At the moment I seem to be addicted to criminals and crime novels. In particular, Agatha Christie books. These cosy mysteries are keeping me up late at night and when I wake on morning,I reach straight for the current novel. I guess it’s better than reaching for the mobile or a bottle of something.
When I’m not reading about murders or working on an eBook,I find myself watching Sherlock on DVD. I know that I’m probably not alone and there are millions of people who do these types of things, but I’m curious about genre. What is it that attracts a person to a murder mystery and why do we find ourselves trying to work it out alone the way. When the clues come together at the end of the book, I kick myself for not working it out but sometimes they’re so subtle that they’re not easy to recognise. In some cases there doesn’t seem to be anything in particular that singles out one person and I often find myself wondering how the author thought up the case and how it was done. I guess it’s like any type of book because I’ve written crime myself and sometimes, I don’t realise how it’s all going to come together until just before I finish. I’m not really a list maker and I don’t sit there working out a plot like we were taught to do in high school. There isn’t a list of characters, they get invented along the way and sometimes, they become more prominent than I thought they would be.
Anyway, I doesn’t really matter how or why it’s written, that’s irrelevant. I love a cosy mystery and I suppose I always will.
Sandra Maggs 