Notes from the Bench

A repair ticket has four fields, always in the same order, and I ran my own working life on the same form before I ever gave it to a detective. The last field asks what the fix cost, and in a mystery that cost is never only parts and hours.

A repair café is a hall, some borrowed tables, and a line of toasters waiting to be fixed for nothing. They are the most cheerful rooms I know, and I gave my fictional town one and put my sleuth behind the counter.

Pre-orders for Fixed to Death are open, and the cover is the premise in one image, a mended cash register set in a lit shop window.

The case had not come down off that cabinet in years. The boy knew it for a fact, and he built his whole plan around it.

Before I draft a page I know who, how, why, and what the crime left behind. Everything else is built to put that trace in my detective's path.

Fixed to Death, the first Repair Café Mystery, is a Kindle ebook out August 4, 2026. If you have been reading The Notebook, you already know its town.