Small world crossings

Currently reading:
The Patience of the Spider
by Andrea Camilleri
Genre: Crime
Date started: September 17
Reason: It has a scooter on the cover

Waiting:
The Scent of Blood
by Raymond Miller

Thanks to Matthew Coenen for the idea to list "Reading" and "Waiting."

Recently I did one of those periodic Google searches that some of us do on names from the past. I searched the name Anita Spearman.

The number one return out of 91,400 citations for "Anita Spearman" was for an feature article titled Tell the story, tell the truth, that ran 5/28/2006, in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, written by Michael Connelly.

Anita Spearman had been murdered in late 1985, while recovering at home from a mastectomy. She was beaten to death by an intruder. She was my boss. I was the director of the West Palm Beach Public Library at the time and Anita was an Assistant City Manager for an old Florida cracker from Kissimmee named Dick Simmons. At her funeral, this big-eared country good old boy cried for everyone there, he was inconsolable with shock and grief amid the hundreds of mourners who attended her funeral. Very quickly her husband was charged and convicted of hiring the murder. He was killed in prison. The actual perpetrator was also brought to trial.

The Michael Connelly is That Michael Connelly. Who knew. He worked as a cub reporter for the Sun-Sentinel and West Palm Beach city government was his first beat. I wish I could say I remember meeting him but I don't. I do remember one of his replacements, Scott Hiaasen, son of novelist Karl Hiaasen and as nice a young man as you could want.

Of course Michael Connelly has gone on to write sixteen successful crime novels, some featuring detective Harry Bosch. The point of the Sun-Sentinel article was to register Connelly's regret over the one article he did at the time of the Spearman murder in which he took an objective view and did not reveal his own grief and sadness over the loss of that gentlewoman who had been so cordial and welcoming to him as a young reporter. His regret was in not showing his heart in telling the truth and he claims that the lesson was learned, he writes; "When I write now I am free to reveal my compassion, my passion, my hopes and regrets. In a way I am free to tell the truth about myself in my novels, whereas when I was writing the stories in newspapers I had to hold things back."

Connelly tells the story in his non-fiction book Crime Beat, which is on-order at the time of this writing.