"Debut novelist Underhill... make(s) this a believable story...a heart-stopping climax, the result is a winner."
Library Journal

From Mysterious Reviews

'Moon' illuminates Leelanau
Crime story has a scenic setting

By Marta Hepler Draho
Traverse City Record Eagle

LELAND — When Robert Underhill moved to the tranquil Leelanau Peninsula, he saw more than the perfect setting for retirement. He saw the perfect setting for a crime.

"It's got different villages, a mix of people, and I love it," said Underhill, who set his mystery novel, "Strawberry Moon" ($16.95, Arbutus Press) against a scenic peninsula backdrop. "So it seemed like a natural thing for me to do."

One of five founders of the Suttons Bay-based Beyond the Bay Film Series and a retired psychiatrist who practiced in Bloomfield Township, Underhill is a self-described mystery novel addict. Since reading Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" as a teenager, he's been a fan of the classics by authors like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy Sayers.

Unlike Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey, however, Underhill's detective is thoroughly modern.

When Leelanau County doctor Barbara Wilson goes missing after an appointment at her psychiatrist's office, it's up to local sheriff Hoss Davis to solve the case.

Both helping and hindering his investigation is a cast of characters that includes attractive artist Marti Jensen, local troublemaker Harry Swifthawk, rogue deputy Donna Roper, unscrupulous land developer Jason Ackerman, sheriff hopeful Kip Springer and enigmatic doctor Derek Marsh.

Local readers will recognize dozens of area landmarks as well as references to popular events — from Gill's Point and the Leland Mercantile Co. to the Fourth of July Whitefish Boil at Northport. Other names are invented; don't bother looking for Larry's Oyster Bar on county maps, for instance.

Underhill, 75, uses his background in psychiatry and psychoanalysis — he belongs to the orthodox Freudian school — to help flesh out his characters.

"If all my psychoanalytical training has done anything, it's put me more easily in touch with feelings and admitting them in a character," he said.

In fact, while some readers have told him they recognize themselves in the book, he said the characters are actually a composite of him.

"I really think if a character has life to them it's because the author is dipping into themselves," he said.

Readers who look hard enough may even find a moral to the story.

"If there is a moral to the book, it's that our prejudices affect our perception of what's going on," he said.

The book takes its title from the Chippewa term for the first full moon of the summer. The American Indian community figures prominently in the story, as it does in real life in the area.

Although the novel is his first to be published, Underhill said he has completed six others. A college English major, he began writing mysteries several years ago but was ambivalent about publishing them.

"One of the precepts in analytic theory and practice is the transference," he said, referring to the phenomenon in which clients project onto others feelings and attitudes that were originally associated with significant figures in their lives.

"So the doctor keeps all facts about himself secret from the patient. To publish a novel would just be a no-no if you were still treating. Now I no longer have to worry about that."

While he's not expecting any financial gain from the publication of "Strawberry Moon," he said profits could help his other books see the light of day.

Meanwhile, he hopes his contribution to the mystery genre will be as entertaining as its predecessors.

Strawberry Moon
written by Robert Underhill
ISBN 0-9766104-4-2