You Heard it Here First – Winter’s On The Run

I’m writing this on the fifth of March, absolutely convinced spring is in the offing.

Looks just wet. Isn’t.

Call me a fool for believing. But after this winter of All The Ice We Could Not See—months of involuntarily shoe skating along sidewalks that appeared to be just wet—today’s long-awaited warm up has me in a whirl.

Did you feel it today? The gentle breeze against your face? It was thirty-seven degrees at 6:40 a.m., and the air was soft, nothing like the sharp-edged wind that’s been the norm for the past couple of months.

You could smell it too, if you took a good, deep breath. My nose perceived damp, earthy and alive, or at least starting to come alive. Not mud yet (oh how I love the scent of mud in March) but not the olfactory monotony of December, January and February.

In Portland, at least, if you listened carefully, a trickle of water was audible beneath the grubby snowbanks.

Enough already.

Tonight’s rain likely will turn those tiny rivulets into rivers rushing along the gutters, evidence of the seasonal transition that’s ugly on the surface, but on a deeper level, so very beautiful.

Soon the early morning birdsong will start building toward its annual crescendo and winter will be gone, baby, gone.

But signs of spring aren’t just in nature. Last weekend the Maine high school basketball championship games were on Maine Public TV, giving the entire state the opportunity to root for teams from towns where they do not know a blessed soul to win the gold ball.

The coveted gold ball (credit: Bangor Daily News)

I truly love this experience and wish the entire tournament still was televised, but that turned out to be another of those don’t-know-what-you’ve-got-till-it’s gone things.

Speaking of high school basketball, if you’ve never read One on One by Tabitha King, I recommend it. You don’t need to be a basketball fan to appreciate the story of a rural school where both the girls and boys’ teams are vying for the state championship, because it’s really a novel about social class and character, learning the difference between winning and losing, and more than anything else, the need to be loved.

Speaking of books, a couple of books by favorite Maine crime writers are on my nightstand right now. One is MCW’s own Jule Selbo’s 7 Days, the fourth in her terrific Dee Rommel series.  She wrote about it on this blog in mid-February (the link is here: https://mainecrimewriters.com/2025/02/12/using-all-contacts-for-inspiration/ ) but she didn’t toot her own horn enough.  Dee is a believable, funny, brilliant, imperfect, compelling character, and I cannot wait to spend more time with her. Find 7 Days. Buy it. You won’t be sorry.

I’m also keen to read Tess Gerritsen’s The Summer Guests, the second in a new series about several retired spies living in the same Midcoast town. They dissect local crimes during their Martini Club meetings and cannot stop themselves from using their many skills to assist the local police, who do not want (and think they do not need ) any help. Tess has prodigious talent for pacing, character development and devising complex plots. Like all of her books, I expect The Summer Guests to be a master class in how to write a hell of a good mystery.

If my optimism is misplaced and we still have a bit of winter to go, I’ve now given you some wonderful reading suggestions to get you through.  And if I’m right, happy spring!

Brenda Buchanan sets her novels in and around Portland. Her three-book Joe Gale series features a contemporary newspaper reporter with old-school style who covers the courts and crime beat at the fictional Portland Daily Chronicle.  Brenda’s short story, “Means, Motive, and Opportunity,” was in the anthology Bloodroot: Best New England Crime Stories 2021 and received an honorable mention in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022. Her story Assumptions Can Get You Killed appears in Wolfsbane: Best New England Crime Stories 2023.