Paul Betit speaks about his mystery series at the Brown Bag Lecture Series

Wednesday, August 13th at noon in the Rines Auditorium

Portland, Maine - Former Portland Press Herald sportswriter Paul Betit will talk about his series of mystery-suspense novels as part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture series at 12 noon, Aug. 13th in the Rines Auditorium.

Betit, who lives in Brunswick, will share back-stories and discuss his writing regimen and the creative process.  Betit’s crime novel series, which features U.S. Army CID investigator John Murphy, includes Phu Bai, Kagnew Station and the recently-published The Man In The Canal.  “His latest book has all the great qualities of the first two books in this series,” said publisher Nancy Randolph, owner of Topsham-based Just Write Books. “Great characters, super plot, fast-paced action and much more.  “In this well-crafted and suspenseful mystery, (Betit) taps into his 1960s military service in Vietnam as background for his tale,” Maine Sunday Telegram book reviewer Lloyd Ferris wrote recently. “This is Betit’s third novel set overseas during the Vietnam War. It’s the best of the trilogy.”

In Betit’s latest novel, Murphy goes undercover in Sweden during the summer of 1971 to find a murderer

believed to be hiding among the group of American military deserters who took refuge in the Scandinavian country during the Vietnam War.  “I’ve been working on this book for quite some time,” said Betit, who wrapped up a 38-year career as a newspaperman last November. “It was quite a challenge, especially since I didn’t take a step in Sweden until I had written nearly half of the book.”

Betit was quite familiar with the locales of the series’ first two books.  While serving as an intelligence analyst with the Army during the 1960s, he spent 16 months in Vietnam, the setting for Phu Bai, and nearly two years in Ethiopia, the backdrop for Kagnew Station. “In those books, I was able to include some of my experiences in the Army to create realistic narratives,” he said. “Writing The Man In The Canal required much more research.”  As a sportswriter covering the Portland Pirates hockey team for ten seasons for the Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, Betit picked the brains of every Swedish hockey player he met, asking them about their homeland, language and culture.

“In my first two books, the protagonist, John Murphy, followed in my footsteps. He went where I had been,” Betit said. “To write this book, we sort of traveled through Sweden together. I scoped out locales for scenes and, through my conversations with the dozens of people I met during my stay in Sweden, I got a good idea of what the country was like during the time period I was writing about.  In The Man In The Canal, Betit introduces Magnus Lund, a Swedish police inspector who is trying to learn the identity and find the killer of a dead man found floating in the historic Gota Canal.  For much of the book, Murphy and Lund work independently, unaware of each other.  “The chapters bounce back and forth between the two investigations,” Betit explained. “Until the thread of clues finally bring them together.”

Signed copies of all three of Betit’s books will be available for purchase.