Title: Real Murder
Author: Lauren Carr
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
Pages: 302
Genre: Mystery
Format: Paperback/Kindle
Purchase at AMAZONAuthor: Lauren Carr
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
Pages: 302
Genre: Mystery
Format: Paperback/Kindle
When
Homicide Detective Cameron Gates befriends Dolly, the little old lady who lives
across the street, she is warned not to get lured into helping the elderly
woman by investigating the unsolved murder of one of her girls. “She’s senile,”
Cameron is warned. “It’s not a real murder.”
Such is not the case. After Dolly is brutally murdered, Cameron discovers that the sweet blue-haired lady’s “girl” was a call girl, who had been killed in a mysterious double homicide.
Meanwhile, Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton is looking for answers to the murder of a childhood friend, a sheriff deputy whose cruiser is found at the bottom of a lake. The deputy had disappeared almost twenty years ago while privately investigating the murder of a local prostitute.
It doesn’t take long for the Lovers in Crime to put their cases together to reveal a long-kept secret that some believe is worth killing to keep undercover.
Such is not the case. After Dolly is brutally murdered, Cameron discovers that the sweet blue-haired lady’s “girl” was a call girl, who had been killed in a mysterious double homicide.
Meanwhile, Prosecuting Attorney Joshua Thornton is looking for answers to the murder of a childhood friend, a sheriff deputy whose cruiser is found at the bottom of a lake. The deputy had disappeared almost twenty years ago while privately investigating the murder of a local prostitute.
It doesn’t take long for the Lovers in Crime to put their cases together to reveal a long-kept secret that some believe is worth killing to keep undercover.
“Would you like
another breast, Tad?”
Dr. Tad MacMillan
studied the last two bites of white meat on the chicken breast in the middle of
his paper plate before answering the robust woman standing over him with a foil
pan in one hand and a pair of tongs clutching a fried chicken piece in the
other. He was already on his third piece.
“Come on, Tad.”
His wife, Jan, urged him from across the picnic table. Her attention was
divided between her husband, their three-month-old son fussing in the baby
carrier on top of the table, and her long blonde hair that had abruptly become
too hot on her next. “You know you want it. That’s what church picnics are for.
Eating until you bust.” She clenched a hair clip in her teeth and gathered her
hair together with both hands.
Entertained by the
funny looking object sticking out of his mother’s mouth, Tad Jr. giggled.
Tired of waiting
for his response, the woman plopped the plump breast onto his plate and moved
on to the next table to foist the remaining chicken on other picnickers.
“I’m trying to save
room for Cameron’s hot fudge lava cake,” Tad said while searching the parking
lot for his cousin and his wife, “if she ever comes.”
After taking the
clip out of her mouth, Jan continued to make funny faces at the baby, who
giggled harder. “Not to mention the ice cream that Josh is supposed to bring.”
“Where are they
anyway?”
“Cameron got a
lead on a murder case she was working and took off this morning.” After
securing her hair up on top of her head, Jan picked Tad Junior up out of the
carrier. “Josh decided to work on an opening argument that he’s giving
tomorrow. He didn’t want to come without her.”
“Just like
newlyweds.” Tad dove into the next piece of chicken. “I remember when you
refused to go anywhere without me at your side.
“Now I don’t even
notice when you aren’t there,” she confessed. “I never thought we would get
this old and settled.”
“Can you really
picture me being settled?” Tad let out a laugh before peeling the crispy skin
off the chicken piece on his plate.
“I just hope TJ
takes after me instead of you in that regard,” Jan said.
“You’re not the
only one.”
While hugging
their son, Jan looked across the picnic table at her husband, Dr. Tad
MacMillan, the town doctor and Hancock
County
Taking in the
their friends and family that littered the park for the church picnic, Jan found it hard to believe that less than a
decade earlier she had resigned herself to the fact that she would never marry,
let alone have a journalism career, and a fussy baby, who just threw up down
the back of her shirt.
While the older
members of the church congregation were helping themselves to seconds and
thirds of the picnic fare, the younger and more athletic picnickers were racing
paddleboats across the park’s lake. Joshua Thornton’s sixteen-year old-son
Donny, the only remaining child at home, was included in that group. The boys
were racing the girls.
“Faster! Pedal
faster!” Donny yelled at his friend Woody.
“I’m going as fast
as I can!” The chubby teenager who rarely exercised anything except his fingers
while playing computer games was put out with being coerced into this activity
in the first place. At least since he was partnered with Donny, a linebacker on
Oak Glen High School
“Beat you!” the
girls squealed from the shore where they turned their craft around.
With a curse,
Donny kicked at the pedals and sat back to let the sun shine on his face.
The paddleboat
rocked when Woody leaned over the side to peer into the water. “Hey, what’s
that?”
“What?” Donny
replied without opening his eyes.
“Down there.”
“Down where?”
Woody nudged him
in the arm. “In the water. It looks like a car.”
Opening his eyes,
Donny sat up. “So someone tossed their old car into the lake. Happens all the
time.”
“Do the police
dump their old cruisers in the lake, too?”
About the Author
Lauren
Carr is the best-selling author of the Mac Faraday Mysteries, which takes place
in Deep Creek Lake , Maryland
In
addition to her series set on Deep
Creek Lake
Lauren
launched the Lovers in Crime (first introduced in Shades of Murder) mystery series in September 2012 with Dead on Ice. Real
Murder is the second installment in this series.
The
owner of Acorn Book Services, Lauren is also a publishing manager, consultant,
editor, cover and layout designer, and marketing agent for independent authors.
This year, several books, over a variety of genre, written by independent
authors will be released through the management of Acorn Book Services, which
is currently accepting submissions. Visit Acorn Book Services website for more
information.
Lauren
is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on
author panels at conventions. She also passes on what she has learned in her
years of writing and publishing by conducting workshops and teaching in
community education classes.
She
lives with her husband, son, and three dogs on a mountain in Harpers Ferry , WV
Interview:
Where are you from?
I’m a small town girl from Chester, West Virginia, which is where I place the Lovers in Crime Mysteries. Chester was, and is, one of those small towns where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has a secret that they don’t want anyone to know, but there is always someone who does. That’s why I love to place my mysteries in small towns.
Tell us your latest news?
Real Murder is the second installment in the Lovers in Crime Mysteries. It has been receiving rave reviews from readers and has been consistently on Amazon’s best sellers list in police procedurals and cozies.
When and why did you begin writing?
Writers are born writers. They’re natural story tellers. From the time I can remember, even before I knew how to read, I would make up stories. Then, when I would hear stories, I would rewrite them in my head to give them different endings or change characters—always generating toward a mysteries. I remember changing the Bobbsey Twins mysteries of the missing sea shell to make it a kidnapping story.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I was in high school and a friend paid me to write her short story assignment for her creative writing class. It was a story about a dog with fleas (told in first person) and I was paid a cheeseburger, fries, and a can of diet coke. But it wasn’t easy! It was also my first rushed deadline. I had a study hall and a lunch period to write it.
What inspired you to write your first book?
A better question would be what inspired me to write murder mysteries? I always aspired to write novels and generated toward writing romance or humor, even though I exclusively read murder mysteries. Murder mystery writers, as far as I was concerned, had to be geniuses in order to piece together a mystery that would be complicated and fun enough to keep readers on their toes and I didn’t think I was clever enough to write something like that.
Then, shortly after I was married twenty-five years ago, my husband would bring home murder mysteries that to me, just weren’t challenging enough, or I didn’t like the protagonists.
Then, I said those words to myself, “I can write a better mystery myself.” It took me about eight years to stop saying it and to sit down and start writing it.
Do you have a specific writing style?
The best way to describe my style is “I write what I want to read and have fun doing it.”
For years, I struggled with trying to impress literary agents and publishers. Then, after a year of writers block, I decided to write what I really would like to read. Those books have been my most successful. My success is two-fold in that not only do readers enjoy reading them, but I have fun writing them.
How did you come up with the title?
Real Murder comes from an actual line in my latest Lovers in Crime Mystery. Dolly Houseman, a little old blue-haired lady who walks with a cane, lives across the street from the Lovers in Crime, Joshua Thornton and Cameron Gates.
When Cameron Gates ends up on medical leave after jumping off a second story fire escape to capture a killer, she befriends Dolly. However, she is warned not to take the little old lady seriously when she claims that “one of her girls” was murdered and no one cares.
“It is not a real murder,” Cameron is told. But it really is.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Take the time to listen to people.
How much of the book is realistic?
It is fiction, but I do a lot of research into criminal investigations and forensics and how the interconnecting law enforcement agencies work.
Joshua Thornton is the Hancock County Prosecuting Attorney in West Virginia. Yet, his new wife, Cameron Gates, is a homicide detective for the Pennsylvania State Police, which is a couple of miles down the road. There was discussion in the book about jurisdiction and everyone being careful not to step on each other’s toes. However, because the connected crimes are committed in different states, then these people have to work closely together—as well as sleep together, since they are married to each other.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
I always get inspired by things that happen to me in real life. But most of the time, they are quite little incidents that in my writer’s mind, I twist and turn and reproduce into something completely different.
For example, the whole premise of little old Dolly Houseman talking about her girl’s murder, and everyone dismissing it …
I was at a conference when this homely, scrawny older man struck up a conversation with me during lunch. He was one of those nerdy type of men that most people would avoid. Well, during the course of our conversation, he tells me about how, in college, he had a hot romance with a sexy young theater major who went on to become a very glamorous sex symbol back in the eighties and he was still in love with and gets occasional letters from her.
Looking at this man sitting across from me, my jaw is hanging open and I’m thinking, “He must be delusional.”
Now, most people would dismiss him and this story completely because of his appearance, but then, the writer in me asked, “Suppose it was true.” I imagined most people would dismiss his tale completely, but what if …
What books have most influenced your life most?
The classic mysteries. Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, and many more.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
Agatha Christie. I love the way her mind worked. She focused on the mystery in her books and even though readers love my characters, I always work to keep the murder mystery at the forefront in my books.
What book are you reading now?
Cindy McDonald’s To the Breaking Pointe. Her First Force series isn’t a mystery, but it is a thrilling suspense that does keep you on the edge of your seat.
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
Cindy McDonald with her First Force series. I am also working with a new couple of new sci-fi authors whose debut novels will be coming out at the end of this year or the beginning of next. Mac Cusiter and Victor Nieves.
What are your current projects?
A Wedding and a Killing is coming out this month. That is the next Mac Faraday Mystery. I will be touring with Pump UpYour Book Tours for that book in October!
The next Mac Faraday Mystery, Three Days to Forever is expected to be released in December. In this mystery, Mac Faraday is on the run from a death squad who have attacked his home only three days before his and Archie’s big wedding.
Three Days to Forever will feature Mac Faraday and the Lovers in Crime, plus introduce a new couple of detectives, who will star in a new series to be launched next year called The Thorny Rose Mysteries.
Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members?
My pets. My dogs and cats that I have now and have had in the past. The thing about animals is that they love you no matter what. Just look into their eyes and you can see the total adoration that they have for you. As far as they’re concerned, you can do no wrong—even when you can’t zip up your skinny jeans. When I feel down or insecure about my writing, I spend time with my dogs and just soak up those feelings that they are projecting my way.
What would you like my readers to know?
Readers can keep up with me at my website or any of my social media sites.
E-Mail: writerlaurencarr@gmail.net
Website: http://acornbookservices.com/
Blog: Literary Wealth: http://literarywealth.wordpress.com/
Gnarly’s Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/GnarlyofMacFaradayMysteries
Lovers in Crime Facebook Page:
Acorn Book Services Facebook Page:
Twitter: @TheMysteryLadie
For More Information
No comments:
Post a Comment