Authors Interviewing Characters: Tessa Wegert

April 5, 2022 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

Dead Wind

The body is discovered on Wolfe Island, under the shadow of an enormous wind turbine. Senior Investigator Shana Merchant, arriving on the scene with fellow investigator Tim Wellington, can’t shake the feeling that she knows the victim – and the subsequent identification sends shockwaves through their community in the Thousand Islands of Upstate New York.

Politics, power, passion . . . there are dark undercurrents in Shana’s new home, and finding the killer means dredging up her new friends and neighbors’ old grudges and long-kept secrets.

That is, if the killer is from the community at all. For Shana’s keeping a terrible secret from almost everyone around her: eighteen months ago she escaped from serial killer Blake Bram’s clutches. But has he followed her, to kill again?

TESSA WEGERT INTERVIEWS SHANA

Tessa: I hate to say it, Shana, but it seems like trouble follows you wherever you go.

Shana: You’re not wrong about that. You’re not the first to point it out, either. Tim says Alexandria Bay used to be like Shangri-La, all happy vacationers and peaceful river tours. The locals had to grapple with underage drinking, maybe even the occasional break-in, but the Thousand Islands wasn’t exactly a den of sin. Now, Tim and I are investigating the area’s third violent crime in a matter of months. But we’re going to put a stop to all that.

Tessa: You do make a great team.

Shana: I hope so. I won’t deny that things have been…strained between us since our last case. But we’re professionals. We make it work.

Tessa: Good thing, too, because this new case is a strange one.

Shana: It really is. It’s my first time collaborating with Canadian law enforcement. That doesn’t happen very often, you know, even though my jurisdiction extends right up to the Ontario border. The crime scene is on Canadian soil, so the New York State Police shouldn’t even be involved.

Tessa: Yet you are.

Shana: Yeah – and that’s the strange part. The victim found out there, at the base of that wind turbine? She’s connected to A-Bay. Truth be told, that worries me. Blake Bram has been quiet for almost five months. We’ve seen no sign of him, nor have we uncovered any fresh crimes that could be linked to the killer the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, my old NYPD precinct, and the FBI are all looking for. But after eighteen months of playing cat and mouse with him, I don’t believe for a second that Bram – the same man who abducted me and killed all those women in New York – is going to disappear into the ether.

Tessa: Are you saying that you think Bram has something to do with the murder out on Wolfe Island?

Shana: It’s a possibility. The locals will certainly think so, when news of this homicide gets out. Bram’s become the bogeyman under the bed. People are scared, and frankly, they should be. Until Tim and I can puzzle out how Hope Oberon got from her home in Watertown to that windswept island, we have to take him into consideration. I know one thing for sure: Bram is still here. He’s watching me. Plotting his next move. And I’m going to find him.

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Tessa Wegert is the author of the Shana Merchant series of mysteries, which includes Death in the Family, The Dead Season, and Dead Wind (2022). A former freelance journalist, Tessa’s work has appeared in Forbes, The Huffington Post, Adweek, The Economist, and The Globe and Mail. Tessa grew up in Quebec, where she earned a degree in Communication Studies, and now lives with her husband and children in Coastal Connecticut.