Ever since Margaret Truman conceived the brilliant Capital Crimes series in 1980. Washington, DC has been the dominant, if not exclusive, setting. And the latest entry, number thirty-two overall and my second since taking the reins, Murder at the CDC, is no exception. With that in mind, I thought it would be fun to list…
Mysteries and thrillers have long been set in institutions of learning. Many of these novels play out in universities and elite boarding schools in New England and in the British countryside. With their remote campuses and secret student societies, novels like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Tana French’s The Secret Place make wonderful gothic…
In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”, Sherlock Holmes laments that “doctors make the greatest criminals.” He noted that, “When a doctor does go wrong, he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.” Most of us only ever interact with the medical profession when ill or injured. We rely on…
I’ve always been fascinated by cold cases. I’ve often thought about why—is it because I love mysteries? Is it about human nature and the need for answers? Is it a bit darker than that…a fascination with the unknown or the unknowable, or an interest in the murder of strangers? Whatever the reason, I’m not the…
A Note from Author Wendy Church I wrote Murder on the Spanish Seas during the first year of the pandemic lockdown—like everyone else, we were pretty isolated, and I was thinking about places I’d been, and places I wished I could go. The Basque Country has been on my travel list for a while, and the more…
Dentophobia—the fear of going to the dentist. Studies indicate that as many as one in five people suffer from the malady. Because sufferers experience anything from slight anxiety to full-blown panic attacks, many forgo their dental care rather than visit their dentist. The phobia is irrational, as most are. After all, there’s nothing sinister about…
The Teddy Creque mystery series is set on the tropical island of Anegada in the British Virgin Islands. Anegada was initially chosen because I was familiar with the island and its people; I’d had the pleasure of visiting it more than a dozen times. But when I dug deeper into my surface acquaintance with Anegada,…
Mind-altering substances needn’t always come in the form of a pill, plant, capsule, tab, or tincture. Sometimes they come in the form of a crime novel. We’ve all read great mysteries, thrillers, and noir that created a prodigious shift in our perspective, mindset, or mood—even if only temporarily. Getting high on crime fiction is not…
We teamed up with six mystery writers to create a short story in real-time. The end result was “All Too Well” which you can read in full below! A special thank you goes out to the participating authors (in order of appearance): Gigi Pandian, Samantha Jayne Allen, Anna Downes, Camilla Sten, Alex Finlay, and Stacy…
When I first started reading, I thought of fiction and non-fiction as two sides of the same coin, one nation perhaps, but cut in half. They were East and West Berlin, always divided, and with a heavily guarded border running down the middle, an impenetrable wall that could never come down. Then I read James…
