When History Rhymes

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Wow, we have such a treat for you today! Introducing, or re-introducing, the fabulous duo of Deb Well and Gabriel Valjan. Deb is a wonderful author, and an editor at Level Best Books. And Gabriel is a multi-award-winning and much acclaimed author. They are a duo and a team on every level.

And today, grab your own cup of coffee or tea and join them at the breakfast table. They have the most interesting conversations!

When History Rhymes

By Deb Well and Gabriel Valjan

When the CIA targeted Tehran in 1953, it changed the world. In Eyes to Deceit, Gabriel Valjan brings that tense, shadowy moment to life, following writer/agent Walker from Malibu to Rome, while a Holocaust survivor navigates the Catskills in pursuit of a crucial key to success. Today, Valjan talks with Level Best Books editor of Celluloid Crimes Deb Well, about the motivation behind his recent fiction, the women in his novel, and the history we often overlook—but should not forget.

DW: You have a new book out this month in your Company Files series, taking your reticent Walker from Malibu to Rome, while Holocaust survivor Sheldon visits the Catskills to work an asset in exchange for the names of Nazis who escaped justice. Tell us about Eyes to Deceit and why you chose the 1953 Iranian coup as your focus.

GV: Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” History is stranger than fiction—but poorly taught. The Coup of ’53 fascinated me because its consequences still ripple today. Allen W. Dulles emerged as the master architect of realpolitik, shaping moves that echoed for decades.

The novel shows more than strategy—it shows people. Betrayals, moral compromises, personal tensions—these made Operation AJAX more than a footnote, and they didn’t stay in Tehran; they shaped CIA policy in other foreign interferences and led, eventually, to the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979.

DW: Your books feature strong women navigating a male-dominated world. How did you make that feel authentic without losing edge?

GV: Three women stand out in Eyes. Leslie, formerly MI6, now CIA, was blocked after the war—she refuses to settle into domestic life. Tania mirrors her: brilliant, multilingual, but scarred by trauma, awkward socially. Then there’s Clare Boothe Luce, the first U.S. ambassador to Italy—outspoken, audacious, brilliant.

They’re true to their era but fully alive, capable, uncompromising. They bend but don’t break. In a world built to sideline them, their choices carry consequences.

DW: You clearly did extensive research. Were there any unexpected discoveries and challenges?

GV: Writing the Catskills required delicacy. I worried readers would think of Dirty Dancing, but these resorts were a refuge, an oasis of culture—an escape from antisemitism in the cities. That history deserved respect.

Allen Dulles was trickier. Immense power, almost mythic. After Bay of Pigs, JFK fired him—but he showed up at work the next day as if nothing had happened. He later helped staff the Warren Commission. Capturing the chess master at play and that authority without caricature were monumental challenges.

DW: Both your Company Files and Shane Cleary series are historical. What draws you to the past as a setting?

GV: The past frees me from technology and lets me focus on human behavior. Nuance mattered then. A woman could be judged for her gloves, a curse word, or a public misstep. A Black maid might keep two sets of shoes—one for work, one for home. These small details shape stakes, reveal character, heighten tension.

Since we’re talking nuance, let’s pivot to Celluloid Crimes. You edited this anthology. When arranging the stories, how did you think about pacing readers or sequencing authors? Did you aim for rising tension, tonal variation, or something else?

DW: In choosing the stories for this anthology, the two things they all had in common were a strong voice and a tonal aspect of what I call “Hollywood Noir. When I reviewed all the stories I had chosen, I was surprised that they were almost evenly split between male and female narrators/protagonists. So I immediately thought it would be great to alternate the stories between male and female voices. Additionally, when I first read Colin Campbell’s story, Picture Palace Blues, I knew I wanted it to be the anchor – or last story of the collection. Since it was the only one set in contemporary times, ordering the stories in a loose chronology from the 20s till today made sense.

GV: I love that your anthology captures something from each decade. For you, what makes a story irresistible—compelling characters, a twisty plot, or a unique use of language?

DW: As I mention in the Afterword, I look for strong voice and a story – no “sketch” or “vignette”. And the ending must be satisfying. So a twisty plot is nice – but only if it makes sense. Compelling characters are important to me. But it’s that unique voice – that’s what makes a story – or a novel, for that matter – something I can’t put down – and that I will recommend to everyone I know that they have to read.

Back to Eyes to Deceit: what’s next for both your series?

GV: The fifth Company Files novel, The Nameless Lie, dives into the Suez Canal Crisis. Shane Cleary six, Four on the Floor, draws on Boston’s Blackfriars Massacre. Both explore the human cost of history—the ways small choices cascade into global consequences.

DW: One last question. If a reader takes only one thing from Eyes to Deceit, what would you want it to be?

GV: That history isn’t abstract. It’s felt, lived, sometimes hidden in plain sight. Fiction can’t fix it—but it can remind us what it felt like—and why those choices still matter today.

Reds and Readers! In both history and fiction, secrets drive the story. Which secret from history would you most want to uncover?


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: OH, what a great question. What happened to the lost colony of Roanoke? What’s the real deal about Amelia Earhart? (Cannot wait to read that new book.) What really happened in the Cuban Missile crisis? I know you all will have many more…

Deborah Well is an editor, marketing consultant, and digital strategist. After working for several decades in the finance realm, she has been happy to see her English degree get put to good use in her “retirement career” in the publishing world. Deb lives in Boston’s South End with her partner, author Gabriel Valjan.

Gabriel Valjan is the author of The Company Files, and the Shane Cleary Mysteries with Level Best Books. He has been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Derringer, and Silver Falchion awards. He received the 2021 Macavity Award for Best Short Story, and the Shamus Award for Best PI in 2023. Gabriel is a member of the Historical Novel Society, ITW, MWA, and Sisters in Crime. He lives in Boston with his partner, Deb Well.

And both answer to a their much-memed tuxedo cat, Munchkin.

Catriona Confesses

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Woohoo, and ruffles and flourishes! Today we welcome, with great fanfare, one of the dearest and best friends of the Reds, the brilliant and incomparable Catriona McPherson. A blazingly good writer, and infinitely hilarious, her books are consistently terrific--thoughtful and funny and twisty.

I don't know how she does it. Some of her books are so deeply dark and literary and thought provoking that they will break your heart (and your brain, too), and others are laugh-out-loud funny.

Today, she offers a confession.

 

Confessions of a Philistine

   By Catriona McPherson

 

In Scot’s Eggs, the eighth Last Ditch Motel mystery, the fluffy-soft, pastel-shaded innocence of an Easter holiday in Cuento, CA, is somewhat spoiled by the murder of two tourists and especially by the crime scene, which is a vintage Mustang full – like seriously full – of their blood. It’s been left in the hot sun for a week until the arrival of the turkey vultures makes someone take a closer look.

Why’d it take a week? Because the killers parked it outside the brand new art museum on the UCC campus, where the curators mistook it for the early arrival of the promised work by a young creator from an Oakland collective, who’s long been interested in decay.

I can’t lie; I had a lot of fun writing the employees of the Patsy Denoni Cultural Center and their combination of aching earnestness and corporate lock-step. Here’s just a flavour.

Fern had arrived at our side. ‘These resources are free and there is no entry charge,” she said. ‘But we encourage you to make a small donation to support our work in celebrating, promoting and protecting the diverse practices of artistic expression by the families of peoples who comprise our communities.’

 

Before any of us could answer, another woman came our way, stalking across the polished marble in spike heels. It took some kind of confidence to walk that fast in those shoes on this surface, but she was being powered by irritation.

 

‘Diverse expressions of artistic practice, Fern,’ she said. ‘The communities of peoples who comprise our family. Wait.’ She coloured slightly. ‘Diverse communities of expressive practice, to protect the arts of-’ She sniffed. ‘We suggest fifty dollars.’

 

I had even more fun describing the art itself, but it’s too gross for this blog. (Yes, I know I described a Mustang full of blood. The actual art is worse.) As ever, I need to say that the opinions expressed – here regarding the collection – are those of the fictional Lexy Campbell, nothing to do with me.

Ahem.

Honestly?

Every so often an exhibition of conceptual art blows me away completely. I saw a dozen pieces at the Serpentine in London a few years back that still haunt me – hyper-realistic and disturbing – and there’s a sliced-apart full-size house at Tate Modern with a film of 1950s DIY leaflets playing in the slices that . . . maybe you have to be there but it’s amazing. Also, I think Shedboatshed – the wee huttie dismantled, turned into a boat, sailed to the museum and reassembled into a shed again thoroughly deserved its Turner Prize. And I’ve got a lot of time for Tracy Emin. Even her Bed.

But.

The pile of wrapped sweeties (US hard candy?) in the all-white room in the National Gallery that the museum-goers are supposed to help themselves from? (And presumably suck as they walk round the rest of the exhibition? Dropping the wrappers?) It doesn’t work. There’s a security guard on duty. Who’s going to eat the art when there’s a guy in a uniform watching?

And in another room of that same exhibition, we read the card and peered about looking for the art for ages, wondering if someone had stolen it, before we realised it was the light fixture plugged in low down on one wall and tacked up and across the ceiling.

“Okay,” I remember Neil saying. “So we’re in one of those ‘But what is Art?’ exhibitions.” He cleared his throat. “So. What is Art?” There was a long silence then someone behind us whispered “You forgot to say Hey, Siri.” So we weren’t the only Philistines in there that day.

Look, I’m not saying it’s not an interesting question. (Seriously, what is Art?) only that you can’t necessarily stand in front of a pile of sweeties, ask yourself what art is for a while, then move on, ask it again underneath a light fixture, and on again and on and on, in front of, under, on top of, or sucking on another fifteen or twenty works. At some point you start wondering if the café’s any good. I do.

How about you, Jungle Red readers? Are you big fans of conceptual art? If so, have you lost any respect you ever had for me? I might as well put the cherry on top and tell you that my favourite artist is Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn then. Mostly because he painted women with love and tenderness, not as if he’d simply scoured the Bible for any page where someone’s dress fell off. And his unflinching gaze at his aging self makes me want to give him a cuddle.

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  See, Reds and readers, easy question today: what is Art? 

(This always reminds me of when my editor and I were discussing one of my book covers.

She said: I’ll tell Art what you said.

 I said: Great, tell him I appreciate it.

And she said, no, there’s no Art, I meant the art department.

I mean, how’m I supposed to know that?  But that’s a question of WHO is Art. Not today’s question, which is: WHAT is art. See?  Weigh in, Reds and readers!

 

 

Serial awards-botherer, Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories about a toff; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories about an oik; and contemporary psychothriller standalones. These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of-water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California sneezedavissneeze.

Catriona is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.  www.catrionamcpherson.com

finally, Finally, FINALLY: At Midnight Comes the Cry is here!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: To understand how excited I am today, you need to realize my last published book was released on April 4, 2020. In the 5 years, 7 months and two weeks since then, most of my writer friends have released 5-6 books. Rhys (and her co-writer Clare Broyles) have put out 14 novels, and Jenn, I assume, has published 57.

 

By the way, today is also the book birthday for FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE, the latest, much-anticipated Royal Spyness mystery, and the reason you're not reading about that book is because Rhys was gracious enough to insist I take the spotlight instead. Thank you, Rhys!

 

The prospect of the publication of AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY kicked off a lot of positive changes in my life. I finally got a new website, courtesy of Xuni.com. I figured out how to post to both Instagram and Facebook at the same time, and my daughter Virginia taught me how to do Insta stories. (Reels are still to come.) I restarted my newsletter, News From the Kill - with many thanks to Jenn, who inspired me to try Substack, where she hosts her own newsletter. 

 

 And I just feel, well, more on top of things. More organized, more able to take one the myriad of tasks popping up every day. Part if that is undoubtedly because Karma and Janey have returned to Victoria's house (dogsitting those two was the LONGEST three weeks of my life.) Part of it is due to my friend Celia Wakefield's suggestions, tips, techniques and plain old kicking me in the butt. Which is why this book is dedicated to her.

 

 Surprise, Celia!

 

Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me during the long, long, LONG journey to seeing the 10th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne mystery in bookstores. I love you, and even more importantly, appreciate you all. I hope to see some of you while I'm on tour, or, next spring, at Malice Domestic. When we meet up, rest assured, the drinks are on me!

Won't You Tell Me Your Name?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The frustrating thing is that sometimes it is so easy and sometimes it is so hard. And right now it is so hard. I am working like mad on a book synopsis, a proposal, and all I need, all I need! is the name of the main character.

Sometimes the names just show up, like Prime Time's Charlotte McNally, there was no question but that Charlotte was her name. (Although, if I had to do it over, I'd bet I would change it, the McNally at least, it seems too cute now,  but that's another story.)

 

And, come to think about it, everybody in the Prime Time series had an instant name, they just arrived, fully formed, Franklin and Penny and even Josh Gelston, which was an amalgam of a strong first name and the last name of my first boyfriend. (Imagine my surprise when I got an email from someone named Josh Gelston, who was something like a caterer for a rock band, who wondered where I had found his name. In my imagination, is the answer!)

Anyway, Jane Ryland, let’s see. That one was SO hard! I had Jane Elizabeth, right off the bat. I worked and worked and worked and had 1 million last names for her, I cannot begin to tell you, and honestly on the way to New York, for a publishing conference I realized I had to come up with a last name for her.  And I said to myself: the next name I see out of the window of this train is going to be her name. And there it was, a massive billboard, I am not kidding, for Ryland Industries. Okay, I thought, got it! Everybody loved Jane Ryland. And then, in one of my first book events, someone ask me “why did you name your main character with the same last name as yours. I was completely baffled. And then I realized. No wonder it sounded familiar.

Anyway, as I said,  I am now trying to name characters in a synopsis in progress. (And I use the term "progress" loosely.) And I cannot come up with the main character name.

I am sitting here looking at the 2025 commencement program from the University of Massachusetts that has fifty million names in it. I have looked through the entire graduating class, thousands and thousands of names. And there is not one that I can find that I can use. Just randomly Ana Gretchen Chapman. Sara Elizabeth Chappelle . Haley Charles . Mia Charles. Desteny Ann Charon. Christina Chen. Catherine Grace Chu. Erica Clarkman. Katie Lynn Clifford. Bridget Breanne Coughlin. Riley Collins. 

Okay, Wait, Riley Collins? Briley? Or maybe Collin Briley. Or, no, Colleen Briley! Wait, I had a Briley in another book.  See the problem? AND a Colleen.

I know there are all those things like the Social Security list of names, and the missing money list, I always look at that. I always look at the credits at the end of TV show shows, they are always fascinating, and maybe why I have so many British sounding names in my books.  

There’s also the tendency to come up with the name with the same first letter. In a previous attempts at a synopsis, I had Annie, all good. Then another character Ava. Then Aiden. That’s just not gonna work. 

Sometimes I just open a random book and look at the names and see if those names remind me of any other names that might remind me of any other names. I really think the best way of finding a name is that it just comes to you at some point. 

You just have to let it appear as you write.

Jenn, your dubious main character has such an interesting name, where did that come from? And Rhys, you’re always having to be careful of history when you choose a name.  And people who write contemporary novels have different kinds of choices.

Reds and readers, tell me your thoughts about names! 

RHYS BOWEN: As Hank said I do have an extra challenge for names as I write historical characters. They have to be right for the time and place.  And in the case of the Royal Spyness novels they have to witty or amusing. So I adore using silly nicknames like Binky and Fig and Podge (some of which are stolen from John’s family members who still have silly nicknames.). My favorite name so far is Lady Wormwood, Fig’s mother. I still chuckle every time I use it.

Sometimes I find I’ve used the wrong name for a character and the story is  plodding along and one day the character says, “Why do you keep calling me Richard when my name is Robert?” And I say “oh sorry” and then the story leaps ahead. It’s true that I believe Elmore Leonard said Once you have the name you have the person. Get the name right and you know exactly who they are. I changed my Scottish inspector’s name in the upcoming From Sea to Skye about five times until I finally realized he was Melrose.

So the only advice I can give to Hank is not to try too hard. Let the name come to you. You’ll wake in the middle of one night and say “Oh of Course. She’s not Abby, she’s Maddy!"

HANK: That is absolutely what happens! 

LUCY BURDETTE: This is funny Hank, as I've just been finishing the murder mystery for the Key West library to be held in February.  The Key West Woman's Club is co-sponsoring the event with the Friends, so I wanted it to have a KWWC cookbook theme. I took several of the characters from the list of Woman's Club members who worked on previous editions of the cookbook, with names like Mrs. Lee Goddard, Mrs. Frank Bowser, Ruth Munder, etc. I lifted the victim from my own THE KEY LIME CRIME. So in answer to your question Hank, it depends on the project!

JENN McKINLAY: Such a great question, Hank! The main character from WITCHES OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN - Zoanne Zakias - was taken from a girl in my judo class when I was 10 years old! I knew even back then it was a cool name. Thanks, ZZ,  wherever you are! 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I have a terrible tendency to insert the names of friends and family members for incidental characters and then not being able to change them out later because they become those names during the course of writing the first manuscript!

 

My biggest bugaboo when it comes to character names is getting them right for the age of the character and the socio-economic class they were born into. There's potentially a wide gap between Nathanial and Jaxon, and there's fifty years of time between Billy and Braydon.

HALLIE EPHRON: For me, names evolve, and I OFTEN change the name of my protagonist once I figure out who she is by what she does. I try not to start with a name that will be difficult to isolate by the search-and-replace function. (No Sue’s or Ann’s - those letters turn up together in too many innocent words.) I can be changing names in the final edit. 

HANK: Oh, definitely. Me,too. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, I look at TV and movie credits, too, mostly British, and authors of books on my shelves, or people in the news. But one thing I always check is the most popular UK baby names for the years around my character’s age. Which doesn’t mean I can’t pull something out of left field, or have a character named after an older relative, although that would have to be mentioned. And sometimes names just click. A character in the current book is called Karo, short for Karoline with a K. No idea where that came from. Also Quill, whose last name is Quillen. No idea on that one, either!

HANK: That’s my very favorite, when the name just pops into your mind. It proves it's the right name! 

How about you, Reds and readers. Do you like your characters to have quirky names?  Do you think there are names that  instantly  fit a category, like Tiffany or Rex or Claire or Trixie or Emmaline or Betsy?  (Oh, Emmaline!) 

Do you prefer your characters to be Janes and Davids?

Do you notice diversity in names? Do you ever notice a trend in names? Once my pal Hannah and I came out with a book the same cycle–with the main character Lily. How does that happen? We did NOT know about the other’s naming.

Let’s talk about whatever strikes your fancy about names! (Oh, Fancy!) I mean, you've all done it when you named a child or a pet, right?

Nailing the victim...

 A long-delayed announcement: Melinda O, you are the winner of BOURDAIN: The Definitive Oral Biography! Please contact Celia at wakefieldpro at gmail!

HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this week we talked about villains – is a good villain anything like law-breakers in real life? Which got me thinking about VICTIMS. What makes a “good” victim in a crime story?

I ask this because just the other day I was watching a TV mystery episode and realized, with a sinking heart, which character was about to be killed off. I had to turn the thing off. Seriously. I liked that character SO much and it just, well, did not seem fair.

I did not want to keep hanging out in that world, even though I know full well it's ficton.

I know, ridiculous thing to get upset about, but there you are.

Which got me wondering: Have you ever realized that you have the WRONG VICTIM? That you thought you needed to kill them off but, in fact, it was a bad idea and you needed to rework your plot?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes! Precisely. I was writing TRUTH BE TOLD, and even though I am a devout pantser, I knew I had to kill a certain person, I knew it, it was absolutely necessary. The whole story revolved around that death. Turned out, um, it didn’t. More I cannot say.

(But like you, Hallie, this is one of the hilarities of our household. We will be watching something, and I’ll point to the screen and say: DEAD. Jonathan is always somewhere between amused and annoyed. I am so sorry, though, I cannot help it.)

RHYS BOWEN: I found out pretty early on that I can’t kill a child. When I was writing Evan’s Gate ( that actually got an Edgar nomination to my surprise) I had planned for two little girls to die the same way. I couldn’t do it. One died by accident and the other stayed alive.

I always know who is going to be killed as the WHY is at the center of the story.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I wrote about the death of a child - not by murder! - and was actually sobbing the whole time. So I agree with Rhys; no kids and no dogs or cats as victims!

Because I like writing about social issues and communities, I usually prefer victims whose loss will have a strong impact on the other characters.

One thing that drives me absolutely BONKERS when watching movies/series is when a victim’s whole existence and death serves to motivate the enraged and grief-stricken detective. 99 times out of 100, the decedent is a woman and the detective is a guy.

C’mon, screenwriters, there are ways for your male characters to access their emotions without fridging their girlfriends.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m thinking back on the last four or five books and seeing a pattern–I don’t necessarily like the victim. Which really is a little lame when you think of it–what kind of mystery is that? But it’s hard for me to let the good guys go…

Hank, that’s so funny. I’m usually completely clueless because I get caught up in the story, rather than figuring out whodunit.

JENN McKINLAY: Victims can be so sensitive! I once had a victim who refused to die and I had to rewrite the entire book and then he became a recurring character in the series. I’m glad he didn’t die because he really made the series so much better but at the time, I was like “Dude, you have to die! Cooperate!”

He didn’t.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've never thought I had the wrong victim, but there have been some that I really really really did NOT want to kill. But if had I changed the victim, I would have had no plot, so I just had to cry my way through it.

HALLIE: So how about you? Can you sense when a character you've gotten attached to is about to get bumped off? Does it make you keep reading (or watching), or is it your signal to bail?

A NYTimes rave for our own Julia Spencer-Fleming

HALLIE EPHRON: There's much excitement here at Jungle Red! 

Fireworks! 

Drum roll! 

We're delighted to report that MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY, Julia's brand new, hot off the presse book, has earned an absolutely glowing review from The New York Times's mystery maven, Sarah Weinman.

We're madly toasting Julia, and happily sharing the news. 

Here's what Ms. Weinman has to say: 

Over 10 books, Spencer-Fleming has examined the joys and ills of small-town life, the limits and tests of faith, and the many ways love can prevail. In AT MIDNIGHT COMES THE CRY (Minotaur, 308 pp., $29), her first book in five years, the longtime Millers Kill, N.Y., police chief Russ Van Alstyne has just resigned. He and his wife, the Rev. Clare Fergusson, have settled in for a quiet holiday season with their 8-month-old son. That is, until a white supremacist group descends upon the town, inciting violence at the annual lighted tractor parade, and Russ gets word from Officer Hadley Knox, the newest member of the Millers Kill police department, that her former partner has vanished after a stint infiltrating local militia groups.

It doesn’t take long for Russ and Hadley to realize that the people they care about are in the cross hairs of malevolence, and that following the procedural playbook won’t keep them alive. Fleming, in her most masterly turn yet, mixes heart-stopping action with deep empathy for her characters.

Goodness! It doesn't get much better than that!

Brava Julia! Russ and Clare can bask. 

It said... vs I read

HALLIE EPHRON: Seems like daily I go down the rabbit hole with a very personal MISreading of a news item. And the mistakes, I am sorry to say, illustrate how much being an aging crime fiction writer has taken over my brain.

A few days ago it said:
"The Volunteer Buglers Giving 24-Note Salutes" 
I read:
The Volunteer Burglers Giving 24-Note Salutes   

A few weeks ago, the news article said: autopay.
I read autopsy.

Then there was the headline that said:
"Even Mediocre Home Baristas Can Make Good Espresso With This Unintimidating Machine"  
I read:
Even Medicare Home Baristas Can Make Good Espresso With This Unintimidating Machine 

An finally, a news bulletin said:
"Japan was violating an agreement to stop dumping semiconductors on the US market at below cost”
I read:
Japan was violating an agreement to stop dumpling semiconductors on the US market at below cost. 

This last misreading, clearly driven by my passion for Chinese soup dumplings.

Do you have a penchant for misreading the news, one that reflects what you really care about or, as in my case, how much your brain is in a state of gradual decay but your sense of humor remains intact?

A trip down phoney-baloney road

HALLIE EPHRON: I live just south of Boston, and whenever we needed to drive through the city and into New Hampshire or Maine, we liked to take Route 1 -- which we referred to as the "phoney-baloney road." With kids in the back seat shouting out every they spotted another wacky beloved landmark.

In addition to shopping malls and fast food restaurants and sketchy looking bars, Route 1 was dotted with literal-minded storefront that earned its name, "phoney-baloney."

At the start, there was the hulking orange T-Rex perched on an overpass beside a miniature golf course. The golf course is now long gone, but the dino remains, watching over his domain.

There was the truly Leaning Tower of Pizza.

The restaurant that looked like an enormous pirate ship that had washed up on suburban Boston.

The Hilltop, a steak restaurant that marked its place with an enormous neon cactus and was surrounded by life-sized cattle "grazing" alongside the always-long line of hungry diners waiting to get in.

And the illustrious Chinese restaurant, The Kowloon, which I am sorry to report is about to undergo demolition to make way for something or another much less interesting. Their all-you-can eat was spectacular and it was surrounded by gardens.

All of these were dear to my heart, probably because I grew up in Southern California just over the canyon from the TailofthePup.

Do you have fond memories of establishments that would have been right at home on our Phoney Baloney Road?

Classics for when you're in the mood for mystery...

Back in 2008, my book "1001 Books for Every Mood" was published. It's out of print now (the publisher went belly up, but copies are amazingly still available on ABEBooks). I often go back to the lists and marvel at my own stamina, and to remind myself of the titles that set the bar for our genre.

These are the books I recommended for WHEN YOU'RE IN THE MOOD TO SIFT CLUES

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
A dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to deal with his daughter’s blackmailer. This is the book that introduced the world to Marlowe, one of the first hardboiled private dicks. With his “powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them,” only the attitude resembles Bogey’s portrayal on the silver screen.

The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
In postwar LA, burnt-out New York cop and former prizefighter Bucky Bleichert becomes obsessed with a real (and still today) unsolved 1947 Black Dahlia torture-murder case. In this book you get all the gory details of the actual crime. Bleichert cracks the case, but in the process he loses his job and much more. In spare, powerful prose, Ellroy machine guns his story at the reader. In a poignant afterword, he discloses that his own mother was the victim of an unsolved murder.

The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart
The first line says it all: “This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.” Soon our girl’s up to her corset in ghosts, stolen securities, and murder. This 1908 novel was the first from the prolific author and invented the mystery sub-genre “fem jep” in which a heroine is in jeopardy and has to be rescued (in modern versions, she rescues herself).

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
LAPD detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch has killed a man he thinks is a serial killer of prostitutes and porn stars. Then a similar murder occurs. Did Bosch kill an innocent man? Many feel Connelly is our best living American mystery writer, and this is considered one of his best novels.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Scottish author Tey explores one of the great unsolved mysteries of all time: the murder of Richard III’s two young nephews and heirs to the throne. In this enduring novel written in 1951, a painting of Richard III catches the interest Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant while he’s laid up in hospital and bored to tears.: The inspector, something of an expert on faces, “lay a long time looking at that face, at those extraordinary eyes.” He muses, “I can’t remember any murderers, either in my own experience, or in case-histories, who resemble him.” As he tries to solve the murders, Tey provides readers with an enthralling blend of fact and fiction.

The Deep Blue Goodbye by John D. MacDonald
This first Travis McGee novel (there were 21 of them from 1964 to 1985) launched the much beloved salvager of lost causes who lives on the “Busted Flush, a 52-foot houseboat docked in Fort Lauderdale, drives a blue Rolls-turned- truck he calls “Miss Agnes,” and has a soft spot for a desperate woman. In this one, the dame is Cathy Kerr, “a brown-eyed blonde, with the helpless mournful eyes of a basset hound” who seek his help recovering gems belonging to her deceased father.

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
It’s 1948 in a Los Angeles where there’s “still a large stretch of farmland between Los Angeles and Santa Monica.” World War II black army vet Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is out of work. He accepts $100 from a white thug to find Daphne Monet, a missing white woman who’s been seen partying in black nightspots. “That girl is the devil, man. She got evil in every pocket,” he says after friends of the missing woman start turning up dead and Rawlins becomes the prime suspect. This first novel won Mosley critical acclaim for the unique voice and post-war setting.

Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block
Matthew Scudder is not just another hardboiled private investigator, though he certainly fits the mold—an alcoholic ex-cop, divorced and estranged from his family, guilt-ridden by a holdup he couldn’t stop and a little girl’s murder he couldn’t prevent. He’s also one of life’s sardonic observers. A 23-year-old hooker comes to him for help getting out of “the life.” She’s murdered. Scudder is determined to find her killer. Block, one of today’s most prolific and widely read mystery authors, is a writer’s writer who does dark, claustrophobic New York to a T.

The Hard Way by Lee Child
Raymond Chandler meets Hemingway in Child’s spare prose. In this 10th series novel, tough-guy Jack Reacher is in New York at a café, minding his own business, when he sees a man get into a Mercedes Benz and drive off. Turns out he’s witnessed a ransom payoff. Twenty-four hours later, the kidnappers haven’t released millionaire Edward Lane’s wife and daughter, and Reacher gets recruited to find them. Child may be a Brit but he nails American macho.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, and the legend of a hell hound of Dartmoor. Was Sir Charles Baskerville killed by the infamous Hound of the Baskervilles, a demonic dog believed responsible for killing his ancestor Sir Hugo Baskerville hundreds of years earlier? As Holmes and Watson journey to investigate, they encounter an “enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.” If you’ve never read a legendary Holmes book, here’s a good place to start. Read it for pure fun, then read the version annotated by Leslie S. Kilnger for fascinating insights.

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
Here’s a tough, ex-army investigator who lives in Montana and has a name you can’t pronounce: C. W. Sughrue, He’s hired to find Abraham Trahearne, a boozing author. When he tracks Trahearne down, he’s “drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma California, drinking the heart of a fine spring afternoon.” Wow—can this guy channel Chandler or what?

Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker
In this series novel, a man hires PI Spenser to protect a woman author who has rattled a few cages with her tell-all book. She fires him for being too “macho” (he is); but when she’s abducted he comes to the rescue. Parker is a master minimalist. Boston’s his beat, and deadpan dialogue is his winning game. At his best, and he’s at his best in this one, he’s second only to Elmore Leonard.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Private investigator Sam Spade is out to avenge the death of his partner, Miles Archer. Sinister Joe Cairo offers Spade $500 to retrieve a black figurine. Beautiful Brigid O’Shaughnessy throws herself at Spade (“I want you to save me—from it all.”) Turns out she wants the statue, too. But tough, ruthless, single-minded Spade is immune to her feminine wiles. Hammett wrote only this one novel featuring Spade, but with it he created the mold for the hardboiled private investigator who follows his own moral compass.

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (National Book Critics Circle 1999)
Lionel Essrog, the narrator of this hybrid hardboiled crime slash literary fiction, has Tourette syndrome, and his verbal pyrotechnics turn the novel into an extended rap. The murder victim is a small-time mobster who is also Essrog’s mentor and his boss at a car service/detective agency. Essrog, armed with tics and screams, infiltrates Brooklyn’s “secret system” to hunt down the killer. Another neurologically impaired detective? He’s anything but. The genre may be familiar, but the territory Lethem explores with it is unique.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers set the standard for Britain’s golden age of mystery with her fourteen novels and a passel of short stories starring wealthy, witty Lord Peter Wimsey. In this one, Peter assumes the name “Death Bredon” and goes undercover at Pym’s Publicity to investigate the mysterious death of a copywriter in their employ. Sayers writes a sharply satirical view of the advertising world which she knew well—she worked for in a London advertising agency for seven years.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
The apparent suicide of wealthy widow Mrs. Ferrar looks like murder when her fiancé Roger Ackroyd is found dead, too. Hercule Poirot, the diminutive and oh-so-precise Belgian detective, investigates. When Poirot tells the narrator, Dr. Sheppard, that his life’s work is “the study of human nature,” Sheppard concludes that Poirot is a retired hairdresser. Sheppard becomes Poirot’s helpmate in the investigation. There was a great hew and cry about the ending of this novel. No doubt Dame Agatha chuckled all the way to the bank.

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Prolific author Alexander McCall Smith struck gold when he conjured Precious Ramotswe, the only lady detective in Botswana. She takes proceeds of the sale of cattle she inherits after her father’s death and sets out to do as he directed: “I want you to have your own business.” She sets up office on the edge of town with a brightly painted sign promising “SATISFACTION GUARANTEED,” brews a pot of red bush tea, and settles in to wait for clients. Hold the noir, hold the violence; this is a wry, delightful mystery series with a wise female sleuth.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
In this hardboiled/noir classic, young drifter Frank Chambers stops at the Twin Oaks Tavern. He takes one look at the owner’s wife Cora and he’s a goner: “Except for the shape, she really wasn’t any raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.” Cora talks Frank into helping her kill her husband, but things go awry. Greed, lust, and plenty of kinky moments. The book was banned in Boston.

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow
Kindle County prosecutor Rusty Sabich is assigned to investigate the rape and murder of a woman colleague. He fails to disclose that he and the victim had had an affair. Compelling physical evidence makes Sabich the prime suspect. This novel defined the legal thriller genre. But it has the kind of characters you expect from a literary novel and an infamous surprise ending that most of us don’t see coming.

A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
An anthropologist vanishes. Navajo Tribal Policemen Lt. Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee investigate the ravaged ancient burial site where she was last seen. One of Hillerman’s best novels, the mystery is woven into a tapestry of earth-tone landscape and shot through with the convincing detail of Native American life.

Whip Hand by Dick Francis (Edgar Award 1981)
Dick Francis was jockey to Queen Elizabeth from 1953 and 1957. Lucky for us, he had to retire from racing after a serious fall and took up writing. His prodigious body of work combines horseracing with action-packed mystery. In this one, ex-jockey and private investigator Sid Halley looks into allegations of foul play at a stable. It has one of Francis’s signature, eye-popping opening lines: “I took the battery out of my arm and fed it into the recharger, and only realized I’d done it when ten seconds later the fingers wouldn’t work.”

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
On Hampstead on a moonlit night, drawing teacher Walter Cartwright encounters a “solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to the dark cloud over London, as I faced her.” He helps her, and later discovers that she escaped from a nearby asylum. This complicated tale of murder, madness, and mistaken identity is narrated from multiple viewpoints and was inspired by a true crime. One of the most popular novels of the 19th Century, this is considered the first true mystery novels.


A little quiz: Which book is this opening line from?
“It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness...”

AND who is this character?

“I am tall, and I gangle. I look like a loose-jointed, clumsy hundred and eighty…As far as clumsiness and reflexes go, I have never had to use a flyswatter in my life.”

What books would you add to recommend to someone looking to sample THE BEST of what the crime fiction genre has to offer?