Novels Featuring Twins

Sons of Fortune by Jeffrey Archer. Archer is masterful at writing stories that span multiple generations or at least long periods of time and exploring how the people change through the years. In Sons of Fortune, we have the classic twins separated at birth plot. A set of fraternal male twins and a single male birth happen at the same hospital around 1948. The single baby boy dies and a nurse switches the dead baby with one of the twins so each family can have at least one baby.

The boys grow up in different socio-economic strata although both go to private schools when they become teens. Their paths keep creeping closer and closer to each other, but will they every meet, and even then, will they learn the truth of their history.

Mystery Series- Temperance Brennan

Dr. Kathy Reichs

Kathy Reichs, PhD. is herself a forensic anthropologist, one of only 100 certified in the United States. Out of this career, she writes both non-fiction on the topic, and fiction. Her book series featuring Temperance Brennan inspired the television series Bones. Temperance is the forensic anthropologist for North Carolina who also travels to Quebec regularly as part of her job.

The Fox TV show does not follow the books very closely. "Bones" is possibly on the autism spectrum, which is not at all true of the character in the books.

The books are authentic police proceedurals. Some unnecessary language. Graphic descriptions of dead bodies, particularly the ones in bad enough condition to call in a forensic anthropologist. Overall, I give the series high marks. Temperence is professional but real. There is a small amount of personal interaction so that we understand who she is and that she has some flaws. There are a lot of dream sequences in the books. Sometimes the dreams help Tempe find a clue in a case, sometimes they are just bizarre. There is a little overuse of the trite "something nagging that the protagonist can't quite remember" plot motif.

Recurring Characters:
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist
Katy, her daughter
Harry (Harriet), her sister
Andrew Ryan, fellow detective and sometimes lover

#1 Déjà Dead 1997

#2 Death du Jour 1999

#3 Deadly Décisions 2000

#4 Fatal Voyage 2001

#5 Grave Secrets 2002

#6 Bare Bones 2003
Temperance is examining the sparse remains of a dead newborn baby that was burned in a wood stove. She's contemplating the personal repurcussions since she knows the baby's grandfather, when she is called to a site where there are a large number of bones buried in plastic bags. These turn out to be bear bones- of multiple bears. Almost all bear bones, except for some bird bones.

Then she has to go to the crash site of a small plane where the two occupants were badly burned. When she finally gets back to the bears... uh oh... there are some human hand bones too.

The quest to find out what the plane was doing when it crashed leads the investigation to an old house in the country with a privy full of more bones. Do any of the bones connect?

#7 Monday Mourning 2004

#8 Cross Bones 2005

#9 Break No Bones 2006

#10 Bones to Ashes 2007
Tempe is in her Montreal office and is working her usual busy schedule of examining old bones, skeletons, and damaged bodies, when she hears of a skull and its skeleton which are sitting in someone's office because they seem to be too old to trace. She requests they be sent to her.

They require extensive cleaning, but the more she examines them, the more she suspects they might belong to a childhood friend of hers who went missing at age 13. This seems a stretch of coincidence, but the possibility stirs up all the old memories and questions as to what happened to Evangeline. The friend was Acadian, and that is where these bones were found.

She convinces the police to open a cold case investigation which leads to child porn, trafficking, and unexpected answers about her friend.

#11 Devil Bones 2008

#12 206 Bones 2009

#13 Spider Bones 2010

#14 Flash and Bones 2011

#15 Bones are Forever 2012

#16 Bones of the Lost 2013

#17 Bones Never Lie 2014
Tempe's old nemisis Anique Pomerleau, the only one who ever got away, is back. Young girls are going missing and their bodies turn up a few days later, posed and not mutilated or sexually assaulted.

Tempe and Ryan check into a number of other cold cases that seem to fit the profile, and with the help of Tempe's mother doing volunteer computer research, begin to see a pattern forming. But Mama has cancer and is refusing treatment.

There is a huge plot twist in the middle.

And Ryan asks Tempe to marry him.

#18 Speaking in Bones 2015

#19 The Bone Collection 2016

#20 A Conspiracy of Bones 2020

#21 The Bone Code July 2021

#22 Cold, Cold Bones July 2022

#23 The Bone Hacker August 2023
Tempe is working in Montreal when a few scraps of a body are recovered, hacked up by the propellor on a large boat. It is assumed this is a man who jumped off a bridge. A few days later, the rest of the body washes up, but the many died from a gunshot wound. A tattoo identifies him as part of a gang from the islands of Turks and Caicos. For some reason the Medical Examiner from the islands flies immediately to Montreal.

This woman, Tiersa Musgrove, convinces Tempe to return to the Turks and Caicos with her to study a strange set of murders where each victim has had the left hand cut off. There they are sidetracked by a boat found floating with five dead bodies on board.

Continually sidetracked by other cases, Tempe always manages to get back to the mutilated bodies, although she is stymied by the lack of a good microscope and unhelpful people.

This case is a bit like a classic mystery at the end with a whole chapter to explain parts of the story that the reader has not yet heard enough about to understand.

#24 Fire and Bones August 2024
While working on her normal caseload in North Caroline, Tempe is asked by her daughter to grant an interview with a journalist friend in D.C. Brennen isn't thrilled, but agrees for Katy's sake and drives to the capital.

The next day there is a fire in an older building in D.C. that was being used as an illegal rental property. Four people die in the fire. Tempe helps with recovery, and discovers a fifth body in a forgotten sub-basement that had nothing to do with the fire, but dates from about the 1940s.

Soon another building just blocks away burns, and a man is shot in a separate incident. With some research, it is discovered that there may be a connection beteween all these incidents, but not the body in the basement whose identity cannot be determined.

Mystery Series - Lucas Davenport

John Sandford (Random House)

Lucas Davenport is the creation of John Sandford (born 1944), pseudonym of John Roswell Camp. Throughout the long series, Davenport evolves.

Davenport has various roles in the Minneapolis Police Department, or in some way connected to it, as he has several run-ins with them over the course of his career. In some books he works for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, or is a US Marshall.

His family life provides counterpoint to the high-action police work.

Recurring Characters of Note:
Lucas Davenport
Sister Mary Joseph (Elle Kruger)
Weather Karkinnen- his wife
Kidd- computer genius (there is a separate series featuring him)
Letty- adopted daughter
Virgil Flowers- fellow detective (there is a separate series featuring him)

#1 Rules of Prey (1989)

#2 Shadow Prey (1990)

#3 Eyes of Prey (1991)

#4 Silent Prey (1992)

#5 Winter Prey (1993)

#6 Night Prey (1994)

#7 Mind Prey (1995)
A mother and her two daughters are kidnapped in broad daylight by throwing them into a van as the girls are being picked up after school. The woman is a psychiatrist. It is unclear if the kidnapper is a former patient or a family member. There is big money in the family and a convoluted chain of inheritance if the mother and/or children die.

Davenport's gaming company is strongly involved in the solution to the crime.

This book has some violent content involving children, so it's probably not a good read for people who are sensitive on this topic.
Lucas Davenport is trying to decide whether to ask Weather Karkinnen to marry him.

#8 Sudden Prey (1996)

#9 Secret Prey (1998)

#10 Certain Prey (1999)

#11 Easy Prey (2000)

#12 Chosen Prey (2001)

#13 Mortal Prey (2002)

#14 Naked Prey (2003)

#15 Hidden Prey (2004)

#16 Broken Prey (2005)

#17 Invisible Prey (2007)

#18 Phantom Prey (2008)

#19 Wicked Prey (2009)

#20 Storm Prey (2010)

#21 Buried Prey (2011)

#22 Stolen Prey (2012)

#23 Silken Prey (2013)
This book is full of political intrigue, and your interest in that sort of complexity could affect how much you like the story.

Child pornography is found on the computer of the man running against the governonr in the election. However, the governor himself thinks the man is being framed and calls in Davenport to find out the truth of the matter because even though it is his political opponent.

The story runs from political intrigue to cyber crime to burglary. Everyone who is pursuing the case believes that someone from the opposing team is responsible, but it's hard to see how it could be done.

This is one of the books that is a crossover with the Kidd series. Computer nerd Kidd can crack almost anything.

#24 Field of Prey (2014)

#25 Gathering Prey (2015)

#26 Extreme Prey (2016)

#27 Golden Prey (2017)

#28 Twisted Prey (2018)

#29 Neon Prey (2019)

#30 Masked Prey (2020)

#31 Ocean Prey (2021)

#32 Righteous Prey (2022)
A small group five of Bitcoin billionaires decides that they are going to rid the world of one really bad person each. And they are going to do it with high publicity, taking credit for each killing.

The first two murders take place without a hitch, but when they attempt one in the Twin Cities, Davenport finds a few cracks in their careful planning.

Things begin to unravel for the Five, and law enforcement manages to figure out who is to be the next victim. They set up an elaborate surveillance.

The leader of the Five is identified, but can the entire group be found and rounded up?

#33 Judgment Prey (2023)

#34 Toxic Prey (2024)

Inspector Lansing - Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac is a pen name of Edith Caroline Rivett.She was a prolific mystery writer from 1931 until her death in 1958. As a child she lived in both England and Australia. She is credited with creating fictional detectives Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, Inspector Ryvet, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers, and Inspector Lansing. Some of the books overlap, featuring more than one of these characters.

Her books follow the style of the Golden Age of Mystery. They are difficult to find, and I'm still trying to determine which 18 feature Inspector Lansing. A few have been re-published as British Classics. Based on the two I have read, I'd love to find more

So far, I've only been able to find these two books, but I give them a very high rating for plot, characters, and locations.

Crossed Skis (1952)
The book begins with a group of young people who have loosely banded together to take a ski holiday to Austria by ferry and train. Sixteen people, most of whom don't really know one another travel to the ski resort.

Meanwhile, Rivers and Lansing are attempting to solve a puzzling murder in London that occurs in a boarding house. The neer-do-well son of the owner seems to be key to the solution. One of the flats caught fire, and the body of the lodger was found thrust into the gas flame so that his face and hands are too disfigured for identification. The police suspect the body is not that of the lodger.

On the ski holiday, strange events begin to happen, and the members of the party suspiciously begin sorting out who they think they can and can't trust.

The book culminates with a dangerous ski chase in a blizzard.

Impact of Evidence (1958)

This is set in the farm country of Wales in the winter. Life is harsh, and the book does a convincing job of portraying that condition. You really can feel the hills and the snow and the horrible flood that cuts the small settlement off from the rest of the country for days.

During that time of isolation, an old man who probably shouldn't be driving is broadsided by another car when he recklessly drives in front of that car. The impacted car is pushed into the river where it is lodged. The driver of the other car, though injured, stumbles down to the closest farm to get help.

When a group of men rally under nearly impossible weather conditions to rescue the old man from the car in the river, he is determined to be dead. The huge surprise is that there is another man dead in the back seat.

The story unwinds methodically with many a suspect and potential motive. In the classic mystery tradition, the guilty party is not revealed until the very end.

Victoria Trumbull - Cynthia Riggs

Cynthia Riggs

Cynthia Riggs has been a geologist, operator of the Chesapeake Bay Ferry, and a rigger on Martha's Vinyard.

This series is based on Martha's Vinyard, and stars the nonagenarian, Victoria Trumbull. The atmosphere and characters of the New England setting are wonderfully done. If you have any experience with people from and life in this area you'll have plenty to chuckle at. I love the details of the island setting and the unusual place names. This is regional fiction at its best.

Victoria is always 92, and the books can be read in any order. However, Jack in the Pulpit sets the stage for events mentioned in the other books.

One small warning- language is not toned down.

Recurring Characters:
Victoria Trumbell, age 92
Elizabeth, her adult granddaughter
Hope, her adult great-grand niece
Howland Atherton

#1- Deadly Nightshade (2001)
Victoria is waiting on the dock for Elizabeth to finish her shift as assistant Harbormaster. It is dusk. Victoria hears a blood-curdling scream cove across the water. Elizabeth returns, but she has not heard it. The Harbormaster, Domingo, believes Victoria and the go out in a small boat to track down the noise. They find a discmboweled body, and it is a local man.

Domingo is a retired cop who has been hired from out of town for the summer. A great many local authorities are not happy about that because he knows for certain that there is a lot of skimming being done due to the lax menthod of collecting and recording harbor fees. Domingo brings in someone to set up a computer program to track the money and makes quite a few enemies.

Many of the summer hires are local highschoolers, mostly children or grandchildren of the people who think they can do anything they want. Coupled with having no work ethic, they are making Domingo and Elizabeth's jobs miserable.

#2- The Cranefly Orchid Murders (2002)
This is one of my personal favorites of the series.

An elderly lady is still living in her family home on a large area of land known as Sachem's Rock. She is estranged from her family and refuses to leave it to any children or grandchildren. The Conservationists want the property. A developer wants the property. The tribe wants it to build a casino, a commune wants to take control, and the town of West Tisbury wants to turn it into a campground and park.

The developer talks the woman into selling to him, to everyone's dismay. Victoria is recruited by the conservationists to try to find some endangered plants on the property so they can have development stopped. Victoria teams up with Robin, an eleven-year-old nerdy boy, to hunt for plants by following the "ancient ways," pathways through the property that are supposed to remain public rights-of-way.

Victoria and Robin do find Cranefly Orchids. They also find fences and a man living underground. Then the orchids disappear and different ones are planted in their place.

What is going on?

#3- The Cemetery Yew (2003)
The town receives a request to disinter a casket from a ten-year-old suicide. It will be picked up by hearse because the body is going to be transferred to Milwaukee for reburial in a family plot. However, the grave is empty. The curmudgeonly cemetery supervisor blames the backhoe operator, and the blame goes round and round.

Howland Atherton's cousin Dahlia is retiring from the Foreign Service and shows up, claiming she owns half his house. She is in poor health, taking cancer treatments. She also comes with a raucous toucan that drives everyone nuts. When she and Howland can't get along, Victoria takes in Dahlia and the bird, but Elizabeth can't stand them.

Meanwhile, when the hearse arrives on the ferry, the driver has disappeared and the vehicle is locked. Then several other off-islanders appear and are somewhat quickly killed! They all seem to have ties to Dahlia, and someone is also trying to kill her.

#4- Jack in the Pulpit (2004)
Given some of the events, this book seems to be first in the series although it was not written first.

This is a book with complex layers. The previous pastor of Tisbury Church was named Jack. The new pastor is also named Jack and there is some conflict between them. Meanwhile, four people die in one month, but not of apparently related causes.

Elizabeth has divorced her husband, Lockwood, and is living with Victoria. In a rare case of poor analysis of another person, Victoria gives him the benefit of the doubt, but he's pretty much a psychopath who comes to the island to stalk Elizabeth.

It begins to look like the four deaths in one month are pretty unusual, and Victoria traces them to recipes made with deadly wild Amanita mushrooms. But who is trying to kill whom?

There is a classic who-dun-it denoument when Victoria reveals all at a meeting of the Kippers Women's Club where she was scheduled to speak on the history of police work in West Tisbury..

#5- The Paperwhite Narcissus (2005)
The publisher of the local paper, Colly Jameson, is receiving threatening letters, and all of them seem to be in response to unexplained accidents or deaths in the area. The truth is that nobody likes Colly anyway. He's a narcissistic bully with 4 ex-wives and one unhappy current wife. He is firing staff members, claiming he doesn't need them in the summer when the truth is that he just wasn't to use college-age interns for free.

However, an attempted murder, a successful murder, and an unexplained death all seem linked to Colly.

When he fires Victoria Trumbull, she goes to work for Tom Botts who is printing a weekly, one-page, alternative news sheet. She also gets Colly to pay her to find out who is sending the threatening letters.

#6- Indian Pipes (2006)
The local Native American sovereign nation is negotiating to build a casino on the island. However, there is a lot of disagreement as to the form it should take. A local contractor, Jubal Burkhart, who has to sign off on various permits is taking bribes from the factions.

Meanwhile, a motorcycle rally comes to the island. The noisy grouup is not popular with a number of the locals.

Hiram Pennybacker, an older man who doesn't know when to stop talking seems rather harmless, but he disappears. When Jubal's house burns to the ground, a body is found inside among the stacks of hoarded papers and magazines. Jubal's property turns out to be worth $18 million, but who inherits.

#7- Shooting Star (2007)
Victoria has written a new screenplay of Dracula that she hopes will be taken quite seriously by those who choose to attend the local theater production.

Instead the youngest actor goes missing, and others are being injured or killed. Substitutions in the cast result in the play becoming a hit farce, much to Victoria's dismay.

There is so much animosity between cast members and the director it's easy to draw certain conclsions about the deaths. Meanwhile, where is Teddy, the young cast member?

#8- Death and Honesty (2009)
The town assessors are jacking up tax bills and skimming the extra off the top. But someone is trying to horn in on their operation.

Meanwhile, a rather trashy and naive woman who moved to the Island and bought an old historic home had that house torn down, and she built a modern mansion. She is married to a TV evangelist. Despite her flaws, Victoria likes Delilah. Delilah is not naive enough to stand for the outrageous tax bill she receives, and she stirs up a hornet's nest.

Meanwhile, what is the good reverend up to?

#9- Touch-Me-Not (2010)

#10 The Bee Balm Murders (2011)
Orion Nanopoulos arrives on the island for an extended stay to lay fiber optic cable. He rents a room at Victoria's house. Not long after they start digging to lay the cable, a man is found dead in the trench. An all-night rain has washed away any clues as to how he got there.

It turns out that the dead man has connections to the mob, but meanwhile there is a lot of local hanky-panky going on with the contracts for the fiber optic cable.

#11 Poison Ivy (2014)

#12 Bloodroot (2016)
An older woman, Mrs. Wilmington, who raised her for grandchildren dies unexpectedly in the dentist's chair. She was not liked by anyone, including her grandchildren. When an autopsy shows she died of arsenic poisoning, there are too many suspects.

On the same day that Mrs. Wilmington dies, the dental receptionist accidentally drowns on her way home from the office.

The grandchildren are all adults now, and they all have motives to get rid of grandma, chief among them is to get her money. But a tangled web of relationships relating to the staff of the dental clinic also emerges. Maybe the receptionist's death was not an accident.

Elizabeth's psychopathic ex-husband is stalking her again.

#13 Trumpet of Death (2017)

#14 Widow's Wreath (2018)
Penny, a young cousin of Victoria's has requested that her wedding reception be held on Victoria's property on the Island. Victoria agrees, but she soon loarns that the whole affair is huge and much more complex than she would like to host.

When a body is found hanging in Victoria's seldom-visited cellar, everything is postponed. In fact, we soon learn that Penny was marrying Rocco for his money, and he was marrying her for her money. But when they each learn that neither one has money, the wedding is called off.

Rocco's family has serious ties to the mob, and several of his relatives are on the island for the wedding.

Adam Dalgleish - P.D. James

P.D. James (public domain)

Phyllis Dorothy James White (3 August 1920 – 27 November 2014) was a British novelist and has written some of the most clever and complex mysteries of all time. Her prose is dense and rich. There are always so many personal plots going on that there are any number of suspects to consider.

Although many of the books are in rather modern settings, most of the motives and lifestyles are rooted in the past that people seem powerless to escape.

There are 14 books in the Adam Dalgleish series, but she wrote many standalone mysteries as well.

#1 Cover Her Face (1962)

#2 A Mind to Murder (1963)

#3 Unnatural Causes (1967)

#4 Shroud for a Nightingale (1971)

#5 The Black Tower (1975)

#6 Death of an Expert Witness (1977)

#7 A Taste for Death (1986)

#8 Devises and Desires (1989)
Dalgleish must travel to the Norfolk Coast to take possession of a mill which his aunt, his last remaining relative, left to him in her will. While there, as a courtesy, he consults with the local police on a serial killer.

Apart from the killings, the most controversial topic in the area is the nuclear power plant. Detractors are organizing against nuclear power. A local artist is renting a cottage from an officer of the plant, but she wants him and his family out of the house. The director of the plant has been offered a better job in London, but his personal assistant does not want to stay with him.

Dalgleish is invited to a dinner party with a great many of these people, but one of the guests is late. When he does arrive, it is with the news that he has just discovered the most recent victim of the killer.

#9 Original Sin (1994)

#10 A Certain Justice (1997)

#11 Death in Holy Orders(2001)

#12 The Murder Room (2003)

#13 The Lighthouse (2005)

#14 The Private Patient (2008)

Help Your Formatter

I few days ago, I published an article about using paragraph formatting rather than tabs and said it was the number one wish of mine as an editor. However, it's hard for me to say this isn't #1. This one is strictly formatting, but doing this would save SO MUCH TIME. You may be paying by the job rather than by the hour, but it would get the finished product back in your hands sooner.

The desire to see your work look like a "real book" is strong. Especially for new authors. In fact, I used to to this myself, and then would berate myself over and over, later on, when I had to undo everything to actually format the book.

If you want to play around and see what your chapters will look like, or choose small art work to accompany breaks, or whatever... just do it with a few chapters for your own enjoyment or education. This is a good way to test things and see what look you like.

It would be best for the formatter if you just sent the text, with the paragraph indents created as described in Help Your Editor -1. Leave out any other formatting "stuff" except maybe a new page for chapter breaks.

Why? All the formatting you have added will probably need to be stripped out so it can be done correctly.

Things that are a nightmare for a formatter: Using the tab key. Adding a space before every paragraph (this makes no sense to me but I know two authors that must have a nervous habit of doing this). Using the space bar to center or arrange elements. Adding extra carriage returns.

DO NOT add your own page numbers. DO NOT add your own headers and footers. DO NOT set up the page size. DO NOT use two spaces between sentences.

If you want to show the formatter an example of your desired finished product, just send those sample chapters you've been playing with.

Even better... you could copy the manuscript into a program like Notepad that takes out all the extra stuff. It has to be something that truly reduces the MS to text. Even Wordpad will keep a lot of the formatting. Save it as a *.txt file and send that to your editor.

Note various of the no-nos I mentioned in the graphic below. You can click to make it larger. I have turned on the pilcrow (formatting marks) to show them. You can do the same thing, and then you can see if your MS is a mess.

Note the following in this sample: Author has created a page break by hitting the return several times. Author has tried to center text with the space bar. Author has added page numbers. Author has added a header. Author has hit the space bar at the beginning of the paragraph.

Here is what the final copy will look like for that same section.

Your formatter should be able to clean it up no matter what, but the time spent can affect your price and your working relationship.

Samples are from the forthcoming book, The Kommandant's Last Battle, by A. Katie Wood. It will be released in December 2024, assuming I can get the formatting done fast enough. The story is a WWII romance.