A Time To Celebrate—And Reflect! By Katherine Hall Page

JENN McKINLAY: What a treat to have our friend Katherine Hall Page visit us today to talk about her latest Faith Fairchild mystery! Take it away, Katherine!

     Today is Syttende Mai, Norwegian for the Seventeenth of May or Constitution Day and celebrated not only all over Norway, but by Norwegian migrant communities across the world (think lutefisk and lingonberries in Minnesota, waffler in Cardiff, and a huge parade in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn). The day celebrates the signing of Norway’s Constitution in 1814, but earlier celebrations were a protest at being ceded to Sweden (story for another time and source of jokes belittling that country made by my grandfather when I was growing up). My mother was Norwegian, and we always had something special for dinner. It joined the 4th of July as our national holidays. Today I’ve been thinking of the 17th of May as a slightly different kind of celebration, one of survival. The brutal Nazi occupation of Norway with three concentration camps and other horrors forbid the celebration, and also wearing colors of the Norwegian flag (red, white, and blue) on clothing. Norway was liberated on May 8, 1945, and the flag continues to be a strong symbol of freedom, as is Constitution Day with its children’s parades, more diverse these days with the country’s increasing ethnic diversity. 

     The Body in the Web is about a crime, but the book is set against the backdrop of the pandemic, survival. I kept a daily journal, jotting a few sentences about things happening in our lives and outside the Pod (three—our son under the same roof happily) ‚ what we ate and how I “foraged” for essentials. Once it was safe to be with people and I started the book, everyone had stories to tell—some tragic, but also many about their ways of coping, ingenious, even humorous. Similar to one of the subplots in the book, I learned about a postponed very elaborate wedding, and plan for a honeymoon baby prompting thorny discussions since no one could pick a new date, for either. Biological clock ticking, baby first? I detailed other issues. Unlike paper goods, there were many shortages, that could not have been predicted— thread since we were all stitching up masks, cream cheese! and the search for yeast alternatives. 

     Faith Fairchild and family form a Pod with son Ben home from college, daughter Amy a senior in high school and husband Tom, all dealing with their lives remotely. Faith’s catering business is suspended. When a close friend’s death is deemed a suicide, Faith must solve what she knows is a murder remotely as well. She can’t go knock on doors, face suspects eye-to-eye. The book begins on January 14, 2021. Here are the first few sentences: 

      “Faith Fairchild set her phone down with the first sigh of relief she had felt for almost eight months…Such was the effect of the call from her husband Tom, the Reverend Thomas Fairchild, with the stunning news that as one of the local VA hospital’s chaplains he was eligible for vaccination and was on his way to get the shot. A simple sentence, a series of words turned the room from the everyday to a rare setting she would always remember as the beginning flicker of hope.” 

     I thought the book needed to begin with this emotion since it will also look back at those worst weeks and months, we experienced beginning in late February 2020. Norway’s Resistance Movement is storied and today I am recalling the food packages we sent after the war and how desperate things were there but hope never died. Norway survived and although it is a very wealthy nation now, there is still a sense of remembrance, cherishing the survival of that time, passing this down to children, grand and great grandchildren. 

     I received a number of comments about rereading or reading The Body in the Lighthouse, which I was writing just before 9/11 and had to put aside until I could write again after some months. The following is part of the Author’s Note in the new book and especially resonates today: 

Rereading the Lighthouse note, I’ve been struck by how I could simply have copied it, changed the date, several descriptive sentences and it would apply—saying what I want to say to you now. “There were no degrees of separation on September 11” I wrote and that was true at the start of the pandemic. “We are all in this together.” I am not naïve and there are deep divisions in our country, but throughout the pandemic, and continuing as each new variant like the Hydra’s head raises fears and causes a spike in cases, people helped each other. Acts of kindness were enumerable. The heroic work of healthcare workers of all kinds, putting their lives on hold and on the line will be remembered when the history of all this is written in the future. The future. At the close of the Lighthouse note, I write “Just as many of us date things from before the Cuban missile crisis and before the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr., we now have another ‘before’.” Now we have an even greater “before”. “Pre-pandemic” has entered our daily conversations. “I saw someone…” “That was…” and so forth. After September 11th, I mourned a world lost to our children that had seemed a place safe from such an attack. Those children are adults now, many with children of their own, and I mourn the loss of the pre-pandemic world for them. The toll that remote learning, isolation, and loss has taken in multiple forms can never be remedied. As we enter in what is being termed, “Living with Covid”, my wish for you, dear readers, is the same as I expressed all those years ago. That we hold on to hope—and in every way possible, each other. Altogether. 

     And so, as we think back and look forward, let’s enjoy whatever heritage we represent—I’ll have some Aquavit (Dad’s Anglo Saxons might have had ale) saying “Skål”. Cheers to all of you!! 

      P.S. A photo of much much younger me wearing my Vestfold (the part of Eastern Norway on the Oslofjord) Bunad, traditional dress for the holiday!! 

And as an extra treat here is Faith Fairchild's Beer Bread recipe: 

Katherine Hall Page is the award-winning writer of the Faith Fairchild series (Wm Morrow/Avon), a recipient of the Agatha for Best First, Best Short Story, and Best Mystery Novel as well as other Agatha, Edgar, Mary Higgins Clark, and Maine Literary Awards nominees. She received Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award and another—Crime Master—from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. The Body in the Web is the 26th in the series. She has also published a cookbook, Have Faith in your Kitchen, and books for YAs and Middle Grade readers. A New Jersey native, she lives in Massachusetts and Maine. 

www.webmaster@katherine-hall-page.org

Happy Anniversary, Faith Fairchild!

LUCY BURDETTE: Today we're delighted to invite back our old friend Katherine Hall Page. She's celebrating her new book--and a big anniversary, 25 years with her character Faith Fairchild. That's a big deal--welcome Katherine!

KATHERINE HALL PAGE: The birthday book in which I keep track of family and friends’ birthdays has a list of Wedding Anniversary Gifts in the front. They start out modest—first is “paper”—and work their way through “flowers,” “wood,” and “pottery” until you start getting to the good stuff. Twenty-fifth is “silver.” The Body in the Wake, number twenty-five in the Faith Fairchild series, is my silver anniversary book. Yet, this silver anniversary is a golden one for me. 

When the first book in the series, The Body in the Belfry, was published in February 1990, I was looking more toward a second anniversary—cotton—than a silver one, twenty-nine years later! Writing about Faith and her family has been a golden opportunity for me as a writer. I have been able to sustain one character across a number of significant life events: a prequel as a single woman set in her native Manhattan when she is just starting her catering—and sleuthing—career, continuing through marriage, child rearing (and no, one is never done) through good times and bad.

I’ve always thought of the books as a kind of theater. At the core, my ensemble troupe has an unchanging cast of characters. Side characters come and go, some making frequent appearances, others walking on stage only once. The sets also change. In order to keep the series fresh for readers, and for me, I alternate locales between Aleford, Massachusetts, the fictitious town I created west of Boston where Faith moves after marriage, with the “someplace else” books—those ranging across New England, elsewhere in the United States, and two set in Europe.

I started thinking about the twenty-fifth several books ago and there was no question that the milestone had to be a Sanpere novel. The Body in the Wake is the sixth Maine book and the third featuring the character Sophie Maxwell, who was introduced in The Body in the Birches. Right away, I liked writing about these two women, who are in very different stages of life but share the same values and especially a sense of humor. Married for almost three years in this book, Sophie is fretting about not getting pregnant. Faith, who has been married much longer, but would not describe herself as an “old married lady,” has two children in their late teens. Sophie and Faith’s close friendship was forged under unusual circumstances—most bonding does not come about because of murder!

 I decided an anniversary book needed a wedding, so The Body in The Wake ends with Samantha Miller and Zach Cohen’s nuptials on a perfect Maine afternoon in a meadow high above The Reach with the Camden Hills on the horizon. However, before getting to this point, Samantha, the daughter of Pix and Sam Miller—the Fairchilds’ closest friends in Massachusetts and Maine—has to wait out several plot twists, one involving her difficult future mother-in-law, the other Faith’s discovery of first one body with an unusual tattoo and then, a week later, another. 

I flat out loved writing this book. The temptation was getting carried away by the scenery and anecdotes about the place, but it’s a mystery, not a travel guide. I reined myself in and let go in other ways, such as describing the fiction writing course that Sophie takes at the former Laughing Gull Lodge, now the Sanpere Shores Conference center. Plus, it wouldn’t be a Faith Fairchild mystery without plenty of food. When the Shores’ chef falls ill, Faith takes his place, joining daughter Amy, who had been working there all summer as sous chef. As usual, there’s plenty of food throughout the book, including Faith’s famous lobster rolls and a Maine favorite: Blueberry Buckle.

Sanpere is not paradise, despite Faith’s and my deep feelings for it. It is this feeling that pushed me to write about the very real problem of substance abuse. Samantha’s matron of honor, a young mother who is an island native, becomes addicted to opiates after they were prescribed for a severe injury. It was important for me to show that addicts are not criminals, but people in our families and our friendship circles who have a disease. It is as essential for them to get treatment as it is for diabetics to get insulin, or any number of individuals with life-threatening health issues the care they need. I have nothing but deep-seated fury for the drug companies that aggressively marketed opioids knowing how addictive they were even as they marketed recovery drugs for the scourge they created. Win/win. Hell is too good a place for them.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, are those in Maine, and elsewhere, working to address the epidemic that was created.  These individuals are heroes and I am in awe of them.

Every book has a bit of all the books that came before it incorporated into it and this one most of all. In the Author’s Note I write that the Beatles’ song, “In My Life” kept running through my mind—“There are places I remember.” So it is with the books. As I’ve traveled through twenty-five of them with the Fairchilds and friends, as Lennon wrote, “I’ve loved them all.”

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-four previous Faith Fairchild mysteries. The recipient of Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award, she has received Agathas for best first mystery (The Body in the Belfry), best novel (The Body in the Snowdrift), and best short story, (“The Would-Be Widower”). She has also been nominated for the Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark, the Macavity, and the Maine Literary Award. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.

 

A Weekend in the Country?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I was going to say—remember when you read your first country house mystery? But instead—let me lead the standing ovation for Katherine Hall Page. Such a talented, brilliant and hilarious person--and the most loyal and loving and generous friend. In your library? Well, of course. You want Katherine. In the kitchen? Most definitely. Katherine's an amazing cook. 

And in the trenches? Trust me. You want Katherine.

And now, astonishingly, she’s on the twenty-fourth Faith Fairchild mystery. You’ve read her “The Body in the….”  books, right?  Traditional and contemporary at the same time, witty and smart and sophisticated and clever.

The dining room at Stonehurst

Now. Remember what I said about country houses?  You want Katherine's. I mean--the one she writes about in her brand new book!

Take One Manor House, Add Murder and Stir

   By Katherine Hall Page

I’ve always wanted to write a country house mystery. One in which all the action occurs over a weekend—a “Saturday to Monday” as the British called it—with the suspects limited to the guests, staff, and host. Bumps in the night could mean discreet visits to another bedroom, or something more sinister. A push down a flight of stairs or a perilous visit to the loo tripping over the piece of string stretched across the hall that released a deadly cudgel on a nearby suit of armor. A tray of drinks passed by the butler, one lethal. And the grounds offered plenty of pitfalls resulting in an empty place at table. Endless possibilities.

Agatha Christie certainly knew this and introduced Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first of many set in similar venues. Martin Edwards has edited a superb collection of country house mystery short stories—Murder at the Manor (Poisoned Pen Press), including a very witty takeoff on the genre, “The Murder at the Towers” by E.V. Knox.

Given the popularity of the setting during the Golden Age, it is a wonder that anyone accepted an invitation to one of these stately homes.

The Body in the Casket is the 24^th in the Faith Fairchild series and I decided it was more than time to try my hand at the iconic setting. It is Rowan House, near Faith’s home in Aleford, Massachusetts. She has never heard of it nor the enclave in which it is located—Havencrest.

The Rowan House is directly modeled on Stonehurst in Waltham, MA. It was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson with landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted and I think it’s the only one of their collaborations that is open to the public. Stonehurst was completed in 1886 and sits on 109 acres. We live only a few miles away, but I had never heard of it (like Faith) until we went there for a friend’s wedding. 

It immediately suggested itself as the perfect place for a murder!

Rowan House’s current owner is Max Dane, legendary Broadway producer/director. He is throwing himself a weekend long 70^th birthday party and hires Faith to cater it, but tells her that although he knows her reputation as a chef, it’s her “sleuthing abilities” that have attracted him.

Max’s last show, Heaven or hell The Musical was a colossal flop twenty years ago and he has not done one since. An ominous early birthday gift delivered to his door has convinced him that someone associated with the production is out to kill him. All ten of the guests he’s invited—and one uninvited—have good reasons to wish him dead.

photo courtesy Jean Fogelberg

And so we’re off with a good old-fashioned ice storm, power outage and plenty of food. Not hampers from Fortnum and Mason, but dishes referencing the musical such as Lobster Fra Diavolo and fallen Angel cocktails.

What are some of your favorite country house mysteries? And heavenly or devily delicious dishes?

HANK: Ooh, cannot wait to hear what you all say. Ten Little Indians? In a Dark, Dark Wood? What say you, Reds and readers?

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-three previous Faith Fairchild mysteries. The recipient of Malice Domestic’s Lifetime Achievement Award, she has received Agathas for best first mystery (The Body in the Belfry), best novel (The Body in the Snowdrift), and best short story, (“The Would-Be Widower”). She has also been nominated for the Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark, the Macavity, and the Maine Literary Award. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.

 

The Body in the Casket 

The inimitable Faith Fairchild returns in a chilling New England whodunit, inspired by the best Agatha Christie mysteries and with hints of the timeless board game Clue.
For most of her adult life, resourceful caterer Faith Fairchild has called the sleepy Massachusetts village of Aleford home. While the native New Yorker has come to know the region well, she isn't familiar with Havencrest, a privileged enclave, until the owner of Rowan House, a secluded sprawling Arts and Crafts mansion, calls her about catering a weekend house party.

Producer/director of a string of hit musicals, Max Dane—a Broadway legend—is throwing a lavish party to celebrate his seventieth birthday. At the house as they discuss the event, Faith's client makes a startling confession. "I didn't hire you for your cooking skills, fine as they may be, but for your sleuthing ability. You see, one of the guests wants to kill me."
Faith's only clue is an ominous birthday gift the man received the week before—an empty casket sent anonymously containing a twenty-year-oldPlaybill from Max's last, and only failed, production—Heaven or Hell. Consequently, Max has drawn his guest list for the party from the cast and crew.

 As the guests begin to arrive one by one, and an ice storm brews overhead, Faith must keep one eye on the menu and the other on her host to prevent his birthday bash from becoming his final curtain call.

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Person, Place or Thing: a guest post by Katherine Hall Page

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Do I really need to introduce Katherine Hall Page? She's the author of twenty-three books in the beloved Faith Fairchild series, as well as several juvenile mysteries and many short stories. She's won the Best First Novel Agatha, the Best Novel Agatha, the Best Short Story Agatha and was nominated for the Best Nonfiction for Have Faith in Your Kitchen, a cookbook based on recipes from her series. (By the way, we've done several events together over the years and Katherine always brings some tasty treat for the audience. I can attest she's the real deal when it comes to delicious cooking.)

This past April, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the nationally known mystery conference, Malice Domestic. However, her newest Faith Fairchild mystery, The Body in the Wardrobe, assures us Katherine still has a lot more achieving yet to do! Here's the summary:

Minster’s wife, caterer, and part-time sleuth Faith Fairchild pairs up with Sophie Maxwell, last seen in Body in the Birches . Sophie has moved to Savannah to be with her new husband, Will. But nothing throws cold water on a hot relationship faster than a dead body. Worse for Sophie, no one believes the body she knows she saw is real. Will, a private investigator, is spending an awful lot of time in Atlanta on a case he claims is urgent, and she’s been tasked with house hunting for them with his former sweetheart, who Sophie can’t help but suspect wishes Sophie would return to her Yankee roots!

Fortunately, Sophie has a good friend in Faith Fairchild. With teenage Amy being bullied by mean girls and husband Tom contemplating a major life change that will affect all the Fairchilds, Faith is eager for distraction in the form of some sleuthing. In between discussions of newlywed agita, rich Savannah customs and, of course, fabulous low country food, Faith and Sophie will pair up to unmask a killer!

Person, Place, Or Thing

Put another way: protagonist, location, or plot.

I’ve been thinking about these three a great deal lately in a somewhat philosophic way—receiving a lifetime achievement award, that incredible honor, seems to be making me more pensive than usual and I’m looking back at the books nounfully.

Is it my series character in the person of Faith Fairchild who dominates— is the most important element? Or is it where I chose to set the books? One of the ways I’ve hoped to keep the series fresh is to alternate the locale from the fictitious town of Aleford, west of Boston, with the “someplace else “ books—France, Norway, Italy, Vermont, Maine, Manhattan, and now Savannah Georgia. Very occasionally I’ll hear from a reader who wants all the books to take place in Aleford, like Miss Marple and St. Mary Mead. Should I have made that choice? I love to travel; did I get carried away?

Then there is plot. Many years ago I got up the nerve to ask my editor Ruth Cavin, who acquired The Body in the Belfry (1990) as the first mystery when she moved from Walker to St. Martin’s why she had picked my book. It wasn’t that Ruth wasn’t approachable, especially after we had had a martini or two together, but it seemed like a presumptuous question. She answered right away, “I can always fix plot”—this was very good news—“but, Katherine, I can never supply voice and yours was distinctive.” Does this mean, despite my relief, that plot wasn’t as essential as character?

I think it does, although I am open to hearing other views. Same with place. Wuthering Heights not on the Yorkshire moors—or “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in Kent, the garden of England? The Maltese Falcon in Paramus, NJ—I’m a Jersey girl, so can say this kind of thing? And so on.

Or are all three equally important to the mystery novel? I’m still going with Faith’s voice—or her equivalent in countless books that have been coming to mind. Person, place, or thing? Thoughts?

The Body in the Wardrobe is the 23^rd in Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild series and her 30^th book overall. She has published for middle grade and YA readers as well as a collection of short stories, Small Plates (2014), and a series cookbook, Have Faith inyour Kitchen (Orchises Press). She has been awarded Agathas for Best First, Best Novel, and Best SS and also was nominated for additional Agathas, an Edgar, Macavity, Mary Higgins Clark and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She is the recipient of Malice Domestic 28^th’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She lives in Maine and Massachusetts. You can find more info and recipes at her website, and friend her on Facebook.

A Sneaking of Shorts

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  What could be cooler than a sneak preview? And that's exactly what we have here today—courtesy of the fab Malice Domestic.  As they say in TV news: Shawn Reilly Simmons has the story. Er, stories. Er, short stories.

SHAWN: This just in! (Couldn’t resist.) After a fifteen year hiatus, Malice Domestic is pleased to announce the return of their annual short story anthologies. Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional, published by Wildside Press, will be released during Malice 28 (April 29 – May 1, 2016). The anthology includes twenty-two original stories and one modern classic reprint, each representing their own take on the “cozy” style of mystery, those in the tradition of Agatha Christie.

HANK: And the amazing Barb Goffman and Verena Rose and Rita Owens edited, (Barb really made my story shine--what a  terrific line and developmental editor. And they all worked so hard--putting together an anthology is a huge job) and  Katherine Hall Page wrote the thoughtful introduction. What a treat. The stories are hilarious. Clever—and very specific.

SHAWN: Yes, definitely!. The stories all have to do with some type of gathering or convention. But turns out, like any good anthology there’s a wide range of stories, from historical pieces to modern takes on fun gatherings.

HANK: Psst. Sneak preview!  Here are just a few samples. And you can tell, even from this, how amazingly different they are!

 *******************

From:  

THE PERFECT PITCH

by

 Marie Hannan‐Mandel

Before you begin to feel sorry for me, don’t. I’m here for an

inventors’ convention with my lint-collecting dryer sheet

prototype, the Lint-Locker—the guaranteed way to ensure your

laundry doesn’t get covered in lint—so I can meet James Maguire

O’Reilly, megastar inventor. As soon as I’d found out he was going

to be running workshops and hearing inventor pitches—something

he never does—I’d registered, even though it meant coming to

Maine in January. I signed up for every one of his morning

workshops, and I’m going to make sure he notices me. He’s going

to love my product and help me get financial backing for it. All he

needs is to hear my pitch.

Soon enough I’ve found my destination, a chain hotel on the

edge of town. It has cookies in the lobby, racks of brochures, and a

fake fire.

“I’m here for the inventors’ convention,” I say when I catch the

front desk clerk’s eye.

  

From 

The Vanishing Wife

by

Victoria Thompson

January 1899

“My wife has vanished.”

This was the last thing Frank Malloy had expected his welldressed

client to say. When rich men came to his Confidential

Inquiries office in Greenwich Village, they were usually concerned

with marital infidelities or dishonest employees.

“What do you mean, she vanished?”

Delwood Hooper rubbed a well-manicured hand over his pale

face. “I came home last evening, as usual, but my wife wasn’t there

to greet me. I asked our butler where she was, and he informed me

that she had left town.”

“Then she didn’t exactly vanish,” Frank said, settling back in

his chair. He was still breaking it in since it, like everything else in

his office, was brand new. “Didn’t he tell you where she went?”

“That’s the problem, you see. Marjorie occasionally does go

out of town to visit friends or relations, but she always leaves me a

note telling me exactly where she went and when she will return.

This time, she didn’t.”

From: 

Two Birds with One Stone

by

Rhys Bowen

“The pipes are playing to celebrate the Gathering of the Clans,”

I said. “Binky felt we should do the right thing with visitors from

all over Scotland coming together here. It’s a great honor, you

know, to be chosen to host the annual Gathering of the Clans. It

only comes to us about every twenty years. I was a toddler last time

it happened in 1913, but I vaguely remember all the fuss and that I

was terrified of those huge men in kilts and ran back to Nanny.”

“Huge men in kilts?” Queenie perked up at this.

“They’ll all be wearing traditional Highland dress for the

games.”

“What sort of games?” She was looking quite interested now.

“The Highland Games are the main part of the gathering,”I

explained. “You know, they toss the caber and throw the hammer.

All sorts of feats of strength.”

“They have strong feet?” she asked, puzzled.

I tried not to laugh. “No, I meant contests to demonstrate how

strong they are. You can go down and watch them practicing later,

if you like. My brother has set aside the meadow beyond the

stables as a practice field. Oh, and speaking of my brother, I have

to go and inspect the facilities after breakfast to make sure all is in

order. You know how—” I broke off. I had been going to say “You

know how hopeless he is about organizing things,” but one does

not criticize

From 

A Dark and Stormy Light

by

Gigi Pandian

A few years ago, while I was still a graduate student, I began

attending Asian History conferences. At the fateful gathering I will

always think of as The Conference, we didn’t fill up the entire

hotel. Instead, we found ourselves sharing the space with a mystery

writers’ convention.

If I’m being true to the story, I need to say that it began on a

dark and stormy night. If it hadn’t been for that storm, the whole

fiasco would have been avoided.

 From

The Clue in the Blue Booth

by

Hank Phillippi Ryan

I touched the flowered silk scarf tied around my neck, and the

strand of pearls underneath. It’s not usually necessary for me to go

undercover to blend into a crowd, because my whole life is

undercover. But coming here in costume had seemed prudent, and

now, surveying the lobby, the line of registration desks, and the

vast convention floor, it turned out my costume was not only

prudent, but hilarious. It was like being in a massive hall of

mirrors.

Blond wigs—or, on some, I supposed, real blond hair—scarves

and pearls and twin-set cashmere sweaters, stockings, and sensible

shoes. Plaid skirts. Some women carried magnifying glasses, and

some, like me, wore little vintage hats tilted rakishly over one eye.

A fluttering canvas banner suspended from the erector-set

ceiling announced why we were all dressed that way, and why we

were here—not exactly why I’m here, of course, but why the rest of

them were here. NANCY DREW CONVENTION, it trumpeted.

They’d included a huge graphic portrayal of the iconic silhouette of

the 1930s girl sleuth, all waved hair and cloche hat and pearls and

cardigan. Just like me.

Just like all the attendees, because all were requested to dress as

Nancy Drew. Clearly, these women followed directions. The

organizers had promised a big-time surprise guest speaker, and as

of now, word hadn’t leaked about who that would be. Not even to

me, which was somewhat unnerving. I don’t like surprises.

From

A Gathering of Great Detectives

      by Shawn Reilly Simmons

“What’s going on here today?” Detective Murphy asked,

making eye contact with his partner briefly before turning his gaze

back to the couple. “Are you having some kind of event or

something?” He glanced at their vintage clothes and Mrs. Adams’s

hair, which was curled and sprayed into place. They looked like

they’d stepped out of one of those old black-and-white movies his

mother was always watching. Mr. Adams wore a tux with a white

bow tie and Mrs. Adams was in a shimmery black evening gown

with a string of pearls around her neck. They were pretty decked

out, especially for noon on a Saturday.

Mrs. Adams placed a hand lightly on her chest and said, “It’s

our annual convention, A Gathering of Great Detectives.” She

waved at a wooden table along the far wall of the foyer near the

reception desk. A few leather badge holders with names written on

yellowing paper tucked inside were lined up on the table. “We

gather every year, about sixty of us, and solve a mystery.”

“Murder,” Mr. Adams boomed from behind her, causing his

wife to jump slightly.

“Yes, murder, that’s right, dear,” she said. “We’re different

from the average murder mystery weekend though. Attendees must

appear as their favorite detective and stay in character all weekend,

or until the mystery is solved.”

HANK and SHAWN: We bet you cannot wait to get your hands on one of hese! Friday night during Malice, right after the live charity auction, there will be a special signing event for the contributing authors, over twenty in total. We hope to see you there!  

 However,  Murder Most Conventional is also available for pre-order (http://tinyurl.com/hku7k6p)  For more info about Malice visit us at www.MaliceDomestic.org

HANK: And we’ll give a copy, of course, as a prize to one lucky commenter! This’ll be easy, since you don’t actually have to write the story—where would you sent a short story that had to be about a convention? I first contemplated a convention of convention planners.

Shawn Reilly Simmons is the author of the Red Carpet Catering mystery series published by Henery Press. The third book in the series, Murder on a Designer Diet will be released June 7^th. Shawn is a member of the Malice Domestic Board of Directors and a contributing author to the Murder Most Conventional anthology.

www.ShawnReillySimmons.com