Bugs Bunny's Critique of Pure Reason; a guest blog by Jeff Cohen and EJ Copperman

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Usually, when we have a guest who writes as part of a team, we like to explore how the dynamic works. Since Jeff Cohen is collaborating with E.J. Copperman, who is... Jeff Cohen... I'm not going to ask. I don't want to disturb the delicate balance.

We have several prolific writers here at Jungle Reds who produce two to three books a year, including Jenn McKinlay, Rhys Bowen, and Edith Maxwell. I can, however, honestly state none of them has ever released books in two different series on the same day. Thank heavens, we always say writers aren't competing against one another. I hope your monthly book budget runs to more than one purchase, because you're going to want to get both BIRD, BATH AND BEYOND and THE QUESTION OF THE DEAD MISTRESS from two of the funniest cozy mystery writers around.

At a conference recently I was asked (as authors occasionally are) to name my influences. And I always cringe at the question because the artists who actually have influenced me had virtually nothing to do with the kind of thing I have ended up writing. My influences are not Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett or Tony Hillerman. I admire the work of each of those masters, but they didn’t set me on any path other than to want to read more of their books.

When I was writing a Capstone project for my master’s degree about six years ago (a non-mystery novel that was never published, possibly for good reason) I was required to list in the bibliography works that had influenced my thinking for the project and my style in writing it. Mostly I lied. I brought up Cicero and Kierkegaard and Kant, for goodness’ sake, all of whom I had read strictly for courses in the master’s program and have completely forgotten about since.

The conference panel at which I was asked the question was about writing books in the mystery genre that are also (hopefully) funny. So I finally felt comfortable uttering the one name that really has had an influence on my writing since I picked up a crayon in second grade. The one artist whose style I might not have directly emulated, but who definitely has had an impact on every work I’ve ever written.

That’s right. Bugs Bunny.

Bugs is a demon, a wiseguy, the kind of comic nuisance you’d never want to face as an adversary. But he never punches down. That is, he doesn’t use his lethal wit on anyone who hasn’t directly come after him. He doesn’t attack the defenseless or the weak—he only makes fun of those who deserve it.

I’ve always tried to create characters who follow the same code. They’re smart and funny, but they don’t ridicule anyone who isn’t flat-out asking for it. I have two books that were published on October 9 (it’s a long story, and it gives me headaches, so don’t ask), and their main characters are very different, but they hold to the code.

Kay Powell, the main character in BIRD, BATH AND BEYOND, is a theatrical agent whose clients are all animals. The non-human kind. In this, the second book in the series, she’s representing a parrot who might be the only witness to a murder. And Kay, a showbiz kid who left the act to get a law degree and become an agent, runs into a lot of people who think the bird should just speak up and name the killer.

She hears that from police detectives and reporters. To the cops she explains what is and is not possible with parrots. To the reporters, whom she sees as crass leeches trying to destroy her privacy, she’s slightly less patient.

So she tries to defuse the situation:

“Is this going live to any of your affiliates?”

“Yes!” a couple of the reporters yelled out.

It was a pity. Because I didn’t want to get in trouble with the FCC, my planned two-word statement was not going to be usable.

Samuel Hoenig, on the other hand, is not trying to be a rapier wit. Samuel, who is the narrator of THE QUESTION OF THE DEAD MISTRESS (also published October 9, and it’s still a good policy not to ask me why), has an autism-spectrum disorder and answers questions for a living. When a woman asks whether her husband is having an affair with his college sweetheart, who happens to be dead, Samuel does not try to ridicule her motives. But he doesn’t understand them.

“I do not expect any payment from you, Ms. Fontaine,” I said. “And you may rest assured that any client who walks through that door will get my full attention and an accurate answer to his or her question. In your case the answer was so obvious that it seemed foolish to continue with the interview. No. Your husband is not having an affair with his dead girlfriend.”

“I’m going to ask you again,” Virginia said. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because it is physically impossible for a living man to have a mutual relationship with a dead person,” I said, marveling at the idea that I even had to point out such an obvious fact.

They approach things differently. Samuel isn’t trying to make you laugh; it wouldn’t occur to him to do that. Kay uses humor to deflect and get the upper hand. But neither one of them will take advantage of someone weak or unfortunate.

It’s Bugs Bunny as a philosophy. You can keep your Kierkegaard.

E.J.Copperman writes a bunch of mystery series, but the two coming out on the SAME DAY in October are BIRD, BATH AND BEYOND in the Agent to thePaws series and THE QUESTION OF THE DEAD MISTRESS in the Asperger’sMystery series.

By the way, one of the most moving, affecting things I’ve read recently was a column by @MaineMillenial. https://www.pressherald.com/2018/09/16/the-maine-millennial-im-sharing-my-dad-with-the-world/

JULIA: Thank you for the shout out for the Smithie, Jeff! Readers, you can learn more about Jeff Cohen at his web site, and also friend him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter as @JeffCohenWriter. E.J. Copperman, who is on Twitter as @ejcop, also has a web site and a blog, SLICED BREAD.

Tim Hallinan on E-Books

ROSEMARY: I met Tim Hallinan online through Dorothy L. Although we've yet to meet in person, I've gotten very fond of his posts and have asked him to stop by for a visit today. Timothy's first published book, THE FOUR LAST THINGS, came out in 1990. He's written ten published novels since then, six in the Simeon Grist series and four in his current series of thrillers, set in Bangkok and featuring rough-travel writer Poke Rafferty. (Just one of the reasons I love his writing!) The most recent of the highly-praised Rafferty books is this year's THE QUEEN OF PATPONG. Later this month, CRASHED, the first novel in a third series, will debut as an e-book - Hallinan's first e-book "first edition" and his timing couldn't be better.

TH: In a few short words the New York Times, that Olympian temple of condescension, has just announced that it's expanding its Bestsellers List to include e-books.

Whoa! Stop the car. The Times? The paper that once declined to review Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh because they thought it was “regional writing?” The paper that insists on segregating “genre” books in their own little corner to prevent their infecting – you know, real literature? That paper?

Hoo-hooo-hooo. Taken to its logical extreme, that means there's a chance a self-published book will find itself listed in the Times. I can imagine elitists all over Manhattan spilling their morning cup of Oolong into their laps. And it's about XXXking time.

In my long and spotty career, I've had excellent relationships with publishers. They've paid me for, and published, ten novels I made up all by myself. I've found publishing people to be, on the whole, well-intentioned and sincere in their desire to publish good work. (I exempt from this statement whatever idiot at Simon & Schuster decided a couple of weeks ago to publish an upcoming novel called A Shore Thing by the decade's most depressing celebrity, Snooki.)

Nevertheless, the Times announcement is important to me for two reasons, one sort of national and the other sort of selfish. Nationally, this might ultimately mean the end of New York as the publishing center of America. Whenever I see one of those disaster movies that shows 1000-foot waves breaking over the Statue of Liberty and the Chrysler Building, my first thought is, “There goes the publishing industry.” And not entirely a bad thing, either. New York is fine, but it's not America, and there's no reason for a few blocks of Manhattan to maintain a stranglehold on what we read.

On the selfish level, I'm just about to self-publish for the first time. A few months back I started to put my old Dutton and Morrow books online as e-books. Much to my surprise, they sold (and are selling) pretty well – high three-figures to low four-figures every month, and climbing. In the meantime, I'd written the first two books in a new series and was being told by my agent and, later, two publishers, that no one wants to read funny thrillers these days.

Okay, maybe so. These are not cozies or slapstick – they're hard-edged books that derive most of their humor from character and an inversion of the usual moral standard. Looking around a while back, I realized that we're absolutely surrounded by crooks – crooks in dark suits and power ties and Jimmy Choo heels, and that they're pretty much getting their way no matter who's president.

So I invented a series that's essentially all crooks. Junior Bender, is an unhappily divorced man who still loves his wife and worships his daughter. In his night job, he's a burglar, and he's good at it. In his day job, he's a private eye whose clients are all crooks. So Junior busts crooks on behalf of crooks.

The first in the series is called CRASHED, and it's coming out on Amazon and iBooks right after Thanksgiving. In it, when one crook gets ripped off by another, Junior is the guy who gets hired. In the book, Junior finds himself on the wrong side of his own already paper-thin moral code, being forced to prevent sabotage against a multi-million dollar porn film starring exactly the kind of person he'd normally want to protect. At the age of 23, Thistle Downing is broke, strung-out, hopeless, and on the edge of obscurity. But between the ages of eight and fifteen, she was the biggest television star in the world, a brilliant natural comedian until her talent slowly began to desert her. Now desperate, she's facing the ultimate humiliation . . . and she's so wasted she doesn't even know that someone's been trying to kill her.

So the challenge for Junior is to thread his way between his dangerous clients and their dangerous enemies while at the same time trying to find a way to save Thistle from self-destruction. Oh, and it's funny.

So, thanks to the e-books revolution, I can write Crashed and the rest of this series with or without a publisher's blessing, and make it available globally, let it sink or swim. Capitalism at its most carnivorous. If it sells enough, the Times will have to notice it. And New York has nothing to do with getting it published.

We live in interesting times, don't we?

ROSEMARY: We do, indeed. Good luck with Queen (which I loved) and keep us posted on Crashed. Visit Tim at http://www.timothyhallinan.com/

Tim's mention of humor in mysteries reminded me of the highly entertaining - Wickedly Funny - Crimebake panel that Toni Kelner moderated a few days ago. Stop back later this week for more adventures in book publishing and a look at whether or not Funny is the new "F" bomb which should be dropped carefully.