Six Months Later by Susan Oleksiw

Just six months ago, in January, those of us who publish with Five Star/Gale, Cengage got the news that our publisher would no longer accept manuscripts for its mystery line. The news hit a lot of us very hard. Some writers watched their first novel turn into the last one. Others waited for their book to show up at a conference, only to learn the pub date had been pushed back. The bad news took many forms, but in the end it was the same for all of us who write mysteries.

In an earlier posting (found here) I wrote at length about how the abrupt ending of the mystery line affected me. It meant basically the end of the Anita Ray novels and the Mellingham books because publishers are unlikely to pick up another publisher’s series. But as I mentioned then, I had one more book in the pipeline with Five Star, another one ready to go, two paperback editions with Harlequin waiting in the wings, and a story just accepted by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

So where am I six months later? The last Anita Ray mystery novel, When Krishna Calls, will be out in August 2016, along with a short story from AHMM (the October issue available in August). The same magazine accepted two more stories, one featuring Anita Ray. I’ve sent another story to Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. The paperbacks of the second and third Anita Ray novels haven’t appeared yet, but they will.

I was about to send the seventh Joe Silva/Mellingham mystery to Five Star when I got the news. After much thought (and professional editing and a cover design), I published the novel myself. Come About for Murder is doing well, and I’m pleased. None of this breaks new ground. For that I have to turn to my effort to create a new series.

In a few short stories I’ve explored life in a rural area I’ve named West Woodbury, a small town in the poorest county in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. AHMM has accepted a story set in this world, and I self-published one (Love Takes a Detour) some time ago. The stories come easily, most of the time, but creating a new series character is proving to be harder. I’m not interested as much in her because I know she’s going to survive every encounter. The ones I’m interested in are the characters who may not, or who will come out of the experience so changed that no one will recognize them anymore.

Still, this is the new series that has captured my attention and my imagination. Six months after Five Star shut down its mystery line I’ve written two novels and am rewriting the second one, to bring it more into line with current tastes (that means more action, according to my ever-supportive agent, Paula Munier).

I tell myself the challenge has been good for me because it has made me give up a secure place and try something new. I should have known this was coming after all the time I spent writing about sailing in the seventh Joe Silva and the short story coming out in August (“Variable Winds”). Taking the safe way is called, by sailors, “hugging the shore.” To really sail, to find out what you and your boat can do, you have to leave the safety of the coastline behind and set out into the vast ocean, where the only markers are the wind and sun and your own ability to chart a course and find your way.

I’ve heard from a few of my fellow Stars, but I’d like to hear from more. What has happened in your writing life since getting the news? Successes? Discoveries? If you have something to share, I hope you will.

Indian Crime Fiction

The people and culture of India have loomed large in crime fiction almost from the beginning. Consider Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four, or Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone. And yet, up until 1980 there were only a handful of mysteries set in India proper, and most concerned foreigners getting into trouble in a foreign land. Among the few that had any focus on India and Indians were the series titles featuring Inspector Ghote. H.R.F. Keating introduced the much loved and intrepid Inspector Ghote in 1964 in The Perfect Murder, and followed this with 23 more entries. The Ghote series is very much in the Agatha Christie tradition.

For mystery readers who love to read about India, there weren’t many other options than the endearing Inspector Ghote. This was part of the motivation that pushed me to write about Anita Ray, an Indian American photographer who lives in her aunt’s tourist hotel in South India. Anita made her debut in the short story “A Murder Made in India,” in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (2003). Since then she has appeared in 12 more short stories and three novels. The third novel is For the Love of Parvati, available in May 2014. 

India may be thousands of miles away, on the other side of the globe, with more people and worse weather, but many of the problems are the same. In For the Love of Parvati Anita travels with her aunt to visit relatives, but it’s clear at once that the old and revered family is well on its way to disaster, and a woman who has fled a war zone in another country is terrified of something she won’t or can’t explain. She entered the country illegally, and she has nothing to go back to.

An equally important and violent character in the story is the monsoon. It’s hard to explain the drenching unrelenting rain that comes twice a year. Rivers flood, bridges and roads are washed out, and trees are often uprooted. Anita is not surprised when she finds signs that a leopard has been stalking the area, driven out of the nature preserve farther up in the hills. She is surprised, however, when she realizes that a man is stalking the house, and her worry is only intensified when it turns out that the household servant has not gone on pilgrimage but is instead missing.

Similar in tone is the Vish Puri series by Tarquin Hall. The Most Private Investigator Vish Puri is introduced in The Case of the Missing Servant (2009). Three more mysteries followed. Also in this category is the series following treasure hunting professor Jaya Jones, who appeared first in Artifact (2012) by Gigi Pandian. Manjiri Prabhu published at least one book featuring Sonia Samarth, a private detective who solves crimes using astrology, in Cosmic Clues.

Barbara Cleverly introduced Detective Joe Sandilands in The Last Kashmiri Rose (2001). The series is set in 1920s and 1930s colonial India, and depicts life among the British and other Europeans of the time. Darker and more varied in setting and characters is the collection from Akashic Books, Mumbai Noir, edited by Atlaf Tyrewala (2012), offering stories by 14 writers from India. These writers take us into corners of Mumbai no outsider was ever expected to see. You can’t get farther from the Taj Mahal than the dark corners of Mumbai.

India is no longer the most unusual place on earth, the hardest to reach and hardest to understand. But all these books have a few things in common—the traditional ways of dealing with authority and elders, the delicious food, the challenges of getting anything done in India, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the pervasive corruption, and the exotic beauty of the country. All are set in North India, an area that has long been much more accessible to foreigners.

The Anita Ray stories are set in South India, in the state of Kerala, once the location of an old kingdom, Travancore. The ruling family is still active in civic life and much admired by the local population. Kerala is also one of the last areas to relinquish the matrilineal system, and many who live on the fringes of the modern world still adhere to the older ways.

For links to the Anita Ray books, go to www.susanoleksiw.com