"See Also Deception"

Larry D. Sweazy's novels include A Thousand Falling Crows, Escape from Hangtown, See Also Murder: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery, Vengeance at Sundown, The Gila Wars, The Coyote Tracker, The Devil's Bones, The Cougar's Prey, The Badger's Revenge, The Scorpion Trail, and The Rattlesnake Season. He won the WWA (Western Writers of America) Spur award for Best Short Fiction in 2005 and for Best Paperback Original in 2013. He also won the 2011 and 2012 Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction for books the Josiah Wolfe series. He was nominated for a Derringer award in 2007 (for the short story "See Also Murder"), and was a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana literary competition in 2010. Sweazy was awarded the Best Books in Indiana in 2011 for The Scorpion Trail. And in 2013, he received the inaugural Elmer Kelton Fiction Book of the Year for The Coyote Tracker, presented by the AWA (Academy of Western Artists). Sweazy has published over sixty nonfiction articles and short stories, which have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine; The Adventure of the Missing Detective: And 25 of the Year's Finest Crime and Mystery Stories!; Boys' Life; Hardboiled; Amazon Shorts, and several other publications and anthologies.

Sweazy applied the Page 69 Test to See Also Deception, his new Marjorie Trumaine Mystery, and reported the following:

On page 69, Marjorie finds the invasive plant, musk thistle, on her own land. She is on her way home from her first visit in town after learning that Calla Eltmore committed suicide. Musk thistle is the plant that sent her to phone the library to see if it was an perennial or biennial plant for the index she was writing. When no one answered, Marjorie knew something was wrong. While this incident isn’t deeply representative of the rest of the book, it does represent the essence of Marjorie’s character. She is curious to a fault. Her curiosity leads her to ask questions that may in the end be uncomfortable—or dangerous—for her. It is this trait that propels Marjorie forward to investigate Calla’s death on her own. Marjorie couldn’t believe that Calla was capable of killing herself, and she sought out the answers when no one in the position of authority would help her find the truth. The musk thistle, considered a weed, blended in with the rest of the thistles, hiding in plain sight, just like the answers—and the killer—that Marjorie was intent on seeking out.

Learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Larry D. Sweazy & Brodi and Sunny (April 2013).

--Marshal Zeringue