Mystery at the Edge of the World follows a retired civil engineer in coastal California whose peaceful retirement is disrupted when he’s drawn into a murder investigation. What inspired the premise of the story? 

I’ve thought about using an engineer as the protagonist in a mystery novel for a number of years. In this book, Jace is retired with a comfortable pension, so he doesn’t need to worry about making a living, which frees him to spend whatever time is needed to solve puzzles.

What made you choose a retired engineer, rather than a former police officer or detective, as your amateur sleuth?

There are many mystery stories, in fact, series of stories, where the sleuth is a doctor, a mathematician, a novelist, a lawyer, or even a clergyman. We live in a world full of infrastructure, and there are many stories that could be made from the world of construction alone, never mind all the other interactions people have with the engineered facilities around them, along with each other. But someone has to be at least a little versed in engineering in order to write about an engineer investigating a crime. There is, in fact, an entire discipline called ‘forensic engineering’ which looks at the causes of infrastructure failure, and can unearth criminal activity in the process. So, for me, this subgenre of an amateur engineer sleuth seems under-represented in literature, and looked like a field I could write in, while being entertaining and human at the same time.

Did you know who the culprit was before you started writing, or did the investigation evolve as you went?

I did not have the culprit pegged when I started writing. I left that possibility open as I wrote it, but towards the end, the red herrings swam away, and the culprit remained.

The ending leaves room for more adventures. Do you already know where Jace’s next case might take him?

Yes. I just finished the next novel, Mystery at the Hidden River, where Jace is invited to help with a case that eventually proves to be industrial espionage – and murder. 

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