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ABOUT PRISCILLA PATON
If you’re reading this, you trust words. I once trusted words. As a reader/teacher/scholar, I put my faith in them. As a mystery writer, I trust that words will misdirect, deceive, and hide desperate deeds and motives.
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Welcome to the fictional world of Twin Cities Mysteries, with Detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger. A place where even the privacy of those in charge comes into question.
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Detective Erik Jansson discovers the body in a Twin Cities wetland:
This [wetland] couldn’t be the site of death. The man, the rotting semblance of one, was brought here, dragged and hidden. He wasn’t outfitted for bike adventures or birding excursions. The bloodied necktie retained its knotted symmetry, and the muck-saturated suit suggested formality and fussiness. The skull was damaged, the face already food for worms. When the team lifted the body, the footed shoe became unfooted. Erik picked up the shoe and two items fell out. One was a custom orthotic. The hairs on his neck stiffened. The other was a laminated photo of a girl, an adolescent curled in the fetal position.
PRISCILLA'S BLOG
FARM MYSTERIES Animals went missing. Those were the first mysteries of my life. When I was growing up in rural Maine during the 1960s, dogs and cats were free range to do their jobs. The dogs chased down rabbits and woodchucks, meaning fewer holes in the field to snag cows, ponies, and farm machinery. Cats…
The internet seems a custom fit for the adolescent brain: it is instantly receptive to impulses, secrets told beyond the hearing of adults, silly truth or dare games. Adolescents can find through social media the paradoxical assurance that a) no one has ever felt the way they do, they’re special; b) someone else has felt…
This is the week when my family and friends gather to celebrate the publication of my mystery, Where Privacy Dies. It is a celebration of the community support it takes for a book to come forth from an author’s hand, and there’s nothing like the feeling of holding the actual thing in hand—joy. And the tremendous…
What is your brand, and is it protected? I grew up believing my brand was “me” and I didn’t have to do much about it except be “me.” The “me” brand can change: the photo shows an old one. But everyone’s experienced how being yourself can be challenging and people around you might see, or…
Fight and flight requires fuel. The pursuit of murderers requires strength. Those who investigate must feed their appetites. What will my detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger consume so they can dodge death’s harvesting? Noir private eyes, the Sam Spades and Philip Marlowes, survive by downing hard liquor and bad coffee. Hardboiled doesn’t refer to…
Welcome to the fictional world of Twin Cities Mysteries, with Detectives Erik Jansson and Deb Metzger. If you’ve read this far, you trust words. Should you? I once trusted words. As a reader/teacher/scholar, I put my faith in them. As a mystery writer, I put my faith in them differently. I trust that words will…