A Haunting at Marianwood
Dash Hammond, #6
by E.M. Munsch
Date of Publication: October 18th 2022
Publisher: Mystery and Horror, LLC
Genre: Mystery
ASIN: B0BJ4GYGD2
ISBN-10: 1949281213
ISBN-13: 978-1949281217
Print length: 217 pages
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BLURB
Life is good for Dash Hammond. He's recently remarried his childhood sweetheart, Dr. Maevis Summers, and together they're raising his four-year-old son, T.J. in the Hammond family homestead in Clover Pointe, Ohio. A retired Army colonel, Dash now keeps himself busy fixing everything from a leaky faucet to an unsolved murder.
It is no wonder that his cousin Billy McCafferty calls on Dash for a road trip to Kentucky when his oldest sister is in trouble. The president of a religious order, Sister Miriam Patrice, Miri Pat to those who knew her before she took the veil, has been hearing things, seeing things and misplacing things. A very competent woman, she refuses to accept an unearthly reason for all this.
Marianwood, the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Blessed Mother of God, is located on an old plantation thought to be haunted by its original inhabitant, Miss Victoria Harris, who is rumored to prowl the grounds and cemetery in search of her murdered beau.
When the Ohio contingent arrives, they discover that things are not as simple as your ordinary haunting.
In a battle of wits, will the victor be supernatural or a very corporal retired Army colonel?
Excerpt:
A HAUNTING AT MARIANWOOD
Sister Miriam Patrice slid back from the kneeler. The quiet of the church soothed her as it wrapped its velvet cloak of serenity around her. She sat, hands folded, once in prayer but now to stop the trembling. Glancing at the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows casting a rainbow on the empty pews, she drew in deep slow breaths. She looked at the watch pinned to her tunic. Time to get back to work. She rose to leave the church, her place of refuge, a place free from the distractions of the running the community and the new retirement home the sisters established to help make ends meet.
The members of the Sisters of the Blessed Mother of God found their numbers dwindling. New recruits, as Sister Miriam Patrice called them mimicking her cousin Dash Hammond’s military jargon, were very rare. The teaching congregation once had more than a hundred sisters. Vocations, callings to either the religious or the educational side of the community, had fallen to less than a handful each year.
As she walked down the aisle to the back of the church, she heard it again. Tap, tap, tap. She stopped to listen, making sure she wasn’t mistaken. That sound sent shivers down her spine. Squaring her shoulders she walked to the doors next to the church exit. One led up to the choir loft, the other down to the cellar. In days past she had gone up the stairs; today she would go down.
Pulling the doorknob, Miriam Patrice met the resistance of a locked door. She pulled out her keys and unlocked it. She struggled with the door, suggesting to her that no one had gone to the cellar in a while.
The stone steps were worn but sturdy. She moved cautiously into the darkness, one hand on the wall to steady her nervous knees, the other searching for the handrail. Her hope was that the security guard forgot to close the door one day and some critter, not two legged, was trapped down here and making the tap, tap, tap sound. Logically she knew this was wrong, but the alternative could be worse.
Decades ago they discovered one of the newer buildings constructed during a period of rapid expansion had been built on an underground spring. It wasn’t long before the building tilted, as did their finances. What a waste of time and money. Fearful that what she would find was a tell-tale pooling or bubbling of water, she moved forward slowly. She said a silent prayer that she would not stumble into a puddle, a precursor of the inevitable unwelcome news.
Her trek seemed unnecessarily slow though reason told Miriam Patrice she should alert one of her sisters where she was just in case she lost her footing. But her reasoning had not been the sharpest of late. She blamed her sleepless nights, not because of an uneasy conscience but an overabundance of concern for her congregation and its uncertain future, both financially and individually.
After spending a half an hour poking into the corners, searching for the origin of the sound, Miriam Patrice gave up. She needed a flashlight if she wanted to do a proper search. Next time she would be prepared. Next time, she told herself, she would be less skittish, more confident that she could deal with whatever sprung up from the tap, tap, tap. After deciding this, she nodded to herself. At least she didn’t hear a drip, drip, drip.
The sound had stopped so she returned to the church. As she locked the door behind her, the tap, tap, tap began again, louder this time. If she permitted herself, she would have said damn.
Elaine Munsch is a native of Cleveland, Ohio, but has spent her adult life in Louisville, Kentucky. She graduated from Nazareth College of Kentucky located outside of Bardstown and attended The Ohio State University for her graduate work. She has been a bookseller for fifty years working in both large and small, chain and independent bookstores. She opened the first Barnes & Noble in Kentucky where she set up a mystery reading group which is still active today. She also taught classes in the mystery genre for the Veritas Society and joined the local chapter of Sisters in Crime.
With Susan Bell, she co-edited MYSTERY WITH A SPLASH OF BOURBON, an anthology of bourbon related stories.
As E.M. Munsch, she writes the Dash Hammond series set on the shores of Lake Erie. The latest title, A HAUNTING AT MARIANWOOD, is set to be released at the end of October.
The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams Interview with . . . E.M. Munsch . . .
Is writing process ingrained or something that flows?
My grandfather and my mother were born storytellers. Growing up I soaked up my Grandpa’s stories of growing up in rural Kentucky and my mom created wonderful critter characters to charm me.
I can’t remember not reading though I’m sure there must have been a few very early years when Mom read to me. I grew up in Cleveland, a city that has a wonderful library system which my family used constantly. At a class reunion many years ago, when my classmates were talking about this or that event, I remarked that I didn’t remember that (and other). One of my schoolmates said, “No surprise. You always had your nose in a book.”
No wonder I became a bookseller for life.
To answer the question at the top, I always scribbled this and that, starting sentences, paragraphs, pages. Nothing completed.
I joined Sisters in Crime in Louisville when I moved from Cleveland to Kentucky. It was within this group that I was encouraged to move past the first line.
Everyone wants to write a book until they try. It is difficult. It requires discipline and devotion.
One day in my garden I fell into a huge rose bush, trapped by its thorns. As I slowly pulled myself out, one thorn at a time, my first thought was: how would a writer write this scene. Once freed from the bush, I went inside and sat down. The words flowed as they had before. I created a protagonist to help his neighbor out of the rose bush. I probably wrote four to five pages which I presented to the critique group.
They loved it! And then they asked the dreaded question: what happens next? I admitted I had no idea. Those pages were all I had. Not really, after the group kept pushing and nudging, I discovered that Dash and Annie had a whole lot to do, say. Suddenly writing was not a chore, was not difficult. Words flowed and I had a ball.
One book down. I then discovered that my merry troop of characters had more than one adventure in them. I’m now finishing up my seventh book.
A Haunting at Marianwood is the sixth in the series and was just published at the end of October. It’s the best of the series and I expect each book after that to raise the bar.
To answer the question, storytelling is ingrained in me but writing has started to flow.
Do you take your character prep to heart?
Many years ago, in a preface to a reissue of a Nero Wolfe book, Rex Stout’s daughter related the story of how, one morning, her father came to the breakfast table and said, “I can’t wait to see what Archie (Goodwin) get up to today.”
Your first thought is ‘if you don’t know, who does.’ But it’s very true. Often the characters have a mind of their own and you think they should turn left at the stop sign and suddenly they turn right which leads into an all-together different plot scenario than one you planned.
When creating my characters, I did the usual description of height, weight, eye color. Then I added college (yes/no), occupation, position in the town/city/story. Then a funny thing happens. As you write, you discover this or that about the character. In my first book, Annie suddenly displays a knack for acting. Only after totally knocking the socks off Dash, does she tell him that she did some local theatre acting where she used to live. No need to mention this beforehand since she was improvising. She didn’t know she would need to do this, but when the occasion presented itself, she dug down into her past.
As the series has progressed, the layers of the characters’ past have been revealed. The author does have to keep track of these to stay true to the character as the story, and series, continue.
The next creative project(s):
As I said I’m currently working on the seventh Dash Hammond book. In it, Dash becomes the sole heir to the estate of his mother’s very distant cousin, Maud. She is a little old Irish lady that Dash has only the fewest of memories. In a letter Maud wrote to Dash, and Dash alone, she chose him because she is certain he will accomplish the task she set before him, right after dropping a bomb in his lap. Dash, basically a good man, takes on the task. The working title is A Reliable Man and I hope to have it out in 2023.
I also have an idea kicking around in my head – again some opening lines – that I want to flesh out. I do believe there is a good story here. This will be a standalone.
And I hope to write a short story or two since a different type of discipline is needed for that.
Dinner party with seven fictional characters:
The first person I would invite is Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe’s leg man and lady’s man. Since I first met Archie, I have been in love with him, his good looks, his dancing skills and especially his quips. I’d ask him about dealing with difficult people like his boss, Nero Wolfe. These wonderful books are by Rex Stout.
Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s son Bernie, aka Bernie the Burglar, from Lawrence Block’s Burglar series. Bernie buys a used bookstore and offering commentary on the various books he is reading or the customer buying. He is also quick with the quips.
Detective Sergeant Robbie Lewis from Colin Dexter’s Morse series. Robbie goes on to have his own TV series, Inspector Lewis. It would be fun to get him away from Morse and tell us the true story behind the very grumpy Morse
Kinsey Milhone from Grafton’s Alphabet series. She can mix it up with the gentlemen and hold her own.
D. I. Vera Stanhope from the novels by Ann Cleeves. A grumpy middle-aged woman who, if we can drag her away from her job and remote home, can complain about the food, the other attendees, and just about everything. We could sit around and call her ‘pet’ like she does to everyone she meets. Rather irritating.
Julian Kestrel, a Regency-era dandy turned sleuth, from the marvelous series by Kate Ross. It would be interesting to get Kestrel’s take on the modern world as well as listen to Archie and Bernie discuss Kestrel’s clothes. (These books are probably out of print but well worth the search.)
Dublin copper Peter McGarr of the Irish Garda written by Bartholomew Gill. I’d invite McGarr for a bit of Irish humor. (Again, probably out of print.)
If you could go anywhere:
I would love to spend a year unfettered by the cost of everything in the British Isles. I’d travel from one end to the other, walking where the great detectives, and not so great detectives, have trod. I’m also a Richardian, a supporter of Richard III, so I’d definitely visit all the key locations for him.
I’ve visited England, Wales and Ireland before so I’d want to tour Scotland. I’d especially like to spend time in the small villages where murders seem to thrive. A combination of the love of history and the love of a good crime story would keep me busy for the year and begging for more time.
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