Annette Dashofy--Suspense versus Mystery

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Welcome to one of our frequent and favorite guests here on JRW, Annette Dashofy! It seems like we've been with Annette's protagonist Zoe Chambers every step of the way, and I have such admiration for Annette stepping off in a slightly different direction with her new Zoe book--the 12th!

Suspense versus Mystery by Annette Dashofy

When I started working on the twelfth Zoe Chambers Mystery, as always, I had a seed of an idea. Honestly, I had several seeds. A flood. A trapped and critically injured father. His kidnapped daughter. They all sounded viable until I started plotting Helpless. That’s when I made a few realizations.

 

1.      The story had to take place within a very compressed timeline.

2.      This wasn’t going to be a traditional whodunit.

3.      Writing suspense is way out of my wheelhouse.

 

I based the flooding on a couple of tropical storms, remnants of hurricanes, that made their way to southwestern Pennsylvania over the last 20 years. Around here, the water rises, coming closer and closer over a matter of hours, and then recedes quickly. Combined with the critically injured father in the story, I knew I needed this book to take place in under 24 hours.

What the heck was I thinking?

Let me tell you about outlining a story that only lasts 24 hours. Getting the timelines to work from both Zoe Chambers-Adams’s and Pete Adams’s points of view was maddening. I used a spreadsheet. I used postcards. I had to calculate how long it took to get from Point A to Point B and then tack on time for traveling through floodwaters and downed trees. Then I had to coordinate what was happening with Zoe and Pete, who were in different locations, but who were in communication with each other. I’d write a scene, calculate how much time had passed, figure out where that fell on the other character’s timeline, and find out it didn’t match.

I lost count of how many times I told my husband, “This book is going to kill me.”

It also soon became apparent this poor man, who couldn’t be moved, had seen the person who kidnapped his daughter. He didn’t know who the guy was, but he’d recognize him if he saw him again. Hence, this wasn’t going to be a traditional whodunit with the usual red herrings and suspects, all of whom might be the killer. The reader would also have an inkling of why this madman had taken the girl.

The narrative questions don’t involve “who is the killer?” Instead, the reader asks, “Where is the child?” “Is she even alive?” And “Will the girl’s father survive?” And the big one. “Will The Bad Guy outsmart Chief Pete Adams and escape with or without the little girl?”

I pondered giving The Bad Guy a point of view in the book, but quickly abandoned that idea.

So, I found myself writing suspense, a race against time in the truest sense. Thanks to modern technology, Zoe Chambers-Adams keeps an eye on her weather app’s radar to follow the progress of the advancing storm. The Bad Guy’s identity eventually becomes known, but it takes a while for Pete to recognize how cunning he is. Call it a chess match or a cat-and-mouse game, the fact is both Zoe and Pete are battling man and the elements against the ticking clock of Mother Nature’s wrath.

DEBS: Okay, the suspense is killing me just from reading this! Here's more about HELPLESS:

As a massive weather system barrels toward them, Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams and his wife, County Coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams, soon learn how unprepared they really are. A 911 call reports a dead young mother, her critically injured husband, and their missing seven-year-old daughter. Pete and Zoe realize that as the storm moved north from Louisiana, a mysterious killer came with it.  

The wounded and trapped father is Zoe’s friend and blacksmith, and he asks her to stay with him during the rescue efforts. Pete encourages her to oblige, hoping she can uncover clues that might help the investigation. But as attempts to free the victim fail and his condition worsens, Zoe’s questions reveal he doesn’t know why his family was targeted and child kidnapped. Yet he stays alive, hoping for one last glimpse of his little girl.

Pursuing the murderer and the kidnapped child, Pete and his officers battle downed trees, massive flooding, and a widespread loss of communications. They’re isolated with no backup, while facing rising water and impassable roads. The killer faces the same problems, yet somehow stays one step ahead of law enforcement. But he is becoming desperate, and more people are dying because of it. 

As two lives hang in the balance, can Pete win the race against time and weather to stop a savage and cunning predator? And will he and Zoe be able to reunite a family before it’s too late? 

USA Today bestseller Annette Dashofy is the author of over a dozen novels including the five-time Agatha Award nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic-turned-coroner in rural Pennsylvania as well as the Detective Honeywell series set along Lake Erie. Her standalone novel, Death By Equine is the 2021 winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for excellence in thoroughbred racing literature. In addition, she is an active member of Sisters in Crime and Pennwriters. Annette and her husband live on ten acres of what was her grandfather’s dairy farm with one very spoiled cat.

DEBS: How about it, dear Reds and readers--what's your favorite book with a ticking clock?

 

What If and If Only--Annette Dashofy

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What a treat we have for you today! One of our favorite authors here at JRW has not only a new book, but a new series out next week. We know Annette Dashofy for her wonderful Zoe Chambers novels as well as her terrific standalone, Death by Equine. Now, with WHERE THE GUILTY HIDE, she brings us the first novel featuring fascinating new characters Emma Anderson and Matthias Honeywell.

But what sparks the first little flame of inspiration for a new series? Here's Annette to fill us in!

ANNETTE DASHOFY:  It took me several years to develop the characters for this new series. I had a setting and some basic ideas, but I needed more. I needed a theme or concept to motivate both the main characters and the story. I needed to figure out what drove Detective Matthias Honeywell and Emma Anderson, not only in book #1, but hopefully throughout books two, three, four, and so on.

The answer came from an unexpected source.

 In November of 2019, I visited the Flight 93 National Memorial. Shanksville, PA, is only an hour or so from where I live, but I’d never been there until my FBI Citizen’s Academy Alumni group set up a tour. I expected to be moved, but nothing prepared me for the experience of walking those sacred grounds and wandering through the museum.

 Note: if you ever go there, take tissues.

As I read the sequence of events that transpired on 9/11, listened to the recordings of the phone calls made by passengers to loved ones, viewed the personal items retrieved from the wreckage, emotions overwhelmed me. Especially when I thought of those who lost family and friends.

 I carried the heaviness of the day in my heart for weeks. And as so often happens to us writers, I began to work my way through my feelings by funneling them into the characters I was creating. For about thirty seconds I thought, what if my character had lost a loved one on that plane. Wisely, I dismissed the idea out of respect for all who did lose someone that terrible day. I didn’t want to minimalize what they went through. I can’t even fathom their level of grief.

But what if…

Those two words are the cornerstone of most of what I write.

What if Emma and her sister lost their parents, not in a plane crash, but in a traffic collision? What if Emma and Nell had refused to go on that car trip with their parents? What if they blamed themselves for not going along to share the driving chores which led to their father falling asleep at the wheel?

 If only…

 Two more words I embraced for these characters especially Matthias Honeywell. If only he’d taken the lead on the night his police partner entered the house first and made a tragic mistake, taking an innocent life, maybe—just maybe—the victim would still be alive. Maybe the guilt wouldn’t have driven Matthias’s partner to take his own life months later. If only.

As I fleshed out these two scenarios, I realized Emma, her sister, and Matthias were all victims of survivor’s guilt. Had they made different choices, those they cared about would still be alive.

Each dealt with it in different ways. Nell began numbing her pain with alcohol and drugs. Emma sought refuge in the arms of a man who turned out not to be the charming knight in shining armor she originally believed.

Matthias buries his guilt, compartmentalizing it along with other personal traumas from his past. Only his current partner in Major Crimes is aware of his unease around home invasions and heroes.

And even she isn’t privy to the deeper, darker survivor’s guilt he carries.

Alas, we don’t get to explore those secrets until the third book.

Readers and Reds, do you enjoy delving into the psychology of series characters?

DEBS: So interesting, Annette. My insights into my characters' psychology and backstories have tended to develop as I write, so I'm wondering if your ideas changed or developed differently as the characters came alive on the page. And I can't wait to meet Emma and Matthias!

USA Today bestseller Annette Dashofy is the author of over a dozen novels including the five-time Agatha Award nominated Zoe Chambers mystery series about a paramedic-turned-coroner in rural Pennsylvania. Her standalone novel, Death By Equine is the 2021 winner of the Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award for excellence in thoroughbred racing literature. Where the Guilty Hide (One More Chapter/HarperCollins UK, January 20, 2023) is the first in her new Detective Honeywell series set on the shores of Lake Erie.

Here's more about WHERE THE GUILTY HIDE.

On the shore of Lake Erie, Pennsylvania, a body lays half hidden, the waves slowly moving it with the rising tide…

In the early morning mist, freelance photographer Emma Anderson takes pictures of the rocky coastline. She moved to Erie to escape a past that haunts her but the last thing she expects to capture is a dead body.

Erie City Police Detective Matthias Honeywell has been investigating a spate of home invasions but when one of the robbery victims turns up dead, his case evolves into homicide. Emma’s first encounter with Detective Honeywell leaves her shaken when he reminds her of her ex-fiancé-turned-stalker. Matthias misinterprets Emma’s anxiety and suspects she knows more than she’s letting on.

With the threat of another murder and no obvious leads, will Emma and Matthias overcome their mutual distrust and work together to capture a killer?