B.V. Lawson's Blog, page 59

Quote of the Week

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Friday's "Forgotten" Book: Emily Dickinson is Dead

Author Jane Langton (1922-2018) didn't come to mystery novels in any traditional sort of way. She studied astronomy at Wellesley College and the University of Michigan and received graduate degrees in art history at the University of Michigan and Radcliffe College. But turn to writing, she did, and in 1962 started penning YA novels (her book The Fledgling is a Newbery Honor book) and 18 adult mysteries which won her Bouchercon's 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award.



All of her mysteries focus on the same two protagonists, Homer Kelly, a distinguished Thoreau scholar and ex-lieutenant detective for Middlesex County, and his wife Mary. As the author herself once said, "Mary is the sensible one, but I confess I like Homer's rhapsodic flights of fancy." Most of the settings are in the author's home state of Massachusetts although she's sent her heroes to more exotic places like Florence, Oxford and Venice.



Langton also illustrated many of her novels with her own drawings, explaining it this way:

One of the greatest pleasures has been illustrating my adult books with drawings of the real places where my fictional events happen. I've loved setting up my folding stool in Harvard Square, or standing on my own back porch trying to get down on paper the look of the pants and shirts on the laundry line, or leaning against cars in Florence with sketchbook in hand to draw some architectural wonder. Conditions have not always been salubrious, as when my feet were submerged while I sketched the house of Tintoretto in Venice during the season of high water.

Her 1984 Homer Kelly novel, Emily Dickinson is Dead was nominated for an Edgar Award and received a Nero Award that year. It was inspired, no doubt, by the author's own interest in Dickinson, having written a text about the poet for the collection Acts of Light. The action in Langton's novel takes place at a symposium celebrating the 100th anniversary of the death of poet Emily Dickinson, where one attendee disappears and another is found murdered in the poet's former bedroom.

Langton's trademarks are all here in the novel, her memorable and descriptive settings, eccentric characters, a sly humor that pokes fun at the pompous academics and Amherst townsfolk alike. As the New York Times Book Review added, "Miss Langton is a sensitive and even elegant writer, one who deals with literate, intelligent people..." 

Homer Kelly is more of a peripheral figure in this particular novel, but he sums up the essence of his philosophy—and probably that of the author—and the book quite nicely:

Homer Kelly, too, was enchanted with the afternoon. It wasn't the justice of the women's cause that had diverted him; it was the everlasting melodrama of human souls in conflict. It was the handfuls of gritty sand that were forever being sprinkled into the machinery of daily life, grinding the ill-fitting cogs against each other, warping the sprockets, jamming the mismatched teeth. It was always so fascinating, the way people went right on being so outrageously themselves, and therefore so eternally interesting.

Although not so much a mystery as a wry study of human hubris and self-delusion, the book's character studies, snippets of poetry, Langton's illustrations, and even some details about the workings of dams and reservoirs, make Emily Dickinson is Dead an entertaining read.

          

Mystery Melange

Nina Bhadreshwar has won the 2022 Little, Brown UEA Crime Fiction Award with her debut novel, The Day of the Roaring. The annual award is given to the best book by a graduating student from UEA’s Creative Writing Crime Fiction MA. Bhadreshwar wins the £3,000 prize, which was chaired by Sphere Fiction publishing director Ed Wood and judged by a diverse panel of Little, Brown staff. The runner up, Kat Latham, was highly commended for her novel, No Man’s Land. Previous winners included Femi Yayode (Lightseekers; published by Raven) and Emma Styles (No Country for Girls; Sphere).

Here's some conference good news: Not only will CrimeFest in Bristol celebrate its 15th anniversary in 2023, Specsavers has renewed its title sponsorship of the event through 2025. The convention has grown to be one of the biggest crime fiction conventions in Europe and will convene at the Mercure Bristol Grand Hotel from May 11-14, 2023, with headline authors to be announced in the New Year. The conference will also once again sponsor the CrimeFest bursary in 2023 for a crime fiction author of color, which includes attendance fees and a guaranteed panel appearance.

James Patterson has been hired to complete an unfinished Michael Crichton book. The late author’s estate provided Patterson with over 100 pages of a novel about the imminent eruption of Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, which threatens a secret cache of deadly chemical weapons. Ironically, the volcano did start erupting just last month. The author’s widow, Sherri Crichton and chief executive of CrichtonSun, a company that oversees the estate, found the manuscript after his death. She said, "Michael had been working on this book for years, it was his passion project and centered in the place that inspired him the most, Hawaii." She also noted her late husband had conducted extensive research including interviews with volcanologists and location scouting. Crichton died in 2008, leaving behind a career of books including Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo and Sphere, many adapted for TV and film.

Mystery Readers Journal has released its Winter 2022 issue, themed around Legal Mysteries, with columns, reviews, and Author! Author! essays. You can catch a sneak peak online (and order a print or PDF copy) with two free articles, "Grief, Loss and a Con Man Changed My Life" by Steve Cavanagh and "Writing What You Know—Sort of" by Martin Edwards.

As the end-of-the-year best books list continue apace, Barry Forshaw offered up his "End-of-Year Crime Round-Up" for The Financial Times, and Michael Dirda chose "14 mystery books to savor during the long nights of winter" for The Washington Post.

Writing for MSN Online, Nick Kolakowski investigated "The Enduring Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Macabre Death," a real-life puzzle that endures.

Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, Sophie Hannah, Mark Billingham, Dreda Say Mitchell, Ann Cleeves, Sara Paretsky, David Baldacci, and other crime authors revealed their favorite detectives for The Guardian, from Lew Archer to Phillip Marlowe.

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Jeffrey Epstein Speaks From the Grave" by Tom Barlow.

In the Q&A roundup, Indie Crime Scene chatted with John Yearwood, whose novel, Jar of Pennies, was a featured new release in October; Crime Fiction Lover spoke with physician Cristina LePort about her debut medical thriller, Dissection; and Criminal Element had a Q&A with Peter Blauner, author of the historical suspense novel, Picture in the Sand, set in part during the filming of Cecil B. DeMille's classic The Ten Commandments in Egypt in the 1950s.

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Author R&R with Mark Ellis

UK-based Mark Ellis is former barrister and entrepreneur turned thriller writer and creator of DCI Frank Merlin, an Anglo-Spanish police detective operating in World War 2 London. Mark grew up under the shadow of his parents’ experience of the Second World War: his father served in the wartime navy and died a young man, and his mother told him stories of watching the heavy bombardment of Swansea from the safe vantage point of a hill in Llanelli, Wales. As a consequence, Mark has always been fascinated by WW2 and the fact that while the nation was engaged in a heroic endeavor, crime flourished—murder, robbery, theft, rape and widespread looting. This was an intriguing, harsh and cruel world, the world of DCI Frank Merlin.

Dead in the Water is the fifth and latest installment in the Frank Merlin series, set in 1942 with the war still raging. A mangled body is found in the Thames River just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two? Following a twisting trail of secrets, Merlin and his team must investigate a baffling and deadly puzzle.

Mark Ellis stops by In Reference to Murder to take some Author R&R about researching and writing the series:

 

The Importance of Research in my Writing

I am the author of a detective series set in World War Two London. My hero is Detective Chief Inspector Frank Merlin, a police officer working out of Scotland Yard. There are 5 books in the series to date,  and I’m currently working on the sixth. The Embassy Murders (formerly titled Princes Gate) kicked off the series with Merlin investigating deaths at Joe Kennedy’s London American Embassy in January 1940. The series then progressed to the latest, fifth book, Dead In The Water, set in August 1942, when Merlin investigates a number of deaths linked to Nazi-stolen art. The next book will take Merlin on to early summer 1943.

When I took up crime writing I chose wartime London for a number of reasons. One was that it was a period which had not been covered very much recently in crime fiction. Another was that I found out there had been a crime boom during the war. Crime grew by approximately sixty per cent in England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. Criminals benefited from the blackout, rationing and the black market, the growing market for vice, and the general civil disarray caused by bombing and the war. It seemed to me this would be a great time in which to set a detective series.

I am very keen on achieving historical accuracy in my books. I aim to transport readers to another very different time and place and in my view this cannot be done successfully without accuracy and authenticity. As to the research process I use to achieve this, it has changed a little over time. When I began writing in the early 2000s, I relied very heavily on libraries. In particular I spent a lot of time at the British Public Records Office in Kew, London, where amongst much other helpful information, they hold copies of all the newspapers printed in the war. However as the internet grew, I found that I could increasingly get much of that information online, and the balance of my research process changed, both in terms of sources and procedure.

Having built up a good detailed general knowledge of the period, my main focus now is the specific timeline of the story. Merlin 6, as mentioned above, will be set in early summer 1943. Before starting to write this autumn I spent around 3 months immersing myself in May and June 1943. I began by trawling through the internet searching for any information connected to that time. Then I did the same with my own wartime library of histories, biographies, autobiographies, diaries and literature of the period by authors like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Elizabeth Bowen. Public libraries still play a part if I encounter gaps. Of course, the research process hasn’t stopped completely now I am writing. There are always facts to verify, and geographical locations to check out.

Good research is crucial, but it is important for the author to remember that the story is the most important thing. There is often a temptation to show off the depth of research done. Many readers enjoy learning new facts in historical fiction books but authors should not overdo it and allow the fruits of research to overwhelm the story. I try hard not to leave myself open to that criticism.

PS I’ve been asked to say who I would consider for the part of Frank Merlin if my series was filmed. This is not so unlikely an event as I have had tv/movie interest from the BBC and others. I like a British actor called Luke Evans who has a Hollywood pedigree (Beauty and the Beast, Midway, The Hobbit). He has similar looks and build to Merlin, as does another possibility, the experienced British actor, Orlando Bloom. Both are the right age.

 

You can learn more about Mark Ellis and his books via his website, and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Dead in the Water is available now from Headline Publishing and via all major booksellers.

          

Media Murder for Monday

It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news:

THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES

Following the success of their Ocean’s Eleven movies, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are taking on an another heist film, The Instigators, with Doug Liman (who directed Damon in the Bourne Identity films) also on board to helm the project for Apple Original Films. Damon and Casey's brother, Ben Affleck, are producing through their newly announced banner, Artists Equity, along with Jeff Robinov and John Graham's Studio 8, and Kevin Walsh's The Walsh Company. The film, which was penned by Chuck MacLean and developed by Robinov, Graham, and Casey Affleck, follows two thieves who must go on the run with the help of one of their therapists after a robbery goes awry.

Netflix released a trailer for The Pale Blue Eye based on Louis Bayard's 2006 novel, which acts as an alternative origin story for Edgar Allan Poe. Adapted and directed by Scott Cooper, the film stars Christian Bale and hits select theaters December 23 before landing on the streamer beginning January 6. Set in the 1830s, Bale plays a local detective tasked with solving the grisly murder of a cadet at then-fledgling West Point. That’s where he meets Poe (Henry Melling), an eccentric cadet with a disdain for the rigors of the military and a penchant for poetry, and engages him to help pursue the case. The cast also includes Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Hadley Robinson, Timothy Spall, Joey Brooks, Brennan Cook, Gideon Glick, Fred Hechinger, Matt Helm, Jack Irving, Steven Maier, Charlie Tahan, and Robert Duvall.

TELEVISION/STREAMING

FX has given a pilot order to The Border, a drama based on the third book in Don Winslow’s bestselling Cartel Trilogy, from Daniel Zelman, (Damages, Bloodline), Shane Salerno (Salinger, Avatar sequels, and FX Productions). E.J. Bonilla is set to lead the cast, which also includes Frank Blake, Annie Shapero, Sebastián Buitrón, and Luis Bordonada. The Border is an epic saga that reveals the dark truths about America’s failed fifty-year war on drugs, exploring the myths of the drug war through the intertwining narratives of characters on both sides of the Mexican-American border.

Better Call Saul producer, Gordon Smith, is adapting The Destroyer book series (which was first published in 1971) for Sony Pictures Television. Originated by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, The Destroyer books are about a U.S. government operative named Remo Williams, a former Newark cop framed for a crime and sentenced to death. His death is faked by the government so he can be trained as an assassin for CURE, a secret organization set up to defend the country by working outside the law. The books were previously adapted as a 1985 feature film, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

In his first major foray into TV, Jake Gyllenhaal is in negotiations to star in and executive produce Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+’s upcoming limited series from David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams, and Warner Brothers TV. The series is inspired by the courtroom thriller novel of the same name by Scott Turow, which was published in 1987 and turned into a 1990 feature starring Harrison Ford. It tells the story of a horrific murder that upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorneys’ office when one of its own is suspected of the crime. Gyllenhaal will play Rusty Sabich, the fervent prosecutor suspected of killing a close colleague when the evidence begins to point to him.

CBS is developing Citizen Jane, a drama from the co-creators of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and Jay Beattie and CBS Studios. In Citizen Jane, written by Beattie, a law school dropout turned citizen sleuth—haunted by her sister’s unsolved murder—partners with a jaded homicide detective seeking redemption to solve cold cases and deliver justice across the country. 

Taron Egerton and the creators behind Apple TV+’s Black Bird are re-teaming on the crime series, Firebug, inspired by events surrounding notorious California arsonist, John Leonard Orr. Former firefighter Orr was an arson investigator for the Glendale Fire Department in Southern California. Initially hired to understand and track down cases of arson, he became a convicted serial arsonist himself. He was found to be the cause of a spate of high-profile fires across California in the 1980s and ’90s that led to tens of millions of dollars' worth of damage and four deaths.

Colin Callender’s production company, Playground, has optioned the crime novel, The Wicked Girls, to develop as a limited TV series. Filmmaker Richard Shepard (Ugly Betty) is attached to write and direct, while also serving as an executive producer alongside Callender, Scott Huff, and David Stern. The book was written by Alex Marwood and tells the story of journalist Kirsty Lindsay, who reports on a series of attacks on female tourists in a seaside town.

Hulu’s limited series based on Rebecca Godfrey’s book, Under The Bridge, has added to its cast. Emmy winner Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife) is set as a lead, along with Vritika Gupta, Javon "Wanna" Walton, and Aiyana Goodfellow. They join previously announced series stars Riley Keough, Izzy G, Chloe Guidry, and Ezra Faroque Khan. The book is based on the 1997 true story of fourteen-year-old Reena Virk (Gupta) who went to join friends at a party and never returned home. Seven teenage girls and a boy were accused of the savage murder, and the resulting investigation reveals startling truths about the unlikely killer.

Alona Tal, Johnny Ray Gill, and Eloise Mumford have joined the cast of Amazon’s Cross in series regular roles. They will star opposite Aldis Hodge, who plays the titular forensic psychologist character in the series, which is based on the best-selling Alex Cross book series by James Patterson. Tal will play Kayla Craig, a brilliant, determined, and abrasive FBI agent with a sharp sense of humor who aims to recruit Cross into the bureau; Gill will play Bobby Trey, a deadly and cunning ex-police officer; and Mumford will play Shannon Witmer, a frustrated dreamer with artistic aspirations.

Netflix released a trailer for the spy thriller, Treason, from Bridge of Spies' writer Matt Charman. The limited series explores the trials, tribulations, and treasonous actions of MI6 agent, Adam Lawrence (Charlie Cox), who finds himself taking over as Chief after his predecessor was poisoned. Treason also stars Olga Kurylenko as Kara, a Russian spy who Lawrence shares history with, and Oona Chaplin as Maddy, Lawrence's wife.

A teaser trailer was also released for Perry Mason Season 2, starring Matthew Rhys in a gritty new murder mystery conspiracy featuring the scion of a powerful oil family.

PODCASTS/VIDEO/RADIO/AUDIO

It was a Dark and Stormy Book Club took at look at The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Annotated, the definitive edition from Mysterious Press of Robert Louis Stevenson’s immortal tale of depraved murder and unrelenting horror. The edition is introduced by Joe Hill, annotated by Edgar-winner Leslie S. Klinger, and illustrated with over 100 color images.

On Crime Time FM, Barry Forshaw chaired a panel of top critics and writers about their picks for the Best Crime Novels of 2022. The panelists included Laura Wilson (Guardian critic, novelist) , Maxim Jakubowski (editor, publisher, writer, bookseller), Jake Kerridge (crime fiction critic for the Telegraph), Ayo Onatade (critic at ShotsBlog), Victoria Selman (novelist and Crime Time presenter), and Paul Burke (reviewer and Crime Time host).

The Red Hot Chili Writers spoke with Lord Peter Hains, politician and thriller writer, to discuss wildlife poaching, apartheid protests, and the different forms of meditation.

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Sunday Music Treat

It's Christmas season again, which means it's time for some holiday-themed music treats. First up is a section from Franz Liszt's Weihnachtsbaum ("Christmas Tree"), a suite of 12 pieces written by Liszt in 1873–76, with revisions in 1881. Although the composer led a scandalous life as a young piano virtuoso, in his later years, he joined the Third Order of Saint Francis and took several minor orders within the Catholic Church as as lector, porter, acolyte, and exorcist (but that latter one is for another season). He fashioned this particular work for his granddaughter Daniela, who was born on December 24. Fortunately, it's less of a virtuosic piece than Liszt's usual fare, which means even Scott Drayco could handle it with his injured right hand. The piece uses several several traditional carols including this movement, "In Dulci Jubilo," played here by the conductor/pianist, Myron Romanul:

 

          

Quote of the Week

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Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Man Who Didn't Fly

Scottish author Margot Bennett was born in 1912 and worked first first as a copywriter in the UK and Australia and then as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War before turning to writing. Her output in crime fiction was relatively small, yet successful: The Man Who Didn't Fly was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was runner-up to Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison for Best Novel at the Edgars in 1956, and she won the Gold Dagger two years later in 1958 with Someone from the Past. She was also chosen to contribute a short story to the second CWA anthology, Choice Of Weapons, edited by Michael Gilbert.



But thereafter, a bit of mystery regarding Bennett herself began. She essentially stopped writing crime fiction, something discussed by Martin Edwards both and in the foreword he wrote for the Black Dagger Crime Series edition of The Man Who Didn't Fly. Bennett only wrote for television for awhile—including the early 60s UK adaptation of the Maigret novels by Simenon—with the exception of two non-mystery books (one of which had the intriguing title The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Atomic Radiation), before abandoning writing altogether in 1966. She died in 1980 at the age of 68.

In The Man Who Didn't Fly, four men are scheduled to take an ill-fated chartered flight to Dublin that crashes into the Irish Channel. Although the bodies can't be recovered, it becomes evident that only three men were on board the plane, yet all four are reported as missing. Inspector Lewis and Sergeant Young have their work count out for them trying to coax clues out of unreliable witnesses including the Wade family, Charles and his daughters Hester and Prudence.

The lives of the Wades intersected with all four of the missing men: Harry Walters, a desperate poet, who was in love with Hester Wade; Joseph Ferguson, a businessman who wife was more interested in Harry; Morgan Price, a nervous guest of the Wades; and Maurice Reid, something of a family friend. Slowly but surely, Lewis and Young piece together the details of the days leading up to the flight, finally uncovering the name of the missing man. But that just sets up a new problem: what happened to him and why?

Bennett's artful plotting was enough to capture the attention of the producers of NBC's Kraft Television Theater who created an episode in 1958 based on The Man Who Didn't Fly starring then 27-year-old William Shatner, Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith of Lost in Space) and Walter Brooke (guest star in just about all TV series in the 60s, 70s, and 80s). The book was also chosen by Julian Symons as part of his 1958 "100 Best Crime Stories" for the London Sunday Times.

          

Mystery Melange

The winner of the 2022 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year is Fatal Isles by Maria Adolfsson, translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé and published by Zaffre. Maria Adolfsson will receive a trophy, and both the author and translator will receive a cash prize. The other finalists include: Helene Flood - The Therapist (tr. Alison McCullough); Ruth Lillegraven - Everything is Mine (tr. Diane Oatley); Anders Roslund - Knock Knock (tr. Elizabeth Clark Wessel); Lilja Sigurðardóttir - Cold as Hell (tr. Quentin Bates); Antti Tuomainen - The Rabbit Factor (tr. David Hackston).

Although there hasn't been an official announcement yet following the recent Wolfe Pack Literary Society awards dinner on December 3, Michael Sears posted on Facebook that his novel, Tower of Babel, was named 2022 winner of the Society's annual Nero Wolfe Award. Jacqueline Freimor also posted that she won the Black Orchid Novella Award with "The Case of the Bogus Cinderellas," which will be published in the July/August issue of Alfred HItchcock's Mystery Magazine.

The UK-based Crime Fiction Lover site announced the winners of their second annual Crime Fiction Lover Awards across six categories. Best Novel Winner was The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths; Best Novel Editor’s Choice: The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee; Best Debut Winner: A Christmas Murder of Crows by DM Austin; Best Debut Editor’s Choice: Bad for Good by Graham Bartlett; Best in Translation Winner: The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer, translated by KL Seegers; Best in Translation Editor’s Choice: The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-Mo, translated by Chi-Young Kim; Best Indie Novel Winner: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill; Best Indie Novel Editor’s Choice: Five Moves of Doom by AJ Devlin; Best Author: Elly Griffiths; Best Author Editor’s Choice: Steve Cavanagh.

On Sunday, December 11th in Minneapolis, Michael Allan Mallory will serve as moderator for a panel of mystery writers following the 2 p.m. performance of Theater in the Round's production of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Members of the Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime, including Julie Holmes, Christine Husom, and Sherry Roberts, will participate in the post-show panel about why we love mystery and the role of women in the creation of the genre.

Washington, DC.s Virtual Noir at the Bar is returning Sunday, December 11, at 7 pm ET. The event will be hosted by E.A. Aymar and feature readings from authors May Cobb, Kelly J. Ford, Jordan Harper, Wanda Morris, Raquel Reyes, and Johnny Shaw. Music will also be provided by local jazz star Sara Jones and a custom cocktail by celebrity mixologist Chantal Tseng. Even if you can't attend in person, you can register and watch via Crowdcast.

The New York Times released a list of its choices for Best Thrillers of 2022, including Janice Hallett’s The Appeal; J.M. Lee’s Broken Summer, which has been translated from the Korean by An Seon Je; Adam Hamdy's The Other Side of Night; Sascha Rothchild's Blood Sugar; Dervla McTiernan’s The Murder Rule; and Adrian McKinty’s The Island. Sarah Weinman also picked her best of the best among the mystery titles of 2022 for the NYT; The Guardian published its list of the Best Crime and Thriller Books of 2022; the SunSentinel's Oline Cogdill also chose her picks for the best mystery books of the year; and the Herald Scotland's reviewer, Barry Didcock, listed his pick of the best Scottish novels of 2022.

Kate Jackson a/k/a "The Armchair Sleuth" over at the Cross-Examining Crime blog is putting together a listing for the blog's Reprint of the Year awards, drawing from over 160 possible reprints to choose from that will be voted on by participating bloggers and blog readers. The winner(s) will be announced later this month. In the meantime, you can check out the blog link that includes a listing of all the available titles, including many classics and several titles I was unaware were being re-released this year.

Artificial Intelligence is getting more advanced all the time, but there are still hordes of moral and ethical challenges associated with these technologies. In a Mashable review of the new, and wildly popular online ChatGPT, it was noted that when other similar chat-bots were asked questions related to cold-case murder suspects, they seemed "all too eager to throw innocent people under the bus for such a crime without hesitation."

This week's crime poem at the 5-2 weekly is "Gulp" by Eric D. Goodman.

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Author R&R with Tessa Wegert

Tessa Wegert is a journalist and former digital media strategist. Her business and marketing articles have appeared in such publications as Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, and The Economist. She grew up in Quebec near the border of Vermont and now lives with her husband and children in Coastal Connecticut, where she writes while studying martial arts and dance. Tessa is also the author of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries, beginning with Death in the Family. The latest installment in that series is The Kind to Kill. 

In The Kind to Kill, a missing tourist spells trouble for former NYPD detective Shana Merchant, who is now a skilled Senior Investigator keeping New York's beautiful Thousands Islands community safe. As she investigates the disappearance, the case threatens to destroy not just the annual Pirate Days celebration but what remains of Shana's reputation, revealing secrets she's tried to keep hidden.

Tessa stops by In Reference to Murder for a little Author R&R about the book:

 

True Crime in Fiction: A Killer in the Family

In recent years, we’ve seen a pretty sizeable uptick in thrillers with true crime themes. Chalk it up to North America’s true crime podcast obsession, the glut of new docuseries available on Netflix, or cyclical trends—whatever its origins true crime is booming, and weaving it into crime fiction makes perfect sense.

There’s a true crime connection with The Kind to Kill, my latest thriller, too. In the book, New York State Police Senior Investigator Shana Merchant’s secret is finally out: she’s related to a notorious serial killer, and the man she’s been hunting for years was once her closest friend. I did a lot of research on true crime while writing—you’ll see local journalist Jared Cunningham mention a few real-life cases in his conversations with Shana—but this is a book that looks at true crime through a different lens. Instead of solely focusing on the victim and killer, it also explores the killer’s family.

When the news gets out that Shana has blood ties to Blake Bram, she quickly becomes a pariah. Even members of her own family, who are related to Bram too, opt to shut her out. Exploring true crime from the point of view of the killer’s family fascinated me, and Shana provided the perfect entry point for this analysis. What would it feel like to discover a relative had committed a brutal crime? How would that revelation affect someone who was duty-bound to uphold the law? These were the questions I wanted to address. In the end, it didn’t surprise me that Shana’s struggle to accept the truth and reconcile it with her profession and deep-seated desire to protect others became the heart of this story about resentment, redemption, and the darkest family secrets of all.

 

You can find out more about Tessa and her books via her website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter. The Kind to Kill is available in ebook and print formats from Severn House and all major booksellers.

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