Target Audience for Judge Dee

Some time ago, I wondered about the existence of detective stories in Chinese literature.

Many friends told me that they were fans of the Judge Dee stories, rather like being fans of Agatha Christie, or of "the cat who" series, or of Nero Wolfe. You get the picture. I looked into this and soon discovered that there were more than two dozen Judge Dee stories from the clever pen of Robert van Gulik. I discovered among them The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, published in 1949 by Dover Press, that he did not write but translated from an eighteenth century edition published in vernacular Chinese.

I learned also that there was a historical Judge Dee, a Di Renjie, who served the Tang Empire in the seventh century. His title was not literally a judge and certainly not a judge in the same way that Rumpole of the Bailey or Judge Judy were "judges." You might be closer to the truth to compare his position to that of judges under the Napoleonic Code/Continental System who often served as prosecutor, judge and jury. His real position was that of an imperial official much like the thousand or so men with whom the English boasted they ruled India. They represented the Empire and fixed whatever was broken--fences, water supplies, domestic situations, as well as actual crimes against society or the state.

The Celebrated Cases impressed me enough to lead to the adaptation that I wrote and published as The Ingenious Judge Dee, a Play (this is described more fully in the tab for Books in this blog). Despite the eighteenth century "original" that van Gulik worked with, I chose to set the play in the seventh century. There isn't anything that is historically linked to that time in the play, but it seems a fitting tribute to the historical person. I imagined him as lean and athletic unlike the figure on the left, but his clothing might have looked similar. (This is a genuine Tang dynasty artifact, excavated in Xi-an, the capital of the Tang Empire and its image has been downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.)

Then the thought intruded: Who would make up the "target market"?

Much of a writer's motivation, I believe, is internal. At least mine is. I write because something has piqued my interest or challenged my understanding or demands resolution between conflicting ideas or beliefs. This is very different from the writer who scopes out a target audience and develops a formula to appeal to it. Nevertheless, as a writer, I am grateful to be read even if I do not set out with an audience in mind; the main purpose of writing, I find it necessary to remind myself, is to be read. Reviews, even negative ones, are gratifying indications that one's work is making some sort of impression.

I imagine that the audience for this play will be those who are curious as I was about Chinese "detective" stories. No doubt, there will be fans of Judge Dee. (A video game has recently been released, I understand, but this runs outside the limits of my activities.) I hope also that those who are interested in Asian plays will look for my take on Judge Dee. Fans who have experienced a performance have one more aspect of the Judge Dee experience to share.

Muriel Spark, The Only Problem, a review

Norman Mailer dismissed Muriel Spark’s writing as belonging to what he called "dykily psychotic, crippled, creepish" women's writing. The man had his problems.

Spark is perhaps now best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) and most likely because that was made into a successful movie, starring the young Maggie Smith. Spark herself had attended James Gillespie's High School in Edinburgh (from 1923 to 1935) which was the model for the Marcia Blaine School in the novel.

The Only Problem was published in 1984 and drew my attention because its main character, Harvey, was trying as I am to understand the Book of Job. He and another character had discussed this Book since they were fellow students in university and agreed that it was the most important part of the Bible, that the problem it presents—why suffering is visited upon a man who has been pronounced righteous—is pivotal, is in fact “the only problem.”

The two men are married to sisters and matters do get complicated. Both marriages fail, though in very different ways. Harvey left his wife after she had shop-lifted two bars of chocolate and defended this action by arguing that stealing from big corporations that exploit their customers was acceptable. Her sister agreed with Harvey that stealing only makes it worse for everyone, besides which, “it’s dishonest.” The wife, however, continues in her wayward ways, contributing to a surrealistic drama involving the French police.

Meanwhile the sister leaves her husband and winds up with Harvey, though this is not as simple as it sounds. “Her being there … astonished her to the point of vertigo.” Harvey is independently wealthy and lives in France near the painting shown above of Job’s wife visiting her distressed husband. The painting is by Georges de la Tour, possibly done in 1625. Harvey visits it for inspiration from time to time. He is convinced that Job continued to suffer even after his health and wealth have been restored for “he [Job] not only argued the problem of suffering, he suffered the problem of argument. And that is incurable.” Ultimately, he [Harvey] finds “We are back to the Inscrutable. If the answers are valid, then it is the questions that are all cock-eyed.”

In an obituary that appeared in The Weekly Standard, May 1, 2006, Kelly Jane Torrance wrote: "The world has lost a singular voice with the death of Dame Muriel. Her short, sharp novels … have something of the biting wit of Evelyn Waugh and the intellectual Catholicism of Graham Greene; but in her ability to make the absurd seem everyday, and the darkest deeds deliciously droll, Spark was in a class of her own.”

The image of Georges de la Tour' painting was downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

The Ninja meets the Girl with sad eyes, another fight scene

(The Ninja fights to obtain the antidote for his master who has been poisoned by an extract of wolf's bane. The small images are of the poison and its antidote, a variety of bella donna, both highly poisonous. This is another extract from The Ninja and the Diplomat, forthcoming.) 

Again the ninja attempted to attack the Boss and again he was confronted by the woman with sad eyes.

The two champions knew then that they would have to square off against each other; the ninja if he was to obtain the antidote from the Boss, the woman with sad eyes would do whatever she had to to thwart him. Briefly they inspected each other and then bowed before launching into the attack. The ninja faked a high kick and swung a hard jab at the woman. She blocked his jab partially and pivoted as she appeared to absorb the energy from that jab. From her pivot she emerged to kick him viciously in the crotch.

***

Katya, where is that girl?

The boys have surrounded and attacked her.

What has she done now?

She did nothing, but they did not like it when she beat Anton and Vasily. They thought together they could get her and pull her pants down.

What? I know she is fast and strong but they are each twice, three times, as big as she.

Anyway, she is getting a beating now.

We’ll see about that.

Twelve boys stood around kicking a young girl lying on the ground. They were careful not to get too close as she kicked back and already two of them were sitting by the side nursing bruises and perhaps broken bones.

They were young teens in a special school for gymnasts. Katya had begged her coach to let her learn what they boys were doing as well as what the girls had to. The coach had laughed then grudging agreed to let her try to climb the rope.

He was astonished at her strength. She pulled herself up hand over hand as she had seen the boys do. She did not climb all the way to the top on her first attempt or her second. But it took only weeks for her strength to develop so that she climbed and kept a correct form as she had observed the boys perform.

Eventually she learned all their floor exercises, the pommel horse moves, the uneven bars routines and even the rings.

It’s something genetic, pronounced the team doctor.

Male pride provoked many instances of bullying. Attempted bullying would be the more correct term, as no boy was able to defeat her in a boxing match or a brawl. Those who tried to pair up against Katya discovered her natural aptitude for dodging, squirming, kicking, lashing out with elbows, fists, knees and head butts.

She outgrew her preteen grace and appeared less svelte as her body showed more muscle than women gymnasts do. But she became an awesome fighting machine. Her straight blond hair and sad grey eyes were her best disguise.

***

The ninja took the blow on his left thigh as he turned clockwise, spinning swiftly round to lash a leg sweep. He barely connected before the blond began a cartwheel that ended with her trying to stomp on his left leg. Moving more swiftly than the eye could follow, the ninja had recovered and engaged the woman in a furious series of kicks and blocks.

They broke off only to return immediately with arms flailing, slashing and jabbing, blocking and twisting. An opponent might appear to have an arm locked only to kick or twist free. Neither combatant appeared to weaken or tire. Two or three times, the force of the ninja’s strikes or jabs enabled him to hit his target despite a block or deflecting move by the woman. Several times, her quickness and flexibility, bending over backwards to a handspring resulted in her heel reaching the ninja’s crotch or solar plexus just before he could parry the blow or twist away.

The ninja stepped back, appearing to slip and pivoted off his right arm on the floor to lash his legs against his opponent’s hips. Though she certainly felt the blow, she reacted instantly by swiveling her hips away to her left while launching herself into a handspring to her right.

“They are very good,” said Wang, more to his companion than to the Boss or the Yakuza.

“On a good day, I would not be sure of myself against either of them,” replied Li. “But today, the ninja is distracted.”

“Enough of this Boris,” declared Wang. “Would you please give him the antidote?”

“What antidote?” responded the Boss.

“No matter, Mr. Yamato,” offered Wang, addressing the Yakuza directly. “It would appear that your alliance with the Boss has been terminated, but I do have the antidote. I need, however, some information from you.”

“Ha,” coughed the Yakuza. “You want to know where the other eleven nuclear devices are headed. I shall never tell you!” He coughed again but it became a whoop and then he convulsed.

“It is a simple proposition, Mr. Yamato,” related Wang. “You have been poisoned by what is called in your country torikabuto. Wolf’s bane is its common English name. I don’t think it really has the power to ward off vampires as some legends have it, but it does impair the ability of the heart and the lungs to function properly. You will be dead in two hours without the antidote. So tell me, where are those devices?”

Salman Rushdie's SHAME

The phrase "an impertinence to praise" was invented for a book like this. 

About thirty years ago, Salman Rushdie published Shame. It was preceded by Midnight's Children which seemed to address India's Independence and its aftermath and labored under its self-imposed "blockbuster" status. It was followed by The Satanic Verses which bore the tortured burden of explaining Islam to English readers, perhaps to the author himself.

Shame declares itself to be about a country like Pakistan, but not quite Pakistan. But it

is indubitably Pakistan, from Peccavistan to the country that was born of not one, but two, partitions. The first left it "like two wings without a body, joined by nothing but God"; the second produced "the sound of one wing flapping."

It is possible to go further and read the novel as the duel between Bhutto, the charismatic bon vivant, and Zia ul-Haq, the army man beset in this story by a disgraced (he is caught in a necklace of shoes intended by some deliquents for for the main character), demented Maulana. One reviewer has even identified the character Arjuna "Virgin Ironpants" Harappa as Benazir Bhutto.

But to read this book as a political novel takes it neither here nor there. This is the fable of a man named Omar Khayyam Shakil who was conceived by one of three sisters though all three claimed motherhood. The sisters had been brought up by their father, a widower, "with the help of Parsee wet-nurses, Christian ayahs, and an iron morality that was mostly Muslim," foretelling the cosmopolitan and complex nature of the tale. All three sisters "longed for children with the abstract passion of their virginity." They all lived unhappily in a fortress-building called Nishapur, the city of the poet's birth and death. (The image below of his Mausoleum there in Iran is to be credited to "Khayam" by مختاری from fa. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons -http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Khayam.jpg#/media/ File:Khayam.jpg). Our hero, though he is hardly this in the story, demands for his twelfth birthday two things, to be allowed out of Nishapur and to know who was his father. In the pandemonium that ensued, one of the sisters/mothers declared that one at least of his demands should be granted. "Whichwhichwhich?" asked Omar, his curiosity and impatience adroitly captured.

He is allowed out to attend school, eventually leaving Nishapur for good and going on to medical school. When he was first allowed out of the fortress, he was told, "Come home without hitting anyone or we will know that they have lowered your pride and made you feel the forbidden emotion of shame." This is the clue to this wonderful, puzzling book. The tapestry is filled with the intrigues and daring-dos of the Razas (4) and Harappas (4), not to mention the seven Shakils, Rodriguez, Hashmat Bibi, Pinkie Aurangzeb, Shahbanou, and almost countless others. They serve as detail on an artfully woven rug. The author's main burden, however, is the 'problem of shame,' the word itself a "wholly inadequate translation" of the Urdu sharam.

A reader could easily be dazzled by the many ways of a man with a woman that Rushdie conjures in this fabulous book. The adolescent Omar Khayyam pursues "with waddling and heated resolution" a girl only two years older but already possessed of a "body with the physical wisdom of a woman." Their schoolteacher urges her to befriend him, you smart ones should stick together; she woodenly complies, while Omar's trigger response was "Ek dum. Fut-a-fut. At once or even sooner." He confesses to having spied on her through a telescope and declares his love. She cuts him off a little higher than his knees: "Voyeur ... I shit on your words. Your balls dropped too soon and you got the hots, no more to it than that."

Or the convulsing, complex socio-political prelude to the marriage of Good News Hyder and Naveed Talvar (more names) after which she "felt like a vegetable patch whose fertile soil had been worn out by an over-zealous gardener," the gardener's clairvoyant mating decisions having begotten an arithmetical progression of litters.

No. It is in the murky connection between Omar Khayyam and Sufiya Zinobia that the truth and consequences of shame unfolds. Much of it is a dark allegory of idiocy, violence, of bestial strength and revenge. It may be explained by the author's breach of the "fourth wall," in his story about a Pakistani honor killing in East London, to assert that fatherhood had shown him "how colossal a force would be required to make a man turn a knife-blade against his own flesh" but that "we who have grown up on a diet of honor and shame can still grasp ... that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altar of their pride."

Sufiya Zinobia flees from her marital bed, she becomes a creature of the shadows and of legends. She embodies those women who, bullied and violated, retaliate with demonic and fearsome gore and violence against those who trespassed against them in the name of honor and pride. She is the awesome, barely comprehensible, apotheosis of shame, the kind that combusts like a raging fever but leaves one shivering.

A minor fight scene

This is a fight scene excerpted from my forthcoming (July 2015) spy-intrigue, The Ninja and the Diplomat. It does not involve the major characters and indeed should not be taken to characterize that book. I am writing this three volume series of The Chinese Spymaster not as thrillers but as spy-novels, with the emphasis on intelligence gathering/analysis and international intrigue. But there are fight scenes. I have also included a picture of the jade vine, download from Wikimedia Commons, which was once more common throughout the Philippines than now.

Later that day, Hashim and Emilio got out of the jeep that had brought them from the

airport in Cotabato to the hillside village and walked towards a medium-sized wooden house. They were met at the door with bowls of water to wash the dust off their faces and hands and invited in. Four lean and strong young men met them in a large room that was the front of the house.

“You have come again to recruit us,” said the handsome leader of the group with a hint of a sneer.

Hashim sighed inwardly and replied, “I come to persuade you to join with other brothers in a common struggle. We will never succeed if we do not work together.”

“You think you will lead us, bakla?”

“That was rude,” declared Emilio in a quiet but firm tone. Hashim merely waved the remark off though his eyes smoldered.

“I see some reaction from our great unifier.”

“Why do you wish to pick a fight?” demanded Hashim in a voice oscillating between rage and tact. “Nothing is gained for our cause.”

“Why are you so noble, bakla? Is it because you have something to prove?”

“What would you prove fighting us four to two?” asked Emilio, confident that Hashim and he were more than a match for the local group.

“Oh, there are more than four of us,” announced their host. Through the open windows and door, they could see a large group gathering. “But there is no honor if twenty of us kick you like dogs. I want to see if the great Hashim can be the Saladin of our people. How about it?”

“You want to fight me?” asked the incredulous Hashim.

“I have heard that the great Tok Mat taught you and that he taught you well. I wonder if what he taught you was not taken away from you with your—”

“Enough!” yelled Hashim. “I did not come to fight you. But it seems you cannot get that out of your head, so let’s fight.”

“One on one and everybody else stay out of this,” ordered his host imperiously. “No matter what happens!”

“This is insane,” muttered Emilio as he moved to a wall near the door. The rest of the local band grouped against the opposite wall by the windows around which those outside had gathered to watch.

“Come,” shouted the host as he sprang into the middle of the room. Hashim strode on and the two men adopted their chosen silat stances. They stepped around each other like praying mantises. Their knees were well bent and directed to their sides, their arms and elbows moved slowly as their feet circled each other.

In the first flurry of strikes and kicks Hashim appeared to act purely defensively until he found an opening to kick at his opponent’s crotch. He stepped away from the man who had taunted him, now doubled in pain.

“A lucky strike, bakla,” he finally spat after several minutes of stunned silence and heightened tension among his followers. “Do you think you can do it again?”

The two men approached each other and almost immediately were locked in furious blows and kicks. Hashim easily blocked his opponent’s initial strikes but did not stay on the defensive this time. The praying mantises now fought furiously, engaging in swift and repeated strikes, kicks and throws. Hashim hit out at the knees and elbows of his opponent. In retaliation, his opponent spun several times, aiming to throw him off balance, and succeeded in grappling with Hashim for a moment and landing a sharp elbow into his solar plexus.

Hashim appeared to fall to his back but continued rolling to his feet. As the fight resumed, his opponent called out,

“Blades?”

The crowd stirred as someone found their leader’s kris and Emilio quickly rummaged through Hashim’s bag but found only a wooden stick had been packed as Hashim knew they would be searched by airport security. The wooden stick, however, had been especially hardened and its tip had killed before. Hashim looked at Emilio and shrugged. He believed his fate had been written and he accepted it.

The fight resumed with more deliberate maneuvers. The combatants seemed to rehearse their respective repertory of classic martial positions and motions. This slow dance sped up until only experts themselves could follow the antagonists or divine their respective intentions. Hashim blocked several strikes and thrusts before whirling his sharpened stick, disarming his opponent and thrusting the hardened sharp end up into the man’s stomach into his heart.

Everyone inside the house froze as cries came from several men outside.

“The imam!”

Guest blog by Ron Cherry, author of It's Bad Business

I am honored to host a blog by Ron Cherry, author (most recently) of It’s Bad Business.

P.I. Morgana Mahoney, known as Morg, prides herself on being tough.  But in It’s Bad

Business, she finds that her hard shell is vulnerable if she cares for someone too much.  However, she also realizes she can’t live her life as a stoic.  There is a time to love.  And a time to mourn.  It’s 1999 and Morg Mahoney has just graduated from college with a degree in Classics, which she feels qualifies her for jobs like a bank teller or a gas station cashier.  When Joe Spector, a retired San Bernardino County Sheriff’s detective that Morg calls Papa Joe, offers her a job as a private investigator, she jumps at it.  Soon they become embroiled in a case that lands them smack dab in the middle of a scheme by the Mexican Mafia, La Eme. She gains a few friends and more enemies as she solves the case, while suffering a tragic loss.  Fifteen years later, Morg gets an early-morning call from her filthy-rich best friend, Heather Pierce.  Heather’s sorority sister’s fiancé has disappeared on the night before their wedding.  Morg drives up to Lake Tahoe to help, only to become the target of a sociopathic murderer.  Is there a connection to her past?  With a tip of the fedora to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the story even includes a Sam Spade who helps Morg at key moments.

This is the second in the Morg Mahoney Mysteries series.  It starts before the first book, giving a background about how she got into the business.  She is fresh out of college with no real goals when a friend of her father, who also was on the job, brings her into his small agency in San Bernardino, CA.  In some ways, she's more vulnerable, but still maintains a hard shell to protect herself.  She's hard boiled, but with a center that's still a little soft.  Then the book jumps to the present where she is once again helping her friend, Heather, and getting into trouble.  She travels up to Lake Tahoe.  Although I have also written and published a book that has a noirish undertone, it is a stand-alone and will never have a sequel.  I have finished writing, and now am editing, an historical novel taking place in late 7th c Ireland and Western Scotland.  I also have a few sci-fi or futuristic short stories that have been published in ezines.  As Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." 

For me, I know Morg by now.  She's an old friend who sometimes does outrageous things.  I often write a scene and she balks, refusing to be in it.  So I have to rewrite it until she finds it acceptable.  A big bugaboo for me is when I read a book and find a character or two acting out of character.  Morg won't let me do that.  I also research the locations by personally visiting them and often photographing them.  Google maps are great for describing routes, but I also try to drive them myself as well.  Although the basic mystery is in my mind when I write my books, they constantly change and evolve, more organically.  While the basic concept for my plot doesn't change, the scenes and even some of the outcome does.  Again, my characters drive the developments.

I love mysteries.  My favorites are by now-dead authors.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are the giants I admire most.  Rober Parker was good in his early books, but lost his edge as the volumes of his work grew.  I am very hands-on in my research.

I am editing my historical fiction, writing a Father Robert Bruce cozy mystery that takes place in the Foothills and planning my next Morg, where she travels to Austria.  It ain't no "Sound of Music."  In the meantime, I also write my blog and car articles for The Union.

Ron's website.

Ron's Amazon Author page.

Lunch during an intelligence gathering mission

Many readers of Ian Fleming's Bond stories were seduced by the rich life of the jet-setting spy. Monte Carlo, chemin de fer, caviar, champagne. In my forthcoming book, The Ninja and the Diplomat, there is a light scene in an eatery in a shopping mall (for the parking). The following graphic is not of Manila as the street scenes would not look different from similar scenes anywhere else. But the rice terraces of Banaue are something special even though they do resemble rice terraces elsewhere. (Image found by searching the internet for the "rices terraces of Banaue.")

“Wow, that was easy,” declared Mariam. “The rest of your trip should be so blessed.” Chen shrugged and Emilio merely smiled as he declared,

“I missed breakfast this morning.”

They walked into the warm sunshine as a light breeze brought smells from the harbor. Chen looked gratefully at his companions and declared,

“I must tell you that what you are doing to help us is very much appreciated. The weapons that had been stolen included some very dangerous devices. I need to be sure that none of those arrived here. If at any point it gets uncomfortable for either of you, however, please let me know.”

“All right,” remarked Emilio. “Just keep in mind Hashim is not just a very good friend, he is like our brother.”

In the food court of a shopping center nearby, where there was parking and a selection of international eateries, the three made their way to a Korean barbecue stall. Mariam turned the radio on her smart-phone and placed it on the table. Chen recognized it as a good way to thwart electronic eavesdropping and that the music was the light pop that he remembered from his previous visits to the Philippines.

“I’ll have the bulgogi,” announced Emilio. “I just love the charbroiled, sweetish soy sauce flavor. I understand what we taste includes what we smell so the sizzle must help. Are you going to stick with those cold noodles as usual, Mariam?”

“Yes, Naengmyeon. They don’t have the best buckwheat noodles here but they do the beef broth, cucumbers, beef and kimchi−all perfectly done, and something cold right now sounds good.”

“I noticed a stall where they make halo-halo next door,” remarked Chen, “that would be my choice for a cold treat after lunch.”

“Oh, you like that?” cried Mariam delightedly.

“Everybody likes halo-halo, even Hashim,” Emilio retorted.

“Why doesn’t he like halo-halo?” inquired Mariam.

“He does. But he keeps talking about the dates and chopped nutmeg treats from his youth; I think he is just hanging on on to his memories,” explained Emilio.

For his lunch, Chen ordered bibimbab with extra seaweed and mushrooms and without the egg even when assured that it would be cooked first. “Do they put chopped up preserved radishes in this?”

Mariam nodded and declared, “My mother always included it in her fried rice, with left over pork or duck sausage if we had that.”

“Well, I think of bibimbab as a variety of fried rice and a good test of a Korean restaurant. Besides, I like the crunch of the radishes; it reminds me of home cooking.”

“So what do you do in your day job?” inquired Emilio, abruptly changing the subject.

“I’m a policeman,” replied Chen to an explosion of hysterical laughter from his companions. “What’s so funny?”

It took a while before either Emilio or Miriam stopped their raucous braying and for the restaurant crowd to turn their attention to each other and their food. Emilio still chuckled as he explained,

“That was precious. You are so straightforward. I guess we thought you would have a whole story made up. I mean we do know why you are here, but for you to simply announce what you do is … just … amazing.”

“Well, I’m new at this,” admitted Chen, which sent his companions into more hysterics. The other people in the restaurant simply shook their heads thinking their table must be having a good time.

“Well, could you try to be more sneaky?” advised Emilio before he dissolved into hysterical giggles.

After lunch, the three made their dessert stop, where they had extravagant versions of mixed fruit, beans, shaved ice, rose syrup, sarsaparilla flavoring, and a choice of evaporated milk or coconut milk. Mariam oohed over the glistening macapuno and suggested Chen add jackfruit to his order. Emilio ordered extra red beans, prompting Chen to ask for the same and then he asked for more “grass jelly” because it was “healthy.” As they left, Chen excused himself and returned with a small paper bag.

“New phones,” he explained. “They are my present to you and Hashim, although you don’t have to tell him who bought them. You should dismantle and throw away the ones you are currently using soon.”

“We know about this tactic,” protested Emilio. “We don’t need to do this now.”

“No,” agreed Chen. “But you will soon.”

“How will we know when?” asked Mariam.

“You will know,” declared Chen.