When I married Temple Walker in November 2015, I did not realize I was marrying into a crime family. I’m not certain she realized it, either.
Not long after our marriage, Temple and her father—James Lincoln Walker, aka Jim—took an interest in family history and soon discovered multiple miscreants in various branches of their family tree. One stood out: Merle Dees, an indicted participant in the 10-day Louisiana Milk Strike of 1947, was Jim’s uncle by marriage (his mother’s sister’s husband).
The strike, referred to by the Times Picayune (April 4, 1947) as a “10-day reign of terror” during which “trains were held up, trucks and cars riddled with buckshot and rifle slugs and at least one person wounded,” prevented most milk deliveries to New Orleans.
The strike, called by the Dairymen’s Union (AFL) of Amite (La.) and Tangipahoa (La.) and later joined by AFL-affiliated teamsters’ locals, was, according to the Times Picayune, in response to a “drop of milk price from $5.75 to $5.20 a hundredweight for fluid containing 4 per cent butterfat.”
Milk from the Florida parishes milkshed—the eight Louisiana parishes on the east side of the Mississippi River—was the first to stop flowing into New Orleans, but the strikers soon stopped outside shipments as well.
And more than milk was at stake. The Chicago Daily Tribune (March 27, 1947) noted that 5,000 to 6,000 New Orleans members of the teamsters’ union refused to make any deliveries to retailers who continued to sell milk sold by New Orleans distributors, whose price cut set off the strike. “Observers said this will mean virtual cessation of all food deliveries in the city, since nearly all truck drivers except those who deliver milk are members of the AFL union. The alternative, for retailers, apparently will be to sell no fresh milk.”
By the time the strike ended, approximately 80,000 gallons of milk had been destroyed, and twenty-five strikers were indicted by a United States grand jury in connection with alleged violations of federal law, including retarding the mail and breaking seals on railroad cars.
Temple’s Great-Uncle Merle Dees was indicted in a true bill in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Louisiana, New Orleans Division (Docket No. 22,594) for “Conspiracy to Violate the Anti-Racketeering Act,” that is, he “knowingly, wrongfully, willfully, unlawfully and feloniously conspire[d] […] to obstruct, delay and affect interstate commerce and the movement of articles and commodities in interstate commerce by robbery and extortion.”
From Fact to Fiction
My father-in-law was a Louisiana-born retired mechanical engineer who spent a great deal of his free time reading mystery novels and watching televised mysteries. He and Temple—also a mystery lover—often discussed the books they read and the television programs they watched, sharing their favorites. That his daughter married a mystery writer must have amused him to no end.
At first, Merle Dees’s involvement with the Milk Strike was just a story passed down through the family, but Jim became intrigued by his uncle’s involvement. Here was a real-life mystery to be explored, and explore it he did.
As Jim sought more information about the strike, he began corresponding with Bill Dorman in the Genealogy Department of the Tangipahoa Parish Library, who provided PDFs of scanned newspaper articles and other information, which he then shared with Temple and me.
Before long, I realized the real-life adventures of my wife’s great-uncle could be the basis of a short story and, after rearranging some real-life events, working in a few other family stories, and then fictionalizing everything, I had “Spilt Milk,” published in the November/December issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
My father-in-law passed away on Friday, January 13, 2023, so he didn’t live to see the story in print. He did, however, read the finished story in manuscript form before I submitted it.
A mile from where I grew up stands the Crescent Hill Free Public Library. It was built along Frankfort Avenue in 1905, one of over a thousand U.S. libraries built on money from none other than Andrew Carnegie. I didn’t know that at the time, nor did I understand the architecture was a shining example of Beaux-Arts style. To me, that building was a castle full of books.
Crescent Hill sprung up in the 1850s as Frankfort Avenue, then the Louisville and Lexington Turnpike, cut eastward. Because Louisville has always embraced a certain style, the houses and churches that came in were ornate. Streetcar lines followed. This new suburb prospered.
Until it didn’t.
By the time I came along, Louisville’s gateway era was over. Crescent Hill had evolved into middle-class bohemian meets rough around the edges. To get to the Library, the left onto Frankfort was a seedy corner joint with blacked-out windows. The theater a few doors down showed X-rated flicks.
But oh, that weird charm, that ten minutes from anywhere location. By my college days, great bars and restaurants were returning along Frankfort.
Years later and two hundred miles away, I decided to try my hand at short fiction. One of my drivers was to write stories with huge doses of character. In 2012, I must’ve written a publishable one, because a Canadian lit journal made it my first acceptance.
In that story, an engineer named Vi Celucci battles corporate shelving algorithms to maintain her grocery shopping regimen. This fictional store sits a short hop from Crescent Hill, as inspired by the Clifton institution revered as Dirty Kroger. My dad shopped there religiously, and so did I when I got an apartment not far off.
Vi is tough, smart, and cursed with a glorious flaw. She can only see this imperfect world through her industrial engineer lens. Everything can be optimized—should be optimized—and, once done, managed. Back then I’d been working with my share of industrial engineers, and wonderful as they are, they’re of a breed.
Pro tip: Go find one and make them your friend. You’ll get more things done.
With Vi, I took that engineer mindset, tossed in my own stickler impulses, and cranked the mix, a la Spinal Tap, to eleven. Someone that obsessed with rules and efficiency can’t let anything go. Anything, and it costs them. The torrent of minor failings, the constant wheedling of supposed underperformers, the inevitable let-downs, the surrender to intellectual compromise. All of it would be exhausting.
I’d thought Vi could make a fun amateur sleuth. I let her loose after a counterfeiting scam around Crescent Hill that taxes her last nerves. That must’ve worked, too. AHMM ran “Two Bad Hamiltons and a Hirsute Jackson” in 2015.
Then I didn’t write Vi again. No story idea screamed for her. A Vi story can’t have a crime so serious it spoils the tone. And like her neighborhood, a Vi crime has to be weird, something tiny but torturing to her perfectionist soul.
Eventually, inspiration struck. You might’ve heard that horse racing is big in Louisville. So big, in fact, that a whole charity effort sponsors fanciful horse statues around town. Each statue—and there have been hundreds—has a unique theme that ranges from whimsical to flat-out gorgeous, and each stands as commissioned sidewalk art until they’ve run their race, so to speak. Such a unique feature along Frankfort Avenue would be a landmark Vi latches onto full bore.
So I put a Plexiglas Horse a block from the Crescent Hill Free Public Library. Then, I had someone steal it. Vi’s ensuing Kentucky-fried odyssey forces her to sift through the noise and discover what really matters. Eight years later, Vi is back in AHMM.
I still get up to Louisville often. While polishing “Know Thyself,” I walked Frankfort Avenue up and back. The high times are doing fine, with legit hip and enough pubs for a proper crawl. That castle of a library is much smaller than I remember, inside and out. I donated an armload of books, some with my stories in them.
Life is complicated. We feel better when our feet are on familiar turf, somewhere we have a semblance of control. Offbeat as Vi is, we all have some of her in us deep down. We all reach out for familiar turf. We need to understand where we’ve been, where we’re headed, where we’ll always belong.
Although I spent my entire childhood (and beyond) in the library, I also spent it watching television. (My father claimed he bought the first television owned by any family on our block in Brooklyn, NY.) So I have seen every detective show ever produced. And then, when I was in high school, I sat next to a girl who was drawing stick figures with a halo over its head. And that’s when I first learned about Simon Templar “The Saint,” mystery writers, and going to used book stores. So I have also read every celebrated mystery writer—although it never occurred to me to write a mystery until a few years ago.
An old friend of mine from Star Trek conventions, who is also a lawyer and a writer, told me about a writing contest that had to feature some aspect of the law. Since I spent at least 20 years hearing her complain about having to maintain rigorous files, I used that as a jumping-off point to write “Who Killed What’s Her Name?”—the first mystery story I ever wrote and which AHMM published. The protagonist is a combination of myself and my friend; we’re both old, cranky, and forgetful but, fortunately, she is a lawyer emeritus and remembers enough to vet all legal aspects of what I write about.
My latest story, “Beam Me Up, Elsie” was inspired by my career as a book editor specializing in genre fiction, particularly science fiction. Again, I probably spent more than 20 years going to a variety of conventions and, by combining some well-known actors, authors, and various movies, I came up with a hopefully entertaining as well as informative mystery. And I managed to work in plenty of “in jokes.”
Although I have done books in the past, and still have novels I should be finishing, I really enjoy writing short stories and learning how to write mysteries. Particularly how and where to drop clues, and to show the procedures by which mysteries are deduced. I especially am trying to write stories that are not your standard murder mysteries. The one I’m working on now is about a probate squabble featuring an attempted poisoning. And the next one after that is about a possibly cursed box constructed to look like King Tut’s sarcophagus–based on my lifetime interest in the paranormal. So don’t expect me to write about dead bodies for quite a while, though I might throw in some ghosts. And now that I think of it, my other pastimes, which include vending at Native American pow-wows as well as antique shows, plus my extensive knowledge in those areas, could also provide more inspiration for non-traditional stories. So I better get to work. . . .
Best-selling author Peter James (credit: James Clarke)
With over twenty-one million books sold and 19 Sunday Times No.1 sellers, Peter James is among the most accomplished crime writers in British history. The author of the world’s first electronic novel way back in 1993, James is recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association’s Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement for crime writing in the English language. His most famous creation, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, is a household name in the UK and the subject of stage plays and a hit television show, Grace, now available in America. No man to rest on his laurels, Peter has a new DS Grace novel just released, Stop Them Dead, and takes a pause from his whirlwind schedule to chat with us at Trace Evidence and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine about his early life, current work and the state of crime fiction.
William Burton McCormick: Welcome to Trace Evidence, Peter. Early in your life, your mother Cornelia was glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II and you worked as a house cleaner for Orson Welles. What are your memories about your connections to those iconic figures and did any of those images somehow make it into your writing? Peter James: When I was 20 and at film school I had just enough money from my parents to eat, pay my rent in London and travel to and from the college. But no surplus. There was a girl I wanted to take out, who I knew had expensive tastes, so I decided I had better earn some extra cash! I saw a sign in a newsagent window “CLEANER WANTED – APPLY MRS. WELLES” and the address was just around the corner from me in Fulham. I turned up, not making any connection to the name, and this very elegant and pleasant woman looked at me in surprise and said, “Well, I was rather expecting a woman to apply.” I persuaded her to give me a trial period, which she agreed to. I had no idea how to clean a house but there had been plenty of adverts on telly for household appliances and cleaning materials, like Flash, so I just got on with it. On my second day, I was on my knees cleaning the skirting board in the hall when the morning post fell through the front door and I saw all these letters addressed to “Orson Welles.” Not always being the sharpest tack in the box, I still did not connect to “Mrs. Welles” and wondered if there had been some kind of error by the postman! A short while later the front door opened and in came the great man himself. I stared up at him in shock and in awe, suddenly realizing that a golden opportunity had presented itself. If I could get him to like me, maybe I could get a huge leg up my future career path! I was a bag of nerves. He looked down at me with an amiable smile, the kind of smile he might have given to a funkily shaped dog turd, stepped past me with a cursory “Good morning” and vanished up the stairs as I gasped out a strangled reply. Later that day he left for the US and I never saw him again! Two weeks later, Mrs. Welles very sweetly told me she didn’t think I was really cut out for this job. I had to agree. . . . But it taught me a lesson for the future—always grab an opportunity! Regarding my mother as the Queen’s glovemaker, one of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother, sitting in armchair, watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium on television, whilst repairing one of the Queen’s gloves with a needle and thread! The Queen’s gloves got a lot of wear and tear—she was in the Guinness Book of Records as having shaken more hands in one day than anyone else. My mother was both a fierce Royalist, and immensely proud of her Royal Warrant, and she would not let anyone else touch Her Majesty’s gloves. Incidentally, and I only say this in jest, there is only one other author I know whose family were glovemakers—and that was Shakespeare!
WBM: Speaking of filmmakers other than Orson Welles, Trace Evidence, as you know, is the blog of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Were the films of Alfred Hitchcock influential to your work for screen or printed page? If so, in what ways? PJ: Hitchcock has always had a big influence on my writing. He portrayed the “sinister everyday” so brilliantly, and he also laced some of his darkest moments with truly black humour—such as in Psycho. It really showed me how well humour can work as a counterpoint to fear. And another very big lesson I learned from Hitchcock was about firing the reader’s imagination. That shower scene in Psycho is one of the most famously scary scenes in all of movie making and yet we actually hardly see anything at all—it is our imagination that sees it.
WBM: Do you think Hitchcock is still relevant today? PJ: Oh my God yes! More relevant than ever as the movie and television industries seek to replace characters, story and plot with action and special effects.
WBM: During the Golden Age of Mystery Fiction from the early to mid-twentieth century there were significant thematic, tonal and stylistic differences between British authors like Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie and their American crime fiction counterparts such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (to name only the most prominent few.) Do you feel there are still significant differences in crime writing on either side of the Atlantic or have those traditions eroded in our modern interconnected world? PJ: The gap has narrowed a little but there are still very big differences. One fundamental difference I’ve always felt is that in UK crime fiction, the victim, or first victim, is usually dead on the opening pages, whereas in US crime thriller fiction, the victim is alive but in peril.
WBM: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine publishes short form crime fiction. In addition to your novels, you’ve written numerous short crime tales (many of which are collected in A Twist of the Knife). What do you like about the short form? What are the challenges of the short story for the career novelist? And how do you decide what ideas best fit a novel, novella or short story? PJ: I love short stories as I enjoy exploring themes that wouldn’t make a full-length novel—and also, I love to write really short, sharp shockers. But I do find them hard to write. The first draft of a Roy Grace novel, which will be around 120k words, takes me seven months. But it can take me two weeks to write a short story of just 1k words! In terms of deciding between a novella and a novel, it is very much a gut feeling for me. I’ve only written two novellas—The Perfect Murder and Wish You Were Dead—both for the Quick Reads Initiate, and both felt the perfect themes and length for me.
WBM: You do a lot of research with police forces throughout the world. I once read you were shot at in police car in Moscow. As someone who has lived in Moscow myself and writes crime fiction set in Eastern Europe, I’d love to know the details of that event. Did it inspire anything in your writing? What were your experiences like with the Moscow police force? PJ: I got friendly with the then Chief of Police of Central Moscow, Alexander Havkin, back in 2007, on book tour, he arranged for me to go out on patrol in a response car. It was about 8pm and I heard what sounded like a car backfiring. Next thing I knew, the driver did a very fast U-turn and drove like crazy. I think they were worried for my safety, otherwise I think they’d have stopped and had a shootout! Over a lot of booze with Alexander one night I asked him if the Russian Mafia was a figment of the West’s imagination. He replied that in 2000 the Moscow Police had lost control of the city to the Mafia and had only just got it back. I asked him how they could have lost control. “How much does a young police officer earn in London?’ was his reply. I told him around £27k. He told me in Moscow it was €3k. . . .
WBM: Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is an amazing character. What do you think it is about Roy that makes him so popular? PJ: Thank you! I’ve always joked that if I was unlucky enough to have a member of my family murdered, Roy Grace is the detective I would want running the case. I think people like him because he is smart, but at the same time, very warm and human. I’ve had a string of fan letters from ladies around the globe telling me that Roy Grace is the only fictional detective they’ve ever fancied sleeping with!
WBM: DS Grace has been adapted into the acclaimed GRACE television series available on ITV X in the UK and BritBox in the US and Canada and now filming its fourth season. How closely does the television series follow the novels? How personally involved were you in the production and what was it like translating Grace to a series? PJ: ITV have been a constant joy to work with, and they have tried very hard to remain as faithful as possible to the novels. There is only one book in the series where for a number of reasons, by mutual agreement, we wrote a largely original story. I’ve been involved at every stage, from scripts to cast, even down to the most minor cast member. And I could not be more thrilled with John Simm, nor with any of the other cast members, too.
WBM: Your nineteenth Roy Grace novel Stop Them Dead was released this September. What is happening to DS Grace now? PJ: I’m very excited about this novel. Roy, like myself—and my wife, Lara—is a dog lover, and he gets involved in the very dark world of the illegal puppy trade which exploded during lockdown, when the price of dogs went up tenfold. The Chief Constable of Sussex told me that Organised Crime Gangs were then and still are making more money out of illegally breeding, smuggling—as well as stealing—dogs than from drug—and with minuscule sentences if caught. And one of the very big, real dangers of this new trade is the risk of Rabies—a disease we have been free of in the UK for over 100 years. Countless dogs are being smuggled in daily from places like Romania, which have the highest incidence of Rabies in Europe—and with fake vaccination certificates. . . . And of course it features in my story! Although I do want to reassure all my readers that as a massive animal lover, I’ve not depicted any animals being harmed—only humans!
WBM: What makes Stop Them Dead unique in the series? PJ: Throughout the series, some of my themes and storylines have come from true situations, and when I’ve been asked by the police if I would consider highlighting issues. I did this for example with Dead Tomorrow, highlighting the horrific international trade in human organs for transplants. I wrote Love You Dead after Sussex Police told me that people in Sussex, looking for love on internet dating sights had, over the previous three years, been conned out of over £15m from people with fake profiles. I think in some ways, drawing from the reality of what is actually happening, adds something to the novels. I hope very much it will be the case with Stop Them Dead, where I’ve worked very closely with both the police and with the RSPCA (which I’m a patron of) who have been brilliantly helpful.
WBM: What are your writing plans for 2024? Any other projects creative or otherwise for the upcoming year? PJ: I have a very exciting year for 2024, with two novels coming out! The first, which will be in May, titled They Thought I was Dead—Sandy’s Story which tells the true story of Roy Grace’s missing wife, Sandy, from the day she disappears! I know a lot of my fans have been waiting for this for a very long time. . . . Then in September I have the 20th novel in the Roy Grace series coming out. The title will be announced soon! And we will have Season 4 of the Grace television series broadcasting early in the new year—with four new 2-hour episodes on Sunday nights on ITV1.
WBM: In closing, I know you were twice chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and also involved at a senior level with International Thriller Writers. As a member of both associations we thank you for your service. How do you feel these and similar organizations like Mystery Writers of America should assist both new and established writers? How do you see these organizations evolving as we go deeper into the twenty-first century? PJ: Most writers need help when they are starting out. I was very lucky to have the late James Herbert, who initially gave me advice and then became one of my closest friends, before his untimely death. Organisations like the CWA, SOA, ITW, MWA and others around the world play an invaluable role in so many ways. Writing is a solitary occupation and it is wonderful to emerge from our caves and meet fellow writers at events organized by these, as well as some of the really brilliant and friendly festivals we have in the UK, such as Harrogate, Capital Crime, Crimefest, and the plethora of wonderful smaller ones. Nothing ever stands still in life and that applies so much to writers. In 1934 paperbacks began to be published, bringing books to the masses. Now we have audio books taking 10% of the market and electronic books closer to 50%—and I’m proud to say my novel Host, published by Penguin in 1993, is in the Science Museum as the World’s First Electronic Novel! Mind you, I was pilloried to hell and back and accused of trying to destroy the novel, back then! Writers need guidance on agents, on publishers and of course on the question so many ask is whether self-publishing is worthwhile. And perhaps the biggest question of all facing us right now, the new kid on the block, Chat GPT 4—friend or foe?
Author William Burton McCormick (Credit: Nika Popova)
About the Interviewer: William Burton McCormick has no royal glovemakers in his family history, but his great-grand aunt was mistress to President Harding and conceived a child in the White House coat room. Other than that, William is an Edgar-award nominated writer of crime and thriller fiction set mainly in Eastern Europe. He is a regular contributor to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and its sister publication Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He prefers the novella form and is the author of three acclaimed novellas A Stranger from the Storm, Demon in the Depths, and House of Tigers, as well as the award-winning novel KGB Banker (co-written with whistle-blower John Christmas). His forthcoming Western Ghost was written with the late U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. A native of Nevada, William earned his MA in Novel Writing from the University of Manchester in the UK. He has lived in seven countries for writing purposes including Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Russia. Learn more about his writing at williamburtonmccormick.com or by following him on Twitter (he refuses to call it “X”) at @WBMCAuthor.
If you’ve ever watched a cooking show like Iron Chef or Chopped, there’s always one chef who uses every possible ingredient, every pot and pan in the kitchen, and who knocks one or more of them onto the floor while in a cooking frenzy. Often the original plan will be scrapped, and an entirely new recipe started when it seems impossible to finish on time. When the buzzer sounds, the chef presents a creative, tasty dish, served on a spotless plate, complete with edible origami-shaped garnishes. In the background, you can see the workstation. It looks like a tornado blew through, caused a train derailment, and fire is imminent.
The chef at the next station is a mise en place guy. The ingredients are not only within reach, quantities are premeasured according to the recipe, and the ramekins arranged in the order they will be used. When time is up, chef’s coat will be spotless and the workstation, immaculate.
Both dishes will be tasty enough to make you want seconds and thirds.
(Photos from Pexels.com)
Co-writing with Michael Bracken is much the same. I, of course, am the one without a plan of action. My mind wanders into twenty-seven possible scenarios and that’s before the halfway mark in the story. What if? guides every plot twist. A sidekick character will wander from my imagination onto the page. I try to evict them but besides being stubborn, they’ve often proven useful and stayed around to improve the storyline. After all, a main character needs a confidant, someone to make them laugh, or to just hold the flashlight while they dig.
Michael has a plan. In scene one, introduce the characters. In scene two, add conflict. When I wander too far off track or throw in a bit of trivia found during research, interesting but not vital to the story, he reins me in. On the other hand, we’ve had occasions where he tells me, here’s the crime. I don’t know who did it. I read it over and send back an email and say, it was this guy. And it works.
So far, we’ve co-written five stories and all have been published, most on their first submission. One uncooperative story is in limbo and two are in the “wait and see” stage. I write my ideas on scraps of yellow legal paper and tape them to the wall. Michael has files. Organized files.
We are the Odd Pairing of short stories, like tacos and toasted ravioli, but for us, it works.
Many years ago, when I had dreams of athletic glory, I used to box and I started learning the fistic science at Gleason’s Gym in N.Y. when they were located on West 30th Street in what was then the fur district. My trainer was Sammy Morgan, who harkened back to the days of Benny Leonard, Mike McTigue and Battling Siki. I learned a lot from him, and not just how to throw hands either. After I would finish working out, I would watch the other fighters train and listen to the stories from Sammy and the other trainers, and from them came the inspiration for “Doing Business.”
My crime and mystery fiction influences are several, but the top three are probably George V. Higgins, George Pelicanos and Colson Whitehead. Besides crime and mystery, I read a lot of history, particularly recent American urban history which gives me a lot of good ideas for stories. For example, all three of my three novels are based on actual events in my hometown of Buffalo. On TV, lately, I’ve been watching Endeavor, the latest Sylvester Stallone series Tulsa King and the Jesse Stone movies.
I’m a retired firefighter, and after that I worked as a deckhand on tugboats and taught firefighting to mariners. Now I just write, although I still keep my hand in the maritime trade by volunteering on the World War II Liberty Ship, the S.S. John W. Brown here in Baltimore. I get up early to feed our dog Nestle, work out to clear the cobwebs out of my cranium and start writing around 10:00 A.M. The kids are working or at school these days, so I can usually keep hammering the keyboard until around 5:00 P.M. I spend a lot of time doing research and find interviewing eyewitnesses and visiting the sites where stories occur to be the best inspirations for plot and character ideas.
I’m currently working on a fourth novel, assisting a master mariner friend with his memoir and have about half a dozen short stories I just can’t seem to finish. Yet.
As for recent literary developments, I discovered the existence of a position called “sensitivity editor” at a writer’s convention last year, and I think the concept is absolute nonsense. Characters in short stories, novels, etc. should reflect the accurate speech of real people from any era and I hope the literary community does away with this fraud immediately if not sooner.
What aspect of mystery stories gives you the most pleasure? Is it the puzzle? Do you adore a locked room? A brain teaser? The slow elimination of suspect after suspect? Do you love to re-read Golden Age classics in which fair play was a given, with the author sworn to provide reader as well as detective with all the clues needed to solve the mystery? Or is it crime itself that fascinates you? The shock? The gore? The ingenious method of dealing death? Or the heart-pounding suspense that keeps you up late at night, turning pages frantically to find out what happens?
Or are you really in it for the characters? Like many hopelessly addicted mystery and crime fiction readers, I find most literary fiction boring. Of course there has to be a crime, a murder, a caper, a puzzle, or a high stakes threat to an appealing character. Something has to happen. But it has to happen to characters I care about, so character-driven mystery and crime fiction is my preferred fare, my filet mignon and potatoes au gratin, as both reader and writer.
I’m not talking about cozies, which spend a lot of time describing literal steak and potatoes—or wine or cheese or cupcakes—as well as clothing, which doesn’t interest me. The real problem with cozies is that the characters’ development is circumscribed by convention. There’s a glass floor that keeps their problems from going too deep. I find true traditional mysteries and the kind of police procedurals in which the reader learns more about the personal life of the protagonists as the series continues the most satisfying character-driven reads.
It’s easy to find character-driven novels, but how do authors develop characters and their relationships fully within the compass of a short story? The short story series offers unlimited opportunity to do just that, along with creating puzzles without sagging middles, gratuitous second and third murders, or excessively convoluted plots.
Look at the fictional character who’s most generally agreed to have come to life in the hearts and minds of readers since he first appeared almost a century and a half ago: Sherlock Holmes. The Holmes canon includes only four works that were considered book-length in their day at word counts between 43,000 and 59,000 but would be rejected as too short for publishable novels nowadays. The rest of the series consists of short stories. Does anyone ever say, “Oh, Conan Doyle wasn’t really a writer. He never wrote a novel.” I don’t think so!
My two series, the contemporary Bruce Kohler Mysteries and the historical Mendoza Family Saga, both started about fifteen years ago with published short stories, went on to novels, and are still alive today with new short stories continuing to appear. In both cases, my characters told me in no uncertain terms that they had more to say for themselves. I also wanted to know more about what happened to them after they solved not just the crimes they had to deal with but also the initial dilemmas that made them interesting.
Many readers complain about the trope of the alcoholic cop or private eye in crime fiction. Bruce Kohler is an alcoholic who gets sober. If he doesn’t relapse, what happens next? I’m a shrink who ran alcohol treatment programs for many years, so I know a lot about the recovery process. Readers who follow the series find out that Bruce does not spend the next few years going into bars and thinking about having a drink. He gradually grows up and deals with life and becomes what in Yiddish is called a mensch. He also stumbles into murders and gets nagged by his exasperating but funny friend Barbara into investigating them.
In the first Mendoza story, Diego Mendoza sails with Columbus on the Santa Maria because the Jews were kicked out of Spain on the very same day in 1492. I knew that fact well enough that Diego came to me in a dream, demanding that I tell his story. What happened to the Jews after they left Spain? I didn’t know. But I did a ton of research and discovered enough fascinating information to keep on writing. Thirty years later, Diego and his sister Rachel and their families are living in Istanbul. Diego is a prosperous merchant and ship builder. Rachel is working in Suleiman the Magnificent’s harem as a personal shopper to the ladies there—yes, Jewish women had this job—and solving mysteries. Just the other day, I was asked if I’m related to the Mendozas. Nope, I made them up. My forebears were not Sephardim from the Iberian Peninsula but Ashkenazic Jews from Eastern Europe, as both my DNA and my cultural traits (interrupting, talking with my hands, bagels—much like Bruce’s friend Barbara) confirm.
Summer 1986—my track record as a writer: one published short story and a completed novel. After months of trolling for an agent by snail-mailing hard-copy packages made up of the first three chapters plus an outline, I had only one bite. “Cut out the first three chapters,” the agent suggested, “then start with chapter four.” I was rewriting furiously, aiming to resubmit before she forgot about me. And amidst all this the same questions nagged me: Am I a writer? Can I consider myself a writer? Can I even say the word in mixed company?
My concern went beyond my thin track record. I had a full-time job as a lawyer. My writing time was confined to my 45 minute Metro North commute between the suburbs and New York City, plus whatever lunch hour I could grab. With such a tight schedule, output was always a top of mind concern. Could I ever rain words down on the page at a rate that would allow me to write the novels I envisioned myself writing?
The answer came in the form of a book, Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. I’d purchased the book a few years earlier from the Quality Paperback Book Club, a choice made hastily to avoid automatically ordering the club’s monthly selection. And there it sat on my bookshelf, its spine unbroken, not even for a cursory browse. In the summer of 1986, I opened it.
The book was not what I’d expected. It mostly ignored the craft of writing and concentrated instead on how to be a writer, or more precisely, how to become a person who can exist as a writer. The chapter titles mixed the nebulous with the practical: What Writers Are Like; Harnessing The Unconscious; Writing On Schedule; and The Critic At Work On Himself. I read the book and found it interesting. But the lasting takeaway came in a section called Toward Effortless Writing. This, I thought, was what I needed.
The advice for achieving effortless writing was very specific: “rise half an hour, or a full hour, earlier than you customarily rise . . . and without talking, without reading the morning’s paper, without picking up the book you laid aside the night before—begin to write.” The subject of this writing was to be anything that came into your head. The goal was to write “rapidly and uncritically” because “the ultimate worth of what you write is of no importance yet.”
I began this practice on August 4, 1986, printing the words “Morning Sketches” on the cover of a 6″ by 9″ college ruled wire notebook. So what came into my head while sitting alone in my quiet kitchen with a cup of coffee at my elbow? As this regimen of daily sketching developed into a habit, the recurring subjects fell into a few broad categories:
—meditations on places where I’d lived
—anecdotes from the courthouse where I worked
—sketches of people I knew or recently met
—childhood memories re-examined with the benefit of adult wisdom
I soon realized that these daily sessions were not only strengthening my writing stamina but also honing my abilities in the four building blocks of fiction. My meditations on familiar places became conscious attempts at creating settings. My courthouse anecdotes blossomed into mini-plots. My sketches of real people trained my eye to look deeply into characters. And my re-examined childhood memories added dialog to create rounded scenes.
I wrote my Morning Sketches for more than three years without missing a day, then for another eight years skipping only weekends and holidays. By 1998, the entries became sporadic. Now they are so rare as to be non-existent. Did my writing ever become effortless? I don’t think so. But I managed to transform all those train rides and many lunch hours into eight published novels and, as of today, 40 published short stories.
The germ for “Italian Alzheimer’s” was a Morning Sketch from August 14, 1997. The entry recounted a discussion about two neighborhood women, each by then deceased, and a suspicious connection that bound them together. It was this connection — a vague story involving the unsolved murder of a NYC taxi driver who may have dated both women simultaneously in the late 1940s—that piqued my interest enough to explore in a story.
Morning Sketch entries have suggested other stories in my personal bibliography: “The American Professor” (AHMM Nov. 2011); “The Visit” (EQMM Sept./Oct. 2019); “Escape Velocity” (EQMM Mar./April 2021); and “Becoming Ian Fleming” (AHMM Sept./Oct. 2022).
Those spiral notebooks (18 of them with 108 pages in each, written on both sides) sit on a bookshelf in my basement. An incomplete index, which I attempted to create in the mid-1990s, offers some guidance. But lately, I’ve been pulling down a notebook at random and diving in. I find myself continually surprised at the neatness of my penmanship and the clarity of my writing. More importantly, I turn each page with the possibility of finding the seed for my next story.
Compasses aren’t fashionable, anyway, even if you had remembered to bring one. We’re supposed to charge into the badlands relying on our shiny new GPS app, even it if does sometimes tell us to drive over the nearest cliff. How rude. It doesn’t even say please.
Good, tuned-in people go it alone. You’ve been told repeatedly that to rely on maps, or a compass, or stories, or any other sort of objective guidance is a myth, maybe even oppressive, because guidance is Old School. Guidance means subjugating your journey to the experience of others, leftover advice from the imperialist days when two plus two always equaled four. No point asking those dead people for directions, even if they did know where the cliffs used to be and maybe still are. Better to forge into the unknown without the stale, elitist privilege of advice from those who’ve been there before.
Listen, you don’t play games with this place. People really do die out there. The desert makes it real easy to be stupid.
But why should you presume to be better than stupid people? How dare you be such a snob! You can just imagine the comments, if this were a video and not just some anonymous, undocumented walk.
You grab the plastic bottle of water from your central console, grateful to the Navajo teenager at the gas station who insisted you take it, a stocky young man with skin that glowed like polished oak and an impossible fall of coal-black hair streaming to his waist, hair that managed somehow to be black, coarse and featureless and yet shimmering all at the same time. The water had been cold when you accepted it. Now, it’s the same temperature as your skin.
You pause, standing next to your cooling, clinking car and then step away, hoping it will start up again when you need it to. You head east where the moon is rising and the hills strike your eyes with a sharply silhouetted clarity usually seen only by saints and lunatics. Everything’s fine. Why be afraid when here it’s all about you.
Sure, someone not you built a shack here once, but now it’s almost collapsed, as gray and splintered as any seaside shanty. You walk on and stumble on strange symbols, a Maltese Cross, fifty feet across, with concrete, triangular petals converging on a round, central plaque.
Further on, you see disintegrating strips of concrete, hints of what might once have been roads. Dream streets, for a project that never was, started and never finished by someone who isn’t you and isn’t here now. You don’t need no stinking roads.
And there, in the middle of all the nowhere, a six-foot square of wire fencing protects a featureless gray trapdoor in the sand. The gray paint on the steel is mottled and split like the skin of one of the local reptiles but the hinges are oiled and shiny. The lock was recently replaced. Someone uses this to go down into the rocky dirt, but they’re not leaving you any hints. No maps. No guidance this time. Where they go to and why is none of your business. The yellow and red WARNING sign tells you so. Move along.
The next ridge over, swirls and spirals have been left behind in the rough sand, big and obvious as crop circles. People, kids, on ATVs, spinning donuts into alien code that will last decades.
These people, the strange crowd that’s passed through and left graffiti behind them in concrete or steel or sand, are gone. It’s all about you because you are the only person, the only human, for all the miles that are visible.
I gave you water because you are beloved. Dear, dear fool.
In the desert you can remember your name so the song says. But your name is not the problem. You have so many names, created to make you predictable, allowing you to pass in the world that has no guidance. Please, doctor. Excuse me, Miss? Hey, buddy. Listen, lady! Names created to bury truth rather than reveal it. Names that eliminate surprises. My ex. The suspect. The witness. Person or persons unknown. Names that are excuses. Normal, usual, everybody else does it. What else could I do?
So much. So much else you could have done.
This is the desert. You can find clues, but you can’t hide them here. Your steps remain behind you for years. You can see the outline of the shallow graves of your truths glaring in their mounds of dug industry and trash amidst the glistening perfection of what had been perfect land, wind blown into uniform ripples. So foreign, here, these human acts—the steel, the concrete, the discards, the lies. So different from the efficient skitterings of reptiles and insects, the invisible landings and delicate foraging of the birds.
Every act, recorded in salt and silicon. Every step, seen. You walk on, deliberately choosing a fractured path around a tiny hill that will hide the distant view of your car. And then you realize that you did this crazy thing, drove all this way, were guided here to wail, to mourn, to repent. It’s all about you.
By using the weapons of your enemy, you have sacrificed that which you fought to protect.
And these, the darkened gray hills, the scrub that is releasing new, mysterious tweets and rustlings as the sun sets, the open bits of sand that might be the path back to your car, these lovely horrors, are your only reward.
The Royal 22nd is a French Canadian infantry regiment with roots back to the War of 1812. The Van Doos—anglicized from le Vingt-deuxième—have served with distinction in Flanders, Sicily, and Kandahar. Their home station is Quebec City’s La Citadelle, and in 2017 I was there watching the Van Doos’ changing of the guard. Among their many traditions, one snagged my creative attention. Their beloved goat, Batisse.
Don’t picture some yard goat chewing trash. Batisse is magnificent. He stands waist-high and sports a regal blue cape and golden horns to inspect the ritual. Since 1955, the Crown has kept the Van Doos in goats from the royal Tibetan flock. I’d encountered Batisse XI. You can buy his merch in La Citadelle’s gift shop. The city hockey team has his profile on their sweaters. Batisse is the bomb.
A goat heist might make one hell of a story.
But, my right brain interjected, the caper can’t use the actual Batisse. Legal issues galore, and there would be military-grade security to research, and anyway, everyone loves Batisse. No, I should use a Batisse-inspired mascot somewhere easier to access. So long as the heist was humane yet funny.
And that, friends, is where it starts. Those first qualifiers are where ideas bloom or die.
Capers are tricky things. What reads like a lark is precision work by the author. It’s not just mapping an outlandish crime and each next obstacle. A character needs personal stakes in taking such a bold risk, something to balance conflict with that lark tone. Not easy, not at all. It’s why Donald Westlake and other greats of the form get far too little credit. And it’s why a mascot heist remains on my brainstorming list.
There is danger in self-editing a new idea. If reality-checking douses enough creative sparks, that invites negativism. Over time, fatalism, someone afraid the spark is gone. The fine line is curious realism, a weighing of merits not too early to buzzkill the left brain and not too late to waste precious time.
When I first tried short fiction, I might’ve jumped onto a mascot heist because it should be hilarious. Ah, should. An artistic word, so full of possibilities. Except within the big universe of shoulds, we have to recognize the coulds. A goat heist should be a killer premise. But could I make it work? The mascot heist idea had legit problems, not least that it didn’t compel me to solve them.
On that same trip, I walked through Old Town looking for a lunch spot. Quebec City always has cruise ships in port, so the food options abound. Pubs, pizza, creperies, the works. After a search, and hungry, I picked a smallish place with a smallish chalkboard out front promising Québécois fare. Not selling it hard, just saying what the place was about. That simple message spoke to why I’d come to Quebec. To experience it. I had the elk something something.
Journaling afterward at my hotel, I jotted down another idea. Quebec, the real Quebec and someone who craved that experience. Vague, but I understood travel cravings in my wandering soul. Lots of other folks heard the call to here if only based on that cruise ship traffic. We all had our reasons for coming. So could a strong main character.
I started playing with opening paragraphs, and sure enough, my right brain rattled through its early questions. Who is this traveler? Why are they here? What expectations did they have of Quebec? Did those match up to reality? Finding those answers grabbed and held my interest. Which was needed fuel, because this story took my requisite long struggle to nail down. Time well invested. This second Quebec idea grew into “Spirits Along the One North Road” and landed in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.
Someone, please write a goat mascot heist. I might never be the guy for it. But I’m not sweating that, either. Ideas come and go. Time is the short supply. I’ll take that second breath and stay open to goat capers and travel cravings and to anything else I stumble upon. In the final math, I’ll have more sparks than years to chase them.
Trace Evidence 