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Two mysteries that might likely be languishing on the shelf, probably because what started off as a funny, cozy series stopped after two novels. Which is really too bad, because they are wonderfully written light mysteries , with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and an endearing heroine that will appeal to readers who enjoy the sassiness of Janet Evanovich.

Wisecracking Morgan Taylor is a Chicago actress-turned-sleuth. In Audition for Murder, she is thrust into a spotlight she doesn’t want when 2 of her theater pals are murdered. The follow-up, Cruising for Murder,  finds Morgan as a lead performer on a cruise ship, but it turns out the actress she’s replacing might not have died accidentally, after all.

I do wish authors Susan Sussman and Sarajan Avidon could have continued this series, not just because I have a personal interest in musical theater, but because, as the Booklist review for Cruising for Murder put it, “This is a stylish and absorbing story featuring a woman you will wish was your friend in real life.”  Unfortunately, Avidon, a popular Chicago actress, passed away in 2006.

Oh, I kid King Henry, I kid. If your patrons are some of the thousands who put Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies on the best-seller list, they may be ready for some more sixteenth-century intrigue. Nothing could be more timely than spotlighting these historical mysteries.

• To Shield the Queen by Fiona Buckley
• The White Rose Murders by Michael Clynes
• Day of Wrath by Iris Collier
• Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie by Kathy Lynn Emerson
• The Poyson Garden by Karen Harper
• The Serpent Garden by Judith Merkle Riley
• Dissolution by C.J. Sansom

Featuring some of today’s leading mystery and crime writers, MURDERATI examines critical themes, historical archetypes and trends in publishing, marketing and the life of the published author.

Notable contributors include Alafair Burke, Luise Ure, and Tess Gerritsen. For the most part, the writers write about…being writers. A great insight into how crime novelists see the world around them.

So,  Karen has already offered read-alikes for Fifty Shades of Grey, but this recent blog post, “I’ll Show You Smut,” from our friend Nanette Donohue, gives an eye-opening look at more titles you can find on your library’s shelf while you languish on the hold list.

She couches her list—a “Dirty Dozen Books that Brevard County Library Hasn’t Removed from Their Collection”—as it as a reprimand to the Florida library where the title was pulled from the collection.

As Donohue puts it, “So Fifty Shades of Grey is too hot for the readers of Brevard County. Okay, whatever. Communities have the right to determine which items to add to their collections based on local standards. But I wondered to myself if they owned books that I would consider hotter than Fifty Shades of Grey (which is pretty much most things with a few sex scenes). I decided to take a look at their online catalog to see if I could find some smutty stuff. I avoided the obvious targets, like nonfiction books about sex (e.g., The Joy of Sex or The Joy of Gay Sex) or boring-ass classic literature with sex scenes (yeah, they own Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but that’s tame by modern standards). I narrowed my list down to twelve authors, titles, and series, but I could find more. Lots, lots more. Go forth, administration of the Brevard County Public Library, and weed! Bowdlerize your collections! Make your library safe for readers!”

We say, use her suggestions as read-alikes, or a display—if you dare.

Set in Chicago, Westerfield’s Chain is the story of Nick Acropolis, a private eye who gets deeper and deeper into a mystery involving a mom & pop drugstore, medicare fraud, missing person after missing person, and several murders.  Very well written with great Chicago detail.

This seemed like a great start to a new series, but surprisingly, Clark hasn’t come out with another  Acropolis mystery.

In 2010,  Booklist editor Bill Ott followed up on Clark in a “Story Behind the Story” feature.

A former Library Trustee and current President of the Friends of the Hinsdale Public Library, mystery writer Jack Fredrickson is a delightfully enthusiastic advocate for public libraries. If you’ve featured any of his books in your newsletter or on your website, you may have even received a hand-written note of thanks. (Though, given his sense of humor and penchant for self-deprecation, you may have mistaken it for an apology.)

In honor of Booklist’s Mystery Month, I sat down for a “quick” chat with Jack, whose latest Dek Elstrom mystery Hunting Sweetie Rose came out this spring and is just as quirky and enjoyable as its predecessors.

It’s not a huge surprise that Jack became a writer, some of his strongest and earliest memories are of checking out armloads of books from the Park Ridge Public Library. (He even earned his Boy Scout Troop’s very first merit badge—for reading.) Once he was old enough to head into downtown Chicago on his own, he’d take a ten-dollar bill he got for Christmas and case Kroch’s and Brentano’s for hours, plotting which 35-cent paperbacks to take come. He’d start reading on the train and not remove his nose from his books until school started.

Serious mystery writer headshot. (Perhaps the only time I've seen the author not smiling.)

Reading remained a passionate hobby, but writing was limited to a couple of business books he wrote in his post-MBA days. (To read more about Cost Reduction in the Office and Designing the Cost-Effective Office, go to the cheekily named “Sleep Aids” page on his website.) After working in management consulting and industrial engineering, Jack ran a successful office furniture business. He retired early and gave himself three years to be irresponsible. Scuba lessons, Appalachian banjo-building lessons, and a string of other adventures followed.

Up for anything, Jack agreed to take a writing class at a local community college with a friend. The friend was not aware that Jack already had a manuscript in a drawer, a story that had been the reason Jack would sneak into the office early or offer to lock the place up at night. The positive feedback he received from this workshop gave him the courage to submit a short story to Ellery Queen magazine. Months later (April Fool’s day, actually) he bought himself a straw hat from Target when he learned it would be published.

Jack continued taking classes and finally went to the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, where an instructor read the first draft of The Gateville Explosions (later to be published as A Safe Place for Dying) and suggested that he send it to an agent. That first agent didn’t bite, but the book did eventually catch the eye of an editor at St. Martin’s. The rest is history. (With a long interlude including lunch at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station, a scrambled phone call to his son in which some lady from New York left a message about Jack looking for a place to die in New York, and a trudge to the Flatiron Building. Get Jack to tell you about it sometime.)

Thus, Dek Elstrom, the turret-dwelling, hypocrisy-hating, ex-wife-pining, Ho-Ho-eating former P.I. was released upon the reading public. About Dek’s destiny, “I don’t want to know,” Jack says. “I only know about 10 minutes in advance what’s going to happen.” Which is probably a good thing. Part of the charm of this series is Dek’s casual befuddlement. I think of the Dek Elstrom books as Elmore Leonard on good behavior. They’re not quite cozies, not quite capers. Easily recommended to fans of Lawrence Shames or G.M. Malliet, the characters and irreverent sense of humor are the big draw to this enjoyable series. Now that I think about it, the same can be said of the author.

An excellent source for all things mystery and crime fiction related, The Rap Sheet features information about new and forthcoming books, and special author projects such as essays and feature articles.

Edited by J. Kingston Pierce, the site also features a regular roundup of mystery and crime fiction news, (and often just fun random web stuff) known as “Bullet Points” (ha ha!).

If Birdie Wooster only took himself a little more seriously, he might have fit in with the crime solving barristers in Sarah Caudwell’s very smart, very witty, very British legal whodunits. In the last of the four books in the series,  Sibyl in Her Grave, Professor of Medieval Law Hilary Tamar advises a group of former students how to handle an insider-trading scandal.

If you don’t enjoy long, literally allusions that imply, “If you don’t get it, I can’t be bothered with you,” then Caudwell’s not for you. Part of the charm of these books is the author’s ironic take on Britain’s elite, joyfully described in overly formal prose.

In Edna Buchanan’s You Only Die Twice, a woman’s body washes up on a Florida beach.  One problemshe’s identified as a woman reported dead 10 years ago—and her husband is on death row for the murder. Who is the body, and who killed her?

Our Booklist reviewer called it “An intelligent, thoroughly entertaining crime novel”—and I completely agree. Lots of twists,  a great main character, and a fast read.  

There are many mysteries inherent to motherhood–where is that other shoe? why do you suddenly HAVE TO HAVE the bear you haven’t played with in three months? how did that much stuff come out of a child that small? I can’t imagine having to sort through somebody else’s figurative dirty laundry when I’ve got so much of the real stuff at home. That’s why reading is an escape, I guess. Celebrate Mother’s Day with these do-it-all detectives.

• Jennifer Apodaca
• Laurien Berenson
• Dorothy Cannell
• Jill Churchill
• Sharon Fiffer
• Lynn Hightower
• Susan Isaacs (Compromising Positions)
• Jonnie Jacobs
• Leslie Meier
• Ayelet Waldman
• Jennifer Weiner (Goodnight Nobody)
• Valerie Wolzien