Maggie Pill Mysteries

If this were a typical day, I might have called my sister and talked about nothing for a half hour. She knew I love my husband, so I could gripe for a while about his foibles and she wouldn't judge. She was patient with my stories, which tend to weave a bunch of asides in as I struggle toward the main point. She shared my negative optimism about life: It isn't perfect, but it's what we've got. Instead of calling, I might have driven the 30 miles to her house so we could go out to lunch. Or we might have sat on her porch, sipped tea, and relived our childhood. Those things were typical, but they're impossible now, since my sister died suddenly at sixty-three. There are positives here. She often said she didn't want to linger into old age, and we agreed that a quick death is better than a slow decline. (Hence the deer suit in the Sleuth Sisters stories.) We'd been out together the day she died, and her last words to me were how much fun it was, doing n...

Lots of places I go, I hear, "When's the next Sleuth Sisters book coming out?" (I also hear, "Who's Maggie Pill?" but that's a topic for another day.) As to the where, it's in my head, and I'm hoping it's like cheese, getting sharper with age. As to the when, sometime in 2019 if my cheese-head comes together as it should. I say "cheese-head" because the book is set in Green Bay, WI, the home of the Packers and many, many cheese-heads. I've always liked the Packers, a team that's different from all the others in that the fans own it. I was with them in their down years, and there was a time I could probably have named all the starters. The only time my loyalties are tested is when they play Detroit, my home-state team. So the sisters will travel to Green Bay. I know why. I know the crime and the bad guys who must be caught. I know the season and the subplots and where the dogs are going to be. All I don't know is...

Releasing May 30, 2016 Since E. A. Poe wrote the first mystery, the genre has been popular with readers. Though most of us will never deal with murder and wouldn't want to, we like peering over someone's shoulder as he or she pokes into a crime, unearthing secrets and eventually the perpetrator. We began with police officers, whose involvement is logical, since they're paid to find out whodunit. The genre soon picked up private investigators, who also get paid but aren't as hemmed in by rules as the coppers. Then came the amateur detective, someone who should be doing something else, like writing novels (Jessica Fletcher) or Miss Marple (making tea?). They're often just plain nosy, but they can also be clever and fun. Of course there are those who are falsely accused, or connected to someone who is, but that usually works only once (unless you're Jessica Fletcher's nephew). Today's mysteries spread across all those lines. There are lots of police ...