Annette Dashofy--Secrets and Villains

DEBORAH CROMBIE: There's nothing we love more here on Jungle Red than hosting one of our regular readers,commenters, and fellow authors, so we're very excited today to bring you Annette Dashofy, author of the Zoe Chambers Mysteries and of the Detective Honeywell Mysteries. She's giving us a sneak peek at the third novel featuring Erie City's Detective Matthias Honeywell and free lance photographer Emma Anderson, THE DEVIL COMES CALLING.

Wow, what a great cover! Annette, tell us more!

Secrets and Villains by Annette Dashofy

Confession time. When I started writing the first Zoe Chambers mystery nearly twenty years ago, I had no clue how to write a series. I only had an inkling of a clue about writing anything, to be honest. Back then, I had ideas for two books. When I was offered a contract for three, of course, I told them I absolutely had plans for that third book. (It was a lie. Fake it til you make it, right?) I had used all my ideas for these characters in those first two mysteries. I had delved into all their secrets. Now I had to come up with more. I didn’t figure out the story arc thing until the fourth book.

Fast forward a decade or so to when I was noodling with a premise for another series. One of my regrets with Zoe and Pete was having them already well acquainted as Circle of Influence started. This time, I wanted to open the first book before Matthias Honeywell and Emma Andersen met in order to develop the relationship in full view of the reader. And I knew I needed to create deeper backstories for the two main characters. Secrets beyond one or two books.

Here I am with less than a month until the release of The Devil Comes Calling, and I’m happy to say, this third installment is jam-packed with secrets being spilled and past wounds being reopened. Seeds that I planted in the first two novels sprout like crazy in this one.

Including one particularly nasty villain.

I love villains. I love to create villains the reader loves to hate. Sometimes my bad guys are forced into circumstances in which they make bad choices. Had they changed one little decision, they might have been redeemable. Others see the error of their ways too late to be redeemed.

My working title for The Devil Comes Calling was Beyond Redemption. My publisher obviously chose not to use it, as I knew they wouldn’t. But I clung to it as the underlying theme, one that echoed throughout several story threads and characters, not merely the villain. I even had the beyond redemption theme in mind for Matthias this time around. While the first two Honeywell mysteries leaned heavily into Emma’s family history, in this book, it’s Matthias’s turn. We get to learn about his late mother’s tragic end. We discover his father is in prison. Or was. (Okay, that’s a small spoiler, but the reader finds it out in the first chapter, and I think there are plenty more twists and surprises, so I’m willing to divulge that one.)

Reds, how deeply do you delve into the hearts and souls of your bad guys? And readers, do you enjoy a memorable villain? Who are a few that have stuck with you over time?

 

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today bestselling author of over sixteen novels of mystery and suspense, including seven Agatha Award finalists and a Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award winner. She has two Detective Honeywell Mysteries coming in November and December of this year including The Devil Comes Calling and No Stone Left Unturned. Additionally, she has been a Derringer Award finalist for her short fiction. Annette and her husband live on ten acres of what was her grandfather’s dairy farm in Washington County, Pennsylvania with their very spoiled cat, Kensi. You’re invited to check out her website at http://annettedashofy.com

 

“Two bodies. One male, approximately fifty years old. One female, mid-twenties. Both shot execution-style, with one bullet to the back of the head.”

When a murderous ghost from Erie City Police Detective Matthias Honeywell’s past appears unexpectedly, his investigation into a double homicide in a quiet residential neighborhood gets increasingly complicated, and puts everything and everyone he cares about at risk – including photographer Emma Anderson.

Emma’s first day as the crime beat photographer for ErieLIVE wasn’t meant to see her photographing the scene of her predecessor’s murder, and with ties to the victim as well as a deadly fire that follows in the wake of the crime, she fears she may also be in the killer’s sightlines.

To solve the case and catch the killer, Matthias and Emma will have to face their own demons. But what happens when the devil himself comes calling?

DEBS: What a great premise, Annette! And I have to say that as much as I understand how attached we can get to our working titles (by "we" I mean "I"...) in this case I have to agree with your publisher. It's a great title and one that really sticks.   

As for villians, I've written a few that were perhaps a tiny bit sympathetic, or at least relatable, and a few that still give me nightmares. It will be very interesting to see what the other Reds and our readers have to say on the matter!

P.S. THE DEVIL COMES CALLING is out on November 7th, so do pre-order!

In the Shadow of Jane

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Jane Goodall has been much on my mind since her passing on October 1st. As a teenager, I first read about Jane in the copies of National Geographic Magazine that I shared every month with my grandmother. 

Those articles in Nat Geo sparked an interest in Africa and in animal behavior. I read Louis Leakey, the Kenyan-British paleontologist, anthropologist, and archaeologist who first sponsored Goodall's work in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania (Tanganyika as it was then,) books by the Austrian zoologist Konrad Lorenz, who is considered to be the father of ethology (animal behavior,) and those articles and books led me to read Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle and The Origin of Species. (I think I still have my tattered paperback copies of both of those books. 

I found it fascinating that Jane, a young woman of twenty-three from Bournemouth, had accepted an invitation to visit a friend's family's farm in Kenya. Once there, she got a job as a secretary and on an impulse, telephoned Louis Leakey, with whom her friend was acquainted. She wanted to talk to him about animals. He wanted a chimpanzee researcher. Leakey hired her as his secretary, but he had another purpose in mind. Three years later he sent her to Gombe Stream National Park, where her groundbreaking work would establish her as the first of the great female primate researchers.

In 1971 Jane Goodall published In the Shadow of Man, the story of her time in Gombe. At the time, I was nineteen and had already failed spectacularly in my first try at university, where I'd enrolled as a history major. But reading about Jane, some spark was lit and I began to wonder if I could, in some small way, follow in her footsteps. By the time I transferred a year or two later to the college that would become my alma mater (go Roos!) I'd decided to major in biology, specializing in animal behavior.

Even though a career in zoology was not ultimately to be my path (another story!) I did graduate with a hard won bachelor of arts in biology, and even more importantly, a very good liberal arts education. It's this I credit with any degree of success I've had as a writer of detective novels. It taught me to think rationally and critically, to love research, and to stick with projects. Some of my journey, however winding, must trace back to that teenage girl pouring over Jane's accounts of her adventures. 

Dear Reds and readers, has there been someone in your life who inspired you to take a road you might not otherwise have followed?

P.S. Speaking of research, I went down a serious rabbit hole reading about the Leakeys–Louis and his son, Richard. What wild and adventurous lives they led–I highly recommend looking them up!

 

Carol Pouliot--Paris Full Circle

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It is always a treat to host Carol Pouliot with a new entry in her delightful Blackwell and Watson series. These are history/mystery/time travel so there is something for everyone, and I can't wait to see what adventures Carol has dreamed up for 21st century journalist Olivia Watson and Depression-era cop Steven Blackwell--this time in Paris! Here's Carol with the scoop on MURDER AT THE MOULIN ROUGE!

PARIS FULL CIRCLE

 

Thanks so much for hosting me today on Jungle Reds, Debs. I’m thrilled to be here with everyone.

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with France and all things French. The moment my eighth-grade French teacher uttered the word “Bonjour,” my life changed forever. While my friends dreamed about their future husbands and the children they hoped to have, I dreamed of getting a passport, packing my suitcase, and heading to Paris. The day I received my first passport in the mail, I felt like a doorway to the world had opened up. Endless possibilities fanned out in front of me.

 

My first trip overseas—1973, MA just completed—took me to Marseille for a job teaching English. Before I could begin, I had a week of orientation on the French education system in Paris. I sold my VW bug for a $200 round-trip ticket on Icelandic Air to Luxembourg and from there took a train to Paris. I remember the moment I stepped off the train. I felt every molecule in my body settle into place. This was where I belonged!

Naturally, I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and the Louvre, but number one on my list was Montmartre, the artists’ quarter. I met up with a college friend, who was happy to show me around. She took me to all the top attractions, including the Quartier Latin, where I fell in love all over again. This small Left Bank neighborhood is home to the Sorbonne University and sits above the Catacombs, where thousands of bodies lie buried deep beneath the city. The area is a maze of twisting, turning alleyways and narrow connecting streets. I had couscous in the cellar of a tiny Middle Eastern restaurant. Later in the week, I attended a champagne and caviar reception at the American Embassy. Lots of exciting firsts!

 

(View from the roof of Notre Dame)

 

At the end of the week, I packed my belongings, bought a train ticket to Marseille, and prepared to leave—without having seen Montmartre. Somehow, my friend had never fit it into her plan. (Why didn’t I just go by myself??) I was crushed. The one area where I’d wanted to spend time and I never even got close. Little did I know I would return to Paris countless times during my life, and even live there for a short time. And never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would become a published author and write a book that takes place in that city.

 (Le Lapin Agile, Montmartre)

In Murder at the Moulin Rouge, Detective Steven Blackwell and his partner-in-crime Olivia Watson travel to Paris in 1895. They stay in Montmartre, question suspects in landmarks that still stand, and get to know the artists who lived and worked there—Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Sisley, and others. It was wonderful spending time there again, even if it was mostly in my mind as I wrote. And, to celebrate finishing my final draft, I returned to Paris...closing the circle fifty years later.

(Le Moulin Rouge, Montmartre)

Reds and Readers,  

If you’re a traveler, what’s your favorite city or town? If you’re an armchair traveler, what do you love about your hometown?

DEBS: Carol, your description of how you felt at your first sight of Paris reminds me so much of how I felt the first time I stepped off a plane in England. We have kindred journeys!

Now, here's more about MURDER AT THE MOULIN ROUGE:

Paris, 1895. When a cancan dancer at the Moulin Rouge falls to her death from the top of one of Montmartre’s highest staircases, the police dismiss it as an accident. But, Madeleine was one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s favorite models, and the artist is certain she was murdered. Enter Depression-era detective Steven Blackwell and 21^st-century journalist Olivia Watson who travel back in time to Paris to hunt down the killer. Before long, they learn that a second dancer—a ballerina and favorite model of painter Edgar Degas—has died. Two dancers dead in two weeks. Two artists grieving. Is the killer targeting young dancers, or, does this case involve the enigmatic Paris art world? 

From the moment Steven and Olivia arrive, Steven is out of his element. The small-town cop has no idea what techniques the French police use in 1895. Worse, he has no official status to investigate murder in one of the world’s largest cities. The sleuths soon discover disturbing secrets at the Paris Ballet. And when Olivia insists on going undercover to visit a suspect’s house alone, Steven fears he’s made the biggest mistake of his life.

 

Travel back in time with Steven and Olivia, as they enter the back-stabbing world of dance in one of the world’s greatest cities. Murder at the Moulin Rouge is their most daring and dangerous case to date.

 

DEBS: And here's more about Carol:

A former language teacher and business owner, Carol Pouliot writes the acclaimed Blackwell and Watson Time-Travel Mysteries, traditional police procedurals with a seemingly impossible relationship between Depression-era cop Steven Blackwell and 21^st-century journalist Olivia Watson. With their fast pace and unexpected twists and turns, the books have earned praise from readers and mystery authors alike. Carol is the former President and Program Chair of her Sisters in Crime chapter, Co-Chair of Murderous March, an online mystery conference, and a founding member of Sleuths and Sidekicks. When not writing, Carol can be found packing her suitcase and reaching for her passport for her next travel adventure. Sign up for Carol’s newsletter and learn more at http://www.carolpouliot.com 

FB Author Page

Instagram

Pinterest

BookBub

DEBS: P.S. Carol says that there is a temporary problem with the Buy link for print books on Amazon, but the book can be found at the links below:

Amazon

B&N