After twenty years of writing short stories, I’m more than happy to report the forthcoming publication of my first book: THE BRIDE MUST BE STOPPED! It’s a YA thriller, the first book in a series of self-contained mysteries featuring a group of teenage high-school friends – the Mean City Mysteries. It’s noir, hence the pulpy cover. The main character, Thornton Thacker, is a teenage detective who wears a trench coat and spends his spare time playing in a jazz band.

The story’s journey from the synapses in the back of my head to the pages of a published book has been long, and for a long time while writing it, I got hung up on WHERE and WHEN is it set?

The book didn’t seem like a fit for my hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. Auckland is a city, but it’s not a big city. For some time, I considered setting it in London. I’ve lived there and have a feel for it. There’s a noirish grit to dear old London town, and I’ve written several short stories set there, but that didn’t feel right either.

With frustration mounting, I sat at my desk and did the writing exercise: Define your story in one word. The word I finally wrote was NOIR. It was immediately clear to me that the story was set in America – the origin of noir. That was its natural home.

But which city? I’ve spent time in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. And when? I still hadn’t decided on that either.

I deliberated over this for weeks (possibly a year).

Eventually, the clouds cleared, and obviousness stared at me. You see, the book hadn’t been the sole focus of my life. I’d been quietly working on it when I could find the time, and after several years, I had simply forgotten where and how it had all begun.

It began with two events occurring around the same time in 2010.

1. A short story of mine, The Man with One Eye, was published by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (December 2010). The story was about a small boy investigating the disappearance of a school friend. It was noir, spooky, set in the 1950s in a large, unnamed US city, and not without humour. It was nominated for a Derringer Award (Best Novelette) and was an Ellery Queen Readers’ Award finalist.

2. My wife bought a box set of The Famous Five TV series: she’d been an Enid Blyton fan since childhood. I didn’t know them; I had been an avid Secret Seven reader. Watching the show, and observing its quaint, 1970s Britishness, I had joked: “Imagine if the Famous Five had been written by Raymond Chandler?”

Note: If you don’t know The Famous Five, think Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys.

That had been my initial spark. My noirish, spooky short story, and the adventures of The Famous Five. Everything about my Mean City world had grown out of that, and remembering this set me back on the right course: The setting is a large, unnamed US city in the late 1950s.

Journeys are sometimes odd adventures. You find yourself in the middle, not entirely sure of the destination, and you’ve forgotten where you started from… It could just be me.

Anyway, my book launch is at the Whangaparaoa Library. If you’re in Auckland, do come along.

      ©2025 Stephen Ross

Write what you don’t know. Just to clarify, I’ve never discovered a dead body. Although I once thought I had, and it was on a bike ride to a piano lesson—it was just a drunk guy lying in the weeds in a narrow alleyway between streets.

In my story, Thomas Phipps is a high school student in 1950s Henderson, New Zealand (my hometown). Henderson is a suburb in the western district of Auckland city. Thomas is taking piano lessons, but he doesn’t like them. My piano teacher twice asked me if I would prefer to switch to learning “modern”—I was learning classical. I was 12, and I didn’t appreciate the difference. Thomas Phipps, 16, is learning classical, but he really wants to play jazz.

Jazz was the thing in New Zealand in the 1950s. Contrary to popular misconception (the filter of nostalgia), 1950s Auckland wasn’t rock and roll, Presley, Haley, et al. Had you hung out in an Auckland city milk bar or coffee shop, you would have heard the cool people listening to jazz on the jukebox. Rock and roll didn’t land until well into the ’60s.

And naturally, anything young people like (be it jazz or rock and roll) is immediately hated by their parents. This counter-culture clash—for want of better words, this generation gap—is the central conflict in my story that runs underneath the mystery of the murder.

“Is this a YA story?”

This was asked by someone who read a draft before I submitted the story to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. You could make a case that “Murder in F-Sharp” is a Young Adult story—a teenage boy wants something that’s antithetical to his father and his piano teacher. But I didn’t write it with any intention to be YA fiction. And it’s not the first time I’ve been asked the question. Ten of my published short stories have featured protagonists in the 12–20 age range. Except for two (written for Mystery Writers of America YA anthologies) the rest were written for anyone to read—young or old. Honestly, aside from wanting to make a story readable and exciting, I don’t give much thought to the reader’s age.

Which brings me to my book.

After twenty years of writing short stories, I’m pleased to report that my first mystery novel, THE BRIDE MUST BE STOPPED! goes to print at the end of this year.

Thornton Thacker—a Philip Marlowe-esque teenage detective—his sister, and their two best friends follow a trail of Egyptian hieroglyphics and a missing mummy, and find themselves up against ancient supernatural forces, with Thacker’s girlfriend’s life at stake.

Set in the 1950s in the US, The Bride Must Be Stopped! is the first novel in my Mean City Mysteries series.

My pitch for the series was: Imagine if the Famous Five novels had been written by Raymond Chandler. (The Famous Five was a series of British adventure/mystery novels written in the 1940s and ’50s. Of comparison in the US would be the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mysteries.)

The protagonist of my book is a high school student, and again it’s not a YA story; I wrote it for anyone to enjoy—anyone who likes a mystery/thriller with a tall serving of noir. Also again, the protagonist is a musician. He plays upright bass in a jazz quartet. Hey, I’m a musician (piano and electric guitar). I write what I know.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Murder in F-Sharp
by Stephen Ross
Appears in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (September/October 2025)

      First published in Trace Evidence
      Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine blog (October 3, 2025)
      ©2025 Stephen Ross

What was the Edalji Affair?

It’s a complicated web of events. It begins in Great Wyrley.

Great Wyrley is a village in Staffordshire, in the West Midlands. It sits almost in the middle of England. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was infamous. In 1903, it was the location of what became known in the papers, and history, as the Great Wyrley Outrages – a series of brutal slashings of horses, cows, and sheep. A 27-year-old local solicitor, George Edalji, was convicted of one of the attacks (on a pony) and was sentenced to seven years' hard labour at His Majesty’s pleasure.

It gets more complicated.

George Edalji was the son of the local parson, and the parson’s household had, since 1888, been subject to an ongoing campaign of poison pen letters (many threatening, many vile), fake newspaper announcements, and many other harassments. Blame fell upon a member of the parson’s household staff, a maid. She was subsequently brought before the court, where she pleaded guilty – in exchange for being given probation (she couldn’t afford a defence lawyer, and she maintained her innocence until her death).

The police sergeant investigating, however, was convinced George Edalji had been responsible for the letters and other annoyances. Others at Scotland Yard shared this view. In short: The constabulary wanted to get Edalji.

It gets even more complicated.

Poison pen letters weren’t just sent to the vicarage, but to others, including the police. And the letters (self-purportedly) were written by a variety of authors, with one stating he was a member of the “Wyrley Gang,” the group responsible for the animal mutilations. This writer wrote that George Edalji was himself a Wyrley Gang member.

In short: Because of the existing, long-running suspicion of George Edalji (the poison pen letters), and some circumstantial evidence connecting him to the maiming of the pony, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of animal mutilation.

George’s mother began an earnest campaign to free her son from gaol. The premise of her argument was that no firm evidence had been presented, and that George’s innocence had been clouded in the court’s view by their belief he was responsible for the poison-pen letters, of which there was also no firm evidence. Her position saw over 10,000 people sign a petition and a flurry of discussion in the legal world.

In short: George Edalji was paroled three years into his sentence, and his case led to the establishment of the British Court of Appeal.

However, George Edalji was not granted a pardon.

And the poison-pen letters continued.

Enter, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

One of the key reasons the Great Wyrley Outrages are so famous is Doyle. Sir Arthur took an interest in the case. He met with George Edalji, investigated the events, and subsequently campaigned for George’s pardon. In Doyle’s opinion, George Edalji could not possibly have committed the attack on the pony. Doyle was also sceptical of handwriting experts who claimed George had written some of the letters. In Doyle’s eyes, George Edalji was an innocent man wrongly accused of all crimes. Given that Doyle was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and, in that first decade of the 20th century, was at the height of his celebrity, most people took Doyle’s word for it. Who are we to argue with a doctor, a knight, and the creator of one of literature’s greatest detectives?

Doyle was successful in his endeavour, to some extent – Edalji was pardoned, but he was not granted a full pardon (he was never acquitted, which Doyle wanted, and he was never compensated for his prison time).

What transpired at Great Wyrley took place more than a century ago. Looking back from today, the events appear as a great tangled cobweb that spans several decades. Many books have attempted to unravel it, including one by Doyle himself. Over the years, there have been films, television series, and countless journalistic investigations. Most favour Doyle’s conclusions. Who are we to argue with a doctor, a knight, and the creator of one of literature’s greatest detectives?

GET EDALJI reopens the case. It undertakes a fresh, up-to-date examination of the events, and it draws different conclusions from those of Doyle. It uncovers evidence that others who have written about the case have not. It untangles the web.

The research presented in this book is rich and detailed. It is a criminal case analysis worthy of Sherlock Holmes; it has his tenacity and attentiveness. The Edalji affair is a complex series of events, spanning many years, and involving dozens of people. GET EDALJI admirably presents these events and persons clearly and consistently. If you come to this story with no prior knowledge, you won’t get lost in a myriad of details.

Sherlock Holmes frequently solved his mysteries through the behaviour of man, by considering human psychology. This book does, too. Our understanding of the mind and its workings has evolved enormously since Doyle’s day. Things he was oblivious to in his time are readily observed and understood 120 years later. GET EDALJI sheds light on these. It is sensitive, equally, to the racial attitudes and prejudices prevalent in Victorian/Edwardian England. Edalji was of mixed race.

The ace in the research's hole are the many letters at the heart of the case – modern forensics has been applied to their texts. Dr Isabel Picornell, a leading authority in forensic linguistics, has made a detailed study of the letters, and her findings are presented in this book.

This is a delight of a book to hold and touch (see the photos). All books should come with such lavish presentation: supplements, hard-bound encasement. The pages too are populated with a variety of illustrations, photographs, and many newspaper clippings. There is attention to detail here. It’s immersive.

GET EDALJI was written by Rose H. Schmollek – a pseudonym for author Petra Weber. Petra chose the pseudonym (it’s also an anagram) as a nod to the many people – an international team – who helped her in the book’s research. Petra Weber is the author of 17 crime novels and short stories (written under a different pseudonym) and is the publisher of KrimiKiosk, a popular true crime podcast.

The book’s title, “GET EDALJI,” can be read three ways. (1) Literally, Get Edalji. As many in law enforcement at the time wanted to. (2) It’s the man’s name: George E.T. Edalji. (3) Get, i.e., understand, Edalji.

Clever.

I recommend you get GET EDALJI. Immerse yourself in the social fabric of England 120 years ago. You will find a mystery both intriguing and puzzling. It’s definitely a three-pipe problem, as Sherlock Holmes would say.

For more information about the book and how to obtain a copy:
     https://georgeedalji.com

      ©2025 Stephen Ross

My avoidance of this realm of crime fiction writing has been simple: I had no idea. Also, only a handful of my stories have featured a police detective in the protagonist seat. I've never yet written a police procedural.

I could have YouTubed these CSI things, I guess. I'm no stranger to the Tube and have spent quite some considerable time learning how to pack a pipe, hot-wire a car, become an RA (Royal Academician), and so on. Honestly, if you can think it, there's probably a YouTube video for it (and for many things you probably don't want to think of).

Write what you know is the mantra and T-shirt slogan of all writers. And if you don't know, then stay away from it. Which is a double-edged sword for us crime writers – we write about people murdering people, and I can report I have no practical experience in that sort of thing. Which reminds me of an excellent New Zealand novel that explores the premise. Paul Cleave's psychological thriller, Trust No One (2016 Niago Marsh Award winner for Best Crime Novel).

Anyway, I've finally gotten some hands-on experience in crime scene investigating. Really, really good experience.

I went on a training course in forensic science here in Auckland with a handful of work colleagues (I work in software). Team building, CSI edition. A four-hour immersive masterclass in crime scenes: fingerprints, shoe prints, blood splatter, trace evidence, and DNA. Our teacher was the real deal – an actual CSI professional, fully qualified, with 32 years' experience (Scotland Yard and New Zealand Police).

• Where we went: Forensic Insight Ltd.

We examined a simulated crime scene (a life-size mannequin/dummy for a dead body), replete with murder weapon, shattered skull, blood splatter, and a roomful of clues. We budding Poirots and Marples were kitted out in proper crime scene PPE: scene suit, gloves, and blue booties that slipped on over our shoes. Working in two teams, each team was provided with a hefty carry case full of field equipment needed for gathering evidence: fingerprint powder & brushes, lift tape & cards, tweezers, UV light, evidence pouches, scissors, swab sticks, distilled water, and so on.

We lifted and documented fingerprints from tins, cups, and a windowsill. We swabbed beer bottles for DNA and collected fibres and a shoe print left by the murderer. We even determined the murderer was left-handed, based upon fingerprints left on the weapon and from the tell-tale flicks of blood on the wall. At the end, we ran the fingerprints we had collected through a computer database to look for a match. And we got one. All our teams of two correctly identified the killer from a pool of about thirty suspects.

Needless to say, the afternoon was not for the faint of heart.

In addition to the hands-on experience, we also learned a lot about the history of forensics. Forensic, from the Latin forēnsis, meaning "of or before the forum." Back in ancient Rome, criminal cases would be decided based upon the evidence presented by the accused and the accuser. Whoever of the two presented the best argument and delivery would win.

We learned about Edmond Locard, the father of modern forensic science and criminology. He set up the first crime scene investigation laboratory in 1910 and pioneered many of the CSI methods still in use today. He also coined Locard's Exchange Theory, which is: Every contact leaves a trace. That's a handy theory to remember. Writer Trivia: Georges Simenon is known to have attended some of Locard's lectures, circa, 1919.

I'm not, nor will ever be, a hardcore forensics writer, but having a better understanding of the processes will certainly lead to its inclusion (in more depth) in my future stories.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (August 3, 2023)
      Text & Photos ©2023 Stephen Ross

Want to write a mystery, but don’t know how? Join me as I tell you about my set of guidelines and tips (19 of them) for mystery writing that can help get you started or add to your skillset if you’re already writing.

Join me as I explore the differences between mysteries and thrillers, and how some stories can be a combination of both (mystery thrillers). You’ll find mysteries and thrillers everywhere. In books, short stories, movies, TV shows, and more.

Story settings aside, drinking establishments are excellent places to tell a story. The social atmosphere, comfortable seats, warmth, and alcohol invites (nay, demands) storytelling. When the wine comes in, the wit comes out. I mean, if you're sitting there with a group of friends, you've got to do something while you're drinking. And pretty soon, someone will be off and running with a tale, tall or otherwise.

Our desire to gather with friends somewhere warm and convivial, and tell a story, is innate. And it predates drinking. Many thousands of years ago, our caveman ancestors sat around the fire on dark winter evenings. The whole clan. The extended family. They'd spent the day hunting and gathering, they'd eaten. They sat there sated and sleepy, nothing else to do – drawing pictures on the cave wall was so last era. Someone said, "You know, a funny thing happened to me today. There was this woolly mammoth…" And off he or she went, running with a tale, tall or otherwise.

The invention of alcohol meant there was now something to do while the stories were being told. And that swiftly led to the creation of places to do all of this in: pubs, inns, bars, taverns, and so on. The public living room.

I digress.

So, what's my story (Room of Ice) about? Well, no spoilers, it's about two things: Hammer Films and perception.

Hammer Film Productions is a British film production company that had its heyday from the mid-1950s to the 1970s. They specialised in horror films with a Gothic flavour (e.g., vampires, mummies, Frankenstein). Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were probably the studio's two biggest stars. According to Wikipedia, the studio made 295 films (between 1934-2019). In addition to horror, Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, noir, and comedies. I grew up watching Hammer Horrors (along with their American counterparts, the Vincent Price Edgar Allen Poe movies).

In my story, I imagine Hammer made a horror film in 1959 called Room of Ice.

My story is from the point of view of a middle-aged man – "Tim" – who, as a child, was an extra in that movie. Tim tracks down the movie's now elderly star, because he has, in later life, remembered something about the filming – something he saw. It isn't a spoiler to say that Tim is a blackmailer.

This is a story about perception. Something witnessed as a five-year-old, and then remembered at 45, with a now adult's perspective of the world (my story is set in 1999).

Room of Ice is about movies (I'm film mad, don't you know?). Making them, remembering them, worshipping them. And, as such, I made a trailer for the story to help promote it. And rather than do my usual, I made a "movie trailer" for an imagined re-release of the movie Room of Ice. You can watch the trailer here:

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (February 26, 2023)
      ©2023 Stephen Ross

I guess, because short stories have never been a focus here for Kiwi mystery writers. Books are where the money and prestige lie in most minds. Me vexat pede, the Ngaio Marsh Awards (New Zealand's version of the Edgar Awards) has no short story category. There's also the fact that only a couple of local magazines print short stories, and they are solely literary magazines – they have no interest in plot twists, suspense, or Professor Plum in the library with the crowbar.

New Zealand has a perfectly respectable history of short mystery fiction. Dame Ngaio Marsh had four short stories published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. And that paragon of New Zealand literature, Katherine Mansfield, graced the pages of EQMM (posthumously) in 1949.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, for the first time, there is now an anthology of New Zealand crime fiction. It was published in June this year (2022), and its title is Dark Deeds Down Under. It's actually two firsts because, as the title (Down Under) suggests, it's an anthology of New Zealand AND Australian mystery fiction. That's never happened before, either.

The anthology was the collective brainchild of Australian Lindy Cameron (mystery writer and publisher of Clan Destine Press), and New Zealander Craig Sisterson (founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, and author of Southern Cross Crime: The Pocket Essential Guide to the Crime Fiction, Film & TV of Australia and New Zealand).

Their plan was simple. Contact and invite leading mystery writers from both sides of the Tasman (the sea that separates New Zealand and Australia) to contribute a story. Fingers crossed; off they went. Bam. They got such an enthusiastic response that two more volumes are planned. Which tells you yes, mystery fiction is alive and kicking in this part of the world.

Many of the anthology's contributing authors have written a story featuring their book series characters: Kerry Greenwood’s Corinna Chapman, Garry Disher’s ‘Hirsch’, Vanda Symon’s Sam Shephard, Sulari Gentill’s Rowly Sinclair, RWR McDonald’s ‘Nancys’, Lee Murray & Dan Rabarts’ Penny Yee & Matiu, Katherine Kovacic’s Alex Clayton, Dinuka McKenzie’s Kate Miles, and a rare appearance from Shane Maloney’s Murray Whelan. The rest have written standalones, and I believe all the stories are brand new.

Here's the marketing blurb for the book (to give you a taste of what's inside):

Dark Deeds Down Under, a ground-breaking anthology, brings together internationally-renowned Aussie and Kiwi crime writers and their beloved characters.

This stunning anthology includes 19 short stories from some of the brightest storytelling talents from Australia and New Zealand: including international bestsellers and award winners.

Through the prism of page-turning crime, mystery and thriller stories you will roam from the dusty Outback to South Island glaciers, from ocean-carved coastlines and craggy mountains to sultry rainforests and Middle Earth valleys, and via sleepy villages to the underbellies of our cosmopolitan cities.

In these all-new stories you’ll spend time with favourite series cops, sleuths and accidental heroes, and meet some new and edgy standalone characters.

The anthology's perpetrators of dark deeds are:

Alan Carter, Nikki Crutchley, Aoife Clifford, Garry Disher, Helen Vivienne Fletcher, Lisa Fuller, Sulari Gentil, Kerry Greenwood, Narrelle M Harris, Katherine Kovacic, Shane Maloney, RWR McDonald, Dinuka McKenzie, Lee Murray & Dan Rabarts, Renée, Stephen Ross, Fiona Sussman, Vanda Symon, and David Whish-Wilson.

I'm pleased to report that I have a story in the book. Mine is called "Mr. Pig" (excerpt below). It's a tale set in the rugged countryside north of Auckland in 1942. It's about a young girl, Mercy Brown. Her mother has gone missing, and her beast of a father is "grumpy." I had the ghost of Flannery O'Conner sitting on my shoulder when I wrote this one. I think Shirley Jackson breathed a few words in my ear, too.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (October 2, 2022)
      ©2022 Stephen Ross

From a young age, I was hooked on movies and movie music.

When I was in my teens, my record collection was 90% original soundtrack albums, and most weekends, I’d take a train into the city and catch a movie. I even made movies – short silent films shot on Super 8-millimeter film stock – roping in my school friends to act. For a long time, I wanted to be a movie director. When I started writing scripts for my short films (because sound, and thus dialog, had become an option), I got hooked on writing. My first two scripts were crime thrillers.

Above: Excerpt from the movie The Splash (1980)

Before I’d left high school, writing and music had established themselves as my life’s twin interests.

Cut to: Many years later.

I’ve written over thirty short stories in the last decade and a half. A handful of the characters I’ve written about have been musicians of some stripe or another, most often piano players. About five years ago, I thought about writing about a film composer. That was the first step in writing Moonlight in Our Eyes.

I once considered entering the field of film composition myself. I was signed briefly in the late 1980s to Chappell/Warner Bros. as a songwriter. I have soundtrack credits for a handful of short films, a TV documentary, and live theatre.

I once scored a theatre production of Ira Levin’s Veronica’s Room. The director said, “Let’s score this three-act play with incidental music. Let’s blur the boundaries between live theatre and cinema.” I’m pleased to report the experiment was a success.

So, I had a character, “David Camden,” and I’d given him some shading. He’s an elderly film composer in Hollywood in the early 1960s. An old school film composer approaching the end of his days.

But a character in a setting is not a plot.

I decided to make David Camden an Englishman for a bit of character conflict; an alien living in an alien world (not that I used that detail much in the final story). And I added a song. I liked the idea that he had written music for countless films, but it was one song from an early picture that had stuck in the public’s mind. And he would be grumpy about that. I imagined that the song “Moonlight in Our Eyes,” written by him for a film in the 1950s, had entered the pantheon as a “standard.” The type of song everyone would have a go at, from Dean Martin to Herb Albert, Tiny Tim, and the Everly Brothers. The song’s title, naturally, would be the story’s title.

Bits of information were slowly assembling around the nucleus (the main character), but critical mass (a plot) still hadn’t been arrived at.

And then my mother fell to dementia.

Her fall lasted three years. She passed away about a month before COVID-19 became the thing that changed all our lives. I won’t dwell on her passing, except to say I learned an awful lot about dementia in that time, and I would not wish that illness on anyone.

My mother asked me after I had sold my second short story, where do you get your ideas? I can’t remember my answer. My answer with “Moonlight” would have been “from her.”

It occurred to me one afternoon: What if David Camden had dementia? Memory loss is a primary symptom of dementia, and what if “a brother” turned up on his doorstep to visit, and Camden didn’t remember ever having a brother?

That simple conflict was the key conceit to the story. It led quickly to a plot, and I wrote the first draft in about two weeks.

And then I sat on that draft for three months.

Was it right to use the pain and suffering I’d witnessed as a plot device?

Write what you know, they say, but should you?

My mother would have said, “Use it.” She was not faint of heart. And I reminded myself that “Moonlight” was not about her in any shape or form. “Moonlight” is not a study of dementia; the illness is simply one thread in the story’s fabric. It’s a crime mystery written to entertain: A Hollywood film composer near the end of his life is confronted with his secret past in London.

To say any more than that would be a spoiler.

Above: Story “Trailor” for Moonlight in Our Eyes. (I made the video and wrote & performed the music.)

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Moonlight in Our Eyes
by Stephen Ross
Appears in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (May/June 2022)

      First published in Trace Evidence
      Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine blog (April 7, 2022)
      Text & Photo & Video ©2022 Stephen Ross

The point is: public gatherings here (sans masks and distancing) are fine, and lately there’s been a bunch of them in libraries around the country, where panels of mystery authors have talked about their books and the craft of writing in front of an audience.

I moderated one recently at the Takapuna Library on Auckland's North Shore.

The Mystery in the Library events began at the Takapuna library in back in 2015. Conceived by Craig Sisterson (more on him in a moment). The format is your basic author panel: a handful of authors, and a moderator to guide a low-key, coffee shop type of conversation about the craft of crime and mystery writing, with an audience eavesdropping on the chat. Book signing afterward. Refreshments provided.

Each year since 2015, more and more libraries around the country have hosted MITL evenings, with this year (April, May, June) seeing more than a dozen scheduled. So many, in fact, that each event has now gotten its own subtitle. Ours was BLOOD BY THE BEACH. Because the Takapuna library is right next to Takapuna Beach.

At our event, we chatted about what makes a mystery compelling, tools of the trade, do you plot or pants, advice for aspiring writers, and so on (with digressions into writing as meditation and how do you 'write what you know' when the know is murder?). I was blessed with four authors who were happy and eager to chat, and a captive audience of about 100 who had lots of questions. We all had a pleasant evening. I've said it before, I'll say it again: Mystery writers (and readers) are the nicest of people.

The authors on the panel, in alphabetical order:

SL Beaumont is the bestselling author of eight books, all of which are set in her native England. Shadow of a Doubt won the 2020 Indie Reader Discovery Award for Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, and her latest, Death Count, has been long listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel.

Madeleine Eskedahl's recently released debut novel, Blood on Vines, is already a bestseller and is set in the wine growing region of Matakana (about 30 minutes north of Auckland).

Ben Sanders is the bestselling author of eight books (three have been short listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel). His first three were set in Auckland and the following five in the US; American Blood was optioned by Warner Bros. His latest book is The Devils You Know.

Patricia Snelling has written nine books, all set here in New Zealand, and her latest, Last Ferry to Gulf Harbour, has been long listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel.

A decade ago (time flies), I wrote an article for Criminal Brief about New Zealand's crime/mystery writing scene, and I had to really scratch around to find any local authors to mention. Now there are lots. The scene is growing. We don't have an MWA type of organization here yet, but the roots for one are in place. The Auckland Crime Writers group (a private group on Facebook) has 60+ active members. We hang out, real time, in coffee shops or on Zoom meetings. The local scene is growing and lively; we even have our own local label for it: Yeah, Noir (a play on the Kiwi slang expression, "yeah, nah").

About Craig Sisterson. Craig is New Zealand mystery writing’s Wizard of OZ; he’s the man behind the curtain. He’s the leading reviewer, blogger, interviewer, and authority in the field. His book, Southern Cross Crime, is the definitive guidebook to NZ and Australian crime fiction. As I mentioned, Craig set up the very first MITL (and every following years' events, including all of this year's). Craig was also the principal instigator and administrator of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, which is New Zealand's highest (and only) award for mystery writing (sadly, gripe, no category for short stories).

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (August 13, 2021)
      ©2021 Stephen Ross

“It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

It hasn’t really been a lesson, as such, it’s been more of a realization that remote working really works, adaption as necessity, and then acceptance of this.

The recent abrupt move from office to home, for most, has been fairly effortless, and well-lubricated by the fact that most software/IT workers were already working remotely. The “work” of an open plan full of developers sitting side-by-side at desks, fingers to their keyboards, eyes to their monitors takes place, for want of better, in a connected cyberspace (it’s not like they’re all in the same room building a physical thing together). That shared space can be accessed from literally anywhere. They were only in the same room because that’s long been the default way to set up an office/business. In this time of Corona, the impersonal open plan has smoothly transformed into a network of separate personal rooms, and the work happily continues.

And we shouldn’t forget that this has only been a successful transformation due to the level of technology we have today, and of which most of us now possess at home. Had this pandemic struck back in 2000, the transformation would not have been smooth. Remember dial-up?

We have the technology, and we are seizing the day. In fact, the technology we have today facilitates an inter-connectivity that could only have been dreamed of 20 years ago. Morning stand-ups, SCRUMs, 1:1s, group meetings, even full staff town halls continue seamlessly thanks to MS Teams, Zoom, and alike, shared screens and all.

One of the few things current technology doesn’t allow for are those informal, casual “meetings” that take place every day in a real-world office: The after meeting; the off-the-cuff, but relevant, conversations that sometimes take place directly after a meeting has concluded. The chats over coffee in the lunchroom. The passing in the hallway: “Hi, Jane. Oh, by the way…” It’s a layer of office social inter-connectivity that software doesn’t yet truly facilitate. Attention technology, there ISN’T an app for that!

I won’t list all the pros and cons of working from home, aside from the salient ones. Pros: Better work-life balance, flexibility, zero commute time (which saves time and money (and the environment)). Cons: Distractions. If the worker has a lack of a good work space, and/or equipment. It’s been my experience that working from home is almost all pro. Other people’s mileage may vary, but I’ve heard few complaints.

Trust

The one thing about working from home that seldom gets mentioned in any article of this type, but is perhaps one of its most important aspects is honesty and accountability: Your boss can’t see if you’re sitting at your desk and doing your job. Back in the late 1990s, I took a position at a publishing company as a writer/researcher/editor. I was allowed to work from home. On my first day, my boss said to me, words to this effect: It’s all about trust.

Yes. You have to have that honesty and accountability.

A prediction of the future…

I’m a technical writer for a software company, I’m not a futurist or a soothsayer, but I’ve worked in offices long enough to see the changes and subtle shifts in dynamics, the evolution of the work space, so I’ll make an educated stab at what the future might bring.

I see the software/IT office becoming a central hub. A cost-effective meeting space (as opposed to the large, expensive-to-rent acreages for desks we currently have). There will be offices for senior management, and even they won’t be present Monday-Friday. There will be meeting rooms for when real-world, face-to-face meetings are needed, e.g., really important, or highly confidential meetings, job interviews, training, etc. There will be a server room: Everyone (at home) will log into their own virtual desktop within the company servers. And there will be a small lunch room with a coffee machine.

This prediction is based on the technology we now have and world we now live in. The Corona virus is still with us, for who knows how long, and who knows what’s coming after that. And because things change. The “office” we knew three months ago is nothing like the offices of 20, 30, 40 years ago. The offices of Lloyd’s of London had its origin (17th Century) as a coffee house.

Things change

Consider this. Before I went to university, straight out of high school, I had a couple of years working in a bank. There were 30 people working in that bank branch, about the size of a small apartment, and there was only ONE computer. The guy sitting next to me smoked at his desk and addressed women staff by their bra cup-size (I imagine he’s now living out his days grazing in some Jurassic park retirement village). Everyday, a herd of people would come and go from that office: to get cash, bank cash and checks, get a bank balance, pick up a new check book, and so on. It was a busy place to work.

Today, about 5 people work in that bank branch; each one has a computer on his/her desk and they perform most of their day-to-day tasks on it. They lead quiet lives. Next to nobody uses a check book anymore, more people use cards than cash, those who prefer cash get it from an ATM, and most people use their phone to do their banking. In ten years time, there will most likely be only one person working in that office (and it’ll probably be a robot).

     First published: Medium (June 5, 2020)
     ©2020 Stephen Ross

"I arrived home. I parked the car. I went inside and made my way to my office. As I climbed the stairs, I could hear voices. I could hear Oscar, and I could hear Ruby. Oscar was telling Ruby his Ernest Rutherford joke. When he got to the punch line, she cackled with laughter." 
     From The Trouble with QWERTY 
     by Stephen Ross
     COSMOS Magazine, Aug/Sep 2010

The story was science fiction. It was a flight of (humorous) fantasy.

Consider this: The technology we have today wasn't around yesterday. My cheap cell phone (bought in January) has significantly more processing power and memory than my first Windows computer (bought in 1995); and that computer, a quarter of century ago, had more computing power and memory on board than the spaceship Neil Armstrong landed on the moon (a quarter of a century before that).

Technology creeps. Yeah, like rust, it doesn't sleep.

My computer today doesn't talk to me. But I can talk to it. Using voice recognition, everything I say can be transcribed (almost perfectly) into text, and directly into an MS Word document. It's so easy and workable that I sometimes "write" first drafts of my stories this way.

Amazingly, scientists (in a study funded by Facebook) have already started taking steps to remove the "voice" part-of-speech recognition, transcribing directly from your brain waves.

Article at The Guardian: Neuroscientists decode brain speech signals into written text

They're working on this for the benefit of people who are paralyzed; remember the elaborate process by which Prof. Stephen Hawking communicated. It's an excellent field of study and development. And you just know (and this is not a negative) that once the software/equipment is up and running, market forces will see that it's available for everyone. One day, probably sooner than we'd imagine, we'll be able to "think" our stories into our computers.

But what really worries me is, will there come a day when my computer doesn't need me to think for it, and it can write a story all by itself?

Technology creeps.

Yes, Virginia, there will come a day.

What do we writers do? We make stuff up. Well, there's an app for that. Actually, it's some pretty hardcore AI programming, but it can... actually... "make stuff up." I believe you can even download the code and try it out for yourself.

OpenAI.com: Better Language Models and Their Implications

(Also) Article at The Guardian: New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators

OpenAI.com is a non-profit research organ (funded by Elon Musk and others), and it has an AI text generator called GPT2. When fed text, anything from a few words to a whole page, it can write the next few sentences based on its predictions of what should follow. And this output text is coherent, fluid and natural. To most readers, it could have plausibly been written by a fellow human.

The OpenAI's software uses an input sample of content, e.g., 40 GB of internet text, and uses that dataset as a model to generate output. To quote The Guardian article:

"Feed it the opening line of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” and the system recognises the vaguely futuristic tone and the novelistic style, and continues with: “I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science.”

The internet is an awfully large, easily accessible dataset. So, imagine what might be possible if the program had more than 40 GB to play with? And frankly, 40 GB is nothing. My car radio has more memory. And it won't take long before the "opening sample" dataset isn't needed. I'm a Technical Writer by profession, but even I can write the code to randomly generate data, be it numbers or words. And how do we humans start a brand-new story? With random ideas.

One of the key tasks the writer has when making up a story is bringing order to randomness. Writing fiction is a long, long series of decisions, mostly YES/NO decisions. They might start out a little more complex, but they will always eventually come down to the binary: Do I end the chapter here? Does she have dark hair? Does he know she cheated on him? Does she drink red wine? Does he drink white wine?

It's 1s and 0s.

Could a machine/computer/robot/software/app one day write a short story, or a book, that passes muster with an editor (i.e., it's good) and it gets published? Yeah, I know, there's a wide gulf between spitting out a paragraph or two of passable content, to undertaking the complexity of a 6,000-word short story or an 80,000-word novel. But then, consider how much crap out there actually does get accepted and published.

Remember, it was a breathing, walking, talking human being who wrote, "It was a dark and stormy night."

There is right now an argument taking place about whether AI can or should be recognized as the "creator" of something. From a BBC article:

"Unlike some machine-learning systems, Dabus has not been trained to solve particular problems. Instead, it seeks to devise and develop new ideas - "what is traditionally considered the mental part of the inventive act", according to creator Stephen Thaler."

Article at the BBC: AI system 'should be recognised as inventor'

So, why not? AI is simply a bunch of programming. In many respects, so are we. We write what we know. We write from our 'personal' datasets.

Welcome to our brave new world. And for the record, I really did write this article; I didn't outsource it to my toaster.

Bonus Trivia: "It was a dark and stormy night" is the start of the opening sentence of Lord Lytton's book Paul Clifford (published 1830). This is the only book that Raymond Chandler is known to have checked out of the library at Dulwich College, when he was a student there.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (August 10, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross

A Study in Scarlet

An animated telling of a Sherlock Holmes tale? For kids? Seriously? I selected the program and let it play, the cynic in me chortling, this will be good for a laugh. I went in with zero expectations: in fact, less than zero expectations. I expected Dr. Watson to be played by Scooby Doo.

The opening shot is a moonlit set of rooftops – a dark and stormy night in Victorian London. A police constable is on the street, patrolling with a lamp. He winds up on the Brixton Road. He's joined by another bobby. There's a light on in an empty house. They enter. In a dilapidated drawing room, there's a dead body of an elderly gentleman on the floor.

Two and a half minutes in, and I'm thinking, this ain't too bad. The animation will not win any awards, but the storytelling seems to be faithful to the source, and it has mood and atmosphere.

The opening credits started, and I was about to turn the thing off, when the following credit appeared: "With Peter O'Toole as Sherlock Holmes." That got my undivided attention. Naturally, I let the program keep playing. I could happily listen to Peter O'Toole recite the Periodic Table (have I mentioned that My Favorite Year is one of my favourite movies?). I had no idea he had ever played Holmes.

For the next 50 minutes, I was away (once again, happily) in Conan Doyle land. The program did indeed prove to be a reasonably faithful telling of the story, Watson was not played by an exuberant Great Dane, and nothing in the story's telling was "watered down" or "rendered appropriate" for children – my biggest fear while watching.

And it's funny, when you think about it: an adult tale of murder, forced marriage (i.e., rape), revenge, and justice filed away for children's viewing pleasure alongside the likes of Anne of Green Gables, the Cat in the Hat, and SpongeBob. I presume this was because it was animated.

There persists the quaint notion that if something is animated, it must be for kids. That all animations are simply "cartoons" and should be dropped into the "Kids and family TV" box. I gleefully await the addition of Fritz the Cat to the children’s archive. Had the same script of A Study in Scarlet been filmed as a live-action drama, then it would have gone straight into the adult drama box. No questions asked.

But I'm glad it did wind up in front of kids. They seem to get so much rubbish in their TV diet. Let them find this quiet little doorway into the world of grown-up mystery fiction.

Peter O'Toole did four Holmes animated stories. They were all made in 1983; they're all 50 minutes long (except for Baskerville, 70 minutes), and they're all on Amazon Prime (here in NZ, at least).

• A Study in Scarlet

• The Baskerville Curse

• The Sign of Four

• Valley of Fear

I've watched all of them. And as I said, there's nothing overtly special about the animation. The specialness of the telling lies in the stories themselves, and in this instance, the actor playing Sherlock Holmes. If it's a wet Saturday morning, and you're unwell, I can recommend this medication.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (July 13, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross

I have only ever seen ONE episode of GOT (see, I know the fan acronym) and that was six years ago, but through sheer force of osmosis of the press and social media, I know more about that TV show (who's in it, plot lines, plot twists, plot holes, spoilers, surprises, murders, deaths, trivia, controversy, and Starbucks' coffee cups) than I know about I Love Lucy, which I did watch.

Will I ever watch GOT? I have no idea. I might, I've come late to a lot of TV things. Breaking Bad, for example, which I binge-watched over the course of a couple of months a year ago, long after everyone else had seen it. The Wire is another example, and I think it's an excellent show, but I've so far only binged the first season; I'm due to watch the second in 2030. The Wire is now so old it's not even in wide-screen – it's in that old boxy TV 4x3 format. And then there's a bunch of recent shows I want to watch, but haven't even made the effort, like The Knick, Peaky Blinders, The Alienist.

And then there are movies, and a couple by Orson Welles flicks I've never seen.

I like Welles' movies and have watched many more than once – Citizen Kane maybe thirty times (I was a nerdy, film-crazy kid). I think Touch of Evil (1958) is his best. I recently rewatched it when I discovered Netflix had the HD version, and I still came to the same conclusion the next day about why it's not one of the greatest movies ever made: Charlton Heston – one of the least convincing actors in history (in my opinion). Wood. Grade-A certification. Heston's impersonation of a Mexican man in Touch of Evil is about as good as my impersonation of a New York bagel.

Oh, why couldn't they have cast someone like Ramón Novarro, or Ricardo Montalbán to play the Mexican drug enforcement agent, you know, a real actor (and Mexican)? Oh, yeah. Charlton Heston, that's right. He was the primary reason the picture got made, and the only reason Orson Welles did the writing, directing, and took the lead role. The studio really didn't want Welles anywhere near the thing. Heston probably laid down one of his you'll have to pry this movie out of my cold dead hands speeches to the studio bosses; such is the clout of a Grade-A certified movie star. I'll give Heston this, he believed in Welles, and Welles gave him his best picture (Welles' best picture, that is).

One Welles' movies I've never seen is Chimes at Midnight (1965). I've seen several clips, I know it draws upon two Shakespeare plays, I've heard it has one of best medieval battle scenes ever put to film, and Welles thought of it as his best film.

And that's all I know. Why haven't I seen it? Well, chance would be a fine thing. It's simply has never come my way. Citizen Kane was always rerunning on TV when I was a kid. Same too with TOE, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Stranger, Journey into Fear, Lady from Shanghai, and so on. I suppose I could simply buy it.

Another of Welles' movies I have never seen is The Other Side of the Wind. I've known about this one for years. And I've never seen it, because (until recently) almost no one had, because Welles never finished it; he died in 1985. I can now watch this one, and I plan to soon, as it's on Netflix. Somebody finished it; and I believe one of those people was Peter Bogdanovich – who knows a thing or two about movies, was a friend of Welles, and, also, was in the movie. So, there is some authenticity in the completion. I firmly expect the movie will be a strange experiment in filmmaking / mess. But it'll be great to see John Huston, one of my other favourite directors, playing a role in it. Huston was no slouch as an actor – hell, even he would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent.

I've seen almost all of John Huston's films (and a couple I wish I hadn't: The List of Adrian Messenger). And one, The Man Who Would be King, I really wished he'd made earlier, as he had planned, because then it would have starred Humphrey Bogart, and not Sean Connery (another piece of lumber in the acting yard). Yes, I know it was Kipling and the characters were British Empire, but even Bogart would have made for a convincing Mexican drug enforcement agent. And sergeant in her majesty's army.

I'll shut up now. Forgive my loose ramble. It's the weather. Winter is coming and I have a head cold.

Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich in a brief scene from Touch of Evil that probably sums up noir in every way. Filmmaking, acting, writing. It don't get much better than this.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (May 11, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross

   "Do you go for Father Brown mysteries?" 
   "Yeah, love him."

Sometimes, they're kind of odd:

   "Are you feeling okay?" 
   "Yes, I am. Thanks!"
   "That's wonderful!" 
   And then, I'm not kidding, the guy sends me about 30 photos of himself hiking in forests with his friends.

Huh?

Last week, I got a “Hi” from a girl. Her photo was blurry.

    I said hello. 
   Blurry girl asked me, "How are you?" 
   I asked her if I knew her. Had we met at a recent writing event? 
   She didn't answer; instead, she asked me if I really was a writer, like my Facebook page said. She asked: "Is that really a thing?" 
   I replied that being a writer really was a thing. I asked her how she had found my page.
   She didn't answer. She asked several more random questions (with increasing randomness), writing in perfect English, with perfect punctuation (writers notice these things). Do I like where I live? How tall am I? 
   I asked her if she randomly picked me to talk to. I added a smiley face. 
   Blurry girl got defensive. She said I was hurting her feelings, and she was starting to feel uneasy; she asked if that was my intention.
   My face, staring at the monitor, was the raised left-eyebrow version of WTF?

It then occurred to me... Was I right there, right then, taking a Turing Test?

Years ago, for amusement, I made a website. You could ask it a question, and it would give you an answer. It was a rudimentary chunk of logic programmed (in Perl), picking up on words entered and matching them to "answers" in a database of responses:

   Q "How are you today?" 
   A "Today is another day, much like yesterday."

Garbage in. Garbage out.

I replied to blurry girl by entering a line of random gibberish, then a message in German about how I love jam donuts (Ich liebe Berliner!), and then a string of my best expletives in English, German, and Spanish. And a smiley face. She ignored all of it, forgot about feeling hurt and uneasy, and asked me if I preferred red wine to white.

Yeah, baby. I got your number. And it's ones and zeros.

I checked out her Facebook profile. She had been on Facebook for three weeks. She had fifteen friends. All guys. Her posts consisted entirely of reposts of articles about wrestling and gridiron. Fake? Almost certainly. Robot? Almost absolutely.

I blocked her.

And right after blocking her, I remembered that she hadn't been the first. I had had several odd encounters of a similar stripe in the past: random, odd conversations that came out of nowhere, went nowhere, where I wasn't being contacted because I was a writer, or because I knew the person, I was being contacted because I was simply someone who would type in a reply and engage in conversation.

I disconnected my Facebook page's messaging facility.

The internet is a weird place, and lately it seems, a laboratory for A.I. testing. To quote John Lennon, Nothing is real (and nothing to get hung about).

The internet is also a very angry place. This post was originally going to be about negativity on the internet, but I got side-tracked by the robot. And then, negativity isn't a fun thing to write about. The point of this article was going to be about how I have a new story coming out this month, and how it took a cue from all the negativity that exists on the internet.

In short, to quote William Carlos Williams, There are a lot of bastards out there. One of the internet's greatest virtues is the connectivity it provides: We all have access to the electronic playground. We can all come out and play together, regardless of our physical location. However, that same connectivity also provides a certain type of person, shrouded in near anonymity, with a medium to open the sewer of their souls to freely pour out their bile.

Last year I wrote a Lovecraftian tale about how someone taps the negativity of the internet and uses it as a power source. The story is called The Tall Ones, and it appears in a new anthology titled The Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods. I read a lot of Lovecraft when I was a kid; I was delighted to be asked to write a story for the book.

      Photo of girl generated at: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com
      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (April 13, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross

Anyway, I was a child, it was a winter's night, and my parents decided on a night out: Dinner in the city, and then a few blocks walk in the rain to one of the many cinemas that used to line Queen Street; the main street in Auckland City, NZ (think Regent Street, or Broadway).

Finney played Hercule Poirot; Agatha Christie's master Belgian detective (a character who appeared in 33 of her novels, 50 short stories, and one play). Poirot is her most famous character, and Murder on the Orient Express (1934) is her most famous book.

I was hooked. The movie, Poirot & Christie, was my gateway drug into classic mystery fiction, i.e., proper adult crime mysteries, and away from the watered-down child readers I had been privy to until that point. You know what I mean: Jimmy and Johnny and their dog, go in search of a missing pocket watch, or plate of muffins. No, nice and juicy murders were now on my immediate horizon. And I hoovered up all the mysteries on my parents’ bookshelf: Christie, Earle Stanley Gardner, Ngaio Marsh, and many others.

Two years later (1976), Death on the Nile came to the movie theatres. Poirot was back on the screen, and I took a train into the city to go catch a Saturday matinee. Poirot this time was played by Peter Ustinov, who couldn't have been more different in his portrayal of the character to that of Albert Finney than a buffalo impersonating a bicycle.

Actors interpret their roles and bring their own uniqueness to them, which is fine, and it's the way it should be. But, as much as I like Peter Ustinov's movies, I always feel he was mostly interpreting himself.

Fast forward to the 1990s, and a third Poirot entered my frame; the small frame this time. Every Tuesday night at 8:30, David Suchet appeared on the TV in the role of Hercule Poirot. By sheer weight of volume (the Poirot TV series ran from 1989 until 2013, and adapted almost all the short stories and novels), Suchet became the definitive Poirot in my mind, and those of many others. It helped also that he's a superb actor. Meticulous in his method.

Actors interpret, and they can research.

Many have argued that, of all the actors who've taken on the role, Suchet's interpretation of Poirot is the closest to what's on the page in the books: the appearance, the mannerisms, the attention to detail. Having read a large chunk of the books for myself, I agree.

Part of the Poirot TV series included a feature-length adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express (2010). I thought it was excellent; as good as the 1974 adaptation. I think the murder scene was better staged, too. It had a greater bite. It felt vicious.

I've not seen the 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express starring (and directed by) Sir Kenneth Branagh. I was put off by the mustache. Poirot is fussy, persnickety, refined, and monumentally anal. His mustache should reflect that. Branagh's choice of mustache makes him look ridiculous, like a Colonel Blimp or pantomime villain. Seriously, the only thing an actor could do with that mustache is twirl the ends of it and cackle.

Actor interpretation. Yeah. Whatever.

I hear Branagh is next going to tackle Death on the Nile (which is probably Christie's second most famous book). I'll pass. David Suchet did a version of that in 2004, and it worked fine for me.

Finney, Ustinov, Suchet, and Branagh are not the only actors to have portrayed Hercule Poirot on film, TV, or in audio adaptations. Wikipedia lists 24 other actors (everyone from Tony Randall to Charles Laughton to Orson Welles), the latest being John Malkovich, who appears in the 2018 three-part ABC Murders (one of my favorite Christie books). Malkovich sports not just a mustache, but a full gray circle beard. And a bald head. I've not seen the miniseries, but the trailer is intriguing, and Malkovich's take on a Belgian accent is interesting. I will definitely watch this one.

I can report that the Wikipedia list is missing a name: Hugh Fraser. Yes, the actor who played Poirot's sidekick Arthur Hastings in the long-running TV series. He has recorded audiobook versions of many of the Poirot novels, in which he voices both himself, well, Hastings... and Poirot. And since I've wandered down a trail of trivia, I can also report that Fraser has lately become a writer of mystery novels. I hear he's good.

Hercule Poirot has been portrayed by Englishmen, Irishmen, Americans, a Russian, a Puerto Rican, and two men from Japan (and even his sidekick Hastings). I'm not aware that he has ever, in fact, been played by an actor from Belgium. Funny that.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (March 9, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross

And with that said, people read what I write and believe every word.

Bless them. Note: Believe is a fluid term.

I’m no exception. Every writer of FICTION is granted this privilege. And it’s a privilege we work with carefully, because if we stretch our fiction too much, too far, or too absurdly, it’ll break. The reader will snort with derision and hurl our writing across the room at the wall; or worse, into the publishing house’s rejection receptacle.

When people pick up a work of fiction, 99% of them will read and accept it, happily allowing for its inherent falseness; and as long as the writer plays more or less by the rules (of whatever field, genre he/she is writing in), everything will be fine.

But, of course, there is that 1% of folk who will pick up a book and actually believe the whole thing is a true story, i.e., not made up.

My percentages are also fiction, but based on a reasonable assumption. People really do send death threats to actors who play nasty villains on TV and in movies. And to pluck an excellent example from history; people really did cry when (PLOT SPOILER!) Little Nell died at the end of Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. In fact, it’s been said that readers in New York stormed the docks (in 1841) when the ship arrived bearing the last instalment, shouting to the sailors, “Is Little Nell alive?”

Alive?

“Little Nell” perhaps better demonstrates the power of a good story, rather than complete acceptance of a work of fiction in blind faith. But, you know, there really are people out there who totally, utterly, unquestioningly, believe there’s a school in Scotland called Hogwarts. Right now, I have at least one friend who’s saying, What the hell are you talking about, Stephen?!? You know who you are.

Liking a good story is why we happily suspend our disbelief. We are consciously aware it’s made up, but we allow for that. In fact, the more we like a story, the greater our ability to suspend disbelief, regardless of how ludicrous the story might be.

Liking a good story is part of human nature. We’ve been liking a good story since man could talk and could string enough sentences together to say something interesting. And let’s face it, there wasn’t much else to do of an evening in prehistoric times, when sitting around the fire, after having swallowed the last mouthful of woolly mammoth. There was nowhere to plug in the TV, to start with, and the wi-fi was lousy.

There is something innate in the human mind that can easily latch onto, like, and believe in a decent set of characters and a reasonable plot. Were there not, then books, plays, movies, and so on, would not be a thing. We’d still be sitting around the fire. Counting the stars.

Speaking as a writer, there’s something nice about being able to send made-up ideas into the heads of other people. To make them see things that don’t exist. To make them feel. And to keep doing that, possibly forever, or until the stars burn out. Think about it, every time someone picks up one of Dickens’ books, the ideas of a man who’s been dead for nearly 150 years come through clearly into the reader’s head. Natürliche, you need to be someone as good as Dickens to achieve that kind of longevity.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing, talked about this. From memory, I think he referred to it as a form of telepathy – transmitting ideas from the writer’s mind into that of the reader’s, with, sometimes, years apart between the writing and the reading.

Nice.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (February 9, 2019)
      ©2019 Stephen Ross
      Photo: Jametlene Reskp

The double portrait below (a diptych painted on vellum) caught my eye the first time I visited the NPG. It's a Tudor-era work; the costuming and the date of 1554 (it's inscribed on it) are the big giveaway. But the most immediate thing about the work is its size; it's only 100 mm tall (4 inches). It's one of the smallest oil paintings in the gallery (depending on your monitor/phone screen configuration, you may even be viewing it larger than it really is).

It's an odd painting; very simple, very small, and somewhat engaging. This is not a double portrait of two kings, two dukes, or even two wealthy merchants; the plainness of their attire, and the minimalism of the work speaks to that. But there is a discernible sense of dignity about these two gentlemen.

The man on the left holds an artist's palette; the man on the right, a lute. This says:

This is how we wish to be known: Art and Music.

Above each of the men, finely inscribed, are lines of text. Above the artist are two lines of Latin. Above the musician are two lines of English. Unless you are fluent in Latin, you immediately head to the English…

Strangwish, thus strangely depicted is One prisoner, for thother, hath done this
Gerlin, hath garnisht, for his delight This woorck whiche you se, before youre sight.

The key takeaways in this humorous, punning slice of ye olde English are the words "prisoner" and "garnisht." The latter is Tudor-era slang for "giving something to your prison warden to obtain the conveniences of life." So, to paraphrase the inscription: The man with the lute is Strangwish (Henry Strangways). He is a prisoner, and this "which you see before you" was done to buy a little comfort for his life.

The Latin inscription is of a different mood.

Such was the face of Gerlach Flicke when he was a painter in the City of London. This he himself painted from a looking-glass for his dear friends. That they might have something by which to remember him after his death.

Sombre, huh?

The man with the artist's palette is Gerlach Flicke, a German portrait painter known for his work in the Tudor court at London. It's a self-portrait, and to paraphrase his inscription: He thought he was going to die.

Flicke and Strangways were prisoners in the Tower of London. Friends and companions, or simply comrades in captivity? We will probably never know. Strangways was a "gentleman" pirate (it was a narrow channel between pirate and privateer). History never recorded why Flicke was jailed. Maybe the Queen (Mary (Bloody)) didn't like something he said when he painted her portrait?

Could Strangways play the lute? History didn't record that either, but as a pirate, he probably enjoyed a bit of wine, women, and song. But history did record that he wanted to steal an island from Philip II of Spain; yes, an island. I like this man.

Flicke is noted, but never became notable as an artist. He is, sadly, more of a footnote. This painting is his most famous piece. It's good, but really, it's well known more because it's recognized as the first ever self-portrait painted in oils in England.

And knowing the conditions it was painted explains its starkness. I've never visited the Tower of London, and I doubt I ever will. I know way too much about the abject horrors that took place within its walls, and there are frankly better things to visit when in London.

This is how we wish to be remembered: This is all we have left.

I am reminded of Henry Purcell's When I am laid in earth, and its haunting lyric:

             Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Neither man died in the Tower; Strangwish was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth I.   
   Gerlach Flicke 1495-1558
   Henry Strangwish (Strangways) ?-1562 

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (November 23, 2018)
      ©2018 Stephen Ross

Anyways.

It was evening. It was raining. I had finished another chapter of the WIP, but rather than start on the third draft of the next one, I remembered something I had learned during the week in my day job: how to create a Google map and populate it with custom location pins. So, armed with a mug of chocolate tea and a plate of late-evening chocolate cookies (chocolate is always the best kind of procrastination), I set about making a map of the world identifying the locations where my published short stories have been set.

I created an icon/pin for each of the three categories I write in, assigned each story a category, and stuck in a pin where each was set; adding notation of when and where it was published.

It was an educational experience. I had this idea in my head that I had set only a few stories in New Zealand, maybe two or three. Wrong. There were in fact six.

I also had this idea that most of my stories were set in the United States. Wrong. Most of my stories are set in Europe, and even if the United Kingdom continues with its insanity and brexits away from continental Europe, the UK alone will still have the same number of stories set in it as the US.

Another interesting thing I learned was that only two of my stories are set in fictional towns. Most of my stories are set in real, named places, typically cities, e.g., Los Angeles, London, Frankfurt. Bad Memory even drills down and mentions a whole cobweb of real street names and locations (it's set in West Auckland, New Zealand, where I grew up).

Some stories have no named setting, but it's reasonably clear and implied. The Man from the Future is set in the English countryside, near a river and near the coast, and the voice of the narrator (it's first person) is Snotty British. It's never said on the page, but in my head the story was set in Devon.

What's interesting about the two fictional places I made up is that both were horror stories (with a young narrator). The youthful narrator of Feed the Birds departs Paddington train station bound for Abercrumble House in the Hertley Forest. There is no Hertley Forest in the northwest of England. Or anywhere in the UK. The teenage boy in The Tall Ones finds himself swept up in a Lovecraftian nightmare in the small town of Redgrave on the shore of Lake Michigan. Yup. No Redgrave at Lake Michigan (unless you're thinking of Michael Redgrave in the movie Thunder Rock).

Probably my favourite location of all for a story, and in real life, is Metz. It's a small town in the northeast of France. I've holidayed there a few times. It features two rivers, interesting architecture, a fantastic museum, coffee, 3000+ years of history (a woman in a bookstore told me the town was the birthplace of Gregorian Chant), and there's a dragon in the cathedral's basement.

I set Monsieur Alice is Absent (Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, 2010) in Metz. This has always been one of my favourite stories (a story dear to my heart, as they say) and now is a good time to mention it's being reprinted in the Terror at the Crossroads anthology edited by Jackie Sherbow and Emily Hockaday at Dell Magazines. It comes out later this month. I can't wait!

My map of stories, of course, is rather sparse. I don't have that many published stories compared to my fellow Sleuthsayers. I can imagine a similar map made by any one of them would be a carpet of icons. And by delightful coincidence, the day after I started making a map and writing this blog post, John posted an article about settings: A Whole Town--Imagine That. In which, he asked: As a writer, what works for you? Do you usually create your own town/city names, or do you install your characters in real-life locations? So, John, take this as my answer :)

So, what next? Oh, yeah, back to the next chapter in the third draft of the WIP. :P

Or maybe another T-shirt design.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (October 19, 2018)
      ©2018 Stephen Ross

I'm too old to play in a sandpit anymore with my toy cars, toy gorilla, and action man. And if I did, people would think it odd; at best, eccentric. Some might even alert the authorities. However, as a grownup, I can let my mind wander freely, letting my stories and characters flow (action man, gorilla, et al.). And so long as I do it on paper, no one will bat an eyelid. My joy of writing is creation; the joy of making things up. For me, a blank page of paper is like the sandpit of my childhood.

I wrote the above, more or less, in about three minutes today (Saturday, May 12). I wrote it from scratch. It was a short writing exercise answering the question: What is your joy of writing?

I belong to a writing group. A bunch of us meet once a month at the local library, and we do things such as talk about writing, discuss competitions, hear from guest writers (today we had a comprehensive tutorial on social media for authors), and occasionally we undertake short, on-the-spot writing exercises, as above.

The group is delightfully informal (behind the scenes, it is a fully incorporated society). I'm not sure how many people belong, maybe upwards of 40-50, as attendance for some is delightfully casual. There’s a fairly wide range of ages among members, and a fairly wide range of writing experience: published, self-published, not-yet-published. Everyone in the room is a writer. Everyone has a WIP: a book, short story, play, poem, or piece of journalism.

I believe I am the only mystery writer in the group. But I’m not the only former teacher. It seems almost every second member of the group is, or has been, a schoolteacher… Apropos of nothing.

I came late to joining a writing group. I've been writing all my life, but I only went along and joined one two years ago. The gateway drug was a post I chanced upon on Facebook about a guest speaker (Frances Housden) who would be giving a crime/mystery fiction workshop. Visitors welcome.

• It was local.

• I took in a cappuccino.

• I liked the atmosphere.

• I've kept going back.

I’ve said it often: Writers are the friendliest people you’ll meet (and I'll add that mystery writers are the friendliest of the friendly).

The writing of fiction is a solitary pursuit and an unsociable practice – it is the very definition of unsociable. And even if you’re sitting in a crowded café, slamming out chapter 27 of your usurper to the Harry Potter franchise, you’re probably wearing headphones and ignoring everyone except for the waiter bringing more coffee.

Writing is on the list of unsociable occupations along with IRS employee, jail warden, lone astronaut stranded on a hostile planet, and ascetic cave hermit. So, once a month, it's nice to go along and meet up with others who also do the writing thing, and to talk shop.

Sidebar: I bow to those rare literary pluralists who can truly write in tandem with another person.

I work days in an office (tech writer at a software company). If I started randomly talking to my colleagues about first person omniscient, writer's block, word count, page formatting, current submissions, or who was nominated for or won a Derringer Award this year (claps and cheers for Elizabeth, Brendan, Rob, and John), their eyes would glaze over.

I suppose it's a little therapeutic in that respect. A writing group is like an AA meeting. “Hi, my name is Stephen. I'm a writer. I haven’t written a paragraph since 9 A.M. this morning.”

Sleuthsayers.org is an online version of a writer's group, with the advantage that it's open 24/7, and we can all be anywhere at all: Florida, Seattle, Canada, down here at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or at the Stork Club (Thelma?).

The bottom line is: belonging to a writer group, be it at the local library, or in cyberspace, is a chance to learn stuff (big or small); to plug into the collective mind and soak up new and interesting things. To hang out with fellow travellers.

Did I mention competitions? My writing group has a bunch of them, and one of them this year is a trophy-prized, short-story comp: "Crime and Mystery." I've not yet entered any of the group's competitions, but I plan to (pardon the obligatory pun) give that one a decent stab.

      First published: Sleuthsayers.org (July 6, 2018)
      ©2018 Stephen Ross
      Photo: Becky Carr