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I am so excited about your new murder mystery, The Lemon House Murders. Why did you choose this particular story to write?
I like to build stories around a central idea that I think is worth exploring deeply. The Lemon House Murders was born when I noticed how much of our popular media emphasizes the importance of family. We hear it so much that it almost doesn't register any longer: family is everything, blood is thicker than water. We're constantly told that familial relationships are some of the most important ingredients of a happy life. It made me begin to wonder if there might be a downside to this pervasive messaging. What about the people who have no family? How are they meant to feel about all of this? Even more broadly, I wondered if it's healthy to put anything, even something as supposedly good as family, up on a pedestal in that way? This led me toward the topic of addiction, something that I have personal experience with, and I crafted The Lemon House Murders to explore our society's addiction to family and how that might potentially damage a young man's life.
Can you give us a book blurb so others will know what it’s about?
A string of mysterious deaths . . . A house full of suspects . . . A secret that will change everything . . .
When residents of a live-in drug rehabilitation facility called Lemon House start dying one by one, no one in the outside world seems to care.
Two Lemon House patients, nicknamed Trip and Gobstopper, are the only ones who can see the truth: these are murders.
Their quest to find the killer will push their budding relationship to the brink, cast suspicion on everyone locked in the house with them, and force them to question their most cherished beliefs.
The Lemon House Murders is the rare murder mystery that will have you guessing at the culprit AND thinking deeply about theology, society’s relationship toward the downtrodden, and the importance of self-determination to a fulfilling life.
Can you tell us a little about the main characters in your book?
At the center of The Lemon House Murders is Francis (nicknamed Trip), a 19-year-old young man who has spent his whole life in a highly sheltered religious environment. A dramatic incident involving his parents gets him shipped off to a drug rehab facility, where new experiences challenge everything he once thought he knew.
While at Lemon House, Trip meets another resident called Gobstopper, a sensitive young man with an artist's soul and a passion for drawing. He and Trip explore their unfolding relationship while also attempting to solve the string of deaths that plagues the house. Will their friendship turn into something more? Will they find the truth behind the deaths? Or will their attempts to solve the mystery ultimately tear them apart?
Where and when does this book take place?
The story is set in 2006 at a live-in drug rehabilitation center in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. The setting is based directly on a rehab center that I personally spent time in back in 2022 to receive treatment for alcoholism. While the story is fully fictional, the setting is not. Almost all the details about Lemon House shared in this book come from my own personal experience.
They say all books of fiction have at least one pivotal point where the reader just can’t put the book down. What is one of the pivotal points in one of your books in this series?
I would hope that moment comes right away! I put a lot of effort into engaging readers right from the get-go. A later moment that I hope reels people in further is the death of a character who is working hard to turn his life around. It forces our protagonist, Trip, to question his own life path for the first time and spurs the investigation into these mysterious deaths that no one in the outside world seems to care about.
Does your book carry a message?
Absolutely! I hope that The Lemon House Murders encourages readers to think differently about addiction, which is a simple miswiring of feedback mechanisms that are baked into each and every one of our brains. Addiction is not a personal or a moral failure on the part of the struggling individual. The people who suffer from addiction are just as engaging, multi-faceted, and full of promise as anyone else. This story, I believe, can help others recognize these facts. Recovering addicts have much to offer the world and when we write them off as a lost cause, we're hurting them, ourselves, and our society as a whole.
What's your next project?
I am currently drafting my third novel, The Last Dead Guy in Hell. It's a missing person mystery that explores whether a person can lead a fulfilling and significant life even if they lack the "hustle gene" or the all-encompassing ambition that modern American society promotes to the detriment of our collective mental health. Anyone interested in updates on that work can follow me on social media at the links below or sign up for email updates on www.tuckermay.com.
Where can we pick up copies of 'The Lemon House Murders'?
Is there anything you’d like to tell your readers and fans?
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