Murder Ballad Blues (Appalachian Mountain Mysteries #4) by Lynda McDaniel-Review & Interview

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date September 15, 2020

Laurel Falls, N.C. 2005 A mysterious death in the North Carolina mountains. Then a second. By the third, the FBI finally gets involved. Trouble is, they’re looking in all the wrong places.

Abit Bradshaw has a theory, but of course the FBI doesn’t take him seriously. When he teams up with musicologist Wallis Harding, bluegrass music becomes more than something to practice and perform. It’s key to finding the serial killer.

Della Kincaid, a former crime reporter in Washington, D.C., can’t seem to escape her past. Now living in the small town of Laurel Falls, she’s busy investigating a fraud case that gets darker at every turn. She’s about to give up when a secretive whistleblower pulls her in again—and back to D.C.

Abit and Della team up once again to convince the FBI to help them with both their crime investigations.

Will Abit and Wallis discover the killer’s pattern … before he strikes again?

Can Della make sense of the whistleblower’s clues before the fraud case is closed for good?

You’ll love this suspenseful mystery because everyone longs to find justice in this crazy world.

Get it now.

This is the fourth novel—a standalone novel—in the Appalachian Mountain Mysteries series. All the favorite characters return, along with the debut of several colorful new ones.

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REVIEW: I like a good murder/mystery and this one wasn’t too bad. In fact I could see it as a movie or tv series.

Della is a reporter digging around for the next big story, married/divorced/still seeing her ex/husband/now boyfriend (yeah I got confused too! She’s known Abit for years and counts him as a close and dear friend.

Vesper junior (Abit) or Rabbit as his wife calls him is happily married with kids and plays in a band with his wife and friends. Life might be dull, but Abit likes it that way thank you. I felt so sorry for Vesper, he got the nickname because his father always called him “a bit slow”, which got shortened over time. I don’t know if I could be called Abit and know it’s nasty and not a cute nickname!

So we have Wallis and Abit bonding over music and using it to track killers, rather ingenious if you ask me.
Della uses her contacts in the paper to dig deeper, hoping to get a story out of it. But wanting to help the FBI (who she shared a sizzling kiss with!)

Reading the cover I did think a ménage. Sadly no, but in a way I’m glad, I don’t think it would have worked out?

The killer was pretty smart, and catching up with him was good. And a couple of clues might have you guessing who it might be.

I liked how we came along for the ride, we saw all the thought processes and saw glimpses of their lives. But it all gets a little too close to home when Abit’s kids get kidnapped by the killer! Will he be able to raise the ransom money in time?

I think there we just a few too many characters in this book, not sure we needed all those extra’s. But other than that, they were all pretty solid.

This book worked backwards, we see Abit running away from the killer, we don’t see who it it, we just see him run…..

Told mainly in Della’s and Abit POV. It needed just a little polishing, I felt something was missing. The connection between Abit and Della was good, the connection between Abit and Wallis wasn’t as well felt.

But I’d happily read another book with these characters in. They did make me smile, and at one point I did get a “scooby doo” moment ?

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Julie ?

TRC: Hi Lynda and welcome to The Reading Café. Congratulations on the release of MURDER BALLAD BLUES.

We would like to start with some background information. Would you please tell us something about yourself?

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Lynda: I’ve lived all over this country—from the Midwest to the Deep South to Appalachia to the Mid-Atlantic to the Pacific Northwest and finally California—and yet I find I often start stories and recollections with “When I lived in the mountains of North Carolina ….” My interests in so many things—writing, hiking, nature, mountain music, organic gardening, ecology—took root while I lived on a small farm there, an eager participant in the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s. I made mistakes by the wheelbarrowful, but I learned just about everything that matters to me today.

I was lucky to live near the Campbell Folk School, an amazing center for art, craft, and music (and featured in my novels as The Hickson School of American Studies). That’s where I was introduced to the music of my heritage. The first time I walked into the school’s wood-paneled community room where fiddlers played, it was like finding a lost relative.

My writing career also started at the Campell Folk School. One day the director asked if I’d like to learn public relations. To be honest, I should have answered, “What’s that?” Instead, I said, “Sure,” and took to it like ink to newsprint. I haven’t stopped writing since. These days, I spend my time writing my Appalachian Mountain Mysteries series. I started them as a way to share some of the unforgettable stories from my years in the mountains.

Before my novel-writing days, I crafted 1,200 articles for arts and culture magazines such as Southern Living, Country Living, AmericanStyle, Southwest Art, Yoga Journal, American Cinematographer, Chile Pepper, and Restaurants USA. Newspaper articles about art, food, and business ran in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Charlotte Observer, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, washingtonpost.com, among others. I’ve also written 15 nonfiction books, including several on the art and craft of writing.

I moved to the mountains of North Carolina on a whim. Why not? Let’s see what it’s like, we thought during those adventurous times. But decades later, I believe I was drawn to that place, signing on to a graduate program in life I didn’t realize I needed. By comparison, my life today seems so tame, but that doesn’t worry me. In the mountains of North Carolina, I also learned there is a season for everything.

TRC: Who or what influenced your career in writing?

Lynda: In addition to my lucky break at the Campbell Folk School, I credit my mentor Dick Simms in Atlanta, Georgia for supporting my interest in writing. For writers, self-doubt is never far away, like a grumpy uncle who lives in the basement, poised to come upstairs at the most inopportune times. Dick gave me the encouragement I needed believe in myself. Later, Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird shared invaluable advice that I still draw from today.

TRC: What challenges or difficulties did you encounter writing and publishing this story?

Lynda: I wanted to incorporate bluegrass and old-timey music into the story, and while I loved the sound, I didn’t know that much about the stories behind murder ballads. I did a lot of research and worked many hours to develop the logistics that Abit Bradshaw and Wallis Harding also work on in Murder Ballad Blues.

TRC: Would you please tell us something about the premise of MURDER BALLAD BLUES?

Lynda: Abit Bradshaw worries about the safety of his family when he hears about the first murder in the mountains of N.C. He struggled through his own childhood, thanks to unloving parents and a restrictive community that labeled him “slow.” But he’s found his rightful place in the world as an accomplished woodworker and mandolin musician in the bluegrass band The Rollin’ Ramblers. By the second murder, he has an inkling that music plays a role in the killer’s pattern. He can’t prove it, though, so he reaches out to Wallis Harding, a self-taught mountain music expert. Together they work to discover the killer’s pattern. Their hardest challenge, however, arises after the third murder when they go to the FBI with their theory.

Della Kincaid, Abit’s best friend, is still running Coburn’s General Store in Laurel Falls, N.C. She hasn’t been a crime reporter for years, ever since she left D.C., but she hasn’t lost the curiosity and bravado that made her such a success there. She gets involved in a real-estate fraud case in the N.C. mountains that takes her back to D.C. for help.

TRC: How many books do you have planned for the APPALACHIAN MYSTERY series? Do the books have to be read in order?

Lynda: Murder Ballad Blues is the fourth book in the series, and I have two more books planned. Murder Ballad Blues is a standalone. I paid close attention to backstory that needed explaining, but in a way that wasn’t too repetitive for fans of the series. I’ve tried to make each of the books a standalone, but I have to say I think the experience is enhanced by reading the first three in order.

TRC: What kind of research/plotting did you do, and how long did you spend researching /plotting before beginning MURDER BALLAD BLUES?

Lynda: I spent several months mulling over the plot of Murder Ballad Blues. It’s more complex than the first three books in the series. I found it particularly challenging to get the dates and circumstances of the contemporary crimes to jibe with those of the murder ballads.

Fortunately, I have a muse who comes sweeping in, anytime day or night, to offer ideas. The key for any writer is to listen and capture those gifts ASAP before they evaporate like a dream. For example, the character Wallis Harding came to me like that, and I think he’s one of the most successful characters I’ve ever developed. He’s funny, ornery, and kind, all wrapped in one.

TRC: Do you believe the cover image plays a deciding factor for many readers in the process of selecting a book or new series to read?

Lynda: I do, especially with online sales and all the competition for readers’ time and money. I believe a cover’s appeal to a potential buyer is as much subconscious as conscious, which adds to the challenge of getting it right. The publishing gurus all say to test your covers, and I have done that with the first three books. I especially like the cover for Murder Ballad Blues; it’s got the misty-mountain-moonlit-river-thing going just right—straight out of one of the crime scenes in the book.

TRC: When writing a story line, do the characters direct the writing or do you direct the characters?

Lynda: We work together. Like I mentioned about the muse, while I’m writing about any of my characters, they come swooping in. Abit told me many times what he wanted to say, especially when he talks about his son, Conor, and his fears about his family’s safety. He’s the kind of father he longed to have when he was young. And Della, well, she’s sassy and says things I wish I could say!

TRC: The mark of a good writer is to pull the reader into the storyline so they experience the emotions along with the characters. What do you believe a writer must do to make this happen? Where do you believe writer’s fail in this endeavor?

Lynda: I can only speak for myself, but I think we need to write more from our hearts, rather than our heads. When I do that, the scenes always work better. It’s hard, though, because these days there are so many so-called experts bandying about rules and restrictions. I find that draws us back into our heads, and the results are more wooden. Yes, we need to know the rules, but edicts like “don’t use ‘was’ or ‘ing words’” swirling in our heads can smother the creative spirit. I like to think of my readers and imagine that my words are like throwing my arms around them.

TRC: Do you listen to music while writing? If so, does the style of music influence the storyline direction? Characters?

Lynda: I usually don’t listen to music when I’m writing fiction. When I wrote nonfiction magazine articles and books, I could listen to music—but not with fiction writing. I need to hear the muse and characters when they make the scene. That said, for Murder Ballad Blues I did listen to a lot of bluegrass and old-timey music so I knew what I was writing about (and I loved every minute of it).

TRC: What do you believe is the biggest misconception people have about authors?

Lynda: That they write beautiful first drafts. Anne Lamott was one of the first authors who helped me debunk that myth in her book Bird by Bird. That book was a godsend, as I mentioned earlier.

TRC: What is something that few, if anyone, knows about you?

Lynda: I was a traveling artist/weaver for a number of years while living on the farm in N.C. I learned to weave at the Campbell Folk School, and for about five years I traveled the art-show circuit selling my wall hangings.

TRC: Who is your favorite author (living or dead)?

Lynda: Graham Greene.

TRC: On what are you currently working?

Lynda: I’m musing about Book Five in the series as I work on marketing Murder Ballad Blues. I plan to set it in a place a little different from Laurel Falls, N.C. More to be revealed later …

TRC: Would you like to add anything else?

Lynda: I hope anyone who longs to write—whether that’s a memoir, book, article—will listen to his/her heart and do it. The world is full of naysayers, but you can do it. Humble yourself to learn more about your genre and the art of writing in general, but listen to that voice within.

LIGHTNING ROUND

Favorite Food: Cheese, almost any kind

Favorite Dessert: Cookies, almost any kind

Favorite TV Show: “Rectify,” beautifully written by Ray McKinnon

Last Movie You Saw: I’m having trouble with this one, given the shelter-in-place order and the dearth of good movies. The last good movie I saw was “Barbara,” a German movie I re-watched because of its tragic but beautiful story of selfless love.

Dark or Milk Chocolate: Milk

Secret Celebrity Crush: Matthew Rhys

Last Vacation Destination: Mendocino, California

Do you have any pets? Late last year I lost my beloved dog, Mollie, at only 4 years old. Murder Ballad Blues is dedicated to her, and she’s memorialized in the book as Abit Bradshaw’s dog, who he describes as “precious like no other.”

Last book you read: Fallen Mountains by Kimi Cunningham Grant. Exquisite writing.

TRC: Thank you Lynda for taking the time to answer our questions. Congratulations on the release of MURDER BALLAD BLUES. We wish you all
the best. Thank you!