Will > Books: cozy-mystery‎ (4)

Dr. Henry glared at Blake and snatched the champagne glass from her hand. “I can pour my wife’s drink well enough, Blake.” He sloshed a dollop of l

Dr. Henry glared at Blake and snatched the champagne glass from her hand. “I can pour my wife’s drink well enough, Blake.” He sloshed a dollop of liquid into her glass, refilling what he had just caused to splash out. He smiled obnoxiously at Mrs. Henry as she accepted the glass from him and took a drink.
With a cold smile to her husband, she said, “Thank you, darling.”
Then Mrs. Henry crumpled to the floor and lay quite still.

…when I taught fifth grade American history, the story of how America developed felt like a story instead of a bunch of names and dates in a book. Writing about the ‘20’s feels the same- so many things were happening as a result of World War One that influenced everyday life. Technology and science were exploding with new discoveries, women were finding their new place in the world, millions were adjusting to horrible new realities of destroyed countries, bodies, and minds, and politics were ever-changing and charged with fear and hope. It’s a fascinating time to write about. - from The Book Delight interview

Harry Snyder, Dr. Henry’s assistant, was seated on her other side. With small brown eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, and thin lips that emphasized his large, impeccable teeth, he looked rather like a rodent. His demeanor, skittish and reticent, matched his mousy appearance.

Much has been written about soldiers experiencing shell-shock, so I wanted to explore a lesser known avenue of symptoms and recovery. Alexander’s recovery from the Great War is complex and isn’t straightforward—few cases are—nor it is over. I will just say that many hours of research and consideration went into developing his symptoms and coping strategies… - from The Book Delight interview

Her eyes fell on the name of a plant from south-central Mexico, brought back decades ago by Dr. Maxwell. The vine was a sickly yellow color and zigzagged around trees as it grew, clinging tightly to its host. Maxwell had named it the xolotl vine, after the Aztec god of death and lightning, since the growth pattern resembled a fork of lightning and the toxin in its leaves struck as quickly. Saffron had the feeling that Maxwell enjoyed the notorious reputation of his plant, occasionally still telling secondhand stories of people dropping to the ground immediately upon consumption.

The truth is, I often have trouble with social situations; it’s as though everyone is playing an elaborate game with complex rules they all know, b

The truth is, I often have trouble with social situations; it’s as though everyone is playing an elaborate game with complex rules they all know, but I’m always playing for the first time.

Today at work, I found a guest very dead in his bed. Mr. Black. The Mr. Black. Other than that, my work day was as normal as ever.

As an editor, Pronovost is always thinking about how a manuscript fits into a specific genre or how a story might bend reader expectations in that genre. For her own novel, she imagined mixing a misfit-character trope – inspired by the titular protagonist of Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine – with a contemporary locked-room mystery inspired by the work of U.K. thriller writer Ruth Ware. Add in a touch of the film Knives Out and the board game Clue, and there is The Maid. - from the Quill & Quire interview

Is now a good time for me to return your suite to a state of perfection?

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson - from the epigraph

Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson - from the epigraph

…she did owe him. He had helped her stop being young and start being interesting.

…she did owe him. He had helped her stop being young and start being interesting.

I wanted to make the joke! That he’d died in his sleep, when he’d actually died in his soup. The real difficulty was figuring out how someone could actually die in their soup, so the joke kind of forced all the rest of it…As a writer, there’s just some things that you want to write. And the soup thing just made me laugh every time I read it. - from the Stop and Smell the Pages interview

On television the police were always saying, “I’ll talk to my snitches,” and every literary sleuth seemed to have a network of carefully cultivated connections or village gossips to help them out. The difficulty with being an actual amateur detective was the lack of this inside information. No wonder none of the fictional representatives ever featured a detective who was just starting out: without contacts you were nowhere.

I have a hypothesis that everybody has another country that’s not the country they were born in and not the country that they live in, and when I went to Paris, I was just very comfortable there. I used to spend a lot of time there; in the summers, when I would come to England for research, I would stop over in Paris for a couple of days. So I knew enough when I started writing the novel to set the novel there, but I did have to go back and spend more time there. - from the Stop and Smell the Pages interview