Contemporary Authors

PERSONAL

Male.

ADDRESS

• Home - San Francisco, CA.

CAREER

Writer, journalist, newspaper editor, and novelist. Worked at newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and the Oakland Tribune.

WRITINGS

• "YARN WOMAN" SERIES; MYSTERY NOVELS
• The Yarn Woman, CreateSpace 2014
• Wailing Wood, CreateSpace 2015
• The Rusalka Wheel, CreateSpace 2017

SIDELIGHTS

Brooks Mencher is a writer, newspaper editor, and journalist based in the San Francisco Bay area. He has worked for papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, and San Francisco Examiner. He also worked on newspaper in the coastal areas of northern California, noted a writer on the Yarn Woman website.

The Yarn Woman

The Yarn Woman introduces series protagonist Ruth M., an eccentric but brilliant expert in the forensic analysis of textiles. She gets called in to help with cases when there is important evidence mixed in with clothing, fiber remnants, and other pieces of cloth. She also helps when there is a ghostly element to the cases that the police have difficulty dealing with, or even accepting. The first book includes three short stories that explore the Yarn Woman’s participation in cases that also involve San Francisco newspaper reporter Nat Fisher. The first story, “The Ghosts of the Albert Townsend,” begins in the aftermath of a powerful storm that brings to the surface the wrecked nineteenth-century schooner Albert Townsend. Shortly after the ship resurfaces, a precocious young girl is brutally beaten, and mauled by an animal, in an area near the resurfaced ship. Their only clue is an old woolen garment, saturated in blood. Ruth’s investigation and analysis comes to the unlikely conclusion that the garment is directly connected to the old shipwreck.

“The Fisherman’s Wife” begins when human remains are found on a beach by a homeless veteran of the Gulf War. The discoverer is the brother of Denis Avila, a South Mateo County sheriff’s deputy. Shortly after the remains are found, both Avila and his brother are plagued by nightmares featuring the dead man and an unidentified woman. The dreams give them a deep sense of dread. With few other clues, Avila contacts the Yarn Woman for help identifying the knitting pattern in the unusual sweater the dead man had been wearing. Ruth begins to find answers and tells Avila that the dead man’s wife is in extreme danger. When she and Nat Fisher finally do find the woman, they locate not only a victim of horrendous abuse, but the living embodiment of an ancient myth.

In the book’s third story, “The Boy in the Mist,” The Yarn Woman meets six-year-old Gabriel, one of a family of eight adults and children on the beach. When she first sees him, Gabriel seems to appear out of the mist. He also appears to be injured, with a bloody ankle and crooked, possibly broken wrist. Before she can find out more, the boy vanishes. A second meeting later has Gabriel leading Ruth to the body of an older man who has died on a city side street. Ruth is called in by Detective William Chu to help with the case, and she and Nat Fisher determine that the dead man was Henry Berq, a local playwright whose fortunes were decline. They believe his last play may have had a pivotal role in his death. The solution will require Ruth and Nat to find the connection between Berq, his play, and the mysterious young boy named Gabriel.

Wailing Wood

Wailing Wood, the second “Yarn Woman” book, brings the Yarn Woman into contact with another local legend. The Wailing Wood is a the last area of virgin redwood timber in northern California. The grove has decades of reports of ghosts, sobbing sounds, and children’s ghosts being encountered in the gloom beneath the trees. Owl calls are also common, but they take on an even more sinister aspect when combined with the reports of ghostly phenomena. From a more practical perspective, the forest has repeatedly been tied up in legal battles over the owner’s right to sell the timber and make millions of dollars from it.

Now, a major timber company is planning to harvest the centuries-old trees, and there seems to be little that can be done to stop it this time. The process halts, however, when a child’s skull and decomposed knitted vest are discovered. The sheriff calls in Ruth M., and she and a state archaeologist link the forensic evidence to a double murder that occurred in the woods a century ago. Fearing that the old murder might be a sign that new murders are on the way, Ruth, along with Nat Fisher, must find answers. A Publishers Weekly writer concluded: “Well-developed characters match the intriguing premise.”

The Rusalka Wheel

In the third volume in the series, The Rusalka Wheel, Helen Oliver takes a shopping trip into San Francisco’s Chinatown. There, she visits an antique shop and finds an antique spinning wheel. The wheel is very appealing, but she finds markings and designs on the wheel, of the water nymph Rusalka, that makes her wonder if it’s the same wheel her grandmother once used in Ukraine. The peculiar couple running the story refuse to sell the wheel, though she takes some photographs of it with her phone. Later, however, Helen’s purse and phone are found along the pier, along with an unidentified dead male.

Detective William Chu asks Ruth to look at pictures of the spinning wheel, and she is able to give him valuable information based on the photos alone. “Evocative flashback sections giving the history of the Rusalka spinning wheel enhance the clever plot,” commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Publishers Weekly, April 18, 2016, review of Wailing Wood, p. 100; February 5, 2016, review of The Rusalka Wheel, p. 46.

ONLINE

• Yarn Woman Companion, http://www.yarnwoman.com/ (August 9, 2018), biography of Brooks Mencher.