THE ZELIG PROBLEM: Guest Post by James R. Benn

JAMES R. BENN: The Zelig Problem

Remember Zelig, Woody Allen’s 1983 mockumentary film? Allen plays Leonard Zelig, a 1930s guy who just wants to fit in. Chameleon-like, he adopts the characteristics of people he meets. His skin color changes, his body size alters, and he easily adopts other people’s points of view. When he encounters Nazis, he becomes a brownshirt, and when he chats with an obese fellow, he instantly gains two hundred pounds. Zelig’s ability to mimic those around him brings him into contact with historical figures such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Lou Gehrig, Adolf Hitler, Al Capone, and many others. 

I often think of Leonard Zelig as I write the Billy Boyle mysteries, since Billy and Leonard share some similarities. Zelig, through his adaptability, has an easy time of it when it comes to meeting famous people. Billy, in his role as General Eisenhower’s special investigator, also finds himself close to important people as well as climactic events. He’s hobnobbed with the King of Norway, Winston Churchill, Pope Pius XII, Ernest Hemingway, Sterling Hayden, Jack Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Audie Murphy, Kim Philby, and other heroes and villains of the Second World War.

Zelig was a film built around a protagonist who crept into the lives of famous people. That was his superpower. But it’s trickier in a historical mystery series in which the whole idea is to place the protagonist amid vital events and important people. Why?

Because, if you think about it, it doesn’t really add up, does it? How could Billy Boyle, over the course of a little more than two years, find himself at the center of so many chapters in the history of the Second World War? Even with the Supreme Commander deciding where to send him next, it strains credulity. 

That’s my challenge – to have the reader not think about it. Each plot point, whether it’s the IRA stealing weapons or a double murder at a Soviet airbase, must provide access, via a conceptual side door, to the events and people I want to explore and illuminate. When Billy Boyle journeyed to the South Pacific in The White Ghost, it was because I wanted to delve into the personality of Jack Kennedy at the time of his PT 109 experience. But I had to avoid the trap of coming across like some of my favorite books as a child.

Anyone remember the We Were There series, published during the 1950s? Over thirty titles featured the retelling of historical events through the eyes of children as primary characters. We Were There On The Oregon Trail, We Were There at the Battle of the Bulge, and so on. I loved those books, and perhaps the seed of the Billy Boyle series was planted there, but I can’t put him center stage the way those kids were.

It's important for Billy to act as the observer when it comes to historical characters. Even as he works his Zelig magic, he can’t be the primary mover of actual events. When he visits Jack Kennedy on Tulagi during a murder investigation, the future president is recovering from his shipwreck ordeal. During Billy’s search for a killer, the story of Kennedy, his crew, and the sinking of PT 109 is revealed. I could have had the murder take place before the PT boat disaster, and perhaps have ginned up some reason for Billy to be on board. But that’s too much Zelig. And it’s stealing the story from the characters who are all real people.

Some events are simply too huge to wrap a story around. The Normandy invasion was one. I’d tried to work out how D-Day could form the basis of a plot, but I gave up and had Billy literally fly over the invasion fleet on his way to a clandestine rendezvous behind the lines in Blue Madonna:

 

Below us, ships filled the Channel. To the far horizon, wakes churned the inky water as vessels of every size departed English ports and made for the French coastline. Moonlight rippled across the waves, shimmering slivers of silver in the night. I glanced at the luminous dial on my watch. Forty minutes past midnight. It was the sixth of June. 

 

The biggest challenge, in terms of keeping Billy from hogging center stage, came with the latest novel, From The Shadows. I’d long wanted to write about the 442^nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit made of Nisei (Japanese American citizens) whose families were incarcerated in relocation camps due to racial hatred. 

I found my hook for the plot when I discovered how they were treated by a general in southern France. The Nisei were attached to a division whose commanding officer had gotten a battalion surrounded through his own ineptitude. He sent in the 442nd to rescue them, with little regard for their lives. They prevailed, but at a terrible cost.

Billy is in the area on a case. Two members of the French Resistance are serving as scouts with the trapped battalion. These two men are witnesses to the murder he’s investigating, and he’s there to bring them out safely. But he can only go so far:

 

There was no bayonet charge, no shouting, no grand gestures, just a wave of men swallowed by the forest, firing from the hip, killing Germans and being killed. I gripped my Thompson and took a step toward the struggle.

“No, Billy,” Kaz said, his hand on my shoulder. “This is not our fight. If we were to be killed, even if the scouts survive, we would have failed everyone.”

“You don’t have to go with me,” I said, my eyes on the Nisei disappearing into the smoke and dense woods.

“You know I would not let you go into that alone,” Kaz said.

I dropped back a foot. He was right. About it all. If I went, Kaz would be at my side. In my heart, I knew we weren’t here for a valiant last charge. Our job was to wait and salvage what we

could of our mission if the scouts were left alive.

And my heart also knew I’d never forget the moment I watched those men advance into hell’s open, gaping jaws.

 

            Exactly the right amount of Zelig.

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James R. Benn is the Dilys, Barry, and Sue Feder Historical Mystery award nominated author of the Billy Boyle WWII mysteries and other novels. He lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida with his wife and muse, Deborah Mandel.