The Best Travel Books Are More Than Guides

In looking for gifts at Christmas, my kids are baffled by my interest in travel books. After all, they can use Internet search to find highly rated places to visit without the cost and bulk of a book! What they don't seem to realize is that the best books about travel go way beyond tourist info. The best books are explorations of nature, culture, art and philosophy, and are really quests that lead to expanded self-knowledge for the author and, vicariously, for the reader. For example, consider the late TV star Anthony Bourdain's memoir Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to The World of Food and the People Who Cook, in which Bourdain still expresses his long-held convictions about what makes good cooking but also reveals, by meeting people who are less fortunate yet happier than he can ever be, how stepping outside comfort zones can be a road to growth--even if he could not follow that road beyond a premature end. Another classic combination of food and travel is A Moveable Feast (Life Changing Food Adventures Around The World), a collection of 38 short stories from famous chefs, culinary writers and foodies, edited by Don George. This book will definitely spur a foodie travel lust! For women hesitating to travel alone, find the impetus to explore the world solo in A Woman Alone: Travel Tales From Around the Globe, a collection of inspiring tales of female adventure edited by Faith Conlon, Ingrid Emerick and Christina Henry de Tessan. Then maybe you can follow the path of Kate Harris, author of Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road as she spends a year cycling the Silk Road and penning meditations on remote places, history and human borders. Or get inspired by Judith Schlansky's Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will to go where she has not, based on both the factual secrets, enticing and daunting, of 50 isolated islands and her poetic essays on rare wildlife, surprise discoveries and human folly. For those who dream of an African safari, Paul Theroux satisfies in Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, taking readers on a road trip via rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train, as he details his encounters with dangers, hardships and delays as well as revealing interactions with Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. Finally, if you want to know less about where to travel and more about why to travel, read Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel, as he discusses the "pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything," from grand vistas to mundane events, and enriches his own observations with those of famous travelers. For more inspiration, see https://www.rearviewmirror.tv/best-travel-books/

How Racial Divides Deepen Mystery Puzzles

In an era when media stories note that our racial schisms are widening, mystery fans can find a revealing echo in mystery/thriller tales. Certainly, the inclusion of racial divisions will let an author increase the difficulties of crime-solving by drawing violent motives from bias, undermining witness reliability, and warping the agents of law and justice. But for the best writers, racial conflicts are an opportunity for more than plotting clever clues and allow them to go beyond genre fiction to address the mysteries of human tribalism. Here are some notable recent novels, starting with 2018 Edgar Award winner Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. Locke's protagonist Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, is called to a small East Texas town to solve two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--that dangerously roil racial resentments and threaten Darren himself. In Celeste Ng's 2015 bestseller Everything I Never Told You, the stock elements of a missing girl in a lake, a local bad boy who was one of the last to see her, and a quiet all-American Ohio town are transformed into the complex portrait of a Chinese-American family destroyed and unable to bring themselves to tell one another, or the police, what they believe is behind the disappearance of a favored child, the focus of all the dreams they were unable to pursue. Prejudice against Native Americans is the backdrop for Red Knife by William Kent Krueger. In this entry in the award-winning Corcoran O'Connor series, private investigator Cork is caught up in a racial gang war in picturesque Tamarack County, MN, when the daughter of a powerful businessman dies from meth addiction and her father vows revenge on the Red Boyz, a gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the fatal drug. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are murdered execution-style, Cork, a man of mixed heritage, must uncover the truth to prevent the outbreak of a "red vs. white" war. For more top fiction dealing with racism, racial conflict and discrimination, see the Goodreads recommendations at https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/21184.Best_Novels_on_Racism_and_Discrimination

How Memory Offers Clues & Red Herrings

In the recent Brett Kavanaugh hearings, Christine Blasey Ford's testimony accusing Kavanaugh of a teenage sexual assault ignited a public discussion of the reliability of witness and victim memory of traumatic events. Many people seem to think that memory is like a videotape and that gaps undermine credibility, and also that time can erode memory to the point that mistaken identity is likely. Unfortunately, the public discussion is pumping out more misinformation than scientific and experiential fact. While some Kavanaugh backers suggested Ford's story was probably a case of mistaken identity, mistaken identity is unlikely in cases where the perpetrator is known to the victim or witness as in Ford's case. Mistaken identification most frequently occurs when the perpetrator is a stranger, when the accused is of a different race than the victim or witness, and when a weapon is used so that the victim/witness naturally focuses on the threat (knife or gun, for example) rather than the threatening person. Other commentators suggested that the gaps in Ford's memory undermined her credibility for them. Yet scientific research shows that what the brain encodes and is able to retrieve about a trauma is naturally spotty. Specifics such as exact location, date and time (unless tied to a memorable marker such as a holiday or work routine or well-known place) are commonly blurry, while other details are burned into the mind by intense negative emotion and stress. It is also true that memory can be manipulated, that people may fill in missing details from other memories or even be influenced by police and witness cues to create a complete scenario. As a result, testimony with gaps in memory can actually be more reliable, while a detailed story confidently asserted can be taken with a grain of salt. Plus, excess alcohol consumption (as alleged for Kavanaugh and his friend) can black out memory of events even if the person never passes out. For a mystery writer, characters' memories of traumatic events are important for creating both vital clues and red herrings. The starting point of many plots, especially cold case detective stories, involves witnesses and victims with gaps in their memories and conflicting accounts. Plots also make use of confident testimony that turns out to be misleading. Because mystery authors need to make plot twists realistic and believable, they need to avoid the kind of misguided assumptions about memory and trauma currently bandied about by politicians and TV talk chatter. For an easy-to-understand expert take, see https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-reliable-are-the-memories-of-sexual-assault-victims/

Mystery Authors Who Plotted Real Murders

In a made-for-reality-TV tale, romance novelist Nancy Brophy, who once wrote an essay "How to Murder Your Husband," was recently arrested for the actual murder of her husband. It is rare for murder mystery writers to be plotters of real murder, but there have been some noted instances. Anne Perry, one of my favorite authors for her Thomas Pitt and William Monk historical mystery series set in Victorian England, is a convicted murderer, for example. Born Juliet Marion Hulme in 1938 England, Hulme/Perry was convicted at age 15 in 1954 for participating in the murder of her friend's mother but, due to her young age, served only a five-year sentence. At the time of the murder, Hulme's parents had moved the family to New Zealand, but they were in the process of divorcing, and Hulme was going to be sent to South Africa to stay with relatives. Hulme was obsessively close to her friend Pauline Parker at the time (Hulme denies implications of a lesbian relationship), and the two girls did not want to be separated. Somehow their shared devotion and fantasies came to include eliminating Pauline's mother. The two went for a walk with Pauline's mother on an isolated path where Hulme dropped an ornamental stone so that the older woman would lean over to retrieve it. Pauline had planned to hit her mother with half a brick wrapped in a stocking, and the two girls assumed that one blow would kill her. But it took more than 20 blows. After her release from prison, Hulme became a flight attendant, lived in the U.S. for a bit, and eventually settled in a Scottish village with her mother. She created a new name, Anne Perry, using her stepfather's surname and launched a successful writing career with her first mystery novel, The Cater Street Hangman, published in 1979.  The 1994 film "Heavenly Creatures," with Kate Winslet as the teenage Juliet Hulme, is based on the Hulme-Parker murder. Here's an even creepier killer author story:  Noted Chinese crime writer, Liu Yongbiao, 53, received the death penalty this year for the murder of four people in a case that had gone unsolved for nearly two dozen years. The author and an accomplice had killed a couple and their grandson in November 1995 at their family-owned hostel in order to cover up the murder of one of the guests during a robbery. Police finally were able to crack the case by using DNA evidence from a cigarette at the crime scene. "I’ve been waiting for you all this time," Liu told officers when he was arrested in August 2017 at his home. He later admitted that he had used the gory details of the crimes as inspiration for his novels. Maybe he wanted to get caught; his novel The Guilty Secret is about a writer who commits a string of murders!  If you don't hold her past against her, check out Anne Perry's many excellent books at https://www.amazon.com/Anne-Perry/e/B000APAS2A

Family Annihilators Fit a Terrible Pattern

The recent news story about Chris Watts, the Denver-area father accused of killing his pregnant wife and two daughters, is shocking and incomprehensible for most of us. But so-called "family annihilators" actually fit a pattern according to analysis of cases. First of all, the killer is almost always male: a son, father or brother. The killer is emotionally isolated, either because of the family's treatment (such as abuse), the killer's situation (such as financial failure or an affair) or mental illness. While, to the outside world, these killers may appear to be successful and devoted husbands, fathers or sons, the perpetrator is actually consumed with hatred, resentment, shame or a sense of failure, and the crime is usually planned rather than spontaneous, with a time chosen when the family is isolated and unsuspecting. Often, there have been experimental or lesser attacks before the final mayhem, such as unreported domestic violence or a suspicious home fire. The majority of annihilators commit suicide—but some attempt to cover up the crime and shift blame, as Watts did. British research has categorized the family annihilator into four types: the self-righteous killer who exacts revenge on the mother or spouse he blames for breakdown of the family; the disappointed killer who destroys the family he thinks has destroyed his vision of ideal family life, for example by not following religious or cultural customs; the anomic killer who sees his family only as an expression of his own success and status so that they are discarded with economic failure or disgrace; and the paranoid killer who perceives an external threat and wipes out the family in a twisted effort to "protect it." By the way, the most common month for family annihilation is August, so it's good we're coming to an end of this month! Some well-known mystery authors have taken on this disturbing topic. An example is Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, mistress of dark twists and unreliable narrators: Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered. She survived and famously testified that her 15-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, a group obsessed with notorious crimes hopes to discover details exonerating Ben and is willing to pay Libby to reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings. Libby’s search takes her right back where she started—on the run from a killer. Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner begins one warm summer night in a working-class Boston neighborhood with the brutal murders of four members of a family. The father—and possible suspect—is clinging to life in the ICU. A murder-suicide? Veteran police detective D. D. Warren is certain there are even more disturbing depths to the case. For more on this horrific trend in modern society, you can read Familicidal Hearts by sociologist Neil Websdale.

Honeymoons Can Be Murder

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

Inspired by July 4, a Salute to Colonial Sleuths

On Independence Day, I began to think about the historical setting of the Founding Fathers , and I realized that I had never read a mystery set in the colonial period. Curious, I began to look for mysteries set during the American Revolutuion, and I found a few that intrigued. For example, there is the Tim Euston series by Roddy Thorleifson, starting with Tim Curious: A Murder Mystery Set in the American Revolution, in which 1777's colonial sleuth and patriot Tim Euston sets out to find the killer of the only witness who can clear his name of a false accusation of robbery and to prove the innocence of the man wrongfully convicted for that witness's murder. On the distaff side of the Revolution, there is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Murder by Karen Swee, about a 1777 tavern mistress who must solve a puzzle involving spies and traitors to find the killer of an overnight guest. Meanwhile, the female protagonist in Suzanne Adair's Paper Woman, frustrated by the disinterest and suspicion of the occupying British, is drawn into dangerous international espionage in 1780 Georgia as she sets out to solve the murder of her outspoken patriot father, the town printer, who has been killed along with one of his associates and a Spanish assassin. Eliot Pattison introduces readers to the conflicting cultures and injustices of the period leading up to revolution in his Bone Rattler series, starting appropriately with Bone Rattler. Protagonist Duncan McCallum, bound for the New World on a British convict ship in 1750, witnesses a series of murders and apparent suicides among his fellow Scottish prisoners. Determined to follow a trail of clues to justice even while indentured to a British lord on an estate in the New York wilderness, Duncan is soon caught up in the French and Indian War and its factions' physical, psychological, and spiritual battle. You may find it even more satisfying to go beyond fiction to unravel the factual mysteries and fascinating characters and motives behind of our nation's birth. In that case check these 100 top books about the American Revolution: https://allthingsliberty.com/2017/03/100-best-american-revolution-books-time/

Female Con Artists Deliver Thrill Power

I recently watched the all-star female cast romp through "Ocean's 8," and it put me in the mood for more girl-power heist action. The thief/con artist protagonist is popular in fiction and film because we are willing to root for the lawless if they are clever and sympathetic--and if the target is especially unsympathetic, such as a wicked rich person, criminal or corrupt institution. It is especially satisfying when the erstwhile Robin Hood represents the powerless--and I think being female qualifies. When it comes to female-heist books, Bustle Digital Group conveniently put together some suggestions. For example, here's a timely novel from 2016: The Assistants by Camille Perri is about a band of executive assistants who take on their bosses and plot to skim money from their employers to pay off their student loans! In last year's The Ultimatum by best-selling author Karen Robards, Bianca St. Ives has been a con artist prodigy in her scammer father's "family business" but seeks to turn over a new leaf when her father is killed on the job. Alas, the U.S. government thinks he's alive, and Bianca is trapped in a new, dangerous game. A similar plot is featured in Heist Society by best-selling author Ally Carter: Katarina Bishop has been stealing and scamming from childhood but is trying to leave that life behind by enrolling in boarding school--only to be snared in new trouble when a powerful mobster's art is stolen, and her father is the main suspect. Now if you want to be inspired by real-life lady scammers, check out this Mental Floss post about 10 famous female con artists. Some come to a bad end (hanged, beheaded, dying in prison, etc.), but others end up with fame and fortune like the phony "Princess Carabou." And a select few jog the course of history, such as doomed Queen Marie Antoinette's "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" nemesis and Ronald Reagan's iconic "Welfare Queen." See http://mentalfloss.com/article/61868/10-exceptionally-clever-female-con-artists

Political Thriller Romps Unlike Our Real Ones

If you're like me, you want a summer beach read that will help you forget the current circus of our divisive politics. I assumed that a political thriller would be last book to fit that escapist urge. But, surprise, there are new mystery/thriller books that are both political and capable of taking the reader away to a place of heroism, humor and happy endings. Start with the thriller by former President Bill Clinton and best-selling author James Patterson. Try to ignore Clinton's problematic book tour and any bias you have about the former commander in chief because The President Is Missing is, in the words of the New York Times reviewer, "wildly readable." Its hero, President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan, is so worried about a potentially crippling cyberterror attack that he decides to ditch his protective detail and try to contact the shadowy figures who know about the threat on his own. Readers will enjoy rooting for the presidential character, described by the NYT reviewer as brimming "with humanity, character and stoicism," as he dodges an assassin's bullets and seeks to unmask a traitor in his inner circle of advisers. If you want to step further into fantasy, pick up this improbable, politically inspired mystery: Hope Never Dies by best-selling author Andrew Shaffer. The comic crime tale starts a few months after the 2016 presidential election as former Vice President Joe Biden turns amateur sleuth to investigate the suspicious death of his favorite Amtrak conductor. Naturally, Joe turns to his cerebral buddy former President Barack Obama for help! Or perhaps you long for a covert U.S.-Russia confrontation where the Americans come out on top. Try veteran thriller writer Brad Thor's Spymaster, another entry in his Scot Harvath series. Across Europe, a secret organization has begun attacking diplomats. Meanwhile, Russia implements a daring plan to draw the U.S. into war. It's up to counter-terrorism operative Scot Harvath to once again save the day! For more new (and non-political) mystery/thrillers, see https://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/summer-reads-2018/mystery

Revisiting Fave Books Celebrating Great Moms

This weekend is Mother's Day and my previous blog post was on the bleak bad-mom side (talking about filicide) as is typical of many murder mystery characters and plots. But there's also the mother whom we all would like to have, or grow up to be. Unfortunately, the traits that make a "good mother," per experts, are dauntingly demanding: empathetic, patient, emotionally strong and resilient, humble, respectful of others, authoritative without being authoritarian, supportive, and, of course, loving. We know most of our mothers, and ourselves as parents, fall short of those goals from time to time. Maybe it's easier to avoid the things that make for really bad mothering: neglectful, abusive, overprotective, aloof, partial, overindulgent, interfering, untrustworthy, and so on. In thinking about motherly role models, I found myself turning to favorite, formative childhood reading. Everyone wants to meet the brave and kind Ma of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, the brilliant yet supportive scientist Mrs. Murry of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, the family rock Marmee in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, or adoptive parent Marilla's love-beneath-a-stern-exterior in Anne of Green Gables from L.M. Montgomery. More recently, readers can embrace the warm but fiercely protective Mrs. Weasley of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. So for timely Mother's Day inspiration, why not reacquaint yourself, or younger readers, with some top moms (and dads) in literature? Check out http://mentalfloss.com/article/57128/30-best-parents-literature

Mother's Day Lauds Bond With Deadly Breaks

In May, Mother's Day celebrates what most of us see as a sacred bond, natural and social, between mothers and children. But that bond is more tenuous than we like to think. A study in Forensic Science International looked at filicide cases (killing of a child by a parent) between 1976 and 2007 and found they occur about 500 times a year in the United States, with more than 40% of the murders committed by mothers. Cheryl Meyer, co-author of several books on the subject, said it's probable that a mother kills a child once every three days in the U.S. Filicide expert and forensic psychiatrist Phillip J. Resnick identifies five major reasons a mother might kill her child. One motive is misguided altruism--believing death is in the child's best interest, either based on the reality of a child's terminal illness or a conviction the child needs to be saved from a cruel world, especially if the parent intends to commit suicide. Of course, acute psychosis is another explanation, such as when a mother thinks her child is demon-possessed or obeys "voices." Sometimes the killer mom just wants to be rid of an unwanted child seen as a hindrance. Or perhaps the killing is the accidental result of cruel physical abuse or neglect. The least common motive is spousal revenge a la Medea: a mother killing her child to exact revenge on her spouse. Maternal filicide is a common theme in the true crime genre, and it has played a key role in well-known fiction works such as Toni Morrison's Beloved or Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. In recent fiction, there's Veronique Olmi's haunting Beside the Sea, which captures the twisted altruism of a single mother who takes her beloved two sons on a last fun-filled trip to the seaside before freeing them from what she sees as an uncaring and dangerous world. Best-selling author Tami Hoag offers The Boy, in which detectives must solve the question of whether a mother, who ran panicked into the night after an alleged intruder killed her 7-year-old son, is suffering an unfathomable loss or is guilty of an unthinkable crime. Little Deaths by Emma Flint focuses on Ruth Malone, a single mother in 1965 Queens, NY, who works long hours as a cocktail waitress and insists she woke up to find her two small children missing. When their bodies are discovered, the lead detective concludes Malone is the killer, but a dogged tabloid reporter questions whether the unhappy mother is a killer, victim of circumstance or pawn of something more sinister. The Big Girls by Susanna Moore addresses both the destructive power of maternal instinct and our cult of celebrity by bringing together four characters at a women's prison: a woman serving a life sentence for murder of her children; the female chief of psychiatry; a male corrections desiring the psychiatrist, and an ambitious Hollywood starlet contacted by the convicted killer. For more on filicide in America, see https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/07/health/filicide-parents-killing-kids-stats-trnd/index.html

Sleepwalking Murder in Fact & Fiction

My brother was a sleepwalker, and I still remember with unease my childhood encounters with him in the night--appearing silently in my room, shuffling past down a dark hall, mumbling to unseen companions as he moved blind-eyed through his dream world. The strange phenomenon of sleepwalking has been the basis for real and fictional murder mysteries. One of the most famous cases of homicidal sleepwalking was that of Kenneth James Parks, a married 23-year-old Canadian man who left his bed in the early morning hours of May 1987, and, still asleep, drove to his in-laws' home where he assaulted his father-in-law and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. The next thing he said he could recall was arriving at the police station, saying “I think I have killed some people...” Despite skepticism of his sleepwalking defense, his consistent story, lack of motive, the testimony of sleep specialists and abnormal EEG readings resulted in his acquittal by a jury. Sleepwalking has captivated fictional mystery writers as well. In last year's The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian, Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, and her daughters assume another sleepwalking incident. Annalee's husband flies home from a business trip, and search parties comb the nearby woods, but only a small swatch of nightshirt fabric hanging from a tree branch is found. Drawn to a detective who continues to stop by, her older daughter begins to wonder about the detective's motives, why no body has been found, and why incidents seem to occur when her father is absent. Another eerie entry from 2013 is The Nightwalker by Sebastian Fitzek: Leon Nader had been violent as a young man while sleepwalking but believes he has been cured by psychiatric treatment—until his wife disappears from their apartment. Nader fits a movement-activated camera to his forehead, and when he looks at the video the next morning, he makes an unimaginable discovery about his nocturnal personality. In 2011, B. Michael Radburn published The Crossing set in Tasmania. Traumatized by the disappearance of his daughter, Taylor Bridges' marriage breaks down, and he exiles himself to Tasmania's Glorys Crossing as the only national park ranger in an isolated town slowly disappearing under the rising waters of a new dam project. Taylor is a chronic sleepwalker, and when another young girl of the same age as his lost daughter goes missing, he begins to worry about his unknown behavior while sleepwalking. Among the more traditional novels about sleepwalking homicide are The Ivory Dagger by Patricia Wentworth, in which her sleuth Miss Silver solves the case of a young woman, prone to sleepwalking, who is accused of murdering her wealthy (but disagreeable) fiance, and I've Heard That Song Before by Mary Higgins Clark, in which a young woman who begins to doubt her new husband's suspicious nighttime wanderings, especially since he is connected with a vanished former girlfriend, a drowned wife, and bodies newly discovered on his estate. For more true stories of homicidal sleepwalking, see https://www.thoughtco.com/homicidal-sleepwalking-is-it-real-4098185

How Mystery Writers Can Color in Emotion

Passing through a bookstore, I noted the now-common section devoted to adult coloring books, and I began to think about the role of color in fiction writing, including mysteries.  Color has a proven ability to evoke emotion; there's a reason fast-food logos and ads lean toward appetite-stimulating red and yellow, business materials opt for a trust-inspiring blue, and European prisons paint their walls a calming pink. But the power of color is not limited to the visual arts, online and offline advertising, or interior decor. When we read, we create pictures in our minds, and mystery authors' descriptions of settings, characters and clues are rarely black-and-white snapshots. The color of a suspect's dress, the colors of a winter forest or tropical jungle, or the color of a murder-scene carpet can offer both symbolic meaning that enriches the plot and clues to solving the mystery. A character's color choices can be used to reveal personality traits or emotional states, for example; note that psychiatrist Carl Jung found that introverts and extroverts prefer different colors--blue and red respectively. So if the writer introduces a woman wearing red, she probably does not want to be a wallflower. Sometimes the contrast between color choices and character hint at deception or conflict. Is the big guy in a pink shirt just supremely confident, disguising his aggression or hinting at a less masculine side? Doubt that color has a place in even the most "noir" of mysteries? Consider color's frequent evocative use in mystery titles. As an example, Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress sets up tension before the first page by pairing the evil and power of "devil" with the trustworthy and inviting aspects associated with "blue." Meanwhile, P.D. James' The Black Tower purposely paints the tower black--the color of power, death, and evil--to create a looming gloom.  (For the literary, it also evokes W.B Yeats' poem of the same name where "in the tomb the dark grows blacker.") Some mystery writers even make color a title theme, such as Ann Cleeves' Shetland series, which includes Blue Lightning, Red Bones, White Nights, and Raven Black. John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series uses color in all 21 titles, starting with The Deep Blue Good-by through National Book Award-winner The Green Ripper to the final The Lonely Silver Rain. One caveat on coloring fiction prose: Be aware that color psychology differs by culture. For example, white is the color of purity and innocence in Western cultures and the color of death and mourning in Eastern cultures. For a quick overview of color psychology, see http://changingminds.org/disciplines/communication/color_effect.htm

Top Psychological Thrillers Have a Feminine Face

Best-selling mystery-thrillers like Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies have won fans and movie renditions because of cleverly deceptive psychological plotting. There's an interesting trend in these novels: To create their surprise twists, the authors rely on the unreliable narration of troubled female protagonists and a claustrophobic domesticity that is distinctly feminine. Forensic evidence, genius detectives, and serial killer foes do not power these story lines. Instead, they turn inward to the dark places of the female psyche and relationships, and maybe it is precisely because of today's #MeToo female empowerment and growing emancipation from female stereotypes (damsel in distress, romantic ingenue, wise-old-lady sleuth) that this female psychological warping has come out of the shadows in the mystery world. If you are a reader who grabs a book when the blurb says "if you loved The Girl on the Train...," check out Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll, a debut novel inspired by Knoll's own life, about a magazine editor forced to unearth her teenage memory of a traumatic assault and confront the mysteries in her own psyche. You may also like What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman, which starts when a woman taken in by the police after a hit-and-run car accident claims to be the victim of a famous missing person's case from decades earlier. Lippman approaches the cold case police procedural in an inventive way that explores the deeper mysteries of human nature. With the sexual predation scandals of women's gymnastics in the news, there's something very topical about You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott, in which the sudden death of a young man in a car accident plunges a tight community of women gymnasts and their parents and coaches into crisis. For more options, see https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/books-like-girl-on-the-train-mysteries-thrillers

Domestic Violence Deaths as Public Health Crisis

White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter recently failed to get a security clearance and was forced out because of evidence of physical abuse of two ex-wives and a girlfriend. Porter did not fit the stereotype that many people have of "wife beaters" as low-status, drunken products of abusive environments. He was a successful, attractive, Harvard-educated scion of good family. I think Porter's long escape from scrutiny reflects to some extent a denial about the frequency and seriousness of domestic violence. But there's a reason mystery writers rarely use spousal abuse in their murder puzzles; it's too common for a challenging plot. There's a reason fictional and real police investigators of female homicides put the husband or boyfriend at the top of the list of suspects. The real mystery of domestic violence is how little priority it is given as a "public health problem." Domestic violence isn't garnering terrifying headlines like mass shootings, but it takes more lives each year. A 2017 report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed that about 50% of the female homicides were killed by intimate partners, and the vast majority of those were carried out by a male partner (98%). This female-murder-by-partner epidemic affects all races and ethnic groups as well, per the report. Yet this is not a completely intractable social problem. Consider that, in 10% of cases, violence in the month before the killing provided an opportunity for intervention. First responders could assess risk factors for violence to "facilitate immediate safety planning and to connect women with other services, such as crisis intervention and counseling, housing, medical and legal advocacy," suggests the report. And when it comes to weapons of domestic partner murder, more than half involved firearms and 20% involved some sort of blade. Thus, the report points out, statutes limiting firearm access for people who are under domestic violence restraining orders also could help reduce the risk of homicide. For more CDC data, see https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/21/538518569/cdc-half-of-all-female-murder-victims-are-killed-by-intimate-partners

In the Headlines: Kids Shooting Kids at School

There have been a couple of headline stories recently about K-12 school shootings involving minor shooters (a 15-year-old Kentucky boy and 12-year-old L.A. girl). School violence is always disturbing, but the idea of school children shooting each other is especially upsetting. I began to wonder just how common it really was and what steps at prevention we could take short of armed guards. I found some interesting research by Everytown for Gun Safety on K-12 shootings between 2013 and 2015. In that period, an average of two school shootings took place at K-12 schools each month, and, among the shootings in which the age of the shooter was known, 56% (39 of 70) were perpetrated by minors under age 18. Before parents of elementary-school children begin looking askance at their child's classmates, note that it is still rare for a child under the age of 14 to kill anyone, and especially rare for that homicide to take place at school. Approximately 74 children under age 14 commit murder in the United States each year, per other 2017 research. This is less than 1% of all homicide perpetrators. The majority (90%) are boys between the ages of 11 and 14. However, 75% of the time, the child kills someone older, not a school classmate. The older victim/victims are most often relatives (usually a parent or grandparent), adults shot during the commission of crime (usually a robbery or break-in), or victims killed in gang violence. But even one incident of a kid shooting up a school is one tragedy too many. How do we protect children from armed children? The research shows that children's access to guns is a big part of the problem. Guns are the weapon of choice for all child school shooters, about 60% of the time, per Everytown. When the source of the gun was known, more than half of young shooters obtained the gun at home—often because an adult did not store it locked and unloaded. Also, nearly one in six of Everytown's studied school shootings occurred after a confrontation or verbal argument intensified because of the presence of a gun, rather than in spite of it. In fact, the surprise is that more violence does not occur at schools given the common presence of guns on school grounds. A survey by the U.S. Department of Education found that, during the 2009-2010 school year, one in every 30 K-12 schools took serious disciplinary action against at least one student for use or possession of a firearm on school property. For more school shooting research, see https://everytownresearch.org/reports/analysis-of-school-shootings/

We're Still Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Last week marked the 136th anniversary of the birth of author Virginia Woolf, and it was noted by numerous newspaper articles and even an iconic sketch by Google. As the #MeToo and Time's Up movements step up to podiums, and powerful men's sexual abuses--in entertainment, politics, media and sports--grab headlines, it's not surprising that Woolf is suddenly accorded politically correct kudos (just a century late). Woolf was a pioneer of the stream-of-consciousness style of fiction in works like Mrs. Dalloway, a keen observer of society and art in her essays, and a member of the legendary Bloomsbury Group of British intellectuals that included economist John Maynard Keynes and writer E.M. Forster. But I would guess that she is receiving renewed attention now because of her feminism and her long essay A Room of One's Own, where she posited "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," arguing that social and financial dependence prevent women from reaching their potential. As a result, "for most of history, Anonymous was a woman," she wrote. Certainly, women have made many strides since Woolf's birth in 1882 and her death in 1941 (a suicide). Yet gender discrimination and harassment continue because, as it turns out, intellectual emancipation via education, financial emancipation via the workplace, and legal emancipation via the courts are only the first rungs on the long ladder to equality and respect. The next step is political power, which requires a feminizing of boardrooms, legislatures and leadership. The surge in women running for political office in 2018 shows that this realization is taking hold. And then there must be a social emancipation, an acceptance of new rules and values by men and women at every level. The public #MeToo furor over sexual misconduct is just the first wave in a long battle to change hearts and minds. The fact that Virginia Woolf has been dusted off and honored as a "woman writer" and "feminist" pioneer just proves how far we still have to go. Great art, great ideas and great character are without gender. For some of Woolf's more quotable thoughts, see https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/virginia_woolf

Authors Turn Journalists Into Murder Sleuths

The other evening I enjoyed watching the movie "The Post," about The Washington Post and the drama of the "Pentagon Papers" publication (you can't beat Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks), and it brought back memories of my own early years in newspaper journalism. Frankly, journalists are rightfully observers and recorders rather than participants in murder investigations, but authors of mystery fiction have created some great series starring reporter sleuths. There is Bruce da Silva's Liam Mulligan, an old-school newspaper reporter who debuts in Rogue Island, winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for best first novel, as he races to find the arsonist who is destroying lives in his hometown of Providence, RI. Best-selling author Allison Brennan's protagonist Maxine Revere is an investigative reporter driven to solve cold murder cases, and the series launches with Notorious, in which Max returns to old haunts to attend the funeral of a troubled high school friend once accused of an unsolved murder. Brenda English has created Sutton McPhee, a Washington, D.C., newspaper writer. The first in the series, Corruption of Faith, finds McPhee drawn into a murder case involving her own sister. There are also non-series journalist sleuths from some of my favorite authors, such as Sandra Brown, Harlan Coben and Fiona Davis. Brown's Seeing Red features TV journalist Kerra Bailey seeking an exclusive interview with the reclusive hero of a Dallas hotel bombing, only to be attacked by mysterious assailants. In Coben's Caught, reporter Wendy Tynes is making a name televising stings of sexual offenders when a male social worker walks into the trap, and old crimes and complex motives are revealed by the master of the plot twist. Finally, The Dollhouse by Davis is the haunting tale of a present-day journalist ferreting out the old, dark secrets of New York City's glamorous Barbizon Hotel for Women, where a generation of aspiring career women clawed for success in the 1950s. For more journalists in mystery/thriller fiction, see https://www.barnesandnoble.com/b/books/detective-fiction/detective-fiction-journalists/_/N-29Z8q8Z16gs

Start the New Year With New Mysteries

January can be a frigidly bleak start to the new year, but it's also a great month to stay cozily indoors enjoying the year's first crop of mystery debuts. For fans of J.D. Robb's Detective Eve Dallas, and her sexy husband Roarke, January brings a 46th entry in the Robb series: Dark in Death. A young woman is murdered with an ice pick during a screening of Hitchcock’s "Psycho" (during the most appropriate scene), and Dallas soon finds a link between the murder and a recent strangulation—with both deaths echoing scenes written by an author of procedural thrillers. Every mother's nightmare propels the tense Two Girls Down by Louisa Luna: Single mother Jamie Brandt leaves her 8- and 10-year-old daughters in the car for a few minutes while she buys a birthday present, and returns to find they've vanished. Brandt's sister enlists tough-as-nails bounty hunter Alice Vega to find the girls, and, when the police resist her help, Alice teams up with a disgraced former cop named Max Caplan. If you want to tap into marital nightmares instead, January offers a twisty psychological thriller in The Wife by Alafair Burke. After a tragic past, Angela is enjoying a quiet life with her son when she meets and marries Jason. Several years later, Jason’s writing career takes off and puts the family in an uncomfortable spotlight as several women make troubling accusations against Jason, and Angela realizes she may not know her husband as well as she thinks. Finally, for a dark exploration of how family legacies can shape us (and destroy us), read A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis. When a teenage girl named Ruby disappears under mysterious circumstances, FBI agent Elsa Myers takes the case even though she’s already struggling with a dying father and dysfunctional family. As Ruby’s case unfolds, it stirs up long-buried secrets, and Elsa’s own painful history threatens to derail her investigation and her life. For a list of more mysteries and thrillers ahead in 2018, see https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Coming-Soon-Thriller-Suspense/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A10457%2Cp_n_publication_date%3A1250228011

True Crime, or Fact Stranger Than Fiction

We're in an era when the lines between fact and fiction, truth and falsehood (alternative facts for some), seem more blurred than usual. When it comes to murder, the fictional tale is certainly easier to swallow, with mysteries solved, with good and evil clearly delineated, and with resolution cathartic and triumphant. On the other hand, the best of the true crime genre, going beyond prurient and sensational tabloid fare, exposes disturbing realities and forces readers to consider tough questions involving family, society and justice--often without clear answers. Consider Kate Summerscale's The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer, winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime Book. In 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) kill their mother and go on a 10-day spree--eating at coffee houses, visiting the seaside and attending the theater. When their mother's decomposed body is finally discovered in an upstairs bedroom, Robert coolly confesses to stabbing her, while Nattie takes a plea and gives evidence against his brother. In his insanity defense, the court hears testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals, and his passion for "penny dreadful" pulp fiction violence. He seems to feel no remorse, his laughing courtroom demeanor chills, and neither the prosecution nor the defense can find a motive. He is sentenced to Broadmoor, the infamous criminal lunatic asylum. Released as an adult, he moves to Australia and joins the army during World War I, becoming a band leader and stretcher-bearer, and earning medals for his courage under fire. He also later informally adopts a neighbor’s child when he sees the child abused. The journey from child killer to wartime hero is one of the tale's great mysteries, certainly unimaginable by Victorian theories about the "Wicked Boy." Another impressive fact crime book about the same time period is The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, intertwining the story of the architect of Chicago's 1893 World’s Fair with one of the earliest serial killers, contrasting harbingers of our "modern" age. I also loved Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, a Southern Gothic murder set in Savannah, GA, high society. And of course, there's In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, the 1966 classic that launched the genre with an exploration of a family massacred in a small Kansas town and the dark hearts of two killers, a great read even if later criticized for sacrificing factual truth to storytelling truth. For more examples of top true crime writing, see https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/73638-the-10-best-true-crime-books.html