Golf, Anyone?

Coming from a family of golfers could have made me an eager player, but I decided years ago that I did not have the aptitude for recollecting where every shot ended up or the desire to share each moment either exhilarating or exasperating with folks after my ordeal. But I do enjoy watching Tiger Woods and reading about the game. You would think that a sport that commends and commands exemplary behavior wouldn't lend itself to murder and mayhem. But sometimes, what are you going to do with the perfect blunt object in your hand?

Real golfers, no matter what the provocation, never strike a caddie with the driver. The sand wedge is far more effective. (Huxtable Pippey)

Swing hard in case you hit it. (Dan Marino)

Of course, sometimes this weapon is used far away from the course, as in Junkyard Dogs by Craig Johnson.

As it finally warms up here, and heat waves wrap their humid tentacles around the denizens of the middle latitudes, winter is thankfully a dim memory. Walt Longmire, the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming is immersed in snow. Walt is tired, and as cold as the winter, for several reasons. His daughter Cady had returned to the East to plan her wedding––for some reason leaving him out of the loop––one of his best officers is having second thoughts about his career, Walt himself has worries about his health that he is trying to suppress and, lastly, he won't let go and have the relationship he wants and needs in his love life. As always, he suppresses all his concerns in the job, and the job always comes through.

As in any town, there are people whose actions defy belief but that make perfect sense to them, and the story begins with Walt trying to figure out why a grandfather in his seventies has ended up in a ditch, after having been towed a few miles by a car. I know people like this, you know people like this, and so you settle in for this winter's tale.

The case this time involves an unusual death at a junkyard guarded by two vicious animals of great reputation. The corpse is old George Stewart himself, who was recently smacked in the head by a golf club swung by an irate neighbor. But this isn't what killed the old man. Before many days follow, the bodies are dropping like dominoes and the thread that ties them together is hard to find. Walt has to look within families to try and find connections, and he unearths secrets that are deeply hidden.

There are always many kinds of people who live in any community. Those who have been there for ages and those who saw the potential of the area and come to change it. This does not always make for peace.

As in any community, there is that ubiquitous junkyard surrounded by that chicken-wire fence that is an eyesore, but it provides an essential service. No one wants it in his or her neighborhood and everyone is afraid of the guard dogs. It is a symbol of the other side of the tracks. This sounds more like a big city or town concept, at least a place with tracks, not the wide-open-spaces-of-Wyoming kind of separation. But people are the same everywhere––with a Craig Johnson kind of twist.

There is a moral to this story. It is that problems are best faced straight on, whether they be people with criminal tendencies, family difficulties, physical problems, medical issues or junkyard dogs––or you may get bitten in the a$$.

You can always count on Craig Johnson to tell a great tale and take you into his Wyoming world for several hours. This was a great trip. I would score it an eagle (two stokes under par).

Golf is a game of coordination, rhythm and grace; women have these to a high degree. (Babe Didrikson Zaharias)

Following in the great Babe's footsteps by taking up golf is Lee Ofsted, a very interesting character who is a pro golfer in the LPGA. Lee is featured in the Charlotte and Aaron Elkins mystery series about her adventures as a sleuth as well as a competitor trying to break into the upper echelons of women's pro golf.

In Rotten Lies, the second of the series, Lee is 23 and she is playing the tour on a shoestring. Lee, for the first time in her life, is leading the boards at the High Desert Classic in Los Alamos, New Mexico, when the tourney is halted for a thunder storm. When play resumes, Ted Guthrie, the man most disliked at this club, is found dead on the course. In a cruel twist of fate, Lee injures her arm trying to revive Ted and she loses her first chance at winning on the women's pro circuit. The coroner suspects the lightning strike was no accident.

Lee has talent, courage, and an intuitive sense for seeing the way things lie––whether they're golf balls or nasty plots for murder. She senses that something is amiss at the Cotton Creek Country Club, so she and her lover, California cop Graham Sheldon, help snoop out a murderer. She believes someone closely involved with the game is the culprit, and all of the country club's colorful characters are suspect, from the old geezer holding a golf umbrella near the body, to her own cranky old caddy, Lou.

I was more disappointed in Lee's misfortune than she was. Lee takes life as it comes and, of course, is a good detective. This series is strong throughout and is great for a summer read. Score: Birdie (one under par)

Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. (Attributed to Mark Twain)

One golf series that weaves the game of golf into the plots is Keith Miles's Alan Saxon string of golf adventures. Saxon is a pro who has passed his glory days. In Bermuda Grass, he has taken on the job of designing a new course for an exclusive resort hotel in Bermuda. He hasn't even had time to change into his bermuda shorts before he learns that there have been several attempts to sabotage the work.

For one thing, a new hybrid Bermuda grass has been stolen and equipment has gone astray. It seems also that there are hazards among the hazards when Saxon finds a disgruntled employee dead in the trees. Adding to the mayhem, Saxon's daughter and her girlfriend, who accompanied him to the Island, have been kidnapped. Saxon falls into a few traps before all ends well. Learning about Bermuda grass was the best part of the story for me. I felt like I was watching it grow. Score: Double Bogie (two over par)

Isn't it fun to go out on the course and lie in the sun? (Bob Hope)


Murder at the Nineteenth, by J. M. Gregson, is the first in the Superintendent John Lambert, Detective Sergeant Bert Hook compendium, both of whom are golfing enthusiasts in Gloucestershire, England. This is an extensive series, which include many crimes with golf themes.

In Murder at the Nineteenth, there is a violent murder at a historic country club, which included among its members Superintendent Lambert. The man was killed at the end of a business meeting, and all those attending are among the suspects. The detectives have to weave around all the lies in order to solve the crime. Readers who enjoy British police procedurals will enjoy these. Score: Bogie (one over par) (As the series progresses, the characterizations improve.)

I went to play golf and tried to shoot my age, but I shot my weight instead. (Bob Hope)

The Murder on the Links is the second of Christie's Poirot series, and from it comes a better picture of what this Belgian detective is like. The thing that struck me was that he might be a precursor to today's Adrian Monk. Hercule Poirot comes into a room and immediately looks around and, if he can, he will begin to straighten up the pictures on the wall, align edges of things out of place and generally look for what is out of order. This is basically the method to his madness, as the saying goes.

Poirot's second characteristic is that he leaves forensic details to others. He can't waste time on clues like cigarette butts or blades of grass because, frankly, he knows nothing about them and he refuses to make himself look ridiculous moving his nose across the ground like a hound dog. Leave that for the dogs, he says.

Poirot gets a frantic letter from France, where a Mr. Renauld is in fear for his life. Despite leaving immediately with his friend, Captain Hastings, he arrives too late. Renauld has been found in an open grave on a golf course wearing an overcoat, which is too large for him, over his underwear. Aside from the gross infringement of the dress code, the corpse has a look of absolute amazement and terror. Poirot makes the fantastic statement that he could see by the victim's face that he was stabbed in the back.

There are many entangled threads, involving several mysterious characters, that Poirot teases out in a delicate fashion, all the while poor Captain Hasting is totally lost at sea. He is a lot more than a day late and a dollar short. It made me wonder just why Poirot puts up with him. A young French detective named Giraud is on the case. He is apparently the best thing to be had in Paris. He is a young rapidly rising star in fact. His method is that of investigating the little clues of spent cigarettes, footprints and the like. He barely hides his contempt for Poirot when Hercule refuses to jump to conclusions. Naturally, Poirot has the last laugh while the Frenchman rushes back to Paris with a little less luster on his star.

I liked the early Poirot books the best because as yet I wasn't tired of the little grey cells comments. Score: Birdie (one under par)

It's so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying "Shhh" and not moving a muscle. Then we allow nineteen year-old kids to face a game-deciding free throw with seventeen thousand people yelling. (Al McGuire)

Keep in mind that golfers putter on into old age and that it may be good sportmanship that keeps them in the game. Old golfers never die and they still have their drive.

Agatha Christie as Nemesis

Charles Dickens

College students all over the world are probably deep into their studies of literature of all kinds. Back in the day, as they say, during my college years, what I learned about was the writings of DWM (Dead White Men). Popular reading may not have the cachet of the classics, but I must sometimes agree with the wimpy kid of diary fame who defines a classic as a story about a person or an animal with a tough life, either or both of whom die before the end.

So last week, September 15, was Dame Agatha Christie's birthday. I am glad to be reminded that she is the most-published novelist of all time, having written some 69 novels and 19 plays over a period of 56 years. I thought it would be interesting to talk a little about what she wrote when she was 30, then later on in her career.

In 1920, Christie's debut was The Mysterious Affair at Styles. She was working at a hospital dispensary at the time. In it, she introduced her most famous character, Hercule Poirot. Captain Arthur Hastings, a soldier who had been invalided out of the army during the Great War that was still ongoing, narrates this book. He has been invited to Styles, a country estate in the village of Styles St. Mary, as a guest of the eldest son of the family. There is a cast of many characters at Styles, so when the matriarch is murdered by strychnine shortly after changing her will, there are plenty of suspects.

Young Agatha

It just so happens that some Belgian refugees are living nearby, in a house by the gates of the estate. One of these is ex-policeman extraordinaire, Hercule Poirot. It is here, in this first Christie mystery, that this gentleman's peculiarities are delineated: a fanciful moustache, a pedantic manner, comments on little grey cells, as well as patience with Hastings, who is often quite slow to grasp what he is seeing. Christie's Sherlock and two-steps-behind Watson became very popular over the years, as they untwist the skeins of some truly complex murders.

It is interesting to speculate about whether Christie's occupation made her interested in pharmaceutical modes of murder. In her first story, she gave ample information about the ways strychnine was used in everyday medicines, which is what made it readily available.

In contrast to these classical detective types, Christie soon published three books with entirely different main protagonists. There was The Man in the Brown Suit, which takes place in 1920 but was published about four years later. The main character herein is a feisty young girl raised by a gentle, scholarly father who relied on her for everything. After her father dies, she has made no plans until she is present at the death of a man who falls on the third rail in the subway. A man in a brown suit, claiming to be a doctor, tries to resuscitate the man and then rushes off, dropping a mysterious piece of paper.

Our heroine, Anne Beddingfeld, grabs the piece of paper and starts on the adventure of a lifetime. It starts with seeing another murder victim, which eventually leads her on a fantastic voyage by sea to South Africa, and later to Rhodesia. Aside from learning how to surf, she runs from spies, revolutionaries and secret agents who seem to want to kill her. Naturally, the cause of all this trouble is a girl's best friend––diamonds.

Anne is an unusual girl for the era in some ways, because she is educated, fearless and intrepid. On the other hand, she longs for romance and all the things others girls of the time want. When she is asked about what frightens her, she responds that only wasps, sarcastic women, very young men, cockroaches and superior shop assistants make her scared. This story is the first of Christie's standalones.

In 1922, Christie began a series featuring Tuppence and Tommy Beresford, intelligence agents in England. A few years after that, she began a trilogy with The Secret of Chimneys featuring a Scotland Yard detective. It begins with the story of the adventure-loving Anthony Cade who, tiring of his job as a travel guide, leaves it to carry some important papers to London and then to the Chimneys estate. The papers are the memoirs of a Count who had his fingers in many political pies, and it is feared by different parties that these writings may reveal secrets dangerous to many in government circles. Anthony becomes a target of both governmental agents and villains of other sorts and the fun begins. This series pokes a bit of fun at the more serious spy thrillers of the era, as Christie portrays the aristocracy, the police as well as butlers in a stereotypical humorous fashion.

The main policeman in this series of three is Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard and he uses as his cohort Bundle Brent, a no-nonsense daughter of the Chimneys family.

Christie writes these Battle-and-Brent books with a light touch and quick pace, introducing us to amusing characters and a little bit of romance. These are very different from Christie's better-known Miss Jane Marple and Poirot series, but very likeable. When The Secret of Chimneys was translated to TV, however, Jane Marple was used as the central character. Jane Marple was introduced in 1930––10 years after Poirot and six years after Superintendent Battle.

The Murder at the Vicarage was the first of the series, in which Jane Marple was introduced as a knitting, grey-haired elderly woman who has a keen eye for the variations of human behavior and a nose for the evil that lurks behinds the facades of seemingly ordinary villagers. She is well portrayed on film, but the overwhelming feature that I noticed in some screen adaptations is that poor Jane is frequently given only one hat that she wears for gardening, visits to neighbors and even funerals. I have been tempted to take up a collection for a new one.

There is not much change in the Jane Marple character over her lifespan, except in the development of her nephew's progression in his writing career. She often bursts his balloon in the early days but, as he becomes more well known, he is able to send her on voyages (A Caribbean Mystery) and local trips (Nemesis). Nemesis was written in 1971, toward the end of her career and it was the penultimate Marple story.

Poirot also remains much the same, except that he has more aches and pains and takes more tisanes. But his little grey cells still work. Christie was reportedly very tired of this character (so was I), and she made his foibles a little over the top. Hastings, who was once much younger than Poirot, doesn't appear that way by series end. She also uses another frequent character in the Poirot stories, a writer of mysteries called Ariadne Oliver, who writes about a depressed Finn from a country she knows little about, in her books. Mrs. Oliver frequently bemoans the fact that her publisher won't let her kill Finn off. Is this a thinly-disguised version of Christie herself?

The non-series books are where I found the main changes in the Christie stories over the decades. By the end of World War II, Christie had seen much of the world, since she was married to Max Mallowan, her second husband, who was an archaeologist. She incorporated exotic locations in many of her books. But in Death Comes as the End, written at the midpoint of her career, the story is set in Ancient Egypt.

Valley of the Kings

It is about Renisenb, who has been recently widowed, and has returned to her father’s house. He is a wealthy landowner and priest who recently married Nofret, a young, manipulative concubine. Now, the home is not the peaceful oasis Renisenb remembers. Then, Nofret ends up dead at the foot of a cliff.

Evil from within, compared to evil from the outside, is the main theme. Christie used this theme more as the years passed. In Death Comes as the End, the characters are interesting, but not always consistent. The main Christie-like feature was that I thought I knew who the murderer was––until, one by one, my main suspects were murdered and the only one left standing had to be the guilty one.

Twenty years or so later, Christie wowed many with the psychological thriller Endless Night that builds slowly from a gypsy curse to a creepy non-traditional shocker. Just telling the story may give it away. Evil is personified once again.

So if you have read all the Marples and Poirots, take a chance on the other wonderful and different mysteries that Agatha Christie has dished up to us. Many are free on Kindle and there are new editions published all the time. William Morrow, a division of Harper Collins, is releasing most of these books in a very nice trade paperback edition that enticed me to pick up several of the non-series books and the Inspector Battle books.

One thing is for certain: the villains in all of Christie's books, plays and short stories meet their nemesis when they encounter any one of Christie's poking, prying protagonists. Nemesis, in Greek mythology, is the avenger of crime and the punisher of hubris. Christie's plotting, intricate and delightful, stands the test of time. If I have to pick a favorite character it would be Miss Jane Marple, but there are several non-series books that I have yet to read. Lucky me.

Casting the Detectives

When a mystery book's character moves from the page to the screen, a lot of changes may occur. I was reminded recently of the casting issue when discussing the late Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series with some friends. You may have seen the three-part adaptation on Masterpiece Mystery! last season, with Rufus Sewell playing Zen. This casting provoked a lot of howls from the more ardent fans of the Zen books. My good friend Georgette opined that Rufus Sewell was as much Aurelio Zen as Owen Wilson would be Josef Stalin. Hmm.

Da!

Duh

What do you think?

Were these two separated at birth?

Caterina Murino & Rufus Sewell

Me, I was fine with Rufus Sewell as Zen. He smoldered nicely, looked great in Italian suits and had explosive chemistry with Caterina Murino, who played Tania Moretti. But I've only read a couple of the books in the series and that was a long time ago. Maybe I'd feel differently if I'd read them all and they were dear to my heart.

What makes for a successful acting portrayal of a beloved mystery book character, then? One thing I do know is that a physical resemblance between the actor and the character isn't a prerequisite. Here is Dashiell Hammett's description of Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon:

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-gray eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down–from high flat temples–in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan."

Humphrey Bogart

David Suchet

That doesn't sound even remotely like Humphrey Bogart, does it? And yet wasn't Bogie near perfection as Spade? Obviously, we need to forget about looks. Instead, the actor must express the essence of the character or make the character his own.

Could there be a better Hercule Poirot than David Suchet? For me, he's Poirot to the life. I didn't dislike Peter Ustinov the many times he played him, but he didn't seem quite right. Albert Finney and Alfred Molina really didn't do it for me. I just hope Suchet gets the chance to achieve his stated ambition to play Poirot in every one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot mysteries.

Margaret Rutherford

Joan Hickson

Agatha Christie's other best-known protagonist, Miss Marple, has also been played by many actors. Just in recent years, PBS has shown productions with Julia McKenzie, Geraldine McEwan and Joan Hickson. They all were appealing to me, though I liked Joan Hickson the best. Going back to the old movies, I just loved Margaret Rutherford, even accepting that she wasn't true to the books' descriptions. She was just so far from even a façade of a retiring nature, and every time I'd see her knitting I'd think that about the only thing I could truly imagine her doing with the needle was tenderizing the rump of a fleeing suspect.

Heston: worst Sherlock ever?

Look on Wikipedia to see the list of actors who have played Sherlock Holmes. The list is something like 70 names long, including such unlikely choices as Charlton Heston and George C. Scott. I remember Rupert Everett's 2004 portrayal of Holmes in the TV movie Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stockings was downright painful, though that had a lot to do with the film itself. I think most Holmes aficionados are satisfied with the portrayals of Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett. They've formed many people's mental pictures of Sherlock Holmes for decades.

Benedict Cumberbatch

The current Holmes depictions by Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey, Jr., are a little more controversial. I thought Cumberbatch captured the Holmes disdain for conventional behavior and all lesser mortals (pretty much everybody, in other words), while Downey's willingness to do and try anything was appealing even if he didn't seem all that much like Holmes. But I'm not a hardcore Holmesian, so maybe I'm too easygoing on the subject.

Roy Ridley

I am, however, a hardcore Lord Peter Wimsey-ite. It's commonly said that Dorothy L. Sayers modeled Wimsey's physical appearance on Roy Ridley, who was a Fellow and Tutor of Oxford's Balliol College. In Whose Body, Sayers describes him as having "rather hard grey eyes [and a] long, indeterminate mouth" and adds to that "a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding forehead, accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness of his tow-coloured hair." Wimsey's appearance wouldn't stop a clock, but he's no oil painting, either. As Sayers would put it more elegantly, "[a]t no . . . time had he any pretensions to good looks."

Ian Carmichael

On the screen, the two most well-known depicters of Dorothy L. Sayers's creation are Ian Carmichael and Edward Petherbridge. I don't downright dislike Carmichael's portrayal, but he's too bumptious for my taste. And I can't get the picture out of my head of his somewhat pudgy body in a harlequin costume in Murder Must Advertise. It was just not right.

Jeremy Sheffield

Edward Petherbridge

On the other hand, Petherbridge seemed a closer physical resemblance to Sayers's Wimsey, though I'd say a touch too effete. More important, Petherbridge conveyed Lord Peter's yearning for Harriet Vane and his occasional angst about the consequences of his detective work. I'd love to see a remake of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories, but I don't know whom I'd cast as the lead. Maybe Jeremy Sheffield, a British actor who caught my eye recently.

Jason Isaacs

Right now, PBS's Masterpiece Mystery! is televising a three-part series based on Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries. Jason Isaacs, looking very different from his well-known part as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, plays Jackson Brodie. First off, he looks great, with his penetrating blue eyes and weather-beaten but handsome face. He has a voice as warm as a peat fire and personality that's an irresistible mix of wry humor leavened with an air of lifelong loss. Since I've never read the books, I have no way to compare his portrayal to Kate Atkinson's creation. Thoughts about that or other crime fiction characters portrayed on screen?