I’ve written more than a few British-style mysteries (see the web page “Books and Short Fiction), and questions keep arising as I write that show my ignorance about life in the UK, of course, but visitors to this blog—they could be American readers or authors themselves—might have also considered some of them. These questions aren’t answered in any detail if at all in my British-style mysteries. Perhaps they shouldn’t be, or they shouldn’t even be asked by an inquisitive Yank who lives across the pond in a country with its own many unanswered questions, but I’m interested in the answers.

Here’s my current list:

Do Brits feel like they’re part of Europe or not? I do mention Brexit in my British-style mysteries, more in the aftermath of PM Boris Johnson’s reign than what led to PM Teresa May’s downfall. (In my stories, the latter received more attention for trying to send those descendants of immigrants who helped clean up after World War II back to their home countries. Esther Brookstone’s handyman in her gallery has Jamaican ancestors, and Steve Morgan’s ARO leader has ancestors from Belize.) Brexit caused a whole host of problems, so a related question here might be: Will the UK ever return to the EU?

Did Winnie and his cronies feel like they’d made a pact with the Devil in World War II? This is related to Europeans’ hate-love affair with Putin. The UK is less dependent on Russia’s petroleum exports, but there’s no doubt that part of the world isn’t always comfortable in its support of Ukraine, especially fascist-leaning countries like Austria, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Churchill’s pact with Stalin followed one old Joe made with Hitler. While Winnie didn’t practice appeasement with Hitler like Chamberlain (or Europeans often do today with Putin), I doubted he liked Stalin very much. Or communists, for that matter (except for Cuban cigars?). Current opinions about Putin, who desperately wants to restore that evil Russian empire, the USSR, and is willing to have thousands of Russian soldiers slaughtered to do it, are mostly negative even among Labour Party members, primarily because the UK thinks of Ukraine as part of Europe even if people in the UK don’t think their country is.

How could Brits have allowed the Iron Lady to lead them into that war for the Malvinas? It was clearly a ploy created by Margaret Thatcher to rev up British pride and make her more popular; but outside the UK, it led many people to believe that Britain was struggling for relevance at best and becoming a bad bully at worst. Participation in a few NATO ops was a lot more noble. Do the Brits also think that Malvinas conflict just Thatcher’s folly? (Note that I don’t call those islands the Falklands.)

What are current attitudes in the UK toward colonialism and their participation in the slave trade? In reference to the Malvinas, there’s some truth in the statement that long ago “the sun never set on the British Empire.” There’s patriotism and pride in that statement. But many outside the UK see the colonial period as causing many problems worldwide, even current ones. From Hong Kong to India, many African nations, Northern Ireland, and Israel, British colonialism left bad feelings bitter hatreds among its subjects. Australia was only a place to send convicts remember, and the slave trade made some Brits a lot of money. Do the UK’s citizens regret any of that?

How did the Brits get rid of Cromwell? That Puritan fanatic created havoc inside and outside England. Perhaps he’s also become a model for religious fundamentalists in the US as well as the UK, although the former are probably more Pope-haters than the latter because the Anglicans (Church of England) aren’t Catholic only because Henry VIII wanted to have a few divorces. Old Oliver was a bit more of a bloodthirsty fascist than Henry, though, especially if you allow for their different eras. Just ask the Irish what they think of Cromwell. How to get rid of fanatical religious leaders of oppressive theocracies like the current Ayatollahs in Iran and future ones like the US House Speaker Mike Johnson and his cohorts seems to be a worldwide problem, hence the importance of this question.

I’m sure that other questions I’d like to ask Brits will keep popping up if I continue to write Brit-style mysteries. Stay tuned.

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

My British-style mysteries. The published ones started with Rembrandt’s Angel; the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series ended with nine novels (two are free PDF downloads—see the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). Esther’s stories are linked to the three novels in the “Inspector Steve Morgan Trilogy” and sometimes to my short fiction stories (also found in that list of free PDF downloads). My fascination with British-style mysteries began with Covid-19 enforced “sheltering in place” where I perused many novels that go far beyond anything Agatha Christie ever imagined. (The British publisher Joffe Books has many multi-novel sets that are inexpensive “best buys” in this genre. Visitors to this blog should check them out…and some of mine as well!)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

[Note from Steve: I’ve been remiss in offering these short stories and novellas. If anyone cares, I’ve been doing what the title says. (I hope…although, some who also read my political blog might argue that my retirement from running novelistic marathons is far from graceful!) In any case, I thought it was appropriate to end this series by returning to my intrepid Detective Rolando Castilblanco, one of my earliest creations. I hope you enjoy the story!]

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Aging Gracefully

Copyright 2024, Steven M. Moore

Pam put down her section of the Times, removed her reading glasses, and smiled at me. I put down my glass of Jameson—I only did a few sips now, still neat—and smiled back. Drinking that brew never had been an homage to the stereotypical Irish cops in the NYPD. I just preferred it over other whiskeys—bourbon too biting, scotch too smoky—and whiskey over rum and coke or some other drink people often consider more typical of Puerto Ricans. Maybe I had acquired enough blarney to make my choice even more logical?

I knew this woman so well now that which smile she was flashing me was obvious: She was going to propose something that I might not be keen on doing but would willingly do if I could because she’s the love of my life. There might even be an argument that I knew I’d probably lose, again willingly. After all, the man is the king of his castle until the queen arrives, as they say. That’s a rule for any man to live by when it came to his woman! And in my case, I figured I was lucky to have her.

Let’s face it: I’ve always looked like many of the thugs I’ve often pursued and arrested, and that never changed for the better as I aged. I’m a bear of a man, always have been, from the time when I was still a young and nimble Navy SEAL traipsing around in the Middle East to when I walked out the precinct’s doors to become ex-Sergeant Rolando Castilblanco, celebratory emphasis on “ex.”

None of my detective skills involved mind-reading, though, so I waited to hear what mi mariposa’s sly smile meant, secure in the knowledge that whatever it meant might get me into trouble. That had happened, sometimes getting Pam into trouble as well.

“You know, Rollie, our European trip wasn’t exactly the romantic vacation I’d imagined.”

Talk about stating the obvious! Assuming her comment was about how the terrorist Kadar had resurrected from the dead to begin his evil campaign by nearly killing me, a very good assumption albeit a bit dated, Pam’s observation was an understatement. Or was she referring to our more recent little getaway when we visited Esther and Bastiann in London? That had begun back in New York with an attack on our daughter, Ceci. I ended up working in London to thwart some Chinese agents, so that trip wasn’t exactly pleasureful either.

It was unusual and interesting how my “Big Apple beat” prowling for criminal lowlifes on the city’s mean streets so often took me elsewhere in the US and abroad. Pursuing the murderer of an FBI agent’s son—the agent had been a good friend and became a love interest for my partner Chen—that pursuit had taken me to the Fascist Republic of Texas and had ended in a trip to the Caribbean. (The state had become much worse over the years, a place smart Latinos and women needing abortions had to avoid now because their lives depended on it!) Unlike AOC and all her little commies, I’d seen Cuba wasn’t the worker’s paradise, but maybe I was just biased after being shot at in Gitmo.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, mi amor,” I said to my wife. “What are you proposing?”

***

Pam thought a moment. She’d been a TV personality but was without a script writer, so maybe she was looking for the right words to convince me? I knew she would eventually, but I hoped it wasn’t a long, drawn-out discussion.

“I was referring to our trip when that awful terrorist was kidnapping those aristocrats,” she finally said.

I nodded: That had been my first guess. Kadar had made both our lives and Chen’s miserable. Where was this going?

“We could avoid any possibility for a repetition of something like that by taking a river cruise like Esther and Bastiann did for their honeymoon.”

“Please remember that Bastiann had to solve a murder case on that riverboat,” I said. “That wasn’t exactly a joyful and romantic honeymoon for those two old lovebirds.”

“Oh, that could never occur again. You’re not a cop any longer; I’m not a reporter. Very few people even know we exist anymore. Our kids now live more dangerous lives that we do.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her about that—Ceci was a CSI and Pedro was a cop, and both had already proven their livelihoods could lead them into danger—but as an ex-cop, I still had many enemies, including some lowlifes still in jail who might have it in for me and would soon get out for “good behavior.” Even dumb apes with one-track minds can hold a grudge for years!

“I suppose you have a tour already picked out?”

“I do. The same tour in fact with the same riverboat company Esther and Bastiann used.” She smiled. This was now one of her gotcha-smiles. “Less chance of a repeat if I understand Bayesian statistics at all.”

Bayesian statistics? Is that a thing? What the hell has she been reading? Pam had always been more curious and self-taught than I am. Her work had covered lots of topics with interviews of many so-called experts on many things. The perps I’d caught were generally the dumb ones. The smart perps, often psychotic sociopaths, used their better brains to commit evil deeds, an exception being a certain ex-president who wasn’t smart at all and just barely escaped serious jail time…and maybe a firing squad for being a traitor?

“Are we doing Munich or Prague before the riverboat cruise?” I knew something about Esther and Bastiann’s trip, more his version than hers.

“No. This will be a trial run for you. It should be easy. They have one-, two-, or three-level difficulty ratings for their land tours, or we can just stay onboard and watch the Danube flow by.”

Oh joy, I thought, recalling that all those new fascist European countries we’d also be passing by.

***

Our European super-vacation was delayed!

I knew something was wrong as we sat at our gate at JFK and I heard shots fired. Later I learned that the small group of terrorists had broken through TSA security, killing three poor agents on their way to our gate.

When they arrived, I saw they were dressed in business suits. (I suppose full military regalia might have been suspicious.) They were waving pistols with huge magazines hanging from their undersides; I guessed they had more mags in their pockets. TSAs’ scanners would have spotted those weapons obviously, so that must be why they’d broken through the security station. An obvious point of failure! Maybe TSA needed to screen people as they entered the terminal instead?

Domestic terrorism had plagued the US even before that ex-president had tried to overthrow the US government claiming fraud in that election where he’d been the big loser. Militia members from California had participated in a crazy cartel leader’s plan to take over most of the American drug trade that oxycontin manufacturers had shown to be so profitable. Al Qaeda terrorists had participated as well. It had been a huge cluster-fuck that had almost killed Hal, an American Interpol colleague of the Dutch Bastiann; they’d become consultants for MI5. I knew all this for multiple reasons, the last because of submarines. Long story!

Our terrorists didn’t wear red hats, big sombreros, or military helmets, some apparel that might have made security agents wonder. They looked more like young businessmen off to have a good time at a boondoggling meeting somewhere in Europe. I bided my time, thinking about one, what they intended to accomplish, and two, what I could do to help prevent it. It was clear that the terminal would soon be invaded by US agents of all types. In a firefight, innocent people could die. Shit, Pam and I could die! Not exactly the vacation she’d wanted!

Sometimes on a case, Chen or I discussed a perp’s possible motives. Knowing them could help us solve the case. The weird cases were those we solved without ever learning the motives. In Europe, the case of that terrorist Kadar had almost been like that. He’d had a whole lot of so-called “counterterrorism experts” baffled. There’d been a clear motive, a terrible one, to be honest, so we’d been lucky to stop him.

Consequently, I couldn’t help wondering what these domestic terrorists’ motives were. With all the airport’s security around and more on call who’d be there in minutes, why take the risk of mounting what could very well be a suicide op for them?

Suicide? My memories time-traveled back to 9/11/2001! Our plane wasn’t a good one to hijack to Cuba or anywhere else. It was a huge jumbo with a lot of twelve-seat rows in a 3-6-3 combo separated by two aisles. I used my smart phone to find out where it was headed after Frankfort, Germany, hoping that would provide a clue. The answer I got was Tel Aviv, Israel.

Despite that crazy ex-president’s efforts—he’d encouraged the Israelis to make Jerusalem their new capital, pissing off a lot of Muslims and even Christians who shared that holy city as a shrine—Tel Aviv was still the most important city in Israel for multiple reasons, mostly economic. It was a safe assumption that the SOBs at JFK wanted to go there, although the plane would have enough fuel to go to other places. And big cities don’t only exist in America! London or Paris could also be a target. (The jumbo would need a large airport to land, if a landing was in the terrorists’ plan.)

As the terrorists tried to maintain control of a lot of frightened passengers, I studied them. They were black-haired, brown-eyed, and swarthy-skinned, but hell, that describes me as well! They could be from anywhere and fanatics about anything.

I moved closer to a subgroup of them to try to determine their language. A gun swung in my direction to cover me.

***

Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page.)

Want to read the rest of this story? Easy…but TANSTAFL, because you’ll have to make a few clicks. Rather than serialize it, you will find it next week in the free PDF download “Castilblanco Redux Plus Two,” a short fiction collection that contains two more crime stories set in the Sheffield area of England. Consider all these and many other free PDF downloads of crime mysteries to be an introduction to the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco,” “Esther Brookstone Art Detective,” and “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, Have fun!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Far too often!

The Star Wars series turned me off with its very first film (whatever number that was in their all-too-cute numbering scheme). I knew immediately that it was basically a fantasy filled with references to Japanese ninjas, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s characters (even the names!), and Isaac Asimov’s plot devices (the Foundation). Where were the lawyers at that time who went after plagiarists? (Or the ones even now?) Jedi warriors and fairy-tale princesses with light sabers? C’mon! (Okay, I’ll admit the music was interesting, but I liked that composer a lot more when he was leading the Boston Pops.)

Frank Herbert’s Dune series is even worse as sci-fi but at least it was in book form long before Hollywood screenwriters took a break from writing terrible scripts (e.g. Star Wars!) and tried to adapt those novels to the silver screen (a new Marvel Comics-like version is about to come out). Herbert’s books were already pure fantasy (forget that damn Hugo because it’s also given for fantasy!) filled with magic, mysticism, sandworms, and that miraculous spice existing only on one arid world, a coveted and moneymaking substance that Ponce de Leon might have searched for in Florida if he could get past DeSantis’s anti-immigrant Gestapo. (I’m sure Ron would have arrested him and sent him to New York if that fascist Florida governor and huge presidential primary loser had been around back then.) The Dune series is just more fantasy, whether in book or movie format. (The movies have been worse than the books, but that’s almost always the case!)

Too many people (a majority who have never read a book, by the way…if they can read—Trump can’t) conflate fantasy with sci-fi, and authors and screenwriters exploit them by adding a few starships and blasters to Harry Potter and call it sci-fi. (A silly author like Margaret Atwood might pardon their sins by calling it all “speculative fiction,” of course; she’s become rich peddling her fantasies.) That’s the formula for creating a sci-fi classic, right? Wrong!

Science fiction, sci-fi for short, even if you accept A. C. Clarke’s claim that any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic (consider Ugh the Caveman finding some time-traveler’s smart phone, basically a little computer!), must be some sort of reasonable extrapolation of current science. Comsats were created by Clarke in his fiction long before Elon Musk littered near-earth orbits with his space junk! Sure, the farther into the future an author goes with his story, the more bold the extrapolation has to be, and it all often approaches Clarke’s limit. But science fiction stories nowadays have generally ceased to be a logical extensions of current science, stories that often contain clear violations of known physical laws, which is what fantasy does (and all the examples above, I might add).

I read very little fantasy now—I graduated from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter on Mars stories with their Jedi warriors and beautiful egg-laying princesses decades ago. (For all their sophistication, I guess those Martians didn’t have IVF; and John Carter probably never realized an egg back on Earth was already a chicken, so he couldn’t apply that lesson learned to Martian females’ eggs!) I especially avoid fantasy stories if their authors claim they’re sci-fi. (You can comment on this post and tell me if you agree or disagree.)

Or, you might want to read some sci-fi classics written by Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and others (even some of mine?) to see how good sci-fi can be when it’s not conflated with fantasy! (By the way, the best sci-fi authors, like me, are ex-scientists. When they’re not, they can easily confuse fantasy with sci-fi!)

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Comments are always welcome. (Just follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page. If you don’t, I might send you an ESP-transmitted whack with my light saber!)

“Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.” There are three complete sci-fi novels in this one inexpensive bundle. The first, Survivors of the Chaos, will seem a bit too close for comfort to what’s going on in the US and the world today. The last leads into the novel Rogue Planet and the Dr, Carlos short stories. (The first book represents well deserved mockery of the current Iranian regime; for the second collection, see the list of free downloadable PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.) These are “evergreen books” (as entertaining, fresh, and hopefully still profound now as on the day I finished their manuscripts), but sci-fi in general can never get old, can it?

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

From 1984 to Atlas Shrugged and Ender’s Game, authors have stated their political positions. When their works take extreme positions and/or are morally extreme, one way or the other, readers and critics can react. All three novels just mentioned are political, debatable, but shouldn’t be banned.

This article applies not only to the past, however. In fact, it’s more about authors failing to state their positions now. As Tom Clancy, certainly a successful author if not a philosophical or political sage, said, fiction has to seem real, and I would add that real human beings are philosophical and political animals. I’m not asking authors to take positions I favor; I’m telling them to take positions! Period. I’m not asking them to present both sides of an issue nor take what I’d call the moral high (or low) road either. But authors who write silly fantasies (J. K. Rowling’s a well-known example) and schmaltzy or smutty romances (I don’t read them, so that Fifty Shades crap is the only example that comes to mind) are shirking their duty of being honest observers of the human condition when writing their stories, usually motivated by their desire to make tons of money by appealing to readers’ escapist and/or prurient interests. Of course, they share the blame with the acquisition editors of every publisher under the Big Five conglomerates huge umbrellas.

Some of my readers have told me that I’m too political in my fiction, even friends who know better to believe that I measure my success as a writer by my sales figures. I celebrate those comments! They mean that I’ve done my job!

Too many authors nowadays write pablum for the masses and try to please all readers all the time in order to maximize their royalties, often pleasing no one in the process. They become accomplices in crimes against humanity by becoming completely irrelevant. All three authors of the books mentioned in my first paragraph are relevant in the sense that their fiction teaches a reader something I might agree or not agree with—the dangers of fascism, quirky economic theories, and homophobia, respectively—but what they say is important in current political debates as they were when the books were published. Relevance is the key feature we should demand of fiction in today’s troubling times; and if that has lasting value, all the better!

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Defanging the Red Dragon. I originally wrote this novel as a 2022 holiday gift to my readers. It features my quartet of detectives—Brookstone, Castilblanco, Chen, and van Coevorden—from two series—“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” and “Esther Brookstone Art Detective”—and counts as the eighth novel in the first series and the sixth in the second. It’s also completely free (as is Esther’s seventh). (See the list of free downloadable PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

While the dictator Vladimir Putin and his fascist Russian accomplices and enablers are featured more as villains in those two series, this free novel has the fascist Xi and his Chinese spies as the major villains. But there are good Chinese too: Esther’s new artist friends, for example, who play important roles. They had to flee when the Chinese fascists took over Hong Kong.

Considering the title and the importance of those creative and gentle Chinese artists, let me present this novel to you as a celebration of the “Year of the Dragon,” 2024. You won’t find this book in any bookstore, but it’s a complete novel you might not want to miss. Like all good “political fiction,” it will be forever evergreen. Download it now.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Many professors influenced me in various ways as a student; among them: James Hartle, the young physicist who later often worked with Stephen Hawking; the old Jesuit priest who taught Latin American history (I forget his name—like Mr. Biden, this old author can forget a few things, but this priest didn’t avoid the scandals or fail to mention the many leaders who fathered so many illegitimate childdren—and he became the model for Bastiann van Coevorden’s priest involved in that Interpol agent’s marriage to Esther Brookstone, the art detective); and N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa Native American who taught me to love poetry.

Dr. Momaday is probably best known for House Made of Dawn, his Pulitzer-prize winning novel describing the life of a young Native American who returns to the reservation from the war with what we’d now call PTSD. But he also left us with many poems, short stories, and essays.

I can still see him pacing up there on the stage, book in hand and reading classic poetry in that expressive baritone voice (perhaps you saw him in that PBS special a few years ago?), while I struggled to decipher the content and emotion contained in those journeys through English poetry with this marvelous time-travel guide. As a first-semester freshman, college was new to me, but I needn’t have worried. The lectures took place in a large lecture class with over one-hundred students, so the professor had his group of TAs. Maybe some of them approached Momaday’s competence, but mine didn’t. (I took the experience gained in those first large lecture courses into account when I introduced them in South America, but that’s another tale.) I was still able to ace that first college English course because all I had to do was include a mention of Freud somewhere in the quizzes and reports; the TA loved “Freudian interpretations” and rewarded them in his grading!

Of course, the other thing Professor Momaday taught me was that I am not a poet! While I’ve published a few pathetic attempts (I’m partial to “Ode to St. John” by Esther Brookstone in Son of Thunder and “A Goodbye” by Penelope Castro in Menace from Moscow), I’ve compensated for my lack of skills in writing poetry by creating a few novels instead.

N. Scott Momaday was awarded the Pulitzer after I had him as an English professor. I feel that my experience as his student, though, could beat any obtained in an MFA course. I read House Made of Dawn after that college English course. Only critics can determine how much that influenced my own writing, but Professor Momaday is certainly someone whom I’ll always fondly remember.

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The Collector. This fifth book in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series is special in several ways: Related to the above, the reader might have fun with Rolando Castilblanco’s poem “On Modern Art.” (I originally wrote it for my father, who became a full-time artist in his later years, specializing in landscapes but often expressing sentiments similar to those in the poem.) It also introduces Esther Brookstone for the first time. My two NYPD detectives go after a criminal organization that uses stolen artwork to finance other nefarious activities, something akin to a prequel to Rembrandt’s Angel, and also dealing with real stolen artwork, in this case from Boston’s Stuart Gardner museum. This novel stands alone, though, and can be found everywhere quality ebooks are sold (even on Amazon!).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Last week’s post about James Patterson, Inc., reminded me of some of the pros and cons of first-person stories. They’re usually first-person past, with the main character or chronicler relating what happened, but they can be first-person present as well. They’re good for mystery, crime, and thriller stories when the author wants the reader to learn what’s going on in lock-step with the person telling the story.

It’s also good writing technique even in sci-fi for the same reason. I’m into the third novel of “The Earthburst Saga,” a six-novel series by Craig Falconer. (I bought all seven at once in a bundle. Like my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” that was too good of a bargain to pass up!) After the first, Last Man Standing, I thought, “What’s this author going to do for an encore?” The second novel is different but just as engaging, though. (You may take this part of the post as five-star reviews of the two, by the way.) Emotions and tensions run high as the hero-scientist relates his multiple tales of survival in the first person. (There are a few slip-ups where Ray Barclay seems to know too much about what’s going on in other people’s minds, including his pet parrot, but no one’s perfect!) I repeat: The use of the first person adds a lot to this saga!

A lot of fiction is in third person, past tense, because its use gives all the characters equal opportunity: The author can describe what’s going on from their different points of view (POVs). Of course, this can lead to confusion. Jumping around between different POVs, often called “head-hopping,” shouldn’t occur more often than section to section; some writing coaches say no more than chapter to chapter. When I started out, I was oblivious to this and how it could confuse a reader. An author friend set me straight, and I’ve been careful ever since (but far from perfect, I’m sure). Yet I’ve seen even MFAs make head-hopping mistakes, so either their profs didn’t teach POV or their students ignored the lessons.

The use of first person present or past tense helps avoid POV confusion. It also gives a reader more a sense of direct participation: He becomes the character telling the story. In Mr. Falconer’s first book, I felt all the main character’s desperation and elation, his incredible sadness at seeing dead friends, and his rage when he realizes he’s been duped. A detective and the reader can discover the clues together; a soldier and the reader both hear the sound of gunfire; a tween’s first kiss is experienced by the main character and the tween-reader.

There are negatives for using the first person, though: The reader only experiences other characters indirectly via the character relating the story. One way around this is to use a combination. For example, the author can alternate the first person from chapter to chapter between two main characters. (I did that in A Time Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse.) Or the author can alternate between first person in one chapter and third person in another. (I did that for all the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco novels. Detective Castilblanco is almost always in first person, other characters in third. A. G. Carolan also used that technique in Mind Games.)

Two of my novels, Muddlin’ Through and The Last Humans, illustrate another problem with using first person: They’re both written in first person, but the main characters are women! That might give a male author pause (same for a female author writing as a male), especially in romance scenes! I took that as a challenge the first time I tried it in Muddlin’ Through (I often challenge myself), but it’s not really any different from writing third-person prose: You simply must become the character. (I suppose that’s more daunting for a male author writing as a woman than the reverse. Men tend to understand women less than women understand men, especially if the fellow isn’t very observant!)

The art of writing includes handling POV and person correctly. Many authors can fail to do this. For example, I’ve read many British-style mysteries full of confusing head-hopping. This can be disastrous in the mystery genre. I often have to ask myself, how does this character know this? When the reader is playing detective and looking for clues, it can almost seem like cheating…or worse: The author gives away the mystery before his detective solves the case!

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“The Last Humans Trilogy.” Ex-USN SAR and LA County Sheriff’s diver Penny Castro is on a forensics dive off the California coast when the world almost ends after a biowarfare attack. In the first novel, The Last Humans, she struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic landscape that remains, but the remains of the US government exploit her survival skills. In the second novel, A New Dawn, she’s forced to leave her new family to prevent a repeat attack from the first one’s country of origin. In the third, Menace from Moscow, she must recover missiles from a sunken US submarine in the Caribbean before the Russians can get to them. Exciting armchair-travel, action, and suspense await the reader of this post-apocalyptic trilogy. All three novels available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (And if you want to see more lessons on writing fiction like this one, please download my little course “Writing Fiction,” a free PDF found in the list on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Sorry, Mr. Patterson, I refuse to read your latest book. I haven’t read what comes off the assembly lines at James Patterson, Inc., in fact, for quite a while. You’ve continued to be like the greedy thesis adviser who puts his name first on an academic publication so he’ll get all the credit and citations, not his student; i.e., the second author’s name is below yours in small print…and for exactly the same reasons! Mr. Patterson, you haven’t written anything really original or interesting in a long time. Instead, James Patterson, Inc. has turned out book after book, including young adult and romance stories as you, its CEO, continues to attack self-published authors. You’re the leader and the epitome of members from that group of formulaic mares and stallions waiting for the glue factory in the Big Five publishing conglomerates’ stables.

Now you’re advertising Holmes, Marple, and Poe everywhere, even on TV. Wow! How original that book must be? Maybe it’s a time-travel yarn about those famous fictional and real people teaming up on some faraway planet? Or about three kids playing detective, a Hardy boys + Nancy Drew-like story to keep your foot in YA fiction’s door? Or a modern Fifty Shades of something-romance about a lusty, sexy triad? I don’t care what it is. I’m not reading it!

FYI to you and all readers of this blog: I long ago put Marple and Poirot together when I began  the now nine-book long “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, but those were only nicknames for the main characters: Esther is a more active Marple; and Bastiann van Coevorden, the other half of the detective-duo,  only looks like David Suchet, the actor who portrayed Poirot so often. (By the way, Mr. Patterson, Poe was a mystery writer, not a character, so that’s a negative for your title as well.) Also, A. B. Carolan has written YA sci-fi mysteries where one (The Secret Lab) considers a gang of kids on the ISS in the future and another (The Secret of the Urns) has a daughter of a triad as a main character. Because I won’t read Patterson Inc.’s new book, I can’t tell if multiple crimes of plagiarism have been committed by you, but Patterson Inc.’s hyping this new book as something cleverly original just seems wrong, even if it only steals from those awful movies about Holmes.

There was a time long ago when I read your books, Mr. Patterson. I’ll give you some credit: Your early Alex Cross books (where only your name appears as author, so either you weren’t giving ghostwriters credit back then, or you actually managed to write them) taught me that a mix of first person and third person points of view is an interesting technique to use, which I did in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series (eight novels). But the Alex Cross books were your first to become formulaic and boring, causing me to forget about reading anything you or your slave-authors produce. In fact, you’re responsible for me ignoring almost any fiction the Big Five conglomerates produce!

I suppose it’s natural that Big Five authors will try to continue their hold on the book market at any cost. (Sue Grafton never finished the alphabet, though.) That’s sad, but I feel more for those authors Patterson Inc. exploits. They should break the ties to you, Mr. Patterson, and write their own stories. I might read those.

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Marple and Poirot together. The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is nine-novels strong, and each one is an original mystery and crime thriller that follows no Big Five formulaic plan. Esther is a more active Marple (and hates that detractors identify her with Christie’s famous character!); Bastiann van Coevorden, her paramour and eventual husband, is an Interpol agent who ends up as an MI5 consultant (he only looks like the actor who played Poirot). She’s very British; he’s very Dutch, not Belgian like Poirot. Their adventures will take any armchair travelers brave enough to avoid the Big Fives formulaic fiction to England, Europe, and even to the Middle East and South America. Two novels, Defanging the Red Dragon and Intolerance, are free PDF downloads. (See the list on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page. Do you think Patterson Inc. would ever give away two complete novels?)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Renegade. Adam Kinzinger, author (2023). Between Liz Cheney’s book (reviewed last week) and this one, the reader will have most of the full story of what led up to January 6, 2021 and what has come after in the years that followed, laying the foundation for holding DJT accountable for the mayhem and murder that occurred as a consequence of his futile attempt to lead a coup against the duly elected new president Joe Biden and American government in general. You will only need to add the select committee’s full report to get the full story, one that most of the Marchin’ MAGA Morons don’t care about, of course. (Narcissus le Grand is their fuehrer, king, and lord who they believe walks on water. He will save them from all the non-white invaders and God deniers, don’t you know? But can he save them from themselves?)

Kinzinger’s is the most personal tale which nicely complements Cheney’s. He is more biographical and goes farther back in time. You peek inside his mind a lot more. His is a story about the makings of a true conservative, what fascist Trump and his fascist followers are not and never can be, because Kinzinger believes, as I do, that true conservatives are needed to balance that exuberant progressivism that so often fails to see the unplanned-for bad consequences of their policies. (“Sanctuary cities” are an obvious example because the federal government has so far refused to help them.) There are only a few such conservatives left in government, especially in Congress and SCOTUS. Many true conservatives in Congress have had to run for their lives literally because of fascist threats to them and their families. Even Kinzinger’s family members and friends who’d supported him in his political campaigns for the House in Illinois turned against him. He now lives near his wife’s family in Texas, of all places. (I’d never live in Texas; it’s a completely fascist state now, and it really belongs to Mexico.) And all his troubles maxed out when Cheney and he participated in that January 6^th committee investigating Trump’s attempted coup. (Cheney had it worse in Wyoming. I imagine that both still have bodyguards as DJT’s “retribution campaign” for 2024 includes his spurring on followers to maim and kill anyone who defied him.) Remember the gallows erected on January 6 and the chants of “Hang Mike Pence!”? According to many fascist members of Congress, these were just ordinary Americans on a tour of the Capitol!

Kinzinger points out how Il Duce’s followers live in a fictional alternate reality created by their fuehrer and promoted by Fox News and other far-right media. That old Nazi spin-doctor Goebbels must be smiling. He had the original idea: Say lies often enough and stupid people will start believing them. Forget obvious idiots like QAnon’s conspiracy believers. American fascists keep saying that President Biden lost. He actually crushed DJT in both the popular vote and Electoral College, turning Narcissus le Grand into one of the biggest political losers in American history, which continued in the 2022 midterms. Trump has never won the popular vote, not even in 2016! Sadly, the Marchin’ MAGA Morons still believe these lies!

Kinzinger agonizes over and laments the nasty bifurcation and polarization in our country, this us-against-them attitude today’s Good Ole Piranhas continue to promote in their politics. He agonizes over how Trump has corrupted religious beliefs so much that they have become the evil tool of the fascists. And, like me but unlike Cheney, he’s not afraid to use the word “fascism” to describe what the current battle for America’s soul is all about. But Kinzinger, more than anything, laments the death throes of the Republican Party as it solidifies into the Fascist Party of America. He’s a voice crying in the wilderness, though, as the US sinks more into the fetid cesspool known as fascism.

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“Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. This nine-book series follows some of Esther’s history in working for MI6 and Scotland Yard while also helping her paramour and later hubby Bastiann van Coevorden solve mysteries and bring criminals to justice (or vice versa). The art motif harks to her association with recovering stolen artworks and running a gallery, but the case histories recorded by her one-time boss in the Art and Antiques Division of the Yard, starting with Rembrandt’s Angel and ending with Celtic Chronicles (there’s a free PDF download, Defanging the Red Dragon, that’s a crossover novel involving Chen and Castilblanco, and the duo also appears in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy), the reader will enjoy these 21^st century versions of Miss Marple (Esther’s a lot more limber!) and Hercule Poirot (Bastiann is Dutch not Belgian). Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (but not always on Amazon).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Oath and Honor. A Memoir and a Warning. Liz Cheney, author (2023). I have the official report from the January 6^th Select Committee. While there are glimpses into the author’s political thoughts here in this book, I hasten to state that, like that committee’s report, her book is more a bipartisan indictment of the ex-president Donald J. Trump and proof that he’s a clear and present danger to democracy in America.

There are a few nits to pick besides those I might have about the author’s political biases, though. Let’s consider them:

This book is not a memoir! You really need to read closely to find details about the author’s life. The book is truly a warning, one good people don’t need very much (except for my third point below). But isn’t any book about Narcissus le Grand a dire warning if it’s worth anything at all? The whole subtitle is therefore unnecessary.

An oath to the Constitution should not be taken as “originalist” fealty to a dated document! The very event that required VP Pence to stand pat and do his “constitutional duty,” much to his credit, would never have have been needed if the Founding Fathers had decided not to create the Electoral College that clearly violates the one man-one vote principle. This, among other mistakes, puts chinks in the armor of democracy America’s fascists have found; the Electoral College has guaranteed that GOP candidates have won the White House without winning the popular vote ever since Reagan. That’s not democracy; that’s fascism. The Constitution that Ms. Cheney so loves badly needs editing. And the Oath Keepers, after all, claimed to be keeping their oaths to the Constitution!

The author commits the same sin that many authors do when criticizing today’s GOP. Too many are afraid of not saying a person who talks like a fascist, walks like a fascist, and threatens people and institutions like a fascist, is indeed a fascist! Good political writers should make every effort to choose the correct words. Not calling Trump and his marching MAGA morons fascists only leads to some people conflating true conservatives, so necessary in our political system, people like Cheney, Kinzinger, and Romney, along with a few others, with those fascists. Even a progressive like me recognizes that we need true conservatives if only to balance the exuberance of progressives in a democratic society. We don’t need fascists!

All that being said, the best way to treat this tome is to consider it a guide to the full report. In fact, I’ll place both books side by side on my bookshelf…and recommend them as guides to anyone who considers themselves to be a responsible citizen of this once great country that Donald J. Trump has damaged so much.

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“Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series. These books are fiction, but they’re ample evidence for my continuing concern for America’s future. The fictional prose here can only help people like Cheney and many others on the right and left who are also concerned about America’s future continue to raise the alarms. None of that will help unless people heed them and take action, of course, using the democratically established tools of ballot boxes.

These two NYPD cops provide a great example, in fact, of how people can agree on the bigger dangers for free societies. Castilblanco, the progressive, is the type of guy far-right traitors and so many others love to hate, even though he’s more American than most. (FYI to them and DJT if they’re possibly reading this: Puerto Ricans are Americans!) Chen, the conservative who’d probably enjoy talking with Cheney about America’s future, is a Chinese-American who teams up with Castilblanco to thwart the bad guys.  The eight novels (one, Defanging the Red Dragon, is a crossover and a free downloadable PDF) will provide readers with hours of reading entertainment…and hopefully spur them onto voting for truth and the American way!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

I had a good laugh when I read “A Character-Driven Approach to Diversifying Fiction” in the NY Times a while ago (12/10/2023 “Sunday Business” section). ‘Twas a report on a meeting hosted by Electric Postcard Entertainment, and it provided some comic relief from all the bad news related to that “f&^%ing moron” (not my quote but ex-SecState Tillerson’s—Il Duce, he of the imperious scowl, would have fired him if he hadn’t resigned). Not to belittle Dhonielle Clayton’s creativity (she leads the afore-mentioned company), the article showed how out of touch with reality traditional publishers have become.

Yes, America is diverse. Yes, many readers want diverse characters in the prose they read. (In the TV shows and films they watch as well!) And the old far-right white boys running and ruining everything are still out of touch, so much so that Dhonielle’s little meeting made the front page of the NY Times’s “Sunday Business” section.

My characters are diverse. They’ve been diverse from the very beginning. In my very first novel, Full Medical (2006), one main character is Jayrashee Sandoval, a ‘zine reporter and daughter of an Indian and Latin immigrant. (No, she wasn’t modeled after Kamala Harris or Nikki Haley—I didn’t even learn about them until years later.) Another main character in the same novel is Kalidas Metropolis, a biogenetics expert and the daughter of Greek immigrants, but perhaps diversely more notable for being a lesbian!

When I decided to write a more conventional mystery-crime thriller, I wanted to avoid the stereotypical Irish cop, so I created NYPD detectives Rolando Castilblanco and Dao-Ming Chen, who first teamed up in The Midas Bomb. NYC is the most diverse city in the world. (Over 800 languages are spoken there.) So these Puerto Rican and Chinese-American cops only reflect a small part of that city’s diversity. Even in my latest British-style mysteries, there’s diversity. (That probably annoys the British royal family if their reaction to Meghan Markle is any indication, but who knows if these dolts read any fiction.)

There might be novels in my oeuvre that don’t feature diverse characters in the US and around the world, but none come to mind right now. There’s good reason for this: I grew up in California, probably the most diverse state in the union. (The state of New York can’t begin to compare with California outside of NYC; it’s more Trumpland, in fact.) In California, I experienced Armenian-, Chinese-, Japanese-, and Latin-Americans along with other ethnic groups as I grew up. That experience, together with living in Colombia for years and traveling in South America and Europe, helped me create and reliably portray many diverse characters. (Our two kids are both half-Colombian!) That background not only allows me to thumb my nose at those who scream “cultural appropriation”; it means that I can create diverse characters who seem authentic in my prose. Fiction must seem real, to paraphrase Tom Clancy, and our country and world are really diverse.

Of course, what the anti-cultural appropriation protesters really mean to say is that Latino authors should be the only ones to write about Latinos, Black authors the only ones to write about Blacks, etc., contrary to the title of the afore-mentioned article that characters drive the diversification of fiction. I’m not completely sure which side Ms. Clayton is on, but the characters must be the ones who exhibit the diversification. Otherwise, anti-cultural appropriation forces would go after any sci-fi writer who dares to write about ETs, which is completely absurd! Maybe someday traditional publishing and other entertainment sources won’t have to keep “rediscovering” diversity and worrying about “diversification”? I might never live to see that day, of course.

In these troubled times, there are persons who eschew diversity and never realize how strong it makes our country. I’m resigned to the fact that these morons will never read Ms. Clayton’s works nor my own. That’s their loss, but it also means that changing the minds of traditional publishers about what sells will be a long slog as their books ignore a huge audience of readers!

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Rembrandt’s Angel. Small presses can be traditional publishers who are exceptions to what’s analyzed above. They’re often more open to publishing novels with more diversity and subsequently originality. I have experimented with two: Black Opal Books and Penmore Press. While we’ve parted our ways, the reasons for doing so weren’t due to their lack of emphasizing diversity…in plots, characterizations, settings, etc.

The novel Rembrandt’s Angel is a great example. This first book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is diverse in all these areas as Esther becomes obsessed with recovering a painting stolen by the Nazis during the war. (The title painting is real, by the way, and remains in some fascist’s private collection, I’m sure.) You will visit Europe, the US, and South America as an armchair-sleuth along with Esther as she battles neo-Nazis, a drug cartel, and ISIS terrorists, ably aided by her Interpol-agent paramour Bastiann van Coevorden. Available wherever fine books are sold in paper and ebook formats.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris liberta!