Chris Chan's Blog, page 27
February 5, 2021
True Crime Article Profile: “Some Day the Truth Will Come Out”
True Crime Article Profile: “Some Day the Truth Will Come Out”
I am a crime historian as well as a mystery writer and critic. Over a century ago in Madison, Wisconsin, a shocking murder turned the city upside-down. A little girl, Annie Lemberger, was kidnapped from her home and brutally slain. The police soon arrested a likely culprit and sent him to prison, but he maintained his innocence. Years later, an ambitious lawyer took on the case, leading to a courtroom scene as dramatic as anything in Perry Mason.
At the end of the proceedings, the world thought that a wrongly imprisoned man had be cleared and that the true guilty party had been identified. But was this truly the case? The second man to be accused argued that he had been framed, though few people wanted to hear his denials. Decades passed, and the case, once the most famous American child murder aside from the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping, faded into obscurity.
By the last twentieth century, Annie’s grown nephew, born long after her death, started looking into the case, and realized that corruption and misguided zeal had led to another miscarriage of justice. Mark Lemberger’s book Crime of Magnitude explained his research and conclusions. My article “Some Day the Truth Will Come Out” tells Mark Lemberger’s story.
Mark Lemberger’s website can be found here.
“Some Day the Truth Will Come Out” was published in September 2019, in issue #27 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine. It won an Honorable Mention for the Kay W. Levin Award for Short Nonfiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
January 29, 2021
THIF!– Thank Holmes It’s Friday!
THIF!– Thank Holmes It’s Friday!
As I’ve mentioned many times on this blog, my first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was published by MX Publishing this year, and I couldn’t have asked for a better publisher. MX Publishing specializes in Sherlock Holmes-themed work, and if you’re looking for new Sherlock Holmes stories by fans, scholarly work about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or just an entertaining read in general, I highly recommend that Sherlock Holmes fans and mystery readers take a look at their website.
MX Publishing is holding a special sale on certain books. As part of their new promotion, “Thank Holmes It’s Friday!” here are some special deals:
Here are the offers valid from 9pm Thursday UK time to 9am Saturday UK time. Only one discount code can be used per customer so please pick your offer. Please consider adding a 'mystery book' to your order too as it helps us spread the postage.
Just A Dollar - Holmes Book of the Week
The Detective and The Woman - $16.95
First in the Holmes/Adler series of four books (so far) by Amy Thomas
Offer $1 Quantity 5
Code at basket THIF-3
Just a Dollar - Non-Holmes Book Of The Week
80 Years Gone In A Flash - $19.95
The autobiography of John Jochimsen - legendary photographer.
Offer $1 Quantity 5
Code at basket THIF-1
Sherlock Book Of The Week
The Monographs $22.95
The definitive guide to becoming Sherlock Holmes
Offer $ 5 Quantity 5
Code at basket THIF-4
Free AudioBook of the Week
A Biased Judgement: The Sherlock Holmes Diaries 1897 $18.95
Geri Schear's first in novel in a traditional trilogy
Offer $ free Quantity 5 US, 5 UK
First five from USA and UK to use contact us form with code THIF-2
Check them out before it’s too late!
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27th from MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
January 22, 2021
My Amazon Author Page
My Amazon Author Page
If you’re interested in reading some of my work, please check out my Amazon Author Page. There are links to the publications with my writings in them, connections to this blog, and if you’re interested in buying an anthology with one of my stories in it, or my book Sherlock & Irene, please check it out !
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
January 15, 2021
My Work for Gilbert! Magazine, Part Two
My Work for Gilbert! Magazine, Part Two
Picking up where I left off last week, during the first term of my senior year of college, I stopped by a used book sale and discovered an anthology of Nobel Prize for Literature laureates. In the introductory essay for the 1936 Prize (Eugene O’Neill) there was an comment about how G.K. Chesterton was nominated for the 1935 prize. I wondered if Mr. Dale Ahlquist, the President of the American Chesterton Society, knew any more about it.
I wrote to him, and this was the first he’d heard about it. He wrote to a friend in Sweden who was able to access the files and translate the assessment of Chesterton’s work. This led to my writing an article on Chesterton’s Nobel nomination, which led to being asked to speak at the annual Chesterton Conference in the Twin Cities that summer. A few months later, I joined Gilbert! as a contributing editor, and I’ve been writing for them ever since. In the past sixteen-plus years, I’ve written over two hundred fifty articles for Gilbert!
I started by writing a column called “Manalive,” which focused on literary theory. After a few years, I started writing more TV, movie, and book reviews, and after “Manalive” was discontinued, and focused on reviews, mainly in a column titled “Fear of Film.” More recently, there was another change of assignment, leading to a column titled “Chesterton’s Great Characters.” That lasted for a couple of years, with plenty of book reviews along the way. For the last two years, I’ve been writing a column titled “The Debater,” focusing on the many prominent figures Chesterton debated over the years.
Hopefully, I’ll be writing columns for Gilbert! for many years to come.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
January 8, 2021
My Work for Gilbert! Magazine
My Work for Gilbert! Magazine
One of my hobbies is promoting the work of underappreciated authors that I really enjoy. I first discovered G.K. Chesterton’s work in seventh grade. At the time, I was in the process of becoming a really big fan of Golden Age Mysteries. I started reading Agatha Christie’s books in January of fifth grade, and by September of seventh grade I’d read all of her mystery novels. I had a problem. I wanted to read more books like hers, but I found all of the contemporary mysteries I’d read to be disappointing– too dark, too violent, too nihilistic, and not enough fair play for armchair sleuths.
So I looked at Christie’s short story collection Partners in Crime, where her husband and wife team Tommy and Tuppence investigate cases by imitating their favorite fictional detectives. I decided to track some of them down. I’d already read and loved all of Sherlock Holmes years earlier. Most of the other detectives parodied in the book were out of print, but on a trip to Barnes & Noble, I found a copy of The Complete Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton. I got it, and read it over Spring Break of seventh grade.
By the end of the first story, “The Blue Cross,” I knew I’d found a winner. I read through the anthology in a matter of days and was crushed that there weren’t more Father Brown stories. I tried to find more of Chesterton’s work, but at the time most of his work was out of print. I found a few of his books here and there, and ordered some Dover editions of some mysteries from Schwartz’s, my local bookstore, and those books cemented my appreciation for Chesterton.
Years passed, and I found myself in college. One evening sophomore year, I was tired and surfing the Internet, and decided to do searches for my favorite authors. I eventually tried Chesterton and discovered The American Chesterton Society and their magazine Gilbert! I really enjoyed the online articles, and in the middle of my senior year, I corresponded with the President of the ACS, Dale Ahlquist. I’ll talk about what happened next in an upcoming post.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
January 1, 2021
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! I hope that 2021 is off to a great start for everybody reading this!
2020 was… to put it mildly… rough for most of us. I had my difficulties, but I want to focus on the positives now. This has been my most successful year of writing and publishing yet.
To start, my first full-length book Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” came out this summer, in both paperback and audiobook. I’ve been brainstorming this book since I was a senior in college, and I finally fleshed it out enough to do this very intriguing premise justice.
Not only that, but I’ve had nine new stories and one reprint published in eight different anthologies this year. I continue to have essays and reviews published in Strand Magazine and Gilbert!
I’ve even gotten some awards news. My true crime article “Someday the Truth Will Come Out: The Lemberger Family and the Murder that Stunned Wisconsin,” published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, received the Honorable Mention for the Kay W. Levin Award for Short Nonfiction from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. My short tale “The Six-Year-Old Serial Killer” tied for second place in the 2020 Derringer Awards for Best Flash Story, and I took Second Place in the “Wolfe’s World” category for The Wolfe Pack’s The Gazette Writing Competition for my novella “Time Trieth Truth: Why Nero Wolfe Misjudged St. Thomas More.”
Given some other news I’ve been saving, I’m hoping for the best with 2021. I hope that everybody reading has similar success with their endeavors!
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
December 24, 2020
Story Profile: “How to Get Bloodstains Out of Leather Pants”
Story Profile: “How to Get Bloodstains Out of Leather Pants”
Merry Christmas! I hope that everybody reading this blog has a happy– and healthy– New Year!
The annual anthology Best New England Crime Stories is a collection of mysteries set in the New England states. The authors of the tales don’t have to be from the region, as long as their tales prominently feature these areas. I have a story in the 2020 edition.
While most of the Funderburke mysteries are set in the Milwaukee area, sometimes Funderburke and Nerissa come across crimes as they travel. In “How to Get Bloodstains Out of Leather Pants,” the duo are attending a weekend conference at a small college in rural Massachusetts. It’s a scruffy little campus, and not many of the faculty are particularly friendly, though the pair do make friends with a young woman who’s an adjunct in the Popular Culture department, with a specialty in Buffy the Vampire Slayer studies.
When a prominent professor is murdered, it’s up to Funderburke and Nerissa to find out who did it. But what happens when the killer seems more sympathetic than the victim?
Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories is now available in paperback.
December 18, 2020
Story Profile: “The Heinous Half-Crowns”
Story Profile: “The Heinous Half-Crowns”
In yet another anthology from Belanger Books, there is a pastiche of mine that expands upon the Sherlock Holmes universe.
Beyond the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a trilogy of anthologies, all of which center around the earliest volume of Sherlock Holmes short stories, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, consisting of twelve tales. In each volume of Beyond the Adventures, the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories is reprinted, each followed by at least one and often more newly-written sequels to the classic tale.
My story appears in Volume Three. “The Heinous Half-Crowns” is a sequel to “The Engineer’s Thumb.” In the original story, a man is mutilated after he inadvertently uncovers a counterfeiting scheme. The story’s ending is rare in the Canon, as the villains get away. Or do they? In my sequel, the criminals have been caught, but their remaining cache of fake coins is a matter of great concern for the British government, and it’s up to Holmes to save the nation from scandal and financial devastation.
Beyond the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Volume Three, and the first two volumes in the series, are all available for purchase in paperback and Kindle editions.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
December 11, 2020
Story Profile: “Raguel”
Story Profile: “Raguel”
The Trench Coat Chronicles is a new anthology of murder mysteries where every story has to feature a trench coat in some capacity. This seemed like an interesting topic, and since my series detective, Funderburke, wears a distinctive long coat that has become a personal trademark. For a while now, I’ve been plotting a story about how he first got his favorite garment, and it all started with one of his earliest cases as a private investigator.
Before he started working at a school, Funderburke was working at a rundown P.I. agency, not quite making ends meet. He hadn’t started to focus on helping young people in need yet, but “Raguel” is set in a seedy motel, where a teenaged boy is accused of killing his own father. This kind of investigation is new to Funderburke, but this origin story sets Funderburke on the path to realizing his calling is for helping those who can’t help themselves.
The Trench Coat Chronicles is available on Kindle, and the paperback edition will be released soon.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
December 4, 2020
Story Profile: “Intruders at Baker Street”
Story Profile: “Intruders at Baker Street”
I have two stories in the anthology The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories: Some More Untold Cases Part XXII: 1887-1897. Other than “Merridew of Abominable Memory,” the volume includes my story “Intruders at Baker Street,” which is inspired by a reference to the “Darlington Substitution Scandal” in the original Canon.
Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are inextricably linked with 221B Baker Street in the public imagination. It is very probable that multiple people lived at that famous address before the most famous inhabitants lived there. Holmes lived at 221B by himself during Watson’s marriage to Mary Morstan, and the sleuthing pair left the premises after Holmes’ retirement. Someone probably moved in soon after they left, but we have no clue who those people could be.
The thought of anybody but Holmes and Watson living at 221B just seems wrong somehow, That’s when I got the idea. What if, at one point during Watson’s marriage, he returned to 221B for a visit and found someone other than Holmes living there? And what if he had trouble convincing the authorities that the intruders were not the true residents? Who would supplant Holmes in his own domicile and why? That was the genesis of “Intruders at Baker Street.”
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories: Some More Untold Cases Part XXII: 1887-1897 is available for sale now from Amazon.com and MX Publishing in both hardcover and paperback.
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s first book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” was released on August 27thfrom MX Publishing, and is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindle edition.
