This story is part of the WTOP Book Report series written by Terik King. Read more of that coverage.
Axios D.C. reporter Mimi Montgomery has spent years covering hard news in the nation’s capital, where “just the facts” is the guiding ethos. Now she’s completely making things up instead.
Montgomery’s debut novel, “Murder Bites“ (Bantam Books), follows Margot Cartwright, a D.C. transplant who relocates to a small South Carolina town where residents are obsessed with their dogs. When the local dog walker is murdered just as a reality television dog competition comes to town to film its latest season, Margot finds herself the prime suspect and must solve the crime before she lands in jail.
For Montgomery, writing fiction after years in journalism proved more difficult than she expected.
“It was really hard to learn to write fiction after doing journalism for so long,” Montgomery said in an interview with the WTOP Book Report. “I was like, ‘I’m a professional writer. I’ve been doing this for a long time. How hard can it be?’ Famous last words!”
Unlike journalism, where reporters begin with known facts, fiction writing presented an entirely different challenge. Montgomery found herself instinctively trying to verify events she alone had invented.
“I would actually find myself spending hours going down a fact-checking hole,” she said. “And I had to be like, ‘Wait, girl, this is literally a Google Doc you’re writing alone in your guest bedroom. You can make these people do whatever you want.’ It was freeing.”
Once she embraced that creative freedom, Montgomery said, the writing became far more enjoyable. Still, she credits her editor with helping shape the mechanics of the mystery, balancing the novel’s humor with emotional depth while carefully planting clues and misdirection throughout the story.
Although “Murder Bites” centers on a homicide, Montgomery describes it first as a comedy.
“The goal is for you to laugh out loud a lot,” she said, adding that she also hopes readers become invested in the unlikely friendships Margot forms while trying to clear her name.
Those relationships are rooted in one of the novel’s larger themes: the assumptions people make about one another.
Originally from a small Southern town herself, Montgomery has lived in the D.C. area for more than a decade. Moving between those two worlds exposed her to the stereotypes each held about the other, inspiring Margot’s perspective as an outsider who initially believes she has everyone figured out.
“I kind of wanted the central message at the end of the day to be like we’re all humans, and we’re all weirder and far more complex than I think we give other people credit (for),” she said.
Margot herself is intentionally imperfect.
“Basically the way I thought of Margot is like if all of our snarkiest inner little gremlins were not silenced,” Montgomery said. “If you just let all your stereotypes of other people and all of your preconceptions just barrel and barrel and barrel … that would be Margot.”
The novel’s publication also represents the culmination of a yearslong process. Montgomery began writing “Murder Bites” four years ago. After spending about a year drafting the manuscript, she secured an agent, sold the book, revised it with an editor and waited another year for publication.
Finding time to write alongside a demanding reporting job required discipline.
“I had to just wake up and do it before work,” she said. “I would write from like six to eight in the morning, and then do work.”
Despite discovering a love for fiction, Montgomery has no plans to leave journalism behind.
“I honestly don’t see a world where I’m not doing one of them,” she said. Reporting, she explained, satisfies her curiosity while providing endless inspiration for future stories. “Truth is stranger than fiction. Being a journalist (is) seeing what kooky stuff people are up to … I would never want to shut myself off from that well of inspiration.”
Readers hoping for another Margot Cartwright mystery, however, may be disappointed. Montgomery said “Murder Bites” was conceived as a standalone novel rather than the start of a series.
For now, though, she hopes readers simply enjoy the ride.
“I really want people just to have fun and just to laugh a lot,” Montgomery said, “and just end the book and be like, ‘Ah, what a weird and wild and fun ride that was.'”
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