Welcome, Joan! Please tell us more!
My mysteries always have a victim. And it’s Isabel Long’s mission to find out what really happened to that person.
Isabel, a longtime journalist turned P.I., focuses on solving cold cases in the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. In the first, Chasing the Case, a woman had disappeared 28 years earlier. In the second, Redneck’s Revenge, a junkyard owner supposedly died in a fire because he was too drunk to get out.
And in Checking the Traps, the victim is a highway worker by day and a poet by night. The official ruling was that Cary Moore jumped from a bridge known for suicides. His half-brother, Gary Beaumont, doesn’t believe it. For years, Gary has been trying to get someone to look into it, and now that Isabel has solved two cases, he turns to her for help.
It’s not as if Isabel and Gary have had a friendly relationship. After all, he and his brother, Larry, are drug-dealing bad boys who terrorized Isabel a bit in her last case.
But Isabel has a fondness for those men who take care of the roads, especially in snowy winters.
Plus, she is intrigued by the story of a poetry-writing truck driver. Cary hand-wrote his poems in composition books, and as Isabel goes through them, she sees a vast improvement. Perhaps that is the influence of the famous poet who was his neighbor. And as the case goes on, she finds the poems he wrote as gifts to people.
His poetry certainly reflects the person Cary was. Here’s an excerpt:
As I read Cary’s poems, I get an image of the self-taught poet. Or perhaps he was a natural and only needed practice to get it down. He wrote about the world around him. I smile when I read in one he calls “Close to Home” that he’s never traveled more than a hundred miles from where he lives and doesn’t feel he needs to go any farther.
Cary wrote about cutting wood, apologizing to these grand beasts, as he calls the trees on his land, but his family needs to keep warm this winter. In one poem, he finds a pair of old skates in his barn and remembers as a child, gliding on ice, if only life was still that easy.
Cary was married to a woman, Cherie, who runs a hair salon in their home. They were expecting a child when he died. He was a handy guy and a hard worker. But he’s also a bit of a boozer and drug user, so he’s got problems. And as it turns out, he was a bit naïve, especially concerning his famous neighbor.
In this scene, Isabel and her ‘Watson’ – her 93-year-old mother, Maria – visit Cherie. Isabel wants to know more about her late husband’s poetry. Cherie works on Maria’s hair while they talk.
"I think he got ideas for poems when he was drivin’ truck for the town, especially when he was plowin’ in the winter. He’d keep his eyes on the road, but his mind would wander. He started keepin’ a notebook in the cab of his truck, and on his breaks, he scribbled stuff down.” She laughs. “The other guys on the crew kidded him about it, but he didn’t care.”
"When did he write?”
"At night usually, on the weekends some. He did it at the kitchen table. He wrote on paper. He didn’t use a typewriter or computer. When he was finished with a poem, he’d write it down in one of his notebooks.”
"Did he show you his poems?”
"All the time. He read them out loud, too. They changed over the years. You’ll see. They get more serious.”
"One of the notebooks looks like it caught on fire.”
"I came home one day and saw Cary throwing it into the woodstove. I grabbed the book and put out the fire. I think he was going to burn ’em all. He wouldn’t tell me why, but he was upset about somethin’.”
"How long was that before he died?”
She holds the scissors above a strand of hair as she thinks. She turns, blinking toward me.
"It was a few weeks before. I hadn’t thought of that.”
Isabel Long is a bit banged up from her last case with a broken collarbone and her arm in a sling. But that doesn’t stop her from pouring beer at the Rooster Bar or taking her third case with Gary Beaumont, a local drug dealer who once terrorized her. Gary is convinced his brother didn’t jump off a bridge known for suicides. Somebody pushed him.
Gary’s brother was a boozer who drove
for a highway crew. But what interests Isabel and her ‘Watson’ – her 93-year-old
mother who lives with her – is that the man wrote poetry.
The chief suspects are one of Gary’s business associates and a famous poet who plagiarized his brother’s poetry for an award-winning book. Yes, he was that good.
As a journalist, Isabel did
regular meetups with her sources for stories. She called it checking the traps.
She does the same as a private investigator, and this time, she’ll make sure she
doesn’t get caught in one.
More about Joan:
Joan Livingston is the author of novels for
adult and young readers. Checking the
Traps, published by Crooked Cat Books, is the third in the mystery series
featuring Isabel Long, a longtime journalist who becomes an amateur P.I. The
first two are Chasing the Case and Redneck’s Revenge.
An award-winning journalist, she started as a
reporter covering the hilltowns of Western Massachusetts. She was an editor,
columnist, and the managing editor of The
Taos News, which won numerous state and national awards during her tenure.
Recently, she was named editor of the Greenfield Recorder.
After living eleven years in New Mexico, she
has returned to rural Western Massachusetts, which is the setting of much of
her adult fiction, including the Isabel Long Mystery Series.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Redneck’s
Revenge: http://mybook.to/rednecksrevenge
Checking
the Traps: http://mybook.to/checkingthetraps
Twitter: @JoanLivingston
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