Category: Mystery Readers Only

Read about new mysteries from the authors who write them!

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Guest Post: How to Decipher a Cozy Mystery

Smothered by G.P. Gottlieb
Smothered A Whipped and Sipped Mystery

By G.P. Gottlieb

I usually pay close attention to the first few characters introduced in a cozy mystery, and I assume that the nicest and friendliest one is probably the murderer. The book might start out with a description of a donut shop, for example. It will be written in first person by Joyce, the shop’s owner, who was tragically widowed and recently started keeping company with Bernard, a heavyset, divorced pharmacist. Felice, who owns the antique shop next door, will pop in for a donut, and might complain bitterly about Larry, their bad-tempered landlord. I think to myself, ah ha, the landlord is either going to bite the dust or murder someone.

Then Felice will tell Joyce about Fred, a man from her past who’d shown up in her antiques store that very morning. They’d been madly in love a decade ago, but he’d suddenly disappeared while they were traveling together in Thailand. She’d been stunned and hurt, had a difficult time getting back to the states, and spent years getting over him. It turned out that he’d been bashed on the head by muggers and had suffered from amnesia. He’d somehow gotten back home and had been working at the local high school for the past nine years but hadn’t remembered his and Joyce’s relationship until the previous day. Ah ha, I think this Fred character is either going to get whacked, or murder someone.

Then Megan and Nancy, two of Joyce’s employees, weigh in about Fred, Felice’s newly resurfaced paramour. Megan is a sweet eighteen-year-old heading to Wellesley in the fall, and Nancy is Joyce’s twenty-year-old, bespectacled daughter, who attends the nearby community college. Nancy tells Megan that Fred had been her soccer coach, and she’d heard rumors about an inappropriate relationship with a younger girl in the school. At that moment, Joyce will bring out a tray of misshapen donuts that they certainly cannot sell, and they’ll each have one, but I only like apple fritters, so I won’t be impressed by the caramel, butterscotch icing, and chocolate glazes. Megan will burst into tears because it turns out that she was the younger girl at Nancy’s school whom Fred had sexually assaulted. She’s probably not going to be murdered, because it’s rare for beautiful young girls to come to harm in cozy mysteries, but ah ha – she has a motive to murder Fred.

Enter Ian, a dashing grad student, and Colin, his younger brother, who is in a wheelchair, and whom Ian is watching while their parents take a 25th anniversary trip to Thailand. While Megan bats her eyelashes at adorable Colin, Nancy smiles at handsome, square-jawed Ian. Just then, Larry, the bad-tempered landlord, comes pushing into the shop, threatening that he’s going to sue Joyce for damages because she tampered with the HVAC system. Joyce explains that the donut glazes would drip if she didn’t have air conditioning in this hot, sticky southern climate. Larry shouts that she should have called him instead of tinkering with the system, and his loud, scary voice causes antique store owner Felice to have an asthma attack. She falls to the floor, gasping for air, but Ian, Colin’s dashing older brother, finds her inhaler, helps her get it to her mouth and holds her head on his lap. Larry the landlord rushes out in a huff. Ah ha, I think, the author is not fooling me. Ian will turn out to be the murderer.

Two shots are fired from outside the donut shop, narrowly missing Nancy, but hitting young Colin. It’s only a graze, but everyone is shaken. And Larry the landlord is lying dead in front of the donut shop. Ah ha – the murderer is either Fred, the amnesiac sex offender, or Bernard, the portly divorced pharmacist. See how easy it is to decipher a cozy mystery? Suddenly, I’m in the mood for Thai food. And an apple fritter for dessert.

I love cozy mysteries!

Author G.P. Gottlieb

BIO: G.P. Gottlieb (https://gpgottlieb.com) has worked as a musician, a teacher, and an administrator, but she’s happiest when writing recipe-laced murder mysteries. Battered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery and Smothered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery take place in the spring and summer of 2019 and a third book in the series will center on a murder that occurs during the city of Chicago’s lockdown in May 2020. G.P. Gottlieb has always experimented in the kitchen and created her delicious vegan cookies and cakes in direct opposition to what she learned in courses at Chicago’s French Pastry School. She is host for New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, the mother of three grown children, and lives with her husband in a Chicago high-rise that is strikingly similar to the building portrayed in the Whipped and Sipped Mystery series.


Click link below for 30% off from the publisher
Smothered by G.P. Gottlieb

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Guest Post: The Inverted Detective Story

The Silenced Women by Frederick Weisel

by Frederick Weisel

The Silenced Women
by Frederick Weisel

The classic mystery saves the big reveal—the identity of the guilty party—for the last chapter or even the final paragraph. As readers, we rush through the book to learn how the puzzle is solved. Agatha Christie was, of course, famous for this. Even current writers like the Irish mystery writer Tana French keep the reader guessing until the end.

But the mystery genre also includes a different kind of plot—the so-called “inverted detective story.” Here the crime and the identity of the criminal are described at the outset. The story then shows us how the detective uncovers the evidence to figure out what the reader already knows. If the classic mystery is the whodunit, the inverted detective story is the howcatchem.

According to Wikipedia, the inverted detective story was invented by a writer named R. Austin Freeman in 1912. But anyone old enough to have watched TV in the 1970s will remember Peter Falk’s Columbo. The first few minutes of that show always began with the commission of the crime and the identity of the guilty person. The rest of the show was about how Columbo found a way to prove the killer’s guilt.

My mystery/police procedural The Silenced Women follows the inverted detective story format. No spoiler alert is necessary. Chapter 3 introduces Ben Thackrey and his friends Victor and Russell. The chapter doesn’t actually tell you they are killers. But, given their conversation about how to dispose of a bloody trunk liner in their car, you know all is not right in their world.

So—as readers, what do get in an inverted detective story in exchange for not being able to guess the killer? In my novel, readers are able to spend time with the killers throughout the novel, not just at the end. Many chapters show them trying to cover their tracks and even threatening the police detectives. Equally, the plot shows the detectives gradually collecting clues that close in on the Thackrey and his friends.

In Columbo and, hopefully, my novel, the plot puts readers in a different place from the classic mystery. Readers aren’t trying to catch up to the detective; they are ahead of the sleuth. As the shorthand phrase above notes, it puts the emphasis not on the who but the how. In that sense, it’s a profoundly different kind of story.

The structure also shifts the focus more on character than plot. As readers, you’re not reading to find out who the killer is, you’re reading to observe who the detective and the killer are. That was clearly true with Peter Falk’s Columbo character. What we remember about that show are not the plots but Lieutenant Columbo’s way of speaking and moving.

When you read my novel, I hope you’ll find some pleasure in getting to know Eddie Mahler, the lead detective who suffers from migraine headaches; Eden Somers, the smart former FBI analyst who is haunted by serial killer case; and the other detectives on the VCI team. And I hope these characters will keep you turning the pages even though you know the killer before the cops do.

About the Book:

A debut novel, The Silenced Women, introduces an exciting new police procedural series, set in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, about a team of homicide investigators led by the enigmatic detective Eddie Mahler. The novel follows the detectives as they investigate a recent homicide and several similar cold cases. The book will be published by Poisoned Pen Press on February 2, 2021, and is available for pre-order now. The second book in the series, The Day He Left, is a missing person case, and will be published in February 2022. More information about the book and the series is at: https://frederickweisel.com.

About the Author:

Author Frederick Weisel

Frederick Weisel has been a writer and editor for more than 30 years. He graduated from Antioch College and has an MA in Victorian Literature and History from the University of Leicester in England. The Silenced Women is his debut novel. He lives with his wife in Santa Rosa, California.

Links: https://frederickweisel.com

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Silenced-Women-Violent-Crimes-Investigations/dp/1464214182/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=silenced+women+frederick+weisel&qid=1597950486&sr=8-2

IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781464214189

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-silenced-women-frederick-weisel/1136917002?ean=9781464214189

Register for February 11, 2021 Online Virtual Event: https://www.copperfieldsbooks.com/event/frederick-weisel-online

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Guest Post: Setting’s Importance

Not as We Knew It

SETTINGS IMPORTANCE IN MY ROCKY BLUFF P.D. MYSTERY SERIES

By Marilyn Meredith

My hostess, Thonie Hevron, made the suggestion for this topic, and it’s a good one.

Though there is no real town of Rocky Bluff, it is similar to another town set on the Pacific coast between Ventura and Santa Barbara. It is only vaguely similar however, since Rocky Bluff is a much smaller community, and the geography is different in a major way.

Both towns are divided by the 101 Highway, with the part near the beach being where the business and most of the homes are situated. The other side is more rural with ranches and orange groves. A big difference is the bluff which gives my town its name and where the homes are larger and far more expensive.

When I first began writing this series, I lived in a beach town not far from my fictional setting. I know what the weather is like, the ocean often bringing in a blanket of fog, and the only time the temperature rises is when an East wind strikes.  Living close to the ocean, means being able to smell the saltiness on the breeze, and when close enough, to enjoy the glorious differences of the blues in the water, and watch the waves come into shore. I try to put in words what the characters in my mysteries experience through sight, sound, and smell.

In my latest, Not As We Knew It, number 16 in the series, the intersection of the 101 highway plays a major part in one of the subplots. The fact that Rocky Bluff is between Ventura and Santa Barbara is important to one of the mysteries.

When writing one these mysteries, I transport myself to this fictional town in my mind, and picture what is going on around the characters as the story plays out. How the weather is affecting what is going on, when one must travel what he or she sees along the way, and how other factors that are important to the story are being affected.

About Not As We Knew It: The challenges come one after another for the Rocky Bluff P.D. to handle―from a missing woman to a fatal house fire. Detective Doug Milligan is faced with new and unusual problems to solve, some on the job and others related to his family. With the department shorthanded because of the Covid virus, Chief Chandra Taylor must make some hard decisions in order to protect the town of Rocky Bluff.

To buy: https://www.amazon.com/Not-As-Knew-F-M-Meredith/dp/B08NDT3FW5/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Marilyn Meredith

About Marilyn: Marilyn Meredith is the author of over 40 published novels, including the Rocky Bluff P.D. series, which she writes as F. M. Meredith, and the Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series. She is a member to two branches of Sisters in Crime, and the Public Safety Writers Association. Over the years she’s taught writing for Writers Digest School, and at many writers and mystery conferences. She now lives in the foothills of the Sierra with her husband and other family members.

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Today’s the day!

The Annual Rohnert Park Holiday Arts & Crafts Faire is here!

Do your Christmas and holiday shopping from unique, one-of-a-kind vendors—this year online!

The Nick and Meredith Mysteries will be featured Friday at 12:30 and 3:30 and Saturday at 12:30 and 3:30 but feel free to check them out anytime during the Faire.

All three books are for sale with free shipping or arranged (through Rohnert Park’s Parks and Rec Department) curb-side pick-up in Rohnert Park. The real deal is 30% off for all three personalized books. eBooks are also available on www.thoniehevron.com through Amazon.

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Guest Post by J.L. Greger: When Murder is All in the Family

Dirty Holy Water

By J.L. Greger

Dirty Holy Water
by J.L. Greger

Gang members, drug dealers, and robbers are the most common murderers in novels. Yet, the FBI has reported nearly a quarter of the 13,000 murder victims in the U.S. in 2010 were killed by family members. An additional 28% were killed by someone they knew. Does that surprise you?

Now here’s more surprising statistics from the Department of Justice for 1998-2002. Most family violence offenders were white (79%), and most were thirty or older (62%).

Should more authors of murder mysteries focus on family violence?

You have to answer that question. I can tell you once I decided to write about family violence in DIRTY HOLY WATER, I quickly realized I was creating psychological mystery. It was hard to distinguish victims from villains. What’s more the mystery seemed much more personal to me (and I hope readers) than most mysteries. Although I don’t know any convicted robbers or sex offenders, I (and I suspect everyone else) know at least one pretty obnoxious family member who given the right circumstances could be pretty violent.

Now read this opening excerpt from my new novel DIRTY HOLY WATER. Does Lurleen appear to be a victim or a perpetrator of family violence?

Lurleen Jansen must have been a pretty woman once. Now Sara Almquist could see little attractive about Lurleen, except her expressive green eyes. Lurleen had called Monday and almost demanded that Sara drive her to El Santuario de Chimayó this week. Sara had hesitated but finally agreed to the field trip because Lurleen needed a friend.

Although Sara had pushed the front passenger seat of her Subaru Forester back to the maximum, Lurleen looked like she was a piece of pimento stuffed in a green olive. Her face was red as she tried to close the clamp shut on the seat belt that strained around her green camouflage cargo pants and T-shirt. “Should have brought my seat belt extender along. Too much work to walk back inside for it.”

Sara felt a twinge of guilt. She considered volunteering to get the seat belt extender but knew she wouldn’t. Lurleen had been her neighbor in the adults-only community of La Bendita until Lurleen and her husband Pete decided about five years ago that the two- and three-bedroom houses of the gated neighborhood were too small to meet their needs. It wasn’t jealousy that kept Sara from looking for the seat belt extender in Lurleen’s large house. Her reasons were simpler—she knew it would be difficult to locate something small, like a seat belt extender, among the stack of boxes and piles of junk in the house. She was also afraid what she might find. Lurleen didn’t waste time cleaning her house and only hired someone to clean it when a new infestation problem appeared. Some sort of pest, usually bigger than ants, appeared every year.

Lurleen appeared to hold her breath and clicked the seat belt shut. “Pete’s being tight with me.” She smiled. “But I’ll get what I want.”

Before Sara could make a catty comment, such as you must have asked for the moon this time, Lurleen changed the subject. “Thanks for agreeing to take me to Chimayó to get some holy dirt for Matt. He’s talking less these days.”

Sara gave a soft sigh because Lurleen had reminded her why they were making this trip. Lurleen’s daughter Mitzi had become a foster parent for a one-year-old girl named Kayla almost twelve years ago. About that time, Kayla’s biological parents had another child Matt. He was born addicted to cocaine and quickly displayed developmental delays. The New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families Department, better known as CYFD, had decided the two children must be kept together, and Mitzi had reluctantly agreed to become Matt’s foster care mother, too. When she was five, Kayla had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Eventually Mitzi had adopted both children. Lurleen had been supportive of Mitzi and her two adopted children during the long adoption process.

Sara admired both women because it took guts to adopt special needs children. Although Sara doubted the holy dirt dispensed from a small pit at El Santuario de Chimayó had curative properties, she recognized faith was sometimes effective in helping patients.

Chimayó was north of Santa Fe, almost a two-hour drive from La Bendita. Since 1816, pilgrims had claimed the dirt there had healing powers. Now the adobe chapel built around the pit with holy dirt was probably the most important pilgrimage site in the United States.

Sara had visited Chimayó several times because the drive in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains was scenic and a nearby restaurant was excellent. Sara also recognized Lurleen needed a chance to vent her feelings more than Matt needed the holy dirt. So, she drove north and mainly listened.

(The rest of Chapter 1 of Dirty Holy Water).

Buy DIRTY HOLY WATER (paperback or ebook) at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0960028587

About DIRTY HOLY WATER: Life is complicated for Sara Almquist in this romantic and psychological mystery. She’s about to become engaged and leave for a vacation in India when she becomes the chief suspect in the murder of a friend. Only the friend and her family, well to put it politely, have a couple of dark secrets. Sara soon realizes the difference between a villain and a victim can be small – alarmingly small, especially in a dysfunctional family. 

The Kirkus review is: “A thought-provoking, disturbing, and engaging mystery with a likable, strong-willed female lead”  

Bio: J.L. Greger is a biology professor and research administrator from the University of Wisconsin-Madison turned novelist. She has consulted on scientific issues worldwide and loves to travel. Thus, she likes to include both science and her travel experiences in her thriller/mystery novels in the Science Traveler series. Award-winning books in the series include: 

The Flu Is Coming

Murder: A Way to Lose Weight

Malignancy

Riddled with Clues

A Pound of Flesh, Sorta 

Learn more at: http://www.jlgreger.com

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Between the Covers

By Thonie Hevron

Who has the nerve to charge $30.00 for a mass market novel?

Plenty of best-selling, award-winning authors, that’s who.

Why the heck should I spend thirty of my hard-earned bucks on a book?

Because there is so much more between the covers than mere pages. How long did it take the author dream up the plot? Outline? Characters? Setting? Dialog? All this takes research. Romantic Bronte hero Edward Rochester doesn’t dress or talk like Phillip Marlowe. The setting must be realistic with sights, sounds and smells of real terra firma (unless it’s the ocean). Even visiting a local requires research into soil types, geography, demographics, weather and so on. If I told you how long it took to cull this information to distill into one scene, you’d grab your wallet and willingly hand over the cash.

That’s just preliminaries. After all the above is set in your head (or hard drive somewhere), a writer must do what a writer must do—write! Getting words down on a page may sound simple but fighting the temptation to edit as you go along, warring with distractions and generally motivating your bad self into the chair, take a lot of work. It’s not unusual for prolific authors to write 1,000 words a day. For an 80,000- word mystery, that’s a lot of days.

Typing “The End” isn’t the end for the author. There are edits. I’ve gone through rounds of seven with editors before it’s proclaimed “readable.”

You might think that’s really the end but it’s not. Whether your author is traditionally, small press or indie published, he/she bears the burden of most PR. Sure, the big houses will set up author events at book stores, but it’s up to the author to have bookmarks, swag, a captivating topic on which to speak and generate much of his/her own audience.

Social media platforms would’ve begun the moment the contract was signed. Again, the burden is on the author. There might be some technical help in the form of a custom website but Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et al, is done on the author’s time.

All this for one book? Well, the goal here is to produce many books. A website will be helpful for marketing, especially if it’s already set up. Social media will have generated interest and sales but to keep momentum the author must be active on the platforms.

All this is work. It’s labor of love, granted, but I know of few (introverted, the lot of us!) authors who like getting in front of an audience and talking about themselves. We authors know to acquaint readers with our work (that’s the whole point) we must stretch out of our comfort zones—or not ever put our words in front of readers.

Whew! All this takes a lot of energy. Authors don’t get paid by the hour and couldn’t begin to figure billing. So, we put a price tag on our darlings and hope others find them as captivating as we did.

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Guest Post: Radine Nehring- Yes to Success as an Author

Solving Peculiar Crimes by Radine Trees Nehring

By Radine Nehring

Hmmmm. If you are not a New York Times best-selling author with book sales in the thousands–or even in your own, more local, venue—counted in hundreds (I am including myself here) you can still say “I am a success.”

Of course there are gazillion other kinds of success, from making a delicious meal in the kitchen to feeling good about a work project not related to writing. That’s great, if it’s a helpful definition of success in your life.

But, how about success as a writer on a day when words simply aren’t working, when no agent or editor has responded to your query, or some “knucklehead” gave your latest book a mediocre review? Plus today, worry about pandemic, climate change, and political fighting can mess with peace of mind. Success through all that, too?

For me, the answer is yes, and is found in my interaction with other people in person, as well as spending more time on those connections via computer these days. For a number of years, being able to set up for weekly day-long book selling in grocery stores near my home area gave me a big boost toward happiness. Most of those who stopped at my table were not writers themselves, and their curiosity and even awe were springboards to a feeling of success, even when they did not choose to buy a book. Their friendliness and interest still fill me with gratitude and I hope, when things open up, I can go back to this work again.

Connections with other writers via conferences around the country, plus activity in a local book critique group, (even via Zoom) also make people-power an important way to experience a feeling of success. I know, this depends on how you think about it, but don’t forget, you are in charge of your thoughts and reactions. Be grateful.

Now, while spending much more time at home, there are newsletters, blogs, and social media locations for authors, plus special places like DorothyL’s review posts, and the Authors Guild daily posts covering conversations between authors about all kinds of ideas.

I guess what I am saying, is that, because you are a writer, one kind of success can be measured in friendships related in so many ways to that profession.

GO FOR IT!

Links:

Amazon-Solving Peculiar Crimes

Radine’s website featuring all her books is Radinesbooks

Radine’s Author’s Guild Profile

About Radine:

Radine Trees Nehing

Radine Trees Nehring’s award-winning writing career began when she fell in love with the Arkansas Ozarks and wanted to tell people why. She began by writing articles and essays for magazines and newspapers, sold a non-fiction book about life in the Ozarks to a New York publisher, then began writing her “To Die For” mystery series featuring Carrie McCrite, Henry King, and their friends in the Ozarks. “Solving Peculiar Crimes” adds intriguing and unique Carrie and Henry short stories to that series. Radine is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, Ozark Writers League, and Authors Guild. She was chosen as the 2011 inductee into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame.

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Guest Post: Maris Soule’s Take on Coming Up With Ideas

Girl running in empty, dark tunnel. Symbolizing escape, looking for exit or freedom. Toned BW photo
A Killer Past by Maris Soule

By Maris Soule

I’m often asked, “How do you come up with your ideas?” Well, Mary Harrington took form during a walk with my husband. We’d just watched the TV show Nikita (A rogue assassin returns to take down a secret organization) and I said, “I wonder what she would be like in her seventies?”

Hmm. I had a character. A woman in her seventies who regularly works out at the gym and has kept a low profile since moving to Rivershore, a small, rural town in southwest Michigan. She’s a widow whose grown son thinks, for her safety, she should move out of the two-story house she’s called home for almost forty-four years. A woman with secrets.

Mary Harrington became real to me, but now I needed an event to change the course of her life. I came up with two. First, she’s featured in a magazine article about the mental and physical advantages of older people staying active. Her picture is included, showing Mary working out at the gym, and the article goes out on the Internet, where it can be (and is) seen by people from her past. And then, the night before Halloween, Mary’s car breaks down two blocks from her house, and two gang members see her as easy prey. When one of the punks grabs her, Mary discovers old habits are hard to forget, and the gang members are the ones who end up in the hospital.

Of course, I needed a foil, someone intent on discovering why Mary isn’t willing to admit she bested the boys. Enter Sergeant Jack Rossini, Rivershore’s lone investigator. He’s a widower and younger than Mary by over a decade, who finds her fascinating, especially when he discovers there’s no record of her life prior to her arrival in Rivershore and is told by the F.B.I. to drop his investigation.

I loved writing this book. It was fun verbally pitting Mary against Jack, creating a son who thinks his mother can’t take care of herself, and a snobbish daughter-in-law who wants to trace Mary’s family tree. To the mix, I added a drug pushing gang and a man from her past who want her dead.

As an older woman myself, I hate being classified as “elderly.” The word conjures up images of feeble and weak. Yes, I can’t do everything I used to do when I was younger, but I still remember some of the Judo I learned in my teens. Don’t try grabbing my arm and pulling me somewhere I don’t want to go. And I may not see the target as well as I did in my younger years, but I can still put some bullet holes near the center. I never learned how to use some of the weapons Mary had hiding in her basement, but it was fun doing the research.

So, what would a woman who was an assassin in her twenties be like in her seventies? Meet Mary Harrington who has A KILLER PAST.

Maris Soule

About Maris:

Maris Soule has had thirty books published, ranging from romance and romantic suspense to mystery and thriller. Over the years, her books have won and placed in more than a dozen contests. Born and raised in California, she was working on a master’s degree in art history when she met and married her husband. She taught high school art and math for eight years before turning to writing full time. The Soules, who have two grown children and two granddaughters, now live in Michigan in the summer and Florida in the winter.

Visit her at:

https://www.marissoule.com

http://facebook.com/marissoule

https://www.facebook.com/MarisSouleAuthor/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/305476.Maris_Soule

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Guest Post: Are You Inspired?

By Susan McCormick

Inspiration is a funny thing. As a cozy mystery writer, I need inspiration for the murders that anchor the stories, inspiration to sit myself down and write for hours on end, inspiration for the big ideas of the characters and the books, and, most importantly, inspiration for the magic that happens on the page.

I am attuned to murder possibilities in everyday life. A cutthroat music competition that comes every four years with only one scholarship awarded? I see a mom who will do anything to help her child succeed. An arguing couple in a National Park? I see a husband who might lean too close to the edge and “fall off.” I am kind, sedate, and boring in my real life, but my imagination is full of mystery.

Authors need inspiration for the actual process of putting pen to paper, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. In many cases, the writing happens after coming home or before heading off to work. And, at home, so many distractions! The view outside the window, the dog angling for a tummy rub, the children clamoring for a snack or a game, the tea kettle ready to warm, the outdoors calling for a walk, the bedside table stacked with fully formed books that someone else has toiled over: grit and determination are the only antidotes. For me, with a day job as a doctor, the preciousness of time forced me into that chair before the sun came up each morning.  

The fun parts of inspiration, though, are the wisps of inspiration we collect and add together over time. My book series, The Fog Ladies, deals with old ladies, senior sleuths who have plenty of time on their hands and plenty of suspicion. The inspiration came when I lived in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco, and I was a busy medical resident with no time on my hands, so busy and tired I envied the sick patients lying in their hospital beds. In my apartment building were many older women, and I pictured them, incorrectly, as living the life of leisure I so coveted, sitting in rocking chairs looking out at the beautiful view and reading murder mysteries. My Fog Ladies’ characters took shape over the years as a conglomeration of older women I met in my building, in my practice as a doctor, at my mother’s retirement community’s dinner table, and anywhere else spunky ladies gather.

Inspiration for me also involves dogs. My gigantic Newfoundland dog, Albert, was my faithful writing companion, slipping downstairs with me in the early morning hours which are so good for writing and lying silently by my side as I typed. Looking at his large, black, solid, calm presence, I created his antithesis, a tiny, white, high-strung, fidgety Bichon Frise, who yips through the book, creates chaos and trouble, and ultimately saves the day. My dog, Albert, makes a short, sedate, and dignified appearance in Book 2, but in Book 3 he will finally shine, with a Newfoundland front and center in the action.

The final and best type of inspiration, however, comes from the inner recess of my mind, unplanned, unanticipated. Without this, there is no magic. With my doctor work, sometimes a diagnosis or a concern about a patient will come to me in a dream, and these messages from my brain have always been accurate. Writing is the same. Though I try to plot and plan, my favorite part of writing is when characters I’ve created do unexpected things and get themselves into trouble. One of my characters, Enid Carmichael, discovers Starbucks lattes at the ripe old age of eighty. She loves the bitterness, the froth. I wrote that. Then she craved more, and the next thing I knew, she was stealing Starbucks coupons from her neighbor’s newspaper to feed her addiction. She did that. Not me. I have learned to give my characters a little space to be themselves, because the surprises they bring are a delight.

Inspiration is around and within us. As a cozy mystery writer, I love to twist real life into murder, twist bits and pieces of people and dogs into rich, feisty new characters, and twist secrets from a part of my brain that is hidden.

The Fog Ladies: Family Matters (A San Francisco Cozy Murder Mystery, Book 2) synopsis:

Till death do us part, with kitchen shears. When a family man kills his wife, the Fog Ladies—spunky senior sleuths and one overtired, overstressed and newly suspicious young doctor living in an elegant apartment building in San Francisco—set out to discover the truth. Their probing finds the threat is perilously close to home, endangering another troubled family struggling to survive. Marriage can be deadly.

About Susan:

Susan McCormick and Albert

Susan McCormick is a writer and doctor who lives in Seattle. She graduated from Smith College and George Washington University School of Medicine, with additional medical training in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Susan served as a doctor in the U.S. Army for nine years before moving to the Pacific Northwest. In addition to the Fog Ladies series, she also wrote Granny Can’t Remember Me, a lighthearted picture book about Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. She is part of The Cozy Mystery Quartet, with YouTube podcasts about all things cozy, for authors and for readers. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two sons, and, until recently, a giant Newfoundland dog, Albert.

Social media links:

https://www.facebook.com/susanmccormickauthor/

https://www.instagram.com/susanmccormickbooks/

Buy links:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-fog-ladies-susan-mccormick/1137457639

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-fog-ladies-family-matters/id1526067766

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54900244-the-fog-ladies

https://www.bookbub.com/books/the-fog-ladies-family-matters-a-san-francisco-cozy-murder-mystery-book-2-by-susan-mccormick

Categories
Mystery Readers Only

Guest Post: What’s in a Murder Mystery, Anyway?

The Lethal Legacy
The Lethal Legacy by Jeannette de Beauvoir

Due to a scheduling glitch, you are seeing Jeannette de Beauvoir’s post on the ingredients for a murder mystery this afternoon instead of this morining. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. –Thonie

By Jeannette de Beauvoir

My favorite genre, whether reading or writing, is mystery. There’s something that’s intellectually and morally satisfying about seeing justice done—and having a go at figuring out how to get there.

Most murders originate long before they come to the reader’s—or the sleuth’s—attention. The body is both the ending of one story and the beginning of another. But unless there’s some sort of flashback in the prologue, the murder mystery proper begins with a body.

THE BODY

In a cozy mystery, one that doesn’t follow the investigation from the police point of view  (those are called police procedurals), generally the murder itself is glossed over. Its brutality doesn’t intrude much into the drawing-room or garden; instead, that’s all abstracted and presented to the reader as a puzzle. Readers are generally not attached to the victim, though as the mystery deepens the victim may be fleshed out and presented as more of a person; right now, though, we’re just looking at a body.

THE SLEUTH

In a mystery in which the protagonist is a detective (either police or private), that person now enters the scene. Although not always, this is also the point where the amateur sleuth enters the scene, though generally with less deliberation; most amateurs stumble over bodies—literally or metaphorically—or get drawn in by someone else. In a detective novel, there is sometimes a dark past or present (for example, Sherlock Holmes’ cocaine habit), while amateurs often handle their pasts and foibles with humor.

THE SUSPECTS

The obvious suspect is, of course, rarely guilty. Agatha Christie pioneered using the least likely suspect as murderer; but there are all sorts of options between those extremes. It’s generally not the butler (though to be honest, I long to read a mystery in which the butler did do it!). Suspects all present a motive for murder, and most of these motives are established by the author to lead the reader astray.

THE WEAPON

The weapon used reveals the level of planning—or lack thereof—involved. Murder weapons (or methods) in novels tend in general to be more creative than those in the headlines; one can only assume that when real criminals use creative methods, they’re not caught.

THE INFORMATION

There’s lots of it. The weather, people’s habits, gum wrappers left behind… nothing is too small for the author to include. It’s up to the reader to figure out what’s relevant and what isn’t. The author has a duty to the reader: all the information necessary to solving the crime must be given to the reader in the name of fair play—so a lot more of it needs to be there in order to distract!

THE RED HERRINGS

Just as superfluous information must be included, along with a plethora of possible suspects, the author includes possible false trails for the reader to fall in love with and follow.

THE REVELATION

It’s no fun to solve a murder if you can’t reveal your solution as dramatically as possible! Remember Hercule Poirot’s “you may wonder why I’ve called you here this evening”… this is possibly the most annoying part of the classic Golden Age mysteries, as the detective (professional or amateur) takes the suspects through the entire case, throws about the red herrings, and finally reveals the culprit.

And that’s pretty much it! Of course, I hope you see more than this bare-bones structure in my novels… but I am writing them in conformity to an old and venerable writing tradition.

Happy sleuthing!

About the book: 

Despite a slew of weddings to coordinate, Sydney Riley refuses to miss the Women’s Community Dinner—the high point of Women’s Week. During the festivities, she meets vocalist Jordan Bellefort, a direct descendant of a fugitive slave whose diaries suggest the Race Point Inn was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Then Jordan’s wife, Reggie, is murdered while Jordan performs onstage before a crowd of adoring fans. When Sydney probes Reggie’s death, she uncovers a tainted legacy that may provide a motive for the killing and place her own life at risk.

Jeannette de Beauvoir


The Lethal Legacy explores the past’s influence on the present in a world-famous seaside resort with a rich history of diversity and acceptance. This seventh book in the Provincetown Mystery Series maintains the masterful blend of gripping suspense and unique characters Sydney Riley readers have come to expect.  

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08DMCBDCY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

About Jeannette de Beauvoir:

Jeannette is a bestselling novelist whose characters uncover truths and occasional dark secrets via mystery, historical, and literary fiction. Her work has been translated into 12 languages and she has been a Booksense Book-of-the-Year finalist.

As you can imagine, she loves to write. All the time.