Crime and Punishment

I enjoy writing what I think of as short cosy crime mysteries. 

Murder or mayhem remain implausible, and that implausibility allows them to be entertaining. There is plenty of domestic detail, crimes happen offstage with no grisly details, and the police rarely make an appearance. All this can be wrapped up satisfactorily in short story form.

What I have realised, looking back, is that all my victims somehow deserved their fate. There is the over-zealous council official, the supercilious husband forever putting his wife down, the Indian mother-in-law plotting to poison her half-English daughter-in-law, the high-flying executive who pushes her colleague to suicide, the love rat who destroys his girlfriend’s self-esteem, the money-grabbing antiques dealer, and – crème de la crime – the woman who poisons the dog alongside her intended victim.

Let the punishment fit the crime.

The ever entertaining Crimeucopia anthologies offer something for everyone and are published in ebook and paperback by Murderous Ink Press and available on Amazon, for example

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crimeucopia-Well-Right-Back-After/dp/1909498424/

 

Madeleine McDonald

2023 - The Year To Kick Back And Relaaax

Hello and welcome to a new day, a new month, a new year: 2023!!

Members of Hornsea Writers trust you enjoyed your Christmas feasting – food, drink, and reading books.

Fiction is what we offer, escape portals into other worlds to make your own, to ease your way through the absurdities of real life. And we have plenty to offer.

Do you believe in unicorns? 

Evidently Penny Grubb does, or at least Melodie Trudeaux, her alter ego who keeps her humorous Young Teen fiction separate from her seriously adult Crime novels. Horse of the Same Colour is the sequel to Horse of a Different Colour, with Megan and Amy finding more trouble with horses… and otherworldly beasts.

Paperback, Ebook, Kindle Unlimited

Linda Acaster moved from Contemporary Fantasy to Contemporary Mystery for The Forever House. 

After the death of her husband, Caroline Haynes is doing her best to carry on renovating their house. But with her son and his family only available on video calls, she has too much time to think. Does anyone ever know what layers of wallpaper might reveal? Or layers of life?

Paperback, Ebook, Kindle Unlimited

Very hot off the press comes Who Wants To Live Forever? April Taylor’s final novel in the Georgia Pattison Mystery series. 

Georgia may at last have agreed to marry her beloved Sir Edward Broome, but an unknown man calling halt mid-service is just the beginning of Gerogia’s problems in this multi-layered story of intrigue and corruption.

Ebook, Kindle Unlimited    

Other members have not been slothful. Many are writing fiction and non-fiction shorts for a variety of print and digital imprints, with Shellie Horst’s Whitebridge Heroes gaining an Honorable Mention in the prestigious “Writers of the Future” competition.  

Madeleine McDonald’s Enchantment in Morocco has a new cover, and she won an award from Press 53 for a flash fiction tale. Joy Stonehouse is putting the finishing touches to the fourth in her faction series set in 18th century Reighton, Yorkshire. Stuart Aken, author of An Excess of… and an SF trilogy set on Mars, has penned a contemporary Christmas short available to read on his website.

On the non-fiction front, Karen Whitchurch continues to entertain and inform with her monthly newspaper column on living with dogs.

Enjoy!