{"id":17930,"date":"2025-08-19T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=17930"},"modified":"2026-01-08T09:22:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:22:49","slug":"a-prescription-for-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2025\/08\/19\/a-prescription-for-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Prescription for Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Medical
Illustration by Stephan Schmitz\/Folio Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

After a decades-long career as a physician, Mary Rae \u201975 is thrilling readers with her series of medical whodunits.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What are the elements of a compelling mystery novel? Start with interesting characters. Sprinkle subtle clues that take on greater significance later. And always have a surprise twist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Rae \u201975 certainly didn\u2019t see her surprise career twist coming. Sure, she\u2019d pivoted a few times within her rewarding medical career in Texas. She served for 20 years as an emergency room physician, worked as a primary care doctor at Texas Christian University\u2019s student health center, then spent several years in community health before retiring from the field in 2020 and moving to Oakland, Calif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on a 2018 trip to Galveston, Texas, with her longtime physician friend Wanda Venters, Rae offhandedly mentioned that the historic coastal city would make a great setting for a mystery novel. Venters replied, \u201cWell, why don\u2019t we write one?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair has since written not one but three medical mysteries featuring their physician protagonists, Louise Finnerty, MD, and Marnie Liccione, MD. Their characters have taken on challenges ranging from dengue fever to PTSD and opiate use to a cold murder case with suspected mob ties. \u201cThe writing is so much fun,\u201d Rae says. \u201cWe\u2019re not looking to win the Booker Prize. These are page-turners for when you\u2019re looking for a good airplane read.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae\u2019s medical career was a surprise twist in itself compared to her career aspirations while at Colgate, where she majored in geology. But after moving with her soon-to-be husband, Cody Arnold \u201975, back to his native Oklahoma so he could attend medical school, she realized, \u201cI was better suited to a career involving people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her geology degree provided an unexpectedly perfect preparation for medical school. \u201cOur geology studies were so eclectic, drawing on physics, chemistry, and biology,\u201d she says. \u201cYou used your head; it was diagnostic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout her medical career, Rae served as a subject matter expert for her mother, Catherine Rae, who wrote eight mysteries after the age of 65. \u201cShe\u2019d call and say, \u2018Oh, darling, I need to know how I can kill somebody with arsenic,\u2019\u201d Rae says. \u201cI would never have thought about writing a murder mystery if it hadn\u2019t been for her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For each book, Rae and Venters work out a broad plot outline and then break up the writing by character. Rae writes Louise Finnerty, who, like Rae, is an even-tempered emergency room physician, is married with two children, and has a dog named Chico. \u201cOur family members and pets have shown up quite a bit in our books,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first Finnerty and Liccione mystery, Break Bone Fever<\/em>, was published in 2021, when Rae was 65. It revolves around the death of a physician who\u2019d been researching dengue fever at a high-security infectious disease laboratory modeled after the Galveston National Laboratory, which the authors toured for research. The book was a finalist for the 2022 Colorado Book Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their second book, Breaking Apart<\/em>, set at a Colorado veterans administration hospital, won the Silver Falchion Award for best thriller at the 2024 Killer Nashville competition. \u201cThat was great validation, to win a national award,\u201d Rae says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their third book, Breaking News<\/em> (December 2024), returns to Galveston and explores the city\u2019s history of organized crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think our training gives us an edge within the medical mystery genre,\u201d Rae says. She recently presented a talk on how to write medical scenes to the Northern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The authors are currently working on their fourth mystery, which will be set on a fictional college campus in Colorado, where Venters lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rae is always on the lookout for details to include in her writing. \u201cI might see something at the supermarket or on a walk and think, \u2018That just might work in the story,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve run into people who\u2019ve ended up in my books in both good ways and bad. But hopefully the villains don\u2019t recognize themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a long career as a physician, Mary Rae \u201975 is thrilling readers with her medical whodunits. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":17986,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3012,3017,1165,3018,3013,3011,3016,3014,3015,123],"coauthors":[424],"class_list":["post-17930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-endeavor","tag-break-bone-fever","tag-cody-arnold","tag-colgate-university","tag-galveston-texas","tag-louise-finnerty","tag-mary-rae","tag-medical-mysteries","tag-mystery-novels","tag-thriller-awards","tag-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-4Fc","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/08\/scene-primary-prescription-080625.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17930"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18912,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17930\/revisions\/18912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}