Review of The Killing of Emma Gross

The Killing of Emma Gross by Damien Seaman

March, 1929…a prostitute named Emma Gross is killed in a Dusseldorf hotel room and her body mutilated so the wounds mimic those borne by two other murder victims. Johann Stausberg confesses to all three crimes and is sent to Grafenberg Asylum for the criminally insane. That should have been that, but a year later, the arrest of serienmörder (serial killer) Peter Kürten brings to light certain discrepancies that investigating officer Thomas Klein simply can’t ignore. And it doesn’t hurt that proving Johann Stausberg didn’t kill Emma Gross will humiliate his ex-partner Michael Ritter who has hated him ever since learning of Thomas’ affair with his wife Gisela.

Damien Seaman’s debut novel, The Killing of Emma Gross stuns the reader like a blow from the claw-hammer wielded by one of its characters. The novel is equal parts police procedural, psychological thriller and dramatic deconstruction of a love affair gone very, very wrong. This is a plot that involves secrets and lies buried so deep inside that winkling them out involves blood and pain on an epic scale.

For everyone but Thomas, the question of “Who killed Emma Gross?” is less important than “Who cares who killed Emma Gross?” and the closer Thomas gets to answers, the more questions surface. This is not a simple book and Thomas is not a simple character. A veteran of the Great War, he is scarred inside and out from the experience, but traumatized even more by the death of “Lilli” and his wretched love affair with Ritter’s wife.  He is capable of mistreating people in his search for the truth, but he’s also susceptible to moments of what he calls “softness.”

Feminist Fiction Friday: Judith Viorst

Judith Viorst is a writer who can’t be confined to a genre.

She’s a journalist, a poet, a playwright. She could probably sell her grocery lists if someone drew pictures on them.

As a writer, Judith Viorst has a split personality. She writes wonderful books for children—her most famous are probably Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, NoGood, Very Bad Day and The Tenth GoodThing About Barney (my favorite)—but she also writes non-fiction for adults, her titles ranging from breezy books of poetry about aging (It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty and I’m Too Young to Be Seventy and Other Delusions) as well as thoughtful, scholarly works informed by her studies in psychology. I read her book Necessary Losses after my mother’s death and it helped.

Viorst’s versatility—from serious to silly—is awe-inspiring. Sometimes all she wants to do is entertain, as with her four-line poem “And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella’s Foot,” a hilarious take on fairy tale endings. (You can find it in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, but you can also find it here.) But sometimes there’s more going on than kidjinks. The Tenth Good Thing About Barney is the story of a kid whose beloved cat has died and it’s one of the best “circle of life” stories you’ll ever read. I am not ashamed to say that I cried when I read it.

She doesn’t tweet—at least not under @judithviorst—but she does have a fan page on Facebook here. 

Her 81^st birthday is coming up next month. Celebrate it!

Naff--my new favorite word

Mark Satchwill, my arty other half at NoHo Noir, introduced me to this word, British slang (I learned from Urban Dictionary) for "lame." 
Naff. It's my new favorite word. I don't understand why it never caught on here in the US, where sillier words have become common currency.
I've been thinking about words a lot lately, specifically slang, because late last year I tried something I'd never done before--writing a story set in swinging 60s London.
I would have felt more comfortable if it were set in 1860s London because there's more of a margin for error and it's not like someone is going to pop in and say, "That's not what we said!" (Well, there are sharp-eyed people who know the 1860s inside and out who would probably let me know if I got it wrong, but you know what I mean.)
It's really  hard to be persuasive writing about another time and another culture, and I have a horror of making a misstep especially since I tend to get snarky about writers who don't do their research and get things wrong.  (You know the kind of thing I mean--novelists who describe the fields of white marble crosses in Arlington Cemetery not realizing they're describing Flanders Fields and not the garden of stone that is the nation's most-storied national cemetery where all the tombstones are tombstone-shaped.) And language is the trickiest thing.
I have several friends from France whose English is superb--nuanced and slangy and grammatically perfect. The only thing that marks them as non-native speakers, besides their accents, is that instead of saying "last night," they say "yesterday night."
Which reminds me (yes, I know this is a NAFF segue) of a story I once read, probably in EQMM. Set in WWII it was about a German spy who was caught because when he spoke (in English) about the moon, he referred to its gender as male.  That's the kind of thing I mean.
Naff.

When Less is More

I like flash fiction. I like writing it; I like reading it. I really admire writers who can pack a story into a small space and let it uncoil like a jack in the box.  The famous one, of course, is Hemingway's six-word story:  For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
As I was posting my entry on ShortStory365 today, I was thinking about writers who can pull off the really, really short story. Chris Rhatigan showcased Thomas Pluck's "Faggot" a couple of days ago on SS365 and if you haven't read it, you need to. In fewer than 100 words, he'll take your breath away. Here's the link to the story on Shotgun Honey.
Thinking about short-shorts sent me searching for Somerset Maugham's "The Appointment in Samarra," which I remembered being short. I'd forgotten how short. It's 198 indelible words. Find it here.

I'm in awe.

When you can't even give it away...

My first fiction collection, Just Another Day in Paradise, has been free on Amazon and Smashwords for a couple of months now.  Downloads were extremely brisk at the beginning, and have taken an uptick in the last two weeks for some reason.  It's gratifying. Not as gratifying as it would be if all those people were paying for the book, but gratifying nonetheless.
But then...every once in awhile, someone returns one of the downloads of the book.
That's right, they send it back!
Who does that?  Seriously?  Why not simply delete it from your kindle?  Because it's not as if the customer is going to get a refund.
Maybe it's a perceived value issue? Maybe I need to raise the price?
It's a mystery.

Feminist (Non) Fiction Friday--Renny Darling

Years ago, I attended my first American Book Association convention representing my then-employer, Los Angeles Magazine. At the table to my right was a vivacious, dark-haired woman named Renny Darling who was there to promote her first cookbook, The Joy of Eating. It was oversized and paperbound, and the pages were decorated with little drawings that gave the whole thing a very “cozy” feel that reminded me of looking through my mother’s recipes, which were often adorned with her doodles. (She’d gone to art school and worked as a commercial artist before I was born.)

Renny was one of the friendliest, most upbeat people I have ever met and my one real memory of that convention was when she returned to her table after a short break wearing a pyramid hat because two kids were selling them and a book about pyramid power and the whole thing tickled her.

I loved Renny. She was one of those people you sometimes meet that you just fall in love with and want to befriend. I was too shy to follow up on that so I did the next-best thing, I bought the cookbook.

Even at the time, I had a lot of cookbooks, so I figured I’d read through it and probably never really cook anything from it.

And then I stopped on her recipe for chocolate chip banana bread.

I don’t really like banana bread but I do like chocolate and the recipe was dead easy—one of Renny’s abiding principles is “simple is better”—so I whipped up a batch.

The word “orgasmic” comes to mind.

Right out of the oven, the bread tastes like heaven, with little melty bits of chocolate oozing out of it in lovely little dark specks.

Cold, the bread changes texture into something more like a dense bread pudding.

Men who have eaten this bread have proposed to me.

I always make a few loaves at Christmas and give them to deserving friends.

You want to be one of those friends.

The next recipe I tried was Renny’s pumpkin bread with orange juice and golden raisins. You only think you’ve had pumpkin bread until you have had Renny’s pumpkin bread. Her pumpkin bread kicks your pumpkin bread’s ass.

So I bought her next cookbook and her next and a couple more after that.

I have made soups and quiches and a rice with fruit and nuts side dish that was so sinfully good I had the leftovers for breakfast by themselves.

Once you’ve had one of her cheesecakes (she loves cheesecake and all her books seem to have half a dozen great recipes for cheesecake) you will never again be satisfied by those dry concoctions delis try to pass off as cheesecake.

Every single one of the recipes she shares is unbelievably tasty. I mean…Every. Single. One.

In addition to the books, Renny also had a recipe club with a newsletter offering recipes and cooking tips. (We’re not talking about a wimpy little newsletter either, this mailings ran for some 20 pages.) Rising postal costs shut the newsletter down but then she went online, where she has continued to enhance and expand her brand. Find her site here.

Read her brief memoir on the site and you’ll get an inkling of her warm and chatty style, which is the way she writes her cookbooks.

When you leaf through one of her books, it feels like you’re visiting a good friend who has just printed up the recipe for that amazing muffin you just ate; giving you the secret of the deliciousness because she loves you and wants you to be able to whip up that deliciousness for yourself.

This is a woman who took her love of cooking and turned it into a business and a brand while raising a family and holding a marriage together.

Renny Darling is my heroine.

And she’s written a lot more cookbooks since I last checked in on her.
So I have some catching up to do. And meanwhile, I have the pleasure of browsing through the descriptions of her newest books.
Renny Darling offers free recipes on her site. Here's one.

Renny Darling is on Facebook! Friend her here.

Renny Darling is on Twitter! Follow her @RennyDarling.

Then go buy one of her books.

Any one of her books.

Your life will taste better for it.

Want Some Freebie Publicity?

Over the holidays, I took advantage of a SuperEReads offer to create some free catalogue pages for two of my ebooks. Response to their offer was tremendous (who doesn't like free publicity?).  Now, to thank everyone who took advantage of their offer, Karen Dionne and Christopher Graham, the site's founders, are offering the "early adopters" a deal--another free catalogue page for one of our own books or someone else's. 

Would you like to have my catalogue page?

The pages look great and you can add as much info as you want, reviews, book trailers, dancing girls, whatever. Ordinarily, there's a charge for this, but I have a freebie I will give away to the next person who joins this site.  Just join and comment here and I will give you the secret password. (Don't dilly-dally, though--the offer expires on January 15th.)