D.R. Ransdell lives in Tucson, Arizona where she can enjoy good swimming weather most of the year. She loves to travel, so exotic locations are often a feature in her writing. She plays the violin in a mariachi band, which led to Mariachi Murder and a musical protagonist named Andy Veracruz. Her Greek vacations led to Andy’s second adventure, Island Casualty. D.R. lives with several lively cats who give her plenty of reasons to procrastinate. So far the felines have brought in plenty of dead lizards, but no dead bodies—yet.

I didn’t set out to write funny mysteries. How could murder be funny? It’s not, really. It’s too final. It usually snuffs people out of their last breaths way before their time. But when I started writing about Andy Veracruz, my mariachi player and accidental sleuth, the humor emerged, and I can’t seem to beat it out of him.

This doesn’t mean that Andy doesn’t get into serious misadventures. He witnesses crime on many levels. He doesn’t run into serial killers. Instead he winds up in the midst of domestic problems he couldn’t have dreamed of. These things disconcert him. He doesn’t know how to put things into perspective. What this reminds us is that murder is strange. It’s extraordinary. Any “regular” person should be shaken up by it.

When he’s not stalking murderers, Andy gets caught up in the kinds of problems that happen to a lot of us. He makes bad choices. In his case, this nearly always has to do with women. He likes women too much, and he likes the wrong women way, way too much. He knows better than to get involved, but he has a habit of making the same mistakes.

Why would he do that? He’s the everyman or everywoman we all recognize. How many of us have suffered similar situations? How often have we thought, that person is no good for me, but I want to have just one date anyway? Or two dates? Or more?

Andy doesn’t make sound decisions when beautiful women get in his way. I should explain that he comes by these characteristics naturally. For many years I’ve played in a mariachi group where I’m outnumbered, usually by three or four or five men to one woman—me. This has given me ample time to get into the heads of mariachi players. In fact Andy sprang from years of hearing confessions, bragging, and adventures from my comrades. Many of them make very bad decisions when it comes to women, especially the ones they aren’t married to.

I’m not as brash as my compadres are. Night after night I’ve watched them try to work their charm on unsuspecting females. Sometimes they get lucky. Sometimes I have to become an accomplice by warning them if their partners arrive on the scene unexpectedly!

Thus Andy gets involved in tight spots that have to do with murderers because he’s unlucky and tight spots that have to do with women because he simply can’t help himself. At first I wanted to write a more serious mystery series, but I can’t manage it. Andy might make mistakes, but down deep he’s optimistic. And even though he chooses the wrong women—bless his heart—at least he keeps trying.

For sample chapters of Mariachi Murder and Island Casualty, please visit http://www.drransdellnovels.com.

Lesley says:  Andy sounds like the kind of protagonist we love: flawed and determined…and kinda cute.

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