By Adam Prudhomme
Staff Reporter
Best-selling mystery author Vicki Delany will be the guest of honour at the County of Lennox and Addington Public Libraries fourth annual Author Gala, which takes place Oct. 28 at the county’s Museum and Archives.
The gala will cap off the county’s ‘One Book, One L&A’ program, which encourages readers from across the region to read Delany’s novel Elementary, She Read. The book is the first in a series that revolves around a woman who owns a Sherlock Holmes bookstore and finds herself entangled in a mystery of her own. It’s inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s works.
“I’ll talk a little bit about my writing life in general and specifically about the bookshop series and how I decided to write it and the fun I’ve had writing about the bookshop full of nothing but Sherlock Holmes related items,” said Delany. “To my considerable surprise I found it’s not actually hard to do because there’s so much out there.”
Delany’s novel falls into a sub-genre of mystery known as ‘cozy’.
“A ‘cozy’ is essentially a very light mystery novel,” explains Delany. “It’s often intended to be funny. Usually the protagonist is a woman, but not always. She has a close circle of friends, has an interesting job, like this woman owning a Sherlock Holmes bookshop. It’s actually as much about relationships and friends and community as it is about the solving of the mystery. There’s always a little bit of a romance element… They’re enjoyed I think by people who read the news and think there’s enough angst in the world, they just want to relax with something light or maybe funny.”
Based out of Picton, Delany says she was thrilled when the L&A Library chose her book for their ‘One Book’ program as it helps gain her local exposure. She’s already built quite a name for herself on the Canadian mystery landscape, penning several novels under a pen name. She is the author behind the Constable Molly Smith mystery series, which is set in the fictional B.C. town of Trafalgar. She also writes the Klondike Mystery series, which is set in the Yukon during the 1898 gold rush. When not writing cozy mysteries she can get a little more serious, writing physiological suspense.
She says she was drawn to the mystery genre based on the fact she could write both light-hearted novels as well as darker, more suspenseful works.
More information about her work can be found at www.VickiDelany.com.
Tickets for the Author Gala are $10 per person and includes light refreshments. They are available at all six L&A branches or online at www.CountyLibrary.ca.