TRAVEL WITH SERENA - GUEST AUTHOR BILL HOPKINS

The Ozark Valley in the fog

We have a special guest today to talk about the Ozarks. Bill Hopkins is a judge turned author. His poems, short stories, and non-fiction have appeared in many different publications, and he's had several short plays produced. Bill is also a photographer who has sold work in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Courting Murder is his first mystery novel. Learn more about Bill at his website. -- AP

Bald Eagle Persuasion

The bald eagle persuaded me that I was right.

Plains, rivers, huge mountains, small mountains, deserts, and oceans. America has all kinds of landscapes and all kinds of people living here. I was born and raised in the Ozarks. They're not mountains, not really. There might be some tall hills, deep valleys, and rolling country, but not true mountains.

I still live in the Missouri Ozarks near my tiny hometown named Marble Hill. (No one is quite sure why it's named that. Despite what Wikipedia says, there is no marble or marble-like rock anywhere around.) My wife (mystery writer Sharon Woods Hopkins, author of Killerwatt and Killerfind) and I live deep in the boondocks, which means few vehicles ever pass on the gravel road in front of our house. It also means that we're living on someone else's property. That's right, we're trespassing on where at one time only animals lived.

That really doesn't bother them much. In fact, the deer love eating Sharon's flowers, the armadillos love digging in the mulch around the trees in our yard, the foxes love denning in the deadfall in a patch of woods near the house, and the coyotes run howling, mostly at night. Although bears and mountain lions live in our neck of the woods, we haven't seen any of them. Yet.

This description sounds pastoral. And it is. Yet, when it came time for me to try my hand at writing a mystery novel, I wandered around my couple of isolated acres, pondering the location of a story about violent crime. Saint Louis? Memphis? New Orleans? I'm familiar with those cities. The notion of crime in a city is standard fare in mysteries, and I love urban mysteries.

There's also a strain of mysteries that take place in the country. That's what I decided I wanted to do: Write a mystery about the rural area that I knew best. Folks out in the country can murder with the best of them. And the protagonist? I'm a retired judge, but my hero could be a working judge who's tired of listening to boring stuff in the courtroom. In fact, he thinks he'd make a better detective than judge. Since he is a judge, the law enforcement folks are hardly thrilled to have him snooping where he shouldn't be sticking his nose.

Thus was born Courting Murder:

When Judge Rosswell Carew makes the gruesome discovery of two corpses on a riverbank in the Missouri Ozarks, he's plunged into a storm of deadly secrets that threaten both him and his fiancée, Tina Parkmore. Unsatisfied with the way the authorities are conducting the investigation, Rosswell, who's always nurtured a secret desire to be a detective, teams up with an ex-con, Ollie Groton, to solve the case before the killer can murder again. Rosswell uncovers a maze of crimes so tangled that he must fight his way to a solution or die trying.

I knew the rural setting was right because I received a sign from on high. On the jaunt where I finally decided the location for the crimes, a bald eagle swooped overhead and lit in a tall oak tree. She had built her nest somewhere back in the forest behind my house. She regularly flies over our pond and helps herself to whatever fish happen to be swimming too close to the surface.

If the Ozark countryside is good enough for a bald eagle, then it's good enough for a couple of murders!

Interesting parallel to end with, Bill! Thanks for stopping by today. Readers, post a comment for a chance to win books from our Book Club Friday guest author this week. -- AP