During this holiday season, can we really give thanks for all of these things?
Of course.
Why not?
Actually some people may have small families, or they may have no family that they know of. But most of us do have family members that we love, and for them, we are grateful.
And we have friends. Sure, some friends are closer than others, but for all of them, we give thanks.
Then there are the murders. We like them, too--as long as they remain in our movies and books. Why? Someone always makes the murderers accountable for their evil deeds. They let us know the world is right. The good will achieve; the bad will be punished. What is right will overcome evil.
Those of us who write about killings do so with an awareness that our good guy or gal will go after the villain and make him pay for what he broke. That's what store owners want: If you break it, you pay for it. We feel the same way about life.
Readers of mysteries want that too. If someone in a story creates a major problem in someone else's life, they yearn to see that person punished. It is only after the punishment occurs that the world seems right. The future looks more promising.
Thus while we all plunge ourselves deeper into the merry holiday season, let us always remember to thank those who care about us--our families and friends. And also those who create worlds in which good battles evil and always overcomes, which strenghtens our faith and knowledge that another day will look brighter.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Thursday, November 25, 2010
While the Clock Ticked...
by Jonathan Quist
From the beginning of crime fiction, timepieces have played major roles, ranging from the illusory to the concrete. In The Telltale Heart, Poe describes the sound of a beating heart as “a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”. The description is subtly sensual, but also metaphorical – the ticking watch representing both the steady beat of life going on, and also the abrupt manner in which it can run down to nothing. Recently, this metaphor was restated, much more bluntly, in the HBO series, Dexter, as one character intoned, “Tick, tick, tick. That’s the sound of your life running out.”
That line is an excellent summary of the most common appearance of clocks – the representation of an absolute deadline approaching. How many times has 007 defused a bomb with 3 seconds remaining on the clock? Or a worried detective glanced across a smoke-filled room to a clock approaching a ransom deadline?
Hercule Poirot solved the mystery of The Clocks. The Hardy Boys learned what happened When the Clock Ticked, even as Nancy Drew learned The Secret of the Old Clock. The Boxcar Children faced The Haunted Clock Tower fifteen years before the people of Hill Valley tried to save the clock tower.
While the Dexter quote above refers to the ticking of a watch, prior to the appearance of relatively inexpensive, accurate quartz watches, clocks were more likely to play that role. Clocks held more respect, in a sense - nobody would have thought of leaving the house for an important appointment without first checking their watch against an accurate clock. And that brings me to the prompt for this little musing.
Standing in the room with me is my grandfather’s grandfather – a 1907 Gilbert long case clock. (The name “grandfather clock” became common with the popularity of Henry Clay Work’s 1876 song, “My Grandfather’s Clock”.) My dad spent most of his retirement restoring the clock, the work delayed or repeated for myriad reasons over twenty years, until 5 years ago, when he took a fall from a stool while reinstalling the movement into the case. Dad wasn’t hurt, but the clock suffered enough damage to end the project. It came to me a year ago, and sat untouched until my wife offered the challenge to get it running in time for Thanksgiving guests. (Thanks for the prod, honey!)
The past month has been a journey, to say the least. With the aid of several old books, and the members of an online horological community, I straightened several parts bent in the fall, fabricated new leather tips for the strike hammers, and resynchronized the strike gear train. Then repeated several steps to get them right – I wasn’t satisfied with a clock that struck the hours continuously until the weight ran down.
And then I sat back, and listened. The clock does not sound like it does in my memory. Replacing the old, hardened leather with new mellowed the sound quite a bit. One experienced clock repairer told me it probably sounds like it did when new. Is that good or bad? That’s a complex question to answer.
While the "new sound" is much more pleasant, it is the old sound which is ingrained into my soul. It heralded the
arrival of Christmas (and Santa). It rang in each and every New Year - the year I had my first camera, it was the sound that signaled time to click the shutter as my parents posed patiently, with the clock hands pointing to "XII" behind them. At 19, it gently nudged me that it was time to drive my young lady friend home. This clock was the time standard of my life - it never occurred to me that any other was more trustworthy. Even when, as a teen, I began periodically checking and adjusting the clock against National Bureau of Standards time broadcasts, I viewed it as part of an organic process which did not impeach the accuracy of the clock.
During my teen years, when I suffered bouts of insomnia, the old sound was my staunch companion through the long nights. During over-night term paper sessions, it encouraged me to carry on, and, eventually, to panic. During college years, it called out a warm greeting to me during phone calls home.
So restoring the sound to "factory new" was not an easy call. The right call, but also the wrong one.
I've got more work to do – I took a lot of shortcuts, which need to be addressed relatively soon. But it's good enough for now. I've met Karin’s "by Thanksgiving" challenge, and I'm quite happy with that. I closed everything up that first night and started the pendulum swinging around 11:25. By the time I had settled in with my book, the house had gone quiet. And the clock struck midnight, welcoming the arrival of a new day.
Yeah. That's good enough.
From the beginning of crime fiction, timepieces have played major roles, ranging from the illusory to the concrete. In The Telltale Heart, Poe describes the sound of a beating heart as “a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton”. The description is subtly sensual, but also metaphorical – the ticking watch representing both the steady beat of life going on, and also the abrupt manner in which it can run down to nothing. Recently, this metaphor was restated, much more bluntly, in the HBO series, Dexter, as one character intoned, “Tick, tick, tick. That’s the sound of your life running out.”
That line is an excellent summary of the most common appearance of clocks – the representation of an absolute deadline approaching. How many times has 007 defused a bomb with 3 seconds remaining on the clock? Or a worried detective glanced across a smoke-filled room to a clock approaching a ransom deadline?
Hercule Poirot solved the mystery of The Clocks. The Hardy Boys learned what happened When the Clock Ticked, even as Nancy Drew learned The Secret of the Old Clock. The Boxcar Children faced The Haunted Clock Tower fifteen years before the people of Hill Valley tried to save the clock tower.
While the Dexter quote above refers to the ticking of a watch, prior to the appearance of relatively inexpensive, accurate quartz watches, clocks were more likely to play that role. Clocks held more respect, in a sense - nobody would have thought of leaving the house for an important appointment without first checking their watch against an accurate clock. And that brings me to the prompt for this little musing.
Standing in the room with me is my grandfather’s grandfather – a 1907 Gilbert long case clock. (The name “grandfather clock” became common with the popularity of Henry Clay Work’s 1876 song, “My Grandfather’s Clock”.) My dad spent most of his retirement restoring the clock, the work delayed or repeated for myriad reasons over twenty years, until 5 years ago, when he took a fall from a stool while reinstalling the movement into the case. Dad wasn’t hurt, but the clock suffered enough damage to end the project. It came to me a year ago, and sat untouched until my wife offered the challenge to get it running in time for Thanksgiving guests. (Thanks for the prod, honey!)
The past month has been a journey, to say the least. With the aid of several old books, and the members of an online horological community, I straightened several parts bent in the fall, fabricated new leather tips for the strike hammers, and resynchronized the strike gear train. Then repeated several steps to get them right – I wasn’t satisfied with a clock that struck the hours continuously until the weight ran down.
And then I sat back, and listened. The clock does not sound like it does in my memory. Replacing the old, hardened leather with new mellowed the sound quite a bit. One experienced clock repairer told me it probably sounds like it did when new. Is that good or bad? That’s a complex question to answer.
While the "new sound" is much more pleasant, it is the old sound which is ingrained into my soul. It heralded the
arrival of Christmas (and Santa). It rang in each and every New Year - the year I had my first camera, it was the sound that signaled time to click the shutter as my parents posed patiently, with the clock hands pointing to "XII" behind them. At 19, it gently nudged me that it was time to drive my young lady friend home. This clock was the time standard of my life - it never occurred to me that any other was more trustworthy. Even when, as a teen, I began periodically checking and adjusting the clock against National Bureau of Standards time broadcasts, I viewed it as part of an organic process which did not impeach the accuracy of the clock.During my teen years, when I suffered bouts of insomnia, the old sound was my staunch companion through the long nights. During over-night term paper sessions, it encouraged me to carry on, and, eventually, to panic. During college years, it called out a warm greeting to me during phone calls home.
So restoring the sound to "factory new" was not an easy call. The right call, but also the wrong one.
I've got more work to do – I took a lot of shortcuts, which need to be addressed relatively soon. But it's good enough for now. I've met Karin’s "by Thanksgiving" challenge, and I'm quite happy with that. I closed everything up that first night and started the pendulum swinging around 11:25. By the time I had settled in with my book, the house had gone quiet. And the clock struck midnight, welcoming the arrival of a new day.
Yeah. That's good enough.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The Power of Persuasion
Persuasion: A form of social influence. The process of guiding oneself or another toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational, forceful, and symbolic means. A process where writers play a huge role by creating speeches, television commercials, television shows, plays, novels, and screenplays, all of which have the ability to bring about change. It’s a role writers cannot take lightly.
Noteworthy quotes made history. Patrick Henry, the first post-colonial Governor of Virginia, gave a boost to the American Revolution with his "Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" speech. “Remember the Alamo” did the same during Texas’ fight for freedom. Rear Admiral David Farragut’s command to “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” led to victory during the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. All of these quotes carried the power of persuasion. But these words would have meant little, had they not been documented and shared through some form of mass communication. At the time, it was on printed paper. Later, radio sped the process. Then came television, whose live broadcast of the Kennedy assassination changed the world. Now, every significant statement or event can be instantly transmitted through the Internet, all of which have the ability to persuade.
Elections thrive on emotional persuasion. Our recent mid-term elections proved that. Writers on either side wrote emotional speeches and ads to be remembered. Strong messages bring strong reactions. Campaigners hope that voters will remember their ads as being supportive, though emotional messages can also lead to backlashes. And when politicians decide to ad lib their interviews or speeches, skilled writers must be called in for damage control long after the elections are over.
Of course, some novels are written to persuade. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote about a poor sharecropping family during the Great Depression, forced from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes within the agriculture industry. But Steinbeck’s real intent was to shame the “greedy bastards” who were responsible for the economic woes. Considering how history has repeated itself, it’s likely we will see a new book of similar stature.
Every writer has the power to persuade, but their message must be clear. If the topic is murder, there should be a reason behind the killing. Serial murders without a message merely stir anger. But make the reader identify with a serial killer and you’ve got yourself a movie contract. If the environment is the topic as it was in State of Fear, the message is most effective when presented as a sideline. Forced ideas repel, not persuade.
From this discussion, it’s easy to see that the common denominator in persuading is emotion. Without it, fiction writers fall flat. But because of its unpredictability, emotion must also be kept in check. This is why writers use editors to objectively review their work. Ironically, these editors persuade writers with brief, unemotional, direct comments.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Preventable people by Bill Kirton
I wonder if, when you saw the title, you thought, ‘Ah yes, preventable people – an obvious choice of subject for a crime/mystery writer.’ The genre is full of undesirable characters who make for good, entertaining fiction but who wouldn't be very nice neighbours. Perhaps surprisingly, I have very few ‘villains’ in my books, but the ones I do have would definitely qualify for being ‘prevented’ in some way or another.
But the expression has nothing to do with crime fiction. In fact, it was a slip of the tongue by someone being interviewed on the BBC recently. He meant things that could be prevented from affecting people but I think the slip is much more interesting. Of course, it would be easy to make a list of preventable people. They’d vary according to our political, moral and other beliefs but there’s another, bigger problem. In order to know that they ought to be prevented, we’d need to know why, which means they’d need to exist first and so, by definition, they couldn’t be prevented. All very existential.
And before pro-lifers or their adversaries start putting me on their list of undesirables (or maybe preventables), this isn’t about abortion. I have very clear opinions about that topic which are too profoundly held and too important to be articulated in a trivial medium such as one of my blogs. No, this is just a words thing. It’s just me musing about the idea of a category of persons who are unpleasant enough, in one way or another, to be considered preventable.
Purists will complain that that implies being prevented from doing something specific but I prefer the blunt, unqualified ‘prevented’. If someone should have been prevented it means there’s nothing about them worth preserving. How satisfying it would be, when faced with a politician mouthing the usual evasions or a celebrity making vacuous pronouncements about their importance or their desire to be alone, to be able to say ‘he/she ought to have been prevented’.
How much nicer history (and therefore the world) would have been if certain people had been prevented. In fact, I’m beginning to think that the verb might be an alternative to ‘elected’. At the polls, why shouldn’t we get ballot papers which allow us to ‘prevent’ candidates as well as ‘elect’ them? Given the representatives we seem to choose, I’m pretty confident that the ‘preventable’ option would be a much better use of the democratic process.
Of course, what would happen is that we’d all cancel one another out. I’d want to eliminate all bigots on both left and right of politics, and their supporters would want to get rid of wishy-washy people hovering in the centre. Fervent worshippers of the various religions would eradicate all traces of any opposing beliefs, so religion would disappear completely. Street gangs would cancel one another out, Pepsi would prevent Coke and vice versa, MacDonalds, KFC, Burger King and all the others would all vanish. The slavering hordes of supporters of the various teams in football (US and UK versions), baseball, cricket and other sports would eliminate each other, government and opposition benches would be emptied and, one by one, the delegates at the United Nations would pop into non-existence.
Hmmm. This is beginning to sound like a very attractive proposition.
Monday, November 22, 2010
What Am I Watching? By Shane Cashion
I'm falling out of love with television. It's true. After thirty five years of enjoyment, I'm getting tired of it. High Def, Standard Def, LCD, LED, Plasma, Direct TV, U-Verse, Dish, Pay Per View, sports packages, premium packages, movie packages, 1080, 480, how many rooms can we get service in, what about the garage; it's all too much.
When I was a kid, we had six channels with three networks. Our TV was carved from the trunk of a Giant Sequoia and it was the only TV in the house. Today we have a TV in every room, like they're home radiators. What's more, they all look alike, sleek black borders on a flat, rectangular screen. The only way to tell them apart is by their size. Ours range from a highway billboard to a child's fingernail. If you're wondering if we're rich, we're not. We got them the same way as most: tricks, raffles, store credits, QVC easy pays, gifts, marriage, and bartering with clients who can't pay for legal services.
Because we have so many TVs, selecting the right cable company or satellite provider is big business. After endless affairs with various outfits, all of which ended badly (threatening letters, slurs, collections, lawsuits, etc.) we finally settled on AT&T U-Verse as our forever provider. The U-Verse rep duped us into buying the premium package. Our channels stop at 9,910. Outside of a handful of sports channels and a few staples, I don't watch any of them as I never know what's on.
Growing up, I always knew what was on. How could you not? There were only six channels. I'll never forget walking home from school in fourth grade wondering who in the hell shot J.R. Was it Sue Ellen, her sister, or had Cliff Barnes finally gotten fed up with being the Ewing's punching bag? And we always had our favorite night of TV. Like so many others, mine was Thursday: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, and Hill Street Blues. What a line up!
Today, I just incessantly flip channels in hopes of finding something better. For the most part, I stop randomly to watch parts of shows on A & E, Discovery, TLC, History, and The Travel Channel. Of course you can't help but recognize certain shows, like Dog The Bounty Hunter, which has its moments, though the story's always the same. Dog and his crew of cartoon characters chase some "Ice Head" through the seedier parts of Hawaii until a friend or a family member gives the fugitive up. Once found, Dog's sons beat the tar out of the guy while Dog and his wife cuss at him. The show ends with a ride to county jail where Dog listens to the fugitive's story, empathizes with his plight, feels sorry for him, prays for him, and then offers him a smoke as a final peace offering. They always part as friends, and the fugitive is usually grateful for the sage advice he received from a sixty year old man with a mullet called Dog.
When we originally signed up for U-Verse, I was particularly excited about the movie package. With more than fifty channels showing premium movies in HD our options would surely be endless. We'd feel like movie critics! Not quite. After a year of having it, I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, when I can find it, and nothing else. Jennifer's Body has been on HBO for 311 consecutive days. I'm sure it's not a record, though it should be a crime.
As a policy, I refuse to watch anything not in high definition. The U-Verse channels above 1000 are in HD, and those below 1000 are in SD. Most of the channels offer both, so TBS is in HD on channel 1112, and in SD on channel 112. I routinely catch my wife watching the standard definition version on 112. While I don't say anything to her; inside, I'm having an apoplectic fit. She might as well be watching a black and white TV with rabbit ears! "What are you doing?!!!!!" I scream inside my head.
U-Verse comes with a DVR that allows me to record, rewind, fast forward, send live shows to my cell phone, produce films, and basically do whatever I want. With one simple remote, I'm the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately, I never use it because I can never find the shows I like. Nevertheless, I am amazed at how far technology has come since the days of the old VHS and BETA recorders. I remember when my rich uncle bought one of the early VCRs. Four beefy guys delivered it to his house on a skid. The rest of my family was so jealous that they refused to go see it. At Christmas they played home movies of him without his hair transplant. I wonder if he still has that VCR? I bet he could sell it to those three guys who own the pawn shop in Las Vegas. I like that show too. I wish I knew when it was on.
Above all the myriad things that frustrate me about modern television; it's what it did to my love of sports that bothers me most. On any given Saturday, there are hundreds if not thousands of football and basketball games on. It's too many. Before cable or satellite TV, the networks picked what games I watched, and I liked it. At best, there may have been six games on in an entire day. Now, don't get me wrong, I love being able to watch my favorite teams play, but I used to like to watch the "big games" involving other teams too. Today, I can see just about every game being played anywhere in the world, which wreaks havoc on my attention deficit brain. Because I can't settle on a single game, I just flip channels from game to game to game without actually watching any of them. By the end of the day, I've watched eight hours of lowlights. I never happen upon a game when something exciting occurs.
In the end, I trust I'm just acting spoiled, and of course exaggerating a bit. Truth be told, I have no intention of ever canceling U-Verse, since they are my forever provider, but I am getting sick of trying to keep up with the latest technology only to watch a handful of shows and games from a digital scroll of crappy viewing options.
When I was a kid, we had six channels with three networks. Our TV was carved from the trunk of a Giant Sequoia and it was the only TV in the house. Today we have a TV in every room, like they're home radiators. What's more, they all look alike, sleek black borders on a flat, rectangular screen. The only way to tell them apart is by their size. Ours range from a highway billboard to a child's fingernail. If you're wondering if we're rich, we're not. We got them the same way as most: tricks, raffles, store credits, QVC easy pays, gifts, marriage, and bartering with clients who can't pay for legal services.
Because we have so many TVs, selecting the right cable company or satellite provider is big business. After endless affairs with various outfits, all of which ended badly (threatening letters, slurs, collections, lawsuits, etc.) we finally settled on AT&T U-Verse as our forever provider. The U-Verse rep duped us into buying the premium package. Our channels stop at 9,910. Outside of a handful of sports channels and a few staples, I don't watch any of them as I never know what's on.
Growing up, I always knew what was on. How could you not? There were only six channels. I'll never forget walking home from school in fourth grade wondering who in the hell shot J.R. Was it Sue Ellen, her sister, or had Cliff Barnes finally gotten fed up with being the Ewing's punching bag? And we always had our favorite night of TV. Like so many others, mine was Thursday: The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court, and Hill Street Blues. What a line up!
Today, I just incessantly flip channels in hopes of finding something better. For the most part, I stop randomly to watch parts of shows on A & E, Discovery, TLC, History, and The Travel Channel. Of course you can't help but recognize certain shows, like Dog The Bounty Hunter, which has its moments, though the story's always the same. Dog and his crew of cartoon characters chase some "Ice Head" through the seedier parts of Hawaii until a friend or a family member gives the fugitive up. Once found, Dog's sons beat the tar out of the guy while Dog and his wife cuss at him. The show ends with a ride to county jail where Dog listens to the fugitive's story, empathizes with his plight, feels sorry for him, prays for him, and then offers him a smoke as a final peace offering. They always part as friends, and the fugitive is usually grateful for the sage advice he received from a sixty year old man with a mullet called Dog.
When we originally signed up for U-Verse, I was particularly excited about the movie package. With more than fifty channels showing premium movies in HD our options would surely be endless. We'd feel like movie critics! Not quite. After a year of having it, I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, when I can find it, and nothing else. Jennifer's Body has been on HBO for 311 consecutive days. I'm sure it's not a record, though it should be a crime.
As a policy, I refuse to watch anything not in high definition. The U-Verse channels above 1000 are in HD, and those below 1000 are in SD. Most of the channels offer both, so TBS is in HD on channel 1112, and in SD on channel 112. I routinely catch my wife watching the standard definition version on 112. While I don't say anything to her; inside, I'm having an apoplectic fit. She might as well be watching a black and white TV with rabbit ears! "What are you doing?!!!!!" I scream inside my head.
U-Verse comes with a DVR that allows me to record, rewind, fast forward, send live shows to my cell phone, produce films, and basically do whatever I want. With one simple remote, I'm the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately, I never use it because I can never find the shows I like. Nevertheless, I am amazed at how far technology has come since the days of the old VHS and BETA recorders. I remember when my rich uncle bought one of the early VCRs. Four beefy guys delivered it to his house on a skid. The rest of my family was so jealous that they refused to go see it. At Christmas they played home movies of him without his hair transplant. I wonder if he still has that VCR? I bet he could sell it to those three guys who own the pawn shop in Las Vegas. I like that show too. I wish I knew when it was on.
Above all the myriad things that frustrate me about modern television; it's what it did to my love of sports that bothers me most. On any given Saturday, there are hundreds if not thousands of football and basketball games on. It's too many. Before cable or satellite TV, the networks picked what games I watched, and I liked it. At best, there may have been six games on in an entire day. Now, don't get me wrong, I love being able to watch my favorite teams play, but I used to like to watch the "big games" involving other teams too. Today, I can see just about every game being played anywhere in the world, which wreaks havoc on my attention deficit brain. Because I can't settle on a single game, I just flip channels from game to game to game without actually watching any of them. By the end of the day, I've watched eight hours of lowlights. I never happen upon a game when something exciting occurs.
In the end, I trust I'm just acting spoiled, and of course exaggerating a bit. Truth be told, I have no intention of ever canceling U-Verse, since they are my forever provider, but I am getting sick of trying to keep up with the latest technology only to watch a handful of shows and games from a digital scroll of crappy viewing options.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Greetings From An English Cocker Blogger -- and Her Faithful Scribe
Lucy and Susan. It's a terrible picture of me, but good of her.Happy Sunday. Thanks to Pat Browning who introduced me to the Murderous Musings crowd two weeks ago, and to all my fellow/sister MM bloggers who made me feel so welcome. This is my very first blog posting. Ever. In my entire life. It's about time I got myself into the 21st century, right? So here I go.
I figured that since my "official" MM photo shows me with two dogs (I'm the one in the middle, in case you were wondering), my first blog post should tell everybody about them. I'm sharing the family room sofa with Tucker and Lucy, both English cocker spaniels. The important words here are "English cockers," not to be confused with their more "common" American relatives. (I hope I'm not offending anyone by saying that.)
Anyway, when I got the idea for the Baby Boomer mysteries, Lucy got the idea that she should be in them. And she pestered and pestered me until I finally gave in. She is extremely persistent. But no way was she sharing the limelight with another "real" dog. Not that girl. She demanded a fictitious sidekick, so what could I do but come up with the name "Ethel"? It seemed to fit somehow, like peanut butter and jelly. Fred and Ginger. Salt and pepper. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Somehow, she managed to convince the book designer that her photo belonged on the back of the book jacket. So, there she is. (I wonder who her agent is?) I got a big kick out of the Sisters in Crime list this week because there were a lot of posts about how important it is for a female author to have her photo on the book jacket. I'm not sure if Lucy would go for that, but the second book is in production now and I'm just going to add my photo and not tell her.
For Christmas, Lucy wants a stamp of her paw print made for me to take to book signings when she can't attend. Apparently her fans have suggested it. I do a lot of book signings on the dog show circuit, and she started her own fan club when I wasn't looking. Could Facebook and Twitter be far behind?
Friday, November 19, 2010
A Contribution from the New Guy
About a week ago, I got an email from Patricia King.
Pat, who calls herself Annamaria Alfieri when she’s writing novels, (check out her delightful City of Silver, set in Potosi back in colonial times) had this to say:
“I’ve just been reading Paraguay, Brazil, and the Plate: Letters Written in 1852-1853 by C. B. Mansfield, and I came across a few lines that reminded me of your books. Mansfield, one of those intrepid, peripatetic 19th century English naturalists, was traveling in the back country of Pernambuco studying the flora and fauna. He wrote: The only industry, so far as I have learned, among the Brazilians here is sugar-growing, mandioca-eating, and assassination. Murders are being committed continually.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!”
Yup.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let me back up and introduce myself.
I’m Leighton Gage, the new guy here on Murderous Musings. I live in Brazil and write crime novels set in this country.
My home is in a little town less than a hundred kilometers from the Tropic of Capricorn. It’s called Santana do Parnaiba, meaning “Santa Anna of the Rocky River”, and it was founded back in 1625.
The city of which we’re a suburb, is even older, having been established by Jesuit missionaries on the 25th of January, 1554. It’s São Paulo, now home to more than twenty million people, the giant of the Southern Hemisphere and the source of my inspiration.
Some of the people who live around here are very rich, but most of them are very poor.
Which might lead you to believe that I live in a poor country.
That’s not the case.
Brazil’s GNP is greater than that of the next five countries in South America combined. We have an automobile industry, an aircraft industry and a computer industry. We launch satellites into space. We’re independent in terms of natural gas and petroleum.
We have the largest fleet of private helicopters and the largest fleet of private jets outside of the United States. We are eighth among all the economies of the world.
We’re rich. And, of all of the cities of Brazil, São Paulo is the richest of all. But it’s also jam-packed with poor people.
(The title of the cartoon says, “Poverty is diminishing in Brazil…”)
Our income distribution is worse than that of all of the other countries in the western hemisphere - except for Haiti and Bolivia.
But those countries have tiny populations in comparison to ours, which is currently approaching two hundred million.
The wealthy, of course, live very well indeed.
If I could walk you through the Santos Yacht Club’s installation at Angra dos Reis, where the hundred-footers are lined up one next to the other…
…or bring you to Daslu, the most luxurious shop in São Paulo, you’d be able to see what I mean.
And the situation isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
How come Brazil’s rich get richer while the poor keep getting poorer?
In a word: feudalism.
Two percent of the people own sixty percent of the land.
And have owned it, many of them, for four hundred years.
But that’s not the only thing.
Corruption, too, is a factor.
Brazil, in a recent survey, was found to be the fourth most corrupt country in the world, after Benin, Kenya and Guatemala.
By and large, the politicians are corrupt, the cops are corrupt, the judges are corrupt and so are most of the other “public servants” (Ha!) from tax collectors to building inspectors. Last year, in the Amazonian city of Manaus alone, the federal cops busted more than 120 of the locals for crimes ranging from extortion to murder.
And, as you can well imagine, all of this social inequality, and all of this corruption, makes Brazil a breeding ground for crime.
Countrywide there are fifty-thousand murders a year. Seventy percent of all crimes go unsolved, and only one convicted felon in ten serves out his sentence.
A law school colleague of my brother-in-law used to run the murder squad for the city of Ṣo Paulo. He had 750 men and women on staff, investigating nothing but murders Рand he was understaffed.
Here are a couple of popular expressions, freely translated from the Portuguese:
(On the justice system) “The rich don’t go to jail.”
(On politicians) “They’re all thieves.”
(On getting sold a bill of goods by the government) “Brazil is the country of the future – and it always has been.”
For a crime writer, this place is paradise.
Every day, the newspapers bring new grist to my literary mill.
But it isn’t only the social situation that makes this place fascinating. It’s the land itself.
This is a shot taken from the rainforest that tops a mountain range called the Serra de Cantareira. The jungle is in the foreground, the heart of the city is what you see off on the horizon, less than thirty kilometers away. A small plane on final approach to one of our airports went down in that jungle back in 1956. Everybody knew where it was – roughly. All they had to do was to draw a line on the map - and search on either side of that line.
Which they did.
But it wasn’t until 1984 that they found it.
The jungle up there is that impenetrable.
And yet so close by.
You can clearly see the vast expanse of thick vegetation from the windows of any one of a number of skyscrapers on our main drag, Avenida Paulista.
Leaving the city in the opposite direction from the Serra, a drive of eighty kilometers will take you down to the sea. I say “down” because São Paulo is situated at slightly above 800 meters of altitude, and the descent to the coast is worth doing for the spectacular views alone.
If, when you reach the coast, you turn left and follow the road it will take you around a bay, the Bahia de Ilha Grande. I’ve spent many happy hours sailing among its more than three hundred islands, many of which have pristine beaches, sparkling springs and beautiful waterfalls.
You probably know already that Brazil is big. But did you know that it’s larger than the continental United States?
One river alone, the Amazon, contains twenty percent of all of the fresh water in the world. In that river swim more species of fish than in all of the Atlantic Ocean – as well as manatees and botos.
You don’t know what a boto is?
Well, here’s a picture of one. It’s a pink, freshwater porpoise, and it can be trained to come when you call.
Brazil is where I live, my reality, the place I write about in my books.
And, in future postings to this blog, I hope to bring you back here again and again. I’ve been asked, and have gratefully accepted, to be here twice a month, on the first and third Saturdays. I’m truly looking forward to it.
If you’d like to know more about my books, you can check them out here on my website.
And, if you'd like to see an interview with me, recorded at the end of September when I was in Helsinki to launch the Finnish version of Buried Strangers, go here
Cheers All,
Leighton
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