Oh, so much more than that.

Coming soon to an electronic bookstore near you.

I’m just finishing up ‘Blessed Are the Humble,’ my new book and mystery # 3 in the Maintenon Mystery Series.

It’s interesting, how after I got a few thousand words down, the story sort of took off on its own.

By making certain choices early in the book, many other choices were eliminated later in the book. And yet certain opportunities presented themselves. They always do.

Every thought you ever had, every thing you ever saw or heard, read, or imagined, is still inside of you.

It’s all there, logged into your memory banks. Much of it is so obscure, it will never be needed. It will never be called upon—unless you want to be a writer or something stupid like that.

Nothing is forgotten. It’s all there in some subconscious thought factory, one that rules our dreams and even our body.

Mind, body, spirit, right?

All of that can come to the surface again when it is called upon. It’s called regurgitation.

That’s not to say that I’m rewriting AgathaChristie, but all the previous mystery novels that I have read undoubtedly play a part in whatever I write in that genre.

It’s called ‘influences,’ and we all have a few.

My characters, who seem to spring, at least in my own eyes, directly formed, right off of the page, say the dumbest things—and it always gets me to thinking.

What in the hell did he mean by that?

But of course it is my subconscious mind, well trained over the years, trying to tell me something.

In the first chapter, I set up a crime, and made certain statements, statements that must hold true for the entire book, or must be accounted for in some way otherwise.

The internal logic of a mystery novel must be true unto itself, even if it is true unto no other thing or world. 

Your subconscious mind has internal logic too.

Internally, if I introduce something early in the book, ideally, it should be accounted for later on. If not, I can always go back and cut out those red herrings, those erroneous clues that mean nothing except that the author was laying some groundwork, of a sort that ultimately was unnecessary.

All that shit is bubbling away below the surface. In me. That’s where it’s all happening.

I knew the ending, or at least who had committed this crime before I even set foot into the writing of this book. Fun metaphor, right? But those red herrings were useless once I got going, and so I took them out again.

Easy, right? And when I ran across a statement, I thought it through. As best I could. And came up with objections. Objections which I subsequently shot down, by going to an appropriate place in the manuscript, and taking out something stupid, and writing in something new.

That’s called logic.

All I really had to do, was to write a practical set-up for the ending of my book. It’s a mystery book. It’s formulaic to begin with, and must be so or the readers kind of miss the point.

Then I went through and checked all my logic, all the names and faces, time-frames and stuff like that. If you have a male murderer, and your detective and the evil lady are struggling in mortal combat upon the Empire State Building, and yet the entire sequence of events is in Tokyo, with the scene set in Paleolithic Africa, then I guess you would have a bit of a problem.

An interesting mash-up, but not your classic formula mystery novel.

People can’t be in two places at once, and people must have motive for an extraordinary act.

My story happens in Paris, and it’s not that difficult to keep it in Paris. Until one character goes on the lam—then I had to look up border towns on the way to Lausanne, which is in Switzerland.

The characters drive the story! Whoever would have thunk it.

And so the characters can be said to have led me on. They led me on a merry chase, and I had to work hard just to figure these guys out. In order for Inspector Gilles Maintenon to solve this murder, first I had to solve it. In order to solve it, I had to have les clue.

Writing a mystery novel is an interesting mental exercise.

It’s easier said than done. I need evidence to convict a criminal character. The only person who could provide compelling evidence, motive, modus operandi and all of that sort of thing is the writer himself.

To say that I had fun writing the book would be an understatement. The whole thing works out to about 65,300 words. It took twenty-eight writing days and four drafts, which took another three or four days. I will no doubt read it again, four or five times more.

That’s interesting, because John Creasey, who is said to have received seven hundred sixty-five rejection slips before making his first novel sale, is also said to have written books in a very short time. He also wrote six hundred novels. Eight different pen names. He even wrote science fiction.

Books which he sold for some ludicrous sum; and I mean like all of twenty-five pounds for a mystery or crime thriller novel. Back then, I guess the rents were cheap or something.

I’ve read quite a few of his books as well, as my grandfather had a whole shelf full of them.

Mystery readers love a puzzle, and I have set them a good one. All of the clues, both the physical and yes, the all-important psychological ones, are right there in black and white.

What you make of them, is up to you.

In the beginning, it was such a simple crime: to write a mystery novel in about a month, to a length of 60,000 words.

It was a crime of pure arrogance.

But it was oh, so much more than that.

Extracts from Maintenon 3.

“After you.”

With a polite nod, Hubert led the way up to the third floor landing where there were exactly two chocolate brown-painted doors, one on the right and one on the left. The walls were a faded peachy colour. The steps continued switching back and forth up another two floors from the landing.

A radio played softly, but it was in the apartment behind them. The one they were interested in seemed dead silent, but then they heard a clunk and what sounded like a match striking. Someone coughed and that’s when Hubert raised his hand and knocked firmly but not overly-loud.

There came some indeterminate sounds and then footsteps falling on thin carpet over hollow boards.

With no peep-hole, the rattling of a chain—it was probably being put on rather than being taken off, was no surprise, and then one dark eye was peering at Levain and Hubert through a seventy-five millimetre gap.

“Yes?”

The man eyed them suspiciously.

“We are from the police. We would like to speak to an Aron Saunier, please.”

The man uttered a deep sigh of resignation.

“Yes, he’s home.” The door closed and then the chain came off and the gentleman let them in, where a homey smell of cooking, mostly fried meat, and tobacco, and sweat and steam quickly enveloped them in its sticky embrace.

It was the smell of bacon and tobacco, thought Hubert as he waved clouds of stale smoke aside.

The man, shuffling along a short and rather dim hallway, wore slippers, baggy pajama bottoms and a housecoat with an undershirt. Lanky white hair stuck out all round, including upper chest and no doubt the armpits. He had long sideburns and a patch of bushy grey hair that went from ear to ear and nowhere else, not even a vestige of it on top anymore. Hubert looked at his watch, briefly struggling to remember today’s date. He had at least three pens with him.

Stopping inside the front room, judging by the windows and the yellow curtains, the man turned to his right.

“Aron! Someone is here to see you.” He glanced back.

“It’s all right, sir, he’s not in any trouble.” Levain kept his hands in his pockets but Hubert looked around, taking in the seediness of the place.

The couch sagged, the arms were ripped on the armchair, the end tables were miss-matched, the one picture on the long wall was a faded print of some clipper-ship at anchor in a cove with palm trees. The picture hung crooked. The walls showed brighter patches were someone else’s pictures had hung for quite some time. 

The ashtray overflowed and there were several dirty glasses strategically placed here and there. There were no coasters, judging by the prominent rings he saw on the coffee table, mostly on one corner area. Beside the door was a crate full of empty beer bottles, with a couple of much larger ones standing beside it.

It was all very impressive.

The man nodded glumly as ashes grew on the end of his cigarette. When he took it out of his mouth, he held it so very carefully, so as not to accidentally knock it off on the rug, but the rug looked distinctly grimy, pounded black and flat in the entranceway from a thousand people over the years. When he turned, his housecoat was tattered in the area of the behind.

From somewhere off in the distance they heard a toilet flush, very reluctant it sounded, and then then they heard thumps from sock feet as the young man came down a side passage beside what was probably the kitchen.

Judging by the room they were in, someone was sleeping on the couch. The blanket was thrown hastily up over the back of the couch and there were two pillows on the right end of it. On balance, Levain thought it might be the old man, who didn’t seem all that ambitious. He looked to be about forty-five or sixty.

Then Aron was there, freezing on the spot when he got a good look at them.

They flashed their badges in perfunctory manner.

“Is there someplace we could talk, Monsieur Saunier?”

The young man looked defiant and a little bit scared.

“What’s this about?”

Hubert was bang on, again.

“It’s really nothing to worry about. We would like to ask one or two questions about a party you were at.”

The startled look on the kid’s face was priceless. Levain wondered about that as the kid actually relaxed, air coming out in a big rush for some reason.

“What—a party?”

Okay, here’s another short extract:

The boy allowed that his father was ill and had been for some time. A hunted look came over his face upon speaking the words. Nodding, Hubert could think of nothing further to say. It put the peeling paint and shabby furnishings, the smell of grease and cabbage, into a whole new light.

At least in these respects, the kid was paying his own way, or at least Hubert hoped he was.

It seemed likely, but he didn’t want to ask about the financial arrangements. The kid had his dignity and a good cop would leave him as much of it as he possibly could. Until further notice. And a horrible feeling it was sometimes, too.

Hubert put his notebook away and on some odd impulse, maybe to try and take some of the sting out of it, he stuck out his hand.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

Almost beyond his control, pure reflex, the kid’s hand came up and they shook briefly.

“Thank you, Aron.”

“Ah—you’re welcome.”

Another lost kid.

There was probably something else he should have said, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything good. The doorway back into his own life was just ahead.

“Hey!”

He spun.

“What’s your name?”

“Hubert.”

The kid dove into the bedroom and came out with a sheaf of pamphlets.

He thrust a small bundle of them into Hubert’s hand and then his hands dropped helplessly to his sides.

Without even looking at it, Hubert nodded in a friendly manner and then went looking for Andre, who was most likely down at curbside by this time. Aron was about four years younger than Hubert. What a gulf that was sometimes.

Another extract:

Gilles sat at his desk, waiting for a friend from another department to call on him, reading reports, going over his thoughts on several outstanding cases, and writing up a final report on an arrest he had made last week. 

He had a few files like that to do, a small stack on the left front corner of his desk. File folders held shut with rubber bands. A man’s life, summed up in an instant for judge and jury. Those people were at least safely behind bars, awaiting trial, still, one caught up when one could.

From time to time his thoughts returned to the Ducharme case. It was hard to say if they were making any real progress. Not every case got solved, admittedly. The trouble was that for some reason, without knowing her, Gilles somehow liked Muriel Ducharme. He liked her in spite of himself. It was just one of those unexplainable things. In spite of all her faults, barely hinted at by anything so far, he had a sneaking kind of affection for that certain type of battle-axe. They had their rights just like anyone else, and some of them did a lot of good in the world.

If nothing else, they weren’t wishy-washy, weak characters, they knew what they wanted and how the world should be. They needed no validation.

Sometimes the police knew who did it, but didn’t have the evidence to even lay a charge. This was not one of those times. The very class of people they were dealing with made gathering a case together more difficult, cynically it must be said, and he had often allowed that poor people were easier to convict.

But if Gilles Maintenon was to charge someone, he had bloody well better get the right guy. For one thing, he had to live with himself. It was his only proper attitude, and one he had instilled into the heads of his men with a heavy if symbolic hammer.

The case was unusual in the fact that he still had no sense of who the killer might have been. 

As usual, this revolved around the question of why.

No one ever did anything for no reason.

The fingerprint reports were conclusive: no prints that could not be accounted for by family members or household staff. And yet there were even a couple positively belonging to Philipe. For the most part, his prints were on the insides of closets, and inside some little-used drawers in his old bedroom, but there were a couple of oddballs, for example a row of four under the edge of a small brass and marble coffee table downstairs. He’d probably helped move it years before, and now it was a memento of those better times. It was a piece of evidence that meant nothing until some theory of the crime took it into account—and they still had no theory of the crime, although one or two suggested themselves well enough.

Philipe had been gone for years, by all accounts.

Gilles’ head came up and he stared into space again. He was almost certain he’d heard something, a familiar cough that could only belong to one man. His face changed, he was back in the room again, and Tailler saw it happen.

A knock came at the door. Tailler was rising when it opened. At first a head came in, looked around the door and sought out Gilles. A scruffy old man looked around, taking in Tailler as if reassuring himself that this was indeed the place. As Tailler sank down, the hunched form straightened up and entered, gripping the edge of the door with fingers like sausages. They were the hands of an old farmer, and very strong still, thought Tailler.

An unprepossessing figure shuffled in, shaking off a battered fedora and checking out Tailler and Firmin with sneaky, pale blue eyes. His eyes swept the room, taking in everything, and nodding at the open windows and fresh air.

“You guys do yourselves all right up here, eh?” He had just the voice for it, deep and tobacco-brown.

“Alphonse!” Gilles rose to greet his old friend.

“Tailler, this is Inspector Alphonse Durand, a legend in the force.”

Firmin smiled, looking up and down again quickly, intent on his paperwork. Tailler nodded dutifully, bobbing his head in acknowledgement of the gentleman’s second appraising glance.

END