Time Again to Celebrate "Bad Sex in Fiction"

The year is ending on a grim note for many, whether it's the tragedy in Aleppo, the Trump transition or the polar vortex. That's why we need the Bad Sex in Fiction Award right now! Every year since 1993, the London-based Literary Review has honored an author who has produced an outstandingly bad sex scene description in an otherwise good novel. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written sexual description in modern fiction--with the hope that writers will learn to do better.  This year, respected writer Erri De Luca, who has won the 2013 European Prize for Literature, was awarded the booby prize for The Day Before Happiness, in which the Neapolitan orphan protagonist has a penchant for describing erotic moments with wooden (literally) prose such as "My prick was a plank stuck to her stomach" or the rev-me-up "My body was her gearstick." Of course, De Luca faced tough competition from Leave Me by Gayle Forman, a New York Times best-selling author, and A Doubter’s Almanac by Ethan Canin, teacher of creative writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Canin earned his nomination with this sporty passage: "The act itself was fervent. Like a brisk tennis game or a summer track meet, something performed in daylight between competitors. The cheap mattress bounced." Meanwhile, nominee Tom Connolly seems confused about what makes a sex scene hot in Men Like Air: "Often she cooked exotic meals and put chillies or spices in her mouth while preparing the food and sucked him while the food cooked and then told him to f---- her while his manhood was burning rock-hard with fire." While The Butcher’s Hook by Janet Ellis earned the judges' attention with the limp "I am pinned like wet washing with his peg," The Tobacconist, by Robert Seethaler, waxed philosophical during a BJ: "...for one blessed moment he felt as if he could understand the things of this world in all their immeasurable beauty. How strange they are, he thought, life and all of these things." Yeah. For more excerpts from this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award nominees, see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/17/bad-sex-award-2016-the-contenders-in-quotes

Travel Changes Thinking Not Just Scenery

The holiday vacation period has arrived, and many will be making travel plans--whether an annual pilgrimage to a family home or a journey to an exotic land. So here's a timely look at just three of the latest crop of travel best sellers courtesy of the New York Times listing. Atlas Obscura, by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras and Ella Morton Workman offers nearly 500 pages about more than 700 hidden marvels, events and curiosities around the world. That's an almost overwhelming amount of inspiration for the adventurous! If you want to stick with the less exotic, check out The Road to Little Dribbling, an irreverent travelogue around Britain by American expat Bill Bryson, or go for a more luxe experience with The Hotel on Place Vendome by Tilar J. Mazzeo, about the history of Paris' famous cultural landmark, the Hotel Ritz. But mainly, I hope your travel reading will inspire actual travel plans, since prose, no matter how intriguing, is no substitute for real exploration. A trip, whether to a neighboring town or a country on the other side of the world, can broaden understanding, providing new perspectives, unlimited by ignorance and bias, on peoples and cultures. An open-minded tourist is following the sage counsel of Mark Twain, also a talented travel writer: "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime." The best journeys then aren't about seeking a change in scenery but finding a change in thinking. So don't just read a travel book, use it to inform your next real-life travel adventure. Take the advice of Saint Augustine to heart: "The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." For more travel best sellers, see http://www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers/travel/?_r=0

Our Thanksgiving Politics: How You Say 'Pecan'

A lot of news channels before Thanksgiving featured some expert advising how to avoid dinner table fights coming out of this contentious election season. Since my family is like-minded, political debate wasn't a problem--but we did quickly divide over other deep and stubbornly held habits: how to pronounce common words in American English. It started with the pecan pie. Is it pick-AHN, pee-Kahn, PEE-can, or PEE-kahn? Well, I've always pronounced it as pick-AHN, and a national linguistic survey shows that's because my family roots are in Louisiana and Texas. From the pecan pie, the argument moved to other words, although we could agree that one person's "carml" (for caramel) tasted as sweet as another's "carramel." So we are a nation divided not just by what we say but how we say it. For example, as a child, I called every sweet carbonated beverage a "coke," which most people in Texas understood, but this led to confusion when I lived in Virginia and California, where more people say "soda," and raised eyebrows when I was in college in Michigan, where people prefer "pop" (and "coke" refers to an illegal substance). So I've stopped saying "coke" and sometimes even offer "soda pop" just to make it clear to a range of speakers. Other childhood linguistic habits persist, of course, and I've been surprised how quickly speech experts pick up on the slight tells in my pronunciation to pinpoint regional origin and ancestry. With mobility and the standardization of mass media and entertainment, our regional linguistic divisions are dwindling. And luckily, those trivial verbal differences that still separate us can be debated without hurt feelings, and perhaps can even encourage acceptance.  Check out a national survey at http://dialect.redlog.net/ to see maps of our American linguistic divides and where your pronunciation may fit. For an article with quick highlights, go to http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6/

Some Musings on Music and Politics

With the shock waves of the presidential election still spreading, I got to thinking about an artistic phenomenon that occurs in times of great change. Let me start with last Friday, when we had over some friends who were saddened by the election of Donald Trump. The conversation soon turned from politics to Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter who died the day before the election, and his amazing song "Hallelujah." We listened to various versions, from Jeff Buckley's well-known performance to an Israeli army choir interpretation in Hebrew. Then, the next evening, "Saturday Night Live" opened with Kate McKinnon, known for her satiric portrayal of defeated presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, singing "Hallelujah." The song ends with Cohen's verse: "I did my best; it wasn't much. I couldn't feel so I tried to touch. I've told the truth; I didn't come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!" The song is seen by many as sorrowful, but Cohen himself felt it was a "rather joyous song" and explained, "This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah.'" In that more positive spirit, McKinnon/Hillary followed the song's conclusion with an exhortation to those disappointed in the election outcome (the majority in terms of popular vote): "I'm not giving up and neither should you." All that got me thinking of the historic convergence of music and politics. After all, Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter and five-decade cultural influence, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Dylan is well-known for a musical opus that includes "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," which became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Looking for an exploration of politics in music, and vice versa, I found books such as Politics in Music: Music and Political Transformation from Beethoven to Hip-Hop by Courtney Brown, Music and Politics by John Street, Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution: Music and Social Change in America by Dick Weissman, and 33 Revolutions per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day by music critic Dorian Lynskey. And as far as Cohen's song is concerned, there is The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of 'Hallelujah' by Alan Light. But I note that none of these histories go past 2013. The defining songs of the next generation of political protest have yet to emerge. Watch and listen in 2017. I'm betting new rallying music is in the offing. In the meantime, for fans of "Hallelujah," see https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Broken-Leonard-Unlikely-Hallelujah/dp/1451657854

After the Election, My Mystery Shopping Deluge

I'm not much of a holiday shopping fanatic, but I need something pleasant to anticipate after the end of this awful election season. So I'm beginning to put together my holiday book list for mystery lovers. Courtesy of Publishers Weekly, here are some ideas: I like the look of Steven Price's By Gaslight, about two men combing London's 1885 underworld to find the master criminal responsible for a woman's dismembered body; you can't beat foggy streets, smoky opium dens, and Victorian seance halls described with "literary sophistication." For anyone who likes the moody mystery of Edward Hopper's paintings, In Sunlight or in Shadow is a fascinating idea for a crime fiction anthology, with top authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Stephen King, and Joyce Carol Oates each penning stories inspired by Hopper's art. I'm a big fan of Canadian Louise Penny, and the 12th mystery in her Armand Gamache series, titled A Great Reckoning, has the former Quebec Chief of Homicide back in the village of Three Pines and following an old map into a dangerous web involving police cadets, a murdered professor and a stained glass window with terrible secrets. I'm also a fan of Caleb Carr's The Alienist about a psychologist investigating crime in 19th century New York City, so I'm piqued by a new entry from Carr called Surrender, New York, about a psychologist and a DNA expert solving present-day crimes in upstate New York. Also set in New York City is best-seller J.D. Robb's 43rd Eve Dallas thriller, Apprentice in Death, which starts with three ice skaters shot dead on Wollman Rink in Central Park. Plus, best-selling favorite Karin Slaughter has debuted another novel featuring Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent and medical examiner Dr. Sara Litton; in The Kept Woman, the pair of lovers investigate the death of a dirty retired Atlanta cop. For more fiction and nonfiction options, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/71628-holiday-gift-guide-2016-all-our-coverage.html

Halloween As a Murder Backdrop, in Fiction and Fact

Halloween is around the corner, and murder mystery authors can't help but be drawn to this celebration of restless dead souls and dark forces in the chill, autumn night. Fictional tales using the holiday setting include the great Agatha Christie's Hallowe'en Party, in which Hercule Poirot is called on to solve the murder of a 13-year-old girl after she boasted at a Halloween party that she once witnessed a murder. For those who prefer their mysteries a little cozier, there's Susan Wittig Albert's Witches' Bane, her second mystery featuring herb shop owner China Bayles, who must solve a Halloween murder in which her friend, a New Age expert in tarot and astrology, is a prime suspect. For a Western flavor, read Tony Hillerman's The Fallen Man. Newly retired Joe Leaphorn investigates a skeleton discovered on Halloween at one of the holiest of Navajo places and soon realizes the skeleton is that of a missing person from one of his long-unsolved cases. In reality, crime statistics do spike on Halloween. After all, the holiday involves alcohol-infused parties, opening doors to masked people, and vulnerable children approaching strangers to ask for candy--and most of that happens at night. Actual murders that have taken place on Halloween include the sensational death of Martha Moxley (which inspired numerous books and for which Kennedy family scion Michael Skakel was eventually convicted and later released on appeal). Another horror tale that inspired film and TV documentaries is the Halloween rape and torture-murder of 16-year-old Shirley Ledford, which led to the capture of a pair of serial killer ghouls known as the Tool Box Killers. Now I've never liked the holiday's excessively macabre aspects, so some real Halloween crimes that disturb me involve hanging or decapitated bodies left in plain sight and ignored for hours by passersby who assume they are just realistic "decorations." For more real-life Halloween murder mysteries, read http://listverse.com/2015/10/30/10-sinister-halloween-horror-stories-that-really-happened/

Tired of Politics? Try Other Planets' Troubles

By late October, I find myself exhausted by our political mud-wrestling and yearning for escape to some other galaxy. The sci-fi mystery genre is rife with tales of a futuristic, usually post-apocalyptic, Earth, but I'm hearing enough apocalyptic talk in the election race! I long to sleuth where the sky is red and home to two moons, where the aliens come from other worlds and not other countries, and where our unhappy Earth is a spaceship's time-warp away. So here are some choices for those seeking justice in an alternative universe. Start with Red Planet Blues, by Robert J Sawyer, who is a Hugo and Nebula award winner. Set on Mars, the story takes place in the domed city of New Klondike (a future Elon Musk destination maybe). The town was built for miners seeking "fossils" that sell for big bucks on Earth, but the fossils ran out and the town has gone bust. Alex Lomax, a traditional PI character, is hired to find out who has killed the miners who first started the fossil rush, with the possibility of finding a cache of fossils worth millions. Then there's KOP by Warren Hammand. It's about a policeman named Juno Mozambe whose family moved from Earth to the planet Lagarto, a promised utopia unfortunately dependent on a single export that has been replaced by cheap knock-offs. Amid the planet's slums and poverty, cop Juno faces bribes from organized crime and a frame-up by a new partner. Now if you want to land on a planet without unethical Earth pioneers, try acclaimed writer Lois McMaster Bujold's Hugo and Nebula award-winning Mountains of Mourning, set in an imaginary galaxy. Interstellar investigator Miles Vorkosigan is sent to uncover the truth about a murder in a society that values physical perfection. A baby has been killed because of a physical defect, calling up an outlawed custom and prejudices against "mutants." With the Village Speaker determined to hide the truth, Miles and his team, despite the advantages of special truth serum, must use all their skills to find the real killer. Finally, there is the Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which portrays a universe where humans and alien races try to coexist and respect each other's differing laws. The penalties in this inter-species legal balancing act can be severe, and Miles Flint, a "retrieval artist," is tasked with tracking down fugitives across worlds, torn between the demands of his police job and his sense of justice. Rusch is deft with cross-genre writing, as proven by her Endeavor and Hugo sci-fi awards as well as her Edgar mystery award nominations. For more options, check out http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best-science-fiction-mystery-books

Mysteries with a Mystical Bent

I just spent a wonderful weekend in Sedona, Arizona, with girlfriends, including visits to shops stocked with religious icons, New Age literature and rocks claiming various mystical properties. We also hiked to a famous "vortex" to imbibe its earth energy. Now I must admit that a number of curious things occurred near the vortex; for example, a strange man suddenly appeared on the trail and handed out free heart-shaped pieces of red sandstone to our group of gals before moseying on. Divine Messenger or Loco Local? Choose the most satisfying answer. Now as a rule, I tend to avoid detective fiction that relies on the workings of angels, fairies, witches, vampires, ghosts, psychics or otherwordly powers, animal or mineral, as plot devices in solving mysteries. But I also make exceptions. Here are some popular mysteries with a paranormal bent, starting with favorite author Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island, about U.S. Marshals who go to an island asylum to investigate the disappearance of a criminally insane patient. Some detecting powers I'd rather not have. In Chuck Wendig's Blackbirds, Miriam Black can tell with a touch when you're going to die, and the hero of The Cypress House by best-selling author Michael Koryta can sense imminent death. If you like folks who can use magical powers to catch criminals, try prolific author Heather Blake's It Takes a Witch, whose heroine casts spells to grant wishes, with some murderous consequences. If you believe in psychic sleuthing, read any entry in Kay Hooper's series about the FBI Special Crimes Unit's psychic detecting. For ghost lovers, there's Night of the Living Deed by E.J. Copperman, about a haunted guesthouse where the ghosts expect the new owner to solve their murders. And that brings us back to Sedona, and Mathew Marine's Devil's Moon about a troubled FBI agent who gets involved in investigating a Sedona "murder-suicide" after a young woman is found mutilated in a police officer’s basement, his confession scrawled on the wall above his dead body. Sounds like a straightforward who-done-it? Hey, it's set in Sedona, so psychic powers, premonitions, angels and mystical experiences abound. For more paranormal mysteries, check out readers' recommendations at https://www.goodreads.com/genres/paranormal-mystery

Attack of the Creepy Clowns

"Creepy clown" hysteria has become so prevalent that it was a topic raised at a recent White House press conference. Calm is being urged by none other than horror maestro Stephen King, whose seminal 1986 novel It features a monster clown preying on young children. The panic began in August in Greenville County, South Carolina, with emergency calls about a clown, or someone dressed like one, “trying to lure children in the woods.” Since then, over a dozen states have reported sightings of scary clowns, and the phenomenon has gone viral on the Internet. An explosion of memes, teen hoaxers, arrests for threats related to "clown activity," even the establishment of a Clown Lives Matter effort by one threatened clowning practitioner--all have pushed the creepy clown panic right to the door of the White House. Now I must admit I've disliked clowns since childhood. My pediatrician used to have clown pictures on the waiting room walls in a misguided attempt at a kid-friendly environment, which forever connected clowns with fear and pain in my young mind. And I wasn't alone; most children are afraid of clowns, per studies. After all, clowns' painted faces and odd clothes hide their true selves and motives, and then they behave unpredictably with startling pranks and magic. For children, that's unnerving and scary. And there have been a few evil souls dressed in clown suits to foster adult fears, too, such as John Wayne Gacy, who killed 33 teenage boys between 1972 and 1978. But what is the psychology behind today's terror of imaginary "creepy" clowns? Clearly, even in our modern culture, we are not immune to the mass hysteria of the witch hunters of old Salem. And what if this year's overheated political discourse is fostering a free-floating fear of menacing "others," which distills into delusions of clowns, disguised and hiding among us, "luring children in the woods"? A troubling thought.  For more research on clowns as nightmares, there's Benjamin Radford's new book Bad Clowns. Or check out this CNN.com article for a quick overview of our "creepy clown" terror: http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/03/health/creepy-clown-sighting-psychology/,

Let Detective Sidekicks Take a Bow

Most mystery readers enjoy imagining themselves with the sharp detective wits of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Endeavour Morse or Inspector Thomas Lynley. I'm sure emulation is a lot rarer for the sidekicks of those noted fictional sleuths, who are, in order, Dr. John Watson, Captain Arthur Hastings, Detective Sergeant (DS) Robbie Lewis and DS Barbara Havers. But sidekicks play a very important role. Imagine the mystery plot without them! A sidekicks helps move along the plot by engaging with the main detective character to convey thoughts and feelings quickly and conversationally, by acting as a sounding board for theories and courses of action, and by delivering both red herrings and hot leads. The "duo" concept moves the plot much more naturally and interestingly than if the writer had to resort to big chunks of internal monologue to provide clues and revelations! Sometimes the sidekick can even take over as narrator (reliable or unreliable) a la Dr. Watson. The sidekick narrator, always close to the action, is especially useful in artfully placing clues while keeping the detective's inner process veiled right up to the climax. All sidekicks also offer a way to humanize or deepen the main detective's character by adding humor, emotional interaction, personality contrast, or social commentary. The loyal sidekick can smooth off-putting traits of a complex lead detective, such as Holmes' cold arrogance, Poirot's petty fussiness, Morse's morose overthinking, Lynley's aristocratic maleness. And, of course, sidekicks can be very useful as agents for sudden twists and exciting confrontations and rescues. If you want to meet more mystery fiction sidekicks, in addition to the well-known sleuthing teams noted above (from the pens of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Colin Dexter and Elizabeth George), see Wikipedia's list of detective teams at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_detective_teams and Colin Dexter's favorite sidekicks: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1383782/Dr-Watson-Detective-Sergeant-Lewis-Colin-Dexter-greatest-sleuthing-sidekicks.html

Senior Lady Sleuths: Gray Locks Join Gray Matter

Now that I'm joining the ranks of senior citizens in a few years (I'm holding off true membership till age 65), I find myself more interested in mystery tales featuring older lady sleuths. Of course, Agatha Christie's Miss Jane Marple, the shrewdly observant spinster of St. Mary Mead, has an international fan base. And Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain's retired English teacher and novelist, even won a TV following for the "Murder, She Wrote" series. There are many other outstanding examples: M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin, a retired PR agent turned PI; globe-trotting Mrs. Emily Pollifax, grandmother and spy, of the eponymous Dorothy Gilman series; and Eugenia Potter, widowed chef and star of the culinary cozy mysteries of Virginia Rich and Nancy Pickard. I wondered if there was some special set of skills offered by older ladies to make them appealing to mystery writers. And I came up with five reasons a mystery author might choose to create a gray-haired female detective. For one thing, as retirees, and often widows or spinsters, older women have more time to devote to detection without the constant, complicating drag of career and/or family on character and plot. Second, their judgment can be informed by age rather than years of police training, so they can draw on long experience with personal and social interactions to pick up the subtle clues to murder. Third, these fictional characters can be freed by age, maturely comfortable in their own skins and less constrained by worry over social conventions and sexual politics. This allows authors to create an eccentric, independent, adventurous or even comical character that would be less believable as a 20-something or 30-something heroine. Fourth, older ladies can approach evil obliquely and catch it unawares, because there are few people seen as less threatening than a grandmother or maiden aunt. And, finally, these fictional sleuths are not just older people, they are older women. Even today, most societies reward men for action, control and dominance, and encourage women to be more observant, emotionally attuned and socially participant. Female detectives can turn that gender bias into an advantage in terms of honed human observational skills. For some more senior sleuths, check out author Chris Well's post at http://chriswellnovelist.blogspot.com/2010/07/retirement-is-murder-10-senior-sleuths.html

Flashbulb Memories and Our National Psyche

We are about to embark on commemorations of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, reliving sights and stories that already seem indelibly burned into the national psyche. In the past, I have found that conversations about the now 15-year-old trauma include asking each other "Where were you when...?" And most people relate an especially vivid, emotional recollection of events. This phenomenon is what psychologists call a "flashbulb memory." People tend to have a detailed recollection of not only where they were when the dramatic public event occurred, but what they felt, what they saw, what they said, who they were with, etc. Other shared "flashbulb memory" experiences would include President John F. Kennedy's assassination, the Challenger space shuttle explosion, or even Princess Diana's death. These public traumas were unexpected, horrific and tapped strong feelings about an iconic person, institution or symbol. The emotional intersection between the personal and the public creates vivid memories, psychologists agree, but are such flashbulb memories really accurate, unchanging snapshots of our experience? Not exactly. Extensive research findings about 9/11 memories, for example, indicate that many of us forget or falsely remember more than we realize, both in terms of facts and emotional reactions. Those few who are closer physically and mentally to a public tragedy are apt to have more accurate recall than the majority who experience the event at a remove, say via televised reports. Yet, factual or not, the strong emotional context does have an especially deep impact on our minds, creating recollections that stand as landmarks in our personal and national stories. When revisiting your own 9/11 "flashbulb memories" in conversations this weekend, you can reflect on their accuracy while discussing them with others. But I bet the power of these memories will not be diminished by conflicting facts. Their emotional resonance is their truth, creating our shared popular history. For an interesting article on flashbulb memory studies, including those from 9/11, read http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/09/memories.aspx

Partners in Detection: Crime-Solving Couples

We're heading for the Labor Day weekend of family barbecues, end-of-summer trips and last-of-summer reading indulgences. So why not combine family and mystery themes with detective fiction that features married teams? After all, the detective couple is a cherished tradition. The era of mystery classics gave us Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence Beresford and Dashiell Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles. More recently conceived sleuthing couples range from Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt in the foggy streets of Victorian London to Lt. Eve Dallas and husband Roarke fighting crime in the futuristic New York of the "in Death" series by J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts). Closer to our current time and place, there is the husband-wife team of Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock in the FBI Thriller series by Catherine Coulter and Faye Kellerman's LAPD Lt. Peter Decker and his Orthodox Jewish wife Rina Lazarus. What do couples have to offer readers that the lone detective can't deliver? Well, there is the spice of romance (yes, married people are still lovers, even outside of fiction) and the opportunity to add character interest--either extra tension/distrust (when the couple is in a rough patch) or amusing banter/camaraderie (when things are copacetic). Second, a sleuthing couple allows the author to combine mystery-solving styles to good effect; for example, one may be emotionally and socially intuitive, while the other is more scientific or legalistic. (If you assumed that the first description fits the wife and the second fits the husband, remember that good writers confound stereotypes.) Finally, the plot tension with a crime-solving couple is literally doubled as each half of the duo risks both personal safety and that of a loved one by confronting evil. For some more partners in detection, check out http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2013/01/novel-crime-solving-couples-corrina-lawson-geekmom-harriet-vane-eve-dallas

Making Political Discourse Even More Confusing

I'm an Internet political junkie. I follow commentary on the presidential campaign from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, etc. and even occasionally dip in the roiling Alt Right pro-Trump waters of Breitbart.com (Get a feel for its politics with these headlines from the tenure of Stephen Bannon, who is now the Trump campaign CEO: http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/17/breitbart-news-worst-headlines/212467.) I also watch those shouting panels of pundits, partisans and journalists on television news programs. So I just have to address several language issues that are driving me crazy. The new favorite word of TV panelists is "relitigate," as in "I don't want to relitigate the issue." Now "litigate" means "to contest at law," which makes no sense for a bunch of TV talking heads. But "dispute" is an archaic meaning of "litigate," and "dispute again" is what I think these folks are trying to say. Guys, please, just admit you want to stop arguing and move on; you may actually win points in the "court of public opinion." Another term bandied about in this year's uncivil political discourse is "bigot." A bigot is someone "who is intolerantly devoted to his or her own prejudices and opinions," per Merriam-Webster. So, Donald Trump, it makes no sense to label Hillary Clinton as a bigot with an explanation that equates failure to deliver effective minority policies with prejudice. Of course, Donald's imprecise wording stirs constant debate, both important and trivial; there were arguments over whether he was saying "bigly" or "big league" in speeches, for example. Meanwhile, everyone yammers about "dog whistles" this year. For the mystified, a political dog whistle means messaging that has a general interpretation but also another intended meaning for a target group. An example would be using the president's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, while talking about Islamic terror policy to tap into those who suspect he's really Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer. "Talking point" is another term that I find popping up in media discourse this year, often with an accusatory tone. Pay attention when someone calls out a "talking point," however, because it may be spotlighting political propaganda. A talking point is a succinct, persuasive statement of one side of an issue, purposefully developed by politicos and then launched through media personalities and sympathizers' responses so that media repetition eventually frames the debate and turns the favored argument into accepted fact. That's why so many TV panel discussions degenerate into shouted "talking points." For a quick primer on more political jargon, read https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/american-political-jargon

Making Political Discourse Even More Confusing

I'm an Internet political junkie. I follow commentary on the presidential campaign from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Politico, etc. and even occasionally dip in the roiling Alt Right pro-Trump waters of Breitbart.com (Get a feel for its politics with these headlines from the tenure of Stephen Bannon, who is now the Trump campaign CEO: http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/17/breitbart-news-worst-headlines/212467.) I also watch those shouting panels of pundits, partisans and journalists on television news programs. So I just have to address several language issues that are driving me crazy. The new favorite word of TV panelists is "relitigate," as in "I don't want to relitigate the issue." Now "litigate" means "to contest at law," which makes no sense for a bunch of TV talking heads. But "dispute" is an archaic meaning of "litigate," and "dispute again" is what I think these folks are trying to say. Guys, please, just admit you want to stop arguing and move on; you may actually win points in the "court of public opinion." Another term bandied about in this year's uncivil political discourse is "bigot." A bigot is someone "who is intolerantly devoted to his or her own prejudices and opinions," per Merriam-Webster. So, Donald Trump, it makes no sense to label Hillary Clinton as a bigot with an explanation that equates failure to deliver effective minority policies with prejudice. Of course, Donald's imprecise wording stirs constant debate, both important and trivial; there were arguments over whether he was saying "bigly" or "big league" in speeches, for example. Meanwhile, everyone yammers about "dog whistles" this year. For the mystified, a political dog whistle means messaging that has a general interpretation but also another intended meaning for a target group. An example would be using the president's full name, Barack Hussein Obama, while talking about Islamic terror policy to tap into those who suspect he's really Muslim or a Muslim sympathizer. "Talking point" is another term that I find popping up in media discourse this year, often with an accusatory tone. Pay attention when someone calls out a "talking point," however, because it may be spotlighting political propaganda. A talking point is a succinct, persuasive statement of one side of an issue, purposefully developed by politicos and then launched through media personalities and sympathizers' responses so that media repetition eventually frames the debate and turns the favored argument into accepted fact. That's why so many TV panel discussions degenerate into shouted "talking points." For a quick primer on more political jargon, read https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/american-political-jargon

Intriguing Mystery Plot Twists, Fictional and Real

Mystery lovers, by their nature, are lovers of the plot twist. Just a few of my favorites with surprise twists include Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, In the Woods by Tana French, Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton, and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart. Of course, the great Agatha Christie has multiple entries, such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express. Notice how often the "unreliable narrator" is key to the surprise twist, by the way. Sometimes fact is even more astounding than fiction, however. Just check out Listverse.com's post about 10 real-life mysteries solved by incredible plot twists. For example, there's seven-year-old Maria Ridulph's 1957 murder solved by a "murder will out" twist 54 years later. Although 17-year-old neighbor John Tessier was suspected of Ridulph's murder at the time, he had an iron-clad alibi: He had taken a train trip on the day the child disappeared. The police reopened the case in 1994 after a deathbed statement by Tessier's mother, but the alibi had them stumped--until one of Tessier's ex-girlfriends helpfully provided an old framed photograph. Investigators found the 1957 train ticket hidden inside, unstamped because Tessier had never used it to take the trip. Tessier was finally charged with murder in 2011. Science, not luck, played the key role in another seemingly insoluble murder. After a 13-year-old girl was found stabbed to death in 2011 in Italy, police took 15,000 DNA tests to compare with DNA samples found at the murder scene. One man's near-match led to testing of his family, including a long-dead uncle and the uncle's children--without an exact match. Police then learned the dead uncle had been a very active womanizer, and 500 women were investigated. Police finally found a married woman whose twins turned out to be the secret offspring of the dead uncle. One of the twins was a match for the killer's DNA, and he was charged with murder in 2014. For more real-life twists, read http://listverse.com/2015/03/25/10-mysteries-resolved-by-unbelievable-surprise-twists/.

Narcissists in Headlines and Fiction

The current presidential race has spawned numerous articles, by real and amateur psychologists, about whether a particular candidate (guess which one) is suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. People with this disorder have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, uniqueness and superiority. They engage in grandiose exaggeration of achievements and talents, have an insatiable need for admiration and attention, and express a sense of entitlement, expecting favors and unquestioning compliance. They are preoccupied with a self image of success, brilliance, power and attractiveness. They can be superficially charming but are also manipulative, arrogant, thin-skinned and lacking in empathy--unable or unwilling to recognize the needs and feeling of others. If they are criticized or fail to receive the special treatment/attention they feel is their due, they react with rage, contempt and belittling of others. Needless to say, these are favorite personality traits for fictional villains, ranging from selfish vanity to full-blown psychopathy (when narcissism is ramped up by antisocial aggression and sadism, you get someone really scary). Some well-known fictional narcissists include Miranda Priestly in Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada, Ingrid Magnussen in Janet Fitch's White Oleander, and Dorian Gray in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Since this post refers to speculative articles inspired by the presidential race, it is also somewhat interesting that one of GOP candidate Donald Trump's favorite films, per multiple interviews, is "Citizen Kane," the story of a wealthy and powerful narcissist. For more details, including Trump comments, read the Politico article: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/donald-trump-2016-citizen-kane-213943. And for more fictional narcissists in novels and films, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Narcissism_in_fiction

Crime Fighters With Across-the-Border Roots

When the political landscape is heated by rhetoric about immigrant crime and border walls, it may be time to remember that mystery fiction has a tradition of sleuths and crime fighters with south-of-the-border heritage. For example, there's Rex Burns' Gabriel Wager, a hard-drinking Mexican-American detective with the Denver police force, introduced in The Alvarez Journal, the Edgar Award-winning first novel of the series. Dell Shannon (aka Elizabeth Linington) debuted her hero, LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, in Case Pending and was nominated for an Edgar with the series' Knave of Hearts. But it is probably more illuminating to check out mystery fiction by truly Chicano/Chicana voices. Start with Rudolfo Anaya, born in a rural New Mexico village and famed for the poetic and mystical Bless Me, Ultima. Anaya also has penned mysteries with his special perspective expressed in Sonny Baca, a part-time rodeo rider turned private eye in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who not only seeks to solve crimes but to understand the meaning of his dreams and cultural roots. On the distaff side, there is Lucha Corpi, a Chicana poet and mystery writer born in Mexico. Her first mystery in 1992, Eulogy for a Brown Angel, introduced Gloria Damasco, a Chicana feminist with extra-sensory awareness. Rolando Hinojosa, born in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, debuted his series about Texan Lieutenant Detective Rafe Buenrostro of the Belken County Homicide Squad with 1972's Partners in Crime. Breaking more than ethnic barriers, Michael Nava is a California attorney and author of a mystery series featuring Henry Rios, an openly gay criminal defense lawyer who struggles to maintain his faith in a sometimes corrupt legal system. Since Rios' debut in The Little Death in 1986, Nava's novels have received multiple Lambda Literary Awards for LGBT literature. Finally, there's Manuel Ramos, another attorney turned author. His mystery series has also won recognition and awards, including an Edgar nomination for The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz, the 1994 introduction of sleuth Luis Montez, a world-weary middle-aged lawyer and former Chicano activist. For more, see http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv204.html

Thrillers Resonate This Political Season

Recently, Russian digital hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were revealed, raising the specter of foreign government interference in U.S. elections. That's a plot you'd expect to find in a Cold War-era political thriller, not 2016 news stories. So this very unusual political season has inspired me to take a closer look at political thrillers. An example is the just released novel about ISIS terrorism in France from bestselling political thriller author Daniel Silva. In The Black Widow, the spy hero is poised for promotion to chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service but takes on one final operation after ISIS detonates a massive bomb in Paris, and the desperate French government asks him to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again. But the classic political thrillers emerged after World War II when the West faced a nuclear-armed world divided by Cold War ideologies and post-colonial chaos. Among the best-known works is Richard Condon's 1959 The Manchurian Candidate about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into becoming an unwitting Communist assassin controlled by his domineering mother, who seeks to make her husband, a McCarthy-esque senator, into a puppet dictator. In 1955, Graham Greene's prescient The Quiet American depicts French and British colonialism in Vietnam being uprooted by American involvement during the 1950s, revealing a blind American "exceptionalism" that fails to see disaster looming. Colonialism's poisonous roots in the Muslim world are exposed in 1972's Edgar Award-winning The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, about a mysterious professional assassin contracted to kill French President Charles de Gaulle by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organization upset by France's Algeria policy. More recently, America's racial politics are the subject of A Certain Justice by John Lescroart, published in 2006: When an angry white mob in San Francisco murders an innocent black man, the only man who tried to stop the killing is framed and goes on the run amid riots, political posturing, and pressure on police to subvert justice. Of course, money is at the root of political evil, and in 2001's The Constant Gardner, by famed British spy novelist John le Carré, a British diplomat's search for the truth about his activist wife's murder in Africa uncovers an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucrats and pharmaceutical industry money. For Amazon's latest political thrillers, see https://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/7538395011/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr

Physical Challenges Can't Stop These Sleuths

If you like triumph-over-physical-adversity tales, you may want to check out mystery writing's long tradition of physically challenged detectives. There are many reasons for authors to create sleuths who are blind, deaf, paralyzed or otherwise physically limited. By literally handicapping crime-solving via a detective's impaired ability to personally gather clues from crime scene inspection or interrogations, an author boosts the puzzle-solving challenge. The social stigma often faced by people with physical issues also creates reader empathy and increases reader satisfaction in the protagonist's ability to overcome and triumph. Authors usually offset a character's physical disadvantage by honing intellect, senses, instincts or determination to a point beyond the skills of ordinary sleuths. A disability, because it can be misread as incapability, can even give a surprise edge in outwitting arrogant suspects, deceptive witnesses or uncooperative authorities. Among the well-known detectives in this group is bestselling author Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic New York City detective. NYC culprits also find a nemesis in George Chesbro's dwarf criminology professor and private-eye Robert 'Mongo' Fredrickson. Proving lack of sight is not lack of insight is Jane A. Adams' Naomi Blake, a blind ex-policewoman in the Midlands of England, while reading lips doesn't hinder reading clues in Penny Warner's Connor Westphal mysteries about a deaf newspaper journalist in California. For a list of more mysteries featuring physically challenged detectives, go to

https://beyondrivalry.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/crime-fiction-book-list-disabled-isnt-unable/

Mystery on Board: Cruising Into Murder

It's vacation time, and maybe you're longing to sail away from it all. You may even be one of the folks actually taking a cruise ship to exotic destinations. But what if there is a murderer hunting among the passengers trapped on that floating hotel? If you don't mind a frisson of anxiety with your real or imagined cruise adventure, add some of these noted mystery authors' tales of shipboard murder to your reading list. A well-known classic is Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, in which her Belgian sleuth Hercules Poirot plans a leisurely cruise down the Nile but ends up sifting through suspicious passengers and false leads to solve the murder of a wealthy young woman. Bestselling suspense author Mary Higgins Clark also penned a thriller with a cruise setting. In Clark's You Belong to Me, a killer stalks lonely women on board cruise ships as a radio-show psychologist rushes to catch the murderer before he can literally stop her dead. Famed New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh even introduced her mystery series' police detective Roderick Alleyn to the high seas in Singing in the Shrouds, sending Alleyn on a ship voyage in pursuit of a serial killer. But the King of Ocean-Liner Fiction is Conrad Allen. Allen's eight mysteries in the "Murder on the..." series are all set aboard pre-World War I cruise ships, starting with Murder on the Lusitania, and feature a husband and wife sleuthing team. For an updated ocean liner tale, fans of the "Murder, She Wrote" mystery series will appreciate Murder on the QE2, by Donald Bain and "Jessica Fletcher," as Jessica, invited aboard as one of seven guest lecturers, tries to solve the murder of a fellow speaker. For more mysteries with cruise ship settings, see http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/mystery-books-that-take-place-on-cruise-ships-mystery-books-at-sea.html

Dreaming Up Dreams in Your Writing? Be Wary

Because all people experience dreaming, it is tempting for authors to include a "dream sequence" in works of fiction. Some reasons for fictional dreams include illuminating a character's suppressed anxieties or desires, creating a foreshadowing or mood, or inserting an explanatory flashback. In general, writing critics discourage the urge to insert dreams because botched efforts are so common. You've no doubt encountered fictional dream descriptions that bore and impede rather than propel the story, that annoy as obviously hokey manipulations, or that confuse by their ambiguous truthfulness and significance. Most writers can't match great literature's dream usage. For example, Homer's epic Iliad uses a false dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon to spur the attack on Troy. Many of William Shakespeare's plays include vivid dreams, such as Macbeth, Richard III, The Tempest and, of course, A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Emily Bronte's gothic Wuthering Heights, characters are guided by their dreams. Russian greats Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment rely on dream motifs, too. Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland uses a dream setting to play with logic and satire. James Joyce's Ulysses has dream sequences that inspire Freudian and Jungian analysis. Note how assumptions about dreams have changed in the West, from the ancient belief that dreams come from outside supernatural sources, to Romantic personal inspiration and revelation, and finally to the modern focus on science and psychological insight. No matter what theory of dreaming is used, writers must make sure a believable dream sequence is relevant to character and integral to the plot. Here are some dream facts to consider: https://www.verywell.com/facts-about-dreams-2795938

Add Mystery & Thrills to Your 2016 Beach Reads

It's time to pack for that summer vacation, including, of course, a couple of mysteries or thrillers to get the heart pounding and the blood chilled despite the lazy, sunny days ahead. Here are some reviewer-favored suggestions that you may also want to add to your beach reading list. John Hart, who has won two Edgar Awards back to back, returns with the crime thriller Redemption Road, in which damaged yet courageous North Carolina police detective Elizabeth Black, who is white, faces a media a circus and the prospect of criminal charges after gunning down two black men sexually abusing 18-year-old Channing Shore in an abandoned house. North Carolina features again in All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda, a noted YA author with an adult fiction debut: A prep school counselor makes a return visit to her North Carolina hometown--and the unsolved disappearance of her best friend after their high school graduation a decade earlier. Let Me Die in His Footsteps by Lori Roy, another Edgar winner, evokes Southern gothic tradition with her tale of two families, first in 1936 and then in 1952, and an evil passed down the generations in a small Kentucky town. The Girls in the Garden by New York Times best-selling author Lisa Jewell leaves the South and takes us to a midsummer night's party for neighbors on a communal garden square in London. But the secure urban oasis is shattered when preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a rose garden, drawing the reader into a mystery about the dark games children and adults play. Memory, madness and lies also bring danger to psychiatric ward resident Dr. Zoe Goldman in Little Black Lies by Sandra Block. Goldman is dedicated to helping patients but she is also wrestling with her own demons, seeking to piece together the truth of her mother's death from nightmares about a fire and her adoptive mother's dementia-tattered memories. For more Publishers Weekly "best summer reads" in the mystery category, check out
http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/summer-reads-2016/mystery#book/book-1

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/

Dark Mysteries Lit by Las Vegas Neon

Last week I took relatives visiting from abroad to Las Vegas--because foreign tourists see its neon-magicked, cigarette- and alcohol-hazed glamorization of fantasy and vice as a top American entertainment experience.  The glitz of Sin City long ago ceased to enthrall me, but I admit that the "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" world is a perfect setting for mystery novels that I do enjoy. For example, 2015 Edgar Award-winner Chris Albani's The Secret History of Las Vegas: A Novel offers an original plot in which a near-retirement Las Vegas detective and a South African doctor studying psychopaths join forces to solve a spate of murders implicating a pair of conjoined twins. Dark Eye by William Bernhardt features psychologist Susan Pulaski, a Las Vegas police consultant whose life has spun out of control after the death of her cop husband, ending with an LVPD pink slip and a trip to detox. As a serial killer begins decorating Sin City with the horribly disfigured bodies of once beautiful young women, Pulaski is trying to regain her job and reputation, and stop a madman. She gets surprise help from a 25-year-old autistic savant whose unusual perspective forces her to see the crimes from a bizarre–but ultimately insightful–viewpoint. For a different Vegas journey, try Ron Chaney's Tony Hillerman Prize-winning The Ragged End of Nowhere, which stars a former CIA agent seeking his war veteran brother's killer in the Vegas criminal underworld, a case complicated by allegations that the victim was in possession of a stolen ancient relic. For more mysteries set in Vegas, check out http://www.indianprairielibrary.org/books-movies-more/book/1199-all-time-faves-what-happens-in-vegas-mysteries-set-in-las-vegas

'Poison Pens' Find Dangerous Cyber Power

The poison pen letter has been a plot device in some classic murder mysteries. For example, Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night and Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger featured these cruel communications--anonymous notes sent to the targeted recipient or third parties to humiliate, intimidate and discredit. A pen and ink letter seems quaint in this digital age. But the malice of the poison pen not only still exists, it has been further empowered by technology. Cyberbullying is one modern manifestation. Hurtful words and images can be unleashed 24/7 with free, anonymous clicks and delivered to large online and mobile social networks. The consequences have been especially devastating for vulnerable teenagers. Statistics show that 15% of high school students reported they were victims of cyberbullies in 2013, and the rising number of highly publicized teen suicides due to cyberbullying has sparked national concern. Some well-known mystery authors have taken note and incorporated cyberbullying in their plots. Start with Val McDermid's Splinter the Silence, featuring psychologist Tony Hill and former police detective Carol Jordan. The plot centers on the mysterious deaths of several outspoken feminists who were the victims of vicious cyberbullying. It is assumed that the torrent of abuse overwhelmed them and caused them to silence themselves in high-profile suicides. But Hill begins to see something even more sinister at work. In Roadside Crosses by Jeffery Deaver, his protagonist Kathryn Dance of the California Bureau of Investigation is called in when roadside crosses start appearing along the highways of the Monterey Peninsula--not as memorials to past accidents but as markers for fatalities to come. After the driver in a recent fatal car crash, a gaming-obsessed teen who’s been the target of cyberbullies, vanishes, Dance's manhunt takes her into the illusory world of bloggers, social networks and cyberbullying. Finally, veteran mystery writer Nevada Barr has penned Boar Island (an Anna Pigeon Mystery). Anna Pigeon, a National Park Service Ranger, finds out that the adopted teenage daughter of a friend is being victimized by cyberbullies and offers an escape by asking them to join her at her new post in Maine's Acadia National Park, staying in a house on nearby Boar Island. But a cyberstalker follows them, and soon Anna is dealing with a brutal murder as well. For more information about cyberbullying, read https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/what-is-it/

'Psychic Detectives' Only Shine in Fiction

A popular mystery subgenre features "psychic detectives," folks who help solve crimes with paranormal skills such as precognition or postcognition (extrasensory perception of future or past), psychometry (psychic info from objects), telepathy (mind reading), and "spirit medium" contact with the dead, including murder victims. These books offer a path to justice that is not blinded by the here and now, reading the secret thoughts of witnesses, culprits and victims, and detecting a crime unlimited by time, space or death itself. Psychic detectives certainly have won a place in popular culture--as seen from TV dramas and "reality" shows, such as NBC's "Medium" and Court TV's "Psychic Detectives," as well as repeated psychic detective appearances on hit talk shows. An example of a successful mystery series built around psychic detectives is Kay Hooper's Bishop/Special Crimes Unit (including her Shadows, Evil, Fear, Blood, and Haven trilogies). Yet, while fascinating to imagine, psychic detecting in real life has been repeatedly debunked by fact-checkers. Evidence of psychic crime-solving often turns out to have been fed to an uncritical media by the psychics themselves rather than independent sources. The police, FBI, and victim families consistently deny psychics' claimed involvement and helpfulness. Even successful psychic insights tend to use generality, ambiguity and probability to boost the 50/50 success rate of guesswork. Take a prediction that a missing person will be found dead in/near woods/field/water (depending on local landscape), and that someone with a close personal connection is involved. Such a prediction is likely to pan out because a person mysteriously missing for a length of time is usually dead, most people are killed by someone they know, and missing bodies are dumped in out-of-sight places--but that's hardly a revelation to police. Many reports of psychic achievement then benefit from historical reconstruction; vague claims become specific, misfires are ignored or replaced with correct predictions, and fabrications become facts. Nevertheless, the fictional fascination with psychics continues because popular authors offer some fun reads, including writers such as Kay Hooper, Heather Graham, Charlaine Harris and Victoria Laurie. After all, a psychic character and an omniscient author are playing much the same role. For a psychic mystery sampling, see http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/super-super-natural-mystery-novels-on-the-cozy-mystery-site-psychics-6th-sense.html

Injecting Poison Into the Mystery Plot

Poison is a rare murder weapon statistically but not fictionally. And here's a case where mystery plots may be more revealing than crime data. Many homicidal poisonings go undetected per experts, and only one in five verified murders by poisoning is ever solved. As an introduction to the topic, read The Poisoner's Handbook by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Deborah Blum. It's a historical thriller about how a medical examiner and toxicologist team uses trailblazing forensic science to bring to justice poisoners in early twentieth-century New York, setting new standards for forensic detection along the way. Structured as a series of linked stories about poison death investigations, it was a finalist for the 2010 Agatha Award for nonfiction and a New York Times bestseller in 2011. Or, you can turn to fictional inspiration. Agatha Christie counted many poison victims in her mystery books, from Cards on the Table, in which an evil doctor salts anthrax on a shaving brush to kill with a razor nick, to The Pale Horse, where tasteless, odorless thallium is the poison of choice. Another British mystery queen, P.D. James, used insecticide in a whiskey to poison a trainee in a nursing home in Shroud for a Nightingale. But how close are the fictional mysteries to real poisonings? Author-scientist Blum lists carbon monoxide, arsenic, radium, cyanide, nicotine, aconite, chloroform, mercury and thallium (kudos, Agatha) among her favorite poisons from historical homicides. And based on convicted poisoners (recognizing that they represent the minority of poisoners who have been caught), criminal profilers can say that, contrary to the popular notion that poison is a woman's weapon, the majority of convicted poisoners are male. The homicidal poisoner is also more likely to be in the medical field (doctor, nurse, lab technician) or in a care-taking role (wife, mother, nursing home attendant) where he or she has ready access to poisonous means and vulnerable, trusting victims. Psychological profiling of convicted poisoners shows that they tend to be clever, methodical, self-centered, emotionally immature and certainly unburdened by morality and empathy. And they are sneaky, often skillfully masking their true natures by pretending to be a loving spouse or caring nurse. For examples of more famous poisonings in literature, check out http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/16/ten-best-poisonings-john-mullan

Blindsided: Murder Mystery Plot Twists

Skilled mystery authors can use an ingenious plot twist to surprise and stump even veteran mystery readers. Here are some favorites that continue to inspire imitation and inventive variation. Let's start with the Narrator Culprit. Readers tend to trust the mystery narrator, especially if he or she is a victim, sympathetic witness or helpful aide to investigators, so it's a real shock to find out they've been bamboozled by a villain (and the author). It worked in The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and the more recent Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The Impossible Murder twist is another favorite in which the evidence seems to contradict logic and science, including the many variations on the classic "locked room" murder. Read John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins for an ingenious example that includes a locked room death followed minutes later by the shooting death of the main suspect on a snow-covered street, surrounded only by his own footprints yet with a powder burn showing he was shot at close range. The Supernatural Killer is a popular way to play mind games with readers, too. There's often a spooky house, a ghost sighting, a curse, an old crime and a new one, and clues that fit both natural and supernatural explanations. A recent example is Tana French's The Secret Place, in which adolescent girls at a posh Irish boarding school claim to police investigators that they see the ghost of the boy victim of an unsolved murder. Similarly, The Chinese Gold Murders, the second entry in Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee series set in ancient China, involves sightings of a murdered magistrate's ghost, as well as a murdered monk in the wrong grave and a tiger at large, events Judge Dee traces to a common cause to solve the mystery. Finally, there's the Not Really Dead Suspect ploy, in which the author misdirects reader attention away from a supposedly dead character as in Agatha Christie's famous And Then There Were None. For more classic plot twists courtesy of Queen of Mystery Christie, read http://flavorwire.com/537670/agatha-christies-10-best-plot-twists/10

April Is the Month for Civil War Mysteries

With states rights and minority rights currently sparking passionate political clashes, April is a great month to gain historical perspective on the issues. After all, the first shot in the American Civil War, the ultimate battle over states rights and equality, was fired 155 years ago on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Four years later, with 650,000-850,000 killed per recent estimates, the nation's bloodiest war essentially ended on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Va. Today, when victory is measured in bombast and votes rather than blood, and when politicos fret over party rifts, Abraham Lincoln amazes with the compassionate, inclusive leadership of his Second Inaugural, "with malice toward none, with charity for all." If history books put you to sleep, murder mysteries may be an easier way to revisit that watershed time this April. For example, Faded Coat of Blue by Owen Parry won the Herodotus Award for historical fiction and started Parry's Abel Jones mystery series about a Union officer courted by General George McClellan as a spy. On the distaff side, Miriam Grace Monfredo penned the Cain Trilogy about Bronwen Llyr, a spy for the Treasury Department, and her sister, Katherine, a nurse for the Union Army. She also won the Herodotus Award with Brothers of Cain, the second in the trilogy. For more Civil War mystery suggestions: http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2012/06/civil-war-mysteries-in-time-for-the-sesquicentennial-anniversary-tony-hays-historical-miriam-grace-monfredo-michael-killian-owen-parry-ann-mcmillan

Plotting Murder by the Real Numbers

Murder mysteries are fiction. The reality of murder is both more mundane and more inexplicably tragic. If you want to write a murder tale that accurately reflects crime data, you will describe a handgun homicide involving two male friends engaged in an argument that escalated. It would be more interesting if that argument involved a tabloid-favored motive, but conflicts over romance, money and drug/alcohol-fueled temper rarely lead to deadly consequences as it turns out. Here are the statistics about real homicides: FBI data shows about 69% of 2013 murders involved firearms, mainly handguns. In contrast, knives/cutting instruments accounted for 12%, blunt objects 3.5%, and strangulation less than 1%. As for who is most likely to end up a murder victim, FBI 2013 data shows that 77.7 % of murder victims were male and 51.7% were black (compared to 45.7% white). And when it comes to the killers, where gender was known, 89.3% were male, and where race was known, 53.6% were black and 43.9% white. Although mass killings rose in 2015, one-to-one murder is still the norm, with nearly 47% of homicides single victim/single offender situations. And while people worry about evil serial killers, they should be paying attention to the people at the kitchen table. In incidents of murder for which the relationship of murder victim and offender were known, 55.9 % were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend), and 24.9% were slain by family members. For a fiction writer looking for a realistic motive, here's the scoop: Of the murders for which the circumstances of the crimes were known, 24.4 % of murders occurred during the commission of a felony (rape, robbery, burglary, drug deal), and 39.6% involved "arguments." Digging into those personal conflicts, you find the cliché motives of murder fiction are rare: Love triangles accounted for just 1% of homicides, 2.3% involved an argument over money or property, and 2,6% involved a fight fueled by drugs or alcohol. If you want to go deeper into the numbers, see https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expandhomicidemain_final

Unconventional Crime Fiction, California-Style

If your mystery bookshelf is overstocked with British-accented capers, hard-boiled noir and "cozy" cat-lady sleuths, it's time to add crime fiction titles that will take you off the beaten path. And what better setting for the unconventional than California? Here are four examples of wilder, weirder California-style crime fiction. Start with The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt's Wild West tale, shortlisted for the 2012 Booker Prize, about hitmen brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are hired to track down and kill a prospector named Hermit Kermit Warm. The psychopathic brothers' misadventures as they travel on horseback from Oregon to San Francisco involve violent fur trappers, floozies, con artists, drifters and dentists, in a flurry of Western cliches subverted. The West Coast scene stays grim into modern times with The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann, final entry in his “Prostitution Trilogy” set in San Francisco’s seamy Tenderloin District. The plot revolves around a struggling private investigator, obsessively in love with the wife of his brother, a successful lawyer in the Financial District, who is hired by a shadowy tycoon to track down a "Queen of the Whores" overseeing the city’s underworld of sex workers and addicts. Head south to L.A.'s underbelly next, with Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, famed for the classic Gravity's Rainbow. Drawing on his life in Manhattan Beach in the 1960s and '70s, Pynchon offers protagonist Larry “Doc” Sportello, a pothead Philip Marlowe who sets out to help an ex-girlfriend worried about a threat to her married real-estate tycoon lover. The business mogul disappears, his bodyguard is murdered, and Doc is drawn into a psychedelic web of police vigilantes, assassination plots, drug deals, shady businesses and political radicals. For more L.A.-weird, read The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. When down-on-his-luck Webster Fillmore Goodhue takes a job with the Clean Team, a firm doing “trauma scene and waste cleaning” (inspiring the title), he gets involved with a seductive female client whose father has blown his brains out--and is quickly sucked into a world of hijackers, smugglers and cold-blooded killers. Of course, other places besides California fit into strange, original crime novels. For more, read http://www.allthingscrimeblog.com/2013/06/24/ten-best-weird-crime-novels-that-will-keep-you-up-all-night-reading/

When Cat Lovers Unite With Mystery Lovers

Based on the number of titles available, there is a relatively large mystery audience that combines love of detective/crime fiction with a love of cats. Felines have sauntered into a growing list of series: Black Cat Bookshop mysteries, Joe Grey mysteries, Magical Cats mysteries, Cat Who... mysteries, Cat in the Stacks mysteries, Midnight Louie mysteries, etc. But I would note that there also are cat-mystery creations outside the usual "cozy" corner. For a selection of crime stories featuring cats by leading authors, read Mystery Cats by Ruth Rendell, author of the classic A Dark-Adapted Eye. Her anthology includes authors such as Lillian Jackson Braun (Cat Who...series author) but also Patricia Highsmith, Edgar Allan Poe, Joyce Harrington, Patricia Moyes, Margaret Maron, Lillian de la Torre and Edward D. Hoch, plus Rendell herself. Or just go straight to a dark place with Edgar Allan Poe's classic The Black Cat, in which the alcoholic narrator describes his descent into madness, murdering his beloved black cat and then his wife, only to be haunted and his guilt exposed by another black cat. For those who prefer classic English mystery style, I'd try a cat lover's suggestion set in 1930s England: In The Norths Meet Murder, by Frances & Richard Lockridge, an unknown murdered man is found in the Norths' bathtub, and the only clues are the sooty footprints of their black cat. One of Japan's leading novelists, Haruki Murakami, often weaves cats into his novels. For example, he begins his gripping The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle with a man's search for his wife's missing cat, a search that blossoms into a detective story and an excavation of buried secrets of World War II. For feline-focused mystery series, see the Goodreads selection at https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/cat-mystery

Culinary Mysteries Make Murder Appetizing

The culinary mystery has become a popular subgenre, pleasing both crime-solving and foodie fans. Most of these nestle in the "cozy" mystery category, sport cute titles, include recipes, and form fictional series. Here's a quick taste (pun intended) of popular foodie mysteries: Ellery Adams writes the Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery series, so begin with her debut Pies and Prejudice, in which heroine Ella Mae returns to her Georgia hometown to open a bakery shop and becomes entangled in the murder of her childhood enemy's fiance, with Ella Mae's rolling pin as the murder weapon. Jessica Beck offers more calories with her Donut Shop Mystery series; sample Glazed Murder in which the heroine proprietor of a donut shop tracks the killer of a customer. More baked goods come with Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen Mysteries; for example, Blueberry Muffin Murder has Hannah, owner of the Cookie Jar eat-in bakery, investigating the death of a cookbook author and cable TV star. Diane Mott Davidson pens the popular Goldy Bear Mystery series featuring caterer Goldy Schultz; in The Whole Enchilada, Goldy digs into the presumed overdose death of a friend and uncovers murder. It's not all baked goods and coffee; sometimes it's baked goods and tea. Laura Childs writes the Tea Shop Mystery series with entries like Death by Darjeeling, in which South Carolina tea shop owner Theodosia Browning seeks to solve a murder and salvage her reputation after a male guest is poisoned by her tea at a catered garden party. If you're not full and want to keep grazing culinary mysteries, get a more exhaustive list at http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/where-to-start-with-culinary-cozy-mystery-series.html

Sci Fi Meets Mystery: Detecting in Future Time

In previous posts, I focused on mysteries set in past historical eras, but some mysteries leap into the future, and this marriage of science fiction with mystery has attracted best-selling authors and awards. Start with sci-fi titan Isaac Asimov, who wrote Caves of Steel back in 1953 to prove to his doubting editor that mystery and science fiction were not incompatible genres. The result: On an overpopulated future Earth, a New York City police detective, who dislikes his arrogant Spacer superiors and their robotic companions, is sent to the Outer Worlds to track down the killer of a Spacer, aided by a robot partner made in the likeness of the murder victim. The Andromeda Strain, by best-selling Michael Crichton, is a techno-thriller rather than a who-done-it, but it's a great puzzle pitting a hero bacteriologist and his flawed team in a race to decipher clues and stop a murderous alien "biological agent" released by the crash of a military satellite before they are destroyed by a quarantining nuclear blast. Meanwhile, Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman’s Union is set in a “temporary” Jewish settlement in Sitka, formed after Israel's imagined collapse in 1948 and now about to revert to Alaskan control, where homicide detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy, and runs afoul of old forces of faith and evil. The City & The City, by China Mieville, is a police procedural involving a psychic journey across borders as two detectives in neighbor cities, one in the decaying city of Beszel and one in the vibrant city of Ul Qoma, are drawn by a woman's murder into an underworld of nationalists intent on destroying the rival city and unificationists seeking to combine them. Finally, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man won a Hugo back in 1953 yet seems strangely apropos today: In the year 2301, guns are only museum pieces, and benign telepaths sweep the minds of the populace to detect crimes before they happen, so murder is virtually impossible--until Ben Reich, a psychopathic business magnate, devises a scheme to eliminate the competition and destroy the social order. There are just too many options to note here, so check out http://best-sci-fi-books.com/23-best-science-fiction-mystery-books/

The Medieval Mystery: Death and Pageantry

The violence and pageantry of the Medieval world, from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance (5th through 15th centuries), has been a popular backdrop for fantasy and romance fiction, but murder mystery writers also like the period. Crime-solving set in castle, monastery and walled town pairs archaic suspects, such as lords, serfs, knights, maidens, monks, minstrels and lepers, with the evergreen motives for mayhem. That the quest for moral justice must navigate a feudal society torn by war, plague and intolerance enriches the plots. The literary world first embraced the Medieval mystery with Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Young Brother William of Baskerville investigates the bizarre deaths of monks at an Italian monastery in a complex novel pitting Aristotelian logic against theology as the hero tries to decipher secret symbols and coded manuscripts. Those who find Eco's opus too philosophically dense may enjoy Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mysteries instead, in which a 12th century Benedictine monk tackles local murders with psychological insight and primitive forensics. Other series include Caroline Roe's Isaac from Girona mysteries about the sleuthing of a blind doctor in mid-1300 Spain; Kate Sedley's Roger the Chapman mysteries featuring a peddler in Medieval England; Bernard Knight's Crowner John mysteries about a former Crusader knight serving the king's justice in 12th century England; Ian Morson's William Falconer series with crime-solving by a 13th-century Oxford University Regent Master; Philip Gooden’s Chaucer Tales, relying on Geoffrey Chaucer, future poet and diplomat, to put together the clues; and Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew mysteries, in which a teacher of medicine investigates murders in 14th-century Cambridge. Paul Doherty is another Medieval mystery leader with multiple series (Brother Athelstan mysteries for one), but try his Satan in St. Mary for a fun read about a real murder in 13th century London. If you're bored by Medieval males, check out Peter Tremayne's Sister Fidelma mysteries, with a 7th century Irish nun as detective, or read Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death, where an ahead-of-her-time 12th century woman doctor investigates. For historical mystery options, regardless of time period: http://bestmysterybooks.com/best-historical-mystery-books.html

Victorian Mysteries Debut Modern Crime-Solving

Looking to escape back in time with your next mystery? England's Victorian era is a favorite setting because it can combine old-fashioned moral certitudes with relatively modern crime-solving thanks to the era's policing and forensic science advances. Indeed, the Victorian period ushered in the first true detective fiction, such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales, and Edgar Allan Poe's three seminal detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter). If you want to sample other British Victorian mystery masters, try Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, unique for its contemporary portrait of a daring, ruthless woman. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was famed for his Victorian Gothic mysteries, and a good example is Uncle Silas about a sinister uncle threatening a plucky heroine. But many modern writers are carrying on the Victorian mystery tradition--sometimes borrowing from the masters. For example, a series by Laurie R. King pairs an aging Sherlock Holmes with clever teen Mary Russell, starting with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. Lynn Shepherd's The Solitary House has two Charles Maddoxes, a private detective and his "thief taker"great uncle, solving a mystery involving the cast of Dickens' Bleak House. Meanwhile, The Asylum by John Harwood is inspired by Wilkie's structure and atmosphere as a young woman awakens in an asylum under a name she denies and repudiated by relatives. Among the modern Victorian-era mystery series are those penned by Anne Perry, with The Cater Street Hangman as the first entry of her popular Thomas Pitt London mysteries. While "Victorian" connotes England, the same time period has inspired great mysteries set in the U.S. One of the best is Caleb Carr's The Alienist about 1896 child mutilation murders in New York, with an investigative team made up of a New York Times crime reporter,  his "alienist" (psychologist) friend, and then NYC Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Victoria Thompson's Gaslight Mystery series also is set in Victorian-era New York but is notable for its female sleuth, midwife Sarah Brandt, first introduced in Murder on Astor Place. For more Victorian mystery ideas: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/56604-victorian-crimes-mysteries-2013.html

Peculiar Politics: Liar, Liar and Polls on Fire

In the current presidential race, charges of "liar" are being tossed back and forth by just about everyone. Journalistic fact-checkers don't seem to have much impact, probably because people distrust the media more than the politicians (a recent Pew Research Center survey found 65% of the public hold a negative view of the media). My only consolation is that by watching the endless debates and town halls, I will have a chance to hone my skills at detecting liars from a bevy of sources. I revisited lie-detection research I did back in 2014 and added some new input. My first task was to accept that I am pretty bad at deception detection; most of us have only slightly better than a 50-50 chance of spotting a liar. Second, I had to junk popular "tells" as unreliable; the nervous guy who can't make eye contact isn't necessarily a liar; liars can be glib and engage in more eye contact to sell their stories (watch those politicians ace closeups and sound bites). Researchers suggest some slightly more reliable clues to deceit: a slight shrug, usually of one shoulder, coinciding with a verbal statement of confidence is one example, or a slight head shake "no" when saying "yes." Also, beware the smile that does not include the eyes; if the eyes don't simultaneously narrow and produce crow's feet, that flash of white teeth is not an authentic expression of pleasure or good will. And it's been shown that the nose heats up while lying, so watch for a tell-tale Pinocchio nose rub! If I can detect the biggest political liar, I may even get ahead of the pundits in predicting the winner--because in this peculiar election season, there is an inverse relationship between honesty and success. For example, nonpartisan PolitiFact rated the truthfulness of presidential candidates before the Iowa caucuses, and Donald Trump led the pack in falsehoods (78% mostly false statements all the way to pants-on-fire lies), followed by Ted Cruz (68%) and Marco Rubio in third. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were running close, with Bernie at 29% false statements and Hillary at 26% untrue. Now look at the primary results, polls and projections since then. What does it mean? Is there so much anger at the political system that we prefer "authentic" emotions to "establishment" facts? Do we think the world is now a game of liar's poker, and we need to elect the best liar to win? I hope Honest Abe Lincoln and "I cannot tell a lie" George Washington wouldn't run at the bottom of the polls today! For more about political lying: http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/02/01/a-winning-gop-formula-lie-more-do-better/

Mr. and Mrs. Malaprop on the Campaign Trail

I've noticed that American presidential campaigns generate a bumper crop of malapropisms, verbal mistakes named for Mrs. Malaprop, a comedic 18th century play character who tended to use an incorrect word in place of one with a similar sound. Mrs. Malaprop would urge "illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory" when she meant "obliterate," for example, and compared someone to "an allegory on the banks of the Nile" instead of an alligator. The malapropism tendency is fairly common and certainly has not been cured by 21st century sophistication. Examples include using "for all intensive purposes" in place of "for all intents and purposes," and "he supposably said" instead of the correct "he supposedly said." I heard a recent passionate declaration that "his claim doesn't jive with the facts," which would mean his claim can't engage in hip dance or talk but not the intended "his claim doesn't jibe with the facts," meaning a claim not agreeing with the facts. The famous and powerful are not immune. Former President George W. Bush was Mr. Malaprop, delivering gems such as "We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile." I wince when I hear malapropisms continue to fly from the mouths of today's presidential hopefuls and TV commentators. Social media is especially littered with these faux pas. For example, GOP candidate Ben Carson called Sharia Law "a central tenant of Islam" when he meant "tenet," and Republican contender Marco Rubio repeated the debate phrase “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing,” when he probably meant to use "dispense with." GOP hopeful Jeb Bush may have inherited a bit of brother George's language tangling, saying in his kick-off foreign policy speech that immigration should be “a catalytic converter for sustained economic growth" (meaning "catalyst," Jeb?), and explaining to an interviewer the difficulties of criticizing brother George when “I have to do the Heisman on my brother"--likely a reference to the throat-clearing Heimlich not the football trophy. For amusing malapropisms, see: http://www.fun-with-words.com/malapropisms.html