Alexandria writer John Adam Wasowicz’s eighth novel in his Old Town Mystery series is set against a murder on July 4.
In “Patriots Circle,” Wasowicz’s protagonist, attorney Mo Katz, is back investigating another murder. Katz is a modern day Sherlock Holmes, working out of his small office at 221B Wales Alley. The book will be released on June 15.
Wasowicz has been an attorney for the federal government for decades, and started writing the series in 2017. The first mystery, “Daingerfield Island,” was followed two years later with “Jones Point.” He says he has one more book left to write in the series and wants to focus on publishing. After working with Brickhouse Publishing in Baltimore for the first two books, Katz founded his own publishing company, Alendron Publishing, named after his sons Alexander, Andrew and Aaron.
ALXnow: Who is your biggest literary influence?
Wasowicz: Agatha Christie. I’m a huge Christie fan. Nobody did a better job of tricking the reader, leaving the reader guessing and surprising the reader at the end of the story. That’s what I try to do. I try to entertain the reader. I want to hold your attention. I want you to be pleasantly surprised at the end of the story and to close the book with a smile on your face, that you couldn’t figure it out and was a fun experience.
ALXnow: Tell me about your protagonist Mo Katz.
Wasowicz: Mo’s an amalgam of the best of America. He’s half Black, he’s half Jewish. He’s a former prosecutor and a former U.S. attorney in the current book, a guy who has stepped in and out of prosecuting bad guys and defending bad guys. He’s a modern day Sherlock Holmes-type character who gets involved in the investigative part of murders that occur in and around Old Town.
He has an entourage of characters who accompany him, Curtis Santana is his PI, his private investigator. He has a young researcher named Mai Lin. His benefactor is a guy named Senator Abraham Lowenstein, who is modeled after my very first employer, the late great Edward W. Brooke, who served from Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate back when giants roamed the halls of the Russell and Dirksen buildings.
ALXnow: How long did Patriot Circle take to write?
Wasowicz: Two years. I decided when I finished the last book that I wanted to do a book for the semiquincentennial. This is my semi semiquincentennial murder mystery, the kind that only comes around once every two years. I deliberately wrote it for the Fourth of July, and I try to play off of some of the things that are going on around us in the way I put the story together.
For instance, there’s a group of hooligans who depart Old Town Alexandria on motorcycles and in cars, and they go down the GW Parkway to reportedly assault Senator Lowenstein. Senator Lowenstein is at the circle in front of Mount Vernon, dressed as George Washington, and when the local townspeople, patriots, all learn about this, they go to critical points along the parkway, the stone bridge, the tunnel at Fort Hunt Park, the Grassy Knoll at Cedar Knoll, and they attempt to stop this menacing group that’s heading to the circle. They don’t succeed and the final confrontation occurs at the circle, and hence the naming of that circle at the base of the GW Parkway as Patriots Circle.
ALXnow: When do you find the time to write? What’s your process look like?
Wasowicz: Nighttime and weekends, I set a schedule, 7 to 10 p.m. I abide by it rigorously. I drop ink on a piece of paper, and I see how it develops. I tend not to have outlines in terms of how the book is going to progress and who the villain is, because that enables me to play while I’m writing, and if I trick myself, I can trick the reader. I try to avoid going into a book knowing the end when I get started. I like it to evolve and develop in the process of being, in the process of becoming. I let things germinate a long time.
I’m 73 now, and I started the series when I was 65. The whole process helps me with my mental acuity. It’s become like going someplace for exercise, like going to a gym, where I’ve been able to maintain the sharpness of my faculties through a writing process.
ALXnow: Are you working on another book?
Wasowicz: The ninth book will be the last book. I had a sense of how many books I wanted to carry through the series, and I’ve been true to book nine. I’ve been structuring things all the way through. For instance, in this book, I have a character, John the Jack of Hearts Smith, who is the villain in “Daingerfield Island,” and he goes to prison. He has now been released, and in the opening scene he dies. He’s found on a bench in a mansion on the Potomac River.
ALXnow: Do you get into Old Town politics?
Wasowicz: I try to avoid them.
ALXnow: Essentially, what character does the city and Old Town Alexandria play in your books?
Wasowicz: You can’t walk the streets of Old Town and not feel the ghosts of the past. It goes back to the American Revolution, back to Colonial America, the Civil War, and those people. Their essence is still here. You can walk the alleys — Wales Alley, Ramsay’s Alley — some of them are cobblestone, and you can’t avoid absorbing the city and its history. I try to communicate that feeling in my stories. Old Town is the heart of this series, and that wasn’t something I consciously knew when I wrote the first, or even the second books.
Wasowicz will appear at a number of events in June and July to promote the new book.
