Detective in Uppsala

Somebody hired me to find out
what happens to light in Sweden.
Uppsala, specifically.  Hey, my
far-far was Swedish, I wanted to say
as I started the job. There was no
fooling the Swedes.  Every move I
made was American.  Even when I
was quiet, I was loud; and on time,
late. What I found out.

was light fills snow in Uppsala along about
January.  It will have you dreaming
in Bergman scenes.  In summer, it
leaves town for the lakes. It takes
the place of paint: some buildings
are an uncanny yellow, others eye-blue,
others as pale as the belly of a fish
in the Fyris River. I saw light

playing on birch bark, in gold hair,
black hair, brown hair. I have
a recording of light congratulating
raindrops.  The light in this
one apartment almost had me
sobbing, it was so beautiful.
(Private Eyes aren't supposed to cry.)
I praised light in crystal. I
tasted it in pastry.  That's
what I found out. That's my report.


* far far = grandfather
hans ostrom 2017

Crime Novel Set in the Sierra

My first published novel was also my first published crime, or detective, novel.  It is set in a small county in the Sierra Nevada of California.  It's called THREE TO GET READY.  Here's how little I knew about the inner workings of the mystery/crime/detective genre back then: When I got a copy of a favorable review of the book, I noticed that the reviewer called it a "procedural," which refers to a crime novel in which the detective/protagonist is a professional.  As my protagonist is a sheriff, my novel is a "procedural."  I said to my wife, "Honey, I wrote a 'procedural'!"

Anyway, the novel is now available at what I imagine to be a reasonable price--$3.95--on Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Three-To-Get-Ready-ebook/dp/B007QMHUSA/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1333329396&sr=1-1-catcorr

Top 100 Detective Novels?

(The image is of Denzel Washington in the film-based-on-the-novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley.)


I'm double-dipping on this post, as I have posted on a related topic--on

http://upsenglish.wordpress.com/

At any rate, the following site has a list from David Lehman of the top 100 detective novels, based partly on the value of the novels themselves but also on their historical importance in the genre:

http://www.topmystery.com/lehmans100.html



Like a lot of people who, one way or another, ended up making reading central to their lives, I started reading detective fiction early. There were always a lot of paperbacks in the genre around the house, for one thing, and I also got hooked on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes early on.

I teach a class, now and then, on detective fiction, and I've published one detective novel, Three To Get Ready--very much a first try, if you get my drift. I was so inexperienced that I didn't know I'd written a book in the sub-genre known as "police procedural" until I read a review of the book, the "police" in which are represented by a rural sheriff and his deputy.

I've always thought the detective (or "crime" or "mystery") novel had a lot in common with the sonnet, insofar as there are some strict conventions set up, and some heavy expectations--but also the expectation that one will improvise, somehow, on what's come before. In both cases, working within the conventions but also testing them and in some cases disrupting them--all part of a satisfying process, from the writer's point of view at least.

Yo, Poe

Thanks to the incalcuable effort, energy, and imagination of some colleagues, the college at which I teach is about to host "SymPOEsyium," celebrating Edgar's 200th birthday, which actually occurred about a month ago, but after 200 years, well--close enough. The celebration will feature lectures, informal discussions, a parody-contest, performances, screenings of films, the serious, the campy, and the in-between. And Lord knows Edgar was in between--serious writer; writer for pay; "Southern Gentleman"; impoverished, feckless roustabout; considered by some to be an indelibly influential writer and critic; considered by others to be juvenile and excessive. Poe was most American, perhaps, in his desperate need for acceptance, in his attempt to try on different identities, in is manic drive, and in his raging inventiveness.
*




The poetry captivated me for a brief "moment" when I was in my early teens, and "The Raven" is still quite a performance, a grand entertainment. Poe also had a way with lyricism. Like Auden, he liked to play with words.
*

Many of the stories still work for me. They aren't especially subtle (ya think?), but that trait mostly springs from Poe's idea of what a story (and, indeed, a poem) should do: go for that one effect. In many instances, the stories achieve multiple effects, and the personae that narrate many of the tales fascinate, are more complex than one might first realize.
*


It's great to watch a writer essentially invent sub-genres that we now call "horror," "thriller," and "detective story." It's fun to watch a writer have fun. Poe's pleasure in entertaining comes through especially, I think, in "The Cask of Amontillado." (Unfortunately, my having worked as a stone-mason's assistant almost ruins the story for me because I know how long it takes to mix mortar, build a wall, etc. Poe glides over the details; more power to him.) "The Fall of the House of Usher" still holds great appeal, and Poe achieved so much in such a small space (so to speak) in "Murders in the Rue Morgue": genius-detective (half-amateur, half-pro); wacky crime; grisly crime-scene; the "locked-room" puzzle; the flummoxed police; the surprise ending.

Writers and readers should probably not underestimate how well Poe tended to start his stories. Some great openers.
*

In college I read and studied The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. A wild book, and not a bad novel, really.
*

For SymPOEsium, I'm going to get off my duff and, with a colleague, talk about "The Philosophy of Composition" and the famous review of Hawthorne's tales. I'll be giving Edgar an imaginary fist-bump. I hope his spirit takes it in the right spirit and doesn't try to brick me up in the catacombs. Yo, Poe: Happy Birthday.

25 Detective Novels!

(Dame Agatha Christie)






Some months ago, I wrote a post about H.R.F. Keating's wonderful book about his 100 favorite detective novels. Keating was not just an avid reader and reviewer in the genre but a detective-novelist himself, and the book has a fine essay on each choice. A link to the post, which is remarkable chiefly for the great photo of Keating:

http://poetsmusings-muser.blogspot.com/2008/06/rumpole-and-keating-brits-fit-for.html

Of course, when anyone, even experts, sets out to produce such lists, he or she knows the extent s/he's engaged in folly, especially with regard to a genre so abundant and multifaceted as detective fiction.

I decided to go for a list of 25 and not really to try to represent the genre as well as Keating does. These are simply favorite detective novels of mine, although many of them qualify generally as classics.

Actually, I already lied. There are only 24 novels here. I decided to cheat and include Conan Doyle's complete Sherlock Holmes. At least it's in one volume. And although I begin with Holmes, that is to say, Doyle, the books are really in no order in particular. And while I'm at it, let me highly recommend Leslie S. Klinger's magnificent 3-volume The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. It is to die for, so to speak. It doesn't replace Baring-Gould's two volume work of the same kind, but it adds to it splendidly--if, that is, you're an aficionado of Holmes, Watson, and Doyle.

I confess my less is awfully predictable. Staid. Preemptive apologies if you don't see some of your "faves", or is it "favs"? I must also confess that I've published a detective novel, which does not appear on this list (apparently I do have some shame), and I'm working on another (wish me luck; oy, it's a hard genre.)

And I simply MUST expand my knowledge of the genre and find out more about Canadian detective fiction, more French detective fiction (besides Simenon, and in translation), Spanish and Latin American detective fiction, and detective fiction from nations in Africa, Arabia, Persia, and so on. Recommendations gladly accepted.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I have the venerable Doubleday one, with the introduction by Christopher Morley. My favorite tale? I'll go with "A Scandal in Bohemia."

2. Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade.

3. Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man. Nick Charles. I'm tempted to add Hammett's Continental Op stories. Hammett did almost the impossible by creating three highly appealing detectives. Amazing.

4. Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep. Philip Marlowe, wise-ass.

5. Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely.

6. Dorothy Sayers, Strong Poison. Keating prefers The Nine Tailors. Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. (Harriet is not in The Nine Tailors.)

7. Agatha Christie, Taken at the Flood. Other novels by her are much better known, but this one, as well as The Clocks, has always impressed me. Poirot.

8. Agatha Christie, The Body in the Library. Miss Marple. Perhaps the classic "village cozy" detective novel.

9. Rudolph Fisher, The Conjure-Man Dies: A Mystery Novel of Dark Harlem.

10. Georges Simenon, Maigret's Revolver. There's just nothing quite like a Maigret book.

11. Georges Simenon, Maigret's Rival.

12. Henning Mankell, Sidetracked. Warning: very creepy.

13. Akimitsu Takagi, The Tattoo Murder Case. Warning: very creepy.

14. R. Austin Freeman, Mr. Pottermack's Overshight. (Great droll British title. Warning: unconventional).

15. Edmund Crispin (pen name of Bruce Montgomery, who also wrote music for films), The Moving Toy Shop. Warning: British eccentricity taken almost to the limit. Extremely witty, however.

16. Barbara Neely, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. A most refreshing amateur-detective novel.

17. Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance. One of the great debut novels in American crime fiction. Many moons ago, the owner (then) of the Seattle Mystery Book Shop told me this was his favorite mystery novel.

18. Rex Stout, The Golden Spiders.

20. Tony Hillerman, The Skin-Walkers. Jim Chee, Navajo.

21. Joseph Hansen, Early Deaths. Dave Brandstetter is the detective, and his, among other things, gay.

22. P.D. James, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. I think P.D. James was made a peer of the realm, so I should refer to her as Dame James--is that right? We Americans are so bad about this stuff--and so much else. Anyway, I got to interview her once--about her book, The Children of Men, on which the recent film was based. Adam Dalgleish is her detective. I just purchased her latest Dalgleish, The Lighthouse. It looks good.

23. Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress.

24. John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Goodbye. This is a nostalgic choice because I was really "into" MacDonald novels in my teens, and I thought Travis McGee, was pretty cool. The novels are a tad dated, but MacDonald's a real pro.

25. Aaron Elkins, Old Bones.

I feel terribly about leaving off books by Grafton, Paretsky, Ross MacDonald, James Elmore, Elmore Leonard, J.A. Jance--and dozens & dozens of others. But these 25 I really like.

Happy detective-novel reading to you, and remember: recommendations welcome.

Bats and Bobs in My Belfry

I'm not exactly sure why, but in Winter, the reading I do that's not connected with my professorial work tends to include either Russian novels or classic detective fiction or both. With regard to Russian novels, I guess one reason may be obvious: who "does" Winter better in fiction that the Russians? With regard to detective fiction, well, I can remember having read the collected Sherlock Holmes tales for the first time in the winter, and I even remember reading them by candle-light when the power went out for a few days. So maybe that experience welded Winter to the reading of detective fiction, in my case.

So I've dipped into War and Peace for the umpteenth time, and I've decided to read Dorothy Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels again; in fact, I'm reading a couple of them for the first time. I'd read Strong Poison and Whose Body? before, for example, but I'm reading The Nine Tailors for the first time. (The photo is of Sayers.)

It has nothing to do with tailors, at least as referring to people who put clothes together. It has everything to do with bells. Church bells. Ringing church bells--the tradition and practice of which are bewilderingly complex--and fascinating. In the beginning of the novel (I'm not spoiling the plot), Lord Peter is pressed into service as a parish church literally rings in the New Year--with 8 bell-ringers ringing a bell each for nine hours, from midnight to 9:00 a.m. That's some serious bell-ringing. The narrator also lets us know that one of the bells was forged in the ground; that is, a hollowed out piece of pasture was used to mold the bell, back in the day.

There are probably cultures that immerse themselves in arcane, eccentric practices more fully (one wants to say more madly) that the Brits, but I can't think of any at the moment. (And for every arcane pursuit, there seems to be a BBC radio show.) Apparently, serious bell-ringing began in the 17th century, and soon ringers were performing elaborate, mathematically complex tunes, although I thing I'm supposed to use "change" in place of "tune." Soon thereafter, an elaborate and seemingly impenetrable vocabulary emerged. For instance, "tailors" is, according to the OED online, a corruption of "tellers," which probably is related to "tolling." According to a bell-ringing glossary online, "bob" refers to "a type of plain method" of ringing in which a "lead or a half-lead" is deployed. All righteee, then.

I know I'm over my head with a subject when the definitions of terms seem as confusing as the terms they allegedly define. It was that way with trigonometry.

In bell-ringing circles (that word seems apt, given how sound radiates), "wrong" doesn't mean incorrect. It is "a device that causes an odd number of bells (often 3) to vary their work"--usually related to the "Treble's full lead." There, now; we've cleared that up!

Sayers was not just a Brit, but also a Dante scholar, a devout Christian, and a feminist. This combination helps to make her a most readable detective novelist, full of surprises, knowledge, wisdom, and wit. I wouldn't say her villains are especially interesting, but her detective, Wimsey, is distinctive enough to rival Holmes, and his side-kick (and wife), Harriet Vane, a liberated woman of the 1920s, more than rivals Watson, except for the fact that Watson is our narrator in the tales, and for the fact that Harriet is not in all the novels.

The devout-Christian part induces Sayers to defend ferociously the practice of bell-ringing--in an author's note before the novel begins. She asks, rhetorically, why anyone would complain about bell-ringing in an age of the automobile and the "wails" of jazz--especially when bell-ringing is a tribute to God. The novel itself makes bell-ringing--like book-collecting, fly-fishing, and all manner of pursuits--and end in itself. Highly proscribed subcultures like this no doubt provide great comfort to people in a bewildering, chaotic world. Meanwhile, ordinary folks who aren't maniacally devoted to such a pursuit think the bell-ringers, et al., have "bats in their belfry." I always thought that was a charming term for insanity. I heard it quite a bit when I was growing up (not always directed at me, I hasten to add), but I don't hear or read it anymore.

In any event, here I am in Winter's darkness, immersed in a Sayers book and immersed in her immersion in bell-ringing. And this pleases me? Yes, I'm afraid it does. I'm 40 pages in, and there's yet to be a murder, so I must be pleased. I usually like at least one murder--or some other serious crime--to occur within the first 25 pages of detective novels.

So when you ring in the New Year, think of . . . Dorothy Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey, bats in the belfry, and bob, who is not only your uncle but also "a type of plain method . . .".

If there's a bat or two in your belfry and you'd like to know more about this obscure art of bell-ringing, well, here's a link:

http://www.cccbr.org.uk/ringing/ringing.php