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Everyone’s Always Performing
Hypnotized follows an Army veteran, a missing teen, an aspiring actress, and a retired detective who become entangled in a decades-old disappearance. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Hampton’s character grew out of a short story I wrote back in the late 60s about draft dodgers. He was hanging out in a pool hall when he met a Whittier woman named Margo who attempted to convince him to burn his draft card. Also, legends about Hell’s Gate and Turnbull Canyon Road are numerous, and I wanted to use them to provide an atmosphere that would hopefully intrigue my readers.
Nick’s reflective narration gives the novel a distinctive personality. Why did you choose him as the primary voice rather than the detective?
Detective Roach was introduced in my previous book, Surf and Sand, The Girl in the Seaside Hotel, wherein he’s seen considering his upcoming retirement in Whittier. See, I was already thinking about Hypnotized then. But when I actually started writing it Nick was the first character that came to me, and I soon realized I wanted to tell most of the story from a first-person perspective and let the novel become a kind of memoir. I’d just reread Charles Portis’s novel, True Grit, and was inspired by the narration of his character, Mattie Ross. She’s an elderly woman looking back on something that happened to her when she was young. I wanted to try and capture that feeling. (And by the way, everyone’s seen the films, but if you haven’t heard Donna Tartt‘s narration of the audio book, well, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!)
Identity, performance, and self-deception appear repeatedly throughout the novel. Why do those ideas interest you?
Identity is kind of a big deal these days, but I wasn’t trying to make any statements about that, I just want my characters to live in other people’s heads besides my own. I worked on this book for about 7 years, on and off. Eventually the characters take over and can even become kind of demanding. And when we look at real life, people are always performing, aren’t they? Trying to do their best, or to be as good as someone they admire, or to be “like” someone they look up to. Self-deception too, is common, just look at my not so healthy diet! But performance is something else when it’s used to deceive others.
Without giving anything away, what do you think continues to haunt Turnbull Canyon long after the final page?
Memories. Wishes. Hopes. Desires. And a few deadly curves!
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Hypnotized: A Turnbull Canyon Mystery
W. B. Edwards’s Hypnotized: A Turnbull Canyon Mystery is a historical mystery novel set in Whittier, California, during the summer of 1969. The story opens with an ominous encounter near Turnbull Canyon, then moves among several characters whose lives become connected through attraction, deception, buried family history, and the unsettling possibility of hypnosis. Nick O’Brien, a drifting Army veteran, remembers that summer as the end of an era and a season filled with unexpected turns. With its Southern California setting and late-sixties atmosphere, the novel blends historical fiction, crime fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural mystery.
Rather than following a single investigator, the book builds its mystery through multiple viewpoints. Nick’s conversational narration gives the story much of its personality, while Hampton Masters III brings vulnerability and growing confusion to the psychological suspense plot. Retired detective Harry Roach supplies the traditional cold-case mystery element as he investigates the 1943 disappearance of fourteen-year-old Margaret “Margo” Stewart near the abandoned property known as Hell’s Gate. Imelda’s story adds another layer involving identity, performance, ambition, and a strange ability that becomes increasingly important as the characters’ paths cross.
The novel’s strongest quality is its lived-in sense of time and place. Pool halls, drive-ins, hot rods, stereo equipment, cigarette smoke, smoggy sunsets, and Whittier Boulevard cruising give the historical fiction setting real texture. Edwards lets conversations wander and relationships develop gradually, so the characters feel like people caught up in an increasingly bizarre situation. That unhurried approach also suits Nick’s reflective voice, which often circles around the uncertain nature of memory. The result is a mystery novel where personal regrets and half-remembered experiences matter as much as physical clues.
As the separate storylines come together, Hypnotized grows into an offbeat Turnbull Canyon mystery about manipulation, obsession, desire, and the stories people tell themselves. Its crime-fiction plot reaches a satisfying confrontation, but the supernatural questions remain slippery enough to keep the ending in your mind. The book’s final reflections on memories, dreams, and possible spells fit its hazy 1969 world especially well. Readers who enjoy character-driven historical mysteries, California noir, psychological suspense novels, and supernatural crime fiction will find plenty to discuss here.
Pages: 270 | ISBN : 9798235560857
