News
Another in my occasional series of Down East colloquialisms:
DRESSING: Manure spread as fertilizer on agricultural fields. As in, "Those people who just moved in next door called to complain about the smell of my dressing, and I said, "Then why the hell did you buy a house beside an organic farm? What did you think we spread out there—Miracle-Gro?"
My friends at the Rockport Public Library hosted me for a reception, reading, and book signing this afternoon. It's was a low-key affair. Just a small group of local book lovers who wanted to celebrate the publication of my first novel with me. I suppose I could have hoped for a bigger crowd or more book sales, but I felt nothing but gratitude for the experience of sharing The Poacher's Son with such an interested audience in such a warm and familiar setting. I'm not one for quoting proverbs, but it really is better to want what you have than to have what you want.
Book jacket of the first 1940 U.S. editionI'm spending the Memorial Day weekend on Monhegan island ten miles off the coast of Maine. It's one of my favorite places for lots of reasons; among them is that Monhegan has all the ingredients for a classic murder mystery. There are towering cliffs for people to fall off (or be pushed from); the only law enforcement officer here is a part-time constable (the current occupant of the job also owns an art gallery); and storms frequently make it hazardous to travel back and forth to the mainland. I've often wondered what Agatha Christie would have done with Monhegan.
I was thinking of Dame Agatha last night when the fog rolled in and I could hear the bell buoys ringing out on the dark water. It occurred to me that it had been ages since I read her all-time bestselling book And Then There Were None (which is set on an even more remote island), but I remembered that the novel had also been published, and filmed, under the title Ten Little Indians, based on the well-known American nursery rhyme. Curious to learn more about the story, I did what anyone does these days and looked it up on Wikipedia.
Book jacket of the first 1939 British editionTo my surprise I discovered that the book had first been published in the U.K. under the title Ten Little Niggers. The racially insensitive nursery rhyme evidently has an even more racially insensitive version (early Americans seemingly found the deaths of any ten people of color cause for amusement). Christie originally set her story on fictional "Nigger Island" off the coast of Devon. The choice was meant to suggest that a Heart of Darkness beats inside the British body politic if you listen to scholar Alison Light. (The island was renamed "Soldier Island" in later editions.) These days, the book is mostly published under the title of And Then There None, but the racist version lives on through foreign translations (in Spanish the novel is still called Diez negritos).
Another serendipitous surprise—the name that Christie gave to the detective who discusses the case in the book's epilogue is Inspector Maine.
It would be tempting to say this true story was stranger than fiction except that I'm almost certain I've read it before in a novel:
In a grisly case that British newspapers have compared to the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s, the police on Thursday charged a 40-year-old man pursuing a Ph.D. in 19th-century homicides with the murders of three women identified by the police as prostitutes.
One victim was caught on closed-circuit television last week being killed with a crossbow shot to the head before her dismembered body was dumped in a nearby river.
Think for a moment about the diver assigned to recover that poor woman's body parts from the River Aire. The newspapers are likely to obsess over the warped psychology of Stephen Griffiths, the man accused of these gruesome crimes. But the inner lives of psychopaths have never held much interest to me. It's that brave diver and what he must have been thinking before he climbed into the water that fires my imagination.
I'm the featured blogger this week over at the Book Case, a page of news and thoughts on publishing at BookPage.com. The editors asked me to talk about some aspect of how I came to write The Poacher's Son. It being Memorial Day (or almost) I couldn't help but tell the story of my being nearly killed by a lightning strike twenty-two years ago this weekend in the mountains of western Maine. That night continues to shape my life in surprising ways, as you'll discover if you click over there and read "A Haunting Memorial Day Weekend."
