Crime Fiction authors Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman remind me of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. And no, neither Lee nor Joel has a mustache.
Charlie Chaplin wanted to control his own work.
Ninety-five years ago, Chaplin and Fairbanks (along with Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith) opened their own studio: United Artists. They’d been working for the big-name studios and thought they could do a better job making movies. They also wanted the creative control that the commercial studios wouldn’t give them.
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. bears a strong resemblance to Joel Goldman in the sense that they both wear hats.
Brash Books Bursts Onto the Scene
This month, Goldberg and Goldman, both highly successful writers in the crime fiction genre, opened “Brash Books,” a new publisher of ebooks and paperbacks. They are already offering selections from crime fiction stalwarts Bill Crider, Dick Lochte, Dallas Murphy, Barbara Neely, Bob Forward, Tom Kakonis, Noreen Ayres, and others. Here are some of the paperbacks.
The Brash Books tagline is…well, brash: “We Publish the Best Crime Novels in Existence.” Oh, how the ebook revolution has turned the publishing industry upside down. Twenty years ago…make that ten years ago, this would not have been possible. The cost of production and distribution of “dead tree” books would make wanna-be publishers blink.
Crime Fiction Rookies Welcome
While the initial offerings are from established crime fiction writers, Brash is opening the door (or transom?) to unpublished authors, too. Go here to see how to submit your work. Why do I think they’ll be deluged with manuscripts?
Well, there are lots of unpublished authors out there, some of whom are very good. There is also a contingent of formerly published crime fiction writers who can no longer get a contract with a New York publishing house. But as some doors close, others open.
Crime Fiction Back in Print
In my case, the ebook revolution gave second life to many titles that were long out-of-print in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Those books are now alive and well on Amazon. There’s another benefit for the writer, too. By giving re-birth to the first book in a series — in my case, “To Speak for the Dead” (1990) — electronic publication opened the door to fresh NEW ebooks and paperbacks. Again, in my case, the tenth book of the same series, “State vs. Lassiter” (2014).
As for Brash Books, let’s look back at United Artists a moment. It remained independent for nearly 50 years, producing everything from “The Three Musketeers” with Fairbanks in 1921 to “A Hard Day’s Night” with the Beatles in 1964. I’m hoping Brash Books is around for a half century, too.
In 17 years as a trial lawyer, I saw a lot of courtroom drama. But I never witnessed a judge shouting “Order in the court!” Still, that hasn’t stopped me from writing scenes in which the judge angrily silences an unruly mob, his gavel echoing like a rifle shot.
I’ve taken liberties, but mostly small ones. Nothing irritates me more than a courtroom scene that’s dead wrong. Recently, I was skimming a promising debut novel that involves a murder trial.
“Does the prosecution intend to call the defendant to testify?” the judge asks.
Maybe if we’re in China, I thought.
In the U.S.A., there’s the little matter of the Fifth Amendment. The choice to testify belongs solely to the defendant. The prosecution cannot call the defendant to testify.
The Worst Courtroom Drama in History
The prize for Most Ludicrous Courtroom Drama Ever goes to the film “Double Jeopardy,” a 1999 Ashley Judd potboiler.
Courtroom Drama: Ashley Judd has a foolproof way to get away with murder…but it would never work.
A woman convicted of killing her husband gets early release from prison and discovers her hubby had faked his death and is still alive. She decides to kill him because “double jeopardy” prevents her from being charged with his murder a second time.
No, it doesn’t! The supposed murder six years earlier is a different crime, with different facts at a different time and place. The woman can be charged if she kills the faker today. (If it were up to me, the screenwriter would go to jail along with the homicidal woman).
If you want a tough case, how’s this? You remember the television show starring Calista Flockhart as Ally McBeal, a ditzy young, mini-skirted lawyer. Well, once Ally strongly considered the possibility of suing God.
Courtroom drama was never as nuts as on “Ally McBeal.”
No wonder Wikipedia describes the show as a “surreal dramedy.” To be fair, Ally actually refused to sue God on behalf of a little boy dying of leukemia. The kid came from a hard-luck family. Years earlier, a lightning bolt had killed the boy’s father. Another lawyer in her firm suggested that the lightning was an “act of God,” so they could sue the Big Guy for that, as well as for the kid’s leukemia. Who says we don’t need tort reform?
The portrayal of the justice system in popular entertainment has changed substantially over the years. In Perry Mason’s world, the D.A. was a likeable dullard, and every client was innocent. More recently, on “Law & Order,” the prosecutors were indignant and intelligent, and the defendants almost always guilty.
Sam Waterston portrayed prosecutor Jack McCoy in television’s most successful courtroom drama series.
My favorite character was Jack McCoy, the hard-nosed prosecutor given to confrontational dialogue:
“Your grief might seem a little more real had you not just admitted you cut off your wife’s head.”
“The last time I checked, ‘stupid’ isn’t a defense to murder.”
“You played me, you son-of-a-bitch!”
Courtroom Drama Goofs
Here are some of the common courtroom drama fallacies foisted upon us by screenwriters and novelists:
“We lost the case on a legal technicality.” Really? Is that what you call the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures?
“Put yourself in my client’s shoes,”the lawyer says to the jury. No way! In real life, it’s commendable to live by the “Golden Rule.” In closing argument, it will get you a mistrial.
“Objection! Counsel is badgering the witness.” I don’t know how this got started, but it’s epidemic on television. There’s no such objection under the Rules of Evidence. “Argumentative” gets the point across, and it’s what real lawyers say.
Still, I had fun with this objection in my novel “Lassiter.” After the prosecutor accuses our hero of badgering the witness, Lassiter responds: “It’s my job to badger the witness. I get paid to badger the witness.”
Hard-boiled lawyer Jake Lassiter gets paid to badger witnesses.
My Courtroom Drama Mea Culpa
My legal thrillers are not immune to criticism. A dozen years ago, I co-created the Supreme Court drama, “First Monday,” on CBS. The Wall Street Journal gleefully described the show as a “moronic melodrama.” Yeah, I feel the same about the paper’s editorials.
Then there was the Justice Department lawyer who took issue with the portrayal of the Supreme Court in my novel “Impact.” (Originally published in hardcover as “9 Scorpions.”) The legal thriller is about an attempt to fix a case at the nation’s highest court. In a scholarly piece – it had 171 footnotes! — John B. Owen, Esq. objected to a female law clerk having an affair with her boss, the newest, youngest Justice. Wouldn’t happen, he wrote in the University of California Law Review. What really irked Barrister Owen, however, was a scene at the Court’s Christmas party where the female clerk performed a partial strip-tease. Lacked “authenticity,” he wrote.
Owen also criticized David Baldacci’s “The Simple Truth” and Brad Meltzer’s “The Tenth Justice,” both set at the Supreme Court. He found both unrealistic and declared that “‘The Tenth Justice’ won’t win any awards for its attention to finer detail.”
But doesn’t that miss the point? “Finer detail” is not what fiction is all about. A novelist need only create an imaginary world that is real in the broader sense. Compelling stories involving the quest for justice or the thirst for revenge or a host of other inner needs can emerge from a setting that is an approximation of reality. And if all else fails, write a scene involving a strip-tease at the Supreme Court’s Christmas party.
Todd and Garrett were best friends from the west coast of Florida who loved fishing and drinking beer. After one long, hot day of doing both, they sat in Todd’s Ford pick-up at a gas station and argued over something stupid, as best friends sometimes do. Todd wanted to drive to his girlfriend’s house; Garrett wanted to go home.
Someone threw a loopy, beery punch.
And they struggled.
One of the two pulled Todd’s .40 caliber Glock from under the front seat. (The evidence was in conflict over who grabbed the gun, which they tussled over). The gun discharged, the bullet hitting a roof strut. A shard of the ricochet struck Garrett in the head. A stricken Todd comforted his wounded pal and called 9-1-1.
Garrett survived, thanks to Todd’s quick action. Todd went on trial in Manatee County, charged with aggravated assault with a firearm. Now, a legal quiz. What’s your verdict?
(1) Todd was acquitted because the shooting was an accident;
(2) Todd was convicted, but due to a clean record, received probation;
(3) Todd was convicted and sentenced to three years because a gun was involved.
(4) Todd was convicted, and the judge reluctantly sentenced him to 25 years in prison, because Florida law requires it.
If you said number four, you’re right. Aggravated assault with a firearm resulting in an injury draws a 25 year minimum mandatory sentence, regardless of the circumstances.
A victim of mass incarceration: the real Todd’s prison photo.
Todd is serving his time in Avon Park Correctional Institution in Highlands County. He is one of thousands of prisoners, who in my opinion, are serving absurdly long terms due to the Legislature’s imposition of minimum mandatory sentences.
The Florida Legislature has taken sentencing discretion out of the hands of the judiciary where certain crimes are involved. It’s part of the troubling nationwide trend of mass incarceration. My thesis is a simple one: Mandatory minimum sentences overcrowd our prisons and create social problems.
“With more than 2.3 million people locked up, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.”
Here’s another statistic worth considering. It costs about $26,000 per inmate in prison and about $3,400 per felon on supervised probation.
Political policy, not crime, drives mass incarceration, the authors argue.
Or maybe you read the book, “Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?” by Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll, both professors in the University of California system. Their answer to the mass incarceration dilemma is quite simple. Prison population has not been driven to record numbers because of an increase in crime, but rather because of changes in political policy. (In fact, crime rates have fallen by almost half in the last 25 years).
All 50 states have adopted mandatory sentencing laws. Since the 1960’s, the incarceration rate – the number of persons imprisoned in relation to the population – has nearly quadrupled! In actual numbers, of course, the number is far greater. The rate of Americans in prison is roughly fifteen times greater than Japan, five times greater than Great Britain, and more than triple that of Mexico.
Mass incarceration is expensive and harmful public policy.
In raw numbers, our prisons and jails hold an astounding 2.2 to 2.3 million people. Rather than diminish crime, mass incarceration may, in fact, increase crime as well as poverty. As recently reported by Eduardo Porto in The New York Times, “In the U.S., Punishment Often Comes Before the Crimes”:
“A growing body of research has concluded that the costs of the [mass incarceration] strategy are much steeper than prisoners room and board. Anna Aizer of Brown University and Joseph J. Doyle Jr. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that putting a minor in juvenile detention reduced his likelihood of graduating from high school by 13 percentage points and increased his odds of being incarcerated as an adult by 23 percentage points.
“More than half of inmates have minor children. Their children are almost six times as likely to be expelled or suspended from school. Family incomes fall 22 percent during the years fathers are incarcerated.”
I think about those inmates and their children a lot. And I think, too, about Todd.
On the federal front, where about half of all inmates are imprisoned for drug crimes, the Obama Administration is doing something about the most egregious sentences. For federal inmates imprisoned more than ten years – and not convicted of crimes of violence – there is now a “Get Out of Jail” card. For more details on this subject, take a look at Super Lawyer Marcia Silvers’ excellent blog, “Commutation of Sentence: The Window Opens.”
For the sake of Todd and thousands like him, it would be in the national interest for the Florida Legislature and other states to embrace sentence reform and put an end to mass incarceration.
A friend just sent me the photo below, asking if I’d ever seen it. Well yes, the “technicolor” picture hangs on the walls of countless Hollywood agents, producers, and executives who seek some connection — real or imagined — with the golden age of films.
Jimmy Stewart (front row, far left) and Louie B. Mayer (middle) in this famous MGM shot in 1943.
The photo was taken in early 1943 to celebrate MGM’s 20th birthday. Yes, that’s mogul Louie B. Mayer in the middle of the front row flanked by Katherine Hepburn and Greer Garson. You’ll find Lucille Ball in the front row, too, but her husband of three years, Desi Arnaz, is in the back row, middle, in uniform.
It won’t take long for you to find Red Skelton, Mickey Rooney, William Powell, Wallace Beery, Spencer Tracy, Walter Pidgeon, and Robert Taylor in the scond row. And a host of other stars.
Jimmy Stewart: A Hero Among Stars
To me, one star stands out. At the far left of the front row one is Jimmy Stewart. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but it would appear Stewart is wearing lieutenant’s bars. That would make sense. A Princeton University grad, he had virtually sneaked into the Army as a private in 1941, despite being underweight…five pounds less the required 148. Already an experienced pilot of small aircraft, he wanted to fly combat aircraft. What he didn’t want was to be an entertainer at the USO or to simply train other Army Air Force pilots in the States.
Jimmy Stewart, of Indiana, PA, became a lieutenant in July 1942 (before the photo was taken) and a captain in July 1943. He was stationed at Gowen Field, Boise, Idaho when MGM celebrated its 20th Anniversary with the party and photo. Gowen Field may also be where my father, Lt. Stanley Levine, of Hughesville, PA, met Stewart. Dad always claimed to have played poker with Jimmy Stewart when both men were lieutenants, and that’s about the only place I can put them together. Dad later served in the Pacific as a navigator on a B-29, while Stewart piloted B-24 Liberators over Germany from bases in England.
Lt. Jimmy Stewart of Indiana, PALt. Stanley Levine of Hughesville, PA
Jimmy Stewart on Combat Missions
In December 1943, several months after the MGM photo, Stewart flew his first combat mission, bombing U-boat facilities in Kiel, Germany. A few days later, he took part on an attack on Bremen, followed by Ludwigshafen, and Berlin. In all, Stewart flew at least 20 combat missions. As far as I can tell, the only special privileges he received were rather rapid promotions, not highly unusual for World War II, but still a bit startling: private to colonel in four years. He was also highly decorated with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the French Croix de Guerre.
Jimmy Stewart was awarded the highly prized French Croix de Guerre
In all, I have nothing but respect for Jimmy Stewart and his dedication to his country. This photo, showing Col. Stewart in his hometown of Indiana, PA, was taken in early September 1945, after the war ended. At the time, my father was still in a Japanese prison camp, waiting to be repatriated. Colonel Jimmy Stewart welcomed home to Indiana, PA in 1945.
For as long as he lived, Stan Levine spoke highly of Jimmy Stewart and with disdain of John Wayne, who was a pretend hero in “Sands of Iwo Jima” and “The Green Berets” among other potboiler war movies. In real life, Wayne was content to let Republic Pictures seek deferment-after-deferment for him. In later years, he became a bellicose supporter of the War in Vietnam.
Unlike Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne was a pretend hero.
You can read more about Jimmy Stewart’s war record in Wikipedia here. On the 50th Anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing in 1995, I wrote about my father’s war experiences in The Miami Herald. My father, after all, had been in Hiroshima one week AFTER the nuclear blast. Not willingly, of course. The article, “Hiroshima Personally” is here. Six weeks after publication of the article, my father died. Two years later, Jimmy Stewart, who retired as a Brigadier General from the Air Force Reserve, also died.
Several years ago, I wrote “Ballistic,” a novel in which an Air Force missile base in Wyoming was attacked by terrorists. The story raised the fear of “loose nukes,” nuclear weapons in the hands of those who would use them. Or, in the shorthand language of flap copy:
A Nuclear Missile…
A Band of Terrorists…
And Only Two People Who Can Prevent Armageddon.
The set-up for the novel was that U.S. Air Force “missileers” — the personnel in underground launch control capsules who enter the codes and turn the keys — doubted their services would ever be used. Discipline was poor, equipment was obsolete, and the missile silos were vulnerable to attack.
So what’s been in the nuclear weapons news lately?
A U.S. Air Force motivational poster for the missile forces
“On a recent tour of one of the nation’s Air Force nuclear missile facilities in Wyoming, Leslie Stahl of CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ made the surprising discovery about the archaic state of technology inside the facilities. Dana Meyers, a 23-year-old missileer working at the facility, told Stahl of the floppy disks: ‘I had never seen one of these until I got down in missiles.’
“In the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. government built several facilities like the one Stahl visited to operate and conceal its Cold War-era Minuteman missiles. Most of the technology hasn’t seen a hint of upgrade since then. For example, the missileers use analog phones for communication, as shown in the CBS report. The computers that would receive a launch order from the president to deploy one of the missiles are Internet-free, bulky and painted a retro-inspired muted yellow.”
The “60 Minutes” piece also showed a drill in which specially trained U.S. commandos attacked a missile silo overrun with “terrorists.” That was exactly what I had written years earlier…although the heroes of “Ballistic” were a lowly, drunken Air Force sergeant and a terrified female psychiatrist who had been tasked with testing the mental state of the missileers. (Yes, that was based on a real study involving the safety of our nuclear weapons).
Nuclear Weapons: Can a lowly sergeant prevent terrorists from firing a Minuteman?
I commissioned an illustrator to make this drawing to help me with the logistics of moving U.S. troops and terrorists throughout the Launch Control Capsule and missile silo.
Then there’s this humiliation. Earlier last month, General Michael Carey, the man in charge of all 450 Minuteman missiles was forced to resign after a rowdy, drunken trip to Russia, of all places. As explained by Huffington Post:
“Investigators determined that Carey had engaged in ‘inappropriate behavior,’ including heavy drinking, rudeness to his hosts and associating with “suspect” women, according to the investigative report made public last December.
“After the Russia trip, a member of his delegation lodged a complaint about Carey’s behavior. That person, described as a female staff member in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, asserted to investigators that on the delegation’s first night in Moscow, Carey was drinking and speaking loudly in a hotel lounge about how he was ‘saving the world’ and that his forces suffer from low morale.”
