Just Call Me "Talks With Strangers"

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: So I was listening to an NPR show about happiness. I should preface this by saying that at this point in my life, I get 90% of what I know of the outside world from NPR (the other 10% comes from Twitter.) I listen to everything: TED Radio Hour, This American Life, All Things Considered, The Commonwealth Club, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me - you get the idea.

At any rate, the host was interviewing one of these happiness researchers, who found, for the 100th time, that people in Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world, despite the hellscape of socialism and the fact they are shrouded in eldritch darkness six months of the year. One of the important factors in happiness, the researcher said, was good social interactions. "People who live alone are more likely to suffer from depression," he said.

"Uh oh," I said to the cat. "I live alone." (Apparently cats don't count as "robust social support." Which I can see, because my cat is a more a combination panhandler/demanding massage client - the wholesome kind of massage, not the Robert Kraft sort - than a Friend In Need.) My kids have all expressed concerns about the quality of my life since they've moved out. Youngest keeps threatening assuring me she'll be back lots and lots of times during the school year.

The researcher then went on to say the research had changed some of his habits. "Now I chat with people on the elevator instead of staring at the fire escape instructions," he said. "It improves your mental health."

Okay, excellent. I'm good. Why? Because I talk in the elevator. I chat with the Uber driver. I ask questions of the cook making omelettes to order at the Hilton. I interact with little kids in the grocery store. 

I am that woman.

Being that woman is a combination of nature and nurture. As anyone who has ever met me has already figured out, I'm extroverted by nature. Not that socializing can't wear on me - like many of you, I limp back to my hotel room after a day at Bouchercon and require a full nine hours of sleep to function again the next day. But I like people. I enjoy talking and finding out what they have to say.

On top of that, I was raised by a woman who thought conversation was the highest art form. My mother's maxim was, "You have to sing for your supper," -  if you were at table, you had better contribute to the dialog. Youngest told me about a documentary she had seen about Consuelo Vanderbilt, who became the Duchess of Marlborough. Evidently, young Consuelo's nanny would stroll her around the garden, and at each bush, the girl was made to converse for a period of time. With the bush. And a different topic for every stop. My mother never marched me around to talk with shrubbery, but the end result was the same, I can - and will! - find something about which to converse with anyone, anywhere.

Over the years, my children have been alternately horrified, embarrassed, impatient and amused by my predilection for passing the time of day with store clerks, auto mechanics, and their friends. There were several years when I was entreated to never say anything to my kids' peers other than, "Hello," and "Would you like [name of food dish]?" Ironically, they now encourage their friends, especially those whose own mothers are far away, to talk with me. This is, I suspect, because a vital part of being a good conversationalist is being a good listener.

As I've gotten older, I talk more, rather than less, with strangers. When I was a younger woman, I had the usual concerns about safety, and more to the point, I didn't want anyone thinking me weird or pushy. Now I'm a silver-haired lady in her fifties, I don't give two snaps of my fingers if someone decides I'm odd or too outspoken. Resembling Everybody's Mother gives a woman a great deal of leeway in her actions.

I will continue, therefore, to happily interact with the people fate puts in my way while running errands or traveling (unless I'm in the Amtrak quiet car. No speaking on the train!) It's good for my mental health. And if you're ever trapped with me yammering away at you, please remember, it's nothing personal - it's you or inviting my children to come back and live with me again.

How about you, dear readers? Are you Chatty Cathy? Or Bashful Bill?

Heard Through Hotel Room Walls!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: How fabulous is sleeping? That moment, you know, when you slide between the sheets, and the thread count is lovely, and the pillow are puffy, and you cuddle down and sink in and..then—ah. Oh. No.

Whatever. Interrupts you. Someone left the light on. A fly is buzzing. There’s a TV on someplace. Your phone is glowing blue, or pinging about something that you don’t know what is. Everything is magnified into infinity.

Our darling brilliant Agatha nominee (yay!) Annette Dashofy has had her coziness interrupted by—well, let her tell it. But, because she is brilliant and thoughtful and always thinking about her next book—she put the sleep invasion to good use.

Hotel Rooms And Overheard Plots

By Annette Dashofy

I travel enough that I can usually sleep well in hotel rooms, but not enough to have contingencies for when I can’t. There are times when I’d give my kingdom for some noise-cancelling headphones. On the other hand, if I owned a set of those, the opening chapter of Fair Game would be very different.

A couple of years ago, I was attending a mystery or writing convention (I can’t remember which one or where it was…or which hotel). As is always the case, I retreated to my room that night, exhausted beyond words. All I wanted was a solid eight hours to recharge.

Okay, who am I kidding. I’d be happy with six hours. Seven would be heaven.

I fell into my lush, comfortable bed, closed my eyes, began to drift into oblivion…

Which was when the party started next door.

Lots of shouting and laughter. A man. And it sounded like perhaps more than one woman. Hmm.

To be fair, even when they weren’t being loud, I could still hear them. I didn’t want to hear them. I wanted to sleep. But I’m a writer and consider overheard conversations a gift from the idea gods. I was wide awake and mining (eavesdropping) for tidbits. Alas, there were none.

At least nothing I could use in my genre.

I considered pounding on the wall and yelling, “I can hear every word you’re saying!” But then another thought struck me.

If I could hear everything they were saying, they could hear everything my fellow mystery author roommate and I had been saying.

Now, I really couldn’t sleep. As writers of crime fiction, we tend to have some…odd discussions. “Well, it might be better if we killed him off by (fill in the blank).” “Or I could dump the body (again, fill in the blank).”

Were those footsteps in the hall the police coming to arrest us?

Thankfully not. But I had more than a mere tidbit of conversation to use in a book. I had a premise for an entire story thread. What if a traveler stays in a motel with paper-thin walls and overhears his neighbor planning to commit murder? Does he report it? The homicidal neighbor might be drunk and blowing off steam. Or he might be a mystery writer discussing his next story.

Or he could be a killer, and reporting him might just save a life.

In the opening chapter of Fair Game, a conflicted traveler has this exact conundrum. The problem is when he got up in the morning, the guy in the room next door had already checked out. Our traveler debates whether to say anything or not…until he passes the Vance Township Police Station and takes it as a sign. He stops and tells Chief Pete Adams, who then must decide how much weight to give such a report. No murder has occurred. No one in his jurisdiction has gone missing. It’s probably nothing.

Until, on a whim, he stops at the motel to get the murderous guest’s name and license number. Both of which turn out to be fake…

So Reds and readers, have you ever overheard any “interesting” conversations through a hotel room wall? And what would you do if you overheard your neighbor say, “I’m going to kill him!”

HANK: That would be a very difficult decision! Whoa. And I’m not sure what I would do. Yeah, I might call. Certainly I would call if I heard “I’m going to kill you!” Definitely.

 The last hotel disaster I had was when every time I took a shower, it set off the smoke alarm.  Truly. It went through my mind, the first time—well, I’m in the shower, I’ll be wet and so, fine. Brilliant. 

I’ve heard loud partiers, that’s for sure. But nothing sinister. 

So how about you reads and readers? Any hotel “insights”? 

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Paramedic Zoe Chambers hoped a week at the Monongahela County Fair, showing her horse and manning the ambulance, would provide a much-needed diversion from recent events that continue to haunt her. An old friend, a bossy nemesis, and a teenage crush from her 4-H days fail to offer the distraction she had in mind. But ever the caregiver, she soon bonds with a troubled teen and a grieving father.

Back in Vance Township, a missing woman turns up dead, leading Police Chief Pete Adams into a journey through her mysterious final hours. With each new clue, the tragic circumstances of her death grow increasingly muddied.

A cryptic phone call leads Pete to join Zoe for an evening at the fairgrounds where the annual school bus demolition derby concludes with a gruesome discovery and a new case that may or may not be connected to the first. Pete’s quest for the motive behind two homicides—and Zoe’s stubborn determination to reunite a family—thrust them both onto a collision course with a violent and desperate felon.

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today best-selling author of the Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania’s tight-knit Vance Township. A lifelong resident of Washington County (PA), Annette has garnered four Agatha Award nominations including Best Contemporary Novel of 2018 for CRY WOLF. She’s a member of International Thriller Writers, the Pittsburgh Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and is on the board of directors of Pennwriters. FAIR GAME (May 2019) is the eighth in her series.

And, For the Grand Finale...

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Close to 20 million people watched the finale of Game of Thrones and at least that many more who followed along casually had heard every detail of the conclusion to the eight-year saga by breakfast on Monday. Indeed, it was hard to avoid as people rioted in the streets took to Twitter and Facebook to express their amazement, agreement dismay or disgust. I don't want to rehash the many arguments about whether the ending was fitting or not (it wasn't; Sansa + Tyrion should have jointly ruled the kingdoms, Jon Snow should have been King in the North and Brienne and Tormund should have ridden off to adventures together) but it did put me in mind of some of the memorable series conclusions I've seen over the years, and how satisfying - or jaw gaping - they were.

First off, I have to acknowledge there are many, many TV series that never got a finale on the small screen because they were prematurely, unjustly yanked. (The other two of you in the US who watched Flash Forward will know what I'm talking about. Back in the sixties and seventies, even shows that knew they were ending  rarely capped the series - production companies had their eyes on valuable syndication rights, and didn't want to lose future audiences who, it was thought, wouldn't tune in if they knew how everything ended. (A similar theory still circulates in the publishing world: editors will tell you not to kill the main series characters off at the end for fear later readers won't start reading the beginning.

But starting in the eighties and increasing exponentially in the nineties, companies began tying a bow on their popular TV shows. Part of it was economic, as always - even flagging shows could pull a startling number of eyeballs for a last hurrah. For some series, everything was pulled together in a bittersweet and satisfying way that left you with a glow of contentment. For others, viewers found themselves saying, "What the @#$%did I just see?" after the closing credits.  Let's look at a few I remember:

1. M*A*S*H: After a run three and a half times longer than the actual Korean War, the doctors and staff of the MASH unit were discharged. Everyone who had ever been on the show appeared (at least in a photograph) and I sobbed my way through the entire second hour, not so much because I was going to miss Alan Alda, but because I used to watch it with my Mom and Grandma at Grandma's house and I was seeing the finale in my slightly crummy student apartment and I was never going to be a little kid perched on Grandma's enormous divan again.


You may have experienced this finale differently.

2. Mad Men: This was definitely a "What the heck?" ending. Don discovers EST? Did Don write the famous Coke song? The acme of Sally Draper's character arc is that she's cooking and cleaning and taking care of her younger brothers? (that really cheesed me off.) On the other hand, I really love the Coke song because it reminds me of my tween years, so overall, I gave this a thumbs up.


I promise not every episode will be viewed through the lens of how it made me feel about my childhood.

3. Quantum Leap. I sobbed at this one, too. After all his humane, wise, helpful adventures, Sam doesn't get to go home? He never goes home?!? But Dean Stockwell is still alive, thank God, so there's still a chance of a follow-up movie. We should start a write-in campaign. I hear Netflix is looking for projects.


Fun fact: I'm pretty sure my son was conceived the night this episode aired. Seeking comfort in adversity and all that. 

4. Newhart: The best absurdist ending ever pulled off in theater, TV or the cinema. After eight years of wacky adventures in a Vermont Inn (oh, how I loved Larry, Daryl and Daryl!) in the show's finale, Bob wakes up... in his New York apartment, sleeping next to his wife, Suzanne Pleshette. Bob's deadpan confusion, Suzanne's tolerant "All right, Bob," and the audience's enormous affection for The Bob Newhart Show makes this a slam-dunk.


5. St. Elsewhere: It's not an easy trick to pull, however, as shown in the baffling discovery that six years of drama, black humor and angst at the run-down Boston hospital actually all took place in the mind of an autistic kid holding a snow globe. Author John Scalzi has an excellent observation that the failure mode of clever is "asshole": this finale is living proof. It's a good thing this happened before the age of the internet, or the writers would have been hounded off social media for life.


6. The Sopranos: Love it or hate it, the ending of this ground-breaking crime show/family drama was singular and memorable, not so much for the way it completed hanging plot lines - it sort of did and sort of didn't -but for the last four minutes. Three of the four members of the Soprano family are sitting in a diner booth. The camera widens so we see a man walk into the restrooms. Two big guys approach the jukebox. The dialog is banal and the music is anything except suspenseful, but the tension is almost unbearable. The daughter, running late, crosses the road. We hear a ting as the diner door opens and...slam to black. 

The way writer/director David Chase set the scene is purely cinematic, but the ambiguous ending is very novelistic to me. A tricky choice that had lots of fans yelling, but it worked as art.

All right, dear readers, it's your turn. What are your favorite or infamous series finales?