A New Detective in the Streets of Houston

By M.E. Proctor

I moved to Houston, Texas, twenty-seven years ago. The town confused me. I was used to European cities where streets turned and wove at random, landmarks on every corner, neighborhoods with small shops and restaurants, trees and parks, rows of brick houses, an occasional glass building, and hard-to-find parking spots.

 For the first couple of years, I kept a map of Houston on the passenger seat of my car (this was before smart phones). I tended to get lost and wasn’t too sure where the various intersecting freeways were going. To baffle me even more, each of them had more than one name—I-10 was also the Katy Freeway (but only up to the small town of Katy, to the west), 59 was also called the Eastex, Beltway 8 was the Sam Houston or the tollway, 610 was the Loop ... Locals juggled the labels, switching them in mid-conversation. They talked about Kirby and West U, Milam and the Pierce Elevated. I had to reshuffle my mental registers. It took a while but I eventually got my bearings. I was no longer a complete outsider. In the process, slightly anarchic Houston grew on me, as it kept growing itself, and boy, has it grown in all these years.

When I decided to write a crime novel, setting it in my adoptive hometown was a no-brainer. I envisioned the streets at night, the neon lights as the background for a classic detective story with a contemporary flavor. The city that overwhelmed me as a new arrival would provide the vast and varied canvas I needed.

I dropped my private investigator, Declan Shaw, on the east side of Downtown, a former industrial waste land fit for a gloomy neo-noir movie that is slowly turning civilized one eatery and art gallery at a time. Declan’s small agency operates from his office-apartment combo on top of a refurbished warehouse with a clanging antique elevator. It matches his personality, sophistication under rough brick. To balance the equation, his business partner, Moira Perkins, lives in The Heights, an old neighborhood replete with Arts & Crafts bungalows and intricate colorful Victorians. Every time, I drive through these oak-shaded streets, I fantasize about moving there. I have to settle for enjoying the area vicariously through Moira.

Other parts of Houston are featured in Love You Till Tuesday, the first book in the Declan Shaw mystery series.

The jazz club where April Easton, the murder victim, performs is Downtown. Houston has multiple venues to catch live music, from bars to arenas, from new talent to established names. April’s apartment in a gated enclave is on the west side, half an hour away from the club at night when traffic is light. Frank Murphy, the head of Houston PD’s Homicide Division, and a friend/mentor of Declan’s also lives on the west side in a quiet neighborhood of ranch houses with unfenced and well-tended front yards where gray squirrels teem. A secondary character lives in hip and quirky Montrose, and Declan kills time between interviews at the Butterfly Center in the Museum District, perfect for pondering clues. He also wanders around the Anahuac Wildlife Refuge and the San Jacinto Monument at sunset.

I didn’t intend to give readers a complete tour of H-Town, but I believe that a complex plot needs anchoring and even if the characters are fictional it helps when they move in a world that is as close as possible to the real one.

So, what is Love You Till Tuesday about?

It starts with the murder of jazz singer, April Easton. A murder that makes no sense, and yet she appears to have been targeted. Steve Robledo, the Houston cop in charge of the investigation, has nothing to work with. Local PI Declan Shaw, who spent the night with April, has little to contribute. He’d just met her and she was asleep when he left. The case seems doomed to remain unsolved, forever open, and quickly erased from the headlines. And it would be if Declan’s accidental connection with the murder didn’t have unexpected consequences. The men responsible for April’s death are worried. Declan is known to be stubborn and nosy. There is no telling what he’ll find if he starts digging. He must be watched. He might have to be stopped. He’s a risk the killers cannot afford. The stakes are high: a major trial with the death penalty written all over it.

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M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. Her short story collection Family and Other Ailments (Wordwooze Publishing) is available in all the usual places. She’s currently working on a crime series. The first book, Love You Till Tuesday, introducing Houston PI Declan Shaw, was recently published by Shotgun Honey. The next book in the series, Catch Me on a Blue Day, will come out in 2025. Her stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines like Vautrin, Bristol Noir, Mystery Tribune, Reckon Review, and Black Cat Weekly. She’s a Derringer nominee for short fiction. Website: www.shawmystery.com – On Substack: meproctor.substack.com.