Annette Dashofy--Secrets and Villains

DEBORAH CROMBIE: There's nothing we love more here on Jungle Red than hosting one of our regular readers,commenters, and fellow authors, so we're very excited today to bring you Annette Dashofy, author of the Zoe Chambers Mysteries and of the Detective Honeywell Mysteries. She's giving us a sneak peek at the third novel featuring Erie City's Detective Matthias Honeywell and free lance photographer Emma Anderson, THE DEVIL COMES CALLING.

Wow, what a great cover! Annette, tell us more!

Secrets and Villains by Annette Dashofy

Confession time. When I started writing the first Zoe Chambers mystery nearly twenty years ago, I had no clue how to write a series. I only had an inkling of a clue about writing anything, to be honest. Back then, I had ideas for two books. When I was offered a contract for three, of course, I told them I absolutely had plans for that third book. (It was a lie. Fake it til you make it, right?) I had used all my ideas for these characters in those first two mysteries. I had delved into all their secrets. Now I had to come up with more. I didn’t figure out the story arc thing until the fourth book.

Fast forward a decade or so to when I was noodling with a premise for another series. One of my regrets with Zoe and Pete was having them already well acquainted as Circle of Influence started. This time, I wanted to open the first book before Matthias Honeywell and Emma Andersen met in order to develop the relationship in full view of the reader. And I knew I needed to create deeper backstories for the two main characters. Secrets beyond one or two books.

Here I am with less than a month until the release of The Devil Comes Calling, and I’m happy to say, this third installment is jam-packed with secrets being spilled and past wounds being reopened. Seeds that I planted in the first two novels sprout like crazy in this one.

Including one particularly nasty villain.

I love villains. I love to create villains the reader loves to hate. Sometimes my bad guys are forced into circumstances in which they make bad choices. Had they changed one little decision, they might have been redeemable. Others see the error of their ways too late to be redeemed.

My working title for The Devil Comes Calling was Beyond Redemption. My publisher obviously chose not to use it, as I knew they wouldn’t. But I clung to it as the underlying theme, one that echoed throughout several story threads and characters, not merely the villain. I even had the beyond redemption theme in mind for Matthias this time around. While the first two Honeywell mysteries leaned heavily into Emma’s family history, in this book, it’s Matthias’s turn. We get to learn about his late mother’s tragic end. We discover his father is in prison. Or was. (Okay, that’s a small spoiler, but the reader finds it out in the first chapter, and I think there are plenty more twists and surprises, so I’m willing to divulge that one.)

Reds, how deeply do you delve into the hearts and souls of your bad guys? And readers, do you enjoy a memorable villain? Who are a few that have stuck with you over time?

 

Annette Dashofy is the USA Today bestselling author of over sixteen novels of mystery and suspense, including seven Agatha Award finalists and a Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award winner. She has two Detective Honeywell Mysteries coming in November and December of this year including The Devil Comes Calling and No Stone Left Unturned. Additionally, she has been a Derringer Award finalist for her short fiction. Annette and her husband live on ten acres of what was her grandfather’s dairy farm in Washington County, Pennsylvania with their very spoiled cat, Kensi. You’re invited to check out her website at http://annettedashofy.com

 

“Two bodies. One male, approximately fifty years old. One female, mid-twenties. Both shot execution-style, with one bullet to the back of the head.”

When a murderous ghost from Erie City Police Detective Matthias Honeywell’s past appears unexpectedly, his investigation into a double homicide in a quiet residential neighborhood gets increasingly complicated, and puts everything and everyone he cares about at risk – including photographer Emma Anderson.

Emma’s first day as the crime beat photographer for ErieLIVE wasn’t meant to see her photographing the scene of her predecessor’s murder, and with ties to the victim as well as a deadly fire that follows in the wake of the crime, she fears she may also be in the killer’s sightlines.

To solve the case and catch the killer, Matthias and Emma will have to face their own demons. But what happens when the devil himself comes calling?

DEBS: What a great premise, Annette! And I have to say that as much as I understand how attached we can get to our working titles (by "we" I mean "I"...) in this case I have to agree with your publisher. It's a great title and one that really sticks.   

As for villians, I've written a few that were perhaps a tiny bit sympathetic, or at least relatable, and a few that still give me nightmares. It will be very interesting to see what the other Reds and our readers have to say on the matter!

P.S. THE DEVIL COMES CALLING is out on November 7th, so do pre-order!