When the pace of change, especially in technology, makes you dizzy, consider changes American women went through from the eve of World War I to the eve of World War II. A few of those changes become “accidental characters” in the mystery Don’t Dare a Dame, when a private eye in Ohio is hired to learn […]
Continue readingIn the years just before World War II and through the anxious years until it ended, the writings of three women influenced American politics and social issues, were quoted for their razor-sharp wit, and kept mystery lovers up reading past their bedtime. They were all named Dorothy. “The first thing I do in the morning […]
Continue readingOne of the icons of World War II, and a presence in the live of American service men and women from then to now, turns 75 today – the USO. It was the brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who saw the need for an organization to boost morale and provide recreation to American G.I.’s. […]
Continue reading“A Concrete Garter Belt”, a new Maggie Sullivan short story, has joined the four novels and one other short story currently in the mystery series. It was previously published in the Private Eye Writers of America anthology Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora, but is now available as a stand-alone. The private eye’s search for […]
Continue readingAs you race around doing your holiday cooking, even if it’s only opening a bottle of wine for guests, take time to raise your oven mitt to the Greatest Generation woman who designed the efficient, modern kitchen we take for granted today. Her name was Lillian Gilbreth, and her many accomplishments include: Pioneer in time-and-motion […]
Continue readingOccasionally – perhaps once in 150 reviews – a reader expresses doubt that a woman PI like Maggie Sullivan could have existed in the late 1930s or 40s. Admittedly they were a rare breed, but women private detectives and policewomen were around in that era and well before. The best known among them is without […]
Continue readingIn the two years before the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans were divided over whether the country should get involved in the war against Hitler. Nowhere was this split more evident than among American women. In 1940 and ’41, when politics was still largely a man’s game, women who never before would have done something as […]
Continue readingHere’s a recent picture of the now-deserted Arcade which usually is the locale of at least one scene in most of the Maggie Sullivan mysteries. You’ll enjoy the brief account of its history. Small wonder the spot turns up in my series, what with the detective division of the Dayton police just across the street in one direction and […]
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