Jessie Bishop Powell

I juxtapose words a lot when I'm speaking. I mix up verbs, my kids' names, and the words for household objects. (Un-coincidentally, I'm also awful at names.) My husband and I were talking Poe in the car one day and I, intending to say "Murders in the Rue Morgue" said "Marriage" instead.

Scott asked, "What did you say?"

And I realized I had a fantastic premise and book title.

Poe's short story features an amateur detective who solves a crime using specialized knowledge. This model has evolved into many forms of modern mystery, especially the cozy genre. I knew that I wanted The Marriage at the Rue Morgue to have a mixture of similarities and contrasts with Poe, so I kept the amateur detective theme.

But the key to the Poe tale is that an orangutan committed the crime, and I wanted this detail to be exactly the opposite in my novel. I wanted a situation where my amateur detectives would know through their specialized knowledge that the orangutan had to be innocent.

Oh. And I had to have a marriage to go with the murder. That was important, too. After all, I was planning to call it The Marriage at the Rue Morgue.