Con men and Karma.

A long time ago, when the Woolworth's store was an important part of every high street, I used to let my mates down by not shoplifting.

We often went through by train from Easterhouse to the cinema or swimming pool in Airdrie, Coatbridge or Shettleston. After a swim or a film we would descend on the local Woolworth's with whatever money we had left. A lot of the guys I used to pal around with would habitually go for a "five finger discount" and emerge with pockets crammed with marbles, toy soldiers or sweets filched from the pick 'n' mix. I had to live with the fact that I believed there was no point in stealing. The Catholic Church insists that, if you ever want to have the sin forgiven, you have to give back any ill-gotten gains. I used to take a lot of ribbing on the train home to Easterhouse station. I used to compound this by actually paying for a ticket. This conscientiousness pretty much continues to the present day.

(I remember Anne getting more than a little annoyed when we were trying to sell our first flat so that we could move to a "proper" house since Claire was on the way. I insisted on telling potential buyers about faults that might have been missed by their surveyor. )

Despite this hardwired scrupulosity, or because of it, I love films / books about heists and con men.

Thieves can be entertaining in fiction. Donald Westlake's Parker novels are superb and portray the criminal as a professional who sees robbery as a job. The same author's Dortmunder novels take a lighter approach but are equally entertaining. Of late I've also found myself following the misadventures of Chris Ewan's good thief Charlie Howard with quite a bit of enthusiasm.

I've already mentioned the NBC mystery movie series "McCoy" in which Tony Curtis played a con artist but in the present day I have a great fondness for "Hustle" (just started a new series on BBC!) and "Leverage". I've also tried to get Claire, my daughter, to watch "The Sting" which always remains in my top 10 films of the '70s- and that's a decade which contained a lot of tough competition. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't like this film. Let's face it. Fictional con men are a class apart from the average thief. The clue is in the designation; con ARTIST.

Sadly, real-life conmen are, for the most part, evil, cynical bastards. Fictional, "Robin Hood-ish" scam artists often quote an aphorism that goes along the lines of "You can't con an honest man". In the real world you can cheat the poor and the desperate who are the victims of most scams. In my job as a cancer information nurse I come across the damage caused by reptiles selling bogus cancer cures several times a week, every single week in life. There are hundreds of web sites making false claims about quick and easy cancer cures. One of the biggest stresses in my work is trying to pick up the pieces after explaining to someone the reason why the very expensive "medicine" they've bought for a loved one has no scientific validity and no proven success in actuality.

I often dream about being able to turn the tables on con men in real life. Victoria Coren, the journalist and broadcaster, has delighted me no end by making things uncomfortable for a bunch of leeches known as "the Jolley Gang". Led by an ex-magistrate called Richard Jolley this mob turned up at a memorial service held in honour of the great Alan Coren, Victoria's father. In her original article about the gang she revealed that she planned to embarrass its members most publicly by setting up a fake funeral service for a fictional celebrity ("Sir William Ormerod"). The only problem with her plan was that, after setting up a fake website in tribute to Sir William and ensuring his death was announced in the broadsheets, she didn't have the heart to carry out an actual public humiliation. This despite the fact that several of the vermin had written to her, in her guise as the late Ormerod's boyfriend, proclaiming their admiration for the late philanthropist and asking for tickets to the memorial service.

In a bizarre sequel to this abandoned revenge Fate stepped in and dealt a fatal blow to one of the gang. As detailed in a further article this could be evidence for the Buddhist belief in Karma......

Rivals of Columbo and Sherlock Holmes.....

Sometime in the late '60s /early '70s there was a seismic shift in American television series. Westerns were "out" and detectives were "in". There may have been an input from the cinema where Clint Eastwood had made the transition from gunfighter to cop with the Dirty Harry films. Even John Wayne tried to change genres, if not persona, in "McQ" and "Brannigan".

In the early days of American comic books there was an avalanche of brightly coloured superheroes onto the newsstands. According to Jim Steranko's "History of Comics" many of the young artists working in what amounted to studio sweatshops tried desperately to come up with unique looks and costumes to give the characters they created some staying power. Said costumes were often referred to as "funny hats" by their disdainful creators. I would imagine that much the same principle applied to the production companies churning out detective series. Each one had to have its own, particular selling point.

"Cannon"(portly, middle-aged detective), "Kojak"(bald detective), "Matt Houston" (redneck detective), "The Rockford Files" (ex-con), "Harry O" (ex-cop), "Baretta"(streetwise detective), "Police Woman" (female detective), "Cagney & Lacey"( 2 x female 'tecs), "Ironside" (disabled detective), "Charlie's Angels"(3x female 'tecs), "Longstreet" (blind detective) and "Barnaby Jones"(senior citizen detective) : these are only the first that come to mind without resort to references. Overshadowing them all was the plethora of shows which appeared under the banner "NBC Mystery Movie".

"Columbo" was clearly the king of this royal family of detective shows but I loved two of the less well-remembered scions.

"'Hec' Ramsey" combined the Western and detective genres and had a great star in Richard Boone, who had earlier starred as Paladin in "Have Gun Will Travel". There are several hints in the show that Ramsey, a man trying to introduce forensic science to the Wild West, and Paladin are actually the same character in different stages of his life.

"McCoy" starred Tony Curtis and utilised his knack for comedy in playing a reformed con artist who was someting of a Robin Hood. I always felt that it cashed in on Curtis' earlier film "The Great Impostor" which rarely shows up on TV schedules nowadays. I'd love to get a chance to compare it with the far more recent (and very good) "Catch Me if You Can".

What got me started blogging about TV 'tecs though was a British series made in the early '70s: "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes". (It was based on the anthologies of the same name edited by Sir Hugh Greene). I now have DVD sets of both "seasons" of the series and enjoy savouring each episode. It's interesting to think that the aforementioned deluge of detective was mirrored nearly 100 years before in the wake of the success of Conan Doyle's stories in the Strand magazine.

The particular episode which I watched the other evening featured the wonderful, English character actor Charles Gray who was habitually cast as a cad or bounder. So good (or bad ?) was he in those roles that I grew up thinking that if you were to look up the word "louche"(: "Disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way") in a dictionary then the entry should feature a picture of Gray in character.

He was an actor with a distinctive voice and accent. When the great Jack Hawkins had to undergo a laryngectomy as part of his treatment for throat cancer Gray stepped in to provide convincing "voice-overs" for his last few film appearances. Strangely, in the TV episode I watched Gray was playing the French detective Eugene Valmont which meant that much of his vocal distinctiveness was lost. There was also a fascinating scattering of other character actors throughout the production; many familiar faces, but the names were elusive and sent me to the IMDB database to do some detective work of my own. I fully intend to follow up on this as I watch further episodes over the Christmas break.

Magic and Crime.

I always take a book with me for the daily commute between home and work. My current choice is "The Bullet Trick" by Louise Welsh and I'm absolutely enthralled by it. Not only is it extremely well written but it features 3 of my favourite cities (Glasgow, London and Berlin). The central character and narrator is a stage magician who gets caught up in crime while plying his trade in seedy nightclubs.

Conjurors have always been a reliable staple in detective fiction. Two favourites from TV are the current "Jonathan Creek" and, from America, "Blacke's Magic". The latter reminds me of the days when my son Paul was a toddler. STV had bought a batch of American detective series including "Riptide", "Tucker's Witch" and "Partners in Crime" (with Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter) and would show them in the middle of the afternoon. "Blacke's Magic" was pretty much a precursor of Jonathan Creek and often featured "impossible" crimes such as locked room mysteries. I would have thought that, with established stars like Hal Linden and Harry Morgan who had proved their comedic talents in "Barney Miller" ( a police procedural sit-com ?) and "M.A.S.H." respectively, that this would have been a banker for TV gold. Sadly, it only ran for 12 episodes but I have fond memories of the show that coincide with changing nappies and preparing suitably mushy food.

Around the same time I discovered the delights of Clayton Rawson and his illusionist detective "The Great Merlini" through occasional short stories in old editions of "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". Naturally, I was delighted when an American publisher reprinted the 4 Merlini novels. A working stage magician as well as a crime writer Rawson is often credited with coining the phrase : "Crime doesn't pay. . .. enough."

They say that stage magic is overdue for a resurgence. The in-your-face rudeness of David Blaine and the party spoiling tactics of the "Masked Magician" in the TV specials revealing magic's greatest secrets may put that on hold for quite some time. I still hope that there will always be a place for the conjuror in the detective story.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Jolly BMJ

We Scots tend to be a bit gloomy in our outlook. This is particularly true at this time of year when the Winter equinox is fast approaching. The bad weather has been a great stimulus for starting conversations and Anne commented last week that it's definitely had the effect of binding people together in adversity. Neighbours have been really good and seem to be looking out for one another.



We seem to have taken the utter failure of our transport system in our stride. Bread, milk and petrol shortages barely meritted a mention. The single topic of conversation in which I've detected an undertone of slight panic is that some branches of Greggs the Bakers have been unable to open because of staff being unable to get to work. Three separate, otherwise rational human beings have told me that they're convinced that this is one of the signs that the Apocalypse is imminent.



Seeing as this is meant to be a crime fiction related blog I thought I'd share another sign of the times. Every year around the festivive season one of the straitlaced medical journals I have to browse in the course of my work comes up with a bit of Christmas light-heartedness. For the first time ever the BMJ has contributed not only to Medical Knowledge but also the world of Sherlockiana.

The Slow Thaw

Just back home after walking Bobo up to the park in Easterhouse. He must have had a bit of cabin fever because he was one happy dog to be given the chance to chase sticks and leap into semi-frozen puddles.

The snow and ice have been a real nuisance but the thaw can be worse as the Christmas card scenery begins to melt away revealing dark, bare trees and the snow transforms into a mush of gray and black, especially up near the main road as it bridges the motorway. The icicles are dripping away into nothingness and the TV crew filming the chaos for the BBC has long since gone. (Bobo & I may be on a segment of library footage somewhere: captured, frozen in time as well as fact, as we trudged home in the middle of a blizzard). Looking out of the front window the whole scene reminds me of the backdrop of that wonderful crime movie from 2002; "Road to Perdition".

Somehow I managed to miss it in cinemas during its summer release but managed to catch it in February 2003 when the "Glasgow Film Theatre" re-ran it before the Oscar season. (It won the award for best cinematography and was nominated for 5 others). As it turned out my timing was perfect.

Can you remember visits to the cinema as a child when you came out blinking into the daylight after being lost in a different world for a few hours ? I have fond memories of moments of readjustment to the real world after being caught up in a magical film. Sadly, with age and experience these moments have become few and far between. I still savour those rare, bittersweet moments when movie magic gradually fades as the cinematic scenery ( whether the deserts of the Wild West or the twin moons of Mars) morphs into a Glaswegian street scene. Usually there's a feeling of dissonance as fantasy is replaced by reality. In the case of "Road to Perdition" the illusion of being still caught up in the big screen action continued as I stepped into Rose Street and headed for the station. Icy puddles and driving sleet seamlessly reflected the scenery of an icy Illinois on the cusp between Winter and Spring. ( Little wonder that the cinematography of Samuel L Hall won him an Oscar).

Critics generally loved the film, especially in the UK. Sam Mendes, coming as he does from a theatrical background, tends to be a favourite of the broadsheet set. When any reference was made to the source material, Max Allan Collins' original graphic novel, the same critics tended to write it off as if Mendes had worked a Pygmalionesque trick of turning base materials into Art.

Collins is one of my favourite crime writers, and certainly one of the most dedicated. Everything I've ever read by or about him confirms that he has always wanted to be a crime writer. He's also turned his hand to Rock Music and film direction. His work is never "Arty" but it's always entertaining and he never puts on any airs or graces. I've never fully understood his undying admiration for the work of Mickey Spillane but his passionate defence of it made me reconsider an author whom I'd previously written off as a hack.

It'ss difficult for me to pick a favourite among his novels but I have a fondness for the "Nate Heller" series. "Majic Man" in particular is not only an excellent, if unconventional, historical novel it also gives a plausible, down-to-Earth solution for the real-life Roswell mystery.

Even when writing movie or TV "tie-in" novels ("CSI" , "Bones" and "Criminal Minds") a task which other writers treat as somewhat infra dig Collins always maintains his own high standards. If anything his novels read like big screen versions of the TV series they're based on.

I'm glad to say that the productive Mr Collins shows no sign of slowing down. He's even taken on the formidable task of continuing Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books. As I've hinted I'm not the world's biggest Hammer fan but I look forward to reading the Collins version.

The Big Freeze

You would think that freezing weather, snowdrifts and almost impassable roads would be a good incentive to get on with some blogging. Sadly, all I've wanted to do is hibernate. Anne and I did make a foray out to the SECC to see Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds". This musical offering resurrects Richard Burton as a hologram to narrate the story which, indirectly, led me to thinking about the novels of Alistair MacLean.

The logic may be circuitous but it is there. Burton's voice combined with the mounds of snow raised memories of the film "Where Eagles Dare". Legend has it that MacLean wrote the story to tie together elements requested by the producers (snow, a Bavarian castle, an experimental gyrocopter, a fight on a cable car). This led me to consider the large proportion of MacLean's book which feature extreme cold weather. Apart from the dramatic backdrop provided by snow and ice I'm sure that the author's personal experiences played a part in his choice of locations. "H.M.S. Ulysses", his first novel, was heavily influenced by MacLean's service in the Royal Navy. As a young seaman he served on escort vessels guarding convoys in the North Atlantic. The Arctic conditions are described in harsh detail and imprint themselves on the reader's memory.

Over the years blizzards and Arctic blasts play a big part in many of MacLean's novels. "Ice Station Zebra", "Breakheart Pass", "Night Without End" and "Bear Island" are all thrillers where sub-zero weather contributes to MacLean's typically labyrinthine plots. I used to read MacLean's novels fairly regularly and I'm glad to see that they're having something of a resurgence at the moment. Now, time to dig out the DVD of "Where Eagles Dare", the film where Clint Eastwood runs up a bigger body count than in all of the Dirty Harry movies put together.