I’ve neglected this blog for a while, being tied up with this and that and having my fondness of crime fiction challenged by a variety of things happening in the world. I’ve neglected my old reading community, too, partly because the group founded by Maxine Clark used a social media platform that was gobbled up by Facebook around the time that Google discontinued Reader and I never quite got back into the habit of reading blogs in their natural state. What really keeps it all together isn’t the technology, it’s the people, and after the shock of losing Maxine, I feel very much the same discovering my friend Bernadette has died.
I say “my friend” though we never met. Mostly I knew her through her book reviews, which were incisive and voluminous and always a way that I could find new books to read because we had similar tastes and a similar outlook on the world. She promoted Australian women writers and Aussie crime fiction, helped us Remember Petrona, and was a kind and frequent commenter on other blogger’s posts, including mine when I was blogging more regularly. I can’t recall exactly how I learned she was gone. I just remember it being a horrid shock, an impossibility. How could it be? I never imagined the world being a place that was without her. For some reason when you don’t really know someone in person, when you know them only online, you forget they have lives like everyone else, and things can happen that no one is prepared for. How awful for her family, and for her in-real-life friends. She must be dreadfully missed.
It has popped into my mind more times than I can count in the past couple of weeks, this combination of sadness and shock. I’d been reading her reviews now and then but hadn’t been commenting; haven’t been blogging about books much, and haven’t kept up sharing reading experiences with the community she was part of. I feel as if I’ve let a good friend slip out of my life without saying goodbye. I’m sad about that, but I’m also inspired by her generosity, and I hope to post more regularly here to talk about books. I’ll never be as good a reviewer as she was, nor will I be as energetic and kind as she was at sharing reading experiences, good and bad. But I’ll try to be a better member of the international reading community she helped to build.
Kerrie, whose own blog is Mysteries in Paradise knew Bernadette both online and in person. She compiled posts about her, as has Jose Ignacio at A Crime is Afoot. I’m belatedly adding my own. We’ll miss you, Bernadette.
- Vale Bernadette by Margot Kinberg – Confessions of a Mystery Novelist
- A Sad Loss by Karen on Euro Crime
- In Memoriam and Bernadette by Jose Ignacio on A Crime is Afoot
- A Tip of the Hat to a Revered Blogger from Brad at Ah Sweet Mystery
- RIP Bernadette by Moira at Clothes in Books
- A Tribute at Mrs Peabody Investigates
- A Tribute to Bernadette at The View from the Blue House
- Remembering Bernadette Bean at The Australian Crime Writers Association
photo courtesy of Stefano Bussolon
Scandinavian Crime Fiction 
A lovely tribute. We all miss Bernadette so much… Thanks, too, for the kind mention.
Margot, I was very moved by your remembrance. In fact, your blog post may be how I learned of her passing. I am so glad you had a chance to meet Bernadette. I have this very clear picture of her in my mind which is entirely my own invention. Her words had so much character and life to them they created a picture of her for me. Such a loss.
Yes, indeed it is. And she was absolutely lovely in person, Barbara. You’re right: I do feel so lucky to have met her.