DYING IN HOLLYWOOD by Melodie Johnson Howe In Hollywood many famous murders go unsolved. In the land of make believe they can’t quite seem come to terms with the right ending so they end up with no ending or a very unsatisfactory one. I don’t hold out much hope for finding the killer or killers […]

JLW here. I’m taking the day off. But here’s a real treat for a guest column. Steve Hockensmith was one of the first people I asked to write a column for CRIMINAL BRIEF three years ago when Rob Lopresti and I were first developing it, but he passed because he was under deadline for a […]

PROFESSIONAL TIPS– Lemony Snicket by Leigh Lundin You’re a fan of crime writing and you haven’t heard of Lemony Snicket? Leigh at Borders (2005) Lemony Snicket might be accused of the crime of writing, which would undoubtedly please Lemony no end. To be candid, I’ve read only one LS novel, The Bad Beginning from the […]

UNORIGINAL SINS by John M. Floyd All of us, whether we’re writers or not, have pet peeves. One of mine is clichés. Or at least certain clichés. Why do they bother me so? Think of it this way . . . One of my favorite TV commercials of the past several years features a guy standing in […]

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. For today’s Bandersnatch, I’ve invited my son, Sam, to contribute an essay he wrote for school. His Language Arts assignment was to write—in letter form addressed to the teacher—an account of a book he read. I had recently recommended The Deep Blue Good-by (as the first of the “Travis McGee” novels by […]

FEEDING THE SPIRIT by Deborah Elliott-Upton “You know that just before that first Thanksgiving dinner there was one wise, old Native American woman saying, ‘Don’t feed them. If you feed them, they’ll never leave.’” —Dylan Brody Right about this time, I’m thinking I ate too much turkey and dressing and I haven’t even sliced a […]

THANKS TO MR. GIBSON by Rob Lopresti Tomorrow millions of Americans will be chowing down on turkey and the trimmings, and that made me think of the Thanksgivings of my childhood. And those memories brought to mind a very unusual style of storytelling. No, I am not referring to your Uncle Manny who regaled you […]