Susan Oleksiw

Susan Oleksiw writes two mystery series. The first features Chief of Police Joe Silva in the Mellingham series; the second features Indian American photographer Anita Ray, who lives in India at her aunt's tourist hotel. Both series give me an opportunity to explore how people behave in the hothouse of a murder investigation as well as how people live in certain environments.

The first Mellingham mystery is Murder in Mellingham (1993) and the most recent is Last Call for Justice (2012). Anita Ray has appeared in a number of short stories, and in Under the Eye of Kali (2010) and The Wrath of Shiva (2012). 

Many readers know me best from The Reader's Guide to the Classic British Mystery (1988), which brings together the best in traditional British crime fiction. I wrote several articles for the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (1999), which again allowed me to read and discuss some of my favorite writers.

Although I write mostly novels, I've published a number of short stories in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and a number of anthologies. For many years I was co-editor of the annual anthology of the best New England crime stories published by Level Best Books, for which I was a co-founder. I was also a co-founder of The Larcom Press, where we published The Larcom Review and a number of crime novels.

I read widely, but my great love is crime fiction.