A Canadian in the U.S.: My Love Letter to Michigan

By Victoria Hamilton
Author of A Deadly Grind

“Nobody in the States would buy a mystery set in Canada.”

That’s always been the prevailing wisdom, as far as the mystery publishing world has gone. Most Canadian mystery writers with ambitions beyond our border have caved, and set their books in the United States. 

Of course, Louise Penny (and some notable others) have blown that theory out of the water; Ms. Penny’s Quebec-set Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries are making rather nice headway on the New York Times bestseller list, and for good reason. Her writing is, of course, excellent, and Canada is a rich, beautiful, fascinating country, with a wealth of great locations for mystery novels.

But I’m one of those who decided to flow with the stream, so I set my Vintage Kitchen Mysteries (#1, A Deadly Grind, came out May 1 from Berkley Prime Crime) in the United States, Michigan to be exact. Close enough that it feels much like home to me, but in another country, so it feels just a shade exotic. I know Michiganders (58% of those who reside in Michigan prefer ‘Michigander’ over ‘Michiganian’ as a demonym… did you know that?) are going to laugh. Exotic? Michigan??

A little background on why this is so for me: I live in Southwestern Ontario, a part of Canada that looks, on a map, as if it is a spoon thrust down into the jam pot that is the United States of America. Growing up, I spent a lot of time on the Ontario shores of Lake Huron at a provincial park, camping. All around me were campers from Ohio, New York, but mostly, Michigan. The old-style Michigan license plates, white lettering on a blue field, was opposite the Ontario plates, blue lettering on a white field, and you’d see about an equal mix of both in the parking lots and on camp sites.

And the American kids were the coolest! They wore the neatest clothes, had the best stuff, and radios everywhere, in that lakeside campground, were tuned to CKLW, a Windsor/Detroit station that played nothing but Motown. To this day, when I hear the O’Jays or the Stylistics it takes me back to the smell of lake water and tanning lotion, and the sound of waves and gulls.

So when I was pondering where to set my Vintage Kitchen Mysteries, Michigan was an easy choice. A natural choice. A great choice! That state has taken a lot of hits in the Motor City belt in the last few years, but Michiganders will come out of it just fine.

I invented a town called Queensville, across the St. Clair River from a fictional Ontario town, Johnsonville, with a divided island in the middle called Heartbreak Island. I created a fictional history that highlighted the cooperation and love between such close neighbors. We may disagree from time to time, but Canada and the U.S. set a gold standard for international friendship that I feel can’t be matched.

And so I have been greatly flattered by the many letters and reviews that have named Queensville, Michigan, as a place folks would like to visit. I’ve received more than one letter asking me if it’s real. Well, yes, it is real, in my mind, and in the lives of the characters I’ve created who love their town, and their state.

I’m endlessly interested in the towns and cities that make up the fictional landscape, from Cleo Coyle’s wonderful real life Village setting in her Coffeehouse mysteries, to quaint Elderberry Bay, Pennsylvania, home of Janet Bolin’s ‘Threadville’ sewing mysteries; the United States is dotted with crime-ridden cozy towns. For other mystery writers I wonder… why do you set your series where you did? Did you make up a town? Did you use a real city? How have readers reaction?

And for readers of mysteries, how important is the setting of the mysteries you read? Do you mind the ‘Cabot Cove’ syndrome, small fictional villages with an ever decreasing population and an ever increasing crime wave? I’d be interested to hear!
                                        ~::~
Victoria Hamilton writes her Vintage Kitchen Mysteries out of a small Southwestern Ontario city, but hopes that her fictional town of Queensville, Michigan feels like Anywhere, USA. Book 1, A Deadly Grind came out May 1, and Book 2, Bowled Over will be released March 5, 2013.

Visit her website at http://www.victoriahamiltonmysteries.com/
Victoria Twitters at: @MysteryVictoria
Victoria’s characters blog at Killer Characters on the 21st of each month.

DEAD THINGS

by Sheila Connolly

This summer my family and I took a quick and unexpected vacation. My daughter had a day or two left of a rental house near the shore in Rhode Island and invited her father and me to join her for a night midweek, so we did. Since we’re rarely this spontaneous, it was both a surprise and a treat. We spent a pleasant afternoon strolling along all but empty beaches, watching people fishing, admiring the nearby lighthouse and shopping for typical beach-town souvenirs. But one of the things that excited me most was finding dead things.

Okay, I’m weird. But I've always been a naturalist at heart, and I love seeing things I've never seen before. The inside of a dead bird's head may not be the first thing that occurs to most people, but when I found a seagull skull, I fascinated. I even took a picture.

And I didn't stop there. At a different beach (to be accurate, the parking lot near the beach), I discovered a desiccated sting ray and was thrilled (and took more pictures). I had only just discovered that there were sting rays in that part of the world, and, presto, there was a large and perfectly preserved specimen that I could study to my heart's content. I thought it was beautifulBelegant, exotic, alien. (I thought it would make a charming addition to the decor surrounding my desk, but my daughter would not let me bring it home.)

Actually I’ve been doing this for years. I have a picture of a huge jellyfish I found washed up on a beach in New Jersey years ago (it was at least a foot across). When my husband and I visited Australia several years ago, I had a marvelous time documenting dead animals: a cockatoo in a tree, a wombat, even an entire cow skeleton. Lest you think I'm totally bonkers, I also took pictures of as many living creatures as I could, but they often move fast and/or keep their distance, so pictures of them can be disappointing. The dead ones hold still.

When I was eight, a friend and I created our own animal graveyard. Some people have healthy hobbies like sports; we instead collected road kill and conducted funerals. No, we did not kill anything, nor were our pets included. We relied on serendipity to provide us with our departed. Once we were very happy to discover four mice that had apparently fallen victim to the same car in a driveway. A quadruple funeral!

In my own defense, I should add that I've talked to several other people who did the same thing when they were young. Maybe there’s something compelling to children about big serious issues like death, especially when they’re often sheltered from the reality. When I was holding those mock funerals, I had never been to one. I didn't see a dead person until I was well into my twenties (and it was an acquaintance, not someone I knew well); I didn't attend a funeral until my grandmother's, and she lived to be 94.

Now I write mysteries, in most of which my protagonist is trying to identify a killer and to bring that person to justice. That is the core of the traditional or cozy mystery: justice is done. Those who kill others maliciously must be identified and stopped. No one should suffer an untimely death, and maybe writing about it in some way rights a wrong.