J.D. Griffo had already published his first in a series of cozy murder mysteries when he accidentally came upon a real town in western New Jersey that largely resembled his fictional landscape.
An avid fan of antiques, Griffo was out bargain hunting in Sussex and got lost.
“I saw signs for a place called Tranquility and I went searching for it,” he said. “I’m always taking notes. So this seemed like an ideal opportunity.”
Ironically, he found a town on a lake that so strongly resembled the town in his first cozy mystery novel, “Murder on Memory Lake,” that it stunned him.
“It wasn’t called Memory Lake, but the Tranquility in the book is very close,” he said.
This, of course, led him to name his follow up novel, “Murder at Tranquility Park,” the second installment in Griffo’s Ferrara Family Mystery series—a humorous tale of a New Jersey-Italian grandmother and her granddaughter who stumble across a dead body during their early-morning jog.
Born and raised in Hoboken, Griffo currently lives in Secaucus. An award-winning writer and graduate of New York University, Griffo has studied at the Playwrights Horizons and Gotham Writers Workshop.
Griffo wrote other fiction before finding his niche.
Born in Hoboken near St. Ann’s Church, he attended Number 3 School. He got involved with stage in high school, and has been writing professionally since 2001.
“I won a play contest in Hamilton Park in Jersey City as part of a reading series,” he said. “This play was about an Italian family that included a possible Frank Sinatra love child. Since I lived near where Sinatra was born, it seemed like a good twist.”
Griffo moved to Secaucus for the first time in 1975, and left to pursue a career in New York City for a few years before returning to Secaucus again in 2009
He has worked for the ICM talent agency since 2002. He started in the business affairs department
“I’m now an agent for theatrical designers,” he said. He deals with people who design costumes and provide light and sound for theater.
Griffo previously wrote gay fiction under another name. He also wrote two young adult supernatural novels.
“Gay fiction doesn’t sell that well unless you cross over into mainstream,” he said.
Since publishers like to know how the last novel sold, he decided it was wiser to publish under different names.
He might have continued writing for young adults, but said with his job his time was limited.
“I didn’t know if I had the time, especially when I transitioned to an agent,” he said. “Young adult books are long, almost 400 pages. I didn’t think I could invest the time.”
His editor told him about the cozy mystery market.
A niche market that needs content
“Murder at Tranquility Park” is his second book in a cozy mystery series.
“This is basically a niche market under the mystery genre umbrella,” he said. “It usually involves a murder in a comfortable setting such as quilting club, and involves a character such as an old woman, a retired doctor who discovers the murderer.”
His first in the series, “Murder on Memory Lake,” was published in 2018.
“It’s huge, and they are always looking for more content. There are racks and racks of them,” he said. “But writing mystery is very hard. I wasn’t sure I could do it. Then, I occurred to me that the mystery in these are less important that the characters. The relationships in that world continue through these series. This is really soap opera. I grew up watching soap operas. I love soap operas. It’s how my brain works.”
While he knew he had to insert red herrings and provide clues, as well as find different ways to commit the murder, he also understood the murder must take place off the page.
“There can be no gratuitous violence,” he said. “But the real reason people read these isn’t as much for the mystery, but they get invested in the characters. The plot is secondary. People get emotionally involved with the characters. My strength is that my characters connect with readers.”
But he also knew that he had to come up with a unique gimmick or twist, such as having a main character that is a bird watcher.
“I chose to have a ‘Golden Girls’ meets ‘Nancy Drew’,” he said. “There are three old Italian ladies and a granddaughter who solve the murders. The books tend to be funny and sweet.”
The novels are also invested in a back story and primarily involve the grandmother and granddaughter. The older woman has been estranged from her daughter for more than 20 years.
“A rich back story give tension and helps with the struggle and conflict,” he said. “There is a reunion across generations, people wanting to connect, older and younger want to do this, and readers connect strongly to this.”
For the most part, the characters come out of his imagination, and he does take traits from people he grew up with in Hoboken, and how people dress or act.
“I might take the physical traits of a woman I used to see out the window of my home as part of the back story,” he said. “It makes my story seem authentic.”
He even has one of the characters, who lived in Secaucus before moving Tranquility, he said.
Published by Kensington Books, his new novel costs $7.99.
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