Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

AbeBooks.com had a listing of the top ten train thrillers Auntie M decided to share with you.

Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith in 1950, was made by Alfred Hitchcock into a wonderful movie. One of my faves.

The Wheel Spins is an earlier thriller about meeting a stranger on a train. Done in 1936 by Ethel Lina White, Hitchcock turned this one into The Lady Vanishes.  Check out the original cover:

Agatha Christie’s 1933 Murder on the Orient Express has suave Hercule Poirot solving who stabbed a gentleman traveling on that famous train twelve times.  I didn’t know that in 1932, Graham Greene published a thriller also set on the Orient Express titled Stamboul Train. I’ll have to look for that one.

The Necropolis Railway is set in the golden age of steam, although Andrew Martin published it in 2002.  Dick Francis, that master of the racing mystery, set his thriller The Edge on a transcontinental train journey across Canada.  And the earliest of the recommendations is from 1890, Emile Zola’s La Bete Humaine, which takes place on the railway between Paris and Le Havre.

Agatha Christie makes the list a second time in 4.50 From Paddington, when Miss Marple investigates after a young woman on the same train sees a woman being strangled in a passing train. This is one of Christie’s best, in my humble opinion.

Christopher Isherwood set his novel Mr. Norris Changes Trains in pre-war 1935 Europe, with a chance meeting on a train. His novel Goodbye to Berlin is also mentioned.

The list concludes with John Godey’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. I confess to seeing both versions of this movie, but have never read the book.

And you thought train rides were boring…

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Auntie M told you a few days ago that she was doing two readings/signings of her new book, The Blue Virgin, one in NYC and one on Long Island, along with Lauren Small and Nina Romano from the Screw Iowa book. After a presentation on the world of publishing and the rise of independent and self publishing, we each read from our works. Nina read from her two poetry books, Cooking Lessons and her newly published Coffeehouse Meditations. Lauren read from her historical novel, Choke Creek.

It was an interesting experience all around, in the company of good friends, and surrounded by others. In Manhattan we met a group from the IWWG, the International Women’s Writers Group, at the META Center, where we all had to take our shoes off! That audience was attentive, but most writers are struggling, so the sales were almost nonexistent. We appreciated the chance to tell our story and get the reading experience.

It was a different story on Long Island, where I used to live. My good friend Laura Hamilton organized an evening at her lovely log cabin home in Miller Place. A group of about 15 gathered for good food and drinks, and we were asked to read. Since the majority of these friends would be at our presentation the next day, we chose different sections to read from our books. The reading experience is always good, and we were well-received. It was lovely to be feted that way. Laura said she felt as though she had a literary salon on her house that night!

The Port Jefferson Library presentation was so well attended that the head librarian said we were welcome to come back any time! His Sunday programs usually garner an audience of 15 or so; we drew a crowd of over 40! Our presentation was again well-received, with astute questions afterwards that made it interesting for us. Our readings went well, also. But the best part for me was sitting at a table and having people lined up to have me sign their copy of my book~I said it would be priceless, and it was. Nina and Lauren sold books, I sold a bunch, and it was a great day to be an author with a book in print.

Anyone wishing to see their work in print, who has been through the traditional route without success, please consider self publishing or using an independent press such as Bridle Path Press. Check the link to read more about the community being developed by this unique press, whose mission statements includes: “This press will make NO money.”

Now there’s an intriguing thought for you!

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Today Nina, Lauren and Marni are presenting a program kicking off National Library Week at the Port Jefferson Library on New York’s Long Island.

The library has an active writers group who invited the Screw Iowa gals to talk about The End of the Book: Writing in a Changing World and to discuss the changing nature in the publishing business, and the rise of independent and self-publishing.

They will end the afternoon reading from their own books with a signing to follow.  What more could a writer ask for? An audience, a chance to read your own work, and maybe even to sell a few books.  Priceless.

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Holding a copy of my novel in my hands was pretty close to the first time I held my son.  Okay, not as earth-shattering, but longed for longer and surely at my age, an accomplishment on its own.

The first sales are dribbling in, not to mention the carton I sent off to everyone in my Acknowledgments. It was amazing to me during my research phase who generous people where when I’d tell them I was writing an novel and wanted it to be as close to accurate as possible in their area of expertise. For the mere promise of a  mention in the hoped-for Acknowledgments page, I had the ear and emails of a Chief Superintendent from the Thames Valley Police. He went to far as to give me descriptions of the interior of the police station that is a setting in the novel. And his added information on the building where inquests take place became a scene I hadn’t planned in the book.

On Tuesday Auntie M leave town to head north for two readings/signings. Will let you know how that goes.

On Thursday, Nina Romano and Lauren Small, colleagues from Screw Iowa Writing Group (www.screwiowa.com) will be giving a presentation to the International Women’s Writers Guild. The subject hovers around the changes in publishing, with the rise of independent and self publishing. It dovetails nicely with the book our group has written: The End of the Book: Writing in a Changing World. (Available as an ebook at our site.)

Then it’s on to Long Island, my former home, for a second presentation and signing.

See you soon~

The Author

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Auntie M has to admit that this book has been in her pile for a while.

It had been recommended by a friend, but got pushed to the end of the waiting-to-be-read pile, where it languished behind a new Reginald Hill and got pushed aside by an unread Peter Lovesey.

Then I saw its red cover poking out and grabbed it a few days ago. What a treat!

Author Lisa Lutz has a wild and dark sense of humor. She’s been compared to Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiassen, but her humor lies somewhere between the two.

The Spellman’s are a family of private investigators, down to little sister Rae. Narrator Isabel, trying to live down her wilder youthful days, has reached her late 20’s and become a maven of invading other people’s privacy, even as her own is invaded and she reacts with, well, how she reacts is actually the plot of this book, so I’d better let you find out for yourself.

Izzy is a great protagonist, but part of the delight in reading this is the layout, the way Izzy characterizes events in her life. Her entire dysfunctional family has a very different way of looking at life.

Yes, Lutz has already followed up with Curse of the Spellmans, Revenge of the Spellmans, and The Spellmans Strike Again (mea culpa, I told you it sat on my shelf for a while). Read them in order, as I plan to, to get the full flavor of the growth of Izzy and her clan.

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Ruth Rendell’s newest Inspector Wexford mystery takes us back and forth through the likeable detective’s career.

Wexford has never told anyone of his suspicions that dog-loving entrepreneur Eric Targo is a murderer. He has little evidence to support his theory, beyond his suspicions of the man, and the fact that Targo gives Wexford an unnerving stare.  There are more apparently motiveless murders whenever Targo is around, and Wexford becomes increasingly convinced they are down to Targo.

When Targo returns to the area and another murder occurs, Wexford finally confides his suspicions to his partner, Mike Burden, who dismisses him and his ideas as fantasy, in the same way Wexford has dismissed Burden’s wife of the belief a local Pakistani family is arranging a marriage for their only daughter.

How these two plot lines converge, and eventually involve Wexford’s  wife Dora, are examples of Rendell’s fine sense of story and plot. And along the way, you will find out what ‘the box’ signifies.

This is the 22nd Wexford novel, and if you’ve never read one of Rendell’s  novels, stand-alones or from the Wexford series, start right here and you will learn all you have to know about her compelling protagonist.

Along with PD James and Frances Fyfield, (whom are all friends) Rendell forms the triumvirate of English mystery writers who only get better with age.

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If you’re a lover of crime novels (count me in) and especially those with a heavy emphasis on the psychology of the characters (ditto) you’ll find this list interesting.  Andrew Klavan, author of True Crime, Don’t Say a Word, and the recently published Empire of Lies, has compiled what he believes to be the top five most engrossing crime novels from1866 to1992.  Here are his choices, along with his {edited by me} reasoning:

1. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: Former student Raskolnikov conceives the idea that an “extraordinary man” should be free of socially constructed moral constraints. Working off that theory, he brutally ax-murders a pawnbroker and her sister–and discovers, to his horror, that he has violated not a mere social construct but the unfathomable Moral Law Within. His escape from the crime scene is as suspenseful as anything in Hitchcock. The scenes of his psychological duel with the canny police detective Porfiry Petrovich have been imitated endlessly yet never matched. But if Dosteovsky had written only the heart-wrenching scene in which the prostitute Sonya reads to the murderer from the Gospels, he could have retired after a life’s work well done. {I read this in high school but had forgotten its wonderful scenes. I may have to dig through it again.}

2. The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes: This is a wonderful read and a forgotten genre classic. Two retired servants, The Buntings, find their respectable middle-class London life about to collapse into poverty. Then the same night a serial killer called The Avenger strike again, the mysterious Mr. Sleuth arrives to rent a room. Is it possible their new lodger and the murderous Avenger are one and the same? What’s so mesmerizing here is not just the suspect, but the way Mrs. Bunting’s desperation to hold onto her middle-class respectability compels her to become his tacit accomplice. {I’d never heard of this one but will check it out now.}

3. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain: The gold standard for American noir, this is also a stark, incisive portrayal of human desire stripped of every spiritual gloss. Depression-era drifter Frank Chambers takes one look at diner waitress Cora and falls for her hard. The two want desperately to be together, but there’s the small matter of Cora’s husband. While most of Cain’s work were made into films, such as Double Indemnity, and often improved, this is not the case here. The story is still most powerful in its book form. The murder scene remains shocking. The sex scenes will put starch in your collar with nary a foul word. But it’s the depiction of petty weakness and selfishness as the motivation for unconscionable wrongdoing that’s uncomfortably seductive and reminiscent of our own lives. {Never read the book, just saw the two movie versions. I’ll have to read this now, though.  PS: The title comes from Cain’s own desperation of  the postman’s rings when dropping rejection letters.}

4. The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham: Sweet-natured war widow Meg Elginbrodde is about to marry a self-made millionaire when she receives photos suggesting her first husband migth still be alive. One of Allingham’s Albert Campion mysteries, her usual cast of appealing characters is overshadowed by the murderous treasure-hunter Jack Havoc.  He is the embodiment of a post-WWII atheistic materialism that Allingham understood to be nothing more than a new kind of superstition. Havoc is a remarkably original invention, the prototype of the soulless but philosophical killing machines who populate modern thriller novels and films. His final confrontation with the consequences of his worldview is deep, moving and spectacular. {This is a different twist from Allingham’s pleasant Campion series; reading it you feel the depth of her awareness.}

5. The Secret History by Donna Tartt: I love the scope and vision of this novel, its precise characterization and its beautiful prose. Richard Papen hopes to leave his working-class origins behind when he enrolls at an exclusive college in Vermont. Accepted into an elegant clique that centers on a charismatic Classics professor, the group’s immersion in ancient culture leads them to a moment of Bacchic ecstasy and murder. Erudite and compelling, the book is at once a riveting crime story and, I suspect, a meditation on the famous snowstorm scene in Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain;” a coming-to-terms with the cornerstone of human savagery on which even the greatest civilization stands. {My friend Melissa gave me this one birthday and it was engrossing and hard-hitting.}

Readers: Which ones have you read? Which ones will you give a try?

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