Bloody Noses, Broken Hearts

 By David Corbett

Zoë Sharp recently posted an excellent piece on the question of why we—meaning you, me, and the shy, skulking, blinky stranger in the threadbare overcoat crouching over there in the corner with the thumb-worn paperback—why we, dear friends, read crime fiction.

Given a natural, almost irrepressible inclination to let my mind wander and generally, hopelessly digress, I soon found myself mentally drifting into the conjectural weeds, wondering about a related question:

Why do we write crime fiction?

I’m hoping all my fellow Murderateros chime in on this, because I have a nagging little notion that the answers will prove not just revealing but jaw-dropping.

I mean, why does a conscientious, civil, well-educated, upstanding, socially responsible, personally hygienic, cheerful, brave, clean and reverent soul and lifelong swell gal like Pari Noskin Taichert or Phillipa Martin—to take but two blushing examples—come to share the blue-skied expanse of their otherwise benign imaginations with schemy lowlifes, bumbling thugs, skin-curdling perverts, gun-toting birdbrains, shuffling miscreants, jolly sadists, penny-ante lawmen, bogus medicine men and anarchist shoplifters?

I hope the dozens-to-hundreds of the rest you toiling away in the crime fiction boiler room—whether famous or obscure, published or soon-to-be-published or dreaming-of-being-published or willing-to-kill-to-get-published—will also pipe up and be heard. Why oh why do you do it?

I can only speak for myself, of course, and what purpose would generalizations serve? So here is my sad and sordid tale, my ars poetica.

Let me take you back to the tranquil midwestern burg known as Columbus, Ohio—a great place to raise a family, it was often said. Or brew up a first-rate neurosis. Everything of any import, I was convinced, happened elsewhere. In particular, it happened in books.

I was a brainy, tubby, near-sighted kid who read voraciously, tirelessly, endlessly, so much so my less print-bedazed brother considered me an excellent target for mockery, torment and contempt. To little avail. I devoured the Hardy Boys and Danny Dunn and the We Were There novels—We Were There at the Battle of the Bulge, We Were There on the Chisolm Trail, We Were There at the Oklahoma Land Rush—and the Random House American history set that taught me about everything from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to the U.S. Marine assault at Belleau Wood. I had the kind of knowledge that would serve me well later as a PI—a thousand miles wide and two inches deep. All of it from books.

Meanwhile, there was a gas station in my neighborhood run by the Moro brothers who always bought the change from my paper route, and once that transaction was complete I normally bought a soda from the machine and a candy bar and hung out for a while. Though not exactly Tom and Ray Magliozzi—NPR’s infamous Click and Clack from Car Talk—Jimmy and Johnny Moro weren’t far off, and they mesmerized me. They were earthy, funny, fouled with grease and full of fun. They laughed loud and seemed to possess that rarest of gifts I so wanted to share: They lived.

I wondered if it wasn’t an Italian thing, for I saw much the same kind of gioia di vivere at my buddy Vince Milletello’s house, even though he was even pudgier than me. His mom and aunts were gorgeous, their husbands charismatic, the food incredible—I didn’t know why everybody didn’t hang out at that house. (Mrs. Milletello was constantly trying to get me to go home, to the point, on occasion, of shaking her shoe.)

These people just lived larger than my family did. In my home, anything remotely emotional remained studiously in check—until unleashed by alcohol, or uncorked by rage.

This resulted in the all too familiar fate of the bookworm: self-loathing. I was convinced an essential piece to the puzzle of life was by its very nature nowhere to be found—by me. And it was the piece that had to do with the dirty business known as Life As It Is, not Life As It Appears In Books.

My egg-headedness began paying dividends, though, at least in attention from teachers—I still got the usual ragging crap from classmates—and I embraced my IQ as the quintessential essence of my life. Or at least the most direct way out of puberty. I was the guy who got straight A’s, but with a bit of a mouth, the class clown attitude, a rough edge here and there. I was never top of my class but always close. And in the pit of my black little soul, I sensed that any hope I had of getting a girl, it would probably be because I was so doggone smart.

What an idiot.

But I was also musical, played guitar in the campus coffeehouses, and then took a year off from THE Ohio State University to join a bar band, touring Midwestern backwaters like Beckley, West Virginia; Lima, Ohio; Kokomo, Indiana; Midland, Michigan.

It was a formative time. I met many cocktail waitresses.

(If you want an idea of what one of our signature tunes was, go here.)

But the siren call of campus life drew me back. There’s only so many times you can play “Color My World” to a roomful of horny, polyester-clad divorcees drenched in Old Spice—or sweet Midwestern fogheads nodding on quaaludes—before you begin having unhealthy imaginings, replete with knives and curdled in bile.

I returned to college and somehow bumbled my way into a math major. I was the department freak—a hippy entranced with diophantine equations and Fermat’s Last Theorem. I continued playing in coffeehouses, dabbled in writing, won a poetry prize (figure that one out), hung out with dancers—I mean, who wouldn’t?—and was basically on a collision course with full-blown academe.

But I had no clue what to do as a graduate student. I threw a dart, hit linguistics—a perfect marriage of my fascination with language and my scientific soul—and won a full scholarship to U.C. Berkeley.

Within a matter of weeks, I was drowning in doubt and my own lack of talent, not to mention a serious deficiency of oomph. I saw the life my professors were living—marrying young, the girl across the table in the library, then divorcing at 40, lustily chasing their students—and I ran screaming. On some deep level I knew I had to climb down out of the ivory tower and wander the world. Get my heart broken, my nose bloodied.

But I still had that artistic itch, so after leaving school I studied acting and began writing short stories. Ironically, it was two of my friends from acting school who turned me on to the PI firm where I would spend the next thirteen years of my life. One friend worked as a receptionist, the other as a stringer (serving subpoenas, spending hours in his car conducting surveillance), and they both made it clear—if I wanted to write, I couldn’t beat this job for material.

I bugged the owners of the firm, Jack Palladino and Sandra Sutherland, for nine months, and was finally hired because I wore them down (they graciously referred to me as the most persistent applicant they’d ever had—persistence, incidentally, being of far more use to a PI than anything else). As for my writing, I told myself: These will be my years at sea. What I saw and did would provide not just the subject matter but the texture and worldview that would inform everything I wrote for the rest of my life.

The job rooted me to the real world like nothing had before. I was now working for men and women whose freedom, life-savings, even their very lives were at risk. Half measures wouldn’t do. The stakes were high and the lights were on. I loved it, like no other job I’d ever had. I felt like I could finally go back home, walk into the Moro brothers’ gas station and not feel like a phony. I was no longer waiting for my life. I’d found it.

Up to this point, no joke, I hadn’t picked up a crime novel since the Hardy Boys. I associated crime fiction with B movies, fun but campy, and preferred Kafka and Borges and Robbe-Grillet, Pinter and Stoppard. Now that I was actually working in the world of crime, I figured: Oh, what the hell. I picked up Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Shortly thereafter I devoured Cain’s Double Indemnity, and then the clincher, James Crumley’s The Wrong Case.

No, I wasn’t hooked. But I got it. And the point hit home in a way it hadn’t before. I saw the world I knew, the world of the justice system—witnesses, criminals, victims and cops, snitches and lawyers—transplanted to a literary landscape, a smart one (of course, I couldn’t give up that), and my artistic sensibility and my real-world existence had finally meshed in a way they never had before.

Here was the literary representation of the authenticity I’d been craving since my boyhood, the world where people didn’t think about life, they lived it. Yeah, sure, they existed in books, so sue me. Or shoot me. The characters in those books suffered the terror of their smallness before the crushing wheel of power, they fought and even killed for just a little more, they needed, they craved, they believed, they despaired. Justice might be small but it was everything. And even the most cynical had an inner fire.

Due to the heritage of American realism, there was a convincing lack of prettiness, a sharpness, a directness and hard-edged simplicity that rang true for me. I didn’t completely forego lyricism but the mode was now decidedly minor. And though I didn’t give up on literary fiction I needed the edge I found in crime, that same lack of sentiment, that commitment to a life faced squarely and lived fully, damn the bloody noses and broken hearts.

Please chime in: Why do you write crime? And if you don’t write, what do you expect from the crime writers you read that you don’t expect from others?

* * * * *

Jukebox Hero of the Week: My own music career was behind me when Steve Earle came out with “Copperhead Road,” but on one of my very first author panels—which I got to share with both Laurie King and Michael Connelly—I admitted that this song probably had as much influence on me as writer as anything I’d ever read. Still does:

BY ANY OTHER NAME

by Gar Anthony Haywood

Quick: What do the following upcoming films and television shows all have in common?

 

If you said they all feature poster art suitable for the Louvre, you're wrong.  And you're blind.

If you said they all feature A-list talent whose work you never miss, well . . .  I don't quite know what to say about that.  Though the expression "get a life" does spring to mind.  (Taylor Lautner??)

If, however, you said all four are burdened by an incredibly unimaginative and dumb-as-a-stick title, you nailed it.  And therein lies the tale of this Murderati post.

Several months ago on my own blog, I wrote a post describing how much it mystifies me when creative people consciously decide to attach a one-word, generic title to something they've spent months, sometimes years to produce.  This is what I wrote in part:

"Now, I know not every writer cares to spend a thousand sleepless nights trying to come up with a title for their book or film that's as fresh and original as it is memorable.  It's a pain in the ass process and, sometimes, it hardly seems worth the effort. . .

"But here's where I'm coming from with all this:  A writer busts his ass for months, maybe even years, to write a novel or a screenplay.  He puts his heart and soul into the work, trying with all he's got to make it something special, something different, something he and he alone could have written.

"After all that, why on earth would he want to give the work a generic, overused, blatantly obvious title that anybody with a fifth-grade education could have come up with?

"I don't get it."

I was careful to point out in that post that this sort of thing happens far more often in the realms of film and television because the creative process in Hollywood, as Alex and Stephen know far better than I, is almost designed to produce something ridiculously simplistic at every turn, so as not to confuse our feeble minds when it comes time to turn on our TV or buy a ticket at the box office:

"Hollywood has a long tradition of treating the movie-going public like a herd of mindless cows that would forget how to chew cud if you gave them anything other than grass to think about.  And its penchant for dumbing down titles to their most obvious and uninspiring form is only getting worse."

And every published novelist knows that the title his book winds up with is not always the one he chose for it, because publishers make the final call on such things.  So my gripe is not with authors in any medium who are forced to live with a Dumb-Ass-Title (hereafter referred to as a DAT) by forces beyond their control.  Authors who go with a DAT by choice are the ones with whom I take issue.

What, in my opinion, constitutes a DAT in the literary world?  The following trifecta of death, "death" in this case being no interest from me whatsoever in reading the book so afflicted:

• A length of one word (or two, if you include a preceding and pointless "the").  Think about it --- the entire scope and breadth of your novel can be reduced to ONE WORD?  What kind of message is that to be sending to potential readers?
  
  
• Ubiquity.  If the word you choose for your title is as commonplace and ordinary as sliced bread, why should anyone expect your writing to be any different?

And most importantly:

• Predictability.  "Detective" is a nice word, and it really comes in handy when you write crime fiction, but I think we can all agree that it's rather lacking in multiple meanings, yes?  Chances are, if the title of a book is DETECTIVE, its storyline involves someone who could most accurately be described as. . . well, a detective!  Big surprise, huh?  Yet another way to appeal to potential readers --- announce by way of your book's title not to expect anything unexpected.

To really qualify as a DAT, a title has to meet all three of the criteria above.  For instance, BEAT may only be one word (yeah, Schwartz, I'm talking about you), but is that word particularly ubiquitous?  And does BOULEVARD immediately suggest what the book is about?  The answer in both cases is no, so these titles don't make my DAT cut.  (Okay, Stephen, you can exhale now.)

In the comments to my original post, I engaged in a rather lively debate with a crime writer who objected to my assertion that he'd given his latest book a DAT.  He argued that the title he'd chosen was in fact an ingenious one because, as readers of the book would discover in the end, it had a secret meaning.  I won't rehash all the ways I debunked that argument here, except to say that the cleverness of a title with a "secret" or double meaning is completely lost on somebody who hasn't yet read the associated book --- i.e., somebody cruising the shelves at their local book store looking for something great to read.  Like a duck, if it looks like a DAT, sounds like a DAT, and smells like a DAT, people are going to be inclined to assume that it is a DAT, and won't grant you 389 pages to disabuse them of that notion.  The time to impress potential readers with your capacity to surprise is at the start of your book, not the end of it, and that start --- even before page 1 --- is your title.

If you're beginning to get the idea I could go on and on about DATs if left to my own devices, you wouldn't be far off the mark.  This phenomenon doesn't just confound me, it saddens me a little, in the same way that all avoidable, self-destructive behaviors we humans sometimes engage in do.  However, as I've beaten this poor, dead horse into the ground online once already, and don't particularly feel like being the negatron I usually am, what I'd like to do today is turn my old post on its head and devote the rest of this one to singling out some relatively recent crime novel titles that I think are the polar opposite of a DAT.  The following are Kick-Ass Titles (KATs), the kind a reader can't help but notice and be drawn to, and in my estimation, all are no less exceptional and creative than the fine novels --- and authors --- they represent.

(As an added bonus, I'm including an Alternative DAT for each, just to demonstrate what might have been, had the gods not smiled upon us all.)

A BAD DAY FOR SORRY - Sophie Littlefiield

This title has blown me away since the moment I first heard it.  Its primary message is immediately and abundantly clear: Somebody in Littlefield's terrific book is about to suffer the effects of a full can of whup-ass.  And seriously, what more should the title of a crime novel ever need to say?

Alternative DAT: PISSED

THE BARBED-WIRE KISS - Wallace Stroby

Shit.  This title ticks me the hell off, and always has, because I wish to God I'd thought of it first.  It makes all the jacket copy for Stroby's debut noir thoroughly unnecessary, as everything you need to know about his story is right there: Love; pain; sex; betrayal.  No title in the tradition of Chandler and Ross Macdonald could be a more a fitting homage to the masters than this one.

Alternative DAT: THE FLAME

EIGHT MILLION WAYS TO DIE - Lawrence Block

All of Block's titles for his Matthew Scudder novels are memorable --- A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE, TIME TO MURDER AND CREATE, etc. --- but this one, I think, is his best.  Some reference to death in the title of a mystery or crime novel is a no-brainer, but it's hard as hell to work it in in a way that isn't blatantly obvious or unoriginal.  Block managed that trick here.

Alternative DAT: MORTALITY

THE CONCRETE BLONDE - Michael Connelly

Blondes are a fixture in classic crime fiction, and concrete is often used as a metaphor for the cold, hard city.  Put these two things together and you have a title that promises nothing but trouble for a beautiful woman --- and by extension, Connelly's homicide detective Harry Bosch.

Alternative DAT: BURIED

61 HOURS - Lee Child

One thing a great title does, even as it's offering hints as to what kind of book it belongs to, is raise questions.  Note that Child didn't title this Reacher novel 24 HOURS, or 48 HOURS --- it's 61 HOURS.  And what in the hell can happen in exactly 61 hours?  You have to read the book to find out, and Child is counting on you becoming curious enough to do just that.  Clever.  Very clever.

Alternative DAT: THE CLOCK

DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND - Dennis Lehane

Lehane's another author whose book titles all tend to stick in the mind --- MYSTIC RIVER is a prime example --- but this one, for his second Kenzie-Gennaro mystery, which deals with a serial killer who targets children, is my favorite.   It alludes to the temptation evil sometimes holds over us all, and what could be a more ominous intro to a crime novel than that?

Alternative DAT: TWISTED

THE BLADE ITSELF - Marcus Sakey

Nothing conveys life-altering heartache quite like the expression "cut to the bone," and Sakey's title for his debut novel evokes this experience brilliantly.  Could there be any doubt that this is a noirish thriller with serious attitude?  None whatsoever.

Alternative DAT:  THE DEFENDER

FUN & GAMES - Duane Swierczynski

Though Swierczynski is capable of dropping a DAT of his own every now and then --- THE BLONDE?  Really? --- more than a few of his titles hit the Kick-Ass Title sweetspot for me.  It's a toss-up which title I like better --- this one or POINT & SHOOT --- but they both speak volumes about Swierczynski's old school, pulp-era sensibilities, and the emphasis he places on entertainment above all else.

Alternative DAT: THE BRUNETTE

FEAR OF THE DARK - Walter Mosley

Actually, my appreciation for this title to Mosley's 2006 Fearless Jones/Paris Minton novel is entirely selfish, because it immediately reminds me of a debut novel near and dear to my heart that was published 19 years earlier:

Remember what I said earlier about THE BARBED-WIRE KISS being an homage to Chandler and Ross Macdonald?  Well, that's got to be what this was, right?  An homage to me?  So I'm flattered.  Really.  I swear to God.

Alternative DAT: SPOOKED

One last word before I sign out: There's another level to the moronic-title descent into hell that I call "Just Plain Stupid."  JPSTs can be of any length, yet still manage to be even more obvious and devoid of originality than DATs, and the reason I chose this subject for today's post is a JPST that's been all over billboards lately that makes me want to tear my hair out, rather than shave it cleanly from my scalp:

Hmmm.  You think maybe this film has something to do with horrible bosses?  Talk about a title that requires zero brainpower to interpret.  The only mystery in it is just how long the geniuses behind it took to come up with it: four seconds or a whopping fourteen?

Pathetic.

Questions for the class:  How about you, my fellow 'Ratis?  Do DATs make the top of your head come off the way they do mine?  If so, name a few that really bent you out of shape.  Or conversely, name some titles that you think qualify as KATs instead.

Read Me A River

by Brett Battles

I just finished the draft of my latest WIP, and am feeling a little tired. Make that a LOT tired. Since November 18^th, I’ve actually written two books (one all the way through several rewrites, the current one with no rewrites at all yet), and did a thorough rewrite pass on a YA novel I wrote last summer. Yeah, I write fast. The thing is, we all write a different speeds, and have different amounts of time we can dedicate to the process. So it’s not a "wow," or a “how do you do that.” It’s just an “is.” That’s all. To achieve this though, I keep this insane schedule (not my words, I’ve been told by many people.) The result is that I basically wipe myself out, day after day. Not great for the old social life, but works well on the writing front.

Anyway, this is a long way around for me to say I’m going to go with an easy one today. Something fun.

It thought we could talk about recent reads. I’ve read a string of winners since the holidays, which is not always the case. I’m on number six in a row, and have at least three more lined up that I have high hopes for! This makes me very, very happy.

First up: THE HUNGER GAMES/CATCHING FIRE/MOCKINGJAY by Suzanne Collins

Several years ago, I read the book BATTLE ROYALE by Koushun Takami (translated by Yuji Oniki) about a group of school age kids that get picked against their will by a fictional oppressive government in the future to partake in a game of sorts where they have to kill or be killed and the winner is the last one standing. I absolutely loved it. Have read it twice. Well, over the holidays, I finally read THE HUNGER GAMES, about a group of school aged kids that get picked against their will by a fictional oppressive government in the future to partake in a game of sorts where they have to kill or be killed and the winner is the last one standing. Yep. There’s no denying that the plots are…eh…similar, down to the fact that two of the last players standing are in love (or appear to be in one of the two books.) But even so I loved this book, too! And the plot similarity didn’t bother me. I think both books rock. (One of the big differences is that in THE HUNGER GAMES most of the deaths occur off screen. Not the case in BATTLE ROYALE.) Anyway, I loved Collins so much, I rushed out and bought both of the sequels (CATCHING FIRE and MOCKINGJAY) and devoured them, too. The first was the best of the series, but the others were good, too. Big recommend from me. (If I find out BATTLE ROYALE has a translated sequel – and yes, I know there was a sequel movie, I’m talking book – I’d read it in a heartbeat.)

Next: THE REVERSAL by Michael Connelly

How can you not enjoy anything Connelly writes? I loved the combo of Haller and Bosch in this one. Well worth the read.  

And then: THE SENTRY by Robert Crais.

Yep, I went from one L.A. based series to another. That was actually kind of fun. In fact there were scenes in both books set in areas that I frequent a lot. I always love that. As far as THE SENTRY goes, I just have to say I would never want to have Joe Pike on my ass. You might as well purchase your grave marker right away. Not surprisingly, this was another page turner.

And, finally: THE WANDERING GHOST by Martin Limon

This might be my favorite of the bunch. It’s from Limon’s Sueño & Bascom mystery series about two Criminal Investigation Sergeants in 1970s era Korea. They try to do the right thing, but are also great at getting themselves into trouble. WANDERING GHOST is no exception. I love this series, and Limon is such a good writer that I can’t wait to pick up another one of his. Couldn’t recommend this series more.

There’s six recommendations (seven if you count BATTLE ROYALE) from me to you. So whatca’ got for me? 

The Essence of Character

- by Alexandra Sokoloff

I so loved Stephen’s post on character yesterday I wanted to continue the discussion, from a slightly different angle.

First  I just have to say this.  In just a few paragraphs – tiny black marks on paper, or bits on a screen – Steve put a REAL PERSON into our heads.   An unforgettable person.  

That’s great writing.   But I don’t think you can break it down into the words he used and what order he used them in.   It’s not a technical skill so much as – well, as another Steve says in On Writing – it’s telepathy.   Steve  - Our Steve - was struck to his core by a unique human being and so moved by the experience that he used his own being to communicate that profound encounter to us - whole - so that we could have that encounter with Henry, too…

AND IT WORKED.

How awesome is that?

That is the real magic of writing.

And that doesn’t have a lot to do with details, really. It has to do with ESSENCE.

Note what SJS didn't put into his characterization of Henry.  He didn’t say what he was wearing (didn’t need to - we’ve all seen how men dress to move furniture).  He didn’t say if he was married, with or without children, gay, straight.  He didn’t give us his long and involved back story, what kind of cereal he likes, what team he roots for, what side of the bed he sleeps on, what his astrological sign is.   There weren’t even any descriptions of fascinating tattoos.

I’ve seen character bio forms that have writers list all of those things and more, and they always make me uneasy.   It’s too much information.  A character comes through not because of a mountain of details, but because of those one or two unmissable things that define him or her – in this case, Henry’s infinite patience and presence in a frustrating, mundane situation (and the contrast of that personal serenity in the body of a bruiser.).

Steve’s portrayal of Henry doesn’t have much to do with the words he used, either, with technical skill.  Oh, we need technical skill all right, but mainly so that we don’t get in our own way while we’re writing.   We learn all those things, the words, the pace, the grammar rules and how to break them, iambic pentameter (yes, we all use it if we’re writing in English…) – but that’s just a pianist’s scales, or a dancer’s barre work.   We do those things so that we have a finely tuned instrument that is always ready on a moment’s notice to communicate the pure ESSENCE of a character (or love scene, or  fight, whatever we’re needing to communicate in our story.)

I think I’m going on about this because – well, of course it’s what I do, but also I’ve been thinking about the essence of character because I went on a Reacher binge recently and caught up on a few of the older books I hadn’t read yet.  And then I wanted more, and I started up rereading the ones I’ve already read.

As I have confessed here before, I’m not much of a series reader.   I realize that part of it is that I am generally doubtful and cynical that any one author can continue to build depth and complexity in the same characters for more than three or four books.  And that’s if they’re really good and really lucky.   With a series, I am always bracing myself for ennui to set in.   Now, I think TV can do series brilliantly – but TV has the incredible advantage of having ACTORS along with a whole staff of writers looking after character development.   And actors are fanatically devoted to exploring their particular character, exclusively.   That specialization and focus can, in the best of circumstances, carry TV characters much farther than authors are usually capable of carrying them.   That’s by no means a slight on writers, it’s an acknowledgement of the art, craft, magic and specialization of actors.

But Lee Child’s Reacher is an exception, and so is Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, and that has to do with unbelievably great plots, for sure, but I think it also has to do with character essence.

In any Reacher book you care to pick up, on the first few pages you are going to find this character who is almost always out on the open road, and preternaturally observant. Okay, sometimes you meet him right before a fight in which he is always outnumbered and always the last man standing, but the fight will be portrayed moment by moment so that we experience Reacher’s mental and psychological calculations at every second of the action.    I don’t much think about what Reacher looks like – muscle seems to have very little to do with anything that happens.  In fact, Reacher is huge, but is constantly dispatching bigger and stronger men because he’s fighting with his brain.  It’s the Sherlockian powers of observation, whether in a fight or in the course of an investigation -  that are compelling about the character.

There are a few other constant, essential things about Reacher that make him unique.  He HATES a situation in which a big guy, whether an individual or corporation, is dominating or oppressing a weaker person or entity; he is driven to right that imbalance time and time again.   He hates having any encumbrances – house, clothing, place, or even money.  And he must have the companionship of an intelligent, unique woman to feel balanced and whole - that is, as balanced and whole as Reacher will ever even temporarily be (he doesn’t say this, but it’s constantly played out).  

Harry Bosch is another character I never get tired of.  Harry was devised with a particular back story of being a tunnel rat in Vietnam, which – without being stated – gives a sense of why this man is damaged.  And Harry is wounded, no doubt – while he is often heroic, you worry about him, wonder how he even gets through a day, sometimes.   As an LAPD detective, Harry is constantly up against overwhelming forces – it’s not just about the case he’s working on, but the bureaucracy and sometimes malignance of the police department in general, or superiors in the department in particular.  Sometimes the very family Harry is trying to help is working against him.   Sometimes there’s a bigger, amorphous evil like racism.   In fact, there’s always a sense of a greater evil that might finish Harry off for good.  Harry is on some level aware of these larger forces and still he goes out there and does his job with a dogged determination that is both relentless and slightly – autistic, is the word that comes to mind.

Of course both Reacher and Harry are wounded knights, an archetype that has captured the popular imagination for hundreds of years, if not since the beginning of time.

I loved Denise Mina’s prickly, scrappy Paddy Meehan instantly because of her in-your-face Scottishness.  Irishness.  Mongrel-mixedness.  She’s a new journalist from the wrong side of the tracks and too young to have any practical experience who ends up uncovering more than any of her male colleagues combined because of sheer cussedness.  The lone woman up against a force of often hostile male colleagues has always done me (the brilliant BBC series Prime Suspect is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen) because it’s so true to my own experience.   Paddy’s also like Tess’s Jane Rizzoli, who startled me as a female lead because she is so desperately unhappy, so NOT a Cinderella.  In the book which was Jane’s introduction, The Surgeon, Jane DOESN’T get the guy – she nearly gets killed instead.   She gets no respect on the job because she’s a woman and she gets no respect from her Italian family because she’s a woman.  And experiencing her pain and outsiderness made me a devoted fan.

Margaret Maron, to me, captures the essence of the South in her Deborah Knott books.   Margaret’s own laser perception masked by that “Who - little ol’ me?” Southern slyness oozes through in Deborah.

Cornelia’s Madeline Dare is a fascinating character to me because she lives in – or at least has lived in – a world that is completely alien to my experience, and yet I completely relate to her razor-sharp smarts, wicked tongue, and feminism.  SJS’s Hayden Glass being driven by this demon of addiction is compelling to me in essence.  Ken Bruen’s  Irish cop Jack Taylor’s essence to me is his wide-open heart and purity of soul.   

Okay, you know what I want from you today.   Who are YOUR favorite series characters and what is it about them – what is the essence - that draws you back, again and again?

- Alex



It Go Up and Down and Round And Round...

by J.D. Rhoades

As some of you may have noticed, I am NOT Robert Gregory Browne. This is Rob’s usual week, but he is, as they say,  glutes-high in Alligator mississippiensis. Everyone else in the world seems to be at Thrillerfest. (Heavy sigh). So when Rob  sent out a cry for help, I agreed to take his week, because...well, because  I’m a hell of a guy. It was short notice, so if things seem a bit random and disjointed...well, it’s not like anyone can tell the difference from the way I usually post.

Anyway, here’s what's on my mind recently:

Lately I keep seeing ads for a new Harry Potter-themed amusement park at Universal Studios in Orlando. “You can truly be part of Harry Potter’s World!” the ad promises breathlessly. I  don't know about you, but my first reaction was “I’m not sure I actually want to be part of a  world where an immensely powerful magic user who looks like James Carville's handsomer brother and who has a serious grudge against my family  spends most of his days trying to figure out how to kill me.” But it did get me thinking, which is always a dangerous proposition.

Now, J.K. Rowling seems like a nice lady, and hers is one of the great inspirational stories for writers: deprivation, determination,  rejection, perseverance, and finally riches beyond most people’s dreams of avarice (not beyond mine, but then I feed my dreams of avarice red meat, Wheaties,  and steroids).I'm glad to see her continuing to do well.

But, I  wondered, how is it fair that her characters get a theme park and others don’t? I mean, there are plenty of other writers who create vivid and intensely realized worlds. Why don’t we have them parks for them?

Imagine what forms some of these theme parks might take:

IAN RANKIN’S REBUSWORLD: Enter the world of Edinburgh’s most successful and  most surly detective! Have a drink in the famous Oxford Bar. Make the climb up the full-sized replica of Arthur’s Seat. Have another drink in the famous Oxford bar. Take a refreshing dip on the Firth of Forth waterslide before having another drink, maybe several, in the famous Oxford Bar. Management not responsible for liver damage.

MICHAEL CONNOLLY’S BOSCHLAND: Ride a replica of the Angel’s Flight inclined railway to get to this LA-themed attraction. Explore the scary storm drains of LA in the Black Echo Fun House. Ride the wet and wild Narrows log flume ride. Hope you like jazz, though, ‘cause that stuff’s playing ALL OVER THE FRIGGIN’ PARK.

LEE CHILD’S REACHER-RAMA: there are a lot of great, thrilling and  scary rides, but no matter how much cash or you take in or how many souvenirs you buy, you always walk out of the place with nothing on you but the clothes on your back and your toothbrush.

For you fantasy fans, there’s GEORGE R.R. MARTIN’S ICE N’ FIRE ISLAND: it’s going to be the most awesome thing ever if they can just  get the damn thing finished.

    Hmmm...okay. Maybe not such great ideas after all. But maybe some of you can pick your favorite fictional world (even your own)  and make it into a theme park. Give it a try, won’t you?

   Rob will be back in this spot next week.