Blogging Bloodworks: Deans Edition

So I love cozy mysteries. The ones with near-puns in the titles, like, it'll be called MURDER TAKES A MOUTHFUL and the protaganist is a plucky young middle-aged woman who runs a bakery in a small town and someone she knows, a little distantly but she still has a connection to him, that person gets murdered and she accidentally on purpose solves the crime, bewildering the local sheriff who is also now in love with her. Did I say I love them? Maybe that's a strong word. I mostly love them. I love them when I'm burnt out and it's either, we're going to watch an entire season of America's Next Top Model or we're going to go outside and read something. These are the somethings I pick. A good cozy is wonderfully comforting, despite the murders.



When I started writing The Hooks, I thought I'd just write a cozy. I made a list of all of the things that my favorite cozies had in common. I wrote myself a plucky heroine, I gave her an oddball shop. I gave her a best friend. I gave her a mystery. I gave her someone to fall in love with. Then a weird kind of thing happened. I fell in love with getting my plucky young heroine to fall in love. Like, real deal. All of a sudden, The Hooks was also a love story.



'Cause that's the funny thing about cozies. Lots of them have romances. If it's a multi-book series, that's a thread for your reader, but also, if it's a multi-book series, things can't move too fast. So lots of those plucky heroines push back against the romance. I wanted to write into that instinct, the push-back instinct. I wanted to figure out why there might be more fear in love than there was fear in figuring out who'd stabbed whom. So I grabbed my magnifying glass and I called up my trusty sidekick and...no, no, I didn't. No magnifying glass. But I did write a play. And you can see a reading of it. Tonight! THE DETAILS ARE AS FOLLOWs!

A man is found dead in the local historical society, stabbed in the back with a(n historical) hook. The town's local sleuth is a little in love with the sheriff's lead suspect. And then there's this matter of some buried treasure...?

The Hooks is a love story, with murder.

Written by Meghan Deans
Directed by Dylan McCullough

With the considerable acting talents of Robert Askins, Pepper Binkley, Steven Boyer, Kristen Harlow, and Brian Morvant; plus the lovely Dana Chehansky on stage directions.

Monday, June 6th
8:30pm
New Location! IRT Theater
154 Christopher Street (at Washington)
3rd floor (buzzer 3B)
$Free