Don't Even Ask Me This

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I'm sure my memories are tinged with the bitterness that comes from abject rejection. Okay, I'm sure that's not exactly true, but if someone offered me ten million dollars to go back to high school--and without the wisdom I hope I now have--I might need to think about it.

There were some wonderful parts, and people who are lovely friends now. And teachers who completely changed my life, and for whom I am grateful every day. But basically: thanks, but no thanks.

That's why our dear friend Leslie Wheeler has such a perfect setting for her new mystery! 

And ooh, leave a comment and you could win a copy
of her brand new Wildcat Academy. SO much fun to go back to high school...if you don't actually have to go.

Back to School in a Mystery

By Leslie Wheeler

My mystery novels and short stories are what you could call place-centric.

I start with a place I find intriguing and the plot and characters grow from that.

In the first book of my Berkshire Hilltown Mysteries, that place is a hill (Rattlesnake Hill), in the second, it’s a road (Shuntoll Road), in the third, it’s a bog (Wolf Bog). For my fourth book, I chose a school, but not a regular public school.

Wildcat Academy is set at a private boarding school. I went to a private school myself and so did my son, and we both had good experiences—though my son probably didn’t think so at time. In any case, the type of private schools I decided to write were called therapeutic boarding schools, or schools for troubled teens, or tough love schools. This was because they resorted to punishments and restrictions they claimed would help students in the long run. Instead, these tactics only made things worse for some students, leading to lawsuits and closures of the schools, amid charges of abuse.

My first encounter with such a school happened shortly after I’d moved to the Berkshires. My husband and I went to see a musical comedy performance at a school in a different town from where we lived. The main building was a mansion at the far end of a huge lawn with a gated fence.

We were ushered into a screened-in porch before the performance began. There, a man wearing multiple gold rings on his fingers, who turned out to be the head of the school, relaxed in a lounge chair like the shah of a foreign country, while students milled around him waiting for the show to start. Sensing there was something different about this school, my husband asked a couple of students we were talking with what kind of school it was.

After exchanging glances, one of the students said, “It’s a place for kids who don’t always go with the flow.” And that was all they would say, although obviously there was more to it. Only later did we learn just how unpleasant that “more” could be.

Meanwhile, I discovered there was a similar school in our Berkshire town, and many residents were not happy about it. I attended an angry town meeting in reaction to an incident where a group of students from this school broke into a neighboring house, when the owners were away. They got drunk on the booze they found, stole a car and smashed it on their way into town. Tempers ran so high at that meeting that some people were ready to run the school owners out of town. That didn’t happen, but a few years later, the school shut down.


Given my town’s experience with that school, it wasn’t surprising that the townspeople were adamantly against another tough love school moving in. One person even put together a pamphlet, detailing all the awful things that had happened at the school in its current location. That pamphlet added grist to my fictional mill as I began to write Wildcat Academy.

Still, as I’ve learned, most things in life aren’t totally bad. There are glimmers of light in the darkness. While the headmaster of my fictional school is not a nice guy, nor are the school bullies, I’ve given it two good people in the characters of a student and a teacher. I was an English major, so naturally she’s an English teacher. The teacher and the “good” student help my main character, Kathryn Stinson, solve the mysterious death of another student, who happens to be the son of Kathryn’s sister-in-law.

Readers, what was your high school experience like: good, bad, or a mix, and why? One of the commentators will receive a free copy of Wildcat Academy.

HANK: Oh, I absolutely cannot wait to hear this. (I have a theory.) Tell all, Reds and Readers!

An award-winning author of books about American history and biographies, Leslie Wheeler has written two mystery series. Titles in the Berkshire Hilltown Mysteries are Rattlesnake Hill, Shuntoll Road, Wolf Bog and now, Wildcat Academy. 

Titles in the Miranda Lewis series include Murder at Plimoth Plantation, Murder at Gettysburg, and Murder at Spouters Point. Her mystery short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including The Best New England Crime Stories series, published by Crime Spell Books, where she is a co-editor/publisher. Leslie is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, serving as Speakers Bureau Coordinator for the New England Chapter of SinC. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Berkshires, where she writes in a house overlooking a pond.

Freezer Jenga

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’m not going to show you any pictures here and in a minute you’ll understand why. Well, it is out of pure embarrassment, and my personal self-revelations, even to you all, darling ones, do not extend this far.

If you came over to visit, I would be so incredibly happy to see you! I would show you around my house and show you the things I love, and we could have a cup of tea or a glass of wine and it would be so lovely! You are all invited.

But I will never, under any circumstances, ever, show you the inside of my freezer. Freezers. 

We have a couple of freezers, long story, and I was very happy about that during the pandemic. Still am. (They are not separate, just in the fridge.) 

But I am absolutely completely incapable of throwing food away. I have to freeze it. Oh, well that’s not exactly right, if we have leftover broccoli I will just eat it, same with green beans, that kind of thing

But let’s say I make delicious sautéed flattened chicken breasts that I served with Parmesan cheese and rice and vegetables. And let’s say there are two of those left over. First they get tightly wrapped in saran, then I put them in the refrigerator because they would be great for lunch! Then we don’t have them for lunch. Then I have to do something with them. Into the freezer they go!


If we have leftover grilled lemon pepper salmon, yummy, that gets a day in the refrigerator until I decide that I’m not going to make salmon salad, and then into the freezer it goes! I could make lemon pasta, right? And that would be delicious on it. Someday.

But gradually, my freezer is filling up with little bits and bobs of things like that. Greek chicken, the leftover meat from turkey tacos, (wouldn’t that be good for nachos someday?) the leftover flank steak that would be great for stirfry. Someday.

But you see, I never use them. I always make new chicken or new tacos.

And also, my freezers are kind of like hideous Jenga. None of those things are symmetrical, so they sort of have to be stacked and layered. Very very tippy. And I have had several narrow escapes from frozen blocks of cheese landing on my toes.

Yes, I bought plastic dividers for the freezer; figuring cheese goes in, one chicken goes in, one bread-like things go in another one. That was so great. Very efficient. But I still can’t see everything.

Generally things are labeled, but not always, but if I have leftover beef bourguignon or pasta primavera, I’ll write that on the container. But sometimes I think oh, I’ll recognize that when I look at it. Which I… Sometimes do.

From time to time I’ll make a vow to just throw everything away. Or just close my eyes, put my hand in the freezer, and make for dinner whatever I pick.

However. I don’t do any of those things.

Reds and readers, do you have a freezer situation? Or a solution? Are you playing freezer Jenga?

It's Always About Me?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It's true, isn’t it? If I assigned each of you to write a story about, oh, say, a day in a cave, each of our stories would be different. Why is that? The fab Gin Phillips has the answer. A very special personal answer.



It’s Always About Me

By Gin Phillips

I have a theory that no novelist can ever write a book that’s not about themselves. It’s not a theory with a lot of research behind it, granted. I’ve got a sample size of one—myself.

The thing is that I can’t imagine how you avoid writing about yourself, no matter what kind of world you’re building. The page is there in front of you, so beautifully blank, and whatever struggles or preoccupations are circling through your head are bound to unspool themselves as you type. Writing is therapy that you don’t pay for. A novel gives you thousands of words and an entire cast of characters to work all sorts of things out.

Your own struggles and obsessions aren’t necessarily recognizable to a reader, mind you. Not if you hide them well enough.

My first novel followed a family in a coal mining town in 1931 after a baby was found in the family well, but it was really about me coming to terms with how my grandmother and great-aunt and all the generations before me helped shape me. My book about ghosts at an archaeology dig was really about me falling in love with my husband, and my novel about a mother and son being trapped in a zoo during a public shooting was about my own experience with motherhood. (That last one might have been fairly obvious.)

So here I am at a new novel, Ruby Falls, and on the surface, it’s a historical mystery set after the real-life discovery of Ruby Falls in Chattanooga. The story follows Ada, a woman who finds a new world and a new start in the mazes of caverns under the falls. She descends into that underground world with a mind reader and a group of strangers bent on a publicity stunt, and she finds out one of them is a killer. It’s a story with secrets and murder and possibly romance.

It’s a cool setting for a novel. I spent plenty of time wriggling through caves in Tennessee—bats and salamanders and all—and fell a little bit in love with them myself.

But in another way this book isn’t about caving or mind readers or the Great Depression.

It’s about the fact that in the last five years I’ve lost my grandmother and great-aunt and stepmother, and I was up close and personal with their final years and their final days. That grief is underlying Ada.

More than that, though, I’ve thought plenty about how all three women—like so many women, generation after generation—were brought up to believe you get married, you have kids, and that’s your life. They had different paths in terms of how marriage and kids played out, but all of them struggled to fill their days once there was no one left at home to take care of. (My grandmother was seventy when my grandfather died, and she lived thirty-five more years!) 

Here’s the truth, of course: whether you have a family or not, at some stage the kids are gone. The husband might be gone, too. And there are all these years left, years when you are your best self—wiser, tougher, more competent than you were when you were younger. You know things. You know yourself, yet you’re supposed to—what? Sit on a porch and rock?

Those thoughts were the beginning of Ada, my main character in Ruby Falls. I wanted a woman in middle age to launch herself into a new narrative instead of reaching the end of one. I wanted her to find freedom and all sorts of possibility. She’s steeped in both loss and joy—mine, maybe—and, I’ll tell you, she left me feeling a lot better by the time I reached the last page.


How about you? Do you still think of those women who helped shaped you and have passed on? I’d love to hear about them. 

HANK: Oh, what a lovely and thought-provoking question! And yikes, caving—have any of you ever been? (And I want to ask Gin: tell us about the macaroni and cheese. )


Gin Phillips is the author of seven novels, and her work has been sold in 29 countries. Her debut novel, The Well and the Mine, won the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Her novel Fierce Kingdom was named one of the best books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly, NPR, Amazon, and Kirkus Reviews. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her family.

More About Ruby Falls

A tense, claustrophobic historical mystery set almost entirely underground, Ruby Falls has gotten starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. It’s about the discovery of a 150-foot waterfall in the middle of a mountain, the unthinkable crime that happens in its caves… and a woman who’s never felt more alive.

"Woven from historical events...and the workings of brilliantly brooding imagination, this story of murder, lust, and survival is as disturbing as it is mesmerizing. A hyper-immersive novel that fearlessly explores the darkest, most primal corners of the human heart.”—Publishers Weekly

“Excruciatingly suspenseful….electrifying.”—Booklist

"Exquisitely written and evocatively claustrophobic, layered and transportingly authentic—as chilling as it is tender, and as mysterious as the human soul."—Hank Phillippi Ryan

One body. Five suspects. Total darkness.

In 1928, a Chattanooga man disappears down a hole in the ground and discovers a 150-foot waterfall in the middle of a mountain that he names after his wife: Ruby Falls. Within months, visitors can buy tickets to see the falls for themselves. Ada Smith has been sneaking into the caves at night, entranced by the natural wonders around her and the freedom granted by this new underground world.

But it’s tough timing for a natural wonder. As the country flounders in the Great Depression, a shrewd public relations ploy seems like the only way to save Ruby Falls. A famous mind reader and mystic agrees to launch himself into the Ruby Falls caverns where he will attempt to locate a hidden hatpin using only his psychic abilities. He'll be joined by five others: his manager, his wife, a guide, a Chattanooga businessman, and a reporter from the Chicago Times. But they’re not alone in the caverns. Ada and another guide, Quinton, have been asked to follow the mind reader’s party at a distance, staying out of sight. They are a safety net, in case of a broken leg or busted flashlights.

One of them will be dead before the end of the day.

Faced with a corpse and the stark reality that one of the people in her midst is a killer, Ada needs to get everyone—the murderer and the innocents—back aboveground before their light runs out.

Ruby Falls is both a unique twist on the locked-room mystery and an exploration of loss and what it means to start over. It’s a heart-racing story of survival and a testament to the threads that bind strangers together.

Would You Go Back To Yesteryear?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I’m reading a book called Yesteryear (by Caro Claire Burke), and Reds and Readers, it is phenomenal. Riveting. I absolutely love it. 

And the gist of it, no spoilers, is that a tradwife influencer, all butter churning, adorable children, dutiful wife who lives on a ranch, is an organic farmer, homeschooler, all those things, and who spends her entire life presenting herself on Instagram as a salt of the earth back to what’s important good spiritual loving person is, in reality, pretty much a fraud. She's cynical dismissive ambitious–and absolutely irresistible to read about.

So that’s not even the point of the story. Again, no spoilers because it’s on the back of the book, one morning she wakes up and she is in 1805. Where churning butter and collecting eggs and making your own bread is not an option, it’s the only way people can live. And she realizes it’s hideous. It’s awful. It’s difficult it’s cold it’s hard and there’s no electricity and she’s totally miserable. She remembers her other life, see, so she’s even more bitter.


How the heck did that happen? I will never tell but suffice it to say it’s a terrific book, and an amazing tour de force in voice, as well as an examination of our contemporary fantasies. And inside all that is a dark and terrifying social commentary about pressure and criticism and manipulation and power and expectations and envy.

Oh, another element is that her contemporary husband is super rich and super handsome and super dumb. And not that… romantic, shall we say. And she wishes, constantly, for someone who is strong and tough and manly and in charge. In 1805, her husband is all of those things, and she hates him. He’s horrible!


There’s a whole lot more, the above does not even begin to describe it, and you have to read it for yourself. Do not miss it. 

Anyway it got me thinking about things we do the “old-fashioned way.”

I am trying to think of things I do without modern conveniences, and I have to say that there are kind of… None. Gardening maybe? Does that count? Flower arranging? That seems kind of pitiful. I would make a cake from scratch, but 2026 scratch is nothing like 1805 scratch, not to mention the oven.

Does yesteryear – – the reality, not the book – – seem tempting to you at all? (I left out all the medical parts, we won’t even go there.) Do you do anything "the old fashioned way"?



HALLIE EPHRON: Sounds like a “be careful what you wish for” story - and not one to miss.

What I do without modern conveniences: Whip cream (with a whisk or a fork). Drip coffee.

The thing I’m SO GLAD I don’t have to do without conveniences: laundry. Can you even imagine?


JENN McKINLAY: Camping is as close to yesteryear as I want to get and even at that, I have an inflatable mattress. I remember reading My Side of the Mountain as a tween and thinking “No, absolutely not.” That being said, I do enjoy manual labor like painting rooms, refinishing cupboards, and putting in flooring. There is such a huge sense of satisfaction when walking on a floor you put down or putting books on a bookcase that you made yourself.


LUCY BURDETTE: My yesteryear excursions would all be in the realm of cooking, gardening, and canning. In my old days, I canned everything using a pressure cooker, and pickled things with hot water baths etc. But it’s a risky business, avoiding botulism, and now I only do the occasional pickle. I do prefer to bake from scratch, and also cook from scratch. Until I’m tired of it and insist we go out to eat:).

Most of the gardening has been shifted over to John, but he does use my organic methods. We are now bracing for spring and the onslaught of critters who adore his produce! I guess in the old days, we’d shoot them and eat them.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Any romanticized ideas I might have had about Ye Good Olde Days were ruthlessly squashed during the Ice Storm of ‘97, when I lived in an 1820 house with NO electricity or running water for nine days. Oh, and with a five and three year old constantly underfoot!


Ross brought home water in jugs (the lucky son of a gun had heat, power and a hot shower at his office) and we heated the house to a balmy 50° by keeping the wood stove and both fireplaces going round the clock. Which, yes, entailed one of us getting up very three hours during the night to pile on more logs.

It was AWFUL, and I still had the benefit of certain modern conveniences - the kids and I went to a friend’s house to bathe and shower, and I hauled the dirty clothes to a laundromat. It’s no wonder women died in their 40s back then - it was probably from exhaustion.


RHYS BOWEN: I grew up in a big old house with no central heating. Corridors so long that I used to roller skate down them. In our 30 by 20 living room there was a fireplace at one end, around which we all huddled. My bedroom had no heat apart from a two bar electric fire. I used to get dressed under the bedcovers. Sometimes there was ice on the inside of the window. So no thank you. I would not want that again.


Unlike Lucy I have never bottled or canned. My mother was always a professional woman so no housewifely stuff for her. I’m trying to think of anything old fashioned that I do: I used to knit. Does that count? I write proper thank you letters and cards. I send birthday and Christmas cards. That’s about as primitive as I get.


DEBORAH CROMBIE: I’ve canned marmalade, does that count? Although to be fair, the oranges came in imported tins. I’ve fermented things, kimchi and sauerkraut, which only require salt and time, and I’ve baked sourdough bread, but only in a modern oven. Household chores like dusting and sweeping–surely those haven’t changed too much except for the quality of the instruments. And gardening, since people have been digging in the dirt since time immemorial.

Like Julia, we’ve lived through extended power outages during ice storms, having only our living room fireplace for heat, and there is nothing the last least bit romantic about it!


HANK: How about you, Reds and Readers? Is there anything you do that you would have done the same way in 1805? Would you have liked to have lived then? Why and why not?

Sally Wainwright rocks: RIOT WOMEN

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Seems like I spend a fair amount of time grazing among the various streaming offerings, and occasionally striking gold. Britbox is my favored pasture, and I have just started watching an absolutely fantastic series: RIOT WOMEN.

It "ticks all the boxes": great cast, fantastic acting, and most of all fabulous (funny, wry, believable, ...) writing. And it's been green-lighted for a second season.

No surprise that it comes from the pen of Sally Wainwright.

She's an amazingly prolific English TV writer, producer, and director. She is known for her dramas set in West Yorkshire, such as LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX and HAPPY VALLEY.

She's also the creative behind my all-time favorite British police procedural SCOTT AND BAILEY.

And now three cheers for RIOT WOMEN. It's about five iron-willed women of a certain age, each some version of damaged goods, who come together and form a rock band. A PUNK-rock band! Singing their own material that channels their anger and creativity and can bring tears to my eyes.

Profound stuff when you wipe away the tears of laughter.

It gets off to a roaring start with a failed suicide attempt (life intervenes)... It swings from tense to hysterically funny to insightful to profoundly sad. Always affirming life and hope and sisterhood.

As one of the women (Beth) says of their band: "We sing songs about being middle-aged and menopausal and more or less invisible."

Let's just say that it had me standing up and cheering at my television screen.

Anyone else out there watching RIOT WOMEN? My one advice is: when it seems to be going dark dark dark, hang in there with it.

What else is atop your watch list at the moment?

Discovering Scottish roots with Kathy Chung

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Where do you come from, and how much of that place still beckons? Whose genes did you inherit?

These are fundamental questions that we mystery writers ask of our characters, and often of ourselves.

We travel to the places where our mysteries take place, all in an effort to get the details right. But traveling to the places that shaped our own ancestors or our characters' pasts is a special challenge.

Introducing Kathy Chung who makes that challenge a lot easier and so much more fun.

For two decades Kathy has been conference coordinator for the annual Surrey International Writers Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's a fabulous several-day event (regularly featuring luminaries Diana Gabaldon, (until recently) Anne Perry and Donald Maas, just for example.)

Each year I so look forward to being welcomed to the conference by Kathy. She's lovely, competent, able to put out twelve competing fires at the same time.

What I didn't know is that Kathy is also a qualified genealogist specializing in Scotland, North America, and the rest of the United Kingdom. Today she's branching out, applying her organization and genealogical talents to a new venture that has me wishing I had ancestors from Scotland...

KATHY CHUNG: All the work I love best is some combination of puzzles, stories, and connection: researching and writing novels, genealogy, and planning conference and events to bring people together to learn, explore, and connect.

My own roots are Scottish, and I've been lucky enough to make several research trips to Scotland and to study family and local history at the University of Dundee. I've combined my love of bringing people together in a supportive environment to learn - and my years of experience planning the Surrey International Writers' Conference - with my love of genealogy and research in what to me is a dream job: offering supportive small-group research trips to Edinburgh.

At the end of 2025, I launched my new business, https://scottishgenealogy.ca, to offer small groups of amateur family historians from North America who have Scottish roots week-long research trips in Edinburgh. The first one is coming up in June.

The first trip is coming up June 13-20, 2026.

Explore your roots in the country of your ancestors or research your Scottish novel setting while getting a feel for the sights, sounds, and culture of Scotland. Connect with other people who love disappearing down research rabbit holes. I hope you'll join me!

HALLIE: This sounds so great and has me wishing my genealogical past wasn't rooted in Russian shtetls.

And asking: Are you interested in chasing down your own genealogical past and visiting the place(s) that are implanted in your DNA? If you could travel to discover your ancestors, where would you go (time? place?) and what would you want to know?

Hallie's On-the-go bars

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm sure I'm not the only one who frequently needs a quick bite -- not a meal but SOMETHING to keep my energy up until I have time (and the inclination) for the next meal. 

Granola bars, of course, fit that niche. But have you had any lately? My experience is that they either taste like sawdust or a block of sugar. On top of that, they're pricey.

So I was thrilled when The New York Times ran a recipe for "energy bars" -- chopped nuts and dried fruit, glued together with some flour and egg, seasoned with cinnamon and salt. Baked, cooled, and cut into bars. VOILA!

I made my own version with nuts I had the fridge. Almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, and pistachios. But it would have been fine with pecans and unsweetened coconut or whatever other nut-like substances you like and have on hand. 

All I had in the dried fruit department was raisins, but now I'll stock up on some dried apricots and dates and cranberries to give it more zest next time out.

I wouldn't swap out the maple syrup, and it needed all that sweetness. And surprisingly the small amount of salt is a lovely touch.

So here's my version of "energy bars." Very nutty. Not too sweet. And helped me use up last bits of nuts I had hanging around in the fridge. Making it extremely economical.

INGREDIENTS 
Oil
2 eggs
4 T maple syrup
1/2 tsp of kosher salt plus a bit more
4 T flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 cups nuts - use whatever combination you love or happen to have on hand
1 1/2 cups of dried fruit (apricot, dates, raisins, cranberries, whatever you like or happen to have)

PREP 
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Prep the pan: Lightly oil the bottom and sides of an 8x8 metal baking pan; line the pan with parchment (or foil); lightly oil the surface of the liner
3. Coarsely chop the nuts and dried fruit (raisins and cranberries don't need chopping)
4. Whisk the egg and maple syrup and salt in a large bowl until smooth. 
5. Add flour and cinnamon. Whisk til smooth. 
6. Add nuts and dried fruit. Mix. 
7. Spread the mixture in the pan
8. Bake about 30 minutes or until it's nicely brown and firm to the touch. Sprinkle with a little kosher salt.
9. Cool completely IN THE PAN on a rack.
10. Slide out the slab and cut into bars.

I stored mine in zip-lock bags, but a tin or any airtight container will do. 

Put it where you can GRAB AND GO.

So what's your go-to for a speedy (non-cooking) breakfast and mid-afternoon snack? Maybe there are some decent tasting, ready-made, affordable "energy bars" that I haven't yet discovered.

Agatha evergreen?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: I recently spent several evenings watching new adaptations of Agatha Chrstie novels: AGATHA CHRISTIE'S SEVEN DIALS (on Amazon) and WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS (on Britbox).

WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS starts as golf caddy and all around swell guy, Bobby Jones, witnesses a man plummet from a cliff onto rocks below. He gets to the body in time to hear the man say, "Why didn't they ask Evans," but too late to save him.

Bobby becomes embroiled in the investigation (was the man pushed?) with a shove from a plucky, smart, quintessentially Christie-an female sleuth, Lady Frankie Derwent.

It has an amazing cast that includes Hugh Laurie (who also directed it) and a cameo by Emma Thompson (I think she's Lady Frankie's mother).

What happens from there is so complicated that I couldn't begin to explain it, and in fact I was barely follow the lookalike identities, hulking mean goons, precipitous will, fancy estate with nearby mysterious mental hospital... I just went along for the smart talk and colorful ride... and waiting for Emma Thompson to reappear.

SEVEN DIALS is a locked room (with a fireplace mantle and seven... or was it six?) ticking alarm clocks that go off to tip the house residents that there's been a murder. Also featuring a plucky, upper crust, female sleuth (Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent). Supporting cast includes Helena Bonham Carter as (I think) Bundle's mother.

I enjoyed both series, but the plot lines are SO COMPLICATED I don't even know for certain who did it for either series or why. Honestly the main thing I remember are the clocks of one and the reveal of who Evans is in the other.

Whodunnit? Not so much.

Which leads me to my question: Why are Agatha Christie stories so evergreen? Is there a "formula" and does it work today?

RHS BOWEN: Hallie, I’ve watched all of the recent Agatha Christie TV movies. They alter the plot and make them much more suspenseful and violent than the books. I really loved the original Why Didn’t the Ask Evans?” when I first read it but reading it again makes it annoyingly outdated. Her bright young things protagonists take stupid risks, get into households containing murderers, sneak into clubs full of people who would easily kill them. I suppose the world was a safer place in those days.

I remember reading Enid Blyton’s Famous Five when I was a child. I loved the books but again so unrealistic. They trap the smugglers in their cave and then men say “We’re sorry” instead of shooting the kids.

I’ve been quite a student of Agatha. I’ve written a couple of learned articles for books on her and even a piece for the Washington Post on Miss Marple. I think this is where she is at her best. The simple village murder, gentle sleuth, clever clues. All make reassuring and predictable reading. We know good will prevail. The bad guys will get caught. When she tries to move to a bigger canvas… more thrilleresque, she is no longer believable. Read the book of the Seven Dials. It’s quite good, apart from the risks they take.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I watched an episode or two of WHY DIDN'T THEY ASK EVANS when it was first released, and I remember I thought the protagonists were cute. But then it got really confusing and unbelievable and I gave up. I think for the Christie adaptations I much prefer the Poirot/Marple series format as it seems they stayed a bit closer to the original books.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, I have SO many opinions. First off, one of the things I love about all the various screen adaptations is getting more depth to the characters.

Dame Agatha was wonderful with her series sleuths (and no, I don’t need to find out about Miss Marples’ beau who died in WWI or Poirot’s dead lady friend who ALSO dies in WWI. People can just be single, folks.) But she’s not great at fleshing out the one-off characters, and those people really come alive with skill performers.

I also love the beautiful settings and costumes of the BBC adaptations of the past decade or so. They spend a lot of money and it shows, and they’re accurate with their period details. (Hallie, I turned off SEVEN DIALS after the first episode because the hair and clothing was such an inaccurate muddle!)

But some of the most faithful adaptations are the ones from the 40s through the 80s. Yes, the hair and clothing is usually wrong, but I don’t expect it to be; that wasn’t really a thing back then. Watch the 1981 THE SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY. I loved it.

JENN McKINLAY: Chiming in as the person who hasn’t watched nor attempted to watch any Christie adaptations–cynical me thinks they’re evergreen because Christie is evergreen as in “bankable”. I think the Christie connection means potential money maker to the studios but I could be wrong. I don’t think so but…

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, my goodness, thank you. I was beginning to doubt my brain cells. I tried to watch EVANS, really I did, and after about 10 minutes, I had NO idea what was going on. None. And I kept thinking, yeah, why didn't they ask him? Woulda been so much easier. I gave up.

As for Seven Dials that was RIDICULOUS because ((spoiler)) but I watched every bit anyway because Bundle is a wonderful name and she was fun to see. And the clothes.

And I think they are evergreen because on the page, at least, they are truly entertaining. And the dialogue is so wry. And from time to time, talking to you, Orient Express and Roger Ackroyd, they are truly spectacular mysteries.

It's odd, though, thinking about it now, because shouldn't they be EASIER to understand on TV? But sometimes, they aren't.

HALLIE: So what do you all think. There really is something special about Dame Agatha’s novels that continues to make them fodder for dramatization. But what is it??

Writers Digest MYSTERY & THRILLER virtual conference features REDS

HALLIE EPHRON: Last week I shared my delight at being invited to teach mystery writing this spring in Paris for WICE (Where Internationals Connect In English) -- an English-speaking community based in Paris that provides all kinds of classes and volunteer opportunities. 

I had my fingers crossed that that my class would get enough registrants to be viable, and it has! There are still a few more spots... and the offerings include writing master classes in novel, short fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and screenwriting. 

For folks who are tethered more to home base, I'll be teaching a virtual class on mystery writing at Writers Digest's Mystery and Thriller Virtual Conference (March 20-22.) 

DRUM ROLL: So will Hank! Making it a Jungle Red twofer!

Also featured are friends of Jungle Red agent/author Paula Munier, author Sharon Short, and one of my favorite literary agents, Michelle Richter of FUSE Literary.

I'll be teaching:
Crafting a page turner: hooking readers and keeping them reading

• How to structure a plot and build a character web that gives a story forward momentum
• Finding “Page One” and "5 tent poles" of plot
• Opening with a question, building suspense to strategic turning points, writing action, and pausing with a hook. Crafting a climactic ending.
• Building a head of steam: attending to turning points, secrets, stakes, and time pressure

Hank will be teaching: The Secrets of the Three-Act Structure: Nailing the Beginning, the Middle, and the End. Something at which she excels.

The only downside of this is that we can't meet you in the bar, always my favorite part of a writing conference. 

The upside: it's very affordable, and you can show up in your PJs and no one will be the wiser. 

If you're tempted by a 3-day VIRTUAL class in mystery writing, Here's the link for registration:
https://writersdigestuniversity.mykajabi.com/offers/ZmSUHKx7/checkout

Hallie's restaurant pet peeve...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm just back from a lovely week-plus in Key West where the food is SPECTACULAR! There's a reason why Lucy planted her Key Zest food reviewer Hayley Snow in Key West. The Shrimp! Fish Tacos! Grouper! Pie! Cuban coffee and Sandwich Cubano!! The restaurants! The food trucks!!

I could go on and on, waxing ecstatic.

However so many days in so many restaurants with great food reminded me of a few of my pet peeves about eating out.

Why oh why are the seats at restaurant tables invariably so low? (Or is it that the tabletops are so high??) When the table is level with my armpits, it feels like when I was a kid and had to stand on tippy toes to see what was on the table. Or like I'm trying to do the chicken dance while seated.

Restaurant seats are never adjustable, and I've yet to go to one that offers grownups a booster seat. Or a phone book. Or an extra seat cushion.

I know I'm shrinking, but not THAT much.

Maybe it's a plot to make us so uncomfortable that we won't overstay our welcome. Restaurants need tables to turn over. But really, someone needs to invent a booster seat for shorter (and really not very short) people.

And don't get me started on high top seating. Once you manage to climb on, feet dangling or on the foot rest, how are you supposed to skootch close enough to the table to get to your food? And what is the point of eating 12 inches higher?

Then there's noise. Something I'm much more sensitive to now that my hearing isn't what it used to be. The ambient noise in some restaurants swamps the voices of the people you're sitting with. Add a thumping sound system or visiting vocalist and I need two Tylenols for dessert.

Rereading this, I do sound like a grump. And truly I love eating out. 

Because what's gotten better is quite a lot, too.

No one blinks when you order dishes to share, and takeout boxes come routinely at the end of the meal. Splitting the check isn't a problem. Usually. And of course, in Key West at least, nine times out of ten the food is great, and not anything I can fix for myself at home.

But I also like to see my food and hear my dining companions. Is that too much to ask? 

What gets easier when you stop trying so hard?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: For the last week I’ve been in warm, lovely Key West Florida enjoying the company of dear friends and my grandkids who are on school break and happy to spend 24/7 in a swimming pool. 

My granddaughter has been swimming competitively after school, and the first thing she wanted to know was: how many laps would she have to swim to make a mile. It’s a lot.

She then proceeded to swim that many laps, stroke after stroke, skimming through the water, apparently effortlessly. Flip turn at the end of each lap. Pushing off and shooting back.

I watched her in awe.

I swim more like a beached whale, not convinced at all that the water will support me. Struggling and fighting for every stroke. Exhausted by the end of a few laps. Exhausted and bored.

Sometimes writing feels like that. Such a laborious process at times, and so effortless at others when I'm in the groove and can lay down word after word without breaking a sweat.

Can you swim like that, at one with the water, as it were? Write like that when the ideas flow?

Or maybe there’s some other activity that you do better when you stop trying so hard?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Hallie, I love swimming, but it’s a struggle for me (since I don’t like to put my whole face in the water!) Still, there are times when I’m so delighted to just be in the pool, enjoying the water and the movement, that I feel transported, which does also happen in writing.

Back when my knees allowed me to run, I used to compare writing to my regular three mile loop in our neighborhood. The first mile was ALWAYS agony, puffing and panting, my muscles complaining, wondering why the heck I was doing this to myself. Then, right around the start of the second mile, I broke through, and could enjoy my effort and the pace and the scenery around me. The third mile was triumphant - yes! I can do this and I am! It was a great feeling and I miss it.

There’s nothing like the flow state in writing, when it stops feeling like you’re laying a wall brick by brick and suddenly becomes flying. I think it’s those times that keeps us going.

RHYS BOWEN: when I was a child swimming was in an unheated pool. We learned breaststroke, swam a width and got a certificate. We swam in the cold sea on vacation, so I never got proficient.

But then I discovered snorkeling. Put a mask and find on me and I am one with the water. I can go forever, as John will tell you. Once in Grand Cayman I followed the reef out, never looking up or hearing him shout. When I did look up the shore looked as if someone had drawn a pencil line far away. I looked around. Not a soul in sight. Then I had to swim all the way back to a frantic John

Most of my married life we’ve had a pool so swimming is something I do every day. Our kids were all competitive swimmers!

 As for writing: every book is the same. First hundred pages in pure panic mode, convinced it’s never going to work. Then next hundred getting into the rhythm and seeing the way ahead and the last hundred or so rushing at full steam.

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m a good solid swimmer, though it’s never quite effortless. I wonder if I write like that too? I’d like to write like Rhys (except for the pure panic), but for me it feels like the beginning is joyful.

But then the original spark runs out of juice and I’m left wondering how I can possibly fill more pages.

JENN McKINLAY: I like swimming in pools but not laps because…boring. But I love diving games or basketball or volleyball in the pool.

Clearly, I’m not a regimented swimmer. I am not a deep sea ocean swimmer because sharks,,,duh. But like Rhys, I love snorkeling or boogie boarding or paddle boarding.

I think writing is similar to swimming for me only in that if it’s boring, I can’t do it. The second I lose interest in my story a fictional someone is getting murdered or heartbroken or hit by a witch’s curse.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hallie, you must be having such fun with the kids! I liked swimming when I was a kid but not so much these days. I don’t like getting my face in the water–a big handicap! At least not in chlorinated water.

The few times I’ve been snorkeling I have loved it but I have to be able to touch the bottom. I’m terrified of deep water. Maybe this is why I like to have a road map when I’m writing?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I think absolutely everything works better when you stop trying so hard, the secret being that you have to work so hard and learn so much in order to be able to not have to try as hard. I’m an experienced okay swimmer , and once absolutely caused a gasp from my grandson when I did a perfectly good dive off the side of the pool. I think he thought I was incapable.

But do I love swimming? No. I love floating on a raft in the pool with a book and a glass of lemonade. That’s pretty fabulous. Or walking in the ocean up to my ankles.

Let’s just put it this way. My feet like to swim.

As for writing and swimming. I do a lot of preparation mentally and emotionally, then I dive off the end in a great wave of enthusiasm, swimming swimming swimming until whatever the equivalent of page 36 is.

Then there is a lot of treading water going on. A lot. Of. Treading water.

Then comes the persistence, and when I see the shore, I have a sudden spurt of energy.

But yes, absolutely, those days that I am at one in the writing water, that is the reason I keep doing it.

HALLIE: I do find it's the same way with cooking. When I'm in the groove, I'm not stressed at all and improvising... the food comes out tastier. Ditto Falling asleep: definitely works best when I stop trying.

And that scary feeling when you enter a room full of strangers? Just relax and lean into it. Conversations will flow.

What about everyone else? What gets easier when you stop trying so hard?

What We're Writing: If Summer Never Ends by Jenn McKinlay

 

JENN McKINLAY: I'm on deadline. I'm probably going to be late because this current romcom IF SUMMER NEVER ENDS (May 2027) has taken a few unexpected turns, such as...

     The look on Lorelei's face. I wanted to take a picture and frame it. She opened her mouth and then closed it. She blinked once, twice, and then opened her eyes wide. She glanced from the donkey's backside to me and then she huffed a sigh of outrage.

     “That is not a thing, Chance,” she said. “A donkey can’t tell if a person is lying.”

     Maybellene stomped her foot and brayed again.

     “Test her,” I said. “Tell her two truths and a lie.”

     “No, I am not playing whatever game this is.” Lorelei turned to walk away.

     “What’s the matter? Afraid?” I taunted her.

     “Afraid!” she scoffed. “That a donkey can tell if I’m lying? Get over yourself. I’m not afraid of anything, it’s just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard and I know you’re pranking me.”

     “Am I?” I bit my lip and wagged my eyebrows at her. She glowered and I almost did a fist pump when I realized I was getting under her skin. I gestured to the donkey in the stall. “There’s only one way to see if it’s true. Two truths and a lie.”

     “This is ridiculous.” She gestured to Maybellene. “There is no way a donkey can tell if I’m lying and how will you know if I’m fibbing or not. We haven’t seen each other in a decade. You have no idea what’s happened in my life.”

     “That’s a fair point.” I scratched my chin. “I guess you’ll have to keep it to things I do know.”

     “Such as?”

     “You sing in the shower,” I said. “Really loudly.”

     Her face turned bright pink and she said, “I have never sung in the shower, you must be remembering a different girlfriend.”

     Maybellene spun around in her stall and stuck her head out over the half door. She stomped her foot and let out a bray that I swear sounded like the word “liar”.

     Lorelei jumped. Her eyes went wide. She tentatively put her hand on Maybell’s nose. “That was just a coincidence, right?”

     I shrugged. Maybell snuffled Lorelei’s hands and pockets as if a snack might have magically appeared.

     Lorelei narrowed her eyes at the donkey and said, “I stole a car when I was a teenager.”

     Maybellene didn’t bat an eyelash, but I did. “You what?”

     Lorelei waved a hand at me. “I returned it, it was fine.”

     “Say something I know,” I said. She was quiet for a moment, sifting through the memories of our time together to choose something I could verify.

     “Chance Whitaker was my first love.” Lorelei’s voice was soft and there was a vulnerability in it that about broke me.

     Maybellene didn’t even flick an ear. It was the truth.

     Lorelei glanced at me and said, “You know that’s true. I told you at the time.”

     “You did.” My voice came out hoarse and I cleared my throat.

     We glanced away from each other as Lorelei pondered what whopper to tell the donkey. She drummed her fingertips on top of the stall door and then snapped her fingers. “Got it.”

     “I was Miss North Carolina 2017,” Maybellene let out a high pitched heehaw and stomped around her stall.

     Lorelei burst out laughing. “I know it was a lie but you don’t have to be offended by it. It could have happened.”

     The donkey brayed again and Lorelei turned to face me with her eyes twinkling. “You know that was a lie as we were dating at the time and I am not a pageant girl.”

     I smiled at her. When she looked at me with that sparkle in her gaze, it was hard not to feel as if I’d been transported back in time to the summer we fell in love. The urge to hug her was almost too much to resist, but I liked my arms attached to my body so I refrained.

JENN: I think this snippet best answers the question, where do you get your ideas? Y'all, I have no idea where a lie detector donkey came from but I am already ridiculously fond of Miss Maybellene.

Side note: Lorelei and Chance pop up in THE SUMMER SHARE (May 2026) as a very small subplot and I liked them soooo much, I gave them their own story. 

Do you enjoy it when side characters get their own stories? Yes, no, or maybe?