Chatham Central To Two New Mystery Novels

To those of us who call Chatham home, or who visit here in the summer, it probably seems like a safe small town.

Not so to those who write fiction. Two recent novels set mainly in Chatham introduce all kinds of mayhem including murder most foul.

“Never Fault a Creature” (Decoy Magazine, 2023) is W. Van Northcross’s debut murder mystery novel.

In the town of Chagport (which Northcross calls a “thinly disguised Chatham”), at the height of the summer season, Payton Pomeroy, a neurosurgeon at Cape Cod Hospital, goes out to dinner at Chatham’s Saylor’s Loft restaurant. Outside, after the restaurant closes, Payton’s date is gunned down by an assailant with a 9-millimeter Glock. Enter Police Chief John Augustus, who thought his late-career posting to Chagport would revolve around busting up loud parties as no one has been murdered in Chagport for 25 years. How wrong he was.

The action switches to Mississippi, where the evil man pulling everyone’s strings lives on the 3,500-acre VanTrees family plantation. Back in Chagport, where the residents and visitors are already on edge, things get even more complicated and deadly when a shark attacks a swimmer on Krowell’s Beach. Then another corpse turns up.

Northcross, who lives in West Barnstable, has lived on Cape Cod for 53 years. Born and raised in Memphis, Tenn., he earned his B.A. at the University of Mississippi. He has held jobs as varied as advertising manager for the Puritan of Cape Cod and as marketing and communication relations director for Cape Cod Healthcare.

During his career he wrote advertising copy, press releases, physician profiles, newsletters and specialty brochures on deadline. Yet he said in an email interview that he “always had it in my head that it would be fun to just let it flow, to write with no word or time limit and give my imagination free rein.” He is a fan of John Grisham’s novels and has read all 32 of them.

The unusual cover art shows a shark in a blazer standing on a crowded beach. The book’s title comes from something an elderly character named Granny Lee says down on the plantation in Tennessee. Addressing a young woman who is upset because a cat has been killing cooped chickens, she says, “You must never fault a creature for doing what’s its nature to do.”

An unspoken theme throughout the novel is nature versus nurture, Northcross says. “Sharks aren’t killers. They are just trying to find a bite to eat. Even a young killer trying to make a name for himself is just a creature.”

Northcross will sign copies of “Never Fault a Creature” at Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham on Saturday, July 20 from noon to 2 p.m.

Suspense author Iris Glazner Leigh of Chatham describes herself as “an avid plotter.” In the process of obtaining a new car loan, she discovered that either she or her husband could take money from their home equity loan “with no need to tell the other,” she said in an email interview. “I wondered if I had exposed not only a perfect crime but also a way for either partner to abscond with a great deal of cash and disappear.”

The idea for “Liza’s Secrets: A Cape Cod Thriller” (Black Rose Writing, 2024) was sparked.

In the opening pages of this novel Franny Blackman becomes Liza Kasner. As Liza, she takes off from her home in New Jersey with $63,000 in bank checks, $2,000 in cash and her cat Licorice. Fleeing her abusive husband Barry, Liza drives to Chatham, which she fell in love with on a vacation the previous summer. But now it’s winter, and the wintertime Cape is different, boarded up, cold, full of “see you next year” signs.

Yet the repulsive Barry is unlikely to look for Liza in Chatham. “He hated the place. Everything was too perfect. Green lawns and flowers everywhere,” Leigh writes. “He wanted a quiet life, a few girls, and a couple of beers.”

Eventually Liza snags a winter rental in Chatham near Harding’s Beach. She finds a job at a restaurant then a clothing store and makes friends. Still, living on the lam is stressful. The locals are inquisitive. More horrifying, a real estate agent remembers both Liza and her husband from the summer.

Meanwhile Barry, back home in New Jersey, is collecting clues about Liza that don’t yet add up. Will he find her?

Leigh herself was a Chatham summer resident for over 30 years and moved to Chatham full-time a decade ago. About 20 years ago she took a writing class with mystery writer Paul Kemprecos, author of the “Soc” Socarides mystery series. About five years after that she joined a supportive writers’ group. She says she is a fan of Cape Cod’s suspenseful authors Jacquelyn Mitchard, Barbara Eppich Struna and, of course, Kemprecos.

One “critical aspect” of Leigh’s background is her expertise in bullying prevention. “My book is based on accepted bullying prevention concepts,” she says.

Leigh will speak at the Eldredge Public Library in Chatham on Thursday, July 25 at 4 p.m. Registration for the free talk is recommended through eldredgelibrary.org as space is limited. “Liza’s Secrets” is available locally in Chatham at Yellow Umbrella Books, Where the Sidewalk Ends and in Brewster at Brewster Book Store.