Whodunit reloaded

WHEN a former president and a bestselling writer collaborate, it puts a new spin on the genre of the whodunit.

I came across an essay Craig Fehrman wrote for the “The New York Times International Edition”. On May 26-27, Fehrman revealed that Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s thriller, “The President is Missing,” will be published next month.

Before Bill became recently known as the husband of the woman who came closest to occupying the Oval Office, he was a president of the United States. For those with even more selective memories like mine, Bill’s public life is bookended by actually two women, Hillary and Monica.

Despite these unfond associations, I was curious to know he had co-written a book with, of all writers, James Patterson. Years ago, my older son and I took home one carload of thrillers given by a Korean War veteran who was making room in his apartment for more.

While we were shovelling books inside the family car, PL picked up one copy of a Patterson thriller (I forgot which one; there were several litters of them) and commented that much as he liked a whodunit, Patterson’s habit of “using” unknown writers to “partner” with left PL cold.

Not only did Patterson have first-mention, bigger-font billing on the book cover, the other writer must have written the whole book but received a smaller royalty and an even smaller byline, speculated PL.

I never had a chance to investigate PL’s snarky dismissal of Patterson because, in one of our regular marital reviews when the husband repeated the usual offer I cannot refuse (“those books or me”), I gave away nearly the entire PL hoard, including the cannibalistic Pattersons.

I now wish I had read one of those books so I can judge by next month, if, aside from settling for second-place, smaller-font mention, Patterson does get unplotted by Bill.
Fehrman, who is writing a book about books written by U.S. presidents, observed that “‘The President is Missing’ belongs to a long tradition of chief executives devouring thrillers, mysteries and detective stories.”

Devoted readers include Abraham Lincoln, who could quote passages from Edgar Allan Poe; Woodrow Wilson, “mystery writing’s defender in chief;” and Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, whose wives, I imagine, regularly raided their husband’s bedside stacks of thrillers.

Fehrman also uncovered that Franklin D. Roosevelt once devised a plot that resulted in a book written by several writers, including Erle Stanley Gardener. “The Times” reviewed the thriller as “one of the worst suspense novels ever written”.

Whether I would part with precious pesos for a book by carnivorous Patterson and philanderous Bill, only next month will tell.


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)


*First published in SunStar Cebu’s June 3, 2018 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

No small miracle

I WISH there were more Jesuits like Father Gus Saenz.

First, he has a bookshelf I wouldn’t mind spending endless detention hours with: Asterix comics, glossy art books, and “DNA in the Courtroom” (although to be honest, I prefer “CSI” reruns: more Hollywood than science).

He has democratic, even “reprobate” taste in music: Gregorian chants and rock music, which he plays very loud while cutting up bodies.

When fellow priest and protégé Jeremy Lucero complains about R. E. M. blasting into their ears during an autopsy, Father Gus defends the rock band whose greatest hit is “Losing My Religion”: “Don’t knock it. It’s the closest either of us will ever get to sex.”

F. H. Batacan’s creation of a character with a complex inner and outer life is a good enough reason to rush to the nearest bookstore for “Smaller and Smaller Circles” before the copies disappear altogether.

The plain truth is that in this country, books written by Filipinos rarely share the gilded reprinting destinies of foreign bestsellers like the Harry Potter series and “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

According to Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo in her University of the Philippines (UP) Press book, “Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women,” the first printing of English-language books written by Filipinos usually runs only to 1,000 copies.

It’s no small miracle that “Smaller and Smaller Circles” was reprinted four times since it was first published as a novella by the UP Press in 2002. The slim book became an underground favorite. Total number of copies reprinted by 2006: 6,000.

By then, the novella gathered the critics’ nods: the Grand Prize for the Novel in English at the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 1999; the Philippine National Book Award from the Manila Critics’ Circle in 2002; and the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award in 2003.

 The copy I recently bought from a local bookstore is from the 2015 printing by independent New York publisher Soho Crime of “Smaller and Smaller Circles,” the novel.

For three years, its author rewrote and expanded the novella from the original 155 pages into the novel’s 357 pages.

The author is Maria Felisa H. Batacan, who worked for 10 years with the Philippine intelligence community, before going into broadcast journalism and crime and mystery fiction writing. She was a fellow at the 1996 Silliman University National Writers Workshop.

Marketing a book through its cover, blurbs neatly summarize the F. H. Batacan behind “Smaller and Smaller Circles”. But blurbs cannot justly capture what makes this novel about a serial killer in 1997 resound to this day. (To be continued)


(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ mayettetabada.blogspot.com/ 09173226131)


* First published in SunStar Cebu’s March 12, 2017 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”