Thursday, July 10, 2025

Stories are the Spice of Life by Leslie Budewitz

 JENN MCKINLAY: One of our favorite writers Leslie Budewitz is with us today and she has a delightful post about the joys of traveling through the written word and how it inspired her latest. LAVENDER LIES BLEEDING.


LESLIE BUDEWITZ: One of the joys of reading is armchair travel, right? You get to visit a place you’ve never been, or return to a place you’ve loved, with the author. Maine, with Julia. Key West, with Lucy. England – and France, Italy, and even Australia, oh and New York City – with Rhys.

 

With me, it’s Montana, where I was born and raised and still live. And Seattle, where I went to college and lived and worked as a young lawyer. I fell in love with Pike Place Market at eighteen, not long after the voters saved it from “urban removal.” Fun and funky, it was, and thanks to those voters and the historic preservation district they created, it retains its charms.

 


If, like me, you think of cobblestones, flying fish, and tales of the long-dead, top-hatted market master dancing in the upper windows of the Economy Building charming.

 

With the 9th book, Lavender Lies Bleeding, coming out next week, I’ve been remembering a few of my favorite discoveries about the city, from living there and from researching and writing about the place. (I always say that by research, I mean eat, but as my research assistants, my BFF and Mr. Right, can attest, it also means walking. A LOT.)

 

One of the first things you see when you walk into the Market at First and Pike is Rachel, the four-foot-high bronze pig and Market mascot. She’s a piggy bank, of course, as well as a photo opp, and all the money deposited in her goes to the Market foundation for community services—emergency loans to vendors, the senior center, and more.

 


On one visit, Mr. Right and I were snooping around – with my sketchbook as my excuse, I’ll go down any ramp, hallway, or staircase in the Market. We came around a corner and saw a store room, its door open. And inside?

 

Spare pigs.

 


Big ones and little ones. On all fours like Rachel, or seated. Bronze or silver toned.

 

Turns out the spare pigs are often displayed in the Market itself. But they also travel, to pop-up Farmers’ Markets around downtown and to other regional markets and events.

 

I love public art, and it’s everywhere in the Market. These tile figures outside the restrooms at the foot of the stairs just behind the main entrance evoke the Market’s early years—it was founded in 1907 and is the oldest continuously-operating farmers’ market in the country. So when I needed a spot for a confrontation in Lavender Lies Bleeding, that staircase and these figures popped to mind.

 



Along with the cattle ramp—and Market staff confirmed to me that it was once used to bring cattle and pigs, Rachel’s flesh-and-bacon ancestors, into the Market. I first discovered it while location scouting with my BFF, and finally had a chance to use it in Lavender.

 


In my student days, I loved exploring the city’s neighborhoods. I still do, and try to take Pepper to a different one in each book. She often returns to her childhood home, where her BFF, Kristen, now lives, on Capitol Hill. In The Solace of Bay Leaves, she visits the adjacent neighborhood called Montlake. One rainy summer day, my BFF and her teenage daughter spent an afternoon sipping coffee and wandering Montlake’s streets and parks, looking for exactly the right spot for Pepper’s old frenemy, Maddie, to get into trouble. We found it—and I just managed to avoid backing into a car while taking a picture.

 

The Fremont neighborhood, probably the city’s funkiest, proudly declares itself the Center of the Universe, and since no one can prove otherwise, the King County Council officially agreed. I explored it on the pages of To Err is Cumin—a bakery I remember fondly, an underground vintage mall where Pepper finds clues in old treasures, and the Sunday Market where vendors and growers hawk their wares and bicyclists ride wearing only body paint, helmets, and shoes. Which catches Pepper quite by surprise when she finds herself taking an unexpected swim in the Ship Canal that runs through Fremont and is rescued by a pair of men in green and blue and nothing else.

 

The Market’s Flower Ladies have always made me smile. Mostly Hmong, they grow incredible blooms that always draw attention, even from visitors who can’t take a bouquet home. The action in Lavender Lies Bleeding goes between the Market and Salmon Falls, a farm town outside the city that is home to several Flower Ladies and to Pepper’s vendor pal, Lavender Liz. I got to weave together what I’d seen in the Market over the years with my experience living in a rural community, to create a new place that lives only on the page. We can call it Story Land.

 

After all, as I’ve learned after all these years with Pepper and the Spice Shop crew, stories are the spice of life.

 

Readers, where have you been on the page lately, and what did you discover about the setting that surprised or delighted you? Tell us the book and author, too, if you can, so we can enjoy a little armchair travel with you.


Lavender Lies Bleeding (Seventh St. Books, July 15, in pb, ebook, and audio)

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, is shocked when vandals destroy the greenhouse at her friend Liz Giacometti’s lavender farm. But then Liz is killed, and Pepper digs in to solve the crimes. As her questions threaten to unearth secrets others desperately want to keep buried, danger creeps closer to her and those she loves. Can Pepper root out the killer, before someone nips her in the bud?

 


Leslie Budewitz writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers' Village mysteries, set in fictional Jewel Bay, Montana, based on the small town where she lives. As Alicia Beckman, she writes standalone suspense set in Montana and the NW. Her latest books are Lavender Lies Bleeding, the 9th Spice Shop mystery, and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection. A national best-seller and three-time Agatha Award winner, Leslie believes that stories are the spice of life. 

 

Read excerpts and more, and find buy links, at www.LeslieBudewitz.com

52 comments:

  1. LESLIE: Welcome back to JRW! I wish I knew about the spare pigs you found at Pike Place Market. Of course I visited the market when I was in the city for a few days before heading out to Bellevue LCC in 2024.

    Recently, I read one story set in a place I would NEVER want to go to IRL:

    THE CHAMBER by Will Dean. Six divers descend to the ocean depths in a tight packed hyperbaric chamber.

    But I did like reading about 1965 rural Vermont in
    HUNTER'S HEART RIDGE by Sarah Stewart Taylor

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    1. I wouldn't go into the chamber either Grace, but really looking forward to HUNTER'S HEART RIDGE!

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    2. I'm with you both on the chamber! I just saw a description of Sarah's newest and was soo tempted to put it on my library request list. If I see it one more time . . .

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  2. Congratulations, Leslie, on your newest book . . . it sounds quite mysterious and I’m looking forward to seeing how Pepper unmasks the killer.
    Recently, I've been off to ancient Rome, reading James Lacey's compelling "The Year God Died" . . . .

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    1. Ancient Rome, Joan! Where the air was filled with the scents of cinnamon and lavender and other spices and oils -- to cover up other smells, while the Romans worked on discovering the secrets of plumbing!

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  3. Hi, Leslie! Great news about your latest book. My sister lives in Olympia, WA, so I have a good chance of visiting Pike Place Market and the neighborhoods you describe sometime in the next few years. You make me want to shop in the market tomorrow! As for my armchair travels, I'm in the middle of listening to the latest book in the Bruno, Chief of Police series, AN ENEMY IN THE VILLAGE, by Martin Walker. These all take place in a lovely village in the Dordogne, a region of France famous for prehistoric caves, huge medieval castles, and excellent food. The hero, Bruno, is a wonderfully likeable character. Is anyone else familiar with the series?

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    1. I am familiar with the Bruno’s series Kim. As my ancestor comes from Dordogne, I visited the region and appreciated all of what you mentioned, including prehistoric caves as I’ve also read and loved Jean M Auel’s prehistoric series.

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    2. Yes - love Bruno, Chief of Police and Martin Walker is a great writer. You really feel you are in the Dordogne region. It's wonderful. (Enemy in the Village is his newest book).

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    3. Hey, Kim! And Danielle and Lucy and Anon. Years ago, when the Seattle Mystery Bookshop was still open, I was paired with Martin Walker for a signing, since food is a focus in both our books. He was charming, and described a dish to my BFF that we spotted at the restaurant in Burien, where she lives, where we went that evening -- so of course we had it. Something with artichokes . . .

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  4. I love this series and am delighted that a new book is coming along! I'm way overdue for an in-person visit to Seattle, so I love when I get another chance to be there in one of your Spice Shop mysteries.

    I've been book-living on Cape Cod recently, writing my eighth Cozy Capers Book Group mystery. It might be a steamy July in my northeast corner of the state, but I have to keep remembering it's early March in fictional Westham in the southeast corner of MA.

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    1. Thanks, Edith! Keeping the seasons -- and days of the week -- straight between the page and IRL can be tricky. More than once, I've been sure it was Saturday because that's what it is in the WIP!

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  5. Leslie, I do hope this blog counts as being on a page and being transported. Thank you for this trip to The Market. I could hear and smell and see all that made being there a delight and refreshment to my soul. Elisabeth

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    1. My pleasure, Elisabeth! "A delight and refreshment to my soul" -- what a lovely description!

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  6. Welcome Leslie and congrats on the book! We saw a big like that in Japan some years ago--everyone rubbed a finger on its foot for good luck. I'm visiting the Maine woods (Appalachian trail) in Amity Gaige's Heartwood. I will skip that trip IRL too!

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    1. Thanks, Lucy! A few years ago, we backpacked through the Bob Marshall Wilderness. I'd just read an article about attacks on the Appalachian Trail, and when a camo-wearing young man with a pistol on his hip came to our camp site, every terrifying word came flooding back. But he was simply resting while catching up with his friends and siblings, and they were all very nice. Still, for a few moments there . . .

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  7. Congrats on the book. I love armchair travel. My most recent adventures have been in Amsterdam with the characters in The Expat Affair by Kimberly Belle, Paris in The Stolen Life of Collette Marceau by Kristin Harmel, and California in Jill is Not Happy by Kaira Rouda.

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    1. Thanks, Brenda! Just look at all the places you can go, without putting on shoes! And as Jenn would say, Paris is always a good idea!

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  8. Not much time this morning, just wanted to wave to Leslie, and say that lavender is one of my favorite herbs, for so many reasons. Lavender farms are wonderful places to visit, and what a great mystery location!

    And thank you for solving a personal mystery for me! When I visited Pike Place Market with a friend I took photos of the facade, which included a silvery pig up near the sign. At the time I thought that pig was a permanent feature, but when I've mentioned it to people more familiar with the market they just gave me blank looks. Knowing that there are bronze and silver pigs that get moved around is a huge comfort, Leslie.

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    1. Hi, Karen! I couldn't remember who had shared a photo of that silver pig on the upper awning a few years ago -- it was you! Yep, spare pigs pop up now and then. I think the sitting pig in my picture is called Reuben, though I don't know if they all have names.

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  9. Hi Leslie: Welcome back to JRW's. I love books about my home town. Some day I hope Pepper gets to my stomping grounds the Ravenna Park, or Ballard where Dad worked in the office of a locally owned steel mill. Me? I wonder if Pepper ever watches the Clipper ships leave pier 69 for Victoria BC?
    Pier 69 is about a mile and a half north of Pier 62. That's where I sold excursion tickets over the phone. Job helped pay my way through the UofW. So lately given the reality of today's world, I have been hanging out in Tammy Painter's Rosaria, which you can visit if you are lucky or fae. Especially if you are a magic worker because magic is fueled by a high sugar pastry consumption. Pardon time to pretend I need another breakfast so I can enter Rosaria again. ps. Pepper and I go way back can't wait to see what she will do next.

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    1. Ooh, Coralee! All excellent ideas -- thanks. Pepper does spend a lot of time in Fremont in To Err is Cumin, as you remember, but that's as close to Ballard as she's gotten. And I haven't taken her down to Pier 69 -- even though I've taken that Clipper -- although she does have a few customers from the cruise ships in Lavender.
      Rosaria sounds magical -- and delicious!

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  10. Hi Leslie, welcome back! Pike Place Market is amazing. When I was just out of college, one of my best friends lived in Seattle, so I drove up there frequently (from Portland) and wandered around. I'm just back from Tynside, having finished Ann Cleeves's Hidden Depths. I'm also spending time in 13th century France as my son is reading out loud Schiller's The Maid of Orleans (Joan of Arc). I love to travel through time and space by reading.

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    1. Hi, Gillian! What fun to be two places at once, thanks to the magic of books!

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  11. Congrats on your latest release! I haven't made it to Seattle yet, but Pike Place Market and the Chihuly Garden are on my list.

    Kim, yes, I'm a huge Bruno, Chief of Police fan. I've visited Dordogne and published a story set in the area, "Voices in the Caves" in Gone Fishin': Crime Takes a Holiday.

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    1. Thanks, Margaret! The Chihuly Garden at Seattle Center is astonishing. I just set a scene in the WIP there, in part so I could enjoy another visit, even if it's mostly through photographs and memories.

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    2. Chuhuly Garden is amazing, I visited the exhibit in April 2024. It was just a 20 minute walk from Pike Place Market.

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  12. Hank Phillippi RyanJuly 10, 2025 at 8:41 AM

    Welcome welcome welcome, and thank you for the fun adventure at the market! Right now I am at Lake Geneva at a gorgeous hotel with Ruth Ware’s main character in the woman in Suite 11.
    It’s beautiful, but I certain it will not be for long… !

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    1. Thanks thank thanks! If things get too hairy at Lake Geneva, pop over to Bern for a visit with Kim -- oh, wait. Scary things happen there, too!

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  13. Congrats Leslie - looking forward to reading your new book!!
    I love the Bruno, Chief of Police series, in the Dordogne area by Martin Walker.
    I also want to recommend a wonderful writer - TARQUIN HALL. He is an established journalist but also writes the Vish Puri, the "Most Private Investigator" series set in modern day India (mostly Delhi). You follow Vish Puri's gourmet diet of India cuisine, the India's cultural nuances, and a cast of wonderful and engaging characters. His newest book is The CASE OF THE ELUSIVE BOMBAY DUCK. Hall lived in India for many years and now lives in Bath, England with his wife (Anu Anand the BBC reporter).

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    1. Thanks, Anon! I've heard of Tarquin Hall -- sounds like the name of an English manor house, doesn't it? -- but haven't read the books yet. Mr. Right lived in Delhi for a year and we're thinking of a trip -- thanks for reminding me what to read!

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    2. Hope you enjoy. Hall lived in India and he really captures the heart of the cities, the people and their history. He has a journalist background as well, so he brings in a lot of historical research and weaves it into the plot. I loved his newest book which plays ougdtween London and New Delhi. He is receiving a prestigious award and working on a case that spans both countries.

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  14. Last night I finished GARDEN OF LAMENTATIONS from Debs. Loved visualizing all the shared garden areas for the houses.

    Debs, I'm finally caught up on the whole series!

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    1. One of the many things I love about Debs' series is visiting so many regions in the UK and so many parts of London with a writer we all know does her research!

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  15. An interesting questions as well as the responses. At present I am visiting Catalina Island via Michael Connelly's new character in NIGHTSHADE. Annette

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    1. You can never go wrong with Connelly -- or Catalina!

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  16. LESLIE: Welcome back to JRW. I visited Seattle several times when a friend from Uni and her husband were living there. They just had a baby. I remember going to the aquarium ? museum of natural history ? That was in 1998 or 1999! I remember the Madison neighborhood where there was a Starbucks cafe offering things like Oreo cafe latte? We visited Pike Place Market and I recently found a photo of myself with the baby at the Market. I remember Capitol Hill, Green Lake ? Park and driving through the Fremont neighborhood. Since then, they moved to one of the Islands across the water from Seattle.

    Currently reading a novel set in Scotland by Alexander McCall Smith. Armchair travel is the next excellent thing to do after traveling in real life.

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    1. Hi, Diana -- Yes, the Aquarium, recently remodeled and expanded. The entire waterfront looks very different now, with the Viaduct gone and the new Waterfront Park connecting it to the Market. Pepper only visits the islands once, in a short story, but maybe she should pop in on your friends!

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    2. Yes! One of my favorite things about Seattle is the ferry ride from Seattle to the Islands.

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    3. Diana, I l Alexander McCall Smith's books. I particularly like the No.1 Women's Detective Agency set in Botswana ( Smith lived in Africa). The sounds, smells, birds, wildlife, plants and people are so descriptive. I've never been to Africa but he really makes it come alivereally comes alive. Plus he always has a moral outcome.

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  17. From Celia: I'm not sure what called to me Leslie, but I just ordered your first book. Probably the smell of lavender, of cumin and the market description which I would love to visit.
    But right now I'm reading a book with a tale of Boston Brahmins and old Cape Cod - The Big House by George Howe Colt. I am fascinated by his tale of the summer home visited by his large family and guests stretching back into the mid / late Victorian era. This is a story of how a house grows within the family and how it shapes each generation as the follow in their elders steps highlighting daily activities, rainy days playing cards with old mismatched packs which come from boxes opened with silk tabs. The joy of reading in a house where every room has a bookcase of mismatched books. Where any topic or author might be found from leather bound copies of Dickens to a memoir of horseback across the desert.
    I am not at the end yet but I fear it may be unhappy as the story has a continuing thread of money both gained and lost. This is no trust fund home and I am sad as I consider the inevitable end.
    My daughter gave me the book and I find the story continuously fascinating as I compare my life with that of Mr. Colt.

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    1. Thank you, Celia! I hope you enjoy the trip to Seattle with me, on the page.
      And oh, you make Colt's book -- and the house it portrays -- sound so intriguing! I'm stuck on that detail about playing card boxes that open with silk tabs.

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  18. Ooo thrilled to hear a new Pepper mystery is coming down the Pike! This series always conjures fond memories of wandering the market and quirky neighborhoods of Seattle with my beloved college roomie (and still BFF, after all these years!) I’ll beaver out and cue it up right after I finish rereading Kim Hays’ polizei Bern series, set in that marvelous Swiss city that I haven’t yet visited (but feel like I know through the eyes of detectives Linder and Donatelli)!

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    1. Isn't it fun, Jonelle, to travel so easily from Switzerland to Seattle -- and maybe with a stop in your beloved Japan -- with no shoes, no TSA, and no jet lag? Our ticket is our imagination -- and a good book!

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    2. Thanks, Jonelle. I'm glad you're enjoying getting to know my beloved Bern through my books.

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  19. I have never been to Seattle except with Pepper and cannot wait for the new book! I have preordered it and have just finished rereading the earlier ones.
    Right now I am in ancient Egypt with Cleopatra in Dana Stabenow's Eye of Isis series. I have actually been there.
    You all take me so many wonderful places. Thank you. Atlanta

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  20. There is nothing I love more than a good market, Leslie, and I can't wait to read the latest installment in Pepper's adventures! You also reminded me that I once visited a lavendar farm in England and it was amazing.

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    1. Every lavender farm I've visited -- in France, Wash, and Montana -- has been magical. Something about the scent, and of course, the settings are usually sublime. English lavender is top notch, and I'd love to visit a farm there!

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  21. Hi, Leslie. I've currently reading books by D. D. Black set in Washington. The Thomas Austin Crime Series, and today's book is on Bainbridge Island. My grandparents lived in the Lakewood area of Tacoma, so I've spent a little bit of time that area in my youth. (I think it's now the city of Lakewood, no longer Tacoma.) We only went to Seattle once, to see the Space Needle. When you don't have a passport, armchair travel is so easy but I working getting passport so I can try to experience more of the world in person.

    I'm going to check out your Spice Shop series but I'm wondering if I will sneeze when I get to the lavender book. It's one of scents that can get to me.... :)

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    1. Hi, Diana -- I don't know that series, but Bainbridge is a terrific place and setting! As for lavender, it does trigger some people, and Pepper and Liz have to deal with that. It's the first sip of champagne that makes me sneeze, but that doesn't stop me!

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  22. I was just out looking at my lavender plants. With the temps hitting 118, they definitely lie bleeding. LOL. Can't wait to enjoy your latest, Leslie!

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  23. Leslie, the way you describe settings is always extraordinary. I feel like I'm walking with you though Seattle!

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