This episode of Cozy Ink Podcast features an interview with cozy mystery author Jay Forman. We discuss her Lee Smith cozy mystery series.
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Jay’s books are available through:
About the Books:
One Way Ticket (Book #1: The Lee Smith Mystery Series)
Somebody tried to kill me.
Travel writer Lee Smith experiences a bumpy landing when she returns to Canada from a Caribbean cruise. A text from her best friend, billionaire Jack Hughes, appears on her phone before her plane has even reached the gate in Toronto—Somebody tried to kill me.
Even worse, it happened at Berkshire, the prestigious school where they first met.
Twenty years earlier, Berkshire’s iron gates and thick walls may have kept Lee safe from the media frenzy resulting from her father’s sensational trial, but they also locked her into her own kind of prison. Despite the elaborate story she made up to hide her identity, her classmates found out who she really was and bullied her mercilessly. The emotional scars left behind still haven’t healed.
Berkshire’s walls haven’t kept a current student safe, either. A seventeen year old girl has tumbled out of the Berkshire tower to her death—did she jump? Was she pushed?
Lee would rather travel to any other place on the planet than return to Berkshire but Jack needs her help. And maybe the time has come to finally face her old demons. Braving Berkshire, Lee finds sex tapes, a blackmail scheme, and a murderer who’s only just getting started—and it looks like Lee could be next on the list.
No Return (Book #2: The Lee Smith Mystery Series)
Canadian travel writer Lee Smith is half-way through her 7,000 kilometer cross-Canada road trip, enjoying the view from the top of The Sleeping Giant in Lake Superior, when she agrees to take a 500 kilometer detour north.
Despite its isolation, the fly-in Ojibway community of Webequie First Nation is having problems with the neighbors. Multiple mining companies are clamoring to tap into the $60 billion mineral field that envelopes Webequie. Even Jack is blasting gaping wounds in Mother Earth to increase the shine of the bottom line at Hughes Diamonds.
A prospector has been shot — and his face has been carved.
An elder is arrested by the Ontario Provincial Police, but the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service officers in Webequie don’t think he did it. Visiting Texan hunters are shooting anything that moves. A little boy carefully hides the big shiny rock crystal that he found in the river. A strangely silent girl thinks she’s seen a ghost. An accredited Sasquatch researcher is thrashing around in the bush.
While trying to find a killer who isn’t done yet, Lee stumbles on the rough edges in her relationship with Jack, gets almost as high as the dancing green shapes of the Wawatay in the night sky, crosses paths with a porcupine, and circumnavigates wolverine traps on the run of her life. The killer is hunting her.
Excess Baggage (Book #3: The Lee Smith Mystery Series)
Two countries. Three police forces. Four bodies.
It was supposed to be a fun corporate team-building adventure, with travel writer Lee Smith joining her new husband Jack Hughes and some of his top executives chasing clues that take them from the Bay of Fundy, to the French islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, and across Newfoundland. Lee hopes the trip will offer her an escape from the intense media interest in her father’s appeal against the sentence he received after being convicted of a number of serial killings.
But instead of fun, Lee keeps finding dead bodies. Bodies with first names that match her father’s list of victims. Soon more than the media is focused on Lee. The combined forces of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the French Gendarmerie Nationale, and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary are keeping a close eye on everyone on the Hughes retreat – especially Lee. Worse, a menacing musclehead keeps showing up wherever Lee is, and there’s a persistent red car following her in her rear-view mirror. And all the while, the body count continues to climb…
About the Author:
Jay Forman was once a relatively sane television producer. Since walking away from the cameras she’s been crazy busy adding mother and mystery author to her list of credits. Her focus is now locked on sending Canadian travel writer Lee Smith and Jack Hughes (Lee’s best friend with many benefits, not least of which is that he’s a billionaire philanthropist) to wherever bodies are found.