Vinnie Hansen's Blog - Posts Tagged "mystery"
Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery
When Steve, an eccentric local publisher, invited me to join his spring literary soiree, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. The group would discuss Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. I’d never heard of the book, and had never read Smollett. That alone was enough to entice me. But Steve had also helped me enormously over the years with the publication of my mysteries.
Because my mysteries have food words in the titles, Steve assigned me the topic “Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery.”
Gulp.
Yet, food is elemental in writing, appealing to our sense of taste, and characterizing with each mouthful. Does the protagonist eat rare steak or tofu? Sue Grafton’s heroine, private investigator Kinsey Milhone, eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. What does that tell us about her? She’s accustomed to dining alone, has little food in the ‘frig, and is not afraid to experiment. Martha Grime’s Aunt Agatha gobbles up all the petit fours and fairy cakes on the tea tray. Her picky freeloading consumption captures most of what we need to know about her character, and tea, of course, persuades us the book is British (although Martha Grimes is American). S.J. Rozen’s private detective Lydia Chin lives dutifully at home with her mom who communicates her feelings by what she prepares for dinner. Dim Sum and all is good. Food is so predominate in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series that spinoffs include cookbooks, so we can all prepare the pumpkin stew apparently popular in Botswana. Even one’s taste in mystery is subdivided gastronomically into hard-boiled or soft-boiled.
Humphrey Clinker is not a mystery. The story relates a road trip through England and Scotland in the 1700’s. The epistolary style offers five fictional characters composing the letters, giving various perspectives on the stops along the way. The main character Matthew Bramble is piercingly sarcastic, but I often only half understood his political and cultural barbs because the time is so foreign to me. However, when Matthew Bramble turns his attention to food and drink, as he often does, he is hilarious. Here he is on the subject of the waters at Bath: “But I am now as much afraid of drinking, as of bathing; for, after a long conversation with the Doctor, about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me, that the patients in the Pumproom don’t swallow the scouring of the bathers. I can’t help suspecting, that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beveridge is every day quaffed by the drinkers; medicated with the sweat, and dirt, and dandruff; and the abominable discharges of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below.”
Food and drink have the omniscient power to cross cultural barriers and to span the chasm of time. Breaking bread or sharing a toast offer powerful connections in our lives, and to the worlds we encounter when we open a book.
Because my mysteries have food words in the titles, Steve assigned me the topic “Smollett & the Modern Gustatory Mystery.”
Gulp.
Yet, food is elemental in writing, appealing to our sense of taste, and characterizing with each mouthful. Does the protagonist eat rare steak or tofu? Sue Grafton’s heroine, private investigator Kinsey Milhone, eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. What does that tell us about her? She’s accustomed to dining alone, has little food in the ‘frig, and is not afraid to experiment. Martha Grime’s Aunt Agatha gobbles up all the petit fours and fairy cakes on the tea tray. Her picky freeloading consumption captures most of what we need to know about her character, and tea, of course, persuades us the book is British (although Martha Grimes is American). S.J. Rozen’s private detective Lydia Chin lives dutifully at home with her mom who communicates her feelings by what she prepares for dinner. Dim Sum and all is good. Food is so predominate in Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series that spinoffs include cookbooks, so we can all prepare the pumpkin stew apparently popular in Botswana. Even one’s taste in mystery is subdivided gastronomically into hard-boiled or soft-boiled.
Humphrey Clinker is not a mystery. The story relates a road trip through England and Scotland in the 1700’s. The epistolary style offers five fictional characters composing the letters, giving various perspectives on the stops along the way. The main character Matthew Bramble is piercingly sarcastic, but I often only half understood his political and cultural barbs because the time is so foreign to me. However, when Matthew Bramble turns his attention to food and drink, as he often does, he is hilarious. Here he is on the subject of the waters at Bath: “But I am now as much afraid of drinking, as of bathing; for, after a long conversation with the Doctor, about the construction of the pump and the cistern, it is very far from being clear with me, that the patients in the Pumproom don’t swallow the scouring of the bathers. I can’t help suspecting, that there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump. In that case, what a delicate beveridge is every day quaffed by the drinkers; medicated with the sweat, and dirt, and dandruff; and the abominable discharges of various kinds, from twenty different diseased bodies, parboiling in the kettle below.”
Food and drink have the omniscient power to cross cultural barriers and to span the chasm of time. Breaking bread or sharing a toast offer powerful connections in our lives, and to the worlds we encounter when we open a book.
Under the Tree Good
In my family we have the expression “under-the-tree good.” It refers to a hot South Dakota afternoon when my brother Frank mixed up some orange Kool-Aid for us, his three younger siblings. He put ice cubes in it. We sat in a shady spot in the tree line behind the house and drank the beverage from brightly colored aluminum cups. The four of us agreed this was the best Kool-Aid ever. Thus originated the standard of under-the-tree good.
How much difference really could there be in one batch of Kool-Aid vs. another? In truth, a confluence of elements—heat, shade, kindness, ice-cubes—conspired to create the sensation of under-the-tree good.
Externals can also shape our experience with a book. I recently read Cara Black’s Murder in the Latin Quarter while staying in the Latin Quarter. The book became a blue print for a scavenger hunt.
To read more, please see the original post at:
blog.normahuss.com/2014/06/
How much difference really could there be in one batch of Kool-Aid vs. another? In truth, a confluence of elements—heat, shade, kindness, ice-cubes—conspired to create the sensation of under-the-tree good.
Externals can also shape our experience with a book. I recently read Cara Black’s Murder in the Latin Quarter while staying in the Latin Quarter. The book became a blue print for a scavenger hunt.
To read more, please see the original post at:
blog.normahuss.com/2014/06/
Eating Up Mystery
This post originally appeared on Leslie Karst's wonderful site Custard and Clues. Leslie is also a mystery writer from Santa Cruz, whose first book was recently agented.
On another blog, which shall remain nameless, they had a discussion of mysteries without food! You may as well have food without mystery—no secret ingredients, no surprising bursts of flavor, no heat that creeps up from the back of the throat.
To me, food and mystery go hand in hand, literally and figuratively.
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Enjoying a good read and a hot beverage in a Barcelona condo
I recently read Cindy Sample’s Dying for a Daiquiri (set on the Big Island) and enjoyed the food references, from the informational description of an imu pit for kalua pig to the amusing riffs on Donkey Ball snacks.
Besides informing us of the cultural setting, food is a great way to characterize. Think of Martha Grimes’ Aunt Agatha scarfing down all of Melrose Plant’s petit fours. What a quick, efficient way to show her avaricious, grasping personality. Think of Kinsey Milhone slapping together a peanut butter and pickle sandwich—the lone wolf with the empty refrigerator and peculiar tastes.
S.J. Rozan goes beyond simple characterization and uses food to show the subtle undercurrents in the relationship between her protagonist Lydia Chin and her mother. After the mother scolds Lydia for taking an extended trip to California, Rozan gives us the following:
“I made congee. There may be enough for two.”
Detouring into the kitchen, … I lifted the lid from a steaming pot and found enough congee for an army. The table held bowls of chopped spring onions, pickles, and dried fish.
My mother’s never liked fish in her congee. But I love it.
With this exchange, the reader knows that for all the surface fuss, Lydia’s mom is glad that her daughter is home.
There’s also food as a vehicle for murder. In Murder, Honey, the first book in my series, the deadly dose is delivered via honey.
In this book, recently re-released from misterio press, baker/sleuth Carol Sabala investigates after a reviled head chef collapses into her lebkuchen dough. Sometimes, the food itself can be the method. Remember those peanuts in The Da Vinci Code?
To illustrate the strong connection between food and mystery, in the recently released Cozy Food, editor Nancy Lynn Jarvis has compiled over 200 recipes from 128 cozy mystery writers! You are apt to find a contribution from one of your favorite writers, whether you read K.B. Owens, Juliet Blackwell, Kaye George, or Camille Minichino. My lebkuchen recipe is among them.
I’m sure mysteries without food exist, but for my taste, what a lost opportunity!
On another blog, which shall remain nameless, they had a discussion of mysteries without food! You may as well have food without mystery—no secret ingredients, no surprising bursts of flavor, no heat that creeps up from the back of the throat.
To me, food and mystery go hand in hand, literally and figuratively.
[image error]
Enjoying a good read and a hot beverage in a Barcelona condo
I recently read Cindy Sample’s Dying for a Daiquiri (set on the Big Island) and enjoyed the food references, from the informational description of an imu pit for kalua pig to the amusing riffs on Donkey Ball snacks.
Besides informing us of the cultural setting, food is a great way to characterize. Think of Martha Grimes’ Aunt Agatha scarfing down all of Melrose Plant’s petit fours. What a quick, efficient way to show her avaricious, grasping personality. Think of Kinsey Milhone slapping together a peanut butter and pickle sandwich—the lone wolf with the empty refrigerator and peculiar tastes.
S.J. Rozan goes beyond simple characterization and uses food to show the subtle undercurrents in the relationship between her protagonist Lydia Chin and her mother. After the mother scolds Lydia for taking an extended trip to California, Rozan gives us the following:
“I made congee. There may be enough for two.”
Detouring into the kitchen, … I lifted the lid from a steaming pot and found enough congee for an army. The table held bowls of chopped spring onions, pickles, and dried fish.
My mother’s never liked fish in her congee. But I love it.
With this exchange, the reader knows that for all the surface fuss, Lydia’s mom is glad that her daughter is home.
There’s also food as a vehicle for murder. In Murder, Honey, the first book in my series, the deadly dose is delivered via honey.
In this book, recently re-released from misterio press, baker/sleuth Carol Sabala investigates after a reviled head chef collapses into her lebkuchen dough. Sometimes, the food itself can be the method. Remember those peanuts in The Da Vinci Code?
To illustrate the strong connection between food and mystery, in the recently released Cozy Food, editor Nancy Lynn Jarvis has compiled over 200 recipes from 128 cozy mystery writers! You are apt to find a contribution from one of your favorite writers, whether you read K.B. Owens, Juliet Blackwell, Kaye George, or Camille Minichino. My lebkuchen recipe is among them.
I’m sure mysteries without food exist, but for my taste, what a lost opportunity!
Research Takes Me to Jail
Whether I consult my reference book Deadly Doses or tour San Quentin, all of my mysteries involve research. DEATH WITH DESSERT, the newly re-released fifth book in the Carol Sabala series, required the most difficult research of the seven books.
DEATH WITH DESSERT contains an immigration sub-theme. Illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States is a complex topic. In my long career as a teacher I worked with immigrant families and heard many of their stories. But I still spent many hours reading about the Operation Wetback program of the 1950s, watching documentaries, and talking to workers from Humane Borders and the Mexican Consulate in Tuscon.
However, there’s no substitute for personal experience . . . . Read more at http://www.misteriopress.com Death with Dessert
DEATH WITH DESSERT contains an immigration sub-theme. Illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States is a complex topic. In my long career as a teacher I worked with immigrant families and heard many of their stories. But I still spent many hours reading about the Operation Wetback program of the 1950s, watching documentaries, and talking to workers from Humane Borders and the Mexican Consulate in Tuscon.
However, there’s no substitute for personal experience . . . . Read more at http://www.misteriopress.com Death with Dessert
First Impression & Second Chances
You never have a second chance to make a first impression. This advertising slogan for Head & Shoulders shampoo wormed its way into our consciousness. Because it’s a catchy way to state a truth. In life there are no do-overs.
My good friend Christine recalls when she first met me. She was a teacher visiting my classroom to see if she wanted to make the shift to a high-school setting. She thought I was . . . .
Please visit http://misteriopress.com to continue and to see my latest release.
My good friend Christine recalls when she first met me. She was a teacher visiting my classroom to see if she wanted to make the shift to a high-school setting. She thought I was . . . .
Please visit http://misteriopress.com to continue and to see my latest release.
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda
That's what my mom used to say to our lame excuses. With my new novel, One Gun, out in June, I certainly "shoulda" been more on top of promotion.
And I "woulda, coulda," but my husband and I spent most of June sick. Tell me, how did we elude Covid for two and a half years only to get bronchitis?
Then there's been a time-consuming hunt for a new mattress (rather like "The Princess and the Pea") and reading for my upcoming "The Modern Gumshoe" panel at Bouchercon.
I did have a great virtual launch of One Gun via Bookshop Santa Cruz. The incomparable Susan Bickford interviewed me. You can view it here: https://youtu.be/9zp1QoEJ7is
And there are great events yet to come . . . . https://vinniehansen.com/2022/08/more...
And I "woulda, coulda," but my husband and I spent most of June sick. Tell me, how did we elude Covid for two and a half years only to get bronchitis?
Then there's been a time-consuming hunt for a new mattress (rather like "The Princess and the Pea") and reading for my upcoming "The Modern Gumshoe" panel at Bouchercon.
I did have a great virtual launch of One Gun via Bookshop Santa Cruz. The incomparable Susan Bickford interviewed me. You can view it here: https://youtu.be/9zp1QoEJ7is
And there are great events yet to come . . . . https://vinniehansen.com/2022/08/more...
