Alls the Ms: MacAlister to MacBird

Katie MacAlister: I started Steamed. It has rapid dialog and an immediate conflict. I didn't engage with the narrator, however. At one point, I was legitimately amused since the narrator has a reputation for "Indiana" Jones-types heroics, which he argues were all just happenstance. But then it turns out that the narrator worked for the army with "high-tech...spy technology"--which he doesn't deny--and I lost interest. I would rather he was the guy who didn't see heroic events coming than the supposedly self-effacing guy who is the amazing hero everybody says he is.

Greer Macallister: Girl in Disguise is based on the story of Kate Warne, a Pinkerton agent in the mid-1800s. I found the opening chapter engaging. I didn't read further since I tend to go for detective mysteries rather than thriller mysteries. But I can recommend the writing!

Robin MacArthur: Heart Spring Mountain is presented in an interesting way: the stories of separate people, mostly women, from different decades. It's "raw life in small towns," like a less romantic/less nostalgic version of Sarah Orne Jewett's work. Not my cup of tea. And there's an awful lot of this stuff. But then there are an awful lot of mysteries and romances! It is well-written.

Bonnie MacBird: Art in the Blood starts like many Sherlock Holmes' books--it refers to a recently discovered manuscript by John Watson.

It also references Nicholas Meyer, the "discoverer" of the Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror and The Canary Singer. It has the same direct, clear language.

And it takes place abroad, so I didn't continue. Of Meyer's books, for instance, my favorite is The West End Horror, precisely because it takes place in a closed environment, the theater world of Gilbert & Sullivan. I prefer my detectives on, say, trains rather than dashing through countrysides.

Regarding Holmes' books: When I first started out as a writer sending submissions to magazines, editors would warn writers not to send them the same-old-same-old, such as vampire tales. 

I understood the editors' exhaustion--it's the same reason I finally told my students they couldn't write papers about marijuana for me anymore; I was thoroughly bored. 

But I don't have a literary problem with writers tackling the same topics over and over, such as Greek gods or Sherlock Holmes or, even, vampires (I avoid vampire books for entirely different reasons). Granted, the writers may find themselves trying to force their way into a crowded room. But the joy of the thing itself is why people write and why people read. If I'm not engaged by a topic...well, actually, I write in the same way that I wrote papers as a student on topics that didn't interest me--

But what's the fun in that!?