Madison John's Agnes Barton

Today is truly lucky 13 in the Murder We Write Tour.  I’ve promised W. S.  I will be on my best behavior when I interview Agnes Barton from Madison Johns’ book ARMED AND OUTRAGEOUS. Your favorite crime beat reporter Mitch Malone, (that’s me) will interview fellow Michigander Agnes Barton.  I’m wondering if this senior citizen will be like Elsie Dobson and bake cookies to get on my good side. I am a bit hungry.  I see a sports car drive up now. That can’t be the elderly woman I am supposed to interview.  Agnes? Agnes Barton? Did you really arrive in that Mustang? Did you borrow it to impress me?

Agnes: Heck yeah that’s my car and I don’t really try to impress anyone unless it you have vital clues to share. Well do you? I’m not really the baking type but I can grow mean tomato, which are perfect for tossing at my partner in crime, Eleanor Mason. Lucky for us she’s not here otherwise a whole lot of squawking would be heard.

Really, I like a muscle car.  Is Grand River anything like Tadium? Lake Michigan is only a twenty minute drive with its white sand beaches. Isn’t Lake Huron shoreline rockier?

Agnes: Lake Huron isn’t rocky at all, at least not in Tadium. It’s a bit close to East Tawas, MI. I always thought Lake Michigan was rocky. It sure is in Traverse City.

My sources tell me there is quite a mystery going on over there in Tadium. Do you need Mitch Malone and award-winning sleuthing powers to get an exclusive and solve it?

Agnes: I think not! I’m quite good at snooping and carry a trusty firearm just in case. That’s The Pink Lady that Smith and Wesson makes just for us ladies in case you don’t know.

Okay, you don’t have to point that lady in my direction. Maybe you should point that at a cranky sheriff. I know a few police officers who are hard to work with.  What makes you think he is acting strange?

Agnes: He has strange written all over him, and he won’t even take the disappearance of a missing tourist seriously just like with the case of my own granddaughter, Sophia, a year ago. As you can see if you have a mind to look, I have a personal stake in this case.

Don’t you have any hobbies to keep you busy? Maybe a church group? Bingo league?

Agnes: I was kicked out of the last church group I was at, something about a food fight, totally not my fault. Bingo league? You must have never played bingo before. It’s more of an all for yourself game. If B 6 had come in I’d be at the casino right now.

Isn’t there a man in Tadium that is looking for a hip woman?

Agnes: You youngsters are all the same. I suppose you don’t want to hear about my lipstick then. (Laughs) Now that is real hoot. I’m about as hip as it goes and my former boss Andrew Hart came to town recently. Don’t believe all the gossip! I’m a real upstanding member of the community. Why just last week El and I helped out at the County Medical Center bake sale. That’s a nursing home by the way. Some of the residents got out of hand, but that’s not my fault, they just get like that sometimes.

Thank you Agnes for making the trip in the muscle car. Maybe next time I can take it for a spin. To learn more about Agnes check out 

http://madisonjohns.com/ or 

http://mysterywritermadisonjohns.blogspot.com/

Contest:  Madison will be giving away a free copy of Armed and Outrageous in either your choice of digital or signed print edition. To enter contest you only have to leave a comment on my stops on the Murder We Write Mystery Blog Tour.

Senior sleuth — Grandma Mazur meets Murder She Wrote — cozy mystery. Agnes Barton is not your typical senior citizen living in Tadium, MI, on the shores of Lake Huron. She drives a red hot Mustang, shops at Victoria’s Secret, rankles local police officials, and has a knack for sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. What does a murder that happened forty-three years ago have to do with missing tourist Jennifer Martin? Agnes makes it her personal mission to find out, and she’s not letting the fact she’s seventy-two get in the way. Butting heads with Sheriff Clem Peterson is something she’s accustomed to, but lately Clem seems to be acting even more strange, making Agnes wonder what he may be hiding ala the Martin disappearance. Agnes’ partner in crime, Eleanor Mason tags along, Watson to her Holmes. Together, they unearth clues. If only Eleanor would behave, as although lovable, she has a knack for getting into trouble by tangling with her rival, Dorothy Alton, or flirting with anyone—male or female—and gossiping! She’s incorrigible, but she does carry a Pink Lady revolver in her purse, one that has proved useful at times. Life for Agnes and Eleanor is shaken up when Agnes’ former boss and secret crush comes to Tadium. Before long, the lady sleuths have more on their hands to contend with as goons roll into town and bullets begin to fly.

Buy link: http://www.amazon.com/Armed-Outrageous-Barton-Mystery-book/dp/B007Z5Y30Q/ref=cm_rdp_productd and Outrageous

 As a child, Madison Johns preferred to distance herself from other children her age and had been described as a dreamer. Even as a small child, she remembers staying awake many a night fighting dragons, whisked away to foreign lands, or meeting the man of her dreams. She was a voracious reader of historical romance in her teen years and has always wished to one day journey to England, France, Ireland, and Scotland.The writing bug bit her at the age of 44 and she pounded out three books since that time. As the publishing climate changed she took a risk and decided to self publish, first a collection of two horror short stories geared for YA, Coffin Tales Season of Death.  Madison’s caring nature had led her to work in the healthcare field, where she was employed as a nursing care assistant at a nursing home, and it was there that she was inspired to write her first mystery, Armed and Outrageous, introducing amateur detective Agnes Barton. The book depicts two elderly ladies digging up clues with enough laugh out loud antics to make James Bond blush.