Reese’s Leap
by Darcy Scott
on Tour August – September 2013
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:
My groan is of the just-how-big-an-asshole-did-I-make-of-myself variety, chased by the kind of creeping, morning-after dread I’ve come to know so well. I vaguely recall a bottle of tawny Port, unearthed by Adria from some secret stash of her father’s after everyone else had gone to bed—which was earlier than usual, thanks to the pall Brit and Pete cast over the evening. Just the two of us, then—well, three, if you count the bottle. Pure liquid ambrosia, if memory serves. No doubt I went a bit overboard. But it wasn’t the booze or the thought of another night crammed onto that miserable hammock that got me out here, I recall now, but the fear of what I might do about Nora’s tempting proximity while I lay in such a weakened and vulnerable state. Still, I’ve no clue how I managed it. Could have walked, could have flown, could have been wheeled in a barrow. But however I did it, I slept like the proverbial rock.No reason to get up now either, I figure—at least not ’til the mosquitoes find me. Another hour, I plead, rolling over, which is when I see Pete down on his haunches studying me, face not a foot from mine.“J–s!” I bark, adrenaline powering my scramble to clear the sleeping bag I apparently dragged out here with me. “Don’t do that!”He cocks his head, rising to meet me as I stand. Not a good idea as it turns out, this standing business, considering the explosion of pain at the top of my head. At six-two, I’m five or six inches taller than this guy—something that would normally make me feel pretty good, only nothing feels good just now. My legs are so wobbly, it’s all I can do to remain vertical. I glance down at the cool breeze running over my left foot.
My sore, bare left foot.
Where the f– is my shoe?
“Piece of advice,” Pete says, glancing toward the mountain, gaze flat and unreadable as he swings it back my way. Think Clint Eastwood’s slow burn, but with none of his style. “Right now we got no real beef, you and me. Keep out of this and it’ll stay that way.”
What this? There’s a this?
“Let me guess,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose against the vise slowly tightening at the top of my head, the forks carving out the backs of my eyeballs. The things I do to myself. “This is about your brother, right? What—you were too busy lobbing the n-word at Adria to hear her say she wasn’t around? That none of these chicks know anything about this?”
“They know,” he assures me. “Just not sayin’.”
“They—as in…”
“All of ’em, probably.”
Of course. Conspiracy among the conifers. I’ll have to remember to suggest this to Duggan for the title of whatever mystery or thriller he’s hoping to eke out of all this.
“Come on, man. You saw the looks on their faces—total f– surprise.”
“Brit said they come out here every year—same women, same week in July.”
Good old Brit. “I wouldn’t know.” Nor do I care. Once around with this shit’s more than enough for me; besides, I desperately need to keep the sun from hitting my retinas just now. Shades, I think. I pat my pockets.
“Earl was killed the week they were here. July 21st.”
“July 21st what?”
“Day he died.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” I say, carefully lowering myself to rummage in my
rucksack for those miserable Maui Jims. Sliding them on makes things marginally better, but mincing my way back to my feet brings stabbing pains from the sole of the shoeless one. Man, it hurts. What the hell did I step on, anyway? Glass, rock—what?
“So, okay,” I say, cranking the foot up stork-like to peer at the dried brown goo stuck to the bottom. Mud? I wonder, hopping awkwardly to stay upright. Blood? “Say you’re right, and he was here. Doesn’t mean they knew he was here.” Gently probing the most tender places for lacerations, protruding foreign objects. “If Adria even suspected he was camping on the island, she’d have booted his ass off. You’ve seen the way she is about this place.”
“Earl don’t listen to nobody when his mind’s set. Kind of his trademark.”
More of that unremitting Eastwood gaze, which is frankly starting to piss me off. Out of nowhere, another piece of yesterday slips along the edge of my mind—something weird about the timing of all this. And then it hits me. If Earl died two years ago, why’s this guy just turning up now?
“You were in prison when it happened.” Pure hunch, of course, but it fits. Explains why he seemed so hinky from the start, that vague whiff of what I now recognize as recent and intimate acquaintance with Maine State Corrections. I do the mental math, take a stab. “You and Earl were sent up together; only he got out early. Drugs would be my bet. That or a juicy little B&E.”
“F– them b–s. Bullshit’s what it was. Lousy pot bust. My second time, so the judge bumped me a couple extra years.”
“So Earl gets out, comes here to revisit the old stomping grounds, and ends up dead.”
“I knew there’d be trouble, what with me not around to keep him in line. It was me always looked out for him.”
“Plus, you landed him in jail. What a bro. But hey, at least you knew where he was; there’s that.” Screwing with him like this probably isn’t smart, but I’m still kinda punchy, and I need to piss. Besides; I really, really, really don’t like this guy.
Pete cocks his head.
“This funny to you?”
F– hilarious, actually, only it’s fast becoming clear that leaving Adria et al alone while a deluded nut like this is wandering the island wouldn’t be smart. There’s my conscience to consider, what’s left of it anyway. “So you got sprung—what—a month ago? Two?”
“Sat in that s–y jail two years knowin’ he’d been murdered, countin’ the days ’til I got out.”
“Accidents happen, pal. You’ve seen the cliffs out here—dangerous as hell in the wrong conditions.”
“Earl never went near them cliffs. Hated heights. No, somethin’ happened out here. I’m gonna know what and I’m gonna know why. I owe him that. You bein’ here just complicates things.”
“Yeah, well, only person leaving the island is you,” I say, trying to sound all bad-a– as I fight the urge to toss my cookies. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He considers. “Your decision. Things been put in motion. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” A smirk as he nods toward the sleeping bag. “Nice.”
I glance down, following his gaze. A faded field of blue dotted with yellow and pink flowers, the darker hue of a minimally sullied ball gown and white-gloved hands—all this capped with the lemon yellow orb of Cinderella’s hair, her face lit with a saccharine smile. A little girl’s sleeping bag, I realize. Swell.
“So here’s what you do,” he says. “You and the other girls have a meetin’. You explain how things are gonna get really ugly, really fast, if I don’t find out what went down.”
With that he trots back into the brush like something out of The Last of the Mohicans—all that bouncy action enough to set my eyeballs aching. What the f– was in that bottle, anyway?
Nothing for it but to head to the house and fill Adria in, come up with some kind of plan.
After I find that f– shoe.
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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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4 Comments
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Thanks so much for the opportunity to do an author interview on your site. Great questions!
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Author
It was absolutely my pleasure! I hope your book gets the exposure it deserves.
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So glad I came back to see this interview. I agree, it is a good one. And will admit that I also had a crush on Paul McCartney when I was younger *blushing*. Thank you for posting!
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I have been seeing great reviews for this book and have since put it on my TBR list. Thank you for posting!!
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