Friends,
Welcome to The Shop's Bell. It is a short note that comes once a week, some of it from the workbench and some of it from the writing desk, and it will never run long.
The blog, The Notebook, has been going since March, so there is already a season of posts waiting for you at The Notebook, and you can start anywhere in it.
My first novel, Fixed to Death, comes out on the fourth of August, and I will have more to say about that in the weeks ahead. For now I am glad you are here.
Delilah
From the Bench
Four Fields on Every Ticket
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.
Also in the notebook
- Reads Light A customer had said the woman weighed heavy, and the talk went round the town a day before her scale reached my bench. She wanted it checked, not defended, and the weights had an answer that ran the other way from the accusation.
- Estate Sale Season June brings the estate sales out along the Sound. I go for the small broken machines, and I come home with something harder to price, the arrangement of a whole life laid out on card tables.
You do not stop asking. You only stop being paid for the answers.
From Fixed to Death, out August 4