Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig discuss "The Author's Guide to Murder"
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Three best-selling authors combine forces for a new murder mystery
Here's a recipe from the CBS New York Book Club: Take three authors, add a "book within a book" concept, a sense of humor about the publishing industry, and a murder mystery. Those are the ingredients for the new novel "The Author's Guide to Murder" by Beatrice Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.
Individually, Williams, Willig, and White are authors of best-selling historical fiction books. The previous four books they wrote together were of the same genre. "The Author's Guide to Murder" is their first murder mystery. Williams and Willig talked to Mary Calvi about how their collaboration started.
"We had known each other on the writers' circuit," said Williams. "It was the last day of a conference and we were saying this is so fun hanging out together. Wouldn't it be fun to write a book together and our publisher could send us on book tour together."
"And pay our bar bill," Willig added.
"The Author's Guide to Murder" is about three authors who are on a research trip to Scotland for a book they will write together. These authors don't like each other. Willig says she, Williams, and White came up with the plot when they were working on their last book, "The Lost Summers of Newport."
"We were laughing over how whenever we are on tour, someone in the audience will pop up and say, 'You can tell me the truth. You really hate each other, don't you?' And we'll say, yeah, you can tell we can't stand each other. We really are best friends. We sat over a little too much caffeine and said what if there were really three authors who hated each other and who were put together, like the Spice Girls. And what if we put them in a castle in Scotland."
"And what if there was a murder mystery?" added Williams.
"We've all written lots of books on our own," said Willig. "When you write a lot of books you often get typed. And often you get put into a certain style of character or writing. But when we are writing together, and we are writing three different characters, you can choose to write with-type or against-type. Sometimes when we are writing together, we pick the characters that are wildly different from ourselves and what we usually do. And we never tell anyone who wrote what."
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"The Author's Guide to Murder" by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White
From the publisher: There's been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower's book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle's guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors' stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don't quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
Beatriz Williams lives in Connecticut. Lauren Willig lives in New York City. Karen White lives in Georgia.
"The Author's Guide to Murder" (ThriftBooks) $23
Excerpt: "The Author's Guide To Murder" by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White
PROLOGUE
Kinloch Castle
10 December 2022
A murder is reported . . .
Detective Chief Inspector Euan Macintosh had never seen a crime scene like this one before.
Torches guttered in iron holders along the walls of the octagonal chamber, illuminating the body of a man, dressed in little more than strategic strips of black leather, sprawled face down in a puddle of something that gleamed pale and sticky. The sickly sweet scent made Euan feel like retching—or that could just be the sheer amount of punch he'd consumed at the Kinloch ceilidh last night. Did it count as last night if one hadn't been to bed yet?
Erotic tapestries lined the walls: Europa, pursued by a bull; Leda, in the process of being ravished by a swan. The torchlight glinted off bare breasts, reaching arms, arched necks, and the bare buttocks of the man splayed on the floor.
A pseudomedieval chalice, enormous, inlaid with rough-cut jewels, lay where it must have fallen from the man's outstretched hand, spilling its honeyed contents.
A stag's head lolled on the flagstones next to the body, lopsided due to the loss of a branch of antlers on the left.
The inspector didn't need to ask what had happened to the missing antler. It was protruding from the back of the man lying on the floor, into which it had been shoved with considerable force.
No chance of natural death here. Euan repressed the urge to curse. His first murder since returning to Kinloch and it couldn't be a simple brawl at the pub gone terribly wrong.
A sheep bleated, nosing at the puddle spreading out around the corpse.
A stern-faced man in a kilt tugged the sheep away. "Dinna ye be drinking that, Beatrice. Ye don't know where it's been."
Calum MacDougal. Gillie. General factotum at Castle Kinloch. Employed by the man who now lay face down in a pool of mead wearing what looked like a woman's dominatrix costume.
Euan gestured at the body. "I take it that's—"
"The novelist. Aye."
American. Had written a book Euan hadn't bothered to read because it sounded like poncey nonsense. Rented out the castle for writers' retreats at Castle Kinloch. Euan had never met the man but he'd seen his face on the posters the man had plastered across the island.
He didn't look like his poster now.
"I've rung the medical examiner," said Calum expressionlessly.
Euan felt bile rise in his throat—and not just because of the scene before him. Euan had seen all sorts of brutality during his time with the Met in London. Gun violence, knife violence, brass-knuckled violence. But those had been simple crimes compared to this. And there, the suspects weren't people he'd known from a boy.
"You found the body?" Euan asked brusquely.
"That'd be me nan." Calum looked sideways at Euan. "Or would ye be needin' her full name for the record, Chief Inspector?"
"Where is Mrs. MacDougal?" Euan asked. "I'll need to speak to her. For the record."
"At the castle. I sent her back to get warm. She was fair fashed as ye may imagine."
Euan followed Calum through a tunnel that led from the freestanding tower—a landmark on Kinloch, the Obelisk—to the castle itself, where Morag MacDougal stood like a wraith in the Great Hall, her white face and white hair standing out starkly against the black of her dress, making her look like a black-and-white photo of herself.
Euan had known Morag since he was a boy. She'd rapped his knuckles with one hand and fed him scones with the other. And now he had to question her about a murder. It felt like an impertinence.
Calum made a clucking noise and wrapped his grandmother in a Kinloch plaid. "Ye'll catch yer death."
"Death," she echoed. The keys hanging from the gold chain at her waist clanged like the tolling of a bell. "Death has come to Kinloch. . . . It's a reckoning. A reckoning, I tell ye. . . ."
"Can you tell me who else was in the castle?" Euan asked hastily. Morag MacDougal in her prophetic mood was a bit much before breakfast.
Behind him, Beatrice the sheep bleated plaintively. Euan swatted her away before she could nose under his kilt.
In the distance, he could hear the sound of a siren: PC McMorris coming up from the village, bringing the medical examiner with her, and thank goodness for that. Euan wished he were wearing something more official and not the dress kilt and blazer he'd worn to the ceilidh the night before. Would it be sexist to send PC McMorris back to fetch him some trousers?
Before he could act on that thought, a commotion arose from above.
"We need to take a selfie!" an American voice trilled.
What the—"
Shove up, you're blocking the way." Three women tumbled down the stairs, shoving and elbowing one another, all talking at once. They came to an abrupt halt just shy of the landing, staring at Euan.
They all wore plaid, but in nothing resembling any tartan Euan had ever seen on Kinloch. Their jarring plaids were enough to give anyone a headache, much less a man who had been called out before he'd had a chance to go to bed and was still feeling the effects of the fabled Kinloch punch.
One of them appeared to be wearing nothing at all underneath her plaid dressing gown.
He'd seen her at the ceilidh. Dancing. In skintight plaid.
Euan turned to Calum.
"What the devil are they doing here?"
Calum looked at him apologetically. "These'll be the Amerrrrricans. The authors. Staying at the castle for the retreat."
This was all the morning needed.
Americans. Why did it always have to be Americans?
From the book THE AUTHOR'S GUIDE TO MURDER by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White. Copyright Ó 2024 by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
