Celebrating the Release of Murderous Means, #6 in the Southern California Mysteries
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by Lida Sideris
So far, I’ve concocted seven murders. On the page, of course. That includes six novels and one short story, all with homicides (or possible homicides) that need to be solved. Fortunately, the criminal is always caught by my heroine: a young lawyer who regularly shoves aside her desk job for the chance to capture the culprit. She knows a thing or two about investigations, thanks to her P.I. dad, and justice is served. This month, I’m excited that the latest in my Southern California Mysteries, #6 in the series, Murderous Means, came out on December 5. But this installment is a little bit different.
I love a heroine who takes control of her life and does things. One who never sits on the sidelines. Brave, determined, and mostly smart, my heroine, Corrie Locke, is having a little more trouble than usual in finding the culprit in my newest book. Mostly because she’s not sure there is a culprit, and secondly because she’s suddenly without one of her much needed skills, thanks to a slight mishap.
This time my setting is a little different as well. Fictional places are common in my series, sometimes inspired by real ones, and Murderous Means is no different, except that a whole town is fictional. The main events take place in the tiny town of Los Ranchos (population 1200). It’s kind of like a Mayberry sandwiched between two Southern California powerhouses: the cities of Calabasas and Malibu. That is, if Mayberry looked like a movie set from an old Hollywood western.
After reading articles about psychics and the tools they use to make “high probability generalizations” that suck people right in to becoming believers, I decided it’s high time for Corrie to meet a psychic head-on and see what happens. Then I heard about the unexpected death of a wealthy matriarch of a family that lived nearby; her passing was deemed to be of natural causes. A seemingly peaceful death…until my heroine stepped into my head, asking, what if it wasn’t all that peaceful? We have to find out what happened. And that’s exactly what we did, on the page, of course.
Photos by Roy Reyna (top) and Mikhail Nilov (bottom) on Pexels