Deb Pines' Chautauqua series set in an edgy Cabot Cove

HALLIE EPHRON: I met Deb Pines in NYC at an event for mystery writers. She was writing crime novels, but her day job was as a headline writer for the New York Post. She wasnresponsible for THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN FREAKING headline (remember the JetBlue pilot who lost it?) In other words clever, smart, and a dab hand with words.

Now she's back, launching her 5th(!) mystery (Vengeance is Mine) in her series set in Chautauqua and featuring a former copy editor (right up Deb's alley) Mimi Goldman. Reviewers call the series "enjoyable," "twisty," "fun," and "snappy." The setting especially sets them apart.

My first question: Why Chautauqua?

DEB PINES: Good question. First, two things it’s not. It’s not Chappaqua, New York, Bill and Hillary’s New York City suburb that it’s mistaken for the most. It’s also not a fictional creation like Agatha Christie’s sleepy British village of St. Mary Mead, Louise Penny’s Canadian town of Three Pines or “Murder, She Wrote’s” Cabot Cove, Maine.

Chautauqua is a real place. A gated, leafy lakeside community of narrow streets—with quaint Victorian cottages, modern homes and public buildings—it is located in very far western New York state, about 400 miles north and west of New York City but only 60 miles east of Ohio.

Chautauqua, which has a tiny year-round population of several hundred, comes alive for a nine-week summer season of lectures, concerts and church services often compared to a summer camp for adults.

But the tradition-bound spot is also a little culty—drawing many of the same families, generation after generation, to the place that began in 1874 as a tent retreat for Methodist Sunday school teachers.

Nowadays Chautauqua offers TED Talk-like lectures, Tanglewood-like concerts and Burning Man-like spiritual recharging in a far less hip, more white-bread, All-American setting.

HALLIE: OK, so why murder mysteries there?

DEB: For many of the same reasons, other writers set spooky stories and murder mysteries in idyllic small towns.

Sin intruding on an Edenic paradise feels like a greater trespass. It’s shocking.  And, I think, it gets readers more behind my newspaper reporter sleuth Mimi Goldman’s relentless quest for justice.

My Chautauqua mysteries have a lot of small-town Us-(locals)-vs.-Them (outsiders) drama; close-knit neighbors with secrets; quiet, dark locales that, to a city girl like me, seem extra scary; less-savvy cops; beautiful settings with poetic names; and trusting inhabitants.

In VENGEANCE IS MINE, Chautauquans never dream there’s a killer lurking among them at the annual July Fourth concert when spectators pop paper bags to simulate cannon fire during the “1812 Overture.”

But in the giddy commotion a visitor is shot. An outsider is arrested.  Most Chautauquans are satisfied.  But not series hero, Mimi Goldman, a former New York Post copy editor and wary granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors.

Mimi, an outsider herself, shares the skepticism of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and, apparently, Miss Marple’s model, Christie’s grandmother.  Writing about her grandmother, the author once said she “always expected the worst of everyone and everything and was, with almost frightening accuracy usually proved right.”

While Miss Marple drew upon lessons about human nature learned from her small-town St. Mary Mead neighbors, Mimi often draws on lessons she learned from her past editing big-city tabloid crime stories.

HALLIE: Sounds like cozy with a lot of wit and a bit of an edge. I love this picture of you at Chatutauqua... perhaps surrounded by some of the characters in the books?

DEB: It’s fun to be a mystery writer in a small place.  Readers of all ages volunteer plot suggestions and gotcha corrections. The model for a character in my first novel, SHADOW, introduced herself and asked me if Meryl Streep could play her in the movie. Another woman, the model for the Lost & Found character in VENGEANCE, said that after her recent book cameo, her husband mock-complained, “There’ll be no livin’ with her now.”

HALLIE: This got me thinking about other kinds of seasonal venues, like Tanglewood or Jacob's Pillow or Aspen or Breadloaf or Burning Man... that are temporarily full of strangers who could easily inspire characters in a murder mystery. Has anyone been somewhere like Chautauqua and imagined it as a stage set for murder?

DEB PINES, an award-winning New Post headline writer and former reporter, is the author of three other Mimi Goldman novels and one novelette including In the Shadow of Death, a Chautauqua Bookstore top-seller, and Beside Still Waters, an IndieReader-Approved Title.

A SoulCycle indoor cycling nut, Deb also loves puns, Scrabble, cooking and hiking. A mother of two, she lives in New York City with her husband Dave and had her 15 minutes of fame this summer when “Jeopardy!” featured one of her Post headlines in a question—that stumped the contestants.

VENGEANCE IS MINE: Deb Pines’ fourth Chautauqua murder mystery starts with a bang—when Maureen Donahue, a filmmaker and speaker at the historic Chautauqua Institution, is killed at a raucous Fourth of July concert. There’s a quick arrest. But reporter and relentless snoop Mimi Goldman, even with her own wedding to plan, is on the case. Mimi’s questions about a racist personal trainer, shadowy piano teacher, chatty chimemaster and others lead to more questions—and to Mimi unearthing an ugly secret that points her to the surprise real killer.

PRAISE FOR PAST MIMI GOLDMAN ADVENTURES:

 “REQUIRED READING”—NEW YORK POST

 “AN AGATHA CHRISTIE FOR THE TEXT-MESSAGE AGE”—INDIEREADER

 "IF YOU ENJOY AN OLD-FASHIONED WHODUNIT, IT’S PERFECT”—JAMESTOWN POST-JOURNAL

 “THE JUXTAPOSITION OF MURDER AGAINST THE TRANQUIL SETTING OF THE INSTITUTION WORKS ITS MAGIC ONCE AGAIN”—KIRKUS REVIEWS

 “A CLASSIC WHODUNIT BRIMMING WITH PAGE-TURNING TWISTS AND TURNS”—THE BOOK REPORT