Murder is Everywhere

One Thin Dime

2026-04-05T09:30:00.001-04:00

Sara E. Johnson, 1st Sunday

I mentioned in a previous post that I enjoy teaching my Exploring Mysteries class. One session is on the history of mysteries, and in researching that wide and deep topic, I learned about dime novels and how they caught on like a California wildfire and broke ground for many of the genres we enjoy today.

Dime novels debuted in the United States during the Civil War era. Named for their cheap price, they began as lurid Westerns, and later branched to romances, adventures, and detective stories. Their straightforward plots combined sentimentality with violence and introduced readers to new vistas much like books set in a foreign locale do for me.

The first known dime novel, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Ann S. Stephens, was published by Irwin and Erasmus Beadle and Robert Adams in 1860. It’s a tale of an interracial romance between a white hunter and Malaeska, a Mohawk woman. Their son is raised in the white culture. When the son learns of his parentage, his reaction is melodramatic, a common element of dime novels. Here’s the section when the son learns of his parentage: "Great God!" he almost shrieked, dashing his hand against his forehead. “No, no ! it can not — I, an Indian? a halfblood? the grandson of my father’s murderer? Woman, speak the truth; word for word, give me the accursed history of my disgrace.”

(No surprise: dime novels perpetuated racist stereotypes of Native Americans, Blacks and Asians.) Stephens was paid $250 for Malaeska. It reportedly sold over 300,000 copies. You can read it in its entirety; it is in the public domain.

Civil War soldiers tackled the boredom of camp life by reading and trading dime novels. According to one book historian, dime novels were “sent to the army in the field by cords, like unsawed firewood.”

Prior to the Civil War, reading was an upper class or upper-middle class pastime. Books were expensive. In the 1850s, the average book cost $1 to $1.50. The creation of dime novels slashed those prices so that virtually anyone could afford to have their nose in a book while, at the same time, literacy rates were growing.

Dime novels were mass produced on cheap paper. They averaged one hundred pages and were small: 6.5 x 4.5 inches, perfect to fit in a pocket or pocketbook. To keep costs low, the books were printed on paper similar to newsprint. Any dime novel you come across in an antique store is likely to have brittle or crumbling pages. The print was often fuzzy and with odd space breaks.

Updated shipping methods – though no comparison to Amazon’s next-day delivery – brought the dimes to almost every newsstand or dry good store. People – largely of the working class – went crazy for them. In the five years following Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, Beadle and Adams published more than five million dime novels. ‘Books for the millions’ was proclaimed on the covers. Dartmouth Libraries said, “Enormously popular and critically maligned, the dime novel was one of the first forms of mass culture in the United States.”

Detective stories soon replaced Westerns. One of the earliest was The Two Detectives; or, The Fortunes of a Bowery Girl. This was actually a nickel novel because it was short. The Bowery Detective series focused on gritty city crime. A funny aside: Typical dime novel detectives were old. Their names often reflected their advanced ages: Old Bull’s Eye, Old Sleuth, Old Neverfail, and Old Spicer.

Women became writers and readers of dime novels. The plots that attracted them dealt with romance and marriage. Many readers were ‘working girls,’ so a repeated story line was a love between a working class girl and a noble. (Sound familiar?) All for Love of a Fair Face, The Story of a Wedding Ring, The Unseen Bridegroom, and The Charity Girl are titles of dime novels marketed for women.

The dime novel’s counterpart in the United Kingdom was the penny dreadful. Subjects were Gothic – hence the name – and included tales about vampires, highwaymen, murderers, and ghosts. They were also know as penny bloods, penny awfuls or simply ‘bloods.’

The years 1870 to 1900 were the dime novel’s heyday. Not many dime novels were printed after World War I. Pulp fiction magazines nudged them aside and going to the ‘motion pictures’ was more exciting and cheaper than one thin dime.

Dime novels are a thing of the past. Today, mass-market paperbacks face a similar extinction. Remember how you could pick up a copy of Jaws or Carrie at the airport or drug store for a cheap price, and slip into your pocket? Mass-market paperbacks, like dime novels, were touted as making reading accessible for the masses, including me. Trade paperbacks, hard covers, Ebooks, audio books, and Netflix are dancing on their graves.

Which mass-market paperbacks do you have yellowing in your book case? Happy reading and I'll see you next month.

Sara Johnson, 1st Sunday

Thirteen Years Ago Today, 'Here's Looking At You, Babe' Played Out for Real.

2026-04-04T00:00:00.004-04:00

Saturday - Jeff

Thirteen Years ago today I wrote a post for MIE detailing a seminal occurrence in my life--the birth of a grandchild. As my family prepares to celebrate today's thirteenth anniversary with reminiscences of the years of wonder and joy we've reaped from that miraculous event, I thought it appropriate to reflect back on memories of that day---at least as I recall it---by republishing my time-line scribblings as the reporter on the scene:

It was a 5:00AM Thursday morning. Ugh, what an ungodly hour for an alarm to go off. But if we hadn’t driven in last night from my farm in western New Jersey it would have been a 3AM wakeup. Hmm, a quick check of the emails—what else does one do first thing in the morning? It’s from a friend on Mykonos: “Call me. It’s important.” My guess is it’s in response to my request for information about an esoteric Greek funeral practice tied into my new Andreas Kaldis novel.

I reply, “Am on way to the hospital. Will call later.”

There’s another message from the same friend. “Call me after the baby is born.”

After the baby is born. Wow. Seeing the phrase in black and white (pixels) makes an impact. My baby girl is having her own baby this morning. Her first. It’s set for 7:30AM.

I’ve been so busy this week cutting away the remaining trees downed by hurricane Sandy that I haven’t had time to work on my post for Saturday. And I know that I won’t be able to focus on a “Greek piece” this week. But come to think of it, with all the time Greeks spend obsessed with the “fixins” for babies, perhaps it might be a refreshing change to focus on the back end of the courting process. My sort of in real time existential take on “Waiting for Baby.”

5:45AM. We’re headed north to Huntington Hospital. It’s close by the Long Island Sound, not far from where we’re staying just south of the Long Island Expressway. Officially the LIE is Interstate 495, Long Island’s commuter backbone, known affectionately to those whose lives are tethered to it as “the Long Island Distressway” or “The World’s Longest Parking Lot.” I remember living out this way in the early 70s. Beautiful place, offering a wonderful life…if you don’t mind rush hour commutes into NYC.

6:00 AM. Made it to the hospital and found the Labor and Delivery Waiting Room. Impressive name. Too bad the green carpeting and mismatched green-brown furniture doesn’t cut it. But who cares about the décor—which probably is why it’s as bad as it is—I just hope we get to see Karen before she goes into surgery. She’s having a Caesarian delivery. Strange name. I always heard it came from the way Julius Caesar entered the world, but according to all-knowing Wikipedia (thank God the waiting room has wireless), that theory’s been debunked. It’s now thought to derive from the verb caedere … to cut…as in to cut through the abdominal wall to deliver the baby.

It’s so much easier being a man.

I’m not worried. Nor is my daughter. At least she wasn’t when we spoke last night before she went to sleep. Honest, I’m not worried.

6:15AM. Karen’s mother, Judy, and Judy’s husband, Joe, arrive in the waiting room. Three strangers also are in there and have been since before Barbara and I got there. They’re the quiet type. Haven’t said a word to anyone. But they won’t remain that way for long. Judy—that’s my ex-wife—is naturally gregarious, capable of drawing monks vowed to silence into animated conversation. She pulls out a photo of Karen taken less than an hour after she was born. My handwritten note on the back gives the details. I was anal then. I was a lawyer.

6:45AM. Karen’s husband, Terry, pops into the waiting room to say we can see Karen. We follow him through a maze of turns and doorways, complete with one wrong turn attributable to an anxious pappy moment. There’s the room and inside is Karen, all smiles and calm amid monitors and an IV hookup. I can hear the baby’s heartbeat: loud, strong, and ready to take on the world.

7:15AM. Terry’s mom and dad arrive. Three sets of grandparents hovering and waiting for the big moment. I sure hope the new kid is into hugging. Terry says it’s our last chance to toss out name suggestions. I’ll spare you that, but believe me when I say it’s easier to title a new book.

7:30AM. Nurse comes in to prepare Karen and says we have to leave. We head down to the cafeteria for coffee. I think I’ll write. Not a chance. Judy has new photographs of our son’s children to share.

8:00AM. Terry shows up in the cafeteria. Things are delayed. A woman who’s been in labor all night now needs an emergency C-section, so Karen’s time has been pushed back a bit. The nurse told Terry to get something to eat and Karen to rest. We tease him about his “deer in the headlights” look…a natural segue considering his up close and personal SUV run in with a Long Island Bambi the day before yesterday.

8:15AM. Terry gets a call from Karen. Everyone’s listening as he says, “Wow.”

He hangs up to a chorus of “What’s ‘Wow’?”

Answer: “Doctor said that since Karen isn’t in distress and other women are facing more difficult situations, her delivery is now pushed back to at least noon, maybe as late as 2PM. But Karen has to rest, and we have the choice of hanging around in the waiting room or cafeteria until then or leaving the hospital and coming back later.

Barbara and I vote for going back to sleep.

9:00AM. Back at the hotel I receive a SMS from Terry. He suggests we wait to hear from him before returning to the hospital because the doctor said there are likely to be more delays. I try calling my friend in Greece. No answer. I send a SMS on the situation to my son and brother. I fall asleep.

11:00AM. Message from Terry: Looks like she’ll go in at 2.

12:30 PM. I never realized how many Dunkin’ Donut shops there are on Long Island. Maybe it’s just how many times we’ve driven past the same one in the last twelve hours, but there does happen to be one right next door to the baby store we’re looking for. Barbara suspects it has the “perfect” stuffed animal. In exchange for her promise that we can go to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee “after,” I join her in the hunt for bunny rabbit. It’s decision time: Do I prefer the pink, blue, beige, or white one? I try feigning nonchalance: “Whichever one shows the least dirt.” That’s how I choose my cars these days, so why shouldn’t it work for bunny rabbits?

I know, it’s pink for girls and blue for boys, but that requires you know the sex and we don’t. Karen doesn’t want to know the ending before she finishes the story. Sounds like a mystery writer’s daughter to me.

2 PM. Back in the Labor and Delivery Waiting Room. It’s just the six of us on baby watch, plus a receptionist. No one wants to talk about anything serious…even baseball’s off limits. It’s just old memories retold, recast, reminisced. Funny isn’t it how life’s genuinely significant events are so often surrounded by mindless waiting.

A television mounted on the far wall is running a (badly written) soap opera. I’m sure the last time I knowingly sat in one place for so long with a soap opera playing on television was in some Greek hospital’s waiting room, but that show would have made more sense. The only person watching it is the receptionist. Perhaps it’s “General Hospital” and she considers it part of a work-study program.

2:15 PM. Another couple comes in. Now it’s eight people plus the receptionist and she’s still the only one watching TV. Two are reading newspapers, one a magazine, another a Kindle, two are on iPads, and one is just staring off into the middle distance. I’m typing away on my Macbook Air.

A Reese’s mini-pieces commercial comes on the TV. I look up. Finally, something on TV I can sink my teeth into.

More waiting.

2:30PM. Terry stops in to say Karen is now in the delivery room. Everyone’s quiet. We know it’s time. He leaves.

2:55 PM. An SMS from Terry. “In for epidural.”

3:15PM. The hospital’s PA system breaks the silence with Brahms’ Lullaby. We’re told it’s played throughout the hospital every time there’s a new baby born.

My heart jumps. Could it be ours? I’m really excited, almost in tears. “Oh my gosh,” says Terry’s mother, Joyce, to her husband, Tom. Judy’s husband starts taking photos of everyone. I try imagining my daughter’s face at that moment. Six very excited people are now waiting for confirmatory news.

3:30PM. No one’s told us anything yet. Terry’s mom walks down to the nursery. Comes back with no news.

3:55PM. Still no word. Where’s Terry? Where’s an SMS? The mothers are getting worried, the fathers are acting as if they’re not.

4:00PM. Tensions are rising. Talk is now onto politics. If the baby doesn’t show up soon we might need to switch the TV to the World Wide Wresting channel to properly reflect the changing mood in the room.

4:05PM. Right on cue Terry shows up in the doorway. His mother cries and hugs him. He says to come with him to see Karen and the baby. “So what is it?” we ask. He says they want to tell us the details together. Dramatists both.

It seems a long walk, but Terry knows the way perfectly this time and it’s only a couple of minutes before we’re standing in front of a large wooden door marked “recovery room.” Terry knocks, we wait for someone to let us in, and six of us herd in behind him. Karen is on a bed off in the corner covered in a blanket and wearing some sort of scarf. I look closer. It isn’t a scarf. It’s a snuggly wrapped baby. Her baby!

Terry goes to the far side of the bed to stand beside his wife and child as my theater trained daughter announces, “Baby was born precisely at 3:00PM, weighs five pounds, ten ounces, is eighteen inches long, and is a” … drumroll please … “She.”

No longer an “it” but a she! A babe! A moll! A lassie! And a genuine beauty if I may say so myself.

We only have time to get in a quick peek at her before the nurse starts shooing us out of the room saying we’ll get to spend more time with baby and mom in about an hour.

As I’m leaving the room Karen calls out, “Dad.”

“Yes.”

“Come back, please.”

I walk over to her bed and lean down. “Yes, honey?”

She whispers, “I watched your face when I told you about my baby.”

I smile. “I was crying.”

“I know.” And my baby cries as she squeezes my hand.

God bless you, my beautiful baby granddaughter, your Mommy, and your Daddy.

–Jeff

The Writer's Nap

2026-04-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

Sujata Massey

Frederick Leighton's Flaming June

Napping after lunch is a tradition with adherents worldwide, especially in warm seasons and places. We had 87-degree weather yesterday in Baltimore—the second hot day in a row. Cherry trees are bursting into pink heaven outside my bedroom window. As I lie down over rather than underneath the sheet because of my street clothes, guilt snuggles alongside me, an unwelcome companion whispering that I didn’t make my morning writing quota.

My sigh back at her turns into a yawn. There’s a curtain of fog inside my head, perhaps induced by the budding trees themselves. Brain fog prevents me from getting into flow whenever I want. I know from experience that sentences are most sprightly in the morning, but unfortunately this morning I dashed out for an appointment. And so, at 1:15 pm—right after lunch—I throw myself onto my bed with relief.

I know I’m not the only person who indulges; and I imagine how many people are napping in my neighborhood. Thirty-five miles away, the White House lies, and I have a brief image of Donald Trump napping that I quickly shove away.

Better to think about people in my lane: writers. The authors Vladimir Nabakov and Thomas Mann were habitual nappers who managed to also write classic novels. Patricia Highsmith napped, but usually at 6 p.m., setting herself up after a day of writing to soldier on into the night.

Patricia Highsmith

The Internet search calls up many more male writers as self-avowed nappers than it does female. I suppose women writers have often felt that stealing time to be able to write was a great privilege not to be squandered. As the mother of a one-year-old, when my baby napped, I wrote frantically—it was my only chance. I play out this idea to realize that in the 19^thand much of the 20^th century, women worked hard in the house, caring for children, and if someone got a moment to herself, and was working on a book—there was the focus. I bet that daytime sleeping was a privilege reserved for the elders among them—and was a sign of necessity for their health. Apparently, the legendary nurse Florence Nightingale made the discovery that rest was needed for recovery—though she typically spent less than five hours on sleep herself!

Florence Nightingale

Things are slowly changing. Tricia Hersey is a poet, nonfiction writer and activist famous for her books Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest in which she explains her practice of resting as an act of self-care and protest against the unrelenting, capitalistic grind. I’ve read about scientists proving that a fatigued brain has more trouble finding answers and creative solutions than a rested one. Though it’s not just sleep that does it—walking in nature works, say if you’re in a workplace or at school and don’t have a cozy bed in which to retreat.

Brain power also increases after taking a walk in nature.

My pattern used to be to regularly stroll with my dog after my own lunch. I did it because I know that if I move vigorously after lunch, my blood sugar curve doesn’t look like Mount Olympus. Blood sugar that’s too high is itself a reason for sudden fatigue.

There are plenty of ways to spend one’s time when not writing. I will continue to practice both walking and napping. I may have dreamed up a way to combine both. And this looks like sinking into a chair on my upstairs porch, or on a bench in the park, and letting my eyes ever-so-gently fall closed.

Setting my alarm now for 25 minutes.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles

An exclusive excerpt of AN ARTFUL DODGE & thoughts on "historical truth" versus "verisimilitude"

2026-04-02T07:00:00.011-04:00

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

I'm thrilled to be able to share the sneak preview, first three chapters of my new book! There's a link at the bottom to read them for free!

But before you do ... I want to say a few words about writing about the Victorian period and the tension between historical truth and verisimilitude.

One of my favorite anecdotes that illustrates this tension comes from my friend Susan Elia MacNeal, who writes the Maggie Hope series, which begins during WWII, with Maggie serving as a secretary in Churchill's office. For her research, Susan went to the War Rooms, where she read facsimiles of Churchill's letters in his handwriting. In his letters, he uses the abbreviation "OMG." If you think about it, it makes sense -- it's the age of the telegram, when abbreviations saved money.

Now, if Susan were to put that detail in one of her books, she would be sustaining historical truth but destroying verisimilitude -- which we could define as what the reader believes to be true about the period. Imagine the outcry! I can hear the chuckling Goodreads reviews now ... "What's Churchill going to write next? LMAO?"

None of us writers want to push the reader's "disbelief" button. When it comes to including elements that pull readers out of the story -- well, we have to pick our battles. Sometimes we hit that button inadvertently.

For example, a few years ago, a reviewer wrote something along the lines of, "I love your books, and they're pretty accurate, except you have Inspector Corravan drinking coffee, when Victorians drank tea."

I've been explicitly warned not to engage on social media platforms over reviews. But had I engaged, I would have replied, "Yes, Victorians drank a lot of tea, and the image of women drinking tea has been widely documented both in words and images (such as this painting, above). But in the 1870s, there were still 7 million tons of coffee being imported annually into England, most of it arriving through the London docks. Elaborate silver coffee services (that you can still see in museums) were still being produced."

That said, even though it's historical truth, I might not have had Corravan drink coffee had I realized it was going to hit the "disbelief" button.

However, there are elements that I'm willing to hit the "disbelief" button to include. The most important is giving my Victorian heroines agency.

Sometimes, I receive comments along the lines of, "I just don't believe [your heroine Annabel or Nell or whoever] could go running around London the way she does. Weren't Victorian women confined to their homes?"

It's a valid question. TV shows and movies show Victorian women indoors, at balls, drinking tea, languishing in chaises, reading novels, riding in closed carriages. Books by Victorian writers including Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins and Mrs. Henry Wood often show women in somewhat stifling surroundings.

But keep in mind two things. First, these characters are mostly unmarried, upper-class women who are going on the marriage market. They need to be watched and guarded lest their honor be lost and they become unmarriageable. That was a real, historical risk for women of a certain class -- but not for all classes. Second, these characters are fictional! Writers (for TV or of novels) gain a lot of plot advantages by constraining their female characters in particular ways -- in making certain acts impossible. It creates tension, anxiety, stress, frustration -- all good plot drivers and conflict-generators.

I don't believe in giving women characters undue amounts of agency and justifying it by calling them "spunky." I try hard to be accurate, and that includes showing my heroines behaving plausibly within the strictures and mores of the time.

However, one of the ways I work around the conventional constraints in fiction and give my heroines legitimate agency is by having them be members of the lower and middle classes, or orphans with no father or older brother to oversee their actions. In real-life Victorian England, who's watching these women? Virtually no one! Their honor and virtue and morality didn't need to be so desperately protected. Their goal wasn't necessarily to marry. Working women walked all over London alone, without chaperones. They went to shops, they bought breakfast from street vendors, they visited galleries and museums and the Crystal Palace in 1851. They worked in hospitals, in wealthy families' homes, in dressmaking shops, in bakeries, in music halls, in shops, and in brothels.

And in AN ARTFUL DODGE, they work as thieves. Kit Jimeson is a member of an all-women thieving gang operating out of the Elephant & Castle area of Southwark (above), south of the Thames. My fictional gang is based on the historical (real) gang of women thieves who were working out of E&C beginning in the 1870s. In later years, especially in the 1920s, they'd become known as the Forty Elephants, and they were active into the 1930s. Scotland Yard tried repeatedly to shut them down. To read more about the real Forty Elephants, you might look up Brian McDonald's excellent book Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: Britain's First Female Crime Syndicate.

To read the first three chapters of AN ARTFUL DODGE and to meet Kit and her friends for yourself, click here: https://bit.ly/4uoYSIN

Writers Who Cook

2026-03-29T17:23:00.004-04:00

Annamaria on Monday

Some of my friends and I have joined together in a group we have labeled WWC. We meet up for long-standing, intermittently scheduled gatherings of authors and sometimes their spouses. In a couple of cases, both are authors. We are twelve in number, but because of busy lives we are hardly ever all together at once. This past Saturday, we were just six, including five writers.

WWC began after a conversation at an MWA-NY event when my friend Gary Cahill and I were chatting about cooking and began wondering why so many writers like to cook. The best answers we came up with then, and since over the years, concern the fact that both writing and cooking are nourishing - in one case of the body and another of the soul or the intellect. Or perhaps it's because writing is done alone and the result is shared but only after much time has passed and when the author is not present. Whereas with cooking, consumption often follows quickly and the cook is there to share in and see the satisfaction. My contribution to this discussion, which gets laughs, but I maintain is not entirely silly, is that you do it standing up.

Our meetings always begin with a first course we call the amuse bouche: pizza prepared by Gary, who according my very picky tastebuds, is the best pizzaiolo on this planet. Here is the first pizza for this recent event as it was going into the oven.

And before we took the first bites.

There are always at least two pizzas, but, as usual, once we started munching, we were too distracted by deliciousness to take many pictures.

When it comes to writing, Gary is also a splendid short story author of literary merit.

Our next course was an appetizer of gravlax, perfectly prepared by Jeff Markowitz. Exquisite!

Jeff's mystery stories are equally great. Some that are hilarious. Man others deep and moving. His latest is a historical, with a look at societal issues that resonate today,

Jeff's Wife Carol Markowitz also writes historical fiction, with a backdrop of WWII. Just now, she has a story in the 2025 anthology of The Military Writers Society of America.

For the main course, I made sea scallops in a brandy sauce served over rice, with asparagus.

The last writer this time was Richie Narvaez, who writes wonderful New York , both novels and short stories. His latest is in an anthology of crime fiction having to do with climate change.

Lucky us, Richie's wife Denise is a pastry chef, who this time brought us cookies of her own making, designed in a mystery theme! Yum!!

Happy Reading and Buon Appetito!

A Bit of Greek Humor to Help Us Get By.

2026-03-28T00:00:00.002-04:00

Jeff—Saturday

There really isn’t much uplifting news to report these days, aside of course from this Weekend's Sweet Sixteen NCAA Basketball games. But there remains humor to be found ... at least for Greeks.

So, rather than droning on about what confronts us on so many fronts, permit me to share with you a bit of uniquely Greek humor. Unique I say, because it brings Greek gods into play in jokes I lifted directly from jokes4us.com.

What game did the Greek Gods play?

Hydra and go seek.

What did the Ancient Greeks wear on their feet?

Tennis Zeus.

How do Greek women get ready for a toga party?

With A Hera appointment.

Have you seen the movies about Greek Mythology?

No? Well you odyssey them.

What do you call a musician petrified by Medusa?

A rockstar.

Why doesn't Aphrodite date tennis players?

Because love means nothing to them.

What did Poseidon say to the sea monster?

What's Kraken?

Why does Ares only have a Sony Playstation?

Because he is the "God Of War."

Who did Artemis invite to her birthday party?

Her nearest and deer-est friends.

What breed of horse was the Trojan horse?

A nightmare.

What do you call the Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie about the Greek Bailouts?

The Last Action Gyro.

And punny you should ask, but yes, now you know why I have such an affinity for Greece. :)

—Jeff

The Little Five

2026-03-26T06:38:00.000-04:00

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Most people know about South Africa’s Big Five. These are the iconic Bushveld animals that people come halfway around the world to see in their natural environment. They are the Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Buffalo. So then what are the Little Five? They are also fascinating creatures, just a lot smaller. And their namesakes are the Big Five. Let’s take a look at them (in reverse order):

The Red-billed Buffalo Weaver

Red-billed Buffalo Weaver

Masked weaver putting the finishing touches to his beautifully woven nest

Although these birds are part of the Weaver group, they are not at all in the class of the charming masked weavers that build intricately woven nests. With masked weavers, the males will offer the females several options, and she may reject them all. If she does, the male will completely demolish the nests and start again.

Thorny dead acacia branches seem a favorite construction material

Buffalo weavers, on the other hand, build large communal nest that are anything but elegantly woven. They are built from twigs and sticks arranged in an apparently haphazard fashion but producing “lodges” containing several nest chambers. The males persuade as many females as they can to take up residence and then they defend them from other males. They flap around noisily announcing their sovereignty. Probably they aspire to having their likenesses on gold coins. Occasionally, the whole construction becomes so unstable that it collapses. Then the whole flock will move on to another location and repeat the whole chaotic process.

Very proud of himself

They are large (for weavers) and quite handsome in their way, but not very bright. I once saw a predatory hawk make its way around the communal nest reaching in and grabbing chicks while the weavers carried on no end but did very little. Eventually, some (much smaller) birds took matters into their own hands (so to speak) and chased the hawk away with aerial acrobatics and dive bombing. Afterwards, the buffalo weavers went on with their business as though nothing had happened.

The name Buffalo Weaver comes from their habit of following buffalo herds to feed on the insects the large beasts disturb as the move through the bush.

The African Rhinoceros Beetle

Okay, so no prizes for guessing how they got their name.

They are appealing creatures, and don’t sting or bite, but unfortunately can do damage to groves of palm trees. Still, nobody’s perfect. They are large for beetles and popular pets in some parts of the world. The horn seems to be for arguments with other males.

The Elephant Shrew

Eastern Rock Elephant Shrew

Elephants shrews are almost ridiculously cute. They use their long noses to search around for insects, which they then flick into their mouths. In fact, they are not actually shrews or even rodents, but have their own order.

We had the pleasure of seeing several living on a large rock outside our cabin at the Mountain Zebra National Park. Their antics were much more entertaining than those of most of the larger animals.

The Leopard Tortoise

Leopard tortoise. No rush...

The Leopard can’t change its spots and neither can the leopard tortoise, although the pattern may fade as they get older. They are the fourth largest species of tortoise and may reach two feet in length. In common with other large tortoise species they are long lived and my reach 100 years old.

I once had a (nearly) crushing experience with a large one. Driving a Land Rover, looking for larger animals, I suddenly realized there was one in the road in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and the vehicle stopped, but the road was downhill and it slid forward some way. When we examined the situation, we realized that the front wheel was actually jammed on the tortoise's shell. The animal had followed Tortoise 101 and disappeared into its shell. The shell wasn't cracked or damaged, but it was firmly held with the tire pressing on one side of the shell. I wanted to reverse the vehicle, but feared that the Land Rover might roll another few inches forward when I released the break before the reverse gear took. That could be disastrous. So we spent some time jamming and hammering large stones in front of the other wheels first. The operation was a success, and in due course the tortoise emerged, took a good look around, and then moved sedately into the bush. Apparently hyenas sometimes get through those shells, but nothing else has much of a chance, not even Land Rovers.

The AntLion

One is grateful that these are very small...

Each hole has a minimonster hiding at the bottom

Alone of all the Little Five, Antlions aren’t restricted to Africa. Uncommon among insects, it’s the larval stage that is the more interesting with their neat sand traps to catch ants and other small insects. Burying themselves in loose sand, the wait at the bottom of their conical pit traps for something to slip in. Then they'll grab it with their fearsome (for ants) jaws and enjoy a good meal. They have a slow metabolism so can take their time between meals. It may take a year to reach the stage where they pupate and change into adults.

The adults are rather lovely creatures, making one think of diaphanous dragon flies, but they live only a few weeks. Finding a mate and laying eggs is about it.

One of the remarkable and enjoyable things about the African bush is the enormous variety of life. Maybe one isn’t always blown away by sightings of the Big Five, but there are always other creatures with interesting lives, behaviors, and pedigrees to enjoy. It is truly a gift.

Notes from the Saggy Middle

2026-03-24T02:00:00.001-04:00

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I suspect all writers (and too many readers) are aware of the 'saggy middle' stretch where nothing much seems to be happening.

It kind of feels like that's where we're at in Singapore right now. Everyone's recovering from the crush of major festivals: Christmas- Chinese New Year- Hari Raya Aidilfitri and there's just a little time to breathe now that it's Lent and Easter doesn't come till April 5 this year.

I was thinking that I had nothing to write about this week--not because nothing has happened, but because so many small but good things have.

The best of these is, I have a new office assistant:

I can't believe we didn't realise how smart Sophia is--she just didn't understand our expectations. Now she not only walks on a leash, as soon as she sees me unhooking her harness she lies on her tummy and lifts her two front paws to slide them into the correct loops.
I might be biased, but isn't that dog level genius? She also responds to 'Sit' and 'Stay' even when other dogs are around and holds the current record for digging out treats hidden in egg cartons or wedged into toilet rolls.
Best of all maybe, she's come to understand the yoga mat in my exercise room isn't a second toilet!

Now she sleeps in the corner while I put my daily time in.

But I'm glad I'll be going to yoga and pilates classes again soon. We'll be having the sea burial ceremony (ashes in an approved sea burial pot) for my dad in law this coming Saturday and then the official mourning period will be over.

I've also really enjoyed the first German class we attended. It's been a long time since I've got to study something according to schedule and I realise I've always approached things by plunging in and going full immersion. But I'm seeing how my fellow students work in structured systems, making vocabulary lists and so on.

So I'm taking this as a chance to learn about learning instead of relying on excitement and momentum!

I've also got to a point where I feel like I know (for now at least) where the next book is going. I can feel it taking shape, bones and organs forming and I'm hoping to get a rough draft down by the end of next month.

And through all this I'm very aware how lucky we are to have quiet moments and safe spaces here, with eveything that's going on in the rest of the world.

Solace

2026-03-22T17:05:00.002-04:00

Annamaria on Monday

From my 1970 Webster's Unbridged

I am tempted to explain why I need solace right now. Such complaining would very likely elicit sympathy from the kind people who make up the partners and the fans of Murder is Everywhere. But I will not force my misery-loves-company on you.

As is always the case in my life, it is music that I find most helpful at a time like this. So rather than describing my difficulties, I give you my road to a more hopeful and positive outlook: three songs. Perhaps they will do for you what they are doing for me.

The first one - the beginning of Shostakovich's Piano concerto #2 - starts out a bit sad and quiet, but when the piano comes in the sheer beauty of melody begins to turn me around.

Shostakovich Piano Concerto #2

And now some more gorgeous Shostakovich

And now SOLACE by Scott Joplin

I have proof that this works for me: The tribulations of creating this blog would ordinarily make me want to scream. And I have hardly uttered a groan.

Freedom or Death: A Greek Battle Cry

2026-03-21T00:00:00.003-04:00

Jeff–Saturday

MANTO MAVROGENOUS

March 25^th is fast approaching. It's a two-for-one holiday in Greece: Annunciation and Greek Independence Day. The former celebrates Mary learning from Archangel Gabriel that she was with child, and the later marks the day in 1821 when Greek Orthodox Bishop Germanos of Patras raised the Greek flag at the Monastery of Agia Lavra in Greece’s Peloponnese and inspired a more than eight-year struggle (1821-1829) to throw off nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule.

Bishop Germanos raising the flag (Theordore Vryzakis)

In towns and villages across Greece, school children proudly parade the country’s blue and white flag. Aflutter, the flag is reminiscent of Greek seas but it holds a deeper meaning. The white cross honors the contribution of the church to the country’s enduring battle for freedom and its nine blue and white bars honor the nine syllable rallying call shouted across the land during Greece’s struggle for Independence: Eleftheria i Thanatos—Freedom or Death. (Though some say they represent the nine letters of ελευθερια in the Greek word for freedom, the idea is the same.).

Petros Mavromichalis

Greece’s larger cities also hold military parades, and Greek communities around the world join in celebration with parades of their own. But this is not about any of those events, or for that matter whether the Revolution actually began a week earlier in another part of the Peloponnese when the ruler of its Mani region, Petros Mavromichalis, raised his war flag in Mani’s capital city of Areopoli and marched his troops off against the Turks.

No, this is about a small Cycladic island’s personal War of Independence heroine, Manto Mavrogenous (1796-1848). Her statue stands at the foot of the main square on Mykonos’ harbor, and soon it will be surrounded by palm fronds—an ancient symbol of triumph, victory, and the sacred sign of Apollo—in honor of a life truly worthy of an epic film. Or a tragic opera.

Manto Mavrogenous Square, Mykonos

Born in Trieste to a wealthy, aristocratic Greek merchant family, Manto Mavrogenous studied philosophy and history, was fluent in several languages, and drew her fire for Greek independence from her father, a member of Filiki Eteria, the secret society dedicated to freeing Greece from Ottoman rule.

She was thirteen when her family returned to its roots in the Cycladic islands, first to Paros and after her father’s death to Tinos. War broke out when she was twenty-five and she left for Mykonos, the place of her family’s origins, to convince its leaders to join in the Revolution. But what she offered Mykonos and indeed all of Greece was far more than words. When Ottomans attempted to land on Mykonos, she commanded the forces that repelled them. She used her fortune to outfit ships and crews that battled pirates and the Ottoman fleet, and to send soldiers to fight for freedom on mainland Greece, as well as to support the families of those who fought.

Manto even sold her jewelry to support the fight and pressed the world to allow Greece to be free. This is from her letter to The Women of Paris: “The Greeks, born to be liberal, will owe their independence only to themselves. So I don’t ask your intervention to force your compatriots to help us. But only to change the idea of sending help to our enemies.”

Demetrius Ypsilantis

In the early years of the war she met Demetrius Ypsilantis, a well-educated son of a prominent family, brother of the leader of Filiki Eteria, and a politically connected war hero. (Yes, that city in Michigan was named after him, a town perhaps better known today for “the world’s most phallic building,” the Ypsilanti Water Tower.) They became engaged and Mavrogenous’ beauty, bravery, and selfless commitment to Greek independence brought her fame across Europe.

Bust of Demetrius erected in foreground of "The Brick Dick" of Ypsilanti.

It seemed a fairy tale, but that was not to be.

During their engagement Mavrogenous’ home was totally destroyed by fire and her fortune stolen. She moved in with Ypsilanti but in time he broke off the engagement. Deeply depressed and virtually penniless, she never recovered.

Her memoirs were written on Mykonos but she spent most of the balance of her life amid poverty in Greece’s first modern capital, Nafplio, before finally moving to Paros where she died penurious and in oblivion at fifty-four.

The great debts owed to her for financing so much of Greece’s Revolution were never repaid. Unless you count the palms, thanks, and honors bestowed each March 25.

The back of a Greek coin worth less than a penny

Freedom or Death.

––Jeff

The Star From Calcutta, Here At Last!

2026-03-20T11:53:00.000-04:00

Sujata Massey

At long last, THE STAR FROM CALCUTTA has arrived!

Three busy years of writing, editing and marketing have brought the wisps of my old film fantasies to life as the fifth Perveen Mistry historical mystery novel. Here’s my elevator pitch:

Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first woman lawyer, gets her most glamorous client yet: Subhas Ghoshal, the director and founder of Champa Films, a silent film studio that features his wife, the beautiful daredevil actress Rochana, as headliner. The couple is threatened by a rival film company in Calcutta as well as the omnipresent British government censors.

Perveen brings her best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones, to a preview party for the studio’s next film. Amid the drunken revelry, arguments and liaisons develop. The morning after brings death, a disappearance, and much more of a legal challenge for Perveen, especially since Alice seems to be holding secrets from her. Sailing, a menagerie of performing animals, romance and international intrigue mark the novel. It's onsale in the USA now, and the Indian edition will appear in all South Asian territories in the last week in March. Here's what the Penguin India edition will appear:

One of the challenges in writing about film was locating old Indian films to study and inspire the fictional film (a story within a story) that I dreamed up for Rochana and others from Champa Films. Due to the fragile nature of old film rolls, much of it is gone, although I found some clips online. It looks like many films were about women, and I found myself wondering quite often about the female-centric plots for films like Barrister's Wife.

One film you can easily find on YouTube is Karma, an Indo-German-British production from 1933 starring Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani, the Bengali filmmaking couple that inspired my fictional characters of Subhas and Rochana Ghoshal. Karma is a fascinating film that features a 4-minute kissing scene, which served as the longest lip-lock world-wide for many decades.

I adored learning about old studios in India and traveled to Bombay, where I visited the very old Mehboob Film Studios and the vacant Imperial Theater as well as the National Museum of Indian Cinema, a fantastic group of buildings that house artifacts of many eras and screen old films as well.

The old Imperial Cinema

In Mumbai with historians Amrit Gangar and Sifra Lentin

The museum’s founding curator, Amrit Gangar, graciously met with me and answered my obscure questions. One of the most interesting things I learned was that early Indian film audiences were crazy for action heroines whose physicality expressed rebellion against authority. These films showed stars like Durga Khote and The Fearless Nadia racing cars, swimming rivers and fighting with swords were very popular in the 1920s and ‘30s. Many actresses were of mixed South Asian-European ancestry or came from families who had immigrated from the Middle East, including those of Jewish heritage.

The nation of Germany also plays a surprising role in the book. One of Bombay’s greatest studios, Bombay Talkies, had both a German director and a cinematographer, colleagues that Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani met at Emelka Films in Germany during the 20s and 30s. Being German in British-controlled India between the two wars was a discreet operation due to lingering resentments and suspicion. I had fun talking with Sneha Mathan, narrator of the audiobook, as we worked out what the novel’s character Hans Becker might have sounded like. I myself am Indo-German, so it was very heartwarming for me to bring this aspect into the novel.

You can’t make a film without a team; and I certainly found the same was true in writing a book about film. I close with resounding applause to the off-camera real life crew and of course, my beloved fictional characters and old Bombay locations who will continue in upcoming Perveen Mistry productions.

Royal Bombay Yacht Club bar

Sujata has upcoming events to celebrate and sign The Star From Calcutta. Coming up soon are appearances at The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore on 3/18; Politics and Prose in Washington DC on 3/22; Queen Takes Book in Columbia, MD on 3/27, and Backwater Books in Ellicott City on 4/10; and McIntryres Books, Pittsboro, NC, on 5/9.

5 things that New Zealand does really, really well

2026-03-18T13:00:00.059-04:00

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

My husband and I were supposed to visit New Zealand in March 2020 for our 30th anniversary. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

So for our 35th, we decided to reboot the itinerary and the adventure, and now we are smack in the middle of our trip to New Zealand. (Our Sara isn't here at the moment, alas!! But she did give me some pointers.)

From Auckland, we went north up to the Bay of Islands, then we went south and east to Coromandel Peninsula, and then we headed south, through Rotorua, Lake Taupo, and Cape Kidnappers (where the blue line ends); eventually we will make it to Wellington and then to the South Island. Every day, from my passenger seat (on the left side of the car), I'm astounded by how beautiful this country is, how there are delights at every turn. OK ... I have to share Jack-Jack the leering goat! And an Atticus Finch sighting!

No one wants to see all my pictures or read some long travelogue of mine ... but I do want to share 5 things that these New Zealanders do very, very well.

1. Pastries. Omg, I had no idea. The first morning, we had a pastry in the Britomart area of Auckland that was as flaky as any croissant I've ever had in Paris, with a decadent maple almond paste inside like I've never tasted anywhere. It is NOT SHOWN here because I ate it before I remembered to take a picture.

Another highlight, the next morning, a raspberry pastry (shown, as I managed to take a picture before I gobbled it). A few days later, there was a blackberry and white chocolate muffin at the Hahei Cafe. Truly, if I had to pick only five foods to take to an island to live for eternity, one might be that maple almond pastry. Coffee is excellent as well, and the cafes are ubiquitous.

2. Lotions and body wash and honey and wine! We are moving from place to place, but at every stop there are yet more exquisite natural products. I wish I could bring them all home. I'd need another suitcase. Or two.

3. Rocks. I have never seen so many gorgeous rocks amidst water and in the landscape. This is Cathedral Cove, in Coromandel Peninsula. We hiked down to it along the coast, and the tide was just coming in. Breathtaking, honestly.

4. Vistas. Inland, there are miles and miles of vistas -- green pastures and farmland and rolling hills and sheep and cows and horses and corn and hay -- and along the coast, there is water. I'm going to tuck in the vistas you see on the ferries from Auckland because they need to be in my list somewhere. We visited the island of Waiheke, walked on the pristine pale sand beach (vista, yes), and then went up to the Mudbrick Winery for a tasting and still MORE vistas.

5. I've saved the best and most important for last. I'm absolutely wowed by the way that the native Maori culture is celebrated, linguistically present, and part of the fabric of daily life for all New Zealanders and visitors. Many signs show the Maori words first, and the English translation below. Towns have retained their original names. A high point was visiting a living Maori village in Rotorua, where the guide walked us through and explained their alphabet and the history of their spoken and written language, how they used the geothermal land where they live, and the history of how they have kept their culture thriving. (Below, he is explaining the way the body is mapped onto their meeting house.) It was utterly fascinating. I kept thinking to myself, "I am so so glad I didn't miss this."

And now I'll stop.

If you've been to New Zealand, please feel free to share YOUR favorite things.

Walking in Oviedo: How a Compact, Walkable City Improves Health, Mood, and Community

2026-03-18T12:24:00.001-04:00

Introduction

When I relocated from Los Angeles to Oviedo, I expected a cultural shift. What I didn’t expect was a physiological one. The simple act of walking—built into daily life here—has altered my blood pressure, mood, and sense of connection to others.

Oviedo is not a large city, roughly comparable in footprint to Richmond, Virginia, but without skyscrapers—these are largely prohibited in the historic urban core. The result is a compact, human-scale environment where daily needs are embedded within walking distance.

Grand buildings, but no skyscrapers

Why Walking in Oviedo Works So Well

Oviedo is structured for movement on foot. From my home, nearly everything I need is within a 5–40-minute walk—groceries, pharmacies, cafés, parks, and medical care.

Pedestrian-only streets

When needed, walking is supplemented by:

A reliable and punctual bus system
Readily available taxis
Pedestrian-friendly streets and plazas

Urban researchers consistently show that compact cities encourage daily physical activity because walking becomes the easiest option rather than a planned exercise activity.¹

Evidence-Based Benefits of Walking—and My Experience in Oviedo

1. Reduced Blood Pressure

(Image: AI)

Regular walking has been shown to significantly reduce blood pressure. A meta-analysis of walking interventions found reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure among participants who incorporated walking into daily routines.²

My observation:
Since living in Oviedo and walking daily, my blood pressure has dropped enough that I require less medication.

2. Improved Mood and Reduced Depression

Walking and moderate aerobic activity stimulate endorphin release and improve neurotransmitter balance. Large studies show that regular walking can reduce symptoms of depression and improve overall psychological well-being.³

My observation:
My baseline mood has improved noticeably since walking became a daily part of life rather than something scheduled. One medication down, one more to go!

3. Lower Chronic Stress

Research shows that walking—especially in pleasant urban environments—reduces cortisol levels and sympathetic nervous system activity.⁴

My observation:
The constant low-level tension I experienced while living in Los Angeles—traffic, noise, scheduling every movement—has largely disappeared.

4. Increased Social Connection

Walkable environments foster incidental social interactions, which are strongly linked to improved mental health and reduced loneliness.⁵

My observation:
Walking in Oviedo creates small but meaningful interactions—eye contact, greetings, shared sidewalks.

Contrast that with freeway driving: thousands of people in proximity, yet complete isolation.

5. A Stronger Sense of Community

Urban studies show that pedestrian environments increase social trust and civic engagement.⁶

My observation:
There is a palpable sense that people watch out for one another. I’ve seen this during real emergencies on the street. In my own case, the example was small but revealing. One afternoon, I was on the sidewalk struggling to get my backpack on. Without being asked, a passerby stepped behind me and said, “¿Te ayudo?”—“Can I help you?”—and adjusted the straps. That kind of warm, spontaneous assistance is difficult to imagine when everyone is sealed inside cars.

From Car Culture to Walking Culture

Driving in Los Angeles often felt paradoxical: surrounded by thousands, yet entirely alone.

Walking in Oviedo produces the opposite effect:

You become part of the street
You repeatedly encounter the same spaces and people
The city becomes familiar rather than anonymous

Over time, walking creates belonging.

Urban Design Matters

Oviedo’s walkability is not accidental. Key features include:

Human-scale urban density
Mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods
Wide sidewalks and pedestrian streets
Public services within short distances

Urban planners describe these environments as “15-minute cities,” where daily needs are accessible within a short walk or transit ride.⁷

Oviedo effectively functions this way.

Conclusion

Walking in Oviedo is not exercise in the traditional sense—it is infrastructure.

The city makes movement on foot the most logical way to live. The health benefits follow naturally: lower blood pressure, improved mood, and reduced stress.

But beyond physiology, there is something less measurable and equally important—a restoration of trust in the people around you.

References

1. Sallis JF et al. “Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity.” The Lancet, 2016.

2. Murphy MH et al. “Walking for Health.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2007.

3. Mammen G, Faulkner G. “Physical Activity and Depression.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2013.

4. Hunter MR et al. “Urban Green Space and Stress Reduction.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2019.

5. Leyden KM. “Social Capital and the Built Environment.” American Journal of Public Health, 2003.

6. Wood L et al. “Neighborhood Design and Social Interaction.” Health & Place, 2010.

7. Moreno C. “The 15-Minute City.” Smart Cities Journal, 2021.

Italian Food for Thought

2026-03-15T15:17:00.000-04:00

Annamaria on Monday

This coming Tuesday is my Birthday. I have been in tech hell since I returned back to to my beloved NYC after being away for two and half months, hiding out from the storied but this year ICY sidewalks of New York. I will not grumble about the computer difficulties. I am blessed to be where I am and how I am as I reach 85 years on this splendid planet. I am deeply grateful for all the blessings of my life. Here below is a post from some years ago about one of those blessings - I grew up learning how to cook and always enjoying "every body's favorite food."

The playwright Neil Simon famously observed that there are only two laws in the universe: the Law of Gravity and Everyone Loves Italian Food. American supermarket shelves have more Italian food items than any other kind—far more than those of any other ethnic group. The average American eats Italian food of some sort at least once a week.

It has not always been this way.

Each of the 2.7 million Italians who poured into the US between 1890 and 1910 brought with him an average of $12.67. They had left starving areas of what they came call the Old Country. When they arrived in the US (90% through Ellis Island), they found a land of plenty, but what they wanted to eat was their traditional food, a Mediterranean cuisine of vegetables, grains, and fruits. They longed for olive oil, fresh figs, pasta, good bread—none of these easy to find at first.

The United States officially expected them to become American and to demonstrate that they were doing so by adopting the American culture lock, stock, and barrel. The Federal government employed squads of social workers to make sure this happened. An important measure of their success at Americanization was converting Italians to an American diet. I am delighted to report that this effort was a dismal failure.

Despite the difficulties of finding the ingredients they wanted for their own dishes, Italians refused to accept what America wanted to feed them. One Federal social researcher lamented about a family in her study: “Not assimilated, yet. Still eating Italian food.” What recalcitrance! A 1907 report on Wage Earners’ Budgets in New York complained about Italian immigrants’ stubbornness in this regard: “The Italian believes that the commercial method of canning removes all the goodness from food and that a minimum of processes should intervene between harvest and consumption.” Insisting food should be fresh? What a concept!

Italians persisted in replicating their Old Country diet, often with a vengeance. For instance, because there were no figs for sale nearby, my grandfather Gennaro had a fig tree. One cannot grow figs in the climate of New Jersey without a lot of trouble. Each fall, before the first frost, my father and my Uncle Joe, supervised by Gennaro, dug up the tree by the roots, lay it down in a trench, covered it with soil, then with straw, and a khaki tarpaulin. When spring came, they dug it up, stood it upright, and replanted it. Then, the whole family waited for the first green shoots to prove it had survived its winter slumber.

Like all immigrant groups, Italians opened restaurants. It was in those establishments that Italian cooking took an American turn. True Italian meals were a hundred years ago and still are served in courses, the first of which is often a pasta dish. So an Italian might make meatballs (polpette) in tomato sauce, put a little of the sauce and some grated cheese on pasta, serve that and then, as second course, serve the polpette, likely with a vegetable side dish. But American customers in those early Italian eateries weren't used to courses. So to accommodate the cultural difference, restauranteurs invented a New World riff on their cuisine. They combined the the first and the second and Tah-DAH--meatballs and spaghetti!

The current state of Italian restaurants in the US seems to depend on whether or not there is an actual Italian in the kitchen. Many places with Italian names and self-described as Italian serve things far removed from true Italian cuisine. My personal beefs (!) about this are mainly two. First of all, the amount of sauce on the pasta. Authentic Italian pasta might be served with a variety of different sauces, but it is not drowned in Bolognese or carbonara. Much of the time, in US restaurants, there is three or five times the amount of sauce on the pasta as I would serve at home or one would find in a restaurant in Italy. It spoils the dish for me.

Worst of all is the insane about of garlic and hot peppers. Starting with Artusi in 1891, real Italian food experts advise using garlic con parsimonio, parsimoniously. Here is how I learned as a child to saute vegetables: Heat olive oil in a saute pan. Peel and halve (NOT mince) a clove a fresh garlic. NOTE: I said ONE clove. Gently saute the garlic until it softens. (NEVER brown it. If you accidentally brown it, you have to throw the effort away, wash the pan and start over.) With a fork, remove the garlic from the oil and throw it away. Then, add and toss the vegetable in the oil. Delicious! The flavor of the vegetable subtly enhanced by the hint (HINT!!) of garlic.

There are a few regional recipes that call for more garlic - like the Piedmontese favorite Bagna Cauda. But they are the exception, not the rule.

Pepperoncini (hot peppers) go into certain Italian dishes, mostly they are Calabrian recipes. There is NO place for hot peppers in Bolognese sauce. Or Marinara. Or--God Forbid--ossobucco or fiori di zucca.

Why in the name that all that is holy, would anyone want to cook these
delicate blossoms and then pour garlicky pesto over them

If you like, you can overwhelm the flavor of everything you eat with tons of garlic and drown it in hot pepper sauce. I won't stop you. BUT PLEASE, don't call it Italian. In fact, I respectfully request that you NOT give such a dish a name the sounds Italian.

My nonno Gennaro, my guardian angel in the picture above, told me when I was about that age that heavy spices were things chefs put on food if the ingredients are under par or on the verge of spoiling. Don't eat such dishes, he warned me. If you are going to put a food inside your body, it must be the best thing you can find.

I learned very young and have practiced all my life the art of Italian cooking. I think the tradition is about more than gastronomic pleasure. In addition to their recipes and a taste for peaches picked ripe from the tree, Italians carried a family-centric culture with them when they crossed the ocean. Good food was and is the enduring value learned by their descendants. Cooking well to give pleasure in addition to nourishment is a deep expression of the Italian maternal instinct. Those newly arrived women fed their children really good food not only to help them grow up healthy and strong but to spoil them with affection. Family meals were rituals, not only on holidays, but even on an ordinary Tuesday. People didn’t eat out; they gathered around the family table.

At the table is where children learned manners, family lore and values, their sense of belonging to something bigger and stronger than they. When they visited family and friends, meals were always the central activity. I never ate in a restaurant other than a pizzeria before I went away to college. When I became a wife and mother, I never gave it second thought: I cooked. My daughter’s classmates at Swarthmore were astonished to find out that she ate a proper sit-down dinner with her parents every evening.

Italians prepare wonderful food not as an end in itself, but as a means. The end is to get everyone to sit down together and unite in mutual tolerance and support. When an Italian calls out "Tutti a tavola" (Everyone to the table), it is the pleasure of the food that draws the family. Togetherness is the real goal.

Family members all pitching in to create a meal they can enjoy together, trading jokes and tales of their day’s triumphs and tribulations--that’s the Italian way with food. That’s amore.

The Top Ten Best Short Story Mysteries of All Time

2026-03-14T00:00:00.001-04:00

Jeff–Saturday

There is so much (good) news I have to share...but cannot talk about quite yet. All I can say is that it's kept me so busy and distracted this week that I couldn't find the time to come up with an MIE post that meets the standards of my blogmates' work. So, I've fallen back upon republishing an oldie but goodie post It's my take on the top ten best short story mysteries of all time.

I cannot think of a quicker way to start an argument than with a “Top Ten” anything list. Yet, as a former adjunct professor of English teaching mystery writing at a college that’s decades older than the modern detective novel, how could I refuse the honor of such a request from the 2023 Mystery Writers of America Ellery Queen Award winning The Strand Magazine?

In order to avoid offending any of my many gifted, still writing, short-story authoring friends, I readily admit to prayerfully ameliorating potential fallout by offering up, in roughly chronological order, this ten best list of seminal short stories penned by writers no longer with us.

So here's my article as published by The Strand Magazine, courtesy of the online posting skills of Talia Tydall.

“Murders in the Rue Morgue,” by Edgar Allan Poe (Graham’s Magazine, 1841)

It’s only appropriate that the first story on my list is considered the first modern detective story. In Poe’s tale, he introduces his brilliantly analytical detective, C. Auguste Dupin, and Dupin’s trusted friend who acts as the story’s narrator. Their relationship and Dupin’s methods and cool demeanor have come to serve as inspiration for legions of mystery writers,

On Paris’ Rue Morgue at 3AM, a mother and daughter are brutally and inhumanely slaughtered in their heavily locked-down fourth-floor apartment. Neighbors heard their shrieks but also two additional voices coming from within the apartment, one identified as male and French, the other as shrill and foreign. When the neighbors break into the apartment, they find only the daughter inside, dead and stuffed feet-first up the chimney in a show of superhuman strength, while her mother lay decapitated on the ground, four unscalable stories below a still locked window. Though newspapers call it an impossible crime to solve, and the police remain baffled, a man known to Dupin is accused of the murders. Through the application of his “ratiocination” investigatory methods that do not ask “what has occurred,” but rather, “what has occurred that has never occurred before,” Dupin determines what transpired and frees an innocent man; establishing in the process an enduring classic formula for mystery writing.

“The Red-Headed League,” by Arthur Conan Doyle (The Strand Magazine, 1891)

I trace my interest in writing mysteries to my early years as a lawyer when I found an unexpected opportunity to read The Complete Sherlock Holmes straight through from cover to cover. By the end of that exercise, I was thinking like Holmes, loving Conan Doyle’s beautiful Victorian prose, and enthralled at the thought that since Sherlock’s father’s first name is “Siger” we were related…if not as kin, at least as kindred spirits. From the perpetual flow of new Sherlock Holmes-themed projects coming to market, I’d call him a true cultural phenomenon.

It’s hard to pick a favorite Holmes story. In “The Red-Headed League,” experts see themes of man-to-man confrontation and greed, plus Holmes’ high opinion of himself and distain for lesser minds. To me, there’s an added lesson: know your setting well, because from that knowledge you may find your answer. The assistant to a red-headed pawnbroker shows his boss an ad offering a busy-work office job paying male red-heads exorbitant wages and convinces him to take the job. Eight weeks later the pawnbroker finds the office suddenly closed and that the landlord never heard of the League, He turns to Holmes, who visits the pawnshop with Watson and concludes he knows the answer to the mystery. Conan Doyle considered this story his second favorite. “The Speckled Band” was his first.

“Locked Doors,” by Mary Roberts Rinehart (1914)

Born in my hometown of Pittsburgh in 1876, she is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and identified there as: “America’s first woman war correspondent during World War I for the Saturday Evening Post; wrote mystery novels, including The Circular Staircase and The Bat; in 1921 was referred to as ‘America’s Mistress of Mystery.” A fearless woman, also called “America’s Agatha Christie,” she’s credited as the inventor of the “Had-I-But-Known” mystery novel, and for the phrase “the butler did it.” Her best-selling books and plays were often adapted for film and one novel was among the earliest “talking book” recordings.

In much of Rinehart’s work the challenge is discovering what’s hidden from view, because the “hidden situation” looms more important than whodunit. An accomplished mystery writer trained in nursing, Rinehart combined those talents in her series featuring nurse Hilda Adams a/k/a Miss Pinkerton, who at times works undercover for the police. In “Locked Doors,” she’s recruited to replace a badly shaken nurse who came to the police after four days of living in a large eerie house, working for a peculiar family with no servants, no working telephone, two young children confined to their room, and doors barred shut at night. Its spine chilling, not-your-normal-mystery sort of “Gothic thrills” plotting, might just keep you from guessing the “perfectly macabre solution to this mystery.”

“The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb,” Agatha Christie (The Sketch Magazine, 1923)

What more can I possibly tell you than you already know about Dame Agatha Christie, the undisputed Queen of Crime and creator of Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and the world’s longest running play, “Mousetrap.” Hmm, perhaps you didn’t know that this best-selling fiction writer of all time with more than two billion novels sold (trailing only the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare) loved surfing? That was news to me, so I took it as a suggestion on how to find a favorite among her more than 150 short stories. I went surfing through her work and came up with this Poirot and Captain Hastings gem that’s celebrating its one-hundredth anniversary.

The widow of a famous Egyptologist asks Poirot to journey to the excavation site of a Pharaoh’s tomb where her husband died by heart attack, the wealthy backer of the dig died from blood poisoning, and from which the backer’s nephew left for New York only to commit suicide soon after arriving there. The widow fears for the life of her son who intends on continuing his father’s work. Poirot cables New York for information on the nephew, and leaves for the dig. By the time he and Hastings arrive, another American has died, this one from tetanus, and talk of an Egyptian Curse fills the papers. Tension builds as Poirot suddenly begins choking on tea he’s been served. It’s a tour de force example of how Christie’s least likely characters so often turn out to be the guilty, and of Poirot’s penchant for gathering the guilty together for their unmasking.

“Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” by Raymond Chandler (Black Mask, 1933)

Chandler is considered a founder of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. Mention his name and private detective Philip Marlowe immediately springs to mind. Chandler coined the phrase “down these mean streets” and Marlowe lives on them. It’s a rough place for a compassionate guy with a more noble sense of purpose than accumulating wealth and power. Marlowe’s compassion makes him vulnerable, and so he plays a tough guy to the world, using wise cracks as his defense to whatever that world throws at him.

“Blackmailers Don’t Shoot” is Chandler’s first mystery story, written when he was 44. Αll the dames, guns, gangsters, shady dealings, lies, deceptions, crooked cops, fights, tough guy talk, and elements of the mythical quests knight Marlowe feels compelled to pursue are there. But not yet the Marlowe name. That change doesn’t happen until 1939 in “The Big Sleep.” In 1933 he’s Mallory and at center stage in a swanky club attempting to blackmail a beautiful movie star over love letters she’d long ago sent to a gangster. She dismisses the attempt, leaves the club, and is kidnapped. Mallory leaves later, only to be strong-armed into the middle of a falling out among gangsters over her kidnapping. He turns the situation to his advantage, leading to the Star’s ultimate rescue, the death of her gangster ex-boyfriend, and the return of her letters. But Mallory has more left to do. Chandler likes it that way.

“Death Threats,” by Georges Simenon (cir. 1936-42)

SIMENON, Georges, 1963, Ecrivain (F) © ERLING MANDELMANN ©

Belgian writer Georges Simenon is one of the most prolific authors of the 20^th Century, estimated to have written over 400 novels, plus as many as 1200 stories under his own name and more than a dozen pen names. His sales total more than 500 million copies, and his highly popular Inspector Jules Maigret appears in 78 novels and 28 short stories, often confronting serious themes rarely touched upon by more traditional detectives. Maigret does not adhere to the genre’s conventional approach of searching for clues and using deductive reasoning to solve a case. Rather, he immerses himself in the surroundings and life of those who interest him, much as would a therapist or professor looking for psychological insights to help better understand the human condition and criminal mind.

“Death Threats” has Maigret dispatched to spend the weekend at the country villa of the senior member of a wealthy merchant family. The merchant received an anonymous note threatening his death before 6PM on Sunday. His twin brother reaches out to Maigret trying to convince him that his brother is paranoid and the threat must be a joke. At the villa, Maigret discovers a family of ambitious, self-absorbed, greedy narcissists wracked by mutual hatred for each other, who despite all their advantages, utterly fail to appreciate life. Things get exciting around 6, but don’t go quite as Maigret had expected even though he knew from the outset who’d sent the note.

“Kiss Me Again, Stranger,” by Daphne du Maurier (Gollancz, 1952)

Du Maurier’s work rarely has a happy ending, yet she’s often described as a romantic novelist, a characterization she rejected and despised. Fantasy and mystery were descriptions she might have found more to her liking. Whatever one’s opinion on that debate, her short stories are certainly dark, if not noir, hovering close to the paranormal and often haunting the reader long after the final sentence is read.

“Kiss Me Again, Stranger” is neither a ghost story nor a supernatural tale, but rather a classic example of du Maurier’s uncanny ability to keep the reader thinking it just might end up being one of those. A nameless young man narrates the story of his evening at the cinema where he’s irresistibly taken by a beautiful usherette. He follows her onto a bus, sits beside her, pulls her close to him, and rests her head on his shoulder. I shall not tell you what happens when they later go off together into a cemetery, except to quote what another has written about the usherette: “it is hard to think of any female character in British fiction, before this husky siren, who does what she does and with such cool aplomb: an unexpectedly powerful proto-feminist role model.”

“The Oblong Room,” by Edward D. Hoch (The Saint Magazine, 1967)

Edward Hoch is the author of close to 1000 classic detective stories, a record holder with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for having published a short story in every one of its issues over a thirty-four-year span, and the first short story writer to be named a “Grand Master” by Mystery Writers of America. His work emphasizes mystery and deduction over other forms, but seldom are they simple police procedurals, and at times they’re locked rooms and impossible crimes scenarios. His small town, Connecticut police Captain Jules Leopold has weathered close to fifty-years and one hundred stories, including the Edgar award winning, “The Oblong Room” – an homage of sorts to Poe’s “The Oblong Box.”

In “The Oblong Room,” Captain Leopold is called to investigate what seems an open and shut case of murder on a college campus. A man is found stabbed to death, locked in a room for 24 hours with his roommate. All that is needed to convict is the roommate’s motive, but the roommate will not make a statement. The ensuing investigation establishes, (a) the victim possessed an uncanny ability to manipulate anyone into obeying him, (b) no one was more devoted to and protective of the victim than his roommate, and (c) the two were known to use LSD. But why did the roommate kill someone he’d die to protect? And why a 24-hour vigil after the slaying? Our answers arrive in a do-not-see-it-coming solution.

“The Last Bottle in the World,” by Stanley Ellin (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine 1968)

This three-time Edgar award winner and Mystery Writers of America Grand Master is said to have focused so intently on perfection that it would take him a year to complete each short story he submitted to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His ingenious imagination, precision plotting, strong characters, chosen locales, and deft ability to fool and surprise the reader from a psychological point of view, all served to focus attention on his protagonist’s crisis at hand.

In this story about the last bottle of a famed vintage that a mega-rich man is determined to buy from the narrator-wine merchant, the merchant unexpectedly comes across the rich man’s wife in a café, and there’s a flashback to when the two first met. She’s now in a difficult marriage and showing interest in another man. The tension rises, until the plot unexpectedly twists in a most satisfying yet realistic of ways.

“Blood Lines,” by Ruth Rendell (Hutchinson (UK), Crown (US), 1995)

Writing also as Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell is a literary giant of the 20^th Century, possessing an uncanny knack for weaving the strangest of tales out of the joys and pains of ordinary family life. Rendell offers up her themes on multiple penetrating levels, drawing upon ancient tragedy, quixotic dark humor, poignant intellect, and piercing insights into the darkest regions of the human psyche to reveal the disturbed family relationships unearthed in her works. In the process, often shocking the reader at how fragile the separation between life on the page and off.

“Blood Lines” features her popular Inspector Reginald “Rex” Wexford investigating a murder that’s shattered the tranquility of a small bucolic community. A young woman discovers her stepfather’s brutally beaten body. She firmly denies knowing the identity of the murderer, but Wexford is convinced his primary suspects include the victim’s extended family. Wexford’s patient investigation reveals evidence of spousal abuse, infidelity, avarice, and betrayal, reminding him that the criminal impulse may be present in even the most routine or intimate of situations. It is vintage Rendell.

--Jeff

The wine of Constantia

2026-03-12T04:01:00.000-04:00

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

For this week's post I was looking for topics that are uniquely South African, and, of course, there are lots of them. Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma (at opposite ends of the spectrum), the local cultures, the animals (I'd choose the springbok because all the other iconic animals of South Africa are widely spread in sub-Saharan Africa), the Kruger National Park, Table Mountain, various dishes. To pick one thing that is absolutely South African for me, I thought I'd look at my first ever post on Murder Is Everywhere. That was 17 years ago and if you remember it, you have a good memory. It was about a very special South African wine.

In 1652 Jan van Riebeeck landed at what became the Cape of Good Hope with the aim of providing fresh produce for ships of the Dutch East India Company on the way to and from the Indies. Ostensibly, because wine was supposed to help scurvy but perhaps for a quiet tipple on the side, he planted the first vineyard three years later. And on the 2^nd of February 1659, he was able to proclaim: “Today, praise be to God, wine was pressed from Cape grapes for the first time”. By all accounts the wine was pretty foul - not too surprising given the level of expertise around. The Netherlands is not renowned for her wine.

But van Riebeeck was succeeded twenty years later by Simon van der Stel, an interesting if contentious character, who did know about wine and saw the opportunity for a guilder or two to come his way also. He was the son of Adriaan van der Stel and Maria Lievens, the daughter of a freed Indian slave woman, which made him “coloured” in the racial parlance of the apartheid government. (Needless to say this was not a feature emphasized in the school history text books of the day.)

The Cape peninsular has a climate not too different from that of southern Europe with winter rainfall and moderate temperatures. It's the area of South Africa which most reminds people of Europe with gnarled oak lined streets and the genteel plants that thrive in the “old country”. Van der Stel carefully selected a wine farm for himself along the southern slopes of the Cape peninsular, actually testing the soils and choosing a cool microclimate with winds from the sea. He called the estate Constantia and it did very well.

But the wines that made Constantia famous came later when Hendrik Cloete moved from
Stellenbosch (named after van der Stel) and bought a portion of the Constantia estate. He planted new vines and specialised in a wine made from grapes ripened almost to raisins on the vine, matured in vats, and fortified. The wine was called simply Constantia and it held its own with all the choice sweet wines with the rich and famous of the day. All this came to an end late in the nineteenth century when phylloxera devastated the vineyards. Still, a few bottles survive to this day. A wine-writer friend of mine was fortunate to taste one some years ago and pronounced it still luscious after two hundred years.

A famous story about Constantia is that it was one of Napoleon's favourite wines and he received a regular supply to cheer him up on Saint Helena - an island off the west coast of Africa to which he was exiled the second time after Elba couldn't hold him. A juicy twist to the story was that the British used the wine to kill him with small doses of arsenic poisoning, but if arsenic was involved, it was more likely to have been from the glue in the wall paper. The modern consensus seems to be that he died of stomach cancer and that spoils the tale altogether.

In 1980 a new estate named Klein Constantia (part of the original van der Stel estate) decided to try to recreate the wine. It was to be a sweet desert wine in the late harvest style – not botrytis – with the berries hand-selected. The venture was a stunning success and celebrated in the name – Vin de Constance – and in copies of the old Constantia hand-made bottles which the estate uses for the modern wine. It's available outside South Africa – a friend in Australia has a good selection of vintages, and I've had a bottle in a restaurant in New York. If you like dessert wines, this one is worth trying if you have the chance.

You can imagine you're sharing the bottle with Bismark or Napoleon or King George. It will set you back more than a few dollars though. The wine has become something of a collectors item.

Feeding Me, My Dog and My Next Mystery

2026-03-10T02:00:00.001-04:00

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

For years I’ve had two mystery series, both of which I love. But recently I’ve been feeling the itch to start something unconnected with either of them.

We're also settling in our beloved new dog, Sophia (who would like to make it clear the itching doesn't have anything to do with her!)

Maybe it's because so many people in my generation are moving into retirement, while it can feel like I've not ever started working at a 'real' job... meaning one that I would look forward to retiring from. Anyway, the itch for the 'new' is translating into a German Course at the Goethe Institut and the new book I'm drafting.

And exploring Singapore looking for dog friendly locations...

Anyway, the dog influence first. One side effect of having Sophia around is we’ve begun exploring dog-friendly cafés all over Singapore.

Sophia at Boomarang.

And what I look for when eating out has changed--these days it's a case of looking for a place with outdoor seating (where Sophia's allowed to join us) and preferably a nice grass patch nearby.
Given Singapore's 'garden city' concept that's not been too difficult to find. And the first bar bistro we tried, along the Singapore River, was lovely.
And that was lovely, though neither Sophia nor I were keen on walking along the riverside in the heat.
Which led to the next quest: for someplace with air-conditioning where we could all sit together... and we found that in Menage...

Which was pretty much perfect.
Sophia loved her salmon dish so much she tried to eat mine as well, which made me think about a case where a dog steals someone's poisoned salmon--but I don’t want my not-yet-fictional dog to die, so most of the salmon will be retrieved... though just having had her jaws around it and swallowing a bit is enough to made the poor pup sick and that murder attempt is foiled/ exposed...

Which just goes to show (again) how ideas tend to come when you're not sitting at a desk. A newly retired friend asked 'where do your ideas come from?' and I had to say 'everywhere'. If anything, the struggle is to find enough time to sit down and work through all the ideas I want to wrestle with!

To make it worse/ better, my husband and I are starting to learn German; partly to stretch our minds, partly because with all the German neighbours we have, it's a shame that the only German words I know are 'marten aller arten' (loads of terrible tortures) and 'Meine tochter nimmermehr' (no more my daughter) both phrases useful for threatening a dog who's stubbornly trying to kill one's reading glasses or refusing to walk. (Don't worry, Sophia doesn't take threats or opera seriously).

Anyway, we've signed up for four hours a week of German classes, starting next Monday. And we thought we'd get started by reading (with the help of Google Translate) Erich Kastner's Emil Und Die Detektive in German.

I love the daily down to earth details about life in Berlin about a hundred years ago, the trams and trains, the cafes, the neighbours and the observant child. And I realised I want to try to capture my time and space with the same care, respect and lightness. And I'm realising that reading in a language other than English is making more aware of how I sometimes use language on autopilot.

Also, my sis-in-law strongly recommended Uketsu's wonderfully strange puzzle with pictures books, Strange Houses and Strange Pictures and now I strongly recommend them too!
I borrowed these e-copies from the library--

But I am going to need to be getting my own copies because I love them so much. They are somehow simple and complex at the same time and I'm trying to figure out why while figuring out the puzzles!

So life is very good here even as we're aware of disruptions in the outside world.

My Pilates teacher was stranded in Dubai but the second repatriation flight from the UAE back to Singapore just landed and I'm hoping she was on it!

But in situations like this, when there's nothing practical to do other than 'hope' we might as well put all our energy into hoping and for me that means thinking about what we get to read and write next!

Exposition

2026-03-09T00:00:00.002-04:00

Annamaria on Monday

I am back in NYC and on a whim decided that it's time to start working on the TBR pile of books on the window sill next to my bed. The way it looks in the picture below, you might think it's not that out of control, but that window sill is not the only place where such volumes reside. There is a whole bookshelf full next to the window and many unread purchases hanging out on shelves all over my apartment.

To start toward my goal, I chose a book I had bought at a conference of the Historical Novel Society in England about a decade ago. The author, until then unknown to me, was greatly revered by the participants, who spoke of him as a great authority on writing great historical fiction.

A few evenings ago, I finally cracked his book. To my amazement, I found I could not read it. It may be a prejudice as far as I am concerned, but the first two pages were written in what I think is a clunky style.

Here's how I think about historical fiction: it must draw the reader back into the past and make it look effortless. The history must meld into the fiction. But in the book in questionI starts with an implausible conversation. It set me to thinking about exactly what was wrong, and what would be a better way to do it. (I am not going to quote from the actual story. I do not want to vilify a fellow writer. I just want to share a better way to set the scene a historical novel.

That writer's first scene began with a supposed conversation between a powerful nobleman and one of his minions discussing the core challenge they faced. The problem is they are telling each each other facts that both of them undoubtedly already know. It was exposition masquerading as historical fiction.

To show you what I mean, here is an example of what this mistake might look like on the page. To make this easy on myself, I need you to pretend that, in 2096 you are reading a historical novel set in Washington in 2026. Let's say the characters the writer has chosen to introduce the reader to the history are two US Senators, both Democrats from Maryland. Here is their scene one, page one, meant to envelop a future reader into what life was like back in 2026.

James Morgan closed the door softly behind him and spoke in a whisper. "Donald Trump is in the White House. He was re-elected, and he is overstepping his bounds. He is ignoring the rule of law. We are both senators, but our party is in the minority."

His fellow Senator from Maryland, Joanne Burns, shook her head. "There are people on the left who are getting violent. People on our side have been attacked and harmed. Some have been killed."

You get it. This style of writing does not draw the reader in. It informs him in pretty much the same way a history book would.

A good way to avoid this is to choose characters who do not agree, so they can discuss their differences. They might argue about them. Or the writer can have one of them enter the discussion wanting to change the other person's mind. And fail. Or change his own mind and come to agree with the person whose mind she came to change. The writer then can get the facts out by weaving them into the arguments of the characters.

Joanne Burns was afraid. She wanted convince Jim Morgan to go easy. As far as she could see, because he was the senior senator, he thought he could dictate how she would vote on the up coming bill. They both knew that, with Trump in the White House and the Republicans in the majority...

You get it.

Also with crime fiction, the writer can weave in the history by choosing the right victim, so that those who are trying to solve the mystery have to consider the facts of the history in order to solve the crime. In my third South American story, Blood Tango for instance, the victim is a young woman who is fascinated with Evita, and makes herself up to look like her. When she is found murdered, the question is was the person who killed her, trying to kill Evita? The policeman trying to solve the murder has to consider why someone would want to kill Juan Peron's woman. Thinking about the politics of the time is essential to answering that question.

To my way of thinking, a historical novelist should always be first a story teller who writes in a way that the reader learns the history through the story, not next to it, but melded with it,

I'm Back!!

2026-03-07T00:00:00.001-05:00

Saturday–Jeff

It’s been a rough several weeks but … fingers crossed… things seem to be back on course.

Earlier this week , “The Campus Files” published a deep-diving interview with me exploring A Study In Secrets, the just published debut novel in my new “The Redacted Man” series. Sam Hunter conducted the interview and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Here’s hoping you will as well in the reading.

Here is the Q&A:

On the Evolution of the Protagonist

Q.1 Michael is a fascinating departure from the typical high-octane thriller hero. What prompted the decision to center a new series on a man whose primary power is his intellect and his "gentil civility" rather than physical youth?

Answer.1 We live in the time of the “high-octane thriller hero.” No matter where you look, aggressive power dominates intellect. Be it in entertainment, business or politics. As for “gentile civility,” good luck at finding evidence of that amid modern social media. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I believe the world can be different. But only if those with the capacity for bringing about real change choose to stand up for what they know to be right and not simply live out their days going along with the status quo.

Q.2 Michael’s past is intentionally "redacted," leaving the reader to piece together his history through small clues—his wealth, his service, and his loss of a foot. As a writer, how do you balance the need to satisfy a reader's curiosity while maintaining the mystery that defines his character?

Answer.2 I agree with the principle that curiosity keeps readers turning pages, but I also believe a writer must be wary of an unintended opposite effect. It is an intriguing dilemma; one I confront every day––guided by this variation on an age-old proverb: “Too much requited curiosity will kill the cat…no matter how much satisfaction tries to bring it back.”

On the "Imagined Life" vs. Reality

Q.3 The book opens with Michael as a passive observer, literally watching life through a window. The theme of "imagining" vs. "living" is central to his journey. Was this a reflection on the role of the novelist—creating lives for others—or was it strictly a character choice to illustrate Michael’s self-imposed isolation?

Answer.3 Actually, it was neither. Or both. As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now this is a very different sort of book from any of my Kaldis novels. This one is driven far more by the nuances of its characters and the intensity of their individual backstories than by the sort of grandiose settings and unique cultural ways at play in my Greece-based Kaldis stories.

In the opening scenes of A Study in Secrets, Michael A subtly offers his perspective on modern life and why he prefers a lifestyle reminiscent of elegant late 19^th Century living. One that provides a firm framework for moving the storyline forward at an ever increasing, more complicated pace. As for why I chose New York City over several other cosmopolitan international settings I’d been considering, I settled upon NYC because of how well I know the city and its secrets.

Q.4 At the end of the novel, Michael considers "shuttering" his window. Does this signify a permanent transition from an observer to a participant, or is he simply trading one form of protection for another?

Answer. 4 The closing lines of the novel reveal a subtle distinction in how Michael now views his role compared to how he’d imagined it when the story began. Specifically:

“He’d long considered his window an impenetrable barrier between the imagined and reality. One that allowed him to see life as he wanted it to be, not as it had become. To imagine life left him free to be fearless and forever hopeful. Facing reality meant confrontation, sacrifice, and risk to all he held dear.

“But his window had failed him.

“Before it did so again, he should shutter it.

“Perhaps tomorrow.”

Yes, his choice lay between observer and participant…existing and living…the imagined and the actual.

And he’s not yet sure of the path to choose. Perhaps tomorrow he will.

On Dialogue and Narrative Style

Q.5 The dialogue in A Study in Secrets is notably formal, almost Victorian in its precision. Even characters from rougher backgrounds, like Angel, seem to adapt to this "gentlemanly" frequency when speaking with Michael. Was this a deliberate choice to show how Michael’s personality reshapes the world around him?

Answer.5 I’ve long admired Conan Doyle’s brilliant Victorian prose, and so I’m not surprised that I fell to utilizing that style in creating the ambiance for this book. I wouldn’t say that all characters adopted Michael’s style of speech, but without question the dialogue was meant to demonstrate that Michael is a character very much in charge of whatever situation he confronts.

On the Nature of "The Treasure"

Q.6 The "Fielding Treasure" serves as the classic MacGuffin, yet its true value remains somewhat ambiguous even as the book closes. Why was it important for the resolution of the story to focus more on the psychological safety of the characters than the physical contents of the package?

Answer.6 Once again the mischievous role of curiosity brings its buddy imagination into play. I’m a big believer in utilizing a reader’s natural imagination to play a significant role in selling my story. And that’s why I resisted editorial efforts to identify the Fielding Treasure beyond classic MacGuffin status. My reasoning is simple: If I were to tell a room full of readers that in a box on the table before them is the most fearsome horror imaginable, how many different opinions will that elicit as to what’s in the box? Some people might imagine ten possibilities, some a hundred. But one thing is for certain: Once the box is opened, they’ll be relieved it wasn’t any of the other nine or ninety-nine they feared. That’s why I prefer to leave the box closed. 

On Secondary Characters and Relationships

Q.7. The relationship between Michael and Gabriel (the diner owner) hints at a deep, generational history involving Gabriel’s father. How much of Michael’s backstory is already mapped out in your mind, and how much is being discovered as he interacts with these "remnants" of his former life?

Answer 7. I am a dedicated seat-of-the-pants writer. When I sit down at a keyboard, I rarely have more than a tingle in my brain of what I’m about to write that day. It’s up to my characters to tell me where we’re off to and whether or not they’ll permit me to intercede in ways they disagree. That’s especially true in the case of Michael and Gabriel. The two have a lot of backstory at play in their respective lives, that I sense they’re anxious to explore and share. Hopefully soon.

Q.8. Mrs. Baker is clearly much more than a housekeeper. In many ways, she feels like his last remaining "handler." How does their dynamic serve to ground Michael in a reality he often tries to avoid?

Answer 8. Once again you impress me with your insights on the nature of my characters and their interpersonal dynamics. Though I didn’t intend for Mrs. Baker to serve as Michael’s “handler” I must admit that their interactions reveal a long-standing symbiotic relationship akin to handler and asset with each doing what they must to jointly survive a needlessly merciless and complex world.

On Future Redactions

Q.9. Now that the "Redacted Man" has stepped out of his apartment and into the lives of others, can we expect the next installment to peel back more layers of his history, or will he continue to keep the reader—and his new family—at arm's length?

Answer 9. He’s promised to tell more but on reflection, we all know how these secret agent types can be tricky. 

––Jeff

Meeting Sara Paretsky in San Francisco

2026-03-05T08:30:00.038-05:00

Karen Odden - Every other Thursday

Last weekend was the Left Coast Crime mystery conference, held in San Francisco, a city I haven't visited in nearly 21 years--and I know this because last time I was there, I was pregnant with my son who is now 21. Here I am at a San Francisco antique shop with my sisters Kristin, who was living there at the time (left), and Jen (center), and my daughter Julia. When it came to the steep hills, Jen carried Julia piggyback when my three-year-old got tired.

San Francisco is such a striking, beautiful city. Here is the mermaid sculpture near the Ferry building. Isn't she gorgeous?

LCC is probably my favorite of the mystery conferences. It's medium-sized ... not so ginormous that my inner introvert feels overwhelmed but large enough that I feel heart-full by the end of it, seeing all my friends.

Events began with a pre-LCC night at the Best Bookstore in Union Square.

My friend Rob Osler had organized a night of flash fiction; 10 writers would read short pieces -- no more than 1,000 words -- with Fog as a character. Most people wrote about fog in San Francisco, or somewhere in the US. I wrote about fog in London. (Big surprise there, I know.) One of the readers was Sara Paretsky(!). Another was Gary Phillips(!). Others were Rob Osler, Gigi Pandian, Audrey Lee, John Copenhaver, Faye Snowden, James D.F. Hannah ... these are legends of the mystery world, people who have received Edgar nominations and NYT "best books" labels, and so on. I was the least famous person there.

Six of us had gathered beforehand to have dinner at Johnny Foley's Irish House, and I pinched myself a bit. "You're sitting across from Sara Paretsky. Don't stare," I thought to myself. But she was so down-to-earth and genuinely warm and interested in all of us that within minutes she made it easy to just relax and enjoy her company.

For those who don't know (I'm not sure who those people are, likely they are much younger than I), Sara wrote the V.I. Warshawski mysteries set in Chicago. With these, Sara revolutionized the mystery novel genre, moving women out of the supporting roles of side-kick or victim (or femme fatale, once in a great while) and casting her heroine as a kick-ass woman detective solving crimes. The first novel was Indemnity Only, and she followed it with nearly two dozen more. They're international bestsellers and have been translated into 30 languages. In 1991, there was a film made starring Kathleen Turner.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given her wonderful feminist bent, Sara Paretsky is also the first president of Sisters in Crime, the international group, established in 1987, as an advocacy group for women mystery writers. (This earned her the Woman of the Year award from Ms magazine.) Back in the 1980s, women writers in the mystery genre were not getting reviewed with the same frequency that the men were (they had numbers to back this up); and they weren't getting into bookstores the way men were. So a group of women who had gathered at the 1986 Bouchercon (good things happen at conferences!) decided they would advocate for themselves and each other. Sisters in Crime now has around 5,000 members worldwide and advocates on behalf of all writers (sisters and misters, all siblings). I've belonged to the group for years and have the honor of serving on their board.

For the Wednesday evening FOG event, we had a fabulous MC -- Elsa Touche -- and the event space at the store was PACKED, as you can see here.

We all took turns reading our pieces. (Below: Rob, Faye, Gary.)

A few days later, Sara attended the panel where I was presenting at LCC, and then she came to the book sales room to buy a book. From me. Okay, so I gave her one -- I refused to let her buy it -- and the gift came from a grateful heart. I had a difficult time in high school. I was the kid who spent my lunches in the library, so I wouldn't have to sit by myself at a table. Sometimes I'd read those V.I. Warshawski books, to feel vicariously kick-ass instead of kicked out.

And here I am, forty-five years later, with Sara herself.

Have you ever met one of your literary heroes ... perhaps one from childhood?

How Living in Spain Affected My Health: Blood Pressure, Depression, and Migraines

2026-03-04T09:07:00.000-05:00

Blazing Altocumulus: A Fiery Sky, A Soothing Evening in Oviedo*

I moved to Spain for my mental health. Associated changes began to appear later, noticed only after familiar numbers began behaving differently.

Over time, it became difficult to ignore how living in Spain affected my health in measurable ways. Not dramatically. Not magically. But consistently.

This is not a story about a cure. It’s about what happens when the body no longer has to brace itself as often.

How Living in Spain Affected My Blood Pressure

Full disclosure: I have longstanding hypertension. My father's side has all the cardiovascular disease. It became prominent in medical school and residency training when I began my low-sodium diet. Hypertension did not disappear when I changed countries from the US to Spain. What shifted was stability.

After settling into daily life here, my readings began trending lower until I was able to drop one of my two medications and became more consistent without major medication changes or dramatic lifestyle overhauls.

Blood pressure is tightly linked to sympathetic tone. When vigilance decreases, vascular resistance often follows. Living in Spain affected my health not by curing hypertension, but by reducing the subtle daily stress responses that sustain it.

Vigilance: Living in Spain and the Reduction of Ambient Threat

Spain is not perfect. But the default posture feels less suspicious.

One moment stands out clearly a few nights after I arrived in Oviedo: a young white woman was approaching me on the sidewalk. My mind switched to Black American mode. Oh, no. I know she's going to cross the street. I was in for a surprise. Not only did she not cross the street, she passed so close that she practically brushed against me as if she hadn't even noticed me.

That reaction revealed how deeply American racial conditioning had embedded itself in my nervous system. Chronic vigilance reshapes cortisol rhythms. Cortisol reshapes blood pressure, glucose, sleep, and mood.

When vigilance drops, physiology follows.

Twice, in the early days, when I entered one of Oviedo's flagship department store, El Corte Inglés, I warily glanced back at the security guard at the door to see if he was following me with his eyes. He was not. In fact, he had shown little to no interest as I had entered the store.

Security guard at El Corte Inglés

Cortisol, Diurnal Rhythms, and Chronic Vigilance

Cortisol normally peaks in the morning, declines through the day, and drops at night to allow repair. Chronic stress disrupts this rhythm.

Among many Black Americans, studies show altered diurnal patterns—blunted morning rise, elevated daytime baseline, and insufficient nocturnal decline. This pattern correlates with hypertension, insulin resistance, and mood instability.

This isn’t about dramatic trauma. It’s about chronic vigilance.

Early in Spain, I noticed the absence of something. Walking at night, I wasn’t mentally rehearsing explanations for my presence to a citizen or police officer. Entering a department store, I expected scrutiny from security and received none.

These moments might seem minor, but physiologically, they are not. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis responds to anticipation as readily as to threat. When vigilance becomes unnecessary, endocrine tone likely shifts.

The Stress Response (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis by Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc)

Living in Spain plausibly affected my health, particularly in cortisol regulation—before I consciously named it.

How Living in Spain Affected My Depression

I have lived with long-term depression for decades. Spain did not erase that.

What has changed, preliminarily, is stability. My mood feels less reactive, and more stable. Under supervision, I am cautiously evaluating whether one antidepressant can be tapered--so far, so good! This is an ongoing assessment, not a conclusion.

Depression is neurochemical, but it is also contextual. Fewer aggravating inputs make regulation less effortful.

Olive Oil and the Siesta

When I first arrived, I found it irritating that shops closed for siesta (mostly 2-4:30 PM) and that Sundays were largely shut down. My reflex was impatience.

What! The Apple Store closed at

3:00 PM? Why?

Over time, that shifted. If everything is closed, there is nowhere to go. If there is nowhere to go, there is nothing to chase. So Sundays, when so many places are shut, it's a permission slip to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast at a café (those don't close!), or Netflix and chill.

The culture imposed a pause and I learned to embrace it as a way to slow down..

That matters. Structural limits on productivity reduce structural arousal. Taken together, the cumulative effect is not trivial.

How Living in Spain Affected My Blood Sugar

My fasting glucose has hovered near the borderline range for years. Recently, those numbers have begun to resemble values I last saw two decades ago. The trend is encouraging, although the verdict is still out, and long-term monitoring will tell the real story.

One change has been the quality of dietary fat. In Spain, fresh, high-polyphenol extra-virgin olive oil is standard. The bitterness and peppery finish signal the presence of antioxidant content rarely encountered in typical American supermarket oils.

Olive oil alone does not explain improved glucose trends. Stress hormones likely play an even larger role.

Olive Oil in Spain vs. Olive Oil in the United States

One dietary difference deserves more precision.

In Spain, especially in producing regions, fresh extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) is widely available and often locally sourced. Varieties like Picual are unapologetically robust—green, bitter, peppery, sometimes almost aggressive to an unaccustomed palate. That peppery sensation in the throat is not a flaw; it reflects high polyphenol content, particularly oleocanthal compounds associated with anti-inflammatory effects.

For many Americans, the first taste of fresh Picual EVOO can be startling. It does not resemble the neutral, soft, sometimes flat oils commonly sold in U.S. supermarkets. It can feel sharp. Almost too sharp. That reaction itself says something.

A bottle of early-harvest Spanish extra-virgin olive oil

“Primer Día de Cosecha 2025” indicates oil pressed from olives harvested on the very first day of the season. It is extra-virgin olive oil made from the Picual olive variety, produced by the renowned Castillo de Canena estate in Andalusia. As in this case, EVOO should be in a glass bottle (never plastic) or a metal can.

In the United States, olive oil quality is highly variable. While excellent oils certainly exist, much of what is sold in large supermarkets:

Is blended from multiple countries
Has been stored for long periods before purchase
May be past peak freshness by the time it reaches consumers
Often lacks harvest date transparency

Several industry investigations over the past two decades have shown that some imported oils labeled “extra virgin” fail to meet strict chemical and sensory standards. Oxidation during transport and storage is also common, reducing polyphenol levels and altering flavor. The result is that many Americans have never actually tasted high-polyphenol, freshly pressed extra-virgin olive oil. When they do, the bitterness and throat sting can come as a shock.

Why does this matter clinically?

Polyphenols in high-quality EVOO are associated with:

Improved endothelial function
Reduced oxidative stress
Better insulin sensitivity
Anti-inflammatory activity

How Living in Spain Affected My Migraines

Finally, migraines have been another long-standing health challenge. For years, nocturnal headaches were a regular feature of my nights, often followed by daytime episodes severe enough to interrupt normal activity, including, significantly, my writing: hours looking at a laptop screen is a strong migraine trigger. This wrecked my novel-writing throughout 2025.

Under the skilled guidance of a highly regarded Spanish neurologist, that pattern has changed markedly. My nighttime headaches have fallen by roughly 75 percent, and daytime events are now far more manageable. Occasionally, a severe episode still forces me to lie down for an hour or two, but those disruptions have become uncommon.

The story is still unfolding, but the direction is encouraging. Better medical management—including thoughtful medication adjustments—may be contributing to the improvement, as may reduced stress signaling.

Migraines and depression are also closely linked. Migraines can trigger depressive episodes, and depression can lower the threshold for migraines. Stabilizing one often helps stabilize the other.

Final Thoughts

Spain did not cure my hypertension. It did not eliminate borderline glucose levels. It did not erase depression. However, all of these are trending in the desired direction. What it appears to have done is remove a layer of chronic strain.

Health is not only what we ingest or prescribe. It is also what the body prepares for. Living in Spain affected my health not through intervention, but through subtraction. And sometimes subtraction changes the numbers.

*All images by the author unless otherwise stated.

★ Don't forget to follow me on Instagram for more content @kweiquarteyauthor ★

Books of the Uffizi

2026-03-02T00:00:00.087-05:00

Annamaria on Monday

In the interests of sanity in the age of AI, I am keeping it simple today (Sunday March 1). Having been delightfully ensconced here in Florence for the past 2 1/2 months, in a couple of days I will be heading back to NYC. Getting organized to do so is a complicated process.

Keeping up with blogs has been a major challenge while here. Today, I worked out a process to get photos from my phone to my laptop. There may be an easy way to do this, but I have not hit upon it. For me today it has involved four steps worked on the phone and an iPad to the laptop, one photo at a time.

I hope you will enjoy them.

I've spent five days this past week happily hosting dear friends, one of whom hasn't been to Florence in 30 years and another who had never been here. I had the great pleasure of showing them around. One of our stops was a visit to the de rigeur Uffizi Gallery.

When visiting major museums I never try to see everything. If I do, my eyes and my brain blur over and nothing sticks. For the past several years, when visiting a museum with a large collection that I know pretty well, I decide on the theme. Earlier in this stay in Florence, I posted pictures of angels from a massive exposition. This time in the Uffizi, I decided to take pictures of books, hoping the book lovers of Murder is Everywhere would be amused.

Here they are: a smattering of the many glorious works of art in one of the most revered art collections in the world.

The gorgeous image that suggested books as the target that day.

No book here, but I could not resist putting in

Caravaggio's Medusa, since it portrays exactly

how I feel when dealing with the Blogger software.

Location, Location, Location

2026-03-01T09:30:00.001-05:00

Sara Johnson, 1st Sunday

The real estate mantra – location, location, location – applies to mystery fiction, too. Readers often choose a book because its setting sparks their curiosity and reading or listening to it transports them to a world of distinct flora and fauna, voices and cultures, moods and – I am discussing mysteries – shattered peace.

I gabbed with Malcolm Kempt at CrimeScene Bookfest in Pittsboro, NC. Michael’s debut book, A Gift Before Dying, is set in Nunavut, which forms most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The only way to get around is by boat or plane. “The territory has the highest murder rate of anywhere in Canada,” Michael told me. He spent 17 years a criminal lawyer in the region, flying to tiny villages to represent clients, so he knows what he is talking about. Of course I bought the book!

The Canadian Arctic is foreign to me, but I know another rugged landscape: Stewart Island, New Zealand, separated from the tip of the South Island by the often treacherous Foveaux Strait. Like Michael's Nunavut, you must arrive by plane or boat. It is the setting of my second Alexa Glock Forensic Mystery, The Bones Remember.

Stewart Island is roughly 45 by 25 miles, yet there are only 14 miles of paved road. (Sometimes the road is blocked by sea lions.) There is one fishing village, one pub, one six-hole golf course, and one police officer for the 400 locals who call it home. The rest of the island is Rakiura National Park, a dense primeval thicket that attracts hunters (for white-tailed deer, imported from the U.S. in 1905) and hikers. It is a landscape that can disorient and kill.

When we lived in Christchurch, we planned a trip to Stewart Island. My husband asked if I’d like to go shark cage diving during our visit.

I did not know the waters around Stewart Island are a great white shark hot spot. Many Stewart Islanders make their living in or on the sea and have coexisted peacefully with the sharks. Two shark cage operations opened up in 2007-2008 and in the years that followed, that peace was threatened. The locals believed luring the sharks with fish parts and blood was changing their behavior, making the whites a threat to their lives and livelihood. The sharks were coming close to shore and following boats. Residents wanted to ban the cages. This inherent tension between ‘local and other’ is the spine of The Bones Remember.

I found a reason to send Alexa there from the following 2016 newspaper article:

Otago Daily Times: Joe Freiman, a 64-year-old farmer, went missing during a hunting trip on Stewart Island in 1991 and was never found. Search and Rescue will today return to the area to resume the hunt. About 70 police and volunteers from the Southern District will make use of the new SARTrack system as they search the area on foot. "The search area is probably one of the most remote parts of New Zealand so it will be difficult for police to provide good communications," Community Constable Dale Jenkins said.

The search was unsuccessful.

Alexa enters those woods when the skeletal remains of a fictional hunter is discovered. After being charged by a sea lion on the beach – she thought she would be steamrolled – Alexa wedges between clawing branches and enters the forest primeval. She is instantly attacked by another enemy: sandflies. (I was rough on her.)

When a shark-ravaged body washes ashore elsewhere on the island, Alexa is whisked out of the woods to examine the remains and use teeth marks – Alexa’s specialty is teeth – to identify the culprit so the shark can be hunted down like in Jaws. Surprise: it wasn’t a shark that killed the victim.

In its recorded history, there has only been one murder on Stewart Island. Eighty-two year old André Jose was bludgeoned to death with a manuka branch in 1927. I felt like it was time for another.

One scene in The Bones Remember still gives me nightmares. Alexa, snooping aboard a moored shark-cage diving boat, is attacked by a gaff-wielding assailant. To save herself she jumps overboard. It is night. The cold waters of Horseshoe Bay are inky black. Suddenly a whoosh of warmth, of slick oil, of putrid rot, coats her head, blinding her. Alexa was chummed. I get shivers rereading the passage.

When Alexa dog paddles into a bed of thick rubbery kelp, she thinks she’s safe from the sharks. Later she finds out from a budding scientist studying kelp that researchers in South Africa attached cameras to the dorsal fins of eight Carcharodon carcharias. Seven swam into the kelp forests.

Gulp.

I like a smidgen of romance in my series. What better place for Alexa and Detective Inspector Bruce Horne – a continuing character in the series – to have their first kiss than under a starry sky? “I’ve never seen so many stars,” Alexa says in the book. “It’s like a glowworm cave.” Due to its remote location and sparse population, Stewart Island is virtually free of light pollution and is designated a Dark Sky Sanctuary. That darkness also ramps up tension.

William Kent Krueger – whose Cork O’Connor mysteries are set in the great Northwoods of Minnesota, said, “Stories rise out of and are inexorably shaped by the unique elements of the place in which they occur.” Stewart Island teems with sharks – yes – but also teems with those unique elements which make for a great read: geographic isolation, darkness, dorsal fins, and treachery.

Where have you traveled in recent books? By the way, when my husband found out how much it cost to go shark cage diving, we went birding instead.

Sara Johnson, 1st Sunday

When It Comes to Fasting, I Prefer the Greek Way.

2026-02-28T00:00:00.001-05:00

Jeff–Saturday

This past week marked the beginning of Lent for the Eastern Orthodox faithful. It runs for forty days and ends on the Friday before Palm Sunday. This year Greek Easter is April 12^th, one week later than Easter will be celebrated by Protestants and Catholics in 2026. As I explained in other articles around this time, Eastern Orthodox calculations of the events surrounding Easter are based on the Gregorian rather than Julian calendar.

So what does the beginning of Lent mean? For those of you looking for a liturgical or religious answer to that question, I can assure you this is not the place to find one. Yes, I know that for the Orthodox Lent begins not on an Ash Wednesday (as it does for others) but on “Clean Monday” (which actually begins the night before), that the reference to “clean” refers to leaving behind sinful attitudes and forbidden foods during Lent, and that the theme for Clean Monday is set out in an Old Testament reading from Isaiah 1:1-20, stating in part, “Wash yourselves and ye shall be clean.”

But that’s not what this piece is about. What the beginning of Lent means as far at this piece is concerned is one thing: FOOD.

In Greek the name is Katharι (clean) Deftera (Monday) and is a public holiday. It probably also is, or at least should be, a holiday for vegetarians around the world. That’s because Clean Monday generally does not permit the consumption of any animal with red blood or of anything derived from those animals. In other words, no meat, fish, milk, cheese, yogurt, eggs, etcetera. Many also exclude olive oil. You see, Lent is about fasting. If it’s starting to sound like a pretty boring feast day, trust me, you’re wrong.

But just to keep the interest of those unrepentant red meat lovers out there, the Greeks also have a day for you to circle on your calendars. It’s two Thursdays before Clean Monday. In Greek that day is called, Tsiknopempti, “pempti” meaning Thursday. Tsikno is hard to translate, though most settle on “burnt” and call it “Burnt Thursday,” or use the rest of Europe’s name for the day, “Fat Thursday.” To me, though, tsikno conjures up the engulfing smoke and scents of endless grills sizzling with meats.

Personally, I think a more appropriate name would be “Lipitor Thursday.”

As for Clean Monday, to Greeks it’s a time that is about a lot more than prayer and food. It’s regarded as the first day of Spring, a time to celebrate outdoors and picnic. Kite flying is a huge tradition, as is dancing and music, and thoughts of a new beginning ... please God.

But back to the food. No one is supposed to eat until noon, but once it’s here, kali orexi!

Unique to Clean Monday is lagana, a generally unleavened bread eaten only on that day which serves as the perfect compliment to the rest of the holiday table (and is far different from the “matzoh” familiar to many as another form of unleavened bread). Here’s just an example of what you might find to nibble on while you dream of that Big Mac.

Taramosalata, made of cod or carp roe, is sometimes called “the common man's caviar.” It’s one of the tastiest and most famous of all Greek dips.

A fava (split pea) puree.

Yigandes, giant kastoria beans (similar in look to lima beans) generally combined in a casserole with tomatoes, onions, herbs, and spices.

Salads of marouli (romaine lettuce), three beans (fassolia), or perhaps something more daring such as revitho (chickpea) salad with artichokes and sun-dried tomato.

Dolmades, the traditional grape leaves stuffed with rice and fresh herbs

Peppers stuffed with bulgar and herbs.

Calamari, squid prepared fried or in any number of other ways.

Octopus grilled as is, or dressed up with tomatoes, capers, and other special touches.

Cuttlefish in wine sauce with pearl onions.

Garides, giant shrimp grilled with oil and lemon

Stews of wild mushrooms, onions, and herbs.

loukoumathes

Halvas (semolina pudding), loukoumathes (puffs of fried dough in sweet syrup sprinkled with cinnamon and walnuts), pasteli (sesame-honey candies) … and on and on.

Then, of course, there’s the ouzo, wine, and beer.

Some fast, huh? Gotta got run now. Suddenly, I’m very hungry.

—Jeff

Who (or what) will write the next best seller?

2026-02-26T04:46:00.003-05:00

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

AI is a very strange industry. Basically, as far as I can see, it is an answer in search of a question. I’m not saying it’s not useful, or at least helpful, but is it multi-trillion dollar useful? That is the question.

One area where the AI companies have been focusing is on writing. After all, they are working with Large Language Models (LLMs), computer systems designed to absorb languages and their structures and uses in order to "comprehend" human communication and be able to communicate with us.

So while humans seem to write more and more in shorthand with emojis and acronyms, it’s very important for AI companies that their systems actually write (or speak) clear, contemporary languages. And they are not very particular about how they achieve that.

Probably most authors (and many readers) have heard of the big settlement that Anthropic agreed to with authors of books that they used for training their systems. The law suit was settled for $1.5 billion dollars, but that turns out to be only part of the story. The judge has now unsealed some of the documents from the case, and it turns out that Anthropic’s aim was to scan all the books in the world to train their systems. The effort was called Project Panama. And it was secret. The company, along with the other AI giants, didn’t see it as practical to get the authors permission, so they acquired troves of books, separated the pages, and scanned them to feed their voracious LLMs hoping they'd learn to read and, perhaps, write as well as the authors of the books. At some point that became too slow and cumbersome and one of the company’s founders downloaded and shared a huge number of pirated books from an online library called LibGen. The newly-released court papers make it clear that he was well aware that this was a copyright infringement.

It was this direct copyright infringement that lead to the settlement. The deeper issue is about the legality and the morality of AI companies sucking all these books into their LLMs. I guess the moral arguments depend on which side of the fence you sit (as they usually do) and are unlikely to make much impact if they don’t lead to actual enforceable laws. The legal arguments are tricky, and so far no court has found against the companies. Their argument is that what they are doing is “fair use”.

Here’s what Google's AI thinks “fair use” is:

Four Factors of Fair Use: Courts determine fair use by analyzing the purpose (e.g., nonprofit educational vs. commercial), the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount used relative to the whole, and the effect on the work's market value.

Transformative Purpose: Using material in a way that adds new expression or meaning, rather than just replacing the original, strongly favors fair use.

Common Examples: Quoting a book in a review, using clips in news reporting, parodying a song, or using small portions of video for commentary.

Not a Rule, but a Defense: There are no strict legal limits (e.g., "under 30 seconds" is not a rule), and only a court can ultimately determine if a use is fair.

The AI companies claim that their work is “transformative” and “educational”. Anthropic also said that it hadn’t used the actual materials “read” for financial gain. (Hmm. Why do it then?) The settlement was based on the fact that the books were downloaded from an illegal site (in terms of copyright laws) and that the company was well aware of the fact that they were doing that. The use those pirated books were put to was not the issue. Other cases carry on in various courts against various companies, but my bet is that they won’t end with the judges ruling against the companies.

So where does all this go? Can LLMs write books? Of course they can. You can buy as many as you want on Kindle or another electronic or print-on-demand site. I certainly can’t tell if a random book from Amazon is written by AI or an unknown, mediocre, human author. If people keep buying them, they must find them readable. We like to think AI has nothing original to say and that may be true, but the same criticism applies to some human authors. Some publishers are requiring that authors of manuscripts sign that they haven’t used AI. The question is to do what? To write the book? To do research? To check geography? Publishers have famously released books with large parts lifted from other works. I can’t see them being successful as AI gatekeepers. And if a LLM comes up with a really good book (Borel's monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare comes to mind), is it wrong to publish that? If so why?

More questions than answers, I guess. In the meanwhile, AI systems have their own social media sites now. So they can try out their new writing skills on each other. Cut out the middle man so to speak. No humans allowed as members. See: A Social Network for AI Bots Only. Maybe we humans should start writing novels for them. They certainly have the disposable income.