Author Description

Readers root for a criminal in fiction (or in real life) for many reasons. Perhaps the criminal is fighting an injustice, or she acts impulsively and we recognize the temptation, and sometimes it's as simple as wishing we could do something like that crime and get away with it. We won't be the only one who cheers on the team in Sean Harding's "The Books Job." Many of us look to crime fiction to explore the knottier question of what is justice; several stories offer no easy answers but satisfying conclusions. The women in Gabriela Stiteler's "Money Well Spent" and in Chris Knopf's "Submission" make choices we can understand. The ranger in "As the Crows Fly" by Cheryl Malone has plenty of courage but needs something more when the line between right and wrong blurs. The reader enters more comfortable territory before realizing she's wrong. In Beth Hogan's "Willful Blindness" the situation isn't clear until the end. Bruce Robert Coffin in "Writer's Block" lets us mislead ourselves as we listen to two writers spar. A standard feature of many mysteries is the twist. In some stories the twist comes early and isn't the one we were waiting for. A small town gathers to await the easing of a storm before volunteers set out to search for a missing sailboat and its captain in "Out of the Reach" by Laurel Hanson. An early twist is followed by another in "At the End of the Day" by Bonnar Spring. We like to believe our conscience guides us. Two women linked in crime take different paths in Nikki Knight's "Other Voices Carry." Then again, a strong conscience can rise up in even the most complicated circumstances. In Christine Bagley's "Sakura," a successful restaurant finds itself the object of interest of an unsavory guest. Certain villains so fully inhabit their crimes there is no story without them. The gas jockey in "Gas" by Dale Phillips is one, and the writer in "Catch and Release" by Judith Carlough is another. At the end both leave us wondering exactly how w