What do mystery readers know about Western Kansas in the 1930s? Or, for that matter, now?
When readers think of Kansas, they think of the Wizard of Oz—wholesomeness, and “Dorothy and her dog Toto, too.” They do not think of its rigid class structure, control, and conformity. When that reaches bursting point, it can cause violence against women and children. Although murders are uncommon in Kansas, they can be brutal. A case in point would be the Clutter family depicted in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. In 1959, two drifters searched for an isolated wealthy farm family to rob. Hitchcock and Smith tortured and murdered four members of the Clutter family over several days. The tragedy happened forty miles east of “Hamilton.” The town suffered from anxiety, terrified that the murderers would next come to our town. It took six weeks for the authorities to arrest them. As an eight-year-old, it was horrifying. I worked alone daily in my grandfather’s store on Highway 50 for several hours.
Years later, I learned that the killers, posing as vacuum cleaner salesmen, first visited my step-grandparent’s house before going to the Clutters. They assumed the males of the household would be away in the fields. My suspicious step-grandmother told them she didn’t have time to look at vacuum cleaners. Six hungry men were due for lunch any minute.
Another murder occurred during my childhood. A gruesome murder in a motel across the alley from my home also influenced Eleven Days Toward Death. I was four or five years old. My grandmother caught me standing on the fence, watching men carry buckets of bloody water. I would have been clueless if she hadn’t shared the details and forced me inside. On the positive side, it gave me this storyline.
Tomorrow’s post will preview the "Prologue” to Eleven Days Toward Death, a Corrie Chester/Roger Holloway Murder Mystery/Romance.
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