Series: A Mac Faraday Mystery (Volume 12)
Category: Adult fiction, 464 pages
Genre: Murder Mystery / Political Satire
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
Release date: June 9, 2016
Content Rating: PG-13 - (Lauren Carr's books are murder mysteries, so there are murders involved. Occasionally, a murder will happen on stage. There is sexual content, but always behind closed doors. Some mild swearing (a hell or a damn few and far between). No F-bombs!
"Hilarious, mysterious and full of adventure, Gnarly and his human friends will have you on the edge of your seat unable to put your book down. Candidate for Murder is well written, played out and a story that you have just never heard before. I enjoyed every moment reading this book!" Reviewer: Working Mommy Journal
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It’s election time in Spencer, Maryland, and the race for mayor is not a pretty one. In recent years, the small resort town has become divided between the year-round residents who enjoy their rural way of life and the city dwellers who are moving into mansions, taking over the town council, and proceeding to turn Deep Creek Lake into a closed-gate community—complete with a host of regulations for everything from speed limits to clotheslines. When the political parties force-feed two unsavory mayoral nominees to the town’s residents, David O’Callaghan, the chief of police, decides to make a statement—by nominating Gnarly, Mac Faraday’s German shepherd, to run for mayor of Spencer! What starts out as a joke turns into a disaster when overnight, Gnarly becomes the front-runner, and his political opponents proceed to dig into the canine’s past. When one of the mayoral candidates ends up dead, it becomes apparent that slinging mud is not enough for someone with a stake in this election. With murder on the ballot, Mac Faraday and the gang—including old friends from past cases—dive in to clear Gnarly’s name, catch a killer, and save Spencer!
Go Back to the Beginning to When Mac Met Gnarly.
"I couldn't put this book down! Lauren Carr develops the characters and weaves the details of the murder investigation into a complex storyline that keeps the reader relentlessly turning pages. She is skilled at teasing you into reading more. I finished the last page still wanting to read more!" -- Kelly Carpenter, Kelly's Lucky You
"No disrespect to Mac Faraday, Archie Monday, David O'Callaghan, Travis Turner or any of the multitude of good, bad and ugly characters populating Lauren Carr's It's Murder, My Son; but to me the most interesting character in the book is a lovable, mischievous, sneaky German shepherd named Gnarly." - David M. Kinchen, Huntington News
Series: A Mac Faraday Mystery (Volume 1)
Category: Adult fiction (18+), 288 pages
Genre: Murder Mystery
Publisher: Acorn Book Services
Release date: June 23, 2010
Content Rating: PG-13 - (Lauren Carr's books are murder mysteries, so there are murders involved. Occasionally, a murder will happen on stage. There is sexual content, but always behind closed doors. Some mild swearing (a hell or a damn few and far between). No F-bombs!
What started out as the worst day of Mac Faraday’s life would end up being a new beginning. After a messy divorce hearing, the last person that Mac wanted to see was another lawyer. Yet, this lawyer wore the expression of a child bursting to tell his secret. This confidence would reveal Mac as heir to undreamed of fortunes, and lead him to the birthplace of America’s Queen of Mystery and an investigation that will unfold like one of her famous mystery novels.
Soon after she moves to Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, Katrina Singleton learns that life in an exclusive community is not all good. For some unknown reason, a strange man calling himself “Pay Back” begins stalking her. When Katrina is found strangled all evidence points to her terrorist, who is nowhere to be found.
Three months later, the file on her murder is still open when Mac Faraday, sole heir to his unknown birth mother’s home and fortune, moves into the estate next door. Little does he know as he drives up to Spencer Manor that he is driving into a closed gate community that is hiding more suspicious deaths than his DC workload as a homicide detective. With the help of his late mother’s journal, this retired cop puts all his detective skills to work to pick up where the local investigators have left off to follow the clues to Katrina’s killer.
Why Murder?
By Lauren Carr
One day when I was visiting our church offices, a young pastor approached me. At this point, he had known me for many months, but had only just discovered that I wrote murder mysteries, which he considered quite peculiar for a middle-aged church lady.
“Do you ever kill anyone you know?” he asked with worried expression on his face.
“Of course,” I replied. “I also kill complete strangers.”
His eyes grew big and he ended the conversation.
When most people think of murder mystery writers, they envision Agatha Christie (a soft-spoke elderly woman), Richard Castle (loveable guy with a boyish-charm and a wild imagination), or maybe Sherlock Holmes (extremely intelligent gentleman with more than a touch of arrogance).
While each of these writer types may impress readers, there still remains one underlying question. Sure, they may each contain that wonderful combination of writing talent and wild imagination, but why—why use that combination to write murder mysteries?
After all, it goes without saying. Murder is the ultimate violation that one human being can inflict on another. It is a theft of one’s life. When someone commits a murder, they are ripping a mother, father, daughter, son, husband, wife out of their loved ones’ lives—an act for which there is no way to compensate the living victims.
So why would an otherwise normal person (at least I think I’m normal) use her talent writing murder mysteries? Some might think that is endorsing murder, as a writer friend told me her church group saw it.
Not really, is how I respond to that.
A mystery is a puzzle. Mystery writers love puzzles. Some love crossword puzzles. Others, like me, love jigsaw puzzles. I grew up reading mysteries—from Bobbsey Twins to Nancy Drew to Agatha Christie and Perry Mason. But I didn’t start writing murder mysteries until I was in my thirties. Until then, I wrote humor.
Murder mysteries, I told myself, took a special talent that involved creating the puzzle and taking it apart for readers to solve. I didn’t think I could be clever enough to do that. But then, after reading mystery after mystery in which I solved the cases way too early, I realized I needed more of a challenge. Like a crossword puzzle fan who finds that the challenge is gone, I needed to exercise my brain by taking the challenge up a notch.
It was time to create my own mystery.
In the mystery genre, a detective or amateur sleuth works through the clues (puzzle pieces) to piece together the crime in order to reveal the culprit. When the crime is murder, then they are looking for the identity of the killer.
The next question might be: Why write murder mysteries?
Because murder is the ultimate crime that one can perpetrate on another human being. That makes it the ultimate puzzle—failure to solve the puzzle means the killer goes free. A murder mystery is not like a jigsaw puzzle in which you throw up your hands and dump the pieces back into the box if you can’t finish it. Failure to complete the puzzle is not an option.
While there are some murder mysteries in which the killer is allowed to escape to challenge the detective another day, many murder mystery writers, like me, create a world between the pages where the killer is always held accountable for his or her crimes.
Wrong has been righted.
Justice prevails.
All is right with the world, which is something that murder mystery writers can’t get from a crossword puzzle.
Lauren Carr is the international best-selling author of the Mac Faraday, Lovers in Crime, Chris Matheson Cold Case, Thorny Rose Mysteries, and the Nikki Bryant Cozy Mysteries—close to thirty titles across five fast-paced mystery series filled with twists and turns!
Book reviewers and readers alike rave about how Lauren Carr’s seamlessly crosses genres to include mystery, suspense, crime fiction, police procedurals, romance, and humor.
A popular speaker, Lauren is also the owner of Acorn Book Service, the umbrella under which falls iRead Book Tours. She lives with her husband and two spoiled rotten German Shepherds (including the nephew of the late-great Gnarly! (pictured above)) on a mountain in Harpers Ferry, WV.
Connect with the author: Website ~ Twitter ~ Facebook ~ Instagram ~ Pinterest ~ Goodreads
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