Why New England? by Edith Maxwell/Maddie Day

The following article appeared in the New England I issue of Mystery Readers Journal  (38:1) For the Table of Contents, go Here. To order this issue as Hardcopy, go here. For a PDF download of 38:1, go Here.

EDITH MAXWELL/MADDIE DAY: Why New England? 

Think of crime fiction set in Boston and what comes to mind? If you read thrillers, you might conjure stories by Hank Phillippi Ryan and Dennis Lehane. Robert Parker’s many books are set in Boston, as are Edwin Hill’s suspenseful Hester Thursby mysteries. A little farther north finds Kate Flora’s Joe Burgess police procedurals set in Portland Maine, as are Bruce Robert Coffin’s Detective Byron books.

When we venture into the gentler side of the genre as brought to the screen, we find the delightful Jessica Fletcher in the Murder She Wrote series, now continued for many more tales on the page. Just don’t go to Cabot Cove, Maine. Someone is guaranteed to die.

I’ve written five cozy and traditional mystery series, with two that are ongoing. Four of them are set somewhere in Massachusetts. All of my talented Wicked Authors blogmates also write books set in New England, along with a slew of other authors. Why? What’s the draw?

Apart from gritty Boston, with its Irish mob and history of fraught race relations, most of the rest of New England is both bucolic and iconic. We have hundreds of miles of coastline. Many small family farms still sell their produce at farm stands and farmers’ markets. You can hike gentle mountains and then eat in a diner on a classic village green complete with a white church. People drop their Rs and call soda pop “tonic.” And the food! Lobster rolls, clam chowder, Boston baked beans, apple cider do- nuts, and the best small-batch ice cream any- where.

For cozy mystery authors, New England is a perfect place to site books. The late (sniff) Sheila Connolly’s long-running Orchard Mysteries are set in a small town in the western part of the state. My Local Foods Mysteries take place on a small organic farm (much like the one I used to own and run) in northeastern Massachusetts, with members of a locavore club signing up for CSA [Community Sup- ported Agriculture] shares—and helping farmer Cam Flaherty solve crimes.

Sherry Harris writes the Sarah Winston Gar- age Sale series, which includes one of those classic town greens west of Boston as well as a nearby Air Force Base. Also village-based are Julia Henry’s Garden Squad Mysteries, with sixty-something Lilly Jane leading a group of guerilla gardeners—and crime solvers.

The coast is never far. In Barbara Ross’s popular Maine Clambake Mysteries, Julia Snowden and her family run a clambake business on their island off fictional Busman’s Harbor. Shari Randall’s Lobster Shack Mysteries are set on the Connecticut coast. Cate Conte’s fun Cat Café books take place on an island somewhere in New England.

And who hasn’t heard of Cape Cod? Amy Pershing has a delightful new Cape Cod Foodie series out. Just off the coast, Cynthia Riggs has a long-running Martha’s Vineyard series. In my Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries (writ- ten as Maddie Day), Mackenzie—Mac—Almeida owns and runs Mac’s Bikes in fictional Westham on the Cape. Along with other business owners and town officials, she’s a member of the Cozy Capers book group, which reads and discusses a different cozy mystery every week. The group also helps Mac solve the real- life crimes she encounters.

New England is also rich in history, of course. Alyssa Maxwell writes the wonderful Gilded Newport Mysteries, which take place in Rhode Island in the last years of the nineteenth century. Jessica Estevao wrote two intriguing Change of Fortune mysteries set around the same time in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

I staged my Agatha-Award-winning Quaker Midwife Mysteries a decade earlier in the former mill and factory town where I live in the northeast corner of Massachusetts. Many of the homes from that era still exist (I live in one of them) as well as the repurposed brick factory and mill buildings and the Friends Meetinghouse, still a place of worship (my own, in fact). It’s easy to walk around town and imagine parts of my stories. Earlier and farther north yet are Beth Kanell’s deeply drawn Winds of Freedom novels, featuring a young abolitionist woman in 1850s northern Vermont.

If you want your New England in short bites, you can’t go wrong reading any of the almost twenty annual anthologies of Best New Eng- land Crime Stories. Published by various incarnations of Level Best Books, this year the endeavor was taken over by the new Crime Spell Books. Bloodroot: Best New England Crime Stories came out in November 2021, edited by Susan Oleksiw, Ang Pompano and Leslie Wheeler. The collection includes a historical story of mine, “Dark Corners,” featuring a young PI named Dot Henderson (a fictional version of my grandmother) solving a crime with the real, pre-fame Amelia Earhart in 1926 Boston.

You could read crime fiction set only in New England and never run out of books. And really, why not?

***

Edith Maxwell writes the Agatha Award-winning Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction; as Maddie Day, she pens the bestselling Country Store Mysteries and Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. She lives north of Boston with her beau, where she cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook when she isn’t plotting new murders. 

To read other articles in this issue, go Here.

 

WHY CAPE COD? Guest post by Maddie Day aka Edith Maxwell

MADDIE DAY aka Edith Maxwell:
Why Cape Cod?

Janet, thank you for inviting me – and my alter-ego Maddie Day – to your blog!

My latest book, Murder at the Taffy Shop is the second Cozy Capers Book Group mystery. The series is set in a fictional town on Cape Cod. I live in Massachusetts but way north at the opposite border, half a mile from New Hampshire, a drive of almost three hours. So what do I know about Cape Cod, anyway?

Five or six years ago I learned about a Quaker retreat cottage nestled behind the West Falmouth Friends meetinghouse. West Falmouth is a quiet former fishing village on enormous Buzzard’s Bay, with a west-facing coastline. I’m a Quaker of many years, and I rented the cottage for a week during the off season for a solo writing retreat. I was able to write SO much that I started going twice a year. No wi-fi in the cottage helps, too (but the public library is across the street in case of wi-fi emergency).

Artists flock to the Cape for a reason. I don’t know why, but the light is different there, colors are more intense, skies are more dramatic. And everyone has heard of iconic Cape Cod, whether they have visited in person or not. When my Kensington editor and I were tossing around ideas for this series and he suggested the Cape, I jumped on it.

I decided to create a fictional town for all the reasons authors do: I can make up streets, stores, and restaurants. I can invent a lighthouse and a beach and not worry that readers will call me out on something I got wrong. The town of Falmouth, to the south of West Falmouth (don’t ask, I have no idea, since there’s also a north Falmouth which is to the east of West Falmouth...), is a bustling coastal town. And while Cape Cod has an Eastham, it doesn’t have a Westham. Bingo – I had my cozy village.

These days my trips to West Falmouth are for research as well as super-productive writing sprees. I love checking out what’s blooming in May and the colors in October and January. I soak up the smell of the tidal pools, the sight of ospreys soaring overhead, the hues of beach rosehips ripening and poison ivy reddening.

But the cottage is rented to a family all summer, and Murder at the Taffy Shop is set in early August, peak tourist season. I love the beach, but the Cape in August? Fugeddabout it. Still, I’ve been there in early September, and I know what beachy towns are like.

This part of the Cape features the lovely Shining Sea Trail, a walking and biking path on the former railbed. Bicyclists love the Cape, because it’s pretty and mostly flat. My protagonist, Mac Almeida, owns a bike rental, repair, and retail shop, so avid cyclists and the trail feature prominently in the books. I also knew about the Falmouth Road Race, an internationally famed seven-miler held in early August. Mac’s boyfriend Tim is a runner, so that went in, too.

And then we have the somewhat meta premise of a cozy mystery about a book group that only reads cozy mysteries. Again, my editor suggested the book group idea. I was the one who took it the extra step. In my experience – and Murder at the Taffy Shop is my 20^th novel – cozy fans read a lot. I mean, a lot. The group Mac is in is named the Cozy Capers – because Cape Cod. They read and discuss a book a week, which isn’t a stretch.

Westham is a cozy town with a core group of shop owners and town officials who are part of the book group. Mac is devoted to her family, who all live in town. But that doesn’t exempt her and her fellow Cozy Capers from dealing with real social and interpersonal issues. And bodies!

I love writing this series, and readers seem to be loving reading it, too.

When bike shop owner Mac Almeida heads out for a walk with her friend, she finds a horrified Gin staring at an imperious summer person, dead on the sidewalk in front of Gin’s candy shop, Salty Taffy’s. When the police find the murder weapon in Gin’s garage, the Cozy Capers book group members put their heads together to clear Gin’s name and figure out who killed the woman whom almost everyone disliked. After the killer later invades Mac’s tiny house to finish her off, Belle, Mac’s African Gray parrot, comes to the rescue. Murder at the Taffy Shop is out March 31 in a one-year paperback exclusive from Barnes & Noble.  

Readers: What are your book group experiences, or would you rather read solo? Do you prefer seaside, mountaintop, or big city downtown?

***

Maddie Day – aka Edith Maxwell – is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha-nominated and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and pens the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries and the Country Store Mysteries. As Edith she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and award-winning short crime fiction. Maddie/Edith lives with her beau north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen. She hopes you'll visit her on her web site, sign up for her monthly newsletter, and visit her as @MaddieDayAuthor on social media.