06 April 2025

Squid Names


Squid Games.

I despised it finding myself standing alone as fascinated fans globally flocked to watch Squid Games. To be sure, its visuals were startling brilliant, especially the M.C. Escher architecture. Music was carefully selected from modern to classical, e.g, Blue Danube. I even appreciated that Eyes Wide Shut corrupt and wealthy secret society behind the plot. However…

I have no patience with betrayal and torture story themes, the reason I chose not to watch the series 24. Likewise, Squid Games relied heavily on perfidy and persecution plot points, 456 participants playing off against one another to the death. I finished the first season, vowing to watch no more.

But…

Not long ago, I stumbled upon something that explained a few things, suggesting more than torture-for-entertainment pleasure.

It turns out some in South Korea may have known something the rest of us didn’t– the show was perhaps inspired by horrid events. Forty years ago. Unwanted children, unwanted elderly, and the homeless were rounded up to slave away in work camps, facilities extremely high rates of attrition, as much as 552. It’s further suggested a wealthy Australian-Korean family was behind a pseudo-religious charity called the Brothers Home.

But…

Enter Snopes: They say while Brothers Home and South Korean street cleanups happened, no evidence exists that anyone was forced to play games or was tortured. They found no evidence of exploitation, suffering, or spurious deaths.

But…

Enter Stephanie Soo. She is a prolific vlogger and podcaster. One such podcast is Rotten Mango, a long format true crime video blog in which she cites brilliantly read articles of atrocities and crimes in Asia and around the world.

Something about her suggests Korean, and indeed, she was born in South Korea and grew up in Atlanta. She works with an unknown, never-seen male commentator behind the camera. He occasionally questions or seeks clarification, and she’s done her homework.

The couple created a three episode series on real life Squid Games, and no doubt, she believes it to be true. Further, she provides considerably more detail than I’ve found elsewhere, more than three and a half hours of presentation. And she names names.

But…

Is Snopes wrong? Note the site’s careful wording repeatedly states they found ‘no evidence’ of a real-life torturous work facility. That may be true as far as it goes, but given Mango’s aggregation of detail, it’s eminently possible Soo's Korean contacts uncovered facts and evidence not readily available to the rest of us. I’ve watched a few of her podcasts that demonstrate her attention to detail and her researchers’ knack for collecting, collating, and validating information from disparate sources. In general, she knows what she’s talking about.

Watch Stephanie’s podcasts and let us know what you think.

  1. Thousands of Koreans Forced to Play Children’s Games to NOT Be Killed
  2. South Korea ‘Erased’ 4000 People to Host Olympic Games
  3. Man Survives Real Life Squid Game That Killed 551 People Funded by Rich Australian Family


A Tragedy



In two trials in 2023 and 2024, Lucy Letby, a 33-year-old  former nurse in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in England, was found guilty of the murder or attempted murder of 14 babies in her care between June 2015 and June 2016 and sentenced to life in prison. 


Her murder trial lasted more than ten months and captivated the United Kingdom. The press called Lucy, "UK's most prolific child serial killer in modern times"The judge highlighted "the cruelty and calculation" of her actions and a mother of an infant girl stated, "I don't think we will ever get over the fact that our daughter was tortured till she had no fight left in her, and everything she went through over her short life was deliberately done by someone who was supposed to protect her and help her come home, where she belonged."

Prologue: 


All tragedy invokes the question of what could have been done to stop it, but the prologue is Lucy's life before this tragedy and it's remarkably normal, with no indication that she was a danger to the tiny, premature babies she looked after. She appeared to have been a psychologically healthy and happy, with many close friends and a dedication to nursing. She wanted to be a nurse since she was a teenager, 


 “She’d had a difficult birth herself, and she was very grateful for being alive to the nurses that would have helped save her life,” her friend Dawn Howe told the BBC. An only child, Letby grew up in Hereford, a city north of Bristol. In high school, she had a group of close friends who called themselves the “miss-match family”: they were dorky and liked to play games such as Cranium and Twister. Howe described Letby as the “most kind, gentle, soft friend.” Another friend said that she was “joyful and peaceful. Letby, who lived in staff housing on the hospital grounds, was twenty-five years old and had just finished a six-month course to become qualified in neonatal intensive care. She was one of only two junior nurses on the unit with that training. “We had massive staffing issues, where people were coming in and doing extra shifts,” a senior nurse on the unit said. “It was mainly Lucy that did a lot.” She was young, single, and saving to buy a house. That year, when a friend suggested that she take some time off, Letby texted her, “Work is always my priority.”


Act One: The Trial.


The prosecutors, in seven of the murder or attempted murder charges, relied on an academic paper written in 1989 by Dr. Shoo Lee, one of Canada’s most renowned neonatologists, on a rare complication in newborns — pulmonary vascular air embolism — to argue that Ms. Letby had intentionally injected air into their veins.


At her trial, Lucy suffered from PTSD, was barely coherent and, despite denying that she murdered anyone, she was found guilty of the murder or attempted murder of 14 babies.



Act Two: 



Dr. Lee had retired to a farm in Alberta in 2021 and only heard of the case when Lucy's lawyer emailed him in 2023. Dr. Lee agreed to help with Ms. Letby’s request for an appeal because the expert witness had misinterpreted his work, but the court ultimately denied her request, saying Dr. Lee’s testimony should have been introduced at trial.


Dr. Lee assembled a team of neonatal specialists to look into the case with the caveat that the panel’s review would be released even if they found Lucy guilty.

Fourteen specialists from around the world assessed the clinical evidence and found: In all cases, death or injury were due to natural causes or just bad medical care.


“there was no medical evidence to support malfeasance causing death or injury” in any of the babies that Ms. Letby was charged with harming.

“If there’s no malfeasance, there’s no murder. If there’s no murder, there’s no murderer,” Dr. Lee said, adding, “And if there’s no murderer, what is she doing in prison?”

Some of the hospital staff, the panel concluded, were caring for the most critically ill or premature babies in a unit that was only meant to treat babies with lesser needs. 


Act Three: The Hospital.


The neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital, run by the National Health Service, in the West of England, was found by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to have inadequate nursing- and medical-staffing levels and the increased mortality rate in 2015 was not restricted to the neonatal unit.


Burkhard Schafer, a law professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies the intersection of law and science, said,


 “Looking for a responsible human—this is what the police are good at. What is not in the police’s remit is finding a systemic problem in an organization like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category. It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy.”


That last sentence warrants repeating: It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy. It was precisely the need to find a culprit that led to the failure to understand the real reasons that babies died. 



Act Four:Yet to be written.


We have a nurse in jail for life for murders she didn't commit and a hospital woefully underfunded, that put babies lives at risk. There is no way to rectify things. Lucy, even if released, will be irrevocably damaged. The families who lost their babies will never get them back. The underfunding of hospitals remains unchanged.


It's all a damn tragedy. 

























05 April 2025

We Can't Bury Her THERE


  

I don't know about my fellow SleuthSayers, but the columns I write for this blog usually come to mind only a few days before they're due, and they're often triggered by a recent event or a conversation or a new publication, etc. The idea for my post today popped into my head while I was out in our back yard this past week, when I happened to hear our behind-our-house neighbors chatting to each other in their back yard--we're separated only by a six-foot-tall cypress fence.

Anyhow, hearing those voices made me think of something out of the past--an incident that happened out there in almost the same spot (though we had different neighbors then), and it's memorable only because it proves that real life can sometimes be a lot stranger than fiction.

Here's some background. Twenty years ago, a film producer who lives about three hours north of us had contacted me several months earlier about a Western story of mine that he'd read in a Canadian magazine. He said he thought it would make a good movie, and (of course) I agreed. After a lot of discussions and negotiations he asked me to write a screenplay for it and was soon in the process of putting together a crew, equipment, casting calls, music, locations, etc. Fortunately he allowed me to take part in most of that --I've never had so much fun--and we were swapping phone calls pretty regularly. (NOTE: Alas, that movie never saw the light of day, but for a year or so it was a real possibility, one that now reminds me of the old joke about the airline pilot who announces to his passengers, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, we're lost. The good news is, we're making damn good time.") 

Anyhow, while all this was going on and we were making good time even though we were lost, my Movie Man had decided he also wanted me to come up with a second screenplay, this one a contemporary murder mystery. And here's something else you need to know: Our neighbors in the house behind ours were fairly new to the area, and we hadn't yet met them. All I knew about them was that the husband was tall like me, because we occasionally caught a glimpse of each other over the top of the board fence. 

Okay, back to my story. On this particular day, a Saturday afternoon, my wife Carolyn was in the kitchen and I was out in our back yard, talking on my cell phone with the producer about the plot of my aforementioned in-progress mystery screenplay. The call lasted a long time, as our calls usually did, and when I disconnected and walked in though our back door, Carolyn looked up at me from whatever she was doing and said, "Do you realize what you just said, out there?"

I stopped and gave her my usual clueless stare. "What do you mean, what I just said?"

She pointed to our breakfast-room window, which looked out onto our back yard and--on that day--was open to let in the cool breeze of a nice spring weekend. "For one thing," she said, "you were talking too loud. I could hear every word."

"So, what'd I say?"

"You said, 'We can't bury her there.'"

Then I remembered. We'd been discussing the plotline, and my producer friend had suggested that one of my main characters, who had murdered his wife, should plant her body in a flowerbed on their property, which I didn't think was a good idea.

Continuing, my wife said, "You almost shouted it. After that, you said, 'We should bury her down by the railroad tracks instead, where nobody'll ever find her.'"

I still didn't see what the big deal was. I said, "So?"

She rolled her eyes. "So, our new neighbor was out in his back yard, the whole time you were talking. I saw the top of his head go by a couple of times, above the fence."

Understanding finally dawned. "You think he heard what I said?"

"Unless he's stone deaf, he did."

Well, I remember thinking, Even if he did hear me, he probably thought nothing about it. Besides, what was done was done. I shrugged and asked, "What's for supper?" 

And seriously, I thought no more about it. Until two days later, when I was mowing the grass.

We live on a big corner lot, and at the place where our side lawn bordered our neighbor's lawn, outside the fence and between it and the side street, I saw a shiny new sign, about a foot square, one of those flimsy metal Ten Commandments-like signs with two little wire legs, sticking up out of the grass on our property line. The sign was aimed at our house, and it said, in big printed letters, YOU ARE BEING PRAYED FOR. 

When I finished mowing, I came into the house, hot and sweaty, and reported this news to Carolyn. As it turned out, she'd done some research the previous day, and she now informed me that the husband half of the neighbor couple was the new youth minister at the local Baptist church. For some reason that struck me as funny, but she was not at all amused. I think she strongly suspected that the police might soon show up with drawn guns and a lot of questions about my future plans for burial sites and who might get buried there.

The cops and FBI never arrived, but what did happen was that our backyard neighbors moved away the following week--I swear that's true--and to this day my wife is convinced it was because of my big mouth and my announce-it-to-the-whole-neighborhood plot plans.

Final note, just to ease your mind: Unlike my suspicious wife, I'm fairly certain that (1) our neighbor did not hear what I was saying that day, (2) that sign probably had nothing at all to do with that incident, and (3) neither did our neighbors' sudden relocation to greener pastures. And you might be pleased to hear that I do now try not to talk so loudly on the phone (especially if my immediate family is listening). 

As I said, all this happened long ago, and in all the years since, I have never attempted to use that goofy incident in one of my short stories. Why?

Because fiction must be believable to the reader--and I doubt that this story, even though it's true, would be able to pass that test.

That's one thing that's always bothered me, about writing: Nonfiction is more easily accepted; it doesn't have to be believable. If it happened, it happened, strange or not--in fact, the stranger the better. With fiction, there are restrictions. If it's too strange, it won't work. On the one hand, we as writers are encouraged to mine our past experiences to come up with compelling story ideas, and on the other hand, we have to be careful not to make it too true. Has that kind of thing ever happened to you?

Real Life, as they say, is a trip. You can't make this sh*t up.


  


04 April 2025

Have a Word With Yourself


Two writers inhabit the office where I’m sitting right now. If one of us is having a bad day, the other can’t help but notice. It doesn’t take long before the other occupant gets an earful. On one of those days, I asked my wife to pause in her exasperated recitation. I rooted around in our stash of stationery and produced a piece of textured card stock. I handed it to her, and urged her to write something in this format:
Dear (your name):

You did a great job yesterday writing (short description of the thing you wrote or edited yesterday).

Today you’re going to work on (short description of today’s goal). And you know what? It’s going to be awesome. Have a great day.

I love you,

(sign your name here)

She looked at me like I was nuts but she did it. And for weeks after, whenever I sensed or heard from her that she felt bad about the way the current project was going, I’d either present her with a card in person or leave it on her desk so she’d see it when she next sat down.

She originally thought it was a woo-woo idea, but she now has a little stack of these cards that she has written out. (I do too, because I couldn’t very well let myself off the hook when I was foisting this on her.) I bought two old-timey mail spikes so we could lend some order to our individual piles.


One day, when she resisted doing the exercise because it felt weird, she said, “Where did you even get this stupid idea?”

I did what any husband would do in such a circumstance. I blamed Lawrence Block.

Yes, fellow mystery scribes, that Lawrence Block. The MWA Grand Master. The author of the Matthew Scudder novels, the Bernie Rhodenbarr capers, the Ehrengraf stories… (Oh you don’t know them? You probably should. Very funny.) Block has written tons of books, including what his website calls “midcentury” erotica.

You can’t say this about many fiction writers, but I like Block just as much when he’s writing nonfiction. His advice books for writers, in particular, radiate a very gentle, conversational authority.
In the mid-eighties, Block attended one of those seminars that promised to change your life. He liked what he learned and thought it might even be useful for writers, except that no one had created such material. So Block created a group of exercises and a PowerPoint presentation. Then he booked ads, rented hotel conference rooms, and embarked on road trips with his wife to teach writers how to get in their right mind.

For instance, he had students pair up with another writer, sit across from each other, and recite a list of fears they have about their writing. While one person read off their list of fears, the other person’s job was to simply listen and respond as follows.

“A fear I have about my writing is that it’s all a big waste.”

“Thank you.”

“Another fear I have about my writing is that it’s not any good.”

“Thank you.”

“Another fear I have about my writing is that editors will reject it as soon as they see how bad it really is.”

“Thank you.”

Block’s logic is that fear and negativity are chickenshit. They run aground when they are exposed.
The technique reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting when the shrink character played by Robin Williams demolishes Matt Damon’s tough guy persona by repeating one phrase over and over again—“It’s Not Your Fault”—until Will’s subconscious finally accepts the truth about his miserable childhood.



Block and his wife presented these in-person seminars for two years. Attendees paid $100 for the one-day course. Hitting the road every weekend for three months at a time quickly got old for the Blocks. Little mistakes here and there often left them at the break-even point financially. Block hung up his spurs and got back to his writing.

But he did hear from former students who felt that the class had helped them enormously. Well, he thought, maybe I should write it all down in a book. The first book version of the Write for Your Life course ran about 60,000 words, 20 chapters, 175 pages. Back in the eighties, in the days before print-on-demand, the only way you could make a book was to order a full press run. Block printed 5,000 books hoping he wasn’t going to lose his shirt.

Far from it. He sold all but 25 via mail order. After 4,975 copies disappeared in the mail, Block allowed the book to slip from his mind. Those copies took on a life of their own, with vendors eventually hawking them online at astronomical prices. In 2013, Block says, an assistant of his found the 25 leftover books tucked in a storage facility somewhere. They slapped them up on eBay and alerted fans in an e-blast. The books sold out in three hours.

Block finally capitulated, making the text available as an ebook and a print-on-demand paperback. Though many of the exercises were originally designed to be conducted in a setting with other writers, you can easily adapt them. (Hence the subtitle The Home Seminar for Writers.) I reread the book to write this piece, and I discovered many exercises that I refused to do upon first reading it years ago, such as:

  • I never got around to meditating at several points during the day: as a prelude to writing, after I had finished my writing for the day, or when I was stuck…
  • I never got around to practicing automatic writing—putting down on paper anything that pops into my head—for 10 minutes…
  • I never got around to compiling a list of all the eduction, expertise, life experiences, and references that I have accumulated that I might draw upon for my writing…
  • I never got around to assembling a list of actions I can take to add to that “bank” of experiences…
  • I never got around to decorating my home or office with positive affirmations that I can see on a regular basis…
I’ll stop there, but the book offers at least another 15 different exercises that I—haha—never got around to doing. Because I apparently was too busy not living up to my potential.

Oh—it turned out that the exercise I asked my wife to do is not in Block’s book. The closest is an exercise in which Block asks you to sign and date a letter to yourself in which you state that you no longer need to believe the aforementioned negative thoughts about your writing.

So it turns out that I, Joe D’Agnese, am also a self-help author!

You wouldn’t know it to look at me. I am not alone in buying such books and then not taking their advice. The entire self-help genre would die tomorrow if people did. At one point in the course’s history, Block realized writers so hate saying affirmations that he created and sold audiotapes where the affirmations were spoken aloud and you merely had to listen to them.

For me, what has become interesting about the “love letters to yourself” technique is noticing the negative reactions I have while doing it. I tell myself it’s stupid. I feel uncomfortable, almost sick, at the prospect of praising myself. In fact, I have already judged writing this very column about my experience to be a worthless and egotistical endeavor.

To which I can only respond: Thank you, Joe. Thank you very much.

But what does that mean for you?

Well, some morning soon, I hope you will rise, look yourself in the mirror, and say, “You know what, INSERT NAME HERE? You done good.”

If even thinking about such a thing makes you feel icky or weird, interrogate the feeling. That’s all I’m asking. And if it does make you icky, maybe you ought to check out Block’s book to see if it’s for you. Think about getting a paper copy so you can dog-ear pages or mark your progress as you work through the exercises.

Oh…and while you were looking at yourself in the mirror just now, I left this card on your desk. 


I use these Avery postcards
because they offer nice texture at decent price.


You know what to do with it. If following the instructions makes you feel weird, ask yourself why. Carry that question around with you for a few days as you go about your other projects and errands.
Not because it’s a big deal. Not because it’s supposed to change your life. Do it for yourself. Because it’s worth getting to know an interesting, creative person who builds such marvelous worlds.

* * * 

See you in three weeks!
Joe
josephdagnese.com




03 April 2025

Plot Holes as Big as a Buick


We've all read a book, or watched a movie, one which we actually enjoyed, but later went...  "Wait a second.  What about???"  

And I 'm not talking about tropes, which are everywhere, ranging from "meet cute" to "discussing highly confidential secrets while an evil person is standing right outside the door listening" to "the supervillain who is always one step ahead of the detective, spy, superhero*" to "the genius detective who is never wrong."  You can either stand them or not, and it's usually based on who's playing the part.  

BTW, Allan Rickman could play either the supervillain or the romantic hero and I was always all in for it.  

No, I'm talking about plot holes, the size of my father's 1955 pink and white Buick, where you just shake your head.  And again, you either accept it or you don't...

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins has two plot holes, but I still love it with a passion.  It has tremendous suspense, one of the great villains of all time (Count Fosco), secret illegitimacy, faked deaths, mental asylums, an evil mother (Mrs. Catherick), an innocent heroine cruelly treated (Laura Fairlie), an even more innocent victim who dies (or is killed?), a dauntless hero, a dauntless heroine (Laura's half sister, Marian Halcombe) and enough twists and turns to keep anyone happy and thinking.  A nice, long winter's read.  But, the plot holes:

The plot turns on wealthy heiress Laura Fairlie's remarkable resemblance to a mentally ill young woman (Anne Catherick), and how, after her marriage, where she becomes Lady Laura Glyde, she is drugged and placed in a mental asylum under Anne's name, while the exceedingly ill Anne dies (or is helped along the way) and is buried under Laura's name.  

First Plot Hole: "The most well known error of chronology is that first described in The Times of 30 October 1860. The plot relies on the fact that Laura’s departure for London took place the day after Anne Catherick had died under Laura’s name. In the book edition the date of that death was 26 July whereas as the reviewer points out ‘…we could easily show that Lady Glyde could not have left Blackwater Park before the 9th or 10th of August. Anybody who reads the story, and who counts the days from the conclusion of Miss Halcombe’s diary, can verify the calculation for himself.’"  (The Wilkie Collins Society)

This was eventually corrected, but not until the fourth edition of the novel - and then the correction interfered with later dates in this tightly woven, complex novel.  Those of us who love the book have learned to live with it, and ignore all, including the second plot hole:

Second Plot Hole:  Long after Lady Laura has been rescued from the mental asylum she and her true love Walter marry, but before her identity as Lady Laura has been confirmed and reinstated by the law.  So what name did she get married under? Was it truly legal?  We are never told.  

There is a similar problem in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend.  Bella Wilfer marries John Rokesmith - however John Rokesmith is actually John Harmon, using an alias, which leads to the obvious question, how could their marriage be legal since he married under a false name, and did they remarry once John Harmon revealed himself?  

All I can say is, just ignore it and keep reading. 

The Big Sleep - the movie, not the book.  The book, of course, was written by Raymond Chandler. The movie was written by Leigh Brackett, William Faulkner, with touch-ups by Jules Furthman and Howard Hawks.  

Plot Hole:  The legendary "who killed the chauffer?" (whose death starts the whole movie and investigation) is unanswerable. None of the writers knew; so Hawks cabled Raymond Chandler, who said later, "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either."  (Wikipedia

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie.  

Plot Hole:  Both the book and the movie have a fatal flaw:  why kill the maid?  Yes, the maid is blackmailing the killer, but the killer has money, and they're on a steamer on the Nile.  Why not just pay the maid off, and keep paying the maid off for a few months, and kill her later when everyone's back home and no one will notice if the maid, for example, gets a little blood poisoning from a scratch and dies of it, or just plain disappears?  Obviously, the only reason was that Ms. Christie (whom I revere in many ways) had made such a complex, ironclad plot that it was the only way to make it possible for Hercule Poirot to solve the case.  

And right there is a lesson for us all:  don't make your plot so tight you can't find a way out of it.  Leave room for errors and basic screw-ups, because we humans do that all the time.  

For that matter, leave room in your life for basic screw-ups, because they will happen.

02 April 2025

Today in Mystery History: April 2


 


Time for the 14th stop on our tour of the genre's past.


April 2, 1879.
 Hulbert Footner was born in Ontario.  He explored the northern part of the province (Lake Footner is named in his honor) and then became an actor, traveling across North America in a play called Sherlock Holmes.  He wrote adventure stories and more than 30 detective tales about Madame Rozika Storey who solved crimes with her less-brilliant assistant.  Some of his other crime novels were made into movies.

April 2, 1914.  Alec Guinness was born in London.  He starred in some wonderful films in our genre (Kind Hearts and Coronets, Our Man in Havana, The Lavender Hill Mob) but to me he is immortal for the greatest performance of John LeCarre's master spy, George Smiley, in TV's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley's People.
 

April 2, 1920.
Jack Webb was born in Santa Monica, CAIn 1949 he starred as an unlicensed private eye in the radio show Pat Novak, For Hire. In 1950 he performed in  two classic genre movies: Sunset Boulevard and Dark City. But you know darned well what he is remembered for: he created and starred in the radio show Dragnet (1952-1957) which also played on TV from 1952-1959.  Yes, he played Sgt. Joe Friday on radio and TV at the same time.  He brought the show back to TV from 1967 to 1970.  The highly-stylized police procedural was much quoted, copied, and mocked.
 
 April 2, 1931. The birth date of another Ontario mystery writer.  Howard Engel wrote sixteen novels about Toronto private eye Benny Cooperman. In Memory Book the detective suffers a blow to his head (as have how many other fictional sleuths?) but this one resulted in his inability to read.  This was based on the results of an actual stroke Engel suffered.
 

April 2, 1950.
This Week Magazine featured Ellery Queen's short story "The Sound of Murder."
 
April 2, 1974. The Sting won the Oscar for Best picture.  Can you hear "The Entertainer?"
 
April 2, 1980. The Long Good Friday was released.  The wonderful Bob Hoskins as a gang boss  under attack.  "You don't crucify people! Not on Good Friday!" 



April 2, 199?.
On this date Detective Mike Hoolihan tells us about the case she can't let go of.  Thus begins Kingsley Amis' novel Night Train.
 
April 2, 1999. Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune  was released.  Glenn Close and Julianne Moore starred in a movie about the results of an old woman's death on a small town.  It was nominated for an Edgar.
 
April 2, 2002. Henry Slesar died in New York City, where he was born.  In between he wrote  mysteries and science fiction, but is best remembered for the adaptation of his work to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.  His first novel, The Gray Flannel Shroud, won the Edgar Award. He also won an Emmy as head writer for the only crime-focused soap opera, The Edge of Night.
 

April 2, 2012. 
On this day New Jersey mobster Sal Caetano told a gang of Mafiosi that he wanted a screw-up killed.  Thus begins Greenfellas, written by somebody named Lopresti.

And there we draw the veil.
 

01 April 2025

BSP


Honest truth. With no horse-trading or calendar engineering whatsoever, my turn to blog falls on the day Severn River Publishing releases my debut novel, The Devil's Kitchen. Stop now if you don't want to read about my unsuppressed joy. 

The road to publication began in 2015. In December, my wife called my bluff. A new district attorney had just been elected in my county. I left the DA's Office without a real plan for what might happen next. On that day, my wife also became a former assistant district attorney. She challenged me to pursue my writing dream. Always the braver and smarter of the two of us, she quickly found traditional employment, the kind that doles out regular paychecks and benefits. 

I started writing short stories. Some of them found homes. (I thank Linda Landrigan, Michael Bracken, Barb Goffman, and others for always making me sound more dexterous in my native tongue than I actually am.) Meanwhile, I began scribbling away at novels. The first didn't sell. Neither did the second nor the third, nor the...You may see a pattern here. 

It was important to me to keep trying. I love writing short stories, and I'm still thrilled when an email arrives informing me that one has been accepted for publication. But to achieve my goals as a writer, I wanted to succeed in both short and long forms. 

Somewhere in this process, I too stumbled back into traditional employment. The regular hours of my magistrate gig were far more conducive to writing than working as an assistant district attorney. I still got to dabble in criminal law without the burden of disrupting and time-consuming trials. 

The new job's schedule allowed me to attend a few mystery conferences. I made friends and learned more about the craft of writing. I'm grateful for the opportunities these gatherings have provided me. 

One of the books I wrote involved a pair of National Park Service investigators who found a dead body at Yellowstone. Clues gleaned from the investigation hinted at a historic conspiracy involving an ancient relic secreted out of France by royalists during the French Revolution. I titled it The Devil's Kitchen. The dual timeline mystery was fun to write, and it allowed me to draw upon hikes I taken visiting Yellowstone with my family. 

Last year, I was sitting on the beach in Galveston, burning some vacation, when my agent emailed me to say that Severn River wanted to talk about the novel. "When could I set that up?" she asked. 

"I'm on vacation," I told her. "I'm available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But that may sound desperate. Tell them that as a magistrate I can move things around and likely be available at their convenience." 

The last few months have been another fabulous adventure. Like Michael and Barb before her, Kate Schomaker has continued to find gentle ways to point out my deviations from the Chicago Manual of Style. I have loved getting emails with possible cover designs and being asked to comment on the options I prefer. (In truth, all I see is my name printed across the bottom.)

And I really, really like the emails where we talk about the next book. Our heroes travel to the Everglades. 

The last decade has been a great journey, one that has only gotten better over the last few months. I'm grateful to many people along the way, especially my family, friends, and fellow writers, who have continued to say, "You can." I hope that I have the opportunity to thank each of you personally. 

I'll see some of you at Malice Domestic in a few weeks. You'll be able to recognize me. I'll be the smiling guy holding the book with the new and shiny cover. 

Until next time. 

31 March 2025

What Makes An Anthology The Best?


The SleuthSayers anthology, Murder, Neat, edited by our own Michael Bracken and Barb Goffman, has had the distinction of being named one of the finalists for the inaugural Derringer Award for Best Anthology in an impressive field of 2024 short crime fiction anthologies.

I've edited two anthologies and contributed stories to almost a dozen including my own. I've also had a story included as an "Other Distinguished Story" in a volume of Best American Mystery Stories—an honor that means the notoriously critical series editor picked it as one of fifty out of a field of several thousand, but that year's guest editor failed to select it as one of the twenty to include in the anthology.

So I feel qualified at what seems a good moment to talk about some of the elements of excellence in an anthology.

Any anthology needs focus. This may be provided by a theme, restriction of the setting or authorship to a certain region, or limitation of submissions to a particular group or organization. All the contributors to Murder, Neat are current or former SleuthSayers. The theme, some aspect of alcohol, bars, and drinking, was chosen after much lively discussion among the blogfellas.

 The highly regarded Noir anthology series from Akashic Books was fresh when it began with Brooklyn Noir. It now runs to more than a hundred books. I've heard that the publisher is deeply committed to publishing stories on a variety of aspects of the chosen location as well as a genuine noir flavor. On the other hand, the concept of the "anthology noir" has been a runaway success far beyond the original publisher's series. I wrote a story for Jewish Noir II (2022). The stories ranged from Biblical to paranormal to historical to modern, the genres from noir to comic to speculative, the settings spanned the globe. Submissions were by invitation only, but not all of the contributors were Jewish.

Some editors choose to engage potential readers through a mix of beloved authors and fresh voices. Those are the anthologies in which half the stories are by invitation, the other half by open call. I've never made it into one of those. I tried to seed my own anthology, Me Too Short Stories, with a few well-known authors along with open submissions in hopes of attracting a better publishing contract. As it happened, a political issue was raging at the time, and the more courted authors were the first to abandon ship. I persisted and ended up with a book of wonderful stories that failed to get the attention it deserved.

Apart from market considerations, the best anthology is one in which every story is a winner. I got that in the end with Me Too Short Stories. All the stories adhered to the theme, but each of them did it in a different way. None of the writers was famous, but all were terrific at working cooperatively and appreciated a strong editor. Even when fifteen or twenty or two dozen stories are all about bars or all about Jewishness or all about crimes against women, they can be as different as each writer's voice and way of building a unique structure on the three-cornered foundation of plot, character, and writing or storytelling.

Once the editor or editors have selected the stories, they must put them in the best possible order. This is a creative act, akin to putting together a single-author collection of short stories or poetry, and I assure you it produces endorphins. A well arranged anthology starts with a pie in the face—a first story that grabs the your attention (especially in the library or bookstore or in the Amazon sample) and makes you want to read on. The second and third stories must also make you want to read on, and they must be entirely different from the first and from each other—dark and light, tragedy and humor, horror and cozy, snappy dialogue and brooding narrative. And one of the very best must be saved for last, so you close the book with a smile or a sigh of satisfaction.