NEIL LOW

(The following blog I wrote as a guest blogger for another site, for possible inclusion in a research book on authors. I will include a link as soon is it is uploaded)

What Readers Want and Don’t Want are Often the Same Thing: Sex

By: Neil Low

I write hardboiled murder mysteries set in 1940s because I want to explore the darker (noir) side of human nature, pondering why people do the nasty things they do to each other. I want the story and all of its details raw and bare, so the life lessons speaks for themselves, without a didactic message from me, the author, preaching what the moral imperative should be for readers to understand and follow. I believe that what I write should reflect the realities of life, albeit as I see them, as if I was holding up a mirror for society to see itself and decide what changes need be made.

When my first novel, THICK AS THIEVES, made its debut in 2008, I received rave comments from my circle of friends and acquaintances, with a few teasing me about the sex scenes in the story, asking me where the Chinatown brothel mentioned might be located, how I knew what the inside of a brothel would look like, while close relatives confided they were surprised by my sexual frankness, which revealed a side of my character they didn’t know existed. One relative attempted to hijack a conversation at a picnic, telling family members I wrote “smut.” A well respected uncle raised his eyebrows and said, “I don’t know what that says about me, I’ve already read it twice.” The lines on how much sex should be in a story are blurry, but what’s clear to me is that sex is an important factor in what people choose to read and/or feel comfortable having on their library shelves.

I’ve written three more novels since that picnic: SIGN OF THE DRAGON, UNREASONABLE PERSUASION, and UNHOLY ALLIANCE. One editor trimmed sex scenes from DRAGON, not wanting them to be distracting to my growing audience, while my publisher offered encouragement: “Leave them in,” because she felt as I do that those scenes add to the total picture of my protagonist, Alan Stewart, a twenty-one year old discovering to his surprise that women find him attractive. That wasn’t always the case for him, growing up a skinny kid in a household with strong Christian values. As a young adult, he’s coming to terms with his masculinity on several levels, all at the same time, one of those levels being his sexuality, which is very consistent with a young man of any era. My goal is to depict Alan as a complete character, not just a hardboiled crime fighter, who emerges fully grown, hard and sullen, giving the reader no idea what made him the way he is. I want readers to feel like they know Alan, know why they should care about him, and know with some degree of certainty how he will act when he faces the challenges life will throw in front of him.

With the release of my fourth novel, UNHOLY ALLIANCE, based on the true murder of a Seattle police officer during the Prohibition Era, the investigation takes us into another brothel, Goon Dip Wong’s pleasure emporium, a notorious establishment in Seattle’s Chinatown. Detective Stewart goes undercover to follow-up on the only lead presented him, a vague description of a prostitute on an outcall. He has to get close enough to potential witnesses, who happen to be prostitutes and pimps, to surreptitiously interview them. So of course there are sex scenes. What was I going to have Alan do, play strip checkers with the girls?  Of course not, but I think I handled the scenes very well, not overly dwelling on the physical sex acts. I thought the jealously of Alan’s partner, Vera Deward, which surfaced as she waited for Alan, added a richness to the story. My early rewards were along the lines of: “This is your best work yet!” Soon following, came repeated whispers from family: “Neil’s gone a bit too far this time. Have him reel in the sex scenes.” When another close relative heard the latest critique, he responded that he was going to make sure he put ALLIANCE at the top of his reading queue. So this still begs the question: What do the readers want? More sex or less? Should I keep the sex in or take it out?

Arguably, a lot—maybe most—of society’s moral teachings are based around sexual issues. How we view and approach sex says a lot about who we are, what we want in life, and how we identify ourselves. Raymond Obstfeld[1] opines that there are two components to sex: pursuit and culmination. The pursuit is the romantic element and the culmination the sexual act. Writers can either emphasize the romance or dwell on the sexual acts themselves, depending on their preferred genre, predilection, and style. I prefer a balance between the romance and sexual act, but acknowledge my focus is primarily on the romance. I love a good chase, the tension that accompanies it, which makes for a richly deserved payoff for the reader—and writer, too. I see the sex as more symbolic of the expression of love between the characters, rather than merely a lustful experience that means as much to those involved as a good dinner and an after dinner drink. Romantic scenes can lead to the payoff of a sexual act, but I don’t believe that is always necessary in writing. I find that the rewards of a well told romantic pursuit don’t always require a sexual act to make them fulfilling; they can be rewarding in themselves, if the circumstances of why the culminating act couldn’t happen at this moment are explained adequately or enough so they leave the reader hungry for more.

Enough about my writing, let’s look at what I like to read, starting with the past masters of the genre, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who led the way and got it completely right. Hammett’s Sam Spade can seduce a woman but then turn her over to the cops for murder, despite how he feels for her in THE MALTESE FALCON, while Chandler preferred to have Philip Marlowe comment on the debauchery of L.A. as an observer. Chandler opined in an interview that he thought sex and romance got in the way of a mystery plot, serving as an unnecessary distraction to a good story. Modern master, James Elroy, on the other hand, avoids inclusion of women in his plots, at least as fully drawn characters, but his LA CONFIDENTIAL stands as a masterpiece, richly deserving of the praise and honor it has received. Now, moving away from noir to modern murder mysteries, I enjoy reading Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller series, including THE LINCOLN LAWYER. I find his characters richly drawn, well balanced, and he includes a modest amount of sex.

I haven't picked a date yet for a winter Murder Mystery Tour that's open to the public. If you would like us to notify you of coming tours/events, please provide me/us with your email address information, and I will notify you of scheduled tours. Of course if you have a group of ten or more friends or co-workers, you can pick the date yourself and we'll work out the time and start location. Those are always a lot of fun. But usually if the group is small and open to it, we tell others and add guests who have compatible schedules.

I figure the $35,000 is still out there somewhere, likely in a vault or safe deposit box. Of course with US money being so popular world wide, it could easily have gone to Canada during the 1930s, Europe, or even South America. But if that happened, and the ransom was dispersed across the globe, you would think that some of it would have made its way into collectors' hands in this country. I can't imagine those who extorted it from the Lindberghs would have destroyed it. Maybe it will show up on the PBS Road Show for Antiques.

In Anthony Scaduto's SCAPEGOAT (1976) he postulates that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was unjustly convicted and executed for the March 1, 1932, kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh. I remember reviewing the evidence presented by Scaduto and thinking that although he raised some valid points about evidence and testimony integrity, Hauptmann was indeed guilty, but I'm convinced he didn't act alone. My take away from the reading was that there had obviously been other conspirators, most notably a business partner of sorts for Hauptmann, Isidor Fische. Although relatives of Fische, who had returned to Germany only to die, claim he had no involvement in the kidnapping and murder, there was proof that his steamer ticket was purchased with ransom money, a fact that was not shared with the defense. Of the $50,000 paid to the kidnappers, only $13,760 of it was recovered in Hauptmann's garage, roughly one quarter of the total. Other small amounts turned up throughout the New York City area, leaving well over $35,000 unaccounted for. It had been paid in gold certificates, which soon were no longer legal to possess (Depression Era economic recovery effort by Roosevelt). What happened to all that money during the depths of the Depression? Why has it never shown up?

Of course this lingering question provided fuel for my creative fire, and I provide an example of what might have happened with all of these ambiguities in THICK AS THIEVES.

The inspiration for THICK AS THIEVES began while discussing the death of my father with Al O'Brien (WA St. Representative), while we were both police sergeants. In commiserating with me, Al told me his dad died in his arms in their front yard on Pontius North, following a union meeting. When I asked if the police caught the perpetrators, he informed me they hadn't, couldn't, or might even have been involved in the death themselves. Still smarting about the union leaving my mother high and dry after dad's death, I started out with the goal of going after them through my writing. But then a strange thing happened along the way, the characters I created hijacked my story and began telling me one of their own. It was time for me to forget the sentimental crap I was wallowing in and find out what was going on with this wonderful thing called the writing process.

While studying my writing hero Raymond Chandler at the University of Washington (Bothell), I was struck by how often his admirers referred to him as the master of hard-boiled fiction. In fact every piece I read on Chandler used that term when describing him or his detective, Philip Marlowe. It got me to wondering if Marlowe had always been hard-bolied, or did he start out softer as a young detective and harden along the way. Could Marlowe have ever been soft-boiled? I wondered, and then I decided to write a coming-of-age story of a young man who grows into becoming a detective: Alan Stewart.

In THIEVES young Alan Stewart meets his mentor, Vic Morrison, as well as Vera Deward and other characters who will play significant roles in subsequent stories.

I can't tell you how thrilled I was when THICK AS THIEVES was selected as a "Staff Pick" at the Everett Borders Store, and the reviewer likened it to a "hard-boiled" Raymond Chandler read.

And since THIEVES touches on the Lindbergh Kidnapping, I'll discuss my interpretation of that infamous case in a future blog.

      My four fiction novels (fifth one is on its way) have all been based on true events and/or true crimes, and that's the creative wave I'm riding at the moment, so my future works will most likely have a base in reality. I've found many loyal readers are curious about which murders and crimes inspired my writing. In the blog entries that follow I plan to talk about these real life events, what the physical evidence shows us, and what my interpretation of said evidence is, based on my forty-three years in police work, which includes stints as the Homicide and Internal Affairs commanders, among other fascinating positions. I have also found that while leading the colorful Seattle Murder Mystery Tour through Pioneer Square, all fact based events, many guests are hungry to learn more about the actual Seattle crimes I talk about. I found, for instance, that a number of the Seattle events recorded as historical fact, are based on faulty information and have contributed to local urban legends. I plan to discuss in detail those actual murders, lynchings, Indian attacks, riots, and gun fights in future blogs. I also plan to discuss writing techniques and lessons learned, which hopefully will help aspiring writers. Occasionally I will discuss current events, such as the Wah Mee Massacre or Kurt Cobain's tragic death, unless of course they involve issues I've signed Confidentiality Agreements on, promising never to discuss until the matters have been adjudicated, etc. Other than those very few matters, I love to answer questions, so feel free to post them here.