The World of Amity Landing
My mysteries, The Penhallow Train
Incident and Mrs.
Spinney’s Secret, take place in midcoast Maine, in the fictional towns
of Penhallow and Amity Landing. My upcoming release, Fair Winds and Foul
Play, is set there.
Midcoast Maine is not perhaps as well known as the southern
beaches or the Down East sites such as Bar Harbor, but it has its own special
charm. Towns like Bath, Camden, Rockland, and Belfast showcase the Maine of
lobstermen, shipbuilders, and farmers, while towns such as Thomaston on the
many small peninsulas that jut into Penobscot Bay offer gorgeous views and
pleasant cottages.
Amity Landing is a small village almost ready to tumble into
Penobscot Bay. Established as a Methodist revival camp, people would come from
the many small towns in central Maine. At first they pitched tents, then built
platforms for the tents, and finally erected walls and roofs. The narrow dirt
roads are lined with gingerbread cottages stuck cheek by jowl next to each
other.
The city of Penhallow lies four miles from Amity Landing,
nestled in the curve of Penobscot Bay, just below the point where Maine begins
its journey Down East. Here, the Passamaquoddy River debouches into the bay,
splitting Penhallow into east and west halves. The nineteenth-century red brick
buildings of an old factory town line Main Street and High Street on the west
side. The east side is mostly businesses catering to sightseers heading toward
Ellsworth and Acadia National Park.
In the Penhallow Train Incident an ancient mystery comes to a small Maine town and brings with it murder, romance, suspense, and treasure.
In Mrs.
Spinney’s Secret Amity Landing is being invaded by Hollywood and
Cassidy Beauvoir, chairman of the board of overseers, doesn’t like it. That is,
until she meets Jasper MacEwan, the director of American Waterloo: the Rout
of the Penobscot Expedition. Their budding romance is interrupted by a
series of deadly incidents, sending them on a quest for long-lost English gold.
Soon to be released is Fair Winds and Foul Play. It’s about a man in the witness protection program whose boss was dropped from the sky to his death on a wind turbine. The question isn't so much who murdered him as who wanted him dead. Suspects include developers, environmentalists, NIMBY protesters, and even lovers.
