Pride and Principal: A Silicon Valley Mystery
Cozy Mystery
6th in Series
Setting – California
BGM Press (April 23, 2024)
Number of Pages: 230

Synopsis

The school secretary has a sharp tongue but is she a killer? Can Marty do the math or will he get schooled by a criminal mastermind?

Marty Golden is frazzled. Struggling to juggle nieces, a rambunctious dog, a demanding job, and a serious relationship, the software engineer is never quite sure whether he’s coming or going. But when his nemesis begs for help after she’s accused of offing the school principal, the amateur sleuth agrees to hunt down the real culprit.

Confounded to discover the cantankerous woman stood to take the dead man’s position, he strives to find anyone who could benefit from discrediting the grump. And when his brilliant deductions and personal life implode, not even Marty’s groan-worthy dad-jokes can save him from an explosive threat.

Does this bumbling amateur sleuth have what it takes to capture the real killer?

Pride and Principal is the rollicking sixth book in the Silicon Valley cozy mystery series. If you like heroes in over their head, family hijinks, and plenty of wit and charm, then you’ll love Marc Jedel’s wild ride.

Try Pride and Principal to put two and two together today!

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Guest Post

There I was, sitting at a Stanford women’s basketball game in early November when a friend asked, “So, what’s your next book?”

My mind was blank.

The friend laughed at my reaction and said, “You should have a story set here. This place is pretty crazy.” She pointed around us at the typical nuttiness of a Stanford game. Their team name references not the bird, but the shade of red which, not so accidentally, is used on my book cover. Their mascot of a redwood tree has no arms and can’t bend over, seriously limiting the ability of the mascot from engaging with children or winning a mascot vs mascot dance-off competition. And, let’s not even get started on Stanford’s nonconformist band, which barely manages to play tunes in sync and certainly never coordinates their clothing or movements. And perhaps geekiest of all, the band loves to chant: “2X plus 4, where X is your score” whenever Stanford has achieved a lead matching their math.

Yes, a basketball game at Stanford can be quite the unusual experience. I realized that my Silicon Valley Mystery series, with my favorite character Marty, would likely need its next book to take place in the month of January in order to remain consistent with the pace of the series. This meant it would be right during basketball season. Quickly, I committed to my friend to have a key scene take place in the stadium at one of the games. I next spent too much of the following few games looking at everything in the stadium, except for the basketball game.

I’d had the title on a list of possible titles for years when I first brainstormed for suitable cozy titles. These tend to use puns or homonyms for humor. I’d always liked the idea of getting Marty sucked into helping his longtime nemesis, the school secretary, Mrs. Quarles, to get out of a jam where she’s accused of murder. I really enjoy writing Mrs. Quarles’ character and felt it would be lots of fun to force Marty and her to spend more time together. And it was!

So there I was with an idea of how the story began and where the story ended. Fleshing out the rest of the plot and writing the novel seemed to fly by, but I didn’t quite get it finished before the season ended in March. Perhaps if Stanford continued on to win the National Championship, I’d have had enough time. I’ll send a complaint about this to the coach and see if she can work on it for next season.

Pride and Principal is my tenth cozy published. That’s a number I find hard to believe, let alone that nearly 200,000 copies of my novels are in readers’ hands plus another 3 million pages have been read by Kindle Unlimited members. That audience motivates me to try to make each new novel better.

Although I’ve started two new series (the Ozarks Lake Mystery series and the Redwoods Country Mystery series), Marty and the Silicon Valley Mystery series remains the stories and characters that I enjoy writing the most. My wife loves Marty too, even if she’s less keen on my process for writing him, mostly because she thinks it’s strange for a grown man to be constantly laughing to himself as he types on a computer.

Pride and Principal brings back many of the fan-favorite side characters while also tying up loose ends from the earlier novels in the series. It’s not necessarily the end of the Silicon Valley Mystery series, but I do plan to focus on other series for at least the next little while. Unless, of course, someone offers me a movie deal or sales start to boom.

About the Author

Marc Jedel writes humorous murder mysteries. He credits his years of marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley for honing his writing skills and sense of humor. While his high-tech marketing roles involved crafting plenty of fiction, these were just called emails, ads, and marketing collateral.

For most of Marc’s life, he’s been inventing stories. It’s a skill that’s served him well as both an author and marketer. The publication of Marc’s first novel, Uncle and Ants, gave him permission to claim “author” as his job. This leads to much more interesting conversations with people than answering, “marketing.”

Like his character, Andy, from the Redwoods Country Mystery series, Marc continues to grow older and would prefer not to run a bed-and-breakfast inn when he retires. Like his character, Marty from the Silicon Valley Mystery series, Marc now lives in Silicon Valley, works in high-tech, and enjoys bad puns. Like his characters Jonas and Elizabeth from the Ozarks Lake Mystery series, he grew up in the South and spent plenty of time in and around Arkansas. Like all his protagonists, Marc too has a dog, although his is neurotic, sweet, and small, with little appreciation for Marc’s humor.

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