SPOTLIGHT ON BETWEEN A WOK AND A DEAD PLACE by @LeslieBudewitz + Book & Prize Pack #giveaway

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Once a month at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, we shine the spotlight on one of our authors, giving you a closer look into our writing lives, our books, and sometimes, our kitchens! Today, it's my turn!

I write two cozy mystery series, the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, set in NW Montana, where I live. As Alicia Beckman, a name that honors my mother and grandmother, I write standalone suspense set in the Northwest. 

I started writing at 4, on my father’s desk – quite literally. I did not yet understand the concept of paper. My parents were amused, and kept me well supplied in paper, pens, and books. When I started writing my own books, no surprise that they came out as mysteries. I’m a lawyer by training, which gives me an insider’s grasp of the justice system. 

But my stories came out as mysteries for another, more important reason: It’s what I’ve loved to read since I was a little girl, spending a quarter my father slipped me for two red-bound Happy Hollister hardcovers at the church book sale. 

My first published book, Books, Crooks and Counselors: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law and Courtroom Procedure, winner of the 2011 Agatha Award for Best Nonfiction, drew on my long experience as a lawyer. I love helping other writers get the facts about the law right. 

Mr. Right and I live outside a village in NW Montana brimming with art, music, and great food in a stunning natural setting. It always surprises visitors, making it a terrific setting for a cozy series, and my real life neighbors love being part of the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries. The series began with Death al Dente, winner of the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. 

I fell in love with Seattle’s Pike Place Market as a college freshman. It’s a place full of life, of sights and sounds and smells, of magic and memories, and always, always, great, fresh food. 

So when I decided to write a second series, I knew I wanted it to be an “urban cozy,” influenced by writers like Cleo Coyle, the late Sheila Connolly, and my cousin, Laura Childs. The heart of the urban cozy is the “community within a community”—which describes the Market perfectly. And I knew in an instant that my main character would run a spice shop, because the Market’s own spice shops have always intrigued my senses and imagination, and send me traveling the world through taste and smell. 

And along came Pepper Reece, who first appeared in Assault & Pepper (2015). She’s a city girl through and through, raised in a peace and justice community on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, modeled on one I knew as a young adult. (Her ex likes to get her goat by calling it a commune. Not exactly—but not far off!) If you’d like to know more about the origins of the Spice Shop series, take a look at last year’s Spotlight. 

Now Pepper and I are embarking on our seventh adventure, Between a Wok and a Dead Place—and I’m delighted to say there will be at least two more as well. 

Just a pinch of murder . . . 

A few years ago, my husband and I toured the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, chronicling the Asian-American experience in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a fascinating place, featuring a permanent rotating exhibit devoted to the late Bruce Lee, a replica of a Chinese grocery, and tours of the adjacent Kong Yick Hotel. The Kong Yick served as a community center and boarding house for Chinese laborers from the 1880s until well into the 20th century. 

And because I write mysteries, and am drawn to secrets and stories, I started wondering. What if a body was found in the basement of a closed residential hotel? What if Pepper Reece, the main character in my Spice Shop mysteries, got drawn in to the mystery?

So I created the Gold Rush Hotel in the CID, as its called. I’d been incorporating the history of Pike Place Market into my stories since the series began. Founded in 1907 and saved from the wrecking ball by voters in 1971, it’s the oldest continuously-operating farmers’ market in the country. It’s an amalgam of buildings, each with its own origins and architecture, built on a hill with lower levels and secret passages, woven together by a cobbled street, open-air arcades, and a magical atmosphere. 

History is in the air—along with the smells of fish, produce, and flowers, the sounds of street musicians, and the hubbub created by ten million visitors a year. 

But how could I recreate the CID on the page? Even though I went to Seattle University, just up the hill, and worked downtown as a young lawyer, I did not know it well. 

Museum websites are great research sources, and so are their bookstores. Through the Wing Luke site, I discovered Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels, by Marie Rose Wong, Ph.D. Professor Wong, who teaches at Seattle University, explores the hotels’ construction and ownership, and their role in the Chinese community and in national and local politics in the late 19th century. Her photographs and maps of the CID as it was moved and squeezed gave me a visual, and I began to see my fictional hotel come to life, pulling on those details. When I read her account of traveling with her father through the Midwest in the early 1970s, delivering fruits and vegetables, and his visits to the old Chinese hotels and restaurants, I felt a mental click. Community is key to every immigrant, but especially to those who have faced extreme prejudice and legal exclusion. Those ties, I realized, were why my fictional hotel owner, Francis Wu, held on to the Gold Rush long after the hotel closed. Why he was so determined that it stay in the family, despite his son’s indifference. 

And why he did not destroy the apothecary in the basement, despite what it had cost him. 

I’m getting shivers just thinking of it, and I made it all up! But not from whole cloth. I read interviews of Chinese elders collected by the Wing Luke and a book about the city’s Japanese community. I pored over websites showing historic Chinese pharmacies in rural Oregon and Butte, Montana. My husband, an acupuncturist who traveled in China as a young man, helped me understand the medicine practiced then. In my mind, I created shelves crammed with old bottles and jars, boxes labeled in the old calligraphy, and other objects that help bring a time and place to life.

And what about Bruce Lee? Though there are no reported tales of his ghost roaming the city, I could easily imagine my characters spinning such a story. 

Last fall, I walked the CID again, taking pictures and feeling the streets beneath my feet. I hope you feel it too, when you read Between a Wok and a Dead Place. 

Coming July 18, in paperback, ebook, and audio! 

To learn more or pre-order: 

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
And your local booksellers!

“Leslie Budewitz delivers the goods again in her latest captivating cozy, Between a Wok and a Dead Place. A twisty-turny plot, seasoned just right with plentiful suspects and lots of culinary delights, this is one page turner of a mystery no reader should miss!” 

— Jenn McKinlay, New York Times Bestselling author

“The inclusion of Chinatown’s history, along with the stories of the culture and residents, adds a depth seldom found in cozy mysteries.” 

— Library Journal 

GIVEAWAY! Reader’s choice of a Spice Shop book and a Spice Shop prize pack. (US and Canada only.) Talk to me in the comments to enter--be sure to leave your email address. Mr. Kitten will pick a winner Wed, June 28.

“The Spice Shop mysteries are a treat for the senses . . . with an unusual setting and a mature, introspective amateur sleuth.” —librarian and blogger Lesa Holstine

“Pure enjoyment.” —Suspense Magazine on Assault & Pepper

BETWEEN A WOK AND A DEAD PLACE: A Spice Shop Mystery (July 2023, Seventh St. Books)

From the cover: 

It's the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change. 

 

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

 

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk? 

 

With each new discovery, Pepper find herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls. 

 

Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper's boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can't resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century. 

 

But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Between a Wok and a Dead Place, the 7th Spice Shop mystery, will appear in July 2023. 

A past president of Sisters in Crime and national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.