Patricia Skalka, left, and the final installment of her Dave Cubiak Door County mysteries.
Patricia Skalka remembers the moment the idea for her first Dave Cubiak mystery came to her — years before the publication of her first book, Death Stalks Door County, in 2014.
“I always knew I wanted to write a mystery; that was one of my lifetime goals,” says Skalka, a former Reader’s Digest writer who now divides her time between Milwaukee and Door County. “I was there on vacation, sitting on the beach on the Lake Michigan side and not thinking about much of anything except how stunningly beautiful and calm it was. And then I was in that same spot that evening. It was one of those nights that was black, like sitting in the middle of an inkwell. No stars, no light, no anything. I started to think of the contrast between day and night. Light and dark. Good and evil. And I realized that, ‘Wow. This is the perfect place to set a mystery.’”
Seven of them, in fact, all subtitled “A Dave Cubiak Door County Mystery.” UW Press has published all seven books, which feature gorgeous noirish covers created by Madison artist Sara DeHaan.
Death Stalks Door County, in which a half-dozen deaths mar the summer tourism season, was followed by Death at Gills Rock (2015), Death in Cold Water (2016), Death Rides the Ferry (2018), Death By the Bay (2019) and Death Washes Ashore (2021). Skalka will be at Mystery to Me bookstore on July 28, in conversation with Doug Moe, to discuss the final installment in the series, Death Casts a Shadow. (It’s a free event, but audience members will need a ticket available through mysterytomebooks.com).
The novels follow Dave Cubiak, a former Chicago homicide detective racked by grief and guilt after his wife and daughter are killed by a drunk driver. He relocates to Door County, finds work as a park ranger and eventually is elected sheriff. He rattles cages and solves homicides involving everything from live-action role playing to progressive medicine and, in the case of Death Casts a Shadow, internet romance scams.
“Each book has its own story arc, but the overriding theme of the series is Cubiak’s journey of personal redemption,” Skalka says. Wrapping up the series was bittersweet: “I knew that when I felt he had come to accept what had happened and re-embraced life fully that his journey was over and the series would end. Writers talk about their characters talking to them, and to an extent it’s true. Dave was telling me, ‘I’m okay.’ It was tough to make that decision, and I miss him.”
Skalka is grateful for the support she’s received from readers and booksellers over the years, during which she won multiple awards for the series. In 2020, Death Stalks Door County was chosen to represent Wisconsin in USA Today’s “50 states, 50 books” feature.
Now she plans to spend time with her two baby grandsons plus revisit manuscripts already in progress. Those include an inspirational Christmas novella and a mystery set in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is fertile ground for a slew of mystery writers that includes John Galligan and Jeff Nania, as well as newcomers Sue Berg and Jeffrey D. Boldt. “I like seeing how writers take a region and claim it as their own,” Skalka says. “Wisconsin has such a rich history with the geography, the natural beauty of different parts of the state and the complexities of the population. All the ingredients are there, and it’s nice to see writers taking advantage of that.”
