Bestselling Buffalo Grove author turned pandemic suburban life into murder mystery novel

As he and his wife walked their Buffalo Grove neighborhood alone at the peak of the pandemic, bestselling author Raymond Benson was struck by the atmosphere of combined peace and paranoia.

He built that tension into his new thriller “The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way,” a darkly comic murder mystery set during the COVID-19 lockdown.

“We’d go to the grocery store and eye other people suspiciously, and move over when they’re coming by,” Benson recalled. “You’d come home, you’d wash your groceries or your mail. People were doing crazy things. And so, I bring a murder mystery into it.”

While the book is not centered around the pandemic, the situation informs the circumstances of the story. The plot takes place during May 2020 in a fictional version of Buffalo Grove called Lincoln Grove.

The story follows novelist Scott Hatcher and housewife Rachel Bergman, neighbors whose spouses go missing on the same day. The spouses’ dead bodies are found in an abandoned home next door, setting off a murder investigation implicating Hatcher and Bergman.

With a starred review from Publishers Weekly and a gold medal in Mystery category of the 2023 Independent Publishers Book Awards, known as the IPPYs, the story is a modern take on Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,” set during the period of the Spanish Flu. Also influenced by the darkly funny style of the Coen Brothers, Benson says he played on their tone as humorists by including characters that “do stupid things.”

Benson’s literary agent Cynthia Manson said the book has the classical feel of a locked-room mystery, yet in the broader setting of a town, which was appealing to her because COVID trapped people in their homes.

“It’s important that literary fiction and commercial fiction, from a historical point of view, reflect events that have happened that have transformed people’s lives,” Manson said. “We can’t really escape that kind of reality, and oftentimes you can take liberties with that.”

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic was a truly unprecedented and “scary” time for both Benson and his wife, Randi Frank.

Frank, who was reaching retirement as director of development at The Center for Enriched Living in Riverwoods, had to work on Zoom for the first time. While Benson had always worked from home as a freelance writer, the couple had to adapt to sharing a workspace.

During the stressful time, they would take walks around the neighborhood, carrying their masks always and avoiding running into others.

Benson took note of the way everyday life became so “bizarre” and people were on edge. The strange time got Benson’s creativity flowing, and taking inspiration from his suburban life during the pandemic, he wrote the book over the summer of 2020.

“We were always taking walks because it was always a beautiful day. The weather was great. The birds were flying; they didn’t care about COVID,” Benson said. “So I just thought, well, here’s this peaceful, nice little neighborhood. Let’s throw a monkey wrench into it, because my mind works that way.”

Though the story was timely when Benson wrote it and he hoped publishers would jump at the opportunity to share the novel, it was not as well-received as he anticipated, since publishers felt it was too soon for readers to read about a pandemic they were living. After finding small independent publisher Beaufort Books, the book was published in the fall of 2022.

Megan Trank, former editorial director of Beaufort Books, said because readers tend to use books to escape daily challenges, publishing a story with the backdrop of the pandemic was a risk.

“Publishing ‘The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way’ during the COVID-19 pandemic was a unique experience,” Trank said. “The book captures the isolation, eerie stillness of everyday life, and the underlying tension of living through a global pandemic while still trying to have a ‘normal’ life.”

A risk worth taking in Benson’s eyes, the story allowed him to escape the realities of the pandemic, which he hopes readers also experience.

Benson’s takeaway from the pandemic was also that it allowed him to hone in on his creativity, despite being a scary time of uncertainty. He encouraged other artists to take tough times and use them to their advantage.

“If something like that ever happened again, I would encourage people to look inside themselves. And if there is a creative spark, whether you’re a poet or a musician or what, dive into it,” Benson said.

In addition to “Marigold Way,” Benson will see publication of a new book in his 007 series this year. Ian Fleming Publications has announced it will release his novel “The Hook and the Eye” digitally in 10 installments beginning May 27, followed by paperback publication of the full story on Oct. 2.