What is Kathryn Miller Haines reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Kathryn Miller Haines, author of The Girl Is Murder.

Her entry begins:

Right now I’m reading The Sherlockian by Graham Moore. I actually intended to read another book, but it wasn’t available, but I’d just read something about Moore’s book and thought it would make a good substitute (History and mystery? Sign me up!) The book alternates between the late 19th/early 20th century and present day. The story in the past deals with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during the period when he decides to kill off his most famous creation. The present day tale is about a group of elite Holmes’s scholars (the Baker Street Irregulars) hosting their annual meeting, where a missing Doyle diary written during the period after he killed off Holmes has finally been found. Naturally, the Irregular who found the diary is murdered and the diary goes missing, leaving the newest Irregular, Harold, to exercise his deductive reasoning to track it down.

So far I’m really enjoying it. Doyle is drawn as both comic and empathetic and Harold is a winningly awkward protagonist. And for once while reading a book that alternates between past and present, I...[read on]

Among the early praise for The Girl Is Murder:

"[A] smart offering that gives both mysteries and historical fiction a good name.... The mystery is solid, but what makes this such a standout is the cast. Sounding like they’re right out of the 1940s (well, a 40’s movie anyway), the characters, young and old, pop off the pages.... This joint is jumping."
--Booklist (starred review)

"A stylish, slang-filled teen noir that is as entertaining as it is absorbing."
--Kirkus

"In this fast-paced, quick-witted historical mystery, 15-year-old Iris Anderson has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Her German-immigrant mother recently committed suicide; her father came home from Pearl Harbor physically and mentally broken; and circumstances forced her to transfer from an exclusive private school to one of the roughest public schools on New York City’s Lower East Side. Desperate to save her father’s faltering private-eye business, Iris becomes wrapped up in the disappearance of one of her classmates, discovering that the thin line between friends and suspects is dangerously blurry. Haines scores with her first entry into the young adult scene...."
--School Library Journal (starred review)

Learn more about the book and author at Kathryn Miller Haines's website and blog.

Writers Read: Kathryn Miller Haines.

--Marshal Zeringue