Marina City setting for murder mystery

May 11, 2008 – Marina City is the setting for a new murder mystery novel. Alex Matthews has written nine novels in which the main character is a Chicago therapist named Cassidy McCabe. Her latest, “Murder’s Madness,” places a schizophrenic patient in a condo unit at Marina City. The condo is owned by Cassidy’s new husband, crime reporter Zach Moran.

Alex, who is also a psychotherapist, has spent time at Marina City, starting in 1979 when she started dating fellow therapist Allen Matthews.

“I have wonderful memories of being in his condo and staring out at the lights of the city around us. It never seemed a scary place to me, but when I needed a Chicago high rise for my book, Marina City was the only building I was familiar with.”

She came back recently to look around and do research. “We went up to the rooftop room that I write about in my book. I described the room accurately…since readers always catch you if you make mistakes. 28 years ago Marina City was pretty rundown, but it’s had a snazzy facelift in the interim.”

The author remembers the first time she saw the view from Allen’s west tower condo. “To say I was awestruck would be an understatement. We dated over a long period of time, and I loved every minute I spent at Marina City. When I was in Oak Park, my life as a single mother seemed drab and overwhelming. When I was at Marina City, I felt like a princess in a tower.”

After the couple married in 1984, Allen Matthews moved to Oak Park but kept the Marina City condo unit as rental property.

“During the years we rented it out,” recalls Alex, “we watched a long list of eccentric characters parade through the condo: a con man who ended up in prison; a call girl; and an ‘importer’ from Columbia. But the person who intrigued me most was a schizophrenic woman who covered the mirrors with newspaper and paid the rent with hundred dollar bills she carried in a brown paper bag.”

The woman fascinated Alex enough to write a mystery novel around her. “And since I had only known her when she lived at Marina City, I had to set my story there.”

Alex is currently working on her tenth Cassidy McCabe mystery, published by Veiled Intent Press. She says the schizophrenic woman “disappeared completely years ago.”

Voices screaming in her head…dark angels pursuing her…desperation driving her to climb to the top of a Chicago building. When Cassidy and her reporter husband Zach rent their Marina City condo to Delia, she has been stabilized on medication for several years. Then, a few months later, she goes off her meds and has a psychotic break.

“You have to come here,” Delia whispers to Cassidy. “I can’t tell you over the phone…people are listening. After Cassidy arrives at Delia’s condo, the schizophrenic woman describes the incident she witnessed in the rooftop room the previous night. “I opened the door a crack. I saw the Angel of Death, all shiny and glistening. He was standing in front of a closet where a naked body was hanging.”

That same day a man is discovered missing from the building. As Cass probes deeper into the mystery, she has reason to fear that she will disappear as well.

– From a review of Murder’s Madness that appears on the Amazon.com web site

Amazon.com: Murder’s Madness: Alex Matthews