Book Review: Face of the Enemy

Face of the Enemy

Reviewed by Crystal V. Rhodes

I like the old black and white, fast talking film noir mystery movies of the 1930s and 40s that I’ve occasionally run across on TV.  I like the sense of urgency, and the sense of style they convey, but rarely have I found a book that captured the feeling of that film genre, that is until I read Face of the Enemy, by Jo Anne Dobson and Beverly Graves Myers.

Set in December 1941, shortly after Japan bombed Pear Harbor, Face of the Enemy sheds light on America’s racial paranoia during that period of time, especially its bigotry toward people of Japanese descent.  Even more interesting is the fact that this novel doesn’t take place on the West Coast where there were mass government incarcerations of people of Japanese ancestry. Instead, Face of the Enemy takes place on the East Coast, in the glitzy art world of New York City.

When the murdered body of an art dealer is discovered in his gallery, the authorities suspect artists, Masako Fumi, an avant-garde Japanese immigrant, married to a university professor, who is American and who is gravely ill.  Although there are other suspects and even a lead detective who is skeptical about her guilt, the FBI is anxious to turn the talented artist’s case into a political coup, especially since she’s the estranged daughter of a high official in the Japanese government.  It seems that Masako’s only hope for redemption is her husband’s nurse, an unassuming Southern bell named Louise Hunter, who fervently believes in the woman’s innocence and vows to help her.

The twists and turns in Face of the Enemy are a mystery lover’s delight.  The characters are vivid and the dialogue is snappy.  As for the story line, it contains historic references about an era about which I knew little.  Face of the Enemy wasn’t merely entertaining, but educational as well.   

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C.V. Rhodes is a member of the Speed City Sisters in Crime chapter and co-author, with L. Barnett Evans, of the Grandmothers, Incorporated cozy mystery series.  Visit their website at www.grandmothersinc.com

Join Author Ross Carley for Book Launch of New Wolf Ruger Mystery: Formula Murder

The book launch party for Speed City Chapter member Ross Carley's latest novel, Formula Murder, will be Saturday, April 29 at Porter Books and Bread, on the grounds of Fort Benjamin Harrison at 5719 Lawton Loop E Dr, Indianapolis, IN 46216.  Ross will be signing books from 10 until 2.

Formula Murder is the second Wolf Ruger mystery by Ross Carley. Private Investigator Wolf Ruger, returning Iraq vet with PTSD, tackles high-stakes high-tech crime and elusive murderers in the fast-paced world of Formula racing, undeterred by beautiful women and organized crime. 

Ross Carley is a cybersecurity and electronic warfare consultant, with experience as a military intelligence officer, an engineering professor, and CTO for a defense contractor. He authored several nonfiction technical books before writing his first Wolf Ruger mystery, Dead Drive. He is a member of Sisters in Crime and lives in Indianapolis.

If you can't make the book signing, Formula Murder is available on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites. 

You can visit www.RossCarleyBooks.com  and www.Facebook.com/RossCarleyBooks for more information.

Here's a Cool Way to Organize Your Writing

By S. Ashley Couts

                                                                  

            I don’t know about you but I sometimes get overwhelmed by all of those words. It is easy to get lost in the plot. Mary might be Mary one place but Margaret in another. It can be hard to keep a handle on all that. When I am planning a story or a book I need to see a hard copy and yet I can still get lost in all of those pages. I’ve attended a number of workshops and seminars on writing and learned that this is a common problem.

        Recently I read an exciting article about a writer who has solved this problem. Michael Jecks, an English writer in his article “A Book in Three Stages” in Writers’ Forum gives step-by-step instructions including photos.  His article was so convincing that I ran right out to buy supplies in order to employ his method.

       Jecks method involves using two English notebook Atoma4 and 5 for plotting out his books. I realize as I write this now that somewhere out there my British friends are having a chuckle because apparently the Atoma notebook is as common as a legal pad across the pond. However, to the unschooled you might be asking, what is so special about the Atoma and how can it help my writing? 

          Jecks a historical crime writer (Blood of the Innocents) explained in his article a bit of the history of the A5 and A4 Atoma which was invented in Belgium in 1948. The initial design being easy and portable with fat removable side rings and a flat surface. The article included a three- page instructive illustration. The Atotma notebooks Jenks referred to in his article have five large holes.

        In my search, I found something similar at Office Depot (TUL Custom Note Taking System)—a flat notebook in those requisite two sizes albeit with more plastic side holes. Their system comes in a variety of colors, styles and you can purchase a special hole punch, colored stick-on page markers etc. The prices range from around ten to fifty dollars.  

         These notebooks are useful to writers because of their flexibility. Pages are easily removed with a slight flip of the finger. If you get a bright idea and decide all at once that Harry should be the protagonist and not Herbert, simply exchange those pages –no sweat. You can even mark the change by inserting a yellow or red tab or slip in a short page that includes a note. Easy-peasy.

       Jecks plots his character in the small Atoma-- Office Depot sells two sizes if you want to follow his example. He uses a specific structure in his writing. Stage one is planning the novel. Stage two is using the second notebook to insert the detail and characters. In Stage three he uses a white board to pull it all together. 

     “This is the part that gets sticky for me . . . making sure I haven’t left out anything out. It (the board) sits on the wall dominating my study.”  The white board is his master he says. His website is : www.michaeljecks.co.uk

Speed City Author addressing Society of Midland Authors in Chicago, April 11

Speed City Sisters in Crime member Stephen Terrell will address the century old Society of Midland Authors in Chicago Tuesday, April 11.  Terrell is an Indianapolis lawyer and author of two legal thrillers. He will discuss the law and writing, as well as self-publishing.

The meeting will be held at Celler Dwellers, on the 22nd floor at 200 S. Michigan Avenue, overlooking Millennium Park and Lake Michigan. The reception begins at 6 p.m. with the presentation at 6:45 p.m. It is open to the public.

The Society of Midland Authors was founded in 1915. Among its charter members were Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, Edna Ferber and lawyer Clarence Darrow. Noted members have included Ring Lardner, Edgar Lee Masters, Gene Stratton Porter, Daniel Boorstin, Jane Addams and Carl Sandburg.

Terrell is the author of Stars Fall, a 5-star rated legal thriller, and his newly released legal thriller, The First Rule. Both are available in trade paperback and ebook on Amazon.

Terrell has also self-published two personal books, a short story collection titled Visiting Hours and Other Stories from the Heart, and There and Back: Journal of a Last Motorcycle Ride. While both are available to the public, they were published primarily for friends and family.  He has also assisted other authors in self-publishing their own works.

Terrell also has two stories -- Expose Yourself to Art and Street Art -- in The Fine Art of Murder, the Speed City Sisters in Crime most recent short story collection.  The Fine Art of Murder is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Walmart.com.

Home and Drama: Reflections by Award-Winning Author Lori Rader-Day

By Lori Rader-Day

Home Is Where the Drama Is

My third novel, The Day I Died, is getting published soon and maybe it will surprise no one that it’s set in Indiana. Well, half of it is. Here’s how the book begins:

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On the day I died, I took the new oars down to the lake. They were heavy, but I was saving myself the second trip. The blades rode flat along the ground, flattening two tracks through the wet grass.

It was morning. The air was cool, but down on the dock, the slats were already hot. I noted a lone fishing boat out on the water. Inside, two men hunched silently over their tackle, their faces turned out across the lake. Beyond them, mist rose off the water, nearly hiding the far shore.

This moment. This is what I return to.

Later, I will note the long crack in the new oar, just before my head goes under, just before the flume of blood rises off my skin under the water like smoke. I will come back to this moment and think, if I had just gone back up the steps to the house immediately. If I had just stayed up at the house in the first place.

If I had just.

________________

That’s a prologue of sorts. You can read the first full chapter HERE, where you’ll see that the protagonist has survived whatever-this-is to find a home in a small town in Indiana with her son.

I love to write about home. “Home,” though, is a complicated word. Is it where I grew up? Or is where I’ve lived for the last sixteen years? That’s exactly the kind of thing the protagonist of The Day I Died, Anna Winger, thinks about, with one big difference: she can’t go back to hers. Or at least she thinks she won’t. And then there’s the current situation brewing inside her apartment with her son.

 Home makes good stories, because home is where the drama is.

My first novel was set in the surrounds of Chicago; the second back home in Indiana. This one is split between the place Anna lives now and the place she yearns for. I can already tell you that my next next book is set in Michigan; the protagonist is a transplant to Chicago, like me, merely visiting. I had to borrow the Michigan setting, but I was able to bring a Chicagoan’s hard glare to everything she encounters there. That makes the story easier for me to get inside of, the better for me but also the better for my reader.

But with that next work-in-progress drafted, now I have a moment to think: What’s next? The Sisters and Misters of the Speed City Chapter probably feel the same as I do: Ideas are easy. I had three ideas while I was brushing my teeth this morning. But which idea has legs enough to run for four hundred pages? How do I want to spend the next year of my writing life?

It’s really no wonder I so often write about home. Home is where I’d rather be, no matter where I am.

How do you decide the setting of your stories?

--

Lori Rader-Day, author of The Day I Died, The Black Hour, and Little Pretty Things, is the recipient of the 2016 Mary Higgins Clark Award and the 2015 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. Lori’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Good Housekeeping, and others. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches mystery writing at StoryStudio Chicago and is the president of the Mystery Writers of America Midwest Chapter and the co-chair of Murder and Mayhem in Chicago.

Lori is also a member of the Speed City Chapter of Sisters in Crime.

REVIEW: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James is a Most Suitable Mystery

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Cordelia Gray, #1) 
by P.D. James 

Reviewed by Stephen Terrell

This is one of the most enjoyable English murder mystery novels that I have read. Written in the early 1970s, Cordelia Gray seems a predecessor and maybe inspiration for Kinsey Milhone, the heroine of Sue Grafton's alphabet books and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, heroine of the "1 for the Money" series. 

The book opens with a young and a bit naive Cordelia pushing into her bosses office to find him dead, a victim of his own hand. He has left her a detective agency deeply in debt, a failing car, and an absence of clients. So when a wealthy scientist at Cambridge summons her to look into the apparent suicide of his son, she jumps on the opportunity. But her investigation soon leads her to conclude that the death was not a suicide at all.

The book is well paced -- something often missing in British novels. The plot is well constructed and the characters are fascinating. If you're looking for a cozy mystery to curl up with next to a fire, or something to enjoy at the beach, you won't go wrong with An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.

Celebrating 30 Years of Sisters In Crime with Award-Winning Author Rhys Bowen

Speed City hosts  internationally renowned author Rhys Bowen and celebrates 30 years of Sisters in Crime

By MB Dabney

  

The Speed City chapter of Sisters in Crime has always loved murder, mystery and mayhem. That love is the heart and soul of what we do.

Best-selling author and Agatha Award Winner Rhys Bowen

Speed City is the only Indiana chapter of the national Sisters in Crime organization. Since the fall of 2007, the chapter has completed five short story mystery anthologies, with the newest, The Fine Art of Murder, hitting book shelves last October.

While the Speed City chapter is only 15 years old, Sisters in Crime this year marks its 30^th anniversary of advocating for female mystery and crime writers, and for diversity in the crime writing industry. And to celebrate, the Speed City is hosting a day of fun on February 25, with internationally renowned bestselling British author Rhys Bowen.

A winner of both the Anthony and the Agatha mystery awards, Rhys is the author of Molly Murphy mystery series and the Royal Spyness series, among other novels and short stories.

Rhys will speak to the chapter at our regularly scheduled monthly meeting at 11:30 a.m., at the Barnes and Noble bookstore on River Crossing Boulevard on the north side of Indianapolis. Following that, the chapter and the College Park Book Club are hosting a British tea for Bowen at the College Park community center on Fordham Road from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Then from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., there is a book fair again at the Barnes and Noble store, with Rhys greeting fans and signing books.

Local authors with stories in the chapter’s five mystery anthologies will also be on hand at Barnes and Nobel to sign copies of our books.

In addition to the The Fine Art of Murder, the chapter’s collection includes Racing Can Be Murder (2007), Bedlam at the Brickyard (2010), Hoosier Hoops and Hijinks (2013), and Decades of Dirt (2015).

The Speed City Chapter is

proud to have Rhys Bowen in Indianapolis to help celebrate Sisters in Crime, which has been serving as the voice for excellence and diversity in crime writing for 30 years.