Blood-Letter #180

January 2026

In this issue of The Blood-Letter from Friends of Mystery: Bloody Thursday guest Phillip Margolin, Left Coast Crime Awards, and new books.

CONTENTS:

• On January 22, 2026 Friends of Mystery Welcomes Phillip Margolin
• 2026 Left Coast Crime
• For Your Viewing Pleasure…
• New and Noteworthy
• New Mailing Address
• Member News
• Buy Books by FOM Speakers at Annie Bloom’s
• Membership Renewal
• Submissions Needed

BLOODY THURSDAY

On January 22, 2026 Friends of Mystery Welcomes Phillip Margolin

Friends of Mystery is pleased to welcome Portland author and long-time friend of our organization and former Spotted Owl Award winner, Phillip Margolin.

Margolin grew up in New York City and Levittown, New York. He graduated from The American University in Washington, D.C. in 1965 with a Bachelors Degree in Government. From 1965 to 1967 he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Liberia, West Africa. In 1970 he graduated from New York University School of Law. During his last two years in law school he went at night and worked his way through by teaching junior high school in the South Bronx in New York City.

His first job after law school was a clerkship with Herbert M. Schwab, the Chief Judge of the Oregon Court of Appeals. From 1972 until 1996, he was in private practice specializing in criminal defense at the trial and appellate levels. As an appellate attorney he has appeared before the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the Oregon Supreme Court and the Oregon Court of Appeals. As a trial attorney, he handled all sorts of criminal cases in state and federal court and he has represented approximately 30 people charged with homicide, including several who have faced the death penalty. He was the first Oregon attorney to use the Battered Women’s Syndrome to defend a battered woman accused of murdering her spouse.

Since 1996 Margolin has been writing full-time in the legal thriller genre. His most recent book is False Witness. Margolin will be interviewed by Dana Haynes.

Please join us on Zoom for the meeting, which will open at 6:45 pm, with the formal programming beginning at 7:00 pm. The Zoom link is available below.

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2026 Left Coast Crime

“Lefty” Award Nominees

Best Humorous Mystery Novel

• Solid Gold Murder, by Ellen Byron
• Star-Crossed Egg Tarts, by Jennifer J. Chow
• Bye Bye Blackbird, by Elizabeth Crowens
• Scot’s Eggs, by Catriona McPherson
• All’s Faire in Love and Murder, by Cindy Sample

Best Historical Mystery Novel

• Huguette, by Cara Black
• The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks
• A Daughter’s Guide to Mothers and Murder, by Dianne Freeman
• City Lights, by Claire M. Johnson
• Knave of Diamonds, by Laurie R. King
• The Case of the Missing Maid, by Rob Osler

Best Debut Mystery Novel

• Whiskey Business, by Adrian Andover
• We Don’t Talk About Carol, by Kristen L. Berry
• Mask of the Deer Woman, by Laurie L. Dove
• The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenbergs
• Best Offer Wins, by Maris Kashino
• Mortal Zin, by Diane Schaffer

Best Mystery Novel (not in other categories)

• Crooks, by Lou Berney
• Throwing Shadows, by Claire Booth
• Edge, by Tracy Clark
• Waters of Destruction, by Leslie Karst
• River of Lies, by James L’Etoile
• The Library Game, by Gigi Pandian

The “Lefty’s” will be presented on February 28, 2026 in San Francisco at Left Coast Crime.

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For Your Viewing Pleasure…

The Game

(Britbox 2025)

Retired Detective Huw Miller is haunted by a case he didn’t solve. As he tries to settle into retirement, he begins to think his new neighbor may be the serial killer that eluded him. Starring Jason Watkins, Robson Green & Sunetra Sarker. 4 episodes.

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New and Noteworthy…

(Summaries provided by the publishers)

No Rest for The Wicked, by Rachel Louise Adams

It’s been close to twenty years since forensic pathologist Dolores Hawthorne left her hometown of Little Horton, Wisconsin. The town is famous for its Halloween celebrations, but also its history of violent deaths linked to the holiday. To Dolores, it’s the place she fled – family, bad memories, and all. Until the FBI calls to tell her that her father—the former mayor turned U.S. senator—is missing under mysterious circumstances.

Some people count to ten to wake up from a nightmare. Dolores always counts the bones of her head instead: sphenoid, frontal, lacrimal. But no matter how many times she counts them, it doesn’t change the fact that her father is missing, that his final words of warning to her were “Trust no one,” and that now, the rest of her family is giving Dolores a chilling welcome. With Halloween fast approaching, Dolores must face the past she left behind before it’s too late.

The Wasp Trap, by Mark Edwards

Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor who brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing.

But what is meant to be a night of bittersweet nostalgia soon becomes a twisted and deadly game. The old friends are given an ultimatum: reveal their darkest secrets to the group or pick each other off one by one.

It soon becomes clear that their current predicament is related to their shared past. The love questionnaire they helped develop in 1999 for the dating site was also turned into a tool for weeding out psychopaths: the wasp trap. This psychological experiment and the tragic events of the summer they spent together may help reveal the truth behind a killer hiding in plain sight.

The Girl in the Green Dress, by Mariah Fredericks

New York, 1920. Zelda Fitzgerald is bored, bored, bored. Although she’s newly married to the hottest writer in America and one half of the literary scene’s “it” couple, Zelda is at loose ends while Scott works on his next novel. Meanwhile, Atlanta journalist Morris Markey has arrived in New York and is lost in every way possible. Without connections he hovers at the edge of the city’s revels, unable to hear the secrets that might give him his first big story.

When notorious man-about-town Joseph Elwell is found shot in his swanky town house, the fortunes of Zelda and Markey collide. They were both among the last to see him alive: Zelda encountered Elwell at the scandalous Midnight Frolic revue; Markey saw him just hours before he died, with a ravishing mystery woman dressed in green. Markey has his story. Zelda has her next adventure.

As they investigate who might have wanted the dapper society man dead, Zelda sweeps Markey into her New York: the heady, gaudy Jazz Age of excess and abandon, as the Lost Generation takes its first giddy steps into a decade long spree. Zelda is hungry for love and sensation; Markey desperate for success and recognition. As they each follow these ultimately dangerous desires, the pair close in on what really happened that night – and hunt for the elusive girl in the green dress who may hold the truth.

Wild Instinct, by T. Jefferson Parker

Former Marine sniper Lew Gale, now a detective with the Orange County, California Sheriff’s Department, is assigned to track and shoot a mountain lion that has killed a man in the rugged country east of Laguna Beach. The victim is Bennet Tarlow, a rich developer and man-about-town in upscale coastal Orange County.

The investigation takes a chilling turn when Lew and his new partner, Daniela Mendez, discover that Bennet was dead long before the lion got to him. And while he might have been the first to die, he certainly will not be the last.

The Vanishing Place, by Zoe Rankin

A young girl stumbles out of the bush into a tiny New Zealand town, her clothes smeared with dirt and blood, unable – or unwilling to speak. No one’s ever seen her before, but old-timers insist that she looks just like a girl who disappeared twenty years earlier.

Effie has built a life for herself in Scotland, oceans and miles away from the secrets of her past, from a childhood spent in the wilds of New Zealand, hidden away with her family. As a child, she thought that it was her parents’ love of the natural world that took them off-grid and into the bush. But as she grew, she began to see how unsafe and unwise their life was, and finally escaped, vowing never to look back. Now she lives on the Isle of Skye, as far from that dark forest as she can get.

But the appearance of the strange little girl leads police to a murder scene. And to help solve the mystery of the child who looks so much like her, Effie will finally confront the horrors of her childhood – and head back into the trees.

The Dentist, by Tim Sullivan

Detective Sergeant George Cross can be difficult to work with, but he doesn’t miss a clue. Because he is on the autism spectrum, George struggles with simple daily interactions – but his single-minded attention to detail and fierce determination make him the most successful detective in the Bristol station with a 97 percent conviction rate. George can be maddeningly insensitive, but he never gives up on a case. Josie Ottey, his partner on the force and a single mom juggling work with parenting demands, is exasperated by George but equally protective.

When an elderly homeless man is found dead near a gorge in Bristol, George’s colleagues move quickly to close the case as an act of senseless violence. But George insists on scrupulously examining the corpse, and what he finds there raises more questions than it answers. George discovers that the victim had been investigating a murder, one that happened fifteen years earlier – and might have been on the brink of solving it before he was killed. Multiple suspects emerge, but George and Josie, an unstoppable team in the interrogation room, can see right past a life – or a false confession.

The Glass Eel, by J.J. Viertel

Caterpillar Island is off the central coast of Maine – beloved Vacationland of lobster bakes and quaint fried clam shacks, kayaking and country houses. At night, though, by the light of a headlamp, the island is alive with cash, guns, and poachers. Oxy addicts, struggling retirees, and unemployable deadbeats dip their nets in the creeks to catch elvers – two-inch-long baby eels that fetch $2,000 a pound on the international black market.

Into this dark and dangerous world falls Jeanette King, who has, up to this moment, been earning her meager living mainly by picking and packaging peekytoe crab meat for shipment to New York and Boston. As Jeanette gets drawn into a fast-moving story of risk and violent consequences, she enlists the aid of a local policeman and an Indigenous activist. Together they try to set things right for the people and the planet. But the deeper they dig, the more dangerous things get.

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Friends of Mystery has a new mailing address

If you need to contact us by mail, the new address is:

Friends of Mystery
P.O. Box 332
Sherwood, Oregon 97140

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Member News

Share Your Member News

Friends of Mystery is happy to publish news and press releases from our members in our Member News section, with the following considerations:

• The news must be related to mystery or true crime writing, films, and television, as well as non-fiction examinations of the mystery genre.
• Friends of Mystery will not be able to edit announcements, and will publish them as provided.
• Friends of Mystery will include one image with each announcement, if provided.
• Friends of Mystery is not responsible for the content of news announcements, and we reserve the right to not publish any announcements which we feel will reflect poorly on the organization and do not advance the organization’s mission.

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Buy Books by Friends of Mystery Speakers Online at Annie Bloom’s Books

If you want to order any of our speaker’s books, you can find them at our special Friends of Mystery page at Annie Bloom’s Books!

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Membership Renewal

It’s never too late to consider renewing your membership to Friends of Mystery! Dues are $20.00 annually. FOM is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Dues and additional donations are deductible to the full extent of the law. Please mail your check, made out to Friends of Mystery, to P.O. Box 332, Sherwood, OR 97140. Your newsletter will be sent electronically unless otherwise requested.

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Submissions Needed

Members and readers are encouraged to submit book or film reviews, comments on authors, and recommendations for books to read or questions about mysteries, crime fiction and fact. If you have suggestions of mysteries worth sharing, please contact the editor at: jlvoss48@gmail.com.

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Stay warm with a great mystery!