People ask me why I set a murder series in a tiny Kansas town where the grain elevators are painted like Impressionist masterpieces.
The elevators, honestly, were for me. Every small town has one beautiful, slightly ridiculous thing it's decided to be proud of, and I wanted mine visible from every road in the county.
The town itself? That was research. Thirty years of it, conducted one head of hair at a time.
Because here's what I know about small towns that no map will tell you: news doesn't travel through them. News lives there. A disagreement at the bistro is public property by lunch. A reputation you earned at nineteen will still be seated at your table at forty-five. Everybody knows your business — or believes they do, which in a small town is functionally the same thing.
So when Blair Cole comes back to Monet after six years away and has a very public confrontation with Renee Harmon, and hours later Renee is dead — well. Blair doesn't need a prosecutor. The town builds the case itself, out of memory and repetition and things people half-saw, and it does it before supper.
In a city, a witness is a stranger who saw one moment and moved on. In Monet, a witness has opinions. A witness remembers your mother, your divorce, and something you said at a graduation party in another decade. The truth is in there somewhere, tangled up with everything everyone already decided.
Which is exactly what makes Blair dangerous. She grew up on this gossip. She knows which stories have been polished smooth by retelling and which details don't fit. And she's a hairdresser, which means she knows the oldest rule there is: people will tell you anything when they think they're just chatting.
There's a line in the book I'll give you, because it belongs to Blair's mother and May Cole would want it shared. It's the morning of a funeral the whole town plans to attend, and Blair doesn't want to walk in that front door: "Honey, they're going to look at you either way. The only thing you get to pick is what they see."
That's Monet in one sentence. Everybody's presenting a version. The cheerful neighbor might be nursing a grudge. The helpful one might be guarding a secret. And the person with nothing to hide might just be the best in town at choosing what to show.
Being watched in Monet is dangerous. Watching closely is how you survive it.