonna hold on to her until the day I die. Not talking about her murder does nothing to bring her back.” “What do you have in mind, man?” I asked Bimbo. “Easy,” he said. “We show up late and wait around until Lazer closes. Then we follow this guy to his car or his house or whatever and have a talk with him.” “Will this talk involve violence?” asked Tavo. “You know I don’t like violence. It…it brings bad karma, man.” “I don’t fucking know, man,” said Bimbo. “I guess it depends on what he says.” “I don’t think we should waste our time following some dude just because you —” “I don’t give a fuck what you think, Paul,” interrupted Bimbo. “I don’t give a fuck what any of you think. You either come with me or you don’t. It’s that simple.” Leave it to Paul and his fucking mood swings to be the first to be all in at Maria’s wake and then the first one to step back when it was time to get to work. “Tranquilízate, cabrón,” said Paul. “En este carro, tú no tienes enemigos. I know you’re angry as hell. I’m angry too. We all are. Thing is, following that dude and asking him questions can get you — us — in a lot of trouble. We don’t know who he is. Cynthia says I should stop —” “Ah, now it all makes sense,” said Bimbo. “Cynthia says. Well, I told you, I don’t give a fuck about what Cynthia says and I don’t give a fuck about whatever trouble I can get into for asking questions. Trouble is waking up and not having my mom there. Trouble is worrying about my sister day and night because my mom was the only one who could keep her happy and under control. Whatever ‘trouble’ this motherfucker wants to bring my way is fine by me: he either doesn’t know a thing or he knows exactly what I want to know.” “Fuck you, man.” “Nah, fuck you, P.” “There are ways to go about revenge,” said Tavo, jumping in the middle. “We need a bit more info, Bimbo. That’s all.” “I was locked up, so don’t pretend you motherfuckers have spent more time thinking about this than I have. If you came to me and told me someone shot your mom in the face, I’d be down for whatever you want to do. I’m not gonna sit here and beg your asses to back me up,” said Bimbo. “We’ve never done that, remember? We don’t have to. We stick together no matter what. Every time someone has come at you for being gay, Tavo, what have we done?” The silence that followed Bimbo’s question hung around us like a thing everyone disliked and no one wanted to touch. Finally, Tavo spoke. “You’ve beaten their asses.” “We’ve beaten their asses,” echoed Bimbo. “And do you know why we — and that includes you — have beaten their asses, Paul?” “Because Tavo is one of us, and if someone fucks with one of us —” “They fuck with all of us,” Tavo and I finished like choirboys recit- ing a prayer. “Exactly,” said Bimbo. “And what did we do when that guy with the nose ring put his hands on my sis?” “We beat him so bad he spent two days in the hospital,” I said, remembering the way his face had looked after we were done. I had an image of the guy turning to the side because he was gagging and then spitting out a bunch of bloody teeth. “And why the hell did we do that, Gabe?” asked Bimbo. “Why did we almost kill that motherfucker?” “We did it because if someone fucks with one of us —” “They fuck with all of us,” said Bimbo. He was right. I thought about it and I couldn’t let him go alone. I could help keep him focused. I could keep him from doing something dangerously stupid. I could be the voice of reason, especially if Tavo didn’t want to go. “I get what you’re saying, man, but this—” “Hold your horses, T,” said Bimbo. “I’m not done. I’m only getting started. We never go looking for trouble and you know it. We don’t go out looking for violence or whatever. Those things find us. They always have. And we have never backed down. It’s what we do, right? Think about it. What did we do when those huge motherfuckers pulled a gun on Gabe at the beach when he was selling jewelry? What did we do when we were at that bar that looks like a boat from the outside and those six guys got into it with Paul? What did we do that time I got caught shoplifting and the two security goons wanted to teach me a lesson? What did we do when we were partying at Babylon and four guys from some cruise decided to pull a knife on you and called you a faggot? “I could spend three hours asking you questions like that and you would have to reply with the same thing again and again because you fucking know what we did. You know we did what family does. This is no different. You fuckers come with me or you don’t, but I’m not asking you twice.” “I’ll come with you, man,” I said. I said it not because I wanted to but because I knew it was the right thing to say, the only thing to do after Bimbo had spoken his piece. Spoken the truth. I did it because I knew Bimbo would’ve done the same for me and because Maria had given me a place to hide from the ghost of my father and set a plate of food in front of me without even asking. I said it because no one else had said it, and their silence was starting to hurt. “I’m with you, brother,” said Tavo. Paul stayed quiet, but he looked at Bimbo and nodded. That was all he needed to say. __________________________________ From HOUSE OF BONE AND RAIN. Used with the permission of the publisher, MULHOLLAND. Copyright © 2024 by GABINO IGLESIAS. View the full article

Hercule Poirot hasn’t been brought to the screen as many times as Sherlock Holmes has, but he’s certainly had his fair share of portrayals, throughout the years. He’s been everywhere, from radio to the big screen to the small screen to the stage. The rules: as usual, with these things, I can only rank performances that I can actually watch. So, no radio (VERY sorry not to include a Poirot adaptation with Orson Welles in multiple parts), no theater, no video games. But that’s okay. That leaves us with 20 performances to assess. It wasn’t an easy job. I relied on most of my little gray cells to pull it off. Now, normally, when making these lists, I have to put together the candidates myself, which means I rely on a lot of research to amass an effective number. But not this time. I’m grateful that the Agatha Christie estate has, on their website, a timeline of all major and minor Poirot performances. Evidently, the 1970s were silly with Poirot. I’d love to know why. Normally, on lists like these, I have to ignore the pasticcios, those sendups that refer to the character with other names. “Herlock Sholmes” or Count Chocula, that kind of thing. But since we’re working with fewer Poirots overall, it seems perfectly acceptable to permit them to round out the group. Now. There are a few Poirots I absolutely did not get to watch, either because their recordings were difficult to find or, in a few cases, impossible to get. I’ve listed them here. Anatoliy Ravikovich, Peril at End House (1990) Martin Gabel, The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim (1962) Heini Göbel, Murder on the Orient Express (1955) Tom Petrone, Doing Agatha (2008) As with all rankings on our website, this list is extremely subjective and exists purely for fun. And I had a lot fun; I highly enjoyed sifting through these contenders. How many times on this list will I use the word “adorable?” Read on and see. 20. John Mangan, Extraordinary Women (2011) Honestly, this one barely counts. John Mangan plays Poirot in scenes in a documentary about Agatha Christie’s contribution, part of the Extraordinary Women series. It’s reenactment-style. I’m putting it last, for this reason. 19. Ed Begley, Burke’s Law, “Who Killed Supersleuth?” (1964) Ed Begley (that’s senior) plays the Poirot-esque Bascule Doirot in this episode of the PI show Burke’s Law. I love Ed as an actor (Sweet Bird of Youth! Twelve Angry Men!), but I’m hard-pressed to find him a suitable Poirot stand-in. This isn’t his fault as much as a script that gives him little to do. Then again, he barely seems to be trying for the accent. 18. Andrew Sachs, Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) Comedian Andrew Sachs pops into Revenge of then Pink Panther to play a mental patient who thinks he’s Poirot. Clouseau meets him when he too is brought to the asylum. Between Sachs and Peter Sellers, it’s a battle of the fake French accents. 17. Hugh Laurie, Spice World (1997) People don’t talk enough about how Hugh Laurie made a cameo in Spice World, in which he plays a Hercule Poirot-style detective who can’t tell that Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) is clearly the murderer, in an interlude designed to suggest that she can get away with anything. 16. Kôtarô Satomi, Agatha Christie’s Great Detective Poirot and Marple (2004) Kôtarô Satomi voices Poirot in this charming Japanese anime series from 2004. The voicework is quite good, but I think we can all agree it’s the thick animated mustache that wins the day. 15. Dudley Jones, The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977) In this hour-long comic mystery send-up starring John Cleese as a descendant of Sherlock Holmes who has to foil the evil plot of a descendant of Moriarty, with help from a descendant of Dr. Watson, there’s an international investigation delegation where Dudley Jones shows up as a very short, very capillaceously-shellacked Hercule Poirot. I wish I could say that this is the funniest or most random cameo, but that title belongs to Luie Caballero parodying Detective Columbo. 14. Anthony O’Donnell, Agatha Christie: A Life in Pictures (2004) Olivia Williams played Agatha Christie in this 2004 BBC biographical TV movie. Anthony O’Donnell plays an English investigator Agatha kind of imagines is Poirot. He’s an overserious little guy, too much of a cop to be a real Poirot stand-in. 13. Mansai Nomura, Murder on the Orient Express (2015) This enthusiastic Japanese miniseries is charming, but features a very, very intense performance from Mansai Nomura as Poirot, one that tips the show from an otherwise fairly dramatic story into caricature and comedy. Perhaps it’s all too self-aware to fully gel? 12. Jason Alexander, “Murder on the Disoriented Express” (1996) I’ll bet you didn’t know that in the MIDDLE of his Seinfeld fame, Jason Alexander played Poirot in episode of Muppets Tonight. What’s the performance like? That’s entirely beside the point. You’re welcome. 11. Joan Borràs, “Les cartes d’Hèrcules Poirot” (1979) This is the first Spanish-language Poirot adaptation. I love Joan Borràs’s extremely deep-voiced Poirot, a jolly baritone. 10. Tony Randall, The Alphabet Murders (1965) There is possibly no one in the world more adorable than Tony Randall, and his affable, adorable Poirot (in this long-forgotten black-and-white TV movie) is one of my personal favorites on this list. Not because it’s incredible, but because it’s so charming. 9. James Coco, Murder by Death (1976) I love James Coco, but that’s beside the point. Of all the Poirot spoofs, parodies, and pastiches on this list, his portrayal of Poirot-esque detective Milo Perrier in Murder By Death is the very best one. 8. Ian Holm, Murder by the Book In this sly TV movie about how Agatha Christie (Dame Peggy Ashcroft) gets to hang out with her creation Poirot, Ian Holm plays the detective. Ian Holm was a surprisingly good accent-man, though not in Big Night, I’m sorry. But his Poirot is perfectly suitable. 7. John Malkovich, The ABC Murders (2018) If you’re surprised to see John Malkovich’s name on this list, you’re not alone. It’s surprising to see him play Poirot, that’s for sure. And it’s a very different Poirot than we’ve seen before. Settling down to watch, this miniseries, I tried hard to ignore my own predispositions, including my assumption that he would naturally provide Poirot with a vicious edge, but he plays him as rather subdued and sad… with a mysterious, Englishy accent, no less. Okay then! 6. Horst Bollmann, Black Coffee (1973) This atmospheric West German TV adaptation of Black Coffee does not have subtitles (in the version I found on YouTube), so for a while I wasn’t sure who Poirot was. I figured it out, though. >taps head< Horst Bollmann’s Poirot is a tidy, clever fellow with a twinkle in his eye. I wish I knew what he was saying, because I was really appreciating his physicality as the character. 5. Kenneth Branagh, Murder on the Orient Express, etc. (2017) Say what you will about Branagh’s Poirot films, but I do think his take on the character is extremely interesting. He’s smart but a little pompous, in a sensitive way, that I think is more about Branagh reflecting on himself and his own career than about Poirot the character. He’s by far the best in A Haunting in Venice, the reboot-y third installment in his Poirot series. 4. Alfred Molina, Murder on the Orient Express (2001) This actually-pretty-good TV adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express, set at the time of its release, stars a youngish Alfred Molina as a serious, unruffled, even grave Poirot. It’s a version of the character I haven’t really seen elsewhere; Molina brings an air of gravitas to a character often undercut with drabs of superciliousness. Perhaps it’s not the most traditional Poirot, but it is one of the more effective ones. Plus he does a kickin’ accent. I could watch him all day. 3. Albert Finney, Murder on the Orient Express (1974) Albert Finney was originally thought to be too young to play Poirot, but won the part anyway. And I think we can all agree it was a success! 2. Peter Ustinov, Death on the Nile, etc. (1978) The great Peter Ustinov took over the role of Poirot from Albert Finney after Murder on the Orient Express, and man, what a sensation he was. Peter Ustinov is an actor of endless charisma and charm, and he hams up the role perfectly in this film and its four sequels. We as a people do not deserve Peter Ustinov. 1. David Suchet, Poirot (1989-2013) You all knew it would come to this. David Suchet’s droll, clever Poirot is highly accurate, if you’re into that sort of thing, but he also possesses a real je ne sais quoi that sends his performance over the line. His performance doesn’t feel so much as a take on the character as the essence of him. View the full article

A look at the month’s best debuts in crime fiction, mystery, and thriller. * Vanessa Chan, The Storm We Made (S&S/Marysue Ricci Books) In one of the best espionage novels I’ve ever come across, a bored Malaya housewife lets a Japanese spy charm her into giving up the secrets necessary for her nation to be invaded; later, as the war continues, her guilt grows monstrous as her children suffer. –MO Nishita Parekh, The Night of the Storm (Dutton) Houston during a hurricane is the setting for this thriller featuring a South Asian family trapped in a fancy suburban home with a dead body and a lot of petty resentments. Along with various other storm-set novels coming out lately, The Night of the Storm reminds us that locked-room thrillers are the only true beneficiaries of climate change. –MO Kate Brody, Rabbit Hole (Soho Crime) Kate Brody’s much-awaited debut Rabbit Hole is a fascinating romp through the internet’s true crime boards as an aimless and depressed young woman seeks answers in her sister’s long-sensationalized death after their father’s suicide makes clear that he never stopped looking for a culprit. She teams with a quirky reddit-fanatic named Mickey in her investigation and the banter between them is a highlight in the book. Brody’s novel continues the ongoing trend of psychological thrillers that become smart critiques of true crime culture. –MO Abbott Kahler, Where You End (Henry Holt) Abbott Kahler wowed me with the nonfiction book Ghosts of Eden Park, so I’m really psyched for this pivot to thrillers. Where You End explores the twisted relationship between two mirror twins, each a perfect replica of the other in reverse. When one twin has amnesia, the other decides to fill in the details of their childhood with an imagined happiness that doesn’t mesh with the ongoing dangers both sisters are facing. –MO Sarah-Jane Collins, Radiant Heat (Berkley) In this Australian eco-thriller, Alison emerges from her burnt-out home after a wildfire only to find a dead woman in her driveway. Who is the woman? How did she die? And why did she have Alison’s name and address on a slip of paper inside of her well-stocked billfold? I’m excited to read further into this one and see where Sarah-Jane Collins goes with this intriguing and timely set-up. –MO View the full article

Most people know that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a result of trauma, but unless you’ve lived with it, it’s hard to really understand what it’s like. Everyday experiences and objects become terrifying. Having PTSD is like living in a haunted house, but the ghosts are your trauma and they follow you everywhere. The house I grew up in was haunted. There were strange noises, like creaking and footsteps. There were occasional cold spots or feelings of being watched, especially from the woods behind my house. While I loved that forest during the day, I wouldn’t go anywhere near it once the sun went down. I just knew something bad would happen if I went there at night. I felt it. Believing that someone—or something—was there and I couldn’t see them, but they could see me—it was scary. No matter how much I tried to talk myself out of my fear, I couldn’t. It was like my body knew something my brain didn’t. It’s not uncommon for people to say they’re being “haunted.” By the past, by memories, by loved ones, by trauma. What most of us mean is that we think about it sometimes and it’s upsetting. But for someone with PTSD, being “haunted” is almost literally true. When someone is being haunted by an actual ghost, ordinary noises can become frightening. The sound of footsteps in the attic is no big deal—unless you know that no living person is upstairs. If I’m at the coffee shop and I feel watched, I turn around and maybe catch someone looking in my direction. But if I’m alone in my room, feeling watched is scary. Living with PTSD is like that. Most people aren’t afraid of the sound of storms or riding in a car. But for someone with PTSD, those experiences can be terrifying. Not because storms or cars themselves are scary, but because they’re a trigger. For combat veterans, the sound of thunder can remind them of gunfire and explosions. People who’ve been in car accidents might be fearful of driving or being a passenger, depending on who was driving when the crash happened. Or they might be afraid of driving in whatever weather condition contributed to the collision, like heavy rain or snow. Triggers can be specific or general. Most of the lore on ghosts say that they stick around when they have unfinished business. That they can only be put to rest when they’ve resolved whatever it is that they needed to. And that’s a perfect description of trauma. It’s unfinished business. It’s in the past, but it hasn’t been resolved. It hasn’t been healed, which makes it a challenge to move on. It’s easy to say that we should leave the past in the past when ghosts aren’t jumping out at us, forcing us to relive something terrible. People with PTSD don’t want to be stuck in a loop of the worst thing that ever happened to them. But laying those ghosts to rest aren’t any easier than laying real ghosts to rest. They move on in their own time. When I talk about my experiences in that haunted house, many people will laugh it off, like I’m joking. I don’t really believe in ghosts, do I? Often, people who haven’t experienced something paranormal prefer rational, logical explanations. But fear doesn’t respond well to logic. It’s our brain’s way of telling us that something isn’t right. It’s important to listen to that fear. Healthy fear keeps us safe. And because fear is designed for that, it doesn’t just go away because we want it to. Because those of us who don’t have PTSD experience the world in a certain way, we see a car as just a mode of transportation. A storm is an exciting spectacle with the rain, the dramatic flashing and booms of thunder so loud that they shake the house. People with PTSD often have to deal with doubt and skepticism. They’re sometimes described as “dramatic,” as if they have to justify their fear. I had a friend who used to laugh at my fear of the woods until they experienced something frightening they couldn’t explain. Then, suddenly, they got it. To many of us, an unusual experience isn’t real unless we’ve the ones it happened to. Most houses aren’t haunted. The dead stay dead. The past softens and blurs. We remember pain, but can mostly leave it behind. When I walked out the door of my childhood home, I left the ghosts behind. When someone has PTSD, the ghosts follow them everywhere they go, popping up at unexpected times. Even when you know the house is haunted, the jump scare still works. For most of us, we remember the bad things that have happened to us. If you want to hear about how scared I was when I ran from my car to the house after dark, I’ll be happy to tell you all about it. But that’s all I’d be doing—telling you. I remember the fear, but I don’t feel it anymore. In the moment, I was terrified, but now, it’s in the past. I’ve moved on. People with PTSD don’t have that luxury. Their past feelings are just as big and frightening as they were when their trauma (or series of traumas) happened. It’s as intense as it was when it was actually happening, like they are physically in that moment. Their ghosts refuse to be put to rest. Growing up in a haunted house, I couldn’t just move out. I had to learn to live with the ghosts. Sometimes that meant avoiding them, like how I wouldn’t go in the woods after dark. Sometimes that meant talking myself through it. If I heard footsteps in the attic, I’d remind myself that nothing bad had ever happened. I developed strategies to live with my ghosts. People with PTSD are far braver than I’ve ever had to be. Their ghosts can be anywhere, and they still have to live life, even knowing that a ghost might jump out from behind any corner. They learn to avoid triggers when they can, rationalize what’s “real” and happening now versus what isn’t, and talk to trusted people so they have support. As an adult, I remember walking through my childhood home. I could still hear footsteps in the attic and feel how wrong the forest was at night. No matter how much I’d changed, the ghosts were still there, waiting. Because that’s the thing about ghosts. They never get tired of waiting. And when I least expected it, they’d jump out at me for one last scare. *** View the full article

For a character whose screen adventures always end with, “James Bond will return,” it’s interesting how much of a struggle it has been to try to make the literary character undertake a new adventure on the page. In many ways, the fact that Bond ever graced the page again after the death of creator Ian Fleming in 1964 is surprising. Fleming’s widow, Ann Fleming, was more than happy to let Bond die with his creator. But, of course, fans were loathe to do such a thing. Literary star Kingsley Amis was the first to pick up the golden pen, penning two books that were more celebration of Bond than continuation. (1965’s James Bond Dossier, under mis’s own name and The Book of Bond, or, Every Man His Own 007 under the pseudonym of Bill Tanner, the chief of staff to MI6’s head M in the books. Bond, however, was certainly not the first literary character to carry on after its creator’s passing; the estate of L. Frank Baum released The Royal Book of Oz only one year after’s Baum’s death, claiming that the story was based on notes that Baum had left behind. Given the popularity of the Oz books, is it any shock that the notes didn’t exist and were likely created to help ease readers into someone else telling these fantastical stories? In his new book, James Bond After Fleming, author Mark Edlitz examines the world of 007 post-Fleming. And, like any story that spans the decades, there is good and then there is bad. Amis was also picked to write the first continuation novel, titled Colonel Sun, released in 1968, which thrilled readers and some critics. While some reviews called the book a pale imitation of Fleming’s voice, the critic for the British magazine, The Listener, described the book at “good dirty fun, once read and soon forgotten.” (It should be noted that it wasn’t forgotten and despite film producers repeatedly insisting that they don’t take story ideas from the books, elements of Colonel Sun have appeared in several Bond films, most notably, Die Another Day and Spectre.) To help keep tab on 007 post-Fleming, Edlitz breaks every book down to several categories, including noting how Bond eats his eggs, because, of course, Bond fans simply must know these things. And in recapping the plot and the backstory of each book, readers get a good sense of the story and can easily figure out which books are essential reading and, perhaps, more importantly, which ones are worth a pass. The Bond book went into hiatus for most of the 1970s, with Christopher Wood penning two books, James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, because both films deviated so distinctly from the origin novels. (Though Spy was Fleming’s own doing – he was too embarrassed by the book after its publication to allow an adaptation, selling producers the name alone and forcing them to create their own story.) The 80s were dominated by the work of John Gardner, whose Bond output surpassed Fleming himself. Over 14 original novels and two film novelizations, Gardner brought Bond current, trading in the Aston-Martin for a Saab and the Walther PPK for a 9mm Browning. Edlitz helpfully places each book in place on the Bond timeline, so we can continue to argue endlessly over the ‘is Bond a codename, given to different spies or one individual going on all of these missions’ debate, which, never ever grows tiresome or misses the whole point of Bond as a fantasy character. After Gardner came a unique choice – an American. Raymond Benson, who in the early 80s published The James Bond Bedside Companion, one of the early serious studies of Bond and his world up to that point. (Benson hasn’t updated the book since its original publication, due to his affiliation with the character after the book’s release.) Benson wrote six Bond originals and three film novelizations and, for some readers, brought back the Bond they missed since Gardner had taken over. (High Time to Kill, Benson’s third Bond novel is, for me, one of the greats of the series.) And then, in 2002, after the publication of The Man with the Red Tattoo, Benson had moved on to different pastures. Ian Fleming Publications, the company tasked with maintaining the Fleming catalogue of books and continuing the legacy of 007, then decided to try something different – not cede control on Bond to one writer. (This was something the film producers learned a few years earlier, preferring to keep their name in lights and let each movie’s director come and go.) And so, on what would have been Fleming’s 100th birthday, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks was released on May 28th, 2008. The book carried the sub-credit ‘writing as Ian Fleming,’ which, is a new one for continuation novels. Reception for the novel was muted, so, this new plan of one book per writer really came in handy and, Jeffery Deaver next took up the pen, producing Carte Blanche, which kept Bond in the present day. It was also at this time that IFP decided to spread its wings a little bit and delve deeper into several aspects of the Bond universe, with Charlie Higson and then Steve Cole writing nine Young Bond books for younger readers. Much put-upon secretary Miss Moneypenny also got into telling her story in three books by Samantha Weinberg (writing under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook). William Boyd wrote Solo in 2013, bringing Bond back to the late 1960s and Anthony Horowitz produced a trilogy of books all set even earlier than Boyd’s. Edlitz details all of the back-and-forth incredibly well, including short stories, essays and the novels that were never meant to be. (But oh how the mind reels at what Geoffrey Jenkins was working up.) By the time you finish, you are likely picking up at least one of the many books covered here and diving in, or you’re fixing yourself a stiff drink… either one would be acceptable for any serious Bond fan. In this book, and in his previous The Lost Adventures of James Bond, Edlitz does the leg work, allowing readers to simply enjoy the fruits of his labors, as he educates us in the never ending dark corners of Bond’s world. While some may consider Fleming’s work the beginning and end of Bond’s literary exploits, Edlitz provides a detailed guide through the decades. In many ways, the saga of gentleman secret agent James Bond will never end because we will have these books and these stories to entertain us. Bond will always be available for us to settle down with some evening, when the world is a little bit quieter and still. As we let our daily problems drift away and prepare ourselves for the fate of the world, we will turn to the first page and, in the words of Q in Never Say Never Again, will think to ourselves “I hope we’re going to have some gratuitous sex and violence.” View the full article

It was the summer I left rehab. I was officially six weeks “clean” of alcohol and was taking my first baby steps back into the real world, when I looked down at my phone to see 11 missed calls. My heart sank. The number listed was an ex-addict from my former rehab—a brilliant young doctor named Liz* who had checked in for alcohol and cocaine addiction. This couldn’t be good. Dread pooling in my stomach, I called her back. She answered on the first ring. “I’ve relapsed,” Liz sobbed. “I’m devastated.” I listened sympathetically, as she outlined her shame and despair. In a society where children are taught to pass or fail, Liz’s take-home was clear. She had failed at recovery. I didn’t know it then, but this downward spiral of self recrimination would be instrumental in taking her life. Convinced her slip-up was evidence of her inability to succeed, it wasn’t long before Liz slipped up again. And again. Within two months, she’d fallen victim to a fatal overdose. It should never have ended that way. All we could do was mourn. Six weeks earlier, I had checked into rehab, in my own black pit of despair. A bestselling author for almost a decade, I had started my career as a London journalism aged twenty, with just enough childhood trauma to send me into the open arms of Fleet Street drinking culture. My switch to novel writing marked the culmination of a life-long ambition to be an author. But by now I had a terrible secret. My heavy drinking was a habit I’d been using to successfully drown out painful feelings. Now I was using alcohol to plumb the feelings required to write crime-thrillers with a deep emotional core. The journey through rehab though painful, and tough, was greatly eased by my fellow addicts. During the process we were urged to dig into the painful feelings that led to us to our various addictions. We were also shown the way to the famous 12-Steps program, to allow us to mature through the process of sobriety in a supportive community, ready to nurture of vulnerabilities and offer help. One aspect of the 12-steps program will be familiar to many of us in western society. The ambition of recovery using this method is to stay ‘clean’ forever. To never again imbibe our respective addiction. Not once. Not ever. The reward for this iron-clad willpower, was various badges, tokens and awards along the way. There were people in my 12 steps group who had been sober for thirty years, with the badge to prove it. But slip up just once, and you go back to stage one. No matter how many years you’ve negotiated daily life without your crutch, you are now “one day clean.” No merit exists to acknowledge your growth or learning along the way. So absolute is this system, I’ve known members fall into agonies of doubt, over having accidentally sipped an alcoholic beer having mistaken it for alcohol free. When I first went into recovery, I needed this system. I needed to celebrate every small victory. The days–even the hours–of being free from alcohol. But when Liz died, I radically shifted my perspective. Did I really need to attach so much importance to being perfect, when, bluntly, I had just seen that approach result in such tragedy? The more I took this perspective, the more I noticed something. Attaching such a huge importance to not relapsing seemed to give the drug in question a huge amount of cache. The unspoken suggestion, was whatever you’d quit was so fun, even the slightest sniff would send you tunnelling back into addiction. Or, you as a recovering addict, so irrevocably damaged, any replacement coping mechanisms or self-healing was pointless. I began to think, that perhaps neither was true. And when I first “relapsed” drinking a glass of wine at a wedding, a year after rehab, I realized the lie of it all. Alcohol really wasn’t fun at all. Free of the physical addiction, I was missing all the pleasure of sating my anxiety riddled body. The only thing left was a slightly woozy feeling, that I could really take or leave. It was a revelation. Could it be that my “relapse” was actually a learning curve? Something I personally needed to experience, to realize I wasn’t getting from the alcohol, what I thought I was? I contacted the other addicts from my rehab with my guilty news. And found that they had all done the same. More importantly, they felt the same as I did. The drug had completely lost its shine. We had learned other ways to cope with life. And none of us felt our old drug would add anything at all, even if we were able to use it in moderation. It was around this time, that I had another revelation. Going into rehab, I had been gripped with a case of severe writer’s block. I’d fallen into a deadly cycle of drinking to try and plumb the empty well, and then drinking more in despair when that didn’t work. It was an awful pit of self-loathing that nearly took my life, and I was grateful that I had got into rehab in time. Leaving the clinic, I was terrified that without alcohol, I would never write another word. Then, to my surprise, an idea struck. In rehab, I had met all kinds of colorful characters, a few of them well-known. Since leaving, to protect the privacy of my fellow patients, I’d kept my crazy in a luxury clinic of addicts to myself. It occurred to me, that writing on a book on the subject would solve these two problems in one. I finally had something to write about, and I could process some of the stranger events, without compromising anyone’s anonymity. The book, began to write itself. In rehab, the last thing on my mind was fiction. But now I was out, those creepy Victorian corridors, and luxury treatment facilities took on a whole new life. To my great relief, I didn’t feel the need to drink alcohol when writing it. The emotional journey of rehab allowed me to use some of my deepest personal experiences, without resorting to my old addiction. Despite the strong start, finishing the book wasn’t straight-forward. I had ups and downs. Days where I wrote nothing. Days where I “failed.” But I kept showing up to my desk, ready to work, and hoping the words would come. One year later, I had a first draft of a manuscript I titled The Clinic. I also had something more valuable. A deep understanding, born of the tragic loss of Liz, that exacting expectations can be an enemy of success, and mistakes can teach you as much as successes—as long as you’re able to see them as lessons. We all miss Liz, every day. Her loss is still hard to understand or believe. But she taught us all something, and there’s comfort in that. Recovery, like life, isn’t linear. It isn’t a pass or fail. It’s a journey, where the best any of us can do, is to keep trying. *names have been changed to protect identities. *** View the full article

The most perfect EIGHT steps.

In 2015 I decided to write a magical realism western despite knowing nothing about magical realism or westerns. I wanted to fictionalize the story of my great-grandfather, Antonio Gonzalez, who was a bandido in the late 1800s, was shot in the face by the Texas Rangers and left for dead, but lived and was henceforth known as “El Tragabalas,” or, “The Bullet Swallower.” The date and setting of my great-grandfather’s story dictated that I write a western; I decided to make it magical because that sounded cool. (Budding writers are generally steered away from making major authorial choices on the basis of “it sounds cool.” And yet I think a lot of us get into writing because we have a good sense of when following cool will pay off. Much ink has been spilled on why Melville included so many whale facts in Moby Dick, but maybe on some level he just thought they were cool.) To educate myself, I embarked on a multi-year reading campaign to ground myself in both canons and to understand life along the Texas-Mexico border in 1895 and beyond. I read Cormac, I read Gabo, I read Allende and McMurtry and dozens of others. In the end I think I read upwards of sixty books, fiction and nonfiction. It was probably too much. Definitely too much. And yet I made many literary friends along the way, books that complicated my picture of the American west, specifically Texas (my home state), and delighted my taste for the weird. Fernando A. Flores, Valleyesque Looking at the cover of this short story collection, you know you’re going to get weird: the splayed legs, the floating piano, the menacing drop of blood. And Flores does not disappoint. His writing reminds me of another Texan, Donald Barthelme, for its surreal imagery and intense confidence. By the third story in the collection, which opens with 19th century composer Frédéric Chopin waking up muddy and ailing in modern Ciudad Juarez, you know you’re in capable hands and can just sit back and enjoy the insanity. Flores’s deft mix of hyperreality with the surreal also brings to mind another favorite of mine, Bruno Schulz, a writer of gifted imagination and an ability to make the mundane magical. Flores writes with such a flair for the uncanny, reading him is like seeing Texas for the very first time. Alison Wisdom, The Burning Season In this disturbing novel about a woman trapped in a repressive religious cult, Wisdom strikes right at the heart of modern Texas and the ways many well-intentioned people live in religious hypocrisy. Rosemary has followed her husband to a small town slowly being taken over by a religious sect that is controlled by a charismatic preacher named Papa Jake. Anyone who grew up in the Bible Belt, as I did, will find this story uncomfortably familiar, and will recognize the slow slide from searching to believing, from meaning well to brutality, from faith to hate. Gabino Iglesias, The Devil Takes You Home Being a fairly new reader of horror, I was very excited for Iglesias’s latest. Mario has recently lost his young daughter to cancer, and his wife to grief, and so with nothing to live for he becomes a hitman. When a friend offers him the chance to make a huge sum of money doing a job for a narco-cartel, he agrees, and is launched into a nightmare world of violence and cruelty. Fair warning: This book is dark. DARK. But as someone who grew up on the border amid the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s, where, it turns out, cults were actually sacrificing people to the devil, I found Iglesias’s descent into the grim world of drug-fueled violence chillingly rendered and all too real. Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers Larry McMurtry is the literary patron saint of Texas. Lonesome Dove will probably be added to the state seal at some point. As it should—it’s incredible. But before Gus and Call drove beeves up to Montana, McMurtry was writing a series of loosely connected novels about an offbeat cast of oversexed dysfunctionals in 1970s Houston, my favorite of which is All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. Danny Deck is living in a guest house apartment with his girlfriend, and on the verge of success as a writer. But his heart and his penis lead him often in the wrong direction, always to hilarious result. The scene of him at his tony book launch next to a fountain of champagne, waiting for a legion of fans who never show up, is a hilariously cringe moment in a novel full of them, and will be relatable to anyone, writer or not, who has had their hopes dashed against the rocks. Katherine Hoerth, Flare Stacks in Full Bloom This poetry collection isn’t weird necessarily, but I include it here for the author’s uncanny ability to describe precisely what it is like to live around oil refineries, a fixture across east Texas, including my hometown of Corpus Christi. This stretch of the Texas coastline is sometimes called “Cancer Alley” for the amount of noxious chemicals released into the environment. But they are also lifeblood: My father worked at the refinery, as did my brother, as does everyone, in one way or another, back home. Hoerth paints a vivid picture of natural destruction, the floods in Houston following Hurricane Harvey, and the unrelenting machinery of consumption. Describing the eerie glow of a refinery flare at night, she says, “Here, I watch the sunset all night long, imagining the hum of flame is birdsong.” Sounds like home. Charles Portis, The Dog of the South Most people have heard of True Grit, Portis’s blockbuster novel of how much butt fourteen-year-old girls can kick, even in the wild west. But The Dog of the South, which is begging for a Coen brothers adaptation, is equally funny and surprising. Ray Midge drives across Texas and all the way into Belize to chase after the Ford Torino his wife took when she ran off with her ex-husband. On the way Midge thinks about the Civil War, and runs across a bizarre cast of characters, including Dr. Reo Symes, a leech and extraordinary bullshitter. Come for the journey; stay for the prodigious use of exclamation marks. Lawrence Wright, God Save Texas A journalist with a gift for telling it how it is, Wright uses his sharp eye to portray contemporary Texas in all her hideous glory. In essays that touch on all aspects of Texas from guns to oil to politics and music, he manages to be at the right place at the right time with the right people, and lets us sit in the room, too. He describes a long cordiality with former President George W. Bush, a man he calls “uncurious,” which I believe is maybe the most apt thing anyone has ever said about him. He delves into our state’s collective obsession with bigness through an essay on Buc-ee’s—the world’s largest gas station in New Braunfels. He touches on Texas’s problem with rogue peacocks, which can be distracted, it turns out, by mirrors hung on fences. And he takes a fascinating dive into the Savings and Loan Scandal of the 1980s, which reduced former governor John Connally to selling all his possessions at auction, including a Santa Claus cookie jar. If you have ever asked yourself, What the Hell is going on in Texas?, this book might have your answer. Merritt Tierce, Love Me Back I have been banging the drum for this incredible book since it came out in 2012. Marie is a waitress at an upscale steakhouse in Dallas, and through her searing narration, we enter a grim world of subservience, demented power dynamics, and the internal struggle of a woman who desperately wants to be better but can’t. Marie shares custody of her young daughter with her ex-husband, but she hates herself for all the ways she believes she fails her, and punishes herself brutally. As much about motherhood as punishment, it’s an unflinching and honest story about what love really means, and what it costs to hold onto it. Bret Anthony Johnston, Corpus Christi: Stories I ordered this collection within five seconds of hearing that it existed. The city of Corpus Christi is not often high in the literary imagination, and so I will read any book set there. Johnston is a master of the short form, having won both an NEA Fellowship and the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. In this, his debut collection, he paints a bleak picture of our shared hometown, a place where natural disaster is always on the horizon, and the slide into decrepitude is inevitable. The jewel of the collection is a three-story cycle about a son caring for his mother as she dies of cancer, a gift to readers of profound empathy and sight. Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Football is religion in Texas, as everyone knows, and this novel about an Iraq war soldier gifted a Sunday in a private box at a Dallas Cowboys game shows just how fanatical this devotion is. Fountain’s tremendous novel is that rare combination of funny as hell and sad as hell. I listened to the audiobook during the early lockdown of 2020 and I remember cracking up behind my mask at Trader Joe’s one gray morning, wishing I could be anywhere, even a Cowboys merch palace, rather than under quarantine. Fountain writes with sharp observation and true empathy for his fully wrought characters. Setting the nationalistic theatrics of a football game against the reality of a bunch of shell-shocked boys home for a brief interlude before returning to battle, gives him an incredible stage on which to present his story of hypocrisy, patriotism, manhood, and despair. And yes, there are cheerleaders. Arturo Longoria, Adios to the Brushlands I came across Arturo Longoria when I was searching for information on the terrain of South Texas, a hot, thorny hellscape of brush so dense people regularly used to get lost and die in it before finding water. A journalist and native son of the borderlands, Longoria’s memoir is an elegy to a land denuded and desecrated in favor of farming, ranching, and oil exploration. Having lived in South Texas for eighteen years, in a neighborhood surrounded by flat fields of cotton that stretch to the horizon, it was a genuine shock to read Longoria’s book and learn that until the 1960s the entire bottom triangle of Texas was filled with trees. Longoria’s narrative of the waste of his world is a beautiful ode to a landscape, and a necessary chapter in the history of the state. *** View the full article

Spade had no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and what quite a few of them in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not – or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague – want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client. –Dashiell Hammett, 1934 One of the few parts of Dashiell Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon that did not make it into John Huston’s otherwise faithful film is a four-page story Sam Spade recounts about a man he once hunted named Charles Flitcraft, “who left his real estate office, in Tacoma, to go to luncheon one day and never returned.” In the Hammett world, this passage is often called the Flitcraft Parable, and it has a full scholarly life of its own, as if the anecdote poses a question about the universe. While some have found in it clues to a philosopher of flux, it has at least as much to do with its author’s life as with his hero’s. In Scott Frank’s new series on AMC, Monsieur Spade, Sam has undergone a Flitcraftian relocation of his own, a “hard and shifty fellow” from wide open San Francisco ending up years later in the wine country of the south of France. In The Maltese Falcon, the Flitcraft story is told by Sam to his client and lover Brigid O’Shaughnessy in his Post Street room, the very apartment Dashiell Hammett inhabited while writing the book. The story he tells her is in fact about as much as we learn of Sam’s earlier life, apart from an unwise past affair with his partner’s wife. Hired by Mrs. Flitcraft to find her vanished husband, Spade locates him in Spokane in 1927, when Flitcraft is eager to explain what happened five years before: “Going to lunch he passed an office building that was being put up—just the skeleton. A beam or something fell eight or ten stories down and smacked the sidewalk alongside him. It brushed pretty close to him, but didn’t touch him, though a piece of the sidewalk was chipped off and flew up and hit his cheek….He was scared stiff of course, he said, but he was more shocked than really frightened. He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.” The life he had known before going to lunch was “a clean orderly sane responsible affair” in which good people were rewarded with beautiful families and gulf club memberships. Now a falling beam had shown him that even good men lived “only while blind chance spared them.” A change came over him, Spade tells Brigid, “like a fist when you open your hand.” The close call spurs Flitcraft to quickly reorder his life to the new reality. He leaves his family and job in one city and ends up in another, where Spade tracks him down and finds he has outwardly recreated his old existence, with a new job, name, and family. But that is not how it feels to Flitcraft, who is unrepentant about the adjustments he felt compelled to make. He only worries that Spade won’t understand him. “I got it all right,” Spade says to Brigid O’Shaughnessy, “but Mrs. Flitcraft never did. She thought it was silly. Maybe it was.” The story is also mysterious for how Spade accepts Flitcraft’s explanation, and simply reports back to the client instead of hauling him by his ear back to Seattle. Whatever else is going on in this story that Spade tells to kill time waiting for Joel Cairo to return his call, Hammett is also working out a puzzle of his own. Parable or not, the story of Charles Flitcraft is rooted in Hammett’s own life and need to amuse himself, like much of his writing. Having nearly died of tuberculosis contracted in the army in 1918, he had convalesced with the disease in Tacoma, the town Flitcraft flees after his own near-death experience, and he worked as a Pinkerton in the cities (San Francisco, Spokane) in which Flitcraft locates, as well as in Seattle, where Spade is working at the time of the case. In each of these agency offices, operatives would have consulted an “A.J. Flitcraft Life Insurance” manual for its actuarial tables, as Pinkerton’s had a number of large insurance clients. As he wrote The Maltese Falcon, Hammett had been living apart from his own family off and on for several years, and was considering making the separation complete by moving three thousand miles away to New York. Hammett had moved into his San Francisco studio at 891 Post Street on orders to shield his young children from his TB, and, once living apart, found the solitude and freedom that, among other things, allowed him to become a novelist. (The same apartment, Bill Arney and Don Herron have shown, in which Sam Spade lives.) As he finished the manuscript for The Maltese Falcon, Hammett had survived a full decade with a disease that might have killed him at any time, an experience that had certainly lifted the lid off life and shown him the works. Hammett, a man poised between lives, is talking to himself through his creation. If you sit in the studio at 891 Post, you can imagine Hammett writing and Sam reading the Flitcraft tale for Brigid, who listens in the padded rocking chair. *** In Monsieur Spade, Brigid O’Shaughnessy is the main link between Sam’s old life in San Francisco and his new one in France, having bought him his plane ticket for a job using some very sketchy money. He arrives there in 1955. I was prepared to sneer at the AMC show, upon first hearing about its premise two years ago, but admired its style from its earliest scenes, when, during a rainstorm, you see the distaste on Sam’s face as he’s forced to look into the stalled engine of his French automobile. Clive Owen does not look much more like Hammett’s conception of Spade than Bogart did. Neither looks “rather pleasantly like a blond satan.” But that doesn’t keep Owen from willing the shamus into being, masking his Bondian looks with world-weariness and gradually acquiring some tough-guy French to use at the market. The south of France is an excellent place to lose yourself and also to be a criminal. The Belgian writer Georges Simenon, a fan of Hammett and vice versa, produced his own Flitcraftian tale about a French businessman, Norbert Monde, in a non-Magritte novel of 1945, Monsieur Monde Vanishes. Monde’s trigger is more a kind of mid-life malaise than a shock to the system from a falling beam. But one morning he leaves his domestic and business affairs in Paris for the Riviera, where he disappears for a time into the riffraff, and finds his ex-wife, now an addict. The Flitcraft tale remains the great unfilmed Spade story with a Hammett pedigree. As Scott Frank’s production company is called Flitcraft, perhaps it will come to pass, especially as Charles Flitcraft was missing for five years, in which time much can dramatically happen. In Monsieur Spade, after trouble finally finds Sam in the paradise where he has landed, his response is measured but firm: “You have disturbed my tranquility.” At the close of the first episode, when he witnesses the aftermath of an unspeakable crime in a French convent, his eyes change as he studies the carnage and the hard and shifty fellow comes reluctantly back to life. View the full article

In June of 2022, the Supreme Court struck down a New York law known as The Sullivan Act which made it a felony to carry a concealed weapon without a license. Sullivan, ruled the court, violated the Second Amendment by making it “virtually impossible for most New Yorkers” to possess firearms unless they could demonstrate a specific need to own a gun. Writing the majority opinion for New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas insisted that going forward, gun regulation must be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition.” Never mind that the law had been in place for more than a century. The end of Sullivan might not have surprised the man whose murder inspired it. Journalist and novelist David Graham Phillips had a low opinion of government officials. In 1906, he wrote a series of articles called The Treason of the Senate, in which he accused several senators of being corrupt lackeys of the rich and entitled. “Did you ever think where the millions…that are spent in national, state and local campaigns come from? Who pays the big election expenses of your congressman, of the men you send to the legislature to elect senators? Do you imagine those who foot those huge bills are fools? Don’t you know that they make sure of getting their money back?” A combative writer, Phillips made enemies, among them Theodore Roosevelt who gave him the title “the man who rakes the muck” (reputedly coining the term “muckraker”). He received abuse, even threats, throughout his career. It did not deter him in the slightest. He was prolific, writing six thousand words a day. “If I were to die tomorrow,” he once said, “I would be six years ahead of the game.” But in 1910, he started receiving anonymous threats and phone calls he found disturbing enough to report to the police. One note read, “This is your last day.” It was signed with his own name. At 1:30, on January 23rd, 1911, the forty-three-year-old Phillips left his Gramercy Park apartment, intending to pick up his mail at the Princeton Club, which was located on 21st Street, on the northern side of the park. A few steps from the entrance, he was shot six times. He died the following day. Feisty to the end, he said, “I could have won against two bullets, but not six.” David Graham Phillips wasn’t the only New Yorker to fall victim to gun violence in the century’s first decade. In August of 1910 an aggrieved dock worker shot Mayor William Gaynor through the neck in Hoboken. (He survived but the bullet remained in his throat, killing him three years later.) A boiler maker was shot in John Kerr’s saloon during an argument. On July 4th, the New York Tribune announced, “Joey Buono Shot Again.” In February, John Fredericks (no relation) identified a magician—known in the tabloids as “the insane prestidigitator”—as the man who shot not only him, but two six-year-old boys in the Bronx as well. But the murder of a novelist in broad daylight in such a genteel neighborhood sparked particular outrage. Working in the coroner’s office. George Petit le Brun saw firsthand the damage guns could do and he sent letters to well-connected New Yorkers, urging them to act. One of Tammany’s more colorful personalities, State Senator “Big Tim” Sullivan saw an opportunity. As a man born in the Five Points who ran the Bowery and Lower East Side, Sullivan knew that cheap guns were plentiful in the city. The citizenry was particularly edgy about young Italian men, all of whom supposedly carried guns with malign intent. Sullivan was a sincere champion of poor immigrants; FDR would later remember, “Tim Sullivan used to say that the America of the future would be made out of the people who had come over in steerage.” Sullivan didn’t dispute that there were criminals with guns in the Bowery; some of his closest friends and business associates were criminals. But, he said, “I want to make it so young thugs in my district will get three years for carrying dangerous weapons instead of getting [the] electric chair a year from now.” He put forth the Dangerous Weapons Bill, which required New Yorkers to be licensed by the police to if they wished to own guns small enough to be concealed. Sullivan divided “gun toters” into three categories: professional criminals, deranged people, and a third group we easily recognize today. “Young fellows who carry guns around in their pockets all the time not because they are murderers or criminals but because the other fellows do it and they want to be able to protect themselves. [T]hose boys aren’t all bad but…just carrying their guns around makes them itch to use them.” Then as now, opponents questioned the constitutionality of the bill. Those in districts where guns were manufactured took issue. Others argued that criminals would pay no attention to the rules, leaving law abiding citizens at the mercy of hoodlums. It was also suggested that corrupt police officers in league with Tammany, would plant guns on enterprising fellows whose business wasn’t strictly legal, in order to force them to work with the political machine. Bat Masterson called the law “obnoxious.” But overall, the act faced little resistance. Only five Senators opposed it in the State Legislature. On August 31, 1911, it became a felony to carry a concealed weapon in New York without a permit. While the cost of a permit was not onerous, the police approved very few applicants, and the number of pistol permits plummeted. The New York Times praised the law as a timely “warning” to the Italian community. Ironically, the first person to be convicted was an immigrant on his way to a job interview who was carrying a gun because he feared being mugged by gangs. Le Brun and Sullivan’s vision of a city where fewer guns means fewer people dying by gun violence seems to have been realized. New York has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership and according to Pew Research Center, one of the lowest gun death rates per capita in the country, well below other states with more permissive gun laws. Subway shooter Bernhard Goetz was convicted, not because he shot four young men on the subway—one of whom was curled up on the floor—but because he was carrying an unlicensed gun. The men were probably trying to rob him. But Goetz admitted, “My intention was to murder them, to hurt them, to make them suffer as much as possible,” proving that his purpose went well beyond self-defense and indicating—to some—that imposing some kind of standard on those who wish to carry a gun is not a bad idea. In the Heller ruling, which decided that the Second Amendment did guarantee the individual right to bear arms, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote,” Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those ‘in common use at the time; finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.” Justice Scalia seems to have had a different interpretation of historical tradition than the current court. The impact of Bruen remains to be seen. But the Phillips murder calls to mind another, more recent assault. Phillips was killed because someone took exception to one of his novels. Two months after the Supreme Court overturned Sullivan, Salman Rushdie was attacked by a man in Chautauqua, New York. His assailant was armed with a knife; Rushdie lost the use of one eye and one hand. But he survived. One wonders if that would be so had his attacker been carrying a gun. *** View the full article

‘Laughter is poison to fear,’ said George R. R. Martin in A Game of Thrones. ‘To laugh is to dispel the darkness,’ agreed Isobelle Carmody in The Gathering. Both insightful quotes that speak to a universal truth. Fear is allayed the instant we laugh at the source of it, and what better way to cope with the inevitable horrors of life? Unfortunately, if you’re a writer of mystery thrillers and you like to blend a dark, creeping sense of terror with humor, the fact a single laugh can cancel out the tense anticipation you’ve built up over thousands of words, is one huge bummer. This dilemma stalked me while I wrote my latest novel The Mysterious Case of The Alperton Angels. I set out to write a story that explored the murky confluence of true crime, crime fiction and entertainment and thought at first it would take the form of a satire. The action follows two true crime authors, Amanda Bailey and Oliver Menzies, both locked in competition to find a key interviewee—someone who was a baby 18 years ago when they narrowly escaped being sacrificed by a cult that believed they were the anti-Christ. This child, now an adult, can tell their story for the first time. The two writers, old rivals but obliged to work together, speak to witnesses, examine evidence and trawl through fictional works inspired by the events, but they disturb a deadly sleeping dog. So many inconsistencies emerge, our heroes conclude that what everyone thinks happened the night the Alperton Angels died, is only part of the truth. The trouble with satire Satire is comedy with a purpose and that purpose is to expose hypocrisy, absurdity and deceit, in this instance the uncomfortable realities of the true crime industry. So, I looked forward to making sharp observations and drawing on the surreal and the eccentric to explore the fact that ‘truth’ can be inconvenient when you’re making entertainment out of real-life crime. Only, I didn’t bank on what happened next. My characters took me in a whole new direction. Their journeys became darker and more thoughtful than I had ever imagined. Any tongue-in-cheek comments and comedic episodes ruined this serious new tone. Gradually, humorous lines and scenes were replaced with straight ones as the story was clearly turning out be to be my toughest and most contemplative yet. I am a ‘cosy crime’ author, even if I believe the moniker doesn’t take into account the dark side of what I write. But, honestly, it’s anathema to me that I would write anything without any humor in it at all. As The Alperton Angels story unfolded, a character emerged who I felt could provide light relief without dispelling the tension in that delicate balance so accurately described by Martin and Carmody at the start of this feature. Amanda records all her interviews and has them transcribed by her former assistant Ellie Cooper. At first this was something of a literary device for us to access Amanda’s research, but increasingly the character of Ellie began to play a much more subtle, nuanced role in the storytelling. She became the character we are with as the reader. She looks in on the action and reaches her own conclusions, with trademark subtle and not-so-subtle observations about the witnesses—as well as Amanda’s dubious working practices. Ellie grew into her role, not only as the moral compass of the story, but also as its source of humour as we followed dark events to their even darker conclusion. As an outsider to the action, she could make funny and insightful comments yet leave the tension intact. Playing for laughs What makes a reader, or anyone, laugh is ungraspable. It really is a kind of magic that shifts and changes from year to year, if not day to day. There are different types of jokes that come in and out of vogue, and tones that gain or lose their humour over time, but down through the decades, crime writers have used them all. The Golden Age was shot through with humor (every pun intended) from the very start, with Agatha Christie the queen of mannered comedy and sharp, satirical character observation. No one peeked beneath the veneer of polite society with quite the dry humour she did. This tone of observation is often described as a ‘comedy of manners’—it’s the laugh we find looking in on a world and observing its quirks, finding them amusing because the stakes are considered sky-high by the characters, yet low to nil in the grand scheme of things. Poirot, as an outsider in both situation and culture is often in the perfect position to make these observations—“in England the cult of the moustache is lamentably neglected,”—often with his trademark outspoken directness: “If you will forgive me for being personal, I do not like your face.” Agatha Christie’s comedy also drew on the humour of recognition. There’s something funny about seeing or hearing characters, situations and feelings common to us all, but rarely mentioned in everyday life. From the village politics of Murder at the Vicarage to the hypocrisies of the English upper class laid bare in Murder on the Orient Express, Christie knew her readers would relish the chance to laugh at what they could not change. This brand of humour remains fundamental to modern stand-up comedy and is a testimony to the fact laughter is a means through which we bond over shared experiences. Modern crime novels inspired by the golden age, still deliver humour via character. The Thursday Murder Club finds a gentle humour in a circle of elderly ‘detectives’ based in a retirement village. Vaseem Khan’s Malabar House series casts a witty eye over the social mores of the British Raj and the wider Indian society forced to live under them. Even my own debut novel The Appeal found comedy in the minutiae of social interactions and the subtle ways in which we change our face depending on who is, or isn’t, looking. My follow-up, The Christmas Appeal, is fun and festive, but the dark humor of social hierarchy is never far from the surface. If you didn’t laugh… Crime fiction writers have also overcome the fear-humor equation by exploiting ‘gallows humor’. These dark jokes, often at the expense of otherwise tragic and deeply unfunny situations, are typical of professions where death and trauma are daily events, and none more so than the spectrum of law enforcement. It’s no surprise that the gumshoe detectives of crime fiction from Sherlock Holmes and Philip Marlowe to the latest Mark Billingham series The Last Dance, are where these witty one-liners and irreverent put downs create a foil to the most humourless subject matter. What’s more, thanks to its inherent darkness, it can be employed in a crime novel without dissolving the tension. Win win! Of course, gallows humor can border on inappropriate when observed out of context, or by outsiders, but when we are immersed in a novel whose subject matter is harrowing, it works as light relief for the reader, as it does in real life for those whose profession brings them in close proximity with the lower reaches of humanity. … you’d wry Humour is not confined to gags, punchlines and slapstick farce. It can be found in a sense of irreverent cynicism and a wry turn of phrase delivered by a wise-cracking—or world-weary—character. Such humor plays to our inner cynic who wants to scoff at all that’s deemed important in life. For the highest-profile example of character-based narrative humor in recent years think Fleabag… a TV series so funny it was billed as a sitcom, and yet whose themes were as dark and visceral as any drama. It can be done! Likewise, in some crime novels a lively, sassy narrative can take the place of overt humor, to give the book an energetic, contemporary tone without dispelling tension or drama. Recent stand-out examples include Run Time by Catherine Ryan Howard, Grave Expectations by Alice Bell and Over My Dead Body by Maz Evans. Interestingly, the latter two feature ‘ghosts’ of murder victims, a format that plays into our suspension of disbelief. Thus the visceral horror of violent crime is denied and, ultimately, rendered impotent. I explored denial as a source of humor in The Twyford Code, as the main character Steve Smith narrates his personal journey with a light, bright and jaunty Cockney humor and irreverent outlook that proves even more effective when we realise he is actually reminiscing about the most harrowing trauma from a dysfunctional childhood. From twists to twisted Speaking of The Twyford Code, there’s a particular humour to be had from the unexpected. Even the darkest story can lift your spirits if it catches you out with a fabulous and satisfying twist. But twists don’t necessarily come at the end. There’s a particular type of crime novel that is itself a twist on the entire genre while engaging the humor of the absurdly unexpected. These stories play violence for laughs, with unapologetic sympathy for the killer (who is usually a sassy, stylish, aspirational character) and is a place where the emotional realities of violent crime are completely dismissed, while graphic violence and gore are described with irreverent pragmatism and complete absence of emotion and accountability. Killing Eve and Dexter brought this genre to the screen, but You’d Look Better as a Ghost by Joanna Wallace is a stand-out recent example of this, sometimes controversial, emerging genre. A humorous narrative attitude sympathetic towards the murderer would be preposterous to Golden Age authors, but it nonetheless has its roots in the very same fear/humour equation writers in this genre have always had to balance. Mark Twain said ‘the human race has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.’ His words ring true throughout history and today. Laughter takes all power away from what we cannot change: the tyranny of our collective, inescapable fate, the ultimate shared experience. Laughing at death, murder, violence and whatever else that would otherwise reduce us with sheer terror, gives us back a shred of autonomy, even if it is just a fleeting sense of triumph over the inevitable. *** View the full article

As it does for many, my obsession with Agatha Christie started young. I was ten or so when I picked up my first Christie, fresh off a self-prescribed course of Greek mythology. Had someone asked me then to explain why reading a murder mystery from the heart of the twentieth century felt like a natural transition from the world of gods and monsters, I’d have been at a loss. Now, I can recognize that Christie has the rare ability to write “large,” making use of stock characters who interact in grownup ways amid life-or-death stakes—and rarer still, to do so by way of accessible prose. I can’t be sure, but I think it’s this “adult fairytale”-like quality that first drew me to Christie’s work. But what kept me going? And going? And going? I never stopped reading Christie, and seven years ago, I formalized my obsession by way of a podcast I co-hosted with my good friend, Catherine Brobeck. (Tragically, Catherine passed away five years into our project, which I’ve continued on my own.) At the heart of the All About Agatha podcast is a mystery independent of the fictional intrigue Christie masterminded in 66 full-length novels, over 150 short stories, and more than two dozen plays. It doesn’t even have to do with her infamous eleven-day disappearance in 1926. I contend that Agatha Christie’s most enduring mystery is concerned with endurance itself—specifically, the unique endurance of her work among her contemporaries, those who wrote during the so-called “Golden Age of Detective Fiction.” This is where I talk about how many books Christie’s sold (over two billion! bested only by the Bible and Shakespeare!) and how popular she continues to be (Christmas specials! continuation novels! a splashy new biography!). But let’s not dwell on the obvious, and move along to the good stuff, shall we? Just what is Christie’s secret? A good place to start is by acknowledging the snobbery—and misogyny—inherent in this question. A good place to start is by acknowledging the snobbery—and misogyny—inherent in this question. Christie’s success tends to be viewed as a phenomenon, a freak of literature, which rarely happens with more highbrow writers, especially when they’re male. How often do people ask why the heck we still read F. Scott Fitzgerald? Or about the secret to Raymond Chandler’s continuing popularity? (Not that either of them compares to Christie in terms of sales, just saying.) As men who were perceived as writing mainly for other men, Fitzgerald and Chandler have been accepted as good, perhaps even great, writers. But Agatha Christie was a woman who wrote in a commercial genre known to be enjoyed by women as much as men, if not more. For this reason, she still isn’t afforded the same regard, though I’m happy to report the situation is evolving. The answer to why Christie endures is simple. She endures because she is a great writer. Full stop. I would love to be able to leave it there, and yet the perception of Christie as a middling or even bad writer who somehow manages to hoodwink generation after generation of readers is as enduring as her popularity. Indeed, the two go hand in hand. And so, in an effort to set the record straight, I will lay out a few key areas of support for the brilliance of Agatha Christie. Let’s start with the puzzles. To be clear, a puzzle is not a plot. Every story regardless of genre has a plot, but only a particular kind of mystery, the whodunit, features a puzzle that unfolds parallel to the plot. The puzzle is a series of tricks or obfuscations concerned with uncovering the identity of the murderer, and they’re dropped into the text along with clues or hints the astute reader may use to solve them. Often, these puzzles function cumulatively: one deduction leads to another in a step-by-step process that concludes with irrefutable proof of the culprit’s guilt. Some readers pursue the puzzle actively, doing all they can to ferret out the solution before the fictional detective tells them whodunit. Others read passively, admiring the puzzle’s mechanisms once its solution has been presented to them. (Despite the claims of literary critic Edmund Wilson and his ilk, there is nothing wrong with reading a whodunit passively!) I believe a major reason Christie’s puzzles work as well as they do is that she consistently used obfuscations and solutions that function within the written medium itself, as opposed to tricks that take place in the physical world, and can only be described. Many key deductions in Christie are to be made right there on the page: the inconsistent spelling of a word or name, the spacing between words, the placement of emphasis in a phrase of dialogue, the margins of a handwritten letter reproduced in the book…. During the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (roughly, the period between the two World Wars), these puzzles were all the rage. There were many besides Christie who excelled in crafting them, perhaps none more so than John Dickson Carr, who remains notable—though not widely read—for his ingenious puzzles. Carr’s solutions were gloriously elaborate: a bit like the textual version of a Rube Goldberg machine. He never met an “impossible crime” he didn’t like, whereas Christie opted relatively rarely for such scenarios. (We can count on one hand the number of times a “locked room” puzzle features in her novels, for instance.) And while Christie’s murderers do their fair share of scurrying hither and thither for the execution of convoluted logistics, many of her best solutions are derived internally: from who her characters are, and what they truly mean to each other. Solve the character in Christie, and more often than not, the reader solves the crime. There is a unique pleasure—a rush—from the solving of Christie’s character-based puzzles that I believe goes a long way to explaining why she is the best at this game. And while we’re on the subject, let’s dispense with the misperception that Christie was incapable of creating complex, compelling characters. I began this piece by referring to Christie’s use of fairytale-like, stock characters. This may sound like an admission that her characters are “cardboard” in quality, as P.D. James once infamously claimed. But with respect, I believe Baroness James needed to read her Christie more closely. It’s true that sometimes the stock characters in Christie are what they seem: types deployed to fill out a cast of suspects. Other times, she surprises us. The lascivious “other woman” is actually a black hole of need, easily victimized. The stodgy bore of an ex-military man we meet in so many of her stories turns out in at least one of them to be the calculating murderer. Readers underestimate Christie’s characters at their peril, and not just for purposes of solving the puzzle. She in fact wielded magnificent powers of specific and spellbinding characterization. Just ask Elsa Greer from Five Little Pigs, Henrietta Savernake from The Hollow, or Mike Rogers from Endless Night: they are as real to me as any of my other favorite characters from literature, not a whiff of cardboard about them. Of course, when an author writes 66 novels over more than half a century, she doesn’t get it right every time. But I prefer not to punish Christie for her productivity. The existence of a few clunkers does not negate the brilliance of her best work. (See also: Shakespeare. And for that matter, the Bible!) I think more than any other quality of Christie’s, it’s her readability that continues to be underappreciated. She does not dress up her prose with unnecessary flourishes or arcane vocabulary. Her tendency is to go light on physical description and heavy on dialogue, which results in storytelling that is simple and straightforward: “school-girlish,” if the critic Robert Graves is to be believed—not that he is. There is nothing easier to dismiss than good, clean writing. As soon as we jump from Christie to any of her Golden Age contemporaries, we can see how gifted a stylist she is. The works of that brilliant puzzle-maker Carr, for instance, suffer from an unfortunate muddiness of language. Christie’s texts are crystalline by comparison. The efficiency of her writing means not only that Christie’s books are well paced, but that she has the room to evoke time and place, even while spinning the multiple plates of puzzle and plot. Many who have watched Christie as opposed to reading her believe wrongly that her stories are set in a mid-century fantasy-land divorced from reality. But a close reading of Christie reveals all sorts of commentary on the human condition tethered to time and place, a veritable guided tour of the twentieth century: women entering the workforce, the end of widespread domestic servitude, the thrill and terror of war, the economic privations and social alienation following war, shifts in the relations between the sexes and in attitudes to sex itself, etc., etc. Time and again she proves what an insightful and observant writer she is, inspiring as much reflection as her more literary peers, and all while spinning a good mystery yarn—the literary equivalent to dancing backward in heels. If only the critics who judged her could have displayed the same agility, appreciating her work as light diversion and worthwhile literature, she would have assumed her proper place within the pantheon of great authors long ago. Perhaps in future, her books should come with their own dancing lessons, and a pair of high heels. A fanboy can dream. *** View the full article

The dark months call for dark stories. There’s nothing more delicious than to curl up under a blanket with a hot cocoa (or hot toddy!) and read a fast-paced thriller, twisty mystery, or creepy psychological thriller. If this Queer Crime Writers* round-up is any indicator, 2024 is looking to be a banner year for great LGBTQIA+ crime fiction. We’re highlighting the return of beloved characters, like Greg Herren’s Scotty Bradley, Marshall Thornton’s Henry Milch, and Joseph DeMarco’s Marco Fontana, the second installment of newly beloved characters like Margot Douaihy’s Sister Holiday and Rob Osler’s Hayden McCall, not to mention new characters like Nicholas George’s Rick “Chase” Chasen, a retired San Diego detective on a deadly vacation, and Bailey Bridgewater’s Alaska state trooper, Louisa Linebach. It’s difficult to deny the variety of leading characters, subject matter, tone, and style in these novels. You don’t need to leave the house—or even your warm bed—to experience a wide range of characters and experiences. Hunker down, snuggle up, and read! *Queer Crime Writers is an organization that advocates for LGBTQIA+ crime fiction authors and creates community for them. End of 2023 Mississippi River Mischief (Scotty Bradley Mystery, 9), by Greg Herren Scotty Bradley is back! After a four-year hiatus, Greg Herren’s beloved psychic, former-go-go-boy detective, returns for the ninth installment in the series. It’s spring in New Orleans, and the termites are swarming. A first-time homeowner, Bradley regrets purchasing in the historic French Quarter. Luckily (or unluckily!), a new case distracts him from new home-ownership woes: Bradley’s friend David brings him a new case. One of his students is being harassed by an older man. Soon, Bradley discovers that the older man is a notable politician, and he plunges into the dark side of New Orleans politics and cover-ups. What he doesn’t plan on is shining a light on shadows from his own past. Suddenly, termites don’t seem so bad! Death on the Water, by C.J. Birch Forced by her agent and publisher to take a much-needed vacation, investigative journalist Claire Mills boards the inaugural cruise of the Ocean Summit. But on the first day out, the cleaning staff discovers the guest in her neighboring cabin dead. Despite the ship’s authorities ruling it a suicide, she suspects murder. Aided by Moira, the assistant cruise director, she begins to investigate, and the deeper they probe, the greater the danger mounts. Soon, the killer comes for them. They must decide what is more important: finding the killer or surviving eight days together at sea. Come Find Me in the Midnight Sun, by Bailey Bridgewater Alaska state trooper Louisa Linebach’s territory is the Kenai Peninsula, where hundreds of young men go missing every year. So, when two men disappear, Louisa doesn’t think it’s unusual. One may be a straightforward suicide, but the other defies all explanation, with the victim’s footprints vanishing along an abandoned mountain runway. As Louisa and her partner investigate, they encounter alien conspiracy theories, a town where all the inhabitants live under one roof, and a drug trade tied to the tourist industry. Their case is further complicated by a police chief unwilling to allow them to investigate his friend and Louisa’s romantic feelings for Anna Fenway, the local medical examiner. When a body is identified, Louisa thinks the case is coming to a close, but it’s just beginning. January-March 2024 The Longest Goodbye, by Mari Hannah, 1/18 The Longest Goodbye is the ninth in Hannah’s long-running series from the UK featuring DCI Kate Daniels. Kate solves another complex case with personal repercussions while navigating her on-again, off-again relationship with criminal profiler Jo Soulsby. Three years ago, Kate investigated the murder of police officer Georgina Ioannau, but the potential culprits were never brought to justice. Now, within hours of their return to the UK, the prime suspects have been shot to death. Could this be the hand of a vigilante? Seeking out the truth will force Kate to confront her mistakes in the original investigation and put her career and her team’s lives on the line. The Kate Daniels series is being developed for television in the UK. Who To Believe, by Edwin Hill Edwin Hill’s second standalone thriller carefully weaves a complex tapestry of six unreliable points of view as they converge on a dinner party in the wake of the brutal murder of an unpopular local restaurateur in a small seaside Massachusetts town. When the gathering turns deadly, it is clear that everyone has something to hide, that everyone has a reason to murder, but of these unreliable characters, who is lying to cover up the bloody truth? As we encounter new perspectives, the story reveals its layers, inviting us to question what we’ve been told, each new angle offering more revelations—and perhaps more lies. Murder on Las Olas, A Marco Fontana Mystery (Book 6), by Joseph R.G. DeMarco In DeMarco’s sixth book in the Marco Fontana Mystery series, a wedding of one of Fontana’s strippers from his StripGuyz troupe starts with a few glitches, cold feet, and … murder. After the wedding planner’s assistant and then the wedding planner are murdered, Danny is the prime suspect. Marco must figure out who the killer is before Danny says, “I do.” But who else would want to kill the planner and his assistant? Between his role of giving Danny away at the wedding and solving the murder, he might also have found his own love interest. Do we hear wedding bells for Marco, too? Cirque du Slay, by Rob Osler Hayden McCall, a pint-sized Seattle middle school teacher and sleuth, is back in this second book in the Hayden & Friends cozy mystery series. Like the first book, Devil’s Chew Toy, in which Hayden investigates the disappearance of a one-night stand, he gets wrapped up in another madcap adventure: the artistic director of an upscale circus art show, Mysterium, is murdered. To complicate things, Hayden’s frenemy, Sarah Lee, is found in the hotel suite with the dead body. Hayden and Hollister, his compatriot in crime-solving, and other friends team up to solve a crime with a truly unique cast of suspects, including a Russian trapeze artist, a cowgirl comedian sharp-shooter, and Adrenalin!, a sexy troop of Romanian male acrobats … Solving this mystery is going to be more complicated than a three-ring circus! The Fall and Rise of Henry Milch: A Wyandot County Mystery, by Marshall Thornton As a prolific and versatile author, Thornton has written characters in various locations: Nick Nowak in Chicago, Noah Valentine in Los Angeles, and now, Henry Milch in northern Michigan. In Thornton’s Wyandot County Mysteries, Milch is difficult to like, but you can’t help but root for him. He’s an opioid addict who has been sent to live with his grandmother in northern Michigan after overdosing. He wants to go back to LA to his friends and clubbing. However, in each book, he stumbles over a dead body, thwarting his plan. In The Fall and Rise of Henry Milch, the third in the series, Milch trips and falls on the murdered body of his doctor. If he wants to clear his name and move back to Los Angeles, he must find the real killer. Blessed Water: A Sister Holiday Mystery, Margot Douaihy After the critical splash of Douaihy’s debut, Scorched Grace, it’s a thrill to get another Sister Holiday mystery so soon. In Blessed Water, the queer punk nun sleuth now has her PI apprentice certificate and has teamed up with the former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux for another hard-boiled case: When Holiday and Riveaux set out to dig up dirt on a philandering husband, they discover the corpse of a priest in the rising waters of the Mississippi River. As torrential rains flood the Big Easy, Holiday and Riveaux are committed to bringing a murderer to justice. If fire was the elemental motif for Scorched Grace, water soaks this story of obsession and deception—and a nun’s fascinating struggle between faith and the desire for justice. The Evening Wolves, by Gregory Ashe In The Evening Wolves: Iron on Iron Book Four, Ashe brings back Emery Hazard and John-Henry Somerset, who have appeared in various other series he’s penned. In this novel, The Cottonmouth Club operates as a criminal organization, but Hazard and Somerset can’t find any proof of their criminality. Then, when Somerset is framed and arrested for a crime he did not commit, new clues emerge. But Hazard and Somerset are not alone in facing the Cottonmouth Club. North and Shaw from Ashe’s Borealis series show up to help take down the Cottonmouth Club! Deadly Walk in Devon, by Nicholas George After the death of his long-time partner, San Diego detective Rick “Chase” Chasen reunites with his dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau for a seacoast holiday in Devon. They join seven other Americans, and everyone seems excited for an English getaway except Ronald Gretz, the wealthy nursing home entrepreneur. Outspoken and rude, Gretz doesn’t like walking, touring, or even England, and he rubs his fellow vacationers wrong, especially his long-suffering trophy wife. But he’s unhappy for a reason: he has been receiving threatening texts and emails signed “An Avenger.” Convinced he’s in danger, he asks Chase to watch his back. Soon, Gretz is dead at the bottom of a cliff, and Chase must investigate to discover who, in their tour group, is a vicious murderer. View the full article

Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Janice Hallett, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels (Atria) “[M]any-layered, highly complex, and imaginative… Hallett shocks readers with satisfying twists and a dark, unpredictable ending… True crime tackles angels and demons in this devilishly good tale.” –Kirkus Reviews Elizabeth Gonzalez, The Bullet Swallower (Simon and Schuster) “Gonzalez laces magical realism into her vivid epic of the Texas-Mexico border and the violence that shapes a family for generations. . .The novel’s striking centerpiece follows Antonio and fellow desperado Peter Ainsley as they cut a swath across the border badlands [with] blazing guns and rich, Butch and Sundance–esque banter. . .Readers will find this a refreshingly modern recasting of the classic western.” –Publishers Weekly Cate Quinn, The Clinic (Sourcebooks) “Hooks readers from the start and has twists and turns that will keep them guessing. Themes of addiction, trauma, and grief set this apart from other thrillers, and readers can sense Quinn’s personal rehab experience, which she writes about in her acknowledgements…hard to put down.” –Booklist Kate Alice Marshall, No One Can Know (Flatiron) “A propulsive and intricate psychological thriller. . . Meticulously plotted. . . Family connections prove both their damage and their worth in this community-focused thriller.” –Kirkus Sarah-Jane Collins, Radiant Heat (Berkley) “The claustrophobic atmosphere of a raging wildfire is handled well. Fans of Jane Harper’s Australian novels will want to try this debut featuring an unreliable narrator.” –Library Journal Andrew Hunter Murray, The Sanctuary (Blackstone) “A novel that pulls you in immediately and doesn’t let go until the last page.” –Booklist Nicolás Ferraro (transl. Mallory Craig-Kuhn), My Favorite Scar (Soho) “The book feels like Richard Stark’s Parker had a ‘bring your daughter to work’ day and stands apart from other thrillers as Ferraro gives narrative space to Ámbar’s own self-discovery . . . This literary thriller with The Last of Us dynamics will please readers who like thrills with substance.” –Library Journal Allison Brennan, The Missing Witness (MIRA) “Action-packed fifth adventure… The pace never lags… Series fans will walk away satisfied.” –Publishers Weekly Seth Dickinson, Exordia (Tordotcom) “Magnificent. . . . A science fiction action juggernaut.” –Tamsyn Muir Mariah Fredericks, The Wharton Plot (Minotaur) “Superb . . . Thanks to a literary plot laced with arch wit and precise put-downs, appearances by Wharton’s famous friends (including Henry James and the Vanderbilts), and an eclectic assortment of the upper crust in the waning days of a varnished era, Fredericks hits this one out of the park.” –Library Journal View the full article

In 1973, a paperback thriller was published by Pyramid Press, written by an aspiring writer from Southern California. The book opened with an antiquated World War I German Albatross biplane strafing Brady Air Force Base on the Greek island of Thásos, destroying its fleet of F-105 jet fighters. The attack is disrupted by the arrival of a lumbering PBY Catalina flying boat, whose pilot engages in an unlikely dogfight with the Albatross and somehow prevails. The Mediterranean Caper was the debut novel by my father Clive Cussler, and introduced the indomitable character of Dirk Pitt at the controls of the Catalina, along with his fictional employer, the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA). Coveted by collectors today, Pyramid published just 5,000 copies of The Mediterranean Caper. Despite its limited release, the book was nominated as the Best Original Paperback by the Mystery Writers of America. Although Clive didn’t win the award, the recognition helped launch his storied career as an action-adventure writer. I was twelve years old when the book was published, and, like the rest of my family, I was thrilled to see a book with his name on the cover. Even more exciting was the fact that Clive had named the main protagonist in the story after ME! (I was less enamored with the inclusion of Pitt’s romantic interest, a woman named Teri, named for my older sister). I realized that naming his main character Dirk may have been a payback of sorts for the insomnia my father caused me. Clive began writing at nights in my childhood bedroom, which shared space as the family den. Many nights I would fall asleep to the clacking of his aged Smith Corona typewriter as he pounded out manuscript pages. When my father first took pen to paper to write an adventure story, he wanted to create a different kind of protagonist. Clive studied fictional heroes from established mystery series, including Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe, and even Mike Hammer. But he didn’t want a prototypical detective or spy, so he created Dirk Pitt to be a marine engineer who spent his life in and around the sea. The result was a tall guy with thick black hair, a hard-featured face, and opaline green eyes. Pitt isn’t the handsomest of men and is a bit on the lean side, but like most alter egos, he is tough, courageous, and has an eye for beautiful women. My youthful fantasies didn’t preclude me from realizing that Dirk Pitt wasn’t modeled after a young boy. No, my father had a clear inspiration for Pitt that wasn’t hard to see: it was himself! Pitt reflects a great deal of my father’s personality—intolerant of needless rules and bureaucracy, yet ingrained with humor and generosity. They shared a love of history, antique cars, and sea mysteries, along with a penchant for tequila. And, of course, they both had a thirst for adventure. With the publication of Caper, my father had hoped for nothing more than to continue writing a potboiler adventure series. But life changed with the publication of his third book, Raise the Titanic, which proved to be his breakout novel. Raise the Titanic shot up the international bestseller lists upon its release in 1976 and established Clive as one of the foremost writers of adventure fiction. It also spawned a lavishly produced but sadly ill-conceived film of the same name, which has rightly been consigned to the furthest reaches of cable television late at night. Clive’s subsequent novels became fixtures on the bestseller lists, marred only by another failed venture in Hollywood with the 2005 film production of Sahara, starring Matthew McConaughey. (I see Rotten Tomatoes now has it at an aggregate rating of 38%, which may be a bit generous.) For a man blessed with great creative vision, it pained Clive that his works failed to translate successfully to the big screen. But he returned to what he knew best, and that was writing adventure fiction. Beyond the Dirk Pitt adventures, Clive became the driving force behind four other action series, each benefitting from partnerships with talented co-authors. The NUMA Files, the Oregon Files, the Fargos, and the Isaac Bell series grew in popularity to nearly rival the Pitt books. At his death, my father had written or co-written over 85 books, a staggering volume of work. He had come a long ways from the backroom of a Southern California dive shop, where he penned his first novel between selling wetsuits and refilling empty dive tanks. Clive’s writing enabled him to engage in real life maritime adventures focused on locating lost historic shipwrecks. In a nod to the fictional agency in the Dirk Pitt books, he created a non-profit organization called NUMA, dedicated to preserving America’s maritime and naval history. Among the nearly seventy wrecks found by NUMA was the Belgian transport ship Leopoldville. Originally a passenger liner and converted for use as a troopship in the Second World War, the Leopoldville was struck by a torpedo in the English Channel on Christmas Eve, 1944, near the coast of Cherbourg, France. As a result, 763 soldiers died in a wartime tragedy often overlooked in the history books. Perhaps NUMA’s most celebrated discovery was the H.L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine that sank the Union ship U.S.S. Housatonic with a spar torpedo in 1864—the first submarine in history ever to sink a ship. The Hunley disappeared shortly thereafter, but in 1995 its preserved remains were discovered buried in the silt off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Raised in 2000 and currently under preservation in a Charleston museum, the Hunley represents one of the most remarkable artifacts dating from the Civil War. Clive went on to document the efforts of NUMA in two non-fiction books, The Sea Hunters (a #1 bestseller) and The Sea Hunters II. And if that wasn’t enough, he also found time to pen two children’s books, The Adventures of Vin Fiz and The Adventures of Hotsy Totsy. With the modest release of The Mediterranean Caper back in 1973, my father could never have foreseen the successful writing career that was on his horizon, nor the ongoing popularity of his literary hero Dirk Pitt. As a twelve-year old kid, I certainly didn’t envision the longevity of my namesake. And I certainly never imagined that one day, I would be the one chronicling the fictional adventures of Pitt. Yet fifty years have passed in a heartbeat, and today I find my name upon the cover of The Corsican Shadow, the 27th entry in the Dirk Pitt series—and the tenth Pitt book I’ve had a hand in writing since 2004. Pitt has always felt like something of a family member to me, perhaps even more so now in my father’s absence. But something tells me I’m not the only one who feels that way. The fictional guy who flew out of the clouds in a flying boat fifty years ago still seems to resonate with multiple generations of readers in a timeless manner. The world has changed a great deal over those fifty years. But even in the midst of thousands of profound changes, Dirk Pitt has kept his bearings. A calm moral presence in a sea of ambiguity, Pitt remains sure of himself and ever-ready—even hungry—for the next challenge. Maybe in today’s increasingly disturbing and tumultuous world, we need a heroic force for good like Dirk Pitt as much as that day in 1973 when he first appeared. Or, maybe, MORE than ever before. *** View the full article