Leader of the New Democratic Party, 2003-2011

Leader of the Official Opposition, 2011

Jack Layton was born into a political family. His father, Robert Layton, was first an activist for the Liberal party and later in life became a Progressive Conservative and finally served as a member of Brian Mulroney\’s (federal cabinet) cabinet. His grandfather was a cabinet minister in the Duplessis (Quebec provincial) cabinet before the second World War. His great grandfather, Philip Layton, fought during the 1930s for pensions and other rights for the disabled and the blind. His great, great uncle was of one of the founding fathers of Canada.

Just a few months ago Jack Layton led the federal New Democratic Party to its best result in electoral history. The NDP swept past the Liberals to become the official opposition. Layton had been been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2009 but seemed to be winning the (short term) fight against cancer when the recent federal election was called in 2011. On the campaign tail he often appeared to be in pain although he almost always managed to be cheerful on the hustings.

On July 25th of this year he announced that he was taking a temporary leave due to a newly diagnosed (and different) form of cancer. He died the morning of August 22, 2011 — at home with his family.

Last Saturday Jack Layton wrote a letter to Canadians be with shared with them if he was unable to continue his battle with cancer.

In it he wrote

It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind.

to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

In this Canadian\’s opinion Layton\’s letter (which has been made publicly available) deserves to be read in full.

This is the vision I look to in the people who lead my country. All else, the elections and the party platforms, should be nothing more than a heated discussion as to the best way to achieve that glorious vision.

A better world for all of us to live in.

Every morning, just after I put on my glasses and before I drink my first cup of coffee, I fire up my computer and check out the news online.

Most mornings my computer screen is immediately filled with stories about events which are distressing. There are famines, floods and other natural disasters. There are wars, suicide bombings, forced relocations, insurgencies, military crackdowns and other hardships and sufferings that arise from the actions and decisions of human institutions and governments. There are kidnappings and murders, assaults and thefts committed by human beings alone or in small groups.

What do I feel as I sit reading the news knowing myself utterly inadequate to respond in any meaningful way to those crimes and disasters? Robert Merton might diagnose me as experiencing anomie as a result of \”an acute disjunction between the cultural norms and goals and the socially structured capacities of member of that group to act in accord with them\”.[1] I have been brought up to believe that people should do something in the face of need and to act in the face of injustice. So, along with my dose of news, every morning my computer is delivering to me a reminder of my own inadequacy.

The more I read the more frustrated I become that the world is full of injustices which I cannot attack and needs I cannot minster to. I feel disempowered and disenfranchised. I wonder why I bother to read the news at all. Perhaps I should just pass by the stories about famines and floods. Perhaps I should ignore the news of crimes that cannot touch me and disorders that do not threaten my neighbourhood. I have worked hard all my life — do I not deserve to sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labour? It isn\’t as if I can make the life of someone in Horn of Africa better by denying myself my favourite sports shows. My choice to sit back and enjoy a novel won\’t help (or hurt) an American family about to lose their health insurance and, perhaps, their home.

Then a small voice within whispers to my inner ear \”this is but accidie, the sin of spiritual sloth.\” This is the self-indulgence of focusing on what I can do nothing about so that I do not see that which I can do. By comparing what I do only against the actions of the exceptionally good, charitable and brave I am giving myself license to do no good, to give nothing and be a coward.

I will never know what the world would be like if each of us tried every day to be just a little better, a little more charitable and a little more willing to stand up just a little longer and speak a little louder in defense of others. It is my choice whether I get to see what the world is like if I try to do and be all those things.

[1] Merton, Robert (1968) Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. p. 216

The Spanish Cape Mystery by Ellery Queen (1935)

Summary: Once again Ellery Queen (the authors) twist the plot, settings and characters in order to place Ellery Queen (the detective) at the right spot, at the right time to become semi-officially involved in solving a mystery. The authors have to go to great lengths to provide a setting that is isolated enough to rule out the possibility of random murderer and yet not so isolated that police, the press and various modern facilities are not on hand. The people encountered are either stereotypes or unbelievable as actual human beings (or both.)

For much of the book Ellery Queen (the character) makes speeches or offers explanations whose primary purpose appears to be to muddy rather than clarify the situation. For all the authors\’ attempts to make this a brain puzzler if one simply ignores Queen\’s verbal obfuscations the identity of the murderer is obvious.

[Note the first: Ellery Queen, the authors, do not strictly play fair with the reader. It is that lack of fair play that delays the reader from immediately recognizing the actual culprit.]

[Note the second: In addition to the usual racist and misogynist language and behaviour one comes upon in these early Ellery Queen novels this book includes scenes of psychical, emotional and verbal spousal abuse as well as fat-shaming and \”lookism\” that is extreme even for Queen novels of this period.]

In short: Since this is not one of the better-written of the early Queens, not a good brain-teaser, doesn\’t play fair with the reader and is full of language and behaviour that is disturbing this reader does not recommend the book to anyone who isn\’t a Queen afficiando/completist and/or a student of popular culture/mysteries of the 1930s.

Additional Trigger Warning: Chapter Twelve includes a disturbing description of a man verbally and physically assaulting his wife. Although Queen and the other men covertly observing this initially do not intervene because they are able to learn information that will assist them in solving the murder mystery they do nothing, after they have gained that information, to assist the woman and do nothing, even after the husband has left the scene, to render aid to her. The last we see of her she is sitting physically bruised and emotionally battered and the reader is left with no illusions that male observers feel more sympathy for the cuckolded husband than the battered woman.

Beyond here there be spoilers

Ellery Queen and his friend Judge Macklin arrive at the cottage Macklin has arranged to rent only to find a young woman who has been kidnapped from her home on the nearby Spanish Cape. On getting in touch with her family Queen learns that a murder has also taken place on the Cape.

Perhaps it was indeed a kinder, simpler time, but it strains the imagination of this reader that the local police inspector would so quickly and unreservedly include the visiting Ellery Queen (with his host the retired Judge Macklin) in the investigation. Queen and Macklin just happen to turn up to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a wall street tycoon. The daughter just happened to have been tied up and left in the deserted beach house that Macklin says he has rented from its actual owner. An owner who has notified no one local of the rental and who is safely out of touch should anyone wish to verify the details.

In real life, one imagines, both men would be sitting down at the local police station having been (perhaps politely) asked to supply their bona fides. In the world of this book they are immediately swept up in the investigation.

Perhaps the reader supposed to deduce/suspect that the local police are already a bit out of their depth and thus will naturally jump at the opportunity to include Queen and Macklin ?

“Inspector Moley proved to be a grizzled veteran of the red-faced, hard-lipped, solidly built variety—the marks of the experienced man-hunter the world over who has come up from the ranks by the free use of fists, a knowledge of the faces and ways of professional criminals, and a certain cool native, shrewdness. Such men are often bewildered when crime strays off the path of orthodoxy.” (47) [1]

Inspector Moley often seems to be incurious and dismissive of things that make the reader go \’hmmmm.\’ For example, when the Inspector returns the kidnapped Rosa Godfrey to her mother, Mrs. Godfrey mentions that in addition to worries about her brother (kidnapped with Rosa but not found with her) David, the horror of learning that a houseguest\’s (John Marco) dead, naked body having been found she also cannot find Pitts, her housemaid. The discerning reader of detective fiction might find it suspicious that a trusted servant is missing from a house where so many crimes have been committed. Inspector Moley, however, expresses no interest at all:

“Moley shrugged. “She\’s probably around somewhere. I\’m not goin\’ to worry about a maid now. . . .” (50) [1]

The tinge of “local rube” to the characterization of the Inspector is in line with the almost essentialist treatment of characters. Tallness, slenderness, attractiveness are all taken as outward signs of inner character. When characters don\’t fit that simple typology it is treated as noteworthy–as when we first meet the wealthy financier, Walter Godfrey,

“he looked like an under-gardener, or a cook\’s helper. Certainly there was nothing in his appearance to suggest power—except possibly the snakey eyes—or in his demeanor to suggest the builder and destroyer of forturnes.” (50) [1]

Inspector Moley later verbally attacks Mrs. Godfrey for not having brought to his attention the information that had been specifically shrugged off at their first meeting, “You didn\’t think it important!” howled Inspector Moley, dancing up and down. “Nobody thinks anything important!……For God\’s sake, haven\’t you a tongue, Mrs. Godfrey?” (127) [1]

To the modern reader the police (and Queen and Macklin) seem to be incompetent. They do not separate people before questioning them and then seem surprised that individuals do not bare their deepest darkest secrets to others. When employers interrupt servants about to give evidence with the threat “I\’ll fire you if you speak” neither the police nor Queen move to put them in separate rooms nor do they immediately assume the employers have something to hide.

Indeed if the police (or Queen) had simply followed what was even at the time standard police routine the murder would have been cleared up quickly enough to save a marriage and a life.

When this reader reached the end of the book zie felt a suspicion that the reason the authors had created such an contrived circumstance for a murder was to distract the reader from the fact that the main obstacle to the solving of the crimes was incompetence of those investigating them.

Rating: 1-1/2 stars

[1]Queen, E. (1979). The Spanish Cape Mystery. New York: Signet Books. 

According to a study released by the National Institutes of Health (U.S.) there is:

a 10 percentage point gap between black and white researchers in winning the most common type of NIH grant — even though all held doctorate degrees and had similar research experience. Between 2000 and 2006, about 27 per cent of white applicants won funding compared with about 17 per cent of blacks. [Black scientists less likely than whites to win research funds]

These results hold true even after most variables are held constant (academic qualification and research experience).

What cannot be held constant is the crucial factor of mentoring. Writing research grants is a skill. My own personal experience of applying for a fellowship (and being turned down) is that my own mentor had explained the process to me as one in which you write the initial application in order to receive feedback on it. Armed with those criticisms you reapply.

I applied and did not receive funding. My mentor and I worked over the application. I reapplied and did receive funding.

Mentors are not only crucial in training their students in the process of applying for and securing fellowships and grants they are also play a vital role in access to all resources. For example, access to lab time can be extremely competitive and the decision as to which aspiring doctoral candidate gets the best lab times and the best access to departmental funds and resources is usually determined by \”who has their back.\” Mentors who know how to write grant proposals are vital to the process but data gathering usually requires access to physical resources that not all mentors can deliver.

As the authors of the study put it:

Small differences in access to research resources and mentoring during training or at the beginning of a career may accumulate to become large between-group differences.[Race, Ethnicity, and NIH Research Award]

Without strong mentoring minority graduate students, research fellows and junior faculty are disadvantaged in receiving funding and lab access. At the same time the very people to whom they look for mentoring have to weigh the time required to do mentoring with the impact it will have on their own careers

The time constraints imposed by serving on minority recruitment committees and mentoring students often leaves precious little time for minority scientists to do their own research. “As an underrepresented minority, you want to give back,” he says. “But as one minority scientist told me once, ‘You do no one, especially other minorities, any good if you don\’t get tenure.’” [A Minority Viewpoint]

And so it goes. You cannot simply wave away centuries (and sometimes millennia) of unequal access to resources with a wand and say \”so, it is all better now.\” If we do not make an affirmative effort to offset the incremental disadvantages we are merely allow the effects of previous inequities to ripple through the system.

I don\’t remember a time when going to the library was not an important and yet routine part of my family\’s life.

Important — because we had neither the money nor the storage space for all the books my parents wanted to read.

Routine — because \”going to the library,\” like buying groceries, changing the linen and washing the dishes was built into the rhythm of our lives.

Saturday, after the chores had been done around the house, we were packed into the car and driven to the library. The Army camp in which we lived had a small library and many of the books were donated by the men and women who lived on the base. Because a fair number of the men had married while in England and brought their wives back to Canada and a goodly number of the families had been posted to England or Germany many of the donated books had been bought in (or shipped from) England. I was deposited in the \”for young children\” nook which was packed full of books written for English schoolchildren.

While I was sitting, enraptured, in the niche set aside for young children my older sister was picking out books she wanted to read and then arguing with the librarian (or, more accurately, one of the women who either volunteered or was paid very little to run the library) as to whether they were \”suitable\” for a girl her age. Meanwhile my mother and my father would have each struck out for their favourite sections of the building.

After an hour or so mom or dad would gather us all up, we would check out our books and head back home. Where over the course of the next week we would not only read the books we had picked out we would check out everyone else\’s books.

Later, when we had moved from the Army camp to a medium-sized city, we checked out the various branches of the local library. My father walked by one branch of the library every day as he went to work, and my sister walked past another on her way to school. Since this was before the Internet took off, Saturday became the day when my mother would drop me off at the best \”research\” branch of the library to do my homework while she ran the weekly errands. I would work for several hours at one of those long wooden library tables until mom returned and then she and I would spend a pleasant hour or so in the stacks before going home with our trove.

During the years that I studied and worked in academia the library continued to be the building that held the books that I couldn\’t afford and didn\’t have room to store. Without the library I couldn\’t do my research. I lived for much of the year within a few minutes walk of a number of major research libraries. Over the years my respect for the skills of librarians flowered. The completion of both of my graduate degrees required years of research, much of which would have taken longer (or been fruitless) without their assistance.

Now I am once again living year round in my home in a small city in Canada. One of the things that I expected to miss was access to a good library system. Yet today I found myself standing in the middle of main branch of our local library and thinking (and almost saying out loud) \”I LIKE our library.\”

The local library is more accessible than it ever was before. It is physically accessible to those who were once unable to negotiate its stairs and narrow entrances. It is virtually accessible to anyone who has get onto the internet. I can browse the stacks from home and request that the books I am interested in be set aside. Much of the library\’s reference section is available online and so I can still read many of the academic journals in my field.

The library is also more lively than it was years ago. There is large, colourful, and welcoming section for children and for teenagers. There are comfortable chairs for people, old and young, who simply want to sit and read. There are computers and internet access for people who cannot afford either. There are librarians who will help people set up the resumes that they will soon print out on the library printer. There is a little coffee/fruit/pastry stand. People all around me were having fun, enjoying themselves, happy to be in the library.

I stood there for a moment and thought, \”this is the center of my community.\” People go to the library to learn how to apply for jobs, they go to learn new skills, they go to watch movies, take part in book clubs, and to meet people.

In my town the library has, in many ways, replaced the church as the center of the community life.

I don’t remember a time when going to the library was not an important and yet routine part of my family’s life.

Important — because we had neither the money nor the storage space for all the books my parents wanted to read.

Routine — because “going to the library,” like buying groceries, changing the linen and washing the dishes was built into the rhythm of our lives.

Saturday, after the chores had been done around the house, we were packed into the car and driven to the library. The Army camp in which we lived had a small library and many of the books were donated by the men and women who lived on the base. Because a fair number of the men had married while in England and brought their wives back to Canada and a goodly number of the families had been posted to England or Germany many of the donated books had been bought in (or shipped from) England. I was deposited in the “for young children” nook which was packed full of books written for English schoolchildren.

While I was sitting, enraptured, in the niche set aside for young children my older sister was picking out books she wanted to read and then arguing with the librarian (or, more accurately, one of the women who either volunteered or was paid very little to run the library) as to whether they were “suitable” for a girl her age. Meanwhile my mother and my father would have each struck out for their favourite sections of the building.

After an hour or so mom or dad would gather us all up, we would check out our books and head back home. Where over the course of the next week we would not only read the books we had picked out we would check out everyone else’s books.

Later, when we had moved from the Army camp to a medium-sized city, we checked out the various branches of the local library. My father walked by one branch of the library every day as he went to work, and my sister walked past another on her way to school. Since this was before the Internet took off, Saturday became the day when my mother would drop me off at the best “research” branch of the library to do my homework while she ran the weekly errands. I would work for several hours at one of those long wooden library tables until mom returned and then she and I would spend a pleasant hour or so in the stacks before going home with our trove.

During the years that I studied and worked in academia the library continued to be the building that held the books that I couldn’t afford and didn’t have room to store. Without the library I couldn’t do my research. I lived for much of the year within a few minutes walk of a number of major research libraries. Over the years my respect for the skills of librarians flowered. The completion of both of my graduate degrees required years of research, much of which would have taken longer (or been fruitless) without their assistance.

Now I am once again living year round in my home in a small city in Canada. One of the things that I expected to miss was access to a good library system. Yet today I found myself standing in the middle of main branch of our local library and thinking (and almost saying out loud) “I LIKE our library.”

The local library is more accessible than it ever was before. It is physically accessible to those who were once unable to negotiate its stairs and narrow entrances. It is virtually accessible to anyone who has get onto the internet. I can browse the stacks from home and request that the books I am interested in be set aside. Much of the library’s reference section is available online and so I can still read many of the academic journals in my field.

The library is also more lively than it was years ago. There is large, colourful, and welcoming section for children and for teenagers. There are comfortable chairs for people, old and young, who simply want to sit and read. There are computers and internet access for people who cannot afford either. There are librarians who will help people set up the resumes that they will soon print out on the library printer. There is a little coffee/fruit/pastry stand. People all around me were having fun, enjoying themselves, happy to be in the library.

I stood there for a moment and thought, “this is the center of my community.” People go to the library to learn how to apply for jobs, they go to learn new skills, they go to watch movies, take part in book clubs, and to meet people.

In my town the library has, in many ways, replaced the church as the center of the community life.

When they read of outsourcing most Americans and Canadians think of computers being made in China, clothes made in Indonesia and call centers located in Mumbai. Reading today\’s Washington Post I found out that other things were being outsourced as well. Scandals tarnish Citibank’s image in Indonesia.

An Indonesian man who owed money to Citibank was \”invited\” to their office in Jakarta. Hours later he was dead. While there are still many questions as to what happened in the small room that was set aside by the U.S. bank for questioning of deadbeat debtors there is no question that U.S. banks are outsourcing debt collection.

While some may see this story primarily as a case of the unfortunate consequences of an American company working in another country outsourcing work to \”locals\” who do not adhere to American standards and values I suggest that there is an alternate, and much scarier, reading. Outsourcing jobs to countries with a lower standard of living and/or laxer standards of worker/workplace protection has been a useful tool to undermine wages and workers\’ rights in the United States. The rush toward outsourcing was evidence that these methods of increasing \”profits\” that the companies involved considered reasonable/within their brief.

Can you find it hard to imagine the day will come creditors is the U.S. will be \”invited\” into small rooms? Probe after probe and investigation after investigation shows American companies engaging in fraud and coercion in the United States:
House of Cards
Lauderdale man\’s home sold out from under him in foreclosure mistake
Lawsuit accuses bank of seizing wrong house
Woman says Bank of America wrongly repossessed home
No Mortgage, Still Foreclosed
Bank Wrongly Seizes Home, Takes Parrot

The notable asymmetry of power between these companies and the people whose property they seize (and damage) when the company is completely in the wrong makes chills run up one\’s back. The only reason that these people have any voice at all is that they are completely \”in the right.\” They are so clearly \”in the right\” that even the people who normally side automatically with companies recognize a wrong has been done. But what about the people who have no voice? The person who doesn\’t know who to complain to? Those who are without the privilege of being middle-class or well-educated or sympathetic? What aren\’t we hearing?

Take for example the case of Mr. and Mrs. Nyerges. A bank attempted to seize their home even though the couple had bought the house with cash. They had to go to court in order to get the foreclosure case dismissed. The court ordered that the bank pay the couple\’s court fees. It did not.

Finally the couple\’s lawyer got a court order that allowed them to seize the assets of the local branch and it was only after the sheriff (and the local media) arrived with the order that the couple got their cheque.

While I cheer for the Nyerges and applaud their lawyer\’s efforts to get them justice I wonder just how many people have horror stories that we aren\’t hearing.

I wonder if most of America is already sitting in a room set aside by the U.S. bank for questioning of deadbeat debtors.

When reading books that were in the past either influential and/or popular it can be difficult for the reader of today to fully understand why the book(s) appealed to past readers. The Philo Vance and Ellery Queen detective novel series are both good examples of this phenomenon. Although I had similar issues reading S. S. Van Dine\’s Philo Vance as I did Ellery Queen\’s Ellery Queen the long term success of the two series were quite dissimilar. Van Dine’s popularity dropped precipitously several decades after he was first published while Queen, on the other hand, not only continued to be popular but went on to be very influential within the world of mystery writing. What made these books so popular at the time they were published, why were the trajectories of their popularity were so different and why do modern readers \”receive\” them so differently than did their initial audience.

The two authorial choices unite these series are the nature of the New Yorks in which they were set and the structures used by the authors allow the detective access to sites, evidence and witnesses and the reader access to the thoughts and actions of the detective.

First, the nature of their New Yorks:

It is difficult to keep in mind while reading the early works of Queen and Van Dine that they were published within a few years of Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Stout’s Fer-de-Lance. The former was published in 1930 and the latter, the first Nero Wolfe novel, was published in 1934. Those two books seem to have been written about a different universe than inhabited by either Philo Vance or Ellery Queen.

This reader felt that Vance and Queen lived in a country and a city that were strange amalgams of England and the United States. Both detectives work in New York City and both encounter the rather stereotypical individuals of New York: the cops with the broad accents and apparently little education; the cab drivers and waiters who have broad accents and cheerfully know their places. But the New York rich, the upper classes, live with the same “different set” of rules as do members of the British upper class in Ngaio Marsh’s detective novels. It is a New York without anything near the broad ethnic diversity one encounters in Rex Stout and with a degree of deference from police officers towards “their betters\” that no one shows in his books. Compare, if you will, Inspector Queen with Stout\’s Inspector Cramer. Cramer doesn’t always get his man, true, but Cramer would not have put up with the affected manners and sense of privilege of either Vance or Queen.

Reviewers and analysts of murder/detective mysteries refer to a type of novel as a ‘cozy.’ Cozies are set in an alternative universe where all the nice things about the past continue to exist without any of its more unpleasant elements. In some the detectives themselves are an element of that sanitized nostalgia. Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn is the son and brother of members of the aristocracy. He is a card carrying gentleman who interviews the upstairs folks while one of his men (often Inspector Fox) interviews the maids, the butler and the rest of the downstairs staff. Not only do servants defer but often the greatest supporters of the class system are members of the “peasantry” whose adherence to an outdated caste system allows for others (their betters) to be protected against that system being breached while presenting themselves as enlightened and even egalitarian.

S. S. Van Dine and Ellery Queen can be argued to have been writing the American equivalent of the cozy, although in their cases this is masked by the fact that they set their murders in New York and present their detectives as world traveled and erudite. Make no mistake, though, these are cozies. In the world of Van Dine and Queen there is an attempt to transpose what the authors believe to be the English class system into the world of New York. The run-of-the-mill police officer in Queen\’s New York treat Ellery with such a degree of respect that one imagines them tugging their forelocks when reporting to him. The idea that any of the monied and well-connected witnesses in the early Queen books would not have called their lawyers immediately upon being detained and questioned by a man whose only authority is a “pass” written out for him by his father is laughable. The idea that no one in the police force or at city hall would direct charges of nepotism and incompetence toward Inspector Queen is similarly ludicrous. However in these books the reader is assured that in a United States much changed over the last few decades, by immigration as well as the farm boys who returned from war duty overseas only to see their families wiped out by the crash of 1929.

Philo Vance is an Americanized version of that stereotype in English fiction, the eclectic, erudite man of the upper class who travels the world, dabbles in a variety of subjects and has the money and connections to provide him access to the crime scenes. The author makes a point of emphasizing that Vance had acquired an accent while studying in England. Those who are merely police officers (as opposed to persons of private means) are described as differing physically, intellectually and even morally from Vance and his friends.

The New York of these American urban cozies seems far more like the moderate sized towns than many readers lived or grew up in. There are important families and, without doubt, those important families can exert pressure on the police. But this pressure isn’t presented as a form of corruption rather as the natural consequence of people being important and monied. The daughter of a rich man may be a “drug fiend”* but it isn’t portrayed as a form of inappropriate wielding of power and influence for the police to treat her differently than they would the daughter of a working class man.

Second, the structural issues of both Van Dine and Queen:

The further frustrating thing about the Ellery Queen novels arose from their very structure. The original conceit is that they are written, years after the actual occurrences by a friend who had not witnessed the actual cases. The manuscripts are supposedly based on the notes that Ellery kept of the cases and from the clippings he and his father kept from contemporary coverage. It thus makes no sense for the writer to not “open up” the mind of Queen throughout the book. Why is the reader kept ignorant of Ellery’s deductions and some of the information he has until the final unfolding of the criminal? The authors may have felt that if the reader was aware of everything Ellery thought and witnessed the reader would not be attempting to solve the problem themselves they would be witnessing Ellery solving it. The books themselves are set up with the premise that at a certain point the reader has all the information necessary to deduce who “did it” and they are invited to work it out for themselves before turning the page. From that point on the reader is supposed to have a front row seat as Ellery demonstrates his superior abilities to deduce.

This structure/conceit will be dropped over time. The problem that the authors face, the difficulty of presented someone as having an outstanding deductive brain and giving that person reasonable access to the information, sites and people necessary to solve the crime remained. Reading these books underlines the brilliance of the formula that Rex Stout devised for his Nero Wolfe books where it is Archie Goodwin’s POV that is presented to the reader and where much of the setup of many books involves giving Wolfe and Goodwin a reason to have the type of access given so unquestioningly to Ellery Queen and Philo Vance.

If you want to amuse yourself imagine the field day any defense lawyer would have with evidence collected by and witnesses interviewed by someone who was not a sworn officer of the court and not a member of the police force. Of course these books were written long before the birth of the CSI franchise and it is likely that few readers would have heard of the concept of “chain of custody” but certainly any adequate lawyer would be able to call into question evidence and information gathered by the son of the man whose job would be in question if someone was not arrested with due speed.

S. S. Van Dine’s alternative to access through nepotism is scarcely more palatable since his detective gains access to persons and places because of a private relationship with the DA. One imagines that defense lawyers would enjoy the opportunities this irregular relationship would give them to undermine any evidence Vance might have had access to and any statements made to witnesses in response to Vance’s questions.

In summary, both the Philo Vance and Ellery Queen series provided for their readers the same type of reassuring universe that the English cozies did for theirs and neither solve the problem of how to entwine a private detective into the world of the police procedural.

* Drug Fiend is the authors term not mine. The demonization of drug taking, including misleading descriptions of its symptoms has a long history in American crime fiction.

The final picks are in–the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and the Senate have each made their 3 picks for the 12 member \”supercommittee\” that will determine which Americans bear the brunt of the \”sacrifices\” to come.

Among those 12 there is one woman, one African-American and one Hispanic.

How does the diversity of the committee compare to that of the American population? Less than 9 percent of the committee is female, African-American or Hispanic while 51% of Americans are female, 16% are Hispanic and 13% are African-Americans.

One can argue (and indeed there are people arguing this right now) that women, African-Americans and Hispanics have less experience in these kind of leadership positions. This is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy because as long as the only people we name to leadership positions are people who have already been named to leadership positions then only the kind of people who in the past were given an opportunity to serve in such positions will in the future be deemed to have enough experience to be named to such positions.

This argument, however, avoids the key question \”what type of experience are these people supposed to be calling on?\” Surely the people who are tasked with deciding \”where to cut the budget / government programs\” should be people who have some degree of experience with the impact of the budget cuts / government programs.

To give a real world example. One of the college buildings in which I taught was gutted, rewired and repainted. While inspecting the building one day with one of the \”important people with experience, training and credentials\” I pointed to one of the emergency fire alarms on the wall. \”What am I supposed to do with that?\” I asked. \”Pull the handle in case of fire\” he smirked back at me. \”And how am I supposed to do that?\” I asked, walking over and reaching up my arm. The handle was several inches (about 5 centimeters) above my outreaching fingers.

[Yes, for those who wonder, that was against code — the point is that not a single one of the men who had inspected the building had noticed it.]

One of the most basic concepts that underlies the push towards diversity is that those who are not part of a group (women, short people, parents, African-Americans, people who use canes, diabetics…..) tend to be unaware of how things will impact that particular group of people.

Sometimes the results of having one group of people make decisions that will have an effect of a group to which they do not belong can be almost laughable—as happened the year in which the committee who decided when the grades were due at a particular college had no overlap with the committee who decided when exams would be held. This resulted in professors being informed that the grades that semester were due before the final exams had been written.

It is not laughable when the people who decide what government program will be cut are not the people who may not be able to pay the rent or the people who may not be able to feed their children or may not be able to get health care or may lose their pensions.

I am not sure whether of not \”the fix is in\” but I am sure that great injustices will arise from the decisions made by this group of people. Unintended consequences can be just as cruel and lethal as intended ones.

The French Powder Mystery by Ellery Queen (1930)

As I read this book I found myself asking several questions:

Why did The French Powder Mystery open not with the crime or the lead-up to the crime but rather with both Queens and a number of police officers complaining about the officiousness and meddlesomeness of the new police commissioner; why were Ellery\’s \”brilliant insights\” so mundane; why were Ellery\’s mundane insights repeated frequently and at length; why were the \”regular police\” so painfully inadequate at even the most routine aspects of their job; and finally why was Ellery, a complete outsider to the police, allowed such privileged access to crime scenes and witnesses often without any official oversight at all?

By the time I finished this book I had arrived at the following answers:

Why did The French Powder Mystery open not with the crime or the lead-up to the crime but rather with both Queen’s and a number of police officers complaining about the officiousness and meddlesomeness of the new police commissioner?

By situating the police commissioner as at least troublesome and perhaps an actual antagonist to the regular police force it makes it reasonable to the reader (and to the police in the story) that Ellery withholds clues from the police commissioner and from any other member of the police force who might pass on information to the commissioner. In fact Ellery actually removes evidence from one possible crime scene and in another case sends evidence to an analyst with specific instructions not to let the commissioner know about the result of his tests.

Why were Ellery\’s \”brilliant insights\” so mundane?

I am torn in my answer to this question. In part, this “mundaneness” may be due to the fact that the authors wanted to have their literary cake and eat it too — that is, they wanted the case to look difficult enough to justify calling in Inspector Queen and his son as well as the intervention of the police commissioner. The authors also want the clues to be obvious enough, or at least understandable enough, that the reader immediately sides with Ellery rather than with his doubters.

Why were Ellery\’s mundane insights repeated frequently and at length

Perhaps the authors thought some members of the audience wouldn’t get them the first time. Perhaps the authors thought that some of the members of the audience were reading the book in a fragmented way and therefore needed to be frequently reminded about what just happened. Perhaps the authors thought (or the authors thought that the audience thought) that that was the way “really educated” people talked–certainly S. S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance also falls prey to the same tendency to speak repetitively and at great length. Perhaps the authors were getting paid by the word or the page. Or perhaps without the repetition it would have been clear that the authors had chosen to write a novel length short story.

Why were the \”regular police\” so painfully inadequate at even the most routine aspects of their job?

Authorial laziness? Ellery\’s brilliance is established by his ability to outperform those around him. The more inadequate those around him are the more brilliant Ellery will appear to be. One might also suspect that the authors were themselves rather unaware of routine police procedures and may even have depended on other authors (all of whom also tended to show the police as inadequate) for their information as to how the police functioned. The inability of the police also makes Inspector Queen’s dependence on his son look less like unacceptable.

Why was Ellery, a complete outsider to the police, allowed such privileged access to crime scenes and witnesses often without any official oversight at all?

The only “in universe” explanation I can think of is nepotism. The “our world” answer is that it is the authors response to the problem faced by every writer who has as their detective someone who is not a member of the police force. Some authors, notably Conan Doyle, have their detectives either hired by people who are involved as victims, witnesses or suspects or asked to consult by the police themselves. Others, such as Rex Stout and Dashiell Hammett, had their detectives work, professionally, as private investigators. Every author needs to find a reason to have their detective on the scene of the crime. Ellery Queen, the writers, choose to have Ellery Queen, their detective, given as much access to the crime and witnesses as would a police officer without being limited by the rule of law as to what he could do and say.

The fact that all of these questions arose in my mind while reading this book, as indeed did the answers I have suggested, indicates the weakness of this particular mystery. So far neither the first nor the second Ellery Queen novels have done much to demonstrate to me why this particular fictional detective was so popular although both do highlight the nature of the audience the books appealed to at the time they were first published.

Rating: 1-1/2 stars