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If someone happens to call you a “dead fly,” don't be miffed, don't get your dukes up. It's a compliment – of sorts. At least I've always regarded it as such.

My father liked to use the expression. I can still hear him calling someone that, some sharpie attempting to pull a fast one – possibly even me – and can see his smile light up, that glint on his gold front tooth. Well, one couldn't help but sense an interesting double-sidedness to things. You could have a little something up your sleeve, a puckish resourcefulness; you could dabble in a class of mischief that explores the other meanings of the words “artful” and “craft.” You could become a miscreant of some description. A writer, say.

Now, if you are a fly, lounging by the sugar bowl, legs in the air, you might look dead, causing some household passerby to exclaim “Ew!” and dash off for the dust pan, but we know it ain't necessarily so. Like the possum, a fly is quite capable of resurrective trickery, hence the expression, and hence the dead fly on the cover of my new book, a mystery entitled Thought You Were Dead .

Reader, put down that dust pan – there's more here than meets the eye.

Anyone familiar with my earlier work might be thinking, A mystery? Genre fiction? This isn't her usual thing. Can we trust her? Does she play by the rules?

You can trust me ... implicitly (pick a card, any card). I not only play by the rules, but I play with them as well, and I play in the wild area out behind the school of orthodoxy. Besides, the distinctions matter less than the execution, and literary categories have been getting softer of late. Transgression is in the air and on the page. Who was it that said there is really only one main plot in all fiction, which is: Nothing is as it seems? Somebody, I forget. But if that isn't a dead fly position, I don't know what is.

Musca domestica . In the soup, in the ointment, on the wall, devil's embodiment, associate of death and decay, bearer of much weighty negative symbolism – no wonder the little guy is pretending to be dead. Who wants to work with the regimental efficiency of an ant anyway, or the tireless industry of a bee? Hey, shake a leg if the mood strikes, snack on a glob of jam, check out that dead body wedged behind the sofa. Flies are often the first detectives at the scene of a crime, after all, and perhaps would be less eager if they knew how forensically useful they are in determining the time of its occurrence.

It's fitting, then, that this compound-eyed sleuth is the first bug one encounters in Thought You Were Dead , a book in which the motives are mostly ulterior, spider-to-the-fly situations abound, and the main character, Chellis Beith, has a severe aversion to housework. Chellis is a literary researcher, a fact-finder for a prolific author. Never mind the prolific part, I've always dreamed of having such an underling in my employ. But seeing as I'm the only underling in my employ, I've had to do Chellis's work for him – that cunning, laid-back fly!

Can't honestly complain, though, as my general knowledge has increased thereby and my world-view enlarged. Only recently (like, 10 minutes ago), I discovered a band of Glaswegian rockers called Dead Fly Buchowski – “the best thing to come out of Scotland since Scotch Whisky” (believe that if you will!) – and an unfamiliar cookie species, Garibaldi Biscuits, layered with currants and known as squashed fly biscuits or, more wonderfully, fly cemeteries.

And then there's this cool game where someone shouts “dead flies,” everyone hits the dirt and begins waving their arms and legs around and ... Why am I blathering on like this? Oh, just trying to create a little buzz, people, a little buzzzzz.

Terry Griggs's latest novel, Thought You Were Dead (Biblioasis), is in stores now. It begins with the revenge murder of an Ontario literary critic; to mark the book's launch, the publisher is running a contest for the best 250-word story about the deserving death of a literary critic. The winner will receive, among other nice things, $100. Click here for more info.