books

Fall Comes to Paris

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By Helen Currie Foster

Travel thoughts.

It’s fall in Paris. The rows of chestnuts flanking the Seine are turning golden-brown; gingko trees sport their distinctive yellow leaves, preparing to fling down, on one afternoon they keep secret, all their leaves at once.

Fall fashion? Long hair for women, slim tan trench coats at mid-calf, midi-length swishy skirts. Anyone can wear jeans and sneakers (male, female, old, young) with a blazer-cut jacket. In the markets, apples from the Garonne (Pixie Pommes!), quantities of mushrooms, cashmere scarves. Kids scurry to school at eight while their older siblings stride down Rue de l’Universite toward Science Po. 

I’m forever grateful to Madame, our wondrous French teacher at McCallum High in Austin. On the first trip to Paris over fifty years ago, fresh off the early train, my husband and I stopped at a café where I opened my mouth in fear and trembling to order in French—deux cafes et deux croissants.

To my shock the proprietor didn’t blink. And the result was magic—our first taste of croissant.

Long past high school I still say “Merci, Madame!” A Parisienne, she had (I believe) a PhD. She maintained perfect class discipline—even with smarty seniors. When anyone asks, how did you learn French? I say, “Madame! She made us sing songs!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96JRl7bER3g&list=RD96JRl7bER3g&start_radio=1

As to “à la Claire Fontaine” I suspect she omitted the first two verses—at least I don’t remember singing about bathing beneath a tree! But this song and the rest we still remember, decades later.

Sur le Pont d’Avignon…Frère Jacques…Alouette, gentille alouette, je te plumerai (le nez, le cou, et la tete, et le dos, etc.). At Christmas, Il est né, le divin enfant. Twisting your tongue around the pretty French words leaves you with life skills.

(She didn’t teach us La Marseillaise. But I still get chills when, in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo leads the crowd at Rick’s in singing it.)

And another beloved teacher taught both Latin and English. She could order grown seniors to race to the blackboard to diagram sentences, and insisted we use proper punctuation.

What was it about those favorite teachers? They made us learn. They brooked no foolishness. They could tell when we faked preparation. They thrust us into difficult novels, demanding paintings, complex unfamiliar music. Hitherto hidden histories. Concepts we hadn’t invented or come upon by ourselves.

Maybe we did learn. Maybe—that learning is worthwhile.

Yesterday we visited La Fondation Louis Vuitton to visit what architect Frank Gehry dreamed of as an iceberg with sails.

Curves, lines, water, wood… magical in their power.

The building invites you to wander and wonder. What imagination, what creativity, what a vision! I listened to the rippling water traveling down the slope—the sound took over. Couldn’t hear traffic, or talking. Just the water–in the middle of a vast city. Being there takes you back to Roman stonework (rectangles, arches, roads in straight lines), and then to the power of curved sails, moved by wind and water. People working there seemed quietly confident that visitors should and would be (but not literally) blown away.

READING: I’m very much enjoying Susan Wittig Albert’s Thyme, Place & Story website where she is now serializing the first China Bayles book–A Bitter Taste of Garlic. Many of us are fans of this series, and would be delighted to visit China’s herb shop in a town not far from Austin…!

I just finished Mick Herron’s Down Cemetery Road. I found it much scarier than the Slow Horses novels…but still wanted to know the ending. It was published over 20 years ago and apparently will be streaming in October.

On the flight over I was reading Graham Robb’s France, including some tales of Paris that were scarier than Down Cemetery Road. Like being the butt of your buddies’ jokes and winding up as a prisoner in Fenestrelle, a political prison during the Napoleonic era. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forteresse_de_Fenestrelle

Meanwhile, at home, Ghost Justice is now out! Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series set in the Hill Country. Available at BookPeople on Lamar Blvd. in Austin https://bookpeople.com/ and on Amazon. https://amzn.to/4pk8WQO

Hope you’ll enjoy it!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and prehistory and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

Review of a Very Very Very Very Very Good Book

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by Kathy Waller

 

I’m rereading novelist Nancy Peacock’s  memoir, A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning & Life.  I liked the book when I read it the first time, sixteen years ago, and I like it even more now.

I posted the following review on my personal blog in 2009. The disclaimer preceding it is a reference to a recent FTC rule designed to “provide a robust framework that curbs unscrupulous practices in the book publishing industry. By prohibiting the creation, sale, or procurement of fictitious reviews, the FTC discourages the manipulation of the book review ecosystem.” Bloggers who occasionally posted reviews—”small-time” reviewers (like me), as it were—sometimes fulfilled their obligation by observing the letter of the law while frolicking with the spirit.

Where small-timers are concerned, the rule seems to have fallen by the wayside, and that’s a shame.  It stimulated creativity.

***

The backstory:

I wrote the following review to answer a “challenge.” I intended to post it at the end of September 2009. But in the process of writing, I got all tangled up in words and couldn’t finish even the first sentence.

I intended to post it at the end of October. I still couldn’t write it.

Finally, after telling myself I didn’t care, I managed to write it after the October deadline.*

In the middle of the “process,” I considered posting the following review: “I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own very very very very very much.”

But the challenge specified a four-sentence review, and that was only one, and I didn’t want to repeat it three times.

So there’s the background.

I must also add this disclaimer: I bought my copy of A Broom of One’s Own myself, with my own money. No one told, asked, or paid me to write this review. No one told, asked, or paid me to say I like the book. No one told, asked, or paid me to like it. No one offered me tickets to Rio or a week’s lodging in Venice, more’s the pity. I decided to read the book, to like it, and to write this review all by myself, at the invitation of Story Circle Book Review Challenge. Nobody paid them either. Amen.

*********************************************

The review:

I like Nancy Peacock’s A Broom of One’s Own: Words About Writing, Housecleaning & Life so much that it’s taken me over two months and two missed deadlines to untangle my thoughts and write this four-sentence review, an irony Peacock, author of two critically acclaimed novels, would no doubt address were I in one of her writing classes.

She would probably tell me that there is no perfect writing life; that her job as a part-time house cleaner, begun when full-time writing wouldn’t pay the bills, afforded time, solitude, and the “foundation of regular work” she needed;  that engaging in physical labor allowed her unconscious mind to “kick into gear,” so she became not the writer but the “receiver” of her stories.

She’d probably say that writing is hard; that sitting at a desk doesn’t automatically bring brilliance; that writers have to work with what they have; that “if I don’t have the pages I hate I will never have the pages I love”; that there are a million “saner” things to do and a “million good reasons to quit” and that the only good reason to continue is, “This is what I want.”

So, having composed at least two dozen subordinated, coordinated, appositived, participial-phrase-stuffed first sentences and discarding them before completion; having practically memorized the text searching for the perfect quotation to end with; and having once again stayed awake into the night, racing another deadline well past the due date, I am completing this review—because I value Nancy Peacock’s advice; and because I love A Broom of One’s Own; and because I consider it the equal of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird; and because I want other readers to know about it; and because this is what I want.

*Not caring is often the key to cracking writer’s block. Nancy Peacock probably would say that, too.

READING WHILE TRAVELING

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by Helen Currie Foster

Just before a trip I get anxious: is there enough stored in my Kindle to keep me happy? You constant readers know that feeling. Did you upload enough for the waiting room at the airport? For the plane? For a sleepless first night, jet-lagging? Enough to keep you happy even if weak (or no) wi-fi at the (tent, cabin, hotel, boat, campsite, rental) precludes another download? Yes, there’ll be news–but I am escaping!

We’re on a family trip to France, with children and grandchildren. I loaded up the Kindle diligently beforehand. Of course there are way too many wonderful things to do besides read…

Still, my heart sang when we entered the rental in the French mountains and spied—A BOOKCASE!

Moreover, the shelves held mysteries! Ian McEwan, Patricia Cornwell, Elizabeth George, Janet Evanovich, V.I. Warshawski, Alexander McCall Smith…

Also serious nonfiction and titles from Kazuo Ishiguro, Dostoevsky, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes and more. Then I spotted Kinky Friedman’s Frequent Flyer and thought—eclectic tastes! Perhaps some were left behind by guests. Still, the shelves made me want to meet the owners. The welcoming bookshelves and, to boot, a choice of comfortable corners where a tired tourist can flop, prop up the well-used feet, and read…what more can one ask?

(Sidebar—when you see a Talking Head on your screen, with a bookshelf behind—do you wonder if the books really belong to the Head? Or are they just a prop intended to impress? Maybe we’ll see some interviewer pose a question: “How did you like Crimes Against Humanity?” Blank stare.)

I know I’ve mentioned her in a prior blog, but have you discovered Dorothy Dunnett yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Dunnett

If you’re familiar with Dunnett’s stunning two historical fiction series, The Lymond Chronicles and The House of Niccolo, you already know she delivered powerful (and powerfully surprising) plots, magnetic characters, and vivid reconstructions of the 15th and 16th centuries. Using (for all that detail) an omniscient narrator.

But in her spare time she also wrote the Dolly mystery series, involving an astoundingly talented portrait painter named Johnson Johnson (yes, two), who happens to turn up in scenic locations in his yacht, the Dolly, on secret missions for the British ministry of defense. I’ve reread three of those on this trip—one set in Ibiza, one in Morocco, one in Canada. Unlike the Niccolo or Lymond historical series, Dunnett’s heroines in these first-person mysteries are in their late teens or twenties and trying to make their way in the world (as an au pair, a cook, an executive assistant, etc.). Naturally they find themselves in dangerous situations while trying to identify a murderer, and Dunnett gives each her own first-person voice—each interestingly different.

Clearly Dunnett didn’t merely set foot in these locales: she absorbed them. The action’s fast-moving, but she paints a landscape with details that place you right in the square where the villains are about to—well, here’s an example from Moroccan Traffic, in the Atlas Mountains, where Wendy, a young executive assistant, watches as Johnson and the engaging inventor Mo pursue two ruthless adversaries up perilous cliffs:

…where they had set their faces to climb was the flank of the mountain; the boulder slope rising to cliffs and ridges and rock bands interlaid with tongues of snow, and scree-fields, and stony pockets of pasture. And further up, behind escarpment and terrace, the burning forepeaks of the range.

         I had seen it all from the road. Somewhere there, already entrenched, already waiting, were Gerry and Sullivan, ex-SAS marksmen.

You can also tell that Dunnett (as well as her character Johnson) was a painter:

All around us the hills, limp as blankets, glowed in soft reds, their milky hollows the colour of amethyst. The snow on Sirwa was tinged golden pink, and cast china blue shadows which were technically impermanent. A man walked by the road, a black goat like a scarf around his neck.

         And from Roman Nights – the young heroine, an astronomer, battles spy dealings in Italy including the Aragonese Castle on Ischia in the Bay of Naples:

         On a plateau the cathedral reared its three roofless sides like a kind of dismembered Versailles, white and flaking; the walls furnished with crumbling cherubs and statues, with rococo arches and pillars and architraves.

Dunnett gives her astronomer heroine plenty of tongue-in chic wit:

Johnson and Lenny sailed out of Amalfi, in a pure, warm air blowing about eight on the bloody Beaufort scale, and the rain lashing down. After becoming exceedingly well acquainted with the water filling the Gulf of Salerno, we fled into a fishing harbour called San Marco and spent the night offshore in a cat’s cradle of other boats’ cables.

Thank you, Dorothy Dunnett, for stupendous scholarship and for witty mysteries in places so believably described. What a gift to the traveler! Sorry, gotta go—I’m deep into Tropical Issue, set in Madeira, where I’ve never been—but it sure looks great in this prose…

What gifts they are to humans—to write, to read!

Award-winning writer Helen Currie Foster lives and writes in the iconic Texas hill country, supervised by three inquisitive and persistent burros. After practicing law for more than thirty years, she found the Alice MacDonald Greer Mysteries had suddenly appeared in her life. Book 10 in the series, Ghost Justice, is expected to debut in August 2025. Helen is continually fascinated by human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps invading our parties. Follow her on Facebook and Amazon, and in Austin at BookPeople.

https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Helen-Currie-Foster/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AHelen%2BCurrie%2BFoster

Walking the Dark Side of Summer: A Personal Look at For Every Evil Under the Sun

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VP Chandler


By V.P. Chandler

When I first sat down to write the stories that would eventually become part of For Every Evil Under the Sun, I didn’t know exactly where they would lead me—I only knew I wanted to stretch my writing skills, try new things, and be a part of a hot, cool collaboration. (Yes, I like puns.)

Now, I’m proud to announce that this collection is out in the world, published by the brand-new Fredonia Ink Publishing. I’m honored to be sharing the pages with two powerhouse writers, Alexandra Burt and Laura Oles—both of whom are not only incredibly talented but also deeply committed to telling stories that explore the dark, complex corners of the human experience.

This collection is a bit of a literary experiment. We each approached the idea of “evil” through our own unique lens—psychological thriller, family drama, crime, horror, western—and let the stories guide us. What came out of it is a collection that isn’t just eclectic, it’s electric. It shines! (Yes, another pun.)

As for me, I leaned into the grit—into crime, revenge, justice. I wanted my stories to carry that weight—to explore the consequences of violence and vengeance. And also add a little bit of fun to the mix. And the stories by Alexandra Burt and Laura Oles are equally as dark and entertaining.

And hey, if you’re in Austin this summer, I’d love to invite you to join us for a special event at Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar (1101 E. 11th St.) on July 18 at 7pm. Alexandra, Laura, and I will be discussing short story craft, the experiences of women writing crime fiction, and what went into shaping this haunting little book. It’ll be an evening of books, wine, and maybe a few goosebumps.

So if you’re in the mood for stories that simmer under the heat of summer and explore just how far people will go—to protect, to avenge, to survive—then For Every Evil Under the Sun might just be what you’re looking for.

Hope to see you in July.

—VP Chandler
vpchandler.com


🗓️ Event Info: July 18, 7pm @ Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar, Austin, TX
🔗 Learn more, here is the Amazon listing. Ebook now available and paperback will be soon on Amazon and bookstores everywhere: https://tinyurl.com/2tph4xcz

Words, words, words . . .

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By Dixie Evatt

Words, words, words . . .
~ Shakespeare

Before we had powerful computers in our pockets or on our laps, we had reference books. . . shelves and shelves of them.

One of my favorite possessions is a vintage Webster’s dictionary, published 1956 – when I was 10 years old. All 11-plus pounds of the five-inch-thick book teeter on a top shelf in my office. I can no longer safely lift it and the pages are laid out in three columns of typeface so tiny that my aging eyes strain to make out the words.

My book is a holdover from the days when library dictionaries were housed and opened on a specialized wooden lectern. I wonder, do libraries still have these throwbacks to that bygone day or have the enormous books all made their way to the shredder?

I never look at mine that I’m not reminded of the 1950s movie, Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday. She won an Oscar for her portrayal of the brassy girlfriend of an uncouth tycoon. Her character tries to overcome her limited education and rudimentary vocabulary by reading, among other texts, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In one of the more humorous scenes, she struggles to make meaning of the archaic text and is advised to simply check the dictionary if she encounters any words she doesn’t understand. The increasingly frustrated Holliday would no more than read a sentence before she is up again, consulting a dictionary. Word by word. Trip by trip. Written today, the scene would surely lose its charm since she would likely be reading Tocqueville on a Kindle where all you must do is press and hold a finger on a word for the meaning to flash before you.

Like Holliday with a Kindle, writers don’t have the need for shelves full of reference books since language prompts are everywhere from the demons in autocorrect to the drop-down menus in word processing programs that produce synonyms.

The 19th Century French author Jules Renard is credited with saying, “What a vast amount of paper would be saved if there were a law forcing writers to use only the right word.

Yet, finding the right word isn’t always so easy even with all our modern assets. Luckily there are still some reference sources to help. Here are a few:

Evan Esar’s “20,000 Quips & Quotes: A Treasury of Witty Remarks, Comic Proverbs, Wisecracks and Epigrams.” If she’d thumbed through this one, Holliday would have learned that Tocqueville said, “The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.”

“The Allyn & Bacon Handbook” by Leonard J. Rosen and Laurence Behrens. You must love any book that is willing to devote 22 pages to the uses and misuses of the comma alone.

Theodore M. Bernstein’s “Dos, Don’ts & Maybes of English Usage.” For instance, he explains why Mark Antony didn’t say “Friends, Romans, countrymen, loan me your ears.”

“Describer’s Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations,” by David Grambs and Ellen S. Levine. It indexes illustrative passages of more than 600 authors from travel writer Paul Theroux to contemporary British novelist Zadie Smith.

Eli Burnstein’s “Dictionary of Fine Distinction Book,” offering a humorous look at often misused words and phrases. For instance, couch vs. sofa.

Valerie Howard’s “1,000 Helpful Adjectives for Fiction Writers,” promises to spice up characteristics, qualities or attributes of a noun when a writer is having trouble capturing just the right word.”

Bill Bryson’s “Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting it Right” sets out to decipher the idiosyncrasies of the English language. Things such as 126 meanings of “set” when used as a verb and another 58 when used as a noun.

Brian Shawver’s “The Language of Fiction: A Writer’s Stylebook.” Need to be reminded when to use a comma or semicolon? Shawver’s there to help.

Kathy Steinemann’s “The Writer’s Lexicon: Descriptions, Overused Words, and Taboos.” Among other things, she offers writers cures for overused modifiers (I’m talking about you “very”).

John B. Bremner’s “The Columbia Dictionary for Writers: Words on Words.” Here you can learn the history of H. L. Mencken’s inspiration for coining the term “ecdysiast” to replace “striptease.”

Christine Lindberg’s “The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus.” Writing about bread? How about a baker’s dozen choices: dal, pita, rye, naan, tortilla, focaccia, ciabatta, challah, corn, sourdough, pumpernickel, baguette, etc.

“Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law” has been found on the desk of every journalist for decades since it dictates uniform rules for grammar, punctuation, style for capitalization and numbers, preferred spelling, abbreviations, acronyms, and such.

“Words, words, words,” is the sarcastic response Hamlet gave when Polonius asked him what he was reading. Fortunately, authors still have no shortage of excellent reference books to help them find the right ones.

***

A former political reporter in Austin, Dixie also taught writing at Syracuse University. When she teamed up with Sue Cleveland to write fiction, they sold a screenplay to a Hollywood producer. Although the movie was never made, the seed money financed ThirtyNineStars, their publishing company. Through it they published two award-winning thrillers (Shrouded and Digging up the Dead) under the pen name, Meredith Lee. Dixie’s first solo mystery was Bloodlines & Fencelines, set in a tiny Texas town near Austin. Kirkus reviews described the book as, “A twisty whodunit that’s crafted with care and saturated with down-home Southern charm.” She is working on second mystery in the series.  www.dlsevatt.com

***

Image of dictionary by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Publicity photo of William Holden and Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday via Wikipedia

Image of tablet  by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Curious Animals And Recent Reads

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by Helen Currie Foster

New reads! If, like me, you desperately miss John le Carré, consider A Spy Alone, the 2023 debut spy thriller by Charles Beaumont, a field operative veteran of Britain’s MI-6. https://bit.ly/3ZzHjHs His premise is fascinating: we know of the “Cambridge Five” who spied for Russia from the 1930’s to 1950’s—Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five But has there ever been, or could there be, a spy ring linked to Oxford? Beaumont’s protagonist Simon Sharman feels real, right from the first page:

“It is their shoes that give them away. As a lifelong fieldman, Simon Sharman hasn’t forgotten the lesson: walkers might change their jackets, pull on a pair of glasses, even a wig. But nobody changes their shoes on a job. Look at their shoes. “

I was hooked. Warning: Beaumont’s book is contemporary, well-written, tense, and may interfere with sleep. 

Two other recent reads: old adventure and a new “adult fantasy.” I’d never heard of The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson (1954).

Set from 980 to 1010 A.D., the book recounts the wide-ranging adventures of Norseman Red Orm Tostesson, and the collision between Christian priests (the “shaven men”) and the Norse culture of Skania at the south tip of Sweden. Now I know what it meant to go “a-viking”—to go sea-raiding! 500 pages, with Red, a very engaging Norseman. Great maps, too.

The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods (2024), offers time travel between the 1920’s and 30’s in Britain, and the present; a search for a lost Brontë manuscript; a disappearing attic; and disappearing and reappearing characters. I confess I flipped through big chunks, relieved when true love finally won out after two women, generations apart, survive appalling treatment. The disappearing attic reminded me of Susan Cooper’s Over Sea, Under Stone, and of course the wardrobe into Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m always up for secret doors.

I’m rereading a fascinating and fairly demanding study by Graham Robb, who has probably bicycled and walked further in Britain and France than most humans:

In The Search for Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts (2013), he describes how the Keltoi, or Celts, developed a system of surveying based on a midline transected by the lines of the summer and winter solstice to estimate travel distances and times—a feat not replicated for centuries. He maps the Heraklean Way, the path from southwestern Iberia that runs northeast across the Pyrenees to the Alps along the diagonal of the solstice sun, which Hannibal took when he invaded Italia. He describes Druid schooling (20 years to learn) and maps out protohistoric forts which turn out to lie along survey lines. He provides amazing maps. Two ongoing lessons from Robb’s devoted research: the winners write history; and humans tend to underestimate the accomplishments of earlier civilizations. 

Several of you asked about the three burros, given the recent cold snap. Thank you, they’re well. Their hair’s not waterproof so in cold rain they gather on the south side of the stable, under the roof, safe from rain and the north wind. They were relieved to see green grass again after the drought broke, but they’re also eating—and rolling in––green hay. And mud!

Yet despite hay, they gather outside the gate every morning and afternoon for carrots. They consider this part of their deal.

Burros are curious. They amble over to watch us garden and hang up laundry. They need company. They graze near each other. They may live into their 40’s. Sebastian, the short stubby knock-kneed male who invited himself to live here, may be 35 or more. Amanda (who insists I tell you she’s registered, with papers) may be 20. Her daughter Caroline is 12. Sebastian deems it his duty to bray loudly when any person or car appears at the end of the driveway, and to welcome the sun every morning with a stunningly loud bray. Now both Amanda and Caroline have begun to bray occasionally. 

Only donkeys can bray. Unlike horses or zebras, donkeys begin a bray on the inhale and continue braying on the exhale. They have great hearing—supposedly they can hear another donkey bray 60 miles away. 

They especially detest canids and will attack, dance on and kick dogs, coyotes, bobcats, foxes. A spooked horse will run away: donkeys stand together until they decide what they’re going to do. This morning, leaving for the post office, I saw the three donkeys standing together, knees locked, ears cocked, eyes fixed on two trespassing dogs who’d strayed across the cattleguard and into the donkeys’ domain. 

The dogs immediately acknowledged their gross error of judgment, raced frantically away and never returned.

If donkeys could read (wait—maybe they can, but have trouble turning the pages), I predict they’d prefer mysteries. They enjoy puzzles (like how to lift the chain and invade the fenced garden). 

Humans and donkeys. We are both curious animals.

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery Series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party! Currently she’s working on Book 10. Her protagonist, Alice, gets into legal drama, and matters of the heart. Alice does have a treehouse…

Follow Helen at http://www.helencurriefoster.com and on Amazon and Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/helencurriefoster

THE NAME OF THE ROSE IS—wait, how do you pronounce that?

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BY HELEN CURRIE FOSTER

April 1! It’s spring, with a riot of bluebonnets this year.

Plus paintbrush! Winecup! Verbena! Prairie celestials (so lovely)!

And within the fence, safe from our marauding burros, the roses are opening their petals and sharing their beauty.  Humans have been growing and hybridizing roses for millenia. I favor those with deep rose fragrance. This year the sniff prize goes to Madame Isaac Pereire,

but Zephirine Drouhine is a strong contender as well—sweet perfume, but no thorns!

Blooming with pride are Cramoisi Superieur, fun to pronounce, and dainty little Perle d’or, below.

Yes, the French have been busy.  But I’m waiting on the spectacular Star of the Republic, which is covered with buds that will become exquisite cream and pink roses,  and is almost as tall as Texas.

Thanks for human ingenuity and the deep love of beauty and fragrance that resulted in these roses. We humans are so able to produce beauty—and yet we mystery readers and writers know how gripped we are by the companion question: why do humans commit the primal sin of murder?

I’ve been reading a riveting book called How the Mind Changed, A Human History of Our Evolving Brain (2022), by neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, who studies the genetic history of the human brain. I’ve had to put stickers and checks on so many pages!

Jebelli says that, starting about 7 million years (or 230,000 generations) ago, when humans split from chimps, our brains were only 350 cm3 big. Then 3.5 million years ago, when our ancestor Lucy came along, we got a new uniquely human gene that gave us a folding neocortex and nearly doubled our brain size to 650 cm3.

Later, he says, our brains bloomed to 900 cm3, when we began cooking (maybe 2.7 million years ago), then to 1000 cm3, about 2.5 million years ago, then to 1500 cm3 500,000 years ago, and then grew another 25% by the time, 300,000-400,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens appeared.

Later research shows—the bigger the brain, the bigger the social group. Id., 69.

And lucky Homo sapiens came along when our planet was in extreme ecological instability: “African megadroughts depleted the land’s fresh water; vanishing grasslands diminished the number of animals available…” Homo sapiens spread across the planet, interbreeding along the way with the Neanderthals (who went extinct around 40,000 years ago), and the Denisovans, Neanderthal cousins from Asia. Most humans outside Africa carry around 2 percent Neanderthal-derived DNA while today humans in Papua New Guinea and Australia possess up to 6% Denisovan DNA.

Now we have tools of advanced microscopy and molecular genetics to use “the mosaic of neurons, the constellation of synapses and the tributaries of molecules to learn the age of the brain and the transformations it has seen.” Îd., 21.

But it’s Jebelli’s discussion of brain research on “fair play” that I find most fascinating – whether the experiment uses rats, vampire bats, or humans. “Our minds intuitively draw a distinction between unfair equality (all students receiving the same…grades regardless of merit) and fair inequality (the doctor earning more than the cleaner). When push comes to shove, humans nearly always prefer fair inequality to unfair equality.” Jebelli goes on to explain that when we humans engage in fair play, we experience a surge of neural activity in our brain’s reward centers, releasing dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. Id., 68.

Watch out: scientists are identifying gene mutations that explain amazing things. “Non-monogamous brains tend to have a special kind of dopamine receptor gene called DRD4, which is linked to promiscuity and infidelity.” Id., 78. Use that in a plot, mystery-writers!

But I was thrilled by the focus on the link between strong imagination and intelligence in our “default network, a brain system that participates in daydreaming, mind wandering, reflective thinking and imagining the future….People who engage in these cognitive practices…have greater access to the states of mind necessary to solve complex problems.” Id., 115. Jebelli says our default networks are only active when we’re not focused on a task, “when the brain is cycling through thoughts not associated with the immediate environment.”  In other words, the default network contrasts with our executive control network.  Jebelli makes another leap: compassion also stimulates the default network. “Compassion requires imagination. ‘Climb into his skin and walk around in it,’ Atticus tells Scout.” But imagination also requires compassion.  Id., 119.

Why has this book grabbed me? As a mystery writer I wrestle with why some humans will run into the street to save a child from a bus, and some will just watch; and why and how some humans invent gripping new imaginative worlds (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Slough House, Yoknapatawpha County, the Forest of Arden, Hat Creek and the saga of Lonesome Dove) that tell of human struggles and victories, tragedies and comedies. Yes, writers who stimulate our “default networks”!

So you might like to take a peek at How the Mind Changed—check out the chapter on that age-old conundrum––what is consciousness? And the chapter on different minds, or neurodiversity, including genetic components. And the chapter on the new field of neurocriminology: what makes humans commit crimes? Which brain regions are responsible for violence? One possibility—it’s an area of the hypothalamus called the ventromedial hypothalamus, “an ancient brain region that has been conserved throughout mammalian evolution.” Yikes!

As Jebelli notes, plots will abound from this inquiry, this research. As always, inquiring minds want to know.

Meanwhile, it’s April! So let us now praise Geoffrey Chaucer – whose compassion and imagination gave us “Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flowr…”

And further to celebrate—Book 9 of my Alice MacDonald Greer legal thriller series has gone off for copy-edit. Yes, again the primal crime has been committed…!

Thanksgiving–for Books Reread

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by Helen Currie Foster

Now and then, when I sneak a book off the shelf, glancing around to be sure no one notices it’s a children’s book…or pick up an old LeCarré…I’m grateful for the joy of rereading.

Rather like upcoming Thanksgiving dinners! Think of their literary content! Suspense, of course–is that turkey really done? Imminent peril–are the drippings sufficient for decent gravy? Strong characters–the usual suspects are arriving at the table! Ethical challenges–no comments on the burnt marshmallow topping on the yams. And, hopefully, enough whipped cream for a happy ending!

Of course an invitee may decide to bring Something New. (I refer to an aunt’s “Pumpkin Chiffon” creation, still infamous years later. I mean, it wasn’t pumpkin pie and never would be.) In the face of such unwonted (unwanted) novelty we draw back: we don’t want something new: we want…reassurance.

So many good books are out now, deserving our attention–Lawrence Wright’s Mr. Texas, Paulette Jiles’s Chenneville, Paul Woodruff’s Living Toward Virtue, and my dear friend Dr. Megan Biesele’s amazing memoir about her anthropological adventures in the Kalahari, Once Upon a Time Is Now. https://amzn.to/3MSVL7y

But sometimes I return to the old faves, craving (especially these days)…reassurance.

What sort of reassurance? How about vindication for a beloved character in trouble? See the end of William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1948), a murder mystery where Lucas Beauchamp with his gold toothpick is saved from lynching with the help of two teens and an old lady. It’s a precursor to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (which has a sadder ending).

Children’s books require vindication of the hero. Lucy receives that in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when her older siblings finally follow her through the back of the wardrobe into Narnia and discover her amazing story is true.

As a Le Carré follower, I remain thrilled by A Legacy of Spies (2017). And yes, like many of his spy thrillers, it’s a murder mystery. Our first-person narrator is “young Peter Guillam” who won our hearts earlier as the man that master spy George Smiley could always count on. White-haired, a bit deaf, and back home on the Breton coast, he’s no longer protected by the now-retired Smiley, and Britain’s foreign service (the “Circus”) has hauled Guillam to England and arrested him. The Circus is plotting an unconscionable rewrite of agency history, with Guillam cast as the villain.

But this old dog still knows old tricks, and, yes, is vindicated! We rejoice, reassured, when Peter Guillam once again is strolling the Breton coast, with a furious Smiley about to descend with a vengeance on the Circus.

Other great rereads for reassurance: Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin sea novels. The last pages of The Commodore (Book 17) provide classic vindication for our surgeon-spy, Stephen Maturin. After many perils, barely surviving yellow fever, and finally encountering his beloved potto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potto, Maturin learns of the death of a most vicious but hitherto unnamed enemy, who has plotted Maturin’s downfall, even his murder, for years (through many volumes). Just pages later Maturin experiences the wild joy of an unexpected reunion with his lost Diana. O’Brian’s unsurpassed powerful brevity can create the sudden turns and arouse the fierce emotions that satisfy a happy (re)reader.

My housemate reports that his rereads include The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monserrat, Cannery Row, Pride and Prejudice, certain sections of Moby Dick, and more.

This Thanksgiving I give thanks for books, new and old. Do you remember learning to read? I do. Early one morning, age five, I opened a new book titled Children’s Book of Knowledge. The long strings of separate curly letters abruptly morphed into words. Like a bolt of lightning! I could read! Words became magnetic: I couldn’t keep my eyes away. I read everything–stray magazines, newspapers, the Cheerios box. I was now independent. No waiting for grown-ups to dispense information: I could simply read for myself! (With a library book stashed inside my desk at East Elementary–unfortunately confiscated by the teacher.)

Reading sets us free, gives us resources, gives us respite, gives us independence..and reassurance. Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m working on the ninth novel in the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series set in Coffee Creek, Texas, in the Hill Country. You can be sure the inhabitants insist on cornbread dressing and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. The burros will hope for leftovers.

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When the Character Steps off the Page…

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by Helen Currie Foster

You go to a play, you’re reading the program, you’re waiting for the curtain to go up. It does. And onstage a character comes alive. You not only believe in that character—suddenly you feel that character is real.

After the play, in the lobby, out comes a chattering group of actors, one of whom is—the character you believed in! But it’s merely…another human being!

This happens to me over and over at Austin Shakespeare productions. I remember sitting riveted, watching Othello preparing to smother Desdemona, his face just a few feet from the front row of the Rollins Theatre. “No, no!” I wanted to scream. Minutes later, still quaking from the death scene, I watched the actors come back out for their traditional after-talk with the audience. I watched brokenhearted Othello plop down in a folding chair and grin at us––morphed from Othello into actor Mark Pouhé. At Free Shakespeare outdoors in Austin’s Zilker Park I held my breath, watching young Romeo climb the balcony to talk with Juliet, enchanted––like Juliet––by every word he uttered. Then at intermission, still in costume, actors came out and climbed the hillside, shaking buckets for donations, including…Romeo! Jarring to think he’d time-traveled from sixteenth century Verona to an Austin hillside. https://www.austinshakespeare.org/

You may be thinking, “I know all about that––it’s just the ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ Coleridge, right? Maybe you’ve just got an aggravated case!”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Taylor_Coleridge

But the question is—how exactly can actors do that? Maybe because Shakespeare has made Othello and Romeo so active, so appealing, so fascinating, so human, so alive in their loves and hates, that we believe in them, and we must hear their story. Others call such fixations our willing contract with actors, in exchange for being entertained––so long as the illusion is not spoiled. See The Actor’s Edge Online, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdGM7QzFJhM

As always, Shakespeare says it best. In the Prologue to Henry V, his Chorus begs the audience to use their own imaginations to make the small wooden stage come alive with the war between the “two mighty monarchies,” England and France:

“Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them/

Printing their proud hoofs I’ th’ receiving earth./

For ‘tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,/

Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,

Turning the accomplishment of many years/

Into an hour-glass…” Henry V, Prologue.

That’s genius.

Coleridge himself recalled his agreement with Wordsworth as follows: that while Wordsworth would write poems about the charm of everyday things,

“It was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” (Emphasis added.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief [Also spoken of as “the concept that to become emotionally involved in a narrative, audiences must react as if the characters are real…”] https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199568758.001.0001/acref-9780199568758-e-267

By buying a theatre ticket, or a movie ticket, we’re inviting an agreement like the one between the child who begs, “Tell me a story!” and the adult who responds, “Once upon a time…” In those two phrases, the contract is made. The child agrees—likely longs––to suspend disbelief, and the storyteller promises a world where the unexpected (even the unbelievable) can happen. Talking animals…bears with beds and chairs…

You and I happily suspend our disbelief when the characters become real to us, even though the events may be beyond “belief.” Harry Potter! Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! Lord of the Rings! Star Wars!

What does this have to do with mysteries? At least the protagonist in any mystery must come alive for us. If you’re a Louise Penny fan, you appreciate how Gamache smiles at his wife, how he strokes his dog. As for Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti, I know him well; I’ve followed him upstairs to his Venetian apartment so many times, practically huffing with him on that last staircase. I’ve watched him choose a panini to have with coffee in his favorite coffee bar—indeed, I can practically smell the espresso. I’ve stood with him in the police boat as it bounces across the lagoon to a murder scene. He’s become so familiar, so…well, real to me. V.I. Warshawski in the Sara Paretzky novels? I know the emotion she feels when she touches her mother’s cherished wine glasses, I feel my blood pressure rise with hers over injustice. And Robert Galbraith’s team, Robin and Cormoran? I ache with the pain of Cormoran Strike’s prosthetic as he runs, trying to catch a suspect; I feel Robin’s fear as she opens a door to a dark hallway. I peer over Joyce’s shoulder as she writes in her journal in Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club series.

A story (play, movie, mystery novel) demands a setting in which the protagonist comes alive for us. We’ve suspended disbelief when our favorite mystery characters no longer exist merely as ink on a page, as lines in a Kindle. Coleridge’s goal was to create “a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment.” We’re interested in what happens—a “semblance of truth”––to a character who arouses our “human interest.” The author, actor, director, has made us feel in league with our favorite characters. We’ve become collaborators with them, sharing their adventures, their frustrations, their fears. Suspending disbelief may be why we’re so anxious when our protagonists face danger, why we’re indignant when they’re treated badly, why we’re so relieved when they’re vindicated.

Of course a mystery plot may challenge imagination. The perfectly timed rescues in Daniel Silva’s spy thrillers…and the magnificent art restoration skills of his hero, Gabriel? The exquisitely choreographed capture and totally successful interrogation of Grigoriev in John Le Carré’s Smiley’s People?

Or the clever solutions deftly reached by ex(?)-spy Elizabeth and her friend Joyce at a foreign agent’s swimming pool suspended high above London, in The Bullet that Missed? https://amzn.to/45NxJlE

Knowing how reality usually works, we worry how plans go awry, how colleagues disappoint, how villains can foil. We shake our heads, fearfully anticipating that the plan will fail, and our character’s bluff will be called. But we’re still hoping, and holding our breath every second. And we keep turning the page.

Death of a Mystery Writer

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by M. K. Waller

This post doesn’t aim to inform, persuade, or entertain. It’s more of an observation, a meditation, a rumination, a mulling over, a puzzling. A rambling through recent events and old secrets. A mystery.

I. The Story

Crime fiction writer Anne Perry died in Los Angeles on April 10. She was eighty-four. A native of New Zealand and long-time resident of Scotland, she published her first mystery novel, The Cater Street Hangman, in 1979. Her latest, The Fourth Enemy, was published the week before her death. A final novel, A Traitor Among Us, will appear in September 2023.

In all, Perry published over a hundred books: the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series (32 novels); the Daniel Pitt series (6 novels); the William Monk series (24 novels); the Elena Standish series (5 novels); the World War I series (5 novels); the Christmas Stories (20 novellas); the Christmas Collections (6 anthologies); a fantasy series (2 novels); the Timepiece series (4 novellas for young adults with dyslexia); standalone novels (7); and three volumes of nonfiction. She also contributed to and edited four short story anthologies. To date, over 26 million copies of her books have been sold.

A television series based on her William Monk novels is being developed. In 2017, Perry moved from Scotland to Los Angeles to “more effectively promote films based on her novels.”

In 2014, freelance writer Lenny Picker wrote in Publisher’s Weekly, “Quantity for Perry has not come at the cost of quality. She’s won major mystery awards, including an Edgar and two Anthonys, which demonstrate the esteem of fellow writers and fans alike.” At the 2009 Malice Domestic, she received the Agatha Award for lifetime achievement.

Her two fantasy novels, Tathea (which she began writing in her twenties) and Come Armageddon, instead of concerning “good men laboring to clean up London’s mean streets by bringing wrongdoers to justice,” instead “present a heroine seeking answers to life’s big questions.”

“Her belief in free will,” writes Picker, “allows Perry to hope for spiritual progress, both for herself and for humanity at large.”

He continues, “Perry’s writings are an effort to facilitate such progress. Through mystery and fantasy, she aspires to make a difference in her readers’ lives, by teaching them, in her words, ‘something of the human condition—a wisdom and compassion, an understanding of life that enables feeling empathy for people whose paths may be very different from our own.’”

II. The News Media

BBC News, 27 November 2014
PD James, crime novelist, dies aged 94

Crime novelist PD James, who penned more than 20 books, has died aged 94.

Her agent said she died “peacefully at her home in Oxford” on Thursday morning.

The author’s books, many featuring sleuth Adam Dalgliesh, sold millions of books around the world, with various adaptations for television and film.

*

BBC News, 2 May 2015
Author Ruth Rendell dies aged 85

Crime writer Ruth Rendell has died aged 85, her publisher says.

She wrote more than 60 novels in a career spanning 50 years, her
best-known creation being Inspector Wexford, which was turned into a highly
successful TV series.

Rendell, one of Britain’s best-selling contemporary authors, also wrote
under the pen-name Barbara Vine.

*

BBC News, 13 April 2023
Anne Perry, Murderer turned crime writer, dies aged 84

 

Crime author Anne Perry, who, as a teenager helped murder her friend’s mother, has died aged 84.

The writer served five years in prison from the age of 15 for bludgeoning Honorah Mary Parker to death.

Perry died in a Los Angeles hospital, her agent confirmed. She had been declining for several months after suffering a heart attack in December. . . .

Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. She went on to write a string of novels across multiple series, which collectively sold 25 million copies around the world.

 

Three major British writers of crime fiction die. They were contemporaries. They were prolific. Their novels received both popular and critical acclaim.

One major British news outlet reports the deaths. But the third report expends over 300 words before focusing on the author’s literary career–and then devotes only ninety-nine words to her books.

P. D. James lived an exemplary life, untouched by notoriety. The most serious offense I’ve found reported about Ruth Rendell is that on her first writing job, reporting for a newspaper in Essex, ” . . . she was forced to resign after filing a story about a local sports club dinner that she hadn’t attended. Her report failed to mention that the after-dinner speaker had died half-way through the speech.”

But Anne Perry was a murderer. In 1954, when she was fifteen, she helped to bludgeon her best friend’s mother to death. Convicted, she served five years in a New Zealand prison, was released under a new name and identity, joined her family in the United Kingdom, and worked for twenty years in what her New York Times obituary refers to as “less creative fields,” before becoming a writer. In 1994, forty years after the murder, and fifteen years after the publication of her first novel, her secret became public. She has since spoken about it in interviews. Although the Personal Biography on her official website omits reference to the crime, she has never claimed innocence. In the reporter’s judgment, Perry’s criminal past was of more import than her years as a literary superstar.

III. Social Media

Readers, too, judge. So do other writers.

Comments on Perry’s Facebook page express admiration for her and sadness at her passing. Elsewhere, however, reactions are mixed. A paraphrased and truncated sample of what I’ve seen on social media follows:

Perry was a gracious person and a brilliant writer. She should be remembered that way.

She was a murderer. She should have written in a different genre. A murderer shouldn’t write about murder.

Reading her books and knowing what she did–it makes me feel weird.

She didn’t celebrate murder in her books. She brought murderers to justice.

Can writers choose what they write? Choose what they’re good at? Perry tried writing historical fiction but didn’t succeed. Should she have refused to do what she did best?

She had to make a living.

It doesn’t matter what she was; it’s what she became that counts.

She served her time, paid her debt to society.

Five years isn’t enough to make up for murder.

She behaved badly at the trial. She laughed. She’s never expressed remorse.

Maybe bringing criminals to justice in her fiction was an attempt to atone.

It’s impossible to atone for murder.

What about redemption? Don’t you believe in redemption?

When you buy her books, you’re supporting her and condoning murder.

She made a major contribution to the mystery genre and to the culture.

She was a great person.

She read some of my work and offered advice. She was very helpful.

If she’d been a man who committed a brutal murder, would the public let her off so easily?

I love her books. I don’t care what she did before.

She was a murderer. I’ve never read her books and never will read them.

Her books raised awareness of social issues.

It’s a shame reporters dredge up all that business about the murder. That shouldn’t be her legacy.

Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

All right–Shakespeare wrote those last two, and he didn’t post them on social media. But they’ve been looping through my brain over the past week, so I thought I’d throw them in.

IV. The Questions

The social media exchange is about more than just Anne Perry. It concerns how we view the relationship between artists and their art.

How do we separate writers from what they’ve written? Can we? Should we try?

And what do readers have the right to expect of writers, beyond words on the page? Do good writers have to be Good People? Just how good do they have to be? When people who’ve done bad deeds write good books, are we wrong to read them?

If writers and their books are inextricably linked, and reading is wrong, how much imperfection should we tolerate before we take those books off our To Be Read list? (Should books by Bad People be pulled from library shelves?*)

Or maybe reading isn’t the issue–maybe it’s money.

When we purchase books by writers whose past acts are abhorrent to us, and thus support them financially, do we condone their crimes? Money talks, but what exactly does it say?

Does time matter? What if a writer is dead, and the crime is long past, and our purchase instead supports heirs, publishers, booksellers–are we still enablers?

Is there a flip side? Do writers–artists–have a responsibility to the public? When they behave unacceptably–in Perry’s case, an understatement–should they expect the public to embrace their creations on merit alone?

Had Perry become a painter or sculptor, would the discussion be different?

Does Art stand on merit alone, independent of its creator?

Should there be a discussion at all? Are these questions a waste of time, gray cells, and energy, and not worth the pixels they’re written in?

Is Hamlet correct:

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

V. One Answer

To Perry, at least, the issue was more than academic. The New York Times obituary quotes from the 2009 documentary film Anne Perry: Interiors:

“‘In a sense it’s not a matter — at the end — of judging,’ she said in the documentary. ‘I did this much good and that much bad. Which is the greater?’

“’It’s in the end, Who am I? Am I somebody that can be trusted? Am I someone that is compassionate, gentle, patient, strong?’ She mentioned other traits: bravery, honesty, caring. ‘If you’re that kind of person — if you’ve done something bad in the past, you’ve obviously changed.’

“She concluded, ‘It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.‘”

*****

Sources–And possibly a summing-up of everything that comes before:

Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, I, v

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones
– William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III, ii

Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it
so. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii

*

*Librarians select books and materials based on their reading of multiple reviews published in professional journals, without regard to the Goodness or Badness of the authors. It’s a matter of professional ethics.

Kathy Waller blogs at her website, Telling the Truth, Mainly, and with Austin Mystery Writers. She’s published short stories and has a novel in progress. Follow this link to her on Facebook.