Small town murder

WHO? WHEN? HOW? So What’s the Answer?

/ Austin Mystery Writers / 1 Comment

by HELEN CURRIE FOSTER

The great thing about a winter storm? A glut of reading. I took refuge in re-reading the broad swath of Tony Hillerman mysteries. What a writer! And what a setting he creates.

I live just west of Austin, beyond the limestone wall of hills known as the Balcones Escarpment, on the Edwards Plateau—a vast hilly area of fractured porous Cretaceous limestone, full of fossils, and dry, except for its secret springs and precious narrow waterways. This Hill Country provides a sharply different landscape from the forests east of Austin and the lush coastal plain around Houston. Indeed, my college roomie (from Manhattan) famously asked, on her first trip to Texas, “Isn’t it kind of scruffy?”

Maybe, but only from a distance.

And limestone’s part of our culture and setting. On our dirt road in the country, all the houses are built of limestone and wood—except for one new red brick house that looks out of place. South of us, the old town of Dripping Springs still holds old limestone buildings—as do Blanco and Fredericksburg.

Back to Hillerman. Of course we readers plan to figure out WHO killed the victim and WHEN and HOW. But also, for mystery lovers, setting is key. Hillerman immerses us in the broad landscape his characters Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee must travel as Navajo Tribal Police officers. Duty leads them not just throughout New Mexico but on into Utah and Arizona, along roads that dwindle into narrow dirt tracks, leading to canyons and cliffs. Leaphorn and Chee are always noticing desert flora—grama grass, buffalo grass, agave and yucca, and cottonwoods along a draw or seep. The sky sets the scene: “The light was turning red. The sun had dipped beneath the western Horizon, and the clouds in the west—dazzling yellow a few moments earlier—were now reflecting scarlet. Soon it would be too dark to see.” The Ghostway, Ch. 8.

And always the weather holds sway—a factor for Jim Chee to consider when driving off-road into a remote canyon: “By the time he reached the graded road leading to the Toadlena boarding school he was weary to the bone, with another thirteen miles through the snow…” (Ch. 23). Sky, weather, plants, sky, cliffs, canyons…all part of the setting. And housing? Hillerman describes the adobe buildings, the circular wood and stone Navajo hogans, the sheep pens, the Hopi cliff dwellings with their squares and kivas, where mystery unfolds. Access to scarce water may mean seeps, springs, buckets.

And as to the questions every mystery poses for the reader—which every reader plans to solve: WHO DID THE MURDER? WHEN? HOW? I loved revisiting Hillerman and searching for the answers. Not infrequently, water plays a role.

Coffee Creek, my made-up Texas town in the Alice MacDonald Greer mystery series, lies atop the Edwards Plateau. The lawyer protagonist, Alice, treasures her small ranch, with its impressive broad-branched live oaks, shallow creek, and scratchy cedar scrub––and her three watchful burros. She re-seeds her pasture with native grasses–buffalo grass and blue grama–and waits with eagle eyes to see the spring swaths of bluebonnets and the first incredibly beautiful prairie celestials. Alice also keeps an eye on water levels in her creek. Flash floods? Or drought? The Hill Country delivers both.

Currently, Barton Springs-Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, which manages groundwater for the Barton Springs segment of the Edwards Aquifer, has declared Stage 3 Drought Conditions for only the second time in its 39-year history. We got a bit of moisture during last week’s Deep Freeze but that may not be enough to avoid Stage 4 drought conditions. https://www.kxan.com/texas-water/texas-water-district-nears-historic-stage-4-emergency-drought-declaration/

In Ghost Justice, Book 10 in the series, Alice’s Coffee Creek clients seek her help opposing a huge proposed concert venue in an area lacking sewers, where concert sewage effluent threatens the town’s water supply. As the frontier adage has it, “Whisky’s for drinking, but water’s for fighting.” Recently a similar actual proposal which could have affected Barton Creek near Dripping Springs was withdrawn after different owners bought the property. And yes, there’s murder, and yes, Alice is determined to solve it.

Water’s key in the Hill Country. To find out what happened in Ghost Justice—WHO killed the original victim, and WHEN AND HOW…and what happened to the perpetrators– you can find the bookonline or at BookPeople in Austin!

Meanwhile, I’m still deeply interested in Texas rock art (rock art is critical in Ghost Cave, Book 1 of my series), especially after the recent thrilling discovery of a 67,800 year old hand print stencil on Muna Island in Sulawesi, Indonesia. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/worlds-oldest-rock-art-indonesia-hand-stencil

I’m also reading I Heard There Was a Secret Chord (2024) by neuroscientist and musician Kenneth J. Levitin, who’s exploring music and healing. One intriguing fact: of the 4500 species of animals on our planet that sing or hum, humans are the only species that live on the ground. Apparently, all the others live in the water or in trees. Humming! Levitin also notes, “The 60,000-year-old bone flute discovered in the Divje Babe cave near Cerkno, Slovenia, plays a pentatonic scale that would be recognizable by anyone alive today.” Id. At 308.

The human animal—a mystery! With history!

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how uninvited, the past keeps crashing the party. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.

Her books are available online at Amazon and at BookPeople in Austin.

See You…in September!

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By Helen Currie Foster

It’s September! New school year! New shoes, after a hot barefoot summer! New outfit, for the first day of school! And then––new classes! New subjects, new teachers, new tools! New friends! New lockers, new classrooms, new hallways…. New season—new teammates, new coach, new plays.

Remember all that?  Your first day back at school? Back to college, back to university? Do you remember the excitement, the nervousness, the anticipation?

September 1 was  Labor Day. And now there will be apples, apple pie and apple crisp. There will be chrysanthemums, spilling out of baskets. Even in central Texas, leaves will change color—as Maxwell Anderson’s lyrics have it, “When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame.” Here in the Hill Country, sumac and Spanish oak turn red, sweet gum turns yellow. No, not the glory of the maples, but a change in the landscape. Because finally, after the dog days of summer, that’s what September brings: something new.

It’s time to pull up the tired summer flowers and thank them for their service. Time to dig some holes and plant new trees, and order some bulbs. I’ll be planting the Mexican plum seedlings a friend gave me, and ordering narcissus bulbs for indoor blooming.

Then the Hill Country brings its own fall excitement. Dove season began  September 1 and a down-the-road neighbor, disturbed by shotgun pellets clattering onto her roof, had to call the sheriff, and have officers explain to a clueless (thoughtless? lawless?) neighbor that it’s contrary to law to allow your ammunition to cross your own fence line. Also unneighborly. But hmm, that could find its way into a future book plot….

Our Hill Country holds surprises. One is the way water hides in the Hill Country—down in secret seeps and creeks, around curves and hollows. And what odd creatures live out here! For example, this fall we’ve seen again the rare and secretive rock squirrel. (We’ve seen a solitary rock squirrel only once every few years.)  We’ve heard the great horned owls that call at night, up and down the creek, and the herons who call, flying down the valley. The buzzards drone, annoyingly, from the tops of telephone poles. We treasure glimpses of the shy, gorgeous painted buntings who appear briefly at the bird feeder, then flit away. Porcupines visit. Roadrunners dart across the road.

And the dog days are over. (This year they were July 3-11, and these hot sultry days have borne their name from ancient times ostensibly because it’s when Sirius, the Dog Star that accompanies Orion, rises with the sun.) https://www.almanac.com/content/what-are-dog-days-summer

But during the dog days I took refuge at night, binge-reading two mystery series that were new to me, by British author Peter Grainger: the DC Smith Investigation series and the Kings Lake Investigation. http://bit.ly/4gmPsad

These wry British procedurals are set on the coast of Norfolk, providing a cool and rainy ocean-side backdrop for the appealing characters. At least I could read about rain and cool breezes. But the books offered not only a respite from ridiculous heat, but a welcome respite from writing. I’ve been in the last weeks of finishing Ghost Justice—Book 10 in my Alice MacDonald Mystery Series, set here in the Texas Hill Country. For me that process includes waking in the wee hours with my mind on plot additions and subtractions, dialogue, characters. For such moments—when the characters wake me up at night voicing their further demands (yes, they seem to come to life and require conversation and attention)––I find mysteries provide absorbing distraction.

And now – Watch for Ghost Justice this week!  https://amzn.to/4pk8WQO

Helen Currie Foster lives and writes the Alice MacDonald Greer Mystery series north of Dripping Springs, Texas, loosely supervised by three burros. She’s drawn to the compelling landscape and quirky characters of the Texas Hill Country. She’s also deeply curious about our human history and how, uninvited, the past keeps crashing th eparty. Follow her at http://www.helencurriefoster.com.