I like my mystery like a Rubik's Cube

I like my mystery like a Rubik's cube

                                                     


For those of you who missed the decade between 1975 and 1985, the Rubik's Cube is a 3-D combination puzzle and toy. Ernő Rubik invented in 1974. He was an Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture. Originally its name was "the Magic Cube." Multiple squares in different colors line each side and move independently of each other. Rows can be moved as a unit in the north-south direction or the east-west direction. By twisting and spinning the rows, using differing axes, you can create a cube that has only a single color of squares on each side. They have invented computer algorithms to figure out the solving process. Of course, that is cheating the same way, reading the last chapter of a mystery instead of starting at the beginning of the book and reading straight through to the end is.

As in my favorite mysteries, the solution should be hard to reach, but it should in retrospect be logical and almost obvious when all the facts are considered from the right point of view - via the retrospectoscope. Every pertinent fact must ring true. They must fit like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Red herrings viewed from the book's conclusion should have been discountable, but somehow are not dismissed immediately by the reader. The process of solving must be not so hard as to discourage the reader from trying, and yet, not so easy so that the reader needs no effort to reach the right conclusion. Certainly, the final answer of whodunnit, should not be so obvious as to make the story unable to hold the reader's interest, but at the finish, the reasoning and logic must stand out like a single color on each side of the Rubik's Cube.

I love colorful characters. I love wonderful setting that bring me into the picture to stand next to the detective, but most of all, I want to struggle to figure out who killed the victim, so that I have a feeling of accomplishment when I reach the conclusion. I want lots of pieces that I must move around and align just right so that I can conclude who dunnit.

If I accuse the wrong character of being the murderer, that is better than if I know who the killer is before the middle of the book. Those type of manuscripts fit into the genre of suspense, where we know who is the bad guy, but we don't know if he will be caught. I'm a mystery fan, not suspense.

Think about it. Suspense by nature is more about the procedural part of crime apprehension, and mysteries were more about the mental aspects - deducing from facts, and using logic to reach the conclusion. Often they have physical apprehension, but just knowing who the killer is represents the goal in murder mysteries.

In a good mystery, like the Rubik's cube, all the facts are on the table before the end of the book, and we, the readers, have the opportunity to succeed, but it takes perseverance and brain power to reach the goal of who, how and why - to align all the colors on their side.

-- L.A. Preschel



The art work for this essay was taken from non-copyright Rubix Cube Clip Art.

NOIR AT THE BAR

Last Night At The Shade Bar - 241 Sullivan Street.

Noir at the Bar is a group of writers of the noir genre who get together for readings every few months. It is held at the Shade Bar on the corner of West Third Street & Sullivan Street in Greenwich village. It is a short walk from the A train, which my character Sam Cochran takes home to Pops in Queens, therefore our transport via subway to the bar was well known to me. Sunday, December 8th was pre-Hanukkah, and the middle of the pre-Chrismas shopping season, so the subway was full of characters at 5 p.m. I love riding the subway, because I can populate my novels with its inhabitants. Of course, it is just my imagination as to their personalities, but the people start the wheels turning. Similar to a farmer harvesting crops. The subways grow character like weeds in your organic vegetable garden.

The bar itself is about fifty feet by thirty feet, with two walls facing the street - I did say it was on a corner - large windows allow viewing of the passing parade of pedestrians. However, even with the street light fully on, the room is darker than a vampire's lair at midnight. The wattage used to illuminate the joint, can't run more than a nickel a night on the electric bill. Or maybe they have four squirrels running on wheels to generate the power. The brown time ceiling made of molded press pattern squares is a left over from when speak-easies existed. The walls are unfinished wood and each has at least one mirror on it. The plain wood tables rock when you lean on them and the kitchen is behind a red curtain, which I did not try to peek behind. In a place like this, never look where they cook the food you eat. What you don't know probably won't kill you, but what you do know, will steal away your appetite. That is my general rule, and I have no idea if it applies to Shade bar, however, the people next to me were having enchilada like food and it looked good. You never know.

The actual bar seats about ten people and takes a right turn to run parallel to the short wall of the room. Behind the patrons seated at the short leg of the bar is one of the two windows. The long leg of the bar runs about fifteen feet, and behind it is a glass lit four-tiered set of shelves with assorted whiskeys. Some of the bottles glow because of the lighting from underneath the shelving is transmitted by their contents. They look like glow-worms in the darkened room. Think Fernando's hideaway and if you are old enough to remember that song, you are in my age group. The corner of the bar has several taps, but none of them sprout stouts or any dark beer, so they are worthless to me. Would not even make the bar tender, who sports two nasal piercing, waste the energy to push a handle to receive a glass of the amber stuff that passes for beer. (My wife compared her to Gilda Radner cause of her two pig-tail hair style.) Guinness in a bottle? Not worth the effort to pull the cap, I can wait to get home for some real bottled dark brew or even some Port. Life has taught me patience. I'll wait the three to four hours to get home before I would ruin my taste buds on the watery bubbles that pass for IPA beer. My beer is as twilight in a cave.

Hey if I'm at a noir author's reading, where's the dark stuff?

The room gradually filled with people - authors, friends, acquaintances, and rabble. I fit into the last category, but having brought my wife, thereby I was upgraded to respectable. We took the last two seats at a table. Timing is everything in life, and we hit the schedule just right.

As the readings were about to start, they darkened the bar. How? Maybe two of the four squirrels on the treadmill stopped running. The little bar was packed with people standing in the aisle. It was so packed that the bar tender could not traverse the ten feet from the bar to my table to ask for the fifth time if I wanted a drink. No stout, no drink. That is my firm policy. The stranger sitting across from me was drinking water with lemon. He asked for a refill and said, "put it on my tab." So I am not sure the bar was doing that well, even with the crowd, but on Sunday without television (no football games), maybe this was better than being empty.

As I said, the room was so tightly packed, I was looking for the label to see if we were sardines in oil or tuna packed in water. It turned out we were neither as exotic as sardines, nor as tedious as tuna. We were just a group of friends/compatriots, newly found or long time known, here to enjoy a spectrum of authors reading their noir and bizarre works.

What I learned from the reading. When a noir writer is too lazy to actually show or tell what his character is thinking he uses a four letter word, which is so non-descript as to let the reader construct/imagine the mood/emotion/action of the character. Don't show, and don't tell, just write some "excrement" on the paper and it'll do. I'm no expert but ... what the hell?

I wanted to announce that they have published a thesaurus, which could provide you with a smorgasbord of words that could approximate quite accurately the meaning and attitude the author wanted to engender in his character. However, my ideas are surely not as substantial as an award winning writer having his or her character say the same four-letter word for the twelfths time in under three pages. That is good writing - remove tongue from cheek and smile in faux flattery.

Do they think this draws in the reader and involves them? No. Does it create character? Maybe, if it is used once or twice. However, repetition makes the "shock" value vanish and the word itself becomes boring. (All good writers try to vary their words, even if they have the same meaning. It is consistent tone for our characters that we strive for, not a limited vocabulary, unless that is the character's best attribute.) By the fifth time the character describes someone, something or some event with this word, it makes the character inarticulate and the writing a cliche and repetitive. How brave of an author to use a word that six year-old children use on the playground to diss one-another. How creative.

Several wonderful writers read and several writers about whom I wonder also read. Slander and liable laws will not allow me to enumerate further. However, I did learn by listening.

I learned that selecting the right word and making your scene and prose accessible without being trite, commonplace and redundant always stands out in the crowd. That is a lesson I relearn every time I hear, or read a great writer. One writer accomplished that supremely and won my award for best writing of the night. The prestigious Sam Cochran award for writing excellence. The winner will go unrecorded and the two million dollars in Monopoly money will go unawarded.

The best writers make the common unique and the unique accessibly common. How wonderful for their readers. To live such a spectacular life with the ease of reading a flowing story.
Thanks Noir at the Bar for allowing me to learn that fact for the ?infinite-th? time.

Oh and P.S. I also met an old friend, Wallace Stroby, there. He did not read, but I already know he knows how to write. Picking up any of his novels will take you on a great Jersey journey.

Live long and prosper - L.A. Preschel for Sam Cochran P.I.

The Greater the Strength of the Villain

The Greater the Strength of the Villain  - the more determined the hero must be.

The greater the talents of the literary villain, the more the hero can demonstrate his abilities.
The harder the task of defeating the hero's adversary, the more impressive the effort by the protagonist.

As writers we must think of the villain as the sounding board our protagonist resonates against. The bigger and harder the task to play the villain, (like the large bass drum of the Ohio State marching band), the greater the talents of the protagonist in playing against that villain. The louder the noise and the greater the commotion.

Strength of the villain should never be a deterrent to the continued attempt to overcome his evil.
People of good faith and strong hearts are needed to supply the balance against evil.

-- L.A. Preschel

"This is true in fiction, but by reading fiction, we can learn how to apply our efforts in real life.
I am ready to stand up and over come the devil no matter the cost to me, no matter his power or position in society. Evil must be fought to its defeat."

Samantha Cochran - 28th November 2019

Thanksgiving gave me opportunity to read James Lee Burke

Thanksgiving gave me opportunity to read a James Lee Burke mystery Pegasus Descending. I had a bus ride to my family's party, and my kindle was loaded with electricity both from the plug in my wall at home and from his writing on the page.

I give thanks for his story-telling ability. I can sail away to places I have never visited before, and experience them with all my senses. How wonderful is writing like that? In fact, for over half the bus ride, I was in Florida while riding on the New Jersey Turnpike. I lived the story with his detective Dave Robicheaux. One of the reasons I write the Samantha Cochran manuscipts in first person is James Lee Burke. He taught me how effective that person is to create a multi-sensory scene.
However, that is where the comparison in our writing styles diverges as his beautiful lengthy descriptions of every setting are not present in my writing. I write with more urgency. Probably the difference between the writing of an intense New Yorker versus the slow pace of the laid-back south and mid-west populace.
If you have not had the chance to read Mr. Burke, you should start within the minute, because it beats the hell out of almost everything else you can do legally wherever you live.
I may have written this before somewhere a blog or a tweet or on my Facebook page, but every time I pick up one of his novels, no matter which of his detectives is the protagonist, I leave New Jersey and travel to Louisiana, or Texas or Idaho or wherever his book takes place. Cheapest vacation you can ever buy. And one of the safest, no driving to a resort, no flying to a destination, and no travel delays that make your connections disconnected.
Oh, and if you were wondering if Alafair Burke, who writes mysteries as well, is related to him, her credentials as a former DA in the great Northwest does not require genetic compatibility with Mr. Burke. She has earned her ranking as a mystery writer on her own. She is quite prolific. However, she is his daughter and neither of the two will disclaim that fact. He has stated, she was writing mysteries before he ever penned one Dave Robicheaux manuscript.

I leave with this final thought, James Lee Burke is such a talented writer that he has won an Edgar (the award given by Mystery Writers of America for the best mystery novel of the year) for two of his detectives.

Now stop reading this post and go download or buy one of his books.

Here is a link for the order and complete listing of Mr. James Lee Burke's works

Or as an alternative, buy one of Alafair's
Here are the books of Alafair Burke in order.

One last thing, if you think you are too snooty and proper to read mysteries, because they are not literate enough or they do not present the level of academia that your taste requires, before I give you the you are one number sign with my middle finger, remember, Robert B. Parker taught college level English, as did Mr. Burke. His daughter's teaching credentials are listed at the link above. Things sometimes are not what they seem; oh wait, isn't that what most mysteries are based on. So if mysteries are the pablum of the masses, their author-chefs can still cook the hell out of them.


Enjoy. Read and live.
--- L.A. Preschel

Political Life goes on

I have published a political rant on my Facebook page.
So if you dare, go visit this link.

I will be back soon with more about noir mysteries and Samantha Cochran.

Thanks for the look and see today.

L.A. Preschel

Live to Write and Live to Read

Live to Write and Live to Read

Live to Write - I'm over 70 years old and that is my motto.
Write to Live - A life that would be otherwise unavailable to me.

Live to read - I hope my audience believes that. I'm retired and still learning everyday.
           A life without reading is dull and uninformed.
Read to Live - a life/story you want to discover that is unique, and yet, obscure to you.
           The key to discovery is exploring the written world, fact, fiction and fantasy.

Why Noir Mysteries Work

Noir Mysteries as a genre were created during the struggling times before World War ii. The world seemed broken then, as men with no morals made lots of money while good men seemed to struggle to get by. In America, the economy teetered on the edge of prosperity, and looked into the deep crevice of the depression.

Tough men took what they wanted and good men were victims. The world did not look past men as women were an afterthought, a temptation, or a side story on the way to a conclusion. They stayed home and raised families. Only good girls and bad girls existed, and neither was a fleshed out character. 

Yet, the noir stories worked so well, because somehow during the course of the mystery, evil was thwarted and justice preserved. The world returned to some balance of fairness and “the good guys” or at least, "the less bad guys" won.

It was every reader's wish for the real world to correspond to the written one. 

Eighty years later, the genre can still work. Madoff, Strehli, and insider trading the cheaters make profits and the honest suffer. When a President declares himself rich even though he declared bankruptcy in the past - building his empire on the backs of his broken creditors - and when police shoot innocent people without much justification – they always seem to have their body cams off when they do it. The world of the noir has become real life. We retrogress back to the world as it was in the 1930's and 1940's, but with the modern threat of environmental pollution recognized as fact not fiction. 

Reality offers justification for the noir mysteries on my pages. 

In my written world, I want a person who is Machiavellian enough to consider the path to justice immaterial, as long as justice is serviced. Forget the map, trespass, scam and swindle in the name of justice, but get it done right at the conclusion. 

I don’t want that in real life, but in fiction, I am so ready for Sam Cochran and Catherine Worthington. Let’s twist the noir paradigm and rebalance world through them. They are females who matter, because they won't let the world throw them aside. Welcome to the Sam-Cat mystery series.

L.A. Preschel  

the Arts and the Crafts of Writers  by L.A. Preschel.

This essay was originally written for Clued-in the newsletter of the Central Jersey Chapter of Sisters in Crime. I reprint here because ... no other reason than I want to. 

When I first became involved in writing fiction (at the age of 50), an editor/friend noticed that I was grammatically challenged. My excuse is that from 2nd to 4th grade in the Bronx school system, they experimented with a new way to teach reading. I never learned phonetics and I never was taught grammar. 

My friend who edited my first attempt at fiction (a vampire manuscript that sucked my life's blood, but will never see the light of day?) physically brought me to Barnes & Nobles and pointed me to "the little book," The Elements of Styleby Strunk & White. She felt this was a rite of passage involving editors and writers since the middle of the twentieth century. 

Report/author Charles Osgood is quoted on the cover of the little bookthusly, "... still a little book, small enough and important enough to carry in your pocket, as I carry mine." 

I have had several editors since my initiation rite into authorship. Everyone has said to me at one time or another, "Where is your Strunk and White. You have no idea how to punctuate English." And sadly, they are right, but my French is even worse. I keep the little book near me, and if I have a grammatical question, I look at it. Often, I have no idea that I have mis-punctuated. I guess that is what editors were created for.  

In the forward to the fourth edition of Strunk & White, p. x, Roger Angell wrote concerning the rules and concepts within the little book: "How simple they look, set down here in White's last chapter: 'Write in a way that comes naturally.' 'Revise and rewrite.' 'Do not explain too much,' and the rest; above all, the cleansing, clarion 'Be clear.' 

Strunk & Whiteis a great reference for writers. As evidence, I offer its section headings: 

1. Elementary Rules of Usage; it contains eleven simple rules with examples. 

2. Elementary Principles of Composition: 10 more rules to help a writer communicate to the reader. It instructs while not being condescending or complex. It has more examples.  

3. A Few Matters of Form: he details the usage or avoidance of colloquialisms, exclamations, headings, hyphens, numerals, formatting, quotations, references, etc.

4. Words and Expressions commonly misused: i.e. affect vs. effect, etc.   

5. An Approach to Style: a discussion of how an author goes about maximizing his or her impact on the reader. He emphasizes story telling is communicating an event clearly and concisely without the reader's attention or interest being broken, and without the author interposing their image/ego between the reader and the story. The reader must readily absorb the story without being distracted or losing interest. If the reader is willing to put down your manuscript, you have failed as a writer.   

The history of the little bookis interesting as well. William Strunk Jr. was a professor at Cornell in 1919 and taught English. E.B. White - the future author of Charlotte's Web- took his classes. They developed a friendship. Strunk's self-published the little book. It was universally known on campus, but unknown elsewhere. Being a self-published author, we should consider him ahead of the curve, a trendsetter, but he had no public relations department, and no internet presence. The little bookwas not yet a universally praised text. It wasn't carried by Amazon prime or Mississippi regular. That's a stream of thought joke, sorry.  

E.B. White, Strunk's student, went on to write for The New York Times, and eventually his writing and his looks caught the eye of Katherine Sergeant Angell. She wrote for the New Yorker, as well as being the fiction editor for that magazine. She convinced her boss, Chief Editor Harold Ross that he should hire E.B. as a staff writer. 

The notoriously shy White was seduced by the New Yorker, and Katherine, who became his wife after she divorced her first husband, Ernest Angell. With the marriage to Katherine, E.B. became the step-father of the above-mentioned Roger Angell - a famous sportswriter who also worked for the New Yorker under Chief Editor William Shawn. Roger eventually became the fiction editor at the New Yorker- almost like incest or a soap opera, As the World Press Turns? 

In 1959, with Mr. Strunk no longer living, Macmillian obtained the rights to the little book from Oliver Strunk, but the text needed revision and updating. Mr. White took on the job having previously written an article for the New Yorker(1957) concerning the little bookand it value. It had been revised in 1935 by Edward A. Tenney in association with William Strunk Jr., and so the third and fourth editions were revised by E.B. White. However, the New Yorkermagazine seems to have had a large part in making this wonderful text (sold for under $10) known to writers and educators across America. I recommend it for your literary library.           

The Elements of Style, the fourth edition. Strunk, William Jr. & White, E.B., 2000, 1979. Pearson Boston, et al.  (previous edition 1959, 1972 Macmillian Publishing Co. Inc. New York, N.Y. 

ISBN 10: 0-205-31342-6.          ISBN 13: 978-0-205-31342-6.

Literary Writing is Rembrandt; Noir Mysteries are Rubik’s Cubes

Sometimes I wonder why people “look down on non-literary writing.” To dismiss such people as literary snobs diminishes them, and at the same time, you diminishes the value of your opinion on the subject of writing. Why do they debase the mystery novel as an art form, as if it were a feeble step-sibling of the writing family. 

Professor's pat answers  - the tried and true response - never explain the problem or get an honest answer. They are repetitions of the Great Wiz, don't look at the man behind the curtain. The Great Oz has spoken, accept it at face value and move on.  Yet it is only through producing a transparent thought  process showing the reasoning to your conclusion, that the conclusion becomes significant and reproducible. By the way, it is the reasoning and logic that a reader performs to solve a mystery that makes that form of literature interesting to the reader and involves them in the story.  The reader's participation makes a mystery superior. 

Still, the fact that "literary snobs" look down on pulp fiction, diminishes the snobs and their opinion, for the reasons cited above. It excludes further discussion, because they post it as accepted fact. I don't accept it. Let's forget them, and discuss the merits of Noir mysteries.  

Each genre has a deserved audience, but the audience reads them for different reasons. Occasionally someone like the wonderfully talented James Lee Burke combines flowery expressive language with a good mystery or thriller plot, but the literary audience probably avoids his writing. They ignore an author that holds two Edgar Awards (for two different detectives.). He creates a world the reader can feel, see and live in, as well as any author. Oh and by the way, as per wikipedia: He taught at five different colleges before getting on the tenure track teaching creative writing at Wichita State University, during the 1980's. Not bad credentials for a mystery writer.  

In literary novels, the milieu and the setting are often the greatest character – augmented by the “emotions” portrayed in the story. “Heathcliff” anyone? Historicals make statements about society and life the way it was. Some literary fiction opines about the way life still is. The audience lives in the past or see the light about today universe from the observer’s position. Inert, inactive, passive. The reader trespasses inside the body of the author - as if the author was a pod from the Invasion of the bodies snatchers, and the reader's soul crept inside that pod for the duration of the book.         

Literary writing excites me the way some Broadway shows equate the scenery to a character. Oh wasn't that scenery fantastic, worth the price of admission ($250), i.e. Phantom of the Opera or Cats comes to mind. Great scenery is not a strike against a well-written play, but should the audience really notice the scenery? How much character arc can a curtain go through during a performance? I think My Fair Lady probes the human psyche more than Phantom, while not needing the support of spectacular visual aids.

In mysteries, the reader comes with an agenda. He or she will solve the problem. Setting and milieu may contribute but it is the humans - the characters - that run the show. The reader gets involved finding clues and making conclusions, as if he or she were turning the sides of a Rubik’s cube to align them. Psychology, motive, emotions are inspected and probed to learn about human nature, and in so doing, solve the crime. The emotions are not on display, but felt by the reader, if the author is talented. 
The journey offers an education in a way that literary fiction could never do. The reader does not sit back and imagine the green velvet of the trees’ leaves swaying in the breeze, over the placid azure lake while Heathcliff rows his paramour to an islet off shore. And he certainly does not wait four pages to see if they might argue or kiss. The reader in a mystery wonders, what does this action mean? Does he really want to kiss her? Get her alone? Why? What will he do?   

In crime fiction, the reader competes to solve the mystery before the detective. The difference in expectations of the literary reader from the noir mystery fan is the difference between watching Pilates and getting out of breath, or doing Peloton and sweating from the workout competing against the unseen people peddling just as hard on their bike. The high from strong exercise, in my opinion, beats the spectator's awe of watching others compete.    

I may be biased, but that is my take on the two genre, and if you want your mind to get fat by sitting inside a literary character body and watching the story happen, that’s find with me. I’ll be pedaling along on the dark road to the unlit house at the top of the hill in a thunderstorm, looking for ghosts and attempting to survive while finding the next clue.

Oh wait, did I just become literary? 

I’ll sit in the corner for ten minutes until this mood passes. I'll be back.   

L.A. Preschel