Who's Your Daddy (or Mother)?

My first exposure to mysteries was in the third grade when I read The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner. It really sparked my imagination. I grew up in a small town with three sets of railroad tracks passing through it, and my dad ran a factory where a railway siding was used to deliver materials, so I'd seen the inside of real boxcars. All of the above contributed to my love of trains. Is it any wonder that Brad Frame - my fictional detective - is a train aficionado?

I later "graduated" to The Hardy Boys, and can still recall how it felt exploring Mr. Applegate's creepy house in The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon.

By high school I'd discovered Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries, Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, and the Ellery Queen stories. Later I found Agatha Christie's Poirot. A theme among those early favorites was the use of either a "Watson" character to recount the cases, or trusted associates. Della Street and Paul Drake, Archie Goodwin, and Captain Hastings, were as integral to the stories as the well-known protagonists. That influenced me to expand Sharon Porter's role in the Brad Frame series. Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Michael Palmer, Vince Flynn, Brad Meltzer, David Baldacci, and Nelson DeMille have joined my recent reading list. I love mystery series, because whenever I find an author I like that's written a series I know there will be lots of great reading ahead. It's also clear from these early influences that I love a whodunit, and try to surprise readers with the outcome of each Brad Frame story.

I labeled this post "Who's Your Daddy (or Mother)?" in the belief that our early reading and life experiences are the progenitor to the creative process.

What kind of mysteries do you like to read? And can you trace your current reading/writing interests to a "first" book experience? Share your comment and join the conversation.