Traveling detectives are those who travel around the country solving crimes. Now, we all know that a lot of writers travel around visiting different places to get the first-hand experience of the scenes that they write about. We know of quite a few writers who combine the two and write about their detectives traveling while solving crimes. One of my favorites is Marg McAlister. She lives in Australia and writes a series called Georgie B. Goode that is first set in and around the U.S. and is now featured in her home country. Ms. McAlister has visited and camped in the U.S. and she used those experiences to help her with her scenes in the books.
Georgie B. Goode is the daughter of a big RV Sales business. She loves vintage trailers and gypsy caravans especially. After having her gypsy wagon created she talks her father into creating more new “retro” trailers and offers to hit the road visiting Vintage Trailer Rallies around the country selling them. While in competition with her brother she runs across various mysteries to solve along the way. She also collects interesting friends and a love interest. It is not a crime procedural nor a murder mystery series. It more like a “who-dun-it” of mostly white collar crimes.
Marg started out writing children’s stories then writer’s help books and finally writing the Georgie B Goode Mystery series. She does love to camp and got the idea for the series when she saw a vintage Vardo wagon in a campground and soon after another campground was having a vintage trailer rally. Georgie’s books are set in the U.S. but have now moved over to Australia where she is traveling around with your boyfriend who has grown up there. Please visit her website for more information and read all of her books they are a real hoot! http://margmcalister.com/ She also has some great advice and helpful tips on her website for new mystery writers at: http://margmcalister.com/writing-advice/
The last traveling writer/detective we are featuring is Minnie Crowell and her Will Travel For Trouble series. When I first started reading this short cozy fiction stories I thought the real author’s name was Minnie but it turned out that Bess McBride was using a pseudonym. She went so far as to create a who different website named for the character with her background story. She travels around the country in an RV with a ghost from the 19th century that she picked up along the way. This is from her website at http://www.minniecrockwell.com/:
“Welcome! I’m Minnie Crockwell, RV enthusiast and traveler, amateur sleuth, and author of cozy mysteries. I’m married and have three children…
No, wait! That’s not right.
I am not married and have no children. I travel and live in my RV, accompanied by Peregrine Ebenezer Alvord, the ghost of an early 19th cartographer on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I call him Ben. He calls me Minerva. Somehow, we’ve teamed up and neither one of us really knows why.”
The stories are fairly short but fun to read and her website is a hoot. If you would like to know more about Bess though please visit her website at: http://www.bessmcbride.com/home.html Now I guess I will have to check out her Time Travel novels.
Now that the weather is cooling off some maybe you should hit the road with your laptop and start writing your very own mystery series.
