Tuesday, Aug. 17, 6:30 p.m. Bailey Library in Winthrop, Maine. Come on by. The agenda? A good chat.

Anyway, it’s Sunday night, a day of working on the barn, out in the boat, one eagle (immature), a stiff southeast wind, and a good chop. Weeds out the wimps.

And I’m thinking of this story I read in the Boston Globe a few days back. It’s about my current favorite subject—arson. If I told you why, I’d have to kill you. Just kidding.

But this story has been hanging with me for a few days. This guy in Roslindale, Jose Baez (no relation to Joan that I know of) gets picked up for torching places. Houses. A hair salon. An auto body shop. Cops say he had a beef with you, he came back later, lit you up. Or at least your business. Or your house. Cops say they suspected Mr. Baez of earlier arsons because anytime he had a disagreement, later that person’s property went up in flames. No fatalities, just property, but at least one guy had to jump out a second-story window.

So the cops  put a GPS on his car, and picked him up after he was at the scene of the latest of several fires, a house in Roslindale, Mass. I quote:  “Officials said they found several one-gallon Poland Spring bottles filled with gasoline in his car. He reeked of gasoline, they said. And he had a box of wooden matches in his pocket.”
Guilty? Plea bargain? Not yet. Now, I know we are all entitled to due process, and a defense lawyer has a responsibility to do everything in his or her power to get the client off, make sure you walk. But Poland Spring bottles filled with gasoline? A box of wooden matches? What was he doing out there? Helping backyard barbecuers during a rainstorm?

Enter Baez’ lawyer, William Fick, earning his keep, no doubt, and good for him. He says, and I quote the Globe, “the evidence against him in the fire on Monday is circumstantial.”

Well, I guess to hell is is. As in, nobody light a match!

Oh, it’s a great country, isn’t it? Many years ago, I wrote a newspaper column about a most amazing defendant. I don’t recall the crime but this guy is in court (I was there, too) and he is asked what he pleads and he says, “Guilty.” The judge says, “Are you sure you want to plead guilty?” and this guy says, “Yes, your honor. I did it.”

Well, heavens to Betsy, I almost fell off my bench. Guilty because you are guilty? Have this man’s sanity checked pronto and continue this case.

An exception to the rule that says nobody’s guilty of nothing until the jury comes back in.

Come to Winthrop, Maine, Tuesday night. We can talk about arson. And guilt. And I’ll talk about DAMAGED GOODS, in which one character is self-sentenced. Then we can talk about whatever you like.

Interesting story in the  New York Times last month about some pre-trial maneuvering in the case of the horrific Chesire, Connecticut triple homicide in 2007. Two total and utter dirtbag psychopaths, Stephen Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, are accused of murdering a mother and her teenage daughters and beating their dad in a home invasion in their idyllic small town. It was a horror movie come to life. Or was it a book plot?

Hayes’ lawyers (he was arrested near the scene and is about as guilty as you can get before the verdict is actually pronounced; trial begins Sept. 13) don’t want prosecutors to use a list of books that their client read in prison. Speculation is that the books might include In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the doc-novel about a similar crime in Kansas, or Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  I assume that the defense doesn’t want the book in evidence because it will show that Hayes had been planning to recreate the book crime for some time, that it wasn’t a robbery gone awry. My prediction: the lawyers will get paid; Hayes and Komisarjevsky eventually will be executed or die on death row. Small justice for the victims’ family and friends  but better than nothing.

But in the meantime, the legal tactic raises an interesting question. By creating fictional crimes, are authors somehow planting the seed for future crimes? By inventing bad guys are we helping to produce them in real life?

I think back to some of the villains that have come from my imagination. Fuller and Kelvin from the Brandon Blake novel Port City Shakedown, for example. Fuller is a sociopath with delusions of grandeur, at least when it comes to crime. Assault, extortion, kidnapping–Fuller is a schemer and if he has to kill you to make the scheme work, so be it. At one point, he’s trucking a kidnapping victim around in a suitcase. Confronted, his first impulse is to shoot the woman dead.

Could this happen in real life? I suppose, but a criminal-minded reader might want to read Port City Shakedown all the way to the end to see the payoff for this life of crime. (It ain’t pretty).

There are some gruesome crimes in fiction and film, of course. But most crime novels don’t glorify or glamorize the crime. When I create villains, it is with the express purpose of having my characters (Brandon Blake, Jack McMorrow, Clair Varney) defeat them in the end. In the world of my books, good defeats evil, or at least keeps it at bay. In this world, justice does prevail, or at least some form of justice. In order to create a world where good triumphs, you need some bad stuff for the forces of good to defeat.

I suppose that prison inmates reading my books might get an idea or two. They may even see themselves in my fictional criminals (Actually, I hope so). But I’d like to think that readers (incarcerated or not) will be inspired by my fictional heroes as well. When Jack and Clair get locked and loaded to defend someone helpless or vulnerable, when Brandon risks his own life to save another– maybe that will rub off somewhere.

Guys like Hayes and Komisarjevsky don’t need Stieg Larsson to inspire them to commit atrocities. These sorts of criminals have something missing inside, a lost piece of the puzzle that makes us human. They’re broken, for reasons of nature or nuture or both. They appear in crime fiction mostly to be shot down to reassure us that there is a world where people don’t get away with murder. Unfortunately, it’s a world we crime writers make up.

Thoughts on any of this? I’d love to have readers weigh in.

My next stop: Charles M. Bailey Library in Winthrop, Maine, in the lake district west of Augusta, Aug. 17, 6:30 p.m. The complete list is here, under events. Hope to see you along the way.

Made a run down the beautiful Kennebec River this week in Blood Vessel, starting out in Gardiner, south of Augusta, and ending a few miles below Bath, where Bath Iron Works is hard at work at some very large and lethal warships. Something reassuring about a big gray destroyer in this age of space-age weaponry.

We would have made the run to the river’s mouth but ran out of time and swung around just after we were passed by the Marine Patrol. The officers did not give chase.

Thoughts from the river:

* Spotted eleven bald eagles along the way, including two recently fledged, squabbling over lunch on a riverbank. You’ve got to like a place where the eagles outnumber the ospreys.

* Thirty years ago, this river was an open sewer, with paper mills, slaughterhouses, and everything in between dumping their waste in, letting it be carried to the sea. No more. Thanks to George Mitchell and the Clean Water Act, the Kennebec is clean and thriving. Striped bass, sturgeon, trout, alewives. People, too, swimming, diving, kayaking, sailing. A little good news if you need a break from BP.

* Marine Patrol is a very cool job. Big boats, twin-engines, guns on their hips.  I gotta get out with these guys (non-gender use). Another mystery series? Would you read it?

* Bath, Maine is a nice town. Pubs, boats, BIW, boats, the Maine Marine Museum, more boats. Life is good.

* Felt a little guilty running up the river at 30 mph when Benedict Arnold and his men had to slog in their overweight bateaux. Passing Swan Island, where he met with his generals, I wondered if they were still optimistic at that point, not knowing that the winter was closing in and disaster awaited in Quebec.

* Jack McMorrow loves a good news story; Brandon Blake loves to be on the water. Both are protagonists from my own heart.

Speaking of the water, I’m signing Saturday July 24, noon to 1 p.m. at the Bucksport Bay Festival in Bucksport, Maine.  Word has it that Linda Greenlaw, of sword boat fame, will be there, too.  I’m looking forward to meeting her. Come by and you can do the same.

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Anyone interested in knowing more about the source of inspiration for much of Robert B. Parker’s work  should read this story about Joan Parker and her life after Bob.

I’m off to Castine, Maine Tuesday night to speak at the Witherle Memorial Library’s Maine Writers Series. Castine is a beautiful town with a long and storied history (I’d rather be arriving by boat, as we have in the past). Hope to see some of you there. Castine is well worth the trip.

And don’t forget what I said about the Parker story. Is all fiction autobiographical? Perhaps.

As a Maine boater, I’d like to think that this review in Maine Boats & Harbors magazine, will prompt DAMAGED GOODS to be taken along on many a coastal cruise.

Nothing like a good book on good boat in a sheltered Maine harbor. Set the hook, make a drink (maybe a Boodles in memory of my hero, Travis McGee), and settle in. For that reason, this comment is one that warms my heart. Check it out. I especially appreciate the  kudos for my good friend, Clair. He’s a good man to have around, Clair is, especially when someone is trying to take you out.

This is the assessment of reviewer Carol Standish:

“He’s a Vietnam vet with more skills than any human being can use in a lifetime unless you’ve fought in Vietnam and live next door to Jack. In every book he gets progressively slower, quieter, more deliberate and more deadly.”

Any other Clair fans want to weigh in?

Once more, I’m struck by contrasts: on the lake this weekend, a snapping turtle snagging bait from fishermen casting from shore, the turtle waiting with his head held high out of the water like a dolphin at SeaWorld. Same place, same time, a loon swimming under a bridge beneath us, slicing through the water like a penguin. A beautiful sight on a summer night.

But the news story that has hung with me all weekend: three people stabbed to death at a house in the town of Amity, Maine, on the Canadian border. A man, his friend, the man’s 10-year-old son. The man in question said by his ex to be a dealer in prescription drugs, Oxycontin being a popular pastime in that particular neck of the woods. So a buyer in a town of 200 decides to rob the dealer? All the witnesses have to go? A young boy?

Life is good. And sometimes it’s not good at all. Wrong place, wrong time.

I’m writing, talking. Events coming up include the Sixth Annual Maine Summer Book Fair, now called Books in Boothbay. July 10, in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Come by. We’ll chat.

When DEADLINE was published there were  newspaper reviews. Now there are online reviews. To which do you give more weight?