Author R&R with Raemi A. Ray

Raemi A. Ray is a Boston-based mystery author who enjoys taking inspiration from current New England events when writing about the region. She has a JD with a background in intellectual property and lives in Massachusetts with her two house demons, Otto and DolphLundgren. When not writing or working her much more boring job, she spends her time traveling, or wishing she were traveling.

A Chain of Pearls, Raemi’s debut mystery and the first in her Martha’s Vineyard Murders series, centers around the mysterious death of a famous journalist and the cover-up that implicates important Martha’s Vineyard residents. When London-based lawyer Kyra Gibson arrives on the idyllic island to settle her estranged father’s affairs, she ends up partnering with world-weary detective, Tarek Collins, as they uncover a web of intrigue and corruption involving a powerful senator, a dubious energy company, and a brutal murder.

Raemi stops into In Reference to Murder to talk about researching and writing the series:

 

Thank you for having me. This is such a cool question and I’m sure everyone approaches it a little differently. I can speak to my personal experience and process, which unsurprisingly starts with college.

I wasn’t particularly studious in college (or before, to be honest). I chose classes where participation and attendance were not a part of the grade. This worked great for about three years until I had to declare a major. I went with the subject I’d already accumulated the most credits in: Medieval European History. Seriously. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision. Most of those classes required some sort of research paper instead of a test. There weren’t any prerequisites or labs, and I liked the stories. The political intrigue, backstabbing, the royal escapades, wars, it was way better than the dry fiction they’d had us reading in British Literature (still cannot stomach Alexander Pope, but adult me does like Chaucer) and, most importantly, I didn’t have to attend lectures. I did have to spend a lot of time in dingy, dusty library basements, though.

This was before Google Books and other private research databases scanned in the collections of academic libraries. I didn’t have the ease of the internet at my fingertips and I had to do research in person. My university’s special collections were stored in these creepy humidity-controlled basements, always with spotty lighting, some with movable stacks on rails that I swear were bespelled to squash snoozing students. In the theology school’s collections (where most of my source material happened to be) I’d have to request what I needed from a bored-out-of-his-mind (read: stoned) freshman, put on these weird gloves, and read through original manuscripts. Fun fact, I had to leave my notebook and pencil in a separate room and walk back and forth. Note-taking became my cardio.

In retrospect, I realize that it’d have been easier just to go to class and take a multiple-choice exam, but I think that experience is where I got my taste for figuring things out on my own.

Nowadays, my research occurs about ninety percent from the comfort of my reading and writing chair, but the other ten percent is going to the places I’m writing about. The Martha’s Vineyard Murders series takes place on a fictional version of the real-life island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts. I’ve been traveling there for years and truly love it. When I decided to write a mystery, I knew that the location was half the hurdle. All the greatest mysteries have such an immense yet specific sense of place: Rebecca and Manderley, The Dublin Murder Squad and Ireland, Chandler’s Los Angeles, Sherlock’s London. These books wouldn’t be the same without these settings.  

I conceptualized the Martha’s Vineyard Murders (then titled “My Mystery Book”) in the spring of 2021. The World was still under travel restrictions and I didn’t have the option of traveling to a remote place to study it for my story. (I’d originally wanted to put the book on the isle of Skye.) I knew that to keep it authentic, I had to go with what I knew. Lucky for me, there were a few places conducive to a mystery series that I knew like I knew my own name: Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Of course having this basis of knowledge, didn’t mean I didn’t have to make frequent trips, draw dozens of maps, stalk Facebook groups, or consume local news articles like I was planning to run for a selectperson seat, but it gave me something to start with and I think that first step is the hardest one.

The first two books in the series, A Chain of Pearls and The Wraith’s Return include quite a bit about boats and sailing. Prior to the MVM series, my knowledge of watercraft was limited to Disney Land’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I had to teach myself the lingo, the parts, how it all works, and quite a bit about marinas and harbors generally. Luckily, I know a few boaters who were happy to chat with me, and of course the internet is a goldmine. Now, I’d probably be considered a sailing expert, which is ironic since I get seasick looking at boats, but I need to understand something thoroughly in order to determine what to include and what information is too niche and can be left off the page.

Another part of writing the MVM series is that there is just so much death. I’m happy to say I don’t have first-hand experience with being murdered, or finding any corpses, so I’ve had to learn quite a bit about human anatomy, and how people actually die from the injuries they sustain. I’m confident I’m on an FBI watch list with what I’ve been researching over the past few years. My search history is a terrifying place, and I tend to go down rabbit holes when I’m learning of unique ways of torturing and killing my characters. Much to my surprise, I find that I often lean on my background in Medieval history. Those guys were no joke when it came to creative (horrible) ways of killing people.

I think the biggest challenge for me with regards to research is learning those innate things people do that I don’t have experience with. These aren’t things that one can look up, but are common behaviors. For example, where do men keep their wallets? Their phones? How does it feel to lift a child? What does it take to host Thanksgiving dinner? Do doctors really carry doctor bags? What does an accountant really do? Thankfully, I have friends who have lived these experiences and they’re kind enough to share with me. Probably, the funniest thing I do, is I have a group text with my male friends, where I can ask “guy questions,” like the wallet thing, how they pack a suitcase (packing cubes and the ‘roll method’ seems to be a winner there), pretty much anything about professional sports. They’re very, very supportive.  

That all said, the result of my research, how I internalize and apply the information I’ve gathered is such a subjective process and I’m sure I’ve made errors. Writing in the mystery genre, I probably have more leeway with creative license and the plots can be a bit more fantastical. Making it just believable enough is what I think my readers will engage with. They can see themselves in the same position as my main characters.

 

You can learn more about Raemi Ray via her website and follow her on Instagram and Facebook. The books in the "Martha’s Vineyard Murders Series" are available now via Tule Publishing and all major booksellers.

Mystery Melange

In the Short Mystery Fiction Society forums, Rob Lopresti posted news via Ira Matetsky of the Wolfe Pack that the Nero Award, presented each year to an author for the best American Mystery written in the tradition of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, was won by Ariel Lawhon for her novel, The Frozen River. The Black Orchid Novella Award, presented jointly by The Wolfe Pack and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine to celebrate the novella format popularized by Stout, went to T. M. Bradshaw for her novella titled "Double Take." It will be published in the July 2025 issue of AHMM. Honorable mentions for the Black Orchid Novella Award include Peter Hoppock's "Precipice"; Andrew Kass's "Deadline"; Jenny Ramaley's "Workplace Rules for a Fire-Breathing Dragon"; and Ella Rutledge's "Murder at the Y.T.D."

The winners of the UK Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024 were revealed, with a Readers' Choice and Editors' Choice chosen from the shortlists for the categories of Book of the Year, Best Debut Novel, Best in Translation, Best Indie Novel, Best Crime Show, and Best Author. You can read all the winners here and check out all the titles on the shortlists here.

The six titles on AudioFile’s 2024 Best Mystery & Suspense Audiobooks list feature a new voice for a favorite long-running series as well as thrilling tales full of deception and intrigue. The selected titles include: The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, read by Saskia Maarleveld; The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny, read by Jean Brassard; A Nest of Vipers by Harini Nagendra, read by Soneela Nankani; The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, read by Julia Whelan; Shanghai by Joseph Kanon, read by Jonathan Davis; and You'll Never Find Me by Allison Brennan, read by Hilary Huber.

Alison Flood’s best crime and thrillers of 2024 picks for The Guardian include Guide Me Home by Attica Locke (Viper); Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra (Penguin); Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter? by Nicci French (Simon & Schuster); Bonehead by Mo Hayder (Hodder & Stoughton); and We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (Penguin).

And if you're craving more "best of" lists for reading fodder (and gifts!), Jeff Pierce over at The Rap Sheet blog has more from BOLO Books blogger Kristopher Zgorski here, Boston-based critic Steve Donoghue here.

The extended deadline of December 15th is fast approaching for The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers. Interested applicants should submit all documents, including the first three chapters of your work in progress, by the deadline via the following link. The grant includes a $2,500 cash award and a comprehensive registration to Malice Domestic, including two nights' lodging at the convention hotel.

Mystery Readers Journal received so many submissions for the London Mysteries issue, that editor Janet Rudolph has divided it into two issues. She has space for more articles, reviews, and Author Author! essays that focus on Mysteries set in London, with a deadline of January 20, 2025. 

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine interviewed Charlaine Harris, author of series including the Aurora Teagarden mysteries, the Lily Bard mysteries, and the Sookie Stackhouse urban fantasies; and the magazine also spoke with Emma Kenny, a psychologist, TV presenter, writer and expert media commentator, about her book, The Serial Killer Next Door.

Author R&R with Lyn Squire

 

Lyn Squire was born in Cardiff, South Wales.  During a twenty-five-year career at the World Bank, he published over thirty articles and several books within his area of expertise, and was lead author for World Development Report, 1990, which introduced the metric – a dollar a day – that is still used to measure poverty worldwide. Lyn was also the founding president of the Global Development Network, an organization dedicated to supporting promising scholars from the developing world. He now devotes his time to writing. His debut novel, Immortalised to Death, published by Level Best Books in September 2023, introduced Dunston Burnett, a non-conventional amateur detective. It was a First Place Category Winner in the Mystery and Mayhem Division of the Chanticleer International Book Awards.  Dunston’s adventures continue in Fatally Inferior and The Séance of Murder, the second and third books in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  Lyn lives in Virginia with his wife and two dogs.

Dunston Burnett, a Victorian-era middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, is not cut out to be a detective, yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries. In Fatally Inferior he must contend with the abduction of a member of Charles Darwin’s family, the missing person inexplicably spirited out of a locked-tight country house. A few days later, a ransom demand arrives at Down House, Darwin’s home in Kent, threatening that the hostage will be killed unless Darwin renounces his theory of evolution in The Times.  Meanwhile, a former maid at Down House dies, or so it seems, giving birth in London’s Shoreditch workhouse.  Believing her dead, her baby son is swiftly dispatched to a hell-hole orphanage in Hampshire. These apparently independent events converge in a vile act of vengeance: a hellish torture for the victim; the perfect revenge for the perpetrator. Will Dunston ever be able to expose the heart of this dark, confounding mystery?

Lyn Squire stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

 

Researching the second book in a mystery series

Is researching the second book in a mystery series easier than researching the first?  To answer this question, I draw on my experience with Fatally Inferior, the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy.  My answer is mixed.  In some areas, the second book requires less work; in others it can be more challenging and more demanding.

My first book, Immortalised to Death, is set in late nineteenth-century England.  For this book, I researched Victorian dress, furniture, architecture, vernacular, patterns of everyday behavior and so on, to provide period-authentic material for scene-setting and character portrayal.  This task is relatively straightforward, since information on most aspects of Victorian life is readily available on the internet.  Nonetheless, the effort takes time that would otherwise be available for writing.  My second book, Fatally Inferior, is also set in the Victorian era.  Much of the background research for book one was, therefore, of immediate use for book two, a huge labor-saving help. 

Another way in which a prior book can significantly reduce the research required for the current book is through characters that appear throughout the series.  For example, Dunston Burnett, my protagonist, is the glue that binds the three-book series together.  A diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper (think of a latter-day Mr Pickwick), he is not cut out to be a detective yet circumstances invariably conspire to place him at the center of singularly complex mysteries.  He is fully described when he first enters the story in Immortalised to Death so his presence in book two did not entail the need for additional research.  While the character evolves throughout the series, the associated extra research was minimal.      

A second book, however, invariably introduces new locations and characters which naturally require fresh research.  For example, Down House, Charles Darwin’s home in Kent, is not mentioned in the first book, but it is the venue for several scenes in Fatally Inferior, and its layout is crucial to the execution of the crime at the center of the book’s plot.  Down House is open to visitors.  The ground floor is set out as in Darwin’s time with the great man’s study furnished exactly as it was when he was writing The Origin of Species.  Given the house’s key role in my story and the likelihood that many readers would be well acquainted with the house, I decided I had to visit it myself to make sure that my description stayed true to the original. 

This may sound like an unusually burdensome research demand.  But the house is only an hour and a half’s journey from Central London, and many authors visit more distant locations that figure prominently in their books.  Moreover, I had undertaken a similar research excursion for my first book.  Book two’s new location did entail extra research, but, I judged, no more than I had expended on book one for the same purpose.  The same point holds for new secondary characters like Charles Darwin himself.  Additional research is called for, but, again, no more than I devoted to the same task for book one.

Conjuring up a storyline for my second book, however, proved a much more challenging task than for the first.  The kernel of the idea for the storyline in Immortalised to Death, my first novel, was crystalized in my mind before I began researching the book in any detail.  This, I suspect, is the case for most authors embarking on their first book.  As a result, research for that book was focused and limited.  It is the exact opposite for the second book.

Immersed in drafting the first, I had not allocated time to conceptualizing what I would write about in the second, so that when I wrapped up book-one, there was nothing on hand for book-two.  Instead of having a sparkling gem ready to propel the new novel, my literary cupboard was bare, and I found myself casting about from scratch for a fresh idea that would prove a worthy follow-up.  This, I imagine, happens to many other authors writing a mystery series.

To find the right storyline for book-two, I expanded my research about events and people in the time and place where I set my stories (Victorian England), hoping that something would spark my imagination.  And eventually something did.  I was reading Janet Browne’s two-volume biography of Charles Darwin (Voyaging and The Power of Place, Princeton University Press, 1995 and 2002 respectively) when two aspects of his life jumped out at me.  I had found an intriguing pair of leads for a new story. 

One arose from the uproar that greeted the publication of The Origin of Species on November 24, 1859.  Darwin was immediately bombarded with scathing reviews in academic journals, blistering editorials in the leading newspapers and crude cartoons in the cheaper broadsheets.  This avalanche of disgust and hatred from believers in God’s creation of man, led me to imagine a more malicious assault on the scientist.  Was this an idea I could use in my new novel?  Indeed, it was.  I explored several possibilities, finally settling on the abduction of a Darwin family member and a threat that the kidnap-victim would die unless Darwin retracted his theory in a letter to The Times. 

The other had to do with the blood relationship between Darwin and his wife, Emma.  They were first cousins; they had a common grandfather in the person of Josiah Wedgewood.  In the nineteenth century, the offspring of marriages between such close relatives were thought to suffer loss of vigor and infertility.  This fear weighed heavily on both husband and wife, and brought to mind an image of a couple desperate for a grandchild only to be cruelly robbed of any hope of a happy old age spent in the blissful company of their children’s children by a vile act of revenge.  I was soon picturing a scene in which Emma Darwin is forced to witness the horrific death of the couple’s only grandchild. 

Charles Darwin makes only a few fleeting appearances in Fatally Inferior, but the furor created by his theory of evolution and the consequences of his marriage to his first cousin, motivate and structure my entire story.  After much effort, considerably more than I expended on the first book, I had the pegs on which to hang my story.

Looking back on my experience with the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy and the amount of research that was required compared with the first book, the key take-away is this: The overall quantity of research and background reading may not change that much but its distribution across activities changes significantly.  In my, probably typical, case, the focus of research shifted dramatically from scene-setting and character portrayal, all adequately covered in writing the first book, to the new and challenging task of conceiving a fresh idea for the second book’s storyline and developing it into a full-blown successor novel. 

 

You can learn more about Lyn Squire and his writing by visiting his website and by following him on Facebook and Goodreads. Fatally Inferior is now available via Level Best Books and can be found in all major booksellers.

Mystery Melange

Winners of the Irish Book Awards were unveiled, including the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press). The other finalists in that category include Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld).

The Saltire Society presented the Scottish Book Awards last week, including the winner for Fiction Book of the Year, which went to What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close. The novel is a police procedural inspired by the real-life Yorkshire Ripper murders during the late 1970s and early '80s and the subsequent feminist arson campaign that targeted pornography stores. The judges called the novel, "Superb, evocative and enraging, with brilliant characterisation, humour, and a huge sense of tension from the ever-present threat of violence."

Joffe Books announced that the winner of the Joffe Books Prize for Crime Writers of Colour 2024 is Rupa Mahadevan, for her addictive and atmospheric psychological thriller, The Goddess of Death. She receives a two-book publishing deal with Joffe Books, a £1,000 cash prize and a £25,000 audiobook deal from Audible for the first book. This is Britain’s biggest crime prize and was established in 2021 to actively seek out writers from communities that are underrepresented in crime fiction and support them in building sustainable careers, while simultaneously discovering brilliant new talent. (HT to Shots Magazine)

Since 2008, the annual CrimeFest conference has brought crime fiction writers and fans together in Bristol, UK, showcasing approximately 150 authors on some 50+ panels, interviews and events over a four day period each year, as well as presenting the CrimeFest Awards and offering an annual bursary for crime fiction authors of color. Sadly, CrimeFest co-hosts Donna Moore and Adrian Muller posted a notice that the next conference, which takes place from May 15th-18th, 2025, will be the final one. Although the statement didn't point to a specific reason per se, the event has been primarily supported by gate proceeds, donations, and volunteers, and run by a small dedicated staff with few corporate supporters aside from Specsavers. With all the good that CrimeFest has done for the crime fiction community, here's hoping some funding entity will step up to keep the conference going.

South Florida Sun Sentinel book critic, Oline Cogdill chose her best mystery book selections for 2024. Her 31 choices are split between general releases, debut novels, and compilations of short mystery and crime fiction. (HT to The Rap Sheet)

The "best" lists keep coming: New York Times thriller critic, Sarah Lyall, picked her list of the top 10 "Best Thrillers of 2024,"while critic Sarah Weinman chose her ten favorite Crime Novels of 2024. Plus, The Guardian's Laura Wilson compiled her own choices for "The best crime and thrillers of 2024."

The largest archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished works to come to auction will go under the hammer at Doyle tomorrow, December 6, including first editions, letters, poems, manuscripts, such as an extensive archive of Raymond Chandler's unpublished drafts of fantasy stories, the original typed manuscript for Chandler's only opera, and Chandler's Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter (the current estimate for that one is $10-20,000, is you happen to have some spare change lying around). The items are from the Jean Vounder-Davis Collection of Raymond Chandler. Vounder-Davis (then Fracasse) was Chandler's personal secretary as well as fiancé and muse.

Writing for The Dial, Julia Webster Ayuso took a look at how forensic linguists are using grammar, syntax, and vocabulary to help crack cold cases.

In the Q&A roundup, novelist GC Brown chatted with Lisa Haselton about his new crime thriller, Sniff: Book 1 of The Sniff, Smoke, Shoot series; Haselton also spoke with mystery author Leonard H. Orr about his new family drama mystery, Entitled; and Catriona McPherson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Scotzilla, about a wickedly funny cozy about a wedding that becomes a crime scene.

Author R&R with Marlene M. Bell

Marlene M. Bell has never met a sheep she didn’t like. As a personal touch for her readers, they often find these wooly creatures visiting her international romantic mysteries and children’s books as characters or subject matter. Marlene is an accomplished artist and photographer who takes pride in entertaining fans on multiple levels of her creativity. Marlene’s award-winning Annalisse series boasts Best Mystery honors for all installments including these: IP Best Regional Australia/New Zealand, Global Award Best Mystery, and Chanticleer’s International Mystery and Mayhem shortlist for Copper Waters, the fourth mystery in the series.

In Bell's latest mystery, A Hush at Midnight, former celebrity chef Laura Harris, once celebrated for her show-stopping pastries and irresistible desserts, is now making headlines for a far darker reason:  Laura has been accused of murder. How could this petite chef have brutally smothered beloved small-town matriarch and World War II ferry pilot veteran, Hattie Stenburg? Hattie wasn't just a pillar of the community, she was Laura's confidant and mentor. The shocking twist? Hattie’s Will included recent changes, bypassing next-of kin and leaving her entire fortune and historic estate to Laura. As Laura scrambles to clear her name, she uncovers sinister secrets lurking beneath the town’s idyllic surface. The real murderer is always one step ahead, leaving taunting clues and threatening Laura to leave Texas—or face deadly consequences. With time not a luxury, Laura must untangle the web of deceit before the killer makes her the next victim.

Marlene Bell stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the book:

 

Research for novels has become more of a science for me. After four installments to my Annalisse series, a children’s book, and my new release cozy mystery A HUSH AT MIDNIGHT, I quickly found techniques that didn’t work and gravitated more to those that gave me the true results. Fear of a reader calling a foul on misinformation or bad information in my books has kept me awake many nights. Bottom line: Even though my stories are fiction, the sights, sounds, and actual scenery of the places I write about have to be accurate in order for the reader experience to feel real to that person.

My process begins with a complete outline of my manuscript, scene by scene. I envision each character; where they are, what they’re thinking, and how to leave a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter. Backfilling the sensory information once the outline basics are complete.

When I began to write the first Annalisse novel in 2010, I had no clue where the story was going, nor did I care. My objective was to write a romance. A standalone book. That’s it. It wasn’t until my third draft and wandering subplots I couldn’t keep straight, that a talented developmental editor came to the book’s rescue. She quickly saw the issues and mended my ways. Without an outline as a guide, I couldn’t contain the random elements that did nothing but confuse the reader.

I outline using lined 3 x 5 cards, one card per scene. In a separate diary, I list each character by name and add their characteristics to keep them real and unlike other characters in the book. Also listed are their motivations—what they want from the Main in the book. In my mysteries, I also like to drop a Cast of Characters page in front of the first chapter so that the reader can use it as reference in case they forget a player. A Hush at Midnight has fewer characters than in previous books. The more characters, the harder it is for the reader to recall each one should they show up in the beginning and not again until the mid-point. The Cast of Characters idea was taken from the old Pocket crime books from the 1950s. I hear from readers all the time about that page. It’s an overwhelming success!

How do I make my book locations come to life? Perhaps it’s the generation I grew up in, but I’ve found the old-fashioned methods work best for me. In the age of the internet, I see too many people relying on search results from the giant engines that power the information age. Unfortunately, many top result rankings are paid for by the corporations or individuals who are putting out a narrative. One of their choosing and not always the truth. Sites like Wikipedia and the like are places I tend to steer from because the information is a compilation of information and ideas from others.

Because my books are spiked with sensory details, the best place to obtain images for countries I’ve never traveled to are from the photographers and sightseers who have been there. My favorite place to retrieve the visuals and imagine the landscape are through coffee table books published by photographers who have been on the ground. They explain how it feels to be in the space. Most of the books in the Annalisse series travel to places like Greece, Italy, and New Zealand. Without the visuals and descriptions found in expert’s own published works, I can’t imagine my novels having the realistic feel to them. Readers love to be taken away to places they’ve never been. The more details an author can share, the more their readers will return for the next book.

Many of the stories I write about are based on my own personal experiences. I depend upon the experts to guide me through narratives out of my realm of expertise, such as the next project I’m currently outlining. My husband is an expert in the electric field, and I’ll be relying heavily on his experience—to get it right.

 

You can learn more about Marlene Bell via her website, and follow her on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Goodreads. A Hush at Midnight is now available via all major booksellers.

Author R&R with Simon Marlowe

Simon Marlowe is an up-and-coming British crime thriller author, and was a selected author at the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival 2024 (Harrogate International Festivals). A consummate wordsmith, he has excelled as a darkly comic crime author, with his fast paced and action-packed Mason Made trilogy. Like reading a Guy Ritchie movie with a Ken Loach conscience, Simon skillfully blends social and political issues to create a compellingly relevant narrative, on a par with the best in modern crime fiction today. Simon spent his formative years living in South London, indulging in political activism and music, graduating from a number of universities in politics, education and management. He eventually moved back to his home city in Essex, and after studying for a creative writing MA, settled down to developing as a writer. Since 2017, he has been successfully publishing, making people laugh, cry and scream!

In Marlowe's latest darkly-comic-crime-meets-spy-thriller, The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, Steven Mason has an axe to grind and just needs to work out who deserves it. Falling fully into the darkness of Hell, Steven lives a crude, rude, cruel, and heartless life in the streets of Amsterdam, cutting himself off from his old life to indulge in drug-fuelled debauchery. In an attempt to reestablish his criminal career during the coronavirus pandemic, he immerses himself into the blood and guts of conspiracy and Far-Right politics, war crimes, and war criminals. But nothing is as it seems, as Steven is propelled by covert love into festering darkness. When faced with an ultimatum, in the form of becoming a member of the ruthless Bloodaxe gang—knee-deep in dealing and drug trafficking— will he pull himself out of the darkness he’s become so accustomed to? Or will he sink even further down?

Simon Marlowe stops by In Reference to Murder to talk about writing the book and series:

The Heart Is A Cruel Hunter, is the final installment in my darkly comic crime thriller trilogy Mason Made (so check out, The Dead Hand of Dominique – Book One, and Medusa And The Devil – Book Two). And for my protagonists next little adventure, I have Steven Mason, now a jaded drug-fueled criminal, indulging in extremes: personally, professionally (i.e. illegally) and politically.

It may be bold of me to claim the ‘Cruel Hunter’ has captured the zeitgeist of our time, but with Far Right riots, Far Right parties democratically elected in Europe, and Far Right ultra nationalist wars (I’ll leave you to speculate where you think that might be), I felt I would be failing in my thematic duty if I didn’t integrate the political contemporary issue into a bit of crime, murder and mayhem.

Hopefully, if you indulge in purchasing the ebook or paperback (available online from all major retailers!) and you take the obvious next step to read it, you may be surprised to learn that about 90% of the novel is based on fact. Not that I want to stray into Baby Reindeer territory here, because I will say explicitly that the ‘Cruel Hunter’  is a dramatization of Far Right politics, and the ‘facts’ have been integrated to fit into the narrative.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time where nationalism, power, and propaganda are dominant forces, perhaps pushing the world ever closer to some rather unpalatable governing systems. But you’ll be glad to know all is not lost, not if art and literature can be used to laugh at the thugs, tyrants and demagogues.

Mercifully, my anti-hero, Steven Mason, has sufficient moral ambiguity to indulge in criminality whilst retaining a sense of what is right and wrong. Murder, for Steven, is necessary to survive, crime is a way of life (and also happens to pay his bills), but that is nothing compared to the Far Right characters he encounters on a journey that has an underlying purpose which is gradually revealed. Steven may start off unhinged, but that is nothing compared to the bonkers antics of the Far Right criminals and politicians he needs to pander to, characters who are ideologically maladjusted with one thing in common: they think anything that is different should be systematically exterminated.

Perhaps, if we were not living in such strange times, and we considered the Far Right as a poorly psychiatric patient, we would be able to treat them successfully, integrate them back into the community, following a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia and grandiose delusions. However, talking therapies in such cases would be ineffective, and any rational doctor would probably recommend large doses of anti-psychotics, a regime of electroconvulsive therapy followed by an irreversible lobotomy. Although I would still worry, that dulled and subdued, the radical conspiracy supremacist, would still be a danger to themselves and others.

But rest assured, Steven Mason has no liberal constraints holding him back. He knows that if he were to ever find himself reading a book called The Heart Is  A Cruel Hunter, and a rabid dog is running towards him, he will throw the book at it to stop it in its tracks.

 

You can learn more about Simon Marlowe and his books by visiting his website and can follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The Heart is a Cruel Hunter (Mason Made Trilogy Book 3) is now available from the publisher, Cranthorpe Millner, and all major bookstores.

Mystery Melange

In an email to Sisters in Crime members, SinC announced that the winner of the 2024 PRIDE Award for emerging LGBTQIA+ writers is Lori Potvin of Perth, Ontario, Canada. Potvin's winning novel-in-progress is a work of contemporary crime fiction.  According to Potvin, "A Trail's Tears follows the stories of two women who are strangers to each other — youth wellness worker Grace, who's looking for Sonny, a missing Indigenous teen mom, and Anna, a street smart young woman caught in the trap of human trafficking and desperate to escape."  Five runners-up were also chosen: Shelley Kinsman of Ashburn, Ontario; Erick Holmberg of Boston, Massachusetts; Emma Pacchiana of Norfolk, Virginia; Langston Prince of Los Angeles, California; and Shoney Sien of Aptos, California.

Amazon has already released its "best of" lists for the year, including those in the Amazon’s "Best Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense Books of 2024," which seems to be broken down into two categories, one for standalones and one for new or continuing series. I suspect the timing of these lists has as much to do with holiday book sales than anything, but you can check out those forty titles here. Washington Post critic Karen MacPherson also compiled a list of her fave top 10 mysteries for the year. Although it's behind a paywell, The Rap Sheet has broken down the details here.

Next year's CrimeFest in the UK, scheduled for May 15-18, will feature an exclusive John le Carré event featuring the author’s two sons: the eldest, film producer Simon Cornwell, who is the CEO and co-founder of the independent studio, The Ink Factory, currently executive producing The Night Manager for Amazon and the BBC, starring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Colman; and Carré youngest son, Nick Harkaway, who recently brought back one of his father’s most famous literary creations, George Smiley, in the new novel, Karla's Choice. Also confirmed for 2025 is the Canadian mystery writer, Cathy Ace, whose Cait Morgan Mysteries have been optioned for TV by the production company, Free@Last TV, which is behind the hit series, Agatha Raisin. Vaseem Khan, chair of the Crime Writers’ Association and author of the Malabar House historical crime series set in Bombay, has also been confirmed as 2025’s Gala Dinner’s "Leader of Toasts" for the 2025 CrimeFest award.

In May 2025, Penguin Random House will publish a graphic novel version of Raymond Chandler's Trouble Is My Business (1939) as part of the Pantheon Graphic Library. The creative team behind the project includes writer Arvind Ethan David, illustrator Ilias Kyriazis, and colorist Cris Peter, with a Foreword by Ben H. Winters. In the novella, Philip Marlowe is hired by a female private detective to disentangle a gangster's moll from a rich man's son. (HT to The Bunburyist)

The First Two Pages over at Art Taylor's blog featured Vera Chan with an essay about her story in Tales of Music, Murder, and Mayhem: Bouchercon Anthology 2024.

In the Q&A roundup, Alex Kenna, whose debut novel, What Meets the Eye, was nominated for a Shamus Award for best first PI novel, applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Burn this Night; Deborah Kalb chatted with Bonnie Kistler, a former trial lawyer and author of the new psychological thriller, Shell Games; and Writers Who Kill's Paula Gail Benson interviewed Saul Golubcow about his new novel with detective Holocaust survivor Frank Wolf and the narrator, Frank’s lawyer grandson, Joel.

Author R&R with Michael Wolk

Michael Wolk has written screenplays (Innocent Blood, directed by John Landis), theatrical plays and music (Ghostlight 9), and is also a theatrical producer for Broadway (Pacific Overtures, Karate Kid), Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and more. He founded the nonprofit All For One Theater, which has staged over 50 solo shows off-Broadway since 2011, and he directed the award-winning documentary, You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story. He also found time to write the mystery novels, The Beast on Broadway, The Big Picture, and Signet.

His latest project is the cyber thriller, "DevilsGame," which launches today. He didn't want to just write a thriller, he wanted to immerse readers in a story the same way he captures audiences with the stage. So he created something unique: an interactive, multimedia "cyberthriller" that's meant to be read entirely online, blending action, satire, and clickable clues. The story opens with a virtual Blackberry text conversation: a cross-platform virus has swept the globe, turning smartphones into mobile IEDs and causing explosions worldwide. Claire Bodine, a fiery televangelist, and Nathan Rifkin, the cunning mastermind behind the world's most addictive video games, form an unlikely duo as the last line of defense against digital Armageddon. Claire sees the hand of Satan behind the chaos, while Nathan smells a geopolitical conspiracy. Either way, time is running out to get to the bottom of it.

Michael Wolk stops by In Reference to Murder to discuss his innovative creation:

 

It's going to sound strange, but the creation of DevilsGame all began with the realization that I was reading with my thumb. Instead of reading the books piled up by my bedside, I was gazing raptly into my smartphone, scrolling through the events of the day and clicking hyperlinks that added context to the stories I was reading.

I thought: why not write a novel that meets readers like me where they are: on their phones? And why not write a story that employs the “superpower” of hyperlinks to enhance and expand the story?

And it seemed to me the story had to be about an Internet Armageddon that readers would experience the same way we experience REAL crises these days: on our phones, scrolling for the latest developments, then surfing between news sites and social media to get more information—often weaving between fact and fiction without even noticing the boundaries between them!

So DevilsGame became a story about our smartphones going haywire, told on your phone, unfolding “in real-time” through your exploration of the contents of the hero’s smartphone.

I knew I wanted DevilsGame to be a cyber thriller, but it is based on facts that are beyond thrilling – they are terrifying!

In the 24-hour clock of DevilsGame, there is a cascade of hacks that rock the world. Each of the hacks in the book is modeled on an actual, documented attack that was carried out in the past. Each of these attacks were considered “zero day” exploits at the time – meaning hacks that had never occurred before and against which there was no ready defense.

The wrinkle that DevilsGame presents is that all these "greatest hits of hacking" are sequenced one right after the other, with cumulative and catastrophic consequences. My research quickly discovered an internet ecosystem that is astonishingly frail and in deathly peril from bad (state) actors who have already proven they can burrow deeply and often invisibly into its infrastructure.

As I result, I want to share this simple but harrowing maxim:

º Anything connected to the internet can be hacked

º Everything is becoming connected to the internet

º Everything – and everyone – on the Internet is potentially an open book

So please! Protect your data! And don’t entrust your digital life to the “cloud” – keep hard or hard drive copies of your vital information in multiple safe locations! Our entire lives our on the web. Remember the web can easily become a trap that ensnares.

 

You can learn more about Michael and his various projects through his website and also his personal website and follow him on Facebook and LinkedIn. The DevilsGame is live as of today, and you can check it out via this link.

Author R&R with David Finkle

David Finkle has covered the arts and politics for The New York Times, The New York Post, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The New Yorker, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and The Huffington Post, among others. He is author of the story collections, People Tell Me Things and Great Dates With Some Late Greats, as well as the mystery novel, The Man With the Overcoat, called one of the ten best novels of the year by Foreword magazine. His latest mystery, released today, is The Great Gatsby Murder Case.

On a beautiful spring day in New York City, writer Daniel Freund finds a long-sought-after 1953 edition of The Great Gatsby, free for the taking on the steps of a brownstone down the block. But when he brings home his treasure, the words on the page begin to glow, and a hand appears out of the pages sending Daniel secret messages. Prompted by The Great Gatsby itself, Daniel begins his own investigation. Accompanied by a hardheaded retired police detective and a nosy-body neighbor, he works to unfold the pieces of this supposedly solved case. He knows a murder took place, the book told him so, so why is everyone else convinced it was suicide?

David Finkle stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about writing the book:

 

How did I come up with the idea for The Great Gatsby Murder Case and then follow-up with any research? Beats me. Well, almost beats me.

There I was walking down my street one day, thinking about I don’t know what. Maybe wondering whether I’d remembered to pick up everything I needed at Gristede’s or some household notion along those lines. And that’s when suddenly—just like that—a random idea popped full-blown into my head: Why not write a mystery set on this street?

It's not that I’d ever written a  mystery before. I’ve read them, of course. I love mysteries and respect the authors like crazy. From teenagery I’ve been obsessed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie and mystery writers right up to today. As a one-time regular contributor to Publishers Weekly, I’ve even interviewed Patricia Cornwell, a terrific interviewee.

But writing one? It’s crossed my mind but never more than fleetingly, usually because, as I analyze it, mysteries are the one genre where writing isn’t ready to begin until the complete plot has been worked out down to every last detail and clue. Am I wrong about that?

When, however, that write-a-mystery thunder bolt jolted me, it didn’t come outfitted with a plot. Just the cute go-ahead-and-write-one prompt. The subsequent mental monologue started, as I recall, with a celebratory, “Why not?” and was succeeded by, “I know I’ll need a tight plot, but so what?”

I’d just published my last novel—Keys to an Empty House (Plum Bay), having to do with family, father-son stuff—and wasn’t at work on the next one.  I say “at work,” whereas I often regard writing as “at play.” Why shouldn’t writing be play, depending on the content intent?

Authors are often described as at work, but often, when I’m writing, I’m having fun. What I’m doing seems more like play than work. Mightn’t writing a mystery feel like play? I was, right then, prepared to play.

That settled within those first fast-paced seconds on the street, I was percolating. (I grew up when coffee was still brewed in percolators.) And I was still ambling—but more slowly—towards my building and second-floor apartment when something else grabbed me.  If I set the mystery on my block, why not make the detective an amateur like myself? And had I ever learned there had been a mystery on my block, and had I ever furthermore learned there’d been a murder and/or murderer on the block, how would I go about solving it?

Then, the pressing query became, “How would I learn about  the murder or murderer?” Perhaps the obvious answer is that someone on the block mentioned it to me, but one of my quirks is: I’m not generally happy with the obvious. I try to avoid it. My mind goes farther afield. What occurred to me about the origins of my murder/murderer information that wouldn’t be obvious: A book.

A book!? Yes, again out of nowhere I thought a book was clearly the thing. But what book? Millions were available to me. But one pressed forward urgently: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby. Why so suddenly, so completely right? Many of us know its history. Published in 1925, some years after Fitzgerald  left Princeton—where he surely knew Jay Gatsby-Nick Carraway-Tom Buchanan types—the novel was not an immediate success. His first, This Side of Paradise, was. Nonetheless, the initial movie adaptation was 1926. (Scott and Zelda walked out of a screening.) To date there have been three more. By the 1930s, book sales faded more precipitantly but were revived in the 1950s and remain staggering today.

But more than any of that, The Great Gatsby is, in my opinion, the best American novel of the twentieth century. It’s the word-perfect obvious choice. (Here, I broke my rule and did reach for the obvious.) I figured if I settle on this one for the book in my forthcoming mystery, I get to re-read it, a pastime I indulge every couple of years.

I now hurried home, immediately sat down with the 1953 paperback edition from my collection and started perusing. Don’t you know that on the very first page the words “victim” and “detect” leaped out? What more did I need to convince me I was on the right mystery track? All I had to do next was start writing. The plot would come to me.

As would any necessary research. And now a confession: I’m not an inveterate researcher. I kept it to a minimum, which isn’t easy where a mystery is concerned. One helpful aspect: Poison wouldn’t be involved, as it so often is with Christie. Guns were. I had to find out about, for instance, Glocks and Magnums. I did. I had to check out police procedure. Luckily, there’s a precinct half a block from me, where officers are often seen walking to or from or standing around the entrance. I quizzed one or two of them. More? Part of the New York City story branches out to Dayton, Ohio, about which I know some but not all. I pegged answers by calling the Dayton Daily News.  

But enough of that. It all paid off, and now as The Great Gatsby Murder Case—with Fitzgerald’s masterpiece accounting for some of its solution—is here.

 

You can learn more about David Finkle and his writing via his website, enjoy his podcasts on The Hour of Lateral Thinking, and follow him on Facebook and Goodreads. The Great Gatsby Murder Case is now available via all major booksellers.

Petrona Award Winner Announced

The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction, but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries. This year's winner of best translated Scandinavian crime novel is Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen translated from the Faroese by Marita Thomsen and published by Norvik Press. This is only Isaksen’s second novel to be translated into English following Walpurgis Tide. 

Other titles on the 2024 shortlist included:

• Anne Mette Hancock - The Collector tr. Tara F Chace (Denmark, Swift Press)
  
  
• Jørn Lier Horst - Snow Fall tr. Anne Bruce (Norway, Michael Joseph)
  
  
• Arnaldur Indriðason - The Girl by the Bridge tr. Philip Roughton (Iceland, Harvill Secker)
  
  
• Åsa Larsson - The Sins of our Fathers tr. Frank Perry (Sweden, MacLehose Press)
  
  
• Yrsa Sigurðardottir - The Prey tr. Victoria Cribb (Iceland, Hodder & Stoughton)

Mystery Melange

The winners of the 2024 Historical Writers Association (HWA) Crown Awards were announced, celebrating the best in recent historical writing, fiction, and non-fiction. The 2024 Gold Crown Award was won by Disobedient by Elizabeth Fremantle, based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi—the greatest female painter of the Renaissance; the Non-fiction Crown Award was Four Shots In the Night: A True Story of Stakeknife, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland by Henry Hemming; and the Debut Crown Award went to The Tumbling Girl: Variety Palace Mysteries Book 1 by Bridget Walsh. You can read about the other finalists in each category here.

Eddie Muller will host NOIR CITY Xmas at Oakland's historic Grand Lake Theatre, Wednesday, December 18, 7:30 pm. To darken your yuletide spirit, the Film Noir Foundation is presenting Who Killed Santa Claus? (L'Assassinat du père Noël), a 1941 French mystery. The evening will also feature the unveiling of the program for NOIR CITY 22, the 22nd year of the world's most popular film noir festival, coming to the Grand Lake Theatre January 24 - February 2, 2025. Tickets for NOIR CITY Xmas are now available online from Eventbrite for $15 and can also be purchased at the theatre box office on the day of the show. Doors will open at 6:30 pm on the day of the event.

Janet Rudolph posted an updated Thanksgiving Crime Fiction list on the Mystery Fanfare blog, featuring novels and short stories with a mix of cozy, noir, and whodunits. King's River Life also has a few Thanksgiving food-themed mysteries for you to chew on.

The authors at the Mystery Lovers Kitchen blog have some reads and recipes to be thankful for, including Libby Klein's Gluten-Free Thanksgiving Pot Pie; Molly MacRae's Red Wine Honey Cake; Cleo Coyle's Dairy-Free Pumpkin Cupcakes; and the infamous Turducken, courtesy of Maya Corrigan.

I'm a sucker for astronomical mysteries, and Phil Plait, writing for Scientific American, has a fun lesson on why the sky is dark at night and how Edgar Allan Poe figured into the answer to that long-standing riddle.

I'm also a fan of classical music mysteries (and this one hits particularly close to him as it ties in with one of the elements of my own novel, Played to Death): A curator in New York City has identified a lost waltz by Frédéric Chopin, marking the first discovery of music by the renowned 19th-century composer since the 1930s. But is it really Chopin?

In the Q&A roundup, Suspense Magazine spoke with author Jacqueline Bublitz about her latest thriller, Leave the Girls Behind; Writers Who Kill chatted with Jennifer K. Morita about her debut mystery novel, Ghosts of Waikīkī; and Lisa Haselton interviewed Mark L Dressler about his detective mystery novel, Dying for Fame.

Mystery Melange

Sara Paretsky has been named the 2025 Killer Nashville John Seigenthaler Award Winner and Guest of Honor. The award is bestowed upon an individual within the publishing industry who has championed First Amendment Rights to ensure that all opinions are given a voice, has exemplified mentorship and example to authors, supporting the new voices of tomorrow, and/or has written an influential canon of work that will continue to influence authors for many years to come. The award will be presented at the Killer Nashville Awards Dinner.

Here's another bit of good news, via Lesa Holstine: When Bill Crider died in 2018, he left behind over sixty books published by New York publishers including his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series, but beginning with book eleven, they’re now out of print. Bill’s daughter, Angela Crider Neary, and her husband, Tom Neary, have decided to do something about that by republishing the Sheriff Rhodes series. They’re refreshing all twenty-five of those books and also making them available as audiobooks through Audible with a new narrator, Chris Abel. The new books, with Sheriff Dan Rhodes appearing on the covers as Bill Crider described him, will be issued beginning in January with one book issued every four to six weeks.

Scottish company Glencairn Crystal, which produces the whisky glass the Glencairn Glass and has sponsored the McIlvanney and Bloody Scotland Debut crime-writing literary awards since 2020, has launched a new anthology, The Last Dram. The anthology features stories from 16 different authors (including yours truly), all of whom have previously entered the Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story competition over the past three years. All of the profits from the book sales in the run-up to Christmas will go to the UK cancer charity, Maggie’s.

The second Loch Long Crime Writing Residency at Cove Park has been awarded to Callum McSorley. Based in Glasgow, McSorley’s debut novel Squeaky Clean (2023) – inspired by his years working at a car wash in Glasgow’s East End – was praised by the likes of Chris Brookmyre, Peter James, and Kevin Bridges, and featured in 2023 "best of the year" lists in The Guardian, The Scotsman and The Times. He became the youngest ever author to win the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for Best Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. His second novel, Paperboy, will be published in 2025. Launched in March 2024, the Loch Long Crime Writing Residency is a funded residency for Scotland-based writers developing new work in crime fiction. The first award went to Caro Carver.

The deadline for the 2025 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition is fast approaching. The award is open to writers of any nationality, aged 18 or older, who have never been the author of any published mystery novel (including self-published), with a top prize of a $10,000 advance against royalties. Nominees will be selected by judges chosen by the editorial staff of Minotaur Books, and the winner will be chosen by Minotaur Books editors on the basis of the originality, creativity and writing skill of the submission. To be considered for the 2025 competition, all submissions must be received by 11:59pm EST on November 30, 2024.

Editor Janet Rudolph posted that the deadline for articles, reviews, and author essays for the "London" issue of Mystery Readers Journal has been extended until November 15, 2024. The topics can include crime fiction book both in and out of print that are set in London or have a strong London connection. Author essays and articles should be between 500-1,000 words, with reviews 50-250 words.

Another deadline has been extended, from November 1 to December 15. The William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant Program for Unpublished Writers is designed to foster quality literature in the Malice Domestic tradition and assist the next generation of traditional mystery writers on the road to publication. The grant includes a $2,500 cash award and a comprehensive registration to the Malice Domestic conference, including two nights' lodging at the convention hotel. Applicants need to submit the first three chapters of a work in progress, short synopsis, bio, and statement. For more information, click on over here.

In the Q&A roundup, Wisconsin Public Radio chatted with Gabino Iglesias about his novel, House of Bone and Rain, plus hurt, horror, and hurricanes; and Writers Who Kill's E. B. Davis interviewed Heather Weidner about her fourth Glamping Mystery, Deadlines and Valentines.

Mystery Melange - Halloween Edition

The Irish Book Awards shortlists for 2024 were announced, including the titles vying for Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book of the Year: A Stranger in the Family by Jane Casey (Hemlock Press); Witness 8 by Steve Cavanagh (Headline); Where They Lie by Claire Coughlan (Simon & Schuster); Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara (Bantam, Transworld); Somebody Knows by Michelle McDonagh (Hachette Books Ireland); and When We Were Silent by Fiona McPhillips (Bantam, Transworld). The public are now being asked to have their say and cast their votes through November 14th for the best books of the year on the An Post Irish Book Awards website.

Scrawl Books, the new indie bookstore in Reston, Virginia, is presenting a Cozy Halloween Mystery Panel on Thursday, October 31 at 7pm. Participating authors include Olivia Blacke (A New Lease on Death); Mindy Quigley (the Deep Dish Mysteries); Donna Andrews (the Meg Lanslow Series); and Korina L. Moss (the Cheese Shop Mysteries).

On November 1, AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland will show the silent film, The Bat (1926), directed by Roland West, with live musical accompaniment by Ben Model. Based on the play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood (adapted from the author's 1908 mystery novel, The Circular Staircase), this suspenseful picture sees a masked criminal dressed as a bat spread fear and terror among the guests staying at a lavish mansion rented by a mystery writer. Hidden somewhere in the estate is a vast sum of money aching for the taking. The Bat served as inspiration for the creation of DC Comics' Batman. (HT to The Bunburyist)

Dallas Noir At The Bar returns to The Wild Detectives on Sunday, November 3rd. Authors currently scheduled to read from their mystery, thriller, and suspense works include Jim Nesbitt, Kevin R. Tipple, Trang Vu, Graham Powell, Scott Montgomery, and Harry Hunsicker.

Janet Rudolph has published an updated list of Halloween Mysteries that take place on or around Halloween, from full-length novels to short story anthologies.

A new Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast is up, featuring the Halloween mystery short story "Floating Past the Graveyard" by Pamela Ebel, read by actor Theodore Fox.

Kings River Life published two free online Halloween short stories, "Clown-O-Phobia" By Bobbi A. Chukran, and "The Mystery of the Mirror" By Shari Held.

The authors at Mystery Lovers Kitchen have some scary treats and reads for the season, including Warm Spiced Cider by Maya Corrigan; Pumpkin Snickerdoodle Bars via Peg Cochran; Halloween Carrot Cake from Alison Roman by way of Lucy Burdette; Edible Witches' Brooms, courtesy of Cleo Coyle; Spooky Blood Orange Spritizer from Leslie Karst; and Mummy Hand Pies from Molly MacRae.

Brian Cleary, a clinical pharmacist in Dublin, was trawling through the archives at the National Library of Ireland when he stumbled across something extraordinary: a virtually unknown short story by Bram Stoker, author of the Gothic masterpiece, Dracula. The story takes place in Surrey, England, at a spot that became infamous when three men who had murdered a sailor were hanged there in the 18th century (a gibbet is a gallows). In it, a young man goes for a stroll and comes upon a trio of eerie children who perform a strange ritual, tie the man up, and menace him with a sharp dagger. Though he passes out and isn’t sure what happens next — they are gone when he wakes up — the unsettling experience has repercussions that do not bode well for his future. 

Robert Lopresti is the latest guest at "The First Two Pages" on Art Taylor's blog, talking about his new anthology, Crimes Against Nature: New Stories of Environmental Villainy, a collection spurred on by his continuing interest in ecological issues. (Taylor took over hosting duties of the column after its originator, B.K. Stevens, passed away in 2017.)

Author R&R with Alexa Donne

Alexa Donne is the Edgar nominated author of Pretty Dead Queens, The Ivies, and The Bitter End, young adult thrillers featuring terrible teens and big twists. She loves exploring themes of class and wealth, toxic friendships (especially between young women), and the double-edged sword of trying to keep up with the Joneses in the era of social media and toxic capitalism. By day, she lives in Los Angeles and works in television marketing. The rest of the time, she contemplates creative motives for murder and takes too many pictures of her cats.

Alexa’s latest young adult thriller, The Bitter End, follows eight students of LA’s elite Warner Prep, who can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. But they can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident. And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.

Alexa stops by In Reference to Murder to talk some Author R&R about writing and researching the book:

I LOVE isolation trope mysteries. LOVE. In movies, on TV, but especially in books. A ticking clock, no escape, and a limited pool of suspects—the tension in these stories is so high, and the dynamics at play so fun. 

Writing The Bitter End, I challenged myself to set a cast of teens loose on this beloved genre trope. I wanted to see how I could fit the constraints of YA world (there has to be some kind of adult supervision… at least to start) into an adult genre, while also bringing something fresh and exciting to the conceit so that it might surprise and delight seasoned adult readers.

The closed circle mystery is essentially a balancing act: a large cast size, a number of inevitable deaths, and of course the big reveal. It’s a game of teetering precariously to build and sustain suspense as I work to hide the true killer’s identity while not giving short shrift to characters who are not part of the narrative for long. Ultimately, I landed on eight teens rather than the Christie classic ten, and a minimum body count (though I won’t spoil the exact number!). It felt important to have enough personalities to stir up trouble while also not leaving the suspect pool too large at the end.

I chose multi-POV and multi-timeline, in part to stretch myself with a different thriller format, as well as to play with themes of friendship, appearances, and perspective, all of which change over time. I work backwards to construct my thrillers, so I started with a motive. Then built out a cast of spoiled Los Angeles prep school teens to kick the plot mechanics into motion.

But for an isolation trope to work, I needed to figure out how to get my new cast away from their parents and in a remote location. I knew the group should be somewhat disparate to create a lot of conflict and intrigue. They are not all friends, which ruled out a besties Spring Break trip or a post-Prom retreat. Authenticity is important to me in any thriller, but especially YA—it should feel feasible at its heart.

The solution to my problem came at a lunch with some fellow writer friends, including one who’d attended a Los Angeles prep school. She blew my mind when she talked about a program for seniors where for one week they’d get to go on a grand excursion—and real examples from her school included Alaskan dog-sledding and a Hollywood directing workshop! It was so fantastic and sparked my imagination—which is why those real examples are in the book!—and provided the perfect jumping off point for my isolation mystery.

And since I’m an East Coaster who sincerely misses weather (after fifteen years in Southern California), I knew I wanted a mountainous/forest setting with heavy rain or snow. I settled on Colorado for two reasons: first, the state and its glorious 14,000 feet peaks came up in several of the 20+ high-altitude mountaineering tomes I’d read, and second, I had several friends who were either native Coloradans or who had moved there.

And with my setting locked in, I now got to contend with several high-altitude, mountain, and snow-related elements that required some honestly pretty fun, if morbid and mildly terrifying, research. Some highlights:

High altitude sickness

The prep school teens in the book end up stranded in a ski chalet on top of a Colorado mountain of significantly high elevation. The copious amounts of non-fiction and memoir written by and about mountaineers who climb 8,000 meter peaks inevitably all touch upon high altitude sickness and its varying complications, including high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE), and high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), hypoxia, and their symptoms. My made-up mountain isn’t quite that high, but altitude sickness is likely to strike an Angelino at high elevation for the first time.

Dark Summit by Nick Heil, in particular, went into great detail about a man who survived a near-death experience on Everest. Being able to get inside the mind, with vivid description, of someone experiencing hypoxia and nearly dying from it was invaluable. (Did you know it’s a common phenomenon to hallucinate a person following you/being with you, up high on the mountain? This is stuff made for the thriller genre!)

Cell phone emergency access 

It’s the lynchpin of the modern-day thriller, isn’t it: How to deal with technology? Especially in a closed circle mystery with an isolation trope, the key is to get characters AWAY from technology and any hope of help from the outside world. I’m fascinated by wild, out of the way places and all the terrible things that can happen to you there. The Cold Vanish by Jon Billman reinforced that there are many places in the United States where it’s easy to fall to the elements with ZERO recourse. Often, those searching for you may simply never know what happened.

My editor wanted to be double triple sure these students couldn’t seek help. “Surely they’d just call 9-1-1?” she said. Cellphones have an emergency call function. This led both me and her down a rabbit hole of cell phones and emergency communications in 2024, as technology is constantly evolving and mystery authors must tear their hair out to make their plots work.

Multiple Colorado friends confirmed that there are many spots in the mountains where cell coverage is so spotty to the point that it is nonexistent. I did a deep dive to double confirm: emergency calls require a cell tower within a certain distance to work. But then a wrench in the works, at pass pages, no less: newer models of iPhones and now Androids have emergency satellite texting systems.

Here’s where all those books on mountaineering came in handy—they all have passages on satellite phones. How they work, when they work, and, helpful for me, when they don’t. Satellite phone may not work under heavy cloud cover or during storms. Luckily, I already had a blizzard at play, and used my creative license as the author to make things that much trickier for my poor cast of characters trying to survive a killer.

Sadly, I can’t share some of the juicier bits of research without spoilers! But I can relay one anecdote whose lesson is: sometimes you’ll blank on the silliest thing despite meticulous planning, and it’s important to be scrappy with your edits! With all my planning and research into cell signals and plot mechanics to deprive my cast of their phones, Internet access, and eventually power… I still managed to write an entire plot thread in the first draft that hinged on the characters looking through people’s Instagram DMs.

Then, my editor pointed out to me “but they have no Internet, so how could they check Instagram?” Reader, I died. You have to laugh about it though! I had to get creative in terms of keeping the information gleaned while tossing out most of what I’d written for that subplot. On the plus side—it made the back half of act 2 much tighter! Do the best you can, but you can’t do it alone—and some of your best work will happen in editing (and with your editor!).

 

You can learn more about Alexa Donne via her website and also follow her on Instagram, Goodreads, and YouTube. The Bitter End is now available via Random House Books and all major booksellers.