Meeting Cute: Debut Author Edwin Hill

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  We met cute. We totally did. we were seated next to each other at the Malice Domestic banquet, always a treat, and since of course we had a lot in common--we were both at Malice, that's plenty--we started up a conversation.  

Are you writing? I asked. (Always a good one.) 

Yes, he said, in fact, my debut novel, Little Comfort, comes out August 28.

Oh! I said. What a coincidence! Mine, too. That's when Trust Me comes out.

I know, he said.

(To which, silly me, I thought--how wonderful of this cool guy! He's such a fan of mine that he knows my pub date! Isn't that great? Aw. I instantly adored him, of course. and continued the conversation.)

Oh, such a coincidence! I said. We can be pub date buddies. 
Yes, he said, but I'm not doing my launch until the 29th.
(To which, silly me, I thought--well, there's gotta be some reason for that. Wonder what it is?)
Oh, I went on, so brightly, interesting! Why?
Because that's when YOURS is, he said.
What? (This was not computing. Lots of people have the same pub date, obvs.)
Yes, he said. Brookline Booksmith scheduled YOU for that day, so I had to postpone. 
What? (I was repeating myself, I know.) You're from Boston?
Yup, he said.
So, it went on like that, and now we are doing an event together later in the month, and all fabulous.
But today is all Edwin Hill here at Jungle Red, and you are going to love him, too. 
And even more so--as he tells us about:


The Power of the Librarian

   by Edwin Hill
Mysteries, no matter the genre, are about curious people asking questions, and to me, librarians are among the most curious people I know – solving big and small mysteries for their patrons every day. My novel, Little Comfort, is about a librarian named Hester Thursby who finds serial killers, which has given me the opportunity to talk with librarians all over as I’ve researched, and to remember one librarian in particular who played an important role in my life and many others.

My parents grew up in Whitman, a small town on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Before it was a town of its own, Whitman was a neighborhood in the larger town of Abington, called Little Comfort. I always appreciated the irony in that name and thought it would make a great novel title, so here we are!

My grandmother, Phyllis Hill, was the town librarian in Whitman from the forties through the early sixties. She ran all sorts of programs for children and adults that brought the community together. In addition to working as a librarian, she was a poet, publishing a collection called Poems for the Future, and conducted psychic readings and automatic writing. She retired in the early sixties and passed away in the early nineties, and at her funeral, it was amazing to hear people talk about how she’d inspired and helped them through her work at the library. 

Even twenty-five years after my grandmother’s death (she’d be 124 this year), I’m still amazed by that reach. The staff at the Whitman Library helped me find the photos for this piece, and many of them remembered meeting her. 

Recently, because of the publicity for Little Comfort, a man named Andrew Michael Rossi reached out to me through Twitter. I’d never met Andrew, thought he’d grown up in Whitman when my grandmother was still the librarian, and he wrote about how important she had been to him - how she had listened to him and seen him. And then he told me a story that I’ll cherish forever. 

“Your grandmother lived on Washington Street, not far from where I grew up. She had written a book which I had read. I called her and she agreed to meet me. I was twelve years old. I decided I would do a watercolor of a seascape as a thank you. When I got to her house, she asked to see the picture I did for her. She held it up to a picture on her hallway wall. It was almost exactly the same. I kid you not! We talked about the paranormal. She showed me some of her automatic writings from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and then told me a young boy was present around me and he told her to tell me he was watching over me. My older brother Wayne was killed in a freak accident when a piano fell on him ten years earlier. All in all its an experience I will never forget. I just loved your grandmother to bits!”

Phyllis Hill may not have been your stereotypical librarian, but then, neither is Hester Thursby. I adored my grandmother in all her unique, loving ways, just as I love Hester Thursby.

HANK: Right? Of course he had me at the librarian who finds serial killers because she knows about research. BRILLIANT!  And how about that fabulous name, Hester Thursby?  
Two things today: Reds and readers, tell us one thing about your grandmother!
And Ed, we want to hear more about his book!





Edwin Hill grew up in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and where he spent most of his childhood obsessing over Enid Blyton’s “The Famous Five,” Agatha Christie novels, and somehow finding a way into C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe. After attending Wesleyan University, he headed west to San Francisco for the original dotcom boom. Later, he returned to Boston, earned an MFA from Emerson College, and switched gears to work in educational publishing, where he currently serves as the vice president and editorial director for Bedford/St. Martin’s, a division of Macmillan. He lives in Roslindale, Massachusetts with his partner Michael and his favorite reviewer, their yellow lab Edith Ann, who likes his first drafts enough to eat them.

LITTLE COMFORT

In a brilliantly twisted debut set among Boston’s elite, Edwin Hill introduces unforgettable sleuth Hester Thursby—and a missing persons case that uncovers a trail of vicious murder . . .

Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Usually, she’s hired to find long-ago prom dates or to reunite adopted children and birth parents. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine.

Sam has no desire to be found. As a teenager, he fled his small New Hampshire town with his friend, Gabe, after a haunting incident. For a dozen years, Sam and Gabe have traveled the country, reinventing themselves as they move from one mark to another. Sam has learned how trusting wealthy people can be—especially the lonely ones—as he expertly manipulates his way into their lives and homes. In Wendy Richards, the beautiful, fabulously rich daughter of one of Boston’s most influential families, he’s found the perfect way to infiltrate the milieu in which he knows he belongs—a world of Brooks Brothers suits, Nantucket summers, and effortless glamour.

As Hester’s investigation closes in on their brutal truth, the bond between Sam and Gabe is tested and Hester unknowingly jeopardizes her own safety. While Gabe has pinned all his desperate hopes of a normal life on Hester, Sam wants her out of the way for good. And Gabe has always done what Sam asks . . .

A second Hester Thursby Mystery will follow in 2019.


Little Comfort Giveaway

Head over to edwin-hill.com and sign up for my newsletter by September 26. I’ll be offering two signed copies of Little Comfort as a giveaway.

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