Cure Spring Fever With a Mystery Trip Abroad

With California's hills and gardens splashed by a super-bloom of flowers, I must admit to a touch of spring fever. What better cure than armchair travel courtesy of some great new 2019 mysteries? Certainly, you can't beat Italy as a getaway from any lingering winter blahs. Join Donna Leon's soulful Venetian detective Guido Brunetti in Unto Us A Son Is Given, for a case triggered by a rich man's mysterious adoption. Meanwhile sunny Sicily hosts Andrea Camilleri's The Overnight Kidnapper, in which Inspector Montalbano faces a series of baffling abductions of women bank workers. Enjoy the heat and spices of the exotic East with Abir Mukherjee's Smoke and Ashes, set in colonial 1920s Calcutta, or The Suspect, by Fiona Barton, in which journalist Kate Waters investigates two missing girl tourists in Bangkok. To keep you appreciative of the spring thaw, crack an icy Scandanavian noir like the award-winning After She's Gone by Camilla Grebe, in which a psychological profiler who’s lost her memory and a teenage boy with a secret become unwitting partners in a race to stop a killer, or Hunting Game by Helene Tursten, introducing a new series heroine, Detective Inspector Embla Nyström, a sharp woman with a dark past who is tasked with solving a peer's murder during a routine hunting trip. Still, give me that special brand of British country house/gothic anytime. In The Missing Years by Lexie Elliott, coming in April, Alisa Calder inherits half of an eerie Scottish manor, with the other half left to her father, a man who disappeared 27 years earlier. Or roam the bleak moors with my favorite DCI Banks as he tries to connect the baffling deaths of a local female student and an older male stranger in an expensive suit in Careless Love by Peter Robinson. With The Smiling Man, Joseph Knox's damaged detective Aidan Waits of the Manchester PD goes on a dangerous, mind-bending journey as he tries to ID a smiling body found in an abandoned hotel. A gothic tangle of twin brother and sister, a mother who committed suicide at their birth, a missing au pair, and a Norfolk coast estate launch the mystery of The Au Pair by Emma Rous. But if you have to have Paris in April, pick The Book Artist by Mark Pryor, pitting a U.S. Embassy security head against a murderer at an art exhibition and an assassin with a grudge. For a list of more new mysteries out in early 2019, go to https://crimereads.com/the-most-anticipated-crime-books-of-2019-part-1/

Happy Birthday to March-Born Mystery Writers!

Because I was born in this month, I am naturally curious about other writers with March birthdays. If you look at the whole literary realm, from children's book great Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) to the Roman poet Ovid, the list is overwhelming. So I narrowed it down to just March-born mystery/crime fiction writers. And they're a varied lot! Start with the late Mickey Spillane (Frank Morrison Spillane, born March 9, 1918). I'm actually not a fan of his PI Mike Hammer, who debuted in 1947's I, the Jury, but Spillane is a pioneer of "hard-boiled" crime fiction and won the 1995 Edgar Allan Poe Grand Master Award, so you may want to meet Hammer just to indulge in old-fashioned, tough-guy nostalgia. More modern mayhem comes courtesy of James Patterson (born March 22, 1947). Patterson is probably best-known for the African-American psychologist and police detective protagonist of his Alex Cross series (including Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls), but he has penned standalone thrillers and other series, such as the Women's Murder Club. Meanwhile, there's Nevada Barr (born March 1, 1952), author of the Anna Pigeon mystery series with a park ranger detective (so naturally set in national parks). Her debut novel, Track of the Cat, won the 1994 Anthony Award and Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Staying with the wilderness theme, another March writer is Dana Stabenow (born March 27, 1952). Her Kate Shugak mystery series is set in Stabenow's native Alaska and has a unique protagonist: an Aleut living on a 160-acre homestead in a national park, with a half-wolf, half-husky roommate called Mutt. The first Kate Shugak mystery, 1992's A Cold Day for Murder, won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original. But probably my favorite of all the March-born mystery writers is Peter Robinson (born March 17, 1950) and his Inspector Alan Banks novels set in Yorkshire. The 1999 Anthony Award and Barry Award for Best Novel went to the tenth entry in the series, In a Dry Season. When a drought drains the local reservoir to reveal the ruins of a lost village and the unidentified bones of a murdered young woman, Banks must hunt down a sadistic killer who has escaped detection for half a century. For all authors born in March, check out this list: https://www.bookish.com/articles/happy-birthday-authors-a-look-at-writers-born-in-march/

Finding Mysteries North of the Border

I recently began reading the best-selling How the Light Gets In by award-winning Canadian mystery author Louise Penny. It's another entry in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series set in the Quebec village of Three Pines; this time, Gamache comes to the tiny town as a personal favor to look into the disappearance of a once-famous woman, only to find himself stalked by the same evil that turned her village sanctuary into a deadly trap. Since Penny is one of my favorites, I began to think about other Canadian mystery writers to explore. One place to start is the list of winners of the Arthur Ellis Award for Canadian crime fiction (named after the nom de travail of Canada's official hangman). The award is given annually to authors residing in Canada (regardless of original nationality) as well as Canadian-born authors. The 2014 Ellis winner for best crime novel is The Devil's Making by Sean Haldane, a psychotherapist/neuropsychologist and poet. The mystery's protagonist is a young English-immigrant policeman in Victorian-era British Columbia, who seeks to solve the murder of an American "alienist" (archaic term for psychiatrist) while navigating the tensions between Native American, British and American residents in the colonial outpost of Victoria. Two more Ellis Award honorees are Giles Blunt, author of the 2013 Ellis crime fiction winner Until the Night, which is part of his popular John Cardinal series set in fictional Algonquin Bay, Ontario, and Peter Robinson, the English-born Canadian resident who produced the popular Inspector Alan Banks series set in the villages of Yorkshire, which spawned BBC's "DCI Banks" TV series. Beyond the Ellis awards, there is Man Booker Prize finalist Emma Donoghue, an Irish-born Canadian resident, whose new mystery Frog Music follows the efforts of a French burlesque dancer in 1876 boomtown San Francisco to solve the murder of her friend, a notorious and secretive young woman, in a "lyrical tale of love and bloodshed." Even though she is a U.S. writer, I think personal favorite Kathy Reichs deserves a place among the Canadians when her forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan mysteries (basis for the "Bones" TV series) are set in Quebec and based on her actual experience with the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale of Quebec province. For more top-notch Canadian crime fiction, see the Arthur Ellis Award finalists and winners at http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/Awards/Ellis_Awards.html