Meet the Characters of Magnolia Bluff -- The Ghost

 

The sadness in his voice brings tears to my eyes. I procrastinate a minute wondering, Why me?

Once again we are back in Magnolia Bluff talking to the people who make this little town their home.

Today we are meeting a ghost. Yep. Even in Magnolia Bluff we find a friendly Casper.

*

Bliss is a free-spirited young lady who has ridden into a quaint little Texas town.

It’s not where she wanted to be.

But, alas, Magnolia Bluff is where her motorcycle broke down.

She feels like a stranger in a strange town.

She meets some fascinating characters.

One of them is Merrick Doyle.

Bliss discovers him in The Great Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Book 3 in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles.

He’s not like anyone else.

He’s depending on Bliss to help him.

No one else can.

No one else will.

Doyle is desperate.

He has a secret.

He’s not with us anymore.

*

I lean on my elbows, ready to lie back down. “Look, it’s been a long day and I have a splitting headache. Can you either tell me who you are straight-out, or wait until morning and I’ll be happy to play the guessing game with you?” As I lie down, a vivid picture jets into my head and I sit back up. “You’re Merrick Doyle. Ethan and Ciara’s father.”

Correctimundo!

“I’ve seen a bunch of movies, Mr. Doyle. I can guess why you’re here.”

Merrick pops into view near the windows. I use the word pops literally because the sounds are like microwave popcorn, but with a staccato shave-and-a-haircut beat.

The ghost is translucent. I think that’s the right word. Moonlight and details from the alley show through the light colored shirt. He’s got a roundish head and wide nose with deep-set eyes beneath a somewhat overhanging brow. In spite of the sharpness of his features, there’s something handsome about him. He tweaks his beard with his left hand, his head tilted as he waits for my reaction.

“Call me Merrick. Full name Merrick Arthur Doyle.”

“They told me you died last month.”

The eyes shut for three seconds, as though he’s keeping himself in check. When he speaks next, his words are calm but saturated with emotion. I was killed. Murdered.

I get up and move toward him. “How? By whom?”

I don’t know the answer to either question. Be nice, wouldn’t it? I just tell you who did it and you go out and get ’em.

In my almost-concussion-throbbing brain, things grow all-too-clear. “You expect me to figure out who did it?”

Correctimundo again! You’re a very bright girl…ah, woman.

“How do you think I—”

Merrick’s wide shoulders shrug. I see the motion not as body movement but as a ripple of the lighting through the window. Follow the clues.

“You’ve picked the wrong person to ask for help. I’ve never followed so much as a recipe.”

My ghost gives a deep-throated chuckle. You can do this. We’ll do it together.

Together? “What does that mean exactly? Are you going to drive me around town and—”

We use your body and my brain.

“Sounds kinky.”

I love your sense of humor! We’ll use my knowledge of people.

That’s when it dawns on me: he can read my mind.

Exactimundo! He throws back his head and laughs. I wonder if the sound can be heard through the walls.

I doubt it. I’ve spent a month trying to reach someone—anyone. I’ve shouted till I turned hoarse—but you’re the only one who’s been able to hear me. Not even my own children, or any of my friends…

The sadness in his voice brings tears to my eyes. I procrastinate a minute wondering, Why me?

No idea, Sambethe Ursula Watkins. No idea why you.

When he says my name, I’m instantly annoyed. “Do not. I repeat, do not ever say that name. I am Bliss. Period.” Then, reality hits. “Wait. How do you know who I am?”

Did you forget already? I can read your mind.

“I never think about my name. Ever ever ever. So therefore you couldn’t have read my mind.”

Look, I don’t know how I know things about you, but I do. Isn’t that enough? I love the sound of your name, by the way. What a great reference to the Persian Sybil. You know what Sybils were, right?

“Yes. Priestesses, prophets, looked up to by many.”

So, what’s bad about that? It seems like a form of royalty to me.

“I am not a prophet. Nor do I want to be looked up to. As a matter of fact, I don’t even want to be noticed, okay? I just want to follow my free will and do what I want when I want.”

He grows serious. We’ll table that discussion for now. Let’s talk about me.

Please click HERE to find The Great Peanut Butter Conspiracy on Amazon.

And you can read the original post on Caleb and Linda Pirtle’s blog.

The Great Peanut Butter Conspiracy is a funny and suspenseful cozy mystery, written by an accomplished writer of mysteries. Do yourself a favor: pickup a copy to exercise both your brain and your funny bone.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

The Detective Takes a Vacay

The mystery genre (I’m talking about the whodunit, not the thriller) is full of marvelous tropes.

The eccentric, and perhaps flawed, detective. The bumbling Watson, the detective’s assistant. The victim, about whom we often know little or nothing. The odd array of suspects. All of which, in the right hand, make for a delightful, often humorous, suspense-filled, literary puzzle. A game of page turning Clue.

One trope that is used quite often actually is that of the detective on vacation.

The sleuth taking up a case while not in his normal environment.

Poirot in Death on the Nile comes to mind. And Rex Stout, in Some Buried Caesar, had his agoraphobic detective, Nero Wolfe, at a rural county fair.

The detective on vacation, or sick leave, or a honeymoon, is like syncopation in music: it shakes things up for both writer and reader. 

We get to see our favorite detectives at work not in the environment they are used to, but in a place unfamiliar and often out of the ordinary.

The sleuth is out of his natural element, as it were, which allows us to see a different side of his, or her, personality.

Justinia Wright is something of a homebody. Yet in the short story “Sauerkraut Days”, we see her at a sauerkraut festival in small town Henderson, Minnesota, where the local sheriff asks her help in solving a murder.

Which Tina does in record time so she can participate in the sauerkraut eating contest.

Justinia Wright eating pounds of sauerkraut, who would have ever thought that?

In the newest addition to the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, You Won’t Know How… Or When by James R. Callan, Father Frank decides to take a vacation, the first in 4 years, and visit the Texas Hill Country and his friend, Father Lee, who is the priest at the Catholic Church in Magnolia Bluff.

All is well, for a few hours, at least, until Father Frank hears a man’s confession — a confession to commit murder. And the seal of the confessional pretty much prevents Father Frank from saying anything to anyone — including warning the intended victim.

Certainly no way to start a relaxing vacation sightseeing in the Texas Hill Country, is it?

I found the seal of the confessional a clever way to hamstring the amateur sleuth. To force him to use all of his wits to not only ferret out the wannabe killer, but also to protect the intended victim, while maintaining the sanctity of the sacrament and his vows.

Summer is vacation time. What better way to spend your vacation than to take a suspense-filled vicarious side trip and trip up a murderer? Come on. You know you want to.

You Won’t Know How… Or When is on pre-order right now for only 99¢. Don’t wait. The price goes up after the book launches on Friday, July 22nd. Get it now on Amazon.

And while you’re in Magnolia Bluff, take a side trip to Henderson, Minnesota and eat sauerkraut with Justinia Wright. Sauerkraut Days — only 99¢ on Amazon.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

Father Frank to the Rescue

 

I love the clerical sleuth genre, which is actually a sub-genre of the amateur detective genre.

There’s something about a man or woman of faith matching wits with a murderer. That combination elevates the moral nature of the story.

Philip Grosset of the Clerical Detective website has identified 376 clerical detectives. That’s an awful lot of men and women of the cloth bringing criminals to justice. A clear case of faith in action.

Father Frank first appeared in the book Cleansed by Fire, published in 2012.

You Won’t Know How… Or When, Book 4 in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, is also the latest Father Frank mystery. And it’s a good one.

Father Frank has never been to the Texas Hill Country and hasn’t had a vacation in 4 years. His friend from seminary, Father Lee, is the priest at Christ the King Catholic Church in Magnolia Bluff, that idyllic little town on the shore of Burnet Reservoir. So Father Frank decides to pay his friend a visit and do a little sight seeing.

When Father Frank arrives, Father Lee has to attend to an emergency and Father Frank volunteers to do confession for him. And that’s when the fun begins.

Confessions are sacred. Their content cannot be divulged. So what do you do when someone tells you they’re going to kill you? You won’t know how, or when. But they are going to get you.

Then it hits you — the “confession” wasn’t meant for you, but for your friend. And you can’t tell him he’s a marked man. You can’t break the seal of the confessional.

That is Father Frank’s dilemma. And it’s a very difficult one. It turns his holiday into a hunt for a man determined to kill his friend.

In the course of his investigation, he befriends Rev. Ember Cole, the pastor of the Methodist Church, and Harry Thurgood, owner of the Really Good Wood-Fired Coffee Shop, and takes a special interest in their relationship, offering Ember some “fatherly” advice. That gave the story a tender and personal touch.

The book’s storyline is fairly straight-forward. What I enjoyed most was seeing Father Frank working out his faith to achieve tangible and rewarding good works.

Callan doesn’t wield a heavy club when it comes to his faith. His approach is rather matter of fact. An approach that works well for me. An approach that makes the Christian faith accessible and desirable.

You Won’t Know How… Or When is another fabulous entry in the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles series, as well as a worthy addition to the Father Frank series. Two birds with one stone.

Do you like puzzles? Or Wordle? Or just figuring out the instructions on how to put together the table you just bought?

If you do, pick up a copy of this suspense-filled whodunit and see if you can figure out how it will all end. It’s on pre-order at Amazon.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

Meet the Characters of Magnolia Bluff: The Investigator

Once again I’m taking a stroll down the streets of Magnolia Bluff, Texas.

I say hello to those I meet on my morning walk. There’s Gunter Fight entering his bank. We exchange waves. 

I pass by the bakery, mostly because my waistline says I should, but I do wave to Noonan Leigh, the owner. He’s busy so I don’t know if he saw me or not. Best pastries, cakes, and doughnuts in town at Bluff Bakery. At least so I hear.

Down by the courthouse I run into Reece Sovern. He’s the police investigator in Magnolia Bluff. And rather than my words to tell you about Reece, I’m going to once again let Caleb Pirtle talk to you and fill you in on Magnolia Bluff’s detective.

You can find the original blogpost here.

Down deep inside, Detective Reece Sovern may be the happiest man in town. He has a murder to investigate. He’s in the big-time now.

Reece Sovern has been a policeman all of his life.

Spent years driving a patrol car.

Kept his nose clean.

Worked his way up the chain of command.

And now he’s a detective in the small town of Magnolia Bluff.

Mostly he investigates the small stuff.

Thefts.

Burglaries.

Peeping Toms.

But in Death Wears a Crimson Hat, Book 1 of the Magnolia Bluff Crime Chronicles, Reece Sovern finds himself with a murder and a hit-and-run.

Maybe the hit-and-run was an attempted murder.

He’ll find out.

Down deep inside, Reece Sovern may be the happiest man in town.

He’s in the big-time now.

He’ll begin his investigation by talking to the biggest and probably the richest flirt in Magnolia Bluff.

*

Standing on the sidewalk, Reece Sovern unwrapped a cigar, stuck it in his mouth, and walked back to the city hall and police complex to get his car. He’d start by talking to Scarlett Hayden.

Sovern drove around the north end of Burnet Reservoir to Hayden’s Resort, which was situated on the northwest shore of the reservoir.

He remembered when the Haydens bought the fifty acres, put in twenty cabins, and then added a campground with twenty spots. They’d built a fabulous Prairie-style home for themselves, as well.

After all these years, the whole shebang must be worth a few millions, the detective thought, as he pulled into the drive, which was marked private. He wound his way through bald cypress, pecan, Texas ash, cottonwood, bur oak, and cedar elm. He emerged in a clearing. He recognized Scarlett’s big Land Rover and speculated that the beat up Honda parked next to it belonged to some young guy from the college. If one were to believe the gossip, that is.

Of course, if one did believe the gossip, Scarlett Hayden would rarely, if ever, be vertical. And he’d just seen her a little while ago in a vertical position. Besides, she had a resort to run, even though the Smiths did much of the day to day management, Scarlett still had to watch the big picture, which probably meant she was vertical quite a bit of the time.

He parked his car, got out, and walked up to the door. A vision flashed before his eyes of Scarlett walking into Thurgood’s coffee shop. He shook his head and pressed the doorbell.

After what seemed forever, the door opened.

“Mr. Sovern. What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”

She was wearing one of those filmy white outfits that women wore in the movies from the 1930s. Jesus, he said to himself. Out loud he said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure. C’mon in.” She stepped away from the door and headed for somewhere in the house.

He entered, closed the door, and followed. Her outfit billowed behind her like a cumulus cloud until she stopped at a door.

“We can talk in here.” Her hand motioned for Sovern to enter the room, which he did.

Scarlett followed and sat on the sofa, then tucked her legs under her.

Sovern sat, met her gaze, swallowed, pushed his glasses up his nose, and asked, “What happens if Mary Lou dies? With the society, that is?”

“We elect a new queen. And we’ll add a couple new members.”

“What does the society actually do?”

Scarlett chuckled. “It doesn’t do anything, Mr. Sovern. We girls just wanna have fun. So, we have fun.”

“I find it difficult to picture Mary Lou Fight having fun.”

Scarlett laughed loudly. “Then you don’t know Mary Lou. She has the most fun of us all. All of her gossipy little doings. She damn well has everyone in fear of her. What will she tell? What will she not? And at what price?”

“And you? Does she have you in the palm of her hand?”

“Good lord, no. But that’s only because I don’t give a damn.”

“So who do you think would want Louisa Middlebrook and Mary Lou Fight dead?”

“Louisa?” Sovern watched her cock her head and aim her eyes at the ceiling, and hold that pose for a moment, before turning those dark orbs of hers back to him. “I don’t have a clue. Most likely someone she pissed off when she became Mary Lou’s lap dog.”

“Lap dog?”

“Oh, yes. Mary Lou gave Louisa social standing. Made her somebody. And for that honor, she practically worshipped Mary Lou.”

Sovern thought on that for a moment, and then said, “And Mrs. Fight?”

Once again, Scarlett’s throaty laugh filled the room. “You’d be better off asking, Reece…”

The investigator couldn’t help but notice how she drew out his name and that her eyes became filled with longing. He cleared his throat.

“You’d be better off asking who didn’t want to kill her.”

“And who might that be?”

“I’d guess her husband, Harry Thurgood, and myself, of course. Actually, I have second thoughts about her husband.”

“Why do you exempt Thurgood and yourself?”

“Because neither one of us gives a damn about this little pimple on the butt of nowhere.”

*

Please click HERE to find Death Wears A Crimson Hat on Amazon.

Sandy Signing In wrote on Amazon:

Death Wears A Crimson Hat is a well-written mystery. It’s filled with characters, especially members of the Hats, who are deeply flawed and very believable. Mary Lou’s unprincipled character is one that evokes both dread and disgust. So, I’d have to say that the author, CW Hawes, definitely elicited an emotional response in this reader. Hawes also used character personalities, dialog and action in a way that kept me completely engaged throughout the book. Great job, Mr. Hawes! This is a story that I can highly recommend.

You can’t beat that for a hearty recommendation. Thank you Sandy Signing In!

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright, award-winning poet, and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes