Published |
"Oh what a tangled
web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." |
Winter 2003
Volume I
issue 3 |
| W M M New Issue |
| Welcome
to Issue #3, Winter 2003 |
The Web Mystery Magazine is extremely proud to present this issue ... introducing Dr. Anil Aggrawal's new column, Forensic Files, celebrated private investigator Ann Flaherty's new column On the Case, as well as Unsolved Crimes International's new column on open cases, plus featuring articles on techniques of historical research and thoughtful reviews, the third issue of Web Mystery Magazine celebrates good research and good writing! |
|||
| by Rosalie Stafford | The editor of Web Mystery Magazine teaches writing and art history at the Art Institute of California, San Diego. | |||
| Dr.
Anil Aggrawal's Forensic Files An Unusual Case of Death |
"On 29 August 1994, I was faced with one of the strangest cases of my life. A 39 year old male, Bhure Lal, was found dead in a garden in Vasant Vihar area of the capital. He had gone out in his Maruti car to meet his friend Vasudev, on the previous night at about 8 pm. It was heavily raining when he went out, and his wife Shobha implored him not to go out in such heavy rain." Thus begins the first of many cases Dr. Anil Aggrawal will share with the readers in his most interesting -- and informative -- column! |
|||
| by Dr. Anil Aggrawal | Dr. Anil Aggrawal is a professor of Forensic Medicine at the Maulana Azad Medical College, New Delhi. | |||
Historical
Crime Research: |
"One of the breakout books of 2003 was Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a historical nonfiction narrative. Posing the tale of a notorious scammer and serial killer, H.H. Holmes, against the ambitious construction of the 1893 world’s fair, he develops momentum to transform an account of the Gilded Age into a page-turning thriller. We’ve seen the story of Holmes before, but never in this historical milieu. Showing just how this man repeatedly got away with murder in the chaos and confusion of the times places his abominable ventures beyond mere true crime. In the hands of Larson, Holmes becomes a well-defined historical figure. Larson’s feat is a lesson for historical researchers everywhere, and it’s one from which I learned a great deal. "At the end of the book, Larson discusses his research methods, and what stands out is his drive for total immersion. “The more I read about the fair,” he writes, “the more entranced I became.” This is often a foundation to good historical research—falling in love with the subject in such a way as to feed the desire to go deeper and deeper. And the more one knows, the more the possibilities emerge for discovering something unique." |
|||
| by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. | Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University in PA, and has published twenty books, including The Forensic Science of CSI and The Criminal Mind: A Writer’s Guide to Forensic Psychology. She writes for Court TV’s Crime Library and co-wrote The Unknown Darkness with Gregg McCrary. Here Dr. Ramsland discusses her experiences as a historical researcher and enumerates the benefits and drawbacks of historical research in criminal cases. |
|||
| "The purpose of research for a historical novel is to provide a realistic and believable background in which characters can live. Some writers dread research, some writers adore it; but no writer can afford to allow personal response to decide the depth and detail of the research to be done. That judgement must be made on the basis of how much history is going to be useful." | ||||
| by Roberta Gellis | Roberta Gellis holds master's degrees in biochemistry and in medieval literature. Since 1964, she has published about 25 meticulously researched historical novels and has received numerous prestigious awards. Lucrezia Borgia & the Mother of Poisons is her latest historical mystery. | |||
| Led
Astray by Robert Browning |
"I'm an English tutor! I'm a librarian! I'm a romance writer, for heaven's sake! What am I doing writing a historical mystery? "It was May 11, 2001—I know the exact date because I wrote it down in my journal. The semester was almost over, and I was tutoring a clever but lazy high school senior who was catching up on overdue essays. 'I’m supposed to write a psychological profile of this duke guy,' he said, 'in a poem by Robert Browning called My Last Duchess.' "I sighed. I'd read the poem a hundred times, a thousand times, and coaxed dozens of students through essays about it. I turned to the page in the textbook, took a deep breath— "And it hit me.
I was going to write a novel about the duke's second duchess." |
|||
| by Elizabeth Sites | Elizabeth Sites is a librarian, tutor, and writer living in Dallas, Texas. Her prize-winning contemporary romances have been published worldwide. She is presently at work on a historical mystery set in Renaissance Ferrara. | |||
Good
|
"First—and this is critical—maintain a notebook, journal, or what Sherlock Holmes called his 'good old index . . . or all three. Holmes kept a scrapbook. You should, too. Jot down small facts and features that eventually might prove useful in your literary pursuit—and do it immediately as they come to your attention; don’t try to commit them to memory. While you’re at it, record archaic words or phrases you someday may like for one of your characters to use, snatches of plots, local family and place names. While researching a history project, I’ll frequently come across a nugget of information which is irrelevant to my present work but which I believe might prove quite useful within the context of a future 'Harper' story. Into a note file it goes." | |||
| by Daniel Elton Harmon | Daniel Elton Harmon is a periodicals editor and the author of more than 40 books, primarily educational works for juvenile audiences. The Chalk Town Train & Other Tales, volume one of his short story mystery series The Harper Chronicles, was published in 2001. | |||
| Nose
Stuck in a Book: Researching America's Civil War |
"After
spending three years doing extensive research for my biography of mystery
writer Craig Rice, I decided that fiction would be a welcome change. In
my naïveté, I assumed that the world of make-believe
would involve sitting down at the computer and moving my characters around
the page at will. In the words of those old romantic-suspense authors:
Had I but known ... My first published novel took 18 months to
complete between frantic bouts of writing and the research needed to make
it historically accurate." |
|||
| by Jeffrey Marks | Mr. Marks' work has won a number of awards including the Barnes and Noble Prize and he was nominated for an Edgar (MWA), an Agatha (Malice Domestic), a Maxwell award (DWAA), and an Anthony award (Bouchercon). | |||
Good
Research |
"You don't just sit down at the word processor and write about a period of history that you know little or nothing about. You need information -- research. I had the story mapped out in my mind but, in order to make it believable, I needed detail." | |||
| by Ron Nicholson | Ron Nicholson is writing a collection of detective short stories involving 19th-century Detective Inspector George Jarrold and Constable Mann. | |||
| |
|
|||
| Respecting the Past | "The
topic is one I've been thinking about a great deal lately, especially
in the context of The Da Vinci Code, a book
that historians will be having to unteach for some time, I fear.
"There is no one who is an expert in all of history. As lay readers, we have to trust the authors of historical books, both fiction and non, to know what they’re talking about. But we can’t trust blindly. There are some ways to judge what kind of historian wrote the book. It’s not by looking for credentials on the dust jacket; many dedicated and competent scholars never went to a university. Nor is it by noting the minutiae of detail in armor, dress, and furniture or by names of historical people used. One can find that information in an encyclopedia and strew it throughout any story. "My touchstone for belief in authors of any historical works is how much they respect the time and the people they’re writing about. This is something that needs no background knowledge to detect." |
|||
| by Sharan Newman | Sharan Newman is a medieval historian and writer who has published eight medieval mysteries: Death Comes as Epiphany, which was nominated for Agatha and Anthony awards and won the Macavity for best first mystery of 1993; The Devil's Door; The Wandering Arm, nominated for the Agatha; and Strong as Death, also an Agatha Nominee. The fifth book in the series, Cursed in the Blood, won the Herodatus award for best historical mystery of 1998. She has also co-edited three anthologies of history/mystery short stories, Crime Through Time I, & II, & III. | |||
|
The
Da Vinci Code: |
"Imagine
Harry Potter as a fifty-five year old Harvard professor. A mysterious
caller ... Without stripping this book of its high-concept sophistication,
it's a scavenger-hunt adventure written from the same literary 'blueprint'
as Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone.
This formula has been recycled thousands of times all the way back to
Homer's Odyssey and beyond. You have a hero, and the hero must be surrounded
by one or two close confidantes. The hero must have a quest, the fulfillment
of which largely determines his future, his sense of well-being, and
possibly the future of mankind. And don't forget the diabolical villain,
who constantly threatens the hero's plan to fulfill his quest."
|
|||
| A thriller-writer (Blackwater Tango and Knee Deep) delves into Dan Brown's best-selling tour de force and discusses the secret to its run-away success. | ||||
| by Lisa Polisar | ||||
Ann
Flaherty, P.I., |
"The private investigator sits at her desk and opens a new case file. The case revolves around a missing person who was last seen 20 years ago, in a seedy part of San Francisco. How will she solve this case? Will she employ state-of-the-art databases or use good old fashioned detective skills to crack the case? Find out how a real life detective solves cases everyday." |
|||
| by Ann Flaherty, P.I. | Ann Flaherty is the owner of the R.D.D. Detective Agency and is a noted authority on missing persons, fraud, scams, and elder abuse. A licensed private investigator in the state of California with over 25 years' experience in the investigative field, Ms. Flaherty possesses a degree in Criminology, and has collaborated on many TV projects including Oprah, 20/20, Dateline, Hard Copy and several cable shows. Her investigative expertise is sought after and highly respected. | |||
| |
|
|||
| Investigating
the Crime Scene A Checklist for Fiction Writers |
"Readers
demand accuracy. Feed them the wrong information and they'll let you know
you've made a mistake. So to the best of your ability you'd better know
who does what and what happens at the crime scene if you are going to
write about one. "Sherlock Holmes said: 'Whenever you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' In other words the truth is present at every crime scene. And if it's your character's job to find it, make sure he's doing his job correctly." |
|||
| by
Mariane Petit |
Historical mystery writer Marianne Petit offers the crime-fiction writer a clearly useful checklist. | |||
| |
|
|||
| All
Star Detective Stories November 1930 cover art |
"All Star Detective Stories was publishing the same authors and the same type of stories that the other houses were publishing at the time. Some of the top authors contributed to its pages. The cover we are looking at here is from November 1930, Volume 12, Number 3. The cover illustrates 'The Rollicking Rogue,' a Johnston McCulley story. McCulley, you will remember, created the famous Zorro, as well as many other costumed heroes and villains for the pulps." | |||
| by Tom and Ginger Johnson | By publishing their magazines (Behind the Mask & Action Adventure Stories, Detective Mystery Stories, and Echoes), pulp historians Tom and Ginger Johnson over the last 20 years have shone new light on countless "lost" stories from the pulp heyday. This article is the second in their regular column written for the readers of Web Mystery Magazine. |
|||
| |
|
|||
| New
Books by Web Mystery Magazine Writers |
This holiday season is truly a cause for celebration! New books by Web Mystery Magazine contributors include The Unknown Darkness: Profiling the Predators Among Us by eminent forensic psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland and FBI profiler Gregg O. McCrary; Knee Deep by thriller-writer Lisa Polisar; and two opulently-researched historical mysteries by award-winning writers — Lucrezia Borgia and the Mother of Poisons by Roberta Gellis and The Outcast Dove by Sharan Newman. What joy! |
|||
| Unsolved
Crimes Casebook of Unsolved Crimes International Organization |
"'Tis
the season. A season full of expensive decorating, gift buying, card writing,
present wrapping, special meal preparing and so many other things that
have to be done before the unforgiving December 25th deadline that we
often forget to be jolly. In fact, sometimes those final weeks before
Christmas, we're downright grumpy. There's really only one thing that
gets most of us through the admittedly nerve wracking holiday preparations
and that's final reward we know we'll receive on the year's most special
of mornings: smiles and the laughter. We've done it for the children.
"This holiday season law enforcement officers throughout the midwest are working long, hard hours in an attempt to bring two unfortunate children some very special gifts: justice and a name." |
|||
| by David Webb | Unsolved Crimes International is dedicated to publicizing unsolved cases. Victims' photos and their case details will remain for public view on the organization's website as long as their cases remain unsolved. | |||
| Invitation
to Participate in a Survey of Mystery-Readers' Personality-Types |
"What type of person loves to curl up
with a cozy? Or walk through a police procedural? Or analyze true-crime?
Or delve into the depths of noir? Or match wits with a Golden Age
detective? Take part in this informal survey of personality type and genre,
and let's find out.
"No, it's not terribly scientific ... but it's fun ... and the information you share with Rosalie will be used for nothing more than to try to figure out what the readers of the Web Mystery Magazine enjoy reading." |
|||
| by Editor | Rosalie Stafford, Editor of Web Mystery Magazine, teaches writing in San Diego. |
| "Oh what a tangled
web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." |
Winter
2003 Volume I issue 3 |
|
|
|
|
| W M M New Issue | W M M Archives |