No, not really, but I wanted to get your attention. Besides, it’s an appropriate title for this post, given that Isabel Long and I are getting deeper into our next case. Covering the Crime will be the ninth in the series after we solve it. I’ve been at it for two months and am well over the one-third mark, remarkable considering the other writing projects I have going at the same time.
For those new to my series, Isabel Long is a long-time journalist who uses the skills she learned during her prematurely shortened career to solve cold cases in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. She has the help of her 93-year-old mystery-loving mother who came to live with her. On Friday nights, you’ll find Isabel behind the bar at the Rooster, which is owned by a local guy, Jack, who is her love interest.
When you get to number nine, it’s important to keep things fresh and lively. I am disappointed when I solve a case before the P.I., cop, or whoever in a mystery I am reading or watching. Fool me to the end please, and it delights me when readers tell me that’s what happened for them.
For me it starts with the victim. Those in my other books have included a junkyard owner, a highway worker who wrote poetry, a book seller, the list goes on. In all but two, the victims are deceased. Their deaths were ruled accidents or a suicide, but a person close to them doesn’t believe that’s what happened. Actually, let me back up and say that no. eight, Finding the Source, has an outright murder that happened many years ago. Those two cases include a baby who was kidnapped from a front yard and a literary agent who survived being shot in the head.
At the start of this one, I mulled having the victim be a small town official who went missing and was found dead a few years later. Edwin Stuart was going to be an ornery guy who liked things in his rural town run his way. He was the town’s postmaster and, oh, he cheated at cribbage.
But as I dug into the story, I dropped that idea. Edwin just wasn’t interesting enough. So, he became a well-known artist who had moved with his wife to the sticks. He went missing, presumably in the woods behind his plush home just before an early November snowstorm. His remains were found three years later just over the border in another town. It was dismissed as a case of an 80-year-old man with early onset dementia getting lost. Who knows how long he had been gone since his wife had been away for several days?
But his grandson, Sean Mooney, who hires Isabel, doesn’t believe it. Sean was an intern at the newspaper where Isabel used to be editor-in-chief, and he has since reported on a couple of her cases. He tried to solve this one on his own, but gave up. He turns over his work so far to Isabel.
I made Edwin Stuart the kind of person who liked to rub elbows with the locals, especially women. That meant he was familiar to people Isabel knows from her other cases, so she is able to glean info from Annette Waters, that no-holds-barred woman who inherited her father’s junkyard, and Dave Baxter, a bar owner. Of course, there are the Old Farts, those gossipy old men who meet in the back of the general store, although I threw them some drama for this one. Of course, Isabel will meet new people for this case.
And, yes, Edwin Stuart does play cribbage at the local bar. Did he cheat? Isabel will find out. Jack is teaching her how to play so she can sit in on a game.
Often the title comes a close second when I start a new book. Typically, it pops in my head like everything else. In this case, the title was originally Covering a Murder. Eh, as I got into it, I found myself less happy about the title. The word “murder” might get people’s attention, but I preferred a word with a long vowel. Hence, the new title, Covering a Crime.
Over the next four or so months, I will be at it, channeling Isabel as she tries to solve this mystery. Wish us luck.
Interested in reading my Isabel Long books? Here is the link to those and my other books on Amazon:
ABOUT THE PHOTO ABOVE: The yellow flowers I planted last year, a gift from a neighbor, that are spreading on what used to be knotweed hill beneath our deck. They’ll be back next year.