Mystery & Suspense Archives | Page 30 of 119 | BookPage

by Bruce Tierney

Kinky Friedman, author, raconteur, country music singer ( They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore ), and private eye is back for his 11th investigative outing in Blast from the Past. In flashback, Kinky explains the series of events that ushered in his gumshoe career, a quirky and convoluted tale involving the usual cast of characters/suspects, as well as fellow country contra Chinga Chavin and Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman, one of the inventors of the sixties. Shortly after having been convicted of complicity in the bombing of a Chicago bank, Abbie Hoffman went underground, where he remained for many years a fugitive from justice, always looking over his shoulder. Some of this time was spent in Kinky Friedman’s apartment or so Kinky tells it. Abbie and Kinky bore more than a passing resemblance to one another, so when someone took a potshot at Kinky, the immediate assumption was that Abbie was the intended target. But, as we all know, in a mystery novel nothing is ever quite that simple (particularly in a Kinky Friedman novel).

There is, of course, a girl. To protect the innocent, Kinky chooses to call her Judy. Judy is the proverbial bird with the broken wing; Kinky harbors no illusions, however, Once the wing heals good and strong, they beat you to death with it. To complicate matters, she may be sleeping with Kinky’s best friend, and she’s convinced she has seen the ghost of her flyer husband, killed in a plane crash in Vietnam.

Perhaps the best part of any Kinky Friedman novel is the barrage of topical one-liners and observations on subjects as varied as love and politics, death and cats. On the hippies and Yippies, The way I saw it, they hadn’t been wildly successful. When you start a revolution and you wind up with Nixon, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. On a little girl he met outside a Jane Street bakery, She had a spectacularly beautiful American face upon the planes of which intelligence and innocence fought a pitched battle that looked like it might last a lifetime. On his work, I felt particularly Christ-like as I cruised down Christopher Street, my cowboy drag drawing more than the usual number of stares from patrons of a leather bar just across the way. Like Jesus, I was without a home, without a wife, without a job. Also like Jesus, I was a skinny Jew who traveled around the countryside irritating people. It was good work if you could get it. Kinky Friedman is in a class by himself, some might say a world by himself, but from his little green trailer in Texas come some of the weirdest, darkest, and funniest mysteries of the decade.

Bruce Tierney lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kinky Friedman, author, raconteur, country music singer ( They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore ), and private eye is back for his 11th investigative outing in Blast from the Past. In flashback, Kinky explains the series of events that ushered in his gumshoe career,…

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Nan Goldberg

Normally, when I read a book I either like it or I don’t like it. I don’t usually feel like inviting its author over for a pajama party. But this one had that effect on me. I’d never read anything by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith before, I’m sorry to say, but I think I’ve got a crush on her.

An American Killing is a murder mystery/thriller, narrated by a true-crime writer clearly based on the real-life crime writer Ann Rule (who, I bet, never figured she’d turn up as the protagonist of a novel). Rule, like the heroine of An American Killing, was a journalist whose longtime office buddy was arrested for a mass murder. In Rule’s case the friend and murder suspect was Ted Bundy; in the novel his name is different, but the details of the murders are pretty much the same. The arrest changed Rule’s life: at first convinced that a tragic error had been made, she decided to look into the case, and was deeply shaken to discover there’d been no mistake. She became fascinated by the idea that there are people who are evil inside, but who look and act just like you and me. She wrote a book about the Bundy case kind of a true-crime version of Hannah Arrendt’s book The Banality of Evil about the trial of Adolph Eichman. Rule’s book was a bestseller and led to a series of true-crime books that explored the same ground one about a mother who shoots her own children; another about a poisoner. Denise Burke’s career, in An American Killing, has been identical, up until now. This case is different: this one investigates a triple murder for which an innocent man is framed. In addition to her professional life, Denise is also married to a key member of the Clinton administration. (Hillary Clinton calls her occasionally to ask stuff like, what do regular mothers wear to school on Parents’ Day?) She’s got a complicated history, two teenage kids, a dog, a large house with a dining room in dire need of redecorating, and a summer place in Rhode Island. She manages this female I-can-have-everything-and-do-it-brilliantly prototype with humor, a heartwarming lack of efficiency, and exactly the right amount of cynicism. At one point it’s got to be either the dining room or the affair with the Rhode Island congressman, and she chooses the congressman probably, in retrospect, a bad choice. Still, that choice sets in motion the series of events that frame this book.

Plot aside (and I don’t mean to downplay it the plot is good), there is a sensibility at work here that is clear-eyed, contemporary, and incredibly charismatic. Tirone Smith has written four other novels. Prepare, as I will, to hunt them up and read them. And, Mary-Ann, if you’re ever in New Jersey, definitely call.

Nan Goldberg is a freelance writer in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Normally, when I read a book I either like it or I don't like it. I don't usually feel like inviting its author over for a pajama party. But this one had that effect on me. I'd never read anything by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith before,…

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Cynthia Riggs

Michael Dibdin’s latest Aurelio Zen mystery, A Long Finish (the title refers to the lingering aftertaste of a fine wine), combines an education in wine making and truffle hunting with a witty, wacky, suspenseful plot, a satisfying set of gory murders, and a solution that keeps the reader guessing up to the last paragraph. For those who have not yet met Aurelio Zen, he is an arrogant, bumbling Italian police detective, who, despite his seeming incompetence, manages to solve mysteries that baffle lesser minds. His subordinates view him with awe. As the story opens, Aldo Vincenzo, one of the greatest vintners in Italy’s piedmont country, has been brutally killed. His son is being held for the murder. A wine connoisseur, collector, and world-famous film and opera director (and friend of police higher-ups), summons Zen. Now he’s dead and his son is in prison, all on the eve of what promises to be one of the great vintages of the century! he says. I want Manlio Vincenzo [the son] released from prison in time to make the wine this year. He tells Zen, Unless we act now, the grapes will either be sold off to some competitor or crudely vinified into a parody of what a Vincenzo wine could and should be. Zen is given a choice. Either get Manlio released from prison, or plan on becoming part of an elite corps of police officers who are being sent to Sicily to wipe out the mob. This, Aurelio Zen does not want, and we are launched into an absorbing (and funny) tale. Dibdin brings the Italian piedmont setting to life: russet and golden foliage sprouting from ancient stumps ; vines heavy with fat blood-red grapes ; the vast, cold damp cellar, its vaulted roof encrusted with a white mesh of saltpetre. He also brings its characters to life, describing three aging partisans, as interchangeable as pieces on a board in their dark, durable patched clothes, each garment a manuscript in palimpsest of tales that would never be told. A Long Finish is Michael Dibdin’s 12th book, and after reading this skillful writer’s latest tale, you’re sure to want to read the entire series.

Cynthia Riggs is a freelance writer on Martha’s Vineyard where she runs a B&andB for poets and writers.

Michael Dibdin's latest Aurelio Zen mystery, A Long Finish (the title refers to the lingering aftertaste of a fine wine), combines an education in wine making and truffle hunting with a witty, wacky, suspenseful plot, a satisfying set of gory murders, and a solution that…

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Characters with secrets—and stories—to tell

Behind the Book by Lisa Unger

by Lisa Unger

In some respects, the germ for Darkness, My Old Friend took hold a long time ago. Its prequel, Fragile, was loosely based on an event from my own past. In high school, a girl I knew was abducted and murdered. The event—a shocking, horrifying thing—reverberated through the small town where I grew up. And I felt its impact for many years. I wouldn’t say the incident haunted me, but my thoughts returned to that time quite often. Finally, the story, or at least a heavily fictionalized version of it, found its way onto the page when I sat down to write Fragile.

During that process, I met Jones Cooper. When he first showed up in Fragile, he was the husband of my main character Maggie and I didn’t think he had an especially big role to play. As it turned out, he was a critical character. The entire book hinged on his past deeds, and how he’d sought to escape them.

When Fragile was done, I was still thinking about Jones. He and I don’t have that much in common. He is an older guy, in his late 40s. He has retired from his career as a detective, and he isn’t totally sure what he’s going to do next. His marriage is under a tremendous strain as he deals with how his past actions have affected his present, and what they mean for his future. He’s in therapy (very reluctantly). I kept wondering: How is he going to move forward? He has this tremendous darkness within him; how is he going to conquer that? What is he going to do with his life? He can’t just putter around the house! He’s too smart, too interesting.

Usually when I have that many questions and worries about a character, I have no choice but to explore him further on the page. And so began Darkness, My Old Friend, the next chapter of the story.

In a safe, picture-perfect town, the very worst possible thing occurred on a bright and sunny day when all was exactly as it should be.

We had to remain in The Hollows, of course, because Jones is part of that place, and it is part of him. This fictional town from Fragile was at first just a place I came up with because it was similar, if not identical, to the area where I grew up—some hybrid of that spot and an ideal town I had in my head. Near to the city but removed enough to be peaceful and close to nature, The Hollows had a hip, picturesque downtown center, safe streets, a coffee shop, a yoga studio. Again, I didn’t think very much of it at first. But it too evolved and became something more than I expected.

As I did with Jones, I came to sense a great darkness within The Hollows. It has a history, a spirit and a personality. It has wants and needs; it has an agenda. It’s not malicious precisely. Not exactly. I’m not quite sure what The Hollows is up to, to be honest. But I delved a little deeper in Darkness, My Old Friend. And I’m not done with it yet. Or, rather, it’s not done with me.

Shortly after I started writing, a girl by the name of Willow Graves appeared in the narrative. All I knew about her was her misery at living in The Hollows; she hated it. "THE HOLLOWS SUCKS," was what she was writing in her notebook when I first saw her, sitting in her English class, bored to tears. Her mother Bethany, a best-selling novelist, had moved them from New York City after a bitter divorce from Willow’s stepfather. Willow was getting into trouble. So Bethany thought that The Hollows, far from Manhattan and all its temptations, was a safer place for her wild child. Little did she know that trouble finds a girl like Willow anywhere, maybe especially in The Hollows.

I had a lot more in common with Willow than with Jones. In many ways, with her quasi-gothic look, and her rebel’s heart, her penchant for—ahem—storytelling, she reminds me of the girl I was a million years ago. She was out of place, the misfit in a small town, filled with lots of self-imposed angst. She was sure that anyplace was better than The Hollows. I felt for Willow, wished I could tell her to just hang in there. And to try, try, to stay away from that dark place inside. If you follow, I wanted her to know, you can’t always find your way home. But most of us have to learn that lesson that hard way, and Willow was no exception.

It’s the juxtaposition of disparate things that fascinates me: Dark and light, death and life, bad and good. The thin, blurry line between those things keeps me up at night, churning out the pages. And when that line exists within a character, as it does with most of the people who populate Darkness, My Old Friend, I am obsessed with it.

I suspect that my obsession with this idea began more than 25 years ago, when I was a girl, not unlike Willow, living in a place not unlike The Hollows. In a safe, picture-perfect town, the very worst possible thing occurred on a bright and sunny day when all was exactly as it should be. I know Fragile came from there, and Darkness, My Old Friend is certainly an evolution of that story. In a way, maybe all my books began there. Maybe I’m still the girl trying to understand all the many different ways something so horrible could happen to someone so innocent on an ordinary day.

Best-selling writer Lisa Unger takes on the dark side of small-town life in Darkness, My Old Friend, her sixth novel. She divides her time between New York City and Florida. Visit her website for more information.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Pat Regel

Who knows how it happens. One day you pick up the 13th book in a mystery series, and the magic just isn’t there any more. The characters don’t appear as fresh or as interesting as they once did, and the plot leaves you wishing you’d opted for a racy romance novel. It’s difficult writing mysteries in series. Characters are expected to evolve and meet unique challenges in each new book, but sooner or later, some appear only as mere shadows of themselves. There is, however, an exception. The characters that spring from the fertile mind of Elizabeth Peters have never grown stale. The Ape Who Guards the Balance is the latest in the series and the 10th installment in the unusual life of Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson. Together with her sexy, irascible husband, Radcliffe; handsome son, Ramses; his loyal friend David; and her lovely, trouble-seeking ward, Nefret, Amelia is once again up to her exquisite neck in crafty criminals and Egyptian tombs. The year is 1907, and as another archaeological season begins in Egypt even Professor Radcliffe Emerson’s brilliant reputation is of little use in securing a choice excavation site. His less than diplomatic nature has landed the family another boring concession digging in the Valley of the Kings. Just as Amelia decides that there’s nothing she can do but keep a stiff upper lip, Nefret, now a young heiress, purchases a mint-condition papyrus of the famed Book of the Dead. This ancient collection of magical spells and prayers designed to ward off the perils of the underworld soon proves to be the key to the mystery that plunges Amelia into renewed dangers with old enemies.

In addition to grave robbers and bold villains, this adventure also provides another encounter with Sethos, the elusive Master Criminal who made his first appearance in The Mummy Case. As expected, Sethos’s flagrant attempts to impress his beloved Amelia still outrage Radcliffe, but one begins, perhaps unwisely, to soften to his charm. In The Ape Who Guards the Balance, readers will see yet another facet of Sethos’s enigmatic and captivating personality.

Devotees who have followed Amelia Peabody since her first encounter with Radcliffe Emerson in Crocodile on the Sandbank should be prepared to see Ramses now grown to manhood and every bit as brilliant and appealing as his father. The Emerson’s ward, the beautiful Nefret, who Amelia rescued from an isolated and forgotten desert oasis in The Last Camel Died at Noon, has been transformed from a 13-year-old Priestess of Isis into a tantalizing young woman quite unaware of Ramses’s growing fascination with her. Unfortunately, some characters in any mystery series must, sooner or later, be phased out. One might remember, with sorrow, the passing of the cat Bastet. In this newest addition to the series, readers should be prepared one of the oldest and best loved characters meets a noble end.

In Elizabeth Peters’s delightful Amelia Peabody series, the magic is still there, and the characters and plots just keep getting better.

Who knows how it happens. One day you pick up the 13th book in a mystery series, and the magic just isn't there any more. The characters don't appear as fresh or as interesting as they once did, and the plot leaves you wishing you'd…

Fiction, Suspense

Fiction Suspense

Ending the ‘Child 44’ trilogy

Behind the Book by Tom Rob Smith

by Tom Rob Smith

One of the most exciting challenges in writing a trilogy of novels is trying to create connections that go beyond having a set of characters return. Of course, there are no rules to writing, but it strikes me that if you’re going to stipulate that there are three books rather than an undefined number, you need to make creative use of that decision.

As someone who enjoys wandering around old churches, whether in England or on my research trips to Russia, I’ve seen lots of triptych paintings. The form offers a way of presenting three images that can be viewed in any order, images which exist in their own right but which are at their most powerful when considered together.

The number three has powerful signals for any writer—suggesting a three-act structure, implying that the books are telling an over-arching story that will come to a satisfying conclusion. But a trilogy is not one enormous novel being split into three parts. The reader must be taken on a journey during each individual novel. Furthermore, since many readers will come to the novels in a different order, readers should be allowed to build the experience in their own way. It must be as fascinating for a reader to construct their relationship to the novels by starting at the end as it is for a reader who has followed them from the beginning.

In the broadest sense, my three novels not only tell the history of the main character Leo Demidov, they tell the story of the Soviet regime, beginning with the Stalinist paranoia and fear, followed by the moral confusion that followed the dictator’s death, which is at the center of my second book, The Secret Speech, and ultimately ending with Agent 6 and the depiction of an empire in decay, expressed through the occupation and invasion of Afghanistan.

Yet beyond historical and biographical chronology, the books within a fiction trilogy must reflect upon each other in some way. With Child 44, I wanted to use the criminal investigation to explore the society in which the crimes took place—not to concentrate on the forensic, or procedural, but to look at the way in which Communist Russia tried to claim there was no crime in its Utopian society at a time when a series of terrible murders were taking place. In a sense, it was about a reaction to the crimes, rather than crimes. It was about one man fighting against a political system that refused to allow him access to the truth.

With Agent 6 I mirrored this approach, fascinated by the emotional impact of a brilliant and determined detective trying to solve the murder of someone he loves, in a time when geopolitics make it entirely impossible to reach the crime scene. How do you live with knowing that the investigation has been nothing more than a cover-up—and being unable to petition those responsible, unable even to set foot in the country where the crime took place? Once again detective Leo Demidov comes up against political obstacles in his attempt to solve the most important case in his life.

Going further, I used the structural device of echoes and parallels across the three books to take very different angles on similar ideas. In Child 44 Leo Demidov is an officer of the MGB, part of the secret police apparatus. Leo witnesses the brutality of the secret police, he is part of its brutality and he turns his back on it. In Agent 6, he is sent as a Soviet advisor to Afghanistan, where he is ordered to help create an Afghan secret police. He watches with dismay and despair as a young idealistic Afghan woman makes the same mistakes he did, becoming a State Security officer in order, she believes, to build a better country. It was fascinating to reverse the relationship that I created in Child 44.

In similar fashion, the combination of characteristics that Leo embodies as a young man seen in Child 44 are found in the American Communist Jesse Austin, a character based on the singer and athlete Paul Robeson, in Agent 6. The two are a curious pair, similar on many levels, both passionate believers, yet whereas Leo’s idealism cracks, Austin’s remains unbreakable even when his career and wealth are taken from him, even when confronted with the awful truth of the Soviet regime.

So, with the trilogy at a close, I hope I’ve created three books that not only stand on their own but also dance with each other.

After graduating from Cambridge, Tom Rob Smith spent time as a TV screenwriter before publishing his best-selling debut novel, Child 44, in 2008. In Agent 6, Smith’s Russian hero Leo Demidov takes on his most personal case yet—one that takes nearly 20 years to solve.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a review of Agent 6.

Read an interview with Tom Rob Smith for Child 44.

Read a review of The Secret Speech.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by James Webb

Robert B. Parker has been writing Spenser novels for a quarter century now, and, let’s face it, his wise-cracking, hard-hitting, classics-spouting hero is getting a little long in the tooth. It seems only natural that Parker would want to introduce a new hero to his readers, even as he continues Spenser’s adventures. That the hero is part of the Spenser milieu makes it easier to get to know him, and considering the character’s character, that’s probably a good thing.

Jesse Stone is a man with a past; he’s an ex-Los Angeles police officer, divorced, and an alcoholic in the making. For a young man, he’s carrying a lot of baggage when he becomes the police chief of the little town of Paradise, Massachusetts (which is where we met him in Night Passage, Parker’s first novel in this new series).

In Parker’s new novel, Trouble in Paradise, we pick up where we left off at the end of Night Passage. Jesse’s actress ex-wife is living in Boston now, working as a weather girl. Also in for a change of scenery is Jimmy Macklin, who’s just out of prison and looking for a big score; he thinks he’s found it in Paradise, specifically Stiles Island, a gated community for the very rich. Together with Faye, his girlfriend, and a hand-picked crew of criminals, he plans to cut Stiles Island off from Paradise, rob the entire island, then make his getaway by sea. What he doesn’t count on is Jesse Stone if Jesse can find the time to stop him. His plate is pretty full as it is, with a hate-crime to investigate, a wealthy family meddling in his investigation, and three (!) women after him. Thwarting a band of expert, bloodthirsty criminals might be the easiest thing he’ll do all day.

Trouble in Paradise is full of Robert B. Parker’s trademark snappy repartee, straight-arrow justice, and characters you care about. Jesse Stone is not as endearing a character as Spenser, but like Spenser, like reality, he shows a capacity for change. I’ve got a feeling he’ll grow on you.

Robert B. Parker has been writing Spenser novels for a quarter century now, and, let's face it, his wise-cracking, hard-hitting, classics-spouting hero is getting a little long in the tooth. It seems only natural that Parker would want to introduce a new hero to his…

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by George Bauman

Cat on the Scent, the seventh mystery co-written by Rita Mae Brown and her feline collaborator Sneaky Pie, features all the traits of purebred fun.

Recently Disney telecast a version of these mysteries, called Murder She Meowed. It was wonderful to hear the voices of Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, the cat and corgi sleuths who bring clues like gifts to their house-sharer, Mary Harry Harristeen. She’s the postmistress of Crozet, Virginia, and thus privy to the town’s news and gossip (and clues!) when residents pick up their mail. Crozet is shocked when a wealthy resident is shot during a Civil War battle reenactment. Of course Harry and her pets which now include another cat, Pewter get involved in solving the shooting, the first of several to rock the close community.

The sheriff considers the amateur detective a busybody, but concedes a fair amount of past success, little appreciating that her furry friends really deserved the credit. Lassie-like, they uncover and deliver clues, or coax humans to the evidence. Brown gives such intelligence to her animal characters that soon the reader begins looking more to the four-legged for insights into human behavior. The hilarious highlight of the book is a scene straight out of Disney the three animals collaborating to drive a car containing a shooting victim.

The antics of the animals, Brown’s witty observations, the history-revering Virginians, and the Blue Ridge setting make this a pleasurable read for lovers of this popular genre. Enjoying it with two dozing cats on your lap, as I did, made it all the more perfect.

George Bauman is the co-owner of Acorn Bookshop in Columbus, Ohio.

Cat on the Scent, the seventh mystery co-written by Rita Mae Brown and her feline collaborator Sneaky Pie, features all the traits of purebred fun.

Recently Disney telecast a version of these mysteries, called Murder She Meowed. It was wonderful to hear…

Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense

Jane Eyre inspires a life—and a novel

Behind the Book by Joanna Campbell Slan

by Joanna Campbell Slan

I grew up in a chaotic, violent household. Notice I chose the word “household” rather than “home.” To me a “home” is a place of solace, renewal and love. None of those adjectives describe the rundown house in Vincennes, Indiana, the dwelling I shared with my alcoholic parents and two sisters.

Although he wasn’t averse to shoves and slaps, my father’s real forte was emotional abuse. “You will never be able to support yourself. You’ll come running back to me,” he told me, over and over.

I worried that he was right. There seemed to be no way out, no escape. Just an endless horizon of more of the same.

My only respite was reading. “You always have your nose in a book,” my mother would sneer.

Books offered a portal to other worlds, fantastical universes so unlike the one I knew that the fiction seemed obvious. But one book, long forgotten at the back of a bookshelf, gave me more than a mental vacation. It gave me hope. It saved my life. It served as a fingerpost pointing the way to freedom.

That book was Jane Eyre.

Through the rough spots—and there were many—Brontë’s heroine sustained me. “What would Jane do?” I often wondered.

Recall, Gentle Reader, that the subtitle of Jane Eyre calls the tale “An Autobiography.” How was I to know that this story was fiction? To me it rang true. I understood being small, insignificant and plain. At age 10, I had unruly curly hair, glasses, buck teeth and a scar that traced an angry path across my right cheek.

“No one is ever going to love you but me,” my father told me repeatedly, his eyes teary and his mouth quivering with sadness.

The mirror confirmed that he was right, and my mother never corrected him.

But I was no longer alone. Jane Eyre shared my afflictions. Lacking the power of beauty and bankrupt in a world where money begets choices, we were often at the mercy of others. Then Jane finished her education at Lowood Institution—and everything changed.

Charlotte Brontë’s classic provided me with an answer to my prayers: I would get an education. Turning the pages quickly, I hatched a plan. I would go to college. I would get a degree. Even if I wasn’t attractive, I could be respected. Although I longed for love, I could settle for a tranquil environment.

Much later I learned that “education” comes from the Latin “educo,” meaning, “to lead out of.” Thus, education led Jane—and me—out of the bleak future predicted for us. At Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, I held down a full-time job, managing a pet shop. In addition, I tutored other students and wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper, the Muncie Star.

Through the rough spots—and there were many—Brontë’s heroine sustained me. “What would Jane do?” I often wondered. The strong-willed orphan became a talisman, my personal lucky penny.

Little wonder that after the launch of my first successful mystery series, the plucky governess came to mind as the perfect protagonist for a new series called “The Jane Eyre Chronicles.” Nor should it be surprising that Jane’s first adventure, Death of a Schoolgirl, sends her to the rescue of a group of schoolgirls who have been largely abandoned by their parents.

Jane Eyre exhibits the important qualities of an amateur sleuth: a passion for justice, curiosity, an understanding of human nature and a mind that grasps patterns. Because she is slight and not terribly attractive, she blends in. Just like any survivor of abuse, Jane tends to be hyper-vigilant.

But she is also strong. Actually, we are strong. In ways I could have never once imagined.

Joanna Campbell Slan is the author of the Kiki Lowenstein mystery series and 11 nonfiction books (including many on scrapbooking). Death of a Schoolgirl is the first novel in her new series, the Jane Eyre Chronicles. It stars Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth and picks up where Charlotte Brontë’s novel left off.

Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense

Behind the book: Success of home repair series is no mystery

Behind the Book by Jennie Bentley

by Jennie Bentley

I never planned to write cozy mysteries. Back 10 years ago or so, when I first decided to try my hand at becoming an author, I thought I’d write romance novels. I was young, not too long married (i.e. I was having sex regularly), and someone had told me it was easy to get published in romance.

Hah.

Needless to say that didn’t work out. I got pregnant, had a couple of kids, and didn’t write for a few years. Instead, we bought a cheap little house in what’s diplomatically called a ‘transitional neighborhood,’ and I became a stay-at-home mom. Because it was our first house and we were poor as the proverbial church mice, I did things like refinish the floors and paint the walls and re-glaze the tub while the kids were napping. And then we sold that house and bought another, and then another, and then another . . . and pretty soon I decided I’d better get a real estate license, because the way we were buying and selling houses, someone was getting rich, but it wasn’t me.

I went back to writing eventually, once my eldest son started school and the youngest got lonely enough to welcome the idea of daycare, but I no longer felt the urge to write romance. There was precious little of that commodity in my own life, with two boys under six underfoot, and with two boys under six underfoot, violence was a bigger part of my daily life than sex, anyway.

So I wrote what I knew, a mystery about a new-minted real estate agent who walks into an empty house and finds a dead body.

In an ironic twist on what happened five years earlier, someone told me that books about realtors are notoriously hard to sell, but I’d learned my lesson from last time, so of course I didn’t listen. Of course, this time the advice was right on.

A Cutthroat Business was not an easy sell, although it got there in the end. On its way to publication, though, one of the many editors who passed on the manuscript, nonetheless liked it well enough to hand it off to a friend at Berkley Prime Crime, who called with a question. Given my background in real estate and renovation, would I be interested in creating a series about a renovator for them? Something to capitalize on the current interest in HGTV and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." Something with a hot handyman in tight jeans and a low-slung tool belt, and with tips for do-it-yourself projects in the back.

The result was Fatal Fixer-Upper, the first book in the Do-It-Yourself home renovation mystery series. The story introduces Avery Baker, a New York textile designer, who inherits her Aunt Inga’s decrepit Victorian cottage, and who travels to the wilds of Maine to spend the summer renovating it, with the help of local handyman Derek Ellis. (He’s the guy with the tight jeans and the power tools. Just FYI.)

Of course, as anyone who has ever tried to renovate a house knows, the path is seldom smooth. There’s wood rot and leaking pipes and falling bricks and termites . . . and in Avery’s case, there’s also murders current and past, scheming relatives, a missing history professor, a fake Frenchman, a boatload of valuable antiques, two Maine coon cats, ties to Marie Antoinette, and Derek’s perfect—and perfectly annoying—ex-wife.

At the end of the book, with mysteries solved and house sparkling, Avery decides to stay in Maine and continue to renovate houses, thus paving the way for my new release, Spackled and Spooked.

The decision to continue renovating is one I understand. In the nine years since we bought that first little house in the transitional area, we’ve bought—and renovated—nine more. Our current project is a mid-century ranch, just like the one Avery is working on in Spackled and Spooked. Big and rambling, with sprawling rooms, big windows, and a sort of open and airy feel. But while the worst thing I’ve encountered is a complicated plumbing problem, Avery gets unexplained footsteps in the hallway when no one is there, a skeleton in the crawlspace, and murder in the neighborhood. And Avery is on the hunt again, knee-deep not only in drywall and paint, but in murder and mayhem and mysteries old and new.

And it goes on from there. Just like me and my list of projects, which include a couple of cottages, a couple of ranches, a craftsman bungalow, and a brick Tudor, Avery is looking at a list of upcoming projects, as well. Most of them more exciting than mine, I have to admit. Renovation is easier on the page than in the flesh. Avery’s from-Victorian-carriage-house-into-romantic-retreat-for-two is arriving in March 2010, titled Plaster and Poison. After that, there’s a 1783 Colonial on an island off the coast that needs renovating, and a little craftsman cottage in the historic district, that gets a quick flip while the TV cameras are rolling. That’ll take me, and Avery, into 2011 or thereabouts.

By then, I’ll probably be on to another project of my own, too. So many houses, so little time.

Jennie Bentley is the author of the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime. Book 1, Fatal Fixer-Upper was released in November 2008, and went on to become a bestseller for the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. You can learn more about Jennie and the DIY-series on her website.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

The road to ‘That Night’

Behind the Book by Chevy Stevens

by Chevy Stevens

With her 2010 debut novel, Still Missing, Canadian author Chevy Stevens established herself as a writer who can tranform small fears into ultimate nightmares. Her new novel, That Night, evolves a tale of high school bullying into a story of revenge and twisted girl-world secrets.

In 1998, due to false testimony from classmate Shauna and her posse, high school sweethearts Toni and Ryan went to prison for killing Toni’s younger sister, Nicole—a haunted girl with well-hidden secrets. Seventeen years later, Toni and Ryan are out on parole and determined to clear their names—but Shauna's bent on sending them back behind bars. Writes our reviewer, "Chevy Stevens’ account of what it’s like to be powerless—whether as a grounded 12th-grader or a prison inmate—is pitch perfect (and relatable to anyone who’s ever been a teen)."

Stevens shares a look behind the curtain into the changing tides of her writing life:

Some people say that certain songs remind them of a time in their life. For me, it’s each of my books. When I started Still Missing I was in a transitional stage, not happy in my career, my relationship or my house. I started writing the book on my old computer in the upstairs bedroom of the character home I owned. The temperature was inconsistent, and I was either too cold or sweltering in the summer. Six months later, I sold that house, and continued writing in the office at my townhouse. I can still close my eyes and see Post-it notes stuck all over the wall from when I was mapping out the sessions.

When I rewrote all the session openings, I was now single. I rented a cabin on Thetis Island, taking long walks with my dog, Annie, then writing some more. I know exactly which paragraphs I wrote when I was there. If I read them again, I’m transported back to that island, to those days when it was just us.

Not long after I signed with my agent, I met my husband, who was living down in Victoria, about an hour and a half away from me. At the time I’d gone back to work in sales, having used up almost all my savings, and I’d stay with him or a hotel when I was working in the south end of the island. I’d get up early to write on my laptop in his office, trying to be quiet so I didn’t wake him, or I’d come home to my hotel room at lunch, sneaking in a few lines before my next appointment. I was also planning our wedding during this time, excited about the beginning of my married life and my writing career.

Never Knowing was written while I lived at our townhouse, now sharing an office with my husband, our chairs back to back. It was a chaotic time in my life, trying to balance the marketing leading up the publishing of Still Missing, and then my beloved dog, Annie, became very sick. I’d write while she slept on the couch in the office. I’d glance over often, agonizing whether her breathing was okay, how she was feeling that day, if she needed medication. A lot of the stress I was feeling went into that book.

When I was writing Always Watching, I worked through my grief over having lost Annie and my own questions about the universe and whether there was a Heaven, and if I would see her again. We sold our house, and I wrote with boxes stacked around me, then at my friend’s kitchen table while we stayed there for a few days, then finally on my computer in my new office. Toward the end of the book, I found out I was pregnant. For the final three months of that book I had to take long naps on the floor in my office, constantly nauseous. Finally the book was finished—and I was out of the first trimester!

I have my best memories of the time when I was working on That Night. I loved being pregnant, the energy, the clarity of thought. Initially I wrote in my office every day, but the more pregnant I became, the more uncomfortable my seat. Finally I had to work downstairs at our table—for some reason that chair felt better. I remember that fall, looking out at the leaves coming down in our backyard, feeling the baby move in my belly. I also got a cold and spent the last trimester sneezing all over my keyboard.

In December of 2012, I was close to finishing the last draft—and close my due date. If the baby held off for another week, I’d be done, but she thwarted my plan and I went into labor on her due date. I didn’t start work on the book again until late January. I remember all the breaks for nursing, the exhaustion. I had to start the day late, and then take afternoon naps, and still work in the evening some days. I was beyond tired, but head over heels in love with my daughter. Thankfully my husband was also home during that time, and he was with Piper whenever I was writing. A few months into the start of my fifth book, Piper finally started sleeping through the night, and my days gradually returned to normal.

Now it’s spring, and I’m working out in our travel trailer, my dog Oona sleeping quietly beside me. I will finish this book in the next couple of months, probably part of it while on tour, then I’ll start my next book, and the next stage of my life. I don’t know how either will unfold yet, but I’m excited to find out.

Thank you, Chevy!

Author photo credit Suzanne Teresa.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

An unsettling contagion exposes dark fears

Behind the Book by Megan Abbott

by Megan Abbott

With her 2012 novel Dare Me, Megan Abbott transformed high school bullying into a startling tale of reckless teenage chaos. In her new novel, The Fever, another group of young women find themselves at the center of pandemonium, as one by one girls fall to a mysterious infection that causes terrifying, gruesome seizures. The author shares how this haunting tale was inspired by a real-life “mass hysteria” outbreak in Le Roy, New York, in 2012.

She’s pretty, fresh-faced. A cheerleader in a hoodie, her nervous smile lurking. But something’s wrong. “I was always so active,” she says, her words broken up by a sharp vocal outburst, her head jerking. “Everyone was always so happy to be around me. I just don’t feel like myself anymore.” Her name is Thera Sanchez, and I first saw her on the “Today” show in January 2012, a time when she and several other female teens in Le Roy, New York—all with similar vocal tics and twitches—were appearing everywhere: the morning shows; CNN; every major newspaper and magazine. All these lovely, panicked girls begging for answers to the strange affliction that seemed to be spreading through their school like a plague. Watching them and their terrified parents, I couldn’t look away.

Within days of first hearing about the young women—18 in all—of Le Roy, I began writing The Fever, which chronicles a mysterious outbreak in a small town. In the novel, we see everything through the eyes of the Nash family: Tom, a high school teacher, and his two teenage children, Eli and Deenie. One by one, Deenie’s friends are struck by terrifying, unexplained seizures, and fear and hysteria spread through the town.

For several months in early 2012, it seemed like the Le Roy story was amplifying in size, with concerned parents, the media and various activists pointing the finger at environmental toxins, the HPV vaccine, rare autoimmune disorders and other potential threats. Ultimately, the medical diagnosis—accepted by most—was that the girls were suffering from “conversion disorder,” a condition in which the body “converts” emotional distress into physical symptoms. Though psychological in origin, the symptoms are involuntary and completely real. When it occurs in groups, spreading from one to the next, it is called “mass psychogenic illness,” or “mass hysteria.”

While The Fever’s plot diverges dramatically from what happened in Le Roy, I was continually reminded of the stakes for these afflicted girls, for their parents, for the community. And that fear in the girls’ eyes, which was so complicated, so haunting and real: What’s happening to me? When will I be myself again? And, perhaps most hauntingly of all, What if no one believes me?

Comparisons to the Salem witch trials appeared (and remain) everywhere, except in this case it was the afflicted girls themselves who were put on trial, accused of faking their symptoms, of being dramatic look-at-me teenagers, of making it all up, as if it were a game. One needs only to survey a few Internet comments on the articles written about the case to get a sense of what the girls faced: “This is how the herd mentality works. These little heifers are enjoying the show they’ve produced for themselves.”

The young women of Le Roy had undergone significant emotional upheavals (a sick parent, domestic abuse) that triggered the symptoms we all saw on TV, but they were being treated as unruly drama queens. Perhaps in some way, their tics made us deeply uncomfortable. And it was easier to minimize them, dismiss them. Place blame.

Last month, The Fever long finished, I began to wonder how it might be for the girls now, reportedly recovered and no longer under the media glare. I contacted Dr. Jennifer McVige, the neurologist who treated 10 of them. We talked for a long time about the experience and the aftermath, but one thing she said has hummed in my brain ever since: “I’d tell the girls, what you’re going through now is so challenging, but you’re going to come out stronger, smarter. You’re going to look back to this time in your life and say, I got through that, I can get through this. I can do anything now.”

It felt like such a parable of female adolescence, writ large. I think back to Thera Sanchez on the “Today” show, to the words she said—which, on one level, could be the words of any teenage girl, any young woman ever. There’s part of her that wants to please (“Everyone was always so happy to be around me.”), part of her that wants to do (“I was always so active.”) and part that feels lost (“I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”). She knows she’s changing, and it’s so hard because it feels like everyone’s watching, judging. And she’s just asking to be heard and understood.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award-winning author of seven novels. She lives in Queens, New York.

This article was originally published in the July 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With her 2012 novel Dare Me, Megan Abbott transformed high school bullying into a startling tale of reckless teenage chaos. In her new novel, The Fever, another group of young women find themselves at the center of pandemonium, as one by one girls fall to a mysterious infection that causes terrifying, gruesome seizures. The author shares how this haunting tale was inspired by a real-life “mass hysteria” outbreak in Le Roy, New York, in 2012.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Doing unto others—without becoming undone

Behind the Book by Julia Keller

by Julia Keller

Julia Keller's debut mystery, A Killing in the Hills, introduced prosecuting attorney Belfa “Bell” Elkins and the small Appalachian town of Acker's Gap, West Virginia. In Summer of the Dead, Keller's third mystery set in Acker's Gap, Bell faces a new murderer, as well as family challenges and the burdens of the coal mining community.

The opening acknowledgements in Summer of the Dead hint at a heartbreaking story: "Some years ago I met the wise and stalwart wife of a coal miner in McDowell County, West Virginia. She had created a place for her husband under the big kitchen table; because of his many years spent working underground, and injuries to his spine, he was only comfortable in a crouching position. The story has haunted me ever since, and it inspired a key element of this novel."

Keller shed some light on this inspiration and the questions and challenges of caretaking.

A sick old man who lives in the perpetual twilight of an ancient cellar. A wayward sister trying to find herself after three decades in prison. A woman with a serious mental illness who hates being a burden to her husband.

Those people live in and around Acker’s Gap, West Virginia, the setting for my new novel, Summer of the Dead. They happen to be fictional, but in their incompleteness, their neediness, they embody a real-life dilemma of our times: caretaking. How much should we do for others? What do we owe our aging parents, our troubled siblings or spouses or friends, our children in crisis? At what point do our efforts on behalf of others actually do more harm than good—as we rob those we assist of the opportunity to develop their own strengths and inner resources? As a nation, we wonder if a surfeit of government aid might be creating a culture of dependency.

So many people I know are wrestling with these questions in their own lives. They have parents who can no longer live on their own. Or children in their 20s who can’t find jobs, hence return home. And thus when I sat down to write the third book in my mystery series set in a tattered town in the Appalachian foothills, I decided to explore the question that haunts so many of us: When it comes to loved ones in need, how can we strike a balance between helping and also preserving an individual’s dignity?

Make no mistake: Summer of the Dead is a murder mystery, and there are the requisite unsolved homicides and desperate searches for the bad guys (or gals). But as a reader, I’ve always been drawn to stories that are told obliquely, that require us to do more than merely follow the surface maneuverings of a plot. I admire Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River (2001) for its superbly drawn characters and headlong narrative—but also for its nuanced analysis of the crushing weight of class differences in a big city like Boston. Tana French’s Broken Harbor (2012) is a marvelous piece of crime fiction—and a heartbreaking depiction of the psychological impact of the housing crisis that accompanied the recent global recession, when homes in which people had poured their life savings suddenly were almost worthless. “Broke can lead people to places they would never have imagined,” muses French’s narrator. “It can scour away a lifetime of mild, peaceful decency until all that’s left is teeth and claws and terror.”

A novel always has two stories to tell: What happens—and why it’s happening. That second story is often the more interesting one. In Summer of the Dead, the characters must make agonizing decisions about how much to help those whom they love. If they do too little, they feel selfish; if they do too much, they risk feeling put-upon, filled with bitterness and resentment. And a long-simmering resentment can lead the human soul into some dark and lethal places.

Julia Keller's debut mystery, A Killing in the Hills, introduced prosecuting attorney Belfa “Bell” Elkins and the small Appalachian town of Acker's Gap, West Virginia. In Summer of the Dead, Keller's third mystery set in Acker's Gap, Bell faces a new murderer, as well as family challenges and the burdens of the coal mining community.

Keller shed some light on this inspiration and the questions and challenges of caretaking.