A Conversation with Mystery Authors Ron and Janet Benrey

with Ron and Janet Benrey

We are delighted to welcome mystery authors Ron and Janet Benrey to Omnimystery News today.

Ron and Janet's third Royal Tunbridge Wells mystery is A Jam of a Different Color (Greenbrier Book Company; November 2013 ebook format) … and they're giving one of our readers a chance to win a copy! Details, below.

We recently had a chance to catch up with the authors to talk about their work.

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Omnimystery News: You are the authors of several mystery series. Why did you choose to create recurring characters for your books?

Photo provided courtesy of
Ron and Janet Benrey

Ron and Janet Benrey: Long before we began to write mystery fiction we were avid readers of cozy mysteries — virtually all of them with recurring characters. When we decided to write our first novel (during the early 1990s), it was inevitable that we thought in terms of a mystery series and a recurring character. The question of whether or not to "evolve" a series character is fascinating: readers who enjoy a particular character expect him or her to retain those aspects of personality and thinking that they find entertaining. On the other hand, people change and grow (even fictional sleuths). Consequently we find ourselves walking a fine line: our protagonists do change from book to book, but never in their core values that ultimately shape the way they act and interact with other people.

We learned quite early in our writing that a recurring character had to have a strong enough personality and a distinct enough voice to carry readers through three, four, or more novels. Our current series, the Royal Tunbridge Wells mysteries, has been especially challenging because we have two recurring characters, one female and one male. Because they often "play off" against each another, they must grow and change in tandem.

A Jam of a Different Color, our new Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum mystery, is the third in the series. Felicity (Flick) Adams, Ph.D., the American born chief curator of the museum, has become more "Anglofied" — even uttering the occasional Britishism. Nigel Owen, the museum's London-born managing director, has become more comfortable living in a small city in Kent. Nonetheless, the pair still retain those inherent American and British traits that cause interesting friction when they interact.

OMN: So based on your own interests, would you categorize your books as cozies?

R/JB: Yes. However, if we have the opportunity to go beyond such a tightly defined category, we add that our mysteries lie toward the edgy end of the cozy spectrum. They have suspense-filled passages … they all contain an element of romance … and they tend to have more complex plots than many cozies.

"Labeling" has always been an integral part of the book biz. After all, one needs to put a book on a particular shelf in the library or bookstore — and now, in an online bookshop.

Our only complaint with the "cozy" label is that it is too narrow. Our early novels were called cozies because they had an amateur (non-policeman) sleuth, were set in interesting places, and lacked profanity, in your face violence, and overt sexuality. We think our mysteries are rated PG rather than G, like many true cozies.

OMN: Give us the synopsis of A Jam of a Different Color in a tweet.

R/JB: Who made perfect fakes of pricy antiques and murdered two people? The coppers think Flick and Nigel are guilty. The killer knows better!

OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?

R/JB: Our first series — "The Pippa Hunnechurch Mysteries" — features a British-born headhunter living in the Maryland. Well, Janet is a Brit, has worked as an executive recruiter, and was living in Maryland when we wrote the books.

Some of Pippa's characteristics of reflect Janet's personality. But Pippa is not autobiographical. She couldn't be because: 1) Janet has never had to bring several murderers to bay; and 2) Ron made a major contribution to Pippa's worldview and personality.

We invent our characters to tell the fictional stories we want to tell. We've never knowingly based a character on a real person, although we occasionally "meet" one of our characters in the flesh — after a novel is written.

OMN: Tell us about your writing process.

R/JB: We count ourselves among the novelists who are plotters rather than "seat-of-the-pantsers." Because most of our novels have one main plot and four subplots, we have to do considerable advance planning, or else we run the risk of getting lost.

But, we consider our outlines as guides, not fences. We feel free to change most everything as the manuscript develops. We've changed murder victims, the sex of key characters, the number of characters, the importance of secondary characters, the murder victims, and of course the murderer.

We almost never write long, formal biographies of our leading characters; we get to know them as the story progresses. And we really get inside their heads when we deploy them in the second and third novels of a series.

OMN: How do you go about researching the plot points of your stories?

R/JB: We often use the Internet as a research tool — carefully and gingerly. There is lots of incorrect information online. We also consult with experts when needed. For example, while writing A Jam of a Different Color, we spoke on two occasions (via telephone) with a senior police official in England. We wanted to get the details right when Flick and Nigel are arrested and interrogated.

Dead as a Scone, our first Tea Museum novel, posed the challenge of inventing a comprehensive "collection" to fill the museum's galleries and display shelves. We did it with Internet research, library research, visits to museums and several cities. Although our antiquities are imaginary, no one has ever challenged their "possible authenticity."

OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to do on site research, where would it be?

R/JB: We are planning a mystery set in Oxford, England. A month there would give us time to soak up the local atmosphere — and make the story richer. We plan to use Oxford as one of the novel's "characters," so we need lots of interesting details to make "our Oxford" realistic.

Ron is writing a standalone thriller that takes place during the first century. He would love to spend some time browsing through the ruins of ancient Roman cities (and European museums that specialize in ancient Roman artifacts). Same reason.

OMN: You mentioned that you like to soak up local atmosphere. How true are you to the settings in your book.

R/JB: We have used both fictional and real settings.

Our first series—"The Pippa Hunnechurch Mysteries"—was set in the fictional town of Ryde, Maryland, a small city loosely based on Annapolis, Maryland. We lived in Maryland at the time, and Pippa comes from a corner of England that had much in common with the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland. Ryde doesn't exist, but we tried to paint it in a way that made readers think it was located where we said it was.

Ryde is important for Pippa. She likes the ambience so much that she decided to set up her business and home there. She comes from a part of England that has a history stretching back more than a thousand years. Ryde isn't that old, but it does date back to the first English settlers in America. (Sorry! We see Ryde as an actual place.)

Our Royal Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum mysteries are set in a real English town — the kind of place that attracts tourists and might have also attracted the imaginary foundation that built our fictional tea museum.

We are as careful as we can be to be true to geography and local environment. We think that's an important part of making up stories seem completely plausible.

OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?

R/JB: It's funny, but the majority of our interests — e.g., boating, sailing, skiing, fishing, traveling — haven't yet found their way into our novels. Cooking, tea, and techy gadgets certainly have.

OMN: Have you ever considered writing under a single pen name?

R/JB: We write under our own names: Ron and Janet Benrey. However, we did ask our first publisher to use "Benrey+Benrey" as our byline. They put it on the spine of the book, but not elsewhere. It's not really a pen name, but it does reflect that we work together on novels.

OMN: What is the best advice — and harshest criticism — you've received as authors?

R/JB: Best advice: Learn how to evaluate your own writing.

It was Ernest Hemingway who said, "The most important thing in a writer needs is a built-in, shockproof, manure detector." Ernest used a different word, but the point he made is essential. Writers must learn to evaluate their own fiction. It's all too easy to think you've written something wonderful, and equally easy to think you just cranked out the worst chapter in the history of novelizing. Friends, critique groups, faculty at writers conferences, even a favorite aunt can all be useful evaluators — but ultimately a writer must be able to detect the gold (or the manure) in his or her work.

Harshest criticism: "Your novel doesn't meet our high standards."

This was the heart of one of the nastiest rejection letters we ever received. It barely qualifies as "criticism" because there's nothing useful a writer can take away from this kind of statement. We read it, licked our wounds, and moved on. Two months later we sold our first book to another publisher.

OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "We are mystery authors and thus we are also …"

R/JB: … avid mystery readers, because being the former is impossible without doing the latter.

OMN: As both authors and publishers, how important are titles and book covers?

R/JB: The functions of both book covers and titles have changed in the world of e-books and paper books sold online. The old rules reflected the need to attract the attention of people browsing for novels in a bookstore. Today, we need to attract the attention of readers browsing online. Covers need to be fairly simple, or else the "miniatures" will be impossible to decipher when viewed on a web page. Titles have to be relevant enough — and compelling enough — to encourage a browser to read the book's description. That is the item of "marketing literature" that sells e-books and online-purchased paper books.

The title and cover of our latest novel — A Jam of a Different Color — carry forward the "cozy scheme" of the earlier novels in the series. Because the stories are set in a tea museum, the titles and cover illustrations echo items of food served at typical afternoon teas: scones, crumpets, and jam.

OMN: What kinds of feedback have you received from readers?

R/JB: The one question get asked asked again and again is how do we manage to write together? Most people who ask question seem to assume that it's impossible (or at least very difficult) for two writers to work together. If pressed why they think this, they will usually say something about the ego required to write successfully. We've learned that the question they are really asking is, How can the two of you keep your egos in check long enough to put words on paper?

We actually enjoy answering the question, because our explanation surprises most people. Long before we began to write novels together, we operated a business communications firm. We learned that the only way to satisfy our clients — to meet their sometimes-goofy requirements — was to work closely together and check our egos at the door. Writing to please our readers requires the very same discipline.

OMN: If your current series were to be adapted for television or film, who do you see playing the key roles?

R/JB: Interestingly, our casting changes with each subsequent novel. If A Jam of a Different Color were made into a movie today, we would propose Benedict Cumberbatch for Nigel Owen and Christina Hendricks for Flick Adams.

OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young?

R/JB: Janet's childhood reading habits were formed when she discovered a trunk of old books in an attic. Inside was a mishmash of history, biography, fiction, and non-fiction. Later in life Janet developed a taste for mystery — mostly set in England, mostly cozy. Her favorite authors include: Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. D. James, Elspeth Peters, Elizabeth George, Anne Perry, and Ruth Rendell. In fact, most of the mystery classics, including those written by Daphne Du Maurier.

The first novel Ron read cover-to-cover was the The Bobbsey Twins, or Merry Days Indoors and Out. He subsequently read two-dozen more in the series. He was a science fiction fan while growing up and assiduously avoided mystery novels. That changed in his early twenties when he happened upon Gambit, a "Nero Wolfe" mystery by Rex Stout. He quickly grew attached to the mystery writers who wrote during the middle third of the 20th century: Dashiell Hammett, Edmund Crispin, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John le Carré — even Mickey Spillane.

OMN: And what do you read now for pleasure?

R/JB: Mystery is still number one for both of us, although Janet reads a lot of non-fiction these days and Ron enjoys theology books.

OMN: Do you have any favorite series characters?

R/JB: Not surprisingly, they are the characters created by our favorite mystery authors. Janet especially enjoys Adam Dalgliesh (P. D. James) and Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy Sayers). Ron likes Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler), Lew Archer (Ross Macdonald), Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie) — and, of course, Sherlock Holmes.

OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any topic.

R/JB: Five Top Teas to Try

• An inexpensive loose tea blend — to prove that even "ordinary" brewed tea is loads better than tea made with a teabag.
• A good quality Oolong tea — the peachy taste and smell will surprise you.
• An estate Darjeeling tea — but be sure it's not a counterfeit!
• A good quality tea blend (our favorite is Upton Tea's Finest Russian Caravan Blend) — it may make you a tea person (even if you're a committed coffee drinker)
• Pu'erh tea — everyone should try it's fermented "earthy" taste once!

OMN: What's next for you both?

R/JB: Writers keep writing. We're working together on the novel set in Oxford, England we mentioned earlier. Ron is moving along with his novel set in the first century.

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Ron and Janet Benrey write cozy mysteries together. They've written "The Pippa Hunnechurch Mysteries" and "The Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries" (both series are now published by Greenbrier Book Company), and the "Glory, North Carolina, Mysteries" (published by Harlequin).

Despite their literary togetherness, Ron and Janet have dissimilar backgrounds. Janet has been a literary agent, the editorial director of a small press, an executive recruiter, a book publicist, and—going way back—a professional photographer. Janet earned her degree in Communication (Magna cum Laude) from the University of Pittsburgh.

Ron has been a writer forever — initially on magazines (his first real job was Electronics Editor at Popular Science Magazine), then in corporations (he wrote speeches for senior executives), and then as a novelist. Over the years, Ron has authored ten non-fiction books, including Know Your Rights — a Survival Guide for Non-Lawyers (published by Sterling). Ron holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's degree in management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a juris doctor from the Duquesne University School of Law. He was a member of the Bar of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Late in 2010, the Benreys launched Greenbrier Book Company, an eBook-centric publisher that also publishes some paper books. By the end of 2013, Greenbrier had more than 90 books "in print". Greenbrier's list includes dozens of mysteries and suspense novels.

For more about the authors, visit their website at Benrey.com. To learn more about Greenbrier Book Company, visit its website at GreenbrierBooks.com.

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A Jam of a Different Color
Ron and Janet Benrey
The Royal Tunbridge Wells Mysteries

The impossible has happened!

Someone has figured out how to make perfect counterfeits of the Tunbridge Wells Tea Museum's most valuable silver antiques.

Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency (the British equivalent of America's FBI) thinks that it's an inside job. The Officer in charge of the case has Flick Adams and Nigel Owen — the chief curator and managing director — "in the frame" for the crime. He also has begun to wonder if they could be responsible for the mysterious hit-and-run deaths of the museum's webmaster and her brother.

To make matters much, much worse, Nigel and Flick have just launched a major fundraising drive to repay the humongous debt the museum took on to purchase its collection of antiquities. They know that any bad publicity will scuttle the campaign and turn off the money tap.

Flick and Nigel have only one option: find the "mastermind" who's really responsible for the spate of evildoing. But then, the mastermind sets a lethal booby trap to slow them down. SOCA further complicates their detecting, their money raising, and their evolving personal relationship by arresting both of them.