The Thriller Literature

From time to time (not too often nowadays), I am seized by a hankering for a whodunit, or (in a different mood) a thriller.   Such a yen is as elemental and sensuous as that for a milkshake or hamburger.  Yet while the latter are a snap to satisfy, the only check being a rather abstract concern about cholesterol and expanding waistlines,  it has become increasingly difficult even to half-satisfy the craving for thrillers or mysteries.  We must sadly conclude that the chefs and confectioners  have done their work better than have the authors.

Time was, in the 1950’s, myself a lad of eight and nine, such satisfaction could as readily be had as that of a hamburger -- both being limited only by my own exiguous financial resources, the principle income to which was provided by a weekly allowance, first of a nickle, later of ten cents.   This happy circumstance, which has proven unreproducible in later life, resulted from the perfect intersection between my uncomplicated ladly desires, and the workmanlike industry of the team of anonymous ghostscribblers at the Stratemeyer Bookbarn, who regularly churned out the Hardy Boys.

Eheu!  ubi sunt?

[Footnote:   Now even those simple pleasures, while of course subjectively unrecapturable,  cannot easily be objectively reviewed, since the whole series was bowdlerized, dumbed-down, and politically corrected, beginning just around the time I stopped reading them.]

Herewith, something in the forlorn spirit of A Guide to Fine Dining in Oshkosh, or The Antiquities Museums of Gary, Indiana,  our attempts to provide anyhow a bit of reflection and guidance.

*

Commercial Break

A private detective  confronts the uncanny;

an ecclesiastical mystery:

Murphy Calls In a Specialist

[Kindle] [Nook]

*

A Superior Thriller

[Well, at least, that was the title I started with, as I began reading Michael Connelly’s Chasing the Dime.  It flags midway;  towards the end, I just wanted it to wrap it up and get it over with -- the fewer arbitrary last-minute plot-twists  the better.]

The background to Connelly’s thriller is highly promising:  hi-tech industrial espionage, such as has been brilliantly depicted in the movie “Duplicity”, and the thriller Paranoia, by Joseph Finder, and (even better) Neil Stephenson’s unclassifiable Cryptonomicon.  And the immediate premise, the McGuffin as it were, is likewise delightful:  A sciency guy, trying to make a killing in business, having moved into a bare apartment after his divorce, and with (accordingly) a new landline, immediately gets a host of calls for a mysterious “Lilly”;  the callers never leave their names, but hang up.   Apparently he was assigned a discontinued number previously used by a high-priced call-girl.  Instead of simply asking the phone company for a new number stat, he is intrigued, and is drawn in deeper, and deeper, beyond his depth …

There are some excellent high-tech vignettes early on (I once worked in that milieu, and can testify), but they peter out.   The real disappointment, though, is that the author, instead of trusting his instincts (for some voice within  was surely calling to him here) and allowing his protagonist to pursue his ananke unfettered, trumps up some frigging dimestore-psychology miniseries sentimental backstory, “explaining” why the protagonist  reacted as he did.   He thus progressively abandons any engagement with the unconscious drives that impel us, with results that are ultimately banal.

To be fair … The prose is literate, intermittently humorous; and there is just one Chandleresque fragment:

She had  looped over her shoulder  a purse that looked big enough to hold a pack of cigarettes  but not the matches.

~

C.S. Lewis somewhere (in time, in retirement, I might recover the passage) surveys the spectrum of plot-outlines, and notes that that of Orpheus  retains its power to spellbind, even in a bare-bones form, whereas that of almost all worthy modern novels, become as dust  upon such summary.

We venture now  upon that territory  where words fail …  We have ourselves depicted the obsessive pursuit of das Ewig-Weibliche, in the story  “Lost and Found”, reprinted in the collection I Don’t Do Divorce Cases (available here).

~

Blogspot for detective fiction:

http://discretionassured.blogspot.com/

~

[Update, 29 October 2013]   People keep viewing this post, even though it doesn’t really say anything interesting.  So at least I’ll say something more along these lines, even though it won’t be especially interesting either.

Exhibit B:  The King of Torts, by John Grisham (2003).

The couple of times I’ve tried to read a Grisham book, the writing was so bad -- simply at the paragraph level -- that I had to toss it aside.   But this one begins really well.   Some tasty phrasing (“He stutter-stepped forward, [ankle-]chains rattling.”), and surprisingly likeable characters, with fine writerly observation of the family dynamics in the country-club scene.  The ostensible plot premise is ridiculous, but I figured it was just a ruse -- the first layer of the onion, which would be peeled, Spanish-Prisoner-fashion, until we reached the center and either found the key or (post-modern fashion) found it hollow.

The initial premise, which sets the action going, is perfectly adequate for genre fiction:  A company has been testing an experimental drug to treat addiction , which alas turns some of its users temporarily into homicidal maniacs.   Testing is discontinued and the drug is never marketed.   Fair enough so far.   Only now the novelist adds:  In addition to the usual sort of testing in faraway hapless third-world countries, some testing went on right in Washington , on hardcore addicts-- but in such secrecy that there could not be, without inside information and enormous investigative effort, any way of proving this.  And, the small handful of actual murderers having either died or recovered from their drug-induced homicidal mania, and the victims being all of them the usual lowlifes, the books have been closed on these cases, as being just the sort of thing that goes on all the time among the marginal population in D.C.  --  Okay, a bit of a stretch, but we are happy to pay out thus much rope to the author, and see where he will run with it.

But then, Grisham goes off on an absurd tangent:   A shady character contacts a burnt-out no-rep Public Defender, and offers him wealth beyond the dreams of avarice if he will simply … Well, not so simply, because it makes no sense, neither in Realityland nor in fiction.

The P.D. is supposed to go somehow snuffle-out the ‘families’, the ‘bereaved’, of the late lowlifes;  whom-all, given their life-styles, were not exactly close.

Next, he is supposed to REVEAL THE WHOLE DASTARDLY PLOT;  and offer to pay them off, with millions.

Now, by intra-novelistic hypothesis, the dark facts were a priori  unlikely to surface;  whereas this ‘strategy’ is playing with dynamite. 

OK so, we who have been schooled on David Mamet and other artisans of the scheme-within-a-scheme, will already have surmised …

-- No -- Cut;  life is too short;  not even worth dissecting to criticize.

At the point at which I bailed out,  the novel threatened to become a Tendenz-roman -- an anti-tort tract:

“That’s outrageous!”

No, Clay, that’s mass tort litigation at its finest.  That’s how the system works these days.”

Now, abuses of tort law are indeed worth fighting and even satirizing;  but fiction is not an especially effective vehicle, especially if you start out with a plot that seems to take place on Jupiter.

~

Relax with the Murphy brothers,
tough-talking, pistol-packing,
two-fisted private eyes:
http://murphybros.blogspot.com/

~

I won’t have anything to say about the works of Tom Clancy, which are too well known to need notice, but merely advert to an apparent deep cleavage in his oeuvre, and an odd publishing decision by Putnam.   They put out a nice hardbound edition boasting “Two Complete Novels”, with font large enough for these aging eyes:  Red Storm Rising, and The Cardinal of the Kremlin.   Yet, offering these bound together is like confecting footwear out of an oxford for the left foot, paired with a wooden clog for the right.  For while The Cardinal of the Kremlin is quite in line with the other Jack Ryan thrillers, with a solid plot and a scattering of excellent lines, Red Storm Rising -- not one of  the Ryan series -- seems to be written for twelve-year-olds.   I flipped through the thing in increasing disbelief -- not a single good thing to say about it anywhere.  It read more like the script for a video game than a real novel:  and indeed, pursuing the thing into Wikipedia, I learned that such is exactly what it has become.

The decent thing to do in a case like that, is to use a separate pen-name for potboilers that are unlikely to appeal to readers of your main line.

[Update 18 July 2015]  I thoroughly enjoyed Joseph Finder’s 2014 thriller Suspicion.   The only other book of his I’ve read -- likewise excellent -- is his industrial-espionage thriller Paranoia (2004).    Only after-the-fact did I realize that the books share an identical premise to trigger the action.

In both cases, a likeable protagonist engages in a piece of legally sketchy behavior, not for selfish reasons, but to aid another.  And in both cases, another party, with a sinister agenda of their own, discovering his role, use that leverage to grab him by the short-hairs and force him into extremely delicate and dangerous behavior.

The fact that I didn’t realize until afterwards that, to that extent, I was reading the same book over again, simply illustrates the role of motifs in literature.  It is no crime to swipe them, to reuse them consciously or unconsciously.  In the Middle Ages, that was taken for granted.   And even today, in genre fiction, it is recognized to be no harm no foul if the book or movie employs such tried-and-true vignettes as the Spy Called Out of Retirement (the Cincinnatus motif), or car chases, or femmes fatales.

[Update 19 July 2015]  By an accident of meteorology, I found myself in the atrium of the local library, a lethal heat outside, and A/C like an ice-blanket within.  Seeking an excuse to remain amid the soothing cool, I browsed a bit, and stumbled upon another Joseph Finder -- Buried Secrets (2011).

Today, sheltering indoors, I curled up with the book.   This time, parallels to Suspicion  leap to the eye  immediately.

*  Both novels focus on a teen daughter, product of swank New England boarding schools, abducted by a sinister crime organization (in one case genuinely, in the other only initially-supposedly, a Latino drug cartel).

Now, I myself never had a daughter, and didn’t attend prep school:  but with the slightest tip of the die, I might well have done so.  Therefore these themes are of personal interest, as being might-have-beens, real in a closely adjoining alternate universe.  

So, I read and imagine.  Along the way, I meet the slang that has come into currency since the Beatles broke up.

*  The central target of elaborate blackmail is a very wealthy man who made his pile in high-finance, hedge-fund type activity.  In either case, he has an over-manicured tarty trophy bride, whom we see in her “soapstone-topped” sparkly kitchen.  In both cases, in addition to his criminal pursuers, the magnate is being closely monitored by Federal law enforcement (FBI bzw. DEA), who are wise to his game.

 About halfway through, though, Buried Secrets begins to unravel.  Oh well.

~

 Seeking a book suitable for a bedtime story, I picked up a "Grantchester" novel by James Runcie, specifically Sydney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (consciously echoing titles from the Harry Potter series).  It has two things going for it:  a not-quite-contemporary English setting; and an ecclesiastical detective protagonist (the cover calls him a "clergyman-sleuth", rather recalling the old designation of gentleman-cambrioleur).

Unfortunately, the plotting is weak, the style merely workmanlike, and the theological content -- which made the Father Brown stories so uniquely fine -- nonexistent.  (I tried my hand at one of those -- Father Brown meets Sherlock Holmes -- here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-narrow-escape.html )

Only in the very last story does the author comes up with a nice ‘high-concept’ premise:  During a performance of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, when the actors all stab Caesar, apparently one of the knives was real, and the gentleman playing Caesar dies for real.  Only -- that plot isn’t really pursued, even along such elementary lines as autopsy.   Instead, Runcie goes in for a spate of virtue-signalling, loftily condemning those who, in 1953, failed to adhere to the politically-correct line on homosexuals prevailing 2012.   He makes the murderer be a homophobe; boo.

 

Here come the Elephants !!

[Update 5 March 2015]
[From wire services:] The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will phase out the show’s iconic elephants from its performances by 2018, in the face of growing public concern about how the animals are treated.
[From Dr J.]  Actually, of course, they are treated like kings.  They are the star of the show.  No-one shoots them for their tusks, as regularly happens in Africa.  The "concern" is not that of the informed public, but of those who get their jollies  being holier than thou.

[Update 28 February 2015]

Musaylima imitated the early style of the Koran  with ludicrous effect, if we may judge from the sayings ascribed to him, e.g.  “The elephant, what is the elephant, and who shall tell you what is the elephant?  He has a poor tail, and a long trunk:  and is a trifling part of the creations of thy God.”

-- R.A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (1907)

[Update 753 B.C.]

The Romans were terrified by their first encounter in battle  with elephants, which untrained horses  will not face.

-- H.H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC (1935; 4^th edn. 1980), p. 142

[Update 12 May 2014]  You have probably been wondering, "Hmmmmmm .... How do you say 'bell-bottoms' in French?"   Wonder no more!   (From Wikipedia:)

Le pantalon patte d'éléphant, pantalon patte d'eph, ou simplement pantalon à jambes sont un type de réduction importante des genoux vers le bas. Ils sont aussi appelés pantalons à pattes (à partir de leurs anglaise Bell-bottoms), ou pantalons twist.

Alors, mes copains:  portez donc les pattes d'eph en tout bonheur ...

[Update 27 Feb 2014]  Elephant empathy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/science/elephants-give-a-helping-trunk.html?hp

Even the big guys  sometimes need a hug ...


[Update 7 Nov 2013]  Right now I'm enjoying a refreshing beverage called Chang beer, a product of Thailand.   Simply as a beer, it's nothing special;  but the elephants in the logo are wonderful.

Even though she does not drink beer, my wife agrees that these are pretty special elephants.   Since we don't know their names, we refer to them simply as "the elephant on the left" and "the elephant on the right".  You can tell they are friends by the way they are looking at each other.

After much discussion, we agreed that I would identify with the elephant on the right, and she with the one on the left.  When we die, it would be nice if we were both reincarnated as elephants:  then I could marry her all over again as an elephant, shyly stroking her gigantic ears with my nice trunk, by way of proposing.
Such thoughts help keep our marriage strong, after all these many years.

[Update 11 January 2014]  Oh noes!  Thai beer mired in controversy !!

Chitpas Bhirombhakdi, 28, the beer heiress, was quoted last month in a widely circulated article saying that many Thais lack a “true understanding” of democracy, “especially in the rural areas.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/11/world/asia/thai-beer-loses-esteem-after-heiresss-remarks.html?hpw&rref=business

Elephants sez:   That Singha Beer, not Chang Beer!  Sound same, but different!  No boycott Chang!

['Nother update]  OK, here's another one, hopefully  less controversial.

~   ~   ~

[Update 28 April 2013]  Welcome to Tupelo, Mississippi,  where the local folkways include popping a cap into elephants:

"Tupelo is a kaleidoscope," said sociologist Mark Franks, who grew up in nearby Booneville. There are true geniuses walking the streets of Tupelo, he said, and incredibly wealthy, generous people. But also, "every wall-eyed uncle and 'yard cousin' — just referencing the local pejorative — makes it into Tupelo, Miss. It creates a peculiar culture."

Tupelo is best known as the hometown of Elvis Presley, after whom it has named streets, waterways and dry cleaners.

Unlike many other Southern towns its size, it boasts several excellent museums, street art and a large public arena. An arena large enough, in fact, to attract the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus this month. That's when someone shot Carol, a circus elephant, in what seems to be the first elephantine drive-by ever. Carol is recovering, but Tupelo Police Capt. Rusty Haynes said his investigation has stalled. "Because, to be honest, there are a lot of possible perpetrators."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tupelo-arrest-20130428,0,2510068,print.story

[Update 10 April 2013]  Today's bonus pachydermal political cartoon, from David Horsey of the LATimes:

A propos of not very much, here is this morning’s news about elephants.

(0) In a report that startled the worldwide zoological community, the International Pachydermal Society has released a study proving conclusively that lady elephants experience not the slightest Penis Envy.

(1) Elephants Dying in Epic Frenzy as Ivory Fuels Wars and Profits

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/04/world/africa/africas-elephants-are-being-slaughtered-in-poaching-frenzy.html?ref=global-home

[Update 9 Feb 2013]

Over the past eight years... 11,000 elephants have been killed by poachers in the western African state of Gabon.

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/stark-numbers-reveal-the-scale-of-elephant-killings/?src=rechp

[Update 12 Feb 2013]

Surging demand for ivory in China has been well publicized. But the publicity has overlooked the cause: The same international body that enacted a 1990 global ivory ban allowed China in 2008 to import ivory. This catastrophic reversal can be counted in carcasses — elephant and human.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/global/blood-ivory.html?src=rechp

[Update 2 March 2013]

Chinese investors have anointed it “white gold.” Carvers and collectors prefer the term “organic gemstone.” Smugglers, however, use a gruesomely straightforward name for the recently harvested African elephant tusks that find their way to this remote trading outpost on the Vietnamese border.

“We call them bloody teeth,”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/asia/an-illicit-trail-of-african-ivory-to-china.html?src=rechp

[Update 17 March 2013]  Boy, this is becoming a regular NYTimes obsession!  Here's the latest:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/slaughter-of-the-african-elephants.html?src=rechp

[Update 19 March 2013]  Alright, New York Times, we get the idea !

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/world/africa/chad-poachers-slaughter-more-than-80-elephants.html?src=rechp

[Update 31 March 2013]  OK, this is just weird:

Attaque à la tronçonneuse
de l'éléphant de Louis XIV

Un homme a été interpellé après avoir tenté de sectionner la défense de l'animal, au Muséum d'Histoire naturelle de Paris.

(2)  Jevver notice how, in editorial cartoons, elephants appear around fifty times more frequently than do donkeys?  The following is a rare exception:

[Cartoon by Tom Toles]

It's not that the Republican Party is so much more interesting than the Democrats;  it's that elephants are so much fun to draw.

(3)  Bonus statue:

Ganesha, the wise

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

(4)  Charles Cotton (1630-1687), on a summer evening:

The shadows now so long do grow

that brambles  like tall cedars  show;

molehills seem mountains, and the ant

appears a splendid elephant.

Bibliographical scholium:   The published versions of this familiar poem  are based upon a corrupted manuscript, and contain the line “appears a monstrous elephant” -- an obvious absurdity.   We have restored the corrected reading, printed here for the first time.

 

(5) [Update 7 Nov 2012]
Woolly mammoth discovered in the area of Paris:
Un mammouth laineux ? Un mammouth à moumoute, alors.

(6)  [Update 30 Dec 2012] Nepal's Elephant Festival
Buff pachyderms play an exhibition soccer match
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nepals-chitwan-elephant-race/2012/12/28/5ef85198-5107-11e2-950a-7863a013264b_gallery.html?hpid=z8#photo=3

(7) A quotation from one of the world's best books:

It is by reason of dynamical  rather than of statical relations

that an elephant  is of graver deportment  than a mouse.

-- D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917)

(8) [Update 4 Jan 2013]
 

Brigitte Bardot : «Je ne supporte plus la France»

l'ancienne actrice jusitife son désir d'obtenir la nationalité russe, pour protester contre le sort de deux éléphantes bientôt euthanasiées.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/01/04/01016-20130104ARTFIG00440-bardot-menace-de-devenir-russe-pour-sauver-2-elephantes.php

(9)  A Moral Tale

Urtext:

Historians relate, that in the year of the Hegira such-and-so, a Berber student Yahya ben Yahya, then but twenty-eight, traveled from Spain to Damascus, to study under the celebrated Malik ben Anas, author of that classic of Islamic jurisprudence al-Muwatta`.  It was the year in which the domestic tranquility was disturbed by an unprecedented visit of those land-leviathans   known elsewhere as the Elephant  but not previously seen in those quarters.  The students were sitting within, at Malik's feet, when the cry went up, "Here comes the elephant!"  A pounding of feet and an outrush; but when the dust had settled, there sat Yahya still.

            "Why," asked the legist, "didst thou not go out with thy fellows, to see the prodigy?  Such animals are not to be seen in Spain."

            To this the youth replied:  "I left my country that I might learn from you and find guidance.  I did not come here to see the elephant."

Haec fabula docet:

            Little did Yahya know that the prodigy which there passed, was none other than the lord Ganesha, Elephant-headed god of wisdom; nor would the god pass that way again until many centuries, under the incarnation of Babar.   Those who that day witnessed the great beast raising dust from the road, his ears like sails, his trunk like the scroll of the Judgment, were forever transformed, and led lives of wonderful strangeness; while Yahya dug ever more fruitlessly, mole-like, in the dust of dry legalisms, until at length his life crumbled like a dry parchment.

(10)

Chesterton liked to imagine that God has a sense of humor…. jokes like the pelican, the hornbill, the elephant.

-- Martin Gardner, Are Universes Thicker than Blackberries? (2003), p. 128

The pelican, the platypus, are very good jests indeed.  But the elephant -- ahh, the elephant! ! !

(11)  Elephant eyeballs !!

(12) For a (linguistically quite erudite) essay, that touches upon the matter of Piglet and the Heffalump, click here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/05/der-wortwitz-und-seine-beziehung-zum.html

(13) [Update 3 Jan 2014]  Re Charlemagne:

When home from is foreign wars, he spent most of his time traveling… He was accompanied, after 802, by an elephant, presented to him by Caliph Harun al-Rashid.

-- Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1968)

(14) [Update Aug 2014]   Sad facts from Africa ... and a squeee image of a baby elephant nursing on a bottle.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/2014/08/19/01008-20140819ARTFIG00243-les-elephants-en-fort-declin-en-afrique.php

(15)  Bertolt Brech, “Herrn K’s Lieblingstier”:

Als Herr K. gefragt wurde, welches Tier er vor allen schätze, nannte er den Elefanten, und begründete dies so:  Der Elefant vereint List mit Stärke.

(16)
     Over the breast   of her dark dress
     five small elephants   were marching
     towards an unknown destination.

[Source:  Michael Arlen, The Green Hat (1924); edited slightly metri causâ]

[If that were me marching, I could name *two* destinations.] 

~

For a logicopolitical essay starring Babar, the Elephant King, click here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/09/all-thumbs-down.html

 
For more swell stuff about our bulky friends the elephants, click here http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/elephants


For more from our well-dipped pen:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

 
.
 

Consensus Building

We were bemused to see that a poll of French voters has found over ninety-percent demanding major changes in the Hollande administration.  
http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Sondage-Hollande-condamne-au-changement-636804

We were almost envious.  It’s next to impossible to find ninety percent of Americans to agree about anything.

And so, in a lamp-in-hand quest for possible areas of harmony, we sent our pollsters out among the masses.   We began with a proposition of arithmetic.

In a recent poll conducted by WDJ Worldwide Enterprises, a healthy sixty percent of Americans were “fairly sure” that two plus two equals four;  twenty percent were uncertain; another twenty percent were undecided;  eighteen percent favored an alternate result for the summation, with the favored figures correlating strongly with gender and race;  six percent spluttered that the whole thing is a conspiracy;  and nineteen percent were too zoned out to comprehend the question.

When someone challenged our figures, claiming that they “don’t add up”, we replied:  “Oh, so, so you must be one of those two-plus-two-equals-four know-it-alls.”

A heartfelt thanks to the French nation, from the friendly militants of AQIM

[Update 26 April 2014] The latest.  Couldn’t find this at the Focus.de site, nor in Google news; no idea why.

La France a versé 18 millions de dollars pour la libération des quatre journalistes français enlevés en juin 2013 en Syrie et relâchés la semaine dernière, assure samedi l'hebdomadaire allemand Focus, affirmation "catégoriquement" démentie par Paris. Les fonds, convoyés vers Ankara par le ministre français de la Défense Jean-Yves Le Drian, ont été versés aux ravisseurs par l'intermédiaire des services secrets turcs, écrit Focus, citant des sources proches de l'Otan à Bruxelles.

[Update 2 November 2013]  Ha!  Quite as we predicted [in our post below] -- Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is wasting no time:

Deux journalistes français ont été enlevés aujourd'hui à Kidal au Mali. L'information a été confirmée au Figaro.
Il s'agit de deux journalistes de Radio France Internationale, Ghislaine Dupont et Claude Verlon.
Les rebelles touaregs du Mouvement national de libération de l'Azawad (MNLA) ont confirmé l'enlèvement ainsi que des sources sécuritaires maliennes.
L'information dans un premier temps a été donnée par le gouverneur de la ville. Ils ont été kidnappés "par quatre hommes à bord d'une Toyota"

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2013/11/02/97002-20131102FILWWW00317-mali-deux-journalistes-francais-enleves.php?m_i=s7rsWdE2%2B4BcpK2CgofeCaS2p7TgzUr8exq_WpVVKvaxxvFYr#xtor=EPR-31-[mali-deux-journalistes-francais-enleves]-20131102-[titre]

Keep ‘em comin’, suckers!  Come visit beautiful and exotic Azawad!  It's lovely this time of year!  (Somewhat less so, inside the caves.)

A reader comments:

4 libérés avec 25 millions de rançon, cela fait des envieux,
et 2 jours après  rebelottes, allonger la monnaie SVP, la France retaxera encore pour pouvoir payer, on ne va jamais s'en sortir.

(Note to students of French:  That handy word rebelote means ‘Here we go again!’.  Since governments and the general public  seldom learn anything from experience, there are many occasions to use this term.)

Another observes:

Vous savez comment procèdent les Russes ....
Je ne valide pas cette méthode , mais je ne suis pas d'accord pour payer des rançons ...C'est l'effet boule de neige !
En revanche une intervention avec des forces spéciales peut être payante ( Ponant , carré d'as par exemple ...)

The reference is to this excellent adventure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carr%C3%A9_d%27As_IV_incident

Our Navy Seals did something quite similar, not long ago.

And similarly, nicely phrased with the classic tripartite structure of “An Englishman, A Russian, and an Algerian walk into a bar”:

Il est peut-etre temps de changer de communication et d'envoyer des messages forts qui nous eviterons des enlevements de ressortissants francais a tout va.

Méthode Anglaise: On ne paye pas.

Méthode Russe: On execute un membre d'AQMI

Méthode Algérienne: On donne l'assault, Dieu reconnaitra les siens.

Another cheekily posts a Modest Proposal:

Les militaires français devrait aussi se lancer dans le rapt de journalistes. Deux avantages:
1/ Ils pourrait financer leur activité
2/ La concurrence ferait baisser les prix.

[Flash update, 1800 Zulu]  Incredibly, despite this fresh delivery of marketable French meat, the hot-headed African terrorists did not have the patience to wait until France once again showed the white feather, but simply slaughtered the two hostages on the hoof.

Again, a sampling of French opinion:

voilà où nous mène le boboland !

nous n'avons plus rien à faire en Afrique et eux n'ont plus rien à faire chez nous !!!

---

Les sauvages!!!.......

Mais qu'est-ce que l'on va faire en Afrique?!!!La France-Afrique, c'est terminé depuis plus de 50 ans!!!

Que Hollande s'occupe du pays franco-français qui va très mal....à cause de son incompétence et de ses largesses inconsidérées, clientélistes!........

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La France- Afrique ,c'est peut être terminée mais nous avons aujourd'hui l'Afrique -France.

[Update 3 November 2013]  The kidnapping/killing  was fairly predictable:  the French military forces on the ground had warned forcefully of the danger.

C'est par l'intermédiaire de la Minusma, la force de l'ONU au Mali, que Ghislaine Dupont et Claude ­Verlon ont pu arriver vendredi à Kidal. La force Serval avait refusé de les y emmener, soulignant le danger que représentait un séjour dans cette ville

http://www.lejdd.fr/International/Afrique/Ghislaine-Dupont-et-Claude-Verlon-enleves-pour-etre-assassines-636885

[Update 4 November 2013]  France’s practice of repeatedly doling out ransoms, while denying that it does so, has planted a tree with poison roots.  Here, perhaps, are some of its fruits:

Ces meurtres sont-ils liés au versement éventuel d'une rançon contre la libération des otages d'Arlit?

«Il y a une forme de prolongement entre ces deux événements qui nous oblige à nous interroger sur ce point», confesse un bon connaisseur du dossier. La remise en liberté des quatre otages se serait faite contre des contreparties dont notamment une rançon. Comme toujours dans ces cas-là, les sommes ne vont pas qu'aux seuls ravisseurs, mais elles irriguent aussi une foule d'intermédiaires, «d'aides» et de petites mains. Et elles suscitent de fortes envies et de fortes jalousies. Certains ont pu se sentir grugés de ne pas avoir touché ce qu'ils pensaient être leur dû. Ils se seraient alors vengés de la France et des bénéficiaires du pactole en tentant à leur tour d'enlever des Français ou en organisant ces assassinats. Selon un officiel malien, il n'est pas non plus à écarter que Ghislaine Dupont et Claude Verlon, journalistes aguerris et professionnels, aient au cours de leur enquête découvert des informations gênantes sur certains gagnants du marché autour des otages.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/11/03/01003-20131103ARTFIG00166-questions-sur-l-assassinat-cible-de-deux-journalistes-francais.php?m_i=5q65yUSqK1EISvMCY4K3wJDTepfevWOSznGKujayFU0A_P7zb

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[Original post from a few days ago:]

[A follow-up to this:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-special-thanksgiving-in-mali.html  ]

Over the years, the mighty Gallic nation  has generously financed terrorists of every stripe.   The latest infusion of ransom cash from France -- $26 million for a mere quartet of straggly hostages -- is most welcome.   Thank you!   Or should we say -- Mille mercis !!!

http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/10/30/l-etat-n-a-pas-verse-d-argent-public-pour-la-liberation-des-otages-selon-fabius_3505702_3212.html

Alors que Le Monde affirme, mercredi 30 octobre, qu'une rançon de plus de 20 millions d'euros a bien été versée, le ministre des affaires étrangères a répondu, sur le plateau de TF1, qu'aucun "argent public" n'a été engagé pour obtenir la libération

Interrogé sur France 2, le ministre de la défense, Jean-Yves Le Drian, a lui aussi esquivé les questions, se contentant de répéter la ligne officielle selon laquelle "la France ne paye pas de rançon".

Some gadflies and nay-sayers question the wisdom of doling out cash to kidnappers in such lavish amounts, saying that it puts a high price on the head of every Frenchman.   We share your concerns!  What if French tourists and do-gooders were to cease visiting places like People’s Islamic Takfiri Azawad?    That would make our Chamber of Commerce  very sad!    :-(

Accordingly, to encourage the continued flow of clueless cheese-eaters to AQIM territory, and the resulting gush of millions in cold hard cash to our coffers,  we have struck an accord with Accor, the world’s leading hotelier and caterer, to see to the comfort and gourmet feeding of our hostages in the future!   We wish you to enjoy your period of captivity, richly paid for by the French taxpayer!!  So -- Book your flight today!  We offer many picturesque orphans you can pose with  for the cameras, before being courteously escorted to our custody.

Bon voyage !!

Having a wonderful time -- Wish U were here! (instead of us)

 

Cavorting on the tarmac with the newly released hostages, and shamelessly attempting to hog the credit, as if it had been his own diplomatic savoir-faire that had rescued them, rather than cold cash under the table, François Hollande received a rebuff from the glowering patsies of the press:

None of the released hostages wanted to speak after the president, and some appeared visibly uncomfortable at being in the media glare .

An unnamed source, quoted by Le Monde, said 20m euros was paid, from a secret fund operated by the intelligence services.

Senior figures from French nuclear company Areva were in the Niger capital Niamey for a meeting with President Mahamadou Issoufou at which it is said certain guarantees were made.

The men - identified as Thierry Dol, Daniel Larribe, Pierre Legrand and Marc Feret - were seized on 16 September 2010 near Arlit. They were all employees at a uranium mine run by the French nuclear company Areva.

For a sad contrast to this happy development, see this:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/10/base-ingratitude.html
 

*

Si cela vous parle,

savourez la série noire

en argot authentique d’Amérique :

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justiceexcerptdivorce.html

*

[Update 31 October 2013]  The plot thickens:  Conservative/populist leader Marine Le Pen  rains on Hollande’s (already soggy) parade:

Ex-otages : Marine Le Pen pense-t-elle au scénario d’«Homeland» ?

La présidente du Front national admet avoir été gênée par les images du retour des quatre ex-otages français, qui portaient barbe et chèche et faisaient état, selon elle, d’une «extrême réserve étonnante».

« Cet otage avec le chèche sur le visage...Tout ça mérite peut-être quelques explications de leur part ». Pense-t-elle qu’ils ont été islamisés pendant leur détention par des ravisseurs extrémistes, à l’instar de la série américaine « Homeland » qui se penche sur un soldat américain retourné par des fondamentalistes ? « Je n’irai pas jusqu’à faire des théories, je ne serais pas dans mon rôle », a-t-elle éludé.

Interrogée sur le versement d’une rançon, démenti par les autorités françaises, Marine Le Pen a observé que dans ces affaires d’enlèvements, « à chaque fois, d’après ce que l’on sait, la France a payé une rançon et à chaque fois, elle a dit qu’elle n’en avait pas payé, bien entendu ».

« Plus vous payez de rançon, plus vos compatriotes sont « bankables » », « une cible de choix pour des groupes mafieux ou fondamentalistes »

http://www.lesechos.fr/economie-politique/politique/actu/0203100852760-marine-le-pen-embarrassee-par-la-barbe-le-cheche-et-la-reserve-des-ex-otages-624464.php?xtor=EPR-101-[NL_13h]-20131031-[s=461370_n=2_c=202_]-1664277@2

This “Homeland” sleeper-mole scenario is not so far-fetched.   Originally brought to public consciousness by “The Manchurian Candidate” (novel, 1959; movie 1962, with later remakes),  the phenomenon has been attested in our own day…  In this respect, “Homeland” was perhaps more accurate than it knew.  Indeed, that op (which seemed to me far-fetched) of assassinating the Veep  remotely via signals to his pacemaker, turns out to be uncannily accurate:  Dick Cheney feared just such an attack, and has his pacemaker specifically modified to repel it.

~

To find an equally shameful American example of caving-in to terrorists, you would have to go all the way back to the Reagan administration’s policy of abject truckling to Iran ….

[TBC … or else fill in the details yourselves.  Easy to look up.

The Carter administration was much cleverer and tougher, though it got no credit from the public:  see examples here.]

[Update 10 November 2013]  Meanwhile, a rather extraordinary story is playing out in Saint-Ouen, just north of Paris.   Ever since July, an encampment of Gypsies who are in the country illegally, have been squatting atop the railroad line that supplies heating fuel for Paris, in effect holding an entire city hostage, while winter creeps nigh.  There has been no coverage of this in the anglophone press:

   Your search - gypsies Saint-Ouen - did not match any news results.

and very little in the francophone, save in the intrepid Le Figaro this morning:

Un camp illégal de Roms menace l'alimentation en chauffage de Paris

Chassés de leurs campements par les expulsions de l'été, 900 Roms regroupés à Saint-Ouen bloquent l'approvisionnement ferroviaire de la Compagnie de chaufferie parisienne. Des hôpitaux, des crèches et 110.000 foyers pourraient être privés de chauffage.

Plus aucun train n'approche de la centrale de chauffage de Saint-Ouen en Seine-Saint-Denis. L'immense campement illégal de Roms qui recouvre une partie des docks depuis cet été bloque cent mètres de voie ferroviaire, compliquant l'approvisionnement en charbon de ce maillon essentiel de la distribution de chaleur de Paris.

Depuis le début du mois de juillet, au rythme des expulsions survenues en Seine-Saint-Denis ou dans le Val-d'Oise, le campement rom de Saint-Ouen n'a cessé de grossir. «Ils étaient 500 en juillet, 800 début octobre, 900 maintenant, dont un tiers d'enfants», explique le cabinet du maire, qui se dit «totalement incapable de gérer la situation».

La voie ferrée qui mène à la centrale de la Compagnie parisienne de chauffage urbain (CPCU) est complètement bloquée, couverte de cabanons, de caravanes et de détritus. Cette chaufferie représente pourtant, à elle seule, le quart de l'activité de la CPCU, qui alimente tous les hôpitaux publics de la capitale, une grande partie des crèches et 110 000 foyers parisiens.

«S'il y a un pic de froid à partir de la mi-décembre, la Compagnie de chauffage ne pourra pas faire face»

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2013/11/09/01016-20131109ARTFIG00321-un-camp-rom-menace-l-alimentation-en-chauffage-de-paris.php?m_i=%2Bw8%2BzV79clcAwZkTfwxUWDA7yOKPXvWjODSsFMXq_e3Bd93%2Bj

While the Hollande government will authorize payouts to kidnappers amounting to tens of millions of dollars, to rescue a quartet of African adventurers, it has not lifted a finger to defend Paris.

[Update 29 July 2014]  The NYTimes nails it to the mast:

www.nytimes.com/2014/07/30/world/africa/ransoming-citizens-europe-becomes-al-qaedas-patron.html

[Update 31 July 2014]  Curious to see how France would reaction to being so publically ‘outed’ (not that this is news  to those who have been paying attention  -- it was a “secret de polichinelle”), I checked Le Figaro, which itself has, in the past, been fairly frank on the subject:

La France, championne du paiement des rançons à al-Qaida

It is nothing but a brief summary.

Spicier is this reader’s comment (ebenda):

Dans les années 80, ou 90 des russes furent pris en otages.....Le proche d'un ravisseur, fut envoyer à son parent, en plusieurs valises.......Ca calme.....Et coute moins cher.....