When I started writing Sweet After Death I decided that I wanted to write what was in essence a locked-room mystery but instead of walls I would use impenetrable landscape to
isolate my characters. Imagine a small town – barely more than a village,
imagine it pretty in a kind of American gothic way. Now, surround this lovely
example of Americana with mountains and wilderness of the type we don’t get
here – where the landscape is tidy and polite even in its wildest forms. In
short, make it beautiful but make it deadly.
It was enormous fun taking my main character,
Homicide Detective Alice Madison, away from her usual Seattle location and drop
her in the middle of completely unknown territory. There is something very
appealing about living a life away from the pressures and the grim realities of
an urban environment – and Madison has always felt a deep connection with the
nature and wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. However, the truth is that the
lovely inhabitants of the town of Ludlow are far more dangerous than the wolves
that roam the nearby plains.
The murder that has led Madison to Ludlow is
the first ever in the county and quite horrific. And soon she realises that the
murderer must still be among the group of people who have welcomed her so kindly.
There are many challenges
in this set-up because I wanted not only the structure of a locked-room mystery
but also a sense that the killer was not done yet, and that Madison herself
would become part of his or her end game. The problem was that everyone in
Ludlow had secrets – that’s why most of them had decided to live in such an out
of the way place – and some of those secrets were lethal.
Madison herself has been keeping her own
secrets and the investigation brings back memories that she had not dealt with
for a long time – the monster in her past is just as dangerous as the one in
her present.
The beauty of writing a
locked-room mystery in the middle of the mountains is that I could take
advantage of the claustrophobic nature of dark, forbidding forests while at the
same time using the very same landscape as a release and a passage to freedom
for some of the characters.
In the end, as ever,
nothing is quite what it seems – maybe not even Madison – and the locked room
opens up to let in light as much as darkness.
Sweet After Death by Valentina Giambanco
In the dead of winter
Homicide Detective Alice Madison is sent to the remote town of Ludlow,
Washington, to investigate an unspeakable crime. Together with her partner
Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown and crime scene investigator Amy Sorensen,
Madison must first understand the killer's motives...but the dark mountains
that surround Ludlow know how to keep their secrets and that the human heart is
wilder than any beast's. As the killer
strikes again Madison and her team are under siege. And as they become targets
Madison realises that in the freezing woods around the pretty town a cunning
evil has been waiting for her.
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