Maya Corrigan
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Writings
    • By Cook or by Crook
    • Scam Chowder
    • Final Fondue
    • The Tell-Tale Tarte
    • S'more Murders
    • Crypt Suzette
    • Gingerdead Man
    • Book Club Topics
    • Stories and Nonfiction
  • Mystery 101
    • Mystery Milestones
    • Detective Story Origins
    • Mystery Fashions
    • Edgar Allan Poe
    • Poe and Lincoln
    • Holmes & Dracula
    • Christie's Clues
    • Christie's Plays
    • A.A. Milne's Mysteries
    • Poe Trivia Quiz
    • Christie Trivia Quiz
    • Sleuthing Sweethearts Quiz
  • Food
    • Candy Corn's Haunted History
    • Chowder in History and Literature
    • Gingerbread's Dark History
    • Pie's Peculiar Past
    • S'mores History
    • Short Story: Delicious Death
    • Recipes >
      • Five-Ingredient Main Dishes
      • Easy Pies and Tarts
      • Six Sweet Recipes
      • Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
  • News/Contact
  • SmorgasBlog
  • Home
  • Bio
  • Writings
    • By Cook or by Crook
    • Scam Chowder
    • Final Fondue
    • The Tell-Tale Tarte
    • S'more Murders
    • Crypt Suzette
    • Gingerdead Man
    • Book Club Topics
    • Stories and Nonfiction
  • Mystery 101
    • Mystery Milestones
    • Detective Story Origins
    • Mystery Fashions
    • Edgar Allan Poe
    • Poe and Lincoln
    • Holmes & Dracula
    • Christie's Clues
    • Christie's Plays
    • A.A. Milne's Mysteries
    • Poe Trivia Quiz
    • Christie Trivia Quiz
    • Sleuthing Sweethearts Quiz
  • Food
    • Candy Corn's Haunted History
    • Chowder in History and Literature
    • Gingerbread's Dark History
    • Pie's Peculiar Past
    • S'mores History
    • Short Story: Delicious Death
    • Recipes >
      • Five-Ingredient Main Dishes
      • Easy Pies and Tarts
      • Six Sweet Recipes
      • Gingerbread Cookie Recipe
  • News/Contact
  • SmorgasBlog

Costumes: Mirrors of the Soul?

7/13/2019

30 Comments

 
Cover of Crypt Suzette by Maya Corrigan with a black cat, jack o'lantern, candy corn, and shelves with books and Halloween decorationsPicture
Crypt Suzette is now available for pre-order and discounted at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target, and BAM. 
Does a costume disguise or reveal who you really are? That question comes up in Crypt Suzette, my sixth Five-Ingredient Mystery. When Val caters a Halloween party at Bayport’s bookshop, a costume contest is part of the festivities. The contestants are supposed to dress as fictional characters. When the prizewinner, Suzette, is murdered, her competitors are suspects. Val can't help wondering if they might have something in common with the violent characters they portray: Lady Macbeth, the Phantom of the Opera, Count Dracula, and Morgan le Fay, the evil sorceress from Camelot. 
 
Val, who dresses as Nancy Drew, tells her friend Bethany, “People choose costumes that mirror their personalities.” Do you agree? Or is wearing a costume an excuse to take on a totally different personality? How do you choose a costume?

Comment by July 21st for a chance to win an advanced reader edition of Crypt Suzette.
UPDATE: The contest is over. The winner is Gail. Thank you to those who wrote about the costumes they've worn and their reasons for choosing them. It was fun to read the variety of comments. The common thread is that we express ourselves through costumes whether they represent who we are or who we would like to be. 
30 Comments

Five-Ingredient Holiday Recipes

11/18/2018

28 Comments

 
A roast turkey being carved
Turkey is the classic Thanksgiving dish, but you cannot live by turkey alone. What's your favorite holiday side dish? Comment for a chance to win a free book. Below you'll find two reader-favorite recipes from the first Five-Ingredient Mystery, By Cook or by Crook. The dishes are suitable for Thanksgiving and other holiday dinners. I'm also sharing a simple herb stuffing recipe. To view the recipes, click Read More below.
 
Leave a comment about your favorite holiday side dish to enter a drawing for the Five-Ingredient Mystery of your choice or an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) of the upcoming sixth book in the series. To comment, click on the word Comments in the column to the left of this post. 
 
Last day to enter: Sunday, December 16, 2018. The winner is Kay from Arkansas. Thank you to everyone who shared their favorite side dish. Stuffing seemed to get the most votes, followed by yams or sweet potatoes. 


Read More
28 Comments

Hitchcock and Final Fondue

3/25/2017

0 Comments

 
Cover of Final Fondue by Maya Corrigan with fondue pot and ingredients: chocolate, strawberry, banana, an orange, and a cake cube speared with a fondue fork
Poster for Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Rope, with star James Stewart holding a length of rope
This year marks the 90th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's first cameo appearance in a movie he directed: The Lodger (1927), a silent film about the hunt for a killer resembling Jack the Ripper. Hitchcock appeared briefly in 39 of his 52 films, often in street, bus, or train scenes.

​In a sense, he makes a cameo appearance in Final Fondue, the third of my Five-Ingredient Mysteries.

Shortly after cafe manager Val and her grandfather serve chocolate fondue to welcome house guests, one of the guests turns up dead in the backyard, strangled with a rope. Nobody imagines that the murder weapon was inspired by one of Granddad's Hitchcock movie posters until threats reminiscent of other Hitchcock films beset Granddad's guests. Is one of them a movie copy cat killer? Which Hitchcock film will inspire the next attack? And who will be the next victim? 

Read more about Final Fondue.


View Hitchcock's cameos.
0 Comments

What is Scam Chowder?

6/27/2015

4 Comments

 
Book cover of Scam Chowder by Maya Corrigan with a soup tureen, clams, salt pork, onions, potatoes, and creamScam Chowder cover
Scam Chowder (Five-Ingredient Mystery #2) is out.  Here is a preview of the opening chapter from Val, the sleuth in the series.

Cook and run—those were Granddad’s instructions to me this evening. I was supposed to make the chowder for his dinner guests from the retirement village and get out of the kitchen. Then he would add the final ingredients and claim credit for the whole meal. This ruse was part of his campaign to win the heart of Lillian, the Village’s most attractive widow, whose husband had made her gourmet meals. To convince Lillian of his cooking skills, Granddad has no qualms about passing off my recipes and my dinners as his own creations. By eavesdropping, I discovered that more than a romance was at stake tonight. Granddad, egged on by Lillian, planned to confront a dinner guest who’d scammed retirees out of their savings. But someone beat him to it, making tonight’s chowder the last thing the scammer would eat. 

Val makes two types of chowder for her grandfather's guests. When writing the book, I found a helpful video on cooking chowder: How to make three kinds of clam chowder, with Providence chef Michael Cimarusti. The 5-ingredient clear chowder meets Granddad's standards for a recipe. 
Which type do you prefer: clear chowder, red chowder, or creamy chowder? 

4 Comments

Cover Reveal: Scam Chowder

10/23/2014

7 Comments

 
Cover of Scam Chowder by Maya Corrigan: a soup tureen and the ingredients for clam chowder: clams in the shell, potatoes, and onion, cream, and a bowl of chowderScam Chowder comes out June 30, 2015
Book #2 in the Five-Ingredient Mystery series has a mouth-watering cover . . .  with a missing ingredient. 

The first book in the series had a cover image that set the style for future covers: the five ingredients needed for a dish in the forefront. This book's title made it clear what dish's ingredients would have to appear on the cover.   

When my editor asked me to suggest images for the cover, I proposed the tureen with the series name on it and the bay view.  I also listed five chowder ingredients to depict. For whatever reason, possibly aesthetic, one of the ingredients doesn't appear on the cover. 

Any chowder cooks reading this? What other ingredient would you put in your chowder that's not shown here?

7 Comments

Book Giveaway: By Cook or By Crook

9/9/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Enter to win an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of By Cook or By Crook on Goodreads. 

Over the weekend I poked around Goodreads to see what it was like before becoming a member. A social media procrastinator, I signed up Facebook only a few months ago, fifteen years after the rest of the world, and waited until Goodreads had 20 million members before exploring it. To my surprise, I discovered my forthcoming book joined Goodreads before I did.

Kensington, has made 25 copies of the book available for a Goodreads giveaway. Enter to win one before September 30th on the By Cook or By Crook Goodreads page. 

The first book in the Five-Ingredient Mystery series, By Cook or by Crook contains eight delicious five-ingredient recipes. Learn more about the book. 

0 Comments

An Edible Book Cover

4/9/2014

4 Comments

 
Picture
My brother's reaction to my book cover image, "Will they produce an edible version of it?" made me laugh. But it's not a bad idea. When the book comes out in November, I promise to serve an edible version at my book launch party. 

My brother correctly guessed what the ingredients on the book cover would make. Do you know a recipe that uses the ingredients depicted? Can you name other books with covers that look good enough to eat? Or books that made you hungry as you read them?  If so, please leave a comment.  

By Cook or by Crook comes out November 4, 2014, from Kensington Publishing. 

"Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably." --C.S. Lewis
4 Comments

How to Make Murder Palatable

4/3/2014

0 Comments

 
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.
0 Comments

    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 .

    Archives

    February 2022
    April 2021
    February 2021
    June 2020
    July 2019
    November 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    October 2015
    June 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    April 2014

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Book Club Questions
    Book Reviews
    Culinary Mysteries
    Fives
    Freebie
    Halloween
    Jane Austen
    Mystery History
    Poe
    Recipes
    Sleep Tips

    Contact Me

Submit
Vertical Divider
© 2023 Mary Ann Corrigan
​
​Legal Fine Print: Unless otherwise noted, I have purchased the rights to images on this site, the owner has granted free use of them, or they are in the public domain, the United States copyright having expired.
Newsletter Signup 
​
Subscribe to my seasonal newsletter for contests, discounts, and book news.
​I give away a book each time I send a newsletter. You can always unsubscribe. 
​​

powered by TinyLetter

Photo used under Creative Commons from Brett Jordan