True Business Crime

Note: I’m not much of a reader of true crime: the motives are always the same and perps and their enablers display only slightly varying blends of cowardice, appetite, anger or thrill-seeking. When I do, I try to be selective. See Classic Crimes (William Roughhead), Small Town D.A (Robert Traver), For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago (Simon Baatz), and The Spy in The Russian Club: How Glenn Souther Stole America's Nuclear War Plans & Escaped to Moscow (Ronald Kessler)

The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup – Evan Hughes

I could not put down this book about an opioid startup called Insys. They used strong techniques to market their FDA-approved drug, Sybsys, a powerful pain killer made of fentanyl. Since some of their sales techniques were illegal, the top executives were busted and went to trial. The trial was the opportunity for Hughes to take a deep dive to examine how these drugs are marketed and sold. In a tight overview of this trial, Hughes makes clear the fact the nobody gave a shit about the people addicted, harmed, and killed by the narcotic, not the drug makers or its sales agents nor the defense attorneys nor the federal prosecutors.

Readers and patients who are not aware of how drug companies influence doctors’ prescribing will find this an eye-opening book. It is an aggressive sales technique to target the top ten percent of opioid prescribing doctors in a state. It is iffy indeed to push doctors to prescribe higher dosages of any medication, much less the most powerful pain killer in the market, during an epidemic of opioid overdose deaths.

Out of their lane, sales staff urged the doctors to prescribe the medication even in cases when it was not indicated (so-called “off label”). Subsys was approved for breakthrough cancer pain, not aching joints. Going way outside the guard-rails, Insys inserted themselves into the pre-authorization process by out and out falsehoods and massaging the facts to persuade insurance companies to approve coverage.

Most egregiously, Insys paid doctors to give talks on the medication as a pretext to set up a ‘this for that.’ In other words, the company pays for presentations even to attendee-free meetings and the doctors prescribe the drug. Later federal prosecutors summed up the business model as one plus one equals two: “bribing doctors, conning insurers, making money.”

Under pressure from the market and the imperative to make money, the big bosses want all the market share. Under pressure from the bosses, the sales staff want the exhilaration of landing big accounts and money.  Under gimme-gimme pressure from sales agents and patients in pain, harried doctors write hundreds of scripts for an opioid painkiller, adverse effects on trusting naïve patients be damned. It takes courage to resist pressure.  As a humble minion a large public bureaucracy, I gently opine there have to be easier, less stressful ways of making a living.

And staying out of jail.

Also, as a part-time compliance operative myself, the other take-away I got from this book is that companies had better not be cheap like Insys when it comes to hiring in-house lawyers and compliance specialists. The federal regulations are many and convoluted. It’s very easy to make mistakes and run afoul of regs even with the best intentions. Companies need experts to navigate regulatory swamps properly.

Finally, more government oversight is needed over drug companies marketing and distributers between the drugmakers and doctors and pharmacies. Drug company bosses ought not to get coddled when it comes to fines and jail.

Was Love her Crime?

Note: The Gail Patrick film festival continues. In the movie reviewed today she gets away from her early parts as nice secretary (If I Had a Million), nice research assistant (Murders in the Zoo) and nice aspiring singer (The Phantom Broadcast) and kind of nice rich girl (Death Takes a Holiday). What the hell, the reader wonders, is forgotten actress Gail Patrick doing on what is basically a Perry Mason blog? Gail Patrick Jackson found retirement a bore in the 1950s so she became the executive producer of the greatest teevee courtroom drama in creation - there is only one correct answer - Perry Mason. She and Raymond Burr butted heads over scripts and workload, but Burr said she was the soul of the series.

The Crime of Helen Stanley
1934 / 58 minutes
Tagline: “Make-believe drama that changed to grim tragedy!”
[internet archive]

In this production Gail Patrick plays a spoiled movie star of whom a studio executive says, “She never gave reasons. She made demands.” When she finds out that her sister and her ex-BF plan to marry, in a rage of jealousy she warns them to break it off, telling her favorite cameraman in classic diva style, “I made you and I'll break you just as easily.” It seems she has something on everybody so that she can coerce them to do her will. Nobody likes her intimidating ways. Nobody seems especially broken up when she is shot dead on set during the shooting of a scene in a nightclub, except movie-goers that would find easy to take more scenes of Gail Patrick in her drawers, in racy scenes typical of Pre-Code Hollywood.

But alas.

The main attraction is that Inspector Trent (Ralph Bellamy) takes us movie-goers behind the scenes of Columbia studios during the early days of sound. Imparting a feeling of unreality is the Thirties technology such as sets, lights, lifts, dollies, and other equipment so antique as to be unidentifiable. Also putting us off balance are the elaborate catwalks that the lighting guys have to navigate. The images are shot beautifully.                                                                                               

The camera work shows care and craft. Cutting from face to face for reactions was cool. Fascinating is the subjective camera on a trio of faces. As for the acting, Gail Patrick does domineering and spiteful skillfully, as she was to do as mean Cornelia in My Man Godfrey a couple years later. Bellamy uses his great voice to make weakish lines sound genuine.  But that’s about it. Shirley Grey has a kind of mature sensuality but muffs lines too.

Bellamy is adept at giving long looks that make persons of interest squirm. “Suspect: I didn’t do it. Bellamy: Then you have nothing to be afraid of” seems profoundly unsatisfying, but maybe we movie-goers have seen too many innocents railroaded in noir movies. The interrogation scene was well-composed throughout with four hostile detectives browbeating and tormenting one hapless thief. The po-faced perfectionistic European director being blackmailed by Gail over immigration ambiguities had to have been a take-off on tyrants like Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg and Erich Von Stroheim.

A genuine B-movie, of interest only to hardcore movie-goers or buffs of the 1930s.

Tim Simpson #1

A Back Room in Somers Town – John Malcolm

The debut of the Tim Simpson series was published in 1984. An ex-rugby player, Simpson brings a lot of macho to his job as an investment and management consultant in a London merchant bank. One of his specialties is providing advice on art investments, especially modern British art. Bubbly and generous, his boss Jeremy is a refreshing change from the stereotypical cold-hearted conniving banker.

John Malcolm worked as antiques expert, engineer, and journalist. So his writing style is concise, well-paced, and reader-friendly, especially to those who like mysteries to be a little different. In this one, the action centers around a murder and the theft of work by Mary Godwin and Walter Sickert, two British modernists known for their edgy work in many genres.

On one hand, it is nice that it's free of the stereotype that jocks have to be lunkheads that know as much about banking as they don't know about art. On the other, its age spots are less than pretty, especially the male chauvinism. 

But readers who like old-school mysteries set in the business world (P.D. James, Sara Paretsky, Emma Lathen) would probably like this one.

It's a Real Mash when They Clash!

Sherlock Holmes versus Dracula - Loren D. Estleman

The world’s greatest consulting detective meets the scariest monster in an epic clash of two of the most famous characters in modern fiction. The Baker Street detective's brilliant deductions confront the determined wickedness of the most terrible enemy of his investigative career.

From the powerful first chapter of the ghost ship winding up in Whitby harbor, Estleman manages to capture the attention of the reader with a dead captain lashed to the wheel, the crew missing, and eyewitness reports of a huge dog running from the vessel. Estleman is a master of the late-Victorian idiom: the prose sounds like 1890, sentences overstuffed with phrases and clauses though always easy to read. He also imitates Watson’s idiosyncratic voice, especially the ironic contrast between Watson’s self-image as skeptical, rational, and composed and his frequent overwrought melodrama and susceptibility to gloomy settings.

However, Estleman gives the stories his own imaginative stamp by every now and then making an allusion that all of us readers of Holmes stories will understand. For example, Holmes and Watson discuss the case that many remember, The Adventure of Speckled Band. In this, Inspector Lestrade rather comes off like a jaded copper in a hard-boiled story. Dog fans will like Toby showing up too. I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s vampire novel, so any allusions to it were lost on me, but that lack didn’t hurt my enjoyment of this thriller.

Also known as The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count, this 1978 thriller was the first of Estleman’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches. This tribute was followed in 1979 by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes. I think neither of these set the critical world on fire and Estleman found his own voice with the Amos Walker series of noir novels set in Detroit in the 1980s. After a long hiatus, came The Perils ofSherlock Holmes (2012) and Sons of Moriarty and More Stories of Sherlock Holmes (2013).

These books were authorized and licensed by the estate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the detective fiction that introduced many of us hardcore readers to mystery fiction or for that matter fiction written not just for kids but for general readers. A discerning reader need not be wary, fearing a faded imitation written by a hack. The author of 70-some mysteries and historical westerns, Estleman has been a hardcore Holmes fan and re-reader of the stories since his adolescence in the Seventies.

Inspector Montalbano #12

The Track of Sand – Andrea Camilleri

This 2008 mystery stars a Sicilian police inspector. The recurring themes of this series – Salvo’s rocky romance with Livia, globalization as criminal enterprise – felt stale, so I wondered if the series, like The Big Bang Theory, was just going through the motions.

I was pleasantly surprised that international crooks play no part in The Track of Sand. The series hero Salvo Montalbano wakes up one morning to find in his yard the battered carcass of a horse that was beaten to death. Salvo feels admirable grief for the horse and rage at the evil-doing perps. His half-official investigation delves in Mafia schemes and the lifestyles of the filthy rich. A new character, the lovely Rachele Esterman, adds to Salvo’s diversions.

The sense of place still feels authentic and familiar, with Salvo walking on his jetty and sitting on his rock. He still eats local cuisine at Enzo’s trattoria. The translation is extremely smooth and readable, with helpful cultural notes at the end. Camilleri handles skillfully the spectrum of life, from the funny to the horrible, often following each other only in minutes.

I advise readers new to Camillieri to read – in order, please. Camilleri has a clear, decisive, essential style. He envelops you with his particular vocabulary; captures you with the stubborn, ironic and sensitive character of Montalbano.

The Ides of Perry Mason 78

Note: Three times a month, we turn to the works of Erle Stanley Gardner, either the novels or the classic TV series that sent us hardcore readers to the novels. The first three seasons on CBS (1957-58-59) have a noir look and a delightfully lurid handling of stories of folly and murder. The motives are classic: overweening ambition; wishful thinking; irresistible desires and aversions; cowardice and cupidity; and wanting to speed blackmailers into the scalding hells they deserve. Because the Sixties zeitgeist prized “relevance,” the stories became less sensational and more topical, from corporate espionage to folk singing to the JD problem to open-wheel race cars to Playboy clubs to the space program to Vic Tanny-type health clubs. Ironic that the emphasis on “ripped from the headlines,” along with the corny soundtrack of Sixties teevee crime drama, makes the Sixties episodes feel more dated than the timeless Fifties fables of ambition, anxiety, and anger crowding out good sense, moderation and caution.

The Singular Episode in Color

The original Perry Mason TV series (1957 - 1966) was shot in black and white. In the first three seasons, the designers and crew worked their magic with grayscale and composition to achieve the noir vision. The high-contrast visuals and low-key lighting, for example, make Evelyn’s troubles more nightmarish in The Case of the Restless Redhead and make sleazier the civic corruption in the stylish The Case of the Fraudulent Foto.

Only one episode of the 271 was filmed in color. CBS execs had decreed that all shows would be in color for the 1966-67 season. President Wiliam S. Paley wanted to see what full-spectrum Perry Mason looked like so in Season 9, the experiment entitled The Case of the Twice-Told Twist was broadcast* on February 27, 1966**.

Designers took the color bit and ran, which was what designers did in the early days of color TV. They used red and orange for walls, linen, and cars. As for clothes, though Barbara Hale*** pops against the pecky cypress paneling in the office and looks stunning in red silk, not well served by colorful attire are  Victor Buono, Beverly Powers, and Lisa Pera (with the blue blue really blue eyes that some Russian women have). I gape, gawking at the yellow mohair sweater. One scene has Paul chasing a suspect down on L.A.’s Olvera Street (shot for Mexico), with its merchant stalls, craft shops, and restaurants. The pedestrian marketplace flashes with so much bright stuff that it looks as cluttered and fussy as an interior on Murder, She Wrote.

With an example of only one episode, it is hard to judge if Perry Mason in color packs the punch of the other 270 B&W shows.  As hinted above, the visual fatigue drains us viewers with 2025 eyes. On the positive side, Victor Buono puts in his usual skillful performance as a corrupter of youth. The confession scene is pretty cool. The deal-breaker that in the end drags the episode into Meh territory: campy and unbelievable are the juvenile delinquents playing Artful Dodgers to Buono’s Fagin. They dress like the Young Engineers Club at Beverly Hills 90210 High School.

I am of two minds about colorizing the original Perry Mason. My objection is whatever effects the original designers intended cannot be captured by the AI colorizing process as it stands today. What if training images to prime the AI were all based on color TV shows in the early days of color - bright and saturated and exhausting? AI-generated color and design tends to look garish anyway probably because of the taste of the IT bros who don’t know kitsch when they see it.  I can’t imagine what the process would do to the red highlights Hale sometimes put in her hair, but I suspect the reds would be, like Agent Scully’s, “a little too red.” How would an AI know how to use color to add emotion to the scene?  Colorizing from AI algorithms would inevitably distract from the mood, atmosphere, and drama conveyed by images and design originally conceived and captured for black and white.

But the realistic part of me grants a colorized classic Perry Mason will attract audiences. Black and white alienates many people, especially those that can’t bring themselves to believe in the distant past of 60 years ago we lived our lives in color. It would be great if colorizing Perry Mason would make the youngs put down the mobile and pay attention to the greatest courtroom series ever and its depth, creativity, convoluted plots, and high-minded morality (In The Case of the Impatient Partner, Perry says, “I always have faith, Mr. Fallon. Faith in what Judge Learned Hand called ‘the eventual supremacy of reason.’”).

By paying undivided attention, youth would learn to live with the bending of time and space. Like in The Case of the Sulky Girl, a scene supposedly taking place at 11:00 p.m. was obviously shot during the day. As for space, in The Case of the Crooked Candle, the inside of a sailboat is larger than its outside indicates, making us wonder if Perry and Della have wandered into Interstellar’s tesseract. At times out and out magic occurs as when in The Case of the Silent Partner, Lt. Tragg is driven to an apartment in a black 1957 Buick Roadmaster Riviera, but when he arrives moments later it is in a black 1957 Buick Special.

 

*CBS later cancelled the show due to low ratings ("Who wants to go up against Bonanza," asks a TV actor in the last episode TCOT Final Fade-out). Producer Gail Patrick Jackson told The New York Times that the network assumed everybody connected to the show was exhausted due to its grueling shooting schedule. Too true, Burr, obviously tired, frankly discussed burnout as early as 1963.

** I was not quite 10 years of age at the time and I don't recall public reaction to the color episode. I do remember, however, the high media interest and public semi-hysteria when Mia Farrow cut off her hair in late February 1966. Farrow said in her memoir you'd think nothing else was happening in the world. 

*** At 19, in 1941, she began fashion modelling to pay for her education at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Besides that wonderful smile, she looked amazing in anything she wore.

Epic Historical Fiction

Creation – Gore Vidal

This historical novel is set in the 4th century BC, from the Persia of Darius and Xerxes to ancient India and China before Qin Shi Huang. The narrator is old and blind Cyrus Spitama who dictating his memoirs to his distant relative, the future laughing philosopher Democritus.

The story is Spitama’s life as an ambassador and traveler throughout the East and chronicles his meetings with Buddha, Confucius, Anaxagoras, and Herodotus. He even hires Socrates the mason, who botches getting a wall up, perhaps because of being distracted by musings about whether virtue can be taught.

As in Julian and Lincoln, Vidal pushes the reader to review many of their pious certainties soaked up in school and not really examined since. For instance, Vidal is acerbic about the glory that was Greece. “Democritus thinks Athens is wonderful,” our narrator observes. “The fact is, son, you haven't seen the rest of the world. I hope one day you can travel and go beyond your Greekness.” Cyrus entertains doubts: “wisdom was not born in Attica, Democritus, but maybe that's where it will die.”

As in the Narratives of Empire, Vidal loves these large frescoes, where he can allow himself to recast a familiar or dimly recalled story as he sees it, such as the Greek wars from the viewpoint of the Persians. But the real preoccupation of the novel is that of the narrator, the grandson of Zoroaster, as to how the universe arose and who or what created it, with the answers of the various wise men and philosophers of the time. Confucius, a practical scholar, shrugged at inquiries into first causes, figuring that it was a waste to time discussing unanswerable questions and that our life, right here, right now, wasn’t affected whether the origin of Creation was divine or natural forces.

A good novel for those times when the reader that wants an evocation of the remote past, with endless court and harem intrigues, regicide, parricide, fratricide, witches and sorcerers, bloodthirsty leaders and impalements of 15,000 soldiers on the losing side of a battle. Feel for a little time the world when it was either new relative to urbanization or philosophy or really old due to the intrigues of politicians, ministers, and merchants that thought they are going to build systems that would last forever only to have them survive founders by mere decades.