Hurricane Season: Florida Panhandle Mystery # 1

“Miss Marple meets Eudora Welty (with a trace of Erskine Caldwell)” -Kirkus

The New York Times said: “With the kind of realism that stems from William Faulkner, the author skillfully portrays her inbred, suspicious, nasty people ... Hurricane Season ends up an orthodox murder mystery, but it is more than that. In a way, [Michaela Thompson] has attempted a microcosm of America, carefully dissecting out a single cell under a very strong lens."

A STORM, AN ILLICIT LOVE AFFAIR, AND MOONSHINE… (actually, two illicit love affairs)

The 1950s fairly leap off the page in this classic cozy mystery set in northern Florida in the Eisenhower era, complete with Johnny Ray on the jukebox and a Womanless Wedding—this one interrupted by an explosion at a moonshine still. Lily Trulock, owner of Trulock’s Grocery & Marine Supply, leads a pretty quiet life until a stranger comes to town. The new guy’s not what he appears, but then, some of St. Elmo’s residents aren’t either.

Before she can say, “down the hatch,” Lily’s at the center of a vicious murder and a no-holds-barred bootlegging war—and a nasty storm’s on the way. This is a vibrant, atmospheric, powerful novel—as filled with energy, mystery, and motion as a hurricane.

Hurricane Season is as much a richly-detailed, spot-on historical as a mystery, widely praised by masters of the genre and reviewers alike for its pitch-perfect period feel and fine, spare writing.

"A remarkable, compelling first novel ... a storm of a story." -The Washington Post

"This is a remarkable book which deserves readers from far beyond the ranks of mystery fans." -The San Francisco Chronicle/Examiner

P.D. JAMES said: “(Michaela Thompson) knows how to create that sense of place, which is so important to any novel but particularly to crime fiction; her characters are believable men and women in a real world, her mystery is credible, and in Lily Trulock she has created a middle-aged heroine who is both original and sympathetic.”

JOHN D. MACDONALD said: “I enjoyed the book. It has real people in a real place, factors which seem to be ever more rare these days—even though it is the only way to create a real suspension of disbelief.”