The Big Idea: W.M. Akers
Posted on May 13, 2019 Posted by John Scalzi 11 Comments
In novels, detectives follow the “big cases” — but what about the other cases, which need solving? W.M. Akers considers them, and the person who would chase those down, in Westside.
W.M. AKERS:
You will probably never solve a murder mystery. You will probably never personally investigate arson, a hit-and-run, a kidnapping, a bomb threat, insurance fraud, an assassination, or any of the other thrilling crimes that preoccupy most fictional detectives. You are a real person, and though the mysteries of your life are never a matter of life and death, they often feel that way.
That’s what tiny mysteries are all about.
I created Gilda Carr, the hero of Westside, because I wanted to give tiny mysteries their due.
Gilda lives in a twisted version of 1921 Manhattan, in which forces unknown have caused the disappearance of thousands of citizens living west of Broadway. Blocked off from the rest of the city by a massive fence, Gilda’s Westside is overgrown, empty, and bizarre. It is a neighborhood teeming with huge questions, and she has decided to answer none of them.
Her reluctance is a correction to the excesses of her father, a former cop whose obsessive chasing of the city’s largest mysteries ended his career and broke his spirit. To avoid his fate, Gilda chases bits of lost clothing and meaningless personal effects, solving the niggling questions that keep us up at night, no matter how pointless we know they are.
A detective preoccupied with tiny mysteries is something that first came to me after I lost a book. It was, appropriately enough, a book about writing mysteries—a rather good collection of essays edited by Sue Grafton that I checked out from the Brooklyn Library, read a few words of, and lost almost immediately.
It took me some time to realize it was gone. I didn’t see it for a week or two and thought nothing of it. In an apartment like ours, which crams six bookshelves into three rooms and features countless piles of half-read books and unwanted papers, objects tend to wander away and come back of their own accord. When the loan came due, I launched a half-hearted search. On finding that the book wasn’t anywhere within arm’s reach, I renewed the loan and spent another couple of weeks not wondering where it had gone.
This went on for over a year.
Every time the loan came due, I combed the apartment in search of Writing Mysteries, checking over the same six shelves, the same two desks, the same piles of junk, and finding, again, that it was nowhere at all. I kept renewing it—if no one places a hold on a book, you can renew it endlessly—feeling so guilty about my deception that an automated email from the Brooklyn Public Library was enough to make me feel ill. As the year wore on, my searches grew more frantic, until I found myself rooting through kitchen cabinets, looking under furniture, and going through old suitcases in search of a book I’d barely read.
Finally, paranoia took over. Heeding Sherlock Holmes, I decided that the improbable must be the truth: I hadn’t lost the book. The library had. Although I had no memory of doing so, I suddenly and desperately believed that I must have returned the book at some point, only to be thwarted by some filing error that marked it still checked out.
I took this theory to one of the endlessly patient librarians at the Central Branch. They politely explained that what I’d imagined was impossible, and told me that I would have to pay an $84 fine to make up for the loss of the book. I decided $84 was worth it to be rid of the stress, apologized to the librarian, and ponied up, happy that, at last, I could forget the mystery.
And then my brother-in-law threw a bottle of detergent into our storage closet.
My wife and I came home from a trip and found the entire apartment polluted by a horrible chemical smell that my brother-in-law claimed he hadn’t noticed. The source was the far reaches of the closet, where he had celebrated the completion of his laundry by hurling an entire handle of detergent, which had leaked all over the wall, the floor, and everything else in its path, destroying several cubic feet of the unwanted junk that filled our closet to the brim.
As we threw out three trash bags of stuff we should have gotten rid of years before, I felt the same relief that I had when I paid off the library fine for the missing Mysteries. When you have been carrying around something useless and awful for a long time, it is beautiful to simply chuck it. And with that happy thought, I reached the bottom of the pile of newly-minted trash, and saw Sue Grafton’s name.
These are the kinds of mysteries I created Gilda Carr to solve: the kinds of questions, like, “Where the hell did I leave that book?!” that are totally unimportant and yet have the power to get under our skin. She lets the other detectives take the big cases. It’s the tiny ones, she thinks, that matter most of all.
I have absolutely no idea how that book ended up in the back of our closet, piled under so much junk that the detergent couldn’t reach it. But I kept the book—it cost me $84, after all—and put it on a high shelf as a reminder to be more careful with books borrowed from the library.
At least, I think I put it there. I haven’t seen it in a while.
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Westside: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s
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$84? Seriously? This has happened to me, but in my case I KNEW I’d returned it and eventually the BPL did find it, but I can’t believe they ripped you off for that much money.
That said, I am adding the book to my list.
When I had that happen to me, I brought the book back and they refunded me almost all of my money. The library was all, “Oh, this happens ALLLLLLLL the time.”
IMO the library deserved every dime of that $84.
Book losers (and that’s what he did) are monsters.
Is there a word missing from the second sentence?
I’ve put a lot of things in a safe place so I wouldn’t lose them, and then can never find them again.
When, one day, I stumble across that safe place it’s going to be awesome.
Actually, just 20 minutes ago I ordered this book as an ebook, and then saw it here also too! Amazing. Hope it’s as interesting as it sounds…
I love this concept. I moved last year and am slowly going through the last few boxes, and there’s a lot of “Oh, THAT’S where that’s been!” involved. And yes, there’s more than one book still missing. I blame the gremlins.
When that happened to me, when I had already turned in the book, I bought it. When they tried to ding me again for it being overdue, I said, “It’s mine now, I bought it.” But I was young and naive and I had to buy it a second time. It has never turned up at my house.
What I would do now is go to the stacks and find it for them.
I was busy yesterday, so Happy Mother’s Day to both Mrs Scalzis, and many happy returns!
For some reason, this reminds me of Ben Katchor’s great comic strip, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer (and more generally of surrealism): https://theslingsandarrows.com/julius-knipl-real-estate-photographer/
I hate to say this but our library doesn’t charge for books you believe you returned. Also, 3 of ours disappeared in one round. And the book return box is next to a US mail box. Just saying.
On the other hand they take donations.