But what if?

Michael - Thursday

I’m in northern Queensland on a bird watching trip. I think you'll agree that the Buff-breasted Paradise-kingfisher was worth the 10k miles of travel!

Buff-breasted Paradise-Kingfisher.
Photo Ian Wilson

This is tropical Australia—superb rain forests and humidity close to 100%. As soon as the temperature drops a bit, it starts to drizzle; half an hour later the sun is out and everything is full of steamy life again. Here's a picture of the ‘garden’ in front of the house we rented near Kuranda, north of Cairns.

It’s pretty hard to spot birds in the forest because it’s so dense, and it’s impossible to see animals unless they come out into a clearing. The Cassowary is a case in point. These flightless birds stand 5 foot high and they live in the forest, but you seldom see them through the thick foliage. (We were lucky and saw a couple out near the road.) I suppose one of the things about mystery writers is that they always look at anything unusual with a touch of but-what-if. With the forest so dense, much of what goes on there must be secret. What about murder? How long would it take to discover the body? Would it ever be discovered? The undergrowth is too thick for people to bash through, maybe a dog?

Another thing about mystery writers is that we know that our readers expect believable plots and characters. Coincidences exist in real life, but it’s bad taste to use them as a plot resolver. So how about this story? Two people, both members of a French group exploring the Barrier Reef off Cairns, die at the same time while snorkeling. Both apparently had preexisting medical conditions, but snorkeling isn’t particularly strenuous. It would be easy to believe one death—tragic and surprising though it would be. But two deaths at the same time? Of two unrelated people who had been fine on the trip up until that point? Then add a scuba diver drowning only a few hundred meters away a couple of days later. No mystery writer could have coincidences like that and get away with it. However, there’s an obvious and entirely believable explanation—suggested by a specialist and immediately rejected out of hand by the tour operator, the company operating the snorkeling boat, and the tourism minister.

At this time of the year as the water grows warmer, this coast gets an influx of ‘stingers’ – small jellyfish-like creatures with poisonous streamers. There's not much hope of spotting them; the most deadly could fit onto your finger nail. Some feel like nothing more than a tingle, some can leave a nasty welt and burning pain, and one can kill.

Irukandji are tiny

The poison of the Irukandji jelly fish streamers takes some time to work, but then causes heart problems and ultimately cardiac arrest. People swimming in these waters ought to wear special ‘stinger suits’ – mesh material to keep the creatures at bay. One of the two French tourists was, the other wasn’t. Sometimes people prefer wet suits which aren’t as effective against the stings.  I don’t know what the scuba diver was wearing.

Stinger suits -
note that faces and feet aren't covered 

Consider your verdict. An unfortunate Irukandji attack as proposed by the expert. Or coincidence as proposed by the tourist personnel—who have no vested interest in making people believe that the reef is absolutely safe, of course. And what if one wanted to murder someone with a weak heart using an almost undetectable poison? A mystery plot opportunity. Just don’t kill two characters the same way at the same time!

Lake Eacham. Idyllic?

There’s been another mystery up here too. Lake Eacham is one of the spectacular crater lakes that grace the Tablelands – higher country inland from Cairns. Formed by repeated volcanic explosions as a result of magma being forced out under water, they are very deep and surrounded by thick forest. Some eighteen months ago a man out on a kayak disappeared here, believed drowned. Under the conditions prevalent at this lake, the body was expected to float to the service after around ten days. It didn’t, leading to speculation that the body was somehow wedged below the surface—perhaps in a passage joining with another lake. Yet there is no evidence of such a passage and expert divers here deny its existence. One went on searching the lake without success for weeks after the incident.

A few weeks ago some swimmers found the body on the shore of the lake. No one suspects foul play and that’s the end of the true, tragic story. Only the experts are puzzled about the strange length of time the body remained hidden under the water and about what eventually brought it to the surface.

But let’s play but-what-if. Suppose he didn’t drown—after all the lake isn’t usually rough. It turns out the man had an alias (true fact). Perhaps other things were going on, perhaps he faked his death, but perhaps the bad guys found him and closed the loop, dumping his body in the lake weighted with stones, expecting the weights to come loose in due course – eighteen months in this case. Probably forensics could tell, but who would look that closely? I’m not suggesting for one moment that that is what happened, I’m just discovering a plot in a tragic true event.

I’ll finish with this spectacular Curtain Fig. A murder took place here too, but no humans were involved. What plots does it bring to your mind?

Into the Rainy Jungle

Sujata Massey

It's been raining for a week solid in Baltimore. First we got the side-effects from Hurricane Ian, and now we are in the windy grip of a Nor' Easter. A constant deluge can be annoying, but I know that my wet socks are nothing compared to the situations suffered by those farther south in the US, and in Pakistan, where thirty percent of the landmass has been swallowed by water. At the same time I cannot forget the drought in East Africa so poignantly described by Annamaria Alfieri last Monday. Global warming is a literal disaster, and some people still don't believe in it!  I'm sharing a blogpost dating 2016, when I visited India late in the rainy season to research THE SATAPUR MOONSTONE.

Even though it's raining all the time, monkeys are on it.

Specifically, they are on the job, watching the comings and goings of people like me to the hill towns of Lonavala and Matheran, hill stations in the Sahyadri mountains southeast of Mumbai. Slowly, I eat a piece of the local peanut brittle, taking note of how these bonnet macaques seem to be working in teams to keep the local stray dogs from getting close to me--and my food. A friend warned me that monkeys who think you're teasing them can get mad enough to grab things out of your hand--even non-edible things, like camera and cell phones.

Even though it can still be rainy in October, the fall is a great time to visit India; there are plenty of seats on the plane, and while the weather isn't winter-wonderful as in winter, it isn't insanely hot. Therefore, I have slipped out of my ordinary life in Baltimore and traveled solo to India for some necessary book research.

I based my research in Maharashtra, the beautiful southwestern state with mountains and sea and the country's artistic heart. during British rule, Maharashtra was part of Bombay Presidency, a collection of several provinces overseen by a British governor based in  Bombay. My next book features a young woman lawyer leaving her hometown of Bombay for special assignment into these hills. She likes monkeys all right--but she's not interested in getting close to leopards and tigers.

The Sahyadri Mountain range isn't a difficult journey I planned out a visit to include the hill towns of Lonavala, Khandala, and staying for a few nights at a historic hotel in Matheran, a hill station that had never built actual roads. I'd heard it would be a five-kilometer trek from the car park to my lodgings.   Because of it being uphill, going on horseback was recommended.  

At  Lonavala, and the sky cleared enough to show some detail of the striation of the hills. 

 I'd planned to take a regular train from Mumbai and switch to the historic narrow-gauge railway that ran up the steep hill to Matheran, a famous old British hill station. Fortunately, I checked in with a travel agent before getting on the train. A few months earlier, the toy train had been washed off the tracks during rainy season and was still out of commission.  However, the driver I'd hired to help me in Mumbai said he'd bring me as far as his car was allowed, and he would meet me on the day I was ready to leave. 

Once my driver, Namdev, brought me up the steep misty roads to Matheran, I realized it could be very easy to get lost among the thousands of twisty trees and thick mists. It resembled the set for a horror film. Still, I kept going. This was a part of India not ruined by tourism. But I decided not to walk or ride alone to the inn. I would get there, paying for local assistance. 

My driver and interpreter, Namdev was a good sport about riding a horse

The horseback ride was slow and waterlogged, but Namdev went with me as well, due to my nerves. A male guide lead the party and two teenage boys held the horse's reins--either to reassure us, or because the horses really didn't want to make the trip. It was over an hour of slow, careful plodding until we reached a place called Verandah in the Forest,  heritage hotel occupying the home of Captain Harry Barr. He's the Englishman who built the second bungalow in Matheran. The house, which features a thirty-foot ceiling in the sitting room, is a period model of elegance and function.

My hope had been to explore Matheran and see gorgeous hill views from specific points. And according to everything I'd read, October was not rainy season anymore; it was supposed to be a shoulder season between rain and winter. Yet during the time in  October that I traveled, Matheran was still gripped in late monsoon season. Perfectly normal, everyone said. After my first twenty-four hours in Matheran, the rain fell so hard and constantly that it soon became the most irritating noise. But at least I could while away the hours in the old hotel, drawing out an architectural layout that would become the plan for Circuit House, the place where Perveen first stays when she's visiting Satapur.

Waterfalls are everywhere in these mountains that spill over with rains.  

The historic gates to Verandah in the Forest

Another view of the bungalow amid constant rain 

Hundreds of different kinds of trees and reptiles in the Maharashtran forest. There was a delightful rain forest feeling everywhere.

The actual verandah where one can sit and watch the rains

Verandah in the Forest is furnished with Victorian and Edwardian Indian furniture with a Parsi aesthetic based on its many years of ownership by a Parsi family. This was the tallest bench I ever encountered--and with such a grand mirror and top to it. In the end, I thought the piece was a carpenter's desire to try to live up to the scale of the place.

The rain stopped for only about 2 hours during my three day stay in Matheran. To take advantage, I rushed out with another woman staying at the bungalow. Still, the mists did not left--and because of the plateau-like structure of the hill station, you can't really roam around without danger of slipping, or maybe even  falling over the edge into a dam. 

A friendly local  man explained that stones are taken out of the dam wall during rainy season to allow water to spill into the lake and not flood the land. Because rainy season was drawing to an end, he was tightening up the wall with missing stones. He was happy about the change of season.

And I was melancholy. What do you do at a romantic historic resort, when you are one person and it is keeps raining? The only other guests were couples on anniversaries who were lost in their planned event.

The hotel had no wifi or telephone. The sum total of reading material were three books on a table in the sitting room--and they were books of photographs, not novels or memoirs or histories. I felt sincere regret I hadn't brought some books to leave for others. And the only book I had with me was the one I was editing on my laptop. 

So: I wrote. I took overly long naps where I fell asleep listening to the relentless rain and would be jarred awake by thunder. I understood what it might mean to be confined to a place to months on end because rain meant that the paths down the mountain were washed out. 

I got an excellent sense of my next book.

over here in Paris, it's a little warmer than Iceland

Apologies for being MIA, will blame it on jet lag, time differences and yet, my blogmates in Iceland at IcelandNoir put me to shame and are posting faithfully. I'm here doing an Aimée Leduc tour of Paris visiting the sites where Aimée's investigations happen.

I arrived in Paris a few days before the year anniversary of the tragedies at the Bataclan, Cafe de La Cambodge and le Carrilon, Stade de France. The weather hovered cool, grey pearl skies, a flash of blue and the nights chill. The mood sombre, undercurrent of another expected attack (I heard later there were three arrests that never made the media) and expectant in some way. Most of my friends and it seemed much of Paris kept it low key, Sting did a concert at the Bataclan to reopen it. A moment of silence was held for the victims, the President Holland and Madame la Marie, Anne Hidalgo laid wreaths at the sites now with plaques holding the victim's name. I can't imagine the pain of those family members and friends directly affected. But name dropping here, the day before the anniversary I almost 'ran into' Hollande at le Prefecture with the head of all things police and counter terrorism. I waved and he waved back smiling.

There's a sense of police and law enforcement fatigue, everywhere on high alert for a year now and the Uzi toting soldiers look younger and younger and even talk to us now. Through my friend Marie-Pierre, we were invited to hang with the fireman stationed in Ile de la Cité.

The visit turned to dinner prepared in their 'canteen' and it's true about how well fireman cook, tours after hours of the high courts where it seemed Napoleon still ruled if the murals, fresco's and entwined N's in the woodwork are anything to go by. He designed the Penal code. Still rules from his crypt at Invalides, they say. We went underground from the holding cells to the booking jail that lead to the court.

Then a visit to closed Saint Chapelle and I'm holding the keys and we climbed to the top of 'arrow' tower. Then the bell was going to ring and we had to scurry down the medieval ladders before we became deaf. Cara - Tuesday in Paris

Iceland Noir Redux

Annamaria on Monday

They made me a Brit!

I had the delight of traveling with Barbara Zilly to and from Iceland for the fabulous Iceland Noir conference and of spending time with her while there.  Jeff was there too, which was perfectly lovely most of the time.

Zoe said it in words so beautifully yesterday.  I offer you a pictorial report.

The Town

 

Reykjavik 9:10 AM

The Conference

The British Ambassador spoke of his love of crime fiction

The Great Val McDermid, our most honoured participant

The ****ing Swearing Panel, heartstoppingly hilarious

The Tribal Celebratory Bits

Me, Val, Zoe--three crime-writing granddaughters of coal miners!

Exploring the Gorgeousness of Iceland

Bridge Between Continents, between the North
American and Eurasian tectonic plates

The end.  I am happy but in need of a contemplative lie-down.