News

Nov. 24:

Everyone Loves a Conspiracy Theory--that's my article for  Bibliomysteries, the new issue of Janet Rudolph's Mystery Readers Journal. Bibliomysteries is about mystery writers grappling with all aspects of books--in their stories, in their research, and in every other way you can think of!  My article is about a banned book and the Paris research for the fourth Charles novel, The Whispering of Bones

Here's the link: Mystery Readers Journal:
Bibliomysteries (Volume 30:3) now available as Hardcopy and PDF!

October 23:

Interview with Judith about her books and how her life led to them is up on Nancy Adams' fascinating Saints and Trees site. Take a look!

http://saintsandtrees.wordpress.com/2014/10/23/interview-with-author-judith-rock/

Removed Amazon Buttons:

You may have noticed that I've removed the Amazon buttons for buying my books on the NOVELS page of my site. That's because I don't want to support Amazon's exploitation of its warehouse workers, its predatory greed, and its ongoing damage to the book world. Please do buy the Charles books! But buy them through your local bookstore or online from NON-Amazon sources. (I buy from Powell's.) If you want to know more about the very dark side of Amazon, take a look at journalist Jim Hightower's August and September issues of The Hightower Lowdown.

Why the Priests in Novels Are So Often Jesuits:

Murder Is Everywhere: An Interview of writers who write about Jesuits, by AnnaMaria Alfieri, who amusingly calls them, The Original Men in Black...

Two of my historical mysteries have priests as major characters. Both of them are Jesuits. I hadn’t thought about why they are members of the Society of Jesus and not Franciscans or Dominicans. Then one day, at a Historical Novel Society Conference, I found myself on a panel with four other mystery writers. The panel was called “Four X’s and a Y Mark the Spot.” I think we were named that because four of us were women and the fifth was a man. Then during the introductions, I learned that three of us had written about Jesuits. “They could have named this panel ‘Three Jesuits, a Jew, and an Anglican,’” I quipped.

But that set me to thinking—how did the Jesuits become the go-to guys whenever a novelist needs a priest. I knew my explanation: I wanted my priests to be deeply religious, really intelligent, and to have a capacity to embrace ambiguity. That pretty much described what I learned about the Jesuits through history. But I wondered if other writers had the similar reasons. So I asked the others on that panel and another friend. Here is what they said:

Read more at Murder is Everywhere