Maine Crime Writers

A lifetime ago, I purchased a small paperback titled Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe. For those of you able to recall memories from the dim mists of time, you’ll remember that a variety of books such as Ten Great Mysteries could be purchased through your school. This lovely little volume, with its swirling green-and-yellow psychedelic cover and decidedly sinister, creepy-looking Poe, is the Scholastic Library Edition that still haunts my desk to this day, despite its brittle, yellowed pages. I won’t mention the copyright date for fear of ridicule.

But what brings me to this topic is the “mystery” these stories define. I never thought about this as a kid. I wanted to read Poe because he was spooky, a writer of the macabre, the paragon of suspense and terror. I was far more interested in the horror delivered by certain stories—”The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum,”—rather than the groundbreaking mystery tales of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter.” Nearly everyone defines the last two as the foundation of modern detective fiction. There were contemporary writers in Poe’s time, and even some before, who dabbled in investigation and puzzle solving, but Poe appears to claim the title of father of the genre. However, Poe is no stranger to other genres (or mysteries): psychological suspense, horror, and crime. The constant scholar can make a case for all these in the tales.

Certainly, the 1960 film, The Fall of the House of Usher, starring a blond Vincent Price in the delicious role of Roderick Usher, piqued public interest in the writer, as did later movie adaptations of Poe’s stories. Perhaps Usher spawned the publication of Ten Great Mysteries.

The movies were fodder for a young man who purchased Famous Monsters of Filmland and other horror and science fiction magazines. Who must have come to Poe through such reading and late Saturday night TV creature features.

To me, Poe’s horror came in “the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder,” “any death but that of the pit,” or the maddening and turbulent descent into the maelstrom. In Poe’s world, at least from an editorial viewpoint, the definition of mystery included suspense, horror, madness, and incest. And, yes, crime is rampant in the stories too.

And the language! The sentence structure, the tone, the generated suspense. Who could ever forget a word like “putrefaction” when first confronted with its foul and slimy presence? Poe did so much to change American literature and, for that, we owe him our gratitude.

When I purchased this modest volume, probably for the astounding sum of ten cents, I started to read through the stories, and much to my chagrin, I found many words I didn’t understand. Much the same thing happened a few years later when I bought a copy of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, only to be turned off by the Yorkshire dialect. I had been fooled into thinking that Emily’s masterpiece was a ghost story, i.e., horror. Of course, it is in a way, but ghosts are not the focus of the novel. Rather, I would say, obsession. When I was 38 years old, I picked up the book again and was transfixed and transformed into a Brontë fanatic.

In closing, I would like to recount a story—again from the distant past. Struggling with the words and some of Poe’s concepts, I asked my mother to read me one of his stories. I selected “The Black Cat,” possibly because I’ve always been an animal lover and I had some inkling—I don’t remember how—of what the story was about.

It was summer, the day was brutally hot, and by ten o’clock we had our one window air conditioner running to chase away the Kansas heat. I will always remember my mother sitting in her new French Provincial chair, which she was so proud of, with my small volume of Poe in her hand. The brilliant light cut through the glassine curtains and fell in shafts on the floor. Her body was backlit against the picture window. And she read the story. I remember thanking her for taking the time because it was her day off.

Jumping about forty years forward, I came up with an idea for a novel called Poe’s Mother. It’s about a family that worships Poe in the way that others worship their chosen religion. Only available in e-book, it was never a commercial success—I self-published it—but the reviews made my day. Most readers wrote they’d never read a novel so disturbing and weird. I hope that Poe would appreciate my effort.

A life without Poe—a life without this definition of mystery—would be unthinkable.

About the Author

V.S. Alexander writes across genres, including mystery, historical fiction, psychological suspense, and horror. His eleven novels have garnered critical acclaim domestically and have been published in more than a dozen countries. The Voyage, a novel about the Titanic and a devoted dog aboard, is slated for publication this December. V. S. lives in Maine and is currently at work on a mystery series set in West Yorkshire, England.

Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Kait Carson (Monday), V.S. Alexander (Tuesday), Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Thursday), and Allison Keeton (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Matt Cost is excited for the cover reveal of 1955: A Jazz Jones & January Queen Raleigh Mystery, which will pub on October 13th. What thinks you?

On Tuesday, September 29th at 6:30 PM, Cost will be participating in Mystery Making Mayhem at the Portland Public Library along with Maine Crime Writers Jule Selbo, Richard Cass, and Gabi Stiteler. Also joining in will be Ryan Lowell.

On Wednesday, September 30th at 7:00 PM, Cost will be participating in a Noir at the Bar at Barliman’s in Bangor with Gabi Stiteler and a whole host of fantastic Maine authors.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business, along with the very popular “Making a Mystery” with audience participation, and “Casting Call: How We Staff Our Mysteries.” We also do programs on Zoom. Contact Kate Flora

This past Saturday, my wife, Deb, and I visited my daughter in Brooklyn. There was a night and a morning on either end of the visit, but really it was one day, and the idea was to see how much we could cram into it. But the sojourn was about more than seeing the daughter. It was also about research, as how can one write off a trip if they don’t tie in the writing?

We booked a hotel at the top of Fort Greene, bordering Vinegar Hill, a significant neighborhood setting for the book I’m finishing up. Kings County Gone Amok is the third book in the Brooklyn 8 Ballo series, in which 8 investigates the kidnapping of a young girl that brings him again and again to Vinegar Hill, which was then known as Irish Town.

Bright and early on Saturday, Deb and I struck out for a walk around to get a feel for the place. As we entered Vinegar Hill, we walked down Sands Street, the location of where I’m currently in the big showdown that involves various factions who were historically accurate entities of the time. The Italian Black Hand gang led by Frankie Yale. The Irish White Hand gang led by Pegleg Lonergan. And the Gangster Squad, led by Detective Johnny “Broadway” Broderick. The kidnappers and 8 Ballo are the fictional part of this climactic scene.

Sands Street led right up to the gates of the Brooklyn Naval Yard, still does, and was a place of sin-filled fun in 1925 Brooklyn. At the time, it was nicknamed Hell’s Half Acre. It housed illegal speakeasies, tattoo parlors, brothels, gambling joints, and just about any sort of carnal adventure you might want to engage in, as long as you weren’t afraid of risking your life. The primary creatures crawling through this excess of indulgence were the sailors from the Naval Yard, but many more were drawn to its bestial, animalistic eroticism.

Sands Street at seven on a Saturday morning certainly seemed a bit tamer than that, and now hosts high-rise buildings and small parks. All the same, as I walked down the street, putting myself back to 1925, I could feel the hoots, hollers, and screams of pain, pleasure, excitement, and terror.

We walked up and down Bridge Street, the center of Irishtown back in 1925, trying to place my fictional headquarters for the White Hand Gang and Pegleg Lonergan. I found the building I wanted on Water Street, and was forced to move it to the top of the hill of Bridge Street, melding the location and edifice into the creation of my book, The Five Fingers Club, which is a speakeasy in the basement, a hardware store on the first floor, and the offices up above where Pegleg decided who was going to work that day on the waterfront.

At the bottom of Jay Street, on the edge of the East River, a walking path wove its way between the water and green parks, leading under the Brooklyn Bridge, into DUMBO, and beyond. At this time of day, the sparse traffic consisted of joggers and dog walkers. This beautiful spot, overlooking the Manhattan skyline, was a major reason I imagined why so much of 1920s Irishtown had been torn down and rebuilt into high-rise apartments in 2026 Vinegar Hill, but a significant amount of historical character still remained if you looked close enough.

Several of the streets were still cobblestone. There was the old brick building, worn and forlorn-looking, that my mind was able to relocate to Bridge Street to become the Five Fingers Club. The fringes of the neighborhood still possessed either old-world charm or run-down poverty, depending on your mood of the day. The Hudson Avenue Generating Station, built in stages from 1922-1932, is being repurposed from fossil fuels into the Brooklyn Clean Energy Hub.

Next, we headed to Downtown Brooklyn, on the edge of Brooklyn Heights, for brunch with my daughter and her partner. We had a fabulous meal at French Louie’s, which I highly recommend if you ever find yourself in Brooklyn. Then it was off to the Buffalo Parade.

Tatanka Owe Akupi. Return of the Buffalo. Amir Nizar Zuabi created this artistic version of wild buffalo roaming the streets of Brooklyn in partnership with Elders from the Lenape and Lakota Tribes. It started with short talks and songs by these elders that spoke to unity, love, harmony, and peace. Then the buffalo came.

The buffalo were life-size puppets, each with two people inside and several handlers outside, and they came in a herd of fifty. They streamed into Abolitionist Park in Downtown Brooklyn as if they were pounding across the Great Plains, the most amazing puppets I’ve seen since Sesame Street and the Muppets, but even more powerful and realistic.

The herd circled the park, then went off down the street, following a marching band with a crowd of thousands following, as they paraded toward Brooklyn Bridge Park, a mile and a half away. We followed for a bit, caught up in the spectacle of it all, but eventually had to peel ourselves away as we had plans to go to the Rockaways for an Oyster Festival and a sailboat ride on Jamaica Bay.

The Rockaways, a peninsula of Queens that feels more like a barrier island, was the perfect bookend to a day that started on Sands Street of Vinegar Hill. The name “Rockaway” may have meant “place of sands” in the Munsee language of the Native American Lenape who occupied the area at the time of the arrival of the Europeans, the same Native American tribe whose Elders were speaking at the Tatanka Owe Akupie.

The Oyster Festival was a bit of a letdown as it didn’t compare to those offered in Maine, but a few of those succulent mollusks found their way into our bellies as we listened to an Irish band play. Yes, another tie-in to Kings County Gone Amok (if you happen to be an IRS auditor reading this).

A cloudy (not sunset) sailboat jaunt out into Jamaica Bay followed, taking us through marshlands, across the bay, to the edges of JFK Airport, and back to the Rockaways. I’m not sure if 8 Ballo will find his way to doing any of the Rockaway events, but I’ve been tinkering with incorporating this fascinating getaway spot less than an hour from Manhattan and part of Brooklyn into the Modern-Day Chronicles of Max Creed.

We ended the night with dinner at The Wharf, a bayside restaurant and bar with a band inside that could be heard on the extensive waterside deck. This made me think the Rockaways might be a good venue for 8 Ballo’s next investigation. It turns out it was a booming spot in the 1920s, a summer playground for New York City, and was filled with bootleggers because of the irregular coast. There were many high-speed chases on land and water, making the wheels turn in my head, but I have a few other books to write first.

When being a writer, it is impossible to separate work from play. It is all one and the same.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014, he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published twenty books, mostly in the crime genre, from traditional PI to thriller to historical mystery. His most recent book is the debut of a new series, 1955: A Jazz Jones & January Queen Raleigh Mystery.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. Cost now spends his days at the computer, writing.