JEFFREY A. LOCKWOOD

The 2019 “Six-Word Mystery” contest sponsored by the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Mystery Writers of America drew more than 200 entries from ten states and three countries. The results of this year’s competition were decided in December, and the winner is… me! By the slimmest of margins, my numerical noir finished on top. Sex, violence and justice combined to pique the imagination of the judges and voters: 36D, .44 magnum, 20 to life. I thought that toxic tales might be f

A reader of Lethal Fetish and the other Riley mysteries asked me why I chose one of this Irishman’s haunts to be a Polish bakery—and how I crafted believable, immigrant dialogue (crafting realistic dialect is one of the great challenges in writing). As for the “why”, I sensed a connection between Ireland and Poland. Both countries are grounded in working class lives. Both places have been oppressed by outside forces and have suffered terribly at times. Both countries embra

Last semester I taught an undergraduate course on crime noir, including films, radio programs, readings, and (of course) writing. Upon reflection, I think there were five things that the students realized—“lessons” about this genre and perhaps even life—along with what I learned about my students... First, noir is not a past-tense, old-school, has-been genre. Initially, many students thought noir meant black-and-white gangster movies (not that most of them had watched many s

The term femme fatale, used to describe a dangerous and alluring woman, originated in the mid-1800s and became a staple of noir mysteries in the 20th century. Classic films might’ve justified an inverted “Me Too” movement led by Frank Chambers (played by John Garfield in “The Postman Always Rings Twice”), Philip Marlowe (Humphry Bogart in “The Big Sleep), and Walter Neff (Fred McMurray in “Double Indemnity”). These poor saps were controlled by the likes of Lana Turner, Laur

The cover art for Lethal Fetish, my upcoming mystery novel in the Riley series features sultry, salacious, even lascivious images. Conor Mullen—my immensely gifted and creative artist—and I worked with various images to evoke the decadence that unfolds in the story. We settled on three evocative features (not including the less subtle elements in the storefront windows): stiletto heels, fishnet stockings and San Francisco’s Coit Tower. So why are these so suggestive? Accor

The challenge of scientific literacy is communicating knowledge in forms that are evocative, memorable and intelligent. Stories engage people—and this approach drove a collaborative venture to convey an ecological epic. Locust: The Opera is an environmental murder mystery in which solving the century-old extinction of an iconic species provides lessons for the modern world. The ghost of the locust haunts a scientist until he can figure out how a creature that once blackene

I previously wrote about a collaborative project with Dr. Anne Guzzo—an acclaimed composer in the Department of Music—to produce a chamber opera (How Science OPERAtes). We are excited to announce that LOCUST: THE OPERA will premiere at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyoming, on September 28th at 7:00 pm, with a matinee performance the next day at 1:00 pm. This is the story of the Rocky Mountain locust, whose swarms blackened the skies of North America until

Back in the 1960s, my family watched Art Linkletter’s television show, which included a segment in which he asked children questions or vice-versa. This format gave rise to a series of books titled, “Kids Say the Darnedest Things.” The notion was that the simple, direct, unfiltered words of children can be wonderfully incisive. Their provocative questions can reveal that grownups don’t really know—or maybe haven’t even thought—about some matters that we might presume to un

Here is an intriguing email and my response (both somewhat abridged, so let me know if you’d like the full versions). I showed the controversial image in question (Grasshopper in Cyberspace, Galina Lukshina, 2003) during a university presentation about my writing, when discussing the Riley mystery series. CONCERN: Your seminar was fascinating [but] the image of the woman on her back in a very sexualized position, with the insect head twisted around is not appropriate. Yes, p

I bristle at the notion that basic science, which eschews the crassness of economic utility, is more virtuous than applied research, which pursues gritty questions and messy answers needed by farmers, nurses and soldiers. Maybe this distinction is rooted in the Plato’s separation of the heavenly forms and the shadow on the cave wall (when in doubt, blame Greek philosophers). In reading Erik Dussere’s, America is Elsewhere: The Noir Tradition in the Age of Consumer Culture, I