The Cold War had grown hot. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev considered the young U.S. president John F. Kennedy to be weak and fearful of war. Consequently, the Eastern Bloc constructed an 87-mile wall of concrete and barbed wire that divided Berlin, Germany, into eastern and western sections in 1961. The… Read more
It was 1955. McDonald’s franchised its hamburger joints, Disneyland opened its doors to a magical world, and Elvis Presley commenced gyrating to screaming crowds. Times were changing. And United Air Lines Flight 629 exploded in the air killing everyone onboard to become the first bombing of a domestic aircraft and… Read more
Join S.C. Perkins, author of Murder Once Removed—the first in a new cozy mystery series starring Lucy Lancaster, a Texas genealogist who uses her skills to solve murders in both the past and present—as she shares a list of genealogical facts guaranteed to impress at your next dinner party! Somewhere, years… Read more
Eric Ambler’s The Light of Day was originally published in 1962 and then turned into the film Topkapi in 1964 by American film director Jules Dassin. The novel was received with rave reviews and helped cement Ambler as one of the creators of the modern suspense novel. With an international… Read more
As we filed in, there at the head of this class was someone who could best be described as an older gentleman, in the truest sense of both words. En verité, his head was not egg-shaped, and it was thinly covered with white hair. He was easily in his 60s,… Read more
When it comes to mystery novels, there’s a host of ways to die. Scuba mishap. Nicotine patch overdose. William Tell re-enactment. Yet when I set out to write As Directed, I never dreamed I’d nearly succumb to death by book. You see, I not-so-affectionately called the third book in my… Read more
In 1963, Ellis Peters’ Death and the Joyful Woman was awarded the Edgar for Best Novel, edging out Dell Shannon’s Knave of Hearts, Mark McShane’s Séance, Shelley Smith’s The Ballad of the Running Man, Jean Potts’ The Evil Wish, and Ross Macdonald’s The Zebra-Striped Hearse. I’d never read any novels… Read more
I am a true-crime junkie. Since I was a teenager, I’ve binged on Discovery ID and true-crime documentaries. Watching the new episodes of Dateline, 48 Hours Mystery, and 20/20 is a weekly ritual. And I devour true-crime books by some of my favorite authors including Ann Rule, Gregg Olsen, John… Read more
I lucked into reading crime fiction at a pretty young age. I was eleven or twelve when my father passed along some of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels on one of my weekend visits with him. From there, I had no real guidance. As a compulsive movie watcher, I read… Read more
The eyes of the crime fiction writer see the world differently than normal people, or even normal writers. The eyes of the crime fiction writer, for example, watch television differently. Most people watch crime shows for the schadenfreude, for the cheap thrills. But a crime fiction writer is different. A… Read more
