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Isabel Long Mystery Series

What’s Good About Bad Guys

Not all of the characters I create are nice people. After all, this is a mystery series, and somebody has to have committed a crime, say a murder, an attempted one, even a kidnapped baby — and got away with it. And as Isabel Long has discovered as she tries to solve each cold case, there are suspects who could be classified as bad guys. That includes women by the way.

Frankly, I enjoy creating these characters and often keep several around for more than one book. I try to create characters that are complex, so their villainy might not be apparent. Or they might have some redeeming characteristics that shows they aren’t all bad after all. And sometimes they might seem like they’re okay, but as Isabel finds out, they’re not.

I am going to focus on the first three books in the series — Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge, and Checking the Traps— which were recently released by Bloodhound Books.

In Chasing the Case, Victor Wilson is a suspect in the disappearance of Adela Collins 28 years earlier. (It was Isabel’s first big story as a rookie reporter.) He’s one of those unfriendly guys living in what looks like a stockade on one of the town’s back roads. Isabel has a good guess what he does there and it isn’t growing orchids in a greenhouse. You know the type — quiet and keeps to himself — for a good reason.

Vincent is on the permanently banned list at the Rooster for coming in one night spouting White Supremacist “crap” and carrying a gun. Here’s what Isabel has to say about him: “I typically see him pumping gas outside the general store. Once in a while, Victor comes to town meetings to bitch about something. He’s a scrawny dude with a long hipster beard, before it came into style, and naturally, a wild head of hair. I have no idea what he does for a living.”

But did Victor have anything to do with Adela’s disappearance. I’m not saying.

In Redneck’s Revenge, Annette Waters hires Isabel — for free mechanical service for life at her Rough Waters Junkyard and Garage — to investigate the death of her father Chet. It appears Chet was too drunk to get out of his house when it caught fire. Her father might have been an SOB of a guy, but Annette doesn’t believe his death was accidental.

Among the suspects are two brothers, Gary and Larry Beaumont, drug dealers who terrorized Isabel. The brothers live in a dump of a house and have the manners of feral dogs. They allegedly were responsible for drugs found in a junked car that was delivered to Rough Waters. Oh, Gary’s the father of Annette’s grown son after a brief relationship as teenagers — a secret she keeps to herself.

Isabel goes with Annette to Baxter’s Bar to meet Gary and Larry who were being elusive. (They are banned from the Rooster for selling drugs in the parking lot.) This is what Annette says when the brothers arrive: “Hard to tell ’em apart, eh?” Annette says. “Well, the ugly son of a bitch with the mustache is Gary. The other ugly son of a bitch with the scar down the side of his face is Larry. It’s from a car crash, not a knife fight although he’s been in a couple of those.”

I grew so fond of the brothers, I have kept them through the series. I have also added more complexity to their personalities. Maybe they’re not upstanding citizens, but they aren’t just bad guys.

For instance, Gary, the alpha brother, hires Isabel for her third case in Checking the Traps. Gary wants Isabel to find out what happened to their half-brother Cary. He doesn’t believe for a second that Cary, who worked on a highway crew and wrote poetry at night, jumped off a bridge in a neighboring town that is known for suicides. He is sure somebody murdered him.

The chief suspects are one of Gary’s business associate, yes, Victor Wilson, and a famous but rather snotty poet, Cyrus Nilsson, who plagiarized his brother’s poetry for an award-winning book. Could a poet be a bad guy? Sure, why not?

Here are the links to those books: : Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revengeand Checking the Traps. Thank you if you do.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Meet My Victims

My mysteries always have a victim. And it’s Isabel Long’s mission to find out what really happened to that person.

Isabel, a longtime journalist turned P.I., focuses on solving cold cases in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. So, I try to give her cases that will challenge her — and readers of the series. 

Since the setting is a rural area, likewise the characters I create fit right in. Most are locals whose families have lived there at least a couple of generations although there are newcomers, including Isabel who moved with her family to the small town of Conwell, population 1,000, from Boston.

After living in small rural towns for many years, I feel I have done enough people watching to create authentic characters although I should be clear none are based on real people. As I’ve shared before, my motto is: I take what I know and have my way with it.

Currently, I am completing the eighth in the series. In all but one, which was the case of a missing person, the victims are long deceased. Their deaths were ruled accidents, presumed dead or a suicide, but a person closest to them doesn’t believe that’s what happened. Actually, let me back up and say that no. eight has an outright murder that happened 43 years ago. 

But for this post, I am going to focus on the victims from the first three books in the series, since they were recently republished by Bloodhound Books.

In the first, Chasing the Case, a woman disappeared 28 years earlier. Adela Collins walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again. It was also Isabel’s first big story as a rookie reporter. As she finds out when she pursues this case, Adela has a few secrets.

In the second, Redneck’s Revenge, Chet Waters, a junkyard owner supposedly died in a fire because he was too drunk to get out. But his daughter, Annette Waters, who now owns that junkyard, doesn’t believe it. Chet might have been an SOB, but Annette, believes he deserves better.

And in Checking the Traps, the victim is a highway worker by day and a poet by night. The official ruling was that Cary Moore jumped from a bridge known for suicides. For years, his half-brother Gary has been trying to get someone to look into it, and now that Isabel has solved two cases, he turns to her for help.

In each book, I try to give readers a portrait of each victim through the words of the people Isabel Long interviews. You can check out her handiwork in the first three books in the series: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps. Thank you if you do.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

When You Gotta Write Poetry

I wrote poetry before I could write prose. I began in college, where I fancied myself a poet, and a few years afterward until real life, including having six kids and a 25-year writer’s block, took over. When I did resume writing, I turned to prose, that is, novels and short stories. I no longer wrote poetry. But that changed when I wrote the third book in my Isabel Long Mystery Series, Checking the Traps.

I should note that book was re-released along with Chasing the Case and Redneck’s Revenge on Nov. 15 by their new publisher Bloodhound Books.

In Checking the Traps, Isabel is hired by a local bad boy drug dealer, Gary Beaumont, to find out how his half-brother died. Did Cary Moore jump from a bridge known for suicides or was he pushed? But what fires up Isabel’s interest in this case is that Cary drove heavy equipment by day and wrote poetry at night.

Gary lends Isabel the notebooks in which his half-brother transcribed all of his poems. As Isabel discovers, Cary’s poetry in the early books are really juvenile. But he gets better, well, enough that a famous poet uses the poems for his own in what turns out to be an award-winning book. He actually paid Cary for the poems, but he put his own name on them in a book that garnered big awards. Yes, the poet is a suspect in the man’s death.

Cyrus is indeed a noted poet, hence the snarky nickname, the Big Shot Poet, which the irreverent Isabel Long secretly calls him. He made it big after growing up poor with the release of his first book of poetry, Yonder.

He’s done well for himself, building a swanky home in the hilltown of Penfield and driving a Mercedes. He has a slew of adoring fans, mostly women. He’s quite the charmer. And, no, I don’t know anybody like him. Cyrus is a figment of my imagination.

One of my favorite scenes in Checking the Traps is a bookstore reading Isabel and her mother attend. I tried to capture poetry readings I’ve attended, including those loud sighs and moans from adoring fans.

Isabel also finds poetry that Cary wrote as gifts for other people.

So, that meant I had to write poetry, too, for this book.

Actually I found writing poetry wasn’t hard at all. I was able to channel that inner poet to come up with several complete poems plus lines from others. I tried to imagine what a man who had never gone farther than 100 miles from his country home would write about and how he would write it. I figured on a plain but sturdy style of writing. There would have lots of imagery from nature. The poems would not be long.

Poetry, including a reading where Isabel corners the famous poet, figures big in this book.

There are not many full poems but excerpts like this one: The wind tells me things my mother never did. And this one: gliding on ice/ if only life was still that easy.

Here’s one Cary — and I — wrote for Jack, the owner of the Rooster Bar, where Isabel works part-time. He’s also her love interest in this series.

What’ll it be tonight, boys?

The barman asks each one.

Give me some hope in a bottle.

Give me courage.

Give me love.

The barman laughs.

Sorry, boys, it’s only beer.

Did the experience inspire me to write more poetry? I will be honest and say no. But I enjoyed letting one of my characters do it instead.

Once again, here are the links to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

Meet the Old Farts

I call them the Old Farts. Actually, that’s what Isabel Long, the protagonist of my mystery series, calls them — with a capital O and a capital F. And they are an amusing source of intel for her.

The Old Farts are a group of six gossipy old men who hang out early mornings in the back of the Conwell General Store. They appear to know everybody’s business for miles around, including Isabel’s.

For that reason, she finds the Old Farts useful when she takes her first case — in Chasing the Case — trying to find out what happened to a woman who went missing 28 years earlier in that town of a thousand people. They know all the players.

That’s true of the next cases she investigates — Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps, which now have a home with Bloodhound Books, had a Nov. 15 release date on Amazon. Just clink on the titles below and you’re there.

Actually, Isabel takes this relationship one step further and gives the men secret nicknames. Here they are: the Fattest Old Fart, Serious Old Fart, Bald Old Fart, Silent Old Fart, Skinniest Old Fart, and the Old Fart with Glasses. You can guess how she came up with those names.

The Old Farts, of course, don’t know a thing about it. It’s likely the only one they don’t.

And once in a while, there are Visiting Old Farts, but they aren’t regulars.

Isabel started visiting the Old Farts in the back room on a regular basis after she lost her job running a newspaper and decided to be an amateur P.I. She always sits on a bench besides the Fattest Old Fart, who could rightfully be called the Loudest Old Fart, because nobody else does. He always announces her arrival.

The Serious Old Fart always offers Isabel a cup of the store’s crappy coffee along with a joke that the expresso machine is broke — yes, he mispronounces espresso.

The conversation is lively although the Silent Old Fart lives up to his reputation and rarely speaks. (When he does, it’s significant.) They like to tease Isabel about her personal life. But they do give useful tips or at least some history because unlike Isabel, they are all natives of Conwell. They’ve known each other forever. And they have no better way to start the day than to drink coffee, eat a donut, and shoot the shit, so they love it when Isabel shows up and groan when she leaves too early.

Perhaps you have a group of Old Farts who meet in your town. They might meet regularly at a coffee shop or like mine, in the back room of a general store.

So many readers say they get a kick out of the Old Farts. You can meet them in the first three books in the series. Here are the links: Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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Isabel Long Mystery Series

When One Mystery Inspires Another

Sometimes I love the characters I create too much for them to have only one book. That’s the case of Isabel Long and many of the characters in the mystery series named for her.

I started with Chasing the Case. Then came Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

Currently I am working on the eighth in the Isabel Long Mystery Series. But those three books now have a home with Bloodhound Books, which re-released them Nov. 15. So I’m going to focus on them.

Each book features a cold case Isabel Long tries to solve in the fictional hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. In the first, she’s coming off a bad year — the untimely death of her husband and the loss of her job as editor-in-chief of a newspaper. She decides to put her free time and skills she learned as a journalist to good use solving a 28-year-old mystery in which a woman walked home from her family’s general store and was never seen again. It was also Isabel’s first big story as a rookie reporter. 

Since the disappearance happened in the hilltown where she lives, Isabel knows the people connected to the case and they know her. Besides, she has an unusual sidekick, her 92-year-old mother who has come to live with her. Maria may be up there in years but she as a keen fan of mysteries, she helps to bring insights. 

Other helpful sources include the men who gossip in the store’s backroom — she calls them the Old Farts. Isabel also takes a part-time job tending bar at the Rooster, the only watering hole in town, which is a great place to get people to blab.

Isabel does solve the case, but I’m not telling you anything more. 

With that case under her belt, Isabel is ready for another. Her next client is Annette Waters, who deservedly is nicknamed the Tough Cookie because she runs a junkyard and garage, and doesn’t take crap from anyone. (She is one of my favorite characters.) Annette hires her to investigate the death of her father, who allegedly was too drunk to get out of his shack of a house when it caught fire. I introduce new characters, such as Gary and Larry Beaumont, two feral brothers who are also drug dealers and it turns out, suspects. Plus, I keep many from the first. 

Oh, state law requirements for being a private investigator means Isabel has to work for a licensed one for three years. So Lin Pierce, who runs a seedy little P.I. biz, comes into her life. He pays her a buck a day for the arrangement and she shares what she makes with him.

Then Isabel and I moved onto our third case. Interesting that a drug-dealing suspect from the second case, Gary Beaumont, hires her to probe the death of his half-brother, who supposedly jumped off a bridge known for suicides. What convinces Isabel to take this case is that the victim was a highway worker who wrote poetry good enough for a well-known poet to steal. (It also meant I had to write poetry for this book.) Cyrus Nilsson aka the Big Shot Poet becomes a regular in the series as does Gary and Larry. 

From my experience of reading, watching or listening to a series, the trick is to give continuity but not drag down the story with too much from the previous one. No flashbacks. Just enough info so each book in the series is standalone. But if you read the ones before it, you can smile because you know a whole lot more than what I revealed.

Here are the links to Chasing the Case, Redneck’s Revenge and Checking the Traps.

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