GUEST BLOGGER: Alma Bond

Please warmly welcome my guest blogger today, Alma Bond!

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The first mystery of the Dr. Mary Wells Mystery Series was The Deadly Jigsaw Puzzle. I wrote it because the patient of an analyst friend of mine was murdered, and it disturbed me that the killer was never found. The book is my (ficticious) idea of who the killer was. The book received so many complements that I decided to write another with the same sleuths. My late husband, Rudy Bond, was an actor who appeared in both the original stage show and the movie of A Streetcar Named Desire. I saw the play 78 times, and decided to write Murder on the Streetcar, sparked by the characters I knew so well. The third and last mystery, Who Killed Marcia Maynard? was inspired by a teacher I and everyone else disliked. I wondered what would happen if a psychoanalyst was as hated by her colleagues. Many of them might want to kill her, but would any of them actually do it? The book investigates this question.

Dr. Marcia Maynard, famous psychoanalyst and researcher, has been murdered in her bed at the El Dorado Apartment House by an unknown killer. Psychoanalyst Mary Wells helps solve the mystery with her acute analytical and psychological skills. Finding someone angry enough to kill Maynard was not difficult, as many people had histories of being mistreated by the doctor, including:.
*Her beautiful Indian housekeeper, Asha Rupashi, whom Maynard continually abused and who was a beneficiary in Maynard’s will,
*Her chief associate and co-author, Dr. James Whirter, a man her colleagues said she treated “like a lapdog,”
*Rogerio Chavez, a Chinese restaurant delivery man, whom Maynard had insulted and infuriated, and several suitors whom she had rejected.
*The stunning psychoanalyst, Ruby Malone, who had given a paper in Maynard’s area of expertise. An observer said, ‘Maynard wiped up the floor with her in front of the entire membership. Could Ruby have killed Maynard, to get even with her for the public attack?
*A young boy, Buster Baines, who saw the delivery man sneaking out of Maynard’s back door, is kidnapped before he can testify. Dr. Wells’s car is set on fire. Chavez is suspected as the arsonist, in an attempt to get rid of the sleuth on his trail.

Through Dr. Well’s expert interrogation of all suspects, the killer finally breaks down and confesses the murder.

I believe the series is the first to cover the apprehension of killers from the perspective of a psychoanalyst and is ideal for anyone who wishes to learn the secrets of psychoanalysis, as they are used to understand the criminal mind.

I received my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at Columbia University, and subsequently became a psychoanalyst. Since my “retirement”in 1991, I have had 13 books published, including The Autobiography of Maria Callas, Camille Claudel, a Novel, Old Age is a Terminal Illness, Tales of Psychology, Who Killed Virginia Woolf?, Is There Life After Analysis?, Dream Portrait, Deborah Sampson: America’s First Woman Warrior, and On Becoming a Grandparent. My latest book, Margaret Mahler, the Biography of a Psychoanalyst, is presently in publication with McFarland Press.

Http://alma_bond.tripod.com