Fourth Post in Praise of Women Crime Writers

Patricia Cornwell, creator of the Kay Scarpetta mysteries used to live in Richmond, Virginia. The first novel in the series, Postmortem, is based on a notorious real-life serial killer case that had Richmond connections. (The Killer was Known as the Southside Strangler) In both the book and real life, the killer was a strangler. In real life, he was a "secreter" and it was DNA that did him in.  (It was the first time the Commonwealth of Virginia successfully used DNA in a legal case to prove the identity of an assailant.) There were some interesting things about the real-life case. The killer was a black man who crossed racial lines with his victims, which is unusual.  One of the victims was a young Asian-American girl, another was a 35-year-old white woman named Debbie Davis.
I knew Debbie Davis. She worked at Richmond Style Weekly with me in the late 80s. She was the only child of parents who had been older when she was born and her death just about killed them too. Remember Fred Goldman's emotionally blasted response to his son's death? Multiply that by ten.

SinC25 #3--Women Crime Writers

I used to work for a now-defunct weekly newspaper called the L.A. Reader. I was a general assignment reporter there, which meant I covered everything from hearings on mosquito abatement policies (just as fascinating as it sounds) to best Halloween costumes.
Occasionally, I snagged a crime story. The last crime-related story I covered was a report on a very special meeting of the local Parents of Murdered Children group.  They were meeting with the state's Attorney General and they had some questions to ask and some bones to pick.
One of the attendees was Dominique Dunne's mother Ellen.  (Dominique would have been 52 now. Next year will be the 30th anniversary of her death.)
Ellen Dunne died in 1997 and this was a decade earlier than that and she was already extremely frail and wheelchair-bound. She must have been a great beauty in her youth and even pain-ravaged and grief-stricken, she had an immense presence.

I sat through the meeting, listening to the parents tell their stories and listening to the Attorney General try to deflect their anger.  "The man who killed my son did five years," one man said. "Why shouldn't I kill him?  I can do five years standing on my head." The room was  not with the AG when he pompously suggested that would be a bad idea.
I was not a great crime writer and this experience was actually the one that soured me on reporting news. I switched to features and then I switched to fiction and I've never really looked back.
But that doesn't mean I don't love true crime.  I'm not as avid about it as my friend Berkeley, but a well-written crime story is a thing of beauty.  And the queen of that is ...

EDNA BUCHANAN.  Edna Buchanan wrote for the Miami Herald and covered thousands of crimes.  She was tough, smart, and savvy.  And she was GLAMOROUS.  Even now, as a woman of une certain age, she's got it going on. 
She won a Pulitzer for general reporting in 1986 and a slew of other awards for both her crime reporting and her fiction. I've never read any of her novels but I loved both The Corpse Had a Familiar Face and Never Let Them See You Cry, her memoirs about working the crime beat. The late, great Elizabeth Montgomery starred in several television movies based on these non-fiction books and she copied Buchanan's signature look of touseled hair and big sunglasses. (See the above photo.) You can download Buchanan's short story "Red Shoes" from Mary Higgins Clark's mystery magazine here. 

Cranky Pants Rant for Saturday

As I have mentioned (more than a few times), I love Craig's List. I check in on the listings for LA/NY/Chicago several times a day and I answer any writing jobs/gigs ads that look interesting. And while I have to earn a living, I also like to have fun so if a job that doesn't pay anything sounds intriguing, I'll answer the ad.  (This drives certain people in my life absolutely bonkers.)

Lately, there have been a lot of job offers out there for people who want a ghost-writer to finish a book that's "in pieces" and "not yet written down."  And that's okay, if a "writer" wants to hire someone to transcribe their thoughts, organize them and then "flesh them out," and they can find someone to do that, God love them both.  But the thing is, these writers who have imagined how great their books will be, as soon as they're written, are always in a rush.  ("Must be done by first of September.")  Well, okay--they want their book out there before the Christmas rush. Understandable.

But here's where I don't quite get their logic.  On the one hand they'll say, "Great gig for college students or stay-at-home moms" and on the other they'll request the following:  Sign a non-disclosure agreement, provide three references, provide links to your books.  MUST HAVE PUBLISHED A BEST SELLER. 

First of all--references?  What, from three people who read your book and liked it?  Must have published a best seller.  I am not exaggerating for effect. I have seen that phrase.  More than once.

And the ads always contain misspellings too...

Sigh.

More Praise for Women Crime Writers

It may surprise people who know my fiction that I really have a taste for "cozies." I am very fond of the "Hamish Macbeth" series by M.C. Beaton (aka Marion Chesney). A new one is coming out next February and I can't wait. Oddly enough, I really don't like her "Agatha Raisin" books.  They're just a little bit too "twee" for me.

I am a huge fan of Ellis Peters (aka Edith Pargeter) who wrote under half a dozen pseudonyms (some of them male) and wrote dozens of books.  She was also known as a scholar and a translator. Before I knew her as the author of the Brother Cadfael novels, I had read her "Brothers of Gwynedd" quartet, brilliant historical fiction.  In addition to almost 20 novels about Cadfael,  former Crusader-turned-monk, she wrote 13 novels featuring Inspector George Felse. I have not yet had the pleasure of reading those and look forward to it.

In Praise of Women Crime Writers

I am a member of the LA branch of Sisters in Crime (SinC) although I think I'm currently behind on my dues. I love the organization for the warm welcome they gave me and for the sense of community they provide. They're celebrating their 25th anniversary next month at Bouchercon and while I can't be there, I CAN participate in their blog challenge in praise of women crime writers.  (If you want to participate yourself, get the info here.)

Sharyn McCrumb's  "Appalachian Ballad" novels feature a recurring cast of characters (wonderful characters), stories that combine a crime in the past with one in the present, and a lovely sense of place. My favorite is probably  The Rosewood Casket.  She also writes a series about a character named Elizabeth McPherson, which is totally different in style.

Five more authors I recommend:  Kelli Stanley (who has two series going, one set in ancient Rome, one set in 1940s San Francisco); Carol O'Connell (her series heroine Kathy Mallory compares very favorably to Lisbeth Salander, if you liked The Millennium Trilogy, you'll like her books); Harriet Stratemeyer Adams (aka Carolyn Keene) The mother of both Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys and the author who turned me into a lifelong mystery reader; Liza Cody (big fan of her Anna Lee series); Josephine Tey (her books are really timeless and there just aren't enough of them.)

Reader's Digest Wants Your Life

My parents were omnivorous readers and among the magazines that came into our house via subscription was Reader's Digest.  Don't mock, your parents probably had a subscription to Reader's Digest  too. It sat in the bathroom more often than on the coffee table with Time and Newsweek and EQMM, and Family Circle and McCalls. Long before USA Today mastered the art of the micro-article, they offered short, pithy articles on every topic under the sun.  (For some reason I seem to remember a lot of stories about plucky survivors of animal attacks, but that might just be selective memory.)

Reader's Digest is hosting a "Your Life" contest in which the best 150-word story posted on their Facebook page will win $25,000 and publication. Deadline is November 1st.  Details here.

Chuck Wendig Made Me Do It

I sat out last week's fiction challenge but this week, Chuck was back with one that was irresistible.  Guns. In a thousand words or less.  'Happiness is a warm gun," I thought, having just viewed Red on Netflix. And this nasty little story percolated up from the dismal swamp that is my imagination.

Check out Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds blog  ("Must Love Guns") to see the other stories inspired by the prompt.

And here's my story:

GUN CONTROL

All the girls have a gimmick.

Charla’s got the snake, an albino ball python she raised as a pet right out of the egg. Ball pythons can live to be 30, so Slinky’s got another 15 good years left as a performer. Not Charla though. Nobody wants to look at a 40-year-old’s saggy tits.

Not that she’ll even make it to 30 the way she hits the pipe.

Rada shtick is “the dirty girl.” She never washes her ya-ya during the week, so by the weekend she’s built up a powerful stink. Men line up to dip their fingers in the poisoned honey of her rancid cunt, fumble all over themselves to pad her thong with their hard-earned cash.

Easy cum, easy go.

We’re not supposed to touch the customers unless we take them upstairs but Rada pays JoJo a cut and he looks the other way. Probably dips his fingers himself now and again. Probably considers it one of the perks of the job.

Mel’s gimmick is the body paint, which she mixes up special with little glittery bits thrown in so that when she peels down, she looks like that blue girl from the X-Men, the one who used to be married to John Stamos.
JoJo thought it was too weird at first but she convinced him to let her try it out and sure enough, the geeks from the university can’t get enough of her.

She’s so popular one of the girls over at the Pink Velvet tried to copy her style for awhile.

When she didn’t cease and desist after JoJo asked her politely, he sent Yusef to pay her a visit. Yusef thinks we’re all whores anyway so there wasn’t a lot of talking involved in their conversation.

She doesn’t dance any more. I think that’s a mistake. There are some real freaks out there, men who would enjoy looking a girl whose breasts have been sliced off. She could have made some serious money.

Some women have no imagination.

Men don’t come to a titty bar just to gawp at flesh. They can do that at home without the cover charge and the watered-down drinks. Even the paid porn sites have plenty of freebies, pictures and video clips and fetish trappings. When you’re at home, you can just rub one out when you get the urge. You can’t do that at a club.

Sure, some men have tried it here, but a quick word from Yusef usually convinced them to take it outside, or at least to the men’s room.

I think men come to the club as a way of convincing themselves—in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary—that they’re still the dominant sex on the planet.

And what’s the one thing men like playing with even more than their dicks?

Guns.

Men love guns.

That’s my gimmick.

I can’t dance for shit but the men love the guns.

I come out on stage like gun-whore Barbie, wrapped in bandoliers and strapped with holsters in all sorts of interesting places.

I writhe around for awhile and then fellate a Desert Eagle—always a crowd pleaser—and then finish off by firing a pair of Colt .45s hanging on either side of my g-string.

The crowd always goes nuts at that point.

They think I’m using blanks.

They’re wrong.

If they even notice the little puffs of powdered concrete when the bullets hit the back wall, they think it’s part of the show.

JoJo thinks I’m a crazy bitch and he’s right about that, but I’m the star attraction.

The audience eats it up.

Of course they do. It feels dangerous in a safe way, like fucking a crack whore while wearing a condom.

They’ll never see it coming whe day I aim to kill.

I’ll take Yusef out first—he’s the only one who might be fast enough to stop me.

The others? It’ll be just like target practice, only more fun.

My daddy taught me two things in life—how to give a decent blowjob and how to handle a gun.

“Gun control,” he used to tell me, “is hitting what you aim for.”

I was daddy’s good girl.