Comic books and Hallowe'en.

I've never made any secret of the fact that I have a great affection for comics, particularly American comics. My favourite comic company is D.C. comics. In my mind their product is always associated with crime and mystery fiction. That's not just because the acronym stands for "Detective Comics", the company's flagship title, nor because they have featured a huge variety of detectives over the years from the hardboiled Slam Bradley through Roy Raymond "T.V. Detective" to Bobo, the Detective Chimp. (I don't think this character had any conscious influence on my adoption of our mutt Bobo from the Dog's Trust last year. He may have been at the back of my mind when I bought my "deerstalker" hat though.) I formed the association between D.C. and mystery because it was through one of their comics that I first became aware of the "fair play" detective story.

Despite trawling through the internet I've not been able to track down the story title. I know that it involved Batman and Robin solving a murder where the victim had left a clue as he was dying. He was an amateur artist who worked in a travelling circus and was slain while working on a painting. Even as he was dying he managed to scrawl a cryptic clue onto the corner of the canvas: a minus sign ( -) followed by the letter Q.

I know that in a previous post I've written that I'll never give away the solution to a mystery but I have to if I'm going to illustrate how I became hooked on detective stories. Please take this as a spoiler alert and, if you're an aficionado of early Batman and Robin stories in particular, skip the following paragraph if needs be.

Anyway, of the 4 or 5 suspects one had the surname Dial. The Batman, being the world's greatest detective and able to tell that an ex-con thrown into the mix was only a red herring, knew that Dial was the murderer. The story was written long before key pad telephones and I certainly read it when we still were on a "party line" and had to spin a DIAL when making a call. The only letter of the alphabet missing from such a dial is the letter Q, hence "minus Q". This struck me as being unbelievably clever especially since I was only about 7 or 8 at the time. Looking back I should probably have been puzzled by the convoluted path that a dying man's thoughts could take but I was overawed by Batman's deductive skills.

The Mysterious demise of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.

The "Fortean Times" is a magazine that I've been buying every month for a long time. I see it pretty much as an entertainment but I must admit that SF writer Ken MacLeod turned it into a guilty pleasure for me with the incisive comments on his blog back in January.


Most issues contain a "necrolog" or collection of obituaries about individuals who existed on the fringes of the weirdness which the magazine serves up. The latest came as something of a shock when I read about the death of an author by the name of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.


It was a fairly long obituary and each new paragraph seemed to cram in more and more outrageous details of a very eccentric individual's life.From his tales of being abused as a child in Scotland (or possibly Wales), through his time living with Australian aborigines to his final years in New York where he had abducted and tied up a neighbour the details of his life seem increasingly preposterous. By the time I'd finished reading I was 75% sure that it was a hoax. You can judge for yourself. A more detailed story in the New York Times makes it seem even more incredible.


MacIntyre wasn't the most productive of writers but I'd read and enjoyed several of his short stories over the years. He was a regular contributor to the "Mammoth Book of...." series produced by Robinson publishing. I particularly remember a Sherlock Holmes pastiche involving Ambrose Bierce, Aleister Crowley and the early days of silent film. It appeared in "The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures" and was entitled "The Enigma of the Warwickshire Vortex". It combines many of MacIntyre's enthusiasms to entertaining effect.


Interest in the occult along with his fantasy and science fiction meant that his death was bound to be flagged up by "Fortean Times" but, in researching the details of his death on line, I also discovered that he regularly reviewed films on IMDB and was well known (or infamous) among cinephiles. The discussion on this message board will give you some sense of this. A website dedicated to the silent film comedienne Mabel Normand contains a rather cutting variation on MacIntyre's "necrolog".

Ultimately it's a rather sad end for an enigmatic character but I suspect that he would have taken a perverse pleasure in the mystery he left behind. Is his review of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" a sardonic joke or a very strange suicide note ?

Never Tell Whodunit !

The word on the street is that you should always give your taxi driver a good tip if you're being dropped off at the St. Martins Theatre in London where Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap" will have been running for 58 years come the 25th of November. Fail to do so and he, or she, is likely to punish you by shouting out the name of the murderer. This would make for rather a frustrating 2 hours 20 minutes of theatre-going.

I've never managed to read "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" because I made the mistake of reading a "spoiler" synopsis of the plot. A few weeks back (September6th.) there was a post on Martin Edwards' excellent blog ("Do you write under your own name?") which pointed out that there are two types of mystery readers- those who try to solve the mystery ahead of the author's revelation and those who simply go along for the story. Like Martin I'm firmly in the former group. Let's face it, Dame Agatha was a great entertainer but no-one reads her for her literary style. Take away the puzzle and the novels fire blanks, hence my inability to finish " 'Ackroyd".

When Anne and I visited Rome my second bedside book was "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane. I really enjoyed it ,as I have most of Mr. Lehane's novels, but the edge was taken off it slightly by a spoiler I happened to read on another website. This made me resolve never to give away plot details and aslo never to knowingly read another spoiler.

All of this reminds me of an idea thought up by the wonderful and much missed Bob Shaw in his comic SF novel "Who goes here?". One of the main characters enjoys reading but is often disappointed in novels picked at random. His solution: find a book that you really enjoy then use futuristic mind-wipe technology to erase it's plot and characters from your memory. By keeping the book you're then guaranteed a wonderful reading experience. Forever. If that technology becomes available I'll give "Roger Ackroyd" another try.

When does a crime novel become a travel guide ?

My Open University German exam is a thing of the past, though I've picked up my Monday evening class at the Goethe institute again. Anne and I have been back from Rome for over a week now and I note, with genuine shock, that it's almost a month since I last posted. Time for a major effort.

One thing I enjoy almost as much as a holiday is the discovery of a new crime series to savour. Heading for Rome I managed to combine the two. I'd bought "A Season for the Dead" the first in the "Nic Costa" series of police procedurals by David Hewson. The Roman setting appealed to me and I found myself caught up in a thrilling plot to the extent that the 3 hour flight passed me by completely. I finished the novel on our second evening in Rome with a single regret. I hadn't bought the second in the series.

The plot involves a series of gory murders seemingly influenced by the martyrdom of several early saints and overshadowed by politics in the Vatican. For the very first time I found myself learning about a city while reading crime fiction during my visit.

We walked along the bank of the Tiber and I was able to tell Anne a little about the church and hospital on Tiber island (cribbed from the novel, of course). In our visit to San Giovanni's church, St. John Lateran, I was also able to pick out the massive statue of St. Matthew from among the other, equally monumental apostles. He was the one carrying his own skin in a basket. His martyrdom entailed being flayed alive. Anne also pointed out that his name was in foot high letters on the pedestal making me feel, yet again, like her Dr. Watson.

Anyway, Rome was wonderful and we plan on going back next Autumn. In addition I've found a new series to follow. What's even better is that I can claim that the books are educational, the literary equivalent of a tasty, healthy Mediterranean diet.

"Salvatore syndrome": I'm booking it now.

Perhaps it's a way of avoiding study for my impending German exam (30th. September) but Anne and I are planning a holiday for the first week in October. Rome is our dream destination.


We went for an Italian meal on our wedding anniversary and I found myself wanting to study the language. I'm very suggestible that way, almost to the point where I think I may have a mild form of mental illness. Well at least an aberration. Every year at this time I get strange impulses to study foreign languages. Inevitably, I usually end up dabbling after signing up for Open University courses. There's usually a strong start followed by a limp across the finishing line 11 months later. So far I've completed the basic units for French, Spanish and (soon) German. Each supplies enough vocabulary and practice to hold a basic conversation and the content and presentation are uniformly excellent. Armed with these linguistic weapons I should at least be able to talk about the weather, discuss illnesses and injuries and give basic directions to strangers.


I'm always surprised when tourists visit Scotland in the Summer months. July and August are always months that test the saturation point of the peat fields and fill our rivers to the brim. Every day I make my way to work across George Square in the centre of the city feeling guilty as I see tour coaches discharge stunned looking Spaniards, Italians, Germans and French mesdames and messieurs into the torrents of Summer.


There was one high point when the pipe band championships were being held in town on their customary waterlogged date near the start of August. Pipers abounded in the city centre emitting weird high- pitched noises and waterspouts from their chanters and pibrochs. Even liberal-minded Continentals must have been slightly shocked at first glance. Do these strange, bearded, cross-dressing men always make love to calimari so publicly ?



Anyway,I've come to both dread and relish the challenge of being asked for directions by visitors to the city. I tell myself that, "This time I'll get it right!".
Invariably I start quite well but if the stranger becomes heartened by encountering a Brit who speaks their language ( no matter how badly) and throws more complex constructions into the mix, then I'm lost. Even if I get the gist of what they're saying my meagre ration of words never seems adequate for a reply. My strategy then becomes a frenzy of hand gestures, fractured French, shredded Spanish or garbled German intermixed with English words to fill the (many) gaps; a wattle and daub approach to communication. As if in a recurring nightmare I suddenly realise that my Open University units are balanced on top of a pile of linguistic scraps. German exclamations culled from "Commando" comics protrude from a litter of Spanish dialogue discarded by the Mexican bandits in the "Magnificent Seven".Snippets from the "Pink Panther" films occasionally skitter into the mix when my supply of French is exhausted and Franglais is my only alternative.


I can't lay claim to being the only polyglot (failed) who tackles communication this way.
If you've ever read Umberto Eco's "The name of the Rose" you may remember a character called Salvatore (played by Ron Perlman in the film version of the book). His approach is disturbingly similar, with segments of Italian, Latin and Greek added to my own basic stock of Northern European tongues. I'm sure that there must be other sufferers out there.


If this condition ever gains medical recognition I want it to be called"Salvatore syndrome".

With medical conditions it's always best to make early claims on any new phenomenon.
Many years ago, when I was studying Medicine (not very well) my class had a lecture on Korsakoff's psychosis, a set of debilitating symptoms caused by alcoholism. Korsakoff was a Polish physician who practised medicine in Austria. His classic case, used to define the disorder named after him, was based on the example of a Scottish music teacher who had been living in Vienna for many years. This teacher drank huge amounts of alcohol, 2 or 3 bottles of schnapps per day .He eventually developed memory loss, nerve damage and a coping mechanism of "confabulation". This allowed him to try to cover the gaps in his memory by making up stories.
One of my fellow students summed up the injustice of medical nomenclature: "Isn't that just typical? A Scotsman does all the hard work and some bloody foreigner takes all the credit!"

Say "Hello" to the Bad Guys.

Back in the 1980s there was a gang of down-and-outs in Glasgow which carried out a number of vicious but rather unprofitable robberies, against individuals rather than big organisations. The main purpose of these crimes was to get money for booze. Cops tasked with tracking the group down came up with a name that illustrates the dark humour shared by so many policemen : the "Hole-in-the-head gang".

At the moment a new gang war seems to have flared up. Proceedings apparently kicked off in January when Kevin ("the Gerbil") Carroll was, as the Sopranos might say, "whacked" in a supermarket car park in Robroyston. Within the last 10 days two twin brothers, "associates" of Carroll, have been badly injured in separate attacks. Both were assaulted by gangsters with chisels, hammers and power drills. I wonder if the detectives investigating these incidents were looking for an outfit called "the Carpenters".

Gangsters have always been part of the Glasgow crime scene. I can remember a couple of would-be hard cases turning up at the gates of my school looking for one of my fellow pupils. Apparently he had transgressed some unwritten law and pissed these guys off. The taller of the two was the one who did the mouthing off while his wee pal carried a holdall which he would occasionally hold open to give us a glimpse of a collection of knives, cleavers, hammers and other pieces of hardware. I hadn't realised that gangsters needed caddies.

I can just imagine their conversation if they had caught the guy they were looking for:

"I say , Shuggie, this chap is more portly than I foresaw. Which implement would you suggest I use ?"

"That would depend on whether one wished to rip, slash or plunge him, sir."

"I would think that a good ripping would be in order and display my irritation quite sufficiently".

"In that case may I suggest the straight razor rather than the sharpened screwdriver ?"

The caddy would definitely have been the subservient type. Every real gangster always has a toady to accompany him. This is the type of little turd who didn't have the guts to steal your sweeties but gets his mates to do it for him. They aren't confined to straightforward gangsterism. Igor in the Frankenstein films is a good example. In politics Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Tory MP, always struck me as a prime example too.

When it comes to the gangster in crime novels I must admit that there are few examples that give me any great pleasure. I love the Godfather films and I've always felt that they improve greatly on the book . The exceptions are a series of crime novels written by Loren D. Estleman and set in Detroit starting with "Whiskey River".

Sadly, real-life gangsters are far removed from the Hollywood glamour that descends in a line from "Little Caesar" and Rocky Sullivan through to the Corleones and Tony Montana. Most don't have any class....... however, in among the "Tongs" and the "Drummy" my favourite Glaswegian gang name originates from a particular street in Bridgeton: the "Baltic Fleet". I don't know if the nod to the Soviet Navy is intentional, but I like to think so.

" Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?" or the Watchmen and me...

I grew up in Easterhouse but I went to a "selective" school; what my English cousins would call a grammar school. The story of how I got there was based on a "fix". The guy who was "Third" in the class (academically) had parents who knew the "right people"and had managed to wrangle him a place at St. Mungo's Academy. Driven by some sense of justice our teacher sent for my parents and let them know about this, off the record. The end result was that I managed to ride the wave in along with the fixee. All rather dodgy, I'm afraid. Not to mention the fact that the guy who was "Second" really resented this. I can understand that but unfortunately, whenever we met in later years, he made it quite clear that he resented me more than he did the other guy, the one who had actually cheated him out of a place.

The bottom line is that I went to a school that was a 40 minute bus ride away and had to wear a uniform that marked me out as a stranger in my home district. I also learned Latin instead of "Technical Drawing" as part of the curriculum. Hence the pretentious title quote from the Roman poet Juvenal which, as everyone knows, translates roughly as : "Who watches the watchmen ?".

From previous posts you may have gotten the impression that Easterhouse could be rather tough at times. The role of the local Police must have been difficult. I've always said that despite "E-hoose's" reputation 90% of the people living there were law abiding and generally hard working. Unfortunately for the local cops at least 99% of the 90% didn't trust the Law. I think that's probably true in most working class communities. Politics lines the Police up with people who are more articulate, more vocal and better able to use them as a service.

There's a strange duality in the average working person's relationship with the Police. It's hard to trust them because you always fear, even when completely innocent, that they'll turn on you like a Kafka-esque Rottweiler. On the other hand, as pointed out by the great Ed McBain when explaining why he used policemen (not private investigators) as the heroes in his crime novels, who else do you call when there's been a murder ? I'm not too proud to admit that the first time I ever found myself on the sharp end of a mugging I shouted "Police!" at the top of my voice as I ran away.

I grew up during the height of the local gang warfare and saw local yobs knocking down picket fences and hammering nails through sticks. This was so that they wouldn't feel left out during the amnesty organised by Frankie Vaughn. Maybe the cops thought that they'd finally put an end to the notorious Fred Flintstone gang.(You should view the legendary Matt McGinn's song on you tube to get a perspective on that particular golden age.) Matt also sums up the trust the average Glaswegian places in "ra Polis" in his song "The 2 heided man". Not much. I also note that things really haven't changed too much according to the Evening Times.

TV cops had no effect on our perception of the genuine article. Good cops like George Dixon seemed about as real as Steve Zodiac. One series did provide a nickname for the group of plainclothed " officers assigned to deal with the gang problem. At the sight of a saloon car full of big, short-haired six-foot men turning the corner every urchin in the street would scatter shouting, "It's the Untouchables!".

Many events and incidents over the years have shaped my view of the who are the "good guys" or "bad guys". At 55 I've definitely gone the way of becoming more right wing with age. About 4 or 5 years ago I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Parks Department had planted 40 or so new sapling trees in Blairtummock Park up at the arse-end of Easterhouse 10 minutes' walk from my house.

Next day I walked up with my dog to find that maybe 5 or 6 of the trees had survived a vandal-fest of chopping and uprooting. I was already living with the fact that the local yobs had discovered that the yellow waste baskets strapped to lamp standards will burn like plastic torches for about an hour if you hold a lighter under them long enough for combustion to kick in. If you ever take a dog for a walk in the vicinity be prepared to carry the poop bag all the way home. (Oh, dear God! This is beginning to read like a letter to the "Daily Mail"!)

Policing seems to be different up there. Two incidents outlined that for me.

One New Year, when I still lived with my Father in a tenement flat, I went out to discover the ground floor apartment had every window smashed in ( bedroom and living room at the front, two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom at the back). A bunch of teenage mentalists had been tanked up on alcohol and were battering one another on the stretch of grass in front of our block. A couple of cop cars drew to a halt. Safe in the parked vehicles the Polis watched them knock one another about and then pan in the windows ( one of the participants lived in the ground floor flat). The mother of the family had remonstrated with the cops about not offering any help. The sergeant on the scene rolled down his window and said"You know it'll be another 3 days before the council can do any repairs." Then the cars rolled off into the night. Another triumph for minimal intervention.

Some time later a few friends and I got invited to a small party in a semi-detached house in the West End of Glasgow. In a bunch we arrived about 11 o' clock and switched on a record .Before the first track had finished playing the local Police were at the door asking us to break up the party. No exaggeration. The neighbours must have had speed dial phones attached to the net curtains. This struck me as being an interesting illustration of Police tactics and priorities.

Part of me says, "That's life, move on and grow up" but I still resent the injustice of this and a few other brushes with the cops. Once a pair of plods tried to arrest a friend and me for sitting at the front of our tenement after they'd failed to catch any of the gang members they'd been chasing. The only thing that saved us was the righteous indignation of a wee woman neighbour from across the road. She had thrown her window open and put them bang to rights.

Another time a friend and I had been at a bachelor night party and were walking home. We became aware that we were being shadowed by a police car (subtle this wasn't).

Shaking hands we split up at the next junction. My friend headed down towards (relatively posh) Mount Vernon while I carried on up towards Barlanark and Easterhouse. Guess whom the police opted to follow ? When the car inevitably drew up beside me I managed not to say anything too stupid, or even worse, smart. One of the dynamic duo asked who I was and where I was going. I was sober and innocent so it was easy to handle but I was always aware that you never try to pat a Rotweiller. I didn't ask "Are you carrying the brain this evening , Orificer ?" Even writing about it now I still get a little frisson of resentment. And don't get me started on how the Police behaved during the miners' strike.

Still, who are you going to call if there's a murder..... ?