Isolation Can Deepen a Mystery's Impact

If you're like me, you're finding the isolation of social distancing increasingly tiresome, but it certainly improves understanding of why social, mental and physical isolation is such a powerful element in mystery writing. In a strange way it's also comforting; current isolation is lonely and boring, but at least danger is kept at bay, outside of a secure personal space. Not so, with mysteries and thrillers! For example, the great Agatha Christie traps 10 characters on a mysterious island as they are killed off one by one in And Then There Were None. In the lesser known The Sittaford Mystery, Christie puts six people in an isolated snowbound house on the moors. They amuse themselves with a seance until "spirits" announce the murder of a neighbor, and one of the group walks six miles through snow to check on the potential victim, who is indeed dead. There are motives aplenty; it's the means that seem impossible. Or try Ruth Ware's claustrophobic The Woman in Cabin 10 about a woman travel-magazine writer on an exclusive luxury cruise assignment. She believes she has witnessed a woman being thrown overboard, but when all passengers are accounted for, the ship sails on, trapping her at sea where something (or someone) has gone terribly wrong. Smilla's Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg, combines the icy loneliness of Greenland with a young sleuth, Smilla Jasperson, who is herself socially and emotionally distant and living far from her roots in Copenhagen. When she becomes convinced that a six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like herself, did not accidentally fall to his death from a building, Smilla follows clues back to Greenland, where an explosive secret waits under the ice. In the aptly named Isolation, an entry in Mary Anna Evans' Faye Longchamp series, archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth is on her Florida island home struggling to recover from a personal loss when a close friend at the local marina is brutally murdered. Faye must reach back over a century into her family's history to fight an insidious danger. A disturbing gothic homage to isolation comes in Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island. During the summer of 1954, two U.S. Marshals arrive on the island, now a hospital for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of a murderess patient as a hurricane bears down. Unreliable narrators lead the reader into a nightmare maze of madness and Cold War paranoia. And just this year, Australian Jaye Ford debuts Beyond Fear about Jodie Cramer, a teen survivor of a terrifying assault by three strangers, who 17 years later joins three girlfriends for a fun weekend in a secluded cabin. When the isolation reawakens her fears, she tries to convince her friends they are in danger, but they dismiss her foreboding as flashbacks—until two men knock at the door. For more fiction with themes of isolation, loneliness and alienation, see http://www.novelrecommendations.com/novels-loneliness-isolation-alienation/

Use Fun Nonfiction to Cure at-Home Blues

Many folks tell me their forced COVID-19 at-home time has become 1) a surprising reprieve from their usual hectic life, or 2) a numbing stretch of isolated boredom. It means, either way, there's more room for contemplation, enrichment and education in our lives, and there are some bestselling nonfiction books waiting to not only help fill the void but provide perspective in our current crisis. Just start with picks on the New York Times' nonfiction bestsellers list. For those obsessed with understanding pandemic challenges, there's The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry, an overview of the 1918 flu epidemic and a cautionary tale for the current large-scale outbreak. For those obsessed with the unifying power of great rhetoric and leadership (or lack of both), there is No. 1 on the list, The Splendid and the Vile, by the inimitable Erik Larson, about how British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with stirring and calculated speeches, brought his nation back from the brink during the 12 turbulent months of the Blitz, stretching from May of 1940 to May of 1941, based not only on documents of the powerful but moving stories of the powerless he inspired. Meanwhile, the Smithsonian Magazine has some nonfiction suggestions that may be apropos, too, such as Roadside Americans: The Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation, by Jack Reid. If you are my age or older, you can remember when hitchhiking was still a common mode of travel for the young, poor or free-spirited, relying on an assumption of communal good will. Reid traces its evolution from the Great Depression to the mid-1970s, when hitchhiking became a "taboo form of mobility reserved for desperate and often unsavory individuals." The shift in attitudes corresponds to a shift in culture and politics that is still with us, and it's worth considering the price of that loss of communal trust now that we must all pull together. And if you're looking to find and inspire your inner warrior in a crisis, read The War Queens: Extraordinary Women Who Ruled the Battlefield, by father-daughter duo Jonathan W. Jordan and Emily Anne Jordan. The authors present women leaders, from England’s Elizabeth I to modern figures like Golda Meir, who defied gender conventions to protect their kingdoms and even lead troops on the battlefield. For more ideas, see https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/five-new-nonfiction-books-read-while-youre-stuck-home-180974524/

Bored in Quarantine? Try Armchair-Travel Fiction

Suffering cabin fever after only a short time of at-home lockdown due to COVID-19? Armchair travel is a proven antidote available to fiction readers. And, for me, given the current downbeat national mood, that also means the exotic locales need to be spiced with romance, whimsy and humor. One choice from my book club (when will we meet in person again?) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Less by Andrew Sean Greer. The author lyrically describes the journey of failed novelist Arthur Less after he accepts invitations to half-baked literary events around the world just to avoid the wedding of his ex-boyfriend. Less ends up in humorous misadventures in France, Germany, Morocco, India and an Arabian Sea island. This satirical novel is, at bottom, a love story, and I think we all need a little more laughter and romance right now. Or how about an old favorite: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. The author writes about realizing a long-cherished dream of moving into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the Provence region of France. Even if you've never longed for a house in the south of France, as you vicariously experience the pleasures of the culture, from cuisine to goat racing, don't be surprised if you are inspired to add French cooking experiments to your quarantine diet. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by bestselling author Maureen Johnson is another European romp that will take you back to youthful days when hostel beds, backpacking and minimal budget meant adventure not discomfort. Johnson's heroine Ginny Blackstone receives a little blue envelope from her deceased Aunt Peg, with $1000 cash for a passport and a plane ticket, and a letter instructing her to retrieve twelve other envelopes abroad. So Ginny begins a backpacking adventure from London to Edinburgh to Amsterdam and beyond, discovering stories about her aunt's past along the way—and even more about herself, of course. Finally, readers can head to the Orient with New York Times bestseller Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. This love story/family drama set among the super-rich in Singapore also satisfies the armchair traveler with tours of Singapore's famed locales and food markets, as well as visits to neighboring Macau and Hong Kong. For some more armchair-travel ideas, see https://matadornetwork.com/read/books-armchair-traveling-2020/

Quarantines Can't Stop Sleuths, or Mystery Fans

As mystery fans across the country find themselves in quarantine conditions because of the novel coronavirus, they can enjoy reading about detectives in similar situations. Pandemics don't stop murderers or sleuths—or authors' imaginations. For example, Lydia Kang's Beautiful Poison is set in New York during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Young socialite Allene begins to suspect poison, and not the flu, is responsible for her social circle's spike in deaths, all accompanied by mysterious notes. She recruits friends Jasper, an apprentice medical examiner, and Birdie, a woman of fragile health, to investigate. As deaths and suspicions mount, they must race to find the culprit before one of them becomes the next victim. In Black Death, author M.J Trow re-imagines playwright Christopher Marlowe as a Tudor-era sleuth. In the midst of a plague outbreak in 16th century London, Marlowe feels duty-bound to investigate the baffling death of a former Cambridge scholar who sent him a desperate letter before dying. S.D. Sykes' Plague Land also uses the plague as part of its mystery landscape, but this time the setting is Medieval Kent. After the plague deaths of his father and two older brothers, 17-year-old Oswald de Lacy is called back from childhood exile in a monastery to take on the role of Lord of Somerhill Manor, a place transformed by pestilence and neglect. But before he can move forward, he is confronted by the shocking death of a young woman whom the village priest claims was killed by demonic dog-headed men. Oswald must deal with political intrigue and family secrets, and the death of second women, before he finds the truth. Jumping back to modern Texas, Quarantined, by Joe McKinney, imagines that a deadly flu outbreak has caused the military to completely quarantine San Antonio, Texas. While working on burial statistics at San Antonio's mass graveyard, Detective Lily Harris finds a murder victim hidden among the plague dead and soon also discovers a corrupt local government conspiracy to hide the truth of a new deadly flu strain. She must lead her family through rioting streets and beyond the quarantine walls with news that might save the rest of society. For more fiction with disease/virus motifs, see https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19535.Best_Fiction_Books_About_Diseases_or_Viruses

Pandemics Inspire Fear — and Fiction

Worried about the novel coronavirus becoming a global pandemic? Remember that humanity has faced such crises before, and authors have used them as explorations of the attendant personal and social dislocation. Going all the way back to the Black Death, the bubonic plague that decimated Europe periodically from the Middle Ages through the 18th century, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Geraldine Brooks offers Years of Wonder, about a housemaid named Anna Frith in an isolated village outside London in 1666, where a contaminated bolt of cloth brings the disease that soon reaches into every household. Anna must confront the disintegration of her community, superstitious witch-hunting, the lure of illicit love and a fight for survival. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 inspired another Pulitzer winner, Katherine Ann Porter, in Pale Horse, Pale Rider. It's about the relationship between a Denver, Colorado, newspaper woman, Miranda, and a soldier, Adam. Miranda becomes sick and delirious with the flu, but recovers, only to find that Adam has died of the disease, which he likely caught while tending to her. Meanwhile, Pulitzer winner Philip Roth's Nemesis recalls the impact of the 1944 polio epidemic on a closely knit Newark Jewish community as its children are threatened with paralysis, lifelong disability and death. Protagonist Bucky Cantor, a 23-year-old teacher devoted to his charges, joins his girlfriend at a polio-free summer camp only to have the disease follow him there and alter the course of his life. La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus is considered a classic that explores the human condition as a plague sweeps the French Algerian city of Oran, and characters, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, struggle with love and loss, isolation and social responsibility, selfishness and sacrifice. Of course, no one beats Stephen King for dystopian terror, and The Stand takes place in a world in which 99% of the world's population has been wiped out by a mutated strain of super-flu. Survivors now must choose between the leadership of Mother Abagail, a benevolent 108-year-old woman, and Randall Flagg, the "Dark Man" who delights in chaos and violence. Finally, circling back to our usual mystery theme, there is EVO by Diane May. Livio Marchiori, a homicide detective in Verona, Italy, is battling "The Hypnotist," a serial killer who never touches his victims and leaves no evidence except detailed videos of his murders. So Marchiori is initially pleased to partner with Captain Victor Miller from Interpol, only to discover that illegal CIA genetic engineering has created the serial killer with mind control powers and a terrifying threat to humanity. For acclaimed nonfiction books on pandemics, see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/books/pandemic-books-coronavirus.html

When Mystery Meets Fantasy, It Can Be Magic

Recently, my book club's monthly selection was a fantasy novel. It's not a genre that I commonly read, and this blog is usually about mystery writing. But it sparked curiosity about the many genre-bending offerings labeled "fantasy mystery," where detectives roam magical worlds and use wizardry, vampire/werewolf powers, alien wiles, ESP, or just extraordinary sleuthing skills to solve crimes. For just a taste of this fare, start with last year's best-selling Recursion by Blake Crouch, in which New York City Detective Barry Sutton sets out to find the truth behind what looks like a disease epidemic driving victims mad with memories of lives they've never lived. Sutton begins to realize that he is facing not a pathogen but a threat to the fabric of time itself, and he will need the help of neuroscientist Helena Smith to unlock the mystery and fight growing chaos. Sutton is an ordinary detective faced with the extraordinary, while Jim Butcher's best-selling Harry Dresden series features an extraordinary detective fit to fight extraordinary powers. Dresden is a wizard-for-hire private investigator in a magical Chicago underworld, and Butcher has just added a 16th entry entitled Peace Talks, in which Dresden takes on a security role for the Supernatural nations' peace negotiations and soon faces dark manipulations that endanger not only the talks but the very existence of his home Chicago. Successful YA "Grishaverse" fantasy author Leigh Bardugo debuted her first adult fantasy mystery last year with The Ninth House: Galaxy "Alex" Stern is a school drop-out and sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide when she is offered a chance to attend prestigious Yale University on a full ride by mysterious benefactors—provided she monitors the activities of Yale secret societies who meet in eight windowless "tombs." As she investigates how the rich and powerful members are tampering with forbidden magic, raising the dead and sometimes preying on the living, she also seeks the motives of her "benefactors." Meanwhile, Charlaine Harris' best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels offer the Southern gothic charm that inspired HBO's "True Blood" series. We are introduced to Sookie, a Bon Temps, Louisiana, waitress who can read minds, in Dead Until Dark, just as she meets sexy bad-boy vampire Bill and confronts a string of murders. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union is an original offering, a traditional detective story with fantastical premise and complex layers: Homicide detective Meyer Landsman lives in an imagined federal district in Sitka, Alaska, formed for Jewish refugees after post-Holocaust Israel collapsed in 1948. As the Jewish haven struggles to deal with upcoming reversion to Alaskan control and Landsman faces disaster in his marriage and career, the detective starts to investigate the murder of a chess prodigy neighbor—and must struggle with the forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation. For more options, check out http://bestfantasybooks.com/best-fantasy-mystery-books

Books to Help Keep New Year's Resolutions

At the start of every new year, we tend to make vows to do something to improve our lives or, more selflessly, the lives of others—something different, better, transformative. And then we have trouble keeping those promises to ourselves. It's why so many self-help books are published in January, as a recent recent Forbes magazine article points out. Indeed, our areas of desired change are so varied that Amazon has 28 self-help book categories, and so perhaps you should start with the January-release memoir Help Me! by Marianne Power, about reading self-help books to see if the promise of a "perfect existence" could be fulfilled! Forbes also makes some recommendations for achieving common resolution goals. For example, perhaps you want to improve your mental well-being via the popular "mindfulness" (being aware of and controlling your experience in the moment so you are acting not reacting to life), then you can read Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection by Barbara Fredrickson. Or perhaps you want to be more productive and efficient, so page through Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. If you want to embrace a healthier lifestyle (better diet, more exercise, bad habits kicked), then Are You Fully Charged? The Three Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life, by Tom Rath, is the book for you. For women who feel glumly mired and need the confidence and will to move forward with any resolution, there is the aptly titled How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t: 14 Habits that Are Holding You Back from Happiness by Andrea Owen. Maybe you've decided that 2020 is the year to declutter your house and your life, then it's time to turn to tidiness guru Marie Kondo and her best-selling The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Finally, you may want to think about issues beyond the self and, in an increasingly diverse and yet fractured and tribal society, understand the source of our divisions and solutions for increased inclusion. Then Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect Is Tearing Us Apart, by Howard J. Ross with Jonrobert Tartaglione, offers food for thought—and action. For more books that can help bolster your new year's resolutions, see https://www.forbes.com/sites/amberjohnson-jimludema/2020/01/03/new-years-resolution-book-list/#7143efd61592

'Tis the Season to Celebrate Bad Sex in Fiction

'Tis the season to be jolly, and the British Literary Journal's 2019 "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" has just come out to provide needed end-of-year chuckles. The annual award goes to sex scenes that miss the mark to evoke mirth, cringes or head-scratching in otherwise well-written fictional works by notable authors. This year the judges actually split top "honors" between two authors: Prix Goncourt winner Didier Decoin and British novelist John Harvey. Decoin won for passages in his novel The Office of Gardens and Ponds, a fable set in Japan 1,000 years ago, by describing, for example, how the heroine "seized, kneaded, massaged, squashed and crushed" (Ow!) her lover's genitalia and "felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws." Meanwhile, Harvey floundered erotically with passages in his novel Pax, such as a clunky connection of sexual and geographic heat with "More than torrid, more than tropical: they two were riding the equator," or an unappetizing allusion to a female praying mantis devouring her mate "mouthful by mouthful." A runner-up contender was The River Capture by Mary Costello, who turned sexual penetration into a weird anatomical exploration: "She begged him to go deeper and, no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection." Elizabeth Gilbert, popular author of Eat, Pray, Love, also made the short list by having her heroine proclaim in City of Girls, "I screamed as though I were being run over by a train." (Holy Ow!) For those who get excited by step-by-step direction, try Domenic Smith's The Electric Hotel: "The actual lovemaking was a series of cryptic clues and concealed pleasures. A sensual treasure hunt. She asked for something, then changed her mind. He made adjustments and calibrations, awaited further instruction." For more excerpts, see https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/27/mouthful-by-mouthful-the-2019-bad-sex-award-in-quotes

Shopping Malls Can Be Sinister Places

It's that holiday gift-buying time of year when, even though most of my shopping has moved online, I may have one or two visits to the shopping malls. Though I dread the parking, the crowds, and trekking the maze of stores, I usually don't think of a mall as a sinister setting. Yet it doesn't take too much imagination to find their dark side. Consider What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn. The mystery starts in the 1980s when independent 10-year-old Kate, toting a toy monkey and a notebook of observations, plays detective in a newly opened shopping mall and befriends, Adrian, the 22-year-old son of a local shopkeeper. Then the little girl disappears and Adrian naturally comes under suspicion until, hounded by the press, he also vanishes. Jump to 2003. Now Adrian's sister Lisa is working as a manager at a discount record store in the same mall and becomes obsessed by security guard Kurt's surveillance-camera sightings of a little girl with a toy monkey. Lisa and Kurt develop an after-hours friendship as they join to investigate. Throw in Teresa, Kate's classmate who is now a detective, and you have a haunting mystery set in the eerie underground and locked stretches of the mall. In Silvermeadow, an entry in Barry Maitland's Brock and Kolla mystery series, a supermall outside London is the setting for two seemingly unrelated cases. A girl goes missing from the mall and then a violent criminal is spotted at the mall. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector David Brock and Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla come to launch a manhunt for the wanted man centered on the mall, and their team uses the investigation into the missing girl as cover. But is there more than a coincidental connection? Finally, if you're looking for a thriller pro, try Nora Roberts' 2018 bestseller Shelter in Place, which starts with a mass shooting at a Portland, Maine, mall. After 8 minutes of carnage, the killers are taken down, but the terror doesn't stop for some survivors as they discover that another conspirator is lying in wait. Of course, it is the holidays, and for those who must brave the malls and so would rather keep their mall perspectives less disturbing, there are Laura DiSilverio's cozy Mall Cop mysteries: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=disilverio+mall+cop+series&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

Mysteries Add Side of Mayhem to Thanksgiving

It's that time of year when families gather to feast, malls crowd, e-commerce hums and marching bands parade, and for mystery writers those are all opportunities for old feuds to turn deadly and for killers to create mass death. There are so many Thanksgiving-themed mysteries out there, especially in the cozy mystery space, that I'll only highlight a few. In the "killer in the crowd" category, there is Richard Hawke's debut Speak of the Devil, in which former police commissioner Fritz Malone chases a mystery killer dubbed Nightmare, who has opened fire at New York City's Thanksgiving Day parade and threatens more carnage unless the city meets his impossible demands. For fans of J.D. Robb's Lieutenant Eve Dallas series, there is Thankless in Death, which pits Dallas against a grievance-filled son who has murdered his parents for Thanksgiving and plans to strike again; Dallas knows the who, how and why, but must race to figure out the next victim. For cozy fans, Leslie Meier has an appropriate holiday entry in her amateur sleuth Lucy Stone series, Turkey Day Murder, as charming Tinker's Cove festivities are marred by the murder of a Native American activist with a long list of enemies. Finally, as a Southerner, I have to include a Dixie side with Hit and Run by Sandra Balzo. Journalist AnnaLise Grigg returns to her hometown in North Carolina's western mountains for a Thanksgiving bash hosted by the town's legendary womanizer Dickens Hart, who turns out to be her birth father. The philanderer also invites all former lovers and other children he may have fathered in an attempt to "do right" by potential heirs to his huge fortune. No surprise that the gathering soon takes a deadly turn! For a long list of Thanksgiving-themed mysteries, check this 2019 mysteryreadersinc post at http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-mysteries-thanksgiving.html

New Mysteries Ensnare Readers in the Dark Web

The dark web, which often comes up in today's TV thrillers, is making its mark in mystery fiction, too, as a new digital maze in which detectives must seek encryption-masked villains. For the uninitiated, dark web content exists on darknets that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations or authorizations to access. The identities and locations of darknet users stay anonymous and cannot be tracked due to a layered encryption system, which makes the dark web naturally attractive to black marketers, drug sellers, hackers, pedophiles and terrorists. Here are four recent well-reviewed mysteries that involve dark web sleuthing. In 2019's This is Gomorrah by Tom Chatfield, hacker Azi Bello is recruited by a mysterious espionage unit to take on Gomorrah, an exclusive dark web marketplace where Islamic terrorists have left a clue to their next deadly move. The Dark Web Murders by Brian O'Hare also arrived this year as an entry in the Inspector Sheehan series, pitting Sheehan and his team against a fiendishly clever serial killer who posts luridly about his kills on dark web blogs, murdering with seeming impunity. Meanwhile, a 2017 techno-thriller set in Portland, The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy, posits that the dark web also hosts an ancient evil threatening to spread virally into the real world unless it can be stopped by members of a ragtag crew: 12-year-old blind girl with a high-tech visual prosthetic, a technophobic journalist, a one-time child evangelist with a basement full of weapons, and a hacker who styles himself as a cyber warrior. In the 2015 mystery Dark Web by T.J. Brearton, the death of an online-gaming teen launches Detective John Swift on a quest to untangle a web of virtual and real crimes to solve a complex mystery. Those still skimming the Internet surface via Google and Facebook may want to first dive into the darker reaches with Jamie Bartlett's nonfiction The Dark Net.

Surprise! Digital Gen Z Readers Like Print Fiction

Today's authors of adult fiction face the arrival of a new generation of readers: Generation Z, those born in the mid-1990s to early-2000s, who now make up 25.9% of the U.S. population and will account for 40% of all consumer markets in 2020. So what appeals to a Gen Z readership? Thanks to Library Journal (LJ) and Pew Research surveys, we know that Generation Z is the most diverse generation to date, and on track to be the most educated. They have grown up with the anxieties of post-9/11 terrorism, mass shootings and climate crisis. They have also faced a more diverse society than ever before in racial/ethnic, sexual orientation and lifestyle terms. And they are social media beings and mobile device addicts who don't remember a world without streaming media. But that doesn't mean the Gen Z doesn't read: Some 72% of respondents told LJ they'd read at least one book for pleasure in the last 12 moths—the same as for every generation. Of course, social media does a play a big role for them, even when it comes to reading choices: While like previous generations they put friend and family recommendations at the top of the list of ways to find new titles, social media is Gen Z’s second choice, at 43%, to find out about new books. The good news for fiction authors is that Gen Z members are fiction readers, per LJ: Gen Z respondents prefer reading fiction nearly two to one over nonfiction. And, though weaned on Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series, we are happy to see that mysteries still place among their top four genres. Gen Z women’s four favorite genres are, in order, romance, fantasy and young adult fiction (in a virtual tie), and mystery/suspense. Men, meanwhile, gravitate to fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and mystery/suspense. And despite their supposed digital bias, Gen Z members, like millennials, prefer to read print for long-form content, Gen Z. Hardcover books are the most-read format (79%, compared with 32% for ebooks). Here's a difference: When they do read digitally, a whopping 77% of Gen Z respondents do so on their mobile phones. For the formative fictional reading of Gen Z, see https://bookriot.com/2019/06/05/books-and-series-gen-z-grew-up-with/

Mysteries Go Back to School for Campus Carnage

It's back-to-school time for campuses across the nation, and, frankly, there are few better settings for mystery plots than academia: ambitious academics; the corrupting influence of money; and the tangled relationships and pasts of young students. There were some good topical entries in the campus thriller category in 2019, starting with Dervia McTiernan's The Scholar, in which a woman found murdered on a college campus is identified as the heir to a fortune and the child of the university's biggest funder. There's also A Student of History by Nina Revoyr about a broke young student thrilled to land a research assistant gig with one of Los Angeles' ultra-rich, only to discover dark secrets that force him to decide how far he will go to protect his future. From 2018, there is Beth Gutcheon's The Affliction. At the troubled Rye Manor School for Girls, a former headmaster of a prestigious New York City private school is sent to assess the school’s problems only to find a teacher dead in the school’s swimming pool, a teacher with the "affliction" of nonstop chattering. From 2017 comes Ruth Ware's The Lying Game in which three former girl classmates at a remote boarding school near the English Channel receive a summoning text from the fourth member of their clique, drawing them back to her home near the school, where her father, the art teacher, was a formative influence on all of the women. The reunited friends soon revisit old secrets from their shared pastime, the lying game, in which they purposely fibbed to faculty and students to see what they could get away with. Finally, one of my faves for psychological chills, Tana French, offers 2014's The Secret Place in which her Dublin Murder Squad is called to a high school after an anonymous post claims to know who killed a popular boy the year before, drawing the detectives into a strange and dangerous underworld of teenage girls. For a broader compilation of examples, including top authors such as Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, Amanda Cross and Donna Tartt, see https://crimereads.com/a-brief-history-of-academic-mysteries-campus-thrillers-and-research-noir/

Mysteries to Read Before Summer Officially Ends

Summer is coming to a close, so set aside time for a few mystery indulgences before back-to-school and back-to-work. I'm betting on some proven favorites. One is a book I missed at the end of last year: Tana French's The Witch Elm. After happy-go-lucky Toby surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead, he retreats to the family ancestral home to recover from his injuries and care for a dying uncle. But then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree, detectives arrive, and Toby's beliefs about the past are challenged. As a fan of Karin Slaughter, I want to read her latest The Last Widow, too: First a scientist for the Center for Disease Control is abducted and then bombs blast the Atlanta neighborhood of the FBI and CDC. Medical examiner Sara Linton and investigator Will Trent are unraveling a deadly conspiracy when Sara is abducted, and Will must go undercover to save her and thousands of innocent lives. Plus, I'm putting the reliable Jo Nesbo on my list with the latest installment in his Harry Hole series, Knife, which plunges Harry, even though relegated to cold cases, into new danger. A new author I'd like to try is Ruth Ware. Ware's Turn of the Key is about a young woman who takes a live-in nanny post with an ideal family at a luxurious home in the Scottish Highlands, only to find herself in a nightmare that ends with a child dead and herself on trial for murder. For a very different locale, the reviewer-lauded Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik takes readers to Bolivia, where a heroine running from her past arrives to take a teaching gig that falls through. She ends up following her lover into the depths of the jungle--and a fight for survival. For a different kind of primal confrontation, there's Daniela Petrova's Her Daughter's Mother. Lana meets and befriends her daughter's anonymous egg donor Katya in New York City. When Katya suddenly disappears, Lana begins to dig obsessively into her past, drawing the suspicion of police and unearthing shocking secrets. Meanwhile, parallel stories twist in a deadly knot in the opioid-plagued rural Kansas town of Laura McHugh's The Wolf Wants In as Sadie Keller tries to find out how her brother died, 18-year-old Henley Pettit desperately seeks to escape her family's crimes, and the police keep finding bones in the woods. For more ideas, see https://crimereads.com/the-most-anticipated-crime-books-of-summer/

The Dangerous Epidemic of Loneliness

The headlines are so full of stories fretting over the epidemic of mass shootings, hate speech and hate crimes that you may have missed a disturbing story about another epidemic: loneliness. Chronic loneliness is another term for social isolation, for a lack of physical and emotional connection to others, something human beings are biologically programmed to need for physical and mental well-being. Today, according to a new poll by YouGov, 30% of millennials, those aged 23 to 38, say they are lonely, higher than any other generation surveyed. More disturbing, 22% of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends, 27% percent said they had "no close friends," and 30% said they have "no best friends." While not measured by YouGov, the up-and-coming Gen Z also reports high levels of loneliness on other surveys. Chronic loneliness, which has tended to peak naturally with the elderly in the past, seems to be seeping downward. These findings are scary. Research has linked the stress of chronic social isolation to mental and physical health issues such as anxiety, depression, digestive problems, high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep problems, weight gain, and even premature death via increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease. And do we really think that there is no link between social isolation and the proliferation of tribalism and hate? Lonely people trying to make connections are fueling the growth of isolated social media groups, which create no true intimacy but do deliver a warped and ephemeral sense of belonging by defining themselves against the enemy "other," whether by race, gender, politics or sexual orientation. On campuses and at political events, the isolated and angry are susceptible to the toxic embrace of polarized tribes. And what happens when polarized souls, alone and threatened on the social battlefield, have easy access to battlefield weapons and hear an approving signal in the political noise? We should not discount this dark rot in our society. To help yourself, or someone you know, to cope with loneliness, check out this Psychology Today article https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201901/is-loneliness-making-you-sick

Munchausen by Proxy: Sickened by Love

Munchausen by Proxy (MBP) is a parenting disorder and form of child abuse that may be more common in fiction and television drama than it is in real life, but it makes for fascinating plots and characters, such as Gillian Flynn's monstrously neurotic mother in her psychological thriller Sharp Objects. MBP is when a parent, mainly the mother, either fabricates an illness or induces an illness in her child, sometimes even killing the child. The offending mom usually appears to be a model parent with little or no indication of family discord, and the abusive behavior is clearly premeditated and not a reaction to the child's behavior. There is a high mortality rate for the children, and the tragedy is that they are usually very young and defenseless; the average age of victims is 4 years old. While explanations are complex, MBP often seems to be spurred by an unhealthy desire for attention. Noble mothers tending sick children not only get lots of medical support but also sympathy and help from friends and family, and even media attention. In addition to Flynn's book, other fictional stories about MBP include the newly released thriller Saving Meghan by D.J. Palmer, about a devoted mother who insists she is trying to save her daughter and herself even though the 15-year-old is so frequently ill that MBP is suspected. Figuring out the truth will keep readers turning pages. Also new this year is We Came Here to Forget by Andrea Dunlop, about a young Olympic skier who loses everything when dark secrets about her sister's MBP come to light, a trauma based on Dunlop's experience with her own sister.  The young skier flees to Buenos Aires to reinvent herself, only to become enmeshed with a man keeping dark secrets of his own. Also check out Cradle and All by Zachary Alan Fox, a thriller about a Los Angeles couple with a new baby boy. After a series of mishaps for the baby at home, they are accused of child abuse—and then anonymous night-time telephone calls begin. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon is a Young Adult take on MBP about a 17-year-old girl isolated by an assumed severe immunodeficiency until she finds out the terrible/liberating truth.  For true-crime drama, there is this year's "The Act," starring Patricia Arquette, on Hulu. Episodes are based on the real story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who was tortured by her MBP-afflicted mother DeeDee—until Gypsy orchestrated mom's murder. For more chilling real-life cases, see https://listverse.com/2015/09/03/10-shocking-cases-involving-munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy/

Fatherhood Is Rare Trait for Fictional Detectives

With Father's Day ahead, I began to think about fatherhood in mystery fiction. It's easy to find murderous or dysfunctional fathers and stepfathers, but what about crime-solving protagonist dads? Alas, research showed that most well-known male sleuths are either eccentric singles a la Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot; hardboiled loners like Philip Marlowe and Mike Hammer; or cerebral commitment-phobes like British inspectors Adam Dalgliesh and Endeavor Morse. Although even the most obsessive detective heroes may indulge in humanizing romance, fatherhood's responsibilities seem to be a plot distraction that authors prefer to avoid! But there are a few famous detectives whose fatherly roles play a part in their character arcs. In the police procedural space, there's Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. Bosch's parentless childhood and difficulties in forming relationships inform and give weight to his edgy yet emotional bond with daughter Maddie, who initially lives with Bosch's ex-wife but takes a more important role in later books when she comes to live with him in Los Angeles and starts to emulate her father's police career. In the thriller genre, Tom Clancy's Dr. Jack Ryan—PhD., former Marine, CIA operative extraordinaire and heroic two-term President—also finds time to raise four children, including Jack Ryan Jr., who follows in his father's footsteps and enters the "Ryanverse" book series as an analyst for "the Campus," an off-the-books intelligence agency, where he is a great ally of Ryan Sr., of course. For those who long for a British gentleman as pater familias, there is Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, who starts out single in the series debut A Man Lay Dead but marries in later novels and fathers a son Ricky, who plays major roles as a child in Spinsters in Jeopardy and as a young man in Last Ditch.  For dark-humor American fare, check out Slim and Anci, the father-daughter duo in Jason Miller's Little Egypt series set in southern Illinois coal country. Self-styled "redneck detective" and single-father Slim is teamed with his brilliant young daughter Anci, starting with Down Don't Bother Me about a mine owner who pays Slim to unravel the mystery of a dead reporter and missing photographer (sans police and press), and Red Dog, in which Slim tracks a missing pitbull only to find a dognapper with his head blown off. And if you want fatherly care without the blood ties, there is always Father Brown, the insightful Roman Catholic priest and amateur sleuth of 53 short stories by G.K. Chesterton (and a TV series).

2019 Thrillers With a Timely Political Edge

As I follow the news, I sometimes feel that I am entangled in a series of political thriller plots, but ones less satisfying than fiction. In a novel, I can get to a cathartic climax in days; reality is frustratingly slow moving and full of loose ends and conflicting plot lines. So I started looking at this year's crop of political thrillers to satisfy my thirst for truth, justice, and a satisfying finale—novels in line with classics like The Manchurian Candidate, Day of the Jackal or The Hunt for Red October. I'll note five well-reviewed 2019 releases, starting with Daughter of War by Brad Taylor, a former Special Forces officer and a New York Times bestselling author. This entry in Taylor's Pike Logan series has the hero hot on the trail of a North Korean trying to sell sensitive U.S. intelligence to the Syrian regime when he stumbles on plots and counter-plots by both the Syrians and North Koreans to create mass mayhem using a lethal substance called Red Mercury. What about those pesky Russians? Matthew Quirk's The Night Agent answers with an idealistic young FBI agent who sets out to find and stop a Russian mole, only to realize that anyone in the White House may be the traitor! Of course, writers need to include China among their nemeses.  In Killer Thriller by Lee Goldberg, protagonist Ian Ludlow, an action novel author, is in Hong Kong to research his wildest story yet—a deadly global conspiracy by Chinese intelligence to topple the United States—only to find that his horrifying scenario is actually in the works and the Chinese believe he’s a super-spy. Trapped in his own thriller, Ian must dodge assassins as he races to prevent disaster. If you harbor dark suspicions of the President, Out of the Dark will be your cup of tea; it's the latest entry in Gregg Hurwitz's Orphan X series featuring Evan Smoak, trained from age 12 as a deadly assassin by the Orphan Program, an off-the-books, deniable-assets operation that he has fled. Evan realizes the government is now killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers, so he decides to strike back by taking on the program founder, the U.S. President! But the President is not only surrounded by traditional security, he is guarded by Orphan A, the first Orphan Program recruit, setting up a deadly battle for the fate of the country. Finally, for some feminine spycraft, try The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone. In Paris, American expat Kate Moore, head of a clandestine cadre of operatives behind her homemaker cover, is confronted by a massive terrorist attack only to find that it is not what it seems and that it involves her own family. For more choices, see Amazon's best-seller list at https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Political-Thrillers-Suspense/zgbs/digital-text/6190490011

Weddings More Fatal than Fun in Mysteries

The spring-summer wedding season is gearing up, and mystery writers are ready with their own murderous takes on wedded bliss as deadly secrets surface, relatives and friends feud, and, of course, money is the eternal catalyst tilting marriage to mayhem. Happily, this spring's crop of wedding-inspired mysteries includes some New York Times best-selling authors, starting with one of my favorites, Jonathan Kellerman, with Southern California settings and the unique sleuthing pair of psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis. In The Wedding Guest, Sturgis and Delaware must crash a rowdy "Saints and Sinners"-themed wedding reception where a woman has been found with her throat slashed. Hundreds of guests, and the bride and groom, all claim ignorance of the woman's identity and innocence of any crime as Delaware and Sturgis literally try to separate saints from sinners. Also this year, Alan Bradley adds to his amusing and genre-irreverent Flavia de Luce series with The Golden Tresses of the Dead. This time, British 12-year-old chemist/sleuth/busybody Flavia is attending her sister's wedding in a small English town when a human finger turns up in the wedding cake! Of course, more delicious shocks lie ahead to challenge Flavia's detecting skills. Or maybe you want something a little cozier, then check out The Truffle With Weddings, 2019's installment of Laura Durham's Annabelle Archer Wedding Planner series (series debut Better Off Wed won an Agatha for Best First Novel). In her latest caper, society wedding planner Annabelle is struggling to please a demanding bride when a colleague drops dead after eating a poisoned chocolate, and her best friend and caterer Richard Gerard is suspected. For more cozy mystery series with a wedding theme, check out http://cozy-mysteries-unlimited.com/party-event-planner-list

Gay Detectives Come Out in Mystery Fiction

With the media giving special attention to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who is openly gay, I wondered if mystery fiction reflects a similar LGBTQ acceptance. Overall, mystery and crime fiction have been more hospitable to hard-boiled homicide hunters and old lady sleuths than gay detectives or even gay characters, with homosexuality used most often as a plot point about a hidden identity, a lying witness, a family secret/conflict, or a motive for murder. But there are some great mysteries featuring gay detectives out there, such as Jim Morgan Wilson's Benjamin Justice series. The first novel in the series, Simple Justice, which won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, debuts journalist Justice, disgraced by a Pulitzer-story scandal and mourning the death of his lover, who is pulled out of alcoholic hiding to investigate a seemingly motiveless killing outside a gay bar, a crime with unexpectedly deep personal and political ramifications. Writer and retired attorney Michael Nava, winner of six Lambda Literary Awards for works exploring LGBT themes, offers a series featuring Henry Rios, a gay Latino criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles. His Rios novels run from The Little Death in 1986 to 2016's Lay Your Sleeping Head. Many reviewers see one of the most seminal gay detectives as Joseph Hansen's insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter. In the 1970 debut novel of the Brandstetter series, Fadeout, an entertainer's car plunges off a bridge, but the body is missing, and Brandstetter's queries convince him the man is still alive and in danger. Another popular mystery series features Katherine V. Forrest's Kate Delafield, a lesbian L.A. homicide detective. Four books in the series have been Lambda Award winners, most recently 2013's High Desert, in which Delafield must confront truths about herself as, a few months into retirement, she obliges her old captain by taking up the hunt for a missing police partner. For more gay detectives, see this list from writer Kristen Lepionka: http://www.criminalelement.com/the-quiltbag-detective-queer-characters-in-crime-fiction-comment-sweepstakes/