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/,