Marilyn Meredith authors new mystery novel

Mystery author Marilyn Meredith – who lives in Springville – spent Friday and Saturday at the Porterville Art Center, promoting, signing, and selling copies of her latest book, “Dispel the Mist,” along with some of her other published works.

The back-to-back book signing event took place in conjunction with the Porterville Art Association’s Christmas Boutique and Art Show.

“Dispel the Mist” is the eighth in Meredith’s Tempe Crabtree Mystery Series. The books feature Deputy Tempe Crabtree and stories are set in and around the make-believe Tulare County community of Dennison – which might remind you of Porterville – and nearby village of Bear Creek – which is reminiscent of Springville – as well as on the Bear Creek Indian Reservation which bears a resemblance in Meredith’s stories to the Tule River Reservation.

Despite rainy weather, Meredith was able to sell eight books on Friday, which she said “isn’t bad.”

She also sold some of her earlier novels, including “No Sanctuary,” which is one of four finalists in the Epic E-book mystery competition, and is part of her Rocky Bluff Police Department Mystery Series, which takes place in a fictional town much like Carpenteria.

Dispel the Mist, which was published in September, follows the series’ protagonist, Deputy Tempe Crabtree and her dealings with yet another mysterious murder case on the Bear Creek Reservation. In this story, she is faced with what eventually becomes a life-threatening assignment to investigate the suspicious death of a Tulare County Supervisor. Crabtree must use her knowledge of the Bear Creek Reservation to pursue the case, but ends up having her own life threatened. While the supervisor’s husband and others want her dead, Crabtree begins to have unsettling dreams which hearken back to some of the stories her grandmother had shared with her about the legend of the Hairy Man.

Meredith said she gets a lot of the inspiration and ideas to write her stories from the Tule River Reservation, although she changes specific facts and adds her creative touches of suspense and mystery to fictionalize the stories.

“I do borrow a lot from [the Reservation],” she said. “I love writing [about] the Reservation. Bear Creek is a lot like Tule River.”

In the Tempe Crabtree Mystery Series, someone always gets murdered, and the progression of the novel seeks to identify “who done it,” Meredith said.

She said her ideas for “Dispel the Mist” after she joined a field trip in the Sierra foothills with professor Richard Osborne and his anthropology class at Porterville College. One of the sites they visited was a rock with a pictograph of the legendary Hairy Man, a creature which has been likened to the idea of Big Foot.

“When I saw that, I knew I had to write about it,” she said, recalling how she immediately began asking the resident of the Tule River Reservation who was leading the tour, about whether there had been any actual sightings of the Hairy Man and other questions that would help her to shape her story.

The dedication to her new book includes recognition of the young man who led the field trip hike, J.R. Manuel, for his “patient” explanation of the Hairy Man legend. It also reads, “…to Richard Osborne, professor of Anthropology and Native American classes at Porterville College, who was kind enough to invite me along on his class field trip on the reservation to the Painted Rock. I also want to acknowledge the young people in the class who helped this author climb up and down boulders.”

Meredith also dedicates “Dispel the Mist” to J.P. Pope, who told her about a murder in her family, which prompted the book’s storyline.

Meredith has been writing since she was a child, and has written 28 books that have been published, in addition to those she wrote before being published, she said. “I’ve just been a big reader all of my life. As a kid I always wrote plays.”

Writing is not something she does to make a profit, she said, but something she does out of an appreciation for good mystery. And, “if you have the stories in your head, you just need to sit down and write them.” She uses everything from newspaper articles to graduation ceremonies to glean ideas for events and names to include in her stories.

“I know this Deputy Crabtree better than I know anybody, because I created her. I know everything about my characters, because I know what they think,” Meredith said.

She is currently working on a ninth book for the Tempe Crabtree series, which has to do with bears. She was given the idea while talking with her grandson, who is a police officer in Aspen, and who told her of a problem in his area of bears that have managed to learn how to trespass into houses, leave doors open and eat rocky road ice cream.

Information about Meredith’s work is available online at fictionforyou.com.