c.l. malone
mystery author
C.L. is a short story writer, novelist, and creative consultant with more than twenty-five years of legal experience. Her first short story was published in Crime Spell’s Snakeberry: Best New England Crime Stories 2025. Her second and third will appear in, Calgary 2026 Bouchercon Anthology, and Level Short’s Time Before Our Crime, respectively. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. In addition to teaching creative writing on the college and continuing education level, she is an in-demand consultant with Grub Street, Boston.
C.L. is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and Mystery Writers of America.
latest news!
The Sword of Fereydun
Crime Before Our Time anthology, published by Level Short.
Coming Soon!
As the Crows Fly
Snakeberry: Best New England Crime Stories 2025, published by Crime Spell Books.
A Good Story is Hard to Find
Guest blog post for Maine Crime Writers, April 20, 2026.
A Derryman
Calgary 2026 Bourchercon Anthology, October 2026.
works in progress
A Death in Villa Légère
A literary detective novel (85,000 words) set in Paris and Normandy. When disgraced FBI Art Crime Agent Chloé Broccard arrives in Paris after her grandmother’s murder, she finds four love letters from her grandfather—a 17-year-old French conscript writing home from Indochina in 1954. In the letters, Claude mentions the theft of a sacred Cambodian diamond. He dies in the massacre at Diên Biên Phủ. When Claude is falsely accused of stealing the diamond, his letters—written to a wife who wouldn’t learn the truth for seventy years—become Chloés guide to unraveling the mystery of the missing gemstone, the identify of her grandmother’s killer, and what it means to love and be loved.