My review of Judy Penz Sheluk’s Past & Present: A Marketville Mystery
By E. Michael Helms
Thirteen months after inheriting her father’s home with the strange caveat that she solve her mother’s thirty year old cold-case murder, Calamity “Callie” Barnstable has decided to put down roots in Marketville. Case finally solved, Callie’s quit her banking job in Toronto, leased her cozy condo to a former co-worker, hired her hunky new next door neighbor to renovate her unkempt inherited domicile, and—spurred on by the success of her first case—she’s opened her own PI business: Past & Present Investigations. As the name suggests, P&P’s specialty will be solving not only present-day cases, but also cold cases from the past that have been shelved and largely forgotten.
With plans to sell her refurbished inherited house, Callie sets up shop in a Victorian home/office located in a posh Marketville neighborhood. Chantelle Marchand, Callie’s best…
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Allison “Allie” Bertrand reads once again the mysterious email that appears on her mobile phone like clockwork the same time each month. This disturbing message has been delivered for over a year, beginning soon after the night Allie–against her better judgment–accepted an Emsworth University classmate’s invitation to attend an off-campus party.
series. Despite very good reviews the previous publisher decided to cut-back their “private eye” series to focus more on legal, medical, and international thrillers (or so I was informed). With a couple of new books in the McClellan series already completed, my agent and I set out to find a new home for the retired Marine sleuth before an extended absence caused readers of the first two books to forget about Mac and Kate Bell, Mac’s squeeze and sometimes Girl Friday.
contacted me, requesting the full manuscript which I promptly sent. They were a startup house with two published books–one by him, and one by his wife. But you never know; it could’ve been an opportunity to get into something good from the ground floor. Fast forward a couple of weeks:
McClellan, has a sense of humor, and he will occasionally use a “dreaded” cliché in conversation or to make a point. People use clichés in real life. I choose not to ban all clichés. Don’t fill up your manuscript with them (unless it’s a book about clichés), but don’t treat them as anathema, either.
really, still, some, perhaps, maybe, which, since, etc.)
the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Ga., starting Thursday, April 5th, and culminating in the green jacket finish on Sunday, April 8th.
that she actually found a corpse in the woods. “What can I say? I’m always thinking of the next idea for a story.”
fiction appears is included in several collections, including LIVE FREE OR TRI.
MotiveMeansOpportunity 