“No matter how tough things MAY seem at any given moment in life, don’t despair. Things can and will get better—and in ways you never imagined.”
Coleman Cooper is a troubled young man who can never get anything right—not even his own suicide.
Welcome to the fictional town of Pierrevert, Maine, in the 1970s—a quaint little village where everyone knows everyone. Nobody has ever been a town official, a policeman, or even a fireman who wasn’t born and raised there. Anchored by a venerable country inn, a dive bar where people go to dance and hook up, and a mental health facility known for its innovative, open-door approach, you’d be hard pressed to find a more charming slice of Americana. To be sure, Pierrevert is just about as perfect a spot as it sunnily appears on a five-by-seven picture postcard.
Until someone starts murdering people.
Enter Coleman Cooper, loser deluxe, a young man so inept at everything that he bungles his own suicide. It’s just before his arrival as a patient at the Buchanan Institute that a savage killing takes place in Pierrevert—the first of “The Maine Murders,” so dubbed by Hayley Blossom, an expat British journalist covering the crimes for the local newspaper.
Coleman’s first two friends at Buchanan are a diet-soda addict and a young woman suffering from anorexia nervosa. His therapist, Dr. Wilson Haynes—Black, Harvard-educated, a former college basketball star—takes a tough-love approach and urges Coleman to get a job in town. Having previously worked as a bartender, Coleman soon finds himself pouring drinks at the King Richard Inn, owned by the stylish grande dame of Pierrevert, Patricia Sorensen. Her head chef, Leroy Little, and her house piano player, Sebastian “Skip” Jones, are larger than life to Coleman, who’s as anxious and unsure of himself as ever, even when wearing his official, light-blue King Richard vest and necktie. Yet his awkwardness doesn’t work against him the first time he visits Erin Go Bragh’s, the nearby gin mill, where a local siren who is miles out of his league takes a curious interest in him.
It’s not until eight months after the first Maine Murder, a vicious stabbing, that the killer strikes again—with a similar modus operandi. Other victims follow in more rapid succession, but with an entirely different signature. Pierrevert’s just-the-facts police chief, Chester Cody, along with his hotheaded deputy, Kevin Kincaid, cannot find a viable thread, although the latter sees Coleman as a suspect. Hayley Blossom, along with her colleagues at The Northeast Telegram, do a better job of connecting the dots—but they too struggle to match a motive with the ability to commit the killings that have rocked peaceful little Pierrevert to its core.
Ultimately, it is Coleman, at the crossroads of town interplay in his role as bartender at the King Richard—and later at Erin Go Bragh’s as well—who uncovers the twisted path to the killer’s identity. It is a person whom he, and we, know all too well.
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What People Are Saying
“Crawford's writing is assured…the protagonist emerges as likable and authentic, yet his humorous narration never obscures his underlying struggles with severe trauma. Crawford, who graduated from Amherst College, gets the details of a New England town and the tensions between well-heeled summer visitors and the local community just right…An assured mystery with an engaging narrator and a distinctive cast.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“Something I Keep Upstairs shines a spotlight on the violence that can lurk within a seemingly peaceful small town, where “people can hold grudges for 50 years” and there’s ongoing tension between year-round residents and summer tourists. The novel also offers a look at small-town politics and journalism, as well as some unexpected plot twists; the mystery behind the killings in Pierrevert deepens.”
— Daily Hampshire Gazette
“Something I Keep Upstairs ...gives you a likeable protagonist along with a colorful mix of admirable characters and a few despicable ones. And it provides a satisfying conclusion that's perfect for the optimistic reader--or for an escape from the stresses of 2020.”
— Boomer Magazine