Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "sherlock-holmes"

Top crime fiction blog Gumshoe Review rates my new Palestinian crime novel THE FOURTH ASSASSIN very highly: "Rees does an excellent job of showing the pressures on the young Palestinians and describing the microcosm of one immigrant community within the U.S. The mystery also contains plenty of twist and turns." Read Mel Jacobs's full review.

If you feel compelled to read any other crime fiction but mine -- or if you've already read all my books -- I'd direct you to a list of the 100 Best Crime Books on the Court Reporter blog. Many of the selections are hardly surprising -- you're not likely to say to yourself, "Oh, The Maltese Falcon, how'd they come up with that?" Well, if you DO say that, then you've probably got 100 new books for your nightstand, because surely you can't have read any crime fiction BEFORE you read The Maltese Falcon. That's just unacceptable! Anyway, much of the rest of the list comprises overrated twaddle (dragon tattoos, for example) which has somehow become accepted as a staple of the genre (several genres in fact, because the list includes true crime, thrillers and slasher stuff), classics which to those who bother to read them these days will be head-scratchingly dull, and many others which are fiendishly outdated to the modern reader (yes, Sherlock Holmes fans, I'm talking to you). But you may find something you didn't know about, so take a look.

I dislike the law and I have little interest in ethics. So here’s a post about the ethics and legality of using real characters in fiction, as I do in my latest novel MOZART’S LAST ARIA. It’s the one time I’ll bother to write about either subject.

In a Fringe Magazine review of MOZART’S LAST ARIA, reviewer Scott Wilson notes how much he enjoyed the book. (“This story was extremely well-written and up there with many other great whodunit books. The narrative is both beautiful and historically accurate, as are many other elements of this crime novel. It is obvious that Rees did some pretty extensive research in developing the foundation for this book. I found the pages of the book turning themselves with the ripping read and sense of urgency that the author created with the plot.”)

Thanks, Scott. Reviews don’t get much better than that.

But my novel also touched off another thought in Scott that’s worth looking at in more depth. Here’s what he wrote:

Mozart’s Last Aria is one of those books that amazes me. I don’t know how you can write a fictional novel based on a real person without being sued for slander or defamation etc etc. I mean the concept of using a real, historical figure and adding elements of fiction to make an interesting story has some merit to it and in some cases, such as this book, it makes a great read. But I just don’t understand how you can get sued for plagiarism by using someone else’s song lyrics or stories, but to take a person’s life and write what every the hell you want about it is okay??? Don’t imagine being able to write a novel based on Han Solo or Sherlock Holmes and being able to make millions without it being an issue to anyone else? I’m going to have to do some research into the legalities of writing a fictional novel based on real people for my own curiosity now.

There are a few issues raised in this paragraph. The first is: what’s legal? My understanding, in very blunt terms is: as long as the person is dead, they can be fictionalized.

That’s how you come to have real Hollywood actor Sal Mineo as a gigolo in James Ellroy’s novels. Or Lee Harvey Oswald in Don de Lillo’s “Libra.” Or Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.” If they were still alive, they might’ve sued. Or Mineo would’ve had the mob knee-cap Ellroy, Oswald might’ve assassinated de Lillo, and Woolf may have attempted to beat Michael Cunningham to death with the enormous false nose Nicole Kidman wore in the film version.

But they didn’t. Because they’re dead. Like Mozart. (In fact, my novel is about what really caused his death, so that’d have to be the point.)

So let’s get to the ethics. A fairly silly “outraged” blog on The Guardian website a couple of years ago suggested that “increased” use of real dead famous people by novelists was an ethical issue and that it was the result of the decline of privacy and private space in the age of Twitter, Facebook and My Space (thus revealing that the blogger wasn’t really up on the latest developments with My Space, which has been called the “abandoned theme park of the internet” for years now.) By going inside the heads of famous dead people, novelists reveal themselves to care not a jot for privacy, he writes.

Actually, I agree that the privacy of dead people is an issue of little importance, in a world riven by war, rapine, and investment bankers. There are bigger fish to fry.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.