Murder Mysteries -- An Essay

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Or why I quit reading one book without finishing it and go on to one of my goto writers even if I've read their book before. I know, I know -- where's the mystery in a mystery book you've read before. Or if you're binge watching TV and it's the fourth time you've seen that episode of Blue Bloods? You know whodunit already.

And we're talking mysteries here. Not thrillers. The difference? Well, in a thriller you know whodunit. Or, maybe not. But you're inside the whodunit's head and you know what he's going to do, but the hero doesn't. Or that poor dumb ingenue at the head of the steep, dark stairs into the dreaded basement. Why do they always go down there?

Okay, so I don't like thrillers. They're like horror movies. They're either really dumb or really scary. Either way, I'm not interested. And I sure as hell wouldn't go down those stairs.

What brought this on? As you might know, I am recovering from total knee replacement surgery, which here means that between pain meds and restricted activity, I just haven't been writing. I have, though, learned many important lessons: You can sleep on your back. But not in your bed. That's what lounge chairs were invented for. Rehab exercises can be painful. That's what pain meds were invented for. And when you take pain meds you can sleep on your back in lounge chairs. But you cannot string thoughts together in any kind of coherent fashion. You can read and you can watch TV. Especially if you've already read that book or seen that episode. But you cannot write.

Maybe I'm far enough along in my rehab that I can write. Nothing deep and maybe not particularly thought provoking unless thoughts come to you largely unprovoked. But here goes.

I finished the 14th and last book in Robert Jordan's fantasy series Wheel of Time a couple of weeks after the surgery. I'd read them before, but as always there were things I'd missed or forgotten. And it didn't matter much if I drifted off to sleep, I knew where I was when I woke again.

Then I went to John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy murder mysteries. I'd only read them once before. I was still enough in a fog that my previous reading didn't get in the way of my enjoyment -- once I got past that editor-in-my-brain who kept saying "I'd write it this way!" Obviously my health was improving.

I ran through the first four books in a little more than a week. It's just fascinating how many ways murder can be done and for how many reasons.

Anyway, I didn't have the fifth Dismas Hardy book on my Nook and I can't navigate the stairs (even with the lights on) into the basement where our library lives so I don't know if I have that book in hard copy or not.

I could have asked my husband to look for it. But I'd already asked him to find our Bend It Like Beckham DVD and he never did. Maybe he forgot. But, hey! He's been doing the laundry, cooking, dishes, grocery shopping, driving me to doctor's appointments and physical therapy, and cheering me on. So, what I'm doing here is what my Grandmother used to do. She never complained. But she did point out exactly what it was she never complained about.

I do appreciate him and all the help he's being. And he knows we'll be doing this all again in a couple of months. He's a rock! And it doesn't hurt that he's pretty cute, too.

Anyway, under all the detritus on my side of the bed (that I am only just now being able to sleep in again) was a Ken Follett book, A Place Called Freedom, that I'd never read. I don't even remember buying it, but it has a pink sticker on it marked $1.99. So I'd say I got it at ARC, my favorite thrift store. And now you know why I usually steer clear of their book section. If I go there, I'm gonna buy one. Or, at these prices, a dozen. And the money goes to good purpose.

I like Ken Follet's work, but ....

Having grown up in Oklahoma, I'm quite familiar with my country's despicable history with slavery, segregation, and discrimination. And the continuing ramifications. Interestingly enough, I'm always a bit surprised to discover that slavery was not peculiar to the American South, indeed, not peculiar to America at all.

A Place Called Freedom takes place just before the American Revolution. It follows a young man from his life as a miner in Scotland -- where miner's children were 'dedicated' during their baptismal rites "to work in [the laird's] mines, boy and man, for as long as he is able, or until he die.'' Not strictly legal, but the miners didn't know that. They were required to go down in the mines as children and if they worked in the mine one year and one day following their 21st birthday, they were the mine owner's property for the rest of their lives. And that part was strictly legal.

Malachi McAsh escapes the mine, Scotland, and eventually England, too. But so many bad things happen to him with no let up that I just could not continue reading the book.

You know, I almost quit reading in the middle of one of the books in the Harry Potter series. I don't remember which one it was but it was the one with Dolores Umbridge as the onsite bad guy. Probably the only reason I kept reading Harry Potter was that I was so invested in Harry that I couldn't quit and after I'd read that particular volume, I knew I didn't ever have to read that one again.

Chances are good that I'll never know how Mr. McAsh's life turned out.

Murder mysteries? Why on Earth would I leave a book following a character who is constantly besieged by perfectly dreadful events and turn to a murder mystery? Speaking of 'perfectly dreadful events.'

Because! Especially because it's John Lescroart's murder mystery. His characters are all three-dimensional. Four dimensional, actually, because the books not only show their whole selves, but their selves as they live through time. They experience: dark thoughts in dark events overseen by dangerous people in their work as policemen and attorneys; humorous interactions with people they love; joyous events in their lives quite separate from their work; and, sometimes, even sad events in their lives separate from their work.

And in John Lescroart's murder mysteries we're given things to think about. Like this from Nothing but the Truth. Dismas Hardy's cop friend Abe is half Jewish, half Black and all homicide inspector for the San Francisco Police Department.

Abe's father is thinking:
     "Lots of times when he'd been younger, he'd been less than diligent at keeping the Sabbath,
     but now in his eighth decade he'd come to believe that the Ten Commandments had gotten
     everything exactly right if you wanted to have a world full of healthy and productive
     people. People should pay attention to the wisdom in all ten of them, he believed. They
     really should. Keeping the Sabbath, taking a day off, kept you sane."

Now this passage may not help you or the book's heroes solve the mystery, but it goes a long way to tell us who our main characters are and how they got that way -- all the while dispensing some very useful wisdom.

Plus! At the end of most murder mysteries, we as readers have the satisfaction of not only finding out whodunit and why, but the baddies get their just deserts. (With a nod to Lemony Snicket) which here means "what they deserve."

"...the word 'desert' — [when pronounced with the accent on the second syllable like the word dessert] — ...refers to a deserved reward or punishment. Therefore, someone who does wrong and is punished in a suitable manner has received his 'just deserts.'" http://www.snopes.com/language/notthink/deserts.asp

Why I Admire Good Fiction

A Sci-Fi/Murder Mystery

Why I admire good fiction. It's because fiction tempers reality. Pushes it away from me, at least for a little while. Gives me an image of a better way, a better world.

Last week a man shot to death forty-nine people and was, himself, shot to death in a night club.

Last week an alligator killed a toddler in an amusement park. His father and mother couldn't save him. Alligators live in almost all bodies of water in Florida. The child's Nebraska family were not used to protecting their children from such a threat.

Last week three three-year-olds died in closed cars of heat stroke -- a pair of twins in Bossier City, Louisiana, and a little boy in Houston, Texas. And it doesn't look like the parents were necessarily negligent. The children all died in vehicles parked at their homes. It is so easy for little ones to slip away and they all like to play in the family car. A dangerous choice in the heat of summer, but children don't know about that.

Last week a mountain lion attacked a five-year-old boy in his front yard near Aspen, Colorado. The boy's mother was able to pry the cat's jaws open with her bare hands and save her child. Although this story ended better, more like the plot line of a piece of fiction, I can only imagine how long this terror will haunt them.

That was last week's reality.

Real life makes me seriously reconsider my chosen writing genre. I write murder mysteries. My favorite recreational reading is the old fashioned murder mystery. The same with my go-to television and movies fare. How can I spend so much time with such reminders of reality?

I don't like thrillers that involve graphic torture or sexual assault. Those are worse in books than in movies or on TV. At least the Indiana Jones movies have musical scores that tell me when it's safe to uncover my eyes. And most TV shows give me enough warning that I can head for the fridge or go put a load in the washer when I need to. Maybe with the rise of ebooks we'll get some kind of musical score or trigger warnings that will tell us which pages to skip.

What makes a murder mystery I like? We find out who killed the victim. We find out why they killed them. We get satisfying endings. Often, like the nightclub shooter, the villain dies at the end. Even if the book or show ends with the murderer arrested, but before they are tried, sentenced, and removed from society, we know that they will be removed from society. We can sleep safe in our beds.

That's fiction.

Real life never gives us trigger warnings and seldom has a satisfying ending. We might get a pretty good idea who dunnit. Maybe even some idea of why. Whatever the reason why, it never seems like a good enough reason. And the thought of neither imprisonment nor of capital punishment truly satisfies. The victim's losses are too great to be 'paid for.' Our losses as a society are too great.

And good fiction? Ahhhhh. The best is when the author gives us a protagonist who does the right thing for the right reason, no matter how difficult it is. And they do it without fanfare or medals, satisfied that the good guys win.

Fanfare and medals are never enough to fill a real hero's loss. They can never unknow the wrong that was done or what they had to do to try to right it. And, somehow, winning just isn't enough.

I'll keep writing fictional murder mysteries, hopefully good ones. No doubt reality will continue to happen and I'll have to reconsider the morality of writing fiction. Again.

Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole Series -- A Review

      

A friend who knows that I like detective stories recommended I check out Jo Nesbo. 

Being a provincial American, I automatically thought since the name was spelled Jo that the author was a woman, which put her at the top of my to-read list. (I know. I know. I'm a sexist. My daughter has tried to cure me of that for years.) 

Well, Jo is Norwegian and male. And, being Norwegian, the 'J' is probably pronounced like a 'Y.'

I didn't bother to Wiki him until I finished a second reading of the first in his Harry Hole series The Bat. The first time I read it, I thought it was interesting. It takes place in Australia and as Harry learned more about the setting, so did I. Seemed odd for a cop from Oslo to be investigating a murder in Australia, but it works. 

The reason I read it a second time, was that I ran out of anything to read one night. I'd been reading mostly nonfiction and The Wheel of Time series for the umpteenth time. I bought and downloaded a science fiction novel, but it was badly formatted and I couldn't read it. (A trip to my local Barnes and Noble got that fixed for me. And I needed tea. That's one of the big differences between B&N and my local library. The library doesn't sell tea or chocolate mousse.)

Anyway, I needed something to read and I didn't want to spend any more money right then. Being a sci-fi/murder mystery writer myself (Murder on Ceres) I thought I should stay in my genre. So I read The Bat again. 

This time around, Nesbo's character Harry Hole was more interesting than the exotic setting. I went from there to Cockroaches, the second Harry Hole novel. It takes place in Thailand. Again, it seemed odd that Harry was trying to solve a murder in a country so far from his home. I got the feeling that the Oslo Police Department must have a much larger budget than my town's PD has. Or maybe Norwegian detectives get special discounts with the airlines.

After the second book, I was hooked on Harry. He does follow the rules, meaning the laws that defend the innocent and bring to justice the guilty. He does not, however, follow orders well at all. He's alcoholic. He's got baggage. He makes bad decisions. He takes unnecessary chances. I would not like to be his boss. But he connects with others and his intentions are good. He cares. I wouldn't hesitate to be his friend.

And he solves crimes. Crimes that involve people in sensitive, political situations. Lucky for him. Because his own foul-ups get glossed over while those above him in the political food chain are being protected.

Like I said, I was hooked. Next I read The Redbreast. Harry is at home in Norway. A love interest is introduced, Rakel. He has a partner, Ellen. She is an excellent detective and accepts Harry pretty much as he is. There is information about Norway in World War II, that I knew nothing about. Information that figures heavily in solving the crime.

In The Redbreast, another crime is introduced, one that is not solved, but carried me head-long into the next book, Nemesis.

In Nemesis, bank robberies and murder are the crimes to be solved. Another new character comes on the scene Beate. She works in forensics. Beate Lonn (spelled with a slash through the 'o') it seems has a super sensitive fusiform gyrus. What's that, you ask. It's that part of the brain related to facial recognition. She can remember every face she's ever seen.

Our Harry proves himself to be his own worst enemy. Thank goodness for his friends who love him anyway. Together, they figure out the robbery/murders, but do not solve the greater, ongoing problem within the police department.

I am so glad we can buy and download ebooks. As is not uncommon, I needed the next Harry Hole book after normal business hours.

And then The Devil's Star. An excellent end. After solving a series of ritual murders, the police department is saved from itself. And, just when I'm getting fed up with Harry's self-destructive ways, he somehow pulls through and I have hope for his future.

The first two Harry Hole novels are worth a read, but I would recommend you skip them and go right to The Redbreast, Nemesis, and The Devil's Star.

As for me? It's back to nonfiction -- Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning.

Someone of interest to me is Don Bartlett, Nesbo's translator. Seeing as how even after reading Stieg Larsson, I still don't speak Norwegian. (Wait! No, you're right. Larsson was Swedish.) I did watch all the episodes of the TV show Rita, which I loved. (But that was Danish.) 

The work of translating fascinates me. Where is Bartlett from? What is his first language? Some of his word usage struck me as strange. He wrote "shone an apple on his sleeve" where we would have used "shined" and he uses the term "skip" which I figured out was a "dumpster." English is his first language and England is his home.

Ah, yes. Two nations divided by a common language.

Justice -- an essay

According to the American Heritage Dictionary the first definition of the word justice is “…fairness.” The second is “The principle of moral rightness; equity.” The third is “…fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.” And the fourth is “conformity with truth, fact, or sound reason.”

Fair? What if you hit Millie with your car and she dies? Completely by accident, you understand. You were driving within the speed limit. You were not impaired by drink or drugs or cell phone or rowdy children in the back seat. She stepped in front of you and you hadn’t time to stop. For the purposes of this essay we won’t even consider the question of fairness to Millie.

Because you were in no way at fault for Millie’s death, you have moral rightness on your side and equity would require that you be absolved of any responsibility for Millie’s death.

If Millie were Joe’s pet of ten years, morally all you would be required to do would be to apologize to Joe. You could also offer to pay a token amount to cover Joe’s loss or replace Millie. And maybe that would be due reward – especially if Joe had other pets he liked better or he had family and friends who would continue to provide companionship.

But what if the situation is more complex? Millie was Joe’s only friend in the world? Because Millie was not a human being, you will not be required to answer to the law for her death, nor will Joe have recourse to civil law. He cannot sue you for everything you’ve got. You receive fair treatment in accordance with honor, standards, or law. But he’s lost everything important to him. Will your apology and offer of money be due reward for Joe?  

Or what if Millie was Joe’s wife of fifty-two years? Or Joe’s mother and only support? Or Joe’s only child? Even if the law determines you were not at fault in any way. That it was truly an accident. Something beyond your control. It might take weeks or months. Can that be fair to you? Your life is on hold until the situation can be resolved. However it is resolved can the loss of Millie be fair to Joe?

Finally comes the question of conformity with truth, fact, or sound reason. The truth is that you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact is that Millie is dead and sound reason holds that nothing will change that. You can’t un-be at the moment of impact. Joe cannot un-lose Millie. Can there be justice?

Does this mean justice only happens in trivial cases? Or in our imaginations?

In murder mysteries we almost always find out who dunnit and we end the books assured that the perpetrator will be brought to justice. I think that’s what I like so much about John Lescroart’s novels. (That and the fact that they’re well-written.) And when the hero is involved in something that seems right but against the law, he gets safely out of it. But then we run into the Italian justice system as Donna Leon writes it and even though her indefatigable Commissario Guido Brunetti identifies the baddies they don’t get their comeuppance because of who they are or who their family is.

In what is considered literary fiction justice happens even less often. Steinbeck’s Goad family in The Grapes of Wrath finds no promised land. McCarthy’s cowboys in the Border Trilogy don’t find true love and live happily ever after. Unfortunately these injustices, as uncomfortable as they make us, seem more true to life.

Maybe justice is just a human construct to give us hope and keep us trying.

The Ophelia Cut -- a review

The Ophelia Cut is number 14 in John Lescroart’s series of murder mysteries featuring attorney Dismas Hardy, homicide detective Abe Glitsky, bartender Moses McGuire, and their various and sundry families, friends, partners, underlings, and bosses. Not to mention each book’s featured villain and multiple side-bar bad guys.

To prepare to write this review I read some other reviews. And that reminds me NEVER read a review by anyone with the word “critic” in their title.

Huffington Post’s Jackie K. Cooper, identified as a film critic spends a good deal of his review saying how much Lescroart’s readers look forward to his next novel, especially the Dismas Hardy ones. Then he pans it. Saying the first four-fifths of the book are great but the ending is “something completely unsuspected. Unfortunately it is also completely unsatisfactory.” Insert your favorite expletive here.

The ending is unexpected. (I would not have chosen to use the word ‘unsuspected.’ Perhaps it was Mr. Cooper’s auto-correct acting out.) And though I would not say it is "satisfactory," it is the right ending.

What I love about Lescroart’s novels is the continuing lives of his characters. I started his books with the first of his Dismas Hardy stories, Dead Irish, published in 1989. I didn’t read it then because I’d not heard of John Lescroart until a retired police detective recommended I read him. That was almost three years ago while I was writing my own novel Murder on Ceres (available at http://bit.ly/murderonceres.)

In Dead Irish we first meet Hardy, a has-been, tending bar for his Vietnam War buddy Moses McGuire, and drinking in San Francisco. Hardy had lost his baby boy, his wife, and his career as a lawyer. The book introduces us to Hardy’s best friend from when he was a member of San Francisco’s finest before getting his law degree. Abe Glitsky is the half-Black half-Jewish cop, big enough and serious enough to intimidate the scariest bad guy. And there’s Lou the Greek’s, a dive across from the Hall of Justice open from six a.m. to two a.m. serving alcohol and food to the legal community from cops to judges, clients to social workers, and everybody over, around, and in between. If I ever get to San Fran I want to visit City Lights Bookstore and Lou the Greek’s.

In The Ophelia Cut Hardy is described as “sixty years old.” This makes me happy. He’s almost as old as I am. We both remember the late sixties and early seventies.

It’s some thirty years since the Dead Irish story, twelve books follow these characters’ ongoing lives. I feel like I’ve known them a long time. There are marriages, births, deaths. Each book is complete in itself, beginning and ending a case, but the characters go on.

In The Ophelia Cut, Moses McGuire’s daughter is brutalized by a man who ends up dead and Mose is arrested. But did he do it? The dead man was a truly bad man with any number of associates who would be happy to have him dead. No matter. It falls to Hardy to defend Mose in court.

And we come to the ending that the film critic didn’t like. Let me just say I cried. Not at the shocking part. At that part I was shocked. It was later that I wept.

I am not in the habit of crying over murder mysteries. A visit to the Oklahoma City National Memorial, yes. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, yes. The movie Old Yeller, yes.

But murder mysteries? I don’t remember ever doing it before. Generally speaking the characters and stories are too distant from me as a reader. I do not know them intimately.

Harry Bosch’s daughter grew up, but Harry doesn’t change. I never knew Miss Marple as a young woman. Even Commissario Brunetti does not change, although in Donna Leon’s novels justice is sometimes ill served (which I find appalling but that possibility is real enough to keep me reading her next one.) These characters are not real people to me. Dismas Hardy and the people around him are.

The Ophelia Cut is John Lescroart’s best so far. My only regret is that I can read Lescroart’s books faster than he can write them and there is only one more, The Keeper – so far.