Follow reporter Laura Cunningham as she takes her last shot at determining the fate of a friend who disappeared twenty-four years earlier, even as she deals with a marriage careening toward divorce and an attractive and very attentive ex-husband who just happens to be the cop who investigated the fire in which her friend went missing.
Praise for Chasing Ashes
I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working alongside Joanne McLaughlin for – well, never mind how many – years, both in the journalism trenches at the Philadelphia Inquirer and as fellow members of Philadelphia’s acclaimed Rittenhouse Writers’ Group fiction workshop. Our shared status as single moms trying to juggle demanding careers with fierce writing ambition further cemented our bond. The day job kept our kids fed; the writing workshop fed our souls. She was even the model for a character in my first published novel, a dear friend whose killing spurred my protagonist to action. (Sorry about the murder thing, Joanne.)
And while I treasure so many aspects of our friendship, one that touches me especially deeply has been the privilege of an early look at her novels. Her trilogy, Never Before Noon, Never Until Now and Never More Human, is like Joanne herself, whip-smart and funny, heartfelt and deeply informed. Who knew how seamlessly vampires blended into the prog-rock world?
Testament to the strength of her trilogy: with each book, I wished for an accompanying Court of Cruelty soundtrack, so compellingly did she portray the undead rock stars.
Her fourth novel, Chasing Ashes, is both a departure from those earlier books and a leap forward.
In it, reporter Laura Cunningham takes her last shot at determining the fate of a friend who disappeared twenty-four years earlier, even as she deals with a marriage careening toward divorce and an attractive and very attentive ex-husband who just happens to be the cop who investigated the fire in which her friend went missing.
In the near-quarter-century since Kate McDonald’s disappearance, Cunningham has gone from college journalism student to a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, and now has the skills, along with the added benefit of current technology, to do her friend justice.
McLaughlin’s own considerable journalism chops are on full display as she leads her protagonist through a harrowing investigation fraught with both physical and personal peril.
Laura Cunningham’s wonderfully messy personal life—the cheating husband who wants to work things out, the fresh involvement of the ex now that the investigation is revived, a son from each marriage whose needs are always in conflict with the demands of the investigation—provides the flashes of humor that balance out the rising tension. Likewise, the observations of another of Laura’s college friends who runs the local coffeehouse crackle with wit.
Chasing Ashes touches on social issues of the 1990s that remain relevant today, with its focus on the charismatic leader of The Challenge, the halfway house for troubled young people that went up in flames the night Kate disappeared.
Cults of personality often fail under scrutiny, and as Laura dives ever deeper into her investigation she realizes that almost nothing about The Challenge is as it originally seemed.
Which proves the maxim that every reporter learns early: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. Laura Cunningham checks things out, making for an ending that left me gasping.
— Gwen Florio is the award-winning author of eleven mystery novels and a literary stand-alone, Silent Hearts. www.gwenflorio.net
Chasing Ashes is a one-sitting book, and for lovers of mystery, a story that will induce insomnia.
Lanny Larcinese, author of Get Bek and Fire in the Belly, lannylarcinese.com
Author Joanne McLaughlin’s real-world journalism chops shine in this stylish and smoothly unfolding mystery and its characters. Her portrayal of investigative journalism, and cop methods and argot spice the story, yielding a true crime flavor.
Nor are characters sacrificed on the altar of plot; rather love and loss, and, yes, subtle sex, make them all too human instead of the puzzle-solving automatons common in the mystery genre.
A Day In My Life ~ Laura Cunningham by Joanne McLaughlin
Published originally on dru’s book musings
https://drusbookmusing.com/laura-cunningham/
Dec 4, 2023 | A Day In My Life
Speech, first chapter printed out, stashed in purse. Check.
Raincoat to wear over blazer. Flats to walk across campus. Check.
Suitcase stowed in trunk of Volvo. Travel mug, phone, charger in console. Yep.
E-ZPass thingy repositioned. Headlights on. Morning radio jocks prattling away before dawn on the classic rock station, anything that will keep me awake as the boring turnpike miles stretch ahead of me.
Off I go.
I’m driving to the university where I lost a best friend back in 1992. It’s been twenty-four years since the Challenge Fire sparked, killing twelve people at the far reaches of the campus. Twenty-four years since student reporter Kate McDonald disappeared, her body never found among the fire victims.
I’m used to operating behind a byline, “Laura Cunningham, Staff Writer,” digging out political corruption for a big Philadelphia newspaper. But today, I’m an author in the spotlight, front and center at the launch of Bloodstrains, the book I’ve written about the fire that demands that the flawed and incomplete 1990s investigation be reopened and questions finally answered. Chief among them: What happened to Kate that terrible day in March 1992? And did the founder of The Challenge, a residential counseling facility, really die in the blaze?
Only at the insistence of my publisher’s marketing team am I returning to the scene of the horrific event that’s haunted me all these years. True crime’s always a hit with readers, they say, though I’m skeptical about the always part. You’re here to right wrongs, they say; that much I agree with.
What they don’t know about me: I have stage fright. I’m already nauseated, and I haven’t even gotten onto the highway for the three hour-plus drive to Central Pennsylvania. Hope I don’t have to pull over to throw up.
Hope no one notices the bags under my eyes. I haven’t slept more than three hours a night since my last pregnancy. Drew is eight now, my budding soccer star. He’ll be crushed if his dad doesn’t make it back from Manhattan in time for his game this weekend. Frankly, if not for Drew, I’m not sure I’d care whether David, my husband, comes home from his job at The New Yorker and the woman he’s sleeping with in NYC. Thank goodness for David’s mom, who’s picking Drew up from school today and keeping him and his big brother overnight. Last night, I arranged with my neighbor to have Drew for a sleepover with her son. My fifteen-year-old basketball whiz, Damian, slept at the house of a high school buddy. I’ve never met the kid, let alone his family. It was easier than trying to track down my first husband, Nick, Damian’s dad.
More points off my Mother of the Year nomination.
As I merge into turnpike traffic, I dictate a text to my mother-in-law, reminding her that she should fetch Drew at school at 3:30, and that Damian has basketball practice and should be home by 5. Read him the riot act if he’s late, I tell her.
I’ll text Damian later. That is, if I survive this drive, and the book launch, and the crowd. But the people who buy Bloodstrains might somehow realize they have information we all overlooked. I have to pull myself together and make my case for taking a fresh look at the Challenge Fire.
As the sun peeks out, the radio plays Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. Seems like I heard the song constantly the days after I last saw Kate.
Seems appropriate this day especially.
A Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers Interviews
Author Joanne McLaughlin
Anastasia Pollack of Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers sit down for a chat with mystery, science fiction, and horror author Joanne McLaughlin who assures us that her vampires are more darkly romantic than scary.
https://anastasiapollack.blogspot.com/2025/01/an-interview-with-mystery-sci-fi-and.html
‘Chasing Ashes’ in the media
“McLaughlin’s novel triumphs in its ability to make us care deeply about the people chasing the truth—and the ashes of their past.”
Book Review: Chasing Ashes by Joanne McLaughlin – Thriller Magazine
Interview with Joanne McLaughlin – Thriller Magazine
“A thrilling tale of crime and detective work with rapidly increasing stakes. … Those who enjoy mysteries with a side of relationship drama will tear through this novel.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
A Cozy Conversation with Author Joanne McLaughlin
… The path to her latest book is a story in its own right
DIANNA SINOVIC
Moonrise Prospectus
FEB 19, 2024
Welcome to the latest issue of Moonrise Prospectus. For this week, I caught up with Philadelphia-area author Joanne McLaughlin to chat about her most recent novel, her WIP, and all those sexy vampire stories.
Chasing Ashes was released last fall. It’s your first foray into crime/mystery/thriller. How did this book develop?
That’s a story that spreads over a few decades—sort of like Chasing Ashes itself. I wrote a mystery novel in my late twenties, when I was living in Ohio. I had an agent, but the manuscript wasn’t selling. And life intervened: She had a second child, I moved back to Philadelphia and got pregnant almost immediately, and we parted ways. Some Ohio friends brought my manuscript to me about a year later on a trip East.
Slow forward (ha-ha-ha) about a half-dozen years. I took the manuscript out of the box, read it, and decided I hated the plot but liked some of the characters. I wrote four chapters of that new iteration before I realized that my problem was I was thinking like a journalist, too dispassionate and just-the-facts, not like a novelist, not getting inside my characters’ heads enough. So, I went to many Rittenhouse Writers’ Group workshops in Philadelphia to learn the art of fiction writing. I spent the next few years writing short stories (with no luck at getting them published in those pre-Internet literary journal days), got divorced, raised my son, and got married a second time. My husband became ill and died in 2011, after which I wrote the vampire novels over the next five years. It wasn’t until early 2018, after I left my job as a Business editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, that I hauled the first two stories involving Laura Cunningham, Nick Fabrizzio and Kate McDonald out of the box again and started writing the book that became Chasing Ashes. Whew.
That’s a story in itself! It seems something at the core of that book continued to call to you. What was it about the characters that wouldn’t leave you alone?
Even after the manuscript sat in a box under my desk for more than 20 years, the characters were still interesting to me: an impulsive young woman, her friend who wonders WTF is going on, and the cop who’s had a relationship with both of them. I liked that dynamic. And I thought, what if I make Kate the victim and everything spins around that? It unrolled from there.
You’ve also written three vampire novels (The Vampires of the Court of Cruelty trilogy). What prompted you to make the switch from sexy vampires to mystery?
I guess you could say I switched from mystery to vampires and back again. But the vampire books–Never Before Noon, Never Until Now, and Never More Human–each have elements of murder and/or suspense to them. I jumped into writing the vampire books after my husband died because they were a great release from my tumultuous real life, a dysfunctional family of legendary prog rockers with an overindulged grown daughter–and then Mom and Dad just decide one day to tell her they’re vampires.
I found my voice while writing those vampire books. Reweaving the thread of my earlier efforts into Chasing Ashes wasn’t easy, but I felt more comfortable with character and plotting than I had way back when.
AUTHOR CHAT: Joanne McLaughlin talks about her latest novel, Chasing Ashes, out now!
CHASING ASHES
An often engaging investigative-journalist mystery.
BY JOANNE MCLAUGHLIN ‧ RELEASE DATE: NOV. 1, 2023
In McLaughlin’s novel, an intrepid reporter won’t rest until she uncovers the truth about her best friend’s disappearance.
In 1992, a Pennsylvania university makes headlines when a fire ravages the on-campus halfway house known as The Challenge, apparently killing 12 people—including Andrew Michaels, The Challenge’s charismatic leader. That same night, student reporter Kate McDonald vanished without a trace while looking into The Challenge and its possible connection to a recent murder; 24 years later, Kate’s best friend, Laura Cunningham, is still seeking answers.
Now a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, she’s published Bloodstrains, a book about The Challenge, Kate’s disappearance, and the flawed investigation that followed. After Laura’s book galvanizes a new generation of student journalists to reexamine the case, new details emerge that could finally lead to a breakthrough.
Teaming up with her ex-husband, Nick Fabrizzio, a detective who worked on the original investigation, Laura unravels a decades-old mystery, navigates her own family strife, and confronts old demons and new danger as she continues in her quest to learn what happened to Kate—and maybe even find her.
Told through the perspectives of Laura and Nick, McLaughlin’s narrative jumps back and forth between 1992 and 2016, weaving a thrilling tale of crime and detective work with rapidly increasing stakes.
Laura is a sympathetic protagonist whose mission for the truth is not only compelling but also echoes real-life cases of people seeking justice for loved ones and solving cold cases. Nick is a detective who refreshingly leans into compassion and shows an eagerness to correct his past mistakes. The missing-person plot provides an intriguing portrayal of investigative journalism that doesn’t shy away from the less exciting aspects of the job, such as the tediousness of going through public records. Despite occasional choppy dialogue and a few moments that will challenge readers’ suspension of disbelief, those who enjoy mysteries with a side of relationship drama will tear through this novel.
An often engaging investigative-journalist mystery.
About Author Joanne McLaughlin
Joanne McLaughlin writes sexy vampire novels, sharp mysteries, and sweeter short fiction. She is the author of the Vampires of the Court of Cruelty trilogy (“Never Before Noon,” “Never Until Now,” and “Never More Human”), the crime thriller “Chasing Ashes” (Celestial Echo Press), and the stories “Peppina’s Sweetheart” and “Grass and Granite” (available for Kindle).
Books by Joanne McLaughlin
