Crime novels and MOBY DICK

Between 1965 and 1975 a married pair of Swedish journalists decided to try their hand at Police Mystery Novels. The wife, Maj Siowall, and her husband, Per Whaloo, turned out ten books in a decade, crime stories that are now considered classics. There no more because Per Whaloo died. I had heard their names before but I had never read them. A good friend of mine gave me two of the books, which aren't easy to find, and I read then both in less than a week, not my usual pace. Actually, they are called "Martin Beck  Police Mysteries,"which is misleading because the books feature an ensemble cast of detectives, rather than one man. Solving crimes is a kind of mosaic experience, with each man  contributing to the final solution. The Laughing Policeman is especially like that, while the other novel, The Man Who Went Up In Smoke was less so.

The Laughing Policeman opens with a brutal and gory shooting on a two-Decker bus. Someone hid on the second deck and as the bus approached the end of the line he or she came down and using a Japanese model machine gun mowed down nine people on the bus, including a 29 year old detective who happened to be on the bus. Beck and others had no idea why he was on that bus. The scene inside the bus would rival the Newtown killings. There were no clues at the scene so they were starting from scratch. They later found out the young detective was shadowing someone trying to break a cold case by himself to get a promotion. The search for the killer is done in piecemeal fashion, and little by little, name by name, they get closer and closer to the killer. Its exciting to follow how they finally catch the killer. It was all a matter of being patient and connecting the dots.

Both novels are a kind of bare-bones investigations using career cops who have been around the block many times. There is no unnecessary rhetoric and a minimum of sex and guilty babes. In The Man Who Went Up In Smoke Martin  Beck is dragged away from his vacation with his family and sent to Budapest to find out why a prominent journalist has disappeared. He could have refused the assignment but decides to take it on, which angers his long-suffering wife. When he gets to Budapest he behaves almost like he is on vacation. He discovers that the journalist signed up to stay at three hotels. But beyond that there is darkness, until he discovers three young people who seemed to lying about knowing the journalist. Two men send the third to test him out: is he friend or foe.  She is a sexy girl and she spends a day with him and later she rips her dress off and wants to make love. Martin throws her dress back to her and tells her to beat it. Eventually Beck discovers a drug deal connection between the three and the journalist. They are smuggling Hash. To no one surprise Beck discovers the missing journalist is dead. The killer is a surprise, not anyone one would have suspected from the start.

S.B. and I are going back and forth about my favorite author, Herman Melville. She just finished reading Moby Dick for the first time and she's 69 yrs old. Better late than never. She has signed up for an online course about HM. The following is what I wrote her back.

Have you seen the latest Moby Dick? Its on cable and stars William Hurt as Captain Ahab and Charlie Cox as Starbuck. Although I generally regard Hurt as a fine actor  I wasn't impressed by his portrayal of Ahab. His demeanor was all wrong and his voice didn't fit the character. The special effects were not too believable either. The 1956 version of the book was a better film than the one on cable. First of all, John Houston is a great director and Gregory Peck did a better job as the cracked Ahab. I think the rest of the cast was stronger, too. S.B. said she'll miss both films because she prefers to read the story rather than see a Hollywood interpretation, which automatically leave much out.

More tomorrow...

A royal birth

7/23/2013 A royal birth

Princess Kate has delivered  a royal baby, a boy, who will be third in line for the throne. The news has shoved politics and the Zimmerman debacle out of the central focus. There is a kind of poetic justice to this phenom--a new birth, royal or not, is always uplifting, a promising future, an ace in the hole. The dream still lives as Senator Kennedy like to say when things took a bad turn in society's progress. A new baby is a new hope, a new horizon of possible enlightenment.

In contrast, Ryan Brunn has canceled his ticket to the Hall of Fame by confessing to be a bald-face liar about taking PEDs. His dream, through his own shortcomings, has crashed in the desert of his deceptions. The statement he released yesterday was probably written by his agent or a PR man. All the caught players say the same thing. His feet are not made of clay, just sand blowing in the wind. It is going to be very difficult for him to recoup his career after such poor behavior. Still, he went home with $5 million in the bank from this year.

July 15, 2013: 52 Wedding Aniversary

Yup, 52 years and still going. Our love relationship has many unique features that has made the long haul possible, and my three books detail some of those factors, so this is no place to discuss them. When rough patches occurred we didn't abandon ship like so many people do. We worked through them rather than divorced. Patience and forgiveness was the key.

The Zimmerman trial is over . The jury of six women concluded he was not guilty, to the consternation of many. The defense team outwitted the prosecutor team. They did it by seizing the narrative, like the Republicans do from the Democrats. The defense made it seem that the true aggressor in the encounter that rainy night was Trayvon Martin, not the bigger guy with the gun. The tactic worked because Martin wasn't at the trial to give his side of the story. Nobody saw what really happened so Zimmerman was allowed to frame the story to his advantage. He became the victim and so self defense was his prerogative as they grappled on the sidewalk.The cornerstone of the jury's decision was the right wing notion of "stand-your-ground" law in Florida. The death became a justifiable homicide, when so many things pointed  toward Zimmerman initiating the contact. As one of the prosecutor said, " You shot him not because you had to, but because you wanted to." On seeing Martin he called him "another fucking thug," when he knew absolutely nothing about the kid, other than he was black. But oddly, the Judge would not allow the word "racial" to be used when it was clear Zimmerman was profiling Trayvon as automatically suspicious because of the color of his skin. There have been protest around the country but I doubt anything will come of them.

I wish they was something new to say about the political scene, especially in regard to the Republicans, but they just keep going from bad to worse. The core of hard-nosed Republicans in the House are like a rock rolling downhill. Like during the Bill Clinton's second term, they are determined to undercut or block every bill Obama or the senate puts forward. They are proud to be the Do-Nothing Party. At a time when so many things need to be fixed they want to shrink the government to incapacity. A week or so ago the Demos were furious with the House because the Farm Bill they passed  not only fattened the subsidies for the corporate farmers and removed all risk from farming, they jettisoned nutrition and food stamps. The reason: they want to cut more funds out of those programs, if they even deal with them. The two things have been linked for decades but no more. Many Demos spoke against the ploy, but the republicans just yawned and showed the same indifference and ignorance as they did to the poor.

It also appears that the Immigration Bill may not pass either. The senate bill is comprehensive but the House see it as too big, too complicated and that it should be slowed down. They want to cut it up into pieces and pass one piece at a time. Most important to them is the money they want to spend on border fortifications, including 20,000 more agents to patrol the border. And of course they believe that 11 million Latinos don't deserve amnesty or a path to citizenship. God, even G.W. Bush came out in favor of the bill, asking Republicans to show a "compassionate spirit." Fat chance that will happen.

June19 to July 5: California here we come.

 June19-July 6: California here we com

Feeling it was time to test how real my improved health was Sue and I decided to take up Stan Derelian's invite to his and Anne's 50th wedding anniversary to be held at his sister's place in Paso Robles. Sharon Bergstrom in Santa Cruz, who I had recently reconnected with on Facebook also invited us to come to her place and stay as long as we want. We decided to drive but there was a problem: my driver's licesence had expired while I was sick, so it meant Sue would have to do all the driving. She said she could handle that and I felt it was better she drive otherwise she'd drive me nuts driving her precious Subaru. As usual she spent a lot of time planning the trip, which is her style and she's good at it. However, as it happened we picked a time to go just when a heat wave hit the West. It was 110 in Paso Robles and on the way home between Palmdale and Yuma the temp was 114. The SUV was not bothered by the heat and we were quite comfortable inside the vehicle. The motel in Yuma, a place Sue has stopped at many times has a huge pool which she took advantage of right away. We had two other cool stops alomg the way, a place called Dana's Point on the coast below Los Angeles, where it was foggy on the beach and the temp was 73. Only one motel had eggs and sausage for breakfast and that was Le Fuentes in Yuma; the rest served rolls and cereal and that's all. That did not square with our anti-inflammatory diet.

We used the portable concentrator in the SUV as well as every motel we stayed at. It was a bit awkward but the thing worked well. We plugged it in inside the vehicle but it actually ran on its batteries which would run down and we'd recharge them at every motel. We thought it was supposed to run on the SUV's power but it never did. I did take some canisters with, but it wasn't enough, so we had to stop at a place in San Luis Obispo and trade our empties for replacement canisters. I did spend some time off oxygen and I am trying to increase it all the time.

We saw Stan and Anne the evening we arrived and for two hours in the morning, which was nice, because otherwise they were surrounded by lots of friends. Their two boys, Stephen and Greg, organized the party and made a short film, like Nasima did for us for our 50th a couple years ago. The introduction was pretty funny because Greg used the intro to Star Wars with a script that applied to their years together. I made into the film which I took as an honor. After that they went around the room for stories, mostly about Stan, something we did not do at our party. Some of them were very funny. Anne, who is basically shy got in a few zingers that surprised me. The food they served was too fancy for my taste, so I nibbled and drank three glasses of wine. I also took about 20 pictures. Greg wanted me to say something but I declined, mostly because how bad my hands and arms looked. My arms were and still are covered with purple bruises and psoriasis, and my hands are covered with white scales. I looked like a leper.

Stan's sister's home is perched on a hill outside of town. The veranda faces east and you can see 50 miles. You can see the mountain range that is located near Bakersfield. It was spectacular view. While talking to Ray P. on the veranda he told me he said he had a great deal of admiration for my political protesting in the sixties and seventies, something he was never able to do. I said thanks and we moved on to other topics. We went back to the house the following morning, June 31, for breakfast, and then head to the freeway to go to Santa Cruz.

When we got to Sharon's place it was about 70 degrees which felt wonderful. We stayed there 3 days and nights and it stayed cool all that time. Sue walked on the beach; we had comfortable beds to sleep on and I slept well for all 8 days we were on the road; we ate well and had an extremely good time with Sharon and her latest man, Steve Lauper, as well as with John Robinson who came down from his mountain home to join the merriment. As Suzie likes to say, we laughed and scratched to our heart's content. Steve works for a radio station in Santa Cruz and is an artist, a new variety of print-maker. He does small drawings, splashy, very abstract, say about 8 x10, and then blows them up to a much larger size, so you see a mass of detail you wouldn't otherwise see. Sharon taught English classes at one of the local H.S. but retired 3 years ago after 27 years. I was a bit surprised to see how well Sue and her hit it off. They were like jolly sisters, getting off on each other; indeed, the energy of all 4 of us was sky high. On Sunday night Steve and John played their guitars and sang for a couple of hours. It was all great fun.

We spent some time with Sharon's kids, 37 year old Heather who like her mom teaches in a H.S. in Santa Cruz. She's the scientist in the family, teaching biology and chemistry. She seemed to be quite political as well. She's married but has no kids and doesn't want any. Shron's 23 year son, Mike, is quite a hustler and looks like the god Apollo, tall, blond, sharp, resourceful and ambitious. His nickname is "Broiler" because his last name is Pitt. He's the fruit of another father. Good kid. Reminded me a lot of my nephew Mike Pfaffl who died of an overdose in 1999. Broiler doesn't seem to be too interested in drugs. He's all business. He owns a high-end restaurant, a nightclub with a dance floor, a bar, and his own home, not to mention 5 vehicles. Jeez, at his age I was still wet behind the ears and always broke. I saw that painting of mine that Skip Wagner gave him, a very colorful and playful abstraction that I did my last year at UNLV. He also owns one of the drawings  I put in EROS & PSYCHE. Both are in good hands. We are already making plans to go back to Santa Cruz next summer, only we will fly and stay longer.

The ride back to Tucson was smooth and without incident.