SLEUTHFEST 2025

Sleuthfest, a conference for mystery, thriller, and suspense fiction writers, was postponed because of bad weather (hurricane!), but here's the new date: May 15-18, 2025. Don't miss this fun conference!

Click here to register. 

KEN BRUEN: R.I.P.

Very sad news. Ken Bruen, Irish mystery author and poet, died yesterday. Way too young. I met Ken several years ago, and we struck up what became a most valued friendship. He was truly a Renaissance man. We'd talk at conventions, and he was my guest at a literary salon at my tiny home where 50+ stalwart mystery fans squashed in to listen to him. He regaled us with stories in his Irish brogue. I loved his books. He had such a lyrical way with words. Ken was only 74. He will be missed. 

From the Connacht Tribune

Best known as the man behind the Jack Taylor crime series, he was the author of more than 50 books over a stellar career that made him one of the most prominent Irish crime writers of the last two decades.  

He was a past winner of the prestigious Shamus Award for best crime novel of the year; he also won the Macavity Award, the Barry Award, the Edgar Award – an award he was also shortlisted for earlier in his career. 

Born in Galway in 1951, he was educated at Gormanston College in Co Meath and later at Trinity College Dublin, where he earned a PhD in metaphysics. 

Ken Bruen spent 25 years traveling the world before he began writing in the mid-1990s. As an English teacher, Ken worked in South Africa, Japan, and South America, where he once spent four months in a Brazilian jail. 

He has two long-running series; one starring Jack Taylor, the disgraced former policeman – with acclaimed actor Iain Glen in the title role – and the other, the London police detective Inspector Brant.  

Nine of the Jack Taylor novels were turned into the eponymous television series, all shot around Galway city, with a host of local actors and crew members. Set in Galway, the acclaimed series relates the adventures and misadventures of a disgraced former police officer working as a haphazard private investigator whose life has been marred by alcoholism and drug abuse. 

His Brants and Roberts novel Blitz was adapted into a 2011 film of the same name, starring Jason Statham, Paddy Considine and Aidan Gillen. Indeed Ken Bruen’s work was tailormade for the big screen on many fronts. Bruen’s 2014 novel Merrick was adapted for TV as the series 100 Code, starring Dominic Monaghan and Michael Nyqvist. His 2001 novel, London Boulevard, was adapted for the big screen in 2010 and starred Keira Knightley, Colin Farrell, David Thewlis and Ray Winstone. 

Ken Bruen lived and worked in Galway – and so much of his work was set in the streets, alleyways and pubs of Galway.

He passed away overnight at University Hospital Galway, and is survived by his wife Phyl Kennedy, and their daughter Grace who Ken once described, in a piece for the Connacht Tribune, as ‘the abiding light in my varied life’.

***

Mystery Readers Journal: Irish Mysteries (24:2: 2008): 

"No, Not the Blarney Stone" by Ken Bruen

And

        ghosts

                must

                        do

                                again...

Those lines by Auden- which continue with 

            

                    what gives them pain

--what brings those lines to the forefront of my mind are the posts by Dusty and Alex about sometimes hating writing. Oh horror, heresy etc. a writer not always loving their craft. Arthur Miller well in his 70s, said, every morning he sits in front of the blank page and feels...terror. I don't think any of the writers I respect ever said it was easy.

    There are mornings, when I see a ton of email, I give a sigh of relief as it means I can defer actual writing for a bit. If I skip a day, for whatever reason and don't actually write, I feel guilty and no rationale will eradicate it.

    There's no real mystery, pardon the bad pun, to writing. You just sit down and do it.

    Right.

    How hard can that be?

    And writers block...they say, think of your bank manager, and you'll be back on track.

    The days of blankness, when I really don't have a single thought in my head, I just barge and blaze through it. Blood from a stone. 

Birthday Crime Fiction // Birthday Mysteries

Today is my Birthday! Celebrate with me by reading one of these Birthday Themed Mysteries -- or, keep the list for your own Birthday! Every year I get older, and every year this list gets longer. Any titles missing? Make a comment below, and I'll add it to the list! Have a favorite? Let me know!

Birthday Crime Fiction

Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

Happy Birthday, Turk! by Jakob Arjouni and Anselm Hollo
A Birthday to Die For by Frank Atchley
Cranberry Crimes by Jessica Beck

Birthdays Can be Deadly by Cindy Bell
The Birthday Murderer by Jay Bennett
The Birthday Party by Halini Boland

Birthday Can Be Murder by Joyce Cato

Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark
Berries and Birthdays by Leena Clover

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Catered Birthday Party by Isis Crawford
The Birthday Gift by Ursula Reilly Curtiss
The Birthday Party: Family Reunions Can Be Murder by Chari Davenport
The Whole Enchilada by Diane Mott Davidson

The Party by Elizabeth Day
The Birthday Girl by Melissa de La Cruz
There's Something about Mary by Wendy Delaney
A Birthday Secret by Nickolas Drake
The Birthday Party by Wendy Dranfield

Birthday Pie Burial by Diana Dumont
Murder Can Botch Up Your Birthday by Selma Eichler

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

The Birthday Girl by Sue Fortin
Birthday Cake and Bodies by Agatha Frost
Birthday Sprinkle Murder by Susan Gillard
Aunti Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
The Nanny by Dan Greenburg
The Happy Birthday Murder by Lee Harris
They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer
Birthday Cake Waffle by Carolyn Q. Hunter
Birthday Girl by Matthew Iden

Death in the Garden by Elizabeth Ironside
Happy Birthday, Marge by Shari Hearn
The Birthday Treasure Mystery by Kaylee Huyser
Birthday Party by Marne Davis Kellogg
Murder with a Twist by Tracy Kiely
Birthday Party by C.H.B Kitchin and Adrian Wright
Spiced by Gina LaManna 

The Birthday Girl by Stephen Leather
The Birthday Murder by Lange Lewis
Creme Brulee Murder by Harper Lin
The Old Die Young by Richard Lockridge
The Birthday Killer by W. Kay Lynn
Birthdays for the Dead by Stuart McBride

False Scent by Ngaio Marsh
The Birthday Mystery by Faith Martin
The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier
Birthday Party Murder by Leslie Meier 

Birthday Cake Bloodshed by Addison Moore

Many Deadly Returns by Patricia Moyes
The Body in the Casket by Katherine Hall Page
A Birthday Murder by Olivia Page

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett 

21st Birthday by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro 
Birthday, Deathday; The Cannibal Who Overate by Hugh Pentecost
The Birthday Club by Jack Peterson

Murder and Meringue Cake by Rosie A. Point
The Birthday Party by W. Price
Birthday Dance by Peter Robinson
Birthdays are Murder by Cindy Sample

The Birthday Bash by Elizabeth Sorrells
Don't Scream by Wendy Corsi Staub
Birthday Cake and a Murder by Kathleen Suzette

Sharpe Turn by Lisa B. Thomas
The Day After the Party by Nicole Trope

Fear in the Sunlight by Nicola Upson
The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell

The Birthday Present by Barbara Vine
Cakes for Your Birthday by C.E. Vulliamy

The Birthday Surprise by Clara Vulliamy (Children's) 
A Birthday Lunch by Martin Walker
The Birthday Girl by Sarah Ward

The Birthday by Elizabeth Wells
The Mortician's Birthday Party by Peter Whalley
Birthday Girl by Niko Wolf

The Fortieth Birthday Body by Valerie Wolzien
Happy Birthday Murder by Rachel Woods
The Birthday by Carol Wyer
The Birthday by Margaret Yorke

Short Story:

"The Birthday Dinner" by Donna Andrews in Death Dines In, edited by Claudia Bishop & Dean James

Children's: 

    Cam Jansen and the Birthday Mystery by David A. Adler, Illustrated by Susanna Natti
    The Birthday Party Mystery by Fran Manushkin

AUTHORS & THEIR CATS: P.D. JAMES

Happy Caturday! Today I'm continuing my Authors & their Cats feature. Here's a great photo of mystery author P.D. James and her cat!

LONDON MYSTERIES II: Mystery Readers Journal (41:1)

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford

--Samuel Johnson.

Mystery Readers Journal: London Mysteries II (41:1)  is available as a PDF and Hardcopy. In this issue you’ll find author essays, reviews, and articles for mysteries set in London. 

London Mysteries II

Volume 41, No. 1, Spring 2025

Buy this back issue! Available in hardcopy or as a downloadable PDF.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARTICLES

• The Lost Rivers of London by Aubrey Nye Hamilton
• London Mysteries and the First Armchair Detective by Ashley Bowden
• Charlie Chan in London: Beyond Earl Derr Biggers by Rush Glick
• R. Austin Freeman’s London- Based Detective, Dr. John Thorndyke by Andrew McAleer
• Mysterious London Walks by Linda Triegel

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

• A Sherlock Holmes Pastiche? How Hard Could That Be? by J. F. Benedetto
• London Via Pepys by Ellis Blackwood
• Why I Write About London by Rhys Bowen
• There’s a Jumper in the Boot: Writing British Mysteries for an American Audience by Anne Cleeland
• The Main Stage by Daniel Cole
• So You Want to Write a London Mystery! by Susan Courtright
• Sherlock’s London by Leonard Goldberg
• Robbie’s Wife by Russell Hill
• Fake It Till You Make It, Then Fake It Some More by Alex Grecian
• Jason Davey’s London by Winona Kent
• London Mysteries: History and Crime in the Capital by Anna Sayburn Lane
• Victorian London: City of Mists, Shadows… and Murder by Patrice McDonough
• London’s Urban Armada by Melinda Mullet
• Christie’s Influence on a Victorian-Era Mystery by Neil Plakcy
• London Ghost Story by Lev Raphael
• London Calling by Katherine Reay
• Taking a Bite Out of Food Crime by Jennifer Slee
• The Big Smoke: A Dirty Crime Muse with Spangled Bangs and a Caustic Heart by Saira Viola
• A Long Con in London by Cathi Stoler
• Art, History and Galleries of Beauties at Hampton Court Palace by Nina Wachsman

COLUMNS

• Mystery in Retrospect: Reviews, by Martin Edwards, Aubrey Nye Hamilton, Lesa Holstine, Kathy Boone Reel, Margaret Morse, L.J. Roberts, Craig Sisterson, Lucinda Surber, Linda Triegel, Kate Derie
• Children’s Hour: London Mysteries by Gay Toltl Kinman
• Crime Seen: View from the London Eye by Kate Derie
• Creasey’s Cops by Jim Doherty
• From the Editor’s Desk by Janet A. Rudolph

***

We had so many articles and reviews that we divided the material into two issues. Mystery Readers Journal: London Mysteries I (40:4) is still available. 

Subscribe now in order to be sure to receive a copy of London Mysteries II--and the other three issues for 2025: Themes: London II; Retail Sales; Northern California; Cross-Genre Mysteries. 

If you're a PDF subscriber, you should receive download instructions shortly. Hard copy subscription copies should be received by the end of the week. International subscribers will receive their issues within two weeks. 

PDF Contributor copies will go out in the next few days. 

Contributors: Thanks so much for your great articles, essays, and reviews!

***

FYI: We had two other themed issues on London in 2011. Both are available as PDFs. 

London Mysteries I: Volume 27:1 (2011) 

 and 

London Mysteries II: Volume 27:2 (2011) 

I know you’ll order them all in order to find new books and authors to expand your reading! 

Cartoon of the Day

 

Guests of Honor Interviews: Left Coast Crime Rocky Mountain High Jinks

What a fabulous Left Coast Crime! So many friends, so many panels, so little time. Choices had to be made. So, if you didn't make it to all the panels (or didn't make it to LCC), here are links to the Guests of Honor interviews. Enjoy!

And, please join us next year at Left Coast Crime in San Francisco! San Francisco Schemin'

***

Sarah Paretsky Interviewed by Leslie Budewitz

 

 John Copenhaver interviewed by Christa Faust

   

 Manuel Ramos Interviewed by David Heska Wanbli Weiden 

 

 Grace Koshida interviewed by Leslie Karst 

 

Cartoon of the Day: The Jury

THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE, SEASON 3

The Chelsea Detective, Season 3, starring Adrian Scarborough as DI Max Arnold and Vanessa Emme as DS Layla Walsh, premieres Monday, April 7 on Acorn TV.

The upcoming season features three new cases, including the discovery of an ex-soldier’s body in an allotment, the murder of an antiques dealer, and the mysterious death of a climate scientist found in a stolen car. Meanwhile, Max navigates relationship struggles as he and his estranged wife attempt couples therapy.

Don't miss the Season 3 Christmas Special on Acorn TV (technically, the First Episode of Season 3). It aired in December 2024 and is still available on AcornTV).

Crime Writers for Trans Rights Auction

Crime writers helping transgender folks during this time of extreme uncertainty.

How to help? This online auction benefits the ongoing work of Transgender Law Center, and it needs you to get involved!

Bidding opens March 26th on 200+ items by crime writers you know and love.

Go now to https://www.32auctions.com/writers4transrights, browse amazing items from the biggest names in crime fiction and beyond, and put in those bids!

All funds raised go directly to Transgender Law Center.

Help us help them! Because #TransRightsAreHumanRights

Bid March 26–April 1 on amazing items from top crime writers—all to support trans safety, freedom & justice!

https://www.32auctions.com/writers4transrights

2025 Dove Award: Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association

David Geherin has been awarded  the Dove Award by the Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Association. 

The Detective/Mystery Caucus of the Popular Culture Assocation announced its latest Dove Awardee: David Geherin, professor emeritus of English at Eastern Michigan University, who is an Edgar nominee in the Best Critical/Biographical category this year for Organized Crime on Page and Screen: Portrayals in Hit Novels, Films, and Television Shows. He received earlier Edgar nominations for The Crime World of Michael Connelly: A Study of His Works and Their Adaptations (2022), Scene of the Crime: The Importance of Place in Crime and Mystery Fiction (2008; also nominated for a Macavity Award), and The American Private Eye: The Image in Fiction (1985). His other books include Carl Hiaasen: Sunshine State Satirist (2019), Funny Thing About Murder: Modes of Humor in Crime Fiction and Films(2017), Small Towns in Recent American Crime Fiction(2015), and Elmore Leonard (1989).   

The Dove Award, explains editor-blogger Elizabeth Foxwell, is named for mystery-fiction scholar George N. Dove and is given to “individuals who have contributed to the serious study of mystery, detective, and crime fiction.” Previous Dove honorees include Martin Edwards, Barry Forshaw, Douglas G. Greene, P.D. James, H.R.F. Keating, Margaret Kinsman, Elizabeth Foxwell, and me (!). 

HT: The Rap Sheet & The Bunburyist

Cartoon of the Day: Little Free Library

 

LUDWIG: A new detective series

I'm really enjoying the new BBC detective dramedy series Ludwig, playing on Britbox in the U.S. The series stars David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin. You'll recognize several of the minor characters, too, including Welsh actor Gerran Howell who stars as a medical student from Nebraska in the U.S. show The Pitt. What a surprise. I'm so used to seeing British actors in many shows, but not usually in U.S. ones.

In Ludwig, John Taylor (David Mitchell) is a reclusive puzzle maker who publishes puzzle books under the pen name "Ludwig". His identical twin brother, James Taylor, is a successful detective chief inspector in the Cambridge police force. James has gone missing, and his wife Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) enlists John's help to solve the mystery. Pretending to be his brother, John infiltrates the local police station to investigate, and becomes inadvertently embroiled in solving other cases.

While seeking to unravel the mystery of his twin brother's disappearance, reclusive puzzle-designer John 'Ludwig' Taylor takes on his twin brother James's identity as DCI on Cambridge's major crimes squad. 

Read the NYT review here

And the good news is that the BBC has commissioned a second season of Ludwig with Mitchell and Martin remaining in the starring roles. 

AUTHORS AND THEIR CATS: Edward Gorey

Happy Caturday! I'm reviving my "Authors/Artists and their Cats" Caturday feature. 

Today: Edward Gorey.

ELEGY FOR A STORY-TELLING COP: Guest post by Jim Doherty

 

It must be said from the start that Joe Wambaugh, who passed away on 28 February at the age of 88, was not the first cop to turn his professional experiences into fiction.
            

Way back in the 1930’s, Basil Thomson, a former Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard, wrote eight books about a London Met policeman named Richardson (no first name is ever mentioned) who in eight books, enjoys a meteoric rise from rookie police constable to chief constable of the CID.
            

Thomson was followed by cops from other parts of Britain like Maurice Procter, of the Halifax Borough Police; John Wainwright, of the West Riding County Constabulary; Peter Walker, of the North Riding County Constabulary; Hamilton Jobson of the Southend-on-Sea Borough Constabulary; among others.
           

 In the Netherlands, Albert Cornelis Baantjer’s novels about Detective Inspector DeCock (“DeKok” in English-language editions), which began in 1964, became international best-sellers.
            

In the US, Wambaugh was preceded by LA County DA’s Investigator Leslie T. White, FBI Agent Gordon Gordon (who collaborated with his wife Mildred), collaborating NYPD officers John P. Connors and Paul Glaser, LA County Deputy Sheriff William Camp, and NYC Transit Authority Police Detective Dorothy Uhnak.
            

And yet, despite all those antecedents, when Joseph Wambaugh’s The New Centurions (Little, Brown, 1970) appeared in bookstores, it somehow seemed to be unprecedented.
            

To a degree, this was less because of the book, excellent though it was, than because of how it was marketed.  Previous cop-written novels were consigned to the literary ghetto of “category mysteries,” published by imprints like Doubleday’s Crime Club, or Simon and Schuster’s Inner Sanctum Mysteries.  

Centurions, a comparative “door-stopper” at 376 pages, was marketed as straight fiction.  Charting the career paths of three young cops, from their academy training, through their field training, following them through their first few years on the Job, and culminating in the 1965 Watts riots, it got featured reviews in publications like the New York Times and made all the major best-seller lists.  A high-budget movie followed in 1972, starring George C. Scott as a veteran beat cop, and Stacy Keach as the rookie he’s training.
            

Wambaugh followed with The Blue Knight (Little, Brown, 1972), another door-stopping novel, but a more intimate character study, it follows veteran foot patrolman William “Bumper” Morgan, a cop on the verge of retirement as he approaches his 20^th anniversary on the job, who hopes to make one more major league bust before he pulls the pin. This became an award-winning TV-movie starring William Holden, shown on NBC in 1973 in four parts on four consecutive evenings, leading to the coining of the term “mini-series.”  A regular weekly series, starring George Kennedy as Bumper, followed a few years later on CBS.
            

Between the Blue Knight mini-series and the follow-up regular weekly series, Wambaugh created an award-winning anthology TV show, Police Story (NBC, 1973-80).  Wambaugh described the show as, being, like his books, “less about how cops work on the Job, then how the Job works on cops.”  Using a different cast every week, the show was able to depict a wide variety of law enforcement activities.  
It also made it possible to use specific episodes as, essentially, pilots for additional series, and Police Woman (NBC, 1974-78), Joe Forrester (NBC, 1975-76), and Man Undercover (NBC, 1978-79) were all spun off from Police Story episodes.  
            

The same year that Police Story and The Blue Knight mini-series debuted, Wambaugh released his third, and most ambitious book, The Onion Field (Delacorte, 1973). This was his first piece of non-fiction, describing the kidnapping of two LAPD officers, leading to brutal murder of one, and the hairbreadth escape of the other.  More importantly, it described the emotional toll that Officer Karl Hettinger paid for being the “one who got away.”  This book got Wambaugh his best notices to that point, and, many books later, it was still the one in which he took the most pride.  It was the most praised and admired true-crime book since Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (Random, 1965).
            

Oddly, it did not win the Edgar for Best Fact Crime.  Instead, the Mystery Writers of America gave it a Special Edgar, the Herbert Brean Award, probably thinking that it sucked so much air out of the room, no other true-crimer had a chance.  This would be the first of five Edgars the MWA would award Wambaugh, including a Grand Master.
            

I’ll spare you a book-by-book description of the rest of his corpus.  Suffice it to say that Wambaugh rarely hit anything less than a home run.
            

Aside from triumphing across several different mediums, books, screenplays, and television, fiction and non-fiction, Wambaugh’s success opened the doors for other cops-turned-writers, like NYPD’s William Caunitz, New Orleans PD’s O’Neil de Noux, the US Secret Service’s Gerald Petievich, LAPD’s Dallas Barnes, LAPD’s Connie Dial, the FBI’s Paul Lindsay, Wright County, MN, Sheriff’s Office’s Christine Husom, Portland PD’s Frank Zafiro, and, quite literally, hundreds of others, including your obedient servant.  There is now an organization of crime writers, the Public Safety Writers Association (formerly the Police Writers Association) made up primarily of law enforcement professionals who’ve been inspired to get their stories written and published.  Wambaugh, by his success, was the root of this explosion of cops-turned-writers.  What had been a trickle before Wambaugh became a tidal wave after him.

            

That may be his greatest legacy.
            

And, I think because he knew this, he was always encouraging to new writers.  When my first book, Just the Facts (Deadly Serious, 2004) a collection of true-crime articles (most of which had first appeared in Janet’s Mystery Readers Journal) was being prepared for publication, I contacted Sergeant Wambaugh and shyly asked if he’d be willing to provide a blurb.  He invited me to send some of the chapters, and, after reading them, sent the following comment.
           

“This is a well researched, addictive collection of true case studies, some sensational, others little known, all intensely interesting. And one, ‘The Mad Doctor and The Untouchable,’ will no doubt become a terrific movie.” 

            

The year after the book came out, one of the chapters won a WWA Spur for Best Short Non-Fiction.  That was a wonderful moment.  

But getting that blurb from Wambaugh was, all by itself, almost as terrific.

 

Cartoon of the Day: To be Read Pile

Basement to Bestseller: A Casebook of Crime---Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery: Guest Post by Andrew McAleer

You never know what you might find in Edgar winner John McAleer’s mystery correspondence. As my brother Paul and I comb through his voluminous records we’ve become numb to discoveries such as letters from Golden Age of Detection icons – Dame Agatha, Georges Simenon, or Leslie Chateris. Not to mention big-screen legends like John Wayne and Marlene Dietrich. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart from The Big Sleep, “We don’t even pass out cigars anymore over such finds.” 

A few years ago, however, one lost gem did hook our attention—big time! Paul found a small hardcover chapbook containing a handwritten mystery. The first page—yellowed and pulpy—announced, “Stories of Private Detective Henry von Stray, by John J. McAleer.” The book contained a full mystery story entitled, “The Case of the Illustrious Banker.” Later published in Edgar & Shamus Go Golden. (Down & Books)
In order to establish when von Stray was created Paul did a little sleuthing of his own in attempt to unearth a few clues about the elusive London-based detective and his able collaborator in the detection of crime—affable beetle expert Professor John Dilpate. Paul solved the case.

In our father’s 1937 diary, an August 4^th entry reveals how the senior McAleer wrote at least three von Stray mysteries. (A search for the remaining two stories from the original series remains afoot.) Proving von Stray was created in the 1930s, has important historical significance for the crime fiction genre since it makes von Stray, in all likelihood, the last of the great master sleuths to emerge from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (a literary period existing predominately during the 1920s and 1930s.) In somewhat of an ironical twist, some 40 years later, McAleer’s Rex Stout: A Biography, won the Edgar Award over Golden Age “founder”—the Queen of Mystery herself—Christie’s autobiography.
 

As a novelist and having taught classic crime fiction at Boston College for many years, I jumped at the chance to continue the von Stray series. The characters and setting were too fun to limit the amazing find to one von Stray adventure. I sensed this inimitable detective had many more crimes to solve and it would be my pleasure to help him do so. My first von Stray mystery “The Singular Case of the Bandaged Bobby” appeared in the September 2024 Sherlock Holmes issue of Mystery Magazine and was later selected for the Best Private Eye Stories of 2025.

The first full-book collection of von Stray stories A Casebook of Crime (Level Best Books) was released this February. The volume also features my father’s only known surviving von Stray mystery. A publisher’s note says of the collection, “[Andrew] seamlessly picks up where the elder McAleer left off, brilliantly and authentically capturing—and not without a touch of light humor—von Stray’s thrilling adventures and unique methods of crime detection through 1920s England. So authentic in fact, mystery lovers will virtually travel back in time to a bygone era where they will genuinely feel as if they’re enjoying timeless, never-before-seen century-old classic puzzle whodunits.” 

Shortly after its release, A Casebook of Crime became an Amazon bestseller surpassing a collection of short stories written by none other than—Dame Agatha Christie!
 

* * *

Andrew McAleer served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Army Historian and is the author of the Henry von Stray historical mysteries. Von Stray’s latest exciting exploits appear in the newly released: A Casebook of Crime: Thrilling Adventures of Suspense from the Golden Age of Mystery. (Level Best Books, 2025)
 
John McAleer is the Edgar Allan Poe Award-winning author of Rex Stout: A Biography and creator of Golden Age Private Detective Henry von Stray. He also edited the Throndyke File and was a Pulitzer finalist. 
  

Call for Articles: Themed issue Mystery Readers Journal: Retail Mysteries

Call for Articles: Mystery Readers Journal: Retail Mysteries! (41:2); Summer 2025

For our next issue, Retail Mysteries, we are thinking of books which feature coffee shops, bookstores, garden stores, and so on. And not just stores— contractors, consultants, and others who sell their services qualify. 

If you have a mystery that fits this theme, please consider writing an Author! Author! essay: 500–1500 words, first person, up-close and personal about yourself, your books, and the theme connection. 

We’re also looking for reviews and articles. 

Send submissions to janet @ mysteryreaders.org 

Deadline: April 25, 2025. 

Author Essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "Retail" connection. 500-1000 words. Treat this as if you're chatting with friends and other writers in the bar or cafe (or on zoom) about your work and the "Retail" setting in your mysteries. Be sure and cite specific titles, as well as how you use Retail in your books. Add title and 2-3 sentence bio. 

Reviews: 50-250 words. 

Articles: 500-1000 words. 

Deadline: April 25, 2025  

Send to: Janet Rudolph, Editor. janet @ mysteryreaders . org  

Please let me know if you're planning to send an article, review, or author essay--or if you have any questions! 

Subscribe to Mystery Readers Journal. 

Themes in 2025: London Mysteries 2; Retail Mysteries; Northern California Mysteries; Cross-Genre Mysteries. 

Back issues available as PDF download and print. 

Cartoon of the Day: St. Patrick's Day Mixer in Limerick, Ireland

LEFTY AWARD WINNERS: Left Coast Crime 2025

The Lefty Awards were presented at Left Coast Crime 2025 tonight, Saturday, March 15, at the Westin Denver Downtown. Congratulations to all! 

Lefty Award for Best Humorous Mystery Novel

• Rob Osler, Cirque du Slay (Crooked Lane Books)

Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel
(Bill Gottfried Memorial) for books covering events before 1970

• John Copenhaver, Hall of Mirrors (Pegasus Crime)

Lefty Award for Best Debut Mystery Novel

• Jennifer K. Morita, Ghosts of Waikiki (Crooked Lane Books)

Lefty Award for Best Mystery Novel
(not in other categories)

• James L’Etoile, Served Cold (Level Best Books)

CARTOON OF THE DAY: THE WRITER

 From the amazing Tom Gauld:

Who is Trisha Carson? Guest Post by Glenda Carroll

I’ve known Trisha Carson for at least twelve years. I first saw her on the beach at a Sierra mountain lake in northern California waiting for her sister to finish a two mile open water swim. She was almost like a ghost at that time – faceless, blending in with the people around her. 

That’s how my protagonist was born – a vision appeared based on where I spent so much of my time ... on beaches and in the water. When I started writing the Trisha Carson series, I knew little about Trisha, not even her name. I didn’t know what she looked like, what she enjoyed eating, if she had a significant other, even if she had a job. But I did know one thing about her, she was an amateur sleuth … a woman with no investigative training, but with good instincts and a fierce sense of responsibility to finish what she started. I wanted her to be normal. A person whose life had more than her shares of ups and downs. Someone who screwed up. Someone I could relate to. Creating a couture-wearing private investigator who only carried Hermes bags, wore Manolo Blahnik heels and lived in a penthouse overlooking San Francisco Bay was out of the question. I wouldn’t know where to start. Or a snappy, quick-witted, shrewd police detective seemed beyond my writing talent.

But if she was an older sister (I am one) whose father and husband walked out on her (didn’t happen to me), leaving her to raise her younger sister (I used to babysit way too much) and still grieving over a mother that died of cancer (my mom died peacefully in her sleep at 92), that I understood and could weave into a developing personality.

Since I wanted this character to be in her mid-forties when the series started, I looked up popular baby girl names in the late ‘70’s and found Trisha. Her sister, eight years her junior, took my mother’s name, Lena. As Dead in the Water, the first book in the series opened, Trisha returned to northern California and was living in the back bedroom of her family home that her sister now owns, wondering how things went so wrong. She tried to put her life back together and instead, found herself searching for the killer of an open water swimmer.  

As I was writing, her personality developed. She was noisy, pushy and bickered frequently with Lena. Not the cuddliest woman in the world. She found one job, thanks to her sister and then was fired. Although Trisha didn’t have a handle on her private life, she developed into a creative problem solver when it came to crime. I’m not sure what I expected as I constructed this character, but it wasn’t the Trisha that turned up on the page. She took over and told me who she was, whether I liked it or not.  I understood why some readers didn’t take to her. However, I did. And I gave her the freedom to develop into a strong female amateur sleuth, even while making huge mistakes, especially when it came to men.

Now in the fourth book, Better Off Dead, Trisha has mellowed as the years have passed. She’s softer around the edges and I think it’s due to her family’s influence.  To know Trisha is to know her younger sister, Lena, the swimmer in the family; Lena’s live-in boyfriend, Terrel Robinson, MD, an emergency room doctor in San Francisco, and finally her retired dad, Robert Shaver. What made a real difference was her love for Timmy or Little T, Lena and Terrel’s son.

Her confidence as a crime solver bloomed through the mystery series. She opened doors that no one would walk through; climbed in windows at midnight, hunted through trash cans surrounded by fog and found herself dumped in San Francisco Bay more than once. She’s become a good enough sleuth that the local police want her to join the force. 

Trisha Carson and her family have lived in my head for more than a decade. To me they are as real as my own family. What will happen next? Trisha will be the one to tell me and I’ll follow behind her writing it all down.

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Glenda Carroll is the author of the Trisha Carson mystery series that’s set in and around the beautiful San Francisco Bay area. Her mysteries have an undercurrent of water flowing through them. She was a long-time journalist and a professional communications manager. Currently she tutors first-generation, low-income high schoolers in English and History. Carroll lives in San Rafael, CA with her pup, McCovey.