The Big Kitty

A Note from the Author

When I first discussed the idea of a cat mystery set in Maine, I thought, “What better location than the town of Kittery? It even sounds right!”

With all the outlet stores, the nearby city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and a naval shipyard bringing people from all over the country into the area, Kittery seemed ideal.

Except …

Kittery might be a little too real. It’s a fairly small town, and it didn’t seem quite fair, smearing a murder all over a real place. You can get away with killing lots of people (at least on paper) in large, impersonal metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, or even New Orleans. But there’s a reason why small-town murders tend to happen in fictitious places like St. Mary Mead, Pecan Springs, Texas … or Cabot Cove, Maine.

So I picked up Kittery and sort of smooshed it together with the neighboring township of York Harbor to create Kittery Harbor, a safely make-believe locale with its own politics, movers and shakers … and a cat lady. But as I worked on the plot, the specter of county politics arose, so I decided to secede the whole area from the real world.

Elmet is the name of an ancient Celtic kingdom that controlled part of what is now Yorkshire, England. So, Elmet County is a sort of parallel universe to Maine’s York County. It’s close to Portsmouth, there are lots of outlet stores nearby, and the town fronts on a harbor but there are still farms in the hinterland. Christopher Levett, an early settler in Maine, is commemorated with a fort in the real world. In Elmet County, he gives his name to the county seat.

I had a lot of fun creating a world that connects with reality in general, but definitely not in particulars.

No people were hurt in the creation of this literary crime (if you don’t count the author’s hair tearing), and all places and politics are definitely made up.

Any resemblance to real people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

However, some cat caregivers may recognize a few traits exhibited by certain feline friends …