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WORK TITLE: The Good Byline
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://jillorrauthor.com/
CITY: Columbia
STATE: MO
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
AU blog: https://jillsorr.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2016045943
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016045943
HEADING: Orr, Jill
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670 __ |a The good byline, 2017: |b CIP t.p. (Jill Orr) data view (“Jill Orr has written features and a parenting column for COMO Living Magazine (formerly Columbia Home) in her hometown of Columbia, Missouri, for rmore than ten years, and her humor essays are found on her blog, An Exercise in Narcissism. An active member of Sisters in Crime, Orr serves on the board of the Unbound Book Festival. The Good Byline is her first book”)
PERSONAL
Married; children: two.
EDUCATION:University of Missouri, B.A., M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
MEMBER:Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers.
WRITINGS
Writes a parenting column for COMO Living magazine. Has written articles for National Horseman, Waterways, and the Columbia Business Times.
SIDELIGHTS
Jill Orr earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in social work from the University of Missouri before she began a magazine writing career. She writes a parenting column for COMO Living magazine; her articles also have appeared in National Horseman, Waterways, and the Columbia Business Times. Orr maintains a blog, An Exercise in Narcissism, where she writes humorous essays on parenting. Her first novel in the “Riley Ellison” mystery series is The Good Byline.
In an interview with the author at the website The Big Thrill, LynDee Walker began by noting that this is a book that “makes you think, and it touches your heart.” The “protagonist isn’t a sleuth by trade or nature, but a smart woman who sees a question (or twenty) and sets out to find the answers and get justice for an old friend.” Library assistant Riley Ellison finds herself adrift after her grandfather dies and her boyfriend breaks up with her. Riley is oddly obsessed with reading obituaries, an interest she has had since her teenage years, when she and her friend Jordan James “penned short, pithy goodbyes to teenage fads and trends for the school paper,” as Aarek Danielson noted at Columbia Daily Tribune. The girls go their separate ways, and then, much later, Jordan apparently commits suicide. But did she? When Riley is asked to write an obituary, she starts to see missing pieces to Jordan’s life.”She begins to assume James’ death isn’t as easy to explain as everyone else thinks.”
Writing in Publishers Weekly, one critic found that “not every reader will be charmed” by the “breezy narration.” However, a Kirkus Reviews contributor observed: “Though not every line rings true, Orr is [close] with her debut mystery, with interspersed emails from Click.com’s Personal Romance Concierge as the #cherryontop.” Aarek Danielsen, in a review at Columbia Daily Tribune, called The Good Byline “a blast of fresh air” as well as “nimble, clever and a whole lot of fun.” Carole E. Barrowman, at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, commented that the novel was a “pacey entertaining mystery.” The critic at Dru’s Book Musings pronounced it an “engaging tale” and a “delightfully amusing adventure.”
In the second book in the series is The Bad Break. Riley has left the job of library assistant to embrace the world of journalism. When she is asked to write an obituary for a coworker’s soon-to-be father-in-law, she finds herself embroiled in another murder mystery. The reviewer at Dru’s Book Musings looked “forward to the next book in this wonderfully humorous debut series.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2017, review of The Good Byline.
Publishers Weekly, February 27, 2017, review of The Good Byline, p. 78.
ONLINE
Big Thrill, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (April 30, 2017), LynDee Walker, author interview.
Colombia Daily Tribune, http://www.columbiatribune.com (May 7, 2017), Aarek Danielsen, review of The Good Byline.
COMO Living, http://comolivingmag.com/ (October 29, 2017), author profile.
Dru’s Book Musings, https://drusbookmusing.com (April 9, 2017), review of The Good Byline.
Jill Orr Website, https://jillorrauthor.com (October 29, 2017).
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online, http://www.jsonline.com (April 14, 2017), Carole E. Barrowman, review of The Good Byline.
Unbound Book Festival, http://www.unboundbookfestival.com/ (October 29, 2017), author profile.
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JILL ORR
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JILL ORR lives in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband and two children. She writes humor essays about parenting on her blog, An Exercise in Narcissism.
THE GOOD BYLINE is her first novel in the Riley Ellison mysteries series and was released in April 2017 from Prospect Park Books.
THE BAD BREAK, book two in the Riley Ellison mystery series, will be out April 2018!
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JILL ORR
Jill is a stay-at-home mom of two (an odd title because she is rarely ever at home). In her pre-Mommy days, she graduated from the University of Missouri with an undergraduate degree in journalism and a master's in social work, with an emphasis on children and family studies. But she wishes she would have gotten a Ph.D. in What's For Dinner and How to Get Bubblegum Out of the Carpet. That would have served her better. Read her blog at jillsorr.com • Follow Jill on Twitter @jillsorr
ARTICLES WRITTEN BY
Jill Orr: It’s a Bouncing Baby . . . Book!
“The Good Byline” arrives after an arduous labor. I am now officially the parent of two teenage children and one published novel. It would be impossible for me to pick a favorite, so don’t ask. I love them all . . . in different ways. (I don’t want to name names, but I will say […]
Read More
Jill Orr: Shop Talk
Ten things to not say to your spouse during a renovation. by Jill Orr Almost 16 years ago, my husband and I bought the house he grew up in from his parents. It’s a lovely home at the end of a cul-de-sac, filled with good memories and even better juju. And we’ve spent the past […]
Read More
Jill Orr: Look Who’s Talking
Stay woke and slay teen slang. Every generation of teenagers has its own slang. Adults aren’t meant to understand it, and, in fact, that is the whole point. We chose language partly to express our identity, and, since teenagers naturally want to create an identity separate from that of their parents, they use different words, […]
Read More
Jill Orr: Where Are You from?
So much of how we parent comes from looking backward. Our minds continually flash back to the way things were when we were kids. We mine our childhoods for what worked, what didn’t, and what we vow never to repeat. For instance, I will never make my kids eat everything on their plate — […]
Read More
Jill Orr: Lessons in Social Media
Is the web world really so nasty? by Jill Orr Parenting in the age of social media is a tricky business. Most of us with kids who are old enough to use it did not grow up using it ourselves, so we are learning about social media at the same time as our children — […]
Read More
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Debut Author Spotlight: Jill Orr
APRIL 30, 2017 by ITW
1 0
The Art of Obituary Writing
By LynDee Walker
Jill Orr’s debut mystery is my favorite kind of book: it makes you laugh so hard that if you’re reading at Starbucks, people will glare from behind their laptops (sorry, y’all). It makes you think, and it touches your heart. Her protagonist isn’t a sleuth by trade or nature, but a smart woman who sees a question (or twenty) and sets out to find the answers and get justice for an old friend. Love for the truth and a loyal pal—Riley is a woman after my own heart, and I’m looking forward to her next adventure!
It was such fun to get to ask Orr a few questions about her first novel, and how she devised such an endearing and witty heroine.
Congratulations on the release of THE GOOD BYLINE! These days, it seems there are as many paths to publication as there are authors: can you share a bit about yours?
Thanks! This is such an exciting time. My path to publication was as circuitous as most people’s, mainly because I didn’t figure out I wanted to write books till I was in my thirties and both my kids had started school. It took a few tries to get it right (I have two “drawer” novels) and I received too many rejections to count along the way, but eventually I wrote THE GOOD BYLINE and that’s when things started clicking. I was able to find my agents (I’m co-represented by Margaret Sutherland Brown and Emma Sweeney) within a few months of querying and they sold the book fairly quickly after that. It wasn’t fast or easy, but I’m so glad I didn’t give up. I always say that even if the book doesn’t sell a single copy, at least I taught my children that you don’t have to be good at something the first time you try it.
Jill Orr
Isn’t that the truth? I think our little ones learn so many important lessons from watching us navigate this career. Speaking of lessons, I love that Riley starts off with the time-honored trials of the obituaries: nothing will teach a reporter faster to check every fact twelve times. Beyond the natural nosiness and affinity for research, what do you think are the most important qualities journalism brings to a sleuth?
So, in THE GOOD BYLINE, Riley doesn’t start out as a journalist. She’s working at the library and agrees to help out by writing her friend’s obit. It’s Riley’s complete fealty to the truth that causes her to start sleuthing. When she comes across some fishy details while writing Jordan’s obituary, she feels compelled to find out what really happened. She has a natural curiosity, but she struggles with whether or not to trust her instincts. As the series continues, we will see her grow and come to depend on those instincts, like all the best journalists do. And while she isn’t particularly tough (I always think reporters are so tough!), she will take risks to get the truth, which can—and does—land her in hot water.
Readers learn a lot about the art of obituary writing from this book, and Riley’s passion is a big part of THE GOOD BYLINE’s charm. Do you have a background in obituary writing?
I don’t actually. The idea of writing a mystery with a protagonist who is obituary-obsessed came to me after I read a really funny and touching obituary that went viral. It was for a person I’d never heard of and appeared on Legacy.com, a website where people write and submit obituaries for their loved ones. After I read the one that went viral, I read another, and another, and eventually fell down this rabbit hole of amazing obituaries. But even more amazing than the obits themselves was the fact that I stumbled upon this entire community of people who read obituaries as a hobby! It’s absolutely fascinating. They even have their own conferences! I thought, “Wouldn’t this be a great quirk for an amateur sleuth?” After all, where there’s an obituary, the death is already built in. All you have to do is throw in a little murder and you’re off to the races!
When I first got the bittiest glimmer of my first book, I actually said aloud to my dishwasher (I was loading it at the time), “I write short nonfiction. I’m a reporter. I can’t makes stuff up, and I can’t write a whole book.” Did you ever feel similarly?
Actually, I love to make stuff up! My least favorite part of journalism was fact-checking. That’s why I decided to set my book in a fictional town—so I don’t have to deal with pesky things like “geography” and “accuracy.” I mostly write magazine features or creative non-fiction as a freelancer, so to me the scariest part about writing a novel was, “Can I come up with a story strong enough to carry a reader through 300 pages?” As I said, with my first attempts, the answer was no. I like to think I got better as I worked at it.
Tell us a bit about your writing day: What’s your process like? Plotter or pantser? Do you have a schedule? Do you write every day?
I am such a pantser. I’ve tried to plot things out in advance but it ends up like every “healthy eating plan” or “six week beach body transformation” I’ve ever attempted—I fall off the plan within days and end up knee-deep in a bag of potato chips. I do try to write every day and sometimes I hit that goal, sometimes I don’t. One day I might log 5,000 words, and the next I struggle to hit 200. I am pretty deadline oriented though, so if I have a deadline I’ll always make it.
LynDee Walker
Some of my favorite moments writing fiction are the ones when I think I know what’s coming and my characters go “Pppthhhbbbt. Shows how smart YOU are,” do something totally different, and their way works so much better. It’s like witnessing magic. Do you have those moments?
This happens to me all the time and it is absolutely my favorite part of writing fiction! It’s complete magic, as you say. Since I am not a plotter, I rarely know what’s going to happen next when I sit down at the computer. The best days are when it’s like walking into a room full of old friends and saying, “Okay. Go. Don’t mind me, I’ll just be over here transcribing.” It’s spooky how often it feels like the characters are living, breathing, autonomous creatures. And how their ideas are always better than mine!
What surprised you most about publishing as a business? Would you change anything about your experience in the industry so far if you could?
I was surprised at how long everything takes in publishing. But I understand that there are good reasons for that—there is so much that goes on behind the scenes to launch a book. My publisher, Prospect Park Books, has been working for months to create the framework necessary to support THE GOOD BYLINE once it goes out into the world, for which I am deeply grateful. It seems like a simple process, but the reality is much more complicated. I can’t think of anything I’d change about my experience so far.
Maybe I’d like someone to hand me big bags full of cash or have Emma Stone call and say she’d love to play Riley in the movie version. But other than that, I can’t think of anything.
What’s next for you? For Riley?
I’ve signed with Prospect Park to write two more books in the Riley Ellison series, so that’s a huge thrill for me. The second book finds Riley officially working for the Times as a reporter. Tuttle Corner continues to be a hotbed of criminal activity, so she is drawn into new investigations by way of her beloved obituary pages. Riley has to learn to trust her instincts in both journalism and love, something that proves difficult for her…and often dangerous!
*****
Jill Orr is a writer living in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband and two kids. THE GOOD BYLINE is her first novel.
To learn more about Jill, please visit her website.
LynDee Walker is the author of six national bestselling mysteries featuring crime reporter Nichelle Clarke, beginning with the Agatha Award-nominated Front Page Fatality (2013). Before she started writing mysteries, LynDee was an award-winning journalist. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines across the U.S.
To learn more about LynDee, please visit her website.
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International Thriller Writers Inc represents professional authors from around the world. Learn more about them, their work, and the sources from which they draw their inspiration at the Official ITW Organization Website.
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JILL ORR
Jill Orr is a writer living in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband and children. She writes a parenting column for COMO Living magazine and her work has appeared in National Horseman, Waterways, and the Columbia Business Times. Jill was a speaker at the 2013 Listen to Your Mother Show in St. Louis, and she posts humor essays on her blog, An Exercise in Narcissism. Jill has a bachelor's degree in Journalism and a master's degree in Social Work from the University of Missouri. The Good Byline is her first novel.
https://jillorrauthor.com/
GOOD BYLINE
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Therese Anne Fowler
John Kessel
Christina Baker Kline
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Orr, Jill: THE GOOD BYLINE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Feb. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Orr, Jill THE GOOD BYLINE Prospect Park Books (Adult Fiction) $16.00 4, 11 ISBN: 978-1-938849-91-6
For a small-town girl in over her head, finding love is hard enough without having to find a murderer.The people in
Tuttle Corner, Virginia, think Riley Ellison might as well change her name to Riley Bless-Her-Heart now that her
longtime boyfriend has run off to have a mid-20s crisis. Riley always thought she and "That Sanford Boy," aka Ryan
Sanford, had a bright future together. That's why she put off all her own needs during the seven years they dated and
concentrated on being a "we" instead of a "me." Left alone in the wake of Ryan's nonconsideration, Riley's stuck at a
dead-end library job with no prospects except for her mother's insistence she join Click.com, a highly personalized
dating website. With nothing left to lose, Riley enrolls in the service but is distracted before she can go on her first date
by the news that her childhood friend Jordan James, a reporter at the Tuttle Times, has killed herself. Just as she felt
when her grandfather died the same way, Riley's certain that the cause of death is murder and not suicide. Riley tries to
investigate, but everyone in town seems too busy pitying her to cooperate--except for Jordan's colleague Will Holman,
who may be too weird to be helpful. Worse still, Ryan returns to town, and everyone knows Riley will get her heart
broken again except for Riley, bless her heart. Though not every line rings true, Orr is #soclose with her debut mystery,
with interspersed emails from Click.com's Personal Romance Concierge as the #cherryontop.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Orr, Jill: THE GOOD BYLINE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480921972&it=r&asid=f1bdab5308d5825b5765754ed63027ff.
Accessed 10 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480921972
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The Good Byline: A Riley Ellison Mystery
Publishers Weekly.
264.9 (Feb. 27, 2017): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Good Byline: A Riley Ellison Mystery
Jill Orr. Prospect Park, $16 trade paper (296p)
ISBN 978-1-938849-91-6
Not every reader will be charmed by library assistant Riley Ellison, the narrator of Orr's first novel, who at one point
imagines her own obit after accepting a ride from a stranger ("Her remains were found chopped up and frozen inside
ice cubes that the perpetrator used to chill his iced tea for months after her death"). Riley being dumped by charismatic
Ryan Sanford has made her the object of near-universal sympathy from her neighbors in Tuttle Corner, Va., but she
views their expressions of concern as just a polite mask for disdain and pity. Riley's infatuation with Ryan led her to
neglect her friends, including her best childhood chum, reporter Jordan James. Riley's guilt increases after she learns
that Jordan has died, an apparent suicide. A poorly written and misspelled suicide note makes Riley suspicious, and
she turns amateur sleuth. Riley's breezy narration is at odds with how a person would feel in real life about a close
friend's death. Agents: Emma Sweeney and Margaret Sutherland Brown, Emma Sweeney Agency. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Good Byline: A Riley Ellison Mystery." Publishers Weekly, 27 Feb. 2017, p. 78. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485671171&it=r&asid=f26b932fa354cce261736ba1826b0ddd.
Accessed 10 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485671171
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HIDE CAPTION
Local author Jill Orr poses for a portrait in her home office Monday. Hear Orr read from her debut novel “The Good Byline” at www.columbiatribune.com. [Sarah Bell/Tribune]
By Aarik Danielsen
Posted May 7, 2017 at 8:00 AM
Updated May 12, 2017 at 1:45 PM
Comedians and curmudgeons long have worried about waking to find their names in the obituary pages.
Riley Ellison — and through the natural properties of creativity, Jill Orr — read that section with a more hopeful curiosity.
Ellison’s interest in life-and-death stories animates the mystery in “The Good Byline,” Orr’s debut novel. Released last month, the book already has garnered its author a great deal of attention.
Orr was on a panel with the likes of Sara Paretsky and Lyndsay Faye at April’s Unbound Book Festival. And the book makes her the latest in a recent line of Columbia novelists to gain a national reading, joining Alex George, Keija Parssinen, Laura McHugh and others.
Many things in life can’t quite live up to expectations — a prom date or holiday can fail to meet a high bar, Orr said. Being a published author hasn’t been one of those things.
“This is the exact opposite. ... I’m enjoying every single second so far,” she said.
CHARACTER COUNTS
Lest the talk of obituaries give you the wrong impression, “The Good Byline” is a blast of fresh air. It arrives just in time to live out its destiny as a pitch-perfect summer read.
The book is told from the perspective of Ellison — or as the residents of her Virginia hometown call her, Riley Bless-Her-Heart. She is an old soul who has made some very youthful mistakes.
Although paved with good intentions, her path has involved heartbreak and a return home to work at the local library. With all the time in the world to make a life, Ellison fears she might be lost for good. “She just has this really sincere desire to be part of the world,” Orr said.
McHugh, author of “The Weight of Blood” and “Arrowood,” called Ellison “an instantly likeable character.”
“You can’t help but root for her,” she said in an email. “It’s enjoyable to watch Riley grow and mature as a character as she makes missteps and learns to trust herself.”
The desire to connect is made manifest through Ellison’s interest in obituaries. The genesis for “The Good Byline” came when Orr realized there was an “entire sub-culture” of obit readers with their own message boards and conferences.
A friend posted a fascinating obituary on social media — Orr clicked, then kept clicking. She saw the same names appear in comment sections and concluded these people couldn’t all know the same departed souls. They were “fans” of obituary writing, she realized. What, on its face, could seem like a dark habit revealed itself as something entirely different.
“To read obituaries in this manner — strangers, people you don’t know — is such a hopeful and optimistic pursuit,” Orr said. “They’re looking to these people’s lives — ‘What can I learn from these people’s lives?’ ”
Beginning with birth and bounded by death, the obituary also has a perfect narrative arc, Orr said, and the potential to trace the entire outline of a life.
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
Ellison’s problems start when she notices the lack of a coherent arc in the life and death of a friend. Now estranged, she and Jordan James were called the “obit girls” in junior high. They penned short, pithy goodbyes to teenage fads and trends for the school paper.
When James, a budding journalist, commits suicide, Ellison is asked to write the obituary. What she knows of her friend, and the details she can’t seem to fill in, give her pause. She begins to assume James’ death isn’t as easy to explain as everyone else thinks.
Her suspicions might be taken more serious were it not for a similar reaction to the death of her grandfather, an obituary writer and supposed suicide case himself, a few years before.
Ellison begins poking her nose into the possibilities and gets swept up in a plot that includes an investigative journalist, at least two potential suitors, a fleet of taco trucks and a drug-trafficking ring.
The result is a book that is nimble, clever and a whole lot of fun. Its not-so-secret weapon is Regina H., Ellison’s “personal romance concierge” from an online dating service.
Her correspondence with Riley is filled with sassy asides and hilarious hashtags. In a blurb for the book, novelist and sitcom writer Anne Flett-Giordano said Regina “may be my favorite new literary character of the decade.”
Regina shares and trades spaces at the beginning of each chapter with quotes from real journalists and obit writers. They lend a little gravity and insight about how we live, die and tell the stories of what happens between those landmarks. In this way, Orr nimbly toes the line between mirth and mystery, tension and comic relief.
“It’s great to have moments of levity when you’re dealing with a dark subject, but it has to be done in the right way,” McHugh said. ”... The humorous insights and observations Riley makes in the book are a natural part of the character’s worldview and personality, and keep the tone light despite the focus on murder and obituaries.”
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS
Orr’s own narrative contains its share of forks and surprises. The magazine writer and blogger wasn’t the type who was always dreaming of the Great American Novel. She had faint notions of writing a book and, after talking with a family member, realized she didn’t want to be that person who was always going to do something but never did.
“The Good Byline” is actually her third completed novel. While she makes self-deprecating comments about the others, her first work was picked up by a literary agent but never found a home.
With little fear or feeling that she needed to conform to convention or formal rigors, Orr was free to experiment. Her love of the blank page, she said, kept her going until she found a story and style that felt like her.
For all the starts and stops, McHugh knew Orr was onto something early; she read that first manuscript and “could tell right away that she had a rare gift for writing humor ... I read the manuscript in one setting, sometimes laughing out loud.”
Unlike Ellison and her ill-fated dating life, the character and writer are a perfect match. Prospect Park Books has bought two more Ellison mysteries — the subsequent editions will appear each of the next two Aprils.
Orr is clearly thrilled but also has her feet on terra firma — realizing she would have to talk about herself quite a bit over the coming months, she penned a Riley Ellison-style obituary to her modesty on her blog.
And before the book was on shelves, Orr knew something special had happened. The writing life had provided a real-time, flesh-and-blood object lesson to her children, who had seen her rejected more than 100 times by agents and publishers. She knew that witness would ring louder and longer than any words she could say about responding to adversity.
“Even if the book doesn’t sell a single copy, it was a success in my mind,” she said.
adanielsen@columbiatribune.com 573-815-1731
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Carole E. Barrowman, Special to the Journal Sentinel Published 2:00 p.m. CT April 14, 2017
My two other favorites this month are lighter fare. The first is Jill Orr’s“The Good Byline” (Prospect Park). Fresh and funny, romantic and sunny, Orr’s book checked three genre boxes for me: a smart cozy series, a Southern small town setting, and, my favorite, a newspaper mystery.
The Good Byline. By Jill Orr. Prospect Park Books.
The Good Byline. By Jill Orr. Prospect Park Books. 280 pages. $16. (Photo: Prospect Park Books)
Riley “bless-her-heart” Ellison has had a bad romance, and while she’s attempting to reconnect with her childhood friend, a reporter for The Tuttle Times (as the name implies lots of town gossip and very little bad news), her friend dies suddenly. Riley agrees to write her obituary, a task that uncovers murder and enough mayhem to make this a pacey entertaining mystery.
Riley views her life as “a Wes Anderson film” and Orr’s prose and point of view reflect this aesthetic. I loved the hilarious emails the author interjects into the narrative from Riley’s “Personal Romance Concierge” at Click.com.
My Musing ~ The Good Byline by Jill Orr
Posted on April 9, 2017 | 2 Comments
The Good Byline by Jill Orr is the first book in the NEW “Riley Ellison” mystery series. Publisher: Prospect Park Books, April 11, 2017
the-good-bylineMeet Riley Ellison, a quirky young library assistant who has become known in her hometown of Tuttle Corner, Virginia, as Riley Bless-Her-Heart. Riley’s odd habit of living vicariously through people she reads about in the obituary pages hits a little too close to home when she is asked to write one for her childhood best friend, Jordan James. Jordan’s unexpected suicide has left Riley desperate to understand why a young woman with so much to live for would suddenly opt out, so she steps out of her comfort zone and into the role of obituary writer.
Things get messy, however, when Jordan’s co-worker, a paranoid reporter with a penchant for conspiracy theories, convinces Riley that Jordan’s death was no suicide. He leads her down a dangerous path toward organized crime, secret lovers, and suspicious taco trucks. Eventually, Riley’s serpentine hunt for the truth leads to a discovery that puts everything she holds dear—her job, the people she loves, and even her life—in danger. Will writing this obituary be the death of her?
A new girl is in town and her name if Riley otherwise known as the obit girl. When she learned of her friend’s death, her parents wanted Riley to write her obit, but Riley feels something is amiss in her death and when she teams up with newspaper reporter, look out because Riley is on a mission to “write” a wrong.
This was a fun read that was hard to put down, quickly becoming a page turner. The narrative was nicely done putting me in the middle of all the action as I rooted for Riley with each step she took to uncover the truth. The mystery was strategically set-up to increase the suspense factor and kept me intrigued in all that was happening in Tuttle Corner. Her friend’s death, the mobsters, the newspaper reporter and her personal life all played pivotal roles in the outcome of this engaging tale. This was a delightfully amusing adventure in the life of Riley Ellison who tickled my funny bone with her internal obit-type dialogue. I look forward to the next book in this wonderfully humorous debut series.
FTC Full Disclosure – I received an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) from the publisher