Dear TCL Readers:

This will be a short missive, as I’m on my way to Mexico for the San Miguel de Allende Writer’s Conference and Literary Festival. It’s my first visit to the city, and to Mexico itself, and after a hard, hard winter, it could not be better timed for my emotional and psychological health. (Let’s put it this way: I got myself so burned out that my coping mechanism was turning back the clock to watch many, many vintage figure skating clips. Not the worst way to deal! But I would like my brain to come back, and fleeing winter will almost certainly make this happen.)

My festival schedule is pretty packed. I’ll be on the Industry Insiders panel on Wednesday, February 11 at 2:30 PM along with editors Andrea Walker and Jennifer Barth, agents Julie Stevenson and Susan Golomb, author Danielle Trussoni, and showrunner Nikki Toscano. The next morning, I teach the first of two workshops relating to narrative nonfiction, with the second workshop on Friday the 13th. I’m nervous and excited — teaching is something I’ve long enjoyed and I’d love to do more of, and I am really looking forward to talking about research methods and the ways in which authors, myself and others, glean information from archives for their work.

This is also a good time to mention some other forthcoming events I’ll be moderating in the coming months:

On Thursday, March 5 at 2 PM Eastern/7 PM GMT, I’ll be in conversation with the celebrated Yiddish actor, translator, and writer Mikhl Yashinsky to discuss his wonderful translation of The Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes. Registration details are at this link. Finally, I am able to merge my longstanding profession (crime writing) and key side interest (Yiddish) in a single event!

On Thursday, April 23 at 7 PM, I’ll be in conversation with Miguel Angel Hernandez at the Montague Street location of Books Are Magic to discuss his 2018 crime cronica — mostly true, some fiction — The Pain of Others, translated by Adrian Nathan West. Miguel and I became friends at Art Omi last year and I’m really looking forward to discussing this book in particular, but also crime writing ethics, the slippery nature of memory, and making art out of real-life trauma & pain. The registration link isn’t up yet, but I’ll post it next month when it is.

On Saturday, May 15 at 2:30 PM Mountain Time, I’ll be in conversation with Liz Moore about her body of work — most recently The God of the Woods and Long Bright River — at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival. The event is already sold out (!) but waitlist information is right here.

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Something I keep meaning to do whenever a new column is up is to mention other worthy crime novels I read but didn’t have room to fit in (because I can only review four of them.) January’s column reviewed books by Malcolm Kempt, Michael Idov, Amy Pease, and Kelli Stanley, all of which I liked to varying degrees. I was also taken with the latest Sister Holiday mystery by Margot Douaihy, Divine Ruin — no surprise there, as I loved the first two, and Douaihy’s ability to immerse herself deeply in the genre while also creating a memorable protagonist with a unique voice is on fully display here as well.

I read Ashley Elston’s Anatomy of an Alibi and really enjoyed the way the plot kept me guessing, so I finally went back and read the smash hit First Lie Wins, which I had been hesitating about for no good reason other than it wasn’t the right time — and really enjoyed how off-balance it kept me as well. Elston also writes about the South in a way that feels right and lived-in, and that is clearly part of the appeal to the wide audience she’s already attracted.

Lastly, some other books I’ve been reading and would recommend:

• Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, which I read for a book club, is a truly standout literary biography as well as an incisive meditation on what an archive reveals (and conceals) and who gets to control the narrative, in life and after death. Also this is where I learned that Stein’s favorite crime novelist was Dashiell Hammett, and clearly I will have to write a whole essay on her affinity for crime fiction as a whole.

• Havoc by Christopher Bollen, which I shamefully missed when it was published at the end of 2024, is delicious nasty fun — an octogenarian pitted against an eight-year-old in a battle waged to literal death — that also serves as one of the best novels about the early phases of the pandemic.

• Take It From Me by Alia Hanna Habib is the book I wish I had been able to read while working on my first nonfiction book proposal and a book I am so glad to have on hand as I work on the next one. All nonfiction writers (or writers looking to move into nonfiction) should get this book.

Stay warm and healthy, and I’ll be back with another newsletter at the end of February.

Until next time, I remain,

The Crime Lady