The Sweet Mysteries of Life

Today, I am happy to introduce Charles Salzberg, author of the Swann series of novels about a finder of missing persons.  Charles  is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in New York magazine, GQ, Esquire and the New York Times Book Review.  He is the author of Swann's Last Song, nominated for a Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, the sequel Swann Dives In, and the upcoming Devil in the Hole. He has also been a Visiting Professor of Magazine Writing at the S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications, and teaches writing at the Writer's Voice and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member.  You can find out more at www.charlessalzberg.com/

Annamaria Alfieri

A few years ago I found myself on a panel with several other mystery and crime writers, most well-established.  I was pretty much a novice, recently having published my first detective novel, Swann’s Last Song.  In a way, I felt like a fraud, since I had spent a couple decades writing non-fiction books and magazine articles, while always thinking of myself as a “literary” novelist, whatever that was.  After writing a few novels with nary a crime in sight, other than the “personal” crimes we commit each day, I had tried writing a detective novel merely as an exercise, to see if I could write something where a tightly woven plot was critical.

            When it came time for questions from the audience a woman asked, “what’s the different between mystery writing and any other kind of writing?”  Without thinking, I blurted out, “there is no difference.”  Quickly realizing I had to back this up, I added, “every good novel is a mystery.  If not, why would you bother turning the page to find out what happens next?”

            A couple of the other panelists nodded in agreement, and then we went on to the next question.  But later, when the panel was over, I couldn’t help coming back to this question and my answer.

            I hadn’t really considered it before but what I’d said was not only true but essential for me as a writer.  It brought to mind other questions I and no doubt other writers have been asked over the years, namely, do I write from an outline and do I know the end of a novel before I get there?

            The answer to both is, no.  For me, an outline would not only be scary and inhibiting, but also confining.  When I write mysteries or in my case detective novels, I think my plots would suffer terribly if I knew where I was going.

            Especially in fiction, I think it’s essential to keep the reader guessing.  I’m afraid if I know where I’m going, so will my reader.  And so, not only don’t I know how, where and when my novel will end, but I don’t even know what’s going to happen on the next page, often even the next sentence.  For me, this keeps the writing fresh and if it’s fresh for me I’m assuming it will be for my reader, as well. 

            Another way to accomplish this is to constantly do the unexpected.  It’s what I tell my students to do all the time.  When they get to a point where things seem to be going swimmingly toss in a hand grenade to shake things up.  It’s similar, perhaps, to a plot twist, but it’s really more than that.  To me, it’s a matter of setting up a roadblock that the character, or really the author, has to overcome.  It’s like those speed bumps meant to make drivers slow down, and slowing down means having to think more about what you’re writing. 

            For instance, in my last Swann novel, Swann Dives In, in his search for a missing coed, skip tracer Henry Swann comes across a beautiful college professor.  The temptation was to have them get together, she seducing him or vice versa.  But this seemed stale and predictable to me and so, with no prior planning, I made her a lesbian.  Suddenly, the whole arc of the story changed, as did their relationship.  It made me a better, more creative writer, because I had to think of my feet.  I had to make it work.  This is far more like life, which can be unpredictable, capricious and uncontrollable.  Just when we think we’ve got it whipped, we’re thrown a curve when we’re looking fastball, and if we don’t adapt we’re done for.

            Of course, there is no right way or wrong way.  Other writers need to know just where they’re going and how to get there.  The two schools of thought are personified by two talented immensely talented, but very different kinds of writers.  Truman Capote claimed he couldn’t write the story unless he knew the ending, while Norman Mailer claimed he couldn’t write the story if he did.  I’m with Mailer.  Why would I even bother writing it if I know how it ends.  The thrill for me is in the discovery of what’s going to happen, how the characters will act and react.  And if you’ve created “real” characters they will react in real ways, ways that you don’t have to manufacture. 

It’s a cliché that they take on a life of their own, but it’s true.

And so, each time I approach the computer there is a sense of dread, but also the excitement of not being quite sure of what’s going to happen next. 

That’s the real mystery.

Charles Salzberg

The Source Material Assembly Line

My friend Tim McLoughlin is the editor of Brooklyn Noir and its companion volumes. His novel, Heart of the Old Country, won Italy’s Premio Penne award, and was the basis for the motion picture The Narrows, starring Vincent D’Onofrio.

Robert Knightly

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The cliché of a writer being asked where they get their ideas, and the numerous clever responses conjured out of desperation, is legendary. My situation is a lot more pedestrian and straightforward. Although no one is ever going to accuse me of being prolific, the fiction I do turn out generally centers on crime, or on the kind of people likely to commit crimes on a pretty low rent scale.

I’ve worked in the criminal justice system for thirty years now. If I had been convicted of murdering someone that long ago in New York City I’d have since been released, so I’ve decided to go over the wall this summer and retire. But my career has certainly informed my choice of subject matter. And as I’m more inclined, in my reading and writing, toward the nickel-and-dime world than high-finance-money-laundering-type thrillers, it has suited me well.

I remember exactly where I was standing and what I was doing the first time I heard a 710.30(1)a statement, but then, who doesn’t? I was a brand new, wet behind the ears Court Officer in the arraignment part of Brooklyn Criminal Court in the bad old early eighties. I was the bridgeman, the officer who stands in front of the judge’s bench, calls the case into the record, hands the judge the pertinent paperwork, and gets out of the way. It’s just like Law and Order, except louder and with physically unattractive defendants. It was my first case, and I announced it with confidence, then prepared the next docket while the key players discussed the fate of the accused. After preliminary conversation and a plea of not guilty, the judge turned to the rail thin blonde waif of an Assistant District Attorney.

“Motions?” he asked.

“Seven-ten-thirty-one-a,” she responded.

“Go ahead.”

“Go fuck yourself,” she said, in an absolutely flat, professional tone.

“Anything else?” he inquired.

“No your honor.”

“Bail is set at one thousand dollars, cash or bond,” he said. “Next case.”

He tossed the court papers into the wire basket of finished work and looked at me expectantly. I glanced between him and the ADA, who was already reviewing a new folder, unsure what to do.

“Officer,” he prompted.

I picked up the next docket, called it in, less confidently this time, and stepped back.

It took me perhaps a half dozen cases before I realized that 710.30(1)a statements were direct quotes from defendants, usually made spontaneously at the time of their arrest. It was therefore not unusual that mixed in with the ubiquitous that’s not my gun and what weed? would be the occasional go fuck yourself or take these cuffs off and I’ll kick your ass. They are basically anything that gets blurted out during the arrest process. Arraignment in New York City Criminal Court is supposed to be conducted within twenty-four hours of arrest. In an effort to keep to that schedule, the processing of cases goes on from nine o’clock in the morning until midnight every day of the year at 120 Schermerhorn Street, just down the block from all of the shiny new condos and hotels now being raised in downtown Brooklyn.

Over the course of the three years that I worked in uniform, I listened to hundreds of 710.30(1)a statements, and came to view them as windows on the unrestrained id.

They can be chilling, as in the case of a man caught in Sunset Park disposing of the bloody remains of his pet pit bull: He farted so I stabbed him.

They can be heartbreaking when a man in East New York is arrested for robbery: I’m sorry. I was hungry. I needed the money. I got the blade on me too.

They can be embarrassing, as in a domestic violence case out of East Flatbush when a defense attorney has just told the judge that the court needs to take into account the social mores of other cultures: She doesn’t have my lunch ready for me when I go to work. I want her to do all the cleaning in the house. Today, I told her to make me breakfast and when I went downstairs she hadn’t made me breakfast. That’s how it started.

And of course, they can be hilarious. After all, if you can’t occasionally find humor in someone else’s misdeeds you have no business being a crime writer. My personal favorite was the young man arrested exiting the basement of an apartment building in Crown Heights where every washing machine and dryer in the laundry room had been vandalized. He was carrying a screwdriver, a hammer, and a pillowcase containing 250 quarters: Those are mine, I’m on my way to a PacMan tournament. The tools are to fix the machines.

This parade of tragedy and comedy occurs fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. And though the poor and anonymous comprise the majority of cases, every demographic makes an appearance. I have witnessed the arraignments of lawyers and doctors, police officers and priests, a former major league baseball player, and a judge. They are not the worst of humanity, but what they share is the airing of their worst behavior. The criminal justice system, by mandating long ago that these proceedings be open to the public, invented reality television without the TV, live and unscripted.

So if you’re looking for ideas, or trying to fine-tune that street lingo to be current to the last forty-eight hours, come down to any of the criminal courthouses. Not Supreme Court, but regular Criminal Court, where the nobodies stay, and even the superstars make that initial appearance. Enter through the smoke-stained revolving doors, their broken glass long ago replaced with Plexiglas. Pass through the magnetometers and be searched for weapons, and then step into an arraignment part and have a seat in one of the rows of church pew benches scored with decades of carved initials and expletives.

There’s a new show every three minutes.

Tim McLoughlin

Remembering “A Common Reader”

“…A stimulant: yes, the word is apt. To read these catalogues is like drinking wine in the middle of the morning;”

Rose Macaulay “Booksellers’ Catalogues”

My life at my day job is both restricted and nomadic. Though I spend most days in a cubicle where my fastest companions are a phone and a computer, I have had to move from one cubicle to another on multiple occasions. No need to fold up a cubicle; you can simply abandon it.

Each time I move I am reminded that there is no time like the present for cleaning out my desk and traveling a bit lighter. During my last move I unearthed a book mark from “A Common Reader.” For those of you not blessed enough to have received this lovely publication, I should explain that “A Common Reader” was a book catalog that featured a fabulously eclectic selection. Most months I just wanted to send in a note that said, “I’ll have one of each.”

James Mustich, the wizard responsible for “A Common Reader,” proved himself to be a person of taste and discernment. (I know this because we loved so many of the same books.) In a chatty two paragraphs or so, he would describe a book and convince you that life would not be worth living if you neglected to read it.

While I’m sure he introduced many readers to writers they may not have known (the critic Guy Davenport, the memoirist Diana Athill) he wasn’t afraid of a straightforward yarn. You see, Mr. Mustich shared with us that he recommended many tomes of exquisite subtlety to his wife and she would reply, “But I want something I can read read.” Thus she became known to all of us as “She Who Would Read Read” and we knew that in making her happy her husband would probably make the rest of us happy as well. Thus did I learn about “Emerald” by Elizabeth Luard, the story of what might have happened if Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor had had a daughter. And then there were all those Wilkie Collins novels. Yes, “The Moonstone” and “The Woman in White” are fabulous but until you’ve read “Armadale…” You won’t be the same once you’ve experienced Lydia Gwilt.

The mystery collection was extensive, Mr. Mustich having once confessed that he could not live without the Inspector Maigret novels. I became a devotee of Leo Bruce, Reginald Hill, Arthur Upfield and the menacing novels of Patricia Highsmith.

And the employees of “A Common Reader” were marvelous as well. I once woke up on a morning after a blizzard determined that I would own “The Last Cuckoo: The Very Best Letters to the Times Since 1900.” (That would be the London Times). I could not have it soon enough so I called the office but was sure there would be no one there. I knew that more snow had fallen in New York than Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t go out in such weather. How could I expect other people to persevere? Luckily someone had and didn’t seem to think it at all odd that I needed an obscure volume of letters immediately.

But one of my friends has the best story. She received a package from “A Common Reader” with a hand written note: “Dear Sue: Thanks so much for your continued interest in our selection. When you have a minute could you write us a check for the books enclosed? It comes to $21.50.”

Stephanie Patterson

Settling in for the Summer

Harold and I have been back for a week or so now from our trip to the southland. We are expecting visitors, beloved family members, at the end of June and again at the end of July, so my plan for the summer is to hang around the house, entertain friends and feel swell about things generally. I do plan to put in an appearance at Deadly Ink, but since that's the weekend our son John will be visiting, I won't be staying overnight in New Brunswick.


Summers are great here, in spite of heat and humidity to rival that of Mississippi. The joys of summer in Lambertville include a ten-minute fireworks show every Friday, a delivery of organic vegetables every Saturday (at least for those of us who belong to the Honeybrook Organic Farm), and the opening of the Marshall House to visitors every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. This year it will also involve a senatorial campaign by Rush Holt, right now the smartest man in Congress (okay, the field of comparison is nothing special but he really is an extraordinary person). I would love to see him in the Senate. So maybe he will win the Democratic primary and it will be a totally wonderful summer.

In the meantime I bought some new porch furniture. It was reasonably priced and it's very nice; I got it online from the Wicker Warehouse. The old furniture had seen its day. The plastic wicker was rotting off, it was intractably dirty, and the chair had little spiders in it that used to creep out and bite Harold on his arms and legs while he was trying to read. After I finish cleaning the attic I plan to spend a lot of time lounging in the new rocking chair and catching up on my reading. On June 26 I might take a break and go to New York City, there to dance the tango at four o'clock in Dag Hammarsjold Plaza with Annamaria Alfieri and her flash mob.

Kate Gallison

Dateline London and Bristol: CrimeFesters

 My recent trip to England had two goals: to have at the extensive collection of the British Library for research on my forthcoming African series and to attend CrimeFest, an international conference of crime writers.  Not to mention my need for escape and a dose of faraway places to quell my wanderlust.

After many arrangements, some quite frantic, late on May 25th, my plane took off for Heathrow.

I had gazillions of miles of business travel under my belt, but it had been more than a decade since I had gone solo internationally, and I was trepidatious. The only practical way I could think of to fight my pre-travel anxiety was to buy (at unconscionable expense) a super-light suitcase that would give me at least a fighting chance of muscling (term used advisedly) my luggage on and off trains without help.  Said wonder-grip has four wheels and shortly after my arrival, it tried to escape by rolling down the aisle of the Tube train from the airport to St. Pancras Station.  It was headed directly for a three-year-old in a stroller.  Luckily for the baby, her dad stopped it in time, and with lovely British manners, suggested he might turn it on its side so it would stay put.

The hotel end of St. Pancras Station

St. Pancras Station is a splendor of Victorian red brick gingerbread that had been allowed to go to rack and ruin until it was recently turned back into a palace of rail travel, this time with ticket windows and train platforms, but also lots of shopping and an upscale hotel.  Since the British Library is just across the street, I chose to spend two nights in that new, quite swanky hostel.

1909 English gown and hat

On Sunday, after a full English breakfast that served as lunch for my jet-lagged tummy, I made for the Victoria and Albert Museum, where I looked at early 20^th Century clothing.  Very elegant. 

The British Library at St. Pancras

That Monday morning, I crossed the street to the British Library, carrying a notebook and many well-sharpened pencils (no pens allowed near the books).  The BL has the second largest collection in the world, topped only by the Library of Congress. Its unparalleled mass of material on British East Africa before 1920 was my target.  But The British Library is unlike the marble palace of free knowledge—the New York Public Library—that I have bragged of frequently on these pages.  For one thing, the BL’s modern building looks like a prison from some vantage points.  For another, one cannot just walk in, ask for knowledge, and receive it.  Readers need credentials.  Hoping for a full day and a half to immerse myself in Africanalia, I had used the BL website to preregister and request materials.  All I would need to do was present my multiple proofs of identity and residence, and I would be in.  I thought.

As it turns out, our Memorial Day is also a holiday in the UK; it goes by the pedestrian name Bank Holiday Weekend.  Though the library was open for visiting the exhibitions, the reading rooms and the credentialing center were closed.  Boohoo.

Cheer up, I told myself, you are in London; it’s not as if there is nothing else to do.

The British Museum was a mere fifteen minutes walk away.   There I visited the African art rooms and found several things that were from the area and period of my new series.  Here are a few that are sure to show up in future stories.

Kikuyu Witchdoctor's rattle

Early 20th Century Masaai Swords

After a Tuesday morning spent reading those elusive library books, I took the train to Bristol, scene of the CrimeFest, which I walking-toured on Wednesday.  It is a post-industrial port city that made its early fortune on the slave trade, is a university town, and has some splendid ancient buildings, but a hip, twenty-first century energetic vibe.

Interior Bristol Cathedral

Ancient monument in St. Stephen's Church, Bristol, with modern addition 

CrimeFest—a mystery conference with a solid international focus—ran from Thursday to Sunday, and I had a chance to attend many very interesting and extremely witty panels where writers I admire presented.   And to get acquainted with new writers whose work I know I will enjoy.  Best of all was the time I spent with some dear and delightful writer friends.

CrimeFesters: Stan Trollip (Michael Stanley), me, Jeff Siger, Caro Ramsay,
Yrsa Sigurdardottir,and Michael Sears (Michael Stanley)

I also got to meet Sherlock’s brother Mycroft.

Mark Gatiss with Emma's drawings

My darling granddaughter Emma is a huge fan of the British TV series Sherlock.  When she found out that its creators and one of its stars would be presenting at CrimeFest, she gave me some of her original drawings to present to Mark Gatiss, who plays Mycroft Holmes and also writes some of the episodes.  CrimeFest returned Emma’s favor.  At Saturday evening’s awards banquet, I bought a raffle ticket and won---an autographed set of the DVD’s of Sherlock seasons one and two, which will be delivered to Emma forthwith (as the Brits say) now that her Nonna is home.

Annamaria Alfieri