John Gordon has traveled the world as an award-winning documentary script-writer, cameraman, and producer. He writes novels about murder and sleuthing as if he’s been there and done that, too! Like John’s Master Gardener and talented amateur sleuth, Penelope Summers, John was a public affairs officer in the Navy and knows a thing or two about garden design.
John’s first book, Katelyn’s Killer, was published in 2017. His second, Malice at the Manor (2018), follows Penny and her landscape design professor to Western North Carolina where they visit the last residential design of Frederick Law Olmsted. Both are available everywhere books are sold as well as at Amazon.com.
In Penny’s third mystery, presently under construction, she’ll be back home in Annapolis trying to learn how her long-estranged mother’s new husband died.
John attended St. John’s College in Annapolis and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. He was a copyboy at the Washington Post newspaper, a Navy Air Intelligence officer, and an award-winning documentary and educational film and video producer. Following a stint as landscape designer and garden pond builder, he made the acquaintance of Penny Summers and began co-authoring her stories.
He lives in Asheville, NC, with his wife, two dogs, and several cats, one of which can usually be found dozing behind his iMac.
Penelope Summers, Master Gardener and Sleuth
First of all, I have to confess that I’m a figment of John Gordon’s imagination. But I’ve gotten over that. You probably can, too.
My business card reads “Penelope Summers, Owner, Summers Breeze Gardening, Annapolis Maryland, Master Gardener, Sleuth, Storyteller.
I’m actually all of those. I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, the daughter of Curtis and Evan. That’s short for Evangeline, though I cannot imagine my grandmother naming anyone Evangeline. Dad taught history to midshipmen (the term includes those you might imagine would be called ‘midshipwomen,’ but, trust me on this, there are no midshipwomen.). He professed at the Naval Academy for about twenty-five years before he retired and moved to a private island community north of Naptown. We don’t talk much. Mom ran away with a hippie when I was ten to live in a commune somewhere, and to this day, neither Dad or I, or my brother Spencer, who’s a physician in Baltimore, know her whereabouts. Understand, I’m permitted to call Annapolis Naptown since I graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy back in 2000.
Growing up without a mother has undoubtedly contributed to my personality. But I’m unable to see myself as others see me except to know that I don’t suffer fools gladly or any other way. My dad helped arrange my appointment to the Naval Academy. (Thanks Dad!) After six years in uniform as a public affairs officer, mostly on the aircraft carrier Enterprise during Iraqi Freedom, and after my fiancé dumped me for a high school friend of mine who wasn’t on a Navy ship half a world from him, I left the Navy. I hung my lieutenant’s uniform in the back of my closet and went to work for a PR firm here in Naptown. That was almost four years ago. Since taking Master Gardener training last year, I’ve decided that public relations doesn’t help the world go round and probably hinders it.
That’s what led to my starting a part-time business: Summers Breeze Gardening. I’m developing my skills as a gardener and garden designer. And thinking about getting a landscape architect degree at the University of Maryland. Probably in their two-year masters program.
