Alice in Wonderbook

down memory's rabbit hole

People interviewing authors love to ask them what writers inspired or influenced them. The answers are often predictable. Big familiar names pop up. Fantasy: Tolkien. Science fiction: Philip K. Dick. Horror: King. Mystery: Dame Agatha. Crime: Hammett and Chandler. Jim Thompson is another beacon for crime writers, as are the two MacD(d)onalds (John D. and Ross), with Ellroy and Elmore to complete the line-up.

These names are ubiquitous. The Anglo-Saxon steamroller of popular literature (and cinema) has given all of us a glancing blow.

Can you remember when you first heard about a guy named Sherlock Holmes? If you were born around 1980 or so, he looks like Benedict Cumberbatch or Jonny Lee Miller. If you’re older he has the sharp profile of Peter Cushing or Basil Rathbone.

I’m sure I knew who Sherlock was before I could form a grammatically-correct English sentence.

Where am I going with this, you wonder…

Something about that cultural glancing blow I mentioned before.

I was twelve, or there about, when I started learning English. Up to then, my reading (and budding writing) had been steeped in French with a sprinkling of Flemish (Dutch), enough to get along with my cousins from Ghent, Flanders, and be able to read their graphic novels when we were driven inside by sheets of rain. It rains a lot in Belgium. Rain is a national specialty, together with beer and chocolate.

All this to say that my writing influences are different from those of many of my fellow crime writers. I came to the big names listed in the first paragraph above (except for Agatha), comparatively late in life.

My first detective was Alice Roy. You know her as Nancy Drew. She assumed a new identity when she crossed the Atlantic. Nancy is a town in France and Drew doesn’t roll off the tongue in French (how do you say that: Draiv???). Funnily, the author was issued a new passport too: Carolyn Keene became Caroline Quine. It doesn’t matter because Carolyn is a fiction. Several people wrote the books which explains the uncanny longevity of the character.

I loved Alice. Independent, adventurous, brave. Girl Power! And she drove that cute little sports car. That didn’t hurt the image one bit. I might have read the book shown below, the illustration looks familiar. The back cover blurb is great. It has that thriller beat: A house set on fire. A shadow on the run. A golden ring in the grass. An inventor scammed by a conman. Notes in Swedish in a green notebook …

Are you hooked? I was. I still tend to write fragments (sentences without a verb) and have to be careful not to overdo them. Maybe I didn’t learn that from James Ellroy, a user and abuser of the form. Maybe it all goes back to Alice.

I read a lot growing up. Mostly adventure books. Maybe one day I’ll do a newsletter about these and interviewing the author of my favorite series: Henri Vernes who for 50 years sent Bob Morane all over the world and beyond. Great for learning geography.

If somebody asks me about my writing influences, I might mention Alice, but I will certainly talk about a threesome that looms big over everything I put down on paper.

Top of the list is Georges Simenon. His books were all over the house. Paperbacks falling apart from having been read so many times. The man with the pipe taught me that people drive the plot, that the whodunit is shallow without humanity, that all the characters deserve attention, not just the main one. The homeless guy on the quays of the Seine pissing in the river, the aging hooker bumming a cigarette from a passerby, the dog-tired cop knocking off a couple of drinks at the bar counter, his bunions blazing after a day of fruitless knocking on doors. Call it Noir with a heart. The atmosphere of a story being as important, if not more, than the story.

Then, because I like a fun, spicy, saucy, snarky, wild read, I inhaled the books of Frédéric Dard, the king of the one-liner and made-up words, in particular his Commissaire San-Antonio novels (Dard wrote 175 of them). People used to read these on the train, the bus, the beach, waiting in line at the post office. Explosions of laughter ensued. Dard was a master of dialog and no-rules grammar. Let it go! Anything goes! What a madcap writer… I don’t know if anybody ever tried, or dared, translate the books.

I kept my sentimental favorite for last. Maurice Leblanc and his Arsène Lupin novels. You might know the Lupin series on Netflix. Omar Sy does a fantastic contemporary take on the character. I’ve read and re-read the books. Leblanc was a journalist turned novelist. He created Lupin as a French answer to oh-so English Sherlock. A thief to checkmate Conan Doyle’s detective. A reckless improviser versus a rational thinker. My P.I., Declan Shaw, owes a lot to Lupin. Like my writing owes a lot to these early page turners.

More next time.

Short stories

Pixie Dust was published this month by Danse Macabre. It’s a short science fiction piece featuring an AI investigator, Kasha, who’s steadily becoming a recurrent character. The story is free to read online. Give it a click. This is the third story I publish with Danse Macabre. You can find the others on www.shawmystery.com.

What I’m reading now

Double Whammy, by Carl Hiaasen. Carl doesn’t need a push from me to boost his sales. He’s a best-selling author. If you don’t know the guy, give this book a try. A press photographer turned detective investigates cheating at bass fishing tournaments. Yes, fishing! People get whacked, and it’s hilarious - “humour noir”.

Non Suspicious, by Ed Church. A WW2 veteran found dead in a church close. A ninety-year-old man. Who cares? There’s quite a bit more going on here and people are not who they appear to be. The is great propulsive writing from a new author, and well worth discovering.

A cocktail recipe: French 75

Deceptively simple. With a bit of a history. If you’ve seen 1917 or All Quiet on the Western Front and you want to jump back a hundred years, you got to try this one. It’s named after a WWI 75mm gun. They sure didn’t quaff this in the trenches.

1 ounce gin

1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

1/2 ounce simple syrup

3 ounces champagne (or other sparkling wine)

Garnish: lemon twist

Add the gin, lemon juice and simple syrup to a shaker with ice and shake until chilled. Strain into a champagne glass. Top with the champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist.

Voilà!