With Our Bellies Full and the Fire Dying

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I must have gained ten pounds reading this collection of short stories by Debra H. Goldstein. Though she was raised in New Jersey and Michigan (and is an alumna of my alma mater, the University of Michigan—Go Blue!), she spent much of her career in the South, which has definitely seeped into her story-telling. It’s a south of pie auctions, bar-b-cue, fatal seafood casseroles, and corn pudding recipes over which deadly fights can erupt. She corrals these culinary delights under the broad heading: “Tales of Sinning and Redemption,” and a particularly luscious cake is the recipe for redemption in one of them.

What’s most fun about reading this collection is how varied the stories are, even with the frequent appearance of something delicious. They’ve appeared in many collections, some not widely distributed, so it’s a new and invigorating experience to read them. One that’s particularly apt for Mardi Gras tomorrow is “Who Dat? Dat the Indian Chief?” about the Mardi Gras Indians and their elaborate and in this case, unexpectedly valuable, costumes.

A number of the stories feature children, precocious ones for the most part, like the son of the sheriff who not only discovers a body, but analyzes the crime scene based on his Magic of Forensic Science book. One I especially liked was “The Girls in Cabin Three,” made up solely of letters home from a teenage camper, whose reports must have horrified her parents!

Although the stories are short, Goldstein loads in some compelling surprises, as in her story about a homeless encampment, “So Beautiful or So What,” where characters aren’t necessarily what they seem. Do they all get redemption? The lucky ones do.

Overall, Goldstein’s writing is clear and entertaining, capturing her characters and their outlook on life—good, bad, self-centered, or magnanimous—most convincingly. Very possibly, her years as a judge trained her to see through people’s outer presentation to their core, which skill she now uses to great effect in these entertaining stories. Or perhaps that skill made her a good jurist—whichever, her readers are now the beneficiaries.

Order the collection here.

Don’t Go in the Water?

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One of many memorable scenes in Fredrick Forsyth’s thriller Avenger (which I’ve listened to three times!) occurs when the hero spends several days scouting the encampment of the villain and sees a stream running along the property, an obstacle he’ll have to cross to get inside. Every day, a worker comes out and throws chickens into the water, which are immediately devoured in a frothing mass of piranhas. Eeeew.

But, do piranas have a bad rap? Before you decide, or before authors enlist them to be aggressors in their fiction, you and they might check out Ronald B. Tobias’s article, “Roosevelt’s Piranhas” in the February 2025 issue of Natural History. Piranhas acquired their deadly reputation after Teddy Roosevelt made a trip to Brazil and observed piranhas devour an entire cow in minutes with their razor-sharp, blade-like teeth. What he didn’t know was that this demonstration had been carefully staged for maximum mayhem. He was “the victim of a hoax,” Tobias writes.

A few factoids: most of the 30 to 60 piranha species are vegan; a piranha can detect a drop of blood in 50 gallons of water; they keep rivers clean by “disposing of” dead or dying animals; the bite of a fully grown black piranha is, pound for pound, more powerful than that of the Tyrannosaurus rex; Latin Americans eat them to treat problems of sex drive (men) and reproduction (women); they’re banned in 27 US states, where officials worry they might escape into the wild and breed—piscine pythons.

The red-bellied piranha, called Roosevelt’s Piranha, is about a foot long and weighs three pounds. It’s not so big, but it’s the numbers that will get you. They travel in shoals that can include hundreds or even thousands of fish. For the most part, they are relatively harmless, “except for a few scary weeks of the year,” Tobias says. In the wet season, the river waters flood vast areas, where many animals live, and fish food is plentiful. As the land dries up again, all these well-fed fish are channeled back into a much shrunken area, trapping predator and prey. Once that limited food supply is gone, the fish attack each other—“the cannibal fish Roosevelt saw in Brazil.” That is definitely not the time to take a swim. As the water polo team in Wednesday Addams – Piranha Pool learned.

The March of Television

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This spring promises several new television seasons and series that should be worth watching. But first, let me praise the extremely quirky Interior Chinatown, which we’ve watched over the last few months. It’s based on a 2020 novel by Charles Yu, which won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. A couple of episodes in, I realized I’d actually read this book. I did not get it at all. My reaction: “Huh?”

But someone must have, and the transition to the small screen is terrific. Jimmy O. Yang plays Willis Wu, a background character in a police drama set in a fictional city. His parents, especially his mom, have some hilarious moments, as does his fellow waiter, Fatty Choi, who thrives on insulting the restaurant’s customers. The plot is essentially indescribable, but Wu is on a quest to find out what happened to his older brother, whom the TV show calls “Kung Fu Guy.” Many hilarious and heartfelt moments. Watch it on Hulu.

On TV this spring, I’m looking forward to the televised version of Liz Moore’s Long Bright River, a book I enjoyed immensely. In it, a cop who works in Philadelphia’s rough Kensington neighborhood, scene of a series of prostitute murders, never escapes the fear that one day what she’ll find is the body of her renegade sister. Amanda Seyfried plays the police officer, Mickey Fitzpatrick. Excellent family interactions in the novel; I hope they’re preserved. Coming on Peacock March 13.

Damian Lewis will reprise his role as Henry VIII in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, the third book in the late Hilary Mantel’s riveting series about Tudor political shenanigans involving the King, Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), and Cardinal Wolsey (Jonathan Pryce). The books were great, and the acting in this series, first aired in 2015 as Wolf Hall, is exceptional. Wolf Hall was the ancestral home of Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, the one (out of eight) he presumably most loved. It’s premiering March 23 on PBS.

Another season of Dark Winds arrives March 9 on AMC. This crime series, set on Arizona’s Navajo reservation, is based on Tony Hillerman’s popular books featuring Sheriff Joe Leaphorn and his deputy Jim Chee. Leaphorn is played by Zahn McClarnon, an actor I came to admire in the Longmire series, and Chee by Kiowa Gordon. The rest of the mostly Native American cast is also strong. And you can’t beat the beautifully stark Southwestern landscape.

I’ll also give a try to the British detective drama Ludwig, which aired on the BBC in 2024, but will be available on BritBox starting March 20. The title character (played by actor-comedian David Mitchell) is a puzzle-maker, and Ludwig is his pen name. His identical twin brother (I know, I know, beware of twins) is a Cambridge police DCI who’s gone missing. Ludwig poses as his brother to get access to police information about the disappearance. He is, of course, taken for the detective, and becomes caught up in the department’s investigations. Puzzle-solving should come in handy.

Delicious UK Crime Fiction

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What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close

Ajay Close’s new crime thriller is inspired by the notorious 1970s Yorkshire Ripper case, which prompted a massive and massively inefficient manhunt. In that case, the police eventually identified the killer, but were severely criticized for many aspects of their investigation.

Close’s fictional treatment contains elements of a police procedural, as the authorities stumble along almost completely devoid of clues and full of misplaced emphases. What sets this book apart, though, is the equal, if not greater, attention to the cultural milieu in which the crimes occurred. In that respect, it is a scathing social history.

Close has achieved an inspired juxtaposition here, using as her principal protagonist young police constable Liz Seeley, attached to the task force investigating a series of prostitutes’ murders. She knows firsthand about mistreated women, and, to escape her abusive boyfriend, she has moved to a communal house in Leeds, occupied by six feminists who hate the cops.

The attitude toward women that Liz experiences in the police department—condescending, salacious, misogynistic—is a dark side of male behavior. They don’t take much interest in the dead and engage in victim-blaming until the murder of a middle-class girl who is most definitely not in the sex trade. Liz is trapped between two behavioral and attitudinal extremes.

While male readers might want to give themselves a pass, because they don’t share those extreme beliefs or behaviors, they undoubtedly have seen it, may have tolerated it, and very possibly laughed it off, even if uncomfortably. In susceptible minds, endemic disrespect and hostility end up where Close’s investigators find them.

It’s a bit of a difficult read in the beginning because Close uses the street language and slang of Yorkshire residents of fifty years ago. But it is well worth the effort. It’s an important book, especially when we still receive too-frequent reminders of how willing some people (people who ought to know better) are to trot out the old prejudices and gender slurs, half a century later.

The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

Now, escape the 21st c. for a romp in late-Victorian London. In this entertaining historical crime novel, Quinn le Blanc is the Queen of Fives, head of a once-large and notorious group of female con women, now reduced to her, her major domo, Mr. Silk, and a few loosely connected paid confederates of dubious loyalty.

Quinn’s actions are guided by a Rulebook created by her predecessor Queens, which lays out the rules for any number of confidence schemes, all of which follow a prescribed path and have in common the goal of obtaining something of value. Preferably a lot of value.

Quinn has selected an aloof young duke from the richest family of England as her quarry, and through an elaborate set of stratagems and disguises, sets out to trick him into marriage. It isn’t only his money she’s after; she’d like to derail his do-gooder step-mother whose charities are bent on tearing down old houses, including the traditional seat of the Queen of Fives.

But if the course of true love never did run smooth, neither in this case does the course of false love. A mysterious man, the duke’s suspicious sister, the duke’s secret love all conspire against the Queen. What’s most fun are the clever plots and quick-change artistry of the characters. Pure fun and mischief.

Washington’s Birthday Week

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As thoughts of the Presidency and Presidents fill the news in 2025, it’s interesting to think back on our country’s first president, born 22 February 1732—almost three centuries ago. Although there are many legends associated with him (I need to bake that cherry pie!), some more dubious than others, he without doubt was a prime reason the Continental Army was victorious in the American Revolution.

The battles of Trenton in late December 1776 and in Princeton January 3, 1777, were a turning point in the Revolutionary War. Only a few miles away, Washington and his troops had crossed the Delaware—memorialized in famous artworks—on the night of December 25-26.

Artist Charles Willson Peale, painted several similar versions of Washington and the Princeton battle that are owned by the Princeton University Art Museum. In the one above, Washington holds a rapier aloft, the battle is still under way. Three people can be seen on his left side (viewer’s right), one of whom was Washington’s friend, Virginia neighbor, and Revolutionary War hero, Hugh Mercer, who died of his battle wounds. This painting is called “Washington at the Battle of Princeton,” (1783/84) and the building in the far distance is Princeton’s Nassau Hall.  

This painting remains on display in Nassau Hall today. Its fancy gilded frame originally held a portrait of King George II “decapitated” during the battle by an American cannon ball, reportedly fired by the artillery company commanded by Alexander Hamilton. When Washington’s portrait replaced that of the monarch, the crown that had adorned the original frame was removed. Nassau Hall (pictured below) was built in 1756 and, in 1783, it served for four months as the US Capitol, being the largest academic building then in the colonies. Damaged to its exterior from another January 1777 cannonball remains, unrepaired.

The second painting, versions of which are in various museums and institutions around the country, including Princeton University, replaces the three men with a horse, a groom, and a cannon, the British flag crumpled at his feet. That version is titled “Washington After the Battle of Princeton” (painted between 1779 and 1782). Having grown up in the Midwest, where history didn’t seem so immediate, these connections to Washington are very precious.

Sympathy for Academy Awards Voters

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Academy Award, Oscar

I’m sure glad I don’t have to pick the Best Picture winner in this year’s Academy Awards pool of ten. The four nominees we’ve seen are excellent films with brilliant acting, interesting stories, and cinematic flourishes. Assuming votes are cast based on people’s true assessment of excellence, not corporate loyalties, they have their job cut out for them.

We skipped Anora when it was in the local theater because the preview was so off-putting. Now that was a mistake. Several of the others haven’t come to Princeton yet. But here’s what we’ve seen.

The Brutalist—a moving story about mid-twentieth century Jew (Adrian Brody), whose excellence as an architect doesn’t protect him from the Nazis. He survives to create a new life and new work with his wife (Felicity Jones) about twenty miles from where I live in a fictional version of Doylestown, Pa. What happens to him thereafter makes you wonder whether the movie title refers to his architectural style or certain characters in the film.

A Complete Unknown—Bob Dylan’s career up until the legendary set he did at the Newport Folk Festival about which much has been said and written. The producers made the excellent decision to include lots of music, and Timothée Chalamet sings the songs himself. A wonderful trip into forests of nostalgia—for the music, for the times, for the hope embedded therein.

Conclave—based on a novel by the excellent Robert Harris (my review of his Precipice is here), with a can’t-go-wrong cast of Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini. It’s about the election of a new pope (awkward timing) and the ostensibly stodgy proceedings that result in earthquakes.

Dune: Part Two—Loved the books; so willing to cut the movie some slack with respect to Austin Butler’s alien makeup. The acting and scenery were fantastic. Ditto the special effects which were so good they were distracting. (How’d they DO that?!) Timothée Chalamet again, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, and Javier Bardem.

Coming soon: The Nickel Boys. Looking forward to it!

Curse of the Curse-Word

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The New York Times recently published an interview by Matt Richtel with Timothy Jay, “a scholar in the science of swearing,” which I read with interest. Probably every author comes up against the dilemma of whether and how much cursing their fictional characters should do. Some worry that libraries will turn their books down and some readers will complain, others (especially crime writers like me) may think that they’re not writing about nuns and clergy (or maybe they are), and a few choice curse words make dialog more realistic. And some just let ʼer rip.

There’s an argument that larding speech with cursing not only substitutes for a more thoughtful and meaningful word—in other words, promotes laziness in thinking as well as speech—and, possibly worse, in some opinions, dilutes the effectiveness of a well-placed “f—!!”

Jay says that cursing has become much more commonplace, “as part of the whole shift to a more casual lifestyle.” Yes, the advice columns receive letters from parents who’ve taken young children out to dinner, only to have the experience spoiled by loud cursing from a neighboring table. Handling that isn’t always easy or pleasant for the parents or restaurant staff called upon to intervene.

Social media, once again, takes some of the blame. In one study of Twitter posts published in 2014, profanity occurred in about one word of every ten—about twice the rate of spoken language. Now that Twitter is X, and many folks have abandoned the platform to the true believers, that rate may be higher. A story in today’s Washington Post reported the abuse a blind government worker received after being ridiculed by Musk on X. Unkind, people.

Online a person “can be aggressive without any physical retaliation” or personal consequences, as Jay points out. This no-restraints atmosphere contributes to another problem: the way women are increasingly attacked and harassed online.

Biometrics has shown that taboo words create a stronger emotional reaction in people than other words; they have effects on both speaker and hearer. However, Jay does say that his research group at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts has recorded more than 10,000 people swearing in public. Most of it, he says, is casual and “pretty harmless,” and has never resulted in aggression or violence. He views it as part of the perpetually evolving state of language.

For writers, who care and think about words more than most people probably do, it would be hard to lose the impact of a good swear word just when you need it, emphasis on those last four words.

AI-Generated image from Vocablitz for Pixabay

Society of Lies — Hometown Thriller

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Reading a book set in your own home town is always kind of a kick, and people with a Princeton connection may want to read it for that reason alone. I enjoyed the inside references to places in the Princeton area in Lauren Ling Brown’s new thriller, but the personalities she describes don’t ring true. She makes clear that Society of Lies doesn’t reflect either real characters or social groups at Princeton University, where she did her undergraduate work, and I hope that’s true! Still, you’re forced to wonder to what extent her college experience is reflected here. Like the pair of sisters who are the novel’s main characters, and who encounter prejudice and insults, the author is Black and Asian.

Older sister Maya is visiting the campus a decade after her own graduation to witness the graduation of her sister, Naomi. The return to Princeton immediately triggers waves of memories, especially those surrounding the eating club—Sterling—where both Maya and Naomi were members. Maya also is haunted by the unexpected death of one of her friends ten years earlier. (Eating clubs—combination dining hall and social club—are a nearly 150-year-old tradition at Princeton.) Brown’s fictional Sterling Club is the elite of the elite and has a corrupt secret society at its heart. With all the positives that membership in a club like Sterling can offer, there’s always a downside. It’s tempting to misuse that influence.

This is all brought back to Maya in the story’s first chapter when, on the eve of graduation, Naomi is found drowned. The story timeline ping-pongs between Naomi’s last few months on campus, and Maya’s own university experiences. The similarities can make it hard to keep events straight, despite the clearly labeled short chapters. The extent of drinking and drug use—prescription and otherwise—may be realistic, I can’t say. But when the characters’ resulting confusion and flawed memories repeatedly lead to story red herrings, it became tiresome.

Although Brown has some surprises in store, she plays fair and provides the clues needed to back up the story’s conclusions. Although her writing style is promising, her prose is weighted down with unnecessary verbiage that makes the going seem slow. It isn’t necessary to describe characters’ emotions repeatedly, when their reactions are patently understandable. We’ve all (probably) had friends who were stuck in a romantic rut, like Naomi is with Liam, her boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, boyfriend again, ex-again, and we’ve all (probably) eventually lost patience with those friends.

So, Who Was St. Valentine, Anyway?

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Alumni of Catholic schools probably know this, but I’d forgotten any details, if I’d every known them, about the Old World St. Valentine, who lived in the third century—that is 1700 years ago. (You may be tempted to ponder who, today, will be remembered, at least in a positive way, in the year 3725?)

For a thousand years, the saint has been associated with “courtly love,” but don’t overlook his role as patron saint of epilepsy (not so romantic), beekeepers (honey is sweet, after all), and the Umbrian city of Terni (?). February 14 commemorates the day in CE 269 that the saint was martyred in Italy.

The link with courtly love is tenuous and might have grown from the saint’s practice of marrying Christian couples, whose marriages would otherwise have been prohibited. Poet Geoffrey Chaucer and his friends are often credited with bringing to light the legend of the saint’s love connection, which begins with Chaucer’s Parliament of Birds: “For this was on Seynt Valentynes day, Whan every foul (fowl) cometh there to chese his make (make his choice of mate).”

In the 1840s, St. Valentine’s Day was practically reinvented to become the glorious celebration of hearts, flowers, and chocolate we know today. Love the Jane Austen-y vintage-lookiing valentine!

Flickr photo credit: Adair733, Creative Commons license.

Why the Long Hiatus?

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Possibly one or two followers noticed my vacation from 4 x per week blog posting in the last few months. There were good reasons—several of them. The flow was interrupted by out-of-town trips in October, November, and December (Austin, Louisville, and The Holiday Rust Belt Tour). Then there was the election, about which, what can one say that’s actually useful and, preferably, healing (see below)? Then the Holidays, and we celebrate most of them, plus our wedding anniversary. The first six weeks of the year are busy with birthdays, and, next thing I knew, here it is, the week of February 10.

Or maybe I was in shock that in mid-October I finally got my stove fixed, which had been out of commission for one year, five months, and ten days, an enervating experience of itself. During that time, I learned a lot about my grocery store’s prepared foods counter. Interesting. But now I have to cook again! I did managed to send out my quarterly newsletter, full of good reading and watching tips and my writing news. Are you a subscriber? Sign up here and receive three award-winning short stories.

At least during those months, an awful lot of reading got done. In its excellent November 18 issue, The New Yorker compiled essays “reckoning with Donald Trump’s return to power” written by a slew of authors tackling various issues. Most helpful to me, personally, was the piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders, titled “Concerning the Underlying Disease.” So apt, because the schisms in our national psyche did not suddenly manifest on November 5.

The essay proposes various thought experiments on  circumstances in which we do (or could) mostly get along with people of differing views (Chiefs versus Eagles, for example). People today receive a Niagara of information that helps shape those views, but it’s “information of a peculiar sort, information that is powerful, and has been constructed far away, by people with agendas.” This information is delivered invisibly, in a way to stoke feelings of belonging; it’s addictive (doomscrolling); it’s overwhelming. It’s too much.

He asks whether it’s possible that these “heavily agenda-laced ideas from afar,” as he calls them, have such power within us that we mistake them for our own ideas, that they’ve accumulated exaggerated importance in our lives? This importance may be disproportionate to the issue’s actual effect on us and irrespective of whether we can do anything about them. We’ve come to feel, he believes, responsible for too much. It’s paralyzing.

For the sake of my own mental health, I’ve decided to calibrate how much I do feel responsible for. And what that is, exactly. I can’t turn Gaza into the Riviera (even if I wanted to). I can’t reunite immigrant families separated from their children (even though I would want to). I can’t do any of the hundred things I can think of that actually make more sense to me than what the politicians are either doing or not doing. What I can do is take a step back from other people’s agendas and concentrate on simply being kind. To myself, to you, to strangers. In the long run, living by example may have some effect. That isn’t to abandon all responsibility. It’s just to assess it better. To care about the people affected, not the affecters (a word?). And to do what I actually can, however large or small.