Shopping with Your S.O.

 With Tom Wickersham

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I spent yesterday at bookstores...helping with Small Business Saturday! And it was not only fabulous and fun, it was a real time of insight into relationships. How people deal with each other while shopping--that's worthy of a PhD thesis.

I was staffing the "do you have it" computer at Brookline Booksmith for part of the day. It was such fun! (with Michael Blanding of wonderful The Map Thief and Joan Wickersham of The News From Spain, and Joan's son Tom, the social events coordinator. Oh, and young Cleo Blanding, age about 7, who can recite the first paragraph of  her father's The Map Thief and who is a whiz on the "do you have it" computer!) 

  But I cannot begin to tell you how often my question of "can I help you find something?" was answered with --"Yeah, can you find my wife?"  and just as often "Yeah, can you find my husband?"

SO, yeah. Relationships come out during shopping, that's for sure. And thriller author John Caranen has been thinking about relationships, too.  And not just on Small Business Saturday.

What 're you thinking?

by John Caranen

How does a man see inside a woman's head? How does he discern what motivates her? How does he even begin to understand a woman, especially one who is intelligent, complex, and  -  lethal? Sigmund Freud, whose mother dressed him funny, once said, "My God, what do women want?" Or at least, that's the way I heard it.

In my debut novel, Signs of Struggle (Neverland 2012) I introduce a fine young lass of a woman, Wendy Soderstrom. I had no idea at the time that she would turn out to be a killer. All I had in my head was the image of a beautiful athletic woman sprinting down a country lane toward my protagonist, Thomas O' Shea, who happens to be driving by in his pickup truck. Oh, yeah, and she is covered with blood and is screaming. O' Shea, being, according to him, "the most selfish person I know," contemplates not helping her. He has his own issues. He wants to pretend he doesn't even see her.

But he does, and he makes a huge decision to offer his help.

Wendy's husband has been chewed up by a mower and has bled out. A farm accident. O'Shea renders aid to the young widow until the EMS guys show up to take over as professionals. O'Shea sees to it that Wendy is removed from the scene by a kindly neighbor, who takes Wendy into town to be checked out for shock.

It begins to rain, and with the showers come questions. What, exactly, happened to cause Wendy's young husband to fall from his tractor and be flailed to death by the mower? What distracted him? Why?

Well, these are questions, and Thomas starts asking around. And people start trying to discourage him. He perseveres and discovers that there's more to Wendy, and a simple farm accident, going on in the picturesque farm community of Rockbluff, Iowa. Like, there was no farm accident. And more people die, and Wendy Soderstrom, sweet and alluring, flirtatious and mourning, is involved in more than one would guess, if one were naive, and that's something Thomas O' Shea is not.

When I write about women, it comes from years of observation. I know, I know. I said "observation" because I grew up with a mother and two  older sisters, and I paid attention. Then I dated, a lot, and continued to observe and wonder. Now I have been married for decades and have two grown daughters. They're all women! Even if I weren't paying attention, you'd think I'd learn something. I observe (not stalk) and I listen (yes, eavesdrop) and learn stuff. So, there it is.

HANK:  So--yeah. We'll bite. Let's talk about this. John, what did you learn?  Reds, do you go shopping with your spouse? HOw well does that work?

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John Carenen, a native of Clinton, Iowa, graduated with an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from the prestigious University of Iowa Writers Workshop and has been writing ever since. His work has appeared in numerous popular and literary magazines, and he has been a featured columnist in newspapers in North and South Carolina. A novel, Son-up, Son-down was published by the National Institute of Mental Health.
His debut Thomas O'Shea mystery novel, Signs of Struggle, was published in October of 2012. A Far Gone Night, the long- anticipated sequel, continues the exploits of the enigmatic protagonist and the quirky characters of Rockbluff, Iowa.

John is currently an English professor at Newberry College in Newberry, South Carolina. He and his wife live in their cozy cottage down a quiet lane in northern Greenville, South Carolina. He is a big fan of the Iowa Hawkeyes and Boston Red Sox. 

A Far Gone Night
by John Carenen

Suffering from insomnia, wise-cracking tough guy Thomas O'Shea goes for a late-night stroll through the peaceful streets of Rockbluff, Iowa, and finds himself pausing downtown on the bridge that spans the Whitetail River. When he glances downstream, something catches his eye...something that looks like a body. He scrambles down to the riverbank, pulling the body of a young girl from the water. The girl is naked, with two bullet holes in the back of her head. Ever suspicious of law enforcement, O’Shea chooses not mention the bullet holes when Deputy Stephen Doltch, on routine patrol, discovers him at the river's edge.
When the coroner's report lists the cause of death as "drowning," Thomas goes into action. Confronting the coroner, he is met with hostility. But then the coroner and his wife disappear, along with the body of the dead girl. Once again, Thomas gears up to find answers that will reveal who put the bullets in the girl's head, why she was killed, and her identity, which may hit a little too close to home.
Teaming up with his friend Lunatic Mooning and Clancy Dominguez, an old buddy from his Navy SEAL days, Thomas and the other two men join together to bring justice to the dead girl, a quest that takes them to the Chalaka Reservation in Minnesota, seedy businesses adjacent to the Chalaka Casino, and straight into the world of organized crime.
A fast-paced story, laugh-out-loud moments and familiar, quirky characters from Carenen's debut novel, Signs of Struggle, contribute once again to the complex world of Thomas O'Shea.