Stella Sands uses words to solve crime in 'Wordhunter'

“Can I just read you the first line?" asks North Haven resident Stella Sands, a copy of the starred Publishers Weekly review of “Wordhunter” (HarperCollins, $18.99) in hand. " 'True crime author Sands makes an auspicious fiction debut with this crackling mystery centered on a Lisbeth Salander-esque savant.' "

She looks up with a grin, then skips to the last lines of the brief rave. " 'Sands nails the genius investigator formula on her first try, spinning Maggie into a memorable heroine and handing her an enthralling first case. This transfixes from the first page.' "

By her level of fizzy excitement, you might not guess that "Wordhunter" is actually Sands' seventh book, or that she's quite a few decades older than her 21-year-old heroine. From her writing barn in North Haven, where she's lived full time for 10 years, Sands spoke to Newsday via Zoom about her latest project.

Tell us about your path to writing fiction.

When I was in college at NYU, I wrote plays; several were produced Off-Off Broadway. After that, I became editor of a children's magazine. At this time, my daughter and I lived near Central Park, where she often played with a little girl who lived up the street named Daphne. Fast forward to 1997, that same Daphne is accused of murdering a man named Michael McMorrow in Central Park. It haunted me. I looked into it, wrote a synopsis and very quickly got an agent and a contract for what became “Baby-Faced Butchers.” Almost immediately St. Martin’s came back asking if I had any ideas for the next one, and it went on like that for years.

Why did you stop?

On every project, I bonded with the victim's families and became quite close with most of them. I visited prisons, I corresponded with accused and convicted killers. This was already a lot of sadness to manage, and then, in a very short period of time, I lost my mother, my father, my only sister and my husband. I thought, enough sadness. I can't do it anymore.

So you no longer wanted to write true crime, but you started making up crimes?

Making it up was great fun — totally different, since there are no real people dead, bereaved, incarcerated or hurt in any way. It took me a while to develop my protagonist. She started out as a morbidly obese woman who never left her room, and ended up being an almost anorexic, tattooed, pierced, motorcycle-riding 21-year-old.

Maggie is a wild one, for sure. Is she based on anyone in particular?

Somewhere inside, I always wanted to be Maggie, but I never had the guts.

As much of a renegade as she may be, Maggie is obsessed with grammar, particularly with diagraming sentences. Whenever she's stressed, she diagrams sentences from famous novels.

And that is something we do share. Ever since I learned how to diagram sentences from my beloved seventh-grade teacher, I have always gone back to it as a place to rest, as a place to find comfort. You know some people do crossword puzzles or listen to music — I love taking sentences apart.

For Maggie, analyzing sentences becomes a way to solve crimes.

When I learned that the Unabomber was found out due to [Ted] Kaczynski's brother and his brother's wife analyzing the manifesto and recognizing from the way it was written and the words used that it had to be Ted, I got fascinated with forensic linguistics and started studying it.

In "Wordhunter," the mayor's daughter is kidnapped, and Maggie, who is studying linguistics, is asked to take a look at the notes that have been left. Had you written about kidnapping before?

No, my true crime novels involved murders — single or serial — but no kidnapping. I don't know anyone personally who was kidnapped, but I seem to dwell on things that are hard for people. If somebody's been kidnapped or murdered or abused in some way, my heart cries. I gave that pain to Maggie over her loss of [her kidnapped friend] Lucy — that's the emotional heart of the book.

Do you plan a series with Maggie?

Well, as you know, Detective Jackson, who is her crime-solving partner, has been in a coma for months at the end of “Wordhunter.” But Maggie keeps talking to him, hoping he'll come out of it, and promises him if he does, they can go into business together and start their own detective agency, and solve some crimes. Sure enough …

So, book two is on the way. As the Kirkus reviewer put it, "Grammar nerds rejoice!"

Let's hope they do.