Left Coast Crime 2014

By Teresa Burrell

Author of The Advocate Series

March 20, 2014

Today is the first day of Left Coast Crime 2014, Calamari Crime, in Monterey, California. I love these conferences because the panels are so informative but mostly because I get to see friends who I have come to know over the past

seven years. Most of these people I see only once or twice a year so it is a real treat to catch up.

It’s especially fun to participate on panels. This year I’m on two and both are very unique. The first is on Thursday from 2:30 to 3:15. It’s called “The Truth and Nothing But: Law and Murder.” Our moderator is Daco Auffenorde and the other panelists are Susan Goldstein, Lynne Raimondo, and Robert Rotstein, all attorneys. We’ve decided to have a mock trial in which we will appear as our characters. I will be Sabre Orin Brown, but Susan Goldstein will appear as her character, Samantha Crowley, the defendant who is accused of killing her husband. We will also be dressed in character. It should be a lot of fun.

Then on Friday from 4:00 to 4:45 I have the pleasure of appearing with many of our own Crime Fiction Collective authors, Marlyn Beebe (Moderator), Peg Brantley, Gayle Carline, Andrew E. Kaufman, and L.J. Sellers. The title of our panel is “Lying for a Living: Crime Fiction Collective.” This will be a hoot. We plan to present in a format where we tell the truth with an occasional lie thrown in to see if the audience can tell the difference. Please stop in to see if you can tell when we are fabricating. You may even win a free book.

If you’ve never attended Left Coast Crime, you should. It’s a lot of fun, but more importantly I always learn something and I come home pumped and ready to write, write, write!

I hope to see you there.

Teresa Burrell

Author, Attorney, Advocate

It's Street Sweeper Day!

Yesterday was street sweeper day at my sister’s house. That basically means the city will make some revenue off this block from the poor schmucks who forgot to cram their cars into the driveway, three and four deep. The street sweeper comes by about 7:30 in the morning followed closely by the woman in the little white car with an overactive pen waiting to write a ticket. This street is very near a state university so there are several houses with hard working, low-income, college students living in the neighborhood. Most can’t afford the parking tickets.

This is my sister’s pet peeve.  But before I go on, you have to know that she is like the street monitor making sure everyone keeps their yards looking nice, no sofas left on the street, no loud parties, or barking dogs, etc., She has lived in this neighborhood for forty years and loves it. She raised her kids here and knows most if not every neighbor by name, their children, and cats and dogs. The neighbors love her.

But every second and fourth Wednesday the street sweeper comes. He drives way too fast, blows the leaves and trash, (that the neighbors have just swept into the street) back up on the sidewalks. Then, instead of cleaning his brushes, or emptying his load, or whatever street sweepers do to get rid of the extra debris, he keeps rolling along the street until it all falls off right back onto the street he just swept. Somehow, and I’m not sure it’s by accident, he manages to dump most of it right in front of my sister’s house.

My sister has taken it upon herself to make sure no more money goes into the city coffer from parking tickets on her street. So, every second and fourth Wednesday she gets up early, and at 7:25 drives around the block and knocks on doors where the cars are parked in the street. Most of the time it’s the houses with the students, but not always. Sometimes it’s the guy who had to work late who just forgot, or the family that had out-of-state company and didn’t realize what day it was.

What does this have to do with crime or fiction, you ask? Well, my sister thinks it’s a crime, but that wasn’t the point of my story. This is the kind of every day thing that builds characters in our books. I’m sure you know a lot more about my sister from this description than you would if I just tried to describe her. I bet you formed your own idea of what she looks like, the way she behaves, her personality. Well, if you imagined a wiry, petite, woman who never slows down, never gives up, who loves children and old people, and does it all with a smile, you nailed it.

Every day, wherever I am, or whatever I’m doing, I watch for the little things that go on around me. They help build great characters.

By the way, my sister is out of town this week and I’m house sitting for her. I left the house about 7:30 this morning and noticed the street sweeper hadn’t been there yet. I spotted a car on the street and I couldn’t help myself. I stopped, knocked on the door, and when the man came to the door in his housecoat I told him it was “street sweeper day.” I wasn’t too sure how he would react. I waited for a second. He turned, stuck his head in the door, and yelled, “Gabby, move your car!” Then he said, “Thanks, she didn’t need another one. I can’t afford it.”—It felt good.

Writers: Where do you get your ideas for this kind of character building?

Readers: Do you enjoy reading about the crazy little things a favorite character may do in their everyday life?

It's A Crime

Welcome Guest Blogger, Jim Stevens

I’m thrilled to introduce our guest blogger today, Jim Stevens, a fellow author who writes humorous mysteries. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can write “funny stuff” and his are truly funny. It is difficult to read an excerpt from any page in one of his books and not smile, and in many places I laughed out loud.

In addition to his Richard Sherlock Whodunit Series, he wrote a book called Whupped (no mystery here), which is my personal favorite. The language is a little rough in that one, so if you have tender ears, stick to his mysteries.

Jim Stevens was born in the East, grew up in the West, schooled in the Northwest, and spent twenty-three winters in the Midwest. He has been an advertising copywriter, playwright, filmmaker, stand-up comedian, and television producer.

Teresa Burrell

Author, Attorney, Advocate

It’s A Crime

It’s downright criminal; there are so many crimes for readers to choose from.

Yesterday, I was trying to come up with excuses to avoid working on my latest Richard Sherlock Whodunit. I do this quite often when I’m stuck, can’t find the right word, or it’s really nice outside and I’m sitting at this computer without an original thought in my head. I Googled away, and guess what I find: TOO MANY DARN DETECTIVE BOOKS OUT THERE. Do you realize there are kid, adult, teenage, tweener, and senior citizen detectives? There are housewives, divorced wives, divorced husbands, shrinks, psychologists, marriage counselors, medical examiners, nosy neighbors, dog sitters, and even writers (who write about other writers solving crimes) figuring out whodidit, howtheydidit, and whytheydidit. There are blind detectives, detectives missing limbs, detectives with diseases, deaf detectives, there’s even a series about an overweight female detective who tries new diets while solving murder cases. What’s next, a detective who figures it all out even though he’s in a coma?

I think someone should impose a moratorium on the writing and creation of all new detective characters. Why? Because we don’t need any more, there’s plenty out there already. Any more will just muck up the muck even further and make it harder and harder to find the good ones, like the ones I’ve written.

Jim Stevens

Author of The Richard Sherlock Whodunit series

The Case of the Not-So-Fair Trader

The Case of Moomah’s Moolah

The Case of Tiffany’s Epiphany 

We know Jim is joking, but he he is certainly correct about all the different sleuths we encounter in mysteries. What is the most unusual mystery series character that you have ever read? Or have written? Or have thought about writing?

That Evening I Spent with a Hooker

By Andrew E. Kaufman, bestselling author of psychological thrillers

Before becoming an author, I spent several years working as a broadcast journalist. I loved television news. It was exciting, fast paced, and packed with second-by-second, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants energy—something I’ve thrived on since childhood (read: adrenaline junkie).

Besides experiencing the joy of being at the center of all the energy and feeling the pulse of the city pounding in my head, I got to see a side of life few ever do on a daily basis.

The underside.

Photo courtesy: Kay Chernush for the U.S. State Department

Which for some reason has always fascinated me. This is likely why, after finally leaving the news business, I went on to write thrillers (once an addict, always an addict, you know?) On some
unconscious level, I probably took a lot of what I saw during those years with me, using it to add depth and dynamics to my characters and stories.

And no joke: I saw it all.

From homicide scenes, to filthy meth labs, to blazing fires, to dead bodies sprawled across freeways. You name it, we chased it, and after that, served it up at eleven.

Oh, yeah…the part about the hooker.

In all my years as a journalist, there’s a defining incident that I don’t think will ever leave me.

One evening, we were out on an undercover story about prostitution. This was at the very start of my career, so some of the details are a bit sketchy. I can’t even recall what the actual story hook was (sorry, wasn’t trying to be punny, there), but I think our goal was to find a prostitute so she could help us attract Johns. Of course, with an eleven o’clock deadline, we only had a few hours to accomplish this.

Long story short, we found our girl, and a young one at that, maybe eighteen, maybe younger, wearing tattered shorts and a t-shirt that didn’t look clean. Frizzy hair with hardly any makeup. She leaned in through the window, smiled at us, and then surprisingly, obliged to help us out. Soon after that, she was in our car, and away we went.

As often happens in the News Biz, our John angle ended up falling flat, but what I remember most wasn’t that—it was what she said to us pre-interview, agreeing to do it with one caveat:

“You have to block out my face, because my mother watches the news.”

As soon as those words left her mouth, mine dropped open.

I know this is probably going to sound terribly naïve, but I hadn’t envisioned her as having a mom that she still maintained contact with, let alone being worried about her finding out she was a prostitute. I suppose that on some level I was aware it could have been possible, but in that instant she became so much more layered and dimensional to me, no longer just a nameless street hooker living out a life of destitute. She was a real human with real feelings, just like the rest of us.

And I wondered what happened to this woman. What drove her into this sort of life? And going even farther back, what life events set her up for this. Was it about the drugs? Maybe something from her childhood?

Unfortunately, I never found those answers. She got nervous about her pimp, cut the interview short, and within minutes, was back to walking the streets.

Everything after that became a blur of hurried commotion. It was getting late and close to deadline, so we pieced what little we had into a story, then fed it back to station live in order to make the eleven o’clock show.

But I’ll never forgot that evening I spent with a hooker.

Mysterious holiday gifts

I don't usually publish a gift suggestions list, but I've had a few requests for it this year.
I'm going to assume that CFC readers already know what books are out there, so this post will focus on other mystery-related gifts.

ThinkGeek.com: 

DIY library kit, which includes " 20 self-adhesive pockets, 20 checkout cards, date stamp, inkpad, and pencil"  (books not included).
Mugs - with a handle shaped like a gun,  or brass knuckles.


AgathaChristie.com:

Death on the Nile jigsaw puzzle - 1000 piece puzzle includes a short story to read before you attempt the puzzle.  Does NOT include a picture of the finished puzzle.
Various interactive games for DVDs, PC, or Nintendo Wii.

NancyDrewSleuth.com:

Subscriptions to The Sleuth magazine
Jewelry
Handbags & accessories
Many, many, many collectibles


Calendars

Amazon.com has several mystery-themed calendars, including
Sherlock Holmes
NCIS
Law & Order SVU
Dexter
Edward Gorey


Stocking stuffers:

Dead Fred pen holder
Splat Stan coaster
Crime Scene sandwich bags, bandages, "scotch" tape
GingerDead Man cookie cutter
Pistol-shaped iPhone stand


Of course this is just a sampling of the plethora of stuff out there.  If you know of something so wonderful it should have been included, please let me know in the comments.

The Criminal Choice Behind Burglary

by Tom Adair author of the 2012 Crime Thriller The Scent of Fear.

As a former CSI I tried to understand how the criminal thinks. It's impossible to consider every single motivation but there are some generalities that may aid investigators in uncovering certain clues. As an author I find this insight very valuable because weaving this mindset into your storyline gives a sense of realism I think readers respond to. Everyone wants to understand motive. It's how we begin to make sense of things and challenge our world view. As a reader I want to understand the motivations of the killer, victim, cops, and others too. It helps me understand why they do what they do.

I've talked to a lot of victims that ask me a simple question; "why me?". It's not a dumb question. While it is true that some victim's may just be int he wrong place at the wrong time (like a shark attack), others increase their vulnerability to crime and criminals (like joining a gang). So it's helpful to consider what types of factors criminals may consider when choosing a victim. I thought it would be simpler to frame the discussion within the topic of burglary. In truth, some of the selection criteria can be applied to other crimes as well but let's just stick with burglary for now.

Burglars typically choose a place to burglarize for one of three reasons. These are broad categories with some cross over but they will serve for the discussion.

1. Inside knowledge (intelligence)
2. Vulnerability with reward
3. Opportunity (wrong place wrong time)

Inside Knowledge: 
In the military this is called intelligence. You'd be amazed how often a burglary can be tied to intelligence. The world war two warning of  "loose lips sink ships" actually works with criminals too. If criminals find out that you have things of value they may want to look for an opportunity to take them. I often say that many criminals want "easy" so you have to do your best to avoid helping them. Here are some of the biggest sources of "intelligence leaks" in the household.

1. Children. Children are the worst. Kids love to tell stories and brag to their friends. "We just got a new computer", "My mom just inherited a bunch of money", "I just got a brand new XBOX", etc. Even when talking to 'trusted' friends the conversation may be overheard by others.
2. Social Media. I am always amazed at people that tell the twitterverse that they are on vacation. They get on Facebook and say "Hey! We're a thousand miles away from our house and NO ONE is watching it". Many don't have the smarts to lie and say something like "Thanks God my brother is on leave from the Marine Corps and is watching the house with an attack dog!".
3. Visitors to the house. This can be anyone from your son's new "gangsta friend", ex-boyfriend, or repairmen. We often don't consider what a stranger might see in our homes like jewelry being left out, or even where we keep money (when you pay a serviceman).

Vulnerability with Reward:
I link these two together because the burglar is more likely to exploit a vulnerability if they know there is a reward for their risk. One of the biggest vulnerabilities is easy access to the residence or business. Some of the biggest culprits are;

1. Open garage doors
2. Open windows or unlocked doors (houses and vehicles)
3. Items of value with easy access (like a purse or wallet left on the front seat of your car)

Other things can include ladders propped up against houses (for easy access to second story windows that are usually left unlocked) or newspapers or fliers piled up outside (indicating you're on vacation). The reward/risk issue is equally important. Wanna guess a percentage of how many homes displaying signs like "Dangerous dog", "Video Surveillance Used" or "Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again" get burglarized compared to ones not displaying butterfly flags? Most criminals want "easy". Now all of this changes if your house is the only place to get what they want. So if you have a rare and valuable item (like the Hope Diamond) then the motivated criminal will look for a way to get it but, that is usually not the case. However, the higher the value of the item being sought, the more risk one may take to get it.

Opportunity:
This embodies the "wrong place, wrong time" meme. Obviously, the best way to avoid being in the wrong place is being more selective about the places we visit. I spend a fair amount of time in the back country of the Rocky Mountains. I feel much safer walking through the woods at midnight than an alley in many metropolitan cities. Some places are "wrong" for some folks no matter the time of day. Your characters may increase their risk of being attacked (mugged) because they are forced to go places they wouldn't normally choose. Maybe your PI has to go into a seedy bar or maybe somebody gets arrested and goes to jail for a few days. These exposures put them at increased risk. They may survive without incident but the tension is still there. From a criminal perspective it is literally the fly in the spider net. They simply wait for some unsuspecting victim to cross paths with them. The single attractive woman or suburban teenager with the iPod that has to ride a subway through the bad part of town at midnight.

Considering these factors when developing your plots, characters, and dialog will help explain the motivations of your characters and give a perspective for the reader when digesting the story. Remember, the motive has to align with the risk/reward calculus to be believable. A criminal won't rob a homeless man with a shopping cart full of old smelly clothes, empty liquor bottles, and a dead fish ;).

Kids and Crime

By Jenny Hilborne, author of mysteries and thrillers.

One of my college assignments was to argue one side of a difficult social issue. FOR or AGAINST. I was instructed to show no support for the other side, regardless of my personal beliefs and opinions. This was a tough challenge, made tougher by the issue I chose and one I think about a lot: the appropriate form of punishment for pre-teen and teenage killers. I personally know someone whose adult brother was killed by a teen.

The research into the issue was sickening. Most of us know about the horrific 1993 slaying in England of two-year-old Jamie Bulger by 2 ten-year-old boys, and we all know about Columbine in 1999. In 1991 seventeen-year-old Kevin Nigel Stanford raped and stabbed a woman repeatedly during a robbery, then shot her in the face and back of the head so she couldn't testify against him.

Some kids are psychotic. Evil. Some commit worse crimes than adults and receive lighter punishment. Their age protects them. Society seems to protect children more than ever before.

This post, however, is not about my essay (which can be found on Scribd for anyone who wants to read it), but about using children in our crime novels. Even with all the atrocious school shootings and other crimes we read about committed by minors, as a writer, I'm careful about using children in my novels, especially as the victim. I don't enjoy reading about child abuse in works of fiction, but it's a sad fact that it happens and, if it's integral to the story, I'll read it. It likely won't prevent me from reading other works by the author.

It's shocking to read true crime of juveniles who assault or murder someone with a deadly weapon, and also of child victims abused by people in positions of trust. In works of fiction, I often wonder if and when it is acceptable to use children in crime, either as the villain or the victim. 

Recently, I read a crime fiction novel about child abuse and kidnapping and, while it was difficult to stomach, it touched on some very important points, areas the general public might not always understand, such as why the kidnapped and abused child might not try to escape. 

In my first book, Madness and Murder, my opening scene handles the sentencing for a child murderer. I worried when I wrote it, especially the later chapters about the atrocities inflicted on the child. I felt sick about those and worried how readers would react. The scenes were an important part of the story and they belonged, however, justifying it didn't make it easier to write a child murder into the novel.

Crime against anyone is unacceptable. Crime against women and children seems worse due to the vulnerabilities of both, yet both women and children can be very cruel and equally as capable of committing heinous crimes themselves. Readers: how do you feel about reading crime fiction books using children either as the villain or the victim? Does it prevent you from picking up other works by the author?

Writers: Do you worry about readers reactions to your crime stories where children are involved in the crime, especially if the child is the victim? Do you have a hard time reading it as well as writing it?

Real Challenges for Cold Case Investigators

by Tom Adair
Investigating cold cases is, in some ways, like searching out your family genealogy. New technologies have helped us mine data from public records but the data has to exist in the first place right? I have worked on many cold cases; some old, some not so old. They can be very challenging. Some might think that the greatest challenge is the passage of time. While that can be a major obstacle affecting things like memory, there are other issues that can be far more damaging. Cold cases can languish in archives for decades (even longer). They may be passed among dozens of detectives over the years and reside in multiple buildings and locations (as agencies relocate or reallocate space). They may transition from a state of acute institutional knowledge to one of complete unawareness. Like family lore that dies with the passing of a generation.


These issues can lead to massive frustration for the investigator. As authors we should consider how these challenges may influence our storyline and character evolution. Even the most advanced forensic analyses  may fail to provide meaningful answers. It's hard to comprehend future environments. Laws can change, rules can change, people can change. Knowing what critical issues will arise decades from now is an impossible task for criminal investigators. There are some cardinal principles, of course, but rarely does a case boil down to those broad points. The devil is in the details as they say and details have a stubborn habit of getting lost in time. Here are some of the most frustrating.

1. Illegible Reports: Old police reports were largely hand written. Some officers have very poor (illegible) handwriting. If you can't read the report, or the language is unclear, then it may as well not exist. Sometimes you luck out and the deputy is still alive, or perhaps a child can read it but other times you can't. The chicken scratches just taunt you. Do they hold the missing key or are they just redundant case data?It's not just reports either. Notes, crime scene measurements, even the reporting officer's name may be illegible! How do you get a writing standard from someone you can't even identify?
2. Outdated Storage Devices: This is a big one. Since the 1950's police agencies have been utilizing various technologies to store data. In the early days it was microfiche. Today we have terabyte imaging drives. In between these two technologies are a vast number of devices. Some had mass market appeal and others were a flash in the pan. How does a modern agency "read" a 5 1/4" floppy disk? Even if you could find the hardware do you have the software needed to open the file? Imagine a crime scene sketch and measurements done with a program written by some detective's neighbor's kid. How do you open it now? How about old cassette drives or processing 110 formatted photographic film?  Let's say you could find the correct device. Do you have the cables and connections necessary to link it to modern equipment?
3. Evidence Handling: This is huge. DNA didn't exist thirty years ago. Fingerprints weren't recoverable from surfaces that today we can process. I have seen numerous old crime scene and autopsy photos of individuals handling evidence bare handed. I know that sounds terrible but it was just how things were done back in the day. Prosecutors, detectives, officers, doctors, even the media sometimes handled items without gloves. Knowing that, how valuable will any DNA or fingerprint evidence be? Can you even get standards from the old employees and how do you know who even touched the items? This situation also raises concerns about the chain of custody for these items when they are eventually submitted at trial. 
4. Incomplete reports: I hate these. As writers we love to depict the detective taking the case file home and spreading it out all over their coffee table or kitchen counter. Today, we don't do that stuff but forty years ago was a different story. Most of the time the missing data is obvious. You may open a suspicious death inquiry with no autopsy photos. They had to take them but they aren't there! It may be that the Coroner was the custodian and when they left they took their "records" with them. Sometimes old documents are just purged to make space. It sounds crazy but it happens. You may have crime scene photos that were taken but filed under an incorrect case number (maybe the photographer is dyslexic). You can use your imagination because virtually anything that could happen, has happened somewhere. 
5. No trail: Cold cases are called cold for a reason. Time has a way of hiding the trail as they say. Today we can track and identify people much more easily than we could forty years ago. People today leave an enormous data footprint. Back then, everyone in town may have know "Old Man Hitchens" but today it's not much to go on. Phone numbers don't exist and police may have never jotted down things like a date of birth or social security number. A detective on the case may have been able to look at a photo and tell you exactly who was in it. No need to write that information down right? Thirty years later however there may be no one left who is familiar with the case or is able to identify who certain witnesses are. Then there's the issue of identity theft. You can run commercial database searches for "Tom Adair" in Colorado and come up with a dozen different records, many of which are not me. That's a lot of leg work to track all those people down and figure out who is who. 

I wish I could tell you that cold case investigations are hampered only by faulty memories but the truth of the matter is that administrative "systems" and decisions made decades ago can have devastating effects to a case file. Today, many police agencies see the benefit of doing a yearly audit of cold case files. They can identify what "gaps" may exist in the information and try to get them filled. Likewise, investigators working active unsolved cases realize how important it is to dot the "i's" and cross the "t's".  If you are writing about a cold homicide case you should try to incorporate some of these obstacles into your storyline. The average reader may not identify with the frustrations but and cop that reads it will give you a thumb's up.