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Award-winning local author, Marni Graff (M. K. Graff), published the third installment of the Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries series in April. She recently visited the Belhaven Public Library following a book tour in New England and New York.

The third book, “Death in the Orchard” takes the main character, Nurse Trudy Genova, and her NYPD detective boyfriend to her family home in rural New York where they uncover the truth about her father’s suspicious death eleven years prior. 

“In the beginning of it, she’s trying to keep this investigation into her father from her family, because she doesn’t know how they’ll react and also because she’s concerned that if she uncovers something that’s unsavory they’re not going to take it very well, but it all turns out in the end,” Graff said about the novel. 

As a child, Graff was enthralled by mystery novels and popular authors like Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and P. D. James. Graff was able to meet, befriend and be mentored by James during the last 15 years of James’ life. James encouraged Graff to write a second mystery series where the main character was a nurse much like Graff. 

Graff is a retired registered nurse who dedicated 30 years of her life to healthcare. She was able to combine her love of literature with her career by becoming a feature writer for Nursing Spectrum and editor of a nursing journal. After her retirement, she became a medical consultant for television shows and movies, reviewing scripts and medical scenes on set in New York.

Her nursing career developed Graff into an organized author which helps her write outlines for her novels. Graff begins a novel by writing its ending – who’s murdered and why. Like putting puzzle pieces together, Graff writes through the outline to get to the outcome she’s already planned. “I think that sense of organization has lent itself well to my writing career,” Graff said. 

Mystery is one of the more difficult genres to write, Graff said, because authors have to meet “readers’ expectations.” “The reader has to feel that you’ve planted the clues that they can go back and say ‘oh that’s right. She did tell me that.’”

She is in the planning stages of her next mystery novel which is set at the historic “Harrogate Hydro” spa in 1920’s England. 

Graff is an award-winning author of the Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries and The Nora Tierney English Mysteries Series. 

Graff also authored screenplays, stories, essays and poetry in addition to her two mystery series. Her website, marnigraff.com, states, “Her creative nonfiction was most recently seen in the book of collected essays The Who, The What and the When; Southern Women’s Review; Fine Line Anthology; and Shelf Pleasures. Her poem about Amelia Earhart is part of an anthology of poems dedicated to the pilot that is on display in Earhart’s hometown museum.”