Things that Scream in the Dark

It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

Spooky Spice ...er... Brenda here.

I have always loved Halloween and all that goes with it. Jack 'o lanterns, trick or treating, ghosts and goblins. But don't ask me to watch a horror movie or read a horror book. These are not some of my favourite things.

I write about murder and yet, I do not read true crime or watch shows like Criminal Minds. It's not the actual murder that interests me, more the puzzle and the people involved in a crisis. The psychology. What drives a person to kill somebody else, and how do they live with what they've done? What is the impact on those left behind? How do the detectives figure out whodunit? 

Amp these plot lines up a few notches to the horror level. Chain saws. Clowns. Screaming. Deranged people. Running and more running. Hiding. Blood. Lots of blood. The times I've sat through a horror movie have led to a sleepless night with bizarre dreams, some might say nightmares. I can picture the scenes in my head long after they've ended. Reading produces the same reaction. There's enough horrible stuff going on in the world that I don't need to let more into my brain.

I've had this kind of imagination since I can remember. When I was seven or so, I used to hide behind the floor-length curtains in the living room if I came home from school and my mother was out and siblings hadn't made it home yet. (Back in the days when helicopter parents weren't a thing.) And don't ask me to go tromping around in the woods after dark -- not going to happen. One of my childhood friends told me that wolves circled our houses at night, howling and trying to get inside, enough to give me a reoccurring nightmare (that I appear to have outgrown). Still, you won't find me hiking through the forest after the sun sets.

Okay, deep breath.

My fellow bloggers will likely recommend books in the horror category, and I tip my hat to them. I won't be since I don't read much if at all in the genre. The Halloween shenanigans give me an annual dose of spooky, and that's more than enough scary for me.

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Booooo, by Josh Stallings

 

Q: It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

A: Firstly, I have avoided horror since I was ten-years-old and watched Hitchcock’s The Birds. In the last couple of years, I started reading some Horror. 

Coyote Songs, by Gabino Iglesias, was my gateway into horror. It seamlessly blends crime fiction and horror. But when it gets scary, it becomes terrifying.

Next came Cynthia Pelayo’s Children of Chicago. It starts as a police procedural, a Chicago detective is trying to find missing kids. Brown kids, that she knows no one will care about if she doesn’t. It gradually changes into supernatural horror. 

For my current project, I have spent the last few years educating myself on Latin American literature that led me to Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes, another police procedural that becomes a supernatural horror tale. Creepy demon filled scary shit. By the time I was aware it was horror, I was too invested in the characters to look away.

And then there is Pedro Paramo, by Juan Rulfo. A true nightmare novel. A journey to a literal hell that had me hooked from the jump.

Horror and crime have so many overlaps that the lines blur. We have to keep creating sub-genres or kill the idea of genre all together. Not the worst idea I ever had.

Me, I’ll keep reading everything regardless of label. 

Sorry, this week is brutally short. I’m in Costa Rica doing research for my latest WIP. 

The book was thus gaily dressed in English, by Catriona

Do books get lost in translation? What are some non-English novels you love and are there any that didn’t work over the cultural divide?

Includes the line "the knight
was thus gaily dressed in green"

This question turns me back into a linguist again. I'm almost entirely mono-lingual (although you'd be surrised how any people think a linguist speaks a lot of languages) so when I read a book in translation, I never feel confident about where the writer ends and the translator begins, much less who to blame if something's amiss. I suppose I could read multiple translations of the same work to try and make sure but, apart from Beowulf, I don't think I ever have. I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a couple of times, I suppose, but I probably preferred the Simon Armitage version because I really like Simon Armitage. (He's got a podcast called "The Poet Laureate has Gone to his Shed". How could you not love that? And anyway, the original Middle English is barely another langauge to start with.

So the honest answer to the first bit of the question is I don't know and it would take years of study to find out. 

But to turn to the second bit: I seem to have mostly read Japanese novels in the last couple of years, as far as translated works go. (And I'm not alone - see Eric yesterday.) Japanese novels translated into English are having a moment, I reckon. Why? Well, they're short. (It's not breaking news that I'm a Philistine.) I have no idea if all contemporary Japanese novels are short or if it's the short ones that get translated, but when I've picked one up in a bookshop it's never felt like a massive, off-putting, potential investment, of either time or money.

I would recommend The Bookshop Woman, by Nanako Hanada to anyone who likes biblio-fiction, anyone in the mood for something right between quirky and cozy, anyone who's ever used a dating app (or anyone like me who thanks her stars every day she's never used a dating app). It's about a young, separated but not quite divorced, almost homeless woman who decides to extend her beloved bookselling job into her social life by offering to find the perfect book for her (platonic) dates. 

A bit more cozy although still slightly odd is The Kamogama Food Detectives, by Hisahi Kashimai. In it, a man and his daughter offer to recreate iconic meals from their clients lives, tracking down elusive ingredients and recipes, bringing healing and closure. You've got to not mind a bit of feyness to enjoy this one. In some moods, I might have slapped it shut and gone to read about serial killers instead. But, as winter approaches, and with a fireside and an armchair . . . 

Not being able to pinpoint what was the writing and what was the transaltion was the only irksome thing about The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo. In translation, it's a straight-up Golden-Age detective story in form and in style. Which is to say, clues abound, the detective is a genius and the style is slightly stuffy and a wee tiny bit over-written here and there. But, for anyone who loves the classics in English but can't see reading them again because they're too familiar - more than this one Yokomizo is now available in English.

Fianlly, I think I might have included The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa, in last December's BOTY round-up. Which is to say, I recommend it without any hesitation to anyone at all. It's speculative fiction, I suppose, maybe horror in a quiet way. It concerns a dystopian society in which the memory police are banning things - roses and calendars are just two examples. The objects disappear and people forget that they ever existed. Except for a few (neurodivergent?) individuals whose memories remain. The novel is the story of a writer who is trying to finish her book before she loses all her memories and is hiding her editor, who is one of those who remember. (Maybe only writers would think this is a horror novel!)

The tense dread and mounting despair of The Memory Police remind me of another translated book I read, this time a French novel, that I've forgotten the title and author of (memory police been at me?), but would love to re-find. In this case, it wasn't a successful piece of work, but I've no idea if it was a flawed original or a poor translation. The reason it stuck in my mid was that it struck me as a waste of a premise. The narrator is . . . locked-in? I think he has been poisoned by something that has robbed him of speech and sight - possibly also hearing? - and has a few days to solve his own murder. See what I mean? It should have been incredible. Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Cx 

The Universal Language of Books by Eric Beetner

I love reading books from other cultures. Sadly, I’m not fluent in any other languages to read in the original, but I adore the art of translation. I’ve read French novels, Japanese, Icelandic, Italian and Spanish. Here are a few of my favorites:

A Dog In Water and Shield Of Straw by Kazuhiro Kiuchi. From what I can tell these are the only two books of Kiuchi’s translated into English, which is a shame because I love both of them. There have been several Japanese novels to break through to American markets in recent years, like Out by Natsu Kirino and Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka. Kiuchi’s work is less well known, but I champion these books whenever I can.

A Dog In Water is really more like there novellas tied together by a common character. Kiuchi’s writing is sparse and straightforward and his action unpredictable. These don’t feel like American crime novels.

Shield Of Straw is high concept in it’s plot of a prisoner being transported across Japan via train to face trial while citizens all along the route are trying to get at him to kill the murderer and claim the multi-million dollar reward offered by the victim’s father. Good hook, right? But it goes much deeper than just a chase story as the officer charged with escorting the criminal is torn between his duty and just letting the mob have him so justice is served. 

Both are excellent novels with a feeling unlike any American or English-language crime novels I’ve read.

The French crime fiction master Jean-Patrick Manchette is no stranger to many English-reading crime fans. Most of his work has been in translation, and works like The Prone Gunman should be essential reading. Manchette’s particular brand of existential crime drama is so very French. The action and violence is all tempered with meditations on life, death and meaning. If George Simenon is the most popular French crime writer, and with his prolific output it’s hard to argue at least on sales figures, Manchette is perhaps the most French, at least from this American’s point of view. Simenon hits many of the traditional beats of an American or UK police procedural in his long-running series and his standalones so they are not unfamiliar to those audiences. Manchette feels like reading something from another culture.

I discovered the short story collection Crime/Guilt by Ferdinand Von Schirach quite by accident and I bought it purely because I hadn’t ever read anything translated from German before. What I discovered was another writer who I enjoyed very much, but whose stories felt very foreign, even in my own language. There is a coldness and matter-of-fact tone to the writing that is at once what we think of as very German in it’s humorless bluntness and that fits the subjects very well. Von Schirach is a defense attorney and these stories are inspired by many real life cases. They read as if written by someone who has seen it all and is maybe a little jaded by it. I kept marveling at the depths of the awful crimes being discussed in such a plainspoken voice. I can’t think of any English-first writers to compare it to.

When thinking of diving into the Vimal series by Indian writer Surender Mohan Pathak, it’s easy to be intimidated. Since the debut of the series in 1971 there have been 46 novels, and those compromise only a fraction of Pathak’s over 300 works. Luckily I got a good tip that The 65 Lakh Heist was the place to start, and it quickly become one of my favorite heist novels ever. 

Reading a book as culturally different as this Hindi novel, yet one that retains so much of what I love about a series like the Parker books by Richard Stark, was thrilling. This was the 4th Vimal novel and this series ranks alongside the Parker books for simple, straightforward criminal-as-protagonist crime novels. The anti-hero in India is fascinating to read about and I still have a whole lot more to go.

The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi came recommended to me by one of my favorite crime writers, Ken Bruen. That’s endorsement enough.  

A fascinating novel, I found it more influenced by Nordic crime writing than by American or UK authors. It was interesting to me to see the hugely popular Nordic crime style being written by an Italian, rather than the usual dominance of English language crime writing. It makes total sense, too. Why not be influenced by authors who are much closer, sell in huge numbers and are popular the world over?

The Whisperer should definitely be on the list of anyone who likes Lars Kepler, Stieg Larsson or Jo Nesbo.

I look forward to finding more hidden gems in translation. It’s a skill not often recognized in the literary world. Making the words comprehendible to an English-reading audience while still maintaining the cultural differences and subtle nuance in voice is a challenge. But when done right, it does what the best fiction does which is to take us to another place and expose us to other worlds.

O the Horror, O the Writer

 

 

It’s Halloween week. Do you read horror? Have you written any? Why or why are you not a fan?

 

I don’t read the genre as much as I did. Like the child Cole Sears in The Sixth Sense, I see horror everywhere.

 

We live in a world where images are manipulated and some graphics are done so well that you don’t know whether they are real or not. An ‘alleged’ example of this phenomenon are the moon landing photos. There are some among us who believe Stanley Kubrick created them in a Hollywood studio for the US government.

 

We live in a world of perpetual surveillance. The GPS in our cars, and in our phones act as personal beacons. Cameras mounted on traffic lights watch us. Web cookies track our browser history. We have been reduced to eyeballs and dollar signs. We research a product on Amazon, then Facebook serves us ads. We subscribe to a newsletter, and the hounds of internet marketing are unleashed. That we are made complicit in the technology that enslaves and mesmerizes us is a form of horror to me.

 

Then there is the horror of perpetual anxiety. Fact-checking doesn’t exist. Inundated with information, we don’t know what to believe because contradictions abound everywhere. The SNL skit that goes back and forth in time about whether eggs, butter, and cholesterol are good or bad for you or not illustrates Information as a case of Orwellian newspeak. The Truth and the Lie will be televised simultaneously tonight.

 

As a child, I burned through the pages of Carmilla, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde unafraid because I knew those supernatural creatures didn’t exist. I liked to compare the stories to their film adaptations. I loved the Gothic atmosphere, mist on the moor, but I read with a keen awareness that horror was about unspoken fears and desires. The Victorians equated the erotic with horror. Paging Dr. Freud.

 

As I ventured deeper into the genre, I never lost sight that horror (and most creative writing) is a metaphor for something else. Hawthorne made real the Puritan fear of the devil in the woods. Vampires were either supernatural bloodsuckers or a metaphor for parasites. German currency once displayed the vampyr as a symbol of rampant inflation. We came to know how the Nazis portrayed Jews as monstrous creatures. We became the robots, the mindless automatons, and monsters. We are the zombies, the unaware and mindless consumers. Both Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde showcase science gone unchecked. Horror held up a mirror to social issues. The Shining is a hard exploration of alcoholism—although the topiary animals scared me. 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale are horrific allegories about the authoritarian state. True crime is the new horror. We started with Dr. Moriarty and ended with Dr. Lecter.

 

A shortlist of what truly scared (and scarred) me as a kid were:

Almost all of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

Almost all of Kafka.

Horacio Quiroga’s Jungle Tales (Cuentos de la Selva). He is the Spanish Edgar Allan Poe.

Collodi’s Pinocchio, especially the scenes with the Blue Fairy and the ravens.

 

As a writer, I try to challenge myself and not confine myself to one genre. It’s fun to stretch and test our skills. I’ve written and had horror short stories published.

 

·      “Star of the Sea” in Writers Crushing COVID-19. A ‘ghost ship’ is discovered at sea and boarded. Rats have replaced the crew. A ghost ship is an abandoned ship found at sea.

 

·      “Coming up Roses” in the Sandy River Review. Rivalry during the annual rose competition takes a dark turn when a contestant uses special soil and finds a statue of a gnome in her garden.

 

·      “Last Royal” in Horror USA: California Anthology. A cub reporter scores the scoop of a career when a reclusive Hollywood star grants him an exclusive interview at her mansion.

 

·      “Diet Girl” in Levitate Magazine. A young girl with body image issues discovers a novel way to lose weight.

 

·      “Saving Grace” in Snowbound: Best of New England Crime Fiction. Set in colonial Massachusetts, Mercy Goodfeet hides a terrible secret.

 

·      “Zombees” in Black Chaos II Anthology. A small New England town experiences a strange new strain of bees.

 

·      “The Undead” in Paper Tape Magazine. Man renews his license at the local DMV, only to be told he is listed as dead and he has to prove he is alive to the state.

 

·      “La Santa Muerte” in the Doctor T.J. Eckleberg Review. Two young cousins, an injustice, and the Mexican death cult.

 

What’s on your shelf that scares you?

 

The Secret War of Julia Child

 Diana Chambers is a world traveler and a member of Sisters in Crime Norcal. She worked on this book idea for years and it's great it's now been published! So, here goes with her fascinating guest post.

THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD AND ME

By Diana R. Chambers

 

 

In my university days, I used to be intrigued to discover connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts, people and places. About ten years ago, I had such a light-bulb moment when I read that Julia Child had served with the OSS in WWII Asia. My brain practically exploded. The Julia Child? In America’s first spy agency? In India and China?!

 

Figure 1: China-Burma-India, The Pacific War's Second Front: Museum display, Chongqing, China

These three elements had connected in a way that seared my brain.

It was like a coup de foudre, love at first sight: I was swept away. This fated discovery has captivated me for the past ten years. But only after The Secret War of Julia Child was finished did I realize that Julia and I had both landed in India at around age thirty. After drifting through our twenties, we both began our formative years.

 

 

While I flew into the old Delhi airport in the middle of the night, Julia arrived on a trans-Pacific troopship in Bombay, barely missing a huge explosion in Victoria Harbor before boarding a train across India, then south to the teardrop island of Ceylon, off India’s southeast coast. 

 

Figure 2: Colombo, Sri Lanka railway station: narrow-gauge steam train to Kandy

 

Back in the day, I’d studied Indian art history, then continued my studies and explorations of the subcontinent over the years.

Figure 3: Ajanta caves, India

I was deep into The Secret War of Julia Child when Penguin India published my novel about a Hollywood actress, the last days of princely India, and the dawn of Independence, The Star of India—with its espionage subplot—in the first months of Covid. 

Figure 4: Cooch Behar Palace

Figure 5: Nancy Valentine and HH Jagaddipendra Narayan, the Maharaja of Cooch Behar

 

Besides India, I’ve traveled all over China, where The Secret War of Julia Child ends. So I felt on solid ground undertaking a book about Julia’s experiences in the spy trade of WWII Asia. 

As it turned out, I was shocked by how much I didn’t know. In school, we’d barely touched on wartime events in what was then known as the Far East—which was to most of us, very far indeed. I realized why it’s known as the “Forgotten War of Asia.” Digging deeper, I discovered how imperialism had shaped regional history—as well as intriguing conflicts between America and Britain, which became a backdrop of this story, Julia’s story. But I also wanted to give justice to the other story: the suffering and sacrifices of the Asian peoples who became swept up in the Second World War.

The Indians put aside their century-long independence struggle to join the global one. The Chinese pressed on with their grueling ten-year war of resistance against the Japanese, holding back the Imperial Army from sweeping across Central Asia to Germany’s aid. Their contribution to fascism’s defeat deserves greater recognition and our profound gratitude. 

 

Figure 6: Worshipper at the Temple of the Sacred Buddha Tooth, Kandy, Sri Lanka

Figure 7: Flower Market, Kandy

As the novel opens, Julia McWilliams has risen to run the Office of Strategic Service’s secret file Registry in Washington, DC, holding the highest security clearance and working directly under OSS founder, General “Wild Bill” Donovan. He later sends her into the field to set up document Registries in Kandy, Ceylon (South East Asia Command), then Kunming in southwest China (China-Burma-India). To the end of her days, Julia honored her vow of secrecy by insisting she was “only a file clerk.” However, given my knowledge of her character, discipline, and drive, I believe it highly likely that Donovan also used her as a trusted source. 

Growing up in Pasadena, Julia had been a meat and potatoes girl, barely acquainted with a can opener—until Bombay. At her first taste of the local food, her taste buds salute. The curry! Grilled naan! Fresh pulpy mango juice! All these mysterious little dishes. It’s a revelation. As she discovers a new world of flavor, the world opens up to her. And she plunges right in, heart and soul.

 

Figure 8: Kerala  spice market

Figure 9: Bangalore market

 

Then in a former Kandy tea plantation, OSS Detachment 404, she meets chief mapmaker, Paul Child—short, balding, almost forty, a humorless pedant. This annoying man turns out to be a brilliant artist, world traveler—and sophisticated foodie who’s lived in Paris. They’re stuck together on a small base in a distant corner of the world, more than a little reminiscent of Casablanca. 

 

Figure 10: Reclining Buddha, Kandy temple

 

By the time they fly “over the Hump”—the Himalaya—to China and the perilous front lines of Kunming’s Detachment 101, Julia has begun to admire his better qualities, and he’s stopped looking at other women. They continue to share meals...and more.

Figure 11: “Over the Hump” display, Chongqing Museum

 

One thing is certain: The rich and sophisticated cuisine of China remained the couple’s second favorite for the rest of their lives.

 

 

 

You Can't Beat The Classics - By Harini Nagendra

We keep writing new books, but there are so many classics out there. What are the crime fiction classics you think every writer should read?

Like most mystery/crime fiction authors, I started writing my series because I fell in love with this genre when I was very young. Here, in semi-chronological order were the books and authors I loved reading, and still find myself returning to - despite the anachronisms that make me cringe (for some of them).

1. Enid Blyton, Five Find Outers series - The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters

I loved the Five Find Outers, five children who sleuthed with their dog. I especially loved this one because - unlike many other Blyton books, which were strong on characterization and setting, but could be very thin on plot - this one had a lovely mix of red herrings, real clues - and red herrings which the children laid out to fool their nemesis, choleric Inspector Goon, but which turned out to be real clues. I do find these more difficult to read now. The characters are still as loveable, and so is the setting of an old English village - and the food! How does Enid Blyton manage to make boiled eggs sound so appealing? But her books also have an annoying tendency to make the girls seem weak and in need of some masculine help, and overly involved in cleaning and cooking for the boys. While this series is better than many others (the Famous Five being one of the worst offenders), it still bears strong traces of the time in which it was written. Great plotting though!

2. Carolyn Keene (ghostwritten by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams), Nancy Drew series - The Thirteenth Pearl   

After reading far too mysteries where girls were relegated to bit players, I fell in love with the Nancy Drew series. Plots are thin, adventure high, and the settings are deftly sketched out - the bit I liked best was the chance to travel across the world through the eyes of the books. As an older reader, I jumped at the chance to purchase a full set of the books when they were reissued with the original hard covers - some were harder to read now, again because of the way in which some gender roles are characterized. Nancy's best friends, cousins George and Bess, tend to annoy me now - but as a historical fiction writer, I love the way in which these books weave history and science into the story. I selected this one because I got to learn a lot about pearls, natural and artificial, especially how they are made and sold, and what makes some kinds of pearls especially valuable to collectors. This - communicating interesting facts about the world around you without using a series of boring info-dumps - is a skill that's good to have.

3. John Buchan, Richard Hannay series - Thirty Nine Steps

 I love the Richard Hannay series. My personal favourite is book 4, Three Hostages, because it delves deep into the art of hypnotism, and especially into why some people can remain immune to its effects while others are especially susceptible. But Thirty Nine Steps is better known, also made into a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock (though some would say the movie is loosely based on the book). It's more of a spy thriller than a mystery, and the anachronistic descriptions of race and country are rather obvious when one reads them today, and the language rathe more flowery than we are used to now. But the entire series is a fun read, and I love the way Buchan keeps the action rolling, intense but never overwhelming, keeping the anticipation high and the villains evil but steering the book away from the truly gruesome. Not easy to do in a book about war and international intrigue. This book was set in 1914 and written in 1915, in the early part of World War 1 - Buchan was writing about events that would change the face of the world, without the advantage of hindsight, which writers setting books in WW1 now possess. Quite a feat, when you think of it.

4. Dorothy Gilman, Mrs. Pollifax series - The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

OK, I love all the Mrs. Pollifax books, and I couldn't pick one, so I settled on the first one. The plots are completely unbelievable - Mrs. Pollifax is a senior citizen, retired, spending time in her garden with her potted plants - and through a series of accidents, ends up becoming a CIA spy, sent off on various international assignments. In this one, she travels to Mexico but ends up in prison in Albania. Set in the Cold War, what I love about these books - which can get fairly dark in spots - is the regard and appreciation for diverse cultures that Gilman brings to her writing, and the social critique that she subtly embeds into the plots - without overwhelming the books. When I re-read them now, that's what I am looking for, and trying to learn from.

5. Agatha Christie, Why Didn't They Ask Evans

This is the only one in my list that is not part of a series - but it's one of my favourite Christies, nevertheless. The title gives away one of the main plot points - and yet it doesn't. A man dies, but not before asking his rescuer the question. The rest of the book is devoted to figuring out a number of associated puzzles - who is Evans, who are 'they', why didn't they ask Evans, what should 'they' have asked Evans... it's a long list. And the twist, when it comes, is unexpected yet delicious, in the way only Agatha Christie can make it. Small wonder that she's the mistress of crime and mystery writing! 

 What are some of your favourite classics?