Revising Agatha Christie

 RHYS BOWEN:  We’ve all been talking about the revisions that have taken place in the works of several known literary figures recently.  Their works are being altered to conform to current sensibilities, creating debate over how much we should try to reform the past and whether we have the right to do so without permission of the author.

In Agatha Christie’s novels terms like ‘oriental, gypsy and native’ have been removed. Ian Fleming’s books are being scrubbed of racist and sexist phrases. (can you picture Bond girls wearing plaid skirts below the knee and suggesting a game of ping pong to James?)

We’ve all read about Roald Dahls books with adjectives like fat and ugly being taken out as well as references to skin color.

So is this a good idea? Is the aim of literature not to offend anybody? Are most readers not wise enough to think “this is how it was in the past. People were more racist/sexist.”  

I’ve just experienced this myself in the last round of edits for my upcoming Royal Spyness book. I too have had to remove words like “natives” even though I know that a person living in 1936 would have used them. The one occasion I dug my heels in was when an explorer says he was chased by tribesmen across the desert. No, they were not local inhabitants. They were Bedouins. Tribesmen.

In one of my books, set in Kenya, I had to write a foreword to explain that this was how the British colonials treated the natives  local inhabitants in those days, even though we find it offensive today.  How else do we know exactly how it was? How else do we learn?

My feeling is that books are supposed to invoke emotions in us. We are supposed to feel rage about Oliver Twist asking for more in the orphanage. We are supposed to feel rage and weep when we read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Books should be learning experiences.  When you read about what some of my characters had to endure in WWII you should feel that war is never a good idea.

So how far do we go with this cleansing of anything that could offend? Does Oliver Twist now live a happy children’s home? Does Fagin, that kind old man, take the children out for fun walks where they sometimes find a handkerchief fallen from a pocket?  I personally do not do well with violence in books. So no torture scenes from now on. No on page killing please. Every murder must be neat and sterile.  And what about bad language. Some readers get offended at four letter words. So are drug dealers now going to have to say, “Please go away, you naughty policeman?”

What do you think, Reds? Do you think we should purge books written long ago so that they conform to current sensibilities? Don’t you think readers can rationalize that this is how it was and even learn from past mistakes?

HALLIE EPHRON: I think… it’s complicated. When viewed from my more (what?) privileged viewpoint it looks one way. When I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is arguing for the changes? No, I still don’t get it. But then…Coincidentally I recently managed to get my hands on a copy of a play my parents wrote; it ran on Broadway for a year, a hit, starting in 1944. It’s about a young couple who have a baby during the Depression and have to move in with her parents. Other relatives move in, too, and chaos ensues. It’s a farce  with the baby as a Whoopi cushion. 

Here’s the thing: It’s totally racist. There’s a Black housekeeper who is SO stereotyped it’s horrifying. Yes it’s a period piece. No amount of rewriting can make it palatable to today’s audiences. And my parents, old Lefties, thought they were liberal and racially tolerant. 

So, like I say, it’s complicated

JENN McKINLAY: I’m a recovering librarian so I am not down with censorship of any kind. And, yes, purging old books of anything offensive is censorship. How can we measure the progress of society if we take away the starting mark? I understand that some will argue that those original works promote racism, misogyny, homophobia, and xenophobia, etc., but I believe it’s the opposite. I don’t believe they promote these things so much as they call them out by their mere existence.

I remember reading the opener of a John D. MacDonald book where Travis McGee slaps a woman (she was hysterical, of course, she was) and I thought nope, and yet, I kept reading because it was published in 1965 and I knew it was a reflection of the time in which it was written. Could we go back and erase the slap? Sure. But again, how does society improve if we don’t have an accurate reflection of ourselves from which to grow? My other core belief, as a librarian, is that a good library has something to offend everyone. So there’s that.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m with Jenn and Rhys here–we should not try to fix what’s already written as those books are an important part of our history. It’s a different matter if an author wants to rewrite something, or for that matter, if a publisher denies a book because of racist/sexist/anti-LBGTQ language. I’m so worried about the growing trend toward removing books from schools and libraries–this feels like part of that. BTW, Hallie, you must have been horrified to read that play from your parents!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’m just going to point out that announcing you’re going to publish an “updated, non-offensive” edition for an old book is a terrific way to get an enormous amount of unpaid publicity, and I’m cynical enough to suspect the opportunity to get everyone talking online and in print about your forty-year-old intellectual property might have something to do with these recent efforts - which, you’ll notice, are always announced by the publisher. Think of the sales - from people buying the original “before it’s gone,” and buying the “modern” version in order to either support it or tear it apart. Providentially, every company putting out bowdlerized versions of these classics has said it’s also going to continue selling the original. 

Anyone else notice this? Or do I simply have a low, suspicious mind?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yikes, it is complicated. I start out being incensed at the idea of "re-writing" (censoring!) books that some people may now find offensive, and then I think that with my white, middle-class, Protestant identity, is that just me shouting out my privilege? But cleaning things up is a slippery slope and if we start down it, where does it end? Who gets to be the final arbitrator? And shouldn't we be aware of the changes in society's norms and perceptions? For instance, I've recently been rereading Dorothy Sayers. When I first read Sayers in my teens it would never have occurred to me that she used anti-Semitic terms. Now they make me cringe. But if you change them you lose the opportunity to see how we've progressed in the hundred years since they were written.

And my cynical self agrees with Julia.

RHYS: So what about you, dear friends? Should we re-write books to take out anything that might now offend or should we leave it to the judgment of the reader to realize that we have progressed in some ways and are now more enlightened as to what is offensive?  Or is there a middle ground?

Cathy Ace's Welsh traditions

HALLIE EPHRON: Today it gives me great pleasure to welcome Cathy Ace, Bony Blithe Award-winning author of The Cait Morgan Mysteries & The WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries, and chair of Crime Writers of Canada. Cathy and I cross paths at the wonderful Surrey Writers Conference.

Talk to Cathy and you hear pure Wales. And yet, she's living in Canada... and sometimes writes about Las Vegas. But she'll always have Wales in her bones...

CATHY ACE: I’m a transplant; born and raised in Wales, I didn’t migrate to Canada until I was forty years old. I will always be Welsh (as will my accent), while my new growth will be here, in my new home. I’ve chosen, within my two series of books, to use the fact I’m Welsh to write about Wales and being Welsh with a veracity I hope is clear on the page. What I’ve learned from readers is they like to find out about old Welsh traditions, and that’s made me look at traditions I miss, and try to continue, with fresh eyes.

I feel terribly “homesick” for Wales; I don’t mean the sort of “homesick” a person feels (as discussed here a few weeks ago) when on an extended trip, but the sort of “homesick” one feels for a place and culture that’s “you” - with which you are totally connected, but which isn’t a part of your daily reality anymore - that makes you feel physically and emotionally bereft. The Welsh even have a word for this feeling; hiraeth doesn’t have a direct translation into English (or any other language, as far as I know) but it’s used to refer to the longing for your homeland and culture that screams within every fiber of your body all the time, even though you, yourself, are a representation of the very culture you’re missing. And it’s so tempting to think the grass really was greener there, back then.

The Welsh have a host of “traditions”, many of which have become arcane within even my own lifetime: about fifty years ago at New Year’s Eve parties, in order to ensure good luck for the year ahead, a young, dark-haired men was sought out, handed a lump of coal – which everyone had handy for their coal fires – and shut out on the street, having to knock to gain entry and thus become the first person to enter the house in the year…“first-footing” as it was known; chimney sweeps (necessary due to the aforementioned coal fires) were invited to many weddings at which I sang in the church choir, to ensure good fortune for the couple…and so on.


The coal fires have gone now, as have the lumps of readily-available coal, and the idea of becoming a chimney sweep doesn’t occur to any pimply youths considering a career plan…but some traditions continue, and are even seeing a revival. Many of these are connected with romance and weddings, a subject at the center of The Case of the Missing Morris Dancer, the second in my WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries.


For example, living myrtle is still a part of many Welsh bridal bouquets and is planted in the garden of the couple’s new home for good fortune and fertility, and many Welsh engagements take place on January 25th, St Dynwyn’s Day…a tragic female saint whose story makes her the patron saint of lovers in Wales, in place of St Valentine.

Fortunately, the tradition of the bride being chased around the village by the groom, who then has the right to enter the house where she’s being “hidden” and take her off to be married has gone by the wayside…though even this tradition is discussed as a “possibility” in my book.

All cultures have ancient traditions, such as those listed above, that have passed into lore maybe over the past few decades, or during the centuries before. I’ll be honest, I don’t miss those traditions very much – though I do write about them – and I haven’t brought them with me to my new country.

No, what makes me feel hiraeth are the traditions I developed for myself, with my family, over decades of my life, and are not things I can possibly bring with me.

I miss being able to walk through Swansea market and smell the Welshcakes baking, see the glistening mounds of stewed seaweed known as laverbread, or treating myself to a little cup of pepper and vinegar-seasoned cockles.

I long for the wind that whips across the magnificent rock formation known as Worm’s Head in Rhossili, the smell of the sea in the air as I walk out of Swansea’s main library which is all but on the beach, or the chance to indulge in a chocolate sundae at Joe’s ice cream parlor in The Mumbles – a small “village” on the coast – whenever I want.

I miss the people; the conversations overheard in the bus, on the street, in the pub. The pulse of Welsh life.
Nowadays I bake Welshcakes for the grandchildren, and, when they’re old enough, I’ll get them to read the Welsh mythological Mabinogion tales and the English-language poetry of Dylan Thomas. I’ll show them photos of stone circles that have been in place for thousands of years in Welsh meadows, and the more recent ones erected wherever a National Eisteddfod is held. I’ll tell them about naughty sprites called bwcas, that Roald Dahl was born in Wales, and that no parent ever wanted their child to work in a coal mine. Traditions can be ancient, or those we make for ourselves…

You can find out more about Cathy Ace and both her Cait Morgan Mysteries and WISE Enquiries here: http://cathyace.com/

HALLIE:  So here's Cathy question to you: whether you’re a transplanted person or not, what will you pass to the next generations from your own cultural heritage…and why? Seems particularly appropriate as we head into the holidays.

Simon Wood gets his strange on

HALLIE EPHRON: SIMON WOOD likes to push the envelope. The one-time engineer and race-car driver moved to the US from the UK in 1988. He started writing to fill the time while waiting for his immigration paperwork to get processed and despite being dyslexic. From the get-go he's been a connoisseur of strange. DECEPTIVE PRACTICES is his thirteenth novel.

We're happy to have SIMON WOOD visiting today on JUNGLE RED, talking about writing the improbable and making it work.

SIMON WOOD:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” ~Sherlock Holmes

I’m totally with Sherlock on this one…especially when it comes to the improbable.  I’m drawn to the weird, odd and bizarre.  I’m fascinated by the oddities in life that shouldn’t happen.  They appeal to my imaginative sensibilities.  Blame Roald Dahl and Rod Serling for making me believe in the crazy.  It’s the reason why I’m a rabid fan of the show BANSHEE but not LAW AND ORDER.  BANSHEE is crazy, intense and over the top and only works when the universe’s cosmic tumblers are off, whereas LAW AND ORDER is rooted in the now and the real, which makes it totally mundane to me (sorry Dick Wolf).  If I want mundane, I can pick up a newspaper or watch the evening news.  I want it weird.  I’m an escapist!  What can I say?

That’s why one criticism of my stories is that they push the limits of believability—and that’s true.  They do.  But for all that limit pushing, they don’t go outside the realm of the possible.  I go out of my way to pay attention to the strange happenings in the real world.   I think I have a fascination with the strange because I possess a small talent for calamity myself.  I have many firsthand accounts of how my life went off the rails.  One example was when I had a near fender bender on a roundabout which then developed into someone filing a fraudulent insurance claim against me.  That led to me being charged with half a dozen driving offenses and was topped off by the police handing me a confession they’d written for me to sign.  Seems unlikely, but it happened to meso things like this must happen to others.

I’ve discovered some tragic and cruel twists of fate such as a Sacramento motorcycle cop who responded to a fender bender caused by  an elderly man who pulled out of a turn and tee-boned a car.  The cop felt bad for the elderly man and let him off with a warning instead of citing him.  The following week, the same elderly man did the exact same thing at the same intersection.  This time he struck and killed the motorcycle cop who’d let him off.  The weird what-if game that plays out in your head after that is what inspires my stories.

Things like this have been the inspiration for several of my books.  The trading of life insurance on the living that is the backbone for ACCIDENTS WAITING TO HAPPEN is a real thing.  Private security firms being involved with workplace violence claims, which is the foundation for TERMINATED, came from something that was happening with one of my wife’s employers.  The disturbing series of suicides in WE ALL FALL DOWN were inspired by similar ones that happened between coworkers in the UK in the 80’s.

With my current book, DECEPTIVE PRACTICES, things are a little different. The events in this novel don’t have a direct link to an actual event.  Instead, they are inspired by a way of thinking.  Namely, how can a seemingly mundane event get its strange on?  In DECEPTIVE PRACTICES, there is a company called Infidelity Limited.  They are the last ditch effort when it comes to marriage guidance counselors, especially when their pitch is: Do you have a cheating spouse?  Has counseling failed?  Want to get even with them?  Then hire Infidelity Limited to teach them a lesson…  They're a shadowy company that operates on a speakeasy premise and offers a bespoke service.  Tell them who’s done you wrong and they will beat some sense into them.  Olivia Shaw buys into their promises and hires them to even up the score with her husband when she discovers he’s cheating on her, but when he's killed, she discovers Infidelity Limited is far more dangerous than its advertising pitch.

It sounds a little wild but how many times have we read about spouses caught in police stings hiring hit men to kill their nearest and dearest?  Now the idea of a specialist firm that deals in cheating spouses doesn’t sound all that farfetched. ;)

I know this outlook might not be to everyone’s liking but if you’re willing to go off-piste and embrace the improbable, then I think you’ll enjoy the ride.

HALLIE: Sounds like I definitely would. Today's question: Fans of Roald Dahl and Rod Serling and Simon Wood, what makes a story that goes super-strange work for you?

Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist, an animal rescuer and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated by a longhaired dachshund and four cats. He's the Anthony Award winning author of Working Stiffs, Accidents Waiting to Happen, Paying the Piper, Terminated, Asking For Trouble, We All Fall Down and the Aidy Westlake series. His current thriller THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY has been optioned for a movie adaptation. He also writes horror under the pen name of Simon Janus. Curious people can learn more at http://www.simonwood.net

 

James Hayman--Murder We Wrote

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  Is there something in the water in Maine that breeds terrific mystery writers? Although today's guest James Hayman is a transplant (as is our JRW Julia Spencer-Fleming,) he now lives in Maine and sets his USA Today bestselling Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage books in Portland. And he has some very intriguing thoughts on murder...

JAMES HAYMAN:  Murder We Wrote

When asked what she did for a living, another crime writer, I believe Chelsea Cain, responded “I kill people for money.” Well, so do I.  And so does everyone else who writes mysteries and thrillers for a living.  The vast majority of our books almost by definition involve one or more villains offing one or more victims.

In real life murder tends to be a fairly prosaic if unpleasant affair.  Husbands killing wives. Gangbangers killing rivals. Or, saddest of all, gun nuts walking into movie theatres or elementary schools and blasting away at strangers. Most of it horrifying. None of it particularly entertaining.

It is our peculiar and often challenging task as writers to make murder interesting, involving, entertaining and yes, sometimes, horrifying, but in a way that involves the readers’ imaginations far more than the bloody chaos that goes on in the homes and streets of America.

 There are many ways we go about this.

The writer can go for the cringe-worthy approach.  Hannibal the Cannibal eating his victims’ faces being a prime example

But there are other ways of making murder engaging.  One is the use of strange weapons.  A fellow writer and friend of mine named Joe Brady once considered committing murder in one of his books by having the victim be bitten by the poisonous pufferfish. The pufferfish, one of the few fish that can be considered cute to look at, emits a poison for which there is no antidote that kills by paralyzing the diaphragm, causing nearly instant suffocation.

The pufferfish not withstanding, I think my all-time favorite in the weird weapon category can be found in Roald Dahl’s classic short story Lamb to the Slaughter.  The heroine (villain?) of the piece is dear, sweet Mary Maloney who, when told by her policeman husband that he is planning to divorce her, becomes so upset that she whacks him over the head with the frozen leg of lamb she was planning to cook for dinner. When she realizes that her husband is indeed dead Mary, in a moment of inspiration, puts the murder weapon in the oven and roasts it.  Since the dead husband was a veteran cop, Mary knows all the detectives who come to the house to investigate the killing.  After these worthy fellows spend a fair amount of time searching the house for the likely murder weapon (could it be a sledgehammer?  A spanner? A heavy vase?), Mary convinces them to stay for dinner. Naturally, the main course is roast leg of lamb.

An interesting variation on Dahl’s technique of having the cops eat the murder weapon is Fannie Flagg’s idea of having them eat the victim.  This seemingly ghoulish denouement occurs in Ms. Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café where the heroine (the owner of the café, which is well known for its delicious barbecue) offs a bad guy by hitting him over the head, not with a leg of lamb, but with a frying pan. She then tosses the body into the café’s barbecue oven.  When the bad guy is thoroughly smoked, sauced and cooked, she cuts him into little pieces and offers some to the local sheriff who eagerly gobbles the delicious goodies down. I’m told barbecued human tastes remarkably like barbecued pork but I have no intention of testing the proposition.

For someone like me, who suffers from claustrophobia, one of the scariest way of dying has to be being buried alive.  This frightening fate is beautifully presented in Michael Kimball’s novel Undone.  The story centers around an unscrupulous wife who somehow convinces her husband to agree to climb into a coffin and be buried as part of an insurance scam.  Of course, she promises to dig him up later and share the proceeds.  Of course, she doesn’t.  In the meantime, readers get to spend agonizing hours inside the coffin under six feet of soil suffering along with the poor schmuck of a husband. If you’re wondering why he ever agreed to such a thing, I won’t offer spoilers. You’ll just have to read the book.

The plot of my own first McCabe/Savage thriller, The Cutting, also centers around a particularly unpleasant way to die. The Cutting features a villain who runs a lucrative business selling illegal heart transplants to billionaire octogenarians suffering from advanced coronary disease. These are folks who can’t qualify for legitimate transplant programs because of their age but who do have the funds to seek alternate solutions.  Our bad guy charges each of the billionaires a flat fee of five million dollars for a healthy young heart. But where, you might ask, do the hearts come from?   In keeping with the spirit of the times, all are locally sourced, being cut from the bodies of attractive young women who are first kidnapped and then held captive until their hearts are needed.  When the time is right our villain wields his scalpel and…well you can imagine the rest.

What makes the murder compelling in my latest McCabe/Savage thriller, The Girl in the Glass, is neither the choice of weapon nor the brutality of the crime.  Rather it is the fact that the two young women who are killed are physically identical members of the same family who are murdered in precisely the same way one hundred and eight years apart.  The puzzle for my two detectives, Maggie Savage and Michael McCabe, is why the killer went to such lengths to carry out a near perfect imitation of a murder that happened more than a century earlier. And, of course, to figure out who the hell is he.

DEBS: Here's more about The Girl in the Glass (and isn't that a GREAT cover? So Maine...) which will be published by Harper Collins ebook first imprint Witness Impulse on August 25^th but can be pre-ordered at Amazon, BN.com et al now.

In June, 1904 the beautiful Aimée Marie Garnier Whitby is violently slain with no witnesses to the crime and no leads. The case is left untouched for decades until June 2012, when Aimée's nearly identical granddaughter falls victim to a copycat murder. Now it's up to the dexterous investigative duo of Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage to bring the killer swiftly to justice - but the key to unearthing the truth about young Veronica Whitby's death may have been buried with her ancestor all those years ago. An atmospheric and spine-tingling thriller from one of today's most exciting voices in crime fiction, THE GIRL IN THE GLASS is a crackling, twisty novel of suspense perfect for any lover of thrills, chills, and tales that keep you up at night.
 
I am so intrigued by the premise of this novel. And James, I hadn't thought about the Roald Dahl story in years! I loved it, and my daughter loved it. (Are we slightly warped, I wonder? And is it any wonder she grew up to love mysteries?) 

REDS and readers, what's your favorite twisty and complicated method of murder? Tell us in the comments. This is a challenge worthy of our devoted mystery readers!

James will be giving away a e-copy of The Girl in the Glass to a lucky commenter, and he will be dropping in to answer questions and respond to comments during the day.

James Hayman, formerly a creative director at one of New York's largest advertising agencies, is the author of the acclaimed Mike McCabe series: The Cutting, The Chill of Night, and Darkness First.