Excerpt: 'The Killing Club'

March 7, 2005 — -- "The Killing Club" is a little mystery novel with a real twist. The book is "co-written" by "One Life to Live" soap opera character Marcie Walsh, played by actress Kathy Brier. On the soap opera, the book is part of the plotline, as the Marcie Walsh character -- a receptionist at a police station -- is penning her own mystery novel.

"The Killing Club" is co-authored by Michael Malone, a former "One Life to Live" head writer and now a crime and mystery novelist. The book follows a spunky young detective named Jamie Ferrara, who investigates the murders of several of her high school friends, who, years earlier, formed a club in which they planned the fictional murders of people who made their lives miserable.

Chapter One: Jamie

Here's the idea, Christmas comes but once a year. In Gloria, New Jersey, it comes for five months. Red-nosed reindeer are running across the roofs as soon as the ghosts come off the porches. Christmas trees get dragged out to the curb, dumping a trail of tinsel and needles, after the Valentine candy goes on display at Solly's Drugs. In Gloria, the good parents hide Santa's loot in the crawlspace by late September and they're still paying for it in July.

I'm Jamie Ferrara, Jovanna Lucia Ferrara. No kids, not married, less than a year to go before I'm 30. People don't think my family's Italian, both sides, because I have blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair. But my family's stayed 100 percent Italian since they first came to this harbor town. They were here when the mayor changed its name from Deep Port back in 1927. Gloria was the mayor's wife's name. The high school where we all went was named after her too, Gloria Hart High School. We figured the mayor must have really loved his wife, although from her picture in the hallway it was hard to tell why.

A lot of us who went to Hart still live in Gloria, even if we're always saying that someday we're going to leave. I'm one of that any-day-now set. For me, there're not many strangers here. So driving along River Street, I knew Pudge Salerno was headed back from the Planning Board meeting when I saw him park his new Lexus in front of his family restaurant. I knew the Virgin Mary and Joseph had gone to Dockside Tavern to warm up when I passed the gazebo on Etten Town Green. They'd left a sign hanging on the manger wall: "BACK IN TEN MINUTES." There was no one left guarding the wooden Jesus in the crèche but two plywood shepherds, a plastic camel and a cow. No one was going to steal him either; he had a bicycle chain around his belly.

It was a Friday, early December, bone-cold, dirty snow frozen in lumps in the gutters. A nasty wind was flapping through that one crack, right at the back of my neck, in the canvas top of my Mustang. I admit it, a 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby GT-500 is not a practical car. But I like my convertible, and life is short. I was about to be reminded of that lousy fact.

I'd been in court all day, testifying for the state in an aggravated assault case, and now I was headed for a birthday dinner with Rod Wolenski, chief of detectives at Gloria Police Department, GPD. Rod moved to town five years ago from Philly. He's my boss. For three years, he's been my fianc&ecute;e too. The same everybody that disapproves of my Mustang -- and that's various relatives, including my older brother -- thinks a three-year engagement is two years too long. In Gloria, girls from Italian families get married before they're 30, even if the girls are detective sergeants who love their jobs. Especially if the girl could marry a good-looking man from a Catholic family (even if not Italian) who was not out of a job, not an alcoholic and not already married to somebody else. Seven months 'till my deadline.

I was a little early for our reservation at the Inn so I headed west, away from downtown and the river, and drove to a mid-Nineties subdivision called Glen Valley (there was not much glen, and no valley in it). I wanted to take a look at what Ben Tymosz had done to his house this year. I'd been thinking about Ben today because of an odd phone call from him that afternoon. I'd known him since we were teenagers but had never been close and I don't think I'd said ten words to him in the last couple of years. So his phoning and making a formal appointment to come see me in my office the following morning had felt odd; especially since he wouldn't tell me what he wanted to talk about.

Even in Gloria, Ben is famous for his Christmas show; it spreads from his roof down across his yard, covering the small lawn in plastic icicles, wreaths, reindeer, elves, nutcrackers, Victorian carolers, giant candles and peppermint sticks, all rigged to blink in waves of red, white, blue, green, orange, red, white, blue, green, orange. It's about as tasteful as an Atlantic City casino, and uses about as much electricity.