Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 3, August 1973

The Critic by Richard Deming

She had said my murder plot wouldn’t work. I’d soon show her — in a most final, deadly way...

Ellen and I were still newlyweds when I wrote my first mystery novel. I proofread it aloud to her evenings each time I finished a chapter. She listened with rapt attention, and every time I came to the end of a chapter, she would throw her arms about my heck and say, “Tom, it’s absolutely wonderful!”

The night Tread her the last chapter, instead of throwing her arms about my neck, she sat staring at me with an expression of awe on her face.

Finally she said in a tone of absolute conviction, “Tom, it’s better than any mystery novel I ever read.”

Then she threw her arms about my neck.

Her good judgment as a literary critic is a matter of literary history. MY FAVORITE MONSTER, by Thomas Gannon, won the annual Edgar Award that year from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Mystery Novel of the Year.

Except for a few well-known mystery writers, there is not as much money in the mystery field as the general public seems to think. The rueful motto of the Mystery Writers of America, an organization dedicated to the betterment of the poor mystery writer’s condition, is: “Crime does not pay — enough.” MY FAVORITE MONSTER earned $4,000 the first year, and its eventual total earnings, including translations into twelve different languages, came to just over $9,000, spread over a period of five years.

The initial publisher’s advance against royalties of $3,000 made us envision vast wealth, however, and on the basis of the advance I quit my accounting job to devote full time to writing.

Six months after publication of the book our vision of wealth dissolved when the first semi-annual royalty statement came in. The book had so far earned $3,500 in royalties, which, after the deduction of the $3,000 advance against royalties, brought us a check for $500.

Nevertheless my switch of careers turned out to be economically wise. By writing three books a year I managed to earn more than I ever had as an accountant. None of my subsequent books over the next ten years earned as much as the first, but they all did fairly well, their total incomes amounting to anywhere from $5,000 to $8,000. My annual income consistently hovered somewhere around the $20,000 mark.

There was always the chance of the big break, too, which added some zest to life. Twice we came close. A major slick magazine considered running one of my books as a serial, at a buying price of $.20,000, then finally decided not to. A Hollywood producer bought an option on movie rights on another book for $1,000, with the understanding that if he exercised the option, he would pay an additional $49,000. Then he let the option lapse.

We lived pretty well, though. We had a $40,000 home on the beach, belonged to a country club, and bought a new car every two years.

And we were happy. After ten years of marriage we were still in love, a matter that seemed to surprise some of our friends because we spent so much time together. As Ellen didn’t work and we had no children, she devoted a lot of attention to me. Our friends seemed to think that ought to make us sick of each other, but we both thrived on it.

Ellen’s mother seemed even more surprised than our friends at how well we got along, although her surprise wasn’t based on the amount of time we spent together. She just thought all marriages were eventually doomed because all men were rats. Ellen’s father had deserted her mother when Ellen was quite small, and I gathered that Mother Bellman’s reasoning was that if a man would desert as fine a person as her, no woman was safe from male treachery.

Mother Bellman never understood why Ellen had permitted me to quit a perfectly good job for anything as speculative as writing. I think she was actually pleased when things started to go wrong with my career. And her crowing I-told-you-so attitude certainly did nothing to help.

Things first started to go wrong with my sixteenth book, SENTIMENAL KILLER, the first one for which Ellen failed to show her usual unbridled enthusiasm. I always proofread my books aloud to her, and up until SENTIMENTAL KILLER she was my number one fan.

For instance, the evening I read to her the last chapter of my second book, HEY, MR. MURDERER! she sat staring at me with that same expression of awe on her face she had worn when I finished the first book.

Just before throwing her arms about my neck, she said, “Tom, it’s as good as MY FAVORITE MONSTER!”

Her critical judgement proved right again. HEY, MR. MURDERER! won no awards, but it drew good reviews and had a pretty fair sale. It eventually made us $7,500.

She was just as enthusiastic about all my other books during the first ten years of my writing career — up until SENTIMENTAL KILLER. She was particularly enthusiastic about the two that nearly hit the jackpot, which seemed to indicate, to me at least, that the intensity of her reaction was directly proportional to the eventual success of my books. Over the years I developed a strong reliance on her critical judgment.

When I began work on my sixteenth mystery novel, as usual I read chapters to her each evening as I finished them. For the first half of SENTIMENTAL KILLER she listened as raptly as she always had, and her reactions were as enthusiastic as usual. But the evening I passed the midway point of the book, I sensed a subtle difference in her reaction.

“It’s really good, Tom,” she said, but her enthusiasm sounded forced.

“You didn’t like it,” I said.

She gazed at me wide-eyed. “Why do you say that?”

“I can tell by your tone. And you didn’t give me my usual hug.”

Getting up, she dropped onto my lap and threw her arms about my neck. I remember thinking she wasn’t as light as she had been as a bride. We were both now in our mid-thirties, and both had added a little weight.

“I did like it,” she said. “Only—”

“Only what?”

“Well, it somehow lacked your usual fast pace.”

I said, “There’s a chase scene, two fistfights and a gunfight in the chapter, for cripes sake.”

“Well, yes,” she said doubtfully. “Probably it’s just me. I’m hardly a literary critic, you know.”

But for my stuff she always had been an excellent one, and her reaction bothered me. Next morning I reread the chapter in an attempt to analyze what she had sensed wrong with it, but for the life of me I couldn’t find anything wrong. I thought it literally crackled with action and suspense.

Her reaction to the next chapter was the same, and it remained unchanged clear to the end of the book.

Oh, she said she liked each chapter, and she even forced enthusiasm into her Voice. But sometimes when I glanced up from reading, she looked as though she wasn’t even listening.

And the evening I read the last chapter to her, I caught her yawning.

She told me the book was as good as all the others, though, and at least her hug was enthusiastic.

Having become used to relying so heavily on Ellen’s judgment, I was a little apprehensive when I shipped the book off to my literary agent. But his reaction was as favorable as usual, and so was that of the editor at the publishing house who handled my books. I decided Ellen’s judgment wasn’t as infallible as I had assumed.

It turned out to be better than that of either my agent or publisher, though. The book barely earned the advance against royalties paid me by the publisher, and sold foreign rights only in England and France, whereas my previous books routinely sold in a dozen foreign countries. It’s eventual earnings came to only $3,800.

Meantime, long before I learned how little SENTIMENTAL KILLER was going to earn, I completed my next two books. Since it took my publisher about six months after accepting a script to get it into print, and it was another six months after that before the first royalty statement was due, it was always at least a full year after I mailed off a script before I knew how successful it was going to be. Therefore I can’t claim that loss of confidence because SENTIMENTAL KILLER was less successful than my previous books affected my writing of the next two. I finished both thinking that SENTIMENTAL KILLER had been a success.

It is quite possible that Ellen’s reaction to the books affected my writing, though, because it became increasingly obvious that I had lost her as a fan. She pretended to like them as much as previous ones, but I knew her too well to be fooled. She left no doubt of her real opinion the night she went sound asleep in her chair while I was proofreading to her the final chapter of my eighteenth book.

I read and reread each script, trying to pinpoint just what it was that turned her off, but they seemed to me just as good as anything I had previously written. I finally decided it was Ellen who had lost her touch as a literary critic instead of me who had lost mine as a writer.

But my seventeenth book made only $2,000 in royalties against the $3,000 advance, leaving an unearned balance of $1,000, and sold no foreign rights at all. The eighteenth was turned down by my regular publisher, and was finally unloaded by my agent on one of the minor paperback houses for an advance of $1,500. That was all it ever earned.

After that my career nosedived. And so did my marriage.

As my income dwindled, Ellen’s and my life style naturally had to change. Since there was no way to keep up the payments on our beach home, we had to sell it.

We bought a two-bedroom tract house for $15,000. One of the bedrooms became my office. We dropped out of the country club and stopped seeing most of our friends.

This last was strictly Ellen’s decision. I felt that our reduced circumstances should have no effect on our friendships, but Ellen absolutely refused to have any of the country club crowd see what she kept calling our “tacky house.” And since she refused to extend any invitations, she wouldn’t accept any either. Except for visits from her mother, we became virtual social recluses.

The visits from Mother Bellman increased. She had been only an occasional visitor to our beach home unless she was specifically invited, and then only if she had some actual reason to drop by, such as to bring something she had baked or help Ellen let out a dress. But now she began dropping by several times a week, for no purpose that I could determine other than to sympathize with her daughter for the condition in which she had to live, and to sniff at me.

The personal relationship between Ellen and me underwent as drastic a change as our financial situation. One of the things that had kept our relationship so close, I think, was that I had always basked in her unrestrained admiration for my writing talent. I loved her for many other reasons than just because of her flattering opinion that I was the world’s greatest mystery writer, of course, but that was probably one of the stronger elements cementing our closeness.

After my disastrous eighteenth book, Ellen stopped even pretending she liked my work. In retrospect it is hard to say why I continued, night after night, to proofread my output aloud to her. Certainly it became an ordeal for both of us. I think partly it was because it was such a deeply ingrained habit, we kept it up because neither of us wanted to admit openly that our relationship had changed.

But perhaps another motive, on my part, was simply superstition. Everything of mine Ellen had ever liked had been a literary success; everything she disliked was a failure. I kept hoping desperately I could break the run of bad luck by producing a book she liked.

I didn’t succeed. On the contrary her criticisms became progressively harsher. Of my twentieth book all she said was, “It’s all right, Tom, but I don’t think it comes up to your previous ones.” That sold to the same minor paperback publisher for the same advance of $1,500, and never earned any more.

Of my twentieth book she said, “I hate to hurt your feelings, Tom, but this one leaves me cold.” It was rejected by the paperback house that had published my previous two, and eventually went to a sleazy outfit which paid only a $750 advance. It managed to outsell the advance, but only by a couple of hundred dollars.

My subsequent books for the next couple of years all went to that same publisher. Even though I increased my output to five books a year, we could no longer exist on my earnings alone.

Ellen had to take a job. Her complexion had always been excellent, and she managed to get a job as cosmetician for a large department store. Her starting annual salary was more than my writing was bringing in.

That was another ground for discord. We had always planned together for major expenditures, such as a new car, washing machine or TV. But one morning she drove to work in our four-year-old Buick and returned that evening driving a brand-new Vega. When I suggested she might have consulted with me before making the purchase, she sharply reminded me that she was the major breadwinner in the family.

After that she frequently gave me the same reminder. And she completely took over management of the family finances.

All this time her mother kept dropping by at regular intervals to commiserate with poor Ellen and look down her nose at me.

I will not detail the steady disintegration of our relationship, because I prefer not to think about it. But eventually we reached the point of hating each other. Neither of us openly admitted it, and we continued to observe such meaningless rituals as kisses of good-by and hello when Ellen left for work or arrived home. But deep inside we could no longer stand each other.

Still, night after night, I continued to read aloud to her. And night after night she sat and stoically listened.

I developed the curious belief that it was not my writing that was at fault, but her listening. I became convinced that if she would just try to listen properly, she would like what she heard, and that would make the script a success. I decided she had been influenced by her mother to try deliberately not to like my work anymore, which enraged me because I felt that put a jinx upon it. If she could only bring herself to like my writing as much as she once had, I knew I could make a comeback. I didn’t want her just to pretend to like it, because that wouldn’t break the spell. It had to be sincere liking.

But she continued not to like anything I did. And her criticisms became harsher and harsher. When I finished reading her the last chapter of my thirtieth book, she gave her opinion in two words.

Rising to her feet, she said, “It stinks,” and stalked off to bed.

For that one my publisher cut my usual advance of $750 to $500.

It was then that I got the plot idea for A KILLER ANONYMOUS. The idea stemmed from a news item I read about a prominent local woman who had died of acute alcoholism. During the investigation it came out that no one at all except her husband — not even her parents who lived only a few blocks away — had been aware that for some years the woman had been a heavy secret drinker.

The murder gimmick that evolved from this springboard was that I had the killer tie his wife to a kitchen chair, then pour whiskey down the tube until she died of acute alcoholism. When she was dead, he untied her, removed the tube, leaned her head on the kitchen table and put the empty bottle and a whiskey-stained glass in front of her.

Then he went to visit his mother-in-law, to whom he confided that he was terribly worried about his wife’s drinking, and asked if she would try to talk her daughter into joining Alcoholics Anonymous. The mother-in-law returned to his house with him, where they discovered the wife dead, apparently as a result of her secret drinking.

A KILLER ANONYMOUS went beautifully from the moment I started to write it. The story line unfolded effortlessly, the characters came alive, and the suspense built until even I could barely stand it. I knew with absolute certainty that I had regained my lost talent.

The day I completed the first chapter, I casually announced after dinner that I had finished it.

“Okay,” Ellen said in a resigned voice. “Soon as I stack the dishes.”

“Oh, I’m not going to read it to you tonight,” I said.

She gave me a surprised look.

“I’ve broken the jinx,” I said. “This one is good. I mean really good. Better than MY FAVORITE MONSTER.”

“Then why don’t you want to read it to me?”

“Because your reaction, good or bad, would be bound to affect my approach. And I don’t want to rock the boat. Right now I’m sure this is the best writing I’ve ever done, and I want to retain that feeling right up until I type The End. I’ll read it all to you in a couple of sittings when it’s completely finished.”

“Well, all right,” she said. “However you want to do it.”

Usually a book took me about eight weeks, but I was so hot on this one that I finished it in six. Some of my enthusiasm began to rub off on Ellen. Each evening she would ask how the book was coming, and my self-satisfied answers began to convince her, too, that the jinx was broken.

By the fourth week, without my ever reading a word of the script, or telling her anything about it, she had become as enthusiastic as I was. She grew just as certain as I was that we had a best seller.

That quite naturally improved our relationship. Ellen stopped reminding me that she was the family’s main breadwinner, and began to be as admiringly attentive as she was in the early years of our marriage. I also suspect she asked her mother not to drop around so much until after I completed the script, because Mother Bellman’s visits suddenly decreased.

My hate for Ellen melted away. While I can’t claim that I fell back in love as deeply as on our honeymoon, I did start to develop a certain marital fondness for my wife again.

Eventually, one night after dinner, I announced, “Well, it’s finished.”

In the act of clearing the table, Ellen paused to stare at me. “The book?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re going to start to read it to me tonight?”

“Uh-huh. But there’s a condition.”

“What?”

“I don’t want your chapter-by-chapter reaction. I don’t even want you to comment when I finish reading tonight, because I contemplate getting only about halfway through. I.want you to withhold all comment until you’ve heard it all, then tell me your opinion of the whole book.”

“Why can’t you read it all to me tonight?” she asked. “This is Friday night, so I don’t have to go to work tomorrow. It won’t matter if we stay up all night.”

“It will to me. I would get laryngitis. We’ll do half tonight and half in the morning.”

“All right,” she agreed. “Go get the script while I scrape the dishes.”

As usual we sat on opposite sides of the kitchen table while I read. The book ran twenty-eight chapters. I read aloud fourteen that night.

When I finished, I looked across at Ellen and said, “No comments, please. None at all.”

“All right,” she said agreeably, keeping her face expressionless.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, I read her chapters fifteen through twenty-eight, finishing just before noon. After reading the last line, I carefully fitted the script back into its box before looking across at Ellen. Her face was still as expressionless as it had been last night.

“Okay, let’s have it,” I said.

She looked at me steadily for some moments before finally emitting a sigh. “I know how much you’ve been counting on this one, Tom,” she said with an element of pity in her voice. “And I’m sorry to disappoint you. But that thing isn’t even going to bring a $500 advance. It’s the most unbelievable plot you’ve ever devised.”

I gazed at her absolutely stunned, unable to believe my ears.

“What’s unbelievable about it?” I eventually managed to whisper.

“Your murder method is physically impossible. There are all sorts of things wrong with it, but the most obvious is that the husband couldn’t possibly tie up his wife like that without first rendering her unconscious, which presumably would mean either drugging her or knocking her out. And either would show in the autopsy. Since he didn’t render her unconscious first, it’s simply not believable that he could tie her up so easily. She would have brought neighbors from every direction by screaming her head off.”

I started to get angry. Nitpicking always makes me angry, particularly when the nitpicker is wrong.

“You weren’t listening,” I said hotly. “He gagged her first.”

“I was listening,” she assured me. “That’s something else unbelievable. He wouldn’t have enough hands to hold the gag in place, keep her from scratching his eyes out, and tie her up too. But even assuming he got that far, the minute he removed the gag, she would scream.”

“I made that completely clear. He gave her no chance to scream. He shoved the rubber tubing down her throat at the same instant he removed the gag. Sometime try screaming with a rubber tube down your throat.”

“Poppycock. That’s a third unbelievable item. He could never have forced that tube down her throat. All she would have to do is bite down on it.”

“It’s a good book!” I yelled at her. “The best I’ve ever written! You’re saying all this just to jinx it!”

She started to get angry too. “I’m saying it because your plot stinks! Your murder scheme simply isn’t workable.”

At that moment I hated her more than I’ve ever hated anyone in my life, including her mother. Jumping to my feet, I screamed at her, “I’ll prove to you it’s workable, you jinx!”

I did, too. The only trouble was that Ellen’s mother didn’t sit at home and wait for me to call on her, as the mother-in-law of the murderer in the book had. She walked in the back door without knocking as I was withdrawing the tube from Ellen’s throat, before I could untie her.

I still might have wriggled out of it by somehow disposing of Mother Bellman, but unfortunately the old bat is a judo expert.

I have the satisfaction of knowing that Ellen was totally wrong in her critical judgment, though, which ought to kill the jinx. A KILLER ANONYMOUS was accepted by my original publisher at the usual $3,000 advance, sold foreign rights in seventeen countries, and was picked up by the Detective Book Club.

In addition the warden just delivered a letter from my agent containing the news that movie rights had sold for $75,000.