Greetings!
Summer is just around the corner and with it our latest, #168 of Mystery Scene.
In this issue, Oline H. Cogdill talks with Sujata Massey about the intriguing Perveen Mistry, the pioneering female Parsi lawyer in at the center of her winning series set in 1920s India.
Everyone has their favorite Sherlock Holmes incarnation, but how about your top Professor Moriarty? Tom Mead looks at the many faces of Moriarty—including the real life villains who inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create his nefarious criminal mastermind.
Stephen Mack Jones’ mixed-race protagonist August Snow is a bright new star in the mystery firmament. John B. Valeri chats with Jones in this issue about the author's Detroit ex-cop and his high-octane do-gooding in his latest outing, Dead of Winter.
Valeri also chats with Caroline Kepnes, who has added to the gallery of terrifying yet charismatic antiheroes with her protagonist Joe Goldberg. Joe, both on the page and in the television adaptation, is a hopeless romantic—until the woman in his crosshairs turns out to be less than perfect.
Also in this issue, Joseph Goodrich takes a look at the uniquely imaginative short stories of John Collier. (I’m a fan of Collier’s quirky 1930 novel His Monkey Wife: or Married to a Chimp and had forgotten how many of his short stories deserve equal praise.)
We also feature a remembrance of Margaret Maron, author of the acclaimed North Carolina mysteries featuring Judge Deborah Knott. Cogdill notes both the greatness of Maron's literary legacy and the expansiveness of her generosity as a tireless champion of other writers, a genre pioneer, and one of the founders of Sisters in Crime.
You might think of writing as an indoor occupation, but Will Dean is out there chopping trees and clearing ditches while coming up with his uniquely claustrophobic tales. Craig Sisterson tracks down the author to his Swedish forest lair for the inside word on this author's dark, psychological tales.
In addition to the fiendishly clever crossword puzzle by Verna Suit, we have “Perilous Puzzles” in this issue by Maya Corrigan. Elaine Viets and Debbie De Louise offer interesting essays on their new books, and Ben Welton takes a look at the influential academic mystery The Horizontal Man by by Helen Eustis.
Enjoy!
Kate Stine
Editor in Chief, Mystery Scene
