A few years ago, husband-and-wife novelists John Yunker and Midge Raymond went on an unforgettable trip to Maria Island off Tasmania. As writers, they were inspired by the unfamiliar scenery and its potential as a setting for a murder mystery in which six people embark on a wilderness tour but only two return.
The result was the recently published “Devils Island.”
Raymond, a Bishop’s School alumna, will be back in La Jolla with Yunker to sign and read from the part mystery, part animal conservation story at Warwick’s bookstore at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 11.
Though each is a novelist, this is Yunker and Raymond’s first collaboration. They previously wrote eco-thrillers and literary fiction that featured animals. Some of the more recent publications featured penguins.
“That’s actually why we were in Australia [about 150 miles from Tasmania],” said Raymond, who grew up in La Jolla. “We wanted to see some of the penguins there. But we had the opportunity to take this four-day hiking and camping trip to an island off Tasmania. It was extraordinary, but being writers and realizing we were out in a strange area with people we didn’t know and no forms of communication, our imaginations got moving.”
The two started to develop a story in which, according to the authors, “one of the guests disappears on the first night [and] the group assumes she has wandered too far in the stormy weather. Yet it turns out she has a secret connection to one of the other guests — and when another hiker is found dead in camp, the group finds itself isolated by the worsening storm and wondering who among them might be responsible.”
When it came to writing their first murder mystery together, “we tackled the mystery aspect differently because we are both good at different things, Raymond said. [Yunker] is good at the big picture and I’m about the details. He would write a skeletal chapter and I would flesh it out and [we would] polish it up together until we were done.
We knew we had to have a lot of twists and turns. As mystery readers, we just knew the joy of a mystery is being surprised. Its fun trying to guess who did it. That’s what we were going for as writers. We outlined half the book but wanted to make sure the reader cant figure it out, so we had to layer things on to make sure it made sense.”
John Yunker and Midge Raymond are the authors of the recently released Devils Island. (Provided by Midge Raymond)
The couple also worked to involve a native animal, in this case, a Tasmanian devil.
“We fictionalized the island in which the story takes place, but the island we went to is used as a place to take care of Tasmanian devils,” Raymond said.
Two types of transmissible facial cancer that are spread through biting were “decimating the population” of Tasmanian devils, Raymond said. “So conservationists started moving healthy devils to the island, where they could be raised away from where the cancer was most prevalent.”
Thus, characters in “Devils Island” are naturalists and hikers.
“We get to learn about them and their plight to save the devils, and at the same time people are getting murdered,” Raymond said with a laugh.
Raymond, who now lives in Oregon, said Bishop’s was a great place to go to school. I felt so encouraged and supported as a writer. I didnt become a fiction writer until many years later, but the foundation I got at Bishops helped me. They were the years I got to discover what I loved, which is writing.”
Nine fellow Bishop’s graduates held a virtual book club Oct. 18 with a focus on Devils Island. Many of the alumni, from San Diego, Laguna Beach, San Francisco, Montana and New Hampshire, said they plan to attend the December event at Warwick’s, 7812 Girard Ave.
To learn more or purchase the book, visit warwicks.com/event/raymond-and-yunker-2024. 