DBB slips into some shorts

Spring is a good time for shorts, and that's what I've been reading a lot of these days, a f*ckload of shorts, in one case. The list has included:

1. Mr. Calder and Mr. Behrens by Michael Gilbert
2. Erased and Other Stories by author, cameraman, and Detectives Beyond Borders friend Thomas Kaufman
3. A F*ckload of Shorts by cozy writer Jedidiah Ayres
4. Short Sentence by miscellaneous and, saving the best for last,
5. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," by Ambrose Bierce

I suspect I'll have something to say about several of these items, whether about Gilbert's deadpan hard-boiled humor, Ayres' multiple points of view and general degeneracy, or artful, surprising but non-gimmicky endings by Kaufman and in Anne Zouroudi's contribution to Short Sentence.

Click on the the Bierce title above and read the story free online. When you get your breath back, see if you can guess how I think Bierce addresses the great philosophical problem of almost all crime fiction.

In the meantime, what are your favorite stories, crime or otherwise, and why do you like them?

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A kind DBB reader sends a link to this Oscar-winning 1962 film adaptation of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge."

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A commenter informs me that May is Short Story Month. Thanks, Paul.

© Peter Rozovsky 2013

Bouchercon 2011: "Punctuation is your friend"

 The post's title was Thomas Kaufman's response to an intelligent question from an audience member at my Bouchercon 2011 panel on CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?

The panel's subject was comic crime fiction, and the questioner wanted to know the novelist's equivalent of the timing so essential to a good stand-up comedian's success. Kaufman knows that punctuation is essential to pace and that pace is essential to comedy. The man knows how to use his dashes and his commas, and I can offer no higher praise to a fellow human.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Thomas Kaufman on the streets of Georgetown

Yesterday's post was full of serious discussion about humor. Today you get a sample of the stuff.

Willis Gidney, protagonist of Thomas Kaufman's Drink the Tea, is lying low in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood in a disguise that renders him virtually invisible — the ragged clothes of a homeless man. The vantage point affords him ample leisure to observe the passing foot traffic:

"Mostly young people, Georgetown students who were wealthy and seemed to be born with an innate sense of how to enjoy themselves. ... All the young men were robust and trim, all the young women were shapely and smiling. And if they had a thought among them, it was on a time-share basis."

That, it says here, is a nice observation. It's the sort you or I might make, only it's just a bit funnier, with hints of envy rendered poignant by the character's rugged backstory.

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Thomas Kaufman will be part of my “CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel on Saturday, Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m.-12:30, at Bouchercon 2011.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Two authors of comic crime fiction and a question for readers

Crime isn't funny, but some crime fiction is. How do writers of comic crime fiction keep the laughs coming without trivializing the crime?

Chris Ewan's Good Thief's Guide to Vegas, a smooth and funny caper, has its protagonist witness a shocking act of violence. Ewan does not play the scene for laughs, and he manages at the same not to upset the novel's mood. How does he achieve this? Perhaps by staging the scene behind soundproof glass; neither we not the narrator hear it. It's a delicate balance, and I say it works.

Thomas Kaufman's Drink the Tea does it in part by giving protagonist Willis Gidney a past that includes a grim childhood spent in orphanages and foster homes and by a series of gracefully executed flashbacks to that past.

If you read comic crime fiction, how do your favorite authors maintain the balance between the comedy and the crime? 

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Chris Ewan and Thomas Kaufman will be part of my “CRANKY STREETS: WHAT'S SO FUNNY ABOUT MURDER?” panel on Saturday, Sept. 17, 11:30 a.m.-12:30, at Bouchercon 2011.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011