FATALITIES AND FLOOR PLANS by Maya Corrigan

Congrats to Sherry Brown, the winner of A PARFAIT CRIME!

LUCY BURDETTE: I love the way Maya Corrigan has studied the work of Agatha Christie and then figured out how to weave what she learned into her newest book--I bet you will find this fascinating as well! Welcome Maya!

MAYA CORRIGAN: Thank you, Lucy, for hosting me on Jungle Red Writers. I appreciate the chance to talk about my upcoming mystery, A PARFAIT CRIME, and about Agatha Christie. A community theater production of her long-running play, THE MOUSETRAP, is at the center of my 9th in my Five-Ingredient Mysteries. Set in a quaint Chesapeake Bay town, the series features café manager Val Deniston and her recipe columnist grandfather – a sleuthing duo that shares a Victorian house, a love of cooking and eating, and a talent for catching killers. A PARFAIT CRIME comes out on October 24th. Here’s a taste of what’s in the book.

At the site of a fatal blaze, Val’s boyfriend, a firefighter trainee, is shocked to learn the victim is known to him, a woman named Jane who belonged to the local Agatha Christie book club—and was rehearsing alongside Val’s grandfather for an upcoming Christie play being staged for charity. Just as shocking are the skeletal remains of a man found in the freezer. Who is he and who put him on ice? After Val is chosen to replace Jane in the play, the cast gathers at Granddad’s house to get to work—and enjoy his five-ingredient parfaits—but all anyone can focus on is the bizarre real-life mystery. When it’s revealed that Jane’s death was due to something other than smoke inhalation, Val and Granddad retrace the victim’s final days. As they dig into her past life, their inquiry leads them to a fancy new spa, where they discover that Jane wasn’t the only one who had a skeleton in the cooler...

Most mystery readers know that Agatha Christie has sold more books than any other fiction writer. She also holds the record for the most enduring play in London theater history. THE MOUSETRAP opened in 1952 and is still going strong. (photo credit Ji-Elle, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)





Decades ago I had the chance to see the play twice in London. I remember its scary moments and stunning climax. After each performance, then and now, the audience is asked not to disclose the surprise ending to anyone. I’ve abided by that rule. A PARFAIT CRIME does NOT reveal whodunit in Christie’s mystery.

To prepare for writing my book, I read and reread Christie’s playscript. It begins with a long description of the one and only set: the sitting room at a guesthouse, where a snowstorm has marooned the characters with a murderer in their midst. Christie describes twelve pieces of furniture, some made of “good oak” and others looking “shabby and old-fashioned.” She also specifies what’s on the walls, the desk, and the table.

Christie was used to “stage setting” in her mysteries. Her early books include diagrams, complete with furniture, to help readers visualize the crime scene. Her first Poirot book, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES (1920), contains sketches of the bedroom where the victim dies and the layout of nearby rooms where the household members and guests sleep. Illustrations of the crime scene and a floor plan also appear in THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD (1926), the blockbuster book that made Christie famous.








The first Miss Marple book, MURDER AT THE VICARAGE (1930), includes, not just sketches of the crime scene and the house plan, but also a map of the St. Mary Mead village. In later books Christie provides the seating plan of an airplane where an in-flight murder occurs. Her famous train mystery shows the layout of a sleeping car, with the characters’ names on the compartments they occupied the night of the murder. Besides orienting readers to the setting, Christie’s diagrams contain clues . . . and sometimes red herrings.

Though I’ve never put house plans or room sketches in my books, I’ve created them as a reference for myself. When I was writing the first Five-Ingredient Mystery, I looked up Victorian home plans and modified one to design the house that Val shares with her grandfather. For other books I sketched the layouts of places my sleuths visit, like the hotel where a mystery festival is held in BAKE OFFED (2022).

As Val and Granddad try to solve the murder in A PARFAIT CRIME, they don’t just attend rehearsals, they also go undercover at an upscale spa to trap a killer who has committed the perfect crime. Two sleuthing locations meant two floor plans—one of the 1950s motel that had been converted to a high-end spa and the other of the theater’s stage and backstage for the big “reveal scene.” Neither visual is in the book, but I couldn’t have written the mystery without those plans in front of me.

READERS: Have you read any mysteries with images of house plans or maps? If so, did they enhance the story or help you solve the mystery?

WRITERS: Do you create floor plans or diagrams as you write? Have you included any in your books?

I’ll give away a signed copy of A PARFAIT CRIME to one person who comments.

Maya (Mary Ann) Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring a café manager solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town with her live-wire grandfather, the Codger Cook. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Before writing mysteries, Maya taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Visit her website, for recipes, fun food facts, and mystery history and trivia.

Blog: https://mysteryloverskitchen.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mayacorriganbooks/

A PARFAIT CRIME is available for preorder now as a paperback or ebook

Publication Date: October 24, 2023

Visit Kensington Books for Buy Links and to read an excerpt

Maya Corrigan--Baked Off

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It's been three long years since I've attended a mystery conference (a lack I hope to remedy next year!) and today's post reminded me how much I've missed them. Thank you, Maya Corrigan, for giving us a virtual conference treat! 

Mystery Fan Gatherings: Murder for Pleasure

 Maya Corrigan

 

Thank you. Deborah, for hosting me on Jungle Red Writers. I got to know all of you from mystery fan conventions, which I’ve enjoyed attending for two decades—Malice Domestic, Bouchercon, Sleuthfest, Left Coast Crime, and smaller local conferences and festivals. As a mystery fan since my Nancy Drew days and an aspiring writer, I was delighted to discover that mystery writers were friendly, welcoming, and funny, never taking themselves too seriously. At my first few conventions, I sat meekly in the audience during panels, jotting notes. A couple of years later, I became a panel moderator and finally ascended the dais as a writer, after my first Five-Ingredient Mystery came out in 2014.

In March of 2020 I was at Left Coast Crime in San Diego when Covid shut down the convention on the first day. The abrupt end to the weekend shocked all of us, but was especially hard on the organizers and volunteers who’d worked so hard to make the weekend a success. While sitting in a nearly empty plane back to the East Coast, I realized that upcoming mystery conventions would all be canceled, though I didn’t expect it would be two years before I went to another one.

Knowing how much I’d miss those murder-for-pleasure weekends, I decided to create one in my 8th Five-Ingredient Mystery. Coming out on Nov 29, 2022,  BAKE OFFED takes place at the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest. My sleuths, café manager Val and her livewire grandfather, the Codger Cook, volunteer to help a friend who organized the weekend. At the fest they encounter delightfully idiosyncratic attendees and every conference glitch except Covid. Similar to actual mystery gatherings, the fest includes panels, author signings, and a charity auction. Plus, of course, a murder. Though the characters in the book aren’t based on anyone I’ve ever met at a mystery convention, a true crime case and an actual artifact of mystery history are part of the plot.

A small regional event, the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest is held in an old, reputedly haunted hotel. Exactly a year before the fest, the hotel was the scene of a murder. The victim was found dead after attending an interactive murder mystery staged at the hotel. This scenario comes from an actual 1990’s crime at a hotel on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where most of my books are set. That real murder was solved and the killer convicted, whereas the one in my book has yet to be solved.

Because I write culinary mysteries, I had to incorporate food into the plot, and I wanted to do that in a fun way for mystery lovers. Sitting around a table having a meal with fans and writers of crime fiction is one of the pleasures of mystery conventions, but not because of what’s on the plate. It’s banquet food, edible but unexciting. An idea of how to bring food into the fest came to me as I stared at my bookshelves. Among the many cookbooks I own are some with recipes inspired by the food fictional sleuths eat: DINING WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE LORD PETER WIMSEY COOKBOOK, and THE NERO WOLFE COOKBOOK.  

My fest kicks off with a Deadly Desserts Bake-Off, in which each contestant assumes the role of a cook to a famous fictional detective and must make a dessert the detective would enjoy. Val’s grandfather, a recipe columnist who refuses to make any dish with more than five ingredients, is assigned the daunting role of Nero Wolfe’s gourmet cook Fritz. After flipping through several of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, Granddad grumbles that he has found only “fancy dishes with scads of ingredients” and no desserts.

In the attic of his Victorian house, he discovers a unique item that belonged to his mystery fan aunt—a book-shaped box containing recipes from a Nero Wolfe book. Among the 34 recipe cards in the box, Granddad is thrilled to find a five-ingredient dessert recipe. He’s even more delighted when he learns how valuable the box is. As one of only a thousand promotional gifts from Rex Stout’s 1938 publicity tour for TOO MANY COOKS, the box is prized by collectors and worth far more than a first addition of the book. In case you’d like this artifact of mystery history, you can find one for sale online, where a rare book dealer is currently asking $3,750 for the recipe box in good condition.

The Deadly Desserts Bake-Off pits Granddad against stiff competition in the bake-off. A culinary arts graduate plays Bunter, Lord Peter Wimsey’s manservant. Taking the part of Mrs. Hudson, Holmes’s landlady, recipe columnist Cynthia Sweet pontificates about the proper way to make tea. Granddad blames her for ripping off the five-ingredient theme of his Codger Cook column to use in her own recipe column and cookbook. He’s not the only one who has a beef with her. Ms. Not-So-Sweet received an anonymous threatening note before the bake-off.

A few hours later Granddad’s prized recipe box has disappeared and Cynthia is found dead in her hotel room next to a whistling teakettle. How do the festival goers who love a murder on the page react to a murder in their midst? Some assume it’s a game devised by festival organizers. Others note echoes of classic mysteries and propose ingenious solutions. With a witness in jeopardy and a killer using every trick in the book to avoid detection, Val and Granddad must read between the lines to prevent another murder.  

I dedicated BAKE OFFED to the hardworking organizers of mystery fan gatherings who bring writers and readers together to celebrate their love of crime fiction. Having this book published in the year when those in-person gatherings resumed is the icing on the cake. I hope you’ll enjoy visiting the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest.

Maya (Mary Ann) Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring a café manager and her grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad’s five-ingredient recipes. Maya’s seventh book, Gingerdead Man, takes place during a Dickens festival, and her newest book, Bake Offed, at a mystery fan festival. A Virginia resident, she has taught college courses in writing, literature, and detective fiction. When not reading and writing, Maya enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Her website, https://mayacorrigan.com, offers recipes, fun food facts, and mystery history and trivia.

DEBS: I adore the whole idea of the bake-off contestants taking on the roles of famous sleuths' cooks, and I'm dying to know what sort of recipes are in the Peter Wimsey cookbook! I'm hoping Maya will fill us in on that.

Here's more from Maya:

READERS: If you’ve attended gatherings of mystery lovers, what do you like most about them?

If you’ve never been to one, would you consider attending such an event? 

I’ll send a signed copy of BAKE OFFED to one person who leaves a comment.

Double Your Fun with Two Christmas Cozies

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We have a double helping of book fun for you today! Jungle Red friends Edith Maxwell (as Maddie Day) and Maya Corrigan both have brand new Christmas-themed mysteries. And, yes, we really do need to start getting in the mood. Christmas will be here before we know it. Here are Maddie and Maya with some holiday cheer!

 

 A Couple of Recipe-Wielding, Pseudonym-Toting Authors

Maddie: Thanks, Debs, for hosting Maya and me! When we realized we both had Christmas cozies coming out the same day (September 29), we thought a joint appearance would be more fun than going solo, so we’re going to interview each other. The Reds community gets two for the price of one! And we’re both giving away a copy of our new books, too.

Maya, Gingerdead Man (best title, ever) features a Dickens of a Holiday Festival, and your protagonist Val throws a tea for the volunteers – who are all in costume. It’s a fabulous visual. How did you think up a Dickens-themed holiday festival? Have you ever been to one like it?

 Maya: The idea came from one of my critique partners, Carolyn Mulford. Though I’ve never been to a Dickens Festival, I found photos and programs online from several festivals with volunteers dressed as Dickens characters. It was a perfect fit for my series. My previous books in the series, Crypt Suzette and S’more Murders, had scenes with costumed, role-playing characters. Costumes can disguise people, but the choice of a costume can reveal someone’s true nature. The killer who crashes the tea party in Gingerdead Man is shrouded in black like the eeriest Dickens ghost from A Christmas Carol. The ghost gives each person a gift. When Santa opens his, he finds a gingerbread man, but it doesn’t have raisin eyes and an icing smile. Instead, it’s a skeleton with bones traced in white icing—a gingerdead man. I bet you can guess what the murder weapon is. 

Speaking of skeletons, Maddie, you have one in Candy Slain Murder, only it’s a real skeleton, not an edible one. Your main character, Robbie, like mine, runs a café. How did you incorporate holiday motifs in your mystery? 

 Maddie: Robbie decorates her country store with garlands and tiny white lights. She puts up a freshly cut tree and decorates it with her boyfriend, Abe, and his teen son, Sean, who brings holly-shaped cookies his grandma made. The three of them walk downtown for the tree-lighting and visit from Santa, who drives in on an antique fire truck driven by Mrs. Santa. Unfortunately, Danna, Robbie’s assistant, gets in a fight with an aggressive local photographer, which kind of spoils the event.

And then we have the food and the recipes, which we both include in the books. In Candy Slain Murder, Robbie Jordan and her assistants work hard to come up with Christmas breakfast and lunch specials that look festive. They make a spinach and red pepper egg bake, a Noel omelet, and a split pea soup that includes fresh peas and minced fresh tomatoes. They serve gingerbread people and red-and-green sugar cookies, too. But at Pans ‘N Pancakes, they can use as many ingredients as they want. Your book recipes always have only five ingredients. Is it hard to come up with those?

 Maya: When I was a Mom with two part-time jobs and two preschoolers, I began collecting easy recipes so I could cook fast. Besides the recipes I’ve used for years, countless five-ingredient cookbooks are out there. I’d rather be able to use a few more ingredients for the book’s recipes, but five works with my mystery framework—five suspects, five clues, and five-ingredient recipes. I found it hard to stick to just five suspects in Gingerdead Man. With two seemingly unrelated deaths and no one person with a motive for both crimes, I had to juggle two different sets of suspects. They’re winnowed down as the story progresses, but the connection between the two deaths doesn’t become clear until the end. 

 Maddie, you also have multiple victims in Candy Slain Murder, but a different kind of challenge. One victim shows up as a skeleton. How did Robbie go about investigating a long-ago death, and have you incorporated cold cases in other mysteries?

Maddie: Good question! I don’t think I’ve used a cold case before. But this one kind of slammed Robbie in the face, when Abe spies the skeleton in the attic of a house where the roof was opened to put out a fire. Robbie does what she does best (next to cooking) and digs into the disappearance of a local woman a decade earlier. She sneaks a peek at some of the woman’s diaries from before she dies, and she visits the hospital where the woman’s husband practices.

A different kind of cold case in this book is when a young man shows up claiming to be Danna’s older half-brother. The problem is, growing up as the single child of a single mother, she’d never heard about any siblings, half or otherwise. I don’t want to spoil the story, but it gets complicated, and stems from an issue that formerly was more scandalous than it is for many these days.

Most people think of cozy mysteries as light and humorous, but they also tackle familial and societal issues familiar to readers. Real life has real-life problems, and I don’t shrink from including them in books – but only as a backdrop to the mystery.

Tell us about that aspect of your book, Maya.

Maya: A situation many families face comes up: what to do about an aging parent who needs more care than is available at home. Val caters a birthday dinner for an older man and overhears an argument his daughters have about whether and how to convince him to give up his house. Related to his living situation is the status of the young immigrant woman who’s been his live-in aide and is in a precarious economic and legal position.

Maddie: Both are current and timely. How about pen names which we both write under? Were you asked to use one, or was it your own choice?

Maya: I’ve written nonfiction and short stories using my first, middle, and last names. For this series, which I knew would come out as a small paperback, I combined and shortened my first and middle name so it would fit better on the cover. In Gingerdead Man and other books, I’ve created characters with pseudonyms, aka, aliases. Like a costume, an alias disguises your identity, but your choice of a name can be a clue to who you really are.  

 So, Maddie, are your pen names a way to hide your identity and why did you choose them?

Maddie: That’s funny. No hiding for me, since I do my best to link my names everywhere I can. My name since birth has been Edith Maxwell, and my Agatha Award-winning Quaker Midwife Mysteries are written under that name (book #6, Taken Too Soon, released September 8!). Maddie was born five years ago with the first Country Store Mystery, when my editor wanted me to use a different name than Edith. Here’s why. The Local Foods Mysteries series was by Maxwell but, after five books, the contract was not renewed. Kensington wanted the new series to look like it was written by someone else, but they never said I couldn’t connect the names. The series has done so well, Maddie Day also writes my newest series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries.

 Maya: Thank you again to Deborah and all the Jungle Red Writers for hosting Maddie and me. May we all meet again in person very soon.

Readers: What’s your favorite season for books to be set in? Do you seek out books by a favorite author’s alter ego? Have you been surprised to learn two authors were the same person? Each of us will send a signed copy of our new book to a lucky winner!

***

In Candy Slain Murder, Country Store owner Robbie Jordan’s life seems merry and as bright as the Christmas lights glistening around South Lick, Indiana – until a man claims to be the long-lost half-brother of Robbie’s assistant. A fire destroys the home of a controversial anesthesiologist, exposing skeletal remains in his attic. The twin of the long-dead woman is murdered. Unavoidably intrigued, all Robbie wants for Christmas is to stop her winter wonderland from becoming a real nightmare.

Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries. Agatha Award winning Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. With twenty-three mysteries in print and more underway, Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and their energizer kitten north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. She hopes you’ll find her on social media under both names, on WickedAuthors.com, and at her web site.

 ***

Gingerdead Man: During Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, Val hosts a tea party for the festival's costumed volunteers. Robed in black, a party crasher hands out gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy cookie—a gingerdead man—looks like a Halloween leftover, cookie addict Santa can’t resist it, gobbles it up, and keels over. His death puts a damper on the festivities, and then someone else dies from eating a sweet gift. To restore the holiday spirit, Val and Granddad must stop the murderer from baking more deadly treats.

​Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries. They feature a café manager and her live-wire grandfather, the Codger Cook, who solve murders in a historic Chesapeake Bay town. She’s also written nonfiction and short stories as Mary Ann Corrigan. She lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Connect with her through her website, mayacorrigan.com, where you’ll find book news, recipes, and mystery history anecdotes and trivia.  

DEBS: I just wanted to add that my town used to have a Dickens festival on the town square every year, on Thanksgiving weekend. I'm not sure why they stopped but I wonder if it might have had something to do with heavy Victorian costumes and unseasonably warm Texas weather.... There were no murders (that I know of!)