Welcome to my stop on the Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour for The Murder at Red Oaks (Mosey Frye Mysteries) by Kay Pritchett. Stop by each blog on the tour for interviews, guest posts, spotlights, reviews and more!

The Murder at Red Oaks (Mosey Frye Mysteries)

by Kay Pritchett

The Murder at Red Oaks (Mosey Frye Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
7th in Series
Setting – The fictional town of Hembree, Arkansas
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wild Rose Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 22, 2025
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages

What a chilling sight when real estate agent Mosey Frye enters her client’s grand Victorian only to find her strangled and laid out in a coffin. Clued in on the bizarre murder, the new forensic profiler in town raises the intriguing theory of “posing,” suggesting the culprit, plagued by remorse, decided to honor the victim with a grand send-off.

Meanwhile, police chief Gus Olivera, sticking to the evidence, makes a breakthrough by identifying the coffin as one that is missing from the mausoleum. It originally belonged to the victim’s young ward, tragically drowned in the lake by the house years earlier. With real and amateur sleuths baffled, townspeople fear yet another attack from the deranged killer among them.

Guest Post: Capturing a Time and Place

Capturing a Time and Place: The Urgency of Memory in Storytelling

This article might be considered a corollary to my blog article on character, where I introduced some of the characters that populate Mosey Frye Mysteries. As I wrote that article, I began to contemplate the characters beyond their individual traits and explore the reason for their creation. The straightforward answer might be that they serve as the driving force behind the plot. This notion would certainly be valid in an action-oriented narrative.

During my years of teaching literature courses, I encountered the concept of the character-driven story. While any genre can be characterized by this approach, the specific reference I recall pertains to drama, specifically a type of drama in which the evolution of the protagonist takes center stage.

If someone had asked me a week ago whether my stories were primarily driven by action or character, I would have hesitated, as I still do. However, I am gradually realizing that my characters are intrinsically linked to a purpose, if not the very purpose that fuels my writing: the desire to preserve a past that seems to be rapidly slipping away.

The Urgency of Memory: Why We Write What’s Vanishing

Sometimes when I write—or read what I’ve written—I think, everybody who knew about this is dead now. That’s an exaggeration, but this feeling haunts me: the texture of those times is vanishing. That’s one reason I feel compelled to get it down on paper.

Something irreplaceable is being lost. Historians preserve the facts, but what about the lived reality—how people actually spoke, what excited them on an ordinary Tuesday morning, the rhythm of daily life that shaped how they experienced momentous change.

We’re losing the small details that bring history to life. These intimate textures are often the first to vanish from chronicles, given that broader trends and significant dates tend to smooth them away. But without them, we lose something essential about what it meant to be human in that time and place.

This is why storytelling matters beyond entertainment. When we capture these vanishing voices—really hear them and transcribe not just their words but their cadences, their concerns, their particular way of seeing—we become keepers of cultural memory. We preserve not just what happened, but how it felt to live through it.

What We Stand to Lose

The urgency I feel isn’t academic. It’s personal and immediate, focused on preserving specific people, places, and ways of being that shaped a world I grew up in. I fear the loss of people in particular occupations, the ones who actually brought an occupation to life. I’m thinking of the old time receptionist or secretary like Dot Cowsley with her gracious hospitality, her sense of respect and privacy, her ability to keep a big secret forever, her talent as a storyteller, her genuine emotion, her willingness to listen. And the police officers like Springer and Reagan, who can swiftly identify individuals and assess their potential for committing a crime. Well-acquainted with the locations of all the trail cameras on the outskirts of town, they take surveillance to a new level. 

I fear the loss of places that held the fabric of community together—town centers like the Square, old taverns that offered lodging as well as food, hospitals like Delta Infirmary that intimated the tastes of a bygone era, businesses with worn-down steps going up, nightspots such as Al’s Super Club, where many yearned to be on a Saturday night but only the bold took the plunge. To reach some of these places, a person had to travel a road that also had a character and “life” of its own. I’m thinking now of an old road in the vicinity of the levee—a tunnel of vegetation that a person would venture down with great trepidation. I’m also thinking of mysterious spots on the outskirts like Old Mose’s Cabin that attracted kudzu and legends like a magnet.

I fear the loss of language—the Southern drawl, the use of “y’all” instead of “you,” expressions like “I swanee” that carried generations of meaning in their cadences.

And I fear the loss of mores and customs that shaped how people treated one another: reciprocity, courtesy, kindnesses like taking food to the home of grieving friends. And the culinary details that seemed insignificant but weren’t—cream served in tiny cream jars, pats of real butter (not in plastic), coffee poured into a heavy ceramic cup with a saucer.

Becoming Keepers of Cultural Memory

My characters, I realize now, are vessels for preserving this vanishing world. They carry not just individual personalities but entire ways of being, speaking, and understanding life that are rapidly disappearing. Through them, I hope to capture not merely what happened in that place and time, but how it felt to live through it—the particular excitement in someone’s voice, the rhythm of daily life, the texture of human experience that makes the past feel real and present.

This work feels urgent because once these voices fall silent, once the last person who remembers how things really were is gone, something irreplaceable vanishes with them. But in stories, we can keep that world alive—not as museum pieces, but as living, breathing reality that continues to speak to us across time.

About Kay Pritchett

Kay Pritchett, a native of Greenville, Mississippi, lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she taught Spanish literature at the state’s flagship university. At retirement, she threw herself into fiction writing and has wrapped up seven books in the Mosey Frye Mystery series. As a mystery writer, she delights in blending the charming wit of amateur sleuth Mosey Frye with the suave sophistication of police chief Gus Olivera. She’s all about sprinkling her mystery novels with lively banter, highlighting the dynamic interactions between Mosey and her trusty sidekick Nadia, as well as the intriguing dialogues between Olivera and sharp-witted coroner Eads McGinnis. Her goal? To transport readers into the thrilling world of an Agatha Christie whodunit, but with a delightful twist—think verandas and paddle boats! Murder in High Cotton (2022), inspired by childhood memories of the Delta, anthologizes her first three short mystery novels. Since then, she has launched four full-length novels: The Summer House at Larkspur, The Incident at Sunny Banks,  The House with a Secret Cellar, and The Murder at Red Oaks.

Author Links

Website: https://www.moseyfryemysteries.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/kay.pritchett.9

(1) Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/moseyfrye/

Kay Pritchett (Author of Happiness) | Goodreads

Purchase Links – Amazon    B&N      Bookshop.org      Alibris

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The Murder at Red Oaks TOUR PARTICIPANTS

September 29 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – AUTHOR GUEST POST

September 29 – Cozy Up With Kathy – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

September 29 – Books1987 – SPOTLIGHT

September 30 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT

September 30 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

October 1 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT

October 1 – Salty Inspirations – CHARACTER GUEST POST

October 1 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT

October 2 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT

October 2 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

October 3 – Sarandipity’s – AUTHOR GUEST POST

October 3 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT

October 4 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – SPOTLIGHT

October 4 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT

October 4 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – AUTHOR GUEST POST

October 5 – StoreyBook Reviews – CHARACTER GUEST POST

October 5 – My Books and Crafts – SPOTLIGHT

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