Sometimes, on panels or at book club visits, I’m asked, “Why mysteries?” Other than that I love to read them, that I grew up spending hours in the company of yet another Agatha Christie or Dick Francis, I like to reply that mysteries, and crime fiction in general, provide the satisfaction of structure. Crime fiction demands a beginning, middle, and […]
Once upon a time, I wrote for children. Old children. The creatures known in publishing as young adults—not quite teenagers but beginning to navigate the realties of a world that is not always kind. They have experienced cruelty, encountered their first villains. They know about sex—kind of, sort of. As young people, they don’t always have to power to vanquish
“Ripped from the headlines!” “Inspired by a real story.” “Some of what follows is true…” These are all familiar phrases that many mystery authors – including myself – have used to describe the murderous plots we write about in our books. On the face of it, this sure seems like a pretty nifty concept. Find a sensational crime in the
While it is possible to find mysteries, from fluffiest to darkest, that take place in the author’s version of never-never land, I prefer mysteries set in some semblance of the real world. There, diversity equals reality. How do we incorporate the varied world around us–races, disabilities, sexual identities and so on–into our storytelling? And how do we do it accurately
