What Makes a Death a Legend?

Sujata Massey and Nev March 

Continuing our unofficial celebration of Hammett Prize nominees, I'm shining the spotlight on MURDER IN OLD BOMBAY, by one of my writing friends, Nev March.

Nev lives in New Jersey, and I'm in Baltimore. Our only real life meeting was in New York City at the Edgars symposium in 2019. I was there to win the Mary Higgins Clark prize the following evening (though that day, I had no idea!). Nev already knew she was winning the St. Martins/Minotaur Mystery Writers of America Best First Crime Fiction award, which results in publication of one's book the next year. 

Nev intrigued me by sharing that Murder in Old Bombay was partly inspired by one of Bombay's most famous unsolved crimes: the Rajabai Clock Tower Deaths of 1891. I was honored to write the cover blurb for this book. I found that Nev solves the riddle of the deaths by using fictional characters who come together in a way that makes great dramatic and cultural sense. She also introduces us to a fictional Parsi family of great wealth and intelligence, and a clever young Army captain, Jim Agnihotri, who's hired to investigate their family's tragedy.

Nev and a policewoman near the clock tower balcony

It was no great shock that this book is also nominated for the Edgar Award nominee for Best First Mystery, but it certainly is great news. I don't know how things could get any rosier for Nev. But from the answers she gave me, it's clear that she is one of the humblest, hardest working writers around.

You just got nominated for the Barry and Hammett awards! And you’ve got an Edgar nomination for best first mystery. What does the recognition mean for you and your writing journey?

It’s marvelous. When I was writing I didn’t ever imagine Murder in Old Bombay would find such a warm reception. To have a first book out is both surreal and exciting; to have it gain such recognition is enormously rewarding. It also adds a bit of stress, because now my next book needs to match or exceed this level of writing. My writing journey has just begun, so I have to trust that the process works, and that pulling honestly from my truths will be enough. In some ways it’s a bit easier, because I trust my own judgement more.

We’ve talked together about how important books were in your upbringing. In your childhood or teen years, did you want to become a novelist? What happened instead, with your longtime career in the US?
In 1990 my short story 'Must There Be Crying?' was published in Target, a children’s magazine in India, followed by ‘Blue Skies,’ a short sci-fi piece. I was in college; writing was considered a hobby, not a career. After earning degrees in economics and psychology, I won a scholarship to a graduate program in the States. For the next twenty years I worked in business analysis, market research and more, then was laid off. 

 

This led to some soul-searching. I’d enjoyed my work, conversations with colleagues and made good contributions—should I seek another position of responsibility or turn to what gave me more joy—writing fiction? Writing won, but it was a few years until it paid off.

I was born Sujata Banerjee, but took the last name ‘Massey’ when I married my American husband. As you know, Massey also is an Indian name, so it’s proved a miracle surname for me as a writer. Was Nev your nickname or strictly a pen name? Tell us how you became ’Nev March’. Do you go by Nawaz Merchant in your daily life?

I’ve experienced many forms of racism over these 30 years, and I wanted to give my book a fair chance. A name is a vanity in some sense, a mark of pride that says, "this is mine." Murder in Old Bombay is like my adult child that has gone into the world. To prevent my name becoming a barrier to its growth, I chose to write under a pseudonym. My nickname was Nav, which I modified to Nev. ‘Nev’ is a nod to Neville Shute, an Australian writer I admired enormously. I took 'March' from a childhood favorite, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Jo March wanted to earn a living as a writer, like me!  

 

How did you tap into your talent and get the courage to believe you could write a novel? Was your writer’s group part of it?
Although I’d written four books before 2006, I didn’t know how to market them. So, with two young kids and a full-time job, I put aside creative writing for a decade. Five years ago I joined my local writers’ group, but it was a year and a half later that I wrote Murder in Old Bombay. My writing group was enormously supportive, but also honest, with tough critiques when needed. 

What does writing a 135,000 word manuscript in four months’ time look like? Tell us when you awoke, when you slept, and what else happened.
Writing Murder in Old Bombay was addictive. I’d keep seeing a scene repeating in my mind like a video on endless loop. Each time the scene was from a different perspective, or have additional dialog and surprises. I’d write just to get it out of my head! Then the next would spool. I’d go to bed at 2 am and have to return to the PC at 4 because the next scene kept repeating. It was intense and I loved every bit! It hijacked me—I rarely knew what date it was. Terrified that it wasn’t as good as I wanted, I leaned heavily on my friends during those months. Three critique partners provided extensive input, and one of them, Jay Langley, helped me trim the 138,000 word manuscript to the final 115,000 words needed by my publisher. I can’t ever thank them enough!

Entrance to the University's reading room

 

You delve into a true mystery in Bombay, the deaths in 1891 of two young Parsi women who fell from the Rajabai Clock tower on the University of Bombay campus. There were 2 trials with suspects brought forward, but noone was ever convicted. I was deeply struck by the emotion around this case and even refer to it in my next novel, which is set thirty years later. How did you first heard of this crime, and what did it meant to you as a young woman in India? And how did you extract information from more than a century ago?
As a teen, if I tried to do something adventurous (join the hiking club, overnight college trip etc), my parents put the kibosh on it with this phrase: “Remember the Godrej Girls.” It pointed out that girls aren’t safe, even in daylight. Rape was never mentioned, either in public or private. I only knew that something bad happened to girls from my own tiny community. 

 

Decades later I read an article about their deaths and the murder trial, which was the trial of the century in the 1800s Bombay. When the accused with acquitted due to lack of evidence, two petitions were filed by Parsi citizens of Bombay begging to reopen the case. 60,000 Parsis signed the first, 40,000 the second petition. This is astonishing, since there were only 100,000 Parsis world-wide! 

 

To research it, I read articles and newspaper archives—the case was in British newspapers, and biographies of Ardeshir Godrej (the young widower of one of the victims) hoping for more clues. Ardeshir (usually shortened to Adi) fascinated me, because he became a serial entrepreneur, and founded what is now the Godrej Conglomerate. How does a 22-year-old recover from the death of his young bride? I wondered whether he might have solved the mystery by hiring a detective, and thereby found closure. An intensely private man, he wouldn’t have made public his investigation. That’s where my novel began.

The novel’s protagonist is Jim Agnihotri, a dashing young Anglo-Indian military officer. Was he always meant to be the novel’s protagonist? I step out of my exact cultural identity (Indian-German) when writing about India because it feels too unusually specific. What advantage does stepping out of your own Parsi identity to become Jim give you in storytelling?

 

The moment I “saw” Captain Jim, I knew he’d be the novel’s protagonist. The first scene I wrote was chapter 2: his meeting with Adi. An army man, an officer—I could not understand why he was so deferential to the grieving widower. Then I realized he was mixed race, and it all fell into place. In my mind Captain Jim was astonishingly forthcoming, so I could show his intense loneliness from exclusion.

Parsi writers like Rohinton Mistry, Boman Desai and Bapsi Sidhwa have beautifully portrayed the Parsi community as insiders. I wanted to show my community how they are viewed by others, especially by those who love them, who are traditionally not admitted into the Zoroastrian faith.  This loving portrayal allows me to tell tough truths; that those who follow the Zoroastrian path of “good thoughts, words and deeds” may still be bound by old conventions that hurt others deeply. The character of Burjor is based on people I love dearly who I hoped to persuade to a more liberal point of view.

 

When was the last time you were in India, and when do you hope to return?
I visited India every other year, sometimes three times a year for my parents’ medical care. Mum passed away last year, and Dad is now in the US. Once the covid restrictions are lifted and it is safe to travel, I hope to return and meet my dear aunts and uncles.

Tell us about your next book. Will it feature Jim? Is there a title yet?

No title yet, but I'm working on a sequel set in 1893 Chicago, where millions visit the World's Fair, the magical Columbian Exposition celebrating America's progress. Now employed at a Boston detective agency, Captain Jim investigates the murder of a friend on the fairgrounds. The first Parliament of World Religions will be held that summer, while at the same time the World Convention of Anarchists has assembled. What could possibly go wrong? And, yes, what will resourceful Diana do about it?

Connecting across languages

Craig every second Tuesday. 

Kia ora and gidday everyone.

Before we dive into today's piece, I wanted to pause and acknowledge my fellow Tuesday contributor to Murder is Everywhere, Cara Black. Last week Cara was named as one of five nominees for the 2021 Hammett Prize, a prestigious award that has long been one of my favourite book prizes (in fact when we established the Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2010, we modelled them somewhat on the Hammett Prize). 

Cara Black and her Hammett Prize nominated book THREE HOURS IN PARIS

Run by the International Association of Crime Writers, North America, for the past thirty years this annual prize has celebrated 'literary excellence in crime writing', which is pretty awesome. It's open to genre and non-genre novels which examine crime or the effects of crime. Past winners include Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke, Margaret Atwood, William Deverell, Martin Cruz Smith, Megan E. Abbott, and George Pelecanos. Past nominees also include Cormac McCarthy, Walter Mosley, Laura Lippman, and Normal Mailer. So quite the cadre of excellent crime storytellers - both recognised 'crime writers' and authors from other spheres who've written books strongly entwined with crime. 

Here are the 2021 nominees. Some excellent novels and authors: 

• IN OLD BOMBAY by Nev March (Minotaur): Based on a true story, in 1892 a soldier recovering from wounds investigates a murder.
• THE MOUNTAINS WILD by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur): A New York detective revisits the disappearance of her cousin in Ireland two decades ago.
• THREE HOURS IN PARIS by Cara Black (Soho): In World War II, a young female sniper is sent to Paris to assassinate the Führer.
• WHEN THESE MOUNTAINS BURN by David Joy (Putnam): A father in Appalachia confronts the opioid epidemic in an attempt to rescue his son.
• WINTER COUNTS by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco): Vigilante Virgil Wounded Horse investigates the spread of heroin on the reservation.

Connecting across languages: the impact and importance of literary translators

Another thing that happened last week was the (online) book launch for HOTEL CARTAGENA by Simone Buchholz, translated from German by Rachel Ward, and BOUND by Vanda Symon. Two terrific crime novels from opposite ends of the earth. 

I had the pleasure of compering the launch, which was both a great night and also caused me to reflect on a few things. Not least of which was the fact that the very last public event I attended before all the COVID lockdowns and restrictions kicked in last year was the in-real-life book launch for Simone and Vanda's previous books (along with Stephanie Broadribb) at Waterstone's Victoria in London. So, more than a year with everything online. 

Germany, New Zealand, and the UK combine for a 2020/2021-style book launch

Another thing last week's launch prompted me to reflect on was the importance of literary translators. It was great that Rachel Ward was able to join us onscreen for part of the launch (a few minutes after the photo above was taken by an audience member). Rachel gave some really interesting insights into the art of crime fiction translation. In recent years I've become more and more conscious of the huge role that literary translators play in allowing keen readers like myself to enjoy a diverse array of stories that originated in a wide range of languages. While at the same time it feels like translators - a little bit like illustrators of kids' books, perhaps - go a little underappreciated by the reading public at large. 

A couple of years ago I wrote a large feature for an American magazine, Mystery Scene, about crime fiction translation, interviewing several translators as well as translated authors. It was fascinating to get some deeper insight into the collaboration and all that goes into bringing stories to readers who speak different languages. Interestingly, crime fiction translation is in some ways even more difficult. 

"Found in Translation" - my feature in the Fall 2019 issue of Mystery Scene

Here's a snippet from that feature: 

While translating any story into another language has its challenges, mystery and detective tales contain extra fishhooks for translators, says Karen Seago of City University London, a widely published expert on the translation of fairy tales, feminist translation theory, and crime fiction translation. The way an author writes – not just what they write – can be used to disguise clues, take advantage of shared assumptions, and more deeply engage readers with the solving of the mystery, says Seago. Translators must tiptoe along a tightrope when choosing which words, phrases, and rhetorical devices to use in the ‘new’ version of a story ... Mysteries can be a game of bluff and double-bluff between an author and reader, says Seago. Translators have to be careful not to make a choice that has negative flow-on effects in the translated version, such as making a hidden clue too obvious, obscuring something that later plays a key role, or clarifying something that was intentionally meant to be confusing or vague and therefore make the reader think and engage more deeply.

 

It was interesting for me to reflect on the fact that about a decade before that I had written a large feature for Australian magazine Good Reading on the surge in Scandinavian crime writing, and while I discussed many translated books and authors in that piece, I don't think I named a single translator. 

For too long I was guilty, like so many, of overlooking the very people who ensured I could read these great stories that were first told in languages other than my own. For example, back in 2008 readers in North America and across the world were introduced to Lisbeth Salander, "a ferocious heroine who didn’t want or need anyone to save her and was happy to operate outside legal lines to find some justice". Stieg Larsson's Millennium series became a phenomenon: 100 million sales, hit movies.

But as I said for Mystery Scene, "Here's the thing: while the names Lisbeth Salander and Stieg Larsson became globally famous and tens of millions enjoyed Larsson’s stories, the vast majority weren't reading his words. English-speakers were captivated by Lisbeth as described by Reg Keeland (Stephen T Murray). German readers fell in love even faster; they were reading Winke Kuhne's words."

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish-language film adaptations

Funnily enough, when I reflect on my own reading history, I was actually reading translated fiction from a young age - though I didn't realise it 'til years later. Even before I fell in love with mysteries thanks to the Hardy Boys, the first ongoing series I loved as a young reader was Asterix. I was about seven years old, and my mates and I used to race each other to try to nab the copies of Asterix and the Golden Sickle or Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield from our school library on a rainy day. 

Even at that young age, I was quite aware that the creators Goscinny and Uderzo were French storytellers - but I didn't make the leap to realise that the words I was enjoying so very much on the page (and I still enjoy to this day, more than three decades later) were chosen by someone else. 

The genius of Goscinny & Uderzo was brought to generations of English-speaking readers by the genius of  literary translator Anthea Bell

Anthea Bell had studied French and German at Oxford and become a secretary before shifting into literary translations almost by accident as a young mother, then single mother. She began translating Asterix in 1969, and was responsible for the naming of Dogmatix and Getafix, as well as bringing Goscinny and Uderzo's blend of zany adventures and stories full of satire and puns and wordplay into another language (with all the challenges that incurred). It's astonishingly clever work. 

As Bell said in an interview, "All my professional life, I have felt that translators are in the business of spinning an illusion: the illusion is that the reader is reading not a translation but the real thing".

While translators are a bit overlooked by the general reading public, they're hugely appreciated by publishers and the translated authors themselves. As French author Johanna Gustawsson told me back in 2019, in a way, translators are like music composers who would transpose rock into classical. "They don't just have to translate the story; they also have to translate the musicality of a language, of a sentence, its rhythm and the voice of the author. Translation is a work of art."

Do you read translated crime fiction? What are some of your favourite translated stories - crime or otherwise - and who were the translators? I'd love for you to share some of your faves in the comments.

Until next time. Ka kite anō. 

Whakataukī of the fortnight: 

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei

(Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain)

A view across to Aoraki/Mt Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand

Imperial Man

Annamaria on Monday

The slave-driving Boss-Lady who lives inside me has begun to insist on my beginning to plan my next writing project when I am only two-thirds of the way through a very rough first draft of my current work in progress.  Not able to ignore her, I have been tentatively looking into what Venice was like in the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth centuries.  The phrase "The Venetian Empire" keeps coming up.  It occurred to me that empires are what I almost always write about.  The Spanish in South America and their aftermath.  The British in Africa. And written and waiting in the wings - the Spanish again, this time in Sicily. What is it with me and empires, I wondered.

I turned to research for an answer.  The answer is: It's not me.  If one is going to write about the history of the planet earth, there is almost no place that has not - at one time or another - been part of an empire.  It has been clear to me from the get-go that a writer of historical crime fiction can find no better setting than when the chosen place was going through some sort of turmoil.

And nothing creates turmoil better than Imperialism. A corollary to this rule is mankind (and I am being gender specific here) glories in such efforts.

Really?  Yes, really.  They have done it wherever they were despite all lack of exchange of ideas across the globe in ancient times.  In fact, men started in on empire building pretty much as soon as they learned how to form a functioning state.

An empire is "an unequal relationship between a core state and a periphery of one or more states controlled from the core." Wherever they were on our poor beleaguered, sacred planet, men have built empires for themselves.

Sometimes they have wanted to expand their own span of control, or to own the resources of their neighbors. Sometimes, they have told themselves and the world at large that their goal was to impose peaceful coexistence on squabbling neighbors. Often they have used their religions or ideologies as an excuse.  But, when it comes right down to examining the results, it sure looks to be all about exploitation of wealth and lust for power and glory.  Wherever and whenever men had the means, they did it.

Whatever the stated or underlying motivation, imperialism is such a common activity that it has its own atlas.

The data to support my conclusion that MANkind is constitutionally (!) predisposed to imperialism can be found in its entirety - all 225 of them - here. And that total does not include the informal ones.

Here are a few examples to show that empires have been everywhere, at every time. 

And here are the BIG ones that have perhaps done the most to shape the Western World as we know it today.

The British "Pink Bits"

Imperial Spain

Of late, the outcomes of colonialism have been uncovered and held up to the light in our unprecedented period of Global Economy, competition, cooperation, and communication.  "Imperial" used to mean "powerful" or even "enviable," at least among imperialists.  Nowadays, in what I hope will someday be called the Second Age of Enlightenment, the word has begun to take on the pejorative connotation that I think it deserves.  One can only hope that our tumultuous period of history comes from the death throes of man's compulsion to conquer anyone weaker than himself.

The Man—and Woman—Who Beat Smallpox

Edward Jenner vaccinates James Phipps, 1798

Zoë Sharp

If you have a scientific bent, you have probably heard of Edward Jenner, an English surgeon and scientist who is credited with the discovery of vaccination against smallpox. Born in Gloucestershire in 1749, Jenner was the eighth of nine children of the local vicar and his wife. Jenner was apprenticed at fourteen to a surgeon and in 1770 he moved to London to complete his training.

 

Two years later, Jenner returned to Berkeley in Gloucestershire to become the local doctor and surgeon. One of his regular tasks was to help guard his patients against smallpox by a procedure called variolation. (And I’ll come back to this later.)

 

Smallpox got its name in 16^th Century Britain, to distinguish it from syphilis, which was known as the ‘great pox’. It is a highly infectious disease caused by the Variola major and Variola minor virus variants. Nobody knows exactly where it came from, but some of the earliest instances have been found in Egyptian mummies from the 3^rd Century BCE. During the last hundred years—up to the last known naturally-occurring case in 1977—smallpox is thought to have killed 500 million people, with approximately 300 million of those deaths taking place since 1900. The overall mortality rate was thirty percent, although some strains of the disease were noted to be almost invariably fatal.

 

In Edward Jenner’s time, outbreaks of smallpox across Europe accounted for one third of all cases of blindness, and 400,000 deaths a year. But, for some years Jenner had been intrigued by local country lore which claimed that dairymaids never got smallpox.

 

This was because they tended to catch cowpox, which appeared to offer them protection against smallpox. Cowpox is a mild viral infection in cows, causing a few similar symptoms, although to a far lesser degree and without apparent discomfort. Humans developed a few weeping pocks on their hands and felt unwell for a few days.

Edward Jenner

 

When Sarah Nelmes, a local dairymaid, came to see Jenner in 1796 with pocks on her hand, the doctor took the opportunity to gather some of the pus. He tested his theory on the eight-year-old son of his gardener, a boy called James Phipps, by making scratches on one of James’ arms and infecting these with some of the material from Sarah’s hand.

 

A few days later, James developed mild cowpox, but soon recovered. Six weeks later, Jenner inoculated the child with smallpox, which had no effect. Jenner concluded that James was now immune, and to prove his theory, inoculated the poor kid another twenty times. James never caught the disease, which might be considered reward enough, but Jenner later gave him a free lease on a cottage in Berkeley.

 

Jenner published an account of his vaccination of James Phipps in 1798, becoming the first person to do so, although he was not the first to carry out vaccination using cowpox. Most notably, Benjamin Jesty of Dorset in 1774, inoculated three members of his family, and Peter Plett from Kiel in what is now Germany in 1791, inoculated three children.

 

Up until the new method of vaccination with cowpox became the norm, the only protection against smallpox was variolation. (See, I promised I’d come back to that.) This practise developed in Asia, possibly as early as the 16^thCentury. It involved exposing someone to a very small dose of smallpox—taken either from a smallpox patient, or a recently variolated patient. The idea was that this person would contract a mild form of the disease, and would then be immune.

 

Usually, scabs from the smallpox pustules were dried and then blown up the nose of the person being inoculated, which sounds delightful. It wasn’t without risk, either—between one and two percent of those receiving variolation died as a result. Still better odds than catching full-blown smallpox, however.

 

By 1700, variolation had spread from Asia to Africa, India, and the Ottoman Empire. It was in Constantinople in Turkey that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu first learned about variolation. Lady Mary (1689-1762) was the wife of the British ambassador. She survived a bout of smallpox in 1715, but had suffered the subsequent scarring. Her brother had died of the disease two years earlier.

 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Perhaps because of these events, she was keen to protect her own children. In 1718, while still in Turkey, she had her five-year-old son inoculated by a process of ‘engraftment’—inserting smallpox under the skin. This was carried out with the help of Charles Maitland, the surgeon at the Embassy. Her daughter was too young to undergo the procedure at the time. It was only after Lady Mary returned to England, and a smallpox epidemic broke out in 1721, that she had her daughter inoculated by this process of variolation, named after the smallpox virus itself. Again, Charles Maitland carried out the procedure—the first in Britain—which was much publicised.

 

Sadly, it was also greeted with much condemnation from the exclusively male scientific and medical communities. They were unimpressed by the fact that, in Turkey, variolation was usually carried out by elderly women with no education. Lady Mary was able to convince the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach, to take it seriously, however. In August of 1721, seven condemned prisoners awaiting execution at Newgate were offered variolation as an alternative. Not surprisingly, they accepted. All survived the experience, and were released.

 

In the East, inoculates knew that they must self-isolate after undergoing variolation, as live smallpox was used. In England this was not always understood or advised by medical practitioners. Nor was the dose of smallpox being administered always as tiny it was supposed to be, and some doctors bled and purged their patients unnecessarily. As a result, there were a number of deaths and complications. Politics and misinformation became involved, and Lady Mary’s reputation suffered as a result.

 

Nevertheless, having introduced smallpox inoculation to Western medicine, she continued to campaign for its widespread implementation. Edward Jenner built on the foundations of her work to come up with his vaccine. By doing so, on May 8^th 1980, the World Health Assembly announced that the world was free of smallpox.

 

This year, it is 300 years since Lady Mary’s three-year-old daughter, also Mary, became the first person in the West to be protected against a deadly virus. To celebrate, award-winning TV drama and comedy producer, Jo Willett has penned a new biography of Lady Mary, celebrating the remarkable life of this early feminist among the greatest politicians, writers, artists, and thinkers of her day. Sounds like a brilliant story.

 

THE PIONEERING LIFE OF MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU: SCIENTIST AND FEMINIST

 

This week’s Word of the Week is vaccination, created by Edward Jenner to describe his new treatment against smallpox. It comes from vacca, Latin for cow, from the cowpox virus Jenner used. (Although, Jenner experimented with horsepox virus as well, and when vials from 1902—which had contained the oldest known strains of smallpox vaccine—were subjected to DNA sequencing in 2017, scientists discovered it was more closely related to horsepox. So, perhaps that should be equusination?)

The Aegean Island of Naxos Gets A Deadly Twist

Jeff––Saturday

 

This coming Tuesday, April 6^th, is the release date for my new Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Greece-based mystery-thriller, A DEADLY TWIST. The pandemic delayed its publication by a year, and during those twelve months a lot changed in our world. Yet relative to the storied past of the Aegean island on which this eleventh book in the series is based, twelve months is but the blink of an eye.

 

Naxos is the greenest and largest island in the Cyclades—four times the size of its neighbor Mykonos (my home island)—and boasts the Cyclades' two largest mountains. It is where Zeus was raised, Ares took refuge, and Dionysius called home.

 

For more recent history buffs, Cycladic life began on Naxos before Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, and flourished as a society through most of antiquity up until the Persians ended its long independent run. Then came the Athenians, the Spartans, and a string of other Greeks, followed by the Romans, Venetians, Turks and a touch of Russians, though the most lasting influence is clearly Venetian. A thirteenth century Venetian castle still dominates the hilltop overlooking the ancient harbor and capital town of Naxos—called Chora by the locals.  

The island is agriculturally blessed--deep into its seventh millennium of cultivation--and since antiquity, famous for its marble and emery mines. Down in its valleys, rows of olive sweep up against fields of copper, emerald, and sage, while stone walls streaked with age hold planted terraces snugly in place against sharply slanted hillsides.  Once up in the mountains, roads turn to twists, switchbacks, and panoramic views of long fertile valleys, slices of a distant deep blue sea, and vast stretches of sandy beaches. 

 

Naxos presents a many faceted setting for a mystery thriller.  It is filled with scores of villages deeply proud of their individual histories, and a population forced to confront how best to preserve its past in balance with the demands of tourism hungry to capitalize on the beauty of Naxos' landscape and the seductive magic of its ways.

About an hour due south of Mykonos by ferry, I've been there several times on day trips with friends from Mykonos, but August 2018 was Barbara's first visit. I’d offered to take her wherever she'd like on her birthday, and she picked Naxos. Once again she choose wisely, and I benefited simply by going along for the ride.

We met a lot of wonderful folk--some of whom we now feel as if we've known forever--and have returned several times more. I’m not surprised that my enchantment with Naxos and its people led me to write this novel, and it’s filled with places and stories we discovered through our friends. It’s immersed in Naxos history, adoring of its places, and revealing of its characters and secrets.

May Naxians forgive me for bringing murder to their paradise, but as the line goes, Murder is Everywhere.

Here’s a bit about its general story line:

 

Athens journalist Nikoletta Elia is dispatched by her editor to Naxos to report on the simmering conflict between island advocates for expanded tourism and its passionate preservationists.

There, she’s approached by a fan who claims to be the computer underground’s most successful hacker, taking credit for several suspicious deaths Nikotetta had written about and suspected to be murders. The hacker claims to have abandoned his evil ways, and wants the world to know that there are people out there like him. Plain, seemingly ordinary folk, paid to do very bad things for calculated purposes without leaving a trace of guilt or motive.

She agrees to write the article. Days after the story runs, her editor calls on Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis to investigate Nikoletta’s sudden disappearance, as an unidentified male body is discovered at the base of a cliff outside her hotel. Kaldis sends his deputy, Yianni, and soon leads turn into more dead bodies in this twisting tale of greed, corruption, and murder that puts Kaldis, his family, and members of his team in the path of a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to keep dark secrets buried—forever. 

 For more info.

––Jeff

Jeff’s Upcoming ZOOM Events

Saturday, April 10th @ 4PM EDT 

                Book Carnival, Orange CA

 

Friday, April 23rd @ 4PM EDT

                  Poisoned Pen Bookstore, Scottsdale AZ, with David Wagner

The News Of The Week

 

So what has been happening in the world this week.

By that I mean yesterday.

The Scottish Government released a new pound note with Billy Connolly on it

Volkswagen rebranded themselves in some countries and Voltswagen to promote their new range of electric cars.

                                         

The Argos chain store announced the new green way to cut the lawn, a treadmill and lawnmower in one.

The World Wildlife Fund has added the Unicorn to its list of endangered species.

It was announced that Jacob Rees Mogg is learning Welsh on duo lingo

                                                           

A forward thinking company has launched a concrete mattress which never wears out and eliminated dust mites this is because so many people are suffering from bad posture after lockdown.

The sandwich store Subway has launched a helping hand gadget, a small basket that clips round the wrist so that you can eat your foot long sub whilst scanning Social Media.

The archbishop of Canterbury said that he did do a private blessing for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex dressed as Elvis Presley complete with guitar and slick back hair.

                                               

Pizza Hut announced that it was fitting all delivery bikes with a built in ice cream factory that will bring the service to customers doors – the travelling Sunday bar will be trailed during the summer.

The sponsors of the Wimbledon final Robinsons have requested that the grass in the centre court is dyed bright purple to publicise their new blackcurrant squash. It took 160 litres of non toxic paint.

The official twitter account of Paddington announced that he’s gone off Marmalade.

                                                             

Alex Salmond has launched his own party for Scottish Independence.

                                          

Oh no... wait a minute.....

Caro

The trauma of helplessness

 Stanley - Thursday

This week saw the start of the trial of ex Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt for over 9 minute on the neck of George Floyd. Floyd had been shopping in a local convenience store and had apparently passed a counterfeit $20 bill. He is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd in south Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. 

George Floyd

Derek Chauvin

Floyd's death sparked protests around the world against police brutality and discrimination against Blacks as the Black Lives Matter movement exploded into visibility. In Minneapolis, the protests included the burning of many local businesses and a local police station.

I live four blocks from the heavily barricaded courthouse, and I was concerned what could happen outside the building. So far, however, protests have been very quiet and orderly, as far as I know. May it continue that way.

There have been only three days of testimony, and the striking impression is not so much the testimony itself but the emotion shown by those who were bystanders.

Darnella Frazier took the video that has now been seen millions of times, recording Officer Chauvin kneeling for at least nine minutes on Floyd's neck, despite Floyd gasping that he couldn't breathe. She said in a faltering voice:

"When I look at George Floyd, I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles, because they are all Black. I have a Black father, I have a Black brother, I have Black friends. I look at that and I look at how it could have been one of them."

It was clear that Frazier's trip to buy some snacks at the convenience store will change her life forever, and it appeared that the experience had affected her deeply.

Frazier's 9-year-old cousin, Judeah Reynolds, also testified, saying "I was sad and kind of mad and it felt like it was stopping his breathing and it was hurting him." It is hard to imagine the emotional impact of both witnessing the event and being put on the stand.

61-year-old Charles MacMillan broke down in tears when he watched himself on video, trying to calm the situation as Chauvin and three other police officers tried to get Floyd into the police car. 

The 17-year-old store clerk who refused to accept the $20 bill, said he "disbelief and guilt" because  "If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided."

Another 17-year-old, Alyssa Funari, who witnessed Floyd's death and also made a recording with her cell phone, testified "It was difficult because I felt like there wasn't really anything I could do. As a bystander I was powerless there, and I was failing to do anything."

And finally, there was an 0ff-duty firefighter, Genevieve Hansen, who tried to offer help to Floyd, but was waved off by the police officers. "There is a man being killed, and I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was not provided that right," she said. Hansen also testified that Chauvin appeared "very comfortable with the majority of his weight balanced on top of Mr. Floyd." 

Hansen then told the court what steps she would have taken had she been given access. When asked whether she was able to do any of the steps, she said she wasn't able to.

How did it make you feel?" the prosecutor asked.

"Totally distressed."

"Were you frustrated?"

"Yes," Hansen said, beginning to cry.

The level of distress felt by all of these witnesses was striking, all of whom were mere bystanders. By happenstance they became involved in an incident that will leave a permanent, indelible scar, partly because they either could not assist Floyd or were prevented from helping him.