Alex Dolan: The Empress of Tempera Tuesday, Sep 13 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:03 am

empresstempera

The protagonist of Alex Dolan’s thriller The Empress of Tempera is a young art student studying in New York, renaming herself and reinventing herself from the criminal Maine family she left behind, currently involved in a relationship with artist Derek Rosewood, whose exhibit is being hung at The Fern Gallery.

Paire Anjou heads there to meet up with Derek Rosewood, and as she approaches, she’s struck by the elderly gentleman staring at the painting hanging in the window. As she gets closer, the man moans, and suddenly stabs himself in the heart, dropping to the ground at her feet. Despite Paire’s efforts to resuscitate him, the man dies and she finds herself covered in his blood. It’s only then she finds her eyes drawn to the display window and the painting that mesmerized this man.

The Empress is an almost life-size portrait of a woman in a bright red embroidered Asian dress, sitting in a provocative pose, and she engenders powerful emotions in people who view her. Gallery visitors faint; some write her love letters; others try to steal her.

This is Paire’s introduction to the power art can exert, and in researching the painting, she finds it by a Chinese artist known as Qi, whose body of work has vanished. Qi had lived in the US and returned to China at some point and has died.

Paire also finds one of the wealthiest families in New York has wanted to possess the Empress, and a forty-year feud between them and Qi had been waged. And it’s still going on.

It’s an eye opener for Paire, who starts to work at the Fern Gallery and is exposed to the controversy. Meanwhile, her relationship with Rosewood leads her to escapes that speak to her genetic makeup, with unexpected results.

Dolan, the son of two artists, immerses the reader in the world of art and its effects on people’s natures as well as our culture. He’s also concocted an unusual thriller with unexpected twists and turns in the story that will attract readers as it exposes them to a world that many won’t have known existed in several planes.

 

Sophie Hannah: Closed Casket, Hercule Poirot #2 redux Sunday, Sep 11 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:21 am

closedcasket

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the year Agatha Christie created Hercule Poirot. After last year’s first reincarnation in The Monogram Murders, it’s clear Sophie Hannah has inhabited Poirot’s world, to so many reader’s delight. She celebrates this anniversary with the second volume, Closed Casket,taking Poirot to Ireland and a house filled with bitter relatives, all with a motive for murder.

This is vintage Christie in style and Hannah does a grand job with a compelling plot that has a most clever climax at its end.

Lady Athelinda Playford has long inhabited the world of youths in her beloved children’s book series which feature the precocious juvenile Shrimp Seddon and her band of child detectives. Auntie M particularly enjoyed the description of Shrimp’s dog, as mentioned by Scotland Yard’s detective Edward Catchpool, (not a fan of Shrimp Seddon) as the ” . . . fat, long-haired Anita.”

Catchpool has been invited to Lady Playford’s estate Lillieoak in County Cork for no apparent reason he can discern, yet such is the Playford name’s weight that he decides the author must wish to have him correct her descriptions of detectives and he decides to attend. He is surprised to find his acquaintance, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, has also been invited for the week, as has Lady P’s two lawyers.

The household contains Lady P’s two children, the married son Harry, Viscount Playford, and his wife Dorothy; daughter, the Hon. Claudia and her fiancé, Dr. Randall Kimpton; Lady P’s secretary, Joseph Scotcher; his nurse, Sophie Bourlet; and the usual staff of a cook, a maid, and a peculiarly quiet butler.

Into this set up, classic Christie, comes the whopper that thrusts the action forward: Lady P has had Michael Gathercole, one of her lawyers, redo her will that afternoon. Instead of leaving her estate divided equally between her son and daughter, as had been expected, she now intends to leave her entire estate to . . . her dying secretary, Joseph Scotcher.

With only weeks to live, Scotcher is surely an unusual choice on so many levels, her action makes Poirot decide he and Catchpool have been invited in order to stop a murder.

Yet a murder does occur, and very soon after the dinner where the will change is announced, in spite of Poirot’s plan to stop it. Now his task is to determine the real reason why Lady Playford changed her will–and who is the murderer.

He soon finds out that most of the household had a motive for the killing, which might stump a normal brain, but then, we are dealing with those little grey cells. Kirkus’s says: ” . . . the climactic revelation that establishes the killer’s motive is every bit as brilliant and improbable as any of Christie’s own decorous thunderclaps.”

 

Rebecca Tope: The Coniston Case Wednesday, Sep 7 2016 

Uncategorized , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:07 am

ConistonCase

Auntie M has to admit she has a certain fondness for Rebecca Tope, as the British author of several series kindly gave her a blurb for one of her own mysteries, The Scarlet Wench, set in the Lake District.

So it was a great delight to return to the Lake District in the newest in Tope’s series, The Coniston Case. It’s almost Valentines’ Day in Windermere and florist Persimmon–Simmy–Brown is feeling a bit overwhelmed. There are far too many red roses being ordered, she decides, and to add to her feeling of urgency, she’s suddenly being given a few anonymous deliveries that are sent without signatures to their cards, and which meet with unexpected unhappy explosions toward Simmy from their recipients.

An out of the way delivery to Coniston, which has its own florist and leaves Simmy wondering just why Persimmon’s Petals was chosen, bring DI Moxon to her shop. The unsigned bouquet for a Mr. Hayter of Rosebay Echoes has been found in his house, never put in water. And there’s no sign of Mr. Hayer himself until his bod is found on the fells, an apparent suicide.

Sammy’s upset by the rash of these anonymous orders. In the middle of trying to figure out this muddle comes her Worcester friend, Kathy, for a visit. Kathy’s daughter is in the area and Simmy agrees to put her up so Kathy can figure out what her daughter is keeping from her. Worcester is Simmy’s old hometown, and Kathy’s appearance adds to Simmy’s disquiet. As happy as she is to see her old friend, Kathy reminds her of her lost baby and marriage.

Running a floral shop, Simmy has learned flowers can be sent for reasons other than niceties, apology or revenge among them. “A florist put herself in the line of fire simply by being associated with major life events where emotions were heightened and families forced to confront disagreeable truths.”

Then a second man, a housemate of Mr. Hayter, is found murdered at Rosebay Echoes, and once again, Simmy finds herself involved in crime, against her better judgement.

With her helper, Melanie, and young friend Ben on the case, it will be up to Simmy to help DI Moxon figure out just what’s going on, and how climate change experiments and caves figure into the situation. It’s a perplexing mystery, almost a perplexing as Simmy’s feelings towards local potter, Ninian, and DI Moxon.

 

Marilyn Meredith: Seldom Traveled Sunday, Sep 4 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:10 am

Please welcome prolific author Marilyn Meredith, who will discuss writing her newest Tempe Crabtree mystery, Seldom Traveled.

Seldom Traveled Front Cover

Fiction Too Close to Fact

by Marilyn Meredith

This is not the first time this has happened to me—writing a book and then having a similar thing happen in real life after the book is finished.

When I began writing Seldom Traveled I didn’t know I’d be including a raging forest fire. But as happens so often, as the characters became defined and the mystery developed, I knew that a huge fire had to happen.

After I’d finished the book and sent it off, the first big fire of the season broke out in the rugged canyons and hillsides above Santa Barbara. Next came the horrendous fire at Lake Isabella that consumed 100 homes and took two lives.
Lake Isabella Forest Fire

In the foothills and the mountains where I live conditions are prime for a fire—a drought followed by enough rain to produce lots of growth that dried quickly when the weather turned hot. Many of the trees in the mountains are dying because of the several years of drought, creating plenty more fuel for a fire.

As I’m writing this, so far, we’ve been spared.

My heroine, Tempe Crabtree, in her role as deputy, is assigned to make sure all the residents of remote homes and cabin have left the area. The job itself is dangerous as she avoids the fast moving flames—but that’s not the only threat she must face.

Other stories I’ve written have had scenes and parts in them that ended up being repeated in part in real life—either something that was reported in the news, or happened to someone I knew.

I like it much better when something I write doesn’t end up happening later. . .

Marilyn Meredith
Seldom Traveled Blurb:
The tranquility of Bear Creek is disrupted by a runaway fugitive, a vicious murderer, and a raging forest fire. Deputy Tempe Crabtree is threatened by all three.

Me at A Crushing Death Book signing
Marilyn Meredith’s Bio:
Marilyn has had so many books published, she’s lost track of the count, but it’s getting near 40. She lives in a community similar to the fictional mountain town of Bear Creek, the big difference being that Bear Creek is a thousand feet higher in the mountains. She is a member Mystery Writers of American, three chapters of Sisters in Crime, and is a board member of Public Safety Writers of America.
http://fictionforyou.com
http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/
She’s also on Facebook and Twitter as MarilynMeredith.

New Contest: Winners will be randomly picked from those leaving the most comments on the blog posts. Each winner can choose one of the earlier books in the series as either a print book or e-book.

Tomorrow I’ll be with Maggie King at http://maggingking.com/

 

End of Summer Beach Reads: Robertson, Korman, Ballard Friday, Sep 2 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:07 am

Auntie M has three lovelies coming your way, perfect for the Labor Day beach weekend:

BakerStJ
Michael Robertson’s Baker Street Mystery series have a devoted following of the two brothers who receive and answer the mail for 221B Baker Street addressed to Sherlock Holmes. The hijinks continue in The Baker Street Jurors.

With barrister Reggie Heath finally off on his honeymoon, solicitor Nigel Heath is keeping the office running smoothly. Well, maybe not that smoothly. He’s actually been living in the office after his American adventure and its accompanying romance ended badly. It’s up to Lois, their receptionist/legal secretary/admin. assistant/ barrister’s clerk to keep him topped off with coffee, working on the wills and other legal papers that cross his desk and having an occasional shower to get him out of his depression.

Then Nigel receives a jury summons–but in that day’s mail, so does Sherlock Holmes! Nigel promptly makes a paper plane of Sherlock’s summons and sails it out the open window. He does, however, turn up to do his duty, and is immediately drawn to one of the young female jurors. This might not be too bad at all, he thinks.

But it couldn’t be worse when he’s assigned as an alternate juror to the case of the century: National hero Rory McSweeny is on trial for the murder of his wife, the victim of a horrendous beating with McSweeny’s own cricket bat. On the verge of leading England’s team to another international championship, the papers have been full of outraged talk mostly pro and con about the accused man playing in the games.

It’s not a case for the faint-hearted as the jurors start having unfortunate accidents. One of the alternates seems to be more than closely acquainted with the sayings of Holmes, too. And then the judge is persuaded that the jury must travel to Devon to see the site of McSweeny’s alibi, and things take a decided turn for the worse. Before it’s over there will be accidents during a storm, rumors of secret tunnels, and a locked room murder. Bright and sparkling with that Robertson irony.

killer-punch-killer-wasps-mystery-by-amy-korman-0062431137

The Killer Wasps Mysteries bring the four friends–antique dealer Kristin, tiny Sophie, Bootsie and Holly–back together for another outing. The annual Tomato Show is at the country club, and their goal is to outdo their nemesis Eula, just in the annual Tomato Show, but also in the tennis tournament.

But then a valuable painting of a pastoral scene disappears from the country club, and everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. What are the four friends to do but investigate? They secretly hope Eula is to blame, but can only find evidence of another crime: buying her tomato plant entry from a New Jersey dealer.

And as if the gals haven’t enough on their plates, a new Mega Wine Mart plans to open in their little village, cutting a swath right through their forest. Everyone’s in favor of cheap wine, but to take out their forest for it takes the cake. It’s not bad enough that Sophie is going through a tough divorce, and the details of that one will bring a smile to your face, she’s also hoping for a proposal from her loving Joe.

It’s enough to drive a gal to drink! A charming cozy series~

miss dimple_MECH_01.indd

Mignon Ballard bring her two series heroines together in a charming cozy set in the small Georgia town of Elderberry in Slightly Bewildered Angel.

It’s 1944 and schoolteacher Dimple Kilpatrick and her town do their best to help with the war efforts, while worrying about the ones they care for serving in the armed forces and trying to cope with rationing. Things are made worse when the boardinghouse cook, Odessa Kirby, who helps Miss Dimple’s friend Phoebe Chadwick run the house on a shoestring, has to leave to care for a relative.

But all is not lost when on the doorstep they find Augusta Goodnight, whose wise ways with cooking and even cleaning soon save the day. Then the shy Dora arrives, hoping to stay on the library’s porch, toting her things in a paper bag. She brings out the town’s charitable spirit and soon she’s being fed and cared for.

Miss Dimple is suitably shocked when Dora is found dead in the church, and Augusta persuades her she must find the culprit. She enlists her friends to search for clues, even traveling to Dora’s hometown, where her horrible married life is exposed. It will be up to Augusta to convince Miss Dimple to follow the threads that will solve the mystery that will change Miss Dimple’s life.

A heartwarming cozy with exacting period details and the the meeting of Ballard’s two sleuthing heroines.

 

Kermit Roosevelt: Allegiance Wednesday, Aug 31 2016 

Uncategorized , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:17 am

Allegiance

Kermit Roosevelt (yes, he is President Theodore Roosevelt’s great-great-grandson) has taken an incident in our country’s history and thrusts the reader straight back in time to explore the inner workings of what to most Americans is a lofty but unknown world, The Supreme Court. Allegiance is his well-drawn legal thriller that brings that period to life and involves the reader totally in its compelling plot.

Set during World War II, when then-President Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order that imprisoned Japanese=Americans in war camps, the author cannily focuses on one young Philadelphia lawyer and his experience to personalize and fictionalize that time in our history.

Caswell Harrison is known as Cash, and thinks he has his life on a known track, from his girlfriend to law school and after. Then Pearl Harbor occurs, and after flunking the army physical, Cash is given the honor of clerking for Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Disappointed in not serving in the army, with his girlfriend unhappy that he is leaving her in Philly for Washington DC, Cash finally is convinced this is how he will serve his country.

He’s overwhelmed at first by the paperwork and learning how to fit in, but he soon adjusts, even to playing tennis with Justice Black at his home, where he becomes a substitute son for the justice’s own two enlisted sons. But soon he and a colleague uncover a conspiracy which points at pressure being brought to influence the Court’s decisions regarding these important cases.

It’s a difficult thing find evidence to prove, as the cases revolve around the constitutionality of the prison camps where the Japanese-Americans have been interred and documents they have been asked to sign. Then Cash’s friend and colleague dies under suspicious circumstances, and Cash finds himself embroiled in an surreptitious FBI investigation, colluding with J. Edgar Hoover himself to obtain evidence.

Along the way Cash will find himself questioning everything he thought he believed in–and everyone he thought he trusted. This could be called a loss of innocence story, and there is certainly that angle to the novel, but it’s more about Cash finding his true self and his values while he finds out just how good a lawyer his can be.

There are plenty of figures from history who are portrayed accurately and brought to life bedside Hoover and Black, such as Felix Frankfurter and Francis Biddle. And his exhaustive research informs the law around the cases of Hirabayashi, Korematsu and Endo that formed so much of the lasting history of this time. The time period is reflected accurately, from the clothing to the mores of our culture in the era.

It’s also a crime novel at its heart that is based on a thoughtful examination of our country and the values. In the author’s words: ” . . . the story I tell through my hero is that good people can do bad things. The internment decision has the form of a basic moral dilemma: when is it okay to hurt some people to help others?”

It’s a fascinating question that Roosevelt thoughtfully examines through Cash, and readers will easily be caught up this legal thriller that examines one of the worst civil rights violations in our country’s history.

Roosevelt’s knowledge and experience include clerking for DC Circuit Judge Stephen Williams and Supreme Court Justice David Souter before becoming a professor of constitutional law and creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

 

Laura McHugh: Arrowood Sunday, Aug 28 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:42 am

Arrowood

Laura McHugh’s debute, The Weight of Blood, proved to be an exceptional read, a haunting tale of the Ozarks with a mystery at its heart.

So Auntie M was looking forward to her newest, Arrowood, set in Keokuk, Iowa, and she is happy to report this second book exhibits the same strengths that made McHugh’s debut outstanding. There is the compelling setup and plot; the characters and depths of human nature she plumbs; the way the setting becomes integrated to be a character itself. McHugh captures the lazy feel and slow deterioration of the southern Iowa town on the Mississippi, a town where protagonist Arden was raised, that once featured ornate and lovely grand houses lining the road along the riverside but now has the feel of something dying.

It’s to her recently inherited family home that Arden returns after the death of her father, abandoning her unfinished Master’s thesis in the process. Though the dust and leaks, the bones of the old house are still fine, and she sets about trying to recapture a part of the childhood she holds in her memory, the years before her younger twin sisters were kidnapped and presumed dead. Tabitha and Violet had never surfaced, and twenty years have passed with Arden’s memory giving her a snapshot of a gold car pulling away from the curb in the front of her house, a flash of white she assumed was her sister’s hair in the front seat. It’s a mystery that has never been solved, but part of Arden’s quest to return to her old home is to lay to rest the ghosts of that awful sunny day.

Arden will find, to her surprise, that some of her former neighbors and friends have never left the area and she wonders if she can rekindle old relationships. She will become suspicious of the new man who claims to be obsessed with unsolved crimes and is writing a book about her lost sisters. She will worry that the handyman who’s been caring for and preserving the house all of these years is hiding his own secrets.

Most of all, she will find that beneath the dust and the haze of her own memories of that day, lie more secrets than she could ever have guessed.

Auntie M’s writer friend, Linda Lovely, is from Keokuk, so she was familiar with the name and a bit of the area and its history. Under McHugh’s talented writing, the whole area comes to life in a sleepy way that is characteristic of towns succumbing to the ravages of time and slowed economics.

The suspense almost has a creepy value to it, in a mild way, but one that sustains the tension of suspense, hovering just under the surface: are the dead sisters trying to send Arden clues? But this is not a ghost story.

It is, instead, the story of a brave young woman trying to unravel what is real and what is not in her memory, as she tries to put her own ghosts to rest. The startling conclusion makes sense in a way that probes the psychology of Arden’s family and friends. Highly recommended.

 

Six in Asian Settings Wednesday, Aug 24 2016 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:48 am

Astute readers of Auntie M’s blog may have noticed the plethora of guests these last six weeks and the lack of personal reviews. This is because Auntie M has been recuperating from back surgery and not been allowed to sit at her desk for any length of time. That restriction is slowly being lifted, but she HAS been able to read. Now there are stacks of lovely books standing around, waiting to be reviewed for your reading pleasure. Over the next few weeks you will receive posts with multiple books to facilitate this backlog and get that information out to you. Auntie M hopes you will enjoy reading about the books she’s been reading to help her recovery~

Today’s group all have Asian settings. The unfamiliar names may take getting used to, but the complex plots and mysteries don’t require translation.

Apricots revenge

Apricot’s Revenge by Song Ying, is a nice mix of police procedural with an amateur sleuth who arrives in the form of investigative reporter Nie Feng, who owns a poodle names Yahoo.

But that’s where the levity ends. When a real estate magnate is found dead on a beach, it’s assumed he suffered a heart attack while swimming. It’s only when murder becomes clear that three main suspects rise to the police’s attention–until one of those three is found with a desk drawerful of death threats that accompany his body.

It will take the steady diligence of the young reporter who had just interviewed the first victim a few days before his death to unearth a new suspect, one with a motive that centers around revenge and a tragic historical event. Sing is an award-winning author is China in fiction and nonfiction.

AuntyLeeChilledRevenge

Singapore comes alive under the pen of playwright Ovidia Yu and her Aunty Lee series. This time it’s Aunty Lee’s Chilled Revenge that brings a hearty does of Singapore culture and foods along with its humor. The queen of cozy sleuth and chef at Aunty Lee’s Delights agrees to be sidelined to take it easy after she sprains an ankle.

Her partner Cherril and stepdaughter-in-law Selina take over the running of the cafe. But readers who know Aunty Lee know she just can’t keep herself from snooping when a person from the past is found dead in her hotel room: a woman they call the “puppy killer,” with good reason.

The dead woman’s return to the area was to file a lawsuit against Cherril and two other Animal ReHomers, claiming they had caused her husband to divorce her.

Inspt. Salim Mawar and his team reappear in the investigation. After the past cases they’ve worked on, the Inspector is aware not only of Aunty Lee’s cooking delights but her sleuthing skills. With the dead woman’s sister causing hysterics, it’s enough to make Aunty Lee pop into the kitchen for a new batch of cookies. And yes, there are recipes.

SilentDead

Travel to Japan for the first American translation in what is a long-inning series there. The Silent Dead is the first in Tetsuya Honda’s hit series, already made into television series and movies. Heiko Himekawa is the young police detective in Tokyo who constantly must prove herself to her colleagues and superiors.

This complex mystery starts with a body being discovered in bushes in a quiet Tokyo suburb. Wrapped in a blue tarp, tied with twine, the victim has been murdered in such a bizarre way that Reiko immediately thinks this is the signature of a serial killer.

Once she hits on this thought, Reiko must prove it, and prove it she does, as the bodies start to pile up, some unrecognizable by now. The ones that are identified seem to have no known connection to each other–until a website that calls itself “Strawberry Night” comes to their attention, and everything the police team think they know will change.

A look at the world of Japanese culture and their policing system, with Reiko an intriguing character whose backstory provides a link to her nature for detecting.

Beijing-Red

Two Navy vets writing as Alex Ryan have drawn from their experiences and combined taut action to produce the new thriller Beijing Red.

Nick Foley is an ex-Navy SEAL, working in China on a water irrigation system for his own purposes when he becomes engaged in a conspiracy of the highest order. A bio-terrorism outbreak in western China somehow points to Nick as the leader behind this and he’s suddenly on the run to clear his name.

The Chinese CDC, nanobots, China’s elite Snow Leopard counter-terroism until all come into play, as does the microbiologist Dr. Dazhong Chen. Suddenly Nick realizes he has a purpose and an ally.

Action-packed in a race against time, the duo must find the real perpetrators while convincing the Snow Leopard chiefs that Nick is not trying to bring the Chinese population down. First in a series, with Hong Kong Black–and the lovely Dash–to follow. One to watch for action fans.

Jade Dragon Mtn
Elsa Hart’s debut last year, now in paperback, Jade Dragon Mountain, introduced readers to the complex world of southwest China of 1708. Vintage China’s popularity as a setting is evident with recent titles like The Secret Language of Women by Nina Romano, set during The Boxer Rebellion, each conveying the same level of diligent research combined with elegant lyrical language and customs of their era.

Hart’s story in what is really an historical murder mystery has an exiled nomadic librarian as its sleuth. Li Du travels to Dayan, near Tibet, to stay with his magistrate cousin in preparation for the emperor’s visit during an expected eclipse. That’s when a Jesuit astronomer is found dead and Li Du must help his cousin by finding the real murderer. With real insight into the era, 18th century China comes alive under Hart’s literary turn.

Hart’s new release, The White Mirror,finds Li Du traveling to Lhasa, joining up with a tea caravan on their way. A sudden sleet storm takes them all by surprise, and when they stop their horses, Li Du sees a Tibetan monk sitting perfectly still beside a stream on a bridge leading to the only shelter in the area.

On closer inspection, the meditating monk is revealed to be murdered, stabbed to death. A white mirror has been painted on the front of his robe, Li Du’s first clue.

With the sleet turning to snow, the group take their shelter at the home of the wealthy Doso and his assorted team of characters and family staying there. This is a mixed group and one that is finely drawn, as is the setting.

What starts out as a group stranded in a snowstorm, and the death of one lama, soon turns into a full-fledged murder investigation. There are several characters with strong motives who might want the death of the lama. Despite the remote setting, the murder is soon linked to reasons that has far-reaching implications.

With an ally in Hamza, the storyteller, to keep the company engaged so Li Du can slip away to conduct his investigations, the mystery soon is unravelled. This is a mystery where the reader knows everything Li Du does, so it’s fair play. The question is if the reader can put the clues together the way they need to be to figure out the identity of the killer.

 

Marian McMahon Stanley: The Immaculate Sunday, Aug 21 2016 

Uncategorized , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:46 am

Cover-Immaculate

A SENSE OF PLACE – THE IMMACULATE

Boston is a great setting for a mystery novel like The Immaculate – a story about the murder of an elderly nun and the unholy alliance that did her in.

Rich in history, ethnic neighborhoods, political intrigue and, at the time of the story, an ecclesiastical structure tightly tied to powerful civic interests – the city is a gift to any writer.

Sister Mary Aurelius – secretly called Spike by her students because she could be tough – burned with a mysterious mission she was determined to complete before she died.

But Aurelius is murdered before she can.

Rosaria O’Reilly, a former student who’d left the old neighborhood for a very different kind of life, comes back for the nun’s final services. There, she finds herself drawn further and further into this murder case where nothing is as it seems. At great personal risk to herself and others, Rosaria commits to finishing Sister’s dangerous mission. She does so, but in the process, her own sense of herself is changed forever.

To build the book’s sense of place, without having it read like a travelogue, I tried to weave specifics into the narrative:
The sound of a Bruins game playing on the TV at The Creek, a rough bar in Chelsea where Rosaria uncovers a key piece of the puzzle;
The smell of salty ocean air mixed with newly mown hay at the Motherhouse on the North Shore when Rosaria visits a nun with a story;
The sight of old Italian men in Frank Sinatra hats sitting outside the cafes in Boston’s North End as Rosaria drives along the waterfront;
The taste of whiskey in strong tea on a rainy day when Rosaria contemplates her losses in her condo on Boston Harbor;
The feel of the red bricks on the wall of the old-line parochial school where Aurelius is murdered.

Rich locations are like additional interesting characters in our stories. I’d like to think that worked in The Immaculate.

Available at Barking Rain Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and selected bookstores.

IMG_2684

MARIAN MCMAHON STANLEY: Like her protagonist, Marian McMahon Stanley enjoyed an international corporate career with a Fortune 500 company and, more recently, a senior position at a large, urban university. A dual citizen of the Untied States and Ireland, she is a proud mother and grandmother of four adult children and a growing number of grandchildren. Marian writes in a small town outside Boston where she lives with her husband Bill and – just as in The Immaculate – a Westie named Archie.

Currently, she’s hard at work on her next mystery. You can find out more about Marian on her website, or on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. WWW.MARIANMCMAHONSTANLEY.COM

 

Natalie Barelli: Until I Met Her Sunday, Aug 14 2016 

Uncategorized , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:23 am

Please welcome Australian author Natalie Barelli, who will describe the influences on the thread of her new novel, UNTIL I MET HER:

Until I Met Her_Ebook-300

Writers and Lies Natalie Barelli

Writers and lies

My new suspense novel, Until I Met Her, is loosely about a woman who pretends to be
the author of very successful novel.

I didn’t set out to write a novel about a writer, I set out
to write a novel about a lie, but the two are strangely intertwined: after all, it can be argued
that all crime writers are also consummate liars: they set out to tell you a story, which we,
the readers, take at face value, only to find out at the last minute that we were led up the
garden path and we are left to reel in shock at the deceit that was played out.

In Until I Met Her, Emma isn’t a writer at all, and she doesn’t harbour any ambitions of being
one, either. In her case, it all starts out as a favour to a friend. Put that way, if you were asked to put your name to a novel you didn’t write, would you?

That depends on who’s doing the asking, I hear you say. Which is a fair comment, so
let’s assume it’s your favourite thriller author: your favourite thriller author has asked you to
pretend that you wrote his or her latest book. Why? because it’s different from anything
she’s written before, because she’s typecast, she wants the novel to be received at face
value.

Why not write under a pseudonym? you ask. Sure, but there’s a publicity tour to be
done, there are TV interviews lined up, magazine profiles wanting to be written.
Would you be Jill Emerson? Rosamond Smith? Robert Galbraith?

Of course you would.

These are all pen names, but here is a real life story: In the mid 70s, the famous French
author Romain Gary wrote a novel under the pseudonym Emile Ajar. The novel became so
successful that it became impossible for “Ajar” to stay out of the public eye. But no one
had ever met Ajar, not even his publisher. So under such pressure, Romain Gary enlisted
his nephew to front up and pretend to be “Ajar”.

It may have been decades before the age of the internet, but it still didn’t take long for
someone to point out that Ajar was in fact a man called Paul Pavlowitch. So Paul
Pavlowitch did yet more interviews admitting that yes, he had been writing under a
pseudonym. He was the nephew of a very famous author after all, he wanted some
anonymity. This multilayered subterfuge went on for a few years, during which “Emile Ajar”
published three more novels, and when Romain Gary died in 1980, Pavlowitch/Ajar came
out publicly and revealed the duplicity.

Back in the fictional realm, writers and lies make for some gripping thrillers, and some of
my favourites are John Colapinto’s About the Author, Sascha Arango’s The Truth and
Other Lies, and Lie with Me, the beautifully written latest novel by the brilliant Sabine
Durrant. In all these, the protagonist is either a writer who lies about what they’ve written,
or someone who lies about being a writer.

In Until I Met Her, Emma has only recently met Beatrice, a famous crime writer, a woman
Emma admires, and they are fast becoming friends. Then Beatrice asks for a favour: she
needs someone to be “the author” of her yet to be published novel, someone not shackled
by the expectations of fame and genre. Would Emma be willing?

Of course she would.

Neither Beatrice nor Emma have any expectations of the novel breaking any records. It’s well and truly a literary effort, it might do well with the critics, but such novels
traditionally sell little on the commercial front.

Except that it does do well. So well, in fact, that very quickly, Emma becomes rich, famous,
and hailed as one of the most talented authors of her generation.

And now, Beatrice wants her novel back.
***
Until I Met Her is published on amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Until-Met-Her-
Natalie-Barelli-ebook/dp/B01FBTW19C/

natalieBarelli

You will usually find Natalie Barelli reading a book, and that book will more likely than not be a psychological thriller. When not absorbed in the latest gripping page-turner, Natalie works as an IT professional, loves cooking when she has the time, knits very badly and spends far too much time at the computer. She lives in rural NSW, in Australia.

Until I Met Her is her first novel.

 

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