I read a short story in The New Yorker recently. Nothing unusual about that. Since its inception in 1925, the magazine has been properly praised for its contemporary fiction, and over the years I’ve read its stories often and usually with admiration. The title of the piece was intriguing: “Barbara, Detroit, 1966.” I didn’t know who this Barbara was, but I certainly know Detroit and 1966.

The story’s author is Peter Orner, a prolific and highly praised writer of short fiction and director of the creative writing program at Dartmouth College. It was tagged by the magazine as Flash Fiction, which these days means a very short story, but at almost 1450 words it turned out to be a little longer than what I would call Flash Fiction. Of course, I’m quibbling here, and as I read the story I continued to quibble. You might call it carp, nitpick or complain, but I’ll stick with quibble, and I’m sorry to report that I’ve been doing a ton of it lately about way too many things.

Frankly, it’s a pain to be so constantly critical. For one thing it makes it so damn difficult to simply sit back and enjoy someone’s careful creation, get pleasantly lost in its intricate design, or just have a good old-fashioned read. For another, it reminds me of what an old fart I’ve become.

In any case, I became seriously irked in reading “Barbara, Detroit, 1966,” so much so that I promptly wrote a critique in a letter to the editor that was more than half as long as the story itself. As I expected, the letter became lost in one of the magazine’s many piles of slush, so I thought I’d make it available here. But first, I would strongly urge you to read the story in The New Yorker by clicking here.

Herewith, I quibble:

Dear Madam/Sir,

I started reading “Barbara, Detroit, 1966” with interest because it centers on an event on which I literally wrote the book, a detailed non-fiction account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, titled Murder in the Synagogue and published more than 50 years ago. Unfortunately, I found the story both confused and confusing. I certainly may be biased, but here’s how I read it.

The story’s opening device (dropped after a few lines) is a reference to moving pictures in which we are beckoned to find Barbara in one of the back rows of a new synagogue’s sanctuary in suburban Detroit. On Lincoln’s birthday, 1966, the temple is four years old but somehow still has fresh paint that smells like vanilla (one of several odd details). A service is in progress with 700 people present, but Barbara, eight months pregnant and feeling “woozy,” only wants to go home, where she didn’t want to be either. The rabbi is one of the most admired religious writers and speakers in the country, but Barbara is totally disinterested in what he is saying, thinks of his words as exploding little droplets and can’t wait for him to finish. When he finally sits down, Barbara is suddenly so ravishingly hungry that she thinks about actually eating her seatmate’s high heel shoe.

The cantor’s singing she likes and rocks to in her seat, but then she sees a young man get up, approach the bimah and fire a gun into the ceiling. This very dramatic event Barbara only vaguely registers, and the same for the speech the young fellow then delivers in (by all accounts at the time) a calm and direct manner. He is clearly accusing the entire congregation, including Barbara, of being “a travesty and an abomination,” and of “making a mockery by its phoniness and hypocrisy…” The young man’s completed thought (not included in the story) was “of the beauty and spirit of Judaism.”

Barbara now thinks about licking the ear of the woman in front of her and can’t “make heads or tails” of what the young guy is saying. But she is “entranced” by it because she finds it full of seething anger. And that makes her think of her husband Howard saying nasty, angry things about “the Blacks” over breakfast. She thinks he doesn’t really care, because he won’t even hire them in his business. The difference she finds here in the synagogue is that “this is passion, the genuine article.” So now we can begin to presume that Barbara’s dismal unhappiness is mostly because of her awful marriage to Howard.

At this point on the bimah the young man shoots both the rabbi and himself in the head, and the sanctuary erupts in bedlam, everyone rushing to get out of the temple. But Barbara instead tries to move against the crowd to get herself to the shooter. She hears a call for a doctor’s help, and the quick response from many men in the congregation she thinks are dentists, chiropractors, etc., almost makes her laugh. Barbara never reaches the shooter, is escorted out of the temple and tells people she doesn’t need a ride home because she has her husband’s car. (I guess like everything else in their marriage, including her, Howard owns it, or acts like he thinks he does.)

It turns out that Barbara is the favorite cousin of the narrator’s mother, who thinks she is something of an independent spirit. At a family breakfast some months later, after the newspapers had detailed the carefully planned murder-suicide at the synagogue, she defended the murderer and was roundly shouted down.

Finally, the narrator tells us he had vainly hoped that Barbara might have ended her unhappy marriage in the ensuing years to live on her own terms, but that was not to be, apparently because Howard continued to provide the family with a good living. The narrator says that in the parking lot after the shooting, she had wanted to hold the shooter’s “shattered face in her hands,” had considered him a “martyr” and “half wished” she were carrying his baby.

Really? After we are told that during her whole time in the synagogue Barbara was disoriented, distracted and only vaguely aware of what was being said and done, and that her only firm impression was that of the young shooter’s angry passion, we are supposed to believe that she somehow cared about that deeply distressed and murderous young man?

As I said, to me this portrait of Barbara is mired in confusion. And to graft it onto one of the most disturbing and revealing events of our troubled 1960s seems a rather misguided choice.

Thanks for your consideration.

Tom LoCicero

The post Herewith, I Quibble appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Not long ago I was asked to give a talk to a Jewish adult education group in London, Ontario. The request had come from a member who had learned of two books I had written almost 50 years ago. Now I had spoken and written about those books often over those decades, but never from quite the angle being suggested. And for that reason, and because I was pleased there were still people around who were interested in the stories those books told and the issues they raised, I accepted the invitation. I began by quoting from the introduction to the book that had come first, Murder in the Synagogue:

On a Saturday morning that was Lincoln’s Birthday, 1966, in front of a gathering of over 700 people, including his parents, sister, and grandmother, Richard Wishnetsky, aged 23, stood on the altar of massive Shaarey Zedek Synagogue in suburban Detroit and read a short statement condemning the congregation as a “travesty and an abomination,” after which he used a sawed-off .32 Colt revolver to send a bullet into the head of Rabbi Morris Adler, one of the nation’s prominent religious leaders. He then placed the barrel of the gun over his own right ear and shot himself through the head.

I continued quoting:

When the shooting occurred, I was at work on a novel in my home only three miles from Shaarey Zedek. But before I read about them in the Sunday newspapers, I knew nothing of Rabbi Adler or Richard Wishnetsky. I am not Jewish and had not encountered the rabbi or known of his extensive reputation in the community. As for Richard, our paths had nearly crossed in Ann Arbor where we had gone to school and had a couple of mutual friends. He was two years younger than I.

On the following Wednesday Richard died. A day earlier both Detroit dailies had published articles containing writing that he had been doing in the last few weeks of his life, including an apologia for his fantasized murder of the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Rabbi Adler died three weeks later, and thousands mourned him in a funeral described as the largest in the city’s history.

And then I added a few details. First, the author of several books, Rabbi Adler was widely considered a wise and learned man, whose sterling reputation not only traversed the U.S. but crossed oceans as well. But he had also been a man of some controversy as the leader of Congregation Shaarey Zedek, whose large membership included many of Detroit’s most prominent Jewish families. A recurrent indictment from some Jewish quarters back then (particularly the ultra-Orthodox and the alienated young) had charged the Conservative congregation with leading the way in Detroit to a materialistic betrayal of true Judaic values.

Next, Richard Wishnetsky, the 23-year-old shooter. He had been a Phi Beta Kappa scholar at the University of Michigan and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow bound for the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He was also a troubled intellectual seeker who knew Rabbi Adler both personally as a kind of mentor and as one of the nation’s most venerated religious leaders, yet he settled on this charismatic man as the appropriate target of his deepest rage. With gun in hand on the bimah of Shaarey Zedek’s 5 million dollar temple, this is what Richard read to his audience:

“This congregation is a travesty and an abomination. It has made a mockery by its phoniness and hypocrisy of the beauty and spirit of Judaism. It is composed of people who on the whole make me ashamed to say that I’m a Jew. For the most part it is composed of men, women and children who care for nothing except their vain, egotistical selves. With this act I protest a humanly horrifying and hence unacceptable situation.”

Now because our subject is the congregation’s response to the tragedy that was about to occur, let me move to a passage near the end of the book that describes what happened after Richard spoke those words:

After the slightest pause Richard turned to his right, revolver in hand, to face Rabbi Adler, who, according to some, gestured for him to leave the bimah now that he had spoken his piece. Others thought the rabbi had beckoned for the gun. In either case, Richard moved two or three paces directly toward the seated man, said in a soft, almost tender voice, “Rabbi…” and then, with the gun aimed steadily at arm’s length, shot Morris Adler in the left forearm. The rabbi was in the process of rising, with his hands braced on the arms of the chair. The bullet ricocheted off the bone, then left his arm and entered the left side of his head behind the ear.

Afraid that she was obstructing the work of the doctors, she moved away a bit. An old man was standing on the bimah, screaming and pulling his hair. The mother in the first row, still terrified by her idea that there were others involved in an execution plot, refused the aid of a friend who wanted to lead her out of the sanctuary and into the lobby. “Don’t go there,” she said. “They’re out there too.” Others had run immediately out of the sanctuary, some going directly to their cars, some to call for police and ambulances. Many remained, shouting their demands to know what had happened and who had shot the rabbi.

Yes, a shocking, heart-breaking scene, but I think it is important to an understanding of the wide variety of responses to Murder in the Synagogue.

Next, here’s a quote from one of the early chapters of Squelched, the book I wrote about what happened to Murder in the Synagogue. While Squelched is a memoir, a carefully detailed true story of corporate deceit and criminality in the publishing business, I wrote it some 47 years ago in the third person, referring to myself as a young writer named “L.” The idea, perhaps a bit sophomoric at the time, was to achieve as much objectivity as possible, both in the writing and in reader’s experience of it. So here’s how Chapter 3 opens:

The book’s history had begun with L.’s treatment of the murder and suicide at Shaarey Zedek in an article that appeared a few months after the shooting in the respected Jewish intellectual magazine Commentary. It was his first published piece, and he had just turned 26.

He did not think seriously about doing extensive research for a book-length study until a few members of the aggrieved congregation encouraged him to try it. One man in particular, an old friend and colleague of his lawyer father, was especially enthusiastic and offered to arrange an interview with Goldie Adler, the slain rabbi’s widow. Reaction to the article was generally flattering, and a few people–one was Dr. Karl Menninger, known as the dean of American psychiatry–wrote to ask for permission to reprint it in different places, including a hard-cover collection of the best magazine articles of the year. By the time letters from five book publishers arrived, L. had decided the project was a genuine possibility.

Soon thereafter and really almost by accident I connected with a New York literary agent named Jules Fields, who auctioned my book idea to the highest bidder, the trade division of Prentice-Hall, Inc. As I saw it, the book would serve as a window on the volatile, riotous 1960s, a time of tragic turmoil and violence, including, of course, several assassinations. Also, one of the hot literary topics back then was the rise of the “non-fiction novel,” and according to my agent, Prentice-Hall saw the book as a kind of Jewish In Cold Blood. So in the same year that Mario Puzo got $5000 for what would become The Godfather, my advance was $8500. One quick note on these numbers. We’re talking here about 50 years ago. In today’s dollars that advance would be about 60,000.

At the time I was married to my first wife, and we had a 3-year-old son. I had been teaching at a college outside Detroit, but when I received the initial portion of the advance—$4500—I left that position to work on the book. Reading again from Squelched:

The task at hand then included a thorough-going history of the 23-year-old slayer, a biographical sketch of his victim, and an integrated description of their milieu. L. embarked with an optimism based largely on a lack of experience and, once involved in a quest for data, soon encountered a variety of hindrances: the traumatized emotions of some of those most deeply involved in the story, which would keep them from speaking of their experience to a stranger; a very live concern with what some saw as a possible invasion of privacy; fear in a few of perhaps appearing culpable in some fashion; and with a few others a claim to knowledge of the ‘real’ significance of the assassination-suicide, making less than desirable a book that might possibly arrive at a different view.

With the aid of Mrs. Adler, who would prove helpful through¬out, L. had hoped to secure the cooperation of the family of the young assassin, Richard Wishnetsky, the Adlers and Wishnetskys having been well-acquainted. But he was told the family had been advised against involvement with the book by doctors and others. He had tried other channels and wrote the Wishnetskys a long letter carefully explaining his intention–all to no avail. He couldn’t blame them. Under similar circumstances he too would probably have chosen silence.

Continuing with Squelched in Chapter 5:

The family’s silence meant he had lost an important source of information along with access to a number of potentially helpful individuals and documents. But the reputable name of Prentice-Hall helped to open some doors, and L. soon found himself with a burgeoning list of witnesses and sources to track down, reassure about his purpose, and interview at length: a wide assortment of teachers, professors, classmates, roommates, girlfriends, boyhood chums, religious leaders, youth directors, attorneys, judges, doctors, hospital aides, police officials, chance acquaintances, and eye witnesses to the shooting.

Generally, those he approached in the congregation itself were cordial and helpful. In fact, though he occasionally heard of members who were displeased about his project, he couldn’t recall a single instance in which his request for information had been rejected out of what appeared to be a concern for the image of the congregation. The tone was seemingly set by the cooperation of both Mrs. Adler and the man who succeeded her husband at Shaarey Zedek, Rabbi Irwin Groner. One member, a wealthy entrepreneur and former president of the congregation, had been hesitant for a while, but after a reassuring phone call to Rabbi Groner, he spent a helpful 90 minutes with L. in his office on the umpteenth floor of the plush building he owned.

My research and the writing of a first draft took two and a half years, and early in 1969 I had a manuscript of 1000 pages. My extensive history of Richard and a biographical sketch of the rabbi had required, as mentioned earlier, more than 200 personal interviews, considerable correspondence and a substantial amount of reading in religious and ethnic studies and in the literatures of psychiatry and the social sciences.

I had quickly burned through the initial portion of my advance, and my wife had taken a teaching job at a local community college. Our son was in daycare. The senior editor who had bought the book for Prentice-Hall had moved on to a new job, and I was now in the hands of a junior editor. Doing most of the editing myself, I cut the manuscript down to about 650 typescript pages (the book as printed would come to 384).

After much back and forth, my edited version had been deemed acceptable, and my new young editor told me the company felt the book deserved a “major sales effort.” At that point, early in the fall of 1969, I asked Goldie Adler, Rabbi Groner and a few others in the Jewish community to read the book in manuscript. All the verdicts were gratifying.

And then came months of delay while Prentice-Hall’s lawyers raised concerns and objections, mostly related to how the Wishnetsky family might respond to the book. Word of final approval came in the middle of March. It had taken 5 months for the deletion of 2 short paragraphs, 5 sentences and a few phrases.

Don’t be concerned about the delay, said my editor, because Prentice-Hall felt the book’s success would not depend on its immediate topicality, but rather on the deeper interest that would bring a steady sale over a number of years. Later, however, this episode would take on a sinister look, because without my knowledge certain vital decisions had been made by the publisher during the delay. One was to inexplicably raise the book’s price from the usual $6.95 to $9.95 Another involved the size of the print run. But more on that later.

Now the remaining $4000 of my advance was due. The check should have been channeled to me through my agent, Jules Fields. But I hadn’t heard from him in several months, and then my editor urged me to formally disconnect myself from Fields so that Prentice-Hall could send the check directly on to me. That would of course deprive Fields of his 10% cut, but the editor claimed that Fields was “more or less out of the business” and that Prentice-Hall had experienced trouble lately in getting checks through him to some of its authors.

As I would learn much later, this piece of slander was completely untrue, the first of many lies, half-truths and misinformation the publisher began feeding me about this time concerning all the fine-sounding plans it had for publicity and advertising, for the distribution of hundreds of review and complementary copies, and for a full assault on radio and TV. But at this point, terribly naïve and basking in the glow of a first book soon to appear, I swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker.

Ultimately no reviews ever appeared in Detroit’s two major newspapers. But when my dad brought a copy to an old friend who was an editor at the Free Press, that paper’s magazine included excerpts from the book. About 15 reviews, nearly all with strong praise for the book, appeared in localities scattered around the country in a pattern that seemed odd and unlikely, in publications like the Pomona Progress-Bulletin, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the Canadian Jewish News, and the Allentown Labor Herald. When the Fort Worth Star Telegram called the book “a look at Jewish life of remarkable scope and depth, of intimacy and charm,” and The Dallas Times Herald said it was “…surprising, sobering and frightening,” I became fond of telling friends, “I’m a hot topic in Texas.”

But in the New York area with its Jewish population larger than Israel’s and where the shooting had drawn front-page headlines, there was no mention of the book at all.

One of my favorite reviews came in the Reconstructionist Journal by Rabbi Jack Riemer, who called it “…a fascinating double-portrait of the Rabbi and his killer that holds the reader spellbound from beginning to end.”

I had personally sent copies to a few of the authors and experts whose work had been most helpful to me. Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist regarded as one of the country’s leading authorities on violence, wrote in the American Journal of Psychotherapy: “The data in this book have been collected with such meticulous care and are presented in such an undogmatic way that the book has enduring value. It is not enough to recommend this book; I should express the hope that it will be widely read, understood and heeded.”

And another psychiatrist, Robert Coles, a Pulitzer Prize winner who had recently been on the cover of Time, wrote to me: “I was absolutely enthralled by it. It’s one of those non-fiction novels that one simply cannot put down.”

Prentice-Hall had all of these quotes and blurbs, but used none of them in the four small ads they placed in publications like the Hadassah Magazine and the National Jewish Monthly. As for TV, I appeared on one local show in Detroit, only because a friend called to tell me I was listed as a guest in the TV guide. The publisher had failed to tell me about it.

Finally, in October, 1970, Murder in the Synagogue was officially published. The first retail copies had begun to trickle into some Detroit stores in September, 2 books each, for example, at Doubleday’s and B. Dalton’s. Later a bookseller whose shop was a few miles from Shaarey Zedek described the approach of Prentice-Hall’s salesman: “He said, ‘You should probably take one of these, because, you know, it’s about something that happened in the neighborhood.’”

For a period of more than 7 weeks that fall the book was not available at all from the busiest bookstores serving the Jewish community. Later I was told by an operator of a Little Professor shop, “Well, I tried to reorder it a couple of times during the fall, and the publisher sent me T.O.S. slips.” Temporarily out of stock. But the book was selling so few copies that it was never out of stock. By the start of the new year, the evidence was overwhelming that Prentice-Hall, for whatever reason, had essentially pulled its support for Murder in the Synagogue.

Then one night in February, 1971, my wife came home with a story from one of her college English students. The woman claimed that she had heard a wealthy and well-known Detroiter and member of Congregation Shaarey Zedek say that he had arranged the book’s premature demise.

My informant turned out to be a 30-year-old housewife and mother whose maiden name had been Avren Foreman. Raised in Detroit and educated at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, she had been married by Rabbi Adler in 1965 to a young engineer named Melvin Strager. Over a period of many weeks I spoke with Mrs. Strager almost daily either on the phone or in person; I talked privately with her husband and checked with others outside the family who had known her for many years. I inescapably concluded that she was a dependable person who was telling me the truth.

As for her motivation in doing so, she explained it at one point in a letter she wrote to Fredric Wertham: “There are two reasons why I feel the injustice committed against this book and its author must be reversed,” she wrote. The first involved the fact that as a teenager she had twice contracted an often fatal illness:

“Although many people tried to help, it was Rabbi Adler who gave me the strength, in fact, the very will to keep on living. I don’t think two people can go through an experience such as this without feeling some kind of bond, and in the subsequent years I saw the many facets of Rabbi Adler’s personality….Mr. LoCicero has written a truthful portrait, and in doing so, a great tribute to Morris Adler.

“The second reason is because I love the Jewish religion and the Jewish people. The basic tenets of our religion are based on dealing with others in a just and truthful manner. Since these are the values that make my life worthwhile, I feel that my knowledge leaves me no alternative but to defend these values. The suppression of this book was accomplished by a few Jews who felt they were doing the right thing. I know they are not bad people, but I also know what they have done is wrong.”

At the end of her letter to Dr. Wertham, Avren Strager included the name of Rabbi Max Kapustin, the Hillel director at Detroit’s Wayne State University, who had agreed to serve as a character reference. The Orthodox rabbi had known Mrs. Strager for several years and described her to me as a person of integrity and responsibility. “Of course,” he said, “I have no knowledge myself of what was done, but let me put it this way: I am morally certain that what she says is true.”

Later when I related the details of Mrs. Strager’s story to Goldie Adler–after the obvious initial shock and dismay and after the rabbi’s widow recalled that in years past, she herself had taught the young woman in a Sunday school class–there was no hesitation about Mrs. Adler’s endorsement of Avren Strager’s honesty. Of course Avren was telling the truth, she said; it was impossible to believe that she would ever make up such a story.

Goldie Adler told me she had long known and respected the man named by Mrs. Strager as primarily responsible for the book’s suppression. Nonetheless, shortly after talking to me, Mrs. Adler phoned Avren Strager and praised her for coming forward with the truth.

As told in the letter already quoted, this was Mrs. Strager’s story:

“The knowledge that Mr. LoCicero, a gentile, and therefore an ‘interloper,’ was writing the troubling story of Rabbi Adler’s murder had upset many people because they felt it might have a detrimental effect on the congregation and the community. I had heard the talk, but it wasn’t until the High Holidays, when I sat in on a conversation, that I began to think seriously about the subject. The essence of what I heard was that one of the men, particularly wealthy and powerful, had used his influence with Prentice-Hall to see that this book would be ‘squelched.’

“He went on to say that he had been assured by the publisher that every means they had would be utilized to accomplish this. Someone asked how, and he said, ‘By not advertising the book, setting the price too high, etc.’ I thought that not selling the paperback rights would be another effective way to kill a book. It was also mentioned that the important New York reviewers would not deal with this book.”

The conversation had taken place early in October of 1970, soon after the book had first gone on sale. The scene was a dinner party at the Southfield home of Avren Strager’s father, Sidney Foreman, to which the Stragers had been invited, along with several long-time members of Congregation Shaarey Zedek.

Mr. Foreman operated a suburban-based accounting firm, and the man who claimed responsibility for having “squelched” Murder in the Synagogue on this particular night was an old family friend who had frequently done business with Mrs. Strager’s father over the years. She called him “Uncle Max.”

Detroiters knew him as financier and civic leader Max M. Fisher.

According to Mrs. Strager, the effort against the book had been the work of a handful of congregation members upset at the prospect of a “best-seller” spotlighting the painful events of the murder and suicide at the synagogue and the embarrassing charges of materialism and hypocrisy made by the young assassin. And Max Fisher had been the man with enough power in his pocket to seek a favor from Prentice-Hall.

That power stemmed from both financial clout and political connection. A multi-millionaire, Fisher was one of President Richard Nixon’s leading supporters and fund-raisers. A wide variety of financial interests and real estate holdings contributed to Fisher’s personal worth, reputedly pushing $100 million. He was a board-member of 8 corporations, and among his close personal friends were some of America’s most powerful tycoons, including Henry Ford II.

Widely acknowledged as one of the country’s most influential Jewish leaders, his political leverage alone meant that he could have asked for the squelching as a favor. But it was also true that if only a few of the companies he and some of his friends controlled decided to switch to another house for their business and technical texts, newsletters and bulletins, Prentice-Hall’s profits could suffer.

Ultimately, of course, Max’s pal President Nixon would soon be forced to resign in disgrace, revealed to the world as a liar, a criminal and, with the release of those infamous White House tapes, as a virulent anti-Semite. Transcripts of those thousands of hours of White House tapes are littered with Nixon’s references to “Jew boys” and “kikes.”

For decades rumors had circulated that Nixon was anti-Semitic, no doubt making it more of a chore for Fisher to fund-raise for him in the Jewish community. When the tapes were finally released by court order, many Jews expressed outrage, or at least dismay. Not Fisher. Still loyal even decades later, he was quoted as saying:

“I just felt, well, that’s all part of history. Have you ever said things in private that you didn’t want anybody to hear? That’s the same thing that happened. I’m sure that every president has some nasty words to say or used some profane language.”

It was Avren Strager’s intention to work quietly behind the scenes to induce Max Fisher to “reverse the injustice.” She would appeal to his conscience or, if that failed, threaten to make her story public if he didn’t act to lift his pressure from Prentice-Hall and make amends. But in the end she could not get anyone else who had also heard Fisher’s words to support her, and alone she was much too honest and good-hearted to succeed against those arrayed against her, including her own father and others close to Fisher. All her well-intentioned efforts came to naught, and she finally agreed with my decision to put the whole sad story down on paper in what would turn out to be my book, Squelched.

Now to backtrack just a bit, as soon as I had become convinced that Mrs. Strager’s story was the real deal, I traveled to New Jersey and confronted the president of the trade division at Prentice-Hall. His first response was to admit an acquaintance with Max Fisher and to describe his “one experience” with the man.

A few years back, he explained, Prentice-Hall had published a political biography of George Romney. And while the book was being prepared—this was at a time when Romney was a leading presidential contender—Max Fisher had placed an order with the company for 10,000 copies. Then later, on the book’s publication date, in fact, Romney had withdrawn from the race. “And the following day,” said the president, “Max Fisher called me and cancelled his order.”

When I repeated the details of my story and described the company’s numerous failures to support the book, the fellow finally suggested renewed efforts for the book–perhaps they could still make a deal with a paperback house, etc. I said Avren Strager’s story had undermined my trust in the company, and I simply wanted our contract cancelled and all of the book’s rights reverted to me. In a letter a week and a half later, less than 6 months after publication, the company agreed.

From my visit to Prentice-Hall I also learned that, about the time of my lengthy back-and-forth with its lawyers, the company had made a crucial decision. It would print a total of only 4000 copies, not from plates, in the standard fashion, but from standing type, which was then “pied” or dismantled. That’s the method used for a limited edition, and just to break even they would have needed to sell at least twice that number of books. So the company had made a clear decision to take a bath on the book, at a time when I was being told that Prentice-Hall had high hopes for it.

So how common was what Prentice-Hall did to Murder? I would soon hear directly from two prominent literary agents on the subject. The very successful Julian Bach gestured at his office window overlooking 48th Street and told me, “Look, this 20-square-block area of Manhattan is the publishing establishment in this country, and they’ve all had their experiences like this. They’ll understand Prentice-Hall’s position in this thing, and they’ll close ranks and pull together and you may never get another book published.”

And the famed Scott Meredith, once an agent for Norman Mailer and Henry Miller, advised me that this kind of thing happened with enough regularity that no one of importance would even care if another instance were publicly revealed and documented.

They were both telling me that publishing was a very close-knit business, with gossip being a coin of the realm. Chalk this up as a learning experience and move on, they said. Neither would have anything to do with either of my books. And as it turned out, they knew what they were talking about. I tried offering the rights to Murder to more than 30 publishers. There were no takers.

When Squelched was finished, I thought it was a compelling story of corporate deceit and criminality. But facing a sure-fire, deep-pockets lawsuit from Fisher, a guy who hung out with the likes of Henry Ford II and Richard Nixon, not one of the agents and publishers I approached would even look at my new book.

And then there was my fellow victim of criminal shenanigans at Prentice-Hall. Gerard Colby is the author of another ill-fated book, entitled Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Four years after it purposely “botched” Murder, Prentice-Hall did the same thing to the Du Pont book. That story was first told on January 21, 1975, in the New York Times.

It was told again more recently by the author Colby in “The Price of Liberty,” one of several essays about suppression in the media collected in a book called Into the Buzzsaw. Colby’s research found that the occurrence of this kind of soft squashing was sufficiently common that insiders had a term for it: “privishing.” Instead of “publishing.”

By the way, I’m often asked why Prentice-Hall did not simply shut down the project and not publish the book at all. My response: doing that would have risked my taking it to another publisher where Fisher might not have had as much leverage. Better a quiet, seemingly natural demise.

In any case, my once-budding literary career soon withered. And in order to move on, I gave away my last manuscript copy of Squelched and then embarked on a busy life as a TV producer/writer/director. Over the ensuing years, my output included more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features, 30 live event programs and 600 editorials. Occasionally I still do that kind of work, but I never stopped writing.

And then about a decade ago the world changed. Digital disruption hit the publishing business, and perhaps it would no longer matter what an agent or a publisher would look at. For 30 years I had lost the manuscript of my book about what was done to Murder, but when it came back to me, I brought it up to date and in 2012 offered it for sale both as an e-book and in paperback on Amazon and other outlets. I also put up for sale an e-book version of Murder along with the 1200 copies of the original hard-cover edition that I’ve kept in basements and garages all this time.

Over the past five years, I’ve been surprised by the amount of interest drawn by these two books, written almost five decades ago. They’ve both generated lots of positive reviews, along with a few from trolls, who’ve said things like, “The first book was so awful I couldn’t finish it, so I didn’t even bother to start this second one.” Of course I always assume that reviews like that come from those folks who’ve always thought Murder in the Synagogue should never have seen the light of day.

Now I have not sold a lot of these books, and the crazy business of book selling today is a subject for another time. But perhaps my most rewarding moment in this whole process came in December of 2012 when, as a promotional event, for a period of five days, I made the e-book version of both books free to all comers. I was stunned when readers grabbed more than 10,000 copies. How did it feel knowing that Murder and Squelched were in the hands of so many readers who wanted them? As the commercial says, “Priceless!”

Finally, let me wrap this up with a couple of passages from the epilogue to Squelched. In it I explained how the original manuscript came back to me when I got back in touch with Leo McNamara, an old professor friend of mine to whom I had given the last copy 30 years earlier. I also covered the passing of Max Fisher in 2005 at the age of 96, and recounted how I’d lost touch with Avren Strager over the years. Quoting from the epilogue:

Then as I re-read the manuscript Leo had saved, the reality of this extraordinary woman came rushing back at me: her pluck and courage, her sharp intelligence, blunt opinion, business savvy and cultural naiveté, her firm conscience and commitment to principle, her devotion to her people and her religion, her prickly, sometimes difficult moods, the narrow insularity of her life and finally her remarkable decision to break the boundaries and come to me.

So how would I find her? Well, of course, I would start with that remarkable tool not even dreamed of back in those days when Avren and I were chatting often on the phone, but which I now used so often. I would google her.

At that point I described how shocked I was to learn that Avren Strager was no longer with us. Quoting again:

On one of the people-search sites I learned that Avren Strager had been born in 1941 and died in 1994 at the age of 52. My heart felt crushed. She had been taken at a time when most of us have just begun to see our children forging careers and marriages of their own and perhaps giving us the sweet pleasures of grandchildren.

I thought of Max Fisher still enjoying the comforts of his home and family at the age of 96. The fates had given him almost twice as many years as they had granted to Avren Strager.

The post RESPONDING TO A RABBI’S MURDER appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

There are signs lately that the old saw about old dogs and new tricks may be passé. Take that pathetic old rocker Ted Nugent, for example. Now so far past his way-over-valued prime that he reportedly needs a cane to haul himself on stage (sorry, I just made that up to be snarky), old dog Ted sounds like he’s actually learned a new trick.

Remember back in the day when predictably outrageous Ted would announce from the stage that “Obama should suck on my machine gun?” Well, now old dog Ted, a rabid Trump rooter, says he wants to tone down “hateful rhetoric.” After the shooting at a congressional baseball practice, newly sensitive old Ted said he’s decided to be “more selective with my rants and in my words.” A really heart-warming development.

And now Yours Truly may just be another old dog who’s learned a new trick. This past week I learned somewhere on our wonderful web (so of course, I know it to be true) that fully 7% of American adults think that chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Honest-to-god, someone did a survey.

Now this, to me, new fact has had important ramifications in what passes for my mental life. First, it re-enforces the truism I was forced to adopt about seven months ago that it is impossible to overestimate the stupidity of the American voter.

Remember the good ol’ days when every election cycle in this country always ended with some vapid commentator or other making a profound reference to the “wisdom of the American electorate?” Well, not so much anymore.

Last November I was convinced that the reason we got the presidential result that gobsmacked so many of us was that 54% of white women voted for the short-fingered pussy-grabber currently occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now I’m not so sure. Now I’m thinking it might well have been the chocolate-milk-from-brown-cow crowd who put him over the top.

Think about it. It took only about 70,000 votes to move Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and my own benighted Michigan into the electoral college win-column for Dumbfounding Donald.

Surely, with 130 million votes cast nationwide, even including the 3 to 5 million illegals who gave the nod to Cheating Hillary, that idiotic 7% could easily have swung things for the Constitutional Catastrophe we’re now stuck with.

So what else do these HIDs (Hopelessly Ignorant Deciders) think? What other interesting little facts might they credit? My guess is that because of the color of his hair (or whatever that swept up stuff is up there), they’re sure he shits gold bricks, and if they could just gain access to the presidential toilet, they’d be set for life.

The post OLD DOGS, NEW TRICKS appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

So I had my first cell phone nightmare last night. I’m not talking about some frustrating episode that actually happened involving the ubiquitous little device that has taken over our lives—the kind of experience where you just can’t get the damn thing to do what it’s supposed to. I’m sure many of you are only too familiar with what I’m talking about.

No, this was a real nightmare, the kind you have when you’re lucky enough to finally fall off to sleep. It felt like most of the night I was fussing and fuming with my little Blackberry, trying to make it work properly. But the more I tried, the more weird and dysfunctional it got, producing more and more bizarre pictures on the screen and disallowing any of those vital things I feel like I need to be doing every waking minute with my phone.

Like, making an overdue call to friends or family (that will often go to voice mail because they can see it’s me calling), or reading an urgent text telling me a package I received yesterday has just been delivered, or taking a call from some solicitous guy named Bruce in India who thinks I need help with erectile dysfunction, or opening an email with a news flash on some incomparably stupid thing Trump has just done that I’m now hearing about for at least the fifth time, or…well, of course I partially jest. Not all my cell phone transactions are misleading or a waste of time, but you get the idea.

If my nightmare sounds like a Kafka story for our times, that’s pretty much what it felt like. (For those of you who just said, “Wait, what’s a Kafka?” or “Why would a Middle-Eastern food favorite have anything to do with this?”—just go google on your mobile.)

As I said, the dismal dream seemed to go on for much of the night, and when I’d wake occasionally and then try to get back to sleep, I’d immediately find all those disturbing images from my out-of-control smart-ass phone again flooding my mind as soon as I’d close my eyes.

Actually, it felt as if that nightmare almost had a mind of its own and wanted to consume mine. Yes, a strange notion but even awake, it seemed I was still in its thrall. And now that I think about it, that’s kind of how I feel about the disruption our cell phones are inflicting on most of our waking lives.

Disruption. Now there’s a seminal concept, one we need to understand and apply to practically every aspect of our contemporary world. Like Amazon disrupting the book business, or iTunes with the music industry, or Trump doing it to the American political landscape. But our so-called smart phones may be disrupting more things in our everyday lives than any other social or technical phenomenon.

Yes, you’ve always been able to take a photo of your genitalia and send it to someone who might (or quite possibly might not) want a look, but now you can do it practically instantaneously with just a single tap or two.

Remember road maps? The kind that were often a pain to fold back up correctly? Now road maps are like ancient relics because your phone will calmly talk you through directions to just about any location on the globe and show you a photo of that spot both from above and at ground level.

Want someone to spend the night with you, or maybe share the rest of your life? Just tap away. How about knowing how many minutes you’ll slice off your life span if you indulge in that delicious looking glazed concoction you’re eying at the local donut shop? I’m sure there’s an app for that…or there will be tomorrow.

Our phones can kill us (just keep using yours behind the wheel), or find a cure for what ails; they’ll teach us something amazing, or make us remarkably stupid; connect us, distract us, or keep us living in a bubble; help us find love or trouble or both, learn the facts or remain ignorant, tell us what to cook tonight, or how to overthrow a dictator tomorrow; they can make us well-informed citizens, or prey to fake news, show us the play of the day, or someone’s head chopped off, the cutest kittens at play, the latest live Facebook murder, or a horrific natural disaster; and they’ll offer the most elaborate bird calls, the ugly screams of a mob, or our favorite song.

Come to think of it, given the incredible penetration of these powerful little pocket things into practically every corner of our psyches, I’m surprised at how long it took for my phone to finally invade my dream life.

And while I haven’t researched this, I’ll bet you a box of those artery-clogging donuts that there’s an app out there that will turn your mobile into a soothing white-noise or soft music provider that will help you get right back to sleep if a nightmare wakes you up.

The post MY FIRST CELL PHONE NIGHTMARE appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

We seem to have a lot of them these days. Just read the papers or watch the news. No, I’m not talking about all those tireless journalists working their fingers to the bone, breaking bombshell, after expose, after blockbuster about the crazed, pathetic or frightening antics of our sitting president.

There are so many of them at work right now, and the competition among them is so fierce, that if Woodward and Bernstein were still at it today (instead of just being the avuncular personages they play on TV) they’d most likely be lost in the shuffle. No, frankly, in my book, all these super-busy reporters are just doing their jobs. And since this is a time when those jobs bring enormous excitement, reward, recognition and even adulation, one might argue that performing their work is actually easier than it is in more pedestrian times.

I’m also not talking about all those never-at-lost-for-words commentators with the supposed cojones to call the Orange Guy in the White House a know-nothing fool, an idiot and a child. (Oh, and by the way, please, please stop calling the Leader of the Free World a child. That’s way too deeply demeaning to the concept of childhood. At the very least, be sure to add something more specific, like “selfish” or “spoiled-rotten.”) No, for my money, heroic behavior is not to be found behind the opinion desk or on expert panels either.

So who are my real heroes in the multitude of jaw-dropping news stories raining down on us daily? I’d argue for all those quiet, unassuming ones, those devious milk-toast types, those lurkers in the shadows at the military and intelligence agencies, high-powered law firms and financial outfits and, most important of all, the brave ones operating with stealth in the paranoid confines of the White House itself. Yes, of course I’m talking about the Leakers.

It’s all those courageous ones so vilified and threatened by the blind and craven defenders of the Orangutan in the Oval who are finally giving us a real shot at learning what’s truly going on. For all their trouble they live in fear and uncertainty and face the very real possibility of prison time and the outlaw’s disgrace.

So why willingly risk a loss of career and personal freedom? Certainly not for money or fame. If all goes well for them, no one is likely to ever know their name or the dimensions of their exploits.

Then why do they do it? That’s the easy one. Because the future of the Republic is at stake, and the only thing that can save it is what they give us: the Truth.

The post HEROES… appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

We had friends in from out of town a few weekends back, and because their Dallas Cowboys and our Detroit Lions both had games that started at 1 pm on Sunday, the local sports bar was in order. And so well ahead of game-time the four of us were ensconced in a large booth partaking of typical pub fare and surrounded by big-screen TVs.

For a while we were practically the only ones in the bar, but our waitress assured us the place would be jumping by 1:30 or so. And sure enough about that time, with the games well underway, most of the tables and stools were occupied, and the scene was getting a little raucous, with one helpful fellow screaming “He’s goin’ deep!” every time our quarterback decided to launch a pass more than 20 yards downfield—just in case, I suppose, the rest of us hadn’t noticed.

The booth behind us remained empty until about 2 when a party of four well-dressed, middle-aged black women slid into place. Their waiter explained that for every touchdown the Lions scored while the ladies were there, 7% would be taken off their bill. They didn’t seem impressed, and it soon became clear that they had zero interest in any of the games on screen in the bar.

Now I need to tell you that I am an inveterate eavesdropper and a dedicated observer of unsuspecting folks in public places. I really can’t help myself. But on this particular occasion, with two games to follow simultaneously and while sharing comments on both with my Cowboy-rooting buddy, I was mightily distracted and only caught a snippet from the ladies here and there, enough only to surmise that they had just come from church and were at the bar strictly to socialize. It was something they did, I guessed, every Sabbath.

Why this bar? Who knows? Maybe it’s the closest one to their church. Maybe they’re partial to the burgers or the wings. Or maybe they prefer an atmosphere where they can be pretty darn sure that no one in the place will pay the slightest bit of attention to them or what they wish to talk about.

Except that on this particular Sunday, and unbeknownst to them, they had just happened sit next to an incorrigible spy. And so as I sat there following the intricacies of two NFL games, kibitzing on brilliant or dim-witted strategies, play-calling or execution, I was also half-processing the reports and analysis (gossip is another word that comes to mind) emanating from the booth next door.

Their subject was of course not the trivialities of football, but the profundities of the human condition, or their own little slice of it, which seemed to most often involve insecure ministers, wandering wives, hopeless husbands and treacherous best friends. As I mentioned, I was getting none of this in anything close to coherence. It was all mixed in with amazing one-hand grabs and ignominious dropped passes, depressing quarterback sacks and remarkable tight-roped sideline scampers.

Until, that is, there arrived, as clear as a bell, a line delivered by one of the women behind us, a line so simple and perfect in its way that it held three or four times the impact of the guy on the other side of the bar screaming, “He’s goin’ deep!”

As fate in this noisy place conspired to offer a two-second window of relative quiet, the woman said with a calm firmness, “At least he was dead.”

Wait a second, I thought, did she just say, “At least he was dead”?

Yes, exactly: At least he was dead.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered to my gal-friend sitting next to me. “She just said, ‘At least he was dead.’”

“Yes, I heard it,” said my friend. And then I realized that I wasn’t the only one eavesdropping.

So I said, “What could possibly have come before to which that was an appropriate comment?”

“I’ll tell you later,” said my friend.

And later, after the Cowboys had won and the Lions lost (because of three missed field goals, although their two touchdowns had meant 14% off our bill), once we were back in the car and driving home, both my gal-friend and my buddy’s wife did indeed fill us in on what had been coming from the church ladies in the next booth.

By the way, it was not that our gals had missed out on the finer points of either of the games we’d all been watching, in order to better apprehend the colorful chat next door. It was only clear evidence once again that women are much superior multi-taskers.

As it turns out, the moment I was curious about had come soon after the ladies had picked apart the rather pompous male minister of their church, who turned out to be so completely intimidated by a new female associate minister that the old reverend had quickly managed to find a way to send her packing.

And then it was onto a series of lurid tales about married female friends and acquaintances who had been fooling around on their sad-sack husbands, and sometimes with one of their hubby’s good and trusted friends, the friend being, of course, “just a dog,” who was only too happy to take advantage of a deplorable situation in which the wife was acting “like a whore.”

Finally, it was in the context of this rich conversational string that one of my favorite overheard lines of all time had arrived. One of the good church ladies had been recounting the story of a friend who had just recently been widowed and then, no sooner had she put the poor man in the ground than she had immediately taken up with her newly deceased husband’s best friend.

Which from another of our good ladies in the booth behind had elicited the undeniably sage observation:

“At least he was dead.”

The post AT LEAST HE WAS DEAD appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

The past week or so has been passing strange. Every day I’ve driven 15 minutes to the house I lived in for about two decades with the woman I divorced about seven years ago. When I moved out back then, I left behind almost all of my most cherished possessions, my books, stacked in boxes in a basement back room.

Now having decided to return to her New England roots, my ex had sold the house, in one of Detroit’s nicest suburbs, a place I could no longer afford. So the books finally had to be moved, and on each trip I filled my car, a smallish station wagon type, with those boxes and brought them back here to my small apartment to stash them in a garage where I had spent days throwing things out and shifting stuff around to make room.

Through all of this unusual (for me) physical exertion, as I hauled box after heavy box up the basement stairs to shove them in my car, I was teased and bashed by memories filled with hopes, regrets, dreams and disappointments. I must have moved about 60 boxes, but obviously this was not just physical labor.

In that basement I had practically all my books, from the beginning of my college days, first at Notre Dame and then at the University of Michigan, along with close to 1200 hardcover copies of Murder in the Synagogue, the book that unfortunately holds the most emotional resonance for me. (If you’re wondering why I reference Murder that way, you can check out its strange, four-decade-old story in this old post.)

But, in any case, each time I grabbed a box marked “Prentice-Hall,” my publisher back then, I wondered why the hell I was doing this. It seemed almost like blind instinct was driving me. I knew only that I could not possibly leave those books behind to be thrown in a dump.

This was the third time over the past 40 years that I’ve moved them, from basement to basement to garage, and now (unlike those previous moves when I still clung to fanciful hopes) I was quite certain I would never be able to do anything with them that would be right and appropriate for books.

Online I’ve sold only a handful of those hard covers, with their garish purple dust jacket featuring a bullet-split menorah on the front and a photo of my hopelessly naïve 30-year-old self on the back. And there’s no place I can think of to even give them away now. Talk about the baggage of my life. They will most likely still be stacked in the garage when I croak, and so I will have left my family a befuddling, regrettable burden.

And then there were all my personal books, some of them in boxes so water damaged from basement floods that I had to go through them book by book and decide which ones were suitable to keep and which should be consigned to the trash. Often not an easy choice with so many of them holding such great importance to me.

A slim book of poetry by my favorite professor at Notre Dame, a brilliant, no doubt tortured man who had left his wife and children because he finally knew he was gay. My treasured copy of Crime and Punishment with all my scribbles and notes from my Russian Lit class at U. of M. A volume of short stories by six of the giants that I’d pull out as a parlor trick, point to their pictures on the cover and ask my two-year-old son, “Who’s that?” And the little kid would pipe, “Dostoyevsky!” Well, you get the idea.

And again they’ll all probably remain in boxes in the garage because I have only a few small bookcases in this crowded little apartment, and I’m very unlikely to live again in a place with enough shelves for my books.

Of course, all of this was also a potent reminder of how much our world has changed over the past decade or so, especially the volatile world of books, a place where today I can hold a thousand titles on a handheld device that lets me access each book with the touch of a finger.

But the bottom line is I did it. I moved everything, certainly everything in decent enough shape to move, and I didn’t have a heart attack, and I didn’t ruin my back. Actually, if I didn’t think the whole thing was close to absurd, I’d almost feel proud of myself.

The post THE PAST WEEK OR SO HAS BEEN PASSING STRANGE appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn’s domestic crime thriller, became a publishing sensation in 2012, began its journey to the silver screen with Flynn writing the screenplay in 2013 and is scheduled for its cinematic debut in October, 2014. Recently there’s been a spate of publicity for the movie with the news that it will end in a way substantially different from the ending of the novel.

The word came in the 2014 Preview edition of Entertainment Weekly, where Flynn once worked, and which features a cover photo that seems to be a major spoiler. The photo was staged and snapped by the film’s director, David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), who reportedly pushed for the revised ending. The cover picture shows British actress Rosamund Pike as Amy, complete with toe tag and a frozen look of wide-eyed surprise on an autopsy table. Also on the table and snuggled around the corpse is Ben Affleck as Nick, with no toe tag and perhaps still in love with his dead wife. Or perhaps not. Maybe he’s dead too.

Now in case you haven’t noticed, Hollywood taking liberties with a popular book is not news. It happens way more often than not, but Gone Girl was a widely devoured novel that engendered a great deal of controversy and discussion. Readers came away from it with powerful likes and dislikes that led to passionate debate, often focused on the story’s end. And those inclined to look at the bigger picture wondered what kind of nerve had been struck here.

So for a lauded director to want a changed ending and the writer of the both the novel and the screenplay sounding like she was only too happy to come up with a different conclusion, yeah, well, that was news.

Gone Girl is a nicely terrifying relationship drama, featuring Nick and Amy Dunne, a smart and attractive 30-something couple with, shall we say, complex issues. Amy and Nick are two people navigating love and hate, consumed by secret desperation and scheming revenge, and locked in a marriage rife with suspicion and deceit.

Their story is told with alternating points of view, and sooner than later we learn that the two narrators are wildly unreliable. The writing holds a clear-eyed, hip and knowing tone while it effectively describes and explores timely topics such as the media and its obsessions, the impact of a crashing economy on personal lives, and maybe most of all, the cracks and fissures of identity produced by hyper self-consciousness in a society that seems both pressure cooker and fishbowl.

But the narrative is littered throughout with moments that, given the nature, history and propensities of its protagonists, either could not or should not have happened. In short, it is chock full of the implausible and the impossible to believe. Some examples:

–Early in their back story there’s a strange time lapse between Nick and Amy’s instant attraction in their first meeting at a party and their chance encounter on a Manhattan street eight months later. Nick says he was going to call, but the slip of paper with Amy’s phone number got ruined in the wash. Patently ridiculous: each of them could easily have found the other through the party’s host. But Amy is fine with this story even though the Amy we come to know would have cut Nick a new one for being such an inattentive dolt.

–Both Nick and Amy are laid-off magazine writers in NYC, and his decision to move them back to his hometown, North Carthage, Missouri, and to buy a bar with what’s left of Amy’s inheritance seems more than a bit unlikely.

–When Amy goes missing after two years in North Carthage, there are signs of a struggle in the living room, and the front door of the house is left wide open. Whether Nick is the culprit (he is soon a suspect) or someone else is, this detail seems far-fetched, since it means the disappearance will be almost immediately discovered.

–Later we get the news that Amy had gone to an abandoned mall trying to buy a gun from one of the homeless folks squatting there. She feared someone, she told him, but he can’t get her a gun. As it turns out Amy wanted to leave a trail that will incriminate Nick, so why not just go to Walmart and buy a gun. Do it on the record—it’ll be easier to trace, which was the whole point. Please keep in mind: this Amy gal is supposed to be absolutely brilliant.

–Soon Nick and Amy are struggling to make ends meet, but she secretly runs up credit card charges of $212,000 in his name. Apparently he never picked up the mail?

–After a week or two on the run, Amy is hiding out at some rundown Ozark cabin resort and still has about nine grand in cash. She nonetheless decides she needs the 50 bucks oddball Jeff offers to help him steal somebody’s catfish. She stupidly lets Jeff and another obvious grifter see her money belt stuffed with her entire stash, and so, surprise, the next day she’s dead broke.

–Amy’s Plan A had been to send Nick to the chair and then kill herself, since, I guess, she’d be fully satisfied with her life.

–Plan B involves looking up her old high school flame Desi, a multi-millionaire living just an hour away with his mother in one of his mansions. For decades from afar Desi has been crazy in love with Amy, so first he rescues her, then he imprisons her in another of his mansions, then he makes love to her, after which she slits his throat and escapes in his vintage Jaguar. Whoo boy!

Look, there’s other ridiculous stuff, but you get the idea. The point here is that the problem with Gone Girl, the book, is not the ending. Yes, absurdly, these two get back together, with no charges leveled finally at either one. And yes, the baddest badass is not the man but the woman, so super-smart and devious that she can defeat, subdue and control a man who knows her every rotten proclivity, because she has confessed it all when they’re together in the shower, where no tape recorder can nail her.

But now Nick can’t just walk away: Amy has his baby boy in her belly. (She duped him into thinking the fertility clinic they had gone to years ago had destroyed his frozen sperm, then returned there recently to get herself pregnant.) And soon she’ll deliver the unfortunate little tike into a world in which his mother is a monster.

In the book’s final pages we learn that she has carried the baby to term, with submissive Nick there smearing on the cocoa butter and rubbing her feet. And on the marrow she will both give birth and see her new book published, the one that tells her own self-serving version of the whole sordid saga.

So she has triumphed. She has won this epic gender war. Or has she? In their final exchange Amy wonders aloud why Nick is being so good to her. She wants him to say he loves her and she deserves it. Instead he says he just feels sorry for her: “Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

At the very end Amy tells us she can’t stop thinking about that line from Nick. And so we know without question the war is still on.

Actually, the book’s ending, to me, was properly motivated and well-calculated, especially in terms of setting up what seemed like an inevitable sequel. No, the novel’s flaws and weaknesses are all related to the fact that it is implausible fantasy masquerading as cynical realism.

So what about the movie’s new ending?

The ultimate in marital dysfunction, rage and despair is, of course, a story that ends with the husband and wife killing each other. The one I best recall is The War of the Roses, the very popular 1989 film starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and directed by Danny DeVito, from the 1981 novel by Warren Adler. If you haven’t heard of it, never saw it, or have an inkling to watch it again, I’d recommend it.

In the climactic scene, the warring Mr. and Mrs. Rose don’t exactly kill each other, but they’re trying to and end up dead at each other’s hand with the aid of a convenient chandelier. Will something similar happen at the end of Gone Girl the movie? My guess is that it will, although the final scene or scenes will certainly be very different.

But the wonderful thing about murder on stage, screen or page is that the various ways to make it happen are basically endless. Flynn is on record as believing that Nick is too “soft” to murder his wife. If so, that leaves it to Amy to initiate. Why would she do so? Remember, in spite of everything, she still wants Nick to love and cherish her. Instead, after leading her on, he tells her finally that he harbors only pity: “Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

Really, if she thinks about that line long enough, it could well be enough to make Amy snap. And if she acts, Nick will react. And then we’ll have our ending, carefully designed to be both shocking and somehow emotionally satisfying as we walk out of the multiplex.

At least we’ll be certain there will never be a sequel.

The post DON’T READ THIS! UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPECULATE ON GONE GIRL’S NEW CINEMATIC ENDING appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

There’s been a lot of web chatter lately about what I’d call the morality of book pricing.

The loudest noise, with perhaps the widest ramifications, came last year when the Justice Department accused Apple and the Big Five publishers of conspiring to raise e-book prices. In its war with Amazon for consumer dollars, Apple, according to the Justice Department, had colluded with the publishers to keep the prices of their new e-books well above Amazon’s uniform pricing of $9.99.

A few of the publishers folded quickly and agreed to pay the government substantial penalties. The others and Apple decided to fight but eventually folded as well, or in Apple’s case, lost badly. The result? Ultimately, lower e-book prices for fortunate readers. But also much debate and discussion concerning the true costs of publishing digitally, what constitutes appropriate retail pricing when there’s no ink, paper and distribution involved, and what a fair share for the author should be.

At the same time there’s been a good deal of controversy over self-published books that are placed on the market for less than a buck or two, or even free. Some publishers, authors and commentators have screamed about these book bargains as if they are some kind of dire threat to the future of civilization. Others have raised questions about what low or no prices say about an author’s self-worth or the true evaluation of his/her own book.

But given the fact that low prices and giveaways are among the very few ways an unknown author can find some semblance of an audience, I think the prevailing opinion on this subject is something like, “Hey, whatever floats your boat.” And that laissez faire attitude is basically where I come down.

Look at what happened decades ago to my own True Crime classic Murder in the Synagogue. About that book, the Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Coles wrote at the time: “I was absolutely enthralled by it. It’s one of those non-fiction novels that one simply cannot put down.” But back then the publisher undermined the book, in part by raising the price by a third. And until just recently, it’s safe to say most readers had never heard of Murder. If you’d like to know the full story, check out my memoir, Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. Or if you’d like a condensed version, try this blog post: We’re Not in Manhattan Anymore.

Sometimes, having choices on pricing can force you to think more carefully about what’s really important to you. Now I’ve just decided that, more than anything, I want my books in the hands of folks who might find some value in them. How to do that? Well, obviously one way is to drop the price, so that’s what I’m doing on all 13 of my books. For how long? Well, at least until I can notice whether there’s a difference in demand. So for now let’s just use the time-honored phrase, “for a limited time only.”

The two mentioned above, Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched, are now just 99 cents. The same for each of the opening novels in my two trilogies: The Obsession (The Truth Beauty Trilogy, Book 1), and The Car Bomb (The detroit Im dying Trilogy, Book 1). Both just 99 cents. The second novel in each series, The Disappearance (The Truth Beauty Trilogy, Book 2), and Admission of Guilt (The detroit Im dying Trilogy, Book 2) are each now $2.99.

As for my 7 shorts, (all stories, essays and brief memoirs), I’ve set them all free. If one sounds interesting, just pick it up at no cost.

Ahead, before the end of the year, I’ll be publishing a new novel that will be something of a departure for me from the crime thrillers I’ve been writing. And also I’ll be offering two new shorts: a lengthy interview with the great Elmore Leonard, and an in-depth analysis of the two huge best-sellers, Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and John Grisham’s The Racketeer.

How much will these new ones cost? I don’t know yet, but once again, I’ll be delighted to have the choice. And if I decide later that I’ve made a wrong move, how cool to be able to try a different price all on my own. That’s just one fine feature of our Brave New World of publishing.

The post THE MORALITY OF PRICING appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

As it has for most booklovers, both readers and writers, this week has been a sad one for me. We lost Elmore Leonard at 87 this week, for my money the greatest crime novelist of our time. Beyond his greatness as a writer, Dutch was a good man and a good friend. I had not seen him in a few years, and I certainly would not claim any special bond or connection. Many others were much closer to Elmore. But there is also a sense in which he was a special friend to all writers, with his terrific 10 Rules of Writing and, perhaps even more so, as a model of the devoted, unpretentious and wonderfully productive artist and craftsman.

Actually, I had thought about getting in touch recently, especially after a reviewer, whose taste and judgment I admire, wrote this about The Car Bomb and Admission of Guilt, the first two novels in my new trilogy set in Detroit: “If you like Elmore Leonard, you’ll love these books.” Of course, the words came as an unexpected gift, even though I didn’t believe for a second in the validity of any such comparison.

But I held off calling or putting a note in the mail when I heard through his long-time researcher and assistant Greg Sutter that Dutch, who would have been 88 in October, was intensely focused on finishing the current novel in progress. There was no way I was going to intrude or lay even a small, social burden on his precious time.

Now he’s gone. And like so many others, I have a pain in my heart thinking about Elmore falling to that stroke before he could put the finishing touches to what was going to be novel number 47.

My history with Dutch was limited to only a handful of small events and exchanges, but I thought I’d briefly recount them here for whatever interest they might hold for others and perhaps to make myself feel just a little better by adding a tiny bit to the marvelous collective memory that envelops him now.

So twice he gave me an intro to his agent-at-the-time. The first, back in the early ’90s, was an old guy in Hollywood, the one who followed H. N. Swanson, the legendary “Swanie,” who helped make Elmore Leonard both rich and famous. I worked with that fellow for a while, until I sent him part of an early version of The Car Bomb, and he told me he couldn’t sell anything featuring a local TV anchor.

And then some 20 years later Dutch kindly suggested his big time guy in NYC. That second agent and I never got anything going after he expressed no interest in dealing with the novel I ended up publishing last year, The Obsession.

I also worked with Dutch on a couple of occasions when I was making TV specials. Two decades ago I wrote and produced a one-hour documentary on Detroit’s main artery, Woodward Avenue, it’s heartline running north from the river 25 miles all the way to Pontiac. Arrayed along the way was “every reason for hope and despair in urban America,” if I remember the tagline correctly.

It was Dutch’s favorite avenue, featured in more than one of his Detroit-based novels, and he readily agreed to play a role in the story I was telling. First, we recorded him reading a passage from one of those novels, and then as darkness fell in the city’s New Center area, we shot as he walked the empty sidewalk past chained and boarded up storefronts. Finally, the shot pulled back wide to show how deserted the whole place was, and there at the top of the shot was the illuminated General Motors sign atop the giant company’s headquarters a few blocks away.

Later, after the shoot, when I got back to my car parked on Woodward, I found a window smashed and the radio gone. Of course, we shot the looted car, and that image made the perfect capstone to the sequence that married Elmore’s read and his walk.

Then five years ago I finally got the chance to do a piece I had been wanting to produce for decades, a TV bio sketch of the “Dickens of Detroit.” This time we shot for a couple of days with Dutch, including a lengthy interview at his home in Bloomfield Township, about 15 minutes from where I live. Heading for his 82nd birthday, he was thin and a bit frail but still very lively and as sharp as ever. He could not have been more forthcoming and generous with us.

That video bio sketch is the one on this website. The show was part of a series called “World Class Detroiters,” and, of course, Dutch was the most appropriate subject we ever presented. Minus the commercials, the piece was about 22 minutes, and so I struggled mightily to cram in as much of Elmore, his life and story, as possible. In doing so, I could only use brief snippets from an interview that went on for almost an hour and a half. It was conducted by the show’s on-camera host and my good friend, Emery King, a former NBC White House correspondent, working from a long list of my questions.

A few days ago, after Elmore’s passing, I dug out of my computer a transcript of the full interview, something only a handful of folks have ever seen. I read through it and marveled again at how much Dutch had given us. And I quickly decided to see if I could present it in a fashion that would give others the pleasure of an expansive Elmore talking about his life and work. What follows is just a small portion of the interview. If you find interest and value in it, I’ll include more here on my blog and perhaps also find a place to present the whole thing.

So here’s Elmore Leonard talking about why he used two of his favorite settings, the appeal and essence of his stories, and how to rob a bank.

Emery: Two of your favorite settings are Detroit and the Atlantic coast of Florida. Why those two settings and is there a connection?

Elmore: Because I’ve lived in both. Because I’ve lived in Detroit since 1934 and remember a lot about Detroit. And that Atlantic coast of Florida because we have a place there. I bought a motel for my mother back in I guess the ’70s. It only had three units in it, but it gave her something to do. And then we would go down and stay with her. Now we’ve got a place in North Palm Beach, but we don’t stay there that long, never more than two weeks, once or twice a year, because I’d rather be here. I mean, even in the winter. I like the winter. I like the seasons.

Emery: Why do you think your readers are so interested and drawn into these two worlds of cops and criminals, worlds that most people wouldn’t want to be a part of?

Elmore: No, I think they’re drawn into crime and mysteries because these stories always have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the endings are always satisfying to the readers. They know that the good guys are going to win in the end. I think that’s the main reason. Because you look down the New York Times list, and they’re all crime or mysteries.

Emery: Your major characters are usually trying to outthink each other one way or another, or outwit each other. Do you see your stories essentially as a battle between good and evil?

Elmore: I suppose, when you get right down to it, if I were to analyze my stories. But for that matter, all stories are about good and evil. I mean, there are degrees of evil and good, but I think all stories are asking, what’s the opposition? What are we dealing with here?

Emery: Do you analyze your stories?

Elmore: No, never.

Emery: Why?

Elmore: Because I’m not interested in analyzing them. I don’t know what the theme is, for example. When the screenwriter, Scott Frank, who has written two of mine—Get Shorty and Out of Sight—takes on the job, he’ll ask me, he says, “Well, what’s the theme?” I said, “I don’t know. I have no idea.” So, he’ll read the book, and then he tells me what the theme is, which is always impressive. “Really?” So he feels he needs to know what the theme is in order to write a screenplay.

Emery: About your bad guys, you’ve said this: “I don’t think of them as bad guys. I just think of them as normal people who get up in the morning and wonder what they’re going to have for breakfast. And they sneeze and they wonder if they should call their mother and then they rob a bank.”

Elmore: Yeah. That’s really most of them. I mean, that’s the way it is, you know. There’s a guy in the paper this morning who robbed a bank. He had been let go from his job, and he robbed a bank. And the prosecutor was going to give him less than a year. Now he’s got a job offer, and people feel sorry for him. Bank robbery is attractive to people. Willy Sutton said, “That’s where the money is.” That’s why he robbed banks. But all you’ve got to do is ask for the money, and the teller will give you the money, and then you walk out. They’ll give you the money if you’re convincing enough. There was one guy, the FBI called him, ah, who is that comedian who never got any respect?

Emery: Rodney Dangerfield.

Elmore: Rodney Dangerfield. They called him “the Rodney Dangerfield bank robber,” because he would go in and ask for the money, and they wouldn’t give it to him. Until, finally, he got a gun and went in. But if you go in with a gun, then you’re facing a lot of time, if you’re arrested. So it’s best just to be nice and hand the teller a note and hope that she’s frightened enough to give you the money. Most of them get $2,000 or less. They’ll get whatever is on the top of the open drawer, there in those little sections—tens, twenties, fifties, and one hundreds. But you don’t want to get handed the dye pack. When I first began researching bank robberies, I had a time getting a bank to show me a dye pack. Finally, one of them did, and it is triggered, the mechanism goes off, as you’re going out the door, and there’s something in the door frame that triggers the dye pack and then, phew, you’re covered with red or whatever color dye. And there’s just money on the outside of the pack. You know, inside is what makes it erupt. I had a friend in Florida, a judge, who had a guy who was up for breaking his probation by robbing a bank. So, he did four years, and then he came out and he hoped that having done the four years would suffice for breaking the probation. And the judge said, “Yeah. It’s okay. But how much did you get in the bank robbery?” And the guy said, “$2600.” He said, “But I’m going out and the dye pack went off. And so I had all this red dye, and then I went home, and I tried to wash the money. And I was trying to pass these pink twenties, and they caught up with me.”

So there you have just a taste. If you’d like more of this great writer and wonderful man talking about his life and his craft, just let me know.

The post MY FRIEND ELMORE LEONARD appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

The other day I went Googling to see if I might have missed a published review of one of my books. I typed in one book and another came up, well down the list and from two years ago. That was before I began publishing, and before any of my books were available, with one exception. There were still old copies of Murder in the Synagogue for sale on Amazon and at several used book sites.

So I checked out the listing, a site called “R. Shlomo’s reading list,” which turned out to be a blog by a Chicago rabbi, and found his review of Murder posted on November 2, 2011. As I learned later from an exchange of emails with Rabbi Shlomo Rosen, that was some 40 years after he had read my original article on the murder of Rabbi Morris Adler reprinted from Commentary in The Norton Reader. He had found the book on the internet, recalled the tragic story, bought Murder and reviewed it. Yes, life can be a little weird.

So here is the rabbi’s review:

Murder in the Synagogue is a multilevel, fascinating study of the 1966 notorious murder of prominent suburban Detroit rabbi Morris Adler. The book profiles Richard Wishnetsky, a promising graduate student who gradually descends into a psychosis that culminates in Rabbi Adler’s murder and Wishnetsky’s suicide during a Saturday morning Bar Mitzvah service.

Richard Wishnetsky drew inspiration from his Hasidic grandfather claiming a certain authenticity that the suburban synagogue community and its rabbi lacked. We are told of his idealism of wanting to make a difference. He wants to make his mark, to make a statement. Unfortunately, his life spins out of control when it appears that his graduate study plans will not come to the fruition that he expects. We find that he fails at love; he is frustrated with rejection. Speculations of homosexuality persist about his social interactions. He is unattractive. His tragic confusion results in such an horrific scene: reading a final statement against the community and turning to shoot the rabbi and than himself before a crowd of 800 congregants and Bar Mitzvah celebrants.

What struck me about the book was the criticism of Suburban Jewish life; its materialism and lack of religiosity. However, how can one take seriously the criticism of the deranged? Had Wishnetsky experienced success and not failure would he have even noticed the flaws in his own community? Would his mind have crumbled so severely with the taste of triumph? He may have identified with his religious grandfather, however, he, himself, never became religious. The phoniness that he charged and applied to the community could have been charged and applied to himself.

Although a heart wrenching read, the book is thought provoking, written in a strong narrative prose.

In the comments section on the rabbi’s blog I left a message thanking him for the review and mentioning that he might be interested in my book Squelched, an account of what happened to Murder and its strange publishing history. After our email exchange, within a few days he was reading Squelched and a day later he posted this review:

This slim volume is really a continuation of and an explanation of the fate of the excellent study Murder in the Synagogue also by T. V. LoCicero. Anyone who has read Murder in the Synagogue would have expected a wide audience and best seller status because of its topic, caliber of writing and reporting. Surprisingly, the book was stalled and then halted after the author received promising reviews and expectations from the publisher. He subsequently heard from a congregant of that fateful synagogue that a prominent member of the synagogue community proudly announced to a group of friends the he “squelched” the book. Mr. LoCicero details the mishaps and misstatements of his publisher fudging its way through an unsatisfying explanation of the book’s failure.

The book’s picture of people of influence and power rings true; it reminds me of my life as a community rabbi when my job was threatened for speaking the truth. “Rabbi, if you continue to explain your view, there are people in this town who can ruin you! I would watch out if I were you!!” Or alternatively, it reminds me of the help I received: “Rabbi, there seems to be some misplaced anger directed toward you- we’ll just send a letter …” and the anger dissipated and disappeared miraculously! In the first case as a fiery young rabbi I responded with “How dare you threaten a rabbi! I will serve the entire community and not just a few of the elite!” And in the second case, I marveled at the power this man’s pen!

Every community has its ‘melech’, king. The role of the king is to fight and defend and unfortunately for Mr. LoCicero the king misunderstood his very well thought out book that analyzed a dangerous crank as a threat to the community and supposedly snuffed out the “threat” as a king is expected to do.

If the book is true, and there is little evidence to deny this fine written memoir, I believe here the king and his council were wrong! The rabbi’s widow even praised the book. The synagogue could have grown in many ways as a result of a best seller depending on the leadership of the synagogue.

Since Mr. LoCicero has brought Murder in the Synagogue back into print, I believe it to be a very worthwhile read and recommend his writing.

Of course, I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Rosen for his kind and perceptive reviews. And once again I’m amazed at what is possible in this brave new world of publishing.

The post FOUND GOLD appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Recently a reader friend, a woman I’ve never met, but with whom I’ve exchanged emails, left a review of my new novel The Car Bomb on the book’s Amazon page. Previously she had read and reviewed my two non-fiction books, Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched. That’s her preferred type of book, or genre, True Crime, and so I was a little surprised when she decided to read The Car Bomb. But, of course, I was pleased when she filed this kind review:

“I am not usually a reader of fictional mystery/thriller type book, but this one was a riot. Something new happens on every page and it keeps you reading, wanting to know what happens next. Really good story. My only quibble with this book is that we spent almost the entire story inside the head of the protagonist, who is the best-known news anchor in Detroit, so as a Detroiter myself I kept picturing Bill Bonds, and that was just weird.”

When I dropped her a note of thanks for the review, she wrote back quickly with a question: Was my main character Frank DeFauw based on famed TV anchor Bill Bonds, who had a long, at times controversial career in Detroit?

And I responded with this: “Asked like a true fan of true crime!” After which I answered her question in some detail.

Now for you non-Detroiters a little context might be helpful. First, here’s my standard 400 character summary of The Car Bomb:

“Detroit Nielson king Frank DeFauw hunts down the story of a judge who may be corrupt—and is one of his best friends. Booze, drugs, womanizing and a passion for the news are all part of what makes this brilliant, erratic TV anchor a major player in this deeply troubled city. Finally, Frank decides if digging out the truth about his pal the judge is worth risking his own career, family and life.”

Starting in the ‘60s and for nearly four decades, Bill Bonds was Detroit’s dominant news presenter and commentator, working for most of that time at WXYZ-TV, Channel 7. Now my story in The Car Bomb is set in Detroit in the early ‘90s, so it’s understandable that anyone familiar with Bonds’ history might wonder if I was channeling Bill when I came up with my character Frank DeFauw.

But, of course, the making of fiction is something akin to that famous line from von Bismark about how laws are like sausages: “…it is better not to see them being made.”

Yes, fashioning fiction can be a messy, off-putting business. A writer takes whatever is in his/her head—every kind of experience and knowledge of every stripe, honest and true perceptions and stolen snippets of dubious hearsay, indelible memories and mis-remembered crap, sweet longings and impure thoughts, hard evidence and flights of fancy—rolls it all around in his/her imagination for a while, and if he/she has any talent, something good might come out.

For several years I worked with Bonds at Channel 7. I was never employed in the newsroom there, but I produced many documentaries and TV specials with him. I truly liked and admired Bill, and we always got along great.

Frank is not Bonds. He is like Bonds only in the same way he is like any number of somewhat larger-than-life big city TV anchors who came to fame back in the now long-lost Golden Age of local TV, including George Clooney’s dad in Cincinnati.

The genesis of The Car Bomb was a simple question: What if someone like that, someone with that kind of voice, visibility and power, suspected that one of his closest friends was corrupt? What would he do? And what would happen? From there I made everything up. And as far as I can recall, I didn’t use a single detail from anything I knew about Bonds’ personal life or his behind-the-scenes professional life, because none of that fit with the story that was unfolding in my head.

Oh, wait. I just thought of something. Both Frank and Bill like to play golf, and I gave Frank a membership at the Oakland Hills Country Club where I hope Bill continues to play. Actually, while I still consider him a good friend, I haven’t seen Bill in several years, not since we had a great time together over breakfast one morning at Birmingham’s Townsend Hotel. I’d love for us to do that again, and maybe if Bill reads The Car Bomb, he’ll remind me of something else I stole from him to make my fiction.

The post THE MAKING OF FICTION appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Let me stop here for a moment to praise Victoria Louise Best. If the name is familiar, perhaps it’s because you know her blog, “Tales from the Reading Room,” one of the U.K.’s top literary/book review sites. It’s the place where she calls herself “Ms. Litlove.”

Or maybe you’ve read one of her extraordinary biographical sketches of writers in crisis. You can find the latest (on the remarkable American novelist and story writer, Shirley Jackson) in the current issue of the on-line literary mag, Open Letters.

Or you might know the academic volumes she authored while lecturing for a decade in French literature at Cambridge.

Or possibly you recall my mentioning Victoria here on occasion, as I embarked on one of my pet peeves, Unsympathetic Characters, after one of her brilliant essays on the subject, or my grateful reference to her wonderfully generous take on my novel, The Obsession.

Today the occasion is a recent post she called “A Whiff of Testosterone,” in which she reviewed, kindly indeed, my first two books in The detroit im dyin Trilogy: The Car Bomb and Admission of Guilt. Here’s part of what she had to say:

“If you like Elmore Leonard, you’ll love these books. Fast-paced action with lots of short chapters and sharp, punchy dialogue, and the writing is crisp and contemporary. Tom LoCicero is wonderful at setting up several threads of plot that plait into one another and end up inter-related, and there’s a real pleasure in the moment when they finally combine and the landscape of the book is laid out before the reader. The authenticity of the context is evident, particularly in Admission of Guilt, which has a lot of pithy things to say about the way Detroit was allowed to slip into free fall, the authorities unable and mostly unwilling to intervene in a shocking situation. But ultimately, these are stories about our overwhelming desire to see bullies and users get their comeuppance; there’s little more satisfying than that. The third book in the detroit im dyin trilogy isn’t out yet, but I’ll be waiting for it to appear.”

So as you might expect, my gratitude to Ms. Litlove is matched only by my admiration for her own literary accomplishments. The breath of her knowledge, the depth of her insights and the consistent quality of her taste all prompt me to grab your figurative collar and urge you to check out this woman’s marvelous writing in any and all of the places I’ve mentioned, or wherever you can find it.

The post MS. LITLOVE appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Last time I spent most of a lengthy post on John Grisham’s hot new one, The Racketeer and promised a comparison of sorts with Gillian Flynn’s super bestseller, Gone Girl. (If you want to catch up first, please click here.) One of the things these books have in common is the timeless power of good storytelling.

Yes, I guess by now we’ve all read about the Flynn book’s inventive plotting, fascinating (and unreliable) narrators, rich themes and savvy style. And let me say up front, I liked much of it and for those very traits that so many others have noted.

Also, and this may only be my own strange predilection, I liked the novel for what it lacks. Yes, it’s a crime thriller, but there’s no CIA, no FBI to speak of, no Navy Seals, no black ops crew buried in some super-secret government agency, not a single terrorist foreign or home-grown, no physical torture, little blood and gore, no bible-obsessed serial killer and no deviant genius with an imminent plot to destroy half of mankind. Really, bored and annoyed is what I am with most thrillers these days, with incredible plots running rampant and predictable characters laying bloody awful things on each other.

In Gone Girl we’ve got just a nicely terrifying domestic crime drama featuring a 30-something married couple with complex issues and two seemingly stumbling small-town cops. Well, anyway, that’s the one-sentence version.

Now as you may have already guessed, I have a thing about plausibility. But at first, I found only an occasional unlikely note. Early on in the back story there’s a strange time lapse between Nick and Amy’s dreamy first meeting at a party, where they already seem half in love, and their chance encounter on a Manhattan street eight months later. Nick says he was going to call, but the slip of paper with Amy’s phone number got ruined in the wash. Patently ridiculous: each of them could easily have found the other through the party’s host.

Yet Amy acts as if this is no big deal and is simply delighted to have him back in her life. But the Amy we will come to know would certainly have punished Nick for being such a dolt. So why the time lapse? Does it tell us something about each of them? Perhaps how desperate Amy really is, how careless and incompetent Nick is? Maybe, but as we learn much later, an important plot point happened during those eight months. Amy started dating Tommy who didn’t pay her enough attention and got himself accused of rape.

Both Nick and Amy are laid-off magazine writers in NYC, and his decision to move them back to his hometown, North Carthage, Missouri, and to buy a bar with what’s left of Amy’s inheritance seems a bit unlikely. But he is close to his twin sister Go, loves his dying mother and hates his demented father, and these connections make the decision more credible. Actually, one of the things I liked most about the novel was its convincing treatment of the deep impact of money issues and the financial crisis on these individual lives. It cuts them off from potential and possibility in ways that feel, at least for a while, terribly true.

When Amy goes missing after two years in North Carthage with signs of a struggle in the living room, the front door of the house is left wide open. Whether Nick is the culprit (he is soon a suspect) or someone else is, this detail seems odd, since it means the disappearance will be almost immediately discovered.

And why does the woman detective wait until they’re back at the station in a sit-down interrogation to ask Nick if he and Amy have kids? Of course she had already gone through every room in his house, and one of her first questions to him on the scene would have been about children. (Note: the issue of offspring will surface again near the end.)

Still Flynn’s sense of timing is solid. Just as I was getting annoyed at the way Nick was so obviously playing the reader, repeatedly mentioning phone calls to his “disposable” that he won’t tell us about, his young mistress Andie shows up at his door. Soon Nick tells us, unnecessarily: “I’m a big fan of the lie of omission.”

And just when the story clearly needs a jolt, we get the news that Amy had gone to an abandoned mall trying to buy a gun from Lonnie, one of the homeless folks squatting there. She feared someone, she said. He can’t get her one, but later, in retrospect, all this seems hard to believe. Amy wanted to leave a trail that will incriminate Nick, so why not just go to Wal-mart and buy a gun. Do it on the record—it’ll be easier to trace, which should have been the whole point.

Then half-way in, about the time that alternating Nick’s current adventures with Amy’s diary back story has begun to seem mechanical, manipulative and contrived, Flynn pivots and starts giving Amy a chance to report her adventures directly. And we soon learn that all those diary entries, covering their first five years together, have been concocted by Amy after the fact. They were all part of framing Nick for her own murder.

About the same time, all the economic realism I had previously admired just begins to fall away. They were struggling to make ends meet, but Amy secretly ran up credit card charges of $212,000 in Nick’s name. Did he never pick up the mail? Did she do it all online? Then why didn’t the cops find a trace of it on her computer?

After a week or two on the run she’s hiding out at some rundown Ozark cabin resort and still has about 9 grand in cash. She nonetheless decides she needs the 50 bucks oddball Jeff offers to help him steal somebody’s catfish. She stupidly lets Jeff and another obvious grifter, Greta, see her money belt stuffed with her entire stash, and so, surprise, the next day she’s dead broke. And now the hard-to-swallow stuff is really beginning to pile up.

Plan A had been to send Nick to the chair and then kill herself, since, I guess, she’d be fully satisfied with her life.

Plan B involves looking up her old high school flame Desi, a multi-millionaire living just an hour away with his mother in one of his mansions. For decades from afar Desi has been crazy in love with Amy, so first he rescues her, then he imprisons her in another of his mansions, then he makes love to her, after which she slits his throat and escapes in his vintage Jaguar.

Now believing Nick’s TV pleadings that he adores his wife and desperately wants her back, Amy returns with a cracked story that Desi was the one who abducted her from North Carthage and had been raping her morning, noon and night. Except for his mother (who looks exactly like an older Amy and whose vagina seems to smell—it’s mentioned twice), no one cares that Desi’s dead, maybe since he was such a hopelessly flat cartoon man.

Nick’s twin sister Go is also strangely flat. Other than running the bar and worrying about her brother, she seems to have no life at all. In fact most of the secondary characters have no more than two dimensions, although Amy’s parents, Rand and Marybeth, have some interesting heft. A lesson in how to raise a monster, they are a clueless, selfish pair of psychologists who gave their own daughter’s name to the always perfect little girl at the center of their wildly successful “Amazing Amy” series of children’s books.

Look, there’s other ridiculous stuff, but Flynn moves her story along so quickly and engagingly that I suspect most readers don’t have time to notice or dwell on those less-than-credible moments. They’re too busy turning pages and wondering what’s next in this cleverly devised chess match between two always sharp and often nasty people. Yes, it partakes of the gothic at times, but it’s also full of witty, insightful commentary on various aspects of American life—the media and its obsessions, the impact of a crashing economy on personal lives, and most of all the cracks and fissures of identity produced by hyper self-consciousness in a society that seems both pressure cooker and fishbowl.

Flynn’s treatment of the media cluster-effing this bizarre crime tale is one of the best things about Gone Girl. Using well her stint at Entertainment Weekly, she gets just about everything right, from the Nancy-Grace type doing her crazed-crusader thing, to the TV gladiator/attorney Tanner Bolt doing media training with Nick. You wonder perhaps how wiped-out Nick can afford Bolt’s $100,000 retainer, but then money is never mentioned again, so not to worry.

Of course, when you resort so often to the implausible, what you end up with is a fantasy masquerading as realism. That’s what this novel is, and so the ultimate question is, why has this fantasy become such a huge hit? Unlike The Racketeer, which seems to have lots of male enthusiasts, women especially have flocked to Gone Girl, many seeming to find it a kind of feminist cry. Do they see in Amy aspects of themselves? Is there some kind of strange liberation here? It is certainly the end of artifice, of pretending to be the Cool Girl, an end to worries about what men want women to be. This is from one of the book’s most quoted graphs:

Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

What nerve has been struck here? What deep need filled? My two cents: We live in a time of unprecedented competition between women and men. I know, we have always and forever lived with “the battle of the sexes.” It’s eternal, everlasting. But it has also never, ever seemed so consuming, so constantly present in every corner of our personal, social, economic and political lives.

Equality? It’s only common sense, but benighted forces are still arrayed against it, and so the cries ring everywhere. Gender equality! Equal pay for equal work! Abortion rights! Legitimate rape! The Old White Guy Party’s war on women! Control your own vagina! How many vaginas in the House and Senate? In ’08 Hillary almost made it to that last Glass Ceiling, and 2016 may be hers for the taking. These issues and questions will only gain intensity.

In relationships it’s always been there, and even the male/female cop duo is competing to nab Nick. Not surprisingly the smarter, more competent cop is (maybe just to rub it in) the unattractive woman with the ugly name, Det. Boney.

Heroines (and now anti-heroines) are all the rage these days. No one seems to blink when a wily slip of a girl beats the crap out of a strapping man or two or three. Homeland’s Carrie, despite being bipolar, is more than a match for just about any man in the show. She is smarter, quicker, more intuitive, perceptive and courageous. Saul’s line is definitive: “You were right.” And now we’re hearing that she may have been based on the real life CIA gal (the object of bitter envy at the Agency) who played a major role in getting Osama.

Here’s the fantasy: The woman, Amy, is ridiculously beautiful and smart, but also every man’s worst nightmare. Sensationally desirable, but ultimately despicable, moving somewhere between sociopath and psychopath (more properly the former, although she does seem to swerve from reality at times). She is in fact incapable of genuine warmth for others, condemning her husband to death for cheating and executing in cold blood a man hopelessly in love with her. She, not Nick, has the balls to murder and also that one exclusive natural asset the “weaker sex” has always used to tame the male.

So this story’s baddest badass is not the man but the woman, so super-smart and devious that she can defeat, subdue and control a man who knows her every rotten proclivity because she has confessed it all in the shower, where no tape recorder can nail her.

But now Nick can’t just walk away: Amy has his baby boy in her belly. (She duped him into thinking the fertility clinic they had gone to years ago had destroyed his frozen sperm, then returned there recently to get herself pregnant.) And soon she’ll deliver the unfortunate little tike into a world in which his mother is a monster.

In the book’s final pages we learn that she has carried the baby to term, with submissive Nick there smearing on the cocoa butter and rubbing her feet. And on the marrow she will both give birth and see her new book published, the one that tells her self-serving version of the whole sordid saga.

So she has triumphed. She has won this epic gender war.

Or has she? In their final exchange Amy wonders aloud why Nick is being so good to her. She wants him to say he loves her and she deserves it. Instead he says he just feels sorry for her: “Because every morning you have to wake up and be you.”

At the end Amy tells us she can’t stop thinking about that line from Nick. And so we know without question the war is still on. And, yes, there will be a sequel.

Here’s a final thought from that friend I mentioned in Part 1: About the gender appeal of these two popular novels she says: “Maybe the thrill for women right now is in being bad and getting away with it, while the comfort for men is that being bad does not prevent them from still being good.”

The post EPIC PRISON SCAM VS. EPIC GENDER WAR, Part 2 appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Sorry, if you’ve dropped by here at all this year, you’ve found the same damn self-serving post day after day, week after week, month after month. And so you probably concluded that I was either dead or too busy to blog. Fortunately it was the latter.

I’ve been putting the finishing touches (always a treacherous trap for me ) to a couple of new crime novels, in what I’m calling The detroit im dyin Trilogy. So more about these new books later.

Right now I’d like to offer some thoughts on two novels that have battled lately for those coveted top spots on the NY Times hardcover bestseller list: John Grisham’s recently released legal thriller The Racketeer and Gillian Flynn’s still wildly popular gender thriller, Gone Girl. And I’ll do this in two parts

First, two obvious questions: What do these two have that so many other novels lack? And what, if anything (beside their lodging in Thrillerland) might they share with each other? Because the second is easier than the first, I’ll start there.

So both novels have unreliable first-person narrators. The Racketeer has one, the disgraced attorney Malcolm Bannister. In a minimum security prison as the story opens, he is half-way through a stiff 10-year sentence for a crime of fraud he says he did not commit. Gone Girl has two narrators, the warring married protagonists Nick and Amy Dunne, both clearly not to be trusted, Amy so much so that her diary entries, which carry forward her side of things for the first half of the book, are subsequently revealed to be false and calculated to legally ensnare her husband.

Now while Bannister is also less-than-reliable, he is so in ways more subtle. And it is not his claim of innocence that makes the defrocked lawyer untrustworthy. In fact, we end up buying his story that he was unfortunately caught up in a criminal conspiracy in which he was not actually culpable. No, rather it’s a variety of lies about other stuff that make Bannister unreliable. Lies sprinkled here and there in the narrative, lies of both omission and commission.

To be clear, we’re not talking about the lies he tells FBI agents, prosecutors and others. Those fibs are often transparent and used, along with the information he withholds from law enforcement, to further the intricate plot he has hatched during all those long months and years in prison. See, Bannister, who manages the prison library and has earned a rep as an effective jailhouse lawyer by securing more than one inmate’s freedom, has a plan to win his own release. And once initiated it works like a charm.

Bannister convinces authorities that he knows the identity of the killer of a recently murdered federal judge and gives them the name of Quinn Rucker, the head of a major drug gang “with contacts up and down the East Coast.” Quinn, he says, was his best friend in prison until the guy walked away from the camp a few months back.

So Bannister orchestrates his own move out of prison and into the government’s witness protection program, with a $150,000 reward, a brand new identity complete with the requisite documents to go wherever he pleases, a pleasant beachside apartment in Florida and a job if he wants it. He soon changes his name to Max Baldwin, and after a plastic surgeon also changes his face, he goes rogue.

At first it appears that that he’s been freaked that his cover has been blown, that Quinn Rucker has somehow learned his new name and whereabouts. And so he’s off running, here and there, to Jamaica and Antigua, Virginia and even back briefly to his Florida apartment.

He’s always one jump ahead of his former FBI handlers and presumably the Rucker gang, but it’s never clear exactly what he’s doing. Only much later will we learn that it’s all part of an ingenious plot.

At this point I should tell you that The Racketeer also has another narrator, third person, not first, the more or less classic omniscient third, which the crafty Grisham slips into on occasion for a few paragraphs, pages or chapters. He does this whenever he wants to present information that is beyond the ken of his almost full-time narrator, Bannister/Baldwin, and this shift allows the imparting of data that moves the story along more effectively, making it richer and more compelling.

Now while these narrative shifts can at times be jarring and certainly break some classic rules of fiction, after a while the reader gets used to them and the payoff—a stronger, more detailed story—makes them seem worthwhile. Not for nothing has the perennially best-selling Grisham been repeatedly called a “master storyteller.” And to be honest, I detected no lies or intentional misleading in these third person passages.

So what are the lies that make Bannister/Baldwin a truly untrustworthy narrator? They are the ones he tells the reader. Yes, along the way the scheming lawyer drops occasional bits of info and brief comments tinged with untruth, the real nature and purpose of which we will learn only in the latter stages of the story. So why would the main narrator of this book want to fool the folks who’ve chosen to read his story? For a definitive answer you’ll have to ask his creator, Mr. Grisham.

But my guess is that Grisham’s intention was to let his narrator mislead and mystify his readers for their own good, to make the experience of reading this novel ever more enthralling as we try to figure out what the hell his protagonist is up to. Naturally he wants this to last as long as possible, until the reader finally reaches that remarkably satisfying conclusion in which all the myriad loose ends are tied up neatly and all the characters get their more or less just deserts.

Yes, The Racketeer is a legal thriller—with few exceptions that’s what Grisham writes. But in this one the author goes to considerable lengths to disguise the true nature of his book’s sub-genre. It’s also a caper novel, and to put off full disclosure for as long as possible, Grisham has his first-person narrator lie, mislead and fool the reader every once in a while.

So what if this scheming ex-attorney is just a naturally talented story spinner? A fellow who instinctively knows that to tell a good page-turning tale, there are moments when you need to withhold information, to keep it unspoken until the time to disclose is right?

Well, withholding is one thing; it’s what many a good storyteller often chooses to do. But lying, or deliberately misleading is quite something else. It’s also called cheating, and the problem with cheating is that when it’s finally exposed, it tends to spoil the experience the book provides. Here are a few examples of Grisham’s cheating.

On page 139, while watching on TV as a dull and unimpressive U.S. Attorney named Stanley Mumphrey announces the indictment of Quinn Rucker, Bannister/Baldwin says, “The thought crosses my mind that, with Stanley in charge, Quinn may have a fighting chance after all.”

But, no, that particular thought would not have occurred to Bannister/Baldwin, because the narrator knows something we don’t know at that point: exactly what will happen to his old friend Quinn.

Fifteen pages later Bannister/Baldwin tells us about a comely gal for whom he’s carrying a torch. He met Vanessa Young at the prison when she was visiting her brother, another inmate, and then exchanged letters with her. But, he says, “it became painfully obvious, at least to me, that my infatuation with Vanessa was not exactly a two-way street.”

This passage about Vanessa lasts just a few brief paragraphs, but they withhold a good deal of information and, more importantly, they mislead: as we eventually learn, she is every bit into him as he is into her, and there is way more to their connection than lustful romance.

And finally, Chapter 26 begins, “I sleep with a gun…” Well, now Bannister/Baldwin may be sleeping with that Beretta he mentions, but it is not, as he clearly implies, because the Rucker clan is hot on his heels. As we learn later, he knows there is no one to fear.

There are many more examples to site, but you get the idea.

In books like this one, there is always a battle of wits going on. More than one, in fact, between characters in the story itself, but also one between the author and the reader. The reader is always trying to figure where the author is heading with his story, and the author is trying to keep the reader guessing for as long as possible.

Now there are accepted rules for this kind of match, the most basic and important of which is that, while withholding info is generally okay, prevaricating and misleading are not. And in The Racketeer Grisham breaks this rule several times. And of course it matters not at all that his unreliable narrator is the one doing the lying and the cheating. As we are reminded every time the narrative slides into the omniscient third, from start to finish this is Grisham’s concoction.

So why is The Racketeer parked solidly at or near the top of the bestseller lists? Surely, first of all because Grisham books are almost always there. For decades he’s enjoyed enormous success and by now has a mass of dedicated readers who, with little or no encouragement, will read almost anything he publishes.

But this book in particular? Certainly, as with many a caper story, there is the lure of a huge pot of untraceable ill-gotten gain at the conclusion. That always seems irresistible, but especially so with our current fascination, in a time of global financial flux and perhaps calamity.

Then there’s that trusty old standby: the deeply satisfying comeuppance of corporate greed and corruption. Grisham seems to be a genuinely good sort who cares about the right things and generally writes stories that expose the bad and support the good.

And how about this gender-tinged thought from one of my most insightful female friends: “I wonder if there isn’t something intrinsically masculine going on. I know I’m not supposed to say such things! But there is a comforting fantasy in Grisham, I think, of men doing the wrong thing and yet still being good guys, worthy of love and intrinsically right.”

Finally, and perhaps most telling: despite its flaws, this book offers the timeless power of good storytelling. That’s something else it shares with Flynn’s Gone Girl. And next time I’ll take a close look at that sensationally successful novel.

The post EPIC PRISON SCAM VS. EPIC GENDER WAR, Part 1 appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Okay, far be it from me to argue with a classic old saying that apparently goes all the way back to Matthew (5:14-16) in the New Testament:

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

The problem is we live in the Era of Snow-Blindness, a time when all of us are enveloped by the digital blizzard, with screens of all sizes shimmering in every corner and the Net buzzing insistently in our pockets. So even if we remove that bushel and allow our light to shine brightly, who’s going to see it?

To shift the metaphor with another old saw, how about Tooting My Own Horn? I mean, who else is going to toot it? Well, actually a number of kind folks have blown flattering notes my way lately. But this is also the Age of Noise-Induced-Deafness, when our ears are afflicted with a cacophony of voices all screaming to be heard.

Look, all this is a self-conscious preamble to my offering, as a public service, of course, a sampling from recent reviews. Actually, I was encouraged in this by an experience I had last month. Across five days in December with a free-book promotion through Amazon’s Kindle Select, I gave away almost 12,000 e-copies of my four books.

What stunned me was that more than 10,000 of those downloads were of two books that are more than 40-years-old.

Now if you know the tale of those books (it’s right on the Home page of this site)—Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched, the story of its suppression—you’ll understand why I felt that every bit of time and effort it took to e-publish them was suddenly worthwhile. Yes, I haven’t made a penny on those books and probably never will. But knowing they’re in the hands of so many readers who wanted them? As the commercial says, “Priceless!”

Fewer people downloaded the novels, The Obsession and The Disappearance, but I could tell myself the confounding route to discovery was now just a bit less daunting. Everybody in the book business is looking for ways to enhance this thing called “Discoverability.” As far as I can tell, nobody has a good answer yet. So in any way you can, let the light shine and the horn toot. I’ll start with the novels:

My deep gratitude to all these readers who took the time to grace my books with their kind and generous thoughts.

The post DON’T HIDE YOUR LIGHT UNDER A BUSHEL appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

This morning I was in bed more or less minding my own business, and I decided to do what I often do under such circumstances: read my email on my very smart little mobile. The first new one was from someone I don’t know, a fellow named Waziri Ahmed, and in the subject line I read, “Kindly get back to me……”

Now, perhaps like many of you, I often get messages from people I don’t know. Usually they’re from Africa, and usually they want to make me a rich man. Most of these messages are so farfetched and absurd, that I’ve taken to deleting without opening them.

A few years back when I started receiving these messages, I would open, read and reply with a nasty line about how I was forwarding this note to Interpol. But that seemed to result only in more such emails. Apparently any kind of response, even just opening the message, was seen as wildly encouraging.

So why did I open this new note from Waziri? I have no idea. Maybe because I was in a good mood, lolling in a kind of happy haze. But soon I was very glad I did, since my new friend Waziri made my day, my week and most probably my year.

In fact, I’m so pleased that I cannot keep this wonderful message to myself. I must share it with you. But first I have a caution: Please do not read this message from Waziri if you can’t keep a secret.

As you’ll note, about his extraordinary story he swears me to secrecy. But I have no compunction about sharing, since I know that all of you who stop here are just as honorable as I am. And I’m sure that goes for all the spam bots who visit this site dozens of times a week. So without further ado, here’s Waziri:

Dear Friend

A lot of people believe that email like these turn out to be scam, even myself always delete mails like these. but i want you to know that i have no other means to reach you apart from writing you an email.

Am Waziri Ahmed and i use to work with a security deposit firm in Libya, where they keep valuables like gold and diamonds. 2 years ago a woman came to our office then and told me she wants to deposit a package with us and she do not want any person apart from me to know the content. i agreed with her and the package was kept under a code name because she don’t want any body to know her as the owner. but she told only me in secret that the package contains cash of about $12 million dollars.

since then the secret was kept to my self alone and nobody knows even until our company moved out of Libya during the war. But, i now got a new job at a freight company. But, my former company has been disturbing calling and sending emails to me, that i should tell the owner of the package to come forward and remove the package because they are closing up and relocating to Saudi Arabia. i have looked for her even all the phone and email details she gave me are no more working. just 3 days ago i got the news that she is dead, long ago that she died when the NATO forces drop the bomb in Gaddafi house then. i even just found out that she was a cousin to Gaddafi.

well, why am written these email is because i want the both of us to handle these transaction and we share the funds in the package equally. 50% each. i will present you as the owner of the package i have the release code once you tell them the code and other information’s, the package will be released and sent to where ever you want them to send it. they will only confirm from me before they release and if i say yes we are rich. bear in mind that it is not a must that you must appear in person, you do not need to be their, just call and emails with the right codes and full information’s.

they can not release it to me because the know that it is not mine, but they fully knows as well that am the only person on earth that knows the owner and the correct release code. look these is our chance and opportunity to get rich, because if i don’t act fast nobody will ever come for the package. then after waiting for too long it will be dumped in to the sea.

do not have any fear i prefer to do these business with somebody i don’t even know very well because some times your own families and friends will be the once to fail and disappoint you. if you are ready to keep the secret and work with me then i will tell you other things and we move ahead, i promise just 3 days we will receive the package where ever you choose. but do not fail and disappoint me when you receive the package. i will meet with you in person for us to do the sharing.

please if you will work with me and keep the secret please reply me so we can talk more on these issue and act fast, but if you are not interested please delete these email so nobody else can read it.

I wait to hear from you.

Waziri Ahmed.
+971529590913

Now how about that! Waziri is so forthright that he even gave me his phone number, which near as I can figure, comes from somewhere in the United Arab Emirates. So remember, keep the secret!

Otherwise you’ll queer the whole deal, and that beautiful 12 mil Waziri and I are about split will be tossed into the sea.

The post MY SHIP HAS COME IN! appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, one of our most prolific and important bloggers on the business of writing and publishing, recently wrote a lengthy 3-part series of posts titled, “Why Writers Disappear.” There is something in it for just about every writer, and it certainly caught my eye, because, after all, I am a writer who, about 40 years ago, disappeared.

Kris starts by listing a dozen reasons why writers disappear and then goes into considerable detail on each of those reasons. Of course, I quickly scanned through the list, searching for one or more that might match up with my own experience. Kris says that writers disappear because:

“1. They can’t get a new book contract under that name.” Here Kris refers to the sad and increasingly common fate of traditionally published authors whose readership has not been growing fast enough and thus find themselves out of luck and out of the business. No, not exactly my problem.

“2. They can’t get a new book contract because their genre has vanished.” Obviously this one’s about changing tastes. Also not my problem.

“3. They became toxic—and that toxicity trickled through the entire industry.” In this one Kris cites authors who acted badly in some fashion that was off-putting or threatening to publishers. Well, now maybe I better come back to this one later…

“4. They achieved all their goals.” Hardly my problem.

“5. They were no longer interested in writing.” Nope, not a fit here.

“6. They moved to a different part of the industry.” No, when I left, it was for a very different way of making a living.

“7. They got discouraged.” No, whether early in the morning or late at night, I kept on writing.

“8. They couldn’t handle the solitude.” Sorry, I love solitude.

“9. They couldn’t handle the financial problems inherent in a writing career.” By this, Kris means the perils of freelancing…again not a problem for me.

“10. They had life or health issues that interfered with the writing.” Kris talks about things like a family catastrophe, coma, and either swift self-destruction or the slower version with drugs and alcohol. No, fortunately, not part of my history.

“11. They didn’t keep up with the changes in the industry.” With my own company I just published several books and shorter pieces, so…does not apply.

“12. They sold or gave away too many rights to their books.” No, 40 years ago I demanded and almost immediately secured the rights to Murder in the Synagogue.

So let’s go back to reason #3: “They became toxic—and that toxicity trickled through the entire industry.”

Time for a little back story, though if you’ve searched this site at all you probably already know that my career as an author began in 1970 with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, a true crime account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler in suburban Detroit on Lincoln’s birthday, 1966. In the book I explored the life of the high-achieving grad student and troubled intellectual seeker who, at age 23, spoke these words before turning a gun on the rabbi and himself:

“This congregation is a travesty and an abomination. It has made a mockery by its phoniness and hypocrisy of the beauty and spirit of Judaism. It is composed of people who on the whole make me ashamed to say that I’m a Jew. For the most part it is composed of men, women and children who care for nothing except their vain, egotistical selves.  With this act I protest a humanly horrifying and hence unacceptable situation.”

The publisher Prentice-Hall saw the book as a kind of Jewish In Cold Blood and a window on the turbulent ‘60s and so gave me an advance of $8500 ($60,000 in today’s dollars). That same year Mario Puzo got $5000 for what would become The Godfather.

Upon publication, Murder drew a number of very positive reviews in mostly odd, out-of-the-way places, and praise from psychiatric experts, religious figures and academics to whom I sent copies. But the eastern literary establishment seemed to have never heard of it, and sales were slow.

Then a remarkable young woman from Detroit’s Jewish community came to me to say she had heard a wealthy and powerful man she had grown up calling “uncle” tell a group of friends that he had reached out to my publisher and “squelched” my book. Of course I set out to verify her story and soon learned that Prentice-Hall had indeed suppressed Murder in the Synagogue, sabotaging its marketing and distribution, and printing 4000 copies from standing type which was then pied or dismantled—the method used for a “limited edition.” It had secretly bowed to pressure from an influential presidential adviser and top Republican fund-raiser named Max Fisher.

So of course I did what any foolishly high-minded young writer would do. I went to Prentice-Hall, accused them of suppressing my book and demanded and secured its rights. And then what? Nothing. No one, neither first-line publisher nor paperback house, would touch what had obviously become a “toxic” book.

Next I wrote another book, this one about what had happened to Murder. It was, I felt, a compelling story of corporate deceit and criminality confronted by the courage of the plucky young woman who had blown the whistle. But facing a sure-fire, deep-pockets lawsuit from a guy who hung out with the likes of Henry Ford II and Richard Nixon, not one of the agents and publishers I approached would even look at my new book. So now I had not one, but two toxic books.

What I needed was a new book project, something completely unrelated to my first two books, and I soon thought I had found it in a sensational trial in Detroit involving several cops and dope dealers all working together in the heroin and cocaine trade that was ravaging the city. For six months I covered the trial, wrote profiles of the colorful cast of characters and described scene after amazing scene in the courtroom—all of it basically on spec, hoping that someone in New York would agree with me on the importance of the story.

And then a famous agent agreed to take me on and seemed certain he could sell my new book. But after several months of encouraging words, he finally announced that the last editor he took the project to had said this was essentially a “black book, and blacks don’t buy books.” And that was that.

Had the toxicity of my first two books “trickled down through the entire industry,” as Kris Rusch puts it? She says publishing back then was “a very small industry” in which publishers, editors, and agents all knew each other and gossiped together. I had no idea back then what I was really facing, and today I still don’t know for sure.

By this time (it was 1975), I was broke and had to find a quick way to support my family. I took a job as a grant writer for a humanities council, thinking the next book project was not far off. But instead I soon found myself in a busy life as a TV producer/writer/director. Over the ensuing years, my output included more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features, 30 live event programs and hundreds of editorials.

Actually, over the next three and a half decades I never stopped writing, either early in the morning or late at night. But as an author of books I had disappeared.

Then a few months ago I used my own media company to publish, along with several other items, Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. Among other things it’s a coming-of-age tale about a naïve young writer blindsided when his book suffers a fate he has no idea was even possible. Then he gropes, blunders and finally learns a few things.

The book’s new epilogue explains how the original manuscript, the last copy of which I had given away back in the ‘70s in order to get on with my life, finally came back to me after more than three decades. And it adds the story of how four years after it sabotaged Murder in the Synagogue, Prentice-Hall did the same thing to another of its books, Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. The story of what the publisher did to the Du Pont book was first told on January 21, 1975, in the New York Times. The story of what happened to Murder in the Synagogue has never been told. Until now.

How this or any of my newly published books will do, I haven’t the faintest idea. But I do know, after all this time, it can no longer be said that I have disappeared.

The post WHY I DISAPPEARED appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

There’s been lots of chatter lately about the importance of populating a novel with sympathetic characters.

We’ve had advice from agents about what will entice a traditional publisher.

Editors have warned about what is or is not acceptable these days if you want to sell books.

Reviewers complain and readers fulminate about how they just couldn’t get into a particular piece of fiction, because they didn’t really care about the characters who people it. They didn’t like them, thought they were too off-putting, found them to be distasteful creatures for one reason or another.

Now no one is saying that every character in a novel needs to be a positive role model, or a hero, or have some redeeming value. Stories, after all, still seem to benefit from villains.

But the idea appears to be that unless there is at least one main character with sterling moral qualities, someone basically good, comely, admirable and in some way worthy of love, despite any little quirks or foibles, for the reader to feel attached to and to root for, there’s just no way a story is going to work, or hold the average reader’s attention.

Would-be novelists are often told to keep their readers firmly in mind, to consider carefully how their audience will think or feel about this or that. And to make it easy for writers to monitor what readers think of their concoctions, the fact is, today any reader can be a reviewer. On Amazon and many other sites, just pick the number of stars you feel like giving and jot a few words, and there you are, a published reviewer and one whose opinion can matter.

Here’s how one of my favorite book bloggers, Ms. Litlove at Tales from the Reading Room, set up the discussion recently:

“Going online to have a mooch around the reviews of a book I’d just read, I was confronted with the stark judgement that ‘the characters in this novel were not worthy of depiction’. Now it was true that these characters were not heroic, or instantly sympathetic in that button-pressing write-by-numbers sort of way. They were people who struggled with their situations and never managed to resolve them, they were people who made mistakes and who were flawed, they were people who either couldn’t shake off unhealthy obsessions or ran away from conventional happiness – but what’s all this about being ‘worthy’? Since when have we decided that characters in novels need to be moral paragons? And yet I do see this more and more in reviews I read, the endless cry for characters to be wholly, engagingly and consistently sympathetic.”

The full post with comments is here.

Now I found Ms. Litlove’s thoughts on sympathetic characters to be, as usual, shrewd, helpful and…sympathetic. And her visitors and commenters, a marvelous collection of thoughtful folks who regularly stop by her site, also had a number of interesting things to say on the subject.

But in my typically simple-minded way, I found myself wanting to reverse some terms and go at the argument from a different, perhaps more perverse angle.

First of all, the kinds of characters I invariably judge unsympathetic can be smart or stupid, sweet or sour, ugly or lovely, essentially good or often evil…well, you get the idea. What they all have in common and why I find them unsympathetic, or “not worthy of depiction” (yes, I think I’ve found a use for that strange phrase!) is this: they’re flat and unconvincing, without credible motivation or plausible action; they’re simple when they need to be complex, they’re dull and uninteresting because they don’t appear to be genuinely alive. In short, they’re not compelling because they don’t match up well with everything life has taught us about the myriad manifestations of the human animal.

A while back I mentioned somewhere that I continued writing the story in my novel The Obsession into a second book (The Disappearance) because the characters had lodged themselves in my heart. I did not mean that I loved those characters in the sense that I was sympathetic to them and their plight.

No, what makes me love the characters I create are those magical moments when they come alive and go their own way, when they surprise, puzzle and confound me. At those special times they’re full of verve and contradiction, and they’re exciting to me because they often feel so damn real. Yes, I think we need to be concerned about the commercial influence of agents, editors and readers in this new, hyper-connected world of publishing.

But to me, and I expect to any serious novelist, all that matters is not how likeable our characters are, but whether they truly live and breathe.

The post UNSYMPATHETIC CHARACTERS appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

So here’s just one way of looking at last night (November 6).

It was a stunning defeat for:

• Mendacious Mitt
• The One Percent and those self-serving billionaires who tried to buy an election
• Intolerance
• Those who would yank health care from our newly covered millions
• Ayn Rand
• Lies and deception as essential campaign tools
• Secrecy and hidden agendas
• Those who would deny women the right to control their own bodies
• The rabid right and all those who cater to it
• The opposition to any reasonable control of the market dipsy-do that crashed our economy
• Shape-shifting
• Angry, self-seeking white people
• Turd Blossom
• Candidates with Swiss bank accounts
• Political calculation over minding the People’s business
• Race baiting
• Those untold millions still living in the 1950s
• Donald J(erk) Trump
• Homophobia
• Blindness to the changing face of the American electorate

The post DEFEAT appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

If you’re a writer, you know there may be nothing as pleasing and gratifying as a warm word of approval from someone whose opinion you deeply value. Well, yes, sufficient book sales to allow full-time work on the next book is also pretty cool.

I’ve been fortunate enough to experience the former, though not the latter, but what was that line from the incomparable Fran Lebowitz? Something about an author’s premature death from insufficient praise?

So today I came across a review of my novel The Obsession from a woman I greatly admire, Victoria Best, perhaps better known as the blogger Ms. litlove, whose very popular site Tales from the Reading Room offers some of the most acute, insightful and helpful reviews to be found on the web. Imagine my delight when this person with opinions I’ve come to trust and respect not only had very kind and generous words to say about my novel but also compared it favorably to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

As you probably know, Flynn’s book is the sensation of the current season in American publishing, according to a flock of major league reviewers, an intense, page-tuning thriller with loads of literary value. A million and a half in hardcover and ebook sales and along with the “Gray” books, near the top of the the best-seller lists. Here’s some of what Ms.litlove had to say about both books:

Gone Girl has had a huge impact on the book world since it came out; whilst the other novel I read, The Obsession by T. V. LoCicero will be unknown to most people, I imagine. But both are pacy, gripping narratives about love grown monstrous and out of control…fascinating portraits of gender rancour, or the amazing ability men and women have to love and loathe each other with intensity. The Obsession is more straightforward in its premise; sexuality remains a dark and vexed region where reason holds no sway and the agony of unrequited love can provoke unstable individuals to violence…[T]his was the first self-published novel I’ve ever read, and I was properly impressed and surprised by the quality of the story and the writing. Kindle readers, take note.

You can find the whole post at Tales from the Reading Room.

Now Victoria Best is pretty remarkable, a lecturer for a decade in French lit at Cambridge, the author of a couple of books of academic criticism and now a blogger/reviewer of impeccable taste who also treats her many visitors to fascinating tales from her personal life.

Beyond the much appreciated critical assessment of my novel, I am also grateful to her for even deciding to give my book a look, since it was published by my own company, TLC Media, in the new-fangled way that skirts legacy publishing. As she mentions at the end of her piece, The Obsession was the first self-published novel she’s ever read, and the experience was a good one.

So, no, it will probably never sell enough to constitute a living wage, but, yes, very pleasing and gratifying indeed.

The post PLEASED AND GRATIFIED appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

That things have changed is a pretty common observation from those interested in books and publishing these days, but my story about the Great Transformation might shed a different kind of light.

I started working on my first ebook in 1970. Yes, people still lived in caves back then, and ereaders were only a gleam in the eye of some techie savant. But for me it was supposed to be a big year, with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, my true crime account of the killing of Rabbi Morris Adler in a suburban Detroit temple on Lincoln’s birthday, 1966. They called it an assassination, not all that uncommon in those turbulent years.

Murder explored the behavior and psyche of a brilliant 23-year-old graduate student—Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Michigan, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow bound for the Divinity School at the University of Chicago—an idealistic intellectual seeker who accused his audience of 700 congregants of being hypocrites and materialists and then turned a gun on the rabbi and himself.

Among many things, it was a window on those riotous 1960s, and one of the hot literary topics back then was the rise of the “non-fiction novel.” According to my agent, Prentice-Hall, my publisher, saw the book as a kind of Jewish In Cold Blood. So in the same year that Mario Puzo got $5000 for what became The Godfather, my advance was $8500.

Published, Murder drew good reviews in often odd, out-of-the-way places like Pomona, CA, and Allentown, PA, and praise from psychiatric experts, religious figures and academics to whom I sent copies. But the eastern literary establishment acted as if it had never heard of the book, and sales were slow.

Then from Detroit’s Jewish community, a remarkable young woman came forward to tell me that Murder had been undermined by a wealthy and powerful man she had grown up calling “uncle.” She had heard this influential presidential adviser and top Republican fund-raiser—a fellow named Max Fisher—tell a group of friends that he had “squelched” my book. I checked her story and eventually learned that Prentice-Hall had indeed bowed to pressure from Fisher and suppressed my book. They printed 4000 copies from standing type, which was then pied, or dismantled—the method used for a “limited edition”—and sabotaged its marketing and distribution.

So like any foolishly high-minded young writer, I brought my accusations to Prentice-Hall, got weasel-like responses, then demanded (and secured) the rights to my book. After which I wrote another book, about what had happened to Murder.

To me, of course, it was a compelling story of corporate deceit and criminality, but facing a sure-fire, deep-pockets lawsuit from Fisher, a guy who hung out with the likes of Henry Ford II and Richard Nixon, not one of the agents and publishers I approached would even look at my new book.

My once-budding literary career soon withered. And in order to move on, I gave away my last manuscript copy of that useless expose and then embarked on a busy life as a TV producer/writer/director. Over the ensuing years, my output included more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features, 30 live event programs and 600 editorials. Occasionally I still do that kind of work, but I never stopped writing.

And then the world changed. Digital disruption hit the publishing business, and it may no longer matter what an agent or a publisher will look at. For 30 years I had lost the manuscript of my book about what was done to Murder, but when it came back to me, I brought it up to date and am now offering it as Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. Also for sale are an e-book version of Murder and 1200 copies of the original hard-cover edition that I’ve kept in a basement all these years.

So why bother with Squelched? The book was written more than 40 years ago about the publishing problems of another book written a few years earlier. What could such a story have to tell us about the disruption, confusion and uncertainty in the business today?

One of the things people say after reading Squelched is that so many of the details are reminders of things past. For example, the size of the advance Prentice-Hall gave me for writing Murder: $8500 back in 1966 when Puzo got five grand for what turned out to be one of the best-selling novels of all time.

Today the numbers seem almost quaint. The same for the hard-cover price of Murder, jumped by Prentice-Hall from the more or less typical $6.95, to what seemed like a much-inflated $9.95 as part of what I later learned was the publisher’s effort to stifle the book’s appeal and sales.

Lately I’ve wondered what those figures would seem like if translated to the value of today’s dollar. $8500 in 1966? That would be something over $60,000 today. Not bad for an untried young writer in the current market (unless she were a Kardashian).

And $9.95 in 1970 for a hard-cover non-fiction book? In 2012 that would be about $58. Today, of course, you might expect to pay between 27 and 30 bucks for such a book, but then we’re in the midst of the digital revolution. One wonders what a typical hard-cover price might be today if ereaders and ebooks had never happened.

Really, both sets of numbers point up a not-uncommon problem with such comparisons. In today’s rapidly changing book-publishing world, many a successful mid-list author with a few good-sellers under her/his belt might be happy with a 5-figure advance.

So with change and disruption shaking the industry, does my story of suppression in the publishing business back in 1970 seem only more ancient and irrelevant? Can this story tell us anything useful about book publishing or an author’s experience today? And why publish it now through my own company?

Because I can. To set the record straight. Maybe to prove that old New Testament line from John, 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” By the way, those words from Jesus are inscribed on a main lobby wall at that bastion of lies, cover-ups and covert ops, CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.

After striking out with a hoard of agents and publishers, I finally decided that no traditional publisher would seriously consider touching either of my non-fiction books. And since it’s important to me to finally make the story told in Squelched available to the public (after 40 years!), I figured I have neither the time nor the inclination to wait around to see if I might be mistaken about all this. I also felt that once I went public with the suppression story, my novels, The Obsession and The Disappearance, would probably have little or no chance as well in the legacy world.

Is Squelched a defining story of legacy publishing? Well, no. But, in a larger sense books have always been subject to the whims of the companies that publish them. Of course publishers have always made decisions that in large measure determine whether a book, no matter its intrinsic worth, will find its audience. That’s one of the things they do: they make choices about how a book will be presented to the public. Decisions about cover and text design, pricing, promotion, print run, marketing and advertising, whether to push hard for reviews in the places that matter or for certain kinds of in-store display.

They say it’s all about professional judgment. But often it may be just a gut feeling that the time is right for this story, character, theme or set of ideas. Or that its time has passed. Or that its apparent timeliness was only illusory in the first place. The publisher may decide that, while the author performed competently, the book somehow lacks that spark or special glow that can help it catch fire with a sufficient corps of readers.

And having once committed to a book and its author, a publisher may, for many different reasons, withdraw its support. For one, the editor, whose enthusiastic backing for a book promised it a chance, moves on to a new job at another house. After that, forget it. The book has lost its champion.

There have always been a multitude of ways a book might not succeed, might not reach or connect with its audience. But whether it’s bad luck, bad karma, bad timing or, as in the case of Murder in the Synagogue, bad acting that included collusion with an influential third party opposed to the book’s interests, there is almost always one common factor.

The author is in the dark. He or she may have picked up hints, from an editor who was unusually candid or just let something slip, or from the tell-tale pattern of screw-ups, failures and neglect. But the bottom line is the author doesn’t really know for sure what the hell happened to his book, whether it was some lame failure of his own—an inability to be brilliant, perceptive, insightful or eloquent enough. Or whether it was lousy luck. Or whether someone just didn’t like him or his baby enough.

So how common is what Prentice-Hall did to Murder? As I recount in Squelched, soon after the publication of Murder, I heard directly from two prominent literary agents on the subject. The very successful Julian Bach gestured at his office window overlooking 48^th Street and told me, “Look, this 20-square-block area of Manhattan is the publishing establishment in this country, and they’ve all had their experiences like this.”

And the famed Scott Meredith advised me that this kind of thing happened with enough regularity that no one of importance would even care if another instance were publicly revealed and documented.

And then there is my fellow victim of criminal shenanigans at Prentice-Hall. Gerard Colby is the author of another ill-fated book, entitled Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Four years after it purposely “botched” Murder, Prentice-Hall did the same thing to the Du Pont book. That story was first told on January 21, 1975, in the New York Times.

It was told again more recently by the author Colby in “The Price of Liberty,” one of several essays about suppression in the media collected in a book called Into the Buzzsaw, issued by Prometheus Books. Colby’s research found that the occurrence of this kind of soft squashing was sufficiently common that insiders had a term for it: “privishing.”  Instead of “publishing.”

By the way, I’m often asked why Prentice-Hall did not simply shut down the project and not publish the book at all. My response: doing that would have risked my taking it to another publisher where Fisher might not have had as much leverage. Better a quiet, seemingly natural demise.

My own guess about the real frequency today of this industry practice? Perhaps not all that often. I mean, isn’t this the Age of the Expose, when the great game-changing web allows nothing to remain hidden for long? A time when even the most secretive of institutions, like the Pentagon and the Vatican, are subject to massive leaks?

But then again, how can we really know? How often will someone come forward as brave and morally driven as the young woman who told me about what she heard from Max Fisher? How rare is it that an editor and a corporate attorney will jeopardize their jobs and careers by going public with their inside knowledge, as happened with the Du Pont book? I don’t have answers.

Now, of course, I’m biased, but there are other reasons why you might want to take a look at these books from four decades ago.  For example, both can be read as coming-of-age stories, a rich, time-tested theme.

Murder is many things, including an account of something we remain afflicted with today, the use of terrible violence as perverse public statement. But Murder is also the haunting story of a gifted, high-minded, ambitious and privileged young man in a time of social upheaval and rapid change. It’s a carefully told tale that finally arrives at a tragic conclusion in which this young fellow not only forfeits his own life but takes with him a prominent, much-loved member of his community in an act of violent despair so shocking that it stains and changes many lives.

How about the uses of history? The 1960s remain an important and fascinating period in the American 20^th century. And you know what they say about those who ignore history. Murder offers an extraordinary view of the ‘60s in part because Richard Wishnetsky, the young man at its center, was so hyper-conscious of himself as a child of his time, as emblematic of both the promise and the failure of American society. He purposely cast himself in that role in order, he thought, to teach that society it was headed for doom.

Squelched in its way is also a coming-of-age tale. In it a naïve young writer is blindsided when his book suffers a fate he has no idea was even possible. Then he gropes, blunders and finally learns a few things.

If some of the questions raised here resonate, you might give Squelched a try. It’s a meticulous account of a young writer’s sudden plunge into the wiles of publishing and his unexpected, at times unpleasant lessons in how the world works. Its epilogue explains how the original manuscript, the last copy of which I gave away back in the early ‘70s, finally came back to me after more than three decades. And it brings the story up to date by recounting the passing of Max Fisher in 2005 at the age of 96.

Along the way you may note that while the details are decades old, the lessons they contain about corporate manipulation and the power and influence of wealth and political connection remain deeply important in our world today.

*  *  *

Rabbi Jack Riemer, known as “President Clinton’s rabbi” and one of the country’s most trusted reviewers of Jewish books, called Murder in the Synagogue “a fascinating double-portrait of the Rabbi and his killer that holds the reader spellbound from beginning to end.” About Squelched he has said, “It was so absorbing that I could do nothing else until I finished it.”

The post WE’RE NOT IN MANHATTAN ANY MORE appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Is fiction dying? Or, in this early flowering of the ebook age, is it resurgent? You can find advocates for each position, but what continues to fascinate me are questions surrounding what each kind of narration, fiction and non-fiction, can do best.

If you’ve glanced around this site, you know I’ve written and published both fiction and non-fiction, true crime reportage, memoir, short stories and novels. So which kind of writing do I think can have the most impact on a reader’s heart and mind? What form or type has the best chance of delivering what great writing of any sort always offers: an enthralling experience—intellectual, emotional, aesthetic—that somehow imparts a new sense of how life works, the details and dimensions of the human condition, and perhaps even the secrets we keep from ourselves?

Actually, beyond these broad questions, what I’d like to try to get at here is what I’ll call the essence of fiction. What truly sets it apart from other kinds of writing, and how does story-telling in fiction differ essentially from the story-telling of narrative non-fiction? Obviously sci-fi, fantasy, etc., involve imaginative leaps that are beyond non-fiction, but if we put aside questions of genre, which fictional forms do what only fiction can do?

Let’s start with an example from fiction and one from non-fiction that might at first blush seem quite similar: a story or novel told in the first person and a memoir. In fact, if each were not identified as such, the reader might well have a difficult time deciding which was which, even though the memoir is the real life account of actual events, and first-person fiction is more or less the product of the author’s imagination.

(For the sake of moving this discussion along, let’s stick with traditional definitions and  look past my oversimplifications here: obviously the fiction writer may make liberal use of actual fact, and the memoirist, as we’ve seen too often recently, may fabricate.)

While fiction using a first person narrator might look like a memoir, it may also contain a complication all its own: that narrator just might be unreliable. No matter how much truth is being told, s/he might at any moment start coloring or stretching the “facts,” or telling outright lies.

Now, of course, the success and value of the memoir will always be measured in part by an estimation of how truthful and candid the memoirist is finally perceived to be. And the memoir can have the unassailable power of factual truth on its side. But first-person fiction with an unreliable voice can manipulate that truth, trash or splinter it, just as so often happens in the complex reality of our everyday lives, and the result can be both engrossing and enlightening.

Still, in both the memoir and first-person fiction, the reader is allowed directly inside only one character…the narrator. Yes, both fiction and non-fiction writers often come up with various devices, tricks and stunts—diaries, letters, communications of all sorts—to offer other points-of-view and give us a window on the thoughts and feelings of other characters. But none of them necessarily has the power and authority of that first-person voice.

What about fiction with a third-person narrator? There are, of course, varieties of such narrators. Some remain at a distance from their characters, looking at them only from the outside and simply reporting on the action taking place in the story. They appear to want the cloak of objectivity and neutrality, and in doing so they are more or less presenting an experience that can seem very similar to that of a piece of narrative non-fiction.

Then there is the narrator who is omniscient. Yes, all third-person narrators can be seen as all-knowing (it’s their story, after all), but there are varying degrees of omniscience, depending on how much their authors choose to go inside their characters and how readily they offer commentary and perspective as opposed to strict objectivity.

Certainly a full-blown omniscient narrator sets fiction apart, the real difference-maker being the ability to present with a special fullness and detail both the outside and the inside of the world being depicted. The outside includes the locations, settings and events that the characters find themselves in and respond to while they’re acting out their lives. And the inside refers to the interior life of those characters, their thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams and secret urges, as they confront life’s challenges and interact with each other.

Now this kind of fiction, taking the reader inside more than one character, can be most adept at offering a glimpse of the enormous complexity of the human drama. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why short stories and novels with a shifting POV have become so prevalent over the past several decades. Maybe the purveyors of fiction have turned to it in part because they have felt themselves under attack from those touting the power of the true, the undeniably gripping nature of the real.

The most intense and, to my mind, effective use of this shifting POV approach is what’s been called the close, or tight third person, in which the writer moves his narrator’s voice right up against a character, whose sensibility, vocabulary, intelligence and perception can then bleed right into the story. The writer/narrator might stay with that character for a few paragraphs, a few pages or a chapter or two. Then it’s on to another character for a while. Writers as diverse as Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and my favorite crime writer and friend Elmore Leonard have employed it with wit, finesse and brilliance.

With the close third method of story-telling, the narrator’s voice blends with that of the POV character, making for often subtle shifts of hue, temper and style. So in effect, the authority of the narrator is joined with the persona of the character in a narrative technique some contemporary lit scholars refer to as the “free indirect style.” This is an often loose-feeling style that lets readers inhabit two or more mind-sets at a time, thus playing to our natural fascination with the secret thoughts and motivations of others.

Something similar can be achieved with a series of first person narrators. But then the writer is mostly limited by the qualities of each narrator: his/her intelligence, memory, knowledge base, vocabulary, acuity of perception, and again, of course, reliability. Whereas, with a close third shifting POV, the reader is normally certain of reliability, and the narrator can take the story anywhere s/he pleases in time and place.

What I’ve learned in writing fiction with a close third narrator and multiple, shifting POVs (and what I hope is evident in my novels The Obsession and The Disappearance) is that there are also great opportunities to play with plot and experiment with time frame and sequence and, in doing so, to create suspense, mystery, momentary confusion and surprise—all of which, if done effectively, can be features of a compelling, page-turning narrative.

With a true crime book like Murder in the Synagogue, my treatment of what happened and when were entirely determined by the factual reality I was reporting. But in writing fiction I create the plot, and how I do it really depends on what I decide will be most revealing and most effective in telling “the truth” about my characters and my story.

Another vital factor in all of the many decisions a writer makes in the construction of every novel is how best to promote the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief, which is at the heart of every piece of successful fiction. But that’s a rich and fascinating topic for another day.

Let me finish with a quick critique of what I’ve just written: it lacks examples! As a way of rectifying this situation and keeping the discussion going, maybe some of you would like to take on the task of supplying titles that illustrate some of the different approaches to story-telling I’ve outlined here. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

The post THE CLOSE THIRD AND THE ESSENCE OF FICTION appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

In my last post…

I offered some thoughts on the currently heated discussion of genre versus literary fiction and said I’d look at the experience of constructing my own novels.

So I did not begin with any such intentions, but it turns out that my novel The Obsession is a kind of hybrid, a cross between a psychological and a literary thriller, with elements of crime, mystery and suspense.  I simply set out to tell the story in my head, and this is the way it came out. To my mind there is nothing particularly innovative, groundbreaking or original about its methods, shape or purpose. Again, it was just the story I wanted to tell.

The three main characters all interested me enough that I gave each of them a point of view, in more or less alternating chapters and using what’s called the close third person. I wanted to dig deep into each, to present something of where they come from, how they think and see the world, and of course at least a little of what causes them to do what they do.

Sometimes accomplishing this, presenting information about each of these three people, may slow the action down and force the reader to wait a bit longer to learn about what happens next. But many writers, setting out on the more or less crazy endeavor of penning a novel, struggle with and worry over the tension between depth of character and narrative pace. Finally, you make your choices and live with the result.

And by the way, I also had no intention of writing a trilogy. One of the first people to read The Obsession, an old lit prof of mine, said he wanted to know what happened to certain characters after the story ended. So I started thinking about that and soon came up with outlines for two more novels, one of which, The Dissappearance, I’ve written and published. The third, The Tryst, I’m about to start.

Beyond the classic novelists we all read in school…

Dostoyevsky was the one who grabbed me most often. But it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything by the old Russian giant. In the decades since school, I have returned most often to Vonnegut, Bellow, Malamud, Roth, Le Carre, Simenon, Highsmith, Oates, Leonard, Furst, Rendell, Grisham, McEwan, and Amis.

An eclectic bunch, each read for his/her particular passions, pleasures and perspectives, astonishing skills, charm and wisdom, but it would be presumptuous to claim even that I’ve learned from any of them.

All I can say is that I have flat out loved books by each of them, and that what I do when I’m writing is to keep working and re-working, polishing and polishing again, until I at least like, and on rare occasions, love what I have written.

Readers have a basic hunger for knowing how the world works…

And I suspect that’s true even for those who say they read mostly to escape their troubled or hackneyed corner of the universe. We’re all looking for insight and meaning in all of life’s infinite variety. Sooner or later we decide if a writer has a clear and penetrating gaze, with a view as narrow as a laser or as broad as a flood light, and finally whether reading this book provides a special kind of pleasure.

Does the novelist give us that wonderful sense that she will miss nothing, that he possesses a mind so knowing that it comprehends in a flash and cuts to the essence in an instant? How about an ear so acute that it will capture, recall and make good use of the subtle, revealing nuances of everyday speech?

Does the author have a keen, knowing wit?

A deft way with language that will often please and surprise us with just the right word or phrase, a combination that provides not only delight but helps us see something common in our everyday life in a new way, thus giving it a new meaning?

In short, we ultimately ask ourselves, is she or he a writer who can help us discover a little bit more about what’s important in life and give us a resonating joy in the process?

The question of what genre we might be reading at that moment may well seem beside the point.

The post FLIRTING WITH GENRE (Part 2) appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

In two recent posts titled Why Crime?…

I’ve talked about why we’re so taken with crime books and why crimes usually happen in my own books. One more (rather stray) thought occurred, and I decided to drop it in here:

It may be a good thing at times to remind ourselves that the most efficient, ruthless and, to my mind, disgusting criminals in our midst usually dress well. Those who deliver the most damage to the greatest number of lives around them often favor a well-tailored suit (occasionally one that includes a skirt) or an impressive military uniform, or, with some in the Middle-East, the kind of sparkling white robe we often like to picture Jesus wearing. They come with names like Madoff, Stanford, Mugabe, Gaddafi and Assad. Bin Laden, of course, favored the spotless robe but sometimes accessorized with a camo jacket over it.

Now some of those responsible for the most generous, good-doing activities on the planet also wear similar garb, so let’s not rush to judge a book by its cover, as they used to say back when books really did have covers and not some little jpeg image stuck to a web page.

And speaking of books…

I think it may also be risky to judge a book by its genre.

Not to waste your time, I don’t write fantasy, sci-fi, romance or horror. You could put a gun to my head, and I doubt I would write about zombies, werewolves, vampires or any variety of the undead. I have nothing against those creature or the genres they live in, and maybe if I had actually met one of those folks with the oversized incisors, I might have written in a different direction. But for the most part I don’t read in those genres either.

The comparative value of genre fiction versus literary fiction?

The topic has been hot lately, with interesting pieces by Gary Gutting in the NY Times, Arthur Krystal in The New Yorker, and Dwight Allen in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The term “guilty pleasure” is much bandied about in the discussion of genre novels, but I don’t set much store on it. I rarely feel guilty when I’m reading. It doesn’t matter what subject, style or genre, if I’m not getting some kind of value or pleasure from the collection of words in front of me—and that payoff can come in a multitude of ways—I usually stop reading and try something else.

Is Crime and Punishment genre?

A crime novel? The word is, of course, right there in the title, and can you imagine that powerfully compelling story without the murder at it’s core? But is it a genre construction? Well, no, few would say that, since it’s a world classic, unquestionably one of our great literary masterpieces.

Actually, the most helpful piece I’ve read on genre vs. literary is a recent blog/manifesto from the great Ursala K. Le Guin:

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.

The value judgment concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.

Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.

Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.

Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.

Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

For the whole piece, go to Book View Cafe. 

Let’s face it…

What we’re really talking about here is that unfathomable dance each novelist performs with each reader. Every one of us brings a unique consciousness to each novel we read. But that doesn’t mean we cannot share the experience with others in a deep and detailed way, while exchanging our personal preferences and judgments.

Sheer numbers, the test of time, the estimate of those who’ve made the study of literature their life’s work, the power of their arguments, the tenor of the times and the predilections and tastes of the moment—all these and more will play into a novel’s public valuation. But I find it hard to argue with Ms. Le Guin’s point that a novel’s genre should not be a determining factor. To me, her perspective seems not just democratic but practical and wise. How about you?

Next time I’ll go at this genre business with my own fiction in mind.

The post FLIRTING WITH GENRE appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Suddenly two weekends ago (8/25-26)…

All those contentious words flying around the web for weeks on the subject of book reviews (Too nice? Too nasty? Not worth the trouble?) got trumped. In a sprightly expose in the New York Times with the irresistible title, “The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy,” David Streitfeld caused a firestorm of comments (331 the last time I looked) by describing a handy little service that once was available but is no more.

The brainchild of a guy named Todd Rutherford, a shrewd entrepreneur with a convenient conscience, GettingBookReviews.com opened for business in the fall of 2010. At first writing all the reviews himself, Rutherford charged $99 for one, $499 for 20, and $999 for 50. But soon he had so much business that he needed the help of a bunch of folks he found on Craig’s List willing to write reviews for $15 a piece. Rutherford made clear that 5 stars were not absolutely required, but if conscience dictated otherwise, their fee would be cut in half. Quickly all of his new employees developed his kind of conscience. And even though Amazon forbids paid-for reviews and online forums were filled with complaints, before long Rutherford was making $28,000 a month.

It didn’t last long…

Ironically, a dissatisfied customer hastened the end. Angry that her review was taking too long, she spread her complaints across the web, and then Google suspended Rutherford’s ad account and Amazon began taking down reviews. After 4531 reviews, GettingBookReviews.com closed up shop.

But David Streitfeld’s biggest bombshell involved a more-than-satisfied customer named John Locke. Everyone who knows their ebook history knows about John Locke, the 60-year-old former insurance salesman who started writing and self-pubbing ebook thrillers. At first he got nowhere, and then suddenly in December 2010 he sold 15,000 books. Soon he would be celebrated as the first self-pubber to peddle a million. And then he celebrated himself with a non-fiction book entitled How I Sold One Million E-Books in Five Months.

In it he generously includes all his success secrets…except one: in the fall of 2010, Mr. Locke paid Mr. Rutherford about 6 grand to buy himself 300 mostly 5-star reviews.

Hey, you think maybe all those wonderful reviews had something to do with all that heart-warming success?

Now naturally with four books of my own just recently up and, of course, looking for reviews, the Streitfeld piece in the Times grabbed my attention. Was I shocked? Not really. Nothing humans do should shock any of us any longer. But in addition to cynical resignation, did I feel annoyance, disgust? Yes, to both.

For one thing Streitfeld’s tone often seems gratuitously disparaging. Occasionally he offers bold, bald factual statements like this one:

“So as soon as new authors confront that imperative line on their Amazon pages — ‘Be the first to review this item’ — the temptation is great for them to start soliciting notices, at first among those closest at hand: family, friends and acquaintances. They want to be told how great they are.”

And then apparently for unimpeachable support for this questionable opinion, he quotes some know-it-all Stanford professor named Robert I. Sutton:

“Nearly all human beings have unrealistically positive self-regard. When people tell us we’re not as great as we thought we were, we don’t like it. Anything less than a five-star review is an attack.”

Okay, then. Tarred with a very broad brush indeed.

In a related piece published in the Times a week earlier Streitfeld described the efforts of a team of Cornell researchers to create a computer algorithm that would smoke out fake reviews. The good news: on hundreds of hotel reviews it worked about 90% of the time. The bad news: hotel reviews and book reviews seem like apples and oranges.

On Sunday morning, as I perused the first 30 or so of those 330 plus comments in the Times, they ran the gamut:

From, woe is us poor indie authors, this is the last nail in the coffin of our desperate quest for respect. To: Hey, eff it, legacy publishing does the same damn thing!

From: John Locke is a lying pig. To: John Locke is really smart.

From: I would never, ever do such a thing. To: Yeah, but if others are doing it, the rest of us are screwed.

From: This is a dead-certain sign we’re at the edge of the ethical abyss. To: No, man, this is the essence of free enterprise and the glories of capitalism.

From: Reviews are worth shite. Anyone who trusts them is an idiot. To: I can tell a phony/worthless review within the first few words.

From: All I need to do is use “Look Inside” to read a few pages, and I’ll know if the book will be worth my time. To: No, you doofus, those lazy, evil indie authors buff and polish those first few pages so they can get away with writing dreck for the rest of the book.

And, seemingly, ad infinitum.

With many of the comments I found myself agreeing and sometimes also not. A fellow named K.W. Jeter had some cogent things to say, but later on his blog he wrote this:

“There’s a battle going on right now, to demonstrate that indie ebooks are as good and even better than traditionally published print books. The battle is being won by indie writers self-publishing compelling, well-written ebooks which garner genuine positive — and unpaid — reviews from actual readers and not desperate shills recruited from Craigslist. As the comments to the New York Times article indicate, it’s going to be a long battle. We don’t need dishonest writers, willing to do anything to promote their books, raising doubts in readers’ minds about the reliability of the reviews they see on Amazon about our ebooks.”

Again I agree and disagree. Yes, we don’t need dishonest writers. But that’s like saying we don’t need dishonest people. And if there’s a battle going on between indie ebooks and legacy print books, it’s only so if you think it’s so. A battle? More like a free-for-all in which everyone is struggling for notice and survival.

In fact, what’s really happening is that we’re about five years into a huge shift in the publishing business. Things are changing rapidly, inevitably, and the only certainty is that the landscape already looks and feels very different. In another five years?  Who knows? Certainly in a variety of ways today there are many more books being published . Some are good, others not so much. Whatever happens, Good luck to everyone.

Look, if you’ve been out there scouring the web for places to get a new book reviewed…

You know there are multiple sites offering to sell you something that looks like a critical judgment. Often they’ll give you a choice: a free review that may arrive in two or three months (or maybe never), or one that will cost you but will definitely take only two or three weeks. If you chose to pay, that’ll be 59 bucks for one, or three for 129.

Most of these places provide the standard disclaimer: whether free or bought and paid for, good reviews are not guaranteed. Occasionally you’ll see that silly old saw about how there’s no such thing as bad publicity. But com’on, folks, how long will these outfits stay in business if they take your cash and serve up a bad review?

Actually, I found it at least slightly reassuring that those smart people from Cornell are out there trying to devise ways to sort the wheat from the chaff, to spot the phony among the real.

Now if someone will just come up with an algorithm where you could plug in a reviewer’s name and out would pop an accurate notion of that person’s intelligence, honesty, good taste, comprehensive knowledge and common sense.

Of course, each of us could make all those calculations and judgments on our own, but then that would take a whole lot of reading and thinking and the like.

For what it’s worth, here’s my thought…

Yes, most of the pro reviewers are still behind walls manned by gatekeepers who will consider submissions only from established publishers. The best of the online reviewers and book bloggers are swamped with requests, and the amateur enthusiasts often seem to merit little trust. So what happens to all those indie books, dumped in our vast digital sea to sink or swim? How will we find a way to establish their genuine value?

I’m pretty sure this whole indie publishing thing (now obviously at the toddler stage) will sooner or later shake itself out. Maybe with some of the novelty worn off, more of our expectations will float back down to earth. Most likely more resources will evolve and develop to provide us with what we need and want for literary assessment. In the meantime, let’s all relax, take a deep breath and get back to writing our books.

The post BUYING BOOK REVIEWS appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

In my last post I asked…

Why do so many of us seem to love books that feature crime? You might want to check it out here, before heading into this one. But in any case, as promised, I want to talk about why crimes usually happen in my own novels. (Check out The Obsession, and The Disappearance.)

Certainly I hope they’ll add a measure of suspense, mystery and narrative drive, but that’s not necessarily why you’ll find them there. Crimes also happen in my novels because I want to deal with life and death issues, because I’m interested in exploring ethical values in real world situations, questions of right and wrong and how we frame them, avoid them, or ultimately answer them, how we deal with a moral dilemma or a conflict of values. Obviously crime provides ready access to all these important themes.

And then there’s the fact that a crime will often offer a quick way to cut to the quick, an effective way to expose our hidden dreams and nightmares, those fears, desires and needs that feed our most powerful emotions.

Psychiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote with great insight about violence. Here’s one of my favorite quotes from him:

In a human being’s life, murder is one of the most crucial, experiment like events that can possibly take place. It reveals the innermost springs of the individual’s life and is a profound self-revelation of character. Far more than any other act, it requires an enormously strong impulse, an overcoming of resistances, a conquering of inhibitions, and a building up of rationalizations. It is invaluable, therefore, for understanding the true texture of human personality and of mental mechanisms in general. It might be truly said: Tell me what kind of murder you could or would commit, and I’ll tell you what kind of a man you are.

Crime often moves characters to extremes…

And it is in that realm that men and women can sometimes reveal their most naked selves. So, yes, crime happens in my novels, and yes, I’m pleased when I feel their occurrence helps me grab and hold the reader. But not, I should add, at the expense of credibility, depth of character and literary value.

I do have a thing about credibility, even as I admit that it can be a tricky concept, heavily influenced by things like the reader’s acuity of perception and breadth of experience. One person’s credible is another’s absurd.

My own feeling is…

Writing thrillers today has become a dicey proposition. The wild popularity of the genre is undeniable, and naturally where popular leads, authors follow. In addition, pushed by the multiplying distractions and shrinking attention spans of our busy society, a writer may feel an ever-increasing need to grab the reader’s interest as quickly as possible and to hold on to it desperately in a world that seems cleverly designed to pry us away from anything and everything. These realities may well lure a thriller writer into story telling that loses any genuine touch with reality, and embraces comic-book extravagance in character, plot and pace.

Of course, I want my books to absorb, entertain and please in some significant way, and I do my best to make that happen, but ultimately whether it does or not will depend on the reader. If what she’s looking for is a wild ride, or he doesn’t really care whether the writer cheats, manipulates and stretches that vital suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, then she/he is probably better off looking elsewhere.

Now if I were still writing True Crime…

Though that’s not what it was called back then, True Crime was where I started, more than 40 years ago now, with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, my non-fiction account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler. As I outline elsewhere on this site, I followed that book with a memoir that was also True Crime, recounting my unusual experience with Murder. When that one found no publisher, and when a top literary agent finally failed to sell the next crime story I had lined up and researched for several months, I stopped writing True Crime.

Lately, though, here in metro Detroit, reports on a number of strange and compelling crimes have caused me to think, “If I were still writing True Crime, that’s one I’d consider.” So occasionally on this Blog, I’ll tell a crime story that has caught my eye. Since most of these tales are still unfolding, they’ll probably come in installments. As always, I’ll look forward to your response.

The post WHY CRIME? (Part 2) appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Why do so many of us seem to love crime with a passion?

Why do we devour book after book as if we’re in the clutches of an addiction? All kinds of crimes in all kinds of books:

True Crime practitioners and confessional scribes dealing in white collar and organized wrong-doing, mass and serial murder, assassination and the lethal encounter with family member, lover or spouse, rape, torture and enslavement, war-time espionage and spy story, all sorts of robbery, armed and otherwise, the looting of personal fortunes, the Detroit carjack and the Wall Street highjack, the heist caper and the bank job, the quiet counterfeit and the audacious Ponzi scheme, the suburban home invasion and downtown street mugging, and all kinds of mayhem–passionate, perverse, mad, calculated, cold-blooded, or simply inexplicable.

And of course novelists have always flocked to the fictional variants: the master sleuth and gritty detective narratives, police procedurals and private eye accounts, mysteries and whodunits, first person renditions and shifting POVs, suspense, horror and that wildly popular catch-all these days, the thriller, in its many manifestations—from literary and legal to psychological and political to spy and sci-fi—all of them usually centered on some kind of crime.

So why the fascination?

What is it about crime and criminals that grabs us and won’t let go? Do we all have a little larceny or murder in our hearts, darker urges we keep secret, even from ourselves? And is that why we’re so taken with those who, unlike most of us, act on those impulses, giving vent to lust, greed or murderous hate?

Is there something irresistible about those who refuse to accept the limits imposed by society or personal morality? Is it the lure of the outlaw, the transgressor who breaks the boundaries (and cheats the boredom) of daily existence? Or is it simply the undying appeal of the ancient drama of good versus evil? Do we root for the white hats, while secretly admiring the black?

Are we so unnerved by the constant flow of crime stories in the media, those frightening reports of the sudden eruption of chaos and violence in our everyday lives, that we long for tales of justice, revenge or retribution in which the proper order of things is finally restored?

Is evil inherently more interesting than good?

Or do we so admire those who put themselves at risk to maintain order and civility in our troubled world that we never tire of watching them function with courage and skill?

Are we simply adrenaline junkies, searching for anything that will speed the pulse, make our hearts pound and our mouths go dry, all the while knowing that we’re perfectly safe with that hardcover or Kindle in our lap? Or do we sense there is something about crime that can effectively get us down to basics, give us a look into the soul of both perpetrator and victim and a way to gauge the strains, fissures and flaws of the society in which we live?

As you may have already guessed, I’m sometimes better at asking questions than coming up with answers, and with multiple choice, I’m often drawn to “all of the above.”

But how about you?

Are you taken with crime or can you take it or leave it? I’d love to hear from you on the subject. And with some thoughts about why crimes usually happen in my novels, I’ll continue the discussion next time. At least for now, I’ll have something new here every few days.

The post WHY CRIME? appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

So this is the third and last installment of this series…

In Part 1 and Part 2 I’ve been asking, are Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue irrelevant, ancient history?  If not, why not?

So how common is what Prentice-Hall did to Murder? As I recount in Squelched, soon after the publication of Murder, I heard directly from two prominent literary agents on the subject. The very successful Julian Bach gestured at his office window overlooking 48^th Street and told me, “Look, this 20-square-block area of Manhattan is the publishing establishment in this country, and they’ve all had their experiences like this.”

And the famed Scott Meredith advised me that this kind of thing happened with enough regularity that no one of importance would even care if another instance were publicly revealed and documented.

And then there is my fellow victim of criminal shenanigans at Prentice-Hall…

Gerard Colby is the author of another ill-fated book, entitled Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Four years after it purposely “botched” Murder, Prentice-Hall did the same thing to the Du Pont book. That story was first told on January 21, 1975, in the New York Times.

It was told again more recently by the author Colby in “The Price of Liberty,” one of several essays about suppression in the media collected in a book called Into the Buzzsaw issued by Prometheus Books. Colby’s research found that the occurrence of this kind of thing was sufficiently common that insiders had a term for it: “privishing”…instead of “publishing.”

My own guess about the real frequency of this industry practice? Perhaps not all that often. But probably more than most of us would guess. But then, really, how can we know?

So isn’t this the Age of the Expose?

A time when nothing can remain hidden for long? When even the most secretive of institutions, like the Pentagon and the Vatican, are subject to massive leaks?

And yet how often will someone come forward as brave and morally driven as the young woman who told me about what she heard from Max Fisher? How rare is it that an editor and a corporate attorney will jeopardize their jobs and careers by going public with their inside knowledge, as happened with the Du Pont book? Answers are hard to come by.

Now, of course, I’m biased…

But there are other reasons why you might want to take a look at these books from four decades ago.  For example, both can be read as coming-of-age stories, a rich, time-tested theme.

Murder is many things, including an account of something we remain afflicted with today, the use of terrible violence as perverse public statement. But Murder is also the haunting story of a gifted, high-minded, ambitious and privileged young man in a time of social upheaval and rapid change. It’s a carefully told tale that finally arrives at a tragic conclusion in which this young fellow not only forfeits his own life but takes with him a prominent, much-loved member of his community in an act of violent despair so shocking that it stains and changes many lives.

How about the uses of history?

The 1960s remain an important and fascinating period in the American 20^th century. And you know what they say about those who ignore history. Murder offers an extraordinary view of the ‘60s in part because Richard Wishnetsky, the young man at its center, was so hyper-conscious of himself as a child of his time, as emblematic of both the great promise and the great failure of American society, and purposely cast himself in that role in order, he thought, to teach that society it was headed for doom.

Squelched in its way is also a coming-of-age tale…

In it a naïve young writer is blindsided when his book suffers a fate he has no idea was even possible. Then he gropes, blunders and finally learns a few things.

If some of the questions raised in these posts resonate, you might give Squelched a try. It’s a meticulous account of a young writer’s sudden plunge into the wiles of publishing and his unexpected, at times unpleasant lessons in how the world works. Its epilogue explains how the original manuscript, the last copy of which I gave away back in the early ‘70s, finally came back to me after more than three decades and brings the story up to date by recounting the passing of Max Fisher in 2005 at the age of 96.

Along the way you may note…

While the details are decades old, the lessons they contain about corporate manipulation and the power and influence of wealth and political connection remain deeply important in our world today.

If you’ve stayed with me this far, I’m grateful and hope you’ll leave a comment.

The post THINGS HAVE CHANGED (Part 3) appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Last time…

I wrote about my books Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue and ended by asking what, if anything, their fate 40 years ago might add to the conversation we’re having about the Great Shift in publishing these days. You can catch up with that post here.

One of the things people say after reading Squelched is that so many of the details are reminders of things past. For example, the size of the advance Prentice-Hall gave me for writing Murder: $8500 back in 1966 when Puzo got five grand for what turned out to be one of the best-selling novels of all time.

Today the numbers seem almost quaint…

The same for the hard-cover price of Murder, jumped by Prentice-Hall from the more or less typical $6.95, to what seemed like a much-inflated $9.95 as part of what I later learned was the publisher’s effort to stifle the book’s appeal and sales.

Lately I’ve wondered what those figures would feel like if translated to the value of today’s dollar. $8500 in 1966? Today that would be something over $60,000. Not bad for an untried young writer in the current market (unless she were a Kardashian).

And $9.95 in 1970 for a hard-cover non-fiction book? In 2012 that would be about $58. Today, of course, you might expect to pay between 27 and 32 bucks for such a book, but then we’re in the midst of the digital revolution. One wonders what a typical hard-cover price might be today if eReaders and eBooks had never happened.

Really, both sets of numbers point up a not-uncommon problem with such comparisons. In today’s rapidly changing book-publishing world, many a successful mid-list author with a few good-sellers under his belt might be happy with a 5-figure advance.

So with change and disruption shaking the industry…

Does my story of suppression in the publishing business back in 1970 seem only more ancient and irrelevant? Can this story tell us anything useful about book publishing or an author’s experience today? And why publish it now through my own company?

Because I can.

To set the record straight.

Maybe to prove those old saws about truth?

From Shakespeare’s the Merchant of Venice: “…in the end truth will out.”

And from the New Testament, John, 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” By the way, these words from Jesus are inscribed on a main lobby wall at that bastion of lies, cover-ups and covert ops, CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia.

And after striking out with a hoard of agents and publishers…

I finally decided that no traditional publisher would seriously consider touching either of my non-fiction books. And since it’s important to me to finally make the story told in Squelched available to the public (after 40 years!), I figured I have neither the time nor the inclination to wait around to see if I might be mistaken about all this.

At the same time, I felt that once I went public with the suppression story, my novels, The Obsession and The Disappearance, would probably have little or no chance as well in the legacy world.

Is Squelched a defining story of legacy publishing?

Well, no. But, yes, in a larger sense books have always been subject to the whims of the companies that publish them. Of course publishers have always made decisions that in large measure determine whether a book, no matter its intrinsic worth, will find its audience. That’s one of the things they do: they make choices about how a book will be presented to the public. Decisions about cover and text design, pricing, promotion, print run, marketing and advertising, whether to push hard for reviews in the places that matter or for certain kinds of in-store display.

They say it’s all about professional judgment.

But often it may be just a gut feeling that the time is right for this story, character, theme or set of ideas. Or that its time has passed. Or that its apparent timeliness was only illusory in the first place. The publisher may decide that, while the author performed competently, the book somehow lacks that spark or special glow that can help it catch fire with a sufficient corps of readers.

And having once committed to a book and its author, a publisher may withdraw its support. That can happen for many different reasons. For example, the editor, whose enthusiastic backing for a book promised it a chance, moves on to a new job at another house. After that, forget it. The book has lost its champion.

There have always been a multitude of ways a book might not succeed, might not reach or connect with its audience. But whether it’s bad luck, bad karma, bad timing or, as in the case of Murder in the Synagogue, bad acting that included collusion with an influential third party opposed to the book’s interests, there is almost always one common factor.

The author is in the dark…

He or she may have picked up hints, from an editor who was unusually candid or just let something slip, or from the tell-tale pattern of screw-ups, failures and neglect. But the bottom line is the author doesn’t really know for sure what the hell happened to his book, whether it was some lame failure of his own—an inability to be brilliant, perceptive, insightful or eloquent enough. Or whether it was lousy luck. Or whether someone just didn’t like him or his baby enough.

Next time I’ll ask how often the kind of collusion I describe in Squelched might be happening to unsuspecting authors. As always, I’m looking forward to your comments.

The post THINGS HAVE CHANGED (Part 2) appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.

Oh, you’ve noticed?

Yes, a pretty common observation from those interested in books and publishing these days. But I’ve got a story about the Great Shift that’s a bit unusual and might shed a different light.

It was 1970—I know, people still lived in caves back then, but stick with me for a moment—a big year for me with the publication of Murder in the Synagogue, my true crime account of the killing of Rabbi Morris Adler in a suburban Detroit temple on Lincoln’s birthday, 1966. An assassination it was called, one of several, you may remember, in those turbulent years.

I had set out to explore the behavior and psyche of a brilliant 23-year-old graduate student—Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Michigan, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow bound for the Divinity School at the University of Chicago—an idealistic intellectual seeker who accused his audience of 700 congregants of being hypocrites and materialists and then turned a gun on the rabbi and himself.

Murder was a window on those riotous 1960s…

One of the hot literary topics at the time was the rise of the “non-fiction novel.” According to my agent, my publisher, Prentice-Hall, saw the book as a kind of Jewish In Cold Blood, and so in the same year that Mario Puzo got $5000 for what became The Godfather, my advance was $8500.

Published, Murder drew positive reviews in often odd, out-of-the-way places like Pomona, CA, and Allentown, PA, and praise from psychiatric experts, religious figures and academics to whom I sent copies. But the eastern literary establishment acted as if it had never heard of it, and sales were slow.

Then from Detroit’s Jewish community…

A remarkable young woman came forward to tell me she had heard a wealthy and powerful man—an influential presidential adviser and top Republican fund-raiser named Max Fisher—tell a group of friends that he had “squelched” my book. Of course I checked her story and eventually learned that Prentice-Hall had indeed bowed to pressure from Fisher and suppressed Murder in the Synagogue. They printed 4000 copies from standing type, which was then pied, or dismantled—the method used for a “limited edition”—and sabotaged its marketing and distribution.

So what did I do?

Like any foolishly high-minded young writer. I went to Prentice-Hall, accused them of undermining my book, then demanded (and secured) its rights. After which I wrote another book, about what had happened to Murder.

Of course, facing a sure-fire, deep-pockets lawsuit from a guy who hung out with the likes of Henry Ford II and Richard Nixon, not one of the agents and publishers I approached would even look at my new book.

My once-budding literary career soon withered…

So in order to move on, I gave away my last manuscript copy of that hopeless expose and then embarked on a busy life as a TV producer/writer/director. Over the ensuing years, my output included more than 50 long-form documentaries, 75 shorter features, 30 live event programs and 600 editorials. Occasionally I still do that kind of work, but I never stopped writing.

And then the world changed…

Digital disruption hit the publishing business, and it may no longer matter what an agent or a publisher will look at. For 30 years I had lost the manuscript of my book about what was done to Murder, but when it came back to me, I brought it up to date and am now offering it as Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. Also for sale are an ebook version of Murder and 1200 copies of the original hard-cover edition that I’ve kept in a basement all these years.

So why bother with Squelched?

The book was written more than 40 years ago about the publishing problems of another book written a few years earlier? What could such a story have to tell us about the disruption, confusion and uncertainty in the business today? That’s what I’ll take up next time.

The post THINGS HAVE CHANGED appeared first on TVLOCICERO.COM.