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

The 'Bad Seed' in Fact and Fiction

Psychopathic villains--manipulative, aggressive, remorseless and unemotional--abound in murder mysteries, but when those psychopaths are children, an element of horror enters. Remember Rhoda, the too-perfect little girl murderess in the 1954 novel The Bad Seed by William March? Or Kevin, a school massacre perpetrator, whose mother suspects his evil capacity long before his final horrific acts in Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. Agatha Christie's Crooked House also featured a deadly child in scheming 12-year-old Josephine Leonides, who kills her grandfather because he won't pay for ballet lessons--and almost gets away with it. Author Jonathan Kellerman, a clinical child psychologist who writes New York Times best-selling mysteries featuring psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware, gives support to fictional "bad seed" characterizations. He notes in his nonfiction Savage Spawn, inspired by the spate of 1997-1998 schoolyard shootings, that “psychopathic tendencies begin very early in life, as young as three, and they endure.” Though research shows psychopathy is 50% genetic, biology is not destiny for our complex human personalities, and nurture can guide nature. Budding pre-psychopaths can be tempered by a non-aggressive environment and by a parenting style that is neither too permissive nor too authoritarian while providing structure and limits, according to psychology experts. After all, children with psychopathic traits do not all become killers; many grow up to use the daring, charming and manipulative aspects of their personalities as successful business tycoons, political leaders or sports stars. Still, the fictional tales of young murderers are not just fantasy and are reinforced every year by headlines about preteen killers and school shootings. We need to be alert to signs in children that presage criminal acts--violence toward people or animals, lack of guilt or remorse, social isolation, defiance and sensation-seeking--and commit to timely intervention. For more on youthful violence prediction and intervention, see http://crimefeed.com/2016/01/predicting-violent-criminal-behavior-how-to-spot-the-warning-signs-intervene/

Mysteries Close to Home: Los Angeles Noir

It's a rainy winter day in Los Angeles, courtesy of El Nino, and a great time to stay at home with a good mystery. Since Los Angeles is the recognized home of "noir" police procedurals and "hard-boiled" private eyes, I'm gathering together my favorite "L.A. noir" authors. Start with Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye; in post-war L.A., iconic private investigator Philip Marlowe is dragged into a cesspool of dangerous lies after befriending a drunken, scarred vet with a rich nymphomanic wife who turns up dead. Then go neo-noir with James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, the first in his quartet of novels about corrupt police and depraved post-war society, inspired by the gruesome, unsolved 1947 Elizabeth Short murder. Moving forward in L.A. history, there is T. Jefferson Parker's Edgar Award-winning The California Girl, set in Orange County's suburbs at the time of Vietnam, hippies and LSD, when three brothers (a cop, a reporter and a minister) collide over the decapitation murder of a teenage beauty queen. I also love Michael Connelly's maverick homicide detective Harry Bosch, and I'd recommend starting with the Edgar Award-winning The Black Echo. It's the first entry in the Bosch series and introduces Bosch as he fights enemies within the police department and his conflicting urges for justice and vengeance. For another tough PI, get to know Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer; The Underground Man has it all--a fire in the hills, a missing child, and Southern California's special brand of moral ambiguity. I'm also a fan of Jonathan Kellerman's child psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware, who helps the police root out the evil hiding under So Cal's sunny glam. A good starting point is the Edgar Award-winning When the Bough Breaks, in which Delaware tries to unlock the memory of a 7-year-old girl, the only witness to the murder of a fraudulent, sexually manipulative psychiatrist. Finally, for a very different angle on L.A, get to know Easy Rawlins, Walter Mosley's African-American sleuth. In the series debut, Devil in a Blue Dress, watch Rawlins transform from Watts day laborer to private detective. For more L.A. noir gems, see Jonathan Kellerman's recommendations at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/31/jonathan-kellerman-top-10-la-noir-novels

Try Paranormal Mystery Treats for Halloween

Halloween is a perfect time to indulge in mysteries with the extra spice of the supernatural--ghosts, curses, magic, haunted houses and dark forces. I've always had a soft spot for Jonathan Kellerman's best-selling Alex Delaware mysteries set in Los Angeles, so I'll start with The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and his son Jesse. This new contemporary mystery pulls in religious mythology and the supernatural to produce "an extraordinary work of detection, suspense, and supernatural mystery," per Amazon's quote of Stephen King. Solving the mystery of a severed head in an abandoned living room takes burned-out LAPD detective (and rabbi's son) Jacob Lev on an odyssey from Los Angeles to Prague to Oxford and back again. His standard crime-genre investigation is complicated by a mysterious woman and a monstrous being of Jewish mythology (the title's Golem), built to render justice upon the wicked—including serial killers. If your appetite for the spine-tingling is still not sated, read Mateguas Island, a debut novel by Linda Watkins and winner of the gold medal in Amazon's 2014 Readers' Favorite International Book Award Competition for the Supernatural Fiction category. A troubled family comes to a remote island off the coast of Maine, not realizing that their inherited property is steeped in destructive forces. An arcane locked box, a foreboding trail into the woods, a seductive young woman, and tales of a malevolent Native American spirit ratchet up the suspense. Then, for a modern haunted house story, turn to Christopher Fowler, award-winning author of the Peculiar Crimes Unit series. His original thriller Nyctophobia isolates newly married architect Callie in a grand house in southern Spain, a house split between rooms flooded with light and rooms locked away in darkness and neglect. As Callie begins to research the history of the strange house, her nyctophobia (fear of the dark) is awakened, along with haunting secrets. But when it comes to seeing ghosts, hysterical, attention-seeking adolescent girls would seem to be most susceptible. So no wonder the girls at a posh Irish boarding school keep seeing the ghost of the boy victim of an unsolved murder in Tana French's The Secret Place, another installment in the Dublin Murder Squad series. The narrative alternates between flashbacks by clique of schoolgirls and the perspective of a cold-case detective and his partner, who spend a long day and night investigating. As any parent of an adolescent might guess, the private lives of teenage girls, their friendships and betrayals, can be more mysterious and dangerous than the detectives imagine. If psychic sleuths rather than psyched-out sleuths are your cup of tea, then pick up veteran paranormal mystery writer Kay Hooper's Haunted, the latest entry in the Bishop Special Crimes Unit series. For more reviews of paranormal mystery releases, check out http://www.iheartreading.net/genres/paranormal-mystery-mystery-and-suspense-3/

Regional Mystery Rewards Sleuth and Tourist

Sometimes the setting of a mystery novel goes beyond a dash of "local color" into the realm of regional fiction, offering a special atmosphere, unique characters and local accents so integral to the story that it's hard to imagine the same plot in another place. Here are just a few regional mysteries that may appeal to fellow armchair detectives and tourists. Take a trip to New Mexico and its blend of Hispanic, Native American and Anglo cultures courtesy of the late Tony Hillerman; Skinwalkers or A Thief of Time is a good first read. Closer to home for me, Raymond Chandler may have been the pioneer of Los Angeles noir, but Michael Connelly is a worthy heir, winning every major award given to mystery writers, with his novels featuring LAPD detective "Harry" Bosch and defense attorney Mickey Haller. I also like Jonathan Kellerman's L.A.-based series with child-psychologist sleuth Alex Delaware, starting with the award-winning debut When the Bough Breaks. On the opposite coast, Dennis Lehane draws powerful, wrenching literary mysteries out of a gritty Boston landscape; a great example is Mystic River, winner of multiple book awards. Or follow the cases of the late Robert B. Parker's Boston private detective Spenser; with so many books in the series, a good start is Edgar Award-winning Promised Land. If New York City tops your tour agenda, Linda Fairstein and her Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper provide satisfying reads, including Nero Award-winning The Deadhouse. If you think drizzly gloom is the perfect setting for murder and mayhem, you'll be drawn to J.A. Jance's Seattle-based detective J.P. Beaumont series, starting with debut Until Proven Guilty. Or you can move further north to the wilder shores of Alaska, and meet Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak, kicking off the series with Edgar Award-winning A Cold Day for Murder. There are a lot more regional mysteries worth sampling, of course. For more suggestions, take a look at the post by Marvin Lachman, author of The American Regional Mystery, at http://somethingisgoingtohappen.net/2012/10/17/the-american-regional-mystery-by-marvin-lachman/