Killer books bring Tucson mystery authors together

We didn’t see it on the local news last week, but there was a meeting of veteran crime-fighters in Oro Valley.

Brigid Quinn was there. So was Kate Fox. Nora Abbott, too.

True, all three of these literary gumshoes are fictional, but they were very much at the table when their creators — Tucson authors Shannon Baker and Becky Masterman – convened over coffee to catch up.

The two writers have been meeting regularly since 2016, when they met at a local book sale.

In the years since, they have published a total of 19 mysteries, and by now they know their characters as well as they know themselves.

“We try not to talk about them, but we always do one way or another,” Baker confessed.

It can be said Baker and Masterman write killer books, both literally and figuratively, so it is interesting to learn the two authors met in a church.

“We were at a holiday book thing,” Baker recalled, happily. “After we’d both signed our books, we visited for a while, and she was this delightful woman … quiet, understated, elegant, classy. So I bought her book and took it home and later, as I’m reading it, I’m thinking ‘Holy Cow! That nice woman wrote this? We need to talk!’”

The book was “Rage Against the Dying,” Masterman’s first. “I had three serial killers in that one,” Masterman laughed. “I pulled out all the stops.”

Their first attempt at a casual get-together did not go well — “I went to one Mimi’s Restaurant, she went to the other,” Baker said — but they’ve been doing better in the years since.

They typically meet over lunch every couple of months. Especially when they are joined by Anne Hillerman, who moved to Tucson two years ago, this becomes the most potent writing group in town.

“Honestly, we’re more of a writer group than a writing group,” Masterman said. “We don’t workshop each other’s drafts or anything. We talk about books, and the book business. We might, every now and then, talk about other authors. It’s just nice being around people who really understand what I do, who have the same kind of challenges I do.”

Masterman began pondering a career as an author 20 years ago, while working with CRC Press in Boca Raton, Florida. CRC publishes books and other materials about science, engineering and mathematics.

“They acquired a forensic science line about the time of the O.J. Simpson trial,” she recalled, “and forensic scientists became superstars. I was the marketing person that Marcia Clark would call to order books. Reporters would call. I would connect them to our scientists, and answer any questions they might have. I spent way too much time thinking about how people might die.”

Such knowledge can come in handy when writing mysteries. In “Rage Against the Dying,” her first Brigid Quinn book, a man dies after an intravenous dose of … vodka.

“At the time I started thinking about that book, I could call the pre-eminent forensic toxicologist in the world and say, ‘Steve, can you kill a person with intravenous vodka?’ He actually said no, it would hurt too much, but I found three cases where it happened — so I used it anyway.”

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Masterman’s most recent book, a stand-alone mystery called “Maternal Instinct,” was released six months ago. The fourth installment of the Brigid Quinn series, “Her Prodigal Husband,” will be available in January.

The sandhills of north-central Nebraska formed the setting for Baker’s early work.

“Picture the Sahara Desert covered with grass,” she suggested. “It’s a perfect place to raise cattle. I was newly married and miserable, on a ranch 30 miles from a town of 300 people. I had to leave it or learn to love it, so I stayed and started to write about it.”

A Mother’s Day essay about her grandmother won an award from Guidepost, and a weeklong workshop on Long Island convinced Baker to get serious about writing.

“After a while, I decided I wanted to be a novelist, book club fiction,” Baker said. “But I wanted to be published, too, and an editor told me my book might sell better if I’d get some crime into it.”

In “Tainted Mountain,” her first Nora Abbot book, she certainly did that. The story evolves after Nora’s womanizing husband is found dead.

Interestingly, the Nora Abbott series was set in Arizona. Most of Baker’s books since moving to here have featured Kate Fox, a sheriff in Nebraska. The ninth installment in the series, “Bull’s Eye,” was published in January. The 10th, “Close Range,” will debut in November.

Like Masterman, Baker spends an inordinate amount of time thinking dark thoughts.

“I write crime fiction,” she explained. “It’s always a challenge not to kill somebody.”

Predictably, the two Tucson authors talk about these things.

Last week, Baker asked Masterman if she had ever considered how wrenching it must be to actually kill someone.

“I dream about it!” Masterman replied. “Not every night, but I have dreams where I’ve killed someone and I spend the rest of the night thinking how awful my life’s going to be. Should I run? Should I turn myself in? What was I thinking? Then, when I wake up, it’s wonderful. I didn’t kill anyone after all. I just wish I could remember how I did it so I could write it down.”

FOOTNOTES

Summer hours are now in effect at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 E. Helen St. The library is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday until classes resume in August. Learn more at poetry.arizona.edu.