Have you ever been confronted with a decision as to whether or not you would place yourself in the middle of a dangerous situation in order to stop a criminal?  Are you one to try and break up a fight, tackle a fleeing shoplifter, or confront a person who was acting suspiciously?  There usually is not…

At a recent author event, an audience member asked me how I keep upbeat when most of my writing revolves around troubled souls who get into trouble.  The most obvious answers come to mind. I have a husband who pulls me away from the computer. I have kids to attend to. I have a great group of friends to have fun with. The most honest answer, however, comes from deep within. Simply put: I don't think delving into darkness is a bad thing.

Have you ever met someone who you know…

In this rapidly changing industry, writers must adapt on a near-daily basis and continuously search for new ways to reach new readers. In that mode, I’ve decided to re-brand my Detective Jackson series by listing Secrets to Die For as the first book and creating a new cover for it. The old cover was never meant to be the final product, but that's another…

In the late 1970s, working as a journalist for a New York syndicate I went down to Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina to interview the legendary mystery writer, Mickey Spillane.

            Beginning in 1947, Spillane wrote a series of hard-boiled paperback novels starring a tough-as-nails private detective named Mike Hammer. Titles such as Vengeance Is Mine and I, The Jury and My Gun Is Quick sold in excess of 180 million copies and…

Brattleboro, Vt., is a bucolic town — pricked with picturesque church steeples — and home to a vibrant arts community. So it's an unlikely setting for gruesome murder and gritty crime, but that's just what goes on in Archer Mayor's Brattleboro-based Joe Gunther detective series.

Mayor is something of an unlikely character himself. Never mind his New England blue blood background — Mayor has had some grisly jobs. He works as a death examiner for the state's medical office and…

While growing up, I loved to read mysteries with great detective characters that solved the most difficult murders – and still do.  It didn’t take me long to find some of the Sherlock Holmes novels after I read the Nancy Drew mystery series, and books by Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen just to name a few.  The adventures of Sherlock Holmes just seemed like the next…

Crime novelists generally write a novel a year. It’s what publishers want. Some big writers—and I mean, 25 million books sold—have told me their publishers and agents complain that if they don’t produce a book a year their readers will forget them.

In the case of such writers, some of those 25 million may have degenerative diseases and others may be plain stupid, but in all…

As a reader, writer, watcher of all things Noire, I'm happy I can now add player to my list of Noire enjoyments.  Yesterday, May 17, Rockstar Games released it's long awaited title, L.A. Noire, in which you play the character of Detective Cole Phelps trying to make a name for himself in 1947 Los Angeles.

When I originally saw the trailer for this game back in 2007, it literally made me salivate, and I'm happy to report the game lived up to expectations.  L.A. Noire borrows from all…

The Alexander Steele Mysteries

Alexander Steele is a retired African American private detective turned night club owner living in Philadelphia. He hoped to put the detective life behind him and move on with his longtime girlfriend Shakia. When one of Alex's friends brings him an encrypted travel drive with info on the blackout that was created three months before the recent Canadian blackout; Alex finds himself drawn into the…

I've certainly done my share of carping over authors' failings, both live and online. I am impatient with characters who act in ways real people never would, with plots that don't make complete sense at the end, and especially with killers who come out of nowhere in the last chapter. However, I don't pretend to be a critic. Like so many other people, I only know--and only want to talk about--what I like.

I've heard writers and readers say that critics don't matter. "I never…

Death Dealer and beyond

Dying for Justice, the fifth book in the bestselling Detective Jackson series is now available on Kindle and other e-readers for $2.99 and in print from Amazon.

Here's the back cover text:

When Gina wakes up from a two-year coma, she realizes someone tried to kill her and make it look like suicide. Detective-in-training Lara…

I received my author copies of the latest DI Andy Horton marine mysteryto be published as an unabridged audio book yesterday and it looks and sounds great. Dead Man’s Wharf is the fourth in the marine mystery series of crime novels featuring Inspector Andy Horton and is set in Portsmouth and the Solent area. It was chosen as the Best…

Today (Jan.31) starts my Blog Crawl (a pub crawl mixed with a blog tour). There are prizes to be had by commenting on the posts as I travel from blog to blog during the month of February. You can find the details at itsamysterytomepegherring.blogspot.com

As you follow the crawl, you'll be entertained with uses and abuses of the English language. Each week some lucky reader will win a copy of my February release, THE DEAD DETECTIVE AGENCY (either print or e-book format, your…

I wrote the following article for the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Debut Dagger Award to help those entering for the competition, and thought it might interest readers of my blog here on Crimespace. The Debut Dagger is open to anyone who has not yet had a novel published commercially. All shortlisted entrants will receive a generous selection of crime novels and professional assessments of their entries. The…