Diary of a Mad Editor

One of the last great literary heavyweights of the last century, died the other day, of natural causes. J. D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive literary legend who hadn’t published anything since 1965 and had rarely been seen since the 70’s passed away at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire at the ripe old age of 91. Although, Salinger had published a few stories in the 1940’s and had struck-up a friendship with Ernest Hemingway while serving in the Second World War, it wasn’t until the publication of his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, that Salinger earned his place in American literature.

Salinger began writing short stories while in high school, and published a number of stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker. After the publication of Catcher, Salinger became at once a popular, influential and controversial writer. Since it’s publication, the famous novel has sold around 65 million copies, averaging 250000 copies per year. Salinger followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Although many film producers pursued the possibility of translating Catcher in the Rye for the big screen, Salinger refused to allow it due to an early bad experience with a screen adaptation of one of his short stories. Salinger was also famous for pursuing legal action to block unauthorized adaptations and derivative works base on his writing.

I don’t usually write book reviews on this blog ( there’s plenty of book blogs out there who do it better than I could — plus, I don’t enjoy writing reviews), but I was asked by Patricia Rockwell, a blogger friend, for feedback on her first effort, a cozy mystery entitled, Sounds of Murder forthcoming from Patricia’s publishing startup Cozy Cat Press. The novel is set on a fictional college campus. I should preface my remarks about this book by saying that, although I read my share of cozy mysteries as an adolescent, I pretty much consider cozy mysteries to be mainly for the walker and arthritis pain treatment set. A bit too tame and toothless as crime fiction goes. As an adult I tend to prefer more adult, hardboiled crime fiction so this novel is a bit too PG for my literary tastes.

That being said, this book is easy to read, fairly well-paced. The plot and story execution meet the requirements of the genre with the level of character development on par with what you’d expect of any cozy mystery in that the characters are functional more than they are substantial. I thought Patricia got the internal politics of the academic culture just about right.  It’s publishable and, as first novels go, I’ve certainly read a lot worse.  With some modest revision, I could certainly see this book as a midlist title for a publisher like St. Martin’s Press or the like.

Those are the pros, now the cons:

Without giving away any major spoilers, I will say that figuring out whodunit is not that difficult and the motive for the murder is pretty weak (even the amateur sleuth’s own husband acknowledges this long before the actual motive is revealed which is both ironic and a bit groan-worthy once the motive is revealed). I felt a little bit cheated. I had hoped there would’ve been a little more to it. I also found the Scooby Doo manner in which the killer was unveiled to be a cliché of the first magnitude bordering on insulting. One expects that cozy mysteries will follow a particular formula. One expects a certain amount of absurdity and implausibility in the plotting of cozy mysteries, but the only reason the victim died in the manner in which she did, in the particular location where she was killed was so the protagonist could bear witness to the body and find the one flimsy little clue that would link the killer to the crime (evidence that would never hold-up in court which is why you have to get the killer to confess).

It was a little too much of a set-up. Yet, as set-up as it is, there are plot holes I can ram my fist through. Consider the crime: woman is strangled in a psych research lab while using a lab computer. The killer wears gloves suggesting a premeditated crime. But the woman is strangled  in an exposed area where almost anyone could have caught the killer in the act and leaving  little opportunity to properly clean-up the crime scene — suggesting either a crime of opportunity or a crime of passion that was very unplanned. 

Fictional killers nowadays have to be more sinister, manipulative and much smarter than the killer in this tale is and the detective has to work a little harder to solve the crime(and, by extension, so should the reader). At no time during the progress of this story did the author ever make me doubt the identity of the killer. The killer makes no effort to even hide the fact that the murder is a deliberate assassination. Not to mention there was a struggle, which means there’s the very real possibility that there was other forensic evidence left behind that could’ve linked the killer to the crime long before Pamela Barnes sussed-out the rather miraculous clue that ultimately solved the case (recall the student murdered at Yale last year and how her killer got caught). And that’s the problem with having a cozy mystery with a contemporary setting — too much progress has been made in forensics since Christie and Simenon were writing these kinds of stories. Progress that many readers probably won’t be able to ignore entirely. But DNA evidence plays no role in this novel so it isn’t even acknowledged really save for a vague reference to other evidence in passing. Also, at the point in the story Pamela has her epiphany about the victim’s computer, the lab  should have still been a closed crime scene — she shouldn’t have been able to walk right into the lab and access the computer. It even occurred to me that the police would’ve removed the computer the victim had been using and may have had that same epiphany before Pamela provided they had the resources to have a forensic computer geek working for them. It might have seemed more plausible to me if, instead of Pamela discovering the incriminating evidence on her own, for the police to have uncovered the sound recording of the murder and, given that Barnes had been eliminated as a suspect and that she was both a material witness of sorts (having been one of the first people to find the body) and an expert on acoustics, have the detective approach her with the evidence and ask for her input. At least that way, she has a plausible reason to be actively involved in the investigation and she’s not necessarily such an eager participant having been dragged into it despite herself. 

Secondly, I’m not sure I can see building a novel series on the Pamela Barnes character as she currently exists in this draft of the novel. Her biggest flaw is that she really doesn’t have any major flaws or quirks or anything that makes her particularly memorable or interesting. Aside from a very minor conflict with her daughter which is completely irrelevant to the story and its resolution, her relationships are conflict-free. She’s not the most popular professor on campus, but none of her students dislike her. For the most part,  she’s a stereotypical career academic. Well-read and well-educated, of somewhat above-average intelligence (but no Sherlock Holmes).   There’s nothing about her that screams, "I solve murders." By her own admission she has no experience with dead bodies or crime. She’s a devoted wife, mother and teacher, but she didn’t strike me as someone who had been an especially curious or observant person prior to the murder (In fact, it was the police detective, Schoop, who suggested that the victim was a deliberate target and not just some random victim — Pamela was initially dismissive of the notion, not the thought process of a nature-born sleuth). Seeing as how the discovery of the body evidently upset her (being as how all of the other characters were constantly sensitive to the fact) there was no good reason why she’d want to be within fifty miles of that murder investigation. She and the victim weren’t friends — they worked together, but Pamela wasn’t going to miss the victim anymore than her colleagues even though she doesn’t appear to overtly resent or envy her late co-worker. She isn’t a suspect. She has no motivation to get involved. So why is she the one person who could solve the case? I’m not suggesting that the author give her a drug habit or a secret lover or anything so dramatic, but maybe give her some small wrinkle that makes her seem less perfect or more intriguing, that either contrasts or complements her sleuthing abilities in some way. Does she like playing Sudoku or solving logic puzzles? Maybe make her an impatient driver with a hundred unpaid traffic tickets or give her a strange hobby or a penchant for telling corny jokes. Perhaps she could even have some hidden agenda so that the murder and its resolution would benefit her own career in some way. I don’t know, but anything that would make her a little more extraordinary and help a reader remember this character five minutes after reading the novel, and perhaps explain her need to insinuate herself into a murder investigation to begin with. 

Lastly, it’ll be difficult to find new, exciting ways of introducing acoustics into the plots of subsequent novels.  There are only so many ways to do it plausibly. The author can’t count on having her heroine overhearing arguments, conveniently finding dead bodies and having recordings of murders each and every time.  I would also recommend expanding future stories beyond the walls of Grace University.  College campuses exist in college towns and there are lots of people who live in those towns. More material, therefore, to explore and develop so that the series doesn’t become self-parody.

A few days ago, I was chatting with someone about my NanoWriMo novel and somewhere along the way, the conversation turned towards Dan Brown and what a awful writer I think he is.

"Your just jealous," this person said.

"Jealous? Why would I be jealous of Dan Brown?"

"Because he’s a famous writer."

Well, I thought about this for a bit because whenever strangers or near-strangers make these apparently keen observations about me, I always give it due consideration. So I first asked myself how I came to such a low opinion of Dan Brown in the first place. I remember: I read The Da Vinci Code. Jesus, man! I don’t hate Dan Brown, I hate his writing. I don’t want to drive his car or sleep with his wife — I just don’t ever want to suffer through anymore of his books. Second, I asked myself if I even wanted to be a famous writer like Dan Brown, because to accept that I’m jealous of Dan Brown, I’d have to be someone who coveted fame. But, here’s a little scoop: I’ve never really wanted to be a famous writer. I’d like to be a good writer. I’d certainly like to make a living from my writing (and by "living" I don’t necessarily mean a million dollars). Truth is, I couldn’t handle fame. In real life, I’m kind of shy and more than a little anti-social. Were I to attain fame on par with a Dan Brown, Stephen King of J.K. Rowling, I’d be pulling a J.D. Salinger for sure.

Sure, being famous is why everyone participates in NanoWriMo — because they want to be the next whoever. I’d like to believe that’s not true. I’m sure even Dan Brown didn’t want or expect the level of fame he’s achieved. What writer really, truly does? We just want to write. Should I live to be old and feeble enough to require the use of a cane and walk in tubs, I just want to look back on my life as a writer and see a body of work that I’m not too ashamed of. And isn’t that what we should all want from our writing?