More Books I Recommend

 How did it get to be October already? The months seem to fly, don't they? Well, having just finished the third quarter of the year, it's a great time to share the mystery/crime books I enjoyed most during the last three months. 

They all happened to have been published this year. While none of them are perfect reads (what books are?), I did enjoy them and do recommend them.

So without further ado ...

 

The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen

This is a dual-timeline story. The earlier timeline occurs in 1964 at a fictional college (that I understand was based on a real one). This college has a famous professor who is conducting parapsychology research. He finds four women with ESP and runs experiments on them. The professor is sadistic and treats the women poorly, but they all have reason to put up with it. (Being a woman in 1964 wasn't easy.) Then, one day, the four women disappear. 

The second timeline is set in the current day, when a young woman is hired as the caregiver of a recently widowed elderly woman, Betty, who was one of the four test subjects. Betty lives in a house that could have been plucked right out of the 1960s (think no modern conveniences). She doesn't know what she's missing, however, because she's rarely left her home in the last sixty years. Why? And what happened to the other three women? The newly hired caregiver is determined to find out. 

I found this to be an intriguing page-turner. The insights into ESP research was fascinating (and disturbing). The author did a good job of showing how the women became found family for each other and how they coped as the professor used their friendships to manipulate them. I wish the author had shown more of a range in the personalities of the men in the story (though I understand that the story dictated otherwise) and that she'd let the reader know more about what happened to the professor in the end. Nonetheless, this is a strong book. If you like psychological thrillers, I think you'll like this book.

 

A Cute Little Murder by Molly Harper

And now for something a little lighter. This book opens with prologue set fifteen years ago, as two teenage girls who run a true-crime podcast (based on crimes in their small town) are in the midst of busting their principal for a number of felonies. They're their high school's version of Veronica Mars, and the author really succeeded in capturing the vibe.

Then we fast-forward to present day. One girl has grown into a big-league true-crime podcaster. The other has become a forensic accountant. They aren't in touch (it turns out they weren't such good friends after all), until the podcaster needs the accountant's help solving a 1920s cold case in a soon-to-close hotel on a small island in the Great Lakes. As you can imagine, the original case might be old, but that doesn't mean there isn't someone who wants to stop the current investigation.

I found this to be a well-plotted story with fun twists, amusing characters, interesting sleuthing, enjoyable romance, and a good voice. The pacing was a little slow at times in the middle, and the main character (the accountant) reminded herself way too often that she was doing this for the money, but it still was a good read. I wish this were the beginning of a series, but it appears it's a standalone. 

 

The Primrose Murder Society by Stacy Hackney

After her husband goes on the lam for white-collar crime and the government takes her house and money, Lila and her precocious, Murder She Wrote-obsessed daughter, Bea, age ten, need a safe place to land. They find The Primrose, an upscale fifty-five-plus building. They're allowed to move in temporarily, rent-free, because they promise to clean out the apartment of a recently deceased hoarder. 

Then a rich man in the building dies, and he's left $2 million to whoever solves the cold case of his granddaughter's death in that very building. What's a woman in need of cash to do but to take on the case, especially when her daughter keeps pushing her to do it? Heck, Bea would handle the investigation herself if Lila would stop reining her in.

The novel is filled with a strong mother/daughter relationship, fun (if sometimes annoying) secondary characters (the neighbors--including a retired police detective who thinks he wasn't good at his job), a well-plotted mystery, and a bunch of amusing moments with witty dialogue. It's a solid series starter. As one reviewer said, it's a "delightful story about perseverance, overcoming odds, found family, friendship, and believing in oneself." It's this author's first mystery, and she did a good job. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, coming next spring.

 ************

And now for a little BSP: 

Three weeks ago I wrote about the new anthology Hooked on Urban Legends--and Murder!, which I edited with Donna Andrews and Marcia Talley. This fun anthology has seventeen stories involving ghosts, monsters, human bad guys, and, of course, crime. (You can read that blog post here.) On Tuesday, October 20th, at least a dozen of the authors with stories in the book will appear on a zoom where they'll talk about their stories and share tips for writing short stories. 

The authors scheduled to appear are: Donna Andrews, Ellen Byerrum, Barb Goffman (yes, that's me), Kathryn Holland, Smita Harish Jain, Meghan Lewis, Jane Limprecht, Alan Orloff, Pat Remick, Daphne Silver, Robin Templeton, and Marcia Talley. We're still hoping a few more might be able to attend.

The event will begin at 7 p.m. Eastern Time on 10/20. You can register to attend by clicking here. We hope to see you there.

Oops

 

Mistakes, I’ve made few, but then again, too many to mention.  And more, much more than this, I did it any way I could figure out. 

            When people ask me how I’m able to make a certain piece of wood working, the only honest answer is, “A series of mistakes, randomly interrupted by moments of good fortune.”   I think the only difference between a person who succeeds at a craft, and one who doesn’t, is

the willingness to try.  Failure is not an option, it’s inevitable.  A completed project is the result of winnowing the number of mistakes down to a tolerable, and amendable, few.  Thus, making mistakes is not as important as knowing how to reorganize the flaws. 

            For this, the most important ingredient is humility.  When it comes to craft, we are all born sinners.  Accepting this is the road to endurance and faith that persistence, seasoned by patience and presence of mind, will see you through. 

            Some mistakes achieve an unexpected good.  We’ve heard about Velcro, Post-it notes and microwave ovens, but I have experienced a number of occasions when a colossal blunder resulted in a far better outcome.  This usually happens when I’ve made my intended effect impossible, so I’m forced to redesign the whole thing, turning a repair into a pleasing improvisation.     

Architects have known about this for a long time, probably because buildings are so big and take so long to put together that learning how to glorify a goof was an important strategy.   

            Not unlike building a novel.  I’m sure this is how many of you write.  Perhaps it’s the only way to write anything halfway decent. Anne Lamott’s shitty first draft is actually an exercise in dispensing thousands of mistakes that call for ingenious corrections.  Our most inventive writers are probably people who generate mistakes at scale, writing themselves out of one pitfall after another.

           

            The Grand Master of fortuitous mistakes is nature herself.  For every living thing, reproductive success is a numbers game.  The reason an individual produces far more eggs or sperm than needed to complete the transaction is it increases the odds for an acceptable match.  A byproduct of these multitudes is that little errors creep into the genetic scheme. It’s regrettable that the word “mutation” has a vaguely negative connotation.  Truth is, without mutation, we wouldn’t have evolution, since natural selection needs a toolbox of mis-made parts from which to select the preferred attribute for continued survival.   

If you really want to go large on the value of error, whatever existed before the Big Bang contained tiny quantum fluctuations, deviations from the norm.  This meant the universe didn’t start off perfectly configured, but instead, what cosmologists charmingly describe as slightly lumpy.  This meant that when expansion created the universe we ended up with galaxies, stars, and planets, one of which is our current residence.

            This is what I’d call a happy accident. 

            I’ve recently mentioned the delusion of perfectionism.  Nothing is perfect, and if it was, it wouldn’t do us much good.  It would just sit there in a smooth slab of static nothingness.  It wouldn’t grow, change, evolve or adapt.  This doesn’t mean there’s no point in trying to make things better. You just can’t make them perfect, and neither should you try.   

            Say what you will about the advanced technology we live with today, it mostly works.  It’s all pretty much based on quantum mechanics, which everyone applies, though no one really understands.   If you could boil down the unfathomable complexity of quantum theory, the remaining nugget would be probability.  Probably.  Outcomes are not predetermined, but rather the consequence of infinite, unknowable and evanescent interactions.  Heisenberg proved that “here and now” is ultimately an approximation. 

            This wouldn’t happen in a perfect world, but lucky for us, irregularity and imprecision makes the whole thing operational.  It’s been built into the system since the first nanosecond.  You might regret a mistake, but there’s no shame in it.  So have at it.  That’s why we have copy editors, imperfect as they are.   

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fraudulent Færies

Subject: A Conan Doyle, circa 1920.
Genuine, for certain real, not fake,
Lumière KinemaColour fauxtograf™
on loan to SleuthSayers, courtesy
British Museum archive collection.

Doyle and Houdini and science and such,
Séance and fairies concern overmuch.

The words physics and psychics come to us from Greek via Latin. The spellings might seem similar, but physics in Greek related to physical things, especially nature, whereas psychics suggested soul. Forgive me, but I'm in the former camp.

My classmate Lela with kindness told me I was a ‘rational bigot’. She’s not wrong and I cherish her evaluation. When it comes to psychic phenomena, I side with the Amazing Randi: provide evidence, unambiguous proof. Unlike, well, the most highly regarded icon in our profession.

Embarrassingly, when it came to spiritualism and the supernatural, the wonderful and prolific Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was dismayingly gullible. He was so unlike Sherlock Holmes that it hardly seems credible he could so superlatively depict his coldly rational protagonist.

I mentioned the magician Randi, but Doyle was, you might be surprised to learn, once a close friend of Harry Houdini. The famed magician went to lengths to dissuade the author from his utter belief in the occult, efforts that eventually broke their friendship.

From the Mouths of Babes

Thus we set the stage for a pair of Yorkshire cousins who, aided by flitting fairies, fooled much of the adult world, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For proof, they proffered photographs of petite figures hovering in the air.

1^st Cottingley photo

To be sure, young girls have fooled adults before. The Fox sisters, Leah, Maggie, and Kate, introduced the world to séances in 1848. After a hundred eighty years and an eventual admission of fakery by one of the sisters, séances still have believers. Simply visit Cassadaga, Florida, a town of soothseekers.

Much earlier in 1692, the Salem witch trials began with antics and accusations by three pre-teen girls, 9yo Elizabeth (Betty) Parris, her cousin 11yo Abigail Williams, and Ann Putman, age 12. The latter child became a prolific inculpater who, along with a number of teenagers, over time denounced nearly half the village of practicing witchcraft. And adults believed them.

Back in England

5^th Cottingley photo

The Christmas 1920 issue of The Strand carried photographs of fairies photographed by two young cousins in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. There were doubters, but skeptics were few and believers were many.

A few months later, the same magazine published a followup by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was couched as a reasonable exploration of the subject, but it’s clear Doyle not only accepted the evidence of fairies, but also supernatural phenomena in general. (As a side note, Doyle was also taken in by the Piltdown Man hoax.)

Without further ado, here’s the original article and here’s Doyle’s defence.

No fairies were harmed in the making of this article.

Even though I don’t believe in fairies, I’m setting out a dish of cookies. Just sayin’.

Boo-hoo, Wow, and Hooray

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post here at SleuthSayers called "Whoa, Look at THAT," about current YouTube channels showing moviewatchers' reactions--fright, sorrow, delight, shock, etc.--to what they see on the screen, and how those emotion-charged scenes can be an inspiration to us, as fiction writers. After all, we want to make our readers feel those same things. 

Anyhow, since watching a few of those channels told me what movies and parts of movies the "reactors" liked most, I've been doing some thinking about which movie scenes triggered the biggest reactions from me. And the funny thing is, those reactions didn't only happen the first time I saw these movies, some of them many years ago; the feelings are rekindled every time I see them. And I re-watch a lot of movies.

So think of this post as "Whoa, Look at THAT, Part 2." I have listed, below, thirty scenes that always, even now, keep me glued to the screen. I'm sure you won't agree with me on all of them--some aren't even scenes from great or well-known movies--but for me they're all entertaining and bring forth truly strong emotions. 

NOTE 1: I'm including links to the videos, instead of embedding functional clips. Otherwise this post would be a mile long. (Besides, the Blogger program, for some reason, wouldn't allow me to.)

NOTE 2: I'm NOT including the Bates Motel shower scene, Rhett leaving Scarlett, requests for a bigger boat, San Francisco car chases, songs in the rain, napalm in the morning, Sam playing the piano, etc., because most of us have seen those scenes many, many times. Some of the following you actually might not know about. And a warning: big spoilers ahead!

1. Surprise

Poltergeist: TV people

The Usual Suspects: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled

12 Angry Men: It's a very unusual knife

Romancing the Stone: Together, forever

Dead Poets Society: O captain, my captain

The Sixth Sense: They don't know they're dead

Superman (1978): All those powers--and I couldn't even save him

The Natural: Awright, Hobbs, knock the cover off the ball

2. Sadness

Cool Hand Luke: He was smilin'

Somersby: God bless you, Jack

Shane: There aren't any more guns in the valley

Lonesome Dove: Hell of a vision

The Last Sunset: Primroses

Old Yeller: Travis, bring your gun

Dances with Wolves: Do you see that I am your friend?

3. Tension

For a Few Dollars More: Try and shoot me, Colonel

Goldfinger: What kept you?

The Black Stallion: There's some problem with the Mystery Horse

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968): Left early

Star Trek II: Here it comes

Aliens: Punch it, Bishop

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip

Once Upon a Time in the West: You bring a horse for me?

4. Happiness

It's a Wonderful Life: Every time a bell rings

Flashdance: What a feeling

Witness: He'll need his city clothes

Forrest Gump: Run, Forrest, run

Rocky: Ain't gonna be no rematch

The Graduate: Elaine!

An Officer and a Gentleman: Way to go, Paula

Something I didn't mention earlier: For me, music plays a big part in how I'm affected by movie scenes. For example, think about how different that final shot in Gone with the Wind would be, as the camera tracks back from Scarlett to show the live oak tree beside her and Tara in the distance, if it weren't for that fantastic Max Steiner score. That, of course, and visual elements like lighting, colors, and camera movement, is something we writers can't create on the page; we have to work a little harder at causing those emotions. But it can be done. I still remember the tears that came to my eyes when the little boy died in the hot car at the end of the novel Cujo (in the movie version, he lives), and when Boo Radley is finally revealed to Scout in the final pages of To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Now, a question for you: Which movie scenes do you recall affecting you the most, emotionally? Happiest, saddest, most surprising, most suspenseful? Are any of them the same as those I've remembered? Have you been influenced by any particular scenes, for your own writing?

I think I'll go see if I can find some more (and yes, Honey, it's still research). 

Go ye and do likewise.

The Strangers Who Came to Dinner

Still life with kibori kuma.
(Japanese hand-carved sculpture of bear with fish).

When we bought this house in the mountains of North Carolina, I foolishly thought that this tiny parcel of land was all ours. Wrong. We were merely the only organisms living on the property dumb enough to pay for it. I learned that the first time a flock of turkeys traipsed through our vegetable garden with thirteen of their waddling poults, pecking at every single one of our tomatoes for whatever sustenance they could provide.

When one of our neighbors attached a night vision camera to a tree in the woods behind our houses, it became clear that when the sun dropped a menagerie held court: opossum, fox, deer, and bears.

The latter have become the unofficial mascot of our city. Local artists have given us and the tourists tons of bear chic decor to fill our homes with. We ourselves display two paintings of bears on our walls. (The bear carving predates our marriage.)

If traffic slows on our approach to the mall, we know chances are good that a black bear is crossing the road. If tourists are standing around pointing their phones at a tree in the downtown shopping district, it’s because an adolescent ursine is napping in its branches. Every summer we hear sad stories of bears euthanized for entering peoples’ homes, or tales of idiots “not-from-around-here” who think it’s a good idea to hug and then selfie with a bear cub on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

“He died for Instagram” is not a phrase I’d like to have on my tombstone.

My backyard, late July 2017, 7 AM.

We know why they’re in our midst. (See our friend Amy Cherrix’s children’s book, Backyard Bears, if you really need a primer.) Every passing second, we humans consume more of their habitat. If you’ve ever watched a Yogi Bear cartoon, you know the other reason. We make it easy for them to get food.

Hardware stores in the region sell bear-resistant trash bins and straps, but the bears have such an smorgasbord to choose from, they can easily find a snack a few doors down from those selfish homeowners who lock up their goods.

And—gotta say it—a warming climate means that the bears are increasingly confused by parameters of their annual nap. How dare Nature wake them on a 70-degree day after three weeks of frigid weather, and not provide them with something to eat? The effrontery! Wait—are there any of those bipedal meat sacks around? These boneheads always leave out something good to eat.

I was one of those dopey meat sacks one year. Normally, I don’t put out trash until the morning of pickup. If I have an abundance, I stash the plastic bags in our locked garage until the designated day. But a three-day weekend altered the trash calendar, and the sanitation department did not, for some reason, phone me immediately to let me know.

I walked out of the house, intending to do some yard work or drive to a store, and discovered a bear rooting through my toppled bin. I closed the front door, and quickly ticked off all the things I was supposed to do to scare bears off.

Timorous beastie flees in the presence of ruggedly handsome writer.
In other news: a great year for lavender.

In the wild, you are supposed to play dead if attacked by a grizzly. If attacked by a black bear, you are advised to loudly fight back. (Who comes up with these suggestions?) Yes, thought I, loud noises could work. After all, every creature in the peaceable kingdom fears human clangor.

I dashed to the kitchen, grabbed a pot and a steel serving spoon, and did my best impression of a clangorous scribe, while hiding behind my cracked front door.

Nothing. The bear did not lift its head, let alone budge.

Maybe I was not loud or annoying enough?

Back to the kitchen. I rooted in a cabinet for the portable Bluetooth speaker we use in the yard. I booted the thing up, and scrolled through my phone in search of Music to Frighten Bears. I nudged the speaker onto the porch with the steel spoon.

Folks, I am here to tell you that bears are not at all terrified of the Hamilton soundtrack.

You know what finally did the trick? Me, standing on the porch, stamping my feet and screaming at the top of my lungs.

It was the last thing I wanted to do, but it worked!

My wife has never let me forget that I attempted to scare off a bear with show tunes. I mean, could I not summon some Whitesnake in a hurry?

Another time, I returned from the market and was getting groceries out of the car when I looked up to discover that a mother and two cubs had just entered my driveway from our backyard.

Mother and I locked eyes, and I swear, my brain played tricks on me.

My first thought was, “Who is this now? Did someone invite themselves over unannounced?”

Yes, for a few moments, I thought I was peering into the pinched, narrowed eyes of an irritated person. That’s how human its gaze was.

After a bit, my brain coughed up another possibility: “Wait, are they dogs?”

Finally, I comprehended the truth. I flung the groceries back in the car, jumped in myself, locked the doors, and prayed that they had not packed their glass cutters.

I waited twenty minutes while they explored the front yard, climbed up and down our front cherry tree, and finally wandered off.

That memory came back to me when I read a review of Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s book, A Libertarian Walks into a Bear, about a New Hampshire town that is taken over by a group of freedom-loving activists who ignore such basics as taxes and city sanitation, only to have their Utopia trampled to pieces by black bears. A woman who survived mauling tells the author, “If you look at their eyes, you understand that they are completely alien to us.”

I once thought that. But the longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve become sympathetic to their plight. A painter doing work on our house one year put it all in perspective. He had stepped out our front door to wash his brushes, and beheld the sight of a mother bear strolling up the road with three cubs in tow. A furry parade that did not make eye contact with him.

“Can you imagine the stress that mother is under?” he told me later. “She’s got to find food every day to feed all four of them.”

Our neighborhood keeps a running mobile phone text thread to keep everyone in the loop on bear sightings. Usually, the texts arrive after the neighborhood dogs have raised the alarm, so it’s never a surprise. But we do want to know where exactly the bears were last seen, in whose yard, how many, and how big. For these reasons alone I’m never without the phone in my pocket.

The system is far from foolproof.

There was the morning the dog barked endlessly in the lower part of our yard. When I finally walked over to see what the deal was, I spotted an adolescent bear marching away from us, like a tightrope walker, over the top of the privacy fence. Denise came down to look. I grabbed the dog and pulled him back to the house. In my absence, the bear somehow reversed course, faced Denise, and hissed. She backed away and rejoined the dog and me.

I still don’t understand how he was able to make a U-turn on a narrow fence top. They look blubbery and ungainly, but they’re incredibly nimble.

One night in late summer, my wife alerted me to a bear tearing down our bird feeder. (We have since banished feeders from the yard.) It was dark, and I had trouble seeing the culprit. When I finally discerned his shape, I gasped.

Hoping to explain my behavior, I blathered, “Well, I mean, first I thought it was a chubby man in a black raincoat. Then…I realized it was a bear—and I got scared!”

Thirty minutes later, after the bear left and we removed the attractant, she pounced on my words. “Oh, but a chubby man in a black raincoat…in our backyard, at night, was not at all scary to you?”

In May 2021, when she was out, a mother and cub surprised me in the yard. I scampered into the house and bolted the sliding doors of the den. My guests were not in a hurry to go. In fact, they settled in for a sweet siesta in the shadiest part of the yard. From the safety of an upstairs bathroom window, I filmed the interaction. The footage runs 90 seconds. (I put it on YouTube.) It’s the most tender mother-and-child scene I’ve witnessed outside of a nature documentary. Nat Geo, call me.

All these creatures want is space, peace, and to be left alone.

A hilarious book by William Kotzwinkle, entitled The Bear Went Over the Mountain, imagines a world in which a black bear in the woods of Maine discovers a completely finished book manuscript lying in a briefcase under a tree. Naturally, he lands a literary agent and passes the work off as his own. Zaniness ensues. It’s a clever satire about all the things wrong with publishing and Hollywood. And the bear, long a symbol of strength, protection, and seasonal renewal, becomes instead an unwitting player in a sordid drama of literary fraud.

Makes you think: They already eat our food and make themselves at home in our spaces. Would it really be so strange if they stole our livelihoods? Better them than AI. Vincant ursi.

My neighbor John gets bears who long to style their hair.

 Photo copyright 2026 Gordon John Gilbart.

 

* * * 

See you next time!

Joe

josephdagnese.com

joedenise.com

My Father & the Big A

All my life my old man has been known for his extensive vocabulary and his remarkable memory.

At least until recently.

These days it’s pretty much just his vocabulary that’s left.

My dad has Alzheimer’s.

He’s been suffering from it for years. At first my mom thought he had Parkinson’s. Not sure how that worked.

It sure seems that Alzheimer’s, and the dementia associated with it, are fodder for popular culture these days. As with a lot of brain disorders, people who suffer from mental issues are coming out of the dark, and being seen for who and what they are. This is all commendable.

Don Johnson and James Gammon

But I’m not sure that fictional treatments can actually do justice to the horror show that is Alzheimer’s. I can remember back in the 90s Don Johnson’s TV show Nash Bridges featured veteran character actor James Gammon as Nash‘s father who suffered from Alzheimer’s. And it was the most convenient Alzheimer’s you’d ever see. When he needed to be lucid, he was, and when it served the plot for him to be goofy, he was. My dad‘s Alzheimer’s isn’t like that.

Alzheimer’s has gradually, minute by minute, hollowed my father out. So much so that every day he resembles the man I’ve known my entire life a little bit less. He went from being initially forgetful to being forgetful and easily confused to being absolutely out of the loop and constantly needing to be reminded of what was going on around him.

But he hasn’t taken this journey alone. Even as his Alzheimer’s is isolate him more every day, my dad is surrounded by a family that loves him. That supports him. And occasionally can still find it in themselves to like him. 

This is no mean feat. 

There are certain things my father can no longer bear. One of them seems to be me. Sometimes just my very existence.Especially if I’m redirecting or disciplining my son around him. My father gets very protective of his grandson, it starts to yell at me. Within the last week I’ve been told to shut up. I’ve been told I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve been told that I’m picking on my kid. None of that is true. And I did not stand still for the shut up part. That’s a story for another time. And it’s hard not to take it personally. Except that in three minutes, he won’t even remember that he did it. I’ve watched a man with a memory for names, dates, places, style trends, sports statistics, exotic words, you name it lose all of that piece meal. 

My dad can still tell you who won the 1969 Super Bowl. But he can’t tell you what I said to him five minutes ago. Or yesterday. Or two months ago. Right now his existence seems to consist of walking a precarious tight rope, completely unmoored. And needing help to become grounded back in the moment if only for a moment.

I’m not writing this For any other reason than to express how it’s been feeling to deal with Alzheimer’s in our family. It’s taken the worst toll on my father. It has taken a knot insignificant toll on those who love him. 

And just once I’d like to see Hollywood get that right.

James Garner and Gena Rowlands in The Notebook

Old Myths, New Stories

If you read this space regularly you may be aware that I am a fan (is that the right word?) of mythology, especially the Greco-Roman variety. I think I was probably six or seven when I discovered d'Aulaire's book of Greek myths and switched from drawing dinosaurs to gorgons and Pegasus.

But what does that have to do with mystery fiction?  Well, there are, of course, gazillion mysteries set in the classical period.  More importantly, it is easy to argue that Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex is the first mystery, beating Poe to the post by a couple of millennium. It contains: a murder, a detective, a Watson, the interrogation of suspects, and the "least likely" murderer.

Our first trip to Greece a few years ago inspired me to write a fantasy-crime story called "The Gate of Hades," which involved the legendary cave through which Theseus, Orpheus, and Heracles all snuck into the underworld  It appeared in the late lamented Mystery Magazine two years ago.

More recently I began thinking about Charon, the ferryman who takes souls across the river Styx. Specifically I pondered one question I had always had about the gentleman.  I wrote a story in which my question got answered but several fantasy magazines turned it down.

Gate of Hades

Hmm. My forte has always been mysteries so could I somehow move the story into that genre?

I did.  I actually left the beginning and end of the story almost untouched but in the middle Charon helps one of the passengers solve his own murder.  The result is "The Crossing," which appears in Crime Before Our Time, which was published yesterday.

But I have a complaint. I've made three trips to Greece but have only gotten two stories out of it so far, which doesn't seem fair. And none for the trip to Egypt! Perhaps I need to make a sacrifice or two to some deities.  Where did I leave that ceremonial ax?