Cable Car Mystery by Greg Messel

Title: Cable Car Mystery
Author: Greg Messel
Publisher: Sunbreaks Publishing
Pages: 180
Genre: Mystery/Romance

On the hottest day of the year in San Francisco in 1959, Private Detectives Sam and Amelia Slater are contemplating fleeing the city for their Stinson Beach house. However, when Sam decides to take a cable car ride to run some errands on the lazy summer day, he’s suddenly thrust into the spotlight when he rescues a woman who fell onto the busy street. Sam pulls the mysterious red haired woman out of the path of an oncoming cable car in the nick of time. The entire incident is captured by a newspaper photographer who splashes Sam’s heroics all over the front page. Sam is troubled not only by his new status as a city hero, but by the rescued woman’s plea for help. She whispers to Sam that she didn’t fall from the cable car but was pushed. She is frightened and disappears into the crowd before Sam can get more details. A San Francisco newspaper launches a campaign to find the mystery woman and Sam hopes to cross paths with her again. 

Meanwhile, Amelia is troubled by the sudden disappearance of her elderly neighbor. Two thuggish younger men who now occupy the house next door say he took a sudden trip. One night when she’s alone Amelia grabs a flashlight and finds some disturbing clues in her neighbor’s garage. What really happened to her neighbor? Amelia is determined to find out.

Award winning author Greg Messel spins a new tale of intrigue in Cable Car Mystery, the sixth book in the Sam Slater Mystery series set in at the 1950s in San Francisco. 

For More Information

• Cable Car Mystery is available at Amazon.
• Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.

Greg Messel Talks Book Covers

“Cable Car Mystery” is the sixth book in a series about a private detective and his wife set in the late 1950s in San Francisco.  I conceived the idea for the series on a trip to San Francisco. I was walking around the city and remembering how things had changed since my childhood and the late 1950s and early 1960s.  I did more research and discovered so many interesting historical events occurring in that time period. I also think the culture was very different. Many of the men, including the main protagonist, Sam Slater were just back from World War II.  The last years of the 1950s were the final gasp of an era which was about to end.  San Francisco and the world was about to change forever with the assassination of the president, the Vietnam War and the city itself would become ground zero for major societal changes. The series has been very popular so far and readers seem to enjoy my characters. 

I do a lot of rewriting and revisions in my books. I think it the nature of mystery writing. You need to carefully craft the mystery and the suspense. Sometimes that can take a lot of tweaking.  

I’m often asked how many books there will be in the series. I plan to keep writing them as long as I can come up with good storylines. At some point I will run out of things for Sam and Amelia to do but that day is not today. After each book in the series I usually answer that they’ll be one or two more. That’s my answer now. I’ve written about 100 pages in the next book in the series “San Francisco Nights.”  I’m also well into a new book that is set in the late 1960s and is about the newspaper business. I’m excited about it and that book may be the launch of a new series. The story is set against the backdrop of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Presidential campaign. 

As far as the book cover, I’m extremely proud of my book covers. I get a lot of compliments on the design. My publisher has a design team which does a great job and usually gives me a couple of options to consider. I think covers are so important. I see a lot of covers that are really bad and look amateurish. The book covers in the series have some common elements to them. There are often photos of San Francisco. This cover has my private detective on it and a montage of photos that include the Golden Gate Bridge and of course, a cable car climbing the hills in San Francisco. 

We are in a “sweet spot” on our covers for the series. 

About the Author:

Greg Messel has spent most of his adult life interested in writing, including a career in the newspaper business. He won a Wyoming Press Association Award as a columnist and has contributed articles to various magazines. Greg lives in Edmonds, Washington on Puget Sound with his wife Jean DeFond.

Greg has written nine novels. His latest is “Cable Car Mystery" which is the sixth in a series of mysteries set in 1959 San Francisco. “Shadows In The Fog,” ”Fog City Strangler," "San Francisco Secrets," "Deadly Plunge" are sequels to the first book in the series "Last of the Seals." His other three novels are "Sunbreaks," "Expiation" and "The Illusion of Certainty."

For More Information

· Visit Greg Messel’s website.

· Connect with Greg on Facebook and Twitter.

· Find out more about Greg at Goodreads.