Her California home is filled with what she calls her miniaturesâexpansive, intricate dollhouses depicting Lilliputian versions of scenes from her mystery novels. The miniatures, like their creator and her murderers, are careful, meticulousâevery bit in its proper place, no table turned over but for plot.
âIn the end, itâs all the same thing,â Minichino says. âPhysics, mystery, even the houses. Itâs about taking the unknown and working, step by step, to know it, to make it real.â
She is effortlessly eloquent discussing physicsâin which she earned masterâs and doctoral degrees from Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the 1965 and 1968 before embarking on a long career studying and teaching high-temperature, high-pressure physicsâand points out warmly that all physics is commanded by different flavors of quarks, including up, down, strange, and charm. âCome to think of it,â she says with a chuckle, âmystery stories are built on those same elements, too.â
Sheâs been to college three times. Now, at 82, sheâs enrolled in school again, getting a second masterâs degree in creative writingâa certification whose lack has always troubled her, regardless of the 27 novels to her name. She has no trouble explaining why, in spite of all her achievements, sheâs back taking classes. âThereâs so many days, still,â Minichino says, âand every day youâre not learning is a waste of a day.â
Minichinoâs latest novel is Mousse and Murder (Berkley, 2020), the first book in the Alaskan Diner Mystery series sheâs writing under the pen name Elizabeth Logan.