Jennie Bentley | History Mystery : Truth or Fiction?

It’s the kind of coincidence that, if I’d put it into a book, nobody would believe.

Picture this: it’s sometime in late 2008, and I’m sitting in front of my computer, getting ready to start writing the third book in my Do-It-Yourself mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime, featuring textile-designer-turned-home-renovator Avery Baker and her boyfriend, hunky handyman Derek Ellis. (Remember those names. There’ll be a quiz later.)

Each book in the series details the renovation of a decrepit house, and each book includes a few fresh murders and some sort of history mystery. In book 1,
Fatal Fixer-Upper Avery inherited her Aunt Inga’s Second Empire Victorian cottage and hooked up with Derek, the handyman she hired to help her renovate it. In book 2,Spackled and Spooked the two of them bought and renovated their first project together: a low-slung mid-century brick ranch, rumored to be haunted because of a tragedy that took place some seventeen or eighteen years ago.

I had already decided that in book 3, Avery and Derek would be taking on the renovation of an old carriage house at the back of their friend Kate McGillicutty’s property. They’re broke, since they haven’t sold the house from book 2 yet, and turning Kate’s carriage house from decrepit garden shed into romantic retreat for two in time for Kate’s New Year’s Eve wedding to the man of her dreams, police chief Wayne Rasmussen, would be just the thing to tie them over. I knew who the murder victim would be--someone from Kate’s past--I knew who killed him and why, and all that was left was to figure out the historical connection.

Kate’s house, the Waterfield Inn, is a big 1896 Queen Anne, with turrets and towers and every Victorian excess imaginable. World War One was looming on the horizon at that time, and I thought a war story might make for an interesting tie-in. I hadn’t done one yet, and the timing was right. The quaint and fictitious town of Waterfield is located on the coast of Maine, and there used to be a navy base at Elliott, just up the road apiece. And that’s how I came to be scanning lists of navy casualties during The Great War.

9.7 million military personnel died in WWI. 116,708 of those were Americans. Quite a few were enlisted in the navy. The names went on forever, and it wasn’t long before my eyes glazed over as my finger got heavier and heavier on the mouse and the scroll bar slid down at breakneck speed. Until something jumped out at me and jerked me out of my stupor.

Yes, it sounds crazy, but it’s the only way I can explain it. Some sort of almost-subliminal message that my brain picked up, that went by too fast for my eyes to see clearly. I had to backtrack to look for what I thought I’d seen, just to be sure I’d really seen it.

And lo, there it was: the kind of coincidence that nobody would believe if it happened in a book or a movie. I’m not sure I would have believed it myself, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Yet there was no doubt. On the list of the fallen was a young fireman third class, from a small town called Chandler, Texas, by the name of William Avery Ellis.

(You remember those names I told you to remember earlier, don’t you? If not, go back and read them again.)

If that wasn’t coincidence enough, William had joined the navy on June 3rd 1917. He died three days later, still on the navy base in Dallas. From strychnine poisoning.

It’s enough to make any crime writer’s heart beat faster. And I hope I’m not the only one getting chills.

Unfortunately, those tidbits are all I ever managed to learn about William. He lived, he died, and that’s all I know. I don’t know who killed him, or why, or if whoever did it was caught and punished. I don’t think it was an accident, because other accidental deaths on the same list were noted as such, while this wasn’t. I’m pretty sure someone killed poor William, but as for why, I have no idea.

In lieu of having the facts, I came up with my own story, rife with adultery, illegitimacy, murder, betrayal and a bunch of other things. I changed William’s middle name from Avery to Aaron--the coincidence of Avery Ellis was just too much, even for me; plus, no one would have believed it--but I used whatever other details I could. Instead of Chandler, Texas, my William lived on Chandler Street in Waterfield, and just like the real William, his mother’s name was Mallessa. I turned him into a relative of Derek’s a few generations back, and carved his initials in a heart inside Kate’s carriage house. And then I set Avery on the trail, and sat back to see what she’d find out.

The result is Plaster and Poison, book 3 in the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries. It was released on March 2nd. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, please check it out. And if by chance you know anything about William Avery Ellis of Chandler, Texas, I’d love to hear from you. You can find me here: www.jenniebentley.com


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Jennie Bentley | When life imitates art and vice versa

Last year around this time, I was getting ready to start promoting my debut, Fatal Fixer-Upper, first in the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime, featuring New York designer turned Maine renovator Avery Baker, and her boyfriend, hunky handyman Derek Ellis. The book came out in November 2008, and since then, my life has pretty much gone by at warp speed. Launching a first book was insane, and then came Thanksgiving and Christmas, before we sold one house and moved into another in January. Since then, we’ve been renovating what is our ninth house in nine years. All while we’re going about the dual businesses of real estate and writing, and while raising two boys under eleven and caring for the menagerie of pets they’ve accumulated between them.

The latest house is a brick mid-century ranch, long and low-slung, with a big picture window in the front, situated on a large lot surrounded by tall trees. Chapter 1 of Spackled and Spooked has a description that matches that one in pretty much every particular. In Spackled and Spooked, Derek and Avery are renovating just such a house. It’s a local haunted house; I thought the idea of a haunted ranch would be fun.

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Jennie Bentley | Home, Sweet Homicide!

I spent the first half of my life in the same house. My grandfather built it with his own two hands back in 1929, and when he died, my mother inherited it, and lived there until she died. It was my home through childhood and most of my teen years, until I headed out, to seek my fortune in the world.

Since then I’ve lived in...oh...roughly twelve more houses and a few apartments in a couple of different countries, cities, and states. I renovated my first home eight years ago; since then, I’ve owned and renovated seven more. Eight houses in eight years isn’t too bad of a track-record. Especially since most of them were renovated around our ears as we tried to go about our business as usual in the midst of paint and drywall mud and dust and men with their shirts off flexing their muscles as they drove nails and soldered pipes.

And it’s just really hard to keep going about business as usual when there are shirtless men driving nails and soldering pipes in the next room, isn’t there?

Anyway, it’s that background that caused Berkley Prime Crime to offer me a chance to create a series of Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries last year sometime. Something to capitalize on the current interest in ‘flipping’, and to snag the interest of all the women who tune in to watch Ty Pennington and Carter Oosterhouse flex their muscles every week.

Mmm...

Sorry about that. Slight digression there. As I was saying, something to snag the interest of the people who tune in to ‘Extreme Makeover, Home Edition’ and HGTV every week. Something with home improvement tips and Do-It-Yourself projects, some suspense, a little history, a few dead bodies, and a hot guy with his shirt off.

Yes, there really is a hot guy with his shirt off. His name is Derek, and he’s six feet tall, with hair that’s just a touch closer to blond than brown, melting, blue eyes, and all the right muscles in all the right places—on display—and he’s really, really good with his hands. Not to mention that he has power tools, and knows how to use them. Derek’s the one who teaches Avery—she’s the main character—the ABCs. About home improvement, I mean.

Avery meets Derek when she inherits her Aunt Inga’s Victorian cottage in tiny Waterfield, Maine, and decides that she’s going to spend the summer renovating the place, before putting it back on the market in the fall, hopefully to make a quick buck. Or a quick hundred thousand. A girl can hope, right? Flipping is ‘easy’ and ‘everyone’s doing it’, right?

Well, maybe not. As I know, and as Avery finds out, there’s a lot more to renovating a house than what you see on TV. It always costs more and takes longer than you think it will, and then there are those complications... And that’s where Derek comes in. He’s a local handyman, remodeler, and restorer, and he hires on to help Avery navigate the choppy waters of DIY. And the rest, as they say, is history. There are cats (Maine Coons, of course), scheming relatives (his and hers), historical intrigue dating all the way back to the French Revolution, stolen heirlooms, a missing professor, secret tunnels, a rotting corpse, a sexy Frenchman in a beret... and, as I mentioned, a hot guy with his shirt off. What more could any hot-blooded woman want?

“Fatal Fixer-Upper” first in the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mysteries, hit stores everywhere on November 4th. If you decide to check it out, I’d love to hear what you thought, as I’ll hopefully be writing this series for a while!

Jennie Bentley

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Jennie Bentley is the author of the Do-It-Yourself Home Renovation mystery series from Berkley Prime Crime. When she’s not writing about real estate, she’s buying it, selling it, or renovating it somewhere in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find out more about her at www.jenniebentley.com/ or www.theabcsofdiy.blogspot.com/