Some serial mystery authors have grown tired of writing about the same characters. Arthur Conan Doyle grew bored with Sherlock Holmes and killed him off although he later resurrected the infamous sleuth. Agatha Christie also grew to hate her arrogant little detective Hercule Poirot, and wanted to end his career as well as his life. My own Logan & Cafferty mystery/suspense series became tiresome after I had finished novel six, Murder at the Mansion. However, after starting a standalone suspense novel, I began dreaming about my senior sleuths, Dana Logan and her best friend Sarah Cafferty. In the dreams both women seemed to plead with me to continue the series.
I have to admit that, after six months of not tuning
into their conversations and adventures, I missed them. They had become old
friends. In fact, they were patterned after my best friend and I while we were still
both young, single and adventurous. My sixtyish amateur sleuths have gotten
themselves into some unusual predicaments but have managed somehow to survive.
I eventually decided to write a serious seventh novel
but my sleuths refused to fit completely into serious mode. Dana’s sidekick
Sarah has an innate sense of humor that can’t be tamped down, and Dana usually
goes along with her antics, no matter how much I try to discourage them. However,
the novels’ subjects are serious: drugs,
terrorism, adultery, anarchy, romance, theft, gray wolves, RV park intrigue, a
tornado, flood, and, of course, murder. But Sarah always seems to make light of
or exaggerate the problems which present themselves.
Emotions are the most important elements in novel
plots, so I’m grateful to have a quirky character like Sarah to make the novels
come alive. No cardboard characters for me.
My current work in Progress, Logan & Cafferty #7,
is titled Mystery of the Black Cross and
features Sarah’s badly laser-burned face and the murders of two women in the
cosmetic surgeon’s office. I researched the novel by suffering through a
similar burn myself. I then came across an anarchist’s group dating back to the
twelfth century. The research has been fascinating. I tied the two subjects together
by having the killer paint a black cross on the house the two women share. A deadly
warning or a prank? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait to find out. : )
Jean Henry Mead began her writing career as a
California news reporter, among her beats the Mexican border. She later
transferred to her current home in Wyoming, where she served as staff
writer-photographer for the statewide newspaper, and editor of In Wyoming Magazine while freelancing
for the Denver Post. She also
contributed to other magazines, both domestic and abroad, before writing the
first of her 21 books, half of them novels.
Along the way she established the Western Writers Hall of Fame located in
the large Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, and has served as National
Publicity director of WWA and editor of two small presses.
Visit her website at JeanHenryMead.com and her Amazon
author’s page at http://www.amazon.com/Jean-Henry-Mead/e/B002DBE37A/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
