Hubbard, S. W.

PERSONAL: Married; children: two. Education: Georgetown University, B.A.; New York University, M.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—Morristown, NJ. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: Has worked as a marketing promotions writer.

WRITINGS:

"FRANK BENNETT" MYSTERY NOVELS

Take the Bait, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Swallow the Hook, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Blood Knot, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: S. W. Hubbard fell in love with the Adirondack Mountains one year while driving with her husband to Montreal from her New Jersey home. The couple decided to build a vacation home there, and Hubbard became fascinated by the area and its people. It is not surprising, then, that when this marketing-promoter-turned-author decided to writer her first mystery novel she set it in the Adirondacks. A fan of detective fiction, she created the character of police chief Frank Bennett, who, in his debut in Take the Bait, leaves the big city for the town of Trout Run, New York, after one of his cases goes sour and his wife dies of cancer.

Even the rustic village of Trout Run has its share of crime, Bennett finds, when a high school student named Janelle Harvey is apparently kidnapped. Fighting the prejudice of the local residents, who dislike Bennett because he was not born there, the chief staves off the urge to quit and instead resolves to find the truth. Barbara Wright, in a review of Take the Bait for the Murder and Mayhem Book Club, praised Hubbard for creating a realistic story of detection in which there are "no quick fixes. Just good, solid police work."

In Swallow the Hook a young woman is found dead after a car crash, but her death was not the result of the accident. Instead, she appears to have died while in labor, a fact that shocks the residents of Trout Run, none of whom knew she was even pregnant. Once again, Bennett must wade through a morass of complicated small-town relationships and social politics to find the truth. Best Reviews critic Dawn Dowdle called Bennett "a terrific character," and also praised the author's "descriptions, [which] are so well written that I feel that I've been there with each book in this series."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kliatt, July, 2003, Barbara Jo McKee, review of Take the Bait, p. 23.

ONLINE

AllReaders.com, http://www.allreaders.com/ (February 8, 2005), Harriet Klausner, review of Swallow the Hook.

Best Reviews Web site, http://thebestreviews.com/ (December 23, 2004), Dawn Dowdle, "Black Market Adoption and Murder," review of Swallow the Hook.

MurderandMayhemBookClub.com, http://www.murderandmayhembookclub.com/ (February 8, 2005), Barbara Wright, review of Take the Bait.

S. W. Hubbard Home Page, http://www.swhubbard.com (February 16, 2005).