The Orphan Scrivener: 2007

Saturday, December 15, 2007

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # FORTY-EIGHT - l5 DECEMBER 2007

This month's Orphan Scrivener is being composed as snow falls thick and fast and weather forecasters are making noises about yet another nor’easter to follow in a day or two. Thus doubtless a number of subscribers will soon, if they haven't already, sympathise with the lot of the Pilgrim Fathers who, as U. S. Grant observed, came to a country sporting nine months of winter and cold weather the rest of the time.

That paragraph was copied verbatim from the December 2003 Orphan Scrivener, not just for the heck of it but because it describes the current situation as we begin to prepare this issue for transmission into the aether -- always providing the power stays on.

William Hamilton Gibson likened snowflakes to gems. We don't claim to be diamonds in the rough or consider Orphan Scrivener to be brimming over with golden prose or pearls of wisdom and since subscription is free it's not hawked about the marketplace at a price above Ruby's, that gin mill of legend, but in any event if you've reached this far you may as well keep reading....

ERIC'S BIT or FIT TO BE TIED

Now that the holidays are here, I can't help but think about neckties. They are among the most traditional and thoughtless of Christmas gifts, a step up from socks perhaps.

Mary gave me a necktie one year. To be fair, it was not just any necktie. It was an English school tie, reminiscent of the school ties the Kinks are pictured wearing on their 1970's album "Schoolboys in Disgrace." It was, I believe, from a school in the area of northern England where Mary had grown up.

There was sentiment behind that particular necktie. It is probably the only tie (does anyone actually refer them as neckties?) for which I have ever had any use. In general, ties strike me as a waste. Why spend a lot on a tie? Who needs an expensive mustard catcher?

I don't wear ties these days. Whenever I wore one there was something unpleasant going on. They evoke memories of the boredom of suffering through interminable Sunday sermons, the horror of facing the unforgiving camera for school photographs, the misery of dragging myself to the office.

On a few occasions, while still in school, I varied my neckwear. I wore turtleneck shirts and a medallion on a chain. Ties weren't my thing but neither were medallions. Mine seemed to have been forged of iron. It was so heavy I walked hunched over. Bummer!

I tried a bow tie. The Kinks Ray Davies wears a bow tie on the cover of the "Everybody's In Showbiz" album. The bow tie didn't work for me. I was going for the rock star look but what I got was Orville Redenbacher.

Yes, about the only things I know about fashion was what I saw on old album covers. I've read that ties originated as a fashion statement. They were a mark of the leisure class, worn by upper crust folk who didn't have to worry that a useless bit of dangling cloth might get in the way of their work. To me, though, ties are an emblem of corporate servility. Every morning, getting ready for work, when I looped that cloth around my neck, I felt like I was putting on a noose.

Not long after I started the job I found a cardboard box full of ties at the thrift store. For $4. It might have been a random selection but I liked to think it was someone's lifetime collection. It was a veritable history of neckwear. There were ties wide as bibs and narrow as ribbons. Stripes, checks, stars, paisley.

I imagined the ties reflected not just changing fashions but the changing tastes of the owner. The loud ties of youth, the sober ones of middle age. Or perhaps it had been the other way around.

Those were all the ties I ever needed. For more than a decade, every morning I simply picked one of the ties from that box and headed to the office adequately uniformed. I wasn't particular. A tie is a tie is a tie. There was no rule against ties that were twenty years out of date or looked like the cat had thrown up on them. And considering how styles tend to go in cycles I must have been in style as often as I was behind, and on certain days I was probably a trend setter.

I'm not sure where those ties have got too. They might be in the attic. They would make a good nest for mice.

When I began to work at home I stopped putting on neckwear. I only wear a tie to funerals now. Other people's funerals. I will certainly not wear a tie to my own. Well, a school tie maybe.

"...Rockall, Irish Sea, Shannon, southeast backing northwest 4 or 5, occasionally 6...."

We grew up hearing these five minute forecasts every night when we turned on the wireless to listen to the six o'clock news. Thus whereas a recital of names and terms would be merely a list, to listeners such as us and countless others they mean much more than that. They are part of our personal history.

"...Gale warnings have been issued for Dover, Wight, and Portland...."

The nightly litany passed on to Fastnet, whose lighthouse was the last sight of old Ireland emigrants could look back to see before facing the Atlantic gales between them and their new lives, and Cromarty, bringing to mind Scottish witches who made a good living selling favourable winds to herring fishers and gullible sailors, not to mention Lundy, famous as a haven for pirates although only a scrap of an island off the Devonshire coast.

There was Trafalgar, site of Horatio Nelson's great victory against the combined might of the Spanish and French fleets, and Plymouth, where it's said Francis Drake insisted on finishing his game of bowls before going out to engage the Spanish Armada. Defeated, its remnants were to founder in terrible storms around our rocky coasts.

Next, the far northern Faeroes, famous for puffins, Fair Isle, called the peaceful island by Scandinavian mariners who put in to shelter there when the sea was running too high, and by way of contrast, Viking, calling to mind less friendly seafarers whose long-ago raids left linguistic traces in our local dialect and what has been claimed as the highest percentage of red hair in the nation.

Biscay is mentioned, far to the south although closer to us in time and one of many marine graveyards during World War II, when shipping forecasts were suspended and the international brotherhood of the sea fell apart for six years although the gales didn't stop raging. Closer to home, the familiar rivers Humber and Thames, who bear their sons and daughters away to their fates across the high seas as lightly as their names trip off the tongue.

All the names identifying particular patches of the sea http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/lib/images/ukship2.jpg were a familiar and a generally unremarked-upon part of our everyday routine. But sometimes the forecast became a matter of personal interest, as on this particular night.

It caught our attention towards the end of the announcements.

"Gale warnings for Forth, Tyne, Dogger ..."

We finished our boiled eggs hastily, thinking of the trawlers that put to sea from further down the Tyne. That river rolled by behind the Vickers-Armstrong factory at the bottom of our street, beyond where yellow haloed streetlights swayed sickeningly in the wind-whipped downpour scouring Scotswood Road. As we well knew, those scrubby little vessels carried local men, men who were broad and loud in their clunky boots and oversized knitted sweaters, and who when they went to work sailed away down the Tyne and out across the North Sea to the Dogger Bank's rich fishing grounds.

Given the grim forecast we'd just heard, it seemed very likely, to mangle Kipling, that the unfed sea would be calling that night. So as was our custom we turned our empty eggshells over and pierced their bases with the tips of our teaspoons. After all, didn't everyone know that witches sailed to sea in eggshell boats for the sole purpose of raising deadly storms? And on this terrible night of gales, surely fishermen and sailors and mariners of every nationality needed all the help they could get.

AND FINALLY

With the holiday season in full swing, let us not forget that in about a fortnight we'll all be standing at the gate, waiting for it to open the way into 2008. As the shadow moves over time's dial-plate, as John Greenleaf Whittier so well described the passage of the hours, many subscribers will be staying up late to welcome the new year or alternatively to make certain the old one has been seen off the premises. Either way, while we send hopes for good things for our subscribers in the coming twelvemonth, we also feel obliged to mention that at least one blot will darken their calendars, since the next edition of Orphan Scrivener will flap out on l5th February.

We'll see you then!

Mary R and Eric
who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free etexts of classic and Golden Age mysteries as well as the supernatural tales mentioned above. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Monday, October 15, 2007

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # FORTY-SEVEN - l5 OCTOBER 2007

Autumn has arrived since our last issue, although the foliage is changing so slowly this year we shall enjoy the tints of grapefruit red, bronze, flaring orange, scarlet, lemon yellow, russet, and lime green for a little longer. When the cold weather finally storms in, it'll likely be virtually overnight so rather than gathering us rosebuds while we may, we've been busy squirreling away supplies of winter essentials such as cat litter, tinned vegetables, packets of noodles, and toothpaste for those times the buggy cannot depart the premises.

Thoreau reckoned changes wrought to the woods by autumn had not yet made an impression on the literature of his time. Bearing this in mind we now present the autumn edition of Orphan Scrivener and invite you to press onward into our wood of words. It may be dark in its tangled, overgrown groves, but there's nothing scary lurking in them waiting to leap out at you.

For a change.

MARY'S BIT or REVERE REVISITED

We've recently had a real frog strangler with rain coming down like stair rods for hours, the sort of weather that always reminds me of a long-ago motor bike trip.

The mountains surrounding north-west England's Lake District had long since faded into a blurred blue smudge, hidden by the storm that began as we set out south.

We'd enjoyed a week's break from city life. The air was clear and cool each morning, the afternoons golden, the peaks looming majestic and serene around Ullswater as the sun went down and the stars came out. It had been a stretch of nothing-much-happening days, although we did have one bit of excitement. My brother-in-law came in one evening with a large trout after spending most of the day on the lake in a small rowing boat. As he pulled off his boots he related how, when mist had come down, he had come to shore where he could, tied the boat up next to a bigger vessel, and would have to return next day to get the borrowed boat back to its owner. On the morrow, when he went to claim it, he found he had lashed it right next to Lord Nuffield's yacht.

I wonder if his lordship had had fresh trout for dinner.

But now we were driving south, me to return home and my sister and family to visit, travelling in that curious hybrid of bike and car, the three-wheeler combination -- a motorbike with a one-wheeled passenger sidecar attached. It was a nice, airy way to travel. Unless, of course, it was raining.

And it certainly was.

There were only two of us exposed to the elements, since the two-seater sidecar was the de-luxe enclosed model.Brother-in-law and I were togged up in rain-gear and helmets. His leather gauntletted hands stuck out sideways from the windshield behind whose slight protection we hunched pitifully. With our stiff and crackly wet weather gear, we looked as if we were going trawling off the Dogger Bank. Except the North Sea was on the other side of England, and probably less stormy at the time.

Our little three-wheeled chariot churned merrily along, leaving a v-shaped wave behind us. We were both soon soaked to the skin. The engine chugged, the sky wept, passing vehicles threw spray over us. Then a layby loomed out of the tempest and we pulled in gratefully for a short break and to stretch our cramped legs. My jeans were so soaked with the weight of water in them they began to fall down.

"Have some tea," my sister offered from the snug sidecar, handing over two mugs of same piping hot from the thermos.

We had come to a halt next to a bus full of tourists who were also sipping tea. They were eating sandwiches as well. Dry sandwiches. Hitching my jeans with one hand, I reached down to take a proffered mug. A rivulet of water shot out from my sleeve as if from a drainpipe. Behind their steamy windows the bus riders laughed. We flourished our mugs at them cheerfully. No-one offered us a sandwich.

We hopped stiffly back onto the bike. It was still raining.Turner would have loved it, although Wind, Rain, and Exhaust Fumes is not much of a title for a work of art. But we took heart when we realised we had now passed the journey's half way mark. Wet, black tarmac unreeled licorice bootlace-like benath us. By the time we finally rolled into the Midlands, Lord Nuffield's yacht could gave sailed along with us, for the motorway had turned into a horizontal sluice. We would spot the great white whale any moment. Paul Revere, veteran of a famous journey, would surely have sympathised.

But then we noticed the silvery curtain into which we had been plunging wheel first for hours was - wasn't it? - becoming less dense. We could see raindrops now, rather than the taut, grey lines lashing us all morning. With a wild surmise, we crested the hill outside Banbury. Clouds were beginning to break up and roll away as a watery gleam of sunshine trickled over us. A few minutes later, we rolled to a halt at our back door. The ground was bone dry.

Cicada-like, we shed raingear. Blue shoe dye had been transferred to my socks, and, as I discovered when I peeled them off, to my feet as well. The footwear, my teenage pride and joy, were ruined. I took them out to the dustbin, and went back into the kitchen, bare feet leaving snail-trails of water on the tiles.

"Mary," mum said, "put the kettle on, would you? We could all do with a nice cup of tea."

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The news is somewhat slim this time around, but there are a couple of items on the ticker and here they are.

A KENTISH ADVENTURE or WHAT THE DICKENS?

Accompanied by Mr Tracy Tupman, that jolly fellow Mr Samuel Pickwick is off to Kent in an investigation overshadowed by The Three-Legged Cat of Great Clatterden. We plead guilty to being the awful pair of scriveners who sent them there as our contribution to Mike Ashley's latest anthology The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits. The publishers are Constable & Robinson (UK) and Carroll & Graf (US). Celebrating Dickens' fascination with crime, it includes stories by Edward Marston, Charles Todd, Peter Tremayne, Robert Barnard, and Kate Ellis among others.

IT'S NO SECRET or SEVENFER LURKS AT THE GATE

With US tax returns due on April l5th it seems a shame to add to the general woe of the month, but indeed we shall. Seven For A Secret, in which John meets a woman who claims to be the model for the little girl Zoe in his study mosaic, will gallop out of Constantinople's Golden Gate that very month. Its cover features a mosaic of a girl, the illustration set against a rich, deep blue background, and the events in John's latest adventure are equally dark and intricate. They could hardly be otherwise, for the day after meeting the adult Zoe, John finds her red-dyed corpse in a subterranean cistern. Why had she sought John out? Who wanted her dead -- and why? During John's search for the truth, we introduce a faded actress, a patriotic sausage maker, a sundial maker who fears the sun, a religious visionary, a man who lives in a treasure trove, and a beggar who owes his life to the miracle of the melons....

JUST FOR THE HOWLIDAY or SPOOKING OF HALLOWEEN

To provide a bit o' literary enjoyment for fast-approaching Halloween, we've added another page to our website, this time featuring links to free e-texts of classic ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. You can scare it up by pointing your clicker at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ghost.htm As with our page of links to Golden Age and classic mystery stories e-texts http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/golden.htm this is an ongoing project and suggestions for additions to either or both lists are welcome, so feel free to send a cyber flapping our way.

ERIC'S BIT or SPRING FORWARD TO FALL

Autumn finally arrived a few days ago, heralded by a gusty wind that knocked dying leaves from the trees and drove them horizontally through the air, making them soar and dive like flocks of yellow birds before they settled onto the ground. Then the rains came. Two inches at least. After that, when the day before temperatures had been in the upper eighties, it turned cold.

I have never much cared for autumn. I don't like the cold. My fingers go numb in air conditioned rooms. It's what comes of being nothing but skin and bones. That and Raynaud's Syndrome. Unfortunately, autumn's chill is only a prelude to the bitter cold of winter. To frozen water pipes and the endless groan of the space heater. Where we live, out in the country, winter also means snow and icy roads and weeks of being unable to get the car out. At some point we will subsist on instant macaroni and cheese and the remaining tins of soup. Shall we have celery or tomato today?

If autumn were not constantly reminding me of the winter to come I would enjoy it more. For one thing, the landscape looks its best. The foliage in our part of the northeast is so spectacular that when I see the colors in photographs and paintings they strike me as garish and unreal. There is a more somber beauty once the leaves are gone and the forms of both trees and mountains stand revealed.

Dealing with fallen leaves isn't much of a chore these days. Rather than raking them off the rocky lawn and into the surrounding woods I simply chop them up with the mower. When I was growing up everyone hauled them out to the curb to burn. The street became a channel between smoldering fires. Here and there ashes cartwheeled upwards and orange sparks glinted out of the smoke. You could taste the smoke in the crisp air.

As the leaves were raked into huge piles, before they were hauled off on paint-spotted canvasses to meet their fiery fate, we kids would leap into them, oblivious to the risk of injury from stray sticks. We sat in the leaves and poured handfuls over ourselves. We burrowed into the piles, buried each other, reveling in the dry, earthy smell. They were another element in which to immerse ourselves, neither air, nor earth, nor water.

It was in the autumn, after the frost had off finished the garden and even the rutabagas had been harvested, that my grandfather built a hut out of corn shocks. There we would sit, inhaling the heady odor of the pine needles on the floor, watching our breath hang in the dim air, shivering but out of the wind. We would venture out to explore the frozen garden rows. Amid blackened and withered leaves we found vegetables that had successfully hidden from the harvesters -- a monstrous summer squash on which some creature had gnawed or a bloated cucumber rendered white and translucent from the cold. At the edge of the field beyond the garden we might discover a blackened, all but petrified baseball we had lost in the weeds during the summer.

Autumn is also the time for Halloween, the year's best holiday. When I was allowed to prowl the streets in disguise demanding candy the cold didn't seem quite so bad. I did have to warm my hands up before I could unwrap my Tootsie Rolls.

So there are good aspects to autumn and some good memories associated with it. It has been so many years since autumn meant I was back in school I hardly ever have nightmares about that any more. I think I could really warm up to autumn if only it were followed by spring rather than winter. I like spring, even if it does hint at the looming oppressive heat of summer.

How about if autumn was followed by spring, which was followed by autumn? A year with only those two seasons. That would be perfect.

AND FINALLY

As the days grow shorter -- if that's not an oxymoron -- they inexorably bring ever nearer the arrival of the next issue of Orphan Scrivener, which will loiter into subscriber in-boxes at December l5th. By then Jack Frost will have made a few house calls and like Robert of the same surname most subscribers will have joined us in callously treading this year's autumn leaves underfoot.

Subscribers might like to consider that the arrival of the next issue will provide a bit of a break from their searches for a game bird in a fruit tree, a pair of doves, a trio of hens imported from France, and a quartet of colly birds, not to mention getting gold rings assayed, disposing of large numbers of goose eggs, locating an unfrozen pond in which several swans could swim, and arranging housing for milk maids and their cows as well as a crowd of ladies and a bunch of lords who ought to be entertaining the countryside to a roaring good Yuletide dinner in the charming old fashioned way.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing pages of links to free etexts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # FORTY-SIX - l5 AUGUST 2007

James Barrie remarked he wasn't certain whether the printing press was the greatest curse or the greatest blessing of his time. By contrast, Benjamin Disraeli had no doubt about the question, for he declared its invention had been the worst misfortune to befall humanity. Given both remarks were made long before the arrival of the Internet and this email-only newsletter, they might well have revised their opinions had they been our contemporaries and in an absentminded moment subscribed to Orphan Scrivener. But blessing, curse, or misfortune as it may be, this latest issue has arrived and if subscribers have perused it this far they may as well press on regardless.

ERIC'S BIT or BOARD WITH LIFE

Since the mystery board game Clue (Cluedo outside North America) was invented in the UK in the late 1940s there have been endless variations. Card games, DVDs, a junior edition, a movie, a computer game....

I played Clue when it was relatively new (long before the Simpsons version) and before I ever read a mystery. My friends and I were crazed on board games back in our grade school days. I was still reading Tom Swift Jr and science fiction juveniles by Lester del Rey, Andre Norton, and Robert Heinlein. The Hardy Boys never interested me. They were stuck on the surface of the planet and all the suspects they encountered were carbon-based life forms, or so I gathered. How boring!

My first mysteries were the Sherlock Holmes stories. Holmes had something of the mad scientist about him. If he hadn't been solving mysteries he might very well have been inventing time machines or invisibility potions, and maybe he did. His breathtaking, if often incomprehensible, intellectual leaps reminded me of those spaceship engineers who would figure out, at the last moment, how to rig the Aldebarean Framistan Device to take advantage of the rotational velocity of the doomed asteroid to escape the gravitational beams of the pursuing raiders from Ophiuchi.

Miss Marple, on the other hand, didn't remind me of any science fictional character. But I didn't get around to her until years after I'd discovered Sherlock. So when I first played Clue I knew nothing of mysteries, let alone the body-in-the-library genre on which the game was based.

What I liked about the game was how you could roam around the mansion in any direction you wanted, visiting whichever room took your fancy. The board games I first came in contact with, from Candy Land to Chutes and Ladders and Uncle Wiggly, all involved racing along a path to a finish line. Even The Game of Life, which had plastic mountains jutting up from the board, or the game about the conquest of Mount Everest, where the board was a triangular mountain (magnetized so the playing pieces could climb it) involved moving along a path to the end. The same was true of Monopoly where you went around and around tediously, one Pay Day following another until it all ended in happiness for the winner, and tears for all the bankrupts. Alas, I rarely ended up being the rich man.

When I played Clue I was vaguely aware that I was supposed to figure out that Colonel Mustard did it in the Conservatory with the Wrench. (And why is it, Colonel Mustard always seems to be the first suspect who springs to mind? Why does no one ever finger Mrs. White?) But I could barely handle the deduction even when there were only two of us playing. I just enjoyed wandering the halls and gawking, which is pretty much the way I read mystery novels, that is, with no hope of figuring out the killer and not much effort put into it.

Although one player wins Clue the ending isn't quite so simple as that of most board games. With 6 different characters, 6 possible murder weapons, and nine different rooms there are 324 possible solutions. That's a lot of possibilities, and maybe too many since I was never quite sure why, if the body had been discovered, there would be a question as to whether the crime had been committed with the rope, for example, as opposed to the gun. I would have thought it would be obvious.

One of the attractions of the mystery novel may be that there is more to the ending than winning or losing. At the conclusion of most books the protagonists either succeed or fail in reaching their goals, overcoming the obstacles they face, or resolving the conflicts that beset them. And for the most part we have to fool ourselves into believing the protagonist might lose because few books -- at least of the genre variety -- end in such a totally unsatisfactory fashion. We keep reading in large part to find out exactly how the successful outcome will be achieved and perhaps what it all means.

Classic mysteries offer a bit more suspense as to the outcome. Of course, the detective will find the murderer, no surprise there. But as in the game of Clue, we don't know who the murderer will turn out to be from amongst the cast of characters. That part of the end of a mystery novel is also satisfyingly concrete. We might not like the way an author wraps up a book, or how the author has the protagonist reach the end, or what the author makes of it all. But with a mystery, at the very least, we are left with a solution to a puzzle.

I have to confess, aside from my predilection for exploring mansions, I also liked Clue because of the lead pipe. Not to mention the candlestick, the dagger, the gun, the rope, and the wrench. I found those miniature accessories beguiling although I would have preferred that the rope wasn't plastic. Those objects are not actually required for game play. They could have been pictured on cards, or the players might have been instructed to simply allude to them verbally rather than placing them in the room where the crime was suspected to have occurred. But it was a stroke of genius to include them. Perhaps they served as an example of "show, don't tell.."

Then again, maybe I don't have a clue.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker has been chugging like all get out since our last newsletter, and here's the news it brought.

REED ALL ABOUT IT or MAYER WE TALK?

The Reviewedbyliz Summer Mystery Reading Challenge is ending this month. While readers will have through the end of August to complete their six books, we'll be acting as bookends in that we're the last featured authors and will be gracing Liz's blog on August 17th. Subscribers may recall on our original attempt to participate we broke it...but now we have another opportunity to say a few words and answer questions. Point your clicker at http://www.reviewedbyliz.com on August 17th and say hello!

JOHN'S NEXT ADVENTURE or IT'S NO SECRET

Three days ago we received official word that Seven For A Secret will be published by Poisoned Pen Press in April.

A few words about John's latest adventure:

The day after meeting a mysterious woman who claims to have been the model for the little girl in his study mosaic, John finds the woman's red-dyed corpse in a subterranean cistern. Who was she? Why had she sought John out? Who wanted her dead -- and why?

The answers seem to lie among the denizens of the smoky streets of that quarter of Constantinople known as the Copper Market, where artisans, beggars, prostitutes, pillar saints, and exiled aristocrats struggle to survive within sight of the Great Palace and yet worlds distant.

John encounters a faded actress, a patriotic sausage maker, a sundial maker who fears the sun, a religious visionary, a man who lives in a treasure trove, and a beggar who owes his life to a cartload of melons. Before long John suspects he is attempting to unravel not just a murder but a plot against the empire.

BACK TO BRETANIA or ONEFER MARCHES ON

Recently spotted: an August 2006 piece in the British paper The Guardian devoted to reads inspired by holiday destinations, http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2006/aug/11/restandrelaxation.onlocationfilminspiredtravel

or, as James Anthony and Sarah Crown put it, "classic literary accompaniments to your summer escapes". What authors would not be thrilled to find one of their books mentioned in such an article? And there was One For Sorrow, one of the titles representing Turkey, along with such notables as For Whom the Bell Tolls (Spain), Madame Bovary (France), A Room With a View (Italy), and Ulysses (Ireland)! We're still amazed.

FOURFER GOES FORTH FIRST or BRETANIA INVADED

Four For A Boy how now escaped in the UK. One For Sorrow, John's first appearance at novel length, will follow this autumn, with the rest of John's adventures released in due course. Info on these and other PPP novels can be found on the website of Poisoned Pen Press (UK), the publisher's British arm http://www.poisonedpenpressuk.com UK subscribers may be interested to hear that while the site features the publisher's catalogue, printed copies can also be requested.

THE TRIPOD CAT or MR PICKWICK'S KENTISH TRAVELS

Accompanied by Mr Tracy Tupman, that jolly fellow Mr Samuel Pickwick will shortly be off to Kent in an investigation overshadowed by The Three-legged Cat of Great Clatterden. We plead guilty to being the awful pair of scriveners who sent them there as our contribution to Mike Ashley's forthcoming anthology The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits. Intended to celebrate Dickens' fascination with crime, it will be published towards the end of the year and includes stories by Edward Marston, Charles Todd, Peter Tremayne, Robert Barnard, and Kate Ellis among others.

A DEER MEMORY or OFF TO NARNIA

Mary contributed a nostalgic piece to the Lady Killers Blog in July. She opened her essay with the following words:

"My parents owned one of those enormous wardrobes made of dark wood -- perhaps mahogany -- and fitted with a mirror on the door taking up the middle third of its vast frontage. As a youngster, more than once I poked my head into the wardrobe's dark cavern of garments, leaned in, and groped past its mothball-scented hanging population. And once or twice it really felt, just before the tips of my fingers met smooth wood, they would go further than they should and I would be poking them into Narnia. Years later, when I lived in Oxford, I finally got there."

Subscribers can follow her footsteps by pointing their clickers at:

http://theladykillers.typepad.com/the_lady_killers/2007/07/mary-reed-goes-.html

A BRUSH WITH FAME or GET YOUR TEETH INTO A MYSTERY

We were surprised, to say the least, when we recently learnt John's adventures will soon reside in the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore. Lois Hirt, writer of a column dealing with dental matters in any media, particularly fiction and non-fiction books, is currently cataloguing her collection of archival material, which includes dental paraphernalia such as dolls, puzzles, toys, puzzles, etc., for donation to the museum, and Six For Gold is among items to be transferred there in due course. It's certainly the most unusual honour we have been awarded thus far, and we thank Lois for it.

GOLDEN DAYS or WEARING A NEW HAT

The Maywrite Library, our ongoing effort listing etexts for classic and Golden Age novels, now features over 250 links, a number of them to collections of short stories. It can be viewed at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/golden.htm. In connection with this project, Mary has boldly put on her Apprentice Reviewer hat and scribbled a few thoughts about a number of these works for the Mystery File site run by Steve Lewis. These reviews are enhanced with biblios, book covers, and the like. Go to http://www.mysteryfile.com/blog/ and search for her moniker in the box on the right hand side, whereupon All Will Be Revealed.

MARY'S BIT or NEITHER POISONED NOR PURLOINED

Looking through my old files recently, I stumbled over notes made several years ago about a fascinating case involving an enterprising l9th century criminal with an inventive yet simple modus operandi.

The problem was he didn't think it all the way through.

Englishman Robert Spring was among what Emma Lazarus later described as the huddled masses yearning to be free. He followed their example and emigrated to America. Alas, he was not much of an ornament to this country.

Spring opened a bookshop in Philadelphia, but it did not flourish. Evidently he was also yearning to be free to break the law, for he then began forging historical documents using paper taken from old books, staining his work with coffee to give it an appropriately aged appearance. Shocking to relate, his speciality was imitating George Washington's handwriting. Spring did a roaring trade selling bogus military passes and orders issued from (appropriately enough) Valley Forge and similar locations, as well as letters supposedly written by the Father of His Country. Eventually rumbled, Spring was arrested in the late l850s, but jumped bail and sprang off to Canada.

While in residence over the border, Spring continued to produce faux documents, which he distributed by posing as a widow selling letters written by important persons to her deceased husband. A couple of years later, he returned to the US, initially taking up residence in Baltimore. Once again he wielded quill and ink in the furtherance of his facsimiles but being more cautious than hitherto sold most of these forgeries to British collectors, libraries, and institutions. This time he masqueraded as Stonewall Jackson's daughter, disposing of her father's papers for lack of cash.

However, it seems he was foolish enough to return to a too well trodden path, for in l869 he was arrested in Philadelphia, spent time in prison, and died in a city hospital in l876.

It strikes me this sorry business would make an interesting historical mystery. Edgar Allan Poe, who had resided in both Baltimore and Philadelphia and whose autographs have also been forged although not by Spring, would surely have been the author to pen it. He had already written about a real crime under the guise of fiction, The Mystery of Marie Roget being based on the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in New York with Poe's solution to the crime being presented in the novel.

Supposing when Spring was arrested Poe was still alive and decided to use the forgery case for a story in which his proto-detective C. Auguste Dupin is consulted. The time line is not too far-fetched, given the Spring affair happened within twenty years of publication of The Purloined Letter. In that novel Dupin observes to "Monsieur G", Prefect of the Parisian police, vis a vis fruitless efforts to recover the titular communication, that "...it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault".

Dupin would surely have written the same to the American authorities from his Parisian lodgings at 33 Rue Dunôt, Faubourg Saint Germain, lambasting them for their delay in catching the forger -- though we may hope he would not be too unkind about Spring managing to escape justice the first time around.

Poe then might well have had Dupin, displaying a flash of the amateur detective's contempt for the intelligence of the police, immediately advise them to keep watch on the various addresses, usually post offices in nearby towns, to which payments to Spring were to be sent. While we can agree it was a remarkably stupid arrangement whether Spring picked up his ill-gotten gains personally or sent someone else to do so, it was the unavoidable weakest point in his plan.

As a number of sleuths have observed, it is this type of vital but overlooked detail that so often trips up criminals. Yet how else was Spring to get his hands on the money made from his (literal) handiwork, including forged letters neither poisonous nor purloined but equally criminous?

AND FINALLY

Being high summer, leaves are currently clustered so thickly in the surrounding landscape that it's hard to see a hundred yards in most directions. But the wheel of the year turns inexorably and it won't be long before there's less foliage on the trees, the light will be thinner, and the nights drawing in even more than they are at present. Melancholy days indeed, and to add to the more sorrowful aspects of the departing year, the next Orphan Scrivener will flap into subscribers' inboxes on October l5th.

See you then!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing page of links to free etexts of classic and Golden Age mysteries. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Friday, June 15, 2007

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # FORTY-FIVE - l5 JUNE 2007

It is said the l9th century Light-fingered Larry known as Black Bart was invariably polite but also had an unfortunate habit of leaving silly rhymes for recipients of his unwanted criminal attentions. We'd given thought to composing these newsletters in similar fashion but lack of words to rhyme with Scrivener -- a fright it had given her was the only suggestion the Muse whispered into our ears -- has saved subscribers from such a fate.

So far.

Mason Cooley rightly opined reading gives us somewhere to go when we must remain in the place we are. While not in the habit of tying subscribers to chairs, hopefully they will voluntarily decide read on...

MARY'S BIT or REMAINING TRUE TO TYPE

I learnt to type on a handsome green Imperial 66 manual typewriter during a two year secretarial course at an Oxfordshire business college. However, it's odds on not everyone skilled in the art practiced touch typing in the same fashion as myself and classmates by a process involving what suggested to me at least the sound of highwaymen in pursuit of a l9th century hearse. For we all tapped along in unison to a crackling record regulating our keystrokes by the measured clip clopping produced by half a coconut shell, interspersed at regular intervals with a sepulchral male voice intoning "Carriage...return!"

And with a collective "ding" of end-of-line bells we returned our carriages.

Except for the time someone had been fiddling with their machine and during one such exercise their platen came off.

Those were the days when exams invariably wanted specs for the two common character sizes, which knowledge now forms part of my vast collection of useless trivia: pica had l0 to a linear inch, while elite featured l2.

I once worked with a machine boasting l5 letters to the inch. It was an American model with a platen twice as long as normal and was used to type extra wide, confidential sales reports featuring sales targets for the month and year and cumulative totals for different areas of the country split in various ways. Alas, I accidentally sent one of these reports to a competitor, who returned it without comment -- but accompanied by a company compliment slip.

Imagine my horror at opening the morning post and finding what I had done! I immediately went to the boss, confessed, and offered to resign, but he decided the best course was to destroy the evidence, that neither of us should say anything, and we should let the sordid matter remain forever shrouded in mystery.

As indeed has happened. Well, until now, that is.

Let others worry about the whereabouts of Macavity or what song the Sirens sang or why bread and butter always falls with the butter side down. Once we got to grips with the mystery of typing *without looking at the keys*, puzzles of more immediate import impinged upon us.

Why were typewriting erasers red-brown discs, given the colour came off on the paper, their gritty texture tore the page, and that annoying circular shape soon wore down into straight edges anyway? What caused those little brushes on pencil-shaped typing erasers to so frequently shed pesky mini bristles into the machine's innards? What possessed us not to copyright our idea of masking erasures by rubbing the area lightly with white chalk? Who started the rumour we'd get the galloping giggles if we breathed too many fumes from the thinner keeping liquid correction bloggo from clotting after the fashion of a half-empty container of Soft Scrub?

Further, how could it be the case that using those chunks of Plasticine-like gubbinge to remove accumulations of ink and tiny shreds of ribbon fibres from key faces invariably deposited more black gunk on our fingers than anywhere else? Would the British Empire totter if, despite constant stern warnings in secretarial school not to do so, we furtively cleaned out blocked o or a or other "closed" letters and numbers with a pin?

Of course, it's true we no longer have an empire....

I was among those who initially found electric typewriters difficult to operate. They tended to run away with me, for the slightest touch of a key left lengthy spoors of aaaaas or mmmmms. They also absorbed the hearty thump integral to my typing style, providing no answering clunk as feedback. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say every manual typer I used for any length of time developed a slight depression on the space bar, not to mention a pitted platen presenting the appearance of having been bombarded with miniature coconuts.

One office mystery however is easily solved. I could always tell if someone else had used my manual typewriter, because its "touch" was different.

It would make a good clue in a mystery novel.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Before the advent of email which, like Ariel, gets there and back in two pulse-beats, it was proverbially said good news would have a problem departing the premises whereas bad tidings easily leapt out to travel thousands of miles. In Necessary Evil we firmly shove the former sort through the portal, and here it is! News, that is, not the door.

A SUMMER CHALLENGE or READING REED & MAYER

We are happy to announce John's most recent adventure, Six For Gold, has been chosen to be a featured book in Liz Clifford's Summer Mystery Reading Challenge. Sixfer will be gleaming in the spotlight on July lst at Liz's website http://www.reviewedbyliz.com We'll be dropping in to visit, so perhaps we'll see you there.

NEGLECTED NOVELS NOMINATED or UNDERDOGS GET THEIR DAY

May 22nd marked the first anniversary of The Rap Sheet (http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/) as a blog. As a jamboree to celebrate the event, writers, bloggers, and critics were invited to choose one crime, mystery, or thriller novel they felt, as Jeff Kingston Pierce put it, had been unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or underappreciated over the years. Mary's contribution was Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers. The entire list of nominations has now been archived on a separate page at http://therapsheet-onebook.blogspot.com/ and makes fascinating reading -- but no virtual fist fights over titles, if you please!

LAST TO KNOW or PROTAGONIST ON PARADE

Imagine our delighted surprise when Robin Burcell, author of the upcoming Face of a Killer (2008), drew our attention to a mention of Fourfer on Parade magazine's website.

http://www.parade.com/export/sites/default/articles/web_exclusives/2007/06-03-2007/Travel_Books

It's in a list of suggested reading matching travel itineraries with novels, a service the Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ, has been offering for years. Until we heard from Robin, we had no idea John had graced Parade's website, and are thrilled to say the least.

ERIC'S BIT or METEORITE MEMORIES, SORT OF

When I was a kid, back in the days when families went for Sunday drives, we stopped at a roadside museum I’ve never entirely forgotten. What I recall is the meteorite.

Putting my nose practically on the glass front of the case housing that fist-sized, metallic lump, I came as close to outer space and alien worlds as I’ve ever been. It was particularly remarkable since I would never have expected to encounter a real meteorite in, of all places....well...there my memory fails me. But I’m certain it was a place nobody expects a meteorite. I distinctly remember that, even if the place itself eludes me.

I can’t remember what the museum was called either. “Somebody or Other’s Museum” according to the sign on the side of the long, low shed-like building. Or was the sign on the roof?

The name has lurked at the periphery of my recollections for weeks. I'll catch just a glimpse. Wasn’t that a “k”? It was a lengthy name, wasn’t it? Every so often the name flickers right in front of me, like a ghost about to materialize, but it never has, yet.

I brought the subject up at a family gathering. No one else could recall the name of the museum, although my brother did remember the meteorite.

There must be an essay there, if I could place the two-lane macadam road beside which the museum sat amidst trees. Yes. There were trees. Pines, I think. If I could identify the place, I would know how we had got there and what we had seen along the way.

Maybe we stopped for home-made ice cream and root beer at the tiny shop that stood by itself in a dusty space surrounded by flat fields. The ice cream -- heavy, rich and almost unnaturally cold -- tasted similar to what my grandparents made by hand-cranking an old wooden contraption packed with cracked ice and rock salt.

The root beer was like nothing I’d ever tasted. It was almost flat, with a touch of carbonation, more like beer than soda, though I didn’t know it at the time. Strong, but not very sweet, it practically burned the tongue. You could see the gleaming brewing vats through the open doorway behind the counter.

We might very well have stopped there on the way to the meteorite museum, because it lay within the same unknown territory.

Almost certainly we were in the red station wagon. The windows never worked correctly because my dad had once left a newly acquired dog in the car for an hour and the nervous animal had removed every bit of rubber it could find trying to chew its way out.

The station wagon was some car. It had wood panels on the doors. Each time we climbed the precipitous mountain road on the way to one of our favorite parks, my dad would see how far he could go before down shifting, and it was counted a triumph if we made it all the way to the top in second.

The park featured hiking trails with waterfalls, one taller than Niagara but only a few feet across. On a wet, moss covered rock beside a steep path alongside one of the waterfalls, I saw a spotted red newt for one of the few times in my life.

I keep thinking maybe the museum was in the vicinity of this park. Its name began with...an “N”...maybe. I can almost see it.

No. It’s gone. Too bad, I’m sure it would make a good story.

AND FINALLY

Speaking of museums, E. Thomas Hughes, founder of the Potato Museum in Washington DC, once remarked while the potato has numerous eyes, it does not possess a mouth and thus that was the role he took on their behalf.

Subscribers will doubtless be happy to hear their eyes will shortly get a rest, since we'll remain here just long enough to announce our next Orphan Scrivener will be emailed on l5th August and thus the tumult now dies down as, like Kipling's kings and captains, we depart.

See you two months hence!

Best wishes
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver, and our growing page of links -- over 170 so far -- to free etexts of classic and Golden Age mysteries. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Sunday, April 15, 2007

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER - ISSUE # FORTY-FOUR
l5 APRIL 2007

In Chapter 28 of Moby Dick, Herman Melville likens April and May to dancing, rosy-faced girls whose appearance in bosky dells encourages even lightning-blasted oaks to green up in welcome. As this newsletter is written another nor'easter is hoving into view, so it appears the great white whale winter is reluctant to sink back into the vasty deeps, leaving a slowly subsiding whirlpool composed of enormous heating bills, cough mixture bottles, and bent snow shovels to mark his lengthy stay. Thus it may be a while before subscribers (red-cheeked or not) can dance to greet the arrival of spring, although they still might like to do a few sprightly steps since this year we've extra time to submit our tax returns, that annual penance frosting everyone's garden.

The much-quoted Anonymous once pointed out tax laws and the haggis are alike in that both are bloody undertakings which ultimately produce mysterious results and the squeamish should avoid having anything to do with them. We can refuse to haggle with a haggis, but unfortunately cannot avoid tackling taxes. Still, the extended filing deadline means subscribers have extra time to read this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener, which -- although it deals with matters mysterious -- is guaranteed free of sanguinary substances and will certainly be less taxing than struggling through the Form l040 instruction booklet.

ERIC'S BIT or BRASSICA OF BYZANTIUM

When you write historical fiction you can't take anything for granted. Even a detail as seemingly simple as cabbages rolling off the back of a cart can cause a problem.

In this case, the problem turned out to be that sixth century Roman cabbages didn't roll.

The round, hard-heading cabbages with which we're familiar today didn't grow in the Mediterranean climate. They were probably developed in northern Europe and were likely not known until sometime after the reign of Charlemagne, who died in 814.

In fact, the first irrefutable description of a hard-heading cabbage dates only to 1536, long after the final demise of Eastern Roman Empire.

The wild cabbage native to the Mediterranean consists of stalks and leaves, rather like kale, and it is cabbage of this sort which is referred to by Roman writers. Far from rolling off a cart, imperiling passerby in an chaotic avalanche of speeding produce, Roman cabbages would have just...well...flopped.

So much for the cabbage scene.

Research can suck all the drama out of your writing!

I'm relieved I looked into the cabbage matter, even if I am still peeved at the inconvenient wimpiness of Roman cabbage, although I'm not sure why I did. After a while you begin to develop a feel for things that seem obvious but might be wrong.

Horticulture is always worrisome. Everyone's aware that Europeans had never laid eyes, or teeth, on such common crops as potatoes and tomatoes until visiting the New World. Foods that are everywhere today were geographically confined in the past.

Even when it ruins your brilliant ideas, research is never boring. I learned that Cato was a great believer in cabbage for what ails you. It was, he wrote, an aid to digestion, good for colic, and in combination with various other ingredients efficacious for cleaning sores, easing joint afflictions, restoring hearing, and removing nasal polyps. Feeble children could be made stronger by being bathed in the urine of a perpetual cabbage eater.

He also reckoned if you're going to a party you should eat a lot of cabbage beforehand. You'll be able to eat and drink as much as you want.

Then there was Cato's recipe for a laxative. Mix cabbage, boiled pigs' feet, beets, mussels, snails, lentils, and a scorpion (just one scorpion will do the trick) and take with some wine. Presumably you'd have to drink the wine first to get that concoction down.

Thinking about all this I will probably never be able to face sauerkraut again. However, at least now I have proof Romans had constipation concerns, in case that might work as a plot point sometime. Otherwise you know cabbage has to turn up in one of our books or stories now for sure.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

The ticker room is knee deep in tape this time around, so let's see what all the excitement is about....

JOHN'S NEXT ADVENTURE or SECRETS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Seven For A Secret will skulk out of a dark alley and into the thronged forum in April 2008 when Poisoned Pen Press publish John's next adventure. In this episode, John becomes embroiled in all manner of goings-on when he meets the woman who was the model for the little girl in his study mosaic. Add the usual mix of supporting characters (including a sundial maker who assiduously avoids daylight) and settings ranging from underground emporiums to a nunnery for reformed prostitutes, and John and his friends soon find themselves plunged into the thick of a mystery which could well result in their imprisonment -- or worse.

FOURFER RETURNS or BACK IN BRETANIA

Poisoned Pen Press now has a British arm, meaning UK readers can order and obtain US editions from the press in a much easier fashion than hitherto. PPP UK's website is up and growing at http://www.poisonedpenpressuk.com

Meantime, the first of John's adventures, Four For A Boy, will appear over there in June. For those new to the series, Fourfer is its prequel and relates how John regained his freedom and put his boot on the ladder to his current high office. It also,reveals how John met Felix and Anatolius, not to mention Lady Anna.

A NEW VENTURE or REED ALL ABOUT IT

As a long time lover of Golden Age detections, I recently worked up the brass nerve to take a stab at reviewing some of these wonderful novels. The reviews are hosted by Steve Lewis on his Mystery*File site http://www.mysteryfile.com which I recommend for its eclectic mix of news, interviews, reviews, and bibliographic research into the careers of mystery writers of all genres and all eras. My thanks to Steve for the opportunity to put a few thoughts about a favourite type of mystery out online.

THE MAYWRITE LIBRARY or GAD(D)ING ABOUT THE INTERNET

And speaking of Golden Age novels, we've just started yet another project on our own site. We're constructing a page of links to e-texts of Golden Age or earlier mystery novels and short stories. So far we've listed about six dozen and would be happy to add links suggested by subscribers who are fellow fans of these works. Credit will be given unless contributors wish to remain anonymous. If you're interested in taking a look at the library shelves, point your clicker at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/golden.htm

MARY'S BIT or CRIMES AND CANONICALS

The Newgate Calendar alias The Malefactor's Bloody Register http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/completenewgate.htm first appeared in l760. This and later editions provide a fascinating compendium of the fates of defendants ranging from footpads to titled personages. Crimes represented include arson, burglary, coin clipping, highway robbery, receiving stolen goods, assault, forgery, ship scuttling, theft, high treason, and fraudulent solemnization of marriages. Jack Collet was in the habit of wearing stolen clerical robes when working as a highwayman. Where he obtained his initial set of garments is not revealed, but he lost them to playing dice. Not long afterwards, he held up the carriage of the Bishop of Winchester and thereby obtained replacement canonicals. Collet came a cropper when he was involved in the theft of items from a London church, leading to the charge of sacrilegious burglary for which he was hanged in l69l.

Numerous executions are mentioned, such as those of John Bishop and Thomas Williams (murder and body-snatching, l83l), cook Eliza Fenning (poisoned dumplings with arsenic, l8l5), bankrupt James Bullock (defrauded his creditors, no date), and seventeen year old Thomas Chalfont (theft of a bank bill, l800).

Lighter sentences were passed on Joseph Moses (fine and unspecified jail time for receiving skins from slaughtered royal swans, l8ll), Richard Corduy (two years for stealing six pieces of wood from the royal forest at Waltham, no date), and Charles Fox alias The Flying Dustman (three months for assault, arising from his unauthorised collection of household ashes, l8l2).

Desperate lives are on display. In an undated case fourteen year old Patrick M'Donald was convicted of stealing a jacket. The emaciated boy burst into tears after telling the court of having gone hungry for two days. Touched, jury members each gave him a shilling and asked for mercy after reluctantly finding him guilty. He was sentenced to be taken care of until a situation could be found for him. The judge stated he would see about a pardon, and spectators in the court provided more money for Patrick's needs. Hopefully the lad went to a good master and thereafter flourished.

Robert Powell, self-described professor of the sidereal science, was less fortunate. Convicted in l807 of obtaining money by false pretences through the practice of astrology, despite magisterial sympathy to Powell's starved appearance and plea his physical weakness, a lunatic wife, and three famished children left only theft, imposture, or starvation open to him, he was convicted. His sentence is not given, but I cannot help wondering what happened to his family.

Then there was Margaret Dixon, remarried not long after her execution in l728. Becoming pregnant in her husband's absence, she was hung for the murder of a newborn infant found near where she lived. While being taken to burial she sat up in her coffin. Under Scottish law she was exculpated although her marriage had been automatically dissolved since the sentence had been carried out. Her former husband remarried her in a public ceremony.

Also connected with marriages but at the other end of the social scale, an undated account relates the prosecution of the Countess of Bristol, found guilty of committing bigamy. Her trial was attended by the queen and other royals and revealed scandalous details included attempted blackmail, a secret marriage and birth, theft (and subsequent return) of a vital page in a marriage register, bribery, and other glimpses of low goings-on in high society.

AND FINALLY

Novels of detection featuring recipes are popular with many readers and in the spirit of obliging same, we'd like to provide instructions for that British dish known by the mysterious nomenclature of bubble and squeak.

Few meals are simpler to prepare: fry a mixture of cooked cabbage and potato. Its name is onomatopoeic and is said to derive from the bubbling during the initial boiling of the ingredients followed by (admittedly needing some effort of the imagination) the noise made as they are cooked in your frying pan.

In the l800s bubble and squeak was also applied to something showy which actually had little or no value. We trust this usage didn't immediately put you in mind of our newsletter, the more so as the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will be trundling into your in-box in June.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), and a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to visit Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Thursday, February 15, 2007

THEORPHAN SCRIVENER ISSUE # FORTY-THREE - l5 FEBRUARY 2007

Since our last appearance in your in-box vast swathes of the country have been afflicted with weather as cold as charity. As we write, snow is falling steadily and it looks as if we already have a foot or so, with more on the way.

Few have described a bitter winter landscape as well as Wallace Stevens, whose poems likened icicles to barbaric glass and described juniper trees as shaggy with encrustations of ice.

We're all familiar with the way noise seems to carry further than usual over snow, and in his l930s work The Sun This March, Wallace talked about such air bringing the sound of voices akin to lions. Although Wittgenstein was of the opinion we wouldn't be able to understand lions even if they were able to talk, doubtless if such leonine roars were intelligible they'd be grumbling about the cold. However, today such voices are more likely to convey our subscribers' complaints not so much about the weather as finding this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener lion in wait when they open their email.

But given you've read this far, press on, lionhearts!

MARY'S BIT or CLOAK FIRST, DAGGER LATER (MAYBE)

Subscribers who remember our first newsletter back in February 2000 may recall it related a near miss involving a lighting fixture while readers who missed the enthralling tale of this incident can view it at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/toc1.htm#xmas

And now here we are seven years later, and it's a case of history -- or in this case, her story -- repeating itself.

I was looking out the door on a recent stormy day when a particularly strong gust of wind shook the house and at that very instant the dome-shaped ceiling light behind me parted company with its anchor and crashed to the floor a foot or so away, outdoing the famous chandelier scene in Phantom of the Opera, but fortunately not hitting yours truly. It was a lucky escape, since the fallen globe amply demonstrated the astonishing breadth of distribution and amount of shards and tiny splinters even a small glass object will achieve when it shatters and scatters.

In films of a macabre nature this sort of event would be accompanied by a soundtrack of screeching violins, before a lesser player in the kinematic drama would start up, wild-eyed, to declare "There's a curse on this house!" and then take flight, probably to a nasty fate.

When it comes to ill wishing, however, they'd have to travel a lot further than just fleeing a malignant building to beat that bane of the ancient world, the defixio or curse tablet.

Curse tablets have made an appearance or two during John's adventures, most notably in the short story And All That He Calls Family, published in Mike Ashley's 200l anthology The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits: A New Collection (issued as The Mammoth Book of More Historical Whodunnits in the US).

Delving into the topic while writing Family showed human nature has not changed much over the millennia, although methods used to bring ruination or retribution are different nowadays. Rather than the court case, gossiping tongue, or poison pen letter, the seeker of justice -- as they saw it at least -- petitioned the gods for personal intervention, ignoring the wise advice that one should be certain of one's own roof before summoning a storm.

In brief, these requests were usually inscribed on a thin sheet of lead, which was rolled up and buried or sometimes thrown into a well, thus ensuring the cursed person could not find and destroy it and, like as not, compose one of their own.

Petitions for heavenly intervention were, it seems, as varied as the interests of humanity. Chariot teams were a popular target, so rather than nobbling horses or waylaying charioteers, wagerers anxious about their bets or supporters of competing teams improved their chances of winning by asking various deities to tangle the feet of rival teams' horses or otherwise cripple them, arrange for chariots to crash at the turns, or cause charioteers to fall ill or suffer incapacitating injuries.

Needless to say, such tablets were also used in attempts to blight the romantic prospects or business interests of rivals, interfere with the professional success of an athlete or actor, or wreak havoc on a person the petitioner disliked for one reason or another.

Written generally to a formulaic magickal text, sometimes arranged in a pattern, examples have been excavated where the name of the accursed was squished into a constricted space. This leads experts to theorise that fill in the blank tablets were available, an early example of consumer driven supply and demand, and it has been suggested literate persons such as scribes were happy to inscribe names for those who could not write, an unexpected but doubtless lucrative extra benefit accorded to the educated classes.

Apparently one of the commonest reasons for these malignant petitions was to ask the god or gods to punish thieves and return stolen property to its owner, and one such was excavated last year in Leicester, England.

Thought to be about 1,500 years old and addressed to the god Maglus, it asks the deity to destroy whoever stole the cloak of Servandus, who had no hesitation in requesting results within nine days http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/1227855.html

Perhaps Servandus was dubious about Maglus' interest in such a minor matter, for he also obligingly provided a list of over a dozen possible culprits. To mystery readers this will suggest either Servandus had a large number of lightfingered friends or alternatively he did not move in the best company. But given the loss of his cloak infuriated him so much that he decided to involve a god, I suspect if he did not soon retrieve his garment a persuasive dagger might be drawn on suspected perpetrators until either his cloak was found -- or he was, lifeless in an alley.

Although seven has been regarded for centuries as a number of great mystical import, I'm not leaping to conclusions although I may well attempt to keep away from lighting fixtures as much as possible during February 20l4. As for Servandus, we'll probably never know the end of the story unless further discoveries eventually shed illumination on the outcome of the theft of his cloak.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Only one report is unspooling from the ticker this time around, but it's a matter not only newsworthy but also one that's new to the residents of Casa Maywrite! Read on...

CLUBBING TOGETHER or READING REED AND MAYER

We're honoured to be able to announce that currently two book clubs are reading about John's adventures.

The first is Mysterybooks, which has been meeting monthly since January l997, when a group of sorority alumnae friends realised they were all reading mysteries. Based in California, they discuss a new author each month, sometimes one specific book, pairing it with a film based on the novel, a potluck dinner, or an appropriate ethnic meal at a restaurant. For February 2007 the choice was any novel from our series, and we thank the members of Mysterybook for their interest and support.

On the other side of the country a church book club in Ohio is currently reading One For Sorrow. We hear members are finding it a little different from many historical mysteries, particularly its look at various religious beliefs. We thank them also and hope their weather-delayed discussion goes well.

ERIC'S BIT or STREET SEENS

Since the middle of January we've been in the midst of a cold spell. The office space heater has been blowing more hot air than the two scriveners. I've had to slither into the crawl space once already to use the heat gun on a frozen water pipe. At least the giant lurking spiders were probably all frozen to their webs.

There are people who'd be happy to have pipes to freeze, or a roof over their heads. I used to pass them on the streets when I lived in New York almost thirty years ago. They may have had places to live of some sort but as far as I could tell they were always outside. Or nearly outside.

The first level of the subway station beside Washington Square Park was deserted. To reach the lower levels and catch your train you needed to pass through a huge dark space resembling an empty parking garage. Somewhere in the shadows lived a man who screamed. He'd shriek and roar and the noise would echo around the pillars. It wasn't so much a communication of pain as rage. A monstrous anger that pulled a sound straight from a tormented soul that could never have been achieved by human vocal cords alone. Maybe he was one of the junkies who populated the park. I never caught a glimpse of this man nor did I want to.

I had plenty of opportunities to get a good look at the cadaverous looking fellow who stood outside the porno theater not far from Borough Hall in Brooklyn. His activities were equally as mysterious. No matter the time of day or the weather he'd be there, just under the marquee, writing in his notebook. It was a medium sized ring-bound notebook with a cardboard cover. He'd peer around, give every indication of engaging in deep thought, lick his pencil and proceed to jot down who knows what. He held the notebook close to his chest. Was he keeping track of pedestrian traffic along Smith Street? Making notes on passersby? Occasionally, he would bend down and, using a piece of chalk, make an "X' on the pavement at his feet. So he stood there amidst his burgeoning "X's" -- patterns which may or may not have meant anything -- until the rains came and he had to start all over.

A few blocks distant, an older man with a Santa Claus beard liked to push his shopping cart along trendy upscale Montague Street. The cart was filled with bulging plastic bags, bits of newspaper, an old shoe or two, and empty soda cans. He carried grimy scraps of paper covered with scribbles. He was constantly peering at them, shaking his head and muttering to himself. When I passed by close enough to hear him I realized he was mumbling about what sounded like extremely complex medical procedures. The terms he was using were a lot longer than the "Xs" scratched on the sidewalk by the fellow by the theater but just as mystifying to me.

One winter the medical man vanished. For weeks I didn't see him. I figured he had moved on or succumbed to the elements. Then one day in early spring, there he was again, pushing his cart as usual, dressed in the same ragged coat, near as I could tell, but he was missing a hand. The stump was wrapped in bandages.

It seemed incredible. Someone had taken this man off the street, amputated his hand, and then simply sent him back out, in the same rags, before his dressings had even come off.

Some street people engaged in business. A man with a saxophone set up shop beside an office supply store in downtown Brooklyn. He'd sometimes put the saxophone to his lips and sounds would emerge. Every time I went by he'd be playing "People" or maybe it was "When the Saints Go Marching In." People left money in the cigar box by his feet.

Downtown Brooklyn wasn't a prime location, even for begging. The fellow I'd see outside Macy's in Manhattan didn't have to perform. He just sat against the wall. The coat he wore, consisting of clear trash bags, must have convinced more than a few clothes shoppers to drop a coin or two into his cup.

Oddly enough, the city's street entrepreneurs seemed to keep abreast of what went on in their far flung community and were alert to new business opportunities. One day I was surprised to see that the Brooklyn saxophonist had replaced the sitter at Macy's. I suppose the previous owner of the location had vacated his spot and the saxophonist had leapt at his chance to move up in the world.

AND FINALLY

It'll be mid-April before Orphan Scrivener will again be discovered loitering in your in-box, by which time spring should be here or at least on its way. Philip Larkin declared the season was heralded by the brightly clothed trumpeters of newly green bushes and trees as the leper winter relaxed the grip of his pale hands and crept away. For now, we'll emulate that bleached spectre and sidle off until Orphan Scrivener springs back into view on l5th April.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, hanging out on the virtual washing line at http://home.epix.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, lists of author freebies and mystery-related newsletters, Doom Cat (an interactive game written by Eric), and a jigsaw featuring the handsome cover of Five For Silver. There's also an Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Intrepid subscribers may also wish to pop over to visit Eric's blog at http://www.journalscape.com/ericmayer/

Saturday, December 15, 2007

ERIC'S BIT or FIT TO BE TIED

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

THE TERROR OF ERRORS or AVOIDING THE PIT

SEASONAL SHIVERS or THE HOLLY AND THE IVORY

MARY'S BIT or FORECASTS FOR THE FORECASTLE

AND FINALLY

Monday, October 15, 2007

MARY'S BIT or REVERE REVISITED

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A KENTISH ADVENTURE or WHAT THE DICKENS?

IT'S NO SECRET or SEVENFER LURKS AT THE GATE

JUST FOR THE HOWLIDAY or SPOOKING OF HALLOWEEN

ERIC'S BIT or SPRING FORWARD TO FALL

AND FINALLY

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

ERIC'S BIT or BOARD WITH LIFE

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

REED ALL ABOUT IT or MAYER WE TALK?

JOHN'S NEXT ADVENTURE or IT'S NO SECRET

BACK TO BRETANIA or ONEFER MARCHES ON

FOURFER GOES FORTH FIRST or BRETANIA INVADED

THE TRIPOD CAT or MR PICKWICK'S KENTISH TRAVELS

A DEER MEMORY or OFF TO NARNIA

A BRUSH WITH FAME or GET YOUR TEETH INTO A MYSTERY

GOLDEN DAYS or WEARING A NEW HAT

AND FINALLY

Friday, June 15, 2007

MARY'S BIT or REMAINING TRUE TO TYPE

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

A SUMMER CHALLENGE or READING REED & MAYER

NEGLECTED NOVELS NOMINATED or UNDERDOGS GET THEIR DAY

LAST TO KNOW or PROTAGONIST ON PARADE

ERIC'S BIT or METEORITE MEMORIES, SORT OF

AND FINALLY

Sunday, April 15, 2007

ERIC'S BIT or BRASSICA OF BYZANTIUM

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

JOHN'S NEXT ADVENTURE or SECRETS OF CONSTANTINOPLE

FOURFER RETURNS or BACK IN BRETANIA

A NEW VENTURE or REED ALL ABOUT IT

THE MAYWRITE LIBRARY or GAD(D)ING ABOUT THE INTERNET

MARY'S BIT or CRIMES AND CANONICALS

AND FINALLY

Thursday, February 15, 2007

MARY'S BIT or CLOAK FIRST, DAGGER LATER (MAYBE)

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

CLUBBING TOGETHER or READING REED AND MAYER

ERIC'S BIT or STREET SEENS

AND FINALLY