Can You Say That...Today?
By E.A. Aymar (also E.A. Barres)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Author's Note
New Releases (That I'm Excited About!)
Two Writers You Should Read
Events
It's Contest Time!
Other Writing
Can You Say That...Today?
Lately I've been listening to a lot of podcasts about The Office, which is a television show that some people are devoted to and others DESPISE. The Office was never one of my favorite television shows. but I did like it a lot, and I always watch the re-runs when they're on - the past few years, and the surge of streaming, has resulted in a surprising resurgence for the dormant series. Weirdly, I sometimes find The Office comforting...as much as you can find a show about oft-depressed employees who work for a paper company comforting. It was also, at its best, intelligently written, brutally satirical, and emotionally resonant.
At its worse, it trafficked in apologetic cruelty and racism.
And those moments (like All in the Family claimed, long before The Office) weren't always at the expense of the main character to "teach the audience a valuable lesson." It was, occasionally, simply racism because the writers thought it was funny. I'm thinking, in particular, of the episode when one of the characters couldn't tell a pair of Asians apart, and any hint of satire from the writers or characters was absent.
It's honestly nice, years later, to listen (in one of the podcasts about the show) to the actors in and writer of that particularly episode express their dismay about the joke.
But these conversations inevitably bring the counter-argument (often stated in these podcasts, and by comedians in particular) that "society is too PC nowadays" and "art isn't allowed to daring."
I can't tell you how intensely aggravating I find that argument, which is why I'm screeding about it here. Also, "screeding" is now a word.
Of course some jokes aren't going to be told nowadays, but it has nothing to do with society being passive. Humor and perspective are, like language, living, evolving things (see: "screeding"). It's the reason that I don't find comedies from sixty or seventy years ago quite as funny as more current ones. It's not because they touched a level of insight and took chances today's comedians don't. It's because the intended audience is markedly different.
Writers are always going to push boundaries. The minute you tell an artist that they're forbidden to do something, that artist will BURN to do it.
But there is, perhaps, no more important trait for an artist than empathy.
And as our intellectual empathy grows, and as society's intellectual empathy does the same, our scope changes. We'll likely still write about the same things one hundred, two hundred, a thousand years from now. But the audience will be different, and so will our approach.
Ultimately, we'll still write about people and laugh at their failings.
But hopefully, when we do, we'll just be better at it.
Midnight Hour, a collection of short stories written by members of Crime Writers of Color, earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly! As a reminder, this book comes out later this year and is available for preorder now! Click HERE or on the graphic below for more information.
Friend of the Devil
James D.F. Hannah
Getting a guy out of a bar should be a simple thing. Should be. But it’s Henry Malone and his well-armed A.A. sponsor Woody, so of course, things get complicated. Bar fight with bikers-level complicated.
And things don’t get simpler afterwards, either. The man Henry and Woody rescue is soon accused of killing the leader of the motorcycle gang, and that leaves the gang hungry for revenge. Then there’s a sheriff’s deputy with something to prove, some Russian mobsters, the cargo of a hijacked semi that everyone wants, and the ghosts haunting Woody as he works to right the sins of his own mysterious past. Henry and Woody find themselves embroiled in a case that may change their lives—if they survive.
The Spires
Kate Moretti
Strung between two teenagers, an unemployed husband, and a tenuous career, Penelope Cox barely has her life together when the past comes knocking at her door. Willa Blaine, her old roommate, needs her help: refuge from an abusive husband. “Two weeks tops,” she says—but it’s not the imposition that bothers Penelope; it’s the memories Willa brings with her.
Twenty years earlier, Penelope, Willa, and three friends lived together in a converted church. Insular and closed off from the rest of the world, the five roommates formed their own dysfunctional family, celebrating the pinnacle of their lives; they called themselves “the Spires.” But nights of wild parties gave way to a darker undercurrent: jealousy, resentment, unrequited love, and obsession. Tensions boiled over during a night of debauchery that ended in a deadly fire, leaving the Spires scattered and forever changed.
Now Willa is the perfect houseguest: accommodating, helpful, bringing a newfound sense of excitement to the Cox household. Yet Penelope can’t help but feel the cracks in her life widen as she begins to question Willa’s motives. Everyone has secrets, it seems—and the fire may have brought down the Spires, but not everything burned was forgotten.
Shadow Music
Helaine Mario
Late in the Cold War, a young woman escapes from Communist Hungary, vanishing into the night with a priceless painting and a baby girl—setting events in motion from a decades-old secret that will change lives for generations to come.
Many years later, classical pianist Maggie O'Shea is drawn to Cornwall in search of a long-lost Van Gogh and the truth behind her husband's death. A journal from World War II Paris holds many of the answers, but only two people know where the Van Gogh is hidden now—a courageous nun and a man presumed dead.
Set against the backdrop of the international music and art world, Maggie finds herself on a collision course with three dangerous Russians who threaten all she holds dear—including her life and the life of the man she has come to love.
Past and present converge in this haunting tale of loss, courage, love, and revenge.
The Ninja Betrayed
Tori Eldridge
Things get personal for Chinese-Norwegian modern-day ninja Lily Wong in Hong Kong when she dives into the dangerous world of triads, romance, and corporate disaster during the height of the pro-democracy protests.
Lily’s mother has been summoned by her grandfather, Gung-Gung to attend an emergency board meeting. Lily is happy to take her father’s place for exotic travel, family reunions, and romantic dates with her new boyfriend, Daniel Kwok, who's there for business. Lily and her mother stay at her grandparents' hillside home on Hong Kong Island, but tension between Gung-Gung and Ma makes it hard to enjoy the beautiful surroundings, especially with the city in turmoil. Gung-Gung won’t say anything about the meeting and Ma is worried that her career is in jeopardy. Meanwhile, the teenage daughter of Gung-Gung's driver is pulled into the dangerous riots.
As Lily and Ma discover shaky finances, questionable loans, and plans for the future involving them both, Lily's escalating romance with Daniel puts her heart at risk. Will her ninja skills allow her to protect her mother, the family business, and the renegade teen while navigating love, corporate intrigue, and murderous triads?
Constance
Matthew Fitzsimmons
In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.
After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?
The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again.
These Toxic Things
Rachel Howzell Hall
Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain—twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia, who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.
But these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.
It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Discovering the truth means crossing paths with a long-dormant serial killer and navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One that might, Mickie fears, be inescapably entwined with her own.
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.
Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn't ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn't ask questions, either.
Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the "Waldorf of Harlem"—and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.
Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?
Her Perfect Life
Hank Phillippi Ryan
Everyone knows Lily Atwood―and that may be her biggest problem. The beloved television reporter has it all―fame, fortune, Emmys, an adorable seven-year-old daughter, and the hashtag her loving fans created: #PerfectLily. To keep it, all she has to do is protect one life-changing secret.
Her own.
Lily has an anonymous source who feeds her story tips―but suddenly, the source begins telling Lily inside information about her own life. How does he―or she―know the truth?
Lily understands that no one reveals a secret unless they have a reason. Now she's terrified someone is determined to destroy her world―and with it, everyone and everything she holds dear.
How much will she risk to keep her perfect life? And what if the spotlight is the most dangerous place of all?
Simply put, Gwen Florio is one of the most prolific and powerful writers I've read.
I haven't read all her books (as I said, prolific) but the ones that I have are tightly wound, tense mysteries, often tying in some sort of societal circumstance informed by Florio's past work in journalism. But beyond that, Florio's characters have a nobility about them that often escapes most protagonists in mystery fiction. There's a sense of determination that refuses to be shaken by every human instincts. There's something lovingly, painfully human in her writing, and someday I will read everything she's written.
And a writer Gwen Florio recommends?
The book I always recommend to people isn’t categorized as a mystery, even though just a few pages in, someone poses this question:
“D’you think there are mysteries?”
Oh, hell, yeah, there are mysteries aplenty in Jane Gardam’s Old Filth. One reason I so love recommending this book is the way people recoil at the title. FILTH is actually an acronym, for “Failed in London, Try Hong Kong,” and it refers to the way the protagonist, Edward Feathers, flees a moribund legal career in Britain, only to be wildly successful in Hong Kong, in part due to his childhood in East.
There is, of course, a price. Isn’t there always?
We’re talking vicious jealousies, an indictment of colonialism, and harrowing details of the lives of “Raj orphans,” a phenomenon with which I was wholly unfamiliar.
By the time I got to a scene in which a very elderly, very proper Scotswoman cups tulip bulbs in her hand and reminisces about testicles she has known, I was hooked.
Old Filth is the first in a trilogy, and as soon as I’d finished, I inhaled the next two. Gardam’s work underscores the fact that wounds to the spirit can be the deadliest of all; that murder – generally deemed necessary in crime novels – in some cases might prove a mercy.
To learn more about these authors, click on the photos above.
I'll be giving a reading (virtually) on October 21st with some other writers from Crime Writers of Color, but the details are still TBD. That said, you can follow Crime Writers of Color on Twitter for information as soon as it's available.
It's contest time! The monthly contest winner wins copies of the books listed in my "Two Writers You Should Read" segment. And the winner is...
back__log@gmail.com
Congrats, and keep your eye out for a separate e-mail from me!
As I said last month, my latest column in the the Washington Independent Review of Books was all about Writers' Bucket Lists and had contributions from from Mia P. Manansala, Eliza Nellums, Lori Rader-Day, and Lisa Regan. You can read it HERE.
Until next time, much love and happy reading!