Dear readers, the year is 2021 and I am writing this note to you on behalf of my mother. As you may have heard, Sheila Connolly died in the spring of 2020 at her cottage in Ireland, following a diagnosis of cancer she kept very close to the vest.
My mother didn’t want to talk about her health; she wanted to talk about books, writing, and her next subject of research, at all times. She wanted to drink coffee and eat pastries, go to conferences in different cities, discover new relatives, and chat endlessly with her friends, both Irish and American, about all these things as they happened.
She came to writing after the age of fifty, following a series of careers in different fields, and being a full-time mystery writer was absolutely her favorite thing, a source of delight that animated her every conversation. She wrote the first draft of this book, and by the time the manuscript came back with requested edits, she was too ill to finish the work. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to collaborate with her, even under such unfortunate circumstances.
I wish to thank my mother’s longtime agent, Jessica Faust at BookEnds, and her editor, Hannah O’Grady at St. Martin’s, both of whom have been nothing but patient and kind as I navigated the stages of the editorial process for the first time. The past few years would have been immeasurably more difficult without various kinds of advice and assistance from friends, neighbors, and capable professionals on both sides of the Atlantic, including Katherine Jhumann, Avril O’Brien, Diarmuid and Mary Lucey, Joan Browne and Lisa Whelton, Koreen Santos, Valerie Williams, Eileen and Ray Houin, Jenny Magnus, and my dear friend Beau O’Reilly.
Immense thanks go also to my mother’s many comrades in mystery writing, especially Edith Maxwell and Krista Davis, who tracked down Sheila’s whereabouts when she went missing from her usual online hangouts, and then rallied the troops to write a few dozen kind letters. Real-life sleuths of the cozy scene, I salute you. I send my gratitude to Cheryl Cantrell and Marcia Armstrong, from my mother’s Wellesley College cohort, both of whom braved the small and rural roads of West Cork to visit, cook meals, and laugh with their old friend, just before the world shut down. In a year severely lacking in comfort and good cheer, I know you all made a difference.
And most importantly: Thank you for reading.
—Julie Williams