I have been reading mysteries since I was in seventh grade.
I started with the inevitable Hardy Boys and Perry Mason. At some point I
picked up a Nancy Drew. Yeah, I know, teenaged boy reading a book aimed at
girls. But I read Little Women, too.
And I will admit, in public for the first time, that I cried when Beth died.
Over the years I have read all kinds of mysteries, but my
favorites have always tended to be the cozies. They involve an amateur sleuth,
preferably a woman, who investigates a murder which the police don’t think is a
murder. They’re set in a knitting store, a library, a bakery, or some other
environment that we usually associate with women. The Hallmark Channel now
offers a series of such stories, although I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more
of Lori Laughlin’s “Garage Sale” movies. There are an amazing number of these
cozy mysteries available today. I may offend some readers by saying that I do
not like ones where cats, dogs, or ghosts help to solve the mystery.
I had already published several books in a series of
mysteries set in ancient Rome when I decided to write a cozy, set in an antique
store. Death by Armoire was inspired
by memories of my grandfather’s antique/used furniture store in a small town in
South Carolina. Maureen Cooper is a ghost-writer, penning books for
celebrities. She likes that quiet, below-the-radar life. Then she learns that
her ex-husband, Troy, has been found dead in the store, crushed by a large
armoire that apparently tipped over him. It’s ruled an accidental death. But
someone breaks into the store and goes through the armoire and other pieces of
furniture that came from the same set. What were they looking for? Was Troy’s
death really accidental?
As she tries to answer those two questions Maureen uncovers
secrets about her family and her hometown that change her whole outlook on who
she is. She has a dog, Pepper, who was Troy’s support dog, but he offers no
help in solving the case.
When I was finished with the book I wasn’t looking forward
to the whole process of finding a publisher. It can take a couple of years to
get through that ordeal. I’m lucky to have an excellent publisher for my Roman
mystery series in Perseverance Press, but they’re small and did not have room
for another title in their list. I decided to do something I’ve often
criticized people for: I self-published the book. It had gone through the
vetting process of my writers’ group and a friend who is a free-lance editor,
so it wasn’t as though no one had worked on it.
Once the book was published, I saw a notice about Writers’ Digest’s contest for
self-published books. I entered Death by
Armoire and WON the genre fiction category. I’m waiting for movie offers
and other sorts of acclaim to come my way. Surely, soon.
You can find more information about this book and my other
books at my website: www.albertbell.wixsite.com/writer.
Death
by Armoire by Albert Bell Jr.
Excerpt
I love everything about my house, but the one
part that I would never give up is the front porch. The builders of big old
Southern houses like mine, which goes back to 1887, understood the importance
of a porch. My house, a joyously gaudy Queen Anne, faces east, with a huge
magnolia tree and an ancient oak—and thus very little grass—in the yard, and
the porch runs across the front and halfway back along both sides. On the south
side there’s a large swing mounted from the ceiling.
At the northeast
corner the porch bulges out to create a circular area where I have a table and
chairs, the same table and chairs my mother had when I was a little girl
growing up here.
Because of the conical shape of the roof over
this area and the black shingles, I dubbed it the Witch’s Hat when I was a
child, and the name stuck. It’s the perfect place to eat breakfast on a summer
morning, as I did so many times as a child, as I did with my children, and as I
was about to do now.
But now everything’s
different. My children are grown, my mother died eight years ago, my father a
year after that, and my cheating ex-husband Troy died a week ago.
As I arranged my
breakfast on the table, Troy’s companion dog Pepper trotted up the steps and
plopped down on his haunches next to me. I gave him the extra slices of bacon I
had fixed, and they disappeared in two gulps. Pepper is a five-year-old Gordon
Setter. Everybody thinks he’s named Pepper because of his color—the black
that’s typical for a Gordon—but his name is actually short for Sgt. Pepper,
after Troy’s favorite Beatles’ album.
Neither of my
children can have a dog in their apartments—and Pepper’s too large for their
apartments anyway—so I had to take him in. Gordon Setters are known for their
loyalty and good nature. Pepper actually excels Troy in both those categories,
but we’re still trying to figure out our relationship. I’ve never been a pet
person.
My cell phone rang
and I cursed myself for putting the thing on the tray when I came out here.
Force of habit. It was my agent, Dave Siegler. I wasn’t sure whether he was
calling about the book I was supposed to have finished this week or about the
proposal he emailed to me on the day Troy died. We had talked once earlier in
the week, when I called to tell him about Troy’s death, but we hadn’t discussed
business, of course. I guessed he had waited as long as a New York agent could
contain himself.
Albert Bell
Albert A. Bell, Jr discovered his love for
writing in high school, with his first publication in 1972. Although he
considers himself a “shy person,” he believes he is a storyteller more than a
literary artist. He says, “When I read a book I’m more interested in one with a
plot that keeps moving rather than long descriptive passages or philosophical
reflection.” He writes books he would enjoy reading himself.
A native of South Carolina, Dr. Bell has taught
at Hope College in Holland, Michigan since 1978, and, from 1994 - 2004 served
as Chair of the History Department. He holds a PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, as
well as an MA from Duke and an MDiv from Southeastern Baptist Theological
Seminary. He is married to psychologist Bettye Jo Barnes Bell; they have four
children and two grandsons Bell is well-known for the historical mysteries of
the series, Cases from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger. Corpus Conundrum,
third of the series, was a Best Mystery of the year from Library Journal. The
Secret of the Lonely Grave, first in the series of Steve and Kendra Mysteries
for young people, won a Mom’s Choice Silver Medal and the Evelyn Thurman Young
Readers Award.
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