How does one account for the sheer number of mysteries in which food, both for good and evil, features prominently? So prominently that it’s virtually a character itself—or at least a character witness. Perhaps it’s because food (the cooking of it, the eating of it, the sharing of it) offers so many lovely options for…
Elsa Hart stops by to share eight of her favorite crime short stories. Add these to your TBR, and also make sure to save room for The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne, the first book in a new atmospheric mystery series set in 1703 London—a time when the old approaches to science coexist with the new,…
Ever since reading Nancy Drew in third grade, I’ve wanted to write about crime. Or, more specifically, the mystery that so often comes hand in hand with crime. Between third grade and the time I eventually wrote Fake Plastic Girl and Fake Plastic World, I had many years to dive deeper into the world of…
Late on the night of May 29, 1997, a talented young musician named Jeff Buckley walked into a tributary channel of the Mississippi River near Memphis, and disappeared. At the time, his star was in the ascendancy—his first album had received widespread acclaim. He was 30 years old, dark-haired and beautiful, with a voice that…
The books you read shape the books you write, and nothing has influenced me more than mysteries, right from the very start. The first books I remember reading—after the Madeline and Winnie-the-Pooh years—were mysteries. Encyclopedia Brown and Jupiter Jones were the gateway adventures leading to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew. I loved them for the…
If you are wondering why crime is such a big genre that doesn’t appeal to you because you prefer fantasy, romance, period drama or because you tried a Poirot once and didn’t get it (this was me, too), these might change your mind. They’re not just crime books—they’re good books. Best Book for Romance Readers…
From Queen of Suspense, Agatha Christie, The Last Séance is an all-new collection of her spookiest and most sinister stories, including the never-before-published in the USA, “The Wife of Kenite!” With Halloween just around the corner, what better time to delve into a collection of spooky and mysterious tales written by the Queen of Suspense…
There’s something inherently interesting about a mystery set on an island. There are those that are set on small islands: ones that are remote, wind-swept, and hopefully facing a devastating storm. The threat of isolation without the possibility of outside assistance makes for great storytelling. Then there are the ones that explore those tiny close-knit…
My thriller, The Escape Room, set in an elevator, is a 21st-century twist to the locked-room mystery genre of crime novels. The locked-room mystery novel developed in the late 19th century and the early 20th century when readers were invited to solve the murder mystery using clues in the story, and they’ve been popular ever…
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, had a thin white mustache,…
