'Tis the Season to Celebrate Bad Sex in Fiction

'Tis the season to be jolly, and the British Literary Journal's 2019 "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" has just come out to provide needed end-of-year chuckles. The annual award goes to sex scenes that miss the mark to evoke mirth, cringes or head-scratching in otherwise well-written fictional works by notable authors. This year the judges actually split top "honors" between two authors: Prix Goncourt winner Didier Decoin and British novelist John Harvey. Decoin won for passages in his novel The Office of Gardens and Ponds, a fable set in Japan 1,000 years ago, by describing, for example, how the heroine "seized, kneaded, massaged, squashed and crushed" (Ow!) her lover's genitalia and "felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws." Meanwhile, Harvey floundered erotically with passages in his novel Pax, such as a clunky connection of sexual and geographic heat with "More than torrid, more than tropical: they two were riding the equator," or an unappetizing allusion to a female praying mantis devouring her mate "mouthful by mouthful." A runner-up contender was The River Capture by Mary Costello, who turned sexual penetration into a weird anatomical exploration: "She begged him to go deeper and, no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection." Elizabeth Gilbert, popular author of Eat, Pray, Love, also made the short list by having her heroine proclaim in City of Girls, "I screamed as though I were being run over by a train." (Holy Ow!) For those who get excited by step-by-step direction, try Domenic Smith's The Electric Hotel: "The actual lovemaking was a series of cryptic clues and concealed pleasures. A sensual treasure hunt. She asked for something, then changed her mind. He made adjustments and calibrations, awaited further instruction." For more excerpts, see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/27/mouthful-by-mouthful-the-2019-bad-sex-award-in-quotes

Shopping Malls Can Be Sinister Places

It's that holiday gift-buying time of year when, even though most of my shopping has moved online, I may have one or two visits to the shopping malls. Though I dread the parking, the crowds, and trekking the maze of stores, I usually don't think of a mall as a sinister setting. Yet it doesn't take too much imagination to find their dark side. Consider What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn. The mystery starts in the 1980s when independent 10-year-old Kate, toting a toy monkey and a notebook of observations, plays detective in a newly opened shopping mall and befriends, Adrian, the 22-year-old son of a local shopkeeper. Then the little girl disappears and Adrian naturally comes under suspicion until, hounded by the press, he also vanishes. Jump to 2003. Now Adrian's sister Lisa is working as a manager at a discount record store in the same mall and becomes obsessed by security guard Kurt's surveillance-camera sightings of a little girl with a toy monkey. Lisa and Kurt develop an after-hours friendship as they join to investigate. Throw in Teresa, Kate's classmate who is now a detective, and you have a haunting mystery set in the eerie underground and locked stretches of the mall. In Silvermeadow, an entry in Barry Maitland's Brock and Kolla mystery series, a supermall outside London is the setting for two seemingly unrelated cases. A girl goes missing from the mall and then a violent criminal is spotted at the mall. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla come to launch a manhunt for the wanted man centered on the mall, and their team uses the investigation into the missing girl as cover. But is there more than a coincidental connection? Finally, if you're looking for a thriller pro, try Nora Roberts' 2018 bestseller Shelter in Place, which starts with a mass shooting at a Portland, Maine, mall. After 8 minutes of carnage, the killers are taken down, but the terror doesn't stop for some survivors as they discover that another conspirator is lying in wait. Of course, it is the holidays, and for those who must brave the malls and so would rather keep their mall perspectives less disturbing, there are Laura DiSilverio's cozy Mall Cop mysteries: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=disilverio+mall+cop+series&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

Mysteries Add Side of Mayhem to Thanksgiving

It's that time of year when families gather to feast, malls crowd, e-commerce hums and marching bands parade, and for mystery writers those are all opportunities for old feuds to turn deadly and for killers to create mass death. There are so many Thanksgiving-themed mysteries out there, especially in the cozy mystery space, that I'll only highlight a few. In the "killer in the crowd" category, there is Richard Hawke's debut Speak of the Devil, in which former police commissioner Fritz Malone chases a mystery killer dubbed Nightmare, who has opened fire at New York City's Thanksgiving Day parade and threatens more carnage unless the city meets his impossible demands. For fans of J.D. Robb's Lieutenant Eve Dallas series, there is Thankless in Death, which pits Dallas against a grievance-filled son who has murdered his parents for Thanksgiving and plans to strike again; Dallas knows the who, how and why, but must race to figure out the next victim. For cozy fans, Leslie Meier has an appropriate holiday entry in her amateur sleuth Lucy Stone series, Turkey Day Murder, as charming Tinker's Cove festivities are marred by the murder of a Native American activist with a long list of enemies. Finally, as a Southerner, I have to include a Dixie side with Hit and Run by Sandra Balzo. Journalist AnnaLise Grigg returns to her hometown in North Carolina's western mountains for a Thanksgiving bash hosted by the town's legendary womanizer Dickens Hart, who turns out to be her birth father. The philanderer also invites all former lovers and other children he may have fathered in an attempt to "do right" by potential heirs to his huge fortune. No surprise that the gathering soon takes a deadly turn! For a long list of Thanksgiving-themed mysteries, check this 2019 mysteryreadersinc post at http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-mysteries-thanksgiving.html

New Mysteries Ensnare Readers in the Dark Web

The dark web, which often comes up in today's TV thrillers, is making its mark in mystery fiction, too, as a new digital maze in which detectives must seek encryption-masked villains. For the uninitiated, dark web content exists on darknets that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations or authorizations to access. The identities and locations of darknet users stay anonymous and cannot be tracked due to a layered encryption system, which makes the dark web naturally attractive to black marketers, drug sellers, hackers, pedophiles and terrorists. Here are four recent well-reviewed mysteries that involve dark web sleuthing. In 2019's This is Gomorrah by Tom Chatfield, hacker Azi Bello is recruited by a mysterious espionage unit to take on Gomorrah, an exclusive dark web marketplace where Islamic terrorists have left a clue to their next deadly move. The Dark Web Murders by Brian O'Hare also arrived this year as an entry in the Inspector Sheehan series, pitting Sheehan and his team against a fiendishly clever serial killer who posts luridly about his kills on dark web blogs, murdering with seeming impunity. Meanwhile, a 2017 techno-thriller set in Portland, The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy, posits that the dark web also hosts an ancient evil threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew: 12-year-old blind girl with a high-tech visual prosthetic, a technophobic journalist, a one-time child evangelist with a basement full of weapons, and a hacker who styles himself as a cyber warrior. In the 2015 mystery Dark Web by T.J. Brearton, the death of an online-gaming teen launches Detective John Swift on a quest to untangle a web of virtual and real crimes to solve a complex mystery. Those still skimming the Internet surface via Google and Facebook may want to first dive into the darker reaches with Jamie Bartlett's nonfiction The Dark Net.

Surprise! Digital Gen Z Readers Like Print Fiction

Today's authors of adult fiction face the arrival of a new generation of readers: Generation Z, those born in the mid-1990s to early-2000s, who now make up 25.9% of the U.S. population and will account for 40% of all consumer markets in 2020. So what appeals to a Gen Z readership? Thanks to Library Journal (LJ) and Pew Research surveys, we know that Generation Z is the most diverse generation to date, and on track to be the most educated. They have grown up with the anxieties of post-9/11 terrorism, mass shootings and climate crisis. They have also faced a more diverse society than ever before in racial/ethnic, sexual orientation and lifestyle terms. And they are social media beings and mobile device addicts who don't remember a world without streaming media. But that doesn't mean the Gen Z doesn't read: Some 72% of respondents told LJ they'd read at least one book for pleasure in the last 12 moths—the same as for every generation. Of course, social media does a play a big role for them, even when it comes to reading choices: While like previous generations they put friend and family recommendations at the top of the list of ways to find new titles, social media is Gen Z’s second choice, at 43%, to find out about new books. The good news for fiction authors is that Gen Z members are fiction readers, per LJ: Gen Z respondents prefer reading fiction nearly two to one over nonfiction. And, though weaned on Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series, we are happy to see that mysteries still place among their top four genres. Gen Z women’s four favorite genres are, in order, romance, fantasy and young adult fiction (in a virtual tie), and mystery/suspense. Men, meanwhile, gravitate to fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and mystery/suspense. And despite their supposed digital bias, Gen Z members, like millennials, prefer to read print for long-form content, Gen Z. Hardcover books are the most-read format (79%, compared with 32% for ebooks). Here's a difference: When they do read digitally, a whopping 77% of Gen Z respondents do so on their mobile phones. For the formative fictional reading of Gen Z, see https://bookriot.com/2019/06/05/books-and-series-gen-z-grew-up-with/

Mysteries Go Back to School for Campus Carnage

It's back-to-school time for campuses across the nation, and, frankly, there are few better settings for mystery plots than academia: ambitious academics; the corrupting influence of money; and the tangled relationships and pasts of young students. There were some good topical entries in the campus thriller category in 2019, starting with Dervia McTiernan's The Scholar, in which a woman found murdered on a college campus is identified as the heir to a fortune and the child of the university's biggest funder. There's also A Student of History by Nina Revoyr about a broke young student thrilled to land a research assistant gig with one of Los Angeles' ultra-rich, only to discover dark secrets that force him to decide how far he will go to protect his future. From 2018, there is Beth Gutcheon's The Affliction. At the troubled Rye Manor School for Girls, a former headmaster of a prestigious New York City private school is sent to assess the school’s problems only to find a teacher dead in the school’s swimming pool, a teacher with the "affliction" of nonstop chattering. From 2017 comes Ruth Ware's The Lying Game in which three former girl classmates at a remote boarding school near the English Channel receive a summoning text from the fourth member of their clique, drawing them back to her home near the school, where her father, the art teacher, was a formative influence on all of the women. The reunited friends soon revisit old secrets from their shared pastime, the lying game, in which they purposely fibbed to faculty and students to see what they could get away with. Finally, one of my faves for psychological chills, Tana French, offers 2014's The Secret Place in which her Dublin Murder Squad is called to a high school after an anonymous post claims to know who killed a popular boy the year before, drawing the detectives into a strange and dangerous underworld of teenage girls. For a broader compilation of examples, including top authors such as Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Amanda Cross and Donna Tartt, see https://crimereads.com/a-brief-history-of-academic-mysteries-campus-thrillers-and-research-noir/

Mysteries to Read Before Summer Officially Ends

Summer is coming to a close, so set aside time for a few mystery indulgences before back-to-school and back-to-work. I'm betting on some proven favorites. One is a book I missed at the end of last year: Tana French's The Witch Elm. After happy-go-lucky Toby surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead, he retreats to the family ancestral home to recover from his injuries and care for a dying uncle. But then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree, detectives arrive, and Toby's beliefs about the past are challenged. As a fan of Karin Slaughter, I want to read her latest The Last Widow, too: First a scientist for the Center for Disease Control is abducted and then bombs blast the Atlanta neighborhood of the FBI and CDC. Medical examiner Sara Linton and investigator Will Trent are unraveling a deadly conspiracy when Sara is abducted, and Will must go undercover to save her and thousands of innocent lives. Plus, I'm putting the reliable Jo Nesbo on my list with the latest installment in his Harry Hole series, Knife, which plunges Harry, even though relegated to cold cases, into new danger. A new author I'd like to try is Ruth Ware. Ware's Turn of the Key is about a young woman who takes a live-in nanny post with an ideal family at a luxurious home in the Scottish Highlands, only to find herself in a nightmare that ends with a child dead and herself on trial for murder. For a very different locale, the reviewer-lauded Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik takes readers to Bolivia, where a heroine running from her past arrives to take a teaching gig that falls through. She ends up following her lover into the depths of the jungle--and a fight for survival. For a different kind of primal confrontation, there's Daniela Petrova's Her Daughter's Mother. Lana meets and befriends her daughter's anonymous egg donor Katya in New York City. When Katya suddenly disappears, Lana begins to dig obsessively into her past, drawing the suspicion of police and unearthing shocking secrets. Meanwhile, parallel stories twist in a deadly knot in the opioid-plagued rural Kansas town of Laura McHugh's The Wolf Wants In as Sadie Keller tries to find out how her brother died, 18-year-old Henley Pettit desperately seeks to escape her family's crimes, and the police keep finding bones in the woods. For more ideas, see https://crimereads.com/the-most-anticipated-crime-books-of-summer/

The Dangerous Epidemic of Loneliness

The headlines are so full of stories fretting over the epidemic of mass shootings, hate speech and hate crimes that you may have missed a disturbing story about another epidemic: loneliness. Chronic loneliness is another term for social isolation, for a lack of physical and emotional connection to others, something human beings are biologically programmed to need for physical and mental well-being. Today, according to a new poll by YouGov, 30% of millennials, those aged 23 to 38, say they are lonely, higher than any other generation surveyed. More disturbing, 22% of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends, 27% percent said they had "no close friends," and 30% said they have "no best friends." While not measured by YouGov, the up-and-coming Gen Z also reports high levels of loneliness on other surveys. Chronic loneliness, which has tended to peak naturally with the elderly in the past, seems to be seeping downward. These findings are scary. Research has linked the stress of chronic social isolation to mental and physical health issues such as anxiety, depression, digestive problems, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep problems, weight gain, and even premature death via increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease. And do we really think that there is no link between social isolation and the proliferation of tribalism and hate? Lonely people trying to make connections are fueling the growth of isolated social media groups, which create no true intimacy but do deliver a warped and ephemeral sense of belonging by defining themselves against the enemy "other," whether by race, gender, politics or sexual orientation. On campuses and at political events, the isolated and angry are susceptible to the toxic embrace of polarized tribes. And what happens when polarized souls, alone and threatened on the social battlefield, have easy access to battlefield weapons and hear an approving signal in the political noise? We should not discount this dark rot in our society. To help yourself, or someone you know, to cope with loneliness, check out this Psychology Today article https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201901/is-loneliness-making-you-sick

Munchausen by Proxy: Sickened by Love

Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) is a parenting disorder and form of child abuse that may be more common in fiction and television drama than it is in real life, but it makes for fascinating plots and characters, such as Gillian Flynn's monstrously neurotic mother in her psychological thriller Sharp Objects. MBP is when a parent, mainly the mother, either fabricates an illness or induces an illness in her child, sometimes even killing the child. The offending mom usually appears to be a model parent with little or no indication of family discord, and the abusive behavior is clearly premeditated and not a reaction to the child's behavior. There is a high mortality rate for the children, and the tragedy is that they are usually very young and defenseless; the average age of victims is 4 years old. While explanations are complex, MBP often seems to be spurred by an unhealthy desire for attention. Noble mothers tending sick children not only get lots of medical support but also sympathy and help from friends and family, and even media attention. In addition to Flynn's book, other fictional stories about MBP include the newly released thriller Saving Meghan by D.J. Palmer, about a devoted mother who insists she is trying to save her daughter and herself even though the 15-year-old is so frequently ill that MBP is suspected. Figuring out the truth will keep readers turning pages. Also new this year is We Came Here to Forget by Andrea Dunlop, about a young Olympic skier who loses everything when dark secrets about her sister's MBP come to light, a trauma based on Dunlop's experience with her own sister.  The young skier flees to Buenos Aires to reinvent herself, only to become enmeshed with a man keeping dark secrets of his own. Also check out Cradle and All by Zachary Alan Fox, a thriller about a Los Angeles couple with a new baby boy. After a series of mishaps for the baby at home, they are accused of child abuse—and then anonymous night-time telephone calls begin. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon is a Young Adult take on MBP about a 17-year-old girl isolated by an assumed severe immunodeficiency until she finds out the terrible/liberating truth.  For true-crime drama, there is this year's "The Act," starring Patricia Arquette, on Hulu. Episodes are based on the real story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was tortured by her MBP-afflicted mother DeeDee—until Gypsy orchestrated mom's murder. For more chilling real-life cases, see https://listverse.com/2015/09/03/10-shocking-cases-involving-munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy/

Fatherhood Is Rare Trait for Fictional Detectives

With Father's Day ahead, I began to think about fatherhood in mystery fiction. It's easy to find murderous or dysfunctional fathers and stepfathers, but what about crime-solving protagonist dads? Alas, research showed that most well-known male sleuths are either eccentric singles a la Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot; hardboiled loners like Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer; or cerebral commitment-phobes like British inspectors Adam Dalgliesh and Endeavor Morse. Although even the most obsessive detective heroes may indulge in humanizing romance, fatherhood's responsibilities seem to be a plot distraction that authors prefer to avoid! But there are a few famous detectives whose fatherly roles play a part in their character arcs. In the police procedural space, there's Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. Bosch's parentless childhood and difficulties in forming relationships inform and give weight to his edgy yet emotional bond with daughter Maddie, who initially lives with Bosch's ex-wife but takes a more important role in later books when she comes to live with him in Los Angeles and starts to emulate her father's police career. In the thriller genre, Tom Clancy's Dr. Jack Ryan—PhD., former Marine, CIA operative extraordinaire and heroic two-term President—also finds time to raise four children, including Jack Ryan Jr., who follows in his father's footsteps and enters the "Ryanverse" book series as an analyst for "the Campus," an off-the-books intelligence agency, where he is a great ally of Ryan Sr., of course. For those who long for a British gentleman as pater familias, there is Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, who starts out single in the series debut A Man Lay Dead but marries in later novels and fathers a son Ricky, who plays major roles as a child in Spinsters in Jeopardy and as a young man in Last Ditch.  For dark-humor American fare, check out Slim and Anci, the father-daughter duo in Jason Miller's Little Egypt series set in southern Illinois coal country. Self-styled "redneck detective" and single-father Slim is teamed with his brilliant young daughter Anci, starting with Down Don't Bother Me about a mine owner who pays Slim to unravel the mystery of a dead reporter and missing photographer (sans police and press), and Red Dog, in which Slim tracks a missing pitbull only to find a dognapper with his head blown off. And if you want fatherly care without the blood ties, there is always Father Brown, the insightful Roman Catholic priest and amateur sleuth of 53 short stories by G.K. Chesterton (and a TV series).

2019 Thrillers With a Timely Political Edge

As I follow the news, I sometimes feel that I am entangled in a series of political thriller plots, but ones less satisfying than fiction. In a novel, I can get to a cathartic climax in days; reality is frustratingly slow moving and full of loose ends and conflicting plot lines. So I started looking at this year's crop of political thrillers to satisfy my thirst for truth, justice, and a satisfying finale—novels in line with classics like The Manchurian Candidate, Day of the Jackal or The Hunt for Red October. I'll note five well-reviewed 2019 releases, starting with Daughter of War by Brad Taylor, a former Special Forces officer and a New York Times bestselling author. This entry in Taylor's Pike Logan series has the hero hot on the trail of a North Korean trying to sell sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Syrian regime when he stumbles on plots and counter-plots by both the Syrians and North Koreans to create mass mayhem using a lethal substance called Red Mercury. What about those pesky Russians? Matthew Quirk's The Night Agent answers with an idealistic young FBI agent who sets out to find and stop a Russian mole, only to realize that anyone in the White House may be the traitor! Of course, writers need to include China among their nemeses.  In Killer Thriller by Lee Goldberg, protagonist Ian Ludlow, an action novel author, is in Hong Kong to research his wildest story yet—a deadly global conspiracy by Chinese intelligence to topple the United States—only to find that his horrifying scenario is actually in the works and the Chinese believe he’s a super-spy. Trapped in his own thriller, Ian must dodge assassins as he races to prevent disaster. If you harbor dark suspicions of the President, Out of the Dark will be your cup of tea; it's the latest entry in Gregg Hurwitz's Orphan X series featuring Evan Smoak, trained from age 12 as a deadly assassin by the Orphan Program, an off-the-books, deniable-assets operation that he has fled. Evan realizes the government is now killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers, so he decides to strike back by taking on the program founder, the U.S. President! But the President is not only surrounded by traditional security, he is guarded by Orphan A, the first Orphan Program recruit, setting up a deadly battle for the fate of the country. Finally, for some feminine spycraft, try The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone. In Paris, American expat Kate Moore, head of a clandestine cadre of operatives behind her homemaker cover, is confronted by a massive terrorist attack only to find that it is not what it seems and that it involves her own family. For more choices, see Amazon's best-seller list at https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Political-Thrillers-Suspense/zgbs/digital-text/6190490011

Weddings More Fatal than Fun in Mysteries

The spring-summer wedding season is gearing up, and mystery writers are ready with their own murderous takes on wedded bliss as deadly secrets surface, relatives and friends feud, and, of course, money is the eternal catalyst tilting marriage to mayhem. Happily, this spring's crop of wedding-inspired mysteries includes some New York Times best-selling authors, starting with one of my favorites, Jonathan Kellerman, with Southern California settings and the unique sleuthing pair of psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis. In The Wedding Guest, Sturgis and Delaware must crash a rowdy "Saints and Sinners"-themed wedding reception where a woman has been found with her throat slashed. Hundreds of guests, and the bride and groom, all claim ignorance of the woman's identity and innocence of any crime as Delaware and Sturgis literally try to separate saints from sinners. Also this year, Alan Bradley adds to his amusing and genre-irreverent Flavia de Luce series with The Golden Tresses of the Dead. This time, British 12-year-old chemist/sleuth/busybody Flavia is attending her sister's wedding in a small English town when a human finger turns up in the wedding cake! Of course, more delicious shocks lie ahead to challenge Flavia's detecting skills. Or maybe you want something a little cozier, then check out The Truffle With Weddings, 2019's installment of Laura Durham's Annabelle Archer Wedding Planner series (series debut Better Off Wed won an Agatha for Best First Novel). In her latest caper, society wedding planner Annabelle is struggling to please a demanding bride when a colleague drops dead after eating a poisoned chocolate, and her best friend and caterer Richard Gerard is suspected. For more cozy mystery series with a wedding theme, check out http://cozy-mysteries-unlimited.com/party-event-planner-list

Gay Detectives Come Out in Mystery Fiction

With the media giving special attention to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay, I wondered if mystery fiction reflects a similar LGBTQ acceptance. Overall, mystery and crime fiction have been more hospitable to hard-boiled homicide hunters and old lady sleuths than gay detectives or even gay characters, with homosexuality used most often as a plot point about a hidden identity, a lying witness, a family secret/conflict, or a motive for murder. But there are some great mysteries featuring gay detectives out there, such as Jim Morgan Wilson's Benjamin Justice series. The first novel in the series, Simple Justice, which won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, debuts journalist Justice, disgraced by a Pulitzer-story scandal and mourning the death of his lover, who is pulled out of alcoholic hiding to investigate a seemingly motiveless killing outside a gay bar, a crime with unexpectedly deep personal and political ramifications. Writer and retired attorney Michael Nava, winner of six Lambda Literary Awards for works exploring LGBT themes, offers a series featuring Henry Rios, a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. His Rios novels run from The Little Death in 1986 to 2016's Lay Your Sleeping Head. Many reviewers see one of the most seminal gay detectives as Joseph Hansen's insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter. In the 1970 debut novel of the Brandstetter series, Fadeout, an entertainer's car plunges off a bridge, but the body is missing, and Brandstetter's queries convince him the man is still alive and in danger. Another popular mystery series features Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield, a lesbian L.A. homicide detective. Four books in the series have been Lambda Award winners, most recently 2013's High Desert, in which Delafield must confront truths about herself as, a few months into retirement, she obliges her old captain by taking up the hunt for a missing police partner. For more gay detectives, see this list from writer Kristen Lepionka: http://www.criminalelement.com/the-quiltbag-detective-queer-characters-in-crime-fiction-comment-sweepstakes/

Cure Spring Fever With a Mystery Trip Abroad

With California's hills and gardens splashed by a super-bloom of flowers, I must admit to a touch of spring fever. What better cure than armchair travel courtesy of some great new 2019 mysteries? Certainly, you can't beat Italy as a getaway from any lingering winter blahs. Join Donna Leon's soulful Venetian detective Guido Brunetti in Unto Us A Son Is Given, for a case triggered by a rich man's mysterious adoption. Meanwhile sunny Sicily hosts Andrea Camilleri's The Overnight Kidnapper, in which Inspector Montalbano faces a series of baffling abductions of women bank workers. Enjoy the heat and spices of the exotic East with Abir Mukherjee's Smoke and Ashes, set in colonial 1920s Calcutta, or The Suspect, by Fiona Barton, in which journalist Kate Waters investigates two missing girl tourists in Bangkok. To keep you appreciative of the spring thaw, crack an icy Scandanavian noir like the award-winning After She's Gone by Camilla Grebe, in which a psychological profiler who’s lost her memory and a teenage boy with a secret become unwitting partners in a race to stop a killer, or Hunting Game by Helene Tursten, introducing a new series heroine, Detective Inspector Embla Nyström, a sharp woman with a dark past who is tasked with solving a peer's murder during a routine hunting trip. Still, give me that special brand of British country house/gothic anytime. In The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott, coming in April, Alisa Calder inherits half of an eerie Scottish manor, with the other half left to her father, a man who disappeared 27 years earlier. Or roam the bleak moors with my favorite DCI Banks as he tries to connect the baffling deaths of a local female student and an older male stranger in an expensive suit in Careless Love by Peter Robinson. With The Smiling Man, Joseph Knox's damaged detective Aidan Waits of the Manchester PD goes on a dangerous, mind-bending journey as he tries to ID a smiling body found in an abandoned hotel. A gothic tangle of twin brother and sister, a mother who committed suicide at their birth, a missing au pair, and a Norfolk coast estate launch the mystery of The Au Pair by Emma Rous. But if you have to have Paris in April, pick The Book Artist by Mark Pryor, pitting a U.S. Embassy security head against a murderer at an art exhibition and an assassin with a grudge. For a list of more new mysteries out in early 2019, go to https://crimereads.com/the-most-anticipated-crime-books-of-2019-part-1/

The Special Charms of Indian Detectives

In India to visit friends and relatives for a few weeks, I naturally brought mysteries for travel days and hotel stays, and this time I chose Indian mystery authors--and I don't mean books by English writers with Indian heroes, such as H.R.F. Keating's Inspector Ganesh Ghote or Tarquin Hall's PI Vish Puri. I mean mysteries by authors who are Indian (or at least of Indian origin) and use an Indian setting. Best known internationally as a filmmaker, no list of Indian mystery writers is complete without the late Satyajit Ray. His 35 short mystery stories, featuring Bengali sleuth Prodosh Chandra Mitra a.k.a. Feluda, form a two-volume set, The Complete Adventures of Feluda, and follow Feluda's development from amateur to skilled investigator. However, fans of Agatha Christie may prefer Madhumita Bhattacharya's private investigator Reema Ray in The Masala Murder, Dead In A Mumbai Minute or Goa Undercover. Although technically not an Indian author since she was born in England and raised in the U.S., it's hard to leave out Sujata Massey because she has won both an Agatha Award for Best First Novel and a Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel. She launched a new mystery series in 2018 with The Widows of Malabar Hill, in which Perveen Mistry, the first female lawyer in 1920s Bombay, investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows and soon is embroiled in murder. If you're a "Jewel in the Crown" fan, then go for Arjun Raj Gaind's series about the detecting skills of Maharaja Sikander Singh of Rajpore, a Sherlock Holmes fan; the 2018 paperback Death at the Durbar has the Maharaja under pressure to help the British solve a murder before it upends their George V coronation celebration in 1911 Delhi. Back in modern times, murder is less romantically silk-draped and bejeweled; for example, Ankush Saikia just added More Bodies Will Fall, a 2018 paperback, to his detective Arjun Arora series. This time Arora investigates the Delhi murder of a girl from Northeast India, a tribal area facing violent unrest and outside prejudice. Another dark take on today's India is Fraudster by R.V. Raman. Critically praised in India, the story drags the reader into a corporate world where the employees of a bank are murdered one-by-one as soon as they get too close to large-scale financial fraud. For more Indian mystery recommendations, see https://www.thecuriousreader.in/bookrack/mystery-novels/

Weather Turns Witness in Forensic Meteorology

It's a rainy day in Southern California, and, as a mystery fanatic cozy indoors with a good who-done-it, it started me thinking about weather and murder--and the interesting role of "forensic meteorology" in investigations. I'm clearly not alone because The Weather Channel debuted its own true-crime series "Storm of Suspicion" last year, highlighting the role played by weather science in solving murders. For example, in one case, a husband claims that his wife was murdered, and he was knocked unconscious, by an intruder. Yet forensic meteorological analysis showed the lawn around the house would have been so soggy with dew at the time of the murder that an intruder would have left clear footprints. Lack of any footprints helped clinch the husband's arrest. In another case, footprints betrayed a murder-as-accident scheme: A woman is found dead at the wheel of her crashed SUV after apparently skidding off an icy road--until footprints in the snow are spotted walking away from the wreck. Yet another example hinges on lack of snow: An accused murderer claims he sustained a scratch on his hand while snowboarding and not during the attack--only it was raining at the time of the alleged snowboarding, melting a slight snowpack and leaving slopes too bare for the sport. The weather is such a common factor in tragic events that forensic meteorologists have been used as expert witnesses in murders, suicides, bombings, vehicle accidents, bad aircraft landings, property insurance disputes, hurricane and flood damage claims, building collapses, slip-and-fall insurance scams, and much more. Unfortunately, as global warming leads to more extreme and dangerous weather events, forensic meteorologists will be keeping busy! For an interesting article on how weather-related forensics contribute to solving crimes and settling legal disputes, see https://gizmodo.com/forensic-meteorologists-solve-crimes-youve-never-though-1586035339

Social Media Nourishes Murderous Misogyny

If you haven't noticed, there's a disturbing new trend of misogyny-inspired murder in the headlines. It started when Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself in Isla Vista, CA, in 2014, leaving a manifesto about his "Incel" motivations. After Rodger introduced the world to a dark Internet subculture, his fellow "Incels" quickly awarded him iconic status. There followed other Incel-inspired mass killings such as Chris Harper-Mercer's 2015 rampage at Umpqua Community College in Oregon that killed nine and injured eight; Alek Minassian's 2018 Toronto massacre in which he used his van to kill 10 and injure 14; and Scott Beierle's Hot Yoga Studio attack in Tallahassee, FL, that left two women dead and injured four women and a man. Even the infamous Parkland killer, Nikolas Cruz, who gunned down 17 people and injured 17 more at Stoneman Douglas High School, posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten." What is this Incel madness? Incel is short for "involuntary celibate," and these women-hating souls (almost exclusively white male heterosexuals) believe they are entitled to sex yet are being denied by women and society. They gather in Internet forums (notably Reddit) of shared misery but go beyond commiserating with each other over not being able to get a date. Incels glorify violence against sexually active women, harassment of women, and catfishing of women. Some warp concepts such as biological determinism, evolutionary psychology, and female hypergamy (that 80% of women desire only the top 20% of most attractive men) to justify their anger. But mostly they talk about their looks, penis size, loneliness, suicide, sex robots, rape, etc. And they cheer men who take revenge for sexual deprivation by killing people. This social media-enabled misogyny should be driving more national concern. The Incel subculture is just beginning to catch the notice of mystery authors--for example Lori A. Witt's 2018 debut Incel about a male-female detective team investigating a series of murders connected to Incel Internet forums. Meanwhile, though free speech lets Incels rant, I would urge media, law enforcement, legislators, and social media platforms to raise the alarm and focus on monitoring and intervention before the death toll goes higher. For Witt's novel, see https://www.amazon.com/Incel-Walker-Arruda-Book-1-ebook/dp/B07GLXGC45

Winter Can Be a Deadly Season

While crime generally proliferates as the temperature climbs, statistically peaking in summer, homicide is a less seasonal crop, a year-round blight on the human condition. Certainly, mystery authors find winter's bleak landscapes and frozen isolation apt settings for murder. And winter does have its own emotionally toxic aspects, such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) depression and cabin fever, a very real condition per scientists. The isolation, lack of socialization and boredom when bad weather traps people indoors alone or with the same faces can express itself as cabin fever's irritability, restlessness, excessive sleepiness and negative feelings. Documented cases among Arctic and Antarctic scientists and explorers have included attacking each other with hammers, poisoning a colleague to death, and burning a research station to the ground, per a recent Popular Science article. Mystery and thriller authors have used frigid settings for some outstandingly chilly novels, and any list would have to start with Stephen King's The Shining, in which Jack Torrance goes murderously mad as caretaker of a creepy, snow-bound hotel. The Scandinavians naturally dominate wintertime mysteries. Keep hot cocoa handy to offset the chill of Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo, writer of the Harry Hole detective series, about a surprisingly sympathetic contract killer; Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell, which launched the famed Kurt Wallander series with gruesome murders in a cold, remote farmhouse; and Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow about exotic Smilla's obsessive tracking of murder clues and secrets from Copenhagen to her icy origins in Greenland. Of course, Russia's snowy steppes and oppressive society are perfect for deadly doings, and Martin Cruz Smith's classic Gorky Park is a good example; Soviet detective Arkady Renko investigates three mutilated, frozen corpses in Gorky Park, a Moscow amusement park, and ends up battling both the KGB and ruthless Americans. In the snowy Pyrenees, acclaimed French author Bernard Minier has crafted a haunting tale with The Frozen Dead, in which a charismatic city cop must make connections between a series of gruesome murders, strange doings at an insane asylum, and a tale of madness and revenge from the past. Of course, England has a raft of wintry mysteries from the likes of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, but more recently there's Robert Bryndza's The Girl in the Ice, introducing Detective Erika Foster as she begins to investigate the discovery of a beautiful young socialite's body beneath ice in a South London park--and soon finds the trail of a serial killer. For mysteries debuting this winter, whether they feature frigid temperatures or not, see https://www.bookish.com/articles/winter-2019-must-read-mysteries-thrillers/

Reading Resolution: Exploring Women Writers

Time to make those 2019 reading resolutions! I've decided that one of my resolutions will be a conscious effort to read fiction by and about women. After all, 2019 is seeing a record 102 women sworn into House, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi making history by returning as House Speaker, another Women's March organizing for Jan. 19, and the #MeToo movement bearing fruit as at least 11 states pass new protections against workplace harassment. I'll start with women authors receiving 2018 fiction awards. For example, the 2018 Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award went to Attica Locke for Bluebird, Bluebird, about an explosive intersection of love, race, and justice in East Texas. The 2018 Man-Booker International Prize honored Olga Tokarczuk for Flights, which interweaves haunting characters and stories to create a meditation on what it means to be a traveler in both space and time. Kamila Shamsie won the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction for her Home Fire, a reworking of Sophocles' Greek tragedy Antigone. Joan Silber won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction last year for Improvement, a novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and unexpected implications of their decisions. In Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, winner of the National Book Award, the unnamed protagonist loses her longtime best friend and fellow writer to suicide and finds herself responsible for his Great Dane, bonding with the dog to deal with grief. The Reading Women podcast named All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva, a genre-busting collection of stories about struggles with fate, as its 2018 fiction winner. For more ideas on women-oriented reading, try the "2019 Reading Women Challenge" at https://www.readingwomenpodcast.com/reading-women-challeng…/