Shownotes Transcript
There's only one rule to writing romance stories. They always end with a happily ever after. And Nancy Brophy didn't just write them. She was a romance mystery writer who happens to be married to a chef. She seemed to be living one, too. I was jealous of their relationship. They seemed to really just fit. Nancy's love story could have been ripped right out of the pages of one of her own novels. But...
This story didn't end with a happily ever after.
When I stepped into the kitchen, I could see that Chef Brophy was on the ground, and I heard somebody say, call 911. From Wondery, the makers of Ghost Story, and Fed Up, this is a story about a murder that rocked my little community. The way Dan was murdered, cold-blooded, calculated. We have no eyewitnesses. Two case scenes and a dead body. That's it. You have nothing more. As writers, we'd written our share of murder mysteries.
So when suspicion turned to Dan's wife, Nancy, we weren't that surprised. "The first person they look at would be the spouse." "We understand that's usually the way they do it." But we began to wonder: Were the detectives confusing Nancy's novels with reality?
They glommed on the fact that she writes stories like this, so that must mean she was thinking about doing this. He asked, did Nancy know how to use a gun? I'm like, oh God, no. She shakes. She has diabetes. Or were they seeing something that the rest of us didn't? Ms. Brophy has spent good money on night vision goggles, a telescope, law enforcement quality handcuffs. Had Nancy gotten so wrapped up in her own novels? There are murders in all of
the books? That she was playing them out in real life? Did she think that she could act out as one of her characters in her book? And that would be just as simple as a plot line? I'm Heidi Trethewey. If they ask me...
I couldn't write a book. Follow Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Happily Never After, Dan and Nancy early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. She would tease him about sleeping with one eye open because she was a romantic suspense writer, so she knew all the ways to get away with stuff.
