Making Adjustments

Whenever I start reading a crime or mystery novel, the first thing I do is take a look at the copyright date. My reason for doing this is twofold. First, I need to know whether the film that will play out in the theater of my mind will be in color or black and white. My rule of thumb is that anything before 1960 will be B&W, while anything from the Sixties forward will be in color. Needless to say, that will also affect the garb of the characters and the vehicles they drive. Second, I need to understand the context of the currency, and that's the hardest part of reading a period crime novel. 

For example, Philip Marlowe is always paying off some informant, slipping him a dollar for some valuable information. Nowadays, try to buy info for a buck and your stoolie might say, "Hey, buddy, where's the other nineteen to go along with that?" On the other hand, he might decide to loosen someone's tongue with some liquor, some slugs of Old Forester. Even then, it's a cheap investment, since he can get an informant drunk, have a few shots himself, and still get change back from his $5...and that includes sliding a dime to the bartender as a tip. Even Marlowe's rates ($25 a day, plus expenses) sound picayune by today's standards, where a lunch can cost that much easily. It helps, though, when I remember that my grandfather was at the time making $3,500 per year, and that was a excellent salary, him being a stationary engineer. In comparison, a journalist on the same census report was listed as making $2,800 a year, with a teacher earning slightly less. Understanding Marlowe's rates also helps me to understand his clients. Somebody who could pay him $25 a day, plus expenses (let's call it $35) is pretty well heeled. Could you hire a detective for $450 a day? It explains why Marlowe's clients often wore diamonds.

In crime books, there are often robberies, kidnappings and murders. More often than not, the motive is money. When I read about a robbery that nets a cool $5,000 or even $10,000, my first thought is, You could have got that with a job at Burger King...no guns involved. Even a ransom demand of $50,000 seems petty, less than a year's salary in a mediocre job. I remember an episode of the old TV series The Saint where an actress and an actor were kidnapped from the stage of an Italian sword & sandal film. The kidnappers wanted $25,000 for the actress, but only $5,000 for the musclebound actor. When the aggrieved actor complained to the kidnappers, he was told, "Well, we had to ask for something we thought they would pay." An insult in comparison, perhaps, but still a princely sum, equal to about $60,000 today...well, I guess it was rather insulting after all since that's still a mediocre job these days. When you move into the rather rarefied air of millions you begin to get away from actual sums and start dealing with ideas and concepts. A title like Million Dollar Murder evoked a response from a reader that had nothing to do with the actual sum. A million dollars was an unreachable amount, a synonym for "more money than you can imagine"...which was also a common line in crime novels back in the day. Today, a million bucks is a lot of money only in an abstract sense, a tenuous tie with tradition. In reality, it's not much to get excited about. Anyone in a mediocre job ($50,00/year) will earn that much in just twenty years. The whole point of citing a million dollars was to evoke the feeling that that was more than the average reader could ever make...doing something legal,

Even the lofty billion ($1,000,000,000) is on the verge of becoming an endangered species. If a million bucks was unimaginable, then a billion was inconceivable, the sort of thing that might cause an embolism if a crook considered it too long. Nowadays, billion has become the new million, which has become the new thousand. If this keeps up, the next time you pay your bill at McDonald's, you might have to say, "Sorry, I don't have anything smaller than the new Booker T. Washington $20,000,000 bill." It can get quite depressing reading a period crime novel, not for any action in the book itself, but because the devolution of our money really hits home. Sure, wages were low, but so were prices, and the money you earned actually had value. People might look down on what my grandfather earned in the Thirties, but his six kids never went hungry and always had shoes. 

So, when I read crime novels and money invariably enters the picture, I have to make adjustments to keep the amounts in perspective. However, it's too depressing to think of what that would be equal to now. I find it is better to immerse myself in the story and the times, adjusting myself to the book rather than the book to me. Yeah, I'm happier that way.

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Unreal Biographies

When you are a fictional character (in the real sense, not the metafictional sense), there are two ways you can tell you've crossed the boundary between the printed page and our world -- you either get mail (as Santa Claus did in Miracle on 34th Street), or someone writes your biography. The greatest example of this is, of course, Sherlock Holmes, who not only receives mail regularly at his 221B Baker Street address in London, but has had a slew of biographies (including the best shown below) as well as case studies and monographs. Additionally, several years ago, I was perusing the biographical section at the end of a standard dictionary and came across the entry: "Sherlock Holmes -- English consulting detective." The lexicographer either omitted the word "fictional" or was just admitting the obvious.

Two of Agatha Christie's characters have, through sheer force of personality, made the leap from fiction to biography. They are, of course, Dame Agatha's greatest creations: M. Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective with the magnificent moustaches and the egg-shaped head, and Miss Jane Marple, the penurious spinster who knows that the great crime-ridden world is nothing more than a giant version of her little village of St Mary Mead. Truth be told, however, the Belgian sleuth was the lesser child in Dame Agatha's eyes, for she came to resent all the little eccentricities with which she imbued him, and took him to a mostly ignoble death in Curtain; Miss Marple, on the other hand, finished her last case (Sleeping Murder) with dignity. Personally, I think it is because, while Agatha Christie grew away from Poirot, she grew into Miss Marple.

Another British character deemed more real than most people is James Bond, Agent 007 of the British Secret Service, whose characteristics and early exploits were based on the wartime espionage adventures of creator Ian Fleming. Not only is the once secret dossier of this venerable civil servant now open to public inspection through any number of books, it is possible to take walking tours of "James Bond's London."

On this side of the Pond, we have our own share of real imaginary people. Chief among these must be Ellery Queen. When I was a kid, Ellery Queen confused the heck out of me. Was he a writer? Was he a detective? Was he the editor of his own magazine? Was he even a real person? The answer to all four questions is yes...and no. Ellery Queen, I discovered, was actually two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, who created the detective in 1928 for a mystery novel contest, then submitted the story under the name of the character. So, we have Ellery the character, Ellery the writer (who sometimes write about himself, sometimes others), Ellery the anthologist who creates glittering collections, Ellery the scholar who is the greatest living expert on mystery fiction, and Ellery the editor of his own mystery magazine. No actual biography for Ellery, but boy did he get mail...by the bags full.

Nero Wolfe, America's greatest detective, has lived out his life in books, with the exception of a mundane film and two unfortunately short-lived television series. It is, then, quite a feat that he has achieved such a high level of reality to his fans...to his "Wolfe pack." We've talked a bit about Wolfe previously, so rather than travel down that street again, I only advise you to read his bio.

Contrasted with Wolfe, our next duo of American sleuths have led healthy lives outside the world of print. Perry Mason and Philip Marlowe are actually more known these days through appearances in film and television; some people may even be surprised that they were born in books (when attending a screening of the Sherlock Holmes film, I was amused to hear a girl tell her boyfriend to write down Conan Doyle's name so they could see if the library had any books available). For millions of people, Perry Mason looks just like Raymond Burr, while Philip Marlowe sometimes looks like Humphrey Bogart (or Sam Spade), sometimes like Robert Mitchum. If you read the biography of Mason's creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, you're really reading Mason's bio; Marlowe has his own biography, and when in Los Angeles, that city of mean streets where a man must walk while not becoming mean himself, be sure to take the Philip Marlowe bus tour.

And for a little bit of fun, as well as some great information on Erle Stanley Gardner as a fictional character (yes, the creator becomes the created), it's well worth your time to track down a copy of Susan Kandel's I Dreamed I Married Perry mason.

All the characters who've leapt from fiction to fact are from the mystery genre, and I feel that is no mere coincidence. Only in the mystery world do we have characters coming back again and again, sharing their lives with us, becoming a bit more real with each reading. Those characters outside mysteries who have attained a measure of reality (Harry Potter leaps to mind) are the exception rather than the rule, and in the case of Harry Potter, I would suggest that the lad has more in common with the mystery realm than with any other genre, despite all the potions, broomsticks and bogies. There are lots of reference books about mystery writers and their creations, but I have two go-to books when I want to dig deep, Detectionary andThe Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, both by Otto Penzler; they are a bit dated when it comes to the latest crop of sleuths, such as Harry Bosch, Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski, but I still can't recommend any better.

For a bit of fun and sinful indulgence, however, track down two books "perpetrated" by Dilys Wynn, noted NYC bookseller who founded the first all-mystery bookstore, Murder Ink. Both books show below are reference books, in a sense, but they are also "companionable" books...you know, cozy, like a good English country house murder.