Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Ten Questions

by Eric

You can tell when Mary and I have a mystery coming out. We start answering questions. Kind of like murder suspects.

This time Diane Plumley invited us down to The Bookshop Blog to find out what we knew. She asked Ten Questions. Although we were under investigation because One For Sorrow is being reissued in the UK by Head of Zeus, we spilled the beans about our whole Byzantine series and writing in general.

Luckily there were no rubber hoses involved.

Hope we didn't incriminate ourselves.

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Review: Midnight by Octavus Roy Cohen

by Mary

On a sleety December night taxi-driver Spike Walters picks up a fare at Union Station. The well-dressed, veiled woman instructs Walters to drive to a poorer part of town but when he arrives at the address given she has vanished from his cab, leaving her suitcase -- and a man's body. Of the missing woman Spike asks himself, as will the reader, "Where was she? How had she managed to leave the taxicab? When had the man, who now lay sprawled in the cab, entered it?"

Chief of Police Eric Leverage and amateur criminologist David Carroll cooperate in solving the crime. The departed is identified as club man Roland Warren, a cad rumoured to have been involved with a number of socially prominent married women although there has been no open scandal, and just as well being as he is engaged. It transpires every article in the suitcase belonged to him and this, along with certain other evidence, convinces the authorities and the public that Warren was planning to elope -- but not with his fiancee. Given the dead man's reputation of not being too fussy about whose wife he romances, a number of upper crust persons naturally come under suspicion, and then there's Warren's just discharged valet, not to mention the bereaved fiancee.

My verdict: Midnight features a fairly complex plot unreeled at a slower pace than in many works. Older novels of detection often display social mores that seem strange to modern eyes, for example not mentioning a woman's name at the club or the terrible consequences of cheating at cards or in some other way being touched by the rancid breath of scandal. David Carroll must navigate these treacherous waters to solve the mystery of the who and how and why of the crime.

Etext: Midnight by Octavus Roy Cohen

Website of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Forgotten at the Grocery

by Eric

This time it was the three bean salad.

It's always something.

The awful realization hits me when I'm halfway home, or hauling the bags out of the car, or in the evening, hours after the groceries have been put away.

"Oh hell!" I forgot to pick something up.

"Forgetting three bean salad isn't a crime," Mary said.

"Or a snack. Because I didn't bring any home. I could really do with a three bean salad right now."

"Do you think you should be eating three bean salad at ten o'clock at night? You never have it except with meals. Since when do you have three bean salad for a snack?"

"Last winter," I told her. "Or the winter before. I forget. Those were good times. Whenever they were."

"I remember. That was at the end of February. We'd been snowed in for five weeks. The shelves were bare. It was either the three bean salad or the tinned okra."

"And it was delicious too. Tangy. What else do we have for a snack that's tangy?"

"What about that tin of okra?"

I scowled hungrily.

"Never mind," she said. "You can buy two tins of three bean salad next week. Or three tins. It's Liberty Hall."

"There's no point trying to be a Pollyanna about it," I said. "The plain sad fact of the matter is...I forgot."

I might almost have said I was vexed, but I'm not sure if anyone has been truly vexed since the nineteenth century.

"It's easy enough to forget," Mary offered sympathetically.

"Well, yes, there's only one way to remember but endless ways to forget. I mean, I can forget to take the grocery list, or forget to write it in the first place. I might forget to take the list out of my pocket at the store. Or else I put it back in my pocket in order to hold the freezer door open in order to get at the vegetarian bacon, and then forget to take it out again before I get to the tinned vegetable aisle. Oh, I'm a wonder at forgetting!"

"You did remember the bacon."

"But I don't want vegetarian bacon for a snack. It isn't tangy. I guess I will just have to suffer for my own mistake," I concluded.

"Look on the bright side," Mary told me. "What if you'd forgotten the loo rolls?"

"Oh hell", I said.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

John Buchan's Greenmantle

by Mary

I've debated whether or not Greenmantle could be classified as a mystery. Set during World War I, it certainly revolves around one: who is Greenmantle and can he be found in time to interfere with German plans to use him in their bid to grab the middle east?

Richard Hannay, last seen just before the war in The 39 Steps and now a major in the Lennox Highlanders, is recuperating from shrapnel wounds suffered at Loos, as is his friend Sandy Arbuthnot. Anxious to return to the front line, they are instead asked to undertake a secret mission.

Hannay, Arbuthnot, and "sedentary dyspeptic" American John S. Blenkiron, joined later by an old friend from Hannay's South African days, must find the mysterious Greenmantle and assess the situation so the British can take countermeasures. It is a matter of great urgency and no time can be lost. However, they must begin the task with no clues except three words scribbled on a piece of paper -- Kasredin, cancer, and v.I. In different disguises the men take separate roads to Constantinople where they will meet and begin their search, if they all arrive safely -- and it's a big if. Along the way they encounter dangerous enemies and life-threatening situations and must use fast thinking and physical daring to even get to Turkey to begin their quest in the first place.

My verdict: This novel mirrors a time and society where fair play, decency, and honour were important and practiced as far as possible even in wartime. Military and intelligence gathering methods have changed since WWI and for the modern reader this gives Greenmantle a poignant air at times. Even so, it's a rattling good yarn, with plenty of action, excitement, and suspense, along with a dash of wit. Although I'd read the novel before, I still laughed out loud at the mental picture of Hannay in jammies and dressing gown when, due to circumstances, he is "left to receive my guest in a room littered with broken glass and a senseless man in the cupboard".

Etext: Greenmantle

Friday, November 16, 2012

NaNo? Nah. No.

by Eric Mystery author Mark Terry isn't a fan of NaNoMoWri (National Novel Writing Month). See NaNoWriMo & Me.

I've never been a NaNo fan either, as I explained in a comment on Mark's blog. My reaction, when asked if I would do it has always been "Nah, no."

For one thing the 50,000 words NaNoMoWri participants aim for isn't generally considered a novel by publishers these days except in the Young Adult genre. So even if you reach the goal, you still don't have novel.

Then too my composition method is get it right the first time as nearly as possible. There are writers who prefer to dash things off -- to get something -- anything -- down and then clean it up afterwards. I worry about starting off with a manuscript that's too broken to ever fix.

Besides, why rush through a book, simply to produce a given number of words per day? Are we working an assembly line?

Now maybe, just maybe, I'm leery of the concept because I'm a literary sloth. To successfully complete NaNoMoWri you need to crank out 1,600 words a day and I rarely do. To manage that trick 30 days running would be difficult if not impossible. For me. A guy I know once completed his NaNo novel in two and a half days. So this November he's writing two.

And then there's the legendary French author Georges Simenon who claimed he locked himself in a hotel room for several days to write a new Maigret novel at one go. But, well, he was a legend.

Maybe I'm saying NaNo just isn't for me. Everyone has their own writing method.

Hmmmm. I notice I've just written two letters to correspondents, plus some blog comments, which along with this blog come to well over 2,000 words today. And I do love those short, gritty fifties crime fiction novels. Hey, maybe next year.

Monday, November 12, 2012

The Master Mystery


  by Mary

I may be the last one to have seen this gem but I must say I really enjoyed The Master Mystery, stated to have been "Novelized by ARTHUR B. REEVE and JOHN W. GREY From Scenarios by Arthur B. Reeve in Collaboration with John W. Grey and C.A. Logue" Gutenberg offers an etext but the better version is their "Profusely Illustrated with Photographic Reproductions Taken from the Houdini Super-Serial of the Same Name" version with stills showing various scenes, notably the murderous (but oddly mild looking) Automaton and shots of Harry Houdini as the hero of the multipart silent serial.

The writing is telegraphic and not reminiscent of Reeve's usual style, although it is done ably enough so pictures unfolding on the mental screen can be enjoyed quite well. And the plot! Our hero spends much of his time experiencing various perils -- suspended head down over a vat of acid, locked in a box and left to drown, chained and thrown into a river, hung up by his thumbs, fighting in a diving suit, falling through trapdoors, attached to a garotting machine, tied up in barbed wire, and so on, which added to secret hideouts in the cliffs, horrid dens in Chinatown, candles that provoke the Madagascar madness by which victims laugh themselves to death or insanity, and much more must have made positively thrilling viewing!

Link to Project Gutenberg text: The Master Mystery  by Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey published 1919.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Reading Out Loud

by Eric


A lot of reading goes on here in the evenings. Mary and I can both get very enthusiastic about what we're reading. When a book's really good you just have to share it. That can get confusing. 
 
Yesterday Mary was immersed in a Wilkie Collins novel while I was chuckling, rather bleakly, over a collection of Kurt Vonnegut essays.

"Oh no," says Mary. "Apparently any will a man makes while single is invalidated when he marries. Or at least it was at the time. I thought one of the daughters might be cut off, but not both."

"Hmmphh," I reply, before quoting from my book. "'Do you realize that all great literature-Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, The Bible, and The Charge of the Light Brigade-are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being?'"

"The younger daughter is planning to get the money back but what it might be who knows."

"'The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.'" quoth I. "How about some ice cream?"

"Ah. Coffee flavored."

"Yeah. Funny how I like coffee ice cream but hate iced coffee."

"Now the younger daughter is pursuing her plan to get the money back by going about London in disguise, a highly unlikely tale."

"'Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.' See, that's why I never use semicolons."

"The scene has moved to Suffolk and he refers to the German Ocean. That's the old name for the North Sea."

"Ha! Vonnegut says, 'If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts.'"

"That's unkind. Oh look, is it 11:30 already."

"He keeps mentioning Mark Twain. Maybe I'll read Huckleberry Finn next."

"Let me just finish this chapter before we go to bed."

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Partners in Crime


by Mary

We’re occasionally asked how as co-authors we can work together and emerge unbloodied. Well, here’s our reply, which appeared a year or so back on the blog maintained by Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal.

With apologies to Messrs Gilbert & Sullivan

We’re co-authors of ratiocinative fiction
Inventing plots full of character friction
Scattering clues for the villain’s conviction
Co-writers of mysteries!

We begin by inventing a devious plot line
Some elements are his and some are mine
Our method is to mix them and then refine
This foundation of mysteries!

We’ve long since agreed its champion will decide
If something stays in the plot that the other derides
When working together there’s no room for pride
In co-writers of mysteries!

One will draft a scene or a chapter and then
The other polishes it once, and if need be again,
Savagely wielding the editorial pen
On the draft of the mystery!

Research is necessary before we start to write
Toiling at the task through the hours of the night
At least midnight oil sheds a pretty sort of light!
On writers of mysteries!

Some collaborative authors’ language singes
We advise colleagues fit strong door hinges
Since a slamming exit often impinges
On the writing of mysteries!

Our individual writings differ in ways distinct
But the blended text reveals no obvious links
Though Mary tends to ramble while Eric’s more succinct
Just as well for the mysteries!

We’re scriveners who, when the manuscript’s done,
Send it to the press and say “Wasn’t that fun?”
And then start on researching for another one
A co-authored mystery!!