| "Oh!
What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott |
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| Welcome to Spring 2005: Volume II, Issue 4 Web Mystery Magazine is extremely proud to present this issue, featuring non-fiction articles and columns by experts in a variety of fields, from forensics to private investigations to historical fiction to pulp fiction history, as well as original short mystery fiction by writers both established and new. Criminal Investigator Michael Siverling writes about parental child-abduction, and writer-cop James O. Born contributes an article on writer-cops. Writer-cop B. J. Bourg, Jan Christensen, Kaye George, Christopher Gooch, Charles Schaeffer, Erik Smetana, Earl Staggs, and Tim Wohlforth provide a feast of short stories – happily marking our debut in the genre of short mystery fiction. Elsie Haydon offers a farewell to the late cozy-author Barbara Burnett Smith, and Kathy Lynn Emerson gives a glance at The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code. This issue happily introduces four new columns: "A Jim Wolfe Short Mystery" by Tim Wohlforth; "Around the Block: Mystery Writers Convention News" by David Terrenoire; "Real World Investigations: A Writer’s Perspective" by P.I. Meriah Crawford, and "E-Legends: Flash-Folklore in the Era of the Internet" by Editor Rosalie Stafford. Our continuing regular columns by the highly-esteemed Dr. Anil Aggrawal, pulp-historian Ginger Johnson, P.I. Ann Flaherty, cozy-expert Dawn Dawdle, and Unsolved-Crimes International Organization, and our customary line-up of new books by WMM writers and news-contributors round out the Spring 2005 issue. Web Mystery Magazine continues to celebrate good research and good writing! |
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| Direct correspondence to Rosalie Stafford, Editor, Web Mystery Magazine. (Visit Archives for table of contents.) |
"One of the most horrifying events that can occur to a parent is the disappearance of a child. These cases strike a chord in our national conscience. Everyone knows the names of these children: Polly Klass, Elizabeth Smart, Megan Kanka, Jessica Lunsford, and the others. But there is another kind of child abduction that garners far less attention and concern: When a child is taken by his or her own parent." MORE >>>> Michael Siverling is Supervising Criminal Investigator for the County of Sacramento, California. His debut mystery, Sterling Inheritance, won St. Martin's Press Best First Private Eye Novel Contest in 2002. "As a working cop here in Florida I like seeing accurate detail, not something a writer learned on Law and Order or CSI. A good story is much more important than perfect detail, but the little things can add up to turn off a realism junkie. Clichés like “stop in the name of the law” or “you only get one phone call” still make me laugh. Anyway, I’ve been reading cops who are writers. This is a partial list of some of the best writer-cops..." MORE >>>> James O. Born is a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. His novels Walking Money and Shock Wave are published by Putnam.
"I laughed, the wickedness of which surprised even me. 'This ain’t about money.' I held the flashlight in my left hand and turned it so that the light splashed against my ski mask. I caught the bottom of the ski mask with the muzzle of my pistol and shoved it away from my face. Barry Vincent’s mouth fell open. “You! But … but … you … you’re a cop! You can’t do this!” MORE >>>> B. J. Bourg currently works as Chief Investigator for a District Attorney’s Office in Louisiana. "That old saying about wallowing with pigs. "That’s what was on my mind as I waited for Richie Gold to come in. "My first year on the force, an old sergeant told me it happens to some of us. You wallow with pigs, they say, and you come up as dirty as they are. "You put in enough years working the streets with scum and you start thinking like they do, doing things the way they do. You do it for all the right reasons, you tell yourself, but the line between the good guys and the bad guys gets gray and thin as the years go by. Maybe it was on my mind because I was in my twentieth year as a cop. "Or maybe it was because of what I was planning to do." MORE >>>> Earl Staggs's novel, Memory of a Murder will be published by Quiet Storm this year.
"He’s single, rich, charming and wants to marry her after just three weeks of hot and heavy emailing. "My client Rochelle met Joel through an Internet dating web site and she feels she has met her soul-mate. After getting the details from my client, which include the fact that Joel is an entrepreneur worth in excess of five million dollars, I warn her that the I see too many red flags and to please wait until I complete my investigation before she orders the wedding cake. "You see, Rochelle has come to me on two other occasions after meeting 'Mr. Right' on the Internet. Each time I had to deliver the news that 'Mr. Right' was in fact married and not even close to what he had purported himself to be." MORE >>>> Ann Flaherty, a licensed private investigator in the state of California with over 25 years' experience in the investigative field, is the owner of the R.D.D. Detective Agency and is a noted authority on missing persons, fraud, scams, and elder abuse.
"Who becomes a PI, and how do they do it? "These are common questions that I get asked when people find out I’m a PI. I certainly didn’t come to the profession in one of the usual ways ... "Beyond the basics: "Working as a PI can be more complicated than just getting a PI license or registration..." MORE >>>> Meriah Crawford is a private investigator who lives and works in Virginia. Her company is called Rhino Investigations. In her other life, she’s currently studying in the Stonecoast MFA creative writing program.
Beneath
a Panamanian Moon –The rule is never sleep
with anyone with more trouble than you: but you can write about them
... people who are in trouble, who cause trouble, or who attract trouble
the way shiny objects attract trophy wives ... In this book, a piano
player attracts a boatload of bad news when history, love, and American
music collide in a Panamanian mystery that practically sweats from the
heat.
"Jim Born is the real thing: a South Florida lawman with an authentic sound that puts you at the scene. Walking Money is a winner." –– Elmore Leonard "Only a cop could know this stuff – only a natural writer could put it down in a novel that’s so smart and suspenseful. Jim Born is a new star." –– W.E.B. Griffin James O. Born is a Special Agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Walking Money (0-399-151-699) and Shock Wave (0-399-152-636) are published by Putnam's.
Sterling Inheritance – Private investigator Jason Wilder's assignment is to locate a missing businessman and to return him to his worried wife. With Jason doing the footwork and "Her Highness" Mom supplying the know-how, they get dangerously close, and Mom is going to have to take a hand herself. Mike Siverling is a detective in real life. His debut mystery, Sterling Inheritance (St. Martin's Minotaur , ISBN 0-31-23192-74) , won St. Martin's 2002 Best First Private Eye Novel Contest.
Deadlocked – In the latest Lou Mason novel, the attorney is hired to prove that Ryan Kowalczyk was executed for a double murder he didn’t commit while the killer went free. Going after the killer puts Mason to the ultimate test and exposes dark truths about his own past. A trial lawyer since 1977, Joel Goldman's Lou Mason novels include Motion to Kill, The Last Witness, Cold Truth, and Deadlocked (Pinnacle Books, ISBN: 0786016086).
The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code – The Da Vinci Code: It is a cultural phenomenon of extraordinary proportions, having created not only legions of readers but also hundreds of questions from each of them. Is the story true? Does the Opus Dei exist? Who are the Templars? What is the Holy Grail and whom does it serve? And to meet this barrage of questions there have been a number of books. However, none before have met the needs of the curious non-partisan. The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code comes at the examination of Dan Brown’s work from a completely secular angle. Where most of the Code books intend to de-bunk or defend the ideas on basis of their religious truth, The Real History is completely unbiased by religious opinion. Organized like an encyclopedia, alphabetically with entries for each character, lace, artifact and historical event, The Real History addresses each item individually with a true/false and contextual evaluation. Exhaustively researched, laden with photos, references and suggested reading, The Real History Behind the Da Vinci Code is the companion for the reader looking for the truth and nothing but.
Brief
Review
Kathy Lynn Emerson discusses The Real History Behind The Da Vinci Code by Sharan Newman
"Thrilling Detective, more popular than its sister publication Thrilling Mystery, continued through 1953 and 213 issues. This was the way of the pulp magazine. The new pocket sized novels were more trendy than the larger pulp magazine. Plus, the paperback author was bringing a more hardboiled writing style to genre fiction. Basically, America was growing up after World War II, and the pulps just could not grow up fast enough." MORE >>>> By publishing their magazines (Behind the Mask & Action Adventure Stories, Detective Mystery Stories, and Echoes), pulp historians Ginger Johnson and her husband Tom, over the last 20 years, have shone new light on countless "lost" stories from the pulp heyday.
Gumshoe
Online is a point-and-click adventure game set in
the crime-ridden streets of 1930’s America. With its film
noir setting, the game blends the suspense of a hard-boiled detective
novel with the challenge of an interactive adventure: an entertaining
mystery series in which the player has the starring role.
Karen
S. Wiesner’s method presents a sure-fire system to reduce rewrites
and writing detours, showing how to create an outline so detailed and
complete that it actually doubles as a first draft. First
Draft in 30 Days is published by Writer's Digest Books
(1-582-972-966).
Web
Mystery Magazine (ISSN: 1547-9609) is a free on-line
quarterly journal dedicated to investigating the mysterious genre
in print, in film, and in real-life. The Web
welcomes well-researched, well-written articles, reviews, and
mystery fiction. Writers are invited to read the Submission
Guidelines.
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"I solved a very interesting case in November 1993. On 16th November, 1993, I was called by the police to a house in Vasant Vihar, where they had found the dead body of an 18 year old girl Rajni. Rajni was a student of B.Com. (Bachelor of Commerce) in Delhi University. Her parents were simple middle-class people. She had a younger brother, a 15 year old boy called Raju. Rajni was in love with Pramod, a boy who was her colleague in the college. Everybody knew about their love-affair. Her parents were however very much against it, and had advised their daughter to terminate this affair. But she would not listen. Pramod came from a good family, but his company was not good. There were rumors in the campus, that the couple had even had sexual relations. However Rajni had confided everything to Sarita, her best friend. During the police investigations later on, Sarita told the police that Rajni had no sexual relations with Pramod. However only a few days back Rajni had told her that lately Pramod was insisting to start sexual relations with her; but as she was against such things before marriage, she had refuted his advances. Rajni had not lost her love for Pramod ... she just did not want to have sexual relations with him before marriage. "On 15th November, 1993 Rajni came home from college at the usual time of 5 pm...." MORE >>>> Dr. Anil Aggrawal is a professor of Forensic Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi.
Killer
Fog
A Jim Wolfe Short Mystery "A thick fog had swallowed up Jack London Square. I could hear the dolorous braying of a foghorn as I made my way across the promenade toward the shimmering orange glow of Big Emma’s. Normally, I view the fog as a friend that, realizing my need for solitude, has blocked off the rest of the world for me. But not this fog. It left me no space. Pushed in on me from all sides. "Beads of moisture dripped down my face. My damp flannel shirt and jeans clung to my body. No wind but it was cold. I turned up the collar on my sports jacket. I stopped and looked around. I saw no one. No footsteps. Once again the bleating of the distant foghorn. Every ninety seconds. Incessantly. Never missing a beat. I felt a cloud of white pressing in on my face like a down pillow. Suffocating. I began to breath harder. "I have a client to see, I told myself. A private eye has to take what he can get. Can’t panic. I shook myself like a dog after a dip in a cold stream. I trudged on toward the bar." MORE >>>>
"The old '78 Mustang sputtered and died as Sammie pulled into the farmyard just outside Noonday, Texas. She sighed and turned off the ignition. Probably the EGR valve was clogged again. She would fix it after her visit. It might make her dirty if she did it now, and that wouldn't be professional. Good thing she'd worked with her father on old cars when she was young. That knowledge had come in handy lots of times since. "She grabbed her briefcase and purse. As she stepped out of the car, she looked around. The front yard boasted three dogwood trees and several beautiful azaleas which might have won the owners an Azalea Trail award if they lived in Tyler. But the place was about three miles out of Noonday, and it was so quiet, Sammie stopped for a moment to just listen. Nothing disturbed the peace. "The house was a typical old farmhouse with peeling white paint. A curtain fluttered out of one of the open front windows. A cat slithered down the front porch steps where an old rocker sat becalmed next to a wicker table and chair. Beyond the house a tumble of burnt boards sprawled on the ground. Must have been the barn – her reason for being here." MORE >>>> Jan Christensen's first mystery novel, Sara's Search, was published in 2004, with another scheduled for 2005. "Two hundred beepers woke up and chirped their signals to their keepers, who read the scrolling messages, smiled, stuck the devices in their pockets and purses, and headed out. "Melissa breathed a barely perceptible sigh of relief. Can’t relax too much yet. In two hours it will all be over." MORE >>>> Kaye George is a violinist and a life-long short story writer.
"Welcome to the debut of a new column providing highlights from recent conferences. As your columnist, you’d think I’d be on the scene, gathering notes on panels and roundtables, schmoozing the participants, bending elbows with agents and authors in the bar, commiserating about the state of the business and the lack of publicity money. But I’m not. In spite of what my publisher thinks, I am not independently wealthy. "That leaves me looking to people who have actually been there to fill me in on the particulars, which is a lot like the way I write books. When I can, I go to where the action is. I’ve been taken through booking at the county jail and a few weeks ago I went to see Central Prison’s old gas chamber, now located in a widow’s back yard. But that’s another story. This column will be strictly an “as told to” effort. I’ve ghosted novels for others, now I find myself in the curious position of having others ghost for me ... This time we’re covering Murder in the Magic City, thanks to Susan McBride and Nancy Cohen, and Left Coast Crime with Joel Goldman and Denise Hamilton. " MORE >>>>
"Grief can be felt in many ways on many levels, but experts in crime psychology generally agree that the greatest grief felt is a loss without resolution. These three case files from Unsolved Crimes International tell the story of children taken from their loved ones with the hope that somehow, someone can provide a clue that will bring resolution. These cases are only the tiniest fraction of a percentage of missing child cases around the country but it is our belief that each case is important and these children must not and will not be forgotten." MORE >>>> Unsolved Crimes International is dedicated to publicizing unsolved cases.
"In October, I received this e-mail from the Dean of the college where I was teaching: Typically, I do not by practice, forward personal items, the Dean's note said. Situations such as this I put in a different category. Thank you for your understanding. The email read: 'Amber Alert – Penny Brown.'" MORE >>>> Trained as a folklorist, our editor's areas of interest include occupational humor and the role of the internet in modern-day folk-groups.
"Wish I could say otherwise, but our town has a history of violence and intrigue. I didn't know just how violent until the incident of the old canal barge. For years, the decaying tub had been an "attractive nuisance" to kids. When the canal closed for good years before, town fathers moored the barge in a makeshift slip carved out along the east bank of Crease's Creek. "Trouble was, the location was made for kids with idle time to sneak aboard to explore the rotting ghost. Maybe it would have stayed harmless mischief ..." MORE >>>> Charles Schaeffer's work has appeared periodicals including Detective Mystery Stories, Esquire, Harper's, and The Nation. "The
only color in the room was from the grotesque splatter of bodily fluid,
all too reminiscent of a Pollack painting, and a pool of coagulated blood
that encompassed the body of the victim, the late homeowner. Aside from
the new crimson décor, the crime scene was immaculate. Not even
a minute amount of trace evidence could be found by the now haggard looking
forensic investigation team. They
had scoured every nook of the eight-by-eight panic room that opened up
off of the master suite, a space constructed solely for the purpose of
avoiding events like the one that took place this evening.'"
MORE
>>>> "My partner and I arrived on the scene within minutes of the first officers. The husband was found, stabbed, face down, on his own front lawn. The house was a beauty – a two story, in the modern style, with a lovely garden and lawn – except where the dead man lay, which was stained dark red." MORE >>>> Christopher Gooch has published over 35 short stories. He is the publisher of a monthly mystery ezine.
Barbara Burnett Smith (pen name of Barbara Jo Petry) tragically died on February 19, 2005. Her first book, Writers of the Purple Sage, was an Agatha award nominee. Her fourth book, Mistletoe from Purple Sage, made the top ten cozy mystery selections of the year. Other books include Dust Devils of the Purple Sage, Skeletons in Purple Sage, and Mauve and Murder. Her latest book, Bead on Trouble, was the first, and sadly last, in her "beading” mystery series. Perky, bright, friendly – these are all words people use to describe Barbara. For those of us who were fortunate enough to know her, none of those words seem adequate. She was the type of person who immediately turned a stranger into a friend. She encouraged timid writers and gave of herself to others without asking anything in return. Barbara will live through her Purple Sage series and in the hearts of her many fans and friends. Barbara, we truly miss you. (Elsie Haydon)
Dawn Dowdle, cozy-expert, looks at Bead on Trouble by the late Barbara Burnett Smith, Death In Duplicate by Valerie Wolzien, Morgue Mama: The Cross Kisses Back by C. R. Corwin, and Wedding to Die For by Leann Sweeney. Dawn Dowdle loves reading cozies. She has made friends with many mystery authors.
Face Down Below the Banqueting House is the eighth mystery featuring Susanna, Lady Appleton, 16th-century gentlewoman, herbalist, and sleuth. Here, Queen Elizabeth is threatening to visit Lady Appleton's home, Leigh Abbey in Kent, on her annual progress ... but murder may change her mind.
The Good Girl's Guide to Murder ... Ego-in-pumps domestic guru Marilee Mabry is ready for stardom when her Dallas-based TV show, The Sweet Life, goes into national syndication. Only Marilee makes Martha Stewart seem as honest as Abe Lincoln and as sweet as sugar, so there are plenty of folks who'd like to end her career ... permanently.
Web Mystery Magazine writers and news contributors, forensics professionals and organizations, mystery associations, mystery periodicals, and friends of WMM.
Summer 2005 issue (Web Mystery Magazine IIV.1) features articles on recovered memory, lie detector accuracy, psychological testing, profiling, mental aberrations, the BTK KIller, and more. Look for more new short mystery fiction by BJ Bourg and others, plus reviews of fiction and non-fiction works including the Judge Dee series and A Voice for the Dead.
First
Annual "W" Short Story Contest Guidelines. Witness
... will ... wheelchair ... wakeful ... waiting ... whisper ... wainscotting ... window-blind
... weapon ... wrongful ... writ ... wreath ... watusi ... The rules of Web
Mystery Magazine's First Annual "W" Short
Story Contest are simple: (1) write a short story using any "W"
word as a motif, character, setting, theme, or clue, and (2) include
the "W" word in the title. Three winners will be selected
...
MORE >>>>
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| "Oh!
What a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott |
|
Web Mystery Magazine (ISSN:
1547-9609) is an on-line quarterly dedicated to investigating
the mysterious genre in print, in film, and in real-life. Web Mystery Magazine welcomes well-researched, well-written articles, reviews, and mystery fiction. Writers are invited to send comments and inquiries to editor@lifeloom.com. Copyright 2003-2005, lifeloom.com |
