10 Classic Crime Stories That Have Just Entered the Public Domain in 2022 https://flip.it/Pbeef_
Author: Jane Simon Ammeson
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Spilling the Beans: Abra Berens Dishes on Legumes, Beans, and More in Her Latest Cookbook
A much maligned vegetable belonging, along with peas and lentils, to the vegetable class called legumes, beans are about as low on the food chain as you can go in terms of respect. Kids snicker at rhymes about beans and the gas they produce and sayings like “not worth a hill of beans” signifies their, well, insignificance.
Once Abra Berens, the former co-owner of Bare Knuckles Farm in Northport, Michigan and now the executive chef at Granor Farm in Southwest Michigan, was like most of us. She didn’t give a bean about beans. That is until she became intrigued by the bean and grain program at Granor, a certified organic farm in Three Oaks, a charming historic village with its own burgeoning food culture.
Now she’s all about legumes and grains and for anyone who knows Abra that means a total passionate immersion in the subject which resulted in her latest cookbook, a 464-page door stopper with 140 recipes and over 160 recipe variations titled Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes. Just published by Chronicle Books on October 26th, the demand for Grist is so high it was hard to get a copy at first.
Now, that’s worth more than a hill of beans.
Berens, a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Chef: Great Lakes, also authored Ruffage. That book, which came out in 2019, was named a Best Cookbook for Spring 2019 by the New York Times and Bon Appétit, was a 2019 Michigan Notable Book winner, and was also nominated for a 2019 James Beard Award. She puts the same energy into her Grist.
“We are told over and over again to eat a diet rich in whole grains and plant-based protein,” writes Berens in the book’s introduction. “The science is there—high in soluble fiber, low glycemic index, healthy fatted protein—but the perception of whole grains seems to still be of leaden health food, endless cooking times, and cud-like chewing at the end of it all.”
Indeed. Consider this. A cup of cooked black beans has 245 calories and contains approximately the following percentage of the daily values needed in an average diet—74% folate, 39% manganese, 20% iron, 21% both potassium and magnesium, and 20% vitamin B6.
“But we all know that they’re good for you,” says Berens, who describes herself as a bean-evangelist. “I want people to understand these ingredients and you can’t understand these ingredients until you know them.”
And so, she introduces us to 29 different grains, legumes, and seeds. Some like lentils, lima beans, split peas, quinoa, rice, and oats we know something about. Others are more obscure such as cowpeas, millet, teff, fonio, and freekeh are mysteries. That is until you read her book and learn not only how to cook them but also about their history. There’s a cheat sheet of the health benefits of each. Berens also conducted interviews with farmers including her cousins Matt and John Berens, third-generation farmers in Bentheim, Michigan who have transitioned into growing non-GMO corn and edible beans and Jerry Hebron, the manager of Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, a nonprofit, community-based organization dedicated to cultivating healthy foods, sustainable economies, and active cultural environments. Hebron has been raising crowder beans for almost a decade.
We also get to meet Carl Wagner, a farmer and seed cleaner in Niles, Michigan. Berens said she wanted to include “invisible” farming jobs and this certainly is one. She didn’t know what a seed cleaner was until a few years ago and figured that most of us don’t know either. Wagner, with his wife Mary, run C3 Seeds, a company that provides seed cleaning for grains and seed stock. When Berens asked him what he’d like people to know about his job, his response was that they would know that seed cleaning “is part of buying a bag of flour or a bottle of whiskey.”
“The biggest thing is that if people are interested in cooking with beans, it’s an easy entry point it’s not like buying $100 tenderloin,” says Berens.
Of course, you can buy beans in the grocery store. Berens recommends dried beans not canned. But Granor Farm also sells black, red, and pinto beans at their farm store which is open Friday and Saturday. For information on the times, visit granorfarm.com
Berens is already working on her next book, tentatively titled Fruit, due out in 2023. When I ask her how she does it all, she laughs and replies, “I don’t have any hobbies.”
And she takes things very seriously.
“Every author has to think about why they’re putting something in the world,” she says, “and what is the value of it and makes these books worthwhile.”
With Grist, we’re learning the value of tasty and healthy foods that taste good.
The following recipes are reprinted from Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes by Abra Berens with permission from Chronicle Books, 2021. Photographs © EE Berger.
Seared Chicken Thighs W/Buckwheat, Smashed Cucumbers + Tajín Oil
The angular mouthfeel of the buckwheat plays well with the crunch of the cucumber and against the crisp of the chicken thigh. Serve the buckwheat warm or chilled, depending on your preference. If you aren’t eating meat, the salad is a great lunch on its own or pairs well with an egg or fried tofu.
- 1 cup buckwheat groats, toasted or not
- Olive oil
- 2 medium cucumbers (about 1 lb. total), washed
- 1/4 cup Tajín Oil
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- ¾ cup plain yogurt, Greek or traditional
- 1 lemon (about 1½ oz) zest and juice
- 10 sprigs parsley, roughly chopped
- Any additional herbs you want, roughly chopped (mint, tarragon, thyme, cilantro)
- Pinch of chili flakes (optional)
- 4 to 6 chicken thighs
Bring a large pot of salted water to a rolling boil over high heat. Toss in the buckwheat groats and give the pot a stir. Return to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cook the grains until tender, 8 to 15 minutes.
Drain the groats, toss with a glug of Tajín oil, and set aside.
Trim the ends of the cucumbers and place on a cutting board. Using the widest knife (or frying pan) you have, press down on the cucumbers until their skin cracks and they break into irregular pieces. Dress the cucumbers with the Tajín oil and a pinch of salt.
Combine the yogurt with the lemon zest and juice, chopped herbs, chili flakes (if using), a pinch of salt, and two big glugs of olive oil. Set aside.
Blot the chicken skin dry and season with salt and pepper.
Heat a large frying pan over high heat until the pan is starting to smoke. Add a glug or two of oil, lower the heat to medium, and fry the thighs, skin-side down, until golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Flip the
chicken and sauté until cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes more.
To serve, dish the buckwheat onto serving plates. Top with the chicken thighs and then the dressed cucumbers. Garnish with a thick spoonful of the herbed yogurt.
Tajín Oil
- 1 cup neutral oil
- 2 Tbsp Tajín
In a medium sauce or frying pan, heat the oil over medium heat until it begins to shimmer, about 1 minute. Remove from the heat, add the Tajín, and let steep for 5 minutes.
Whole Roasted Leeks w/Chickpeas, Lemon Vinaigrette, Ricotta + Chard
- 4 large leeks (about 2 pounds), trimmed and cleaned of dirt
- 4 sprigs thyme (optional)
- ¼ teaspoon chili flakes (optional)
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 orange (about 3 ounces), peel stripped, juiced, or ¼ cup white wine or hard cider
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, rinsed
- 1 bunch chard (8 ounces), cut into ribbons (or spinach, kale, or arugula)
- 2 lemons (about 3 ounces), zest and juice
- 4 ounces ricotta
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the whole, cleaned leeks, side by side, in a roasting pan.
Scatter the thyme (if using), chili flakes (if using), and 2 large pinches of salt evenly over the leeks.
Scatter the orange peel strips over the leeks and drizzle them with the orange juice and ¼ cup of the olive oil to coat.
Cover with foil and bake until the leeks are tender, 35 to 45 minutes.
Combine the chickpeas, chard ribbons, lemon zest and juice, and remaining ½ cup of olive oil with a big pinch of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper.
When the leeks are tender, transfer from the roasting pan to plates or a serving platter. Top with the chickpea and chard salad. Dot ricotta over the top and serve.
Spoon Pudding with Pork Chops and Cabbage Salad
For the spoon pudding:
- ¾ cup cornmeal
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup milk
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
For the salad:
- About 1 pound red cabbage, shaved into thin strips
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 10 sprigs parsley, roughly chopped
- 1 lemon zest and juice
- ½ teaspoon chili flakes
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- Salt
4 pork chops, seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled
To make the spoon pudding:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an ovenproof baking dish or frying pan that can hold 2 quarts total volume.
Combine the cornmeal, salt, 1 cup of boiling water, and the melted butter and whisk out any lumps. Combine the eggs, milk, and baking powder and add to the cornmeal batter. Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake until the edges of the spoon bread are just set and lightly browned, 30 to 40 minutes.
To make the salad: Combine the cabbage with the olive oil, chopped parsley, lemon zest and juice, chili flakes, paprika, and a couple pinches of salt. Toss to combine and adjust the seasoning as desired.
Serve the spoon bread alongside the grilled pork chops and cabbage salad.
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History Through the Headsets
It didn’t take long for Notre Dame senior defensive signal-callers Reed Gregory (No. 50) and John Mahoney (No. 25) to get to yes when then-defensive backs coach Terry Joseph asked if they wanted to write about what most likely will remain the most unique time period in the school’s football history.
John Mahoney The two, both members of the class of 2021, were on the sidelines signaling during practice recalls Maloney when they looked at each and asked, “do we really want to do this?”
They did indeed. After spending spring and summer writing, their book History Through the Headsets: Inside Notre Dame’s Playoff Run During the Craziest Season in College Football History (Triumph Books $26.95) has just been released during what is a much saner season.
Reed Gregory Neither was an English major—Mahoney, who majored in finance and minored in history and now works as a management consultant in Minneapolis and Gregory, an economics major with minors in Russian and digital marketing who now works in wealth management in New York City. Still they knew what to do.
“Once we spoke to each other and decided that’s what we wanted to do, we went to the bookstore and looked through every sports book for the name of the publisher and then contacted everyone we could,” says Gregory. They chose Triumph Books, a Chicago publishing house.
Next came the writing part. That was easier than they thought as well.
“We wrote a lot of it in first person and a lot of it was recounting the personal memories we have,” says Gregory while Mahoney notes that as defensive signalers they had the inside story on every snap. Plus, they added their owner firsthand experiences about being on a football team during the pandemic. Both mention working out while wearing masks while attempting to keep the correct social distancing. There was also the experience of playing against Boston College where the empty stands were filled with paper cutouts of people.
“More than anything we hope the book is a memento of the time—and hopefully one that will never be repeated—and what our lives were like in the daily process as a football team,” says Mahoney.
Both count the double overtime win against Clemson last November as the best moment in a season of ups and downs.
Their work is appreciated by then-Notre Dame Head Football Coach Brian Kelly who in the book’s forward “This 2020 edition of Notre Dame Football was a very special group to me because of the strong character they possessed, and Reed and John are the epitome of that as much as anyone in our program.”
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Florence LaRue: Grace in Your Second Act
“People ask me when I’m going to retire,” says Florence LaRue, “and I say retire? I know I can’t do what I did when I was 70 but I do have the energy to keep moving and that’s what I’m going to keep doing.”
LaRue, now 80-years-old, is certainly on the move. In the month or so between when her publicist contacted me about doing a story about her new book, “Grace in Your Second Act: A Guide to Aging Gracefully,” and the day LaRue called to chat, she’d been touring with the 5th Dimension, a music vocal group that LaRue has been performing with as the lead singer since 1966. Now more than half-a-century later, LaRue, a six-time GRAMMY-Award winner, she is the only remaining original member.
LaRue never planned or even wanted to be a singer.
“There were two things I always wanted to do,” says LaRue who was born in a small town in Pennsylvania. “One was to teach—I had a wonderful 5th grade teacher, and the other was to act.”
Indeed, LaRue, a graduate of California State was just starting to teach when she fulfilled her duty as the 1962 winner of the Miss Bronze California by crowning her successor. When Jet Magazine photographer Lamonte McLemore had a different plan. His cousin, gospel singer Billy Davis Jr., and Ron Towson were putting together a group called the Versailles.
“He came up and said he wanted me to be in their group,” says LaRue who agreed to do it for fun just for a while.
The Versailles isn’t a group many people remember. But they do know The 5th Dimension which between 1967 and 1973 charted 20 Top 40 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 with songs such as “Go Where You Wanna Go,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Never My Love,” and “(Last Night) I didn’t Get to Sleep at All.” Their 1967 song “Up – Up and Away” and 1969’s “Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” both won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Aquarius achieved tremendous success, shooting up to number one where it stayed for six weeks, selling over a million copies in less than a month.
“I owe my career to winning that contest,” says LaRue. “Years later a man came up to me and said I know you don’t remember me, but I was one of the judges. All the other young ladies came out wearing their gowns and sang. But when you came out in a white suit with a white hat, holding the hatbox, singing “April in Paris” in French, Eartha Kitt turned and said to us, ‘There’s your winner.”
LaRue does some acting but never had the time to pursue it as a fulltime career. When I suggest that singing on stage is a form of acting, she quickly but sweetly corrects me.
“I have to feel what I’m singing,” she says. “There’s no acting to it. If I don’t feel it, I can’t do my best.”
Feeling it is also part of LaRue wrote “Grace in Your Second Act.” She wants older women to embrace their lives as they grow older.
“Don’t regret growing older,” she says. “It’s a privilege denied to many.”
But her book is not only for those who are in their second act. The best way to prepare for the second act, she says, is by taking care of yourself during your first act.
It worries her that people don’t eat well, consume to much sugar, and don’t exercise. Before she called at 10 a.m., LaRue had already done her exercises and walked a mile to get ready for her day.
We end out phone call with LaRue taking down my address. She’s going to send me her recipe for chicken curry.
“It’s one of my favorites, I’m sure you’ll like it,” she tells me.
I’m sure I will.
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All Her Little Secrets
Most of us keep secrets from those we love—whether it’s simply misdirection about how much that new dress really cost or an outright lie like what really happened at the work party your partner couldn’t attend.
But in Wanda Morris’s All Her Little Secrets, attorney Ellice Littlejohn has taken it to a new level. Sure, she graduated from an Ivy League Law School and she’s extremely bright and hardworking. She’s also the only Black lawyer at the company where she works. Indeed, she is just one of a few Blacks working there at all. Which explains why there’s a constant stream of protestors outside the company’s building protesting their hiring practices.
But who is Ellice? She’s not from Atlanta, Georgia like she tells everyone. Instead, she grew up in a poverty-stricken small town where she lived with her alcoholic mother and sadistic stepfather. She did attend a prestigious boarding school, but it was as on an academic scholarship not because she was a rich kid like most of the other students. And no, she’s not an only child, but her brother Sam, who she dearly loves, has been in and out of jail. That’s not the kind of back story Ellice has created for herself. It doesn’t go with the fancy condo, expensive clothes and car that define her Atlanta lifestyle, one she’s perfected to keep others from finding out about her past including what exactly happened to her stepfather whose body has never been found.
All these falsehoods start to unravel when she takes the elevator up to the 20th floor to meet with Michael, her boss, for one of their all-too frequent early morning meetings. But Michael’s dead, an apparent suicide and Ellice instead of calling for help, leaves.
Michael is also her long-time lover. The problem, at least it would be for some women, is that he’s married. But Ellice isn’t sure if she loves him nor is she certain she wants to take over his job when offered that plum promotion. She’s been keeping secrets for too long to know what she wants or how she feels.
As complicated as all this is, it becomes even more so when the police discover Michael was murdered. To add to the stress, Ellice’s brother Sam was caught on camera using his sister’s ID to get past security at the office. Did Ellice have Sam kill Michael so she could get his job and his plush office (redecorated, of course), or did she kill him herself? And why won’t the police believe her when she tells them that Michael had discovered criminal activity on the 20th floor?
Morris, who has held positions as an attorney in several Fortune 100 companies, says she thinks both her work as Black female lawyer and her fascination with thrillers helped shape the story.
“Ellice’s experiences are an amalgam of what many women experience in their lives,” says Morris, who is married with three children and lives in Atlanta. “Think about it, you are the only women working in a predominantly white male space and your colleagues despise you simply because of your race and/or gender and put obstacles in front of you.”
A fan of mystery/thriller writers like Karin Slaughter, Lucy Foley, Walter Mosley and Joe Ide, Morris wants readers to see the distinctive viewpoint Black female writers can bring to the genre.
“I’ve always enjoyed books by other thriller authors like John Grisham and Joseph Finder, but I couldn’t find many books like theirs with female protagonists who liked me,” she says. “Black women should be able to find themselves in all types of books including thrillers with smart, sophisticated Black women chasing down bad guys through dark office towers at night without a gun or an ounce of regret.”
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An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz
Chicago author Alex Kotlowitz has always been willing to tackle the big issues that impact our society and in his book An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago, he looks at one summer in Chicago to tell the story about violence throughout the United States. Kotlowitz discussed his book with Northwest Indiana Times correspondent Jane Ammeson.
What was the inspiration for writing An American Summer? And can you give us a synopsis of the book in your own words?
I feel like I’ve been working my way to this book for a long while. When some thirty years ago I was reporting There Are No Children Here, it was the violence that unmoored me. The numbers are staggering. In the twenty years between 1990 and 2010, in Chicago 14,033 people have been killed, another 60,000 wounded by gunfire. I’ve long felt we’ve completely underestimated the effect of that violence on the spirit of individuals and the spirit of community. And so I set out to tell the stories of those emerging from the violence and trying to reckon with it, people who are standing tall in a world slumping around them. The book is set in one summer, 2013, and it’s a collection of 14 stories, intimate tales that speak to the capacity of the human heart, stories that I hope will upend what you think you know.
How did you choose who to talk to? How did you find them? And how did you go about choosing which stories to use?
I spent that summer speaking with as many people as I could. I’ve been reporting on many of these neighborhoods for thirty years, so I visited with many of the people I knew. I embedded with a homicide unit. I spent time at a trauma center. I hung out at the criminal courthouse. I spent time on the streets, in churches, at taverns, halfway houses. I was looking for stories that surprised me, that knocked me off balance, hoping they might do the same for readers. And as is often the case, I wrote about people who on some level I admired. For who they are. For how they persevered. For their character. I wrote about people who I came to deeply care about. I wrote about stories that made me smile and that left me anger. I wrote about stories that left me with a sense of hope.
You’ve been writing about violence for 30 years? Do you ever get worn out by it?
It’s by no means all that I’ve written about, but, yes, a lot of my work has dealt with the profound poverty of our cities. I write out of a fundamental belief that life ought to be fair, and so much of the time I land in corners of the country where life isn’t fair at all. Do I get worn out by it? Sometimes. But I come away each time inspired by the people I meet along the way.
I know the number of murders has gone down but so has the number of murders and shootings that are solved. Any thoughts on why that is? And does that have an impact on the continuing violence?
Murders have gone down from the early 1990s, though we saw an unsettling spike in 2016 which approached those numbers of 30 years ago. And, yes, you’re right the clearance rate on homicides and shootings are remarkably low. You have a three in four chance of getting away with murder in Chicago, and a nine in ten chance of getting away with shooting someone and wounding them. Those numbers aren’t a misprint. That inability to solve violent crimes only erodes even further the distrust between communities of color and the police. It erodes even further that there will be justice. And as a result when there’s a sense that there’s no justice, people take matters into their own hands.
What would you like readers to take away from your book?
The humanity of the people I write about. I’m a storyteller. My ambitions are reasonably modest. I guess my hope in the end is after reading these stories, readers will think of themselves and the world around just a little bit differently. And maybe it will nudge along politicians and policy makers to act, to recognize the urgency.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
One final thought. This book takes place in Chicago, but Chicago, despite its reputation, isn’t even among the top ten most violent cities in the country. I could’ve written this book about so many other cities. What’s more, these stories speak to who we are as a nation. In the wake of the tragedies at Newtown and Parkland, we asked all the right questions. How could this happen? What would bring a young man to commit such an atrocity? How do the families and the community continue on while carrying the full weight of this tragedy? In Chicago, in Baltimore, in New Orleans, in the cities across the nation, no one’s asking those questions. What does that say about us?
An American Summer is available in hard cover, digital, and as an audiobook.
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The Attic on Queen Street by Karen White
Karen White and I are talking about ghosts, particularly the ghosts haunting Melanie Middleton Trenholm in White’s latest novel, The Attic on Queen Street, the last in the series set in haunted Charleston, South Carolina.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asks.
Not really, I reply, but I also don’t like staying in places that are supposedly haunted when I’m by myself.
White feels the same way because, as we both agree, you just never know.
It’s then that her phone goes dead.
“I don’t what happened,” says White when she calls back. “My phone was charged and everything.”
Coincidence? Most likely. But still, it makes you wonder.
But phones going dead are the least of the problems for Melanie, a Charleston real estate agent with young twins, a husband who is deciding whether he wants to stay in the marriage, and a teenaged stepdaughter whose room is haunted. Indeed, the entire house on Tradd Street is haunted. Some of the ghosts are helpful, some are evil, and one is the ghost of a dog—which is fine as it gives Melanie’s dog a companion to play with. And to make matters worse, Melanie’s young daughter is already showing signs of being able to see ghosts.
Ghosts are such a problem that Melanie learned early on to sing ABBA songs loudly to drown out the sounds of the dead people trying to talk to her. But that only works sometimes and in this novel there’s plenty of evil for Melanie to deal with both living and dead. For starters there’s Marc Longo, who stole her husband’s manuscript and turned himself into a bestselling author. Longo is now heading a film crew in Melanie’s house while underhandedly trying to discover the diamonds he believes are hidden there. Melanie is also trying to aid a good friend in discovering who murdered her sister years ago—with the help of the cryptic messages the deceased sister keeps sending her way. And then there’s Jack, her handsome husband. They’re still in love but Jack is darned tired of Melanie always getting herself into deadly situations.
White first introduced us to Melanie in The House on Tradd Street in what was to be a two book series.
“But when it came out and was so popular, my publisher said let’s make it four,” says White. “This is the seventh and I’m really going to miss them.”
Well, kind of, as White is continuing the theme of a haunted city and the Trenholm family, only with Melanie’s stepdaughter in the key role who has to deal with her only supernatural beings when she move to New Orleans in a book due out this coming March called The Shop on Royal Street.
Interestingly, the Tradd Street series was originally going to be set in New Orleans. White went to Tulane University and in 2005 she was all set to go with her family back to New Orleans to do research for the first book when Hurricane Katrina hit.
“I knew that there was no way with all the catastrophic flooding, and deaths that I could write this story without having Katrina in it and this wasn’t that kind of book,” says White, who has authored 23 books,
Choosing Charleston made sense as White had ancestors who lived in Charleston in the late 1700s and family who had lived on Tradd Street. In ways, she says that when she visited, she felt the pull of genetic memory—a sensation of a past shared life.
“I smelled what they call pluff—which is rotted vegetation,” recalls White, “and I said oh doesn’t that smell so wonderful.”
Coincidence? Doubtful.
The Attic on Tradd Street is also available as an audiobook and electronically.
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The Ice Coven: Nordic Noir
When we last saw Helsinki police officer Jessica Niemi, she had solved a heinous spate of murders and escaped—or so it seemed—the clutches of a coven of witches.
But alas, life isn’t always so easily wrapped up in a happy ever after ending and poor Jessica has to deal with those darn witches again in The Ice Coven, the second novel published in English by Finnish author Max Seeck. His first, Witch Hunters, made the New York Times Bestseller list.
It’s only been six months since Jessica and the Helsinki police were able to breathe a sigh of relief and deal just with everyday crime. But now as they hunt for two popular social media influencers who have disappeared, it slowly becomes apparent that there’s again a supernatural force at work against them. Seeck has the ability to interweave complicated plots and tie them all neatly together at the end. In The Ice Coven, the police are facing a case with a wide range of weird stuff that includes human trafficking, frog toxin, bizarre murders, and somnophilia—an odd sexual obsession of those who like to watch people sleep.
Interestingly, Seeck’s interest in writing Nordic Noir stems from the mid-1990s when he watched Agatha Christie movies with his grandmother including those featuring her famed detective Hercule Poirot. It seems like a large leap between those gentile English mysteries and a series of violent killings and witchcraft. But Seeck views it all—both Christie and his own stories—as similar.
“It was magical—the mystery, the tension, and finally the solution to the case,” is how he describes those days of binging on Agatha Christie. And indeed, there’s lots of tension as we worry about what will happen next. Even Seeck is on edge as he writes.
“I like a blurry, icy scene, a setting where eerie figures are looking at you,” he says as we chat on Skype—he in Helsinki and me in the Midwest. “The fictional characters are afraid. So am I. And so, I hope is the reader.”
I tell him not to worry about the latter. At least this reader was very afraid and yet compelled to keep turning the page.
Setting his novels (there’s a third Jessica book coming out in 2022) in Helsinki is reflective of Seeck’s ability to “think cinematically.”
“There are two sides to Helsinki as there are in any city,” he says. “In the summer it is a beautiful and exciting city, full of life and full of people who enjoy life. However, in the winter, it is very dark and cold, making it a terrific location for dark and icy thrillers.”
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Everything We Didn’t Say by Nicole Baart
Nicole Baart, who lives in Iowa and is the mother of five children from four different countries, is the author of several bestselling mysteries. Taking time out from her busy schedule—she’s already working on her next novel–Baart chatted with Jane Ammeson about her latest, Everything We Didn’t Say, which was selected as the Book of the Month October’s Most Popular Pick.
What initially drew you to writing mysteries?
I started out writing contemporary fiction, but I have always loved reading mysteries. In the beginning of my career, I think penning a compelling whodunit simply felt too complicated. Plotting a good mystery is no easy feat—and I feared I wouldn’t be able to skillfully juggle all the important elements (red herrings, believable foreshadowing, a twist or two, authentic motive, etc.). Mystery readers have very high expectations! But I started almost unconsciously weaving puzzles into my books, and by the time Little Broken Things came out in 2017 I had gotten over my hesitation. I love writing novels that center around a good mystery, and I’m thrilled that Everything We Didn’t Say has resonated with so many readers.
Can you give us a brief summary of Everything We Didn’t Say?
It’s the story of Juniper Baker, a special archives librarian in Denver, Colorado who returns to her small, Iowa hometown ostensibly to help an old friend. Really, she’s there to solve a fifteen-year-old double homicide and win back the daughter she left behind.
Was the book inspired by an actual event or events? If not, how did you come up with idea for the book?
I’ve been working on this book for nearly three years and so many different things contributed to the final story! It’s truly a sort of book soup: a bit of this, a little of that. But at the center of it all is a cold case in Iowa that I stumbled across several years ago. My heart went out to the family and friends who are still looking for answers, and that quest for resolution and hope in the midst of such brokenness is littered across the pages of Everything We Didn’t Say.
Juniper has such a sense of longing and displacement as well as an ambiguousness about her hometown. Are these feelings you’ve experienced? Do you share characteristics with June?
Absolutely. I love my small town (and the people in it) so very much, but I’m afraid sometimes that we think the line between good and evil runs around the outskirts of town. Us and them narratives are so simple and satisfying, but the truth is much more complicated. Small towns can be places of intimate community and belonging, but they are also filled with secrets, prejudices, and the same turmoil and tragedies that plague, well, everywhere. We aren’t perfect, we aren’t even always good, and I think we need to be honest about that. I want to have conversations about where we might be myopic and insular, and find ways to work through our own short-sightedness. I want to be candid about the ways that we fail, and try to be and do better instead of pretending we’ve got it all together.
Tell us about One Body One Hope and what led you to co-founding the organization.
It’s a long and complicated story, but the simple version is that my husband and I met a Liberian man who became a friend while we were in Ethiopia adopting our second son. That connection led to a deep relationship with a couple in Monrovia, and lasting ties to the children’s home that they opened after the Liberian civil war. We call it the accidental ministry because we never intended for it to happen! What started with one church and 35 orphaned and at-risk kids has grown into three children’s homes that serve over 150 kids (and often their extended families), 27 churches, 6 schools, a micro-finance program with a 92% repayment rate, numerous community redevelopment projects, and a 160-acre commercial farm. Our passion is empowering indigenous leaders and then getting out of their way. Everything good that has happened through One Body One Hope has been because of the Liberian people and their enduring love for their country!
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I love interacting with readers on my Instagram page @nicolebaart, where I have worked hard to cultivate an uplifting, authentic community. We talk about much more than just books, and I seek to find ways to connect on a personal level as we discuss everything from parenthood to being a good neighbor to things that bring us joy. I’d love to see you there!
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Where They Wait: A Scott Carson Supernatural Thriller
What could be easier than for an out-of-work journalist than an offer of a high paying gig writing a puff piece for an old friend? Well, if you’re the main character in a Scott Carson novel then take it from someone like me who has read every book Michael Koryta has written including those under the Carson pseudonym, things will get much worse before—and if—they get better.
In time for a stupendously creepy Halloween scare we meet Nick Bishop in Where They Wait (Atria/Bestler, $27) as he arrives in Maine. His assignment is to write about Bryce Lermond for the Hammel College alumni magazine. $5000 is a whole lot of money for a profile of a successful college alum but Bishop, who has reported from Afghanistan, almost turns the job down. He’s proud of his reporter credentials and this job is beneath him. Unfortunately, he’s also broke and besides, a paid trip to Maine gives him a chance to see his mother, a once noted scientist, who now suffers from dementia.
Oh, if only it were that easy. First entering Lermond’s headquarters, Bishop notes there’s something off kilter about the whole set-up. But he agrees to try Clarity, the app Lermond’s developed that promises to soothe and relax. And indeed, when Bishop first listens to the hauntingly beautiful song, he does fall into a sound sleep. But it’s a rest followed by horrific and seemingly real nightmares. Lermond’s top assistant—and Bishop’s childhood friend—warns him not to listen to Clarity but the melody and the voice of the woman singing is addictive. No, make that irresistible despite she committed suicide and yet shows up frequently and all too real in Bishop’s Clarity-induced dreams.
Koryta, who grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, says that he was struck during the pandemic lockdown at how many relaxation apps were coming to market.
“I thought this is good but then wondered what if it isn’t good for you,” says Koryta in a call from his home in Maine. “And writing the book during the backdrop of the constant question of how communication is being used to either save democracy or destroy it as well as the power and responsibility of communication soaked into my work. The power of song is really striking to me. Song has a staying power that most things do not, we remember songs and what they say.”
As the song and the nightmares begin to overtake him, Bishop tries to delete Clarity but it reappears. He also begins to discover secrets about how his mother, who now only seems able to talk in riddles, worked at rewiring his memories. What he remembers about his past never happened.
“You can peel a lot of things away from a person but as long as they have their own sense of the truth, they’re going to find their way but if you tell them what they know is a lie it changes all that,” says Koryta. “That’s part of the emotional experience I want to impart.”
Typically, any of Koryta’s books can be read at distinct levels. If you want a great read that moves fast, he delivers. But you can go down to deeper levels, such as his intense research into memory when writing Where They Wait and into how the actions of the characters’ ancestors impact the choices they make now.
Koryta says the fun part of writing is in the journey of discovering how it will end.
“When I’m start a book, I don’t know where it’s going,” he says. “You have to personally embrace the unease. I can scare myself when writing and I perversely enjoy that.”
Shelf Life 