Tag Archives: mysteries

Forthcoming in Leah Contarini Mystery Series

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Coming May 23, 2023: If Two of Them Are Dead, second of the Leah Contarini Mysteries, by Libi Siporin. The now-widowed Leah Contarini returns to the Tuscan village of Scansansiano and finds her beloved community beset with bizarre events. Shamus Award winner Greg Stout, author of Lost Little Girl and The Gone Man, writes Siporin’s work is: “…first, a murder mystery, second, a paean to the Tuscan region, its customs, culture, …and residents, all of which are richly drawn…. A far cry from the usual noir-ish streets of New York or Los Angeles.” Stout’s words hold true; Siporin writes more than murder.

My Thanks

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This month I want to express a big “Thank You” to the community of people who stand behind all writers. From the beginning of any writing project this includes those:

who help set up a Web Page and other online venues
who maintain those sites;
readers who give time, attention, and thoughtful criticisms to rough drafts (and I mean often really rough drafts);
editors who accept our work and spend hours nourishing it, trusting it; improving it
reviewers who speak publicly about our books, encouraging readers to buy and read
readers who buy our work, who take the time to listen to our stories

My personal thanks on the Leah Contarini Mystery Series goes to:
Sabine Barcatta
Shanna Siporin
Dov & Lev Siporin
Steve Siporin
Mary Sharp
Steve Sharp
Carol McNamara
Greg Stout
Mark Levenson
Laura Fisher
Level Best Books:
Harriette Sackler
Shawn Reilly Simmons
Verena Rose

Beginning a New Book

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To animate work on a book, I gather ideas from three sources:  scholarly / public records; interviews; and notes from my own experience. Combining these three elements jumpstarts my imagination, and I know if I keep sifting through these elements, the story I discover, one of hundreds of possibilities, will make itself known. Personal memories of food, landscape, gestures, and the sounds of a language infuse scholarly information with vibrancy, and the scholarly writings provide details and facts that may have become fuzzy in friends’ telling of personal stories.

So when I was recently asked at a reading if my stories are autobiographical, or if the stories I am putting to paper are the stories of someone else, or if I just create the narratives whole cloth out of imagination, I say that none of these is the case, and yet, all of them are the case.

Everywhere I go, in everything I read, hear, and see, I find pieces of life — good, evil, and inbetween — and am compelled to make a story. The pieces appear everywhere: in a fact in a book, in a neighbor’s tears elicited by a memory, in the vison of a landscape, in the unique sound of a dialect, in the way the rain fell outside the window on a certain day, in the moment I understood the profound anger of a woman who remembers running through the forest, SS and dogs not far behind.  From these pieces, an incipient story nudges at me.

I begin a narrative. Perhaps the woman was crying when she remembers how it was raining the night she slipped from her house and fled into the forests of Tuscany, the SS not far behind.  It could be that the trail that  night was muddy, like the trails I explored years later in the same forest, the mud sucking at my feet. Perhaps the Italian peasant man I interviewed still makes the same sausage his grandfather made, and can give me the recipe, which in my story becomes a murder weapon.

These chunks of life add up to a story, which, good or bad, is a reflection of my vision, risen from the urge to create a narrative. My ultimate goal is to look into my own and others’ hearts, including the darker sides, to grasp some understanding of human nature.

Why Read Mysteries?

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Last blog, I wrote about why I write mysteries: the puzzle aspect; the chance to deal with
death, which is the center of all our maps; the opportunity to re-create geographies I’ve known and loved; the chance to live through characters that are stronger, smarter, more courageous than I am; the chance to explore my own inner world, including the darker side; and the chance, almost like a folktale, to clarify the differences between good and evil – and more: the confusion of the two.

What about you? Why do you read mysteries, or why don’t you read mysteries? If you
do, when did you start reading them? Or did you pick one up, start reading, and decide the genre’s not for you? What do mysteries offer you that other genres don’t? What subgenres (thrillers, cozies, detective novels, police procedurals, etc.) do you read? Or, what is it mysteries lack that you find in other genres? Who are your favorite writers of mysteries? Why? Who your favorite writers of other genres?

I hope you’ll send a line or two – or whole paragraphs – and tell me your thoughts on
mysteries.

WHY MYSTERIES?

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“Why mysteries?” Someone asked me.

I didn’t have a ready answer. I never planned to write them. I’ve mostly written poetry, commentaries, a few short works of fiction, and there’s an unpublished novel languishing on my shelf. 

The idea of writing mysteries started some years ago while I was hiking in the forests of the upper Maremma of Tuscany. Walking past three Etruscan burial caves, a mystery popped into my head.

So, I began.

I wrote the story, and in the way a reader or a listener lives through stories, so does the writer. My characters are not me; they can do and say what they want in ways very different from me, but I still get to act through them in a range of ways:  I can fight off attackers, I can get angry when I shouldn’t, I can be any age I want; I can have long braids, or shave my head and wear tattoos. I can be cruel, tender, harsh or sweet, beautiful, with long legs; I can go anywhere I want. And because mystery is a natural setting for shadowy characters, I can explore the dark sides of myself with impunity. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never murdered anyone and I don’t intend too, but writing a mystery I do search my own dark corners for understanding. In the words of Kurt Vonnegut: “Writing, I experience becoming, find out what’s inside me, make my soul grow.”

Another reason I like writing mysteries is for the fun of the puzzle. Can I play the game well enough to make several characters suspicious? Can I leave a clue so subtly no one notices it’s a clue? Can I set the game so well, it’s the end before anyone guesses who the murderer is?

A third reason:  I get to weave setting with plot. Ok, this is true in any genre, but it’s still a great delight to be able to talk about places I’ve lived and loved, to make those places themselves, characters.

Fourth:I get to deal with the subject of death. Death is the country at the center of the map in everyone’s life, and in writing mysteries I can confront it, and in some ways be relieved of it.

 Fifth:  E.M Forster once said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” This applies to writing in general. I don’t write mysteries because I understand why humans kill each other; I write mysteries because in writing them I work to understand why they kill each other. 

Sixth: Finally, it’s rewarding to “take a close and uncomfortable look at the world.” (Walter Mosley). In mysteries I see, up-close, the worst side of human beings and the best side. I have the possibility to watch people make choices in difficult circumstances, to learn and clarify the differences between good and evil. In this sense, mysteries are like traditional folktales, and I have always loved traditional tales.

Most of the reasons I’ve given for writing mysteries, are also reasons for writing in any genre. At base, I simply love to write, and I think that as I work to understand my characters – which means understanding myself as well – I become more human.