Maya Corrigan
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  • Home
  • Bio
  • Writings
    • For Book Clubs
    • By Cook or by Crook
    • Scam Chowder
    • Final Fondue
    • The Tell-Tale Tarte
    • S'more Murders
    • Crypt Suzette
    • Gingerdead Man
    • Stories and Nonfiction
  • Mystery Museum
    • Mystery Exhibits
    • Detective Story Origins
    • Edgar Allan Poe
    • Mystery Fashions
    • Poe and Austen
    • Poe and Lincoln
    • Poe, Dickens, and Ravens
    • Holmes & Dracula
    • Christie's Tricks
    • Christie's Hit Play: The Mousetrap
    • Poe Trivia Quiz
    • Christie Trivia Quiz
    • Sleuthing Sweethearts Quiz
  • Food
    • Gingerbread's Dark History
    • Chocolate's Poisonous Past
    • Candy Corn's Haunted History
    • Pie's Peculiar Past
    • Chowder in History and Literature
    • S'mores History
    • Recipes >
      • Five-Ingredient Main Dishes
      • Easy Pies and Tarts
      • Six Sweet Recipes
      • Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
  • News/Events

Five Tips from the Sleep Doctor

4/18/2014

12 Comments

 
10 sheep sleep while a woman awake in bed wonders if they're asleep or dead, who killed them and whyWhat keeps mystery writers awake at night
I used to spend hours awake in bed at night. My visit to a sleep specialist changed that.  


In addition to the usual good advice to cut down on caffeine after noon and on alcohol at night, he offered five suggestions that I hadn't heard before and that really helped me break the habit of sleeplessness. 


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How to Make Murder Palatable

4/3/2014

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A skeleton in a chef's hat mixes food and consults a cookbook while spiders crawl around and a black bird sits on his shoulder bone
The culinary mystery, a popular form of the traditional whodunit, combines murder, food, and humor. Cooking and eating are comforting routines that make murder more palatable, at least on the page. My forthcoming mystery, By Cook or by Crook, like many culinary mysteries, includes recipes for the dishes the sleuth makes while solving crimes. Those dishes make murder even more palatable.

When I tell people I write culinary mysteries, a fair number of them say, "Oh, I love reading those kinds of books." Others say, "I've never heard of a culinary mystery. Did you come up with that idea yourself?" Old though I am, the culinary mystery predates me. Rex Stout, who created gourmet detective Nero Wolfe, is a pioneer in the genre. His 1938 publicity tour for the fifth Nero Wolfe mystery, Too Many Cooks, included giveaways of book-shaped boxes containing recipes for 35 dishes mentioned in the mystery. 

The current Buy-It-Now price on eBay for a recipe "book" signed by Rex Stout is $600. He signed the page containing this description:  

Wherein vagrant tastes and fugitive flavors are sniffed to their hideouts, fingerprinted and imprisoned in savory dishes—by that celebrated Nemesis of crooks and envy of cooks, NERO WOLFE, private investigator.
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    Maya Corrigan

    This blog, like the books and stories I write, combines mysteries, food, trivia, and a bit of humor to leaven the grim subject of crime. Sometimes random subjects intrude here .

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