About The Rich Are Different

The high­ly-antic­i­pat­ed mys­tery sequel…

The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent, the 2nd nov­el in the Dako­ta Stevens Mys­tery Series by Chris Orcutt, explores the rar­efied world of a Long Island heiress and her mur­dered broth­er who owned an Old West resort in Mon­tana. To hunt down the man’s killer, Dako­ta and his asso­ciate Svet­lana Krüsh must go under­cov­er as actors in a make-believe min­ing town straight out of 1885.

This much-antic­i­pat­ed sequel to A Real Piece of Work picks up a few months after that dif­fi­cult case. Dako­ta Stevens is depressed. He’s lost his detect­ing mojo and has­n’t tak­en a case since A Real Piece of Work. Can he get his mojo back and find the killer?

Like bul­lets from a Gatling gun, the sus­pects come fast and furi­ous: eccen­tric heiress­es, greedy CEOs, cat­ty thes­pi­ans, sexy hench­women, angry Native Amer­i­cans, mys­te­ri­ous mob­sters, men­ac­ing mer­ce­nar­ies, kinky house­wives and con­tract killers.

It’s a clas­sic case of East meets West as Dako­ta and Svet­lana fol­low a trail of clues that takes the read­er from the sophis­ti­cat­ed set­ting of The Great Gats­by to the for­bid­ding land of Pale Rid­er.

Buy: Ama­zon

 

Excerpt from The Rich Are Different

Dur­ing the long dri­ve to Yel­low­stone, Svet­lana kept a per­fect two-car buffer between Heather’s and ours. Once inside the park, how­ev­er, an RV the size of a blue whale some­how slipped between us, and then we were stopped by a bear-jam and wait­ed half an hour for it to clear. We lost Heather briefly on the Grand Loop Road and caught up to her just as she parked in front of the Old Faith­ful Inn. She car­ried her overnight bag to the geyser view­ing area and sat on a bench. I got out while Svet­lana parked, and we met at the hotel entrance. The evening sun was dip­ping beneath the tree­tops.

“Looks like she’s here for the night,” I said. “See if you can get us rooms, and meet me on the obser­va­tion bal­cony.”

“We’ll meet in the restau­rant,” she said. “You’re buy­ing me din­ner.”

In the restau­rant, I got a cor­ner table with a view of the entrance, ordered shrimp cock­tail, and wait­ed. At first I suf­fered the pity­ing stares of cou­ples who thought I was din­ing alone. How­ev­er, I was amply vin­di­cat­ed when Svet­lana sashayed in and every man in the place choked on his bison burg­er. I knew that cat­walk gait of hers well. It was the same one she used when­ev­er she left chess tour­na­ments with the cham­pi­onship purse.

“Well?” I said.

She sat down, spread the nap­kin on her lap and ate a shrimp before toss­ing a plas­tic room key on the table.

“What’d you do, mug them?” I said.

“I wan­dered into the staff lock­er room. One of the house­keep­ers left her lock­er open, and she had two, so—”

“You bor­rowed one,” I said.

“Cor­rect. And now…”

She snapped her fin­gers and the wait­er mate­ri­al­ized at her elbow.

“I will have a Vir­gin Mary and the prime rib,” she said. “Rare. Sim­ply coax the cow into a warm room.”

“Very good, miss.”

“Miss.” She rest­ed her chin on her fist. “Did you hear that Dako­ta? Such a smart young man. Make sure you tip him well.”

I strummed the room key across my fin­gers like a gui­tar pick. “Have I ever told you how much I love your sit­u­a­tion­al ethics?”

“No, but you may fawn over me while I eat these shrimp.”

 

Where did you get the idea for The Rich Are Different?

The orig­i­nal man­u­script that became this nov­el grew out of a trip I took to Mon­tana in 2002. Besides see­ing Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park and the vast Mon­tana plains and wilder­ness, I vis­it­ed sev­er­al ghost towns, includ­ing Ban­nack, and Vir­ginia City & Neva­da City, MT. I saw what tourist attrac­tions these sites can be, and I thought, “Would­n’t it be cool if some rich per­son cre­at­ed a mod­ern-day Old West park?” I imag­ined such a place, staffed by actors, with a town and its own rail­road, and then I imag­ined the own­er of the place being mur­dered and his sis­ter being an heiress on Long Island.

I decid­ed I want­ed to write a mys­tery nov­el that also paid homage to two works I deeply admire: West­erns and The Great Gats­by. I want­ed to con­trast the East with the West in such a way that would make read­ers look at both places a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly. I think I’ve accom­plished that while also adding, in a mod­est way, to both the detec­tive and West­ern gen­res.

 

With so many 5‑star reviews, was A Real Piece of Work a tough act to follow?

Ini­tial­ly I had con­cerns about The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent fol­low­ing such a big suc­cess because I kept think­ing the nov­el had to be “even big­ger” than the first. Then, through some wise coun­sel from my wife and friends, I real­ized that it was­n’t about try­ing to write a sec­ond, “even bet­ter” A Real Piece of Work; it was about let­ting The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent be the unique nov­el it was meant to be.

I’m hop­ing for the Dako­ta books to become an estab­lished series, and if you look at oth­er authors’ detec­tive series, every case is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent holds up as a sequel to A Real Piece of Work, but it also stands on its own as a more tra­di­tion­al PI case than in the first book.

In fact, in some ways The Rich Are Dif­fer­ent is supe­ri­or to the first book. It’s dark­er and emo­tion­al­ly deep­er. Dako­ta is bat­tle-scarred and less cav­a­lier. He and Svet­lana find them­selves in sev­er­al pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tions that push them clos­er togeth­er. And the mys­tery is just as baffling—maybe even more so.

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