The Friday Fishwrap

We had Town Meeting this week and I've been obsessed for the last couple of months with putting together information and getting out the vote so that our library would be funded. We got the funding, but not without a struggle. We also had a huge debate about whether to adopt a pay-as-you-throw trash program.

Even though it doesn't get too awfully heated at Town Meeting, during the slow bits I always think Murder at Town Meeting would be a great plot for a New England mystery. I can visualize one of the more cantankerous types taking a bathroom break, stopping at the Historical Society's hallway table for a cup of coffee and a homemade brownie, then dropping stone dead 15 minutes later in mid-harangue. Was it a stroke, a heart attack, or was he actually––cue portentous music here––murdered?

During my recovery from Town Meeting, I let art wash over me in the form of one of my favorite caper movies of all time, How to Steal a Million, featuring Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole during their most youthful, chic and charming stage of life. The flick is set and was filmed largely in Paris in the 1960s. Audrey plays Nicole Bonnet, the entirely Givenchy-clad daughter of Charles Bonnet, a famed art collector. What nobody but Nicole knows, though, is that behind the false back of an upstairs wardrobe is an art studio where her beloved Papa (played by the extravagantly eyebrowed Hugh Griffith) forges Impressionist paintings, following in the footsteps of his father, who faked sculptures, like the prize of Bonnet's collection, the Venus statue, ostensibly carved by Benvenuto Cellini.

Hugh Griffith as Charles Bonnet

When Bonnet agrees to allow the Cellini Venus to be exhibited at the Kléber-Lafayette Museum, he doesn't realize that by signing the associated paperwork, he has also agreed to have it examined by an art expert. Cue that portentous music again! Somehow, the Venus needs to disappear before it's examined.

Nicole's first thought is to ask Simon Dermot to steal the statue. Why? Well, she thinks that's Simon’s profession. Her assumption makes sense, when you consider that she first encounters him, at the beginning of the movie, when she finds him in her living room in the dark of night, apparently lifting a valuable painting. She wings him with an inadvertent shot from an antique pistol, he charms her into giving him a ride "home" to the Ritz Hotel, and there's that "meet cute" that every romantic comedy needs.

The Bonnet house on rue Parmentier

Simon, who is actually a lawman charged with identifying art forgers, is naturally puzzled by Nicole's request and asks why she needs to have this particular piece of art stolen. Her answer: "You don't think I'd steal something that didn't belong to me, did you?" Simon: "Excuse me, I spoke without thinking." Without revealing his true profession to Nicole, Simon comes up with the most comically elaborate theft scheme ever. It's an inspired bit, and a genius melding of caper and romantic-comedy seduction. As Simon hands Nicole a museum cleaner's costume, points to the bathroom and orders her to take off her clothes, she asks: "Are we planning the same sort of crime?"

It's an exuberant movie, filmed in eye-popping color-saturated CinemaScope and filled with witty repartée and chemistry to burn between Hepburn and O'Toole. I could watch it again right now. Or maybe I should pull out my DVD of that other Audrey Hepburn classic caper, Charade, with Cary Grant. What to do?

Are you wondering if I'm ever going to talk about any mystery books? Well, frankly, I'm behind on my reading. I'm listening to Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May and the Burning Man when I walk the dog. It's fantastic, but it's currently only available in the US on audio, so I'll save a full review for a date closer to the publication of the US print and ebook versions.

Tell you what, though. Since we're talking about humorous crime, how about a list of the 2014 books up for the Last Laugh (humorous crime novel) Award at this weekend's CrimeFest international crime fiction convention in Bristol, UK? Here you go:

Lawrence Block: The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons
Declan Burke: Crime Always Pays
Christopher Fowler: Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart
Shane Kuhn: Kill Your Boss (published in the US as The Intern’s Handbook)
Chris Pavone: The Accident (This was supposed to be humorous? That might explain what I was missing when I read it.)
L. C. Tyler: Crooked Herring  (winner)

I hope you all have a wonderful and caper-filled spring weekend, even if your capers are just in a piccata sauce.

Amuse-bouche

Amuse-bouche. Definition: A bite-sized hors d'oeuvre. From the French; literally, something that entertains the mouth.

In the late 1980s, British advertising executive Peter Mayle and his wife moved to Provence, where he intended to write a novel. Instead, he wrote an account of his new Provençal life; his oddball neighbors, his misadventures getting his ancient farmhouse renovated, and maddeningly tantalizing descriptions of food and drink. A Year in Provence was a runaway best-seller worldwide, and it helped set off an explosion in Provençal tourism. At regular intervals, Mayle updated his chronicles, publishing Toujours Provence and Encore Provence, as well as other nonfiction books about French living and other topics.

Mayle did get around to writing novels, too; mostly caper-type stories that are the literary equivalent to amuse-bouches in French cuisine. Every few years––probably about the time he needs a cash infusion to maintain his lifestyle––Mayle publishes another 200-pager: Hotel Pastis, Anything Considered, Chasing Cézanne, A Good Year, and The Vintage Caper. The Vintage Caper, published in 2009, is Mayle's first foray into series fiction.

In The Vintage Caper, Los Angeles-based investigator Sam Levitt is hired to track down Danny Roth's stolen multimillion-dollar wine collection. Sam's sleuthing takes him to Marseille and a little wine heist of his own. Along the way, there is a whole lot of mouth-watering food and wine, and the gorgeous scenery and atmosphere of the south of France.

Three years have passed and, in The Marseille Caper, published in 2012, Sam is back in Los Angeles, his romance still going strong with Elena Morales, the insurance executive who hired him to track down Danny Roth's wine. This time around, Sam is hired by Frenchman Francis Reboul to go back to Marseille and be Reboul's frontman in a competition to develop a valuable piece of real estate on a picturesque harbor. Elena goes along for some much-needed rest and relaxation.

The R&R is in short supply, though, as the competition turns ugly. Luckily, Sam has a few tricks up his sleeve, too, and his compatriots––from suave journalist Philippe, to starchy (but always game) translator Daphne, to the Corsican brothers Flo and Jo––have all the guile and flair that Lord Wapping's crew of thugs lack.

This is a featherweight of a story; the kind of book so insubstantial that only an already-popular author could get it published. Still, it's an entertaining way to spend a few hours, especially if you're in the mood for a book that will take you on a mental vacation. During the bleak midwinter, an additional benefit of reading books like Peter Mayle's is that they remind me the days are getting longer and it won't be too much of a wait before I can sit on a terrace too, soaking up the sun, drinking fruity wines and eating––not just reading––amuse-bouches.

Note: A version of this review may appear on Amazon and other reviewing sites under my user names there.

News of the Weird

You know you're a serious mystery reader when real-life news stories immediately get you thinking about how well-suited they'd be for crime fiction. Lately, it seems like that's been happening a lot.


Hog Wild

Did you see the story last week about the 70-year-old man in Oregon who was eaten by his hogs? Terry Garner went out to feed the 700-pound hogs one morning, as usual. His family went looking for him after a few hours and found his dentures on the ground in front of the hog pen. What little was left of him was found inside the pen.

The death is being investigated. The Coos County Sheriff says:

There are several scenarios being investigated, including that Mr. Garner had a health event, such as a heart attack, which then put him in a position where the hogs could consume him. Another scenario being investigated is that given the age and health of Mr. Garner, that one or more of the hogs knocked Mr. Garner to the ground, whereupon the hogs killed and consumed him. In addition, due to the unusual circumstances presented by this case, the Sheriff's Office is investigating to determine if foul play may have resulted in the death of Mr. Garner.

When I read the story, my first reaction was horror and sadness but, I'm embarrassed to admit, my next thoughts were all about the foul play possibility.

I've always thought a farm would make a great place to set a murder and hide the evidence. All that acreage, heavy equipment, large storage sites. But I have to admit I never thought of getting rid of a body by feeding it to the livestock. Gruesome, but very, very dramatic.

Deputy Dawg

In Vaughn, New Mexico, police chief Chris Armijo resigned after losing his legal right to carry a gun. Armijo owed tens of thousands of dollars in child support and then was convicted of a felony after he sold a rifle owned by the town and kept the cash. Armijo's deputy, Brian Bernal, was convicted on assault and battery on somebody living in his home, and he also lost his legal right to carry a gun. The result is that the only member of the Vaughn police department qualified in all job-related certifications is its K-9 unit's German Shepherd, Nikka.

Although Vaughn is reported to be a peaceful town, it's in a remote area of Guadalupe County, whose roads are frequently used by drug traffickers. People are a little nervous about the lack of any armed response capability by Vaughn's police department. Nikka is good at her job, but she doesn't pack heat. It's not that she has outstanding legal charges against her, like her colleagues Armijo and Bernal; it's just that she lacks opposable thumbs and the ability to tell perps things like "stop, or I'll shoot."

This story has all the makings of a shoot-'em-up mystery with comic elements. It probably lends itself even better to the screen than the page, just because dogs are so popular in comic cop movies. Think K-9, Turner and Hooch or the Police Academy movies.

The Maple Syrup Caper

Do you remember reading in August about the discovery that thieves had managed to get away with $30 million worth of maple syrup from Canada's strategic reserve in St-Louise-de-Blandford, Québec? So many questions came to mind after reading about this caper.

First of all, a "strategic reserve" for maple syrup? I live in Maine, where maple syrup is taken darned seriously, and we sure don't have a strategic reserve of the stuff. I'm pretty sure that Vermont, the US's largest producer, doesn't have one either. But here's the thing. Canada produces about five times more maple syrup than all the US states combined and is the source of 75% of the world's sales. Maple syrup is tremendously important in Canada's economy, but its production is variable from year to year, due to weather conditions and the very short sugaring season. So our neighbors to the north have been putting large amounts of maple syrup in storage for the last decade or so in order to meet demand consistently.

Weren't we all curious to know how much maple syrup is $30 million worth? It turns out to be enough to fill one and a half Olympic-size swimming pools. (Now that would really slow down lap times.) Even more amazing is the fact that the syrup was stored in barrels and the barrels themselves weren't stolen. The thieves apparently siphoned the syrup out of the warehouse's barrels––that's thousands of barrels––and got away with it. The daring robbery was revealed during an inventory check when somebody discovered that the warehouse's barrels were empty.

Last week, acting on the basis of a search warrant requested of a New Brunswick judge by the Sûreté du Québec, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided SK Export in New Brunswick and seized 600 barrels there that they believe are filled with syrup from the theft. SK representatives say they bought the syrup from their regular suppliers in Québec, at the normally-expected price, and that the seizure is part of a plot against SK by the Federation of Québec Maple Syrup Producers, which has previously claimed that SK buys syrup from unauthorized sources. (I have no idea what an "unauthorized" source is––or an authorized source, for that matter.) Nevertheless, the Mounties loaded up the syrup––in 16 trailer trucks––and moved it back to the strategic reserve under heavy guard.

This 600 barrels of recovered maple syrup is nowhere near the total amount stolen, so the investigation into the theft continues. The Sûreté du Québec has been meeting with various provincial producers and asking them to agree to lie detector tests. I'd love to sit in on those interviews.

If somebody doesn't incorporate the great maple syrup heist into a novel, I'll eat my hat––with maple syrup on top. Louise Penny's most recent Armand Gamache book was so serious that I'm thinking she could use some comic relief in her next outing. Since Gamache actually works for the Sûreté du Québec, isn't he an obvious choice to get involved in this? Maybe not, since he's a homicide cop, but this is fiction, so I'm sure Louise Penny could alter the facts a little and smuggle a corpse into this caper somewhere––like maybe one of those barrels.

Alternatively, this is another story that would translate well to the screen, in a heist film like The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven or How to Steal a Million––but with that certain je ne sais quoi needed when the MacGuffin is close to a million gallons of French-Canadian maple syrup, and the Mounties are involved. (I'm trying hard not to think of Dudley Do-Right here.)

* * *

Of course, some news of the weird doesn't transfer so well to crime fiction. I'm cautiously optimistic that nobody will be inspired to fictionalize other recent news stories, like the frat boy who overdosed on an alcohol enema, or the about-to-be-groom who suffered a ruptured bladder at his stag party when a woman doing a pole dance landed hard on him as he lay at the base of the pole.

Not Everybody Wishes You Well

I've been wringing my hands, racking my brain, and ransacking my books since Sister Mary Murderous posted her list of favorite 2011 reads. I'm not the organized person she is, and trying to figure out which the heck books I read in 2011, let alone which were my favorites, is a Sisyphean chore. These questions will require more mental and physical excavations over the next few weeks, but not completing this task is inconceivable. The guilt I'm already feeling at my lateness allowed me to eat pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning while my brain smoldered. Compiling my best-of-2011 list is a tough job, but others in fiction had tougher lives than I do. Let me point out a few of them in these books I read in 2011.

Oh Lordy. An incredibly brutal world, religious passion, and bizarre characters. Themes of destruction, creation, and redemption. Last year I read about Francis Tarwater, a 14-year-old boy who struggles with his destiny as a prophet in Flannery O'Connor's ironic southern gothic The Violent Bear It Away. Last night I read Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time, a 2011 book its publisher states "marr[ies] the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers with the religious and gothic overtones of Flannery O'Connor at her most haunting." Doubleday got that right. The Devil All the Time has a three-story plotline involving Arvis Eugene Russell, an orphaned 9-year-old boy, whose beautiful mother Charlotte dies of cancer despite her husband Willard's blood sacrifices on his prayer log in the woods; a traveling preacher named Roy and his wheelchair-bound friend Theodore; and a young married couple who use their summer vacations to pick up and kill hitchhikers. This account takes place from the end of World War II to the mid-1960s in the hardscrabble world of Knockemstiff, a town in rural southern Ohio, and West Virginia. Lovers of noir should read no more about this powerful book; they should just read it.

The fictional world of Daniel Woodrell contains less religious fervor than Pollock's but no less brutality. His three hardboiled novels have been collected into the 2011 omnibus The Bayou Trilogy. These bold and gritty tales are set in St. Bruno, in Louisiana's bayou country north of New Orleans. They feature Cajun ex-prizefighter-turned-cop Rene Shade, who lives above his mother's pool hall and maintains complicated relationships with his two brothers, bar-owner Tip and prosecutor Francois. The first novel in the Trilogy, Under the Bright Lights, concerns the killing of a black member of the city council. Despite the mayor's desire that the police investigation calls it a robbery, Shade's digging leads to a festering mess of corruption and betrayal. In Muscle for the Wing, some ex-cons try to take over St. Bruno's gambling scene, and Rene becomes involved. The Ones You Do finds Shade's long-gone father, pro gambler John X., returning to St. Bruno.

Woodrell grew up on the Mississippi River and currently lives in the Ozarks. He is a masterful storyteller and his characters––desperate losers anxious to escape their fates and more sophisticated bad guys who prey on them––are unforgettable. Woodrell is author of four standalone novels, including the wonderful Winter's Bone (16-year-old Ree Dolly has one week to find her meth-cooking, bail-jumping father before losing the family home), which was made into the 2010 movie of the same name.

The life of Elmore Leonard's Mickey Dawson, wife of real-estate developer Frank Dawson, doesn't seem too tough. She lives in a big brown and white Tudor house in a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Tennis and drinks at the country club make up her life in The Switch. Suddenly, her life becomes very tough when she is kidnapped and held for ransom. The ransom collecting is complicated by the facts that (1) both Mickey and her husband are having affairs, and (2) the thugs can't trust each other. As usual, Leonard's ear for dialog and his plotting are first-rate. This caper, complicated for its participants, is an uncomplicated and fun time for its readers.

Half the world away, life is not easy for characters in Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon. The Wandering Falcon of the title is born near the book's beginning, and the reader catches glimpses of him as he moves from childhood to adulthood. The chapters are like pop beads strung together––neither completely independent stories nor a flowing narrative from one chapter to the next. This memorable nonmystery fiction features lyrical writing by an 80-year-old man who well knows the people and region of plains and mountains in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where tribesmen have moved their families and animals according to the season for centuries. Now, governmental regulations and pressures of modernity are changing their lives. The slim 2011 book is a glimpse at an area of the world that's in the news but still mysterious to many of us. After reading it, I have a better understanding, and I highly recommend it.

Well, back to the difficult job of pondering my favorite books from this past year. I hope you have read some books recently that would qualify for your own best reads, because we would love to hear about them. There aren't many days left in 2011. I'm not going to think about how quickly we'll be amassing our best-books-of-2012 lists. Hmmm....