The Place is the Thing

I first met today's guest blogger, Edith Maxwell, when I was deciding which publisher to sign with. I knew her from the Guppy chapter of the Sisters in Crime, and I was aware she had earlier signed with Barking Rain Press. That book (published under her pseudonym, Tace Baker) has been recently published. (See blurb below for more about Speaking of Murder. She also writes the Local Foods Mysteries series.)

~ Jim


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Thanks for asking me over to Salad Bowl Saturday!

I set my new mystery, Speaking of Murder, in the real town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. I lived there for some years and only recently moved a few towns away. It’s a lovely historic town on the Atlantic coast and salt marshes. It’s also a quirky town with colorful characters. My protagonist, Professor Lauren Rousseau, lives there and much of the book’s action takes place there.

Anyone who lives in Ipswich will recognize local landmarks. For example, my daily walk used to be on a hilly road that stretched up and down through woods and past a few houses to end at a creek and the salt marshes. The road is called Labor in Vain Road. Yes, really. The creek is also Labor in Vain Creek which empties into the nearby Ipswich River. The story goes that craft used to wend their way from the sea up the Ipswich River into town. At one point a couple of centuries ago the river began to silt up, and by the time a boat reached the creek, its operator was laboring in vain to make further progress up stream.

One of the residents on Labor in Vain Road is a white-haired gentleman who always wears a skirt. It’s always a khaki A-line skirt that hits him above the knees. He usually wears knee socks with it. I saw him mowing the lawn of the Episcopal church in the skirt. He walked with his wife in the skirt. He even went for a daily slow jog in it. He seems otherwise completely normal, friendly, with a twinkle in his eye. I didn’t include him in the first book, but he might show up in the sequel.

Photo by Elizabeth Thomson

Right over the creek bridge is an antique house that is unoccupied except for a couple of weeks in the summer. I set a couple of scenes in that house.

The oldest double-arch bridge in the nation is the Choate Bridge that spans the Ipswich River in the center of town. It was funded in part by Colonel John Choate. At the opening of the bridge in 1764 he apparently stationed himself on the north side of the bridge on his horse. If it collapsed under the weight of real traffic, he could make a speedy getaway to New Hampshire. The Choate Bridge Pub is a popular restaurant and bar in town, so of course I had to include that in the book.

Until this year, Ipswich also had a secretive cabal of trustees called the Feoffees, who were supposed to manage the oldest land trust in the country. Much controversy surrounded them and I thought, “Here’s a situation where nobody would be surprised if someone were murdered.” After I completed Speaking of Murder, I started the next book in the series. I wanted the Feoffees to be part of the story and I realized I needed to fictionalize Ipswich. I went back into Speaking of Murder, changed its name to Ashford, and altered the names of a few landmarks.

I made sure not to have any crimes committed in public places, even with their fictionalized names. I’d like to be able to hold a reading event in the Choate Bridge Pub, for example, and wouldn’t want them to refuse me because someone was poisoned in a booth or stabbed behind the bar.

What’s your favorite setting for a book? Do you like reading stories set in a place you know, or does it irritate you when the setting is fictionalized and things exactly as they are in real life?

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Edith Maxwell is the author of Speaking of Murder (Barking Rain Press, under pseudonym Tace Baker) featuring Quaker linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau. Edith holds a PhD in linguistics and is a member of Amesbury Monthly Meeting of Friends. A mother and technical writer, Edith lives north of Boston with her beau and three cats.

Edith also writes the Local Foods Mysteries. A Tine to Live, a Tine to Die introduces organic farmer Cam Flaherty and a colorful Locavore Club (Kensington Publishing, June, 2013).

Find her at http://www.facebook.com/EdithMaxwellAuthor, @edithmaxwell, and www.edithmaxwell.com. Tace Baker can be found at www.tacebaker.com, @tacebaker, and http://www.facebook.com/TaceBaker

Speaking of Murder "blurb":

The murder of a talented student at a Massachusetts college thrusts linguistics professor Lauren Rousseau into the search for the killer. Lauren is a Quaker with an ear for accents. Her investigation exposes small-town intrigues, academic blackmail, and a drug cartel that now has its sights set on her.

Convinced that the key to the crime lies hidden in her dead student’s thesis, Lauren races to solve the mystery. Her department chair behaves suspiciously. A century-old boat shop is torched. Lauren’s friend goes missing – and the unsettled relationship with her lover threatens to implode just when she needs him most.