Heather Mac Archer loves murder; she loves history and is currently writing not one but two murder mysteries one set in the UK and one in Canada. Both feature beautifully detailed locales.
Heather thinks the challenge of a good murder mystery is to draw an emotional link between the murder and the crime. “There is always a link to the past, either in the childhood of the murderer or the life of the victim.”
After her minister father taught her to read at four, she inhaled everything in his library from Thornton W. Burgess animal stories to theology, psychology and history. Spreading her literary wings in the Fenelon Falls Village Library, she consumed all of Agatha Christie by her early teens. She admires Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Ian Rankin, John Goddard, Kate Atkinson and Anne Perry for their portrayal of the psychological aspects of crime in “a delicious way.” Other influences include two history degrees and copyediting murder stories during her career at the Toronto Star:
“I can’t visit a place,” says the deceptively mild-mannered Heather with a gentle smile and a glitter in her eye “and not sit back and look around and think this would be a fine place to set a murder.”
Heather’s first blog appears Monday, June 6, 2011.
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