Justice, One Way or Another: An Interview with Meredith Doench on “Whereabouts Unknown”

Meredith Doench | Whereabouts Unknown | Bold Strokes Books | 2022 | 275 Pages

Meredith Doench is a crime writer located in Dayton, Ohio, and best known for her Luce Hansen series. Crossed, the first in the series, won Silver in the 2015 IndieFab Awards for Mystery, and in 2017 was awarded the Mary Dasher Award for fiction from the College English Association of Ohio. All three books in the series were mystery/thriller Goldie Award finalists in their respective years from the Golden Crown Literary Society. Doench’s short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in literary journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere, and she currently serves on the board of Mystery Writers of America, Midwest Chapter. She is a senior lecturer of creative writing, literature, and composition at the University of Dayton.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Erin Flanagan: I just finished Whereabouts Unknown and really loved this book. I’m curious how it came about and why you decided to pivot from your Luce Hansen series to a standalone book. 

Meredith Doench: Thank you so much. This is a great question, and so many people have asked me why I moved away from the Luce Hansen series. I worked with Luce and her world for about 10 years, and I really wanted to do something different. I love crime fiction, and I really can’t imagine myself writing outside that genre, so this novel was all about finding a new voice and a different way of telling a crime story. I always wanted to try writing a crime novel from a survivor’s point of view, to build her as a main character. This novel gave me the opportunity to do that. 

EF: Are you envisioning this as a series? I know it’s being marketed as a standalone novel, and it certainly works as such, but I also felt like at the end you left a door open for yourself to continue with these characters. Is that on purpose? 

MD: I always considered Whereabouts to be a standalone novel. The more I worked with Theo and the rest of these characters, though, the more I fell in love with them. It’s hard to let go after spending so much time developing a character’s world, and I’m hopeful there will be more Theo Madsen books at some point. Her story continues, for sure. 

EF: The book takes place in Ohio, particularly Dayton and Brecksville, near Cleveland. Too often when people think of this area of the country they think of Midwestern nice and apple pie, but you expose a real underbelly that’s also part of the culture. Would you consider this a political novel? Is it even possible to write about crime (or anything!) without getting political these days? 

MD: I certainly didn’t set out to write a political novel, but politics was on my mind. I started working on this novel in 2019, so the Trump years in office and the election of Biden swirled in the news as I wrote. I’m always intrigued how the current events and local news seem to find their way into my work in some way or another. I’d say the politics in this novel are clearly a reflection of that. As you rightly point out, the Midwest is known for its nice smiles, but I’m always so curious what lies beneath that exterior. I want to believe that everyone in my community has a heart of gold under those smiles—I think we all want to believe that. But if there is anything the last administration and the pandemic taught me, it’s that we never really know what’s going on behind our neighbors’ closed doors. One of the influences in the politics of the book had to do with the Midwest’s reports of startup militia groups, particularly in Ohio and Michigan. I’m fascinated by the ways these groups form and structure themselves. I wanted my own group in the book to be run by women, and that took some research into the possible ways women would lead a militia. 

EF: I really love how grounded this novel is in its details, from the militia groups, to Annabelle’s struggle with lupus, to the procedures of an investigation and the gross, noisy realities of a dead body. Can you talk a little bit about the research for the book? 

MD: I’m a writer that really loves to do research. I can go down those rabbit holes for days and days. In this book, I really found myself spiraling through information on white supremacy groups and their methods of recruitment. While everything in my book is fiction, I tried to base Pearle’s actions on recruitment styles I’d read about. The methods that disturbed me most were based on “tricking” individuals into joining what appeared to be a caring community. This is what drew Annabelle to Pearle. She longs for someone to care for her, and Pearle seems to be the salve for all that aching loneliness. 

In terms of gross body stuff, I’m very lucky to have two great friends who help with my research. One is an ex-cop who worked in sex crimes and the other is a mortician at a university in my area. Both are very honest with me about details and hate it when I get anything wrong about dead bodies or the law. I mean, we’ve had multiple hour-long conversations about how a body breaks down once a heart stops beating. Trust me, these two spare no details! Some of the most important conversations I had with them regarding this book had to do with the way a detective would enter a potential crime scene alone and how a body would break down in the stifling summer heat of a storage container. I’ve also had the privilege of working with the editor Ruth Sternglantz (with Bold Strokes Books) who is fantastic with legal and police procedures. It’s important to me to get the facts correct.

EF: Those are wonderful contacts to have as a thriller writer. I bet your friends could get quite a side hustle going as consultants because writers love the particulars. It was interesting to me too, in addition to the varied research, how much disability played a part in the book. Theo sustains a serious physical injury in the opening and has to reevaluate how she moves through the world; Annabelle has lupus, which her grandma refers to as “the gift of sensitivity”; plus there’s the twisted idea of the “worth” of a healthy baby versus one who is differently abled. Is this something you set out to address or did it arise naturally from the characters? 

MD: There is A LOT of physicality going on in this novel, for sure. This novel was basically written during the pandemic, so I was very focused on illness and symptoms. I’ve also given a lot of thought to the physical body in the last few years for personal reasons. I was diagnosed with my own autoimmune disease in 2017. While I was working on this book, I was also dealing with doctors, tests, medications, and endless internet searches looking for any way to help myself. At the same time, my mother had a serious back injury on top of a neurological issue. My life revolved around medical appointments, illness, physical therapy, and death. I found a lot of comfort where I usually do, in horror and crime novels/movies/series, and I took notice of the lack of disability represented in these stories. My doctors were telling me about all the new autoimmune disorder diagnoses in our country every year, yet I couldn’t think of one representation of that in crime fiction. I have a new article coming out in a March Crime Reads that delves more deeply into this, but I really wanted my characters to fall somewhere on the disability spectrum. I’d say that parts of the disability representation in the novel were intentional. For instance, when I met Theo, she had already been injured, so I knew I’d be writing about her coming to terms with her new way of moving inside her world. I also knew that the teens would be giving birth under wretched conditions without the care of a medical professional. The teens weren’t eating or hydrating properly, and I knew this would lead to birthing and health complications. However, Annabelle and her grandmother’s lupus surprised me. I wrote Annabelle’s part of the novel last, and I struggled with finding her voice. One day during a free write her illness landed on my page and it all made sense. 

I really wanted to show that these women could not only survive but thrive with chronic health conditions. We don’t see enough of that messaging in our culture. It was important to me to show that no matter what state my character’s body may be in, they held just as much worth as any other human. 

EF: There’s such a great difference between thriving and surviving and I really see it with these characters, and one of the things that I really appreciated in the book was how full these characters’ lives were. Theo isn’t just a cop but is about to be a new parent, and along with exploring fears all new parents face, there are the additional concerns of gay couples. I was moved by the conversation between Theo and her partner, Bree, about what they wanted their child to call them. Bree knows she wants to go by “Mom,” but Theo’s having a harder time with her title. You write, “The term mother didn’t seem to apply to her. She wasn’t carrying the baby and giving birth. Bree clearly owned that title. But Theo didn’t really feel like a father, either. So where did that leave her?” It made me question what these terms really mean as far as caregiving. Can you talk about what it means to you to represent lesbian parents in the book? 

MD: I’m so glad this part touched you. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite scenes in the book and I was teary writing it. I don’t have children, but I’ve seen some of my queer friends go through the struggles of a parental name. There’s so much in a name or a title, I think. So many layers of expectations, and gender is certainly wrapped up in all that. Queer parents deal with subverting those titles and stereotypes every day. I’m not sure my novel was so much about showcasing lesbian parents as it was about showing different ways people go about parenting. I’m fascinated about how and when two people form a pact to care, love and protect a child for the rest of their lives. Theo and Bree are two people truly devoted to the health and growth of a child, but I’d also argue that Annabelle’s mother was also devoted to the safety and growth of her own child. If we look at the ways Bree prepares for her childbirth and newborn, it’s very different from Annabelle, but all these people want a good life for their baby. It’s so beautiful to me. 

EF: Thanks for that answer. I appreciate the distinction that the novel isn’t “showcasing” lesbian parents but is more about how many different ways there are to parent. As I was formulating questions, I wanted to discuss Theo and Bree’s relationship but wasn’t sure how. Their love is so fundamental to the book, but in the way all love is fundamental to who someone is. Their being gay has nothing to do with it and everything to do with it. It’s just nice to see a gay relationship in crime fiction that is healthy and happy and not centered around trauma. 

MD: I gave a lot of thought to Theo and Bree’s relationship, and the idea of a trauma-based relationship was something I wanted to avoid. While those relationships do exist, there are so many examples of queer partnerships that are based on love and respect. I think we are seeing so many more of these types of relationships because our society has become more accepting—it’s the new normal for queer couples. That’s not to say hurt and damage isn’t there from the past, but the pressures of hiding their love and families have relaxed and given queer couples the chance to fully express the familial side of themselves. I always envisioned a calm and happy home life for Theo and Bree. I also really wanted their home to be a place of safety and quiet. Because both women are first responders in their professional lives, they needed that haven of comfort, particularly with the addition of a newborn. 

EF: I admit, some of the larger thematic questions about sexuality and parenthood and ableism and family weren’t ones I was necessarily thinking about directly when I was reading, and it wasn’t because they weren’t present, but because I was scrabbling through the story on the adrenaline high of reading a great mystery. But of course, they’re what I think about long after the book is closed. It made me think about all the discourse around genre versus literary writing. Do you think about these divides? Do you feel you have certain expectations you need to hit writing crime fiction, or are these categories mainly the concerns of marketers? 

MD: I used to think about these divides all the time. I teach writing at a university, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in those debates over genre vs literary. But I’ve always been a genre reader and writer. I cut my teeth on horror—all the slasher films, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Anne Rice. I looked up to these writers, and their stories taught me so much about being an outsider. I started writing crime fiction near the end of my graduate program when I realized it was really justice I wanted to write about—who gets it, how it’s metered out, and why. When I write crime fiction, I think most about that—justice. It might not always look the way my characters envision it, but justice finds all the characters one way or another. 

EF: Justice is a great way to put that. I totally see that in your work and it’s so interesting to me you started with a love of horror. The two genres—horror and crime—are pretty interwoven. One delves less into the supernatural, but both have these heart-stopping plots that propel the story forward. I love that you kept me guessing about some things plot-wise, but others you just laid right out there. For instance, when the book opens, we know Annabelle is being held prisoner by Pearle and Daniel is already dead so you’ve automatically lost the surprise of whether or not Pearle will end up being a decent person as she presents early on, and the question of what will happen to Daniel. But what you gain is this dread in the reader whenever Pearle walks on the page, and the question of how Daniel ends up there. Plus, I can see that you had to balance those decisions along with the narrative points-of-view between Annabelle and Theo. Can you talk a little bit about how you make decisions about what to reveal, and also how you decide on point of view and structure? 

MD: This was a hard book to write. The multiple timelines were hardest, and I had to rewrite section after section of the drafts to get them to match up. I started with Theo’s story and tried to tell it linearly. But it was difficult given the case she was working on was already cold. Annabelle’s story starts in the middle of her nightmare. It was important to me to show Annabelle’s growth and stubborn determination to live despite everything. To show that, I had to allow the reader many different glimpses into her life. I work with students who aren’t much older than Annabelle, and it regularly strikes me how hard it is to be a young adult. While Annabelle might have started this journey because of selfish desires, she makes choices by the end that show her growth. For Annabelle, at least, I wasn’t so concerned that readers knew where she ended up, but how she got there. Both Theo and Annabelle’s stories intrigued me, and I couldn’t write the book without giving each of them center stage. 

EF: As sad as I was to turn the final page on Theo and Annabelle—and I’ll say again, I would love to see Theo in a series—I’m excited to know what you’re working on now, and how soon you can get it in readers’ hands.

MD: I’ve been working on a few short stories and essays. I find that writing shorter pieces really helps to cleanse my palate after the marathon of writing a novel. I have a few ideas brewing, so it won’t be long until I’m knee deep in another thriller.