A recent post on Carter Brown sort of lost its way and led into a discussion of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Herewith we pick up the comments that ensued about two-thirds the way through. Follow the link to the original post and the comments that produced the exchange below.

    First, David L. Vineyard:

    To which Walker Martin responded:

   A review of a Murder, She Wrote book I posted last Friday also included a bibliography of all the other novels based on the series. This has produced a large number of follow-up comments, many of them on the definition of what the term novelization actually means. (As opposed, say, to the longer, more cumbersome phrase “Original novel based on characters created for a televison series.” )

   If this sounds like an exciting topic to you — and it is to me! — you might want to go back and read through the discussion so far. See https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=995.

            — Steve

My computer either has a virus or some sort of corrupted hard drive. I’ll be back as soon as things are fixed. I’m hoping for the best, but it comes to computers, you gotta suspect the worse.

   Following the recent review I posted of Catch a Killer, by Ursula Curtiss, also known as The Noonday Devil, a lengthy discussion has developed between Juri Nummelin and myself in the comments section.

   Part of the conversation deals with “female noir” as a subcategory of crime fiction — what is it and what books might qualify — and specifically if that’s what Ursula Curtiss’s early books might be called.

   And where do “gothic romances” fit into the picture, if at all?

A couple of my self-storage units were broken into this past weekend, as I discovered yesterday afternoon. The thieves got into about 160 units in all, I was told. They saw the boxes of books in mine, rummaged around for a while, then left. They smashed the door latch on one of the units, though, so it couldn’t be used. I had to move everything out of that one into the other, filling up the “aisle” I’d left, and leaving no room to move around at all. It wasn’t much fun.

Luckily it was a beautiful day.

   I didn’t think anything of it when it posted yesterday’s entry here, but somehow Google picked up on it very quickly, and today’s total number of visitors has surpassed that of any other day so far except (perhaps) the day the passing of Donald Hamilton was posted here first.

   No one’s come up with any of the answers yet, or if they have, they didn’t bother leaving them as comments. I deleted a couple that I thought were facetious, not that I’m against facetie or anything, but neither were the proposed answers particularly relevant either. (Sorry, guys.)

   Maybe some hints are in order? Don’t keep reading if you don’t want any help.

49 ACROSS: Author said to have influenced Hitchcock. [Three letters.] This one should be extremely easy for mystery fans. It’s exactly who should come to mind immediately, but I’d also have to concede that I don’t know how true it is.

   Let’s skip to 57 ACROSS: Holmesian tool. [Eight letters.] You have to watch out for two word phrases in one slot, and that’s the case here. I’ll break it up correctly as

         HA_D    _ _N_

and let me know if that helps. The “Holmes” referred to is Sherlock, by the way, not “Oliver Wendell.”

   I have a confession to make. Before I picked up on the answer, I had some letters going down through 51 ACROSS: Street boss. [Ten letters.] So I was asking you to do something that I didn’t quite do myself, but I was hoping that the primary focus of this blog would compensate for that, at least maybe in part.

   Hint: Two words again. Mystery fiction oriented. And a couple of letters:

         P_ _ _ _ M _ _ _ _

   You’ll know it when you get this one right, it will feel so good.

[UPDATE] 10-22-07. The answers are in this morning’s paper, so I may as well provide them too. See the comment.

   Today’s Tribune crossword puzzle had some interesting challenges, and not only because Saturday’s offering is always the toughest of the week.

   The Tribune puzzles are not quite [41 DOWN] with those in the New York Times, but they often come close. Today’s was especially enjoyable, with just the right degree of cleverness and difficulty.

      53 ACROSS: Series starter. ANS. EpisodeI

      40 DOWN: 1947 signature Cab Calloway musical. ANS. HiDeHo.

   One that would have had me stumped completely unless I hadn’t had all of the words coming down was 38 ACROSS: Rodent yielding the fur nutria.

   Not my particular expertise, I guess. I had to check with Google when I was done to be sure the answer was even a word. It was.

   Here are a few more for which I won’t give answers.

      49 ACROSS: Author said to have influenced Hitchcock. [Three letters.]

      51 ACROSS: Street boss. [Ten letters.]

      57 ACROSS: Holmesian tool. [Eight letters.]

   You probably won’t get this last one unless you have some words coming down. Here’s what I had when it finally came to me:

              HA_D_ _N_

   41 DOWN. At the same level (with). ANS. OnaPar.

   Forget the heading of this post for a minute. I have some personal comments to make first.

   Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been tied up with matters not involving the blog and blog-related activities, and so (as you may have noticed) I’ve not been posting here nearly as often as I did, for example, over the summer. Nor are things are very likely to improve, I’m sorry to say. As far ahead as I can see, I’m not going to have nearly as much free time as I’ve had up to now to sit here at the computer and provide with you anything better for reading material than this, what you’re reading right now.

   Neither have I been able to keep up with comments that have been left, nor have I been replying in any kind of quick fashion to email questions that have been asked, and I apologize. I’m deeply sorry about that. If I’ve left you hanging in such a fashion, I probably haven’t forgotten about you, if that’s any satisfaction.

   Time is, as one fine philosopher has said, what keeps everything from happening at once. On the other hand, there’s a mathematical principle that says that there’s only a finite amount of it. You can slice it as thin as you want, but the wafers will still add up to only 24 hours a day.

   Besides helping John Pugmire recently with his Locked Rooms Library project, now finished, I’m still working on Al Hubin’s Addenda to Crime Fiction IV and as often as I can get to it. To me, it’s increasingly fascinating stuff. I also have another installment of “Maps in Mysteries” to post, and Victor Berch and I are working on a couple of illustrated checklists that should prove interesting.

   Besides reviews from Mary Reed, which have nearly unforgivably been piling up, I have tons of my own to post, all old, as I’ve not written but one since March. I’d also like to get back to more “Compleat” profiles of authors, but unless something drastic changes, don’t look for another one for a couple of weeks more. Unless it’s a short one.

   And you’ll see them here, eventually. But I guess that’s going to be the key word for a while. Eventually!

   In the meantime, let me plug one of the best sources around for in-depth mystery-related news on the Internet, J. Kingston Pierce’s The Rap Sheet. Let me take that back. In my opinion, it’s the best, and I say that not only because Jeff’s recently given a big publicity boost to John Pugmire’s “Locked Rooms” article. Read the rest of the items on his blog, actually a collective effort, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. It is to enjoy, every post he makes.

   While naming some but not others, I mean no slight to those not named, but Bill Crider’s Pop Culture blog is another that’s worth visiting every day, and I mean every day and usually several times a day. A post entitled “Memory Lane” proved to be a stroll down exactly that, a short history of mystery fandom through one fan’s eyes, Bill’s. While he and I have met in person only once, I think I was with him over the past 30 years, in parallel and sometimes coinciding paths, most of the way. Don’t miss it.

   I’ve also just left some comments on Vince Keenan’s blog, this time perhaps stirring up a figurative hornet’s nest of controversy, unless everyone’s tired of arguing over the Question Without an Answer: “What is Noir?” Everybody knows, but nobody can convince anyone else.

   After Jamie Sturgeon sent me the floor plan of the college that’s the center of Midnight, by the multi-author Mark Strange, I mentioned to him that I love maps and floor plans in detective novels.

   In reply, he sent me this one — see below — a floor plan from The Cat and Fiddle Murders by E.B. Ronald which he recently obtained. He goes on to say, “It could be the most complicated one I have ever seen in a crime novel!”

   I second the motion. I haven’t even asked him what the story’s about. I think that you could probably write your own after seeing this. I hope you can see all of the details.

[UPDATE] 08-31-07. Jamie responds:

    “Thanks for putting the Ronald floor plan on your blog. It’s not easy to say what The Cat and Fiddle Murders is about. The book has no blurb either inside or on the dust wrapper, where all it says on the front panel is ‘A real cat and a real fiddle at the grotesque “Cat and Fiddle” and why two people are murdered’

    “Al has it that The Cat and Fiddle Murders is set in New York City when it actually takes place in London. Is it possible that the American version had the setting changed? It appears that the author’s book as Ronald Barker Clue for Murder has, according to one ABE bookseller, several floor plans!”

   Me again. After I posed the question to him about the setting, Al agrees that he was most likely in error and has made the correction in the latest online Addenda to the Revised Crime Fiction IV.

   As for Clue for Murder, as soon as I learned about this, I immediately ordered the one cheap copy of it to be found on ABE. More than likely, I’ll report back later.

   A character-driven detective novel is one in which the plot develops entirely from the people who inhabit it, protagonists and secondary characters both — their psychological makeup, strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, etc. The plot is not created first and the characters inserted to fit the prearranged storyline.

   Whodunit, howdunit, detection are all less important than what happens to the people themselves; the impact on them of the crime(s) in which they’re involved; how they and/or the world they live in are altered by these crimes and by other external events, some within their control, some beyond it.

   In a character-driven series, the protagonists and those close to them have personal as well as professional lives. And they do not remain the same from book to book; they evolve, change, make mistakes, better their lives, screw up their lives, love, marry, grieve, suffer, rejoice, you name it, the same as everybody else.

   A plot-driven detective novel is just the opposite. Characters are subordinate to plot; the mystery, the gathering and interpretation of clues, the solving of the puzzle are of primary focus and importance. If the detectives have personal lives, they’re generally mentioned only in passing and treated as irrelevent.

   This is not to suggest that this type is inferior to the character-driven variety; far from it. I’m a great admirer of the Golden Age writers — Carr (particularly), Queen, Christie, Stout — but their books mostly fall into the plot-first category.

   The puzzle, the game is everything. Sir Henry Merrivale, Dr. Fell, EQ, Poirot, Nero Wolfe are all superb and memorable creations, but each remains essentially the same from first book to last. There is no evolution, no significant change. The crimes they solve have no real effect on them, or in other than a superficial fashion on the people good and bad whom they encounter.

   One reads their adventures mainly for the cleverness of the gimmicks and the brilliance of the deductions (and in the cases of Wolfe and Archie for the witty byplay, and of H-M for the broad and farcical humor). With the exception of Wolfe and Archie, we never really get to know any of them all that well; and even with that inimitable pair, there are no significant changes in their lives or their relationship with each other.

   The private eye fiction of Hammett and Chandler is likewise plot-driven (remember Chandler’s oft-quoted remark that when he was stuck for something to happen, he brought in a man with a gun?). The mystery is dominant. As memorable as Sam Spade and the Continental Op and Philip Marlowe are, they’re larger-than-life heroes who remain pretty much the same over the course of their careers.

   This is true even in The Long Goodbye, which many consider to be Chandler’s magnum opus (I don’t, but that’s another story); Marlowe’s complex relationship with Terry Lennox and its results, while a powerful motivating force, has no lasting or altering effect on Marlowe’s life.

   Ross Macdonald’s novels, on the other hand, are character-driven to the extent that the convoluted storylines devolve directly from the actions past and present of the large casts of characters; but Lew Archer is merely an “I” camera recording events. His life and career remain unaltered by the crimes he solves or any other influences. We hardly know him; he hardly seems real.

   Contemporary private eye fiction tends to be primarily character-driven, in the sense that I used the term above. The cases undertaken by Thomas B. Dewey’s Mac, for instance, evolve from the complexities and eccentricities of the individuals he encounters; crime and violence have a profound effect on him as well as on those individuals, in subtle as well as obvious ways.

   The same is true of Hitchens’ Long Beach private eye Jim Sader in Sleep with Slander, a book I’ve called “the best traditional male private eye novel written by a woman.” And of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder. And of Marcia’s Sharon McCone (see Wolf in the Shadows, her Shamus-nominated Vanishing Point). And of my “Nameless” series (Shackles, Mourners). All, for better or worse, character-driven and character-oriented. Which is why our readers continue to read us.