Numb de Gruyere

I have a weakness for cheesy names.

The best ones come from real life. Growing up I met a guy named Dick Fitzhugh. Recently I heard about Nita Love. Of course, I’ve lived more than sixty years as Dick Fancy. With a name like that, it’s too bad I’m not gay.

I invented a gay character named Guy Pearce for the book I just finished, Grand Designs (haven’t sold it yet). Turns out, there’s an Australian actor by that name, too. No word if he’s gay, too.

One of my principal characters is Lucy Firenze. Firenze is the Italian name for the city of Florence. When she first meets Frank Healy, she explains that the name was de Firenze when her grandfather arrived at Ellis Island. The Immigration people changed it to Firenze because it didn’t make any difference (Ba-da-boom!).

A peripheral character that shows up periodically is the Macomb County Medical Examiner, Todd Metzger. In German, todt means dead and a Metzger is a butcher: Todd Metzger is a butcher of the dead. If I get a smile from even one reader (did you smile?), I’ve succeeded.

In the book I’m working on now, Frank visits a bar where transvestites perform. Remember that scene in Miss Congeniality 2? One of them is Jean Hardlow. Another is Linda Ronstakd. Think about it, but not too long.

My bad guys need good names, too. In Safety Margin, the executive who’s recruiting all the Vietnam vets as crash test dummies is named Gunner Winchester. He’s an ex-Green Beret colonel whose staff is very regimented. Winchester manufactured firearms for over a hundred years. Enough said.

Detroit is fertile ground for picking up names. Many of the major streets are named after important and sometimes unimportant people from the city’s early history. It didn’t take too much effort to put together a law firm that sounded like directions to the Detroit Institute of Arts. Don Chene, of Woodward Farnsworth Brush and Chene, was a natural.

Stueben Beaubien is another character whose name appears on city roadmaps. The Stueben part comes from a Revolutionary War hero. As you might expect, his family was instrumental founding Univers Industries and he has a leg up on Frank in office politics because of his connections. Isn’t that typical? Well, yes it is, but I won’t get into that.

This quality of the city has been especially valuable, because I want my story to be steeped in history. If the families have been around for generations, their memories and grudges can be equally steeped in history. In my world, the car business is a blood sport.

When blood is drawn, gangsters can’t be too far off stage. Between the Purple Gang and more recent mobsters, I could have had my pick, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially if they’re still packing. Instead, I chose to conjure sufficiently thuggish, Italian sounding names. Bruno Giancarlo was among the usual suspects, but as far as I know, no such person was ever a Detroit crime figure. His son, Sonny, lives on, but he’s reformed. He provides security for Lucy, but wouldn’t hurt anyone unless provoked.

Dr. Suzanne Düsseldorf is a more benign, ongoing character. In the second book, she runs a drug rehab clinic on Cass in Detroit. She darts into the story periodically to offer medical advice, but avoids trouble. The name obviously derives from the German city. I’ve known several -dorfs over the years, but never a Düsseldorf. She is a perpetually harried character with too little body fat and too-wild curly hair.

Buck Rogers is my personal favorite. The origins of the name are obvious. People do get stuck with nicknames like that through no fault of their own. What makes Buck stand out is his violation of stereotypes. While Buck is a large, muscular black man, he is also a highly educated union organizer and an avowed Marxist. He and Frank get along because Frank’s blue collar roots are showing. They enjoy trading Marxist quotes while fighting against the company’s callous anti-union war.

Cute names may not add anything to the story, but they make for more enjoyable reading. In my experience, real people have equally funny names that make sly reference to their identities. Life is full of irony. Why can’t fiction be, too?

Close Hoarse

Frank Healy is a clothes horse, or would like to be. According to the story line, he developed an eye for fabrics and brands while working in the men’s department at Filene’s (Boston plug!). Being working-class Irish, he couldn’t afford to shop there, but proximity drove his lust for fine attire. He knows sharkskin and worsted wool. He knows nubby silk and Harris Tweed. He knows polyester double-knit and acrylic. He knows Brooks Brothers, Savile Row and Milanese. He knows Haute Couture and JCPenney.

When he falls for beautiful, wealthy Lucy Firenze, he goes to the Salvation Army store to buy a suit before meeting her family. He doesn’t own one, and can’t afford to buy a new one.

What a bunch of crap! All you can buy at the Sal are other people’s cast-offs, more suited for rags.

Not true. I have purchased several nice suits there. I once bought a handmade suit at the Sal that gave me many years of service. I have a Hart Schaffner & Marx suit in my closet. I bought it for ten dollars. It had never been worn. The basting still held the pockets tightly shut. I was ragged mercilessly at my sister’s wedding when I let this fact slip, but I still got a five hundred dollar suit for ten dollars.

Frank’s eye for style extends to women’s clothes as well.

Why would a guy even pay attention to that? Shouldn’t he be home drinking Budweiser, watching the Lions lose?

Frank is almost a car stylist. He has an artistic temperament, but, like a minor league ball player, he just missed the cut. Frank is also somewhat uncertain about his sexuality. I know it’s a stereotype, but gays do seem to be disproportionately represented in the arts.

For the stories to work, Frank needs to be keenly observant, someone who misses very little. Why shouldn’t he infer things about people from the way they dress and act? He wouldn’t be a very good detective if he passed through life in a purple haze of pot smoke.

In a fictional world populated by artists and wealthy auto executives, clothing decisions would be very important to other people, too. The landscape ought to be “target rich,” to use the current military jargon. If other people are dressing for success, or at least to be noticed, a keen observer couldn’t help but notice.

That’s only fair.

But is all this necessary in crime fiction? Other authors are satisfied to say, “The gangster wore an expensive, nicely-tailored suit.” Sure, okay for them, but my characters live in a different world where clothes really do make the man and the woman.

Even in the real world, clothing makes an important statement. When I see a girl dressed in a too-tight T-shirt with her pierced navel showing, I can’t help but think “trailer trash,” even if she’s carrying a Gucci bag and wearing Seven For all Mankind jeans. At the Somerset Collection. She might be Paris Hilton, but that’s not who I see.

People dress to get noticed. To be sure, they want to be noticed by their target audience, whether steroid soaked body builders, drag queens or stockbrokers.

We’d better notice, or we may get smacked upside the head with a Kelly bag.

6 End Violins

Explicit sex and gratuitous violence seem to be the order of the day in genre fiction.

I once read a debut Romance by the wife of an acquaintance. She had won a contest and the prize was a publishing contract. The book was cut from the then-popular science fiction romance category. It featured humanoid characters with prehensile … Well, never mind. Books like that must have heaving loins and throbbing bosoms on every other page or they won’t sell. A gynecology textbook has less detail.

I’ve been reading more than more than my share of thrillers lately. Steve Berry, David Baldacci and Tom Clancy have all crossed my lap. The Clancy book was ghostwritten. Badly, but that not my point.

In all these books, the body count climbs dramatically with each chapter. People are shot, poisoned, burned with Greek fire (whatever that is) or blown up over the ocean. Necks snap regularly. I suppose the plot point was that the evildoers were heartless and cruel, and deserved whatever fate was to befall them in the final chapter.

Unfortunately, the putative good guys were in competition to match them, corpse for corpse, and they didn’t seem to show any more remorse than the heartless evildoers.

This bothers me because I don’t believe the moral order is restored because the winning score is a higher body count. I want to know how justice is served beyond foiling the ultimate destructive act.

Feel free to attack me after reading my books. My higher ground isn’t much more than a mole hill. My principal character, Frank Healy, metes justice from the same bloody chalice. He feels compelled to do so, driven by his inner demons, but he feels badly about his crimes. Does that make him a better person? Probably not, but I think it makes for a better story.

I have trouble writing prolonged scenes of graphic violence. This may be because I don’t have what it takes to write thrillers. I’m not really trying. I think I can come up with sufficiently novel forms of death, but I can’t dwell on them for ten pages. Or a hundred.

Of course, that might be because I feel squeamish describing glistening intestines trailing across the floor. Or maybe I don’t think it adds anything to the story. I suspect most violence is abrupt, over in seconds. The razor-sharp, slowly falling pendulum has a place in suspense, but in crime fiction? I don’t think so. Kill him. Get it over with. You can all vomit at your leisure afterward.

Graphic sex falls into the same bed. True, the average male reader must derive guilty pleasure from a languid description of voluptuous female anatomy. Based on my limited exposure to romance, maybe women enjoy reading about well-formed men, too.

Are all women shaped like that? No. Do all men have abs of steel? Not bloody likely. All cutting and pasting those salacious details does is increase the page count. If it isn’t three hundred pages, it must be a novella, right?

While word pictures of the act may titillate (I love that word), when the old movies faded to black, everyone knew what was going on in the darkness between the scenes.

One aspect of crime fiction, especially noir, is the prolonged agony of unfulfilled desire. The hero is often in a relationship with someone forever just out of reach. How many impediments can you put into a romantic relationship? Quite a few, apparently. I’ve been keeping my lovers apart through four books. Oh, they had a brief fling in book three (haven’t sold that one yet), but even that creates more problems. Will they ever settle down and get married? I don’t know. How dramatic could that be?

Another fact of modern life is that people have become more androgynous. Women dress more like men. Men are supposed to be sensitive and do almost half the housework. Everyone is pierced up the wazoo. How can a manly man prove his masculinity if he can’t club a defenseless deer with a stick? Homosexuality has come out of the closet and wants everyone else to wonder if maybe they aren’t gay, too. Ain’t that a kick in the pants? Fictional real men have a lot to answer for these days.

I expect my hero to get into scrapes. Characters have to die, or I would be evicted from the crime writer’s guild, but that doesn’t mean Frank will be happy about killing the perpetrator. Angst is healthy. He can try to be good and not kill anybody for ten chapters, but justice is always there, peeking over his shoulder, pointing out wickedness, demanding retribution.

What’s a crime fighter to do?

The Tale’s Details

To me, vivid writing is the hallmark of great fiction.

Since I spend most of my time reading mysteries and thrillers, I don’t see very much great fiction. Nevada Barr is superb, but surrounded as she is by National Parks, how can she not be? Patricia Cornwell packs in plenty of detail, much of it gruesome, but what I like best is her mastery of emotions. I like Sharon McCrumb, too.

When I read a finely turned phrase, I get all gooey inside. I want to read more. I want to savor each rich morsel.

I suppose there are several schools of thought on this. On the one hand, critics (and editors, allegedly) frown on purple prose, with its rich alliteration. Doesn’t writing that scans like poetry soothe the savage, beastly reader? It’s certainly easier to read than endless blocks of Faulknerian text. My friend John says you have to work to appreciate art. I don't believe that. Art just grabs you.

Aside from that, writing that captures the beauty of a moment – the sky, the water, the smells, the emotions – brings the reader with them on a journey. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?

I have been justly criticized for getting lost in description. “What does this do to carry the story along?” they ask. Nothing. I cut ten pages from the first chapters of Red Crush, and I should probably cut ten more. I agree. Irrelevant details about irrelevant events add nothing to the storytelling.

Then again, spartan prose pared down to the minimum risks losing the reader’s interest. See Dick. See Dick run. Run Dick, run. We got past that in second grade. Even Dr. Seuss spiced up his narrative with green eggs.

In good writing, details tell a story of their own, a story that the author doesn’t have to spell out as if the reader doesn’t get it. We can interpret emotions from facial contortions. We can infer social class from the way a person is dressed. It two women are dressed similarly, but one is in wool and the other is in acrylic, we can see both the status difference and the inference that one is probably copying the other.

In the best writing, moods weigh in on us from the clouds and rain, from the relentless optimism of a bright, sunny day. Where did Noir get its name? The settings are dark. The stories are dark. We start looking over our own shoulders because the atmosphere on the page is infectious. Perhaps we get carried away with pretentious symbolism, but sometimes symbols work at a subliminal level.

It was worth a try, anyway.

Another dimension of good writing is the author’s ability to transport us to new places. Thrillers often take us to exotic locales, feeding us with word pictures and place details we will never see for ourselves. Everyone who’s been to Vladivostok raise their hand. Everyone who wants to go can fill out the sign-up sheet at the back of the room. The train for Siberia leaves in an hour.

Some places remain exotic, even while they’re close at hand. The CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia is off limits to most of us. The GM Design Center is equally out of bounds for the same reason. Secrecy. GM doesn’t want anyone at Ford to know what their 2013 cars will look like, and the CIA doesn’t want the Russians to know their secrets, either. If you were allowed in there, you might spill the beans under the influence of sodium pentothal.

Their paranoia tantalizes us with forbidden fruit. We want what we can’t have.

While the mysterious cave where autos are born might be intriguing to many of us, the factory that makes Charmin is probably not. We are emotionally invested in cars because they express a piece of who we are, or who we wish we were. 

“How could someone possibly embody me in their creation?” The question returns us to Kandinsky. Art expresses the emotional state of the artist, but also resonates with the viewer.

If we see ourselves in a car or truck, it’s because there’s a bit of who we want to be embedded in the design. We see it. Other people see it and think some of the thoughts we hope for, with us as the lead character. We are intrigued that that can occur, and would like to see a glimmer of how it happens.

The sights, sounds, smells and souls at work in car design create an atmosphere unlike anything the rest of us will encounter anyplace else. It really is exotic, much more than any office building, even one populated by spies.

That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway. Go on, take a peek. It’ll only cost you four bucks.

Thyme and Tide Weight 4 Know Man

Time is a precious commodity in fiction, but it is also elastic.

 Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum exists in a moment. She is forever just old enough to know better and by the end of each story everything is back as it was in the beginning.

Nevada Barr has placed Anna Pigeon in the indefinite now. She ages, her life goes on as it does in the real world, but readers have very few clues about when exactly “now” is. Only her most recent book, Burn, set in Post-Katrina New Orleans binds us tightly to historical events.

Dirk Pitt, who labors gloriously for Clive Cussler, ages next to the fount of eternal youth. He has an adult son, but he can still hold his breath for a hundred pages in an underground river. Superman could take lessons from him.

Let’s not waste time.

In my humble opinion (IMHO, NOT!), the worst time offense is what movie people call a “jump cut.” I’m reading along and suddenly the characters fall through a time warp ten years into the past, or even the future. No segue, just boom! from one paragraph to the next.

But that’s just me.

I have such a linear time-sense that my entire series occurs in sequence over fifty years. Book 1, Chapter 1, July 1967. Book 10, final chapter, 2011. Frank Healy sees his entire life flash before him, but he has to wait it out.

Does that sound boring? Since the stories are written from a strict first person point of view, neither Frank nor the reader can know anything unless he sees it or someone tells him. That can be very restricting, but then in real life, we never know what’s coming at us until it happens.

Placing the story in a definite period has benefits. I want to include the social, political and historical issues into the story, to influence the flow of events as they would have for people living through them.

Race was a very big deal in Detroit in 1967. Suspicion abounded. People reacted badly to insignificant encounters. My writer friends criticize me for using “colored,” “negro” and “nigger early in Red Crush, but part of the story is about Franks rising racial conscience. Only at the end, after he achieves a level of solidarity with his black friends, does he speak of them with politically correct, respectful speech. Before that, he simply doesn’t know better.

In the early seventies, when shattered Vietnam veterans were returning to insults, drugs were a big problem. In the car business, safety was a looming specter no one knew how to deal with. The Charismatics were a rising force in Christian circles. Those are the building blocks of a story I set in that time.

Later in that decade, feminism, energy conservation and the Iran hostage crisis dominated our collective thinking. In the auto industry, companies felt so uncertain about the future, they seriously considered reinventing their businesses, and radically revamped their product lines. Panic was the rule. In the law, rape began to lose its stigma. Rape victims weren’t always regarded as “loose women.” Sometimes they still are, but rapists no longer have an automatic “Get out of Jail Free” card. There’s a story there.

Each decade has its own share of problems and solutions. By mingling them together, I can evoke a time and place that readers can relive, perhaps for the first time.

Okay, I didn’t have enough thyme and the tide is against me, but I think I used all the other ingredients.

I 8 They’re

For those of you who need subtitles: “I ate there.”

I am neither text addicted, nor grammatically challenged. I don’t mind if your lips move while you translate into American Standard English.

While as a writer I am very fond of my fantastic locale, as a reader I appreciate the anchors in a story that keep me grounded. When most of the action takes place in a place that doesn’t exist, those anchors bring us back to more familiar ground.

Detroit and southeast Michigan are fertile ground for dropping anchors, although I need to be careful that the anchors I drop existed in the time and place I want to evoke. Case in point: Lelli’s.

For Michiganders (the rest of you do know that’s what we’re called) under thirty, Lelli’s is a place in the back of an upscale industrial park near Auburn Hills. That place is a shadow of its former self. Once upon a time, for a very long time, Lelli’s was a fixture in the New Center area on Woodward near the old GM building. The place was a rabbit warren of pillars and dark corners, with celebrity photos on the walls. When I ate there in the early eighties, the parking lot was a chain link prison yard paved with luxury cards. Even then, the restaurant had outlived its neighborhood.

I only ate there a few times, but those memories still burn brightly: a porterhouse steak that would’ve satisfied a grizzly. Sauce on the pasta that might’ve been made from tomato soup.

Lelli’s, like Mario’s on Cass, the Dakota Inn and the Roostertail, were Detroit landmarks. Some of them still are. Anyone who knew the city could find them blindfolded. There are other familiar landmarks like the Cass corridor, Mother Waddle’s Perpetual Mission and Wayne State University. The ruins of the Packard plant. The Woodbridge Tavern. The DIA. When I need to evoke the city, I call up my memories of those places and I am back in that time and place.

Other long-time Detroit people share those memories. If I can put the images on paper, then my readers are there with me. I hope the images are vivid enough that people from other places and times can come along for the ride and not get lost.

Rochester, Michigan holds memories for far fewer people. When I first moved there, the local tribe was mostly with GM. After the Chrysler complex was built in Auburn Hills, the crowd became for diverse. As the car business has declined the dominant culture has faded but the village at its core has not changed all that much. Some of the touchstones like Green’s Artist Supply remain, but not all. The Cooper’s Arms is now the Rochester Chop House. The D&C dime store is now Rojo (Andiamo’s if you don’t have a scorecard). Mitzelfeld’s is gone. The old library is a yoga studio. The old post office is … what day is it?

Does anyone remember that tiny Oak gas station along the railroad tracks? Does anyone remember the tracks? At least the park is still there.

As a writer, the changes form a time capsule if I can keep my chronology straight.

It’s a long way from Paris, notionally north of Eight Mile in Macomb County to Rochester. An eastsider will want to stop for gas and pack a lunch. I can usually invent an excuse to drag Frank Healy out of his comfort zone if the wilds of north Oakland County are needed to remind readers that they’re still in Michigan.

I can live entirely in my imagination, but readers can’t go there unless I invite them. I may occasionally need to lure them into a familiar place while I spring my traps.