THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # NINETY-EIGHT -- 15 APRIL 2016

Due to public holidays in certain states, the deadline for filing tax returns this month has it seems been extended a couple of days. Hopefully this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener offers lighter reading than that dense mystery with a cast of dozens and an immense amount of obfuscation, or in other words the Form 1040 Instruction Booklet.

ERIC'S BIT or A DIRTY STORY

Our neighbors had a truckload of dirt delivered this morning. They've been filling in low spots in the yard. Their two preschoolers were on top of the pile immediately. They looked giddy with delight and indecision. Should we shovel, or climb or kick the stuff around, or just sit in it?

Dirt's a kid magnet. No one's ever invented a better toy.

By my parents' house there used to be a spot shaded by big maples, behind the leafy bushes edging the lawn, where the grass wouldn't grow. There was nothing back there but beautiful, untouched earth, ready to be dug and scraped and shaped.

My friends and I bought bags of plastic vehicles at the Five & Dime. The assorted cars and trucks in each bag were barely distinguishable as such. They were hollow, just shells really, an inch long and didn't even have working wheels. One of them would have been useless. But 120 in one bag were a marvel.

That kind of traffic required roads and roads are made of dirt. Our wide, straight turnpike stretched from stonewall to hollyhocks. Small roads curved and branched off to assorted rocks and clumps of weeds and narrower tracks twisted their way into the interior of the bushes. All these routes were jammed with vehicles.

Eventually a summer thunderstorm would wash our work away and allow us to start over again.

I'm glad I didn't grow up in a city where that sort of play would probably have been confined to short visits to a nearby park. I was lucky to grow up with dirt.

NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

History tells us Noel Coward once referred to destiny's relentless lamp. Since we'd rather not have it glaring in our eyes while a shadowy figure forcefully asks us for our news, it's as well that this time round the ticker is pretty quiet and our updates quickly told...

MAKING-DO FOR MAKE-UP or CAN YOU BEET IT?

Subscribers may care to consult Lois Winston's blog for March 31st for Mary's contribution on the inventive ways British women got around a severe shortage of cosmetics during the Second World War. One clever makeshift was applying beetroot juice for lip colour. Did you know there was at least one prosecution for the illegal manufacture and sale of face powder during that war? All is revealed at

http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2016/03/beauty-with-guest-author-mary-reed.html

A DIFFERENT SORT OF WRITING or SHORT, DARK, AND HEINOUS

Just for the heck of it Mary challenged Poisoned Pen Press and Poisoned Pencil authors to try a different sort of writing, or in other words — no pun intended — take a bash at writing a haiku or clerihew about one of their books. M. Evonne Dobson, Jane Finnis, Judy Clemens, and Bill Cameron took up the gauntlet and the results appeared in March on the PPP blog at

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/haiku-challenge/

Eric will be in the spotlight over there on April 18th, when he contributes thoughts on The Problem with Self Promotion. For shy authors who prefer to remain in the shadows, it's no wonder he laments if only Eric Reed were a real person who loved being a salesman.... No link yet but his blog will be reachable on that date via Poisoned Pen's page at

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/news-and-blog/news/

Meantime, subscribers may also care to check the same URL now and then to read news and blogs about and by our fellow Poisoned Pen and Poisoned Pencil authors.

MORE GAD REVIEWS UPLOADED or A FITTING PAIR

Since last we lurked in your in-box more reviews of Golden Age mysteries have appeared on our Eric Reed website. It is perhaps only fitting now spring is at least thinking of arriving that they included thoughts on Edgar Wallace's The Daffodil Mystery and The Greene Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine. John Buchan's Greenmantle is next to be considered. Some, nay many, will argue it isn't a mystery as such -- but there's certainly a mystery in it, including an urgent need to solve three terse clues to certain information. That review will go live this Sunday at

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/

MARY'S BIT or NICE GIRLS DON'T SHOW THEIR ANKLES

It's no mystery how much I enjoy detective stories written in the Golden Age. They're not only entertaining but on occasion can also be quite instructive.

What have I learnt from them?

Well, characters with grey eyes are usually not villains, and protagonists often have a tendency to marry their second cousins. Eton, Harrow, Oxford, and Cambridge have educated more characters than readers can shake a shooting stick at, while lower class characters can be expected not to possess an haitch between them, and if they do, it was probably stolen.

Sleuths' love interests are often orphans, by the end of the book if not at the beginning. Putting aside the Baker Street resident, bachelor detectives frequently occupy rooms at the Albany or chambers in the Inns of Court, with occasional outposts at Jerymn Street, Half Moon Street, and Victoria Street -- though one at least is known to reside in Clarges Street.

Gentlemen carry handguns as a matter of course and have no problem getting them through the British customs. Such men belong to at least one London club and to be blackballed by members means social ruin. So does being caught cheating at cards. And men who talk about women while visiting their clubs are cads of the first order.

Parma violets are popular decorative wear for ladies and are usually worn at the waist, while women who dare to show their ankles should not be trusted. Any lady on the stage is almost automatically morally suspect, but this does not stop scions of noble families eloping with them.

Blackmailers get no quarter, and I say it serves them jolly well right. Cleanliness or otherwise is a sure indication of social class, unless the sleuth is in disguise.

AND FINALLY

From dirt to cleanliness is a natural progression, but as Havelock Ellis observed, what is called progress consists of exchanging one nuisance for another. Speaking of which, we'll close with a reminder the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will make itself a nuisance by its stately progress into subscribers' in-boxes on June 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!

THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # NINETY-SEVEN -- 15 FEBRUARY 2016

Even when it snows and the landscape dons a white overcoat, February always seems the greyest month of the year. Half way through winter it may be, but the other side of the cold season seems as far off as it did at the turn of the year. Not to mention late 1099s show up to remind us tax season loometh. And now to add to the general misery, here comes another issue of Orphan Scrivener...

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MARY'S BIT or DROP THE SLOPKETTLE!

Speaking of winter miseries, when the power goes out we're still able to have hot meals and warm drinks, being possessed of a gas cooker and given our coffee pot is of the sturdy metal type heated on camp fires in westerns. To prepare for lack of water when electricity to run the well pump is not available we set aside a fair amount of Adam's ale, but imagine the horror when towards the end of one winter, after some weeks of being unable to get to the shops, we almost ran out of coffee! Oh, the humanity!

Taking no notice of William Cowper's characterisation of tea as the cup that cheers but does not inebriate, we boldly cheer the pot that produces Satan's brew. But no Irish coffee for us, thanks. We drink coffee in all its black and aromatic glory without anything added to interfere with its rich, robust flavour. Not even sugar or milk, no sir! This is Liberty Hall. Naked coffee is what we like and that's what we imbibe.

At one time my family drank nothing but strong tea made from the leaf. The earliest coffee I can recall is an occasional bottle of Camp Coffee, a liquid essence sold in distinctive square, elongated bottles. It's fair to say its label has become iconic, with its less than subtle suggestion of the glory days of the British Empire. Its colourful illustration depicts an Indian servant with sash and turban, holding a tray on which are displayed a jug and the instantly recognisable bottle. He serves a Highland officer, who is all togged up in sporran, plaid, kilt, and red jacket, and taking his ease on a chest in front of couple of bell tents. These details strongly suggest, to me at least, they are on campaign where this particular type of coffee conveniently needs only a spoonful or two of the essence and the addition of steaming hot water and a quick stir with a spoon instead of all that preliminary messing about with grinders and coffee pots, especially while persons of ill hide behind boulders and take, well, yes, pot shots at you.

We got through so many electric perkers over the years we eventually moved to the plain metal type of which I spoke. Their big advantage is there no parts to go wrong -- or so you would think. However, we had one (now relegated to serving as back up) whose lid would never quite close but it did at least serve for its purpose. Then there was another whose lid bubble fell apart. It turned out to be manufactured of plastic, a foolish design decision considering boiling water would hit it regularly during the perking process. Yankee ingenuity came to the rescue: a repair kit from a local ironmonger's emporium provided us with a glass bubble and accompanying rubber sealing ring, and with a bit of fiddling about it rendered the old pot whole again. It's still going strong, literally as I type, as the merry sound of energetic bubbling floating upstairs signals it's just starting to perk the next batch.

A favourite quotation of mine is William Cobbett's advice to endeavour to free oneself from the slavery of tea, coffee, and other slopkettles such as soup or grog, asserting the daily intake of what he describes as a pint or two of warm liquid greatly injures the health. It seems Cobbett frowned upon time wasted gossiping over the cups, and further asserts the reader is unable to imbibe these drinks without a servant to light the fire and prepare the slop. To be fair, since his title is Advice to Young Men And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life his audience would not find his reference to a servant strange but all the same I cannot be the only person who wonders what Cobbett drank and if he got it himself. Since he also advised his readers to drink nothing intoxicating cold water straight from the jug suggests itself as fitting his preferences. Just don't heat it up, OK?

As for the first two beverages he names and shames, at one time Eric drank tea much more than coffee. He's since reconsidered his position so now you could say that, to paraphrase J. Alfred Prufrock, we are measuring out our lives together in coffee spoons.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

Most of this issue's BSP revolves around The Guardian Stones, written by our alter ego Eric Reed. We're happy this is the case, given we prefer to let him have the spotlight. And no, he did not demand it with menaces. Dame Rumour was ever a lying jade...

STARS IN OUR EYES or A BRITISH PAPER TAKES A BIT OF NOTICE

Being as The Guardian Stones is set in rural Shropshire, we drew our BSP bow at a venture and scribbled a line to the Shropshire Star, the biggest newspaper in the county. CHECK <------ To our amazement and delight, they've briefly mentioned the book -- and one of their reviewers is currently reading the novel. Can't beat that with a large stick! Let's hope we got the local flavour right.

HOW NODDWEIR GOT ITS NAME or IT TAKES A WRITER TO BUILD A VILLAGE

Or in this case, two writers transparently masquerading as one. Mary's guest essay for Alicia Rasley's blog on 8th January talked about the creation of the village of Noddweir, including how the village came to receive its unusual name.

http://aliciarasleybooks.com/?p=195

ER SPEAKS or TO MARKET, TO MARKET -- OR MAYBE NOT

E.B. Davis interviewed Eric Reed for the Who Kill blog on 20th January. Topics covered such diverse topics as what drew ER to write about the English countryside during WWII and, in connection with black marketeering, whether the marketplace nullifies politics.

http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/2016/01/an-interview-with-eric-reed-by-e-b-davis.html

GOING FURTHER AFIELD or HERBS FOR HEALTH

Martha Roper, self-described wise woman in The Guardian Stones, gathers herbs and plants to make natural remedies for ailments and for other purposes. While she does not specifically say so, she must certainly visit the fields surrounding Noddweir to obtain some of her ingredients. On January 28th Joanne Tropello's Mustard Seed site ran Mary's guest essay touching on Martha's herbal knowledge.

http://mustardseedbotanicalsmsmg.weebly.com/mustard-seed-blog/guest-author-eric-reed-guests-today-to-discuss-the-book-the-guardian-stones-healthremedies

AND SPEAKING OF BLOGS or DID YOU FORGET THE FRUIT GUMS, MUM?

Another contribution to the Poisoned Pen Press multi-author blog will appear on February 18th, this time musing about memorable TV ads. Which have remained with you over the years?

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/memorable-ads/

Meantime, subscribers may care to read news and blogs about and by our fellow Poisoned Pen authors via this links page

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/news-and-blog/news/

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ERIC'S BIT or A SLAVE TO THE SCREEN

This morning after I got online and checked my email, baseball news, and news (always in that order) it struck me that I spend more time staring at a screen than I did as a child when I started my day watching Captain Kangaroo and ended it with programs like Car Fifty-Four, Where Are You? and My Three Sons. It's ironic because I ended my long relationship with television shortly after Mary and I moved into our current house.

Our television reception was terrible. Everything looked like the introduction to The Outer Limits. We weren't bothered because our viewing had been withering away ever since we were married. The last shows we bothered to watch with any regularity were The X-Files and Millenium (badly underrated!). Reruns of Seinfeld also, to be honest. Well, okay, I admit we enjoyed The Nanny.

By the summer of 2001 there wasn't much left to watch. Apart from occasional local weather reports, the last thing I saw on television was the incomprehensible image of planes flying into the World Trade Center. The first thing I recall seeing, while sitting in my high-chair in front of a tiny black and white screen, was Willie the Worm, a crude puppet featured on a Philadelphia television station.

Make of those strange bookends what you will.

Do you remember when everyone called television "The Boob Tube"? Back before there were any boobs to be seen, back when screens actually contained tubes. A long time ago.

Psychologists warned that staring passively at a screen would make people stupid. Did it? If the boob tube so powerfully influenced those of us growing up in the fifties and early sixties why didn't we all become cowboys? As a kid and a young adult I probably spent as much time with television and those ubiquitous westerns as the next person, but it didn't stop me from falling in love with the written word or lessen my loyalty to books.

I grew up reading when there weren't any programs on. Saturdays were typical. I spent my mornings tuned in to cartoons and then Jungle Theatre -- featuring old Tarzan movies. After that it was out to play until dark, after which, with the rest of the family, I settled myself in the living room to watch something (anything!) from the small selection offered during prime time. Still, somehow, I found plenty of time to read. Rather than becoming addicted to television my interest faded over the years.

It might have helped that my family lived next to my grandparents and my great aunt, who spent most of their lives without television and never quite cottoned to it. I only remember them having one television set, a black and white portable that sat on a metal stand, looking out of place amid the Victorian furniture in the lace-curtained living room. It must have lasted for a couple decades and was never replaced by a color set.

My great aunt feared she'd be electrocuted if she tried to adjust the mysterious dials so she kept the set on and simply plugged it in and then unplugged it as necessary. She only watched The Billy Graham Crusade and Lawrence Welk. My grandmother joined her for the latter. Despite my grandmother being a huge fan of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels I can't remember her following the Raymond Burr series. As for my grandfather, he liked baseball games and never missed a rocket launch. I thought it odd that a man who, as a farmer, had been so close to the earth was facinated by our attempts to get off it.

Perhaps it was my grandmother, reader that she was, who saved me from being a television casualty. She read everything from modern mystery novels to Dickens. Before I had memorized the alphabet, I sat beside her in the big rocking chair while she read me The Wind in the Willows and Heidi and Thornton W. Burgess's gritty -- relatively speaking they certainly were -- animal stories. In the dim lamplight of her living room she introduced me to magic. Compared to books played out in my own unfettered imagination, television shows were only little figures jumping around behind glass.

So here I am today, spending longer than ever in front of a screen but reading: email, news, articles, and books. Not sitting passively but writing. Even sending off mail and posting my words to be read onscreen, on the Internet, by others. I guess I have ended up a slave to a television screen, but not in a way anyone might have guessed back in the days when Willie the Worm roamed the earth.

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AND FINALLY

Speaking of reading, if subscribers have persisted this far, they're just in time to see us sign off with a reminder the next issue of Orphan Scrivener will arrive for scrutiny on April 15th. If nothing else, it'll serve as an alternative to perusing the labyrinthian intricacies of the IRS Form 1040 instruction booklet.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, a bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!

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THE ORPHAN SCRIVENER -- ISSUE # NINETY-SIX -- 15 DECEMBER 2015

In a striking case of a curious concatenation of coincidences, three weeks hence two of our novels will have appeared in four months. Murder In Megara, our protagonist John's eleventh adventure taking place in Greece, came out in October and The Guardian Stones, set in WWII rural Shropshire, will be published in January. The settings, eras, and protagonists in the two books are about as different as can be imagined, but as Disraeli observed, variety is the mother of enjoyment. Let's hope readers agree.

Meantime, here follows the variety of content forming this latest issue of Orphan Scrivener...

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ERIC'S BIT or PSEUDONYM SECRETS

You might be puzzled to see that our new novel, The Guardian Stones, is by some guy named Eric Reed. He, of course, is us but you may well be asking yourself why did we adopt a pen name?

It certainly isn't because we're cranking books out so fast we don't want to glut the market with Reed and Mayer titles. The publishing industry is different than it was in the old days (i.e. a couple decades ago). Modern publishers don't offer much opportunity for writers to hack out enormous numbers of books under pseudonyms, at least not in the mystery field. They are not concerned with filling up generic lines guaranteed to sell overall a certain, modest number of copies no matter what. Rather they are looking for authors who can write individual books or series that will sell a lot and right now! There are a few work-for-hire cozy lines of the old style from large publishers where writers mass produce titles from templates and might use different names for different series.

Nevertheless writers still have good reasons for sporting nom de plumes. One is the aforementioned requirement that books need to sell well immediately. For the first-time author it's a case of three strikes and you're out at best, and more often one or two strikes and you're out. Mary and I know a fellow whose supposed three book contract from Dell *** was canceled after his initial title failed to sell enough during its first two weeks of release. One advantage of having a smaller publisher is that, not being part of huge corporate conglomerates, they are not so obsessively sales driven. Such "failed" writers are poison to agents and publishers. Often the only way to get a second chance is to change one's name. Ever notice how many debut novels are out there, and how often how remarkably accomplished reviewers find them? That's partly because a huge number of those are only "debuts" of an experienced author's pseudonym.

Authors also change names to escape another kiss of death -- less than stellar sales figures under their original names recorded by services like Book Scan. If a book doesn't sell well bookstores won't order many copies of the next book, pretty much insuring it will sell even less.

Mary and I decided to employ a different name because the new WWII era book is so unlike our Byzantine series As a reader I enjoy being surprised but most book purchasers do not. They want to know exactly what they are getting for their money and anyone who buys The Guardian Stones expecting it to be similar to our previous mysteries will be disappointed. Conversely, some people who wouldn't be inclined to try anything by authors who write about that boring old Byzantine Empire might not be inclined to give our new effort a chance. However, we don't make any secret of our authorship.

It's common for authors to differentiate amongst their work this way. Agatha Christie produced six romances as Mary Westmacott. When he wrote about the private detective firm, Cool and Lam, rather than defense lawyer Perry Mason, Erle Stanley Gardner used the name A. A. Fair. Ruth Rendell, well known for her Inspector Wexford police procedurals, published psychological crime novels as Barbara Vine.

Perhaps Mary and I should have used a pen name right from the start for our Byzantine series. Mary Mayer? After all, a joint effort really is the work of an author quite different from either singly. Thus, Ellery Queen was actually cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, except when he was Dannay and Theodore Sturgeon, Avram Davidson, or Robert Sheckley. The mother-and-son historical mystery writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd goes by the name Charles Todd.

Besides, Mary and I are private and retiring sorts. We're happy to shove Eric Reed out into public while staying home ourselves.

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NECESSARY EVIL or THE BSP TICKER

We'll keep this section as brief as possible, given subscribers will doubtless be busy with holiday preparations of one kind or another. And so away we go...

INSIDIOUS DEMONS or NOT A COSY

We'll adopt telegraphic style to provide the essential details. Title: The Guardian Stones. Location: rural Shropshire. Time: the Second World War. Publication date: January 2016. Description: A dark mystery set in a village Kirkus Reviews declares is "beset by wartime demons even more insidious than the Third Reich". Author: Eric Reed. More info: The Guardian Stones page on the Poisoned Pen Press website:

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/guardian-stones/

SPEAKING OF DEMONS or TRY TELLING THAT TO YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY!

Are demons to blame for certain distressing events in Murder In Megara? Certainly! Sounds unlikely, we admit, but at least one person claims so in this extract from Murder In Megara over on the Historical Fiction Excerpts blog:

http://historicalfictionexcerpts.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/guest-blog-mary-reed-and-eric-mayer.html

LATEST BLOG-O-RAMA or GEESE, GLASS MANNA, AND THE GOURD

Geese and Graves and Other Writerly Concerns at TypeM4Murder blog October 17th

http://typem4murder.blogspot.com/2015/10/geese-and-graves-and-other-writerly.html

Food For Thought appeared on Marilyn Meredith's Musings blog on 9th November and deals with comestibles in our mysteries: the miracle of the melons and glass manna in Seven For A Secret, Theodora's ghastly outdoor banquet in Five For Silver, and The Gourd's only slightly less grim social gathering in Four For A Boy. CHECK CORRECT TITLES

http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/2015/11/food-for-thought-by-mary-reed.html

COULD IT REALLY HAPPEN? or FLYING LORD CHAMBERLAINS

Then there was a guest essay for Patti Nunn's Bookbrowsing blog on 19th November, dealing with a vexing problem for historical mystery writers: could certain events in their books have taken place in the time period in which they are set?

https://bookbrowsing.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/cat-mummies-and-flying-lord-chamberlains-by-mary-reed/

MORE GOLDEN AGE REVIEWS or THE RUBY, THE CANDLE, AND THE CAT'S EYE

Several reviews of Golden Age novel have been uploaded to our blog since last we met in cyber space, among them Charles E. Walk's The Paternoster Ruby, The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace, and R. Austin Freeman's The Cat's Eye. The most dealt with The Brigand, another Edgar Wallace. Sounds sinister, doesn't it? Here's the blog page giving links to a number of other reviews:

http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/

While you're over there, be sure to read Eric's memories of Frank Sinatra!

LATEST PPP BLOGS or PHLOX AND COUGHS

On October 18th Eric recalled one of his grandparents' favourite flowers, thus releasing phlox of memories including four-legged ghosts rustling amid a sweet scented fog:

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/phlox/

We're getting into sneezin' season and November 18th saw Mary advising readers to First Catch Your Cold, featuring Mrs Beeton's advice on dealing with the common cold. Hare over here for the skinny:

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/first-catch-cold/

Subscribers might also care to read news about, and blogs by, other Poisoned Pen Press authors via the links on this page:

http://www.poisonedpenpress.com/category/news-and-blog/news/

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MARY'S BIT or WAXING ENTHUSIASTIC

There are two locations I would never pass without investigation: older churchyards, especially in rural areas, and waxworks exhibitions. In the former case, my interest is in the statuary and inscriptions, in particular those of Victorian vintage, and in the latter, well, there is something so uncannily gripping about those suggestively lifeless figures they draw many to them. I am among those who find them to be so, and thus can truthfully say I'll wax enthusiastic about them at the drop of a glass eyeball.

Speaking of which, none has ever winked at me, thank goodness, although I did fall into the common trap of many visitors by attempting to converse with an attendant at Madam Tussauds' London waxworks. He was not flesh and blood, but certainly lifelike! And a right nana I felt, I can tell you.

Not surprisingly, fiction involving a waxworks tends to be connected with the supernatural. However, one of the best stories featuring such an exhibition, Edith Nesbit's The Power of Darkness, does not belong to that type although the inhabitants of the setting is appropriately disturbing. As she puts it, the figures in the Musée Grévin, a Parisian waxworks, are "so convincing, so very nearly alive. Given the right angle, their glass eyes met one's own, and seemed to exchange with one meaning glances". Her story is a nasty little biter-bit yarn in which a man challenges a friend he knows is terrified of the dark to hide overnight in the Musée, intending to give him a good scare. Its ending can be interpreted in more than one way.

To date I've only read one mystery novel in which a waxworks exhibition plays an important role in the plot. It was penned by Ethel Lina White, a favourite author of mine. In Wax, the Riverpool Waxwork Gallery, has a gained a sinister reputation after a chain of deaths there, starting with the builder who erected it hanging himself in the Hall of Horrors. The gallery has now declined even further to become, as the author puts it, "a place of assignation—of stolen meetings and illicit love". However, as the reader learns in due course the premises are also being put to another sordid use which ultimately ties in nicely with a spate of local crimes in a really inventive way. I'm planning on reviewing Wax for our blog's 27th December Golden Age of Mystery feature, so won't say more about it here except to reveal I reckon it's a cracking good yarn.

Having reached this point subscribers may be asking themselves if we will ever feature a waxworks in our own fiction. Well, as it happens we do have an unsold novel in which just such an exhibition makes an appearance, so it may be at some time hence readers will find themselves looking over the shoulders of our protagonists at the various tableau in Simkin's Celebrated Gallery of Wax (adults a penny, children half price).

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AND FINALLY

In a couple of weeks we shall step through the gateway of the year and into 2016. May it be a better one in all ways than the one now passing into history! As Johann von Schiller remarked, the future cannot be known and any omen or dream predicting what will happen is false. Even so, we'll declare one possibility will be, while nothing is graven in stone and the power goes out now and then, the appearance of the next issue of Orphan Scrivener in our subscribers' in-boxes on February 15th.

See you then!
Mary R and Eric

who invite you to visit their home page, to be found hanging out on the virtual washing line that is the Web at http://home.earthlink.net/~maywrite/ There you'll discover the usual suspects, including more personal essays, our bibliography, and our growing libraries of links to free e-texts of classic and Golden Age mysteries, ghost stories, and tales of the supernatural. There's also the Orphan Scrivener archive, so don't say you weren't warned! Our joint blog is at http://ericreedmysteries.blogspot.com/ Intrepid subscribers may also wish to know our noms des Twitter are @marymaywrite and @groggytales Drop in some time!

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