Crime Beat

This month Joanne Hichens’ From the Hip column carries a PG warning – there is some bad language. Nothing that you won’t find in most crime novels but Joanne does let herself go a tad. So littlies beware. Also this could be disturbing to sensitive souls as there is a strong second voice present and if this was anything other than Crime Beat we’d be calling the funny farm.

Ever wonder who really does the writing? I’ve just wolfed down a treat of a collection of short pieces, edited by Daniel Halpern, called Who’s Writing This? Fifty-five writers on humour, courage, self-loathing, and the creative process.

Of course I was struck by a piece by the King himself. No, not Elvis – Elmore! It starts: “What Elmore Leonard does, is he makes us do all the work, the people in his books. Puts us in scenes and says, ‘Go ahead and do something!’ There was a piece written about Elmore one time in the Village Voice called ‘The Author Vanishes’, and it’s true.”

As for Evan Hunter, of Ed McBain he writes: “I first began using his name when I was very young. The older and much wiser men guiding my career felt that if it became known Evan Hunter was also writing mysteries, I would be drummed out of the Fraternal Order of Serious Writers. The discovery I made is that Ed McBain is the true lineal descendant of Evan Hunter, and not the bastard progeny I’d assumed he was all along. Ed, I’m home. Take my hand.”

So I tried the exercise myself, of allowing my alter ego to have her say, and did she give me a hard time! Here’s an edited version, ‘cause I know little kids stumble on things they shouldn’t on the Net.

Cape Greed is out in the USA, yeah, at last! But if you think the co-author is the priss-miss in the pic above, with every lock in place and wide white smile – then you’re wrong. Dead wrong. She keeps up the façade of decency – was once a church-school girl, see, ever so WASP – but there’re times I want her to damn well give me a little credit, at least introduce me for heavens sake! Not that I’m making a fuss about it, but at the risk of sounding churlish – oh all right, I do sound churlish, and I don’t care – I consider myself the better half. I want at least some recognition, I insist on it! Why should she get the kudos? I’m the one with the ideas, with the chutzpah! She drags me everywhere, to writer’s meetings, launches, she’s tripping round half invisible, stuttering and spilling her drink, like a startled Bambi if someone even looks her way. Oh for fuck’s sake, don’t tell me you’re forcing me to a bloody book-club wank. Leave me be to watch The Wire! I’ll settle for CSI! But does she listen? No. See, she barely functions without me. The truth is out – she needs me. I dance on tables, play strip poker, show my tattoos. I order up messy sex (heck, that obligatory once-a-week missionary-routine is soooo tiresome), I’m the one who pulls the trigger for God’s sake, I shoot people!

Her life has very little to do with my life. As a mother, as a half-baked activist preaching human rights, yadda yadda, respect your children, your spouse, your fellow man, recycle, switch off the lights, hold good thoughts, it’s no wonder she keeps me under wraps. Yet at the same time she can’t do a short story without me, can’t write a sentence even! So I’ve taken it apon myself to appear as I really am and let’s see how she deals with it! And if she gets back at me with a petty response about how my hair looks all messed up – what’s this obsession with hair anyway? – I’ll write up a mega nasty scene next time she insists I come up with a killing she wants doing, or a lurid sexual encounter. I’ll stoop so low as to involve children! Oh, take a chill-pill, I’ll tell her. Yeah, yeah, you’ll make sure the murderer gets his just desserts alright. (See how she wants to temper things all the time! Gets on my tits.)

Don’t stress, I tell her, it’s only crime fiction after all. Oh jeez, I can hear the pain in the arse already – what’re you saying it’s only crime fiction…

Joanne Hichens is the editor of Bad Company and wrote Cape Greed (aka Out to Score) with Mike Nicol.