The Monster in our Midst

When I first heard the words, they just didn’t fit together in the same sentence.

It was midnight, I was driving home from my weekly Monday-night hockey game, and the hourly news had just come on the radio. The first item started with: “Canadian Forces Base commander Colonel Russell Williams…”  I almost pushed the dial. Assumed it was yet another military story, late-night news filler.

Then came the second part of the sentence: “charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of breaking and enter and sexual assault.”

I often tell young writers how crucial the opening line of a book can be. That one technique is to have a surprising turn in it. A disconnect, between the first part of the sentence and the second. Hard to top how Charles Dickens started A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

One of best opening lines I’ve read recently was in Tom Rob Smith’s wonderful debut novel, Child 44: “Since Maria had decided to die her cat would have to fend for itself.”

(Okay – here’s the opening line to my first novel, Old City Hall: “Much to the shock of his family, Mr. Singh rather enjoyed delivering newspapers.”)

The phrases ‘Canadian Forces Base commander’ and ‘charged with two counts of murder” didn’t fit.

(When I first heard the words ‘two murders,’ I assumed it would be two family members. And, of course, the criminal lawyer in me must emphasize that to date these are only allegations).

The allegations are bone chilling. Two different women murdered. Two other victims raped in their homes, tied up and photographed. Ongoing investigation into other cases.

I was just a few blocks away from my house when the story the newscast moved on to another story. I flicked off the radio, stunned.

People who work in the criminal courts know how rare it is to see crimes like this. The statistics back up what we see every day, that so few homicides are committed by strangers. I’ve defended many people charged with murder and the cases all fit into the usual, sad, categories: drug-related killings, domestic homicides, rooming house murders, bar room brawls gone sour.

But the statistics fall away in the face of a Boston-strangler-like, serial-murderer scenario like this. Such extreme allegations feel more like the stuff of fiction.

One of the magical things about finally being a published author is that I’ve met and been on stage with writers such as Jeffery Deaver, Douglas Preston, Michael Connelly, Lee Child and Ian Rankin.

A few months ago I was at a book festival, and Rankin was asked: “Is there a theme that runs through all your books?”

It was a terrific question. Rankin took his time with the answer. “That even good people are capable of great evil,” he said at last, and recounted how as a young man he’d been influenced by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It had never really left him.

I pulled into our driveway and hefted by hockey bag out of the back of my car. As strode into the bracing cold-night air, I could only shake my head, and wonder at the line between fact and fiction, and how it will be forever blurred.

Losing My Bookshelf Friends

In the last few days, in alarming succession, four writers who have had a great influence on my life have died.

Robert B. Parker, the prolific mystery writer, died on January 18, 2010, while at his desk producing his daily five-page output.  I remember hearing an interview with Parker once on CBC Radio, when he told the host Michael Enright about his PhD thesis based on Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald – the writers I read obsessively to get me through law school. l was inspired by a guy who gave up being a university English professor (one of the many occupations I thought I’d do in my life) to write crime novels.

Paul Quarrington, the agile Canadian writer/musician/screenwriter died three days later. I’d followed Paul’s career for years, and marveled at his ability to jump from creative project to creative project with great enthusiasm and skill. I met him for the first time this summer and he was exactly what I’d expect. Straight forward, engaging and most of all tremendously welcoming to me – a rookie writer – into the world of words.

Louis Achincloss died five days later. He was a New York City wills and trusts lawyer, cut from the American upper class, who worked full time as a partner in a major law firm and wrote about a book a year. I read about him years ago in Time Magazine, when I was at law school. I loved the idea of being a lawyer by day, writer by night. If he could do it, I thought…

J. D. Salinger died the next day. There was a time in my life when Salinger was almost everything to me. I was in grade ten. My older brother, the writer David Rotenberg, was in grade thirteen (we had that back then in Ontario) and he had a wonderful English teacher who had David’s class read The Nine Short Stories. I soon read them and became a secret Salinger snob. The Catcher in the Ryewas okay I thought, but rather common, compared to his other three books. I was so into Salinger, I remember spending days at the high school library finding his obscure New Yorker short stories that never made it into his four books. When I was nineteen, a friend of mine and I drove around New England in a van, and I made him detour and go all around Cornish, New Hampshire. To this day,The Nine Short Stories is in the bedside stack of books I read over and over. Two stories that I never hear mentioned, Down at the Dinghy and The Laughing Man, are the ones I read the most.

When a writer dies, I think all their readers lose a small part of themselves. As I write this, my eyes drift up to my bookshelf. These authors have a place there. And I’ll miss knowing that they’re not still out there, typing away.

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming

I always read how novelists would return letters to their readers as a daily writing warm-up. Now that I seem to be a writer, guess what? It’s true. People want to write to me and writing them back every morning is a great way to start my day. Get my fingers moving and my butt in the chair.

The letters seem to fall into a few categories. There are the ‘I’m mad at you because I couldn’t sleep last night until I finished your book’ missives. I could read those all day. And some are funny. One reader had a blackout in his house and finished Old City Hall by candlelight. Another got through the last few chapters by the light of her cell phone on a greyhound bus. Love that image.

Then there are the ‘but’ letters. Usually they say things I love the: story/characters/setting/writing/hockey in the book/complex ending, etc. ‘but’ I didn’t like the: story/characters/setting/writing/hockey in the book/complex ending, etc. Some days I get letters in which one writer loves the exact same thing the other doesn’t like.

I get many, many ‘can I send you a chapter’ letters. Writers of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds who want me to have me look at their prose. I look at everything. To be candid, often it is like looking in a writing mirror – I see the same mistakes that I, and almost all writers struggle with, as we learn this trade. I recommend to everyone the Humber School for Writers – either their great nine-day summer course in July in Toronto, or their six-month correspondence course available to people all over the world. Also that they read Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

By far my favorites are the ‘you missed’ letters. Readers just love to point out any little factual inconsistency they can find. Some writers might be offended. I find it wonderfully flattering that sitting alone all these hours, I’ve somehow constructed this fictional world that is so very real to people. Here is an excerpt from one of the best:

I thoroughly enjoyed your first novel…The one (minor) false note concerned your description of the full moon late in the book. You had Kennicott looking up and seeing the full moon well above the horizon in midday, which is an astronomical impossibility. A full moon always rises near the time of sunset and sets near sunrise. For example, in 2009, the full moon occurred on June 7. On that date in Toronto, moonrise was at 9:42 p.m. EDT and moonset at 5:04 a.m. EDT. In other words, the full moon would have been high in the sky in the middle of the night, not the middle of the day. I’m perfectly happy to grant an author a good deal of poetic license, but my “willing suspension of disbelief” doesn’t extend quite that far.

I eagerly look forward to your next book, with or without a full moon.

I’ve now enlisted this reader to check all my future books for solar and lunar accuracy.

Finally there are the letters that touch me so very deeply. Total strangers, who tell me about their relationships with their fathers, and how much Ari Greene andhis dad meant to them. Parents of autistic adults who tell me I got the character of Brace’s son just right. People tell me the parts that made them laugh, and made them cry.

What a miracle. These little black marks on a white page can have so much power, so much importance in peoples’ lives.

The one constant in every letter is that everyone wants to read the next book. Which characters will be in it? When oh when is it coming out?

Well, I’m working away. Close to done. And hoping that readers will be moved to keep those cards and letters coming.

With thanks.

Robert Rotenberg

Outdoor Hockey

In the years I lived in Europe, there were many things I loved about the lifestyle. The cafes, the food, the history and beauty on every corner.

But one of the things I missed most was the easy access to outdoor activity. I used to be a marathon runner, so that was okay when I lived in London with all the big parks – though the air was so dirty. And when I lived in Paris, that was before they reined in the dogs, so it was more poop avoidance than running.

Which leads me back home in Toronto, where one great advantage is the abundant parks. And even better, in winter, the open-air ice rinks.

I read once that Toronto has more outdoor skating rinks per capita than any city in the world, and a few years ago when they were in peril due to budget cuts a civil servant who really cared referred to the rinks as the “jewel in the crown” as local politicians crowed on about it being the “birthright of every Canadian kid” to play outdoor hockey.

To me the best is late at night. When the wind has died down, and I’ve changed out of my sweat-filled clothes of the day. I love to walk to one of the two rinks near my, skates dangling over my hockey stick which is slung over my shoulder, and play for a few hours with total strangers.

Everyone knows the rules. Don’t stay on too long if there are a lot of players. Pass and skate hard. Have fun and don’t hurt anyone.

Often I’m a good decade or two older than everyone else on the ice.

I’ll admit, I like that.

But most of all I like the cool air in my lungs, a layer of sweat lining my body, the clap of sticks on the ice, the clear stars and moon above and the feeling that maybe I could just keep skating forever.

Sadness and Outrage

Toronto lost one of its finest citizens on December 29, 2009 and he was laid to rest last  Saturday.

His name was Kenneth Mark, described lovingly by his brother at his funeral as a “gentle giant” who all the kids in his neighbourhood adored.  His employer, his friends, his family, all who knew him felt the same way.

Why was he killed? Murdered in cold blood just before he went to work as a well-respected night-shift manager at Walmart? Because he had the courage to challenge the gang members who were trying to infest the housing complex where he lived.

A very close friend of ours is Kenneth’s aunt, so this hits particularly close to home.  At the funeral, the enormous church was packed. A man who touched so many. We all cried.

I admit, I assumed that the mostly-white Toronto media would not pay much attention to this case. I feared they’d have the cynical attitude that makes my blood boil: that this was just another “black person killing another black person.” (Even writing those words makes me want to vomit – who would EVER care about the race of someone who was murdered?)

To my pleasant surprise, the opposite has been true. The story did not disappear as I thought it would. Instead the media has made a real point of following it. Andy Barry on Metro Morning deserves special kudos.

Sure, I’m a defense lawyer, tasked with defending all those who are charged. Even those charged with heinous crimes.

But I‘m a citizen, and I’m outraged by this murder.

And impressed with the police.

The breaking news this morning is that they have arrested two teens, and all I can tell you right now is expect a third arrest soon. (I do have my contacts).

We all lost a great deal when we lost Kenneth. This is how you lose a city – one good person at a time.

I’m glad that this time we seem to be standing together.

It’s a tipping point moment –and I’m holding my breath.

Bobby

Reading List

I consider myself rather an accidental mystery writer. Before I wrote “Old City Hall,” I spent ten years writing another book. All I’ll say is it was good enough to get an agent in New York but not good enough (thank goodness) to sell.

The book was not a mystery, had no lawyers (well almost none) and it lives safely tucked away in a drawer.

So when I wrote “Old City Hall” I really was not the well read in the mystery book world. Oh, I’d read my share. Fell for Ian Rankin and read all of his, same with Michael Connelley. And, as I began to realize I was writing a book with big courtroom scenes, I started reading other lawyer-turned writers books. (I mean beyond Grisham and Turow, who of course I’d read).

Once the book came out and the webpage was launched, I began to get emails from all over the world from people who said I reminded them of this or that writer. So I’ve been making a list, and reading away, trying to catch up. What fun.

These days I have a bunch of books on the go.  What I look for first and foremost is good writing. Then comes a strong sense of place. Interesting characters. Tight dialogue. And good cooking – love books with good food in them. Last of all – humour. Hate books that don’t make me laugh.

Here are some writers I’m having fun with these days.

Andrea Camillleri – Lovely little mysteries set in Sicily. Writing is delicious, and addictive.

Dona Leon. – Nice stuff set in Venice. I seem to be on a bit of an Italian kick.

Robert Goddard – Longer, more complex stuff.

Alexander McCall Smith – just finishing the second in his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  Given that I’m almost done the second book in my series, I want to see how he did book two.

Book on tape – right now in my car I have Steven King’s Under the Dome keyed up. A big sprawling book, great to listen to when I’m not listening to sports radio and laughing at all the Toronto Maple Leaf fans going insane about our local hockey team. Just like in the book.

There you have it – blog one.

Happy reading.

Bobby