Clea Simon's Blog, page 15
July 2, 2021
“The Basement,” a short story
Want a little dark crime fiction to kickstart your holiday weekend? Here’s my story “The Basement,” up now in Punk Noir Magazine (free).
PUNK NOIR MAGAZINEThe Only Crime Is Getting CaughtPUNK NOIR MAGAZINEABOUT PUNK NOIR MAGAZINETHE BASEMENT BY CLEA SIMONThe basement. That’s where it all happened. Where we came together. Before the gigs. Before the airplay. Before we hit the road.
You’d have laughed. I know I did. We were such a bunch of misfits, dragged down into that dank hellhole by one crazy idea. Dragged back here by … Well, fuck it. I mean, at first, it sounded like fun.
“We’re gonna be a band. The best band in the world.” That was Rot – Rob, still, in those days. Tuesday afternoon, some vocational class in our old school. Mandatory if you wanted to collect but a waste of time for anything else, and Kurt had been drumming on the desktop with his pencils, making the stiffs glare. I remembered him from around and had gone over, scattering the nobodies with a look and squeezing into that little kid desk to sit beside him. Rob had found us there when he came in, late as usual, dragging Karma over, both of them still bleary-eyed from the night before. “Kid here’s got the beat. And you’ve got a bass, right?”
Band? We didn’t even have a place to play. But it wasn’t like any of us had anything else going on, so when Kurt suggested his basement, we all said what the hell. Karma had a car – a cast-off from her ex – and she moved us all over that night, maybe the next. With the snow that winter, the corner was slow. My amp was too heavy to lug around much anyway, and Kurt’s drums were already in the building, up three flights but still. There was a lock on the front door that mostly worked, and the far side looked dry enough. Rob plugged in the first day and shorted something out. Old pipes, a leak, but the other plug worked. And so it began.
Band. What a joke. Only Karma had that voice. You know – the one that stops you cold? In those days, though, she was so shy she couldn’t sing in front of us. We’d all heard her, nights when she was high. That’s why she was there. We’d all seen her, out on the street, too, and figured she’d be game for anything. But singing? Guess we all have a weak spot. Guess I should know.
Her’s almost broke us. Ending us before it began, half a night dragging our shit around town for nothing. Tromping through the ice and the muck. It was Rot who figured it out. Told her to stand in the janitor’s closet, door open for light. He’d been poking around, looking for something to sell. Figured she’d want to get out of there, so full of junk – construction shit, repair shit – there was barely room to stand, even after we ripped the pipes out. Took a while though. She made herself comfortable, lounging on those old sacks of Quikrete like a queen. But we could hear her, even then.
We all had our part. Rot got a real guitar. Copper paid good. Me on my bass, the deep thrum-thrum that kept us steady. God knows, Kurt didn’t. A wild man on the set, he was all power and speed. Unreliable as hell, though, especially when he was high. Tempo going like his heartbeat – faster, faster, fast. Didn’t matter. He was a big guy. Loud, and we needed that. We each had a part to play.
Good times, bashing away, and with Kurt going nuts we kept cranking it up. My old amp heating up so hard the walls were steaming, and Rob windmilling like mad. We were onto something – an energy if not a tune – the beat so loud we couldn’t hear anything else. Didn’t hear the angry dude until he was right in front of us, hands on his hips and a face like he was going to fire us all.
“What the fuck? Didn’t you hear me?” The cold coming in behind him.
“No, man.” Kurt must have known him from the building. He sounded sort of sorry. “We were just practicing.”
“This isn’t a practice space.” He scowled like that was supposed to mean something. “Some of us need to sleep.”
“Sorry.” Kurt put his sticks down and the guy stormed off.
Just in time. My fists still bunched as Karma came out, giggling, eyes wide in the light. “Whoa, what an asshole.” She took in our faces. Mine. “Don’t worry guys. I had my knife.”
Girl talk. We weren’t worried, but we did stick to daytime after that. Most afternoons, when we didn’t have to clock in. Time passed, and we were getting pretty good.
“Hey, man, cut the artsy shit.” I spoke without thinking. Rot – Rob – playing rock star. “You’re ruining the thrust.”
“Thrust is what it’s about.” He lunged with his Strat, but Kurt was with me by then.
“No, he’s right,” he said. “Keep it stripped down. Basic. Real.”
A shrug. I’d won. “We going again?” Karma, calling from the closet.
Kurt grinned. “One-two-three-four!” Another day, another practice. All of us just looking for something to do.
“So, I talked to someone. Jimmy – from the Five Spot?” Karma made everything a question, so I nodded. I’d become the leader by then. I guess the bass always is. Setting the tempo. Keeping everyone in line without even throwing a punch.
“We’re ready.” I looked around. Kurt was Kurt. He didn’t respond, but Rob was into it. “Shit, yeah! Let’s do it!”
Two weeks later, we loaded our gear into Karma’s car. Two sets at the Five Spot. Then a party at the Locals’ loft, and someone had a van that we could use. By July, we were gigging all over. Rob had become Rot, and Kurt had shaved his head.
“It makes me look mean.”
Not that mean. “Play that song again.” Some bratty kid had pushed his way up. “The one that goes pow-pow-pow!”
July, and we had fans. People who showed up at our gigs without knowing us beforehand. I laid down the rules. Buy us beer and you could make a request. That worked out well for the clubs too. Plus, it made me laugh. All our songs were the same, pretty much. Didn’t matter. They didn’t notice, and we all got off on playing. The power, the energy. Rob posing out front, and Kurt bashing away. Besides, Karma’s singing gave us an edge. Set us off from the other thrash bands. I knew it, even if she didn’t, and I wasn’t surprised when the kid from Banger Records started pestering us to go into the studio.
“You paying?” Wiping my bass down. The club was a sweatbox, and I was soaked.
“Not our deal.” Suburban kid, playing at punk. His teeth were too good. “We split the costs. I handle distribution, airplay.”
“We’re getting airplay.” Some college DJ had taped a show. Kurt had wanted to kill him, until that zine writer had shown up. She was cute, and she liked them big. The exposure didn’t hurt either.
“Not like I could get you.” The kid, head tilted to one side like he could play me. “Four track, proper mics. You’d sound huge.”
“Huge, huh?” It was going to cost. I knew that. My unemployment was running out, and the record store wasn’t having me back. Not after the fight, the blood sprayed up high on the wall. Didn’t matter, none of us had money to spare. I saw how Rob was hopping about, pupils like pinballs. Happy, high. But I’d also seen how Karma’s eyes had lit up as the kid talked. She wanted this, so, yeah, I did too.
We called a band meeting, next day in the basement. What got me was how into it even Kurt was. I guess he liked banging away. Maybe it was the girls.
At any rate, I laid out the plan. Every gig, half whatever we got paid would go into the pot. We were playing for the door, most places, so I knew there were workarounds. Rob let his dealer pad the list, and Kurt’s bar tab cut into our take. But it was a plan we could all live with, especially once they agreed I’d keep the money. Keep it safe.
Two nights later, we had a deal. October, we’d go into the studio – some place over in the South End. The kid would front the money for the time, but we had to get our share in before we started. And by the way? We needed songs.
“You’ve got something. I know that.” Those good teeth bared in a smile. “But, come on, two songs? Two that don’t sound exactly like each other? How hard can that be?”
“Fuck you.” Bait and switch. I should have seen it coming. Itched to shove those white teeth into red. The band, though, they’d heard him too.
“We can do that.” Rob, on the rise, pulling me aside. Kurt nodding along. “Come on, man. Let’s get to it. I bet we can write ten songs in a week.”
We started practicing in earnest then. Coming together for more than to bash and laugh. Kurt got discipline, somewhere in there. His rhythm became rock solid. His attitude changed too.
“Stop, stop.” Standing. Sticks pointed at me. “Back at the bridge, you keep fucking it up.”
Any other time, that would have been it. Kurt wasn’t that big. But I held back. It felt good, that summer. Like we were heading somewhere. Had a goal. Practice every day, no excuses. Got to the point I didn’t notice the smell. By then, I’d stopped skimming off our earnings, even when I was short.
Karma had moved into my place, which helped. Still bringing in some money and I didn’t ask. A girl has to eat, right? More to the point, she’d gotten over her shyness. Tough as she was, everyone loved her. And that voice.
She still liked the closet though. “You guys, I can’t hear myself.” She’d shake her head, taking the mike with her, the cord like a rat’s tail over the gritty floor.
She was in there when the guy came down again, the asshole from upstairs. We’d forgotten about him. Forgotten about the daytime rule. Weekends, whatever. We had a mission, and who was he to us?
Angry, that’s what. “What the fuck?” Staring at us like we each had two heads. “I thought I told you jerks to get lost ages ago.”
“Hey, I pay rent here too.” Kurt. I didn’t think he did, but I wasn’t going to interrupt. “Basement’s public.”
“You wanna tell the landlord that?” Leaning forward, like he knew something we didn’t. “You wanna tell the cops?” Kurt starting to stand, when Karma came out.
“Cool it, everybody.” She knew Kurt. Knew me. Stepping forward with that swagger that said so much. “I’m sure we can figure something out, Daddio. Right?”
The asshole looked at her. We all did. Sweaty from the closet, from the summer heat. Her tank top sticking to her like paint. The water dripping from the wall the only sound. My girl. My band. We’d all worked so damned hard. He reached out, a leer spreading across his face. Karma, and I saw red.
Later she told me what she’d meant, wanting to keep me sweet. We were gigging, she said. We could afford a practice space. Use the Five Spot, even, as long as we kept on with Tuesday nights. Dip into the kitty, if we had to. That was all. It was too late by then, of course. We were halfway to Texas before we knew it, calling every college station that had aired our tape. Playing hard and fast and moving on.
“Think we can go back sometime?” Karma and me, sitting on a levee. Cold-enough beer and concrete down into black water. “Say we’ve been on tour?”
“We’ll come back heroes.” I threw my can, waited for the splash.
They caught up to us outside Vicksburg, the heat like a hand pressing down.
“Was I speeding, officer?” Karma, big-eyed, beside me. Rob, or maybe it was Kurt, snoring in the back.
“This isn’t about your driving, son.” The cop looked sad, which threw me. “Why don’t you step out and we’ll have a talk.”
I haven’t seen Karma since then. Rob either, though he calmed down once Kurt was on the ground. A big guy goes down hard. But it doesn’t matter what any of them say. I’ve told you what happened. What I know.
I guess Rob was wrong about the Quikrete. Maybe the mix, the closet just too big. That leak didn’t help things. Even with the mold, a stench you couldn’t ignore.
All I know is, I don’t wanna go down to the basement. Not again, not now. We had some good times, though. Damn.
Clea Simon is a former music critic turned mystery novelist. The Boston scene that she used to cover serves as the setting for her 2017 mystery “World Enough” (Severn House), which was named a Massachusetts Book Awards Must-Read, and also for her upcoming “Hold Me Down” (Polis, Oct. 5, 2021). She also has a bunch of books out featuring cats.
June 28, 2021
Caroline Leavitt’s WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
Finally, With or Without You is out in paperback!
What happens when a young woman, desperate to appease the rock-star dreams of her partner, falls into a coma – and then wakes months later to find her world has changed? This twisty, turny psychologically complex novel is the perfect read for our own post-pandemic awakening!
June 25, 2021
BLOODROOT short story news!
Woot! Woot! I am thrilled to announce that I’ll have a story in the upcoming BLOODROOT: BEST NEW ENGLAND CRIME STORIES 2021 by Crime Spell Books. My short story, “No Cities to Love,” is a kind of futuristic take on women taking care of themselves and their own … with a beat! Pub date is November and I’ll post more when I get ’em, folks.
Here’s the announcement and full lineup: “The editors at Crime Spell Books are pleased to announce that the following stories by these authors will appear in Bloodroot, Best New England Crime Stories anthology #19.”
Christine Bagley “Valhalla”
Brenda Buchanan “Means, Motive and Opportunity”
Bruce Coffin “Murphy’s Law”
Hans Copek “The Visa”
A.L. Dawson “The Crossing”
Kat Fast “Only You”
Kate Flora “Best Served Cold”
Judith Green “Virtue Is Its Own Reward”
Jane Haertel “Where the Wild Pigs Are”
Vaughn Hardacker “Just Like Jesse James”
Zakariah Johnson “Egg on Her Face”
Frederic T. Jones “Bounty”Chris Knopf “Rescue”
Lisa Lieberman “The Virgin’s Necklace”
Edith Maxwell “Dark Corners”
Susan Oleksiw “Chuck Zanger Exceeds His Skill Set”
Eugenia Parrish “A Death at the Crossroads”
Ang Pompano “Directions to Justice”
Stephen Rogers “The Baby Screamed Murder”
Clea Simon “No Cities to Love”
Sarah Smith “Jane Austen’s House”
Janet Raye Stevens “Dirty Water”
Leslie Wheeler “Watchers”
June 7, 2021
Boston Lit Crawl!
This year, the Boston Book Fest’s Lit Crawl is “taking it to the streets,” in that all events will be OUTSIDE! The June 10 eventincludes three evening sessions (at 6, 7, and 8 pm), and I am thrilled that I’ll be part of two events, both taking place in Cambridge’s Central Square. The first – at 6 p.m. – is a Mystery Writers of America “Making a Mystery,” at Starlight Square 84 Bishop Allen Drive (the stage in the H-Mart parking lot). If you’ve been to one of these interactive events before, you know what to expect. If not, think “game show” meets “plotting the perfect murder.” I’ll be joined by Sarah Smith, Kate Flora, Dale Phillips, TIllia Jacobs, and Elaine Isaak.) This 40-minute event is FREE (though you are encouraged to donate).
Then, at 8 p.m., Broad Universe is hosting a rapid-fire reading on the Dial Restaurant Roofdeck at 907 Mass. Ave. This is a TICKETED event, but the $15 fee covers appetizers and (some) beverages. (The Lit Crawl is trying to help out our hard-hit restaurants and watering places.) All events will be capacity limited by COVID guidelines, so if you can register ahead! Look for a whole cast of authors doing quick reads – and signing books after!
Rain date for the Lit Crawl is Wed., June 16.
June 3, 2021
Celebrating Cathy’s CORPSE
Well, not exactly – but the wonderful Welsh-Canadian author Cathy Ace has a new book out, her tenth Cait Morgan Mystery, The Corpse with the Iron Will. Cathy’s not only a celebrated creator of atmospheric crime fiction, the IPPY and Bony Blithe Award-winning Ace is also a wonderful and supportive member of our writing community – and so I am thrilled beyond belief to welcome her as a guest, writing about writing, her new book, and this really strange year…
A CORPSE TOO CLOSE TO HOME?
Doesn’t she look innocent here?
We’ve all had to rethink our lives this past year or so and authors are no different – except we’ve also had to rethink our fictional lives, too; how to deal with the pandemic in our fictional world is a “real” dilemma for many of us.
I made a Big Decision when plotting the tenth Cait Morgan Mystery: I will not mention the pandemic in the series at all. Why? Well, I can’t be sure when a person will be reading the books, so have no idea how the world will have changed (again) by then. Also, I firmly believe many of my readers pick up my books to be entertained, to escape…so I don’t need to burden them with today’s routine of masks and hand-washing, etc.
What I did decide to do, however, was to have Cait and her husband Bud at home for a change (usually they’re away from home, often at a delightful location) and to have to grapple with their own shifting sense of what “home” and “community” mean to them – because that’s something we’ve all been challenged by.
I’m extremely fortunate to live where I do, and I’ve made sure Cait is as lucky as I am because she lives in a fictionalized version of my home area – half-way up a little mountain in the south-western corner of British Columbia. That means I’ve been able to allow readers to “visit” Cait (and me) at home in this book, and I’ve even been able to use the names of many people from my real life (with their permission, of course) for characters who are nothing like them, but do give a true flavor of the sort of mix of folks I’m surrounded by (dead bodies notwithstanding!).
But this book hasn’t been without its challenges: usually I take Cait to a place I know well (all the books have been set somewhere I’ve lived or worked, as opposed to having just visited once as a tourist) and I’ve become accustomed to dripping in details of the location for readers to be able to absorb its atmosphere throughout the book. This time I found I was editing out great big chunks of “too much information” about the place I know best, and love the most – my own neighborhood. It’s true to say my editing process was bloody and brutal this time, and I hope readers feel I got the balance right…it’s so important to me to convey the way nature lives in harmony with itself here that I just hope I didn’t over-egg the cake!
At least there’s one good thing – I’ve been able to use lots of photographs of my garden in my promotional efforts…not just because it looks good (I think it does, anyway…LOL!) but because it’s relevant to the book, in which the titular corpse is a man with a wealth of knowledge about plants, and nature.
Cathy Ace’s Welsh Canadian criminal psychologist sleuth Cait Morgan encounters traditional, closed-circle whodunits around the world, while her WISE Enquiries Agency Mysteries feature a quartet of soft-boiled female PIs who solve more cozy cases from their office at a Welsh stately home. Her standalone suspense novel, The Wrong Boy, has been optioned for TV (as have her Cait Morgan Mysteries). Shortlisted for Canada’s Bony Blithe Award three times in four years, winning in 2015, she’s also won IPPY and IBA Awards, and has been shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award. Cathy lives in Canada, having migrated from Wales aged 40.
Find Cathy at http://www.cathyace.com/ on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Cathy-Ace-Author-318388861616661 – Twitter: @AceCathy – IG: @cathyace1
And that garden she speaks of? Gorgeous:
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May 19, 2021
April 19, 2021
Linda L. Richards isn’t faking
Linda L. Richards knows what she’s talking about. I first found her through her neo-noir Kitty Pangborn books, Death Was the Other Woman and Death Was in the Picture, with their badass women, and I’ve just downloaded her highly anticipated (and already highly praised) Endings. But on a more personal note, back when I was still trying to get my own feet, she encouraged me – supporting my efforts to stretch my amateur sleuth mysteries with something a little edgier. When I asked her to blog for me today, she offered some more hard-won advice on Learning to Not Listen
by Linda L. Richards
Calling it imposter syndrome would be a lot. That is, it would make it bigger than it really is. Like naming the boogeyman. Who needs to do that? All I know is that, all these years in, I have a pretty good working relationship with the voices in my head that tell me I have no business being a writer.
They are not unrelenting, those voices. But they are persistent. I can have whole stretches of deep involvement with my story when they are not present at all. Or maybe they are present, but I don’t hear them. I just keep powering through. But if I hesitate. If I become distracted. If I work with anything less than full concentration, they come right back.
Early in my career they could sometimes derail me. They would win. I could put aside a project or a session because I was convinced that ultimate failure was the only possibility. The voices had told me so. It took me a long time to come to understand that the voices in my head trying to convince me of my inadequacy weren’t mine alone. They belonged, also, to almost every writer I’ve ever met. And painter. And sculptor. And actor. And musician. Maybe architects, too. And others who work (try to work?) in fields where the fulfillment of the order depends entirely on your own resources. And the voices belong, at times, to just about anyone who tackles something that feels like it might be larger than they are. Beyond them. The voices struggle to keep us small.
So here’s what I eventually figured out: if everyone — not just me — at some time, is plagued by voices that tell us we are not up to the task at hand, then the voices that I hear are of my own construction. If I constructed them, I control them, at least to a certain degree. I reasoned that, if I make them start, I can then make them stop. It turns out that, for me anyway, that is not true. I can’t make them stop. They are with me still. They are with me even now. I’ve just gotten better at not listening. When they tell me that the task I have set myself is larger than I am, I keep my head down. I move forward. When they tell me I have no business trying to share what I envision — that others more gifted and talented and probably better looking can do it better than I can, I just keep going.
So imposter syndrome? Maybe. I only know that, for me, it has been so long now — decades — that I don’t hold much hope I will ever get the voices that preach my inadequacy to shut up forever. Maybe they are even a necessary part of what makes Linda run. But if they speak and I don’t listen, they are powerless. And if they are without power, they might as well not exist at all.
Happy writing!
Linda L. Richards is a journalist and award-winning author. Her latest book, Endings, a dark and edgy thriller, was published April 6, 2021 by Oceanview Publishing. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly said Endings was a “harrowing tale of love, loss, and the value of life.”
April 17, 2021
E. Jean Carroll rocks
Did you read E. Jean Carroll growing up? I know I did – her column (then in Vogue) helped me navigate womanhood from college onward. It wasn’t until recently that I put together why: She, too, was dealing with the PTSD of rape and all the sexist bullshit aftermath imposed by a world that holds us responsible for others’ acts of violence. Yet, somehow she retained her sanity and humor. What’s not to love?
Well, despite being unceremoniously dumped by Elle when she sued the former guy for defamation, she is BACK, with all the wit and wisdom as ever – and fewer fucks given! I’m subscribing and following her, and recommend that you do too: Ask E. Jean (or https://ejeancarroll.substack.com ). You’ll be glad you did!
April 12, 2021
Leslie Budewitz takes a turn…
Maybe you know Leslie Budewitz from her tasty spice shop mysteries or the food lovers’ village books. These cozies are full of mouth-watering crime and detection, and I’d be thrilled to have Leslie drop by for those alone. But this spring, Leslie is stepping out in a new direction – full of suspense – with Bitterroot Lake (written as Alicia Beckman). Library Journal says: “VERDICT Beckman paints a gorgeous picture of an idyllic small town. With some paranormal aspects, secrets past and present, and a multitude of murder suspects, this suspense debut is sure to attract readers.” It’s downloading on my Kindle today – release day – and I cannot wait! In the meantime, here’s Leslie!
“. . . And Ladies of the Club:” an homage, of sorts
by Leslie Budewitz, aka Alicia Beckman
Decades ago, I read a book called “. . . And Ladies of the Club” by Helen Hooven Santmyer. I picked it up in the bookstore where I worked in high school and college—originally published by a small university press in 1982, it didn’t get much attention until Putnam brought it out in paperback in 1984—and I do remember it being popular, despite its size. The paperback is the thickest book on my shelves, beating “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry by about 200 pages. (Pause to check: my mass market paperback is 1433 pages. That’s almost five of my cozy mysteries.)
And I loved every page. It begins in 1868 in a small town in Ohio, when two young girls are invited to join a local book club, and ends in 1932 when the last of them dies. In between, the girls become young women, wives, mothers, widows, and old ladies, but the constants are their friendship and the club.
I thought of Santmyer’s book—published when she was 87—frequently while working on Bitterroot Lake, my suspense debut written as Alicia Beckman (coming April 13, 2021 from Crooked Lane Books). The connection isn’t obvious. One’s mainstream historical fiction; one’s suspense. One is set in small-town Ohio, the other on a lake shore in northwestern Montana. Santmyer’s main characters find solace and connection in their “literary society;” my main character is Sarah McCaskill Carter, a new widow in her forties who’s estranged from her oldest and dearest friends, a distance that becomes particularly painful when she returns to Whitetail Lodge, her family’s home on Bitterroot Lake, the last place she, her sister Holly, and their friends Janine and Nicole last saw each other, twenty-five years ago.
Sarah comes to the lodge to help her mother clean it and decide what to do with the property, in the family nearly a hundred years. In the bedroom of the caretaker’s apartment, above the carriage house, Sarah finds a locked trunk she doesn’t recall ever seeing before. When she finally gets it open, she finds photograph albums, photos rolled up so long they’re brittle, a box of letters, and a journal kept by the great-grandmother who died when she was a baby, Caroline Sullivan McCaskill.
And in those letters and the journal, Sarah discovers a history she never knew. Caro, as she was always called, and other privileged women of the young railroad and timber town of Deer Park, Montana, spearheaded a behind-the-scenes effort to help some of the community’s less fortunate women. “The Norwegian woman” who lost everything when the man she lived with burned down their shack and died in it; when others spurned her for “living in sin,” Caro lent a hand and cash. The young woman seduced by a married man who needed money for a railroad ticket back to her grateful parents in Cincinnati. (Ohio! There IS a connection!) The young mother who lost her husband in an accident at the mill Caro’s husband owned and found that the insurance benefits weren’t enough to help her get by.
Women always do that, don’t we? The women in Santmyer’s club helped each other with more than reading material. They helped each other cope with ordinary life and extraordinary tragedy.
My own mother was a mainstay in several Catholic church groups that were so much more than thoughts and prayers. And they didn’t just fill food baskets and wash altar cloths. She actually started a life insurance program for single women in the 1960s, when it was expensive and hard to get. Like Caro, she knew that too many women fall between society’s cracks.
Sarah’s discovery of Caro’s secret history helps her make sense of pieces of her past that she’d never before put together, and it helps her decide what to do with herself.
That’s what women do for each other, isn’t, both then and now, on the page and off?
Thank you, Mrs. Santmyer, for a story that’s clung to my heart all these years.
From the cover of Bitterroot Lake
When four women separated by tragedy reunite at a lakeside Montana lodge, murder forces them to confront everything they thought they knew about the terrifying accident that tore them apart, in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman’s suspense debut.
Twenty-five years ago, during a celebratory weekend at historic Whitetail Lodge, Sarah McCaskill had a vision. A dream. A nightmare. When a young man was killed, Sarah’s guilt over having ignored the warning in her dreams devastated her. Her friendships with her closest friends, and her sister, fell apart as she worked to build a new life in a new city. But she never stopped loving Whitetail Lodge on the shores of Bitterroot Lake.
Now that she’s a young widow, her mother urges her to return to the lodge for healing. But when she arrives, she’s greeted by an old friend–and by news of a murder that’s clearly tied to that tragic day she’ll never forget.
And the dreams are back, too. What dangers are they warning of this time? As Sarah and her friends dig into the history of the lodge and the McCaskill family, they uncover a legacy of secrets and make a discovery that gives a chilling new meaning to the dreams. Now, they can no longer ignore the ominous portents from the past that point to a danger more present than any of them could know.
Crooked Lane Books (April 13, 2021)
Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in two cozy mystery series, the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, set in NW Montana. She’ll make her suspense debut with BITTERROOT LAKE, written as Alicia Beckman, in April 2021. A three-time Agatha-Award winner (2011, Best Nonfiction; 2013, Best First Novel; 2018, Best Short Story), she is a current board member of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime. She lives in northwest Montana. Visit her website: www.LeslieBudewitz.com, where newsletter subscribers receive a free short story, or join her on Facebook as Leslie Budewitz Author.
March 30, 2021
Hear, hear! “A Cat on the Case” audiobook review
What’s better than having a story read to you? Especially by a pro like Hilary Huber? Thanks to Audible and other audiobook services, all my witch cats books are available as downloads and CDs. This week, Sandie Herron reviewed the audiobook of A Cat on the Case over at librarian Lesa Holstine’s Lesa’s Book Critiques, and quite enjoyed the “cacophony of voices and purrs,” especially the cats’ “wickedly smart and funny purr-sonalities.”
Here’s her review:
Becca Colwin believes she is a witch since, after all, she did conjure a pillow out of thin air. However, as she and her tiny coven knows, she hasn’t been able to do anything magical since then. Becca’s three cats, all littermates, easily talk among themselves about the timing of their summoning spell coinciding with Becca’s. It is Clara, Laurel, and Harriet that know better. These three have wickedly smart and funny purr-sonalities.
It is Becca’s neighbor that pounds on the door, complaining of the noise the cats were making. Becca’s building is converting to condos, and she is just meeting new neighbors. Becca recently started work at Charm and Cherish that keeps her away all day when the cats were accustomed to her 24 hour service. While at work, a woman rushes in, apparently looking for a witch detective, but she abruptly exits, leaving behind a violin case. Unable to catch her, Becca reviews the contents and finds a note with her apartment building’s address. She sprints home to try and return the case only to find the young woman struggling to open a neighbor’s door. The two women are startled to see a man dead on the floor.
The mystery woman is Ruby, a woman who has come to Boston to audition for a place in the Conservatory. The dead man was renting her a place to stay for a few days. Becca spends the next few days trying to understand Ruby’s story about her cherished violin. It was an heirloom in her family, much loved, much played. A friend offered to buy it in order to finance her trip to Boston and replace it with an ordinary violin. But Ruby swears the original violin returned. The police tell Becca it was stolen from a collector.
Through a series of fits and starts, Becca and Ruby keep running into each other, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. Strange things keep happening to Becca’s friends, her apartment is ransacked, and her job at Charm and Cherish is threatened. All the while Becca’s three cats continue to narrate every move because the youngest, Clara, is constantly with her beloved human, even if she is “shaded.”
Hillary Huber did an excellent job of telling the story from her point of view as the narrator, and she also alternately portrayed all three cats narrating the story. There always seemed to be a conversation going on about the action. At the same time, Clara was learning a bit of her history as a cat in dreams directed by her sisters. I chuckled often over the cat-like traits described by the cats and differently by their human. There was often a cacophony of voices and purrs going on.
Finally, Ruby tells Becca the full truth about the violin, as she knows it. But Becca has learned more, and the two find themselves on the run in the middle of blizzard with Clara chasing after them. Everything comes together in the end, but not at all how I expected.
A Cat on the Case by Clea Simon. Polis Books, 2021. ISBN 9781951709266 (hardcover), 320p.
Written by Clea Simon
Narrated by Hillary Huber
Series: Witch Cats of Cambridge, Book 3
Unabridged Audiobook
Dreamscape Media (2/8/2021)
Listening Length: 8 hours 29 minutes
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