Four New Mysteries to Savor

Oct 182020
 

I’m a mystery writer and I’m a mystery reader, too. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy other genres. I love world-building science fiction (NK Jemisin) and literary fiction (Anne Patchett) as well as select biographies.

My reading list, though, mainly consists of mysteries. While I like to encounter new writers, I have my favorite writers whose reputations are secure, whose skills are legendary, and whose stories never fail to entertain. I take my inspiration from these favorites. Among those at the very top of their game are the four below, all of whom have released new books in the last few months.

A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL by James Lee Burke

Burke is author of the mesmerizing Dave Robicheaux series. Set in Louisiana, the novels are odes to the raw splendor of the region and the raw brutality of life on the edges. Robicheaux is an on-again, off-again cop, a barely reformed drunk who shares with his imbibing buddy Clete Purcell, a fatalistic view of the world that directs their often-vicious response to injustice. In A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL, Burke has placed his story in the vague recent past, which handily fudges the issue of how old Robicheaux, a Vietnam war veteran, might actually be in 2020. It works. The book is bittersweet, the descriptive passages achingly beautiful, the action merciless, violent and swift-moving. The experience is heart-pounding.

THE GOOD DAUGHTER by Karin Slaughter

I’ve read a number of books by Karin Slaughter—I’m a fan of her Will Trent procedurals that feature a troubled cop working for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. This novel feels quite different. Her trademark gritty realism is on display, along with a no-filter depiction of violence found in many of her novels. And yes, it is, in part, a who-done-it. At the same time, the story of two physically and emotionally wounded sisters at odds with each other, their father, and the world reads like Ann Patchett or Barbara Kingsolver. Which is to say, this book contains more than a few moving passages mixed in with the nuts and bolts of a crime procedural. Highly recommended—and it would make a terrific film.

ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE by Louise Penny

Penny, the popular Canadian writer, usually sets her Armand Gamache series in Canada’s Eastern Townships region in a fictional town called Three Pines. Gamache, formerly Chief Inspector of Quebec’s Sûreté, is a learned man prone to philosophical reflection although capable of decisive action when necessary. The small, tightly-knit community is his refuge and his strength. This time, Penny sends Gamache and his indomitable wide, Reine, to Paris to visit their children, grandchildren and Gamache’s foster father, Stephen. There, he and his son-in-law, also a cop, uncover a dangerous scheme that draws in the entire family. Gamache’s wit, skill, and courage are as formidable as ever, particularly when his loved ones are threatened.

THE SEARCHER by Tara French

Tara French is an Irish-American writer who gained recognition with her Dublin Murder Squad series. In her newest book, she moves the action out into the countryside and adds a twist. Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago homicide detective who’s moved to find peace and perhaps a good pub following an acrimonious divorce and a disheartening epiphany about his work. His hardscrabble North Carolina upbringing should bind him to the scrappy locals, but theirs is an insular community and they keep their secrets. French unspools her story without haste, yet the throb of inevitability never leaves. Hooper realizes early on that this story won’t have a happy ending. As it turns out, though, it’s the necessary one. Sometimes that’s the best you can get.

 

 

Write What You Know

Jan 072015
 

That’s the time-honored advice given to any aspiring writer of non-fiction, fiction poetry, lyric or essay.

Write what you know.

Up until my 52nd birthday, I wrote words for music, press releases for clients and the Hemingway quoteoccasional opinion piece. Then I began a memoir, a running diary that began on 9/11/01 and continued for about eighteen months thereafter. At 160,000 words, it’s a mish-mash of styles: the analytical observer trying to record history and the grief-stricken narrator trying to work out her anguish. As my personal ties to the material have loosened, I’ve accepted that the work’s merit lies mostly in its therapeutic value to me. There are some insights worth saving; these I’ve either salvaged for future publication or used as fodder for two of the books I’ve written.

Each of those non-fiction books has grown out of my experience with losing a loved one in an historical event and then fashioning myself as something of a minor player. I’m proud of both Because I Say So: Moral Authority’s Dangerous Appeal and Hope in Small Doses because they represent the intersection of conviction and experience.

Write what you know.

Several years ago, I realized I had no more to say on the seminal but narrow slice of my life represented by the September 11 attacks, which meant that I found myself stuck in the mud just as I was promoting my book on hope (and getting asked specific questions about ground zero or US policy on terrorism or what it was like to be a 9/11 family member—arrgh!). I had a knack for writing; I knew that. With practice, I could get quite good at it. But what was I supposed to write about? What did I know?

I began by enrolling in an established New York writing workshop where the instructor started us on short stories. I loved the work. Writing tales between, say, 1500 and 500 words is liberating. The imposition of length freed me to do other things; to get to the point, to make my words count and my sentences mean something: to be entertaining.

I had lots of ideas for stories about horses and homicidal spinsters, cops and cowboys, telepathic boys and sociopathic girls and a dog worried about being displaced. But while I could fashion my notions into interesting and even entertaining narratives, I was concerned about what my instructor was calling the authenticity of what I was writing. After all, I’m not a horse, housewife, young mother, homicidal spinster, telepathic boy, sociopathic girl or dog.

Write what you know.

Was I writing what I knew? What the hell did I know anyway? I grew up the middle child of a middle class family in a middle class neighborhood in a Midwestern suburb in the middle of the last century. I don’t remember anything interesting happen to me growing up except that which took place in my own slightly dissociative mind. Mildly alienated and marginally different from the other kids, I was nevertheless loved by my family. Where were the mountains to climb, the challenges to overcome, the dramatic or dangerous or debilitating past to throw off in order to emerge stronger, better and more resilient? What did I know of anything? What the hell could I write about? What—other than a single, shocking loss in mid-life—did I have the right to write about?

Write what you know.

Epiphany time, although the epiphany is probably fifteen years in the making: Good writing involves a reveal—not a plot reveal but an author reveal. Put another way, the hardest part of writing isn’t writing what you know but admitting what you know about yourself. One doesn’t have to say it, of course; one just has to show it. Words used as a window, not a door.

Joseph Conrad quoteIt’s not a novel concept, except perhaps for me in my continuing evolution. I don’t need to have lived as a cop or a cowboy or an assassin. Something about those lives will resonate within me. Even if I haven’t climbed a mountain or hiked a trail or met the Dali Lama, I can write about hope, heartbreak, confusion, despair, discovery, joy, tenderness, wonder and pure unadulterated rage.

I can write what I know.