Roses, Romance, and Wrongdoings

At least some traditions haven’t been swept away by time. When I was in elementary school, my classmates and I all exchanged Valentine’s Day cards on February 14. Everybody was given them—even boys nobody liked, and girls we thought too pretty to actually engage in conversation. It seems such exchanges are still made. My niece’s elder son, Gareth, told me during out monthly breakfast last Saturday that he and his father were cutting out small wooden hearts to dispense among Gareth’s fellow second-graders this week. It was only reluctantly that Gareth said he enjoys this custom.

Whether some people have made it a tradition, as well, to read Valentine’s Day-related crime fiction isn’t proven by any scientific study with which I’m familiar, but blogger-editor Janet Rudolph continues to encourage the practice. She recently posted her updated list of “Mysteries that take place on or around Valentine’s Day.” Who but she knew that so many books fit the theme? Everything from Susan Wittig Albert’s Love Lies Bleeding, Laurien Berenson’s Killer Cupid, and Tony Bassett’s Not My Valentine to Rose Deshaw’s Love With the Proper Killer, Dorothy Cannell’s How to Murder the Man of Your Dreams, Jane Haddam’s Bleeding Hearts, and Alastair Gunn’s My Bloody Valentine.

Should you be in the mood tomorrow for some fictional crimes of the heart while munching through your boxed chocolates, keep these whodunits and the others on Rudolph’s roster in mind.