Megan, who’s purchased the house next to Jane’s, needs some help
from her snooping neighbor. Megan’s been having blackouts, hearing voices—and
feeling like someone’s following her. Are these symptoms of an illness—or signs
that she’s in danger?
Considering the extensive security system in Megan’s house, it
seems like she should be safe—yet she soon vanishes into thin air. Some think
she’s run away, but would this ambitious young lawyer on the partner track
really miss a meeting with an important client? And where’s Megan’s cat?
The mystery is about to deepen when the cat is finally located in
a hidden panic room—and as Jane and the police look into Megan’s friends,
family, and past, it may be time to sound the alarm…
BarbaraRossAuthor.com

What a plot! Barbara Ross is on her game. This
second book in the Jane Darrowfield series, Jane
Darrowfield And The Madwoman Next Door, kicks the series into overdrive. It
reminded me a bit of an Agatha Raisin novel, if only Agatha lived in the Boston
suburbs and cut out excessive drinking, smoking, and getting a man. Jane isn’t
as abrasive as Agatha, but she likes her independence, can get testy when her
friends involve themselves too much in her business, and is an independent
business woman who solves “lesser” crimes.
This series is an experiment for Barnes & Noble,
where it is exclusively sold in paperback form only. It’s seems like they are
targeting a specific audience, but they really need to think about also putting
it out in electronic format because the book is such a page turner they are
inhibiting their own sales. To pick up a copy, go to: Barnes &
Noble The book was released yesterday.
Please welcome Barbara Ross back to WWK.
E. B. Davis
When next-door neighbor Megan asks Jane to determine
if she is crazy, why does Jane hesitate from taking the job?
Jane’s services as a professional
busybody are sometimes difficult for prospective clients to understand. Jane
has no training of any kind as a therapist and she doesn’t want Megan to
believe she’s in a position to evaluate her mental health. Once Megan promises
to seek professional help if Jane determines there are no external causes for
her symptoms, Jane agrees to take the case.
Why are Jane’s neighbors disappointed in Megan as a
neighbor?
Jane’s neighborhood has undergone
numerous transitions since she and her bridge-playing friends moved in decades
ago. As home prices have increased, the neighborhood has gone from single-earner
families to high-earning power couples to foreign investors who are rarely in
residence. Jane’s neighbors have nothing against Megan, who is single, but they
are always hoping for families with kids.
Megan doesn’t own a car. How far is it from
Cambridge to downtown Boston? Is the area mass transit really great? Jane sure
seems to use her car a lot.
It’s not unusual for members of
Megan’s generation in metro Boston not to have a car. Megan can walk about a
mile to the Red Line subway stop in Harvard Square, or she can take a bus or
trackless trolley if the weather is bad or she has a lot to carry. She uses her
bike frequently but can also use a car service like Lyft or Uber or a
short-term car rental like Zip Car if she needs to. Jane uses her car far more,
but she also takes the subway when she goes to downtown Boston.
There is a theme of generational estrangement in
this book. Have you experienced or have knowledge of this phenomenon?
Personally, fortunately no,
though I have observed it from both the kids’ side and the parents’ side in
friends and acquaintances. Estrangement from one’s parents is an unusual
situation and very hard on everyone involved, no matter how much one party or
the other might perceive it to be necessary.
Jane narrows down the reasons for Megan’s symptoms.
One could be toxic black mold. Can black mold account for many of Megan’s
symptoms?
Usually issues like sick building
syndrome result in mild, allergy-like symptoms. However, in rare cases, toxic
black mold can attack the central nervous system causing poor concentration,
depression, irritability, confusion, sleep disorders, anxiety and
hallucinations. Megan has reported some of these, especially sleep disorders
and things that seem like they must be hallucinations, as reasons she is
worried about her mental health
How is it that people can sense when they are being
watched?
What an interesting question. All
of us have experienced the phenomenon of feeling someone was watching us and have
turned around to discover an old acquaintance, or someone who is sure we are
someone else or, the worst, someone wanting to tell us we have toilet paper
stuck to our shoe. I don’t know how it works. Do we catch something out of the
corner of our eye that our brain needs time to process? And how many times is
someone looking and we don’t turn around? We can never know.
Another possibility for Megan’s symptoms could be
gaslighting. It isn’t a new term. What is it? Where did the term originate?
Hitchcock and Betty Davis?
The term gaslighting comes from a
Hitchcock-era play and two movies, one British and one American titled Gaslight.
The US version of the movie (1944) was directed by George Cukor and stars
Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotton and an eighteen-year-old Angela
Lansbury making her screen debut. The story is set in 1880s London, and one of
the things the main character experiences is seeing the gaslights in her home
surge and dim. Her husband assures her it isn’t happening and that it’s one of
many symptoms of her failing mental health. Manipulating people to believe
they’re not seeing, hearing, or experiencing things they actually are is now
called gaslighting.
I was surprised that Megan seems so naïve and less
than tech-savvy. Why? Is everyone to a certain extent naïve? Do we think of
ourselves as less than worthy of someone’s deviousness?
I think Megan is probably very
savvy about the tech she needs to do her job and about social media as well.
But she’s a busy attorney on the partner track at her law firm and she hasn’t
taken much of an interest in the security system in her home, which was
installed by the developer. She’s in “set it and forget it” mode with it.
I do think a lot of us have
trouble believing someone we know, and perhaps even trust, wishes us harm and
is actively working against us. I have a tendency to take people at face value
and they have to lose my trust rather than earn it.
Why are foreign nationals buying up homes in Jane’s
neighborhood? Is this a common practice in suburbs of large cities in the US?
Yes, I think most big cities and
close-in suburbs around the world have experienced this. Foreign nationals buy
the properties as investments, but also to move money out of their own
countries which may have totalitarian regimes whose future actions can’t be
predicted. Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Jane lives has many boarding schools
and universities in the area, and sometimes the kids of these investors stay in
the properties during school breaks. However, mostly the houses are empty.
Is there danger in having the same company install
and service security systems in the same neighborhood?
I think neighbors often recommend
their favorite services to others, and contractors develop preferences for
reliable, economical vendors they use over and over, so this happens often.
Why can’t we cross Andy off the suspects list? Is
there such a thing as being too nice?
Jane’s friend Detective Alvarez
of the Cambridge Police Department thinks that Andy is overly interested in
Megan’s case. Andy insists Megan is missing when she’s only been out of touch
for a couple of hours. He drives down Megan’s narrow, winding street way too
often and always seems to turn up when something big happens in the case.
Detective Alvarez finds this behavior very concerning.
What did Jane do that her son needed to take a
ten-year break from her? He never gave her a reason? What does Jane’s intuition
say?
I’ve gotten more specific about
this with each book, but I am not ready to disclose yet.
Harry, Jane’s special someone (she can’t abide the
term boyfriend), wants and hints at getting closer. Why does Jane hesitate?
Jane’s marriage ended very badly
a quarter century earlier, but a bigger consideration is those twenty-five
years she’s spent on her own. She’s used to running her own life and not used
to the kind of compromises a long-term romantic relationship requires. Can she
change? Does she want to?
Why after Jane sends Detective Alvarez on two false
alarm clues does he still keep her in the loop?
Alvarez has learned to trust Jane
on some previous cases, and in this situation, as time ticks on, he’s desperate
for a solution. Leads that don’t pan out are better than no leads at all.
Do you have a security system? After writing this
book were you paranoid? After Zoom meetings, I wonder if someone is looking at
me through my own laptop camera. I’m hesitating to buy a smart TV because
they’ll view us in the living room. Since I don’t watch much TV, this isn’t as
much of a problem for me. Is big brother, or his notoriously delinquent son,
now a part of our lives?
We do have a security system, and
like Megan, we inherited it from a previous owner. It has a lot more
functionality than I think we need. Like Megan, I haven’t paid a lot of
attention to the system. It’s become my husband’s domain, so I totally get how
a malicious partner or ex-partner could use the system to torment an
unsuspecting victim. Thank goodness my husband has no such motives.
I don’t think there’s anything
about my life that’s interesting enough to attract the attention of Big Brother
(except maybe some of the internet searches I do for my mysteries), but I know
I’m interesting to A LOT of corporations that want to sell me stuff. It’s one
of those trade-offs we make in modern life.
In the end, all of Jane’s theories weren’t totally
on the mark even though she figures it out. She also blames herself for
triggering the entire crime. Will Jane rise again to solve another problem?
Good question! I hope so. I’m sure she’ll continue her
professional busybody business and we’ll see where that leads.
Coming Soon
2/23/21