Dorothy and Julian Cannell. Photo credit: Trevor Cannell.

What is it like to be married to a writer? Late hours, messy offices, and unusual eating habits is the consensus, according to the spouses of award-winning mystery writers Margaret Maron, Dorothy Cannell, Harlan Coben, and Jan Burke.

What do writers eat? What do they wear? What do they like to do on their days off? Read on for the answers, presented in roundtable format, to these and other questions about life with TA (The Author). But first, an introduction to the spouses:

JOE MARON was a Navy officer and Margaret was a summer secretary when they met in the Pentagon. He later earned an MFA and taught studio art at the college level. He and Margaret now live in North Carolina on land that has been in her family for a hundred years. They have one son and two granddaughters.

JULIAN CANNELL is a retired small-town lawyer. He met Dorothy when they were next-door neighbors. They weren’t sure they liked each other until they discovered Anna Karenina was their mutual favorite book. They have been married for over 40 years.

ANNE ARMSTRONG-COBEN, MD, and Harlan have been together since 1982. They met at Amherst College where they both played basketball and were fraternity brothers (Amherst had coed fraternities). They married in 1988 and have four children—two girls and two boys, ages 11, 8, 6, and 4.

TIM BURKE is a musician and co-owner of a private tutoring company. He and Jan live in Southern California with their two dogs, Cappy and Britches.

What was your welcome-to-the-world-of-writing moment?

JOE: I stayed in the Navy for a second hitch after Margaret and I were married, wangling shore duty in Naples, Italy. We had an apartment with a broad terrace overlooking the bay where we used to sit and talk about our future. That’s where we decided we would do all we could to live our lives as creatively as our talents would allow. I suppose my welcome-to-her-world moment was that first sale—a short story to the Alfred Hitchcock magazine. That’s what validates you: somebody you don’t know gives you money for something you made up out of your head. That $65 triggered a lifelong celebration.
JULIAN: When Dorothy sold her first short story, two years before selling her book. Up to that point, I thought writing might be just another hobby, like her macramé (string took over our house) and defensive gardening (only the cacti survived).
ANNIE: There wasn’t really one. I’ve now been with Harlan for 23 years so it was a gradual welcome.
TIM: When Jan first began writing, we discussed whether she should use a pseudonym. I was concerned about protecting her privacy, but Jan decided to write under her real name. About two or three years after the first book came out, she received a fan letter from an inmate at Pelican Bay prison. Although the letter started out polite enough, by the third sentence he was asking for nude photos. We did some research, and found out that he was a serial rapist—who was out on parole! Fortunately (for us, at least) he beat up his roommate within three days of his release and was sent back inside.

What is peculiar or unusual about TA’s work space?

JOE: All Margaret’s books have been written in our house here in North Carolina, the first few on her portable typewriter from college days in a spare room about the size of a walk-in closet. She now has a very comfortable workspace with all the appropriate furnishings. But she’s still very hands-on, and will always try to make it herself instead of buying it new. She cobbled up one of those old teachers’ desks from a thrift store and reconfigured it to perfectly house her computer.
JULIAN: Dorothy’s first “office” was a corner of our cellar, next to the cats’ litter box. She had a $50 manual typewriter, a ream of paper, and a $2.95 lamp on a “desk” that was really a sheet of plywood balanced on two sawhorses. There were no windows. She had a real office for a while, but now she’s back in the cellar while her new office space is under construction. The space has windows, but she doesn’t like them. And she’s moved up from a typewriter to a word processor.
ANNIE: It’s an absolute mess most of the time. Towards the end of finishing a book Harlan refuses to clean it until he’s done and then there is a major, welcome cleanup.
TIM: Jan’s work area is always boiling with activity. It looks like a mad scientist’s lab, with at least five different research projects spread about. The OED is in a place of honor and gets heavy use. Nearby are five Thunderbird action figures (from the TV show), including the evil “Hood” whose eyes light up when he speaks. These were gifts from her niece. There are also several old clocks (she collects them). Oh yeah, and a wind-up “Nunzilla” that walks and breathes fire.

Anne Armstrong-Coben and Harlan Coben

Does TA have any rituals or superstitions that s/he follows when getting ready to write?

JOE: Margaret catches up on all her correspondence and cleans off all the surfaces in her office.
JULIAN: First Dorothy decides on the setting. She will think about it, talk about it with her friends, refine it. Once she has the characters in the setting in mind, she is ready to go. (She doesn’t need to know who the victim or the villain is when she starts. Her characters drive the story.) She also eavesdrops a lot in restaurants.
TIM: I can always tell when Jan is getting ready to write because she undertakes strange cleaning projects.

What things does TA do when writing s/he doesn’t do at other times?

JOE: Solitaire. Whenever Margaret gets stuck, she’ll lay out a hand of solitaire—and she keeps score. There’s a tiny tablet on her desk that has her cumulative score from several books back.
JULIAN: Chews pencils. Doesn’t call her friends. Dorothy is writing all the time—she can disappear into the cellar for six or eight weeks at a time.
TIM: Jan becomes a night owl, writing during the vampire hours. When I get up in the morning, she’s ready to go to bed. She usually picks a certain CD and listens to it exclusively while she’s working on a book. It can be a certain band, an opera, or a classical composer.

Are there any “rules of the house” when TA is in writing mode?

JOE: Not rules exactly, but Margaret does tend to go missing in action. Doesn’t care if there are formal meals, doesn’t want guests, doesn’t want to have to make any decisions of any kind. I’m at one end of a long house and she’s at the other. I probably annoy her periodically with inconsequential stuff but we’re pretty much in tune.
JULIAN: Dorothy must have absolute quiet. Although she generally does not want to be disturbed, occasionally she will appear, read a section, and ask if it’s good. The answer is always “yes.” Finished pages are saved on the table discarded pages are dropped onto the floor. The floor cannot be cleaned until the book is done, in case she decides to use something from a discarded page.
ANNIE: Harlan will lock himself away and the kids know not to bother him. Sometimes they take it to an extreme and will phone me at work with a simple question they could have asked him when he’s sitting right in the next room.
TIM: Don’t talk to the writer. Unfortunately, our dogs (especially Cappy) don’t understand this, so it becomes my job to give them more attention. And our social life (going out to dinner, seeing friends) is substantially cut back.

How does TA change when a deadline is approaching?

JOE: Margaret has always been a night person. In all our years together, I’d be surprised if she’s gotten up for a hundred sunrises. She does most of her writing late in the day and into the night. There have been plenty of all-nighters, so I guess she actually has seen a lot of sunrises, now that I think about it. She’s a crisis writer who hones in under deadline pressure—usually doesn’t miss them or, if so, not by much.
JULIAN: Sometimes Dorothy writes the last 100 pages in three or four days; stopping only for the occasional half-hour or hour nap, she goes around the clock, mainlining Red Bull. (She can go through 36 cans in a week.) She loses all track of time, and is simply writing like crazy to get it all down. She spends time polishing and revising at the beginning of a book, but the last 100 pages is always in finished form in her head.
ANNIE: Harlan tends to get much more focused and less able to write with the background noise of the family. He’s usually quite easygoing and not too serious but we get to see his serious side at that time.
TIM: Jan becomes an introverted hermit. During this period, if she is the driver and I am the passenger, I often find myself asking her, “Where are you going?” because she has just sailed past the turn we were supposed to make. She has been revising chapter eleventeen and has missed the turn.

Jan and Tim Burke

What’s TA’s favorite food when writing?

JOE: I’m convinced Margaret would live on sandwiches, nuts, and raw carrots if I didn’t cook occasionally.
JULIAN: Dorothy likes to nibble on raw pieces of spaghetti. It’s a substitute for her pencils.
ANNIE: Harlan used to call me an addict because of my love/need for coffee. He didn’t drink it until he became a writer. He now shares my addiction and does quite a bit of writing at the local coffee shop.
TIM: It used to be Dr. Pepper, then for a while red licorice and tropical-flavored Jelly Bellies. Now it’s pretty much cut-up fresh fruit.

Does TA have favorite “writing clothes”?

JOE: Slouchy sweatshirts and sneakers in the winter; T-shirts, shorts, and bare feet in the summer.
JULIAN: Dorothy’s favorite writing garment finally disintegrated in the wash. It was a long cotton flannel T-shirt with a teddy bear in the front. Now she wears long-sleeved pullovers. When she’s on deadline, I sometimes leave clothes and food at the top of the cellar stairs for her.
ANNIE: No, as long as they’re clean and comfortable. Oh, and Harlan prefers fitted boxers to briefs.
TIM: Clothing can be optional, especially when Jan gets up to write in the middle of the night.

What does TA do on breaks from writing? What is TA’s favorite off-day activity?

JOE: The usual: reading, promotional activities, lunching with friends, us just hanging out together. Margaret used to look for arrowheads when the fields were still being regularly plowed. Now she goes out with a hoe and chops sandspurs. Don’t ask.
JULIAN: Dorothy likes to walk in the woods near our house (she’s a power-walker), and to work out at the Y. She listens to Plácido Domingo and, of course, enjoys her grandchildren. She still gardens—it’s hard to kill mint.
ANNIE: After dismissing the game of golf for years, Harlan has now got the bug. This has been his most recent “break” from work. Harlan also has many other forced but welcome breaks throughout the day keeping up with our kids and their activities. He’s been enjoying watching our oldest playing basketball and lacrosse, and now our two boys have a passion for baseball. Harlan is a great waffle ball pitcher.
TIM: We have “reading parties,” where one of us reads a book to the other. On breaks, we will catch up with family, friends, and movies. Once we spent most of a weekend watching the first two seasons of The Sopranos back-to-back. We’ll also take the dogs to the beach or on long walks.

What does TA do when s/he has finished a book?

JOE: When Margaret’s done there’s the inevitable race to Kinko’s for, let’s see, about six copies: One for the agent, one for the editor, one for a local farmer’s wife (who reads for neighborhood/local color), and three for Wilmington. All the Deborah Knott books go straight to three district court judges down there who check for legal gaffes. Being neither a judge nor lawyer, Margaret has found the ideal solution. Once the manuscript is accepted by the editor she heads down to Wilmington for her “trial.” I usually go along and we take the judges to dinner. After a great meal, out come the manuscript. “I had something on page 24,” is usually the way it starts. Often enough something serious will be troublesome—like the time she wrote that “the statute of limitations ran on that a long time ago,” and was told that no, in North Carolina, there is no statute of limitations on any felony. She had built the whole back end of Home Fires on that premise and she started to panic. But out came the laptops as the judges searched the statutes for loopholes and damned if they didn’t find something called a “naked confession,” which saved the day.
JULIAN: Dorothy crashes and sleeps for a few days. One time I came down to the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning. She was sitting at the table in her nightgown with a snifter of brandy. When I asked her if it wasn’t a little early to start drinking, she told me it wasn’t morning for someone who started work at 9 p.m. and stopped at 4 a.m. She then announced that the latest book was done and asked me to send it off. When I asked her if she wanted to proofread it, she said she never wanted to see the thing again.
ANNIE: Harlan cleans his office.
TIM: Because Jan’s usually exhausted (and ready to dive into the next project), I think I do more celebrating than she does. Sometimes we’ll go out to a restaurant.

Margaret and Joe Maron

What’s the worst thing about living with a writer that the public doesn’t know about?

JOE: Finding the best way to help without getting in the way. Margaret does not send her work around for peer review. I am her only sounding board, and she trusts me to tell her what I think. This caused a lot of battles in the past when she’d hand me a chapter to read—only to read—and I (in typical teacher fashion) would blue pencil the hell out of it. Big mistake. We blessedly gave up on that long ago. She now reads each chapter to me as she finishes it and I’m much less likely to jump in. She’s a good reader of her own work. Then we discuss. I must confess that I don’t read much fiction and I’m not especially interested in whodunit. What does interest me is pacing, tone, contrast, flow, that kind of thing. I think of her work as a piece of music.
JULIAN: You have to be prepared to spend time alone. It’s not a problem for me, because I love to read, but it could be frustrating for others.
ANNIE: They’re really working all the time. With Harlan his head is always churning and he’s always got a pen and pad at his side—even in the middle of the night he’ll awaken to write down his most recent “brilliant” thought.
TIM: When the copyedited manuscript comes back, I try to be out of town for at least 24 hours. Jan is either infuriated at the red-lining or feels dumb at missing things. And even though Jan loves it, I don’t like the traveling. I’m not a chatty person when it comes to the phone. I prefer that we talk face to face, rather than by phone—tough to do when she’s on the road!

What’s the best thing?

JOE: Living with a writer is never dull. They really do look at things differently. And mystery writers are always willing to speculate on alternative realities. And all that business about “living on our wits” that we laid out back in Naples? That’s come largely if not spectacularly true. The dog flies are pretty bad in the summer here and it does stay hot an awful long time, but eighteen acres of swaying pines, gardenias, tomatoes, lettuce all winter…. For a kid from Brooklyn, it’s like having your own country.
JULIAN: Writers are marvelous conversationalists and entertainers.
ANNIE: For us, it’s been his availability to the family. Except when on book tour, Harlan is ever present. He’s there to drive the kids to school and activities or just pick them up for a midday lunch. The problem is that when he’s gone, they all decompensate because they miss him so much. I am a pediatrician and am not sure I’d be able to work part-time as I do if his schedule weren’t so flexible.
TIM: It’s a thrill to be involved in the process early on. I get to see the gems that don’t make the cut, and to be a listener when she needs to bounce ideas off someone.

Anything you’d like to say to TA’s fans/readers?

JOE: I think readers might be surprised how much Margaret values them and how much she appreciates the letters and positive comments. It can be a solitary occupation and she likes hearing that someone out there gets it—gets the literary allusions, the sly offhand remarks, the ironies.
JULIAN: In every book, there is a piece of the writer. If you read several books by the same author and/or spend time with her, you will see it. Part of the writer is in her protagonist, part of the personality of the creator is in the character she has created.
ANNIE: Just that he really and truly appreciates them. He never takes that fan base for granted.
TIM: Thank you for your support! But if you mean advice, well …
If you find a small typo or what you think is a mistake in a book, let it go. You’d be amazed at how many lunatics crawl out of their caves because they feel compelled to send Jan a three-page missive to the effect that “you said the sun rose at 5:46, but it never rises any earlier than 5:47 every other leap year in April.”...
Jan loves to hear from readers on how a book meant something to them. She also enjoys the relationships she has developed over the years with fans and booksellers.

If you could change one thing about the publishing world, you would …

JOE: Put all Margaret’s Sigrid Harald books back into print and encourage her to write new ones. I would also, of course, divert the company’s whole publicity budget to her!

If TA weren’t a writer, s/he would be a great …

JOE: Judge—what else?
JULIAN: Comedian, actor (I’m always telling her she should read her own books for audio ), interior designer, craftsperson.
ANNIE: Stand-up comic. I think I fell in love with Harlan for his sense of humor.
TIM: Filmmaker, dog trainer, therapist, song writer.

If there is an Edgar in your house, where does it live? Does TA ever talk to it?

JOE: It lives on a shelf in her office and Margaret doesn’t talk to it, but she does smile at it occasionally.
ANNIE: In a wooden display box with a glass front in our living room. I actually broke the first one cleaning one day. That led to the new protective home. I don’t think Harlan ever talks to it but I’m not sure.
TIM: It lives in Jan’s office on a bookshelf. She never talks to it. However, I have noticed it always has something snide to say to me whenever I pass by. It’s starting to make me paranoid, but I bet many of you already accuse me behind my back of paranoia.

Any words of advice for other writer’s spouses?

JOE: Enjoy the ride and don’t take it too seriously.
JULIAN: Be prepared to spend time alone. Also be prepared to encounter two types of people—those who will be in awe of your spouse, and will invite her to cocktail parties so they can pass her around with the cashews, and those who will like her for who she is, and never talk about her craft.
ANNIE: Just to be supportive and believe in them. When asked to read drafts, give honest feedback but try to always be positive. Harlan’s the first to admit, writers tend to be insecure about their writing and the spouse’s job is to tell them they’re great!
TIM: Never admit you think the copy editor has a point unless you have previously checked out all possible points of egress from the building. Don’t take it personally when a writer asks to be left alone to work; even though it looks as though she is at home, she’s really at the office. You owe it to the writer to be honest—if you think something is bad, you have to say so. You may want to put on hockey gear before you do this.

Twist Phelan is the author of the Pinnacle Peak series, legal-themed mysteries set in Arizona featuring different sports, published by Poisoned Pen Press.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Fall Issue #91.

Is this end of Agatha Christie’s long-standing detective Hercule Poirot, as we know him?

Unlikely, I say.

Although British actor David Suchet is making his last appearances as the dapper Belgian detective, Poirot, like Christie’s work, will never go out of style.

But for now, we must say farewell to Suchet in the final five 90-minute episodes of Agatha Christie’s Poirot.

Suchet’s final turn as the TV Poirot began with The Big Four on July 27 and with Dead Man’s Folly on Augl 3. Those episodes air on PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery! series. The series begins at 9 p.m.; check your local listings for changes, and for viewings On Demand. Those episodes also are available at www.Acorn.TV, Acorn TV for iPhone and iPad on the App store, on Roku and other platforms.

The Big Four also is a bit of a reunion as it brings back several Poirot’s supporting characters. Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser), Inspector Japp (Philip Jackson) and Miss Lemon (Pauline Moran) were last together more than a decade ago, in Season 8.

The final three episodes will air exclusively on AcornTV. Those episodes, which are available on Mondays, are Elephants Can Remember (Aug. 11); Labours of Hercules (Aug. 18); and Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case on Aug. 25. If you are a Christie fan, then you already have a good idea of what happens during that finale.

In addition to those five new episodes, the 65 previous ones then will be available on the British TV streaming service AcornTV, part of RLJ Entertainment Inc. (These episodes aired in Britain in 2013.)

Suchet has been playing the sleuth for the past 25 years and it is hard to imagine anyone else bringing such life and intelligence to the fussy Belgian, whose appearance is as impeccable as his detection skills. Suchet has given Poirot’s “little grey cells” the upmost respect and care through the years.

And he has had such good material to work with.

Mystery fiction—or crime fiction if you prefer—has radically changed since Christie began writing back in the 1920s. But her work has endured because she is one tough plotter. Her novels were as much about social issues of the time, as today’s novels are. She explored the privileged wealthy, the imperfect justice system, and even the effects of war.


Poirot first appeared in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920, and left her novels in Curtain, published in 1975. Poirot was the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York Times.

Christie’s novels showed Poirot through the whole of his life in England. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, he is a refugee staying at Styles; in Curtain, he makes a final visit to Styles.

The novels gave scant clues to Poirot’s childhood. Apparently, he comes from a large family that had a little money. We do know that Christie wrote that Poirot was a Roman Catholic. His religion gave him a strong sense of morality and justice, which are not necessarily the same thing.

It was the 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that really put Poirot on the map with readers. The surprising solution to Roger was controversial at the time. Roger is still one of Christie’s most famous novels, having launched myriad parodies as well as proving a springboard for other similar plots. Edmund Wilson used the title for his screed against detective fiction, Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

But Poirot’s most famous case was Murder on the Orient Express (1934). I never tire of that novel and the 1974 movie with its all-star cast is always a pleasure.

Poirot appeared in 33 novels, one play (Black Coffee), and more than 50 short stories. On screen, he has been portrayed by John Moffatt, Albert Finney, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Ian Holm, Tony Randall, Alfred Molina, and, of course, Suchet.

While Poirot has never gone out of fashion, he was often criticized by an unlikely source: Agatha Christie. Through the years, Christie often was quoted as saying she had grown weary of Poirot. In 1930, she was quoted as calling him “insufferable.” In 1960, she was quoted as calling him a “detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep.”

And that description is never in Suchet’s wheelhouse. Suchet portrayed him as many things—precise, fussy, astute, a bit too know it all. But never a creep, though he could be insufferable to murderers.

No doubt other Poirots will come after Suchet, as did those before him.

But Suchet’s performances as the detective will continue to live on as the actor begins other acting adventures.

Captions: Top, David Suchet as Poirot; Center, From left, Pauline Moran (Miss Lemon), Philip Jackson (Japp), David Suchet (Hercule Poirot) and Hugh Fraser (Hastings) in The Big Four. Photos courtesy Acorn TV

The only thing more delectable than a good summer mystery read may just be a delicious summer peach.

To celebrate the season, Mystery Scene asked some of our favorite culinary mystery authors to share some of their favorite peach recipes. Take it from Joanne Fluke , Daryl Wood Gerber (Avery Aames), Livia J. Washburn, and Cleo Coyle. Murder has never been so sweet...

MINNESOTA PEACH COBBLER

by Joanne Fluke (Hannah Swenson mysteries)

INGREDIENTS
***Do NOT thaw peaches***

Filling

• 10 cups frozen sliced peaches (2.5 pounds, sliced)
• 1/8 cup lemon juice (2 tbsp)
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup melted butter

Crust

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 stick softened butter (1/4 cup)
• 2 beaten eggs

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a 13 by 9 inch cake pan with Pam.

Measure peaches and put them in a large mixing bowl. Let them sit on the counter and thaw for 10 minutes.  Then sprinkle with lemon juice and toss.

In another smaller bowl combine white sugar, salt, flour, and cinnamon.  Mix them together with a fork until they're evenly combined.

Pour dry mixture over the peaches and toss them (your hands are best).  Once most of the dry mixture is clinging to the peaches, dump them into the cake pan you've prepared.  Sprinkle any dry mixture left in the bowl on the top of the peaches in the pan.

Melt the butter. Drizzle it over the peaches.  Then cover the cake pan tightly with foil.

Bake the peach mixture at 350 for 40 minutes.  Take it out of the oven and set it on a heat-proof surface, but DO NOT turn off the oven.

Now for the crust.  Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a smaller bowl you used earlier.  Cut in the softened butter with a couple of forks until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal.  Add the beaten eggs and mix them in with a fork.  For those of you who remember your school library with fondness, the result will resemble library paste but it'll smell a whole lot better).  You can also do this with food processor with chilled butter.

Remove the foil cover from the peaches and drop on spoonfuls of the topping.  Because the topping is thick, you'll have to do this in little dibs and dabs scraped from the spoon with another spoon, a rubber spatula, or with your clean finger.  Dab on the topping until the whole pan is polka dotted.  (Will spread out when baking).

Bake at 350 degrees, uncovered, for an additional 50 minutes.

JOANNE FLUKE is the New York Times bestselling author of the Hannah Swensen mysteries, which include Apple Turnover Murder, Cinnamon Roll Murder, Red Velvet Cupcake Murder, and, of course, Peach Cobbler Murder. She’s baked over 500,000 chocolate chip cookies for fans since the series debuted 14 years ago, not to mention countless pies, cakes, muffins and other sweets. Like Hannah Swensen, Joanne Fluke was born and raised in a small town in rural Minnesota, where a traffic jam was defined as two cars stuck behind a tractor. She managed to shovel her way out of the snow and now lives in California. Visit Joanne at www.JoanneFluke.com.

PEACH BASIL PROSCIUTTO

by Daryl Wood Gerber (Cookbook NOOK Mystery series)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 peaches sliced in eighths
• 1 pound prosciutto, cut into thin one-inch slices
• 12-16 large leaves of basil, rinsed, stem removed

DIRECTIONS

Slice the peaches
Slice the prosciutto
Prepare the basil

Lay one slice of peach in each basil leaf. Using a piece of prosciutto, wrap at the center around the peach/basil combo, twisting or pressing at the end so the prosciutto holds together.

NOTES

In the Perfect Peach recipe, the skin of the peach is cut off. I prefer the skin on for texture. You can do either. Also, my husband liked the peach with the prosciutto by itself, no basil. I happen to adore basil and loved the combination. Eat to your heart’s content!

DARYL WOOD GERBER is the author of A Cookbook Nook Mystery series, featuring an avid reader, admitted foodie, and owner of a cookbook store in picturesque coastal California. The series debuted in 2013. In addition, under the pen name Avery Aames, Daryl writes the Agatha Award winning, nationally bestselling A Cheese Shop Mystery series. Visit Daryl at www.darylwoodgerber.com.

PHYLLIS' SPICY PEACH COBBLER

by Livia J. Washburn (Fresh Baked Mysteries)

INGREDIENTS

Filling

• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 1/2 tbsp minced candied ginger
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 4 cups sliced peaches

9" Basic Crust

• 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp ice water
• 1 tsp granulated or turbinado (raw) sugar * Makes a 9-inch pie crust

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 375º. Combine cornstarch, minced candied ginger, brown sugar, and water in saucepan. Cook until thickened and then add peaches. Cook until peaches are hot, about 5 minutes. Pour into buttered 9” pan making sure the ginger is evenly distributed.

Mix flour and salt in chilled bowl, then cut shortening into the flour with a pastry cutter, until mixture resembles the texture of tiny split peas. When the mixture is the right texture, add the ice water and combine with a fork. Quickly gather the dough into a ball and flatten into a 4-inch-wide disk. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.

Remove dough disk from refrigerator. If stiff and very cold, let stand until dough is cool but malleable. Using a floured rolling pin, roll dough disk on a lightly floured surface until it’s bigger than the pan. Transfer dough by carefully rolling it around the rolling pin, lift and unroll dough, centering it over the fruit. Vent crust, and sprinkle granulated or turbinado (raw) sugar on top to give a delightful sparkling appearance.

Bake cobbler for 50 minutes or until golden brown.

The candied ginger gives this dessert a warm zesty taste.

LIVIA J WASHBURN (aka L.J. Washburn) is Livia Reasoner, a mystery, western, romance, and historical novelist. She began to write in collaboration with her husband, author James Reasoner, and soon branched out into telling her own stories. Livia and James have had a long career working together, tweaking and editing each others stories. In recent years she's become involved in the publishing end of the business, producing ebooks and trade paperbacks for Western Fictioneers, and now for Prairie Rose Publications. A good day for her includes having time to create something new in the kitchen, on a story, and designing a great cover. Livia's website can be found at www.liviawashburn.com.

Honey Cinnamon Peach Sopapillas

by Cleo Coyle (Coffeehouse Mystery series)

Traditionally sopapillas are little pillows of fried dough. They can be served with savory ingredients but also as a dessert with honey and cinnamon. You can certainly make them from scratch, but here's a quick, easy, lighter way to make them using flour tortillas. This recipe serves one.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 six-inch flour tortilla
• 2-3 teaspoons shortening (my favorite: cold-pressed extra virgin coconut oil, but you can also use olive oil, or your favorite oil, butter, lard, or vegetable shortening - see my note below)
• Raw honey for drizzling (Health and flavor note: Raw honey is far, far better tasting than heat-processed honeys. It's truly worth the price and makes a huge difference in flavor. If you can find local raw honey, that's an even better benefit for your immune system.)
• 1 tbsp cinnamon mixed with 2 tsp sugar
• 1 ripe, fresh peach

DIRECTIONS

Place a skillet on medium-high heat and add your choice of shortening (oil, butter, lard, etc). You must use some kind of shortening and enough of it or the tortilla will not properly bubble up.

When the oil is hot (or the butter melted), place the tortilla in the pan. Allow it to heat up (15 to 20 seconds), then flip it and wait patiently for the tortilla to bubble up. If it does not bubble up, you need to increase the heat and keep waiting. Then flip it one more time to finish cooking and remove it from the pan. Slip it on the plate, drizzle it with raw honey, and sprinkle it generously with cinnamon sugar. Use a pizza cutter to slice it into sections.

To serve, slice up a fresh peach and arrange the slices on the center of a plate as shown in my photo. Drizzle with raw honey and cinnamon sugar. Place the sopapilla slices around the plate, top the center of the peach slices with whipped cream or ice cream and eat with joy!

NOTES

My very favorite shortening for this recipe is cold-pressed extra virgin coconut oil. This is a healthy, delicious oil, and of all the shortenings I tested with this recipe, coconut oil gave the absolute best results. It doesn't brown the way butter does at a high temperature; it brings a lovely, slightly nutty flavor to the tortilla; and it creates a nice, crisp texture in the tortilla as it cools.

CLEO COYLE is the pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, who writes popular fiction in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. Like their 13 Coffeehouse Mystery novels, their five Haunted Bookshop Mysteries (written under the name Alice Kimberly), are bestselling works of amateur sleuth fiction for Penguin. Visit Cleo at www.coffeehousemystery.com.

Author Dorothy Salisbury Davis passed away August 3, 2014. Sarah Weinman recently profiled the crime fiction legend for Mystery Scene.

Dorothy Salisbury Davis celebrated her 98th birthday on April 26, making her arguably the oldest living American mystery writer. She is also one of the genre’s very best practitioners, one whose approach to crime fiction was once described by her friend and protégée Sara Paretsky as having “an awareness of how easy it is for ordinary people to do nasty and wicked deeds” and “[a rich] understanding of the human condition that is missing from most contemporary crime fiction.”

For years I had a dim awareness of Davis’ life and work, glimpsing her at the Edgar Awards in 2007 and seeing her name mentioned in mystery magazines as a major force, but it wasn’t until I began collecting stories for my anthology of domestic suspense fiction, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, that I delved into Davis’ oeuvre in a serious manner. What I found backed up the plaudits and confirmed the hosannas: Davis truly understood the complicated nature of human behavior, and how otherwise ordinary people could tumble down the proverbial rabbit hole of sin, temptation, and weakness to commit murder—and keep the reader’s sympathy throughout.

Davis, born in Chicago and raised on dairy farms in rural Illinois and Wisconsin, was adopted and did not learn the truth of her parentage until she was well past middle age. Those hidden origins, contrasted against an otherwise happy childhood, may have led Davis to writing mysteries, though not before several professional detours as a research librarian in the advertising world, a magic show promoter, a director of the benefits program of a major meatpacking company during World War II, and later, as an editor for The Merchandiser magazine. Davis was also active in local theater, and met her husband, the character actor Harry Davis, when he was assistant stage manager for the production of The Glass Menagerie that eventually landed on Broadway.

Three years into her marriage, Davis published her first novel, The Judas Cat (1949), with Scribner, who remained her hardcover publisher for the rest of her career. Already many of the themes that would recur in Davis’ work—the seemingly close-knit small town populated with flawed but relatable people undone by a murder, and then the corrosive aftermath—appear in this debut, which is set up by a nifty locked-room mystery: How did 92-year-old Andy Mattson die violently in his house with only a cat as witness, and possibly as culprit?

But locked-room mysteries weren’t Davis’ main concern. She was much more interested in the psychology of regular people, especially women of all ages, like the thirtyish spinster Hannah in A Town of Masks (1952), whose timid manner boils over in a murderous, yet justified way, or the elderly matriarch in The Clay Hand (1950) who rules her small town using fear and hatred, yet is herself undone. She also brilliantly captured the downward spiral of a teenage-boy-turned-hoodlum in both Black Sheep, White Lamb (1963) and The Little Brothers (1973), both of which also depict New York City’s Italian-American communities with forthright compassion.

Davis’ Roman Catholicism also figured prominently in a number of her novels. A Gentle Murderer (1951), her best-known novel, begins with a tour de force of an opener, in which a young man gets off a subway in midtown Manhattan, heads for a nearby church, and confesses his mortal sin to the priest: he thinks he has killed a young woman, and he is beside himself. The priest is honor-bound to keep the man’s secret. The cop who investigates the woman’s murder must find a way to coax the information out of the priest without breaking that oath. Meanwhile, the young man finds himself the object of affection of two generations of women at the house where he lodges, and where his secrets are threatened to be discovered.

More than 20 years later, Davis twists the original opening scene of A Gentle Murderer to its near-opposite in Where the Dark Streets Go (1969), as Father McMahon, tasked with writing his weekly sermon, gets an urgent summons to a tenement basement where a young man lies dying, bloody, and stabbed, refusing to divulge his real name or his killer’s. Davis suffuses this novel, too, with an overwhelming desire for absolution in the face of multiple types of guilt. Father McMahon’s struggles become the reader’s struggles, too.

While Davis’ concerns about human behavior and social justice means her crime novels are generally sober in nature, the wicked sense of humor she’s displayed in real life comes through on the page as well. This is most especially true with her trio of novels—Death of an Old Sinner, A Gentleman Called, and Old Sinners Never Die, published between 1957 and 1959—starring the elderly housekeeper Mrs. Norris, accompanying her longtime charge Jimmie, now a Wall Street lawyer, and the police detective Jasper Tully as they investigate serious crimes with a lighthearted touch.

Davis’ humor is also on display in her last four novels, all featuring Julie Hayes, who moves from disaffected, psychoanalyzed housewife and struggling actress (A Death in the Life) to tarot card reader (Scarlet Night) to gossip reporter (Lullaby of Murder) to searching out her own birth parents in Ireland (The Habit of Fear).

The Julie Hayes novels are difficult to pigeonhole, however. They feature one of the most dysfunctional marriages in mystery fiction, between Julie, chafing at her own lack of independence, and Jeff, the much older, condescending investigative reporter. Davis thoughtfully examines this relationship as it grows, changes, and eventually, ends. Julie is caustic, eccentric, and resourceful, but also deals with her own brutal rape in The Habit of Fear—more disturbing because Davis describes it without flourish or relish—in a “let’s get on with it” manner that does not diminish the horror. And yet, there is joie de vivre, especially with respect to the late 1970s/early 1980s New York City Davis depicts, a city in great transition that is clearly one the author loves.

While crime fiction was Davis’s primary genre, for which she garnered eight Edgar nominations—as well as the Grand Master designation by the Mystery Writers of America in 1985—she also wrote mainstream historical fiction, including Men of No Property (1956), set in Ireland during the 19th century potato famine; The Evening of the Good Samaritan (1962), set before, during, and after World War II through the vantage point of three generations of men; and God Speed the Night (1968, co-written with Jerome Ross), a suspense tale of Nazi resistance during World War II.

A number of influential writers counted Davis among their friends. She recalled, in an interview for The Daily Beast in 2013, living just two miles away from Patricia Highsmith in the 1950s, being “great friends” with Dorothy B. Hughes, and visiting Ross Macdonald and Margaret Millar in California. Davis was also instrumental in cementing Sisters in Crime as an organization to take seriously upon its founding in 1986 by joining as a board member. “She was a pioneer in speaking out for women writers and insisting that a woman’s voice was as valid, as strong, and as important as a man’s,” the noted crime writer Margaret Maron recalls.

Maron, who considers Davis to be “one of my icons,” vividly recalled her first encounter with the author during Edgar Week in the 1980s. “She came into the nearly empty room where I was and smiled at me as she bustled through (she never just strolled, she always moved quickly). I sat there dazed: ‘Dorothy Salisbury Davis just smiled at me!’”

Davis stopped writing novels after her husband Harry’s death in 1993, although she has published short stories as recently as 2009, many of them collected in In The Still of the Night (2001). Readers, luckily, can find out for themselves about the consistent excellence of Dorothy Salisbury Davis’ work thanks to the recent digital reissues of her entire body of work by Open Road Integrated Media.

A DOROTHY SALISBURY DAVIS READING LIST

Mrs. Norris Series
Death of an Old Sinner (1957)
A Gentleman Called (1958)
Old Sinners Never Die (1959)

Julie Hayes Series
A Death in the Life (1976)
Scarlet Night (1980)
Lullaby of Murder (1984)
The Habit of Fear (1987)

Collections
In the Still of the Night (2001)
Tales for a Stormy Night (1984)

Crime Novels
The Judas Cat (1949)
The Clay Hand (1952)
A Gentle Murderer (1951)
A Town of Masks (1952)
Black Sheep, White Lamb (1963)
The Pale Betrayer (1965)
Enemy and Brother (1966)
God Speed the Night (1968) (with Jerome Ross)
Where the Dark Streets Go (1969)
Shock Wave (1972)
Little Brothers (1974)

Sarah Weinman is the editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories From the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense (Penguin). She is at work editing a two-volume set of novels by American women crime writers for the Library of America.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Summer Issue #135.

I love exotic perfumes, the kind that you don’t often find in regular department stores. And if those perfumes come with a history, so much the better.

Perfumes also can make a statement about character in crime fiction.

Scents trigger Maggie Silver’s memory in Denise Hamilton’s novel Damage Control. Here's Maggie applying a fragrance: “...clean, crisp notes of citrus, bergamot and verbena. Nothing cloying or clobbering... Just a subtle scent amulet to infuse me with secret grace and power.” Hamilton, by the way, is an expert on perfumes.

Perfume, or at least one perfume, has meaning to private detective Miranda Corbie in Kelli Stanley’s latest novel City of Ghosts set in San Francisco during 1940, the time when war was raging in Europe but the U.S. had yet to enter the battle.

For Miranda, the scent Vol de Nuit is important. Not because of its wonderful bouquet, but because Vol de Nuit reminds her of a different time and when she was a different person.

Stanley writes: “Vol de Nuit, replacement for Je Reviens and the happy time, the other Miranda, the girl in New York who liked carnations and violets, the scene of freshly cut oranges and coffee, the sound of the Elevated pounding above her tiny apartment, shouts of kids running to buy candy and a Shadow magazine at the corner store.”

In City of Ghosts, Miranda is down to her last bottle of Vol de Nuit, and knows that there will be no more shipments of the perfume until the war is over.

“She closed her eyes, inhaling the oakmoss and narcissus, the deep vanilla crème and the arid scent of wood bark, straight from the Ardennes,” writes Stanley.

Vol de Nuit is an apt perfume for Miranda to cherish during wartime. Produced by the house Guerlain (who make Shalimar, among others), Vol de Nuit was “composed in 1933 as a tribute to flight, celebrating the novel of the same name by pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Air France.” The novel Vol de Nuit celebrated courage, according to Guerlain.

Naturally, I had to order a bottle. I don’t know how much courage it brings me, but it is a lovely, old-fashioned scent that at the same time is modern.

And every time I wear it, it smells as if it were San Francisco, 1940.

David Rosenfelt is the consummate dog lover. You can tell this from his involving novels about lawyer Andy Carpenter.

In each of the 12 novels in this series, Rosenfelt works in a love of dogs as the canines have something to do with the plot.

In Hounded, the latest novel in this series, Andy is asked to take in the eight-year-old son of a murder victim and the boy’s basset hound, Sebastian.

The dog is no problem—Andy often does rescue and fostering of dogs—but a child, well, that’s another matter. Hounded is one of the best novels in Rosenfelt’s series.

Without getting too sentimental or cutesy, Rosenfelt shows in each of the Andy Carpenter novels how our bonds with dogs can change our lives.

Andy’s rescue sideline never overwhelms the plot but it is a part of this character and makes him who he is.

In the novels, Andy owns just one dog—a golden retriever named Tara, who is named after Rosenfelt’s own Tara.

But the author David Rosenfelt doesn’t own a single dog.

He has 25.

Yes, 25 dogs, all of which he and his wife, Debbie Myers, have taken in as rescues.

Of course, that number could be completely different today.

Rosenfelt and Myers rescue dogs, especially golden retrievers, and try to find them homes.


But if they can’t find new homes, well, these dogs have a forever home with them.

Rosenfelt discusses his love of dogs, how he got into rescuing, and how he moved his family and those 25 dogs from Southern California to Maine in Dogtripping.

A funny, insightful memoir, Dogtripping shows how the best plans can go awry when humans, and, well, dogs, too, are in the mix.

When he started the relocation of his pack, Rosenfelt thought he had planned for every turn. He had GPSes, RVs for transit, and loads of food. But he was traveling with 25 dogs and he was in for an adventure.

Spoiler alert: everyone made it just fine.

Dogtripping also is the tale of the beginnings of his dog rescue foundation, which is named after Tara, the beloved golden who lives on in Rosenfelt’s novels.

Those of us who love dogs will find Rosenfelt’s recollections bring a few tears, and a lot of smiles.

And as a consummate dog lover myself, I also know the power of bonding with a dog. My first dog, Lou, came when I was about 11 months old, and, except for college, I have always had at least one dog.

Currently, we have only two—and, yes, both are rescues.

It would be easy—and it has already been done—to call Breathless the British Mad Men.

After all, this British series making its debut as part of PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery! is set in 1961 and is thoroughly steeped in the sensibilities of the era.

As we all know, that was a time when societal mores and attitudes were beginning to change, when revolution was in the air, from social reform to the music.  

Breathless is divided into three two-hour episodes. The first two-hour Breathless will be shown at 9 p.m. Aug. 24, followed by Aug. 31 and Sept. 7. Check your local listings for changes in times and airing.

Breathless certainly has much in common with Mad Men, that is if the American series were set in London and the advertising firm were a hospital and the “mad men” were not just doctors but gynecologists.

But Breathless delivers even more cynicism about the times that were a-changing, going from the old boys’ network—or, I guess this would be the old chaps’ network—to one in which women and minorities would have more of a piece of the pie.

That changing of the times is the crux of Breathless, a fascinating, often perceptive, but sometimes hollow look at the early 1960s in London.

After watching the initial screening, I am interested enough to want to see the rest of the series.

But I fail to see how Breathless fits with PBS’ Masterpiece Mystery! series. Yes, a cop conducts some sort of an investigation and a death occurs midway in the series. But there seems little in the way of any mystery. Endeavour Morse, Poirot, Miss Marple, and the various Sherlocks have very little in common with Breathless.

Even the British police procedural George Gently, set in the same time, is light years away from Breathless.

At its heart, Breathless is more of a soap opera about men who seem to care little about women’s health—which makes us wonder why they chose gynecology—and more about manipulating women and having as much sex as possible.

Yet, amid this misogyny there is some concern about women’s health.

Jack Davenport stars as the brilliant London surgeon Otto Powell, a respected physician, a devoted family man with a lovely wife, Elizabeth, and a bright son. But look beneath the surface. He also fools around with nurses, patients, neighbors, and the wives of colleagues whenever he can, and has some dark secrets.

Yet, despite all his caddish ways, Otto is the most unlikely champion of a woman’s right to choose. And he performs safe—though still illegal—abortions on the side to desperate women, many of whom can afford to have a private physician, anesthesiologist, and nurse come quietly to their home. These are not those back-alley procedures that movies of the 1950s showed. One society woman greets Otto and his crew by saying, “I’ve been such a silly muffin.”

Otto’s side business is only one aspect of Breathless. The series’ main focus is showing how steeped the era was in racism, classism, and sexism and how these men, arrogant, snide, thinking they are masters of the universe, are about to get a rude awakening. Anesthesiologist Charlie Enderbury (Shaun Dingwall) can’t believe that the promotion he was sure of might go to a doctor of Indian heritage.

Otto is being investigated—the reason never clear in the first episode—by Chief Inspector Ronald Mulligan (Iain Glen), a ruthless detective whose pursuit seems to harken back to a war. But Mulligan also is a controlling father who was forcing his daughter to marry a man she didn’t love. Mulligan seems determined to disgrace the doctor because his daughter vanished from the hospital and he can’t find her.  

Although Breathless is rather weak on plot, its strength is in watching the characters maneuver amid unforgiving times. A newlywed has had to give up her brilliant career as a nurse because, well, she is married. She spends her days smoking, drinking, and trying new recipes, and is constantly being intruded on by the nosey wife of one of her husband’s colleagues. Another wife is being forced to go on tranquilizers because her husband believes “the change” is driving her mad; her rage is inspired not by hormones but by her husband’s affair.

The cast is uniformly good. Davenport has always been a personal favorite since Coupling and The Talented Mr. Ripley; others may recognize him from Pirates of the Caribbean and Smash. He gives a sense of decency and concern for women to Otto, as well as the physician’s sense of entitlement.

Other recognizable actors are Zoe Boyle (Downton Abbey), Catherine Steadman (Mansfield Park), Iain Glen (Downton Abbey), Natasha Little (Case Histories), Oliver Chris (Sharpe's Challenge), Joanna Page (Love Actually), and Shaun Dingwall (Touching Evil).

Breathless also is one stylish series. The cars, the clothes, the little details of the era are lovingly displayed.

The sexual revolution, as Breathless shows (as does Mad Men) was really good for men, giving them a wider field to bed. Not so much for women who may have slept with a man before marriage, but were still stuck with antiquated attitudes about their reputation and freedom. Sure, there was the birth control pill, which was approved in the US in 1961. But in London, this was still a rumor. It wasn’t until 1974 that single women could be prescribed the pill, and during the early 1960s, married women were supposed to have their husbands’ permission.

Breathless didn’t leave me breathless, but, like Mad Men, gives a perceptive window into an era.

Captions: Top, from left to right: Natasha Little as Elizabeth Powell, Jack Davenport as Dr. Otto Powell, Zoe Boyle as Jean Meecher, Oliver Chris as Dr. Richard Truscott, and Sarah Parish as Margaret; center photo, Jack Davenport. Photos courtesy PBS.

I know we've written about television and films a lot lately—but they’ve all had an interest for our readers.

But this essay hurts—after three successful seasons A&E is cancelling Longmire, the television series based on Craig Johnson’s bestselling series about Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire.

What?

Yes, and this cancellation makes no sense.

Now, I don’t use the word successful causally when mentioning Longmire the TV series.

A&E network admits that Longmire is its “most-watched original drama series of all time.”

Despite that, A&E will not renew Longmire for a fourth season.

In a lame statement, A&E announced: “We would like to thank the phenomenal cast, crew and producers of Longmire, along with our partners at Warner Horizon, for their tireless work on three seasons of quality dramatic storytelling. We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved together.”

I say poppycock. If A&E was so proud of what they have achieved together, the network would be signing up Longmire for at least three more seasons.

What makes Longmire, the television series—as well as Johnson’s novels—so compelling is the insightful look at a modern-day sheriff dealing with the contemporary crimes that have infiltrated the Old West. And while these crimes are contemporary, many of the atrocities could have occurred when Wyoming was first being settled.

Robert Taylor nailed the character of Longmire, settling into this role as the Australian actor would in an old pair of comfortable jeans.

And who didn’t love to see Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear? He is one of those actors I love to see in anything. Katee Sackhoff brought emotional strength to the role of Vic Moretti.

According to several reports, including from Deadline Hollywood, the second season of Longmire averaged nearly 6 million viewers, up 9 percent from the first season.

While the third season dropped to 4.6 million viewers, it still is stronger than many of the series A&E airs, coming in only behind Duck Dynasty in terms of viewership.

I still haven’t gotten over the cancellation of The Glades that ended on a cliff-hanger. Likewise, let’s not forget that Longmire’s third season, which aired a few weeks ago, also ended on a cliff-hanger.

The adage “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t even apply here. Instead A&E is taking a successful product, breaking it in many pieces and then shrugging away. And this from a network that once had a reputation of quality programing.

Apparently, Longmire’s studio Warner Horizons is looking for another network to air the series.

It would be great if Longmire were to be picked up by another network. TNT has had much success with Rizzoli & Isles and Major Crimes. Longmire would easily fit into TNT’s grid.

Meanwhile, readers and viewers should take comfort that Johnson’s novels continue with more involving plots.

By Any Other Name, the 11th novel in this series, was released a couple of months ago. Buying his books is the best revenge—and protest—for this cancellation.

Photos: From top, Robert Taylor as Longmire; Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear. A&E photos.