Alistair MacLean and The Human Cost of War

by Barbara D'Amato


I was reminded of Alistair MacLean a few weeks ago when the Thrillerwriters put out a query for suggestions for naming their awards after a writer in the field. I doubt that they will name them after MacLean. He’s not remembered much anymore.

Which is a horrible loss to readers. I was reminded of him again last week when Patti Abbott asked me to come up with a novel for her blog Pattinase’s Forgottten Books.

HMS ULYSSES [1955] was the first novel Alistair MacLean wrote, and it’s a remarkable achievement. He had many later successes among twenty-eight novels—The Guns of Navarone, The Satan Bug, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Breakheart Pass, Goodbye California, When Eight Bells Toll, and many more. Many were made into movies, but HMS Ulysses remains his very best.

MacLean had served in the Royal Navy from 1941 through the end of the war, as Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Torpedo Operator, and saw action in the north Atlantic, escorting carrier groups in operations against targets in the arctic and off the coast of Norway, later in the Mediterranean for the invasion of France and after that in the Far East, in Burma, Maylaya, and Sumatra. His brother Ian, who contributed data for his books, was a Master Mariner.

HMS Ulysses throbs with authenticity. I read it at least twenty-five years ago and it still produces a deep chill when I think of it. Not an easy book, often grim, always real, it is the tale of a light cruiser, put to sea to guard an important convoy heading for Murmansk. The convoy runs into crisis after crisis--German warships, an arctic storm, attacks from U-boats beneath, and from the Luftwaffe overhead. Slowly thirty-two ships are reduced to five. Then the Ulysses is called on to do the impossible--

As a depiction of the human cost of war, HMS Ulysses has never been surpassed. Critics have ranked it with The Cruel Sea [Monsarrat] and The Caine Mutiny [Wouk], but I think in open-eyed, unsparing truth, as well as sheer suspense, it is superior to both.

This is a good time to be thinking about the cost of war. So my question is—what war novels have made an impact on you?

Marcus is a Hack

by Marcus Sakey

Hey all, I was up on the roster for today, but the last week or so has really gotten away from me. So instead of a, you know, half-intelligent post, I offer you these questions:

1. The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?
2. What's the best book you've read in the last couple of months?
3. Have you seen Firefly? If not, why not? What the hell is wrong with you?
4. What's the book you're most looking forward to?
5. What's your favorite part of summer?

My answers are below--hope you'll join me.

Take the $ and smile

by Michael Dymmoch

In the late ‘80s, I had an idea for a movie I thought would be perfect for Sean Connery. I didn’t know anyone who knew Sean Connery, or anyone else in Hollywood. I’d never written anything longer than a short story or had anything published but bad poetry. Because I had no clue about how to get my idea to Mr. Connery (or if he’d be interested if I did), I went to the library and took out books on screen writing. I followed the directions and wrote my idea into a screenplay. I even lucked out and got someone in Hollywood to read it. When he called me to discuss it, he gushed about what a great writer I was.

But ...

Maybe I could rewrite the script to make it more like Back to the Future or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. And why not call him after the holidays to discuss it?

I never called. Green as I was, I realized it would be easier to write another story from scratch than to rewrite my story to fit his ideas. Eventually I novelized the screen play; finally published it, The Cymry Ring, in 2006. (And I have a rewritten script available if anyone’s interested, though Mr. Connery is now too old to play the lead.)

Today I know people in Hollywood, though it isn’t any less crazy. And it’s no easier to get a story made into a movie. Everyone involved wants to make his contribution. People whose only qualification for writing is that they watch movies and have read Syd Field’s book want to tell the writer how to improve the script. Everything has to be like something else. Only different.

It’s all about the story. But...

Like publishers, movie companies have been bought up by international conglomerates. Except for indies—financed by indie film makers, passionate fans, and dentists—movies are made today by For-Ginourmous-Profit corporations, that don’t care if a movie makes sense as long as it makes money. And American audiences want circuses and happy outcomes. Very few writers have the skill to pull off a deus ex machina ending that works. (Neil Jordan comes to mind.) Writers have to know this to make it in film. (So if you want your book on the screen, exactly as you wrote it, you'll probably have to film it yourself.)

For novelists, adapting our own work is hard. Cutting a 300+ page novel into a 95-110 page screenplay—without gutting the story—is an art-form in itself. Best selling author and screenwriter Lee Childs has said he doesn’t want to adapt his own books. (And he gets hired to fix other writer’s scripts.)

Novelists realize the Moody Blues were right: Thinking is the best way to travel. And the cheapest. Actors are expensive, especially when they have speaking parts and box office draw. And car chases really co$t. Novelists don’t have to get permission to write a shoot-out in a public place. Or worry about crowd control, collateral injuries, lawsuits... Or idiots wandering through the scene demanding autographs.

We novelists don’t want anyone tampering with our characters or stories, but we don’t have to worry about convincing a bankable star or competent director to sign on. Even when the characters have minds of their own, we don’t have to settle disputes about who gets top billing, or think about whether the weather will cooperate or who’s going to pay the caterer and that long list of people named in the credits.

One of my books has been optioned; I wrote the SP. At the request of the producer, I’ve eliminated characters, added a chase, and blown up a boat (or maybe it’ll be a car if the movie gets filmed in winter). And the producer's indicated he wants the villain to have a larger role. He has his reasons. And they’re good ones from his point of view. Maybe the movie will never be made. Maybe a studio will buy the rights and hire a “real” screenwriter to rewrite it. And if they change everything but the title, I won’t care. They’re not gonna change my novel.

So I’ll cash the check and wish them luck. I’ll take the money and smile.

Dispatches from Thrillerfest . . .

by Sean Chercover

Coming at you from Thrillerfest in New York. I didn't sign up for Craftfest, but you can read David Montgomery's post about a Joseph Finder session he attended, and you'll get a good idea of what is covered in these sessions.

Speaking of Montgomery ... the thing I love about crime fiction conventions is not so much the panels and sessions (although they're fun too) but the time spent (usually in the bar) with like-minded people. Sharing joys and frustrations and war stories with other writers ... talking with readers about our favorite books and authors ... talking about the industry, where it is now and where it might be heading, with agents and editors and publishers.

The atmosphere at these conferences is intense, and deep friendships are formed here. And if you remember to listen a little more than you talk, you can also learn a hell of a lot.

If you've never been to a crime fiction conference, I urge you to give it a try. Sign up for Bouchercon (Oct 9-12, Baltimore). Do it now. You won't be sorry.

One of the coolest things that can happen at these conferences is, you might see a good friend win an award. The Strand Magazine gave out its awards at a lovely cocktail reception the other night, and our own Marcus Sakey took home the award for Best First Novel.

That was a real thrill.

Now I'm off ... running back down to the hotel for the next round of fun. Hope to see y'all in Baltimore.

-Sean
P.S. If you're here at T'fest, stop by the Ballroom Foyer A at 3pm today. I'll be giving away signed ARCs of TRIGGER CITY. Free books!

Let Me Count The Ways...

by Libby Hellmann

When I began writing crime fiction, I remember lots of chatter about the perfect murder weapon. The undetected murder. The exotic substance that couldn’t be identified. I heard about poisons like
oleander, foxglove, arsenic, and -- moving up the hazardous bio-chemical chain -- cyanide, sarin, and anthrax.
Indeed, I flirted with ricin in one of my novels. I remember hearing the old saw about the perfect murder weapon being a sharp icicle and thinking it was pretty clever.

However, the more I write, the more the manner of death has become a distraction. I don’t really care how someone is killed. The fact that they're alive one moment and aren't the next is enough. The fact that a killer used what he or she thought was an undetectable poison (which, btw, given enough time and the right equipment toxicologists say is mostly a myth) is less compelling than the killer’s character and motivation: the passion or fear or hatred or greed that drove him or her to commit murder.

In fact, all the falderal about intricate death scenarios boils down to this: (NB: The first 15 seconds are all you need to watch)



There’s something else, too. Murder is a heinous act. It’s perhaps the most profane act one human can perform on another. Because I don’t treat it lightly, I’m finding it more difficult to appreciate humorous crime fiction these days. I’m not talking about black humor – that’s something I think we all embrace when trying to deal with the unacceptable. What I’m talking about are the bouncy, breezy stories that show an otherwise normal person solving crimes on their lunch hour or summer vacation.

I’m sure they’re done with the best intentions – to emphasize the counterpoint between the gravity of murder and the joy of life. Indeed, I’ve written some myself. My amateur sleuth, Ellie Foreman, has a dry sense of humor and isn’t afraid to be foolish. Still, I find I’m less willing to trot her out these days. Maybe it’s because I’m getting to an age where life seems more precious every day. Maybe it’s because friends are being struck down long before their time. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t feel right to deal with a death which could have been avoided and then giggle about it. That’s probably why Georgia Davis appeared.

But enough from my end. What do you think? Does the manner of death make a difference in crime fiction? What about humor? How far can you take it? Am I just being cranky?

I'm Embarrassed To Admit It Hit the Soft Spot In My Heart

By Kevin Guilfoile

Last week the family--my brothers and sisters and all our kids and my mom and dad--was together at my brother's house south of Boston. It was a leisurely five days of beach and pool and good food and wine that passed way too quickly.

Friday night we were in the front yard watching a neighbor's blatantly illegal fireworks display burst in magnificent colors over the treeline and my sister-in-law was asking about book suggestions for her 13-year-old daughter, a voracious and fairly sophisticated reader, especially of mysteries, who is ready to graduate to adult fiction. "But not too adult," said my brother's wife, who has read my own probably-inappropriate-for-the-purposes-of-this-conversation novel.

I suggested Agatha Christie, who was one of my first mystery loves. And To Kill a Mockingbird, which everyone should read for pleasure before some teacher forces her to. I had a handful of others, but I was surprised how quickly my well of recommendation dried up. Many books I just couldn't remember clearly enough. Was I sure they were mostly void of explicit sex and gratuitous violence and themes that a 13-year-old--even, as I said, a sophisticated one--isn't quite ready for?

It was a disturbing brain cramp.

So I pose the question to the Outfit jury. What grown-up suspense novels can you recommend to a sophisticated young reader who has already developed the wonderful, lifetime habit of reading? What books have you recommended to your own kids? Your own nieces and nephews?

The 4th of July

July 4. An emotional holiday for most Americans, stirring lots of different emotions. In my family, it was the one holiday where my parents didn’t fight. My father would recount for us the history of the Revolutionary War, my mother would make the custard for ice cream; we’d all take part in freezing it in the hand-turned ice cream maker, and we’d have a picnic supper with family and friends. We’d listen to my folks’ old 78’s of Paul Robeson singing “” and then set off fireworks.

These days, it’s harder to feel celebratory. The Supremes have decided that the only part of the Bill of Rights worth keeping and expanding is the 2nd Amendment. Yes! We can all carry handguns! We can create the armed state so many Americans have dreamed of for so long. Our rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unwarranted search, our rights to privacy and equal protection under the laws are sorely diminished, but I guess we can all now shoot our way out of trouble.

And speaking of shooting our way out of trouble, with oil markets in turmoil, with the economy tanking, with 60,000 Iraqi soldiers dead or wounded and 30,000 U.S. soldiers in the same sad state, with the military unable to meet recruitment targets except by admitting gang members and the functionally illiterate, the U.S. is once more on the brink of war with Iran.

A year ago, Dick Cheney wanted desperately to start bombing Iran, but the Joint Chiefs told him the U.S. didn’t have the resources to carry on the war that would ensue. Now, he’s rattling the cage again. When Congress gets back from its July 4 recess, members will vote on Joint Resolution 362, urging Bush to use all means to stop Iran from doing whatever it’s doing. Iran may be a worrying Middle East threat, but do we really want to blow up the whole Middle East and our own people and economy in the process? Give it some thought. If you want to phone or fax your representative, this handy website gives their names and numbers.

Have a happy 4th. Eat ice cream. Enjoy your gun. Don’t say anything on the phone you don’t want Cheney to hear.

Sara Paretsky

What the--? A rant.

by Barbara D'Amato


Nobody says “What the--?” unless they’re trying to be funny. If you walk into your home and find that somebody has burgled it, then petulantly scattered taco sauce on your rug, you don’t say “What the--?” You may say “What the hell?” or something even saltier.

My guess is that “What the—“ came into the language several decades ago from the comic books. My older boy went through a stage of saying it, to be funny, when he was a pre-teen. He had been reading a whole lot of Mad Magazine. But I frequently see it written perfectly seriously in crime novels. It isn’t convincing. It isn’t the way real people talk, and it’s lazy writing.

Another example of using comic book talk is “The diamond! Where is it?” People don’t talk that way. They say, “Where’s the bloody diamond?” If the hero is being carried off into the sunset by a giant firebird, does the girlfriend say, “The code ring! Drop it,” or “Drop the ring!” But this construction is being used in fiction a lot.

I’m also seeing “Well” used unconvincingly. One character says to another, “I went to the store and – well—I forgot the milk.”

And then there’s this dialogue:

“Hi, Mary. How are you?”
“Just fine, John You?”
“Oh, not bad, Mary. I can’t complain.”

I can complain, however. This too is lazy writing. The author is trying – on the cheap -- to remind the reader who these people are without going to all the work of characterizing them by what they say or how they say it. Or even a dollop of description.

It gets worse. Like this:

“I’ve been thinking, John. Ever since we were married eighteen months ago in Grand Rapids Michigan, on that lovely Saturday afternoon, your mother has been trying to drive us apart.”

“That’s not quite fair, Mary. Since she broke her leg last week falling over your hula hoop, she’s been a bit testy.”

The author is trying to avoid telling the reader what’s going on and must believe that dialogue like this is showing not telling. Telling would be a whole lot better.

I guess the thing that bothers me as a reader about this kind of thing is that I can’t see through it to the story. It screams “Heeeere’s writing!”

If you’ve got similar pet peeves, send them in. I’m making a collection.

Mail Order Author

by Marcus Sakey

So if you'll will forgive me a moment of self-promotion, I've got some happy news. My new book, GOOD PEOPLE, comes out August 14th. It's my fave thus far, and the early reviews have been very generous:

"Masterful...tops his previous two novels…stellar."
- Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"Gleefully dread-filled and mercilessly tense, GOOD PEOPLE
moves with the speed of something fired from a sawed-off."
- Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of MYSTIC RIVER

"A killer of a book. Magnificent."
- Ken Bruen, Edgar-nominated author of PRIEST

"Dark, disturbing, and timely...Marcus Sakey is a prodigious talent."
- Laura Lippman, bestselling author of ANOTHER THING TO FALL

"GOOD PEOPLE scared the crap out of me."
- Julia Spencer-Fleming, Edgar-nominated author of I SHALL NOT WANT

You can read an excerpt on my website, if you're interested.

Meanwhile, I've got a fun opportunity. I'm planning my tour schedule, and while a lot of it is figured out, I want to make sure that I go beyond the usual suspects. So here's the deal—if you're interested in me coming to your area, let me know. I'll visit the place that gets the most votes. Not only that, but wherever it is, I'm taking everyone who attends out for drinks afterwards.

You can either post here or email me with the subject "Have a signing here" and your vote will be counted. Plus, if you're pretty sure you can rope in some other people to join, tell me how many and I'll count them as votes as well.

Those of you in Chicago, have no fear--I'll be all over the place, probably overstaying my welcome.

Thanks, folks! Looking forward to hearing from you.

Jerry Rodriguez . . .

by Sean Chercover

I write this with a heavy heart. I've been away for a week, just returned to learn that Brooklyn author Jerry Rodriguez has died at 46.

Jerry and I met at the Crimespree party at Bouchercon in Madison a couple of years ago. We saw eye-to-eye on a lot of things, bonded the way you do at such conferences, drank together and shared some laughs. After the conference, we kept in touch by email, and eventually telephone.

We liked each other's work and agreed to trade galleys, and he recently sent me the galley for REVENGE TANGO, the second book in his Nick Esperanza series (follow-up to THE DEVIL'S MAMBO). When I get my galleys for Trigger City in a week or so, the joy of that will be somewhat dimmed by the fact that one was reserved for Jerry.

Jerry Rodriguez was a true renaissance man - author of noir fiction, playwright and stage director, screenwriter and film director . . . and more. With all that, he still made time to do good works in the community, helping the homeless, HIV/AIDS patients, and drug addicts at risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.

Not enough? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention . . . he did all this - with good humor and a sense of gratitude - while also battling cancer ... undergoing multiple rounds of chemo - carrying on that battle for the last seven years of his life.

He will be missed.

Learn more about Jerry by visiting his website and his MySpace page, and reading the NY Daily News article, and Sarah's post.

Then go out and buy his books.

Don’t lose it. Use it!

by Michael Dymmoch

Sunday evening I was driving up Halsted when my left front tire started making an unfamiliar sound and my car started tracking to the left. I pulled into a CTA bus turnaround to investigate and discovered the tire was flat. Damn! As it happened, I hadn’t had a flat since I bought the car—three years ago. And I hadn’t checked recently to see if the spare was good. Plus I had a trunk full of assorted junk that had to be removed to get to the spare.

Fortunately, it had stopped raining, and I had an hour of daylight. So I shifted all the junk to the front and back seats and got out the spare and the jack and the owner’s manual. None of the CTA drivers who had to drive around me called the cops. A very nice drywall salesman stopped to offer assistance. In a short time I was back on the road.

As a driver, I was really bummed. Flat tires are a waste of time and money. Sometimes they can be life threatening.

As a writer, I was happy to be reminded that anything you do or encounter can be used—something I learned when I had a job with a narcissistic supervisor. Nothing I ever did was good enough for the guy. He was a genius at making every thing my fault. The only time he ever listened was when I prefaced my remarks with, “I spoke to an attorney.”

But he taught me to be a better writer. At some point, I started to take notes, to record what he said, and how it made me feel. When I really worked at finding the words to make a reader feel what I felt, I forgot to be hurt. Or angry.

Conflict is a bitch in life, but it’s the life force of fiction. So when you encounter it, use it. Get out a pen or your pocket computer and record the details. Not just the facts of the event, not just what was said, but what it felt like. What did the guy who got in your face say? What would you have said to him if only you could think faster? Was he scary or just infuriating? What did he smell like? What did he look like? How was he dressed? What was he driving? Why does he behave like that? (He’s just a jerk isn’t an adequate answer.) Be precise. Make your reader feel your rage and all the physical sensations that go with it.

Years ago I was driving a bus through a construction zone. One of the flaggers was busy yakking with his buddy, not paying attention to traffic. Suddenly he looked up to find a 47-foot bus passing him two feet away. (This isn’t particularly close for a bus driver. Sometimes we have only inches of clearance.) The flagger was startled enough to use the c-word to express his displeasure. I laughed and kept driving. But if I’d been able to think faster, I might have stopped and asked if I’d scared him. Someday I’ll use that incident in a story. My protagonist will stop and ask. The flagger will probably have to defend his masculinity with an R-rated comeback. The whole thing may develop into a huge fight, maybe even a murder!

The act of recording a conflict, concentrating on the details, searching for the exact words to describe how you feel, may dissipate your anger and give you something you couldn’t have made up.

LAURA CALDWELL, GUEST BLOGGER

by Libby Hellmann

It’s summer and today is my birthday and I can’t think of a better present to myself than to travel to far away places, at least virtually. So please welcome Guest Blogger and Friend-of-the-Outfit Laura Caldwell. A Chicago trial attorney, law professor, and a wonderful romantic suspense author, Laura is amazingly talented, but her greatest talent might well have been snagging a month long trip to Rome. Be sure to check out her most recent book -- THE GOOD LIAR-- a real page-turner-- and her website.

And now, from a sidewalk café in Rome, heeerrre’s Laura. Saluti!


Ciao from Roma!

How lucky am I? I’ve spent the last few weeks teaching at the Rome campus of my alma mater, Loyola University, and now I get to step in and blog for the wonderful Libby Hellman. Happy Birthday, lady! And thanks to Sara, Barb, Michael, Marcus, Sean and Kevin for letting me hang with you guys.

I had great designs on writing lots while in Rome. But another professor who arrived before me had emailed, telling me that things still take a long time in Italy and cautioning me not to count on too many hours at the writing desk.

So I decided to try and get my words done while still enjoying la dolce vita. One day I wrote at the Piazza Barberini, a glass of Greco de Tufo wine in front of me on a yellow linened table.
The Italians don’t sit at cafes or coffee shops working on laptops the way we do, so I went back to my roots—good, old fashioned paper. I wrote my first book, Burning the Map, a book set partially in Rome, on a raft of yellow pads, then dictated it and had it typed. Now, I’m a straight-into-the-computer kind of girl and usually only scribble notes when my laptop isn’t around. Marcus Sakey, who I was lucky enough to tour with a few months ago, said that he sometimes breaks out the Mont Blanc when he’s a little stuck, and I agree—actual pen to paper can be motivating, inspiring something off the beaten path.

The ristorante I wrote at that day faced Via Veneto, a wide, stately avenue with regal apartamentos decorated with stone balconies and potted plants. At the Piazza Barberini, a hotel sat to one side. Its unimaginative brick front looked more like an American hotel, but around it were stuccoed buildings painted ochre and mustard, their windows and shutters thrown open. Taxis and scooters and the tiniest of cars zipped around the circular piazza and the fountain in the middle that looked like a large naked man on his knees. Perfecto!

For the first hour, I kept neglecting my notebook, gazing instead at the foot traffic. Rome is the perfect city for people-watching. The Roman women are gorgeous, and the men are strutting peacocks, masculine and yet dressed to perfection. And it’s always comforting to see another tourist pointing, wearing befuddled books, turning a map one way, then another and another.

I thought about the last two times I was in Rome—signing Italian versions of my books, Burning the Map and A Clean Slate. Reminding myself that there would be no more book signings, not with Sakey, not in Rome or anyplace else, if I didn’t get down to work, I dropped my attention to my notebook and started to write.

But then I ran out of wine. Somehow, in my pathetic, meager Italian, I managed to have a twenty minute conversation with the waiter about Italian whites. When he delivered my much debated glass, I finally got back to work.

My first mystery series—what we’re calling the Red Hot series—will be released in the summer of 2009. It features a sassy, red-headed lawyer named Izzy McNeil who keeps finding herself in loads of trouble. The first book, Red Hot Lies, is done. Ditto for the second, Red Blooded. But the third (anyone have a sizzling, suspenseful ‘red’ title?) needs to be done by the end of this year. Why not, I thought, send Izzy to Rome, at least for a little while?

I was a few paragraphs into a scene when I heard my name called. I looked up to see a Loyola alum and his wife, a couple who have recently moved from Chicago to Paris and have been spending time at Loyola of Rome. The Italian way requires inviting people you bump into for a glass of wine. Far be it from to ignore cultural tradition. They sat down, we talked, we watched the pedestrians, the waiter brought more wine.


I had recently read Sara Paretsky’s post about the fairly alarming trend of corruption (okay, I’m a lawyer, I’ll say alleged corruption) amongst Illinois governors), and I mentioned this to my friends. We began comparing and contrasting Italian politics with those in Chicago and Illinois.

Two and a half hours after I arrived, those few paragraphs were the only thing to show for my “writing time”. I said Ciao, Ciao, to my friends. I strolled over to Palazzo Barberini and gazed at the frescoed ceiling for the rest of the afternoon. I hadn’t scored a lot of pages, but at least I got the la dolce vita part right.

Lying On the Beach With My Back Burned Rare

By Kevin Guilfoile


It feels like one of those lazy Fridays when everyone is getting ready to blow out for somewhere else, and so it's appropriate that my one time employer and second family, Coudal Partners, has launched a new edition of Field Tested Books where a group of writers and bloggers and otherwise interesting people have written short essays about particular books they read in a particular place. Sometimes the reviews are about the appropriateness of the read (don't miss thriller writer Lori Andrews's story about reading The Journalist and the Murderer while sitting next to an actual murderer in New Orleans). Sometimes the stories are about inappropriate settings. Last time around I wrote about reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee's powerful account of the lives of depression-era sharecroppers, while on spring break in South Padre, Texas. In every case, the subject is how the environment in which we read is related to our experience of the book.

Back when I worked there, each of us made a big deal about selecting what books we would bring on vacations. There could have been days and days of debate on the subject and those discussions no doubt led to the project, which is in its fourth incarnation now. A nice feature of the page is that you can sort by reviewer or by book title or by place. And after three editions there are enough of them that you might want to check them out for suggestions before you head to the airport.

But how about you? As we look forward to the official start of summer tomorrow, what memorable experience have you had on the road with a good book?

What are the Odds?

Illinois has sent three governors to prison in the forty years I've lived here--Otto Kerner, Dan Walker and George Ryan. In Illinois it's always about money, not sex, and now that , a big Illinois fixer,has been found guilty, I'm wondering if Rod Blagojevich will become the fourth. Disclosure Notice: I voted for Walker and Ryan. I was too young to vote for Kerner at his final re-election campaign.

I wonder what the odds are? And how do I find out? I was in England during the NCAA tournament, and since I went to KU (go, Hawks!) I decided to bet on my boys. A friend who's a serious punter got her bookie to give me odds--7:2-- and I made me 22 pounds on the boyHawks. They won the day after I came home, so the money is sitting over there. And in April, I decided, DieHard Cubs fan that I am, to spend some of it on the Cubs. My friend's bookie is in a solo shop; he couldn't do pennant races, only the divisions and the Series. So I have 5 quid on the Cubs winning the Central Division, 5 on the World Series. The odds were 10:1 when I placed the bet, so if they come through for me, I'll have 50 pounds, which in today's money, is worth, I think $50,000. or maybe it's fifty million. I'm hopeful, but not optimistic--my first year with the Cubs was the year of the Miracle Mets. Realistic odds should have been more like a thousand to one. Still, I've put money on them this time; I care more. Want my bookie's name?