A Whale of a Murder: A Venus Bixby Mystery by Valerie Taylor

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A Whale of a Murder: A Venus Bixby Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Chatham Crossing — a fictional whaling town situated between Providence and Cape Cod
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Aspetuck Publishing (April 23, 2024)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 358 pages

First in the Venus Bixby Mystery series from award-winning author Valerie Taylor.

Sea breezes and fireworks fill the air in cozy Chatham Crossing, the peaceful and historic whaling town situated between Providence and Cape Cod.

Venus Bixby, owner of the forever popular music store Oldies & Goodies, is counting on the festivities over the Fourth of July weekend to propel her to a position on the prestigious Town Committee.

After years of living in the shadow of her late husband, Venus will finally be the center of attention this holiday weekend: starting with her fiftieth birthday celebration and ending as the parade’s Grand Marshal.

Faster than a cookie crumbles, her dream collapses on the morning of her party when she trips over orange platform shoes in the gardens of the Sofia Silva Whaling Museum and breaks her thumb. When it’s discovered the shoes are attached to the body of the manager of the museum’s gift shop, Venus becomes both a suspect and a sleuth in Chatham Crossing’s first murder in decades.

Given this unexpected turn of events, will Venus ever sing and dance at her birthday party, or will her fractured thumb end up in handcuffs?

Includes cookie recipes and playlist!

Guest Post from Author Valerie Taylor

To whom do we attribute the phrase “What’s in a name?” Ten points if you said it was William Shakespeare. Twenty points if you knew it was a line in Romeo and Juliet. Thirty points if you knew Juliet uttered it. Forty points if you can recite the line that followed: “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”

But this isn’t a game of Jeopardy!

What it is, though, is a brief commentary about the significance of names in novels and a look behind the curtain about how I named characters and places in my debut cozy mystery, A WHALE OF A MURDER: A VENUS BIXBY MYSTERY.

If we are to believe Juliet (or her creator), a name is only important to distinguish a person, place, or thing from another person, place, or thing. If that is so, consider why authors gave us these colorful and memorable characters:

Voldemort — Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling

Ebenezer Scrooge — A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Forrest Gump — Forrest Gump, Winston Groom

Boo Radley — To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee

I imagine these writers, and others, would like to have a word with The Bard of Avon. Or perhaps even with Ernest Hemingway, who apparently agreed that naming is irrelevant to the story. Ironic, isn’t it? Mention the name Shakespeare or Hemingway, and there’s no mistaking who we’re talking about.

Similarly, the names of places in novels often blaze a long-lasting image that evolve into our everyday cultural discourse. Consider Wakanda, Narnia, Hogwarts, and Camelot. Though just names of locations, they provide powerful imagery that’s not easy to shake out of our minds.

Enough about Shakespeare, Hemingway, and places we envision well after we’ve turned the last page.

I had a dandy of a time naming so many things in A WHALE OF A MURDER: A VENUS BIXBY MYSTERY.

Let’s start with the star of the show: Venus Bixby. Actually, Venus first appears in the last book of my romantic comedy, WHAT’S NOT LOST, as the aunt of the antagonist in that story. She has a minor role, but I loved her so much I decided to spin her off into her own series. Venus and her twin sister, Sherrie, were named by their parents who were hippies in the sixties living in San Francisco. Longing to infuse music into the twins’ lives forever, their parents named them after popular song titles.

However, I pulled Venus’s last name out of thin air. It’s her married name, and frankly, it just fits the style of a character who puts her nose where it doesn’t belong, has high self-esteem, and together with her first name portrays someone who is short and sassy. The perfect sleuth.

One minor character in the story is Jeremy Roserun, who is allergic to pollen emanating from flowers and shrubs of all kinds. With a last name of Roserun, what else could he be but the master gardener at the whaling museum?

Just like writers often do, I named several of my characters in honor of people I know. The physician assistant is Jeanne, after my sister. The owner of the hair salon is Gabby, after a special author friend. I fondly named Venus’s love interest Budd after a cute guy I had a crush on in junior high school. (And yes, he knows he’s been so named.)

Cecilia is a name that appears in the What’s Not trilogy and again in A WHALE OF A MURDER. However, they are two different characters. My young granddaughter Cecilia has demanded that a character in each of my books carries her name, no matter the role the character plays. Not to worry, though, I’ve put my Cecilia to work naming characters in the rest of the Venus Bixby Mystery series.

Most cozy mysteries are set in a small town. Inspired by charming and coastal New Bedford, Massachusetts, I was determined to create my own historic whaling village. With a nod to Chatham on Cape Cod and my town located midway between Providence and the Cape, the world of Chatham Crossing was founded.

Because I’m a bit of a looney writer, I carried the alliteration of Chatham Crossing further. The newpaper is The Chatham Chronicle. Local enterprises include Carefree Catering and the Chatham Crossing Clinic, a.k.a. the Cube.

As a way to reinforce Venus’s music heritage, she owns a retro-music store that also houses a cookie bakery. The storefront is called Oldies & Goodies (not Oldies but Goodies, like the song). And the bakery within the store is eponymously named Bixby’s Dozen, kind of a word play reinforcing both Venus’s ownership of a store having thirteen bakers (i.e., a baker’s dozen). Not sure if readers got this reference, but I had fun creating it.

Realistically, I don’t expect Venus Bixby or Chatham Crossing to become household names. The most I could wish for is that readers of A WHALE OF A MURDER look forward to the rest of the series in a cozy town with some distinctive and amusing characters.

I do wonder, though, if Shakespeare envisioned the name Romeo becoming synonymous forever with a male lover or that Romeo would serve as the communication code word for the letter R. If only we could ask.

About Valerie Taylor

Valerie Taylor tried to retire in 2016. But life had other ideas. After enjoying some of the best years of her life in Boston and Seattle, she moved back home to Connecticut and embarked on a second career as an author. Her first romantic comedy trilogy What’s Not Said, What’s Not True, and What’s Not Lost won multiple awards. Encouraged by her readers, she created a new cozy mystery series, spinning one of the secondary characters in What’s Not LOST into the role of amateur sleuth in A Whale of a Murder: A Venus Bixby Mystery. When she’s not writing or reading, Valerie enjoys practicing tai chi and being an expert sports spectator.

Author Links

Website: https://valerietaylorauthor.com

Facebook: facebook.com/valerietaylorauthor

Twitter/X: twitter.com/ValerieEMTaylor

Instagram: Instagram.com/ValerieETaylor/

Purchase Links – Amazon – B&N – Bookshop.org