Tempa Pagel was born in Pontiac, Michigan. She received a BA in history from Oakland University in Michigan, and a MEd from Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts. Since moving to Massachusetts in 1976 she has worked as a publicist, a free lance writer, a church school administrator, and middle school special education teacher. She and her husband reside in Newburyport with their son and daughter.
Here’s the Church, Here’s the Steeple, a cozy mystery published in March, 2006, came out of an interest in local history, an intrigue with the workings of small New England towns, and an appreciation of the humor in raising children. Tempa is at work on her second Andy Gammon mystery in which Andy and her sidekick, mother-in-law Mayta, again stumble across a dead body connected to the past, this time a girl who vanished from a grand hotel at the turn of the century. |
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Tempa and daughter Maggie in front of the
Wentworth by the Sea Hotel in Newcastle, NH,
doing a little research. Tempa is using this location
as a setting in her new book. Maggie is the inspiration
for the
character Molly. |
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I am a book lover, but I wasn’t born that way. Sometime around fourth grade a neighbor loaned me
one of her Nancy Drew books. I finished it in a couple of days. It was pretty good so I read another one, finishing it
in a few hours. My mother, pleased with the fact that I was reading, started buying me my own. Soon I was devouring Nancy
Drews as fast as I could get my hands on them. When none were to be had, I reread the old ones, some as many as four
times each.
My favorite childhood memory is not
going to the swimming hole down the street, or to Girl Scout camp, or tramping through fields and woods at the other end of the
neighborhood--all of which I enjoyed immensely--but of lying in the hammock in a part of the yard secluded by evergreens, with a
delicious hour or two of free time ahead of me, and cracking open a new glossy covered Nancy Drew mystery. While my mother took
pride in the fact that my reading ability jumped three grade levels in one summer, I took pride in my expanding shelf of book
spines sporting that famous silhouette with a spy glass (my collection would eventually grow to forty-two--the entire series at
the time). |
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I moved on to Trixie Belden, and the Dana Girls, then authors Mary Stewart, Phyllis A. Whitney,
and Helen MacInnes, among many others. Eventually, I developed a love for all fiction, and later, for nonfiction also,
but it was mystery that hooked me into reading, and which remains my mainstay. For an intriguing plot, interesting
characters, and a lot of information about some aspect of life you never knew about before, you can’t beat a good
who-done-it. And if you meet a character you want to spend more time with, or find an era or locale you want to revisit,
there’s often a whole series to follow up with.
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Plum Island beach where Tempa's character, Mayta, the
mother-in-law and sidekick, lives.
This location will
continue to figure in Tempa's upcoming books. |
I’ve immersed myself for far more hours than I care to admit in worlds created by the likes of
P.D. James, Martha Grimes, Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, William Tapply, Robert Parker, and Linda Barnes. I’ve learned
about espionage on every continent during every era in history. I’ve learned about archaeology, anthropology, mixology,
and the inner workings of airports, English pubs, and the Big Dig. I’ve learned how to autopsy a body and how to bake
world class brownies.
Mysteries have taught me about horse racing in England, catching blue fish on Martha’s Vineyard,
driving taxis in Boston,
and repossessing cars in New Jersey. I’ve experienced secondhand the devastation of post World War I London, the yellow fever
epidemic in 1830’s New Orleans, San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, and rum running across the Detroit River in the 1930’s. I’ve
been introduced to the cultures of the Navajo in New Mexico, the Ojibwa in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the British upper class,
and Boston literary scholars in the 1860’s.
So, what am I reading now? I’m keeping up to date with Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series,
and Laurie R. King’s Mary
Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. I’m also catching up with my fellow Five Star Mystery authors, including Susan Oleksiw
and Kate Flora, and reading a variety of fiction and nonfiction.
I started a list of my favorite books, but it became way too long. Instead, I am firmly
limiting myself to listing
ten great books, read in the past decade (outside of any by authors mentioned earlier) which,
because of their strong sense of place or time, magical feeling, or revelations about life and history, have stayed with me.
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