It ONly Takes one little murder to spoil a whole vacation
I’ve always been fascinated by hotels and inns. Strangers with competing backgrounds and motives coming together under one roof for a night. Dinners shared. Conversations overheard. Secrets behind closed doors. The mysteries the walls could share if they could whisper.
Even more intriguing are the hotels and inns that enjoy a rich, vibrant history and a challenging, complex character. These properties tend to be older, often dating back one hundred years or more, and fabulously luxurious. Often, they’ve had the most eclectic visitors in their past—movie stars, criminals, athletes, former presidents, and other world leaders. With their luxuriously rich history and heritage their unique and often unusual architecture, and their own distinct and sometimes complicated personalities and character, it can be an otherworldly experience spending a night or two where mystery, intrigue, and suspense mingle with every guest.
These hotels and inns become characters in their own right.
Oh, and did I mention they all have ghost sightings and stories? Paranormal activity comes standard with these unconventional and sometimes quite eccentric hotels and inns.
I’ve been fortunate to visit a few of such wonderfully inviting accommodations. Wentworth Mansion in Charleston. The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Del Coronado in San Diego. The Boca Raton in Boca Raton. The Grand Galvez in Galveston. Grove Park Inn in Asheville. The Driskill in Austin. The Adolphus in Dallas. The Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. For me, such locations become the perfect setting for a story.
After the publication of my first novel, We Planned a Murder, I began to consider the direction I wanted to take next. Would I continue the Nacho Blanco adventures in Ten Spot, Texas, or would I explore a whole different set of characters, conflicts, and mysteries?
I began to consider the possibility of a new series of mysteries, each novel set in a different hotel or inn, featuring a married couple who unwittingly find themselves entangled in a murder investigation wherever they go.
Enter Jaxson and Holiday Bridgewater.
Order your copy of Jaxson and Holiday’s first mystery today!
I’m not the first to explore these ideas, at least in part. Author Kathleen Kaska has a historical hotel mystery series set during the mid-1900s. Agatha Christie penned four novels and a book of short stories featuring Tommy and Tuppence, a married couple who found themselves embroiled in one mystery after another. And Dashiell Hammett, who made literary history with the publication of The Maltese Falcon, also wrote the equally impressive The Thin Man, featuring Nick and Nora Charles, a young couple drinking and dancing their way from one dangerous murder investigation to another during the Jazz Age of the 1930s. The public loved Nick and Nora so much that Hollywood adapted the novel into a movie and subsequently produced four cinematic sequels during the next fifteen years. Nobody could get enough of the fun-loving, high-flying Nick and Nora and their beloved dog Asta.
I set to work mapping out my ideas for this new series and soon realized that with the writing, there would also be research. In October 2023, I made a trip to Wentworth Mansion, and I knew straight away, just like Jaxson, that I wanted the first “Resorting to Murder” mystery set at the beautiful, old Gothic home. The parlor (drawing room), the library, the sunroom, the Grand Mansion Suite—it was like entering a real-life game of Clue, minus the weapons and the dead body, of course. Like Jaxson, I immediately went on a photographic scavenger hunt, recording every room that looked like it might help make a good old-fashioned murder mystery. It was only natural that Wentworth Mansion and Seven For A Secret Never To Be Told became the first in the “Resorting to Murder” series.
I highly recommend taking a trip to Wentworth Mansion. Play a game of Crazy Eights in the library. Spend the night in the Grand Mansion Suite. Partake of the afternoon hors d'oeuvres in the sunroom. Take the spiral staircase to the top of the cupola and step out on the deck for the most spectacular views of old Charleston. And when the sun goes down, settle into the parlor with a glass of wine and your copy of Seven For A Secret Never To Be Told, and imagine Jaxson revealing the murderer as he stands before the beautiful Italian marble fireplace. You’ll be right there on the set of the story.
