Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 50 + novels, novellas, and short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.
Great mystery/thriller books writers should read… by Robin Henry
It is time for year end lists! Here’s my list of favorite mysteries and thrillers I read in 2022. NOTE—I read these in 2022, some of them were published earlier…
Each of these are a great mini-masterclass for mystery writers, too. Each does a wonderful job of keeping the reader curious, building suspense, but without frustrating the reader. Several of them are also playing with form, like epistolary or traditional historical. If you want to write a great mystery or just get lost in one for a while, these are all excellent choices.
The Appeal by Janice Hallett
An excellent use of the epistolary form, and just a fun mystery with a load of crazy characters who will keep you guessing. Definitely recommended for Cozy fans…
Apples Never Fall by Liane Moriarty
Domestic Thriller by the current Queen of the Genre in my opinion. So many family secrets…but somehow all loose ends are explained and tied up at the end.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley
Need a book that will make you stay up until 2 AM? Look no further. This apartment building is creepy and so are the people who live there…
The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
You’ll laugh, you’ll tear up, you’ll love every moment you spend with the gang. One of the most fun things about Osman is the observations he makes about the world through the eyes of his characters. Surrender to it and you won’t be sorry.
Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St. Olaf’s Church by Indrek Hargla
English translation by Adam Cullen, English version published by Peter Owen
A finely plotted traditional medieval whodunit. If you’ve been wishing for a new Father Cædful, try Apothecary Melchior…
Fatherland by Robert Harris
Gritty, alternative history mystery set in the Berlin of a partially victorious Third Reich. The Cold War looks a little different and the Americans under President Joe Kennedy (mobster father of John, Ted, and Robert) is cozying up to the fascists. The book is simply fantastic and also a little frightening because of the way Harris understands human nature.
Robin Henry is a librarian and independent scholar turned book coach who loves history and mysteries along with her hot beverage. You can find out more at http://readerly.net or contact her at readerlybooks@gmail.com
My mind spins so many different directions when I’m “stewing and brewing” the next book or chapter. The other day, as browsed the email of free photos from Depositphotos a vector caught my attention. It is in this post. I thought could I use that for anything, and poof! the idea for this post came to mind.
Everyone has a unique to them fingerprint. It is theirs and theirs alone.
The same can be said for a writer’s voice. Not their speaking voice, their style of writing. Some writers use long, elaborate words or sentences. They spin their tales with sinewy prose, weaving the tale in between the actual words on the page. Then there are others who use precise words, short sentences, and graphic descriptions.
No matter what the writer writes there is a telltale “fingerprint” to their writing. Think about some of your favorite authors. Why do you read each one of their books? Is it how the story is worded? The characters? The plotting?
Characters? Plotting? How can that be voice? Again, think about your favorite authors. Do the characters seem similar even if they have different names, backgrounds, and ethnicity? Every author puts a little of themselves into their main and sometimes secondary characters. They can’t help it. Otherwise, how would they be able to describe feelings, emotions, and even the setting around them, if they didn’t allow a bit of themselves to slip into the characters.
And Plotting- You can give five authors the same basic theme for a book and each one would put their own spin on how that theme or plot played out. Again, they would each put their knowledge, feelings, and imagination into that story, making it their own with their unique voice.
I’ve always thought of my writing as simple and engaging- not really having a memorable voice. However, many readers tell me they enjoy the simplicity of my writing. They can see the story as it unfolds and not have to guess what words mean. I take that as a compliment to my style. Especially, when I’ve had several people also say that my books brought them back to reading.
My true voice, I think, is that all my stories are about justice. Not just the bad guy getting what he deserves but also showing the injustices that are in the world. I will throw in a cause here and there in my books to bring it to the attention of my readers. And thankfully, they understand that is what I’m doing. I don’t preach. I reveal the injustice and leave it up to the reader to do more digging if it intrigues them. That is my voice. As unique to me as my fingerprints.
Coming at the end of this month, book 10 in my Gabriel Hawke series, Bear Stalker.
Greed, misdirection, and murder has Hawke rushing to track his sister in the Montana wilderness before she becomes the next victim.
Oregon State Trooper Gabriel Hawke’s sister, Marion, is on a corporate retreat in Montana when she is suspected of murder. Running for her life from the real killer, she contacts Hawke for help.
Hawke heads to Montana to find his sister and prove she isn’t a murderer. He hasn’t seen Marion in over twenty years but he knows she wouldn’t kill the man she was about to marry.
As they dig into possible embezzlement, two more murders, and find themselves trying to outsmart a wilderness-wise kidnapper, Hawke realizes his sister needs to return home and immerse herself in their heritage. Grief is a journey that must be traveled and knowing her fiancé had wanted Marion to dance again, Hawke believes their culture would help her heal.
That’s what young violin prodigy Julia Kogan discovers on the night of her debut in the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera.
Julia is the protagonist in my Opera Mystery novel series. I know her very well. She is my alter ego, my clone: myself at that age, when I first started out as a newbie in the Met Orchestra.
How did a Met Opera violinist morph into a writer of mysteries? The answer lies in a sad story with a happy outcome.
When I was in my twenties, I had the good fortune to be playing in the pit at the Met, where I was privileged to watch and learn from some of the most glittering celebrities ever to grace the opera stage. Rehearsing and performing with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo was an almost daily occurrence, and dreamlike in its splendor. Night after night I watched the dazzling Austrian crystal chandeliers rise to the ceiling, heralding another first act curtain about to rise at the world’s most prestigious opera house. It was hard work but rewarding.
Alas, after 21 years of opera spectacles from Mozart to Verdi to Wagner, injuries suffered in a car accident forced me to give up my Met career. What new creative outlet could I replace it with? It was writing that saved me.
I had always written, since I was a kid in grade school and was placed in an after-school program for Creative Writing. That was when I discovered my love for the art: inventing characters and plot lines and weaving them together to tell stories. Even when I was at the Met, I took writing classes whenever I could fit them into my schedule. That passion for telling stories has not faltered. I never expected it would one day become the key to my artistic survival. Nor did I anticipate that the Met itself would be a source of inspiration for future novels.
While I was at the Met, I had learned something surprising about the venerable institution. When I observed the backstage intrigues that went on behind that famous “Golden Curtain,” I found that in every department of the company, from the biggest onstage stars to the orchestra musicians to the stagehands and more, egos and rivalries ruled the day. These people were always at odds with each other. The place was a musical Tower of Babel.
Take the orchestra, for instance. 100 neurotic musicians thrown together in a hole in the ground, with no light and no air, 7 days a week. You see more of these people than your own families. Sooner or later, someone’s going to want to kill someone. And there were some nefarious goings-on as well. True events that would curl your ears.
How could I not write about this place? I let my wicked imagination take over, and before I knew it, I had created my Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series. Book One, Aria for Murder, takes place at the Met, where neophyte Julia becomes entangled in a murder investigation. When she realizes her probing has placed her in danger of becoming the killer’s next victim, she must use every shred of her inner strength to save her own life.
I could never be as brave or as plucky as Julia. But I have gotten limitless vicarious thrills from concocting jeopardy for her as she survives the Met and, in upcoming sequels, finds danger lurking in the dark corners and hidden hallways of other opera houses. The violinist in me continues to provide the background for my novels. But I consider myself doubly blessed to be a violinist who writes.
Erica Miner, the Agatha Christie of the opera world, continues the genre with a wickedly wonderful, brand-new thriller, Aria for Murder. Mystery and opera lovers alike will be fascinated to move beyond the famous “Golden Curtain” and glam atmosphere of the world’s most prestigious opera house to the dark hallways and hidden stairways of a theatre rife with danger and intrigue.
Excitement mounts as the moment arrives for brilliant young violinist Julia Kogan’s debut in the orchestra of the world-renowned Metropolitan Opera. But the high-stakes milieu of this musical mecca is rocked to its core when, during an onstage murder scene, Julia’s mentor, a famous conductor, is assassinated on the podium.
Julia is paralyzed with grief, but when her closest colleague in the orchestra is named chief suspect, Julia is thrown into high gear and teams up with opera-loving NYPD detective Larry Somers to solve the murder. As the investigation escalates, Julia and Larry are shocked to discover that the venerable opera house is rife with a web of secrets, intrigue, and lethal rivalries.
But when Julia finds threatening notes attached to her music and barely misses being crushed by falling scenery, she suddenly realizes she may be the real killer’s next victim. Then she is forced to act to save her own life—before it’s too late.
Erica Miner is the award-winning author of the Julia Kogan Opera Mystery series. Aria for Murder, her recent release from Level Best Books, has garnered 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.
I admit, I was not always. But then, like a whole lot of people I saw the 1995 Pride & Prejudice with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, and I was gone. Lost. Yourcallisveryimportanttouspleaseleaveamessage. Gone.
Since then, I have read Pride & Prejudice multiple times, along with the other Jane Austen novels. I’ve also read a lot of Austen’s contemporaries, who were between them busy inventing the modern novel and several literary genres, including Romance and Historical Fiction. A lot of these books are really bad, but some of them a absolutely fascinating, if you’re a history nerd, which I also am.
For all I credit Austen and her novels as one of the inspirations for the Useful Woman mysteries, I’d never really leaned into the plots and characters of what has become the most famous of her books.
But, as we all know, it is a truth, universally acknowledged that the writer of a series set in England in 1820 must be in want of a plot. And sooner or later, that writer needs to look to the Great Jane.
But in 2021, was there another version, or vision, left to write? Pride & Prejudice has been adapted for every genre, and every character seems to already have their book.
So, what was I going to do?
Step One: reread the original. If you haven’t read Pride & Prejudice, I recommend it. It’s easy to follow and accessible. Even better, it’s funny. It’s sharp. It’s suspenseful and engaging, even after two hundred years and countless adaptations.
Step Two: Get mad at Mr. Bennet. Mr. Bennet is our Heroine’s father. This is the guy who failed to save any money for dowries, or do much of anything else, like insist the girls get educated, so they could manage for themselves, or contact his relatives to help them get started in society so they actually had a chance of making decent marriages.
Step Three: Develop a sympathy for the three younger Bennet sisters. These are Mary, Kitty and tragic Lydia. Realize it must have been hard to be a younger Bennet. Mom’s a hypochondriac. Dad’s emotionally unavailable. You’re constantly being compared to your two oldest sisters, and you know you’re never going to measure up because you’re not that pretty and not that witty and you’ve got no money. So what are you going to do?
Step Four: Hear those oh-so-dangerous words in the back of your head What if…
What if we had a similar situation, where a ne’re-do-well insinuates himself into a family, and tries to seduce one of the sisters? What if the sister isn’t just a silly little thing with no idea of what she’s getting into? What if she’s got a plan? What if she sees this rogue as rout to getting some money of her own and away from her smothering family and perfect older sister? And what if she had help from a sister…?
What if this situation landed in my sleuth Rosalind’s lap just before the London social season of 1820?
Darcie Wilde is the bestselling, award-winning, multi-genre author of the Useful Woman mysteries. Her latest title The Secret of the Lost Pearls is an Editor’s Pick on Amazon and a “Must Read” book for 2022 from USA Today.
This captivating Regency-era mystery inspired by the novels of Jane Austen is perfect for fans of Andrea Penrose, Lauren Willig, and Deanna Raybourn, as readers venture beyond the glittering ballrooms and elegant parties of Regency London to the dark side of the city and its unexpected dangers.
Rosalind Thorne may not have a grand fortune of her own, but she possesses virtues almost as prized by the haut ton: discretion, and a web of connections that enable her to discover just about anything about anyone. Known as a “most useful woman,” Rosalind helps society ladies in need—for a modest fee, of course—and her client roster is steadily increasing.
Mrs. Gerald Douglas, née Bethany Hodgeson, presents Rosalind with a particularly delicate predicament. A valuable pearl necklace has gone missing, and Bethany’s husband believes the thief is Nora, Bethany’s disgraced sister. Nora made a scandalous elopement at age sixteen and returned three years later, telling the family that her husband was dead.
But as Rosalind begins her investigations, under cover of helping the daughters of the house prepare for their first London season, she realizes that the family harbors even more secrets than scandals. The intrigue swirling around the Douglases includes fraud, forgery, blackmail, and soon, murder. And it will fall to Rosalind, aided by charming Bow Street officer Adam Harkness, to untangle the shocking truth and discover who is a thief—and who is a killer.
Darcie Wilde is the bestselling, award-winning, multi-genre author of the Useful Woman mysteries. Her latest title The Secret of the Lost Pearls is an Editor’s Pick on Amazon and a “Must Read” book for 2022 from USA Today.
The real estate agent’s axiom about the importance of “location, location, location” holds true for me, too, as a mystery writer––usually the setting is the first thing I establish in a novel. The place where a story occurs provides a backdrop for the action and creates ambiance. It also grounds the tale in a time/space framework with a history, culture, and physical features that dictate what can or cannot happen there. A crime that transpires in a seventeenth-century French chateau, for instance, will be different from one that takes place on the mean streets of Al Capone’s Chicago or in a California mining town during the Gold Rush.
Sometimes the setting assumes a life of its own and becomes a character in the story, such as the marsh in Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing and the Four Corners in Tony Hillerman’s novels. In some cases, the setting serves as an antagonist, like the Dust Bowl in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and the Parisian flood in Sarah Smith’s Knowledge of Water. The environment challenges the protagonist and either helps or hinders her efforts to solve the crime––or to stay alive.
Much as I enjoy reading about Louise Penny’s fictitious town of Three Pines, Quebec, and Susan Oleksiw’s Hotel Delite in Kovalam, South India, I didn’t want to limit my series to only one setting. Consequently, I created a cast of New York Jazz Age musicians whom wealthy people hire to perform at special events. Each stint takes the entertainers to a different location where they’re presented with a unique set of obstacles and opportunities.
The most recent novel in my Lizzie Crane mystery series, What the Walls Know, is set in a spooky castle in October of 1925. When the musicians accept an invitation to perform at a Halloween party there, they have no idea they’ll be trapped on an isolated peninsula with real-life wizards, witches, ghosts, fortune-tellers––and a murderer. The actual neo-Gothic Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Massachusetts inspired me, and I incorporated its magnificent pipe organ and some other notable features into the story. The oceanside estate of the plumbing magnate Richard Crane prompted the first book in my series, Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife. Two future novels in the series, The Goddess of Shipwrecked Sailors and Running in the Shadows, take place in Salem, Massachusetts. This city’s colorful history offered up intriguing plot elements, including the clipper ship trade and the notorious smuggling tunnels that once ran beneath the old town.
For the sake of authenticity, I physically visit each place mentioned in my novels––every house, store, hotel, restaurant, church, library, museum, park, railway station, and cemetery. If it ever existed and still does, I’ve been there. In Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, my characters eat lunch at a resort that unfortunately burned down in the 1950s, dashing my hopes for a site visit. Luckily, though, I located an elderly gentleman whose family owned the resort when he was young and he kindly spent an evening recounting the “good old days” with me.
What are some of your favorite story locations? How do you feel they contribute to the tale? Does reading about a particular setting make you want to go there?
What The Walls Know
Halloween 1925, Gloucester, Massachusetts: Jazz singer Lizzie Crane thinks ghosts in a creepy castle are her only worry, until a woman dies of a suspicious heroin overdose and Lizzie becomes a murder suspect––or maybe the next victim.
Skye Alexander is the author of nearly 50 fiction and nonfiction books. Her stories have appeared in anthologies internationally, and her work has been published in more than a dozen languages. In 2003, she cofounded Level Best Books with fellow authors Kate Flora and Susan Oleksiw. The first novel in her Lizzie Crane mystery series, Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife, set in 1925, was published in 2021; the second, What the Walls Know, was released in November 2022. Skye lives in Texas with her black Manx cat Zoe.
Ladies of Mystery 
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