About the Book

Book: Mabel and the Unholy Night (Mysteries of Medicine Spring Book Four)

Author: Susan Kimmel Wright

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Release date: November 5, 2024

Faithful dog Barnacle has run off into a snowstorm, disrupting Mabel’s fun outing at the Christmas tree farm. Things don’t improve much when he reappears…with a human skull.

Since Mabel moved into her late grandma’s house, the sleepy village of Medicine Spring has provided clean air, a close-knit community, and charming small-town shops. To her surprise, it’s also offered up several murders—and romance with a handsome private investigator. Now, Barnacle’s discovery plunges Mabel into the mystery surrounding a decades-old unsolved murder and the disappearance of her friend Nita’s great uncle.

Before Mabel, boyfriend John, and her friends can find answers and bring justice for Nita and her family, more complications develop. Incredibly, a sixty-year-old Christmas card arrives, bearing Mabel’s name and address and containing a plea for help. Are the mysteries related?

While Mabel tries to get to the bottom of these strange events, a second suspicious death casts suspicion on Nita. Can Mabel find the real killer in time? Or will her Christmas season end on an unholy night?

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I received a complimentary copy of this book, and all opinions given are my own and not an endorsement of all author’s opinions.

Author Interview

1. Are any of your characters based off of yourself or those close to you?

While none of my characters are closely based on myself or people I know, I see many of my own qualities emerging in my main character Mabel. I certainly share some of Mabel’s insecurities, including her fear of singing in public. I’m also a former lawyer and live in an old Victorian farmhouse, where I wrestle with clutter…sadly, unlike Mabel, I can’t blame my mess on my late grandmother!

2. Was your writing process spontaneous as it came to you or very planned and organized? Why?

My writing process is always a combination of careful planning and spontaneity. I have never succeeded in writing a book without ending up going off script. My characters always have their own ideas—at least so far, they’ve never steered me wrong!

3. Do you have a favorite time of day you are most productive in your writing?

I’ve always wanted to be an early bird, but unfortunately, I’m also a lifelong night owl. Those two preferences do not work together at all! Usually, my best writing times tend to be mid-afternoon through evening, after a slow start in the morning. I gather steam as I go.

4. Why did you pick this genre for your book?

I write cozy mysteries because they’ve always been my favorite genre as a reader. My mother and sister always shared my preference, and while my mother was living, the three of us often traded books among us.

5. How many books do you personally own?

I wish I knew how many books I own—I do know it’s a lot! I have five wall-sized bookcases, as well as three smaller ones. I have books in boxes, books in bags, books heaped on tables, desks, and on top of other furniture. Somehow, even though I’ve started donating some of my bounty to library book sales, my total amount of books never seems to decrease. If someone can explain this to me, I’d be grateful!

About the Author

Susan Kimmel Wright began her life of mystery in childhood, with reading. That led to writing kids’ mysteries and eventually to Medicine Spring with Mabel. A longtime member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, Susan’s also a prolific writer of personal experience stories, many for Chicken Soup for the Soul. She shares an 1875 farmhouse in southwestern PA with her husband, several dogs and cats, and an allegedly excessive stockpile of coffee and tea mugs.

More from Susan

Does Christmas make you nostalgic? In Mabel & the Unholy Night, fifty-year-old Mabel is observing her first Christmas in her late grandma’s house. As she sets out each fragile, vintage ornament, she feels that same familiar lump in her throat.

What we treasure may have to do with when we grew up. I love mid-century glass tree ornaments from Woolworth’s, ceramic elves stamped “Made in Japan,” and Gurley candles shaped like carolers, some still bearing 29¢ stickers on the base.

Ever since childhood, I’ve loved the tiny cardboard village under our tree. Houses and churches sparkled with glitter in their landscape of cotton-batting snow and bushes of dried moss. A sheet of glass atop light-blue construction paper made a perfect pond for tiny skaters. As someone once pointed out, accuracy of scale is of no concern in the cardboard village. Reindeer may loom over the houses like the mutant product of scientific experimentation gone wrong in a “B” horror movie.

Cardboard villages, properly called “putz houses,” originated with Moravian immigrants. Once handmade, houses were later imported from Germany and Japan. While nowadays we’re more likely to buy a ceramic village we can light up, I’ll take the primitive charm of a putz village any day.

Maybe best of all, we can build our own putz villages to suit ourselves. A new tradition for child and parent or grandparent might be building a new house each year, to add to the tiny community. While kits are available, you can also find plans online, such as this free resource: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/make-traditional-glitter-houses-2365171

Perhaps our yearning for the things of the past is rooted in a longing for a more carefree time, when beloved faces, now gone, were still around us as we enjoyed the season together. When our slower-paced celebration centered on Christ’s birth, and family closeness. Building a putz house or church with loved ones might let us recapture just a bit of that old-fashioned Christmas spirit.