Essays
How a Trip to a Museum Turned into the Perfect Start to a Mystery
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School field trips. Exhibitions. Guided tours. It might be easy to dismiss museums as stuffy or even boring, but they are far from that—especially to an aspiring crime writer looking to write her first murder mystery. The idea for my debut historical mystery, A Traitor in Whitehall, came to me while standing in the middle…
The Best Hotels – and Hotel Bars – in Espionage Fiction
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Bars in grand hotels figure prominently in the canon of spy literature. One of the pleasures I get from reading the novels of Joseph Kanon, Graham Greene and other masters of the spy genre, is that the anonymous guests in the grand hotels come alive with a backstory and confidential business discussed over martinis is…
A Country Road, in the Dead of Night: On The Historical Hauntings of Irish Folklore
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First published in 1936, On Another Man’s Wound was written by Earnán Ó Máille and recounts his time as a guerrilla fighter during the Irish War of Independence in the nineteen twenties. It is generally considered to be the one bona-fide piece of literature to arise from that conflict. No dry military memoir, Ó Máille…
When a Dispute Over the Pronunciation of ‘Newfoundland’ Turned Deadly
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The argument erupted at the supper table in a Colorado lumber camp near Castle Rock, a spot on the map at the edge of the Rocky Mountains and about thirty miles south of Denver. William Atcheson, who was working at Hocker & Gray’s sawmill in March 1876, had a large dog and the landlady asked…
Crime and the City: Hamburg
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I think it’s fair to say that, in general, Hamburg is a rather underrated German city. Berlin and Munich get the crowds, Frankfurt the money, and Hamburg gets a bit overlooked. But not by crime fans as Hamburg has a long history of being, shall we say, a bit sleazy? It’s a port city (always…
On Writing an Urbex Thriller and Exploring the Vertical City
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How far would you go to be the first? The only? All the great cities have become theme parks, and all the theme parks feed lots, Burning Man a millionaires’ mud-wallow, Everest an overbooked junkyard, even the once-infamous Area 51 is a tourist trap. But the most thrilling excursion you’ve never taken could be right…
Ava Glass: Me and the Spies
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I’d only been working for the British government for a few weeks when I met my first spy. I’d already had my background checked, and I thought that part was over when I first met Eve in the kitchenette at my office. She was new she said. Worked in the legal department. A few days…
Spenser at 50: The Evolution of Robert B. Parker’s Iconic Character
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From where he sits and writes in his Long Island home – in longhand, 10 pages a day – Mike Lupica can see a framed photograph of Robert B. Parker, the prolific author of the Spenser mystery novels. Parker wears a grin on his face and a Pittsburgh Pirates cap on his head. Also easily…
Freak On: Black Strip Clubs in the 1990s
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(some names and dates have been changed) From Sin City to Hustlers to Zola, more than a few of my favorite neo-noirs feature strip clubs as part of their narrative. My interest in these naughty places began when I was a kid growing-up in New York City. Whenever mom took me through raunchy Times Square…