BOOKS

Former Congressman And Current Ithacan Mrazek Releases 12th Novel

By Julia Nagel

Former ve-term congressman Robert J. Mrazek, now an awardwinning author, released his 12th novel this week. e thriller, titled “ e Dark Circle,” is the second in a series that details the adventures of former army o cer Jake Cantrell and his beloved sidekick, Bug, a wol ound he rescued while serving in Afghanistan. e novel begins with Cantrell working as a campus security o cer at the ctional St. Andrews College, but he resigns when complaints arise a er he uses force to break up a ght between two drug-crazed students. Jake doesn’t stay unemployed for long, though; Lauren Kennsiton, the editor of the “Groton Journal,” o ers him $200 a day to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a gi ed student musician.

As Cantrell travels around Upstate New York, he attempts to untangle a web of issues related to opioids, sex tra cking and corruption. Cantrell makes more than a few enemies as his investigation catches the attention of powerful New Yorkers.

Loosely set in Groton, “ e Dark Circle” weaves together ctional and factual details about Upstate New York.

“Groton is really Ithaca. St. Andrews school is a smaller version of Cornell,” Mrazek explained.

Readers will notice numerous local references in the novel, from landmarks like Ithaca’s Fall Creek and Rochester’s Kodak Tower, to Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and Cornell’s annual Slope Day music festival which is recast as the St. Andrews Slope Day festival in the novel.

As a 1967 Cornell alum and someone that currently splits his time between Ithaca and Maine, Mrazek knows the area well and has watched it evolve over the decades.

“ e drugstores, hardware store, the courthouse, the Woolworth's ve and dime: they're all gone. ey're empty. e big engine in Upstate New York was the railroads. e railroads thrived up here for many years, and when the railroads le , the villages died,” Mrazek explained.

“ e tragedy of a waning set of small communities serves as an undercurrent to the novel, and a contrast to the physical beauty of the Finger Lakes,” Mrazek explained.

According to Mrazek, one of the more di cult aspects of writing this novel was cra ing a “worthy” villain.

“Hopefully the reader is thrilled with what happens to him at the end a er all of the tragedy that he causes,” Mrazek said.

Re ecting on his switch from politics to writing, Mrazek explained that his time as a politician was simply a detour from his true passion.

“I ended up taking a 30-year detour, if you will, from what I wanted to do in life. But when I le Congress, I thought, ‘Okay, you wanted to be a writer. Let's see if you can be a writer,’” Mrazek said.

Despite it being his true calling, the start to Mrazek’s writing career was far from smooth. His rst two books — one of which took two and a half years to write

Mrazek’s latest novel, “The Dark Circle”, is set in a fictional Groton, NY, that is largely based on Ithaca. (Photo: Samuel Stern)

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