Candidate for Murder by Lauren Carr Review & Interview

Book Description for Candidate for Murder :

It’s election time in Spencer, Maryland, and the race for mayor is not a pretty one. In recent years, the small resort town has become divided between the local year-round residents who have enjoyed their rural way of life and the city dwellers moving into their mansions, taking over the town council, and proceeding to turn Deep Creek Lake into a closed gate community—complete with a host of regulations for everything from speed limits to clothes lines.

When the political parties force-feed two unsavory mayoral nominees on the town residents, Police Chief David O’Callaghan decides to make a statement—by nominating Gnarly, Mac Faraday’s German shepherd, to run as mayor of Spencer!

What starts out as a joke turns into a disaster when overnight Gnarly becomes the front runner—at which point his political enemies take a page straight out of Politics 101. What do you do when you’re behind in a race? Dig up dirt on the front runner, of course.

Seemingly, someone is not content to rest with simply embarrassing the front runner by publicizing his dishonorable discharge from the United States Army, but to throw in a murder for good measure. With murder on the ballot, Mac Faraday and the gang—including old friends from past cases—dive in to clear Gnarly’s name, catch a killer, and save Spencer!

Buy the book:   Amazon

Author's Bio:

Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, and Thorny Rose Mysteries. The twelfth installment in the Mac Faraday Mystery series, Candidate for Murder will be released June 2016.

Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She lives with her husband, son, and four dogs (including the real Gnarly) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.

Connect with Lauren: Website  ~  Twitter  ~  Facebook

Book Trailer:

@TheMysteryLadie  and @iReadBookTours

hashtags:   #Vote4Gnarly  #mystery #giveaway

Interview

1. Lauren, I’m very excited to have you here to talk about your newest book in the Mac Faraday series:  Candidate for Murder.  What can you tell us about the story?

Fans of the Mac Faraday mysteries will be thrilled with Candidate for Murder, which is Gnarly’s book. It provides readers with Gnarly’s backstory.

It’s election time in Spencer, Maryland, and the race for mayor is not a pretty one. In recent years, the small resort town has become divided between the local year-round residents who have enjoyed their rural way of life and the city dwellers moving into their mansions, taking over the town council, and proceeding to turn Deep Creek Lake into a closed gate community—complete with a host of regulations for everything from speed limits to clothes lines.

When the political parties force-feed two unsavory mayoral nominees on the town residents, Police Chief David O’Callaghan decides to make a statement—by nominating Gnarly, Mac Faraday’s German shepherd, to run as mayor of Spencer!  

What starts out as a joke turns into a disaster when overnight Gnarly becomes the front runner—at which point his political enemies take a page straight out of Politics 101. What do you do when you’re behind in a race? Dig up dirt on the front runner, of course.

Seemingly, someone is not content to rest with simply embarrassing the front runner by publicizing his dishonorable discharge from the United States Army, but to throw in a murder for good measure.

With murder on the ballot, Mac Faraday and the gang—including old friends from past cases—dive in to clear Gnarly’s name, catch a killer, and save Spencer!

2. In Candidate for Murder, you bring back Mac’s daughter, Jessica, and her husband, Murphy Thornton, the detectives in the Thorny Rose mysteries to help out on the case. What was it like having the detectives of one series cross over to another?

It was tricky, but proved to be necessary. The Mac Faraday mysteries are set on Deep Creek Lake. In Candidate for Murder, one of the candidates for mayor is murdered. Since Gnarly doesn’t have an alibi, it is up to Mac to prove he’s innocent.

However, as circumstances will have it, Gnarly’s political opponents dig up his past and the media claims he was a suspect in a murder that occurred when he was in the Army.

Therefore, we have two murder cases happening simultaneously in Candidate for Murder. While Mac works to solve the murder in Deep Creek Lake, the Thorny Rose detectives, who have the connections necessary to dig into Gnarly’s past, work to clear Gnarly’s name.

Candidate for Murder ended up being my most complicated, and fun, mysteries because suspicions and clues take the detectives in every direction—often leading them into unexpected places.

3. I do love the setting for the Mac Faraday books (Deep Creek Lake).  How did you come to choose this locale?

That’s a funny story. After A Reunion to Die For was released, my sister-in-law asked me to set a mystery in Pelican Lake, Wisconsin; the small lakeside resort town where she and her husband have their summer home. Well, their summer house is at the end of a piece of land called The Point, and is actually surrounded by water on three sides. They have a quite distinctive home. When anyone in Pelican refers to the house on the Point, everyone knows you’re talking about Mary’s house.

I did have an idea for another mystery and knew that I needed to create a new character, so I wrote It’s Murder, My Son, which introduced Mac Faraday, a homicide detective, whose wife leaves him and takes everything. On the day his divorce becomes final, he inherits 270 million dollars and a mansion on the Point from his birth mother, the American Queen of Mystery Writers.

Sweet mystery! However, my sister-in-law was horrified when I placed the murder not only in her town, but in her HOUSE! That was too close for comfort for her. So, for family unity, I had to find another setting.

As luck would have it, my family started vacationing in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. I saw instantly that it was very similar to Pelican Lake. Not only that, but a lot of movers and shakers from Washington, D.C., vacation and have summer places there. It creates a wonderfully inspiring mix of characters to choose from that aren’t available in Pelican Lake. So, I plucked my Mac Faraday mystery up from Pelican Lake and plopped him down in the fictional town of Spencer,Maryland, on the shores of Deep Creek Lake. 

4. What does your writing process look like?  Do you have a special routine?

My writing has gotten into more of a routine, which is nice. I am glad to be at that stage where I have found what works for me and what doesn’t. That is what every writer needs to figure out. We’re all different. What one best-selling author will tell you works for them, may not work for you.

I will think on a book for weeks, or even months. Mentally, I will put it all together while formulating characters and researching. Then, I will write out a loose outline—I mean a very loose outline. This is mainly to work it out in my mind because I have found that I will never refer to the outline when I’m writing the book. After going through several drafts, I will send my book to my perfect reader, a fellow author. We swap books for editorial reviews. One hundred percent of the time, after she reads my book, I will end up going back to do a rewrite based on her comments.From the rewrite, my book goes to the editor, and into publication.

5. Do you have a special space where you love to write?

I have a writer’s studio, but if my mind is working away first thing in the morning, I will start writing on my laptop in a chair in the corner of our bedroom. The next thing I know, the morning is gone, I’m still in my jammies, and I haven’t moved from the chair. Other times, I’ll curl up in the recliner next to the fireplace. So, to answer your question, you can find me writing anywhere. When I get into the zone, I forget where I am.

6. What can you share about your daily life, aside from writing?

Besides being a murder mystery writer, I am a wife and mother. My son is seventeen years old. While I think it’s a blast being a mystery writer, he does get embarrassed. Like while we were at the dentist and he was in the chair when I suddenly asked, “Which of these dental instruments would be most effective for a petite woman to use to kill a big strong guy who’s twice her size, but not easily identifiable to the police as a murder weapon? Not the scalpel. That’s too cliché. Can you suggest a unique murder weapon for me to use?” My husband had to start taking Tristan to the dentist after that. But I did get an answer to my question. The dentist even mailed the murder weapon to me a few days later. I’m keeping it in my desk drawer to use in a later book.

7. I understand that you live on a mountaintop in West Virginia.  It sounds so lovely!  Can you tell us a little about it?

Oh, yes, we have a beautiful home in Harpers Ferry. We honeymooned at a bed and breakfast in Harpers Ferry twenty-seven years ago. So now we live twenty minutes from where we honeymooned. My son uses this as an example of how we never go anywhere.

Our house is on top of a mountain right across the Virginia state line. The Appalachian Trail runs across the ridge of the mountain about a mile behind our house. From our deck, we have a view of the Shenandoah Valley to the next mountain range. It is gorgeous and, yes, I do gaze out across the valley while thinking up murder plots.

8. What are you currently writing?

By the end of summer, September 2016, Lovers in Crime will see the third installment for that series, Killer in the Band. Fans of the Lovers in Crime and the Thorny Rose Mysteries will get to know more about Joshua Thornton Jr (J.J.), Murphy’s identical twin brother and Joshua Thornton’s eldest son.

J.J. has graduated at the top of his class from law school and is returning home to spend the summer studying for the bar exam. However, to the Thornton’s shock and dismay, J.J. decides to move in with Suellen Russell, a lovely widow twice his age. The move brings long buried tensions between the father and son to the surface. When a brutal killer strikes, the father and son must set all differences aside to solve the crime before J.J. ends up in the crosshairs of a murderer.

In November, fans of the Thorny Rose Mysteries will see the second installment for that series, A Fine Year for Murder.

My Review:
I love a good mystery. What I like about this series is that the main detective is the same and the recurring characters help you remember other books in the series. Mac is a fun detective to follow and has a great set of friends. But there is an even bigger set of suspects. I have to admit that I really liked the idea of a dog running for office. My town is so Democratic, that anyone would win, no matter the name, so it was interesting to read for me. I did not like when they went against Gnarly though! That cost them more votes! While trying to figure out who the killer was. and issues from the past arose I felt like I was going through the cast of characters and everyone was on my radar. From Jessica's kitchen to Dallas this is full of fun tidbits to keep me laughing. I can not wait for the next book. I am giving this book a 5/5. I was given a copy, all opinions are my own,