Home is where the Rice is: Bestselling author writes, sets new novel in Ocean House

January 27, 2024 5:00 pm • Last Updated: January 29, 2024 10:29 am

By Rick Koster
Day Arts/Features writer

Luanne Rice (Sarah Gordon/The Day)
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The nerve of Luanne Rice!

Sure, she’s a serial bestselling author and generally a very sweet person.

Last year, the Old Lyme resident checked into the gorgeous Ocean House hotel in Watch Hill to write a new book, which is fine on the surface because it’s a helluva place in which to hunker down and scribble for a while. In fact, flatteringly enough, Rice decided to use the acclaimed and very New Englandy resort as the principal setting in the narrative.

But then, Rice MURDERED a character on the landscaped Ocean House property during a blizzard just before Christmas — and the victim’s 4-year-old daughter has vanished in the storm!

Now the whole world will associate this perfectly pleasant seaside resort with villainy!

The book, “Last Night,” is just hitting bookstore shelves, and Rice celebrates with a discussion and signing Friday in Mystic’s Bank Square Books. The event will be moderated by Providence suspense writer Vanessa Lillie, whose latest book is “Blood Sisters,” and expect the usual large crowd that shows up anytime Rice has a new title.

It’s unknown, though, whether Deborah Goodrich Royce will be there. If her name’s familiar, it’s because she’s also a bestselling thriller author and, oh, yeah, she and her husband Chuck Royce OWN the Ocean House where Rice just deposited a dead mother and who knows where the missing and presumably cold orphan is?

“The good news is that Deborah HAS read ‘Last Night’ and liked it enough to host a big pre-publication event at the Ocean House in December,” Rice says, laughing. “She had arranged a big backdrop that was the cover of the book, and there was a ‘Last Night’ cake and ‘Last Night’ cookies. They had fun with the whole thing and I had fun writing there.

“Deborah has become a very close friend. i think of her as my "writing sister.” I don't talk about work-in-progress with many people, but I do with her. She's so generous to writers and readers, bringing us together through their Ocean House Author Series.“

Royce says, “I couldn’t be happier about the book or for Luanne. She’s one of my favorite writers and human beings. It’s a great story with the elements of ‘Murder On the Orient Express’ — that’s a flattering association — and the whole thing is a fun romp. We particularly appreciate that Luanne takes readers through the whole hotel, all the nooks and crannies. It’s a fun romp, and I hope the Ocean House becomes permanently associated with the book.”

Of course, the above-described crimes are just the set-up for “Last Night.” It’s a beautifully atmospheric story with Rice expertly blending the renowned and brightly lit holiday décor of the Ocean House, the powerful whiteout majesty of a winter Nor’easter, engaging and familiar characters, and darker felonious elements.

Familiar characters

The homicide victim is a frequent Ocean House guest and the internationally celebrated artist Maddie Morrison. She and her daughter CeCe have selected the comforts of the hotel to help lessen the stress of Maddie’s divorce from CeCe’s father, a famous and possibly loutish actor. After the homicide, Maddie’s emotionally crushed sister, Hadley, manages to negotiate the brutal weather and arrives, simultaneously with detective Conor Reid and his brother Tom, a Coast Guard commander. Loyal readers will recognize the Reid brothers from the previous Rice thrillers “Last Day” and “The Shadow Box.”

While “Last Night” isn’t properly a sequel and the Reid brothers’ presence doesn’t mean the books are a series, Rice has developed — along with her fans — an affection for the siblings, and there’s now a loose conglomerate of recurring and tangential characters.

“I’ve set almost all my novels in real but imagined locales,” says Rice, who also wrote parts of the new novel in her home. “Black Hollow is my imagined stand-in for Old Lyme, for example, and I take comfort in establishing and revisiting the beaches and locations I love. Art is a recurring theme in my books, so that falls into the world-building, too.

“Because the latter books are thrillers or suspense novels, and the locations are the same, the detective and the Coast Guard captain would be investigating local crimes anyway. So the readers get to know them and it all seems like real-time development. I like the feeling of writing along and thinking, ‘Oh, it’s time for that guy to come back.’”

The family element

It’s also important to note that, along with her tradition of evocative and beautiful settings, Rice continues to intriguingly and compellingly explore a fascination with families and sisters. In the new book, the relationship between Maddie and Hadley is at first celebrated and then … well, examined in a different context. There HAS been a murder and a possible kidnapping, after all.

Oh, and just because “Last Night” has moved the action 25 miles down the road and across the Rhody border and into an exclusive resort, don’t worry: Rice has perfectly logical reasons for the Reid brothers to be on hand.

Thus confined to the hotel, the investigators and family and friends begin to sort through possible suspects and motives in their race to find CeCe as well as the killer. Then CeCe’s father — the notorious thespian — shows up! And what’s up with that trusted hotel employee?

As the storm begins to ebb, outside personnel pitch in to intensify the search for CeCe, and that allows Rice to introduce a new batch of complications and possibilities. The multiple plot elements clash and overlap, and past romantic relationships, the intricacies of the art world and financial desperation from unlikely sources are just part of the threads of the case.

Mastering the thriller genre

It’s maddening fun trying to figure it all out, and it’s fascinating to think that Rice only started exploring the thriller genre a few books ago — some 30-plus novels into her career. And interestingly, given the complexity of her crime novels, Rice doesn’t outline before she starts writing.

“I never have a plot concept,” Rice admits, “I always just start with a character and a setting. I like reading thrillers, and life is a mystery. So I just take off and see what happens.”

Such a free-wheeling approach suggests that Rice is never surprised when she writes herself into a corner.

“That definitely happens,” she laughs. “I get up in the morning and I write for a while. That night, I’ll edit — and that’s when I can sort of tell when some aspect of the story might not be working. The next day I can jump right in having had the evening to sleep on it. I fix those problems as I go along so I don’t have to go back later. Somehow, it all works out, and I’m as surprised as anyone when I learn who the killer is.”