The Buffalo Butcher: Jack the Ripper in the Electric City, follows a group of five prostitutes who band together to stop a murder who is praying on working girls in a city that turns a blind eye to their deaths. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

When I began to imagine a scenario in which Jack the Ripper—whose 1888 murders in London were never solved—came to Buffalo in 1901 and picked up again where he’d left off, I began to do my usual background research. And I read a lot of books about the Ripper and about other serial killers, in hopes, I suppose, of figuring out what made them tick. I quickly gave up on that, and decided that I would never understand the mind of a serial killer—nor really did I care to. But the thing that gave me the critical idea for my book—and what makes it different from other ‘slasher’ books—is that I found that in so many of these serial killer biographies, the authors (intentionally or not) seemed to adopt a kind of ‘hero-worshipful’ tone about the killers, going on in lurid detail about their exploits, criminal genius, ability to evade the law, and so on. And all this while the actual victims of their crimes were treated as so much stage-dressing, their entire lives reduced to the single moment of a terrible death at the hands of a madman. And frankly that made me sad. So I resolved to write my book differently—from the victims’ perspective. I wanted to let them tell their stories, and give them an opportunity to reclaim—and proclaim—their full humanity, which had been stolen from them, first by the procurers and pimps who lured them into vice, and then by a killer stalking them as so much prey. I’m proud of the result.

I love that the protagonists are women who are typically ignored, scorned, and blamed for their own troubles. What were some driving ideals behind their characters’ development?

Thank you for saying so! I love them, too, for that very reason. In The Buffalo Butcher, all of ‘decent society’, from the cops to the common citizens, considers these young prostitutes (my protagonists) as disposable, unworthy, morally defective creatures. Yet in truth these “working girls” are some of the most decent, genuine people you would ever like to meet. They’ve known poverty and exploitation, and have endured aconstant drip of scorn from their so-called betters. All their illusions about what life ‘ought to be’ have been stripped away—and yet through it all, they have maintained a full measure of human kindness, decency, and willingness to put it all on the line—even to the cost of their lives—for a friend. I like to tell stories about real people—and these young ladies are about as real as they come. As such, The Buffalo Butcher is no ‘cozy mystery’: it’s a gritty, unflinching look at a part of life that perhaps we’d all like to pretend doesn’t exist—but for the sake of my characters—and my love and respect for them—I could not in good conscience turn away from depicting the sometimes horrifying reality of their circumstances.

I find the world you created in this novel brimming with possibilities. Where did the inspiration for the setting come from, and how did it change as you were writing?

Being from Buffalo, New York, I’m fascinated with the history of the place, and its former centrality—once a kind of early Silicon Valley—in the economic and social history of the United States. And in 1901, the biggest world’s fair of all time, the Pan-American Exposition, took place in Buffalo, bringing eight million people to the city. No author could ask for a better setting! But here’s the more interesting part, the metaphor: the great Exposition ran for only one brief season, May through November 1901, and then all but a single building was torn down, and the glittering pleasure city reduced to rubble. Knowing that fate lends The Buffalo Butcher a slightly elegiac quality, which mirrors the lives, loves, and losses of the main characters. And, if I may add, this arc of rise and fall serves as a larger metaphor: as a young person, I witnessed my beloved hometown go through a similar decline and collapse—from boom to bust. But what is beautiful and triumphant, both in real life and I hope in the book—both for cities and with people—is that hope is never lost. Today Buffalo—a city that people once dismissed as a relic of the past—is once again on the rise, re-emerging refreshed and vibrant, and learning both to embrace its rich history and, at the same time, welcome a new and different future.

What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?

Current of Darkness, the next installment of my Avenging Angel Detective Agency™ Mysteries, is to appear in April of 2024, and in it society sleuth Sarah Payne returns to confront a case of industrial espionage in early Niagara Falls . . . then, in October, my next off-series book, The Phantom of Forest Lawn, will be out. I’m pretty excited about both stories, and I hope readers will share my enthusiasm!

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