We chat with bestselling author of the Truly Devious series Maureen Johnson about her latest standalone YA mystery, Death at Morning House. We follow Marlowe Wexler, accidental arsonist, as she flees her hometown and ends up working at Morning House. This beautiful, isolated and abandoned house has an infamous story that Marlowe gets caught up in, trying to unpick a present day mystery while exploring the truth from all those years ago.
As expected from Johnson, it is packed full of great characterisation, sparkling dialogue and plot twists that will keep you up until the early hours.
Hi Maureen, thank you for joining us today! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and your latest book Death at Morning House?
Between upstate New York and Canada, there is a massive river called the St. Lawrence. Along a stretch of it there is a scattering of almost two thousand islands. For some reason they decided to call it the Thousand Islands, robbing themselves of hundreds more. The water is glass-bottle green and very pure and clear. It looks like the tropics.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, this was the playground of the ultra-rich. Wealthy families bought up the islands and built mansions and even castles. They’d spend the summer yachting from door to door. Death at Morning House takes place on Ralston Island, a recently reopened manor that has been falling apart since 1932, when two of the Ralston family’s seven children died on a sunny afternoon and the house was shuttered. There were always questions about what happened that day.
In the present, the house is reopened to tourists—repaired, wallpapers reproduced, furniture removed from storage. Enter Marlowe Wexler, just a girl trying to woo another girl and who accidentally burned down a house in the process. These things happen. Marlowe is brought in from out of town to take an empty post as a tour guide. No one bothered to tell her that’s she’s filling in for a dead guy.
There have been a lot of deaths on Ralston Island. There will be more.
This is a murder mystery and a queer romance. It’s a cautionary tale as well. The stories that affect us the most are the ones we refuse to tell or share, the ones we suppress. These are the stories that can heal us if we take the time to listen to them—or could doom us if we try to push them away.
Also, it’s about the danger of scented candles. You really have to watch those.
Death at Morning House spans two timelines and two gripping mysteries. What draws you to meshing the past and the present in your mysteries?
Well, mysteries are all about unpicking things that have come before and setting them in order, working out motives, figuring out where the evil set in and why. It’s also important to do in general—how did we get where we are? What story have we told ourselves about our own history, and what parts did we conveniently leave out?
Both plot lines are so complex with plenty of clues to uncover. What’s your plotting process like?
Organized whimsy. I’m sort of a mad clockmaker. I always start with why. I never care about how or who until I work out why. I work intensely on the mechanism of the crime. I often write up a solution document. Then I start drafting, working back and forth between these, tweaking each. And then I go into a fugue state at some point, and then the book is due in three weeks and then the screaming starts. That’s when I shine.
What was it like returning to a standalone book after spending time with Stevie Bell and co in the Truly Devious series?
I wanted to step to the side for a minute and do a classic, one-and-done mystery. Sometimes you have to move around a little. That being said, the next Stevie was also on the sketchpads next to this book while I was working.
What surprised you while writing this book?
I went to the Thousand Islands for research for the book, well after I was underway. I always try to go to the place I’m setting a book in, which means that I have driven myself up mountains in tiny cars, wandered down dark alleys in London, looking for sewer tunnels and listened for the places where the water drips. This was a particularly nice location.
The day I was scheduled to go was the great Northeast summer fire (the first, I worry, of many). The sky in New York City turned a glowing orange but was also dark, like we were in a reverse jack o’ lantern. We had most of the smoke, but the bulk was over Syracuse, which is the city I was supposed to fly into. All flights were grounded over both. It was another reminder—look at where we are and ask how we got here.
I made it there the next week. It’s such a beautiful, extraordinary place. The St. Lawrence is everything, and people go from shore to island to island through this beautiful, clear water. It glows kind of a tropical green in places. And you float along, past islands only big enough to hold one small house. You see the history of the rich of the early 20th century—people who built themselves castles. It’s wild and incredible and I want to go back tomorrow.
I loved Marlowe as a protagonist with her passion and willingness to put her all into something, no matter the consequences. Which elements did you love writing for her and which were more challenging?
Marlowe is a romantic, which I am not. She is, however, also ridiculous, which I am. She is in love with a beautiful girl, and in her love and heartbreak, she is always ready to make the biggest possible mistakes. I respect that.
The Ralston family are somewhat unnerving from their first appearance and things only get darker as the book goes on. Were there any real life influences behind them and their case?
Many. There were a lot of historical things I could have put in (and did at points) and had to pull back because they were so grim that it would have set the whole book off balance. Phillip Ralston is a committed eugenicist, which was not only accepted at the time, but regarded as wholesome. There were eugenics tents at state fairs. I’ll just say the story of American “hero” Charles Lindberg comes up again. Once you read the book, look up what he spent his time doing after his famous flight.
At the risk of getting on my soapbox, we always need to ask ourselves who told the stories, or who picked which stories would go into the textbook, or—as we see now—who tried to take the book from the shelf. The information is out there. The stories are waiting for us. And if we don’t learn from them, it’s to our own peril.
What books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
My TBR pile is a pile of a monster. Lots of murder! And history!
If possible, can you share a little about what you are currently working on or any upcoming projects you have?
I’m going right into the next Stevie Bell mystery. And I just finished (literally) a new dossier mystery I’m making with my friend Jay Cooper. It’s called You Are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder. It’s a case file—a collection of documents and photographs (illustrated by Jay), and you solve the case. The solution is sealed in the back.
Finally, if you could only use five to describe Death at Morning House, what would they be?
Learn from history or die.
