Coronavirus Blues

Watchin' the Detective: A Mystery Dinner Romance

by Louise Hathaway

When I first wrote this cozy mystery back in June of 2014, I tried to include all my favorite locales in Orange County, California, where I’ve lived for 65 years. To read of these places again now in March of 2020, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, is bittersweet. With a heavy heart, I’ve discovered that I cannot visit my favorite places mentioned in my story. The entire county is on lockdown and the restaurants, malls, and theaters I love are all closed.

With fondness, I look back at the time when I attended a mystery dinner show with my husband, sister, and brother-in-law that took place in the dining room of a Newport Beach golf course which is now closed. The show we saw was supposed to be set in the French Rivera at a wedding reception and the audience was encouraged to dress as if it were the early 60s, the time frame in which the mystery took place. Most of the dialogue from the show I’ve tried to recreate in my story. The only difference is that someone wasn’t murdered in the one I attended, as happened in the pages of this cozy mystery and romantic comedy.

So, come along with my alter-ego, librarian Isabella, who attended the mystery dinner show and fell head-over-heels in love with the detective who came to investigate the murder. 

Does the detective return her affections? Will she help him solve the mystery? You will have to read Watchin’ the Detective: A Mystery Dinner Romance to find out.  

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Here's a Murder Mystery Based On Some True Events in Orange County, California

Some of the events in this murder mystery really happened. Orange County, California had grown at a rapid pace after the veterans returned home from WWII and built their own houses in this once-rural community best known for its fruit packing houses and orange, avocado, and walnut groves.  As time went by, everyone wanted to come for the mild weather, job opportunities, and relatively cheap housing. Soon, anti-development factions arose, and people protested the further expansion of the lands, especially in Santiago Canyon where the abbey was situated.  This melting pot of different races and religious beliefs led to religious prejudice that was especially apparent when the Catholic Church bought the Chrystal Cathedral and removed memorial stones that the former pastor had promised were permanent. Tempers were running high by the time this story opened and it seemed like several people had a grudge—but was it enough to kill?

Murder at the Abbey:

A Detective Santy Mystery 

Is Available at Amazon as Both an eBook and Paperback

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Free Murder Mystery

Good news! I'm now offering for FREE the first book in the popular, four-volume Detective Santy Mysteries. These murder mysteries are about the life and career of Clarissa Santy, a female homicide detective from Orange County, California. The series begins with the murder of her father. When she turns 18, she looks into the court records of the murder trial, and realizes that the wrong man had been arrested. When she contacts him, she finds out more about her family and learns the hard way that there are some questions best left unanswered. This series has earned many 4 and 5 Star ratings. All of the books in the series can be enjoyed as standalone stories.

To get your free copy, go to this link:

Smashwords Link to The Tustin Chronicles  

On the right hand side where it says "Buy" click on it and you will be taken to a page where you can enter coupon code "QL97E" This deal expires on Jan. 2nd, 2017.

(If you don't have an account, you will be prompted to create one. It's perfectly free.)

These books are also available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes and Noble,

 Google Play, and Kobo  at the regular price of $1.99.

Do you like to read murder mysteries?

Do you love reading mysteries and trying to figure out whodunit?  If the answer is "Yes", please take a look at these four murder mysteries that my husband and I wrote.  They are part of "The Detective Santy Mystery" series and are about the life and career of Clarrisa Santy, a female homicide detective from Orange County, California. The series begins with the murder of her father. When she turns 18, she looks into the court records of the murder trial, and realizes that the wrong man was arrested. Ivan, the man accused of the crime, is based on a real person I used to know, who was infamously known as "the hammer-murderer". When Clarissa contacts him, she finds out more about her family and learns, the hard way, that there are some questions best left unanswered.  The series has received five star and several four star reviews and each book can be enjoyed on its own without having to read the entire series.  The bestseller among the four books is "Honeymoon in Savannah" and it is our favorite, too.

The books in the Detective Santy Mystery Series are:

The Tustin Chronicles

Murder at the Abbey

Honeymoon in Savannah

The Body on Ortega Highway

All are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Google Play, Kobo, Smashwords, Oyster, and Scribd.  

Free Psychological Thriller At Smashwords.com

This psychological thriller about sexual obsession will keep you on the edge of your seats until the very end. It's a riveting murder mystery about a female homicide detective who investigates the brutal murder of two teenage girls on a rural road in Orange County, California. In the course of the investigation, she begins to wonder if the serial killer is the same person who has been making upsetting phone calls to her. She comes to realize that not only does she know him: she used to be in love with him. How much danger must she be willing to put herself into in order to capture him? Based on real events.

The Body on Ortega Highway: A Detective Santy Mystery

By Louise Hathaway

To order your free copy, go to Smashwords.com, type in this title, and use coupon code MC49V prior to completing your checkout.  This offer expires on May 10, 2015

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This e-Book is also available at its regular price of 99 Cents

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If you like this story, check out the other books in The Detective Santy Mysteries.  Reviews are always appreciated, too.  Thank you.

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

This murder mystery, about a daughter's search for the truth behind her father's murder, is an homage to the books of T. Jefferson Parker that describe crime in Orange County, California. Focusing on Tustin in the early 1970s and 1990s, this book brings back the bygone days of tractor showrooms; hippies and head shops in Laguna Beach; and a packing house called "The Sunkist Cathedral" where the Catholic Church once held Mass. It's a world of blimp hangars at the Lighter-Than-Air base; orange groves where virginities are lost; and a restaurant that looks like a train station in South Coast Plaza--all set to the music of Bob Dylan and the Eagles.

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

By Louise Hathaway

eBook available for $2.99 at most online bookstores

Also Available in paperback at Amazon

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Silence of the Lambs

This psychological thriller is inspired by Silence of the Lambs and the relationship between Hannibal and Clarice.  It is about a female homicide detective who investigates the brutal murder of two teenage girls on a rural road in Orange County, California.  What makes this murder mystery different is that, in the course of the detective's investigation, she realizes that the man who has been leaving upsetting telephone calls on her home phone is the serial murderer.  And he is someone she knows.  Not only does she know him; she used to be in love with him.  How much danger is she willing to put herself into so that she can capture the killer.

eBook is available at most online bookstores.

It is only 99 cents!

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Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

I talked my co-writer into going to hear vespers at St. Michael's Abbey. On the way there, we drove by some of the places we remembered from our wild youth and got nostalgic. The result: this murder mystery about a priest getting killed at the abbey after some nasty disputes with anti-developers and eco-terrorists who didn't like the fact that the abbey wants to expand on the diminishing wilderness of Orange County, California. Based on some real events in the news here.

eBook available at most online stores for $2.99

Paperback available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble 

Click here to buy on Amazon

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

This murder mystery, about a daughter's search for the truth behind her father's murder, is an homage to the books of T. Jefferson Parker that describe crime in Orange County, California. Focusing on Tustin in the early 1970's and 1990's, this book brings back the bygone days of tractor showrooms; hippies and head shops in Laguna Beach; and a packing house called "The Sunkist Cathedral" where the Catholic Church once held Mass. It's a world of blimp hangars at the Lighter-Than-Air base; orange groves where virginities are lost; and a restaurant that looks like a train station in South Coast Plaza--all set to the music of Bob Dylan and the Eagles.

eBook available for $2.99 at most online bookstores

Click here to purchase at Amazon.com

The Importance of Setting in "The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery"

The best English teacher I ever had used to tell us that what we learned in class is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding literature.  He'd remind us, "This book was not written in a vacuum: what was going on in the time the novel or poem was written?  What about the setting in which the action takes place?  Why did the author chose that locale to tell his story?  How about the author's life?  Did that affect the way he wrote the novel?  Most of the time I felt that I could never do enough to please him; he was always challenging us to do more and that's why his students either loved him or hated him.

His name was Alan Gauley and he taught at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, California.  He also inspired T. Jefferson Parker, a classmate of ours in high school, who wrote books about Orange County, such as Laguna Heat or Little Saigon.  I wanted to write a book about my hometown of Tustin that takes place between 1970's to the 1990's.  Mine was a town where the Catholic Church used to hold Mass in a Sunquist packing house, with birds flying among the rafters, before the parish finally got enough money to build a "real church".  It was also a place of hippies and headshops and a nearby restaurant at South Coast Plaza that looked like the waiting room of the 20th Century Limited, complete with a steam train and an announcer intermittently proclaiming "All Aboard!"

My husband and I wrote this murder mystery about our home town.  We'd like to think that Tustin is one of the main characters in our story, The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery. We live in a city where everyone across the United States, especially in the winter time, dreams of moving to; it's a place where the sun is always shining.  Our town has undergone tremendous growth in the last few decades as orange groves are plowed under to make way for housing tracks and mini-markets. We'd like to think that the theme of the book, a daughter's attempt to find the truth behind her father's murder, could only have taken place here in all the local places with all the interesting real life people that we feel are integral to telling this story.  Hopefully, while reading it, you can almost close your eyes and see it.

 
eBook available for $2.99 at all your favorite online bookstores
Paperback available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble

T. Jefferson Parker

The famous murder/mystery writer, T. Jefferson Parker, graduated in the same class we did in high school.  If you haven't heard of him, he wrote "Little Saigon" and "Laguna Heat" to name but a few. Orange County, California is the setting for most of his books.  We have followed his career through the years and a couple of years ago we told each other, "We should try to write some murder/mysteries that take place in Orange County, too." 

The results are our three books:

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

The Body on Ortega Highway: A Detective Santy Mystery

All are available at your favorite online bookstores

Common Theme in Literature

When I was an English Major in college, the search for family, for a sense of belonging, was a common theme in some of the literature we read and wrote about.  So, when I started writing novels, I tried to keep that in mind.  One of the first murder/mysteries my husband and I wrote together, "The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery," is about a daughter's search for her parentage. We began the book after my brother passed away and it is loosely based on his relationship with his adopted daughter.

We've written four books with her as a main character.  The second book in the series is about her trying to help her father adjust to life outside of prison; the third is about her meeting her cousins for the first time in Savannah when one of them is murdered; and the last is a psychological thriller about someone from her past stalking her and threatening her family.  We hope you like our characters; many are based on people we know; in fact, the murderer in The Tustin Chronicles, is someone I knew when I was 13.  Art imitating life is what we've tried to achieve in our novels.

Here are the books in The Detective Santy Mysteries:

All are available at your favorite online bookstore for $2.99 and less

The Tustin Chronicles

Murder at the Abbey

Honeymoon in Savannah

The Body on Ortega Highway 

#Environmentalists against the #CatholicChurch

Here is Southern California, an ongoing protest movement against the building expansion plans for St. Michael's Abbey is a story that just won't go away.  There are very few open spaces left in Orange County and some people think that the priests shouldn't be allowed to build a nunnery, a cemetery, and a vineyard on their property in Silverado Canyon.  I would love to live next door to them any day.  I've lived here all my life, and have realized that the County is going to keep on developing more homes as long as people continue wanting to live here. You can't stop progress here in "The OC". More protests about the abbey's plans were scheduled for today.

Here's an interesting article about it:

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2014/09/norbertine_silverado_canyon.php

We wrote about this controversy in our murder mystery novel entitled Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery.  It's available as an eBook or paperback at your favorite on-line bookstores.

Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

Do you like murder/mysteries?  Do you like reading about female detectives?  Do you like a story that focuses on character just as much as plot?  Then, here's a book that you might like to add to your summer reading list:

In this murder/mystery, a monastery in Orange County, California is shaken when one of its priests is murdered. Who would want to kill him? Tempers have been running high in Silverado Canyon ever since the abbey purchased land to expand on. Detective Clarissa Santy is trying to solve the murder, while she's busy reintroducing her father to the world outside of prison.

It's available in paperback and eBook formats at your favorite on-line bookstores

Amazon Apple B & N Smashwords

Google Play Kobo

The Body on Ortega Highway: A Detective Santy Mystery

This riveting murder/mystery and psychological thriller is the latest in the popular Detective Santy Mystery series. Female detective, Clarissa Santy, is assigned a case involving a teenage girl who has been killed and dumped on Ortega Highway, a country road in Orange County, California. As she tries to track down the killer, she finds herself the victim of a stalker who is sexually obsessed with her. Is he someone from her past? Is he the same person who has been killing the girls? What kind of danger must Clarissa be willing to put herself through in order to capture him?

This eBook is available for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords, and many other online bookstores:




Amazon Apple B & N Smashwords

The Murder at the Abbey

Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

by Louise Hathaway

It's so strange how life sometimes imitates art.  When we wrote our novel, "The Murder at the Abbey" about a priest in California getting murdered, little did we suppose that unfortunately, three months later, a real priest in California would also be brutally killed at a church.  What would cause a person to want to kill a man of God?  From what I've read about the murdered priest in Eureka, everybody in the community loved him.  It's heartbreaking to read that he was beaten to death with a wooden stake and metal gutter pipe.  Was it the act of a crazy man?  What would drive a person to commit such a horrible crime?  My heart goes out to the family and friends of the priest in Eureka.

In the murder/mystery we wrote, we tried to answer "why?".  I'm a Catholic, so I definitely have a bias when writing about The Church and its scandals.  There is a lot of prejudice against Catholics which, unfortunately, has taken on a life of its own because of priests who've abused boys, and then were moved around to other parishes instead of being punished.  This has rightly fueled a lot of outrage.  But, at what point could prejudice make someone turn to violence?  It is one of the questions we tried to explore when we wrote our book. As fiction writers, we tried to include various factions in Orange County, California who might have members with radical beliefs that didn't jibe with the Abbey's expansion plans.  Is our book's killer part of a group of anti-development radicals?  Or maybe he is someone who's angry that the Catholic Church has just bought the Crystal Cathedral and wants to tear up their "walk of faith stones"?  What about Cook's Corner--the biker bar down the street from the Abbey?  Maybe someone there was sick and tired of having to deal with the priests at the abbey complaining about the loud live music coming from the bar?  Or maybe the murderer in our book was just a nutcase?  You'll have to read our whodunit to find out.  It is available at Amazon.com in paperback and eBook formats.  It's also available at iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Smashwords.

A New Murder/Mystery Set in Orange County, California

T. Jefferson Parker isn't the only one who grew up in Tustin and writes murder/mysteries about Orange County.  My husband and I graduated from Tustin High the same year he did; so there must be something about "The OC" that is inspiring writers of our generation.

We now have two murder/mysteries that show Tustin and its nearby cities as main characters in our books.  People who had read it, have really given us positive feedback about how landmarks in our book bring back so many memories of when they were growing up.  Our readers have told us that they feel as if they are right there with our main characters watching as the plot unfolds. 

So swing on over to your favorite ebook store today and check out our Tustin mystery books! And if that isn't enough, you can get your hands on good old-fashioned print copies at Amazon too! There's no excuse for not getting lost in a good mystery about Orange County!

Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

by Lousie Hathaway

In our newest murder/mystery, a monastery in Orange County, California is shaken when one of its priests is murdered. Who would want to kill him? Tempers have been running high in Silverado Canyon ever since the abbey purchased land to expand on. Detective Clarissa Santy is trying to solve the murder, while she’s busy reintroducing her father to the world outside of prison where he's spent 30 years for a murder conviction.

The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

by Louise Hathaway

This murder mystery, about a daughter's search for the truth behind her father's murder, is an homage to the books of T. Jefferson Parker that describe crime in Orange County, California. Focusing on Tustin in the early 1970's and 1990's, this book brings back the bygone days of tractor showrooms; hippies and head shops in Laguna Beach; and a packing house called "The Sunkist Cathedral".

These ebooks are available at Apple's iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or any of your favorite e-reader sites.  They're also available in paperback from Amazon.com.