By Kurt Anthony Krug
After spending 8-12 hours at a stretch on her computer on a daily basis, author Tessa Wegert discovered martial arts – particularly Shaolin Kempo Karate.
“I started taking martial arts five years ago because my kids started taking martial arts. I really needed a physical activity that would force me away from the screen… so I started taking martial arts classes with (my kids),” explained Wegert, who recently earned her brown belt.
A native of Canada, Wegert lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children, ages 16 and 14. She is the author of the Shana Merchant novels, which occur in upstate New York (straddling the United States-Canada border), the most recent being The Kind to Kill.
“While doing martial arts over the last several years, I wrote that into the Shana Merchant books, so Shana’s actually a martial artist too and a brown belt,” said Wegert. “It was helpful to take martial arts classes and have access to senseis when I decided to make that part of her character traits. It came in handy with several books where she has this sensei who gives her valuable advice and helps her cope with the PTSD she’s struggling with and various other aspects of her life.”
The Kind to Kill takes place after the events of Dead Wind, where the ongoing storyline involving serial killer Blake Bram – who debuted in Death in the Family, Wegert’s first novel that introduced Shana – is finally resolved.
“Bram isn’t just a serial killer (Shana’s) been assigned to hunt down, but a man to whom she has blood ties,” said Wegert. “It wasn’t until he abducted her 15 years later, while she was investigating his murder spree, that she… realized who he was. Unlike Bram’s other victims, Shana managed to escape. She’s never understood what he wanted from her and why he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. There’s a lot of complexity to their relationship.”
Now Shana must deal with the fallout.
“The secret is out,” said Wegert. “She has this blood tie to this notorious serial killer. How does this impact her family? How does that impact her life? You can see that she’s estranged from her family, whom she’s always been close to, and she’s now reconciling with that.”
Wegert stated that resolving the Bram story was intentional on her part.
“It was important to the series, but it wasn’t everything,” she said. “The series is really about Shana and her growth as a character, her investigative skills, her relationships. The first book in the series has very little to do with Blake Bram. In fact, you don’t know much about him at all. In the second and third books, he plays a much bigger role.”
Wegert continued: “I didn’t want him to overstay his welcome with readers. I thought it would be a neat trick – and I hope that I pulled it off – to remove him from the situation in one way, while still keeping him very present in her life. That was a tricky balance to strike because I didn’t want him to be completely removed from the series because he does factor into her life and plays a big part in shaping her character.”
The author also wanted to challenge herself by conceiving different ways Bram could haunt Shana, influencing her decisions, emotions, and psychological state.
“I just wanted to surprise readers in a way. I knew I could keep it going for several more books where it’s this cat-and-mouse between the two of them,” said Wegert. “Rather than doing that, I thought he’ll still be present in some sense, but I wanted to keep readers on their toes and introduce other threats they’re not expecting.”
So far, the feedback Wegert has gotten for this unexpected twist has been positive.
“A lot of people thought the series would end with the third book since it has a pretty dramatic ending,” said Wegert. “I wasn’t sure how it would sit with people to take this left turn and veer off the road with a slightly different approach to the fourth book and a similar approach with a fifth book (out in December).”
Shana’s creation was inspired by the works of Agatha Christie and Louise Penny.
“I knew if I wrote a mystery, it would be detective fiction because it was the type of mystery I enjoyed reading the most. I knew I wanted it to be a female protagonist because I felt I could bring more to the character that way, even though I don’t have any police experience; I could at least bring my experience as a woman to the main character. She’s a bit of (Christie’s) Poirot and (Penny’s) Gamache and me, especially from the anxiety standpoint, having a clinical mind, and approaching things strategically. She’ll let her emotions take over and not have full control of emotions – that comes from me, I’m loathe to admit.”
Wegert interviewed Colleen M. O’Neill, the first woman county sheriff in the history of New York state.
“She has been my top source for information ever since,” said Wegert. “Every time I have a question, I reach out to her. It was serendipity I was able to connect with her. Not only is she the sheriff, she used be a senior investigator. I found out after I assigned that role to Shana. She gave me a lot of insight what it would be like to be Shana Merchant working as a senior investigator… A lot of knowledge I gleaned from (O’Neill) was incorporated into Shana’s character.”
The Kind to Kill also explores the concept of true crime as entertainment. Wegert poses the question: Is this really the healthiest thing for us a society to be consuming true crime?
“I don’t watch much true crime at all because I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the fact that I would hear, from time to time, stories about how families didn’t want their trauma to be turned into a Netflix documentary… I thought about a lot of that when writing this book,” she explained. “Shana is the one who is involved in this dramatic, violent series of crimes that have a direct impact on her and her family and, of course, the victims, so I wanted to look at it from the perspective of how true crime as entertainment would affect the victims of the criminals but also how it could affect the family members of the criminals themselves.”
Wegert continued: “Shana’s also trying to get past the fact that this small community she now calls home and establish her life, they’re aware of the controversy and scandal, so she’s trying to do a good job in her role as an investigator. At the same time, she’s trying to overcome this reputation she suddenly has. She feels she has very little control over how the media is spinning the story, so that factors in as well… I think the books do read as page-turners, but you can still have the nuance of the characters, their growth, their development, and the changes that occur to their psyches over course of books.”
Visit www.tessawegert.com.