Private Investigations

by Victoria Zackheim

  Home remedies are wonderful, too. And domestic details are excellent as a background for emotional scenes. Clothing, transport, lighting, communication. Fascinating. And they can trip you up in a heartbeat.

  Having said that, most research is to avoid mistakes. I learned through massive editing that it’s really all about people, what they feel, believe, what drives their passions, beliefs, and heartbreaks. And of course—crimes!

  For each story there has to be a motive that we understand, bigger than greed, more passionate than ambition, more interesting than the predictable or purely selfish. No matter what time period or what place you choose, there are always social and ethical issues that we still face today. Some are specific to the period, but you can find their progenitors in the past. Medical ignorance and malpractice, usury and manipulation of money from the corner shop to international exploitation, forgery, embezzlement, domination of one person over another. We haven’t got rid of any of them. Child labor, sexual violence, use and abuse of the weak or vulnerable, all still alive and well.

  Through a really good story you can feel the pain, the anger, and then see the shadow of it now. And care—very much.

  In just ordinary living, day to day, I had very little idea what it would be like to be deaf. To be really poor, wondering what I would eat tonight, if anything. Where I would sleep. Was it safe, even dry? To be afraid of violence, in my own home, must be appalling. I have felt the darkness of it, all of it, after reading a good book, closing it, and still caring.

  That is how change happens. One person at a time. Charles Dickens and child labor. Harriet Beecher Stowe and slavery. A passionate mind is more powerful than all the legislation.

  It has constantly made me look a little harder at people I don’t understand before leaping to harsh conclusions. One life is not enough to learn all we need just to be tolerant, let alone wise. But if you read, you can begin.

  And, of course, you can be at the beginning of a profound inward journey of self-discovery. A bit frightening. It should be. In the end, all you have is who you are.

  I still have time ahead of me to do something about it, but not as much as I used to have. I will discover a few things I don’t like so much. Certainly, I will find several areas where I have got stuck and must change. You have to forgive yourself before you can forgive others. That is necessary to wholeness and the last dishonesty. Lesson one: forget yourself for a while. Understanding is a chance to be wiser, gentler, braver, altogether more what you want to be. You are not supposed to be a bit player in your own story; you are supposed to be the hero, the one who makes the journey, not the one who watches.

  Maybe you think you know what is good and what is bad. At least you know what you like—maybe.

  When you pull apart your villains and heroes, what is the real difference? Good question. Here is another: Why do you like some people when there are others who don’t really have visible faults, but you can’t stand them?

  The people who are not wicked, you just don’t like them.

  They are always right! From their point of view, anyway.

  They don’t like animals or children. Too noisy, messy, troublesome.

  They have no sense of humor; they don’t delight in the absurd.

  They really do think their group, nationality, race, gender, etc. is superior to all others.

  They complain about lots of things, even when it doesn’t help, which is usually.

  They tend to be the victim… of anything.

  They talk a lot but seldom listen. They know everything, anyway.

  They never apologize. Why would they? They are never wrong.

  They mock the slow, the handicapped. Why? Different. Vulnerable.

  And the people you like? In spite of their faults. And they do have them.…

  They can praise others, even people they don’t particularly like.

  They laugh hard at other people’s jokes.

  They like animals, children, old people, the handicapped and listen to them.

  They like people regardless of age, gender, social class, nationality.

  They don’t repeat things they shouldn’t. They keep your secrets.

  They are basically fair. They don’t tell tales. They don’t lie. Except white ones.

  They admit when they are wrong and apologize.

  They share.

  They love beauty, laughter, music and are interested in learning.

  They are not self-righteous and don’t talk down to you.

  That’s just part of my list. But I know why I like them or I don’t. And there are bits of me in all of them.

  Real good or evil is another matter, far deeper. One I am still exploring. But for a strong story there must be tension, real conflict, decisions that are so evenly balanced that the decisions are desperately hard.

  I am told that in deep space there is both light matter and light energy and also dark matter and dark energy, actually far more of it. Light has its shape, its form of stars and planets, and all that we know from the power of the dark, the weight and the energy of it. Without it we would be formless soup.

  Perhaps it is also the same with good and evil. Without this duality we would have no being. We would have nothing to struggle against. We would have no form, no strength, no virtue, no pain. If there is no danger of loss, there can be no courage. No want. Then there needs to be no generosity to give the last you have to someone else. No loneliness in need, so no compassion; no vulnerability, so no tenderness… and so on. In seeking to explain to the reader what I mean, what I believe, I discover more and more what it really is. So many of my voyages of the mind into tangles of darkness have been to make sense of my own beliefs so that I can find the thread of beauty and reason and even glory that weaves together all chaos and pain, perhaps a stitch at a time.

  To make nothing new, fight no dragons, fill no need, is not my idea of heaven. I think it is just ceasing to have purpose or joy. Another name for death without the balm of sleep.

  Endless life is full of big ideas! High mountains to climb, new people to know, things to learn and to create.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MY THANKS TO LAURA MAZER, EXECUTIVE EDITOR AT SEAL Press/Hachette, for her encouragement to take this idea and run with it. Without her creative thought and generous spirit, this project would never have existed.

  To my agent, Jill Marsal, of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, I offer loving thanks for guiding me—with patience and keen intelligence—through every stage of this, our seventh anthology. When we began the journey in 2006 with The Other Woman, who knew?

  So many people have worked with me to bring this book to fruition. A big thank-you to production editor Kelly Anne Lenkevich, for taking my hand and leading me through the labyrinth of edits, and copy editor Connie Oehring, for her deft eye and editing skills. Publicist Sharon Kunz made sure the world knew about our book, and a hats-off to Chin-Yee Lai, who designed our stunning cover.

  When I’m asked what I love most about creating an anthology, my response is always the same: each book creates its own community of authors, a family of new friends. To the twenty writers who gave us a glimpse into their own personal mysteries and worked alongside me with kindness, infinite patience, and humor, I thank you.

  Discover Your Next Great Read

  Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.

  Tap here to learn more.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Tasha Alexander studied English literature and medieval history at the University of Notre Dame. And Only to Deceive was her first novel and the start of the long-running Lady Emily series. She is also the author of the novel Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Tasha has lived in Indiana, Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee. She and her husband, British novelist Andrew Grant, live on a ranch in Wyoming.

  Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nineteen books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, whic
h is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the guest of honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

  Rhys Bowen is the New York Times and number-one Kindle bestselling author of the Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness historical mystery series and three stand-alone historical novels, including the international bestseller The Tuscan Child, which has sold over half a million copies so far. She has won twenty awards, including four Agathas, and her work has been translated into twenty languages. Rhys is a transplanted Brit who divides her time between California and Arizona.

  Lynn Cahoon is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of several cozy mystery series, including The Tourist Trap series of ten novels and six holiday novellas, the Cat Latimer series, and her Farm to Fork mystery series, set in her home state of Idaho. She lives in a small town, much like the ones she loves to write about, with her husband and three fur babies. Visit her at www.lynncahoon.com.

  Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She’s an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds.

  Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists worldwide, selling in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. He is the author of forty novels, three collections of short stories, and a nonfiction law book, and the lyricist of a country-western album. The Bodies Left Behind was named Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers association; The Broken Window and a stand-alone, Edge, were also nominated. The Garden of Beasts won the Steel Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in England. He’s been nominated for eight Edgar Awards and honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Strand Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award in Italy. A Maiden’s Grave was made into an HBO movie, and The Bone Collector was a feature release. NBC is filming a pilot of Lincoln based on Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme. He has served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America

  Carole Nelson Douglas never plays it predictable. The Theater-English major was accepted by Northwestern University graduate theater school, the cradle of acting glory. She could have hit Manhattan as a Vogue editorial assistant and penned a tell-all novel about the rag biz. Instead, she stayed in St. Paul to become an award-winning journalist covering women’s issues. A Golden Age stage-and-screen legend interviewee took her first novel to his publisher. Sold! Douglas then reinvented Sherlock Holmes’s frenemy Irene Adler in a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and turned a stray black cat into a feline-noir icon. Her Tolkienesque and urban-noir fantasy novels and forty-five historical and contemporary mysteries have won twenty-three writing awards and graced national bestseller lists, including that of USA Today. Blending strong women (men, too), genres, social issues, satire, and substance in twenty-eight alphabetically titled mysteries, Midnight Louie, feline PI, kicks off his new Café Noir series with A, as in Absinthe Without Leave.

  Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, number-one Wall Street Journal, and number-one Amazon internationally bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite series, including My Sister’s Grave; the David Sloane series; and the Charles Jenkins series, which includes The Eighth Sister, as well as the bestselling The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, The 7th Canon, and The Cyanide Canary. He is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction and the Mystery Writer’s Spotted Owl Award and a two-time finalist for the International Thriller Writers and the Harper Lee Awards, the Silver Falchion Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award. Visit him at www.robertdugoni.com.

  Hallie Ephron is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven mystery/suspense novels, including Careful What You Wish For. She writes page turners rooted in reality. The Boston Globe praised her You’ll Never Know, Dear for the way it “deftly integrates the mystery genre with women’s fiction; it’s made compelling by the depth and resonance of the relationships.” Her Never Tell a Lie was made into a Lifetime movie. She is a five-time finalist for the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel (Writers Digest Books) was an Edgar Award finalist. For twelve years she wrote an award-winning crime-fiction book-review column for the Boston Globe. A popular speaker and writing teacher, Hallie lives near Boston with her husband.

  Connie May Fowler is the author of six widely acclaimed novels: How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, Sugar Cage, River of Hidden Dreams, The Problem with Murmur Lee, Remembering Blue (recipient of the Chautauqua South Literary Award), and Before Women Had Wings (recipient of the 1996 Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award from the League of American Pen Women). She is the author of the memoirs A Million Fragile Bones and When Katie Wakes. Connie adapted Before Women Had Wings for Oprah Winfrey; the result was an Emmy-winning film starring Winfrey and Ellen Barkin. Connie teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) low-residency writing MFA program and directs the annual VCFA Novel Retreat. She is founder and director of the Yucatan Writing Conference. She lives on Isla Cozumel in Mexico with her husband, Bill Hinson.

  Sulari Gentill went to university to study astrophysics and came out a lawyer. Though not quite sure how that happened, she maintains that the law was an excellent apprenticeship for writing fiction. Sulari is the award-winning author of the Rowland Sinclair mysteries, which chronicle the life and adventures of a 1930s Australian gentleman artist, and the Hero Trilogy, based on the myths and epics of the ancient world. She lives on a small farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales in Australia, where she grows French black truffles and writes about murder and mayhem. Sulari’s most recent US releases include Crossing the Lines, an unusual postmodern crime novel that won the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, and Give the Devil His Due, the seventh in the Rowland Sinclair series, which was short-listed for both the Davitt Awards and the Australian Book Industry Awards. Sulari remains in love with stories.

  Rachel Howzell Hall, author of the recently published They All Fall Down (Forge), writes the acclaimed Lou Norton series, including Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes, and City of Saviors. She is also the coauthor with James Patterson of The Good Sister, which was included in the New York Times bestseller The Family Lawyer. She is on the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and lives in Los Angeles.

  Ausma Zehanat Khan is the author of the award-winning debut novel The Unquiet Dead, the first in the Khattak/Getty mystery series. Her subsequent novels include the critically acclaimed The Language of Secrets, Among the Ruins, and A Dangerous Crossing. Her latest mystery in the series is A Deadly Divide. Ausma is also the author of a fantasy series for HarperVoyager that includes The Bloodprint, The Black Khan, and The Blue Eye. Ausma holds a PhD in international human-rights law with a specialization in military intervention and war crimes in the Balkans. A British-born Canadian and former adjunct law professor with roots in many places, she now lives in Colorado with her husband.

  William Kent Krueger was raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and briefly attended Stanford University before being kicked out for radical activities. His Cork O’Connor mystery series is set in the north woods of Minnesota. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His previous nine novels we
re New York Times bestsellers. Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel, received the Edgar Award. Visit his website at www.williamkentkrueger.com.

  Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Is This Tomorrow and the critically acclaimed author of ten other novels, including Cruel Beautiful World. Her new novel, With or Without You, will be published by Algonquin Books in August 2020. She is a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, and People magazine, and she teaches writing online for Stanford and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. She also works with private clients. She is a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow and was a finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. Her work has appeared in Modern Love in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Real Simple magazine, and more. She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com.

  Kristen Lepionka is the Shamus and Goldie Award–winning author of the Roxane Weary mystery series. Her debut novel, The Last Place You Look, was also an Anthony and Macavity finalist. She grew up mostly in a public library and could often be found in the adult mystery section well before she was out of middle school. Her writing has been published by Shotgun Honey, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Crime Reads, Mystery Tribune, Salon.com, the Independent, and the Guardian. Kristen is a cofounder of the feminist podcast Unlikeable Female Characters and lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her partner and two cats.