SOAP LAKE — Murder, family secrets, mysterious water and a terrifying urban legend. It’s all lurking behind the small-town innocence of Soap Lake in a novel released Tuesday. 

“Midnight in Soap Lake,” the second mystery novel published by former Big Bend Community College English instructor Matthew Sullivan, isn’t just set in Soap Lake but treats the town almost as a character in its own right.  

“I think there’s something about Soap Lake that acted as a convergence of lots of different things,” Sullivan said. “You have the lake with the mineral water and the exceptional, rare qualities of it, then you have a town that emerges on the lake … And then the history: the Indigenous history, the history of white settlement, and the really fascinating history of healing, with veterans coming after World War I with horrific diseases and the VA administration building a hospital there in town.” 

“Midnight in Soap Lake” begins when Abigail, the wife of a scientist studying the water in Soap Lake, discovers the murdered body of Esme in a car in a field along with her little son, George, who survived whatever killed Esme. The story moves back and forth between scenes from Esme’s life and the present time, revealing characters’ histories of drug abuse and violence through encounters with a boogieman called Tree Top. The two stories dovetail at the end, he said. 

“It makes sure that the victim is not just a plot device, but a real human being,” he said. “Oftentimes, in a mystery, you get to the end and you have the solution, but by then the victim is kind of an afterthought. I really wanted to treat the victim as front and center, so empathize with her situation because we followed her throughout the whole book. It's not just about solving the crime, but also about the value of her life.” 

Sullivan said he deliberately created a dark underbelly for the town and painted it as more isolated than it really is. 

“I compare it to (the TV show) ‘Twin Peaks,’ but there’s also the tradition of the Agatha Christie village, or manor houses that are out in the country,” he said. “There’s something about small towns, these really intimate communities, that works really well for the mystery genre. It’s a collection of tight-knit, knowable people and as soon as you place crime into that community, you have the workings for a story.” 

Sullivan lived for three years in Soap Lake and then another 13 in Ephrata, he said. He taught English at BBCC for 20 years, including classes on his passion, mystery fiction. His first book, unconnected with “Midnight in Soap Lake,” was called “Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore,” published in 2017 and takes place at a bookstore in Denver. A sequel to that novel is in the works, Sullivan said, and could be published later this year. There are no plans for a sequel to “Midnight in Soap Lake,” he said, although he didn’t rule out the possibility. 

An afterword to the book makes it clear that all the characters are fictional, except for a reference to the lava lamp project and its proponent Brent Blake, who passed away in 2013. Sullivan’s depiction of Soap Lake is also fictional, he said. 

“I wrote (‘Midnight in Soap Lake’) with a lot of heart, with Soap Lake in mind,” Sullivan said. “I approached it from a place of genuine affection for Soap Lake … I’ve always felt like it was an interesting, colorful community. There were a lot of (people) who stuck to themselves, but then there was also this core group of people who were really fun and wanted to make things happen.” 

Meet the author 

Matthew Sullivan will be in the area for two book signings next month. 

May 15: 6:30 p.m. at the Moses Lake Public Library, 418 E. Fifth Ave. 

May 16: 6 p.m. at the Lakeside Bistro, 14 Canna St N, Soap Lake. 

More information can be found at matthewjsullivan.com. 

    Soap Lake is the setting of a new mystery novel released Tuesday.