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Critic's Eye View: Julia Spencer-Fleming
If you want to know why I'm so gung-ho on freebie books at cons, I have a three-word answer: Julia Spencer-Fleming. Oh, I knew she was out there, but with so many books already to read, nothing was making me run out and try her. But then All Mortal Flesh was lying around in piles at Malice Domestic, making it possible to not only dip my toes in, but to bring back half a dozen copies for friends to try out.
As soon as I read Flesh I rushed to read the rest of her books, with M hot on my heels all fired up by her copy.
Spencer-Fleming's career started in 2002 with In the Bleak Midwinter. It had been the winner of the St. Martin's Press Malice Domestic award, which boils down to "If a first time author impresses us, we will publish their manuscript." Once published, Midwinter reinforced St. Martin's opinion by sweeping the mystery field, bringing in Barry, McCavity, Dilys, Agatha, and Anthony awards.
The following five novels haven't won that many awards right out of the gate, but the quality does not flag. They're all named after hymns - Spencer-Fleming said at Bouchercon that the one with the gaybashing theme had originally been titled "Just As I Am," but the publisher thought it sounded too much like a self-help book and asked her to "find a more morbid hymn." The result is A Fountain Filled With Blood, and she said she had to write a fountain in to fit the new title... although there's plenty of blood on tap.
How much do I love these books? Let me count the ways.
1 - Realism Without Fatalism
There is a school of thought - Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you - that says that the only "real," "modern" ending must be a tragic one... although how a thematic form that was invented by the ancient Greeks is the only "modern" one is beyond me. On the other hand, there are entire genres - I'm looking at you, theme cozies - where despite people being popped off in every plot, the narrator remains more focused on her shoes, hair, and love life than the cost of the human condition around her.
Julia Spencer-Fleming cuts straight through the crap. On the whole, the majority of her characters manage to stagger though the plot and survive, yes... but that doesn't mean they all do, or that her plots pull any punches. Throughlines have included gay bashing, baby abandonment, smuggling, environmentalists vs developers, identity theft, kidnapping, and illegal immigration. Not to mention people willing to murder over all of the above and more. Her novels are the antidote to one too many cute, sweet bits of nothing and fluff, because she does not flinch away from social issues and she does not present a safe answer - there's always at least one character vociferously on each side of every social issue and (this is key) none of those characters are buffoons. Which leads to my next point:
2 - Recognizable People
All of the characters are the sort of people you already know, from that opinionated jerk down the street to whoever it is that you turn to for advice. This is not the sort of thing that one necessarily expects with a priest as a main character - Spencer-Fleming herself said at Bouchercon that when there's someone very religious in a book, they're either "running over a puppy in a stolen car on their way out of town with the organist's wife and the orphan fund or they're so holy they've never cut a fart." More the latter than the former in my experience - Slactivist (himself an ordained minister) has had plenty to say about the sanctified sociopathy of all the "good" people in the Left Behind books, and what that says about their beliefs.
In these books, the main female protagonist is Claire Fergusson: former army chopper pilot, current Episcopalian priest, in trouble with her conscience for her feelings and her higher-ups for having performed a gay wedding. While her religion is obviously a large part of her character, Claire is still someone that this atheist can appreciate, understand, and sympathize with. She's not going to be leaving town in a stolen car and, although Spencer-Fleming has spared us the details, is certainly someone who farts.
The main male protagonist is Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne, local boy who was in the military (despite his crunchy-granola hippie peacenick mother, who makes a series of hilarious cameo appearances. I particularly like the time Russ had to arrest her for an illegal demonstration and she kept calling him "sweetie" while being booked.) He did his time in Vietnam, came back, married his high school sweetheart, and worked his way stolidly up the ladder. While not the flagrant character that Claire and his own mother are, he's certainly the stolid salt-of-the-Earth kind of guy who can be found working in hundreds of different jobs.
3 - For every action, there is a reaction
As in so many books of this type, the amateur detective has fallen for the token cop, and vice versa. (Frankly, I've gotten quite sick of that trope in most cozies. The heroine is usually considering her boytoy to be good enough to screw, but doesn't trust his or any of his compatriots to do the job for which they have trained and have experience.) But Spencer-Fleming makes this not only palatable, but believable. For one thing, she's not contriving misunderstandings and shallow arguments to keep them apart, because there's a damned good reason they stay apart - he's married and neither one of them wants to break that wedding vow. They may be attracted to each other, but Russ honestly also loves his wife and seriously intends to honor her. And Claire won't break a sacrament. Like Bollywood movies where there is no kissing, the dodges and substitutes are a hell of a lot hotter than the obvious alternative.
And when Claire disagrees with Russ (as when she thinks the people ought to know that a suspected basher is on the loose) and tangles with him, there is a price. An emotional one and one involved in the case. In these books, as in the real world, actions *do* have consequences. In gossip. In tension. In mistakes. And it's not just Russ and Claire. Everyone in every book must face the consequences of their decisions. There is never a "get out of jail free" card to be played. Old decisions haunt, new decisions twist lives, and bad decisions kill. And the consequences are remembered from book to book - there is no reset button or retcon here.
Ye gods, that's refreshing!
4 - Pace and plot are perfect
There's an old joke from the Carol Burnett show - "I saw every episode of Bonanza and I know all three plots by heart." I sometimes feel that way reviewing books, especially when the author seems to be giving Clues For The Blind with heavily foreshadowed, multiply-underlined, anvil-falling-from-the-sky obvious plot points. In the six Spencer-Fleming books, I guessed the deed and the doer exactly *once* and then I still hadn't cottoned onto the method. In the one where I was convinced I knew what was going on and every chapter added another layer of certainty, there was still a stunning moment at the end where, like a quarter-inch turn of a kaleidoscope, a whole new picture was made of the parts. But at no point does Spencer-Fleming cheat. There are no sudden revelations from the blue, no new penultimate characters... every clue is right there, dropped casually, only clear in hindsight.
5 - A word is worth 1000 pictures
Most importantly of all, these stories are told in some of the finest writing I've read. The sheer use of language is amazing. She doesn't make words dance like Thurber or Wodehouse or Pratchett, nor does she paint in adjectives like Bradbury. Her choices are often Hemingway-sparse, but they are also incredibly evocative as well.
Two quotes stand out for me. One, which I've quoted before shows how she can paint a fully rounded character quickly:
It is a cliche that there are no secrets in a small town. It is also false. In Miller Kill, it is unlikely anyone will ever know that Geraldine Bain, who has worked in the post office for thirty years and who is famous in the First Baptist Church for her deep-dish crumble-crust pie, nearly died from an illegal abortion in New York City in 1950. The fact that Wayne Stoner, a hardworking dairy farmer and father of two, stays up after everyone has gone to bed to read his wife's romance novels has never come out, even after he spilled coffee on Suzanne Brockmann's The Defiant Hero and had to blame his thirteen-year-old, Hannah. (All Mortal Flesh, p 112)
That tells me more in a few words about Geraldine and Wayne than pages of description of physique, clothing, makeup, record collection, etc.
The other quote I'm not going to identify, because I don't want you to go into the book knowing "oh, this is the one where" and spoil the scene. However, considering that one of the characters is a helicopter pilot, I *don't* consider it a spoiler that there is an inevitable description of one of them falling out of the sky. And it's the perfect example of how good writing is more evocative than even pictures. We've all seen crashes in the movies - the chopper flies behind a hill, and a huge squib goes off. Cut to horrified look on hero/ine's face to tell us what to feel.
The literary equivalent is even flatter. So much thriller and horror writing is just technical writing! The killer did x. The victim reacted Y. The machine went ping. The bullet zipped by.
I find this much more exciting and horrifying: Metal screamed. There was an impressively loud noise as the rotors chopped into wood and dirt and stone and broke off. One knife-edged blade sliced through the tail boom, the machine eviscerating itself in its death throes. Another blade shattered into shrapnel, peppering the fuselage with a hailstorm of metallic fire. One heaved away into the dirt, still trying to do its job, and lifted and turned the body of the helicopter so that it rolled downhill once, twice, landing gear snapping off like fragile bird bones, pieces of steel sheeting peeling off like an orange rind.
The visual impact of those rhetorical choices really brings the whole scene to urgent life. I can really see, practically feel "the machine eviscerating itself in its death throes." The blade "still trying to do its job." The metal scattering down the slope.
This isn't just a series for someone who wants a damnfine plot and a solid puzzle. These are books for people who want damnfine writing. They can be read out of order, but I still suggest that you start with In the Bleak Midwinter and find out why it deserved all those awards.
For those already wondering what comes next, she said at Bouchercon that the next book will be out next fall.
As soon as I read Flesh I rushed to read the rest of her books, with M hot on my heels all fired up by her copy.
Spencer-Fleming's career started in 2002 with In the Bleak Midwinter. It had been the winner of the St. Martin's Press Malice Domestic award, which boils down to "If a first time author impresses us, we will publish their manuscript." Once published, Midwinter reinforced St. Martin's opinion by sweeping the mystery field, bringing in Barry, McCavity, Dilys, Agatha, and Anthony awards.
The following five novels haven't won that many awards right out of the gate, but the quality does not flag. They're all named after hymns - Spencer-Fleming said at Bouchercon that the one with the gaybashing theme had originally been titled "Just As I Am," but the publisher thought it sounded too much like a self-help book and asked her to "find a more morbid hymn." The result is A Fountain Filled With Blood, and she said she had to write a fountain in to fit the new title... although there's plenty of blood on tap.
How much do I love these books? Let me count the ways.
1 - Realism Without Fatalism
There is a school of thought - Joss Whedon, I'm looking at you - that says that the only "real," "modern" ending must be a tragic one... although how a thematic form that was invented by the ancient Greeks is the only "modern" one is beyond me. On the other hand, there are entire genres - I'm looking at you, theme cozies - where despite people being popped off in every plot, the narrator remains more focused on her shoes, hair, and love life than the cost of the human condition around her.
Julia Spencer-Fleming cuts straight through the crap. On the whole, the majority of her characters manage to stagger though the plot and survive, yes... but that doesn't mean they all do, or that her plots pull any punches. Throughlines have included gay bashing, baby abandonment, smuggling, environmentalists vs developers, identity theft, kidnapping, and illegal immigration. Not to mention people willing to murder over all of the above and more. Her novels are the antidote to one too many cute, sweet bits of nothing and fluff, because she does not flinch away from social issues and she does not present a safe answer - there's always at least one character vociferously on each side of every social issue and (this is key) none of those characters are buffoons. Which leads to my next point:
2 - Recognizable People
All of the characters are the sort of people you already know, from that opinionated jerk down the street to whoever it is that you turn to for advice. This is not the sort of thing that one necessarily expects with a priest as a main character - Spencer-Fleming herself said at Bouchercon that when there's someone very religious in a book, they're either "running over a puppy in a stolen car on their way out of town with the organist's wife and the orphan fund or they're so holy they've never cut a fart." More the latter than the former in my experience - Slactivist (himself an ordained minister) has had plenty to say about the sanctified sociopathy of all the "good" people in the Left Behind books, and what that says about their beliefs.
In these books, the main female protagonist is Claire Fergusson: former army chopper pilot, current Episcopalian priest, in trouble with her conscience for her feelings and her higher-ups for having performed a gay wedding. While her religion is obviously a large part of her character, Claire is still someone that this atheist can appreciate, understand, and sympathize with. She's not going to be leaving town in a stolen car and, although Spencer-Fleming has spared us the details, is certainly someone who farts.
The main male protagonist is Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne, local boy who was in the military (despite his crunchy-granola hippie peacenick mother, who makes a series of hilarious cameo appearances. I particularly like the time Russ had to arrest her for an illegal demonstration and she kept calling him "sweetie" while being booked.) He did his time in Vietnam, came back, married his high school sweetheart, and worked his way stolidly up the ladder. While not the flagrant character that Claire and his own mother are, he's certainly the stolid salt-of-the-Earth kind of guy who can be found working in hundreds of different jobs.
3 - For every action, there is a reaction
As in so many books of this type, the amateur detective has fallen for the token cop, and vice versa. (Frankly, I've gotten quite sick of that trope in most cozies. The heroine is usually considering her boytoy to be good enough to screw, but doesn't trust his or any of his compatriots to do the job for which they have trained and have experience.) But Spencer-Fleming makes this not only palatable, but believable. For one thing, she's not contriving misunderstandings and shallow arguments to keep them apart, because there's a damned good reason they stay apart - he's married and neither one of them wants to break that wedding vow. They may be attracted to each other, but Russ honestly also loves his wife and seriously intends to honor her. And Claire won't break a sacrament. Like Bollywood movies where there is no kissing, the dodges and substitutes are a hell of a lot hotter than the obvious alternative.
And when Claire disagrees with Russ (as when she thinks the people ought to know that a suspected basher is on the loose) and tangles with him, there is a price. An emotional one and one involved in the case. In these books, as in the real world, actions *do* have consequences. In gossip. In tension. In mistakes. And it's not just Russ and Claire. Everyone in every book must face the consequences of their decisions. There is never a "get out of jail free" card to be played. Old decisions haunt, new decisions twist lives, and bad decisions kill. And the consequences are remembered from book to book - there is no reset button or retcon here.
Ye gods, that's refreshing!
4 - Pace and plot are perfect
There's an old joke from the Carol Burnett show - "I saw every episode of Bonanza and I know all three plots by heart." I sometimes feel that way reviewing books, especially when the author seems to be giving Clues For The Blind with heavily foreshadowed, multiply-underlined, anvil-falling-from-the-sky obvious plot points. In the six Spencer-Fleming books, I guessed the deed and the doer exactly *once* and then I still hadn't cottoned onto the method. In the one where I was convinced I knew what was going on and every chapter added another layer of certainty, there was still a stunning moment at the end where, like a quarter-inch turn of a kaleidoscope, a whole new picture was made of the parts. But at no point does Spencer-Fleming cheat. There are no sudden revelations from the blue, no new penultimate characters... every clue is right there, dropped casually, only clear in hindsight.
5 - A word is worth 1000 pictures
Most importantly of all, these stories are told in some of the finest writing I've read. The sheer use of language is amazing. She doesn't make words dance like Thurber or Wodehouse or Pratchett, nor does she paint in adjectives like Bradbury. Her choices are often Hemingway-sparse, but they are also incredibly evocative as well.
Two quotes stand out for me. One, which I've quoted before shows how she can paint a fully rounded character quickly:
It is a cliche that there are no secrets in a small town. It is also false. In Miller Kill, it is unlikely anyone will ever know that Geraldine Bain, who has worked in the post office for thirty years and who is famous in the First Baptist Church for her deep-dish crumble-crust pie, nearly died from an illegal abortion in New York City in 1950. The fact that Wayne Stoner, a hardworking dairy farmer and father of two, stays up after everyone has gone to bed to read his wife's romance novels has never come out, even after he spilled coffee on Suzanne Brockmann's The Defiant Hero and had to blame his thirteen-year-old, Hannah. (All Mortal Flesh, p 112)
That tells me more in a few words about Geraldine and Wayne than pages of description of physique, clothing, makeup, record collection, etc.
The other quote I'm not going to identify, because I don't want you to go into the book knowing "oh, this is the one where" and spoil the scene. However, considering that one of the characters is a helicopter pilot, I *don't* consider it a spoiler that there is an inevitable description of one of them falling out of the sky. And it's the perfect example of how good writing is more evocative than even pictures. We've all seen crashes in the movies - the chopper flies behind a hill, and a huge squib goes off. Cut to horrified look on hero/ine's face to tell us what to feel.
The literary equivalent is even flatter. So much thriller and horror writing is just technical writing! The killer did x. The victim reacted Y. The machine went ping. The bullet zipped by.
I find this much more exciting and horrifying: Metal screamed. There was an impressively loud noise as the rotors chopped into wood and dirt and stone and broke off. One knife-edged blade sliced through the tail boom, the machine eviscerating itself in its death throes. Another blade shattered into shrapnel, peppering the fuselage with a hailstorm of metallic fire. One heaved away into the dirt, still trying to do its job, and lifted and turned the body of the helicopter so that it rolled downhill once, twice, landing gear snapping off like fragile bird bones, pieces of steel sheeting peeling off like an orange rind.
The visual impact of those rhetorical choices really brings the whole scene to urgent life. I can really see, practically feel "the machine eviscerating itself in its death throes." The blade "still trying to do its job." The metal scattering down the slope.
This isn't just a series for someone who wants a damnfine plot and a solid puzzle. These are books for people who want damnfine writing. They can be read out of order, but I still suggest that you start with In the Bleak Midwinter and find out why it deserved all those awards.
For those already wondering what comes next, she said at Bouchercon that the next book will be out next fall.