crime
The Dalton Gang’s Final, Doomed Heists in the Twilight of the Old West
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In February 1891, hoping to help his brothers find steady work, Bill Dalton wrote a letter to the superintendent of the nearby Muller and Lux Ranch, having heard it was hiring. After that was confirmed, Bill borrowed a horse and saddle from one of his hired men for Grat and two saddles from his neighbors…
Rhys Bowen on Using Real Experiences As Inspiration
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My new book, The Proof of the Pudding, is the 17th in the series featuring Lady Georgiana, 35th in line to the throne in the nineteen thirties. When I started this series in 2006 I couldn’t have imagined that it would still be going strong and have readers around the world in 9 languages to…
Killing the Rich: Why Privilege Has Always Been at the Heart of the Whodunnit
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For more than a century we’ve been addicted to a particular flavor of murder mystery story. A group of wealthy, upper-class people are gathered together in a country house. There’s a butler, people dress for dinner and talk about fox-hunting or how frightfully vulgar Lady Stuffington’s necklace is. And then someone dies. It’s a trope…
Psychology Is Important For Motivation, But Your Characters Need More Than Diagnoses
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I teach creative writing at a public arts high school in Chicago. If you’re picturing Fame, with students breaking into song and dance in the hallways, you’re not far off. But for all the joy they bring to the classroom, my students often want to write about characters who have bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression,…
On Horror and Humanity’s Enduring Love Affair with Fear
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Hold, friend. I only have fifteen hundred words to save your life. You and I are bound in a bargain spanning hundreds of years, across dozens of types of media and thousands of artists. There’s a monster hiding in these words, ripping through the sentences and syllables, trying to get to your soul. It wants…
The Mantis
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He glances at his watch, then takes off the janitor uniform and changes into a suit. Gets in the taxi, drives back to the airport. He’ll ride the train from there. Should be quicker. By the time he arrives at the front gate of the school, his watch shows ten minutes past two. Made it,…
Fighting Toxic Masculinity Through Young Adult Fiction
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When I was dreaming up the plot of my latest young adult thriller, The Revenge Game, I posed the following research question to my social media followers: “It’s hard to phrase, but did you ever experience kids at school/camp participating in, like, sexual conquest competitions? Example: at my camp, the *cool kids* would rank the…
How to Edit a Series of Crime Novellas with 30 Different Authors and Come Out the Other Side Feeling Grateful
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Talk to anyone who has edited an anthology, planned a Noir at the Bar, or even just tried to figure out where to go for dinner, and you’ll get the same sentiment—where writers are concerned, organizing anything is like herding cats. Except it really isn’t true. I mean, it is true where an anthology is…
Wilderness Thrillers Featuring Fearless Women
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I’m what you might call a mini-adventurer. I’ve climbed rockfaces, rafted rivers, backpacked into the wilderness and once slithered through a cave tunnel so tight that the only way through was to lie flat, turn my head sideways and push with my toes. I’ve never done anything as daring as free-climbing the 3,000-foot granite wall…