mystery
Spooky Shenanigans for Halloween
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I’m such a sucker for holidays. I love to completely immerse myself in a theme: holiday decorations, holiday meals, holiday baking. As soon as the leaves start to turn amber and scarlet; the air goes crisp; and when the windows have that little bit of frost in the mornings, it’s time to think of pumpkins…
Dorothy L. Sayers and the Enduring Legacy of a Marriage of True Minds
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–Originally delivered as the Annual Speech (28 June 2023) for the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, edited. Exactly a hundred years ago this October, Dorothy L Sayers published Whose Body? It launched her career as an illustrious author of eleven novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey that changed the detective genre forever. Sayers was, quite simply, unique.…
Dann McDorman on Exploring Literary Hijinks and Meta Mystery
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While mysteries can usually be trusted to compel the reader within the first chapter or even the first few pages, it’s rare for them to hook us from the first paragraph. But West Heart Kill, Dann McDorman’s clever debut, achieves this with intriguing tongue-in-cheek confidence. The book opens with the protagonist, detective Adam McAnnis, sitting…
Finding Inspiration for Mystery Fiction in Soap Operas
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What JR, Alexis, and Domingue Taught this Mystery Writer One of the best compliments I’ve received from readers about the Lady Mystery series is that each mystery unfolds like an episode of television. The vivid nature of the storytelling, the feeling that you’re in the room watching the events happen, is high praise for a…
5 Christmas Mysteries To Get You Ready for the Holiday Season
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It’s a rare crime fiction reader who doesn’t love curling up with a mystery during the winter months, especially if that mystery is one of the many Christmas-themed puzzles that the genre is famous for. The tradition goes back to the Golden Age of detective fiction, that period after World War II when authors like…
A Murder of Poets: Or, the Inescapable Connections Between Crime Fiction and Poetry
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“Murder will out…” –Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Poetry and pathology. Verse and victim. Meter and murder and mayhem. Poetry and crime fiction seem to go together like, well, rhyme and reason. Crime novelist and CWA Diamond Dagger winner Martin Edwards has been quoted as saying that the pair share “the importance of form…
5 Historical Mysteries Featuring Unforgettable, Unconventional Women
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A lawyer in 1920s Bombay. A computer hacker/tech investigator in 1990s Paris. A deputy sheriff in 1914 New Jersey. What unites these characters, separated by time and diverse locales? Each one is an independent, unconventional woman in the role of investigator. I have been an avid reader of crime fiction for as long as I…
The Backlist: Revisiting Steven Hamilton’s ‘The Lock Artist’ with Elle Cosimano
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When I started writing crime fiction, what I worried about most was all the stuff you had to know. I had never been a criminal, a detective, a private investigator, or a lawyer. I didn’t know how to steal a car or bury a body or fake an alibi. Of course there was always Google,…