Are you ready for a great mystery?
Back in 2005, I helped sell the company that had been my long-time employer. When the sale was done, I had two ‘sensible’ offers that would have kept me in the corporate world. To make a long story short, neither option appealed.
There was something else I wanted to do, something that had been on my mind for a couple of decades: I wanted to see if I could write fiction.
Not the Great American Novel. Not poetry. Not some thinly disguised autobiographical cathartic work. I wanted to see if I could tell a rousing good story using believable characters people would root for. I wanted to write stories with satisfying conclusions that sprinkled enough clues about the outcome throughout the story to make a reader say, ‘why didn’t I see that coming?’ Oh, and I wanted to write stuff that people would actually go out and buy. In short, I wanted to write mysteries, suspense, and thrillers.
Since then, I’ve published 15 books. You can purchase print copies directly from me at https://the-hardington-press.square.site/; or you can buy print, Kindle, or audio editions of my books through Amazon.com; Barnes & Noble, or independent booksellers.
There’s a common theme to these books. Yes, they’re mysteries, but there’s another, stronger bond: each book centers on strong, independent women. Some of those women solve crimes. Some of them commit them. A few do both. But astride the story are always the women. A few are young: Penny Walden and Allie LaPointe (A Whiff of Revenge) , Samantha Ayers (The Garden Club Gang series), Susan Delaney (The Accidental Spy), and Lynn Kowalchuk (Deal Killer) are all between 18 and 28, yet they face and overcome perils that require resourcefulness and quick thinking beyond their years. Kat, the protagonist of Murder Imperfect, is 36; and, by the way, she just murdered her husband. The official members of the Garden Club Gang range in age from 51 (Paula Winters) to 71 (Alice Beauchamp). They’re all people you’ll want to get to know better.
So, what’s a ‘guy’ doing writing books with women as their central characters? It’s simple: I grew up around strong, independent women. I’m married to one. Writing mysteries about women is infinitely more interesting that having a tough guy in the leading role. (“Hearing a noise, Dirk pulled the 44 caliber -Mannheim-Schnauzer from his ankle holster, silently replacing its clip with Kevlar hollow-point dum-dums and burst around the corner, splaying the room…” You get the idea.) Women, frankly, make much more interesting heroes and more sinister villains. Red a few and see if you agree.
Here’s a synopsis of my 15 titles:
The Garden Club Gang, Deadly Deeds, Fatal Equity, and Never Too Old to Lie
Conventional wisdom says that women over the age of 50 in mysteries are required to confine themselves to the ‘cozy’ genre where they can solve murders than involve ingesting poisoned quiches in quaint English villages while conversing with their cats. I say, “bunk” and offer four titles that prove otherwise.
The ‘Garden Club Gang’ are four women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Each is at a turning point in her life. They’re divorced, widowed, or in some netherworld where a spouse is institutionalized. One is what we euphemistically call ‘comfortable’ while another is slipping into poverty. What they have in common is that they live in the same Boston exurb and they’re members of the same garden club.
The first book in the series, The Garden Club Gang, begins with a existential crisis for one of the women: Paula has been diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer. She wonders what she had done with her life and fears she has lived it without every having done anything that was not defined by being ‘wife’ and ‘mother’. She decides if she has only a few months to live, she will do something well outside of her comfort zone. When she confides to a friend that she is going to steal the daily gate from a New England fair, she suddenly finds she has friends… not who want to intervene and stop her, but to help her carry off the heist. Each one, you will learn, has their own reasons.
The robbery is successful, but getting away with the perfect crime is just the beginning of their problems. When they count the money, there’s far more that there should be. In a matter of hours, the four women find themselves in a battle of wits with the local and state police, a determined insurance investigator and the criminals who were using the fair to launder money. Instead of a lark, they’re in danger, and dependent upon their own resources to outwit both the law and the crooks determined to find the money and silence those who stole it.
The Garden Club Gang offers four nuanced portraits of interesting women with all-too-credible motives for doing highly unladylike things. If it sounds like a ‘cozy’, then be prepared for a cozy with quite a kick. The characters are memorable, the action is non-stop and the plot twists until the final page. The book is also laugh-out-loud funny. You can read the opening chapters here. The book is available in print and Kindle formats. You can purchase a copy here or here. If you have half an hour to spend, you can see an interview about the book here.
Within days after the publication of The Garden Club Gang, I was being asked, “What are ‘the ladies’ going to do next?” It took four years to come up with a plot worthy of ‘the Gang’. That story is told in Deadly Deeds.
Four months after the events of The Garden Club Gang; Paula, Eleanor, Alice and Jean go undercover at a car dealership where investigator Samantha Ayers is convinced that insurance fraud is taking place. In the opening pages of the book, that fraud is exposed in a spectacular fashion. The Gang’s success leads them to agree to investigate the death of Cecelia Davis, a very elderly member of the Hardington Garden Club in a high-end nursing home in a nearby community. They’re not even certain a crime has been committed: at 93, Cecelia is off the actuarial charts. But they hear things at the woman’s wake that sound intriguing. And so they go to work.
But, as they do, the patriarch of Pokrovsky Motors is also making his own plans, top among them retribution against the the Gang. Even as ‘the ladies’ are learning first-hand about ‘asset protection’ firms and nursing home economics, ‘Smilin’ Al’ Pokrovsky is discovering the identities of the four women who infiltrated his dealership. The result is a twisting plot that is as funny and suspenseful as it is a great mystery. You can order Deadly Deeds online in print or Kindle formats or find it in bookstores. You can read the opening chapters here.
My third adventure for the Gang is Fatal Equity. Six months have passed since the events of Deadly Deeds. One evening, Alice Beauchamp receives a call from an old friend asking Alice to look in on her parakeets over the next day or two. Something about that call doesn’t sound right and Alice pays an unannounced visit. She finds her friend making out a checklist to end her life. Why? Because, in order to finance her now-deceased husband’s end-of-life care, she took out a reverse mortgage on her home. The issuer has found an irregularity and either wants its money back (plus monumental fees and interest) or it will sell the house out from underneath Alice’s friend.
That sends the Gang into action. What kind of a mortgage company would prey on the elderly? Welcome to the world of Senior Equity Lending Services, an organization that operates in the murky world of reverse mortgages. Senior Equity has fended off every investigation by showing it meticulously plays by the rules, but far too many of its customers end up in Alice’s friend’s position. The ladies need to get close to Senior Equity in order to investigate it. They have a plan: move into the same building with a make-believe business selling fancy French linens over the internet. Their phony company, though, needs a real website. A well-connected woman whom the Ladies helped in Deadly Deeds is more than willing to assist in having it created.
The problem is that their make-believe company suddenly has real orders. As they cope with unexpected and unwanted success, they also have to find the evidence to bring Senior Equity to justice. By the end of the story, you’ll be thoroughly educated on the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ reverse mortgages, as well as on the marketing of fine Provencal linens. You’ll also have laughed out loud for hours on end.
You can order Fatal Equity online in print or Kindle formats or find it in bookstores. You can read the opening chapters here.
Never Too Old to Lie is my latest in the series. Four months have passed since the events of Fatal Equity. ‘Gang’ member Jean Sullivan was widowed five years ago but it had taken until now to extricate herself from a punishing trust established by her late bastard of a husband. Even though she’s now 67, she wants to get back into the dating pool. She does so through ‘You&MeAfter63’, a website aimed at seniors in the Boston area.
And, the Boston area is the latest hunting ground for the Miller brothers, a family of con men who prey on well-to-do widows and divorcees. Until now, they’ve used the standard litany of ‘romance scams’ to extract a quick $25,000 from women who are willing to use money to ingratiate themselves with someone who might be that last chance at love. The Miller brothers, though, have a new scheme – a con so good the mark won’t know she has been taken even after the brothers disappear.
Jean will meet and fall hard for Michael Miller, and he’ll spin out his tale and wait for her to bite. But Jean has the Gang behind her. All it takes is one loose thread, and Michael’s story will begin to unravel. And, once it does, the ladies lay a plan to go after all of the brothers and put them out of business… permanently. In my stories, though, nothing moves in a straight line. The brothers have their own resources, and one of them has a mean streak.
You can read more about the book and the opening chapters – here. You can purchase the book here.
The Liz Phillips and Detective John Flynn Series
You should know two things about me. The first is that my wife, Betty, is an avid gardener. The second is that I failed at retirement. Betty became a Master Gardener in 2006, a year after I retired. Her training was at Elm Bank, the home of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. I began hanging around the Master Gardeners (without ever becoming one but obtaining a badge that says I’m a ‘groupie’) and MassHort. Three years later, I found myself as Chairman of Blooms! at the Boston Flower & Garden Show, where I oversaw all of MassHort’s activities at the 2010, 2011, and 2012 Shows. Betty would also tell me tales of what was going on at the Medfield Garden Club, and she ‘volunteered’ me for other horticultural and floral design events. In short, I collected an enormous amount of raw material for writing fictional accounts of real-world events revolving around garden clubs and the world of horticulture.
These six books share common characters across roughly 18 months (as of the sixth book). They start with…
A Murder at the Flower Show
What happens when the head of a major Boston cultural institution turns out to be a con man… and dead? Just hours after the Northeast Garden and Flower Show’s opening night gala, St. John Grainger-Elliot, head of the venerable New England Botanical Society, is found brutally murdered. For newly minted Lieutenant Victoria Lee it’s a high-profile investigation that could either accelerate or derail her meteoric career – and there are higher-ups who resent the promotion of a 30-year-old woman.
Working with her about-to-retire partner John Flynn, and young, computer-savvy Detective Jason Alvarez, Lee learns that Grainger-Elliot was not what he claimed to be. He was a con man, and funds for his high-profile signature project, ‘The Gardens at Government Center’ are either missing or were never raised. Who killed him? A Society employee or trustee? A flower show exhibitor? A business partner whose reputation he ruined? And, was Grainger-Elliot’s wife a dupe or an accomplice? Horticulture and high tech will solve the crime.
In the background of ‘Flower Show’ is a suburban garden club president named Liz Flynn. She serves as Vicky Lee’s ‘sherpa’ through the flower show world and provides critical information. You’ll her more about Ms. Flynn in later books.
A Murder at the Flower Show is a twisting, fast-paced story that goes behind the scenes into the not-so-genteel world of flowers and money. You can read the opening chapters here, and purchase the book here.
Murder in Negative Space
Valentina Zhukova is a glamorous, globetrotting floral designer; the “Queen of Negative Space” and “Vladimir Putin’s favorite flower arranger”. But in the hours before the opening of the prestigious International Floral Design Alliance conference in Boston, someone stabbed her and then hung her body from a massive floral design.
Six weeks after the events of ‘A Murder at the Flower Show’, Lieutenant Victoria Lee and young, computer-savvy Detective Jason Alvarez are again plunged into a world where flowers and horticulture can be grounds for homicide. They quickly learn that Zhukova was both more and less than the woman she seemed. The proud granddaughter of a World War II hero, she was also an ardent nationalist who toed the Kremlin line, and someone who relished inflicting her viewpoints on those around her.
Who killed Zhukova? With an international cast of suspects, Lee and Alvarez – aided by suburban garden club president Liz Phillips – find few who knew her will mourn her death. Murder in Negative Space takes you into a world where ‘amateur’ designers are deadly serious about their work. You can read the opening chapters here and purchase the book here.
A Murder in the Garden Club
There are only so many flower shows to provide dead bodies, but garden clubs seem to be an endless source of mayhem, or at least in the books I write. Detective John Flynn was retiring from the Boston PD in A Murder at the Flower Show, and was a voice on the phone for Negative Space. For A Murder in the Garden Club, I gave him a fresh start in the Boston suburb of Hardington where he goes to work for a suburban police department where, to put it mildly, he is overqualified. Liz Phillips moves to the forefront. She’s a fifty-something suburban matron with a hole in her life where her absent family ought to be. The third star of the book is the town. You won’t find Hardington, Massachusetts on a map, but you’ve heard of towns like it. It’s a quaint exurb of Boston where ‘starter castles’ are replacing the tract houses from the fifties and appearances are everything.
In A Murder in the Garden Club, Liz finds the body of close friend Sally Kahn at the bottom of her basement stairs. It takes Liz just ten minutes to determine it wasn’t an accident. It takes a lot longer than that for her to convince John Flynn that Hardington has its first murder in a decade. By the time their investigation is over, the trail will have wound through email inboxes and wireless Internet routers, hazardous waste disposal and the economics of tearing down houses to build ‘McMansions’. Their search will also take them through an emotional landscape of adultery and the simmering resentment between ‘townies’ and the new-money affluent. You can read more about it here, or buy it here or here.
Is it a cozy? If you mean, does it emphasize character development and plot equally, is the violence off-screen, and do you want to see these two characters again, then the answer is, yes, it’s a cozy. But if you mean, does it feature a nosy, dithering amateur female sleuth with a weight problem and a bumbling detective who can’t see a clue to save his life, then the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Further, if cozies are a ‘Red States’ genre, then A Murder in the Garden Club has some decided ‘Blue States’ overtones. A key one is that there’s a definite attraction between Liz and Detective Flynn. It may not be acted on, but it’s there.
In Murder for a Worthy Cause, the cast and crew of the hit TV show, Ultimate House Makeover, come to Hardington to build a home for a needy family. But on the morning work is to begin on the project, the body of a town selectman is found at the site.
Detective John Flynn doesn’t lack for suspects or clues: cameras recorded the previous evening’s party where two men threatened Terhune and a woman showed her displeasure with him in spectacular fashion. And, as a selectman, Terhune had enemies.
Meanwhile, Liz Phillips thinks her only role is to keep volunteers on the project busy. But the more she sees and hears as she works on the project, the more she understands that she may hold the key to solving the murder. You can read more about the book here, and buy it here.
A Murder on the Garden Tour, takes on a fact of life in clubs of all kinds: the interloper who is a divisive and negative force. In the Hardington Garden Club, her name is Frieda Woodley. She’s been in town just two years, but she has a ‘posse’ of club members and has nominated herself for president.
Oh, and as the book opens, she is tumbling down a ravine to her death. Was this an unfortunate accident while on a club-sponsored garden tour, or was she pushed?
It doesn’t take Detective John Flynn and Liz Phillips very long to determine that Frieda Woodley didn’t exist (at least by that name) until she moved to town. They also quickly learn Frieda was not above using threats backed by blackmail to get her way. And, while Frieda told everyone she retired from an important job in state government, she never said exactly what it was. Was she at the heart of a scandal that destroyed thousands of lives, and might it be the reason for her death?
A Murder on the Garden Tour also delves deeper into the complex relationship between Liz and Detective Flynn. Events in both their lives may be pushing them toward a different relationship.
The most recent entry in the series (published in 2021) is Murder Brushed with Gold. This is the first book to give Roland Evans-Jones a starring role, and you’ll also meet Liz Phillips’ adult daughter, SaraBeth, for the first time. (A warning: several readers have told me they want to take Sarabeth over their knee and spank her.)
The story starts off with Roland lending an 1889 work by a minor American Impressionist, Alan Churchill Lawrence, to an upcoming exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. He thinks the value of his painting might increase by a few thousand dollars. But when pages from the artist’s journal are found wedged in the frame – and they tell of a double murder committed by Edward Merrill Cosgrove – one of the dominant painters of that era – Roland knows he has something sensational on his hands.
Using clues provided by the painting and the journal, Detective John Flynn, now-former garden club president Liz Phillips and Roland set out to see if there are, indeed, two bodies buried behind a modest house in the Boston suburb of Hardington.
What they find is something no one could have expected, and thus begins twin tales: one of the lengths to which the descendants of an artist will go to protect a legacy; and another of the illicit riches made today through robocalls and phone scams.
You’ll also learn the attraction between Liz and Flynn is more evident than ever as events in their lives sweep them toward an unknown future.
You can read the opening chapters here, and buy copies of the book here or here.
The stand-alone titles
Series with recurring characters are the mother’s milk of mysteries. They keep readers coming back to catch up on the latest events in their fictional universe. Stand-alones, on the other hand, require getting readers interested in new characters and locations. Well, sometimes a really good story can’t be shoehorned into an existing universe. And, also sometimes, you can selectively take bits and pieces of another universe. For example, How to Murder Your Contractor is set in Hardington and Detective John Flynn will figure into the story.
I have five titles of which I’m extremely proud. Here they are:
A Whiff of Revenge
As an undergraduate seven years ago, Penny Walden gained unwanted fame after writing a best-selling novel about revenge. She has been running away from that fame ever since. Now a PhD biochemist, she loves her new job as a research scientist working with pheromones. Allie is a brilliant eighteen-year-old who never got over her father abandoning his family. Her mother, Helga, thought she had put the divorce behind her. In reality, she has only repressed her anger. Zoe and Tyler, stuck in dead-end, entry-level jobs that use none of their considerable journalism skills, desperately need a break. And Emily, wealthy and beautiful, has just found out that the man she planned to marry is the opposite of what she and the world believes.
A week ago these women were strangers to one another. Now, their lives are about to intersect as Penny plots real-life vengeance against Brian LaPointe, the handsome, charismatic head of a revered conservation organization called New England Green. Why? Because whatever his virtues, LaPointe is a cad and a crook.
Like all my stories, you can be certain that things will get complicated. You should also know that the plots will involve cats. It’s a wild, funny tale of unexpected consequences, with a cast of unforgettable characters. You can read the opening chapters here and purchase the book here.
How to Murder Your Contractor
Get ready to take a wild, funny ride as one woman plots to get even with the builder who is putting her through ‘contractor hell’.
“Joey thought building my house was his ticket to unearned riches. He was wrong. Unforgivably wrong. Where is Joey now? Let’s just say that I was Joey’s final customer. I can make that statement with authority.”
Anne Evans Carlton is a woman with a simple goal: to serve Thanksgiving dinner in the ‘retirement dream home’ she is building with her husband, Matt. All that stands in her way is Joey McCoy: possibly the worst contractor ever to be entrusted with the building of a new house.
How to Murder Your Contractor is the story of a battle of wits between Anne and Joey. Joey’s goal is simple: stretch the job out and keep inventing ‘up-charges’. But Joey hasn’t planned on Anne’s determination or Matt’s legal prowess. Neither has he taken into account Anne’s unusual circle of friends. They’re multi-day Jeopardy winners, Master Gardeners, and equestrian jumping champions. They bring an arsenal of ideas – many of them deadly – to the task of either getting Joey to do his job right, or to get Joey out of the way once and for all. You can read the opening chapters here and purchase the book here.
Murder Imperfect
The essence of suspense is not ‘whodunit’ but, rather, ‘are they going to get away with it?’ Murder Imperfect is without question a work of suspense. In the opening paragraph, the protagonist, Kat writes, “You can call this a confession if you must” and then says that she murdered her husband in cold blood. But then she immediately withdraws the word ‘confession’ because she has neither guilt nor remorse. And she says, “where I am right now is of no importance to this story”. So, did she get away with it or is this in fact a confession told to some unknown law enforcement person? It will be a cat-and-mouse game all through the book.
If you’re looking for a sweet, innocent heroine, Kat is definitely not for you. But she’ll grow on you as you hear her story. She’s had some tough breaks in her life and her late husband was no saint. But love her or hate her, you’ll find her compelling.
Murder Imperfect moves a torrid pace, aided by Kat’s irreverent and sharp-tongued narrative. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. You can get more details and read the opening chapter here. You can purchase a copy here or here. You can see an interview about the book here.
The Accidental Spy
The Accidental Spy is a work of suspense, to be certain, but it also has a dash of romance. It’s a story about a Pan Am stewardess, a lost suitcase, and a spy.
Here’s its genesis: my ‘day job’ was in technology and the field is rife with historical questions where the answers are, at best, murky. One such question is why the Soviet Union was always so far behind the U.S. in microelectronics. The question may seem quaint today but, during the cold war, computer chips – however rudimentary – were the difference in the accuracy of missiles, among other things.
Thus was born the idea for The Accidental Spy. The plot: It’s 1967 and Susan Delaney is your carefree airline stewardess with aspirations that go no higher than working her way up to serving first class on flights to Paris, and meeting Mister Right. Then, one day she accepts fifty dollars to escort a misplaced suitcase to its owner. Before she knows what’s happened, she’s part of a cross-country chase by the KGB to get hold of the suitcase and its contents. Her allies are a handsome Mossad agent named Joe Klein and a grandmotherly El-Al air marshal named Sadie whose knitting bag contains a lethal arsenal.
What’s in the suitcase? Joe says it’s the plans for and samples of the world’s first microprocessor, a device thought to be years away from reality. Engineers at IBM and a California semiconductor company agree that it’s the real thing. Everyone – including the Mafia and a shadowy anti-Castro group – wants to buy it. The KGB and the East Germans want to steal it. To be part of history – and to hold onto Mister Right – all Susan has to do is keep herself (and Joe Klein) alive. But as readers, we also know one other important thing: that in 2011, a body has been discovered in Susan’s back yard. We know the body has been there since the 1960s. What we don’t know is whose body it is.
Although written as a work of romantic suspense, The Accidental Spy is carefully researched and historically accurate. The crux of the story – the ‘McGuffin’ as Alfred Hitchcock would have put it – is that all the pieces were in place in 1967 to create a working microprocessor (a device that would not make its appearance until 1971). The Accidental Spy posits that an effort was made to sell the technology to the Soviets, who rejected it only to discover that American companies had authenticated the device and were bidding for rights to it.
You can read the opening chapters here. You can buy a copy of the book here or here.
Deal Killer
Think ‘investment banking’ and your mind immediately conjures up multi-billion-dollar deals done on private jets over Champagne and caviar. That may be the way it works on TV and in the movies, but the real world is considerably more prosaic. An agreement is done, and then a cadre of ‘deal grunts’ move in to perform due diligence and put together a contract. 
In ‘Deal Killer’, one of those deal grunts is Lynn Kowalchuk, a junior investment banker, who has been sent to Nashua, New Hampshire for two weeks to work on closing the acquisition of a failing company by its larger competitor. What Lynn doesn’t know is that someone inside that failing company has figured out a way to illegally siphon off several million dollars of the sale proceeds. All he needs is complacency and indifference on the part of the bankers, attorneys and accountants working on the closing. Lynn is his complication: she takes every job seriously, even small ones like this.
When Lynn’s car is run off the road one evening, her nagging feeling that ‘something isn’t right’ turns into a full-blown search for the ‘deal killer’ and its perpetrator. What follows is tale of suspense, leavened with intelligence plus a dash of romance and even humor. Could something like this happen? I’d be very surprised if it hasn’t.
You can read more about Deal Killer here. You can buy it here or here.
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The opening chapters of these manuscripts, as well as backgrounds to the stories and links to plot summaries, are on this website and can be found by using the the navigation bar at the top of the page. I always enjoy hearing from readers, so please feel free to drop me an email (n_h_sanders <at> yahoo <dot> com) with your comments.
Many thanks for visiting. I’d love to turn you into a fan!
Neal Sanders