Ayo Onatade, who I met through Mystery Women in the U.K., a sisterly relation to Sisters in Crime, passed this fun idea on to me.
List 10 mysteries you’ve read that will always stick with you. Don't take too long to think about it. List the first 10 you can recall in no more than 10 minutes.
I’ll start …
Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard
Strange Children by Kate Charles
Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie
Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett -- the whole Lymond series, actually!
Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers
Tropic of Night by Michael Gruber
Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman
An Air That Kills by Andrew Taylor
Now, your turn. Ready ... set ... go!
Are you registered for Bouchercon by the Bay in San Francisco? Check out the exciting events Sisters in Crime has planned for you.
Wednesday, October 13, 1:30 - 9:00 p.m., Hyatt Seacliff A&B
SinC into Great Writing. Manuscript Makeover: From Rough Draft to Ready.
Sisters in Crime (SinC) sponsors this triple-header pre-Bouchercon workshop at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency hotel. Featuring Elizabeth Lyon, the three workshops, with a break for dinner, cover Movement, Movement, Movement, Revision for Inner and Outer Scene Structure, and Revision for Strong Characterization and Distinctive Style. New York Times best-selling novelist, Ayelet Waldman will be the dinner keynote speaker.
A few spaces are still open at $50 for members, $150 for non-members. Register here.
Thursday, October 14, 10:00 a.m., Hyatt Grand Ballroom A
Sisters in Crime presents: What Readers Want. Sharing the results of a comprehensive study done in partnership with Bowker's PubTrack Consumer Service on what mystery readers are buying, and why and where .
Thursday, October 14, 3:00 – 5:30 p.m., Hyatt Atrium
Sisters in Crime Reception
Visit with the Board of Directors. Enjoy fruit, cupcakes and cookies. A cash bar will be close by. Open to all Bouchercon attendees.
And throughout the conference, stop by the Hospitality Suite co-hosted and staffed by SinC NorCal volunteers who promise to make sure you feel welcome.
My name is Marcia Talley, and I’m national president of Sisters in Crime, an organization that was founded almost twenty five years ago by Sara Paretsky and other like-minded women to support the advancement of women who write mysteries.
From 1989 to 1991, Dorothy was national treasurer of Sisters in Crime. In1990, this "founding mother" gathered a group of local women together in her Maryland living room, elected officers, and the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime was born. Today, the Chessie Chapter is one of the larger and more active of forty-six chapters in our organization, now world-wide.
I met Dorothy at a Chessie Chapter meeting in the mid-1990s, long before I became, like Dorothy, a published mystery writer. Back then, barriers to women existed everywhere in the mystery publishing field, and Sisters in Crime played a major role in helping to break down those barriers.
In Dorothy’s own words:
“It was harder for women than men to find a publisher, harder to get reviewed, harder still to get good reviews -- perhaps because virtually all the critics were men -- and harder to get bookstores to carry the books, let alone push them. Shoot-‘em-up hardboiled mysteries received critical respect, while the so-called feminine “cozies” were scorned. As soon as Sisters in Crime was formed–benefitting in large part from the new activism of the Women’s Movement–committees of volunteers were organized to research and document these kinds of inequities. They gathered statistical proof which was used by letter writing committees to lobby publishing houses, newspapers, and reviewers. We were impatient for change, and it seemed to us that changes came with agonizing slowness. But they came.
“It’s hard to believe at this point in history how unwelcoming the climate was in the 1980s and before for women mystery writers. As for female sleuths–forget it! Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple was long gone, and her successors were few. Nobody would have believed a time would come when male authors were publishing books with female sleuths under female pen-names, in hopes of greater sales! But of course that eventually happened, thanks in large part to the work of Sisters in Crime.”
Inequities still exist, of course, we have a long way to go, but it is due to pioneers like Dorothy that women who write mysteries today are more likely to get the attention they deserve.
So, on behalf of your three thousand sisters (and misters) in crime, we thank you, Dorothy. We couldn’t have done it without you.
In her beautiful book of essays, The Invisible Garden, Dorothy wrote about the challenges of tending a garden, “’Why am I doing this?’ I ask myself. ‘It’ll all be gone as soon as I’m dead.’ Then I remind myself that this is true of most human endeavors, and I go on gardening.”
I don’t want to disagree with you, Dorothy, but both mysteries you published with St Martin’s Press, Dead Men Don’t Give Seminars (which was nominated for an Agatha Award for best first novel) and Dead Men Don’t Marry are still for sale on Amazon.com. And if that isn’t a kind of immortality, I don’t know what is.
Read more about Dorothy's amazing career in The Washington Post.
by Judy Clemens
When I first met Lorraine Bartlett (aka Lorna Barrett, aka L.L. Bartlett) we were both unpublished authors joining forces in the Guppies to make our way in the writing world. I got to know her through small focus groups, a few (not enough!) face-to-face meetings at conferences, and personal e-mails. During the most recent years I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Lorraine not only get published, but get published with multiple series, be nominated for an Agatha, and become a NYT bestselling author! What a fun and satisfying trip it’s been so far.
Besides her own writing and creative marketing, Lorraine has put many, many hours into Sisters in Crime. She has volunteered in many ways, but most recently, and for the past three and a half years, she has become our very own Social Networking Guru, creating our Facebook and MySpace pages, maintaining a book club list, revamping our blog into a vibrant (almost living!) creature, and answering computer questions when none of the rest of us knew what to do. Before the era of Social Networking, she worked with the now archaic forms of computer lists and forms when the rest of us didn’t have a clue.
Lorraine is now going to take a rest from her SinC (volunteer!) work to pursue her writing and other interests, and we want to send her off with a hearty thank you, and a wish for much future success and joy within the business. With her talent and perseverance we are sure to see more great things. We’re glad if more time for writing means there will be more Booktown Mysteries, Victoria Square Mysteries, and – please! – more paranormal/psychological suspense books about Jeff Resnick (with whom I fell in love when I was lucky enough to read a draft before it was even published).
Best wishes to you, Lorraine, and thank you so, so much for all you’ve done for SinC. It is surely appreciated.
With hugs and handshakes and any other way we can cyberly show our thanks . . .
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Judy Clemens is the immediate past president of SinC, and is proud to say she knew Lorraine when…
| Inciting Incident | Story trigger ; what happens to hero |
| POV Character Goal | Prize or Goal |
| Strategy | Plan of Action |
| Conflict | Opposing Forces |
| Rising Stakes | What happens during the journey to make this more important, more meaningful to the hero - internally? Externally? |
| Bleakest Moment | Hero is at the lowest point; opposing forces are winning |
| Lesson | What does the hero learn? How does he change? |
| Decision Point | What does the hero give up in exchange for the prize or goal? What is the cost? |
| Hole | What need or emotional hole is filled by the decision? The need was there before the story began, and is the backstory. |
Murder mysteries are, by definition, morbid. However, I admit a preference for the lighter side of death, namely humorous mysteries that refrain from completely glossing over death but do highlight the lighter side of the investigations. So it was with trepidation that I approached Timothy Hallinan’s latest Poke Rafferty thriller, The Queen of Patpong. Despite my having loved his sarcastic and hard-boiled Simeon Grist series and thoroughly enjoyed the previous entries in the Poke Rafferty Bangkok-based series, The Queen of Patpong confronts topics guaranteed to have me shuddering; namely, the sex trade and exploitation of minors.
And yet…The series began with Poke already in a relationship with Rose, a former bar-girl who now owns a cleaning business and raising Miaow, a too-wise-for-her-age street urchin the couple recently adopted. The sudden reappearance of a menacing figure from Rose’s past as a prostitute though, brings to light a life Rose cannot forgot but has amazingly overcome. As the novel shifts to flashbacks to Rose’s childhood and path to prostitution, Hallinan brilliantly explores the ugly history of the sex trade in Thailand without being forced or preachy. In one of the most powerful and haunting scenes a young Rose sits with her parents and teachers as they negotiate her fate. The growing horror as Rose slowly begins to realize that her father plans to sell her into prostitution is so understated and menacing that the reader shares her repulsion, yet the scene is so quiet and underplayed that the scene itself is neither repellant nor exploitative. Perhaps that is why it is so powerful.
The author has obviously devoted much research into the history of Bangkok’s sex trade, a topic that has become something of a joke to Westerners. The relationships between the bar-girls, who create their own families within the brothels, lighten the novel and prove to be both sad and hopeful. Rose’s eventual escape from this world is as well powerful as she shows Miaow that it is something to hold with pride, not shame. Surprisingly, when the novel shifts back to present time and the figure who has come back to claim Rose the reader may feel a little disappointed as it becomes more of the traditional action-packed thriller centered on the charming and protective Poke. However, this is an extraordinarily positive, fascinating, and witty read that is unforced and always entertaining.
Another surprising mystery that I normally would have ignored had it not been for the record of the author was Live toTell, by Lisa Gardner. While violence against children is never a subject I can warm to, violence perpetuated by them is equally unappealing. And yet again…The opening scene that depicts the menace of domestic violence is horrific, made even more so when the identity of the abuser is revealed. Gardner brings back the acerbic Detective DD Warren and introduces two women, one of whom overcame a tragic past that cost her her family and who now works in a unit that attempts to heal similarly damaged children, and the other a woman held captive by her love for the abuser she believes will eventually kill her. Cases involving the murder and suicides of entire families all become tied together, with the detective trying to distinguish the victims from the killers. Normally this is a topic I would avoid like the plague, as children as murderers is a subject so repellant and against nature that it creeps me out and has me avoiding playgrounds. However, like Hallinan, Gardner has crafted a well-written novel that balances fascinating and engaging characters and quick dialogue with a plot that educates and entertains. The suspense is unrelenting with enough twists to mislead and surprise readers. These two authors share a talent for writing about horrific crimes without repelling or manipulating the reader. Despite their darkness, these two novels can be enjoyed even by readers who prefer the lighter side of murder.
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Cynthia (Cindy) Chow developed a love for mystery novels after working summers in a failing used book & comic store (there was a lot of free time). Born and raised on the island of Oahu, she balances the librarian lifestyle with obsessions for motorcycles and high heels. Occasionally at the same time, much to the dismay of her parents.
And if you dare to reply to this post, give us your objects, verbs, meanings, and symbols. Remember, writers write. Post your answers to this drill. Get on the SWAT Team. And at the risk of giving you a fat head, pat yourself on the back. You've completed the Object Obstacle Course. 