Scottsville-raised Meredith Cole has lived out of Virginia for nearly 20 years. When she wrote her first mystery, she set it in Brooklyn, where she lived at the time. Cole moved to Belmont in Charlottesville last year, but the setting of second novel, Dead in the Water, remains in Brooklyn.

Cole started as a filmmaker and screenwriter, and moved to mystery writing with the birth of her son. The first book in her series about art photographer/sleuth Lydia McKenzie, Posed for Murder, won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Competition. In the second, out in May, a hooker McKenzie has photographed becomes a floater in the East River.

Cole has taught mystery writing and screenwriting at WriterHouse, and that’s where here book launch party will be at 7pm Tuesday, May 11. The public is invited.