Melodie Johnson Howe and Roderick Ramage

Today I'd like to highlight two very different books by two people whom I've known and liked for a number a years. First, Melodie Johnson Howe, whom I've mentioned once or twice before on the blog. She's an actor and writer of excellent short stories which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but I must confess that I've never come across her novels before. That's changed, though, with City of Mirrors, which is sub-titled A Hollywood Murder Mystery. The title comes from a telling line: "If you want a friend in Hollywood, get a mirror."

Melodie has used her acting knowledge to create a very appealing series character called Diana Poole, and her inside knowledge of the seemingly glamorous world of the movies is deployed her to very good effect. "Hollywood is like smog", Diana reflects at one point, "it moves and settles wherever it wants to." In this book, Diana is at an age where the ageism of the movie world works against her, but she is not someone to give up, either in her acting life or when, not for the first time, she stumbles upon murder - this time, the victim is a fellow actor. On Melodie's impressive website you can also hear her EQMM podcast of story with the excellent title "The Talking Dead".

Roderick Ramage is a leading employment and pensions lawyer who worked as a member of my team for more years than either of us care to remember. Like another former colleague, Paul Clarke, he has now ventured into criminal territory. Perhaps I'm leading good men astray, but I must say I'm delighted by what Paul and Roderick have done. Roderick's book has been produced by a small press, and I invited him to say a bit about Mid-Stafford Murders:

"In 95 of 109 pages, one murder for each month of the year is intended to enable Stafford to compete with Midsomer’s murder rate.  In this book are sixteen deaths and one attempted murder.  None of the twelve chapters, one for each month, is connected to any other, except that, in half of them, an ordinary, commonplace (except for those involved) accident, such as might be reported in a local newspaper, is given an improbable backstory and turned into an implausible murder.  The stock of accidental deaths exhausted, the remaining months, to complete the year, are filled with one whodunit (a title called Miss Marple must have a body, prone with a knife in it), incidentally the only chapter without a solution, two with obviously deliberate deaths, one in which two youngster kill each other in a real world acting-out of a computer game, one, helped by a haunted chair, retells a real unsolved crime and another, the stock of deaths being exhausted, is a failed attempt by a resentful motorist to give the elderly driver of a beaten up old Land Rover his just deserts by blowing up the Land Rover.  In only the failed attempt do the police get their man.  The last of the twelve, actually April, tells of the suicide of a teenage girl as a result of Facebook bullying.  This story might be believed, so, in an appendix, the story is retold and its unhappy ending is averted by a love letter. Pages 96 to the end contain the epilogue, a catalogue of the settings of the stories and location maps."

Roderick's book costs £9 plus £1.50 postage in the UK, and is available from 

Etica Press Ltd The Baskervilles 147 Worcester Road Malvern       WR14 1ET info@eticapress.com

or

Roderick Ramage Copehale Coppenhall Stafford       ST18 9BW roderick@copehale.net

Writers at Malice

Whilst at Malice Domestic, I really enjoyed catching up with the Poirot Award winner, Tom Schantz of Rue Morgue Press (check out their excellent catalogue, which includes reprints of many otherwise hard-to-find mysteries of the past) and meeting his daughter Sarah, whose debut novel Fig has just been accepted by Simon & Schuster. It's a book I look forward to reading, and in the meantime her blog Magical Thinking gives an insight into her thoughts about life, storytelling - and daydreaming, which, as she says, is something that writers tend to do more than most.

Along with Tom, Steve Steinbock and Doug Greene (of Crippen & Landru publishers, and John Dickson Carr's biographer) form a trio of experts on Golden Age fiction whose knowledge is pretty much unrivalled. Steve organised a dinner last Friday evening which gave me the chance to catch up with actress turned writer Melodie Johnson Howe, whom I've mentioned before on this blog, and who among other things is one of EQMM's top short story writers. Our companions also included Doug, Charles and Caroline Todd (who won an Agatha the following evening, and who have contributed several short stories to anthologies I've edited), Nora McFarland and her mum, and another actress turned writer, Kathryn Leigh Scott.

Kathryn first earned fame appearing in a long running American TV show called Dark Shadows, which evidently retains a massive following, and her credits include films such as the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. She is not only the first former Playboy bunny I've ever met, but also perhaps the only one who later set up her own successful and long-established publishing business. Like Melodie, Kathryn is great company, and I'm looking forward to reading one of her books. The photo shows me with Melodie, Steve and Kathryn.

Art Taylor is another leading contributor to EQMM, and his excellent story "The Care and Feeding of House Plants" won an Agatha - it's available online via the EQMM site and I urge you to read it. I met him for the first time at a meal organised by Janet Hutchings of EQMM, which also gave me a chance to meet Josh Pachter, whose newsletter about short stories I subscribed to back in the 80s, and whose anthology Top Crime I remember devouring about the same time. Josh is now doing a lot of translating, and it was great to talk to him, his wife Laurie, Janet and Art over the best brunch I've had in ages.

As ever with crime conventions, time passes all too quickly, and it's impossible to do everything. Ingrid Willis, who was there promoting this autumn's Bouchercon at Long Beach has really tempted me to sign up for that too. We'll see. Les Blatt, Jeanne M. Dams, Hank Philippi Ryan,Hannah Dennison, and fellow Brits Frances Brody and Helen Smith were among a good many attendees to whom I chatted all too briefly. All in all, a memorable few days. If you are a fan of traditional mysteries who has never attended Malice Domestic, I can recommend it unreservedly. The convention is brilliantly organised, and the atmosphere as friendly as anyone could wish. I hope tol be back there very soon.

Janet Hutchings and EQMM

One of the real highlights of my trip to Baltimore was to be invited to lunch by Janet Hutchings, the editor of ‘Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’. We originally met ten years ago, when the first US edition of one of my novels was published, and I visited New York ahead of a trip to the Philadelphia Bouchercon, and it was lovely to see her again.

Janet has published a sizeable number of my stories in EQMM over the years and I’m grateful to have such a connection with a marvellous short story magazine that now enjoys legendary status within the genre.

Janet also introduced me to an American crime writer I hadn’t come across before – Melodie Johnson Howe (lower photo.) Melodie turned to crime (fictionally) after a career in acting, and I’m keen to check out her work.

Incidentally, Melodie is married, as she says, to a legend – the record producer Bones Howe. Bones produced one of my favourite sixties songs of lost love – ‘One Less Bell To Answer’, written by the great Burt Bacharach, who featured yesterday in an interview in 'The Guardian', and whose latest concert at The Roundhouse is to be televised on the BBC on Tuesday night (just as well because I couldn't get a ticket...) The title of that song, by the way, is one I fancy using for a crime story one of these days.