WICKED WEDNESDAYS

The Foreign Crime Scene

One thing is certain. Our crime readers are much keener to read crime fiction from other countries than before. So what is the appeal?

Of course foreign writers have been part of our past reading. Some of us remember reading Edmund Crispin, Dorothy L. Sayers, George Simenon, , G.K. Chesterton, Dashiell Hammett, and, of course, those crime classics by Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins. Our younger readers, however, may have read some Agatha Christie but are not familiar with those earlier authors. And we cannot blame them. Times have changed and crime story-telling has evolved over the years to reflect more modern societies. Modern communications (television, computers) has put foreign names and places under our noses. How can we ignore them! The fact is we don't and this has lead to a fascinating development for crime book club readers.

We may read foreign authors simply because we are "interested" or purely as "escapism". We are naturally curious about different societies and environments. Readers who do not wish to actually visit other countries can enjoy armchair travel. Our readers have been pleasantly surprised to discover a more personal kind of enlightenment than that from a travel guide. We have discussed the descriptions (scenic and social) of the countryside and small communities near Melbourne, Australia (Garry Disher) and Istanbul, Turkey (Barbara Nadel).

Lately, we seem to have been ambushed by Scandinavian authors. We have been gobbling up the likes of Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbö, Stieg Larsson and Camilla Lackberg.... "for a Scandinavian author Camilla Lackberg is surprisingly readable".... and the Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indridason as well. We have found these stories to be bleak rather than dark, realistic and thus straight-forward to read (apart from actual names) and have noted the embedded social and political commentary. The pace too is slower and the action less jarring.

Then there is the issue of translation! Can we rely on the translator to accurately report the author's intentions? We noted a slight change in style in one of Indridason's latest titles and our presenter's research informed us that his original translator, who lived in Iceland and maintained close contact with the author, had sadly died and been replaced by another from outside Iceland with less author contact. We find ourselves doing research to explain some of the facts that pop up in stories originally written for the author's own national audience and are amazed by what we learn. We discovered the frustration when translations are delayed by the publishers. This often means we are gasping for the next title in a series to appear in English, 'tho some might say the wait makes the eventual reading more enjoyable. We are even guilty of harassing our librarians in the hope that their influence will filter through the buyers to the publishers.

We have even discovered that "foreign" feeling closer to home with American authors such as James Lee Burke. A story set in Louisiana for example is an unfamiliar setting as Greece to some. Similarly, while the village "cosies" of England have been a staple in our diet, it has been a welcome change to read stories set in places such as the Shetland Islands (Ann Cleves) or the Cambridgeshire Fens (Jim Kelly).

Historical stories set overseas have a special appeal to those readers who love a side of history with their murder mystery main course. Try comparing a historical with a modern mystery setting : for example Jenny White's Istanbul in the Ottoman era with Barbara Nadel's modern-day Istanbul. Or "escape" to the Hindu Kush in the time of the British Raj (Barbara Cleverly); go back to ancient Japan (I.J. Parker) or Paris during WWII (J. Robert Janes). We can go from experiencing South African policing and prejudice (James McClure) to the policing problems caused by the Mafia in Sicily (Andrea Camilleri).

The world of crime fiction is on our doorstop - so enjoy!




Anne Jeanjean was born in the UK, has an English Lit. degree and has adored crime fiction since she was ten. It all began with Agatha Christie and now she’s into forensic, police procedurals and foreign authors.
Catherine Jeanjean, her daughter, is a Librarian and worked for nearly five years in Kansas at Kansas State University Library. She is now a Collections Management Librarian for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Together they are the coordinators for a crime fiction reading group based at the Alta Vista Public Library, called the SleuthHounds. This group has been going strong for over two years now.

TUESDAY BRINGS TROUBLE

SOUNDS

Writers thrive on words; writers are limited by having to use words. What a paradox. Sounds are all around us, but the only “sounds” we get from reading a book are the pages turning. With a Kindle, not even that. (Sounds inside your head don’t count.)

We writers work around this in several ways. Obviously, we use words to describe a sound. Some writers make sure we know what’s playing on the character’s radio or TV. Jazz, classical, choral works, we “cite” them as part of a character’s persona. This works, but mainly because it requires the reader call to mind the actual musical number. The Brits and Canadians do this better, I think, than my fellow US authors. Still, it’s a workaround.

I was reminded of this twice this week. Apple recently provided a free iBook application whereby “inside” the e-book product you can drag music, photos, videos, practically anything that enhances the text. It’s quite sensational. Intended primarily for educational texts, no reason you couldn’t do a very different edition of your e-book. Apple lists your product free on a website. If you want to sell the product, Apple takes a fee, but otherwise the application is entirely free.

The Icelandic singer Bjork, guesting on The Colbert Raport (you have to watch the program to know why it’s spelled that way), explained that she wrote musical numbers for a recent album with a radically new part of the CD package: a digital piece that accompanies the book if read on, say, an iPad. Funky. Fun.

Right now, I’m trying to find some way of musically painting (with words) scenes from my book-in-progress. It’s a tough task if you want to do more than mention Verdi or Bjork. My standard comes from Michael Mann’s wonderful film The Insider, the true story of Jeffrey Wigand (one of my personal heroes). Mann recreates the controversy of Wigand’s revelations about the tobacco industry and the politics of airing the show on 60 Minutes. Toward the end, when CBS has agree to release the unedited interviews, The New York Times publishes the whole story and as a bundle of newspapers hits the New York street . . .

Wham!

Three notes from a tenor sax pierce your mind, your heart, your very soul. And then . . . again! There can’t be more than eight bars of music, but that sax blows my mind; it possesses the same power and magnificence as the Verdi Requiem. Imagine if you can, combining into three thrashing notes all of Dies Irae, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Lux aeterna, and Libera me.

All the tension and intrigues of the Wigand story are presented and resolved with that sax. As I write, I can’t get the notes out of my head.

But I can’t write them.


David Cole is overcoming five years of procrastinations and is finally attacking his eighth novel, Ransom My Soul - a somewhat bleak novel of home invasions, drug cartels and human smuggling in southern Arizona, tempered (hopefully) with a fine romance and love story. David's short story, JaneJohnDoe.com, is featured in Indian Country Noir (Akashic Press); he's also working on several non-fiction books about law enforcement, including The Blue Ceiling, a compilation of personal stories about women in law enforcement.

MAYHEM ON MONDAYS

Welcome to the world of social reading!

Are you familiar with the term? You are if you read the story running in the Postmedia newspapers yesterday. It was in the Books section of the Ottawa Citizen, right above a story headlined, 'Reading is in big trouble'. Both gloom and doom stories? Not really...the the social reading story wasn't anyway.

Although, I suppose that's open to debate. The point is that new E-devices are enticing readers into interactive literacy. You read the book on an e-reader, and depending on what electronics you've purchased, can instantly do such things as post favourite sections on Facebook or interact with the author at the same time as reading the book.

If you own an iPad, you can add an app called 'subtext' which allows the author to expand the creative input into such things as adding links within the text or videos or commentary. It's also being touted as a boon for book clubs.

Here's the link (without subtext)...see what you think: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/books/Social+reading+devices+usher+brave+world+interactive+literacy/6099562/story.html

What about you? Does this sound exciting...as a reader? As an author?

Just let me get settled here with my glass of wine and pull up this month's pick at book club on my e-reader...I may not have worry about an ice storm hitting that night.

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

MYSTERY REVIEW

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
By Peggy Blair
Penguin Canada

Pour yourself a cup of Cubita coffee or a Cubra Libre if that’s more your style, get the fireplace roaring and make yourself comfy because once you start reading The Beggar’s Opera, you won’t want to put it down.

It grabs the reader right from the opening pages, a prologue in this case and what a memorable introduction to the main character Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, head of the Major Crimes Unit of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police. That’s a mouthful and it sums up what this story is about. Cuba, crime, police.

The crime in this case is young boy who’s body is found along the shoreline in Old Havana. He’s also been raped. Just hours before, he’d been spotted begging, along with a gang of boys, in the streets, hitting on tourists. He got lucky. He got money from Mike Ellis, a detective with the Rideau Police Service, who’s on a Cuban vacation with his wife. Unfortunately for Ellis, all the evidence points to him and he ends up in jail.

Ramirez tries to beat the clock in securing an indictment which will keep Ellis behind bars until it’s time for his trial. Seventy-two hours is all the time he has. However, he’s also having to contend with Celia Jones, a formerly an RCMP negotiator, she’s now the departmental lawyer who’s been asked by Ellis’s boss to go to Havana and investigate. She’s up against what seems an entirely different legal system and doesn’t know who to trust.

These are all damaged people. Ellis is recovering from the psychological trauma of the line-of-duty death of his partner and severe facial scars he received in a knife attack. Jones is dealing with a negotiation that went wrong and ended in death. Ramirez is dying and the disease causes him to see the ghosts of the victims of his unsolved crimes. This all adds many more layers to an already complex crime.

The scenes of modern day Havana seem real and disturbing…I say ‘seem’ because I’ve never visited there. It’s a way of living quite far removed from Ottawa, where Peggy Blair lives. That she’s captured it so vividly attests to her writing skills. The dialogue is crisp and focused. The characters are ones who will stay with you, especially Ramirez. Which is good because she’s now working on a sequel.

CRIME ON MY MIND

The word is...

Dialogue came to mind as today's topic after hearing last night about a man in the Halifax area who has a blog. He rides a bus to and from work, and blogs about people, his impressions of them, and more importantly, overheard conversations. What a great idea...I'd love to read it.

We all eavesdrop from time to time, don't we? It's hard to avoid it these days with cell phones being answered in every place from doctor's waiting rooms to a VIA train car. Not only answered, but the conversation seldom drops a respectful octave or two. So, the cell phone user doesn't care who hears the conversation. Fair game. Take note and maybe it will fit into a conversation in your book.

Dialogue has to read real. So what better way then to use actual word patterns, pauses, and yes, you should also make note of the mannerisms. If you get to listen in long enough, you can also pick up on word usage -- what's the person's favourite word -- and even dialect.

The trick is not to put in anything that slows the reader down. Too much dialect and you've lost them...unless you're a terrific writer like Australian Peter Temple.

Y'all know by now that my series is set in Alabama. How not to drive the readers nuts but still remind them of where this is set? That's the question. I try not to overuse expressions such as 'y'all' but it is authentic. Emails I get from Southern writers can attest to that.

That's my way of dealing with that particular aspect of dialogue. And, I admit to the occasional eavesdropping. All with the purest of intentions, of course.
The best advice I've ever heard about dialogue is to read your book out loud. Does the dialogue sound like an actual person is speaking? Let's hope so.

There's a lot to think about with this thing called dialogue. What works best for you?

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com

LADIES' KILLING THURSDAYS

Stranger than Fiction

Where do your characters come from? Do you use real people, or do you just make them up? How can you make them seem real?

These are questions authors are often asked at readings, signings or writing seminars. The creation of character is an endlessly fascinating puzzle, because character is at the heart of story. It’s the characters who draw us into the story, the characters whom we come to love, hate or root for. Characters have to come alive on the page as vivid, credible and genuine, with all the complexity and contradictions of real life.

There are many paths to this goal.. Some writers write elaborate character sketches beforehand, answering such questions as where the person went to school. Thus, when they finally do start to write, they feel they know that character well. Others do the opposite; they merely toss the character onto the page, make him talk and interact, and see how he unfolds. The first technique runs the risk of creating a static character who won’t adapt to the changing story or reveal surprises and layers as he goes along. The latter technique, although strong on flexibility and surprises, may result in a superficial character who is only vaguely conceived.

But regardless of whether we take a cerebral or an intuitive approach, we still need to conjure up characters out of our imagination. How? Partly, we draw on the people we know. Over a lifetime, we have dozens of close relationships – family, work, romance – and observed lots of people. We have worked hard to understand them, see things from their point of view and walk in their shoes. Most of us, with a few glaring exceptions, develop a fair sense of empathy. Empathy is the base from which we create real characters. Once we have sketched out in our mind the type of person he is, drawn some links to real people we know, we step into his shoes, see the scene and the situation from inside his skin, and we write from that perspective. The more different kinds of people we know and the more practiced we are at empathy, the more powerfully real our characters will feel.

But there are some psychic divides across which a writer cannot reach, some characters whose paths we cannot walk. Here we can merely analyze and make observations. I think most of us can step into the shoes of our murderer. We can draw on our own anger, rage, fear and desperation, on those times when we ourselves felt the urge to kill. But most of us can’t walk in the shoes of a psychopathic serial killer. Police, correctional personnel and mental health specialists and researchers might get the closest, but even they can’t truly relate.

Another example emerged in the past few weeks. Most of us have been following the so-called honour killing case in Kingston Ontario, in which a father, mother and their eldest son were on trial for the cold-blooded killing of their three teenage daughters as well as the father’s other wife. This crime is incomprehensible enough by itself, stretching our capacity for human understanding and empathy well beyond the breaking point. But it was the subsequent actions and demeanour of the three accused that is truly mind-boggling. Sadly, many murders involve the killing of loved ones, usually in fits of rage, jealousy, or unbearable pain. The torment of the killer is usually palpable. They are often suicidal and clearly display anguish over the act and the loss.

Not so this extraordinary trio. They expressed outrage at being charged, lied repeatedly and inconsistently throughout the trial, manipulated the system and co-opted other people, including their surviving children, to serve their own interests. Throughout the trial, I kept trying to figure out their perspective and imagine how they saw the world. What, deep inside in the privacy of their own hearts, were their true thoughts and feelings. But I could make no connection.

There are times when a writer is stumped. When characters come along in real life that we could not even begin to make up. Our imagination is limited by our ability to comprehend our fellow humans and to walk in their shoes. And in the case of this trio, I think even if I tried to write a character like that, no one would believe him. That character isn’t real, the readers would say. People aren’t like that.

But sometimes they are.



Barbara Fradkin is a child psychologist with a fascination for how we turn bad. In addition to her darkly haunting short stories in the Ladies Killing Circle anthologies, she writes the gritty, Ottawa-based Inspector Green novels which havewon back to back Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. The eighth in the series, Beautiful Lie the Dead, explores love in all its complications. And, her new Rapid Read from Orca, The Fall Guy, was launched last May.

WICKED WEDNESDAYS

Let the revisions begin!

The end of January coincided with the end of my third book! It sounds dramatic, I know. But I celebrated just a little bit yesterday as I finished the first draft of that book. The one that seemed like I'd never get to the end.

I don't know what it was about this one. Maybe it's more like, what was it about this past fall and early winter? Life seemed to be intruding.... It seemed like there were more appointments (& there were); that more critical events were happening around me and to others who are important to me; and, yes, that I gave in to the call of the frivolous more often than usual.

Book three was there on paper and had been since the start when the editor had asked to see my first three chapters plus proposals for books two and three. I also sent in a synopsis before starting this one. And because of this, I'm now a true believer in that method. It was the synopsis that bailed me out. When I felt overwhelmed and very guilty for not getting on with it, I would read the synopsis and there it was -- my story with a road map that made it easier to write.

Then I got serious with deadlines. I set my own. I had to finish it by Jan. 31st. I work best to short deadlines. And it worked again this time.

So, the relief and the joy are short-lived. Today it's back to reality and the re-writing begins. But this is the fun part (that is, if you're not pulling out your hair because of some obvious problems with timelines, etc.) The writing process continues. Let the revisions begin!

How does the writing process evolve for you -- short bursts of work; sticking to a daily schedule; long-term planning or by the seat of your pants? Enquiring minds want to know!

Linda Wiken/Erika Chase
A Killer Read coming April, 2012
from Berkley Prime Crime
www.erikachase.com