Newest Ben Abbott Mystery Hits The Shelves

By Nancy K. Crevier

Ben Abbott is snooping around the fictional Connecticut town of Newbury again, thanks to local author Justin Scott. Abbott, who comes to life under the skillful pen of Mr Scott is featured once again in Mausoleum, the fifth book in a detective series that takes place in a New England village suspiciously similar to Newtown.

Mausoleum, published by Poisoned Pen Press, will be available to the public this December and Newtown residents can get a sampling of the new mystery story on Sunday, December 9, at  2 pm, at the C.H. Booth Library when Mr Scott will be on hand to charm his fans, sign books, and discuss the newest Ben Abbott mystery. Copies of Mausoleum will be sold for $20 at the author’s reception that day.

The detective novels allow him to have a different kind of fun in writing than when he is writing thrillers or historical fiction, said Mr Scott. The Ben Abbott series came about as a sort of respite from the driving demands of his other writing.

“I had been writing a number of huge books that involved years of research and investment in them. I wanted a rest and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if I could just look out the window, or sip a coffee at the General Store, and watch my friends and neighbors go about their lives. I could watch what was going by me and write a novel set in a small town.’ I had written some other mysteries, so I knew the genre,” Mr Scott said.

He knew from the first that the detective novels would be a series, and that the town itself would be the main character.

“I love writing the ‘Bens,’” said Mr Scott. “They draw a more literate reader and the thing about a mystery is that there’s always a question, there’s some thrill, and there’s room to play with the language. The real pleasure in writing the ‘Bens’ is in his language,” he explained. “The stories are written in the first person, so the words are those of Ben Abbott’s.”

The subject of overdevelopment has always been on his mind, said Mr Scott, and the Ben Abbott books allow him to exercise his personal “curmudgeon” point of view. The enormous homes that take over the rural atmosphere of Newbury took top billing in his previous detective novel, McMansion, and in Mausoleum, he takes on another creeping commercial venture that he first read about in The New York Times. “I read about mausoleums jammed into old graveyards and I thought, ‘I gotta write this next,’” he said.

While many of the characters and characteristics of the town have already been developed in the series, allowing him to “blast away” at the writing once he is ready to go, he still finds that details about the town of Newbury need to be fine-tuned. For his latest novel, he turned to Dan Cruson, Newtown’s town historian, for guidance.

The Village Cemetery at Newbury is the scene of the newest crime that has residents of the town pointing the finger at each other and deploying local investigator Ben Abbott to “unbury” the answer to this who-dun-it in which an unpopular resident is found brutally murdered in an equally unpopular “McMausoleum” that dominates the 300-year-old cemetery in town. Disgruntled husbands of female “assignations” of the deceased, residents seething over the egotistical graveyard monument erected by the murder victim, and even an immigrant worker fall under suspicion in Mr Scott’s wry tale of murder and mayhem in Newbury.

“Dan took me on a magnificent tour of our Village Cemetery and explained the historical quirks  of the place so that I felt very, very comfortable writing the book. He also proofread the book for me to check for any historical inaccuracies about the history of the town,” Mr Scott said. “Where an author goes wrong in writing is not in what has been carefully researched, but in the things you just ‘toss out.’ Those little inaccuracies can truly annoy a reader. Dan keeps me honest.”

Adding to the Ben Abbott cottage industry is Newtown artist Brigette Sorensen, who designed the cover for his last Ben Abbott book, McMansion, the cover for the paperback re-issue of the earlier detective tale, FrostLine, and who has now created the cover art for this latest mystery novel.

The artwork created by Ms Sorensen gives his books a look that attracts buyers, said Mr Scott.

“It puts the book between the covers of a folk art painting and still conveys that it is a modern novel. Brigette is a serious person who just curls herself into a project. I’m thrilled with the jacket and truly hope that she’ll do the next one,” Mr Scott said.

Mr Scott is the author of over 20 novels, including the Ben Abbott series, and thrillers like Red Sky at Morning and Sea Hunter, written under his pen name of Paul Garrison. Born into a family of professional writers, Mr Scott built beach houses, drove trucks, and tended bar before dedicating himself to the life of writing. He was twice nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America and holds bachelors and masters degrees in American history. Mr Scott has traveled extensively in Russia, China, and Scotland, as well as sailing the seas to research his novels.

That the Ben Abbott series remains a delight for Mr Scott is evident. With Mausoleum still hot off the press, the next Ben Abbott mystery is already in the works. The plot, however, remains a mystery to all but the novelist.

In the meantime, fans of the detective series can bury themselves in this latest installment in the lives of Newburyites and its favorite investigator.