The Case of the Malevolent Mugging is back!

I am absolutely ecstatic over the fact that this time I have actually managed to revive The Malevolent Mugging story for real! I churned out several chapters over the past couple of weeks, including the climax. I have only to write the epilogue and then, glorious, glorious day, it will be done!

It started when I was idly thinking of some other possible Perry ideas. I was on a bit of a Misguided Missile kick and re-read my Spectral Stalker story, which I know is very strange and was pretty much totally a self-indulgent installment. There’s a mention in the epilogue that maybe there would have to be a hearing in order for Captain Caldwell to prove who he is. I doubt that would happen in actual fact, but I got the idea of writing a story taking place directly after The Spectral Stalker and following Caldwell trying to reintegrate into society. Perry would be around a lot, with or without a hearing, and a new mystery might emerge.

I don’t know if I will write such a story, but when I was thinking of it, I thought of how I’ve felt like I can’t start any more big Perry mysteries until The Malevolent Mugging is finished. And I went to look it over for the umpteenth time to see if I could determine how to do that.

I realized that the real problem holding it up was that my original outline called for the bad guys to torture Amory Fallon for several more weeks. And the rest of the mystery was really just about ready to be wrapped up, so I didn’t see how I would extend it for so many more chapters. Cue the stalling, with only a small update here and there.

I determined that the bad guys would not have to torment Amory for as long of a time as I’d thought. After everything he’s already been through, I could probably still obtain the desired result for the climax if they decided to pull the cruelest thing much sooner than the original outline called for.

I changed some of my plans for the climax, too, giving Amory a much more active role as opposed to the idea from a very short piece I did called October, where he spent the climax in the hospital. I wasn’t comfortable with that and wanted him involved, and I’m very pleased with the end result.

One thing to keep in mind for any future mysteries is the Jodie character I introduced. She has nothing to do with the current mystery, but I brought her in because of her connection with Vivalene and Flo, who were major players in some of the other stories. She will play some part in perhaps the next mystery in the series.

I may also use Daniel Conway some more. My original outline would have involved him more than he has been, but I think it might be just as well to move some of my ideas for him into his own mystery.

Maybe this year I can even write that Halloween masquerade story. We’ll have to see. With this story finally wrapping up, I definitely feel freer to venture into other Perry story waters. I’m excited to see where the ride takes me.

If anyone is still interested after all this time in where The Malevolent Mugging has been going, it’s still here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8342827/ I plan to post the epilogue very soon, perhaps tomorrow or Tuesday. And then Tuesday night, MeTV will air Daniel Conway’s episode. What timing!

Notable Guest-Stars: Simon Oakland

It’s strange to think about, but tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of this blog’s opening post. And it won’t be long before we hit the 100 posts mark. Since Simon Oakland is a wonderful guest-star on Perry, and rather directly responsible for this blog even existing, I decided it was high-time to give Simon his own tribute post.

Simon was born August 28^th, 1915, the same year William Talman was born. Information about him is hard to come by; Crystal and I have collected pretty much all that we could gather on our website (which will be getting updated this week along with our Simon blog): http://sites.google.com/site/unofficialsimonoaklandtribute/home I wrote the biography, piecing together bits that we’d found, and we both contributed the articles we discovered.

Simon appeared on stage before moving to movies and television, but we sadly have only very scant information on that point in his life. It’s also been said that he was a violinist. I wish some footage existed of that!

Concerning movies and television, he is often remembered for playing the villains. However, while he did take on many roles of that type, he also played many protagonists and misunderstood characters as well. Even many of the villains are so three-dimensional, they still have good in them. One of the articles we found outright mentions that Simon approached his characters wanting to make them three-dimensional and human. He certainly succeeded! He could play any part to perfection, making the viewers really believe in the character.

On Perry Simon appeared twice, once as a bad guy, once as a good guy, and both times ending up the murder victim. Poor characters.

His first appearance was in season 3’s The Frantic Flyer, which happened to be arguably the first time I ever saw Simon anywhere. His character Howard Walters was certainly a wretched sort; as if it wasn’t bad enough that he arranged for the robbery of the safe at the company where he worked as the trusted general manager, he was having an affair with his accomplice and killed the company president’s son so there would be a body discovered and hopefully identified as his when his burned plane was found.

It was such a tangled web all around. His accomplice was a wicked little thing too. She was carrying on with someone else, who planned with her to kill Howard and take the money for themselves. And the guy who ended up being the murderer was the man who had nursed Howard to health when he broke his leg parachuting from the plane. He wanted the money.

In spite of everything, I did feel sorry for Howard. He honestly loved that Janice witch and would have been crushed to learn that she had planned to betray him. But on the other hand, I suppose he really got what he deserved. He definitely was a horrid person, especially on the matter of murdering the president’s ne’er-do-well son. (Whose name, by the way, was Andy Taylor, something that amuses this Andy Griffith Show fan every time.)

I also felt really sorry for Howard’s poor wife in the mess. She honestly loved him and kept trying in vain to see that their marriage stayed alive. But she was brushed off for whatever reason. We weren’t told why the marriage went sour, and in the end, I imagine it’s not a critical detail. But I hope she found someone decent after the episode’s events.

Simon returned in season 4 for The Misguided Missile, which, of course, I’ve talked of several times. Simon played Captain Michael Caldwell, who really can’t be characterized as a bad guy just because he has a grudge against Perry’s friend Major Jerry Reynolds. We don’t even know if it wasn’t at least somewhat justified. He could have been telling the truth about never receiving Jerry’s order, just as Jerry could be telling the truth about sending it. If no one believed Caldwell, including Jerry (who may or may not have been a friend), that would have definitely been enough to make him bitter and wonder if Jerry was really the good man he was praised up as being. When other characters talk about their last encounters with him, they mention how he raved about having the proof that Jerry was not a great hero. I had the feeling that he honestly believed what he said, rather than just pretending to think Jerry was awful in order to cover his own irresponsibility.

By all appearances, Caldwell is a serious and efficient man just trying to do his job—namely, investigating the failed launch of the titular object. He even tells one of the parties involved that his job isn’t to hurt people but to get at the truth—no matter who gets hurt when the truth comes out. That sounds quite similar to what Perry tells his clients and their families and friends.

Caldwell is murdered because he’s too close to the truth. And because, according to the lunatic Dan Morgan, Caldwell “wouldn’t let the missile fly.” The launch for the next one would have been stopped once Caldwell’s investigatory findings about Morgan’s criminal activities became known. And so Morgan murders him and then does the very stupid thing of leaving the body right on the missile range, which nearly stops the launch in the morning anyway.

Caldwell is one of the very few characters murdered for trying to be honest and upright.

On the one hand I wish we’d been told more about Caldwell and Jerry’s past. On the other, perhaps I prefer it the way it was left, so extremely ambiguous and without proclaiming Caldwell a liar. That opens the door for fan story explorations, as I did with both The Case of the Captain’s Ghost and the unrelated The Case of the Spectral Stalker.

It was my desire to look up Simon’s guest-spots last year that led to a rekindling of my interest in Perry—this time a much stronger interest than even before, although the seeds were certainly planted those years earlier. And at least partially from my labor of love on the Simon website and blog, the idea for a Perry blog emerged.

We lost Simon on August 29^th, 1983, another wonderful man and excellent actor gone far too soon. We salute you, Simon. You and your amazing characters are still remembered and loved.

Military episodes and fanfiction projects

I have varying opinions on episodes without Hamilton. I figure to be fair, every episode deserves at least one watch. But if Hamilton isn’t in it, I usually don’t care to see it if it doesn’t happen to be on the TV right then. If I’m choosing something specific to watch, I’d much rather see an episode that he’s in. There are only a handful of episodes without him that I like enough to deliberately select.

Seasons 2, 3, and 4 each feature a very interesting out-of-town episode involving the military. There are others in later seasons, even a couple with Hamilton such as The Angry Astronaut. I’m not sure what the fans’ opinion on the military episodes is in general, but I do hear mostly negative feedback on any involving the Space Age. I’m not sure whether that’s because they just don’t like things getting that modern or if it’s something else. (Hmm, I suppose if they have that much of a problem with the setting being contemporary for the times, they wouldn’t like me casually sliding the time period to the present day in my stories, either.)

Actually, my favorite episode without Hamilton is one of the military episodes and also one of the Space Age episodes. I refer to The Misguided Missile from season 4. With Simon Oakland in it (and William Schallert, too), I’ll return again and again. Whenever I watch it, however, I like to make sure I have time for two so I can also watch one with Hamilton.

I find all of the military episodes quite fascinating. Maybe that’s because I’ve always had a certain interest in military-related shows. Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and M*A*S*H are two of my perennial favorites. I also enjoy Disney movies in which the military plays a large part, such as The Cat From Outer Space. And I like military dramas, too (especially if someone I like is in them). So I suppose it’s not surprising that I would enjoy the military episodes of Perry.

I don’t see any real reason to dislike them, honestly. They’re just as good as general Perry episodes: talented guest stars, intense plots, and the like. I’m sure the reason for the dislike has nothing to do with Hamilton and the police being missing, since there are plenty of Los Angeles-area episodes without them that are highly praised.

Maybe people just don’t like seeing Perry so far removed from his element. Perhaps they prefer seeing him defending civilians in a regular courtroom, rather than military officers in a military court. Of course, my absolute favorite scenario is Perry Mason classic: regular courtroom, Mr. Burger prosecuting, and the police around. (Bonus points if both Tragg and Andy are available.) But for out-of-town episodes, I’m happy to watch the military ventures.

Although The Misguided Missile is the only one I’ve actually selected on purpose when I had a choice.

I’m still working with my mystery story based on that episode. This is the longest it’s taken me to get a Perry mystery done. But I have every intention of finishing it. I’ve been working on chapter 13 over the weekend, and finally got past a roadblock that’s been bothering me since early on. I’m glad I got some more inspiration for it at last. The strange dream I had about Captain Caldwell probably helped with that.

With a mystery story it’s difficult enough to keep one plotline straight. For this one I have about three different threads of plot that will eventually connect into one big explanation. There is the main plot, with Jerry Reynolds being stalked by someone who looks eerily like Captain Caldwell. There is a subplot involving a client of Perry’s who apparently commits suicide. And there is another subplot as some of the characters are still trying to recover from their experiences in the previous mystery, The Broken Ties. Trying to keep all of the plotlines straight and figure out how to connect them is probably another reason why it’s taking longer to finish this one.

I'm heading steadily towards the climax, in which both Jerry's and Paul's situations will play a large and important part. I'm not sure as yet what will happen with Paul's angle, but I do know I don't plan for the mad scientist to have any success turning him against anyone. (Unless she finally tries the drug on him that she's using on Jerry, and I'm not sure she will.)

I do honestly intend that Jerry's stalker really is Captain Caldwell. I'll admit the reason I started this story was because I wanted to "fix" things due to being so grossly dissatisfied by the character's death. (Usually I don't have that reaction. This was a special case.) And due to the gruesome nature of his fatal injuries in the episode, it certainly required a lot of thought to figure it out and be halfway logical. But I'm afraid the story has become rather sci-fi because of what I chose. Oh dear. Sci-fi Perry? That has to be a first.

I’m honestly not sure if I’ll continue the mystery series when I complete The Spectral Stalker. But then again, I had no intention of writing more past The Persecuted Prosecutor, nor the next installment The Memento Mori Murderer, and I continued to get ideas. So who can say. Certainly not me.

I have some oneshots (single-chapter stories) I’ve been working on over the past few weeks. This is interesting to me, as usually I get ideas for oneshots first and then the big mysteries. Instead, for Perry I only wrote one short story and then immediately started on a big mystery. Now I’m suddenly getting some episode-inspired story ideas and other single-chapter ideas.

One was for The Carefree Coronary, the episode in which Paul ends up at death’s door. I wrote some short “missing scenes” from it and put it up as Tomorrow Always Comes.

I just put up one yesterday called A Touch of Honey, which revolves around my fascination of The Surplus Suitor. It’s mostly Della soliloquizing about Hamilton and then attempting to be friendly to him. He isn’t sure what to make of it.

And a third idea concerns Della and Hamilton ending up in a car wreck and trying to get back to civilization while meanwhile Perry tries frantically to find Della. It’s mainly shameless Della and Hamilton interaction and hurt/comfort (with Della hurt more than Hamilton, to see how he would try to help her), but I’ve been trying to put in some nice Perry/Della tidbits for the shippers. It’s not finished yet and I don’t have a title for it.

As far as multi-chapters are concerned, I’m also currently writing a three-way crossover mystery/horror story in which some of the Perry characters play a large part. So far it’s mainly Hamilton and the police, but though they’re the only ones really planned to be in it, Perry may come into it later. I have a vague scene in mind where Hamilton goes to bounce the case off of him as it becomes more and more weird, frightening, and dangerous. I call it Lullaby of Silence, and it’s crossed over with Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The Monkees TV show. (Yes.) I actually think it’s coming out quite well in context, even though that description probably sounds nuts.

February Perry writing projects and nostalgia

As of the end of January, I concluded my longest Perry mystery yet, The Case of the Broken Ties. It was a very rewarding experience overall. I loved writing for the characters, as I have with every venture.

It’s probably the strangest Perry story anyone will ever stumble across. I pitched the initial idea to the Della-Perry Yahoo group (which is for Della, although they are certainly not adverse to Perry/Della as a romantic pairing) and was surprised by the level of interested response. As previously described, it is a very supernatural story. And it is also Hamilton and Paul’s story—with the scale tipped a bit more in Hamilton’s favor as far as narrative point-of-view is concerned. I still find him easier to write for than Paul, although I tried to give Paul a good number of scenes too and found it very interesting when I started trying to pick apart his mind.

While trying to avoid spoilers and repeating myself from past blog posts, the basic plot involves several villains teaming up and enacting revenge on the good guys by unleashing a powerful spell that causes nearly everyone to forget some or all of their life’s memories. Hamilton and Paul are the only ones unaffected and must try to get everyone else to remember as well. Perry and Della’s bond also survived the spell, and despite not consciously remembering each other, they do subconsciously and want to meet.

When I finished that story, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do on the mystery front. I had already decided to work on a month-long project for the community 31 Days, a writing prompt group on Livejournal.com. The overall theme of the prompts for February was Fire and Ice, and I decided that fit Hamilton and Mignon Germaine quite well, with Hamilton representing fire and Mignon, ice. I have been writing and posting short vignettes with each of the month’s writing prompts. Some take place in the past, when Hamilton and Mignon first met, some in the present, and others all throughout the middle. All are being collected here: http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=insaneladybug&keyword=hamilton%20%26%20mignon&filter=all I am unsure if I will post them at Fanfiction.net or not.

While the overarching theme of the vignettes is an exploration and celebration of those characters and their canonical friendship, other characters feature in some of the ventures as well. I have been writing ahead, and the one I am currently working on for the 23^rd largely features Lieutenant Tragg and his friendship with Hamilton. I also threw in a reference to The Screaming Woman, with the technology updated to be a doctored CD that Hamilton threw at the wall instead of a Dictaphone cylinder.

Finally I decided that I would also start another mystery story as well and write both projects during the month. The plot of the new story is one I debated over for some time and previously rejected, but with the receptive response I received for The Broken Ties I decided to give it the go-ahead.

The new story is The Case of the Spectral Stalker, and it is a sequel to season 4’s The Misguided Missile. Actor Simon Oakland was directly responsible for rekindling my old interest in Perry Mason, and his character Captain Caldwell is my favorite of the two he originated for our series. I was heartbroken by Caldwell’s needless death (seriously, by killing him in hopes of letting his missile fly, Dan Morgan almost got the launch stopped anyway by leaving the body on the test field!) and have wondered what really happened concerning his past with Perry’s friend Jerry Reynolds. He insisted that he never received the order Jerry gave that he didn’t follow. And depending on the circumstances, maybe he really didn’t. We never found out enough to draw an opinion one way or another.

My first Perry story was a very short piece written as an addendum to The Misguided Missile. The new story doesn’t connect with it at all, even offering a different scenario and explanation as to why Caldwell did not receive Jerry’s order. In addition, although when I started this blog I mused that I would change the war Jerry and Caldwell fought in from the Korean War to Afghanistan to make it contemporary, I realized recently that it wouldn’t quite fit in the timeframe I had in mind. The Bosnian War, on the other hand, would fit just about perfectly. So Bosnia it is.

The mystery also offers Jerry being stalked by a mysterious person who eerily resembles Caldwell. Panic-stricken and believing he’s losing his mind, he goes to Perry for help. Perry deduces that someone is likely trying to torture Jerry and either make him believe he’s cracking up or cause him to crack up. The mystery quickly descends into a dark and twisted puzzle as it interlocks with Perry’s current case and begins to open up a world of unaccepted science none of the characters ever dreamed could exist. Its main villain will be another of my long-time original characters, Dr. Alice Portman.

There isn’t much more I can offer without revealing what I have planned for the story in future chapters. I currently have four completed. It’s a very interesting and unique venture. While Hamilton was really the star of the previous two, this one goes back to Perry and Della being the main characters, due to Perry’s friend Jerry being the one to have the problem. But Hamilton is the most prominent after them. Of course, he will always be prominent in my mysteries!

The other main characters are also certainly present as well. Taking place over a month after The Broken Ties, some of them are still trying to heal from the various emotional damage done to their hearts and souls during their previous experiences. I’m planning that Tragg will finally be able to fully get on the mend, but to tell why and how is a huge spoiler.

I hope that these projects will be enjoyed, just as the others have been. I find it very fun to write for characters I’ve loved for so many years.

I finally figured out some calculations and determined that it’s been at least over twelve years since the show became a household name for us. I want to say we started watching on the New Year’s Eve marathon of 1999, and that that was also our local station’s introduction to airing the show, but I’m not fully sure on the latter point. Perhaps it had aired for some time before that and we just never happened to catch it. Although that seems a bit far-fetched; I can’t believe we wouldn’t have run across it at least sometimes.

I remember that Dad turned the TV on that night and the marathon was on. I had just learned of the marathon’s existence from the mother of my brother’s future wife before we came home and was surprised at such an old show being on. I was curious and excited at the prospect. Mom was initially lukewarm about the show being on, as she wasn’t crazy about murder mysteries. But somehow we all got hooked, Mom when she remembered having watched the show years ago with her father, Dad because of the mysteries, and me because of the characters. (We all came to love at least some of the characters, however. Mom and I love everyone. Dad I’m not sure about.)

I remember my surprise at realizing there was always (or almost always) the same prosecuting attorney and policeman. I immediately thought that was cool. I liked continuity of that sort even back then. And I believe I liked Hamilton almost immediately. I remember seeing him walking around the courtroom, questioning witnesses. I’m not sure what I liked about him at that point. There were certainly plenty of indications even early on that he is a wonderful person. (I believe that first marathon was the first few episodes of season 1.) But maybe right then I just thought he was a good foil for Perry. Somehow, though, I think it was more than that. I think that perhaps I had a little crush on him even then.

And on this highly nostalgic (for me) and completely unplanned part of my musing, I will close this post.