In their new book "Bury The Lead," Kate Hilton, left, and Elizabeth Renzetti put a middle-age woman front and centre in the central character Cat Conway. The novel is the first title in a series that will follow Conway's life in the fictional town of Port Ellis.
Readers can be thankful that Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti's proposal for a nonfiction guide to mid-life never landed.
If it had, the writers might not have paired up to pen "Bury the Lead," a mystery novel introducing wry veteran journalist Cat Conway.
Conway is a former big-city scribe adjusting to a new life in the small town where she spent her childhood summers. She has fled the city - and her divorce with her capital-C career in tatters after she became the onscreen news that she was supposed to be covering. A straightforward assignment to profile the lecherous legendary actor starring in the local theatre's opening play gets complicated when he dies onstage under suspicious circumstances and Conway finds herself at the centre of a whodunit.
During the grey, uninspiring days of COVID-19 lockdowns, Hilton, the author of three domestic comedies, and Renzetti, an author and former Globe and Mail journalist, would meet on park benches, trying to boost their spirits.
Neither was able to read or write much in those dark days, but they found their way back to enjoying books through a shared love of mysteries. From there, the idea to write a cosy mystery of their own, updated with a feminist edge, took shape.
The collaboration takes their midlife guide proposal full circle, arriving instead, as Hilton notes, in the form of a mystery series. "Bury the Lead" is the first title in the Quill & Packet series, which will follow Conway's life in the fictional town of Port Ellis. The writers are working on the second book now and say they would be happy to continue writing additional titles forever.
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