Twisting the Rope – 1986

 

Twisting the Rope

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Like the first in the series, TEA, Twisting the Rope is a book that breaks through genres so hard there are no genres left standing in the end.  This one, like the first, has the tiniest bit of fantasy and a lot of music, dressed up in a mystery plot.

And like Damiano, it started with a singer and a song.  The singer, in this case, was Micheal O’Domnhail, who arranged and sang the song Casadh T’Sugain, which is a light-hearted romp about a young woman who entices an unwanted suitor into helping her twist the supporting rope for her cottage’s thatch, and as it gets longer and he is forced to back away, she slams the door in his face.  O’Domnhail redid the song into a very lovely and sweet romantic ballad. As the song is in Irish, no one noticed the disparity. People have been singing it his way ever since. I doubt anyone much remembers the original beat and attitude.

Twisting the Rope also seemed the perfect title for a murder mystery.  Macabre, if one doesn’t know the song.  (But it is such a lovely song. Look it up!)

People had been writing to me endlessly about a sequel to TEA, although I thought I had given them a happy ending.  One doesn’t want to mess with happy endings – at least I don’t, so I added new characters and tormented them and changed the course of THEIR lives.

That’s what a writer has to do, however they love their children.  We give them a hard time and then we give them away to others.

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