Blog Archives
Dive Into the Past
The Man in the Dam follows a journalist hosting a dinner for members of the local amateur theatre society at her family’s country home, who wakes to find a body in her family’s paddock dam, leading to a tangled investigation full of secrets and lies. Why place the story in Victoria’s High Country?
A key feature of the Jade Riley Mysteries is that each book is set in a place where I’ve lived. We have a property in Mansfield in Victoria’s High Country, so I couldn’t wait to write a book inspired by that location.
The small town gives a cosy mystery vibe that suits the story, enabling a situation where everybody knows everybody else, leading to secrets and lies. The surrounding countryside is typically Australian with gum trees, kangaroos, and kookaburras, as well as the menace of snakes and spiders.
Further, the local Lake Eildon offers the opportunity for a dive into the past. It was formed by a dam constructed in the 1950s, flooding houses, roads, and bridges. This lost history is integral to the story.
What parts of Jade are most personal to you as a writer?
Jade shares several of my characteristics. She’s driven and determined, like me. She’s also an over-thinker, which isn’t a stretch for me either. But the most personal of her traits are the ones I wish I had, like incredible courage. Sometimes she takes this to the point of foolhardiness, but she always stands up for what is right. Whereas me? Don’t tell me state secrets because I’d spill all at the mere sight of a thumbscrew.
Jade also faces a major life choice in this book: should she marry Brett and give up her career to move to Malaysia for his job? I faced a similar decision when my husband was offered a job in Nigeria, which involved me relinquishing my beloved job as a career coach. In the end, I agreed to go, instead of turning my hand to becoming a writer. Before my novels were picked up for publication, I wondered whether I’d made a mistake, but now I have no regrets.
Performance is a strong thread in the book. How does theatre mirror the mystery itself?
I used theatre imagery throughout the story in developing the characters, setting, and plot. Everyone in the novel is playing a role, choosing what to reveal and what to keep hidden. The settings are theatrical, from the local bookshop and pub to the murky waters beneath the lake. History comes back to haunt people like a theatre ghost.
I also chose Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as the play the characters are working on for a specific reason, but I can’t explain why without giving spoilers.
Weird coincidence: I was working on this book when I went on a writer’s retreat to Varuna, The National Writers’ House, in NSW, Australia. While there, I found The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde in my room, and that serendipity confirmed The Importance of Being Earnest as the right choice of play.
What do you enjoy most about writing mysteries?
Mysteries are all about creating a puzzle for readers, and I love puzzles. I enjoy intricate plotting, red herrings, misdirections, and creating characters who all have something to hide.
Before I start, I usually have a big picture plan, but the details only emerge as I’m writing. I love the aha moments when I can add something I hadn’t anticipated because I figure if I couldn’t predict it at the start, readers are more likely to be surprised.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Journalist Jade Riley hosts a dinner at her parents’ idyllic country property with members of the local amateur theatre society. The next morning, she finds one of her guests dead in a dam.
As Jade investigates, the players tighten their grip on long-held secrets. Grudges and tangled motives emerge, and the past refuses to stay buried.
At the same time, a proposal from her boyfriend forces Jade to consider how much she’s willing to give up for love.
An atmospheric, fast-paced mystery, THE MAN IN THE DAM is the third book in Andrea Barton’s Jade Riley Mysteries series.
The Man in the Dam
Andrea Barton’s The Man in the Dam is a contemporary cozy-style mystery set around Mansfield and Lake Eildon in Victoria’s High Country, where journalist Jade Riley is meant to be writing a feel good arts piece about a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Instead, she wakes after a tense night with her partner Brett, spots a body in the property’s paddock dam, and the week turns into a knot of interviews, small-town suspicion, and a mystery that widens beyond that first death into family history and hidden motives.
What I liked most is how Barton anchors the book in everyday texture before letting the plot accelerate. The opening has that sharp, slightly painful intimacy of real life: Jade replaying a relationship argument, noticing mess on the counter, trying to steady herself, and then the sudden wrongness of seeing “something” in the water that becomes a person. The writing is clean and easy to move through, with lots of forward motion. And I enjoyed the author’s playful structural choice to use song titles for chapters, plus the nod to a playlist, which fits the creative-arts thread without turning the novel into a gimmick.
Barton’s bigger swing, though, is the way she braids “performance” into everything: the literal theatre production, the public masks people wear in a small town, and the private selves they protect when grief and money and reputation start pressing in. That theme lands because it shows up in character choices, not speeches. Jade is a journalist, so she has a believable reason to ask questions, notice tells, and keep pushing even when it gets uncomfortable. I also appreciated that the story doesn’t stay simple. It adds layers of family backstory and a second mystery that turns the book into something closer to a puzzle box, where one answer opens the next door and you start wondering how far back the damage really goes.
I’d recommend The Man in the Dam to readers who like character-driven mysteries with a strong sense of place, a community cast, and an investigation that feels like it’s happening over cups of coffee and awkward conversations rather than car chases. If you enjoy amateur-sleuth stories, theatre and arts settings, and mysteries that mix present-day danger with long shadows from the past, you’ll have a very good time with The Man in the Dam.
Pages: 310 | ASIN : B0GGWHFPY9
Jade Knew All The Suspects
A Killer Among Friends follows a journalist as she investigates a friend’s murder, only to uncover dark secrets and a connection to a past tragedy—forcing her to question everyone she trusts. What inspired you to explore the theme of hidden dangers within close friendships?
I didn’t begin with this theme in mind; it developed as I wrote. The story was always going to be personal for Jade because the victim was one of her close friends who moved in the same circles. Murder is usually committed by someone known to the victim, so by default, Jade knew all the suspects.
To further interweave the main players’ personal and professional lives, I had them work together in a startup IT company—all except Jade, which made her feel excluded. As she uncovered dark secrets about her friends, her sense of isolation and disorientation escalated and through her experience, I started asking: What if someone you knew was a criminal? How would it make you feel about your judgement of human nature? How would it impact your ability to trust others?
How did you approach balancing multiple perspectives while maintaining suspense?
My first draft only had Jade’s perspective in the present day. I set it aside for some time to work on other projects, then came back to it and did a major rewrite. I wanted to show Jade’s best friend Elena when she was alive, so readers could witness what happened in scene rather than hearing a character relay it to Jade in dialogue, and considered several possible points of view.
Eventually, I chose Danny because he was privy to information Jade didn’t have, and he adored Elena and would present her in a biased and glowing light. Jade and Danny each have past and present sections.
Once I had Danny’s chapters on the page, I made color-coded index cards of every scene in the novel and placed them on a table in order. I highlighted each key reveal, and moved the cards around to figure out when these pivotal moments would have the greatest impact. It was a huge mind puzzle.
Did any real-life events or cases influence the mystery in A Killer Among Friends?
In book one, The Godfather of Dance, I wrote about a family involved in money laundering, but I really didn’t know a lot about financial crimes, so I did more research.
Among other things, I found The Sure Thing, a fabulous podcast series by Angus Griggs of the Australian Financial Review, about Australia’s biggest insider trading scam by Christopher Hill and Lukas Kamay. The simplicity of it, the audacity is mind-blowing. These cases are extremely difficult to prove, and if they hadn’t got greedy, they would have got away with it.
I wanted my characters to have a similar fearlessness, a youthful assumption that they’d get away with their crimes.
Without spoilers, can you hint at what’s next for Jade Riley in future installments?
Book three, The Man in the Dam, is out in December.
Murder. Theater. Community secrets.
Journalist Jade Riley hosts a dinner party at her parents’ idyllic property in Mansfield, an area alive with the rustles and chirps of the Australian bush. She invites members of the local amateur theater society: a photographer, a lawyer, a fire investigator, a teacher, a bookshop owner, and a farmer. It may sound like the opening to a joke, but when Jade wakes the next morning to find one of her guests dead in a dam, the punchline falls flat.
As Jade investigates, she soon discovers each guest is playing a role—some parts with lethal consequences.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Soon after journalist Jade returns from abroad to her hometown, Melbourne, her friend Nick is found dead in a dumpster. She turns to their tight-knit circle for answers, only to uncover a web of lies.
Mounting evidence suggests her best friend Elena’s suicide three years earlier is connected. Was she, too, murdered?
As Jade closes in on the killer, she realizes the suspects are all people she loves. Her life depends on knowing which of them to trust.
“A compelling whodunnit. Jade is a complex, feisty character, battling her own demons and insecurities.” Lisa Darcy, author The Pact
An Everyday Hero
The Godfather of Dance follows a determined new journalist who is eager to write a career-defining article and solve the unsolved murder of her dance instructor’s fiancée. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My inspiration was derived from a few elements. Jade, my protagonist, evolved over time. I wrote about her in several books that weren’t published before she finally took shape in The Godfather of Dance. Initially, she was older, married, with kids, but for this story, it made more sense for her to be younger. Among other things, as an unmarried woman, she had the opportunity to develop a will-they-won’t-they romance with Anton.
The setting came from the five years I spent living in The Woodlands, Texas. This planned community is so picture-perfect it just begged for an underbelly as a counterpoint.
Anton’s character was inspired by my dance instructor in Houston, although once he hit the page, he took on a life of his own and became a wonderfully flawed character who’d grown up in a crime family. Right from the first drafts, I knew he was in hiding from his father, who he suspected of killing his fiancée.
Jade Riley is a woman with strength and intelligence. What do you think makes her a valuable and worthy heroine?
I wanted to create an everyday hero who did things for the most part that any regular person could do. I don’t have a background in the police or FBI, so I couldn’t write such a character as convincingly as someone who has. I didn’t give Jade amazing ‘superhero’ strengths, although she takes chances that are probably beyond most people’s capacity for risk-taking. Her value comes from her determination, courage, and intellect.
What was the hardest part about writing a mystery story, where you constantly have to give just enough to keep the mystery alive until the big reveal?
Writing a mystery is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. As the author, you know where all the pieces are—at least you figure them out along the way—but deciding when and how to reveal each new piece of information to the reader is the challenge. Once I have the story down, I move the chapters around to figure out how to maximize the drama. Often, I move reveals to later in the story to maintain the tension.
On the other hand, I’m always careful not to hold back too much, as I like the idea of readers having the chance to figure it out, or to be able to look back and see something in the story that in hindsight makes everything that follows make sense.
Can you tell us more about what’s in store for Jade Riley and the direction of the second book?
Book two, A Killer Among Friends, is out in December.
Journalist Jade returns from abroad to her hometown, Melbourne. Soon after, her friend Nick is found dead in a dumpster. She turns to their tight-knit circle for answers, only to uncover a web of lies.
Mounting evidence suggests her best friend Elena’s suicide three years earlier is connected. Was she, too, murdered?
As Jade closes in on the killer, she realizes the suspects are all people she loves. Her life depends on knowing which of them to trust.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Facebook | Website
Journalist Jade is determined to write a career-defining article. Her dance instructor Anton wants to know who killed his fiancée. Caught between the glamorous world of ballroom dance and Anton’s dark past in the Valencio crime family, can they solve the murder before they become the next targets?
Anton’s sister, desperate to protect family secrets, tries to stop the investigation. The siblings are on a collision course, challenging the Valencio maxim: loyalty to family no matter what.
The Godfather of Dance
The Godfather of Dance, by Andrea Barton, is a captivating crime/mystery novel that follows the determined journalist Jade. Eager to write a career-defining article, Jade teams up with her dance instructor, Anton, who is haunted by the unsolved murder of his fiancée. Both driven by their own goals—Jade for her career and Anton for closure—they embark on a dangerous quest to uncover the truth. The story plunges the reader into a world of suspense and peril as Jade and Anton become targets themselves. The question looms: will they uncover the identity of Anton’s fiancée’s murderer, or will the killer strike again first?
The novel is fast-paced and skillfully written, keeping the reader engaged through action-packed chapters. The dynamic between Jade and Anton, from their differing backgrounds to their shared determination, adds depth to the narrative. Anton’s past within a crime family introduces twists and secrets that further draw the reader in. The author’s engaging writing style allows the reader to become fully engrossed in the story, rooting for the characters’ success. Jade’s dedication to solving the mystery, despite her career ambitions, makes her a compelling character. The portrayal of imperfect characters adds realism and intrigue to the story. Anton’s troubled family history resurfaces as Jade digs deeper, bringing great danger to them both.
Andrea Barton’s The Godfather of Dance is a gripping tale that keeps readers on the edge of their seats, eager to unravel the mystery alongside Jade and Anton. The author’s ability to maintain a fast-paced, action-packed narrative ensures that readers remain captivated until the very end. This book is highly recommended for fans of crime and mystery novels.
Pages: 328 | ASIN : B0CQ3F3NDJ
