If she were alive today, I’d consider sending her a written thank-you, although why she, the master of mystery, should take note of it, I have no idea. I owe a lot to this lady.
Although Miss Rinehart departed this life in 1958, her books are still with us, and I’m grateful for those well-written stories. She was expert at suspense. From the moment I stepped into the pages of Locked Doors or The Bat or The Circular Staircase, or The Wandering Knife or The Red Lamp, chills began chasing each other up and down my spine. I knew, from the heroine’s actions and reactions that something was afoot. Something was about to happen, but what? And, when?
In each of her mysteries, Miss Rinehart builds tension page by page, word by word. It’s the sort of book that keeps me awake at night for two reasons: 1. I can’t wait to see how it ends and 2. I’m so tense, I couldn’t go to sleep if I tried.
In my thank you note to a great author, I’d explain that she has gone with me through actual, physical stormy nights and through some worried and uncomfortable days. Whether it was an original hardback book or a re-printed paperback, I depended on those stories for a break in reality, a small vacation into an exciting realm of strange, uncharted territory.
Romance tinges the mysteries, too, but it is the sweet, old-fashioned, moonlight and roses kind. Lewd language or torrid scenes were never a part of the Rinehart mysteries. She depended on a well-told tale to grab the readers’ interest and it did.
Hopefully, there’s a bit of Mary Roberts Rinehart in the cozy mysteries I write. Hopefully, each story piques interest from the start and builds from the first page. Like her, I’ve never found that profanity or sizzling sex does one thing to make a story interesting. In fact, I find those things extraneous and completely unnecessary to a well-told tale.
So, thank you, Miss Rinehart, mystery writer extraordinaire. I’ve heard imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I don’t imitate your books; mine are written for today’s reader, not those of a century ago, but I do my best to weave mystery and intrigue into each one. As I write, somewhere in the back of my mind, there you are, Miss Mary, with your gifted pen, showing me the way a master of the art did it. And I am grateful.
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