Two Irish-Themed Stories from Maddie Day and Barbara Ross

Jenn McKinlay: Having just returned from Ireland myself, I can not tell you how happy I am to welcome -- Fàilte -- two of the  Jungle Reds fave mystery writers with their Irish-centric mysteries! Yay!

Hello to all. Maddie Day (then known as Edith Maxwell) and Barb (aka Barbara Ross) have traveled a lot of the same roads on this publishing journey. Our first books were published by small presses. Our first series with Kensington debuted in the same year. We’ve been blogging together over at Wicked Authors for nine years. We already knew each other from Sisters in Crime New England and the New England Crime Bake. And both of us have been mentored and supported by several Reds. 

 

And this month we have books with the same theme coming out on the same day. We’re giving away two each!

 

In Four Leaf Cleaver, by Maddie Day, a cooking competition on Saint Patrick’s Day at Robbie Jordan’s Pans ‘n’ Pancakes goes seriously awry.

 

 

In Irish Coffee Murder, a collection of novellas by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross, the holiday is Saint Patrick’s and the signature drink of the day is murder.

 

 

To celebrate, Maddie (L) and Barb (R) sat down at the (virtual) kitchen table to talk writing, research, mysteries, and series.

Maddie: Barb, your novella solves a cold case, a crime from the past. Have you written other cold cases in your Maine Clambake series? Is it easier or harder than having your protagonist evade a criminal lurking in the present?

 

Barb: In mystery novels, it’s not unusual to have a crime in the distant past informing a crime in the present. What’s different about this novella is there is no crime in the present. (Is that a spoiler?) Therefore I had to really work at maintaining suspense and keeping the reader interested in a very cold case. The novella length is part of what made that feasible.

 

Barb: Maddie, why did you choose to write about St. Patrick's Day?

 

Maddie: I usually come up with my own book idea, unless I’m asked to write a Christmas novella, for example. For this book, my (and Barb’s editor) at Kensington suggested I could do a cooking competition. Or, he said, “What about a St. Patrick’s Day theme?” I found the combination irresistible, so I did both! Batter Off Dead, the previous book in the series, takes place in July, but after that was “Scarfed Down,” a Christmas novella. A mid-March story slotted into book time perfectly.

 

Maddie: This is your fifth novella, and you've said before you like writing that length. Would you consider writing only novellas in the future? Why, why not?

 

Barb: I do love writing these 25,000 to 30,000 word stories. I’m writing one now to be published in the spring of 2024. (Red Julia Spencer-Fleming was part of a brainstorming session for this one.) I’m very lucky my publisher, Kensington, has offered me the opportunity to be a part of these collections of stories. However, I wouldn’t write only novellas for two reasons. 1) I would miss the opportunity to tell longer stories, And 2) getting novellas published outside the confines of these anthologies is very difficult.

 

Barb: This is the 11th book in the Country Store Mysteries. What do you find more challenging and what is easier when writing this far into a series?

 

Maddie: I’m writing book 12 now and have a contract through  book 13, which is kind of astonishing. What’s easier is that I know the world. I’m pals with my chef’s staff, hugely fond of her Aunt Adele, and adore Robbie Jordan’s husband Abe almost as much as she does. I know how hilly Brown County is and what fictional South Lick looks like. I love when it comes time on my rotation to write a new Country Store book so I can plunge back into that world and hang out with my imaginary friends.

 

As with any long-running series (looking at more than half the Jungle Reds right now), the challenges come in keeping the stories fresh. Making sure protag Robbie Jordan keeps changing and growing in her personal life and in her sleuthing. Finding plausible new people to murder and that Very Good Reason for Robbie to have to investigate. 

 

Maddie: Do you have Irish heritage? Or doesn't it matter for writing about an American holiday with little resemblance to actual Ireland? 

 

Barb: “Perked Up” takes place entirely in Maine, though Julia and friends do go on a roadtrip to the middle of the state while investigating the mystery. I knew next to nothing about the Irish in Maine and found a marvelous book, They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine, a collection of scholarly  essays edited by Michael C. Connolly. When we think of Irish emigration to the United States we tend to think of famine-driven immigration to big cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. But that is only a part of the story. Did you know the oldest surviving Catholic church building in the US is in Newcastle, Maine? (Next town on the coast from where the Clambake mysteries take place.) Still in use, Saint Patrick’s was built  in 1807 by Irish immigrants who became wealthy shipbuilders.

 

As for me, last summer in Dublin, I had a really fun visit with a genealogist at EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum. I have Irish ancestry, somewhat distantly, on both sides. My father’s great-grandmother, Eleanor Armstrong, was born in 1843 County, Armagh, now in Northern Ireland and my mother’s great-great-great grandfather was born in 1812 in Dublin.

 

Barb: How about your Irish heritage? What kind of research did you do to write this book?

 

Maddie: My maternal grandfather, Richard Flaherty, was a classic bullheaded Irish-American in San Francisco who didn’t speak to my mother from shortly before I was born until he died, as stubborn as ever and with a full head of dark hair, at ninety-four. He had twin brothers who didn’t speak to each other. On the other hand, one of those twin’s sons, my mom’s cousin Bill, is a sweet and devoted family man I’ve gotten to know a bit. I look forward to finally getting to Ireland sometime soon and digging more deeply into the Flahertys of my great-grandparents’ generation.

 

Unlike you, Barb, I didn’t dig too far into the Irish in Indiana, and my Maxwell family roots there are Scottish. For research, I adapted and tested lots of Irish-flavored recipes, and otherwise went full-on American interpretation of the holiday (except green beer). 

 

Maddie and Barb: Thank you to Jenn for hosting us! We hope you’ll all join us at the Wicked Authors blog every weekday, and find us at our web sites and on social media. We wish you happy Irish-styled reading.

 

Readers: What’s your favorite holiday to read about? Do you celebrate any obscure holidays nobody writes about? Do you have a St. Patrick’s Day tradition? We’ll each give away a copy of our new book to two commenters (that is two commenters, two books each).

 

In Four Leaf Cleaver, there’s no mistaking Saint Patrick’s Day at Pans ’N Pancakes, where  the shelves of vintage cookware in her southern Indiana store are draped with Kelly-green garlands and her restaurant is serving shepherd’s pie and Guinness Beer brownies. The big event, however, is a televised Irish cooking competition to be filmed on site. Unfortunately, someone’s luck has run out. Before the cameras start rolling, tough-as-nails producer Tara O’Hara Moore is found upstairs in her B&B room, a heavy cleaver left by her side. Now, not only does Robbie have a store full of festive decorations, she’s got a restaurant full of suspects . . .

 

In “Perked Up,” Barb’s novella in Irish Coffee Murder, It’s a snowy St. Patrick’s night in Busman’s Harbor, Maine. When the power goes out, what better way for Julia Snowden to spend the evening than sharing local ghost stories—and Irish coffees—with friends and family? By the time the lights come back, they might even have solved the coldest case in town . . .

 

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the new Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-nominated short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and cat Martin north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, Wicked Authors, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media: BookBub,Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

 

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries. Her books have been nominated for multiple Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara’s Maine Clambake novellas are included along with stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. Barbara and her husband live in Portland, Maine. Readers can visit her website at www.maineclambakemysteries.com, on her blog at Wicked Authors and on BookBub, Goodreads, Facebook, and Instagram.