Sunday, October 11, 2020

Mysteries? Yes, and Love Stories!

  

One of my two current series, the Father Hardy Alaska Mystery series, is a mystery series. Duh. More accurately, it's a historical mystery series, set in the long-ago 1950s. 

Yes, I know, long ago is in the eye of the beholder. I was just reading about a model wearing a vintage Versace dress that is as old as she is. I might have been impressed except that she was born in 1994. I have t-shirts that old but don't get the headlines. 

Here's the thing. I write mysteries, but they are also love stories.

In the Hardy series, I have two characters, with a few 'miles' on them. They've been around. This is not fresh puppy dog love. These aren't young Romeo and Juliet first-timers, beautiful and memorable simply because they're new.

Hardy and Evie are slightly middle-aged lovers, with scars. He was married, loved his dead wife so terribly that she literally haunts him. She was a scrappy survivor of a bunch of bad stuff, an institutional orphan from the mission school and a wild child who lived to grow up. 

And they are not the same race. It's not such a big deal now as it was when the stories are set, in the 1950s. As a boy in the village, then for several years a teenager in the freedom-rider mid-south, I remember. I remember the gossip and the shunning, the flame-gutted bus.

Now, to make matters more complicated, I've just finished book 6 in the Hardy series and it won't surprise any regular reader to learn they get married, right at the front of the book. You know what that usually means in a mystery series: She's about to die tragically, or the series is about to disappear. Spoiler alert: no. 

If you haven't read a Hardy mystery, quarantine goes a lot smoother with good books. Pick up "Indecent Exposure," first in the series. You can order through any book store, though it's quickest and easiest from Amazon. And then just start reading. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "Come further up and further in."

We'll go together.