Invitation to Murder

Behind the high, ivy-covered walls of the Burchfield Estate in Oakland, California, the Lord and Lady of the Manor spend many an evening huddled before a warm TV, watching British mystery series, mostly on PBS, some on BBCA. (They’re also available for streaming on Roku, through Acorn, but we haven’t snipped the cable yet, mostly because the servants object. And with good help so hard to find these days, well . . . .)

Among our favorites—and there are a fair number--is Midsomer Murders.  Based on a series of novels by Caroline Graham, it’s not the crème de la pinnacle of its genre (an honor I bestow upon Prime Suspect, Foyle’s War, Sherlock! and Poirot et al). But it rates high as a most companionable and genial program, with John Nettles (Ret.) playing a droll Sheriff Andy to a bizarre population of kinky eccentrics and village nutcases. It’s perverse waltz theme, featuring the Theremin, makes a fine ear worm.

We like Midsomer for choosing sharp, polished fun over tortured profundity, making it a relative rarity in 21^st Century cable TV’s savage, despairing environment. (I can watch Sam Peckinpah’s original Straw Dogs--also set in rural England--again anytime I want to despair over the human condition.)

Though ostensibly contemporary (cell phones abound), Midsomer cheerily wanders a never-never land of rural English villages, woodlands and fields, all nested in the titular bucolic county.

Peaceful as it appears though, Midsomer County has what seems the highest homicide rate per population on Earth. Underneath all that chipper bourgeois Winnnie-the-Pooh gentility bubbles a bloody cauldron of homicidal mania. The English can’t stop killing! Any good-hearted, innocent wide-eyed American who dares to tread its green sward is bound to return in a pine box (as I might as I am in the planning stages of journey there in a couple of years. I am so glad I have cable!)

The blame for England’s descent into genteel slaughter though, lies not with Midsomer Murders itself, but with its ancestral inspiration: the stories and novels of Agatha Christie, still the best-selling author in the world nearly forty years after her passing, and the Queen of the so-called Golden Age of Mystery.

This ancestry is most ably and enjoyably explored in The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story by Martin Edwards, the latest in several books about how mystery fiction grew to so dominate western literature.

While paying due tribute to the founders of detective fiction, Poe, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton, The Golden Age story begins in the 1920s. That was when the painfully shy Ms. Christie, then an upper-middle-class housewife, published her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced one of literature’s most endearing oddballs, Hercule Poirot.

Mystery fiction already had monuments left by Doyle and Chesterton, but thanks to Christie’s deft plotting and the imaginative characterization of her heroes (especially Poirot), the genre’s popularity ballooned to phenomenon. Her success inspired near-countless other writers to try their hand, among them Dorothy L. Sayers.

Eventually, in 1930, a group of them living in London, co-led by Sayers, united to form The Detection Club, electing G.K. Chesterton as their first president. This happened, in part, to help promote the work of members; form a united front against greedy scheming publishers; but, mostly to provide an excuse to socialize. They held their own cheeky, flamboyant bizarre initiation ritual, complete with robes, candles, murder weapons, and a skull grinning from a velvet cushion, all topped with a grandly solemn oath. They often collaborated on novels, stories, and radio scripts in round-robin fashion.

They were truly like characters out of their own books, as odd and fascinating as the tales they imagined. Their private lives concealed their own mysteries and scandals.

Sayers had a child out of wedlock whose existence she never fully acknowledged (in keeping with the strict mores of the day). And Christie pulled a sensational vanishing act in 1926, for reasons that remain foggy. Other writers wove their secret fantasies of murder and adulterous misbehavior into their stories, engaging in a level of meta-gamesmanship, perhaps equal to Vladimir Nabokov in daring and cleverness, if not in style and vision. (Nabokov, sad to say, was too much a snob, for he could have well thumped these writers at their own game playing. What a book that would have been!)

They all thought nothing of cheerfully peeling their plotlines right out of the day’s headlines, imagining solutions to many a famous and unsolved murder. But they were not a callous bunch. Some critics theorize that many of them were subconsciously dealing with the trauma of World War I, in which many served.

Christie and Sayers are among the few Detection Club members who are read widely today. Some of the other noted names were A.A. Milne and, later, Eric Ambler.

Others are now forgotten, some undeservedly. Among those, John Dickson Carr, an American, was master of the “locked room” mystery (and author of a sinfully enjoyable non-mystery, the time-travel historical romp, The Devil in Velvet).

Then there is Michael Innes, who helped develop the “Oxford Don” mystery. Innes wrote fine prose with a razor wit and a flair for wild n’ wooly action climaxes. His influence can be gleaned in the series featuring Inspectors Morse and Lewis.

Despite their reputation for upper-class twittery, Golden Age writers often adeptly captured their era, the years between the wars. Nor were they all reactionary Tories. Their viewpoints ran from left to right and up and down the class system. Some even sounded early alarms about Nazism while inveighing against both Communism and Capitalism. The Detection Club drew members from near and far, among them New Zealand’s Ngaio Marsh and the American Carr.

The Detection Club is still active, with author Edwards as a member and first club archivist. His research has borne good fruit here. But if you want to join the club yourself, good luck on even finding a web page. It’s invitation only. Some things really should remain a mystery, hidden in locked rooms for good.

Copyright 2015 by Thomas Burchfield

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Thomas Burchfield’s latest (yet to be published) novel is Butchertown, a ripping, 1920s gangster shoot-‘em-up. He is also the author of the contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark, winner of the IPPY, NIEA, and Halloween Book festival awards for horror in 2012. He’s also author of the original screenplays Whackers and The Uglies (e-book editions only). Published by Ambler House Publishing, those three are available at Amazon in various editions. You can also find his work at Barnes and Noble,  Powell's Books, and Scribed. He also “friends” on Facebook, tweets on Twitter, reads at Goodreads and drinks at various bars around the East Bay. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

The Alchemy of Fiction, The Inhabitants of the Story

When I read fiction, I’m seeking experience apart from mine; an island, a ship, afloat from everyday life (wondrous as the everyday can be in its own terms.) I want a trip to the other side of what I know.

I’m on a quest for adventures that I wouldn’t otherwise have (or even want to have). Reading fiction is a way of wearing and walking in the shoes of others; of thinking with another mind, seeing with other eyes, in another time and place. In the work of Vladimir Nabokov, you can almost caress the world with your fingertips. (If you gather I lean away from contemporary realism, such as the kind Jonathan Franzen writes, you’d be right.)

I don’t read fiction like a mirror, looking for my face (though when it happens, it is an amusing surprise; nevertheless, the room behind the face is never mine; no shower curtain, for example).

Nor do I read fiction for moral uplift, education, or noble ideas; even the most vivid and skillful historical novel should be read with salt sprinkled across its pages. (Nonfiction is still best door into the realities of human history, no matter how bitterly deconstructionists mutter otherwise as they crouch over their laptops at the coffee shop.)

Good fiction comes about through alchemy; a stirring of elements, all chopped, stirred, boiled, blended, basted, baked, and braised: setting, story, plot, thought, outlook, style, and imagination. There is calculation and discipline involved, but there is no science to it and hence no “formula.” There are no absolutes. The godly author can strangle a man in his bed on page one or let him doze for twenty-plus languorous pages as he dreamily muses over a favorite sugary confection. Either approach may work or it may not. (I’d go with strangling, but that’s just me.)

One more alchemical element is character—the inhabitants of the world within the book. While some writing teachers and workshops emphasize character as though it were all that matters—often leading to the kind of twee, static, lugubrious explorations of the heart that can freeze-dry mine—character in fiction does count for gold. Characters are the ground-fire of emotion.

Yes, my hero Nabokov loudly and publicly disdained such claims, but you only have to read Pnin—short, elegant, lovingly thin—to realize you should shake yet more salt across such comments, especially when made by a mischief-maker and gamester like him.

Somehow, the souls on the page, and the soul who put them there, have to clasp hands, even if only briefly and indirectly, with the soul with the book in his lap.

And so, at last, I come to David Corbett’s new book The Art of Character. David (logrolling alert: I know him personally) is the author of several acclaimed, acutely imagined, superb thrillers, including most recently Do They Know I’m Running? He now wields his adroit pen in nonfiction with The Art of Character, his generous and eloquent writer’s “toolkit” for creating the characters, the inhabitants of the fables, tales, and stories we tell.

This is a guide for serious writers, for those whose goals reach beyond the bestseller lists, that fleeting monument to notoriety and mediocrity (though I’d sure like the money); for writers ranging from the genius whose fingertips spark with fire to the genre chef who makes the best damn burger and fries you could wish for.

David provides a chapter-by-chapter array of approaches to nurturing and growing captivating fictional characters, mostly from novels with occasional examples from theatre (The Prize), film (Chinatown), and cable TV (The Sopranos).

You don’t have to read The Art of Character from cover to cover (as I did for this review); yet no single method discussed here stands completely alone. All of them are threaded in varying ways to varying degrees. “You don’t know yourself by yourself” David quotes a relative as advising him.

The same can apply to the techniques he offers here. Like Noah Lukeman’s The Plot Thickens, it’s a good book to turn to when you’re up to your ankles in mud; or your weave seems too thin. It can shake  questions out your head that needs asking.

His first chapter, with the eerily apt title “Fingering Smoke,” discusses how characters are created through a blend of conscious creation and discovery. He warns against starting from archetypes, because of how they represent mere ideas rather than uniquely mysterious human experience and often become mere mouthpieces for the author’s opinions on things.

While an archetype can be a starting place, eventually the serious writer has to dig deeper to find the fuzzy border where archetype and humanity meet. (An example might be Richard Stark’s indelible thief, Parker, a representative of untrammeled individual freedom who is, if not appealing in the sentimental sense, is at least unnervingly understandable.)

The richest wells to draw from are the people in your own life, both those you know well and those you don’t. Genre writers have done this: Sherlock Holmes was based on one of Conan Doyle’s favorite med school teachers; John le Carré created Alec Leamas, the angst-torn Spy Who Came in from the Cold after a brief, wordless encounter with a stranger at an airport bar. Carla, from my novel Dragon’s Ark, is a blend of several women who have bounced and flown in and out my life, for moments and for hours, romantically and not, impossible to live with, impossible not to love.

Subsequent chapters propose exercises and techniques for mining your characters from your own life; probing your own psyche and emotions in the way some Method actors are trained, too (though, as a more comic writer, I resist this tendency); the five cornerstones of characterization; and more matters than I can fit comfortably here without you all clicking back to Kim Kardashian.

The Art of Character is big-hearted, fluid, rich, busy, well-worth keeping at hand. And a delight to read throughout for its patient and intelligent voice.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

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Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

Resolution Fail

A PROMISE UNKEPT

One of the resolutions I made at the end of 2011 was to read and review more contemporary novels. It wasn’t so much a matter of shunning the old and the great: I was facing the fact that, as my audience has grown (by over 100%; my page views totaled more than 55,000 in 2012), and as I write new books, I should turn more of my attention to contemporary fiction.

I don’t want to be known as Mr. Reactionary Old Fart. (“Nope, they don’t write ‘em like Lovecraft used ta, by gum!” I crab, waving my cane, my dentures clacking.) That animal is as invasive common as the Touchy Fan Boy (Batmanus fanaticus) in the jungle bitscape known as the Internet, that seething pit of the world’s petty angers.

But since I unabashedly sneer at and scorn young readers and moviegoers who won’t read or watch anything made before 1978, it’s only fair that I make some effort to keep up, right?

Thanks to illness and financial problems, though, I found the resolution nearly impossible to keep. I only read two contemporary novels. The Expat by Chris Pavone started out excellently but went flat at the end. Floating Staircase by Ronald Malfi, which beat out Dragon’s Ark for first prize in the 2012 IPPY award in horror fiction, was refreshingly low-key and atmospheric, though its ending left something to be desired. (It also suffered from a few of the technical glitches found in indie fiction, including my own).

In the end, I was forced to turn back to dusty tomes purchased long ago that lay a-dozing upon my bookshelf, their spines gleaming like gold as I limped by.

High among the best novels I read in 2012 was Smiley’s People by John le Carré, published in 1982, but as fresh as ever. Le Carré opens a unique window into the shadowy, fascinating realm of the world’s second oldest profession—espionage. Like the best genre novels, it creates a world that may not be like our everyday lives, but somehow reflects it all the same, with great and compelling style.

Another favorite read was Eric Ambler’s 1953 novel The Schirmer Inheritance, another observant, finely written, and steely-eyed adventure of an innocent abroad; this time a young, glib American lawyer gets perilously lost in post-World War II northern Greece and tangles with a motley populace of ex-partisans, Communists, and Nazis. There’s not an accomplished, literate suspense writer around or hasn’t learned a thing or two from Ambler. We all owe him a lot.

Another favorite novel was a little more recent: Eddie Muller’s The Distance, from 2002, a genuinely offbeat and vivid noir mystery set in the bruising world of the 1940s boxing in fog-shrouded San Francisco. I especially enjoyed how Muller eschews muscle-bound, high-IQ supermen for a scarred, but otherwise very ordinary hero. Its portrait of mid-20^th Century San Francisco is as glittering, sad, and gaudy as you could hope for.

For truly deep, old-fashioned pleasure—especially when I was at my sickest—I couldn’t have done better than Maigret and the Spinster  by Georges Simenon (1942). Simenon is thought by many to be the greatest, most literate, mystery writer of the last century, if not for all time. The first Simenon novel I read, Maigret and the Yellow Dog, left me shrugging, but this one—about the despair and anger that engulf Inspector Maigret after he ignores a call for help—is moving, exciting, filled with vivid characters. One of the Bay Area local public TV stations has stopped carrying MHZ’s International Mystery, which broadcasts the most recent of the numerous Maigret film adaptations (starring Bruno Cremer). For those who are as miffed by this lapse as I am, there is a lot of Simenon to read to make up for it.

I was also happy to read one more from Donald Westlake novel, The Comedy Is Finished. Other worthwhile pleasures came from David Corbett’s collection Killing Yourself to Survive, and two by F. Scott Fitzgerald: This Side of Paradise and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories. The year closed well with Frank Norris’s McTeague.

The only short story anthology I completed in 2012 was The Book of Terror, a fusion of two 1990s anthologies edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell. As often happens in these collections, there are hits, misses, and in-betweeners. The hits are plenty though and include the novellas “The Ghost Village” by Peter Straub, “The Medusa” by Thomas Ligotti and “Snodgrass” by Ian R. McLeod, which pungently speculates on John Lennon’s life if he had quit the Beatles before their rocket ride to fame. It was also a treat to be reintroduced to the work of Steve Rasnic Tem with his reflective story “Mirror Man”

THE “HIGHBROW” STUFF

 “That trashy genre fiction will eat your brain and turn you into a hack!” they used to yell. Nowadays, it’s, “That highbrow literary stuff will destroy your writing career and trick you into writing boring, unreadable books!”

To both sides, I chortle “Screw you both! I’ll read what I fuck-ing well please!” with two Vladimir Nabokov novels. One was his scary, funny and moving response to Orwell’s1984, Bend Sinister. The novel spins a grim and cruel satire of communist society and the lonely scholar-dissident and loving father who falls afoul of it and faces the consequences of his rebellion. I still think 1984 is the better book, but this one is also worth your time: It made me laugh as it broke my heart.

An even better Nabokov creation was Pnin, the short, funny, and poignant story of a Russian émigré professor’s lonely struggle to put his feet down in the very strange country known as America, only to find the ground constantly running out from under him. Again, I was captivated by Nabokov’s eerie ability to describe the world through so many different prisms, a talent so unlike anyone else. There are no goblins, demons, or fairies in his work, but nobody, not even Tolkien, writes with such strange and fabulous magic.

You want trippy? You get it from Vladimir Nabokov.
 

FROM THE WORLD OF FACTS

Many of my favorite books from 2012 were nonfiction. At the top is You Can’t Win by Jack Black, a criminal’s memoir that, whether all-true or not, can’t be beat for hair-raising entertainment and granular insight into just how professional criminals manage to make a living.

Another great look at life among the forgotten was Invisible Romans by Robert Knapp, his compassionate study of the faceless millions who are only a shadow in the official histories of the Roman Empire.

Another worthwhile read about people you won’t hear about in history class was The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War by David Laskin, an amazing book about the European immigrants to the United States who found themselves shipped back home to fight in World War I.

Also on my nonfiction list is Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, Berkeley professor Gray Brechin’s angry history that uses the rise of San Francisco to illustrate how the rise of civilization’s mighty cities has led to environmental disaster for us all.

And finally, for those who come by for insights into the trials and travails of an independent publisher, allow me to point you to A Self-Publisher’s Companion by my guru (and Dragon’s Ark interior designer) Joel Friedlander. Joel is a pioneer in this field, and as I tell of my trail and trials in bring my next novel, Butchertown, to press, I’ll be talking about Joel’s book again in the future.

RESOLUTIONS ALREADY FAILING

Now, as for my 2013 resolution to read more contemporary novels, no, it is not going well.

A few weeks ago, I downloaded Justin Cronin’s vampires-conquer-the-world epic The Passage to see if the hub-bub was worth my time. The other night, as doubt assailed me about going any further into its slow, dusty-dull landscape, my Kobo app froze up and The Passage disappeared into the arms of Buddha.

It only took a while for me to turn to my paperback copy of The Inferno of Dante, translated Robert Pinsky, just purchased at a real bookstore . . . .

I’m only in the introduction and, oh yes, there really is a God after all and He works in very odd and mysterious ways.

(re-edited 1/9/12)

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

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Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.