Forgiving Stephen Redmond

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Sidransky, Forgiving Stephen Redmond

By Alan Sidransky – In 2008, workmen tearing down a clutch of derelict Washington Heights rowhouses make a grim discovery: Behind the plaster of an upstairs bedroom is the body of a man sitting in a chair, wearing a hat. To the dismay of the demolition foreman, the NYPD detectives called to the scene—Tolya Kurchenko and Pete Gonzalvez—intend to make a serious investigation. No matter that the corpse has been entombed for at least forty years, and no matter that everyone who knew the victim is probably dead.

Kurchenko and Gonzalvez, partners and best friends, have appeared in two previous police procedurals by Sidransky, and their easy camaraderie is balanced by meticulous investigative work. They’ll need some time to do the digging required for such a cold case, and their captain grudgingly gives them a few days. The detectives are intrigued. This is their neighborhood, they’ve known those houses for years. What happened there?

Property records reveal that the house was then owned by Máximo Rothman and his best friend and business partner Ernest (“Erno”) Eisen, Jewish immigrants from Europe by way of the Dominican Republic. (Max was murdered three years earlier, and these same detectives investigated.) Max and Erno met in the coastal Dominican town of Sosúa, one of the few places in the world that welcomed Jewish refugees as World War II threatened Europe.

Erno, now quite elderly, admits flat-out that he killed the man sealed up in the wall. This surprising confession could wind the case up rather neatly, but it needs some follow up, which leads the detectives deeper into the past.

The detectives hope Rabbi Shalom Rothman, Max’s son, can provide insights about what went on in the rooming house four decades earlier, and their questions bring back memories and feelings Shalom thought were buried forever. Author Sidransky uses the character of Shalom to explore the obligations of love between fathers and sons, not just between Shalom and Max, but also between Shalom and his autistic son, Baruch.

Another appealing aspect of the story is its demonstration of friendship based on mutual respect that exists between Pete, a Dominican, and Tolya, a Russian Jew. Amidst all the teasing and day-do-day banter, the subject of friendship rarely comes up. It doesn’t need to. It’s in their every interaction.

Sidransky’s description of life for the refugee Jews both before and after coming to New York make an evocative back story, but change and the need to adapt didn’t end with their arrival in the United States. Gentrification, displacement, cultural conflict, changing markets and institutions are an effective backdrop for urban characters facing not only who they are, but who they think they are. Forgiving Stephen Redmond offers a timely, immersive mystery and a powerful family story.

“The Most Expensive TV Series Ever Made” – Part I

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The Netflix series “The Crown” reportedly costs more to produce than any other television series in history. Its four seasons so far have cost an estimated $260 million. The largest contributor to the hefty pricetag is location shooting, accounting for some 75 percent of the show’s costs. Last Friday, I took a virtual tour of the locations intended to simulate Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Windsor Castle, and Balmoral.

Led by Curt Di Camillo, curator of special collections for American Ancestors, we zoomers saw interiors of the many grand houses and other buildings where The Crown is filmed. Ironically, according to Di Camillo, many of these interiors are far nicer than anything in the actual palaces, especially so since only the very best room (or two) is used from each. When an actor exits from one room into another or into a spacious hallway, the first room may be in one grand old house and the hallway in another. That’s the magic of continuity.

One “economy” the filmmakers employ is to film everything they can in Britain or nearby. When Diana visited “New York,” for example, that was Manchester. When Diana and Charles visited “Australia,” that was Spain.

Queen Victoria was the first monarch to live in Buckingham Palace, still referred to as the “new palace.” It replaced St. James Palace as the sovereign’s primary residence, and you’ll recall that the U.S. Ambassador is still referred to as the ambassador to the Court of St. James. Sites where Buckingham Palace scenes are filmed include:

The Old Royal Naval College, which derives more money from renting itself out for filming than most (or was it all?) other sources. (The Painted Hall is pictured above.) Also partly filmed there: Patriot Games, The King’s Speech, The Madness of King George.

Osterley House—You may recall when Prince Philip’s mother came to live in the Palace, there was a particular staircase he climbed in order to visit her. This was Osterley House’s Robert Adam’s staircase (pictured). The house is situated in Osterley Park, one of the largest open spaces in London. Also filmed there: Mansfield Park, Young Victoria, Great Expectations.

Wilton House in Wiltshire is the home of the Earls of Pembroke; an early one was the patron of William Shakespeare. The Smoking Room serves as the Queen’s office; its dining room as the Palace dining room, and the Double Cube Room (30 by 30 by 60 feet in length) has appeared several times. It’s where JFK and Jackie meet Elizabeth and Philip. It’s where Diana practices dance. The Double Cube Room and the Single Cube Room next door, between them, display a large collection of paintings, notably 14 van Dykes.

You may recognize these rooms (pictured below) from Bridgerton, as well, and as some of the interiors of Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice—alas, the horrible 2005 version with Kiera Knightley, not the 1995 TV series with Colin Firth. Of much greater significance, in World War II, these rooms were the headquarters for D-Day planning.

Next Week: Part II on 1/26

The Short of It

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On the Writer Unboxed blog last week, publishing guru Porter Anderson speculated about reasons the changeover from the old year to the year always seems to generate news about short-form fiction. Perhaps, he suggests, the end/beginning of a year is a time writers have short fiction on the mind, intending to try out ideas they might spend the rest of the year working up into a larger project—that is, a book. Maybe so.

I went the other direction. To reduce the word-count of a novel, I cut way back on secondary characters’ stories. I liked these guys, but . . . These cutting-room floor episodes became three short stories, all of them now published. While possibly a commendable exercise in prose recycling, there were unanticipated pitfalls. First, they had to be real stories, not “excerpts.” That was relatively easy. Second, once those stories were out there, I had to take them into account when I made further changes to the novel itself. Probably not one reader in a million (should I have that many) would go back, find those stories and object to any discrepancies. Of course, that one would have an active online presence and a snarky temperament.

Anderson cites four international developments bearing on the status of short fiction:
1. A new independent publisher in France (L’Ourse brune) focusing on short stories written in French. Formidable!
2. Later this week, London’s Costa Short Story Awards will reveal the voting public’s favorite among three unpublished short stories.
3. The 16th BBC National Short Story Award program opened for submissions last week; cash prizes to be announced in early October
4. Spain’s Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize consists of cash, an artist’s residency in Umbria or the Writers’ House of Georgia, plus publication opportunities and more.

There’s (fairly recent) U.S. news in the world of short fiction, as well. You’ll remember that the long-running annual Best American Mystery Story anthology has moved from the purview of its founding editor, Otto Penzler, to the guiding hand of author and editor Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay), starting with next fall’s edition. It will have new title, too: The Best American Mystery and Suspense.

Penzler’s Mysterious Press reportedly will launch a competing anthology this fall: The Mysterious Bookshop Presents: The Best Mystery Stories of the Year. The attendant kerfuffle was covered by J. Kingston Pierce in The Rap Sheet.

Finally, the annual Best New England Crime Stories anthology, previously published by Level Best Books, will henceforth be published by Crime Spell Books, with Susan Oleksiw, Ang Pompano, and Leslie Wheeler as editors. Write on!

Photo: Pexel for Pixabay

Now THAT Was Good!

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Ten months of stay-at-home entertainment means we’ve watched a lotta movies we’d never have seen otherwise, old and newish. We liked most, hated a few (I don’t care if Barack Obama did like it, Martin Eden is a serious drag), and I thought these might interest you:

Blow the Man Down – An oddball crime story set in a Maine fishing village. Anything with Margo Martindale is OK by me. I especially liked the breaks in which sea shanties are sung by a male chorus garbed up as Maine fishermen (Amazon). (trailer)

North Country – pushes all those “solitary outsider against Greater Economic Forces” buttons, like Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich. This story, based loosely on real events, pits Charlize Theron against Big Coal and a retrograde male workforce in northern Minnesota. At least she has Frances McDormand as her friend and Woody Harrelson as her lawyer. (trailer)

The Trial of the Chicago Seven – excellent. Sasha Baron Cohen is perfectly cast as Abby Hoffman. This brings back all that angst of that remarkable era. (trailer)

The Personal History of David Copperfield – you can’t fault any of this, certainly not the acting, but the book—at more than 700 pages—is necessarily so much richer. Dev Patel is David and Hugh Laurie is Mr. Dick. (trailer)

The 40-Year Old Version – a Black woman (Radha Blank) playwright down on her luck is desperate to have a success before her 40th birthday and reinvents herself as a hip-hop artist. Some really funny stuff about success in the creative arts. (trailer)

Jimmy Carter: Rock and Roll President – who knew? I didn’t, and I remember his Administration very well. He’s a big fan, especially of the Allman Brothers, but others too, and this documentary shows him rocking out. Great music too! (MHz channel for a short while yet; longer; it may be elsewhere too.)(trailer)

Precious Metals

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Gold, silver, platinum. These tempting elements have brought more than their share of joy and woe to people over millennia. The final session of my gemstones class covered the precious metals in which those beautiful stones are set. The fictional criminal I have in mind picked up a few good tips in this session too.

Gold’s purity is measured in karats, with 24K gold 100 percent pure. 18K gold is 75 percent gold and 25 percent alloy, and so on. Pure gold is much too soft to be made into jewelry. In the United States, 14K (58.3 percent gold) is common in fine jewelry. In other countries—notably, India and the Near East—18K gold is more typical.

Not only are gold alloys more durable for jewelry, having less gold makes them less expensive than pure gold would be and allows for a change in the color. Our instructor emphasized that gold is yellow. White gold, rose gold, and green gold are all possible because of the alloys used. Pink gold is produced through the addition of copper; green gold by adding silver; and white gold includes palladium (expensive) or nickel (cheap), for example. An opportunity for a scam there, it seems.

Gold is also hypoallergenic, so if someone has an allergic reaction to their gold jewelry, they are actually sensitive to whatever metal the gold was alloyed with. Many people (including me!) get an itchy rash when there’s nickel in their jewelry (the backs of inexpensive earrings, for example), so sticking to yellow gold is best for them. Of course, such a dermatologic reaction might raise a buyer’s suspicions. Interestingly, and of potential benefit to our fictional jewelry scammer, the Federal Trade Commission does not regulate the alloys used in jewelry manufacture, just the percentage of gold present.

While nickel is inexpensive, palladium is very expensive, so to achieve the desirable level of whiteness in white gold, it may be plated with some other metal—typically rhodium. White gold today is so expensive, “you might as well buy platinum,” our instructor said. My thief is pondering that in planning his next smash-and-grab.

Prices of the precious metals are high, because of high demand, and can rise quickly when people are nervous about other investments or in the midst of various national or international crises. And some of the countries gold is mined in are not the most stable or as subject to environmental or purity standards as is the United States or European Union. (Foreign intrigue afoot.)

Like gold, most silver is an alloy. Sterling silver is 92.5 percent silver and the remainder copper, which provides strength. It’s not as hard or as tough as gold.

Previous posts in this series:
Diamonds and Pearls
Colored Gemstones

Photo: PhotoMIX-Company for Pixabay

Too Much of a Good Thing

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scissors, blood, editing

If you read a novel like most people do, you try to picture the people, the scene, and the action as the story progresses, as if you were watching a movie. The details the author provides are, presumably, intended to facilitate not just the visualizing of the action, but your understanding of its importance. So more details are good, right? Not always. Details in and of themselves are not helpful; it’s their significance that matters.

A point-of-view character’s global state—physical, mental, emotional, and, at times, spiritual–changes as a story progresses. In novels where chapters alternate among different point-of-view characters, their “global state” helps readers differentiate among them. Yet, a moment-by-moment inventory of all these factors becomes tiresome. Worse is when authors pause the action in a tense scene or before a big reveal to give a rundown of a character’s feelings. If adequate groundwork has been laid, readers can guess how the character feels, anyway. Constantly interfering with the progress of the action makes readers stop caring—and reading.

Suppose a story provides a minutely detailed description of the appearance and state-of-mind of a man walking to a bus stop. And then suppose he’s hit by the bus and is only a walk-on in the story. Readers who followed the author’s lead and created a precise mental picture of a character they’ll never encounter again are justly annoyed. Still, the man did wear a mud-splattered overcoat with a missing button. Out of a lengthy description, those few details might be significant. Perhaps he was an inveterate jaywalker, which might be worth knowing, particularly when the bus driver goes to trial.

In other words, minimize the details that aren’t relevant to the story, and don’t merely strand readers on an island of facts. Here’s a good example:

“He was thirty-two years old, trim, a tough guy, six foot two, and, essentially, in your face. He was wearing one of his two-dozen identical black Armani suits, with one of this three-dozen identical navy button-downs, with one of his four-dozen thin black ties. . . . As for his hair, it was thick, the blackest black, and slicked-and-greased back like a Jersey guido.”

Every sentence raises questions. “A tough guy?” “In your face”—how so? What’s with the weird wardrobe? Is he a New Jersey guido? Questions like these keep readers reading. Which is what you want, and they do too.

(The excerpt is from William Baer’s entertaining new novel New Jersey Noir: Cape May.)

Primary Obsessions

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Primary Obsessions, Charles Demers

By Charles Demers – Vancouver, B.C., cognitive behavioral therapist Annick Boudreau is the protagonist in this new psychological thriller. She’s compassionate and confident about her treatment strategy, even though the work with her new patient, Sanjay Desai, is slow. Desai suffers from a primarily cognitive (i.e., in his thoughts) obsessive compulsive disorder, characterized by uncontrollable and distressingly violent thoughts—in his case, involving his mother.

Boudreau is unfailingly encouraging, but Desai is convinced he’s a monster. He’s so frightened by these blood-soaked thoughts that he’s moved out of the family home and into a cheap apartment with Jason, a bouncer in a gangster-owned bar and strip club. Jason’s best friend is another bouncer there, not bright enough to hold down the job, probably, except that his uncle owns the place. They make Desai’s home life miserable. To escape, he turns his noise-cancelling headphones up high.

Boudreau wants Desai to write the down his violent thoughts in a therapy journal for later discussion. She reassures him that primary obsessives do not act on their thoughts, but her conviction is shaken when Jason is brutally murdered. The police find Desai in the apartment, wearing his headphones, and washing his hands and arms up to his elbows. He claims he didn’t hear a thing. Then they find his therapy journal.

After some soul-searching, Boudreau is convinced Sanjay is innocent, if only she could explain about his condition and about the diary. Professional ethics prevent her from doing so unless he gives permission. These are interesting dilemmas, not usually addressed in crime fiction.

She keeps Desai’s secrets with her long-suffering boyfriend Philip too. The dialog between them is always believable and often funny. Meanwhile, the murdered man’s best friend posts an expletive-filled, all-caps Facebook rant, naming Desai as the killer: “THIS IS WHERE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS LANDED US TOO WHERE MENTALLY ILLS HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN A NORMAL PERSON.” All the “likes” and “shares” this post attracts are a chilling reminder of the persistent stigma of mental illness.

With the authorities convinced they have their perp, and unable to explain to them about Desai’s diagnosis and the therapy journal, Boudreau decides to investigate a bit herself, starting with Mike, the Facebook poster with the permanent Caps Lock. Soon she’s in over her head, and her queries make her a target of the gangsterish club owners.

Author Demers presents Boudreau with a number of compelling personal and professional dilemmas. Despite the seriousness of the topic, the book is never ponderous and is, on the contrary, a pleasure to read. Demers is a comedian, actor, playwright, screenwriter, and political activist. Some of these experiences clearly help him write lively dialog. Demers lives in Vancouver and uses his admiration for that lovely city to bring it to life for his readers.

Order from Amazon here.

Two Entertaining Listens

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Was your New Year’s resolution to get more exercise, and you’re having trouble bounding out of bed with the necessary zeal on these gloomy mornings? Here are two thrillers for your in audio that will get you up and moving, simply because you have to know “What happens next?” These two books are both impeccably entertaining and couldn’t be more different.

Blacktop Wasteland

SA Crosby, Blacktop Wasteland

When Crime Fiction Lover reviewer Rough Justice said “believe the hype” about SA Cosby’s rural noir novel, Blacktop Wasteland, he wasn’t kidding. Suffice it to say that Cosby has achieved that literary ideal—to create the universal by focusing on the specific. The types of challenges faced by Beauregard “Bug” Montage are faced by many sons of missing dads, by many hard-working people of limited means, by many who believe they cannot escape their past.

So much has been written about this multiple award-nominated novel, I won’t rehash the story, but if you like audio books, this is definitely one for your “must-listen” list. Actor Adam Lazarre-White is pitch-perfect, not only when it comes to the Black family at the center of the narrative but also in portraying the white trash grifters and petty criminals with their dubious, dangerous schemes.

Cosby has written his dialog with a precise ear for the rhythms and patterns of speech of his native southern Virginia (the pleading “Just hear me out,” from someone Bug should never in a million years listen to). Combined with Lazarre-White’s talents, Cosby’s characters come to life unforgettably. Good and bad, Black and white, brave and sniveling. They are real people.

Agent Running in the Field

This is John le Carré’s last novel published before his death in December, set in the upper realms of the British espionage establishment. The hero, 47-year-old MI6 agent Nat, is afraid he’s about to be shoved into retirement, but instead he’s given a lackluster post in a local backwater. Maybe this is to keep him out of trouble, but no matter, trouble finds him.

It’s an unsettled time, with Brexit looming and the political establishment, like all of Britain, deeply divided. Though you may anticipate what the sources of Nat’s deepening dilemmas will be, how he goes about extricating himself is exciting reading or, in this case, listening.

Agent is narrated by le Carré himself, and though I’m usually skeptical of an author reading his own work (mostly because I know what a bad job I would do), he offers a persuasive performance. Almost all the characters are British, which may help, or not. (Prof. Henry Higgins would be happy to dissect the regional and impenetrable idiosyncrasies of English speech.) Listening to le Carré read his own words here, quite expertly, as it happens, feels like a kind of good-bye.  

A Question of Time

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James Stejskal’s debut espionage thriller takes place in 1979 in a divided Berlin. Located in the heart of then-Communist East Germany, Berlin was notoriously fertile territory for spies. In East Berlin and the country surrounding the city were the Soviets and the Stasi, East Germany’s repressive secret police. In West Berlin, some 180 kilometers behind the Iron Curtain, sat the Allies, with sectors of the city allocated to Britain, France, and the United States. Cold War tensions only intensified in this island of Western influence with the construction of the wall between east and west in 1961.

By the time the novel begins, the written and unwritten rules governing the strange minuet between spies and diplomats have been largely formalized. One key practice is allowing “freedom of passage patrols” by the Western Allies and the Soviets to tour the other side’s occupied zones. By treaty, those patrols could not be stopped or searched.

But what are rules for, except to be broken or at least bent? Chief rule-breaker here is Master Sergeant Kim Becker, a Vietnam veteran and now a member of the US army’s elite Studies and Operations Group. He has a team of creative and not-by-the-book operatives around him, and they receive a special assignment: A CIA asset, an East German high up in the Communist state’s security apparatus, believes he’s come under suspicion. He wants out. It’s up to Becker and his team to develop and implement a plan to extract him.

Stejskal convincingly establishes the riskiness of the mission and its various ingenious stages, as well as the suspect-everyone mindset necessary for people living under such a difficult regime. He doesn’t spend a lot of time on literary flourishes and detailed description, but you will be turning pages too quickly to miss them. Despite the impressive number of contingencies Becker’s team is prepared for and their attention to espionage tradecraft, the unexpected still occurs. Even then, the rescuers aren’t victims of their plan, they have a powerful capacity to improvise.

Modern warrior-hero stories are often either too far-fetched or too poorly written to recommend. In this one, though, the action is described with just enough detail to make it believable and not so much to bog the story down. The writing is clear and compelling and doesn’t get in the way of the telling.

James Stejskal spent thirty-five years serving with the US Army Special Forces. After his military service, he was recruited by the CIA and served as a senior case officer in Africa, Europe, the Far East, and elsewhere. He is now a military historian who has written several nonfiction books. I’d definitely read another about Becker!

Order from Amazon here.

What’s Your Birthstone?

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Garnet brooch, gemstone

Before the holidays, inspired by my gemology class, I posted about diamonds and pearls (for any last-minute shoppers among my readers), but of course, there’s much more to gemstones.

The majority of gems in the jewelry industry (including at least 95 percent of the diamonds) are “enhanced” to some degree, the class leader—an expert gemologist—explained. Enhancements and treatments can change or remove color; improve clarity, luster, or durability; fill fractures; or, in the case of star rubies or star sapphires, accentuate their stars (“asterism”). Sellers are “required” to disclose such treatments, especially if the stone needs special handling as a result, and the most reputable jewelers do. We crime writers are more interested in the disreputable ones.

Treatments typically include heating the stone (with sometimes unpredictable results), filling fractures (emeralds, especially), bleaching (pearls), irradiation, and exposing the stones to a chemical vapor. Sometimes these enhancements are merely superficial and the results may not last. Another opportunity for shady dealing!

Birthstones

Many of us have a fondness for our birthstones. My January birthstone is garnet, a semiprecious stone (a nesosilicate) that comes in a lot of colors besides the deep red the Victorians loved (as in the brooch above). The green version, for example, is called tsavorite. Different families of garnet are of different chemical compositions, including trace amounts of other elements that affect the color. Tsavorite has a bit of vanadium or chromium.

If you were born in February, your birthstone is amethyst, a type of quartz. The best ones are a deep, rich purple and the ancient Greeks believed amethysts protected their wearers from intoxication. That would be a property well worth fictional exploitation. If an amethyst is heated, it turns yellow, in which case it’s called citrine.

gemstone, aquamarine

The March birthstone in centuries past was bloodstone, an opaque dark green stone with red flecks. Its replacement, aquamarine (pictured), is a type of beryl, as is the May birthstone, emerald. Emeralds are much rarer (and therefore, more valuable), but full of inclusions (flaws) that make them brittle. A candid jeweler may recommend an emerald as “a Sunday stone,” too prone to breakage for a ring you plan to wear every day.

You might think diamonds would be the June birthstone—all those brides–but no, they’re the stone for April, and June’s birthstone is pearls. Both covered in a previous post.

gemstone, sapphire

July (ruby), pinker than garnet, and September (sapphire, pictured) are closely related. They’re both forms of the mineral corundum (aluminum oxide). The red color comes from chromium; traces of a variety of other minerals produce “sapphires” that can be yellow, green, or other colors, or the iconic deep blue. Only the red version is called a ruby.

The August birthstone also has changed over the years. To my mother, born August 1, her birthstone was carnelian (sardonyx), a type of chalcedony, and she wore a beautiful carved carnelian ring. But at some point, the marketing wizards decided more birthstones should be “fancier” transparent gems, and the August stone was changed to the pale, yellow-green peridot. It’s one of the few gemstones that comes in only one color.

October’s birthstone is opal, which is becoming increasingly rare and, therefore valuable. “Precious opal” displays “play-of-color” across its surface, caused by minute spheres and voids within the stone that break up white light and reflect back colors. Wrap one in a bay leaf, and become invisible, people in the Middle Ages believed, something an opal thief would be happy to know about, if it works. Our instructor said she’s often asked, “Should I buy an opal?” and her answer is, “Yes! Twenty years ago.”

The birthstone for November is topaz—another stone that comes in a variety of colors, depending on trace minerals. It can be yellow, golden brown, pale gray (smoky topaz) or a variety of other colors. Mentions of topaz can be found in the Bible, and in ancient times,  it was considered a protective stone. Blue topaz is sometimes passed off as a more valuable stone.

turquoise, silver, jewelry, earrings

Finally, the December birthstone, bucking the penchant for transparent stones, is turquoise in the vintage earrings shown. If you admire the turquoise jewelry from the American Southwest, you know there is a range of shades from green to blue, and you may also know about the booming market in fake turquoise. Turquoise is a form of copper and aluminum and gained its name from the French word for “Turkish,” Turkey being the initial source of the mineral for Europeans.

Whenever your birthday falls in 2021, I hope it’s a good one. Celebrate by decorating yourself with your own special birthstone!