The Call of the Road

By M.E. Proctor

The Way You Say My Name, Book 3 of the Declan Shaw mystery series, will be released in September (publisher: Shotgun Honey).

In theme and mood, this book feels different to me. Love You Till Tuesday was a classical murder mystery: a singer is found dead in her apartment; there is no apparent motive; corporate and police corruption play a major role in the story. Book 2, Catch Me on a Blue Day, started with an apparent suicide and resurrected 30-year-old ghosts. The case Declan Shaw investigates has its roots in the past and the arc of the plot is a long one.

At first sight, the canvas of Book 3 seems smaller. For one, there is no murder (not in the beginning, there isn’t). Can it still be called a mystery? The situation puzzles the cop who brings Declan on board. “I almost wish somebody died,” he says. Because a body makes things clear, we know where we are, and what is expected of the wily investigator.

So what is expected of Declan in The Way You Say My Name? He’s hired to find a woman, Amanda, who doesn’t want to be found. She’s not missing, not exactly. She phoned home to tell her parents she was fine. But didn’t say where she was or how long she would be gone. Which doesn’t reassure anybody.

And so, Declan’s quest begins. It will take him from Texas to the Atlantic seaboard, and back. It won’t be a pleasure trip. He will be broken in body and spirit, unsure of what he achieved, how much he resolved, and wondering what his intervention may have made a lot worse.

Hitting the road is a recurrent film noir theme: criminal on the run, drifter showing up in a small town creating chaos, men and women fleeing from their past and hoping for a better life in a place where nobody knows them. There’s some of that in The Way You Say My Name, with a twist when the pursuer finds out that he has, in turn, become a prey.

Declan muses: “What is people’s fascination with end of the world locations? Maybe they think nobody will come that far to find them. Amanda is exactly the kind of person who would run to the end of the landmass and stop because she can go no further.”

Declan does stop when he reaches the ocean, and believes his job is done—Amanda has been found. Only to realize he would have been much better off if he’d kept running.

In many ways, this story is a road movie. Declan’s old pickup truck eats miles of freeway and back roads. There are stops in fast food joints and gas stations, nights of uneasy sleep in a cramped cabin, stiffness in the early morning, tar-laced coffee in paper cups. Encounters too, some helpful and some not so much. It’s the end of January, nobody travels for pleasure. And when Declan reaches North Carolina, the beaches are deserted and the bitter wind bites.

Years ago, I have driven the road Declan takes. I know the stops (except the one in the Jackson, Mississippi, FBI Field Office) and the final destination. It’s funny how experiences like that don’t seep into the writing right away. It takes time for the sediments to settle.

Another road trip to West Texas has given rise to two short stories already and is now the core of the work-in-progress that might become Declan Shaw Book 4 (cross fingers). I don’t know if my more recent trips—Texas to Maine, Texas to Michigan, Texas to Montana—will eventually find a way into a narrative. I hope they do; I’m keeping a journey journal, just in case.

It feels oddly appropriate to release The Way You Say My Name this year, that marks the 100^th anniversary of Route 66. A hundred years since Americans realized that there was an entire country open to explore. Hop in the car and go. Hit a few National Parks on the way. I still find it seductive to open my eyes to new horizons every morning. I was born in Europe and we don’t have the same appetite for roaming over there. Yes, people get on the road at vacation time (clogged freeways prove it) but the trip is more utilitarian: the beach awaits! There’s an element of discovery in the American approach to car travel … a vague remnant of the explorer’s spirit.

I wish I could share the cover of the new book with you … Patience, it’s coming!

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The Way You Say My Name

A Declan Shaw Mystery

“A spiraling game of cat versus mouse.”
—Craig Terlson, author of the Luke Fischer series

On New Year’s day, P.I. Declan Shaw is hired to investigate a disappearance. Amanda Spencer, a young mother of two, slipped away from a Christmas concert without leaving a clue. What made her run and who is she running from?

While digging up shreds of info from Amanda’s parents and friends, Declan meets Sam Chandler. She’s the kind of woman who stops him in his tracks. Sexy, smart, and complicated. And skilled at keeping secrets. So skilled Declan questions his abilities as a detective. What began as an intriguing missing person case soon shifts into a cross-country pursuit with Sam’s life in the balance.

For once, Declan isn’t the searcher, he’s the one who cannot afford to be found.

In The Way You Say My Name, narratives intertwine as a double spiral winds tighter and tighter. Amanda’s story is one of them. Protecting Sam is the other.

And the closer Declan comes to finding Amanda, the more he risks losing Sam.

Buy Links:

The Way You say My Name will be available on September 22, in eBook and paperback.

You can find Books 1 and 2 in the series on the Shotgun Honey site, here.

M.E. Proctor was born in Brussels and lives in Texas. She’s the author of the Declan Shaw detective mysteries: Love You Till Tuesday, Catch Me on a Blue Day, and the upcoming The Way You Say My Name. She’s the author of two short story collections, Family and Other Ailments and A Book to Live By, and the co-author of the retro-noirs, Bop City Swing and Kansas City Breakdown. Her fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. She’s a Shamus and Derringer awards short story nominee. Catch Me on a Blue Day was recently nominated for a Shamus Award in the Best Original Paperback category.

Social Links

Author Website: www.shawmystery.com

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