Michael Connelly and The Little Sister

 

I like to watch You Tube videos of author appearances, especially interviews. I recently saw Michael Connelly mention he regularly returns to Chapter 13 of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister for inspiration when he wants to be sure he’s getting LA right.

The Little Sister was published in 1949 so I wondered how what Chandler wrote serves Connelly today, as it obviously serves him well. I opened my copy to Chapter 13 and saw right away what Connelly is talking about. I suspect you will, too.

One small bit of context: private detective Philip Marlowe has had a rough day.

Now, in Chandler’s words: 

I drove east on Sunset but I didn't go home. At La Brea I turned north and swung over to Highland, out over Cahuenga Pass and down onto Ventura Boulevard, past Studio City and Sherman Oaks and Encino. There was nothing lonely about the trip. There never is on that road. Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupes and sedans winced and tightened their grips on the wheel and ploughed on north and west toward home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children the gabble of their silly wives. I drove on past the gaudy neon and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed toward the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of lions in the zoo.

Behind Encino an occasional light winked from the hills through thick trees. The homes of screen stars. Screen stars, phooey. The veterans of a thousand beds. Hold it, Marlowe. You're not human tonight.

The air got cooler. The highway narrowed. The cars were so few now that the headlights hurt. The grade rose against the chalk walls and at the top a breeze, unbroken from the ocean, danced casually across the night.

 I ate dinner at a place near Thousand Oaks. Bad but quick. Feed ‘em and throw ‘em out. Lots of business. We can't bother with you sitting over your second cup of coffee, mister. You're using money space. See those people over there behind the rope? They want to eat. Anyway they think they have to. God knows why they want to eat here. They could do better home out of a can. They're just restless. Like you. They have to get the car out and go somewhere. Sucker-bait for the racketeers that have taken over the restaurants. Here you go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

I paid off and stopped at a bar to drop a brandy on top of the New York cut. Why New York, I thought. It was Detroit where they made the machine tools. I stepped out into the night air that nobody had yet found out how the option. But a lot of people were probably trying. They'd get around to it.

I drove on to the Oxnard cut off and turned back along the ocean. The big eight-wheelers and sixteen-wheelers were streaming north, all hung over with orange lights. On the right the great fat solid Pacific trudging into shore like a scrub woman going home. No moon, no fuss, hardly a sound of the surf. No smell. None of the harsh wild smell of the sea. A California ocean. California, the department store state. The most of everything and the best of nothing. Here we go again. You're not human tonight, Marlowe.

[He thinks about the case for a couple of paragraphs.]

Malibu. More movie stars. More pink and blue bathtubs. More tufted beds. More Chanel No. 5. More Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs. More wind-blown hair and sunglasses and attitudes and pseudo-refined voices and waterfront morals. Now, wait a minute. Lots of nice people work in pictures. You've got the wrong attitude, Marlowe. you're not human tonight.

I smelled Los Angeles before I got to it. It smelled stale and old like a living room that had been closed too long. But the colored lights fooled you. The lights were wonderful. There ought to be a monument to the man who invented neon lights. Fifteen stories high, solid marble. There's a boy who really made something out of nothing.

Then he goes to a movie he doesn’t like.

 

I see how this helps Connelly but there is a downside: very little had actually changed over the past 75 years.

Queer Crime Writers

 Just because my books are straight white male oriented doesn’t mean I’m not sensitive to those who aren’t straight white males. I’m a straight white male, so those are the characters I’m most comfortable writing. I’ve tried to make my books more diverse over the years, but it can be awkward for someone of my background.

 

This past spring’s Malice Domestic conference brought Queer Crime Writers to my attention. I spoke with a friend of mine who is a member and he suggested I get in touch with John Copenhaver, who I knew casually.

 

Today John answers my questions about QCW, as well as talking about some of the hurdles queer writers and characters have to clear, and what straight cisgendered writers can do to help. I learned a lot, and my future books will be better for it.

 

One Bite at a Time: Thanks for coming on the blog, John. It’s great to have you.

 

Queer Crime Writers is a relatively new organization, founded in 2019. What was the motivation to begin the group?

 

John Copenhaver: From the beginning, QCW was Kristen Lepionka’s brainchild. She identified the need early on. There was no centralized community or support network for queer crime writers aside from a few Facebook groups. Kristen reached out to Jeff Marks and me, and we began brainstorming. We’d seen the great things that Crime Writers of Color had accomplished, and we wanted to create a similar organization to support aspiring and published LGBTQ+ writers. Then, COVID hit, and life became much more complex. Eventually, we began meeting and established a groups.io chat and a website. We also added more organizers, including Stephanie Gayle and Marco Carocari.

 

OBAAT: The QCW mission statement reads, in part, “to promote community and collaboration among authors of crime fiction who identify as LGBTQIA+.” How do you do that?

 

JC: We began with a groups.io chat that established a closed, queer crime writers-only space to come together, share ideas, network, and celebrate each other’s work. This in-facing community-building aspect is central, but we also want ourselves to be a resource for readers and the broader crime writing community, so we developed a website that features our authors, their books (as well as books of notable LGBTQ crime writer luminaries), and an events calendar. We also established a relationship with CrimeReads to publish a quarterly round-up of queer crime books coming out seasonally. We produce a quarterly newsletter and invite liaisons with established crime writing organizations like Mystery Writers of America, Bouchercon, International Thriller Writers, Left Coast Crime, etc. We also hope to continue to be a presence at conferences by hosting a table and Queer Crime Writer meet-up whenever possible.

 

OBAAT: I used to work for a company that sent its pre-sales technical staff (such as myself) to customer sites to conduct what they called FIND interviews. “FIND” stood for Facts, Issues, Needs, and Dreams. How would you answer those from a QCW perspective?

 

·       What are the facts of the situation as they exist today?

 

JC: Queer-identifying crime writers are still underrepresented in publishing and in the broader crime reading and writing community. For instance, in 2023 crime fiction anthologies featured a total of 517 stories across 30 titles. Five out of 517 stories were written by LGBTQ+ writers. That’s less than 1 percent. That’s not acceptable. Of course, we understand we are a majority, but the stats don’t fit the size of the population of queer crime writers.

 

·       What issues do you face?

 

JC: Homophobia and transphobia in the publishing, writing, and reading community. While I’m sure some folks are openly biased, I believe most of it is an unconscious bias that emerges in the mind of the biased publisher, editor, agent, writer, reader, or event organizer as a preference or aesthetic sensibility. They can’t imagine a tough guy detective who likes men or a trans lawyer who is a bad-ass lawyer. They say to themselves that the book’s not for them or that the book won’t sell, but that’s just unconscious bias playing out, and it’s a failure of imagination. If we can move beyond that unconscious bias, we can make real strides. To do so means getting the community to discover the imaginative joy of reading and writing a counternarrative, the thrill of telling a story about a queer character that’s surprising because it breaks down old stereotypes.

 

·       What do you need to happen?

 

JC: We need allies to reach out, offer support, and read our books. If you read a wonderful queer mystery or thriller, tell folks about it, share it on social media. If you are building a panel or event, reach out to us or our members. While it’s wonderful to have a strong and supportive in-facing community, it’s getting the greater crime reading and writing community involved that’s necessary for lasting change.

 

·       In this context, what would a perfect world look like?

 

JC: In a perfect world, we’d have no need for this organization because our stories would whole equal status in the minds of mainstream publishing and have a broad readership.

 

OBAAT: Full disclosure: I am an aging (68 years old), straight, cisgendered, white male. What should I be aware of to most accurately and fairly depict LGBTQIA+ characters?

 

JC: So, I’ve been on many LGBTQ+ writers' panels, and we’re often asked a question similar to yours. Usually, a panelist will say: “do your research,” or “do your homework,” or mention some tropes to avoid, like “the gay best friend” (i.e., queer characters shouldn’t be the support staff for your straight journey to self-understanding) or “bury your gays” (i.e., tragic queer characters shouldn’t be written as fodder for straight catharsis. Don’t kill us so that you can come to terms with your homophobia.). Most problematic LGBTQ+ tropes result from centering straight lives in queer stories. While I’m not sure all my fellow queer crime writers would agree, I support cis-hetero authors writing queer characters and even making them point-of-view characters, but you should investigate your reasons for doing so. Do you have a compelling, humanistic reason for including character?  Are you willing to do the research? Are you willing to address your biases, especially those sneaky unconscious biases? Or are you just trying to chase a trend? If you’re chasing a trend, you’ll almost always fail to write a compelling LGBTQ+ character. Also, if you plan to include queer characters, be an advocate for queer writers.

.

OBAAT: When I was growing up and first became aware of such things, “queer” was an insult. Now it’s a term that is self-applied. Is the use context-dependent, or is it only appropriate for use by members who identify as such?

 

JC: “Queer” as a term emerged during the 1980 in academia and, now, has broadly been accepted as a catch-all term synonymous with LGBTQIA+. It’s a lot easier to say than the acronym, and it’s okay for non-queer people to use it as long as it’s spoken in a supportive and affirming way. It’s an adjective, so it’s okay to say “Queer people” or “Queer Crime Writers,” but avoid the noun “the queers” or “Are you a queer?” That’s offensive. The noun version is reductive; the adjective is descriptive. My sexuality is part of me (adjective), but not all of me (noun).

 

I know and appreciate that some older gay men don’t like the term, but it’s fallen into common usage and is here to stay, I think.

 

OBAAT: Which straight crime writers get LGBTQIA+ characters best? Not necessarily the most flattering, but most accurately and fairly?

 

JC: Laurie King did a fantastic job with her Kate Martinelli series and has a substantial gay and lesbian following because of it. Her new character, Raquel Laing, in Back in the Garden is also written in a balanced and compelling fashion. When I heard about the concept of Shawn Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, I raised my eyebrows—two men revenging the murderers of their gay sons—but Shawn, sensitive to the issues surrounding the portrayal of queer characters, balances the narrative beautifully. It’s a great example of how to write a straight redemption story without reducing the queer characters to pawns. It’s not an easy feat, but he did it effectively.

 

Thanks to John Copenhaver for taking the time to supply such thoughtful and thought-provoking answers. If you’d like to learn more about Queer Crime Writers, you can visit their website.