About the Book

Book: Mabel and the Unholy Night (Mysteries of Medicine Spring Book Four)

Author: Susan Kimmel Wright

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Release date: November 5, 2024

Faithful dog Barnacle has run off into a snowstorm, disrupting Mabel’s fun outing at the Christmas tree farm. Things don’t improve much when he reappears…with a human skull.

Since Mabel moved into her late grandma’s house, the sleepy village of Medicine Spring has provided clean air, a close-knit community, and charming small-town shops. To her surprise, it’s also offered up several murders—and romance with a handsome private investigator. Now, Barnacle’s discovery plunges Mabel into the mystery surrounding a decades-old unsolved murder and the disappearance of her friend Nita’s great uncle.

Before Mabel, boyfriend John, and her friends can find answers and bring justice for Nita and her family, more complications develop. Incredibly, a sixty-year-old Christmas card arrives, bearing Mabel’s name and address and containing a plea for help. Are the mysteries related?

While Mabel tries to get to the bottom of these strange events, a second suspicious death casts suspicion on Nita. Can Mabel find the real killer in time? Or will her Christmas season end on an unholy night?

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About the Author

Susan Kimmel Wright began her life of mystery in childhood, with reading. That led to writing kids’ mysteries and eventually to Medicine Spring with Mabel. A longtime member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, Susan’s also a prolific writer of personal experience stories, many for Chicken Soup for the Soul. She shares an 1875 farmhouse in southwestern PA with her husband, several dogs and cats, and an allegedly excessive stockpile of coffee and tea mugs.

More from Susan

Does Christmas make you nostalgic? In Mabel & the Unholy Night, fifty-year-old Mabel is observing her first Christmas in her late grandma’s house. As she sets out each fragile, vintage ornament, she feels that same familiar lump in her throat.

What we treasure may have to do with when we grew up. I love mid-century glass tree ornaments from Woolworth’s, ceramic elves stamped “Made in Japan,” and Gurley candles shaped like carolers, some still bearing 29¢ stickers on the base.

Ever since childhood, I’ve loved the tiny cardboard village under our tree. Houses and churches sparkled with glitter in their landscape of cotton-batting snow and bushes of dried moss. A sheet of glass atop light-blue construction paper made a perfect pond for tiny skaters. As someone once pointed out, accuracy of scale is of no concern in the cardboard village. Reindeer may loom over the houses like the mutant product of scientific experimentation gone wrong in a “B” horror movie.

Cardboard villages, properly called “putz houses,” originated with Moravian immigrants. Once handmade, houses were later imported from Germany and Japan. While nowadays we’re more likely to buy a ceramic village we can light up, I’ll take the primitive charm of a putz village any day.

Maybe best of all, we can build our own putz villages to suit ourselves. A new tradition for child and parent or grandparent might be building a new house each year, to add to the tiny community. While kits are available, you can also find plans online, such as this free resource: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/make-traditional-glitter-houses-2365171

Perhaps our yearning for the things of the past is rooted in a longing for a more carefree time, when beloved faces, now gone, were still around us as we enjoyed the season together. When our slower-paced celebration centered on Christ’s birth, and family closeness. Building a putz house or church with loved ones might let us recapture just a bit of that old-fashioned Christmas spirit.

Author Interview

Can you tell us a little bit about what readers can expect from your books?

The most common comments I get from readers are: “Hilarious—I was reading in bed and woke my husband up, laughing too hard.” “I relate to Mabel—she isn’t perfect.” “What a fun read—but what really stuck with me was when it unexpectedly touched my heart.”

What is the greatest advice you have ever been given about writing?

“Keep working on your craft, and never give up. A lot of people more talented than you will fall by the wayside. Persistence is the most important difference between those who get published and those who don’t.”

Can you share 5 random facts about this book?

My very dear friend Dot, who belonged to both my writers’ group and my weekly Bible study christened this book Mabel & the Unholy Night. She didn’t live to see it published, but told me shortly before her passing that she was so glad I used her title for it. I’ve thanked her in my acknowledgements.
Two of my—and many of my readers’—favorite characters in this series are Miss Birdie and Ms. Kathryn Ann, girlhood friends of Mabel’s late grandma. In one scene, they are getting together to make Christmas candy. Two kinds they make are Fantasy Fudge, a favorite of my own grandma, and hard tack, which my mom made every Christmas.
Mabel’s dog Barnacle is modeled after my cattle dogs, Elvis and Blue. Koi the cat is modeled after my Maine coon mix, Cirrus.
Since I wanted a very Christmasy book, I had fun throwing in all kinds of fun Christmas traditions (some of my favorites anyway), including singing Silent Night at the conclusion of Christmas Eve church service in a darkened sanctuary lit by flickering candles. You’ll also see I had fun creating some Christmasy figures of speech that made me giggle.
Like Mabel, I’m afraid of singing alone in public, though I do sing with our church choir every week. Once years ago, I managed to sing a solo without passing out. But I can’t imagine doing that now!

What was the most challenging part of bringing this book to life? 
My books are all light and funny, but this particular book is also centered around an old tragedy that brings up some serious issues. It was a delicate matter to weave all this together—keeping the book light and fun while still treating the serious aspects with respect.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
I hope readers will appreciate that justice always matters, however long delayed, and that sometimes beautiful things can blossom out of the wreckage of the past.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Before you go, where can readers keep up with what’s next?
I love to hear from my readers and enjoy sharing with them. Please check out my website: www.susankimmelwright.com, where you can find out more about my books and see what’s new. You will also find links to purchase books, and can sign up to receive my newsletter, which includes news and giveaways, plus a free e-novella download, Mabel & the Cat’s Meow, the prequel to my Mysteries of Medicine Spring series.