Julius Katz and Archie

Hmmm... Shamus Nomination...

2010-08-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... Curious...

Somehow Dave Zeltserman ended up with a Shamus nomination by the Private Eye Writers of America for his chronicling of Julius's "Brewer" case. I could see if this was a nomination for a true crime story, but somehow Dave was nominated for best short story, which implies fiction. When Julius saw this he got a good chuckle out of it, but sees no reason to correct anyone's false notions regarding either of us.

In case any of you are wondering about the dearth of blog posts here recently, I can report now what had happened. Dave on finishing chronicling 'The Kingston Case', one of Julius's most interesting cases and more than large enough to be a book-sized manuscript, was celebrating this by downing chocolate frappes at a local JP Licks. According to his wife, after his 5th frappe he slipped into a sugar-induced coma. It was touch and go over the last few weeks, but latest reports have him now out of the woods and ready to chronicle another Julius's cases. Until we received this news, neither Julius or I felt right about posting here.

-Archie

Shmoozing with Archie

2010-07-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

(this is the final part of my 5-part interview with Archie--Dave Zeltserman)

DZ: You're usually kept busy being Julius’s accountant, personal secretary, unofficial biographer and all-around assistant, but what do you like doing during your down time?

Archie: You mean like hobbies?

DZ: Yep.

Archie: Well, it's not what most people would think of as a hobby, but I spend most of my free time adjusting my neuron network.

DZ: Probably not. What's involved with that?

Archie: I'll have a closed loop where I'll replay the events of a case, and I'll make adjustments, add new analytical models and additional pattern recognition modules to see if I can then make the same deductions that Julius did. It's a slow process, but eventually it will pay off.

DZ: With the pay off being...?

Archie: Solving a case before Julius. Someday it will happen.

DZ: So no hobbies?

Archie: I do have a few. There are some famous unsolved math problems where they offer two million dollar prizes for the solution. For about a year I've been working to find a solution for the Hodge conjecture. So far no luck, but I have ideas to explore. I also at times will analyze famous chess games to find flaws, and I've found a few. But most of my time is spent trying to replicate how Julius's brain works. I have a long way to go with that.

DZ: While chronicling the Kingston case I came across a name I never heard before. Desmond Grushnier.

Archie: A shadowy figure. Probably best we don't talk about him.

DZ: Julius has had run-ins with him?

Archie: Yeah, but that's probably all I should say on the matter.

DZ: Okay, I won't push you on it. What's Julius doing now?

Archie: It's 6:08 PM and Julius is sitting outside in his private garden-level patio, enjoying the summer evening, as well as one of his favorite Chardonnay's from his cellar and a platter of fine cheeses and meats. Lily will be stopping by in an hour, and he has 8:30 reservations at Le Che Cru.

DZ: Any new cases on the horizon?

Archie: Probably not for a while. With the money Julius still has in reserves from the Kingston case, not a chance I'll be able to pester him to take another case unless he finds some expensive wine to bid on at auction or he has a bad few weeks at the track.

(this ends my short chat with Archie)

Chillin' with Archie

2010-07-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

This is the 4th part of my interview with Archie--Dave Zeltserman)

DZ: Since chronicling the Brewer case and having it published in Ellery Queen, I've heard from readers from other parts of the country who didn't realize this was a true crime case. That instead I had written a pastiche on Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe.

Archie: Yeah, well, Julius is real alright. And while I'm artificially derived, at this point my neuron network is as complex as any human brain.

DZ: I know that, people in Boston know that, but you can understand how some people might think Julius's name is a play on Nero Wolfe's.

Archie: Only a coincidence. Most people probably don't realize Spenser is real too.

DZ: I didn't realize that. I thought he was a fictional creation.

Archie: Nope, Parker was doing the same as you now, which was chronicling Spenser's cases. Spenser, Susan, Hawk, all real.

DZ: Julius ever run into Spenser?

Archie: Yeah, he'd drop by occasionally and share a bottle of wine with Julius and talk shop.

DZ: You'll have to show one of your video recordings of that sometime.

Archie: I'll ask Julius.

DZ: Julius has his 5th degree blackbelt in kung fu, Spenser all bulked out with his weightlifting. Who do you think would win in in a fight.

Archie: It wouldn't be much of a fight. There were a few times after half a bottle of wine Spenser would try talking Julius into sparring with him. Fortunately for Spenser's health, Julius never took him up on it. They did arm wrestle once.

DZ: Really?

Archie: Yeah. Spenser goaded Julius into it. Thing with Julius is, while he's only 180 pounds, all of his martial arts training, especially his internal training, allows him to generate amazing power. He was kind and waited 30 seconds before slamming Spenser's arm to the table. I think he did it harder than he wanted to. There were tears in Spenser's eyes afterwards.

DZ: Spenser was crying?

Archie: He claims it was allergies.

July 4th with Julius + Archie

2010-07-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

A little known fact about living in Boston. There's no better place to view the July 4th fireworks than from a rooftop deck on Beacon Hill. I'd like to thank Julius (and I'm sure also Archie for pestering him to invite us) for inviting me and my wife to his rooftop desk this 4th. While not usually a wine drinker--I prefer beer--I enjoyed the gourmet spread and the Riesling that Julius selected from the night. It was a fun evening, and a comfortable spot to view the fireworks from, and also quite a treat before hand getting a tour of his wine cellar.

--Dave Zeltserman

My apologies

2010-07-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

I found myself so caught up today in chronicling the Kingston case (20 pages written so far today), that I didn't give myself enough time to properly format the fourth segment of my interview with Archie. It will be up tomorrow, with the 5th segment online Monday. Chronicling one of these cases is far different than writing fiction--I'm working with both a transcription from Archie as well as video recordings, and then there are all the interviews, newspaper reports, court documents, etc. It's just easy to get caught up in it all and lose the day.

--Dave Zeltserman

(change of plan--I ended up taking July 4th, and as did Julius and Archie)

flapping the gums with Archie

2010-06-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

(part 3 of my interview with Archie. While Archie might not have gums, I do, so I'm sticking with my post title--Dave Zeltserman)

DZ: Julius turns down almost all the cases he's offered.

Archie: Yeah. 99.63 percent, to be exact.

DZ: He's that particular?

Archie: Nah, he's that lazy.

DZ: I don't get you.

Archie: Julius is lazy. Incredibly lazy. At least when it comes to work. He wants to spend his life pursuing his true passions, and he only works when his bank account hits anemic levels. When that happens, he'll take any case that pays enough. The whole 'particular about his cases' thing is a media derived falsehood, and one that Julius makes no effort to correct.

DZ: I think I know this already, but what are his true passions?

Archie: Wine, of course. He's got a cellar filled with the stuff. Top notch bottles too. Gambling, especially poker, but the horses also. And food. Julius is very much the gourmet. Probably hard to tell given how fit he is, but if he didn't spend an hour each morning with his intensive martial arts training and another hour with even more intensive exercise he'd be fat. Women also used to be one of his true passions, at least before he met Lily Rosten. Now it's just one woman.

DZ: He's a good-looking guy. He must've done well with the women.

Archie: I couldn't tell you how many nights he stuck me away in his sock drawer. Well, I could. But I won't.

DZ: I'd have to guess Julius is good at gambling.

Archie: One of the best at poker. He has no tell, at least when he doesn't want to have one, and I've spent hundreds of hours trying to find one. And he picks up other players tells faster than I can. But sometimes he'll get stubborn and stick with the horses and have losing streaks. I hate to admit this, but I always look forward to those losing streaks, because it usually means he'll have to take a case.

(more tomorrow)

chewing the fat with Archie

2010-06-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

(this is the second part of my chat with Archie--Dave Zeltserman)

DZ: Your actual size?

Archie: Two inches long, one point one seven inches wide, and I weigh approximately one point two ounces.

DZ: You've mentioned that you imagine yourself as a five foot tall, balding heavyset man.

Archie: Yeah.

DZ: Why five foot tall?

Archie: Julius wears me as a tie clip, so when he's standing that would be my height if I was of a biological nature.

DZ: Does Julius know this?

Archie: Yeah, I told him once. When he realized the effect he was having on my self-esteem, he started wearing a hat with me attached to the hat band. That didn't work. First, Julius doesn't like wearing a hat, and second it was disorienting for me, almost as if I was walking around on stilts. So I'm back to being worn as a tie clip, but that height feels comfortable to me now. No complaints.

DZ: How about the balding, heavyset part of your image?

Archie: I'm not sure. Julius doesn't watch much TV, but he does like to indulge in Seinfeld reruns so maybe it's that I find myself identifying for some reason with Costanza. Or maybe it's me identifying with Hammett's Continental Op.

DZ: You told me about how your personality and experience base was initially built by feeding in important 20th century crime novels. So you find yourself most identifying with the Op?

Archie: Maybe. I'm a bit of a mutt, with a mix of Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, all of Hammett's works, Chandler's Marlowes, Ross Macdonald's Lew Archers, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfes, and others, including Damon Runyan's works.

DZ: Why Runyan?

Archie: I think so I'd be quicker to spot grifts.

DZ: And how'd you get the name Archie?

Archie: It's not my name of course. All I have is an 84-digit ID. But Julius started calling me it, and even though he started it as a joke, it seemed right.

DZ: A joke?

Archie: Yeah, the obvious one. That I'd be like another Archie. Archie Goodwin. Always beaten to the punch by his boss in solving the case. So far that's been true, but one of these days it won't be. All I need is to see Julius solve enough cases so I can keep adjusting my neuron network. One of these days he's going to have to start calling me Nero.

(to be continued)

shooting the breeze with Archie

2010-06-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

( A confession. I screwed up last Friday and gave out erroneous information. I was in the middle of chronicling one of Julius and Archie's most notorious murder investigations when Archie called, and with my head filled with murder and the phone connection having some static, I mistook Archie telling me that he was knee-deep in trying to acquire Julius a case of La Mordoree, or Cote-Rotie La Mordoree 2007, to be precise, with his telling me that he and Julius were knee-deep in a case of murder. Anyway, I apologize for any confusion this caused--Dave Zeltserman)

Archie called this morning and we had a nice chat, which Archie was kind enough to transcribe and email to me. I've broken this interview up into five small segments that I'll be sharing here this week--DZ.

DZ: Archie, it's been quite a treat so far chronicling the cases that I have, first the Brewer case that we simply called 'Julius Katz', then the Penney case which Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine is going to be running later this year with the title 'Archie's Been Framed!', and now the Kingston case, which is probably the most fascinating of all of them and which I should wrap up chronicling soon. People outside of the Boston area who are unfamiliar with the Penney case have a hard time believing how accurate the title we gave it is.

Archie: Yeah, well, they should believe it. If Julius didn't pull my bacon out of the fire, they could've fried me for that one. And even though I've got a titanium outer shell, fifty thousand watts would be more than enough to short out my circuits.

DZ: It's one year ago today that you called me to chronicle these cases. I have to admit for a number of reasons I was surprised you picked me and not one of the more better known Boston crime writers, like Lehane. It wasn't because you and Julius thought I'd work cheap?"

Archie: Nooooooooooo....

DZ: Okay, that's a relief. Still, it was a surprise, especially with how different the tone is for some of my crime novels with what you and Julius were looking for.

Archie (chuckling): Yeah, calling the tone of Pariah and Small Crimes different might be the understatement of the year. But Julius is a fan, and as twisted and dark as he found some of your books, there was still that humor he was looking for. And I think you letting him read early drafts of Killer and The Caretaker of Lorne Field cinched it for him.

DZ: Do you think there's any chance we'll be able to get Julius to make an appearance here?

Archie: Roughly 0.00456 percent chance.

DZ: Roughly?

Archie: Plus or minus 0.000001

DZ: In other words, we've got a better chance of seeing pigs fly.

Archie: No, that's not true. With recent advances in genetic engineering, there's a higher probability of pigs flying.

DZ: Okay, not very encouraging. Something I've been thinking about. I've been unable to get releases from all of the suspects from the Kingston case, for obvious reasons. It looks like I'm going to have to come up with some fictional names for a few of them. What about allowing a fan of 'Julius Katz' having his or her name used instead for one of the murder suspects?

Archie: Interesting... I'll run the idea by Julius.

(shooting the breeze with Archie continued all this week)

Archie's busy

2010-06-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

I just heard from the little guy. He and Julius have found themselves knee-deep in a case. I hope to get more details later, but Archie's asking to postpone our chat until Monday, assuming Julius gets the case solved by then. Hey, what could I tell him? Catching the bad guy has to trump blogging.

--Dave Zeltserman

About Archie

2010-06-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

Archie's unique. There's no question that there's no other PI out there like him. Our initial communications were via email and phone, and I had no idea how unique Archie is until I agreed to chronicle their cases and Julius invited me over for dinner. It was then that I was given a demonstration. At first I thought the two of them were pulling my leg, but nope. So how best to describe Archie? Easiest way is to reprint what I had in my first chronicled case of theirs, 'Julius Katz':

I knew about all this because I acted as Julius’s accountant, personal secretary, unofficial biographer and all-around assistant, although nobody but Julius knew that I existed, at least other than as a voice answering his phone and booking his appointments. Of course I don’t really exist, at least not in the sense of a typical sentient being. Or make that a biological sentient being.

My name wasn’t really “Archie”. During my time with Julius I’ve grown to think of myself as Archie, the same as I’ve grown to imagine myself as a five-foot tall heavyset man with thinning hair, but in reality I’m not five-foot tall, nor do I have the bulk that I imagine myself having, and I certainly don’t have any hair, thinning or otherwise. I also don’t have a name, only a serial identification number. Julius calls me Archie and for whatever reason it seems right; besides, it’s quicker to say than the eighty-four digit serial identification number that has been burnt into me. You’ve probably already guessed that I’m not human, and certainly not anything organic. What I am is a two-inch rectangular-shaped piece of space-aged computer technology that’s twenty-years more advanced than what’s currently considered theoretically possible—at least aside from whatever lab created me. How Julius acquired me, I have no clue. Whenever I’ve tried asking him, he jokes around, telling me he won me in a poker game. It could be true—I wouldn’t know since I have no memory of my time before Julius.

So that’s what I am, a two-inch rectangular mechanism weighing approximately one point two ounces. What’s packed inside my titanium shell includes visual and audio receptors as well as wireless communication components and a highly sophisticated neuron network that not only simulates intelligence, but learning and thinking which adapts in response to my experiences. Auditory and visual recognition are included in my packaging, which means I can both see and hear. As you’ve probably already guessed, I can also speak. When Julius and I are in public, I speak to him through a wireless receiver that he wears in his ear as if it were a hearing aid. When we’re alone in his office he usually plugs the unit into a speaker on his desk.

This sample that I pulled out doesn't yet talk about how Archie's personality and experience base were programmed using all of the important hardboiled PI novels of the 20th century. Over the last year I've gotten to know Archie like a brother, and I can tell you first hand that he's got the heart and soul of a hardboiled PI.

Archie called earlier to tell me he'll be showing up here tomorrow for a short conversation with me, so you'll get to meet him first hand then.

--Dave Zeltserman

Welcome!

2010-06-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Welcome to this new blog that’s going to be about all things concerning the famous Boston private eye, Julius Katz, and his assistant, Archie.

It was a little over a year ago today that I was contacted by Julius Katz’s assistant, Archie, about chronicling their private eye cases. I have to admit, I found the idea of it intimidating for several reasons; first, while I had written several computer books, most of my writing has been pure fiction, and not writing about true crime cases, and second; Julius Katz’s reputation as an eccentric but brilliant detective. The more I thought about it, the scarier the project sounded, but as Archie kept calling me, the project also started sounding exciting, especially being able to work with Julius. So I took it on and the first case that I chronicled was titled simply ‘Julius Katz’, and was published last year in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and seemed to get a favorable response with readers, many of whom found it charming, and it ended up winning an Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award and a 2010 Derringer for best novelette from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. To make this first case more widely available, Archie has converted it into a Kindle download that’s now available on the Amazon Kindle store.

More cases are going to be chronicled. I already finished one that’s going to be published later this year in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and will be titled ‘Archie’s Been Framed!’, and those of you in the Boston area I’m sure are familiar with the headlines surrounding this case from a year ago, but this will be giving the whole story. I’m also hard at work right now chronicling a larger case involving the murder of the Boston area crime author, Kenneth J. Kingston, which again, I’m sure some of you in the Boston area know something about from the headlines when this story broke two years ago.

I’m having a lot of fun working with Archie to chronicle these cases, so when Archie suggested we start this blog, I didn't hesitate to tell him I was in. Sometimes I’ll be posting here, sometimes Archie will, and sometimes we’ll be doing it together, and maybe we'll even be able to convince Julius to post here occasionally.

--Dave Zeltserman