Marcy McCreary--The Summer of Love and Death

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Woodstock. One word. That's all most of us have to hear to immediately envision one of the defining cultural events of a generation. I was too young to go to Woodstock, but old enough to think it was all incredibly cool and romantic. How I would have loved to have had a bird's eye view of the festival.

Author Marcy McCreary has given us better than that, however, in her new novel THE SUMMER OF LOVE AND DEATH, a dual timeline story set in 1969 and in 2019. Here's Marcy to explain!

MARCY McCREARY: On Friday August 15, 1969, my mom took me and my twin sister to the (now-defunct) Catskills Game Farm. If you know anything about that location and that date, you’ll pretty much guess what happened next. Yup, we got stranded on the road along with hundreds of thousands of hippies on their way to the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. I was six years old at the time and being stuck in that traffic jam pretty much sums up my personal experience with Woodstock.

But that memory stuck with me, and even inspired scenes in my latest novel, The Summer of Love and Death. But my stuck-in-traffic experience was not going to cut it for truly understanding what went down during those three days of peace and love. And so my research journey began.

As you can well imagine, there is plenty of information about the Woodstock festival on the Internet (the bands, the crowds, the ticketing fiasco), but there is next to nothing about how security was handled and the role of law enforcement at Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York, where the festival took place. What was there felt incomplete, and I suspected, not 100% accurate. To authentically render the novel’s flashback scenes, what I really needed was a firsthand account of policing at Woodstock and the surrounding area.

For my earlier novels, I had no trouble finding and interviewing detectives, lawyers, doctors, and forensics specialists who could answer my questions or provide background on a particular subject matter. What were the chances of tracking down one of the three hundred NYPD police officers who worked at the festival? Felt like I was in slim-to-none territory.

And then luck stepped in.

In the fall of 2022, while at a writer’s conference, I chatted up fellow writer Gregory Renz about my manuscript and he thought he might know someone who could provide some insight. A few weeks later, Greg put me in touch with Nick Chiarkas, an ex-NYPD cop (and crime writer!) who was one of the 300 “Peace Force” cops at Woodstock. 

Nick and I talked for hours about the security apparatus and his personal experiences at the event. In addition to describing how law enforcement handled the crowds, kept the peace, assisted in medical emergencies, Nick regaled me with personal anecdotes that I have woven into the story (with his blessing). Meeting Nick felt fateful, and I’m grateful for his contribution to the novel.

The Summer of Love and Death is a dual timeline murder mystery—2019 and 1969—set in the Catskills featuring a father-daughter detective team. Detective Susan Ford is investigating a murder that is eerily similar to her dad’s first case as a detective. Detective Will Ford’s chapters are set in 1969, with the historical events of that year unfolding around him—the Apollo moon landing, the Miracle Mets, the Vietnam War protests. It was fun to incorporate these events within the context of his scenes, get his take on them, and see how they influenced his worldview. And although his chapters are dark (he’s investigating a serial murder!), Will’s optimism and idealism mirror the sentiment of that era’s generation.

If you could go back in time and attend Woodstock, would you? Which band(s) would you want to see? Would you skinny dip?

DEBS: Oh, oh, can I just cheat here?? I love Marcy's questions! 

Even as a romantic teenager, I was a little creeped out by the idea of the crowds, so not sure I would want to be magically there. But I would love to experience it vicariously! The bands! I would love to have seen (and did see some in concert):

Hendrix. The Who. Joplin. Jefferson Airplane. Crosby, Stills, and Nash! But you know which one really jumped out at me? Country Joe and the Fish. Who grew up in the late sixties who couldn't sing Joe McDonald's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die?"

Oh, and skinny dipping. Yeah, sure, if I could look like I did when I was seventeen:-)

Here's a list of the bands for your perusal.

Marcy McCreary is the author of The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a Silver Falchion finalist for Best Investigator Mystery and The Murder of Madison Garcia, a Society of Voice Arts and Sciences winner for Best Audiobook—Mystery. The Summer of Love and Death is the third book in her Ford Family Mystery Series, released in August 2024. She graduated from The George Washington University with a B.A. in American literature and political science and pursued a career in marketing and communications. She lives in Hull, MA with her husband Lew. She is an active fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association. 

The Summer of Love and Death

Detective Susan Ford and her new partner, Detective Jack Tomelli, are called to a crime scene at the local summer stock theater where they find the director of Murder on the Orient Express gruesomely murdered—naked, face caked in makeup, pillow at his feet, wrists and ankles bound by rope. When Susan describes the murder to her dad, retired detective Will Ford, he recognizes the MO of a 1969 serial killer . . . a case he worked fifty years ago.

Will remembers a lot of things about that summer—the Woodstock Festival, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Miracle Mets, the Vietnam War protests—yet he is fuzzy on the details of the decades-old case. But when Susan and Jack discover the old case files, his memories start trickling back. And with each old and new clue, Susan, Jack, and Will must narrow down the pool of suspects before the killer strikes again.