Eight Mystery Writers You Should Be Reaing Nowwww

by Michael Guillebeau

  With every sound, I’d held my breath, imagining a tree falling into the living room and somehow impaling me into my mother’s pink sofa. There would be blood stains that I’m sure even she, the self proclaimed Queen of Laundry, would be unable to remove. The first aid kit looked ridiculous in the face of tree impalement, but at least I had the wine. It was good; it was a Pinot Grigio, even warm, those go down well.

  Another flash of lightning and I could see how many screens there were left on the patio; just one, holding on by 3 molecules, flapping in the wind.

  The little TV was my only company, and I was fascinated watching this poor weatherman in his bright yellow parka, standing out in the storm, warning us to stay indoors. Street lights were whipping wildly around him attached by only one cable, and he kept listing to the right. The rain was hitting his little baby face with such a force that I was sure he’d be pock marked for life. A large black garbage can went flying over his head and nearly hit him. He should go back inside, I thought, and wondered how much he was getting paid to stand out there. I was guessing it was not a lot and hoped he had a flask stashed inside that parka.

  I kept pacing through the house, which was nothing like the home in Brooklyn that I grew up in. First of all, this place was much bigger with a lot more windows. Everything was decorated in pastel pinks and blues and there were pictures of the ocean and sail boats and pelicans on the walls.

  “Who are these people who live here?” I said out loud to no one, “And what have they done to my parents; my born and raised two blocks from Prospect Park parents?”

  Along the entire back of the house large sliding glass doors opened from the living room to the patio.

  In Brooklyn, everyone sits out front; in Florida, everyone sits out back. Patios are big here and the stores make a killing selling people all kinds of furniture to go in them. Umbrellas for tables are more plentiful than cannolis in Italy. If I lived here though, and had this swimming pool, I’m certain it would be no time at all before I too joined the tanned and unsociable set and put furniture in the back of my house.

  I got a pad and paper and amused myself thinking of creative curse words and derogatory anagrams I could make with the name Florida, and also to come up with equally creative excuses I could use to not visit my folks here in the future. I loved them, and wanted to see them, just not here.

  “Do your worst, Florida!” I hollered, “I can take it. Hurricane shermicane, you’re not so tough, but sweet Jesus, it’s hot. It’s soooooo damned hot!”

  I got a helping of semi- liquid ice cream from the freezer and held the bowl to my forehead for a minute before eating, or more accurately drinking, it down.

  The worst of the storm appeared to finally be over and Fanny was making her soggy way out of here, leaving us all to locate our missing patio furniture and stray pets.

  I had sweated away twelve pounds and immediately put them back on by eating all the ice cream in the freezer. I used up all the batteries in my little TV and burned down all the fragrant candles, and was, fortunately, not killed by either flying bodies or tree limbs.

  I figured I’d try to sleep a bit, and in the morning, when this chapter out of the Old Testament was over, maybe I’d be lucky and wake up in Oz or Kansas, or even Jersey, anywhere but here.

  SAMPLE CHAPTER

  Entangled

  “I haven't enjoyed a mystery like this one in a long time. Granted, being from southern Florida was an extra enticement for me, but even if I wasn't, the ambiance created by Ms. Cosgrove puts you in the gorgeous and muggy thick of it. Fast-paced, plot and character driven (which is hard to do), intriguing, and filled with twists and turns, the well-written story covers environmental issues, as well as our protagonist, Maggie, being older, lonely, and funny at often ill-advised times. The action scenes are wonderfully vivid. The reader is put right there. You can't help but fall in love with the lagoon, the dolphins, the scooter, but I'm starting to give the plot away. Read Entangled for a colorful journey to Florida, several real belly laughs, and a whacking good mystery.” – Heather Haven, Award Winning Author of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries

  Chapter 1

  The instructions the boat captain gave me for the use of the knife were vague, but I felt better having it in case I needed to cut myself free, were I to be pulled through the Gulf of Mexico by my catch, a la Captain Ahab.

  Deep sea fishing can be fun as long as someone else baits the line, holds the pole for you until you get a bite, and then hauls in the catch when your arms get tired. Thus was the experience for the four bikini clad co-eds who had also booked this charter.

  I, on the other hand, have not worn a bikini since Jimmy Carter was president. Today I was sporting a Ben and Jerry’s ball cap, an oversized Yankees jersey that once belonged to my ex-husband, and seven or eight layers of sunscreen.

  Captain Billy of Billy’s Big Boats was regaling the young ladies with his tale of once captaining the actor who played the blind guy in Star Trek, when I was almost jerked out of my chair. In truth, I was strapped in, but the belt nearly sawed me in half.

  “Billy?” I yelled over to him. “Something’s pulling here!”

  Billy glanced over disinterestedly and said, “Good, good, hold the line.”

  My feet could get no traction sliding in seawater and fish scales on a boat that was only slightly more seaworthy than a ’58 Buick sealed with duct tape.

  “Billy? I might need a hand here.”

  Billy did not hear me over the giggling, his own as well as the girls’.

  The pull on my arms and hands was becoming painful but I was not about to let go; my pride wouldn’t allow it. Those girls were young and beautiful and...young, but I was the one going to haul in a...I don’t know, a tuna or a giant squid.

  I was like Spencer Tracy, in The Old Man and the Sea. I began speaking to it using a Cuban accent. "Fish, I love you and respect you very much, but I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

  Sweat poured into my eyes and onto my sunglasses giving everything a blurry, distant look, so I could not see if the fish was jumping, swimming away, or charging me.

  Then Billy’s Big Boat leaned hard to the port side as my catch stopped there, momentarily anchoring us. Two of the young ladies fell conveniently onto Billy who also fell, not so conveniently, into the bucket of chum.

  The girls, now covered in minnows and shrimp, began to scream. Billy, scrambling to his feet, tripping over buckets and skidding in water, was stringing curses together so creatively that under different circumstances I would have applauded. Then he and his crewmen managed to pull in my catch which turned out to be not as I had suspected, a gigantic fish, but a net filled with several medium-sized fish and three average-sized dead guys.

  Captain Billy called the marine police and one of his men sedated our hysterical debutantes with Rum and Diet Coke. Someone found a pirate flag under a seat cushion and laid it across the men’s faces, but their bloated bodies were still visible to anyone brave enough to look. I tried, in the interest of journalism, because I was, in fact, a journalist, to inspect them a bit closer. An object that resembled a kind of whistle worn by gym coaches hung around the neck of one of the corpses. After kneeling down to get a better look and inhaling the accompanying putrid odor, my body decided throwing up over the side of the boat was the more appropriate action.

  We arrived at shore before we ran out of alcohol and I out of patience. Everyone seemed more annoyed that their trip was so abruptly interrupted than the fact that there were three men on the deck with their eyeballs missing.

  *****

  On dry land answering questions from one of the uniformed officers, I said, “So, a triple murder, bet that’s a call you don’t get too often.”

  I had no idea if the men were murdered or merely drowned but I was baiting him, so to speak.

  “Huh? What?” he asked, looking forlornly at his fellow officers who were assigned the task of questioning the girls from the boat who had been much to
o busy shrieking and saying, “Oh my God,” to be bothered pulling t-shirts over their skimpy tops. The regularly scheduled late afternoon storm clouds were moving in from the west and the gusting wind that preceded them gave the women an even sexier hair-blown look. It had all the makings of a Playboy photo shoot, but with corpses.

  He ignored my question and asked, “Why were you on the boat today?”

  “I did a trade-off with Billy.”

  He raised an eyebrow and before the smirk could fully form on his lips I said, “Don’t even go there. We traded for ad space on my website.”

  I had no desire to speak to this man another minute. I wanted to talk to my only friend on the force; Rose.

  Rose Shelton is the Fort Myers’ police department’s rising star. She’s more accurate with a gun than Clint Eastwood, smart, ambitious, fun, and one of the most beautiful women I know.

  “Is Officer Shelton coming? I’d like to talk to her if she’s here. No offense, but we’re friends.”

  “That figures,” he said without looking up. He wrote something on his notepad and I stood on my toes and craned my neck in an effort to read it. “No, Shelton’s working another case,” he said, turning the pad away. “Did you know the deceased?”

  “I’m the one that hooked them and reeled them in, but other than that, no.”

  He looked at me, not so much as if intimidated by my amazing dead body retrieval skills, but more incredulously, like I had sprouted antlers.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” I said, “I’m not sure I believe it myself and I was there. So, are we done? Because if we are, I’d like to go speak to those gentlemen over there.”

  He nodded and I proceeded to where the bodies were being loaded.

  A woman I noticed as head of forensics was near the coroner’s van. I almost didn’t recognize her in the white coverall suit that made her look as though she were transporting plutonium.

  “Hello,” I called to her in my practiced, non-intimidating yet firm voice.

  She turned and said, “Oh, it’s you. That figures.”

  “Hi Miranda, nice to see you too,” I said. “Why are you, you know, doing this?” I turned my head into the back of the van.

  Miranda was my version of an arch enemy, but I needed her so I didn’t take her attitude personally; I pretended she was merely socially awkward. I smiled broadly to help her feel less so.

  “Don’t touch anything,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be here anyway.”

  “A little late for that, I’m the one that reeled them in.”

  She raised her right eyebrow, that being a skill, by the way, I’d never been able to master.

  “Ok, so, I had some help reeling them in, but it was me that hooked them and helped open the net…”

  She interrupted, “Yeah, why’d you do that? I thought you were experienced enough by now to know better than to tamper with evidence.” I could see sweat pouring from under her cap, running onto her paper mask; she looked hot and miserable. I gave her some slack.

  “They were bodies, I mean, they…well, maybe I could have…I don’t know…I had to…”

  “What, you thought you could do a little CPR maybe? Because it seems to me that a smart blogger like you would have sense enough to, I don’t know, figure out when a body’s been floating in the ocean for a few days.”

  She was right, I knew better.

  I had firsthand experience investigating some fairly nasty criminals when I arrived in Florida a little more than a year ago. Now I write a crime-scene blog and sell ad space for it, which pays nearly nothing, but sometimes I can trade for stuff like this trip today. A police scanner that I found used on Craigslist, a Vespa, internet access, and the willingness, a calling even, to be annoying were all I needed to start my own little career in journalism. This was the being annoying part.

  “So,” I said, “they’ve been dead a few days? They’ve been in the water that whole time?”

  She walked away but I stayed on her like a border collie, “How come forensics is messing with the bodies before the autopsy? What was that whistle thing?”

  She stopped, turned to look at me like I had confessed to the Lindbergh kidnapping and said, "I’m sure you didn’t take anything from any of the bodies. Even you’re not that stupid.”

  “A, I’m not stupid, thank you, and B, of course I didn’t take anything. Why? What’s missing? The whistle thingy?”

  She turned and walked back to the group of men in coroner gear and when I tried to follow, she said, “That’s as far as you go Mizz Finn, if you’ve given your statement already, you can leave the area.”

  “It’s ok, I know these social interactions make you uncomfortable,” I called to her retreating form.

  Interview

  Michael Guillebeau: Kathleen, you’re known as a comedy writer first, and mystery novelist second. Is that how you see yourself?

  Kathleen Cosgrove: That would be a fairly good description of my writing and also how my mind works. I always look to see how any situation can be made funny, and it almost always can. I enjoy making people laugh and it seems I have a gift for that, as opposed to say, well, any other talent really. I’ve tried a lot of ways to express myself creatively, but it wasn’t until I wrote Engulfed that I realized I had a bit of a knack for the absurd in writing. I had a lot of imaginary friends when I was little because, quite honestly, the real kids wouldn’t play with me. I was hard-of-hearing, had to wear an eye patch for amblyopia, and was so socially awkward I could make Boo Radley seem like Cary Grant. It was then I created a rich fantasy life full of larger than life characters that eventually paid off, although that wouldn’t happen for decades.

  MG: What made you decide to sit down and write Engulfed?

  KC: I was reading one of Janet Evanovitch’s Stephanie Plum novels. They are a blast to read, very funny, with a whole cast of quirky characters. The main character is in her early thirties as are most of the other main characters. There are richly drawn recurring characters who are older, including her mother, who is probably about the age I was when I was reading it. The mother’s role in the novel is to worry about her daughter’s marital status and the tenderness of the pot roast. I wanted a world where her mother, and all women of a certain age, left the house and began having adventures of their own. I decided if I couldn’t read it anywhere, I’d write it. I wanted a story where Baby Boomers were still out there having fun, mixing it up, even making bad decisions or saving the day, having sex, smoking pot, being the hero or villain, but most of all, being relevant. Jessica Fletcher was an older amateur sleuth, but I could never see her back stage at a drag show, which is where I put my own Maggie Finn in Engulfed.

  MG: What should your readers expect when they pick up one of your Maggie Finn novels, Engulfed or Entangled?

  KC: I expect those readers to be ready for an escape from the ordinary. My novels are lighthearted, fun, easy reads, perfect for a beach bag. If they can embrace the absurd, to be willing to take a ride with a boat load of eccentric but lovable characters, well, it’s a murder mystery so they’re not all lovable.

  I had a reader write and tell me that reading Engulfed gave her the first laugh she’d had since tragedy had struck her family. If I never get another review, I can live with just that. It made the whole labor of writing it worthwhile.

  MG: What book makes you feel good, one that you’ve read over and over?

  KC: To Say Nothing of the Dog or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump by Connie Willis. It’s comic science fiction. The characters are so well drawn and perfectly believable in all their quirkiness that they become real by the end of the first chapter. I’ve read it three or four times and listened to the audio version about as many times. The first book I fell in love with was How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn, the story of life in a Welsh mining village. I was probably nine years old and it was the book that taught me the magic books could do, transporting readers to different places and times. I became an obsessive reader after tha
t one, spending lunch hours in the library looking for my next adventure.

  MG: Is there a common thread that runs through your writing?

  KC: That would probably be something along the lines of, ‘It’s never too late to be extraordinary.’ I believe that now is the time to do what you may have feared trying, or didn’t have the time or resources to do. Simply because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t happen still. I like the idea of reinventing oneself on an ongoing basis. That and ‘redemption.’ I’ve come to believe redemption is the most important component of any story or in life really. Not necessarily for the bad guy to see the error of his ways, but for the protagonist to have a moment when they realize they’ve grown into a better them, is a pivotal part of any great story to me. I grew up reading fairy tales and Beauty and the Beast was my favorite, probably for that reason. It’s stayed with me.

  MG: What have you written that you’re most proud of?

  KC: I’m pretty proud that I finished Engulfed. I’d written a couple novels before then, but never one that I felt was worthy of having other people read until Engulfed. Beyond that, an essay I wrote as kind of tribute to my mother and grandmothers. It’s a humor piece that I’ve performed at various storytelling events, it’s been published in a few places. It’s been incredibly well received and it allows those amazing women to live on, to live on with laughter. It’s how they would want to be remembered.

  MG: Are you working on a third Maggie Finn novel?

  KC: I’m outlining one now. I’m traveling to Miami, Florida for ‘research.’ It may take several visits for me to get everything I need for it. I’m making the Seminole Casinos down there a focal point, so naturally I have to visit one or several.

  MG: It sounds like rough work, are you filling those gaps between tanning and slot machines with anything else?