THE INSPIRATION BEHIND AUTHOR KAREN L. ABRAHAMSON'S NEWEST MYSTERY

The remains of the Bella Coola cannery

Karen L. Abrahamson writes fantasy, romance, and mystery novels and award-nominated short stories. When not writing, she can be found with a camera and backpack in fabulous locations around the world. Learn more about Karen and her books and her website.

The Inspiration Behind the Story

I tend to set my stories in unusual locations that inspire me. The Phoebe Clay Mysteries take place on the stormy waters of Johnstone Strait on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in the sweltering Arabian Sea heat of Kochi, India, and the also sweltering heat of Angkor, Cambodia. I’ve been fortunate to visit all of them. The latest book, Trapped on Cedar Trails, (releasing September 30, 2022), returns Phoebe Clay to British Columbia, Canada, this time to the rainy Great Bear Rainforest of the B.C. Central Coast.

 

The novel centers on Bella Vista, a fictional town that is a poor relation to the real-life Bella Coola. Like Bella Coola, Bella Vista has its own derelict fish cannery. These places are left over from the days when the Pacific Northwest ran thick with salmon and the fishing boats couldn’t possibly get their catch back to Vancouver for canning before the fish spoiled. As a result, in remote locations along the central coast you’ll find these huge old L-shaped buildings built over the water where the boats could pull in and transfer their haul. Inside these remote canneries, men and women, often First Nations or Chinese, would can the fish that would then be transported to the cities.

 

At the time, people could live in dormitories, or claim a bit of land and build a cabin. Typical of the day, the communities were segregated into sub-communities of First Nations, Chinese and European. The canneries had stores that catered to the fishermen and the cannery staff. All this changed early in the 20^th century with the advent of the huge cannery ships. As a result, the canneries and this iconic west coast life faded away. 

 

Today, the old fishing fleets are gone and few of the canneries remain. Fires and west coast rains have largely destroyed the huge old buildings. I stayed at the Tallheo Cannery Guesthouse across the water from Bella Coola. Here, half of the old structure remains standing stately on its pilings along the shore. The other half collapsed long ago and now the owner of the cannery works long hours trying to preserve this bit of west coast history. We stayed in the old (supposedly haunted) dormitory house that was once reserved for the European employees. The old store and the communications buildings still stand as well, though the First Nations and Chinese communities have been consumed by time and the dense vegetation of the rainforest. 

 

Standing on the pebbled shore in the shadow of the west coast mountains, with the wind off the ocean tugging at your hair and the sun disappearing behind the peaks, I could imagine the trials of living in those very isolated communities. As the shadows lengthened, I could conjure the ghosts who probably inhabit the area. Of course, while ghosts might seem dangerous, more realistically the danger to visitors is the chance encounter with one of the rainforest’s huge grizzly bears.

From these thoughts and this beautiful place came the inspiration for the story which grew into Trapped on Cedar Trails.

 

Trapped on Cedar Trails

Phoebe Clay Mystery, Book 4

 

The discovery of a woman’s body trapped in driftwood off a small, west coast town turns a five-day photography class into a nightmare for Phoebe Clay, her sister Becca, and Phoebe’s niece Alice. Did the woman fall off a boat or has something worse happened? Either way, Becca wants to return home immediately, but Alice, a student in the class, won’t hear of it. Phoebe just wants to stay out of the mother-daughter drama.

 

The specter of murder hangs over the family as they join the other students at an isolated fish cannery guesthouse on the coast of British Columbia. Then on their first night, Alice spots ghostly figures outside and on the first morning, Phoebe finds a dead grizzly bear on the cannery’s shore. She doesn’t want to get involved, but there’s something wrong at the Bella Vista Cannery Guesthouse, and someone is not who they say they are.

 

Against her better judgment, she begins quiet enquiries while trying to keep her sister and Alice safely uninvolved. But not knowing who to trust means answers come at a price. When Alice decides to pursue her own risky investigation, events take a sharp turn, revealing an insidious plot that threatens the lives of everyone Phoebe holds dear. 

 

On the run on the cannery’s treacherous, rain-soaked, night-shrouded cedar trails, Phoebe and her family will face the greatest danger they’ve ever met—brutal foes determined to ensure the family doesn’t survive to reveal the cannery’s secrets.

 

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--MYSTERY AND PEACH JAM FROM MYSTERY AUTHOR WENDY HORNSBY

Edgar-Award winning author Wendy Hornsby has been described as “a genteel college professor by day, and by night a purveyor of murder most foul.” After teaching for thirty-eight years, she abandoned all pretense of gentility in order to write full time. Learn more about Wendy and her books at her website. 

In a Jam

Among the greater pleasures of summer, for me, is mucking about in the garden. There is something therapeutic about digging in the dirt, listening to bird song, watching bees at their work, and, of course, seeing again the strange and wonderful process of plants maturing into whatever they were destined to become when I put seed into the soil. And then suddenly everything ripens at the very same time and has to be eaten or distributed or processed immediately.

It seemed natural to me that Maggie MacGowen, the protagonist of my mystery series, would have grown up, as I did, with big backyard gardens and that gardening would somehow find its way into my books, and even become the focus of a story or two.

Several years ago, my husband and I took what we now call the Eat, Drink, and Be Merry research tour of Normandy, France. We learned about making cheese and cider and decided that we loved the area so much that we should retire there. That dream, however, was entirely impractical. So I did the next best thing: I found a reason for Maggie MacGowen to go to Normandy as an excuse for us to visit whenever we could.

In The Paramour’s Daughter Maggie MacGowen goes to the Camembert region of Normandy to meet her birth mother’s family for the first time. Like my husband and I, she learned about making cheese and cider, and from her grandmother learned how to make jam from summer fruit, just as my mother taught me.

By the time the book was published, Maggie, who is far bolder than I am, had acquired a job with French television and moved to Paris, something I still dream of doing, as impractical as it remains. I know that Maggie visits the family farm in Normandy in summer to make jam and cheese so that she will have gifts from the garden to offer friends and hosts throughout the year, as I do.

On my webpage, you can find instructions for making Camembert cheese, but as the recipe begins with milk fresh from the cow’s udder, finding ingredients may be difficult.

Instead, here is the traditional French recipe for peach jam that I make every summer. The recipe calls for only fruit, sugar, and lemon juice, and no purchased pectin. The jam may not be as firm as the other, but it sets up well and as long as you keep the sugar to fruit ratio the same, you can make small batches. Don’t double the recipe, however. Instead, make multiple batches. The process looks complicated, but it gets easier with practice. Just make sure that all your equipment is ready when you begin.

French Method for Peach Jam
7 cups sliced peaches
3 cups sugar
Juice of one large lemon
1/4 tsp unsalted butter

If you’ve never canned before, you can find directions for preparing jars online. You need 2 big pots—one deep enough to cover upright jars completely with water and an 8 qt. heavy bottom pot for cooking jam.

1. Peel, pit, and slice peaches.

2. In a heavy-bottom pot, combine all ingredients. Let sit for 1-2 hours for juice to develop, then bring to a full boil while you mash the fruit with a stick blender or potato masher. Boil for 25-30 minutes, stirring constantly. Drop a teaspoonful onto chilled plate. Mixture should gel. If not, cook 5 more minutes.

3. When ready, skim off foam with metal spoon.

4. Ladle jam into sterilized jars to 1/4” of top. Clean jar rims, put on lids and rings, and place into pot hot water to cover. Simmer for 15 minutes.

5. Remove jars from water. The nipple on every lid should pop. Any that don’t, refrigerate.

A Bouquet of Rue

Filmmaker Maggie MacGowen moves to France ready to settle into a new job with a French television network and a new life with diplomat Jean-Paul Bernard. Maggie soon discovers that under the peaceful veneer of the leafy Paris suburb where she now lives, there are deep and troubling fissures. At first she is an object of curiosity, the woman taking the place of Jean-Paul’s beloved, deceased wife. But as she is drawn into the search for a girl named Ophelia, and tries to stop the persecution of a Muslim immigrant boy, she is viewed by the town an interloper, the outsider. As Maggie tells an interviewer, sometimes an outsider can hold up a mirror that reveals what we have become blind to. But are her new neighbors willing to look into that mirror? She will learn that the human spirit has tremendous resilience—until it snaps.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST MYSTERY AUTHOR NANCY G. WEST

Nancy G. West is a recovering business major who returned to grad school in English Literature to learn to write. She pens mystery and suspense, sprinkled with humor. Each of her Aggie Mundeen Mysteries has either been nominated or won an award. Learn more about Nancy and her books at her website/blog, where you’ll also find that Aggie blogs, too. 

Taking the Lead Character to a Beloved Place

I’ve known Aggie Mundeen and San Antonio Detective Sam Vanderhoven for fifteen years. They popped into my head when grad student Meredith Laughlin needed help with her life-threatening dilemma in my first suspense novel, Nine Days to Evil.

Aggie and Sam solved crimes through four subsequent Aggie Mundeen Mysteries despite frequently incompatible and sometimes amusing methods. I chronicled their struggles and watched their volatile relationship combust and reassemble as they combated crime in San Antonio, Texas. I enjoyed every minute of it. Readers said they fell in love with Aggie, and some wanted to marry Sam.

But I knew the couple’s dicey relationship had to either morph into greater mutual understanding and deeper affection, or they would come to blows. I decided to really test them and wrote The Plunge, the bridge to a new spin-off series, the Aggie Mundeen Lake Mysteries.

In The Plunge, Aggie and Sam settle in for a relaxing lakeside weekend and find themselves swept up in a rampaging flood of epic proportions. As they fight for survival, disaster tests their courage and strains their relationship.

Aggie, who has measured personal success by her ability to solve crimes that challenge Sam, realizes she needs to seek satisfaction outside his purview. Witnessing the grit of flood survivors and the compassionate people who help them, she finds herself drawn to unpredictable Lake Placid and the people who dwell nearby.

Plunge with Aggie Mundeen to her new beloved place.

The Plunge

An Aggie Mundeen Lake Mystery, Book 1

Aggie Mundeen and San Antonio Detective Sam Vanderhoven take care of a friend’s cottage on Lake Placid, a retreat on Texas’ Guadalupe River. Buckets of rain and gusting winds roil the lake, turning the peaceful, shady Guadalupe into an angry, raging river. As darkness descends, lightning highlights two people arguing on a dock across the river. When lightning flashes again, they are gone. Do Aggie and Sam witness an accident? A drowning? A murder?

The Plunge infects readers with the threat of looming disaster and the helplessness of being swept along by an untamable force. Do survivors really survive if disaster changes them forever?

Catastrophe propels Aggie and Sam in a new direction and threatens to pull them apart in the new spin-off series, the Aggie Mundeen Lake Mysteries. 

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GUEST AUTHOR SUSAN CORY ON WHY ARCHITECTS MAKE GREAT AMATEUR SLEUTHS--AND CRAFTY KILLERS

Like her sleuth, Susan Cory is an architect practicing out of a turreted office. Like Iris, she has a brown belt in karate. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her architect husband and her bossy mutt, not a Basset hound. Learn more about Susan and her books at her website. 

Why Architects Make Great Amateur Sleuths—and Crafty Killers

The mystery world is littered with sleuths who are cops, P.I.s, countless lawyers, bookstore owners, caterers, ministers—practitioners of every profession but my own, architecture. Aren't we problem-solvers? Don't we find ourselves deeply enmeshed in other people's lives? Don't we passionately defend our beliefs? Clearly the architecture world has been ignored as a mystery setting, and architects have been neglected as sleuths and, yes, murderers.

In my graduate program alone at Harvard's GSD, I found a setting ripe for murder. Egos were flying, and critics would reduce sleep-deprived students to tears and screaming matches at final juries. Later, out in the real world, a tiny handful of architects would claim all the plum commissions, as a single architect each year would be awarded the Pritzker Prize, ratcheting them to Starchitect status.

Several years ago, I decided to remedy this oversight by writing the Iris Reid Mystery series. Iris designs houses in Cambridge, MA, while her loyal Basset hound, Sheba, sleeps nearby inside the fireplace hearth. Iris spends her days hunched over a drafting table in her turreted home office, or butting heads with sexist contractors at construction sites. She spends her nights with the sexy neighborhood chef. Her loyal friend, Ellie, has her back.

I started writing the first book, Conundrum, in my head while attending my own 20th GSD reunion, reconnecting with backstabbing, competitive classmates. (In fairness, there were plenty of nice, normal fellow students, but they aren't as much fun to write about as the prima donnas.) In this book, Iris also returns to her 20th Architecture School reunion, only to discover the body of her former GSD boyfriend at a neo-Modernist house she's designed. That did not happen to me.

In the second book, Facade, Iris agrees to teach a design studio at GSD. A charismatic Dutch starchitect, also teaching that semester, lures Iris into his world. When a local schoolgirl goes missing after visiting the man's office, Iris is his only alibi. But can she actually vouch for his innocence?

Façade, Book 2 in the Iris Reid series

Smart and gutsy architect, Iris Reid, is plunged into the dark world surrounding a missing Cambridge schoolgirl. One of the girl's last visits was to Xander DeWitt, Harvard's handsome guest starchitect, who denies that they ever met. Only Iris can provide an alibi that will allow DeWitt to keep his perfect life. But can she actually vouch for his innocence?

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--FUDGE WITH GUEST AUTHOR LUCY BURDETTE

Lucy Burdette (aka Roberta Isleib) is the author of thirteen mysteries, including Death With All the Trimmings, the fifth book in the Key West series featuring food critic Hayley Snow. Lucy’s books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She's a past president of Sisters in Crime. Learn more about her and her books at her website and two blog: Mystery Lovers Kitchen and Jungle Red Writers.

On Writing Culinary Cozies—and Making Fudge!

First things first: Thanks for inviting me to post on your wonderful blog!

It’s taken me three mystery series to develop a character who cooks and who loves food and eating as much as I do! Although Hayley Snow, the food critic character in my Key West books, is young and a little bit impulsive, she cares deeply about her family and friends, and she shows her feelings with home cooking. In contrast, my first mystery character (written as Roberta Isleib) was a neurotic aspiring golf pro whose only recipe was Hot Dog Casserole. (Hey, she’s just reminded me that she makes an appearance in Death With All the Trimmings, as does her famous casserole.) Rebecca Butterman, the psychologist/advice columnist in the advice column mysteries, was a good home cook—but she didn’t spend time thinking about the meaning of food the way Hayley Snow does. (She reminds me that she was too busy puzzling through people’s problems, sorting through clues, and eking confessions out of bad guys to really focus on food.)

Anyway, it’s both a joy and challenge to write a culinary mystery series. The food part can’t just be a sideshow, or readers get bored. My editor gets antsy too: How is this moving the story ahead, she might ask. Hayley’s work as a food critic and the scenes involving her cooking on her Key West houseboat have to contribute more than a rumbling stomach to the story. In Death With All the Trimmings, Hayley has been assigned to cover the opening of a new restaurant from a New York chef/owner with extreme ambition. When things start going wrong in her kitchen, she calls on Hayley to help watch for sabotage. I especially enjoyed having Hayley run into the food critic for the New York Times on opening night. I had no idea this would happen when I started the book—and naturally, their conversation provides a clue to the mystery.

This is the kind of cozy paperback that would slide perfectly into a Christmas stocking. Or provide an unusual hostess gift for a foodie or mystery lover—maybe paired with a plate of Hayley’s amazing hazelnut fudge. I had first planned to make chocolate Nutella fudge—until I read the list of ingredients on the back of the jar. At that point, thinking there must be something with fewer weird ingredients, I searched for a substitute and found an organic chocolate-hazelnut spread that is really quite incredible. Hayley definitely approved!

Nocciolato Fudge

Ingredients:

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (make these good quality, as it will show)

1 cup Nocciolato (organic chocolate-hazelnut spread--I used the whole 9.5 oz jar)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

1/2 teaspoon sea salt or pink salt

Line an 8” x 8” inch pan with two layers of parchment paper, overlapping on the sides.

In a stainless steel bowl, stir together sweetened condensed milk, vanilla, chocolate chips, hazelnut spread, and butter.

Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water. (The pan should not touch the water.) Stir until the chocolate chips are melted and the mixture is smooth, 5-7 minutes.

Scrape the mixture into the papered pan, smooth the top, and sprinkle with sea salt. (I would have used some of Krista’s pink sea salt if I’d had it on hand--so pretty!)

Refrigerate until the fudge is firm, at least 2 hours.

Lift the fudge out of the pan using the parchment paper. Cut the fudge into bite-sized pieces and arrange on a pretty plate. Store leftovers (if there are any) in an airtight container in the fridge. This can also be made ahead and frozen.

Death With All the Trimmings

It may be Christmastime, but thoughts of peace on earth, good will toward men, don’t seem to extend to the restaurant business. Food critic Hayley Snow has been assigned to interview Edel Waugh, chef/owner of Key West’s hottest new restaurant. But off the record, Edel reveals that there’s been sabotage in the kitchen and asks Hayley to investigate. Things heat up fast when the restaurant is set on fire—and a body is discovered in the charred wreckage. Is someone out to destroy the chef’s business—or actually kill her? Amid holiday festivities like the lighted boat parade, and visiting relatives who stir up mixed emotions, Hayley needs to smoke out an arsonist and a killer before they turn up the heat again…on her!

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HEALTHY LIVING--GUEST AUTHOR LESLEY DIEHL & THE CHOCOLATE-FILLED DONUT DIET

photo by Pbj2199

Mystery author Lesley Diehl retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York where a shy ghost serves as her literary muse.  In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport.  Learn more about Lesley and her books at her website and blog. 

The Chocolate-Filled Donut Sleuthing Approach to Losing Weight

(This diet won’t kill you!)

Don’t be put off by the protagonist in my newest cozy mystery, Murder Is Academic.  Sure, Laura Murphy, college professor, has a lot of degrees, but at her stage of life, they don’t mean a lot when she spends so much time plunging her head in the freezer to corral her hot flashes. And she notices something else.  She can be described as a short, voluptuous blond whose best asset according to herself is her chest and narrow waist, but a look in the mirror tells her something is going south.  Could it be that a combination of being a woman of a certain age and all those chocolate-filled donuts are catching up with her—  metabolically-speaking?

Here’s Laura’s so-easy, chocolate-filled donut approach to getting back in shape.  You can eliminate any one of the steps, although the results won’t be as radical.

First, try an exercise program.  Oh, sure you say.  Everyone recommends that.  But this one is different.  Laura and Annie, her best friend decide to enter a fifty mile canoeing race, although neither of them had tried the sport before.  The first day on the water they discover the dead body of the college president shoved under a pile of gravel at a bridge construction site.  You may want to just skip this last part.

Next you should extend your exercise program to include a variety of activities, not simply one.  Laura discovers dinner with a hunky biker dude can result in more than messed up hair from the wind.  It can result in messed up hair from a night spent in bed.  This is a highly recommended part of the diet regimen.  Don’t skip it.

On to the next part of the plan in which Laura investigates the murder of her president and gets herself into all kinds of trouble, but all the running around is a kind of exercise (see step two above, variety in your exercise program).  Another unexpected benefit of this is she also creates trouble for others, some of them people at the college she doesn’t really like.  Here is where you give yourself permission to be annoying to others you find annoying.  It doesn’t burn calories per se, but it is satisfying. 

Snooping a la the Laura Murphy approach results in a diminished appetite for donuts while maintaining an excellent appetite for the biker in her life.  If you think this part of the diet is easy, you should be forewarned that too much snooping can make the killer angry and lead to attempts on your life.  Take on this part of the plan only if you’re either a good runner or really smart.  Laura can’t run, but she’s pretty smart, smart enough to outwit a killer.

Once your weight has stabilized at the desired level of maintaining a zealous interest in the biker guy or any man of your choice, and the bad guy has been caught because of some clever, rigorous sleuthing, you may begin the donuts once more.  You didn’t really think you were going to give them up forever, did you?  That’s why it’s called the chocolate-filled donut approach to dieting.  Duh.

A final note: Taking up chocolate-filled donuts again will result in weight gain, so like Laura, you’ll have to find another murder to solve.  Laura does, and it’s called Failure Is Fatal.  In this one, the bad frat guys give her a real run around.  Expect Laura to be positively slim at the end.

Murder is Academic

Laura Murphy, psychology professor, thinks there’s nothing she likes better than coffee and donuts on a summer morning until she says yes to dinner with a Canadian biker and finds herself and her date suspects in the murder of her college’s president. Laura’s friend, the detective assigned the case, asks her to help him find out who on the small upstate New York college campus may be a killer.  The murder appears to be wrapped up in some unsavory happenings on the lake where Laura lives.  A fish kill and raw sewage seeping into the water along with the apparent drowning suicide of a faculty member complicate the hunt for the killer.  And then things become personal.  The killer makes a threatening phone call to Laura. With a tornado bearing down on the area and the killer intent upon silencing her, Laura’s sleuthing work may come too late to save her and her biker from a watery grave.

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TRAVEL WITH SERENA--THE INTRACOASTAL WATERWAY AND DISMAL SWAMP CANAL

ICW Dismal Canal

Norma Huss, today’s guest, calls herself the Grandma Moses of Mystery. She published her first novel just before reaching her 80th birthday. She has since written and published several other books. She stops by today to talk about sailing the Intracoastal Waterway and the Dismal Swamp Canal during Hurricane Hugo. Learn more about Norma at her website. 

Sailing the Dismal Swamp Canal to Hurricane Hugo

When our group of sailboats headed south in 1989, we didn’t plan on meeting a hurricane. Our month-long plan was to sail the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) from Baltimore, Maryland, on Chesapeake Bay through the Dismal Swamp Canal to Morehead City in North Carolina before we turned back for the return trip.

My husband Dick and I sailed Cloud Nine, our 36-foot Cape Dory, accompanied by young friends Cathy and Bill. We joined an informal cruisers’ group and sailed south to Norfolk, Virginia. There we passed the United States Naval Station with sightings of lots of ships including an aircraft carrier and a submarine. We anchored overnight near the Norfolk city marina before entering the 51-mile Dismal Swamp Canal. The slowest boat in our group made only four knots. That’s four nautical miles per hour, a bit more than four miles on land. And, with two locks to raise or lower us eight feet and slow us down, it would be a long day.

There’s a lot of history about the entire ICW, but especially for the Dismal Swamp Canal. As we motored past trees, the branches sometimes nearly meeting over our heads, we appreciated the serenity of no commercial traffic, and the closeness of nature. But as we looked at that heavy stand of trees, we realized that in the late 1700s, this area was swamp land, murky and hidden.

But our young country needed a way to transport goods overland before the advent of railroads and highways. The Dismal Swamp Canal was built entirely by hand, using slaves from nearby farms who worked with saws, axes, picks, shovels, and back-breaking labor. The canal was begun in 1793 and opened in 1805. Originally the canal had five or six locks and was only deep and wide enough for flat boats or rafts. In 1829 it was widened and deepened. Today it is rated to handle boats with a six foot draft, but there have been a year or two, or three, since we traveled the canal, that it was closed due to shallow water.

anchored out

After we left Dismal Swamp Canal and continued south on the ICW, we heard about a storm, Hurricane Hugo, heading toward South Carolina. We couldn’t turn and head north with enough speed to outrun a hurricane. We headed west to Bath, NC. Our entire group tied up to a dock near a small marina, sat on the lawn, and plotted. We would strip sails and everything exposed off our boats. We would put out anchors, and tie down the boats to each other and the dock with our heaviest lines, rather like a spider web. And we did. After we had everything shipshape, the marina owner came over.

“You don’t know it,” he said, “but there used to be a wood mill here.” Since anchors couldn’t hold in a bottom of shifting wood chips, he recommended anchoring out in the waterway. He even volunteered to ferry us back to land so we could stay in the local bed and breakfast during the storm. Most of us took him up on it.

We spent a very worried night, listening to the news telling us that Hurricane Hugo was heading west. We didn’t like that one bit. However, come morning, we discovered the hurricane had shot straight through and gone so far west we were well to its east, and except for strong winds, completely out of it.

sunset on the way home

Later, after putting out boats back together, we saw damage at our next stop at a New Bern, NC, marina. Boats had sunk in their slips. One boat had bounced up and down against the deck until the friction had rubbed a hole in the bow of the boat. In South Carolina, the damage was extensive, with boats piled up across roads from the waterway, and into city yards. Five years later on another trip farther south, we stopped at a marina that had only opened that week after finally repairing all the damage from Hurricane Hugo.

That adventure didn’t scare us away from boating. That sailboat was our first, but we subsequently had two more boats, both tugboat-style cruisers. And, my love of boating inspired the amateur detective in my latest mystery, Death of a Hot Chick. She loves everything about boating, even polishing teak.

Death of a Hot Chick

A Cyd Denlinger Mystery - A young widow trying to survive, a ghost with an agenda, and the boat they share.

Violent death comes suddenly to Smith Harbor, the Chesapeake Bay fishing village with intertwined and lasting relationships.

Cyd Denlinger wants to forget her late, philandering husband, keep her family from running her life, and regain her commercial boat captain's license. What she doesn't want is to be involved with an old flame OR a ghost. But the nagging ghost offers a trade that’s hard to resist.

"Find my killer!" she demands. In exchange, Cyd will own the boat Snapdragon. Easy for a ghost to offer something she can't use. Not so easy to solve a murder with too much help from family and friends. Not too safe either, especially when Cyd wonders: was the killer's target his victim, or her boat.

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