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I will never read a normal novel I just can't I won't I mean I keep saying you know where's the body
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kill someone let's get out of here let's move this along Marilyn stazio has probably read more
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crime novels than anyone in the world she's tiny and unpretentious with a short white Bob and not much patience
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for chit chat since 1988 she's been the gatekeeper of crime Fiction with her twice monthly
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column and the New York Times book review how do you deal with unnecessary or Superfluous violence does it make you
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like a book less want to give it less attention I find it cheap [Music] or maybe I'm in your tour maybe I'm
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insensitive I don't know I think violence is fine it's it's what we're afraid of that's why
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we're reading it I think we like being frightened it's exciting it's been the same way I like horror movies I like you
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know alien I like science fiction I like monster movies I can't stand Godzilla but the rest of them are fine
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on the day we went to meet her in New York we walked from the Natural History Museum towards her apartment building
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and found her waiting for us on the sidewalk leaning against the wall with a cup of coffee and a newspaper she was
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wearing red Keds on the elevator ride up to her apartment she warned us that she
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didn't have an air conditioner ah we are in my apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan looking out on a gorgeous
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day it was a gorgeous day but it was also kind of hot she said there are only six humid days in New York each year and
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that we just happened to come on one of them how long have you lived in this apartment I've lived here forever since
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1971 actually it was a rent control Department which as anyone who has ever visited New York ought to know is worth
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its weight in gold so I have not budged since he sat up in front of an open window
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she's removed all of her screens because she likes to hang her feet out there was
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construction right outside ordinarily if that happened we'd asked to move to a quieter spot
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but the truth is we were pretty hot and needed all the air we could get so you might hear some loud noise in the
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background when you live in the same place for so long do you do you start to have
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routines and patterns and know the people that you see crossing the same time every day oh good I tried to break
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it up I try not to be so predictable but I can't help it I always sit at the same
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spots in the morning after I've had coffee and the same people come by and shoot the breeze and I guess it's the
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neighborliness you know I'm not going to fight it at this point I'd say hello to
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the babies I talk to the dogs and then I go inside and worked all day and look out the window like I'm looking out now
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how many books do you read a year I don't know a couple hundred all the way through but it's not so much how
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many books I actually wind up reading start to finish and then review there aren't that many of those books but it's
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how many I read like 50 pages in here's her system picks up every single book that's sent
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to her she reads a few pages and then decides whether to put it down or keep going
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she is a policy for first-time authors she'll give every single one at least 50 pages of her time and take notes on
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their style and then enter those notes into our Master database of authors have you ever had an author get mad at you oh
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I'm sure they're out there screaming at me right now but not to my face besides most of the reviews I write are
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positive reviews because that's part of my reviewing if I haven't reviewed your book chances are
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I've turned it down that's your review and I mean what do you not understand about no
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in her apartment all you see are books stacked on every surface and on the floor of the living room and dining room
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in her study she's got a beautiful collection of classic mystery novels shelved all the way up to the ceiling
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and also the galleys for the books she may or may not review you can look in here all you want
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so I've got August September October November December and January are under there too and then I have them lined up
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according to well this year possible review and then definite review and I line up the columns a couple in advance
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and everything is very organized I'm very organized but you just can't tell and there's no other
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place to put them because every other spot is taken up with books although the other day
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I did write to my editor I said I have nothing to read I was trying to figure out what to do
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for the next column and I looked around I said I don't know I don't like any of these things I have nothing to read and
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I have thousands of books here the British novelist GK Chesterton once wrote that the detective story is
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different from every other story in one important way the reader is only happy if he feels
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like a fool I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal foreign stasio grew up in Revere Massachusetts
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and when she was a kid she was always reading because she learned pretty quick that if she was reading her parents
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wouldn't make her do any chores I hated to do any kind of kitchen work hate hate hate and my mother used to say
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don't bother her she's reading and I learned oh that's the way out of this when you were
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little reading were you reading everything we were you reading mystery books what were you reading
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my case were always kind of dark the first thing I remember reading obsessively was the encyclopedia
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there I remember the picture of the two little princes in the tower King Edward and his brother
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in their black velvet suits it's a actually a very famous painting the painting depicts Edward V and Richard
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Duke of York when they're 12 and 9 years old in 1483 the brothers were being held in
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the Tower of London and they disappeared some say they were murdered by their Uncle so they could never challenge his
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right to the throne he was Richard III but no one really knows what happened to the boys it's still one of the greatest
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mysteries in British history in the painting The Brothers looked scared looking at something out of the
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frame that we can't see they're holding on to each other but I thought that was the most romantic thing in the world and
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I was always running to the encyclopedia and that was always my favorite story to
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read did it did it scare you that dark stuff when you were little or were you intrigued by it oh it was exciting I
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like exciting things I mean I like a little thrill when she began reading crime fiction she
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started at the very beginning and I remember thinking I probably won't be able to read
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everything but let me try so I started with the classics and I went on from there I must say I loved Christy there
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is nothing like Christy her favorite Christie is the first the mysterious Affair at Styles published in 1920. it's
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about a murdered heiress and it introduced the world to a private detective with a very famous mustache
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irkule poaro the times literary supplement wrote The Only Fault the story has is that it's
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almost too ingenious a major difference between classic crime fiction and what's being published today
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Maryland says is it books today are so much longer it's so long I don't know why
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it's all about solving the mystery so the emphasis was on the crime the emphasis was on the victim the emphasis
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was on the procedures of how the detective amateur or not went about solving this crime nowadays there is a
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lot more hanging on the character it's the insertion of the author an identification of the
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author with the lead character and you can just go on for years in that vein I mean you learn everything about this
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sleuth that you don't really give a about you find out about their boyfriends their husbands their lovers
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their kids every last one of their kids you watch them go to pick them up at school drop them off do the laundry and
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I don't read past it I mean I read it but it gives pleasure to the author not speaking from myself not to this reader
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I like them better when they were nice and tight and concise and had a lot more impact on me because they were more
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about the puzzle and how to solve it but my suspicion is that people don't know how to puzzle anymore it's not The Fad
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it's not the fashion we're not in the 1920s and 30s the 1920s and 30s was the so-called golden age of detective
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fiction the Heyday of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers these novels were about figuring out who the murderer was
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and often set in remote mansions in the British Countryside you don't learn who did it until the very end think about
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the board game Clue it was also the era of black mask magazine they were publishing stories by dashel Hammett and
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Raymond Chandler think loner tough guy private investigators who drink too much but still manage to outsmart everyone
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in 1932 Dr Rudolph Fisher published the conjure man dies a mystery tale of dark Harlem one of the first African-American
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Prime novels so that was the 20s and 30s and as far as action is concerned that's the 50s is
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action writers like Ross McDonald and Mickey Spillane were popular Patricia Highsmith published The Talented Mr
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Ripley in 1955. I haven't read it but I did see the movie with Matt Damon The Godfather came out in 1969. Stephen
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King published misery in 1987 and in 2005 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo took over the world so we're somewhere
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in the present and the present doesn't care a whole lot about puzzle the present cares a lot about character so
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we hear a lot about the person who is solving the mystery and that's why they're so long
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you've been doing this for a long time you've read a lot of this type of work what are the worst cliches
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[Laughter] okay we're in a suburb a cozy suburb about sweet suburb and the heroine is a
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heroine and somebody near and dear is killed because she's an an amateur she doesn't have access
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to specifics that you need to solve a crime so this is where the good luck comes from and this is where the cliche
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comes from is she is always engaged to flirting with married to or in bed with the chief of police or the lead
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detective on the case I mean that is so cliched I want to throw myself off the roof oh and somewhere along the line she
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is going to be come the lead suspect so she has a personal motive for solving this case boring
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there are certain formulas that you follow you have no choice I mean you don't leave the book at the end without
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answering the question who done it I mean that's part of the formula you cannot get away from that
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do you think that crime novels are easier to write hmm it's hard for me to answer because I
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don't read anything else I stopped reading modern fiction contemporary fiction when I realized that it was all
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about self I don't know when it happened it wasn't true in 19th century it wasn't true in
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early 20th century somewhere along the line writers started writing about nothing but themselves and I think it
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started with men I mean Philip Roth has got to be my least favorite writer in the universe
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and I have absolutely no interest in that but I have absolutely no interest in women's novels that are like that
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when she was younger she wrote and published a lot of her own work a play a novel short stories she says she hated
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it but is glad to know that she isn't that stereotypical critic who reviews because they can't write
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her career as a crime critic started slowly she was reading all these novels anyway for fun so she started reviewing
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Tough Guy books for Penthouse magazine and she realized no one else was taking contemporary crime fiction seriously so
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I decided hmm I could make a living if I pitched a column to these editors of big
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newspapers around the country because they don't know what to do with these books and they don't know how to treat
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them and they're not taking them seriously so I'll give them a column and I did and I barely scraped by but it was
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it was fun and I got what I wanted which was free books she doesn't go to book parties or
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socialize with the writer she's reviewing not anymore she says it hasn't gone so well in the past like the time
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she laughed at the writing in a scene by Ed McBain it was a woman who was leaning
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against this patterned wallpaper and it looked like a jungle and he was comparing her to some kind of jungle
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animal cat and I remember I met him and I remember laughing he was really really
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mad he followed me down there wherever we were and he said you shouldn't do that
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you shouldn't laugh and I said well you should write better women and then he did
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he really did right and I must say toward the end she was writing really good female characters
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what are they doing out there [Music] I feel odd about using crime as entertainment
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oh never think of it really who cares I mean if you know that's your problem it's not my problem it's fantasy I go to
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the movies I like fantasy movies I like um the goryer the better I mean the Alien
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movies are Heaven on Wheels I like ghost stories I like haunted houses I like zombies
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um I like monster movies the thing is that's it's it's all entertainment and I like that cut stuff you know that crap
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we asked her to recommend one novel her favorite for us to read before we visited she chose the Moonstone by
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Wilkie Collins published in 1868. that's about 20 years before the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes
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T.S Eliot called the Moonstone the first the longest and the best detective story
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but as with any who was first conversation there's a lot of debate some people say Edgar Allan Poe wrote
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the first detective story in 1841 but for Maryland the Moonstone about the theft of a cursed diamond is first and
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best she showed us one of her favorite Parts a letter instructing where to find a
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clue to lay down on the Rocks a stick or any straight thing to guide my hand exactly
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in the line of the beacon and the Flagstaff to take care in doing this that one end of the stick shall be at
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the edge of the rocks on the side of them which overlooks the quicksand to feel along the stick among the
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seaweed for the chain to run my hand along the chain when found until I come to the part of it which stretches over
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the edge of the Rocks down into the quicksand and then to pull the chain I mean that's really pretty good writing
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that's that's I always like the writing first I don't care how great your story is if
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you can't write it beautifully then you ruin the story now to pull the chain as it flows down into the quicksand I I
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can't imagine anybody reading that and not enjoying it I remember thinking why isn't just
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obvious to the whole world that the moonstone is just the best thing ever written and it's the first detective
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story and Sergeant cuff is the first detective and long may he wave but why do you think people are so drawn
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to this crime genre oh wow I don't know I can't stay away from it I mean it it my fingers just itch when I
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see something that says murder or um you know crime of the century or whatever I mean I just gravitate towards
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so I suppose it's the Cheap Thrills Maybe [Music] part of it is the sense of warriorism when that's in
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the case of historical crimes I think I do True Crime also and I think that applies more with True Crime rather than
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Fiction there's something really fascinating about reading about crimes committed by
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Louis XIV you know that's a kick didn't know that and all the murders of oh God the Kings of England help us they all
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killed one another and their children and their nephews and their uncles and uh and um
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poison has always been poisons but it's it's just it's voyeurism I think I'm not
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going to go out and do it myself what year were you born oh do I have to tell you that I was born a long time ago
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nope that's good enough okay although every now and then somebody writes a note saying grow up
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which I love [Music] foreign [Music] novel is Mr Peanut by Adam Ross when she dies her husband's fingers are found in
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her mouth as well as a bunch of peanuts The Ballad of the whiskey robber by Julian Rubenstein it's a story of a an
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abysmal hockey goalie it's by John Connolly and it's called every dead thing it stands out because I bought it
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when I was about 10 or 11 in a supermarket on a whim and didn't quite realize what Young me was getting into
00:21:14
playground Parker has to hide out in an amusement park that's closed for the season I don't know probably not
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describing it very well but anyway that's probably my favorite we want to know your favorite crime novels old or
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new write to us on Twitter Facebook or email us at hello this is criminal.com and we'll compile a big reading list
00:21:39
criminalists produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers our intern is matild or falino
00:21:47
special thanks to David Murray and Sarah weinman Julian Alexander makes original
00:21:53
illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at thisiscriminal.com where on Facebook and
00:22:00
Twitter at criminal show criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina public radio wunc we're a
00:22:08
proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around shows like what Trump can teach us about
00:22:16
con law a little side project podcast Roman Mars makes with his neighbor Elizabeth Joe she teaches constitutional
00:22:24
law and most of the time this is a pretty straightforward job but now five minutes before class Professor Joe
00:22:32
checks Twitter and uses the news to teach us about the Constitution reportedly General Joseph Hooker once
00:22:39
sent an envelope to Abraham Lincoln that contained the names of 55 convicted military deserters Lincoln supposedly
00:22:46
scrawled pardoned on the envelope and returned it to the general that counted so could it be a tweet
00:22:52
so could Trump tweet tomorrow I at realdonaldtrump pardon at Roman Mars for any and all federal offenses he has
00:23:02
committed since January 20th 2017. that's not going to fit in a tweet but you get my idea yes
00:23:08
it's not an obviously laughable idea Congress doesn't have the ability to place firm legislative restrictions on
00:23:15
the pardon power so it's not totally absurd as a valid pardon okay so I'm just leaving it out there as a
00:23:21
possibility and I'm just putting it out there that I'm cool with that you know if you wanted to do uh not that I've
00:23:27
done anything but you know couldn't hurt go listen radiotopia from PRX is supported by the
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Knight foundation and special thanks to adzerk for providing their ad serving platform to radiotopia I'm Phoebe judge
00:23:42
this is Criminal [Music]