by Paula Munier Plot matters. The days when you could sell a slice-of-life novel in which very little actually happens are over, for the most part. As an agent, former acquisitions editor, and mystery author, I’ve learned this the hard way, in the trenches, so to speak. No matter what genre you’re writing in, something needs to happen. In short: You need a plot. Which is why when Writers Digest asked me to write a book on plot, I wrote PLOT PERFECT: How to Build Unforgettable Stories Scene by Scene. Because I knew that selling a novel without a strong plot was infinitely harder than selling a novel with a strongly plotted one. No surprise, then, that I’m a plotter, not a pantser. When plotting my own Mercy Carr mysteries, I’ve followed my own advice, straight out of my own (bestselling) how-to-plot book. So imagine my delight/dismay when my latest mystery, THE NIGHT WOODS, received a (wonderful) review in bookreporter.com by the fab (oh-so-astute) Pamela Kramer in which she writes: …The crimes seem unconnected. What could a billionaire and a visitor to a hermit have in common? But as fans of Munier know, she is supremely capable of throwing spaghetti at the ceiling and not only having some stick up there, but braiding it en route. The more messy facts and mysterious matters there are, the more Munier will confound us with myriad suspects and many possible motives…. Spaghetti? Really? Is that what I’m doing? I didn’t think that was what I was doing, but having given it some thought, I realize I was wrong. Yes, I plot out my novels, first by nailing the usual plot points—inciting incident, plot point #1, midpoint, plot point #2, climax, denouement—and then by sorting out the scenes in between that take the reader from plot point to plot point. Once I finish the first draft, I sit down with a Sharpie and a giant Post-It and write out a scene-by-scene outline of the entire book so I can see the whole story at a glance. (I know, I know, very analog. But what can I say, it works for me.) For the early books, I followed this aforementioned process to the letter. I would have been lost in the story woods forever without a pathway out. But it’s different now, I’m not such a stickler for plotting every beat of the story. I find that this is partly a matter of time; my day job as an agent (which I love) takes up most of my waking hours, so pounding out a book a year means writing whenever I can steal the time. More time spent putting words on paper, less time spent plotting. That is, more time spent throwing spaghetti at the ceiling. Which begs the question: Where does the spaghetti come from? It comes from that mysterious gold mine inside our writer’s mind: the sub-conscious. The longer I’m in this writing game, the more I have learned to trust my sub-conscious—the pump that fuels the creative process. I will think of something, or more accurately, my sub-conscious will think of something. All I have to do is pay attention when my sub-conscious whispers to me—and keep it happy and productive. Is my pump running dry? Do I need to prime the pump of my creative process? That’s when I turn to 1) research and 2) my husband. Let’s start with research, since that’s easier. I love research. I started as a reporter, so I’m good at research. Good at getting people—cops, game wardens, dog handlers, first responders, wildlife biologists, to name a few—to talk to me, good at tracking down leads, good at doing deep dives on search engines, in libraries, through organizations. Good at reading around the subject. All grist for the mill, fuel for the fire, the wind beneath your wings… choose your own metaphor. As long as I keep priming the pump—and don’t think too hard—my sub-conscious keeps on noodling and I keep on throwing spaghetti. I weave those noodles into my story, with the faith that somehow, someway, they’ll stick. And most of the time, they do stick. All good. Sometimes, however, the spaghetti slips—and I struggle to, as Pamela Kramer put it so vividly, braid it en route. That’s where my husband comes in. Now, my husband is not a writer. (No worries, he is a reader.) He’s not much of a talker either, but he’s a good listener and he can fix practically anything. I go to him whenever I’m faced with a Gordian knot of a plot problem. Explaining the issue to him forces me to identify and articulate exactly what’s not working—and that process alone usually prompts a remedy to come to my mind. If it doesn’t, we keep on talking about it, and he comes up with his own answers. Sometimes I use them, and sometimes I don’t, but either way I almost always have at least a hint of a real solution by the time our little talk is over. As I write book #7 of the series, I find myself at the halfway mark—around 200 pages, 45,000 words—the point at which I typically throw a lot of spaghetti. Anything to get through that endless second act. You know the feeling. The next time you find yourself muddling through the middle, try tossing some noodles up into the air. See what sticks. Keep priming your pump. And if you get stuck, talk it through with a good listener. Preferably someone who’s not a writer. And then keep on plotting to The End.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, how’s it going? Yep, me too. Here we are, at the end of another year. This year went by very quickly. I typically like to measure the year in how many things I watched, and in case you do too, here’s a list of the best crimey TV shows you may or may not have missed, this past year. There were many great TV shows in other genres too, like English Teacher, Interview with the Vampire, Fantasmas, and Shōgun! There were a great many new seasons of existing TV shows, too, like Evil, Abbott Elementary, What we Do in the Shadows, Hacks, My Brilliant Friend, and Girls5Eva. But this is a list of crimey shows, as you might expect from a crime website. Happy watching! Apple TV+ Bad Monkey, Season 1 (Apple TV+) I was pleasantly surprised by Bad Monkey, the groovy new adaptation of Carol Hiaasen’s classic Florida PI story. Vince Vaughn is Andrey Yancy, a down-and-out former detective living in Key West, who becomes embroiled in a mystery after a severed arm is found on a fishing trip. It’s bright and bubbly enough as much as you’d want for a neo-noir, and more than plenty sultry and cheeky. A good alternative for those not headed to the Keys for the winter holidays. Philippe Antonello/Netflix Ripley, Season 1 (Netflix) We didn’t really need another adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but I’m very glad we got one. Developed, written, and directed by Steven Zaillian, Ripley unfolds as a noir, in punchy, digital black-and-white. The thing about this new series, is that its leading actor, Andrew Scott, is incredibly good. He’s incredibly good in it, and he’s incredibly good in everything. I might even say that he’s the best actor working today. In the first shot of Scott’s face, his dark eyes look black and cold, like pools of crude oil. In Ripley, Scott has managed to evacuate almost all humanity and feeling from his body; he embodies the sharp contrast of a body which appears to be human but lacks a human’s soul. This mode of characterization makes for a compelling antihero, but also feels rather like an intervention in the Ripley canon. Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is nothing if not emotional; it stars Matt Damon as a young, giddy and thoroughly disturbed interloper who falls in love with a beautiful man and a beautiful lifestyle, and then does whatever he can to preserve whatever he can have of it. It is as heartbreaking as it’s terrifying, a study in explosive pathos and even, maybe, how the pursuit of community only results in greater loneliness. But the novel, written in 1955 by Patricia Highsmith, offers us a slicker, slimier sociopath. We’ve seen an unfeeling Ripley before, but not in a while, and not as well as the one Andrew Scott offers to us, which is an awkward but conniving lizard-man. Netflix A Man On The Inside, Season 1 (Netflix) Michael Schur’s new comedy, about a retired professor (Ted Dansen) who goes undercover at a retirement community on behalf of a private detective, is a heartrending and moving show about aging, friendship, and rediscovering passion and a lust for life. It’s also a very, very cute detective show, and Dansen is perfect. Apple TV+ Slow Horses, Season 4 (Apple TV+) Slow Horses has consistently been one of the best TV shows in recent memory, a funny, gruff, anti-Fleming espionage series with propulsive plotting and memorable performances. True Detective: Night Country, Season 4 (HBO/Max) Jodie Foster and Kali Reis star in this much-anticipated installment of True Detective. I didn’t watch it because it seemed a bit too scary, but in his glowing review on our site, Nick Kolakowski says “Does the new season succeed? Issa López, the showrunner who wrote or co-wrote all the latest episodes, wisely takes much of what made the show’s first three seasons work so well, while tweaking other elements so it becomes her own beast.” HBO The Penguin, Season 1 (HBO/Max) The Penguin! This isn’t your momma’s Penguin. This isn’t fun, Batman fare. This Penguin, played by Colin Farrell and 100 lbs of prosthetics, is no Oswald Cobblepot. He is “Oz,” a tough Gotham gangster. And in fact, this is a gritty crime drama about gangsters that our reviewer Hector Dejean likens to a modernized, souped-up Edward G. Robinson movie. He writes, “The show provides an engrossing panorama of criminals tossing aside moral codes in favor of survival, and it gives viewers some jaw-dropping performances from extremely talented actors.” View the full article

Why can't we stop reading about this? Sex?

Over the last few weeks in your neighborhood, empty lots and car parking spaces have become temporary spaces where you can buy your own Christmas tree. The supply of them is limited and demand for them sky-high, which can lead to big, fast profits for the vendors. As a result, the Christmas tree business is highly competitive and even dangerous, with criminal enterprises keen to take control, and take their cut. In bigger cities like New York, sabotage, theft and even murder aren’t unheard of, but in 1950, Harry A. Pozner, the “Christmas Tree King” in San Diego, California, faced a very different threat: a love triangle. On April 13, 1950, he drove away after dropping “attractive red-haired divorcee” Verna Simons, 31, outside her sister’s café. He did not see that his wife Margarette, 36, had been lying in wait until it was too late. “So you’re with him again,” said Margarette, and hit Verna on the head with a .32 caliber automatic pistol. The weapon discharged, and Verna was shot in the forehead, dying several hours later in hospital. Margarette had long suspected that Pozner, 46, was having an affair. A few months earlier, Verna, who had been at his side as his secretary and bookkeeper since 1943, brought a lawsuit alleging that he was the father of her five-year-old son Martin. Pozner denied it, and the judge ruled in his favor, but then why had he paid Verna’s hospital expenses and supported the child all that time? This alone might have pushed Margarette over the edge, but then someone who said he was “madly in love” with Verna dropped a dime to the suspicious wife. After her arrest, Margarette told police that she “really didn’t mean to shoot her,” but nevertheless admitted that “I did it, and I’m glad I did it.” The DA charged her with first-degree murder, and at trial the next month café owner Evelyn testified that Margaretta had turned to a shocked Pozner and told him “I killed her, and I intended to kill you too.” Margarette, supported by two psychiatrists, in turn said she had had a “mental blackout”, and in fact only planned to shoot out one of Pozner’s tires so the three could “talk things over.” She said she had been waiting in the cafe, but when she approached Verna, “she had her hands out, like she was going to scratch out my eyes.” She didn’t even realize the gun had gone off, she said. This was again contradicted by witness Roland Morgantini, who said Margarette stood over the dying Verna and said “I told you I would kill you, you redheaded – – – -,” and that Pozner, in taking the gun away from his wife, said “look at the mess you’ve got us into.” She allegedly replied: “Go and hug her now… you’re not worried about the mess, you’re worried because you won’t have her anymore.” Even though the jury deliberated overnight, it seemed like an open-and-shut case – but they acquitted Margarette, who left court arm-in-arm with Pozner. He had admitted the affair on the stand, but now hoped “I’ll do everything I can to make up to my wife if she gives me the opportunity.” Perhaps they celebrated the holidays with their own two children later that year, opening gifts under a Christmas tree that Pozner supplied, but the archives do reveal that in late November 1960, he was filmed by local television news bringing some 2000 trees “from the North” into San Diego to decorate the Balboa Park festival. The report said that he would personally transport some 65,000 trees for sale in the city that year, and that they cost a bit more as they were kept refrigerated at his downtown warehouse. Asked how many he handled in his career, he said “I don’t have the slightest idea.” View the full article

Like all writers, I’m great at procrastinating. One of my favorite guilty pleasures is Reddit’s AmItheA**hole thread. If you haven’t yet succumbed to this black hole, random people submit real life hostile encounters to a jury of strangers, who pronounce someone the villain. What’s truly fascinating is how many different interpretations people come up with for the same events. I’m intrigued by what happens when you combine emotional intensity with miscommunication and differing world views. Particularly when everyone involved is fundamentally a decent human being. Black-and-white, hero-and-villain-type battles between good and evil are only so interesting. In fiction, I prefer to dwell in the emotionally heightened grey area – where terrible mistakes are made for morally complex reasons. Throw in a dead body, and I’m hooked. One of my all-time favorite book series is Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. She chronicles the life-long relationship – alternating between friendship to estrangement – between two brilliant women, Elena and Lila. As kids, they’re inseparable. But their bond is complicated when Lila is forced to drop out of school. Meanwhile Elena continues her education, setting her on a completely different life trajectory. Elena ultimately becomes a writer while Lila becomes a child bride, works in a meat packing factory, and survives a slew of abuses and tragedies. The books are a fascinating study of twentieth century Italian social forces. But what’s most electrifying about Elena and Lila’s story is the way they circle each other, sometimes connecting, sometimes losing each other again. Miscommunication in families and between close friends is not just a plot device; it’s an inescapable part of modern life – particularly in a family context. Just think of every advice column, or our collective anxiety over Thanksgiving dinner. Frankly, it would be hard to convincingly write a modern family where everyone is simpatico and shares a common world view. Yet most books about family struggles involve a monster – a violent father, an emotionally abusive mother, or some trusted adult who is secretly a child-abusing pervert. Bogeymen have a place in fiction, but stories with perfect moral clarity are often less intriguing than tales where the central tragedy is not caused by evil, but by misunderstanding and two people’s inability to reach each other. That psychological gulf can set up a crisis that is simultaneously inevitable and tragically preventable. Miscommunication and a desire to connect can be a particularly strong plot device in crime fiction. Julia Dahl’s terrific I Dreamed of Falling alternates between the perspectives of two people, each one flawed, ordinary, and struggling. Ashley and Roman are long time partners in an open relationship. They love each other but are together more out of loyalty and circumstance than understanding or compatibility. Life has run them ragged. Soon, they find themselves bickering over little things, like couples do when the cracks begin to show. The last thing Roman says to Ashley before she turns up dead is a nasty quip about her grocery shopping. Roman’s subsequent investigation of her death keeps readers hooked because it’s not a straight-up hunt for justice. As Roman gets deeper into his search for answers, he discovers new truths about Ashley and constantly needs to reassess who she was, and the nature of their relationship. The character study and mystery aspects of the book complement each other and make for a riveting read. In my mystery, Burn This Night, I build a novel around two families of decent people, struggling to communicate and relate to each other. Kate, my protagonist, is an agnostic, divorced private investigator mired in a custody battle. Still grieving her father’s death, she feels betrayed and unsettled to discover in her late thirties that she is the product of sperm donation. Meanwhile, Kate’s mother, a deeply religious woman who doesn’t believe in divorce, and who was married to a cop in the eighties, feels that she was protecting her family by concealing a secret she viewed as shameful. In writing about Kate’s experience, I spent a long time listening to NPE, or “not parent expected,” podcasts. I heard dozens of heart-wrenching stories of adults who felt betrayed that a fundamental part of their family history was kept from them. At the same time, some parents talked about their motivations for keeping a family secret, which were often born out of exceptionally difficult circumstances. Around the time that Kate learns about her father, she discovers through a genetics website that she is related to an unknown cold case killer. Kate looks into this decades-old crime for free when she is hired to investigate another murder that occurred in the same town: Jacob Coburn, a mentally ill man is accused of starting a fire that killed his sister, Abby. The Coburns are the second family in my book, torn apart my miscommunication and difficult decisions. A chunk of my book is told in flashbacks from the perspective of Abby, Jacob, and their sister Grace. Early in the book, Jacob discovers methamphetamine. He slowly destroys his brain with drug use. His sisters are shattered by Jacob’s addiction but respond to it in opposite ways. Grace pulls back as he spirals into violence and criminality. Meanwhile Abby upends her life in an effort to help her brother. Despite her efforts, Jacob becomes harder and harder to reach, as he loses touch with reality. All three siblings become estranged from each other as Jacob spirals downward and Abby tumbles after him. The Coburns are inspired by families I encountered as a line prosecutor in Los Angeles. Jacob is also partly based on someone I know very well who severely injured their brain with methamphetamine. California is the epicenter of a massive health crisis. While fentanyl gets more media attention, methamphetamine is causing mass brain damage, which is not always reversible, and wreaking havoc on communities. In Burn This Night, I explore how this crisis is affecting families and what happens when relatives respond to it in different ways – denial, avoidance, attempted interventions. *** View the full article

(I could not get the copied text to un-bold) Story Statement: A young girl must harness the war god’s power and lead her country’s dwindling army to victory. Antagonist Sketch: The Commander The Commander is the fearless leader of Carran’s military. He is unwilling to accept defeat or weakness in his army, even with the diminishing numbers of soldiers and surging attacks of the enemy. Together with the monarch, he is persistent on winning the war despite victory being so out of reach. The man is teeming with hubris, arrogance, and misogyny. Based out of the country’s singular surviving garrison, he trains his soldiers to follow his example and hold their own in battles with enemy numbers far surpassing their own. Fayre is everything he hopes to gain for his army and everything he despises. The Commander is hell-bent on victory and power, but unwilling to praise or recognize Fayre for her progeny or salvific powers. In his denial that a small peasant girl could be what his country needs for victory, he becomes his army’s worst enemy. He is callous toward her and others, and has little patience for her weakness. For the calculated, formidable man that he is, he makes rash decisions regarding Fayre which cost him dearly. Breakout Titles: An Army of Sword Lilies: Sword lilies have a symbolic meaning in the story. Shown to Fayre when she was a young girl by her Mari, she has always known them to represent the loss of an innocent life. Many characters come to be known as “sword lilies” as they pass in the trilogy, leading off with Merek, a young crippled boy who was killed in war. The Masked Progeny: Fayre is the descendant of Falak, the revered god of war. Yet, for both the Commander’s revulsion to a young girl being his country’s salvation, and the fear that if Fayre is discovered by enemy powers as the fulfillment of the prophecy to Carran’s victory, she is disguised as a male servant-at-arms, and made to wear the mask that all slaves do in her society, mirorring Vale, goddess of servitude. Genre and Comparables: Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone: Both novels immerse the reader into a world ravaged by war but filled with the hope of redemption by a girl who must learn to harness her powers to save her country. Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes: Both are set in fictional medieval worlds that bring readers into the hardships of war and slavery, begging the question: is victory and power worth the lives of those who suffer to obtain it? Core Wound and Primary Conflict: (Two options… undecided) Logline 1: In an attempt to protect her young crippled friend from the battlefield, a peasant girl must harness the war god’s power within her to brave the frontlines of war and lead her country’s army to victory. Logline 2: Discovered to be the progeny of the war god with the power to bring down armies, a young peasant girl is forced to brave the world of men and war and lead her country’s soldiers to victory. Two levels of conflict: INNER CONFLICT: Fayre battles herself, and the war god’s power growing inside her. While she desires strength and the capability to win the war so that she can return home and protect her family and Merek, she is horrified at the idea of bloodshed. With every opponent she strikes down, she feels a chasm growing between who she once was and the killer she is becoming. Fayre understands that the enemy soldiers she battles wanted no more part in this war than she. She agonizes over every attack, and the lives of innocents that will end by her hands. Hypothetical: Fayre is told by the Commander on an overseas journey to Aerilon borders that the only way to protect Terrin and her family back home from harm, she must fight and lead her army to victory, cutting down all in her path. As the boat surges onto Aerilon sands, she is in turmoil over every enemy she will have to kill, even though she knows Falak will give her the power to do so. She aims to “wound, not kill,” but her wish is futile in the chaos of the battlefield, and she starts to see herself as a cold-hearted murderer, believing her family back home would surely turn away from her after what she has become. SECONDARY CONFLICT: In order to prevent Terrin from discovering Fayre’s true sex, she must keep her distance from him even when her own heart–and his charm–betrays her. His goodness shines in stark contrast to the rest of her detachment’s cruelty, and his willingness to help her makes it difficult for her to push him away. Hypothetical: After a particularly brutal training session where Fayre took a number of beatings from fellow soldiers who disdain the slaves, Terrin insists on helping her to dress her wounds. During this moment, he discovers who she truly is without her mask, and is insist that he help her and get to know her more. Later that night, when Terrin approaches with his usual compassion, she feels she must push him away to prevent him from further harm if it were found out her secret had spread. He asks her for her true name and expresses his desire to aid her, and, although everything inside her urges against it, shows him unkindness and impatience to push him away. Setting Sketch: The story takes place in Carran, a fictional medieval country that has face severe devastation in the Great War, a war between three nations over borders which took place prior to the book’s starting point. War persists, between Carran and the enemy country of Aerilon, even as Carran is struggling to hold up their defenses. Due to the strain placed on Carran’s military, an enlistment was enacted forcing all males to begin training at the garrison at the age of six, and to fight as soldiers when they age until wartime ceases. Carran’s monarch is power hungry and unwilling to succumb to Aerilon’s power, however, so the hopes for the battle ending any time soon is futile. With all the men at war, the women are left in the villages to run businesses, carry out the agriculture and trade, and instruct the children. They worship a unique set of deities and (for the purposes of this story) the focus gods are Isolde, goddess of wisdom, Falak, god of war, and Vale, goddess of servtitude. Vale is depicted as a small girl who wears a cloth over the lower half of her face to represent her silence in submission. Any prisoner of war, convicted criminal, or disabled person is said to be “disowned” by the gods themselves and destined to live a life as a “Vale” slave, serving in silence and submission. Now that the country is in so much war debt, many male Vale slaves have gone to the frontlines to serve or fight there. Opening Scenes: Fayre’s village: Fayre lives in a peasant cotton-farming village. Although poor, the community gets along well and the women support each other. She lives with her Mari, an elderly woman who adopted several girls orphaned from the war, including Fayre. The women divide the work in the cotton fields, sewing tunics and preparing food as a monthly taxation to the war effort. The soldiers that come to collect the tax each month cruel and demanded, loathed by the community. “Night raiders” are only ever mentioned, but come to raid the villages and rape the women in order to keep population numbers rising with all the men at the war front. Merek’s Ravine: Merek’s ravine lays right outside the cotton village. In the warmer months, it is Merek’s (a crippled young boy whom Fayre is hiding away) home, where he hides away from the soldiers who raid the villages and come for taxation purposes. This is Fayre’s “home away from home.” It adds an element of excitement in her life, but also produces a lot of anxiety as she constantly wonders if the hiding spot will be discovered and Merek taken to live life as a slave or–gods forbid–a soldier. “Cormorant” Garrison: Nicknamed for its shape like the face of a cormorant bird jutting into the Ariat sea, the peninsula holds the army’s strongest–and sole–garrison. This is where all the boys disappear from the villages to for training, where the soldiers are housed and prepare for incoming attacks or are shipped out for an attack on Aerilon lines. The garrison is a buzz of energy and excitement entirely different from what Fayre is used to; teeming with males trained in the art of war, the society at the garrison glorifies killing and strength, even amid shrinking food rations, the improper ratio of armor and weaponry to men, and the fear of continued enemy attacks. Aerilon’s main city: The enemy city is walled in and heavily protected. Once inside, Terrin and his friends notice a stark difference between Aerilon’s cities and their own: men and women together, family units are whole, and there isn’t a draft ripping six-year-old boys from their mother’s arms. The war has still certainly caused devastation, with a draft requiring many males to serve in the war, but there is still the hope of a whole society within Aerilon’s city borders.

A murderous reunion, a bachelorette disaster, a gender reveal turned tragic . . . what is it about life’s milestone moments gone awry that makes for such great stories? From the popularity of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Perfect Couple to the iconic mysteries like Nita Prose’s The Mistletoe Mystery, there’s something about the alchemy of special events and catastrophe that keeps readers turning pages. Maybe it’s the glamorous locales or all those emotions charging through those exotic venues, but for much the same reason we love True Crime, psychology always plays a part. For many people, it’s that combined desire for control and new experiences that event-gone-wrong books satisfy. Readers get to be amateur sleuths and investigators while also empathizing with the characters from the safety of their Kindles. And even when we know it’s coming, it doesn’t dilute the excitement. Somehow it’s the buildup, that creeping itch that makes the trainwreck that much sweeter. The biggest thrill of all is when we’re sure we’ve figured it out, only to find out we were wrong again. In the end, it is always about the storytelling. Whether it’s a rehearsal dinner gone wrong like my novel, The Good Bride, or a funeral that sets off a chain of events, this list of psychological thrillers and suspense books has something for every kind of reader and every kind of hallmark event. The Engagement Party, Finley Turner Kass Baptiste is newly engaged to her fiancé Murray Sedgemont. Before they even get to share the news, an invitation arrives via messenger – to an engagement party hosted by Murray’s parents. But their glittering engagement soiree goes horribly wrong when Kass’s own dark past gets intertwined with murder. After the Funeral, Agatha Christie This work of detective fiction chronicles the investigation of Hercule Poirot as he uncovers dark family secrets after the death of Cora Lansquenet. A woman’s whose extraordinary remark at her brother Richard’s funeral the day before sets off a firestorm that ultimately ends in murder. In My Dreams I Hold A Knife, Ashley Winstead At a college reunion at Duquette University, Jessica Miller is ready to flaunt her achievements and forget about her questionable past. But not everyone is living in the present at this event. Someone still remembers the tragedy from their college days and is determined to make the guilty pay no matter what the price. The Hunting Party, Lucy Foley Foley is the queen of event-gone-wrong, and this novel details a New Year’s Eve gone deadly for a group of old college friends. Set at a remote estate in the Scottish Highlands, when a historic blizzard cuts the group off from the rest of the world, they discover a killer among them. Her Dark Lies, J.T. Ellison Clare Hunter is thrilled to be marrying Jack Compton at his family estate in Isle Isola off the stunning italian coast. . . that is until a literal skeleton in his closet becomes just the first sinister occurrence to plague their nuptials. From a decimated wedding dress to a raging storm, Claire must untangle the mystery of Jack’s first wife before it catches up to them all. Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir, Tod Goldberg This collection contains old-school slapstick comedy, hardboiled noir, gritty procedurals, and poignant reminders of the meaning of Hanukkah, offering something for almost every reader willing to take the journey through these twisted tales. The Christmas Guest, Peter Swanson Ashley was planning on spending Christmas alone but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, the country residence of the Chapman family. Upon arrival, she discovers Emma’s beguiling brother is being investigated by the police for a brutal murder and nothing is as it seems. What began in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion many Christmas seasons later in this page turning holiday-gone-wrong story. The Deadly Reveal, Diane Weiner It’s a boy! It’s a girl! It’s a murder? No list would be complete without the unexpected twists and turns of a gender reveal gone wrong. Diane Weiner, award-winning author of The Susan Wiles Schoolhouse Mysteries delivers a cozy twist on this beloved tradition turned trainwreck. The Good Bride, Jen Marie Wiggins One year after a devastating hurricane, bride-to-be Ruth Bancroft is marrying her perfect groom in a quaint fishing village on the Gulf Coast. The weekend is carefully curated, with the displays of pomp and social media magic meant to promote an area still struggling to rebuild as well as bring Ruth’s estranged family back together. Yet as good intentions often go, this road to wed is hell and paved with a high profile missing person. View the full article

As a retired Catholic, I don’t really care if Die Hard is or isn’t a Christmas movie. (And if we’re gonna settle that one, the film’s correct genre is “Shut Up, Just Let Alan Rickman & Bruce Willis Cook.”) But at least we past or present followers of Christ have ample Christmas crime media to pick from. Home Alone is a Christmas cozy heist film. Grant Morrison’s beautifully gory and insane “Happy!” graphic novel is set during the holiday. And both Soho Press and the once beloved Thuglit have put out Christmas crime fiction collections. But what of our friends who were only fans of the first season of the Bible and dipped out on the show after they introduced that Jesus fellow? That’s the space Tod Goldberg was trying to fill. The best-selling author of the Gangsterland trilogy and all-around mensch chatted with me earlier this month to talk about why he and 10 other authors decided to put their stamp on the holiday crime genre with “Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir” out now from SoHo Press. JQ: How did we get here? “Let’s stitch together 300 pages of Hanukkah-themed bloodshed, sex-driven blackmail and punk rock violence” is not the thought of a healthy human brain. What inspired you to put this collection together? TG: Like many things Hanukkah related, it started with a small miracle: I was asked to be part of a previous anthology Soho Press put out called The Usual Santas, which was edited by the great Peter Lovesey, and turned in a story called “Blue Memories Start Calling” that included, you know, a massacred family, a cop with a fungible moral center, and some tinsel. Because that says Christmas to me. The book was a big success and I suggested to my editor at Soho, Juliet Grames, that a book of stories set around Hanukkah would probably be just as happy and filled with seasonal fun as my Christmas story had been. She agreed. And now here we are. I really wanted a collection that would run the gamut of the genre and I think we really achieved that. I’m very proud of the stories this rogue’s gallery came up with. JQ: What’s the greatest Hanukkah crime story ever told? TG: That’s the thing. There’s not a lot of holiday crime fiction centered around eight nights of anything, really. Perhaps the greatest crime that took place during Hanukkah was whoever forgot to get more oil. JQ: Are you saying there’s no great Jewish/Hanukkah crime story? TG: There’s no signature book or film or TV special about Hanukkah – there’s no adorable ostracized animal with a strange appendage to hang the story on – and so part of the allure of putting this book together was to examine this holiday in a fictional setting, giving it some fun, some danger, some comedy, some darkness, all that. It’s a crime anthology so there’s nothing particularly warm and fuzzy about the stories contained in the book, but in my view it fills a niche that I’ve long yearned for – it’s not enough to get a single shelf at Target with blue paper plates, I want some actual MEDIA. JQ: This collection has an impressive emotional range, which I think is emblematic of the Holidays, be they Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa or Festivus. The stress of seeing and caring for family, which might feel more like an obligation than a labor of love as the years go on. Money panic. Learning uncomfortable truths about those closest to us. David Ulin’s “The Shamash” nearly made me cry. Your piece had me cackling. Ivy Pochoda made me miss Brooklyn and want to beat the piss out of the nearest landlord at the same time. Did you prompt your writers to cultivate this kind of range, or did you go out recruiting people who would hit different beats across the spectrum? TG: When I was trying to decide who to ask to take part in this book, I actually gave this idea of range a lot of thought. I think the challenge with a lot of these crime anthologies that you see every year is that there can be a real sameness to them even if the theme is 15 stories based on B-sides of Beatles singles, because the writers chosen for the anthology end up being of very similar ilk. Which is just fine. I love those anthologies as much as the next guy. But as this book is also centered around a religious holiday that’s also a memorial, I decided early on that I wanted some unconventional approaches to the noir form. A writer like Liska Jacobs, for instance, who doesn’t really write crime but whose voice is influenced by classic noir, I just knew that if she wrote something it would end up being super dark, a little funny, and probably completely unlike anything I would ever write. And I knew David Ulin would bring a closer look at the Jewish faith, which the book needed. Then with writers like Nikki Dolson and James D.F. Hannah, both are really short story masters and I suspected each would find a unique way into the theme, particularly since neither is Jewish. JQ: Why didn’t you spell Hanukkah with a “C,” and how much am I allowed to yell at you about it? TG: I just got some hate mail about this! A guy sent me a letter chastising me for my choice to spell it the way I’ve chosen to spell it. There’s about a dozen different spellings for Hanukkah and I picked the one I like, because I’m in charge. Also, I sometimes put mayonnaise on a corned beef sandwich, and we have six Christmas trees in our house (my wife is very into Christmas). JQ: Were there tropes you were trying to avoid or had to chase out of people’s first drafts? I saw very little Hanukkah-themed weaponry outside of the occasional menorah to the skull. TG: There’s so little Hanukkah fiction, there’s not really a trope to worry that much about. I figured menorahs would play a large role throughout the book and indeed they do, but to me that’s the funny part of the book – how many different ways people ended up getting brained with menorahs – but really, the only thing I asked for in a few of the stories was to make sure Hanukkah was more than just a background theme, that even if it wasn’t talked about much, the actual aspects of the holiday itself ended up showing up subtextually in the relationships within the story, or in how the plot works, or in the resolution of the story itself. Unlike a Christmas story where you can very easily put a tree in every scene … Hanukkah doesn’t have such easy identifiers, so for my taste I was more interested in seeing the essence of the holiday in the people foremost. JQ: Have you personally ever committed or nearly committed a Hanukkah crime. If so, admit just a little bit more than you should on advice of counsel… TG: I haven’t committed a crime, but I was the victim of a holiday crime. This was in 1995. I was living in a shitty house in Northridge with a bunch of guys – we’d all just graduated from college and were still in that odd phase where you didn’t know if you were supposed to still go to frat parties – and were prone to doing things like not locking the house when we left, because invariably one of us couldn’t find their keys. It was that sort of existence. At any rate, I’d just gone shopping for Hanukkah and Christmas and left the house to go get wrapping paper. When I returned, someone had broken in, stolen all of my CDs (and had the temerity to use my own pillowcase as a bag!) and walked away with all the gifts I’d purchased. We called the cops. A couple hours later, a lone cop showed up, took a report and told me he’d follow up with me as soon as he found my missing Jane’s Addiction CDs and the bracelet I’d purchased for my girlfriend. Still waiting. JQ: What does Hanukkah mean to you, and which of these stories best exemplified that? TG: Hanukkah is about the indomitable spirit of Jewish people. And in that way, many of the stories in this book have that at their core, even if that core is pretty dark. The Talmud tells us that the spirit of the Jewish people is rooted in truth, loving-kindness, and divine guidance – how those grand notions are achieved in a world where Jews have often been the witnesses to a brutal history is often more personal than universal, borne out of a need to live by a code rooted in empathy, and so pinpointing a single story that defines that feels antithetical to me. Your empathy is different than my empathy. View the full article

The CrimeReads editors select the best true crime memoirs of the year. Tracy O’Neill, Woman of Interest (HarperOne) O’Neill’s memoir absorbs and upends the form of a detective novel, with the author herself starring as both an investigator and the elusive subject of inquiry, as she tries to track down her birth mother. She starts with the help of an experienced detective who soon disappears, leaving a new trail of questions and a good foundation for O’Neill to take on the duties herself. The narrative bends and evolves into something entirely new, telling the powerful, moving story of one woman’s journey toward an understanding of family and identity. –DM Jay Nicorvo, Best Copy Available (Univ. of Georgia Press) When Jay Nicorvo was a child, his mother was sexually assaulted by a stranger, and he experienced sexual abuse from a babysitter. These twinned traumas, kept secret from each other for far too long, later inspired Nicorvo’s investigation into his family’s larger story and his journey towards processing his own experiences. Thoughtful, devastating, and surprisingly hopeful, Best Copy Available will linger in my mind for some time. –MO Orlando Whitfield, All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art (Pantheon) Whitfield’s whirlwind account of the modern art world is intoxicating in its own right, but add to that a compelling and stubbornly complex crime committed by a longtime colleague, and you have the makings of an epic story. Whitfield and Inigo Philbrick met in art school, later went into business together, then went their separate but sometimes intersecting ways in the art world; except that Philbrick’s way was eventually shown to involve an intricate web of financial fraud. All That Glitters tells the story of the manipulations that went into some of those frauds, but it also tells a very human story of ambition and greed and the ultimate downfall of a high-flying golden boy. –DM Sarah Gerard, Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable (Zando) Sarah Gerard’s skills in both creative writing and private investigation are on full display in this disturbing account of her friend Carolyn Bush’s murder by a roommate, and the many iniquities that enabled the crime. She also examines a wider culture of male privilege and entitlement at Bard College, the same school attended by both Carolyn and her killer, drawing a convincing through-line between the university’s abysmal record on sexual assault and mental health treatment and the shocking crime at the heart of her book. Gerard also connects the case into a wider discussion of privilege and power in the New York literary scene, and shows the devastating impact of Carolyn’s loss on an entire community. –MO Kristine S. Ervin, Rabbit Heart: A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Story (Counterpoint) This one was an emotional read, but that doesn’t mean folks should shy away from experiencing Ervin’s lyrical search for answers and catharsis as she attempts to reconstruct the life and mind of her absent mother, murdered when Ervin was a child. As someone whose own mother passed when I was young, I found this book to be deeply helpful for anyone facing a hole where there was once a loved one, or trying to make sense of the myth that was once a person. –MO View the full article

It’s that time of year again! Every December, I roll out a list of the best Crime Movies of the Year. This is my favorite list to make, because I love movies so much. It’s not easy… but someone has to do it. This year wasn’t last year in terms of movies, I’ll be honest. I have no idea what the Oscars are going to look like this year. But there were some very, very good crime movies in the mix. If the Edgar Awards still had their film category, there might be some stiff competition, this awards cycle. That’s all I’m saying. Anyway, to the movies: Strange Darling I absolutely loved Strange Darling, JT Mollner’s wild and weird serial killer movie, which was shot all on 35 mm film by the actor-turned-cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi. And man, he’s a good DP. Strange Darling is as much as a visual treat as it is a narrative extravaganza, a fully controlled and impressive story told in an innovative way. It stars a superb Willa Fitzgerald as a young woman (simply called “the lady”) and an impressive Kyle Gallner (simply called “the demon”) and it drops us in the middle of their night, a night that has started as a one night stand and has twisted into a terrifying cat-and-mouse mounted by a serial killer. The shot that plays during the opening credits, of Fitzgerald’s character running desperately across a green field in bright red scrubs, her ear having been blasted off by a shotgun, is one of the most arresting things I’ve seen at the movies in a while. And the movie only gets more, well, arresting from there. Nickel Boys RaMell Ross’s deft, impressive adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel about a sinister, segregated detention camp for boys in the 1950s, is a bracing and commanding achievement—in its handling of narrative but also through its particularly innovative camera use. It’s heavy with subjective shots, in ways that tease intimacy but really hold the audience at a distance until the film’s charged, unforgettable climax and denouement. I can’t remember being so riveted in sickly agony and sheer amazement by a film, in such a long time. Truly, I’ve never seen a film like this before. You must see it. You must. Hit Man Hit Man, directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Linklater and Glen Powell, isn’t really about a hit man. It’s about the myth of the hit man, or at least “the hitman-for-hire.” Powell plays Gary Johnson, a dorky philosophy professor who moonlights doing surveillance for the local police department. But one day, he finds himself out of the van and inside a sting; he’s a plant, pretending to be a hit man for a guy who has tried to hire one. His job is simply to seem legit enough that the suspect ends up incriminating himself. But, it turns out, he’s really, really good at pretending to be a killer. And things spin out of control from there. I liked the first act the most (with its explorations of performance and identity), but then it becomes a charming, mid-budget studio rom-com of sorts, and I enjoyed that too. Anora Sean Baker is back!!! The scrappy, low-budget director of The Florida Project and Tangerine has made his best film yet: a twisted, jubilant crimey Cinderella story about a stripper (Mikey Madison) who marries the young, handsome son of a Russian oligarch. And when his family is not happy about his new life decision and sends agents to force them to annul the marriage, he goes on the run. Baker is known for his stories about working-class strivers and those who live in the shadows of preposterous wealth and tawdry glamour, and Anora is his most affecting undertaking yet: part effervescent rom-com, part bleak crime story. Conclave Thank GOD for Conclave, a simmering whodunnit set in the Vatican. If that sentence hasn’t sold you, I don’t know what will… but read on, my child. In Conclave, Ralph Fiennes plays Dean-Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the Vatican official charged with organizing a papal conclave to elect a new pope, following the death of the previous Holy Father. But, once all the cardinals have been sequestered together and political schmoozing begins in earnest, Cardinal Lawrence finds himself not only in charge of the proceedings, but also finding out what really happened to the previous Holy Father, whose death seems to have been a bit suspicious. So, yes, Conclave is a detective story. But Cardinal Lawrence ain’t no Father Brown. This is a tense, staid film… and more than make Lawrence a sleuth, wisely, in all ways, it makes the WHOLE film a mystery. It is about a man who, in his vocation to and service of the Church, has lived for a long time accepting the sense of mystery in his life, but who suddenly finds that everything around him is a mystery: the political motivations of his colleagues, the secret ambitions of his friends, and even the Church’s ability to carry out the work of God. In a world of whispers and gossip and secrets and rumors and pleas and deals, Cardinal Lawrence becomes the only man asking questions. The Fall Guy I took my grandmother to see The Fall Guy and her review of it was to say “it was entertainment!” This is true! It’s a high-octane love letter to stuntmen and stunt coordinators and action movie technicians, and it’s fun to boot! Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers (this is, after all, an adaptation of the Lee Majors TV show of the same name), a formerly-injured stuntman who comes back to work on the film set of the woman he loves whom he once jilted (Emily Blunt) to give her a hand, not only with the stunts, but also with a huge behind-the-scenes problem: the lead actor, whom Colt doubles for, has gone missing. Juror #2 I’m thrilled to report that Clint Eastwood has still got it. In Juror #2, a fascinating, tense legal thriller that asks what exactly we owe to each other, a juror in a high profile murder case realizes that he has a connection to the case… and struggles with what that means for himself and the man on the stand. In its erecting a legal proscenium to interrogate the importance of “doing the right thing,” it’s Twelve Angry Men for our fraught modern era. Thelma Thelma!!! What a JOY Thelma is! In Josh Margolin’s new film, June Squibb plays an active nonagenarian who falls for a “hello grandma” phone scam and sends $10,000 in the mail because she is tricked into thinking her beloved young grandson (Fred Hechinger) is in trouble. He’s not, and she feels sheepish… so she decides to go track down the scammer, herself, and get her money back. This film also features Richard Roundtree in his final role, and he delivers a remarkable performance. A wonderful, wonderful time. The Killer John Woo is back, doing John Woo! Yes, Woo remade his film The Killer from 1989. Yes, The Killer, the un-remake-able classic Chow Yun-fat/Danny Lee vehicle. But Woo doesn’t remake it! Not exactly. He just makes it again, the way someone would revive a play: a new cast, a new vision, but the same foundation. Nathalie Emmanuel and Omar Sy are the assassin and cop playing cat-and-mouse, and the results… are fun. They’re fun! Trap Whatever, I loved Trap. I know it’s contentious!!! It isn’t perfect. I know that. There are the kind of pitfalls that always seem to pop up in Shyamalan’s movies (a tendency to over-explain some things, some strange or stilted dialogue), but I find these things less “pitfalls” than funny markers of style. Shyamalan is an auteur in the truest sense of the word, and, in an era of endless sequels and unwanted franchises, I find it a breath of fresh air that he always seems able to turn out a new, original idea. And Trap, which is a movie about a serial killer who realizes that the FBI are closing in on him while he takes his tween daughter to a Taylor Swift-style pop concert, is not only a delightful and original premise, but it is also executed with such love and care that it feels almost impossible not to enjoy. First and foremost, it is a father-daughter movie. Our protagonist, the slick murderer Cooper (Josh Hartnett), adores his young daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue), and is so excited to be able to be with her to enjoy her favorite artist, the pop singer Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). His clear love for her and his family plays out nicely against his increasing need for self-preservation; as the walls begin to close in, he clings tight to his daughter, and it’s clear that for maybe the first time, he’s beginning to worry if this will be a day his daughter won’t forget not for its specialness, but its potential to upend her life. And second, Shyamalan’s own daughter Saleka, herself a singer-songwriter and musician, plays such a large part in this film, that it is clear that Trap is a family-affair, behind the scenes just as much as in front of the camera. I find it incredibly charming that, at the start of Shyamalan’s career, he was marketed as an extremely mysterious figure with a dark imagination, and now, maybe years later, he is perhaps most famous for seeming to be a very loving father? View the full article

In her recent essay right here in CrimeReads, the author Bonnie Kistler discusses how the classic noir film Gaslight influences her new thriller, Shell Games. Her laser focus on the myriad dynamics at play among her large, often-devious cast makes for an entertaining tale of deception and duplicity. At the start of the story, Kate Sawyer, at 70 a self-made, ultra-successful (and ultra-wealthy) real estate developer in Sarasota, Florida, is marrying her high school sweetheart, Charlie Mull. The young lovers had been separated by Charlie’s service in Vietnam and Kate’s admittance to Radcliffe. They remained apart, out of touch, for over 50 years until a fluke encounter at a luxe car dealership where Charlie was working and Kate’s son-in-law, Eric, purchased a high-end car. The two men bonded, and Eric invited Charlie to dinner so he could meet Julie, his new wife. Sweeping in late to join the three was Kate—and that teenage romance rekindled quickly. Kate and Charlie had a prenup written, but Kate is unconcerned about its ever being necessary. “He loved her, but he didn’t need her. It was such a refreshing change from most of the men who made up most of the dating pool for women her age. Florida women had an expression born of bitter experience: The men were only after a nurse or a purse.” It’s all good. Off to their wedding night before leaving for a Tahitian cruise, as they prepare for bed after an exhausting day, Kate tipsily asks Charlie to open a stubborn bottle of Tylenol for her. Charlie says, “I want us to always be completely honest with each other.” “Of course,” replies Kate. “Do you remember the Tylenol murders?” “What?” says Kate. She “blinked hard. She couldn’t imagine why he was bringing this up now.” Charlie continues, “In Chicago, back in the 80s, when somebody tampered with the bottles on the store shelves and put potassium cyanide capsules in with the pills? Seven people died?” Now she understands. “God, yes,” she says. “That’s why we all have to suffer now with these damn tamperproof caps.” Charlie easily opens the bottle, as Kate thinks that she finally has it all. Then, “‘Katie. Darling,’ he said sadly as the room tilted leftward. ‘I have a confession to make.’” Just like that, Kate’s world implodes. The collateral damage envelops dweeby Julie, a small star in the constellation that her mother shines so brightly in. Eric, Julie’s arrogant surgeon husband; her sister-in-law, a young judge, Greta; and Greta’s neurologist husband, Alex, all suddenly seem bent on institutionalizing Kate. In a recent e-mail interview, I started by asking Kistler about her approach to plotting her stories, which take numerous hairpin curves. She gave an unexpected answer, using a metaphor to explain: “Mystery writers often identify themselves as either plotters––who outline in some detail before beginning to write – or pantsers – who fly by the seat of their pants and simply start writing and see where it takes them. “I’m definitely not a plotter. I don’t outline, and I believe I’d get bored with the material if I knew every scene that was coming. I like to surprise myself almost as much as I like surprising my readers. But neither am I a pantser, which sounds way more haphazard than the way I approach my work. “George R.R. Martin coined different terms for this dichotomy: architects and gardeners. Architects plan out every detail before the first nail is hammered, while gardeners plant seeds and wait to see what grows. “I put myself in the gardening camp. I always begin with a starting premise, and I always know how I want to end up, sometimes down to the closing scene. But I don’t always know exactly how I’m going to get there. It’s like I have a vision of how I want my mature garden to look. I prepare the soil and plant a few foundation shrubs to anchor it. Then I start to plug in some seedlings. Sometimes I have to relocate them. Sometimes I have to rip them out. But as the garden grows, I do my best to cultivate it until it starts to resemble the vision I started with.” Kistler is a former attorney. Shell Games and her previous two novels, Her, Too and The Cage, center around women who are “working in what is traditionally considered a man’s world. This of course comes out of my own background as a lawyer representing business clients. I think it distinguishes my work from that of many of my contemporaries in the psychological suspense world where the focus is more often on domestic issues.” And Kistler acknowledges that she sharpened her writing skills on the job: “My prior career as a lawyer informs my writing in other ways, too. As a litigator preparing cases for trial, it was my job to take the facts, polish and massage them as best I could, and put them together in a package designed to engage and persuade. This is exactly what I do as a novelist, too, with the huge advantage that now I get to make up the facts! “Also, a lot of work in litigation is done in the form of writing – briefs, motions, affidavits – and that’s where I honed my use of language. People think legal writing is dry and stuffy, and I suppose it can be in some hands. But not in mine. I developed a reputation for using more evocative, sometimes colorful, language than most, and I think it made me a more effective advocate.” Kate’s daughter, Julie, initially is a submissive underling to her mother’s go-go business identity. She’s a lawyer who works for and stays close to her mother, even though she can feel less than important in Kate’s life. As the story evolves, Julie rises to numerous challenges, not the least of which is her oppressive husband, Eric, who seems primarily interested in her for two things: money and aggressive sex. “A few years ago at a bookstore event, a reader announced that she’d read all my books and what she loved best was how they center on smart, strong women. That was exactly my aim, but as her words sank in, I thought, I’m in a rut. So, I challenged myself in Shell Games to create a different kind of female protagonist. Julie suffered a childhood trauma, she’s grown up in the shadow of a powerful mother, and she married a domineering man. The result is that she’s timid and unsure of herself, and it takes the events of the novel for her to emerge as smarter and stronger than anyone realized, including herself.” Kistler lives part-time in Florida, and the state is indeed a character in the story. She lives the rest of the time in the Asheville, North Carolina, area. I commented that the hurricane in the book seemed almost uncanny considering recent events and that the portrayal of contemporary Florida is captured expertly. “In Shell Games, the setting is so critical to the story,” she says. “I’ve been a part-time resident there for more than 20 years, but it took me until now to feel that I truly have a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the state—the book banning, the anti-immigrant fervor, the climate change denial in the face of clear evidence to the contrary, and all of this happening in a diverse population living in paradise. The contradiction writes itself. (Well, not quite. I helped). “My husband and I aimed for the best of both worlds when we decided to divide our time between Sarasota and Asheville. In Asheville, we enjoy country living, hiking in the mountains, cool summers, and spectacular autumns. In Sarasota, we have in-town walkability, cultural activities, and of course sun and surf. “But we were not prepared for the double whammy of Hurricane Helene to hit us in both places,” she continues. “The best of both worlds suddenly became the worst. Although we suffered only minor damage to our NC house and none at all to our Sarasota condo, our mountain community is devastated, and so are many homes and businesses on our barrier islands. I wrote a hurricane into Shell Games for dramatic effect and to underscore the climate change issue, but I had no idea how prescient I was being.” It’s difficult—OK, impossible—to sum up all the machinations of a large cast, but deception, startling revelations, and the surprising demise of one character all combine to a page-turning, OMG! set of cliffhanger chapter endings. Kistler’s novels would seem to lend themselves to your favorite streamer. “Yes, The Cage has been optioned and in fact is already in development,” she says. “If all goes well, it will be broadcast as a limited TV series on one of the streaming platforms.” And with her background as a business-oriented attorney, she surely was involved in the legal paperwork for the project? “There’s no way I could have written this contract—it took a team of Hollywood lawyers to do it!” Wondering what Kistler is writing now? She ain’t talking. “I don’t like to talk about my work in progress because I can’t be sure it will turn out the way I hope. Suffice it to say that it’s nowhere near done.” Undoubtedly, she’s coming up with another compulsively readable twist-a-thon! View the full article

While my esteemed colleague Drew Broussard has already made a cooler, wider-ranging version of this list, I wanted to highlight some of my favorite books this year to combine crime and mystery tropes with futuristic or fantastical settings. The following titles are a bit of a grab-bag, given the vast scope of their purview, featuring conniving fairies, rebellious sex robots, sentient trains, secretive communities, nasty little magicians, and more. Thanks, as always, for reading! Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup (Del Rey) Holmes and Watson get a new twist in this fantastical noir set in a mysterious empire in which nothing is as it seems. The high, thick sea walls of the outer rings of the empire were built to withstand the colossal titans that swim in from the ocean depths to exact a ruinous chaos, and now, the walls have been breached. It’s up to a misanthropic genius and her new sword-wielding assistant to find the culprits who wish to destroy the empire, and in so doing, stop the empire’s own steady decline. Perfect for those who loved China Mieville’s Perdito Street Station and Kraken, but wished there was more camaraderie and crime-solving. Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands (Flatiron) This book is steampunk perfection! The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands takes place on an enormous train barreling through a landscape known as the “Wastelands” on its way from Beijing to Moscow at the turn of the 20th century. Outside the train, strange creatures with knowing eyes and too many mouths regard the iron beast and its fearful passengers. Inside the train, a powerful company tries to preserve order and cover up past mistakes as various travelers try to discover the truth behind what happened on the disastrous previous journey. Brooks brings a Mieville-esque mentality to her novel, with some terrifying creepy-crawlies and an even more terrifying capitalist conglomerate. Donyae Coles, Midnight Rooms (Amistad) Never. Eat. What. The. Fairies. Give. You. Especially if it’s as disgusting as what’s consumed at the wedding feast in this atmospheric gothic (complete with strong folk horror elements). Donyae Coles’ plucky heroine is surprised to receive a later-in-life proposal from a mysterious gentleman. Their connection is genuine, but his family is off-putting, his manor house is crumbling, and for some reason, he keeps getting her drunk on honey wine while feeding her bloody meat and little cakes. Read this one if you, like me, just finished rewatching The Magicians and need to fill its gossamer-winged void. Micaiah Johnson, Those Beyond the Wall (Del Rey) In Micaiah Johnson’s magisterial epic, two cities in a dystopian future are poised for conflict across the barren desert between them. The people of Ashtown are grimy, gritty, and have hard-won respect through violence; the people of Wiley City are pale, rich, soft, and have built their riches through exploitation of the Ashtowners and the denizens of the desert. When bodies start piling up in Ashtown, Johnson’s narrator is tasked with discovering what unearthly forces could cause such extreme injury, and come to terms with her own difficult past. This one reads like Mad Max: Fury Road was written by Phillip K. Dick and N.K. Jemison. Olivia Gatwood, Whoever You Are, Honey (Dial Press) Olivia Gatwood’s new novel juxtaposes community solace against dystopian futures in a seaside neighborhood near San Francisco. Two women living in an old cottage befriend their new neighbors, the wealthy and beautiful couple that have purchased the glittering glass home next door. The husband is a successful and handsome entrepreneur, but he pales next to the flawless perfection of his wife, who the neighboring women soon suspect is neither human nor free. Vincent Tirado, We Came to Welcome You (William Morrow) Vincent Tirado’s YA thrillers have already made a big splash, and their adult debut confirms a writer at the top of their game. In We Came to Welcome You, a queer couple is granted a rare opportunity to purchase a home in an exclusive planned community. Soon enough, the town’s promises of inclusion start to sound a lot like threats to participate or else. What secrets are the residents hiding? And what dark agenda drives the town’s strict and bizarre policies? The answers are both completely shocking and extremely logical. Jenna Satterthwaite, Made For You (Mira) Jenna Satterthwaite’s novel is a cutting and creative take on reality television and artificial personhood. Her heroine is the first “synth” to compete on a reality dating show, and only the third to exist publicly in the world. Her romance is fairy-tale perfection, but her marriage is decidedly less so, and when the husband she worked so hard to win goes missing, suspicion falls immediately on his robotic partner. Will she be able to prove her own innocence, and will the world finally accept her autonomy and sense of self? Alexis Henderson, Academy for Liars (Ace Books) Alexis Henderson once again proves herself one of the most virtuoso voices crafting genre fiction today with this dark academia romance. An Academy for Liars reads a bit like if Octavia Butler had written the Magicians, with a strong social justice message that forcefully reckons with the long history of stolen talent and cultural appropriation. A perfect story for those who enjoyed RF Kuang’s Babel or Elisabeth Thomas’ Catherine House. S.E. Porter, Projections (Tor) What a compelling and creative story. In Projections, a boy kills a girl in the mid-19th century in upstate New York. The girl becomes a ghost, the boy becomes a magician, and he takes her along with him to a magical city in which she screams, forever, tethered to his soul and stripped of her energies to fund his despicable enterprises. The magician continues to kill, over and over, telling himself he seeks a perfect love; the ghost, meanwhile, slowly begins to discover her own powers, and may just be able to finally stop him. Emotionally evocative and visually stunning, Projections is the kind of novel that makes you long for a high-budget adaptation. S. B. Caves, Honeycomb (Datura) In this high-concept psychological thriller, six strangers congregate in an old mansion to test a strange new drug with world-changing implications. Caves uses the intriguing set-up for an action-packed meditation on obsession, celebrity, and the behavior of groups. It also reads as a send-off of reality television, with eager investors watching the bloody results of their experiment as it goes increasingly haywire. View the full article