This past Labor Day weekend, my wife and I spent time with our family near Memphis, TN. This gave me the opportunity to revisit the area around Oxford, Mississippi, this past weekend to settle on some key issues for the novel I’m presently writing. One issue was whether to use this picture you’re seeing for the cover of the novel, Road Runner’s Triangle of Death. This is the second book in the mystery/thriller series, with John Edward Bertone (Jeb) as the main character. To refresh your memory, he’s the detective that appears in the last novel, Sometimes Alone, in the Bailie Beach Trilogy, which is already published and available for purchase.
This story is fiction and takes place in the Memphis, Tennessee, area at the beginning of the novel. Jeb and his partner, Jane Holbrook, are assigned the task of solving a twenty-year-old murder cold case. They begin this investigation in the summer of 1995. What they discover is shocking. The serial killer had never stopped abducting female victims for the last twenty years. Their journey investigating this case centers around the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in the town of Oxford, MS. This will be, as I said, the second novel in the mystery/thriller series, with the first novel, Keuka Lake Mystery, to be released sometime in the year 2027, featuring both characters, Jeb and Jane.
I think you’ll find after reading the first in the series that this second novel will be even more riveting and twisted. My goals in writing are multiple. I want to write a story that is logical, characters can be real people, and the story keeps the reader turning the pages, unable to put the book down.
I watch a lot of movies and series that are in the mystery/thriller genre that leave me disappointed in the end. Some of the things the creator tries to pull off in the story have no logical basis, or the endings are so predictable it leaves me greatly disappointed.
In this story, I’m on the second rewrite. I began writing a few months ago and after my last visit to the area of Oxford. I found I had to change the flow of the story and come up with some new ideas to take the reader on a journey that is exciting and full of suspense. You’ll need to put on your Sherlock Holmes hat to figure this one out. Hint: The ending of this novel will leave you gasping for air!