Second Look: Murder. Theatre. Solitaire.

tyunglebower ♦ May 15, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

My second novel was not supposed to be either my second, or a (public) novel.

I had begun my so called sophomore effort more than once, rewritten it, changed ideas. It felt like an idea I could work with at first, but as year two passed and I still had not gotten any momentum for the project, I made the difficult decision to put it in a drawer.

By this time I had “won” the famous NANOWRIMO challenge multiple times. But I had yet to write an entire plot during the 30 day period. My previous wins had been merely word count success, never a full story to tell.

I had made that a goal of mine, to up the ante during the previous November. I did it. I wrote a whole novel, start to finish of at least 50,000 words 30 days. It existed.

Given that I had long planned to have a novel published again by the end of that current year, and that I had given up on the “official” story, I opted to take the Nano draft and revise/edit it for public consumption.

My first, and to date only murder mystery, Murder. Theatre. Solitaire. was that novel.

I am particularly proud of what I accomplished in such a short time with this one, even though I did not set out to publish it. The copy available is not the first draft written during Nanowrimo, but it is surprisingly close to it.

It’s a so-called “cozy” mystery. At least it is “cozy-adjacent” to coin a term, because true fans may note nuances that exclude it from the genre. Nevertheless is is a murder mystery that fits many of the criteria.

In the novel, Milton is a burned out theatre director. (Yes, I dipped into theatre again and not for the final time.) His sister insisted he take a retreat into the Vermont mountains for some time to unwind. But when a huge snowstorm half buries the retreat house, and the seven other guests, there is no way to escape from the escape.

And when the soon-to-be-owner of the property, all swagger and no brain ends up dead, Milton feels called upon to use his insight into human behavior, honed from years or scripts, shows and divas to piece together who, how, and why the man killed.

And to keep everyone safe until the police can get to them from whichever of the guests may be responsible for the crime.

And you may have guessed by now, in his spare time, to help him think and relax, Milton plays solitaire. Lots and lots of solitaire.

This single point of view narrative (Milton’s) does make reference to theatre truisms and tendencies. Unlike my first novel, however, it is not about theatre itself. Theatre knowledge and experience contribute to the proceedings, that is the point, but they are not centered here.

The same with humor. I was not at all interested in gritty procedural. While most of us have not, and hopefully ever will find themselves part of a murder investigation, I wanted to present, as many cozy mysteries do, a group of normal people and their reactions to such a situation. Again, I call attention to my author tagline, “I shift the everyday a few inches.” In the case of overworked Milton and the other disparate folks that have been snowed in together, their lives in a fancy mountain retreat tend to carry on normally in many ways, except for, oops, there has been a murder. (A shift of more than an inch to us, but to them, perhaps, no more than a persistent bad dream from which they cannot awake.

At least until the snow melts.

The elderly proper caretaker of the estate. Her young aide with seeming learning difficulties. The married couple that has seen happier days, a bubbly cockney girl, and a highly respected elderly rabbi. This cast of characters ponders, investigates, dares, cajoles, and suspects throughout the story, all while the corpse of the departed is kept preserved in the stone observation tower nearby in the sub-zero Vermont New England winter temperatures.

And for the sensitive reader, I will point out that while it is a murder mystery, and said body does feature into the investigation, I have kept gore to a minimum. I wasn’t interested in telling the story of Milton and his attempts to decipher what had happened, not in describing such things.

To date, Murder. Theatre. Solitaire. is, according to my reports, my most popular best-selling book. I hope you will be the next to consider buying a copy, and rating it well on Amazon and other such places.