A New Level of Weird

Ah, the life of a mystery writer.

“You’re reached a new level of weird,” my son said the other day. He was holding up a box explaining that it had just come from Amazon addressed to him. He was sure he hadn’t ordered anything from some forensic company.. His wife was sure she hadn’t ordered it. He’d opened it and saw that had something to do with detecting blood. And then he put it together with me saying I’d used his Amazon Prime account to order something.


“Detecting blood?” he said shaking his head as he pushed the box on me.

I started to explain that in Hooking for Trouble, Molly gets a kids detective kit that has real stuff in it, like a bottle of what I call Blood Detector, but is actually Luminol which reacts to blood by briefly making a blue-green glow in the dark. I wanted to recreate something I had Molly doing to see if it really worked. He just rolled his eyes and walked away.

I had seen how it worked several times when I went to Writers Police Academy. When it was held in Greensboro, one of the sponsors was a company called Sirchie which sells products for criminal investigations. The heavy hard bound catalog I came home with features such things as finger print powder and patrol officer pocket kits. It turned out to be a great source for ideas of what to include in Molly’s detective set.

It was only when I was wondering around online looking for information about Luminol that it occurred to me to see if I could buy a small quantity. And there it was on Amazon. And now it is sitting on my coffee table waiting for me to try it.

Now I just have to get some blood. I have a plan. I’ll let you know if it works out.