Murder mystery set during Stampede
Insurance-adjuster sleuth returns to solve murder amid Stampede fever
Susan Calder’s first job as a professional writer was penning a travel column about the Calgary Stampede for the Montreal Gazette.
It was 1993 and Calder had no idea she would eventually be living in Calgary and setting her crime novels here.
But the Montrealer was charmed, as perhaps only a newcomer could be, by how the 10-day fiesta of horses and cowboy culture took over every corner of the city.
“I don’t know that every city has something that permeates the whole city,” says Calder. “Sometimes I think of it as Halloween for two weeks with a western theme. There is that whole cowboy and western heritage of Calgary that also plays into the personality of Calgary as a city of entrepreneurs who maybe think of themselves and act as rugged individualists. So when I was thinking of a summer story, I started thinking about that.”
Ten Days In Summer is the second novel in Calder’s series involving Paula Savard, a baby boomer insurance adjuster and crime-solver who lives in Cowtown. The author figured having the city gripped by Stampede fever would provide a unique backdrop for a tale of betrayal and murder.
So the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth frames the action of Ten Days in Summer, offering a colourful and slightly surreal environment for a story that begins with the death of an elderly hoarder killed in a suspicious fire Savard is sent to investigate.
What she uncovers is a plot that involves feuding heirs and a dark family secret. The whole lurid affair becomes personal when Savard’s 25-year-old daughter be- comes romantically involved with the main suspect.
So, as with Savard’s first mystery, 2011’s Deadly Fall, the crime has both a professional and personal connection.
It has a personal connection to Calder as well. Her uncle was an inspiration for the tale. He was a compulsive hoarder in Montreal long before anyone was making reality TV shows about the condition, giving Calder a first-hand look at how serious and destructive the disorder can be for families.
“He took over this house of my grandmother’s, the stuff spread and his wife left him,” Calder says. “She couldn’t take it anymore. She called the city and reported his place as a hazard. They sent an inspector and locked him out of the house.”
So hoarding — and garage sales, a favourite destination for Calder’s parents — play into Ten Days In Summer, as does Savard’s job as an insurance adjuster.
It was Calder’s first publisher — Victoria-based TouchWood Editions — that suggested Savard’s crime-solving adventures be connected to her profession.
“My initial thought was that Deadly Fall was just going to be a stand-alone, single book and I
was really just thinking of her as an amateur sleuth,” says Calder. “I gave her that job as insurance adjuster because I had worked in that field myself, so it was a job I knew. That was the only reason. I had to give her a job. But as I was writing I began to realize that insurance adjusters could come across crimes.”
TouchWood ended up dropping some of its mystery writers, including Calder, which is why there was a six-year gap between Deadly Fall and Ten Days In Summer.
The latter was published by Airdrie-based BWL Press and Calder hopes to write more mysteries involving Savard and Calgary. Having explored the fall in the first book and summer in the second, the author intends to have her sleuth solve her next murder against a backdrop that is decidedly less festive than the Calgary Stampede.
“I think we’ll start with the deepfreeze and the snow,” Calder says.