country in the 1930s, as well as a strand of multi-award-winning
psychological thrillers. Very different awards. After eight years in the
new country, she kicked off the humorous Last Ditch Motel series, which
takes a wry look at California life. These are not multi-award-winning,
but the first two won the same award in consecutive years, which still
isn’t too shabby.
[My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide; The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.]
McPherson is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.
Her latest Dandy Gilver mystery is The Turning Tide.
At CrimeReads, McPherson tagged five of her favorite mystery plots set on islands, including:
The Island: MictlanRead about the other entries on the list.
The Novel: They All Fall Down
Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down is definitely the off-spring of Christie’s classic. She set out deliberately to write a modern twist on the “going down like ninepins” plot. But every child has twoparents, right? Not only are the characters here about as different from Christie’s generals and schoolmarms as you could imagine—Miriam Macy is a terrific tragicomic invention—but the island itself is a good deal more thrilling than Purbeck. Mictlan, named for the Aztec underworld and reached on a boat called La Charon, is a private paradise off the Mexico coast in the Sea of Cortez. Another wonderful updating is that the guests gathered there to await their fate have been lured on the pretext of an appearance on a reality show. They’re told this in an email signed “A.Nansi”, by the way. So the signs are clear that they should have let the chance go by. I’m so glad they didn’t; this novel is a ton of fun.
They All Fall Down is among CrimeReads' ten best crime novels of 2019 and Kristen Lepionka's seven favorite unlikable female characters.
The Page 69 Test: They All Fall Down.
--Marshal Zeringue
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