Michael Nethercott

Michael Nethercott's work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, Gods and Monsters, and Crimestalkers Casebook. He is a past winner of The Black Orchid Novella Award, The Vermont Playwrights Award, and The Nor’easter Play Writing Contest. He lives with his wife in Guilford, Vermont.

Nethercott's latest traditional mystery novel is The Séance Society. From the author's Q & A at Mysteristas:

Tell us about your main characters’ psyche or personality. What led them to be the persons they are today?

In The Séance Society, set in the mid-1950’s, I have two protagonists—a pair of detectives who work together as team. Mr. O’Nelligan is an Irish-born widower in his early sixties living in the small town of Thetford, Connecticut. His past professions including train conductor, schoolteacher, bricklayer, door-to-door salesman and actor. Also, in his youth, he fought in his homeland as a rebel, though he prefers not to dwell on that period. He is a devotee of classic literature and quotes Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats freely. Mr. O’Nelligan could be described as witty, analytical, pragmatic, warm, compassionate and scholarly. He’s very high-minded and sees each case he embarks upon as a knightly quest. He fits the “amateur sleuth” designation, although he is, in fact, assisting an actual private eye, Lee Plunkett, a young man who has reluctantly inherited his father’s agency. Though Lee is the one with the official investigator’s license, he is, in a sense, actually...[read on]

Visit Michael Nethercott's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: The Séance Society.

--Marshal Zeringue