Our Characters Do Halloween

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Happy Halloween, everyone, from all of us Jungle Reds in Dallas! I think the only costumes we will be wearing today are our Jungle Red pashminas on our Jungle Reds panel. But as we'll be asking a lot of fun questions about our books, it occurred to me to wonder what our CHARACTERS would wear to a Halloween party. (And, yes, they do celebrate Halloween in England these days.)

My Superintendent Duncan Kincaid would go as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Arc, I'm sure of it. He has a brown leather bomber jacket. All he needs is the fedora and the whip! (And if you want to imagine Duncan looking like a young Harrison Ford, I'm okay with that.) 

My characters have a great advantage in that Portobello Market has all sorts of vintage clothing stalls, so they would be spoiled for choice. Gemma might be Amelia Earhart, although she's not cutting her hair! She could tuck it up in her aviator's cap, and I think she'd look quite dashing on Duncan's arm. 

Melody Talbot? Well, Melody would let out her inner rock chick--thigh high boots, bare skin and sequins, gelled hair and LOTS of make-up.

And Doug Cullen? Well, that one's easy. Harry Potter, of course.

JENN MCKINLAY: I have too many characters to costume them all so I’ll just go with my Library Lover’s characters. I suspect Lindsey will dress as a female sleuth, perhaps as Rhys’s Lady Georgie or Julia’s Clare Ferguson! And her sidekick Beth Barker, the children’s librarian, will definitely be Mo Willems’s Pigeon from Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! LOL!

LUCY BURDETTE: Hayley snow Has to go for somebody in the cooking world, I’m thinking Julia child? Although that’s not really a cute costume. You can’t really dress like a food critic unless it was someone from the New York Times like Ruth Reichl, Tall and thin with a big mass of curly hair. And Miss Gloria? The more sequins the better! And by the way Nathan, no way is he wearing a costume of any kind. He’ll probably come as a key west police officer.

HALLIE EPHRON: Professional organizer Emily Harlow might go as an unmade bed. I see her business partner Becca going as Raggedy Ann.

RHYS BOWEN: I went to a Halloween party as Lady Georgie a couple of years ago but I think she might go as something naughty (a cancan dancer maybe) because she has been so pure in real life and her inner sexy lady is dying to get out.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Debs, this gave me furiously to think, as a friend of mine used to say. I can honestly say I never considered what the denizens of Millers Kill would wear for Hallowe'en! At first I thought Russ Van Alstyne might go as Jack Reacher, but that's a bit...vague. Who would know, unless he prominently displayed a folding toothbrush? Upon consideration, he'd dive into his love of upstate New York history, and go as one of Roger's Rangers, arguably the first special forces in America. He'd pooh-pooh the idea of making an effort with the costume, but wind up hiring a completely accurate 18th century uniform, complete with musket and powder horn.

Clare Fergusson, who loves Lindsay Davies' Marcus Falco mysteries, would love to dress up as a Roman matron, perhaps one going to her martyrdom in an arena. If it was too cold for a tunic and stola, she'd probably put on a jumpsuit and go as WASP, one of the brave women pilots who ferried planes and trained pilots in WWII.

Readers, share your inner fictional character with us!!