{"id":383,"date":"2014-06-07T02:11:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-07T02:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=383"},"modified":"2020-08-09T16:27:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-09T16:27:30","slug":"behind-short-story-aix-grind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=383","title":{"rendered":"Behind The Short Story: “Aix to Grind”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, I was in Aix-en-Provence<\/a>, and sure, I was studying a Picasso in a museum’s first room, only a token velvet rope between me and it, and okay, I even thought, \u201cman, this is how many million euro hanging how many steps from the door?\u201d But no, I wasn\u2019t casing the joint. I\u2019m no thief. I am a writer, though, and here\u2019s the thing about writers: we dream all day.<\/p>\n

The heist was on.<\/p>\n

Ahem. The heist story<\/em>. Story. Yeah.<\/p>\n

So. What makes a caper story click? I studied a different artistic master: Donald E. Westlake<\/a>. My takeaways: Humor, sure. The expert-ish crew, absolutely. Both serve to pull a reader in, get them ready to root for the real driver: audacity. Impossible odds and Improbable success. A big and bold plan. A big and bold disaster.<\/p>\n

For \u201cAix,\u201d one painting wouldn\u2019t be audacious enough. Stolen art devalues remarkably, usually fenced or traded for cents on the auction-value dollar. Not that I\u2019ve done it, mind you, but this story required its share of research. No, audacity demanded a major haul. A retirement-plan haul. I don\u2019t know, like maybe the museum\u2019s upstairs collection of C\u00e9zannes.<\/p>\n

So how do you knock over an art museum? Well, based on my research, you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I mean, you can try<\/a>, but with modern security tech, go ahead and plan on a lengthy prison term. The daring cat burglar and their zip lines and their laser-dodging acrobatics? There\u2019s a reason the Pink Panthers go after jewelry shows<\/a>, not museums. And the art thieves these days ain\u2019t no gentlemen<\/a>. \u201cAix\u201d tries both to honor and debunk the Hollywood-style caper, stripping it down without spoiling the fun.<\/p>\n

Where were we? Ah, museum theft. To get the past the video cameras, past the motion sensors, past the alarms, past the watchful docents and the patrolling guards, past the one-way and maze screws securing the hundred-pound frames to the wall, you need real help, not science fiction. You don\u2019t beat the security system. You find someone willing to turn it off.<\/p>\n

Enter our anti-hero Ed. A supposed chameleon and cocksure thief, smart enough to see his career winding down but dumb enough not to see how. Then there\u2019s Gustav, his partner, the shady art dealer and master planner. Together they\u2019ve carved out a niche of country chateau jobs, picking off ruined aristocratic family treasures, but their bubble of relative safety is collapsing inside the now-organized world of art theft. Ed talks Gus into going after our load of C\u00e9zannes as their ticket to retirement. All they need is…<\/p>\n

The insider: Sadie Lannes, blond art student one part Holmes and two parts Moriarty. A natural genius at crime, not that smitten Ed can admit it fully. She proved difficult to write. Guarded, even to the author, and with quasi-Holmesian deductive powers. Whenever she stepped onto the page, I had to fake being as smart as her bent genius.<\/p>\n

She can get them in, but how to get them out? Any good job needs a diversion.<\/p>\n

Spend a few late afternoons in France, and you notice a pre-dinner rush on fresh bread. In December, the crowds shift toward the Christmas markets. Aix\u2019s market isn\u2019t the most quaint, but it is huge, with carnival rides and food ch\u00e2lets and santon figurine stalls packed along Cours Mirabeau. The Christmas Eve Thirteen Desserts that Gus seizes on is a real and delicious French tradition<\/a>, and we sampled all baker\u2019s dozen there at the market. I bet the lady who sold me a vin chaud<\/em> had no clue I was wondering how to use the market to distract the cops. Or maybe she did. Aix is that kind of town.<\/p>\n

And now, for the getaway.<\/p>\n

In my experience, like a caper the most powerful endings come early in the planning, and I had this one from the first. That freedom let me deepen \u201cAix\u201d and set up a slam-bang twist finish where–sorry, no spoilers. Buy the AHMM<\/em><\/a>. Hell, subscribe to AHMM<\/em>. You’d be doing yourself a reading favor. If you want to know more still, buy me a biere belgique<\/em> <\/a>sometime. We’ll talk it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAix\u201d itself is strange to write about. I wrote the first draft riding the trains across France, simultaneously with what became \u201cThe Carcassonne Dream\u201d<\/a> and \u201cLa Upsell.\u201d <\/a>This group has deeply personal meaning, for those weeks of vin chauds<\/em> and Provencal  towns and Roman ruins that brought them to life.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s \u201cAix\u201d catching the eye of Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Mystery Magazine<\/em><\/a>. Consider me honored to appear in this latest round in AHHM\u2019s <\/em>stellar history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oh, and to repeat because this kind of important, I never knocked over any museum. Nope. My characters did, though, and I hope you enjoy reading about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I was in Aix-en-Provence, and sure, I was studying a Picasso in a museum’s first room, only a token velvet rope between me and it, and okay, I even thought, \u201cman, this is how many million euro hanging how many steps from the door?\u201d But no, I wasn\u2019t casing the joint. I\u2019m no thief. I am a… Continue reading Behind The Short Story: “Aix to Grind”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,13,92,6,7],"tags":[66,75,9,97,3,98],"class_list":["post-383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime-mystery-and-suspense","category-france","category-short-stories","category-this-whole-writing-thing","category-travel","tag-aix-to-grind","tag-alfred-hitchcock-mystery-magazine","tag-crime-fiction","tag-france","tag-short-stories","tag-travel","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/AHMSEPT2014web.jpg?fit=300%2C439&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CG0W-6b","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1215,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=1215","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":0},"title":"Borgias, Bother, and Bad Ideas: Behind “Book of Hours”","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"June 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So I had this idea for a novel. There was this gentleman thief, see, and he needed to steal something. Wait. There was more. This something, see, was hidden in the pit network underneath the Colosseum. The hypogeum, if you're into archeology. A caper in front of ten thousand tourists.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime, Mystery & Suspense"","block_context":{"text":"Crime, Mystery & Suspense","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AHMM-JulAug18-Book-of-Hours-first-version.png?fit=829%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AHMM-JulAug18-Book-of-Hours-first-version.png?fit=829%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AHMM-JulAug18-Book-of-Hours-first-version.png?fit=829%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AHMM-JulAug18-Book-of-Hours-first-version.png?fit=829%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":758,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=758","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":1},"title":"Born Under a Bad Sign: Behind “The Cumberland Package”","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"March 24, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Vernon Stagg was born\u00a0from a bad book. A manuscript actually, mine sadly, and fortunately for us all I abandoned it before the querying stage. This was 2011, early yet for me\u00a0into This Whole Writing Thing. The manuscript was a sort of Westlake-ian, Hiaasen-ian lovechild romp, and no matter what I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime, Mystery & Suspense"","block_context":{"text":"Crime, Mystery & Suspense","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"IMG_2653 (1) (2)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/IMG_2653-1-2-300x185.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":391,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=391","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":2},"title":"So You Want to Pull an Art Heist?","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"June 17, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"So\u00a0you want to pull an art heist.\u00a0Not the most noble of goals,\u00a0is it? Or the simplest.\u00a0I mean, if somebody could waltz into a major museum--I assume after hours is the plan--and pluck a masterpiece\u00a0off the wall, then lots of\u00a0somebodies would be waltzing and plucking masterpieces by\u00a0the\u00a0vanload. Oh, sure, there are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime, Mystery & Suspense"","block_context":{"text":"Crime, Mystery & Suspense","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":245,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=245","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":3},"title":"Behind the Short Story: “Whorling”","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"February 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Albert Einstein--you know,\u00a0he of\u00a0the supercomputer brain--once dished out this observation on the universe: \"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.\" Well said, but only half said.\u00a0Sure, gravity doesn't make people weak-kneed in love, but some force does, internal or external.\u00a0Einstein didn't\u00a0name the cause\u00a0because he didn't know it. No\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cathcart"","block_context":{"text":"Cathcart","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=99"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2572,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=2572","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":4},"title":"2024 So Far:","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"March 7, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The new year isn't new anymore. 2024 has had some haps. Here's a few things going on, writing-wise. Murder, Neat A few years ago, the Sleuthsayers blog collective set out on a plan. An anthology plan. The Sleuthsayers ranks includes a few dozen terrific writers all with a love for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime, Mystery & Suspense"","block_context":{"text":"Crime, Mystery & Suspense","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/robertmangeot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Murder-Neat-2024-Sleuthsayers-1-682x1024.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":968,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=968","url_meta":{"origin":383,"position":5},"title":"Derringer-ered!","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"April 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm incredibly proud\u00a0 that last year's\u00a0\"The Cumberland Package\"\u00a0(AHMM, May 2016) has been named a finalist for the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Derringer Awards.\u00a0 I mean, like busting-at-seams proud. Of being named, because the crime\u00a0space these days is terrific in\u00a0its voice\u00a0and depth. The\u00a0stuff that leaves me vibrating explores\u00a0in stark terms\u00a0human nature\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Crime, Mystery & Suspense"","block_context":{"text":"Crime, Mystery & Suspense","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=383"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1762,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383\/revisions\/1762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}