Overkill

by Ben Small

So many mystery/thriller writers turn to high powered rifles to wreak their havoc, but there's a downside to such power. Noise, for one thing. Fire a high powered rifle without ear protection, and you won't be hearing much of anything for a while. Meanwhile, everyone within a mile will hear the shot. Not only that, but the bullet will likely pass through the victim and make forensic identification a bit more easy. Just follow the track, find the spent round, and depending on where it landed, the bullet may be in good enough shape for the lab to identify. Then just find the gun, and most times you've found your shooter.

Isn't there a better alternative?

Yes, there is. The Ruger 10/22, a .22 lr rifle available in about any sort of configuration one can imagine. This is the most popular rifle in America, folks; many of you learned to shoot with one. You probably have one in your house or past somewhere.

Ruger 10/22s are about as diverse as the people who sell them. You can buy a starter version, with a shortened stock, for your young'ins, and you can adapt this rifle as your child grows, changing stocks, rebedding the stock, accurizing, adding scopes, lasers, handgrips, whatever suits his or her fancy.

Let me show you some more pictures of Ruger 10/22s. While they definitely look different one from another, they're essentially the same gun, just personalized or adapted to one's desires or needs.

 

 

 

 

 

None of the rifles pictured belong to me, but I have friends who have one of each. My Ruger 10/22 has a stainless bull barrel, perfect for target shooting, and it wears a Nikon 3X9 scope. It was already shooting one-half inch groups of five shots at fifty yards, and on a non-windy day, inch-wide groups at a hundred yards. Accurate, yes. And a good friend took my gun, replaced the trigger and changed some springs, and made it even more accurate. I can now shoot one ragged hole at fifty yards.

Surely, that's good enough to bump somebody off.

And there are other benefits to using the 10/22. It's quiet. The noise level is just above that of a pellet gun. Add a compensator or shoot sub-sonic rounds, and it's quieter still. You could shoot someone in your front yard while a pool party was going on in back, and no one -- except the victim and the shooter -- would be the wiser. Use soft lead bullets or hollow point rounds, and the forensics team won't have much to work with, assuming they cannot find the shell. Because a .22lr shot into a victim's head will rattle around inside the brain pan, destroying tissue, and not exit, resulting in bullet pieces or chunks which will be unidentifiable. 

Win/win. No noise, no forensics, assuming you picked up your spent shell.

.22lr ammo is cheap and common. That's why the round is the most bought and why the Ruger 10/22 is the most popular rifle in America. You can find the ammo and the gun anywhere: at Wal-Mart, any gun store, even online, although you'll need an FFL to transfer the rifle. No big deal.

These rifles are easy to use and easy to maintain. And as I indicated, they're among the most accurate around. Sure, you can buy rifles just as accurate which shoot more powerful rounds, but those rounds will be more traceable from the sales point and in the ballistics lab, plus the equipment to accurize these more powerful rifles will mean expensive add-ons which themselves may be traced. 

Just how many people regularly shoot a .338 Lapua? Heck, the ammo alone costs about three bucks a round. You can buy a brick of .22lr ammo (500 shots) for about twenty bucks. And the accurizing add-ons are cheap and readily available just about anywhere.

It's no secret that the mob prefers the .22lr for its assassinations. Quiet, effective and no (or little) forensics lab exposure.

So why don't more mystery writers use the Ruger 10/22 for a murder gun?

My guess -- they're going for the bang factor, the thrill of using a high power weapon to bump off their victims. The Wow! aspect.

Overkill.

Remember the oft-repeated rule of life: Keep it simple. 

The Ruger 10/22 proves the rule.

7,000 Years And Counting

By Pat Browning


On Sunday night PBS will air a Nature program called “Wild Balkans” and here’s the summary:


“Thick forests, vast wetlands, deep chasms - this is a wild, inaccessible place that belongs more to myth than reality. The landscape looks as if it was taken straight form Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings." But here there are neither orcs nor elves; rather, bears and wolves. This is not Middle Earth; rather it is middle Europe -the Balkans. Through the centuries this land has burned its way into the soul and spirit of its people. The jagged contours have thrown long dark shadows over the history of the peninsula, always in the middle, between forces of the East and the West. It's as if the bloody history of the Balkans conspired to conceal its natural wonders. The landscape is still untouched and in it are wild animals that have all but vanished from the rest of Europe.”


That’s not just hype. I’ve been there – once with a tour group in the wilds of Slovenia on a side trip to the Hotel Grad Otecec. The hotel is a 13th century feudal castle sitting on an island in the Krka River. It’s midway between Ljubljana and Zagreb, less than 50 miles from either, but so secluded it could be on the moon. The hotel makes all arrangements for hunting boar, pheasant, rabbit and other seasonal game, and for fishing.


Close by are two spas specializing in stress-related disorders and splendid isolation. Tucked in there is the small town of Novo Mesto, chartered in 1365. Beam me down, Scotty.


Soul satisfying as all that is, any trip through the Balkans should start in Belgrade. Some day history will be taught in the only way that makes sense -- by transporting students to where it happened on some mass-transit version of the Starship Enterprise.


I first wandered into the old Yugoslavia by accident. I picked a tour that included Austria, Hungary and Italy. Yugoslavia -- Land of the South Slavs -- happened to be in the neighborhood. It's quite a neighborhood.

You want history? Belgrade has sprawled there at the confluence of the Sava and
Danube Rivers for 7,000 years, give or take a century.


The Romans colonized it (lst Century A.D.).
The Huns destroyed it (441).
The Goths captured it (504).
The Avars sacked it (twice).
The Slavs conquered it (630).
The Bulgarians took it (827).
The Hungarians ransacked it (again and again and again).
The Byzantine Empire took it and lost it and took it and lost it …
The Crusaders passed through (1096-1189).
Turkey ruled it off and on for 300 years.
The Germans and Austrians captured it (1915).
The Serbs liberated it (1918) and Belgrade (Beograd) became the capital of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The Germans bombed and occupied it (1941).
The Americans bombed it (1944) and the communists moved in.
NATO forces bombed it (1999).


The old Yugoslavia is now Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia …


You do remember Macedonia, land of Alexander the Great? As recently as 2001, U.S. troops were there evacuating ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.


When I was in Greek Macedonia in the mid-1980s a tour guide took us to the border, where we stared across to that part of Macedonia claimed by Yugoslavia. Greece had been staring across that border for years, in what the guide called "the silent war."


And that is another story.

**The photo of Skadarlija Street is by Branko Jovansovic, found on the Belgrade website at http://www.beograd.org.yu/ (Click on the English tab at the top.)**

Fiction Action

by Jean Henry Mead

I read a magazine article titled, “Action, the Heartbeat of Fiction” by Jordan E. Rosenfeld that I thought was worth noting. Rosenfeld said, “Action is a dynamic word that calls to mind a director hooting into a megaphone at his actors. It's also the heartbeat of good fiction that keeps readers riveted to the page. Action is comprised of all the elements a reader can 'witness' taking place. From physical movement to spoken dialogue, action transports your readers into your writing and brings your writing to life. Despite all this, many writers have a tendency to shuffle important action ‘offstage,’ relying on pace-dragging narrative summaries and recaps instead.”

The solution to preventing pace-dragging scenes is to write them within a framework. By presenting scenes as though they were happening on a theater stage, all the drama takes place as it happens, not offstage and something for the characters to discuss. Readers remember what happens on stage and can make their own deductions. They needn’t wait for the characters to endlessly discuss what has just taken place.

The scene’s momentum keeps the reader reading and her heart pounding as the action accelerates if the plot situation seems real, particularly when the character is in danger. Instead of characters talking about a past experience, replay the scene in flashback action. By reliving it in living color, the reader can experience it for himself.

Another good way to involve your reader in a scene is to reveal information in dialogue. A good plot reveals new information in each chapter and one of the best ways to deliver the news is to have the characters act it out. Give the narrator a rest. It’s much more powerful to have events happen now than to hear about it later, secondhand.

Character movement is essential in a good scene, whether the protagonist throws a chair through a window in anger, or flicks ashes from a cigarette into his cup. Don’t leave your characters standing around without something to do. Body language is a giveaway when a character’s motives are in question. If a man drops his head when asked if he killed someone, it usually means he’s guilty or knows who committed the crime. If a woman lifts a palm to her chest while denying something, changes are she’s telling the truth.

If your character comes to an important decision or suddenly realizes that he has the answer to a problem, avoid internal monologue as much as possible. The realization will have more impact if it happens in someone else’s presence because it raises the emotional stakes for all concerned, as well as your storyline.

And finally, turn your backstory into frontstory whenever possible or delete it from the plot. Backstory is your character’s past, which you feel needs to be included. It’s usually spooned in as narrative summary instead of dialogue and lacks the elements of scene writing. Because it doesn’t take place in the present, there’s no dialogue or scene setting or action taking place. When that happens, the best part of backstory is casually written off without the slightest hint of emotion. And as I've said before, emotion drives the plot.

The Idea Well

By Beth Terrell

"Where do you get your ideas?"

It's a question that, sooner or later, every writer is bound to hear. In fact, just this week, Nathan Bransford (http://www.nathanbransford.com) asked his readership what had inspired our/their current works in progress, a question similar in spirit, if not in scope. And why not? I'm always intrigued by the workings of other writers' minds, by the spark that flashes when that perfect story idea flits past, and by the fact that an idea that sparks for me may be nothing but a bit of drifting ash to someone else.

Where do you get your ideas? I've heard writers give clever, facile answers:

"I get them from a factory in Poughkeepsie. I send then twenty dollars a month and they send me back ten ideas in a plain manila envelope."

"There's an idea well in my cousin's back yard. Whenever I need a story idea, I go out and pull up a pail full. I always find something I can use."

Others are more forthcoming:

"Newspaper clippings."

"Magazine articles."

"Sixty Minutes."

I think they all mean the same thing. Ideas are everywhere, fireflies on a summer night, stars in a winter sky, an infinite number of beautiful, scattered lights. One current work in progress was inspired by some inexplicable fears and behaviors my grandmother exhibited when she was suffering from dementia. As I attempted to understand what she was going through, I had the idea to write about an woman caring for her grandmother, whose "unreasonable" fears have their roots in long-buried memories. The caregiver never learns those secrets, but the reader does.

Another work in progress, the third in a series, was sparked by a conversation a friend and I had about a couple who created a garden in which thousands of small white wooden crosses represent lives lost to abortion.

Recently, I rediscovered a website I'd come across a few times before:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/index.html. This site is an online library of modern and historical crimes. There are also articles on criminal psychology, toxicology, and other topics useful to writers of crime fiction. Stuck for a plot? Skimming these stories about real-life criminals can spark dozens of ideas. What if Sweeney Todd had been born in Chicago in the 1930s? What if someone like Albert Fish took a resourceful child who knew how to fight back? How about a black widow story? What if there was a group of time travelers who kidnapped serial killers in their infancy and raised them in loving, nurturing environments, and what if an evil group of time travelers decided to kidnap some potential killers of their own--and for less benevolent purposes? (Yes, sometimes the idea fireflies lead us far afield.)

Ideas are everywhere. Whether you envision them as fireflies in a field or drops of water in a well, the source is not a factory in Poughkeepsie or in anybody's cousin's back yard. You are the source, and I am, and everything we read, see, or experience helps scatter the stars and fill the well. That is the beauty of writing.

The Tremulous Future of Bookstores and Bound Books

By Mark W. Danielson

There is nothing official about this topic. It’s just some observations about the book industry. First and foremost, readers need to support their local book stores, especially independent ones, or they will cease to exist. When that happens, a dark era begins, and you will have to visit Starbucks or McDonalds for your coffee and free Wi-Fi.

In October, 2009, I sent 70 newsletters to independent book stores and fifteen were returned because those stores are no longer in business. Others may follow suit unless our economy makes an abrupt turnaround. This is a disturbing trend, particularly for authors who aren’t household names. If Kindle is successful, bound books may only be published on demand.

Personally, I like browsing through book stores. I like the feel of a book in my hand, flipping pages back and forth. Sometimes I might dog-ear a page or two, or highlight things if there’s good reason. My library is full of reference, fiction, and non-fiction books. I have plenty yet to read, and some I may never read in their entirety. Still, they are comforting to have, knowing they can be viewed regardless of my electric power situation. I don’t believe Kindle can match a book’s features.

Independent book stores feature a far greater variety of authors than you will find in chain book stores. These stores are more likely to carry my books. My latest, Diablo’s Shadow was highly rated, and yet Barnes and Noble won’t carry it because neither my publisher nor I are big names. However, I did receive a nice letter from their corporate department manager saying my books meet their criteria, and they will gladly order them on demand. At least I have that going for me.

Last November, I participated in another enjoyable Men of Mystery event in Irvine, California. As one of the fifty-plus authors in attendance, I am always amazed at the talent in the room, and yet few have heard of the majority of these mystery writers. In this regard, an author breaking out is comparable to an actor being discovered while waiting tables. There are plenty of wonderful books out there, but unless they get noticed by the right people, it’s unlikely they will ever become best sellers.

Some of these issues are discussed in my upcoming novel, Writer’s Block. More than a murder mystery, it’s an inside look into the fiction writer’s world. Please don’t confuse this with a documentary or autobiography, though. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writer’s Block is simply a fun story filled with twists and turns. I hope to name a publisher later this year.

Without readers, there would be little reason for authors to invest so much of their time in creating stories, and yet those of us who take writing seriously would probably write them anyway. Once a story teases your brain, there is no escaping it until it’s written down. Whether you read my stories or someone else’s, please try to buy them from your local book stores. They really need your business.

Wall Street Is Choking Americans

By Chester Campbell

This isn't the blog I had intended to write for today. That one will have to wait until next time. Something I read online this morning prompted the change. Like many of you, I suspect, I receive a flood of emails daily on every subject from health to wealth to stealth (those are the mystery related ones). Some of these I asked for, but a lot of them came collaterally from websites I visited. Some I seldom read, some I only read when a headline catches my eye. Here's what caught my eye this morning:

Wall Street's Stranglehold on the Economy Is Choking Americans

It was in the Money Morning financial newsletter and was written by Shah Gilani, contributing editor. I'll give you the link in a moment, but what I read is the most succinct, understandable, east-to-read explanation of the mess we're in and what needs to be done that I have read in a long time.

It isn't a political piece. He shows there's equal blame for Democrats and Republicans starting back with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. It had a laudable goal, the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and other characteristics in the credit and housing markets. But like so many well-meaning ideas, it led to disastrous unintended consequences.

Gilani starts out by saying that after 234 years, the Founding Fathers' worst fears have come true. Their fear was that a concentration of power, particularly among banking interests, could "hijack our fledgling democracy." We're no longer fledgling, but it's happening. He says it's time to look at the truth about Wall Street's tyranny and develop a safe banking system, "not a system rigged by banks."

The article describes how succeeding administrations and congresses kept pushing the boundaries to get more Americans into houses, many  into bigger homes than they could afford and with mortgages they couldn't pay when the economy went south. It explains how the big banks kept playing games with risky loans they were making, creating esoteric products that few people understood.

Gilani shows how greed pushed the banks into ever more risky deals that the executives planned to pawn off on unsuspecting investors. They re-formatted their junk and got it rated AAA by their buddies at the rating agencies. In the end, he says, "Because of their greed, banks actually made the boat and forced us into it. They sunk, along with us, but got bailed out while we were left to drown."

He concludes that we need to break up the big banks and spread the pieces around the country, putting the economy back in the hands of the people. Let banking be done on Main Street, not Wall Street. Gilani says the enormous amount of power that has been concentrated in Wall Street and the banking system is an assault on our freedom.

You can read the full article at Money Morning.

Graham Greene's Haiti

By Pat Browning


Haiti. Where do you start to talk about Haiti?


I would start with THE COMEDIANS, a 1966 novel by Graham Greene that covers another tragic period in the history of that small piece of earth in the Caribbean.


Hollywood made the book into a movie in 1967, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. I don’t remember a single thing about the movie, but I have never forgotten the book. Graham Greene was an exceptional writer.


Stirring up memories of the book was an article in The Washington Post. The horrors taking place in Port-au-Prince are paraded past us daily, but nobody mentioned the wealthy, largely untouched mountain suburb of Petionville – until reporter William Booth came along to tell us that Haiti’s rich and powerful are still living the good life.


I wonder if Graham Greene would be aghast, or even surprised. The Jan.18 article can be read at
http://tinyurl.com/ylys8tm.

The Hotel Oloffson, setting for Greene’s political thriller, still stands. THE COMEDIANS takes place during the dictatorship of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his thugs, the Tonton Macoute. The narrator is Mr. Brown, an Englishman who inherited the Hotel Oloffson from his aunt. Other central characters are The Presidential Candidate, a well-meaning American who ran for president in 1948 and comes to Haiti to set up a vegetarian center, and Mr. Jones, a gregarious con artist from Europe who finds redemption in an uprising against the corrupt government.


I’ve always like Greene’s opening lines:


“When I think of all the grey memorials erected in London to equestrian generals, the heroes of old colonial wars, and to frock-coated politicians who are even more deeply forgotten, I can find no reason to mock the modest stone that commemorates Jones on the far side of the international road which he failed to cross in a country far from home, though I am not to this day absolutely sure of where, geographically speaking, Jones's home lay. At least he paid for the monument - however unwillingly - with his life, while the generals as a rule came home safe and paid, if at all, with the blood of their men, and as for the politicians - who cares for dead politicians sufficiently to remember with what issues they were identified? Free Trade is less interesting than an Ashanti War, though the London pigeons do not distinguish between the two. Exegi monumentum."

(I looked it up. Exegi monumentum means "I raised myself a monument.")


Some of today’s readers might find those lines slow and old-fashioned. To me, they set up a story that promises to blot out everything else for a few hours.


The Hotel Oloffson is not the only luxury hotel still standing after last week’s earthquake. The old Hotel Villa Creole has a crushed central structure, with beautiful paintings and carvings covered in dust, but it is open to paying customers. A hospital is set up at its entrance, and media from all over the world are based in the swimming pool.


Haiti’s history, briefly: Haiti’s native labor made France rich until a slave uprising at the turn of the 19th century. In 1804, Haiti declared its independence, but its native leaders turned out to be as cruel and corrupt as its former French masters. The country endured 33 coups. U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934.


Quoting from a story in The Week magazine, Jan 29 issue:


“The island has the misfortune, among others, to be located directly in a geological fault zone, making it susceptible to earthquakes, and its location in the Caribbean makes it a sitting duck for hurricanes. Environmental degradation and poverty, of course, only compound the problems. ‘If you want to put the worst-case scenario together in the Western Hemisphere for disasters,’ says Richard Olson of Florida International University, ‘it’s Haiti.’


You can read entire article -- “Haiti: A History of Hurt” -- at http://tinyurl.com/yhtrdw7

Graham Greene’s Haiti has changed, but not nearly enough. As for writers, he offers the best answer I’ve found to the question: Where do you get your characters?


THE COMEDIAN is written in first person, from Mr. Brown’s viewpoint. In a letter to A.S. Frere, his former publisher, Greene wrote:


“ ‘I’ is not the only imaginary character: none of the others, from such minor players as the British charge to the principals, has ever existed. A physical trait taken here, a habit of speech, an anecdote -- they are boiled up in the kitchen of the unconscious and emerge unrecognizable even to the cook in most cases.”