Congratulations to Megan Abbott, left, and Sarah St. Vincent, below left, the recipients of the 2019 Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction.
The Pinckley Prizes for Crime Fiction for women writers were established in 2012 by the Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans.
The prizes honor the memory of Diana Pinckley (1952-2012), a longtime crime fiction columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, and her passion for mysteries. Pinckley was a founding member of the Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans, as well as a civic activist for local and national causes.
The author of 10 novels, Megan Abbott is the winner of the Pinckley Prize for Distinguished Body of Work.
Her books include Give Me Your Hand depicting the rivalry between two female graduate students in the world of high-stakes science. You Will Know Me about competitive gymnastics and Dare Me, currently being produced as a USA Network series.
Abbott's novels often delve the dark side of female friendship and ambition.
She also is the author of the nonfiction, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Crime Fiction, and the editor of the anthology, A Hell of a Woman. Her novels have either won or have been nominated for the CWA Steel Dagger, the International Thriller Writers Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and five Edgar awards, Abbott also is a writer on HBO's The Deuce.
According to the press release, the judges praised Abbott's fierce feminism, her brilliant prose style, and her laser-sharp insight into female friendships and ambition, particularly in her treatment of striving and gifted adolescent girls.
I would agree. Abbott is one of the top writers and her novels are terrific.
Sarah St. Vincent is the winner of the Pinckley Prize for Debut Novel for her novel Ways to Hide in Winter, published by Melville house.
Ways to Hide in Winter was one of my picks for best debut of 2018. 
In my review, I wrote “widow Kathleen McElwain’s hermit-like life is upended by a stranger who appears at the store at which she works ‘tucked away in the forgotten forests of Pennsylvania.’ The man claims to be a student from Uzbekistan and his stories make Kathleen consider finally leaving the area. The tightly plotted tale combines a story of regret with the war on terror.”
St. Vincent is a human rights attorney, working for survivors of domestic violence. She also researches national security and surveillance for Human Rights Watch. Her first novel blends her concerns with domestic violence and human rights in a chilling tale of a fugitive and the woman who gets to know him over a wintry season in a state park.
According to the press release, “St. Vincent's exquisitely written novel is eerily timely, said the judges, as issues of domestic violence and immigration continue to lead the news.”
Both authors are well deserving of this honor.
Previous winners include Ellen Hart, Louise Penny, Laura Lippman, Sara Paretsky, among others.
In Howard Owen’s Evergreen, a Willie Black mystery, the many-times-married journalist is back in what just may be the best book of this always excellent series. It is also the most somber. The book opens in Richmond, Virginia, on New Years Day, and Willie’s newsroom is eagerly awaiting “the first stiff of the year.” Will it be murder? Suicide? Or just a dull old heart attack? Willie is called away from this morbid pastime to attend yet another death watch, this one at the bedside of Philomena Slade, a distant cousin. Philomena has one last request for Willie: that he take over the job she’d been doing for years—keeping Artie Lee’s grave tidy. Willie isn’t thrilled with the task since Artie Lee was his hapless father, a talented but irresponsible jazz musician who deserted his young family when Willie was only 15 months old, then died in a drunken car accident. Faithful to Philomena’s dying wish, Willie begins cutting away the weeds from Artie Lee’s grave in the neglected Evergreen Cemetery. But a newsman is always a newsman, and despite Willie’s lifelong resentment toward his father, he grows curious about that accident. As he roams Richmond, talking to people who had known Artie Lee, he realizes something’s not quite right. The accident may not have been an accident at all—quite possibly a murder. The eight Willie Black mysteries have always been known for their sly humor, and there’s plenty of it here, but it’s the returning characters themselves that steal the show. Peggy, Willie’s mother (and Artie Lee’s former baby mama), is a pot-smoking hoot of a woman now living with a man called Awesome Dude. As loquacious as Peggy is, the one subject she has always refused to talk about is Artie Lee. Also on tap are a bevy of half-crazed reporters and editors, who, because of declining newspaper subscriptions, expect their professional lives to end at any moment. We also meet Archangel Bright, a wise old man who at one time knew Artie Lee, but like anyone else who once knew the long-dead jazzman, he’s not talking. In the earlier Willie Black mysteries (beginning with Scuffletown) the action is centered on Willie’s many demons—women, gambling, liquor, etc.—but now he has to put his own demons on hold in order to investigate his father’s. In the end, the ghost of Willie’s long-dead, long-reviled father teaches him that apples never fall far from the tree—and sometimes, that’s a good thing.
If you’d asked me if a jargon-heavy history of the meter (the European measure that’s just a wee bit longer than the American yard) would be a good idea for a mystery novel, I’d have thought you were nuts—until I read Charles Davis’ The Measure of the World. Set in 1791 during the French Revolution, it tells the story of orphanage-raised Jacques-Francois Darbon, a “geographical engineer” who is sent across rural France by the soon-to-be-beheaded Louis XV in order to calculate a new base unit of length (the aforesaid meter). Besides an allowance, the king’s factotums have issued Jacques surveyors’ equipment and a slew of old maps which prove wrong. With a bad-tempered mule named Molly, and the belief that science conquers all, the naive Jacques sets off into the French countryside. The timing is terrible, because the small villages he must map and measure are filled with rioting peasants who bear no love for the deposed king. The peasants (who resemble the mud farmers in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) are deeply suspicious of anyone who has anything resembling an education. Therefore Jacques’ entrance into any village is quickly followed by a riot. In one village, his head only remains attached to his body because at some point he gets rescued by pretty Marie-Jeanne Cazalet. When Jacques discovers that Marie is even smarter than he is, he asks her to assist him in his surveying and mapmaking. But neither Marie nor her father can keep him safe from evil Etienne Vidal, who lusts after Marie (and in one harrowing scene, attempts to rape her). A duel ensues, then Jacques’ escape to Spain, where he is promptly imprisoned for being a spy. There’s an almost equal measure of blood and humor in this brilliant novel about the attempt to “measure the world,” and there’s considerable wisdom, too. While awaiting his fate in the Spanish prison, Jacques muses, “That is one of life’s real mysteries, how the kindest of peoples can transform themselves into killing machines when governed by greed, stupidity, pride, or fear.” Animal lovers needn’t worry about the fate of Molly the mule. That stubborn old mule survives everything. One point: Be sure to read the author’s postscript, where Davis gives us the nitty-gritty about the real historical meridian expedition, which proves almost as fascinating as his fictional one.
One of the first things aspiring novelists are taught is that a book’s protagonist must be likable, but Maggie Gee, author of Blood, must have skipped class that day. Monica Ludd, her book’s 6’1” “Amazon”-like British protagonist is as awful as any human can be: a compulsive liar, a self-obsessed whiner, and a rage-aholic crazy woman prone to attacking anyone she doesn’t like. Her only saving grace is her self-effacing humor. Monica is awful and she knows it, cracking many a sick joke that will leave her readers screaming with laughter. How awful is Monica? When she finds her father, the just-as-awful Albert Ludd, bleeding out from an attack, Monica drops her axe (more about that later), stomps around in the pooling blood while getting blood spatter all over herself, picks the axe back up, and then—with the bloody axe—boards a bus for town, scowling at anyone who gawks at her blood-spattered self. Monica is not subtle. When Monica finally realizes she’s the obvious suspect in her father’s murder, she attempts to hide out, but she fails at that, too. Detective Inspector Parkes-Woods finally catches up with her, whereupon she promptly performs a sex act on him. Did I mention that Monica is not shy? The detective’s shock gives her time to get away, and soon she’s holed up in one of her wealthy family’s beach houses, fondling the bloody axe and wondering what to do next. (I promised to tell you more about that axe, and here it is: she’d bought the thing from a hardware store to kill her father with, only to discover that someone else had done the deed first.) Every now and then, Monica’s craziness is tempered by the POV of a few people less crazy (although not by much), and we begin to realize that awful Albert, a dentist, had been sexually abusing both his patients and his office staff. This is not a book for timid readers. The violence is graphic, and so is the sex. And the entire Ludd family turns out to be just as awful as Monica. Cozy it’s not. But Blood is sneakily and refreshingly hilarious—a book about a deranged woman, a deranged family, and a certain kind of wild, deranged justice.
Paolo Maurensig’s A Devil Comes to Town is an old-fashioned spook story, at first structured in that lovely, slow-paced way where a successful writer cleans out his messy office, and in doing so, finds a manuscript sent to him by an aspiring writer (the successful author makes it clear that people are always sending him such things, and they tend to be talentless). But upon reading this one, he becomes engrossed in the story of Friedrich, a young traveler who stops at a wayside inn where he meets a priest who claims to have met a demon in a small Swiss village. As in all these old-fashioned tales, the priest is eager to explain himself, and embarks on a story of death and destruction. But that’s where the old-fashioned stuff ceases, because in this case, the priest tells the story of a village where everyone—absolutely everyone—is writing a book. Now, Friedrich just happens to be a consultant for a small publishing house, and is on his way to a symposium about psychologist Carl Jung. Not realizing what havoc he’s about to unleash, Friedrich makes known the fact that he’s looking for new work. Soon he is awash in manuscripts, most of them dreadful. Here the Victorian prissiness segues into satire as Friedrich learns just how bad poor writing can be. To get himself out of this self-created mess, he decides to hold a contest promising publication only to the best of the worst. And that’s when Old Scratch comes to town. While young Friedrich begins rejecting truly unreadable manuscripts, the devil moves from house to house, telling each aspiring writer that his/her writing is terrific. Someone turns up dead. Freidrich is suspected. Chaos reigns. And the book just gets funnier and funnier.
I was delighted to come across Fishy Business, edited by Linda Rodriguez. This book of 22 short stories is the fifth anthology in the Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and Rodriguez has to be congratulated for putting together an exciting collection of short stories ranging all the way from IT crimes (Susan Bickford’s “Payout Payback”) to a senior-center game of Scrabble (K.M. Rockwood’s “Scrabble-Rousers”). Two of my favorites are Lida Bushloper’s “The Wannabe,” wherein a would-be serial killer gets what’s coming to him, and Raegan Teller’s witty “The Great Negotiator,” a contemporary spin on the O. Henry classic “The Ransom of Red Chief.” This time the kidnapped brat is replaced by an acid-tongued mother-in-law, and the ending is laugh-out-loud funny.
Silent Night, Deadly Night is a nice addition to Vicki Delany’s entertaining Year-Round Christmas series. It’s our fourth trip to Rudolph, New York, where protagonist Merry Wilkinson runs Mrs. Claus’s Treasures on the town’s main drag, Jingle Bell Lane. Delany briskly sets the scene for the first- or fourth-time visitor, and soon gets to the heart of her narrative involving a reunion of Merry’s mother’s college friends.
Merry’s mother, Aline, a retired opera singer, has invited five of her former besties for the weekend. Their first stop is Merry’s shop, and the clever Delany incisively presents Merry’s mental sketch of their appearances and personalities, my favorite being the woman described “as thin as the branches of the earring tree, struggling to keep her age at bay.” As concise and devastating as they are, these portraits remain good-spirited, and very, very funny.
When one of these five falls ill at the ladies’ potluck and later dies, Merry re-christens them “the quarrelsome quartet,” as all they seem to do is bicker and revisit the old wounds and slights that apparently have festered over the years. As hostess, Aline is stuck in the middle of the hostilities, which includes another attack.
I applaud Delany for keeping her amateur sleuth actually amateur. If she discovers or remembers something, she shares it with the proper authorities right away. That’s not to say that she’s not the one who cracks the case, but it’s a more believable process than the average amateur who relies on her cop squeeze to help her solve things. There’s none of that for feisty Delany. Nosy landlady aside, Merry is very much her own woman.
Traci Wilton (the pseudonym of authors Traci Hall and Patrice Wilton) turns in a new series set in Salem, Massachusetts, with Mrs. Morris and the Ghost. Recent widow Charlene Morris has sold off everything she owned in Chicago and bought a venerable old mansion in Salem, determined to begin a new life as a bed-and-breakfast owner.
After purchasing the house sight unseen at a suspiciously good price, she finds soon after taking occupancy that there’s a feature that wasn’t listed—it’s haunted. The ghost, one Dr. Jack Strathmore, met his death three years previously, and is certain he was murdered. He’s convinced his unquiet soul is in limbo and, since Charlene seems to be the only one in Salem that can actually see him, begs her to find his killer so that he can find peace.
Charlene reluctantly agrees. She’s busy trying to get her B and B up and running in time for Salem’s biggest holiday, Halloween (of course), and has precious little time to spare, but can’t help being intrigued by the investigation not to mention her dishy spectral housemate. As the book progresses, she and Jack become friends, and Wilton introduces local color in the form of their neighbors. The town itself is not explored quite as thoroughly, but I hope this will come later in the series.
The mystery itself is quite clever, but I wished for a ghost with a bit more bite, more like the cranky one in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. For a restless spirit, Jack is just too nice. Being a devotee of HGTV, what I really loved were the details of Charlene setting up her B and B, buying furniture, painting, choosing colors and drapes, and having carpentry done. Charlene is an intriguing character to anchor a series, and here’s hoping the next installments will get her out into Salem more.
In Murder at the PTA, veteran writer Lee Hollis starts a new series built around ex-cop turned private eye Maya Kendrick and senator’s wife Sandra Wallage, the new president of the Portland, Maine PTA. Both women have complex backstories, leading to a fast-paced, absorbing read. Things kick off at Sandra’s first PTA meeting as president, but as she speaks, the local scandal blog, Dirty Laundry, breaks a story about her husband’s adultery, a fact Sandra discovers only when she sees that everyone in the audience is riveted to their phones instead of to her speech.
Maya and Sandra’s paths cross when the woman behind the venomous blog is found hanged in her office, an apparent suicide. But, as any mystery reader worth their salt could foretell, her death is soon exposed as murder most foul. The victim’s sister, a glamorous actress, hires Maya to uncover the truth, and since Sandra has some thoughts on the case herself, they decide to join forces.
Maya is the mother of a teenager whose father, her ex-husband, is in prison. He was a corrupt cop, as guilty as could be, something Maya tries to keep from her daughter, who fantasizes about her daddy being released on appeal. Maya’s life couldn’t be more different than that of the privileged Sandra, but they did go to school together, and a certain rapport, shaky at first, slowly develops. As Maya’s PI partner is eight months pregnant and not at their office much, Maya begins to appreciate Sandra’s help.
The backstories and lives of both women are well drawn, and Hollis has created two three-dimensional and compelling characters. They have the kind of odd-couple contrast that’s always an appealing element in a mystery. I loved the clever way Hollis told her story, keeping things brisk and clear, with a surprisingly twisty denouement. This is a new series to keep an eye on.
In her paranormal romance series featuring the jet-setting Ferraro clan, Christine Feehan posits a family blessed with extraordinary abilities (the power to travel via shadows), and an even more extraordinary sense of responsibility (they use those powers to pursue evildoers beyond the reach of normal law enforcement). Her latest Shadow Riders novel, Shadow Warrior, finds one of their number, Vittorio, discovering his soul mate, Grace Murphy, at the very moment she is severely wounded by a bullet meant for him. Vittorio finds himself facing several concerns: in addition to managing Grace’s recovery and convincing her to accept what he sees as her destiny (a slight twist on Beauty and the Beast), he must also protect her from a vengeful psychopath who has plagued her existence since childhood. Oh, and there’s also a war brewing between the Ferraros and the Saldi crime family, who are as nefarious as the Ferraros are virtuous.
The fourth installment in Feehan’s Shadow Riders series provides copious amounts of action, sex, intrigue, sex, family drama, and sex. Did I mention there was sex? Lots of good, clean, monogamous sex, prefaced by a good deal of precoital sexual tension. It’s not gratuitous, and it serves and advances the plot, but it might test the patience of the less romantic or more prudish among us. Nevertheless, an entertaining read that provides several hours of welcome diversion.
The paranormal plays a major role in James A. Moore’s Boomtown. The “elevator pitch” for this one would be “Supernatural beings spar in Deadwood,” or “Louis L’Amour by way of Joe R. Lansdale by way of...James A. Moore.” It features Moore’s signature character, Jonathan Crowley, who, although slain early on, rises to take revenge on the men who killed him. Along the way, he finds himself battling the disparate forces of chaos who seem set on annihilating the small Colorado town of Carson’s Point.
Moore writes with great power and gusto, gleefully borrowing tropes from several genres, wringing every ounce of storytelling value out of each. His love of fantastic fiction shines through in every sentence as he unspools this compelling yarn. He’s a fearless teller of tall tales, a trait that serves his story, and his audience, well.
J. Edwin Buja’s The King of the Wood is an ambitious effort. Odd things are happening in the small town of Tyndale, and, through no fault of his own, Tom Bender seems to be at the center of the action, as townspeople are murdered or simply fall off the radar, and the local flora and fauna begin to act in strange and mysterious ways.
The King of the Wood is a prime example of what horror aficionados would call “quiet” horror, a subgenre that places greater emphasis on character development and a slow, steady build to the ultimate drama, rather than on mayhem, bloodshed, and sudden shocks. The town of Tyndale recalls the iconic hamlet of Oxrun Station, Connecticut, created by the late, great Charles L. Grant, where ordinary folks often found themselves confronting strange entities and demonic forces beyond their ken. That’s certainly the template for Buja’s work, which comments on larger societal issues even as it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. It was a pleasure to visit Tyndale; I eagerly look forward to future drop-ins.
After nine years, Atkinson brings back her very human ex-cop-turned-private sleuth Jackson Brodie, currently residing in Yorkshire, plying his trade and caring for his brooding teenage son and an old Lab dog, both left him by the boy’s mother who’s in London, performing in a detective TV series. The author is famous for her successful mixture of hardboiled and cozy moods, featuring fully dimensional characters in seemingly unconnected plots, with much of the satisfaction coming from the ease with which she spins her spider’s web of stories around her hapless hero and the unease with which he frees himself. Here, the real news of the day places the emphasis on the travails of Nadia and Katya, two sisters from Gdansk being wooed into the sex trade by slugs posing as beneficent executives of an employment service. Other attached strands involve a wife who demands from Brodie a surplus of evidence of her husband’s infidelity, the murder by niblick of a golfer’s wife, a young man who works in a burlesque theater, and two efficient female cops, one of whom, Reggie, is a friend from Brodie’s past, searching for the sex slavers. Reader Isaacs is in familiar territory here. He portrayed Brodie in the 2011-2013 BBC series Case Histories, which adapted Atkinson’s previous four novels about the unpredictable PI.
Perfidia (2014), the initial entry in Ellroy’s Second L.A. Quartet, all of them prequels to the First, reintroduced many of his favorite corrupt Hollywood coppers and their women (including, surprisingly enough, legendary movie queen Bette Davis) just before the attack on Pearl Harbor sends them all into a frenzy of lawlessness and disorder. The new novel finds them (minus Davis but with other actresses filling in) less than a year later and deeper into WWII corruption, misogyny, racism, greed, and general depravity. Like Perfidia, it is bookended and interspersed by pages from the diary of Kay Lake, one of both Quartets’ more empathic characters. This in no way diminishes the novels’ darkness or shocking cruelties or hellish humor. This Storm begins when a flash flood takes the top soil off of a Griffith Park golf green, exposing a decades-old corpse that, in turn, sends the bent LAPDers and their pals off on a homicidal hunt for a mound of gold bars stolen during a train journey to the US Mint. That’s the plotline on which hang the book’s unrelenting cynicism, anti-Commie jingoism, brawling, brooding and boozing, with a suicide here, a murder there. The harsh spotlight this time is on vice cop Elmer Jackson, whose moments of humanity set him apart from his brutal bros in blue, Hideo Ashida, Perfidia’s whip-smart, morally flawed forensics expert, and his new assistant, Navy lieutenant Joan Conville, who sees a pattern in the multi-plot chaos. Amazingly, reader Wasson finds a distinctive voice for them and the hundred or so other characters, ranging from Ellroy fan favorite Dudley Smith, now in Mexico, now dope-deranged and “full Nazi,” using an Army Intelligence commission to transport heroin to the home front, to Orson Welles and other celebs who attend a string of soirees in honor of composer-conductor Otto Klemperer. As he has previously proven, Wasson is Ellroy’s ultimate interpreter, turning the author’s uniquely stylized prose, his nearly parodistic punchy sentences, outrageous insults (mainly xenophobic) and hipster slang into vocal rhythms as mesmerizing as a Vachel Lindsay chant-poem.
Raymond Chandler’s work remains timeless. His solid characters, view of society and iconic look at Los Angeles are always in style.
So I was especially interested to see how Randall Silvis briefly weaves in Chandler in his novel A Long Way Down.
And I promise no spoilers—just a beautiful homage to Chandler.
In Silvis’ third outing with Ryan DeMarco, the former Pennsylvania state policeman turned private investigator returns to his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio.
Ryan is a reader and his hometown reminds him a couple of times of Raymond Chandler.
Driving from stoplight to stoplight, Ryan is reminded of a phrase Raymond Chandler has used “the big sordid dirty crooked city. Chandler’s Marlowe preferred it over small-town life, but DeMarco was no Philip Marlowe, and he knew it. Any similarities were only skin-deep. He was more like Chandler himself, a man whose spirit and heart were gradually crushed by the city.”
Ryan proves quite the Chandler fan, as he often relies on the author, and Marlowe, to guide him.
Later on, Ryan remembers the quote “I test very high on insubordination,” which Philip Marlowe had said in The Big Sleep.
“The quote had always pleased DeMarco. As did Nabokov’s observations that curiosity is insubordination in its purest form.”
Ryan’s literary tastes also run to mainstream literature.
“. . . the word komorebi came to him then, a word he had read long ago, probably in a novel by Yukio Mishima, that fine Japanese writer. . . . A single word to describe the way sunlight streamed through leaves on a tree.
The first season of the Killing Eve miniseries, in which sleuth Eve Polastri (initially an agent of Britain’s MI5) hunts down and forms an unhealthy bond with a playful, viciously effective assassin named Villanelle, is so unexpectedly smart and funny and fresh, it’s not until much later—maybe in the middle of the considerably less charming season two—that one realizes how little information has been provided by way of the leading characters’ backstories. Half of that absence is satisfied by this novella, the original source for the teleplays. As the title indicates, its author, journo-novelist Jennings, focuses on the clearly insane but strangely likable cold-blooded killer, filling in her grim orphanage, her brutal and at times sadistic “training” in the art of assassination, and the effect both have had on her present-day psyche as well as her profession. You also get a realistic (or at least as realistic as one finds in a breathless spy fantasy) appraisal of her relationship with her shrewd handler Konstantin. A section of the plot is devoted to his kidnapping by enemies of their employers, a sinister secret cadre called the Twelve. The audiobook, a short work that doesn’t take us very deep into the Villanelle-Eve relationship, is admirably narrated by Kirman. Her Villanelle speaks with an accent best described as Russian-blasé, while her Eve, following Jennings’ fiction, is British brisk. This is unlike the brilliant but frazzled TV Eve as portrayed by Canadian-American actress Sandra Oh, whose speech and manner are clearly not British. Her presence in the middle of this tricky, edgy TV spy thriller lifts it well above others of its kind but it also requires a better explanation than provided of how this very American Eve wound up in Europe being tapped by MI5.
Why is this one of my favorite audio mysteries of the year? Let me count the ways. Horowitz’s reappearance as the investigation’s Watson is as hilariously self-deprecating as it was in The Word Is Murder. There’s even more about the author’s ups and downs writing for the Foyle’s War TV series. The main sleuth, Daniel Hawthorne, is just as rigid in keeping his clever deductions from his “biographer” Horowitz, while sadistically encouraging him to blunder into incorrect conclusions. The victim is a celebrated divorce lawyer whom, of course, everyone who knew him wished him dead. (Note to Author: Be careful with your names. The vic’s is Richard Pryce. On paper: OK. Via audio: this triggers the image of novelist, screenwriter Richard Price—The Wire, The Deuce, Stephen King’s The Outsider. It’s something of a mood-breaker.) The clues, the murder weapon, a nearly $4,000 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, a numeral in green paint near the corpse, et al, are both perplexing and satisfyingly explained. There is a particularly loathsome, criminal actually, policewoman whose match will be met by Hawthorne. Actor Kinnear makes her spectacularly officious and nasty. Once again, he captures the book’s Horowitz in all his frustrated, fearful, embarrassed and peevish indignity. His Hawthorne is tight-lipped, implacable, and annoyingly always right. Other characters, suspects in the main, are treated to appropriate vocals. But Kinnear’s main success rests in the way he captures the mood established by the author, the perfect matchup of mirth and mystery.
Besides being a key figure in the development of the spy novel, John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir (1875-1940) was a remarkably prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction in various genres and Governor General of Canada in the last years of his life. The title references his most famous novel, made into one of the great films from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930s British output—and Buchan, like many others, believed the movie The 39 Steps was an improvement on his book. His historical fiction and the other Richard Hannay novels are discussed, but his political life, particularly during the first World War and the run-up to the second, may carry the greatest interest for most readers.
Buchan emerges as an admirable person, both privately and publicly, whose achievements are especially amazing in view of his lifelong health problems. He was a strong supporter of the BBC and the British film industry and a stalwart opponent of censorship. The inaccurate charge of anti-Semitism, based on the dialogue of some of his fictional characters and perhaps a passage from one hastily written newspaper article, is effectively debunked.
The author is the granddaughter of her subject, a relationship alluded to only in the introduction and afterword. The book is agreeably written, even-handed, and exhaustively documented.
(Reviewed from advance PDF copy. Index not seen.)
There are three main characters in this important work of nonfiction, each the focus of one part: 1) The Reverend: Willie Lee Maxwell, an African American Baptist preacher and pulpwooder in Alabama, who took out multiple life insurance policies on wives and other relatives in the 1970s, then collected on them after their suspicious deaths. It was the kind of case (and there are too many other recent examples) where everyone seemed to know what he was doing but the justice system was unable or unwilling to do anything about it. At the funeral of his final victim, the daughter of his third wife, Maxwell was shot to death by Robert Burns, one of her relatives. 2) The Lawyer: Tom Radney, long a prominent Democratic politician in Alabama, who represented Maxwell in his battles with the insurance companies, then represented Burns at his trial for murder. 3) The Writer: Harper Lee, famous author of To Kill a Mockingbird, who after years of failed false starts to follow up on her success, became fascinated by the Maxwell/Burns case and did much research and planning for a book, which she eventually abandoned.
Though Lee doesn’t appear until past the halfway point, the author covers her life in detail, including accounts of both Mockingbird and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, on which she was his research assistant (depicted in two biopics about Capote) and to which she contributed to a greater extent than might be guessed. When Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, a sequel (though written earlier) to Mockingbird, was published in 2015, many readers were shocked by the contrast of heroic Atticus Finch in the iconic book and film and the seemingly racist character of Watchman. Cep recognizes that the reaction reflected the inability of Northerners to imagine or recognize the complexity of Southerners: Lee’s editor on Mockingbird, Tay Hohoff, “might have found it difficult to imagine segregationists who despised the Klan, but Lee knew that the South was full of them. She had known countless men like the Atticus of Watchman, who would defend a black man in court only to bar him from the ballot box, not to mention the neighboring booth or bar stool. In fact, the majority of whites in Alabama would never have joined a lynch mob, yet openly opposed the integration of schools or anything else.”
When a book is both true crime and biography, which Edgar committee gets it? That’s for the MWA to decide, but at least one of them should consider this outstanding work.
(Reviewed from the ebook edition.)
Though Lizzie Borden was acquitted in her 1892 trial of the hatchet murders of her parents, as with O.J. Simpson a century later, the verdict of history has found her guilty. Among the many books about the case, this one is notable for its detailed account of the trial, drawn not only from transcripts but from contemporary newspaper reports of some talented and thorough journalists. The reader gets a sense not only of the defendant, victims, and witnesses but of the lawyers, judges, writers, and spectators. The time and place come alive with an unexpected immediacy, making it possible to see how a verdict that appears absurdly wrongheaded to present-day observers seemed right and proper and even inevitable to people of the time. Anna Katharine Green, leading American mystery novelist of the time, was quoted as believing in Lizzie’s innocence, as did many of her fellow citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts, who could not believe a quiet, upper-middle-class spinster, active in church and charitable pursuits, could be guilty of such horrific crimes. Writers of crime fiction and fact have long been drawn to the case. Among those making fictional use were Evan Hunter, Lillian de la Torre, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Marie Belloc Lowndes. Among the true crime writers were Edmund Pearson and Edward D. Radin, whose Edgar-winning Lizzie Borden: The Untold Story (1961) made a case against Borden maid Bridget Sullivan, who is really the only remotely feasible alternate suspect in this borderline locked-room mystery. Radin debunked Pearson, while others since have debunked Radin, but Robertson finds his book “a gripping read.”
During a recent trip to San Francisco, my husband and I were able to take a few days and drive down to Monterrey and Carmel.
I have always thought this is one of the most beautiful areas of California, and we made the most of it by spending several days in Monterrey, visiting the aquarium, walking around Carmel and making the 17-mile drive of Pebble Beach.
So what does this have to do with mysteries.
It had been 22 years since we visited this area—the last time was for my first Bouchercon held in 1997 in Monterrey.
This Bouchercon hooked me forever on the conference. Since then, I have only missed two.
Before this Bouchercon, I never knew such an event existed.
I think this was one of the largest Bouchercons—2,200 people attended if I am remembering correctly.
I fondly remember meeting Bill and Toby Gottfried, who put on a hell of a conference; being introduced to Donald Westlake and Sara Paretsky; meeting this new author who had just won an award, Harlan Coben; having a long conversation with Charlaine Harris about her Shakespeare series; hearing Val McDermid talk about her watch; participating on my first Bouchercon panel moderated by Janet Rudolph. At night, we heard the seals barking.
I bring this up because it is nearing time for another Bouchercon.
This year, Bouchercon will be Oct. 31 through Nov. 3 in Dallas.
Guests of Honor include Peter Lovesey, Hank Phillippi Ryan, James Patterson, Deborah Crombie, Felix Francis, Harry Hunsicker and McKenna Jordan.
In addition, there will be hundreds of other authors representing every aspect of the mystery genre.
In addition to the numerous authors, Bouchercon 2019 celebrates the 50th of anniversary of the convention.
Plan to party in Dallas.
Mystery Scene continues it series in which authors discuss their writing process. In this essay, Dana Ridenour writes about how her career in the FBI influences her novels.
Author Dana Ridenour, left, is a retired FBI agent who spent most of her career as an FBI undercover operative, infiltrating criminal organizations including the Animal Liberation Front, an organization of domestic terrorists. Her debut, Behind The Mask, is based on her personal experiences working as an undercover agent, and won numerous literary awards and was named one of the best indie books of 2016 by Kirkus Reviews.
Her second novel, Beyond The Cabin, is set in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and was awarded the 2018 Royal Palm Literary Award for Best Thriller or Suspense.
Below The Radar was is her latest novel.
Ridenour lives in Beaufort, S.C., where she is working on her fourth novel.
How my life as an FBI Undercover Agent Helped Me See Both Sides
If you have read any of the books in my Lexie Montgomery FBI series, then you know that I’m not afraid to write about contentious subject matters. As an undercover FBI agent, I spent years using deception to gain information and evidence for criminal prosecutions. The world is not black and white and undercover agents operate in the gray.
Subjects are not all bad and law enforcement officers are not all good. There is good and bad in each of us. My undercover experience has given me the insight to write about controversial subject matters in a tactful, unbiased manner. 
Here are a few suggestions for writers who deal with contentious themes.
If you’re going to write about a sensitive topic, please do your research. There are always two sides to the topic and you need to understand both sides. My first long-term undercover case in the FBI required me to infiltrate a radical animal rights group.
My mission was to target the radical extremists who were committing serious crimes such as arson. To accomplish this mission, I had to immerse myself into the activist lifestyle. I learned their culture and beliefs. This remarkable experience helped me to understand the animal rights extremist ideology and later served as the basis for the three books in the Lexie Montgomery series.
Most people assume that I dislike animal activists, but that’s simply not true. In fact, I have a great respect for the men and women who champion the various animal rights causes. Because of my time working undercover, I was able to experience the activist culture and way of life.
I encountered so many marvelous people who devoted their lives to saving animals. There is nothing wrong with being an activist. In fact, our country was founded on the ideology that as Americans we have the right to protest and change what is wrong in our country. However, the right does not apply to individuals who break federal laws and put innocent lives in danger.
As a writer, you have to draw on your life experiences to help you effectively write painful or controversial moments. Use your personal insights to make your character’s responses believable. Use empathy to be a more compassionate writer.
In my novels, Special Agent Lexie Montgomery is the “good guy”, but I didn’t want to simply use the activist characters as “bad guys.” I wanted to intelligently show both sides of the issue which would force readers to think about the implications of the subject matter on their own lives. I wanted readers to examine their own beliefs and worldviews.
In all three of my novels, healing is a theme.
My main character faces difficult obstacles and things don’t always end up as she would like. She has to find a way to heal, overcome and find hope again. Life has a way of kicking us in the teeth, so I enjoy writing about finding light after overcoming a dark, turbulent time in life. Showing the raw, vulnerable side of a character makes the character more interesting and believable.
When writing about sensitive topics, always treat the subject with respect. Unless you are intentionally writing a piece where the goal is to shock the reader, try to not disrespect one side or the other. Think about why you are writing the piece and if you are allowing your own biases to dictate the direction of your story.
Face it, it’s difficult to be 100 percent objective. From early in life, we are conditioned to take sides. If your goal is to write an opinion piece, then consider at least acknowledging counter arguments and be respectful of the other side.
Always consider your audience when writing a piece that deals with sensitive subject matter. Writers have to determine the best way to deal with extreme violence and other horrible atrocities.
When I worked undercover, I witnessed so much brutality and barbaric acts against animals.
As a writer, I considered my target audience to determine how much savagery to include in the novels. Part of me wanted to show the readers what I had seen and give them a vivid image of the brutality. If I did this, I knew the squeamish readers would slam the book shut and never finish the novel.
The goal is for people to read my stories, not run away screaming. I found the middle ground, allowing me to tell my stories in a realistic manner without offending people.
When writing about controversial subject matters, always remember there are two sides to every story. If you show integrity and compassion, people will read your work.
Even in my early childhood, it seemed, I was attracted to tales of detection.
Photo: John Connolly
Some years ago, at a festival event in England, a young boy asked me if I could recall the first book I ever read. While I couldn’t remember the precise title, I knew it was a Secret Seven book by the hugely prolific children’s writer Enid Blyton. (She published over 760 books in a career that lasted just over 50 years, so in your face, James Patterson...)
The Secret Seven were a group of junior investigators operating out of a garden shed, and the young reader who had asked the question remarked – rather intelligently, I thought, as I handed him a shiny shilling and patted him on the head – how apt it was that the first book I read was a mystery novel. I’d never even thought of the Secret Seven books as mysteries before then – they were simply children’s books – but of course mysteries are precisely what they were. Even in my early childhood, it seemed, I was attracted to tales of detection.
Mind you, I did struggle at bit with the language at first. I started reading the Secret Seven books when I was five years old, and they included words that I had never actually heard spoken aloud. One of those was “cupboard,” pronounced “cubburd,, the word the English use to refer to a closet or cabinet, which we in Ireland sometimes call a “press.” (Apparently the origin of the word “press” is French, and it was once in common use in England as well. Don’t say you haven’t learned anything by reading this.)
No one in Ireland, to my knowledge, had ever used the word “cupboard” in relation to a closet, or not without being beaten up in the playground shortly afterward. I, on the other hand, was determined to introduce it into common usage, if only in my own home. Unfortunately, I had no idea how it was pronounced, since I was reading phonetically, breaking up long words into their smaller constituent components. To me, it was a “cup-board,” as in “Mummy, shall I obtain the teapot from the cup-board?” My mother must have thought she was living with Little Lord Fauntleroy.
That Secret Seven book, its title now lost to me, had probably been borrowed from our local library at Dolphin’s Barn in Dublin, because we, like most Irish households, were not in the habit of buying literature on a regular basis. I’m probably part of the last generation that can recall new books as being relatively unaffordable objects for many, at least in hardback. New titles took a long time, sometimes years, to become cheaper mass-market paperback editions. I would receive books, or a book token, at Christmas or on my birthday, but otherwise my reading was determined by library stock and whatever I could afford from used bookstores or charity sales. Mostly it was those library shelves that supplied my needs.
When it came to new books, I would put down my name on the library waiting list – and then wait, and wait, because each area library would generally receive only one copy of a title. A new Alistair MacLean thriller might have a hundred people on the waiting list, some of them frustratingly slow readers or tardy returners. Even to get on the list required being aware that a new book was on its way, because it was no use putting one’s name down after the title had been published. The author might well be dead by the time your turn came around. Worse, you might be dead.
I still occasionally pass Dolphin’s Barn library when I go to visit my mother. It’s remains open and active, which gives me great joy. Ireland has many flaws, but an unwillingness to support libraries isn’t one of them. They’re cultural oases, free to visit, free to borrow from. They don’t even issue fines anymore for late returns. They ask nothing from you other than that you treat the books as kindly as you would a friend.
They gave me my start in reading, and helped to make me the writer I am. I will always love them for that.
John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. He worked as a bartender, local government official and journalist before publishing his first novel, Every Dead Thing, in 1999. He is the winner of a number of literary prizes for his work, including the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony awards, and a CWA Dagger.
This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" enews October 2019 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.
The recent uptick in mysteries by diverse authors shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Mystery readers have always wanted stories about different cultures, backgrounds, and heritages.
This has especially been true in the past 25 years as publishers realized that readers want stories that take place in a variety of regions and feature myriad characters.
Two of the best mysteries of 2019 are Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay about the effects of violence on two families—one Korean American, the other African American; and Attica Locke’s Heaven, My Home, which continues the series about African-American Texas Ranger Darren Mathews.
While I believe that publishers still have a long way to go to recognize that these stories are so important to the success of the genre, the ground work is here.
Here are a few authors who are setting a new tone to the mystery fiction genre, and giving us those stories that we crave. I am sure I have missed a few so let us know other authors
Tracy Clark, Borrowed Time (Kensington): Continues the story of Cassandra Raines, a former Chicago homicide cop turned private investigator.
Tori Eldridge, The Ninja Daughter (Agora Books/Polis): A Chinese-Norwegian modern-day ninja with Joy Luck Club family issues who fights the Los Angeles Ukrainian mob, sex traffickers, and her own family to save two desperate women and an innocent child.
Cheryl Head, Judge Me When I'm Wrong: A Charlie Mack Motown Mystery (Bywater Books): Two court cases occupy Detroit private investigator Charlene “Charlie” Mack and her team.
Angie Kim, Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton Books): Courtroom drama about a Korean immigrant family and a mother accused of murdering her autistic son. 
Sujata Massey, The Satapur Moonstone (Soho Crime): Set in 1922, this new series follows Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first female solicitor who works for her father’s law firm.
Michael Nava, Carved in Bone (Persigo Press): The first new Henry Rios novel in 20 years explores the story of two gay men in 1980s San Francisco.
Patricia Shanae Smith, Remember (Agora/Polis): Portia Willows, a girl who struggles with severe social anxiety disorder, following the loss of her mother and sister in a mysterious car accident.
John Vercher, Three-Fifths (Agora/Polis): A biracial black man, passing for white, is forced to confront the lies of his past and the truth of his present when his best friend, just released from prison, involves him in a hate crime.
A highlight of every Bouchercon is the Anthony Awards. The 2019 awards were presented on Saturday, Nov. 2, during the convention held in Dallas.
The 2019 Anthony Awards were for works published in 2018, and were selected by the votes of those attending Bouchercon.
This year’s nominees in each of the categories were among the strongest we’ve ever seen. Each author—both those nominated and who took home the Anthony—was a winner.
Congratulations to all.
(Those who took home the Anthony, which was one of the most beautiful awards we’ve seen, are listed first in bold face with ** before the title.)
Best Novel
**November Road by Lou Berney (William Morrow)
Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown and Company)
Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur Books)
Sunburn by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)
Blackout by Alex Segura (Polis Books)
Best First Novel
**My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday)
Broken Places by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
Dodging and Burning by John Copenhaver (Pegasus Books)
What Doesn’t Kill You by Aimee Hix (Midnight Ink)
Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin (Ecco)
Best Paperback Original Novel
** Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day (William Morrow Paperbacks)
Hollywood Ending by Kellye Garrett (Midnight Ink)
If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
Hiroshima Boy by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park Books)
A Stone’s Throw by James W. Ziskin (Seventh Street Books)
Best Short Story
**“The Grass Beneath My Feet” by S.A. Cosby, in Tough (blogazine, August 20, 2018)
“Bug Appétit” by Barb Goffman, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (November/December 2018)
“Cold Beer No Flies” by Greg Herren, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)
“English 398: Fiction Workshop” by Art Taylor, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July/August 2018)
“The Best Laid Plans” by Holly West, in Florida Happens (Three Rooms Press)
Best Critical or Non-Fiction Work
** I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins)
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (William Morrow Paperbacks)
Mastering Plot Twists: How To Use Suspense, Targeted Storytelling Strategies, and Structure To Captivate Your Readers by Jane K. Cleland (Writer’s Digest Books)
Pulp According to David Goodis by Jay A. Gertzman (Down & Out Books)
Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)
The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)
The Anthony® Award is named for the late Anthony Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”), a well-known California writer and critic who wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times Book Review, and also helped found Mystery Writers of America. The Anthony Awards were first presented in 1986.
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