Blackmail: The Overused Trope

I've become a fan of Perry Mason, the television series from 1957-1966. 

I am less fond of the movies, 1985-1993+, though I will watch them. 

The reason is not the acting. Behemoth Raymond Burr still occupies the scene, exuding charisma. (It's hard not to see Dick Van Dyke and Andy Griffith as both trying to compete--in their respective detective shows--to be the next Burr. Angela Lansbury didn't compete for that spot; Jessica Fletcher isn't Mason: she's fully competent Della Street.) 

Barbara Hale as Della Street--though ironically more subordinate in 1990 than she was in 1957--still conveys competence, grace, and commonsense. 

And William Katt as Drake's son is, in the initial movies, quite amusing. He is Barbara Hale's son and I appreciated the nod to family.  

The problems with the movies (which I do watch) are three-fold:

1. The opening title sequence is the most boring I've seen on any television show. 

It's hard to understand why. The drawing that accompanies the movie set is quite iconic. Even if the producers were afraid that Burr would drop dead at any moment, a sequence with some art (rather than scenes of a courtroom) would have been better than what we're given. 

2. I prefer 50 minutes to movie-length episode. 

My preference here is true across the board. I don't much care for the Diagnosis Murder and Murder She Wrote movies either. 

3. WAY too many of the movie plots rely on blackmail. 

So...there's a college campus in which the bad guy (who gets killed) blackmailed a bunch of people...or a movie studio in which the bad guy (who gets killed) blackmailed a bunch of people...or a theater group in which the bad guy (who gets killed) blackmailed a bunch of people...or a newspaper in which the bad guy (who gets killed) blackmailed a bunch of people. 

I understand the attraction: the plot device allows for one bad guy victim that nobody really misses and a TON of suspects whose motives will each be uncovered by Mason and his group. 

But it's a trifle boring after awhile. 

It isn't that blackmail plots are boring automatically. Elementary has a fantastic episode that uses blackmail as does BBC Sherlock (both based on the same short story by Conan Doyle). And the original Perry Mason did the occasional blackmail plot okay. 

But ultimately, it does begin to pale--rather like Hitchcock's escape movies. 

One begins to wish for a wealthy oligarch and a bunch of heirs. After all, people do commit murder for reasons other than "I kept having to pay the bad guy money for something dumb I did once" or even "I kept having to pay the bad guy money for something not my fault."  

What about that wealthy oligarch? Or missing child heir? Or infidelity (a standard in original Perry Mason)? Or an argument over a new invention/land/unfair business contract?

I will grant that some of original Perry Masons got a little samey. And there are a limited amount of mystery plots out there. But blackmail...really...again? Don't writers of shows ever watch the previous episode? Even if it was a year earlier? It's time to write another movie script and...nothing different comes to mind? 

People Don't Change: Invention Doesn't Equal Replication

Murdoch Mysteries brings home a point made in Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. Although humans tend to compartmentalize history to make it easier to learn, it doesn't unwind that way. Although Thomas More "belongs" to the Tudors, he was in fact approximately 7 when Henry VII was crowned. 

Likewise, Murdoch Mysteries makes clear how many inventors--from Edison and Tesla to the Wrights and Graham Bell overlapped. 

Again and again, usually when Pendrick shows up, the point is made that ideas or technology that we take for granted existed before now. The workability of these creations is often exaggerated but--as with Murdoch's "headset phones"--two points are underscored: 

The invention can't go anywhere without (1) smaller sizes; (2) replicability. 

People have come up with ideas, lots of ideas, before those ideas became commonplace. Probably humans from the earliest times were saying, "Wouldn't it be easier if I could call you with something more than my cupped hands? Hey, how about you invent that?!" 

Human inventiveness doesn't change. The actual available technology and the ability to easily use/handle that technology does. 

Which is the same point that Mike Rowe makes in his TedTalk!  (See minute 16:27: "Innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time.") 

The Writing Problem of Omniscient Detectives

Too many writers of detective fiction want their detectives to be super super smart, which they translate as omniscient.

That is, they misunderstand Sherlock Holmes. Sure, Holmes is nearly always right--but it's a right that has been tested. Like Monk and Sherlock from Elementary maintain, guesswork is just guesswork. Without proof, the guess remains a guess.

The brilliant mindset is a separate phenomenon and kind of irritating. It also creates a writing problem.

In Marsh's Singing in the Shrouds, the insightful, intuitive, etc. etc. Alleyn suspects the bad guy. How could he not? He's so smart! 

And yet for the sake of a dramatic climax, he leaves the suspect unwatched. The result is a death. In the text, Alleyn admits that he blundered. But this isn't a blunder. His actions are gross incompetence IF Alleyn had specific suspicions in the first place.

The problem of wanting perfectly wise characters who nevertheless mess up leads to annoying plots where characters who should be fired are treated as victims of an unkind system. But the "solution" to the mess-up happens because the writers want the characters to know more than a reasonable person would know--to be all that.

There is a variation on this archetype: the detective who knows but doesn't act because to act without proof is morally wrong or a waste of time (Columbo, Poirot, Sherlock, Gibbs). Unfortunately, too many of the omniscient detectives, like Alleyn, are praised for their intuition--that is, they are expected to trust to their brilliance. And yet...

Dead bodies.  

The Best Archie Goodwins

 

I've seen a number of Nero Wolfes. I consider Timothy Hutton and Joe Penny (as Jake in Jake & the Fatman) the best Archies. 

The reason connects to a quote from Jacques Barzun that can be found on the Nero Wolfe Wikipedia page.

 If he had done nothing more than to create Archie Goodwin, Rex Stout would deserve the gratitude of whatever assessors watch over the prosperity of American literature. For surely Archie is one of the folk heroes in which the modern American temper can see itself transfigured. Archie is the lineal descendant of Huck Finn...Archie is spiritually larger than life. That is why his employer and companion had to be made corpulent to match.

Timothy Hutton and Joe Penny capture the Huck Finn quality. They have a rawness, a physical easiness that lies somewhere between suppleness and bruiser-like directness. They are never entirely still. And their quickness of thought comes from brash self-confident experience. 

Lee Horsley opposite William Conrad is too slick and yuppie-like. Pietro Sermonti opposite Francesco Pannofino is better, but he also plays the straight man to Pannofino. Both these Archies lack the brashness, the Archie who can appreciate Wolfe's gourmet dishes but is happiest with pie and milk.

Timothy Hutton and Joe Penny capture that raw talent brashness.   

A-Z Characters & Transformation: Nero Wolfe, The Untransforming Detective

My latest A-Z List is characters who transform. I also address characters who don't transform: what constitutes transformation; what doesn't. 

One of the most amusing non-transformations is book detectives who remain the same age over several decades. It's rather like TV detectives who never retire (though Murdoch, who begins his career in the series at approximately 35 is still believably working 18 years later, and the series does move forward in time, so every season is the next year in the early 1900s). 

Miss Marple, Poirot, Nero Wolfe--they all remind me of my left-brain father getting frustrated when my mother began to lose her memory and talked about her parents as still being alive. He would growl, "They would be 130 years old!" 

Rex Stout reputedly stated about Nero Wolfe, "I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to." I LOVE that. Some authors get apologetic. Others, like Sayers, intend to age their characters from the beginning (Wimsey marries when he is 45). But Rex Stout apparently perceived his mystery stories the way I perceive sci-fi: put THIS character into a situation and see how the character handles it, whether the situation is pre-World War II or a 1960s bohemian neighborhood--

Which may explain why Nero Wolfe has proved so "translatable"!  

The Fruitfulness of Gardening Detectives

I'm a big believer that characters need jobs--even full-time detectives! After all, Sherlock has his bees; Joan from Elementary keeps up her license and eventually gets a kid. Jobs give characters things to master and discuss.  

I've mentioned in previous posts that writers and priests provide decent "other" jobs. 

So do gardeners!  

The British comedy-mystery Rosemary & Thyme--with the excellent Felicity Kendal and Pam Ferris--is a great example. Their contract work allows them to visit different locations, from French and Italian villas to ritzy neighborhoods (during a local gardening competition) to a small allotment to a churchyard to a university. So much variety lends itself to a variety of crimes (though most of them fall into the "cozy" category).

There is still the "my goodness, everywhere you go, murders crop up" issue (which leads Natalie in Monk to accuse him of being "the Prince of Darkness"). But again, eh, it's British, so it's allowed. And the murders--like with Jessica on her book tours but unlike the local priest--are at least not all occurring in a single area. 

However, like the local priest, the ability for Rosemary and Laura to investigate WHILE replanting gardens and getting waterfalls to run is, oddly enough, a little more of a stretch than Jessica doing interviews and then returning to her hotel. 

Still--the use of a flower project in nearly every episode is delightful. Just as Rosemary and Laura resolve a case and bring social harmony back into alignment, they also resolve the gardening issue and beautify their immediate environment. The closure of both "cases" at once is quite enchanting!    

Della Street and Betty Jones: Attitudes Don't Work on a Timeline

One of the more irritating attitudes that occurs in every age is the chronocentric insistence that everything has led up to now (us). There is consequently, an insistence on streamlined history which moves from Point A to Point B to Point C to where-things-are-now.

It was the best of the times. It was the worst of times. 

The fallout is an inability to perceive or acknowledge that things are not automatically better or worse just because of the year or theory. 

One common story, for instance, is that women once upon a time were so hemmed in and exploited and powerless than anything post-1950 must be better. 

I recently watched Perry Mason (1957-1966) and Barnaby Jones (1973-1980). What struck me is that Della Street, played by Barbara Hale, is a much more put-together and independent character than Betty Jones, played by Lee Merriweather. 

Della from Day 1 is direct, outspoken, involved with the investigations. She discovers dead bodies and copes without screaming or dropping stuff. She leaves the office to find witnesses. She occasionally confronts bad guys (though she rarely fights them). She is down-to-earth, uncowed: a great role model! 

In the first season of Barnaby Jones, Betty Jones takes messages, gets worried, falls for a conman, and gets kidnapped. 

Seriously? 

Maybe she does more later on.

But the difference here indicates that a tough, no-nonsense woman is not the product of an increase in years or "modernism." Good grief, Portia from Shakespeare has more oomph to her than Betty Jones!

I won't say that nothing every improves over time--such as medical understanding of the human body or legal rights in certain contexts. 

Only, most things don't work to a pattern, what with changing politics, changing religious beliefs, changing opportunities, black swans, changing stigmas, and so on. Things can change in one area but not in another. They can change and then revert. They can change, then have entirely unintended consequences. 

Even with medical advances, people should be humble enough to think, Maybe things are more complicated. Real life doesn't work according to trends.

Insecurity in Jake & the Fatman

Jake and the Fatman is a very smart show in many ways. One of the smartest aspects is that the crime takes place as much in the criminal's head as in a particular time and place. 

That isn't to say that the show is psychological mystery. It is very much a whodunnit/howdunnit action show. But the motive can be what people imagine as much as what actually takes place. 

Dorothy Sayers understood the power of the imagined grievance when she addressed the impact of jealousy on a relationship. Agatha Christie also understood it, particularly the way an idea can become a story in the brain. With several would-be murderers, Poirot gently makes the point, "You imagined a murder--that doesn't mean you committed it."  

The entire world of love and abandonment that Elinor imagines in Sad Cypress (over a fiance who isn't worth so much emotional investment) is a poison that is eventually purged. She never goes as far as she thinks she might. (The Poirot version, though well-acted, misses the point--the scriptwriters insisted on making the affair a matter of actual sex rather than emphasizing that Elinor has invented a more passionate fiance than she has; her identity, her imagined future, is on the line, not an actual flesh-and-blood relationship.)

More destructively, the husband in "Magnolia Blossoms" has convinced himself that his wife MUST sleep with his business partner to get some papers back, and he sends her off to perform that task without warning her. She doesn't, in fact, have to sleep with the other man; she is able to get the papers by simply asking. But she leaves her husband when she realizes his assumptions and suspicions, how willing he was to trade her based on a story in his mind.

Several of the criminals in Jake and the Fatman act not based on good judgment or objectively collected information but on that type of invented story. They think that there were let down, abandoned by a lover when, in fact, they never were.

In the first season episode "Fatal Attraction," a wife and stepson kill off the husband/father. Jake then uses the young man's competitive nature to drive a wedge between him and the wife. When the young man apparently disappears, the wife is easily persuaded that he gave her up--which he never did.  

Likewise, a later villain believes that his girlfriend gave him up when Jake gets her a singing gig. But she never did. 

The police don't have to manipulate these villains. The singing gig, for instance, is completely legitimate. If the girlfriend had held on in the first place, rather than giving up and resorting to crime, she might have broken into the field.

For the boyfriend, the legitimate nature of the singing gig underscores his insecurity. He knows--as does the stepmother with the stepson--that the lover has a less criminal option. Maintaining a relationship through dodgy behavior brings the foundation into question. It backs the idea that humans are attuned to fairness versus unfairness at a basic, non-taught, "natural" level. Something has got to give.

Or, perhaps, the reaction hints at a fundamental belief (however avoided through sophisticated philosophizing) that what goes around, comes around. The villains' stories about others and themselves and the world have convinced them of a particular outcome, and that's the outcome that comes about. 

From a romance point of view, the  criminals' insecurity underscores the inherent vulnerability of love. Love me? Really? For how long? 

Give Characters Jobs: Clergy

Speaking of religion...I mention in an earlier post that Jessica Fletcher's job of writer--which gives her a reason to travel around the country and make contacts in settings as diverse as higher academe, the theater, and stockbrokers' offices--is a great boon to a mystery series.

One role that supposedly lends itself to equally diverse settings is clergy. 

There are several priest and nun detectives in books and shows: Brother Cadfael, Father Brown, Father Dowling, the clergy from Grantchester. 

In truth, I find them a little less believable than Jessica Fletcher. As Dorothy Sayers points out in Nine Tailors, a clergyman who is doing his job, like Venables, is somewhat too busy visiting parishioners and burying people and training/rehearsing the choir/bell-ringers and making emergency preparations and writing sermons and running festivities and keeping in contact with soldiers, sailors, and missionaries, taking care of the church itself and handling issues that are often resolved, these days, by outside agencies...to run around solving mysteries. 

However, doing all the above IS the reason that the clergyman has so many opportunities to ask questions! 

I rather think the Brits manage their mystery-solving clergy better. Father Dowling always puzzled me since so many of the cases end up being gang/mafia-related. Granted, a few decent clergy members in The Closer deal with gangs. They run up against Brenda as they try to deal honestly with the police and protect their parishioners and do right by specific gang members. But again, they are way too busy dealing with those complicated issues to also run an investigation. 

The Brits produce clergy, like Father Brown, who operate as freelancing members of the community. That is, they occupy positions which allow them to stand in and outside the community. (Cadfael, for instance, is a monk who must live by the Order's rules but his work as an apothecary gives him more freedom than his peers.) Since they also tend to live in  villages, their involvement in any event--while implying as large a death toll as Cabot Cove--is instantly excusable. 

My favorite such detective, of course, is the delightful Sister Boniface, played by the delightful Lorna Watson. Her forensic specialty makes her a consultant for the laidback police. The demands of village life bring her into contact with a variety of people, including visitors. The show also doesn't bother to excuse the number of murders. It's England! And there's a lack of angst (unlike early Midsomer Murders, which seasons made me roll my eyes: I mean, come on, talk about angst based on contrived situations!). 

Sister Boniface is simply a ton of fun.     

Buddy Shows: Librarians versus Leverage

Generally speaking, I appreciate a show where the main characters aren't fighting or breaking up every two seconds. 

And yet, I find The Librarians more unbelievable in the buddy-buddy aspect than Leverage. 

Christian Kane is a member of both. Yet why is Leverage--which relies (in a life versus death, jail versus not-jail way) on the main characters liking each other--a better show than The Librarians--which also relies on the main characters liking each other. 

I think the primary reason is that Leverage, like Bones, allows the characters to (1) be idiosyncratic--strange in their individual ways; (2) have different types of relationships with each other. 

The Librarians uses idiosyncratic characters, but there is a constant need within the script to reaffirm the group's togetherness--which often means treating the idiosyncrasies as entirely positive and understandable. 

In Leverage, Eliot continues to be irritated by Hardison's techno-babble (even when he is willing to die for him). And Parker never stops being very Parker-ish. Likewise, in Bones, everyone acknowledges that Bones is going to do things in Bones's way. 

The Librarians are constantly proclaiming their affection for each other (it does get worse in later seasons). The result is a kind of flattening effect. They are all equal all the time in all the same ways about everything because they are all completely supportive all the time in all the same ways about everything, including (weirdly enough) betrayal of the group. It's rather like Star Trek ships: in the next episode, no matter how much damage the ship got, it's back to pristine condition.

I rather like Star Trek. I don't think the solution is, necessarily, to go the Battlestar Galatica route. But--some actual personality traits and opinions and fears should survive the weekly break!  

In Leverage and in Bones, the characters' ability to work together is considered far more important than what they say to each other in the final scenes. In the meantime, the individual relationships hugely differ. Parker dates Hardison. Eliot relates to Parker on the job because they think the same; he treats Nat very much as a leader, even when he criticizes him. On Bones, Angela is Bones's best friend; Booth is her lover and her husband; everyone else, one gathers, is some form of subordinate, which doesn't mean she doesn't care for them. 

I do find it notable that Christian Kane--even with Angel--seems to be drawn to roles where he acts alongside a group.  

Word Choice Moment: Psych's Stanchions

One of the most amusing aspects of script-writing is how often writers appear to be talking to each other. They have characters make comments that are more about writing than about the plot--and not entirely the kind of thing those characters would say to each other. 

Though not entirely not--Danny's point about "forte" (that it doesn't have to be pronounced "for-tay") is a little random but does emphasize the fact that Danny is more erudite than he often behaves. 

Gus and Shawn of Psych often make comments about word choices. One of my favorites is when they comment on "stanchions"--as in "Oh, that is what they are called!"  

 

A-Z Characters & Transformation: Brother Fidelis

*Spoilers*

Ellis Peters' An Excellent Mystery provides a female in disguise. Godfrid Marescot becomes betrothed to a young girl, Julian Cruce, before he leaves on Crusades. He behaves honorably but is severely and specifically wounded in the area of the groin. Subsequently, he breaks off his betrothal to the now-nineteen-year-old young woman and enters a Benedictine monastery. He adopts the name Humilis. 

Julian Cruce considers herself still betrothed (a not unlikely belief since betrothals had considerably more legal weight at the time). She enlists the aid of a servant to help her sell some jewels, change her guise, and enter the monastery as Brother Fidelis. She adopts muteness and becomes Humilis's companion. He is inevitably going to die and she helps him through those final days. 

The story is finely told. As with many of the Cadfael books, Peters ties the events into part of the civil war raging in England, specifically the attacks on the city of Winchester and destruction of nearby religious houses. 

And story is also infinitely touching and deeply romantic. Julian Cruce's disguise does not fundamentally alter her character, except to bind her more closely to her chosen spouse. 

What I appreciate with The Excellent Mystery is Peters' acknowledgement that the un-transformation must be handled in such a way to prevent dishonor and disgrace to all parties. 

There's no "but people mustn't react that way! how dare they! the good people--like Hugh and Cadfael--don't, so all the other good people won't either!" 

In fact, Cadfael does an excellent job at the end of the book summing up the "case" he had to solve: 

"There'll be no scandal, no aspersions cast on either Hyde or Shrewsbury, no legatine muck-raking, no ballad-makers running off dirty rhymes about monks and their women, and hawking them round the markets, no bishops bearing down on us with damning visitations, no carping white monks fulminating about the laxity and lechery of the Benedictines...And no foul blight clinging round that poor girl's name and blackening her for life. Thank God!"

I love how Peters retains Cadfael's personality. He doesn't want anyone's "social media" commentary--not the gossips, not the self-righteous tut-tutters. 

Cadfael solves the problem by taking advantage of an unexpected storm. It's a powerful example of how disguise and transformation can entail wit and sacrifice. If Brother Fidelis's transformation was a difficult matter to bring about, it needed to be a difficult matter to undo. Luckily, Brother Cadfael is there to help out!   

Perry Mason versus Ben Matlock

I quite like Andy Griffith, and I enjoy a number of Matlock episodes. However, the courtroom scenes make me wince. 

Perry Mason (1957-1966) episodes are often not as engaging. But the courtroom scenes are far more credible and can even get quite interesting. And I don't wince. Here's why:

1. Perry Mason's courtroom scenes are usually preliminary hearings to determine whether a trial will occur. 

Rules about what jurors can hear/know are complex. Just about everything during Matlock's jury trials is frankly inadmissible and inappropriate. It simply wouldn't be allowed to occur in real life.  

Preliminary hearings allow for more flexibility. The judge makes the ultimate decision. 

2. Objections in Perry Mason are part of the drama. 

In Matlock, the objections are mostly opportunities for the main character to chew the scenery. I suppose they are stuck in for the sake of verisimilitude, but they feel almost random, shoe-horned-in. The objection occurs because it is time in the script to issue the objection.

In Perry Mason, on the other hand, the objections and legal arguments are part of the drama. In "The Case of the Larcenous Lady," for instance, Mason objects to testimony as hearsay. The judge agrees and states that the prosecutor must produce the witness who is being quoted. When the prosecutor later tries to close his case without following up with the promised witness, the judge insists that the hearing cannot end until the witness is produced. The objection is part of the story. 

3. Perry Mason is respectful of the legal process. 

Both Matlock and Mason show respect to judges. Matlock is more likely to protest and arguably that behavior is part of his charm--or at least his personality: he's a more bumptious John McEnroe. 

Mason is never disrespectful. 

Both Matlock and Mason are on good terms with the police. 

However, unlike Matlock, Mason doesn't do his investigation in the courtroom (which behavior is utterly inappropriate anyway). That is, Mason rarely questions factual testimony. He almost never questions doctors, for example. He focuses on eliciting already existing evidence from witness testimony. So while Matlock--however dramatically--will reconstruct the crime of a blind man based on a piece of paper that he found with a blood spot...

Mason will ask the police to bring all the shoes they found to court. He doesn't dismiss Lieutenant Tragg's analysis of the shoe prints. He uses the experts' deductions to back up his case. The evidence is already there, and he works through the police to bring that evidence to the court's attention. 

Now, granted, both Matlock and Mason's careers lead one to think, "Why are the prosecutors bothering? If these lawyers are involved, their clients must be innocent!" 

But with Matlock, I often enjoy the investigation but not the court scenes. With Mason, I often find the court scenes quite fascinating.    

A-Z Characters & Transformation NOT: Deacon, The Ultimate Sinner

In my current list about characters who transform, I define "transformation" by discussing who I don't include. 

The character here--Deacon from Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers--is a great example of character who never transforms.  

Nine Tailors is often considered to be Sayers's best mystery. It has a complicated enough plot that even if one knows some of the background, the mystery remains (What happened to Deacon? Who exactly did the burying of the body in the graveyard?). Moreover, the plot, though complicated, does not rely on implausible time tables (Sayers did a time table mystery with Red Herrings). 

Best of all, the characters are clear and consistent. 

Deacon is one of Sayers's most vile villains, but he isn't serial-killer vile. Rather, he is like someone who belongs in Dante's Inferno, a work that Sayers would translate in the 1940s. 

Deacon's sins not only lead to him hurting others. He ends up leading a far more horrible life than he could have led otherwise--and keeps digging himself in deeper.  

*Spoilers.*  

He engineers the initial theft, then dupes his co-conspirator. He escapes from prison, then kills a soldier and ends up unwittingly on the front. He returns to England much later, then gets recognized. He was going to be returned to France, then ends up in a belfry, where he is killed by the bells. 

That is, like sinners in Dante, Deacon mires himself deeper and deeper in sludge. He is not stupid. He is venial and short-sighted. The short-sightedness is exactly that of a clever man who is always convinced that a better plan is around the corner. He cannot see beyond the sludge. 

Sayers and C.S. Lewis and Dante (and Joseph Smith) resolve the problem of faith and works in a similar way. Grace is freely and constantly offered. Another life, another choice, another direction. The inability to take that grace is directly linked to what the person wants.

None of them argue that bad things don't happen to good people--or, for that matter, that an entirely indifferent awful (a volcano is a fairly indifferent thing) won't happen to good people. Rather, they argue that people create the personal and mental worlds that they then inhabit. 

In Dante's Inferno, the dead spend more time thinking up excuses and attacking each other (and castigating Virgil and Dante) than in making choices. In fact, in Dante's universe, they can no longer make choices. They have talked themselves into dead ends. They have decided the universe offers nothing but the rage or gluttony or treachery that they have invested themselves in. 

Likewise, Deacon never stops trying to figure out his next "easy" solution. (I'm reminded of research that shows that drug dealers actually pay less than minimum wage to their workers.) The "easy" solution for Deacon is an endless round of misery, not just to others but to himself. 

Deacon ends up in a literal corner. And the community, through the bells, takes revenge. 

In the book, the inscription for the main bell reads,

NINE TAYLERS MAKE A MANNE – 

IN CHRIST IS DETH ATT END IN ADAM YAT BEGANNE

Give Characters Jobs: Being Santa

I'm a big fan of giving characters jobs--the characters can then talk about something other than the problem of the week. (In Bones, interestingly, the job of parenting and marriage become the secondary topic for Bones and Booth to discuss during cases.) 

A number of shows produce working Santas. Bones, for instance, produces a Santa who may, in fact, be the REAL Kris Kringle. Bones and Booth then have to deal with other working Santas, including their bells. 

Castle produces a dead Santa; he was trying to fix a past mistake that happened in a previous job.  

In MASH, Hawkeye--in a Santa outfit--has to go off suddenly to the front. A soldier in a foxhole is amazed to see that Santa is...real! 

And in Frasier, Roz falls for hottie Dean Cain, but only when he is working as Santa. 

There are many, many more examples. 

The working aspects of Santa's life can be fodder for mystery and sitcom plots as much as the lore of Santa.  

Alexander McCall Smith's Latest: In the Time of the Pumpkins

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series is one of the few series that I continue to follow despite the books numbering over 3.

I often lose interest in series after book 3 (maybe 4). And in truth, I don't stay current on any of McCall Smith's other series.

But the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels continue to delight me. 

In the Time of Five Pumpkins delighted me.

It moves somewhat faster than some others. Quite often the books are very slice-of-life. I can pick them up and put them down without worrying about cliffhangers. In this case, however, I was curious about the two main cases, especially since one, rather classically, suggested a murder plot. 

It wasn't. And I didn't bother to add *spoilers* here since I knew it wasn't a murder at the time. Part of the series' charm is that it is full of exciting moments but rarely, if ever, melodramatic ones. I love murder mysteries! I also greatly admire a mystery novel that can create mystery without resorting to murder. 

McCall Smith is able to pull off this feat (Okay, it isn't murder but what could it be?) because he has the capacity to imagine new problems. By "new," I don't mean "edgy." The problems, like problems between a husband and wife, come up again and again. But they never come up again in entirely the same way as before. Nothing does. It's repetition without being repetitious. 

So even Mma Ramotswe's white van--though its problems crop up over and over--never poses the exact same problems. In The Time of Five Pumpkins, for instance, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni brings up electric door options. Mma Ramotswe is puzzled. Are people so lazy, they can't simply go around and lock the other door? 

As someone with electric car door features that don't work, I appreciate Mma Ramotswe's point!

And McCall Smith surprised me since Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni gets a possible friend. It never really occurred to me that he didn't have a "buddy." Not everybody needs one. I'm not sure Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni needs one. But I was impressed at the possibility being presented. 

As well as insightful and unexpected moments, the book has several very funny moments (those tight pants!). 

The one wish I have is that Fanwell, like Charlie, would get a little more story. 

Maybe the next book!    

The Dumbest Trope of All Dumb Tropes

Okay--maybe there are dumber ones. But this one is pretty dumb:

The bad guys (or vampires in hiding) set up in a SMALL TOWN. 

And...they get pinpointed and "outed."

Well, duh. The whole point of the small town is that "everyone knows your name." It's all about the regulars, what so-and-so is doing this week. The sheriff quite literally walks around and asks folks how they are doing. 

I give a pass to Andy Griffith's "Aunt Bee Gets a Job" in part because the counterfeiters ARE stupid. They are EXACTLY the type of people who would buy into the trope. And their clients are equally stupid since one of them exchanges Aunt Bee's employment check for part of his fake cash. In truth, I quite enjoy the episode since I like the Andy Griffith "case" episodes where Andy puts together clues. The episode also offers some truly hilarious moments.

But when an author actually thinks "oh, of course, nobody will find my characters in this tiny town!" I have to surmise that the author is too dumb for me to read. 

Sayers explains in Unnatural Death better than everyone why CITY is the better hiding place:

To the person who has anything to conceal--to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest--to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London. Where no one know his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the meter. Where strangers are friendly and causal. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious, and all-enfolding London.

Parker still tracks down the information he wants, but it takes him trekking through 37 law offices to find a witness. A less dedicated law officer would have give up! 

Cities are far better hiding places than small towns. 

The Dysfunctional MacBeths

The dysfunction in MacBeth's primary relationship isn't that Lady MacBeth talks MacBeth into killing the king. That's bad. But from a relationship point of view, it isn't automatically the thing that destroys the relationship. 

What destroys the relationship is that Lady MacBeth can't control what she has inspired. 

In Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers's characters discuss what happens when one spouse limits or pulls down the other, either intentionally or unintentionally. The problem with MacBeth entails the opposite behavior (one spouse pushes rather than limits the other) but it relates to the first: one couple is trying to design or fix or otherwise manufacture a "perfect" spouse. In Lady MacBeth's case, that perfect spouse is a king. In another case, a perfect spouse might be one who doesn't do that type of work or write that type of stuff or spend time on those kinds of causes. 

The ambitions are different but the intent and subsequent behavior is the same: organizing someone else's life to make one's own life feel organized. 

Lady MacBeth fails in the long run and she fails before it is clear that MacBeth is doomed. She fails because actions have consequences. The act of assassination didn't occur on paper. It occurred in real life. MacBeth didn't turn into a nicely ambitious bloke. He turned into a nut-case. 

I suggest, as have others, that even if MacBeth hadn't turned into a nut-case, he still would have failed Lady MacBeth. Again, actions don't have tidy consequences. Eventually, she would have become another enemy, another person standing in his way. It was only a matter of time. 

Better, truly, for people to know what they are marrying than to try to force a spouse towards what they imagine they are marrying. 

*MacBeth is one of those plays that works at the narrative level, no matter what its trappings--like Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast. A number of mystery shows have "done" Lady MacBeth, including Jake & the Fatman, Season 1, "Rhapsody in Blue." Strong parts for many actors!

Josephine Tey's Alan Grant

Repost from 2005.

* * *

The best description of Josephine Tey's novels is comedy of manners. My favorite of her books is To Love and Be Wise in which she lightly, but elegantly, satirizes modern novelists in a small village, including the super profound novelist, Silas Weekly, who writes about manure and adultery and corruption in rural locations. A character remarks that the literary press adored Silas until he became popular; then, they decided he was old hat.

Tey's detective is Alan Grant, and one of the nice things about Grant is that he is imperfect. I don't mean imperfect in the "let's deconstruct his flaws" sense; I mean imperfect in the sense that Tey herself stands apart from Grant. She doesn't defend him. 

With Ngaoi Marsh, I always feel that Marsh is trying to convince me what a truly nice guy Alleyn is. Christie is more detached from Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, but in terms of detection, they make no errors. And Sayers was invested in explicating Wimsey's personality, which is entirely appropriate to the kind of novels that she wrote. 

But Grant is simply, just, this guy, ya know (as somebody says of somebody else in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). 

John Vine plays Grant

in 1988 Franchise Affair

He is fully admirable, being intelligent and diligent. Like Alleyn, he is looked up to by his sidekick, but Grant comes right out and admits that he likes a little adulation. (Alleyn has to pretend that he isn't being hero-worshiped, which must be a strain.) Grant is rather detached himself. His cousin, Laura, can never get him to marry, and Grant misses several opportunities simply because he isn't paying attention. He isn't absent-minded; his detachment comes from a kind of indifference; after all, Grant doesn't want to get married. He is more Archie Goodwin than Wimsey. His female love interest (sort of) is Marta, an actress, who doesn't want to get married either and usually scares men. She latches onto the confident Grant.

As well as tremendous confidence, Grant is somewhat prideful, not in the "I'm better than others" sense, but in his sureness about his own abilities. He has a "flare" for odd situations, but he isn't even remotely the insightful, thoughtful, concerned, all-knowing, tortured detective of so much detective fiction. He likes being a cog in a machine. And despise his flaws, he isn't unlikable. 

His full character is a remarkable feat of writing, in part because it is so lightly rendered. 

Tey books in order of my preference:

• To Love and Be Wise (Grant) 
• Franchise Affair (Grant has a cameo appearance) 
• Daughter of Time (Grant)  
• Brat Farrar  
• The Singing Sands (Grant) 
• A Shilling for Candles (Grant) 
• Man in the Queue (Grant) 
• Miss Pym Disposes

X is for the Unknown in Murder Mysteries

In mysteries, X often stands in for the murderer. In the show Person of Interest, the unknown factor is whether the "number" (or person) is the perpetrator or the victim of a crime. Is X about to commit a crime? Suffer a crime? Should X be stopped, helped, or protected? 

Agatha Christie has her detectives argue that in order to catch the murderer, the detective must understand the victim. What type of reactions and interactions did the victim invite? In reaction, is the murderer fearful, revengeful, desperate, angry, vain...? 

And some of the best mysteries have memorable murderers. 

*Spoilers*

From the Golden Age,  

Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body delivers a fascinating and cold-hearted murderer in The Dawson Pedigree. The fretful innocence of the victim--and how readily the community accepts the death--underscores the murderess's paranoid self-protection. 

The murderer in Ngaio Marsh's Light Thickens is inconsequential since the main "character" of the book is inconsequential since the victim is also inconsequential. The main "character" of the book is the play. Final Curtain, however, places the victim center-stage; he is an aging actor after all. His ego and self-satisfaction, his demands on family and constant will-changing account for the behavior of the murderer who mirrors him. 

Josephine Tey's To Love and Be Wise, like a few of her novels, involves no murder. Supposed victim and perpetrator of the investigated crime are one and the same, and the character of that person explains the double role.

Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun focuses almost entirely on the clever murdering couple. They attract all the notice. Christie, however, links their personalities to the victim's ultimately naive nature. She appears a slinky, manipulative tease, but she is actually, as Poirot states, "The eternal victim." 

None of the victims deserves being murdered.  The above writers were thankfully not disposed to excusing cruel and violent behavior. 

However, nearly all of them spend time presenting their victims and murderers as members of various networks from family to career: networks that evoke a strong and memorable response. Marsh indulged the most in random or pointless and tawdry murders (that is, realistic murders). But those random, pointless, tawdry victims and murderers are far less memorable. 

A classic murder, it appears, requires a definitive X.