Talking About Mysteries and the Pandemic with a Writer of a Pandemic Mystery

Alison Joseph

At the beginning my recent trip to Europe I had lunch with the mystery writer Alison Joseph and her husband Tim Boon, head of research and public policy at Science Museum, London.  I met them at a science history event in 2018 and immediately became of fan of Alison's novels.  She has published more than ten.  

In 2018 I read two mysteries in which Agatha Christie is a character:  Murder Will Out and Hiddens Sins. I also read the mystery centered around Alison's fascination with the Higgs Boson and particle physics: Dying to Know.  At that point I had not read the Sister Agnes series of mysteries that began her career as a mystery writer in the 1990s.  By 2000 there were six Sister Agnes novels.  

This year I saw Sister Agnes was back in a pandemic mystery What Dark Days Seen.  It was fascinating to see a mystery solved by a person dealing with all the pandemic restrictions. Since the pandemic began I was re-reading stories from The Decameron and Love in the Time of Cholera.  Once I read the pandemic mystery I went back and The Quick and the Dead one of the early Sister Agnes novels and am now reading The Darkening Sky which is influenced by Alison's love of the Divine Comedy. 

In The Quick and the Dead Sister Agnes has a deep crisis of faith.  It is a very good mystery. I had no idea "Who done it" until the murderer was revealed. But the spiritual crisis of Sister Agnes is beautifully done. I would recommend the book even to those who are not fans of the mystery genre.  More than twenty years ago, I read all of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries written by Dorothy Sayers.  The mysteries were fun, but the character of Lord Peter Wimsey kept me reading until the series was finished.  

I was very glad to return to London. And it seems I picked a window between the Delta and Omicron variants that still allowed easy travel between the UK and Paris. It was my first trip on the Eurostar train through the Chunnel.  

For avid readers of mysteries, I would suggest beginning with the Agatha Christie homage books. It's fun to see Agatha herself in the story.  Anyone who has experienced a crisis of faith or wants to read about faith facing tragedy, The Quick and the Dead is fantastic.  

   

Lunch in Paris Talking NASCAR!!

Nita Wiggins, author of Civil Rights Baby and I 

at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris

In July of this year, I met professor Nita Wiggins at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris.  We both arrived at the store just before it opened.  She was there to sign copies of her new book Civil Rights Baby.  She was born the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.  

A lot of the book is about her rise through the crazy world of sports journalism in America, particularly broadcast sports journalism.  She spent several much of the first decade of this century as an on-air reporter for Fox News.  

Then in 2009 she decided to leave journalism and all of the struggles a woman of color faces in that career and move to Paris.  She currently teaches journalism at the Institut Supérieur de Formation au Journalisme in Paris, France CELSA Sorbonne in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.  She has also taught at the American University in Paris since 2009.

Earlier this month I was in Paris again so we met for lunch at a cafe near Red Wheelbarrow bookstore opposite Luxembourg Gardens.  We talked about Paris and America and living abroad and how much Nita was looking forward to seeing her parents for the Christmas Holidays after all the COVID travel restrictions.  

Then we talked about NASCAR.  Nita covered stock car racing early in the 2000s. She talked about interviewing Richard Childress, Roger Penske and other NASCAR luminaries and legends in the years she covered racing.  It was fun to hear Nita talk about covering NASCAR while it was in transition from a regional southern sport to a national sport.  I told her about being a NASCAR fan from age eight until about the time she started covering racing. The changes NASCAR was making were not for me. 

And I was quite sure we were the only people in that crowded cafe talking about American stock car racing.  

This post has links to Nita's website and info about her book.

Nita Wiggins in the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore.