Beth Terrell – Lady With an Alias

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books, detective, mystery, PI, suspense

Jared McKean is a private investigator with a past. He falls for women in distress and in Racing the Devil, Terrell’s first in the PI series, he finds himself in bed with a black-and-blue bruised woman in a halter top in less than 15 pages. The sex is “all animal ferocity and passion, sweat and thrust and howl and moan.” Ten pages later, he’s wanted for murder and you are not going to put this book down.

It’s a beginning that startled me, having met the author Beth Terrell (pen name Jaden Terrell) six months earlier.  Beth is soft-spoken, maybe a bit on the shy side, and nearing middle-age, not at all the in your face, no holds barred writer of a private “dick” novel — that’s what the soon-to-be dead woman called Jared.

Beth confessed she took the pen name Jaden thinking the name had more of an edge and element of mystery to it than her given name. She also uses a “headshot” on her social media that begs you to want to know more and is light years away from what she Beth says is her cherub-faced school -teacher appearance.  She’s probably right, but after reading Racing the Devil, Beth’s writing stands on its own, her real name and real face are irrelevant.

Beth knew she wanted to be a writer from the time she was eight years old. And, when stories about hard-boiled private investigators called, she schooled herself in the genre by reading everything she could find. She also attended the local Citizens Police Academy, the FBI Citizens Academy, the Tennessee Bureau’s Citizens Academy and Lee Lofland’s Writers’ Police Academy–one experience not being enough to satisfy Beth’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge.  Then, too, she’s a member of nearly every crime writer’s organization I know, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and Private Eye Writers of America. For many years, Beth served as the Special Programs Director of Killer Nashville, the mystery/thriller writers’ annual conference in Nashville.

Oh, and did I forget to mention Beth holds a Red Belt in Tae Kwan Do?

The softer side does come through, both when she exposes the kinder side of Jared McKean and when Beth explores the tortured relationship McKean has with his ex-wife, a woman he can’t forget—at least as far as I have read.  That side of Beth comes from a career in special education, a passion for ballroom dancing, and a certification in Equine Massage Therapy, the latter explaining why horses make frequent appearances in her novels.

You don’t have to take my word for how well written her PI series is or how devoted she is to her craft.  Beth is a Shamus Award nominee, and winner of the Magnolia Award for service to her local chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

A Taste of Blood and Ashes is the fourth installment in Beth Terrell’s series.  It is available on line and in bookstores everywhere as are the other installments, if like me, you are starting with the first.

I want to be Beth Terrell when I grow up, but for now, I’ll just count myself as one of her many friends on facebook and in real life. She has come to my rescue at a book signing in Nashville—a city where I barely knew more than a handful of people—shouting out my event across her network. I couldn’t ask for more.

Read more about Beth Terrell on her website.

http://www.jadenterrell.com/

 

Janet Evanovich – By the Numbers

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author, book, Janet Evanovich, mystery, Stephanie Plum, women

The acknowledged queen of the mystery genre enters the room to a round of applause.  She takes the stage, sits down, and comments about the phallic-shaped mic in her hand and how it reminds her of Ranger a character in one of her books. Only one person can get away with that. Janet Evanovich.

By adhering to my rule of reading no more than a single book by any author (except for … well, that’s another story), I have missed the evolution and intrigue that surrounds Evanovich’s most famous character, Stephanie Plum.  Plum is a female bounty hunter who has a pet hamster Rex and several love interests, including Ranger.  And as legions of Janet Evanovich’s fans the laughter rippling across the room attest, Stephanie Plum is as loved and real as the author herself.

Smart dialog and sexual banter fill much of Evanovich’s writing, including this snippet from Hard Eight:

“He [Ranger] stopped in front of my parents’ house, and we both looked to the door. My mother and my grandmother were standing there, watching us.
“I’m not sure I feel comfortable about the way your grandma looks at me,” Ranger said.
[Stephanie] “She wants to see you naked.”
“I wish you hadn’t told me that, babe.”
“Everyone I know wants to see you naked.”
“And you?”
“Never crossed my mind.” I held my breath when I said it, and I hoped God wouldn’t strike me down dead for lying.”

Entertaining?  You bet. In a televised interview, Janet Evanovich said she thinks of herself first as an entertainer and added delights in providing devoted readers vicarious thrills. I imagine she means both in bed and in hot pursuit of a criminal on the lam.

If there’s a secret sauce in writing mystery, then Janet Evanovich has discovered it, bottled it, and dips from it whenever she sits down at a keyboard.  And that is often.

She even has an app.  Yes, there’s an app for All Things Evanovich.

And there needs to be to keep up with Evanovich’s 68 books. They include a dozen romance novels, the genre in which Evanovich started and never truly abandoned, nine co-authored novels, and five series, including 27 in the Stephanie Plum series. Even if you haven’t read a Plum novel, you have likely seen the covers and the clever titles, beginning with One for the Money then Two for the Dough and on to the most recent Turbo Twenty-Three.

Along the way, Evanovich penned a book on writing, How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author, and a graphic novel — which Evanovich advises is great fun but hard to translate to “bottom line” results.  Take heed, that’s advice from a woman who has combined an in-born sense of business with a knack for writing.  Her husband, son, and daughter, and, I suspect,  many minions behind the scene make the Evanovich enterprise hum.

Across Evanovich’s website are games, puzzles, contests, pet pictures, numerous places to sign up for her newsletter or get a sticker with her signature to place inside your copy of one of her novels — please send a self addressed stamped envelope. And, of course, you’ll find buttons that link you to a shopping cart.

So, with all she has accomplished, what does Evanovich, regret? At the writers conference I attended, she said she misses the time spent talking to fans at book signings in bookstores across the country. Today, the mere rumor of an appearance can shut down a Walmart for hours.  I think I can imagine that, if I close my eyes real tight, I think I can.

Things she promises: Stephanie will always be young and beautiful, Rex will always be by her side, and Ranger, well… I’m waiting for Sixty-Six and Sex to decide.

Read more about Stephanie Plum and, oh yeah, Janet Evanovich at evanovich.com

Miss Jane Marple – A Role Model

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Agatha Christie, author, books, Miss Jane Marple, mystery, women

Last month I profiled Nancy Drew and Carolyn Keene, the pseudonym for the group of authors of the series of detective novels featuring the ingénue detective extraordinaire.  This month, I’ve journeyed to the other end of the spectrum to spotlight Miss Jane Marple, Dame Agatha Christie’s much loved cozy mystery sleuth.

A “cozy” mystery as I had to learn is distinguished from other mysteries and thrillers by an amateur sleuth who solves mostly domestic crimes. The crimes often occur in rural settings and violence and sex are left to the imagination, well, well off stage. Dame Christie is credited with inventing the genre and perfecting it in the character of Miss Marple. The aging crime solver appears in twelve of Ms Christie’s novels that span the period from 1927 to 1976.

While I didn’t use Miss Marple as inspiration for Alicia Blake, the amateur detective and soon to be professional police woman in my upcoming thriller, there are similarities between the two characters. For the most part the two share a reliance on intuition.  Feminine intuition to be exact. The decidedly feminine trait was much used by Christie. In Murder at the Vicarage (1930), Christie compared the skill of intuition to “reading a word without having to spell it out.”

Christie had forty years to hone Miss Marple’s skills, but even at the outset, Miss Marple demonstrated the uncanny ability to take an idle comment from casual conversation and connect the dots, solving crimes that eluded her professional male counterparts. Often, Miss Marple put two and two together while relaxing in a comfortable chair, knitting, or in her garden with a pair of gardening shears in hand. Other times, she stayed in the background and listened while those around her chattered away. From everywhere clues dropped like rain, but only she noticed. And, as every Miss Jane Marple reader knows, if a male character thought he had the crime solved and explained how he believed the impossible unfolded, watch for a roll of Miss Marple’s eyes or a shake of her head. He is inevitably not even close.

In Nemesis (1971), the last Marple novel, Jane had aged. Nevertheless, she was just as much at work as she was in her earlier days. Christie described her as “old fashioned,” prone to taking naps, and with a rheumatic back that prevented her from working in her garden, but she still knits and she still solves a crime. All it took was a glance at the obituaries in her favorite newspaper to spark a memory and, by page two, Miss Marple was off and running, or perhaps, ambling down a lane in St. Mary Mead.

She had “a scent for evil, in the evening of her days, her peculiar gift,” Christie said.

More than 125 years after Miss Christie’s birth, the literary world is re-examining the prolific writer, casting her in a more modern light as a feminist, an identity others claim she would have resist.  Though Christie brought women characters out of the shadows and gave them center stage, they remain in their decidedly female roles, chock full of feminine intuition.

That’s not a bad role model for my own protagonist. Watch for more news about my upcoming thriller, scheduled for release this fall.

 

Nancy Drew – My First Girl Detective

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books, detective, first books, mystery, sleuth, thriller

Can you remember the first “real” novel you read—or at least an early, early one—a book that launched you down the reading path? In my case, it was a hand me down. I had an older sister who loved to read (and still loves to read, devouring a book or two each week) and so, when she discarded a book it found its way to me.

If memory serves me correctly, my first was a Nancy Drew mystery. With over forty titles in the series by the early 1960s, I can’t say now whether I started with “The Secret of the Old Clock,” or “The Hidden Staircase,” or the “Clue in the Diary,” or “The Message in the Hollow Oak,” or “The Haunted Bridge”… There seemed to be an unending supply of the books for girls, written as I later discovered by a syndicate under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene.

In retrospect, I suppose they were perfect novels for girls who would become women in the 1970s. Nancy triumphed where others failed. She even went on to be “Nancy Drew, Girl Detective” in the series that continued into this century. Somehow, I think Nancy changed with the times; and I shudder to think of her texting or playing pokemango. For me she’ll forever be climbing dark staircases, running through dark forests, or exploring attics, on her own or with an occasional sidekick. And, of course, she’ll always find the clue and solve the mystery.

The books are definitely for the young reader. Consider the opening words of “The Hidden Staircase.”

Nancy Drew began peeling off her garden gloves as she ran up the porch steps and into the hall to answer the ringing telephone. She picked it up and said, “Hello!”

“Hi, Nancy! This is Helen.” Although Helen Corning was nearly three years older than Nancy, the two girls were close friends.

“Are you tied up on a case?” Helen asked.

“No. What’s up? A mystery?”

“Yes–a haunted house.”

Nancy sat down on the chair by the telephone. “Tell me more!” the eighteen-year old detective begged, excitedly.

There you have it, in less than one hundred words: three exclamation points, a mystery, a haunted house, and a sidekick. Oh yes, and long garden gloves that have to be peeled off.

Seriously, maybe there is a reason to go back and read a few books from the series. In this very short passage there’s drama, tension, suspense, and the beginnings of character description.  With chapters titled “Strange Music,” “Frightening Eyes,” and “An Elusive Ghost,” to come, what’s not to love?

With my own new novel, a thriller, coming to market this fall, maybe I can call my publisher and ask them to hold the presses while I inject a bit of Nancy into my own heroine.