Trap, Neuter, Die: A DeeLo Myer Cat Rescue Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st of Series
Setting – Georgia
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Level Best Books (October 29, 2024)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 286 pages

Synopsis

DeeLo Myer, newly transplanted from Los Angeles to Pecan Point, Georgia, gets sentenced to forty hours of community service with the local humane society. She’s paired with the judgmental Catherine Foster, a Trap-Neuter-Vaccinate-Return (TNVR) guru who prefers feral cats to people. During DeeLo’s first night on duty, she and Catherine are led by a cat to the strangled body of a local bookstore owner.

The cop who investigates seems less concerned with solving a homicide than with Catherine’s violation of an antiquated animal ordinance rendering TNVR illegal. The following evening, when he arrests Catherine for violating the said ordinance, and then holds her as a suspect in the murder, DeeLo vows to prove Catherine’s innocence and get the ridiculous law changed. How hard could it be? She enlists her boyfriend/boss and the resources of his law office. Her quest for justice and legislative change leads her to high-profile members of the community, some of whom have motives for murder.

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Guest Post

How I Became a Mystery Writer

I’m probably the only little girl who never read Nancy Drew—almost a rite of passage for an aspiring mystery writer. Okay, I did read the Bobbsey Twins and the Boxcar Children; I think those stories contained mysteries. But I never thought I could write a mystery.

When I was in graduate school at the University of Southern California, one of my professors, Shelly Lowenkopf, told us the best way to get published was to write genre fiction. He was a big mystery fan and suggested I write those. I resisted. I didn’t read many mysteries and had no idea how to plot a puzzle complex enough to keep an audience engaged.

Instead, I took his advice about genre fiction and tried writing a romance novel for my master’s thesis. My critique partners had told me I was good at creating scenes with subtle sexual tension and thus I’d be a natural at romance. But when I reached the end of the book, I couldn’t picture my heroine with either of the two men vying for her hand, so she said goodbye to both. I violated one of the major tropes of romance writing: the Happily Ever After ending. Although the novel earned me my degree, it didn’t sell.

When I graduated with a Master’s in Professional Writing, still unpublished, I got a job working for an airline. I loved the travel benefits, and the work I did had nothing to do with writing, leaving me to focus on my own creative projects in my off time.

One night, while working at the Los Angeles airport during a major construction phase, I walked through a long, deserted, temporary hallway to meet an incoming plane. The fog was rolling in, shadows loomed, and the ramp area where I waited was pitch dark. Someone could get killed out here and no one would notice what happened, I thought. The idea for my first mystery, Murder at Gate 58A, was born.

I had a great time writing it, creating a cast of quirky characters, each with motive and opportunity, and then trying to figure out whose motive was strong enough to commit murder. I was thrilled when I found an agent to represent me, but unfortunately, after almost two years of peddling my story around the publishing world, he gave up. Murder at Gate 58A is still on the shelf (or rather, on my computer). Maybe someday…

My fourth completed manuscript, Going Home, also a murder mystery, became my first novel to get published. Going Home was inspired by my mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, which prompted me to wonder what it would be like to interview a witness or a suspect who could not rely on her memory. It opens when the heroine visits her childhood home to check on her elderly mother, who has Alzheimer’s, and finds her hovering over the bludgeoned body of her caregiver. Alone. Unable to explain what happened. She becomes a suspect. The heroine is forced to remain in her hometown in a caregiving role while trying to prove her mother’s innocence. People from her past she thought she’d left behind pop back into her life and complicate her role as an amateur sleuth. Although I began writing Going Home in 2003, it took ten years and seven drafts before I received a publishing contract from Sunbury Press. In 2014, the book was released.

Sunbury also published my second mystery, Secrets of the Galapagos, in 2019, and a sequel, Murder at Leisure Dreams – Galapagos, will be released in 2025. Secrets of the Galapagos was inspired by a cruise my husband and I took to the Galapagos Islands in 2014 (fortunately with a lot less mayhem). I had a great time writing that book—reliving my trip by reviewing my photos and notes and doing additional research online. I was hoping to return to the Galapagos to research the sequel, but because the pandemic shut everything down, I had to rely on memories, Google, and imagination.

Last year, I signed a three-book contract with Level Best Books for a cozy mystery series about a woman who does cat rescue. (Trap, Neuter, Die, released in November 2024, is the first in that series; Trapped and Tested, the second book, is scheduled for September 2025.) As a long-time volunteer for the Fayette Humane Society and a crazy cat lady (if only my husband would allow it), I’ve wanted to feature an animal rescue group in a novel, especially after learning how dire the pet overpopulation crisis is. Through my volunteer work, I’ve also learned that many municipalities, including the county where I reside, have draconian animal ordinances that make it difficult to implement programs such as Trap/Neuter/Vaccinate/Return that help control cat overpopulation.

What better way to educate the public about an important issue than to embed it in a story? Drop a dead body, add a lot of suspects with motives for murder, and put my amateur sleuth in the middle of it. After all, I am a mystery writer.

About the Author

Sharon Marchisello is the author of the DeeLo Myer cozy mystery series from Level Best Books, starting with Trap, Neuter, Die (2024). Her two previous mysteries were published by Sunbury Press: Going Home (2014) and Secrets of the Galapagos (2019). She is an active member of Sisters in Crime. She contributed short stories to the anthologies Shhhh…Murder! (Darkhouse Books, 2018) Finally Home (Bienvenue Press, 2019) and Smoking Guns (Wildside Press, 2024). Her personal finance book Live Well, Grow Wealth (2018) was originally published as Live Cheaply, Be Happy, Grow Wealthy, an e-book on Smashwords. Sharon has published travel articles, book reviews, corporate training manuals, and a personal finance blog called Countdown to Financial Fitness. She grew up in Tyler, Texas, and earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Houston in French and English. She studied for a year in Tours, France, on a Rotary scholarship and then moved to Los Angeles to pursue her Masters in Professional Writing at the University of Southern California. Retired from a 27-year career with Delta Air Lines, she lives in Peachtree City, Georgia, doing volunteer work for the Fayette Humane Society, the Fayette County Master Gardeners UGA Extension, and the Friends of the Peachtree City Library.

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