Honeymoons Can Be Murder

I took a brief hiatus from posting to celebrate my youngest son's wedding, but my mystery addict side, seeing the newlyweds' besotted bliss, began to speculate on the honeymoon's place in murder fiction. Some noted mystery/thriller writers have certainly plotted how a love story can transform into tragedy. Best-selling author James Patterson, for one, penned Honeymoon, in which an FBI agent John O'Hara investigates the alluring "black widow" Nora Sinclair, who practices a deadly sorcery on the men she enthralls, including O'Hara. In First to Die, which launched his Women Murder Club series, Patterson brings together a team of four female sleuths--a homicide inspector, a medical examiner, an assistant D.A., and a crime desk reporter--to catch a killer stalking newlyweds in San Francisco. Honeymoon to Nowhere by Akimitsu Takagi, a Soho Crime novel, adds international flavor with a Japanese setting: Etsuko insists on marrying a shy young university lecturer despite her parents' objections that his father was a war criminal and his deceased younger brother a murderer, but then, on their wedding night, the groom leaves in response to an urgent phone call and is still missing in the morning. For a tropical taste, check out Jaden Skye's Death by Honeymoon, first book in the Caribbean Murder series: Cindy and Clint are enjoying a dream honeymoon in Barbados when Clint is drowned in a freak ocean accident. Returning home to her wealthy husband's unfriendly family, Cindy begins to question how well she knew her husband when an anonymous photo of a woman she has never met arrives in the mail. Digging into Clint's e-mails and files, she discovers secrets from his past that convince her that Clint was murdered, and she returns to Barbados to find out what really happened. Of course, mystery queen Agatha Christie leads the way in the famous Death on the Nile, with Hercule Poirot seeking the murderer of a new bride among a river cruise boat's many suspects. For true crime tales of honeymoon murder, check out Listverse.com's 10 cases of spouses committing murder on their honeymoons. One important lesson for honeymooners: If your new beloved convinces you to get a big insurance policy before the honeymoon, avoid romantic trysts near the cruise ship railing or cliff's edge. For details, see http://listverse.com/2018/01/02/10-newlyweds-who-killed-their-spouses-on-their-honeymoons/

Natural Disaster Is Key Player in These Mysteries

Despite the heroic responses to hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it's a sad truth that the chaos created by natural disaster also unleashes and provides cover for human predators. So it's no surprise that mystery writers sometimes use a powerful natural menace--whether shaking earth, raging waters or roaring winds--to heighten suspense and complicate detection in their plots. For example, The Weatherman, by best-selling author Steve Thayer, is a collision of man-made and natural mayhem: Two tortured Vietnam vets, one a television meteorologist with an eerie gift for reading the weather and the other a news producer with a disfigured face, both love the same beautiful cop-turned-reporter. When fierce weather events coincide with murders, the meteorologist is accused, and the disfigured vet and lovely reporter join forces to investigate. In The Breathtaker by Alice Blanchard, a massive tornado strikes a small Oklahoma town and leaves behind three mutilated bodies in a ruined farmhouse. Police Chief Charlie Grover assumes the victims were impaled by flying debris, until evidence proves they were brutally murdered. Grover must enlist the aid of a tornado-chasing scientist to stalk a murderer who conspires with nature to conceal terrible crimes. The drama of Hurricane Katrina (plus a New Orleans setting) have inspired many fictional tales. Certainly, Hurricane by Jewell Parker Rhodes deftly weaves the region's natural and supernatural forces in her mystery plot. Dr. Marie Levant, great-great granddaughter of voodoo queen Marie Laveau, awakens from a nightmare, goes for a drive to clear her head, and finds a crime scene: a couple and their baby killed in the village of DeLaire. She reports the murders to the local deputy and sheriff, and meets the ailing Nana, a voodoo practitioner who's foreseen Marie's arrival. As Marie focuses on the local mystery, an approaching hurricane threatens wider death and destruction. Dead Man's Island, by Carolyn Hart, puts a very different sleuth in the eye of a hurricane: Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins, a widowed former reporter, is invited by an old beau, a media magnate, to his private island off the coast of South Carolina to help him figure out who is trying to kill him. As a monster hurricane hits the island, plot and storm naturally peak together. And if you're hungry for disaster thrills with a dash of romance, there's Chris Fey's Disaster Crimes Series, including Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, etc. For more options, see https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/45619.Natural_Disaster_Fiction

What If Social Media Turns Murderous?

Social media use has become so ubiquitous that it's no wonder mystery plots are mining social networking for clues, motives and even psychological weaponry. One example is the Social Media Murders Series by Angela Clarke, starting with Follow Me. If you think social media feeds fame monsters, you'll appreciate a plot in which recent graduate Freddie, who is trying to get her journalism career started via online contacts and posts, bumps into old friend Nasreen, now a police officer, and seeks a scoop by following her to a crime scene where a dead man lies slumped over his computer. Social media-savvy Freddie realizes the victim was a troll and finds the Twitter account of the "Hashtag Murderer," who takes credit for the murder and posts cryptic clues to the next target, titillating press and public. Freddie and Nasreen are soon in the crosshairs as they race to catch the fame-crazed killer. Or, maybe you fear that some folks in your social network of "friends" are playing unfriendly games. Then you won't find any comfort in The Other Twin by L.V. Hay. In the British thriller, Poppy returns home after her sister India dies from a fall off a railway bridge and hacks into her sister's laptop seeking the truth about her death. Poppy finds a social media world where resentments are played out online, identities are made and remade, and secrets outnumber truths. Now if you're a person who feels vulnerable to online-savvy miscreants, join tech-impaired, retired Detective Bill Hodges of Mr. Mercedes, the first entry in Stephen King's Bill Hodges Trilogy. In an unsolved case at the end of Hodges' career, the "Mercedes Killer" used a stolen Mercedes to mow down a crowd of people waiting outside a job fair. Miserable in retirement, Hodges is jolted back to life by taunting messages from the killer and drawn into a cat-and-mouse game on an anonymous social media chat site, leading to a race to stop a psychopath. Maybe you're worried social posts are attracting undesirable followers who'll try to move from virtual to actual contact. Then you'll be terrified by The Secrets She Keeps from Michael Robotham. Unwed and pregnant Agatha, who works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store, is fascinated by chic customer Meghan, who writes a droll parenting blog and boasts two perfect children and a happy marriage. When Agatha learns her blog idol is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she approaches the unsuspecting Meghan and sets something terrible in motion. Or test your social nerves with Caroline Kepnes' novel You. Beautiful Guinevere Beck shops in a New York bookstore where smitten employee Joe "Googles" the name on her credit card. Joe soon finds all he needs to know from her public Facebook account and constant Tweets. He begins to orchestrate meetings and events designed to push her into his arms, and removes any obstacles to his passion--even if it means murder. For thrillers featuring social media, check out https://strandmag.com/seven-thrillers-featuring-social-media/

'Impossible Murders' Challenge Mystery Buffs

The "impossible murder" or the "locked room murder" is a fun mystery plot device that includes early examples such as Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone and Arthur Conan Doyle outings with Sherlock Holmes. These mystery puzzlers generally include a victim who is apparently alone, or a murderer who inexplicably disappears, and suspects who have solid alibis and/or could not have logically committed the crime. "Impossible murder" purists turn up their noses at any explanations that rely on supernatural agents, hokey secret passages, or gimmicks like Edgar Allan Poe's killer orangutan in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. John Dickson Carr is a master of the "locked room" tale. Consider his 1935 puzzler The Hollow Man about a professor found murdered in a room locked from the inside, with people apparently present in the hall outside during the murder, and the ground below the room's window covered in unbroken snow. Similarly, award-winning French author Paul Halter specializes in "impossible murders" and began his career with The Fourth Door: The Houdini Murders, in which seemingly impossible murders are believed to be the work of a reincarnated Houdini--until Dr. Alan Twist unveils the rational solution. Ellery Queen penned a doozy with The King Is Dead, in which a wealthy munitions magnate, whose brother threatens to shoot him at midnight, locks himself in a hermetically sealed office. When the brother, under constant observation, pulls the trigger of an empty gun at midnight, the magnate is hit by a bullet, proved to be from the same gun, in his sealed room, where no gun is found. Two Japanese authors of impossible murder stories include Soji Shimada and Keigo Higashino. Shimada's The Tokyo Zodiac Murders challenges the reader to explain a cycle of gruesome "impossible" murders that begin with the locked-room death of an artist and continue to take the lives of his relatives over four decades. In Higashino’s Salvation of a Saint, the murderer's identity is known, but she has a seemingly unbreakable alibi: She was on the other side of Japan at the time of the murder. For a list of more "locked room" mysteries, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-room_mystery