Talk About Evil...

by Ben Small

I'm always looking for new stuff writers can use to liven up their work... in this case, murder. Today, I looked no further than my safe.

Enter the Mosin Nagant 91-30, a piece of history still being written.



The Mosin Nagant action is one of the best ever designed, on a par with the Mauser and the Mauser-derived Winchester Model 70, the Rifleman's Rifle. And the term "91-30" means just what it says. It's an 1891 Russian design upgraded in 1930. Its pappy fought in the Russian Revolution and World War I. This version was the standard Russian infantry rifle during World War II, and it enforced the entire Soviet Bloc thereafter.

So there... You've got a rifle with history. An intriguing fact, or maybe something more. Sprinkle in a bit of ethnicity, old family grudges, maybe a previous crime... and these rifles can be your ms missile-launchers.

Or maybe that's just me...

Anyway, the rifle with bayo attached, as you see in this photo I took yesterday, stands about five feet long. The bayo is about a foot-and-a-half. Imposing. And the design and weighting are such that the rifle shoots best with bayo fixed.

Take a closer look at the bayonet...

Yes, it would make a good flat-head screwdriver. But the rifle's length might pose a problem if you use it that way. You'd get torque, all right, but lining everything up would be an issue, and for goodness sake, do not put your finger inside the trigger-guard if the thing is loaded. You'd find you don't need a screwdriver anymore. A carpenter or plumber, maybe...

(Psst. These things make great ice picks. Just don't try this in low-ceiling rooms, and don't be the one holding the bucket.)

Mosin Nagant 91/30s are both beautiful and functional. Deadly so. They're accurate as hell and pack a punch -- at both ends. They fire a 7.62 x 54R cartridge.

Spooky looking, huh?

The 7.62 x 54R cartridge -- the "R" stands for "Russian" -- is larger and more powerful than the standard NATO thirty-caliber cartridge, the round our soldiers prefer over what they fire in their arguably underpowered little M-16s and M-4s. The Russian round will not just power through body armor; it'll make Swiss cheese out of cement houses. It's the round our soldiers often face in Afghanistan, and it's the round we're giving the Iraqi Army.

Recoil? Yes, but the weight of the rifle dampens that, even with the steel butt-plate -- usually a reliable predictor of an approaching ouch. And there's a good side to recoil: If your perp gets the bayo stuck in a victim, all he has to do is pull the trigger. Problem solved.

But there are some other reasons this rifle makes a good perp-weapon, other than the fearsome size of the bayo and the blockbuster round. These things are cheap; millions were made and are out in the marketplace. You can often find a serviceable, complete rifle for under a hundred bucks. And you get cool stuff with it -- ammo bag, oil can, maybe even a sling, although a real Russian period-sling will set you back more than the rifle. And there are parts available galore. Shoot the victim, replace the barrel. You can get replacement barrels at any gun show, and most of these rifles don't have matched barrels anyway. See, the round's primer is usually corrosive. Fail to clean the chamber after firing... let it sit -- the primer's chems munch metal -- and, well... you'll be wantin' to replace the barrel.

Take that, Ballistics.

One cautionary note. The Mosin Nagant 91/30 makes a very big bang. People are gonna hear it. Best fire it when folks are asleep or on New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Ignore this warning at perp's peril: The cops will come before he can replace the barrel or throw El Cheapo away.

For some excellent Mosin Nagant humor, check out this site: http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/MosinHumor.htm

The Eyes Have It

By Pat Browning

I had a raging ear ache all week. Friday I gave up and went to see a doctor, taking along a book to read -- PRELUDE TO TERROR by Helen MacInnes, a 1978 Fawcett Crest paperback. International intrigue and art theft, set in Vienna and Budapest.

Couldn’t miss. I’m fascinated by the looting of art that went on during World War II. I was a tourist in Budapest and Vienna in 1979 so the setting would be a thrill. The book turned out to be a good choice, but not for the reasons I picked it. I’m still trying to read it. It is now Saturday night and into Sunday morning. I’m on page 150 and I still don’t know what’s going on.

MacInnes was a longtime best selling author before her death in 1985. Several of her books became movies. Her 1968 book THE SALZBURG CONNECTION oozes with atmosphere. Not so, PRELUDE TO TERROR. So far, it’s like a skeleton. You have to imagine the flesh.

If the author were anyone but MacInnes I would simply turn to the ending and save myself a slog through the entire book. But I keep reading. Surely there will be a surprise, a shock, a twist. Until then I’m easily distracted. Is that an ant walking across the sidewalk?

The hero is Grant, an American art expert, in Vienna to buy a famous Dutch masterpiece for a reclusive art collector. The complication is that the painting is being sold on the sly by a Hungarian trying to escape to the West. Since the Cold War government of Hungary owns all art in private hands and looks askance at citizens trying to escape – well, you see the problem. This may turn out to be the longest set up in literary history.

There’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, involving the State Department, the Israeli Mossad, unidentified spies in disguise, cryptic messages and absolutely no eye contact. Don’t turn around … don’t look at me … pretend you don’t see me … Grant can’t figure it out and neither can I.

On page 67, a sentence gets my attention: “If I were a Viennese, thought Grant … I’d always be conscious that Czechoslovakia’s barbed wire and Hungary’s armed watchtowers were less than thirty miles away.”

A cloud of memories flies up. 1979: I remember Hungary’s borders. Our tour guide gave us detailed instructions on how to fold our passports and visas, what to say, how to avoid eye contact. Above all, avoid eye contact. Scared us half to death.

And then a young soldier boarded the bus and walked slowly down the aisle, checking papers and avoiding eye contact. He was sweating. He surely wasn’t more than 18, and he looked scared half to death.

My impression of Budapest was, that in spite of its history, beauty, Gabor sisters and magnificent Hilton Hotel, its people were whistling past the graveyard. At the Citadella, an old fortress overlooking the Danube, the walls were pocked with shell holes and there was a towering Russian statue on the roof.

From a travel agent in the Hilton, I learned that Hungarians could leave the country once every three years, but could only take the cash equivalent of $40 with them. Catch 22. Hungarian eyes were a little wary, a little sad.

In Spain in 1975, eyes were merely watchful. The old dictator Franco was on his deathbed. Spain was a country of dark eyes, watching, waiting. The next time I went to Spain, Franco was dead and the country was wide open. Japanese tourists were hogging the best seats in flamenco clubs, and newsstands were actually displaying girlie magazines. Give Franco credit for grooming a young Juan Carlos to take back the throne. Apparently it was a peaceful transition.

For a writer, eyes can speak volumes. One of my few books on writing is EYE LANGUAGE: UNDERSTANDING THE ELOQUENT EYE by Evan Marshall, first published in 1983. He published THE EYES HAVE IT, an updated version, in 2003. The chapters appear to be the same: “ … loving and lying eyes, the etiquette of staring, the ‘evil eye,’ pupillometry, iridology, trends in eye adornment, and ‘the vital blink.’”

You see what I’m up against – a thriller set in Budapest and Vienna that reminds me of everything except Budapest and Vienna. But I keep reading.. Surely there will be a surprise, a shocker, a twist and … somebody … will … make… eye … contact …

The Joys of Moving

by Jean Henry Mead

The words “residential move” strike terror in the hearts of us homebodies—at the least, a number of deep gutteral groans. All that sorting, tossing and packing are back-breaking jobs and saying goodbye to a house you’ve lived in for more than a dozen years is like biding an old friend farewell. Permanently.

To say packing is time consuming is an understatement. My husband and I are the eldest of our families and have inherited picture albums as well as old photos stored in large boxes. You just have to take a peek and wind up spending the rest of the day reminiscing over each photograph as though you had all the time in the world.

I still have my high school and college yearbooks, which I helped to create, so taking a walk down memory lane is mandatory. OMG, is that really me with that huge bouffant hairdo? I also have stacks of campus newspapers that I edited in college while President Johnson was in his waning days in office. I wrote a humorous column about him teaching elocution lessons when he returned to Texas, and my handwriting analysis articles were halted by the professors because their students were critiquing their blackboard writings. But I'm straying from the subject . . .

Bill and I are packrats who can’t seem to part with memorabilia, but moving into a smaller house means that some of it has to go. Not my books or writer magazines and certainly not his museum-sized collections of tools, old guns and miscellaneous "non essentials." I gave most of my porcelain dolls to my granddaughters and vintage clothing to the Salvation Army, but what to do with all this office equipment? We’ll try to cram most of it into a spare bedroom. We can’t survive without our computers, fax machine and other electronics.

Or can we? We recently learned that the telephone company won’t provide us with service until there are four other customers in the area. Not much chance of that because we’ll be surrounded by ranchers who have been there for eons. Cell service is sketchy so boosters are in order but fax machines can be operated from cell phones.

After watching the home and garden channel, we learned what we needed to do to prepare our current house for sale, which was a major undertaking. We bought a large fixer-upper and didn’t quite complete the renovations. So we started again by repainting 3,000 square feet of living space, replacing baseboards and flooring, appliances, siding and windows, roofing and drapes by doing most of the work ourselves.

Twelve years older and a whole lot creakier, we decided that this was our last move. And now that the house looks so nice, I really don’t want to leave it.

Our new place is perched atop a mountain, a stopping place for sheriff’s deputies to report in on their radios, so our house will become an unofficial espresso cafe. I’ll have to learn to make doughnuts and keep the coffee pot perking. But what better research for a mystery writer than to listen to visiting lawmen? They may even take a bead on some of our unwelcome rattlers. . .

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave

By Beth Terrell

Heard any good tweets lately?

If you haven't been living under a rock (I almost have, but that's another story), you've probably been hearing a lot about social networking lately. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, CrimeSpace, LiveJournal, and a host of other sites that encourage cyber-communication are now being used by authors to connect with potential readers and --hopefully--broaden their fan bases.

Social networking is weaving a virtual web of relationships for friendship, entertainment, and yes, business, but with all the options, how do you know which is best? And what's the most effective way to use these social networking tools without alienating the very people you're hoping to connect with? There's been a lot of discussion about social networks on the Murder Must Advertise list lately, and most people seem to agree that the soft sell is the way to go. Make friends, participate in discussions, post some "This is what I've been doing with my book" updates, and you can build an audience without feeling like a snake oil salesman. I succumbed to Facebook, after months of resistance, and have made contact with friends I haven't seen in years, like the guy who was in my Sunday School class when we were kids and whom I haven't seen in...ahem...quite a long time. A lot of those friends ask about my book. Some of them buy it. This is nice, but it's a perk. The relationships are worth cultivating, even if they don't result in book sales.

Still, I know I'm not making the most of the medium, so while I was at Killer Nashville, I picked up a book called Social Media Marketing an Hour a Day by Dave Evans. This immensely readable book is chock full of information about building a platform through social networks such as the ones I mentioned earlier. Most important, it teaches you how to do it without spamming others or engaging in otherwise obnoxious behaviors.

I'd tell you more about it, but I'm just beginning to delve into it. With my book being reissued in October, I'm going to need all the help I can get, and weaving a virtual web of friends and readers seems like a good start.

See you on Facebook?

Which Way To Albuquerque?

By Mark W. Danielson

Here’s a Wrong Way Corrigan story for you. Well, not Wrong Way, per say, but maybe Part Way. You see, the pilot of this bi-plane didn’t have much room to unfold maps so he made a strip chart – a map that covered his route, but little more. All was fine until an ominous cold front forced him to deviate off his chart. Now flying off memory and with a strong tailwind pushing him over Arizona’s mountains, he suddenly came upon an impenetrable gray curtain. Having limited fuel reserves and unsure of his position, the pilot was forced to land to wait out the weather.

The rain-soaked earth made a two-lane highway the only viable option. The bi-plane was seen making several passes along the highway before landing behind a large RV. The pilot then pulled his airplane off the road at the intersection of Marker 81 in the above photo. Now all that remained was waiting out the weather and getting directions.

One might think that a red, white, and blue bi-plane would attract attention, but in this case, it may as well have been nuclear waste. People stopped way up and down the road, but no one dared come near the airplane. Clearly, the denim-clad pilot was chilled by the seven thousand foot altitude. Two hours passed before he ventured to the ranch across the street. After parting cattle like Moses did the Red Sea, he found the house deserted and retraced his steps. Encouraged by a car that had stopped near his plane, he darted for his plane, flinging mud from his shoes, but ten yards short, the car took off like a frightened grouse. Gazing to the sky, the perturbed pilot contemplated his next move when he heard a pickup coming down the dirt road he had blocked. When the driver stopped, the pilot asked for directions to Albuquerque. Without hesitation, the dazed driver pointed toward a knoll. The pilot then thanked him, climbed into his plane, and took off. Fortunately, the driver’s sense of direction was right and I landed safely at my Alamagordo destination, a little south of Albuquerque.

This story is but one of my many misadventures in the airplane I built. My plane and I performed numerous airshows together, but one day we had to part ways so I could buy a house. I look back on this particular experience with both amusement and guilt because I was supposed to be a “professional pilot”. I’ve always wondered if the RV driver I landed behind ever met up with the pickup driver and shared a beer over this crazy experience. Looking back, I suppose that’s the best part of this story -- that I keep thinking about its ending. In that regard, it’s like a novel where every reader has their own take. Stories need that, for without that element, they may as well be text books. As for my lessons learned, I’ve never flown with another strip chart.

The Many Faces of Sid Chance

By Chester Campbell

Well, maybe not all that many faces, but you get the idea. Characters are created from a smorgasbord of features that emanate from many sources. In the case of Sid Chance, the protagonist in The Surest Poison, I pulled him together from lots of different places.

The first thing you notice about a person is outward appearance, mainly size. For Sid, think of my Murderous Musings colleague, Ben Small. If you’ve ever met him, Ben is a large presence. I modeled Sid’s size after him. Sid is six-foot-six and wears a number 16 shoe (it’s featured in the story). But unlike Ben, I gave him a black beard. He had been living like a hermit in the backwoods the past three years, and hermits don’t fool with shaving.

Sid’s love of the outdoors, along with his homemade cabin on the hillside, came from my younger son, Mark. Like Sid, Mark served in Army Special Forces, though his service was post-Vietnam. That’s where his early-rising habit originated. Though nearly twenty years out of the Army, Mark (like Sid) still gets up in the wee hours. The cabin idea and its location came from Mark. Several years ago he bought 85 acres of hillside in Smith County, east of Nashville. He hauled the materials, including plywood sheets and 40-pound sacks of Quikrete, up the hill on his back, with some help from his two sons. Mark’s cabin is not as commodious as Sid’s, but he only stays there a few days at a time.

Sid’s background as a National Park ranger came courtesy of Tom Howell, a former ranger at the Gulf Islands National Seashore at Perdido Key, FL. I interviewed Howell while working on the second Greg McKenzie mystery, Designed to Kill. He gave me a basic understanding of what the job entails.

I didn’t do anything with it in this book, but the fact that Sid’s mother insisted he learn to play the piano may be followed up later. That part of his character came from my own experience. My mother’s sister was a piano teacher and organist at our church. My older brother and I got mandatory piano lessons as youngsters. Playing in recitals was my worst nightmare. Aunt Rosie wanted to teach me organ, but I was getting into my teens and didn’t want to bother with that. Of course, now I dearly wish I had. I haven’t played in ages, though I have an electronic keyboard (I gave my piano to my younger daughter).

The final character trait I had to consider was the way Sid thinks. He isn’t totally me, but a lot of his philosophy on life mirrors my own. I suspect most writers imbue their protagonists with much of their own views. Of course, a lot of his thoughts and actions reflect the way I would like to be. I am not so bold or confrontational. I would not likely have made a good cop.

My characters are pulled together from lots of people I know or know about. They’re not close enough for anybody to sue me (I hope), but they come across as real people because they’re a hodgepodge of actual people.

What To Do If She Says No

by Ben Small


Flex some muscle, flash a wicked grin.
Pout and moan about how long it’s been.

Or…

Wail and cry… or beg and plead.
Snarl and scratch, watch myself bleed.

Or…

I could be silent, stare her down.
I could be quiet, fix her a frown.

Or…

Open her mail, throw it around.
Call her fat, “ one round mound.”

Or…

Drive off, take it somewhere.
Spin it on Facebook, spread it everywhere.

Or…

Plot a payback, less than a crime.
Cover her undies with gun oil and grime.

Or…

I could be steadfast, insistent and firm.
I could plot murder, body on the berm.

But…

I do none of that, no, not at all.
I give her my back and walk down the hall.

And then…


I take out the trash... myself.