Julie Compton: April 2010 Archives

Can't get away for vacation this year? Sit down in your favorite chair with one of Maria Hudgins' novels from her Dotsy Lamb travel mysteries series, and you'll soon be transported to a new place with an exotic setting, intriguing characters, and a murder or two that needs solving. Her latest, Death on the Aegean Queen, finds protagonist Dotsy Lamb on a cruise ship in the Greek Islands searching for the killer of a tourist from Indiana and the ship's photographer. Dotsy's creator, Maria Hudgins, took some time to chat with The Big Thrill.

This is your third Dotsy Lamb mystery. The first two, Death of an Obnoxious Tourist and Death of a Lovable Geek, are set in Italy and Scotland, respectively. Your current novel, Death on the Aegean Queen, takes place on a cruise ship in the Greek Islands. How did you come to write what you call "travel" mysteries, and how did you develop the idea for this third book?

I love to go places. I'll hop on a plane and then ask, "Where are we going?" I don't visit a country with the purpose of writing a mystery about it. Sometimes, nothing strikes me, but when it does, I use the setting as part of the story. I did take a cruise around the Greek Islands a few years ago, but the idea for Death on the Aegean Queen came to me following TV coverage of a newlywed man who disappeared from a cruise ship on his honeymoon. The novel itself bears no further resemblance to that news story.