On Screen: Oppenheimer

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J. Robert Oppenheimer had close connections with Princeton, including his acquaintanceship with Albert Einstein and his tenure as head of the Institute for Advanced Study (one of the four colleges then in this New Jersey town). Our local nonprofit movie theater was able to arrange a U.S. premiere last Thursday, the day before the film’s general release. The Garden Theater produced a classy event—food, wine, free popcorn!—and attendance was enthusiastic.

But it was the movie itself, directed by Christopher Nolan, that made an indelible impression on me. Three hours long, and not a minute wasted. The music and some of the visuals, especially in the beginning, suggested how the young Oppenheimer grappled with the mysterious principles of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics, the energy of the stars, and the movement of atoms. And their implications. He became the person who pulled all these ideas (and conflicting scientists’ egos) together to create the atomic bomb. When the Manhattan Project began, the United States was already four years behind German development of atomic weapons. While there were Americans who questioned whether the United States should deploy such a destructive weapon, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hitler wouldn’t hesitate.

Oppenheimer believed his role was to develop the weapon; it was up to the politicians when, where—and if—it should be used. Then politics threatened to undo him. The 1954 closed-door hearing in which his security clearance hung in the balance jeopardized his career. Physics was a field with too many secrets, and his government wanted to know whether he could be trusted with them. The brutal questioning and testimony at that hearing is intercut with testimony in another hearing—the Senate confirmation debate on Lewis Strauss’s nomination to be Secretary of Commerce. As chair of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Strauss had become an Oppenheimer’s implacable enemy, because of the scientist’s qualms about developing the hydrogen bomb and remarks Strauss perceived as insults. The movie contains some astonishing quotes, and, apparently all are accurate.

While these may sound like dry bureaucratic proceedings, director Christopher Nolan has created a movie of incredible tension. Irish actor Cillian Murphy, as Oppenheimer, and Robert Downey, Jr., as Strauss, are formidable antagonists. The cast is further strengthened by the performances of Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, and Rami Malek, among many others.

The story is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The production team had only three months of preparation, and the film was shot in just 57 days. I see it as a testament to the value of being focused, whereas films whose creation sprawls over many months lose their edge. The powerful result speaks for itself.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 94%; audiences: 94%.

On Stage: And A Nightingale Sang . . .

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A business trip to Las Vegas kept me from attending the opening weekend of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s new production, And A Nightingale Sang . . ., but I didn’t want to go without mentioning it to friends in the area, and encourage you to see it. A not-very-often produced play by Scottish playwright C.P.Taylor, it’s on stage for only one more week (through Sunday, July 30). Taylor was a native of Newcastle upon Tyne, and his characters speak with the broad Geordie dialect that must have been a bear for the actors to master (which they did!). This accent will be familiar to viewers of the television mystery series, Vera.

And a Nightingale Sang . . .the story of a northern England family during the Blitz and how, as one character says, Hitler changed their lives. There are lots of funny moments and sad ones too. The actors, particularly Monette Magrath whose role involves breaking the fourth wall and helping the audience understand how the pieces fit, do a remarkable job keeping up. Something—often more than one thing—is always happening.

Older sister Helen (played by Monette) believes she’s plain until she meets the friend (Benjamin Eakeley) of younger sister Joyce’s (Sarah Deaver) fiancé, Eric (Christian Frost). The men are in the army, training for battle, and the play’s six scenes take place at pivotal points in the war. The mother (Marion Adler) is religious—to a fault you might say—and her husband (John Little) distracts himself with playing the piano, including the title song, and politics. The grandfather (Sam Tsoutsouvas) always weighs in where he’s not wanted.

Retiring Shakespeare Theatre artistic Director Bonnie Monte chose this play for the aptness of its moment “as I read about what the Ukrainians are dealing with on a daily basis,” she says. Big world events affect individual people and families in a personal and private way.

Mention must be made of the set design by Brittany Vasta, economical in space for the small stage, but with multiple areas to hold the disparate action and suggestions of the war’s destruction. The lighting (Matthew E. Adelson) and sound (Drew Sensue-Weinstein) designs effectively evoked the terror as planes overhead drop their bombs nearer and nearer. Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train). For tickets, contact the Box Office.

Imagining Holmes’s Place in History – Guest Post by Richard T. Ryan

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Where exactly is Sherlock Holmes’s place in history? Well, if you’re a writer the answer to that is rather simple: It’s anyplace you care to put him—within reason.

Like so many other pasticheurs, I enjoy placing Sherlock Holmes in situations that are grounded in reality. In other words, I think of my works as a blend of history and mystery. I like to think of it as Conan Doyle meets Dan Brown.

With a background in the medieval and early Renaissance periods, I’m always seeing various connections that span the centuries. As a result, druids figure prominently in one of my works, The Druid of Death, as does the ogham system of writing, used hundreds of years ago by the Irish.

In another work, I focused on the plique-à-jour style of jewelry-making, and was fortunate that the best example of this technique—The Mérode Cup—happened to be housed in the South Kensington Museum (which became the Victoria and Albert Museum some years later) and shown here.

An article about Fabergé eggs, and the discovery that Consuela Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, had commissioned the Pink Serpent Egg served as the starting point for my novel The Merchant of Menace. Also worth noting is that the Duchess was the first person outside of Russia to own one of these masterpieces.

Sometimes an event sends me scurrying down the research rabbit hole. I was intrigued when I learned that a group of Scottish students had stolen the Stone of Scone on Christmas Day in 1950. They pilfered the artifact in an effort to attract attention to the cause of Home Rule for Scotland. In The Stone of Destiny, I changed things a bit to suit the history of Holmes’s times and had a group of Irish separatists abscond with the stone in order to delay the coronation of King Edward VII.

In my most recent book, The Devil’s Disciples, which is due out later this year, I once again examine the question of Home Rule for Ireland. This time I focus on the Fenian dynamite campaign that plagued London in the mid- and early 1880s. Among the targets was the London Bridge, followed a few weeks later by the Tower of London, the House of Commons, and Westminster Hall—all on the same night!

At that point, Holmes is contacted by Her Majesty’s government and tasked with bringing the bombers to heel. This is a more in-depth look at the question of freedom for Ireland, and I touch on such events as the potato famine; the support for the movement in America, specifically from a group called the Clan na Gael; and one particular individual who shall live in Irish infamy forever.

The challenge in my books is to insert Holmes into these events without disturbing the line that is history. Sometimes, it’s fairly easily accomplished, but at other times it can be a real struggle. And, of course, I also have to find a place for Dr. Watson, so in some instances it is doubly tricky.

If you’d like to check out The Devil’s Disciples, this link will take you to its page on Kickstarter, and you can see part of the cover and check out the various rewards. Right now, we are at 94 backers, if we get to 100, everyone will receive $50 worth of free Holmes ebooks as a bonus.

The Mérode Cup photograph is licensed by CC (view license here).

The Man in the Corduroy Suit by James Wolff

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James Wolff writes a different kind of spy novel, and his new one, The Man in the Corduroy Suit, is no exception. Wolff’s British intelligence agents are renegades. Jonas Worth, whose antics were the subject of the first book in the series, Beside the Syrian Sea, and agent-runner August Drummond from How to Betray Your Country, the second, both found themselves at odds with their bureaucracies. Wolff’s storytelling skills are such that you adopt these oddball characters and want them to succeed, despite the parallel imperative for the system to function. There’s no formula evident in Wolff’s stories; each is a plunge into the unknown.

The protagonist of this story, Leonard Flood, has acquired a reputation: blunt and prickly. If he comes up short on social skills, he’s also a relentless questioner, who through sheer persistence can pry information out of an interviewee. Or an unwilling colleague. In other words, he can be a pain in the neck. Wolff draws Leonard’s—and his other characters’—personalities with an artist’s eye for the telling detail, including the corduroy suit Leonard favors, irrespective of weather.

Reading about Wolff’s bureaucratic misfits, you may be reminded of Mick Herron’s Slough House series. The difference is that, flawed though Herron’s characters are, they do form something of a team. And they can hold it together to resolve a problem. Wolff’s characters skate out onto the thin ice mostly alone, and the problems to be solved are, if not wholly of their own making, specific to them. Like Herron, Wolff has a finely-honed ability to skewer the absurdities of bureaucratic life and the foibles of his oh-so-human characters.

The head of an MI5 unit called Gatekeeping, which covertly investigates the agency’s own personnel, asks Flood to look into the activities of a retired officer, Willa Karlsson, who has been struck down by a mysterious illness. Alarmingly, she seems to have been the victim of some hard-to-detect Russian poison. Karlsson for many years worked in New Recruit Vetting. She is, in fact, the very person who vetted Flood. As the boss is quick to point out, she also vetted intelligence analyst Jonas Worth and agent-runner August Drummond from books one and two. Their wandering off the straight-and-narrow still stings. Worse, how many other dodgy personnel did Karlsson approve? Was she on a deliberate campaign to undermine the agency? To introduce people whose personal weaknesses would make them vulnerable? In short, how many bad apples are in the MI5 barrel?

Flood doesn’t have much time to figure it out, either. Once he thinks he has, the atmosphere of the story darkens, and you can’t be sure whom he should trust or what he can risk taking for granted. When so recently in real life, a young American man let loose into the world a large cache of international intelligence, this book can make you think hard about whether you ever do or can know enough about the people called upon to protect a nation’s closest secrets.

While I won’t go into specifics about the ending, it’s one of those satisfyingly unexpected but well laid out scenarios, much like one the late John le Carré might devise. I thoroughly enjoyed this cerebral book—the quirky personalities, the clever plot, the sly tone. Although even Leonard doesn’t figure out Willa Karlsson’s motive, I suspect you will.

A very, very good read!

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Where Did Cats Come From?

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Unfortunately for paleontologists who want to study the fossilized ancestors of the world’s billion cats, such remnants are rare. Cats have been around for an estimated 30 million years, but only sixty species appear in the fossil record. Where did that cuddly creature who shreds your sofa and leaves hairs all over your black trousers come from? An article by Jonathan B. Losos in Natural History gives the story.

Millions of years ago, the feline family tree had two main branches. One branch, the saber-toothed cats that lived in many places worldwide, we know only through fossils. The other branch—the conical toothed cats (huh?)—gave rise to all forty-two current species. There are the Big Cats (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, puma, and cheetahs) and the little cats—bobcats, ocelots, Fluffy, and many more.

Big Cats eat big prey; little cats eat mice and bugs and small cans of chicken pâté. (My cats like Italian food.) Domestic cats are much more similar in anatomy, behavior, and ecology to other small cat species than they are to Big Cats. But family relationships aren’t solely a matter of size. There are seven species in the Big Cat family, including the medium-sized cloud leopard. Two members of the little-cat family are big—the mountain lion and the cheetah.

Genetic analysis is answering some questions about cat families’ common ancestors. Your kitty, sleeping on the clean laundry, is descended from the African wildcat. As natural selection has done its work, the intestines of domestic cats became longer (to handle a more varied diet) and their brains smaller (my cats, William and Charles, disagree with the science on this point, despite evidence the decline is in the areas related to aggression, fear, and instant reactivity, which a domestic cat needs less of, apparently).

Losos concludes that “From those humble origins somewhere between Egypt and Turkey, the cat of the Pharoahs has been on a great evolutionary ride, becoming one of the most successful carnivores that ever existed.”

In my award-winning short story “Burning Bright,” a pair of ne’er-do-wells wants to acquire a tiger. I wrote it in a fury that, at that time, four U.S. states still allowed private persons to own big cats without so much as a license. In fact, said the World Wildlife Fund, more tigers were living in U.S. backyards than in the wild. I’m happy to report that the federal Big Cat Public Safety Act finally was enacted late last year making the trade illegal. Current owners are grandfathered in, but had to register their ownership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service by last Sunday. Charles and William (below) say they are not policy wonks, but they approve.

Further info:
The Cat’s Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa by Jonathan B. Losos
Big Cat Rescue – preserving and protecting exotic wildcat species
Panthera – a conservation organization for big cats and their habitats

Two Novels that Couldn’t Be More Different

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Between Two Strangers by Kate White

Skyler Moore can’t escape the past in Kate White’s new psychological mystery, Between Two Strangers. The disappearance of her younger sister twelve years earlier not only haunts her, but forever damaged her relationship with her mother.

This psychic blow ended her graduate studies. She left Boston for New York, and she put her art studies behind her. Now nearing her mid-thirties, increasingly isolated, she has no promising relationship that would get her the one thing she really wants—a child. You may think as I did that she isn’t a very promising maternal figure for any number of reasons, but a child is what she wants.

At least she’s started creating art again. She’s good too, and a small gallery in lower Manhattan is organizing a show for her. As the show’s opening approaches, a call from a lawyer in the tony suburb of Scarsdale changes everything. He’s the estate administrator for a recently deceased pharmaceutical executive whose name she doesn’t recognize. He’s left her a bequest. How much? $3.5 million. It’s a life-saver, but unraveling the dead man’s motive will take some work.

If you are as skeptical of coincidence as Sherlock Holmes and most police detectives are, you may think Skyler is a bit slow to realize there’s a relationship between her windfall and the harassment she’s newly subjected to. But once she finally tumbles to it, White keeps the story twists coming.

Chapters alternate between Skyler’s current life and the fateful weekend Chloe disappeared. Each leaves you on the brink of learning something critical, giving time to develop your own theories (all of mine were wrong!). With the story’s nice pacing, it’s a highly entertaining page-turner.

White is the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of several previous thrillers.

Back to the Dirt by Frank Bill

If you imagined the full spectrum of crime, mystery, and thriller stories, you might slot tidy Miss Marple and the cosies on the left extreme. Well, hang onto your hat, because Frank Bill will shoot you all the way to the right, literally Back to the Dirt. His story is reminiscent of the late Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Donald Ray Pollock’s The Heavenly Table in giving no quarter to sentiment.

The main character, Miles Knox, is a Vietnam vet living in rural Indiana who saw some horrible things perpetrated there, and not just by the enemy. These episodes and his dead comrades haunt him, and when he’s under stress, they come roaring back into his head in sounds, smells, and sensations. He’s tried counselling with little apparent success. The only thing that relieves the stress is pumping iron. Since he’s no longer young, he has to jack himself full of steroids, which take their own toll. Maybe somewhat more responsible than a loose cannon, don’t get him angry.

His friend Nathaniel shows up with his eight-year-old nephew, Shadrach, who just saw his parents murdered. They were big-time drug dealers, but when the cops arrive, the trailer is clear of both drugs and money. Nathaniel  takes Miles on a long, drug-fueled night of pursuit and frustration. Whatever bad stuff happened that day, it’s only going to get worse.

Author Bill paints a bleak picture of rural America, swamped with opioids, fully stocked with guns, and overtaken by despair. (This is the theme of Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, Demon Copperhead. An author has to find a way into such a morass, and Kingsolver chose Dickens’s David Copperfield for inspiration; Bill chose the Vietnam War and PTSD. Worlds where there are no easy answers.).

I wouldn’t recommend this book for the faint-hearted or easily offended, but if you are up for a bracing look at a segment of society rarely described so unflinchingly, this will do.

It took a while to get into the rhythm of Bill’s writing. He writes characters’ thoughts and dialog not just phonetically, but the way the characters perceive\s the words, adding considerable color to the text. Just when you think there should be an end to the legacy of Vietnam—a war that ended for the politicians some forty-five years ago—you are reminded that for many of the men who fought there, the war is a daily reality.

Criminal Justice in Indian Country

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Good news for Walt Longmire fans! David Heska Wanbli Weiden says the portrayal of law enforcement in Indian Country that you may have absorbed from Craig Johnson’s books or the (terrific!) television series, are on the money.

A Zoom presentation arranged by the Southeast chapter of Mystery Writers of America this week featured Weiden. He is a lawyer, member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, and author of the 2020 crime novel set in Indian Country, Winter Counts, which won numerous awards. (I’m still thinking about the recipes using indigenous ingredients the new casino chef was trying out!)

Weiden reminded viewers that the 577 Native American nations in the United States are exactly that—sovereign nations, and enrolled tribe members have dual citizenship. In any enterprise involving humans, of course, differences arise, and tribes have varying approaches on how to determine membership. So, if you’re writing a story that involves Indian Country, you’ll have to ask questions. While some laws apply across the board—for example, tribes do not have the right to prosecute felony crimes that take place on their own lands—other variations in criminal justice policies and practices do pop up.

In a felony crime, the tribal police must involve the FBI. In the case of Weiden’s home reservation (Rosebud), two FBI agents are assigned, yet are located a hundred miles away in South Dakota’s state capital, Pierre. Agents assigned to reservation work are not necessarily native; he gave the impression they are unlikely to be. These are not considered plum assignments, and agents rarely stay long enough to learn, appreciate, and respect the culture they are policing. Equally important, tribe members don’t develop a relationship of trust with the agents. And, of course, these situations play out against the backdrop of a difficult, neglect-filled history.

Even if the FBI makes an arrest, prosecutors may decline to pursue the case. In fact, Weiden says, they decline to prosecute as much as half the time or more, even in cases of murder and sex abuse. By contrast, outside Indian Country, only about ten percent of cases are unprosecuted. These enforcement and prosecution patterns are one reason private vigilantism has arisen. The protagonist of Winter Counts, Virgil Wounded Horse, is just such a vigilante, with all the dangers such a path exposes him to.

It Ain’t Over

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The background sound to my childhood was my mom listening to baseball games on a scratchy AM radio. The Yankees were the greatest, though our sentimental favorites were the home team, the Detroit Tigers. If you’re at all a fan of baseball or even of people whose larger-than-life character sparkles like a jewel, you won’t want to miss the new documentary about Yankee superstar Yogi Berra, It Ain’t Over (trailer). Not in a theater near you? Get it here.

Conceived and narrated by Yogi’s granddaughter Lindsay, the documentary’s seed was a 2015 All-Star Game tribute to “the four greatest living baseball players.” No question, the four selected in a popular poll should have been there—Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Bench, and Willie Mays. As the names were announced, Lindsay turned to Yogi and said, “What are you, dead?”

The documentary makes it abundantly clear that Berra should have been the fifth man on the field that day. He was an 18-time All Star. He had more MVPs than any of those others. More World Series rings than the four combined. Why wasn’t he there?

This documentary tries to answer that question. You see some of Yogi’s great plays. You hear sports broadcasters, other players, and friends—like Billy Crystal—weigh in. (It’s worth the price of admission just to bask in Derek Jeter’s smile.) And you’re reminded of Yogi’s famous sayings: “Nobody goes to that restaurant any more. It’s too crowded.” “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” “You can observe a lot by watching.” “It ain’t over til it’s over,” and my favorite, “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.” On the surface, they may sound good for a laugh, but when you really think about it . . .

The commenters believe people got distracted by Yogi’s colorful speech, unathletic appearance, and outsized personality, all of which obscured what a fantastic ballplayer he was. Then, after his playing years, he was a successful coach. And all the while, he was a devoted family man, married 65 years to Carmen Short.

Yogi died later in 2015 at age 90. See it! You’ll feel good afterward.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%; audiences: 96%.

Where Did the Month of May Go?

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Two vacations and a flurry of county book fairs have made the past few weeks fly by without blog posts. Recently, I made a little change to my book cover with a see-through label clearly indicating it’s a thriller (after a book fair visitor kept haranguing me—“It doesn’t signal it’s a thriller!”). The label works like a charm: photo shows how it came out.

Later this month I’m looking forward to a Sisters in Crime reading, a Mystery Writers of America get-together, and next month, the Public Safety Writers Association annual conference. All that hasn’t slowed down my reading. Because I read 40-50 crime/mystery/thriller books each year for CrimeFictionLover.com, a site that focuses on NEW books, and CRIME FICTION, I rarely read books that don’t fit those parameters. But lately, a few exceptions.

Best was Just Mercy, “a story of justice and redemption,” by Bryan Stevenson (one extended story in it became the movie starring Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan, which also was great). Reading it was inspired by our trip to Montgomery, Alabama, to visit The Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Very affecting, as you’d expect and highly recommended. Crime yes; fiction, unfortunately, no.

One of Otto Penzler’s American Mystery Classics—Obelists at Sea, C. Daly King, 1932—hit my desk. It’s about a murder during a 1930s transatlantic crossing. A group of psychologists on board ship, each with a different theory about how to identify the perpetrator, tries to help the captain. One by one, their theories fail. There are a few good cracks at the profession, but the comic potential wasn’t fully exploited. And it was slooooow. Some of the characters’ rampant anti-Semitism (and knowing what came afterward in real life, so few years later), made it hard to enjoy. “Obelists,” the author explains, are people who harbor suspicions. That’s a word that should come in pretty handy these days.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra, an award-winning literary novel that was a “best book of the year” a decade ago (I’m way behind) is an exploration of the ravages of war, set in Chechnya. In winter. Betrayal, murder, torture, random maiming, privation, inexplicable compassion, and the enduring power of love. A little grim for me. The title comes from a definition of what constitutes “life” found in a medical dictionary. No doubt this could be considered crime fiction on an epic scale.

The Rose Tattoo

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Tennessee Williams’s “heart-breaking and heart-soaring” story, The Rose Tattoo, launches Bonnie J. Monte’s final season (33rd!) as Artistic Director of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. And Monte’s long-standing affinity for Williams’s work shines. A full cast of 16 adults and three children is rare these days and brings this beautifully conceived and executed production to life through June 18.

The Rose Tattoo, like Streetcar, focuses on two couples, Serafina Delle Rose (played brilliantly by Antoinette LaVecchia), haunted by memories of her dead husband, Rosario, and reluctant to capitulate to the outlandish wooing of Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Anthony Marble), a would-be suitor whose patronymic is even ridiculous. The physical comedy between them is laugh-out-loud perfect.

The other couple is Serafina’s 15-year-old daughter Rosa (Billie Wyatt) and her recently met sailor, Jack Hunter (Isaac Hickox-Young). Rosa is determined to be deflowered, despite the mores of her Sicilian community; Jack is tempted, but unwilling to risk decades in the brig. Their longing for each other is palpable.

In Serafina’s all-consuming grief, she stalwartly believes her lusty marriage was absolutely perfect. The audience knows better. Serafina also subscribes to a superstitious Catholicism and waits for the Virgin Mary to tell her what she should do with her life. These beliefs tether her to the past and warp her relationship with the here-and-now and with her daughter. Nosy neighbors, a hapless priest, and a malevolent “witch” are among the secondary characters who keep the plot racing along. Offstage, Sarafina’s garden is frequently threatened by a neighborhood goat—traditional symbol of unbridled lust—that continuously needs to be corralled, both literally and figuratively.

In all, The Rose Tattoo is a fine start to an exciting season! STNJ productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train). For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit the Box Office online.