Tools of the Trade

"Tools of the Trade" by Tom Robinson, in Needle, issue 1, number 2.

At Sandra Seamans' indispensable website My Little Corner I recently learned about a new print publication called Needle, a " magazine of noir."

So I got it. And I must say, I don't get it.

Here's what I don't get. Apparently this is not a paying market. So how do they acquire such professional-quality stories? My first theory is that the publishers have a vast research department digging up blackmail evidence for noir writers. My second theory is still being formed.

The stories adhere more strictly to the classic noir formula (a nobody tries to be somebody and gets shafted) than, say, the Akashic noir city anthologies I have read.

For example, Todd Robinson's "Tools of the Trade." The nobody in this case is a card cheat and the way he tries to rise above himself is by playing in a game where he can't cheat. Inevitably, things don't turn out the way he hoped.

The story is told cleverly in a series of flashbacks and fragmented scenes. Eventually you find out what happened and precisely what hole he has dug himself into. And as with most of the stories in Needle, the quality of the writing and language is very high.

Gamblers are like thieves. Real poker players take money that isn't ours and we do it through lies and deception. Every poker face is either a lie or hiding a lie. Like thieves, we're always looking for the great score. The one big haul that will set up up with the house in Cabo and the fleet of Cadillacs.

But that's a lie too.

The Sadowsky Manifesto

"The Sadowsky Manifesto," by Karen Catalona, in Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead, edited by Nelson DeMille.

I bought an iPad a few months ago. Mostly I have been using it to check my RSS feeds (see the right column of this screen) for which it seems to work better than my desktop. But it's called an eBook reader, so I had to get around to buying a book, and I have done so. (I hasten to add that I bought it through the website of my local bookstore, thereby contributing to the people who sponsor authors' readings in my town. That's how you buy eBooks, right?)

The MWA anthologies are always themed. The editor invites certain authors to submit; the rest of the slots are available for any MWA member to shoot for. I think I have submitted three times and made it in once.

This year the editor is Nelson DeMille and the theme is the very rich. So far, my favorite story barely qualifies on the theme. But that's okay. It's good anyway.

Max Bergen runs a not-too-successful literary agency. One day a pot of gold rolls in over the transom. More literally it is a manuscript from the serial-killer-du-jour, who had just killed himself. The FBI and publishers are clamoring for the book and Bergen stands to make a fortune on commissions.

Of course, there has to be a problem, right? Sadowsky's book is not an angry political rant. It's a science fiction novel, and it's so bad that after fifty pages readers will be rooting for the giant robots to kill the hero. The book is a disaster and there is no ethical way for an agent to make money off it.

But, hey, Bergen is a literary agent. Who said anything about ethics?
I have never heard of Karen Catalona before, but I hope to run into her again.

The Diner

“The Diner” by Sean May. In Crime Factory. Issue 6.

This is the second time my pick of the week is a free-online choice, this time in the zine Crime Factory.

Once again we are back to bad guy meets bad guy, a format I complained about recently. What makes this story a treat is that the narrator is an experienced heist artist critiquing a young punk who is robbing the diner where our hero happens to be having a late dinner.

Yeah, shades of Pulp Fiction, but there are only so many plots in the world and the question is what you do with the plot. May has fun with this one.

I always like to make a good impression on the people I’m holding up, so I always wear a suit whenever I do a job. Nobody expects that the guy in the suit and sunglasses is going to pull a gun on you until you’re looking straight down the barrel of the thing and you’ve got nowhere to go.

And speaking of nowhere to go, this story could have gone in a dozen different directions, so I was kept in suspense wondering which choice the protagonist would make. A lot of fun.

Politics Makes Dead Bedfellows

“Politics Makes Dead Bedfellows,” by Brad Crowther. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. July/August 2011.
This is the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, co-sponsored by AHMM and the Wolfe Pack. The guidelines for this contest specifically say that "We're not looking for anything derivative of the Nero Wolfe character, milieu, etc," but a pastiche of Rex Stout is precisely what they got. And a good one, too. So let’s talk about pastiches.
I have written on this subject before, so let me start by explaining what a pastiche is not. Some dictionaries say the word is interchangeable with parody, a work that uses elements of another work in order to poke fun at it (e.g. Robert L. Fish’s Schlock Holmes of Bagel Street.) Some sources use pastiche when Writer B writes about the characters invented by Writer A, writing a new book in a dead author’s series (e.g Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Percent Solution.

I say no to both. A pastiche is a work in which Writer B uses elements from the character and style of Writer A to create something different. I would suggest there should be two categories in this field. Hard pastiche is the term I use for works in which the original characters exist in thin disguises of new names and addresses. For example: August Derleth’s Solar Pons is an unmistable copy of Sherlock Holmes.

One way to look at is the TV series rule. Imagine that someone turned Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder books into a TV show. If they ran out of books a screenwriter could take Jay Cronley’s novel Quick Change, change a few names and other details, and have a script ready to go. That’s a hard pastiche.

A soft pastiche takes more liberties. While it is unmistakable based on its model, and is intended to appeal to the same audience, but it creates a new world for the same formula. For some reason Rex Stout seems to attract a lot of these; see works by Dave Zeltsermen, Lawrence Block, Loren D. Estleman, and now (finally) Brad Crowther.

I knew we’d get to the point eventually. Let’s talk about “Politics Makes Dead Bedfellows.” I’ll assume that you are sufficiently familiar with Stout’s books about Nero Wolfe that I don’t need to connect the dots.

Edna Dugué is an wealthy private eye in Charleston, South Carolina. She is also an attorney, and teaches at a college. “I never pretended that my intentions are honorable,” she tells one visitor, but clearly they are.

Her assistant and the narrator of the story is Jerrelle Vesey, an African-American part-time college student. When Edna was a public defender she had helped him when he was sent to prison for badly beating two white men who killed his brother.

When the story opens a city councilman arrives to tell Edna that his wife has threatened to kill him. Not surprisingly he ends up dead and the widow becomes Edna’s client. What follows is classic Stout territory with Archie – Sorry! Jerrelle – going out to interview half a dozen suspects and bringing the results back to Edna, who figures out whodunit.

Two things make the story a treat. First is Jerrelle's dialog. Here he is chatting with the councilman: "I don't hold any grudges. As a matter of fact, I almost voted for you in the last election. In the end though I threw my support behind our neighbor's pet rat, Lester." I like this guy.

Second, are the set of supporting characters. For example, Edna's police nemesis is a woman, a friend of Jerrelle's family. She was the one who arrested him after his crime, and the one who drove him home after he was pardoned. And we still haven't met Edna's grandfather who lives in the attic.

These are interesting people in a world that feels fully developed and three dimensional. Rex Stout would be proud.

The Real Celebrities

"The Real Celebrities," by Michael Mallory. Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. July/August 2011.

Okay, now i'm in trouble. Last week I lamented that for a second time in a row the best story I read was by a friend of mine. Now we make it three. In my own defense I don't think I have had any contact with Michael Mallory since we used to appear regularly in Margo Power's Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine back in the nineties.

Back then I seem to recall Michael writing mostly Sherlock Holmes pastiches and nonfiction about Hollywood. Now he has done a mash-up of sorts: fiction about Hollywood. How's this for an opening?

Since Marilyn Monroe hardly ever gave me the time of day, her sidling up to me meant that she wanted something. As a rule, Marilyn remained within her own little world, acting as though the rest of us didn't exist...

Okay, he's got my attention. Is this a historic tale about the real Marilyn? A fantasy story? Perhaps an insane asylum?

None of the above. The characters are impersonators who pose for tips outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. The narrator dresses as Wolverine and is known as Hugh Jackman.

There are billions of little worlds floating around us and I love the stories that open the doors and let us take a peek inside one. Listen to "Jackman" explaining the service he and his friends provide: "For tourists, those of us on the boulevard are the real celebrities, the ones you can speak to and pose for pictures with. Those other ones, the figures you see on movie and television screens, they're nothing but illusions."

When one of them is murdered our hero feels obliged to try to figure out what happened. The plot won't have anyone puzzled, but you'll enjoy it, and the writing is just the sort of bitter sarcasm you expect from a tale of glitter-land's underclass.

"I'm an asshole' [he] said, by way of greeting.
"You're in the right town for it."

Detour

"Detour" by Neil Schofield. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2011.

If I'm not careful I may be accused of nepotism, logrolling, or some other felony. This is the second week in a row I am reviewing a story written by a friend. Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em.

Let's talk about metaphor. Literary critics love them to death. Is the white whale a symbol of the uncaring universe? Is the yellow brick road a metaphor for the Gold Standard? And is anyone in a work of literature with the initials JC a stand-in for Jesus?

We won't settle those issues today, but Neil Schofield's story is metaphor from title to last sentence. His nameless narrator has gotten off the main track - literally and symbolically. He seems to be working hard at finding ways to avoid working. We learn later on that his personal life has also gotten lost in the rough.

While taking a slow route to a meeting he wishes to avoid he discovers a horrific crime. Last week I talked about interesting readers by giving the protagonist a chance at redemption. I see that chance here because this traumatic event - discovering a brutal crime - could change the course of even a well-adjusted person's life. But will it send our screwed-up hero back onto the main highway of his life, or drag him further into the wilderness?

A quiet, subtle little tale.

Last Laugh in Floogle Park

"Last Laugh in Floogle Park" by James Powell. Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine July 2011.

My friend Jim Powell has become our first repeat offender here at LBC. Last time I wrote that a Powell story "contains a fully realized plot stuffed with wild free associations wrapped around a bizarre central idea that, if it had occurred to most writers, would cause them to swear off late-night enchiladas."

In this case, the story is about Chief Inspector Bozo of the Clowntown police force. And this gives us a chance to talk about developing a series.

When you create the first tale in a series you may have already decided there will be more to come or you may think it is a standalone. But when you make the jump to story number two, you have to decide what to bring along and what to leave behind. Presumably you and the reader like the main character, and you probably want to keep the style and the mood. But something needs to change, right? You can't sell the same story over and over again (or at least, you shouldn't.)

Powell's first Bozo story, "A Dirge for Clowntown" introduced us to the concept of a metropolis inhabited entirely by clowns. The second story, "Elephant Pajamas," dealt with foreign policy, the possibility of Clowntown going to war. And this new story concentrates on the neighboring towns: Vaudevilleville, Mimeapolis, and Burlington (the last is where the Burlesque artists live).

Clearly Powell is filling in the details of his universe, which is what you do in a fantasy series. But the fact is this iswhat a good writer does in any series. Even a realistic series (and maybe the more realistic, the truer this is) is only showing a piece of the world, and each new novel or story is a further chance to define your territory, fill in the details of the map, perhaps extend geographically, chronologically or thematically.

But let's get back to Bozo. As I said before, Powell's strength is how, like a comedian riffing on a theme, he shoots out linked idea after idea on his basic concept. So in Vaudevilleville we meet a mute ventriloquist ("he threw his voice and it never came back") who partners with a mindreading dummy (who knows what jokes he wants to tell). The victim died of "a heart attack with severe side splits" from laughing too much. And so on.

Not everyone's cup of tea, I know. But I love it.