Category Archives: The Uninivted

Lee Library Author Event: A Walk on the Noir Side in Shades of Autumn

1940s mystery, All Through the Night, Always Play the Dark Horse, Autumn, Bait and Switch, Bait and Switch, book signings and readings, Ella Raines, Fall, Film Noir, Jessica Minton, Joan Bennett, Lee Library, massachusetts, mystery, New England, Sharon Healy Yang, Sharon Yang, Smart-Talking Gals, Starving, Starving Artist Cafe, suspense, The Uninivted, Val Lewton, writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Since some of the Covid issues have waned, I’ve started going back to doing in-person author readings.  Friday, October 14th, I had the good fortune to do an event at the Lee Library in Lee, Massachusetts.  What a wonderful day!  Lee is in the western part of Massachusetts, so my husband and I had an exciting drive through all the gorgeous fall foliage to arrive at our destination.  Lee is a neat little town with a main street of equally neat shops, and in an antique store I found a 1940s movie magazine with pictures of favorite stars.  The main street has lots of  tasty restaurants.  We had our lunch at The Starving Artist Cafe, where they craft the yummiest sandwiches and
crêpes. They made a pumpkin latte that was absolutely perfect – not all sugary and fake whipped cream, but good coffee, the flavor of pumpkin spice, and steamed milk.  We sat outside at the street seating on a warm October day and enjoyed the small-town scenery, great food, and trees dressed in their autumn flames and oranges.After a stroll amongst the shops and a peek at some of  the gorgeous Victorian houses in town, we went to the library for my talk.  You can see what a beautiful old building the library is.  When visiting the town earlier, I was taken with the building and thought, “I’d like to do a talk here.”  Well, I contacted Jodi Magner at the library, and she was tremendously welcoming and enthusiastic at the prospect of my doing an event.  She told me that they loved mysteries in that town!

That day, Jodi and her daughter Megan made me so welcome and helped my husband and I set up.  I was delighted that my friend, mystery writer, Leslie Wheeler could join us, as well as other women whom I’d never met before.  We were a small group, but we had a great time.  I got so many intelligent questions, and people seemed interested in my inspiration from film noir and haunting movies of the 1940s like Val Lewton’s films and The Uninvited.  They seemed to get a kick out of the excerpts that I read from Bait and Switch, Letter from a Dead Man, and Always Play the Dark Horse to illustrate how the dark, dreamy elements of noir and the smart talking gals of the 1940s influenced my writing!  One of the women even said that a friend, sometime earlier,  had been suggesting she read the Jessica Minton series.  I’m getting a fan base! And now you can read all three Jessica Minton novels through the Lee Library.

Say, how do you like the pin-stripe black suit and the black fedora?  I thought the gold blouse was just right to add fall color. Should I have brought along a gat?

I’m hoping to go back in the summer, after the fourth novel comes out:  Shadows of a Dark Past.  Maybe I’ll see you there!

Halloween Reading Treats!

1940s mystery, Autumn, Dorothy Mcardle, Film Noir, Gene Teirney, Gothic, Gothic literature, Halloween, Jessie Douglas Kerriush, Mary Wollstonecraft, mystery, suspense, The Sign of the Ram, The Uninivted, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Every October, I like to have some bedtime reading that suits the season.  I just finished two new books:  Midnight Fires and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.  The first is a mystery by Nancy Means Wright that features Mary Wollstonecraft as its intrepid detective.  marywollstonecraftaWollstonecraft is a great choice for the role, as anyone who has read her Vindications would agree that she has all the nerve, smarts, and wit to boldly ask the questions and dig the dirt necessary for an investigator.  Her being cast in this role makes perfect sense. The novel is set during Wollstonecraft’s tenure as governess to the aristocratic Kingsborough family in Ireland and does a neat job of characterizing “the troubles.”  We also get good views of the workings of the Kingsborough family, as well as how contemporary views of women have stunted and warped them – right in line with MW’s own writings.  The descriptions of the landscapes are a pleasure to read as well.  Not least of all, the mystery has some neat twists and turns.

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was a pleasantly amusing visit with the supernatural – a low key, smile-inducing progress of Lucy/Lucia Muir’s liberation from oppressive Edwardian propriety to become a mischievous, independent woman – with a little help from a frank and fiery sea captain’s ghost – though she was already well on her way to freedom before they met at Gull Cottage.ghost-tierney-really-good  There are some significant changes from book to film, but both work equally well.  I do think that Gene Tierney gives Lucia Muir a bit more power than the character in the book.

 

 

There are four books that I usually return to once I finish any new prizes for the month:  The Uninvited (Dorothy Mcardle), The Sign of the Ram (Margaret Ferguson), The Undying Monster (Jessie Douglas Kerriush), and  Redeeming Time (me, unpublished – yet!).  What I admire in the first three (and try to emulate in the fourth), is the depth of characterization, the creation of a powerful mystical/eerie atmosphere, the vividness of the landscapes, and the intelligence of the storylines. signoftheram What makes them such a pleasure to read is their authors’ deftness with language:  there’s enough detail to savor and shape your imagination but no excess or filler.  Right now, I’m working on The Uninvited.  I review it and The Sign of the Ram on this web site, under Golden Age Mysteries.  The Undying Monster is part of the psychic detective genre, with a woman psychic brought in to help a scientist uncover the nature of the beast that has ravaged an ancient British family for centuries and now threatens to destroy his two close friends.  The novel deftly captures the post WWI fascination with psychic phenomenon and leads characters and readers into the dark depths of ancient ruins, crypts, and family history to reach a final, mystical resolution – and it’s a fun ride!

What’s Redeeming Time about?  Think H. P. Lovecraft meets film noir meets Indiana Jones meets Val Lewton.

Image of Gene Tierney from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir copyright 1946, 20th-Century Fox (http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/2010/08/just-thought.html)