Mainely Fear (Goff Langdon Mainely Mystery 2) by Matt Cost-Review and Guest Post

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ABOUT THE BOOK:Release Date- December 4, 2020

“I want you to find out who is responsible for ruining his life and I want them to pay for it.”

This is the desire of Latricia Jones as she hires Goff Langdon to investigate her son’s arrest for burglary, vandalism, and possibly hate crimes.

Langdon is a laid back, slacker detective, happy with his work, friends, and way of life in the town of Brunswick, Maine. To complement his income in Brunswick’s scarce private detective market, Langdon also owns and operates a mystery bookstore named after his trusted companion, Coffee Dog.

He was on the fast track to success. And then something happened.

Jamal Jones is an eighteen-year-old rising star attending a post-grad prep school in central Maine to bring his grades up so he can play college basketball at the D1 level. Then he is arrested for crimes that his mother knows he committed, but not why. She’s sure someone has put him up to it, the behavior so unlike him as to be unthinkable, especially since Jamal was on the verge of beginning a better life. Latricia wants Langdon to track down those responsible for her son’s sudden turn from grace, and she wants them to pay.

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REVIEW:MAINELY FEAR is the second instalment in Matt Cost’s adult GOFF LANGDON MAINELY Mystery series focusing on thirty year old, part time private investigator and book store owner Goff Langdon. MAINELY FEAR can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story line is revealed where necessary. MAINELY FEAR advances the series approximately two years.

WARNING: Due to the nature of the story line content, there may be triggers for more sensitive readers.

Told from third person perspective MAINELY FEAR follows private investigator Goff Langdon when he is hired to look into the who, what and how a budding basketball star became involved in a series of violent home invasions following an ice storm that shut down the small town of Brunswick, Maine. Along with two other students connected to a prep-school for athletes struggling to get into a division one school, Jamal Jones finds himself facing imprisonment until his mother Latricia hires Goff Langdon to investigate but unbeknownst to Goff Langdon, he is about to step into a world of secrets and lies, discrimination, power and control. As Goff and his intrepid group of friends, amateur sleuths, and questionable members of law enforcement begin a investigation, someone takes aim at Goff Langdon, hitting way to close to home.

MAINELY FEAR is a powerful and gritty storyline with a cast of animated, quirky and spirited characters who place themselves in the direct line of fire for a friend whose investigative techniques are painfully amateur, helpless and misgiving. Not everyone will survive; lives are threatened, families are broken, and one vulnerable young man is pulled in too many directions, unprotected by the people in charge.

Click HERE for Sandy’s review of book one MAINELY POWER

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

The Germination of an IDEA

Where do plots come from? More specifically, where do mystery plots come from?

For me, the inspiration for a book comes from the everyday world around me. It could be a news story, a conversation, or an event, and is usually followed by a what if? My second Mainely Mystery novel, “Mainely Fear”, just released at the beginning of this month, was sparked by an ice storm.

In 1998, Maine was devastated by a brutal ice storm. It began quietly enough, an early January rainstorm, but quickly turned to ice and sleet for four days. It coated lines and branches in its icy grip, weighing them down until they snapped under the weight. It was estimated that more than 60% of the population of Maine lost power. And then the temperature dropped into the single digits. Generators sold out. People were freezing. In reality, the people of Maine, aided by the rest of the country, bonded together and got through this horrific event, even though most people didn’t get power back for weeks, some longer.

I took the germination of this idea and asked, ‘what if people took advantage of this situation instead of lent a helping hand’? What a perfect time for abuse. What a perfect time to rob houses. People without power, without alarm systems, went to hotels, friends, relatives, leaving their homes behind like unlocked treasure troves to be plucked for profit. Of course, that idea grows as any child does, stumbling along and changing directions, until it reaches adulthood and is presented to the world in the form of a book.

Many things shape a book as it matures, but none so important as emotion. Things such as power, fear, and money. Passion carries a novel forward, driven by sex. This is the underlying current that pulses within every story, galvanizing the action forward. Passion, emotion, and sex change the course of the story, and the end result, is rarely the same as the inspiration that germinated the original idea.

The first in the series, “Mainely Power”, was kindled by a story on a local nuclear power plant, leading to the question, ‘what if a nuclear power plant was sabotaged’? The third Mainely Mystery, “Mainely Money”, coming out in March was based upon the blackmailing of a U.S. senator.

In my upcoming Clay Wolfe mystery series, the ideas came from the news story of a woman rubbing heroin on her babies gums to keep the teething child from crying, the mind trap that cults set, and genetic engineering of humans.

I also write historical novels and claim that history is the greatest story ever told. Events of the past are filled with fantastic stories just waiting to be told in the right way. Ideas float around past us all the time, each and every day, and it is up to writers to recognize their promise, reel them in, and nurture them to life on the pages.

It is less what the story is, and more how you tell the story, that matters.

~~Matt Cost~~