Dwain Lee, author of Plausible Deception is visiting Ascroft, eh? today.

Welcome, Dwain.

Tell us about your novel. Is it part of a series? If so, please tell us about the series too.

Hi Dianne, thank you very much for the opportunity to be interviewed. Plausible Deception is my debut novel, but I hope that it will be just the first of an ongoing series featuring the two main characters. The Rev. Dan Randolph and Canadian-Asian violin maker Greg Zhu are a married gay couple in their sixties who live in Louisville, Kentucky.

The story opens with Greg preparing to participate in a very prestigious week-long convention and competition for the top violin makers in the world. Greg’s violins have received awards in past competitions, but he hasn’t received any since he and Dan have been married. Dan worries that now that they’re together, his presence might be a distraction hampering Greg’s best efforts – so he has hopes, at least as much as Greg’s own, that this year’s competition will end the awards drought. 

At the competition, which is being held in Los Angeles, the two men meet up with old friends whom they hadn’t seen in person since before the Covid pandemic. One of those friends is Dr. Bill Sloan, who owns the famous Leonora Jackson Stradivarius – one of the very finest and most valuable of Stradivarius violins in existence. Dr. Sloan has confided in only six people at the convention that the Jackson is onsite with him, and Greg is one of the six. Tragically, during the convention, the Jackson is stolen, and Greg is actually the last person to have been with it before it went missing.

As the week unfolds, Dan and Greg, and the other characters in the story, deal not only with the theft, but also instances of racism, homophobia, and misogyny. The two men work to clear Greg of involvement, and then help the authorities try to discover who stole the Jackson and recover it before it disappears on the black market. 

While this first book is primarily centered in Greg’s world, the next book in the series – which, unlike the first book, will be a murder mystery – will focus more on Dan’s. Dan is a theologically progressive pastor in a geographical area where the church is often far more conservative – theologically and politically – than he is, which can and does make for some interesting scenarios. Also, Dan is dealing with a lot of baggage related to his own life. He was married for years to a woman and has two adult children. Once rabidly conservative, he’s now about as progressive as is possible. He had been an architect for many years, and now he’s been a minister for almost as long. Retirement isn’t right around the corner, but he can see it on the horizon, and as he looks over his life, he wonders – has he actually made any difference? Has he been a positive force in the lives of his daughters, his husband, the community, the world? Dan will consider some of those weighty questions while trying to solve the mystery of who killed a much-beloved parishioner who had vanished years ago, and whose body was just discovered under a basement floor slab during some construction work at the church.

Where did the idea for the mystery that is central to the story come from?

Actually, the two main characters in the novel are based very heavily on me and my husband – I really am a Presbyterian minister, and my husband, George Yu, really is an internationally-recognized violin maker, and we do live in Louisville. We did attend the Violin Society of America’s convention and competition in Los Angeles in 2022, and when George arrived in Los Angeles, he had a harrowing, almost heart-stopping experience in the main terminal of LAX – an incident detailed in the book almost exactly as it happened. After it happened, I had commented to George that the incident sounded like something from a book, not real life. That comment stuck with me, and I ultimately decided to write a story that sprung from that incident. The theft of the Jackson Strad – the primary plot of the story – is entirely fictional, of course, but that fiction was built on a number of real-life events.

Is there a theme or subject that underlies the story? If so, what prompted you to write about it?

Sure – as I’d mentioned earlier, it’s my hope that this will ultimately be a series, and while each book will unfold a particular mystery, I hope that there will be two common threads that connect them all. I want them to be a gradual teasing out of Dan’s own story, reflecting on the successes, failures, and meaning of his life. I also want the series to offer a realistic, positive, and hopefully touching, portrayal of the loving marriage between him and his husband – when inaccurate and hateful stereotypes about LGBTQ+ people and couples are so commonplace. It’s my hope, though, that these two threads will weave through the books in a way that isn’t preachy; not drawing attention to themselves for their own sake, but rather, simply being an organic part of whatever the particular mystery may be.

How do you create your characters? Do you have favourite ones? If so, why are you partial to them?

Well, the two main characters are only thinly fictionalized versions of me and my husband, which, as you might expect, has proved both challenging and fun. Almost all of the positive characters in the book are more or less loosely based on people, or are amalgamations of multiple people, whom I’ve met while traveling with George and serving as the good “luthier’s spouse” at various violin events around the country. One of the main characters – Dr. Bill Sloan, the owner of the Jackson Stradivarius, isn’t fictional at all. He’s actually a dear friend of ours who very graciously allowed me to portray him as himself in the book.

The negative characters were much trickier. I will say up front that none of the negative characters are actually based on anyone I’ve ever met in the violin world. One character – Malcolm Stewart – says and does some loathsome things in the story that came out of personal experiences that I had in the workplace many years ago, but other than that, every single negative character is purely and completely a work of fiction.

As far as favourites, I’m obviously biased toward Dan and Greg. After that, as odd as it might seem, I’m kind of intrigued by two negative characters, Police Detective Jim Kavanaugh and Malcolm Stewart – not because I like them, but precisely because I don’t. Even while difficult to create, it was fun letting my dark side go with them, trying to explore how bad I could make them without going too far and making them cartoonish and unbelievable. I hope I didn’t cross that line. Plus, in one scene, Kavanaugh’s character reveals a surprising, uncharacteristic sensitivity and humanity that’s just enough to make a reader wonder about the full depth of his character – a question left open-ended, maybe to be explored in subsequent books. I also have a soft spot in my heart for two secondary characters – Chloe Lavigne, the fun and completely unfiltered wife of German violin maker Hanna Sullenberger; and Chet Hogarth, Dan and Greg’s foodie friend, who will definitely make appearances in future books in the series.

How do you bring to life the place you are writing about?

While most of the action in this book takes place in Los Angeles, it opens with Dan taking an early morning walk through a very well-known section of Louisville. The very first scene opens with Dan talking with the owner of a cookie bakery, and I try to capture that by identifying the aroma that’s flowing out of the shop and onto the sidewalk. As a former architect, I’m always aware of the designed environment, so some of my writing can focus on describing the visual, aesthetic, and natural surroundings of a given scene. Once in the convention venue in Los Angeles, I try to create a mental image of the hotel and the various locations within it where the action unfolds, so that, even though there’s no floor plan provided in the book, as the week’s events unfold, a reader can – I hope – really visualize themselves moving through those spaces and have a sense for how they all fit together and what they look like in relatively fair detail.

What research do you do to provide background information to help you write the novel?

Much of the content of this first book is drawn from my own life’s experiences and those of my husband, so there wasn’t a whole lot of detailed technical research needed. I did reach out for a little technical assistance from some members of the law enforcement community. I also sought out commentary from a few professional violinists regarding certain things they listen for in a violin’s tone, and to capture their own vocabulary when they talk about their instruments. There was also a small bit of minor historical research, regarding some of the historical detail of Louisville’s noteworthy Cherokee Park. The book also includes a “family tree” of sorts, detailing the relationships among the three main original master violin-making family dynasties. My husband could map out those relationships and quote all the dates from memory, but I certainly couldn’t.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about the book?

Hmm, let me think. I guess I’d just say that I hope that they’ll read the book, and that they’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. There’s a lot of subject matter that’s specific to a subset of a subset of the music world in the story, and I hope that I related it in a way that’s understandable, approachable, and fun. I really hope that they find that the characters – all of them, good, bad, and in-between – resonate with them. I hope that, knowing how highly biographical the two main characters are, they’ll wonder just where fact ends and fiction, for the sake of a better story, begins with them (I’ll never tell).

While the story is firmly grounded in the overarching mystery that takes place within the violin world, one reviewer has perceptively recognized that the book is also an essay on serious issues such as xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, and racism – that many individuals are quick to judge based on surface perceptions, obscuring their ability to see people and situations for what they really are. I sometimes describe this book in a self-effacing way, saying it isn’t anything deep or intellectual – it’s just light, fun reading. But maybe readers will discover that that in itself is just another of the deceptions found in the book.

And of course, I hope that they’ll find themselves enjoying the characters of Dan and Greg, and that they’ll want to read more about them in the future.

Thanks again so very much for the opportunity to speak to your readers. It’s a delight to share all of this with you!

You’re welcome, Dwain, and good luck with Plausible Deception.

Readers can learn more about Dwain Lee by visiting the author’s website and his Facebook page.

The novel is available online at https://butlerbooks.com/plausible-deception.html

About Dwain Lee: Dwain Lee grew up in Masontown, Pennsylvania, where his first job was working as a coal miner during the summers of his high school years. He graduated from Penn State University, majoring in architecture, and he owned and operated his own architectural firm in Columbus, Ohio for twenty years. During the thirty years that he lived in Columbus, he raised a family and also served as President and Chairman of the Board of Montana de Luz, an orphanage in Honduras for children living with HIV/AIDS.

Transitioning out of the architectural profession, he obtained a Master of Divinity from Trinity Lutheran Seminary and for many years has served as an ordained Presbyterian minister and pastor. In addition to more typical pastoral duties, a large part of his time in ministry has focused on social justice issues, including LGBTQ+ equality, refugee and immigrant issues, and racial justice.

Dwain has two amazing, wonderful adult daughters, Erica and Andrea. He and his husband, George Yu, an internationally recognized violin maker, currently live in an old double-shotgun house in the eclectic Germantown/Schnitzelburg neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. In addition to writing, he enjoys spending time with George traveling, gardening, doing never-ending home renovation projects, camping, and yoga.