Please Welcome Mystery Author Barry Knister

with Barry Knister

We are delighted to welcome mystery author Barry Knister to Omnimystery News today.

Barry introduces journalist and amateur sleuth Brenda Contay in the first in series mystery The Anything Goes Girl (Barry Knister; December 2013 trade paperback and ebook formats) and today he has titled his guest post "Men Writing about Women: On Your Feet for the Imagination".

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Photo provided courtesy of
Barry Knister

Question: in the 21st century, what business does a man have writing a mystery series with a young woman as the central character? I am that man, and I think the question is worth taking up. It applies to my recently published mystery, The Anything Goes Girl.

Not so long ago, no one would have thought to ask the question. All kinds of men wrote from the point of view of women (Tolstoy, Hardy and Hawthorne come immediately to mind).

Similarly, no one thought anything about a white European like Joseph Conrad presuming to know what was in the minds of Africans (The Heart of Darkness). And no writer, man or woman, dared to write directly and openly about "alternative lifestyles."

But in our time, discrepancies in pay for women, along with exploitation and sexual abuse in developed countries, not to mention grotesque offenses against women like "honor killings" in some developing nations have made people more sensitive to the condition of women.

In other words, it's now a fair question: isn't it presumptuous for men to think they can honestly know and convey the meaning of female identity?

When I set out to develop a series of mystery novels, I made the decision to make my central point-of-view character a journalist. I had no knowledge of police procedure, forensic medicine or the law, but I had some knowledge of journalism. And I decided to make my central character a young woman. Most of my work colleagues were women, and so were all the members of my immediate family. This seemed an ample stock of credentials.

And I had another reason for making Brenda Contay, not Brad or Bob Contay the young tabloid TV journalist at the center of my series. You will see me as either cynical or practical for this reason, but I also knew that something like seventy percent of all fiction is bought by women. If the idea was to develop a readership for my work, it seemed commonsensical to write for my target audience (a very male figure of speech, I agree), and to focus on one of their own.

But as I neared completion of the first novel in the series, I began to have doubts: wouldn't it be hard for a balding, bearded male writer to pitch stories written from the point of view of an American woman in her late-twenties?

I had to hope the answer was located in the story itself, that women mystery readers would not reject The Anything Goes Girl, just because the writer looked like the main character's father.

And then I realized something else. I had a wonderful wife, and two stepdaughters that I thought of as my own kids — but I had not fathered children of my own. Still, I had imagined a young woman, someone with problems, strengths and weaknesses, someone I had come to like and even love.

And I also realized that the women I knew — at work, at home, in my hometown — were not only smart but tolerant. They were feminists but not ideologically driven. I realized that the very attributes that made them good company would be what informed their reaction to my book. They would read it on its merits, without submitting it to some gender-related litmus test.

This has turned out to be completely true. Most of my reviewers and readers are women. They enjoy the story and characters in The Anything Goes Girl and I am delighted they do. To me, this means that in the 21st century, the imagination remains the first and most important "credential" any writer must have.

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After a career teaching college students, Barry Knister now writes mysteries. Until recently, he wrote a blog/column for the Naples (Florida) Daily News. He is the past secretary of Detroit Working Writers, and the former director of the Cranbrook Writers Conference. His first novel, a gritty thriller about Vietnam Vets titled The Dating Service was published by Berkley. A second Brenda Contay mystery is scheduled for release in April or early May.

For more information about the author and his work, please visit his website at BarryKnister.com.

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The Anything Goes Girl
Barry Knister
A Brenda Contay Mystery

Journalist Brenda Contay doesn't look for trouble — it comes looking for her.

Brenda messed up her college life by saying "yes" too often. She became The Anything Goes Girl, and her sex life figured prominently in locker-room graffiti.

When she suddenly makes it big on local TV, it should be like winning the lottery, right? Not for Brenda Contay. Now she's the popular Lightning Rod reporter on WDIG. But succeeding because her butt looks good in Levis isn't what Brenda wants — not after her Anything Goes past.

When Brenda finds out Vince, an old lover, drowned off a tiny island in the Pacific, she quits TV in search of the truth. All-state swimmers don't just drown.

Brenda isn't exactly a welcome addition to the island. Vince's death turns out to be collateral damage in a scandal of global proportions. And since it involves one of the ten richest men in America, Brenda’s chance of living to tell the story is next to zero.

But that's the one thing about The Anything Goes Girl — she hates losing. Things are about to get interesting in paradise.