By the time my daughter Rye rolls in for breakfast, it’s barely 6am. I’ve been up an hour, listening to the scanner, faithfully doing my had-a-heart-‘incident’-that caused-me-to-fall-off-a-ladder-and-break-a-leg exercises, and planning my cooking and self-defense after-school tutorial for nine, or is it ten-year-old? Rachel, niece of Rye’s off again boyfriend. Rachel reminds me of Rye at the same age, smart, plucky, hiding her feelings about there being no mom around.

Rye’s very responsible these days, but I am pretty sure that little girl is still in there. She’s the Vice Principal at Stoneridge High, and the only time she can answer emails and prep for her day is before school starts. Usually, I make coffee, and she grabs a bowl of cereal or banana and takes her caffeine to go, but it’s been a tough week, so I decided to make her favorite – toad in the hole. Everything I cook is just comfort food with a jailhouse twist, but I think there’s a cookbook in my future.

This morning Rye smiles at me gratefully, although she doesn’t mutter more than “good morning” as she drops a kiss on my cheek. She’s never been chatty when she gets up – not as a kid, and not now that she lives out in the apartment she built in our old barn. I don’t mind. I have my paper, which I pretend to hide behind while watching her. She called me out on it when she was fourteen, but we still do it. Even the online version of the paper doesn’t have much news on the body Rye’s friend…well, I guess she’s my friend now…Anyway, on the body that our friend Wanda found in the woods behind the high school. I already have more details from my contacts than what’s been released. Retired sheriffs don’t so much fade away as fade into the station walls when information is being exchanged.

I imagine Wanda’s finding a dead man, Jonathan Thorne, who is some kind of parttime teacher at the school, on the heels of Rye’s break up with her boyfriend Andy, Rachel’s uncle, plus finding out that a former student from the high school died hit-and-run the same night has been a lot to process for both of them. Hey! I’m not comparing murder to being dumped though, see above–no-mom. I’ve got “dumped” as deep as my two stents. On the same day, it’s a brutal combination! Rye is inscrutable, as usual, about it all, but she’s worried about Wanda, who got pretty badly injured in in their first outing as amateur detectives last spring, and the drama department students, who’ve lost a beloved teacher.

Wanda will deal with it…eventually and without accepting the help that would make it easier, although I would never say that to her face. In fact, I can’t say it to Rye, because she might wonder whether I’m thinking too frequently about her sleuthing partner who is, after all, closer to my age than hers. I’m sure that whether Wanda’s former boyfriend and my successor Sheriff Ryan Phennen takes this seriously or not, the two of them will. As Wanda told me when I brought dinner the other day, “it’s complicated.”

What about me? I will cook for them while they compare notes and eavesdrop for them. Who notices what’s said in front of a has-been or a corpse? I’m happy with my role, even if I used to be Phennen’s boss. Now, I’m just Dad…

Death in the Woods, A Rev & Rye Mystery Book #2
Genre: Cozy
Release: July 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Misty fall weather should make for an idyllic walk in the New England woods and a needed respite from Reverend Wanda Duff’s duties. She’ll just take a stroll with her dog, breathe in the cool air, and remember that she loves her job and doesn’t really long for a life of solitude, even when the quiet red-and-gold patch of forest tempts her with it.

But she should’ve known she couldn’t really catch a break.

She only saw his hand—cold, palm up. In the twilight, everything else was indistinct. And even as Wanda said a prayer for the dead man and called for help, she couldn’t shake the feeling of another presence, one that would compel her to follow a path out of these woods to find a killer.

But ever since Wanda and her friend Rye solved a murder together, no one has wanted the reverend to take on anything more dangerous than choir practice. She has no choice, really, but to carry the news of her discovery directly to no-nonsense Assistant Principal Rye, who understands because her own life was upended by last summer’s investigation. Rye’s own life is upended, period.

Unfortunately, solving the murder of drama teacher Jonathan Thorne isn’t an undertaking Wanda and Rye can accomplish without involving their ever-widening circle of family and friends, which means that in addition to investigating, they have to resolve a few personal problems of their own. The truth is, nothing happens in a quaint New England town without everyone noticing. Without everyone speculating. Without everyone talking.

Without everyone knowing a killer is among them.

About the author
Maria Mankin and Maren Tirabassi are the kind of co-writers that either crash and burn or know instinctually how to edit each other … daughter and mother!! (Yes, it works, though each gives an eye-roll to the other’s humor.) Maria has written five non-fiction books and the thriller “Circ” (Pigeon Park Press). Rye’s dilemmas are influenced by Maria’s ten years in education as a teacher and administrator. Maren pens Rev. Wanda from forty-two years in parish ministry (it’s all true, just not all her). She’s a former Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and has published poetry and fiction in fifteen anthologies and five books of her own, as well as sixteen non-fiction Pilgrim Press titles.

All comments are welcomed.