Paul Austin Ardoin's Blog, page 6

Ceremony Early Reviews!

Starting a new series, in my experience, is more nerve-wracking than publishing my first book. With Fenway, I'd planned and ruminated for so long that I wrote it mostly for my own sense of accomplishment, and was pleasantly surprised every time someone else enjoyed reading it. But publishing Ceremony (coming August 17!) feels more intense—there are much higher expectations to live up to. Which is probably why I'm so immensely gratified and honored that fellow writers and early readers are giving such wonderful feedback! Here is a review from fellow mystery/ thriller author, D. F. Hart:

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Ceremony Author's Note Topic 6: Ibogaine

Quite often when I write books, there won’t be an exact medication or drug that does what I need in the plot. So I’ll make one up with some of the characteristics of one chemical and other characteristics of another.

When I was researching Ceremony, I kept coming back to a controlled substance called ibogaine. Ibogaine is a hallucinogen, and has been used for centuries in Africa in religious ceremonies. Some research suggests that ibogaine can treat alcoholism and opiate addiction, but there are other indications that it’s dangerous—according to Wikipedia, 1 in 300 users die from heart problems after ingesting it. As a result, it’s banned in many countries, including the USA. It’s a schedule 1 narcotic, up there with cocaine and LSD: it is not to be used for any reason, including medicine.

Supposedly the natives of West Africa shredded the bark, then chewed on it to get a “high”—hallucinations, numbness of the skin—I didn’t find a lot of information about what the high actually was. And it’s also apparently hard on the heart—a bunch of people died from it, although the information I found was mostly anecdotal.

So what I found fascinating is that the plant, tabaranthe iboga, is totally unregulated in the USA. You can buy seeds off the internet, plant them in your backyard (moist soil, hot weather, partial shade if you’ve got a green thumb), and let the plants grow. It normally grows to about 6 feet tall. I’m not suggesting you grow this plant—who knows, the DEA might be monitoring your tabaranthe iboga purchases—and it’s likely that if you were ever to shred...Read More

Ceremony Author's Note Topic 5: Supersmeller

One of the main characters of my new Murders of Substance series is Dr. Kep Woodhead. He’s a forensic toxicologist in his early fifties and an expert in poisons. But the most unusual thing about him is that he’s a “supersmeller”—he can detect and specify scents far beyond the olfactory range of most humans.

Some of my early readers asked about his special ability and how I came up with the idea. 

Many people are familiar with the recent spate of Sherlock Holmes TV shows and movies. One of my favorites here in the USA is a modern day take on Sherlock set in New York, starring Jonny Lee Miller (yes, the first husband of Angelina Jolie) as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Watson. An episode that first aired in December 2014 entitled “The Adventure of the Nutmeg Concoction” featured Sherlock getting assistance from one of his “irregulars”—consultants with strange specialties who wish to remain under the radar—known only as “The Nose.” This man identifies many smells of the titular nutmeg concoction to establish a common link to a string of murders. (My favorite line from that episode: “The nutmeg is dominant, but it’s the olfactory equivalent of a burlesque dancer.”)

I didn’t think much about it at the time, but when I had the idea for a book series based around poisoning murders, I decided to give one of the main characters a similar unusual olfactory talent. 

I started researching whether or not people like this actually exist or if it’s purely in the realm of fiction, and I happened upon a few articles and videos made about George Aldrich.

Aldrich is...Read More

Ceremony Author's Note Topic 4: Anne Askew

In an earlier blogpost, I mentioned that the St. Joan of Arc Chapel at Marquette University plays a role in my upcoming novel, but under a different name: the Anne Askew Chapel.

Anne Askew was a Protestant reformer during the reign of Henry VIII. She was devoutly religious, and escaped her home (and her unhappy marriage to a Catholic) to preach in London. She was accused of heresy—not because she was a female “gospeller,” but because she didn’t believe in transubstantiation. According to records, she’s the only woman who’s ever been tortured at the Tower of London.

Askew was an important figure in the Tudor era (her death even takes center stage in the TV show The Tudors, Season 4, Episode 9), and I was shocked that I’d never read about her before. (At university, I had to take an upper-division history class on the Tudor monarchs in order to complete my creative writing major. I got the lowest grade of my college career in it, though, so maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.) It seemed to me that she’d done almost as much for religious reform in England as Joan of Arc did in France. And both Anne Askew and Joan of Arc were burned at the stake for heresy. 

In Ceremony, Askew is the central figure of a (fictional) splinter-group church, and Askew’s themes from her poetry are central to the church’s teachings—and the religious ceremony of the title. While the church Askew preached in was never disassembled in London...Read More

Ceremony, Author's Note Topic 3: The Restaurants of Milwaukee

I’m in a writing group here in Sacramento (the “farm-to-fork capital”), and my fellow writers are often telling me that reading my books makes them hungry—Fenway Stevenson loves those lengua tacos at Dos Milagros. My new series, MURDERS OF SUBSTANCE, doesn’t fall too far from that tree. 

The first book, Ceremony, is set in Milwaukee, a city of about half a million people about 100 kilometers north of Chicago. For three years, I worked for a company headquartered in Milwaukee, and I traveled there a couple of times every month. As a business traveler, I ate most of my meals out—and discovered how fantastic the restaurants in Milwaukee are, even if I was mostly limited to ones I could walk to from the Third Ward.

I set quite a few scenes from Ceremony in these restaurants, but, to my taste buds’ chagrin, I had to cut quite a few of them during the edits. I miss these restaurants, and plan to go back as soon as I can (what with the pandemic… and me living 2,000 miles away…) 

Bavette. A tiny butcher shop with a restaurant on Menomenee Street in the Third Ward, Bavette has literally the best roast beef sandwich I’ve ever had in my life (and there’s no close second). That transcendent sandwich is one of the few constants on the menu, and the specials are usually phenomenal too. In my first draft of CEREMONY, two of the law enforcement pros assigned to the murder...Read More

Ceremony, Author's Note Topic 2: Invasive Bloodsuckers

Ceremony (Coming August 17) is the first mystery novel I've written that's not a Fenway Stevenson book. It's the first book in a series about a brilliant forensic toxicologist with a nose for trouble and the disgraced federal investigator who gets one last chance for redemption. Together, they solve some of the most baffling poisoning murders across the nation. I had to do a lot of research for Ceremony, and the stuff that made it into the book is about 80% real, honest-to-goodness fact, and about 20% fictionalized versions of events or real places. This is the second blog post in a series of the behind-the-curtain research that went into making Ceremony.

Topic 2: Lampreys and Freshwater Sciences

They’ve been called “the little vampires of the Great Lakes,” and sea lampreys almost destroyed the fishing industry in the Upper Midwest of the United States in the 1950s. Many scientists believe sea lampreys were the first truly destructive invasive species in North America.

Lampreys are a primitive fish—scientists believe the species are at least 360 million years old. They’re jawless and they have a round mouth with a bunch of teeth. And they stick themselves on the side of a trout or salmon and suck their blood.

They’re kind of gross.

So why am I writing about lampreys in a mystery blog?

As you may have figured out, lampreys play an important role in Read More

Review: The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg

The Quantum Curators, Book 1 • Eva St. John • ★★★★

Death or Glory – just another day in the office.

The idea of the book—curators who travel between parallel universes to capture valuable items before they are destroyed by history—is intriguing. The head of the curator group who travels to Earth B to save the Faberge Egg may be a little too much of the kick-ass humorless type, but she's nevertheless well-drawn and human.

The plot is interesting, but it gets bogged down by its own weight in places, and conflicts often resolve far too quickly—so much so that I didn't think the book was actually over. With so much unresolved by the end of the book, too, it's a bit maddening to realize that this is merely the first of the series and the next book (or maybe later ones) will need to finalize the unresolved threads—and there are many.

The writing style is smooth and it's easy to like the main characters. There could be a better idea of who we're supposed to root against, but these issues really just lower it to four stars from the full five.

Buy The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg on Amazon, or read for free with Kindle Unlimited

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Ceremony, Author Note Topic 1: The Chapel

Ceremony (Coming August 17) is the first mystery novel I've written that's not a Fenway Stevenson book. It's the first book in a (hopefully) long series about a brilliant forensic toxicologist with a nose for trouble and the disgraced federal investigator who gets one last chance for redemption. Together, they solve some of the most baffling poisoning murders across the nation.  I had to do a lot of research for Ceremony, and the stuff that made it into the book is about 80% real, honest-to-goodness fact, and about 20% fictionalized versions of events or real places. This is the first blog post in a series of the behind-the-curtain research that went into making Ceremony. 

 Topic 1: The Chapel 

In my novel, the campus of Milwaukee Technical University houses a 15th century chapel that was disassembled in London and rebuilt, stone by stone, in Milwaukee, and, finally, serves as a mysterious and slightly mystical backdrop for the first murder of the series.  According to the fictionalized history in Ceremony, the chapel was originally built in England, the martyr in question was Anne Askew, and the university was the made-up Milwaukee Tech. 

In real life, the chapel was in France, southeast of Lyon—and the martyr was Joan of Arc. In the 1920s, a railroad heiress (and a superfan of Joan of Arc) learned of the chapel, originally called St. Martin de Seysseul. She acquired it, then had it dismantled and shipped across the ocean, and renamed it the St. Joan of Arc Chapel. She owned property in New York where she’d also reassembled a French Renaissance chateau. A few years later, Pope Pius XI gave his permission to hold Mass in the chapel.

In 1962, the heiress sold the property—including the chateau and the chapel—to an American entrepreneur and...Read More

Dedicated to the Memory of Barbara Hansen

Book dedications carry a lot of meaning for me. I dedicated Book 4, The Upstaged Coroner, to my Shakespeare professor who passed away at age 96. (He had a doppelgänger in the book.) I dedicated Book 6, The Watchful Coroner, to my former boss who passed away early in the COVID days. Book 7, The Accused Coroner, wraps up the first arc of the Fenway Stevenson series, and it has a dedication to someone very important to the development of the series: Barbara Hansen.  

Barbara Hansen was the mother of my story editor, Max Christian Hansen, and she was an avid reader of exactly the kind of mysteries I love—Sue Grafton was one of her favorites. 

I met Max in 2017 in a local writing group when I became serious about finishing The Reluctant Coroner. He thought his mom would like my novel, and he was right. Even after Max began editing my books, his mother would voraciously read the paperback as soon as it came out—I think she read the first paperback available for the first few books in the series. And after finishing each Fenway Stevenson mystery, she pestered Max about when I would come out with my next book (and he'd pester me in turn). 

pageBarbara Hansen was an accountant by trade, and finally, after a couple of decades of pruning down her client list, retired in her early 90s. After I came out with The Courtroom Coroner, I went over to Max's house and his mother was delighted to see me, and even though we’d met a few times, she shook my hand as if I were Sue Grafton. (She may very well have been my biggest fan.)  She passed away last year, and I wish she'd been able to read The Accused Coroner. I think...Read More

The Accused Coroner is a B&N Five Favorite Indie eBook!

The Accused Coroner is one of the Barnes & Noble Five Favorite Indie Books this week! So proud to be included in this group.

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