Tag: Mystery Novels | Page 2

July 24, 2019

#MidweekMystery: Gore in the Garden (a new Washington Whodunit) and The Subject of Malice (A Lila MacLean Academic Mystery)

The Subject of Malice

The organizers have rustled up plenty of surprises for the literary conference at Tattered Star Ranch. But the murder of an influential scholar wasn’t on the program—someone has clearly taken the theme of Malice in the Mountains to heart. This shocking crime is only the beginning: Other dangers and deceptions are soon revealed.

English professor Lila Maclean has a full agenda: She must convince a press to publish her book (possibly), ace her panel presentations (hopefully), and deal with her nemesis (regrettably).
However, when Detective Lex Archer requests Lila’s academic expertise, she agrees to consult on the case. While her contributions earn high marks from her partner, it could be too late; the killer is already taking aim at the next subject.
As Lila races to keep her colleagues alive, publish or perish takes on new meaning.

About the Author

Cynthia Kuhn writes the Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries: The Semester of Our Discontent, The Art of Vanishing, The Spirit in Question, and The Subject of Malice. Honors include an Agatha Award for best first novel and Lefty Award nominations for best humorous mystery. She blogs with Chicks on the Case and is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. For more information, please visit cynthiakuhn.net.

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Gore in the Garden

After her boss narrowly escaped political defeat, Kit Marshall is settling into life as a busy congressional staffer. While attending an evening reception at the United States Botanic Garden, Kit’s best friend stumbles upon the body of a high-ranking government official.

The chairwoman of a congressional committee asks Kit to investigate, and she finds herself once again in the thick of a murder investigation. The complications keep coming with the unexpected arrival of Kit’s younger brother Sebastian, a hippie protestor who seems more concerned about corporate greed than the professional problems he causes for his sister. To make matters even worse, the romantic lives of Kit’s closest friends are driving her crazy, diverting her attention from the mystery she’s been tasked to solve. The search for the killer requires her to tussle with an investigative journalist right out of a noir novel, a congresswoman fixated on getting a statue of James Madison installed on the Capitol grounds and a bossy botanist who would do anything to protect the plants he loves. When the murderer sends a threatening message to Kit via a highly unusual delivery mechanism, Kit knows she must find the killer or risk the lives of her friends and loved ones.

About the Author

Colleen Shogan has been reading mysteries since the age of six. A political scientist by training, Colleen has taught American politics at Yale, George Mason, Georgetown, and Penn. She previously worked in the United States Senate and for the Congressional Research Service. She’s currently a senior executive at the Library of Congress, working on great outreach initiatives such as the National Book Festival. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Rob Raffety and their beagle mutt, Conan.

July 17, 2019

#MidweekMystery: Leg Up by Annabelle Hunter

A severed leg with no body? Check.
A disturbing lack of coffee? Check.
A murderer bent on revenge and a hot cop using her as bait? Double check.

Larklyn Davis moved to the small picturesque town of Barrow Bay, California, needing a new start on life. She found the perfect cottage house, almost the perfect distance from her ex-husband, and built the perfect stable for her dressage business. But when a severed leg suddenly appears on her front porch, her life takes a turn for the absurd.
As more clues pile up, and the killer not content to leave Lark alone, she’s forced to take things into her own hands. One problem: the hottest detective she has ever seen is convinced she is involved. Detective Brecken Wilson looks like he should be in a movie, not glued to Lark’s side, waiting for the other leg to drop.
There’s not enough coffee in the world for Lark to deal with this crime, the detective who stirs things she hasn’t felt in years, and a matchmaking town, intent on helping her find the happiness she doesn’t want.

About the Author

Annabelle Hunter is a stay-at-home mom and an avid fan of classic mystery shows and dressage. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children, and too many animals.

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July 10, 2019July 3, 2019

#MidweekMystery with Guest Post and #Giveaway: Peach Clobbered, a Georgia B&B Mystery

Peach Clobbered

Nina Fleet’s life ought to be as sweet as a Georgia peach. Awarded a tidy sum in her divorce, Nina retired at 41 to a historic Queen Anne house in quaint Cymbeline, GA. But Nina’s barely settled into her new B&B-to-be when a penguin shows up on her porch. Or, at least, a man wearing a penguin suit.

Harry Westcott is making ends meet as an ice cream shop’s mascot and has a letter from his great-aunt, pledging to leave him the house. Too bad that’s not what her will says. Meanwhile, the Sisters of Perpetual Poverty have lost their lease. Real estate developer Gregory Bainbridge intends to turn the convent into a golfing community, so Cymbeline’s mayor persuades Nina to take in the elderly nuns. And then Nina finds the “penguin” again, this time lying in an alley with a kitchen knife in his chest.
A peek under the beak tells Nina it’s not Harry inside the costume, but Bainbridge. What was he doing in Harry’s penguin suit? Was the developer really the intended victim, or did the culprit mean to kill Harry? Whoever is out to stop Harry from contesting the sale of his great-aunt’s house may also be after Nina, so she teams up with him to cage the killer before someone clips her wings in Peach Clobbered, Anna Gerard’s charming first Georgia B&B mystery.

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Guest Post: Dropping Like the Gentle Rain…

Where do you get your ideas? It’s a question we authors are asked a lot, and one that we seemingly can never satisfactorily answer. I read somewhere once that a famous bestselling writer would tell gullible sorts that he subscribed to Writing Ideas of the Month magazine. He claimed that he’d thumb through each new issue when it hit his mailbox, choose an idea, and write his next blockbuster.
Of course, he was kidding. But the truth is that the idea part of writing actually is easy, which is why we often give a frivolous response to that question. We all have ideas, writers and non-writers, alike. They’re a dime a dozen, to use the cliché, and we have far more than we’ll ever need. Not sure how to generate an idea? All it takes is two simple words – What if?

What if the old woman at the coffee shop nervously cradling a latte was once a prima ballerina?

What if the convicted murderer I read about in the morning paper actually was framed?

What if the smelly, unshaven guy prowling the thrift store aisles is actually an undercover cop?

What if the new house I bought was built on an old cemetery?

Ideas come from everywhere and anywhere. Newspapers, television, books,
radio. And, of course, from simply observing. Most writers have far more ideas than they can ever hope to use. As Shakespeare might say, they droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. And, at least in my case, that’s not far from the truth. I tell people I get my best ideas in the shower and, silly as it may sound, I mean it.

There’s something zen-like about standing under splashing water, almost like
being in a isolation chamber. Outside sounds are temporarily muffled, and as a result one’s mind starts casting about for thoughts to fill the void. Soon enough, ideas start filtering through the pounding water.

Which is one reason I’m planning on having one of those oversized rain shower heads installed in my bath sometime soon. Who knows, maybe I can even write it off as a business expense!

But often non-writers don’t realize that an idea, no matter how grand, isn’t a plot. And without a plot, you don’t have a book. Because the plot is the underlying structure of a story. It’s how you get from the beginning to the end of the tale in an interesting yet logical and satisfying way.

An idea, no matter how grand, isn’t a plot. And without a plot, you don’t have a book
Anna Gerard
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To put that concept into real-life context, you may wake up
one morning with the “idea” that you want to drive from New York City to Dallas. But simply having the idea isn’t magically going to transport you from Point A to Point B. You need to “plot” your journey. Will you go the scenic route that takes a couple of extra days, or will you travel via the fastest highways and toll roads? Are you going to stop at four-star hotels, or are you going to catch a few winks in roadside parks? Only once you’ve made all these decisions can you begin your trip.

In much the same way, an author has to line out their book journey before they can begin writing. And depending on one’s writing style, that can take quite a bit of planning. Some authors I know spend months researching and outlining before they ever type the words, Chapter One. On the other hand, many writers plunge right into the story, working off nothing more than a mental outline and a few scribbled notes. Most writers probably fall somewhere in between those two extremes.

But no matter their process, they all have moved well beyond the “idea” stage when they begin typing.

So instead of asking an author, where do you get your ideas, next time consider asking, how do you construct a plot? You might find yourself hearing a much more interesting answer

About the Author

DIANE A.S. STUCKART is the New York Times bestselling author of the Black Cat Bookshop Mystery series (writing as Ali Brandon). She’s also the author of the award-winning Leonardo da Vinci historical mysteries, as well as several historical romances and numerous mystery, fantasy, and romance short stories. The first book in her Tarot Cats Mystery series is FOOL’S MOON, available in trade, large print, and Kindle versions. Her Georgia B&B Mystery series from Crooked Lane Books launched July 2019 with PEACH CLOBBERED, written as Anna Gerard.
Diane is a member of Mystery Writers of America and has served as the 2018 and 2019 Chapter President of the MWA Florida chapter. In addition to her mystery writing affiliations, she’s a member of the Cat Writers’ Association and belongs to the Palm Beach County Beekeepers Association. She’s a native Texan with a degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma, but has been living in the West Palm Beach FL area since 2006. She shares her “almost in the Everglades” home with her husband, dogs, cats, and a few beehives. Learn more about her books at www.dianestuckart.com.

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May 22, 2019

#MidweekMystery: Better than Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery) by Alice Loweecey

Ghosts for Mardi Gras!

Giulia Driscoll used to say running a detective agency was the busiest job she’d ever had. Then the ghosts showed up, and she figured now she’s the busiest ever. This of course challenged the Universe to say, “Hold my beer.”

Today she’s running the agency, sleuthing on behalf of the ghosts, and being the mother of a two-month-old. At last she understands those 5-Hour Energy commercials.
The Universe then dropped two clients in her lap for Mardi Gras: a family greedy to find hidden money and the son of her least-favorite person, Ken Kanning of The Scoop. The positive: a date night! The not-so-positive: it’s a working date night. Driscoll Investigations is joining the big Mardi Gras costume charity gala to search for potential thieves. Kanning Junior will be at the party showing off his tame ghost.
The Scoop, a few hundred drunk revelers, a mercenary family, and a ghost who isn’t as tame as the kid thinks. What could possibly go wrong?
Did someone just hear the Universe say, “Hold my beer”?

About the Author

Alice Loweecey is a baker of brownies and tormenter of characters, Alice Loweecey recently celebrated her thirtieth year outside the convent. She grew up watching Hammer horror films and Scooby-Doo mysteries, which explains a whole lot. When she’s not creating trouble for her sleuth Giulia Driscoll or inspiring nightmares as her alter-ego Kate Morgan, she can be found growing her own vegetables (in summer) and cooking with them (the rest of the year).
Website: aliceloweecey.net
Facebook: facebook.com/GiuliaDriscoll
Twitter: @AliceLoweecey
Goodreads: Alice Loweecey

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September 16, 2018

It's a man's, man's world. By L.A. Chandlar, author of The Gold Pawn (An Art Deco Mystery)

November 1936. Mayor La Guardia’s political future buckles under a missing persons case in New York City. Simultaneously, Lane unravels devastating secrets in the outskirts of Detroit. As two crimes converge, judging friends from enemies can be a dangerous game . . .

Finally summoning the courage to face the past, Lane Sanders breaks away from her busy job at City Hall to confront childhood nightmares in Rochester, Michigan. An unknown assailant left Lane with scattered memories after viciously murdering her parents. However, one memory of a dazzling solid gold pawn piece remains—and with it lies a startling connection between the midwestern tragedy and a current mystery haunting the Big Apple.

Continue reading “It's a man's, man's world. By L.A. Chandlar, author of The Gold Pawn (An Art Deco Mystery)”

September 14, 2018

Judging a book by its cover: What does your face reveal about your personality?

What do Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism look like? Now we know, thanks to Science.
Composite photos of individuals high in narcissism were in fact judged as narcissistic. Same with psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
“The results indicated that unacquainted observers reliably detected the dark triad composite… not only is the dark triad a set of psycho-social characteristics — it may also be a set of physical — morphological characteristics.”
Here are the photos.

I tried these on my students and they were indeed able to tell who was what, especially the female psychopath.

Probably wouldn’t get many babysitting jobs

What do you think your face says to the world?
Me, I think I’d rather not know. I just keep smiling and hope no one notices anything bad.
By the way, the “narcissist” in the featured photo is the composite on your right.
An earlier version was published on Jane Reads

September 11, 2018

A new Washington Whodunit and Giveaway: K Street Killing by Colleen J. Shogan

Another Washington Whodunit from Colleen Shogan, author of the wonderful Calamity at the Continental Club!
It’s the height of campaign season, and instead of relishing newlywed bliss with her husband Doug Hollingsworth, Capitol Hill staffer Kit Marshall is busy with a tough reelection fight for her boss, member of Congress Maeve Dixon. Before Maeve and her staff–Kit included–leave Washington, D.C. to campaign full time in North Carolina, they have one last fundraising engagement.
On the iconic rooftop of a restaurant overlooking the Capitol and the Washington monument, Kit and her best pal Meg do their best to woo wealthy lobbyists for sizable campaign donations. Everyone’s enjoying the evening soiree… until a powerful K Street tycoon mysteriously tumbles off the rooftop.

Even with claims the fall must be suicide, Detective Maggie Glass and Kit aren’t so easily convinced foul play isn’t at work. While balancing Doug’s mid-life career crisis, Kit must spring into action to discover who killed the notorious Van Parker before Dixon’s candidacy sputters, even if it means investigating Meg’s handsome new beau, the victim’s conniving widow, and a bicycle advocate hell-bent on settling a long-standing grudge. When threatening note is left on Kit’s car, warning her to back off the investigation, she knows she’s closing in on the true story of what happened.

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About the Author

Colleen Shogan has been reading mysteries since the age of six. A political scientist by training, Colleen has taught American politics at Yale, George Mason, Georgetown, and Penn. She previously worked in the United States Senate and for the Congressional Research Service. She’s currently a senior executive at the Library of Congress, working on great outreach initiatives such as the National Book Festival. She lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Rob Raffety and their beagle mutt, Conan.

Featured photo: Detail from a cover of The Wasp, 1891, by Charles W. Saalburg.

August 31, 2018

Let's talk about campus murder mysteries

Let’s talk about campus murder mysteries.
I love reading them and writing them. What is it about academia that sparks thoughts of murder? Of course there’s the old saying that “campus politics are so nasty because the stakes are so small.” But that’s more of an observation than an explanation. I have some ideas:
Clashing agendas. Professors want to enlighten the world with their teaching and their research, and deplore the duplicity of administrators. Administrators, on the other hand, need to keep the dollars flowing in, and the legislators and trustees off their backs, and they don’t want some self-righteous faculty Speaking Truth to Power and messing everything up. Late-twentieth-century postmodernists have nothing on administrators when it comes to having a complicated relationship with Truth:

“Our position is, yes, Mister Yamada, your wonderful idea for a Golf Course Management major is going through, and before you know it, we’ll be putting out graduates who are ready and willing to work at your resort. And also, no, Senator Kamoku, of course we’re not considering offering a major in golf as a taxpayer-subsidized sop to our most powerful trustee. The very idea.”

From The Invasive Species

Same words, different meanings. Naturally, everyone on campus agrees on striving for “excellence.” It’s in the University Strategic Plan, after all. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same definition of “excellence.”

“Dr. Rodge,” as he tells his students to call him, doesn’t give midterms or final exams, assigns no homework, and gives A’s to everyone who signs up for his Human Potential class. I can’t force Rodge to “maintain academic standards worthy of our university” (Hanson’s words) or “teach a real college class and knock off that feel-good bull****” (Hanson’s contemporary, Dr. Larry Schneider). As long as Rodge shows up when he’s supposed to and stays out of trouble with the students, there’s not much else I can do. Especially not when the Student Retention Office keeps nominating him for the campus-wide teaching award every year.

From The Cursed Canoe
The student as customer. But not the kind of customer you actually listen to. To cater to students (and their tuition dollars), administrators are forever coming up with new programs and bringing the latest edu-fads to campus.

The student is the customer, and you know what they say about the customer.

Oddly enough, when students ask for more course sections, lower tuition, affordable childcare, and job placement, what administrators hear is “Can you impose some punishing new regime on the faculty that will make their lives harder without actually improving my education? Also hire more administrators pls.”

A few weeks after the Student Retention Office remodel was finished, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement attended an ed-tech conference. Upon his return, we were directed to record our class sessions and post them online, so that students could watch them at their leisure. The problem was that we were “guides on the side” now, and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement didn’t want to post hour-long videos of students sitting in circles talking. So we all had to go back to being “sages on the stage,” lecturing to the video camera, but this time we were cautioned to act as “facilitators of experience” rather than “providers of knowledge.” We’re still stuck with the immovable round tables.

From The Musubi Murder
And not only does academia provide plentiful motives for murder; it’s populated by nosy obsessives with library access who will drop everything to chase the faintest of clues. (This is also known as “research.”) So we have Christa Nardi’s Sheridan Hendley, Sarah Caudwell’s Hilary Tamar, Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler, Joanne Dobson’s Karen Pelletier, R.T. Campbell’s John Stubbs, Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen, and of course Mahina State University’s Molly Barda.
In my view, the only mystery is why there aren’t even more academic detectives.
An earlier version was published on Christa Reads and Writes

August 17, 2018

Paddletics

In The Cursed Canoe, Professor Molly Barda’s best friend Emma Nakamura is the captain of a paddling crew. With seven women on the crew and only six seats in the canoe, things get a little competitive.

In fact, there’s a word for this kind of infighting:

Paddletics.

“We call it paddletics,” Yoshi said. “When paddlers get too competitive within their crew, and turn on each other.”

Yoshi has mellowed a lot since he first moved here with Emma as a freshly minted MBA. At first, he didn’t like living in Mahina. He claimed there were no decent jobs to be had, and would say things like, “I can’t live in a place where no one can tell I’m wearing a two thousand dollar suit.”

Tired of his grumping around the house, Emma got him into canoe paddling, which he embraced with the zeal of a convert. Most of his time is now spent paddling and hanging out at the beach. Today he wore board shorts, a souvenir t-shirt from the previous year’s Labor Day canoe race, and a cap with the logo of a local paddling shop.

One thing that hasn’t changed about Yoshi is his need to be the Expert. His favorite pastime is explaining things to people.

“Paddletics!” Pat exclaimed before Yoshi could expound further. “Molly, isn’t that one of those words you hate? What do the Word Police have to say?”

Pat knows I hate sloppy neologisms: Homophobe. Anything-gate. The worst of the bunch is the suffix –holic, which got snapped off the end of ‘alcoholic’ and now is attached to any word you can think of to indicate addiction or even mere affinity. Normally I enjoy arguing etymology with Pat, but right now, I wasn’t in the mood.

“I’ve heard worse. Paddletics could mean affairs of the paddle, in the same way that politics means affairs of the city.”

–The Cursed Canoe

It’s not just at the office or in the PTA that people vie for position and undermine their colleagues. Paddletics (derived, as you might guess, from “Paddle” and “Politics”) describes all of the infighting and backbiting that comes with a competitive endeavor. Paddlers have been known to talk down teammates, undermining the coach, or even threaten to leave for a competitor club.

So does this mean you should avoid canoe paddling?

No. The blog LiveScience tells us that spending time around the ocean can improve your health and well-being. Some paddlers describe their experience as almost spiritual:

“I’ve learned that sometimes I can’t change things, but I can go with the flow. I’ve learned to harness nature’s energy and use it to my advantage. I’ve learned not to get in Mother Nature’s way. I’ve learned to listen when she speaks. I’ve learned to respect, love and celebrate nature and her ocean.” (source)

And if you’ve been yearning for shapely, muscular arms, you can’t beat the hours of repetitive upper-body work required to push a four-hundred-pound canoe through the waves.

What if you live far from the water? You can get a taste of Hawaiian outrigger paddling from The Cursed Canoe, a Professor Molly mystery.

Originally published on Lynda Dickson’s Books Direct

August 10, 2018

Truth is Boring

One question that I get is,
“Am I in your book?”
I can see why people might ask this. The setting is a public university in Hawaii, similar in some ways to my own workplace. The main character is Molly Barda, who teaches in the Mahina State University College of Commerce. I teach at a university, in Hawaii, in the business school.
But I must insist: I am making most of it up.
In my author bio, I try to make this clear:

Like Molly Barda, Frankie Bow teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, a loving family, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining.

I have sacrificed Truth on the altar of Art.
Why? Because Truth is boring.
If I were really writing about myself and the people I know, my stories would feature kind, capable people doing their jobs competently and without incident. Snore.
So I punch it up a little: Ruinous budget cuts. Reckless, showboating legislators. A powerful and well-funded Student Retention Office staffed by self-assured dimwits.
Molly, my protagonist and narrator, is neurotic and socially awkward. Her bottom-line-obsessed dean won’t let her report cheaters, because he refuses to scare off paying customers. Her next-door colleague is the reason she’s not allowed to close the door when she has a student in her office (it’s called the “Rodge Cowper Rule”). Her students don’t know what “plutocracy” means, but they’re pretty sure it has something to do with planets.
So no, you are (probably) not in my book. I promise. Now go read and enjoy!
Originally posted on Brooke Blogs