Malice Afterword

I'd mentioned awhile back that when I got a free moment I would elaborate on the vintage mystery novels I picked up in the Malice Dealer Room, so here's a few of the more interesting items I shipped home.

WHAT RHYMES WITH MURDER? by Jack Iams. Dell mapback. No date, but it’s one of the later editions.

Hmmm. Birder? Girder?

“When a lusty Lothario sings his serenade, romance rhymes with death!”

It does? I’m thinking Mr. Iams was poetry-impaired, but he does seem to waxed lyrical in this one.

“Ariel Banks, a high-flying, Bohemian poet, had one bad habit: HE LOVED WHERE HE PLEASED.”

Weeell, don’t we all? Kind of? To some extent?

Opening line:
“The news that a British poet was going to lecture before the Tuesday Ladies’ Club would normally have caused something less than a ripple among the ninety-nine percent of our city’s eighty-odd thousand inhabitants who did not belong to, or give a hoot about, the Tuesday Ladies’ Club.”

You know, I like this. Not only did they get the “British” versus “English” thing right, but I am awfully partial to mystery novels about poets. In my opinion the world cannot have too many mystery novels centered around poets and poetry.

But that’s just me.

THE SHADOWY THIRD by Marco Page. Pocket, 1949.

“Marked for slaughter, he was number one on everybody’s hate parade.”

This batch of books goes rather hard on practitioners of the fine arts.

“Dave Calder had been hired to solve the disappearance of a heavily insured violin. Then the owner of the missing violin (Igor Krassin, in case you’re interested) was murdered, and the list of suspects read like a telephone directory.”

I’ll spare you the phone book recital just this one time. Opening line:

“The rehearsal was scheduled for noon but by ten-thirty there were already a dozen musicians in the orchestra dressing room and more were straggling in one or two at a time.”

Uh huh. As you’ve guessed, this kind of plot appeals to me—in particular I love the combination of tough guys and the arts.

Speaking of tough guys…

FINDERS KEEPERS by Geoffrey Homes. Bantam, 1947.

“Here is another toughie by that expert in murder, Geoffrey Homes, who has won a million readers for Bantam Books with his fast-paced, hard-hitting mysteries featuring that two-fisted milk-drinker, the dick with a hard fist and a soft heart, Humphrey Campbell. What more could you ask?”

Is this a sincere question or are you playing with me?

To begin with, I could ask that the dick not be named Humphrey Campbell. I’ll let the Humphrey pass, but CAMPBELL? (Little Scottish folk-singing joke.)

I have to say that Mr. Thrilling was…er…thrilled when I pulled this out of my Malice book box. Apparently he has been longing to read this series by Homes for eons. I myself am not entirely sold on the idea of a writer who pens “toughies” about milk-drinking lads named Humphrey, but….

OH MY GOD. IT’S WORSE THAN I THOUGHT. I tailed off to read the opening line and found this description of our hero:

“Humphrey Campbell, a chubby, tough, ACCORDION-PLAYING sleuth, who was headed for trouble.”

Well, yeeeeAH!

Opening line: “Under the giant sycamore a man in a wheelchair was writing a letter.”

MURDER ENTERS THE PICTURE by Willetta Ann Barber and R.F.Schabelitz. Penguin, 1942.

The gimmick here is an artist-detective, Kit Storm, whose “on-the-spot sketches are important in solving murders.”

Of course they are.

“This is the best book in a unique series of profusely illustrated mysteries, in which the scores of sketches are an integral part of the story.”

And you thought gimmicky mysteries started with recipes and crochet patterns in the eighties!

Opening line:
“EZRA’S GHOST, come back to haunt the Plateau!”

ROLLING STONE by Patricia Wentworth. Popular Library, 1940.

I bought this for the cover since I already have the book in a much later edition. I love all Wentworth’s novels, uneven though they frequently are.

“Spike Reilly, member of a gang of picture thieves that has added murder to its nefarious activities, dies suddenly in a hotel room—and Peter Talbot, unofficial operative of the Foreign Office, decides to take his place.”

Opening line:
“The rain fell in a fine, steady drizzle.”

Ah, to be in England…

My favorite Wentworth novel is called RUN. Anyone read that? I’ve tried unsuccessfully for years to get hold of a copy of THE ADVENTURES OF JANE SMITH (at a price I could afford), which I believe has never been reprinted. Possibly for good reason, but I’m still curious.

VENTUROUS LADY by George Harmon Coxe. Dell, no date again, but I’m guessing late forties.

“In the looming shadows of an old barn where New York actors are producing plays for summer vacationers, mystery rewrites the script—with terror and death as the stars.”

Oh, I just LOVE their work! I’ve never miss one of their shows!

“In the late afternoon the wind, which had been southwest and steady, shifted to easterly, and the sky grew overcast, promising an end to the clear warm days of the past week.”

PIPER ON THE MOUNTAIN by Ellis Peters. Lancer, 1968.

Plenty on the web about this offering from Peters featuring Dominic Fell all grown up and falling in love with a murder suspect, so I’ll move along to…

SING A SONG OF HOMICIDE by James R. Langham. Popular Library, 1940.

Terrific cover and we appear to have a hitherto undiscovered set of married sleuths, Sammy and Ethel Abbott. I wonder if they are somehow related to Pat and Jean Abbott?

Anyhoooooo, no hint as to what the story is about although the title is in keeping with our murder in the arts theme.

Opening line:
“Some people claim that it isn’t nice to laugh at a fresh corpse.”

There we go. It’s interesting how many opening lines focus on weather. Personally I prefer a hint of danger or death the minute the curtain rises.

MURDER OF A NYMPH by Margot Neville. Pocket, 1951.

“She would never steal another woman’s man again!”

Safe to say.

“Beautiful and bad—Enone McGrath had enough wickedness for a woman twice her age.”

Uh…you mean 40? Jeez. What’s that supposed to mean?

“Not even 21, she couldn’t help exercising her charms on other women’s husbands.”

Cute little tyke. Maybe she’ll grow out of it.

“One night someone caught Enone on a lonely road and cooled her off permanently.”

Or maybe not.

Opening line:
“It would have been hard to say just where the train of happenings that led up to the disaster at Come-hither Bend began.”

Oh my. AAAALLLLLLL ABOARD! That’s pretty bad, not even taking into account the Come-hither Bend bit. Let’s ride a little further…

“That question—where events start from, in the primeval cave or yesterday afternoon—opens up a whole field of metaphysical speculation. Better let that lie.”

Agreed. Best to back up slowly and carefully, avoiding sudden movements or any noise…

MYSTERY IN BLUE by Gertrude E. Mallette. Berkeley Books, 1945.

“THE CASE OF THE MISSING BLUEPRINT.

Kerry Owen was a very good secretary. She also had an inquiring mind.”

And inquiring minds want to know!

“And from her very first day as secretary in an engineering office, Kerry’s mind starting asking questions: about the shambles in the files, the way papers were lost one day and turned up the next, and the furtive behavior of some of her coworkers…”

My God, Kerry is working IN MY OFFICE!

(Yes, I do still have a day job—or did.)

Opening line:
“Kerry Owen kept her face as unrevealing as she could while the university placement secretary spoke.”

And I can hear her now: You shouldn’t have taken all those lit and humanity courses, Kerry. What the hell were you thinking? You should have gone for an MBA in Business!

I picked up a few other odds and ends, but the last one I’ll mention here is SCENT OF MYSTERY by Kelly Roos. Dell, 1959.

“The touch of horror, the taste of excitement, the look of murder, and the…SCENT OF MYSTERY”

Yep, Mr. Thrilling is cooking supper once again!

“SCENT OF MYSTERY the first motion picture ever filmed in SMELL-O-VISION!”

I am NOT making this up!

It says right on the cover, “Now a brilliant Michael Todd, Jr. Production.”

You can’t make up stuff like that.

Opening line:
“The young Englishman checked his light meter against the brilliant Mediterranean sun.”

And what are you reading?

CONTEST #9 OPEN BOOK

PSSSSST! As of this minute, Mr. Thrilling has not yet removed Contest #9,
so here's a chance for all of you who haven't been able to figure
out the previous contests to take a shot. No guarantee how long
the contest will remain up...


1)Which of the following novels was NOT nominated for
a 2005 Agatha in the Malice Domestic Best Novel
category:
a-Owls Well That Ends Well by Donna Andrews
b-Rituals of the Season by Margaret Maron
c-A HOE LOT OF TROUBLE BY HEATHER WEBBER
d- The Body in the Snowdrift by Katherine Hall Page

Heather was nominated but for TROUBLE IN SPADES.



2)The DorothyL listserv is named after which mystery writer?
a-Dorothy Salisbury Davis
b-DOROTHY LEIGH SAYERS
c-Dorothy Cannell
d-Dorothy B. Hughes



3) A young Victorian widow’s investigation into her late husband’s mysterious life and death forms the basis of which novel?
a-The Egyptian Coffin by Jane Jakeman
b-A Body in Berkeley Square by Ashley Gardner
c-Murder on Black Friday by P.B. Ryan
d-AND ONLY TO DECEIVE BY TASHA ALEXANDER



4) Leslie Ford’s Washingtonian amateur sleuth Grace Latham is
aided in her investigations by her disapproving but
ultimately indulgent beau:
a-Colonel Mustard
b-COLONEL PRIMROSE
c-Colonel Protheroe
d-Colonel Walker


5) A young mother’s investigation into the death of an
environmentalist on a Northwest Air Force Base forms the
basis of which novel?
a-MOVING IS MURDER BY SARA ROSETT
b-The Big Nap by Ayelet Waldman
c-Confessions of a Naughty Mommy by Heidi Raykeil
d-Mommy Deadest by Jean Marcy



6)Which of the following queens of classic romantic
suspense also wrote children’s books?
a-Mignon G. Eberhart
b-MARY STEWART
c-Dorothy Eden
d-Victoria Holt


7) Who was the first female P.I. to star in a
series of popular and well-written novels?
a-Kinsey Millhone created by Sue Grafton
b-Sharon McCone created by Marcia Muller
c-V.I. Warshawski created by Sara Paretsky
d-MARY CARNER CREATED BY ZELDA F. POPKIN

Yep, decades before Sue Grafton or any of the gals was a twinkle
in their mother's eyes, Zelda F. Popkin was churning out smart
and well-written Dell Mapbacks about a department store
detective by the moniker of Mary Carner.

By the way, in my haste to get this contest up, I mis-typed
Mary's last name as CARVER. My bad! So this one became a freebie.


8) Who said “Book ‘Em, Dano.”?
a-STEVE MCGARRETT
b-Barnaby Jones
c-Frank Gannon
d-Thomas Magnum



9) Which of the following series is NOT by Elizabeth Peters?
a-Amelia Peabody
b-NINA QUINN
c-Vicky Bliss
d-Jacqueline Kirby

Nina Quinn is the sleuth with the green thumb in Heather Webber's
gardening series.



10) Diana Killian’s lord and web-master owns which well-known mystery-related website?
a-A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection
b-MysteryNet.com
c-THE THRILLING DETECTIVE WEB SITE
d-Mystery Lover’s Corner

I always tell Mr. Thrilling I married him for his website. He thinks I'm kidding.

It's a small world after all!

No, I'm not talking about my recent trip to Disneyland.
(Although...yes, I have to admit, it was really, really fun! Can I admit that as a semi-grown-up?)










Nope, I'm talking about the small world of blogs and bloggers and a fun
little time waster known as blog-tagging. My understanding of how blog-tagging
works is you devise some totally trivial questions and then you "tag"
three or four of your most tolerant pals, and they answer the questions
on your website and their own (I think? Or maybe you're just supposed to
answer on your own blog? Anybody?) and then THEY TAG three or four of their
own most tolerant pals, and so on and so on and so on like those shampoo
commercials for wheat germ hair products. (Remember those?)

Anyway, I was tagged by Heather Webber, who writes the Agatha-nominated Nina Quinn series.

So here are the questions, answers to which will not change the
future of the Western World, but might afford you a few moments
entertainment:

4 MOVIES YOU WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
To Catch a Thief
The Big Sleep
Gunga Din
The Uninvited

Actually, if I like a movie, the chances are good that I will watch it over
and over again. Especially because I like to write with movies playing in the background.

4 PLACES YOU HAVE LIVED:
Glendale
Malibu
Lake Isabella
Ventura

I've lived in California my whole life, so that narrows it down a bit.

4 TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
I don't watch a lot of TV, so it's easier if I
tell you four of my all time favorite TV shows:
The X Files
The New Avengers
MacMillan and Wife
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues


4 PLACES YOU HAVE BEEN ON VACATION:
Buffalo, New York
Seattle, Washington
Lake Isabella, California
Ventura, California

4 OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
Chicken Chou Mein
Anything chocolate (except chocolate-covered ants, maybe)
Chips and salsa
bacon

4 WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY:
(Beyond your own????)
Amazon
Yahoo Groups
Yahoo News
ebay (well, that's off and on--but when it's on, it's OBESSESSIVE)


4 PLACES YOU WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
The English Lake District
A swimming pool (drinks on the nearest table, please)
DISNEYLAND!!!!!
One of those luxury trains tooling through the Scottish Highlands

Tag 4 People you think will respond:
Tasha Alexander
Shelley McKibbon
Heidi Vornbrock Roosa
Tori Lennox

What's in the Bag?

Part of the fun of attending mystery conferences is the “goodies bag”
that you get upon registering. You usually get a copy of Mystery Scene
and EQMM and AHMM, a pin or two, a fridge magnet—but
best of all, you get books. New and totally free books!

The books are donated by publishers who hope to promote new
or potentially hot authors (or possibly they need tax write-offs).
HIGH RHYMES AND MISDEMEANORS turned up the Malice
book bag one year—this year, I’m sorry to say, Pocket was not
one of Malice’s supporters or book suppliers. I try not to blame
them for the M.D. book bag being, in my opinion, a little skimpy.

Really, that’s not fair to say because the book bags are NEVER
as full as I would like. I-- I’m addict. I’m one of those people
genetically incapable of saying, “Enough!” when it comes to books
and book-purchasing.

So what was in my Malice book bag? Well, here’s what I kept
(because not every bag gets the same books, and there’s always
a “book swap” table where you can toss back what you don’t feel
like carting home—or exchange it for something worth the $$$ for
extra-heavy luggage):

THE COSMIC CLUES by Manjiri Prabu. A first novel about a “detective
agency that combines astrological science with investigations!” This
is set in India and it stars Sonia Samarth—she’s out to nab an
“international criminal.”

First line: “This is Stellar Investigations and we don’t
read horoscopes!”

Frankly, this doesn’t sound like my kind of thing, but I hung
onto it because my mom might enjoy it—and because if it starts
getting brilliant reviews on DorothyL or elsewhere, I might take
a peek.

FEINT OF ART by Hailey Lind. I was happy to see this in the book
bag because I love mysteries that have to do with art, books,
history, archeology and murders from the past, and I’ve heard
enough about this one to be interested.

Former art-forger Annie Kincaid informs her ex-boyfriend museum
curator that his prized Caravaggio is a fake. Then the museum
janitor is killed and Annie’s ex disappears.

There is mention of a “charming but fickle art thief.”
I am so there!

First line: “Georges, please – try to concentrate on what I’m saying,”
I persisted. It is illegal and immoral to forge art.”

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARROTS by Donna Andrews. I’ve read and enjoyed
one other Meg Langslow novel, so I’m sure this will be fun. Meg goes
to her actor boyfriend’s television series fan convention and soon
after a run-in with the ego-maniacal series star, Meg is suspected
of offing the “Queen B.”

First line: “I woke up when Michael began screaming in the bathroom.”

I like that. It sounds like MY home.

TOO BIG TO MISS by Sue Ann Jaffarian. “Too big to miss—that’s
Odelia Grey. A never-married, middle-aged plus-size woman, she
struggles with her relationships, her crazy family, and her crazier
boss. And then there’s her knack for being in close proximity to
dead people…”

Even if Sue Ann and I had not been partners for the Author-Go-Round
at Malice, I’d have wanted to check this out. I believe Claudia and I
previewed this back in the days of the Wicked Company Book Preview Club.

Originally a self-published effort, Sue Ann sold the series to Midnight
Ink. How cool is that?

First line: “My weekend was D.O.A….dead on arrival.”

And that concludes what I chose to keep out of the book bag.

Now let me tell you what I ADDED to the book bag after visiting
the Dealer’s Room.

O’ARTFUL DEATH by Sarah Stewart Taylor. I’m not sure why I never
bothered to buy this book before meeting Sarah, because it has everything
I love: art, literature, a mystery that ties into the past—and an academic
heroine.

University professor Sweeney St. George is an expert in cemetery art.
Intrigued by the macabre graveyard statue of a beautiful woman, she
starts poking into the statues history and stumbles into murder
both old and new.

First line: “The girl’s nude body lay in the boat, her dead eyes
staring heavenward, her long hair coiling strangely to the ground.”

As already mentioned elsewhere I also bought MOVING IS MURDER by
Sarah Rosett, AND ONLY TO DECEIVE by Tasha Alexander, and MURDER
ON THE ROCKS by Karen MacInerney. I won’t rehash those reviews
here, but I’ll probably do little snippet reviews on Amazon later
in the month (because I just don’t spend enough time not writing books).

As is my want at these things, I scooped up some vintage reprints
from Tom and Enid at Rue Morgue including: THE BLACK PIANO by
Constance and Gwenyth Little (for my views on the Little Sisters,
read my essay at Girl Detective).

“Dick Rouston claimed Jane Cowrer murdered his fiancée, which made
for a pretty awkward situation, since Jane was equally convinced
that Dick had murdered her.”

Now doesn’t that sound like fun?

GLASS ON THE STAIRS by Margaret Scherf. A Henry and Emily Bryce
comedic mystery. This was a mistake. I was looking for the second
book in the series, but this is the third—it’s not a serious mistake,
because I’ll read it right after I find the second.

“Mrs. Otis Carver walked into Link Simpson’s gun and antique
shop one hot August morning and shot herself.”

Now THAT is a difficult customer.

CORPSE DE BALLET by Lucy Cores. First published in 1944, this
is the second and last book to feature amateur sleuth
(exercise maven, former dancer and part-time ballet reviewer)Toni Ney.

First line “Why don’t you take off your hat and stay awhile?” Toni
said hospitably.

Which is as good a place to stop as any. Later this week I’ll post
on the vintage mystery original paperbacks I picked up.
There's some good stuff there--even Mr. Thrilling was pleased with
a couple of my finds.

I REMEMBER MUMMY

CONTEST #8


1)The “Father” of modern detective crime fiction is
generally held to be:
a-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
B-EDGAR ALLAN POE
c-Wilkie Collins
d-Dashiell Hammett

You could make an argument for Collins being first with
THE MOONSTONE or Doyle being most influential with Holmes,
but Poe is the guy the learned experts (of whom I do not
number myself) tapped for "Father."

2)This Golden Age mystery writer also crafted witty
historical romances:
a-Barbara Cartland
b-Robert Louis Stevenson
c-Jane Austen
D-GEORGETTE HEYER

If you're a fan of the comedy of manners genre, you MUST
read Heyer. She is brilliant. Yes, her mysteries are clever,
but she really comes into her own with the historical
romances.

3)Hilda Adams, Sarah Keate and Cherry Ames share
which of the following traits in common:
A-ALL THREE ARE NURSES AND AMATEUR SLEUTHS
b-All three work as secretaries for overbearing
professional investigators
c-All three are overbearing professional investigators
d-All three unofficially help their policeman husbands
solve crimes


4)Hailed on the Guide to Classic Mystery and
Detection website as “the most important American
detective writers of the Twentieth Century,” Ellery
Queen is the pseudonym of:
A-FREDERIC DANNAY AND MANFRED B. LEE
b-Erle Stanley Gardner and A.A. Fair
c-Frances and Richard Lockridge
d-Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice

Dannay and Lee were cousins as well, which I
consider an interesting bit of trivia.

5)“Thin Man” William Powell appears as detective
Philo Vance in the film made from which of S.S. Van
Dine’s novels:
a-The Gracie Allen Murder Case
b-The Winter Murder Case
C-THE KENNEL MURDER CASE
d-The Dragon Murder Case


6) Theologian G.K. Chesterton wrote about clerical
sleuth:
a-Brother Cadfael
b-Rabbi Small
c-Sister Fidelma
D-FATHER BROWN


7)A famous mystery author’s disappearance for eleven
days in December 1926 was the subject of the film:
a-Julia
B-AGATHA
c-Laura
d-I Know Where I’m Going

Have you seen the film? So-so. Nice period touches, but
just not much substance.

8)Akira Kurosawa’s classic samurai film Yojimbo was
supposedly influenced by which Dashiell Hammett novel:
A-RED HARVEST
b-The Dain Curse
c-The Maltese Falcon
d-The Big Knockover

You might not expect this of me, but I'm quite a fan
of samurai movies--I've seen pretty much every one
made up until the 1980s.

9)The Crime Writers of Canada (CWC) Arthur Ellis
Awards are named after:
a-The literary critic and crime writer
B-CANADA'S OFFICIAL HANGMAN
c-Canada’s first Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman
d-The first criminal to receive capital punishment in
Toronto

A creepy bit of trivia!


10)The Malice Domestic Mystery Conference is always
held in:
a-Richmond, VA
b-Seattle, WA
C-WASHINGTON, DC
d-Burlington, VT

Actually, Arlington VA would be more correct. I let this one be
a freebie though most folks seemed to guess correctly.

Wild Kingdom

I'm not having a good week.

It started out all right. We went to the L.A. Festival
of Books at UCLA on Saturday. It was nice and cool--the
haze burned off quite early (toasting Mr. Thrilling to a
sexy crisp by the end of the very long day), and even the
madding crowd didn't irk me too much (although I have to
admit that if I wasn't there signing, wild horses wouldn't
drag me to the campus during the book festival. The mobs of
people and cramped booths do not make for the optimum buying
experience).

I signed at Book 'Em
Mysteries and Crime Time, and it went fairly well
at both places, but Linda at Crime Time had
some mildly disturbing news: she was
unable to order HIGH RHYMES AND MISDEMEANORS or
VERSE OF THE VAMPYRE from Ingram. Both books
were listed as backordered and unavailable.







Yikes!

Of course there might be a mistake somewhere....

But not the kind of news that soothes a skittish author's soul.

After I'd finished my signings I thought I would lend
a hand at the MWA (Mystery Writers of America) booth.
Alexandra Sokoloff (THE HARROWING--great title isn't it?)
was manning the booth with me, and she had just slipped
off for a few minutes of well-deserved respite when
someone plumped down in the seat next to me.

"I'm going to sit down," announced a woman.

"Oh. Okay," says I. I thought perhaps she was feeling
faint. It was getting pretty hot by then. But she
proceeded to tell me about her cousin, a mystery writer
who she had met for the first time that morning and who
she planned to rendezvous with in The Mystery Bookstore booth.
After a minute or two I realized that she was not...quite
...right.

Alexandra came back and the lady pointedly ignored her while
continuing to occupy Alexandra's seat, staring fixedly at me
and then staring off into space. Alexandra and I sort of talked
around her--and then the lady tuned back in, looked at me
and announced, "It's time for you to go."

"It is?" I said.

"Yes. You need to go now. My cousin is coming."

Okaaaay. She didn't appear to be armed. (Yes, I did
double-check.) So I laughed. "Okay, Well, I'll just wait
till your cousin gets here."

This was not the right answer. She started muttering
to herself and I don't think any of it was flattering
to me. But about then one of the very nice people manning
The Mystery Bookstore booth came along and gently detached
her from the MWA table and moved her outside.

Alexandra and I compared notes on dealing with that
unpredictable animal, John Q. Public.

After the book fest, I persuaded Mr. Thrilling
to stop at Jack in the Box. This took some doing. Mr.
Thrilling is always in favor of cooking real food. This
usually works well because I am all in favor of eating
real food--especially if I don't have to cook it. But
sometimes I don't want real food. I want the food that
Jack built. However, I worked my wiles and got my
got my favorite chicken club salad, and then we headed
home and watched THE LATE SHOW with Art Carney and Lillian
Tomlin, which is now out on DVD.

This is a movie I hadn't seen in years, and I was pleasantly
surprised. It's a tidy little update on the screwball
mysteries of the 30s and 40s. In fact, as the Carney P.I.
character even says to the ditzy Tomlin dame,
"This town never changes. They just move the names around."


Both Carney (as an aging P.I. struggling to keep
his head above water--and retain a little dignity
while he dogpaddles into the sunset) and Tomlin
as a nutty clothes designer and talent agent and cat
owner) do a very good job--the success of the movie
depends entirely on these characters and our instant
affection for them. The plot is brisk
and reasonably tight--overall quite entertaining and
well worth a second look, if you haven't seen it
in a few years.

Mr. Thrilling and I don't have many ops for lolling about
on the sofa eating fast food and watching flickers (and even
occasionally dozing) -- in fact, these days it's rare that we're
even in the house at the same time -- so that was much
needed quality time together. Sunday I worked in the garden
mostly planting seeds and pulling weeds. I noticed
that there seemed to be a lot of bees in the wisteria.

I'm very proud of that wisteria. It took me five years
to coax it to flower--every time I look out the window
at those luscious purple flowers draping through
the whatchamacallit slats I feel like I've successfully
worked a magical spell. The garden is really
lovely right now. The roses are blooming as well
as the lilacs--gorgeous! And I planted them all!
I did it! Me!

But as you would expect with magic, there
are unexpected side effects. On Monday Mr. Thrilling
calls me at work with the news that there is a swarm
of bees apparently taking up residence in the drainpipe
beneath the library (right over the front door, in other
words).

This is not jolly news for any homeowner--and for
someone who freaks out over bees as much as I do
(we must all have our little phobias--and bees and
heights are mine) it is really BAD news.

Mr. Thrilling waged war all day with cans of hornet
killer spray while I--Cassandra-like--waxed doom and
gloom over the phone and advised hiring professional
killers FAST. This is my solution for every problem,
but this time my reasoning was sound. But Mr. Thrilling
was convinced that he could win the good fight and by
the time he left for work he assured me the tide had
turned. So I toddle home and by the time I drive
up about seven o'clock, I can see that our winged
enemies are still buzzing around with the total confidence
of WWI aces--and renewed numbers.
I slipped in through the garage and peeked out the front door.
UPS had left a box--my long-awaited Malice book box!--and
it was COVERED IN BEES!!!

!!!!

Words cannot convey the hideousness of this moment.
Not that I didn't give Mr. Thrilling an earful
of them when he got home. I mean, think of
it: a furry quivery mound of bees all over my
precious treasure chest of books!!

Ugh.

So at last Mr. Thrilling arrived home with the reinforcements
(more cans of hornet poison spray) and by then I
was acting out the last half of the latest horror movie--except
that I eschewed the usual skimpy wardrobe. My view
was that we should abandon the house for the night and
think about putting it on the market the following day.
I was, safe to say, a wee bit stressed.

But Mr. Thrilling insisted that it was now cold
enough to really do some damage to his foe, so
out he went with his trusty spray cans. First he
liberated the book box (the man does share my priorities)
and then he emptied two cans of poison into the drainpipe.

And that's when the fun really started. You could
hear the angry buzzing through the walls--I mean we are
talking thousands of furious bees who had our name and
number and were dialing collect.

Again I pushed for abandoning the house and fleeing
to my parents or my sister's. Mr. Thrilling comes from
pioneer stock, and he was confident that the poison
would soon take effect.

So we waited while the bees buzzed like
all the electrical wiring in the place was
about to blow.

And then two bees appeared in the upstairs hall.

I again suggested abandoning the fort. Mr. Thrilling
suggested turning off the lights, which he said were
attracting the enemy, and retreating to the
downstairs to go through the rescued book box.
Apparently he thought distracting me would be
advisable--or even possible.

So we doused the lights and went downstairs
and, yes, I did calm a little gloating over
my Malice purchases (to be detailed in a later
post). We were about halfway through the book
box when a bee landed on my nose.

You heard me. A BEE LANDED ON MY NOSE.

Mr. Thrilling says there is no doubt about my
Irish heritage given the Banshee-like shriek that
echoed off the vault ceiling. He also made cracks
about my impromptu modern dance routine. Yes, he
was a barrel of laughs as he set about killing
the THIRD bee to infiltrate our sanctuary in less than
an hour. He just couldn't get over the improbability of
mine being the nose the bee would choose to land
on--it would never work in a book or a movie, he
assured me, because it would be too cheesey, too clumsy.

Of course if we had been filming a horror movie,
he hastened to add after I gave him The Look,
as soon as he laughed at me he would be eaten
by a giant bee.

"That's right," I said curtly. "You would be killed."

"I don't mean to laugh at you," he assured me,
trying to keep a straight face. "Really."

WhatEVER.

Anyway, that was it. I told him I was spending the
night in a hotel. It was nearly ten o'clock by then,
and I desperately needed sleep. Mr. Thrilling assured
me that spending nights in hotels with me was high
on his list of favorite things to do, and we grabbed
our night things and headed out for the local Marriot.
No Sleep System, but no bees either.

The next morning the bees were down to a few hundred or so.
Mr. Thrilling dosed them liberally with
poison--and soapy water--and by the time I got
home from work everything looked pretty normal
other than the carpet of dead bees over the lawn
and walkway.

So--feeling a little calmer--I braved the bedroom balcony
to water the plants. And I startled--the feeling was mutual
--the doves that hang out there lately. I noticed one
of the doves seemed pretty darned upset. She flew to the
chimney and kept cooing at me, and I glanced down at
the basket I was watering and realized I had just
watered a tiny, pale pink egg.

Needless to say I was as upset as Mrs. Dove at
this gaffe. I love those doves and now I've
probably destroyed their little baby dove. But
having watered it, there wasn't much I could do.
I went back inside and got a cup of birdseed for
Mrs. Dove in case she decided to come back.
I kept peeking out, but she didn't return to
the nest as far as I could tell.

But then when I woke up this morning both doves
were back on the balcony (in the wrong basket).
Mr. Thrilling went out and watered this afternoon
and said Mrs. Dove was back in the right basket
and she didn't move when he watered everything
on the balcony (which is lucky for him because I told
him NOT to go out there while she was there--whereupon
he asked to see my ID).

And she's out there right now--the wind blowing
like a hurricane and no shelter for that basket
at all if it rains--which it looks ready to do.
I'm afraid Mrs. Dove might be wasting her time....

MUM'S THE WORD

The results of Contest #7--which was apparently really
tough (because only 3 people managed to get all
ten questions) are as follows:

1) All of the following novels are set in the 1920s
with one exception. Which is the exception?
A-SECRET SERVICE OPERATOR #13 BY ROBERT CHAMBERS
b-Moonlight at Greystone by Louisa Bronte
c-Anything Goes by Jill Churchill
d-Damsel in Distress by Carola Dunn

2) Using a different pen name, this best-selling
historical author previously wrote a mystery series
featuring a gay TV reporter:
a-Steven Saylor
B-ROBERT ALEXANDER
c-Bruce Alexander
d-Laurie King

R.D. Zimmerman wrote the award-winning Todd Mill's
series back in the gay '90s. See, there is life
after series death.

3) All but one of the following novels is set in
Japan. Which is the exception?
a-The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi
b-The Assassin’s Touch by Laura Joh Rowland
c-Death at the Crossroads by Dale Furutani
D-THE RED PAVILION BY ROBERT VAN GULIK

No, the titles do NOT all look alike. Van Gulik wrote
the Judge Dee series which is set in China.


4) Romance writer Mary Westmacott also wrote mysteries
under the pen name of:
a-Mignon G. Eberhart
b-Mary Roberts Rinehart
C-AGATHA CHRISTIE
d-Nora Roberts

Personally I find the Westmacott stuff a bit depressing,
but anyone who thinks Christie couldn't write characters
needs to investigate her work as Mary Westmacott.

5) Eccentric master sleuths typically outsmart the
police. Who was Nero Wolfe’s favorite law enforcement
nemesis?
a-Inspector Japp
B-INSPECTOR CRAMER
c-Inspector Lestrade
d-Inspector Clouseau

If you put Inspector Clouseau, you get points for having
a sense of humor--but you won't win any mummy cases.

6) Who was John Steed’s first crime-fighting partner?
a-Emma Peel
b-Tara King
c-Purdey
D-DR. KEEL

The MALE Dr. Keel was Steed's first partner in crime-fighting.
Ian Hendry starred as Dr. David Keel. I think he only lasted
the first season.


7) Who is NOT Nancy Drew’s chum?
a-Bess Marvin
b-George Fayne
C-HONEY WHEELER
b-Helen Corning

I'm sure Nancy would have got on with Honey just fine,
but in fact, Honey Wheeler is Trixie Belden's poor
little rich girl pal.

8) How many children did Charlie Chan have?
a-one
b-eight
c-three
D-FOURTEEN

There was some confusion about this question.
See here


9) This Scottish-born author wrote a series featuring
a Scotland Yard inspector:
a-M.C. Beaton
B-JOSEPHINE TEY
c-Ian Rankin
d-John Connolly

Okay, I admit this was a tricky one--the key was
SCOTLAND YARD INSPECTOR. Beaton and Rankin write
about Scottish cops, but Tey wrote about Alan Grant
who works for The Yard--which is in England.
Connolly is Irish. Who cares what he writes.
(OKAY, OKAY, I'M KIDDING!!!!)


10) Which of the following mystery/crime novels does
NOT feature a “real” vampire:
a-Baked to Death by Dean James
b-Death Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
C-VERSE OF THE VAMPYRE BY DIANA KILLIAN
d-Smoke and Shadows by Tanya Huff

At this risk of a spoiler (could this really be a spoiler?)
there are no REAL LIVE (or real dead) vampires hovering
over the lovely village (with the scary crime rate) of Innisdale.

Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington

Now that I'm mostly recovered from my adventures at the Malice Domestic Mystery Convention, I thought I'd share some of the highlights of my trip. First off, I HIGHLY recommend this convention if you are a fan of the traditional or cozy mystery genre. It's a relatively small and very cordial gathering of authors and readers with an emphasis on the tender care and feeding of fans.

I arrived Thursday afternoon following a fast and totally trouble-free flight (you have no idea what a pleasant change that was for me because my flying tends to be plagued by delayed and/or missed flights, terrifying taxi rides, and lost luggage). Anyway, I arrived safely and found that the books and gift basket that I had shipped ahead to the hotel had also arrived safely. Score! So I pre-registered, delivered my "vintage mystery" gift basket, and then settled down to enjoy room service including a bottle of Clos du Bois pinot noir and a box of Sees candy--and let us not forget that delicious cloud of pillows and comforter known as a "sleep system." I rented two really awful movies--UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION and AEON FLUX. Don't ask me why I am always attracted to movies about violent and energetic women in tight clothes because personally I'm much happier in my nest of pillows eating chocolates and drinking wine. Mr. Smith attributes this to my feline bloodline--although I've never met many wine-drinking cats.

Nothing was scheduled to begin on Friday until the Author-Go-Round which is a kind of musical chairs sales pitch whereon teams of authors rush from table to table taking turns synopsizing their books in 90 seconds to folks who actually volunteer to be victims. I was paired with Sue Ann Jaffarian who I believe we previewed a million years ago when Claudia and I ran the Wicked Company Book Preview Club. Anyway, Sue Ann and I met for lunch and chatted a bit about books and publishing (Sue Ann started out self-publishing, did very well marketing her books and has since sold them to Midnight Ink--which is a lovely and encouraging success story, so take heart those of you still struggling to land that first wily fish).

Anyway, the Author-Go-Round was fun in a nerve-wracking way, and at the very last table who should I run into but last week's Guest Girl Detective, Heidi Vornbrock Roosa , which was lucky because it turned out I had her OLD cell phone number and would probably never have managed to find her on my own--given that my tendency at conventions is to go hide in my room and rent terrible movies.

Heidi, who is every bit as smart and charming in real life as she is on the net, chatted for a bit and then we (naturally) headed over to the Dealer Room where she further endeared herself to me by asking for my advice on vintage mysteries. (I steered her towards some Leslie Ford gems and a couple of Little sister novels from Tom and Enid at Rue Morgue. I'll detail my Dealer Room purchases--of which there were many--once the books arrive (I had them shipped home since I sort of--predictably--lost my head and spent waaaay too much money).

Somewhere along the way Heidi and I connected with Sara Rosett, who I've corresponded with a few times, and Tasha Alexander. Sara is one of these sweet and sassy Southern types and Tasha is a wicked and vivacious blonde. Both Sara and Tasha have debut novels--Sara's is MOVING IS MURDER and Tasha's is AND ONLY TO DECIVE. So naturally we had to all head back to the Dealer Room and buy each other's books. Or was that Saturday? It all blurs together, I must admit.




Anyway, eventually Heidi and I headed out for dinner through the amazing underground tunnels that lead from the Marriot to the Metro to...well, I have no idea how far they extend, but they are clean and relatively quiet and full of shops and cafes. Very cool. When we surfaced it was raining. We had dinner at a seafood place and chatted a bit about writing and publishing (what else?).

On the way back to the hotel (in the underground city) we ran across (not literally--although it's a great place to set a murder) Sara and her agent. So Heidi and Sara and I headed off to the bar--the bar accomodations are my one and only complaint about the conference. The main bar closed at 10:00 and the mini bar that we were directed to really did not have the seating or staff to accomodate.

We were joined by Jan Giles who is this amazing woman who had traveled all the way from Bahrain for the convention--more to the point she's a fan and not a writer, so we actually discussed (for a few moments, anyway) something besides writing and publishing.

Just a wonderful day talking (and buying) books. What more could you ask for?

It wasn't until I was lying there snuggled in the cloud bank watching LAW AND ORDER that it occurred to me I hadn't gone to a single panel all day!

Saturday was pretty much the same thing again--Sara and I had lunch and headed to the Dealer Room where she introduced me to Sarah Stewart Taylor (who I always hear I should be reading because her books are sort of similiar to mine) and Karen MacInerney who like me is a BookEnds client. So more buying of each other's books and then signing each other's books and then we found Heidi and Tasha and the gang of us rounded up some chairs and talked about...you'll never guess...writing and publishing!!!



You would think it would be boring, wouldn't you, but it isn't because most of the time you have to refrain from blethering nonstop about writing and publishing because normal, sane people, like your friends and family, can't take it. So you try your best to pretend that you're not obsessed and have regular and reasonable interests too. Sooo...after an afternoon of this--again missing all the panels--I went up to my room and indulged in chocolates and wine and pouring (er--PORING--that was a Freudian slip) over my hoard of new (old) books. Absolute and utter heaven for about ninety minutes before I had to get ready for the banquet.

I wore my new black beaded blouse and slit satin skirt--people wear everything there--I saw denim shorts and vintage clothing, but a banquet means dress-up for me and Miss Manners (besides, I like playing dress up). Anyway I was supposed to "host" a table, but no one seemed really clear about what that meant. If I had it to do again--and that might be next year, now that I think of it--I'd order a bottle of wine for the table and maybe supply some kind of party favors. Anyway I was lucky to have a great bunch of people at the table--two terrific ladies from "across the river" Noreen and... her sister's name escapes me, but I'd have loved to chat with them more. And then Sue Stimpson and her partner Jane Dilucchio--Jane who has a new book out called RELATIONSHIPS CAN BE MURDER. Sue Rice and three other very pleasant ladies who were too far across the expanse of water glasses and candles and butter rosettes to really talk to.

The dinner was the usual unremarkable chicken with equally forgettable salad and side. The award ceremony was brief and rather touching--this was the 18th Malice and there was a great deal of reminiscing.

I won't go into the awards as the winners are listed numerous elsewheres. I agreed with some of the votes and strongly disagreed with others--and that's how these things go. It's a great honor to be nominated and winning depends on many variables. In this case winners and nominees were all equally gracious--and Heather Webber (TROUBLE IN SPADES) gets extra points on sheer classiness for putting aside whatever disappointment she may have felt to take a few minutes to listen to me have a career melt-down moment and offer some wise words.

I wound up that evening with Tasha and Heidi and Sara in the bar where we swore an oath in blood and GTs and formed THE GOOD GIRLS KILL FOR MONEY Club. Well, maybe I exaggerate slightly (at least about the blood--there were definitely GTs involved). There's nothing like a weekend of spending too much money and eating too many carbs--and ultimately confessing your darkest insecurities--to move from friendly acquaintanceship to the basis of real friendships and strategic alliances.

(Anyway, you will no doubt hear many stories of Malice Mischief, but take it from me, The GGKFM Club were the last ones to leave the bar. It's just talk, talk, talk with those other authors.)

On Sunday I had my panel CLASS, MANNERS AND OTHER THINGS--and it was one of the best panels I've been on. The topic is one I think we could have all blabbed on and on about forever. I discussed Leslie Ford (particularly appropriate in that setting!) and it all went really well. I was hardly nervous at all.

One of the nicest moments was when Katherine Hall Page, the Guest of Honor (and Agatha winner for best novel) told me before our panel that she had read and loved SONNET OF THE SPHINX--and she really had read it! She actually was able to discuss Peter and Grace's relationship. That just impressed the heck out of me. How incredibly gracious. She even mentioned the book again when we went into the signing hall--and by the way, I actually had a line of people wanting me to sign their books. I admit that floored me. The last convention I went to was three years ago and I might have been a ghost for all anyone noticed me. (That might have had something to do with the bedsheet I wore over my head--I'm KIDDING!)

So that was my little moment in the sun and then Tasha and I met up at Sara's panel (which also went really well) and then we all said our goodbyes and I had to rush off to catch my plane.

The plan is that next year the GOOD GIRLS KILL FOR MONEY club will stay over on the Sunday in order to relax and have a little mini-vacation--and maybe go to the Tea, which I had to miss since I was flying out at 3:00ish.

So lovely, lovely trip--and on the flight home all the usual disasters happened.

The one bright spot was Sara's MOVING IS MURDER, which I had the foresight to bring on the plane. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I'm not a big fan of books with children--let alone a novel that offers the selling point of a "Mom Zone Mystery," but this was very well done. It's low-key and gently paced--the characters are engaging and believable--and the new mother thing is smoothly handled and provides a nice sub-plot. (Kudos for the baby Livvy being a "real" baby. Part of what is so tiresome in books with children is how totally unreal the children are--too cute, too precocious or too much in the way of the plot.) Anyway, Sara did a great job in creating a unique and interesting setting -- the background being that of military spouse. It's a nicely done debut novel.

Anyway, we arrived late in Phoenix and I had only nine minutes to run across the @#$%^*ing airport and make my connecting flight, they lost my luggage, and when I got to Burbank my shuttle driver turned out to be a maniac who ranted and raved at me for being late, nearly ran us off the road several times, and told me all about his co-workers private lives in loud and embarrassing detail. Holy moly! I was never so glad to see home and my dear Mr. Smith!

And now I can't wait for Bouchercon and the next adventures of the GOOD GIRLS KILL FOR MONEY Club.

CHASING AMELIA

This week's guest Girl Detective has more secret identities than me! Heidi Vornbrock Roosa was
shortlisted for the 2005 Crimewriter's Association (CWA) Debut Dagger.
She's also a past winner of the Malice Domestic Grant. Heidi writes
psychological thrillers under the nom de plume of Regina Harvey, and,
as McLean Jacobson, she writes about a psychic girl detective by the
name of Suny Davis.

One of the pleasures of attending Malice this year will be the
opportunity to finally hook up with the multi-faceted Ms. Roosa!

===================================



How is a character born? Take the protagonist, Dr. Jacob Baldwin,
from my first completed novel, Fox and Rainbow. He was born of angst
when I decided I didn’t want to become a psychotherapist in the midst
of seeking my degree. That, and a slow ten minutes following a
pick-up truck with a gun rack mounted in the rear window down a
winding back-county road that itself followed the path of the Patapsco
River.



And that’s pretty typical. Take any emotional state a writer is in
at a given moment. Add an odd event, a chance comment overheard, a
scenario that just begs the question, “What if…?” And voila, a
character is born to witness the event, to hear or speak the
comment, to be the actor who walks the “what if” to wherever it leads.



But sometimes, it doesn’t work that way. Take Suny Davis, the
sixteen year-old protagonist in my series that begins with
Extrasensory Deception. She sprang fully formed from my head,
like Athena, spouting a first-person narration that made me
smile as I scrawled. But if I dare to look a little more deeply,
if I check my calendar, diary and library fines receipts for the same
time, I will find that, in truth, Suny Davis did not spring to life
fully formed. And damn it, she didn’t spring from my head alone.



I owe a debt of gratitude to Elizabeth Peters. The author of
the Amelia Peabody series of Victorian archaeological mysteries,
she has also penned contemporary series featuring archaeological
scholar Vicky Bliss and other stand-alones featuring plucky females
of a decidedly not gothic nature. And this debt I owe her?
Firstly and most heavily, I am in her debt for the hours of
reading pleasure and delicious anticipation of those precious
hours she has given me. But also for three other gifts she gave.





First, a little backstory, (the bane of every author’s existence –
bear with me). After I had finished Fox and Rainbow, I quickly
landed an agent, did multiple revisions, then severed the
relationship. It was an awful time. Here I had this angst-filled
crime novel, born of angst, carved into new form in angst-ridden
hours of editing. Then the realization that my agent and I weren’t
suited. Talk about angst. So what did I do? I stopped writing and
began a completely angst-free period of self-indulgent reading.
And one of the treats I allowed myself? The complete
works of Elizabeth Peters.



Of course, Amelia Peabody, the embodiment of what I have coined
as the “oblivious narrator” is a favorite. She, unaware of her
own comic foibles, leads the reader through a first-person account
of tombs and pyramids, temples and excavations, throwing in a few
dead bodies, a multitude of side characters, a recurring uber-villain,
the care and feeding of her polyglot and precocious son, and her own
romantic interludes with husband, Emerson.




And thus, the first gift I received was the tutorial Ms. Peters
had unknowingly given me in creating a sustainably compelling
character. One of the things I loved about Amelia was her way
of living outside the bondage of societal expectations, daily
using her intelligence, her self-righteous attitude, and her
boldness. And Ramses, Amelia’s inordinately bright, vaguely
annoying, multi-lingual son, had won my heart early on by being
the epitome of what I myself once was to a lesser degree. It was
my love of these two characters, and the way they fit into my own
experiences and understanding of the world, that led me to
create Suny Davis.



Raised more by the books in the libraries where her father
stashed her while off on various globe-trotting adventures
than by the father himself, Suny is a Victorian throwback
teenager, much-traveled and able to speak multiple languages,
though socially-inept, and worse, unaware of her ineptitude.
Imagine my satisfaction as reader after reader has mentioned
Peter’s Amelia in the descriptions of why they love Suny.



The second gift Ms. Peters gave me is the annual Malice
Domestic traditional mystery convention. I discovered it
in a roundabout way. Such a fan am I of Ms. Peters that
I decided to stalk her. Easy enough, she lives in a historic
farmhouse less than thirty miles away from my Columbia,
Maryland home. And -- bonus -- my daughter is friends with
the daughter of the landscape designer who installed her
Egyptian-inspired garden. Alas, after much traversing of
local historic farmland and much begging of the landscape
designer to allow me to personally weed Ms. Peters’s garden,
I still could not get close to the woman. I did, however,
trip over the fact that she would be honored with a Lifetime
Achievement Award at the annual traditional mystery convention
in Washington D.C., Malice Domestic, a convention she helped
bring into being. And, lo and behold, they sponsored a grant
for the encouragement of unpublished writers. The first three
chapters of Extrasensory Deception (then titled Hypothesis for
Murder) won the 2004 Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished
Writers. If her writing had not inspired my obsession, I would
not have gained this experience and recognition.




The last gift I have to thank her for is my name. My pseudonym,
that is. Or, rather, one of my pseudonyms… Truth is, Elizabeth
Peters is the pseudonym of Barbara Mertz, a doctor of Egyptology,
who also writes romantic suspense as Barbara Michaels. Confused?
Wait, let me add a few more names in there. I wanted something cute
and chick-lit-like for the Suny Davis books. My own name is an
unpronounceable mouthful and the pseudonym I was considering for
the darker books I was writing (Regina Harvey) was already, in my
mind, a harder, more sinister name. So I did what Ms. Mertz did
when faced with a publisher who thought her mysteries were too
different from her romantic suspense books. I used my children’s
names to create a nom de plume. Now, Ms. Mertz had it pretty
straight-forward with an Elizabeth and a Peter, but I wasn’t going
to have such an easy time of it. In the end, I use the “Mc” from
my daughter, Mikaela, the “Lean” from my other daughter’s middle
name, Lane, and “Jacobson,” from my son, Jacob. So, if Extrasensory
Deception is published, look for it in the mystery section,
by author, McLean Jacobson.



Too bad it won’t be closer on the shelves to Elizabeth Peters,
but you can’t have it all.



More about Elizabeth Peters can
be found on her fan site.

Walking Down a Strange New Street...

Just a quick note. On Thursday I'll be flying to Washington D.C. for the Malice Domestic Mystery Conference.

Malice is focused towards traditional mysteries--cozies and classics and everything else that falls into that general category. Usually Agatha Christie is the example held up.

I haven't been to Malice before--in fact, I haven't been to any conventions in a year or two. I'm looking forward to it. I plan to get there Thursday afternoon and just...relax. Maybe rent a movie and have room service and read a few magazines and...and...

Mr. Thrilling will stay home and tend the home fires (and here's hoping that he doesn't set any). No doubt he will be renting episodes of The Wire and The Sopranos from Netflix and stuffing himself with everything I won't let him eat. No, I'm not talking junk food. If ONLY we were talking junk food. We're talking weird Canadian fare. CHEESE CURDS, for crying out loud! And that cheese and gravy and french fry mess.

I don't think I've had a vacation in the past ten years that didn't revolve around writing or a music gig. Which is not a complaint, because these are the things I love to do, but I do sometimes wonder what it would be like just to go somewhere and swim. Or sleep.

Frankly I wouldn't mind staying home and relaxing, but that would never happen. Speaking of home--the doves are back. They've been cooing and fluttering around the bedroom balcony--they like the hanging baskets, and I like them, so that's perfect. AND I noticed today that my five-year old wisteria is finally blooming. Scads and scads of purple flowers! Maybe it was all that rain? The garden is so beautiful right now--even though I've had almost no time to work in it.

I've signed up for the Author Go Round on Friday at noon and I think I'm supposed to "host" a table at the banquet Saturday night. Sunday is my panel: CLASS, MANNERS AND OTHER THINGS.

Moderator: Eve Sandstrom
Panel: Class, Manners and Other Things
Description: The mystery as a vehicle for social history
Location, Date and Time: Salon J, 04.23.06, 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Signing: No. 7 11:00 a.m.


Tomorrow I'm going to try and find some time in the morning to plant sweet pea seeds--my own little way of celebrating Easter. Hope you're having a beautiful Easter weekend and that this spring will be the loveliest ever.

If you're at Malice, please come by and say hi!

Blame it on Trixie

This week's guest Girl Detective, the clever
and talented Shelley McKibbon, discusses the
challenge of writing realistic and engaging
series characters--and the influence of Trixie
Belden. Though Shelley has yet to sell her first
novel, it's only a matter of time--and I guarantee
I'll be first in line to buy a copy!

================================================
The people who live in your head....

Here's the thing: when you write amateur-sleuth
mysteries, you're already counting on the reader
to willingly suspend disbelief. Nobody believes
in crime-fighting dog trainers or English teachers
or peewee hockey players. Not really. Just by
picking up your book the reader is agreeing to
meet you at least halfway. The question is, where
do you as the writer plan to meet your reader?

There are writers whose grandmothers apparently
told them they might as well be hung for sheep
as lambs and who create wild stories with
improbable plots and colourful characters.
I enjoy stories like this but I don't think
I could write one, mostly because what I
hear in my head is my own cool-yet-sort-of-terrifying
grandmother telling me, "There's no need
to go to hell with the joke." Right now I'm
working on a series featuring a nosy third-grade
teacher and her horse trainer sidekick. If I don't
want the reader to do all the heavy lifting, I need
to find ways to make my implausible setup seem a little
more likely.

To me, a major element in that is creating a
plausible central character. In my stories,
that seems to translate into protagonists who are…
well, pretty ordinary, really. Part of my reasoning
is this: to me, a lot of the pleasure of the
amateur-sleuth story is in watching an ordinary person
deal with extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, when
I started work on a mystery of my own I made my
sleuth, Tracy, very life-sized. I did make some initial
attempts to make her more "interesting" by injecting sarcasm
and cynicism into her, but it just didn't stick:
the minute I let up she turned into a much warmer
character. And I also realized that most of the "colourful"
characteristics I'd tried to apply to Tracy were actually
covered by the rest of the cast--Lynn is a more skilled
horsewoman, Alana is snarky, Jamie's smart, and Ty has a clan of
offbeat relatives down in Texas--or at least he says
he does. Even so, the whole cast is composed of pretty
normal people, for a given value of "normal." I just seem
to write them that way.

I blame Trixie Belden, really.





I don’t know if it's true that you’re either
a Nancy Drew
fan or a Trixie fan, but it's a fact that I could never
relate to Nancy and was always more interested in Trixie
and her friends. Part of the attraction was the recurring
cast of named animal characters, but in retrospect I think
a bigger factor was simply that I could relate to Trixie.
She was a pretty average kid: not pretty, not a great student
(in fact, the way Trixie neglected her schoolwork often made
me very nervous as I read about it), inclined to be tactless
and quick-tempered but genuinely remorseful when she messed up.
The fact she was a middle child was another point of similarity
that was probably more important than I realized at the time.
Her parents laid down the law when they thought it was necessary,
and sometimes her older brothers did the same. I wouldn't say
Trixie was exactly defiant when this happened--certainly not
toward her parents--but she always had the confidence to
continue her investigations even in the face of disapproval
from people she really did want to approve of her. Given the
kind of middle child I was, I found Trixie's behaviour
terrifying and sort of exhilarating all at once.




What I didn't really register at the time was the
degree to which my identification with Trixie allowed
me to insert myself into the story, and incidentally also
helped me suspend my disbelief at the notion of a crime-fighting
eighth-grader. Because I could relate to, and believe in,
Trixie as a character, the stories in which she
appeared felt a lot more plausible.

I didn't think about all this when I was an eighth-grader
myself, but I think it was a major reason why I was so
drawn to this type of character when I actually started
trying to write mysteries. And writing would-be realistic
characters probably has benefits for me as someone who's
learning to write: I have to keep stopping to think about
how a real person might react to the murder of someone she's
known for years and never liked very much. I have always
had a tendency to go for flip dialogue, which is fun to
write even though I don't know whether I'm any good at it,
but when I actually began to ask myself whether the character
would actually say that, it made me write more carefully.
In the same way, Tracy's motivation for sleuthing was something
I tried very hard to make credible, because if you believe in
her, I don't think you'll believe she just
decided to poke into a murder because she was bored or something.

I also found that trying to make Tracy and her friends feel as
real as possible also helped me avoid falling into a few "wannabe
original" traps. There are plenty of mysteries out there with
unique" characters, and while the actual originals ring
true, I've noticed that the ones that aren't as well-written
aren't unique at all. In fact, some of them read as though
the author had some sort of "quirky" checklist. I said
before that I tried for a while to make Tracy sardonic,
and originally she had a few bitter quips about past
romantic disasters. When I thought about it,
though, I decided I was only doing that because
I'd read and enjoyed a number of mysteries featuring
troubled female leads.




Okay, here's the thing: I watch American Idol
(and, in fact, the Canadian version too) and if there's
one thing I've learned from Idol it's that just
because a contestant really likes a song,
it doesn't mean he or she can sing it.

And just because I like to read angst sometimes,
it doesn't mean I'm any good at writing it.
I just didn't have a good reason for giving
Tracy those qualities.

While I was thinking about that, it also
occurred to me that a character living in the
city in which she'd grown up, with living parents,
should probably see them once in a while. And that
got me thinking about whether
he was a character who'd be close to her family.
I gave serious thought to whether she'd have a screw-up
sibling who could feature in later plot developments.
I came to the conclusion that, like troubled leads,
I'd read that one too many times already and wasn't confident
I could do anything interesting with the concept. And I like
characters who are dealing with traumas from their pasts, at
least when they're done well and I believe them. I just didn't
want to write one of the other kind. Then it occurred to me that
the character I was writing could easily be made to deal with a
traumatic event in the present--not the murder, something
family-related. As a medical librarian, I had been doing
some reading on a few possibilities and even had a character
floating around who could easily be added to the story as
Tracy's younger brother. Enter Jamie, and a medical subplot
that makes me exceedingly nervous--if I don't pull it off
I'll have written something worse than just trite. On the
other hand, adding Jamie and his subplot pulled the
story together amazingly--even elements I'd already
written suddenly made a lot more sense once the family
storyline was added.

I don't know whether this story will ever see the
light of day, but I'm already planning work on further
stories involving these characters. Before that, however,
I'm going to work over a story I wrote for
National Novel-Writing Month. This one involves a rock
band, because I'm interested in rock bands and
I've never read a mystery involving one I liked much.
Trixie fan that I am, I finally realized that the problem
was when the bands were presented as wealthy and pampered
I just couldn't relate to them. Clearly, it was up to me
to write a rock mystery involving a band that was young,
broke, and hopeful. I ended up with a sleuth I really liked,
a kid who's much too trusting, won't call his parents
when he's scared because he wouldn't want to worry them,
and solves the mystery by referring to his own expectations
about how people's parents are supposed to behave. I don't
know that I've exactly created a realistic young male
character, but I'm trying hard to at least give him internal
consistency. In his case the victims are friends of his
and his reaction to the murders is quite a bit more intense
than that of Tracy in the other story. In fact, I was
wavering on a third murder and then realized it wouldn't
work dramatically: I'd just gotten the character, Jordy,
to a point where he was actively trying to solve the problem
as opposed to freaking out about it, and hitting him with
another murder at that stage would have been too much of a
setback. If I hadn't been forced to consider the character's
reaction I have no idea how high the body count might have gone.

There are disadvantages to feeling close
to characters: in the Tracy mystery I had to
read over certain emotional passages a dozen times
or more before rewriting them, just to get over my
own reaction so I could look at them objectively.
And in the case of the Jordy story, I learned
that if I create a character on purpose to be
a murdered it might not be a great idea to make
up a huge back story and allow him to take on a
resemblance, at least in my head, to Joel Plaskett

But the occasional obsessive bout of rereading,
or even shamefacedly re-engineering a plot so I
can keep a character I've gotten attached to, is worth
it when it helps me stay on track with the story I'm
trying to tell. I may eventually branch out into trying
to come up with a really larger-than-life character, but
for the moment I think the people I write about help keep
me connected to the story, and I hope will affect readers the same way.

Now, another issue I need to consider is my thing
about making sure all the animal characters
are as realistic as possible, too. But that is a blog for
another day.

=======================================================

Shelley McKibbon is comprehensively unpublished but lives
in hope. Actually, she lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where
she works as a librarian and writes amateur sleuth mysteries,
generally featuring animals who neither speak nor sleuth.
Her usual Web hangout is The Great Dark Wonder, where she sometimes blogs
about writing, but more often about her pets and various Canadian bands you really should check out
. The manuscript for her first Tracy Buchanan mystery is
currently under consideration at Poisoned Pen Press, and she's
pretty excited about it!

I WANT MY MUMMY!

Answers to Contest #6 are as follows:


1)The first Girl Detective to appear in a series was:
a-Judy Bolton
b-Nancy Drew
c-VIOLET STRANGE
d-Trixie Belden


Has anyone out there read the Violet Strange stories? I'd love an essay on VS. Let me know if you're interested!

2)Girl sleuth Judy Bolton married which of her devoted suitors?
a-Ned Nickerson
b-Arthur Farrington-Pett
c-Frank Hardy
d-PETER DOBBS

Peter Dobbs. The name says it all, doesn't it? Good old salt of the earth, regular guy, and career boy next door Peter Dobbs. None of those wealthy, effete Arthur Farrington-Petts for our girl Judy. We all know you CANNOT trust a hypenated man.

3)Which actress was fired from playing Nancy Drew due to racy photographs in a men’s
magazine?
a-PAMELA SUE MARTIN
b-Bonita Granville
c-Emma Roberts
4-Maggie Lawson

Yeah, good career move, Pammy. Love everything you've done since.

4)The “Mother of Detective Fiction” was:
a-Agatha Christie
b-Mary Roberts Rinehart
c-ANNA KATHERINE GREEN
d-Mildred Wirt Benson

Anna Katherine Green was the creator of Violet Strange--see above. Violet is not her only claim to fame, but it's the one we like her best for here at Girl Detective.

5)Girl Detective Veronica Mars fights crime in what small town?
a-Cabot Cove
b-NEPTUNE
c-River Heights
d-St. Mary’s Mead

6)Kate Mulgrew starred in which TV detective series that was later retitled Kate
Loves a Mystery?
a-The Snoop Sisters
b-Police Woman
c-Honey West
d-MRS. COLUMBO

That's one of the odder spin-off ideas Hollywood cooked up. I mean,
picture Columbo. Picture Mrs. Columbo. Are you getting Kate Mulgrew?
'Cause my receiver is picking up something utterly different. Maybe
Mildred, the MacMillan's housekeeper?

7)Jessica Fletcher, the middle-aged mystery-writing amateur sleuth who means
death to friends and family when she comes to visit is:
a-a spinster
b-divorced
c-WIDOWED
d-separated from Dr. Seth Hazlitt

Yeah, and has anyone looked into Mr. Fletcher's early death?

8)Sister sleuths Jean and Louise are part of which detecting
family?
a-the Bobbseys
b-the Beldens
c-the Danas
d-the Ames

Despite having sisters (it was not always the successful venture it is these days), I adored the Dana Sisters--and yet, somehow I could never FIND any of their books, so I've only read two of them.

9)The original team of Charlie's Angels trained as police women in which major
metropolitan city?
a-LOS ANGELES
b-San Francisco
c-New York
d-BostonQuestion

10) Kellie Martin stars as an amateur sleuth and bookseller in which TV series?
a-Veronica Mars
b-MYSTERY WOMAN
c-Jane Doe
d-Ghost Whisperer

So how'd you do on it?

Sounding Off on Influential Films

This week's topic for discussion is Films
That Influenced You--because although we can all
probably name a dozen books that shaped our writing--not to
mention our notions of how the world worked (and our place in it)
--sometimes we forget the impact of film.




So who better to kick off the discussion than guest
Girl Detective Libby Fischer Hellman. Libby, in case you
didn't know this, is the award-winning author of the Ellie
Foreman series about a film-maker sleuth.


==========================================================




Vintage Films: The Sound of Music



First off, as a stable-mate of the Girl Detective (we share
the same agent), I’m honored to contribute to a discussion of
vintage films. Thanks for having me!



I was 16 when “The Sound of Music” came out. It isn’t a classic –
in fact, my top 5 are The Godfather, Chinatown, The Battle of Algiers,
Citizen Kane, and Casablanca. The acting wasn’t great. The story was
somewhat contrived. It was basically just a sentimental musical with
pretty pictures and Julie Andrews’ wonderful voice. Still,
The Sound of Music changed my life.


I cried when the Captain Von Trapp finally declared his love
for Maria. I marveled at their daring escape from the Nazis. I
sang along with “My Favorite Things” and, of course, “Sixteen
Going on Seventeen.” But what touched me in a visceral way and
made me go back to see it three times -- those being the days
before VCRs and DVDs – were the sweeping panoramic shots of
the Austrian hills.



I remember one particular shot at the beginning – it must
have been an aerial, although I didn’t know what that was
back then – of Julie Andrews. The camera started on an
extreme wide angle – she wasn’t much more than a dot on
the screen. Then the camera panned and moved in on her
as she was twirling around singing the title song. They
must have cut to a stationary shot of her after that, but
I still remember the camera move. It wasn’t slow, in fact
it must have been rather fast, because it wasn’t at all
shaky. Even so, for me those few seconds became one of
those fundamental Proustian “Petite Madeleine” moments
in my life.





I still can’t tell you precisely what it was about the shot:
the greenness of the hills, the natural contours of the hills
and valley, the achingly blue sky, or the snow-capped mountains
in the distance (Were they the Austrian Alps?) But for the first
time in my adolescent life, I wanted to know that world.
Not just observe it on film. I wanted to sink myself into
it, to revel in the beauty, to understand the people and
the culture that sprang from it.



It was that simple. From that moment on, my only goal
was to go to Europe. To Austria. To see and feel that
scene for myself. I remember coming home from the movie
theater and writing the Experiment in International Living.
Two years later, I achieved my goal. I went to Europe for
two months. Not to Austria -- I didn’t speak a word of German
– but to France. And four years after that, I ended up at
NYU’s graduate school of film. I’ve produced films and
videos ever since, and my mystery series features Ellie
Foreman, a documentary and industrial video producer.



Was The Sound of Music responsible? Who knows?
Maybe it was simply an adolescent girl becoming
aware -- for the first time -- that a world beyond
high school, boyfriends, and the Beatles existed.
Maybe it was some kind of ancestral mitochondrial
DNA calling me -- my ancestors did come from that
part of the world. But maybe it was a subconscious
realization that film can kindle a need to explore
places, people, and stories that broaden and enrich
our world.



Now… can I tell you about the movie “Z?”



Libby Fischer Hellmann
A Shot to Die For, Readers Choice Award
for Best Traditional Novel
An Image of Death
A Picture of Guilt, Finalist Ben Franklin Award
An Eye for Murder, Anthony nominee

Mummy Mia, Mummy Mia, Mummy Mia let me go....

It has been a mighty interesting couple of weeks. Today I received the hot-off-the-press copy of SONNET OF THE SPHINX. Ohmigod it's in print!!!







Really, I'm too old a hand to be excited by this...BUT I AM!!!

Ahem.

Composure regained.

Meanwhile the much-anticipated review from Publisher's Weekly was quite a disappointment. It wasn't a bad review, just...confused. To start with, they listed SOS as following HIGH RHYMES AND MISDEMEANORS. Jeez. Not the sort of mistake one expects from PW. Then they actually made a plot error. Gosh, did this guy even read the book?

But the very next day I learned that RT -- Romantic Times, that is--chose it as one of their TOP PICKS. 4 and 1/2 star review--color picture. Woohoooo!

Meanwhile, the Curse of the Mummy Contest continues. Contest #4 by all accounts was the very easiest so far. Mr. Thrilling is still promising to do a set of questions for me, but I've got him so busy doing bookmarks and ads that he really doesn't have much spare time.

Anyway, these are the questions and answers (in all caps) to Contest #4. Good luck to those of you scratching your heads over contest #5.

#1Which pairing below is NOT a husband and wife sleuthing team?
a- Jeff and Haila Troy
b- Nick and Nora Charles
c-BERT AND NAN BOBBSEY
d-Pat and Jean Abbott



#2 Vintage crime writer Leslie Ford is best known for the Grace Latham and Colonel Primrose mystery series. But she also wrote an earlier series—this one set in Britain—under which pen name?
a-David Lohr
b-David Lawrence
c-Lindsay Davis
d-DAVID FROME



#3 Name San Francisco Police Commissioner Mac and his wife Sally MacMillan’s idiosyncratic housekeeper:
a-Millcent
b-Murgatroyd
c-Merriweather
d-MILDRED



#4 Which of the following novels is by Cornell Woolrich?
a-THE BLACK ALIBI
b-The Black Rustle
c-The Black Shrouds
d-The Black Honeymoon



#5 Who won the 2004 Edgar for Best Short Story?
a-Laurie Lynn Drummond
b-G. MIKI HAYDEN
c-Barbara Serenella
d-Katherine Hall Page



#6 Nancy Drew’s dog was named:
a-TOGO
b-Toto
c-Snoopy
d-Scooby Doo



#7 Who of the following was NOT one of Agatha Christie’s sleuthing duos:
a-Tommy and Tuppence
b-Poirot and Hastings
c-Mr. Satterthwaite and Mr. Quin
d-MRS. BRADLEY AND INSPECTOR CHRISTMAS



#8 Raymond Chandler’s final novel Poodle Springs was completed by crime writer:
a-Ross Macdonald
b-Robert B. Parker
c-Stephen King
d-John D. MacDonald



#9 At the end of the The Maltese Falcon, the falcon is:
a-returned to its rightful owner
b-broken in a scuffle
c-traded for valuable letters of transport
d-STILL MISSING


#10 Which coveted mystery award is a teapot?
a-The Edgar
b-The Leftie
c-THE AGATHA
d- The Thrillie

THIS DAME FOR HIRE

This week we have something very special for you—absolutely nothing about me or my dadblamed contest!!! Instead we’ve got an interview with veteran crime writer Sandra Scoppettone. Scoppettone has been writing since the 70s. She’s written nineteen novels—five YA (young adult) and the rest crime stories for adults—including the critically acclaimed Lauren Laurano series.

More recently Scoppettone authored the Faye Quick series—and that is just up our mean streets here at Girl Detective, because Faye is a 1940s P.I. Actually she’s a 1940s secretary who gets roped into playing P.I. when her boss goes off to war. The first book in the series is This Dame For Hire, which I highly recommend. The second in the series, Too Darn Hot is due out this June.

DL: Were you a fan of girl detective novels growing up?

SS: Never read a one.

(All the Girl Detectives in the audience promptly faint—I mean, if Girl Detectives fainted—which they don’t.)

DL: How did you come up with the idea for doing a series about a woman P.I. during WWII?

SS: I honestly can’t remember how it came to me. The only thing I can recall is telling my writer friend, Marijane Meaker (Vin Packer), that I had an idea for a woman in the 1940s who takes over a detective agency when her boss goes to war. I can still see that moment because she was so enthusiastic about it.

I love the Forties and I’d never written about them. I’d written about most of the decades in the 20th century, but not that one. I don’t know why as the music and movies of the period were and are very important to me. I was a little girl during that time and I don’t remember a lot about the early 40s except movies and music. My parents took me to the movies every Friday night. And the music played on the radio. We didn’t get a television until I was twelve. Although at the time I sulked about that I’m very grateful for it now. I think listening to radio strengthened my imagination. I didn’t know that at the time but The Shadow Knew!





DL: What kind of research is involved for the series?

SS: I read some books about the period, especially the war years. And Marijane loaned me a lot of material. She had a bunch of Commemorative Yearbooks published by Champlain Publishing Inc. They were called Time Passages and had a page for every month and squares for every day that listed books, music, sporting events, everything that happened on those days in that month in that year. There are also pictures. The most important book I used was the Random House Thesaurus of Slang. This is a completely different type of thesaurus. You don’t have to know the slang word first. It’s the other way around. I would look up girl and be given a myriad of slang.

DL: Is Faye Quick based on anyone -- your grandmother perhaps? Do the women of your family have any particular stories during that era that you were able to draw on for the series?

SS: Faye isn’t based on anyone. I think she’s more a composite of 40s movie stars. Part Stanwyck, part Ann Southern, part Joan Blondell and all the others. There are no surviving women in my family from that era. You couldn’t know this, but the thought of Faye being based on either of my grandmothers is very funny. Of course there’s always a little bit of me in any character I create…especially if I’m writing in first person. I don’t remember any stories, but I do remember my mother crying when the bells sounded that the war was over.

DL: How relevant is the story about a vintage P.I. for contemporary readers?

SS: People are people. I get fan mail from men and women in their twenties, thirties, forties, and I got one from an eighty-two year old man. I think it’s very relevant right now as we’re in a war. But we didn’t need a war to make it relevant to readers. I hope my characters are universal.

DL: I found them real and refreshingly true to their time. Are you familiar with the writings of women writers of the 30s and 40s? Any favorites?

SS: I guess you mean crime writers. The best one of all in the Forties -- or any other time for that matter -- was Dorothy B. Hughes. Three of her novels were made into movies. Probably the best known was In A Lonely Place with Bogart and Gloria Grahame. I would have to say she’s my favorite. I never much cared for Christie. I don’t deny that she was the master of plot, but that isn’t all I look for in a crime or mystery novel. Josephine Bell was English and was very prolific. Helen MacInnes was Scottish. We had Craig Rice and Vera Caspary, but I’m sure I’m forgetting many, although I have a feeling there weren’t lots of American women crime writers during the 30s and 40s. I can hear the tapping of keys now telling me how wrong I am.

(Yes, but we'll let that go.) ;-D

DL: How much of a challenge was it finding a publisher for this series?

SS: No challenge at all. Ballantine was the first to see it and bought it on the basis of 100 pages. This doesn’t happen to me everyday.

DL: What are the unique challenges (or pleasures) of writing a historical series?

SS: My friend Annette Meyers, who has written an historical series with her husband Marty Meyers, is always kidding me because from the time we met I said I didn’t like historical mysteries and she considers the Quick novels historical. I don’t. I guess I don’t think of anything in the 20th century as historical. For me, historical begins with the 1st Century through the 19th. I know I’m wrong but that’s how I see it.

Okay. The pleasure to me in writing in the 40s was not having to worry about DNA or other forensic techniques. And I didn’t have to write sex scenes. Yes, I know people had sex then. But to show Faye or any other character having sex wouldn’t be right in the context of these books. If Faye ever gets around to it there’ll be a fade out or a cut to a roaring fire.

(The Girl Detectives are chuckling at this, being rather fond of fades and fires ourselves.)





DL: Tell us a little about the new book, TOO DARN HOT.

SS: This one takes place in the summer of 1943. All I’m going to say is nobody is who they seem to be. And I deal with anti-Semitism.

DL: Okay, well then we'll just have to buy the book--which I, for one, planned on doing anyway. So what's ahead for Faye Quick--and Sandra Scoppettone?

SS: I don’t know about Faye. Ballantine hasn’t offered me a contract for another Quick novel at this point. So it might end up being a series of two. As for me, I’m writing a stand alone crime novel. It’s contemporary and I’ve never written anything like it. But I’ve always wanted to. It’s a slippery devil and I’m learning as I go along. Some days I feel very confident and then there are those other days we all know about. This one has multiple points of view and is written in the third person. I don’t intend to give a hundred pages to my agent this time. I want to write the whole thing. Just to make sure I can actually do it.


------------------------------------------

Thanks to Sandra, and our sincere hopes that Ballantine is smart enough to give this series time to find its audience!

For more information on Sandra Scoppettone, check out her website or her blog.

OH MUMMY!

I actually hate doing this contest. It is so damn hard to be fair. Everytime I see a name I know crop up -- which is an awful lot of entries -- I want to rig the drawing. And then when I see names that have entered each time...I want to rig the drawing.

I really have a hard time disappointing people.

Anyway, while I work on my lack of competitive spirit, here are the questions and answers from CONTEST #3

1)The term "gewgaws" as used in Diana Killian's HIGH
RHYMES AND MISDEMEANORS means:
a – a hard English candy similar to Jawbreakers
b – A DECORATIVE TRINKET OR BAUBLE
c – a colloquial expression of amazement
d – an ignorant country person (i.e., anyone not from
London)

2)Millionaire Bruce Wayne's butler is named:
a-Jeeves
b-Godfrey
c-ALFRED
d-Mr. French

3)The creator of gentleman thief A.J. Raffles was
brother-in-law to which famous Victorian writer?
a-Rudyard Kipling
b-ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
c-Maurice Le Blanc
d-J.M Barrie

Elementary, my dear Watsons!

4)Golden Age mystery writer John Dickson Carr also
wrote under the name of:
a-CARTER DICKSON
b-Nick Carter
c-G.K. Chesterton
e-Caleb Carr

5)"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" is
the opening line to which Gothic novel:
a- Jane Eyre
b- Glenarvon
c- REBECCA
d- Carmilla

6)What ethnic background did Dashiell Hammett give
suave detective Nick Charles:
a-French
b-Italian
c-Belgian
d-GREEK

7) Which well-known mystery writer also penned
successful Broadway comedies?
a-MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
b-Mignon Good Eberhart
c-Lenore Glen Offord
d-Dorothy Cameron Disney

The show must go on!!!

8) In Diana Killian's VERSE OF THE VAMPYRE, a play is
being produced based on an earlier play by:
a-Lord Byron
b-Mary Shelley
c-Percy Shelley
d-JOHN POLIDORI

9) Who among the following does NOT write a mystery
series featuring a gay private eye:
a-Richard Stevenson
b-Greg Herren
c-JOSH LANYON
d-Dorien Grey

10) The wealthy intellectual wife of this is pulp
fiction writer committed suicide:
a-Paul Cain
b-RAOUL WHITFIELD
c-Erle Stanley Gardner
d-Frederick Nebel

BUT WAS IT REALLY SUICIDE??? I keep warning Mr. Thrilling that this is a cautionary tale for those who marry crime writers.