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"When did you realize you could write a book like this?" exclaims an awed Barbara Hanson. The popular Attleboro teacher and voracious reader adds wistfully, "I know I could NEVER write a novel!" Others nod their heads as Barbara directs her remarks to Susan Fleet, author of the newly published detective thriller "Absolution," and honored guest at the October gathering of the Limoncello Literati book club.

Fleet, who spent much of her childhood in Attleboro, puts the lie to the old saw, "You can't be a prophet in your own land." In this circle of area teachers, Susan Feeney Fleet is a phenomenon to celebrate and a real, live author who will share with them some of the nitty gritty aspects of writing a novel. Susan describes herself as a "trumpeter and music historian who somewhere along the way became a crime thriller novelist." Her page-turner "Absolution" is set in New Orleans, where she has lived since 2001.

Unlike many of the Literati whose comfort zone is writing non-fiction, Susan Fleet looks back at the days when she wrote feature stories for The Sun Chronicle and Woonsocket Call and admits, "I feel like I'm slitting my wrists and bleeding onto the page when I write non-fiction articles."

A scriptwriting course at Emerson College in the late '80s put her in touch with her "dark side" and inspired her to try her hand at fiction. One of her assignments was to write part of a segment of "Ryan's Hope." She was hooked immediately. "I can hear the dialogue happening in my head," she says. Her favorite book at the time was Frederick Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" - a book she later studied page by page "to see how he made the magic happen."

Shortly thereafter, in 1990, Susan wrote her first crime thriller, and although it was never published, she had found a passion that was beginning to trump even her busy musical and teaching career. When she moved to New Orleans in 2001, the media was ablaze with details about the Baton Rouge serial killer. FBI profilers had created a detailed composite of the potential killer, but in the end, Susan remembers, they were proved "dead wrong." As the daughter of a former crime reporter, Frank Feeney, Susan followed the Baton Rouge story with more than a little interest. She also knew she wanted to write a story set in the Big Easy - a city she had come to love. And with her creative impulses energized by a vibrant writing community in New Orleans, Susan began "Absolution." The book's protagonist, former Boston Detective Frank Renzi, propels a frantic search to capture a serial killer who is murdering and slashing the tongues of women in need of "absolution."

A barrage of questions from the Literati prompts Fleet to grab paper and pencil and take notes. Judy Lusk wants to know if Susan had any "Catholic issues," as it is a Catholic priest (we discover early on) who is leading the double life of priest and serial killer. From Susan's response, it is clear that the character choice was influenced more by the desire to create a unique and unlikely murderer than by ideological concerns.

Su Wade comments that when she read the first chapter, she wondered if Susan was "trying too hard to be a male author." But, Su hastens to add, those concerns faded quickly as the pace of the book quickened and she was swept along by the action.

"Did you know how it was going to end?" the group asks of a finale that surprised them. "The simple answer" according to Susan, "is 'yes.'" That is, until writing the final chapters, when the killer meets a sympathetic young girl in a bar. Suddenly the characters led their author on a detour that opened up other possibilitiesand Susan scrapped her original ending.

As the conversation moves to the dining table, Ann Marie Monroe eagerly reports than when she gave the book to her son, a policeman, he finished it in two nights, and passed it to his fellow detectives, saying, "You have to read this!" The detectives were impressed with Frank Renzi, and by Susan's accurate portrayal of the law enforcement elements of the book.

In response to the Literati's chant, "We want another!" Susan happily replies that she is busy on the rough draft of her next Frank Renzi thriller. And she promises that, unlike real life, "the bad guy always gets punished."

Since Susan Fleet visits the Boston area several times a year, she would be delighted to join other area book groups for similar discussions. You can contact her through her Web site www.susanfleet.com.

KATHY HICKMAN'S column, The Reading Room, appears in Your Day the first Tuesday of each month. You can contact her at news@thesunchronicle.com.