Shari Randall pops in today for my weekly interview with an writer. She’s the author of the Lobster Shack Mystery series from St. Martin’s Press. The first, Curses, Boiled Again, was recently nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel.
A native New Englander, Shari moved for years with her husband’s Coast Guard career and now finds herself back home in Connecticut, living a short walk from a lighthouse. A former children’s librarian, she holds a BA from Connecticut College and an MLIS from the University of South Carolina. She is Library Liaison for Sisters in Crime. When she’s not committing murder (on the page, of course) Shari enjoys classic movies, reading, dancing, and visiting her globe-trotting children. Check out her mermaid obsession on Instagram.
SS: Let’s face it, Shari, making things up is a strange occupation for a grown-up. But if we accept that statement as true, then writing crime novels must be stranger still. After all, as a crime writer, you spend a lot of your time trying to work out how one person might kill another and get away with it. Do friends and family do tend to look at you in a different way once they’ve read one of your books?
SR: My poor husband! I think he slept with one eye open when I was doing some research and had a copy of The Royal Art of Poison on my bedside table.
SS: What genre do you write?
SR: I write cozy mysteries. Cozies are usually defined by what they don’t have – explicit violence, sex, or language. I think of my books as more traditional mysteries, where the emphasis is on the puzzle, where the reader has rhe fun of solving the crime alongside the amateur sleuth.
SS: Tell us about your main character.
SR: Allegra “Allie” Larkin is a ballerina who’s had the awful bad luck to break her ankle. While she’s healing, she goes to work at her Aunt Gully’s Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack. At a competition for Best Lobser Roll, the judges are poisoned and one of them dies. When suspicion falls on her aunt, Allie starts sleuthing to prove her innocence.
I love a fish out of water story and a ballerina at a lobster shack fit the bill. Plus I wanted an athletic protagonist who could believably do her own stunts and rescue herself. It’s been fun to put Allie into all kinds of dire situations and watch her get herself out of them. Also, her dance background has given her a different way of looking at people – she’s good at reading their body language.
SS: Do your books delve into any particular themes?
SR: Readers have told me that, besides being mysteries, the books in the series are stories of resilience. Several of the characters face challenges—the death of a spouse, starting a business, a potentially career-ending injury —and they have to find ways to make new lives for themselves.
SS: Where is your book set? How did you decide on the setting?
SR: When I was writing the story I lived in a rambling waterfront house that faces a little village called Noank, Connecticut. You can walk among the old lobstermen’s cottages and see the plaques that name the original residents from the 1800s. There are two fabulous lobster shacks there with beautiful ocean views and it’s right down the road from Mystic, CT, which is always on those lists of Most Charming Small Towns in America. How could I not set my series there?
SS: Patricia Cornwell (Scarpetta) worked in a morgue to research her books. Where has your research has taken you?
SR: It was gruelling – I visited lobster shacks all along the New England shore, eating lobster rolls.
SS: What in your childhood do you believe contributed to your becoming a writer?
SR: Playing with Barbie, reading Nancy Drew, and watching Emma Peel from The Avengers.
When I look back, I see myself creating scenes with my Barbies – an early but effective form of plotting! I even used to create maps of my Barbie characters’ towns, sketching in their homes, shops, schools. Reading Nancy Drew got me hooked on mysteries, and Emma Peel was who I wanted to be when I grew up. But there weren’t many jobs for a karate-expert British spy, so I became an editor and then a librarian.
SS: How has the discovery of DNA changed crime fiction?
SR: So many scientific discoveries have changed the landscape, for sure. Cell phones have also made things difficult. Now the first thing a writer has to do is somehow – believably – lose or break a character’s cell phone. Because, when faced with a killer, any rational amateur sleuth would simply call 911. Imagine Christie’s And Then There Were None with a cell phone.
SS: Must you lay empathy and pity to one side to effectively write crime fiction?
SR: I have to tell you, in one story I wrote ten years ago I bumped off an absolutely wonderful person and I still feel guilty about it.
SS: Pantser or Plotter?
SR: Oh, how I’d love to be a Plotter! For Pantsers like me, we’re always working without a net. I’ve heard there is a third kind of writer – a Puzzler. A Puzzler writes scenes and then strings them together which is how I do it. I usually have a beginning and an ending figured out when I start and then I write the connective tissue. It’s a bit terrifying because I think someday this is not going to connect, but somehow it always has.
SS: What’s something memorable you have heard from your readers/fans? What’s been the best compliment?
SR: One of the best comments was about my second book, Against the Claw. The reader said it was the kind of mystery you go back and read twice to see where the author fooled you. There have been lots of comparisons to Murder, She Wrote which is great – that show is one of my favorites!
I have to share a funny but true story. My husband’s cousin was on vacation in New Hampshire and stopped by a Barnes and Noble. She asked for a good mystery, and the bookseller handed her my book.
SS: Do you hear from your readers much? Where do you interact with them the most?
SR: I love hearing from readers. I’m still shocked and thrilled that people are reading my books. When readers take the time to leave a review or post a comment on my Facebook or Instagram, it’s wonderful.
I’m part of a group of mystery writers and mystery lovers on Facebook called the Cozy Mystery Crew. We all take turns hosting and get to hang out with our readers. We share recipes, talk about our day, chat about books – because we’re readers, too. The group has been so helpful – they’ve even helped me come up with character names.
SS: What are you working on at the moment?
SR: I’m launching Book Three of my Lobster Shack Mystery series, Drawn and Buttered. I’ve been dying to set a story at Halloween and bring in some more Gothic elements. This story has them all – a body in an abandoned cemetery, a mysterious burglary where nothing is taken, modern day witches, and connections to long ago legends.
Then I’ll dive into a Christmas novella about the folks at the Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack. Plus, I’m working on a new project so stay tuned.
********************
Drawn and Buttered and the other books in the Lobster Shack series are available through:
Amazon | McMillan | Indie Bound | Powells | B&N | BooksAMillion
Delightful! A fun whodunit full of New England coastal charm and characters who feel like friends. Warm humor, a delectable plot, and clever sleuthing will keep you turning the pages. —Krista Davis, New York Times bestselling author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries
Not only is Curses, Boiled Again! a suspenseful and entertaining mystery, but Shari Randall left me longing to visit the Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack—even though I’m allergic to crustaceans! —Donna Andrews, author of the Meg Lanslow Mysteries
********************
Excerpt from Drawn and Buttered, Book Three of the Lobster Shack Mystery series
The night air was soft and cool, just right weather for a light sweater. Diners enjoyed their lobster rolls while sitting at picnic tables and on the Adirondack chairs under gently swaying multicolored fairy lights.
Their view was one of my favorites. A crescent moon hung low in the sky, its light creating a shining path across the Micasset River that sparkled at the end of our pier. When I was a little girl I imagined that I could follow that path right across the top of the waves to the moon.
Several sailboat charters from the Town Pier ran moonlight sailing trips and the boats slid by our dock on their way back home. The diners hushed as one sailboat, Charlotte, swept by, her rigging and sails silhouetted against the golden crescent moon. She was a ghost ship, a dream. Several customers applauded. From that magical view, I turned back to the Mermaid.
I’d seen Aunt Gully’s Halloween decorations in the daylight, but now in the dark, I got the full nighttime effect of her handiwork, which could only be described as Hansel and Gretel in Vegas. Transformed into a Halloween gingerbread house, the shack was draped—no, drenched—in orange fairy lights, flashing light up plastic skulls, and glittery glow-in-the-dark pumpkins. Two jack o lanterns nestled in the half barrels among yellow and purple mums. She’d even tucked stuffed witch’s legs under the porch, her homage to The Wizard of Oz. I shook my head. The woman’s design aesthetic was More is More.
Aunt Gully had even strung skeletons along the roofline of the lobster shed. Too bad our own monster lobster had been kidnapped—he would have been perfect for Halloween.
Who would want a giant lobster? What on earth would you do with it? I pictured someone trying to cook the monster crustacean and shook my head. What a waste. Poor old Lobzilla.
Great. Even I was calling it Lobzilla.
********************
Shari can be found here on social media:
