After a break, I’m delighted to reintroduce Thursday Themes, with the return of Jessica Thompson to discuss her new novel.
Shoot Shovel and Shut Up is a classic mystery with notes of a modern Western and a romance.
Looking past that, a major theme that I explored was change. Change affected our heroine, drove the plot, motivated our bad guy, and twisted each character in different ways.
Change is one of those unavoidable constants in life, so when Bria comes back home to the family ranch and tries to be the same person she was five years before, change comes up constantly. She wants to fit in the same way that she used to, but being away and married for five years has altered her. She wants to deny those differences, stuff them down deep, rub out the marks they have left on her, and come back home. Conversely, Sam, the family friend and property manager, sees the changes and tries to convince her they are improvements.
Some of the changes have been to the property and the family, like Sam building an apartment inside the shop, the trees getting taller, and the kids growing up. Most notable are the tragedies that happen, both before the book starts and as part of the plot. Sam tries to convince Bria to take time to heal and mourn, but the rest of the family insists on pushing through and walking it off. Bria has tried this for the past five years, but it isn’t working. Ignoring the changes and pretending that everything is the same has left the pain from her beloved mother’s and her distant husband’s passings raw and nagging.
She says, “People don’t really heal from things like this.” When Sam insists that facing her grief and mourning will help, he points out that time doesn’t heal all wounds, but “changes them.” He echoes my sentiments that you have to grow around tragedies, like a tree growing around and enveloping the barbed wire fence outside his apartment.
The ranch is mostly the same thanks to Sam’s tireless efforts, but each member of the family is different than they used to be. Most of them have changed in visible ways, but some have in invisible ways. Several of them have altered in twisted ways. One person in particular has morphed into a cold-blooded murderer. Since her family is dead set on pretending everything is fine, and her father, the sheriff, is insistent that everything has been accidents, it falls to Bria to face her grief, embrace the changes in herself and her world, and find out who is behind all the sinister mishaps.
A sudden and unexpected change is even the spark that starts the blaze of tragedies and murders. At the beginning, Bria’s father, the boss and patriarch of the family compound, comes home with a surprise fiancee. To add fuel to the fire, the family argues over the issue and her father declares he is going to name the new fiancee in his will because she is the one person that has never asked him for anything. Bria assumes this threat is an empty one, same as always, but when the father’s fiancee is found dying, it’s clear that the unwelcome surprise was what started everything.
Perhaps my favorite angle for looking at change is when Bria and Sam talk about how everything is always improving or deteriorating. They see the improvements in each other, the decay in the family members around them, especially Bria’s father whose mental state deteriorates through the story and its traumatic events, and even how Sam makes cheese. I personally feel that cheese is an incredible transformation and I used it to highlight change, improvement, and decay. Cheese is afterall a controlled decay that brings about a kind of miracle change. Cheese is always improving or deteriorating. Cheese is fascinating!
This theme of change not only starts and ends the book, but is woven in the whole story. I’m especially proud of the opening scene and the closing scene portraying these themes and echoing each other, creating neat and tidy end caps to my plot-driven story.
About the Book
After a fight over the family ranch, Dad’s young fiancée is found dead. Bria risks her family’s disapproval to sneak around and investigate as the tragedies pile up. Luckily, she has help from her childhood crush and from the handsome new deputy.
When new love blooms in two directions and her main suspect dies, she must grow around her grief to discover the family’s secrets before she loses everyone she loves.
Reviews for Shoot Shovel and Shut Up by Jessica Thompson
“Suspenseful, shocking, and sweet! A riveting mystery set in the heart of Texas.”
-J.R. Lancaster, author of Someone’s Always Watching
After a fight over the family ranch, Dad’s young fiancée is found dead. Bria risks her family’s disapproval to sneak around and investigate as the tragedies pile up. Luckily, she has help from her childhood crush and from the handsome new deputy.
When new love blooms in two directions and her suspect dies, she must face her grief and discover the family’s secrets before she loses everyone she loves.
About the Author:
Jessica Thompson is the author of the Amazon best-selling mystery novels “A Caterer’s Guide to Love and Murder” and “A Caterer’s Guide to Holidays and Homicide.” Her second book was a Whitney Award nominee in the mystery category and her first book was a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Awards. She also curated an anthology called “Beyond the Woods: A Supernatural Anthology.” She is active in her local writing community and volunteers as the Assistant Communications Chair for the Storymakers Guild.
Jessica lives in the suburbs of Austin, Texas with her husband and two children. When not writing, she’s getting her boots dirty at her parents’ nearby longhorn cattle ranch. Whether she’s revving up chainsaws or wrangling charging bulls, she sees it all as plot-inspiring material for her next mystery.
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Get Shoot Shovel and Shut Up now. Released on August 29th!
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