Following in the Path of Their (Gum)shoes

~ Margaret Lucke ~ 3 Comments

by Margaret Lucke

Jess Randolph, the star of my novels Snow Angel and A Relative Stranger as well as several short stories, is a private investigator and an artist, and she thinks of both of her twin professions as ways to search for the truth. Jess is following in the footsteps of a number of strong women who came before her, and I, as her creator, am doing that too. Some of our predecessors are well known, but these days others are too easily overlooked. So I thought I’d use this post to bring some of them to your attention.

Marcia Muller has been credited with launching the female private investigator in American mystery fiction in 1977 when she published the first Sharon McCone novel, Edwin of the Iron Shoes. Sara Paretsky (Indemnity Only, featuring V.I Warshawski) and Sue Grafton (A Is for Alibi, starring Kinsey Millhone) followed in her footsteps five years later. The three of them paved the way for many other mystery writers, including me.

No one can say these authors have been overlooked. They have many fans (including me), they’ve received high honors, and their series are landmarks in the mystery genre. All of them have been named Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America.

But what about their predecessors? It’s true that most fictional female sleuths prior to the 1980s were amateurs. Yet well before Muller, Paretsky, and Grafton published their first books, quite a few authors had written mysteries whose heroines worked as professional detectives — which was considered to be, as P.D. James pointed out in the title of her 1972 novel, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. The woman in question was James’s character Cordelia Gray, who appeared again in The Skull Beneath the Skin.

Okay, P.D. James doesn’t qualify as an overlooked author either. However, consider these. How many have you read—or even heard about?

Catherine Louisa Pirkis, creator of Loveday Brooke (The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective, 1894). An unmarried woman from high society, Loveday has been forced by circumstances to earn her living. “Marketable accomplishments she had found she had none, so she had forthwith defied convention,” and signed on as an operative with a London detective agency. See her at left as she consults with a client.

Anna Katharine Green, creator of Violet Strange (The Golden Slipper and Other Problems for Violet Strange, 1914). A wealthy young debutante, Violet secretly works on occasion as a detective to earn money that her father doesn’t have to know about. She prefers cases “of subtlety without “of subtlety without crime, one to engage my powers without depressing my spirits.”

Jennette Lee, creator of Millicent Newberry (The Green Jacket, 1917, and two more). Middle-aged and middle class, Millicent starts her detective agency after working for another investigator. Interested in psychology, she is more interested in rehabilitating the wrongdoers she catches than in turning them over to the police.

Patricia Wentworth, creator of Maud Silver (Grey Mask, 1928, and 32 more books). A retired schoolteacher, Maud is a “private enquiry agent” who works with Scotland Yard. She uses her mild manner and appearance to her advantage, so that the villains in these cozy stories believe her to be harmless and unthreatening until it’s too late. Maud began as a secondary character and came into her own in The Case Is Closed, 1937.

Roswell Brown, creator of Grace “Redsie” Culver (20 stories in The Shadow Magazine, 1934-1937). Despite being create by a man (Roswell Brown is a pen name of pulp writer Jean Francis Webb), Redsie is a gutsy, independent, no-nonsense woman. She works for Big Tim Noonan’s detective agency and has a penchant for fast action and chocolate sodas. She’s “nobody’s bimbo,” notes Thrilling Detective Web Site, “and an important figure in the development of female private eyes.”

Maxine O’Callaghan, creator of Delilah West (“A Change of Clients,” Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, 1974; Death Is Forever, 1980 and five more books). Delilah’s appearance in print predated the debuts of Muller, Paretsky and Grafton. In the first novel in the series, ex-cop Delilah goes after the man who murdered her husband, only to have the killer be murdered in turn and herself to be framed for the crime. You wouldn’t go wrong inviting Delilah to the same party as Sharon, V.I., and Kinsey. The Private Eye Writers of America honored Maxine with The Eye, their lifetime achievement award.

This isn’t an exhaustive list. Can you think of other forerunners to today’s female private eyes who have been overlooked and deserve recognition?

Spring Has Sprung

~ janispattersonmysteries ~ 5 Comments

by Janis Patterson


I have never had any trouble being lazy, which is a difficult thing for a writer to overcome. Our careers – to say nothing of our incomes! – depend on us being self starters who have to be responsible for getting everything done when it is due.


And that’s hard to do at any time, let alone when warm weather has finally returned, and the song of the hot tub, or the pool, or the garden is heard in the land. Frankly, I much prefer being on the porch, a glass of iced tea beside me, watching the antics of doves, blue jays, cardinals and lots of little brown birds jockeying for supremacy at the bird feeder, and the squirrels hanging around at the bottom of the pole, hoping for some spillage. Sometimes a hawk will fly overhead and suddenly everyone disappears, either under the deck or into the leafy trees. Then, once the dark shadow is past, they’re back chowing down. There must be some sort of wildlife telegraph about sucker humans who put out free food, because every day there are more. I fully expect the next time I oversleep there will be a delegation knocking peremptorily at the patio door.


See? See how easy it is to wander off into current pleasure – especially when ‘current’ is so beautiful and enticing – when you should be concentrating on immediate deadlines. I have to finish one book, am halfway done on another, really need to do some research on a long-neglected non-fic history, format a special edition paperback for the goody bags at our SCV reunion in July and… I’m sure there are several other somethings, but can’t remember them at the moment. You see, the blue jays and the doves are having a ‘discussion’ about who is next at the feeder.


At least last week I presented my seminar on ‘The Secrets of Republishing Your Backlist’; it was tiring, but received quite well. I am still working on ‘Your Story – How to Write A Memoir’ that I’m giving at the end of the month in Arkansas. I think that’s all of them…


It’s so much more pleasant to sit and watch the Bird Wars, but that does not make a career. I really do have to be more disciplined. When I worked in a 9-5 job I would have fired an employee as easily distracted as I. Successful work depends on projects finished. Well, I do get my projects finished, but not in as timely a fashion as I might wish.
How do you get things done? Do you adhere to a strict by-the-hour schedule, or simply pants it, getting things done even if it means staying up all night, or something else? Let’s face it – no matter what system/systems we use, every once in a while an unkind Fate will dictate that for one reason or another we have to pull an all-nighter. Or two.


But we get it done. We’re writers, and we know what we have to do. Even when there are Bird Wars at the feeder, the temperature is perfect and the hot tub is calling seductively. We are writers.

Get On With It

~ Janet Dawson ~ 5 Comments

My work-in-progress is a historical novel. It’s a first draft and I’m working on it in fits and starts, given the interruptions that life throws at me.

Lately I’ve been thinking about transitions. Now, the dictionary describes a transition as the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another. That could mean transitioning from one place to another. Or in the case of a character, looking at how that person is changing internally or emotionally.

Both these definitions are appropriate in terms of the novel. My protagonist does have some internal and emotional changes in store. But right now, she’s changing from one location to another. So, I need to move her, and two other characters across the landscape from point A to point B—and not take forever doing it.

The book takes place in the late 1870s. My protagonist, Catriona, is the daughter of an officer in the frontier army. In the early chapters of the book, she leaves Fort Garland, Colorado, heading to New Mexico to join her father at Fort Stanton, his new post. With her are two companions, a young woman named Martha and a man named Eusebio. I’ve been writing scenes describing these three people on the road to Santa Fe, where they will make a stop before heading farther south again and arriving at their destination.

Agonizing over minutiae is part of my writing process. On the other hand, describing the journey is useful information to help me visualize what I’m writing about and want to convey to readers.

So lately, I’ve spent lots of time thinking about the route, which doesn’t always follow the asphalt roads of the present day. These people are traveling on dirt roads and trails, which sometimes cross streams by going through the water rather than clip-clopping over a convenient bridge. I’m visualizing the terrain, which involves mountains, rivers and high plains. And pondering how many miles a horse-drawn wagon can cover in a day, given the terrain and the condition of those roads.

After mulling it over, chewing on it, and examining it every which way, I finally decided to get on with it. Readers don’t need to follow along on every dusty mile of that journey, taking in the sights during the day, cooking over a campfire, and sleeping under the stars at night. One day and one night, that’s really all that’s needed to give the appropriate information.

Besides, I want my characters to get to their destination so I can move along with the plot.

Jump ahead, already.

I’ve done this with other books, of course. When I was writing Witness to Evil, a Jeri Howard novel, I had Jeri down in Bakersfield. She was stumped and so was I. What happens next? I jumped ahead and put Jeri on the freeway, heading to Los Angeles. Next think I knew, after finding clues and interviewing people in LA, she was on the road again, this time to San Luis Obispo and then Fresno, before returning to Bakersfield with lots of fresh clues. And me, lots of new chapters.

I also write the Jill McLeod series, featuring my sleuthing Zephyrette back in the early 1950s. Much of the action in those books takes place aboard the train known as the California Zephyr. And I must work within the framework of the train schedule. When writing the first book, Death Rides the Zephyr, I had timetables all around me. Not just the timetable for the train passengers, but the timetable that showed the work rotation of the crew, which was different. Again, it wasn’t necessary to write about every mile of that train journey. It was enough to give readers a glimpse of the changing scenery and the feel of the train rocking along the rails. After a long day seeing to the passengers’ needs, Jill is entitled to go to bed in her Zephyrette’s compartment and wake up the next morning, miles down the track and ready for a plate of railroad French toast in the dining car.

Guest Blogger ~ Kate Michaelson

~ patyjag ~ 5 Comments

Why Mysteries?

When I set out to write my first novel, I knew without question that I would write a mystery. As a teen, I remember coming home from the library with stacks of Agatha Christie books and tearing through them within a week. Part of me loved escaping to the far-flung settings of the Golden Age mysteries, but I also enjoyed the way the investigation brought me into the story—not only as an observer, but as an active participant. I got to look over the shoulder of Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple as they interrogated witnesses and checked alibis. 

But even more than the cognitive challenge of who did it, I’ve always been drawn to the psychology of why they did it. Like the detectives, I searched for motives. I wanted to understand why people would commit such seemingly illogical acts. What series of events brought them to that point? As an adult, it’s a question I still find myself asking on a daily basis. 

As much as I tell myself not to, I can’t help but watch or read about the twisted crime stories that make the news. I promise I’m a happy, fairly positive person, so what draws me to this darker side of life? I think it’s the need to understand the ugly realities most of us would like to keep at bay. Judging by the popularity of mysteries, suspense, true crime, and crime dramas, I’m not alone. Michael Connelly once advised authors to “write about what you never want to know.” Whether we’re reading or writing it, crime fiction gives us the opportunity to have the best of both worlds. We delve into aside of the human experience that we want to understand but would prefer to view from a healthy distance. It’s like seeing a shark—exhilarating, as long as we’re watching safely from the other side of some nice, thick aquarium glass.

Along with giving us a day pass to the seedier side of life, mysteries present character studies in disguise. Beneath the layers of intrigue and suspense lie complex characters, driven by greed, revenge, love, or twisted rationales. And, often, the detectives are nearly as troubled by the criminals. Whether it’s a hopeless, hard-drinking private investigator or the cop haunted by a cold case, the job takes its toll. Unlike the reader who can put the book down, detectives must immerse themselves in the morass of a psychopath’s logic and, thus, take the brunt of the damage. Through the detective, we make controlled contact with the taboo and explore the sides of people’s personalities they’ve spent their lives concealing.

My own mystery, Hidden Rooms, contends with the inaccessible sides of people’s personas and the secrets they keep hidden even from close family and friends. Although my book is set in a small town where everyone knows their neighbors, the drama centers on the characters discovering how little they actually know about one another. My protagonist, Riley, has spent her life quite happily accepting the shiny surfaces her friends and family present. It’s only when a disaster tears their lives apart, that she’s forced to question what they’ve kept hidden beneath their idyllic exteriors. 

My mystery—and the genre as a whole—is about trying to understand the people around us, and that’s why I love them. Crime fiction captures the thrill of the unknown and reveals it to us page by page.

Hidden Rooms

Long-distance runner, Riley Svenson, has been fighting various bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.

As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.

Buy Links

Amazon, Gathering Volumes, Bookshop.org, or CamCat Books

Kate Michaelson’s debut novel, Hidden Rooms, won the 2022 Hugh Holton Award for best unpublished mystery by a Midwest writer and was released in April of 2024. As a curriculum developer and technical writer, she has created educational content on everything from media literacy to cybersecurity awareness. She is active in several writing groups and participates in causes that support those with disabilities and chronic illness. In her free time, she loves hiking, traveling, napping and anything else that takes her away from her laptop. She grew up in Greenwich, Ohio and now lives in Toledo, Ohio with her husband and pets.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kate.michaelson/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katemichaelsonwriter/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/40269182.Kate_Michaelson

Website: http://www.katemichaelson.com

Adapting Agatha and Other Greats by Heather Haven

~ Heather Haven ~ 8 Comments

Several days after returning from the Left Coast Crime Conference, I came down with one of those upper respiratory bugs that are sent to try us. After making sure it wasn’t Covid or RSV, I accepted and dealt with it. Medicated up the wazoo, bored out of my mind, and feeling sorry for myself, I turned to what I always have in times of trouble – murder and mayhem.

One to never let me down in that department is Agatha Christie. I think I’ve read everything she’s written and loved them all. I even liked The Big Four, considered one of her worst. Frankly, I’m convinced that even her worst novel is better than a lot of other writers’ best, but maybe I am prejudiced.  Whatever, it was Agatha Christie Chicken Soup time.

Assessing the situation, I realized the Kindle was being charged and any reading materials in the bedroom were aaaall the way across the room on bookshelves. Doped up and lazy, I reached for the remote. I managed to stream in a collection of several versions of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple done throughout the years. I glommed onto Joan Hickson, who I feel is the quintessential Miss Marple, sharp but seemingly befuddled, all-knowing but not pushy about it. And here she was, in one of my favorite Christie stories, Nemesis. I blew my nose, settled in, and went back to jolly old England during the fifties aboard a week-long motorcoach of historic homes and gardens.

Before long, everyone aboard the bus winds up to be a suspect, of course, having either won the tour or offered hard cash to join. Most damning of all, each was a player in a past … secret. But nothing throws Miss Marple for long. She’s there, complete with godson companion, in accordance to the wishes of a recently deceased friend and millionaire, to right some horrible wrong from the past, no matter what the consequences. Thus, the name Nemesis. Guided by a biblical saying “Let Judgement run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream,” the story moves forward and pretty much follows the original, Christie plotline which is chilling, fiendish, unique, and satisfying.

I got greedy. Right next to this episode was yet another Jane Marple thespian, Geraldine McEwen, appearing in the very same mystery. I thought, well, why not? The comparison of both might be fun, and Lord knows I’m not very busy. So, hubby brought me a cup of herbal tea, a scone, and I settled in again. Okay, not a scone. It was actually a chocolate croissant but munching on a chocolate croissant doesn’t sound quite right for the occasion.

Ms. McEwen presents an intelligent, twinkling Marple, as if she knows whatever she is saying is clever and important and you’ll catch on in your own good time. I found her Marple charming. I liked her. The storyline, not so much. In fact, I was completely at a loss as to what was going on. It still took place on a bus tour of historic homes and gardens, a few years after WWII, and there were a host of odd characters showing up with familiar character names, but they were nothing like the original ones. In short, there was no similarity on any level to the book or even the 1989 Joan Hickson version.

This version involved missing airmen, whackadoodle nuns, scarecrows, and a bust of Shakespeare used for nobody’s good at all. Even the villain was different and once revealed, was an unsatisfying one, at best. I couldn’t blame the budget. It looked to me as if the same amount of money and attention to detail went into making the 2007 version as it had the one done twenty-years earlier. But this 2007 Nemesis made no sense. I became cynical. Some hotshot somebody or other, under the guise of transporting the work from one medium to another, thought they could do a better job of Agatha Christie’s story than Agatha Christie. As Puck says, “What fools these mortals be.”

Not-so-cleverly segueing over to Shakespeare, here is someone else whose stories are often played with as fast and as loosely as Agatha’s. They have cut, added, rewritten, edited, obliterated, updated, melted down, puffed up, refined, and poured over brine everything he has written. It is rare to see his work performed in any of its original form, especially the same historical period. Too old hat. Others need to put their stamp on it. So if you’re off to see the latest version of Macbeth, it might have a Polish circus or a Macon, Georgia, WWII prisoner of war camp as a backdrop.

Back to Agatha. I remember one horrible adaptation of And Then There Were None in 1989. They called the movie Ten Little Indians. This particular novel has had many titles throughout the years. Namely, different forms of Ten Little Somethings Or Other. Not much worked until they came up with And Then There Were None, which might seem to give the plot away but apparently doesn’t. And it’s PC.

Regarding the plot, the scriptwriters changed the location from an island along the Devon Coast and plopped it amid an African safari at the bottom of a ravine, their idea of remoteness. Here, the roar of a surrounding pride of lions can often be heard but are never seen. I suspect the big cats were too embarrassed to be caught on-camera. Even Donald Pleasance and Brenda Vaccaro could not save one single moment of this dreadful interpretation. And yet I watched every frame, hoping against hope it might save itself. After all, it was Agatha’s work. Maybe somebody in charge got a clue and reverted back to what worked in the first place. Maybe somebody saw the rushes. Maybe the Serengeti rose en masse and took back its own.

Nope.

One reason for the wild takeover of someone else’s work could stem from filmland’s past history. From 1930 until 1968 every single movie, including adaptions, had to follow the guidelines of the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also called the Hays Code. The Code was a strict master and you’d better believe it. It didn’t mess around, it didn’t compromise. If the code found one scene didn’t meet those standards, the entire movie could be scrapped. Goodbye production, cast, and crew. Hello breadline. Below is a link to what a studio had to deal with: https://cinecouple.hypotheses.org/files/2017/07/Code_Hays.pdf. That’s still no excuse for some of the stunts adapters pulled throughout the years, even though sometimes rewriting had to be done. Unfortunately, it did give those with power, money, and ego a chance to play around with a genius story until it resembled the original work in title only.

Here’s an interesting fact, though, in the it-pays-to-be-good category. No matter what a screenwriter, actor, producer, or director does – and they can make all the idiotic versions they want – the reality is nothing can diminish the author’s original WRITTEN words. Anyone who wants to know the talent and timelessness of the Bard or the Queen of Mystery and others like them, have but to sit down and read their books. The power of the word. It never goes away.