Yesterday, I reviewed M.E. Hilliard’s debut mystery, The Unkindness of Ravens. I’m so pleased to share an interview with you now. Hilliard was kind enough to answer questions for us. Thank you, M.E.

M.E., who were you before you turned to a life of crime? In other words, please tell us about yourself.

I’ve lived all over, but for the most part am a New Englander. Avid reader, lifelong mystery lover, English major in college. My first job after graduating was as an assistant buyer at Lord & Taylor. I ended up there because the company was recruiting at my university and had an open interview schedule, so I signed up and got hired. I stayed in merchandising as a buyer for twelve years, decided I’d had enough, and got my MLS. It’s been libraries ever since. I’d always noodled around with ideas for mysteries, but finally settled on a librarian detective and a setting and went from there. I currently live in Florida with my husband and a bunch of rescue animals. It’s the island of misfit pets! I still work as a librarian, but I’m now in what’s called Technical Services. I handle Interlibrary Loan—I’m the librarian that finds those obscure titles in library systems all over the country and has them sent in to your branch for you. There’s a certain amount of detective work involved, so I enjoy it.

Tell us about The Unkindness of Ravens, without spoilers.

Here’s the elevator pitch: Greer Hogan is a 40-year-old widowed librarian who makes a mean martini and who never lied about anything she considered important until the night her husband was murdered—because of where she was at the time of his death. Three years and one career change later, Greer is enjoying her new life in the Village of Raven Hill when she finds the body of her friend in the old Manor house that serves as the Village library. Driven by curiosity, guilt, and lingering questions about her husband’s death, Greer begins to untangle a knot of secrets linking respected Village residents to each other and to two deaths reported as accidents as she works to unmask a very clever killer.

Please introduce us to Greer Hogan.

Greer is a lifelong New Yorker. She comes from an Irish Catholic family in Riverdale, where her dad owns a pub. She has a bossy older sister, and her mother drives her nuts. She went to NYU, then spent her career until shortly before we meet her working for a prestige brand cosmetics company in marketing. Though she dated other men, she ended up marrying a boy from the neighborhood when they were in their mid-twenties. His name was Dan Sullivan, and it’s his murder that sets the events of the book in motion. After his death, she gets an MLS and ends up in Raven Hill. She’s smart, she’s funny, she likes good books and nice clothes, and by the time we meet her, she’s got some issues.

Greer introduces herself by telling about her favorite detectives in literature. Who were/are your favorite detectives?

I’ve always been a Christie fan, so Miss Marple and Poirot. I started out watching them on TV with my mother, and then read all the books. My other Golden Age favorite is Lord Peter. Elizabeth Peter’s Jacqueline Kirby and Amelia Peabody. Dr. Ruth Galloway, of course. As far as professional detectives go, I’m a big fan of DCI Vera Stanhope, as well as Fred Vargas’ Commissaire Adamsberg. And who doesn’t love Armand Gamache and Guido Brunetti? Brunetti can cook, right?

The library in The Unkindness of Ravens is almost a character in itself. How did you create that library? Is it modeled on one or two?

When I was in high school we lived in a small town in Connecticut. It had a new, modern library, but right down the street from that was an older home that had been renovated. It still had wooden letters saying “Public Library” over the door. It had started as a private home, then been given to the town to use as a library. Once the town outgrew it, a new library was built and the old one became a private home again. The new owners left the letters over the door and just directed people down the street. Then as an adult I lived in Philadelphia, and ended up taking a class in a university building that had also once been a private home, but this one was big and gothic. It was called Raven Hill Mansion. At some point all those things came together in my head, combined with every creepy old house book I’ve ever read, and the Raven Hill Public Library was born.

I’m not looking for spoilers for the next book, but can you tell us anything about the next book in the Greer Hogan series?

I can give you the title and the first draft of the flap copy, with the caveat that things are subject to change this far from the pub date of April, 2022. It’s called Shadow in the Glass—here’s the copy: Murder rocks a wedding celebration at an idyllic lakeside home—and librarian-turned-sleuth Greer Hogan could be next on the killer’s guest list.Librarian Greer Hogan is on hand to celebrate her old friend Sarah Whitaker’s nuptials at the Whitaker summer home on beautiful Mirror Lake, just outside the upstate New York village of Lake Placid. But Greer has an ulterior motive—to gather information that could reopen the investigation into her husband’s murder, a crime for which she believes an innocent man went to prison. Her plans come to a shuddering halt when a wedding guest goes missing and turns up dead in the lake. The guest, Brittany Miles, was an employee of the Whitaker family whom Sarah had long suspected was up to no good at work. 

The police have no leads, but Greer—an avid reader of crime fiction who possesses an uncanny knack for deduction—begins her own investigation. She learns that the victim was seen with a mystery man right before she disappeared. Then the autopsy reveals that she didn’t drown in the lake after all—she was killed somewhere else, and her body dumped in the water afterward. 

The suspect list is as long as the guest list itself, with no apparent motive. Now, Greer must rely on the wisdom of her favorite fictional detectives to tease out truth from lies—and keep herself out of the killer’s sights.

Everyone takes a different path to publication. How did you become a published author?

I started out writing fifty pages of The Unkindness of Ravens to take to a writing conference that was being held a few hours from where I lived and featured an agent I’d heard of—Don Maass. He’d written some books on craft that I really liked. I got some good feedback, so I kept working on it, went to another workshop, revised and started going to conferences to meet people and learn about publishing. I go to Bouchercon whenever I can, since it’s the biggest mystery convention. I also went to Sleuthfest, a Mystery Writer’s of America conference put on by the Florida chapter, because they had workshops on pitching and a pitch fest with agents and editors. After that it was Killer Nashville, which is where I met my agent. I had signed up for a critique session with her. This all happened over several years—it took me a while and a lot of feedback to finish the book, and then I’d query and submit and pitch when I had a chance. Basically, this is what I spent my vacation time and any spare cash doing for quite a while!

If you had to recommend 5 books to a person so they could get a feel for your reading taste, what 5 would you pick?

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn, Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers, any Ruth Galloway title by Elly Griffiths, Homeport by Nora Roberts, and The Secret of the Mansion–Trixie Belden #1 by Julie Campbell (Throwback!).

What’s on your TBR pile?

The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths, Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards, Finley Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano, and Who Is Maud Dixon?  by Alexandra Andrews. Just finished The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O’Donnell, so that’s still sitting with the others on the nightstand.

Because I’m a librarian, I like to ask this question. Tell us a story about a library or librarian that influenced you.

I’ve always been a library user. When I was a kid—around middle-school age, we lived in New Orleans, close enough to the Algiers Regional Library for me to ride my bike there. I went all the time. One day I’d just finished a book, I think it was Julie of the Wolves, and I asked the librarian what the silver seal on the front cover meant. She said it was a Newbery Medal Winner, then explained what that was, and showed me a section where they kept all the Newberry books to date, winners and nominees. So every time I went I would start there and get at least one. I discovered a lot of great authors that way.

M.E. Hilliard’s website is https://mehilliard.wordpress.com/

The Unkindness of Ravens by M.E. Hilliard. Crooked Lane Books, 2021. ISBN 9781643856940 (hardcover), 336p.