Local author Grace Edinger recently released the second installment of her Stone’s Throw Mystery trilogy, “Tunnel Vision: A Stone’s Throw Mystery,” bringing readers back to the lakeshore town of Stones Throw for another investigation.
“I wanted to bridge the gap where it’s still cozy and fun, but still takes the reader seriously,” Edinger said. “I wanted something that feels like ‘Only Murders in the Building’ or ‘Knives Out.’” Edinger, who writes under the pen name Eloise Corvo, released “Tunnel Vision” in April following the success of her first novel, ‘Off the Beaten Path’, which became a local best seller last summer. The series is set in the fictional town of Stone’s Throw, which is heavily inspired by communities like Glen Arbor and Empire. “I envision Stone’s Throw State park a little like Sleeping Bear Dunes, the crown jewel of the park systems in this region,” she said. The reader follows park ranger Maudy Lorso as she not only helps investigate murders but also deals with shifting town politics. In “Tunnel Vision,” the story has moved from spring into late autumn, trading in the beach town energy of the first book for Halloween parties, stormy nights and football games. The book opens with one of Maudy’s acquaintances being poisoned during a party, leaving her trying to protect her friend Eli, who quickly becomes a suspect. Edinger, who works professionally in environmental policy and serves as a county commissioner on Traverse City’s parks and recreation board, said many of the trilogy’s underlying conflicts are directly inspired by real conversations around issues in local communities. “A big piece of tension throughout the trilogy is this dynamic between population growth, tourism and environmental conservation. How do we navigate growing economies and more people coming here while also preserving why people are coming here in the first place,” Edinger said, adding that it felt impossible to write a fictionalized version of the area without acknowledging those realities. Before becoming a novelist, Edinger studied marine biology and later earned a master’s degree in the same field before transitioning into policy work. Though she now writes murder mysteries, she said her scientific training still finds its way into how she writes. “There’s definitely a formula to mysteries,” Edinger said. “With red herrings and basically going through the scientific method on a few different suspects throughoutthestory.” That puzzle-like approach shows up throughout the book beyond the plot as Edinger added in hidden word puzzles for hawk-eyed readers. She also intentionally layers clues so that hopefully the reader begins to piece together the solution right before the reveal. The Stones Throw series has also become an outlet for Edinger to explore questions surrounding ambition and expectations placed on women through Maudy’s character. “There’s a tension within her that’s trying to resist being told what her life should look like,” Edinger said, adding that she sees some of herself in that conflict as well. Growing up, Edinger focused heavily on science and academia, putting creative writing aside for years despite describing herself as a “lifelong, card-carrying, glasses- wearing bookworm.” It wasn’t until the isolation of the pandemic that she began seriously considering writing again. During a particularly quiet winter, Endinger’s husband, an improvisational comedian whose humor often influences her books, gifted her a cozy mystery novel to help cut through the winter blues. After ripping through it in a single afternoon, she found herself mentally dissecting its story structure and imagining how she might’ve approached writing it herself. “Right afterwards, I started drafting the outline for the first (Stones Throw) book,” she said. Edinger said the books have been especially meaningful to share with local readers, many of whom pick out and recognize the familiar dynamics and landscapes of the area reflected in Stone’s Throw.
“If anything, I wrote this for the people here,” she said. “Hopefully they’ll see themselves a little bit and have a fun time.”
