Joan Hess on The Painted Queen and Elizabeth Peters.

I talk to Joan Hess in Publishers Weekly about The Painted Queen, the last novel of Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Mertz, 1927–2013) completed by Hess after the death of Peters.

Dr. Barbara Mertz, trailblazer.

Barbara Mertz, right, with Charlotte MacLeod, 1989
Photo by Elizabeth Foxwell

It is impossible to grasp that the ebullient Barbara Mertz, aka MWA Grand Master Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels, has left us at age 85. I first met her when I interviewed her for a University of Maryland journalism class. After 2 hours I emerged, somewhat dazedly (a typical state of affairs in Mertzdom), with a 17-page, single-spaced transcript and a friendship that would endure for nearly 30 years. To her I owe a great deal, not least my career in mystery and—like many other writers—warm memories of her encouragement, support, and singular presence.

Barbara's storming of considerable bastions in her life and career has benefited women from many walks of life as well as mystery readers and writers. When she was a graduate student in Egyptology at the University of Chicago, she was asked, more than once, why she was taking the place of a man, and why was she there anyway, because she was "just going to get married." She was divorced at a time when single parents were regarded as strange creatures, and she worked hard to support two children by publishing a minimum of two books per year and reviewing books. Well into her seventies, Barbara was descending into Egyptian tombs and maintaining a schedule that would make someone a quarter of her age relapse onto a Victorian fainting couch. Always embroiled in some offbeat enterprise, she once took me with her to purchase a cowboy hat, because she was embarking on a tour with Sharyn McCrumb and Joan Hess that would feature their country-music song stylings.

Given today's popularity of intrepid Victorian archaeologist Amelia Peabody Emerson and her inimitable spouse and son, as well as Barbara's Agatha Award for the Jacqueline Kirby novel Naked Once More, it is easy to forget that she had to fight to write humorous mysteries. Unease existed in the publishing world about reader receptivity to humor, and she had to adopt the Peters pseudonym for these books while maintaining the Michaels pen name for her twists on the Gothic novel. She created a stir with Borrower of the Night when art-historian heroine Vicky Bliss ditched two handsome men for a more attractive new job.

Five female mystery authors who can put a smile on your face.

"... In England I find it does not make one popular to kill people."—Georgette Heyer, The Unfinished Clue 141

• Joan Hess. I prefer Hess's Claire Malloy series (with Claire's dramatic daughter who always Speaks in Initial Capitals) to her Maggody novels, but few authors understand small-town weirdness better than Hess. (Also check out Hess's books under the pseudonym Joan Hadley)

• Georgette Heyer. Most critics declare that Heyer's romances are superior to her mysteries (perhaps because the latter were written with her husband), but her mysteries have much fun and ingenuity to offer. Winners include Behold, Here's Poison; Envious Casca (dubbed by Dean James as "the house party from hell"); The Unfinished Clue; and Why Shoot a Butler?. However, I found the solution to A Blunt Instrument to be unconvincing.

• Constance and Gwenyth Little.  A headless nurse in The Black Stocking. 'Nuff said.

• Charlotte MacLeod. When Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohn showed up in Chinese disguise in The Family Vault and Professor Peter Shandy covered every inch of his house in tacky Christmas decorations to revenge himself on college colleagues in Rest You Merry, I realized I was in a different universe—and a very funny one.

Happy birthday, Joan Hess.

Agatha and Macavity winner Joan Hess, whose comic mysteries feature Sheriff Arly Hanks (once played by Kate Jackson) and bookstore owner Claire Malloy, turns 60 today. Her latest is Mummy Dearest, which takes place in Egypt and includes certain sly references to friend Elizabeth Peters.