Born and raised in southern Indiana, P.J., a self avowed tomboy, grew up hunting mushrooms in the woods, making her own bows and arrows from catalpa branches (luckily for the fauna they were inaccurate at best) and gathering tadpoles from the pool at the base of a waterfall fed by a small creek running through her parent’s property.
When she wasn’t thus occupied, she could be found stretched out on the grass or floor engrossed in a good book, or scribbling atrocious poetry and passable short stories at the kitchen table.
Only after raising her family and earning degrees in several disciplines did she return to her love of writing. Living in parts of the continent as diverse as Yuma, Arizona and northern Alberta, Canada, she studied the locales and their peoples, only to return to her roots in Indiana for her first mystery series.
The first in the series, A NEW LEASH ON DEATH, introduces her main character, C.J. Sutherland, a sociologist who returns to southern Indiana, to the fictional town of Persimmon Creek, to take a job teaching at the local community college. Here, she finds several of her childhood friends and acquaintances, including Benjamin Cord, the local sheriff and Sally Phillips, proprietor of the popular Persimmon Creek Inn, and Rhonda Jamison, who doesn’t live in the small town but works nearby.
No sooner has she returned than she is begged by a local pastor to find out who, or what, caused his wife’s death two years before. At first, hesitant to become involved, she refuses, but the nightmares interrupting the sleep of the pastor’s four-year-old daughter, a passenger in the car that wrecked, killing her mother, as well as the unexplained disappearance of the beagle puppy also riding in the car, pull her into the investigation.
In addition, the disappearance of the couple that leased a property she has inherited from her mother (an old cabin built by an ancestor of C.J. before Indiana achieved statehood) intrigues her.
Soon, she has a new dog, a Bouvier des Flanders named Oliver, whose owner has been killed by an intruder, a demanding new job, her involvement in Bouvier rescue, anonymous phone calls and midnight visitors.
C.J. never heeded her mother and grandmother’s suggestions that she mind her own business. Why start now?
A NEW LEASH ON DEATH is being circulated, seeking a publisher.
P.J. is currently working on a second C.J. and Oliver mystery involving the death of puppy miller.
P.J. Robertson’s first published short story “The Long Shot” is found in the anthology, DERBY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS, published by Silver Dagger Press.
Her second published short story "Orinoco" is found in the anthology, LOW DOWN AND DERBY, published by Silver Dagger Press.
P.J.'s third published short story "Death of a Best Friend" is found in the anthology, RACING CAN BE MURDER, published by Blue River Press.
