Consider the life of the amateur sleuth. These are usually mild-mannered people, living their lives, minding their own business. They come from all walks of life — house wives, cupcake bakers, shop owners, innkeepers, dog groomers, retired baseball players, hairdressers, the list goes on and on. They’re generally friendly sorts, but sometimes curmudgeonly in an amusing way. Unfortunately, they usually stumble across the murder victim and find themselves surrounded by clues and mysterious people and before they know it, hurled into peril, smack dab in the murderer’s path with warnings from loved ones and the police to stay our of it.
In reality, if a person came across as many corpses as the hero or heroine does, they would need serious therapy. But in the land of fiction, one thing all of the amateur sleuths share is a taste of curiosity to the point of being downright nosy. As the mystery series develops, so do the skills of the armchair crimesolver and they get move involved in solving the cases earlier, sometimes becoming professional private detectives.
In STRANGLED BY SILK, the first in our Poppy Cove Mystery Series, Margot and Daphne are the two heroines who run their own design atelier that puts them in the heart of the social set, where they are privy to all the town gossip and know the murder victim as one of their favorite clients. As we are hard at work at the second novel of the series, we’re looking at how their involvement and skills develop, and are learning how to continue crafting the tales in this fine literary tradition in a way that engages our readers, as much as us, the writers.
Toodles,
Barbara Jean Coast
aka Andrea & Heather
