How Resort to Murder Came to Be

You might think that three successful, busy writers might already have enough on their plates besides editing an anthology, but when they tried their hands at such a task in 2005, the result was the very popular Silence of the Loons. The three editors (each of whom also contributed a story) William Kent Krueger, Ellen Hart, and Carl Brookins who comprise the authors' team known as Minnesota Crime Wave came up with a highly original idea. "We wanted to bring the Minnesota Mystery community together in order to showcase the talent of these wonderful writers and friends. A short story anthology seemed the perfect way. But that, in itself, was too easy. These are writers used to dealing with locked rooms and battling serial killers. We realized we needed to give them an additional challenge, something that would, in its way, unify the collection. This was the challenge. We created a set of eight clues or elements, a pool from which each author had to dip into in order to construct their stories."
Each author invited to be in the book had to include at least eight of the clues, among them a page torn from a dictionary, the sound of a train whistle, a wig— and the one that possibly piqued the public's fancy the most: a headless Barbie doll.
Naturally, readers demanded a follow-up volume, and thus was born Resort to Murder, thirteen stories united by one common theme: each had to take place in a real, but fictionalized Minnesota resort.
The result is a book that will keep you up late at night reading. Enjoy!