Senior Lady Sleuths: Gray Locks Join Gray Matter

Broken man in interrogation room

By Katherine Sharma

Now that I’m joining the ranks of senior citizens in a few years (I’m holding off true membership till age 65), I find myself more interested in mystery tales featuring older lady sleuths. Of course, Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple, the shrewdly observant spinster of St. Mary Mead, has an international fan base. And Jessica Fletcher, Donald Bain’s retired English teacher and novelist, even won a TV following for the “Murder, She Wrote” series.

There are many other outstanding examples: M.C. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin, a retired PR agent turned PI (with a BBC series); globe-trotting Mrs. Emily Pollifax, grandmother and spy, of the eponymous Dorothy Gilman series; and Eugenia Potter, widowed chef and star of the culinary cozy mysteries of Virginia Rich and Nancy Pickard.

Mature female commissioner during interviewI wondered if there was some special set of skills offered by older ladies to make them appealing to mystery writers. And I came up with five reasons a mystery author might choose to create a gray-haired female detective.

  1. For one thing, as retirees, and often widows or spinsters, older women have more time to devote to detection without the constant, complicating drag of career and/or family on character and plot.
  2. Second, their judgment can be informed by age rather than years of police training, so they can draw on long experience with personal and social interactions to pick up the subtle clues to murder.
  3. Third, these fictional characters can be freed by age, maturely comfortable in their own skins and less constrained by worry over social conventions and sexual politics. This allows authors to create an eccentric, independent, adventurous or even comical character that would be less believable as a 20-something or 30-something heroine.
  4. Fourth, older ladies can approach evil obliquely and catch it unawares, because there are few people seen as less threatening than a grandmother or maiden aunt.
  5. And, finally, these fictional sleuths are not just older people, they are older women. Even today, most societies reward men for action, control and dominance, and encourage women to be more observant, emotionally attuned and socially participant. Female detectives can turn that gender bias into an advantage in terms of honed human observational skills.

For some more senior sleuths, check out author Chris Well’s post at http://chriswellnovelist.blogspot.com/2010/07/retirement-is-murder-10-senior-sleuths.html

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Thrillers Resonate This Political Season

Freedom and statue of liberty

By Katherine Sharma

Recently, Russian digital hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee were revealed, raising the specter of foreign government interference in U.S. elections. That’s a plot you’d expect to find in a Cold War-era political thriller, not 2016 news stories.

black widowSo this very unusual political season has inspired me to take a closer look at political thrillers. An example is the just released novel about ISIS terrorism in France from bestselling political thriller author Daniel Silva. In The Black Widow, the spy hero is poised for promotion to chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service but takes on one final operation after ISIS detonates a massive bomb in Paris, and the desperate French government asks him to eliminate the man responsible before he can strike again.

 

manchurian candidateThe classic political thrillers emerged after World War II when the West faced a nuclear-armed world divided by Cold War ideologies and post-colonial chaos. Among the best-known works is Richard Condon’s 1959 The Manchurian Candidate about the son of a prominent U.S. political family who is brainwashed into becoming an unwitting Communist assassin controlled by his domineering mother, who seeks to make her husband, a McCarthy-esque senator, into a puppet dictator.

 

quiet americanIn 1955, Graham Greene’s prescient The Quiet American depicts French and British colonialism in Vietnam being uprooted by American involvement during the 1950s, revealing a blind American “exceptionalism” that fails to see disaster looming.

 

 

 

jackalColonialism’s poisonous roots in the Muslim world are exposed in 1972’s Edgar Award-winning The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, about a mysterious professional assassin contracted to kill French President Charles de Gaulle by the OAS, a French dissident paramilitary organization upset by France’s Algeria policy.

 

 

 

justiceMore recently, America’s racial politics are the subject of A Certain Justice by John Lescroart, published in 2006: When an angry white mob in San Francisco murders an innocent black man, the only man who tried to stop the killing is framed and goes on the run amid riots, political posturing, and pressure on police to subvert justice.

 

 

 

gardnerOf course, money is at the root of political evil, and in 2001’s The Constant Gardner, by famed British spy novelist John le Carré, a British diplomat’s search for the truth about his activist wife’s murder in Africa uncovers an international conspiracy of corrupt bureaucrats and pharmaceutical industry money. For Amazon’s latest political thrillers, see https://www.amazon.com/gp/new-releases/books/7538395011/ref=zg_bs_tab_t_bsnr

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Physical Challenges Can’t Stop These Sleuths

beautiful fashionable woman detective

By Katherine Sharma

If you like triumph-over-physical-adversity tales, you may want to check out mystery writing’s long tradition of physically challenged detectives. There are many reasons for authors to create sleuths who are blind, deaf, paralyzed or otherwise physically limited. By literally handicapping crime-solving via a detective’s impaired ability to personally gather clues from crime scene inspection or interrogations, an author boosts the puzzle-solving challenge.

The social stigma often faced by people with physical issues also creates reader empathy and increases reader satisfaction in the protagonist’s ability to overcome and triumph. Authors usually offset a character’s physical disadvantage by honing intellect, senses, instincts or determination to a point beyond the skills of ordinary sleuths. A disability, because it can be misread as incapability, can even give a surprise edge in outwitting arrogant suspects, deceptive witnesses or uncooperative authorities.

Man in blackAmong the well-known detectives in this group is bestselling author Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic New York City detective. NYC culprits also find a nemesis in George Chesbro’s dwarf criminology professor and private-eye Robert ‘Mongo’ Fredrickson. Proving lack of sight is not lack of insight is Jane A. Adams’ Naomi Blake, a blind ex-policewoman in the Midlands of England, while reading lips doesn’t hinder reading clues in Penny Warner’s Connor Westphal mysteries about a deaf newspaper journalist in California. For a list of more mysteries featuring physically challenged detectives, go to https://beyondrivalry.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/crime-fiction-book-list-disabled-isnt-unable/

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Mystery on Board: Cruising Into Murder

ocean

By Katherine Sharma

It’s vacation time, and maybe you’re longing to sail away from it all. You may even be one of the folks actually taking a cruise ship to exotic destinations. But what if there is a murderer hunting among the passengers trapped on that floating hotel?

nileIf you don’t mind a frisson of anxiety with your real or imagined cruise adventure, add some of these noted mystery authors’ tales of shipboard murder to your reading list. A well-known classic is Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie, in which her Belgian sleuth Hercules Poirot plans a leisurely cruise down the Nile but ends up sifting through suspicious passengers and false leads to solve the murder of a wealthy young woman.

 

 

belongBestselling suspense author Mary Higgins Clark also penned a thriller with a cruise setting. In Clark’s You Belong to Me, a killer stalks lonely women on board cruise ships as a radio-show psychologist rushes to catch the murderer before he can literally stop her dead.

 

 

 

shroudsFamed New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh even introduced her mystery series’ police detective Roderick Alleyn to the high seas in Singing in the Shrouds, sending Alleyn on a ship voyage in pursuit of a serial killer. But the King of Ocean-Liner Fiction is Conrad Allen. Allen’s eight mysteries in the “Murder on the…” series are all set aboard pre-World War I cruise ships, starting with Murder on the Lusitania, and feature a husband and wife sleuthing team.

 

 

murderFor an updated ocean liner tale, fans of the “Murder, She Wrote” mystery series will appreciate Murder on the QE2, by Donald Bain and “Jessica Fletcher,” as Jessica, invited aboard as one of seven guest lecturers, tries to solve the murder of a fellow speaker. For more mysteries with cruise ship settings, see http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/mystery-books-that-take-place-on-cruise-ships-mystery-books-at-sea.html

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Be Wary of Dreaming Up Dreams in Your Writing

Flying girl.

By Katherine Sharma

Because all people experience dreaming, it is tempting for authors to include a “dream sequence” in works of fiction. Some reasons for fictional dreams include illuminating a character’s suppressed anxieties or desires, creating a foreshadowing or mood, or inserting an explanatory flashback.

In general, writing critics discourage the urge to insert dreams because botched efforts are so common. You’ve no doubt encountered fictional dream descriptions that bore and impede rather than propel the story, that annoy as obviously hokey manipulations, or that confuse by their ambiguous truthfulness and significance.

Most writers can’t match great literature’s dream usage. For example, Homer’s epic Iliad uses a false dream sent by Zeus to Agamemnon to spur the attack on Troy. Many of William Shakespeare’s plays include vivid dreams, such as Macbeth, Richard III, The Tempest and, of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

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In Emily Bronte’s gothic Wuthering Heights, characters are guided by their dreams. Russian greats Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment rely on dream motifs, too. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland uses a dream setting to play with logic and satire. James Joyce’s Ulysses has dream sequences that inspire Freudian and Jungian analysis.

Note how assumptions about dreams have changed in the West, from the ancient belief that dreams come from outside supernatural sources, to Romantic personal inspiration and revelation, and finally to the modern focus on science and psychological insight. No matter what theory of dreaming is used, writers must make sure a believable dream sequence is relevant to character and integral to the plot. Here are some dream facts to consider: https://www.verywell.com/facts-about-dreams-2795938

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Add Mystery & Thrills to Your 2016 Beach Reads

HELP written in a bottle

By Katherine Sharma

It’s time to pack for that summer vacation, including, of course, a couple of mysteries or thrillers to get the heart pounding and the blood chilled despite the lazy, sunny days ahead.

roadHere are some reviewer-favored suggestions that you may also want to add to your beach reading list. John Hart, who has won two Edgar Awards back to back, returns with the crime thriller Redemption Road, in which damaged yet courageous North Carolina police detective Elizabeth Black, who is white, faces a media a circus and the prospect of criminal charges after gunning down two black men sexually abusing 18-year-old Channing Shore in an abandoned house.

 

missing girlsNorth Carolina features again in All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda, a noted YA author with an adult fiction debut: A prep school counselor makes a return visit to her North Carolina hometown–and the unsolved disappearance of her best friend after their high school graduation a decade earlier.

 

 

 

let me dieLet Me Die in His Footsteps by Lori Roy, another Edgar winner, evokes Southern gothic tradition with her tale of two families, first in 1936 and then in 1952, and an evil passed down the generations in a small Kentucky town.

 

 

 

 

girl gardenThe Girls in the Garden by New York Times best-selling author Lisa Jewell leaves the South and takes us to a midsummer night’s party for neighbors on a communal garden square in London. But the secure urban oasis is shattered when preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a rose garden, drawing the reader into a mystery about the dark games children and adults play.

 

 

little liesMemory, madness and lies also bring danger to psychiatric ward resident Dr. Zoe Goldman in Little Black Lies by Sandra Block. Goldman is dedicated to helping patients but she is also wrestling with her own demons, seeking to piece together the truth of her mother’s death from nightmares about a fire and her adoptive mother’s dementia-tattered memories.

For more Publishers Weekly “best summer reads” in the mystery category, check out
http://best-books.publishersweekly.com/pw/best-books/summer-reads-2016/mystery#book/book-1

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Injecting Poison Into the Mystery Plot

Portrait of office manager poisoning petroleum

By Katherine Sharma

Poison is a rare murder weapon statistically but not fictionally. And here’s a case where mystery plots may be more revealing than crime data. Many homicidal poisonings go undetected per experts, and only one in five verified murders by poisoning is ever solved.

As an introduction to the topic, read The Poisoner’s Handbook by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Deborah Blum. It’s a historical thriller about how a medical examiner and toxicologist team uses trailblazing forensic science to bring to justice poisoners in early twentieth-century New York, setting new standards for forensic detection along the way. Structured as a series of linked stories about poison death investigations, it was a finalist for the 2010 Agatha Award for nonfiction and a New York Times bestseller in 2011.

Beautiful young nurse with syringe in handOr, you can turn to fictional inspiration. Agatha Christie counted many poison victims in her mystery books, from Cards on the Table, in which an evil doctor salts anthrax on a shaving brush to kill with a razor nick, to The Pale Horse, where tasteless, odorless thallium is the poison of choice. Another British mystery queen, P.D. James, used insecticide in a whiskey to poison a trainee in a nursing home in Shroud for a Nightingale.

But how close are the fictional mysteries to real poisonings? Author-scientist Blum lists carbon monoxide, arsenic, radium, cyanide, nicotine, aconite, chloroform, mercury and thallium (kudos, Agatha) among her favorite poisons from historical homicides. And based on convicted poisoners (recognizing that they represent the minority of poisoners who have been caught), criminal profilers can say that, contrary to the popular notion that poison is a woman’s weapon, the majority of convicted poisoners are male. The homicidal poisoner is also more likely to be in the medical field (doctor, nurse, lab technician) or in a care-taking role (wife, mother, nursing home attendant) where he or she has ready access to poisonous means and vulnerable, trusting victims.

Psychological profiling of convicted poisoners shows that they tend to be clever, methodical, self-centered, emotionally immature and certainly unburdened by morality and empathy. And they are sneaky, often skillfully masking their true natures by pretending to be a loving spouse or caring nurse. For examples of more famous poisonings in literature, check out http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/16/ten-best-poisonings-john-mullan

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Blindsided By Murder Mystery Plot Twists

TS-522556328 Murder Plot Twists

By Katherine Sharma

Skilled mystery authors can use an ingenious plot twist to surprise and stump even veteran mystery readers. Here are some favorites that continue to inspire imitation and inventive variation:

Let’s start with the Narrator Culprit. Readers tend to trust the mystery narrator, especially if he or she is a victim, sympathetic witness or helpful aide to investigators, so it’s a real shock to find out they’ve been bamboozled by a villain (and the author). It worked in The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie and the more recent Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

The Impossible Murder twist is another favorite in which the evidence seems to contradict logic and science, including the many variations on the classic “locked room” murder. Read John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins for an ingenious example that includes a locked room death followed minutes later by the shooting death of the main suspect on a snow-covered street, surrounded only by his own footprints yet with a powder burn showing he was shot at close range.

The Supernatural Killer is a popular way to play mind games with readers, too. There’s often a spooky house, a ghost sighting, a curse, an old crime and a new one, and clues that fit both natural and supernatural explanations. A recent example is Tana French’s The Secret Place, in which adolescent girls at a posh Irish boarding school claim to police investigators that they see the ghost of the boy victim of an unsolved murder. Similarly, The Chinese Gold Murders, the second entry in Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee series set in ancient China, involves sightings of a murdered magistrate’s ghost, as well as a murdered monk in the wrong grave and a tiger at large, events Judge Dee traces to a common cause to solve the mystery.

Finally, there’s the Not Really Dead Suspect ploy, in which the author misdirects reader attention away from a supposedly dead character as in Agatha Christie’s famous And Then There Were None.

For more classic plot twists courtesy of Queen of Mystery Christie, read http://flavorwire.com/537670/agatha-christies-10-best-plot-twists/10

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Culinary Mysteries Make Murder Appetizing

TS-535939389 Chef Murdercrop

By Katherine Sharma

The culinary mystery has become a popular subgenre, pleasing both crime-solving and foodie fans. Most of these nestle in the “cozy” mystery category, sport cute titles, include recipes, and form fictional series. Here’s a quick taste (pun intended) of popular foodie mysteries:

pies

Ellery Adams writes the Charmed Pie Shoppe Mystery series, so begin with her debut Pies and Prejudice, in which heroine Ella Mae returns to her Georgia hometown to open a bakery shop and becomes entangled in the murder of her childhood enemy’s fiance, with Ella Mae’s rolling pin as the murder weapon.

 

 

 

glazed murder

Jessica Beck offers more calories with her Donut Shop Mystery series; sample Glazed Murder in which the heroine proprietor of a donut shop tracks the killer of a customer. More baked goods come with Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen Mysteries; for example, Blueberry Muffin Murder has Hannah, owner of the Cookie Jar eat-in bakery, investigating the death of a cookbook author and cable TV star.

 

 

 

enchilada

Diane Mott Davidson pens the popular Goldy Bear Mystery series featuring caterer Goldy Schultz; in The Whole Enchilada, Goldy digs into the presumed overdose death of a friend and uncovers murder. It’s not all baked goods and coffee; sometimes it’s baked goods and tea.

 

 

 

 

darjeeling

Laura Childs writes the Tea Shop Mystery series with entries like Death by Darjeeling, in which South Carolina tea shop owner Theodosia Browning seeks to solve a murder and salvage her reputation after a male guest is poisoned by her tea at a catered garden party. If you’re not full and want to keep grazing culinary mysteries, get a more exhaustive list at http://www.cozy-mystery.com/blog/where-to-start-with-culinary-cozy-mystery-series.html

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.

Victorian Mysteries Debut Modern Crime-Solving

Sick woman and her friend.

By Katherine Sharma

Looking to escape back in time with your next mystery? England’s Victorian era is a favorite setting because it can combine old-fashioned moral certitudes with relatively modern crime-solving thanks to the era’s policing and forensic science advances. Indeed, the Victorian period ushered in the first true detective fiction, such as Charles Dickens’ Bleak House, Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, and Edgar Allan Poe’s three seminal detective stories (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter).

If you want to sample other British Victorian mystery masters, try Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, unique for its contemporary portrait of a daring, ruthless woman. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was famed for his Victorian Gothic mysteries, and a good example is Uncle Silas about a sinister uncle threatening a plucky heroine.

But many modern writers are carrying on the Victorian mystery tradition–sometimes borrowing from the masters. For example, a series by Laurie R. King pairs an aging Sherlock Holmes with clever teen Mary Russell, starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Lynn Shepherd’s The Solitary House has two Charles Maddoxes, a private detective and his “thief taker”great uncle, solving a mystery involving the cast of Dickens’ Bleak House. Meanwhile, The Asylum by John Harwood is inspired by Wilkie’s structure and atmosphere as a young woman awakens in an asylum under a name she denies and repudiated by relatives.

Mystic woman with a book.

Among the modern Victorian-era mystery series are those penned by Anne Perry, with The Cater Street Hangman as the first entry of her popular Thomas Pitt London mysteries. While “Victorian” connotes England, the same time period has inspired great mysteries set in the U.S. One of the best is Caleb Carr’s The Alienist about 1896 child mutilation murders in New York, with an investigative team made up of a New York Times crime reporter,  his “alienist” (psychologist) friend, and then NYC Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. Victoria Thompson’s Gaslight Mystery series also is set in Victorian-era New York but is notable for its female sleuth, midwife Sarah Brandt, first introduced in Murder on Astor Place.

For more Victorian mystery ideas: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/56604-victorian-crimes-mysteries-2013.html

ABOUT  KATHERINE SHARMA

Katherine Sharma’s family roots are in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. But after her early childhood in Texas, she has moved around the country and lived in seven other states, from Virginia to Hawaii. She currently resides in California with her husband and three children. She has also traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia, and makes regular visits to family in India. After receiving her bachelor’s degree. in economics and her master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan, Katherine worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for more than 15 years. She then shifted into management and marketing roles for firms in industries ranging from outdoor recreation to insurance to direct marketing. Although Katherine still works as a marketing consultant, she is now focused on creative writing.