An Other-Worldly Anniversary

Do you know what day it is? A hint: take a look at the interactive Google doodle.

Sixty-six years ago today, the information officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico issued a press release stating that a flying disk had been found on a ranch near Roswell. Hours later, the RAAF said that the debris came from a weather balloon. Thus began the myth that an alien spacecraft had crashed at Roswell, that aliens had been autopsied, and that the US government was covering it all up.

I've never been a Roswell conspiracy believer, but I've been a fan of movies and novels involving visitors from outer space since I was a kid. On a list of my most traumatic childhood experiences is the TV viewing of the 1953 movie, Invaders from Mars. That movie begins when a young boy climbs out of bed to witness a flying saucer landing outside his window. Soon, humans become vessels for the hostile aliens; you can tell whose body has been taken over by a mark on the back of the neck. Eventually, the boy helps to save the world. As the movie ends, all seems well, until the boy once again climbs out of bed to peer out the window. Wouldn't you know it, here comes a flying saucer again.

I'll be celebrating Roswell's 66th anniversary tonight with a re-watching of John Carpenter's 1984 movie, Starman, in which Jeff Bridges, playing a sweet alien who answers a Voyager 2 invitation to visit Earth, takes on the appearance of Karen Allen's recently deceased husband. It's a great sci fi/road movie/romance that fittingly travels through Las Vegas and ends in the American Southwest.

You may prefer to watch an episode of Doctor Who; The War of the Worlds (the 1953 version is best); ET the Extraterrestrial; District 9; The Rocky Horror Picture Show; or the charming Galaxy Quest, involving a group of appealing Thermians, who swoop down to Earth to pick up the crew of a cancelled TV series resembling Star Trek, because the Thermians desperately need their help dealing with the evil outer-space warlord, Sarris.

If you'd rather read about alien visitors than watch them, you could try a book we Material Witnesses have enjoyed: Rob Reid's Year Zero (mentioned here by Sister Mary Murderous; her Amazon review is here); or Jack Finney's 1955 novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that book, the author of Time and Again envisions seeds from outer space becoming pods near the fictional town of Santa Mira, California. In the pods grow perfect replicants of sleeping people who, when replaced, crumble to dust while their replacements live for 5 years. This book formed the basis for several movies. The 1953 movie's screenplay was written by Daniel Mainwaring, who also wrote the screenplay for the noir masterpiece Out of the Past; it stars Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter. The 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers stars Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy, and Jeff Goldblum. I enjoyed them both.

A third fun book is Robert Jackson Bennett's American Elsewhere, published by Orbit in February 2013.

Bennett's 38-year-old Latina protagonist, tough ex-cop Mona Bright, has left Houston and is drifting around when she learns her dad has died, and she has inherited his cherry-red Dodge Charger and her long-dead mother's house in Wink, New Mexico. The terms of the will give her 11 days in which to claim her inheritance in Wink.

The facts that Wink doesn't appear on any map and no tax assessor has ever heard of it are only Mona's first pointers that the picture-perfect community, created when the now-shuttered Coburn National Laboratory and Observatory was established on a nearby mesa, isn't your typical small American town. Then comes the hotel, whose last guest arrived decades ago. The proprietor, Mr. Parson, seems to play Chinese checkers with himself, and he warns Mona that it's best to stay inside at night. Over the course of this 662-page book, Mona makes a few important discoveries: all unhappy families are not alike, time and place aren't as fixed as she once thought, and Wink inhabitants have varying takes on how to live the American dream. While the last third of the book is a bit repetitious, this is a thought-provoking and entertaining read. The best book ever for a summer thunder storm.

No matter how or with whom you spend this anniversary evening, I'm sure you'll remember that you're only human.

Oh, To Be In England

This past Friday night, I was mesmerized by the spectacle of the Opening Ceremony for the 30th Olympic games. The entire event was awesome and incomparable, as it was a showcase for the history of the British people and their culture. The history of the modern Olympic games themselves is speckled with British involvement. The original Olympics had been banned in 393 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, but Europeans of those dark and middle ages still loved their games. In Scotland, there were various tournaments, which later evolved into the Highland Games, while in England there was a brief period in which the Cotswold Olympick Games took place and the romantic appeal of replicating the ancient games gave rise to many small towns celebrating sporting festivals that included such fare as pig chasing and an "old woman’s race for a pound of tea."

In the last decade of the 19th century, while strides were being made to get the 1896 games going in Greece and as Baron de Coubertin began lobbying for a true Olympics revival, the ideal was for the participants to be rewarded only with medals and laurel wreaths. The idea of amateurism came into play. The original British definition of an amateur was someone who did not labor with his hands. In fact, it was only the upper classes who had the time for fun and games. Besides, could the "lower orders" be trusted to behave in a sportsmanlike manner? Thus, in 1896, it was primarily Harvardians, Elis and MITers who made up the American team. Britain chose to shun the games, but several members of the British Embassy in Greece chose to compete under the Union Jack.

Closer to home, the British working man was very interested in sporting events, especially boxing and six-day marathons known in some circles as a wobble. Many considered these races infernally barbarous, while others––like the promoter of the event––held the opinion that events such as these showcased endurance, persistence and the will to conquer that were the premier qualities of the time.

One of these marathons is the center of activity in Wobble to Death by Peter Lovesey. This event was taking place in the great Agricultural Hall in the late 1800s London.

"For the benefit of those of you unable to read I shall repeat the rules. You may go as you please for six days and nights finishing next Saturday evening at half past ten o'clock..... Five hundred pounds and the belt to the winner, the Champion Pedestrian of the World. Good Luck to you all. Then go!... You poor bastards."

Agricultural Hall

In this situation, as in others in the world, there were two classes of competitors. On the inner one-eighth mile of the track moved the stars, while the lesser participants moved in an outer circle one seventh of a mile longer. In other words, the celebs were given a leg up.

But just a day into the running, one of the favored stars of the race, Charles Darrell, is dead. The cause of death is at first thought to be tetanus. The victim had suffered severe cramping and he had run barefoot for several laps because he had developed blisters on his feet. The Agricultural Hall had, of course, the detritus of many livestock shows still lingering and so the theory was plausible. Eventually it was determined that the actually cause of death was strychnine, which was in those days used as a stimulant at a low doses. Doping is nothing new. Somehow, Darrell had been fed a massive dose. Naturally, his trainer, Sam Monk, was eyed with suspicion––especially after he is soon found dead as well, a possible suicide.

Sergeant Cribb and his sidekick, Constable Thackeray, investigate the murder, going through the suspects from the athletes to the promoters, as the week wears on and the press accounts follow a well-accepted pattern. Initially the race is labeled as the "Islington Mix," then the "Herriott's Wobble" and, by the end of the week, the "Cruelty Show at the Agricultural Hall." You can almost smell the desperation and the leftover aroma of animals and fog. In the end, the simple motives for murder are usually the best: love, hate or money. You can pick and choose in this mystery. Lovesey's The Detective Wore Silk Drawers also takes place in the Victorian sporting arena, this time revolving around boxing.

It was Great Britain that came to the rescue of the Olympic Games, when in 1908 Mt. Vesuvius's temper forced the 1908 competition out of Rome. Again, in 1946, London was prevailed upon to host the Olympics despite the fact that the city had less than two years to prepare and the place was a shambles after the depredations of World War II. The British athletes still had barely enough to eat and all they received for a uniform was instructions, fabric and two pairs of "Y-front" underpants, which were considered a luxury. Maybe this was where the infamous "I see London, I see France" verse originated.

Other cultures have venerated footraces, and I am reminded of Dance Hall of the Dead written by Tony Hillerman. In this book, Lt. Joe Leaphorn of the Navajo police becomes involved in the case of the disappearance and death of a young boy. Ernesto, a young Zuñi, has been chosen to impersonate the Fire God in the incoming Zuñi sacred celebrations. He has been training so that he can run, dance and participate with great strength. Proud of the fact that he has been so honored, he couldn’t help tell his friend George about it, which was an improper thing to do, but he needed George's help in his workouts.

When Ernesto's body is found cruelly murdered, George takes off, trying to right the karma. But, as is often the case, one death follows another and Leaphorn knows he has to find George before anyone else does. Leaphorn believes that there is a reason for everything, that there is a synchronicity to nature. Every cause has its effect and every action its reaction. In all things there is a pattern, but in this situation Joe Leaphorn struggles to find it.

Native Americans have made their mark in the Olympic running events. A Hopi, Lewis Tewanima, won silver in the 10,000 meter, and the only American to ever take gold in this race is Billy Mills of the Oglala Lakota nation. A Penobscot, Andrew Sookalexis, was 12th in the 1912 marathon.

If you ever want to see a stirring movie, check out Running Brave: The Billy Mills Story.

Jim Thorpe

It has been 100 years since Jim Thorpe, a Sac and Fox Indian from Oklahoma, wowed the world with his epic performance in 1912 of 15 feats that won him Gold in the pentathlon and the decathlon and the title of the greatest athlete in the world. Even though he was stripped of his medals because he had earned some money playing in a summer baseball league, this same offense was overlooked when white athletes did the same thing. Later, in 1982, his medals were restored but not his records, which were not exceeded for decades.

Well, if you can see a few sports amidst all the interviews, commercials and general talkitis of the Olympic coverage, enjoy the next two weeks. If you miss anything you can make it up by reading books about similar events. Janet Rudolph's blog Mystery Fanfare has an excellent list of murder at the Olympics books.

Cinco de Mayo

Cinco de Mayo (fifth of May) may be the holiday most celebrated that fewest people understand. It is a Mexican holiday celebrating the Battle of Puebla, which took place on May 5, 1862. The most common misconception is that it is the Mexican day of independence. No! That was 51 years before. For reasons that you will have to Google (but know this: there was a Napoleon mixed up in it somewhere who wanted an empire for himself), France decided that they would invade Mexico. Naturally, with superior forces it was thought that Goliath would triumph as the French rolled through Mexico until they reached Puebla. I must point out that Puebla is the feminine of Pueblo and this may have been what gave the Mexicans the edge, because against all logic David triumphed and the Mexicans won a huge victory.

Thus, Cinco de Mayo celebrates unlikely victory against overwhelming odds. Sort of equals chasing out snakes, doesn't it?

For most of Mexico, the holiday is no big deal. It is mainly celebrated in Puebla. For some reason it is celebrated in the USA by Mexicans and Americans alike. One theory for this is that at one time all of Mexico celebrated it and part of Texas and California were Mexican Territories.

Parades, festivals, mariachi music and, of course, good Mexican food are part of the celebration.

One of my favorite protagonists of Mexican heritage is Rudolfo Anaya's Sonny Baca. He is a small time PI who wants to do credit to his great-grandfather, who was a famed lawman. In Zia Summer, Sonny awakens one morning from a very disturbing dream. The smell of strong coffee that his neighbor Don Eliseo brews every morning under an ancient cottonwood tree in the Old Town section of Albuquerque, New Mexico, comes through his window. Before he gets an explanation of his dream from the wise old man, he gets a call from his Aunt Delfina telling him that his cousin Gloria is dead and she wants him to take her to Gloria's house.

Gloria has been murdered in a ritualistic manner. The sign of the Zia sun has been carved into her body and her blood has been drained and taken away. The Zia sign was the powerful positive image of the sun, and the symbol of the state flag.

Delfina has no faith in the police, and she wants Sonny to solve this murder. The police want to pin the case on the gardener for a quick fix, because Gloria's husband Frank Dominic is running for governor. After he left University, Sonny taught high school for a few years, but he found that teaching was not for him. As a PI, he was quickly involved in a very high-profile case that gave him a lot more fame than he deserved, and life had been good.

Sonny has bad feelings about this case. Don Eliseo spoke about these feelings. "In the old days we called them brujas, men and women who did black magic, fornicated with goats, prayed the Black Mass. Ah, that's what the people said. They are really people who have destruction in their hearts. Things don't change. Now maybe they drive or work in fancy cars, wear nice clothes. They work all over the city. The surface changes, underneath the evil intent remains."

What some people considered evil intent was the intent of the government to bury nuclear waste material in the deep caves and caverns of New Mexico and their aim was to stop this. What other people considered to be the true evil was a cult dedicated to stopping the desecration of the Southwest; planning to blow up trucks carrying nuclear waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and to cause a terrific nuclear incident that would never be forgotten.

Cottonwood Tree

Rudolfo Anaya tells a modern story that is full of characters who have deep connections to the past, to the place that they live, to history and to the spiritual world. Ancestors are important in this life and are more than our genetics. His respect for the family is strong and translates to a naturalistic approach. He uses the symbol of the cottonwood. Although ancient and dying, if treated tenderly it can still put out one last green shoot at summer solstice and encourage all by living on and becoming just as much a story as a murder.

Anaya has a mystery set in each of the seasons and I have enjoyed the unusual character of Sonny Baca in all of his adventures.

No Happy Ending, the first book in a series that Paco Ignacio Taibo II writes about an unusual private investigator in Mexico City, takes place at Christmas time, but the only clues to the holiday setting are in the description of some of the things seen in the streets. My impression of Taibo's protagonist is that holidays of any kind are not really on his radar.

Héctor Belascoarán Shayne tells us that he decided to become a detective because he didn’t like the color his wife picked for the new carpet. He had been an engineer. He got his license by mail. He had never read a British mystery novel. He didn't know a fingerprint from a finger sandwich. He could only shoot something if it didn't move very much.

Héctor is usually a taciturn, enigmatic man who is an unrepentant teetotaler with a penchant for Pepsi-Cola. He shares an office with three characters: a plumber, an upholsterer and a sewer engineer.

One day, a murdered man dressed as a Roman soldier is found at Héctor's office and then he gets a mysterious message to ignore what he saw––and along with the message there was a plane ticket to New York City. All Héctor really knew at this point was that he loved his home, Mexico City, with a passion and if he waited long enough, the killer would show his face.

In this case, the detective is correct and it appears that there is more than one killer and that they are from the police. Since this is Mexico, the question is whether they were from the secret police, the auxiliary police, the judicial police, the special, the bank, the preventative, the traffic, the federal.

Héctor uncovers links from these men to an unsavory incident in Mexico City's recent past. What it has to do with him appears to be serendipity, but he is caught in a web he cannot escape. His life is on the line and he is very like a gunslinger of the Old West, shooting first and asking questions later.

This is an intriguing character and the people in his life are also worth knowing. The prose is somewhat Hemingwayesque and I look forward to reading more of this writer.

No Happy Ending refers back to a real-life incident that took place June 10, 1971, in which student demonstrators were massacred in a square by a paramilitary unit that was secretly trained and funded by the government. Initially, nine students died, but the final death count was closer to 30. Taibo postulates that this unit may have been disbanded and re-assimilated into the Mexico City Subway Police. The deadly June day was just one year later than the May massacre of the four Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard, which resounded all across the US. It was also on a beautiful June day in 1989 that hundreds of students again were the targets of the military; this time in China on Beijing's Tienanmen Square. There were no happy endings on any of these occasions.

There Is No Place Like Home

There are places in this world whose names are almost synonymous with misery. Places you would rather not experience, like Outer Mongolia, the Black Hole of Calcutta, the wilds of Borneo, and Siberia. To some, because there isn’t a hope in hell that there would be a Starbucks, the place to avoid is the Back of Beyond. But that is in real life; travelling to these areas by way of fiction is another story altogether.

Chinggis Khan Hotel

When I first picked up Michael Walters' book The Shadow Walker, I was immediately transported to Ulan Bator and my first reaction was to flip to Google Earth to see where this was and what a city located on these steppes would look like. This is one of the least populated areas of the world. This mystery was a gripping tale that was as much about the far reaches of Mongolia as it was about the story. An unusual protagonist, Nergui, who, along with the head of the Serious Crime Squad, Doripalam, solves the case of the murder of a British geologist whose body was found in the city's best hotel, the Chinggis Khan.

In the second in the series, The Adversary, Nergui's case takes him further out into the steppes as he tries to find connections between the disappearance of a young nomad boy and the death of his mother, and the country's most powerful crime lord, whom Nergui has been after for years. Aside from the setting, the characters themselves are so intriguing that they are memorable. It is not the 87th Precinct. Instead, you have a police crew that is trying to help Mongolia into the 21st century. The land is free of Soviet influences, but unable to master freedom without pervasive corruption. Nergui sometimes feels like he is operating with one hand tied behind his back. He can do all that is possible for ordinary crimes, but organized crime is off limits.

I have not come across a murder mystery written about Borneo, but Graeme Kent has a new book that transports the reader to the nearby Solomon Islands. This is a new series featuring Sergeant Ben Kella, a touring government police officer who was also the aofia of his tribe, a man chosen by the spirits to keep the peace. He joins forces with a young newcomer to the Islands, Sister Conchita, who has just been appointed to help the priest at the mission. The islands are a British territory and Kent enlarges on the ambiance and the history of the progress of the area towards independence. Sergeant Kella has been educated both in Sydney and London, where he took a Master's degree. He even did a little police training in Manhattan.

Some of the locals still feel the yoke of colonialism and the feeling is that the British would prefer to restrict the education of the islanders so that the better jobs can be saved for non-islanders. In Devil-Devil, an elderly man has been killed and Kella must investigate and solve the crime without causing bad feelings and enmity among the different generations and the different tribes. On this island where the crime took place, there lived 13 different clans, each speaking its own language. It was a powder keg. Kella and Sister Conchita walk a fine line inexorably to the solution and I can't wait to read more about this pair.

I have heard about the Black Hole of Calcutta most of my life without realizing where it was exactly. The Black Hole of Calcutta is a cell in the jail of a British fort in Calcutta, now known as Kolkata. In the middle of the 18th century, British and Indian troops fought at this fort. A reported 146 defenders of the fort were driven into the small cell and many had suffocated by the next morning.

I have encountered only one writer of mysteries that take place in this city, now becoming better known as Kolkata. Are we becoming more politically correct, as we now speak of Mumbai and Kolkata, or did they change their names from Bombay and Calcutta? Satyajit Ray, better known as a filmmaker, wrote a series of stories that were collected in The Complete Adventures of Feluda. These are short stories about a young amateur detective who is really a renaissance man who can do almost anything. He is well-versed in the martial arts and is a marksman. He reads about photography, geometry and anything that can help him solve crimes. He gets more adept at crime solving as the stories progress. In the Royal Bengal Mystery, you see some elements of a Sherlock Holmes influence.

Being banished to Siberia reminds me of the nightmarish tension of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s. The name "Siberia" means "sleeping land," and for a thousand years, while Europe and Asia developed, Siberia slept. It was five million square miles and could swallow all of Western Europe and two USAs. It is covered by taiga (forests) and animals, vast deposits of minerals and more. It is a land of perpetual winter, where the temperature on a good day is forty below. In A Cold Red Sunrise, Stuart Kaminsky's Russian detective, Porfiry Rostnikov, a dogged, intense Moscow police Inspector who occasionally gets on the wrong side of the KGB, is sent on a case to this area of tundra and snow.

Tumsk, the town where Rostnikov and his partner are sent, was built around a weather station. This place had not resisted change; it had not even been threatened by it. It was a collection of a few houses and government buildings. A Commissar from Moscow had been murdered while investigating the death of the daughter of a Russian dissident who had been exiled to Siberia. The exile in question was a brilliant doctor whose situation had gained some press in the West and the authorities want a quick resolution to the problem.  And, of course, Rostnikov obliges as always.

We might differ in our opinion about what constitutes the Back of Beyond. I have felt at times that it is where I live, because we have no bookstore, but there are more backward places. In Steven Havill's Scavengers, the story takes place in the New Mexico desert near a town called Maria. Ex-Sheriff, now livestock inspector, Bill Gastner describes it as having lain comatose since the day Coronado walked through.

This story is the first one in the series that features Estelle Reyes-Guzman as the new Undersheriff. She is called to the isolated desert area because first one body, then another, is found dumped in this desolate area. Reyes-Guzman is as sharp as a tack. She sees small discrepancies and details that help her solve these mysteries in a relatively short time. These stories have an excellent pace as well as a good sense of place. Havill makes me want to visit this area. Even though it is bleak, he makes it sound out of the ordinary.

When I close this kind of book, I am really happy to be where I am, having enjoyed a glimpse of life in places of nightmares for some, while I am either warm and cozy or cool and content in my own chair.