DIGGING UP OLD CASES

by Rob Lopresti

Imagine for one moment that Alexander McCall Smith’s detective Mma Ramotswe were to announce that she had reviewed the Baskerville case and Sherlock Holmes got the whole thing wrong. Or perhaps Robert B. Parker’s Spencer discovered that Sam Spade screwed up on the murder of Miles Archer.

Welcome to the world of the archaeologist.

An anthropologist, according to a friend of mine in that field, can only be sure of two things. One: she will die. Two: everything she wrote will be proven wrong. A career is considered successful if those events happen in that order.

And archaeology, of course, is a subfield of anthropology.

Getting down and dirty

This is by way of explaining that I just spent two weeks volunteering at a dig in Israel. Ramat Rachel is a kibbutz between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and back in the forties the kibbutzniks decided to build a water tower on a hill. As happens on occasion in that part of the world, the diggers found some very old ruins, ranging from the Iron Age (ca. 700 BC) to Early Muslim (ca. 1000 AD).

The first archaeologist brought in to investigate was Yohanan Aharoni, who spent several years on it and uncovered a palace with a citadel (small fortress) in front of it. Aharoni concluded that this palace belonged to King Hezekiah of Judah. Years later the area was made available to the public as an archaeological park and they set up some very striking monuments that mark the corners of the king’s building.

The past keeps changing

For the past four years a new dig has been going on at Ramat Rachel, led by Oded Lipschits of the University of Tel Aviv, and, as you have no doubt guessed, a lot of what Aharoni wrote has been overtaken by events. Those lovely monuments are no longer considered to be at the corners of the building. And as for the purpose of the building… why would a king build a palace three miles from his main abode? Lipschits’ theory is that this was the headquarters of the occupying force of the various empires that ruled Judea, starting with the Assyrians around 700 BC. Significantly, the place was destroyed by fire around the time of the Maccabean rebellion (i.e. Chanukah).

But Aharoni isn’t the only one who got overtaken by very old events. At the beginning of the dig the bosses told us volunteers that this, the fourth year, was the first time they were confident they understood the site.

A week later they had changed their minds about at one of the sections. In this picture Oded Lipschits is standing in a huge trench that no one expected to find. Apparently this was a foundation trench for an outside wall, but why was there a wall in that spot at all? Hmm…

“What’s going on”

This is what makes field archaeology so exciting, of course. You swing a pickaxe and you get nothing for your trouble but dirt. Swing it again and perhaps out pops a complete cooking pot, or an ancient coin or, just maybe, something that overturns everything you thought you knew about the place. There is no way to know what the next swing will bring.

All the archaeologists at the site used a phrase I found amusing. “We have to dig down here,” they would say, “and find out what’s going on with this spot.” And I would think “nothing’s going on. There’s just dirt, rocks, and pottery.”

But I understand what they mean, because when you are down in the hole turning over the dirt, it does feel as if amazing things are occurring, one bucketful at a time.

Here is a live blog done by a volunteer with much more energy than I had. Next week. I’ll talk about some of our discoveries.

Regular readers of Criminal Brief may recall a recent column by Melodie describing in tragicomic detail her recent visit to the hospital. Well, Melodie has had to return briefly, since there were some complications from her fall, but we’re expecting her back at full vigor soon. In the meantime, she asked me if I could find someone to cover her column this week, and after much cogitation on the issue, I decided to cover it with Melodie’s own words as well as some words said about her first novel. So he-e-e-e-e-re’s Melodie! —JLW

BIOGRAPHY

by Melodie Johnson Howe

I was born in Los Angeles and grew up under the relentless sun and the dusty palm trees dreaming of becoming a great writer. Then Hollywood discovered me. At twenty-one I did a screen test for Universal Studios. Never having acted professionally, I somehow managed to get a seven-year contract. In that same month I married Bones Howe, record producer and bachelor father of three small children. At twenty-one you can do anything.

In my first acting job I was shot dead in the titles of a TV movie. They covered me with a sheet and carted me off to an ambulance. Only my hair showed. But in my next role I starred in a TV movie called “Kicks” where I shot Mickey Rooney dead. Over the next few years I acted in such movies as: “The Ride To Hangman’s Tree,” co-starring with James Farentino; “Coogan’s Bluff” with Clint Eastwood; “Gaily, Gaily,” directed by Norman Jewison; “Rabbit Run” with James Caan; and “The Moonshine War,” co-starring with Alan Alda.

My most favorite line I said in a movie came from “The Moonshine War.” Sitting by the side of a river and kissing Alan Alda, I murmured, “I have a stone bruise on my ass.”

The movie was taken from the Elmore Leonard novel of the same title. I met him on the set and he autographed a copy of his book for me. I wished I could tell him that I wanted to be a writer, but I was too shy. Years later he and I would be in the same anthology for The Best American Mystery Stories in 1997. My life had come full circle.

I was acting and raising my new family. At night I attended the UCLA Extension where I studied creative writing. I still wanted to be a writer.

In 1980 I wrote a play titled “The Lady of the House,” which was produced by the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and starred Salome Gens, Nan Martin, and Carol Lockatell. But this first success as a writer didn’t stop me from acting. I was now doing it all; even TV commercials. I sold everything: cars, shampoo, deodorant, Kool Aid, and beer.

One day I went on an interview for a dog food commercial. I entered a room filled with middle-aged blondes. We sized one another up as we studied our dog food script. It was then I wondered what I was doing with my creative life. I put the script down and walked out of the room to the surprised looks of the other blondes, and never returned to acting.

A few years later I wrote my first mystery novel, The Mother Shadow, featuring Claire Conrad and Maggie Hill. It was rejected by seven publishers and then accepted by Viking.

This gem of a mystery introduces the improbable sleuthing duo of Maggie Hill and Claire Conrad, reminiscent of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin. Thanks to Howe’s stylish writing in the hard-boiled tradition, it is both gripping and entertaining, with wonderfully vivid characters and a deft plot abounding with twists and turns. Acting as secretary to wealthy Ellis Kenilworth, 35-year-old, divorced ex-writer Maggie Hill witnesses the drafting of a codicil to Ellis’s will bequeathing his rare coin collection to someone outside the family, Claire Conrad. Ellis asks Maggie to keep the sole copy of the codicil while he lunches; he then kills himself, leaving Maggie, with the codicil in her purse, to discover the body and a suicide note. Later, when both note and codicil disappear, Maggie visits Claire Conrad and learns that the elegant eccentric, who dresses alternately in black or white and sports a walking stick, is a renowned detective. Together, the women, aided by Claire’s debonair butler/bodyguard, Boulton, penetrate the miasma enveloping the Kenilworth clan, where they encounter duplicity, heinous secrets and murder. In a class by themselves, Maggie and Claire promise a smashing series. Literary Guild alternate.

–Publishers Weekly, Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Mother Shadow was nominated for an Edgar, Anthony, and Agatha.

Shortly after the publication of my second Claire Conrad / Maggie Hill novel, Beauty Dies, I ran into one of my ex-Hollywood agents who asked me what I was doing. I told him I was a published author. And he said, “Why do women facing menopause always write books?”

Hooray for Hollywood.

I’m still married to Bones Howe — and they said it wouldn’t last. The three children who are now adults still call me mother. And their children call me grandmama. And I’m still writing: short stories about murder and Hollywood, and a new novel about a middle-aged actress.

Hooray for Hollywood!

IT’S A GAS¹

by James Lincoln Warren

I first met the inexhaustible co-Chair of Bouchercon 2008, super-fan Judy Bobalik, immediately following the 2007 Edgar Banquet, i.e., a year ago last April. I was hanging out with the gifted novelist John Billheimer, whom I’ve known and respected for several years, and Judy, among others, was hanging out with him. Eventually we closed down the bar and moved the party to John’s room at the Grand Hyatt. The conversation was of an extremely high caliber, as everyone was witty, knowledgeable, and articulate, particularly Judy, who has a tongue like a red-hot razor and has refined the rare and admirable gift of delivering the well-turned insult to a veritable science. Take it from me, who have some small talent in this ungentle, but not therefore to be despised, art—she could have instructed G. B. Shaw and Dorothy Parker to their aspersive enrichment. I really, really like her.

Anyway, Saturday night I (and several others) received the following email message from her:

From: Judy Bobalik

To: Linda Landrigan, John Floyd, Melodie Johnson-Howe, Leigh Lundin, Steve Steinbock, James Lincoln Warren, Angela Zeman

Subject: Bouchercon Friday panel

1:30pm-2:30pm JUMPING JACK FLASH (The Rolling Stones) Short story panel. Linda Landrigan(M), John Floyd, Melodie Johnson-Howe, Leigh Lundin, Steve Steinbock, James Lincoln Warren, Angela Zeman

I confess I was extremely relieved to get this e-missive, on account of I’d turned myself into something of a gadfly incessantly buzzing in poor program chair (and long-time member of PHARTS) Jon Jordan’s ear trying to arrange this very panel. The perceptive Gentle Reader will notice that every single member of the panel is a Criminal Brief columnist except for Linda Landrigan, the Editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

The idea of having a panel consisting entirely of Criminal Briefers was born out of the idea of getting us all together in one place. This in turn was driven by the fact that we’re all over the United States. Steve lives in New England, Rob in the Pacific Northwest, Leigh in Florida, Deborah in Texas, Angela in New York, John in Mississippi, and Melodie and I in Southern California. Several months ago, somebody—I’m pretty sure it was Deborah—posed the question, “So when are we all going to get together?”

I suggested Bouchercon in Baltimore this year as a likely place, and my colleagues quickly agreed. This suggested the possibility of doing a panel together. I mentioned it to Linda and she volunteered to moderate. Things were looking up.

And then not so much. It turned out that neither Deborah nor Rob could attend. John said he was obligated to do a local book tour. Leigh wasn’t sure he could afford it, and quite reasonably didn’t want to commit a lot of money on the gamble he’d be assigned to a panel.

You see, the thing about Bouchercon is that every writer who attends is desperate to get on a panel, because that’s the surest way to connect with potential readers and sell books. Panels are always followed by book signings featuring the panelists. Because there are so many writers and so few rooms, some writers inevitably do not get to be on a panel—it almost happened to me. Back at Bcon Chicago in 2005, I only got on a panel at the last minute because somebody else dropped out, and I was lucky. The one thing you can absolutely count on is that you won’t get on a panel if you don’t commit to attending first. You can’t tell the organizers, “I’ll come if I get on a panel,” since there are writers who have already registered waiting in the wings just salivating for that empty slot.

And finally, the organizers, despite being as truly wonderful as they are, somehow hadn’t noticed that they had scheduled the convention during Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn religious observance in Judaism. I figured that pretty well knocked Steve out of the running.

That left Linda, Angela, Melodie, and me.

But then I wrote to John and said, “You know, if you want to publicize your new book, there’s no better place than Bouchercon to do it.”

And the next thing I knew he was on board, not because my mercenary words had persuaded him, but because deep in his heart he wanted to go. He just needed a little push. John’s still doing his local book tour, but he’s flying in later specifically to be with us. Now there’s your Dixie chivalry.

Then Leigh was invited to stay with fellow Ellery Queen Readers’ Choice Award winner Dale C. Andrews, who lives within commuter distance of downtown Baltimore, which meant he wouldn’t have to cough up the exorbitant cost of a luxury hotel. Suddenly the budget was doable.

And lo and behold, it transpires that Steve’s deep spirituality cannot be measured merely by a calendar (although he informs me he will be attending Temple in Baltimore on the Day of Atonement—I bet he sees that as something of an adventure, a unique chance to experience spirituality in a different community).

So I wrote Jon Jordan again. Can you add these names? Pretty please?

And Judy answered. My dream of a Criminal Brief panel at Bouchercon had become a reality.

Perhaps the most eloquent reaction to the good news came from Angela Zeman: “OKAY, HOO- HAH!”

The only thing I’m not sure about is the title of the panel: “JUMPING JACK FLASH (The Rolling Stones)”. Does this mean that all the panels are named after rock ’n’ roll songs? It kind of makes you wonder who’s on “STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (Led Zeppelin)” or “HELTER SKELTER (The Beatles)”, don’t it? Or how about “ANARCHY IN THE U.K. (The Sex Pistols)” , “WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE (Bon Jovi)”, and “I FOUGHT THE LAW (AND THE LAW WON) (The Bobby Fuller Four/The Clash)?

Does this also mean that the official soundtrack to Criminal Brief is a tune by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (with some help from Bill Wyman for the tune’s signature riff), and not one of those lovely gruesome folk songs Rob has called our attention to? Hey, I don’t even like the Rolling Stones—I’m more of a Queen/Jethro Tull/Emerson, Lake & Palmer progressive rock type. But that particular song’s okay, I guess. At least it ain’t “Let It Bleed.”

But no doubt about it, I definitely regret that Deborah and Rob won’t be there. I don’t see how even John’s stately Southern accent can replace Deborah’s musical Texas twang, and let’s face it, nobody but Rob can rock the house with an autoharp. You guys will be sorely missed. I promise we will lift our glasses in salute to you when we’re all at dinner together that evening. (At the Afghan restaurant suggested by Baltimorean Laura Lippman, guys—I’ll make the reservation.).

And Gentle Reader, just because two of our colleagues can’t make it doesn’t let you off the hook. I expect to see you there: October 10, 2008, at 1:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Baltimore City Center Hotel. No excuses! If you haven’t already, register now. Aloha.

1. Despite the portrait to the left, this title is not a reference to the eponymous MAD Magazine song, but rather to the lyrics of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. —JLW

AGGIE

by Leigh Lundin

Whew! After a week of solid rain from Tropical Storm Fay, I glimpsed the sun! My house is a disaster, but I see sun. With UPS battery backup, I took advantage of the storm to write and edit, which was gratifying since I felt drained after last week’s article. Unfortunately, T.S. Fay was harder on my new house guest.

Four weeks ago, I mentioned in the comments section that while writing my column, I discovered outside my door what I first thought was a deceased cat. (I can’t write "dead, deceased, expired" without thinking of John Cleese and his demised parrot.) It turned out it wasn’t a dead feline at all, but a very much living puppy. Heat exhausted, starved, but alive.

Not Aggie, but a similar 2007 model.

Sharon (by now you know Sharon is my friend Steve’s inamorata) identified the fur bundle as a King Charles spaniel. Not caring for my nicknames of "pee’bot", "stinker", and "badlands", Sharon suggested Agatha, which became Aggie. Steve insists Aggie stands for "aggravating".

Still, "pee’bot" gets used a lot and the name has nothing to do with another mystery character, Amelia Peabody. If you guessed "peeing robot machine", you’re on the right track.

She dribbles.

Dribbles constantly.

Especially when excited which is most of the time.

She has a bladder the size of a kidney bean. When she sees me, she yelps, runs, jumps, pees, and then rolls on her back right in it. (sigh) Experts assure me this will stop in a few weeks. Or months. Or a year. Or more.

She likes my bare feet, especially my left one. She licks my left foot, a sure way to win my heart. Then I discover my right foot is wet, the one she’s sitting upon. (sigh)

Little pee’bot. At least she’s glad to see me.

Valentine, not so much. My cockatoo does not like this little m-o-n-s-t-e-r at all. We have to spell "monster" around him because even the word frightens him. That’s another story.

Aggie has strange habits. After peeing, her idea of personal hygiene is licking. I guess I thought girl dogs would be different.

I was raised with big, outdoor farm dogs that went huntin’ and fishin’ and campin’, when they weren’t used for herdin’, all male. A boy and his dog roughhouse, play fetch, chase bicycles, and defend each other against peril. To a rural boy, a frou-frou dog is an oxymoron.

Aggie, genuine article

Not that Aggie is frou-frou. She almost broke my heart when I first put a leash on her. She cried pitifully. I had visions of casting off her collar as she galloped across the veldt as background music played Born Free. She isn’t frou-frou, but she’s tiny and dribbles like the oil pan of my Toyota Camry.

She’ll eat fire ants if I’m not watching her. For those of you who haven’t read Swamped, fire ants are a particularly nasty insect that came by ship from South America to Florida. Using acid, fire ants literally burn a hole through the skin. In large enough numbers, they are capable of killing animals– and humans. Aggie eats them.

She hates wet grass but she doesn’t mind the rain. For a puppy that continuously dribbles, I would have considered wet grass an advantage, but I guess she doesn’t know where it’s been. But liking rain? Go figure.

Steve found her difficult to photograph with his lo-res cell phone, since Aggie is small and mostly black. For the same reason, I fear stepping on her in the dark. At night, she disappears in grass, wet or not.

She’s not afraid of bigger dogs, be it Sharon’s shelties or Thrush’s Cosmo whose breed seems to be mainly Marmaduke. Jumping, Aggie reaches Cosmo’s chest.

Cosmo at Companion Camp, Pittsboro, NC

Cosmo is patient and gave her one of his rawhide chew bones. That’s when Aggie succumbed to bad behavior. She settled into Cosmo’s bed, gumming his rawhide chew. When Cosmo approached to see how she was doing, she snarled. When he got closer, she growled and leaped at him, snapping. This happened several times until Cosmo barked at her, "Enough! This is my house and you won’t behave this way."

Neighbors keep a pit bull behind a chain link fence. Cain is red, the size of a Shetland pony, and has jaws that could crunch cars. With a surly look, he’s intimidating as hell. After Aggie got over the shock of his bark, she wanted to visit, which was fine since she’d just had a bath.

Through the fence, she and Cain rubbed noses. I was pleased with how they were getting along, but I had no idea how well they liked each other until he turned and peed on her.

Steve says it means they’re engaged. Aaaaargh! I’d given her a bath only hours before. Couldn’t he have given her a ring?

I’m convinced my neighbors– they’re all Hispanic and find me amusing– are in a conspiracy. When I first made the rounds asking if they knew who the puppy belonged to, they seemed to have an idea and promised they’d check.

Tom Terrific and Mighty Manfred, the Wonder Dog

Within the hour, dog food and toys appeared at my door. When I asked a few days later if they’d found the owners, they patted my arm and said, "Better you keep her." After two hundred dollars in vet bills, I again asked if my neighbors managed to identify the owners. One of my neighbor ladies said, "They no good with pets. Aggie meant for you. She know what she doing."

She’s cute. Like Mighty Manfred, she spends a lot of time on her back with her feet in the air. With her ears spread, she reminds me of one of Spielberg’s Gremlins, Gizmo, the cute one.

She puts up with me. I think I’m stuck. Or she’s stuck. Or both. It’s kind of like being engaged. Girls congratulate you and guys roll their eyes and say, "Uh-oh."

As I write this article, Tropical Storm Fay is raining again, hard. The sun was short-lived. Aggie’s asleep with her head in my shoe. My left one. For once, she’s not dribbling.

Shhhhhh.

DEAR PRUDENCE

by Leigh Lundin

I’ve been watching Dear Prudence, a TV mystery movie that, with a ’sequel’ promised, could potentially become a series if they tighten it up.

Prudence McCoy is a Martha Stewart type (cast considerably nicer) who winds up in Wyoming instead of Connecticut. She’s cute but a bit ditzy. As mystery fans, we want to smack her when she mops up evidence, but she uses her knowledge of household tips to pick locks and otherwise further her investigation. She has a "solution for every problem", such as hemorrhoid cream for softening the skin under her eyes.

The writers set it apart from other mysteries in that her Watson, in this case her geeky lab assistant Nigel, is damn smart and at least her equal in investigation, which is refreshing. If they make him less stomach-churningly cowardly and childish, he’ll do nicely.

I can’t decide why Jessica Fletcher comes to mind, other than they’re both endearing well-dressed cosy-types on the Hallmark Channel. As protagonists, they’re otherwise dissimilar.

Dear Prudence doesn’t require a lot of brainpower, but it’s fun.

IMMORTALITY

by John M. Floyd

In a story I wrote some time ago, called “A Place in History,” a corporate executive embarks on a diabolical plot (what good plot isn’t?) to ensure that his name will be around long after he’s gone. When reminded by his Man Friday that he’s already a multimillion- aire, the businessman replies that wealth is irrelevant; recognition is what he seeks. “A CEO,” he says, “successful or not, is seldom remembered by the public. It’s the celebrities—Tom Hanks, Stephen King, Tiger Woods—they’re the ones who’ll live forever.”

He’s right, in a sense. “Forever” might be too strong a word, but those names will be around long after the artists themselves have given up the ghost. Even I, a very small frog in a very small pond, occasionally entertain the hope that my earthly efforts might somehow be remembered beyond my days. And since I have no acting or athletic skills, I suppose my only chance is my writing.

Farfetched, you say? Of course it is. But it’s also farfetched to think anyone would pay good money to read the things you dream up in the middle of the night, and that phenomenon does occur now and then. Why not admit that securing your own place in history is at least possible? If it never happens, so what? If it’s writers and writing we’re talking about, the process itself— and the constant struggle to get better at it— is still fun.

In some cases, of course, it’s the characters rather than the writers who live on. I would imagine more folks recognize the names Hannibal Lecter and Li’l Abner and Johnny B. Goode than the names Thomas Harris and Al Capp and Chuck Berry. That would be just fine with me. I’ve had a couple of short story “series” published in different magazines, and I’d love to think those recurring characters might one day be well known. The fact that they probably won’t doesn’t keep me from writing the stories.

What a source of pride it must be, for living authors or artists, to know already that things they’ve accomplished will be remembered and visible for years afterward. (Our CB colleague Melodie Johnson Howe comes to mind—I saw “Coogan’s Bluff” again on American Movie Classics the other night, and there she was, in one of the opening scenes. Melodie’s in the rare position of being recognizable from two different fields of endeavor.)

The following is a poem that fits this subject. (I know what you’re thinking: Floyd has a poem to fit every subject. But this one does apply especially to mystery/crime/suspense fiction.) I published it in Mystery Time several years ago, though I doubt I will ever be remembered for it. I almost forgot about it myself.

Its title is, appropriately, “Immortality”:

Philip Marlowe was a P.I.,
Kay Scarpetta an M.E.,
Ms. Warshawski was a V.I.,
Mr. Watson an M.D.

Clarice Starling was a pro,
Bernie Rhodenbarr a con,
Ranger Pigeon was an Anna,
Vito Corleone a Don.

Inspector Pitt was smart and cagey,
Spenser brash and bold,
Dave Robicheaux sleuthed in the heat,
Kate Shugak in the cold.

Some say these folks weren’t real—they lived
In books and books alone;
I say they’ll be alive long after
You and I are gone.

MURDER AT SEA

by Steve Steinbock

Aboard the Royal Caribbean ocean liner Rhapsody of the Sea, I understand how Agatha Christie got the inspiration for so many of her stories. With my sick mind, it’s easy to see murder everywhere I look. Opportunities for poisonings, tossing people overboard, and fatal injuries by blunt trauma abound everywhere.

I boarded the Rhapsody last Friday with my family as we set sail from the Port of Seattle toward Juneau. That was the same day my last column appeared on Criminal Brief, when I wrote about setting. I had hoped to be able to stay in cyber-touch while aboard, but at a cost of fifty-five cents a minute, I’m literally lost at sea as far as the Internet goes. (It’s Tuesday morning as I type this, and sometime Thursday I’ll splurge and go online to post this column). By the time you are reading this, we will be returning to port at Seattle, so I should be able to get back online and participate in discussions here at Criminal Brief.

Yesterday we set ashore at Skagway and took a three hour railway ride up the White Pass and Yukon Route. We climbed 2,865 feet to the White Pass Summit. Once again, Christie came to mind as we entered the first of two tunnels that cast our train car into total darkness for a minute. I was sitting with my son, Sam, when the scene unfolded for me: there he is, sitting inches from his dear-old dad as we plunge into darkness. The rumble of the train rings in his ears. When the car emerges from the other end of the tunnel, his father is nowhere to be seen. The conductor has been standing at one entrance to the car. A family from Connecticut has been blocking the platform at the opposite entrance. The windows are all sealed shut. Where could Steve have been secreted away? I felt like Dame May Whitty in “The Lady Vanishes.”

I brought several books along with me on the trip. Among them is a collection of short stories by Criminal Brief guest contributor Hal White. The stories feature Thaddeus Dean, a rotund and retired pastor living on an island in the Puget Sound. One of the stories, coincidentally, has Father Dean aboard a cruise liner in the Caribbean, where one of his companions is apparently tossed overboard and another apparently commits suicide from within her locked and sealed stateroom. The solution was a clever one, although I don’t see how it would be possible aboard the Rhapsody of the Sea. (At most hours, the passenger hallways are too busy to accommodate the strategy used by the killer. I assume that Father Dean’s smaller ship, with fewer passengers and crew members, made the murder feasible). Nevertheless, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Hal’s stories with a hero reminiscent of Father Brown and Rabbi Small, and their plotlines worthy of John Dickson Carr.

So far on this trip I haven’t caught sight of any whales, except when I look in the mirror, of course. This is my first cruise, and I should have heeded the warnings I received about the prevalence of good food.

(Update: since typing the above paragraph, we did catch several glimpses of whales, flashing their flukes and clearing their blowholes. Now I don’t feel so bad about the desserts I’ve been eating).