MALICIOUS INTENT

Sean Mactire. MALICIOUS INTENT: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists and Other Criminals Think. Writer's Digest, 1995.

It is dated, and I ignored the less than useful arguments about vampirism and blood lust and crime as illness. I also omitted the chapters I am not interested in--terrorism, cults, kids, career criminals, gangsters, drugs, women. Which seems like a lot of omitting. I feel my info gathered from experience in corrections, and more from television--Law & Order, Without A Trace, Cold Cases, etc is stronger than this source. 

I was looking for ways to improve my manuscript IN YOUR DREAMS, especially for ways to improve the villain(s), and I got some ideas. Organized/disorganized. Psychopath, psychotic, and personality disorders. Good. The point about all family members and others within the victim's circle are also victims. Good. The idea that profiling the victim is just as important as profiling the possible criminal. Good. This book still uses the term "rape" if, when replaced by "sexual assault", makes it obvious that the crime is not about sex. Sex is just another tool to use to harm or attempt to control. Not new. That most criminals can be described as having some form of "arrested development" makes sense. They all put themselves first, like adolescents. The fact that there is absolutely no reference to incarceration, to the difference between punishment (penitentiary) and reform (corrections) never comes into it. Nor the idea that any criminal can change. The word "cognitive" does not appear. "Coping mechanisms" are mentioned. The wide-spread interest in crime and true crime suggests fear, but also that we are all very interested in "the dark side of human nature" but would rather not have to go there ourselves. 

THIS IS THE FIRE

Don Lemon. THIS IS THE FIRE: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. Little, Brown, 2021.

Found this at the library booksale and bought it as research for my TRC workbook. I did enjoy reading this. My notation bookmarks make it look like a post-it porcupine. I found the personal material most interesting. He is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

I do not get CNN so am not that familiar with the writer. I suspect he no longer works for that network, although the book is current, Trump-era and COVID lockdown. 

It seems difficult to imagine a journalist being objective where this subject, racism, and inequality in America, is involved. 

At this time, my takeaway is: ANGER & ACTIVISM.

Later.

THE GHOST CLAUSE

Howard Norman. THE GHOST CLAUSE. Houghton Mifflin, 2019.

I picked up this novel at the library book sale because I know the author. Because he is American but has written about Canadian and Indigenous stories and settings. His WISHING BONE CYCLE: NARRATIVE POEMS OF THE SWAMPY CREE INDIANS I used teaching high school. A student made a mural of its image. I also read THE MUSEUM GUARD which was set in Nova Scotia. I was also intrigued by the title, as I am working at incorporating a ghost in IN YOUR DREAMS (although it can also be explained as 'haunted by the memory of her dead sister'). 

This 'ghost clause' idea is so interesting. If someone buys a house which then turns out to have a ghost, to be haunted, then the seller is obligated to buy the house back. A clause written in to the bill of sale.

I did enjoy the book. I also enjoy its representation of a marriage of equals which is passionate and happy. 

ORDINARY STRANGERS

Bill Stenson. ORDINARY STRANGERS. Mother Tongue, 2018.

Picked up this novel in the library book sale because it is Canadian and because the story begins in Hope, BC and ends in Fernie. The concept is great: a couple driving through town picks up a crying child in the downtown park and drives away with her. There are so many ways this story could develop. Intriguing.

What startles me is the "old-fashioned" storytelling. Totally "telling". Third person omniscient, he, Sage, she, Della, and she #2, Stacey. And how the POV often switches between the three, sometimes in the same paragraph, sometimes in the same sentence.

Interesting ideas are explored. Early mistakes, such as marriage. How certain choices the female adult makes, wanting to stay home to raise the child, guarantee her dependence. How the male breadwinner exploits her dependence, knowing that she will not react to his emotional betrayals or criminal behaviour because she has no economic option. How despicable behaviour is excused or responsibility for it is reduced by mixing in alcohol and pot. How medical emergencies change everything. And how facts about birth and genetics are weighed against parental care and love.

 

ENTRY ISLAND

Peter May. ENTRY ISLAND. Quercus, riverrun, 2014.

Another loan from writer friends. This British mystery writer sets a story in two times, 1840's Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, during the Clearances, and 2010s, Iles de la Madeleine, PQ, Canada. The languages are English, Gaelic, and French. It is the type of book I as a female reader love, with its old diaries, boxes of history and genealogy, graveyards and headstones, and talismans handed down through the generations. And the mystery of "familial familiarity" I first heard of by that name in a Val McDermid Trace episode where something physical about a stranger reminds you of something in your family or your history. 

A woman on Entry Island is charged with murdering her husband. The Surete want a quick resolution; one of the lead investigators, Sime Mackenzie, brought in because of his English, is less than convinced. Personal issues, including insomnia, intervene.

I amused myself watching the use of language in the Canadian scenes. The fly screen door eventually becomes the screen door. I know what a fisherman's creel is but are lobster traps or lobster pots also called creels? Does the Gatineau River flow to Quebec City? The only obvious mistake is that the writer does not understand permafrost.

Personally I found the Quebec story line much more engaging but that is probably because the story of the Clearances is more familiar, has been told before, although probably not with the addition of what happened to individuals after they boarded the boats. The sense of place is palpable in both countries. 

I know that at least one of my grandmothers spent time in quarantine on Grosse Isle.

OCTOBER MOURNING

Leslea Newman. OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG for MATTHEW SHEPARD. Candlewick, 2012.

This book was gifted to me over one year ago but today, this month, it seemed to be calling. It is the exact same story three hundred years later. What happened to Matthew Shepard is the same thing that happens to Marie in DAUGHTERS of the DEER. Cruelty. And the origins of such violence from cruelty.

The poetry is very accessible. As I was reading I was thinking how well this would fit a high school English class. I read it aloud to myself. I never watched the movie. Too sad. 

DAUGHTERS of the DEER

Danielle Daniel. DAUGHTERS OF THE DEER. Random House, 2022.

Highly recommended by a trusted writer friend. In fact, he loaned me his library copy for me to return, now that there are no longer late fees.

I have two hesitations in general. The first, my distrust of historical fiction as my mind is always questioning--was it really like that or is this a 21st century imagining of what it was like? The acknowledgements suggest that this writer has done important secondary research on New France in the 1600s. And the Indigenous world view is convincingly presented although I have no way to assess how authentic that is. The second hesitation is my leeriness about "trends" in society reflected a few years later in "trends" in publishing. The trend in this book is the losses inflicted on Indigenous women and "others" especially "two-spirit" or in this case, lesbian-leaning girls who become lovers. The good thing is that the protagonist, Marie's family, never stops loving her. The tension centres around the way the new religion insisted on rejecting some people and making so many, non-males, lesser than they had been before contact and conversion. Once I let the river take me, the story hook me, I was able to float, luxuriate in the beauty of the land and its many "People".