You probably figured it out in grade school: Hey, waitaminute, Ms. Prisco only works ’til three in the afternoon. And then she’s got summers off. Ain’t that swell! Teachers sure got it easy. Then when you attended college, this idea was magnified: Say, wouldn’t it be peachy just to teach for an hour or two a day — you’d have […]
What if Jack the Ripper were alive today? Would he use Twitter? Would he understand it? What if Jack the Ripper were alive in the 1950s and became a cardigan-wearing crooner? Would his music be any good? Would people think all the stabbing references unromantic? Imagine the holiday specials. What if Jack the Ripper shot JFK? Has that been done
Kellye Garrett spent eight years working in Hollywood, including a stint writing for the CBS drama Cold Case. Having moved back to her native New Jersey, she spends her mornings commuting to Manhattan for her job at a leading media company. Her first novel, Hollywood Homicide, was released in August of this year. It was a Library Journal Debut of the
I’m sure all the writers out there have been asked some variation of this question: Why did you become a writer? And I’m sure we’ve all given thoughtful answers. I know I’ve given my share of what I believed were honest answers and hoped were interesting ones, too. But when I really think about this question, the most honest answer
Ask a roomful of writers or filmmakers to define what constitutes “noir” and you’ll get a roomful of answers. At one time or another, I’ve heard or read: it’s about the discontent of humanity, it’s about losers, it glorifies losers, everyone gets screwed, the subversion of justice, villains as heroes, even that old chestnut, “the dark night of the soul.”
Recently, and for no particular reason, I tried to remember the first crime or mystery book I ever read. Since I am a woman of a certain age, it was, of course, a Nancy Drew book. I couldn’t recall which book, but I did remember my childhood thrill at being on a dark and stormy adventure with the girl sleuth.
Amy M. Reade is a cook, chauffeur, household CEO, doctor, laundress, maid, psychiatrist, warden, seer, teacher, and pet whisperer. In other words, a wife, mother, and recovering attorney. But she also writes and is the author of The Malice Series (The House on Candlewick Lane, Highland Peril, and Murder in Thistlecross) and three standalone books, Secrets of Hallstead House, The
Patrick Modiano’s Missing Person focuses on a private detective, introduced as Guy Roland, who investigates himself. The location is Paris, the time period, the mid-1960s. I say “introduced as Guy Roland,” because from page one of this novel, we comprehend that we are dealing with a detective narrator with little sense of his own identity. “I am nothing,” is how the book starts. “Nothing but
Some writers keep drawing you back to them. Among crime writers, one who does this to me is Ross Macdonald. I first read him when I was 13 – the novel was The Goodbye Look, a Lew Archer mystery from 1969. At the time I read it, the mid-’70s, the book was contemporary, and I remember the enjoyment I felt reading
Rich Zahradnik is the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed Coleridge Taylor Mysteries. The latest installment, Lights Out Summer, comes out in October. Publishers Weekly said, “Zahradnik nails the period, with its pack journalism, racism overt and subtle, and the excesses of the wealthy at places like Studio 54, as he shows how one dogged reporter can make a difference.”
In the late 1960s, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the most popular science fiction writers in Russia, decided to write a mystery novel. The Dead Mountaineer’s Inn was published in 1970, and its creation may have been motivated in part by the weariness they felt struggling with the Soviet authorities. Once writers of optimistic science fiction that the authorities backed, they had changed with
As a doe-eyed kid growing up in Brooklyn, I didn’t actively look for Latino characters in all the buckets of pop culture I was gobbling. But when I came across them, glowing on the screen or speaking to me from a story, it was joyful. Hey, that guy looks like my dad. She sounds just like my mom. Of course,
Kevin Egan is the author of eight novels, most recently A Shattered Circle, and Midnight, a Kirkus Best Book of 2013. He works in the iconic New York County Courthouse, which serves as the setting and inspiration for most of his recent fiction. Several of his courthouse mystery stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. His short fiction also
Loneliness and frustration We both came down with an acute case When the lights came up at two I caught a glimpse of you And your face looked like something Death brought with him in his suitcase —Warren Zevon, “The French Inhaler” I don’t exactly know why I took Kevin Avery and Jeff Wong’s It’s All One Case: The Illustrated
David Mamet once observed that writers are obsessed with office supply stores. The things these stores contain — pens, pencils, inks, paper — are the only visible proof of what we do. I thought of Mamet’s remark after seeing California Typewriter, a fascinating new documentary about the titular shop in Berkeley, California. Computers may rule the day (these words are
