Zafiro podcast investigates ‘Murder in Plane Sight’

Above : Julie Holmes is author of the mystery novel “Murder in Plane Sight.” (Photo: Epicenter Press)

“Every writer has an origin story – like superheroes, a certain something that sparked their writing bug.”

So begins the “long” biography of Julie Holmes, a Minnesota’based author of the mystery novel “Murder in Plane Sight” and the subject of an interview with Spokane author Frank Zafiro. The talk between the two crime-writing specialists takes place on Zafiro’s podcast, “Wrong Place, Write Crime.”

In many ways, Holmes’ story is a familiar one. She was interested early in writing, and she carried compliments given from a writer in her fifth-grade class into high school and on into college. She even saw publication of a couple of stories before, as she admits, “life took over.”

Which, as with many people, meant children. Two of them.

Holmes didn’t give up, though. She continued to write, to develop her craft, joined a writing class and cultivated the kinds of friends who “support and encourage each other with our writing and beyond.”

Eventually, through enduring effort – and with the help of a friendly and helpful agent – she succeeded. And “Murder in Plane Sight” was the result.

“Ms. Holmes crafts a taut, suspenseful mystery with just the right amount of romance, murder, and mayhem,” wrote reviewer Janice Martin for the online magazine InD’tale.

Zafiro met Holmes at the 2020 Left Coast Crime convention, which Zafiro describes as “famously curtailed” because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The two appeared on the same panel titled “I Am What I Write: Authors drawing on their own backgrounds.”

Which certainly was suitable for both writers. Holmes is a former mechanic for a commuter airline, while Zafiro is a retired Spokane Police captain whose novels include “Under a Raging Moon,” “Beneath a Weeping Sky” and, coming in 2021, “Dirty Little Town.”

“I was so disappointed when they canceled that,” Holmes tells Zafiro about the virus-shortened convention. “I was looking forward to it. It was my first Left Coast Crime.”

With any luck, there should be many more.

To hear the rest of their 26-minute conversation, click on Zafiro’s podcast.