ESCAPES by Nancy L. Eady

I love mysteries, of course, or I wouldn’t want to write them. I read some mysteries for the fun of solving the “whodunit” puzzle. But I read series for more than that. The series I most enjoy create places and people so vivid that they become friends I can drop in on whenever I want.

It’s hard to say what makes a series magical to me. One of the first series I fell in love with was the Nero Wolfe mysteries. Archie Goodwin, Mr. Wolfe (only his best friend, Marko Vukcic, would ever call him “Nero”), and their supporting cast, which includes Fritz, the cook and butler, Saul Panzer, private detective extraordinaire, and a few others are very real to me. The brownstone building with the orchid greenhouse on the top is one of my favorite haunts. I was in New York City on business once and tracked down the address where Nero Wolfe is supposed to live. The address is nothing like Nero Wolfe’s habitat. That’s okay with me. The New York City Archie moves around in is a New York City I will never see but visit constantly.

Two of my newer series favorites are written by co-bloggers here at Writers Who Kill:  the Sarah Blair series, by Debra Goldstein, and the Haunted Library, by Allison Brook, aka Marilyn Levinson. Debra’s series takes place in a contemporary suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. I recognize the places and people which remind me of places and people I see in the real world. And who can’t love a “cook of convenience,” whose highest culinary achievement was the recipe, “Jell-O in a Can.” Top that off with the fact that Sarah is an animal lover with both a Siamese Alpha cat named Rahrah and a dog named Fluffy. Now there is someone I can’t help but enjoy getting to know. My only beef with Sarah is the fact that she refuses to even consider her friend and boss, Harlan Endicott, as a potential dating partner. But since the series continues, I can hope!

The librarian main character, Carrie, in Marilyn’s series is someone I relate to differently. Until book 1, she had been an itinerant wanderer, but with the help of the library’s resident ghost, Evelyn, she has settled down in one place as the librarian in charge of programs. Book by book I enjoy watching her rebuild her life and many of her relationships. And the idea that small towns exist in Connecticut fascinates me. I tend to picture the Northeast United States as one big city from Washington D.C. up to Boston, except for bucolic Vermont.

I am a little OCD with series. When a new book comes out, I start at book 1 and read through the end of the latest book. It can be quite time-consuming when reading series like Donna Andrews Meg Langslow series and Bobbi Holmes’s Haunting Danielle series, both of which have over twenty books in them. It’s worth it to escape to the worlds created by each of my favorite series’ authors.

And who knows? Maybe one day I will find THE enchanted bookmark or page or gizmo that will let me step into the pages of my favorite books and meet my friends in person. I think they’d be happy to see me.