No place like home - Guest blog by Suzanne Trauth

Suzanne Trauth is the author of the novel What Remains of Love, a first place winner in Women's Fiction, Firebird Book Awards, a finalist in General Fiction, American Book Festival, and a finalist for the Hemingway Prize. She is the author of the popular Dodie O’Dell mystery series—Show Time, Time Out, Running Out of Time, Just in Time, No More Time, and Killing Time. She is also a playwright, and her plays and screenplays have won awards in contests and festivals and been developed in a variety of theatres. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Dramatists Guild, and the League of Professional Theatre Women. After receiving her Ph.D in Theatre, she taught in university theatre programs and now lives in Woodland Park, New Jersey.

Here Suzanne tells us about where she sets her mystery books and why.

“There’s no place like home.” I mentally click my ruby slippers together. I actually lived in Kansas for a while, so the Wizard of Oz sentiments are always close to my heart. Though native Kansans don’t always appreciate the philosophical fine points of Dorothy’s journey. Still, there’s something to be said for appreciating the place we call home, for valuing the familiarity of the setting where we work, play, socialize with family and friends, and, in my case, write.

I live in northern New Jersey, a compact, densely populated area in the shadow of New York City just across the Hudson River. Much of this part of the state is defined by its access to the great metropolis by commuters, theatregoers, museum visitors, and anyone looking for excitement. Living in the vicinity of “the city” will always be considered an asset for residents of the northern Garden State, a drawing card for folks wanting to combine the pleasures and opportunities of New York with the suburban feel of towns that cozy up to the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge. I love living in this part of the state.

When I first debated the setting for my mystery series—the Dodie O’Dell mysteries—I weighed options for the most productive locations: the Midwest where I was born and raised and worked for a number of years; Greenwich Village in Manhattan where I lived for a period of time; or places abroad that I had visited on numerous occasions (Scotland, London, the south of France, Tuscany, Australia). After working through possibilities, I settled on—you guessed it—home. New Jersey.

Besides the fact that I knew it well, I realized that placing my mystery series in New Jersey offered a varied range of potential sites that would serve the stories. A character can zip from the Jersey shore to a northern small town, head out to the western part of the state near the Pennsylvania border, and still be home in time for dinner. Or, in the case of my protagonist Dodie O’Dell, in time to manage the dinner rush at the restaurant she manages in Etonville, a fictional setting that is similar to a town in my area. There are lots of nooks and crannies in this state, lots of places where characters can get in trouble and create mayhem.

 My mystery series required a main street in Etonville, New Jersey, where a restaurant and a community theatre sat side-by-side, the town center no more than half a mile square, where the local police station, a rumor-mill hair salon, and Jersey diner-slash-coffee-shop took up residence. Various other businesses were scattered along the adjacent avenues. Surrounding the center of Etonville, residential neighborhoods provided housing for my protagonist, her chief of police boyfriend, and her BFF, the theatre diva. My nearby cozy New Jersey town was a great inspiration.

            

When I wanted to broaden the canvas for one of my mysteries, I moved the story, as well as the cast of characters, to the Jersey shore where I utilized the beach, tiki bars, an outdoor gazebo, and the boardwalk, and created a threatening climax aboard a luxury boat.

 

         

                

On a couple of occasions I shifted the action to easily-accessible New York City so Dodie could investigate an internationally known arts institution (think Juilliard) as well as enjoy a special dinner with her police chief beau in an out-of-the-way Greenwich Village restaurant.

In a recently completed standalone mystery, the story focused, in part, on socio-economic differences: I needed a middle-class neighborhood for my MC and her family, but also a wealthy, one-percenter location to serve as a contrast. I had no trouble finding models of both settings—in the same town. Graceful English Tudor mansions and beautiful Victorian estates, set back from the road, were distinctly different from the tight-knit neighborhoods where homes sat in close proximity to one another. Where everyone knew your business, word traveled fast, and the local bar and grill provided the focal point for the neighborhood’s social life. When I wanted more inspiration for either setting, a twenty minute drive landed me in an upscale locale or a middle-class environment.

My current work-in-progress was inspired by recent trips to the far western part of New Jersey, just minutes from the Pennsylvania border. Though I was on the road for less than an hour, I had left the city, the shore, the suburbs and snug little towns behind. I was in a pastoral expanse of the state a few miles from the Delaware Water Gap. Miles away from the bustling port of Newark and the New Jersey Turnpike.

Fields and farms, two lane roads—no Garden State Parkway in sight—rolling hills, grazing horses, houses dotting the countryside, and red barns rising from green acreage. My protagonist pursues a mystery in a one-street, rural setting, driving a distance to reach her destinations: an abandoned paint factory, a meeting with law enforcement at a roadside diner, an undertaker in the next town over. But all within forty-five minutes of her base of operations. Still in New Jersey.

I am finding that a wide range of potential crime scenes can be found inside the boundaries of the Garden State. And I’m not even digging into the well-known locations associated with The Sopranos!

As a mystery writer, I discovered there truly is no place like home.