Hi and welcome back to Nighty Night, bedtime stories to keep you awake. I'm your host, Rabia Chaudry. This week I have a really important announcement. Nighty Night has had an incredible run, but we are now wrapping up. But wait, don't go anywhere. This feed is still going to stay live, because we are going to come back week after week with a new show, and everything you loved about the original season of Nighty Night is coming back to you.
Killing original fictional stories, creepy true crime and real life tie-ins in the post-cript, and of course my voice narrating all the murder and mayhem to you. Starting this week, you will be getting episodes of Rabia Chaudry presents the Mystery Hour with the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines. Here in this feed, I promise, if you loved Nighty Night, you will love the Mystery Hour.
Every week I will be narrating original, fictional, creepy, murdering mystery stories written by award-winning authors and published in the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines, and just like used to Love in Nighty Night, I'll be ending every episode with a fascinating post-cript in which we explore how truth is so much stranger than fiction. So stay tuned, stay right here, and this week right now, enjoy the very first episode of the Mystery Hour in this feed.
Thank you guys so much for sticking with me for the last few years, and I hope you continue on this journey with me going forward. Variable Wins by Susan Alexu from the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 2016 edition. On a Tuesday and September, Annie Beckwith walked down the gang plank at the Mellingham Yacht Club. She carried two canvas bags in one hand, and with the other hand held onto a third bag, hoisted over her shoulder. An old red canvas toolkit hung off the same shoulder.
She dropped her bags on the float and waved to Lincoln Walsh, the skipper of the club launch, as he modored among the moorings. He steered toward the float. It was late in the season, and few went sailing on a week day afternoon. Many of the larger sailboats had been taken in for the season, but Annie's boat was one of a half dozen still moored on the outer harbor.
The Lady Mistral was an old wooden international 210, one of the first built in the 1950s, and practically a member of the family as far as Annie was concerned. Her husband, Alan, wanted a new boat, preferably one with a motor, but Annie hung on for sails. The 210 was dark blue, double ended with a grey deck, four-and-aft, plain white sails, and a string of awards to her name. She was outfitted now just as she was the day her father bought her in the 1960s. Lincoln pulled along the float.
Just you, he asked if her Annie was settled in the launch. Just me, I'm delivering Lady Mistral to Smither's boatyard this afternoon. Alan couldn't get off work and I asked Muffy to come with me, but her mother's in the hospital or something. Didn't know she was sick. Lincoln turned the wheel and headed out. Night of the die, Annie said, sitting on the gun whale. Too bad about Alan, Lincoln said, especially after all that prep work he put it on the mistral last week.
Prep work? Annie squinted into the sun and frowned. You mean the extra batency brought out? Are you sure you don't want Smithers to tow it the way they usually do? Annie shook her head. I couldn't pass up the chance for one last sail. Lincoln nodded as he motor to the outer harbor and pulled along the starboard side of the Lady Mistral. Annie tossed the sailbags into the 210 and jumped in after them. She waved her thanks to Lincoln as he pulled away.
The 210 was almost 30 feet long, sported two sails and a spinnaker, and usually took a crew of at least one, preferably two in addition to the skipper. But Annie had grown up with this boat and often sailed it alone. Truthfully, she liked solitude on the open water. She pulled the canvas cover off the boom and folded and stoded under the foredeck, pushing aside the spinnaker pole.
Even though she brought the spinnaker, she didn't expect to use it. She pulled up a center plank, grabbed the pump and began bailing. The rain over the weekend had been light, but enough to make the task necessary. When there wasn't enough left to siphon, she finished the job with a large sponge drying out every corner in the bottom. Half an hour later, floor boards replaced, Annie pulled out the main sail.
As Annie snapped one end of the haljard into the main sail and raised the sail a few feet so she could slip in the batons, she listened for her father's voice telling her, take care of your boat and she'll take care of you. She smiled whenever she recalled his lectures, delivered in short spurts, little marks of wisdom. Annie pulled on the haljard, raising the main sail. She leaned into it, fastening the end of the haljard on a cleat on the starboard side of the mast.
The sail loved and the boom swung back and forth. On the foredeck, Annie attached the jib haljard, clipped the jib on the stay and raised it, fastening the haljard onto the mast on the port side. She jumped back into the cockpit. This was what her dad said, remember if you want to be a good sailor, watch the boom, watch the wind, watch the sheets. She might be both skipper and crew, but she was never really alone on a solo sail.
With both sails laughing in the breeze, Annie stepped back toward the tiller, looked up at the mast and squinted into the sun. She stepped onto the afdek and tried to gauge the two shrouds. Both looked to have even tension. She heard someone call behind her and turned to see another two-ten sailing past on only the main sail, the jib in a ready pile on the deck. She waved and the skipper and the two crew waved back. She loved the camaraderie of those who lived for sailing.
Annie threw off the mooring buoy and jumped back to the tiller, pushing it over to port. She pulled in the main sheet, then the jib sheet and the lady menstrual was underway. Annie sailed out of the harbor close hauled. The wind came out of the south-south east, coolish and steady, and she estimated that if she tacked farther out into the ocean, she could run out on the first leg of her sail on a broad reach, a lazy sail to her mind, and eat her lunch in comfort while she rode the swells.
She held the tiller tight against her ribcage and watched the bow dip into the waves. Her mother thought the two-ten a bit reckless when she first saw it. Thirty feet, fast, all wood, but only two crew. She wanted something with a cabin, so she and her friends could take an overnight down to another club for a visit. But the lady-myself was her father's idea, and every member of the family grew to love it too.
It's unsinkable, Annie's mother used to tell new people who joined them for a day on the water. When they looked skeptical, she pointed to the styrofoam ballast under the decks for an aft. Annie rested her feet on the opposite bench and gave herself over to the sail. The lady-myself passed a small rock island and soon the little sailboat had left the bay for the open sea. The breeze quickened and Annie fell off the wind a few degrees. The ocean didn't frighten her.
It's power and unforgiveness awed her, and it seemed to free her of the sense of the mundane. On the water she could forget everything else and be fully in the moment, feeling the air, the rise and fall of the boat, smelling the salt, and sometimes the seaweed. She felt the ocean in its incessant rocking and heard the wind brushing over it. It was a bright, sparkly day that told you how beautiful summer in New England could be, but also that fall was on the way.
It was the end of sailing season for most, though some sailed into October. A gorgeous day like this could be misleading, Annie knew. The waves rolling along the surface with their glittering shards of light and shifting colors could turn in an instant into a roiling, killing mass. She checked the wind direction and looked around her. To her surprise, she was alone.
Any other vessel had sailed on out of sight, and although she could see land behind her, it was far more distant than she had expected. She pushed the tiller leeward and let out the sheets, and in another few seconds she was running before the wind, riding the swells and feeling the sun on her face. She moved to sit on the aft deck and rested her feet on the bench. She leaned back against one hand and stretched out her bare legs.
The sail and worn her repeatedly not to sit on the deck out of the cockpit, and even her dad had pulled a face when he caught her doing so. But she loved sitting on the aft deck, the tiller in her hand and the wind at her back. Lady Mistral was an athlete, riding and diving and holding the wind, and she felt more a part of it from here. The sails billowed forward, the bow ducking and rising as though eager to be in motion once again after rocking dully on a mooring.
The sails spilled wind, the broom rose and fell, and Annie decided a boom vang was a good idea. She rarely used the device, a line of rope running from a cleat at the foot of the mast to the boom, to flatten the sail and keep the boom down. But she appreciated this stability it gave the boom in variable winds.
She finished her lunch and went to work, turning windward to let her sails love and the boom ease while she attached the vang at the base of the mast and pulled the boom in toward the boat. She felt the sudden chill that often came at this time of year and turned around to see a dark, cloud crowded among the summary puffs. She was glad she'd brought a sweater.
She snapped the vang block onto the fitting on the underside of the boom, turned the tiller and headed downwind once again, letting out the sheets and setting the lady mistrolled back on course. She settled herself on the aft deck and scanned the horizon. The minute she heard it, she knew instinctively what it was. The language of a boat is made up of lots of sounds just as a language has many sounds.
Any one of them alone may not by itself have any meaning, but together the sounds cohere into a message. Any heard a myriad of sounds, the wind hitting the sail in a different way, the howard slapping the mast, the creek of the mast and the pull of the boom against the leech. She understood intuitively. The vang fitting gave away, breaking free of the boom. The boom rose, the main spilt spilled its air, the bow tipped precipitously. The boom swung wildly.
Anyone else would have died for the cockpit, but instinctively Annie dropped flat onto her back on the deck. The boom swung over her. She heard the crack. When she looked up, she saw the mast split vertically, one portion dangling over the chasing waves, the main sail dipping into the water. Another few feet in the mast would have impaled her on deck. Over the years, most boats had changed from wood to aluminum masts, but the lady, Mistrel, had not.
Annie slid down into the cockpit and grabbed at the mast of sail, dragging in the water, pulling it onto the boat, working hand over hand to gather in the main sail and the boom. If the sail became a scoop, the weight of the water and the sail alone had capsized the boat. The broken off top of the mast dangled over her. When she had positioned the boom and sail safely onto the boat, she reached for the jib sheet flapping in the wind.
Behind her, the black cloud had converted its mates, and a summer squall claimed the sea. The mast had split, but part of the upper half was left intact, and the jib forcede and shrouds remained taught. If she could get the jib sheet, she would still have control of the boat. The wind snapped the sheet out of her hands as she tried to grab it, forcing her to crawl onto the heaving four deck.
With her left arm wrapped around the mast, she knelt on the deck as she grabbed the jib, snapping at her head. She worked her way to the sheet, pulling it back around the shroud, and then through the block, renaughting the end. With one hand on the sheet and the other on the tiller, she turned the lady Mistrel into the wind. The wind, fickle and loopy, slowed, but the rain began cold and icy. She stared up at the mast, splintered and swaying, and knew it couldn't last long.
The rain came at her like sprays of glass. If she crawled under the aft deck, she'd be out of the wind and rain, but also unable to see another boat nearby, or any other hazard. Her shoulders hunched. She scanned the white capped waves, but saw nothing of any other boats. Praying for luck, she crawled under the aft deck, pulling out an old vinyl cushion to sit on. She crouched over, her knees drawn up, keeping an eye on the mast, waiting for the crack that was sure to come.
Sure to bring the top half of the mast down onto the jumble of sail in the cockpit. She managed some control of the sheet and held the tiller tight with a rope looped over the end. After an hour or so, Annie couldn't have said for sure how long it took since she lost track of time. The wind grew playful, but the rain continued, and the swells, though deep, evened out.
The lady-mystrel seemed to settle into the role of a lady swinging her hips, rather than a drunkard plunging among the guests at a garden party. Annie felt the tightness at her chest ease. She listened to the fading wind and the creaking of the lady-mystrel. By now, Annie felt safe enough to ease her grip on tiller and sheet. She reached for her bag and her cell inside. It was time to let someone know what was happening.
She felt around in her bag and found her cell at the bottom in a pool of seawater. She had pulled in enough water with the sail to soak everything. She punched buttons on the cell, nothing. But with the boat now sailing under her control, Annie felt less desperate and shoved the bag away. Annie found another pair of cushions and positioned them so she could lean against the ballast and stay relatively dry.
Her one fear at the moment was a rogue wave that would swap the boat and leave her to drown under deck. She scolded herself for her paranoia and began to calculate how long it would take her after the squall died down to get back on course. Without the ability to call Smithers or anyone else, no one knew she'd lost half her mast. She was on her own.
The frame shuttered and Annie leaned back, confident again as she had been as a child, that the international 2-10, the one design that was meant as an improvement on the then ubiquitous 1-10 was unsinkable. If asked, she probably couldn't have said why she was so confident, since the lady mistral was all wood, wood frame covered with mahogany plywood and a sit-cussed Bruce mast.
The blocks of white styrofoam had been such a comfort to her as a child that she had never questioned how they might work. It was wonderful to take something for granted, to live without doubt and with complete confidence in what you were told. She shifted the cushion and this time heard an unfamiliar sound. A rusty coffee can clanked against the boards, Annie reached for it. She had often used cans for bailing but this one came with a plastic lid. She pulled it off and looked inside.
Annie tugged on a piece of paper and it came loose. She unfolded the sheet, the ink smeared from damp. She recognized the name of the local hardware store at the top of the receipt, but the notation was too much of a scroll for her to read. The item cost only a few dollars. The purchase had been made a couple of weeks ago. For the next hour, Annie kept her eye on the boat, watching the broken mast sway in the diminishing winds.
The jib proved more or less successful in keeping the small boat steady and the white caps sank below the gun wails. The rain beat on the mainsail, filling its pockets with water, creating puddles all across the cockpit. Nearly covered with water was the pulley for the vang, still attached to the bolts that should have secured the fitting on the underside of the boom. She had never known a block or fitting to pull away. There had to be something wrong with this vang for it to fail.
She secured the jib sheet on a cleat, crawled to the foot of the mast, disconnected the vang, and crawled back under the deck with it. She studied the damaged equipment, running her fingers over an ochre-colored material, gumming up the threads, that should have secured the vang fitting to the boom. After a while it dawned on her what she was looking at.
The fake wood, plastic wood, the kind people used to patch holes in rotted windows in the garage, to smooth out the side of a bureau damaged over the years. It wasn't meant to hold, like real wood, only to provide a cosmetic finish to damaged material. She'd seen this patching all her life, but she'd never seen it on a boat. Finishing a boom with that material was sure to mean failure.
The fitting couldn't have held the vang for long within a few minutes before the stress pulled it free and left the boom to swing however it would. And that was exactly what had happened. If she hadn't heard the sound of something separating, she might have found herself knocked into the ocean and struggling to catch her boat, swinging wildly in the wind, and drifting ever farther away, out of reach. She raised her hand to her chest. She wasn't wearing a safety vest either.
Another one of her bad habits that her husband often pointed out, she'd grin and nod and wave from her spot on the aft deck. A gust of wind whistled through the shrouds and the mast swayed. She rushed for the jib sheet, but she was too late. The mast cracked again and the top half toppled into the cockpit, pulling the stays and shrouds down with it. The jib flap fell into the water and sprawled over the waves.
It's sheet still in Annie's hand. She pushed her way through the sails and spars and rigging. She began to pull in the jib soaked from the rain and buckets of water splashed into the cockpit. This was the worst mast she had ever been in. The only thing worse would be lightning. The squall had moved on, leaving rough seas and patches of sun in the sky, but that wouldn't do her any good if she had no way to control her boat. Three sails and no masts. Three sails she repeated to herself.
She made her way over the sails on the four deck and knelt down. Deep under the deck she rummaged among cushions, extra life-ests, extra coils of rope for her one last hope. She grabbed hold of the spinnerca boom and pulled it out. Her last hope was a six-foot pole she hadn't used in weeks. Annie dragged the spinnerca pole out onto the cockpit floor. Both ends were intact.
She wasn't sure how much air she'd get with only half a mast or even if this would work at all, but she had to try something. She recovered the jib hellyard from the top of the mast and disentangled and unhook the jib from the stay. She reattached the hellyard to the top of the jib and secured that to the end of the spinnerca pole. Fighting the wind she pulled the jib along the pole.
The jib love was ten inches longer than the pole. She rolled up the love, then she began to wrap and fold the jib along the pole, falling onto the sail once or twice when the wind threatened to pull everything apart. The sheets were easy enough to recover and coil. She carried the pole and sail onto the deck. The real test would be in how she folded the jib and she would know in an instant if she'd gotten it wrong.
Worse, there might be no second chance. For a long minute she braced the pole against the remaining lower half of the mast and hugged both while the boat plunged in the water. As fast as she could, she lashed the pole to the mast with the main sail hellyard, slipping the rope between the jib and pole as she wound the rope around the mast. She secured the line at the van fitting at the foot of the mast or what was left of it. She climbed down from the deck and arranged the jib sheets.
The wind was already tearing at the folded sail, but she had no idea if when she inferled it it would catch the wind, catch too much and immediately pull the pole from the mast or topple the whole thing. This desperate attempt to rig a sail could end in shredded cloth, a broken mast, or a deck ripped apart, or an old wooden boat capsized. Her hand went unconsciously to the life fest she was now wearing.
Any step to the back of the cockpit and tugged on the sheet, the sail head was barely halfway up the mast, but at least it was up. The boat shifted back and forth in the wind, taking no course and finding no direction. The sky above was clearing, but the rough water would last for a while. She checked the wind direction out of the north-north east.
She closed her eyes and prayed, in less than a minute the boat sank into a trough, a gust caught in the jib, and the sail billowed out on the port side. Any sat on the combing, the tiller between her legs and the sheet playing out from her hand. The jib was now only half a sail, its leech dragging and catching at the broken boom at times as it swelled and fell toward the deck, but it caught the air and held it long enough to take the boat onto a course.
If she played the sheet well, the jib might behave like a spitting her. She was heading west, but she had no idea how far she had drifted in the storm or in what direction. With her toe any nudged open the storage bench, held the sheet in a calmer moment and grabbed the horn. She gave five short blasts, waited, then called again. She repeated her call of distress every two minutes. Someone, somewhere, had to hear her.
After more than an hour, a speedboat came onto the horizon emerging from the grain afternoon. Its course was set to pass far ahead of her bow, but it changed course and came straight toward her after she repeated her call. That you making that sad sound? The man at the wheel called out to her. Looks like you have some interesting developments there. The speaker was a man in his 60s, with two younger men perhaps in their 20s. How about a toe? Where am I? Annie asked. I got caught in a squall.
The man told her. With great relief, Annie hauled in the jib and jumped onto the foredeck to take a toe line. In less than two hours she was told, she'd be tying up at smithers. In the interval, she did what she could to make the boat ship shape. Taking down the main sail and jib, stowing them in their canvas bags, putting away batons and lines, tidying stays and shrouds under the decking to keep them out of the way and bailing.
She'd been standing in inches of water without even noticing while she tried to keep the lady mistral afloat. Joel smithers paced the dock as she paddled the last few feet. He caught the bowline and tied up the lady mistral. Annie was effusive in her praise of the skipper of the motorboat. I almost didn't expect to see you, Annie said as she clambered onto the dock.
Joel walked along beside the lady mistral like a man at a gallery exhibit, taking his time to view every aspect of the artwork before him. He stopped to stare up at the pale spears of wood sticking up from the split and toppled mast. It needs a lot of work, Annie said. I guess he rested his hands on his hips and shook his head. Your husband called earlier, said he'd be late picking you up. Come on up to the office and get warmed up. You look pretty beat.
Thanks Joel, I'll be up in a minute. She said trying to muster a smile. I have a couple things to do yet. Annie jumped back into the cockpit and ran her fingers along the underside of the boom from end to end. She knelt down and slipped her fingers into the holes left by the bolts for the vang fitting when it broke away. The boom didn't splinter with long, sharp pieces breaking away as she would have expected. Instead, the bolts had come away in a clean separation.
The bolts had been put into the holes where now fragments of plastic wood remained. Annie stuck her finger into one and wiggled loose some of the ogre-colored material with her fingernail. Someone had booby trapped the boom and vang. Knowing a boom suddenly sprung loose could easily knock someone overboard or even kill them on deck. But when Annie had clipped the vang block onto the boom fitting as the boat sailed along, she'd noticed nothing that could be considered a warning.
She crawled into the aft storage area to retrieve the coffee tin. She reached deeper into the can and felt something stuck to the bottom. She pulled out a small plastic tube. There wasn't much left of it but she worked off the grime and rust and read the label. A two ounce tube of plastic wood beneath that was a worn out piece of sandpaper. Annie unfolded the receipt for the second time and turned it over. She read the short note written in pencil in faint but clear handwriting on the back.
A here it is, this should do it. One good breeze and old vang her bad habits do the rest by October for sure. And then signed M. The remnants of the aft news wall ruffled the corner of the receipt. The cool air sent a chill along Annie's bare arms. Her clothes still damp. She felt every slip of air, every half degree drop in temperature, every hint of surging water below the boat. But the fire of an anger growing deep within her began to warm her.
The weakened vang and swinging boom had been meant to kill her and almost had. Her husband and best friend had almost gotten away with murder. Almost. This week's episode took us on a fascinating journey into the high seas but remember, truth is stranger than fiction. Now we know that humans have been sailing the high seas literally for thousands of years.
The Mesopotamians, the ancient Egyptians, the Chinese, people all across the Middle East and Africa, and of course the Romans and Greeks, traversed the continents, obtained new goods from far off countries, and of course engaged in acts of war from the decks of sailboats. Naturally as with all endeavors of mankind, we also find tales of treachery and villainy on board from the earliest historical accounts.
It may come as no surprise to many to learn that within that particular criminal arena, there seems to be no shortage of stories in which husbands like Alan kill lovers and wives like Annie at sea. In February 2018, a British national named Lewis Bennett was charged by the FBI with second degree murder on the high seas. A very specific charge reserved for American victims killed at sea, in the death of his bride, a Floridian named Isabella Hellman.
Unlike Alan who left Annie to sail the tempered with Lady Mistrel on her own, Bennett was aboard their catamaran yacht near the Bahamas when the vessel began taking on water. It would later be discovered that the hull had been compromised deliberately and several portals have been left open to hasten the sinking process. Bennett put himself on a life raft with a vest, some peanut butter, and tens of thousands of dollars in rare coins.
Only after he drifted for 45 minutes and the boat was well and truly sunk with no sign of Isabella anywhere, did Bennett put out a distress signal so he would be saved. Lest we be accused of Miss Andrey, we will also note that there are even more stories of couples being killed together aboard sailing vessels. Each of these cases being somehow more grizzly than the last.
In 2004, a retired couple, Thomas and Jackie Hawks, decided to sail their yacht after spending a couple years living on board it. A former child actor named Skylar D'Aleon, who had briefly appeared in the mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV show, approached them and asked for a test sail. With Skylar's pregnant wife joining it the last minute, they all set sail. Hours later the boat returned to the marina without the Hawks, Skylar or Skylar's wife Jennifer.
Instead it was piloted by a friend of Skylar's who had apparently joined on board somewhere along the way. When Skylar was later charged with murder, the prosecution alleged that Thomas and Jackie were tied to the mast, beaten, and then thrown overboard to drown. In December of 2016, after 38 years of unanswered questions, Silas Boston of Sacramento was charged with murder on the high seas. Also used by US authorities when American citizens murdered people from other countries.
In the 1978 murders of Chris Farmer and Peter Frampton, a young British couple who were traveling through Central America. For decades, Boston's two sons Russell and Vincent tried to tell everyone from family members to law enforcement officials that they had witnessed their father bind, torture, and ultimately drown Chris and Peter, who had hired Boston to sail them around Belize.
The boys who were just tweens at the time were never believed, and Silas Boston died of old age just months after his long overdue arrest. Sadly, we also see cases in which all of these familiar elements come together. The killer first murders his wife then moves on to others aboard his sailboat. In what's worse, Vincent and Russell weren't the only children to witness heinous acts on the high seas.
On November 8, 1961, Arthur and Jean duper alt and their three children boarded the Blue Bell sailing yacht they chartered to spend a week sailing around the Bahamas. The charter included the skipper Julian Harvey and his new wife Mary. Unbeknownst to the diperalts, Harvey had taken out a sizable life insurance policy on Mary and when they were safely out at sea, he planned to quietly kill Mary and throw her body overboard. Plans went awry the night of the planned killing almost immediately.
A huge commotion brought Arthur and Jean running to the scene of the crime and they witnessed their murder taking place. Harvey then proceeded to chase down the couple and kill them, as well as the two older children who had been roused by all the shouting. Little 10-year-old Terry Joe initially slept through most of it, but when Harvey saw her as she found the rest of her family, he tried to grab her.
She managed to wriggle free and Harvey decided to just flood the boat and flee in a small motorboat fastened to the Blue Bell. He opened all the hatches and left the entire scene behind, believing he would be rescued and could claim the ship had sunk killing everyone but him. But Terry Joe amidst the horror and rising waters, managed to get herself on a life raft.
Upon learning of her eventual rescue by a Greek shipping vessel, Julian Harvey checked into a motel, wrote a brief note, and killed himself with a razor blade. Today's story was written by Arthur Susan Alexio. Susan writes that this story grew out of a moment almost nostalgic when I was walking along the coast and watching the boats out-sailing, probably heading out for a race on one of those perfect days we have along the coast in the summer, clear blue sky, wispy white clouds, good air.
It reminded me of the many summers I spent sailing with my parents. We had a 2-10, the same as in the story and my mother raced. I crude for her. We never won much but we had fun and I learned a lot. The feeling of being on the water is like none other. There is exhilaration at the limitless ocean around you and that sense of heightened alertness of being one with the environment that can be both dangerous and soothing.
I haven't been sailing in probably 50 years but some things you never forget. Susan Alexio grew up on the ocean and learned to sail at an early age and used the small coastal town for the setting of her first mystery series, the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva. More recently she has focused on writing the Anita Ray series which features a young Indian-American photographer living in her aunt's tourist hotel in South India. The most recent in the series is In Seeta's Shadow.
Several of her short stories have appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and other journals and anthologies. At present she's working on the sixth Anita Ray. Alexio has also given a number of photography exhibits featuring aspects of South India including women's rituals. A nearly life-long new englander Alexio received a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. You can find out more about Susan at SusanAlexio.olks.ksiw.com.
Now remember if you'd love this story you'll find hundreds of others in the print and digital versions of the Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Just visit AlfredHitchcockMysteryMagZine.com and ElleryQueenMysteryMagZine.com to order your subscription.
And make sure to subscribe to this show, give us a great rating and review on your favorite podcast app, and make sure to subscribe to this show on the new feed, the 99th Feed, give us a great rating and review on your favorite podcast app, and share with others a week and keep the show going. A special thanks to my friend and true crime expert and investigator Sarah Kaelin for her brilliantly research and written post-grips to every story.
You can learn more about Sarah at Kaelininvestigations.com that's C-A-I-L-E-A-N Investigations.com.