Author Guest Post with A Diet of Death by Jinny Alexander

Ballyfortnum Get Slim group–putting the die in diet.

Welcome to the October 28th stop on the blog tour for A Diet of Death by Jinny Alexander with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Author Guest Post

A Diet of Cozy Mysteries

I asked my writing group friends what they’d like to read about for this blog post, and they came up with some great suggestions.

My favourite is this: ‘Write about all the different kinds of detective figures that inspired you.’

This isn’t something I’ve written about before, although I did touch on it in my launch party for A Diet of Death recently. As many (all?) cozy mystery writers are probably aware, we recently lost one of the genre’s most revered actresses, with the sad death of Angela Lansbury, known to millions for her portrayal of Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote. As a child, I would watch this show religiously, with my mum, also a big fan of cozy mystery. I don’t really remember the plotlines, or any details, but what I do recall is the cozy feeling of sitting there with my mum, watching this wonderful show, and trying to guess who committed the crimes before Jessica Fletcher worked it out. That ‘cozy’ feeling is exactly what this genre is about.

It seems serendipitous that the launch party for my new cozy series took place on what would have been Angela Lansbury’s 97^th birthday, and that my series pays tribute to Jessica Fletcher in the naming of my main characters. When I first came up with the name ‘Jessica O’Malley’ for my own amateur sleuth, my tutor (I wrote A Diet of Death as part of an Open University course) questioned whether I should use a first name already associated with a great fictional detective. My response was immediate: I promptly named Jessica’s dog ‘Fletcher’, embracing the link. This decision set the scene for refencing many other mystery characters throughout my book – something I had enormous fun with.

During my research into Cozy Mystery (again as part of that Open University course) I noted that referencing classic amateur detective fiction is remarkably common in the genre, and that many Cozy writers clearly enjoy doing this just as much as I do. For me, it hints at a real camaraderie between writers in this genre and emphasizes our love of sprinkling clues and Easter Eggs throughout our books. In an interview recently, I likened the Cozy genre to doing jigsaw puzzles; a calm, relaxing activity, with a bit of a challenge and a determination to put the pieces together to complete the picture. As a child, some of my favourite jigsaw puzzles had some specially-shaped pieces – often objects that related to the puzzle’s main picture. We all loved finding those special pieces. I think that weaving references to other amateur sleuths throughout our books is the Cozy Mystery writers’ equivalent of hiding fun-shaped puzzle pieces. They don’t really change the story, but they are great fun to discover.

I won’t give any spoilers as to which other fictional characters have slipped into the pages of A Diet of Death, but I will say that Jess O’Malley loves to read and watch mystery, so her own bookshelves are laden with the same books that I was brought up with: Agatha Christies; Nancy Drew; The Five Find-Outers; The Three Investigators… Jess’s favourite films and TV shows are always murder mysteries. As a child her favourite pastime was sleuthing, and all the family pets were named for fictional mystery characters, a tradition Jess continues as an adult. (My own family tradition is to name all our pet cats after food items. Weirdly, this never applied to our other pets.)

Like me, Jess’s love of mystery was instilled in her from childhood. As much as I have loved honoring so many mystery writers throughout the pages of my book, it is fair to say that there is also a huge tribute to my own parents in this book. While my memories of watching the classic shows like Murder, She Wrote or Cagney and Lacey are deeply connected to time spent with my mum, it was my dad who introduced me to my love of reading mystery. Even now, in their seventies, in their smallish, down-sized house, my parents’ bookcases hold the entire collection of Agatha Christie’s novels, and many of our childhood mystery books. Thanks Mum and Dad! You have a lot to answer for.

About the Book

A Diet of Death
A Jess O’Malley Mystery Book One
by Jinny Alexander

Published 12 October 2022
Creative James Media

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Page Count: 352
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Ballyfortnum Get Slim group–putting the die in diet.

In the close-knit Irish Village of Ballyfortnum, getting slim might just get you dead. Mystery-lover Jess O’Malley is distraught when her elderly friend dies, but that’s not all–he’s the third of the local slimming group to die this year and it’s only February. Is something amiss in the Get Slim group?

Jess, aided by her sidekick Fletcher, her boisterous Labrador, must convince local policeman Marcus that there may be a murderer at large in the village. If she doesn’t solve the mystery, will another of the dieters end up dead? Or worse–if she doesn’t stop asking awkward questions, will Jess become the next victim?

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Excerpt

“What is it that’s worrying you?” Marcus asked, his voice soft and caring.

Jess got up again, reached for the tin of biscuits Linda had pressed into her hands that morning, bus herself with finding plates. She kept her back to Marcus as she voiced her concerns.

“It’s like I started to say the other day,” she eventually said, “it just seems, well … odd.”

“Odd?” Marcus prompted, raising an eyebrow.

“Odd … I mean … all of them in the slimming group … all of them from this small village; all of them dying kind of unexpectedly, I mean … I know Bert was getting on a bit, but eighty isn’t so old these days is it? And Dave was young enough … and poor Angela—she wasn’t much older than me.” Jess clenched her fingers around a piece of shortbread and it crumbled onto the plate, such was her indignance at the thought of someone dying in only their earliest forties. “I know Dave drank, and all that, but …”

About the Author

Jinny was first published in Horse and Pony magazine at the age of ten. She’s striving to achieve equal accolade now she’s (allegedly) a grown up. She secured a publishing deal in December 2020 and her first two novels will be released by Creative James Media in 2022.

Jinny teaches English as a foreign language to people all over the world, which gives her an endless source of new inspiration for stories. Her home for now is in rural Ireland, which she shares with her husband and far too many animals. Her two children have grown up and flown the nest – mostly. She quite likes to shut the door on them all and write.

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Giveaway Alert!

Jinny Alexander will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B&N gift card to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Oct 24	Deborah-Zenha Adams	–
Oct 25	Paws.Read.Repeat	Long and Short Reviews
Oct 26	The Avid Reader	It’s Raining Books
Oct 27	Literary Gold	–
Oct 28	Westveil Publishing	–

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