Plausible Deception by Dwain Lee
About Plausible Deception
Plausible Deception
Mystery/Detective/LGBT/Quozy
Setting: Primarily Los Angeles/Anaheim CA; Louisville KY; New York NY
Publisher: Butler Books (October 15, 2024)
Paperback: 332 pages
ISBN 978-1-964530-02-4
There’s only one Jackson Stradivarius.
Welcome to the arcane world of handcrafted, professional violins. Master luthier Greg Zhu and his husband, Presbyterian minister Dan Randolph, travel to Los Angeles, where Greg’s newest design is competing for recognition from the Violin Society of America. Only a handful of participants know that the Jackson is at the conference, but the owner offers Greg the rare opportunity to examine it—and Greg is the last person in the room before the violin disappears. Greg and Dan team up with the authorities to clear Greg’s name, catch the thief, and recover the priceless violin before it is lost to the arts and antiquities black market.
About Dwain Lee
Where are you from?
Hi - First, thank you very much for the opportunity to be interviewed! My husband and I live and work in Louisville, Kentucky, and we both love it! I’m a Presbyterian minister here, and I serve as pastor to a fantastic congregation in the east suburbs. I’ve lived here since 2016. Before that, I lived for two years in Auburn New York, in the Finger Lakes region of the state, and before that, I lived in Columbus, Ohio for thirty years. All of that hopping around originally started, though, in Masontown, Pennsylvania, in the southwestern corner of the state, where I grew up.
Tell us your latest news?
Wow, things around here are very exciting at the moment. The book was released on October 14, and I’m in the middle of a whirlwind of personal appearances and promotions. It’s now listed on Goodreads, and I’m thrilled to report that the US Review of Books has just given the book a RECOMMENDED rating, reserved for the top 10 to 20% of books they review, and they will be featuring it in their various online platforms in November. You can read that full review at
https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1/Plausible-Deception-Dwain-Lee.html
In other news – Plausible Deception is a story woven around two recurring events in my husband’s professional life – he, like one of the two main characters in the book, is an internationally-recognized violin maker. The mystery takes place during a very prestigious convention and competition he was part of in Los Angeles in November of 2022. Right now, he’s working literally around the clock to get ready for the same competition, which will be taking place in Indianapolis this year. In fact, the date you’re scheduled to read this interview, I’ll be at that convention doing a book signing, and in the evening, the two of us will be attending the big awards banquet for this year’s competition – wish him luck!
When and why did you begin writing?
I can remember writing stories pretty much as soon as I learned how to print the alphabet. I loved being read to as a child and quickly learned to read myself. Once that happened, I read everything I got my hands on. To keep me in stock with reading material, one of my grandmothers cut children’s stories out of magazines she subscribed to and pasted them into an album, making a story book for me. I remember thinking that if she could make a book, so could I, so I started crafting books of my (very simple) stories, binding them together with yarn or metal clasps. Maybe the writing bug started in that early experience. In my first career as an architect, I loved the written part of the profession, explaining and detailing the concepts behind the architectural designs, painting images with words to go along with the actual graphic images, every bit as much as the designing itself. During that time, I was also doing some amateur short-story writing in a now-defunct internet forum. Since then, I’ve written a couple of magazine articles that further whetted my appetite for writing.
In my current career, of course, I write a kind of story every week, as I research and craft my weekly sermons. That’s a very different kind of writing, at least for me – where most of my writing up till then was “writing primarily to be read,” sermon writing is “writing primarily to be spoken,” which is a very different task with a different set of rules, allowable grammar, syntax, etc. Now that I’m writing more to be read again, I’m enjoying the kind of code-switching that requires.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Based on my last answer, I’d say around age five! I’ve beena number of things in my life, but the enjoyment of writing in some manner has woven through all of it. As an architect years ago, I knew a consulting engineer who poked fun at self-proclaimed experts of one discipline or another by commenting, “You aren’t really an author until someone else calls you an author.” That comment has always stuck with me, and while I’d say I was a writer my entire life, I hesitated to call myself an author until this book was actually in print, and someone else had read it, and called me an author. So maybe the real answer to your question is “somewhere between age five and 64.” 😊
What inspired you to write your first book?
I’d actually started writing a bit of non-fiction – a biography of Eugene Carson Blake, head of the Presbyterian Church and a major civil rights advocate in the 1960s who worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin in organizing the 1963 March on Washington – but I hit constant roadblocks and eventually gave up with that project. Even during that effort, though, I felt like I’d like to write some non-fiction, but something based in reality. This book accomplishes that for me.
The idea for this book originated in a harrowing, almost heart-stopping incident that happened to my husband in the main terminal of LAX as he was arriving for that 2022 competition – an incident that’s recounted in the book almost exactly as it happened. Afterward, I’d commented to him that the incident sounded like something you’d read in a book, not experience in real life. That comment stuck with me, and even before the end of that convention I was teasing out a rough idea for a mystery spinning outward from that near-disaster. While the theft of the violin in the story is completely fictional, much of the story is framed in real events and situations.
The book is also intended to give me a vehicle to examine parts of my own life’s journey, trying to embed my own self-reflection into the story. It’s also meant to offer a realistic portrayal of a loving same-sex marriage of two sixty-year olds looks like, in the hopes of dispelling inaccurate and often hateful stereotypes that are so common in our society today. My goal in writing this book – and subsequent books in what I hope will become a series –will be to do both of those things in a natural, organic way integral to the particular story being told.
Do you have a specific writing style?
I’m not equating the quality or importance of my own writing with these two at all, but I recognize some instinctive stylistic similarities between my writing style to some of that of Frederick Buechner and James Baldwin – so if anyone is familiar with those two brilliant authors, if you like their style, mine might resonate with you.
How did you come up with the title?
The phrase “plausible deception” is something said by the character Greg Zhu early in the story. He makes the comment related to the way he antiques the violins he creates, making them look like they’re hundred of years old when their actual age might be measured in weeks. But the term becomes a recurring theme in the plot, where deception of various types play out – in violins, in situations, and in people.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I hope that readers enjoy the mystery which offers a behind-the-scenes peek into the world of fine violins and violin making – a world few of us are part of – but there is definitely more to the book. It’s also an essay on serious issues such as xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and racism - that many individuals are quick to judge based on surface perceptions, obscuring their ability to see people and situations for what they really are. I sometimes describe this book in a self-effacing way, saying it isn’t anything deep or intellectual – it’s just light, fun reading. But maybe readers will discover that that in itself is just another of the deceptions found in the book.
And of course, I hope that readers will find themselves enjoying the characters of Dan and Greg, and that they’ll want to read more about them in the future.
What would you like my readers to know?
I’d love for your readers to give this debut novel a read, and to let me know their thoughts – not just what they liked or disliked, but why – as a first-time author, I really appreciate readers’ feedback. I’d also love to hear from them regarding any questions about the story, the characters, or plans for subsequent books in the series. They can always reach me by email at dwainlee.author@gmail.com , or through the Dwain Lee, Author Facebook page.
Thank you again so much for the opportunity to speak with you and your readers. I’ve really enjoyed your questions!
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