Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries II (41:4)

Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California II (41:4) is now available. 

You'll also want to order the companion issue, too: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries I (41:3)

If you're a print copy and/or PDF subscriber, you should have received your copy.

Contributor PDF copies went out today. 

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

Northern California Mysteries II

Volume 41, No. 4, Winter 2025

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARTICLES

• They Didn’t Intend to Be Detectives… by Aubrey Nye Hamilton
• The Air Smelled Like Redwoods by Rona Bell

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

• Northern California—in My Blood, in My Books by Juliet Blackwell
• A Time Traveler in the East Bay by Mary Adler
• Did a Charlie Chan Film Influence the Zodiac Murders? by Lou Armagno
• If You’ve Got the Lipstick… by David Corbett
• Climate Fiction in Northern California by Mary Flodin
• Just Say “Yes” to Stories from the Bay Area by Meredith Blevins
• Why I Set My Stories in Northern California by Daryl Wood Gerber
• San Francisco Wild by Toni Dwiggins
• Setting: Real or Invented? by Vinnie Hansen
• Mild-Mannered Men in Northern California by Walter Horsting
• I Have a Wild Imagination by Nancy Lynn Jarvis
• Following the Money to Silicon Valley by Ron Katz
• Baking Up Good Mystery in the Northern California Redwoods by Victoria Kazarian
• The Fault Lines in Northern California by Ellen Kirschman
• 1860s San Francisco— A Perfect Place for a Mystery by Nancy Herriman
• It Had to Be San Francisco… by Barry Lancet
• The City, My City by Lexa Mack
• World Building: It’s Not Just for Science Fiction and Fantasy by A.B. Michaels
• Feng Shui-by-the-Sea by Denise Osborne
• A Fog-Shrouded Lens by Tim Maleeny
• A Fish Out of Water in Oakland by Brad Parks
• The Babylon Deception, a Northern California Mystery by Ray Pace
• The Estuary Kept Its Secrets by Susan Paturzo
• Red Rock Island: Where Imagination Found a Home by Alec Peche
• The Cook, the Inspector, and the City by the Bay by Joanne Pence
• A Reader and a Writer Walk into a Bar by Karen A. Phillips
• Northern California: The Lost Highway by Alexandra Sokoloff

COLUMNS

• Mystery in Retrospect: Reviews
• Crime Seen: The Streets of San Francisco by Kate Derie
• Cop Ten: The Streets of… Everyplace Else but San Francisco by Jim Doherty
• From the Editor’s Desk by Janet A. Rudolph

***

Time to renew your subscription for 2026: Themes: Mysteries set at Fetes, Fairs, and Festivals;  Mysteries set in France; Cross-Genre Mysteries; Mysteries set in India. Subscriptions are PDF. 

Print-on-Demand issues will be available as each issue is published. We'll post here and elsewhere with a link when each print-on-demand issue is ready. First issue for 2026 will be out in March.

Call for Articles: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California issue (41:3)

Call for Articles: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries! (41:3); Fall 2025

For our next issue, we are looking for articles, reviews, and author essays about crime fiction set in Northern California.

DEADLINE: September 1.

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: September 1, 2025. 

Author Essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "NorCal" 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 "Northern California" setting in your mysteries. Be sure and cite specific titles, as well as how you use Northern California in your books. Add title and 2-3 sentence bio. 

Reviews: 50-250 words. 

Articles: 500-1000 words. 

Deadline: September 1, 2025  

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

Subject Line: NorCal Mysteries

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 

Southern California: Mystery Readers Journal

Senior Sleuths: Mystery Readers Journal

Irish Mysteries: Mystery Readers Journal

Hobbies & Crafts in Mysteries: Mystery Readers Journal

And so many more... We are now in our 41st year. 4 themed issues a year! 

Have a look at our index of fabulous issues with articles, reviews, and essays from your favorite authors and reviewers. 

***

Love Mysteries? Love San Francisco? Left Coast Crime will be held in "Everybody's Favorite City" February 26-March 1, 2026.   Register Now! 

Call for Articles: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries (41:3)

Call for Articles: Mystery Readers Journal: Northern California Mysteries! (41:3); Fall 2025

For our next issue, we are looking for crime fiction set in Northern California.

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: September 1, 2025. 

Author Essays are first person, about yourself, your books, and the "NorCal" 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 "Northern California" setting in your mysteries. Be sure and cite specific titles, as well as how you use Northern California in your books. Add title and 2-3 sentence bio. 

Reviews: 50-250 words. 

Articles: 500-1000 words. 

Deadline: September 1, 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 

Southern California: Mystery Readers Journal

Senior Sleuths: Mystery Readers Journal

Irish Mysteries: Mystery Readers Journal

Hobbies & Crafts in Mysteries: Mystery Readers Journal

And so many more... We are now in our 41st year. 4 themed issues a year! 

Have a look at our index of fabulous issues with articles, reviews, and essays from your favorite authors and reviewers. 

***

Love Mysteries? Love San Francisco? Left Coast Crime will be held in "Everybody's Favorite City" February 26-March 1, 2026.   Register Now! 

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.

***

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. 
 

 

  

MWANorCal MYSTERY WEEK: October 20-28, 2018

October 20-28, 2018
Mystery Week: A week of events across the NorCal chapter area

Saturday, Oct. 20, 6:30 PM: San Francisco/ LitCrawl
Amnesia, 853 Valencia
Noir at the Bar with Laurie R. King (moderator), Heather Haven, Terry Shames, Mary O’Shaughnessy, Pamela O’Shaughnessy, Gigi Pandian, Kirk Russell, Sheldon Siegel & Jacqueline Winspear

Sunday, Oct. 21, 2 PM: Belmont
Belmont Library, 1110 Alameda de las Pulgas
The Mystery of Writing Mysteries with Laurie R. King & Ellen Kirschman

Monday, Oct. 22, 6 PM: San Lorenzo
San Lorenzo Library, Greenhouse Community Room, 395 Paseo Grande
As You Like It: Mysteries Across Genre with Terry Shames (moderator), John Burley, Reece Hirsch, Camille Minichino, Ann Parker & Nancy Tingley

Tuesday, Oct. 23, 6 PM: Fremont
Fremont Library, 2400 Stevenson Blvd.
Getting to Know Your Protagonist, or, Did We Really Write That? with Heather Haven (moderator), Susan Bickford, John Billheimer, Mary Feliz & Vinnie Hansen

CANCELLED

Wednesday, Oct. 24, 6:30 PM: Petaluma
Petaluma Regional Library, 100 Fairgrounds Drive
With Randal Brandt (moderator), Bill Pronzini, Bette Lamb & J.J. Lamb

Thursday, Oct. 25, 6:30 PM: Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Library, 224 Church Street
The Case of the Mystery Panel with Laurie Sheehan (moderator), Sandra Balzo, Alan Jacobson, Leslie Karst & Laurie R. King

Saturday, Oct. 27, 2 PM: Sacramento
Pocket-Greenhaven Library, 7335 Gloria Drive
With Robin Burcell (moderator), Pat Canterbury, James L’Etoile, Catriona McPherson & Eileen Rendahl