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In 1977, the New York Daily News published an article about a beautiful young con woman named Barbara St. James. (At least, that was one of her names.) “If you meet her, you will like her,” ran the article. “She will draw out your life story, your troubles and triumphs. She appears wealthy, a woman of substance and class. She drips with sincerity.”

Appears was the second-most important word in the paragraph, but the first was like. You will like her. Beautiful Barbara’s life story has long been forgotten, but that line could be used to describe almost every con woman before and after her. If you meet her, you will like her. The con woman’s likability is the single most important tool she has, sharp as a chef ’s knife and fake as a theater mask. Without her likability, she would be nothing. If you like her—and you will like her—then her work will be so much easier. It’ll all be over quickly. You’ll hardly feel a thing.

The fact that we like con artists so much is probably the greatest con of all time. How did they pull it off, these criminals, creating a world in which we call them “confidence artists” while other criminals get unembroidered titles like “thief” and “drug dealer”? Why do we call their crimes “playing confidence tricks,” like we’re talking about a mischievous toddler? When journalists, lawyers, and lovers spoke about the women in this book, it was as though they were remembering a brilliant performer who had sadly lost her way. “The woman would have been a great human creature had she been highly trained, highly educated,” wrote one journalist about a Canadian con woman. The brother of a British con artist insisted that if it weren’t for an “unfortunate quirk” in her character, “she would be a wonderful, wonderful person. In fact, she is anyway.” The lover of a French con artist said of her, “Without being aware of the danger, I admired this brave spirit that was checked by nothing.” The brother-in-law of an American con artist declared, “She’s one of the nicest persons I ever met.”

There’s no point in denying it: the women in this book are extremely charming. Most of them would be fantastic company on a bar crawl. Many had great taste in fashion. The designer handbags! The fur coats! Some could do fun accents, others could tell your future. One drove a pink car, while another had a license plate that read 1rsktkr—Number 1 Risk Taker. The most dangerous one had a habit of giving out $100 bills, just because. Delightful! Clearly these women would have been entertaining to know, assuming that you stayed on their good side. But why do we feel so comfortable admiring them? You can’t go around gushing about how your serialkilling sister-in-law is “a wonderful, wonderful person” and a “brave spirit that was checked by nothing,” but the internet is choked with articles like “Why We Are All So Obsessed With Scammers” and “How to Dress Up Like Your Favorite Con Artist for Halloween.”

A simple explanation for all this adulation is that con artists have a reputation for being nonviolent criminals. Rarely will you find a con artist stashing someone’s head in her freezer. Her victims almost never end up dead. Almost never! This makes it awfully convenient for us, because we can dismiss these victims as gullible-but-largely-unharmed idiots and focus all of our fawning attention on what makes the artists—er, criminals—so fabulous.

But perhaps there’s a darker reason we cheer on the con artist: secretly, we want to be her. Most people, especially women, live their lives rattling around inside a thousand and one social barriers. But, through some mysterious alchemy of talent and criminality, the con artist bursts through those barriers like Houdini escaping from one of his famous suspended straitjackets. The con artist doesn’t feel the need to use the correct Social Security number, or keep the name her parents gave her, or put her real eye color on her driver’s license. She doesn’t mind forgery. She’s not afraid of a little bigamy. She’ll drive a fancy car right off the parking lot or steal a necklace made of 647 diamonds, and she doesn’t care who pays the price for her crimes. And though people love to turn her into a metaphor—for entrepreneurship, for capitalist grift, for the American Dream, for America itself, for the Devil, or simply for the average woman’s life of mild duplicity—she doesn’t give a damn about your figures of speech. The only person she answers to is herself. Isn’t it shocking, that sort of naked selfishness? And doesn’t it sound sort of delicious?

It’s tempting to think that we could be her—if we were better at accents and owned a few more wigs and gave in, completely, to our basest social desires: for status, power, wealth, money, admiration, control. These desires may sound crass, but they’re inherent to our nature. A recent psychology study found that people crave high social rank not only because it satisfies our aching need to belong, but because it gives us a sense of control, better self-esteem, and even reproductive benefits. (Even animals want to be important. A 2016 study of female rhesus macaque monkeys showed that social climbing actually strengthened their immune systems.) Most of us indulge these desires in milquetoast ways; our tiny, depressing cons just never make the papers. We reinvent ourselves on New Year’s Day, we edit our life stories to sound more exciting, and we try our very, very best to be likable—when it benefits us. But we rarely let ourselves go all the way, whether through a sense of morality or social pressure or a good old-fashioned longing to stay out of jail. So when we read about the con woman’s hijinks, it’s tempting to put ourselves not in her victims’ shoes (we’re far too smart for that, we think), but in hers. What if we behaved like she does? What if we could charm like that? What if we shucked off morality, and society, and collective responsibility, and just let ourselves . . . indulge?

But we could never be her. There’s too much standing in our way. Too many rules to follow. Too many social contracts to uphold. This is a good thing, mostly, this following and upholding—a beautiful thing, even, though some of us will hopefully be forgiven for suppressing a small sigh of disappointment at the realization. And maybe that’s why the con artist finds it so easy to make us like her. She has to turn on the charm, sure, but we’re waiting to meet her with open mouths and shining eyes. As she performs for us, we think, “a great human creature” and “a wonderful, wonderful person” and “what if, what if, what if?” She has us right where she wants us. She’s about to make us an offer we can’t refuse.

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Excerpted from Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion. Copyright (c) 2021 by Tori Telfer. Used with permission of the publisher, Harper Perennial, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Earlier this month, we were excited to learn that Sisters in Crime has launched a new program to support emerging LGBTQIA+ authors! Submissions are now open for the inaugural Pride Award for Emerging LGBTQIA+ Crime Writers, which will provide a  $2,000 grant to an emerging crime fiction writer at the beginning of their career who identifies as LGBTQIA+. There is no cost to submit. This is the first year for the Pride Award, which has been created as the legacy project from past Sisters in Crime president Sherry Harris.

We caught up with this year’s judges, John Copenhaver, Cheryl Head, and Kristen Lepionka, to find out more about the new program, and to discuss the state of crime writing for the LGBTQIA+ community. As the following conversation shows, the world’s a lot better now for queer crime writers than it used to be, but there’s still a whole lot of work to be done.

John Copenhaver’s historical crime novel, Dodging and Burning, won the 2019 Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel and garnered Anthony, Strand Critics, Barry, and Lambda Award nominations. His second novel, The Savage Kind, will be published in October 2021. He writes a crime fiction review column for Lambda called “Blacklight,” and cohosts on the House of Mystery Radio Show. He lives in Richmond, VA. www.jcopenhaver.com

Cheryl Head’s debut book, Long Way Home: A World War II Novel, was shortlisted for the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the African-American Fiction, and Historical Fiction categories. Head writes the award-winning, Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries whose female PI protagonist is queer and black. The series is included in the Detroit Public Library’s African-American Books List. Head is a member of the national board of Bouchercon. In 2019, she was named to the Hall of Fame of the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Visit Cheryl online at cherylhead.com

Kristen Lepionka is the Shamus and Goldie Award-winning author of the Roxane Weary mystery series. Her books have also been nominated for Anthony and Macavity Awards, and she is a co-founder of the feminist podcast Unlikeable Female Characters. Find her on social media @kmlwrites or at www.kristenlepionka.com.

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CR: Why is the SinC Pride Award important to the LGBTQIA+ community and how can it help writers?  

Cheryl Head: For a writer starting out in their career, every affirmation that you are on the right track can keep your spirits and ego high and push you to the next level of accomplishment. I believe this award will have that kind of value.

Kristen Lepionka: There are a lot of different grants and awards in the writing world, and the SinC Pride Award is the first I’m aware of that is specifically for queer crime writers, and it’s so important to have that spotlight on our corner of the genre. And more than that, it’s an opportunity to support an emerging writer at a critical stage in the development of their career, which can make all the difference in the world to someone who is just starting out.

John Copenhaver: The award will help up and coming queer authors find mentorship and some financial support. Most importantly, though, is that it’s a powerful way for Sisters in Crime to declare itself an ally organization and take action to demonstrate that allyship.

CR: Why are you excited to judge this event?

Kristen Lepionka: I want to read all the best new queer manuscripts! But also, I’m thrilled to be a part of something that has the potential to positively impact someone else like me. Knowing what we know about the publishing industry and the limited number of #ownvoices books that get traditionally published, I know I’m fortunate and I want to pay that forward however I can. Plus, John and Cheryl are awesome, and I’m really looking forward to discussing the entries with them.

Cheryl Head: I’m always ready to help another writer. Also it’s inspiring for me to learn of other queer writers working in my field. This award, in particular, has so many valuable elements: A cash award for career development activities, membership in the incredibly supportive Sisters in Crime community, and a manuscript critique. That’s a win-win-win.

John Copenhaver: It’s exciting to be able to read and support LGBTQ+ writers in the mystery/thriller genre. I’ve been reviewing crime fiction for years. I know that there’s so much superb writing out there that gets overlooked because many publishers think that queer fiction—particularly if it’s genre—is too niche for a broader audience. They believe only LGBTQ+ people want to read about LGBTQ+ people. I don’t think that’s true. Younger readers are reading across difference. The readers of the future don’t just want to read characters that mirror themselves; they want to read great stories about people who are different than they are. If I can play some role in building the bridge to a broader audience for an up-and-coming writer, I’m all for it.

CR: What has your writing experience taught you about how this award could be helpful?

John Copenhaver: Representation is key. Awards that highlight traditionally underrepresented writers, like the Pride Award or the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award, in organizations that aren’t specific to those writers, are sending a compelling message: We want you. A broader audience wants you. Welcome!

Cheryl Head: This business of writing is certainly about talent, but it’s also about getting the attention of readers and reviewers and agents and peers. The Pride Award will put an emerging writer’s name on the radar of so many influencers in our writing community.

Kristen Lepionka: When you are just starting out, you don’t know what you don’t know, let alone who to ask to find out. The community aspect of SinC is such an important element of this.

CR: What do you think is the biggest obstacle when it comes to diversifying mystery and crime fiction?

Cheryl Head: Getting readers to take a chance on a new author. Mystery crime read fans-and I count myself among them-know what they like. They can be very loyal to a few authors and very habitual about what they buy. What I’d love to see is more readers stepping out of their comfort zones to try works in new styles and from new voices. I love noir. But I read broadly, and I know that noir is not just a white, male, P.I. in a fedora. It’s a state of mind; a defining mood; stories both bleak and self-reliant.

“[N]oir is not just a white, male, P.I. in a fedora. It’s a state of mind; a defining mood; stories both bleak and self-reliant.”–Cheryl Head

John Copenhaver: Non-growth-minded individuals in positions of power in publishing houses and other organizations. If you have that power, you also have a responsibility to understand systemic racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Also, marketing. For instance, it’s terrific that there’s been great energy around reading books by so many incredible Black authors over this past year. The BLM movement has created an occasion to market these writers. Still, you have to ask: Why did it take a social crisis and mass protests for the reading community to realize that there are so many splendid writers of color and that they write books for everyone, not just readers of color. The joy of reading across difference should just be embraced and employed as a marketing strategy. I hope that happens, so this won’t just be a fad, but a lasting trend.

Kristen Lepionka: I think we still have an issue of books with LGBTQIA+ protagonists being specifically labeled as “LGBTQIA+ interest” as if the broader community of crime fiction readers might not be interested—which is nonsense! A good story is a good story. Until publishers put monetary support behind diverse books, readers may not even have the opportunity to discover them, and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Therefore, #ownvoices authors can benefit hugely from the extra exposure that comes with an award like the SinC Pride Award.

CR: What challenges did you face early in your career that you felt were/are specific to LGBTQIA+ authors?

John Copenhaver: When I was shopping Dodging and Burning, I often got rejections that went something like this: “We loved your book, but we don’t know how to market it.” The subtext: We liked your novel, but it’s too gay to convince our editorial board that it would sell broadly. My agent and I kept at it, and we were lucky enough to find an independent publisher (Pegasus) that didn’t see it that way. The big five publishers are changing, but it’s slow. Independent publishers are flexible, creative, and often producing the most exciting work. They’re just more agile.

Kristen Lepionka: I wouldn’t say I experienced any challenges specifically related to LGBTQIA+ authors, other than the occasional reader comment like “I liked this book but I thought it was unnecessary that the main character had to be queer?” Like…whatever.

I will also point out that, in the Before Times when we had things like big conferences (those were the days!), there is a trend of putting all of the queer writers on a few discussion panels that are specifically about queer books. While of course there is value in these conversations, it’s also a missed opportunity to include authors of LGBTQIA+ books in panels that are about other things—trust me, we have opinions about everything.

Cheryl Head: I write a mystery/crime series with a black, queer, female protagonist. That gets my books lumped into a lot of categories, but rarely just mystery. At its heart the Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries are crime novels written with my eye and voice fixed firmly on noir, but with a world view that expands the notions of law and order, justice and problem solving. Charlie Mack is a complex, smart, quirky P.I. who happens to be queer. But in the bookstores, my books might be in the LGBTQ section or the African American fiction section, not mystery. I need that to change.

 CR: How has the publishing landscape changed since your debut?

Cheryl Head: There’s much more focus on diversity and inclusion in publishing now because there are so many fine books coming from writers of color. Amazing, rules-busting, genre-bending reads. But, the industry trusts what it trusts. Shawn (S. A )Cosby recently said in a conversation about black crime writing today that the industry has to let writers of color try things and fail. I agree. White mystery writers get that chance all the time. They may have one book that hits; another that misses. If writers of color or LGBTQ writers have a book that fizzles, it’s hard to get back in the batting roster. I made a baseball analogy there. LOL.

CR: Were there missteps you made early in your career that could have been avoided if you’d had access to resources such as Sisters in Crime community resources and/or the Sisters in Crime Pride Award?

Cheryl Head: I’m an introvert. I mean one of the textbook ones. When someone says the word ‘Conference’ I’m like, do you mean I have to talk to some people? As I’ve gotten older my Meyers Briggs status is more in the middle of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. However, if I’d known of the Sisters in Crime community earlier, I’d have been part of a network of writers who understand some people build community differently. The organization has so many resources to help you along your way in your career. They should be applauded for that.

CR: Why are grants and mentorship so important to getting an author’s career started? Who is someone that you’d like to thank for giving you a leg up in your own career?

Cheryl Head: I came to this vocation late in life after a full career in broadcast news and program production. But all along the way I was writing fiction. One of my media bosses, Peggy O’Brien, drove to my house and put Stephen King’s On Writing book in my mailbox. That’s when I knew someone else believed in me as a fiction writer. More recently, I want to thank author Kellye Garrett for plucking me from the hallways at Malice Domestic to introduce me to the Crime Writers of Color community.

John Copenhaver: Lambda Literary as an organization supported me as I figured out what it meant to a gay writer writing about gay life. In 2011, I went to my first Writers Retreat. It was life-changing. I’m always directing young LGBTQ+ writers to Lambda. They’re a great resource and community.

Kristen Lepionka: There are so many folks that have helped in one way or another, but I’d especially like to shout out former SinC President Lori Rader-Day, who I got to know in the Midwest crime writing community, and Kellye Garrett, who was my mentor in 2015 during the Pitch Wars program. If not for Kellye’s support and belief in my work, I’m not sure that I ever would have been published in the first place. Kellye is an incredible champion for #ownvoices authors and just one of the most awesome people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.

CR: Are there early LGBTQIA+ authors in the annals of crime fiction that you find particularly inspiring for writers getting started now?

Cheryl Head: Nikki Baker, Penny Mickelbury, Joseph Hansen. I’ve noticed more queer stories appearing in gothic fiction and thrillers lately—it’s great to see suspense veer away from straight couples and to see gothic novels leaning into the implications of characters’ mutual obsessions.

John Copenhaver: Joseph Hansen, Katherine V. Forrest, and Michael Nava come immediately to mind. They’re all crime writers writing universally about queer lives. Also, I deeply admire Val McDermid and Sarah Waters.

Kristen Lepionka: I love the Dave Brandstetter series by Joseph Hansen as an early example from the genre. I also have to mention a book that I always talk about when asked this question, but I so far have yet to encounter anyone who’s read it, and that’s really a shame: Dry Fire by Catherine Lewis. It’s a mid-90s novel about a lesbian rookie cop through her days in the academy and as she is starting out on patrol. One of my all time faves. 

CR: What do you see as, well, the most LGBTQIA+-friendly subgenres?

Cheryl Head: Speculative fiction, and there’s some great long-form poetry being written by LGBTQ writers. There’s a lot of blending of genre. I’m seeing horror/mystery and a lot of fantasy/mystery.

Kristen Lepionka: The YA category, across all genres, is absolutely awesome for this. And that’s so exciting, because young adult readers are going to turn into adult readers who expect to see diversity in everything they read (yay!) But in terms of right now, I think fantasy is a great place to find LGBTQIA+ stories (Sarah Gailey’s Magic for Liars is an incredible fantasy-mystery hybrid).

John Copenhaver: Crime fiction is a great place to explore and comment on social injustices. Any of the subgenres can do this. I’m particularly interested in noir, because traditionally it’s been a misogynistic and homophobic subgenre—which means that it’s a great place to address those issues and turn them on their heads.

CR: What kinds of queer stories are still underrepresented in the genre?

Kristen Lepionka: I would like to see way more trans stories.

Cheryl Head: Stories of older gay men and lesbians; queer people who aren’t in their twenties and fab forties.

I’d also like to see more stories of intergenerational queer relationships. There are a lot of them, in my experience. There are very few stories with bisexual characters. I write one, and so does Kristen Lepionka. Some of the writing that focuses on minorities in the LGBTQ community can get very political, but I’d love to see more fiction about those tensions.

John Copenhaver: Trans stories. Trans people of color. Queer people of color. There are so many necessary and compelling stories to be told. We need them, but the genre doesn’t have nearly enough. And in some cases—particularly trans people of color—none at all.

CR: Crime fiction is becoming a better space for queer writers and stories, but still has nothing on, say, YA fiction. What changes are you still hoping to see?

Kristen Lepionka: Yes, YA is where it’s at! For adult crime fiction right now, I want to see more Big 5 publishers putting out crime fiction with queer protagonists. And I also want to see books by cishet authors not perpetuating stereotypes. This has obviously come a very long way already, but there is still a ways to go. Well-written queer supporting characters are important to be able to write realistically about the world we live in, even in books that do not center their stories.

Cheryl Head: I’m hoping to see our readers and publishers become just as curious about queer life as the readers and publishers of YA are. Publishers are pivotal in inviting these readers to be excited about these themes and these books. Not only YA, but TV and film producers are way ahead in understanding that a couple of generations of new readers and consumers of other media don’t see queer characters and life as anomalies. Because, to borrow a slogan from the gay rights movement of old: we’re queer, and we’re here!

CR: Can you recommend an #OwnVoices book by an LGBTQIA+ writer out this year?

John Copenhaver: Every month I review a writer in Lambda’s Literary Review. Check it out! This month I featured Edwin Hill. His Hester Thursby series is superb!

Cheryl Head: I have to name two. Both from Lambda Literary Award winners:

Lies With Man by Michael Nava

Murder and Gold by Ann Aptaker

Kristen Lepionka: I’m really looking forward to the release of By Way of Sorrow by Robin Gigl.

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It may be two months past the winter solstice, but show’s still falling in NYC and there’s plenty of winter weather left to motivate us to stay in and read. These new-in-paperback titles are some of the most exciting mysteries and crime novels around—plus, they won’t break the bank!

Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa (William Morrow) (2/2)

“[An] exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” –The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

Kathy Reichs, A Conspiracy of Bones (Scribner) (2/2)

“Reichs roars back with a Temperance Brennan mystery unlike any that have come before it…” –Booklist

Michael Connelly, Fair Warning (Grand Central Publishing) (2/2)

“Connelly is in terrific form here, applying genre conventions to the real-life dangers inherent in the commercial marketing of genetics research.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Untamed Shore (Agora, 2/2)

“This thriller sets a quiet tone before building slowly and evenly, showing how a meek teenager trapped by circumstance grows into a strong woman who takes control of her future, though in the end it might change who she is. For fans of Celeste Ng, Alafair Burke, and Kent Anderson.” –Library Journal (Starred Review)

Christina Schwarz, Bonnie (Washington Square Press, 2/9)

Absorbing…poignant, often heartbreaking…Schwarz is a vivid storyteller.” -The New York Times Book Review

John Sandford, Masked Prey (Putnam) (2/9)

“Addictive…Sandford always delivers rousing action scenes, but this time he’s especially good on character, too.”–Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

Heather Chavez, No Bad Deed (William Morrow) (2/16)

“Her scrappy female heroine and the breakneck speed in which Chavez unfolds her story make No Bad Deed an exceptional read.” –Shelf Awareness

Daniel Silva, The Order (Harper Paperbacks) (2/16)

“A refreshingly hopeful thriller for troubled times… Silva’s latest broad-canvas thriller starring the much-loved Gabriel Allon will quickly take its reserved seat atop most best-seller lists.” –Booklist, starred review

Alma Katsu, The Deep (Putnam) (2/23)

“Clever and haunting…Katsu is a wordsmith using vivid imagery and beautiful wording to create a story that will leave you wishing there was more.” –Suspense Magazine

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, The Hollow Ones (Grand Central) (2/23)

Like a Jack Reacher crime thriller… with a Van Helsing-style demon hunter –The Guardian

 

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Humankind is predisposed to the hyperbolic. It was a true in the Titanic’s day as it is today. We love anything that smells of success. We want it huge, we crave it grand: the biggest, the fastest, the most opulent, the richest. We are drawn to such claims like moths to flame.

As much as we love hyperbole, however, it invariably leads to disappointment. This world is not meant for absolutes. Every title has an asterisk or footnote, explaining why any claims must be qualified. The problem is that we love our absolutes and have no patience for the fine print.

It is no mystery why we’re drawn to the Titanic. In writing my novel The Deep, a reimagining of the sinking of RMS Titanic and its sister ship, HMHS Britannic, I studied the events surrounding two ships in painstaking detail. While these events provide a wealth of things to capture the imagination—the glamorous passengers, the political and social moment in time—it was the parallel between those events and the current day that I found most striking. As The Deep explores, it was an age in which women faced considerable oppression and little legal recourse to improve their situation. It was also a time of great economic disparity: the rich were getting obscenely richer thanks to improvements in manufacturing and trade, while the lower classes sank further into poverty. Colossal tragedy was right around the corner: the Spanish Flu epidemic was a few years off, as was the Great War. There was a sense of giddy optimism but, at the same time, a creeping realization that maybe we were only pretending that things were great.

RMS Titanic captured the popular imagination when it was launched in late March 1912. It was born into grandeur, the largest passenger ship of its day (though, given the arms race among the world’s shipbuilders, it would be eclipsed by the SS Imperator less than a year later). A key selling point was safety. Passengers were right to worry: sinkings were more common than airplane crashes are today. A White Star vice-president went so far as to claim the ship was unsinkable. As boasts go, it was clever: every day the ship doesn’t sink, you look like a genius. Too bad for White Star Lines, the ship sank on the fourth day of the voyage.

This ridiculous boast made the Titanic forever synonymous with hubris. The ship’s funnel tops sank under the waves in three hours once it struck the iceberg. Common sense would tell you that no ship is unsinkable, and certainly not one weighing over 50,000 tons. Imagine if modern airplane manufacturers promised that a particular model of aircraft would never fall out of the sky. Yet much of the public chose to embrace this threadbare claim.

Did White Star Lines suffer any consequences for its bald-faced lying? J. Bruce Ismay, CEO of White Star Lines, was a passenger aboard the Titanic for its maiden voyage. Ismay managed to escape on one of the lifeboats, though he was widely criticized for his cowardice. Still, he managed to live with this shame to a ripe old age, something you can’t say about John Jacob Astor, the richest man in America, or the other 1,500 people who drowned in the freezing cold Atlantic waters.

As the Titanic goes to show, it is easy for humans to cling to denial when faced with existential threats like spiraling poverty and consolidation of power by elites. How does one prepare for doomsday? Is it so unexpected that many would prefer to believe the lies and would refuse to see the iceberg until chunks of it came crashing onto the deck?

In real life, Titanic’s sinking provided a wake-up call. A review of the incident informed industry-wide improvements in both design and safety procedures. The launch of Britannic, the last ship in the line, was delayed so that improvements could be made to the hull design, changes that probably accounted for the far lower loss of life when the Britannic, now a hospital ship, struck a sea mine and sank on November 21, 1916 (approximately 1500 people were killed when the Titanic sank, only 30 on the Britannic).

What lessons can we take away from the sinking of the Titanic? It reminds us that massive self-deception can’t be sustained, that after every disaster there’s going to be a reckoning, an attempt to set things right. I think that’s one reason so many people remain fascinated with the Titanic: because even though we know its sad ending, we know that come the dawn, there’s going to be a rescue ship on the horizon.

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He walked, feeling his body fill with blessed tiredness. Vyrin knew every root, every hole on this path, and he looked forward to seeing the pasture on the left, fenced by rowan trees—the berries would be ripe in color by now—and then he would encounter the sweet, gentle chimney smoke from the farm. The walk both tired and invigorated him; his recent fears seemed silly. I guess I really am old, he thought. I’ve become neurotically fearful.

He  could see the cathedral from the last turn. It stood on a stone outcropping that divided the top of the valley. The yellow façade, framed by two bell towers, continued upward from the vertical plane of the cliff. This church was much larger than the cathedral in town. It had been built here, in the mountains, by the pass, on an ancient pilgrimage path, its majestic vaults signifying the depth and significance of someone’s epiphany, an acquisition of faith that took place in the silent solitude of the outcropping.

Beyond the cathedral’s back wall, in the shade of chestnut trees, lay a small outdoor restaurant with good food. The regular waiters recognized him—or pretended to. They did not try to chat but smiled respectfully. Here he fully felt he was Mr. Mihalski; he took that pleasant and exciting sense of connection, the merging of true and invented identities, as a special gift which he brought back home in the trolley that traveled along the bottom of the valley.

Today the courtyard was full: a summer weekend. There was only one free table, at the edge behind a wide-branching tree. Next to the sandbox and swings. That meant frenzied children would run around, making noise. Vyrin preferred sitting among people dining sedately, behind strangers, in the buzz of calm conversation, the clinking of knives and forks, where it is hard to eavesdrop, photograph, or take aim.

Vyrin looked at the diners: Was anyone about to leave? No, they were all relaxed, in a merry lazy mood. The brunette at the nearby table had a provocative drop of crème brûlée on her upper lip. She didn’t wipe it away or lick it off, knowing how seductive and sexy it looked. She wore a dark metal necklace resembling a dog collar—a sign of exotic passions, kinky torment insolently displayed in a restaurant by a church.

The brunette’s sister, in her eighth month at least—her swollen belly had pulled her dress up to reveal strong, plump legs— was eating chocolate cake and schnitzel simultaneously with great appetite, as if the infant were overripe, born but remaining in the womb, and demanding his share of the feast.

Vyrin wanted to leave. He was dizzy with fatigue, the heavy scents, the density of human voices—the village was small, every- one was related in some cousinhood, redolent of fetid incest that repulses outsiders like salty seawater.

But he felt the charm of the play of light in the chestnut leaves, the clay-blue tablecloths pressed so that there wasn’t a single wrinkle, the high-necked bottles of ice water, the harmless murmur of neighbors, the balletic moves of waiters balancing enormous trays of six to eight plates on their shoulders, where atop the delicately tossed salad looking as if arranged by a coiffeur, the leaves green with reddish veins, floated golden-breaded schnitzels, resembling torn blobs of copper blasted from a smelting furnace.

Yum, yum, yum the pregnant woman crooned to her unborn infant. The limestone angel with a blurred face blew silently into a golden trumpet over the back entrance to the church. He felt himself basking in the insouciant summer that enveloped the entire world.

Vyrin ordered beer and a steak. Wasps flew toward the fra- grant hops. They were not attracted by the remains of dessert on nearby plates, rivulets of honey and chocolate—only by hops. They crawled around the rim of the mug and tried to land on his shoulder, his hand, circling persistently and stubbornly. He waved them away, almost spilling his beer. He had a bad allergy to insect bites. Back when he was in the service, the doctors said it would get worse over the years and offered to give him a medical discharge. Wasps, wasps, wasps—he moved the mug away, flicked a wasp, and then another, from the table, regretting he had not brought a jacket.

A sting. On the nape of his bare neck. Sudden. As painful as an injection administered by an inexperienced nurse.

He slapped the bite, but the wasp was gone. He turned, intent on the pain, and noticed a man walking away and getting into a car. The license plates were not local.

His neck ached. The pain spread up and down, to his shoulder, cheek, temple. He felt something microscopic in the wound—probably the stinger.

His vision clouded. His breathing became shallow. His body was engulfed by dry heat. He got up with difficulty and headed for the toilet.

Rinse. He needed to rinse with cold water. Take a pill. But wash first. Such pressure in his throat! He might not be able to swallow the pill. His skin was burning.

He could barely stand. He leaned against the sink, clumsily splashed water on his face. The wasp sting was on the right side of his neck, and his right arm was stiff. He shoved the tablet into his throat. The mirror showed a gray, bloodless, but swollen face, as if something was trying to undo the plastic surgery and force his old look back on him.

The tablet should have worked by now. It was the latest medicine.

But it wasn’t working.

A rash broke out on the gray skin. His stomach cramped. He sank to the floor, staring at the tiles—and understood. That man had not been a customer at the restaurant. Locals didn’t park where he had stopped the car.

With a final effort, he rose and holding on to the walls made his way into the corridor. His constricted throat kept him from screaming, calling for help. On the porch, he bumped into a waiter carrying a tray of bottles and wineglasses. The waiter assumed he was dead drunk and moved aside. He fell from the porch, taking the waiter with him, hearing the crashing glass and hoping that everyone noticed and was looking. He hissed and gurgled into someone’s ear:

“Ambulance . . . police . . . murder . . . not drunk . . . poison . . . I was poisoned.”

And he collapsed, still hearing the sounds of the world but no longer understanding what they meant.

The two generals had known each other a long time. They had served together under the red flag with hammer and sickle.

The lieutenant general had been chairman of the Party Committee then. And secretly, he was head of the numbered department, which was not indicated even in the  top-secret staff register. The major general had been his deputy, successor, rival. The Party Committee was long since disbanded. But the department remained. It survived all the reforms of their agency, all the changes in names and leaders, divisions and mergers. As ever, it had only a number and was not included on the organizational chart.

They were in the surveillance-free room and could talk without worry of being overheard. However, their language, laden with professional euphemisms, deceitful by nature, allowed the men to formulate sentences so that they could be interpreted as expressing either conviction or doubt.

They both knew that their conversation would most likely result in the execution of an order, unspoken, not registered in the system of secret case files, but which would still require sanction at the very top. Both generals wanted to avoid responsibility for a possible failure but to claim his share of benefits in case of success. Each knew what the other was thinking.

“According to the information of our neighbors, he died after four days in an induced coma. The organism almost coped with it, you might say. We can’t rule out that the dose was insufficient. Or its method of introduction was wrong. Perhaps he had time to take antidote pills. Or some other outside substance lowered the effectiveness of the preparation. Weather could have been a factor. Air pressure. It was in the mountains, high altitude. Before passing out, he had time to say he had been attacked. The waiter was a former policeman. Someone else might not have paid attention, thought it was just a drunken fantasy.”

“So did the neighbors want the incident to attract attention or not?”

“Naturally, they don’t give us details. They may want to put a good face on a bad game: that they had anticipated this becoming public from the start.”

“Well then . . . Let’s move on to our information.”

“An interagency investigation team has been set up. International protocols have been put into action. They’re bringing in foreign chemistry experts. There are very few specialists of that quality. They called in four people. Three are known to us, they are on file. They are people with big names. But the fourth one does not appear in the files. There is no open information about him. At our request, competent agents have been questioned. No one has heard of such a scientist. We are continuing the search; we’ve put the overseas stations on it.”

“Looks as if he’s a know-nothing, unknown professor.” Both gave a restrained chuckle.

“The source says that this professor was not involved in police cases before. He might have been used by the military, but the source does not know about that. The source is not directly involved in the investigation. His future abilities are limited. He is only coordinating the cooperation of his country’s police.”

The generals fell silent. They could picture the bureaucratic strategy in an extreme event: controlled chaos, mountains of paperwork, coordination, documents that have to be shared with other agencies. Forced repeal of secrecy regulations. Temporary commissions. Outside specialists who would otherwise never be allowed through the door. Whether the neighbors’ action had gone according to plan or not, it gave them a wonderful opportunity, which the neighbors did not recognize.

“There is a high likelihood that this professor is Kalitin,” the deputy said at last.

“Yes, that probability exists. It fits his scientific profile. Exactly. And since suspicion naturally falls on our country, it’s very reasonable to bring him in. If, of course, he is still alive. And of sound mind.”

“He’s only seventy. I assume he takes good care of his health.

Physical and mental.”

“We have an address?”

“The source reported it.”

“Will that compromise the source?”

“Can’t say with certainty.”

“Is he valuable?”

“Moderately. Because of his past in the GDR he has not been promoted readily. And he’ll be retiring soon.”

“Understood. An order must be given to the station. Let them check it out. Send the very best.”

“If they determine it’s him, we can prepare the event. And start the coordination.”

“Interesting. If it’s Kalitin, then it’s very interesting.”

“Neophyte.”

“Yes. Neophyte. His favorite.”

“None of our operatives today have worked with Neophyte.” “I am aware of that.”

“But there is one candidate—Shershnev. He did an operation with one of Kalitin’s early versions. He doesn’t have any experience abroad, however. But he was born and grew up there. His father was in our army. He knows the language well. Here’s his file.”

“I’ll take a look. Send all the necessary orders immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

The deputy left the room. The general opened the file.

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From Untraceable by Sergei Lebedev and translated by Antonina W. Bouis. Used with the permission of the publisher, New Vessel Press. Copyright © 2020 by Sergei Lebedev.

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The Baker Street Irregulars, Sherlock Holmes’s organization of motley street urchins, are going to get their own Netflix series. It’s a dark show, full of supernatural mysteries, but the paranormal activity is not the only modification to the Sherlockian world you know and love. The program, titled The Irregulars, posits that the group is manipulated into solving dangerous supernatural crimes by Dr. Watson (who is evil)—feats for which his sketchy business partner Sherlock Holmes gets all the renown. The series, which consists of eight episodes, is due to make its streaming debut on March 26th.

In an interview with the BBC, writer Tom Bidwell sums up the series as a new interrogation of Holmes’s legacy, concentrating on the construction of his mythos: “Sherlock Holmes had a group of street kids he’d use to help him gather clues so our series is what if Sherlock was a drug addict and a delinquent and the kids solve the whole case whilst he takes credit.”

The Baker Street Irregulars, who are for the most part children, made their first appearance in the inaugural Holmes novella A Study in Scarlet. They are led by a boy named Wiggins, and they perform intelligence work around London.

“It’s the Baker Street division of the detective police force,” explains Holmes to a startled Watson, when half a dozen dirty children burst into their apartment one day, in A Study in Scarlet. Holmes elaborates: “There’s more work to be got out of one of those little beggars than out of a dozen of the force. The mere sight of an official-looking person seals men’s lips. These youngsters, however, go everywhere and hear everything. They are as sharp as needles, too; all they want is organisation.” For their work, Holmes pays them each one shilling per day, plus expenses.

Holmes calls them “the Baker Street Irregulars” for the first time in the following novella, The Sign of the Four, which takes place seven years after A Study in Scarlet. The kids (now teenagers) make a few appearances throughout the Holmes stories, and have been featured in several adaptations, most recently as Holmes’s “Homeless Network” in the BBC Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch.

In the new series, the leader of the Irregulars is not Wiggins, but a preteen girl named Bea (Thaddea Graham), who looks out for her younger sister Jessie (Darci Shaw). They are accompanied by three other children named Billy (Jojo Macari), Spike (McKell David), and Leopold (Harrison Osterfield).

The cast stars Henry Lloyd-Hughes as the shady Holmes, and Royce Pierreson as the “sinister” Dr. Watson.

Take a look at the official teaser here:

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Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks.

*

Russ Thomas, Nighthawking
(Putnam)

“Outstanding. . . Thomas adeptly develops his diverse cast, but the novel’s real power lies in its intricate structure—the mystery surrounding the body is impressively deep, the various levels of tension are relentless, and every chapter ends with a narrative punch to the face. This police procedural is virtually unputdownable.”
–Publishers Weekly

Steve Berry, The Kaiser’s Web
(Minotaur)

“Berry keeps finding enticing alternate-history mysteries for Malone to solve . . . Keep ‘em coming.”
–Booklist

Joe Ide, Smoke
(Little Brown)

“Ide has displayed a rare ability to mix dark comedy and gut-churning drama…mixmaster Ide’s compulsion to blend light and dark (Isaiah’s confrontation with the serial killers, while gruesome, takes the form of “a slapstick movie shot in a burning insane asylum”) affects the two plots in surprising ways, again producing an emotion-rich form of character-driven tragicomedy, but one in which peril forever loiters in the shallows.”
–Booklist

Nalini Singh, Quiet in Her Bones
(Berkley)

“Singh sustains tension throughout, delivering a lushly written, multilayered mystery that will keep readers guessing. Susan Isaacs fans, take note.”
–Publishers Weekly

D.W. Buffa, The Privilege
(Polis)

“Buffa’s characters are compelling; the dialogue authentic and well crafted. With the current political upheaval, Buffa’s newest novel hits home in more ways than one. The author draws on his own experience as a criminal defense attorney to render realistic courtroom proceedings. Highly recommended for lovers of legal and political thrillers.”
–Library Journal

György Dragomán, The Bone Fire
(HMH) (Trans. Ottilie Mulzet)

“A poignant coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of regime change.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Justin Fenton, We Own This City
(Random House)

“Baltimore Sun reporter Fenton, whose coverage of the Baltimore riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray led to a Pulitzer Prize nomination, debuts with a searing look at that city’s recent police corruption scandal. . . . Fenton’s detailed narrative makes the tragic consequences of the [Gun Trace Task Force’s] graft palpable.”
–Publishers Weekly

Tim Brady, Three Ordinary Girls: The Remarkable Story of Three Dutch Teenagers Who Became Spies, Saboteurs, Nazi Assassinsand WWII Heroes
(Citadel)

“Historian Brady (Twelve Desperate Miles) delivers a dramatic group portrait of three teenage girls who fought in the Dutch resistance movement during WWII. Brady conveys the inhumanity of the period with precision…. This moving story spotlights the extraordinary heroism of everyday people during the war and the Holocaust.”
–Publishers Weekly

Tori Telfer, Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion
(Harper Perennial)

“Whether she’s describing women pretending to be doctors, socialites, or just another nice lady who desperately needed help, Telfer dishes up their scandalous schemes for true-crime fans to relish.”
–Booklist

Nicole LaPorte, Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies behind the College Cheating Scandal
(Twelve Press)

“[A] riveting rundown of Operation Varsity Blues…Readers will be captivated by this entertaining look behind the headlines.”
–Publishers Weekly

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I’ve always been impressed with the level to which authors, readers, and editors support each other in the crime fiction community, but the folks at #pitchwars go above and beyond. I interviewed some of the wonderful mentors and mentees of Pitch Wars to find out how their community works to help new authors break into the industry. We talked about gatekeeping, getting started, and how to gracefully take an edit, among other things. Thanks to Kellye Garrett (Hollywood Ending), Layne Fargo (They Never Learn), Mia P. Manansala (Arsenic and Adobo), Mary Keliikoa (Denied), and Dianne Freeman (A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Murder) for answering all my questions about this fantastic program. Follow #pitchwars on Twitter to keep up with all the news.

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To get started, can you give us a brief overview of what Pitch Wars is? 

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Kellye Garrett: Pitch Wars is a mentoring program where published/agented authors, editors, or industry interns choose one writer each to mentor. Mentors read the entire manuscript and offer suggestions on how to make the manuscript shine for the agent showcase. The mentor also helps edit their mentee’s pitch for the contest and their query letter for submitting to agent.

Since Brenda Drake started Pitch Wars in 2012, we’ve had over 250 success stories of mentees getting agents and/or publishing deals. Some notable alums include Tomi Adeyemi, Helen Hoang, Zoje Stage and others.

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How can people get involved in Pitch Wars? 

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Kellye Garrett: They can visit the Start Here page on our website: http://pitchwars.org/new-start-here/. They can also just hang out on the #pitchwars hashtag on Twitter. Thousands of people use it and have found friends, critique partners and just an amazing community.

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What is the best way to support the work that Pitch Wars is doing? 

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Kellye Garrett: The best way would be to share info on Pitch Wars with any emerging writers you know. For example, I found out about Pitch Wars on the Sisters in Crime Guppies board and in turn, I have shared info about it with anyone who will listen. I know at least two mentees who learned about it through me just talking it up and decided to apply.

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How has mentorship helped you in your writing career?

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Mia P. Manansala: I’m very lucky that my mentor, Kellye Garrett, has not only become my co-mentor, but a good friend. She is a constant cheerleader, sounding board, and go-to for questions about the publishing industry. I don’t know how I would’ve survived having to return to the query trenches and being on sub with a new agent and new novel without her. Plus I still use all the tools and techniques I learned as a mentee in my writing routine.

Layne Fargo: When Nina Laurin picked me as her Pitch Wars mentee back in 2017, I had no idea how to take my raw, messy manuscript and turn it into the polished, compelling story I saw in my head. She helped me close that gap and take my work to the next level. I truly have no idea where I’d be now without her guidance.

Kellye Garrett: My debut novel, Hollywood Homicide, was a Pitch Wars novel in 2014! You can read my pitch here: http://pitchwars.org/71-iou-adult-mystery/. My life changed when Sarah Henning selected me and my book to mentor. I met my amazing agent, Michelle Richter, through the program. I sold my Pitch Wars novel to Midnight Ink. It went on to be the most decorated debut mystery of the year when it was awarded the Anthony, Agatha, Lefty and IPPY awards for best first novel. And most important, it created a sense of community that I still depend on to this day.

Dianne Freeman: Working with my mentor, E.B. Wheeler was the first time my writing had ever been edited. I didn’t have a critique group or even a critique partner. I was just floundering on my own. Through PitchWars I gained an understanding of what it was like to work with an editor and produce results within a stated deadline. And if those results weren’t quite hitting the mark, to do it again. And again. Through this process I became a better writer and a better editor.

Mary Keliikoa: Being mentored has meant everything. When I came back from a long writing hiatus (15 years to be exact), I didn’t know anyone who was writing and I felt a bit on an island. Being mentored meant that I had an experienced voice who could help me navigate the new landscape of writing—not only what was happening in publishing, but what was happening in the mystery genre itself. Of course the feedback I received on my book helped me move in the direction of being published, but having that someone who believed in my work was equally as important to keeping me motivated.

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What makes for a great pitch?

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Dianne Freeman: Character, conflict, and stakes—and nothing else. I pitch a story to myself before I ever write it. If it has those three elements, I know I can write the story. Then I memorize it. I’m under contract, so I don’t have to pitch to an agent or editor, but I do speak to readers and booksellers. When they ask what I’m working on, I don’t want to go into a rambling description that keeps veering from the point—which is exactly how I talk—so I give them my pitch. Distilled to those three elements, the pitch should elicit the same reaction you want from readers when they read the book—excitement, interest, a shiver, or maybe a laugh.

Mary Keliikoa: The basics of the pitch are knowing who the main character is, what the goal is they’re striving for, and what’s at stake if that goal is not met. When you can add a layer of voice to that pitch, it turns into great.

Mia P. Manansala: Intriguing comps and specificity. Know exactly what your book’s about and who you’re trying to sell it to.

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What has your experience been like with the publishing industry? Have gatekeepers helped or hindered your career?

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Kellye Garrett: As a black woman, this is such a tricky question. I think most people will agree that I’m one of the most outspoken people in crime fiction when it comes to diversity. It’s so amazing to see editors and agents seeking out crime fiction by writers of color now because it was not like that five years ago when I was looking for an agent and later was on sub. It’s so hard because as a POC, you never know why someone is rejecting you. Is it because they didn’t connect with the book or was it because they don’t think that a book where the black woman actually solves the crime will sell well? Hollywood Homicide was on submission for over a year before Terri Bischoff at Midnight Ink took a chance on it. And I will say this. I had minimal edits on my debut. So the book that won all those awards and got two starred reviews is the same book that Michelle and I were trying to sell five years ago and was getting rejected left and right.

Layne Fargo: Gatekeepers kept me out of the industry when I was querying my first manuscript—and they were right to! That book wasn’t ready, and neither was I. Since signing with my agent Sharon Pelletier post-Pitch Wars, I’ve had a wonderful experience. She’s a relentless advocate for me and my work, and I trust her judgment completely (especially since she was wise enough to form-reject that first book).

Mia P. Manansala: With my Pitch Wars novel, I received lots of positive feedback from agents and editors (including several offers) but it never went anywhere because acquisitions teams didn’t find it “marketable.” According to them, traditional mystery (my genre) skews older and white, and my queer, Filipinx millennial solving a murder at a comic book convention didn’t have an audience. I obviously disagree, but it’ll be some time before those with power in the publishing industry reflect the demographics of the world around them.

Dianne Freeman: Gatekeepers haven’t really played a part in my publishing experience. At least part of the reason for that is PitchWars, where I connected with my agent. If not for PitchWars, I wouldn’t have subbed to her since her bio stated she probably wasn’t the best match for historical fiction. Due to the nature of the Agent Showcase, she picked me, rather than the other way around. In this way, PitchWars allows a writer to bypass a few of the gatekeepers, including the one in our own brains. As it turned out, we’re a wonderful match.

Mary Keliikoa: It’s been educational for sure. I have enjoyed seeing the different stages required to bring a book together, but my experience is it moves very slow. I’ve had to develop the skill of patience, which I didn’t possess much of prior!

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What are some pointers you can give for those who are interested in mentoring up-and-coming authors?

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Kellye Garrett: The biggest thing is recognizing the power dynamic. Even though mentoring is really just someone a bit farther in their career giving notes and advice to someone else, it doesn’t always feel like that to the mentee. What you as the mentor says is bond. A lot of emerging writers have never had a hard critique before as well. It’s like their parents or significant other being like, “This is great.” So it’s hard to get that first real set of notes. It’s not uncommon for someone to get feedback and want to give up writing. So just be mindful of how you interact and say things, especially when giving feedback. Also, just remember this is their book and their voice. It’s not yours. So please don’t try to make them mini-mes.

Layne Fargo: Remember that you’re there to help your mentee achieve their vision for their book—not your own vision. You can give advice and suggest changes, but final decisions should always be up to the author themselves.

Mia P. Manansala: Check your ego at the door. You do not have all the answers and you are not there to stake your claim on their story. Ask questions. Guide them. Help them tell THEIR story the best way they know how. Finally, empathy and kindness go a long way. Writing is a tough gig no matter where you are in your journey, and the perceived power imbalance between mentor and mentee can make it tough for your mentee to speak up when they disagree with you. Make sure your relationship is a safe space, but also keep your boundaries very clear.

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Pitch Wars provides not only mentorship, but a sense of community. How has the community of Pitch Wars made an impact on your life? 

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Layne Fargo: Almost all of my close friends and creative collaborators in the publishing world are people I met through Pitch Wars. As an extreme introvert, Pitch Wars was the perfect way to meet lots of people from the safety of my browser screen.

Mia P. Manansala: The community is absolutely the best part! I was part of the 2017 class and our group is still very active–cheering each other on, helping with beta readers and critique partners, giving book/media recommendations, and just providing a safe place to discuss the difficulties of publishing.

Dianne Freeman: It’s such a thrill when you find someone who gets you. When you find over 100 people who get you, it’s a community and there’s no feeling quite like that. We’re all striving for the same goal and sharing the same experience. We commiserate with each other and cheer each other on.

Mary Keliikoa: Having kindred spirits has been very impactful. We all understand the angst of editing and waiting and wondering. Having a place to land with people who do get you on that level, is incredible. And I think long lasting friendships come out of that as well. One of my best friends that I correspond almost daily with was a mentee the same year as I was, and another one of my close friends was an applicant. And if I’m ever wanting a sprint partner, or just to lament, I just hop over to my 2016 Pitchwars community and there is always someone there to sprint with or talk me down. There is a glue to the community that continues no matter where our paths have led us.

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Pitch Wars is one of many organizations advocating for more diversity in publishing. What changes would you like to see in the industry?

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Kellye Garrett: Diversity is trendy right now but trendy implies it’ll go away. I want diversity to be status quo, where it’s no longer a big deal to see a cozy written by a black writer or a domestic suspense written by someone who is Latinx. After the huge success of Walter Mosley and Terry McMillan in the 90s, black mystery novels were hot! But with some exceptions, most of those amazingly talented writers publishing mysteries in the 90s aren’t still writing those series today. We need to not just publish marginalized writers, we need to keep publishing them.

Layne Fargo: Publishing obviously needs more diverse contributors at all levels. One of the most impactful, immediate changes publishers and agencies could make would be offering more remote work opportunities, so people don’t have to scrape by for years in an expensive city like New York just to break into the industry. Everything about Pitch Wars has been remote since the beginning, and it’s working just fine!

Mia P. Manansala: Widespread representation across all aspects of publishing: agents, editors, acquisitions/marketing/publicity teams, etc.

What books get represented/acquired, the advances they receive, how they’re marketed (or even which books get a marketing push and which are left to struggle on their own) are so often reliant on the white, cishet experience, which leads to a huge imbalance and lack of nuance in representation.

Mary Keliikoa: Representation just needs to continue to happen on every level from the top down. That’s the only way there will be lasting change. Open hearts, open minds, and the willingness to know each other and have compassion for each of our journeys. I have hope that we will just continue to work down the path together and keep opening it up. There’s no other option. It has too happen and I’m encouraged by the outpouring that it will.

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What’s your advice for young writers and those new to writing crime fiction?

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Layne Fargo: Read a lot (not just crime fiction: every kind of fiction) and get over your perfectionism. You have to write the awful version of the book before you can even begin to figure out what the good version looks like.

Dianne Freeman: You really need to love doing this. If you don’t you should choose another career. Writing a book takes a long time and a lot of hard work (usually before and after your paying job). And there are so many ways it can break your heart. Maybe it will be after your umpteenth rejection, or maybe a one-star review, or when your editor tells you that you have to cut 100 pages from your manuscript that just isn’t working. If you write for yourself—for the joy of it, none of that will matter. You get to do what you love!

Mary Keliikoa: Join groups that are crime leaning. Sisters in Crime is great and their Guppies group focuses on the unpublished writer who wants to continue to network and build their skills. Mystery Writers of America is another great organization. In addition, just keep creating a network of people in the industry and experts outside the industry so you have a group to call upon as you write your crime novels.

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What are some recent or upcoming books you’d like to recommend, either from the Pitch Wars community or the genre as a whole? 

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Kellye Garrett: I’m super super super excited for Mia’s book, Arsenic and Adobo, and not just because she’s one of my best friends. She has an amazing writing style and is a much needed voice in crime fiction. Her books feel like true millennials, which is rare in cozies.

I begged Halley for an early copy of The Lady Upstairs, and it was worth every annoying message I sent because the book is amazing. Halley has the type of voice that makes you never want to write again because you won’t be able to match it.

Non Pitch Wars, I loved Alyssa Cole’s debut thriller, When No One is Watching. (I also begged Alyssa for an early copy of that), S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland (begged for an early copy of this as well) and David David Heska Wanbli Weiden’s Winter Counts (would have begged for this one but they accepted me on Netgalley so I didn’t have to. Yay!) These are all #ownvoices thrillers that weave cultural elements/issues with an amazing story.

Layne Fargo: Well, of course I have to recommend my mentee turned co-mentor Halley Sutton’s debut novel The Lady Upstairs, out this November from Putnam. Halley’s book is a scorching, gorgeously-written feminist noir that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since the moment it appeared in my Pitch Wars inbox.

Dianne Freeman: If you enjoy historical fiction, my mentor E.B. Wheeler released Wishwood in January, and The Royalist’s Daughter in March.

PitchWars alum, Julie Clark’s thriller, Last Flight is on my TBR.  I’m a big fan of Kristen Lepionka’s Roxane Weary. Once You Go This Far, book 4 in the series, released in July.

Outside of the Pitchwars community I have two historical mysteries on my radar: M.L. Huie’s Nightshade and S.M. Goodwin’s debut mystery Absence of Mercy came out last fall.

Mary Keliikoa: Anything from Kellye Garrett, Dianne Freeman, Kristen Lepionka and the others on this fine Roundtable that I’m proud to be part of! I also really enjoyed Pitch Wars alum’s Meghan Scott Molin’s book The Frame Up. And as a PI fan, I have to add Tracy Clark’s recently released What You Don’t See. It is excellent.

Mia P. Manansala: My Pitch Wars class has been KILLING it lately. YA mystery is a hugely slept-on category in the mystery community and that’s our loss since kid lit is where some of the most interesting and fresh takes are happening. Two queer YA mystery novels out last year from my class are Throwaway Girls by Andrea Contos and You’re Next by Kylie Schachte. I’ve been wanting to read these books since I first saw their pitches back in 2017 and I’m so excited they’re here.

On the Adult side of crime fic, They Never Learn is Layne Fargo’s sophomore novel (her PW novel Temper came out last year and is a fast, sexy ride), which came out last fall.

As for non-crime fic recs from my class, definitely check out Rena Barron and Roseanne A. Brown for diverse YA fantasy.

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What are some challenges you’ve faced in the quest for publication?

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Layne Fargo: Like most writers, I have several books in the drawer. My first manuscript racked up over 100 rejections— including two consecutive failed attempts to get into Pitch Wars!

Mary Keliikoa: I think probably the hardest challenge was during the querying stages and when the rejections rolled in, trying to understand what the agent had wanted so that I could make my manuscript better. Often, and understandably so, they weren’t very specific which meant I spent a lot of time trying to decipher what different rejection wording actually meant.

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The CrimeReads editors recommend the month’s best new crime nonfiction.

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Ellen McGarrahan, Two Truths and a Lie
(Random House)

In 1990, Ellen McGarrahan, then a reporter working for the Miami Herald, attended the execution of Jesse Tafero. The bungled execution stayed with her for a long time after, and the haunting only grew worse when she learned, years later, that there was serious doubt as Tafero’s conviction. McGarrahan eventually left behind life as a reporter and turned private investigator. From her new perspective, she decided to delve into the case to find out what really happened, and to wrestle with some of her own demons in the process. Two Truths and a Lie is a powerful story driven by intense, dogged research, told by a writer with great skill. This is sure to be one of the year’s best books in nonfiction crime. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief

Peter Vronsky, American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years
(Berkley)

The postwar period has come to be known, in some macabre circles, as the Golden Age of American serial murder. Peter Vronsky, one of the foremost chroniclers of modern serial killer stories, here narrows in on that period and frames the stories of these men, driven to kill in succession, as a kind of “epidemic.” Looking at their stories together offers insight into what drove them, but more than that Vronksy pieces together a theory of the unique American moment that gave rise to these terrible crimes. –DM

Sonia Faleiro, The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing
(Grove)

Sonia Faleiro is a narrative journalist with a talent for nuance and ambiguity, and in her new work of true crime, there are no easy answers—only hard conversations that the world must, and should, be having. The girls of Faleiro’s title, two teenagers growing up in a remote agricultural town in the state of Uttar Pradash, are murdered in the fields around their village after weeks of rumors and escalating tension. The Good Girls will not be a happy story. But it is an essential story. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

Russell Shorto, Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob
(Norton)

Growing up, Russell Shorto knew he was named for Russ Shorto, a mobster who ran a small criminal empire in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, but it wasn’t until recently that he started to get curious enough to look into the matter. Smalltime promises to be a lively journey into the illicit pastimes of factory towns in decades gone by, and the charismatic leaders of the underworld who lived to provide such entertainment. –MO

Keith Roysdon and Douglas Walker, The Westside Park Murders: Muncie’s Most Notorious Cold Case (The History Press)

In 1985 two teenagers, Kimberly Dowell and Ethan Dixon, were murdered in Muncie, Indiana. The killings spun out national headlines and a range of theories. (One of them involved Dungeons & Dragons, that 1980s boogeyman.) The community was rocked, and two reporters at The Star Press, Roysdon and Walker, were assigned to the story, which went unsolved for decades. They would occasionally check back in for new leads and angles, and after thirty years, with a new person of interest, they’ve performed their most detailed examination of the case to date. The Westside Park Murders is at once a vivid true crime account, but also something bigger, a portrait of a community bound in grief, reckoning with the kind of questions that won’t ever go away. –DM

Justin Fenton, We Own This City
(Random House)

Fenton’s We Own This City is nonfiction writing at its most urgent and essential, as he unfolds the story of Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force, led by Sergeant Wayne Jenkins. The Task Force was put at the helm of the city’s efforts to get guns off the street and quell the violence that was bubbling up following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody. Instead, the force went on a crime spree of its own, stealing, skimming, intimidating, planting evidence, and generally turning itself into a dreaded band of corrupt stormtroopers. Fenton, a reporter at the Baltimore Sun, lays out in full and shocking detail the Task Force’s crimes and how they spread like a poison throughout a city that was already grieving. –DM

Alex Tresniowski, The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP
(Simon & Schuster/37INK) 

In this riveting true story, Alex Tresniowski tells the intertwined stories of a crusading reporter, an innovative detective, and a man unjustly imprisoned. When Marie Smith was murdered in a New Jersey resort community in 1910, town leaders immediately tried to pin the murder on a local Black man. Only thanks to the diligent efforts of a pioneering detective and a nascent civil rights movement was the true culprit discovered and the falsely accused suspect set free. You’ll read this in a night, I promise! –MO

Tori Telfer, Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Female Persuasion
(Harper Perennial)

Telfer’s portraits of women criminals are always clever and compulsively readable. Last time around she was looking at women who kill; this time the material has a little more zip and glamor, though no less crime. In Confident Women, Telfer profiles women scammers, swindlers, hustlers, and all around confidence artists down through the ages, offering up plenty of compelling theories, patterns, and insights along the way. –DM

Ioan Grillo, Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels
(Bloomsbury)

The debate over gun control may flare most just after a mass shooting, but the everyday realities of gun violence are often intertwined with the realities of the drug trade and armaments manufacturing. In his new book, Ioan Grillo looks at the ease by which legally purchased weaponry makes its way into the illegal arms market, and the efforts of the gun lobby to derail any attempts at closing the loopholes that prevent effective arms control. –MO

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When I tell people that I write cozy mysteries, the most common question I get is “Who are you and why are you knocking on my door at three o’clock in the morning?” The second most common question is “What are cozies?”

Cozy mysteries are fun, light-hearted adventures—with a side of murder. A reluctant sleuth in a quaint town filled with zany characters follows a twisty trail of suspects and clues to uncover the unlikely killer. Compared with their more hard-boiled mystery cousins, cozies have surprisingly little blood with their murders, and limited adult situations—with no strong language and no sex.

The first full-length cozy mystery appeared in the 1930s, featuring Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Christie’s books coined the phrase cozy, and set the stage for all the cozies to come—a highly intelligent, nosy, regular Josephine (I’d say Joe, but the main character is most often female) who solves crimes by relying on their shrewd wit and the local gossip, rather than digging into forensics like a Sherlock Holmes might. They have evolved with the times, but cozies endure as a popular—and fun!—genre.

Many cozy mysteries remain essentially unchanged since their creation nearly a century ago. Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… books are an enjoyable series of a dozen mysteries, which other than having a notable male protagonist, are a perfect example of the genre. Dorothy St James’s The Broken Spine and Laurie Cass’s Gone with the Whisker are two more examples of fantastic embodiments of delightful traditional cozies—each with a brilliant female librarian with a mischievous cat and a penchant for solving murder in a charming setting.

However, the genre has expanded over the years to include edgier books, which deal with serious social issues, darker themes, or other real world subjects that straddle the line between cozies and traditional mystery. Leslie Meier’s Irish Parade Murder explores the topic of police use of force and the blue shield that protects them. Karen MacInerney’s Margie Peterson Mysteries deal with divorce and messy family issues, while her Dewberry Farm Mysteries touch on domestic violence. Then there’s the magnificent Charlaine Harris, who is best known for her Sookie Stackhouse The Southern Vampire Mysteries that were the basis of HBO’s True Blood. She also writes conventional cozies, such as the Aurora Teagarden series (which are featured on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries) in addition to edgier books that range from the Harper Connelly Mysteries where after a brush with death, the main character gets visions that help her locate dead bodies to the more darkly noir Lily Bard Shakespeare Series wherein the titular character has a mysterious, violent past.

As cozies grow in popularity, they might be adapted into movies, but some popular television shows align with the cozy genre as well. I’d argue that Scooby Doo is, at its heart, a cozy cartoon. My personal favorites are USA Network’s Psych (I found the pineapple!) and BBC’s Death In Paradise. The most well-known cozy mystery television show, however, is the beloved Murder, She Wrote, which ran for a dozen seasons and has spawned more than fifty popular spin-off companion novels, including Jessica Fletcher and Jon Land’s Murder in Season and the upcoming  Killing in a Koi Pond by Jessica Fletcher and Terrie Farley Moran.

A new generation of cozies are appealing to a new audience. Abby Collette’s Ice Cream Parlor Mysteries, Mia P. Manansala Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mysteries, and my own Brooklyn Murder Mysteries all feature Millennial main characters. Whereas traditionally, cozy heroines are often middle aged women, like Agatha Christie’s spinster busybody Miss Marple or Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher, these books trend younger. Manansala’s Lila Macapagal in Arsenic and Adobo, Collette’s Bronwyn Crewse in A Game of Cones, and Odessa Dean in my cozy mystery debut, Killer Content are all amateur sleuths in their early twenties, and all are characters that feel like they’d be fun to sit down and have a beer with when they’re not solving crimes.

Cozy mysteries have enduring appeal. Whether they are traditional, edgy, televised, or featuring a new generation, cozies will continue to entertain readers who enjoy a good mystery in a safe, comfortable setting with smart, lovable characters.

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As winter storms batter much of the country, and treacherous films of ice cover the roads, we’re even more homebound than usual this month, which means it’s the perfect time to indulge in some far-ranging reads. Each month, CrimeReads selects the best international new releases for crime fans, and espionage and thriller fans should be especially pleased with these wintry offerings. Looking for some order in society? Check out a new procedural from China. Ready to feel terrified in your own home? We’ve got just the German thriller for you! And wondering how authors keep coming up with fresh new tales of Eastern European intrigue? Here are three new books that prove the topic of espionage will never run dry. Stay home. Stay safe. And stay vigilant.

Zhou Haohui, Death Notice II: Fate (Head of Zeus)
Translated by Zac Haluza

In the second installment of Zhou Haohui’s internationally bestselling Death Notice trilogy, Haohui continues to wow with his sweeping yet detail-oriented take on the procedural, sure to please fans of Scandi noir and Italian neorealist detective fiction. In Fate, set 18 years after the events of the first volume, a copycat killer has emerged to take up the mantle of the vengeful “death notice” killer, who warns his victims with the titular message before exacting punishment for perceived misdeeds. Some readers have cautioned that this book may be difficult to comprehend if you have not read the previous installment, so keep that in mind before picking this one up. The trilogy is also a landmark television series in China.

Sebastian Fitzek, The Package (Head of Zeus)
Translated by Jamie Bulloch

Maybe I just feel like making jokes about German precision, but man, they sure can plot a thriller. In Sebastian Fitzek’s utterly chilling new novel, the sole survivor of a serial rapist known as the “hairdresser” for his calling card of shaving his victims’ heads, is holed up at home and terrified when she receives a request to hold a mysterious package for her neighbor. Things quickly unravel from there.

György Dragomán, The Bone Fire (Mariner)
Translated by Ottilie Mulzet

Described as a “political Gothic” by the publisher, The Bone Fire follows a young teenage girl who is rescued from an orphanage by her fortune-telling grandmother after her dissident parents are killed in a suspicious road accident. Those who enjoy Eastern European espionage and dark fairy tales will be equally pleased with this disturbing parable.

Sergei Lebedev, Untraceable (New Vessel Press)
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis

Colorless, odorless, undetectable, and untraceable—the quality of Russia’s lethal poisons has only improved in the few decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the soon-restored oligarchy of KGB officers turned capitalist strongmen. In Untraceable, Lebedev takes us into the murky world of those scientists who have developed the country’s deadly weapons of targeted destruction.

Roberta Seret, Gift of Diamonds (Wayzgoose Press)

This one isn’t translated, but the author’s long career in the United Nations and as a teacher of international relations gives her the chops to pull off this first in her Transylvania Trilogy (the following two in the trilogy are soon to be published over the next two months). In Gift of Diamonds, set during Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign of terror, a teenage girl flees Romania after her dissident parents’ arrest, in possession of her father’s valuable (and possibly cursed) stash of diamonds. She uses her treasure to investigate corruption and brinkmanship in Romania’s corrupt upper echelons, as she tries to free her  parents and evade the long arms of a brutal regime.

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When I sold my first YA novel nearly a decade ago, a friend asked me, “Do you think you’ll ever write a real book?” When I looked at her askance, she clarified, “You know, a book for adults.” There’s a pervasive misconception that books written for children are somehow smaller. That they take less work or are less challenging to craft. Too many people view content for children as less, but anyone who spends time with young people knows they’re more—more challenging, more skeptical, more demanding. Young consumers are passionate, but their attention can be difficult to capture and even harder to hold.

Those who’ve never read YA are quick to judge it. They wouldn’t know the children’s market is a forge. That most of authors come out with sharper tools and tougher mettle because of it. We learn to take risks in that oven, to bend genre and disregard rules. We tinker with POV and experiment with narrative structure, diving deep into theme and steeping ourselves in research just for a shot at seeing our work incorporated into a classroom. We become masters of pacing. Ruthless with a red pen. And we learn fast, above all, that an authentic voice is vital.

For many of us who venture into the competitive adult book market, we come carrying a well-equipped box of tools. While many of us are rebranded as debuts, you might be surprised by the authors who got their start writing for younger audiences.

I just finished reading (and loving!) The Wife Upstairs, a highly anticipated debut thriller by Rachel Hawkins. This twisted, contemporary Jane Eyre reimagining captures a gothic feel yet has the tone and pace of a domestic suspense novel, giving it a unique, genre-blended flavor on the page. But what I loved most was the intimacy and immediacy of the first person, present tense narrative. There’s a greater sense of urgency, the thrill of discovery more visceral when we uncover secrets and clues as the protagonist does. It rips away any insulation between narrator and reader, and it takes a deft hand to employ it with a flawed protagonist who teeters toward unlikeable. Hawkins’ debut was an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller, but this wasn’t her first time making it onto those lists. The former high school English teacher first hit the NYT years ago with her captivating novels for young adults.

Lydia Kang got her start penning thrillers for teens, but she’s since branched out, publishing hugely successful non-fiction medical history books as well as historical crime novels, both for adults. Drawing inspiration from her career in medicine, Kang’s books are meticulously researched, the forensic and historical detail both rich and accurate without sacrificing pacing or bogging down prose. The balance is a fine line to walk, one most children’s authors spend years refining. With her riveting historical thrillers, Kang has proven she’s a master.

One of my favorite psychological suspense novelists is Megan Miranda. Her adult debut, All The Missing Girls, turned heads with its original narrative structure—a murder mystery told in reverse. The logistics of the novel’s design boggle the mind, and yet the story unfolds smoothly, propelling the reader backward to the moment of the crime. Add an unreliable narrator into the mix, and the result is both brilliant and unputdownable. But Megan Miranda was known for her smart, twisty thrillers long before her adult debut, having published seven YA suspense novels, many of which were narrated by complex and unreliable protagonists.

A great book is a great book, no matter the age of the protagonist.

David Yoon’s highly anticipated Version Zero hits shelves this spring. Sold in an eight-editor auction, his debut was pitched as the “first great millennial thriller”, a “mashup between John Green and Fight Club”, the pitch hinting at Yoon’s YA roots. And why shouldn’t it? His young adult novel Frankly In Love—a Korean-American rom-com—also sold in a heated auction, eventually going on to hit the New York Times. And while one might wonder how a YA rom-com could prepare Yoon to write a tense speculative thriller for adults, the answer likely has less to do with genre than it does with the author’s masterful grasp of pacing, theme, and voice, regardless of the intended age group.

YA author Tess Sharpe debuted into the adult market with her thriller Barbed Wire Heart. Called a “major talent” by Kirkus and garnering several starred reviews, Book Reporter nailed it when they said, “it isn’t quite accurate to call this a debut novel, particularly since her prose and storytelling chops are equal to many a veteran author.” Sharpe had already published a highly acclaimed YA novel. Her authentic adolescent voice contributed to the success of Barbed Wire Heart, a narrative anchored by the formative childhood experiences of a deeply fleshed out adult protagonist. Moving deftly between the character’s past and present, Sharpe’s prose is both poignant and spare, her transitions seamless, creating a powerful page-turner.

A few weeks ago, I noted a deal announcement for an upcoming debut thriller for adults, written by Amy McCulloch, an accomplished children’s author with eight books for young people under her belt. Breathless, her “locked-room” murder and suspense novel set in a high-altitude mountaineering camp, sold in a six-way auction with rights already snapped up in sizable deals in several foreign markets. Described as “a gripping read” and “a richly researched thriller”, both might be an understatement given the author penned parts of the book at 21,000 ft in the death zone atop Manaslu in Nepal. I’m already betting this novel will be captivating, immersive, and tightly plotted—the culmination of years of experience and commitment to her craft.

I could list more crime and suspense novelists who got their starts in YA that might surprise you, like Chandler Baker, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, or Lauren Oliver. Or others like Kimberly McCreight, April Henry, Kelley Armstrong, and Rachel Caine, who have successfully straddled both the adult and young adult thriller markets. But I’m still not convinced any of that should matter. A great book is a great book, no matter the age of the protagonist.

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It may be my adult debut, but it’s also my sixth published novel. I’ve been nominated for an Edgar and a Stoker, won an International Thriller Award, and was invited to the White House in 2015 to be recognized for my use of mathematics in children’s literature.

I look back with pride on these accomplishments, and yet I’m surprised by how many people discount them, as if I’ve leveled up somehow by publishing a book for grown-ups.

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Everyone loves a good Cold War thriller. For two seasons, the TV series “Counterpart” gave us not only a Cold War thriller but a Cold Worlds thriller.

The chilly Berlin locations—not filmed with a blue filter like the London of “Sherlock” but still sufficient to make you want to put on a sweater—restrained performances and the coldly-calculated plot hold us at arms length while they draw us in.

The credits of “Counterpart” set the tone for the series. They are by turn intriguing and mundane: Shots of impersonal office settings juxtaposed with tantalizing looks at an isolated figure walking through cavernous, stylized underground landscapes.

The latter are meant to suggest the Crossing, the passage between two universes. But when we see the Crossing, it’s a dank basement with utility lights strung up.

And that’s perfect.

Some spoilers ahead, if you haven’t seen “Counterpart,” which saw two seasons of 20 episodes air on Starz in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and which is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. The show’s mysteries are tantalizing and revelations are doled out with great restraint.

Another day, another world

Alternative universes are nothing new, of course. I lost track of how many universes DC comics created beginning with the rebirth of “The Flash” comic book in 1959. The multiverse and worlds that mirror our own have been front and center not only in comics but in TV shows like “Fringe,” “The Man in the High Castle” (loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel) “Motherland: Fort Salem” and even in “Lost.” Not to mention the “Star Trek” mirror universe and the evil goatee sported by Spock (and spoofed in the “Darkest Timeline” episodes of “Community”).

There are no evil goatees in “Counterpart.” Maybe you’ll play the same game as I did by trying to figure out in which of the show’s worlds the scene at hand was set by how star J.K. Simmons was dressed: in black or earth tones?

Simmons got a lot of well-deserved attention for playing two roles in “Counterpart.” He’s the heart of the show. Or maybe the dual hearts of the show.

Simmons plays Howard Silk, a low-level paper-pusher in the Office of Interchange, a Berlin organization related to the United Nations. His daily job is to go to a small booth among many small booths secreted away from the offices in the building and exchange cryptic phrases with the person on the other side of the table.

In this dead-end job for 30 years, Howard yearns to do something else. He seeks a promotion from his job in the Interface division to Strategy, but his effort is quickly dismissed by the head of the division, Peter Quayle (Harry Lloyd).

Simmons also plays Howard Silk, who arrives and throws our Howard’s life out of balance. This second Howard is also an employee of the Office of Interchange but is dramatically different. He’s not a small-time bureaucrat. This Howard—this “other,” this counterpart—is jaded and tough and deadly.

“Our” Howard, the bureaucrat, lives a life recently marred by tragedy. His wife, Emily (Olivia Williams), is hospitalized in a coma after being struck by a car. Emily also worked for the Office of Interchange, but in the Housekeeping division. Needless to say, this Housekeeping does not involve cleaning. And at the top of the Office of Interchange are the mysterious members of Management. The revelation of just who they are comes in the second season and is worth waiting for.

The “stranger” Howard, known as the “Prime Howard” as opposed to our “Alpha Howard,” explains that he is from an alternate reality, a world very much like our own. But in the 1980s, in an event not explained until the show’s second season, the world split, and the resulting “Alpha” and “Prime” worlds and their events diverged.

Confused? Just go with it

It sounds more confusing than it is. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I confess I occasionally struggled to figure out which world we were seeing, so I tried to pick up visual clues quickly. How is the Howard in this scene dressed? How much swagger does Simmons display here? Is Williams’ hair loose or pulled back?

Very quickly, such distractions are forced into the background by the storyline. It seems that a decade after the Crossing between the two worlds was opened, a flu virus ravaged one of the worlds, killing millions of people. (The plot point made for some interesting pandemic viewing, I’ll tell you.)

As the Howards and Olivias move through their worlds and the worlds of their counterparts—for Olivia is still an active, badass agent in her world—we learn that something is coming. It takes two seasons to arrive, but the payoff makes the wait worthwhile.

The Howards and the Olivias don’t hog all the intrigue here, of course. Our Alpha world’s Peter Quayle is married to Clare (Nazanin Boniadi) and it turns out that Clare is not what she seems.

The series is full of complex characters brought to life by great performances. Sara Serraiocco plays Baldwin, an assassin who crosses from one world to another and who plays a pivotal role in the climax. Also great are Nicholas Pinnock (currently starring in the ABC series “For Life”) as Ian Shaw, a hard-nosed Housekeeping operative, Betty Gabriel as Naya Temple, an FBI agent who comes to the Office of Interchange with a mission, and James Cromwell—yes, “Babe’s” dad—as Yanek, whose presence in the second season explains a lot. I mean, he literally explains a lot.

‘We kill people. Then we eat breakfast’

“Counterpart” gives us just glimpses, at times, of the differences between the two worlds. The technology is different, for example. In one world, green computer screens are the order of the day and cell phones are rare.

But other key elements of the series are fleshed out fully. There’s a black site prison that the Office of Interchange maintains. Even more chillingly exists a school to train, from childhood, sleeper agents to infiltrate the other side.

“Counterpart” was created by Justin Marks, whose past credits—primarily the 2016 Disney remake of “The Jungle Book”—don’t really suggest his aptitude for science-fiction espionage. And while we’ve certainly acknowledged that alternate worlds stories have been common, it was definitely an innovation to see the genre paired with a John le Carré style story of gray, unassuming intelligence operatives.

Counterpart stands out among the many treatments of alternate worlds/alternate histories that we’ve seen in fiction for a century. Cool but hot-blooded when it needs to be, it’s a level-headed mix of science fiction, mystery, espionage and alternative history. In just two seasons, it created a world— really two worlds—that its fans will never forget. 

“Counterpart” is not a show with a lot of snappy one-liners, although as the “Other Howard,” Simmons certainly comes close. Late in the second season, he sums up his character in a quick aside to Baldwin.

“We are who we are,” Howard says. “We kill people. Then we eat breakfast.”

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My hometown, Oxford, is a city of bookish ghosts. Its honeyed streets—now spookily empty—hold shimmery echoes of its literary past. And I’m not talking about the obvious here: Inspector Morse or His Dark Materials, or even the University’s 45 Colleges with their medieval cloisters and chapels and gargoyles. I’m talking about the characters that haunt the little alleys, nooks and crannies, the tunnels and vaults, the hidden graveyards. One of my favorites spots is an unobtrusive doorway right in the city centre where a lion’s face is carved into the wood, two golden fauns perched above him: a physical inspiration, so I’m told, for C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. Another regular haunt of mine is Christ Church meadow. Every day I walk my dog  along the river bank where mathematics don Charles Dodgson sat making up stories for a little girl called Alice.

But it isn’t just the surface of the city that’s haunted. Near my house, by the River Thames, is the end of an underground waterway—‘The Trill Mill Stream’—down which, in 1908, a particularly adventurous undergraduate called T. E. Lawrence illegally sailed his canoe. (He’d grow up to become ‘Lawrence of Arabia’). Then there are the subterranean book tunnels, a dimly lit labyrinth built in the early 1900s by the Bodleian Library to house its overflow of books. These tunnels run beneath the tourist feet, the buses and students on bicycles, linking several University libraries. Most people taking selfies in front of the glorious, circular Radcliffe Camera building (also part of the library), don’t realize that they’re standing over a system of conveyer belts that are busy transporting books from hidden stacks to 29 reading rooms in various libraries.

Elsewhere in the city, dotted in leafy little enclaves, are Oxford’s hidden graveyards; essentially, a who’s who of western cultural influencers.

Elsewhere in the city, dotted in leafy little enclaves, are Oxford’s hidden graveyards; essentially, a who’s who of western cultural influencers. My favorite is Holywell, a Victorian churchyard only a stone’s throw from the High Street, but entirely hidden. If you’re brave enough to go through its little gate, down a tunnel of greenery and past a creepy, derelict gatehouse then you’ll find yourself in an overgrown and mystical space where you’ll be greeted by Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows. He died in 1932 and lies next to his only child, Alastair, who—devastatingly—took his own life on the Oxford railway track in 1920 just five days before his 20th birthday.

But it’s not all sad in the cemetery. Holywell is a vibrant place, populated not just by authors but by composers and botanists, mathematicians and Sanskrit scholars, classicists and brain surgeons. A snapshot of Oxford. Even the ‘ordinary’ townspeople are extraordinary: there’s Theophilus Carter, the eccentric furniture dealer who inspired Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter, and Basil Blackwell, whose little bookshop expanded into the Oxford institution that’s going strong even today, despite its closed doors (Blackwell’s recently threw a virtual book launch party for me—which might perhaps make Basil turn in his grave—I didn’t check.) On a sunny day, it is an oasis of wildlife: I’ve seen deer and rabbits and foxes there. But I have to admit, it can get a little creepy. The last time I wandered in—it was a misty, autumnal day—I spotted, over by a crumbling tombstone, a muscular white dog, waist high at least, her pale blue eyes fixed on my face. Later, I stumbled over a human thigh bone (dug up by badgers, or so I’m told).

Of course, this is all irresistible for a novelist—and Magpie Lane certainly bears Oxford’s ghostly traces. There is Linklater, the eccentric ‘house detective’, who has a side-line running Ghost Tours and likes to wander the graveyards, thinking about thinking. And of course, Magpie Lane is mostly set in the 400 year old ‘President’s Lodging’,  a beautiful but unsettling house with an ancient priest’s hole tucked away on the attic floor where Felicity, a spooked little girl, and her Scottish nanny, Dee, spend some very fraught nights.

Part literary gothic, part crime mystery, part love story, Magpie Lane is definitely hard to classify. But perhaps it’s just a love letter (some might say an anti-love letter) to Oxford, and all the literary characters—both fictional and real—who haunt her.

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Kid Guthrie—I’m sorry, Andrew Guthrie—my pint-sized young protégé at the paper and I went to the memorial auditorium for Larry McKnight’s speech in November. It had been a little less than a week since the senator flooded the state with his press release about the Capital News and the Communist on its staff. Though he named no names, he meant me of course, Randall Harker, Dell for short, the city editor who happened to be writing a series on the sorry-ass job McKnight was doing in Washington.

I was mostly just chronicling his career—his disinclination to show up on the Senate floor even during important votes, his constant campaign-financing irregularities, the bribes he all but bragged he took from special interests. That and his character—his two volatile marriages and quickie divorces, his immense fondness for distilled spirits. The senator struck back just as the Chinese invasion of Korea claimed the lead in the News, so forgive me if we took too little space to defend ourselves in print. But our publisher John Tuckerman—a thin, stooped, aging gentleman socialist (he preferred the word Progressive) who wore English tweeds under a swirling mane of white hair—flatly denied McKnight’s vague allegations in a rare appearance on the editorial page. Nice of him, since it was his idea to attack McKnight in the first place.

Old Man Tuckerman, I have to hand it to him, warned me off the memorial auditorium. He said he didn’t like it, my going was a kind of provocation, it might be dangerous. (He didn’t mean it was dangerous for me, naturally, he meant it was dangerous for him and the paper.) He said the last thing we needed was for trouble to start with me there. When I told him it was my story and I was going regardless, he said if I went, he’d bust me off city desk. When I ignored him, he said to take that kid with the chin whiskers—and a fast car.

“If anybody,” he said, “and I mean anybody points a finger at you, or even looks at you too long, you hop in that car and—better yet, leave the kid outside at the wheel with the engine running.” As he talked, he took out some matches and stoked his pipe. “We can still pull this thing off, Dell,” he said between smacks on the stem, “if you don’t do anything stupid. The attorney general’s investigating the senator’s campaign finances, and the Republican leadership wants to bounce him in ’52. The whole point is: Get McKnight. For Pete’s sake don’t play to his hand.”

I shrugged and left for the meeting, the kid in tow.

*

The memorial auditorium sat on the edge of downtown, at the mouth of the North Side. From there out, till you reached farm country, the neighborhoods grew swankier and swankier, the houses bigger and bigger, the country clubs more exclusive and grandiose. The worst of the Republican big money and the best of the Progressive old money lay there. Out there, they all drank cocktails together, played tennis together, golfed together, planned for the education of their children, and seduced each other’s wives. The few friends my father once had in Capital City lived out there now, too, but I never saw them.

And neither did McKnight. Oh, there may have been a couple of lawyers from the North Side there that evening who also happened to sit on the state Republican central committee. But most of the crowd came from the western suburbs and the South Side—the Knights of Columbus, and the Shriners, and the small businessmen, a few chamber-of-commerce types, a real estate agent or two. And lots of women, lots of married women, who joined the PTA and played bridge and canasta and had their hair done just for the occasion. Tonight, they brought the children.

The rest of the press was already there, and some of the boys got uneasy when the kid and I showed up. The memorial auditorium was a modern affair with a sweeping domed ceiling, concrete walls, and a blond-wood plank stage. Behind the podium, in cheap tile and pale washed-out red, white, and blue, was a mosaic of the American flag. The place was filled, the atmosphere relaxed, like a high school talent show. I heard a steady buzz of neighborly conversation, the occasional squeals of tykes trying too hard to have fun, and rare barks of discipline. The lights were up, and people looked around in the glare to see who they knew.

I knew McKnight mostly from photographs—the picked-over glamour shots of newspaper copy—but I had seldom seen him in the flesh. I got that mild twinge I always get when I come across the abstract people I write about in all their corporeal splendor. Real bodies can sit, for example, on a metal folding chair in a row of folding chairs behind a podium, and twitch, and shift position, and lean over trying to make strained conversation with persons left and right. McKnight wore a dark, conservatively cut, not especially expensive suit, a white shirt, and a blue club tie. He sat with his legs crossed, one hand always resting on his top knee as he flopped legs back and forth between the older, graying man—the geezer no doubt condemned to introduce him—and a younger, severely handsome, swarthy guy I took to be his aide, Daniel “Slick” Freeman.

McKnight was shorter than I had imagined, around five foot nine. He had black well-oiled hair, parted low on one side, the other combed straight back across the top over a bald spot. A string seemed permanently to dangle down on his forehead, dangerously close to the right eye, and he constantly pushed it back with his hand. He had a cowlick grease failed to conquer. If I had ever been tempted to buy a used car, McKnight would have been the man I expected to find standing across the hood from me.

He saw us come in while he was talking to the older man, but he did not let on. When he finished what he had to say, we were already seated, and he turned to Freeman to point us out, but before he did, he took one long, hard look at me. His face was sardonic, and his eyes—if I had been close enough to see his eyes—would hold the look of the huckster who has just spotted a newlywed walk onto the lot with his wife. His tongue flicked out across his lower lip, wetting it some more, as he smiled and spoke to the aide. Freeman’s eyes, dark and luxurious even at this distance, shot up immediately, involuntarily, at us.

The introductions consisted of mindless patriotism and half-baked eulogy. Some of us pledged allegiance to the pale-tile flag, and the gray-haired geezer, president of the city’s chamber of commerce, told a lot of silly jousting jokes playing with McKnight’s name. Finally, having spent what little dignity he possessed, the local joker gave, broadcast-commercial style, a brief pitch for free enterprise and the American way. The lights, which had remained up during the introduction, went down when McKnight rose to speak. Under the concentrated illumination of the stage, I noticed for the first time McKnight’s eyebrows. As he sat and talked casually to Freeman on the platform they were unremarkable enough, but when he spoke to the crowd they both arched dramatically, adding to the weasel-like sharpness at the center of his bloated face and to the satanic grin he deemed appropriate for his stance as a political crusader.

Later, of course, his voice and manner of speaking would become famous. All good Americans would recognize the fast, blurred, almost monotonous tone and the long, rambling, illogical style that occasionally built to a kind of ersatz intensity before he made some wild, sensational charge. The national press would claim average folks found him exciting. But that night he was still a local phenomenon, a fast-talking, small-town businessman who had somehow been elected to public office. And the audience was bored. They were bored as he repeated the charges he had made in his week-old news release. They were bored during his dissertation on the evils of International Communism. They were bored as he outlined the plot hatched by Stalin and those Soviet stooges, the Red Chinese, to conquer the world starting with Korea.

Then he stopped his slurred monologue and carefully poured himself a glass of water.

“I have here,” he said, “I have here in my hand a photostatic copy of an editorial written by Mr. John Tuckerman, owner of the Capital News. The editorial is dated March 14, 1941.”

He pulled the paper down and held it out in front of his face, as if he were straining to read it. “And in this editorial, Mr. Tuckerman says, and I want to quote this to you. He says: ‘Now let’s get down to cases. Mr. Harker—’ and by that he means Red Randall Harker, the same Red Randall Harker who now works for Mr. Tuckerman as his city editor—he says, ‘Mr. Harker is a Communist, and I defy him to publicly deny that statement.’”

It was the same kind of crap he’d been tossing around for ten minutes already. And I doubted very seriously that he held in his hand anything but another page of the speech the polished young Freeman had written for him, or even that five people in our crowd knew what photostatic meant. But the difference was this: he had supplied a name and now he had his audience. A breeze of hushes silenced the restless noise of the children.

“And let’s get down to cases. Before I came here tonight—early this morning, in fact—I sent Mr. Tuckerman a wire. And in that wire, I told him, I said, ‘Mr. Tuckerman, I have a question to ask you. WERE YOU LYING—’” The shout made most of us jump, and almost immediately one or two of the children started to cry. McKnight went on: “Were you lying, I asked, when you said Harker was Capital City’s leading Communist? If so, I said, tell us, please tell us WHEN HE CHANGED. And I did even more than that. I got down to cases. I went even further than he did in his editorial. I did not merely challenge him to publicly deny that he made that statement. No, I URGED him that if a single word of what I say is not the truth, I URGED him to sue me for libel, and I will gladly pay the damages.”

Yep, he’s got us now, I thought. Right in the wallet. I had been with Tuckerman all day, and no such wire had come for him. Still, McKnight had those of us in the audience now, in the moment, regardless of what I could disprove tomorrow.

“Let me quote something else to you,” he said, frenetically searching through his notes. Since I was positive that whatever he was looking for did not exist, the search must have been an act. But it was convincing. Why would a man act out incompetence, why would he openly reveal how unprepared he was?

“Let me quote you something else. Only this time let me quote you something from a great American—J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. I know Mr. Hoover personally, and he is extremely concerned about this case. Extremely concerned about what is happening in communities like this all over this great country. Here it is, here it is.” Again, he held a sheet of his speech out as if he were reading it. “Mr. Hoover says, ‘The primary aim of the Communist Party at the present moment in the United States is to plant party members in important newspapers and radio stations, especially in college towns.’ Now think about that—did you know that in addition to the Capital News, Mr. John Tuckerman owns controlling interest in your city’s major radio station, KNET?”

I finished his thought for him: And the renowned and progressive University of Wapsipinicon was just down the street. Every person there could finish that thought for him, now, or tonight at home, or tomorrow on the way to work. Yes, he had brought his bottled fear home for us. Now, he went in for the kill. “Now I don’t want to frighten anyone here tonight,” he said. “And when I tell you what I must tell you, now, I want you all to remain seated. And I want you all to remain calm. But you read the papers, and you know what’s been happening with the labor unions in this state and around the country, the strikes, the violence, the threats. So, I have to tell you this TO PROTECT MYSELF. Let me say now that when the time comes that I quit exposing things because I might bleed a little in return, I promise you here tonight, I will resign from the United States Senate. There is someone here tonight, right here in this audience, who would do me great harm if he thought he could get away with it. Yes, out there among you, in the dark, maybe sitting right next to you, is a Communist—”

The whispering and the sporadic whimpering, and the hushings, created a kind of tremor through the audience.

“You better go start the car,” I whispered to Guthrie. “Now.”

“Right, Chief,” he said.

“Yes, he is here tonight. Let’s have the lights up! Turn them up so we can see him! Yes, Red Randall Harker! The very man we’ve been talking about!”

The lights came on. If folks did not know where to look to find me, the boys in the press made it clear enough. And as the eyes of the crowd began to search me out, a reporter no doubt on McKnight’s payroll made it final by pointing and shouting, “There he is!” A couple of the women screamed out, the way they used to on dates at a double-feature horror show, and I remember worrying how I was dressed.

“I want that man searched!” McKnight shouted. “I want him searched!”

As the shock of light wore off and I could focus on the faces around me, I got a very, very unpleasant feeling in my gut. These people—these housewives and shopkeepers—seemed to suffer from paralysis, from the slowness of action you find in dreams. Or was it me, me who felt the leaden clamp of fear, the unreality of the moment? I should have known, I told myself. I should have figured that if McKnight was getting to me, his effect on those who knew nothing about the dark alleys of real politics would be that much worse.

I was surprised to find myself standing. I could not remember having stood. Then, I saw the men hanging around the back entrances moving down the aisle toward me. Oh, they would search me all right, and they would find on me, no doubt, one of the guns they now carried under their own coats.

I looked at McKnight and said as calmly as I could, “I am a U.S. citizen. Where is your badge?”

He smiled sarcastically. He said: “Oh, so you are a U.S. citizen? Okay, boys, you better forget it. Let Comrade—I mean Citizen Harker hide behind his legal rights. He would not dare to try anything against me here, now. But Citizen Harker, before you go…”

I had already started to move awkwardly down the row toward the aisle. The crowd was buzzing now, and people jerked their legs out of my path—but, at least, they were letting me pass. I stopped in the aisle and turned to face McKnight’s ellipsis.

“Since your boss, Mr. Tuckerman, does not like to answer inquiries,” McKnight said, “I’ll ask you. I’ll ask you to do the same thing he asked you to do back in 1941. Only, I’ll ask you to answer the question in the proper way. To answer the question Congress will put to you if we are ever fortunate enough to get you out there in Washington, D.C., on the witness stand. The question all Communists refuse to answer. Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?”

To this barrage, I responded: “I am not a member of the Communist Party.”

“That’s not the question!” he shouted as I walked out. “That’s not the question! The question is, were you a—”

Outside, I took a long breath and thought about the crowd. They had sat there, frozen. By that clown. Guthrie pulled up, and I got in the car. Before he could ask what happened, I said, “Let’s get out of here. Tuckerman’s not going to like this.”

__________________________________

From Estranged by Charles Lamar Phillips. Used with the permission of the publisher, Regal house. Copyright © 2020 by Charles Lamar Phillips.

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When we decided at CrimeReads that our next roundtable would be with women who write espionage fiction, I really did not know what to focus on. How does espionage work in a Trump or post-Trump world? As this roundtable was back in the dark ages between the election and inauguration, I knew we’d have to address the orange man in the room but not how to put it into an espionage context.

Fortunately, our excellent panel had many ideas about the political climate and the hallmarks of espionage: double-dealing, lying, manipulating, cheating, money, reputation. Once we got into our discussion it seemed inevitable that a regime like the one recently past would be chock full of these issues. Thanks to Lara Prescott (The Secrets We Kept), Lauren Wilkinson (American Spy), Rosalie Knecht (Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery), and Tracy O’Neill (Quotients) for their keen insights.

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“What’s the use of intelligence?
Or what counts as intelligence in a world that is so full of misinformation?”

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Lisa: Well, let’s start with the Big Question. How do you write espionage during a global pandemic? And what happens next? I’ve found it’s good to ask the meaty questions up front because it sparks everyone’s thinking.

Rosalie: My book is set midcentury so it’s been a way to detach from the present and honestly, that has helped me a lot during this time.

Lisa: I think a lot of writers are using history as a distancing tool, which also has interesting implications. I see history being rewritten now, in all kinds of arenas. Why not in crime fiction?

Lauren: I think the thing that has more bearing than the pandemic on espionage as a genre, at least for me, is politics.

Lisa: Whose politics?

Lauren: How do you spy for a country with a government that’s so asleep at the switch that they’ve been indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans?

Where do you find your loyalty? How can it exist in an unconsidered state?

Tracy: Yes, the ethics of spying is really interesting right now—as well as the way in which intelligence on COVID was ignored. So another question is what’s the use of intelligence?

Lisa: Or what counts as intelligence in a world that is so full of misinformation.

Lauren: If you’re Kelly Loeffler you use it for the purposes of insider trading

Tracy: The president received intel briefings on the danger of COVID in January is what I’m referring to.

Rosalie: For me, after the George Floyd protests this summer, it felt hard to write even a very casual scene with police in it, which of course happens in noir all the time.

Lisa: Yes, I just did a roundtable with crime writers in California and police was the first thing they wanted to talk about. I’m very curious as to how people who write procedurals are going to handle this.

Rosalie: Yes, there’s a very easy Law & Order type cop scene that we could all write in our sleep that’s fun and familiar and it just brought it home intensely that maybe writing scenes like that is harmful.

Lisa: That’s why we are going to see a lot of paradigms shifting. Because things that used to feel normal are under scrutiny, and they should be.

Tracy: Rosalie, in your last book there’s a police raid on a gay bar. I think that is an excellent example of a writer using distance thoughtfully in crime. It is clear there that the police are doing harm. They aren’t the empathic center.

Lara: Trust in intelligence is at an all-time low. I mean, Pompeo, joking or not, was talking about smoothly ushering in Trump’s second term. That mistrust is definitely something to dig into as a writer.

Lisa: So no one trusts the police, and no one trusts the government…

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Conspiracy, Ideology, and “Tom Clancy stuff”

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Lara: I’m more interested in exploring the vastly different ways people arrive to that same conclusion.

I don’t believe our systems are set up to benefit all people. Others—fall into conspiracy. We both distrust, but for different reasons.

Lisa: That’s actually a fairly subtle difference. We end up at the same place—skeptical or worse.

The people who have been getting shafted all along get accused of believing in conspiracy theories, when actually they were right. The deck was stacked, etc.

And then, as you said, there are people for whom conspiracy is the only way to make sense of the world.

Rosalie: I think there may actually be fairly broad agreement in the U.S. right now that government doesn’t really serve the interests of the people, but the explanations given are radically different by political alignment.

I think it’s interesting that espionage as a genre was so huge in the ’50s and ’60s. Some of that is postwar cheerleading for the intel apparatus, I think, but just in general, did people trust the CIA in those days? I’m not sure they did. Or did the classic spy novel start fading out as the late sixties started?

I think probably in the 50s there was a sense that these were the people who had won the war. But after that?

Lisa: That’s a thorny question, isn’t it? There is always a doubt at the heart of espionage as to what people’s intentions are. All that lying for a living.

Rosalie: The classic double agent, or corrupt boss!

Lisa: But I do think culturally there was a lot less talking back to institutions than there is now.

And when we start questioning the apparatus, the next place to go is to question who is running it and how.

Lara: To me, there seems to be a tremendous rise in mistrust in institutions (and conspiracy) in the Post-Soviet era on both sides.

Rise of technology, Putin, Trump. It is mainstream.

Lisa: Agreed, Lara. That’s where Fox News gets its numbers.

Tracy: Much commercial espionage literature today—I’m talking about Tom Clancy kind of stuff—still cheerleads rather uncritically for US intel.

Lisa: But it’s also in the NYT bestseller list

And most of that espionage is written by men. And read by men.

Tracy: But that’s one thing that I really appreciate about Lauren’s book American Spy. It asks the spy narrative to engage with ideological investments.

Lauren: Thank you!

Lisa: Isn’t the spy novel always rooted in ideology at some level?

Tracy: Yes, but some writers don’t wrestle critically with ideology. Lauren does, and her character must weigh competing values. In other words, the difference is whether the text operates as an ideological barometer or a conversation with ideology.

Lauren: I think Marie is sort of like Vera (Kelly), in the sense that they both have to grapple with personal identity and self-perception to do the work they’ve been asked to do.

Rosalie: Yes! Asking the question of what it means for an individual and a personality to lie so much and to occupy that position socially

Lauren: So I don’t think it’s built into either character to just be blindly patriotic, not when every other insight comes with some struggle attached.

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Why Spy?

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Lara: There’s ideology and there’s the the individual. I like to think of the CIA’s recruiting mnemonic MICE (Money, Ideology, Compromise, and Ego). Ideology is there, but it goes beyond that.

Rosalie: I remember when I was writing the first Vera book and I was trying to figure out why anybody would agree to do this kind of work and what kind of ideology it would require and my boyfriend at the time said “people do it for money”—“it can just be that it pays well.”

Lara: Yep! Money, revenge, ego. Most people don’t switch sides because they had a change in politics. It is deeper. Tied to identity or circumstance.

Rosalie: I like how The Americans handles this question. There’s the full range. Elizabeth is a real ideologue, Philip isn’t sure anymore, so many people are just manipulated in a moment of vulnerability or weakness.

Lisa: I think that’s right, Lara. I’m thinking about the Neocons and a lot of their angst had to do with being Jewish. It was identity.

That’s true of a lot of crime fiction, Rosalie. Ultimately people are exploited either by institutions or by other people, people they trusted.

Rosalie: I think shame is a huge driver.

Lisa: How so? And how do you think shame ties into ideology?

Rosalie: Well, thinking of The Americans again, many informants are flipped because they’ve done something they’re ashamed of and they would do anything rather than have it be revealed. It’s not enough to drive the primary actors, who are or were at one time ideologically committed, but the ordinary people they run into are always being manipulated by shame about infidelity, money problems, their sexuality, etc etc.

Lisa: And that’s consistent with American thinking in the 1950s, that if people had a secret (eg they are gay) than they could be exposed, and manipulated.

Rosalie: This was the overt reason the intel services wouldn’t hire gay people for a long time. The idea was that it was too easy to compromise you because gayness was shameful and you wouldn’t want it revealed.

Lara: Thousands of people were fired from government jobs for that very reason … for decades. Many from the State department or CIA.

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Shame in the Trump Era

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Lisa: What else are people ashamed of? Or so ashamed of they would betray fill in the blank—their country, their family, their identity?

Really, how can we talk about shame in the Trump era? He’s kind of made it a moot point.

Rosalie: I think the classic James Bond figure is interesting this way—he’s completely devoid of shame, in the sense that he has no emotional vulnerability at all

Lara: Affairs, money, reputation. For Trump, the main shame would be to be forgotten.

Lisa: Narcissists hate it when you don’t pay attention to them.

Rosalie: Trump has this interesting flatness as a character. He’s all on the surface, completely available. Like Andy Warhol said, he’s just what he appears to be.

Lisa: But I think the operative word is character. It’s not who he is as a person, it’s the role he’s carved out for himself.

Lara: I feel like if he was a character of mine, my editor would be like—he needs more nuance! Our current events are almost stranger than fiction.

Lisa: Anyone want to add to that?

Rosalie: Just that a lot of the last four years has felt impossible to satirize. A real artistic problem for satirists.

Lara: Agreed.

Lauren: Definitely.

Lisa: One of my best friends is the showrunner for John Oliver. We were talking recently and he said there’s too much news. Comedy couldn’t keep up.

Tracy: And possibly for writers of spy fiction, the problem with writing this particular era will be that there is little sense of tension in the reveal.

Lisa: I hang around with other nonfiction writers and we all feel like no one would believe this if you wrote it as narrative nonfiction or history. And if you guys also can’t handle it, then where are we in terms of trying to represent and make sense of the state of the world?

Rosalie: When I was a kid I remember a movie trope where the good guys would, at the end, after finding proof of government corruption or whatever, get the story to a newspaper or TV reporter and the assumption was, ok, this movie is over now. Because this shocking information will be published, and the people won’t stand for this! Problem solved.

Lisa: That is the Watergate model.

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“It’s time to get weird”

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Lauren: When the symptoms are too outlandish to be believed, I think maybe that means just writing about the disease in other ways.

Tracy: Yes, when normative modes don’t work, it’s time to get weird.

Lisa. That sounds promising, Tracy

Tracy: I mean, I think about Borges’s plays on detective narratives, and they’re astonishing still.

Lara: Hence the rise one sees of surrealism in post-war / at-war countries. It is often the only way to make sense of a world that doesn’t make sense. I think we are going to see more of that in art in coming years.

Lisa: That’s an excellent point, Lara. It also is historically true that times like these—confusing, dangerous, unpredictable—have lead to innovation and a better system. But I think it’s too soon to tell.

Any final thoughts?

Lauren: Yes. I think it’s smart to get weird. And I think that right now feels like Watergate but it also feels like 1968 in a lot of ways—a president who is trying to run on a “law and order” response to social upheaval, for one thing. All of the news today is about the push to disenfranchise black voters. Right now it’s in Detroit, but that’s a pretty consistent theme in this country. There are problems built into the country’s DNA that keep creating the same kinds of scenarios, but with the details changed. So you can write about the problems without writing about one particular orange moron who happens to be a consequence of them.

Rosalie: Exactly, Trump is a unique personality but all of the structures that allowed this to happen are old, old, old.

Lauren: Yes, exactly. Some people just write the structures and people think they’re prescient but it’s just pattern recognition.

Lara: Final thought: I hope you all keep writing and keep safe. We need your future books. I need your future books!

Rosalie: Yes, cosigned!

Tracy: One way to do this, I think, is to subvert precisely the narrative paradigm in which there is a single antagonist. We need to learn to tell stories about structures and systems, stories which are much more diffuse.

Lisa: That seems right to me, Tracy. I hope that whatever the other side of this looks like there is a sense that some real, deep-rooted social wrongs can start to be addressed if not corrected.

I think that’s a good note to end on. Thank you all for being here!

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Ah, school days! The grassy quads, the tang of autumn in the air, the dying screams of murdered classmates. With atmosphere like that, it’s no wonder campus mysteries have been around since the Golden Age of detective fiction. All the greats took a crack at it—Dorothy Sayers in Gaudy Night, Agatha Christie in Cat Among the Pigeons, Ellery Queen in The Campus Murders—and later innovators like J. S. Borthwick, Pamela Thomas-Graham, and Lev Raphael helped diversify the subgenre. But in 1992, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was the first to break out of the cozy mold, becoming a crossover bestseller and changing the face of the campus thriller forever.

A lush, melancholy whydunit, The Secret History’s biggest innovation was to shift the focus away from sleuthing professors and toward students—often working-class outsiders struggling with impostor syndrome among posh classmates. By making the campus thriller a coming-of-age tale, The Secret History harnessed the intensity and volatility of young adult relationships, suggesting that the Dostoevskian combo of hormones and heady intellectualism could turn deadly.

Despite its success, The Secret History did not produce a rash of imitators at the time. But readers who grew up worshipping The Secret History have grown up and started writing novels of their own. I call it “Dark Academia,” after the gothic, bookish online aesthetic that adopts The Secret History as its foundational text. We are now living, belatedly, in the age of Tartt.

I first noticed the boom in dark campus thrillers when I was already writing my own. My third novel Bad Habits is set in a competitive graduate program and has many of the key Dark Academia elements: a fish-out-of-water protagonist from a hardscrabble background; a charismatic professor who inspires cultish devotion in her students; a gothic campus with lots of gargoyles; and, of course, as much sex and drinking as studying. (It is, after all, college.) Like many of its contemporaries, it checks the boxes.

But today’s Dark Academia thrillers are even darker than The Secret History. While campus novels (like campuses themselves) tend to fetishize a nostalgic British culture that never really existed—implicitly fetishizing whiteness, assimilation, and rigid gender norms—the books on this list reckon frankly with sexual harassment and abuse, class disparities, homophobia, and systemic racism.

I have some theories about why that is. For one thing, the cloistered campus life romanticized by Dark Academia belongs to a vanishing era. With the costs of higher education skyrocketing, the Ivies more competitive and exclusive than ever, and academic departments collapsing under bloated administration and the ever-shrinking tenure track, the sheltered college experience from the brochures looks more and more like an unattainable fantasy. Moreover, this is a largely a Trump-era trend, starting around 2014 but only kicking into high gear in 2017, and accelerating along with the atrocities of the Trump presidency. As of 2021, it shows no sign of slowing.

Perhaps there’s one more way to explain the Dark Academia trend. A generation of Harry Potter-loving children were raised on the idea that a perfect combination of pure heart, ancient birthright, and excellent study skills could dispatch any villain. All grown up and heartbroken by Rowling’s anti-trans hate speech and shallow commitment to diversity, they may rightly question whether hallowed halls and sacred traditions can ever be a place for real rebellion. Perhaps that explains why these books are rife with vigilantes, antiheroes, and revenge schemes. In the new novels of Dark Academia, there is no magic solution, no righteous war. There’s only survival.

Here, listed roughly in order of publication, are the novels of the new Dark Academia canon.

The Secret Place, Tana French (2014)

The fifth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series takes Detectives Stephen Moran and Antoinette Conway to St. Kilda’s, a boarding school where four young girls have discovered a secret power that sets them apart from their classmates. Although there’s a cold case to solve, the book’s hypnotic urgency comes from French’s dreamy depiction of the girls’ love for each other, and the bulwark they’ve built against the misogyny they see and experience around them.

Academy Gothic, James Tate Hill (2014)

This quick-witted debut has definite cozy vibes—visually impaired professor Tate Cowlishaw turns amateur sleuth after discovering a dead dean under his desk. But the hardboiled plot and gothic façade of Parshall College, ranked “Worst Value” annually by U.S. News and World Report, nudge it over the line from academic satire into dark academia. Hill’s prose is punchy and dark—think Richard Russo’s Straight Man with a Chandlerian twist—and he ekes deadpan humor out of Cowlishaw’s detective work without ever making it the punchline. (Of a dead body: “His hair smelled of women’s shampoo. He must have had a coupon.”)

If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio (2017)

M. L. Rio’s debut about ambitious young Shakespearean actors at Dellecher Classical Conservatory is catnip for fans of the Bard, of course, but anyone with a love of skulls and black velvet will want to sink into its high-gothic atmosphere. We know from the outset that Oliver, the quiet outsider who always gets stuck with the leftover roles, is more than he seems; we meet him in prison. The story of how he got there is as dark, twisted, and lush as the plays it draws from.

The Lying Game, Ruth Ware (2017)

Ruth Ware has a way with a gothic setting, so it’s no surprise that her boarding school novel The Lying Game is at the top of this trend. Four women reunite in an old mill house after the discovery of a body in the salt marsh threatens to reveal a shared secret from their school days. With sly allusions to Wuthering Heights, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and more, this is a satisfyingly gothic read with a distinctive literary bent.

Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott (2018)

Of course the queen of brainy thrillers, with a gift for exploring friendship and ambition among high school girls, has an entry in the Dark Academia genre. In Megan Abbott’s ninth novel Give Me Your Hand, a sought-after post-doc reunites old friends with a complicated past, only to put them in competition for the favor of a brilliant scientist and mentor—with murderous results. Adding to the intrigue, the subject of the research study is premenstrual dysphoric disorder—a not-so-subtle suggestion that women’s rage, ignored for far too long, is a force of nature.

Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (2019)

No dark academia list would be complete without this absolute barnburner of a book, with its roots in the real-world secret societies of the Ivies and its heart in a dark, violent fantasy every bit as enticing as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.

Hex, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight (2019)

When this dark comedy of manners opens, biology PhD candidate Nell Barber is in denial about her expulsion in the wake of a lab accident that left one of her colleagues dead. Nell’s depression and unrequited longing for her beautiful, brilliant former advisor Dr. Joan Kallas lead her into increasingly bizarre entanglements and toward another, possibly fatal, catastrophe. Though it doesn’t have a traditional thriller plot, Hex’s weird, wild narrative voice, along with its witchy lists of poisons and antidotes, makes it a thrilling Dark Academia read.

Trust Exercise, Susan Choi (2019)

A metafictional puzzle of a novel set in a Houston performing arts high school, Trust Exercise adopts trauma itself, and the way stories grow around it, as its central mystery. This is a notoriously difficult book to discuss without getting into spoiler territory; let’s just say it joins a subset of Dark Academia thrillers that concern themselves with abusive teacher-student relationships. But Choi’s metaphysical mystery goes beyond questioning authority, and interrogates the structure of authorship itself.

A Student of History, Nina Revoyr (2019)

In this slim, subtle L.A. noir, Rick Nagano, a first-generation college student pursuing a doctorate in history, stumbles on a transcription job for an oil fortune heiress just as he’s struggling with rent and stuck in his dissertation. At first uncomfortable in her moneyed world, Rick gradually begins to enjoy his access to high society; but as buried secrets come to light, he finds himself sinking deeper and deeper into morally compromised ground. Riffing on Gatsby, A Student of History portrays scholarship as its own form of exploitation, and Los Angeles as a racially divided town whose uncomfortable history is woven into the fiber of the everyday.

Bunny, Mona Awad (2019)

Mona Awad’s bizarre version of a campus novel is a funny, ferocious horror story all dressed up in Mary Janes and eating a miniature cupcake. Imagine if Heathers were set in a famous MFA program (Awad herself went to Brown), with the costumes supplied by Modcloth; add in some nightmarish occult rituals, exploding forest creatures, and a pervasive sense of the difficulty of artistic endeavor. Call Bunny “dark kawaii.” Call it whatever you want. It’s genius.

The Swallows, Lisa Lutz (2019)

Lisa Lutz’s follow-up to The Passenger features another tough, wise-cracking protagonist—English teacher Alex Witt, who lands at the second-rate Stonebridge Academy after leaving her last teaching job in disgrace. From her new students’ creative writing assignments, she learns about The Darkroom, a secret place where girls’ reputations, and sometimes their lives, are ruined. Teaming up with a senior girl named Gemma who’s had enough, Alex vows to help destroy The Darkroom in a story that skewers the “boys will be boys” attitudes of complicit faculty as much as the misogyny of the boys themselves.

Good Girls Lie, JT Ellison (2019)

T. Ellison’s standalone entry into the Dark Academia genre, Good Girls Lie, starts off with a bang—a presumed suicide dangles from the wrought-iron front gates of The Goode School, an all-girls “Silent Ivy” in Virginia where the usual secret societies and mean girls abound—only to dive into the perspective of an avowed sociopath. Or is she? Ellison’s boarding-school suspense novel is packed with masterful twists that unpack lie after lie, starting with the first: “Goode girls are always good.”

The Truants, Kate Weinberg (2019)

In her first year at an east Anglian university, Jess Walker, her wealthy roommate, and an unsettlingly handsome post-doc form an uneasy love triangle that gets even more complicated when Jess falls under the sway of a charismatic professor named Lorna. The crime plot in this lushly written debut is ultimately overtaken by relationship drama, but the constant nods to Agatha Christie will delight mystery fans as well as anyone with an interest in the power of stories and storytelling.

White Ivy, Susie Yang (2019)

A crime novel, an immigration story, and even a bit of a family saga, White Ivy gets at the heart of the American fascination with prep schools and Ivy League colleges: by emulating British customs and fetishizing white Anglo-Protestant history, they produce a caricature of whiteness for anyone who can afford the price tag. In a tale that recalls classic stories of American strivers by Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser, Yang shows this caricature as hollow at best, malevolent and corrupting at worst. More than a thriller, White Ivy is an American tragedy.

Catherine House, Elisabeth Thomas (2020)

Elisabeth Thomas’s debut is an absolute banger. The eponymous school, Catherine House, is an experimental, racially diverse, alternate-college experience—something like Deep Springs College, but set on a crumbling gothic campus in backwoods Pennsylvania. More than most books on this list, The Catherine House is intensely focused on the peculiarities of the school itself—its obscure rituals, its amorphous yet all-encompassing intellectual rigor, the contrast between its state-of-the-art research and dank, threadbare decor, and, of course, the disturbing and unnatural secrets it conceals. The world-building is top-notch, the paranoia is real, and this book is a delight to read.

My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell (2020)

Though not technically a thriller, Russell’s debut My Dark Vanessa is definitely crime fiction; it takes the daring approach of hiding its crime in plain sight. The suspense in this tale of sexual abuse and rape at a boarding school is in wondering when the Vanessa of the title will acknowledge the crime that was committed, knowing that this admission will make her a victim. An intense and immersive dive into a young girl’s experience of grooming at the hands of a master manipulator, this story comes with a hefty trigger warning, but it’s worth it—My Dark Vanessa is unflinching and unsentimental despite its lush prose, and refuses to grant the easy comforts of absolution or revenge.

These Violent Delights, Micah Nemerever (2020)

This luxuriously written debut gives us a schoolboy romance that starts in class discussion and quickly turns intense—even dangerous. Set in the Watergate era, These Violent Delights scratches the nostalgia itch while never shying away from the ethical quandaries of the era. Moreover, Julian From is one of the most memorable Dark Academia characters in recent memory—a poor little rich boy with a sadistic streak that makes his vulnerability all the more winning, he has protagonist Paul—and the reader—toggling back and forth the whole book long, wondering whether he’s a sociopath or a beleaguered saint.

They Never Learn, Layne Fargo (2020)

Fargo’s book is the rare one on this list that features a professor in the lead—but in keeping with the Dark Academia aesthetic, she’s not a detective, but a serial killer. Antihero Scarlett is sultry yet calculating, deeply committed to pleasure, and bent on exacting her revenge on campus rapists. In They Never Learn, Fargo cleverly interweaves chapters about Scarlet’s shocking habit of murdering men at her college with a parallel story of a young student that will have readers wishing she would bump off a couple more.

The Orchard, David Hopen (2021)

Hopen’s debut The Orchard takes place in a “modern Orthodox” yeshiva in a wealthy Jewish suburb of Miami, where an intellectually serious student joins the inner circle of a charismatic rabbi whose discussions of the Torah tend to get very, shall we say, metaphysical. Perhaps the title on this list most indebted to The Secret History, it’s a refreshing take on the genre, and one that makes good on its promise to shine light on the workings of privilege in every culture.

 Looking forward to:

All the Girls Are So Nice Here, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

A debut adult fiction from a former YA writer, All the Girls Are So Nice Here promises mean girls aplenty and a pulse-pounding I Know What You Did Last Summer premise.

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, Ashley Winstead

A college reunion brings together a group of friends once shattered by a vicious crime in this thrilling debut, reminiscent of Cruel Intentions, Heathers, and, of course, the Secret History.

For Your Own Good, Samantha Downing

Featuring a chilling protagonist whose unorthodox teaching methods might just prove deadly, For Your Own Good is giving off major Dexter vibes, and we’re here for it.

Kill All Your Darlings, David Bell

An academic thriller that begins with a professor passing off his missing student’s work as his own, and ends with him being implicated in an unsolved murder? Sounds like Wonder Boys times Patricia Highsmith. Yes please!

 ***

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Raymond Chandler had a complicated relationship with Hollywood. If you’re inclined to dig around there are any number of interesting and sometimes shocking anecdotes about his time working around movies, and he certainly left behind a litany of quips on the subject. (“Its idea of ‘production value’ is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away.”) My own personal favorite has a slightly lighter air than most of the matter on offer. It’s the now legendary, possibly apocryphal story about William Faulkner, hired for a script adaptation, desperately trying to work out the plot of The Big Sleep and inquiring of Chandler which of his characters killed Sternwoods’ chauffeur, to which Chandler replied, “I don’t know.” There’s a lesson in there for writers. Not necessarily a good or coherent lesson, but it just may get you through a few difficult days wrestling with a work in progress.

But there’s a slightly more bitter feud that’s always gripped my imagination. In 1950, Alfred Hitchcock, after failing to secure Dashiell Hammett’s services, approached Chandler with the job of adapting Strangers on a Train, a debut novel by the then-unknown Patricia Highsmith. The concept was a stroke of dark genius: two men, meeting on a train, agree each to commit a murder on the other’s behalf. Chandler took the job and after some consultation with the director went about writing a first draft of the script. Hearing little to nothing from Hitchcock, he took a stab at another version and sent that one along, too. Remember, at this time, Hitchcock was fairly celebrated, but not yet the master of suspense, Hollywood titan he would later become. He had made Rebecca, Notorious, and other admired films, but we’re still in the period before his masterpieces here, before Dial M for Murder, Vertigo, The Birds, Psycho and the rest. Surely Chandler knew that he was working with a skilled craftsman, but maybe we can allow that he believed himself worthy of at least a considered response from the man who hired him to do all that work.

Well, that wasn’t to be. Chandler never heard back from Hitchcock about the scripts he’d commissioned. In fact, Hitchcock had taken the drafts and, as he was want to do, quite famously in later years, arranged for a complete dismantling and evisceration of the work performed to date. Pretty standard Hollywood, you might argue, and you’d probably be right. But this is Chandler we’re talking about. A trembling wire of brilliance and resentment. Late in the year, Chandler was able to arrange a screening of the film, ultimately made from the script by Czenzi Ormonde. Ormonde was the protégée of Ben Hecht (renowned as the “Shakespeare of Hollywood”). The screening, well, it left Chandler pretty hot. Not the good kind of hot. After stewing on the matter for a while, he decided to write to Hitchcock, his one-time supposed employer, whom he addressed affectionately as “Dear Hitch,” then proceeded to lambast in utterly Chandler fashion.

Are Chandler’s objections warranted? Probably not. Strangers on a Train, released the following year, has generally been recognized as a classic of the form. It launched Hitchcock into a new stratosphere of acclaim and helped make Highsmith into a celebrity, though she didn’t much care for the movie herself.

Whatever you think of film’s bona fides, you might also admire the little bits of poetry Chandler dripped into his poisoned pen letter to Hitchcock. That letter, swinging wildly between self-effacement and grandiosity, understanding and condemnation, imploration and outright insult, is really a marvel.

Here’s the missive, in full:

December 6th, 1950

Dear Hitch,

In spite of your wide and generous disregard of my communications on the subject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your failure to make any comment on it, and in spite of not having heard a word from you since I began the writing of the actual screenplay—for all of which I might say I bear no malice, since this sort of procedure seems to be part of the standard Hollywood depravity—in spite of this and in spite of this extremely cumbersome sentence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few comments on what is termed the final script. I could understand your finding fault with my script in this or that way, thinking that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mechanism was too awkward. I could understand you changing your mind about the things you specifically wanted, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from without. What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write—the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera. Of course you must have had your reasons but, to use a phrase once coined by Max Beerbohm, it would take a “far less brilliant mind than mine” to guess what they were.

Regardless of whether or not my name appears on the screen among the credits, I’m not afraid that anybody will think I wrote this stuff. They’ll know damn well I didn’t. I shouldn’t have minded in the least if you had produced a better script—believe me. I shouldn’t. But if you wanted something written in skim milk, why on earth did you bother to come to me in the first place? What a waste of money! What a waste of time! It’s no answer to say that I was well paid. Nobody can be adequately paid for wasting his time.

—Signed, ‘Raymond Chandler’

***

“Written in skim milk.” When did you ever read a more withering piece of criticism?

Why did Chandler hate Strangers on a Train so intensely? We can puzzle over the letter, searching for answers, and I have. I imagine what it comes down to is this, the movie wasn’t his. Chandler, especially later in his life, was an unforgiving correspondent and often cruel. Shortly after this time, he would begin work on The Long Goodbye. In my view, it’s his greatest work, maybe the greatest crime novel ever written, and it may also be his most disenchanted. There’s a deep, rich vein of resentment running underneath it. In that late world of Marlowe and Terry Lennox, Los Angeles has a special kind of stain on it.

I don’t know if this sordid little episode with “Hitch” had anything to do with The Long Goodbye, but I’d like to think so. In any case, that’s one hell of a letter. Petty, nasty, and possibly wrong, with glimmers of genius.

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tk

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The Soothsayer: Rose Marks

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There were so many sad women in Manhattan. They were educated and successful and desperate. They had MBAs and books on the New York Times Best Seller list and jobs in international finance; they had abusive husbands and drug-addled sons and mothers who were dying. Their daughters were depressed and their boyfriends were leaving them and their bodies were riddled with cancer. What could they do? These women had grown up believing that there was something more out there, something to cling to. And now, as they dragged their aching hearts through the city, something appeared in front of them: a little storefront, all lit up.

The sign on the front read, “Laws of Attraction Guided by Psychic Joyce Michaels, Walk-ins Welcome.” Most customers walked in, paid $50 for a palm reading, and left. But when these sad women walked through the door, the psychic on duty would perk up and come forward.

How can I help you? she’d say. The sad women would pour out their problems. The psychic would listen intently, and would then begin her ritual. I may be able to help you, she’d say, but first, I need a personal item to pray on and meditate. The loan of the personal item was like a trust fall—would the sad woman do it? Did she have the nerve? What about that bracelet, there on your wrist? Oh, it was given to you by your grandmother? Perfect.

The next day, the bracelet would be returned unharmed, and the sad woman would sigh with relief. But the psychic would be waiting with bad news: You’ve been cursed in a previous life. Thus the abusive husband, the cancer, or the dying mother. Then, the good news: I can help you. I’m here to do God’s work, and the work is free. And then the catch: In the course of this work, there are…sacrifices that have to be made.

Sacrifices? Yes, in the ancient days, the removal of a curse this serious would involve human sacrifice, but these days, they weren’t going to slaughter anyone, of course, ha ha. No, these days, the item sacrificed was simply…money. After all, money is the root of all evil, and so it must be cleansed. But once the curse is lifted, the money will be returned unharmed—just like the bracelet. Everything will be wonderful. Everyone will be happy again.

But first—there’s an ATM across the street.

For more about Rose Marks, listen to episode 42 of Criminal Broads. 

Follow Criminal Broads on Instagram. 

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While working on our recent ranking of prison escape movies, I hit a wall after thinking about movies in which the villain gets himself (or herself, possibly, but it’s almost always a “him”) caught, as part of an evil plan. In these films, it is only by “getting captured” that the next phase of the villain’s plan may commence. And then, usually, he’ll escape. Often, out of some sort of large glass box. So, these films didn’t seem like they should go on my prison escape list, but felt relevant. Hence, the mini sub-list.

But of course, there are also movies where the good guy wants to get caught, so he can escape and do something. I think these instances are fewer, but still, they’re on here.

Here goes, super quickly, sorted by character, and ranked from worst to best.

VILLAINS WHO WANT TO BE CAPTURED

Thor: The Dark World, dir. Alan Taylor (2013)

This one might be a little hard to understand if you haven’t seen the movie, but basically (and this IS a spoiler), an evil “dark elf” named Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) orders his Lieutenant, Algrim (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), to be captured, incognito, by Asgard soldiers, so that he can release the prisoners inside. In prison, he turns himself into “Kurse,” a super-techno-human, and frees all the prisoners to start a riot which will distract the Asgard forces, making it easy for Malekith to attack the city. Loki’s in jail too, but he is left behind.

Star Trek: Into Darkness, dir. J.J. Abrams (2013)

Filmed during the Benedict Cumberbatch frenzy of the early 2010s, this film features our man as “John Harrison,” a traitorous Starfleet officer who, once he is captured, reveals himself to be the villainous, age-old, man-made superhuman entity called Khan Noonien Singh. And once he’s thrown into the Enterprise‘s plexiglass brig, he can bust out and try to take over the ship.

The Avengers, dir. Joss Whedon (2012)

So, in this film, Loki’s capture by the Avengers is accidental, but he uses it to his advantage, mind-controlling Hawkeye, working up Bruce until he hulks up, all with the goal of weakening the Avengers. And it does work, for a while.

Se7en, dir. David Fincher (1995)

Towards the end of Se7en, a film about a serial killer who murders people in manners which represent the seven deadly sins, the killer known as John Doe (Kevin Spacey) appears in a police station and willingly surrenders. As long as the detectives on the case agree to go with him to a new location so he can reveal the last two murders on his list.

The Dark Knight Rises dir. Christopher Nolan (2008)

Bane (Tom Hardy) does the same exact thing in this movie as the Joker does in the previous film, only he does it with a plane.

The Dark Knight dir. Christopher Nolan (2008)

The Dark Knight does this thing really well. The Joker gets himself caught (kind of midway through the movie, though, so you know it’s not gonna stick) by the Cops and thrown into a jail cell. But he’s doing this to place Batman in a bind… there are two victims in different places, tied to bombs: Batman’s love Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and do-gooder politician Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

The Silence of the Lambs, dir. Jonathan Demme (1991)

Ah, the always-controversial The Silence of the Lambs. I’m not going to rehash all of the debates/issues with it, so I’ll just get to the plot. As payment for helping out FBI Agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in her hunt for a serial killer, Hannibal the cannibal (Anthony Hopkins) winds up negotiating a relocation to a different prison cell, and he ends up dramatically breaking out after killing a guard, peeling that guy’s face off, and wearing it as a disguise as he leaves the building… which reminds us that whatever else this film may be (a masterpiece? the source of all my nightmares?), it is also… gross.

Skyfall dir. Sam Mendes (2012)

This is my personal favorite of the villain sequences on this list, but this might also be because Skyfall is my personal favorite film on this list. I ship Roger Deakins’s cinematography work, but also this is the first Bond film in a while with a really great, flamboyant villain, and what are the Bond films about, if nothing else? My apologies to Quantum of Solace, but Dominic Green just doesn’t cut it for me. Anyway, creepy madman Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) gets himself arrested to place him in close proximity to M (Judi Dench), whom he hopes to assassinate.

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Once a week this summer, Bobby Santovasco and his best pal Zeke head down by the Belt Parkway to throw things at the cars getting off at the Bay Parkway exit near Ceasar’s Bay shopping center.

Bobby’s just turned fourteen. Zeke is thirteen. They like stealing CDs from Sam Goody and cigarettes from Augie’s Deli and playing video games in Zeke’s basement. They both have a crush on Carissa Caruso from Stillwell Avenue. They’re both headed into eighth grade at St. Mary Mother of Jesus on Eighty-Fourth Street. Bobby was left back in third grade, so he’s a little older than everyone else in his class. Their teacher is going to be Mrs. Santillo, who Bobby heard fart during the Pledge of Allegiance one day. Bobby lives in a little apartment on Eighty-Third Street, a block from St. Mary’s, with his father, his stepmother Grace, and his sixteen-year-old stepsister Lily. He and Lily don’t talk. Grace is just kind of there. His mother moved to California when he was six. He never heard from her again. Zeke lives in a big house on Twenty-Third Avenue. His real name is Flavio, but Bobby started calling him Zeke in fourth grade and it stuck. Zeke’s dad owns a pork store. He has four sisters and two dogs. One of his sisters, Giovanna, looks like the Virgin Mary mixed with Marisa Tomei. Bobby thinks about her at night.

They come down here because there’s always action. The cars funneling off the parkway, pausing at the traffic light. Ceasar’s Bay, with Toys “R” Us and Kmart and other chain shops, the bazaar with its stalls having closed down the year before. Shore Parkway Park. The tennis complex. Gravesend Bay itself, stretching from Coney Island Creek to the Narrows. The bike path. The Verrazano Bridge looming. Nellie Bly amusement park, where they used to go as kids, right nearby.

They started small, with little cups of ketchup and mustard they filled at the Wendy’s on the opposite corner.

The first day had been the best day, which is why it quickly became a ritual. That day, they had clomped a couple of cups against the windshield of an Olds simultaneously, the ketchup and mustard flinging itself across the glass. The driver had slammed on his brakes, gotten out of his car, abandoning it in traffic, and chased them behind the tennis courts and onto the bike path by the bay. The guy caught them. Mustache. An L&B Spumoni Gardens T-shirt. The body of someone who played softball as an excuse to drink beer. He grabbed them by their shoulders and screamed at them for a solid two or three minutes, an eternity given the situation, spit flying from his mouth like birdshit. He said he was a cop and they were lucky he didn’t bring them down to the station. They nodded, stifling laughs. Eventually, they coughed up apologies and he let them go and told them to smarten up. They turned, ran, and yelled for him to go fuck himself and all the guy could do was blow angry breaths through the bristles of his mustache and storm back to his stupid little condiment-splattered car.

After that, they tried water balloons, filling them beforehand and hauling them in a bucket, but that was too much work and the balloons didn’t last long. Some even broke in their hands as they released them.

It was Zeke’s idea to try tennis balls next. They could always find a dozen or so scattered in the grass on the other side of the fence by the courts. The nice thing about tennis balls was how fast and hard they could be thrown. Bobby had a better arm than Zeke, but they didn’t have to worry as much about falling short. The downside was the overall effect. Tennis balls just dinged against the cars and no one really thought twice about them. Could’ve been raining tennis balls for all anybody cared.

That was how they settled on rocks.

Before heading over to their spot now, they stop at Wendy’s for orange sodas. They stand outside and drink them, paper cups beaded with condensation. It’s a hot day. July-in-the-city hot. The heat’s rising up off the sidewalk. Bobby can smell himself. Sweat and the neighborhood. He’s wearing a Knicks tank top and his gym shorts, the high tops he’d inherited from his cousin Jonny Boy. No socks. A Mets cap turned backwards on his head. Zeke has no shirt on. Jams. His expensive new Air Jordans.

“With a rock,” Bobby says, “we could really bust a windshield.”

“That’d be sweet,” Zeke says.

“We gotta be ready to bolt, though. This ain’t ketchup.”

“Word.”

“I tell you what I told Carissa?”

“What?”

“That I was gonna throw a rock up at her window one night. Break the glass, climb up the drainpipe, and come into her room.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said, ‘You try that, my dad’ll chop you to pieces in the garage.”

“Chop you up? Oh, shit. He chops you up, you’re out of the way and I got a clear path for Carissa.”

“Dream your dreams. She’s mine.”

“We’ll see.”

“Okay, you take Carissa. I’ll take Giovanna.”

“Giovanna wouldn’t put you out if you were on fire. You’re shit on the sidewalk to her, kid. She’s seventeen. You should see the guy she’s dating now. Serge Rossetti. Muscles up the ass. He goes to Bishop Ford. Plays baseball. Pretty sure he’s on steroids.”

They suck down the rest of their sodas. The ice has mostly melted away, so Bobby’s last sip is watery. Zeke’s must be too—he spits it out. They drop their cups to the sidewalk. An old lady who has just come out of Wendy’s curses them.

They charge across Bay Parkway, dodging cars and then walk past the tennis courts, hunting in the brown grass for good rocks. Bobby finds one. He’s only been to a lake once with Jonny Boy in Jersey, but it’s the kind of rock that’s good for skipping. Flat and sharp. Fits right in his palm. Kind of pinkish. Zeke collects a couple of smaller ones. Glorified pebbles. Then Bobby finds an almost perfect rock, shaped like a ball, smooth and heavy but not too heavy to throw. Zeke laughs. What a score. He finds a few others that’ll work, including a rock that’s not a rock at all but a broken hunk of brick.

Zeke throws first and misses. He was aiming for a church van but the rock sailed over the roof, skittering up against the orange cone propped in front of the divider between the parkway and the off-ramp.

Bobby tries and wings the first rock he found against the passenger door of a rusty red Chevy Lumina. It lands with a thud. The driver slams on the brakes and leans on his horn. They can see him. A man with a beard, looking all around, trying to figure out what hit his car. They can see how sweaty he is from where they are. He doesn’t notice them. Finally, he takes off, making a left at the light onto Bay Parkway.

Bobby and Zeke laugh their asses off.

“That dude was like, ‘What the fuck?’” Zeke says, miming the driver’s reaction.

They throw a couple more each, hitting tires and hoods and trunks, eliciting no panicked responses from drivers, which remains their ultimate goal. If someone gets out and chases them again, they have their getaway route all set. Last time, when the guy with the mustache popped out after them, they took the long way around the fenced-in baseball field in Shore Parkway Park. It gave the guy time to catch them as they hit the bike path. Now they know where there’s a hole in the fence, and—since no one’s playing on the field—it’ll be easy to cut through and come out one of the dugouts. A shortcut that will make for a smooth escape up the bike path. Right around Seventeenth Avenue, Bobby knows, a pedestrian bridge crosses the Belt and goes to Bath Beach Park. From there, they can scurry home via the streets, lost in the maze of blocks, of cars and buses and people with shopping carts and boomboxes, kids on stoops, of trees and cracked sidewalks and telephone wires.

“You know what’d be hilarious?” Bobby says. “Get one in an open window. Hit a driver. Thousand points for that.”

“First one who hits a driver gets to be king for a day.”

“Fuck you mean?”

“I mean I hit a driver, I get to tell you what to for the day. ‘Bobby, steal me a tall boy from Augie’s.’ Or: ‘Steal me three porno mags.’”

“You’re on. When I win, what I’m gonna make you do is go into that new Chinese restaurant over by Bay Thirty-Fourth and eat an egg roll or something off somebody’s plate. Just walk up to their table, snag some food, and eat it right in front of them.”

“You’re king for a day, all powerful, that’s what you’re gonna make me do?”

“Hell yeah. That and then I’m gonna make you bring me a pillowcase full of Giovanna’s bras and underwear. I’m gonna sniff those shits until Mrs. Santillo farts again.”

Zeke holds up a rock. “Next one’s coming right between your eyes.”

Bobby takes a defensive position, grinning wide. “What? I love Giovanna. Sue me. You know what I picture? When she pops a squat on the toilet, instead of normal everyday logs, I bet she squeezes out perfect, cold Italian ices. Chocolate, lemon, watermelon, whatever you want. Do me a favor. Look in the bowl one day. Bet I’m right.”

Zeke takes a playful swing at Bobby. “You wish. I been in the can after her. She lights it up, son. A three match operation. I’m like, ‘G, what’d you eat?’ She’s pretty, but she makes a good stink.”

“Not my Giovanna.”

“You’re a dumb motherfucker. Ain’t a single gorgeous girl who don’t drop treacherous deuces.”

More wild laughter. They ready their next round of ammunition. Bobby has his almost perfect rock. Zeke has a good one too, not quite as round and smooth but it has some nice heft to it. Both rocks could probably do the work of a hardball or worse. Bobby’s thinking about some guy behind the wheel taking his perfect pitch right in the arm or chest and getting surprise-winded. Like a batter crowding the plate clobbered by a fastball. Goofy look on the dummy’s face. The pain of a fool who couldn’t get out of the way. Bobby could’ve been a starting pitcher on his little league team if he still played. He’d given it up in sixth grade. He didn’t like practice. Girls and afterschool fights and scoring beer and cigarettes were way more important. Anyhow, the St. Mary’s team sucked donkey dicks. Stupid powder blue uniforms. Like the goddamn Kansas City Royals. Who wants a uniform like the Royals? Bobby had enjoyed playing from second grade to fifth grade, had been a good second baseman and hitter, but he really wanted to pitch. The coach, Gene Grady, who gave out communion on Saturdays at church, had two sons, Jeff and Matt, who he let pitch all the time. They were okay. Nothing special. Bobby’s dream was to get on the mound, a little Vaseline on the brim of his cap, and really start mowing down batters with his good greasy junk. Fuck baseball, Bobby thinks now. Throwing rocks at cars is more fun.

A shambolic little cherry red Toyota Corolla gets off at the exit. It’s going slow, like the engine’s struggling, coughing and burping along. Bobby notices it first and nudges Zeke. The windows on the car are open. The driver’s a woman. A girl really. Probably a high school senior or something. She has a cigarette in her mouth, and she’s singing along to whatever’s on the radio, stealing glances of herself in the rearview mirror.

As the Corolla rattles toward the changing light at the corner, Bobby and Zeke work in perfect synchronization, taking aim at the open passenger window and throwing the rocks as hard as they can.

What happens next is a blur. One of their throws is perfect. The other sails wide. But the rock that goes into the car doesn’t hit the girl on the arm or chest. It smashes into the side of her head. Her body jolts, the cigarette knocked from her lips, and she loses control of the wheel as she barrels toward the yellow light.

Bobby and Zeke don’t hesitate. They drop the other rocks, turn around, and run toward the bike path, cutting through the baseball field.

They don’t look back. Bobby’s not worried that someone’s chasing them so much as he’s worried that something beyond terrible has happened.

It was a joke, that’s it.

For kicks.

They’re running at full speed up the path, weaving in and out of the few distracted pedestrians in their way, being passed on the left by asshole bikers once or twice. It’s hotter than ever. Sweat stings Bobby’s eyes. The bay smells pungent. Salt. Seaweed. Deep darkness.

When they get to the overpass, they cut across into Bath Beach Park and stop to catch their breath and hit up a water fountain.

“Did you see what happened after it hit her?” Zeke asks.

“No, I just bolted immediately,” Bobby says.

“Me too. Anyone see us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fuck,” Zeke says. “Was it the one I threw or the one you threw?”

Bobby puts his head in his hands. The girl’s maybe three or four years older than them, tops.

Nobody they had it out for. Not someone who was cruel or unkind even. A stranger. Smoking. Singing in her car. A normal afternoon for her. Nothing special. Getting off at her exit and probably going home, wherever home was. Then they came along with their big fucking stupid game. That’s all it was. A game. He swears.

“I don’t know,” Bobby says to Zeke, unable to stop seeing the girl. “I don’t know anything.”

__________________________________

Excerpted from SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT by William Boyle, to be published on 11/2/21 by Pegasus Crime. Copyright © 2021 by William Boyle.

 

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I escaped Romania in the middle of the night, by bike, on February 2, 1965. It was the moment when the country was locked in a communist prison. I was seventeen years old then. Now, twenty- four years later, in the diplomatic and political frost of 1989, with the beginning of freedom, I’m returning. As I walk through customs at Bucharest’s Otopeni airport with my American pass‐ port held tightly in my hand, I feel a strange sensation: memory is pulling me back to a lost time.

I see my seventeen-year-old self in front of me, leading me into the labyrinth of youth. She takes my hand and warns me of pitfalls while I enter a world I may have forgotten. She’s cute, smiling, spunky, full of life. One would say she had been very much loved by her parents.

I follow her, admiring her short black hair cropped straight around her oval face, highlighting her high cheekbones and hazel eyes, with a small pointy chin and full lips. She’s of medium height, fragile like porcelain on the outside, but more resilient than she realizes inside. She’s dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and tight black leggings, wearing high black leather boots and covered with an Elizabethan-style coat that closes with a belt wrapped twice around her thin frame.

She leads me to a customs desk where I present my papers to an officer without any communication other than his indifferent stare. I understand that his silence, inherited from the communist era, still lingers. I look around me. There’s only one electric bulb for the entire room and its 40 watts flicker. The wind blows through a broken windowpane, letting in a winter chill. The airport is empty except for several policemen carrying machine guns. I watch them: smooth-skinned boys, dressed up as soldiers.

At the baggage claim, waiting for my suitcase, I notice bullet holes in the cement walls and dried blood on the floor. Broken glass and bullet casings fill every corner of the room. Someone tried to clean up proof of last month’s revolution, but didn’t finish. There’s a heavy silence permeating the air. Danger and risk still exist.

I reason to myself that I had to make this journey. And I look around, trying to find Mica, my seventeen-year-old self, my guide. I want to confess to her why I’m here, why I have come alone, despite the suffering that might befall me, now, as it did in the past. But I can’t find her.

I see my suitcase coming down the conveyor belt. I pick it up and feel its heaviness. I try to grip the handle tightly and suddenly I feel a piercing pain in my right-hand little finger. I close my eyes, try not to cry. I remember…

I was eleven years old, walking home alone from school. A policeman was trailing me. He detained me, handcuffed me, forced me onto his motorcycle, and took me to the chief of the secret police.

“IN MY OFFICE, I HAVE THE POWER TO DO WHATEVER I WANT.”

* * *

He unlocked the handcuffs, pulled my small hand into his, and removed from his pocket a pair of pliers. He flashed the tool in front of my face to taunt me and placed the metal tip under a flame. I saw it turn fiery red.

“Only you can save your father. Work for us and your father will be safe.”

“Don’t ask me that. Please! I can’t!”

“Such a sweet little pinky you have.” He took the red-hot pliers, tight‐ ened it on my fingernail and pulled hard.

“Ow!” I was on fire, burning. I fell to the floor in excruciating pain. “Get up!” He pulled me up by my sweater. He let his pliers play with

my thumbnail, burning the tender skin around it, shouting at me,. “In my office, I have the power to do whatever I want.” 

* * *

I’m twenty-four years older and I’m returning home. I live in New York City and I am a goodwill ambassador to UNICEF for refugee children. This is one of the reasons for my visit. I have established an adoption agency in Transylvania for orphans, and I want to check that medicines from New York are being distributed correctly to the orphanages, and that each child has a crib or bed and food and medicines that we have sent.

I’m also returning because when I escaped, I had left something for my father in his underground bunker the night he was arrested. I need to find out if what I had hidden is still there. I’m afraid, yet excited, to learn the truth.

That’s why I’m seeking my teenaged Mica to guide me to a lost past. As I search for her in these hollow halls of the airport, some‐ thing unexpected is happening before my eyes: the reappearance of images from my youth. I try to hold on to the scenes as clues to help me understand how the past shaped my future. My present.

I look back to see, to feel, to relive the moments.

* * *

Every year on my birthday, my father and I talked about monsters and vampires. Tata was a wonderful storyteller. I cuddled in his arms and listened to tales of what happened in the woods of Transylvania where we lived.

In Romania, when we spoke of vampires, we meant Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, on whom so many legends were based. In Spera, the small town where I grew up, he was remembered as a prince, a leader who protected his people from the Turks when they invaded Romania in the fifteenth century. Still, we had to accept that his heroic deeds were cloaked in bloodthirsty evil. He believed that blood preserved his youth; thousands of innocent people died at the flick of his hand so that he could fortify himself. Mama did not approve of Tata’s stories, but she never stopped him. As she cooked, she’d frown while Tata laughed with joy,

telling me his tales.

As I became a teenager, what he shared became more complex. My father explained how the behavior of monsters and the char‐ acter of man could intersect. Tata was an engineer, and he constructed a stage for me where his stories became lessons for survival.

By the time I was seventeen, Tata’s stories had taken a different route. The characters were no longer based on legend or fairytale. I became the protagonist of the story. My father was preparing me for what I would need to know: that I was the daughter of a revo‐ lutionary.

Father was the leader of the Transylvanian anti-communists, which proved very dangerous for him as well as for Mama and me. My mother feared that Tata’s secret mission would force me to grow up too fast. She realized his work would affect my entire life and she tried to counteract the dangers by preparing me for the future: I would get to America. She taught me English and read Shakespeare to me.

When Tata’s clandestine activities, kept him out at night, Mama took me into the kitchen, ran the faucet strong so no one else would hear her words, and took out our shortwave radio to listen to Radio Free Europe. She’d translate the broadcaster’s English words into whispers and reveal the political truths to me.

As our country turned ruthless, Tata’s stories scared me. I wanted him to stop, but I stayed and listened. Now, years later, as I look back at my childhood, I understand his motive: his vampire stories were warnings. Politics had turned inhuman during that time in Eastern Europe, and his lessons became guiding principles to help me understand political realities. My father’s monsters taught me that there is evil in man. Given the proper incentives, man is capable of becoming cruel and sadistic. Tata didn’t want me to become a victim; yet, there was little he could do. I would be tested and I’d have to fight to survive.

But Tata’s passion for life overruled the savagery that surrounded us. He was optimistic, determined to do what was right. And he had a secret treasure, which he believed could open the door to dreams. I inherited his treasures.

__________________________________

From Gift of Diamonds by Roberta Seret. Used with the permission of the publisher, Wayzgoose Press. Copyright © 2020 by Roberta Seret.

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Of the many triumphs of feminism, and often-cited benefit of women’s equality is the goal of equal participation in the job market. We are able to benefit far more than previous generations from women’s job skills being taken seriously, and there are more working mothers than ever before. And yet maternity leaves, like real wages, or salaries for women of color, or job security for laboring women who are also about to be in labor, remain far behind the glowing promises of the 1970s (or the 1920s, if you go with Soviet promises).

Despite the wide variety in length of leaves available across the world, from the average three months of the United States to the year-long leaves granted to British mothers, crime writers on maternity leave all seem to agree that this is the perfect (and perhaps only) time available to them to craft a psychological thriller. The late nights, the sudden isolation, the shocking reduction from intellectual other to gendered body, the alienation of the nuclear family, the harsh nature of societal judgements upon new mothers—all seem to conspire to make new mothers feel doubted, silenced, and full of plot ideas for thrillers. Perhaps there’s nothing more noir than being subsumed to the all-encompassing needs of a tiny alien that, had evolution taken a different track, might have found its way to the surface by cannibalizing the flesh of its mother (hey, it happens!). And then, of course, there’s the sneaking tendrils of post-partum depression making its own way into the mix…

I am not a mother, nor am I particularly interested in ever becoming one. I am, however, fascinated by those moments in which those of us who’d like to believe we’ve graduated beyond gender are harshly reminded of gender’s bodily demands.

I’m also writing this post in tribute to several colleagues who spent time on maternity leave this past year (congratulations, all!).

The following works were begun, polished, imagined, or perfected during the short window allotted to their authors to bond with their newborns. While some are about the stresses of new parenthood, others have nothing to do with child-rearing. And given the number of illustrious careers first begun as cramped notes and stolen moments, I wonder how many more novels might be born from such experiences, were they to last just a little bit longer.

The Push, Ashley Audrain

Ashley Audrain’s terrifying novel The Push concerns a young mother whose own insecurities about parenting bleed into her growing knowledge of her child’s psychopathy, in what feels like a way more thrilling version of We Need to Talk About Kevin. The mother of Audrain’s debut is sleep-deprived, traumatized, and belittled and ignored by her partner, yet still she knows that something is fundamentally, desperately wrong with her child. Ashley Audrain works in publicity for Penguin Books Canada, and started writing The Push while on her own maternity leave.

The New Girl, Harriet Walker

Harriet Walker, who wrote her debut The New Girl while on maternity leave, found quarantine eerily familiar. In The New Girl, a woman on maternity from a fashion magazine is sent into a tailspin of doubt and dismay after her best friend’s newborn dies soon after birth. Someone keeps sending her images of the dead child, and someone’s been systematically dismantling her reputation online as the temp hired to cover for her seems to be getting a little too good at the job. The New Girl exists in a complex space between rivalry and solidarity, as characters grapple with impulses to take each other down even as they grudgingly move towards mutual assistance. Harriet Walker writes that:

“As the world shut down, any woman who has been on maternity leave with a newborn will have felt the memory of confinement shiver through them like a déjà vu: the smothering closeness, after a while, of one’s own home and company. And any reader or writer of thrillers knows the power of isolation too: there is nothing quite like too much time by yourself to set in motion the wheels of doubt, intrigue and potential destruction.”

The Baby Group, Caroline Corcoran

Caroline Corceran’s The Baby Group (published in the UK last year) features a group of new mothers brought together by their condition, and torn apart by their dark secrets. In an interview, Corceran explains her inspiration for the novel, begun while the author was on maternity leave: “I kept thinking about how maternity leave means you spend all this time together with other expectant mums while barely knowing anything about each other as women, as people, only as mothers.” A potent set-up for secrets to lurk, and relationships to fester…

Check out Caroline Corcaran’s article on the rise of “mum noir.”

Little Disasters, Sarah Vaughan

While Sarah Vaughan didn’t write her novel Little Disasters until several years after her maternity leave, the inspiration for this tale of post-partum anxiety is most definitely rooted in the early days of parenting. Vaughan writes:

[T]his mother’s visceral sense of helplessness was inspired by my own experience with my firstborn, a baby who was gripped with colic from three to sixteen weeks and who seemed to scream with inexhaustible fury. As a 32-year-old, who, bar a failed driving test and some infertility treatment, had largely succeeded at things, I found this baffling, shaming, and terrifying. Of course, the colic stopped, and by about 18 months, my baby slept. But the sense of profound incompetence—why couldn’t I get her to sleep? Why did she hate me so much?—and the speed with which my sense of self started to unravel stayed with me a lot longer. In those days, I was a news reporter, not a novelist, but perhaps even then I was aware that the situation was rich with narrative potential.

Read an article by Sarah Vaughan exploring motherhood as a fertile subject for crime fiction.

The Upstairs House, Julia Fine

Julia Fine’s worn-out narrator is on indefinite maternity leave, stressing over her newborn and trying to finish her dissertation, when she finds her way to the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown through a mysterious door upstairs in her apartment building. Both a gothic tale of madwomen in the attic, and an erudite digression on mid-century American children’s literature, The Upstairs House is as fascinating to read as it is hard to describe, and an intriguing exploration of the boundaries between physical and intellectual creations.

Need To Know, Karen Cleveland

Karen Cleveland wrote her debut espionage novel while on maternity leave from her very fascinating day job as a CIA analyst specializing first in Russia and later in counterterrorism. Both her background and her children make their way into Need to Know, an informed and subtle page-turner perfect for fans of The Americans.

Call After Midnight, Tess Gerritsen

Tess Gerritsen was on maternity leave from her job as a doctor in Hawaii (#goals) when she penned her first intricate thriller, Call After Midnight, in which a newlywed, refusing to believe her husband has been killed in a fire, goes on a dramatic search for him across Europe and encounters dangerous forces along the way. Gerritsen now writes full-time and incorporates her medical knowledge into some of the most fiendishly clever medical thrillers ever plotted.

People Like Her, Ellery Lloyd

Husband-and-wife writing duo Paul and Collette, who publish under the pen name Ellery Lloyd, were inspired to write this grand guignol tale of influencing gone awry during Collette’s maternity leave, a fact that makes the twists and turns of this shocking thriller all the more delightful. An instamum influencer and her novelist husband can’t quite agree on how much of their privacy each is willing to give up in the search for more followers, and the appearance of a stalker quickly takes things from bad, to worse, to utterly nightmarish, as the characters of People Like Her vent legitimate frustrations in extremely unhealthy ways for a fascinating social commentary on a new era of fame.

Proximate Causes, Lyndsay Smith

Lyndsay Smith was on maternity leave from her job as a lawyer in Vancouver specializing in organized crime when she began her first novel, Proximate Causes. She told ABC Book World that “The moment he napped, I started mapping it out. I had no idea how it would end, I just loved the process of writing. Then I had a second child. The first draft took me two-and-a-half years. That was the easy part.”

A Good Mother, Laura Balezon

In this shocking debut legal thriller, coming out this May, a public defender recently returned from maternity leave is tasked with defending a woman accused of killing her husband. Was it self-defense, or cold-blooded murder? Balezon explores the complexities of returning to work after giving birth—her heroine feels both guilty and eager to head back to the job— and in portraying a case involving a mother who may be separated from her daughter by a long prison sentence, expands her narrative to contemplate the meaning of motherhood and separation from a wider lens. Balezon worked on the novel while on her own maternity leave.

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You’ve got your large Coca-Cola in the cupholder affixed to the chair and your bucket of popcorn overflows into your lap. The lights go down and the movie begins. Cue the hero: some grizzled ex-special forces vet or former assassin with an ax to grind. This isn’t just any hero, though. This person is godlike, superhuman, the best in their field. No punch or kick will derail them. Maybe they’ll break a rib or two, or take a knife to the arm, but they will not stop kicking ass. Similarly, no bullet will take them down. There will be hundreds of bullets—thousands—fired at them over the course of the movie, and not one of them, not a single one, will be lethal. The bullets that do hit always find some noncritical part of the body: our hero’s shoulder, perhaps, or the three or four inches of expendable tissue between their ribcage and pelvis. Maybe they’ll cauterize the wound with something and carry on. And they have to carry on, because there are more bad guys to eliminate in a variety of spectacular ways. They are all around, flocking through the doors, through the windows, and our favorite badass is about to take them all out. Every last one of them. We watch with wide eyes, clawing popcorn into our mouths, totally absorbed. This is why we go to the movies—to be thrilled, to be entertained. It doesn’t matter that what we are watching is unrealistic, completely over-the-top fantasy action. We know exactly what we are going to get—a one-person-army—and we are all in.

John Wick is a great and extremely popular example of this action hero—the poster child for the one-person-army subgenre, although audiences have long been captivated by this explosive brand of cinema. I remember, as a kid, watching Max Rockatansky bring carnage to the parched Australian wildlands in Mad Max, and Bruce Lee going to a rival martial arts school and laying a beatdown on an entire dojo full of students in Fists of Fury. Kick after kick, punch after punch, Bruce dropped them to the mat (and usually, one punch or kick was all it took). I watched with huge eyes, thinking, I want to be that guy, I want to kick ass like that. My twelve-year-old mind was enthralled by the idea of taking those kung fu skills to school with me, and putting a hurt on all the bullies (and teachers) that caused me grief on a daily basis.

Which is, of course, a big part of what these movies offer us: a vicarious thrill. We can’t be that badass hero, because he or she doesn’t exist in the real world. But in the movies, we can shoot and kick alongside them for a couple of hours, albeit while shoveling popcorn into our mouths.

There are badass heroes in fiction, of course—Jason Bourne, Jane Hawk, Jack Reacher, to name just a few—and all pack a vicarious and entertaining punch. As a reader, I respond to these with great enthusiasm. As a novelist, I am interested in chaos, and the challenge it offers, and have always wanted to bring movie-level, balls-to-the-wall action into the pages of a novel. (Someone once told me that you should avoid writing car chases in fiction, so I put two in The Forgotten Girl.) Such ambition is perhaps imprudent, given that contemporary fiction and cinema—while both seeking to entertain—are governed by different rules. A thriller novel needs to be grounded in reality, whereas many action movies are encouraged to wallow in the outrageous.

Take Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill for instance. Our avenging hero, Beatrix Kiddo, arrives at the House of Blue Leaves with one job: to eliminate O-Ren Ishii, the queen of the Tokyo crime council. It’s a great setup—the plot has been established and the stakes couldn’t be higher—and it could work beautifully in a novel. But as soon as Beatrix disposes of O-Ren’s personal army (the Crazy 88), Tarantino puts his foot on the cinematic gas. He ups the ante, bringing in reinforcements, not just a handful of Yakuza henchmen, but dozens of them. They rush the House of Blue Leaves and completely surround our hero, dressed in identical black suits and brandishing lethal katanas. What follows is cinematic ballet—a visually poetic bloodbath—as Beatrix kicks, stabs, and slashes her way through the entire room. It’s stylistic, brilliant, and completely over-the-top. It does nothing to advance the character, however, or the plot. This is Tarantino indulging in his Japanese movie influences, and having one hell of a lot of fun in the process.

As chaotic and appealing as this style of action is, it’s really not workable in contemporary fiction—not to the same extent. The connection between a reader and a novel is cerebral, and a modern thriller needs to exist in a world with boundaries. The moment the author veers away from what is plausible, he or she risks losing the reader.

There are also issues in regard to repetition and flow. Think about John Wick and how many times he pulls the trigger over the course of the first movie (the answer is 153, by the way). How would that look on the page? You can tell and not show to a limited degree, but really, how many variations of, “he pulled the trigger,” can the author come up with before the reader wants to take a gun to the book herself?

Knowing this, I still felt impelled to rise to the challenge, and to answer a question that could tie me in literary knots: How do you take the daft square bullet of a Hollywood movie, and fire it down the smooth round barrel of fiction’s pistol?

Ultimately (and unsurprisingly), the answer is not in the bullets—whatever shape they may be—or in the action, but in emotion the author elicits in the reader. And from here the landscape looks more familiar. It’s one of characterization and plot. The former has always been something I work hard at, and take seriously—to create strong, believable personalities, for them to breathe on the page and to feel like true companions to the reader. Having characters that are robust enough to bear the weight of the story gives the author room to flex their muscle in other areas. They can stretch the bounds of reality just a little. They can chamber a few of those unwieldy square bullets.

My new novel, Lola on Fire, is about a former mafia enforcer—a total badass—who is lured out of hiding by the mob boss she tried to kill 26 years before. She’s obviously older, and slower, her reactions aren’t what they used to be, she’s not as strong, and she has to overcome these physical and emotional obstacles if she hopes to not only save herself, but save her family, too.

This is the setup, and it lends itself to explosive, Hollywood-style action. Indeed, every review so far has commented on the book’s pacing and nonstop action, and New York Times bestselling authors have drawn comparisons to John Wick, Jane Hawk, Killing Eve, Elmore Leonard, Lisa Gardner, and Kill Bill. I’m obviously humbled by this (“Mission accomplished,” you might say), but it’s the characters that do most of the heavy lifting. It’s the emotions the reader experiences that lend the action scenes credibility, and make the novel work.

There are scores of fantastic action novels out there, and a dauntless army of fictional badasses. I salute them all, and thank their authors for raising the bar. I tried to do something a little different with Lola on Fire, though. This was my attempt to bring cinema’s brazen, full-throttle action style into the pages of a book. Yes, the cover is wrapped in flames and the body count begins on page one, but beneath all of this—beneath the flamethrowers, the .45s, and the entry wounds—are the fundamentals of storytelling.

Make no mistake, Lola on Fire is a novel, through and through.

Even so, bring your popcorn.

*

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