I'm on a crime spree
How to blow away the blues
Hello there, situation normies!
I got so many lovely responses from last week’s story, Getting mental health help can drive you nuts. I appreciate the kind words and good vibes. I also want you to know that a lot of people shared their own mental health struggles. We are not alone! You probably know that, but if you struggle with mental health, you also probably know what it’s like to feel alone with your problems. If last week’s story made you feel seen, I’m glad.
Also, I plan to write more about mental health. In fact, today’s story has a mental health angle. And for those who are wondering, my experiments with antidepressants continue (hello, Wellbutrin!), and my search for a psych is ongoing.
Shout out time!
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The other day, I met my friend Todd for our weekly breakfast at Brent’s Deli. As Todd noshed on an everything bagel, I made a confession.
“I’ve been on a crime spree.”
“You? Doing crimes. I don’t see it.”
“It’s big time. The crime spree is going on two months.”
“Let me guess. Securities fraud? Money laundering? White collar stuff? That seems up your alley.”
“Mostly murder. Some burglaries. Oh, and conspiracy. There’s almost always a conspiracy. Criminals are just like regular people, and people need people. Barbra Streisand was right. You can do a crime solo—it’s less risky that way—but it’s harder to get shit done.”
“Sounds like a full-time job.”
“It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle. That’s why they call it, a life of crime.”
Todd chuckled. Between his family and work, he didn’t have time for crime. Frankly, I didn’t either. But then I made time.
My walks are the perfect time for crime. You can do a lot of crimes on a two-hour walk. Meal prep takes about three hours every Sunday, so that’s good crime time too. Ditto for cleaning the house, which takes about four hours every Friday. Then there are the small gaps in my schedule that are consumed with crimes: running errands, doing the dishes, picking up Mortimer’s poop in the backyard. My favorite time for crime is every night in bed. After Christina and I talk, I settle in to make a little more progress on my crime spree, before drifting off to sleep.
If it isn’t obvious, I’m talking about crime fiction. In the past six weeks, I’ve listened to twelve crime novels. It began with Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows, a hardboiled story about a Hollywood publicist and her ex-boyfriend, a disgraced cop-turned-enforcer, who try to do the right thing for once, and pay the price. The most recent book in my crime spree was a thriller called The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes, who knocked my socks off with I Am Pilgrim, but really shit the bed with his follow-up. Between those two novels, I breezed through Going Zero, a techno thriller that could’ve used more character development and, come to think of it, a lot more research on surveillance capitalism. I enjoyed the prose of Jessica Knoll, who wrote The Luckiest Girl Alive, a dark story about bullying and misogyny. And I fell hard for Timothy Hallinan’s Junior Bender mysteries, eight books in total, about an erudite burglar with a side hustle solving crimes for crooks in Los Angeles. My crime spree also extends to film and TV. I loved A Murder at the End of the World, puzzled over the latest season of True Detective, and binged Tokyo Vice. Then I rewatched Devil in a Blue Dress, Jackie Brown, and Heat.
“That’s a crime spree all right,” Todd said. “But what about history? You’re always reading history.”
“Funny thing, I’ve been reading history almost non-stop for the past five or six years. I love history, but I also find it depressing. History usually goes from bad to worse. It’s kind of a shit show.”
When you’re depressed, people share a lot of ideas for mitigating depression. One common piece of advice: examine your media diet. I don’t think the media I consume causes my depression, but it makes an impact at the margins. If depression is like being stuck in the mud, history is a rain storm that makes the mud more, well, muddy.
“What about comedy?” Todd asked.
In theory, comedy should work. Next to antidepressants, laughter is the best medicine. Also, there’s no co-pay for laughter. But comedy is tricky. Actually, here’s the quote I’m looking for: “dying is easy, comedy is hard.” That’s a darkly funny way of saying most jokes bomb. If you’re counting on comedy to cheer you up, you should know there are no guarantees. There’s another problem with comedy that might be specific to me, but then again depression is nothing if not a “me problem.” My problem is this: the main ingredients of comedy are tragedy and time. Even when I’m feeling good, I can’t help but deconstruct the recipe for a funny story.
But crime? Those are reliable feel-good stories for me. A good crime story takes the world as it is, focuses on a specific transgression, then plays the narrative through to resolution. Justice is done, but it doesn’t matter if the arbiter of that justice is a detective, or a criminal, a hero or an anti-hero. Crime stories are satisfying because they give us the thing we rarely find in life: closure. They’re stories about something that goes terribly wrong, something so fucked up that the protagonist has to set it right, no matter what.
My favorite protagonist is Harry Bosch. He’s a sad, lonely dude, with a fucked-up back story. I often joke that if I’m ever murdered, I want Harry Bosch on the case. Bosch is a relentless crime-solving machine. He can’t fix the world, hell, he can’t even form a healthy relationship or take a vacation, but that doesn’t matter. Bosch sets things right, one fucked up thing at a time. His motto is beautiful: everybody counts, or nobody counts. Harry might be anti-social, but he’s pro-people. He speaks for the dead, even if they’re the kind of people nobody bothered to speak up for when they were alive. Maybe I’m nuts, but there’s something comforting about a hero who walks through the fires of hell for someone who can never know the price that hero paid for justice. For my money, Raymond Chandler had the best description of that type of person:
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.
The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.
“So the crime stories are working for you?” Todd asked.
“No, I think it’s the drugs. But the crime spree helps.”
“Who says, crime doesn’t pay?” Todd joked.
“Actually, I think it’s your turn to pay, dude.”
“Zing.”
Want more Michael Estrin stories? I’ve got books!
Ride/Share: Micro Stories of Soul, Wit and Wisdom from the Backseat is a collection of my Lyft driver stories🚗🗣
Not Safe for Work is an amateur detective novel based on my experiences covering the adult entertainment industry💋🍑🍆🕵️♂️
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Stick around and chat!
You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.
Have you read or seen any good crime stories lately? Asking for me.
What kind of stories comfort you when you’re feeling down? Dish!
If you were murdered, who would you want to solve the case, and why would it be Harry Bosch? Get creative!
Did you understand what the hell happened in the latest season of True Detective? Come to think of it, can you explain any of the True Detective seasons? Be honest.
We usually get everything bagels with cream cheese at Brent’s. What’s your bagel order?
Quick programming note!
I’m taking next Sunday off. If you’re looking for a reason to smile, here’s my advice: call a friend and get bagels
My wife and I recently watched all the classic Columbo episodes and loved them. I’d like Columbo to solve my murder, because it means a rich person killed me and I want that one percenter to squirm.
Nobody can touch the lineup included in the NBC Mystery Movie series on Sunday nights in the early 1970’s, which rotated through “Columbo,” “McCloud,” “McMillan & Wife,” “Hec Ramsey,” and “Banacek” - classic detective stuff!