It’s Features Friday and today’s guest is no stranger to the TraceeGarner blog just a few months ago. She’s back with a new book we’re sharing with you. Meet author
Jeanette de Bueavoir
Her new book is called A Killer Carnival, here’s a little excerpt…
By the time the float exploded, we were all still far enough away that it was only ear-splittingly loud rather than lethal. I guess one has to be grateful for the small things in life. Like… well, life.
I don’t usually spend a lot of time around objects that explode, so the experience was a new one. And in fact, there haven’t been a lot of explosions in Provincetown itself, either, not since World War Two when the harbor was filled with navy vessels and the odd torpedo was taking out German U-boats right off the coast. So the float blowing up took everyone pretty much by surprise.
The fact that it was my float—well, the one I’d worked on, the one I’d had the initial idea for, the one representing my place of employment at the Race Point Inn—made its blowing up somehow even more personal.
As if someone trying to kill me wasn’t personal enough.
The Carnival parade starts in the East End of town, at the Harbor Hotel, and wends its way along Commercial Street as far as Franklin Street, for one long hot afternoon of total excess. Ptown being Ptown, a lot of the floats feature loud music and scantily clad well-oiled impossibly handsome young men dancing suggestively to a throbbing bass beat. Our float, I’d liked to think, was somewhat more subtle.
Apparently not subtle enough. Or maybe I just don’t have a handle on subtlety anymore. I live in one of the least subtle places in the world, a town aggressively in your face about everything, a town with swagger to spare.
I’d like to add that, technically speaking, none of this was my fault. I didn’t choose the summer’s Carnival theme—Foreign Lands—and I didn’t really mean to interpret said theme in any way offensive to anyone.
All of which is easy to say after they blow it up almost under you.
About A Killer Carnival
Sydney Riley is busier than ever organizing parties, weddings, and even a float for Provincetown’s Carnival Parade. When her boyfriend’s sister, Karen-who happens to be Boston’s Police Commissioner-arrives for an unexpected visit, things don’t add up. It’s totally out of character for Karen to take a vacation, never mind at high season in a tiny summer resort packed with tens of thousands of scantily-clad revelers. Sydney suspects an ulterior motive and starts to investigate, which brings her face-to-face with some ugly truths about the world-and herself. Filled with the colorful characters and unexpected twists you’ve come to expect, this fourth book in the Sydney Riley series offers a gripping tale of courage and conviction set against the festive backdrop of Provincetown’s most outrageous week.
About Jeanette de Beauvoir
Jeannette de Beauvoir is a bestselling novelist who writes both historical and mystery fiction and whose work has been translated into 12 languages. A Booksense Book-of-the-Year finalist, she’s a member of the Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the National Writers Union. All her novels are firmly rooted in a sense of place, whether it’s a mystery series set in Montréal or on Cape Cod, or historical fiction set in World War II or in medieval France.
