by Jon L. Breen
The dubious juror question also reminded me of indignity number two. Though Iris via Andrea successfully insisted that as a full collaborator on the books, I had the right, nay the duty, to be present, there was some talk ofrequiring me to stay in a cage on or under the counsel table, as if I were some kind of wild animal whose freedom to wander the courtroom would somehow endanger human life or otherwise subvert the cause of justice. No sooner was that battle won than the defendant Elmo Gruntz asked for similar rights for his own animal companion, Fang, a huge and fierce German shepherd on whom he said the attack dog Rip in his novels was closely modeled. That led to a long legal confab as well, precipitated by the possibility that Fang really could be a danger to others in the courtroom, though Gruntz claimed he only ripped the flesh of drug lords, child molesters, and other human scum, leaving the pure of heart alone.
What weighed most heavily in the decision that I could attend the trial and Fang could not was the fact that I actually had a collaborative byline on the novels in which I appeared and Fang did not. Either Gruntz was less prone to share credit or, more likely, members of the canine species lack the necessary intelligence for literary achievement. I hope you won’t take that as an instance of dog-bashing. Dogs have many fine qualities, and in some respects may even be the superior of cats. I don’t think a dog could commit premeditated murder, do you? But I’m sure a cat could.
Anyway, back to the courtroom. I’ll leap forward, though. A lot of trial action really is boring; in fact, I don’t know how people can sit still for it all. At least I could wander around the room and explore without missing anything important. Once the jury had been seated and opening arguments presented, Andrea Frost called to the stand the expert witness who would lay out the basics of our case against Elmo Gruntz. He was the renowned crime fiction critic and historian Merv Glickman, a kind and cheerful man who seemed to know every author, every title, and every continuing character in the history of the form.
I confess I had been dubious about making Merv Glickman our major witness. He is on record as not loving cat mysteries, though he seems reasonably fond of cats, and some of the points he would make in his testimony would not be wholly complimentary to our work. But Andrea assured us that his obvious objectivity could only make our case more persuasive, and Iris seemed to agree.
Andrea spent some twenty minutes establishing Merv’s credentials: the publications he’d reviewed for, the books he’d written or edited, the university courses he’d taught, the awards he’d won. Had I been less keyed up, I might have catnapped through much of this. Then Andrea got to the key questions.
“Mr. Glickman, are you familiar with the works of Iris Stapleton Goodhew and Whiskers McGuffin?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And are you also familiar with the works of Elmo Gruntz?”
“Yes.”
“Did I ask you to make a close study of one novel from each of these, uh, bylines?”
“Yes, you did.”
“And what were those two novels?”
“Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe by Goodhew and McGuffin, published in 1997 by Conundrum Press, and Devour by Elmo Gruntz, published in 1999 by St. Patrick’s Press.”
“Did you find any points of similarity in the two novels?”
“I found many.”
“Could you summarize them for us?”
“Certainly. I’ll begin with the more superficial. Each of the books has a title that fits in with a pattern the author has established to create brand recognition. Each of the books has exactly 450 pages and 26 chapters. Of those chapters, in each case half are told from the point of view of an animal character. Every other chapter of Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe is narrated by the animal companion of the heroine, free-lance journalist Winona Fleming. That, of course, is Whiskers McGuffin.” Merv smiled in my direction, and I meowed in gratitude at his politically correct (because sensitive) choice of words.
“Every other chapter of Devour,” he went on, “is told from the viewpoint of Rip, the dog belonging to unlicensed homeless private eye Abel Durfee.” I knew, of course, that the distasteful imputation of animal ownership embodied in this second identification was no accident. Gruntz and his character would naturally think in terms of ownership, master and slave, rather than equality.
“While the chapters about Rip follow his thoughts,” Merv went on, “they are not actually written in his voice but from an omniscient narrator. Third dog rather than first dog, you might say.
“Both novels are, of course, whodunits. And in each novel, about twenty of the 450 pages are devoted to advancing the plot.”
Andrea raised a disingenuous eyebrow at that. “Twenty pages out of 450? What did the two authors do with the other 430 pages?”
“Well, in the case of Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe, there is much attention to descriptions of the scenes, how the various characters are dressed, landscaping, interior decoration, meals, including recipes for selected dishes, things like that. And of course everything must be described twice, once from the viewpoint of a human character and once from the quite different and distinctive, and I might add frequently entertaining, viewpoint of Whiskers McGuffin.”
Frequently entertaining? I bristled at the faint praise.
“The approach in Devour,” Merv went on, “is quite a bit different with much of the needed page filling provided by descriptions of physical action: fistfights, car chases, menaces in parking garages, sex, torture, rape—and of course the vengeance finally taken on the baddies by Durfee and Rip is described in loving detail, without a cracking bone or a bleeding wound neglected. Also, Gruntz can go on for pages of monosyllabic macho posturing dialogue between Durfee and one or more of the villains. Enough speeches of one word to a paragraph and those 450 pages fill up fast.”
Forrest Milhaus made some kind of an objection to the slighting tone of Merv’s description of Gruntz’s repellent novels. Really quite mild, I thought, and he had been accepted as an expert witness.
“Please go on, Mr. Glickman,” Andrea said, after the judge had quite appropriately overruled the objection.
“In both books, there are several chapters made up of the detective summarizing the previous action, all of it well known to the reader, for the benefit of another character. And of course each series has a number of continuing characters who must recur in every book, even if they don’t really have anything to do with story.”
“How many continuing characters are there in the series about Winona Fleming and Whiskers McGuffin?”
“May I refer to my notes?”
“Certainly.”
Merv drew out a vest-pocket notebook and flipped a few pages. “Seventeen,” he replied. “That’s not counting Winona and Whiskers.”
“That seems like a considerable number.”
“They do mount up.”
“And how many continuing characters are there in the Abel Durfee and Rip series?”
“Remarkably enough, the same number, seventeen, apart from Durfee and Rip.”
“Could you briefly list them for us?”
“From both series, you mean?”
“If you would.”
“Well, in the Goodhew/McGuffin series, you have of course Winona Fleming’s police contact and on-and-off boyfriend Detective Lieutenant Brent Hooper; her upstairs neighbor and best girlfriend Adele Washington; her elderly protective landlord Iggy Lamplighter; veterinarian and on-and-off boyfriend Dr. Curt Hamilton; gossiping hairdresser cum cat groomer Sadie McCready; Winona’s loving but eccentric parents Hank and Minerva Fleming; her somewhat wild sister Stacy Fleming Tracy; her sister’s abusive ex-husband Lester Tracy; her lovable but troubled teenage niece Morning Tracy; her priest brother Father Phil Fleming; her sometime editor and former boyfriend Axel Maxwell; the demented cat psychiatrist Dr. Ephraim Entwhistle; cat food manufacturer Ingo Dominguez and his domestic partner, cat sculptor Fred von Richtofen, who also by the way is Brent Hooper’s police partner; wealthy and snobbish cat breeder Muffin Esterbrook; and no
sy neighborhood druggist Pops Werfel.”
“And in the Abel and Rip series?”
“Let’s see now. There’s Abel’s main police contacts, good cop Lieutenant Al Corelli and bad cop Captain Ed McBride; his social worker and sometime girlfriend Estelle Magdalini; his crazy-Vietnam-vet sidekick Thorn; local newspaper columnist Manny Graves; good rackets boss Claude Willis; Reggie and Pedro, Claude’s two enforcers; bad rackets boss Itchy McAllister; Grog and Amadeus, Itchy’s two enforcers; Livia Gravel, local madame and Abel’s off-and-on girlfriend; Abel’s sociologist brother, Dr. Max Durfee; his naïve and danger-prone niece Megan Durfee; bartender and A.A. advocate Clancy Esposito; lawyer Sholem ‘the Shyster’ Schuster; alcoholic unlicensed veterinarian Dr. William ‘Carver’ McTweed; punchdrunk newsy and ex-boxer Bobby ‘the Bandaid’ Whistler; and—did I miss anybody? No, I think that’s seventeen.”
“And all seventeen have to appear in each and every book?”
Merv shrugged. “As I say, when there’s 450 pages to fill. . . .”
“Could you now briefly summarize the plot of Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe for us?”
“Yes. Winona and Whiskers are visiting Sadie McCready to get their respective fur done. Sadie says a friend of hers, fleeing an abusive husband, needs a place to stay. Sensitive to the situation because of her sister’s experiences, Winona quickly offers her guest room, though Whiskers is dubious. When their boarder is found strangled with a distinctive designer necktie, suspicion falls on the victim’s husband, who sells that line of necktie at an exclusive men’s shop he owns. But the detective work of the human-feline team eventually pins the crime on the husband’s business partner, whose amatory advances had been rejected by the victim. In the last chapter, Whiskers comes to Winona’s rescue by upsetting a poisoned cup of tea served her by the murderer.”
“Now tell us the plot of Devour.”
“Abel Durfee hears from bartender Clancy that a friend fleeing out-of-town loan sharks needs a place to crash. Abel helps the man vanish into the homeless community, though Rip is suspicious. When the fleeing man is found carved to death with a broken Thunderbird bottle, the cops arrest one of Claude Willis’s enforcers, who they think was working for the out-of-town loan sharks. Abel finds out the real murderer was the lone shark’s apparently legitimate business partner. He had started a child forced labor and prostitution ring. The victim had found out and the killer had come after him. In the last chapter, Rip rescues Abel, who is being force-fed cheap vodka preparatory to being sent over the cliff in his car to an explosive death, and pretty much devours the killer.”
“Would you say that is the same plot, Mr. Glickman?”
“I’d have to say it’s pretty similar.”
“I have no further questions. Your witness.”
Forrest Milhaus, who had been smirking through much of Merv’s testimony, rose to cross-examine. As he approached the witness chair his shoe grazed my fur and I scurried under the defense table. He apologized, but I was not fooled, nor I think were Iris and Andrea. That had been no accident.
“Mr. Glickman, may we look at some of the supposed similarities between my client’s work and the plaintiff’s?”
“Certainly.”
“You referred to a title pattern to establish brand loyalty. I don’t see many similarities between Ms. Goodhew’s titles and Mr. Gruntz’s.”
“Their titles aren’t similar. It’s the use of a title pattern that is similar.”
“Perhaps you could explain. What is Ms. Goodhew’s title pattern?”
“Punning versions of famous titles or phrases including the word cat or a related word. For example, when Winona and Whiskers invaded Steinbeck country, the title was The Cat and the Cannery. A novel with a computer industry background was called Cat and Mouse. Their Florida novel offered a slight variation, Kitten on the Keys. And of course, the book at issue here is Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe.”
“Do those strike you as good puns, Mr. Glickman?”
“Maybe some of them are rather strained, but that’s not the point, is it?”
“The lawyer asks the questions, Mr. Glickman. And what is my client’s continuing title pattern?”
“One word titles, as short as possible. The first in the series was Rip, named of course for the dog character. The others referred to what Rip and/or Abel Durfee do to the unfortunate villains. Tear, Shred, Cut, Flay, Slice, Slash, Gouge, Gash, and of course Devour.”
“Not so similar to Ms. Goodhew’s titles, are they?”
“Only in that they are title patterns. That wasn’t one of my major points.”
“No, I suppose not. Shall we move on then? Have you heard of the designations tough and cozy referring to mystery fiction?”
“Certainly.”
“What do they represent?”
“Differing approaches to the crime story, or you might say different schools of mystery writing. I think the terms are self-explanatory.”
“Do my client and Ms. Goodhew take the same approach or belong to the same school?”
Merv smiled at that. “Not at all.”
“Would Ms. Goodhew be classified as a cozy?”
“Cozy as you can get, yes.”
“And would Mr. Gruntz be a tough?”
“None tougher.”
“Ms. Goodhew and Mr. Gruntz begin to sound more and more dissimilar.”
Andrea was on her feet, and about time. “Objection. Counsel should ask questions, not comment.” I had hoped she would call Milhaus on his continuing refusal to include my name as co-author of the books, but I supposed she knew what she was doing.
“Comment withdrawn, your honor.” Milhaus picked up from the clerk’s table the copies of the two books Andrea had entered into evidence. “Mr. Glickman, I am handing you a copy of Cat on a Hatpin Pouffe. I direct your attention to the photograph on the back of the dust jacket.”
“Yes, that’s a photograph of Ms. Goodhew and of Whiskers.” Better of her than me, I always thought, but they don’t give me jacket approval.
“What is that object that Ms. Goodhew is holding up to the camera so proudly?”
“That’s a Martini.”
“Really! It doesn’t look like a drink.”
“It’s an award,” Merv explained. “A sculpture of a cat named Martini.”
“And what does this award honor?”
“The best cat mystery of the year.”
“Why the unusual name?”
“They wanted to call it the Macavity, but that was already taken, so they named it after one of Mr. and Mrs. North’s cats.”
“And what organization grants this award?”
“The FCC. No, not the one you think. The Feline Crime Consortium. It’s an organization of people who write cat mysteries.”
“Why did they need such an organization and such an award?”
“Lack of respect accorded cat mysteries. The writers didn’t feel that cat mysteries were getting sufficient attention from the other crime fiction awards. They didn’t expect much of the Edgar but the more cozy-oriented fan-voted awards like the Anthony and the Agatha were ignoring them, too. So they formed their own organization and came up with their own award.”
“And Ms. Goodhew has won this award?”
“She and Whiskers”—thank you, I meowed—“have won three of them. They have been nominated nearly every year.”
“Is it true the same four writers are nominated nearly every year?”
“With minor variations, yes, that’s true.”
“Now I’d like to hand you this copy of Mr. Gruntz’s novel Devour, the other work we are considering in this trial. And again I direct your attention to the author photo on the back of the jacket.”
“Yes, there’s Elmo Gruntz and his dog Fang.”
“And what is Mr. Gruntz holding in his hand?”
Merv smirked. “As the caption to the photograph explains, that’s called a Baskerville, ostensibly an award for the best dog mystery of the year.”
“Why do
you say ostensibly, Mr. Glickman?”
“Because it’s a gag. There is no such award. Your client made it up and awarded it to himself because he thought it would be a funny joke on the cat ladies.”
“Ordinarily, I would object to your apparent ability to read my client’s thoughts, Mr. Glickman, but let’s say you’re correct, that the similarity between the two jacket photographs is intentional and satirical in nature. Would you call that an example of plagiarism?”
“No, of course not. But you’ll have noticed that wasn’t one of the similarities I pointed out in my direct testimony.”
“So noted. Now tell me, Mr. Glickman, to your knowledge is Mr. Elmo Gruntz himself a member of the Feline Cat Consortium?”
“Yes.”
“Does he come to their conventions?”
“Never misses one.”
“Was there some controversy over his membership?”
“To put it mildly. They didn’t want to accept him for membership, thought he only wanted to join to make fun of them, make them uncomfortable. But he was able to point to cat characters in several of his books. According to their own rules, they had to let him in.”
“Mr. Glickman, are you aware of the relative commercial success of Ms. Goodhew and Mr. Gruntz?”
“It’s about a tossup. Goodhew and Whiskers have probably sold more copies overall, including paperback, but Gruntz makes the hardcover bestseller lists and they don’t.”
“Would you say that Iris Stapleton Goodhew has many reasons for personal rancor against my client that might explain this incredibly frivolous lawsuit?”
Andrea was on her feet. “Objection, your honor. Argumentative. Prejudicial. Calls for speculation.” Why couldn’t she have said “incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial”? I always liked that objection. Anyway the damage was done.