When Killer Fiction Becomes Confessional by Betty Webb
No, I’m not admitting to murder. Maybe I’ve sometimes been tempted (one former boss comes readily to mind), but I can truthfully say that I never shot, stabbed, clubbed, or poisoned anyone. However, in “The Panda of Death,” my new Gunn Zoo mystery, I write about uncovering one wowser of a family secret, one that actually happened to me. Halfway through the writing of “Panda,” I decided – mainly as a lark – to have my DNA tested. The story had come down through our family that at sometime in the mid-1700s, William Douglas Webb purchased his Delaware Indian wife at a New Jersey slave auction. An intriguing story to be sure, but the DNA test proved it simply wasn’t true; there was no American Indian blood in my lineage. After a few chuckles, I put the test results away and continued writing “The Panda of Death.” I was having trouble with it, mainly because I couldn’t come up with a good-enough subplot, but I persevered. Then one day, my telephone rang. The caller’s acc...