About
I was born sometime last century in Waseca, a small town in Southern Minnesota, and grew up on a small dairy farm. It was also home to some sheep, hogs, ducks and chickens, a few dogs, and a couple dozen cats. At age 15, my first paid journalism job was as a high school sports writer for the Waseca County News. Big money. Two dollars an article.
Following a stint as an Army intelligence analyst, I finished undergraduate school. I worked as a police officer in Rochester, Minnesota for a few years before enrolling in law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For almost a decade I was a tall-building lawyer and later, the only partner with a beard in the largest law firm in Dallas.
My most recent job was as a university professor of criminal justice at Hamline University in St. Paul. Now I spend a good share of my time pursuing my long-held passion for writing.
Besides writing, my other passions include long-distance running (a bit shorter than last century) and technical mountaineering in the Mountain West, Canada, and European Alps. I also spend a lot of time in the Northwoods of Wisconsin hunting for mushrooms and angling for small fish in its crystal-clear lakes. Like Marlena Von Jaeger, my female protagonist, I can filet a fish in a minute or less.
I am a member of Sisters in Crime and its local chapter, Twin Cities Sisters in Crime, and a sustaining member of The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Sandwiched around my writing are lengthy volunteer ranger assignments with the National Park Service and shorter volunteer gigs wielding a chainsaw for Team Rubicon in tornado and flood zones.
Books
I have completed my manuscript for the first novel in the Waters North Mystery Series. It was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger Award in the international contest sponsored by The Crime Writers’ Association for mystery writers.
Book One in the Series:
The Mourning Light is an historical mystery based on my experience as a volunteer island lighthouse keeper on Lake Superior. Think of an early 20th century female version of Louise Penny’s Inspector Armand Gamache in a William Kent Krueger setting.
A female protagonist ahead of her time, Marlena Von Jaeger is a whip-smart literature lover with a law degree and a penchant for pastries. Unfortunately, it’s 1917, when very few women are allowed to carve out attorney careers. Because of this, she finds herself toiling as an under-paid and under-appreciated insurance claims investigator. Then one day, Marlena gets her big break when she’s hired by the St. Paul office of the recently-formed federal Bureau of Investigation (later becoming the FBI). There, as one of the few female “clerks” in the country allowed to venture outside the office, Marlena bides her time sleuthing about dark alleyways and dusky brothels of Minneapolis, ferreting out white-slave trade violations.
Everything changes when Marlena is directed to head up the 1920 death investigation of Otto Glockner, a German lighthouse keeper. As the sole investigator on a remote and wintry Lake Superior island, she finds a Scandinavian settlement still seething with World War I’s anti-German fervor and shielding closely-guarded secrets. Believing Otto may have been murdered, Marlena scrambles to identify his killer.
Sifting through the dead lightkeeper’s official journals, Marlena discovers them laced with lies. Her investigation leads her to a long-ago shipwreck and a missing child. She’s convinced both are connected to the lightkeeper’s death. The Bureau’s Washington office unexpectedly pressures Marlena to curtail her investigation and leave the island. Marlena later learns if she doesn’t immediately solve the murder, her job and in fact the entire St. Paul bureau will likely be on the chopping block.
Book Two in the Series:
I’m now working on a 1920s historical mystery that finds Marlena Von Jaeger in the St. Croix River valley straddling the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. There Marlena is in search of answers to the injuries that befell a timber baron who was found dead in the last remaining stand of virgin white pine.
Future Books in the Series:
Marlena Von Jaeger has lined up a number of other 1920s-era investigations involving untimely deaths, disappearances and other unsolved crimes across the Upper Great Lakes region. Stay tuned.
Short Stories:
My short story set in the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior was published in Bonafide Books’ Permanent Vacation II, a collection of short stories by those who have lived or worked in the national parks.
Contact
You may contact Jerry Krause by any of the following:
Phone
612/377-0300
jerry@jerrykrauseauthor.com
or
jkrause@hamline.edu
X (also formerly known as Twitter)
@JerryPKrause