A Historical Mystery with Panache

Popular mystery and thriller writer S.J. Rozen and novelist and former publisher at Marvel Comics, John Shen Yen Nee, team up for a meaty and fast-moving historical mystery set in London in the 1920s.

The authors engagingly repurpose two actual historical personages for this “bewitching series kickoff,” as a Publishers Weekly reviewer dubbed The Murder of Mr. Ma in a starred review.

Lao She, here a shy academic lecturer, is the pen name for an actual Chinese novelist in mid-twentith century, known best for his novel, Rickshaw Boy. The other major character in The Murder of Mr. Ma, Judge Dee Ren Jie, is also based on a semi-historical figure who was a county magistrate and statesman of the Tang court. If the name sounds familiar, it should: Judge Dee was previously put to service in a series of detective novels by Robert van Gulik.

Rozen and Nee set their series launch in 1924 London. Lao She is summoned by famed mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, when Judge Dee, a friend of Russell’s, is arrested with a group of Chinese protestors. Russell wants Lao She to help him free Judge Dee, who has come to London to investigate the murder of shopkeeper Ma Za Ren. This is personal for Judge Dee, as he knows Ma from World War I when serving with the Chinese Labour Corps.

Judge Dee ultimately escapes prison, and he and Lao She team up to investigate the deaths of Ma and a series of others, all killed with the same butterfly sword. Along the way, the reader is served a good measure of humor and action scenes, as well as accurate period and historical detail.

The novel has won praise from Library Journal, whose reviewer felt that “fans of the Sherlock Holmes canon will appreciate this fast-paced, exciting novel.” A critic for the Washington Post concurred, calling the novel an “appealingly unusual, action-packed Sherlock Holmes pastiche with deep roots in both Chinese crime fiction and the history of early 20th-century England.” Further praise was offered by bestselling authors Laurie King, who called it a “joy,” and New York Times bestselling author Xiran Jay Zhao, who dubbed The Murder of Mr. Ma a ” refreshingly unique mystery,” and further noted that “Lao She and Dee Ren Jie are a hilarious and compelling duo to follow!”

Release date for The Murder of Mr. Ma is April 2. This is one to watch.

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The Tartan Noir of Philip Miller

Edinburgh-based author Philip Miller took the long route to novel writing, working as a journalist for a couple of decades and twice named Arts Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards. In 2015, he published his first novel, The Blue Horse, following it up two years later with All the Galaxies. His breakthrough novel, The Goldenacre, appeared in 2022, winning the Shamus Award for Best Private Investigator Novel, and scoring rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. That novel deals with the authentication of a famous painting, ‘The Goldenacre,’ by legenday Scottish painter and architect, Charles Renni Mackintosh, and also with a string of gruesome murders in Edinburgh. The Goldenacre introduces Miller’s protagonist, the tough and driven newpspaer reporter Shona Sandison, who is covering the murders and eventually finds a connection between these murders and the Mackintosh painting. Famed Scots mystery author Denise Mina termed this series debut a “riveting, brutal journey into the high-stakes world of legacy art and inherited wealth.”

Now Miller is following up that series launch with the scond novel featuring Shona Sandison, The Hollow Tree, to be published April 2. The Wall Street Journal termed this second installment “ambitious and wonderfully realized,” while The Times in the UK dubbed it a “first-class thriller.”

This is truly an immersive read–I am absolutely taking my time with reading The Hollow Tree, wanting it to last. Miller’s descriptives are quite amazing. Example: his protagonist is on a ferry on her way to a wedding. It’s a chilly day, and most writers would leave it at that. Not Miller, who in fact will soon be publishing his first poetry collection, Blame Yourself. Here is Miller’s description of part of that short voyage:

The ship sunk into a thick mist. It was as if they had entered an erasure. The form and volume of the hills and the sea had been rubbed out by a blanket of dreary light. The distant deep hulks of mountians were smudged and edgeless. The sky was as solid as the water below–grey, lightless, faintly but dully illuminated.

Philip, it is a real pleasure to have you on Scene of the Crime. Let’s start things off with a description of your connection to Edinburgh. How did you come to live there or become interested in it?

I live in Edinburgh, having moved back here eight years ago. Before that I lived in Glasgow for 20 years, and before that, I lived in Edinburgh as a student, [allegedly] studying history at the city’s University for four years. Before that, I grew up in a northern English town – Barnard Castle.

What makes Ediburgh unique and a good physical setting in your books?

Edinburgh, as someone once said, can resemble a dream in stone. It is rich with history of course, but also with modernity, with beauty and also darkness. I love its light, and its sea, its harbours and beaches, as much as its hills and peaks. It’s got great bookshops, and coffee shops, and galleries and cinemas and pubs. It has wild green patches amid the asphalt and stone. It feels human-scale – it is walkable and bus-able, despite the grandeur. It has its issues, of course – everywhere does. And I saw a badger the other day, tottering across Newhaven Road. Big, aren’t they?

Did you consciously set out to use Edinburgh as a “character” in your books, or did this grow naturally out of the initial story or stories?

I just wrote about what I know: I live in Edinburgh. I’ve lived in Glasgow. I’ve spent a bit of time in London, and grew up in a rural town in northern England – these are, so far, my settings, because I know them. And Scotland is big enough to contain a multitude of stories – an infinite number.

How do you incorporate location in your fiction? Do you pay overt attention to it in certain scenes, or is it a background inspiration for you? In other words, similar to the previous question, are you conscious of referring to your specific city or locale as you write?

I always want to help the reader feel they are, even slantingly, in a real place – with real light, texture, and scent. Even if they aren’t, of course. It’s just trying to cast a little cantrip. [SOTC note: Google it–I did.] Making four dimensions with two dimensional words. You can lean them on each other, like stacking cards into a pyramid.

How does your protagonist interact with his/her surroundings? Is she a native, a blow-in, a reluctant or enthusiastic inhabitant, cynical about it, a booster? And conversely, how does the setting affect your protagonist?

Shona Sandison is from Glasgow – the south side of Glasgow in particular. So she is from a world of red tenements, high camber roads, urban parks and cramped pubs. But also of Glasgow, in all its light and shadow. So, in Edinburgh, she is in a very different place to her home town, albeit still in Scotland. She feels like a blow-in there. But in The Hollow Tree, she has to investigate a story in the rural north of England – she feels completely out of place. The silence, the space, the deep horizons, the moors: she is not used to it. She’s a city person. Not a deep dale person.

Has there been any local reaction to your works? What do local (ie those who actually live in your novels’ setting) reviewers think, for example.

I have had some very generous reviews in Scotland (so far).

Have you ever made any goofs in depicting your location or time period? Please share–the more humorous the better (we all have).

Yes. I described a lane next to the rather grand West Register House in Edinburgh as ‘crooked and medieval’ when it is neither. This has been pointed out….in my defence, it was crooked and medieval in my mind, which is also where The Goldenacre came from, so. Can’t have everything. Anyway,  that little lane should be crooked and medieval. I will write a letter to the city council, see if they can change it. In The Hollow Tree I have taken some liberties with the major rivers of the north of England (Tees, Tyne, and Wear), by adding another one, the Tyr.

Of the novels you have written set in this location, do you have a favourite book or scene that focuses on the place? Could you quote a short passage or give an example of how the location figures in your novels?

In The Goldenacre there is a scene on a misty Portobello beach (a beach in Edinburgh) which I am quite fond of, and a rave on Calton Hill, with animal masks and a spot of brutal ego-death, likewise. In The Hollow Tree, there is a scene in a wood where we observe the tree, and nothing much seems to happen, but many things happen, and I think that is my favourite scene. In The Blue Horse, there is a short dream chapter which I am still reasonably pleased with. In All The Galaxies, there’s a scene on the Scottish island of Eigg which is very important – and it is based on something in my own life, when my father cleared a beach of jellyfish, so my sisters and I could play. It is as it was. Or close enough.

Who are your favourite writers, and do you feel that other writers influenced you in your use of the spirit of place in your novels?

I have many favourite writers – some do place very well, others are concerned with other things. I have definitely picked up the importance of place from Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, Jon McGregor, Turgenev. I love the savage light of Greece of Don DeLillo’s The Names. I love the Paris of Simenon’s Maigret, but his descriptions are really quite spare and passing. Early influences would be DH Lawrence and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and they of course conjure spaces and places like magicians. Annie Proulx is very good at conjuring location well, too, I think: you know where you are. And of course Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles – you know exactly where you are, at all times. And you know what the gimlets taste like.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

I love Edinburgh. I feel lucky to live in such a beautiful, walkable, mercurial place. As I get older, I find myself pining for the dales and vales of the north of England more. Maybe it’s inevitable.

If you mean anywhere in space and time? Doggerland, before the flood.

What’s next for your protagonist?

Shona’s next investigation takes her through the UK after Covid, and after Brexit. It’s not a happy place.

Thanks much, Philip, and good luck to you.

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The Cry of Cicadas on Goodreads Book Giveaway

Starting Today 3/10/24

Hello folks! I want to let you know that I am on the Goodreads Book Giveaway for ten signed first editions of my new historical mystery, The Cry of Cicadas. This is the series launch of BYRNS ON THE HOMEFRONT, inspired by that wonderful Brit series, Foyle’s War. For those of you who enjoyed my VIENNESE MYSTERIES, I am sure you will bond with this one, as well. A similar eye to historical detail, compelling characters, nuanced suspense and mystery, and gripping setting–WWII on the American homefront with all its resilience and, of course, crimes.

I am also offering the ebook edition of The Cry of Ciadas on Amazon for a reduced price and for a limited time on Amazon’s Countdown Deal. I want to reach as many former and new readers as possible, as I believe this is a series you will take to heart, as so many of you did with the VIENNESE MYSTERIES.

But unlike that series, I will be the one who determines when BYRNS ON THE HOMEFRONT ends. My Viennese series ended when my publishers were purchased by a larger house. So, I determined that I would be the publisher for this series. It is all on me.

Good luck with the giveaway–be sure to click on the Goodreads Book Giveawy above–contest lasts until March 30. Available only to Goodreads members in the U.S.

I look forward to signing and sending those ten copies.

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Amazon Special on My New Mystery Series

You can get the ebook of The Cry of Cicadas today (3/09/24) at Amazon for $.99. Price goes up soon to $1.99 and ultimately back to the regular cost of $3.99. Unlimited members can get it for free. So take advantage of the savings–hope you enjoy it!

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Print vs. Digital

I come from a farming family, though I am very far removed from the land now. I make my living with my imagination, not my hands. But there is still a strong connection to those roots: like a farmer, I consume what I produce. Not many jobs like that.

I write books, and I read books written by others. Continuously. That’s what writers do. Farmers produce food and consume food, mostly produced by others.

But like many other readers, my consumption pattern has changed over the years. Our home library has a couple thousand books double-rowed in floor-to ceiling shelves. On many of those shelves, more books have found residence horizontally on top of the upright books. No Dewey decimal system, but I have a vague sense of where books belong: foreign-language titles, far left; then British and American fiction spanning the mid sections; nonfiction in the final rows to the right. And another smaller bookcase on the opposite wall is filled with paperback mysteries and thrillers.

I also carry in my left front pocket a library of equal breadth in my digital library. And now we finally get to the nut graph:

I read more from that electronic library than I do from the physical one. Oh, I will pick up the odd Steinbeck or Dickens or Robertson Davies for a re-read, but for new titles and convenience I must admit the e-reader gets a lot of use.

In part this has to do with my peripatetic life-style as a younger man, traveling in countries where English-language books could be scarce and/or expensive. Much time and energy was spent tracking down other likely looking travelers for a book swap. So having a library of books in my pocket is a security blanket.

But it is more than that. There is the ease of it, especially reading in bed, standing on a crowded subway train, waiting for a delayed dentist appointment. The smart phone accompanies us on our daily activities—you always have your books with you. And I am an avid library user: digital libraries make my selections available wherever I have wifi, worldwide.

Yet, there is that niggle of guilt of leaving print books mostly behind. A mini betrayal. I mean, when one of my books is published, it is of course the hardback or softcover copy I hold lovingly, new baby-like in my hands with a feeling of pride.

And there is a rich and lengthy tradition for physical books. Book production of some sort has been around since the 1st century B.C.; printed books started in China in 868 A.D. with hand-carved wood blocks cut in reverse for the printing of The Diamond Sutra. And let us not forget Herr Gutenberg and his bible from mid-15th century.

While our e-book stepchild has only been around since 1971.

Let me know in the comments section about your own battle of print vs digital. Where do you stand? Is it a divide for you or a happy combination? And let me also know if I can publish your comments in a further post (with your name or anonymously).

I look forward to hearing from you all. And keep on reading!

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