Binge-reading Robert B. Parker

A short while ago somebody donated a pile of Robert B. Parker's Spenser paperbacks to the Lambertville Free Public Library. As occasionally happens, the library director brought them home to read before putting them in the collection or in the book sale. The stack is now on the table in our living room. Harold has read them all, and I am reading them, obsessively, perhaps in an unhealthy way. You know how it goes. There are probably quizzes on Facebook to find out how bad you're being. Is this activity interfering with your normal activities? Are your social interactions suffering? Do you find yourself growing distant from loved ones? That sort of thing.

Woman Reading by a Window by David Alison 

By way of interacting in a healthy way with my loved one, as opposed to ignoring him while my nose was stuck in a book, I went for a walk with Harold today and asked him what he thought was so compelling about Robert B. Parker's writing. Lots of things, we agreed. They move along at a brisk pace. The recipes are good. Spenser always makes something tasty to eat in the course of rescuing some beautiful woman or other. Harold himself tried to replicate one of his concoctions, something involving broccoli and pasta. But my favorite thing is the violence. Before the end of every one of these books, retired boxer-turned-private eye Spencer beats the living crap out of some bad guy. Sometimes he pounds him to a jelly and then his friend Hawk shoots him. It's extremely satisfying.

So I've read about five of these in the last two days or so. It's true that I had a tummy ache part of the time. But not all the time. And it isn't as though I had nothing to do. I should be writing Christmas cards and buying presents, to say nothing of working on my book. But I only have three more Spenser novels to go before I can let Harold take the collection back to the library.

Okay, here's the thing. I'm studying these books for technique. That's why I'm reading them. When I get all finished I will have many handy tips on how to write riveting and compelling crime stories. It isn't a vice. It's a professional exercise.

© 2015 Kate Gallison

How Much Food is Too Much?

“…I pounded some lamb steaks I'd bought for lamb cutlets. Dipped them in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs. When they were what Julia Child calls nicely coated I put them aside and peeled four potatoes. I cut them into little egg-shaped oblongs, which took awhile, and started them cooking in a little oil, rolling them around to get them brown all over. I also started the cutlets in another pan. When the potatoes were evenly browned I covered them, turned down the heat and left them to cook through. When the cutlets had browned, I poured off the fat, added some Chablis and some fresh mint, covered them and let them cook… I took the lamb cutlets out of the pan and cooked down the wine. I shut off the heat, put in a lump of unsalted butter, swirled it through the wine essence and poured it over the cutlets."

The crime novel this recipe came from was not something of Diane Mott Davidson's, not even a cozy. It was Promised Land, by Robert B. Parker, and it won the Edgar best novel award for 1977. It looks like a perfectly good recipe, if you don't mind fried food. I wouldn't do that to a good piece of lamb, myself, but that's neither here nor there. The question is, what place, if any, does a cooking recipe have in a crime novel?

I'm thinking, it depends on the novel. For a noir novel the recipe would have to be something doomed and despairing. Beans out of a can, maybe, or a dreadful stew of some kind. Stewed road kill. For a detective story, if your detective cooks, like Spencer, you can describe something quite delicious. If your detective doesn't cook, maybe you want to draw the cloak of charity over his or her activities in the kitchen. I once put a recipe in a Mother Grey book that I got out of a Polly Pigtails comic book long ago, involving crushed potato chips, tuna fish, and canned mushroom soup; Mother Grey doesn't cook. (Notice how I used the Oxford comma in that sentence, where Robert B. Parker didn't. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1977, and fashions in punctuation have changed.)

I can see by the covers and the titles that a lot of cozy mysteries include food, with recipes, presumably, though I blush to confess that I don't read them. Would you put a recipe in a classic thriller or mystery in the modern day, or would it stop the action? Rex Stout's stories about Nero Wolfe always featured marvelous food, but not detailed recipes for preparing it. Menus, rather. That would be one way to go. Or send your protagonist to a great restaurant and have him order what you would like to have yourself, if only you had the money. Readers like sensuous treats. Sometimes they even like to go on vicarious alcoholic binges. What do you think about it? Food or no food with your crime? (Maybe fava beans and a nice Chianti.)

© 2015 Kate Gallison

In Good Time

A Crime Writing Lawyer from Fitchburg, Mass

Hallie Ephron in my favorite Jungle Red Writers gave some excellent comments re the debut novel of Maine lawyer Brenda Buchanan on May 5. Now it struck me that… not only was May 5 my 99th birthday(!) but this writer was from the little mill town in Massachusetts where I made my own entrance on the planet! As I've never known any person from Fitchburg, I thought it would be fun to invite this Fitchburg gal to be a guest here.

She also studied with the noted Robert B.Parker, so I'm anxious to see if any of his genius trickles through her pages of Quick Pivot!

Buchanan, a former newspaper reporter at the Boston Globe, is now a lawyer in Portland, Maine. And my friends know how much I love Prout's Neck, a stone's throw from that Maine town—so I'm delighted to welcome Brenda to our wonderful group at Crime Writers' Chronicle today!

Thelma Jacqueline Straw (not quite 99 yet!)

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I write this early on a spring morning in Maine, which is a lovely time of year in this beautiful state. The songbirds are chorusing, the showy red tulips in our front yard are in bloom and soon my spouse and I will go to the fabulous Portland Farmer’s Market, which moved outdoors to Deering Oaks Park two weeks ago, about a week after the last of the snow melted.

Spring always is a happy time when you live in a winter-weary place, but this spring is especially happy because my debut mystery, Quick Pivot, was released in late April. I thank Thelma for inviting me to stop by Crime Writers' Chronicle today to talk about Quick Pivot and, at her urging, my long and winding path to publication.

First, of course, the book. Here’s the skinny on Quick Pivot:

In 1968, a cunning thief skimmed a half a million dollars from the textile mill that was the beating heart of Riverside, Maine.

Sharp-eyed accountant George Desmond discovered the discrepancy, but was killed before he could report it. After stashing the body, the thief-turned-killer manipulated evidence to make it appear Desmond skipped town with the stolen money. When the mill went bankrupt several years later, Desmond’s name was mud.

In 2014, veteran journalist Joe Gale is writing a feature story about the long-defunct mill being turned into condominiums when Desmond’s bones are found bricked into a basement crawl space. When Joe digs through the morgue at the fading-fast Portland Daily Chronicle, he finds his deceased mentor, an old-school reporter named Paulie Finnegan, covered Desmond’s disappearance in 1968.

Joe tracks down Paulie’s sources—now in late middle age—and begins to piece together the truth about Desmond’s death. But those who muddied the evidentiary waters in 1968 are determined to keep Joe from exposing the secrets they’ve harbored for more than four decades, even if it means killing again.

Though most of the action in Quick Pivot occurs in a fictional town, many scenes happen in real Maine places, including Portland, Kennebunkport, Cape Elizabeth and Peaks Island, where I lived for many years. If you love coastal Maine but don’t get here as much as you’d like, Quick Pivot provides a sweet virtual visit.

As for Riverside, it was inspired in part by my hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, which—like so many proud industrial cities in New England—fell on hard times after the family-owned mills were bought out by large corporations in the 1960s and 70s. Having spent my youth in a community scorched by that painful economic transition, it was natural for me to set Quick Pivot in a still-proud mill town fighting its way back to respectability.

My road to the writing life began at Fitchburg High school, where I was bitten hard by the journalism bug. Like every aspiring reporter in the mid-1970s, the notion of investigative journalism lit me up. Shortly after adoption of Title IX, two other firebrands and I wrote an exposé about the enormous disparity in spending between boys and girls athletic programs. The story made powerful people decidedly uncomfortable, and resulted in significant improvement to athletic opportunities for female students. It was a heady introduction to the transformational potential of good journalism, and no doubt is why Quick Pivot has a reporter as its protagonist.

A few years later Northeastern University’s vaunted co-op program gave me the opportunity to work in the newsroom at the Boston Globe. My jobs included a reporter trainee stint on what was known as the lobster shift, riding around Boston (and sometimes farther afield) from midnight until eight in the morning, covering fires, murders and other breaking news. It was an amazing experience for a 21-year-old woman.

During alternating academic semesters I studied creative writing with Professor Parker, as in Robert B. Parker, who was adjunct faculty at NU in those days. As you might imagine, Parker’s courses were an inspiration. While he never minced words when presented with a badly written story, he was supportive. Keep at it, he advised. It’s a long process.

After graduation I moved to Maine, where I worked at a weekly newspaper based in Kennebunk, covering a variety of beats including the courts.

By the time I was ready to take the next step in my life journalism jobs already were scant in Maine, but I was too smitten with its charms to leave, so I hung up my reporter’s spurs and headed to Maine Law School. I’ve practiced law for 25 years now. I’m fortunate to have great colleagues and wonderful clients. But I’ve always remained a writer at heart.

Several years ago, I heeded the voices of Joe Gale and the other Quick Pivot characters and began writing their story. Now here I sit, on a beautiful spring morning, with my first novel out there in the world. Like Professor Parker said, it was a long process.

© 2015 Brenda Buchanan
Author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series
www.brendabuchananwrites.com