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| Plymouth Magazine, November 2006 |
Tea for You?
Cozy up to Gerry Schmitt, Plymouth’s very own Nancy Drew
by Kelly Westhoff
As a girl, Gerry Schmitt was a thrill-seeker. “I was the kid who snuck into cemeteries on a dare,” she said. “I read every Nancy Drew book. I watched the Twilight Zone. I was the kid at camp who was telling ghost stories.”
Perhaps it‘s only natural, therefore, that as an adult, Schmitt is an accomplished mystery writer. Publishing under the pen name Laura Childs—a name her husband picked for its cozy, southern sound—Schmitt is the author of 11 books. Her titles make up two popular mystery series: the Tea Shop Mysteries and the Scrapbook Mysteries. Blood Orange Brewing (Berkley Publishing, April 2006), the latest installment in the Tea Shop series, was published in April of this year. Her most recent title, Motif for Murder (Berkley Publishing, September 2006), was released in September.
“My books are murder mysteries,” Schmitt explained, “but they’re not thriller, killer, slasher books. Women are tired of violence against women. They don’t want those types of books on their nightstands, but they still like a mystery read.”
Instead, Schmitt’s titles are considered “cozy” mysteries, a kinder, gentler sort of murder story in the tradition of Agatha Christie. “There’s a dead body in the first chapter,” Schmitt said, “and it’s a usually a bloodless murder. The main character is an amateur sleuth who gets pulled into the mystery for some reason, and in the end, the bad guy always gets caught.”
Schmitt’s first series, the Tea Shop Mysteries, features amateur sleuth Theodosia Browning. Browning owns a tea shop in historic Charleston, South Carolina. The tea shop’s tasty pastries and unique brews earn Browning catering gigs at many of Charleston’s top social events. At these parties, a murder takes place, a mystery develops, and Theodosia, once again, gets pulled into the mess.
The second series, the Scrapbook Mysteries, features Carmela Bertrand as unwitting detective. Bertrand’s business, a scrapbooking store in New Orleans’ French Quarter, puts her in contact with a slew of characters seeking advice on how to restore old photographs and papers. In the process of rescuing damaged pictures and album pages, Bertrand discovers clues to troublesome mysteries.
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The remainder of this article can be found in the November 2006 issue of Plymouth Magazine.
To learn more about the Tea Shop Mysteries and the Scrapbook Mysteries, visit www.laurachilds.com.