BESIDE STILL WATERS received a 4+ star review, making it an IndieReader Approved title.
Following find an interview with author Deb Pines.
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
BESIDE STILL WATERS: A CHAUTAUQUA MURDER MYSTERY was published on June 20, 2017
What’s the book’s first line?
Be ruthless.
That’s what Jenny Van Alstine tells people who want to make art or deals or just get stuff done. Forget fear, politeness or an unwillingness to offend, she says on her artist Web site.
I hear you.
That’s what the person watching Jenny Van Alstine through pistol sights in moonlight over Chautauqua Lake wanted to say.
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Mimi Goldman is back—on a missing-persons case that’s the third page-turning Chautauqua murder mystery novel from award-winning New York Post headline writer Deb Pines.
This time, the lovable Chautauquan Daily reporter, NYC expat and single mom is asked to find Jenny Van Alstine, a beautiful feminist artist, who has disappeared from Chautauqua.
Instead, Mimi finds a surprising number of Jenn-emies: haters, lovers, secret-keepers—and one killer determined to stop Mimi before she stops them.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
BESIDE STILL WATERS, the 2017 addition to an Agatha Christie-like mystery series, offers page-turning suspense. Romance. And the unforgettable setting of Chautauqua, NY, a quirky churchy historic lakeside summer arts community that in 1874 launched an adult-education movement Teddy Roosevelt called the “most American thing in America.”
The book’s central mystery was ripped from the headlines in Chautauqua County where my novels are set – the drowning death of a man whose body wasn’t found until six days after he disappeared while water-skiing with friends.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Read BSW for the thrills, chills and escapist pleasure of solving an Agatha Christie-like whodunit.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Mimi Goldman, the series star, is a lovable single mom/small-town reporter/fussy grammarian/granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, with an unusually relentless drive for justice. She follows in the footsteps of amateur sleuths like “Murder, She Wrote'”s Jessica Fletcher and Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
I’d love Tina Fey, Meg Ryan (as a brunette) or Winona Ryder to play Mimi Goldman with wit, humility and a commitment to doing the right thing.
What do you do for work when you’re not writing?
My “day job” that I do at night is copy-editing for The New York Post. There I chop and edit stories and top them with the kind of irreverent, pun-filled, in-your-face headlines the tabloid is known for. My most famous headline was for a 2012 story about a JetBlue pilot’s midflight mental breakdown: THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN FREAKING