The Winter 2021 edition of Mystery Readers Journal (Volume 37, No. 4) featured Cold Case Mysteries, and I was thrilled to have my article on writing cold case cozies included. At the time, I had published three books in my Marketville Mystery series: Skeletons in the Attic (#1), Past & Present (#2) and A Fool’s Journey (#3), the latter released in August 2019. As much as the series was well received, and as much as I loved my kickass amateur sleuth turned professional investigator Calamity (Callie) Barnstable—and her partners in solving cold cases at Past & Present Investigations (Chantelle Marchand, genealogist, Shirley Harrington, reference librarian and Misty Rivers, self-proclaimed psychic)—I’ll admit I didn’t have much in the way of an idea for book #4 beyond a title: Before There Were Skeletons.
I blame part of my lack of inspiration on Covid lockdowns in 2020—no one was more surprised than me to discover I needed the stimulation of the world outside of my office—and a fall on the ice and subsequent concussion in 2021.
Fast forward to January 2022. I’m back to doing New York Times crosswords and getting restless. And then I remembered Callie and Before There Were Skeletons.
The realization that it would be three-plus years since the last book in the series was the first thing I needed to address. In Skeletons in the Attic, first published August 2016, Callie was thirty-six, birthday May 1, 1980. Before There Were Skeletons would be set in February 2022. Aging her in place would bring her to forty-two, on the cusp of forty-three. I also had to accept that her former partners may have moved on in three years, and in truth, I wanted them to.
I sent Chantelle back to her ex (formerly known as Lance the Loser), the couple now living in Ottawa, had Shirley retire to spend winters in Florida (a true Canadian snowbird) and Misty Rivers married and setting down roots in British Columbia. The latter was especially fun because toward the end of book #3, A Fool’s Journey, Misty had just been set up on a blind date.
Of course, Callie can’t go about solving cases without someone to do some of the more tedious tasks, like digging through library newspaper archives, and so I invented Denim Hopkins, a twenty-four-year-old tech savvy waitress. Denim doesn’t have any formal sleuthing experience, but she’s keen to learn and she’s on a mission to find a missing person of her own—a deadbeat ex-boyfriend that drained their joint bank account, let the rent check bounce, and left her like a thief in the night. With her former best girlfriend, no less.
Early readers have told me that Denim adds a fresh new dimension to the series, and as an author, it gives me the added benefit of explaining an investigative process that might otherwise seem contrived. I’ve also enjoyed writing her character enough to consider expanding her role in book #5, whenever that might be
And now for some Shameless Self Promotion: Find Before There Were Skeletons at your favorite bookseller
*Full Disclosure: A version of this post was originally featured in Mystery Fanfare, a wonderful blog with daily posts and dog-cat-writer-related comics.