"New" mystery novelist, Beth Groundwater lives where I’d like to: Colorado Springs. What a breath-taking place! (Not just because of the high altitude.) That area of Colorado looks like God’s creative laboratory – filled with massive swaths of experimental mountains – some are sky-high murderous slices of stone split apart; others are gigantic boulders strewn about the land; and still others look like dribble castles where titans hide. One location after another, each appearing totally alien to the next. Travel a few miles and you’re in the Garden of the Gods. Then head for Manitou Springs. Estes Park, anyone? What a setting for a mystery!
Beth’s Colorado based mystery, A REAL BASKET CASE, won broad attention as an Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel. In this up-and-coming series, the amateur sleuth makes baskets and fills them with native-based elements: turkey feathers, wildflower honey, blue cornbread and a teasingly dangerous “Scorned Woman” salsa/hot sauce mouth-burner. Can you taste the setting? Need a glug of beer or some of Colorado’s carrot-apple juice with protein powder to restore your lost electrolytes? Beth’s got them all close at hand.
The sleuth’s home is nestled among scrub oak and ponderosa pine. Beth uses that setting to capture examine her protagonist’s mood. “A squirrel scampered along the rail of the redwood deck. The creature seemed to know what direction to take – unlike herself.”
After the sleuth witnesses a climber falling to his death in the Garden of the Gods, the vision haunts her like a foreshadowing of her fate. Cruel and absurdly cool.
I plan to revisit Colorado Springs often, with Beth’s help. Care to join me?
(Thanks to Travis Erwin for inventing this opportunity to wallow in settings. To read more, link to Travis’s blog: http://www.traviserwin.blogspot.com/.)
Posts
