Great Gift Books and Remembering a Colorful Friend by Doug Moe

         The English author – and occasional Wisconsin resident –  Neil Gaiman once noted that books make the best gifts because they have whole worlds inside them – and cost less than trying to buy the whole world.
            I had a chance to chat recently with store manager Jayne Rowsam about numerous titles at Mystery to Me that will make excellent gifts this holiday season.
            There is no way a former ink-stained wrench like me wouldn’t appreciate Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing, a beautiful coffee table book by Anthony Casillo, with photographs by Bruce Curtis and a foreword by the actor Tom Hanks.
            We have an old Remington manual typewriter in the store, and it can be a conversation piece. One stands out. A little girl, shopping with her mother, saw the typewriter and said:
            “What is that?”
            It’s a time machine.
            People who love manual typewriters really love them. When I was writing my book on the Chicago columnist Mike Royko, his widow told me he had software installed in his computer that mimicked the sound of typewriter keys being struck.
            The late playwright Sam Shepard, in the recent documentary California Typewriter, said, “I just never got along with the computer screen. It’s somehow removed from the tactile experience. When you go to ride a horse, you have to saddle it. When you use a typewriter, you have to feed it paper. There’s a percussion about it. You can see the ink flying onto the surface of the paper.”
            A typewriter is the murder weapon in The Tenth Clew, a Dashiell Hammett story featuring the ace detective The Continental Op. Hammett fans will delight in knowing all the Op stories have at last been brought together in one volume, the newly released The Big Book of the Continental Op. Hammett drew on his real-life experience working for the Pinkerton agency in writing the Op tales.
            Revolution: Uprisings that Shaped the 20^th Century by Philip Parker, arrived this fall on the 100^th anniversary of the October Revolution that toppled the tsarist autocracy in Russia. It details insurgencies against dictators and imperialist governments and includes removable facsimile documents of historical significance.
            Remarkable Books: The World’s Most Beautiful and Historic Works, is, as Jayne told me, “just gorgeous” – a beautifully illustrated guide to more than 75 classic books and manuscripts and the impact they had, along with biographical notes on their creators.
            Another artfully designed and illustrated book for the holidays is The Gilded Age: 1876-1912: Overture to the American Century,  by the historian Alan Axelrod. It was a fascinating time – Mark Twain is credited with coining the phrase “gilded age” – and Axelrod draw parallels between it and present day.
            Andrew Belonsky’s The Log Cabin: An Illustrated History, includes 200 color illustrations and photographs of the classic American abode.
            National Geographic Night Vision: Magical Photographs of Life After Dark, by Susan Tyler Hitchcock, contains 250 images of everything from night markets in Laos to Paris’s Eiffel Tower.
            The natural world and our place in it figures in the poet Wendell Berry’s new book of prose, The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, as well as The Naturalist’s Notebook, by Nathaniel T. Wheelwright and Bernd Heinrich, which encourages paying attention when you’re outdoors and includes an observation guide and journal to help you get started.
            My friend and colleague Jayne is also very high on a new edition of Homer’s The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson, the first translation by a woman and one that is drawing rapturous reviews.
            And speaking of women, a final gift suggestion, 200 Women: Who Will Change the Way You See the World, in which the authors photograph and profile women around the globe, famous and unknown, asking all a series of questions regarding identity, happiness and what matters most.
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            I can only imagine how Joan Hess would have answered the five questions asked of the subjects in 200 Women. No doubt with both humor and candor – and maybe a bit of an edge.
            Joan, who died November 23 at her home in Austin, Texas, visited Mystery to Me this past summer, and I think I can confidently say it was one of our most memorable author events of 2017.
            The story behind the book Joan was promoting, The Painted Queen, was itself intriguing. It was the 20^th in a series of historical mysteries written by Elizabeth Peters, featuring the amateur Egyptologist Amelia Peabody.
            Peters’ real name was Barbara Mertz, and Mertz died in 2013, having written perhaps one-third of the manuscript. Barbara’s daughter, Beth Mertz, prevailed on Joan Hess – an accomplished mystery author and longtime friend of Barbara’s – to complete the novel.
            Joan had initially hesitated. Writing in another’s voice would be a challenge. Finally she agreed.
            “They bribed me with vodka and carrot cake,” Joan told me, when we chatted by phone prior to her Madison visit.
            That visit was an unreserved success. Beth Mertz came, too, and their discussion about Barbara – mother to one, great friend to the other – and The Painted Queen was moving, informative and amusing. Joan had been ill and was in a wheelchair, but she rallied and charmed everyone. It may have helped that Joanne brought carrot cake, and my wife, Jeanan, brought vodka.
            Beth Mertz told me that evening that her great hope was that The Painted Queen might be a New York Times bestseller. Although a successful author, Joan Hess had never cracked the list.
            On August 13, The Painted Queen, with coauthors Elizabeth Peters and Joan Hess, debuted at number 7 among hardcover fiction bestsellers.
            I called Joan in Austin to congratulate her. How did it feel? “You can say I either giggled or chortled,” she said.
            Truth is, she was thrilled.
            A few days after Joan died, Beth Mertz wrote Joanne a note at Mystery to Me, warmly recalling the event this past summer and noting that she and Joan’s daughter are planning “a wild cocktail party” at the Malice Domestic fan convention next year.
            “We two daughters,” Beth wrote, “are mostly worried that we can’t live up to the level of sublime ridiculousness our moms would expect in their honor.”