Baker Mischief Book 4
Political Thriller
Date Published: 06-10-2025
What would happen if a man of integrity, calm judgment, and firm conservative principles were elected our President? Would he do better than what we have? Or might he discover that behind America’s expressed principles something still lingers from the Fall? That behind our longing for justice, for community, for fairness, for freedom, for beauty, proportion, for the things that nurture all that is good, Something is still out there?
Let’s see.
Interview with Richard Sherry
What is your favorite part of the book?
The book I’m focusing on in this interview is my most recent, Wednesday, After. This is the fourth book in the BakerMischief series, featuring a retired college professor who specializes in putting political “secrets” on the table so American voters can make better choices about government. In all of these books, Dr. Baker and others exploit modern technology to reveal secrets others want to hide.
In Wednesday, After I’ve focused more on the moral and philosophical conflicts that face my fictional president, Scott Martin. Scenes I thought were important and that I put a lot of time into involved his conversations with his wife.
Does your book have a lesson? Moral?
Yes and no. I have tried to resist “lessons” in stories that I write, because I think that constrains you into simplistic answers, and is likely to lead you further into “partisan” thinking—who’s wrong and who’s right. Human choices are most often more complicated than that.
If there is a “lesson” in this book, it is that simple, inflexible answers to complicated questions likely won’t be adequate. You have to look behind the answers to understand the thinking involved.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
I would say we’re dealing with social “types,” more than identifiable “real” people. But yes, some are based on real people. I’ve tried seriously to separate the real from the fictional—when you have vivid people in real life, that can be a little challenging. I worked the hardest at that with members of the Supreme Court (Mondays, Mondays).
Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?
Ed Baker and his wife Melody are my favorites. I started my first book with Baker, and introduced Melody—they are both widowers who marry—later. I find myself working to give her the credit she deserves. She’s smarter and more savvy than I thought she was. A third character, Devon Cook, a former FBI agent, also is showing me new things. She’s got some interesting parts of her I’m still thinking about.
What character in your book are you least likely to get along with?
I think the character of Taylor Perez, vice-president-elect when the story opens, would be my least favorite. He’s attractive, energetic, manipulative, and sold out to an ideology. And he’s convinced that the world should look the way he wants it to.
What would the main character in your book have to say about you?
“So much drama!”
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
I’d like each work to stand on its own. At the same time, some of the stresses in Ed Baker’s life (and with his wife Melody) result from what he’s done before. As with any book that turns into a series, an author has to find a way to “introduce” a character’s past without killing the story’s momentum—or “flattening” the character into an unchanging type.
As an example: I don’t remember either Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot “growing” or deepening as characters in the Agatha Christie novels. But Lord Peter Wimsey, in the Dorothy Sayers stories, has a deep core of character qualities even while changing as he ages, falls in love, and marries. That’s what I’ve tried to do.
In the BakerMischief world of the four novels, Baker’s efforts deal with Congress (A Month of Sundays), the Supreme Court (Mondays, Mondays), the 2024 presidential election (First Tuesday), and now the Executive Branch.
Dr. Richard Sherry is the author of the Baker Mischief series, including A Month of Sundays (2022) ; Mondays, Mondays (2023) ; and First Tuesday 2024. The political thriller series introduces retired political science professor Dr. Ed Baker, determined to open up American politics to daylight. He is almost always up against both the law and forces attempting to conceal their influence on American life. In A Month of Sundays, Baker uncovers who owns senators up for election in 2020 and releases their emails to the voters in their states. In Mondays, Mondays, he reveals a "voting bloc" in the Supreme Court and who is influencing them. In First Tuesday, Baker and his former students look at the influential forces behind the 2024 presidential election, with surprising results.
Richard released a memoir in 2020, The Long Run: Meditations on Marriage, Dementia, Caregiving, and Loss (2020), about his first wife's illness and death.
Richard is a retired college professor and administrator. He resides in Minnesota and winters in Arizona with his wife Marjorie Mathison Hance, author of the North lakes Murder Mystery Series.
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https://mybook.to/WednesdayAfter
