Getting Mysterious with Edward Lodi

The Fourth Black Beacon Book of Mystery will be released on the 23rd of November, but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and the Goodreads listing is up. To get you in the mood for mystery, we’ve interviewed our contributing authors. Are you keen to peer into their minds—a complex world of clues, red herrings, and puzzling plots? This volume of mysteries will be as challenging as ever, but our cast of amateur sleuths, private investigators, and police inspectors will leave no stone unturned!

Hi Edward,

What is it about the genre of mystery that gets the cogs turning in your head?

Depends on the sub genre. They’re all fun in their own way. A “locked room” or “impossible crime” offers a particular challenge. Can I think of something fiendishly clever which is also fair to the reader? An historical mystery may require considerable research, but offers an opportunity to learn something new.

What ingredients are needed for a great fair-play mystery in which the reader can try to solve the puzzle before all is revealed?

First, a crime that contains a puzzle, whether it’s whodunit, howdunit, whydunit, etc. Suspects with plausible motives. Clues that are not obvious but nonetheless fairly presented. Red herrings that appear to be actual clues but are not. A credible detective.

A great mystery needs a killer plot and likeable—or despicable—characters, but setting and atmosphere are also key. What are your favourite settings for a really mysterious atmosphere?

A cemetery at night. An old, dark house. A cranberry bog (see below).

What’s the most mysterious place you’ve ever been?

A cranberry bog in the dead of night far from the nearest habitation. When I was young, I worked for a cranberry company in Southeastern Massachusetts. In the spring, and again in the fall, when frost threatened to damage the vines or the berries, I often had to spend the night alone checking thermometers, and starting irrigation systems if necessary. The bogs were often accessed by rutted dirt roads cut through the swamps that surrounded the bogs. I’d have to periodically get out of my pickup and jump across ditches to read the thermometers set among the vines. An isolated cranberry bog in the wee hours is a truly spooky place. Weird sounds issue from the swamp—owls hooting, screeches of small creatures falling prey to predators, coyotes yodeling, and worst of all, unidentifiable sounds worthy of the sound track of a horror movie.

What are you working on now?

A Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

Thanks for playing along!