Edith Maxwell's pouring poison

Catriona writes: It's lovely to be welcoming the woman I know as Edith Maxwell back to the blog today. Writing as Maddie Day, she's bringing out the third in a series of cozy wine-country mysteries set near where I live in California - in fact Edith came to visit while on her research trip pre-book one. Before I hand over, I want to say a big congratulations. Book three - you've got a trilogy. It's a thing now!  

Edith writes: Thanks for inviting me back to Criminal Minds, Catriona! I’m delighted to hang out here for a pre-celebration of A Poisonous Pour, the third Cece Barton mystery, which releases next Tuesday.

As this is the Criminal Minds blog, I’ve been thinking about the criminal mind. Describing a mind that way makes it sound like the brains of certain people are inherently criminal. But are they?

 I found an article in the American Psychological Assocation Monitor that points to an answer of Yes. People with a history of aggression and violence seem to have a smaller amygdala and one that functions differently. Toddlers who don’t react with fear to a fearful stimulus can be shown to have a higher incidence of crime later in life. (The good news is that the brain can be changed with appropriate approaches.)

I’m an author who mostly writes into the headlights, pulling apart the misty curtains as I go along discovering the story. That means I usually start with the victim and then pay attention as several plausible suspects make themselves known.

 Most of us, when confronted with a nasty or difficult or devious person, do not resort to murder. In my stories, I try to explore what would push someone over the edge to actually kill that person.

 In this book, we see that Regan Greene is definitely a difficult person at the vintage car show and wine tasting event when the book opens. Cece Barton, who brings her blue 1966 Mustang convertible as well as wine from Vino y Vida, the wine bar she owns, has a prime seat from which to observes the various entanglements Greene gets into.

No surprise, Greene ends up dead. A local artist worked as an admin for Greene and had plenty of conflict with her. The new hardware store owner had a past with Greene as well as new verbal tussles. Even the mayor of my northern California fictional Colinas has a run-in with the victim. And then there’s Cece’s elderly neighbor, Richard, who is a former journalist. He wrote an expose of Greene’s work at the district association, and the police seem to be interested in discovering if he went further than the article.

 

Which among these has the true criminal mind? Mind you, I don’t know anything about these characters’ amygdalas (and I don’t really want to, although I might explore that in a future book). One of them committed the homicide, though.

 Readers: Who’s your favorite fictional criminal? I’ll send a commenter a copy of the new book after I get my box of author copies.

Catriona adds: I'm glad it's just us, because we think that is a perfectly normal question and we all know we'll have a long list of answers! So's not to steal thunder, I'm gonig to leave my answer until the end of the day.

At the Memorial Day weekend classic car show and wine tasting, northern California wine bar owner Cece Barton witnesses heated discussions with local vintage car owners and overbearing association director Regan Greene. After Regan is later murdered, Cece once again enlists her twin, Allie, as her partner-in-sleuthing to clear the name of Cece’s elderly but muckraking neighbor. But they’ll have to act quickly to investigate various suspects in the case before the trail goes sour.

 

Maddie Day writes the Cece Barton Mysteries and other gentle and historical mysteries; as Edith Maxwell, she writes Agatha-Award nominated short crime fiction. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a proud lifetime member of Sisters in Crime. Maxwell/Day lives north of Boston with her beau and their cat Martin, where she writes, cooks, gardens, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at edithmaxwell.com and at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen.