Recent reading: The Reporter Who Knew Too Much

Another book, along with the Felder autiobiography from earlier this month, that I had partially read before setting it aside not because it wasn't any good, but because I got distracted by other shiny new toys/books. There's at least a couple more that fit into this category lying around, and now that I'm done with my spring classes and don't have a summer class, I'm hoping to get those wrapped up soon.

The Reporter Who Knew Too Much:

The Mysterious Death of What's My Line TV Star and Media Icon Dorothy Kilgallen

by Mark Shaw

Dorothy Kilgallen was one of the most famous and influential journalists of her day, but today is tragically largely forgotten. But before her untimely death in 1965, Kilgallen wielded immense power. She had a successful newspaper column and was seen weekly on television as a panelist on What's My Line. She was a top investigative journalist and covered a number of high profile cases, including the Sam Sheppard trial. Ernest Hemingway called her "one of the greatest women writers in the world" and the New York Post described her as "the most powerful female voice in America". 

Kilgallen was a natural. She dropped out of college, went to work at the newspaper that also employed her father, and never looked back. At the height of her power she also made some dangerous enemies, including FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Frank Sinatra, and according to this book, mobsters who eventually had her killed.

Kilgallen died November 8, 1965 at the age of 52 due to a deadly mixture of alcohol and barbiturates. What was never determined was how and why this lethal combination was ingested. The coroner left it at "circumstances undetermined", but Shaw argues that Kilgallen was murdered due to the investigation she was conducting into the assassination of President John Kennedy, which she unfortunately had been very vocal about. Kilgallen had become suspicious beginning with Jack Ruby's easy access to Lee Harvey Oswald and had supposedly linked both Ruby and Oswald to a New Orleans mob boss. She didn't buy the idea that Oswald acted alone and may have been about to publicly expose JFK's assassination as a mob hit, revenge not on the president but on his brother Robert Kennedy, the attorney general. One significant aspect of Kilgallen's death is that her Kennedy assassination file disappeared at the same time and was never seen again.

According to Shaw, the hit actually traces back to family patriarch Joseph Kennedy Sr., who enlisted the mob through Sam Giancana to help deliver votes in key states during the 1960 election. In return for helping deliver the presidency, it was expected that Bobby's relentless pursuit of organized crime figures (including the NOLA Don, who he'd had deported at one point) would go away. When it didn't, the mob felt used and betrayed, and that meant payback. Kilgallen not only apparently made this connection, but had attended Jack Ruby's trial, interviewed Ruby during the trial, and felt that his mob-approved lawyer, Melvin Belli, punted his defense. She also disputed the findings of the Warren Commission identifying Oswald as having acted alone in the assassination. Shaw posits that if Kilgallen had been able to complete her investigation and reveal her findings to the world, she could have changed history.

Shaw looks at a number of suspects with motives to silence Kilgallen before settling on the mob. It's a compelling case because of the widespread damage that could have been done to a number of individuals - including Hoover - had her findings been made public. Kilgallen herself had told friends that her life was in danger. Shaw also maintains that incompetence by the coroner who conducted the autopsy and an insufficient police investigation into her death led to her being dismissed as a boozer and pill popper who brought about her own demise, while denying her justice by not holding those responsible for her death accountable for murdering her.

If I have one quibble about the book it's that there are numerous occasions of typos, dropped words, and missing punctuation that begs the question of editing. It's a shame because it could be interpreted as amateurish and take away from this compelling and exhaustively researched argument about Kilgallen's death. There is also a corresponding website for the book and he's also written a second book on Kilgallen that I haven't read yet. Shaw had become interested in Kilgallen's story while researching a biography of Belli and discovering that after she died, Belli had told a friend, "They've killed Dorothy; now they'll go after Ruby."

The case is closed, is it? Well, I'd like to know how, in a big, smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby - owner of a strip tease honky-tonk - can stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it was at a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers is keeping a "tight security guard" on Oswald. Security! What a word for it. (From one of Kilgallen's columns)

 

Recent reading: "November Road"

November Road by Lou Berney

This is an absolutely riveting thriller set against the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963. Frank Guidry has performed a job for his New Orleans mob boss that makes him expendable - a car he dropped off in Dallas, Texas could tie him and his boss to the assassination and his boss is tying up loose ends, if you know what I mean. 

While on the run from Barone, the hitman dispatched to eliminate him, Guidry comes across a woman who, along with her two precocious daughters, are on a flight of their own. Charlotte has impulsively fled her alcoholic husband and small Oklahoma town, hoping for more from life than the tedium hers has become. At first Guidry views the innocent family as a convenient asset to his flight to safety - Barone isn't looking for a family or a family man. But by drawing Charlotte and her girls into his desperate bid to stay alive, he's putting them in danger as well. Matters are complicated even more when Guidry and Charlotte fall hard for each other.

Berney is a gifted writer and November Road is a non-stop thrill ride. You're immediately drawn in not only to the story, but especially to the characters. I had to find out how things would turn out for them and got through this book in just a few days. The ending was completely unexpected, salvaging the main characters believably and without tying everything up into a neat little package as a lesser author might have done.

November Road earned Berney a well-deserved slew of awards: the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, The Hammett Prize, as well as Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and Macavity awards. It was named one of the best novels of the year by numerous publications. And I was thrilled to discover that a film version is in the works, with Lawrence Kasdan scripting and directing. I can't wait for casting announcements.

Berney has written three other novels (November Road being the most recent) and now I'm dying to read those as well. 

Recent reading: "Dallas Noir"

Dallas Noir edited by David Hale Smith

Dallas Noir is an installment of the "Noir" series from Akashic Books. I bought it after returning from my trip to Dallas late last year because I was just so taken with the city, at least the small part of it I got to experience.

Gotta admit it wasn't my favorite of anthologies, but that could have something to do with me not being a Dallasite. Each story is set in a different part of town, so they might be more meaningful for readers who live there. I think that's the case for me when I'm reading Southern California-based anthologies. I also think that the darkness of the stories (despite the fact that I do love tales of noir) clashed with what I saw when I was there, which was a clean, beautiful, friendly city. I'm sure it has its seedy underbelly and maybe I just wasn't ready to see it yet.

A lot of the stories were good. IMO "In the Air" by Daniel J. Hale (Deep Ellum), "Night Work" by Clay Reynolds (Old East Dallas) were the best and my favorites.

Dealing with this year's writing drought and moving forward

This past year was one big writer's block, so I've been going over ideas to move past it. One thing I've decided to try again is submitting as much as possible.

In 2018 my goal was at least two submissions per month. I submitted two each in January and February of that year, but then my Mom died unexpectedly in early March 2018, so March and April were total busts - nothing submitted in those months, which was understandable. There was a lot to deal with suddenly that I was completely unprepared for.

I also moved in July 2018, which was rough for a number of reasons, but I did pretty well with submissions May through September. Then the block seemed to settle in - there were no more submissions for the rest of the year. Still, I had fifteen submissions for the whole year, including five that placed in contests and one that was a winner. On the other hand I didn't get published, so I wasn't thrilled with that. But overall, for a year that was tough I felt okay with my progress.

Although I didn't put a number on submissions for 2019, the year started out with a bang. I had eight submissions in the first three months of the year, then... nothing. April through the rest of the year was pretty much a drought and not only was I not submitting, I wasn't writing much either. The good news was that I did have a story accepted for an anthology, but "Like Deja vu All Over Again", the story that's getting published in Crossing Borders in March 2020, is an old story I had kicking around that just happened to fit the theme for that anthology. I did submit to a short story competition in October that I don't think will place, but the entry fee was minimal and it made me feel like I at least did something, even if it was kind of pointless.

Late October into early November I attended both the Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference in Pasadena and Bouchercon in Dallas and in addition to being exhausted by the time I got home, it did light a fire under me, both in terms of writing and finally tackling some personal stuff that's been lingering since Mom's death and the move away from the beach.

So the new plan is not to have a particular number of submissions per month, but to really examine the markets and opportunities and try to submit to as many as possible. There are a lot of anthologies coming up as well as other short story markets that I want to be more aggressive about submitting to, and I think that's my best shot at getting published again and seeing some progress in my writing career. I really don't want to have to wait another three years to be published again.

I've also got two other longer projects to work on that will be my A/B projects when I'm not working on short stories. One is a play and the other is one of my ideas for a novel. I've had multiple ideas for novels over the past few years and the difficulty has been focusing on just one while setting the others aside. The play is the A project because it will be quicker to complete, while the novel will be the B project with the goal of at least having a first draft by the end of the year.

Yep, that's the plan. We'll see how it rolls out, but for the first time in a long time I actually feel positive not only about writing, but about a lot of personal things as well. The Brother and I have been discussing this lately and he feels the same way - 2019 was rough for a number of reasons, but we're feeling really positive about 2020's potential.

I hope anyone who is reading this is feeling great about the new year and new decade. May the new 20's roar! And may I also take this opportunity to wish you a wonderful, creative, and productive 2020! Let's succeed together!

Recent reading: "The Heirs of Anthony Boucher"

The Heirs of Anthony Boucher by Marvin Lachman

Subtitled "A History of Mystery Fandom" this is much more than the retrospective on the annual mystery convention Bouchercon and its namesake, writer, editor and critic Anthony Boucher. It is a history of the fandom, beginning in 1967 with early fanzines and get-togethers long before the internet made online communities possible. In fact, the first Bouchercon doesn't appear until Chapter 6.

What follows is an incredibly comprehensive of what appears to be every fanzine, magazine, and convention that followed (including Malice Domestic, Left Coast Crime, New England Crime Bake, CrimeFest, and ThrillerFest) as witnessed by someone who was an extremely active participant in their history. Lachman wrote and participated in numerous fan publications and conventions and as such is able to bear witness to this rich history.

Originally published in 2005, winner of the 2006 Anthony Award in the Critical/Non-Fiction category, and updated in 2018, the book includes recaps of every Bouchercon up to last year's in St. Petersburg. I attended my fourth Bouchercon in Dallas recently and was blown away by how much of the fan emphasis I've missed. As someone who approached it not only as a fan but as an aspiring author, this was an aspect of the history I was ignorant of but now have a better appreciation of. Bouchercon 2020 (Sacramento) had a table at Dallas and a very nice lady there encouraged me to volunteer next year. I had declined to do so in the past because I was there for the panels and didn't want to miss out on them. But after that conversation I had pretty much decided it was time to give back and help out. After reading this book, it's definitely decided. This is a community I want to be a more active part of. I don't think I realized how fan driven the organization of these conventions are, despite the enormous undertaking in staging these events. I have a much better appreciation for it now.

One of the things I found funny was reading about Bouchercon 2013, which took place in Albany, NY. On Wednesday in Dallas we shared a lunch table with a couple of lovely ladies, one of whom was Molly Weston, editor of Sisters in Crime's newsletter, and the subject of Albany came up. She proceeded to tell us it was pretty much a disaster. Lachman confirms that in his recap. He quotes writer Lee Goldberg as describing it as "the worst location and the most poorly organized Bouchercon I've been to." But bad Bouchercons are few and far between. Dallas - both the convention and the hotel/location - were awesome.

Lachman also touched on how, as the internet came into being, attendees began blogging and documenting their Bouchercon experiences online. It made me realize I used to do much more comprehensive recaps of the panels I have attended at past events, and I think I need to start doing that again.

Bouchercon began in a bar. Writing about its origins in the 1991 Bouchercon program, Len and June Moffatt recalled that in a bar, at the close of a July 1969 science fiction convention they were reminiscing with Bruce Pelz about Anthony Boucher and his enthusiasm for both science fiction and mysteries. Pelz said, "I wonder if it is time to put on a mystery convention." There had never been one. 

"For civilization to survive, it must remain civilized."

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 56 years ago today. Having recently visited The Sixth Floor Museum, this year's anniversary feels like it has more than the usual impact.

Plaque looking out at the site of Kennedy's assassination on Elm Street in Dallas.

Thanks to Shadow & Substance on Facebook for linking to this post: "More Than a Man Has Died": Serling on Kennedy's Death. According to The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling's daughter Anne, it was written by her father on his letterhead and she found it in his papers. This is the first paragraph; the whole thing is definitely worth a visit and a read:

More than a man has died. More than a gallant young President has been put to death. More than a high office of a land has been assaulted. What is to be mourned now is an ideal. What has been assassinated is a faith in ourselves. What has been murdered now is a belief in our own decency, our capacity to love, our sense of order and logic and civilized decorum.

One of the lines in the letter is particularly striking to me, especially as I check out the news these days (online, it's unwatchable on TV) or watch video clips of people behaving like thugs to others who don't march in lockstep with their beliefs: "For civilization to survive, it must remain civilized." It's not remaining civilized.

When you visit The Sixth Floor Museum it's hard not to wonder how different America would be if those bullets hadn't been fired that day, if Kennedy had completed his trip to Dallas and eventually been re-elected. If Robert Kennedy had followed his brother as a two-term President. That would take us through 1976. That means no President Lyndon Johnson, no President Richard Nixon, no President Gerald Ford. From what I know about the Kennedys, Ted was never Presidential material, but you could go further and imagine him as a two-term President if he'd managed to stay out of trouble, which was never going to happen. But I do think both Jack and Bobby were high-caliber and high-character men, at least in their service to their country. Maybe it's a writer thing, but it's hard not to at least wonder how different things might be today if an assassin's bullet hadn't robbed us of this one man (and later of his brother).

One of the things I heard recently (I can't remember now if it was on the museum's audio tour or elsewhere) was a comment on the enduring Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. The speaker indicated that he felt one reason the theories continue to this day is that people have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that someone as inconsequential as Lee Harvey Oswald could be responsible for killing someone as consequential as President Kennedy. I would add ditto RFK and his assassin. I thought it was an interesting point. One guy changed history in just a few seconds. One guy did all that. It is tough to take. More than a man died that day, indeed.

The Old Red Museum in Dallas

A week ago this minute I was on a plane heading back from Dallas. That went fast.

Just a few blocks from The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is the Old Red Museum, so named because of its beautiful red brick structure.

Originally built as a county courthouse, it's a huge, ornate building that The Brother and I promptly fell in love with. We could see the clock tower from our rooms at the Hyatt. When it was outgrown and replaced with a new courthouse, it was renovated and became a historically designated building. It is now home to a huge exhibit of Dallas County historical artifacts.

The self-tour is broken up into four sections for the time periods of: Prehistory - 1873, 1874 - 1917, 1918 - 1945, and 1946 - 2007. Each section begins with a brief video giving background on the time period, then you can go around and check out the artifacts from that period.

They have some amazing stuff. Check it out:

1857 grocery ledger:

Morphine kit that could be used to administer painkillers to soldiers...or put down horses in the battlefield:

George "Spanky" McFarland of Our Gang/The Little Rascals was a Dallas native. They have his little checkerboard britches!

The gun in the middle belonged to Clyde Barrow:

Actual Klan outfit. Pretty creepy:

No joke - the first frozen margarita machine was invented in Dallas:

Dallas native Mariano Martinez was inspired by Slurpee machines he saw at 7-11 stores. This isn't even the original - that one was snapped up by The Smithsonian.

Hats off to the museum for having Tom Landry's trademark fedora:

And J.R. Ewing's Stetson:

The museum also has some Kennedy assassination artifacts. The handcuffs worn by Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby:

And a "doodle" made by Ruby while he was in jail for the shooting:

The Brother and I loved this staircase. I got Bradbury Building vibes from it:

The pictures here are only a small sample of what you see in this museum. They've done a great job of cataloging the history of the area. Adult admission is only $10 (less for seniors, students, and kids) and well worth it.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

The Brother and I checked out The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza when we were in Dallas. It was walking distance from our hotel and it's something everyone should check out at least once. If you go, be sure to do the audio tour. It's really well done and they don't charge any extra for it (entry is $18).

You are literally on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository Building (now the Dallas County Administration Building). The corner where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed President John F. Kennedy is sectioned off by plexiglass walls, but the rest of the floor is home to the museum.

Despite the horrific history of the place, the museum is really well done and I'm glad I went. In addition to providing a history of the Kennedy presidency leading up to the assassination, as well as the aftermath, the museum has some amazing artifacts. Check it out:

It was supposed to be a charmed period for America. You know, Camelot:

Hmmm, sounds kinda familiar:

An invitation to the luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart. The presidential caravan was on its way when Oswald changed history:

The President and First Lady making their way through Dallas:

And then:

That's the window:

The view from the sixth floor:

Some of the artifacts:

This is the actual place setting that was awaiting the President at the Trade Mart:

That iconic photo:

The aftermath:

A model showing the trajectory of the shots fired:

On the street below (Elm Street), there are X's on the pavement where Oswald's bullets hit:

On the far right is our hotel (The Hyatt Regency Dallas) and Reunion Tower from out in front of the museum:

Because I was traveling, I skipped the bookstore part of the gift shop because I knew I would run wild. I already had four books from Bouchercon and was concerned about getting everything in the suitcase. Unfortunately, the Sixth Floor Museum gift shop is not online, but I was told it will be in the near future. I'm looking forward to that.