Tappin, Nigel

Nigel Tappin was born in London, England, of a Galswegian mother and a London father. After living in Southwest London, the Domesday book recorded East Sussex village of Wadhurst, and Glasgow, he reluctantly immigrated to North York at the age of five.

More satisfactory he relocated to Lake of Bays, near Dorset, Ontario at twelve and attended Huntsville High School before studying at MIT (S.B. in economics and aborted political science Ph. D. work), University of Toronto (MA and ABD Ph.D. work in political science; and Master of Library Science). For interest he took a LL.B. by examination from the University of London as an external student. He has struggled with depression and anxiety for much of his life and since 1993 with degenerative disc disease related Fibromyalgia Syndrome.

Currently Nigel is a writer and librarian living in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada, a  practicing Nichiren Buddhist, and a close student of ecological and global justice issues.

The bulk of his published crime writing has been work about the mystery genre published between 1997 and 2003 in Mystery Review (which concluded a 13 year run in the later year when its publisher and editor, Barbara Davey developed pancreatic cancer). This included feature articles on topics such as spinster sleuths and leading mystery writers and their works including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Robert Van Gulik, and Arthur Upfield, as interviews, book store profiles and reviews of classic and new mystery novels and websites.

Under contract to Running Press, he completed a series of country house murder mystery short stories featuring the same victim, caste of characters, and location. The deal involved a third party game manufacturer  which withdrew licensing permission just before publication due to internal politics. He then helped Running Press recruit veteran short story artist Vicki Cameron to restart and complete the project under the extreme restraints imposed by the “Brand essence” department (he had thought the “Licensing” department had been restrictive but subsequently realised why it is hard to find writers for licensing related deals).

He is currently revising this work, shorn of its allusions  to licensers’ product, and seeking a publisher for How Shall I Kill Thee: 15 Variations on an English Country House Murder.

Nigel has also written columns for Muskoka area newspapers, two short “Country Diary” pieces in the Guardian Weekly, and published many reviews in publications such as Library Journal and American Reference Books Annual.

He is working on a book proposal for a non-fiction title Casino Capitalism and researching a historical mystery series set in early 20^th century Muskoka.

Nigel’s unpublished output includes two early mysteries and a turn of the millenium manuscript Muskoka is Murder that no longer suits his current tastes. The latter  is the story of Ida Miller, an older mystery fan in the habit of sitting in on criminal trials. She lives in a lakefront farmhouse near the village of Port Sutherland with her retired merchant banker husband Leonard and their Irish Setter bitch Donegal. Due to her court-watching hobby, a community newspaper has dubbed her the “Court Lady” and persuaded her to start writing a “See You in Court” column. So when Ida comes across a corpse by the side of the road during a pre-Christmas blizzard, she can’t resist launching her own informal investigation to assist the Ontario Provincial Police.