I am BWL Publishing Inc. author Susan Calder. I've published three
mystery/suspense novels, which you can view and purchase by visiting my BWL Author Page.
I’ve loved mystery novels since I read my first Bobbsey Twins book when
I was eight years old. From the kid sleuth twins I progressed to
Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden and, later, Agatha Christie whodunnits and Daphne Du
Maurier dark suspense. I wrote my first mystery novel, A Deadly Fall, as
a classic whodunnit combined with a coming-of-middle-age story. My amateur
sleuth, Paula Savard, age 52, stumbles into investigating the murder of her
childhood friend. The story events shake up Paula’s personal and professional
life and lead her in new directions.
On the principle of ‘write what you know,’ I set the novel in my home
city, Calgary, and created a protagonist similar to me. Paula was my
age at the time I wrote A Deadly Fall. Like me, she grew up in Montreal
and moved west to Calgary for opportunity. She’s an insurance adjuster; I worked
as an insurance claims examiner. But as our shared traits diverged, Paula became her own person. She's divorced;
I’ve now been married for 42 years. She has two grown up daughters; I
have two sons. She enjoys sports and risk. I like reading and run from danger.
Here’s Paula with the novel’s prime suspect, her murdered friend's husband. He’s invited Paula to
lunch to learn what her friend had told her about him.
Paula would reassure him and make it clear her friend had told her nothing. He would be on
guard, but, perhaps, less guarded than he’d be with a cop. There was a chance he’d
slip.
He was waiting for her reply. His
face said, ‘Yes, no, either way, I don’t care’ while his hand opened and closed
into a fist, opened and closed against his shaking leg. He was hanging on her
answer. Saying ‘no’ would close the door. After talking with the police, she
could cancel.
“I can do lunch tomorrow,” she said. “Where? What time?”
“Your choice,” he said.
She thought of a nearby restaurant.
“Do you know Lily’s Café?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“Noon. I’ll give you
directions.”
While writing A Deadly Fall,
I realized that an insurance adjuster would make a good series detective.
Adjusters are skilled in investigative work. They visit accident and crime
scenes, interview witnesses and study forensic evidence to determine what really
happened. Insurance claims could also reveal cover-ups for murder. Was the
building fire an accident? Did an arsonist set the blaze to collect the building
insurance? Or to kill a person sleeping inside?
A suspicious house fire is the
subject of my second Paula Savard mystery novel,
Ten Days in Summer.
Paula investigates the fire from the property insurance angle. In the course of
her work, she gets to know the family living in the house and gradually
unearths their secrets. I set this novel during Calgary’s annual wild west
festival, The Calgary Stampede. For ten days each July, Calgarians cut loose, wear cowboy hats and boots, party, line dance, and cheer on the daily rodeo and
chuckwagon races. Paula’s mother from Montreal is visiting her this summer. Paula
takes her to the Stampede parade, which kicks off the festival. In the midst of the revelry,
business intervenes, when an insurance claimant/suspect returns Paula’s phone
message to set up a meeting.
 |
| Stampede Parade |
Belly dancers, in halters and pantaloons, whisked guns out of
their holsters. They twirled the pistols around their fingers and shot
imaginary bullets into the air.
“A blend of the old and new Calgary,” Paula said to her mother, who was
seated on the lawn chair beside her. Over the past few years, Paula had noticed
more and more newcomers’ floats and acts in the Stampede Parade. Today, Asian,
Muslim and Caribbean communities would march with descendants of the original
pioneers.
Her cell phone rang. Brendan Becker.
“Great of you to call,” he said. “I’ve been bugging my sister Cynthia to
contact the insurance company.”
The belly dancers moved on. A bow-legged man wearing riding chaps bounded
toward Paula and her mother. He moved his arms in circles.
“Cynthia refused –”
“YAHOO,” the cowboy shouted.
“YAHOO,” the crowd answered.
“YEE-HAW.”
“YEE-HAW.” Paula’s mother joined in.
“You sound like you’re at the parade,” Brendan said against a backdrop of
trombones.
“You too?” Paula said.
While working on his second mystery novel, I got an idea for a different suspense/mystery story. Calgary engineer Julie Fox travels to California to search for her mother who abandoned Julie when she was a child. This novel, To Catch a Fox, would alternate between five
viewpoint characters. As the story progressed readers would understand the harm and danger the two 'bad guys' plan for Julie.
My husband Will and I
researched setting descriptions on two holidays in Southern California. Yes,
writing can tough sometimes. Julie stayed in the Airbnb apartment Will and I
rented in Santa Monica. All of us rented bicycles from a shop on the boardwalk.
Julie questioned a clerk in the shop.
Julie hesitated, feeling foolish to hope the clerk could
provide any information about her mother; yet how wonderful, how easy would it
be if he did.
He looked up, his eyes bleary red, and asked what type of
bike she wanted.
From her waist pouch, Julie pulled out the three pictures of
her mother she’d brought. “I’m looking for this woman, who once worked in a bike
shop in Santa Monica.”
“This shop here?”
“I’m not sure. It was in the late 1980s. Was this place
operating then?”
The man’s grin revealed a gold front tooth. “Beats me. I
only bought the joint two years back.” He picked up the pictures.
“Could you put me in touch with the previous owner?”
“Not likely. He’s dead.”
 |
| Bike shop on the Santa Monica boardwalk |
After BWL published To Catch a Fox in 2019, I returned to my
mystery series. I’m currently working on the third Paula Savard book, Winter’s
Rage. Paula investigates a hit and run collision that killed a woman and
seriously injured her husband. Was it an accident? Or a pretext for murder? The
insured vehicle owner, an eighty-five-year old man recovering from heart
surgery, insists he wasn’t driving.
“I can’t tell you
more than what I told the police,” he said. “Them showing up at my door
yesterday was the first I’d heard of anything.”
“Our insurance
perspective is different from that of the police.” Paula had explained over the
phone that she was the independent adjuster assigned to the claim, but
repeating that could insult him, and rightly. So far, he’d impressed her as
being mentally on the ball.
He leaned forward,
lines flaring from his nose bridge. “When they talked about my car being in an
accident, you could have knocked me down with a feather. I haven’t driven for
two months. Doctor’s orders.” He rapped his chest with his gnarled hand. “I was
sitting right here, reading, that whole evening until I went to bed.”
“At what time?”
“About 9:30, my
usual these days.”
“It was your
birthday,” she said.
“At my age, that’s nothing to celebrate.”
Every book publication is something to celebrate. BWL has scheduled Winter’s
Rage for publication in February 2021. After the celebrations, I'll move on Paula Savard mystery
# 4, which will be set in spring, the season of hope.
 |
| My front yard this spring |
