The Ultimate Whodunnit?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  We have rock stars here today! These are the authors who have the incredible honor of being nominated for the Agatha for Best First Novel.  An absolute once-in-a-lifetime moment!

Massive congratulations to all of you. And a standing ovation.

Now: here’s a question for you, In each of your award-nominated books, you have created a murder mystery—and then solved it. But how about in real life?

What's your favorite unsolved real-life mystery?

Marla Cooper

  author of Terror in Taffeta (Minotaur Books)

One of my favorite mysteries involves greed, sex, false identities — and evil twins. There’s this guy, Jordan Gann, who meets a woman in a bar. He claims to be a pediatric oncologist who had just sold the rights to a drug patent, and he does the whole, “Drinks are on me!” thing. But then, oops, he doesn’t seem to have his credit card. So the woman and her friends cover the bill, Jordan promises he’ll pay them back, and he vanishes. Oh, but not before getting the woman pregnant. (Ooops!)   

Jordan continues to scam women all around the country, using a string of fake identities to avoid being caught. Until one day he goes into a bar, talks to the bartender about throwing a party there, and writes down his information … with a completely different name from the one he’d introduced himself with. The bartender, of course, is suspicious. He googles the man and finds a website warning people about Jordan, his cons, and his many aliases. (Giancarlo Dinatale! Simone Trezeguet! Dr. John Marino!) The bartender calls the police, and they swoop in and arrest Gann — who claims he’s innocent, and it was all the work of ... his twin brother Simon. Oh, yeah: the person who put up the website? You guessed it: the mother of Jordan’s child. Or possibly Simon’s. With twins, it’s hard to be sure.

Alexia Gordon

    author of Murder in G Major (Henery Press)

I’m an unsolved mystery fan. Almost all the podcasts on my Stitcher playlist deal with unsolved mysteries, both “Cold Case Files” and “Unsolved Mysteries” are saved in my Sling TV favorites, and “American Greed: The Fugitives” is on my Hulu watchlist. My favorite unsolved mystery--the one that intrigues me the most--is the case of the Edgecombe County serial killer.

Between 2003 and 2009, ten African-American women disappeared from the Rocky Mount, NC area known as the Neighborhood. Eight of their bodies were found, all in remote areas, several near Seven Bridges Road. Besides race, the women had things in common--they all struggled with drugs, prostitution, and poverty and they all came, literally, from the wrong side of the tracks--the Neighborhood sits on the Edgecombe County side of the railroad tracks running through Rocky Mount. 

Despite the similarities in the victims and the places where their bodies were dumped, Rocky Mount officials waited until 2009 to declare the murders and disappearances the work of a serial killer. Later that year a man was arrested for one of the murders. He was tried and convicted of that one murder in 2011. He was “credited” with “up to” seven of the other killings but was never charged with any of them. Many in Rocky Mount believe he was a scapegoat--a convenient place to lay the blame to make the story go away.

This case gets to me because of the relative lack of coverage it receives. Serial killers are usually big news. I Googled “Jack the Ripper” and got almost 9.5 million hits. “John Wayne Gacy” got more than half a million. “Edgecombe County serial killer” generated a mere 3,280. GQ did a piece on the case in 2010, an archived 2015 sub-Reddit generated a few posts, and a 2016 Rocky Mount newspaper article covered one family’s on-going search for their still-missing loved one. Wikipedia has an article that’s little more than a stub. But that’s about it. The deaths and disappearances of poor, broken, black women don’t seem to generate much notice.

Cynthia Kuhn

   author of The Semester of Our Discontent (Henery               Press)

Margaret Atwood’s postmodern mystery Alias Grace is based on the actual mid-19th century double murder of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Ontario, Canada. Two servants were accused—Grace Marks (who was jailed) and James Montgomery (who was hanged)—but truth of the matter may not be as tidy as it appears. The novel focuses primarily on conversations between Grace, who claims to have amnesia about what happened on the day of the murders, and Dr. Simon Jordan, who attempts to clarify events using newfangled theories of the mind. The “answer” suggested by this beautifully written novel is an intricate puzzle involving storytelling, spiritualism, and class/gender dynamics—and it’s an incredibly interesting journey.

Nadine Nettmann

           author of Decanting a Murder (Midnight Ink)

The mystery that immediately comes to mind is the death of Ned Doheny and his assistant, Hugh Plunket, at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills. Although it was deemed a murder-suicide, rumors and possible cover-ups continue to cloud what really happened that February night in 1929 and who actually killed who and then committed suicide.

 There are disagreements in the details including conflicting evidence, misstatements from the doctor who first arrived on the scene, and the fact that the family moved Ned’s body before calling police.

The story goes even deeper including Ned and Hugh’s involvement in the infamous Teapot Dome Scandal which was still going on at the time. The mystery has fascinated me for years and I’ve enjoyed touring the mansion on several occasions. However, and I’m relieved to share this, the floor is not stained with blood as it was rumored to be.

Renee Patrick (Rosemarie and Vince Keenan)

             author of Design for Dying (Forge)

When we told people we were writing a mystery featuring costume designer Edith Head, it surprised us how often they asked if she would investigate the infamous Black Dahlia case. We’re not sure why they thought we would rush into Hollywood’s most gruesome unsolved murder, especially when a far more intriguing mystery lies closer to Edith’s Paramount Pictures home: the 1922 shooting of director William Desmond Taylor. 

The case, recently covered in meticulous detail in Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann, features venal valets, smitten starlets and an irate stage mother. The perfect cold-case cast. On a recent research trip to Paramount’s costume archive, we were shown a tuxedo owned by Mr. Taylor himself. It bore no stray blonde hairs or overlooked bullet holes, though. Believe us, we looked.

HANK: Wow. SO many great real-life stories.  According to the jury, the Caylee Anthony case is still unsolved, and according to the criminal jury, so is the case of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Hmm.  So Reds and readers: what unsolved crime are you most fascinated with?

And on lucky commenter—to be named on Sunday!—will win a copy of the best-first Agatha winner’s book! 

But hey: congratulations to all!

And the nominees are: 

Marla Cooper is the author of Terror in Taffeta, an Agatha and Lefty nominee for Best First Mystery and book one in the Kelsey McKenna Destination Wedding Mysteries. Her second book, Dying on the Vine, is set in the California wine country and comes out April 4. As a freelance writer, Marla has written all sorts of things, from advertising copy to travel guidebooks to the occasional haiku, and it was while ghostwriting a guide to destination weddings that she found inspiration for her series. Originally hailing from Texas, Marla lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and her polydactyl tuxedo cat. Learn more at www.marla-cooper.com.

Alexia Gordon has been a writer since childhood. She continued writing through college but put literary endeavors on hold to finish medical school and Family Medicine residency training. Medical career established, she returned to writing fiction. She completed SMU's Writer’s Path program in Dallas, Texas. Henery Press published her first novel, Murder in G Major, book one of the Gethsemane Brown mysteries, in September 2016. Book two, Death in D Minor, premiers July 2017. A member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and the Writers’ League of Texas, she listens to classical music, drinks whiskey, and blogs at www.missdemeanors.com. AlexiaGordon.net

Cynthia Kuhn writes the Lila Maclean Academic Mystery series, which includes The Semester of Our Discontent and The Art of Vanishing. She is professor of English at MSU Denver and serves as president of Sisters in Crime-Colorado. For more information, please visit cynthiakuhn.net.

Nadine Nettmann, a Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers, is always on the lookout for great wines and the stories behind them. She has visited wine regions around the world, from France to Chile to South Africa, but chose Napa Valley as the setting for her debut novel, Decanting a Murder. The next book in the Sommelier Mystery Series, Uncorking a Lie, releases in May 2017. Chapters are paired with wine recommendations. NadineNettmann.com

Renee Patrick is the pseudonym of married authors Rosemarie and Vince Keenan. Rosemarie is a research administrator and a poet. Vince is a screenwriter and a journalist. Both native New Yorkers, they currently live in Seattle, Washington.

-->