Saturday, June 27, from 2 to 4 PM
Placitas Library will host two of the Southwest’s most celebrated crime writers Ron Franscell and Anne Hillerman, who will come together for an intimate ‘fireside’ chat centered on Ron’s gripping new mystery novel, Deep End, and the true Placitas story that inspired it.
Deep End, the latest entry in Ron Franscell’s Deaf Row mystery series, is no ordinary whodunit. It draws its dark energy from a real-life double murder that shook our quiet community of Placitas in 1970—a crime that unfolded in an unexpected place: a hippie commune. Ron, a Placitas resident himself, has transformed that buried chapter of local history into a chilling novel that revisits the colorful crew of small-town codgers from the award-winning first book in this series, Deaf Row.
The fireside chat promises to be as riveting as the novel itself. Expect Ron and Anne to explore the true crime itself, the craft of mining fact for fiction, what it means to write about the place you call home, and the unique landscape of New Mexico—its silences, its secrets, its storytelling soul—as both backdrop and character.
A New York Times bestselling true-crime author and Placitas’s own literary voice, Ron Franscell has built a career at the crossroads of true crime and literary fiction. Known for his meticulous research and visceral prose, he has written more than a dozen books, including the internationally acclaimed The Darkest Night and ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of FBI Profiling. With Deep End, he turns to his own backyard, making the familiar suddenly, disturbingly strange.
Daughter of legendary Southwestern mystery writer Tony Hillerman, Anne Hillerman long ago stepped out from her father’s long shadow—she has cast one of her own. A regular guest at the Placitas Community Library, her novels featuring Officer Bernadette Manuelito have earned her a devoted following and cemented her reputation as New Mexico’s foremost contemporary voice in crime fiction. Her deep reverence for the land, its people, and its stories—and the fact that she and Ron were colleagues at the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper years ago—makes her the ideal conversation partner for an event like this one..
Admission is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase and autographing. Don’t miss it.