Created by Bruce Holland Rogers
Pseudonyms include Hanovi Braddock
(1958–)
MADDIE HUGHES has appeared only in two short stories to date, but changed her name in between.
In the first, “Hollywood Considered As a Seal Point in the Sun” (1994), Maddie, originally from the Midwest, is living in Los Angeles, where she’d moved to become a screenwriter. But that didn’t exactly pan out, so she’s become a P.I. Anything to pay the rent, put gas in the Honda and keep her in cigarettes (Trues) and junk food. But her missing person’s case takes a weird hop and she ends up on the hunt for a sun-crazy seal-point Siamese cat.
By the second story, “Masked Marauders of the Mossbelt” (1998), Maddie’s changed both her last name and her location. She’s now MADDIE FROST (the author felt “Maddie Hughes” sounded too much like Cybill Shepherd’s detective character Maddie Hayes from TV’s Moonlighting, and she’s put Los Angeles in the rearview and relocated to Eugene, Oregon, which is taking a little while to get used to. Especially this guy she runs into who keeps a colony of raccoons as pets.
Both stories involve animals of one sort or another. “Hollywood Considered” won the Cat Writer’s Association’s Muse Medallion for Best Short Story, and I found “Mossbelt” entertaining and fairly clued.
Bruce Holland Rogers is a prolific author of short fiction in several genres; primarily, though not exclusively, fantasy, horror and SciFi. His stories have won a Pushcart Prize, two Nebula Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, two World Fantasy Awards and the Micro Award, and have been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Spain’s Premio Ignotus. Lately he has concentrated on Flash Fiction, but I wish he would write more Maddie Frost stories.
SHORT STORIES
- “Hollywood Considered As a Seal Point in the Sun” (1994, Feline and Famous: Cat Crimes Goes Hollywood) | Kindle it!
- “Masked Marauders of the Mossbelt” (1998, Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives) | Kindle it!
Respectfully submitted by Robert Schneider, who runs the great Women Detectives site.
