It’s important to me that my novels are not only readable character-driven mysteries, but also capture western and central Maine, so that those who are familiar with it will say, “Yes, that’s the Maine I know,” and those who are new to Maine or have never been here will understand Maine more than they did before reading. After a lifetime of reading books set in Maine that didn’t capture the state, I wanted to be sure it was as essential a character as the books’ human characters. I grew up in Augusta and worked the newspapers in Maine and New Hampshire for 30 years before returning to central Maine, where I live and write.