MTM: NOVEL HOME TOWNS

Feeling the Soul of New York City and the souls who feed it.

- Novel Settings in the Real World

Whenever I go to New York City for a meeting with the local Sisters In Crime, I leave suburbia behind. The LIRR delivers me to an under-world that never sees daylight. I climb out of Penn Station into a swirl of urbanites, feeling a buzz work up from the pavement onto my soles, and up into my soul.

I love the city that never sleeps, I just don’t get there often, and I definitely don’t get the chance to wander the night streets, rub shoulders with the locals and end up in a smoky bar, listening to a blues band. That’s where Peggy Ehrhart and her first mystery, SWEET MAN IS GONE, comes in.

Maxx Maxwell, a blues singer, uses the setting to a great advantage. It reveals her inner character. She leads us into her less-than-perfect apartment, revealing her basic take on life:

“My apartment is just two rooms, this one and a kitchen. I moved in right after the guy who lived here before died. His name was Mr. Rush. When I checked the place out, his son and daughter were there, a couple of pleasant, well-dressed black people, telling the landlord they’d come the next day and haul everything off to the Salvation Army. I’d just left Sandy and didn’t own anything except a suitcase full of clothes and a box of records and tapes and CDs. So I asked the son and daughter if they’d mind leaving all the stuff there, and they said not at all.

“I’ve been sitting in Mr. Rush’s chair and cooking on his dishes and even waking up to his alarm clock for six months. The only things I’ve added to the décor are the blues calendar over the bed and the picture of my great-great-aunt Caroline on the dresser. She sang in vaudeville. I kind of identify with her. My mother calls her the black sheep of the family.” And that’s how she handles her back story - with swift exposition – and then moves on.

Here’s what our guide notices as she roams her world one night:
“Within a few blocks a neighborhood of grand, stone-faced apartment buildings turns into one where guys stand on the sidewalk in front of bodegas, listening to salsa on boom boxes.

“And something’s going on. The street that skirts the side of Jimmy’s building is clogged with cop cars, an ambulance, and a crowd: salsa guys, chubby Hispanic grandmas, slender brown kids who’ve found something interesting to look at.

“The crowd is jammed against a chain link fence with razor wire on top, filling the sidewalk and spilling out into the street…People are jostling and bobbing to get a better view of whatever’s on the other side of the fence.”

And we feel the mounting tension, thanks to the clarity of Peggy’s setting. What better way to heighten readers’ sense of reality?

I can’t wait for my next trip into Maxx’s world. Granted, I have no talent with a guitar, but I think I’m learning how to sing the Blues.

The creative genius who brought My Town Monday to life and nurtures us along each week is Travis Erwin. You can visit him here to find links to other MTM posts.