In AN EXCELLENT THING IN A WOMAN, BBC-TV is putting together a variety show, and a can-can dancer walks into The Right Sort Marriage Bureau demanding that they find her a husband in one week. They accept the challenge, but then she is found garroted at the studios and their friend, Sally, becomes the main suspect. The ladies are off once again.

A 1907 article in the paper grew into “No.10 Doyers Street” a novel about the Chinatown gangster Mock Duck, his young daughter, and a woman journalist from India searching for the truth. I based it on real events and combined what was happening to Mock personally with the mayor of New York City’s concurrent efforts to demolish Chinatown—in order, the mayor says, to get rid of all the “undesirable elements.”

In “A Death in Diamonds”, Prince Philip uses her as an alibi for the night of a double murder. She knows he didn’t do it, but he wasn’t with her … so what really happened?

I am excited to welcome you to the world of Vandy Myrick, the private investigator who leads my new mystery, Trouble in Queenstown (Minotaur Books). The story follows a tangled case in which Vandy confronts the entrenched powers of her fictional New Jersey hometown to solve a racially charged murder.