In fiction, of course. The answer today at mainecrimewriters.com
Let me know what you think about my theory.

Hello all. Greetings on this sunny Maine morning. Hope you had a good 4th, fun times, survived with all of your fingers.

A bit of news from this neck of the woods: I’m joining up with a half-dozen other Maine-based crime/mystery writers for a group blog site. More to come shortly (who, what, when, where, why) but I can say now that I’m looking forward to reading their posts and readers’ reactions. It’s a great mix from various parts of the genre. I think you’ll enjoy.

I’ll still be writing here (I spout off too much for the thrice-monthly schedule) but this will be a fun give and take. I’ll tell you more asap.

OK, sorry if I’m inflicting my bird stories on you all. But I’ve got to follow up on  my last post on the robins and their travails.

There was a ruckus around the nest in the lilacs at the end of the barn on Sunday. I knew there were at least one baby in there, figured one of our cats had mustered up the energy to climb the branches and take a peek. So I went out to do some wildlife police action. Too late.

A merlin (AKA pigeon hawk) was on the ground with the last fledgling. Robins were in flinging themselves at the hawk, which, when I came around the corner, flew up into a nearby ash tree. It was followed by the robins and within a minutes, every bird within earshot. Orioles, catbirds, blue jays, redstarts, nuthatches, cardinals, and the robins, all divebombing the hawk. The hawk wasn’t flustered. He or she just kept plucking and eating, feathers flying, birds swooping and calling, and then the hawk took off, flew over the house with the robin in its talons, the rest of the birds following like  swarm of bees.

The robins’ nest was on the ground at the base of the lilac. It was quiet at that end of the barn. All the careful nest tending was for naught. It was like some rampaging tribe had blown through, killed the children and old people, burned the shack, marched on.

So anyway, all of this just reinforces my belief that the successful life is one that, through pure luck, is spared any of the myriad random calamities that can befall us. If you’re one of the lucky ones, give thanks.

That’s all the bird news for today. Tomorrow it’s back to people. And crime. And mystery novels. And elusive justice.

Last night, my shooting buddy Chuck B and I went up to the back field with a pistol and a hundred rounds.

Within the hour, we’d had our bag limit of PBR cans.

Why I love this neck of the woods.

Attention writer types! Thought you might want to know about the Crime Bake conference coming up in November near Boston. I mention it now because it’s more than 80 percent full already. I’m doing a workshop, talking on a panel. One of many writers from around the country who will be there to talk about mystery/crime writing. Check out the website: http://www.crimebake.org

Now back to work on McMorrow No. 10. …

I don’t know where Gerry Boyle is. On holiday? Off keeping track of sister Sue? Because I keep having to do his job, which is finding undiscovered musical talent, usually from the unmined towns and cities of the UK. I mean, it’s not like I have nothing else to do. I have to write books! I have a living to make.

Well, somebody’s got to do it. Steven Tyler, take a break.

I’ve recently heard from a few of the old faithful. The Purple Doves from Scotland, with their new single “No Rifle.” Rock on, mates. And Stevie Rockstar, also from Scotland. Always good ripping riffs from Stevie and the boys.

Last but certainly not least is Stuart Carr from London, who actually is pretty successful in the UK as as singer/songwriter with a studio there. He sent a nice note:

Hi Gerry,

I would like to introduce myself.

I am a singer/songwriter for Rollover Studios in London where many hits have been written & produced i.e. Peter Andre & Stephen Gately’s single, & we have released a song, by me the artist, that we wrote especially for Rhydian of X factor fame, once he had visited our studios.
I attach the song called ‘Silence Says It All’ & a PR that explains how I met Rhydian & how he wanted to work with us once he met the hit team at our studios.

This proved they just genuinely liked the song as I am unknown & now I want to take my artist career further & require a label like yours to make this come to fruition.

Stuart sent along his new single, “Strong,” in which he sings, and it’s pretty darn good. Pop sort of tune, uplifting, inspiring. And he has a heck of a nice voice, Stuart does. Very smooth, good range. He’s been on BBC2, seen some success. He also sent along his cover of Barry Manilow’s Somewhere In The Night Nice job, Stuart. Really. I mean, if you were driving along and this came on the radio, you’d probably reach over and turn it up, sit back and cruise.

So like I said to Stevie and my good friends The Purple Doves, I’m not the Gerry Boyle they were looking for but I’ll do what I can. I mean, we’re all out there hustling, looking for that big break. I told Stuart that and he was very nice about it, said if I ever needed music for a movie of one of my books, just ring him up. Which I just may. Who knows?

So if you Googled Gerry Boyle and you were looking for the Gerry Boyle who is on holiday and I’m getting all his e-mail, well, make yourself at home. Read some of what I have up here on the site. I write crime novels, you know? You can get ‘em on Amazon UK. But you need some lyrics? Hey, I could try my hand at that. And you’re looking for musicians, singers? Hey, I know a whole bunch of ‘em.

Last week I wrote here about Krista Dittmeyer, the 20-year-old waitress whose body was found in a pond in New Hampshire, not far from where her car was found, her 14-month-old daughter still strapped in the back seat. This week police arrested three men, including one Anthony Papile, 28, charged with murder. Also charged was a guy named Michael Petelis, a friend of Dittmeyer’s boyfriend and father of her child. Petelis reportedly had pledged to look out for Dittmeyer while the boyfriend was doing two years for selling cocaine. Instead, police say, Petelis lured Dittmeyer to New Hampshire where Papile bludgeoned her with a mallet, bound her with duct tape, and, with Petelis and a third friend,  dumped her in a pond.The motive, according to the detectives: Dittmeyer had drugs and cash. The three guys divided the stuff up after the killing.

This news has unleashed an outpouring of anger and disbelief. That Dittmeyer could be dealing drugs. That Papile could kill anyone, much less this young woman. That any of this could have happened. Read the accounts from friends and family of the victim (I’ve been following the stories written by David Hench and Ann Kim in the Portland Press Herald) and the alleged perpetrators and you would think that aliens had taken over their bodies, turning good, normal, loving people into something very evil.

Pretty to think so.

The truth, as is almost always the case, is somewhere in between. Dittmeyer probably was a nice enough young woman a lot of the time, maybe in her own way a decent mom. But if she was dealing drugs, as the police account implies, then she was most likely using drugs, and drugs slowly but surely skew your judgment. They involve you with people whose judgment is equally messed up. You don’t see all the cocaine, oxycodone, crystal meth as bad things. You and the people around you see them as a commodity, something you need to function, like coffee. Eventually the drugs, the money associated with them, and the people drawn to that world—damaged, emotionally off-kilter— become an explosive mix. A very young woman ends up dead. If convicted, the three guys go off to prison, where they will watch TV, work in the laundry, watch their backs. The rest of us shake our heads, say good riddance to dirtbags, and very quickly forget they ever existed.

This is a real-life shame, of course. but I bring it up here because the whole crew could have stepped out of one of my books. In fact, for the past few months I’ve been writing a character named Beth. She got into drugs when she was seventeen, through her boyfriend Alphonse. He’s in prison for dealing heroin but he was around long enough for Beth to have their son Racket (the name’s another story). Beth is using so much, hanging with a bunch of other drug users, that the state takes the baby away. The state worker is Roxanne. Roxanne actually felt sorry for Beth, whose life has been a series of wrong turns.

A year goes by. Two. And then something very terrible happens. To all concerned.

This book will come out in 2012. I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to turn out. But I do know that working with Jack and Roxanne and Clair has taught me that people are a mix of good and bad, smart and dumb, lucky and unlucky. The ones with the worst luck end up like Krista Dittmeyer, who by most accounts took one wrong turn too many.

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong people.