The Game's a Really Big Shoe

When I was a youth, I was much enamored of mystery tales. I devoured novels and stories of cops and detectives (professional and amateur) solving clever crimes in exciting ways, and I enjoyed mystery films, as well. I loved the ambiance, the feel, the smell of them. And the crime-solver's personality was important, too. Of course, the plots were also important; it's likely that my inability to solve them myself was a large part of their appeal. I've always said that, if I could figure out who the culprit was, it wasn't a good mystery.

But they didn't have to be great. Back when bookstores like Crown Books still existed (RIP), I loved going in, often with a gift certificate from my parents (remember paper gift certificates, which you had to spend in a brick-and-mortar store?), and taking my time exploring the clearance section. Hey, I wanted my folks' money's worth! Invariably, I'd come away with some cool-looking mystery hardcovers that few, if anyone, had ever heard of. Modern stories of cynical, down-on-their-luck P.I.s solving crimes among the rich-and-beautiful set; historical tales of monks, scribes, or what-have-you using their keen minds and little else to detect the guilty; even police procedurals of the future, in which the protagonist and his wisecracking buddy dealt with advanced computers, laser guns, robots, and virtual reality on their way to uncovering the killer. There was even this cool little series about a Japanese-American cop who used his zen mindset to identify the perpetrator.

Of course, there was Holmes. But I'm afraid he was a bit advanced for me at the time. I didn't get past the first two or three stories until I reached adulthood. But I adored the idea of the brilliant, magnifying glass-carrying, private detective, and when I wasn't playing sleuth-for-hire with my cousins, I was dashing off awful, brief tales of my own.

Eventually, the obsession faded and I moved on to other interests. There was still the occasional dip into the world of detection; I became a huge Raymond Chandler fan, and I love the Victorian mysteries of Anne Perry (whom I met once, before I learned she was a convicted killer--yikes!). But it wasn't a regular thing. Cut to: the aforementioned adulthood, when I finally engulfed the whole Sherlock Holmes canon and decided I just had to write a stage play about him (the impetus was the title, which I won't mention lest someone steal it). It's still in the plotting phase, but I'm confident it'll get done. In the meantime, a Holmes pastiche inspired a mystery that I did in fact write, and which I consider my first, true, professional-level short story: "The Case of the Copycatted Clerk." While I'd love to, I'll resist the urge to tell you anything about it, because that would spoil the surprises, of which I'm immensely proud.

Despite these projects, my childhood obsession had not relapsed; I had not been reading mysteries regularly. Then, in my habit of switching up the type of reading material I was engaged in (see Stuffing Yourself), I pulled from one of my heavily laden bookshelves a book of Victorian and Edwardian detective stories. I devoured it and immediately wanted more. That book also inspired some new mystery tales I could pen myself, which seems quite crazy to me, because I've never thought the concept of me as a mystery author was realistic. Remember, I'm terrible at figuring out the plot solution. But the elements are coming to me, and I'm having a ball jotting them down. Most of them are period pieces--there's even one about Holmes in his guise as the American Altamont--but there is also a future police procedural that is, hands-down, the weirdest story I've ever devised.

Raymond Chandler once said, "I certainly do admire people who do things." Maybe I can make Chandler proud of me yet.

Oh, wait, he's dead.

#fiction