Lewes featured in new mystery, 'Corpus Delectable,' on Kindle

Take one 40-something former female police reporter turned consultant, mix in the murder of a fashion model turned food critic, add a dash of romance, some humor and a villain with a terrible secret to keep, bake it until done in Lewes, and you have the recipe for “Corpus Delectable,” the new mystery novel by former News Journal reporter Mike Billington.

“I chose Lewes as the backdrop for this novel because it is such an unlikely place for a brutal murder to take place,” Billington said. “The beach, the beautiful old houses and everything about the city make it a wonderful place to live and work. That made writing about a terrible crime taking place in Lewes really challenging. After all, it’s easy to write about murders in a gritty place like Los Angeles or Chicago where the cops chase down leads in a dozen homicide cases every day. It’s quite another thing to solve a homicide in a place like Lewes where murder is not commonplace, and the police don’t have much experience in tracking down killers.”

Billington worked at the News Journal for a dozen years covering police, the courts and social services before moving to Florida, where he was the editor and later publisher of the Englewood Sun, a small daily paper on the Gulf Coast. He retired from that position in 2012 and is now writing novels full time.

“Corpus Delectable” follows consultant Marcy Pantano as she tries to find out why the former model turned food critic was murdered in her former husband's kitchen. The former husband is a friend of Marcy’s who owns a restaurant in Lewes that his ex-wife had recently savaged in an article. He also has an airtight alibi but he won’t tell the cops, his lawyer or Marcy where he really was on the morning his ex-wife was murdered. That makes Marcy’s job all the more difficult. Added to that are upheavals in Marcy’s personal life.

“Marcy’s life is a little complicated,” Billington said, “but she deals with it as best she can while still trying to save her friend from the death penalty.”

Billington is also the coauthor of “Faith in Action,” a book about medical missionaries in Honduras that he wrote with Cari DeSantis, the former secretary of the Delaware Department of Children, Youth and Their Families. It is available on Amazon.com.

In addition to “Corpus Delectable,” Billington is the author of “The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit,” a Steampunk adventure.

Both “Corpus Delectable” and “The Ashtabula Irregulars: Opening Gambit” are available on Kindle.