Nine Sons: Collected Mysteries

by Wendy Hornsby

GREAT STORIES BY AN EDGAR WINNER

Wendy Hornsby does not write cozies, or tales about cat sleuths, or sanitized murder. Her tales explore the depths of the human psyche, and her family-crimes are decidedly uncozy. In the title story, which won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar for Best Short Story, a heart-wrenching mystery surrounds a family living on the Northern Plains during the Depression. "Ghost Caper" is probably the purest example of noir fiction by a modern mystery writer – and it is not for those of delicate constitution. "High Heels in the Headliner" is about a police groupie whose adoration turns deadly.

Wendy Hornsby's collected mysteries contains ten stories and one essay. Two of the stories, including one about former LAPD officer Mike Flint, are written especially for this volume. Two of the other tales are co-written with Hornsby's daughter, Alyson.

The book includes a new introduction by the author, and a checklist of Wendy Hornsby's mystery novels and stories. Cover painting by Native American artist, Barbara Mitchell.

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

I can’t remember ever not knowing that I was a writer. When I was in the second grade, because I was forever writing little stories, my teacher, a lovely woman named Barbara Heath, gave me her own copy of Little Women, to keep. Hardcover, illustrated, no less. The story wasn’t so much magic for me as was the character of Jo March. Somehow I knew Jo, I pretended I was her sometimes, and knew I was going to grow up to be, as she was, a writer.

When I was in fourth grade, I turned pro. My essay, “Why I love Camp Nawakwa,” won a community contest, earning me a camp scholarship, and my future was set. Sort of. Loving Camp Nawakwa was my writing pinnacle for quite a while.

When it was time for college, I headed off to UCLA, where I tried on a large number of majors before I decided on History. History, well told, has more romance, adventure, intrigue, courage, provocative mystery than any fiction that can be imagined. Besides, the process of historical research and writing mysteries have a great deal in common. One snoops through the remnants of people’s lives – real or fictional – asking the important who, what, where, and when questions and implying insight with the hope of making sense of things. The study of History is great preparation for a writer, especially a writer of mysteries.

The afternoon that I learned I had passed my comprehensive exams for the Masters degree in History at CSULB, I was hired to teach History as an adjunct at Long Beach City College. Over the next decades I taught, went to school some more, raised two beautiful babies to adulthood, acquired a full-time tenured position at LBCC, and, somehow, between school and soccer and baseball and school plays, managed to get seven mystery novels and many, many short stories published. Amazing how that happened.

When my kids, Alyson and Christopher, were of a certain age, I took them to visit The Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa May Alcott grew up and where she wrote Little Women. I stood in her upstairs bedroom, beside the little half-moon desk where she created Jo March, and thanked her for giving a little girl a bit of courage to believe that she, too, could be a writer.

Wendy Hornsby is the Edgar Award winning author of the Maggie MacGowen mysteries.