Thursday, February 28, 2008

Congresswoman J. B. Fletcher


I probably first really started liking mysteries while watching Murder, She Wrote, Sunday nights, growing up. For some reason my parents let me watch this show, even though I distinctly remember having nightmares (especially after one episode with a hung man, which was somehow more disturbing than the blood, knives, guns, and poison.) This was also ironic as, at different points, I was not allowed to watch the Simpson’s or Roseanne. I think they figured anything with Angela Lansbury had to be ok.

Netflix Watch Instantly, being the great invention that it is, has allowed me to revisit these episodes, a couple of decades wiser, with a few more mysteries under my belt.

I'll start with the first one that takes place in D.C. Of course, this is where Jessica plays a congresswoman. Yes, this makes sense so far….

We start in a shady room in the Watergate with politicians and lobbyists discussing a cannery bill. There is yelling about making reports to committees and then Congressman Joyner from Maine gets too excited, has a heart attack and dies! A young, blond woman, stands behind a door and takes pictures with a spy-like small camera. There is a decision not to call an ambulance.

Fade out and then we see a landscape view of beautiful Cabot Cove, Maine! Jessica is in her house having a friendly conversation on the phone about voter registration (she is very popular) when she is interrupted by a politico type. He says the governor has asked her to serve as an interim congresswoman while they figure out who runs next or something. J.B. is cool and all, but no, this doesn't make much sense.

Joe, her PR rep, picks her up in D.C. (I’m guessing she flew to National, I like that airport better than Dulles), and they drive by the White House--oohh, awww. He's friendly, but I guess a bit dismissive, and she firmly lets him know that actually, she is not his aunt for East Nowhere, and he better start treating her with some freaking respect! But she says it in such a nice way, they laugh together about it. (I sort of love J.B.)

On the way to her office she meets a man on one of her committees, Dan Kemptner. He was also in the hotel room! The plot thickens.

Jessica then see’s her office and meets her administrative assistant, who tries to resign, since a new congressperson is supposed to appoint his or her people (except she'll only be there for a few weeks, people). Jessica will have none of this poppycock, insisting Congressman Joyner's staff will suit her just fine. A sleazy man comes in to give her flowers and ask her out to dinner. When he leaves, we find out he's a lobbyist (Harry Parnell) for Pendrick food, dun dun dun!
At the hotel, a large bearded man in the foreground looks like he's unusually interested in J.B. as she checks-in in the background.

Then we see Dan Kemptner at a bar while he calls J.B. from a phone book. He has to talk to her; they agree to meet for breakfast. When he walks out of the bar, the blond girl from the Watergate party, Marta Craig, stops him and shows him the pictures she took.
Back at Jess's hotel, the large bearded man follows Jessica around, until she tricks him, sneaks up behind him and asks assertively who he is and why is he following her! She's so good! He looks a little embarrassed and admits he needs her help in figuring out who "killed" congressman Joyner.

Next they are sitting and he is massaging his feet and telling her he's a Police Lieutenant. He says that Joyner's body was definitely moved. And while the coroner says it was a heart attack, he still thinks something is up. He then complains about his back pain. (He has physical issues the whole episode, back pain, stomach aches, cramps, while he also talks about how his brothers are Rabbis, and his Cousin runs a deli and makes lox, and, spoiler, in the end they fade out to fiddler on the roof…So I guess the writers enjoy Jewish stereotypes and clichés or something? Bleh, I guess MSW can't be completely perfect.)

Cut to Dan in a "D.C." alley. He comes to and realizes he doesn’t have his wallet. As he disoriently (I made that word up) looks for it, the police pick him up.
The Lieutenant finds Marta Craig's key in Dan's pocket. Marta, the blond girl that confronted him, was found murdered last night and they found Dan’s jacket on the scene.
Back at Congress, J.B., trying to sniff out the first mystery, asks Diana where Joyner was supposed to be the night he died. Harry Parnell, the lobbyist, invited him to a party, but Joyner turned him down.

As J.B. and Diana rush to a committee meeting, Thor Danzanger, with an ecological organization, stops Jessica to ask if she’ll look over stuff on the Canary bill. Diana shoos him away and J.B. is concerned that they were rude. (oh J.B.)

At the committee meeting, J.B. remembers that Dan never met her for breakfast like they were supposed to. He's not at the committee meeting either! J.B. also doesn't like how the Pendrick food guy, Dickinson, who was also at the Watergate party, reads his testifying from a script. "If it’s all written out, why are we wasting each other’s time!?" The AA just says that's how we do things in D.C. Heh.

The lieutenant visits Jessica to let her know they are holding Dan for Marta Craig's murder, but he doesn't feel right about it and wants her help. (How do police in the real world do their work without J.B.?)

At the police station, Dan explains it was dumb to move Joyner’s body. (I think they did it because they weren't all supposed to be at the Watergate?) He was going to tell J.B. at breakfast. He recounts the Marta ordeal, except he can't remember what bar he was coming out of. (As a kid, this is the kind of thing I'd buy. But now it’s hard to swallow, I mean, don't you at least know what part of town you were in and can deduce where you might have been?) He swears he didn't kill her, so of course we know he didn't.

They go to see the corpse. (J.B. shields us from the image though) Marta was beat. :-/ However, Jess deduces that the blood and makeup on Dan’s shirt, and the blood on his hands, show he DIDN'T beat Marta. He would have makeup on his hands and more blood on his shirt. She demonstrated that if the killer, who would have had blood and makeup on his hands, grabbed Dan from behind to move him to the alley, the marks would be right where they are.

The lieutenant is impressed and says she should have been a cop, she says she is, when she's at the typewriter. He says solemnly "you're not at the typewriter now." I know this is the first season, but she's already solved like 8 murders before this episode. You’d think she'd realize she's good at it (or that a Cabot Cove serial killer follows her on all her trips, kills someone around her, and successfully frames someone else for the job…)

JB, now convinced that Dan was framed, sends PR Joe to find out all he can about this Marta girl.
At a politico D.C. bar, Harry confronts Dickinson, (these are the Pendrick Food Company guys from the Watergate party…I know, it’s hard to remember all these character, but we must as one of them is the killer!) Harry insinuates that Dickinson might have killed Marta.
Oh, and now we see Diana and Thor have a thing going’ on. In Diana's apartment, they talk about Marta, and he shows her pictures he got, of him in bed, passed out, with Marta leaning over him seductively. He says they were faked, and Diana believes him. They came with a note that says something like, ‘stay away from J.B. or else….’

The lieutenant and J.B. look around Marta's lavish 80s apartment. She has a rap sheet: extortion, etc. J.B. notices that Diana is in a Brighton University cheerleading picture with Marta!!!

To get more clues, she has lunch with Miss Shepherd, a gossip journalist I guess, who brings her cat to lunch (I love cats, but really?). She teaches Jess about “this town” and says everyone responds to clout and that back scratching is a must. (Yeah, those things only happen in D.C.) She also has info; at the Watergate, the night Marta died, she saw Marta run outside, upset, and that Dickson ran out to bring her back in. She says she saw this in her car about a block away. That confusing intersection by the stone gas station probably!!!

Later, in J.B.’s office, Joe says meetings with Kay Shepherd don’t go unnoticed in this town. (I've never heard of this lady and I was born in D.C., so obviously she's not that cool…or she's fictional, which is probably more likely.) Joe then gives a cursory break down of Marta and says Diana called in sick.

Dan comes in after Joe leaves, he was released from jail. He tells her he’s not going to seek reelection, except then J.B. talks him out of it! Or into it? Anyway, decided to run. (She is so influential with people she has just met). Then they hug. :)

Jessica goes to Diana’s apartment, even though she's "sick" but really she knows that Thor, from the environmental group, is there. She admits it was a guess though (I don’t think J.B. every really ‘guesses’). He wore a Brighton University symbol on his tie, so she looked up an old yearbook at the library of congress and found out Diana, Marta, and Thor, all went to school together. Since they made such a production of not liking each other (remember the rudeness), she figured they must be having sex…ok, well she didn't put it quite that bluntly. They explain they used to be friends with Marta, but that she got in with the wrong crowd…like lobbyists….
They didn't reveal their connection to her because of the fake photo.

By the way, when people in the 80s say a photo is fake, they mean Marta tricked Thor into coming to her apartment, then drugged him, then had someone take pictures while he was unconscious and in bed with her. That’s not really “fake.” I meant, it did happen, the photo itself is real?

Later, Joe has more research on Marta and he tells Jessica what Marta did that night that she picked Dan up outside of Stockhom’s Bar.

After talking to Dickinson, she calls Joe in. She suspects Dickinson murdered Marta and probably took the pictures Marta had too. They have just got to get inside Dickinson's penthouse to find out more! Well, right after this important congress committee meeting.

Dan is semi-filibustering until Jess can get there. She rushes in and kicks some ass while voting against the mean old corporate people who want to build a new cannery in an environmentally sensitive area, even though they've already abandoned two canneries in Maine…stupid corporations. She gets cheers from the people in the committee room and the bill doesn’t pass.

At the Watergate, we see Joe going into a penthouse. He rushes to a desk and tries to plant an envelope in Dickinson’s desk, which is a little obvious. But then the lieutenant and J.B. get him!
She explains that she was pretty sure Marta was murdered by the person she was working for. She says Joe was no longer wearing his fancy suede driving gloves, so he probably was wearing them when he beat her. That will never hold up in court. Luckily, Jessica has more. Joe slipped and said that Marta picked up Dan at Stockohms Bar, since Dan forgot what bar he was at, Joe could only have known this by talking to Marta that night.

Joe angrily says he's no different than anyone else in D.C! She says that she still thinks that many people in D.C. are good. The lieutenant then offers to take her to a deli that makes great lox, and, as I said, they close to fiddler on the roof. Oy.

Death as a Writer

Here's a funny comic that i found on Inkygirl.com. :)

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Lady Killer

Lisa Scottoline, author of Daddy's Girl and Killer Smile, will read and sign her new mystery, Lady Killer, at the Borders in Tyson's Corner tomorrow night, February 27, at 7:30.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Dakota Discussion

Martha Grimes will be discussing her new book Dakota at the Dupont Circle Olsson's Books and Records tomorrow night, February 26, at 7:00 pm. Dakota is a mystery set against the back drop of a pig raising farm. Grimes, who will be joined by Neal Barnard, the president of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, will talk about the animal rights issues related to factory farming.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Know the Rules Before you Break Them

I first came across "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories," by S.S. Van Dine in High School and it really changed the way I read mysteries and approached similar kinds of writing. I don't agree with all of it. For example, I think a background love interest, if done correctly, can work in a nice extra dimension to a detective story. And rule 11, is of course still very relevant: "A servant must not be chosen by the author as the culprit...The culprit must be a decidedly worth-while person." However, I still think there's a lot to learn from this, and many of the points articulate why I so strongly dislike some mysteries.

A good example of this is a book a friend gave to me a couple years ago, Pride and Prescience, a Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery. I'm writing a blog on mysteries, so it's pretty clear that I like those, but I also love Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, so this seemed like a slam dunk for me. Throughout the book there were a lot of pretty obvious "clues" that Caroline's mysterious behavior might have something to do with the ring she wore. But I figured the author wouldn't actually make me read a whole mystery book only to discover the mystery was a cursed ring.... (This was not only a very annoying conclusion for a mystery, but it made no sense in the Austenian world either. So Blehs all around).

S.S. Van Dine got it right, and still has it right, when he wrote rules 8 and 14:

"8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio."


"14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure."

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Walking Mysteries

I just ordered the Mystery Reader's Walking Guide: Washington, D.C. on Amazon. Check out the cover...D.C. is full of mishapped stereotypical detectives!

Actually, I'm pretty excited, as I love mysteries and walking. Look out for some digital pictures and notes on these eight walks soon!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Murder Mystery Music

Perhaps this is not quite on topic, but googling can produce some interesting discoveries. A band called Murder Mystery will be playing Saturday night (February 23) at The Rock and Roll Hotel on H street, sort of near Union Station. Fun stuff.

(side note: in the blogspot post form, both blogspot and googling get a little red squiggly line letting you know you just typed a misspelled word...you'd think the google people would give themselves a little more credit. Whoops, looks like google is not a word either.)

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Local Book Nominated for an Edgar Award

Kevin Flynn's book Relentless Pursuit: A True Story of Family, Murder, and the Prosecutor Who Wouldn't Quit has been nominated for an Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime Category. Flynn writes about his experience as a homicide prosecutor dealing with the murder of Diane Hawkins and her daughter, Katrina Harris, which occurred on May 26, 1993 in Northeast Washington D.C.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Book Event Tonight

Susan Choi, author of The Foreign Student and American Woman, will be at Politics and Prose tonight to promote her new book A Person of Interest.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Mystery Reviews

Local professor and book critic Maureen Corrigan reviewed some of the latest mystery novels in today's Washington Post.

Precious Blood

Jonathan Hayes will discuss his latest book Precious Blood at the Baileys Crossroads Borders this Thursday. Hayes pulled from his experience as a forensic pathologist to craft the story of Dr. Edward Jenner who tries to find a serial killer in New York City.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Dead Graves

Note: I wrote this last fall for a grad school assignment but thought it fit the theme of this blog as well.

Last September, I passed shops, businesses, and luxury condominiums on Washington Boulevard before I saw what I was looking for. The bronze sign, in Ballston, indicated a historic site was nearby. I weaved my way through an oil-stained parking lot where cars awaited service at Baird Automotive. After brushing by a rusty chain link fence, violating some spider webs along the way, I entered the Old Ball Family Burial Ground.

Along with the buzz and clink of a mechanic’s work, I heard traffic and the occasional ambulance siren. On a different day, I might have heard children playing or multiple conversations coming from the YMCA which curved around two sides of the cemetery. A colorful playground, covered picnic area, and metal bleachers could be seen through the fence. Mysteriously, the bleachers were pushed against an unrelated gray building with the lowest bench first. Any spectators would look blankly at the equally blank gray wall.

Decaying leaves spotted the cemetery ground, making it a musty faded green color. The plot was roughly 20 yards long and 30 yards across. It started off mostly level before decreasing sharply into a steep hill on the far right side. One large, pristine stone, about five and a half feet high, stood in the center, surrounded by rocks neatly lined in a tight square. The stone listed the names of the dead—or at least most of them. A sweeping “and others…” was etched near the bottom of the hard surface.

The surviving individual grave stones were pushed to the far left corner of the site, several feet from the new stone. They were run down or toppled over, broken and faded. One stone had multiple holes in it, as though it had been machine gunned. A tombstone graveyard.


The Old Ball Family Burial Ground is one of many historic family plots in Arlington. Several have been severely damaged or destroyed, but some hang on, resisting vandalism, decomposition, and development. According to a study conducted in 1989, which sought help from the Virginia government to preserve family plots, many individuals and groups were interested in maintaining family burial grounds. However, the study also noted that, out of 832 Virginia graveyards, survey respondents described 56 percent as “not maintained at all” and 25 percent as “inadequately maintained.”

Despite it being a run down version of its former self, the Ball graveyard still had much to tell. Two grave markers revealed especially short lives. Emma Marcey died 11 days after her 13th birthday on October 31, 1875. Catherine Donaldson died before her first birthday in 1894. Flowers, which often symbolize life’s frailty, were at the top corners of the gravestone. Her parents, James and Sarah, were also identified on the stone to shed some light into this stunted life. Other gravestones simply had letters, such as “M.E.D.” and “S.D.D.,” as though they wanted to reveal as little as possible.

The most prominent among the clustered group was John Wesley Boldin’s stone; it was the highest, at three feet, and the most elaborate. The white tombstone depicted a profile view of a knight holding two crossed axes and a shield. A bird, which resembled a crow, stood on top of his helmet. This was probably because of John’s service during the Civil War. I could make out the dates, 1843-1908, and some of the words, “Sacred…to the memory of our dear husband and father.” His wife, Ella Jane Boldin, daughter of Mary Donaldson née Ball, would be one of the last to be buried in the cemetery, in the spring of 1948. She was 93.

Mary Thrift Ball was the first person to be buried there. She died on October 10, 1804. She was 55.

The cemetery was part of 12.5 acres that had been granted to Mary’s husband, John Ball, on August 4, 1789. According to census records, they lived there with their eight children and at least two slaves. The log house John built stood on the south side of Washington Boulevard until 1955.

John was a notable figure in the community. He was an acquaintance of George Washington and an early supporter of the Revolution. In 1770 he, along with his brother and father, signed an agreement not to import British goods. He also served in the Sixth Virginia Infantry during the war.

I could not find Mary or John’s gravestones, though many were indiscernible. Only ghostly marks and smudges remained of messages that once held significant meaning for those who commissioned them. Aldous Huxley once said, “The only completely consistent people are the dead,” but even that could be argued in the Ball cemetery, where tombstones, the lasting representations of human souls, are worn, wounded, conquered by swelling ivy, and even uprooted and displaced.

Without the markers in their original places, I had to trample over the dead. I could not stand next to a grave and contemplate the life of the person laying just a few feet under me. With the knowledge of that physical proximity, I feel somehow connected to his or her life. I think about what it must have been like to live and breath in the period encompassed by the two simple dates that, along with a name, might be one of the few records left demonstrating that the individual existed at all.

I try to imagine what last words were spoken before the fresh dirt hit the sunken caskets. People were probably standing solemnly, some grief stricken, others attending out of a sense of obligation. On holidays and anniversaries, the grieving probably came back to knell on the same grass. They placed flowers, which eventually decayed into the ground, year after year, until their own tombstones sprouted.

###

Even though it has been damaged, the Old Ball Family Burial Ground has had a better fate than most Virginia plots. Sara Collins, a member of the Arlington Historical Society, which the Ball family helped found in 1956, told me, “When Mrs. [Marie Shreve] Ball Sr. was still living, she was upset by the fact that there had been so much vandalism over there and broken stones….she went to great trouble and expense to gather the information about the cemetery and to have that central stone put up…which seems like a good way to preserve a cemetery.”

Sara agreed to meet me in the Virginia Room of the Arlington Central Library. Surrounded by microfiche, clipping files, and huge musty books, we were swamped in a thick of previous lives. She looked like she had probably witnessed the most recent four scores of history contained in the volumes. However, her wrinkled face and delicate voice did not seem weary or worn. She smiled often and appeared to enjoy peering through her glasses and reading my notes upside down as I scrawled quotes and tidbits of information.

She said Marie probably had all the remaining stones moved to the left corner because, due to vandalism, many of the stones had already been moved. I asked her about the types of people that would go out of their way to mess with a cemetery, and we chuckled quietly as we tried to envision their motivation.

###

I visited the site again in early November, after jack-o-lanterns had been trashed and spooky fake spider webs had been stored in the holiday section of basement closets. It was chilly. The red scarf and yellow rubber ball I saw during my last visit were gone. Half of a dirty paper plate and a yellow plastic spoon were among the graves, probably remnants of a recent YMCA event. The wind tickled the leaves and rustling was added to the cascade of city noises. Birds squawked painfully nearby.

Mystery Theater

We have a mystery theater in this area! The Mystery Dinner Playhouse, which has a few locations in Virginia, puts on shows at the Doubletree Hotel in Crystal City.


A while ago, I dragged my skeptical boyfriend to a show called “Murder in the Court.” The performance, which was more comedic than suspenseful, took place in 10-15 minute scripted acts between courses. In between the acts, the cast members served food while still in character and the audience was encouraged to try to illicit more clues by bribing the characters with fake money. I also liked how, during the show, they interacted with the audience and even pulled people out to play minor characters. (My boyfriend got to take the stand!)

Toward the end of the show, we wrote who we thought was the murderer and why. (I can’t remember if I was right or not…really). After the murderer was revealed, the most humorous answers were read out loud.

The only downside, at least for the performance I saw, was that the mystery was pretty simple and not as clever as I would have liked. Still I really enjoyed in and plan to go back sometime soon. They’re currently showing a spoof on westerns called, “Murder Rides Again.” Where, in “Murder in the Court” the audience serves as court witnesses, in “Murder Rides Again,” the audience serves as town members in a saloon.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Alexandria's Mysterious Female Stranger




The Female Stranger's Bedroom
at Gadsby's Tavern Museum

One of the more mysterious stories in the D.C. area is that of the Mysterious Female Stranger in Alexandria, Virginia. During the fall of 1816, a couple arrived in the port town by boat and stayed at Gadsby’s Tavern. The woman was ill and probably suffering from Typhoid fever. Though the inn staff and a doctor cared for her, in room 8, she died on October 14.



Her husband commissioned an extravagant headstone and buried her in St. Paul’s Cemetery. What is so odd about this true story is that he did not identify her on the headstone and he asked all the parties involved to never reveal her identity.



These are the words on her gravestone:

To the memory of a
FEMALE STRANGER
whose mortal sufferings terminated
on the 14th day of October 1816
Aged 23 years and 8 months

This stone was placed here by her disconsolate
Husband in whose arms she sighed out her
latest breath and who under God
did his utmost even to soothe the cold
dead ear of death.

How loved how valued once avails thee not
To Whom related or by whom begot
A heap of dust alone remains of thee
Tis all though art and all the proud shall be

To him gave all the Prophets witness that
through his name whosoever believeth in
him shall receive remission of sins
Acts. 10th Chap. 43rd verse.


Quickly after her death, her husband left Alexandria leaving $1,500 in unpaid bills.

Unfortunately for all the curious people out there like me, the oath of secrecy was kept and, to this day, we still do not know who she was.

There are many theories to who she might have been, and why the husband wanted to keep her identity concealed. Perhaps she was some kind or royalty and/or her husband stole her because the family didn’t approve of the marriage. Other’s have postulated the she was Aaron Burr’s missing daughter, Theodosia Alston. Theodosia disappeared after boarding the Patriot in Sout Carolina on December 30, 1812. Her fate, as well as the ship’s is unknown. However, it is unlikely she was the Female Stranger as she was born in 1783, not 1793 as the gravestone indicates.

Photo Courtesy of the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Association

Thursday, February 14, 2008

A Person of Interest

Susan Choi, author of The Foreign Student and American Woman, will be at Politics and Prose next Monday, February 18, to promote her new book A Person of Interest.

First post!

Growing up, “Murder She Wrote” was one of my favorite shows, I subscribed to Alfred Hitchcock's mystery magazine, and wrote a school paper focusing mostly on the great, but long out of print, Ellery Queen mystery books. I was an odd kid.

It seems only appropriate that I will now blog about classic mysteries as well as new novels, events, and trends. I'll also sort through all the advice on how to write a mystery. I'd love your feedback so please comment! :)