When there was a manhunt for California bank robber Bill Bagley, who escaped from prison in British Columbia, Canada, the 1932 headlines advised to “look for the woman” if the cops had any hope of finding the man. The headlines themselves were in quotation marks, referencing an already established trope in detective fiction. Cherchez la…
There’s good news for English-speaking noir fiction enthusiasts who are late to the party in getting hip to Gallic/Belgravia Books’ series of English-translation versions of the novels by Frenchman Pascal Garnier (1949-2010). Gallic/Belgravia is now re-issuing Garnier’s edgy suspense tales in omnibus editions. Gallic Noir Volume 1, which was released in the U.S. on April…
On May 1, the 21st book in my Gaslight Mystery Series, Murder on Union Square, will come out. People often ask me where I get my ideas, and for this book, the answer is easy: it came from a mistake! A terrible mistake a fan pointed out to me, and therein lies a tale. As…
I don’t quite know how it happened, but in 2016, I noticed a shift in my own tastes. It happened as a gradual thing and snuck up on me—it was only when I saw that my to-be-read pile had changed complexion did I notice it. I’m sure a lot of authors have two separate TBR…
One of the most memorable highlights of the five years I lived in London took place one sunny summer afternoon when I was invited to Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen of England. Okay, I was one of 10,000 people who also attended that garden party, though you wouldn’t have guessed—the Queen has…
Like a Norman Rockwell painting hanging prominently inside our heads, many of us cherish memories of Thanksgiving gatherings with loved ones complemented by honey-glazed turkey and succulent desserts. A heartwarming tradition believed to have originated in 1621 by the Pilgrims, now celebrated every fourth Thursday of November since Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national…
I write books, mostly thrillers. But earlier, and for many years, I tried civil cases, large and small, of almost every variety. I never thought of it as research for writing, but of course, it was. I also never thought that any of it—being almost entirely civil not criminal—would lead me into Mafia territory, much…
To a detective character from a big city like New York or Los Angeles, the Midwest might look like one big flyover zone. But to plenty of mystery writers (myself included), the Midwest looks like home—and a good setting for a crime novel. We have plenty of cynicism to counteract that apple-cheeked, earnest idea…
The balance between fact and fiction can be a tricky one for a historical novelist. Playing fast and loose with the facts can leave a writer open to accusations of inauthenticity. Yet, if there is anything I have learned from studying history, it’s that it is not static, it is open to interpretation, and what…
Submarines have been known to collide in fiction, but do they occur in reality? The short answer—yes. I’ll have to credit Wikipedia with a list of the more well-known submarine collisions since 2000: 2001 – USS Greeneville collision with Ehime Maru 2002 – USS Oklahoma City collision with Norwegian tanker Norman Lady 2005 – USS…
