UPDATE

Baby Who Vanished After Parents’ Murders Found Alive After 40 Years

A story in the January 24, 2022 issue of BunzelGram recounted how the remains of a young husband and wife found murdered in Houston in 1981 had been identified as Harold Dean Clouse and Tina Gail Clouse, who recently had moved from Florida to start a new life in Texas. At the time they had a baby girl named Holly, who disappeared at the time of the grisly killings and had not been seen in over 40 years. Families of the two parents had recently joined forces with forensic genealogists Misty Gillis and Allison Peacock, who both work for a California-based organization known as Identifinders, to find out what happened to her. Last week the Houston Chronicle reported that “Baby Holly” (pictured left) was found alive and well in Oklahoma, more than four decades after she went missing. Now 42, she was too young at the time to remember the events immediately following her parents’ murders, but authorities in Texas and Oklahoma will be piecing together her family history to determine whether her “surrogate” parents during her childhood had anything to do with the murders.

Seven Great Thrillers In Which (Spoiler

Alert) The Assassin Misses The Target

Nothing ratchets up the tension of a story like the threat of an assassination. As William Martin wrote in an article in Crime Reads last week, “If you’re a reader, you know from a glance at the cover flap that something big is going to happen in the book you’ve just picked up, something that will keep you turning pages right up until the moment when the targets his victim. And if you’re a writer, you know that you’re working in a genre that will give you plot velocity, a strong villain, and a big climax. You also know that you’ll always have a place to go, as long as you remember the advice of detective novelist Raymond Chandler: ‘When you run out of ideas, bring in a man with a gun.’” Chandler meant his words to be taken metaphorically, but an assassin fulfills the definition literally. An assassin is the ultimate “man with a gun,” who promises conflict on every page—and conflict means drama and suspense. Of course, sometimes an assassination will miss…and with that in mind, here’s a list of seven “attempted assassination” thrillers in books and film.

Anne Perry’s Path, From Committing

Murder To Writing About Them

Anne Perry, born October 28, 1938 as Juliet Marion Hulme, is an English author of well over 50 mysteries and crime novels. What many of her fans aren’t aware of, however, is that at age 15 she was convicted of participating in the murder of her best friend’s mother, Honorah Riper, in Christchurch, New Zealand. Hulme's parents were in the process of separating, and Juliet was supposed to go to South Africa to stay with a relative. She and Pauline Parker apparently had created a rich fantasy life together, populated with famous actors such as James Mason and Orson Welles, and they did not want to be separated. They both had hoped to go to England with Hulme's father after the divorce, but that was not to be. On the first full day of summer the girls and Honora Rieper went for a walk in Victoria Park where, on an isolated path, Juliet dropped an ornamental stone so that Ms. Rieper would lean over to retrieve it. Parker had planned to hit her mother with half a brick wrapped in a stocking; the girls presumed that one blow would kill her but it took more than 20. Both girls stood trial and were found guilty, but because they were too young to be considered for the death penalty, they were sentenced to be "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure." They were released separately some five years later with the understanding that they would never contact each other again (apparently, they have not). After being released from prison, Hulme returned to England and took the name Anne Perry. Her first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published under this name in 1979.

Cupcake Mogul Led Wild, Double Life

Using Dead Baby’s Identity, Feds Say

In today’s digital age where birth, marriage, and death records supposedly are cross-referenced, it’s amazing to still find a case in which a person can steal the identity of a deceased infant to take on an alter ego. Yet that’s exactly what cupcake mogul Ave Misseldine allegedly did when she stole the identity of a dead baby to obtain a job, a pilot’s license, a passport, admission to college and, eventually, hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID-19 bailout funds. According to The Daily Beast, the con began almost 20 years ago when she used the birth certificate of “Brie Bourgeois” (yes, that was the baby’s real name), and came to an end while attempting to renew her passport. Misseldine, now 49, was arrested last week after moving west from Columbus, Ohio, where she ran the highly regarded Koko Tea Salon & Bakery, which was featured on the Food Network’s The Best Thing I Ever Ate. In several newspaper interviews, Misseldine portrayed herself as a former cancer researcher who grew up in Hawaii, where relatives owns a tea farm. However, a relative named Russell Misseldine, said Ava did not grow up in Hawaii, that the family is not in the tea trade, and that he is not aware of her having ever worked as a cancer researcher.

Nine Mind-Boggling Mystery Books

With Unreliable Narrators

A good mystery novel draws the reader in by making them feel as if they're solving the mystery with the characters. It piques a person's curiosity and keeps them engaged until they reach that satisfying end. As Jena Brown wrote in an article in Murder and Mayhem, one way an author can escalate the tension—and guarantee that the pages will keep turning until well after bedtime—is by adding to the complexity with an unreliable narrator. Maybe the narrator simply sees things from their limited perspective, missing key pieces of information before they draw their conclusions. Or maybe they’re intentionally keeping things from us to throw us off the scent. No matter the motivation, an unreliable narrator escalates the reader's need to know what is happening and why. Here are nine mysteries with unreliable narrators that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Greenwich Mean Time:

Coming January 2023!

We have a cover! There are still a few minor changes to be made—including procuring these images without watermarks—but my publisher has selected this cool design for my new thriller Greenwich Mean Time, slated for release in January 2023. The final page proofs are done, marketing plans are being drafted, and marvelous advance reviews are starting to come in. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with this teaser from the back cover: “Spanning ten time zones, nine countries, and four continents, Greenwich Mean Time is a tightly spun thriller that plays out against a vicious plot designed to change the course of history forever.”