Book Details:

Genre:  Mystery
Published by: Maine Authors Publishing
Publication Date: March 23, 2013
Number of Pages: 216
ISBN: 978-1938883347
Purchase Links:
Series: Island Mystery Series #2 – Can be read as a stand-alone
Disclaimer:
Excessive strong language

Recently, Matinicus (prequel to Reese’s Leap) has won both the “Best Mystery,” 2013 Indie Book Awards and the Bronze Prize for Regional Fiction from the 2013 IPPY Awards!

Synopsis:

In this much-anticipated sequel to the award-winning “Matinicus,” five longtime friends—briefly freed from their complex lives for an annual, all-female retreat on Adria Jackman’s remote, 200-acre enclave of Mistake Island, Maine—are forced to put the partying on hold to host the hard-drinking, bachelor botanist, Gil Hodges, stranded there for what could be days.

A hopeless womanizer, Gil is secretly pleased at the layover, but soon finds Mistake’s deeply forested interior deceptively bucolic and the women a bit too intriguing for comfort, stirring both glorious memory and profound regret. When a diabolical stranger appears out of nowhere, insinuating himself into the fold to exact a twisted kind of revenge, it falls to Gil to keep the women safe, despite a dawning awareness that not everyone will make it off the island alive.

Read an excerpt:

Author Bio:

DARCY SCOTT is a live-aboard sailor and experienced ocean cruiser who’s sailed to Grenada and back on a whim, island-hopped through the Caribbean, and been struck by lightning in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Her favorite cruising ground remains the coast of Maine, however, and her appreciation of the history and rugged beauty of its sparsely populated out-islands serves as inspiration for her Maine Island Mystery Series, which includes 2012’s award-winning “Matinicus” and the newly released “Reese’s Leap.” Book three, “Ragged Island,” is currently in the works. Her debut novel, “Hunter Huntress,” was published in June, 2010 by Snowbooks, Ltd., UK.

Catch Up With the Author:

Read this amazing interview with the author!  One of the best I have featured here.

My Devotional Thoughts Interview Questions

1. Which authors have influenced you the most and how have they influenced you?

Margaret Mitchell, for one. I remember reading Gone With the Wind while backpacking my way across Europe when I was in my early twenties. I simply drank in the descriptions and language. I was so devastated when I finished it, I simply started it again.

And then I’d have to say two of my very favorite mystery writers: Dennis Lehane for his tight, right-on dialogue between the characters Patrick and Angie in his Kenzie and Gennaro mystery series. I study him in hopes of transferring that amazing talent to my own writing. And Sophie Hannah, a British writer whom I admire for her tight plotting and sudden plot twists. Studying other authors’ writing is a terrific way to hone your own skills.

1. Where do you receive inspiration for your books?

Both of my Maine Island mysteries, the award-winning Matinicus and recently-released Reese’s Leap, are set on islands my husband and I have discovered while sailing. We live aboard our sailboat for much of the year and love exploring the northern New England coastline. The plotlines of both books are based on the history connected with their respective locales and/or experiences I‘ve had in those places. Matinicus is a real island, a rough-and-tumble lobstering community that’s made and enforced its own rules for hundreds of years. A double mystery spanning two centuries, the novel pits the islanders against an unhappily married child-bride of the 1820s, a conflicted twenty-first century teenager, and the hard-drinking, bachelor botanist Gil Hodges, who arrives on-island to verify the existence of a purported 22 species of wild orchid only to find himself hounded by the ghost of a child some 200 years dead. I came face-to-face with this ghost while doing research for the book, by the way, but that’s another story!

I got the early glimmers of the story that would eventually become Reese’s Leap (the second book in the series) while on an annual, all-female retreat on a remote Maine island. Take five women itching to raise some hell, put them in a rambling, hundred-year-old lodge with no electricity, phone service or other connection to the outside world, throw in a three-day fog, and the imagination can’t help but run wild. In this story, five longtime friends—briefly freed from their complex lives for an annual, all-female retreat on a remote, 200-acre island enclave—are forced to put the partying on hold to host Gil when he’s stranded there in the fog. Hopeless womanizer that he is, Gil is secretly pleased at the layover, but soon finds the island’s sense of peace deceptive, and the women a bit too intriguing for comfort. When a diabolical stranger appears out of nowhere, insinuating himself into the fold, it falls to Gil to keep the women safe, despite a dawning awareness that not everyone will make it off the island alive.

1. If you had the opportunity to have dinner with three people, living or dead—who would you chose and why?

Paul McCartney (I’ve had a wicked crush on him since I was twelve—and I won’t tell you how long ago THAT was!); the smokin’ hot actor Mark Ruffalo, whom I’d try convince to star in the movie version of my first novel, Hunter Huntress—this after first convincing him to option it; and my mother, who died in 1991 and whom I never really knew. She was a very private person and there are so many things I wanted to know about her but never had the nerve to ask. I think I’d have the courage now.

1. What are your views on the e-book revolution?

I’m of two minds, really. E-books are kinder to the environment, of course, since they don’t have to actually be printed and stored and they cost next to nothing to produce. They’re also a lot more convenient to take on a trip than 5 paperbacks, but for me reading on these devices is almost too sanitized. When you pick a “real” book up, the first thing you see is the cover—a sensual and evocative encapsulation of the story. When you turn on an e-book, you’re usually taken directly to the first chapter and actually have to hunt for the cover or any other peripheral material. And then there’s the turning of pages and the smell of ink on paper that you get with “real” books. Given the choice, I always prefer a paperback.

5. What do you like to do in your spare time?

Reading of course, and sailing. I do a lot of my writing on the boat; it’s very peaceful and inducive to creativity. And this summer my husband and I are building a small house, as well, so things are pretty crazy!

6. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why?

Wales, no question—on a canal boat parked along the Lllangollen Canal. Rolling, sheep-strewn hills, small villages with cobblestone streets that date to the sixteen hundreds, and enough castles to keep you exploring for years.

7. With which character in your book do you identity most? Identify least? Why?

Oddly enough, I identify very strongly with my protagonist, Gil Hodges, even though we’re opposite genders. I find him incredibly easy to write and I really like him. Despite his problems with self-control, he’s principled, intrepid, and never gives up. The character I least identify with in Reese’s Leap would have to be the killer (don’t worry; I won’t tell you who that is). I can’t imagine the depravity it takes to do the kinds of things done a few of my heroines.

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