Favorite Crime Fiction of 2015, Part VI: Anthony Rainone and Seamus Scanlon

Anthony Rainone is a contributor to January Magazine and The Rap Sheet. He lives in Brooklyn, where he writes screenplays.

• The Cartel, by Don Winslow (Knopf):
Art Keller is a tragic figure. He has been fighting the war on drugs for four decades on behalf of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He has been the de facto American warlord on drugs in Mexico. In particular, he has waged a personal battle against Adán Berrera, the head of the El Federación cartel. It has cost Keller his family and his partner, and at the beginning of this novel, it seems it has cost him his will to live as well. The Cartel is about so much more than Keller, however. It takes in everything swirling around the drug trade like a twister ripping the ground apart. It is about the violent forces interlocking the cartels against each other with unspeakable brutality (men are burned alive in oil barrels). It is about the market forces of supply (Mexico) and demand (the United States) that make Adán and Keller puppets in a Machiavellian clash of law and order and money. Adán can no more turn away from what he has built and what he has become, than Keller can lay down his gun and stop hunting the man who has forced him to live in cheap motels and look constantly over his shoulder. The Cartel is more than a saga: it is folklore, history, and socio-economic forces all backdropped by the context of fragile human life. Everyone is affected by the kind of choices made in this yarn, from the man and woman on the street trying (literally) to make one dollar, to the cowboy-dressed millionaire narcos hiding out in hilltop mansions that could withstand an invasion from Seal Team Six. Winslow is a master novelist, and there is good reason why his book spans more than 600 pages and demands considerable attention from readers. Three-quarters of the way through, you lose sense of who belongs to which cartel, who is fighting against whom, which plazas (drug territories) are vital and which are not. It is the same logistical maze that law enforcement faces when confronting the constantly shifting sands of drug alliances and wars. The violence here is unrelenting: burnings, throat slashings, redundant deaths by semiautomatic rifle. This maelstrom of bloodshed beats like an unending drum rhythm, because it brings the reader face-to-face with the true nature of narcotics-dealing. Keller is up against a tsunami. The immense fortitude and, perhaps, lunacy necessary for someone to remain committed to this drug war is enough to make your stomach churn. This is realism at its best. In the pas de deux between Berrera and Keller we see mirror images of the lengths to which each man will go. Berrera is barbaric: men, women, and children are endlessly executed on his orders. Meanwhile, Keller is coldly objective: he turns a blind eye to the Mexican military assassination squads he assists. In the end, almost nobody is left alive, though one could argue that they weren’t really living to being with. Keller has again lost those he loved, but perhaps he has gained, too. Maybe he isn’t really all that tragic a figure. Maybe he realizes that the best you can hope for is the victory today and the single life you can save from the bullet.

Seamus Scanlon is a librarian, a professor at The City College of New York, and the award-winning Irish author of As Close as You’ll Ever Be.

• Dark City Lights: New York Stories, edited by Lawrence Block
(Three Rooms Press):
Science fiction, crime, horror, tour guides, squeegees, movie locations, struggling artists, ambulance chasers, Marilyn Monroe, the garment industry, subways, Shakespeare in the Park, wilding, a corrupt bedside manner--all of those genres and topics, plus more, are included in this fine collection of New York City stories, along with a succinct and witty introduction by Lawrence Block. His own story in this collection, “Keller the Dog Killer,” I had read previously, but it is always a pleasure to reread tales featuring Keller, the antihero assassin-for-hire with a penchant for guns, stamps, and getting rid of loose ends. “The Big Snip,” by Thomas Pluck, made me wince in a good way. “The Garmento and the Movie Star,” by Jonathan Santlofer, is a magnificent story about Marilyn Monroe. “The Dead Client,” by Parnell Hall, has great energy, dialogue, and humor. Erin Mitchell’s “Old Hands” is written with aplomb and bleak humor. S.J. Rozan’s “Wet Dog on a Rainy Day” is a sobering, despair-filled story of lost love. This anthology offers great stories in the great city of New York, where anything can happen and usually does. Highly recommended.

Making a Run for It, Hollywood Style

(Editor’s note: This is the fourth recent piece by Rap Sheet contributor Anthony Rainone, who has been reflecting on real crimes and how they relate to fictional characters facing similar circumstances. You can enjoy all of Anthony’s previous posts here.)

On June 6, 2015, prisoners Richard Matt, 48, and David Sweat, 35, broke out of the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison located in Dannemora, New York. At the same time as that getaway set off a massive manhunt that continues today, it caused various news media to compare the incident, if only fleetingly, to the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption, which starred Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freedman as Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding.

There are some similarities, to be sure. Matt and Sweat placed dummies in their beds, dug through brick, made their way along interior corridors, cut through pipes with power tools, and emerged outside the prison walls through a manhole cover. Andy Dufresne did not use power tools to escape from Maine’s (fictional) Shawshank State Penitentiary, though he did employ a small ball-peen hammer to break through his wall and dig down to the sewer pipes which also served as his means of escape through the bowels of the prison. Of course, Red Redding walked out of prison a free man, but broke his parole to meet up with Dufresne in Mexico--a locale to which some people thought Matt and Sweat would also head.

Yet the manhole cover escape immediately brought to mind another favorite film, the 1998 caper tale, Out of Sight, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Based on the 1996 Elmore Leonard novel of the same name, that picture at one point finds convicted bank robber Jack Foley (played by Clooney) emerging from beneath a manhole cover only to find himself staring down the barrel of a gun held by U.S. Marshall Karen Sisco (Lopez). The similarity extends further in that Matt and Sweat expected to see a woman when they exited their own manhole: accomplice and 51-year-old civilian prison tailor employee Joyce Mitchell.

Parallels end there, though one could technically extend them a bit further, since prisoner Matt seemed to have a sexual relationship with Mitchell, while Clooney’s Foley enjoyed a romantic attraction to Sisco. Clearly, Foley’s was the more admirable liaison, since Mitchell seemed to be merely a pawn in the Dannemora escape plans.

The recent New York fleeing also brings to mind another of my favorite prison-breakout movies: Escape from Alcatraz. Based on true events, that 1979 film starred Clint Eastwood as convicted armed robber Frank Morris and Patrick McGoohan as the sinister Warden. In 1962, the multiple-offending Morris used a sort-of power tool to undo bolts on a shaft vent; he’d rigged the thing from a fan motor and a drill bit. And let’s not forget the dummy head that Morris left on his prison bed.

Ruining the continuity thread, Morris did not go underground or utilize pipes in his daring flight. Instead, he crossed the roof of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary together with his accomplices, climbed down a wall, climbed over a fence, and used a makeshift raft assembled from raincoats to cross surrounding San Francisco Bay. Morris and his cohorts, the brothers Clarence and John Anglin, were never found and--though they’d be very old men by now--might still be at large. Most presumed they died crossing the frigid waters fraught with strong currents. But many believe Frank Morris eventually made his way to Mexico--the desired flee-to location for Matt and Sweat as well.

Maybe Morris, Dufresne, and Redding all enjoyed drinks with umbrellas on the beach. I could live with that.

Life imitates art/imitates life doesn’t fully apply to the case of Richard Matt and David Sweat, of course. There’s a serious departure. Shawshank’s Dufresne was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Out of Sight’s Jack Foley was a gentleman bank robber with charm and morals--he was not a violent man. Frank Morris was a convicted armed robber, certainly a serious matter, but Eastwood managed to make his character sympathetic and gruffly likable, if not entirely innocent.

Matt and Sweat, on the other hand, are cold-blooded killers. There is nothing romantic or likable about these men, one of whom murdered a deputy, while the other killed and dismembered his victim. Unlike Dufresne or Morris, the recent escapees in New York state deserve to be apprehended and serve out their life sentences. Their story does not merit a happy cinematic ending.

FOLLOW-UP: “Sprawling Hunt Ends as David Sweat, 2nd Prison Escapee, Is Shot and Captured,” by Rick Rojas, J. David Goodman, and William K. Rashbaum (The New York Times).

“Your Verdict Must Be Unanimous”

(Above) Lee J. Cobb as Juror No. 3.

(Editor’s note: This is the third recent piece by Rap Sheet contributor Anthony Rainone, who has been reflecting on real crimes and how they might have been dealt with by fictional characters facing similar cases. You’ll find Anthony’s previous posts here and here.)

The United States is embroiled in the aftermath of three fairly recent grand jury decisions: one by a Missouri grand jury that exonerated former Ferguson County Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown; a second by a Staten Island, New York, grand jury declining to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner; and a third decision--the most recent--by a Brooklyn, New York, grand jury that did deliver an indictment of NYPD Officer Peter Liang in the shooting death of Akai Gurley.

All three of the deceased were unarmed African-American men, and in the last instance, the victim had not even been engaged by the police in any manner. The two exonerations and the single indictment riled racial tensions amongst all nationalities, both across the country and the world. All three verdicts were met with incredulity by various groups of Americans, none of whom seemed able to agree with the others. I wondered how this could be, and who could help the country come to understand the verdicts?

I was reminded of the acclaimed 1957 movie 12 Angry Men, starring Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E.G. Marshall, and Jack Warden, to name just four actors in the star-studded cast. So I decided to rewatch that brilliant Sidney Lumet-directed trial film, to see if I could better understand the thinking process that might have gone on in the real grand jurors’ heads.

Mind you, a grand jury proceeding is significantly different from the deliberations depicted in that 57-year-old big-screen picture. For example, grand juries will often hear several cases during a week and they comprise more than 12 sitting jurors (usually a number somewhere in the 20s).

Still, a comparison between a grand jury and a dozen jurors locked in a room deciding a criminal case can be made based on certain similarities, such as witness testimony and submitted evidence--as well as the emotional, intellectual, and cultural underpinnings brought to the deliberations by the men and (in the modern cases, at least) women involved in hearing a case. These basic ingredients do not change.

(Left) Fonda as Juror No. 8.

12 Angry Men is based on an outstanding screenplay by Reginald Rose, who drew on his own experience with such a trial jury. It is a brilliant rendering of the social, economic, and personality quirks that can influence a case, almost as much as the facts do.

The jurors in the film find themselves battling preconceived notions before they are able to arrive at the truth about a 19-year-old Hispanic boy’s alleged, fatal stabbing of his father. The exception is Juror No. 8 (Fonda). As I watched the film, I wondered if this happened in Missouri and New York. I wondered if there was a Juror No. 8 present during those deliberations, who helped his cohorts come to their ultimate conclusion, or one lacking and thus causing the proceedings to teeter towards folly.

Let me state: I am not suggesting that the grand juries in Missouri and New York did or did not arrive at the truth, or the proper legal decision. I’m simply exploring the possibilities that led to two dismissals (which might have otherwise resulted in the defendants being acquitted at trial anyway) and one indictment.

When the prosecutors in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases decided to present all the evidence, I couldn’t help but think that Fonda’s Juror No. 8 would have relished that result. He would have taken the testimony of hands raised or not (Michael Brown), chokehold or submission hold (Eric Garner), and he would have re-enacted and examined each moment, until he was as sure of the facts as he could be. Much like he did in the movie, re-enacting the testimony of the old man who said he’d made it from his bedroom to his front door in 15 seconds (when it actually took 42 seconds).

Fonda’s character, also identified at the end of the film as “Mr. Davis,” fulfilled roles as juror and defense lawyer, taking up the defense mantle dropped by the youthful defendant’s court-appointed attorney. In a grand jury proceeding, there would be no defendant or defense lawyer present, which would only underscore Juror No. 8’s importance. His is the voice of the accused. The fictional defendant would have found himself on death row, if not for Juror No. 8’s tenacity in examining the evidence with a clear eye devoid of prejudice and societal influences. Was such a voice badly needed in all three of those recent grand jury proceedings?

It has been argued that the prosecutors in both Missouri and New York presented the evidence in a way that favored the police. I wondered what the men and women comprising those grand juries asked the two officers under suspicion (Wilson and Pantaleo both testified, whereas Liang declined). Again, I am not criticizing the seated juries, who had exceptionally difficult cases to weigh. I am simply wondering if the arguments ever got as loud and raucous as those in the cinematic jury room. I am wondering if there was a grand juror such as Angry Men’s Joseph Sweeney’s character, Juror No. 9, who closely examined the physicality of each witness and hit upon key elements that helped break the case. I’m not saying there was anything to uncover, but I wonder whether such a grand juror would have brought his or her scrutiny and voice to bear on the verdicts to indict or not.

Taking license, I could easily see Lee J. Cobb’s Juror No. 3 sitting in either the Missouri or New York grand jury room thinking that justice was served: Brown and Garner resisted arrest and brought about their own tragic ends. That is, as Cobb’s character existed for nearly the entire movie, until the end of Act II, when Juror No. 8 finally shredded the prejudicial mantle that Juror No. 3 had draped around himself.

What do these verdicts say about the United States today? That the racial divides of the past still exist, but that our justice system nonetheless strives to pursue the truth. Sometimes we get it right, and other times we miss. Sometimes Juror No. 8 is in each and every jury room, and sometimes his spirit is sorely lacking.

* * *

A trailer for 1957’s 12 Angry Men is embedded below.

Ending the Real-life “Chinatown” Water Feud

(Above) Frequent dust storms remain an environmental problem on California’s Owens Lake. (Photo from the Owens Lake Project.)

By Anthony Rainone

What can I tell you, kid? You’re right. When you’re right, you’re right, and you’re right.

Those lines from the opening scene of Chinatown (1974) are pretty much what the City of Los Angeles is now saying to the many folks who reside in eastern California’s Owens Valley, according to this article in The New York Times. Trouble is, it took more than a century for L.A. to finally make that admission.

Current Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti stated not long ago that his city is culpable for the considerable air pollution that has resulted from the diversion of water, beginning in 1913, from Owens Lake to L.A., 200 miles to the south. “They took the water,” he remarked, acknowledging the actions of his predecessors--and looking forward to efforts by the city to help clean up the long-standing environmental mess. (As a report by National Public Radio explained, in 2013 Owens Lake--now “a salt flat the size of San Francisco”--was “the largest single source of dust pollution in the nation.”)

(Left) Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.

As part of my ongoing exploration of art imitating life imitating art, and how various fictional and cinematic characters would respond to current topics, I wondered how 1930s private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), who uttered those opening lines, would feel about this final resolution to the controversy. Before the Big Reveal in its second act, Chinatown was all about water. It was Gittes who inadvertently discovered a conspiracy to steal water from the farmers and ranchers living in the Owens Valley and divert it to the fast-growing L.A. metropolis.

Of course, the fictional conspiracy so brilliantly rendered by screenwriter Robert Towne and director Roman Polanksi was based on the true-life theft of water from Owens Valley, perpetrated in the 20th century’s first two decades by William Mulholland, superintendent of what was then the Los Angeles City Water Company (later the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power). Mulholland and his cronies in city government didn’t resort to exploiting an old-age home, as depicted in the movie, but their subterfuge was every bit as damning. As a fictional chamber of commerce official states in Chinatown, the water is necessary to “keep the desert” off the streets of L.A., no matter the cost to farmers in human suffering.

In the film, Mulholland is transformed into the fictional Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling), who is suspected of cheating by his supposed wife (Diane Ladd). Gittes is hired to investigate, and he tails Mulwray to the Los Angeles River basin and then out to the Pacific Ocean. The first half of the movie is replete with water references: a car overheating, Gittes nearly drowning in a drainage pipe, a client of Gittes who is a fisherman, and Mulwray’s gardener uttering the confounding statement “bad for glass,” while knee-deep in a pond. After the Big Reveal, the imagery shifts to the seedy side of Los Angeles, but it never completely forgoes the significance of water. One could argue that the absence of morality in Chinatown (the downtown L.A. neighborhood where Gittes once worked as a cop, and where this movie’s action concludes) is an offshoot of urban impurity far removed from the life-giving essence of water.

(Right) Mulholland with surveying equipment, circa 1920s.

So what would Jake make of the new agreement to curb pollution in the Owens Valley? First, he’d laugh ironically at how the city stole water from the area only to end up pouring a costly “twenty-five billion gallons of water annually” on Owens Lake, just to control the resulting dust. Then he would wonder why the city has finally come to accept its responsibility. What kind of backroom deal was struck? Who is making money off this arrangement? That is something the self-conscious and proud Jake Gittes would be compelled to investigate, since he was made to look like such a fool in the first go-round.

The Times article suggests that perhaps the water theft wasn’t a total loss to the Owens Valley, because it kept the local population down and preserved the natural beauty of the region. I would add that it also inspired one of the finest films ever made in the noir genre.

Old Clues, New Interest

By Anthony Rainone
I recently reviewed Michael Connelly’s The Burning Room for January Magazine. Shortly after that, I came across this article in The New York Times, which echoes one of the major plot points in the novel. And I couldn’t help but wonder how Connelly’s Los Angeles police detective, Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, might have handled the case.

Let’s recap: In The Burning Room, Bosch investigates the shooting, 10 years ago, of Mariachi musician Orlando Merced, who was believed at the time to have been hit in a random gang-banger drive-by. As a member of the LAPD Open-Unsolved Unit, Bosch is assigned the case, even though Merced only recently passed away from his wounds. Because he was shot a decade prior to his demise, and his ultimate passing was due to complications from the shooting, the coroner rules Merced’s death a homicide.

Now, the Times tale: Back in 1959, early on a rainy New York City morning, Antonio Ciccarello left his apartment on East Fifth Street and Avenue C on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and headed toward his job as a porter at a building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. Shortly after setting out, however, Ciccarello was stabbed in the torso by an unknown assailant. An operation to save his life was successful. Unlike the fictional Merced, who ended up in a wheelchair, Ciccarello had no recurring disabilities from his attack. Fast forward 55 years. On September 16, 2014, Mr. Ciccarello dies at the ripe old age of 97--and to the surprise of his family, his body is sent to the medical examiner’s office, because his hospital records indicate the stabbing back in 1959. The medical examiner rules that Mr. Ciccarello’s death is “stabbed by other … homicide.”

When I read this news account, I immediately thought of Bosch. It’s the kind of mystery and injustice that have always fed the flames of his personal mission: Everyone counts or no one counts. Someone stabbed Ciccarello and that person has to be caught.

Yet, there is a significant difference between how L.A. and New York treat cold cases. While Bosch’s Open-Unsolved Unit is handed the investigation following Merced’s death, the case of Ciccarello was given to the Manhattan South Homicide Squad, not a cold-case squad.

This was a juicy bone to chew over. I could imagine Bosch arguing with his superiors to be assigned the case, suspecting “high jingo” or department politics as the reason why the investigation wasn’t automatically tossed over to Open-Unsolved. It wouldn’t take long for Detective Bosch to wear down his superiors’ resistance. Or he’d call in a favor in order to appeal directly to the police chief, and either way he’d get what he wants.

Although porter Ciccarello always maintained he didn’t recognize his assailant, NYPD Lieutenant Detective Michael Saccone was quoted in the Times saying, “random attacks are rare. … Mr. Ciccarello could have known who stabbed him and did not want to tell anyone.”

In The Burning Room, Merced’s shooting is similarly considered a haphazard assault, until Harry Bosch digs deeper into the story. Who knows what Bosch could come up with in the Ciccarello case? While the victim’s family has stated that Ciccarello had no enemies (“He was a porter, he didn’t have anybody against him.”), Bosch would likely find just the right thread to pull and thereby unravel the mystery, confounding everyone, especially the doubters.

The challenges would be considerable: there is no DNA evidence, and most witnesses to Antonio Ciccarello’s 1959 stabbing died long ago. Still, I’d love to see Bosch take a run at this puzzling cold case. If Ciccarello’s killer is still alive, Bosch would surely find him.

Favorite Crime Fiction of 2014, Part IV: Anthony Rainone

Anthony Rainone is a contributing editor to January Magazine and a (too-infrequent) contributor to The Rap Sheet. He lives in Brooklyn, where he writes screenplays, novels, and stories.

• The Burning Room, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown):
Harry Bosch is like a fine bourbon: you taste the complexity but you’re not quite sure what produced it. Except in this case, you can go back to all of Connelly’s previous 16 Bosch novels and learn exactly what made him the finest cop protagonist in literature today … and maybe for a lot of tomorrows. In The Burning Room, we find the Los Angeles homicide detective just a year away from retirement, and now teamed up with novice Lucia Soto, or “Lucky Lucy,” who’s become a hero for having shot it out with the armed robbers who subsequently killed her previous partner. Soto has an immediate appeal and depth not seen in a Bosch cohort for some time, not since the days of Jerry Edgar and Kizmin Rider. Bosch and Soto go on to work a 10-year-old cold case involving the murder of a mariachi musician, as well as a decades-old day-care fire that claimed the life of Soto’s childhood friends. No matter how long he’s been at his job, Bosch still manages to piss people off. A cameo appearance here by FBI Agent Rachel Walling is a welcome touch. Connelly does in this novel what he excels at: weaving together two complex cases, upping the tempo and stakes of each one. Bosch and Soto make a dynamic duo and one laments the team’s short shelf life. But at least in these pages, it’s sublime.

• Murder in Pigalle, by Cara Black (Soho Crime):
Cara Black’s Parisian private-eye heroine, Aimée Leduc, is a complicated woman. Five months pregnant with her first child, fashionista Aimée finds herself embroiled in a serial rapist case that becomes personal. The victims are teenage girls, and when the daughter of Leduc’s café-owning friend goes missing, the P.I. races against the clock to find her. Author Black is perhaps writing her finest prose these days, and this particular novel has a gravitas that pulls the reader in--if the sensory-infused writing doesn’t do it first. The topic here is difficult; yet in Black’s hands, it avoids the gut-wrenching for the practical: finding the man responsible. Although this tale is set in 1998, Leduc is the embodiment of the modern woman: keeping her business afloat and her love life thriving, and doing what she does best—solving crimes. Every time I read one of Black’s novels, I want to book a flight to Paris. The only disappointment would be not finding Aimée Leduc in residence there; she’s one of the best things the fictional City of Light has to offer.

Let me also mention one non-fiction book, which was published in hardcover last year, but that I didn’t read until 2014 …

• George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution, by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger (Sentinel):
Putting aside current bad press regarding the CIA and torture, America would not be the country is it without its spy agencies, and that held especially true during the American Revolution, when the very founding of the country was at risk. After Nathan Hale’s failed attempt at procuring information about attacking British forces and his subsequent hanging, then-General George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, felt personally responsible for putting the inexperienced Hale in harm’s way. Drawing upon his own spy past, he created an intelligence ring so secret that neither he nor its other members knew each other’s identities. Operating from New York City, Long Island, and Connecticut, the Secret Six--five men and one woman--obtained information about ship movements, troop build-ups, and even a plan by Benedict Arnold to surrender West Point, and succeeded in foiling the British consistently. As one of His Majesty’s military officers later remarked, the Americans didn’t outfight the British, they out-spied them. Kilmeade and Yaeger present this fascinating piece of history in a fast-paced narrative with re-created scenes and dialogue that lend the book a thriller-ish tone. It is a fascinating account of six brave American patriots who never wanted their identities or exploits known to the public. They served their country, and that was reward enough. In fact, they did it so well, that they had to be protected from anti-British sentiment after the war was over, because many people thought them British sympathizers. It might help the modern United States for readers to pick up this book and learn the value of espionage, what it’s true purpose is, and the best kind of spies we should aspire to produce.

The Black Orchid Bookshop: Play It Again, Bonnie and Joe

By Anthony Rainone
The 13th anniversary party for the The Black Orchid Bookhop was spectacular. In appearance, it seemed very similar to past anniversary parties at that same store, save for one obvious difference: the “Store for Rent” sign mounted in the front window. Although everyone tried hard to ignore it, the realization that the Raven Award-winning duo of Bonnie Claeson and Joe Guglielmelli were shuttering their shop doors for good come September caused nearly the same reaction from everyone in the mystery-loving community. As one reader remarked to me, “I’m devastated.”

Gabriel Cohen, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Keith Snyder were among those who turned out to celebrate at The Black Orchid one last time. (Photo courtesy of Mary Reagan.)

The store opened on East 81st Street, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, back in 1994. Bonnie had previously worked in the Foul Play bookstore, and Joe then needed a break from the world of law. Their business was a smash from the get-go, attracting media attention in such newspapers as The New York Times, and winning over both mystery readers and writers. More than the books they offered, it was the knowledgeable and giving personalities of Bonnie and Joe that stood out. Author Robert Crais said, “I have never stepped into their store when I did not feel cared for, and cared about.” That sentiment goes across the board for so many who entered their narrow exposed-brick environs.

I moved into the neighborhood in 1992 and discovered Black Orchid randomly one day, soon after it opened. It was nirvana. Heaven. My first purchases? The Elmore Leonard backlist and Ross Macdonald reprints. I was so excited to find this store, I dragged my friend Jeff Bliss into The Black Orchid one day. He was not, and is not, a mystery reader, yet he was impressed, too. So many times over the past 13 years I would go into the store, not only to buy books, but to talk shop with Bonnie and Joe. Sure, the chains exist in the neighborhood (there are two Barnes & Noble outlets within two avenues of each other), but Black Orchid was the only specialty shop for mystery fiction. It was the only place on the Upper East Side where you could be nurtured in the genre by two very expert guides. I cut my teeth on mysteries before I discovered The Black Orchid, but it was from Bonnie and Joe’s store that I bought the books that made the genre come alive and grab hold. They kindled this great association for me.

And so we come to the final party. It was great to see a large collection of very talented writers and enthusiastic readers gathered under threatening skies on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I’m going to mention some names, and apologies to those who are neglected due to my failing memory.

I don’t know whether it was because I happened to be looking at the front of the store or because he just commands immediate attention, but I first spotted Michael Connelly. A fan had found him and Connelly was doing the writer thing: signing copies of his books. Lee Child was standing and talking with Laura Lippman, and across from them was Dave White. Clustered together were Sarah Weinman, Charles Ardai, and Jason Pinter. Jason and I talked about his upcoming sequel novel, The Guilty. Sounds awesome.

Megan Abbott was the topic of many conversations overheard (“I loved Queenpin”), and she too was doing the writer thing: signing copies of her latest book. Kimberly Tellus regaled the author about her book club’s decision to pick Die a Little as their last month’s title. Always good to see Reed Farrel Coleman hoisting a beer and shooting the breeze (well, actually, there was no breeze that humid night). Jason Starr was holding a copy of his newest novel, The Follower, after coming from a signing at a book chain. That seemed symbolic, given the circumstances of the evening.

The talented Alafair Burke was present, as were Gabriel Cohen, Keith Snyder, Jane Cleland, Meredith Anthony, Larry Light, Wallace Stroby, and Margery and Steve Flax. I caught up with Karen Olson, whom I last saw at Mayhem in the Midlands. Always good to see Karen, whose books must be read. We chatted about the possibility of yours truly moving to the Nutmeg State. And the hosts? They were busy being the gracious souls they always have been, through all the signings, pre-Edgar and anniversary parties. Bonnie and Joe. Two of the nicest people in the business, and they will always be part of the business.

I can’t imagine a time when I’ll walk down East 81st Street between First and Second avenues, and not see all of those mentioned above in my memories, under the leafy trees and boiling skies of Manhattan.

Crimes: They Are A-Changin’

By Anthony Rainone
I noticed this a bit late, but Marilyn Stasio wrote an outstanding essay in the Sunday New York Times about the transformation and malleability of detective crime fiction. She remarks that the detective novel is expanding beyond the confines of its neighborhood, or region, to embrace concepts that have broad, international implications. Stasio writes: “Their amateur sleuths and local police officers, charged with keeping the peace at home, are compelled to process even the gravest of national events through the prism of that hometown perspective.” In short, it’s apparent that detective crime fiction is grabbing hold of the terrain normally covered in thrillers, for example, without necessarily moving its protagonists to other parts of the world. It’s an insightful and thought-provoking piece.

Stasio makes mention of numerous examples, including Chris Grabenstein’s Tilt-A-Whirl (2005) and his follow-up novel, Mad House (2006); Reggie Nadelson’s Disturbed Earth (2005) and her follow up book, Red Hook (2006); Jess Walter’s The Zero (2006); Tony Hillerman’s The Sinister Pig (2003); as well as Steve Hamilton’s fine new novel, A Stolen Season (2006)--all as examples of stories in which small-town cops and P.I.s deal with “substantive” national issues in their backyards. She also remarks that New York authors seem hesitant to enter this new direction in crime fiction, though she mentions S.J. Rozan’s 2004 novel, Absent Friends, as an example of one New Yorker who has tackled broader concepts.

What’s fascinating is Stasio’s observation that the mystery genre has a “highly flexible form” capable of tackling this new foray into non-regional issues. Clearly, crime fiction is a dynamic literature. This is not to say that it is the only means to address contemporary issues, but crime fiction possesses a built-in adaptability to reshape itself. And it should, too, since the way local law enforcement operates today, and the types of situations its people are asked to respond to, are changing. The NYPD has a Joint Terrorism Task Force, for example--a relatively new creation to deal with a new reality: terrorists bent on attacking the city. Its intelligence division monitors the world from a single facility, and NYPD detetectives are placed in the police departments of foreign countries. Fiction doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the new reality, but often times it must.

Stasio concludes by wondering if detective fiction will ever possess the means to not bring closure to these new plot dynamics. She found the traditional form soothing in its bringing about closure, and while contemporary crime novelists seem to be striving to do the same thing, it’s getting harder. Readers might have to either be satisfied with small victories (stopping one terrorist cell at a time, for example), or wait for larger historical shifts. Hey--the Nazis were finally defeated, and we can hope the same for terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda.