The circumstances of how The Secrets of Good People came to be still blow my hair back every time I think of them. In August 2020, I hosted a release party for my novel An Unfinished Story at a friend’s restaurant called Grace in Pass-a-Grille, Florida, where my family and I lived at the time. If you haven’t read it, An Unfinished Story is about a widow who tries to convince a well-known and washed-up author to finish her late husband’s book. It’s how she faces her grief.

 

A day later, I received an email from a woman named Leigh Shainberg Howe, mentioning that she’d attended the dinner and happened to be in possession of her mother’s unfinished manuscript, an Agatha Christie–style murder mystery set in 1970 Florida. Leigh asked if I’d be willing to take a walk with her on the beach so that she could bounce a few questions off me, as she was intent on finishing the book. We connected a few days later and had a lovely chat about what it would take to bring her mother’s story to fruition.

 

Her mother, Peggy Shainberg, was no stranger to the written word, as she’d written for newspapers all her life. She also lived next to Walter Farley, the author of Black Stallion. Equally cool to me, her sister typed out most of the novels of John D. McDonald, who was the creator of Travis McGee and one of my biggest inspirations. In fact, I’ve even visited the marina in Fort Lauderdale where McGee kept his boat, The Busted Flush. (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s fiction.) As you can imagine, my walk on the beach with Leigh stuck with me afterward.

 

Fast-forward to June 2023. I’d relocated from Spain to Maine and was in the process of coming up with a few new story ideas. Leigh came back into my life. She’d reached out to my agent and convinced her to read what her mother had written. My agent called me and said, “I know co-writing’s not exactly what you do, but you should give it a read.” Though I’d written a few mystery/thriller books back in the old days—stories now under the pen name Benjamin Blackmore—a 1970s locked-room mystery was far from what I was writing now. Not to mention, I wasn’t interested in finishing other people’s manuscripts. That just wasn’t my bag. Or was it?

 

I’ll never forget the day I sat down to read what Peggy had written. It was super early, long before the sun had come up, and I was drinking coffee in my little writer’s cottage on an island off the coast of Maine and thought I’d go ahead and read a few pages and find a polite way to say no. The next thing I knew, I’d finished every word she’d written—all forty-five thousand of them. I tore through it, I tell you! The writing was exceptional. The characters jumped off the page. And I was hooked from the first sentence. Not only all that, but I felt absolutely compelled to finish what Peggy had started.

 

Leigh and I began chatting, and as the project became more real, it got scarier, especially for Leigh, who had put a ton of work into this book, typing her mother’s written words, coming up with ideas for the plot, convincing me to take a look, and most importantly, deciding to put her trust in one particular writer: me. We kept talking, and as we continued to hash out the details, she asked me to speak with her sister, Lynn.

 

It was clear their mother meant a great deal to them and doing this project the right way was paramount. All I could do was promise that I’d give them my all. The fear on my part started stacking up, as I didn’t want to disappoint them or anyone else in their family. For the record, Peggy didn't leave behind an outline or any notes mentioning who did it in this whodunnit. I had to figure it out myself.

 

Then a cherry on top came to light, an incredible connection that solidified that we’d come to this point for a reason... (click here to keep reading)

Catch up on old newsletters here.