McManus’ McMystery

Best-selling Spokane author Patrick F. McManus unleashes a few surprises in his newest book, “The Blight Way”:

• Blight, Idaho – previously a comic surrogate for greater Sandpoint and vicinity – has been relocated to central Idaho, halfway between Spokane and Boise.

• One of the characters is named Batim Scragg, a name startlingly familiar to those who remember the old Batum/Schrag freeway exit on Interstate 90 west of Spokane.

• The biggest surprise of all: Unlike McManus’ previous 15 books, “The Blight Way” is not a collection of comic stories. It’s his first-ever mystery novel.

“Now, I plan on doing seven or eight of these mysteries,” said McManus, 72, who lives in north Spokane. “They’re easy to do. And people really seem to like it.”

McManus said that the first printing, released March 2, has already sold out. His readings in Scottsdale, Ariz., Denver and Salt Lake City attracted large and enthusiastic crowds. Three readings are scheduled in the region this weekend (see information box).

A Publisher’s Weekly reviewer wrote, “McManus delivers a brisk, hilarious small-town cop mystery.” Kirkus Reviews called it “one of the most entertaining mystery debuts in years.”

“We’ve heard over and over from people who have read the book several times,” said McManus. “And I say, ‘Well, it’s not that difficult.’ “

Reading it may be easy. But isn’t writing a mystery novel hard?

For McManus, the answer was no.

“I always wanted to be a novelist,” he said. “But I got to writing the short pieces, which people think are enormously easy, but are very time-consuming. So less than a year ago, I said, ‘I’m gonna try my hand at writing a mystery novel.’ So I sat down and wrote a mystery novel.”

As for the plot, he knew only that his protagonist, Blight County Sheriff Bo Tully, would get a phone call from good-fer-nuthin’ Batim Scragg saying, “We got a dead body draped over one of our pasture fences.”

McManus didn’t plot out the whole mystery beforehand. He “took it one page at a time.”

He decided early on that it would center around two characters: Sheriff Tully and his irascible old codger of a dad, Pap.

“Here’s the secret of why this is easier,” said McManus. “The point of reading it is to get the mystery. The humor is a bonus and does not have to be knock-down, drag-out funny.

“I have essentially two comic characters, Bo Tully and Pap, and the humor arises out of the relationships of those comic characters. For a short humor piece, you have to come up with a comic idea. Here you don’t have to come up with a comic idea. The humor just arises naturally.”

McManus, who once taught writing at Eastern Washington University, certainly had a few general plot ideas in mind.

He knew that the mystery would involve a private dam, deep in the mountains, which generated a healthy supply of electricity. And he knew he wanted to have a scene set in an abandoned hotel in a ghost town.

In this scene, one of his characters sees ghostly apparitions, wearing pioneer clothing, streaming down the hill from an old cemetery.

“That scene actually happened to me,” said McManus. “We were in Montana at one of those gigantic ranches, north of Billings, that had its own town and all that was left was this empty old hotel.

“There was a cemetery on the hill, just like in the story. I’m looking out the window. Then I apparently lie down and go back to sleep, but I’m dreaming I’m still looking out the window. And they are all dressed in these old clothes, coming down the hill, and they look very real.”

Then he popped awake, bolted upright and knocked something over, scaring himself even more thoroughly. Once he got over the fright, he knew he’d have to use those images in his writing someday.

As for the sudden southward relocation of Blight, McManus said he didn’t want people to think he was writing specifically about North Idaho – he just wanted to invent a fictional county, vaguely in the middle of the state.

“I hope people forgive that,” he said.

And as for Batim Scragg, he remembers driving past that Batum/Schrag freeway sign 20 years ago on the way back from Seattle and saying, “You know, that would be a great name for a character.”

He altered the spelling so it wouldn’t be too blatant.

McManus is already one-third finished with his second Sheriff Bo Tully mystery, tentatively titled “Avalanche.” He clearly has no intentions of slowing down.

“I don’t have anything else to do,” he said. “I still go fishing for perch, although I try to avoid the heavy-metals fish – the three-inch fish that weigh 2 pounds.”

He and his wife, Darlene, have nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild, some of whom he sees almost every day. And someday he intends to take up painting again, an art form he found satisfying in his younger days.

“I have all of the paint and easels,” said McManus. “I’ve been planning to start back in on that for 50 years, and I still plan on it.”

He and his wife recently returned from Europe, but he is not, as he says, “a great traveler.”

“At first I enjoy the museums and cathedrals and markets,” he said. “But by the second day …”

All in all, he’d rather be at home writing his short monthly humor pieces for Outdoor Life. Or better yet, a mystery novel with none of the restrictions of short humor.

“You have all of these words, and you can do anything you want with them,” said McManus.