Cultivating that Old Sense of Place: Guest Post by Christopher Deliso

When tinged with travel writing and journalism, the mystery genre feels a lot more familiar—I don’t mean cozier—to me. Probably, this is largely because much of my professional writing background has involved these non-fiction fields during the past twenty-five years. And yet, my readings of classic mystery works since 2021 (when I started writing my first mystery novel) also seems to bear out the idea that from its inception with Edgar Allan Poe, and through all its various divergences since, the genre has been marked fundamentally by aspects of travel writing and journalism, directly but often indirectly.
 
In the following brief summary, I will provide three examples from well-known works where the travel or journalistic aspect can be discerned. In the bigger picture, this cross-pollination of approaches is practically useful to authors today, I believe, specifically for the strengthening of the literary character of a mystery story—in terms of both characters and settings, and the spirit that permeates the tale.
 
That is: the singularity of any given story should have just as much to do with its setting and its people as it does with its ciphers, locked-room ingenuity, or other devices of the genre that could be plotted anywhere. The best mystery (and other) stories are memorable to a large extent because authors succeed in convincing readers that the story happens, of necessity, to the characters involves, and in the places and times in which they are set. The informed articulation of a specific topos and a convincing historicity (even if the story is not ‘historical,’ in the broadest sense) create additional nuance and depth to a mystery story, elevating the most memorable beyond what might otherwise be simply a generic puzzle absent of topical and character necessity.

 
Note: for the reader’s enjoyment, and to better demonstrate the stories discussed here, I will include a special shout-out, in the form of relevant links to recitations by British voice actor Tony Walker of the Classic Detective Stories channel on YouTube.
 
I tested my observation in yet another listening of the genre’s honorary original, and still one of the most remarkable literary detective stories, Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ For both his great puzzle-solver, the Frenchman Dupin, and his native city of 1840s Paris, are so deftly described in passing, in a thousand accidental (yet essential) details that the magic of the piece comes to life. For the eventual explanation of an escaped orangutan with a razor blade to be at all believable, the author must conjure sufficient images of a city in which both the architecture and personalities make it possible. In order for Poe’s city to be fit for the genius of Dupin the occasional detective, it must also be habitable for that hapless Maltese sailor with his strange pet.
 
Further, and most extraordinary, is how Poe manages to encapsulate both the mood of the characters and their location while foreshadowing and mimicking the very concept of the locked-room mystery that he is about to detail, in the early descriptive scene, in which Poe’s narrator first discusses life in Paris with Dupin:
 

“Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen — although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no visitors whomsoever. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed within ourselves alone. 

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon. The sable divinity would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the massy shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which, strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams — reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford.” 
 
A second story in which sense of place and character struck me, for a different reason, was Dorothy L. Sayers’ ‘Murder at Pentecost.’ This story of mad professors and a murder at an apocryphal Oxonian college not  only reminded me of Oxford (and perhaps, how much has remained the same there over time). Yet it also really emphasized the value that a good narrator can bring in terms of reinforcing character identities through proper reading of dialogue. In the story, Tony Walker does an excellent job of narrating the subtle tonal differences between the aaimless upper-class English undergraduate, the (perhaps) mad professor, and the working-class English policeman on the case. This comprehension of character dialogue through regional accents adds great depth and richness, bringing us closer to Sayers’ original intent and making the story more singular in its new reading.
 
A separate mention of another Classic Detective Stories recitation comes from a book I very much hope to cover in more detail for the Mystery Readers Journal next year. That is the classic 1939 thriller by Eric Ambler, The Mask of Dimitrios (published in the US as A Coffin for Dimitrios). The excerpt is called Belgrade 1926

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, and recounts a fictional espionage trap set in that city in that year. Ambler’s opening contextualization of the contemporaneous geopolitical situation of that era in Europe makes his scenario more believable: that is, how and why ah international mster-spy would attempt to trick a Yugoslav civil servant into selling him, by hook or by crook, a top-secret map of planned mine fields in the Adriatic meant to deter the threat from fascist Italy. The further discussion of the Greek international agent Dimitrios (based on the real-life arms dealer, Basil Zaharoff, and how he attempts to interfere with the map business is recounted in gripping prose, in one of the first realist espionage thrillers.
 
Since 2021, I’ve brought on board the lessons of stories like these into the writing and editing of my own Detective Grigoris novel, which is set in Southeast Europe at the turn of the 21^st century. I’ve applied my own diverse writing and research experience to the novel. At the same time, I’ve observed from the classics of the genre that ‘fleshing out’ a mystery with ekphrasis and richly-local characters are things of long-standing.
 
Such an observation gives me hope not only that my work will be published, but that my approach confirms and complements a pre-existing (if under-discussed) dimension of what makes the mystery genre so interesting for diverse groups of readers.

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Christopher Deliso is an American author, former long-term contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit, IHS Jane’s, and co-author of over twenty Lonely Planet travel guides for five Southeast European countries. He has been widely published in major global media, and his first Detective Grigoris story, "The Mystery of the Scavenging Crabs," was published in January 2025 in the Crimeucopia anthology, Hey! Don’t Read That, Read This! (Murderous Ink Press, UK). 

Subscribe to Christopher Deliso’s Substack for occasional articles on literature, history, travel and reviews.

Why the Haunted Stanley Made the Perfect Setting: Guest Post by L. R. Jones, author of The Wedding Party: A Thriller

Often writers are asked “How do you come up with your stories” many times in their career. For me, it is often just one tiny moment in time that triggers an idea. For The Wedding Party, I was visiting the haunted Stanley Hotel with my ghost-obsessed husband, when the idea came to me. This man’s favorite holiday is Halloween and he messes with me by sticking Michael Myers photos all over, as I rip them down and hide them. And no, The Wedding Party is not supernatural, but it's a fun place for a thriller writer to stage a murder. Some of you know, I’m sure, that this hotel is where Stephen King wrote The Shining, and in fact, in one of the rooms they called “spirited.”
 
Now that I had my setting, ideas began to flow. 
 
My husband would have loved it had we held any wedding event at a haunted hotel. I’d never let that happen, of course, but he’s that guy. So the next piece of the puzzle was writing a character that WOULD let her husband talk her into a ghostly wedding event. In this case, a combo bachelor/bachelorette party at the Stanley Hotel. 
 
Next, I knew I wanted an Agatha Christie / The White Lotus type storyline. That means lots of fun characters and suspects! From there it was all about characters, characters, characters and much like the hotel in The White Lotus, I really wanted the hotel to feel like one of those characters. With this in mind, I incorporated a lot of the Stanley’s haunted tales into the novel just in tiny tidbits here and there. When it comes to “other” main characters I needed a hero and protagonist. Years ago a savvy editor told me, “make people like or relate to the protagonist and they will be hooked and tricked into believing that person is innocent.” I won't say which is which, but this story has an FBI agent who just happens to be at the party, and the bride. Murder happens and at least one of them is in their element. There are many parallels between the two characters and yet so many extreme differences and so many interesting suspects, my hope is that I keep the readers guessing until they gasp at the end. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L. R. Jones is a pseudonym for New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones. Her dark, edgy fiction includes the novels The Wedding Party, You Look Beautiful Tonight, The Poet, A Perfect Lie, and the Lilah Love series. For more information, visit lisareneejones.com.
 

Nurturing a Farm and Its Farmer: Guest Post by Susan Oleksiw

Susan Oleksiw: 
Nurturing a Farm and Its Farmer

When my family purchased a farm in central Massachusetts forty years ago, I knew almost nothing about the area. My mother described her first view of the property as "dreamy," and listed the reasons she and Dad were drawn to. The first time I visited the area, I knew the real reason they'd chosen it.

The Franklin County landscape looked a lot like southwestern Connecticut where they'd had their first farm, in the 1930s and 1940s, and where my brothers and I were born. In their retirement years they were going back to their roots, or at least some of them. For me, the attraction was different.

The Berkshires have the mountains and pretty tourist resorts, the coastal areas have the ocean and access to Boston, but the central part of the state has a sense of time past, of small farming communities straddling the age of the decline of light industry and growth of bedroom communities. Life eddies along the border with New Hampshire and Vermont, and Boston is no longer The Hub. These towns have a sense of rooted authenticity, now fading.

This is the kind of setting that seems perfect, in my view, for stories that explore different ways of life and contemporary issues. Farmers are certainly at the forefront of environmental concerns, with questions of pesticide use, fluctuating markets, and political winds swirling. And yet, despite being remote from urban centers, such areas struggle with some of the same problems, such as a diversifying population seeking work, an influx of well-educated workers looking for cheaper housing, and an aging population worried about the next generation of workers. At present, the average age of farm owners in this state is in the mid-fifties.

The idea of a woman who had the gift of healing came to me when I realized I knew someone who was a healer in a Spiritualist church in the area. Feeling very ignorant and uninformed about all this I began my research, beginning with reading about the cunning folk of Ireland, practitioners of magic and considered wise men and women who counterbalanced black magic and aided in solving crimes. Active up to the nineteenth century, the cunning folk gradually faded along with fears about witchcraft. A history of the occult in America, including the rise of spiritualism, was fascinating, and very informative, and I was slowly inching my way toward a clearer identity for Felicity O'Brien, my protagonist.

Though I had listened to my parents and older brothers for years talk about the Connecticut farm, I didn't know a lot about farming. I turned to memoirs by farmers, and decided not to take up beekeeping or open a small mill. I also discarded the idea of apple orchards, pigs, and horses. I quite liked the idea of goats and chickens--for a while.

Even though I grew up doing a lot of handwork, I discarded the idea of making my sleuth a quilter, knitter, or other craftsperson. I preferred having her outdoors, and often in the woods. With an unexplained gift of healing inherited from her mother's line, Felicity would be a regular farmer coping with the stresses besetting a traditional way of life in a modern world.

I located my fictional town of West Woodbury in Franklin County, considered the most rural county in Massachusetts as well as the poorest. Home to 71,000 people, 26 municipalities, and over 700 farms, the County is one of three defining The Pioneer Valley, running along the Connecticut River. Both towns and farms are small; the average farm is about one hundred acres, and only four municipalities have more than five thousand residents. Felicity's property, Tall Tree Farm, is on the large side, at 500 acres, and my fictional town, West Woodbury, is closer to four thousand people.

The cliche of dozens of murders occurring in tiny fictional towns has never bothered me. If I try to justify it at all I think of all those murders as a literary manifestation of the normal conflicts that arise between people when they're fighting for what they care about. Farm communities and small towns may seem quiet, but plenty of dark feelings seethe beneath green corn stalks and baskets of shiny red apples.

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Susan Oleksiw is the author of the Mellingham mystery series and the Anita Ray mystery series. Beyond the Treeline, her first installment in A Pioneer Valley Mystery series, debuted on September 8 from Midnight Ink. 

Born and raised in New England, Susan Oleksiw has long been fascinated by the traditional New Englander and the way of life found there. She is the co-founder of Level Best Books, which publishes an annual anthology of the best New England crime fiction. Her writing has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and she has served as coeditor for The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. 

Before she entered into a life of crime, Susan studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received a PhD in Asian studies. The author has also spent time living in India, and her fondness for the country lives on through her passion for photography. You can see more on all of her mystery series, as well as featured snapshots of her travels to India at SusanOleksiw.com.

Inspiration for The Night Visitor: Guest Post by Lucy Atkins

Lucy Atkins:
Inspiration for The Night Visitor

When I was growing up in a picture-postcard village in the south of England, I had a friend whose home was nothing like my own. It was huge, for a start—a Victorian Gothic Manor House with ten bedrooms, a sweeping staircase, a ballroom, and a minstrel’s gallery. To get to the house you had to pass through tall iron gates and travel down a long, tree-lined driveway, at the end of which loomed the grey flint house, magnificent but also kind of terrifying.

The interior was in a state of creeping dilapidation. There were cobwebs in the corners, damp shadows on the plasterwork, rattling casement windows with cracked panes, and a pervasive smell of mildew in the air. It was always cold and dark inside, even in summertime. It turned out that my friend’s father, a gambling man, had won the house in a bet some time in the 1970s and, with no money for repairs, upkeep, or modernization, it was stuck in time, a flinty Miss Havisham, hell bent on decay.

I remember crazy teenage parties where we’d run screaming across the tattered lawns, sure that we were being pursued by something ghoulish. I remember everyone cramming into the kitchen because a ghost had been spotted in the minstrel’s gallery. My friend, a tall, blonde, loyal girl, told me that she would often wake in the night to find an old lady sitting on her chest, pinning her to the mattress. My friend was paralyzed when this happened, unable to move or cry out for help.

When I began to research The Night Visitor, two elements of my childhood memory resurfaced: the malevolent old lady “night visitor,” and the Manor. That house became “Ileford Manor” in my novel, a grand place that is stuck in time, hiding complicated secrets. I updated things a little: my housekeeper, Vivian Tester, is proud and competent; she lives alone in the manor with her rescue dog, Bertie, and works hard to keep the damp at bay, dealing with spiders and dust and falling roof slates. What I did recreate though, was that “unheimlich” feeling in the house, the sense of uncanny unease, the knowledge that things are just not right there.

The Night Visitor is about two very different women: Olivia, a glamorous British historian in her forties who makes TV shows about Victorian women, and Vivian, the housekeeper, in her sixties and definitely not glamorous. When Vivian finds a Victorian diary in the house, she takes it to Olivia and the two women begin to work together on a book about the diary’s author. As the novel unfolds, and events move between the manor house and a glorious vacation rental in the South of France, it becomes clear that Vivian is not what she seems.

In my novels, settings are crucial for building tension. I loved the contrast I could draw between the sunny French villa and my threatening, Gothic English house. I have no idea what made the Manor (and its unsettling old lady) resurface in my mind after so many years, but I’m so grateful that it did. I don’t know if I could have written The Night Visitor without it.

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Lucy Atkins is an award winning British author and journalist. Her novels The Night Visitor (2017), The Other Child (2015), and The Missing One (2014) are all published by Quercus. She has also written seven non-fiction books, two of which have won national awards.