Meet the Bouchercon Forensics Panel!

Tomorrow I’m heading off on the long drive to Albany, NY (thanks to hubby for lending me his beloved Mustang for the trip) to Bouchercon, the premier North American mystery conference for both readers and writers. I’m honoured to be sitting on the forensics panel—We Didn’t Start the Fire (But We Can Tell You How It Started)—with four wonderful authors, and I thought I’d use this week’s blog entry to highlight my co-panelists and some of their body of work.

Elizabeth Haynes: Elizabeth, our panel moderator, lives in Kent in the U.K. and works as a police intelligence analyst. A writer from her earliest days, Elizabeth produced her first real novel for NaNoWriMo in 2005 and then tried again in 2006 and 2007. Her debut thriller Into the Darkest Corner (a real nail biter, let me tell you…) was written as part of 2008’s NaNoWriMo and was published in 2011. Since then, Elizabeth has released Dark Tide and Human Remains, with Under a Silent Moon scheduled for release in 2014.

Elly Griffiths: Born in London and currently living in Brighton, Elly writes the Ruth Galloway series about a forensic archaeologist who assists the police whenever local human remains are discovered. Drawing from her husband’s profession as an archaeologist, as well as her aunt’s knowledge and experience from living on the Norfolk coast, the Galloway series is full of real archeological details mixed with the mythology and history of the area. The series starts with The Crossing Places and includes The Janus Stone, The House at Sea’s End, A Room Full of Bones, and A Dying Fall. The sixth book in the series, The Outcast Dead, is scheduled for release in 2014.

Kendra Elliot: When Kendra first started out, she wrote contemporary romance. But when her characters ‘kept tripping over dead bodies’, she turned her hand to writing romantic suspense and hasn’t looked back. Kendra has released three novels (Hidden, Chilled, and Buried) and her fourth, Alone, will be released in January of 2014. A dental hygienist with a love of forensics, she turned her own knowledge and talents into her protagonist Lacey Campbell, a forensic odontologist in Hidden. Kendra is also a regular contributor to the wonderful Murder She Writes blog.

Sarah Shaber: Sarah won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery Award for the first novel in her Simon Shaw series, Simon Says. The series follows the adventures of Simon, a professor and forensic historian, through a series of historical murders in Snipe Hunt, The Fugitive King, The Bug Funeral, and Shell Game. Her newest historical suspense series stars Louise Pearlie as a young widow, working during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in Washington D.C. Louise’s story starts in Louise’s War and continues in Louise’s Gamble. The third book in the series, Louise’s Dilemma, will release in November 2013.

And then there’s me—I’ll be holding down the forensic anthropology and biological sciences end of the discussion.

I’m very much looking forward to meeting these talented ladies in person and sharing some discussion around forensics and writing within the genre of crime fiction. For any readers attending, we’ll be in room 2 at 2:40pm on Thursday and would love to see you there!

Photo credit: Jason Paris