Linda Hall's Blog - Posts Tagged "mystery"

My award winning novel STEAL AWAY is FREE today for your Kindle. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Steal-Away-Teri...

STEAL AWAY was originally published by Multnomah Books. I am so pleased now to offer it as an eBook. It was shortlisted both for a Christy and a Daphne. I hope you enjoy it!

A year ago I thought eReading devices were the dumbest things going. The book itself, the print version, the binding, the pages that turn - whats wrong with that perfectly good technology? And then I got a Kobo Touch for Christmas. And now there is no going back for me. It's featherweight. I can read it in bed without getting shoulder aches, and can adjust the print size for these old eyes of mine.

As for Kindle books, I read them on my iPhone, which is also wonderful. There are so many times I'm stuck in traffic, or stuck in a line in the bank or post office, and can whip out my iPhone and read a chapter or two.

The only thing I don't like? I haven't taken my Kobo into the bathtub with me. Also, the beach. Do you just leave your Kobo or Kindle on the sand when you go in for s swim? I can leave beach books on the sand without a thought. Since I haven't had a Kobo in the summer yet, it remains to be seen what I finally end up doing.

Cheers -

Today I'm guest blogging over at the Word Guild site about some of the physical challenges of writing - carpel tunnel, back problems etc. I'd love for you to come on over and visit and leave a comment or two. Or a suggestion!

Here's the link:

http://twgauthors.blogspot.ca/2012/09...

I am guest posting on Lois Winston's blog today on where I got the 'idea' for Em Ridge my new series character. Would love for you to come over and visit and comment, if you like.

Em Ridge, or 'Captain' Em Ridge is a boat delivery captain whose job it is to deliver boats - usually luxury yachts - from Point A to Point B. Murder and mayhem always follow! Night Watch is the first in this series.

I'd love for you to come over today and visit and leave a comment if you like.

http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot....

Today I'm being interviewed over at OmniMystery News! Would love for you to hop on over and visit and join in on the conversation!

http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2015/0...

I am so pleased to be able to announce that my collection of short mystery stories, STRANGE FACES is free on Amazon for 3 days.

I don't do a lot of free books, and so this is the first time Strange Faces has been free, and will probably be the last, so make sure you grab it on Amazon.

Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Faces-L...

Today I'm guest blogging at two places. I'm on Beverley Bateman's Tuesday Tips and Tweaks blog writing about the importance of chapter hooks and cliffhangers. That one's entitles Hooks, Crooks and Cliffhangers and is located here:

http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/20...


The second guest blog of today is 'O is for Others' at the Alexandria Publishing Group's A to Z April Blogging challenge. That one is located here:

http://alexandriapublishinggroup.com/...

Do click on these links, read the blog posts and post your comments. Would love to hear from you!

Linda
writerhall.com

This summer in honor of the release of my sailing mystery NIGHT WATCH, I'm featuring on my blog authors who set their novels and stories near bodies of water.

Today I'm interviewing award winning mystery author William Burton McCormick. I'd love for you to stop by and visit.

Here's the link:

http://lrhallbooks.blogspot.ca/2015/0...

Linda Hall

Every once in a while there’s nothing more fun than to sit down with a good old fashioned romantic suspense, the kind with the damsel in distress (albeit she’s a strong-of-character damsel) and the handsome, misunderstood alpha male. Find one which has a “hidden treasure” at its core, and you’re well and away to becoming totally absorbed. This week I’m endorsing What She Doesn't Know by Lina Gardiner.

This treasure hunting mystery is set on a remote island, a cold island in the formidable Bay of Fundy and comes complete with abandoned buildings, a castle, long lost diary, hidden caves, clues, writing in code and a decades old family secret.

Romantic suspense novels abound. They are everywhere and continue to remain a strong and popular genre. I tried my hand at romantic suspense with my six Harlequin novels, and found it difficult for me, at least, to write. (I prefer writing straight mystery.) Lina does it well, though, and her secret weapon in making this book stand out is that it’s not a murder mystery per se, but rather the search for a priceless artifact. Will the good guys get it before the bad guys do?

The Bay of Fundy is mysterious at its core with its depths and 40 foot tides, so it's the perfect setting. As a sailor and lover of all things boats and water, I know the vagaries of the sea, and we've been on the Bay of Fundy in our sailboat in very calm mill-pond weather, but we have also been out there in storms. One thing that old sailors and new sailors know is that there is no controlling the sea.

It's for this reason that so many of the classic treasure hunt novels are set on the sea, Treasure Island being the foremost. I read it as a kid, mainly because it was supposed to be a “book for boys,” and I was just that rebellious. The black and white movie made of it is freely available on Youtube.

There are three places in this larger world of ours that we know very little about—what’s at the bottom of the ocean, what’s inside the planet we live on and what’s out there past our dome of breathable air. For centuries, for millennia, the sea has fascinated us. We don’t know what’s buried in its depths. Sea monsters? Dragons? Or centuries old treasures left there by sunken vessels? Here is a link to an interesting and beautiful old map from the 1500s.

Another realm we haven’t discovered is what's underneath our feet. We live on the outer surface of this planet we call earth, our home, but have little or no knowledge of what lies beneath. Here’s a recent article about exploration into this realm.

Tolkein has answered that question with his Lord of the Rings, is a classic treasure hunt which takes place in "middle earth."

Who can forget “My Precious” which has become iconic in popular culture as anything we hold on to with greedy and grasping possessiveness.

Treasure books touch us on some deep level and appeal to that part of us that thinks once we get that “thing”, whether it’s the treasure chest at the bottom of the sea, the meteor made of gold, the “My Precious” ring, the lottery win, or the “whatever,” we’ll be happy, prosperous, and everyone will like us. It take years of living to realize that most of that isn't true.

If you want to look at some lists of current and classic treasure hunt novels, check out a few Goodreads lists.

WHAT SHE DOESN'T KNOW What She Doesn't Knowis a great and fun read, so if you are stocking up on summer read books now, add that one to your list.

And be careful - "Thar be dragons there..

This week I’m endorsing and recommending The Cutting, The Cutting the first in a new mystery/detective series by James Hayman. In a previous blog where I reviewed the Gillian Flynn novel, Sharp Objects, I linked to this very informative 1944 New Yorker article entitled, Why Do People Read Detective Stories?

If you can make it through the quaint verbiage and exceedingly long sentences, it is quite interesting, despite the underlying fact that the author does not have a host of enthusiastic and supportive things to say about the esteemed genre. There, that sentence should get you in the mood for the article. Still, if you are interested in the history of genre, this is an article well-worth reading. Since 1944, when the article was written, the genre has grown by leaps and higher leaps.

I have this theory, and if I were doing some sort of academic paper I’d research the whole thing into existence, but for now, it simply remains a theory of mine—I believe that the worse the world around us gets, the more we escape to the inside of a mystery novel, where at the end of the day, the bad guys are caught.

Pulp fiction saw its birth in 1939 and a meteoric rise between the two Wars. It was a terrifying time. People were confused and scared. People were dying and being bombed. Whole cities were being decimated. People didn’t know who to trust or where to turn. At a time when rationing was the norm and people were learning to do without for the “war effort”, they needed some reassurance that things would turn out right in the end. Enter the detective novel. Enter authors such as Mickey Spillaine.

Eschewing the leather bound tomes of library quality, these were printed on cheap “pulp” paper, and for mere pennies you could immerse yourself in a place where justice prevailed and things came out right in the end.

Today, and I mean today—as in July 28, 2016—rather than "today" in some generic sense, our world is kind of a mess. Bad people are popping out of nowhere and killing innocents all over the world. People are confused and scared. People are dying and being bombed. Whole cities are being bombed out. People didn't know who to trust or where to turn. Again, we see a grand proliferation of crime novels in which good triumphs over evil and good is rewarded.

Here’s another New Yorker article which sort of backs up my point.

I hope I’m not boring you too much. I find this stuff fascinating. This brings me finally to today’s endorsement, a mystery in the classic sense, with clues you’d better pay attention to (no matter how minute), a serial killer, and someone kidnapped with only days to live. Enter two new crime solvers, Detectives Mike McCabe and Maggie Savage.

All of these elements, plus the author’s deft way of getting it all down on paper, make The Cutting by James Hayman a really good read.

Detective McCabe is called to a horrific crime, where a young woman’s heart has been surgically removed from her chest, and her body left outside of a disused warehouse. This crime bears similarities to other crimes, non-local crimes, crimes from all over, and McCabe and his partner Maggie Savage are on the search of a serial killer, a smart, slick serial killer who outwits them almost at every turn.

Add to this, another young woman is missing from her morning run, and McCabe soon determines that the killer has her, but that she yet might not yet be dead. In mystery phraseology–"Time is running out."

This is a serial killer story with threads and strands which reach way back into the killer's history, back when he was almost normal. That’s the story, and I could not put it down.

I'm always thrilled to begin with book #1 in a new mystery series with new characters that I can come to know through the series. McCabe himself is a likeable, interesting character, a single dad of a teen girl. There is the angst of trying to raise a daughter. There is the ongoing problem of an ex-wife who barely knows her daughter, and wants little to do with her. Plus, there is the new girlfriend, who may or may not end up with McCabe in future novels. I suppose I will find out.

What drew me into this book, however, was the first line of chapter one:

Fog can be a sudden thing on the Maine coast.

I love Maine. My husband and I have spent fifteen summers sailing down on our 34' sailboat from our Canadian New Brunswick home and along the coast of Maine. Because we out on the water, we know about Maine fogs. Anyone writing about fog on the Maine coast will immediately get my attention. And this book did.

I also wonder, what is it about Maine which births so many crime and horror novelists - Tess Gerritson and Stephen King only to name a few.

If you like Gerritsen, you will love The Cutting. It will keep you guessing. It will keep you reading, and turning pages (or pressing the side of your Kobo) late into the night.

Here's the link to my blog page: http://lrhallbooks.blogspot.ca

Heres what happened when I started reading BEHIND CLOSED DOORS by B.A. Paris: Behind Closed DoorsI opened it up on my Kobo and began. Three hours later I was still at it. I picked it up in the morning, after having dreamt about it, I am sure, and after picking it up several times during the night to read hidden under my covers so as not to wake my husband.

I drank my morning coffee with the book opened beside me. It wasn’t until the very last page that I was aware of the breath I’d been holding. It’s that good. It’s what I’m recommending this week.

What makes it good is the ever escalating suspense, from the carefully controlled first chapter where we meet the couple, Jack and Grace to the horrific ending.

Jack is smart, good looking, a lawyer who specializes in helping abused women. And, oh, he’s never lost a case. How lucky is Grace to be his wife? Grace, to all appearances is the perfect wife, always beautifully turned out. They live a huge and gorgeous home and host lavish dinner parties. Too good to be true.

It is.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is something I am calling a “psychopath captive prisoner story,” which is just the name I’m giving to this genre. If this genre has a real name, someone please let me know.

I think part of our fascination with these types of stories is that we like to think of ourselves as Macgyvers able to get out of any scrape and situation. I would do it this way. No, I would do it that way. As I read BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, I wanted to yell at Grace. Why don’t you try this? Wouldn’t that work?

We have read the stories, seen the news about the horrific true tales of children kept in closets for years, of women imprisoned in dungeons to be repeatedly raped. These horrific events make us want to hug onto our children more closely, and keep hold of those we love with tight arms. It’s one of the more horrible of crimes that people seem to be capable of.

And it is also reflected in our fiction.

ROOMRoom by Emma Donoghue is the story of a mother raising her son within the confines of a room where they are being held captive. It has also been made into a movie.

Do you remember FLOWERS IN THE ATTICFlowers in the Attic, that YA book from a number of years ago? It was immensely popular with young people, and when my teen daughter brought it home back then, I read it, too. It's about a family of children who are hidden away in the attic by a mother intent on getting the inheritance which is hers only if she doesn’t have children.

There are more in this genre. Stephen King’s MISERYMisery is a tale which is not soon forgotten by those who read it.

I even had a "captive prisoner" novel in THE KING JAMES MURDERS.The King James Murders

I will close this brief analysis with a look at the short story THE YELLOW WALLPAPERThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I remember reading this years ago, probably for a school assignment, and it still holds onto its fearfulness. This short story is about a woman suffering from some undiagnosed illness, and whose husband keeps her in a room with yellow wallpaper - which eventually drives her insane.