'Macabre Trophies' Is New Thriller From Author Ted Murphy

Mr. Murphy may be best known by readers for his middle school series “The Belltown Mysteries,” which are set in a town not unlike Falmouth and feature the young protagonist and mystery solver Orville Jacques. He has also teamed up with his longtime friend and illustrator Mark Penta to create a series of “Totally Weird Activity Books” and is co-author with his brother Seton of the 2010 novel, “Running Waves.”

While “Macabre Trophies” is also set in a fictionalized Falmouth, this time called Sandy Point, Mr. Murphy has strayed even further from the young adult and middle school genres to spin a tale of Nero, a serial killer on the loose in a small town that’s already traumatized by its dark past.

The story is punctuated by convincing and sympathetic characters and contains two storylines that eventually converge: one that begins in 1970 and the other in 2004. The 2004 storyline centers around J.T. O’Rourke, a stuck-in-a-rut bartender in Boston who lands a job on Cape Cod at a local newspaper, not unlike the one you are reading right now.

Mr. Murphy pictures the ideal reader for his new novel as someone who likes thrillers and mysteries and knowing “that you are on the edge of going into a world of ‘Silence of the Lambs’-style stuff.”

Still regarded as a washashore by some of his friends, Mr. Murphy moved to Falmouth with his family when he was 4 years old. His father, James Murphy, worked as an English teacher at Sandwich High School and later taught at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Boston College. A teacher and a novelist, the elder Mr. Murphy also harbored an interest in serial killers, featuring one in his 1978 novel, “Quonsett.”

Although at the time he was forbidden to read the book, Mr. Murphy remembered being a youngster and going to his dad’s book-signing events and thinking how cool it was that people wanted his father’s autograph.

Proving that authors sometimes get their ideas in the most unlikely of places, Mr. Murphy recalled being nicknamed Bundy (as in serial killer Ted Bundy) by a superior on his first day on the job at the Island Queen.

“I ended up getting the nickname and I was like, ‘Who is this Bundy guy?’ Then I went off to college where I majored in English and psychology and, as part of an assignment in my abnormal psychology class, I ended up researching Ted Bundy and wrote a 25-page paper on him. I thought to myself that I had just wasted so much time on the guy that someday I would use the information; so when the idea of Nero started kicking around, I started writing down notes with the possibility that maybe someday I would write a book,” he said.

After taking notes and working on the book, he put it down for several years before picking it back up again in earnest. Because he’d started years earlier, Mr. Murphy’s father was able to read a good deal of the book before he died in 2015.

“My dad had been reading the book before he got sick. He told me I had to finish it, which was one of the things that got me through finishing it after he passed. I did some editing, cleaned it up, added and subtracted and got a new agent.”

After the book was finished, Mr. Murphy’s agent shopped it around, receiving rejection letters from most of the big publishing companies.

At the same time, Mr. Murphy was asked by Mary Petiet at Sea Crow Press in Barnstable to write a blurb for one of her writers. Mr. Murphy’s agent sent the book to Ms. Petiet, who said that, while as a novel she “couldn’t put it down,” it wasn’t consistent with the Sea Crow mission, so she couldn’t publish it. Discouraged but not dejected, Mr. Murphy had lunch with Ms. Petiet, who then proposed creating Dark Waters Books, an imprint for Sea Crow Press that would include thrillers, the first being “Macabre Trophies.”

Going forward, Mr. Murphy has signed on with Dark Waters Press to create a second book in a series that will feature “Macabre Trophies” protagonist J.T. O’Rourke.

As an author mostly known for writing books for middle school readers, Mr. Murphy decided to publish “Macabre Trophies” under a pen name to prevent kids from accidentally picking it up. “I wanted a strong Irish name and I’d always liked the name Declan,” he said. The last name Rush came about partly as a nod to the band Rush and partly out of necessity. “I needed a name quickly,” he said.

Mr. Murphy’s father and other friends and acquaintances provided personal knowledge that proved useful in creating the book’s believable characters and situations, with Mr. Murphy using some of his father’s experiences as a Korean War veteran to create the character of Michael Devlin, a Vietnam veteran. Mr. Murphy also read sections of the book to a friend who is a retired police officer. “I would read him pages over the phone, and he would either agree or tell me that wasn’t the way something would happen,” he said.

Also helpful was a former classmate who created a fashion board to help Mr. Murphy when it came to describing clothing worn by one of his female characters.

In addition to his agent and publisher, Mr. Murphy’s sister, Sarah, served as a copy editor for a portion of the book.

He also credited his mother with offering sound advice from a psychological perspective: “She would often say, ‘Respond, don’t react.’ It’s a great piece of advice.”

Mr. Murphy said the process for writing “Macabre Trophies” was sporadic, involving multiple notebooks and a whiteboard.

“I have random notebooks where I’ll write down a great line. I might have a notebook titled ‘no order’ and another titled ‘random order,’ where I’ll write down thoughts and characters and once it’s filled, I’ll start to put things into sequence. For example, there will be a prologue, I want to introduce the town. How do I do that? I know I’ll have an old-timer down on the beach, what’s a good local name to give him? That kind of thing.”

In addition to his father, Mr. Murphy received encouragement in his youth from several well-regarded Falmouth teachers, most notably his 8th grade English teacher, Joanne Holcomb, who he said “changed everything,” recalling an incident in her class where he read a story out loud to his classmates who then insisted he write an ending. “I finished the story the next week, and they gave me a standing ovation. Imagine you’re an awkward 8th grade kid and you’re getting a standing ovation from your classmates.”

Mr. Murphy also recognized his high school English teachers Paul Cali and Louise Houle. “It’s those people who get you through to the next point,” he said, also remembering a professor at Boston College who encouraged him on one of his papers to keep writing. “I would look at that comment all the time.”

Mr. Murphy was quick to also shout out friends and classmates who have bought and promoted the book on social media, as well as local restaurants, including The Conference Table, The Leeside Woods Hole and the Quahog Republic Dive Bar, which have let the author set up and sell books in their establishments. The author even held an impromptu book signing at the Quarterdeck after the restaurant’s bartender outed him as a local author.

At book signings, Mr. Murphy can often be seen sporting a T-shirt that advertises the Angry Fisherman, a fictional bar that is featured in Sandy Point. The shirts were created by former Just Write It student Casey McGowan, now a student at Pratt Institute in New York.

On Saturday, August 19, from 4 to 7 PM, Mr. Murphy will be selling copies of his book at The Conference Table in Falmouth.

The book is also for sale at Eight Cousins Books in Falmouth and the Daily Brew Coffeehouse in Cataumet.

When it came to the character of J.T. O’Rourke, Mr. Murphy partly used the “write what you know adage,” creating a character who also has a penchant for writing and a degree from Boston College.

“There’s definitely some of me in him, but also fantasy me; he’s cooler than I could ever be,” he said.

In offering advice to other would-be writers, Mr. Murphy suggested blocking off time for writing and having several notebooks for collecting ideas. “The best advice is to do a couple of pages a day and eventually you won’t have to tell yourself to do it,” he said.

Mr. Murphy hopes readers will enjoy “Macabre Trophies” as an escape to Sandy Point, Cape Cod and a chance to solve a mystery. “I just want to entertain,” he said. “No way would I want to go into those worlds in real life but you can escape to a different world.”

In addition to the book signing at The Conference Table, Mr. Murphy will be at Naukabout Brewing in Mashpee on August 27 from 11 to 2 PM.