Tag: mystery

  • Newspaper Coverage of Crime Fiction

    I’ve been grumpy for some time about how diminished the Globe & Mail‘s book coverage has been, lo these many years. I miss having a Books section, with a weekly column on crime fiction by Margaret Cannon. (Dream job!) That’s down to once a month or less, and it’s more of a quick round-up. But…

  • Solving Plot Problems

    Most of my focus has been on revising a novel draft that I’ve despaired of, these past two years, since I completed my 75,000 or so words. [Worse than feared: 104,665, which is, for my chosen genre, a baggy monster of a book, and unpublishable as a first novel.] I could see the plot and…

  • Independent Women in Golden Age Mysteries: From Evil Under the Sun to Gaudy Night

    Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun (1941) has a wonderful series of final revelations. Poirot untangles the various threads that have complicated his investigation of Arlena Stuart’s mystery, for a rapt audience of suspects and bystanders. While the crime was rather convoluted in its execution, the motives were straightforward. Then there are the last several…