The First Two Pages: A Well-Timed Murder

In April 2015, B.K. Stevens debuted the blog series “The First Two Pages,” hosting craft essays by short story writers and novelists analyzing the openings of their own work. The series continued until just after her death in August 2017, and the full archive of those essays can be found at Bonnie’s website. In November 2017, the blog series relocated to my website, and the archive of this second stage of the series can be found here.

I first met Tracee de Hahn at last year’s Malice Domestic, where we chatted briefly about her fine first novel, Swiss Vendetta. Since then, we’ve continued to be friends—catching up both in person from time to time and online (and if you aren’t already following Miss Demeanors, the group blog where Tracee contributes, you should be).

This week—today, in fact!—brings the release of Tracee’s second novel, A Well-Timed Murder, and I’m thrilled to welcome her here today to talk about the taut opening to this second outing for Detective Agnes Lüthi.

Please use the arrows and controls at the bottom of the embedded PDF to navigate through the essay. You can also download the essay here to read off-line.

De Hahn