the Gallic Elvis

In the US we have Elvis impersonators. In France they have Johnny Hallyday impersonators...les Johnnys. If you don't know Johnny Hallyday, and most of the world outside France except Quebec doesn't, he's now an aging French rockstar beloved by many in the land of 354 cheeses.

Johnny, like Elvis, came from humble beginnings. In Johnny's case, unlike the rural South, he was born in the center of Paris (one reason he's beloved - the French see him as a true Paris gamin) lived on rue Clauzel around the corner from where Francois Truffaut spent his childhood. If you watch the classic film 'The Four Hundred Blows' you'll see the postwar Paris streets of Johnny's and Truffaut's childhood which Truffaut used in his semi-autobiographical film. At the time the quartier was working class, full of small shops, theatres and bordered Pigalle.

Johnny's father wasn't in the picture and he was raised by his aunt, a dancer and uncle, an MC at the Cafe de Paris where Johnny got his first singing gig.
Growing up, Johnny was influenced by Elvis and the 1950s rock revolution, and became famous in the 1960s for singing rock and roll in French. The Gallic Elvis. He's still hugely popular after all this time - albeit the fans who fill the stadium are his age, he supported Sarkozy and he's got tax problems which stimulated his move to establish a residence in Switzerland.  Apart from singing Johnny, like Elvis, forayed into films and some of his films in the last decade show a man who took quiet, thoughtful roles and can act, unlike Elvis.
Johnny, like Elvis, no matter what you think of his persona, outfits or antics of driving his motorcycle onstage (and my French neighbor will attest to this) has a good voice.  Johnny still sells out regional stadiums and performed in a packed Stade de France a few years ago on his farewell tour. One of his several farewell tours.
But a faux Johnny got into trouble recently with an impersonator of the late Serge Gainsbourg (the cigarette smoking, iconic composer and singer who sang Je T'aime with Jane Birkin, that one and who is also an icon in France.) Below the real Johnny and Serge.

Who were friends in real-life.

Yet, in one of the more surreal cases seen in a French court, the faux Johnny was stabbed by the faux Serge who viewed him as a rival. This is from the Telegraph:
Denis Colnot, a 48-year-old fan/impersonator of singer-songwriter Gainsbourg, faces a lengthy prison term after being charged with the attack on his Johnny-loving-impersonator neighbour that was allegedly triggered by a long-running feud over the quality of their respective acts.The two men knew each other for years, but their competitiveness is thought to have got the better of them in July 2011 when 'Gainsbourg' decided he could no longer tolerate his rivals insults and allegedly attacked 'Johnny' with a kitchen knife, stabbing him in the neck.
Johnny, identified as Michel Pacchiana, survived and made a full recovery. He described his neighbour as a "cabbage head" driven by jealousy born of constantly losing to him in impersonation contests.
"It's a miracle I'm alive, I thought I was going to join my mother in heaven."
In court, Mr Colnot's lawyer said he "never intended to kill". He faces up to 30 years in prison.
Here's more background from the RFI: The two impersonators who were bitter rivals, entered the same competitions and lived in the same block of flats in the Vosges region. In July 2011 'Gainsbourg' saw 'Johnny' mowing the lawn in front of the building where they both live, hurled insults at him from his balcony and then, grabbing a kitchen knife, ran down and stabbed him in the neck within millimetres of the carotid artery.
He could no longer bear his rival's sneers, he told police, explaining that 'Johnny' had called him a "loser" and other insulting names.
The judge is due to deliver his verdict on Monday.
PS Another similarity Johnny's living and we in American know Elvis is alive, non?
Cara - Tuesday

Scene of the CrimeFest.

A bit of background and a brief introduction…

Martin Luther’s quotation, “I can do no other,” succinctly sums up our buddy Leighton Gage’s motivation for putting one hundred and ten percent into everything he writes.  No where is that pledge to his readers more evident than in his seven Mario Silva novels, called “top notch…controversial and entirely absorbing” by The New York Times and “a world class procedural series” by The Wall Street Journal. 

It is Leighton who by his example inspires each of us to bring our A-game to every MIE post, every day, every week.

Keep it fresh, keep it strong is Leighton’s motto, and that’s precisely what’s guided him to a decision we all deeply regret, but fully understand.  Leighton is a writing master who refuses to give his readers anything less than his absolute best work, something he believes he cannot do while confronting his current health problems.  He has decided to step down as a regular MIE contributor so that he may concentrate on his recovery efforts.  Our hopes and prayers are with Leighton and Eide and we look forward to seeing him back here with us soon.

Another Martin Luther quote comes to mind at this moment: "Even if I knew that the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."

That, too, has Leighton written all over it, for even as he faces serious personal challenges he’s taken the time to plant a strong new tree in his Monday slot by personally selecting who shall occupy his place.  In the words of The Washington Post, Annamaria Alfieri writes exotic South American tales that “glitter” “as both history and mystery.” Her debut novel, City of Silver, was called by some “one of the best first novels of the year” (Deadly Pleasures Magazine) and her second, Invisible Country, was compared to “the notable novels of Charles Todd” (Kirkus Reviews).  Blood Tango (coming June 25, 2013 from St. Martin’s) is Annamaria’s latest novel and imagines the murder of an Evita Perón lookalike amid 1945 Buenos Aires.

Annamaria is a person of many talents, so much so that she needs two names.  As Patricia King she’s written five books on business subjects, including Never Work for a Jerk (featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show), and her current Monster Boss.  As Pat King, she’s also serving her second term as President of the New York City Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

It is with great pleasure I welcome our new colleague, Annamaria Alfieri, to Murder is Everywhere.  We’re all proud, especially Leighton.

PS.  The thought of Leighton smiling just gave me an idea. One I’m sure will put a big smile on the big fellow’s face and a warm feeling in each of our hearts: May I suggest we all immediately buy at least one copy of one of Leighton’s seven Mario Silva masterpieces from our local independent bookstore, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble?  Or buy all seven and feel downright giddy. :)

­—Jeff

#####

CrimeFest Headquarters Hotel

As we say in New York, I didn’t know from Bristol. I had made a brief stop there years ago while touring the west of England, but true New Yorker that I am, all I did on that occasion was visit the Clifton Suspension Bridge, because I had heard it looked like the Brooklyn Bridge.  

Clifton Bridge

Brooklyn Bridge

It does, but without the cathedral-like quality, and definitely without Yonas Schimmel’s Knish Bakery within walking distance.   

So, while I was in the town for CrimeFest, before the Murder is Everywhere crowd arrived to buy me drinks, I took myself on a walking tour.  Threatening weather held at bay that Wednesday so I had a comfortable stroll, following the Michelin Green Guide itinerary, which started and ended just a few minutes from my hotel.

Warehouses converted into condos along the river

From the Norman Arch, my path skirted @Bristol, the science museum, and crossed Pero’s Bridge.  It’s a bascule bridge, a term I didn’t know.  It means the span moves, using counter weights, to open the channel for boat traffic.  In this case, the weights were designed to be modern sculptures.  

Norman Arch

Pero's Bridge

I was surprised to learn that the bridge was named after a slave, but then, on the other side of the canal, at the M Shed Museum, I learned of Bristol’s connection to the slave trade.  It turns out that though the town was first settled in the 10th Century and was England’s second largest city in the Middle Ages, it did not thrive economically until its 17th and 18th century residents made huge fortunes in the slave trade.   The museum’s exhibition, in its own form of counterbalancing, juxtaposes the slaving history with that of modern citizens’ political activism.

The Old Town Walk then took me through lovely Queen Square and along cobbled King Street with its 18th and 19th century warehouses, a 17th century alms house, and Llandoger Trow—a historic pub, where I stopped off for fish and chips.

Queen Square

King Street

The Llandoger Trow

The next monument was St. Stephen’s Church, with its beautiful tower.  On that Wednesday afternoon the way in was to go into a café and then through a door marked exit to find the sanctuary.  One of the memorials of local merchants was decorated with a jaunty modern addition.

St. Stephen's Tower

Ancient merchant remembered

Corn Street was once a precinct of traders and money exchangers, but now the building houses a collection of small stalls selling finger food and general touristy grot.

Corn Street

St. Nicholas Market

The Church of John the Baptist straddles a medieval gate of the city and has an interesting interior, but it can’t hold a candle to the grand finale of the tour—Bristol Cathedral.  There has been a church on its site for a thousand years.  The 14th Century English Gothic structure was first named for St. Augustine and renamed in the Reformation.   A sign over a donations box said it takes £2 per minute to maintain it.  I paid my share on my way out.

Bristol Cathedral

Bristol Cathedral interior

That evening, Michael phoned and ended my lonely rambling by inviting me to a delightful dinner with Bill and Toby Gottfried.  By Thursday, the others arrived and the festivities already reported here got underway.  It was my first CrimeFest.  I hope not miss it in the future.

Stanley, Annamaria, Jeff, Caro, Yrsa, Michael

Annamaria—Monday

 

Who dunnit?

I'm just going to say right off the bat that I'm not going to talk about Edward Snowden and his somewhat bizarre decision to seek asylum in Hong Kong, which is still a part of China, "two systems" or not, and how China has even more pervasive surveillance than the United States with no legal restraints on how it's used.


It would lead me to talking about how the institution of universal surveillance with questionable oversight and weakened legal protection is probably not a way that we should want the United States to emulate China. How according to someone who should know, Ai Weiwei*, the United States is doing precisely that, except that our citizens live under a rule of law that shields us from the worst impulses of the state.

*Chinese contemporary artist who helped design the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing and later ended up getting a hood over his head at the Beijing Capital Airport and dragged off to a semi-legal three month detention. The charges brought afterwards were tax evasion


Then, how the erosion of our Constitutional principles and the outsized influence of money in our political system is leading the US ever further down a road of increasingly seamless integration of state and corporate influences, where profit is the ruling principle, and power is only limited by the amount of it one has and one's willingness to use it. But if I say stuff like that without presenting some evidence, I worry about sounding like a candidate for a Reynolds Wrap chapeau.

And, I just read this very interesting and persuasive article about how metadata is a means of social engineering that could be used as "a tool for a plutocracy." For example, your opinions, buying habits and tax bracket might make getting credit just slightly more difficult. Or slightly more expensive.

The author of this particular piece is Jaron Lanier, an American computer scientist and internet visionary who popularized the phrase, "Virtual reality," and has written critically of "Web 2.0." Among other things, he refers to the so-called "Wisdom of Crowds" as "Digital Maoism," which is the kind of thing that I would like to say but fear would get me labeled as an out-of-touch elitist. 

But I'll say that there's a problem with creating "all the infrastructure a tyrant would need" and "counting on having angels in office," as this cogent piece in The Atlantic puts it:

...we're allowing ourselves to become a nation of men, not laws. Illegal spying? Torture? Violating the War Powers Resolution and the convention that mandates investigating past torture? 

No matter. Just intone that your priority is keeping America safe. Don't like the law? Just get someone in the Office of Legal Counsel to secretly interpret it in a way that twists its words and betrays its spirit. 

You'll never be held accountable.

And, that what I'm thinking lately is, if you want to understand what has happened to the American economy and why we are where we are politically, approach it like a murder mystery. 

In a murder mystery, somebody gets killed, and the central question is motivation. 

Who benefits?

And, oh yeah, I have a new book coming out Tuesday.

Lisa...Sunday...

Today is a Day for Singing!

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear, daddy-grandpa-boyfriend, happy birthday to me.

Well, I guess that just about says it all. Except for the number of candles on the cake.  And who even bothers to count anymore anyway. Once you hit forty it’s all the same. Or is it fifty?  Or is it… Just can’t quite remember at the moment.

And if you have to pick a place to celebrate a birthday, it’s hard to beat the place I now call home.  I’ve celebrated more birthdays on Mykonos than anywhere else on the planet. And my parents weren’t Gypsies.  I lived in or around Pittsburgh until graduating college.  Then it was off to Boston, for a bride, a baby boy, and law degree.  Then on to NYC for a career, baby girl, and bye-bye bride (a still grand lady).

A street in my Pittsburgh neighborhood

Then came Greece.  And it obtains.

No wonder.  Look at these photos.  No (h)airbrushing, just the effects of jet lag on the fishermen struggling to catch something other than a cold while free-diving a few days ago off the coast of Mykonos.

I’d like to share some photos of my birthday dinner tonight, but without my time travel machine that’s not possible.  So, I make you a promise: I’m having my birthday party celebration when my grandchildren and their parents (notice the order of importance) come over for a visit.  I’ll post photos of that event.  Assuming I remember the camera.

As for birthday presents, no need to send any.  I received mine serendipitously this past week from a tourist who stopped by where I live on Mykonos to ask me to autograph a copy of my first Andreas Kaldis novel, Murder in Mykonos.  Yes, that in and of itself was a great honor—even though not quite as visually stimulating as the fan who once approached me on a beach au natural (link to that article here)—but what really made my day was what the gracious woman said after I’d signed and thanked her.

“Have you seen this?”  It was a copy of Fodor’s Guide to the Greek Islands (2012).

“No.”

She opened the guidebook to page 297, and in the introduction to the section titled MYKONOS AFTER DARK, pointed out this sentence:

"Some say that after midnight, Mykonos is all nightlife––this throbbing beat is the backdrop to Jeffrey Siger's popular mystery, Murder in Mykonos."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I felt as if I’d just won an Oscar.  Screw Kirkus (only kidding) or the New York Times (REALLY only kidding), I’d made Fodor’s!

And in a most bizarre coincidental twist, the title of my new book coming in September—one that throbs and then some to the island’s magical beat—is MYKONOS AFTER MIDNIGHT!

Wow.  I want to thank my parents, the academy… 

A few parting words on this significant occasion [nod to the camera].  Somewhere out there is a throbbing beat calling out your name; go with it while everything else is still ticking.

Jeff—Saturday

Bible John/Peter Tobin. One and the same?

Bible John. Case unsolved.

Or is it?

The debate rages on. Bible John killed three women in Glasgow in the late 1960’s and by the 70's the name had almost drifted into folklore. ‘You’d better behave or Bible John will get you!’

                                                  

                                                                   

                                     

                                                                      Pat Docker

The story starts on 23rd February 1968 when the naked body of Patricia Docker (25) was found in a lane just yards from her home. She had been raped and strangled after leaving the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow city centre.

                                                                       

                                                                   

                                                                     Jemima McDonald.

Early morning, 15th August 1969 a rumour was flying round a Glasgow street that some kids had found a body in an old tenement. Margaret McDonald, knowing her sister had failed to come home from her night dancing at the Barrowland, feared the worst and followed the children. Before the  police arrived Margaret  had already found the body of her sister Jemima - strangled, raped and beaten.

                                            

                                                            

                                                                    

                                                                        Helen Puttock

Then on 31st October 1969, 29-year-old Helen Puttock was found murdered in Earl Street in Scotstoun. She too had visited the Barrowland Ballroom on the night she died. Helen and her sister Jean, had been in the company of the killer for over an hour at the dancehall, in the taxi rank and then on the drive home. That chit chat in the back of the cab was the birth  of both the name and the legend of ‘Bible John’.  The nickname came from the fact that he quoted scripture at the girls in the dancehall and the taxi.

I was talking to criminologist Prof David Wilson about the case and he made it clear that very few people have actually read the sister’s original statement. It’s often overlooked that she was probably a little worse for drink at the time of the encounter and traumatised by the time the police took her statement. Jeanie’s evidence, maybe wrongly, was considered a huge breakthrough as there had been no other witnesses to ‘John.’  After Jeanie's famous photofit there followed the biggest manhunt in Scottish criminal history; 5,000 men interviewed, 50,000 statements collected.

                                      

Then the killings stopped.

 Over the years there have been a few false starts to bring the killer to justice. In 1996, the police exhumed the body of a cousin of one of the original suspects to test the DNA against a semen stain on Helen Puttock's tights. (The original suspect had committed suicide aged 41 in 1980). It did not match.

 In 2004, police announced they were to DNA test a number of men in a further attempt to solve the case.  Again the tests yielded nothing.

 The story then moves on to 2006 when the body of a Polish student,  Angelika Kluk was found hidden beneath the floorboards of a church  in the middle of Glasgow where she was spending her second summer, living in the church house free of charge. She had gone missing several days before. She had been brutally murdered.  Many strange stories unfurled during the investigation; Kluk  23, had been having an affair both with the priest 62, and with a 40 year old married man.

                                   

However, in May 2006 a man called Pat McLaughlin had called at the church one night during a thunder storm, claiming he was homeless. He asked the priest if he wanted the place 'tidied up a bit' and was accepted as the  church handyman. Pat called Angelika his 'wee apprentice'. They were seen laughing and joking together as they painted a shed on the day she disappeared.

Then Pat was admitted to hospital under false pretences. His real name was Peter Tobin. He went on the run.

                                 

                                                                      Vicky

Tobin was then linked to two other murders; Dinah McNicoll and Vicky Hamilton who’d both been missing since 1991.  Vicky's body was found in the back garden of the house Tobin had rented in the early 90's in Margate (490 miles from where she was taken in Scotland). Buried yards from it was a bin bag containing the remains of Dinah.

                                 

Tobin was found guilty of all three murders at separate trials.

                                      

                                                     Vicky, Angelika, Dinah

The similarities of these killings to the Bible John murders did not go unnoticed. Operation Anagram was set up to investigate all similar murders GB wide; they stopped at 38. 38 women who had gone missing where Tobin was living at that time, before deciding it was not in the public interest to go any further.  Anagram included the Bible John killings as part of their investigation. Inconclusive.

There was a famous artist impression of Bible John... and a picture of Tobin now and Tobin regressed.

Tobin's first wife is convinced that Tobin is not Bible John. She feels that Bible John is either dead or still free.  Tobin was a very violent husband so she is not surprised he has been convicted of the murders of Vicky, Dinah and Angelika. But she says they were on honeymoon when the second Bible John killing happened. They were away in England from the 6th for two weeks. The killing was on the fourteenth. But that was a very long time ago and memories are not always accurate. Also he was arrested on his honeymoon so not always 'there'. She also says that Tobin was not religious and that the description of Bible John does not match. Tobin always used a knife, even on his wife who he nearly killed in one attack. Bible John  never did use a knife. But killers like everybody else, evolve.

Both David Wilson and Tobin's ex wife agree on one point -  Bible John and Tobin had a very similar knowledge of Glasgow. Looking up from the dumpsite of the second victim, the killer would be looking right into the back window of the flat where Tobin's in-laws lived. That is some  co-incidence.

More than 42 years have passed. Tobin is saying nothing except to taunt a prison psychiatrist that he had killed 48 women. And then challenged the authorities to prove it.

Among the detectives involved in the triple-murder hunt was Joe Jackson who went on to  head Glasgow's CID. He is convinced that Bible John is Tobin. "I saw his photo after the church killing and thought, 'This is as near Bible John as you're going to get'.

Tobin left Scotland in 1969 - the year the killings stopped. His DNA does not match the Puttock semen stains but Jackson does not rule him out because the semen may not have been the killer's in the first place.

                                   

                                          David with his book about Tobin. It convinced me.

Prof David Wilson noticed a very interesting thing that convinced him Tobin and Bible John were one and the same. Reading the statement of the sister back in the 60's, she said that Bible John liked to appear superior in a very particular way. When the sister's said they liked to get drunk at Hogmanay, Bible John said he liked to pray.  When they joked about Rangers and Celtic. Bible John said he did not like football, he liked golf.  All those years later, Dinah's companion recalled similar nuances in conversation with the man who gave them a lift. He had tut-tutted when they said they were going to a rock concert....did they not listen to classical music?

 It was a pattern that occurred again and again when witnesses were interviewed.

                                   

So indeed it might be Tobin.

Then again it might not.

Caro GB 14/06/2013

Hamlet had tennis elbow

Shakespeare at Elsinore

I have always been puzzled by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  If you remember, Claudius was Hamlet’s uncle.  Claudius killed his own brother, Hamlet’s father, and then married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude.  Obviously he did this so he could succeed to the throne, which he did. 

Needless to say, Hamlet was upset.

But what did he do about it? 

Nothing!  He wandered around muttering to himself, even though the ghost of his father told him what had happened.  Any self-respecting prince would have run Claudius through.  But no, Hamlet did nothing.

Why?  That’s the puzzle.

Of course, if Hamlet had just reacted like any hot blooded young man would, the play would have been over before the end of Act 1, which would have ruined Shakespeare’s reputation.  So academics have spent hundreds of years trying to explain Hamlet’s weird behaviour.

Several theories have been advanced over the years trying to explain Hamlet’s reluctance to do Claudius in.  Freud, in his The Interpretation of Dreams, concludes that Hamlet had an Oedipal Complex, and had an Oedipal desire for his mother.  If he killed Claudius, he would then be hurting his mother.  So he held off – and in doing so drove himself mad.

Other interpretations of Hamlet’s behaviour have suggested that he was sexually attracted to his mother.  In the closet scene, where he confronts Gertrude in her private quarters, he is disgusted by her incestuous relationship with Claudius, but is concerned that if he kills Claudius, he would be tempted to sleep with her himself.    

A different type of explanation for Hamlet’s reluctance to kill Claudius suggests that Hamlet is just an ineffectual intellectual.  There is much to support this notion:

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” (Act 2, scene ii)

“To be or not to be: that is the question.” (Act 3, scene i)

Freud also hints that Hamlet couldn’t make a strong decision because Hamlet thinks “he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.”

And Hamlet himself, when he has the opportunity to kill Claudius when he is praying, hesitates because he thinks that someone killed while praying will go to heaven. 

“A villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.” (Act 3, scene iii)

Of course he still does nothing.

As a recovering academic, I see that all these explanations are meant to dazzle fellow academics, thus hopefully leading to tenure.  But none of them is correct.

I discovered the real truth yesterday when I visited Kronborg Castle in Helsingør (Elsinore) - where all of the action of Hamlet takes place - to commune with the plethora of ghosts who still hang out there.  

Kronborg Castle (Elsinore)

Kronborg Castle (Elsinore) - Sweden in background

Self-portrait at the top of the castle

“Why didn’t Hamlet kill Claudius right away?” I asked the wispy group.  

It was poor Ophelia (in love with Hamlet, but told to reject him by her father Polonius and brother, Laertes) who gave me the reason.

“Don’t believe any of the academic claptrap,” she said.  “It’s simple.  He had tennis elbow and couldn’t use his sword!”

I gasped at this academic sacrilege.

“We used to play a lot of royal tennis in our outdoor court between the moats,” she continued.  “Hamlet was a fiend and liked to win.  Eventually he had to stop because he got a mild case of sunstroke (“I am too much I’ the sun.” Act 1, scene ii), as well as a painful case of tennis elbow.”

Outdoor real (royal) tennis court building

The real (royal) tennis court itself

What caused Hamlet's pain!

“That’s really painful,” I said.  “I had it once, and it lasted for months.”

“Yes.  He became very impatient with the usual heat treatment because the pain didn’t go away.  He would curse and swear at his arm (“O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew.” Act 1, scene ii), but his mother kept telling him to be patient (“Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper Sprinkle cool patience.” Act 3, scene iv).

“He kept testing to see if the arm had healed.  He used to take hold of me and tried to straighten his arm (“”He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Then he goes to the length of all his arm.” Act 2, scene i).  It was pitiful (“And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow, .. . . He raised a sigh so piteous and profound As it did seem to shatter all his bulk.” Act 2, scene i).

“In the end, his mother decided to send him south to the warmer climate of England, where he could convalesce.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“It must have worked, because he came back – I wasn’t around then because I'd drowned – and had a fencing match with my brother Laertes.  Poor Gertrude toasted the two of them, but didn’t realize the chalice of wine had been poisoned by Claudius.  So she died.  Laertes didn’t play fair, and tipped his sword with poison.  He scratched Hamlet, who realized what was going on.  He managed to grab Laertes sword and scratch him back.  Then he realized that Claudius was still alive, so he stabbed him and made him drink the poisoned wine just to make sure he died.

"What a mess.  Bodies all over the place!  It would have been much better had Hamlet killed Claudius right away.  Then we would have got married and had kids and lived happily ever after.”

So there you have it – from someone who should know.

Hamlet delayed in killing Claudius, not because of those airy-fairy academic reasons we read about, but because he had tennis elbow.

Stan - Thursday