Muffalettas and Murder: Small Town Girl Mysteries
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Louisiana
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rougarou Press (January 30, 2023)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 238 pages

Synopsis

Evangeline Delafose is finding Graisseville, Louisiana just as she remembered—boring and uneventful. Until her brother Nate asks her to help solve a murder.

Follow Ev as she navigates clues, dead bodies, and quirky small-town residents to solve a mystery. And of course, show her little brother that she’s still got it.

If you like cozy mysteries with twists and turns, deep South settings, and a hint of romance, you’ll love this series! Let’s not forget quirky yet charming characters who remind you of family—sometimes you want to hug them, and sometimes you want to disown them. Enjoy small town Graisseville with Ev as she solves crime with help from her family and friends. This is a clean faith based read with no profanity, sex, or graphic violence.

This book is the first of the Small-Town Girl Mystery Series.

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Guest Post

Don’t Tell The FBI About My Browser History

When I stumbled into writing, I couldn’t believe how fun I was having! It was like being a parent, only with more control. I wanted my protagonist to have straight dark hair, glasses, and a PhD in English Literature. And she does! My children never obeyed that perfectly.

When I began this writing journey, I had to choose a genre. You know—mystery, thriller, horror, historical, romance, speculative fiction, science fiction, etc. Everyone says, “Write what you know.” But who wanted to read about a middle-aged CPA living on a farm in Louisiana? So I rolled the dice, so to speak, and chose something I’d like to know.

I knew I couldn’t write romance. Don’t get me wrong—I’m as romantic as the next person. But there’s one thing we all know about romance: the guy and the girl end up together at the end. Oh sure, there’s some twists and turns, maybe a couple of unexpected hiccups, if the writer’s really good. But we’re cheering for the two protagonists to get together, and we’d be angry if they didn’t. But as a writer, I have a hard time writing something when I already know the ending.

I love fantasy, science fiction, dystopian,…name the speculative fiction type, and I’ll read it. But could I write it? Probably not, because I’d have to create an entire new world. And I get lost in the one I currently live in. I could hear my future readers screaming because my maps made no sense. “What the heck, Jann? Here in the third book you created that massive forest complete with dragons. But in your first novel, you clearly described a metropolis with centaurs directing traffic…in the same dang place!”

Goodness, I can’t navigate a map here in the real world! There’s no way I could do it in one I made up.

That’s what brought me to mysteries. But no crime scenes with blood oozing everywhere and decapitated bodies. No, my mother-in-law reads my books—she already wonders about me, I don’t need to confirm any suspicions. And of course no wild sex scenes either—no need to make family dinners any more awkward than they already are.

I plotted out my first mystery, Muffalettas and Murder, and I knew exactly who the murderer was. A quarter of the way through the book I realized I had a serious problem: I tried so hard to disguise who the murderer was, that I made it so obvious by the lack of clues. In the end, I had to change my murderer, but it was a struggle. In my second mystery, Boudin and Bloodshed, I had no idea who the killer was. Strange, you might say, even unorthodox. But in talking to other mystery writers I’ve discovered it’s fairly common.

In my third book, Fruitcake and Fraud (due out the week of Thanksgiving), I had the big revealing clue all planned out. But I had no idea who the clue would point towards until the last three chapters. For me, the book flows better if I’m solving the mystery as I write. And that’s a lot of fun! Which brings me to another fun part of being a mystery writer…learning how to kill people.

Thanks to the internet, I’ve learned the best ways to strangle, stab, and shoot a person. Poisons are a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that. In Muffalettas, I researched handguns versus shotguns, the bullets they use, and which are most effective. I did a deep dive on blood spatter for the crime scene, too. I also researched the deepest body of water in Louisiana to dispose of a dead body (of course). For one suspect, I even looked into dealing drugs and laundering money.

In Boudin, I had to find out just how blood pressure medication affects the body and the best way to administer an overdose. I think Fruitcake has been my favorite, though, in terms of research, because the victim was stabbed. I scoured the internet long and hard for useful information on how the height of the killer affects the stab wound, the amount of mess the wound would cause, and how much upper body strength it would take.

For my fourth mystery, Mardi Gras and Mayhem, the victim’s shrimp po’ boy is poisoned. The internet isn’t specific enough for that research! Luckily, I found a class from The Poison Lady herself, Luci Hanson Zalvay. She’s a pharmacist who specializes in poisons. She works with law enforcement and writes books—she even has a locked cabinet full of various poisons and antidotes. I’ve also been listening to “The Poisoners’ Cabinet,” a podcast about crimes using poison. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted, but it’s a lot of fun.

Oh, by the way, if the FBI comes knocking on your door, asking if you know anything about this Jann Franklin character and all the bizarre sites saved in her browser history, just play it cool. Tell them I’m a writer, and it’s all research. Well, most of it, anyway.

About the Author

Jann Franklin is a faith-based cozy mystery writer living in Grand Cane, Louisiana with slightly less than three hundred other people. Many of her stories are based on the tales she hears from residents.

She and her husband John enjoy Sundays at Grand Cane Baptist Church, dinner with family and friends, and watching the lightning bugs in their backyard. Their kids come to visit, when they aren’t too busy living their big-city lives.

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