It all started with Nancy Drew.

At least, it did for Maine author Barbara Ross. July 14, Ross discussed the recently released 11th book in her popular Maine Clambake Mystery series as part of Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library’s (BHML) open-air lecture events. Before the event, the public could have lunch with Ross with the option to receive a catered meal from Eventide. Copies of the Maine Clambake Mysteries were also available with all the sale proceeds going to the library. 

“(I’m) a sort of late in-life, second-act, mystery writer,” explained Ross. While Ross has always been interested in the mystery genre, and maintained her writing on the side, she spent most of her career as the co-founder and chief operating officer of educational technology start-ups. 

In 2006, the company she was working for was bought out by its chief competitor, causing Ross to return to an old manuscript that would later become her first book, “The Death of an Ambitious Woman.” On the eve of its release four years later, her new place of work was bought out by that same company. She decided to fully switch gears. “How many times can the universe send you a message?”

Ross’s works have since been nominated for several Agatha Awards for Best Contemporary Novel and have won the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. In addition to the Maine Clambake Mystery books, Ross has released several holiday-themed Maine Clambake novellas which are included alongside stories by Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis in holiday anthologies from Kensington Publishing. 

At the end of January, an Easter-themed novella is set to come out. Ross found the holiday hard to fit into the “cozy mystery” theming of her other works. “I had a head in a basket, and I’m like ‘No, that’s not cozy,’ and then I had a corpse disappear for three days and come back, and I’m like, ‘No, that’s sacrilegious,’” she recalled to audience laughter. 

Ross discussed how the setting of Busman’s Harbor featured in Clambake Mysteries is heavily inspired by the Boothbay region. This is due to Ross’s mother-in-law Olga Carito, who spontaneously decided to buy and take over the 1879 Seafarer Inn after staying there one night back in the ’80s. The decision first brought Ross to the region where she became interested in the local culture and industries. 

While Ross usually changes the names of most of the places featured in her work, her rule of thumb is if she uses a real place name she cannot kill anyone there. The admission drew another wave of laughter. 

The same drive to research that started out the book series has kept her interested in its world for over a decade. Each book offers a different look at a Maine industry, from the ice business to oyster farming. “If you're going to write, you write what you love. It’s hard work, and if you’re writing something that doesn't interest you, you are fundamentally doing something wrong.”