Yeah,
Baxter McLean will be back, this time our unlikely folk-singing
sleuth getting tangled up in the messy revolutionary politics of the
1970s, specifically the so-called United Freedom Front, which, in
1976, decided that bombing our happy little town, Newburyport
Superior Court, was an interesting and effective way to protest
whatever it was they were against (it seems so foggy now, like a bad
dream) in the next Libertyport murder-mystery — Libertyport being
that quaint, fictional-but-oh-so-familiar New England community where
everyone knows everyone else, and their business, “an idyllic
vision straight out of Norman Rockwell, but gay-friendly, with hybrid
cars and flat-screen TVs,” as Joel Brown, the author, puts it. But
you won’t find him, Baxter, kicking around the Rum House, or
fending off the ferocious queries of local gossip/blogger Abigail
Marks until next year. “If I make good on my promises,” says
Brown, a North End resident, Boston Globe scribbler and author
of “Mirror Ball Man” and “Mermaid Blues,” the two
Libertyport/McLean mysteries. And he pretty much has to follow up on
the series, seeing how he promised to kill off some lucky fan as a
reward in his Kickstarter campaign to help finance “Essex County
Byway Guide: History, Culture & Nature on the North Shore,” his
current project, which has its coming out party next week at Plum
Island Coffee Roasters — and his third book in as many years.
