Pop Goes the Weasel--Finding Creative Inspiration from Real Life Event
by Martha
Reed
Two pivotal things happened when I was in high school in
1974 that led me to write NO REST FOR THE WICKED, Book 3 in my Nantucket
Mystery series: 1) a girl from my neighborhood vanished on her way home from
the community swimming pool, and 2) I read Kidnap:
The Story of the Lindbergh Case by George Waller.
Both events planted themselves deeply in my teenaged brain. I
knew, even before I became a crime fiction writer that I’d have to come back
and explore these two things someday.
In NO REST FOR THE WICKED, I synthesized the horror of child
abduction and the Lindbergh kidnapping into a modern day ordeal. Because
authors must torture their characters, I made it even more difficult for Detective
John Jarad to solve the fictional Baby Alice Spenser kidnapping by placing the
cold case in 1921 - ninety years in the past - so that John has to contend with
natural attrition, family myth, fading human memory, deliberate misdirection,
and outright lies.
He does, however, get to meet some intriguing and colorful
new characters living at Island Sanctuary, Nantucket’s premier retirement
facility.
As John pursues the Baby Alice investigation, myriad
scandals emerge from the Spenser family’s Gatsby-esque past. DNA analysis
provides the key to deciphering a genetic family puzzle. I also had great fun
comparing the investigative techniques at the state level from 1921 -
fundamentally fingerprint comparisons - against modern day FBI forensic
advances.
To keep the story in balance, John’s wife, Sarah, has a
different life focus. Sarah is halfway through a twin pregnancy, and she’s
convinced that she is losing her mind. Sarah can’t shake the feeling that she’s
being watched. She’d like to blame her paranoia on raging hormones, but she
fears that her control freak ex-fiancée Mason has finally tracked her down, and
that Mason is on Nantucket plotting revenge.
Events flare white-hot when a copycat criminal snatches a
second child. John and Sarah must race against the clock to unmask the
kidnapper and expose these modern day threats.
NO REST FOR THE WICKED is available in trade paperback and
e-book from most retailers. I encourage you to support your local bookstore! Follow
this link to read a free sample:
http://tinyurl.com/lj6ewvk
MARTHA REED (web link: www.reedmenow.com)
is the author of the award-winning John and Sarah Jarad Nantucket Mystery
series. Book one, THE CHOKING GAME, was a 2015 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion
nominee for Best Traditional Mystery. THE NATURE OF THE GRAVE, book two, won an
Independent Publisher (IPPY) Honorable Mention for Mid-Atlantic Best Regional
Fiction. Book three, NO REST FOR THE WICKED was released by Buccaneer/KMA
Pittsburgh in February, 2017.
Martha recently completed a four-year term as the National
Chapter Liaison for Sisters in Crime, Inc. You can follow her online at
reedmenow.com or on Twitter@ReedMartha.
Comments
I am very intrigued by your premise. I hope you'll be signing books at the Pennwriters Conference next month.
It's going to make crime writing even harder. Maybe we'll be left only writing about crimes of passion?
Have you been to Killer Nashville? I attended last year with my friend Annette Dashofy. We had a blast. There's another insightful writers' conference, and local, too.
Martha