I usually blog about mystery or thriller writing, but during the holiday season, the dark side of human nature just seems an inappropriate topic. Luckily, even serious fiction can create light moments, especially when authors struggle (and fall) in coming up with new ways to describe sex scenes. So for some holiday merriment, I'll pass along excerpts from the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award, established back in 1993 by London's Literary Review. The 2017 winner is American author Christopher Bollen for The Destroyers and a scene in which protagonist Ian describes his male equipment as a "billiard rack," creating some confusion over how many balls were involved. In the same scene, Bollen describes the female love interest's skin as "tan like water stains in a bathtub," which is erotic only for those who like their love action a tad grimy. The runner-up nominees include The Seventh Function of Language by Prix Goncourt winner Laurent Binet, who calls a felating female a "mouth-machine" and has a male lover whisper "with an authority that he has never felt before: 'Let’s construct an assemblage.'" The purpose of the award is to "draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction," hopefully to inspire writers to do better. Alas, every year there are still plenty of nominees! For more laughable, cringeworthy or simply baffling excerpts from 2017's nominees, see http://www.newsweek.com/bad-sex-writing-fiction-award-2017-728981
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— just wasn’t written badly enough, calling the sex "very discreet".
Heading into the holidays, I like to stock up on mysteries to help relax from the season's whirlwind of shopping and socializing, and I always check out the new crop of award winners. This year's Edgar Award for best novel, for example, went to Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, creator of the "Fargo" TV series. A private jet leaves Martha's Vineyard for New York, carrying 11 people, including two multimillionaires and their families as well as one failed artist invitee. It crashes into the Atlantic without even a May Day call, and the only survivors are the artist and the 4-year-old boy he saves. A media frenzy paints the artist by turns hero or villain, while the investigation tries to decide between tragic accident and sinister intention. Meanwhile, the 2017 Edgar Award for best first novel tapped Under the Harrow by Flynn Berry, a novel for fans of The Girl on the Train. Londoner Nora goes to visit her sister in the countryside, only to find her brutally murdered, and Nora soon becomes obsessed and fearful as the search for her sister's killer uncovers dark secrets. if your taste for foreign sleuthing is whetted, try British publishing's Dagger Awards, which selected The Dry by Jane Harper for a Gold Dagger and gave an International Dagger to The Dying Detective by Leif G.W. Persson. In The Dry, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his Australian hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago Luke lied to provide Falk with an alibi in a murder accusation. Now, amid an historic drought, Falk reluctantly joins a local detective to investigate Luke’s death and its connection to long-buried mysteries. You have to go north to Scandinavia for The Dying Detective, about a retired detective recovering from a stroke. In a race against mortality, the detective takes on the unsolved murder of a 9-year-old girl, conducting an investigation from his hospital bed with the help of his assistant, Matilda, an amateur sleuth, and Max, an orphan with a personal stake in the case. Meanwhile, the 2017 Anthony Award for best mystery selected Canada's veteran Louise Penny and A Great Reckoning. Penny's Quebec Chief of Homicide Armand Gamache is drawn into the death of a professor that involves an old map, a mysterious stained glass window, four police cadets, and Gamache's past. All together, that's a great trove of top mysteries to explore. For more ideas, see Amazon's mystery/thriller best-sellers: https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Mystery-Thriller-Suspense/zgbs/books/18
The recent California fires in Sonoma County really struck a chord for me. Not only do we have close friends in Santa Rose affected by the fires, but fire is one of my phobias. As a result, I generally don't choose murder mysteries involving arson, whether flames are used to cover up murder evidence, as the main murder weapon, or express a pyromaniac obsession. However, the terror of killers who use fire does spark (no pun intended) a deep desire for apprehension, which makes the solution at the end of these mysteries especially satisfying. Among arson-murder mysteries, 7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (part of the Women's Murder Club series) is a good example. As Detective Lindsay Boxer and her partner Rich Conklin are searching for leads in California golden boy Michael Campion's disappearance, they are drawn into a series of arson fires that kill suburban couples in wealthy homes. The plot of Douglas Preston's White Fire intriguingly combines modern arson murders and a long-lost Sherlock Holmes story. FBI Special Agent Pendergast comes to help protege Corrie Swanson when her examination of remains from a Colorado town's fabled 19th century grizzly attack on miners turns up shocking results. But the pair soon face modern mayhem as fires burn down multimillion-dollar mansions with families locked inside. Pendergast discovers a long-lost Sherlock Holmes story that may be the key to solving both the mystery of the long-dead miners and the modern-day arson killings as well! Fireproof by best-selling author Alex Kava brings back his protagonist special agent Maggie O'Dell, who is leading the search for a serial arsonist in Washington, D.C., a search with a personal stake now that Maggie's brother Patrick is back in D.C. and working for a private firefighting company frequently called in to the fires. I'm a sucker for Irish settings like Graham Masterton's Dead Girls Dancing (part of the Kate Maguire series). DCI Maguire investigates the tragic deaths of 13 promising Irish folk dance stars who die when their studio goes up in flames in Cork. A small Australian town is the setting of 2017's Little Secrets by Anna Snoekstra. Would-be journalist Rose Blakey thinks she can win acclaim with a big scoop about strange porcelain doll replicas of the town's daughters that are turning up on doorsteps, terrifying parents already shaken by an arson fire at the town's courthouse, which killed a boy trapped inside. Community paranoia, ugly secrets, a suspicious stranger, and subtle red herrings propel this psychological thriller. For more arson mysteries, see https://www.alibris.com/search/books/subject/Arson-investigation
