A Guest Post by Mindy Quigley
You may have heard writers describe moments when their characters take over the story. This has certainly happened to me. I’ll think I know which way a scene needs to go, only to have the folks on the page inform me they have other plans.
Something that gets less attention is what happens when a book’s setting starts taking over the plot.
I certainly didn’t expect Geneva Bay, the charming Wisconsin lakeside resort where my books take place, to start murdering people. But—surprise!—it did just that.
When I first pitched the Deep Dish Mysteries, I had no intention of setting the books in small-town Wisconsin. The books feature deep-dish pizza and a detective descended from Al Capone, so obviously they belonged in Chicago. I envisioned my fictional pizzeria in Hyde Park, where I could draw on the neighborhood’s fascinating history and the city’s unseemly connection with organized crime.
My publisher had other ideas. They loved the concept, but wanted it set in a small, tightly knit community—a place where readers could take a mental vacation.
I tried to argue that Chicago is, in fact, a great place for a vacation, but finally relented, moving the whole shebang to “Geneva Bay,” a lightly-fictionalized version of Lake Geneva.
As it turned out, Lake Geneva had everything I needed. It’s a short drive from Chicago, and its history is deeply intertwined with the city. Wealthy Chicagoans flock there in the summer, and during Prohibition, the area served as a convenient booze-smuggling pitstop. Gangsters, including Al Capone, also reportedly used the area as a place to lie low when things got too hot in Chicago.
I soon realized that my publisher had done me a huge favor. The town wasn’t just a backdrop: as I got to know it, it became a murder-mystery-generating machine.
The early books’ plots were driven primarily by the characters. Take the first book. Main character Delilah O’Leary discovers her elderly aunt holding a literal smoking gun over the corpse of her seemingly beloved caregiver, upping the stakes. In the sequel, Delilah herself becomes a prime suspect after a murder takes place in a juice bar owned by her ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend.
By the fourth book, though, Geneva Bay had started suggesting plot twists of its own.
Sleep in Heavenly Pizza takes place during the U.S. Snow Sculpting Invitational, a real event Lake Geneva hosts each winter. Huge mounds of snow are transformed into oversized artwork over the course of a few days. Watching the sculptors work, I began to wonder: What would happen if they carved back the snow only to unearth a corpse?
I hadn’t simply found a fun place to hide a corpse (though it is fun!). The entire mystery grew out of the setting: the town’s winter attractions, its wealthy seasonal residents, its unpredictable weather. The murder couldn’t be uprooted and plunked down in another place. It became a wheredunnit. Only Geneva Bay could’ve pulled it off.
By the time I started writing At Death’s Dough, the fifth Deep Dish Mystery, the setting was again at the top of my mind.
In this book, Delilah’s great-aunt, an enthusiastic ice fisher, takes her out onto the frozen lake, where—well, you can probably guess what happens next.
The gruesome discovery plunges Delilah into a mystery involving a real-life, century-old crime, the Capone family, and a trail of clues that may lead to a priceless treasure. All of those elements are unique to Lake Geneva/Geneva Bay.
At Death’s Dough won the 2026 Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel, which was a particularly satisfying development for a book that began with the question, “How might this cute-as-a-button place kill someone (again) and why?”
At long last, the audiobook of At Death’s Dough is now available, narrated by the super talented Holly Adams.
So if you’re fed up with the summer heat and looking for a book to transport you, I invite you to visit the frosty shores of a scenic Wisconsin lake.
Just watch your step. Geneva Bay is a dangerous town.
Agatha Award-winning author Mindy Quigley writes twisty, character-driven crime fiction with a sharp, snappy sense of humor. Her Deep Dish Mysteries were a Woman’s World book club pick and have been featured in Parade and the Seattle Times.
Before turning to full-time fiction writing, Mindy spent more than a decade managing veterinary clinical research studies. That followed an unusual career path that took her from the U.S. to the U.K., where she studied British colonial history, worked as the personal assistant to the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep, and project managed a neurology research clinic founded by J.K. Rowling.
She now lives in small-town Virginia with her Civil War historian husband and their children. For a lifelong dog owner, she spends an awful lot of time thinking about cats.
