I Voted.

 

Sasha Peyton Smith and Rachel Griffin at the Mall

The new Barnes & Noble at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue (a suburb of Seattle) advertised that they would have Sasha Peyton Smith speaking about her second book, The Witch Hunt. I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with the book. But it’s been a long time since I had heard an author speak in person about a book, so I went. I’m glad I did.

Sasha Peyton Smith is on the right

Rachel Griffin on the left

Some authors do readings of their work, and then answer questions as if the characters are real. In this case, Sasha Peyton Smith was interviewed by Rachel Griffin, a fellow author. The interview was entirely about the writing process. Sasha Peyton Smith discussed the research she did for the two time periods and the two locations for her books—New York and Paris. An interesting insight was she did not start writing her first book with the goal of publishing it. She was just writing to please herself.

When she decided to try having it published, she said she assembled a Frankenstein’s monster from parts of twelve different drafts. She then submitted it with a badly written query letter. Despite all that, her first book was accepted, and now she has her second book out.

While Sasha Peyton Smith was signing books, I asked Rachel Griffin, author of the recent Wild is the Witch, about agents. She said she submitted her first book to seventy different agents before she was accepted. That process took about a year. She could tell I was an aspiring author from my questions, so she wished me well.

Movie Review: See How They Run

In a London theater in 1953, director Leo Köpernick (Adrien Brody) manages to start a fistfight after a showing of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Not long after, Köpernick turns up dead on a sofa used in the play. The weary Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) is assigned the case and is saddled with the very energetic Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan). Through a series of hilarious interviews they find that multiple people at the theatre, including the famous Richard Attenborough, thoroughly hated Köpernick and could be suspects.

Constable Stalker wants to follow up every lead and often jumps to conclusions as to who is guilty. Inspector Stoppard is more torpid, to the point that he would rather have a few drinks while on duty. As the twists and turns mount up, will this turn out to be like an Agatha Christie thriller?

See How They Run deconstructs the murder mystery, just as Scream deconstructed the slasher movie. Both movies dissect the common tropes of each genre, then put them back together in new and innovative ways. See How They Run should improve murder mystery movies by not allowing them to be lazy in the writing and plot.

Saoirse Ronan is quite the gem. She is allowed to do her pert Irish accent throughout. The scene where Inspector Stoppard secretly goes off for a drink while she remains on duty with a fixed stare is hilarious. And when she yells, “Stop! In the name of the law!” It’s quite a treat.

Although Sam Rockwell does a fine job, I thought Saoirse Ronan should have gotten top billing, since she had far more lines than he did. And Adrien Brody does his usual job of getting under one’s skin with his intense but laid back style.

Throughout, scenes from The Mousetrap are shown. It makes me curious to read the book.