Coming Soon…

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be included in Crippen & Landru’s upcoming anthology ALL THE CRIME IN THE WORLD: Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Puzzles from Across the Globe. As you can see in image above, the cast is absolutely stacked. It’s an honor to be included.

It was almost four years ago when Gigi contacted me about participating in the project. Before that, I had no plans to try the short story format. Though I’ve always loved short stories (Flannery O’Connor has long been one of my favorite authors), I had never considered writing one as a mystery. There are so many elements in the genre–clues, red herrings, investigation, false solutions, etc–seemingly too many to fit in a short narrative. Add in atmosphere and character development and this seemed like something that would never appeal to me. Nearly two short story collections later, I can definitely say I was wrong. While shorter mysteries don’t have quite the time to marinate in the baffling nature of a good puzzle, they can be just as satisfying, sometimes even more so due to being concentrated. How many times have you read a novel that could lose 20 or 30 pages and be improved? Too many!

When gave short story writing a shot in late 2022, I decided to use the opportunity to try two narrative devices I’d never imagine myself doing. I wrote in first person and I made the mystery partially inverted. Neither of those might sound radical to you, but they went against everything I had embraced as a mystery writer. I enjoyed writing the story so much that (after one more novel — Monkey See, Monkey Murder) I have written short stories exclusively since then. This has allowed me to play with multiple styles and solutions.

My story for the anthology is called The Fourth Guest. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve done so far, though it does feature my regular detectives. I can’t wait for you to read it and I can’t wait to read the contributions of all the other authors.

I know that Crippen & Landru are making ARCs available to reviewers. If you are interested, you can request one through their website.

When the cover and exact publishing date are available, I’ll post them here.