Crime Fiction: Partners, Sidekicks, and Foils

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Paging through the notes I’ve taken on innumerable Zoom calls—book discussions, writing tips, publishing conundrums—one from a few months ago caught my eye. The Zoom was sponsored by the New York area chapter of Mystery Writers of America, organized and moderated by expert author Gary Earl Ross of Buffalo.

It was a discussion about “partners in crime” detection—the reasons why in crime fiction the principal detective so often has a sidekick. It’s quite a useful device, because a slightly dim or new-on-the-job partner gives the detective a reason for explaining (to the reader) what they’re doing and why they’re doing it in a natural-feeling way.

As I’m rereading all of Sherlock Holmes currently, Conan Doyle uses Watson in this way. He is not dull-witted (the Nigel Bruce portrayal notwithstanding), but he finds Holmes’s methods baffling. You can empathize with his confusion, especially when Holmes is attempting some high-wire mental acrobatics, and you can feel a tiny bit superior to Watson, confident that Holmes will have it all figured out, even if you can’t see how he gets from A to Z, either.

One characteristic of our fictional detectives that readers (and viewers and hearers) like is their perseverance. Tim Sullivan’s Detective George Cross is like that. He doesn’t give up on an investigation, even when his superiors insist the case is solved. He keeps at it and…he’s right. As Ross said, readers appreciate an investigator who works hard. Of course, it’s the #2 who’ll have to kick in the doors (I’m looking at you, Ben Jones).

In cozy mysteries the bake shop owner (etc.) and her confederates (shop assistant, sister, best friend) frequently encounter a kind of person they don’t generally have to deal with. These meetings inspire readers’ thoughts of how they would handle that kind of person or situation. And, in cozies, having these confederates around provides some safety in numbers.  

Partners can not only provide flashes of insight, they also earn their keep by inserting a bit of humor. The lead detective’s colleagues in the New Zealand cozy-adjacent television series Brokenwood (quite fun) are not only good investigators themselves, they contribute big-time to squadroom humor.

Conveying a sense of justice is good rationale for the genre. But that’s not always simple. I’m thinking about S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears—one of his very best—and the uneasy partnership between two very different fathers. It’s that collaboration that lets Cosby explore highly fraught social territory.

Justice, of course, doesn’t always mean following the letter of the law, or even enforcing the laws. Having a partner lets a character thrash out those options. Here I’m thinking of The Plinko Bounce by Martin Clark—a wonderful tale about a public defender and his colleagues trying not to be outplayed by the man they’re defending. In crime stories, characters with a strong sense of right and wrong may find it in the law and, sometimes, outside it. In tricky situations, it’s great to have a partner you trust to hash things out with.

Sisters in Crime’s Promophobia

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The title of the Sisters in Crime author guide, Promophobia, cleverly encapsulates the dilemma of the modern fiction author. Although there certainly are exceptions, authors tend to be ruminators. They love quiet time for concentration and creativity. You could even say that when they are “alone with their thoughts,” they are never alone. Their characters are always up to something.

Many authors love the time they spend researching their story, plucking the best approach to conveying an idea or personality from a haystack of possibilities, and quietly wrangling plots that seem determined to get on a horse and ride off in all directions.

Once a book is published (or even en route to being published), writers must attempt to dramatically shift personalities. They have to become determined marketers, engaging in many activities that will put themselves and their work out there. In short, they must do something antithetical to who they are. They may respond to exhortations to embrace the business side of the craft, by muttering, “Just let me write.” Media relations, public speaking, creating blurbs, strategizing ad campaigns, tackling social media, designing newsletters, foiling scammers. Even Hindu goddess Kali would be hard-pressed to keep up.

Promophobia, indeed. Many authors find all this difficult, more than a few believe it will be impossible, and almost no one believes they are doing it as well as they ought.

Promophobia, subtitled “Taking the Mystery Out of Promoting Crime Fiction” is here to help! The book is edited by Diane Vallere, author of more than 40 books, including crime mystery series, and past president of Sisters in Crime national. The book’s 63 chapters are written by leading names in crime fiction publication and tackle authors’ principal problems, described as fears, for example: the fear of knowing your niche (just in case your book isn’t for “everybody”), fear of social media, of online promotion, of thinking outside the box, of connecting with readers. I’ve found the last one the most rewarding. Discussing my book with readers who’ve taken the trouble to form an opinion about it is a terrific learning experience. They ask questions I hadn’t thought of, and when I discover there’s actually a good answer, that characters and situations really do hang together, I silently thank my subconscious mind for working all that out for me.  

Any reclusive author can take comfort from the article written by Lori Rader-Day. Yes, it challenges writers to get out there and promote, but it ends with the consoling advice, “Write Another Book.” Big exhale.

Vallere wisely cautions against attempt to adopt every one of the book’s ideas. You have to pick and choose those that best match your own opportunities, skills, and interests. No one can do it all, and not every strategy works all the time or for everyone. But the hard-won insights in this volume will help you achieve better results with the promotional challenges you do engage with.

Another Taste of France: Bruno: Chief of Police

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Now that we’re all Frenchified from watching the Olympics and their stunning opening ceremonies, which showed the Paris at its best, we can take a breath and turn to some of the country’s many other charms.

Millions of UK and US readers have basked in the sunny French countryside via the books by the late Peter Mayle, author of 1989’s A Year in Provence. If you’re one of them, Martin Walker’s more recently written detective series will transport you to a similar, simpler time and place. A place where a meal is something to be lingered over (and described in mouth-watering detail) and a glass of wine is savored, even if it’s the not-all-that-delicious small batch created by your hillside neighbor.

Martin Walker’s series of seventeen mystery novels, published beginning in 2009, retains the witty, warm-hearted, utterly charming feeling Mayle exemplified. Bruno, Chief of Police, is the series opener. The chief’s actual name is Benoît Courrèges, but to everyone, he’s Bruno. His beat is the small town of Saint-Denis and surrounding countryside, located on the Vézère River in the Dordogne—some 450 miles west and a bit north of Provence.

Bruno uses a cell phone, relies on DNA testing, and uses other up-to-date forensic methods, but his real skill is understanding the psychology and behavior of Saint-Denis’s residents. His understanding of what methods will and will not work in getting to the bottom of crimes committed there is acute. Big-city police authorities and the head of the local gendarmerie are ever convinced they know best how to handle situations that arise. But, faced with Bruno’s local intelligence, they’re usually defeated in a most gratifying, often amusing, way—such as a gendarme’s attempt to arrest a boy for possession of a potato (on market day, no less!), which runs quickly aground.

Walker weaves significant contemporary concerns into his rosy descriptions of markets, cafés and wineries. For example, market day offers the opportunity for rule-obsessed EU inspectors to search out cheeses, pâtés, and meats that, despite new restrictions, continue to be produced and sold just the way the sellers’ parents and grand-parents did. A woman cited for selling eggs without the required date stamp actually buys her eggs at the supermarket, washes off the dates, and packages them up with a bit of straw and (don’t think about it) to sell to tourists as real country eggs. And tourists there are, with all their agendas and cultural mishaps.

Intruding on this idyllic existence is the occasional murder, rare for the area, but perfect for Bruno’s particular skills Some stories’ strong political undertow allows the author to explore residents’ attitudes about immigrants, social cohesion, wartime behavior, and the like, which give the stories considerable weight.

Bruno is more than the town’s chief of police. For one thing, he coaches the town’s children who want to play tennis. He thinks it’s A good way to get to know the next generation, whose members soon will enter the risk-prone years of adolescence. He travels the area’s indifferent roadways to visit farm families, keep tabs on their concerns, making numerous friendships among them. When he needs them, they cooperate.

Good food too is a preoccupation. Bruno is an excellent, if unfussy cook, and partakes of the best his region has to over, including the truffles found in the woods behind his house. (I’m salivating.) Naturally, he has a loyal basset hound, Gigi, to keep him company and manage his hunting expeditions.

Bottom line: Walker’s mysteries are a pleasant way to spend a few hours. More than that, the investigations he’s designed dig into many facets of rural life as it has been and as it changes. Not all of them are pretty, and the appearance of simplicity is only on the surface. Along the way he introduces you to interesting local characters and captures a few idyllic moments. You’re very likely to want more of both.

Walker is a former foreign correspondent for The Guardian, has written a number of nonfiction historical and political books and lives in France’s Périgord region.

A Pair of Weekend Movie Picks

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Sometimes you can pretty much figure out who would like a particular film, but in this case, with these two films, the audience is pretty broad, leaving out only the devotees of slasher films. Neither produces any real plot surprises, but both are more than satisfying.

Ghostlight

Ghostlight, written by Kelly O’Sullivan and directed by her and Alex Thompson (trailer), is the story of a sad, frustrated construction worker increasingly disconnected from his wife and daughter who rediscovers what’s missing in his life and how to talk about it by unexpectedly—and totally uncharacteristically—involving himself in a community theater production of Romeo and Juliet. At least at first, he can talk to his fellow amateur thespians (super cast!) more honestly than he can to his veering-off-the-rails daughter or his wife, equally adrift.

His cast of theatre colleagues is charming, and the hard-won results will make you, in the end, feel pretty good. Most amazing is that the man (Keith Kupferer), his near-delinquent daughter (Kathleen Melien Kupferer), and his wife (Tara Mallen) are played by a real-life husband, wife, and daughter. Awesome. The ghostlight is a long-standing theater tradition of keeping a bare bulb burning center stage throughout the night. In this case, the ghostlight demonstrates that, despite the darkness, there’s always a spark of light.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 100%!!; audiences 97%.

Fly Me to the Moon

OK, I admit, at first the idea of creating a fake moon landing back in 1969 (trailer), just in case the real one flubbed, struck me as a way to feed the various conspiracy theories that Neil Armstrong and crew didn’t ever actually land on the moon. But the movie’s way better than that. Directed by Greg Berlanti, with a script from Rose Gilroy, it has plenty of nostalgic Cocoa Beach fun. Scarlett Johansson as a fearless and inveterate publicist and Channing Tatum as the buttoned-up launch director at the Kennedy Space Center are involved in a clash of goals and personalities that you know will end up just the way they ought to. Woody Harrelson is as sly as ever. My cats were impressed that it took three felines to carry out the essential kittycat role.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 65% (lighten up, guys!); audiences 91%.

Enjoy!

The Book of Will

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Tomorrow I’ll post short reviews of two movies we recently enjoyed—and you might, too!—but today, for readers who live in the New York-New Jersey area, I’m recommending The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, on stage now through July 28. The story is clever, the acting is superb, and it’s no surprise that it was beautifully directed by Bonnie J. Monte, STNJ’s former Artistic Director who clearly knows exactly what she’s doing. Don’t miss it!

The story is this: A few years after Shakespeare’s death, members of the King’s Players lament his loss as well as the fact that poorly trained actors are using bastardized scripts to produce inferior versions of their adored plays—Lear, Macbeth, As You Like It. They recite the names in a litany of despair. Burbage says, “Just because that little froth can hold a skull he thinks he can play Hamlet? My soul is written into that part, and I’ll play The Prince till I die, and after that? They better use my skull for Yorick so I can spend eternity silently judging all else.”

It occurs to one of them—Henry Condell (played by Michael Stewart Allen)—that they know the plays best and they should produce an “authoritative version.” His friend John Heminges (Anthony Marble) doesn’t underestimate the amount of work this will entail, but by scouring attics and drawers and lodgings of other Shakespeareans, one way or another, through one difficulty after another, they cobble together “The Book of Will.” That is, the First Folio.

They saved for us the Shakespeare we know to this very day. And the audience is rewarded with witty use of familiar text snippets woven throughout the script. They were heroes of the first water.

Brent Harris plays the very theatrical Richard Burbage and sly printer William Jaggard to perfection, though it’s Jaggard’s son Isaac (Isaac Hickox-Young) who repeatedly rescues the project. Pearce Bunting brings Will’s old enemy Ben Jonson to disreputable life, and three women—Amy Hutchins, Carolyne Leys, and Victoria Mack—soften the men’s sometimes disputatious tendencies, but are no softies themselves.

Every theatre-lover today owes them big time!

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.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

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Earlier this month marked the 94th anniversary of the death of Arthur Conan Doyle. If you read this blog regularly, you may recall that I wrote a series of posts based on themes and stories in an excellent anthology, edited by Richard T. Ryan, Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery 1885. It came out late last year, and my story “A Brick Through the Window” was in it.

I’m pleased to say that story won first place in the Public Safety Writers Association’s annual awards program in the short story category. It tells how in July 1885, Holmes and Watson took part in investigating the impact of laws (only and outrageously punishing women) aimed at reducing sexually transmitted diseases in the military, as well as how extreme poverty had led many families to sell their young daughters into sexual slavery. It’s noteworthy that the laws governing these matters were revised in a good direction shortly thereafter.

The Great Detective became embroiled in these unsavory matters by a request for help from William T. Stead, a real-life character who was a well-known periodical publisher and regarded as the first investigative reporter. Not surprising he’d call on Holmes (if only fictionally). With his facility for disguise, Holmes was able to penetrate some exceedingly seedy places! Stead’s death in 1912 was also notable: he perished aboard the RMS Titanic.

Writing my four published Sherlock Holmes pastiches and doing the posts about the SH:1885 collection inspired me to pick up the stories again. I have a two-volume Collected Works, and I’m nearly through Volume I. It’s been years since I read them, and I’m struck by how almost every story contains a sentence we now think of as iconic Holmes. I just finished “Silver Blaze” about the missing race horse and dead horse trainer, and it’s the one that includes the observation about the dog that didn’t bark. Full of satisfying surprises!

The Infiltrator

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When the tropes of crime fiction—the secrets, the deceit, the evasions, the jealousies—become too much, that’s when a no-holds-barred thriller like TR Hendricks’s new The Infiltrator can be a welcome cleanse. It’s a vein-scouring adventure as you follow retired US Marine and wilderness survival expert Derek Harrington in his effort to extirpate a dangerous group of domestic terrorists.

The Infiltrator is the second book in a series that began in 2023 with The Instructor and can be expected to have at least one more sequel, in order to tie up loose ends. I haven’t read the first book, but that was no handicap to enjoying this one. The only missing piece was why the terrorists were doing what they were doing, but if you accept the premise that they are on some kind of wild and crazy mission, the why is pretty much irrelevant.

The methods Derek uses to stay perfectly hidden in the woods while on a weeks’-long surveillance assignment are quite inventive, though in the early pages, you may feel you’re reading a catalog for survivalists’ gear. The communications lingo will be immediately clear to readers with military experience, but, even as a civilian, I still could follow it easily.

Derek is hiding in the hills of rural West Virginia, watching members of a terrorist group called Autumn’s Tithe prepare for a major attack. Although no longer in the military, he has some official standing. He’s been deputized by the FBI, and can call in massive military and law enforcement resources when he needs to (OK, give the author some leeway). He experiences a conflict of conscience right up front, because the terrorists live as a large family. He sees the wives and children who may become casualtiesm, and some of those kids are his son’s age.

You don’t have to wait for the end of Chapter One for the terrorists to make their move. A three-vehicle convoy, including a fertilizer-bomb-laden box truck and a van of heavily armed terrorists, leaves the camp, intent on committing mass murder. Derek calls it in. A Hellfire missile operated by a soldier way across the country in Arizona destroys the convoy, followed by two attack helicopters whose weapons subdue the people left behind in the camp. Next arrive members of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team who take prisoners.

In case this sounds like a massive exercise in commando-porn, rest assured that before long, you learn the situation has a number of nuances. Almost inevitably, they’re political. Relatively modest objections to conducting such a violent attack on US citizens in their home country are raised.

Part of what this mission was intended to be—a clean-up operation of Autumn Tithe remnants—included capturing their leader, a former FBI agent. Her role makes this pursuit personal for Derek’s colleagues. But it’s also clear that somewhere in government, a mole is revealing vital information about the FBI’s plans. Bureaucracy and unimaginative, by-the-book leadership rear their ugly heads too. Of course, Derek’s methods don’t appear in any book, so conflict between him and the top dogs is inevitable.

While the ongoing adventure keeps the pages rapidly turning, author Hendricks clearly enjoyed writing the fight scenes and, at times, dragged them out past the point of plausibility. He is a former US Army captain who served as a tank platoon leader and military intelligence officer in Iraq and an advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior’s intelligence arm.

As we say in our house, “If this is the kind of thing you like, you’ll like this one.”

Order your copy here, and Amazon will send me a micropayment!

Heads Up! New Books

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Pull out your credit card. The UK’s The Guardian recently published not one, but two, lists of recommended crime thrillers—the best recent ones, and new ones for the month.

Among the “best” is Lucy Foley’s The Midnight Feast about local traditionalists and unwelcome visitors preparing to celebrate the summer solstice on England’s Dorset Coast. Complete with fire and the dead. More than a little reminiscent of The Serpent Dance, the new book by Sofia Slater about an off-the-rails celebration of the solstice in Cornwall. Fire and the dead. Hmmm. That celestial event was a couple of weeks back, so we’re safe now.

The editors also recommend the small book, French Windows, by Antoine Laurain, translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie—and it’s one I’ve actually read. It’s about the interplay between a psychoanalyst and his patient, a young women photographer who’s stopped taking pictures after seeing a murder. He focuses on what she does see, and her subject is the fascinating people she observes through the windows opposite. Are her stories real? Or revelatory? The Guardian calls it “a sheer delight,” and I agree!

New ones the editors especially liked include the aforementioned Foley, as well as Stephen King’s collection of short stories, You Like It Darker, ranging from the deliciously creepy to mini-novels. Supernatural elements in some, and “all are worth a read.”

They also like Will Dean’s, The Chamber, set in the claustrophobic environment of a deep-sea-diving chamber. When the crew starts to die, you’ll be hard-pressed not to think of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might be hard to step into the close confines of an elevator again after reading this one.

Murder Takes a Holiday

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cruise ship

A new issue in editor Janet Rudolph’s excellent Mystery Readers Journal, in which mystery and crime authors talk about what inspired them to write about a particular theme, setting, or domain and how they went about doing it. There’s a certain commonality to some sources of inspiration, but there are always those fascinating quirky bits. Some of the authors that are most interesting to me draw on a vast well of knowledge, experience, and research, so that it sometimes seems they could make a valuable contribution to almost any MRJ issue!

I was tremendously amused by the cover drawing for Summer 2024 (which is Volume 40, No. 2), “Murder Takes a Holiday.” It features the Grim Reaper, ensconced in a deck chair with a cocktail and a book (yay!), while a puzzled cruise passenger looks on. “Taking a holiday” for sure. One hopes.

In Donna Andrews’s essay “Monkey Business Meets the Flying Dutchman,” she points out the value of actually visiting the place or having (some aspect of) the experience you’re writing about. She wanted to write a locked room mystery involving a cruise, but had never been on one. Easy solution: book it! Though she soon found out the crew wasn’t very forthcoming when she asked her questions about crime aboard and missing persons. “They tended to look panic-stricken and find an excuse to sneak away whenever I asked,” she says.

All this reminded me of a recent conversation with friends about the number of people who actually do go missing from cruise ships every year—the very topic the crew of Andrews’s ship avoided. Their mantra: Cruises are fun! They’re exciting! (But not in that way.)

I knew nothing about the missing cruiser phenomenon until a few years ago when I reviewed Sebastian Fitzek’s thriller, Passenger 23, for CrimeFictionLover.com. His premise of a serial killer disposing of cruise ship passengers struck me at first as an eye-roller. Then I did some research. At that time, an estimated 23 people a year—passengers and crew members alike—disappeared from the world’s cruise ships.

That number was widely viewed as an underestimate, because of the cruise shop operators’ public relations imperative to keep such incidents under wraps. They also encourage the narrative that disappearances are suicides, though often there is no evidence of that, or even contrary evidence.

Investigation is often left to a police official from the ship’s country-of-registry. For Carnival Cruises, that would be Panama, and possibly the Bahamas or Malta, where Celebrity Cruises also are registered. Disney? The Bahamas. The initial investigation and autopsy for a woman who died on a Carnival ship in 2023 was conducted by Bahamian authorities. They concluded it was a natural death, but the FBI considered it suspicious and began its own investigation some days after-the-fact, when the ship docked in Charleston.

In a case of presumed suicide from a Royal Caribbean ship late last month, the company is being fairly close-mouthed. Said a lawyer who investigates such incidents, “It’s rare for a company to publish anything that could make them seem liable for the death”—including issues like alcohol consumption.

These incentives and circumstances create the perfect set-up for deadly shenanigans. The Mystery Readers Journal cover artist apparently thought so too!

(photo: ed2456 on pixabay; creative commons license)