AUGUST 2022
YOUR FREE DOSE OF EXTRA MYSTERY
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Greetings!
Issue #173 marks a milestone of sorts for Brian and me. The 2002 Fall Issue was our first as publishers and owners of Mystery Scene. Two decades later here we are—happily bringing you news and notes from all over the world of crime, mystery, and suspense.
Speaking of anniversaries of note, it’s the 100th birthday of the hardboiled private eye. Our gumshoe expert Kevin Burton Smith pens a feature on this iconic figure in the current issue.
It was a plainly dressed Amish man, driving a horse-drawn buggy on a winter’s day that sparked author Linda Castillo’s imagination in 2006. Since then she has written 14 bestselling novels about police chief Kate Burkholder set in the Ohio Amish community of Painter’s Mill. Oline Cogdill talks with Castillo in this issue.
Yasmin Angoe cites winning the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award from Sisters in Crime as one of the best moments in her life. “It helped give me validation that I hadn’t been lying to myself all these years, that people who didn’t know me believed in my story and in me,” she told feature writer John B. Valeri. The result was Angoe’s hard-charging Nena Knight debut, Her Name Is Knight.
Valeri also gets the scoop on how a cozy mystery—say one written by Meri Allen—is like ice cream. Craig Sisterson catches up with Emma Viskic, an Australian musician-turned-novelist who created a sleuth who can’t hear the music she so loves. And once again we bring you one of my favorite annual features: “Writers to Watch” selected by Oline H. Cogdill.
Last, but not least, we bid a fond farewell to Jon L. Breen, our nonfiction review columnist, who has decided to retire after 20 years at Mystery Scene. Jon’s outstanding criticism has been a highlight for me from my first issue working on the magazine and I believe for our readers, as well. We wish Jon all the best and thank him for all his fine work. Fans of reference works need not despair, however. Pat H. Broeske debuts her new column, “Just the Facts.” Welcome, Pat!
Best,
Kate Stine
Editor, Mystery Scene
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Kayte Nunn Explores Motherhood and Mystery in The Only Child
by Robin Agnew
Kayte Nunn is the author of six novels, but The Only Child is her first venture into historical crime fiction.
Set in Puget Sound in both 1949 and 2013, the novel focuses on what was in the past a mother and baby house run by nuns, and in the present is a house being rehabbed by a mother and daughter as a hotel.
The daughter, Frankie Gray, is a cop, and though she hasn’t yet begun her new job in Puget Sound, she becomes involved when a tiny skeleton is found on the property. The book is both haunting and relevant.
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The Deal Goes Down
by Larry Beinhart
Melville House, August 2022, $27.99
Larry Beinhart’s elbows-out private eye Tony Casella is back after two decades for a fourth series entry. Tony has always had a rather flexible set of ethics and a storied background, and The Deal Goes Down finds seventy-something Tony retired, long out of the shamus game, and living in a ramshackle cabin at the very end of a dirt road somewhere up near Woodstock, New York. It's not long, however, before a train, a dame, and a dubious deal has Tony back into trouble—much to readers' delight.
Review by Kevin Burton Smith
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Dark Deeds Down Under Anthology Spotlights Australian and New Zealand Crime Fiction
Mystery Scene's Craig Sisterson recently interviewed Australian author Emma Viskic for our Fall Issue #173, but he has many more Down Under writers he'd love to share with fellow crime and thriller lovers.
In the foreword to the collection Dark Deeds Down Under, edited by Sisterson and released this summer, he writes, "As global readers have discovered, today's Aussie and Kiwi crime writers are at the forefront, crafting cracking tales in vivid setting, with unforgettable characters and standalones and ongoing series."
You can catch Sisterson in conversation with the Australian host Trevor Chappell discussing the new book and the Down Under crime scene on ABC podcast Overnights or learn more about Dark Deeds here. |
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Favorite First Lines
Your attention-grabbing intro for the month
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"Allison slid back under a single sheet after a middle-of-the-night trek to the bathroom. She lay still, breathing in the sweet deep summer air, listening to the night sounds outside her open window—the symphony of crickets, the hoot of a barn owl, the wind rustling the oak leaves near her window. The air was heavy, and it was humid, so she soon kicked off the sheet. Even in her pink short and tank top, it wasn't enough. She rolled out of bed and walked to the wall switch beside her bedroom door to turn on the overhead fan. Her finger was on the switch when she heard slow, light footsteps on the stairs, tiptoeing steps, and the familiar creak of the seventh stair. One of her parents was up? She opend her door, looked out into the dim hallway, started to call out, and froze. Two men were walking quietly toward her parents' bedroom at the end of the hall. In the hallway night-light she saw each man carried a gun."
(William Morrow, August 2022)
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