Book Topics

Lesa Holstine our BOOK TOPICS editor this week lost her husband Jim, a bright and humorous fellow who you got to meet in our past year's Fiesta Bowl coverage at the Glendale Daily Planet here.    Goodbye Jim... You will be missed. - Ed Sharpe, Publisher - Glendale Daily Planet

 

Monday, February 15, 2010

Jim died today, at 12:30 a.m., on Presidents' Day, the perfect day for a man who loved history, particularly of the Presidency. Since I prepared this epitaph ahead of time, at his request, I'm able to make this announcement.

Jim didn't want a newspaper obituary. Instead, he asked that I write an epitaph about his love of books. Jim's parents, Harry and Joanne Holstine, were both readers, and Jim learned to read at any early age, reading the sports pages in the newspaper, sharing that love with Harry. He was always so proud that he read the greatest number of books one year for the summer reading program at the Berlin Heights (Ohio) Public Library. And, I always laughed when he told about getting in trouble for an overdue book because he loved it so much, he hid it under his bed.

Jim and I met at the Huron Public Library in 1981, soon after I returned home to be Director of my hometown library. Jim's mother sent him in, saying there was a cute new librarian at the library. And, my children's librarian, Millie Schilman, formally introduced us, saying, "This is Jim Holstine. He's one of our most prolific readers."

Over the next couple years, we talked about books, and when he went to Florida in the winter, I told Millie I missed Jim Holstine because he was the only person who got as excited about the boxes of new books as I did. We went on our first date on May 1, 1983, and married on October 1. Since we met at the Huron Library, we married in the meeting room there, and Jim even played the piano beforehand. My staff tied paperback books to the bumper of the car.

From the very beginning, books were an important part of our lives. Jim often said he didn't think we would have gotten together if we hadn't both been fond of Leo Buscaglia's books, Love and Living, Loving and Learning. When I invited him to speak at the library, Buscaglia sent me the most gracious rejection letter, which is still framed on our wall. We had no idea he had heart problems, and would die soon after writing that note. 

I made Jim read Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, his favorite book. I never told him Archer was British, and Jim wouldn't read British authors. Ironic that Lee Child became one of his favorite authors years later, but when he first went to see him at the Poisoned Pen, he turned to me and said, "You never told me he was British." And, I said, "You never read the back flap of the book."

Jim loved Florida, and we moved there with my job, first at the Charlotte-Glades Library System, and then the Lee County Library System. He enthusiastically participated in my work there, acting as a volunteer for the Lee County Reading Festival. He was thrilled when he escorted Douglas Brinkley during the festival, and we had the chance to have lunch with Brinkley and Rick Bragg. We picked Sue Grafton up at the airport. And, he had a lengthy conversation with David Morrell, "Rambo's Father."

It was Jim who pushed me to apply for jobs, and spent a great deal of time talking on the phone with my new boss in Glendale, AZ. I think she hired me because she liked him so much. And, he encouraged me every time I worked on my blog, buying me the camera to take pictures of authors, and then a minicam. He always challenged me to be better

I took Jim to meet Brad Meltzer on his birthday. He loved meeting Lee Child, and sharing a cigarette break outside the Poisoned Pen. He met Jeffery Deaver for the first time in the restroom (they didn't shake hands - grin). We even went to see Barack Obama when he was on his book tour, and we had the chance to shake hands, and urge him to run for President. But, it was always books that brought us these opportunities.

Jim never had the chance to read Lee Child's 61 Hours. His illness was so quick that, even though Maggie Griffin, Child's webmaven, graciously sent me an ARC so Jim could get the chance to read one more book, he was never able to read it. Jim loved thrillers, books by Lee Child, James Patterson, Alex Kava, Brad Meltzer. He loved American history and big biographies, and anything about the Kennedys. Now, he'll know the answer to his favorite joke. It's about a man who dies, goes to heaven, and is told by God that he can ask him anything. The man says, "I want to know who really killed President Kennedy," and God answered, "Well, I have a theory about that." Jim's favorite joke, his favorite subject for nonfiction, and his favorite topic for theories. Now, he'll know.

Jim always loved the people I worked with, at Huron, Lee County (particularly at Rutenberg), and, here in Glendale. Someone made the comment that if you knew Lesa, you knew Jim, and, at least in the library, that was usually right. He threw my 50th birthday party with the help of the library staff.

There's one part of Jim's life I wanted to mention, unrelated to books. Jim and I shared a love of sports, and together, we enjoyed them on TV and in person. He loved Duke basketball, baseball, in recent years, the Detroit Tigers, NASCAR, thanks to a dear friend. But, we were both passionate about Ohio State football. My family always knew they could buy Jim gifts that related to Ohio State.

Jim always told people we only got married to read. And, when his father lived with us, he would walk out of his room, find us both reading, and say, "It sure is quiet out here." 

Jim, you left it very quiet out here. I'm going to miss sharing books, authors, my blog, and our life. Rest in peace. I love you.




If you want to remember Jim, please donate to your local public library. And, tell them it's in memory of a man who loved books, libraries, and one librarian. 

Sue Grafton, Presented by Poisoned Pen Bookstore

Sue Grafton doesn't do many speaking engagements on her book tours anymore, so it was a rare opportunity to hear her when the Poisoned Pen Bookstore brought her to the Arizona Biltmore on her U is for Undertow tour.

I attended with a friend and librarian, Cathy Johnson. When we walked in the door, Sue was working the crowd, so I reintroduced myself, reminding her I had hosted her twice in Florida, and picked her up at the airport. She looked at me, and said, "Kind of a vagabond, aren't you?" She was just as kind and warm as always, and spent a half an hour going through the audience.

Barbara Peters, owner of the Poisoned Pen, introduced Sue by saying they go way back to the beginning of the bookstore, when she contacted Sue, and asked her to appear at the new bookstore. Sue said, so you're asking me to change my entire schedule and come to Arizona, and Barbara said, yes. And, she did. Barbara and Sue said they're aging together.

Sue said her current tour was almost over. She left Louisville, went to New York, back to Louisville, then to Atlanta, Kansas City, and Houston. So, she thought, I'm going to Phoenix, and I can finally get warm. Instead, with our current cold weather, she was huddled in the cold while people here were in their shirtsleeves.

Barbara responded that we're always lucky to have her in Phoenix, since she spends half her year in Kentucky and half in California. She said she was very grateful that the event was being held at the Biltmore, because most of the time people stand in a conga line, wrapping around the bookstore to get books signed, and it sometimes cold in December, as now. Then, she told Sue the people in shirtsleeves ere from New Jersey, and the ones wrapped up were from Phoenix.

Barbara thanked the Biltmore for partnering with the bookstore for the celebration of the 21st Kinsey Millhone book. She told the audience they are projecting the end of the series for 2020, and Barbara promised she'd be there for that book, even if the bookstore closed, and she had to rent a shed. Then she asked Sue about the people who were "betting against her" when the series started.

Sue acknowledged that she said when she started the alphabet, there were people betting she couldn't write the entire series. When, she reached M, she said readers were cheering for her to finish. So, when she's asked what she's going to do with Z is for Zero, she told us she's going to hold therapy sessions to help everyone through their separation anxiety, and we'll all hold hands and hum. She said she's going to take a long nap, and then party. But, she assured us she's going to live to 108, so she'd have time for two quick series. They might be about old people, though.

Barbara asked her if she has the manuscript of Z is for Zero in a vault somewhere, in case something strikes her down before the end. The answer was, there's nothing in a vault anyplace, so we'd better root for her to stay alive. She asked the audience to make a commitment to make it for the next ten years, so we could come back. She told us she was going to make us sign a paper saying we'd be there. Barbara said she hated to tell Sue this, but when an author passes on, people come into the bookstore, and they don't say, "I'm going to miss Sue." They say, "What about Kinsey?"

Grafton said it was very cheeky of her to start a series, using the alphabet. She'd never written a mystery before. But, it was a sign she was committed to the future, a way to say, I'm shooting an arrow out, planning an entire series. But, the books are getting harder to write, and she has five to go. Everyone has their own demons, and she's had to outargue her demons. Every book is a struggle, a challenge. And, if you don't like one book, big deal. "I did twenty-one you liked." She said she never lets go, and never cheats with her book. She said she tries to get pity sales, and asked us to just buy one book.

She admitted she thought she'd write five or six books, and get the hang of it, and whiz through to the end. It was a sign she was young.

When asked which decisions she would not have made about the series, Sue responded she would have done everything the same. It's like life. Haven't we all done things we'd regret, but we'd live our life over again, with the divorce and the decisions?

She did make a critical decision that Kinsey would not age one year per book. When the series ends, it will be 1990, and Kinsey will turn 40. That's a good age. We won't have to watch her go through menopause. Sue assured everyone, though, that Henry Pitts and his siblings will survive. His sister is only 99, and she doesn't feel bad, so why should she die?

Grafton said she wouldn't make different choices. In J is for Judgment, she thought it would be fun to have Kinsey investigate herself, and she found cousins and a whole family. Half of the readers loved it, and half were bored. So, she didn't pick that storyline up again until M is for Malice. In L is for Lawless, Kinsey was stranded, and forced to call her cousin, Tasha. Can you imagine how mortifying that was for her? But, she didn't know how to resolve the family issues. And, it's been many years, but finally, after T is for Trespass, she resolved a letter from a reader who said, "If you don't settle that family business, I'm never buying another book. So, Sue wrote back, and said, whoa, I'll take care of that. So, in U is for Undertow, she settled the family issues, and that's enough of the family for now.

Barbara commented that we all know Sue lives in Santa Barbara, although now she spends more time in Louisville. But, she said in Santa Barbara, there's a long shadow cast by Ross Macdonald. He wrote a long series featuring Lew Archer. He thought a detective should not be visible. Sue said she was originally going to do that with Kinsey, and make her a shadow. But, she said Macdonald was so wrong, but he was an old man. Grafton said readers want a continuing character to have depth, quirks, a history.

Barbara mentioned that in U is for Undertow, the story goes back to the 1960s, a turbulent time. Did she plan that? Grafton replied, "I don't tell the book what's going to happen. The book tells me." It takes a year for her to understand the story.

Sue said she's told this before, so if we heard it, we could ignore it. She keeps journals of each book on the computer. The whole journal is there, with every trivial thought and idea. She puts her emotional state there on paper. That keeps her from sabotaging her work. She struggles internally. All of her research and everything else is in that journal. If she has an idea for a dialogue that comes later in the book, she puts it in the journal, and when the right part comes, she just inserts the dialogue. Grafton said her journal is boring. There are no treasures in it. Sometimes she makes nasty remarks about other writers, and then erases them because if she gets run over, people won't think, boy, she was a bitch. She tries to appear much nicer than she is. Sue said 1 out of 30 days her writing is dynamite. The other 29, it's stupid, but she never knows which day is going to be good, so she has to write every day.

When asked about her research, Sue admitted she's had to humble herself. She said it's a real boat on the cover of J is for Judgment. She was interviewing someone about the book, standing there with her notebook, and asked, what's that part that sticks up. "Well, Sue, that's called the mast."

Barbara thought she remembered that Sue went undercover as a chambermaid for one book. Sue said, no, she's a housewife, so she doesn't need to do that. (And everyone laughed.) According to Sue, at one time she worked for a friend who ran a home domestic business. Grafton was poor, and had kids, so she cleaned toilets, and cleaned up after people. So she knows how to clean toilet bowls, and has a back-up plan if she ever needs it.

Sue said she believes in Jungian psychology, the ego and the shadow. There's what you'd like to be seen as. Grafton would like people to see her as cheerful, cooperative, kind, and helpful. Then there's the real self, the shadow. We put those traits behind us. If you look at people you truly despise, they carry your shadow. We project our shadow on others, and denounce them.

Grafton said when she writes, she has to disconnect the ego, and let the shadow come through. The shadow is right brain; the ego is left. She writes in her journal, and that's her shadow. She'll do anything - self-hypnosis or anything, to get a piece that really works. She needs to meet the shadow. Families usually have a black sheep, and they are the shadow in the family. Barbara commented that writers of crime fiction have to have shadows for people to want to read the story. We read crime fiction to get rid of our own shadows. In fact, she was recently editing a book, and told the author to kill a person, to get rid of the shadows.

Barbara mentioned that Sue Grafton has received many honors. She was named a Grand Master by MWA. (And, it was just announced that Dorothy Gilman, author of the Mrs. Pollifax books, will be the 2010 Grand Master.) Sue's also received the Diamond Dagger, the U.K. equivalent of Grand Master.

Sue said it's very nice to get the awards and accolades, but her job is not to get stuck on herself. That doesn't help her write. Reviews don't help either. If they're bad, and say her books are crap, how does that help? And, good reviews don't help either. All of those ceremonies are great, but Grafton said her battle is in the chair. She appreciates the honors, but it doesn't help if she thinks of herself as "hot shit."

Barbara told a story of a Diamond Dagger winner who outraged people when he had it made into an earring for his wife. People were upset, saying she had no right to wear it because she didn't win the Diamond Dagger.

She went on to announce that U is for Undertow will be #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list on Sunday. She'd heard it from Sue's publicist. They both went on to thank the audience. They said we had to buy books. It's the reader's job to buy books, and the author's job to make it worthwhile.

Then, questions were taken from the audience. How did Sue come up with the name Kinsey? Grafton said she was working in Hollywood, and reading the Hollywood Reporter. She saw a column in which it mentioned a baby named Kinsey. She liked the name, and snatched it. Millhone was probably taken out of the phone book. It has no meaning.

Which comes first, the title, such as V is for..., or the story. The answer was, it varies. When Grafton first started the series, she sketched out crime related words, and used them for A-D. But, she had planned to call E, E is For Ever. She switched it to "Evidence," and the story just came. For a long time, she thought F would be forgery, but she found it boring. When she made it "Fugitive," she could hear the story. K was for kidnapping, and she wrote four chapters, and realized kidnapping is a federal crime. No one was going to hire a small-town detective for a kidnapping case, so she dumped it. That was the book that caused her to say to her publicist, I have to have more than a year to write the books. Sue liked Q is for Quarry, with its double meaning. The latest book is U is for Undertow. She admitted she gets out the dictionary, and makes a list of words that might work. There's no hard and fast rule for the title and plot.

Barbara confessed she had wanted T is for Lipton, and, when Sue came to the bookstore, she brought a box of teabags, with T is for Trespass on them.

With S is for Silence, there was a switch in time, and multiple points of view. With T is for Trespass, Sue said sometimes the content dictates the form. When Solana Rojas, the villain, took over, she had to tell that story from her point of view. Grafton said she doesn't make it up in advance, but she can't imagine telling a story from Henry or Rose's point of view. People might like it just because they'd like to see Kinsey from another point of view.

Grafton mugged to the audience, saying she's taking heavy mediation, and has a live-in therapist, trying to keep things fresh. How does she do it? "I only have five more times, baby!" She said it helps to see readers, and converse with us. She also said the journals help. It helps to look back, and see her previous battles.

She said her tour was done on Thursday. Then she does Christmas, since we all have to do Christmas. And, in January, she has to do battle again. She runs 5.4 miles a day, five days a week, to deal with her stress.

Barbara mentioned that Grafton has had the same editor, Marion, for the entire series. "How would you feel writing without her as an editor?" The answer was scared. Sue said she's had the same agent since B is for Burglar. She said Steve, her husband, is her first reader of her manuscript, but he doesn't get to see it until it's done, because she has to write the entire book. Then, if he says it's OK, she'll send it to Marion and Molly. Then, she waits to hear what they thin.

The final question involved another format, the audio, and why didn't Judy Kaye do the most recent one. Sue replied that Judy Kaye does all of her audios for Random House. She said Books-on-Tape may have another narrator, but, otherwise, if it's not Judy Kaye on the audio, it might be a pirated version.

Barbara ended by asking Sue to tell us about her train project. Sue said her husband, Steve, had this wonderful idea to get a private train car, and take it at the end of her tour. So, there were three couples, and the plan was to get on the train at the end of the T is for Trespass tour. They were going to go from Louisville, up to Cincinnati, and then to Chicago, and across North America. They had their pjs, and train movies, and a private chef, and they were all set for a romantic trip. But, it started to snow, and unbeknownst to them, the snow was packing up under the train. And, over time, because of that, one toilet after another, and the showers, began to break down. So, it was a romantic idea until the toilets and showers broke down. They had to fly home. Sue said it was the best half day ever on a train.

Sue Grafton then signed books, and, gracious as ever, insisted people check pictures, and make sure they were good ones before they walked away. And, then she signed my book.

"Hello, Everyone...Read Lesa's Blog! Sue Grafton"

Sue Grafton's website is www.suegrafton.com

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton. G.P. Putnam's Sons, ©2009. ISBN 9780399155970 (hardcover), 416p.

High Crimes on the Magical Plane by Kris Neri

Samantha Brennan "Went through life in search of naked emperors to snicker at." As a fake psychic, she thought she knew all of the tricks. But, she didn't know anything about Celtic goddesses, shape-shifters, flower fairies, or murder. She'll learn about all of that in Kris Neri's fun mystery, High Crimes on the Magical Plane.

Molly Claire was a movie star who had been stalked by four guys dressed as clowns. When Samantha Brennan saw a clown car leaving the parking garage where Claire lived, she saw a way to capitalize on that knowledge. She worked her way into Claire's apartment, only to find a dead man there. But, Samantha's plans were foiled by FBI Special Agent Annabelle Haggerty. Imagine the shock of a fake psychic when she sees an actual vision of the missing woman. Imagine Samantha's shock when she realizes she's seeing those visions because Annabelle is an actual Celtic goddess with unusual powers. And, Annabelle can use Samantha to channel those visions.

It's a good thing that Samantha's aura is "Very happy, carefree...But really simple and childlike." She's able to accept gods and goddesses and winking gnomes, but she's a better student of human nature than she gives herself credit for. And, when Molly Claire shows up at bank robberies, à la Patty Hearst, Samantha is dragged further into the investigation. And, what is Molly's connection to an exhibit of Egyptian art? Samantha wanted to be the center of attention, but she hadn't wanted the attention of someone powerful enough to kill clowns, and force an actress into a life of crime. Samantha thought she was just a fake psychic, but Annabelle Haggerty brought out hidden strengths in her.

This Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty mystery was full of surprises, humor, and a little romance. The two women are a complimentary pair; Samantha, so light-hearted, harmless, and, at times, clueless, and the powerful Celtic goddess, Annabelle, who takes her job so seriously. It takes two women with a psychic link to solve the crimes that could send Los Angeles up in flames. High Crimes on the Magical Plane may have started out with clown cars and a fake psychic, but it rushes into danger and excitement at a fast pace. Neri's mystery is suspenseful, and fun, with an original pair of heroines.

Kris Neri's website is www.krisneri.com

High Crimes on the Magical Plane by Kris Neri. Red Coyote Press, ©2009. ISBN 9780976673354 (paperback), 224p.

See more of Lesa's Book  topics HERE

High Crimes on the Magical Plane by Kris Neri

Samantha Brennan "Went through life in search of naked emperors to snicker at." As a fake psychic, she thought she knew all of the tricks. But, she didn't know anything about Celtic goddesses, shape-shifters, flower fairies, or murder. She'll learn about all of that in Kris Neri's fun mystery, High Crimes on the Magical Plane.

Molly Claire was a movie star who had been stalked by four guys dressed as clowns. When Samantha Brennan saw a clown car leaving the parking garage where Claire lived, she saw a way to capitalize on that knowledge. She worked her way into Claire's apartment, only to find a dead man there. But, Samantha's plans were foiled by FBI Special Agent Annabelle Haggerty. Imagine the shock of a fake psychic when she sees an actual vision of the missing woman. Imagine Samantha's shock when she realizes she's seeing those visions because Annabelle is an actual Celtic goddess with unusual powers. And, Annabelle can use Samantha to channel those visions.

It's a good thing that Samantha's aura is "Very happy, carefree...But really simple and childlike." She's able to accept gods and goddesses and winking gnomes, but she's a better student of human nature than she gives herself credit for. And, when Molly Claire shows up at bank robberies, à la Patty Hearst, Samantha is dragged further into the investigation. And, what is Molly's connection to an exhibit of Egyptian art? Samantha wanted to be the center of attention, but she hadn't wanted the attention of someone powerful enough to kill clowns, and force an actress into a life of crime. Samantha thought she was just a fake psychic, but Annabelle Haggerty brought out hidden strengths in her.

This Samantha Brennan and Annabelle Haggerty mystery was full of surprises, humor, and a little romance. The two women are a complimentary pair; Samantha, so light-hearted, harmless, and, at times, clueless, and the powerful Celtic goddess, Annabelle, who takes her job so seriously. It takes two women with a psychic link to solve the crimes that could send Los Angeles up in flames. High Crimes on the Magical Plane may have started out with clown cars and a fake psychic, but it rushes into danger and excitement at a fast pace. Neri's mystery is suspenseful, and fun, with an original pair of heroines.

Kris Neri's website is www.krisneri.com

High Crimes on the Magical Plane by Kris Neri. Red Coyote Press, ©2009. ISBN 9780976673354 (paperback), 224p.

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book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

Camille Kimball, Author of A Sudden Shot:
  The Phoenix Serial Killer, for Authors @ The Teague

Camille Kimball, author of A Sudden Shot: The Phoenix Serial Shooter, appeared for Authors @ The Teague in order to honor the victims, and thank the heroes who solved the case, and brought Dale Hausner to trial. She brought pictures taken during Hausner's trial, pictures of some of the crime scenes, and two retired Phoenix police detectives who had been involved in the Phoenix Serial Shooter case. Detectives Darrell Smith and Cliff Jewell's contributions to the program were fascinating. 


From May 2005 to July 2006, the Phoenix Shooter was credited with shooting at 27 people, and knifing two victims. Of those, eight people died. Five horses and eight dogs were shot. Buildings and cars were shot at, and buildings burned. As the back cover of the book says, Phoenix "fell victim to one of the most publicized serial killing sprees in history....Often using shotguns with buckshot, Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman tormented the city for an entire year....They took aim at men and women, white and black, Latino and Indian, homeless and rich - even horses and dogs." 

Camille said her book was a tribute to the victims, the forgotten people who were shot, and the ones who died, on the street. She showed photos of Hausner in the courtroom, and said some of the pictures showed his personality, as he peaked at her through his hands, and fidgeted with papers throughout the trial. The witnesses against him were nervous when they saw him at the table, unshackled, but they weren't aware that he was wearing a shock belt around his waist that would shoot 50,000 volts of electricity into him, if the guard needed to shock him. Family members had expressed their fear of Dale Hausner when they had to cross in front of him on the way to the witness stand. 

One of the photos was of Vincent Imbordino, prosecutor, whose closing argument, included in A Sudden Shot, was so moving that people cried. There were hours of testimony, and Kimball's photos included pictures of witnesses, among them some of the women who testified. Dale Hausner was quite successful with women. One witness was a school principal and professor at ASU who dated him. He tried to use her as an alibi. Dale's ex-wife drove in from Texas to testify against him, and she was so terrified she trembled, and had to be reminded to speak loudly. Another woman who dated him was a student teacher, who denied that she was with him when he tried to use her for an alibi. 

There was even a child with Hausner in the apartment when he was arrested. Kimball quoted the mother as telling her, "We were delivered from evil." Hausner himself had a little girl who suffered from an illness, and he lied to play up her illness for sympathy, saying his little girl wouldn't make it to first grade. She's in first grade, doing fine. 

Kimball even showed pictures of Buddy, the burro, "the first victim she interviewed." Buddy had been shot from 30 to 40 feet away. Almost all of the animals shot had been in fenced yards, and they were shot at night. Buddy might have been the least of the victims, but he had been purchased as a pet for the owners' foster children. 

Detective Cliff Jewell, the detective followed through the book, said he believed Dale and his brother, Jeff Hausner, shot all of the animals, but they only charged them for the cases where the shell cases or a bullet was left at the scene. 

Included in the photos were ones of victims and their families. Paul Patrick, was shown in several pictures and he is shown in a YouTube video with Kimball. 

When asked, Camille said the victims, and their families, have appreciated the book, saying they saw it as an opportunity to have their loved ones introduced to a larger audience. 

After the pictures, Kimball introduced both detectives. She said usually Detective Cliff Jewell speaks first because he has the longer arc in the book, but since Darrell Smith had closest connection to Glendale, he spoke first. 

Smith said he entered the case when Wal-Mart went up in smoke in June 2006, because he was investigating the arson. He became involved in the shooter cases after the fires. The ATF and fire departments worked hand in hand in the arson cases, and Smith and Kimball acknowledged Mike Blair from the Glendale Fire Department. With the Wal-Mart fires, the police now had video of cars, and pretty good ones of the suspects in both stores. Following that information, Darrell Smith received a phone call from a woman who said she thought she knew who one of the men was. Everyone met at the Phoenix Police Department because Smith had the computer equipment. They ran the information about the suspect, Sammy Dieteman, but he had no history of arrests. 

Besides the fire, Smith received a phone call claiming the shooter shot at a bicycle at 89th and Camelback, and gave the date and person involved. After checking with the assault team, that was just one of the calls that didn't match the facts. 

Then, the police pulled what phone records they could. As Kimball reminded us, just three years ago, they couldn't pull cell phone records like they can now. 

The police hit bars and apartment complexes in West Phoenix, looking for the car from the Wal-Mart videos, but couldn't find it. They were deadended. They then joined a task force; hundreds were brought in to combat the serial shooter case. The police would sit on street corners at night, listening for shots. It didn't work. Darrell Smith said he lived in the West Valley, and he always watched for the car when he was out. He and his wife even hit bards, looking for that car. There were stakeouts, and they couldn't find the two men. 

But, Smith had a "file stop" on Sammy. In July 2006, he received a call from Silent Witness. A man named Ron Horton wanted to talk to someone about the serial shooter. He said a man named Sam Dieteman was the guy doing this. 

Horton, who looked like a scary man to meet, was, according to Smith, "the meekest, mildest person to talk to and interview." He said Sammy had once said to him, "Do you know what it's like to kill someone," but Ron blew it off because they were drinking in a bar. But, Ron was able to tell Detective Smith details that Sammy had told him, including that a .410 shotgun had been used to kill people, a fact the police had not revealed. Ron Horton said he was sure Sam was one of the killers, but he didn't know the second shooter. After the videotaped interview, Smith took the tape downtown, and things moved quickly. He then went back and videotaped Ron again, and he told the same story. 

Darrel Smith said he did phone calls and surveillance, the interesting work, and didn't have to do the paperwork. He said the asked Ron to get Sam to meet him somewhere Finally Sammy agreed to meet Ron at the Star Dust Bar. There were hundreds of police there, hidden, when two men drove up. Sammy was dropped off, and the car left. Darrell followed the car to Metro Center, where the driver went in. The car license plate was registered to Dale Hausner. Smith followed Dale into a video store in the mall, where he stayed long enough for the police to put a GPS on Dale's car. 

Smith said he wanted so badly to see the case through that he slept in his van two nights with other detectives, two nights in July. But, that night, Sam and Ron went to another bar, and then the casino at Wildhorse Pass. The police kept getting calls from Ron, reporting in. But, Sammy said he'd have a friend pick up him, and Dale came by and picked him up. Then they cruised Gilbert and Chandler for three hours. Smith is convinced they were stalking people, but it had started to rain, so there were not a lot of people out. He said as the police followed them, that was a terrible fear, that they couldn't get to them fast enough if they pulled out a shotgun and shot someone. In the wiretap room, they couldn't believe the things they heard the two men say. 

Detective Darrell Smith said he never testified at the trial because everything he knew was hearsay from Ron Horton. And, Ron died before the trial, so Darrell couldn't testify, saying yes, Ron said that to me. But, in thirty-one years as a cop, he never got closer to a snitch as he did to Ron. Horton did get the reward, and, after he died, there was a fundraiser for him at the Star Dust Bar, a biker bar. Smith said he felt out of place there when he went, but the family welcomed him, and introduced him. The mayor had given a coin to everyone who worked on the case, and Smith gave his to Ron's family. 

Ron Horton said when Robin Blasnek, the last victim, died in July, he knew he had to come forward. When asked, Smith said he had been involved in an incident when Ron went to pick up the reward money. The detectives knew when he'd be picking it up, and, knowing it was a lot of money, they worried about him. They went in a van, grabbed him when he came out with the money, told him they were there to protect him, and take him to his bank so nothing would happen to him. He gave away a lot of his money before he died. His friends don't regret what Ron did. 

Following Detective Smith's presentation, Camille Kimball introduced Detective Cliff Jewell, "a real hero," and the main hero in A Sudden Shot. Cliff said he became involved several months earlier than Darrell. When Kimball said it was a dogged investigation, Jewell said he counted over 200 times he was mentioned in the book, so it was embarrassing. Three hundred forty-eight people were involved in the case. The Glendale Fire Department, a civilian volunteer with the Glendale Police Department, the Mesa and Scottsdale Police Departments were involved. 

Jewell said Jeff Hausner, Dale's brother, lived at 91st and Camelback. Cliff believes Jeff and Dale shot all of the animals, and started shooting people. They told Sam they shot a bunch of people downtown. They all hung around the west side where Jeff lived. Camille's pictures included one of a church at 9th Avenue and Woodland, south of Van Buren. There were shootings outside that church on December 29. One witness survived, Timmy Tordai, but he was a registered sex offender, and not a good witness. They did have five surveillance cameras on a nearby parking garage, but they didn't know what vehicle they were looking for on the cameras. 

Then, there were the stories they had to chase down that turned out to be false. One was a detailed story of how the December 29 shootings occurred. One was from a man who said he rode to work with the shooter. 

Cliff Jewell mentioned the various cases that eventually came together, but seemed unrelated at the beginning. He heard from people in the Tolleson area about animal shootings, and someone who lost their dog gave him the casing. Dale Hausner complained that when Jeff shot someone, he put the gun too far out the window, and the casings went out the car. That's why they didn't find casings or shells at all of the scenes. 

Dale Hausner took classes at ABC Bartending School in Tempe, and remained friends with someone there. When a car windshield was shot out at the bartending school, there were six shell casings found, but that case wasn't connected at the time. 

When discussing serial killers, the FBI says serial killers don't change weapons. But, there was a .22 and shotguns used. It's not typical of serial killers to change weapons. Jewell had a case with dogs shot, and shell casings left. The same night, a prostitute was shot, and it was the same shell casings. 

At the same time the Phoenix Shooter case was going on, the police were investigating the Baseline Killer case. Homicide was all tied up in that case, so Jewell had little help. 

On April 15, he went on America's Most Wanted. He was upset that the show mentioned the .22 caliber because they weren't releasing it. He knew the shooters would then change guns. 

Detective Jewell said he asked the FBI to come out and give him a profile. They told him it was a white male 18-24, alone, but the shotguns and .22s were not connected. They said, "Cliff. You're wrong. The cases aren't connected." Cliff still thought they were wrong. He got called in as part of the Task Force toward the end. He did get to call the FBI, and say, "I was right." He got his credibility back with the department. It was a fifteen month investigation. 


The audience was asked if we'd heard of Charlie Starkweather, a spree killer. Dale Hausner had red hair, and was from Omaha. Charlie Starkweather had red hair and was from Lincoln. They thought Hausner was emulating Starkweather. 

Dale Hausner was a serial killer with no criminal history, but profiling is based on generalities. Hausner is not stupid. He did things to change the scenario. He set dumpsters on fire, and Wal-Marts on fire. 

Hausner won't talk to the cops, and didn't talk to Camille. He's appealing his conviction. On the other hand, Sam Dieteman is remorseful, and says he has no idea how he allowed himself to get involved. He met Dale through Dale's brother, Jeff. Sam lived with Jeff, and, when he had an argument and moved out, Dale went looking for him. It was that night, driving around, that Dale shot someone, then gave the gun to Sam. Sam shot Claudia Gutierrez-Cruz, and killed her. 

Someone mentioned alcohol and drugs. Sam was educated, and an alcoholic. They would shoplift liquor from Target, Walgreens, and grocery stores. They stole dozens of bottles of liquor. They stole videos, and Dale sold them to people at the airport. Dale got Sam on meth. 

The final question was about the caliber of the guns, and why it was a .22. We were told it was part of a game they would play, experimenting to see what the different guns would do. 

But, Camille Kimball said her feelings are that their personalities and characters are specific to them. It wasn't the drugs or alcohol that made them do it. 

Camille Kimball's book, A Sudden Shot: The Phoenix Serial Shooter, and the program at the Velma Teague Library, with Detectives Cliff Jewell and Darrell Smith, showed the importance of dogged police work, and heroes - heroes such as Cliff Jewell, Darrell Smith, Glendale fireman, Mike Blair, and Ron Horton, along with the victims, their families, and the witnesses in the trials. 

Camille Kimball's website is at www.camillekimball.com 

A Sudden Shot: The Phoenix Serial Shooter by Camille Kimball. Penguin Group (USA), ©2009. ISBN 9780425230190 (paperback), 336p. 

Camille Kimball and Lesa Holstine Photo by  Judy Marlett



 lholstine@yahoo.com
See book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstineLesa's 

What an honor to host Sir Terry Pratchett at the Velma Teague Library! Actually, we expected a large crowd, so the event was held in the Glendale City Council Chambers. People stayed over from the North American Discworld Convention, including men from Switzerland and Mexico. One fan flew in from San Francisco, just for this event. And, one woman drove up from Yuma.


It was definitely a fun program, filled with laughter, beginning with his introduction. After I introduced him as Sir Terry Pratchett, he said that always bothers him to be called Sir Terry in America. Didn't we fight a war not to have to say Sir Terry? Well, actually we fought it because we owed England money, and we didn't want to pay up.


He said, when they call you and say they'd like to knight you, they're very nice about it, saying they would fully appreciate that you might not want to be knighted. But, the family gets to go. He said when he went to be knighted, two burly policemen pulled him over, and told him, park over there, and we'll come get our books signed later. He went with his wife, daughter, and mum. His mum is about the same age and same size as the queen, so they could have swapped places in the dark. They had tea, and then went off with a flunky to go through the whole kneeling bit. It wouldn't be proper to pull the queen over. It was good fun, and she whacked him on the shoulder with a sword.

He said it's nice to be a knight, usually when dealing with bullies. He said we could use a few knights in America, especially when dealing with Homeland Security. He said he hopes that the English Customs men aren't as cheeky to us when we go to England, as Homeland Security was to him. Terry asked, "Do they ever smile?" He said maybe England should send a few over to us to teach them how to smile. He said a couple of them would have made Mr. T run away. He gave his name to one of them, and, when asked, said he was a writer here for a convention. Pratchett said, you don't want to hear customs get on the phone, call someone, and say, "I got him." Another man came over, and said, "I can't make the convention. Would you sign this book for me?" So, after he signed to his "best friend, Stan", Stan went back to his own line. So, there were two lines waiting while Terry Pratchett signed Stan's book. Once Stan had left, "Mr. T" said to Terry, "I need to see your I.D." Even while pulling out his passport, Terry looked at him, and said, "Stan didn't." And, "Mr. T" gave him a little smile.


Instead of a formal talk, Terry walked in front of the podium, and said, "You know me and what I do. Ask me a question." After a few gasps that they would actually get to ask him questions, the first one was, "How are you holding up in this heat?" He responded, "You have ferocious heat and ferocious air conditioning. The air in my hotel room didn't need to be that cold. It could be brought down to the temperature of a spring day."


Someone said, "You've always said you have quite a sense of timing. You took a job in a nuclear power plant at the time of Three Mile Island. How's your sense of timing now?" He answered that he's more in control of his own destiny now.


He went on to talk about that. He said tug-of-war is played with a rope. There was a tug of war at Three Mile Island, and the rope broke. Lots of fingers were caught up in that rope. Apart from Chernobyl, the most damage ever was done at Three Mile Island.


Pratchett went on to say, they always say, we're putting in three completely independent fail-safe systems, and they're all a long way apart. However, the cables for all three fail-safe systems go in one cable in one wall.


Terry said a power station is a small town, with its own sewage system. And, naturally, the man sweeping up items there swept three pieces of radioactive iron into the sewage system. So, there's 800,000 gallons of sludge, with a small number of radioactive pieces that can't be seen. So, there's a meeting of the people who know about radioactivity, and the people who know about sewage plants. And, the sewage people say they know sewage, but they're not going to handle it when it's radioactive. And the radioactivity people say they know about radioactivity, but it's the shit that worries us. Terry said he never had to sign anything when he worked in a nuclear power station. How do you find tiny particles in great piles of sludge? Pump it out, and then take it to an enormous coal power station, and feed it carefully in there. Then beep, beep, beep. All three of the pieces were found. They got it 100% right that time. But, weird stuff happened there, including a man who was too radioactive to come in to the power station. He eventually gave his six months notice. Now, he has enough money so he never has to do another honest day's work.


When asked what he was reading, Terry replies, he's been away from books for a few days, but at home, he's reading London Labor and the London Poor. The author was a social reformer. It's set in Georgian England. The Thames was a sewer at the time. And author was appalled by what he found. London was so unbelievably awful that even Morpork was better. At times, soot was London's most valuable export. People used to forge it, fake soot. Chimney sweeps would clean chimneys for free to get soot.


London was actually, people who have jobs, and the underclass, just as right now in England. Everyone was scared, a bit like America right now since you don't have a National Health Service. One accident, and you're in the poorhouse. Charity did not come from the rich, but from the not too poor to the poorer than them. Charity rained from the lower middle class to lower class. Nothing was wasted. House dust was sold for fertilizer because it had human skin in it. Paper was recycled. Metal was valuable. This was just as Queen Victoria was coming to the throne. One thing to say for Prince Albert is that he was a reformer. The River Thames finally gave up, and it made such a great stink that Parliament couldn't sit because of the stench. Then, the English built the best sewer system ever.


Terry was asked how he got into the head of a nine-year-old girl, Tiffany, in his books, since he did it so well. He asked if we had Girl Scouts, Brownies, here. He said he had been contacted by a Brownie troop that wanted to do a spoof for a show. Can we photograph you being kidnapped? They would take that photograph, and use a stand-in to do the rest, since one girl's father looked enough like Pratchett. He said they'd have to film the kidnapping, and he wanted to coordinate it, but they had to bring a rubber chicken. He wanted to have two girls stand behind him as he was signing; then one girl would pick up his hat, and the other would hit him over the head with a rubber chicken. Hit him, and then while he slumped, they were to put his hat back on. The problem was, people saw him signing, and he would have to say, wait, I'm going to be hit by a rubber chicken. He has a plaque now, saying he is a Brownie Guide.


He said, actually, you just watch. He said girls are different, and I just watch and take notice. He could do a monograph on how people clap. An author has to be interested in people. He will talk to anyone who takes the time to talk.


Anything interests him. In Nation, they dipped a womb in a bucket of tar. Only the Royal Navy might have done that. Nation was just channeled. It pured through him.


He said the Victorians never actually covered furniture legs because they were indecent. That was a gag. The mid-Victorian period was a time of "things". People didn't own things before. But, manufacturers were making things, and people wanted as many things as possible. Terry knew a woman who lost her husband, but as he kid, when he went to her house, it was so cluttered with things that Terry thought maybe her husband was in there somewhere.


He leads an inquiring life, and it comes out as a story.


When asked if he was going to incorporate Twitter into any books, he said he doesn't Tweet because he has real flesh and blood friends. He said he was on the Internet about as soon as it was around. Then he asked, "Don't you people want me to write the books?"


A question from the audience began, your books contain a number of moral and ethical dilemmas. Are there any philosophers you admire? Terry Pratchett answered, "Jesus was pretty good." Pratchett said he considers himself a humanist. His god is the god of Carl Sagan and Espinoza. Science is a sacrament. He thinks people should abide by the Golden Rule. Terry said we should close churches, and just put up signs, "God is love. What part of this don't you understand?" He makes up his philosophy as he goes along.


Terry was asked if he had advice for someone going into the priesthood, and the man who asked the question admitted he was thinking of going into the Greek Orthodox priesthood. Terry answered, it's all work and no technique. You don't hear of priests being laid off, but no one is sinning now, so there's not much confession lately. He said one of the long-term triggers for the Industrial Revolution was the closing of monasteries by Henry VII. Craftsmen such as herbalists and carpenters were pushed out into the world. They took apprentices, and those skills were one of the long-term triggers. Pratchett went on to say the priesthood is an interesting job, one of the most interesting, other than his. He asked, Thou Shalt Not Kill should be actually read as Thou Shalt Not Murder, shouldn't it, and the audience member said yes, that's closer to the Hebrew.


Terry said people shouldn't read the Old Testament unprepared, or they come away thinking we're in the hands of a maniac. He said it's actually a guide for getting an argumentative people across the desert, filled with cooking and building tips. He wishes more people would read the New Testament.


When asked who his favorite characters to write about were, Pratchett answered Vimes or Tiffany. But, Tiffany isn't as much fun to write about now that she's older. He said witches were wise women. He knew a nurse once who admitted she had helped people die. She also said she carried shoe boxes with her because she was a nurse/midwife in rural areas with small gene pools, and babies often didn't live. The shoe boxes were just the right size for burials. Granny Weatherwax came from these stories. All those stories are tools for an author. He interviewed an elderly postman, and some of Going Postal came from those stories.


Pratchett said you must be hugely interested in people to be a successful author, and particularly doing what he does.


He said he can remember the '60s, so that means he wasn't there. He was too busy working a job, and trying to have sex. He said those who wanted rock-n-roll and drugs, didn't have sex.


He mentioned his wife, Lady Lynn, who isn't so sure about that title, but it impresses her mum. In his inimitable style, he told of his first date with her. He had no money, but Chinese restaurants were new, so he asked if she wanted to go to one. So, with his lack of money, he couldn't afford to take a taxi all the way from his town to hers, pick her up, and go to dinner, and back. So, he worked it all out. He got dressed up, then put his motorcycle gear on over that. And, it's raining. So, he rode his bike, got off in a farmer's field, dropped the bike, put his motorcycle clothes on top of it, and then ran to her house, just in time to get there when the taxi did, so she thinks he arrived in the taxi. They had a nice meal, and the taxi picks them up. They have a chaste little first date kiss. He pays off the taxi driver, then goes back to the farmer's field, gets into his wet motorcycle gear, and it takes four or five times to start the bike. Then, halfway home, it conks out, and he had to push the bike home.


When asked if Mr. Dibbler, who can sell anything to anybody is based on an actual person, Terry said as a boy he would accompany his Granny to street markets, and they were full of Dibblers, who were selling cheap crockery, "Cutting-Me-Own-Throat" to sell it. He listens to language, how people speak.


When a man died, he was lying in his coffin and people came in to have a glass of sherry, and greet the widow. The man had been on holiday, and dropped dead at his door. Terry's Granny said, "Well, he looks well." And, the answer was, "Yes, undertaker's done good."


One question concerned the editing of his American books. Pratchett said it's been better in recent years. At times, he's argued with his editors, such as when Mister should be spelled out. John Wayne never said, go for your gun M-R.


Terry reminded the audience he has Alzheimer's. He said he will not die of Alzheimer's, but he doesn't like the term assisted suicide. As a journalist, he's seen suicides, such as a woman throwing herself from a bridge. But, he's been writing and making arrangements. In his mind, that doesn't fit the frame of suicide. It's adult homo sapiens looking the inevitable in the face, and making sensible decisions.


He had problems with his books, up until the '90s, when two publishers collided, and suddenly he had an editor who knew his name, and liked his stuff, and a publicist who felt the same. Up until then, his books were poorly published and publicized. Because of the changes in wording for American books, when he would come to the United States, fans would have U.K. hardcovers semi-legally in the U.S. But, in the '90s, the language was allowed to stand. He said he doesn't put a lot of odd language in the books, because Morpork wouldn't come out right. But, when told Webster's wouldn't allow it, he tells them what they could do with Webster's. But, for his children's books, for American kids, it's sensible to have American usage.


Pratchett was asked if he has plans for another Night Watch book. He said he's been feeling chipper, and has a dictation machine in his office. Fortunately, the people who built it are nerdy and Discworld fans. He's dictated more than 10,000 words of a book. He's speeding along with it. They dumped Discworld books into the memory of the machine, and it knows how words should sound. So, if it doesn't recognize a word, he asks for the Spellbox, and he can choose which one is correct. It's going faster than a keyboard.


He told the audience he has a rare disease. He has a large brain, which is unusual, with lots of brain cells. But, it upsets him that so many of those brain cells are used up by lyrics from '60s advertisements. Terry said we should disinvent television. He feels it's the sole excuse for what's going wrong with civilization. Babies are put in front of TV to amuse them.


But, he said the best thing you can do for a child is develop their vocabulary. The more words you know, the more articulate you can be. The better you can express yourself, the happier you are. He said kids love semi-made-up Scottish language in his books. He combines Gaelic and Glaswegian slang, and kids think it's dirty words. Kids are built to be learning.


In his new book, Unseen Academicals, Glenda is uneducated, but she taught herself to read. She reads cheap novels, but she's never heard words spoken, and doesn't know exactly what words are or how to say them, words such as boudoir or reticule. So, when a woman asks her to join her in her boudoir, and she sees forty people there, she's relieved because she didn't know what a boudoir was. Pratchett said education advances through women. They read, and shared, cheap novels. Then, they taught their daughters to read. Mothers made sure their daughters, and some sons, were literate.


So, someone asked Terry what he read as a child, and he said, nothing. He said reading was associated with pain. He had to learn words in school. He said when he was eight or nine years old, his uncle gave him a copy of The Wind in the Willows, and he was reading it in London. All the way home, he was reading it by streetlights. He was hooked by the time he got home. By the next week, he was a member of his local library, and helping the librarians on Saturday. He read children's books and adult books at the same time, with no distinction. School didn't show him reading pleasure; it was a chore. His mother did bribe him to read, offering 6 pence a page.


When asked if he and Neil Gaiman would write another book together, like Good Omens, he said neither wants to do another. He said, "He does his thing, and I do mine." He said then it was easy for two guys. Now, it would be problematical. He said it's not likely they'd do another because there is no obvious reason to do it.


Pratchett was asked if there's anything that appeals to him about America or anything that annoys him. He said Americans don't despair easily. He said people in Europe, and, particularly, England, are cynical. He loved the way we celebrated our new President, although we all know how we'll feel in a few years. He thinks America is the last best hope for mankind, because we have so many examples of mankind. Every individual person is important in America. G.K. Chesteron said, "I pity the man who believes in socialism because he believes in something that doesn't believe in him."


An audience member asked if he had plans for someone to continue Discworld after his death. Terry responded that his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett, is as sharp as a tack. She's a writer of computer games. She and his publicist will have the responsibility for Discworld. But, there's no hard and fast decision, because would she do it because of the money, or because she wanted to? He said he'll be dead, so he won't be a major player in the decision. But, he's renewing copyrights, and it would be nice if things happened. He said his daughter could do it if she wanted; she has talent. But, it's her life, and he won't put his hand on it beyond the grave.


When asked if he had the chance to see the Grand Canyon, he said not on this trip. But he went to Tombstone, and had a good guide, author Emma Bull. He said he didn't know that, basically, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in a place the size of a phone booth. He said Wyatt Earp died in 1929, but England thinks it was in the 1880s. Pratchett said history is closer than people think. In the science of Discworld, grandfathers is a way of measuring time. Fifty years is a grandfather. Actually, measured that way, the pyramids are not that far back.


Terry Pratchett said it's far too dangerous living here on earth. There have been a number of times that life forms have been destroyed from space. He'd advise us to get off the planet as soon as possible. A Mars or moon colony would be fail safe.


He was asked if he has a recurring theme in his books, and he answered, "Smart is better than dumb." He said another book helps his characters in every book. His characters share the way he thinks of things.


He ended by telling about his books made into movies. He likes the small company that made them, because he could tell them things needed to be changed. So, after Hogfather, he had lots of leftover plastic teeth. So, he took them with him to a conference in Australia.


Pratchett said he likes Australia. Every Englishman feels at home in Australia. He never felt at home in America. But, Australia was colonized by Cockneys.


So, he went through Customs in Australia, and had the plastic teeth with him. He was asked if he had any animal products, and he said no. So, the woman at Customs asked him what he had in his suitcase, and he said, lots of plastic teeth. When asked why, he said, "I don't think it's any of your business," an answer he knows he couldn't have given in the U.S. She said, OK. And, then he asked if she wanted to know about the black box marked "Death". In it, was a statue of Death. Then, he asked her if it was the strangest luggage she'd seen all day. She said, yes, but it was only 10:30, and the the Japanese were coming next.


Thank you to Sir Terry Pratchett, the North American Discworld Convention, the Poisoned Pen Bookstore, and the staff and volunteers from the Velma Teague Library who made this a very special event from visitors from around the world.

Sir Terry Pratchett's website is http://www.terrypratchett.co.uk

Sir Terry Pratchett and Lesa Holstine
 by Anna Caggiano

lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

It’s The Big Read Time Again “Fahrenheit 451”

Oct 7, 15,19, 21 and 26

 

 

GLENDALE, Ariz. – If it is fall, it is time for The Big Read. This celebration of literature returns this month with Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.”

Now a modern day classic, “Fahrenheit 451” is probably on the reading list of every high school student, but it remains popular with adults of all ages. First published in 1953, it tells the story of a society gone awry. Instead of putting out fires, firemen burn books and the state suppresses learning. Are the citizens up in arms? Hardly. They are sitting around in a drug-induced and media-saturated indifference. The book is more relevant today than ever.

The West Valley Arts Council, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Glendale Arts Commission, is sponsoring the local Big Read, which runs from September 25-October 31. Thanks to the local sponsor, multiple copies of the book will be available for Glendale library card holders and library reading groups to check out.

Five library events have been planned in Glendale, three for adults and two for teens (ages 12-18). Joe Lockard, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University, will lead the discussion at the Oct. 19 book group at Velma Teague Branch Library.

“Fahrenheit 451” teen events include:

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 7 p.m. in the storytime room at Foothills Branch Library, 19055 N. 57th Ave. –Teens, get involved in the ultimate community book discussion. A book-related craft will also take place. Pick up a copy of Fahrenheit 451 at the youth desk. Call 623-930-3837, then press “6” at the prompt for more information.

Monday, Oct. 26, 7 p.m. in the storytime room at Glendale Main Library, 5959 W. Brown St. Kearsten’s Book Club will read and discuss Ray Bradbury’s classic sci-fi book. Snacks are provided; bring a friend. To register and get a copy of the book, call Kearsten at 623-930-3568.

　

Adults can take part in the following groups:

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2 p.m. in the large meeting room, Glendale Main Library, 5959 W. Brown St. The Afternoon Book Group will discuss “Fahrenheit 451.” Call Melanie at 623-930-3549 for more information.

Monday, Oct. 19, 10 a.m. at Velma Teague Branch, 7010 N. 58th Ave. The 58th Ave. Book Club is delighted to welcome Joe Lockard, Ph.D., an associate professor of English at ASU, to lead discussion and provide insight into Ray Bradbury’s timeless “Fahrenheit 451.” To register and to get a copy of the book, call 623-930-3431, then press “5” at the prompt.

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 7 p.m. in the Hummingbird Room at Foothills Branch Library, 19055 N. 57th Ave. A Novel Approach Discussion Group will discuss “Fahrenheit 451.” Call Sarah at 623-930-3844 to register and get a copy of the book.

For other Big Read events around the Valley, go to www.westvalleyarts.org. The Big Read is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. It is designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The Big Read brings together partners across the country to encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.

###

Release Party for Brent Ghelfi's The Venona Cable

The Tuesday, Sept. 18 release party for Brent Ghelfi's The Venona Cable packed the ballroom at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. There were so many people it was hard to get near Brent for the book signing before the actual program began. The Poisoned Pen Bookstore and Lisa Ghelfi worked together for the party, providing desserts, drinks, and tables with Russian nesting dolls. 

Since the Arizona Biltmore is celebrating its 80th birthday this year, and the Poisoned Pen is celebrating its 20th, they have partnered for four programs. Brent Ghelfi's release party was the first one. Sept. 1 is CSI: Phoenix with Dr. Kathy Reichs signing 206 Bones, followed by Jack Ballentine, author of Murder for Hire, introducing Camille Kimball, author of The Phoenix Serial Killer for her book release. On Sept. 22, Diana Gabaldon will sign her new Outlander novel, Echo in the Bone. The event will even feature a piper. On Nov. 14, John Sandford hosts a Guys Night, a party with Martin Limon, Thomas Perry, James Rollins, and Don Winslow. 

Following the announcement of upcoming events, Barbara Peters, owner of 
the Poisoned Pen, introduced Brent Ghelfi by quoting Lee 
Child. "Brent Ghelfi writes like Dostoevsky's hooligan great-grandson on speed." Brent responded that he was grateful. Not only is Lee Child a bestselling author, but he is a gentleman, and very supportive of other authors. He was very supportive of Ghelfi's first book, Volk's Game. That support is one of the nicest things Child can do for another author. Peters said Volk's Game was the Poisoned Pen's bestselling book of 2007. 

Barbara mentioned that, naturally, Ghelfi was influenced by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but she understood there was another author who was a bigger influence. According to Brent, people thing of Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, but Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was a greater influence. One of the characters is a prison guard, Lieutenant Volkovi, a character no one likes. Ghelfi picked that name, Alexei Volkovoy, for his character. 

When asked who else he reads, Ghelfi said he reads almost everything. Naturally, he reads Martin Cruz Smith. But, James Sallis (photo at left) influenced, and helped him. He started reading Sallis in 1990-91, when he wandered into the Poisoned Pen, and Barbara suggested a book. When he returned, she asked what he thought, and he said it was a little light; he wanted something more...And, she said I have an author for you. She gave him one of Sallis' books. Since Sallis was at the party, Brent said he wanted to acknowledge him, saying, in his opinion, he was the most likely candidate to win a National Book Award. Brent said Sallis taught him all he knows about writing. 

Barbara Peters said as long as they were discussing Sallis and Ghelfi together, she wanted to mention that Maricopa County is doing Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury for this year's Big Read. She's hoping to have Sallis and Ghelfi do a program together about the book. She said she has a whole new life planned for Brent since he acted as host for Clive Cussler and James Rollins, and did such a wonderful job. 

Peters told Ghelfi that his books, set in Chechnya, almost seemed as if they were written from today's headlines. According to Brent, in 1995, Grozny, Chechnya had a population of 600,000. After the Russian tanks rolled in, only 50,000 people lived there, most of them in burned out buildings. Chechnya has been fought over for years. Tolstoy wrote about Russians invading Chechnya. Recently, a human rights advocate was accosted, dragged away, and shot in the back of the head. Her purse, with contacts intact, was left by her body. It was strictly an assassination. Volk is a part of that Chechen politics. Modern Russia is a place where history, life, politics, and religion collide. The outlandish stories that come out of Russia are true. 

Ghelfi's first book, Volk's Game, was his art book, about lost da Vinci painting from the Hermitage Museum. Volk's Shadow is his Chechen book. The new book, The Venona Cable, deals with untold stories of World War II. The British and the Americans deciphered cables sent back and forth from Russia. They were able to identify spies. The Soviets had the greatest spy apparatus in the world, after the Revolution until the '90s. So, the relationship between the U.S. and Russia was the jumping off point for this book. 

If you go to the NSA's website, and search Venona, you can find stories of 1943. Roosevelt and Churchill had a private meeting, with just a couple other people in attendance. Stalin knew the result of that meeting before anyone else, including Congress. They made the decision not to open up the second front. The actual cable is reproduced on Brent's book, altered just a little. 

There's a Hollywood film director in the book, who is a foil to talk about Hollywood and the Communist Party in the U.S.A. A number of people from Hollywood explored Communism in the 50s and 60s, and some ended up on the Hollywood blacklist. Ghelfi explores a little of that history in the book. And, the story includes Volk's father, a veteran of the Cold War air wars. 

Peters said it was strange to read this book, back-to-back with Joseph Kanon's forthcoming book, Stardust. (Kanon appears at the Poisoned Pen on October 14.) That book deals with a Hollywood director in 1944, and the beginning of the blacklist. Kanon sets his book in 1944, and Ghelfi writes his book looking back at that period. 

Ghelfi asked how many in the audience grew up thinking the Rosenbergs might have been innocent. He said they were not. Julius had a darkroom, and he actively recruited spies. Ethel probably knew about it, and, allegedly typed the notes. The U.S. had the Venona Cable saying this. Julius was a spy. 

When Peters mentioned that Ghelfi's books were anchored in history, she said Volk's Game dealt with da Vinci, Volk's Shadow has a stolen Faberge egg, this one deals with the Venona Cable. Brent said he likes to start with something that actually happened. 

He went on to say that Russian life seems to change very little. There's a saying, "Joseph Stalin straddled the oceans and filled the skies." The people yearn for that kind of powerful figure, which is why Putin is so popular. 

Peters said a killer thriller also has to have sex. Ghelfi went on to talk about Valya, Volk's lover. They have a stressful relationship. She is a Chechen refugee. The tribes turned on each other in Chechnya. Valya was one of the disenfranchised tribes. They have a stormy relationship. She's unpredictable, and it's a surprising relationship. 

When asked what was next, Ghelfi said the fourth book in the series is in the works. It's due to his publisher in late October. It deals with Russia's terrible record with nuclear technology. They had one plant explode in 1957, before Chernobyl, but they not only denied the explosion, they denied the plant existed. Gary Power's u2 was headed to take pictures of it when he was shot down. The book is tentatively titled The Burning Lake. 

Before turning the questions over to the audience, Barbara Peters said discovering new authors is one of the pleasures she shares with her staff. She said Brent Ghelfi is one of the finest new writers she's read because he entertains, and makes you think. 

The first question was whether Ghelfi's books were available on e-books. He said no. All three are available on Kindle. He said the first two are also unabridged audios, but he doesn't know when The Venona Cable will come out. 

He was asked how we learned about the Venona Cable, and he said American researchers in Moscow found out through Russian KGB files. They also learned about American Communist spies there. In 1995, those researchers brought it back to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who chaired the Commission on Government Secrecy. Moynihan secured the release of the FBI's Venona files. Researchers know dates and times from the KGB files. 

Barbara reminded everyone that Russia was our ally during WWII. In the 1930s, many people embraced Communism as an ideal. Ghelfi told the story of The Lost Spy by Andrew Meier. It's the true story of a Princeton/Yale graduate who was caught up in Stalin's secret service. They arrested him, sentenced him for being a double spy, and sentenced him to seven years of hard labor. He was released exactly seven years later. But, he was immediately picked up, taken someplace, tortured, and killed. Meier's book includes notes from Stalin saying he needs to die. But, at that time, people who believed in Communism, such as that idealistic young man, thought they were working to build a brave new world. 

Someone asked when the movie was coming out. Brent said Volk's Game has been optioned, and it even has a script. But, there's a slim to none chance of filming unless a major star, director or producer wants to get it made. When asked who should play Volk, he said he could see Jason Statham in the first two books, and 
Clive Owen, as he appeared in Inside Man, in the third. 

He was asked if there has been any interest in publishing his book in Russia. Brent responded that it's unlikely to get a Russian language publisher because he's critical of Putin, but it has been published on the Western edge of Russia, in Poland and Czechoslovakia. 

Before returning to sign books, Brent Ghelfi ended the program by thanking everyone, particularly his wife, Lisa. 

Brent Ghelfi's website is www.brentghelfi.com 

The Venona Cable by Brent Ghelfi. Henry Holt, ©2009. ISBN 9780805088946 (hardcover), 336p. 




lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

The Desert Hedge Murders by Patricia Stoltey

It takes a great deal of patience for a sixty-year-old former judge to accompany her mother's travel club to Laughlin, Nevada and Oatman, Arizona. Sylvia Thorn was a reluctant recruit to her mother's trip. But, it will only get worse in this mystery, reminiscent of the Keystone Cops, The Desert Hedge Murders by Patricia Stoltey.

How could Sylvia ever expect to keep tabs on the Florida Flippers, a group of seventy and eighty year old women? They're independent, opinionated, and out of control. And, it only makes it worse when Sandra Pringle finds a body in her bathtub, soon after check-in at the hotel in Laughlin. While the Florida Flippers are excited about the body, and want to investigate the murder, Sylvia suspects Sandra and her roommate, Patsy, know a little more about the dead man than they're letting on. It only takes one evening of the Flippers running around the casino, asking questions, for Sandra to take the opportunity to slip away from the group.

Patsy's stories about Sandra's whereabouts are a little suspicious, but the Flippers' vacation plans aren't squashed by Sandra's absence. The women all board the bus to Oatman, Arizona, anticipating their visit to the ghost town. But, their tour of the Lone Cactus Gold Mine is disrupted by a grisly discovery. Between the dead man, and the tour group's problems, Sylvia suspects the Flippers might be in danger. A visit from an FBI agent confirms there's something more involved than a suspicious death. Sylvia may think something is wrong. The Flippers see it as more to investigate, getting in the way of the police and FBI as they scatter all over.

Back in Florida, Sylvia's brother, Willie, knows his sister is in trouble. After his experiences in Vietnam, Willie suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But, he is also psychic. His comments to his octogenarian father, Peter, and their inability to reach Sylvia, sets the two men on a wild-goose chase. After flying into Las Vegas, they team up with an old friend of Peter's from World War II. A trip in an old motorcycle sidecar on Old Route 66 isn't quite what Willie had in mind when he knew he needed to reach his sister.

Since the Flippers need to return to Oatman a couple times, Stoltey has the opportunity to capture the town with all of its charms. She includes the ghost stories, the hotel and restaurant, the old gold mine. Sylvia's reaction to the wild burros that actually roam the streets is priceless. She feels quite threatened by the animals. So much of the town is included in the story, including Oatie the Ghost, and the Gable/Lombard honeymoon suite.

Stoltey's madcap mystery is highlighted by the odd group of seniors. Sylvia's mother is right. The former judge comes across as too prim and stuffy. She needs to loosen up. Willie, with his lovable quirks, is a more likable character. The Florida Flippers, and the motorcycle ride from Las Vegas to Oatman, add humor to a complicated story. The Desert Hedge Murders is called "A Sylvia and Willie Mystery". Poor Sylvia is overshadowed by the Florida Flippers and Willie. But, the ending leaves possibilities for future adventures for the brother and sister. Sylvia's already an avid fan of mysteries. If she learns to loosen up, she might even enjoy future cases.

Patricia Stoltey's website is www.patriciastoltey.com

The Desert Hedge Murders by Patricia Stoltey. Five Star Publishing (A Gale Group), ©2009. ISBN 9781594147852 (hardcover), 278p.

(left to right, Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Ann Parker Photo by Lesa Holstine)

The Deadly Combination of Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Ann Parker were a hit at the Velma Teague Library when they appeared to discuss "Strong Heroines in Crime Fiction". They themselves exemplify strong women showcasing their talents. And, it was obvious they're having fun touring together. They brought that sense of fun to the library program.

After introductions, they thanked me, and said how pleased they were to be at the Velma Teague Library. They said they told other people in the mystery community they were coming to Glendale, and everyone said, oh, you're appearing at the Teague. Sophie told the audience the library was lucky to have so much community support, and it was good to see people turn out for a library program.

Each author introduced their books and characters. Ann Parker said she
almost feels as if she's local because her publisher is Poisoned Pen Press in Scottsdale. She told the audience that she writes a historical mystery series set in Leadville, Colorado during the biggest silver rush in the world. People came from all over, but weren't prepared for Leadville. At 10,000 feet, it's winter for nine months of the year there. Some people thought they could just pick silver off the ground. Ann's character is a woman who runs a saloon in Leadville, Inez Stannert. She calls her a woman in a man's world. The three books in the series all have rhyming titles, Silver Lies, Iron Ties, and Leaden Skies. She said they've had a good time teasing her about future titles. She thought Golden Thighs might be going too far, but the others assured her it might be a hit.

Juliet Blackwell is actually Julie Goodson-Lawes. She said she wrote her first mystery series with her sister, using a family name, Hailey Lind. Those books made up the art forgery mystery series. The fourth book in that series will be out next summer, with a new publisher. The first book, Feint of Art, was nominated for an Agatha for Best First Mystery Novel, and then, after three books, the series was dropped. Juliet said she's writing her new books by herself. It's a paranormal series, beginning with Secondhand Spirits. Some readers have told Julie this is the first paranormal book they ever read.

Julie said Secondhand Spirits was fun to write. When she first decided to write a book about a witch, she said the only fun witch she knew was from Bewitched, and she didn't want to write Bewitched. But, her background is in anthropology, so she researched the history of witchcraft. There has been a lot of mystery, and atrocities still committed in the name of witchcraft. Witchcraft is important to women's issues because most people accused are women. Witchcraft is often associated with healing. The wise woman is respected in villages until things go wrong, and then she takes the blame. There are serious themes about witchcraft and culture. Juliet showed her cover, and said you can tell it's a fun book because of the sparkles on the cover. But, she said she thinks it's a little more serious than the cover indicates.

A Bad Day for Sorry is Sophie Littlefield's first published book. She said it's considered part of St. Martin's hardboiled publications. When she thinks of strong women, she thinks of the middle-aged woman, often overlooked by society. Stella Hardesty is fifty, and she suffered from domestic abuse. She kills her husband, and that unleashes a part of her she never knew she had. Sophie said she herself went through a mid-life crisis, and had a bad attitude. She was frustrated with her experiences, needing reading glasses, etc. She complained that no one warned her about changes - she can't see to put her mascara on. Women of a certain age are not respected by society.

The authors asked the audience what they thought when they heard "strong women". Responses ranged from determined, problem solver, goes against convention. Julie said if anyone watched The Closer or Saving Grace, the characters were more mature women. They said the people buying books are women, grown-ups. One woman in the audience commented, "We have time to read." Another word thrown out was flexibility. Julie said at one time women protagonists, such as Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, were just women put into the male role as a private investigator. Now, female characters are strong, and very individual. Sophie said that might have been the source of some of her irritation. She used to have to wear men's suits, with the floppy white bows that women wore. Now, books celebrate that women are themselves.

Juliet summed that part of the discussion up, saying women show strength in culture, family relationships, romantic relationships, physical, beauty and self-image, strong opinions and politics. Sophie said culture focuses on physical beauty. Her character, Stella, is twenty pounds overweight, ordinary-looking. She acknowledges that she's aging. Some agents were willing to take Sophie on as a client, but they wanted Stella to be more attractive. Fortunately, she found an agent comfortable with the character.

Juliet said her books always have an element of romance. She said a woman can still be strong with an interest in romance. Blackwell said she's willing to argue that men's fiction also has romance, but in a different form. She said readers want well-rounded characters, and life had romantic relationships, connections with friends and community. For a witch, romance is an issue, because women are the most dangerous when sexual. In Europe, the traditional belief is that the more sexually attractive one is, the more dangerous. Isn't it the sexy ones who are likely to kill you?

The Malleus Maleficarum was a witch-hunter's handbook that covered sexual magic. Part of the handbook covered those who believed in witchcraft, and those who didn't believe. The more people believed, the more likely they were to turn in their neighbors. If a witch cast a spell sexually, someone would fall for them.

Blackwell's character, Lily Ivory, is a natural witch. She was born with powers. Lily is afraid of romance and sex because it might stir up something primal in her. Her feelings are part of the character arc in the series. How do you let yourself become vulnerable? In her previous series, Hailey Lind wrote of a character with two love interests. It reflects contradictory desires and interests, and provides tension.

Ann Parker said she wanted to provide context for the world Inez Stannert lives in, her woman in a man's world. The 1870 census said there were 300 saloons in Leadville. Three of them were run by women. So, she plays around with assumptions when people come to town, assumptions that a female saloon keeper might be easy. It's a boomtown in Leadville, and, like Inez, people are coming from all over to make new starts and shed their pasts. In the 19th century, everyone came to Leadville, investors, prospectors, women who followed the miners, as prostitutes, bakers, launderers, and miners themselves. Inez walks a knife's edge. She is a saloon keeper, but she's also spiritual. She attends church, but can handle herself in a brawl at the saloon. Her husband disappeared. He's been gone eight months. People often disappeared back then, just took off, or fell down a mine. Inez doesn't know if she's a married woman or not. In Silver Lies, she meets a man, and almost has to seduce him. How does the outside world view her? She wants to make her position public with the man she's seeing. At the same time, she wants to be perceived as a successful business woman.

According to Juliet, when writing women in mysteries, family becomes an issue. It's better to have characters without small children, because a mother wants to protect her children. Lily Ivory, Blackwell's heroine, was run out of a small west Texas town at seventeen. She's spent her life traveling, looking for a place to settle. The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco is safe for a witch. Lily runs a vintage clothing store. The book, Secondhand Spirits, is about motherhood. Lily was rejected by her mother, raised by an elderly woman who was a witch herself, so was comfortable with one. She provided Lily with a sense of family. The book also includes La Llorona, a demon. Spanish-speaking cultures have variations of the legend about her, that she was a woman of humble means who had children with a man who left her. In Mexico, the story says he left her with the children, and she drowns the children in the river, and then herself. She wanders the riverbanks, calling for her children, and wailing. La Llorona means "the weeping woman", and she takes children if they're out at night. The stories of La Llorona are like the Bogeyman. In Secondhand Spirits, Lily deals with a mother of lost children, and comes to grips with her own fears.

Sophie Littlefield brought up Robert Crais' Elvis Cole. When she thinks of physical strength, she thinks of a bad ass such as Elvis. She said all of the male protagonists in crime novels are strong, and they never seem to work out. Littlefield's character, Stella Hardesty, tries to intimidate men into not being abusive. It's unrealistic for a fifty-year-old woman who hasn't worked out to have physical strength. So, Stella starts a fitness program. She looks for ways to handcuff men, so she buys herself bondage items for restraining men. Sophie said she knew her character needed to restrain them, and she was looking for the plastic handcuffs police use, but the Internet led her to bondage sites, and that's what happened with Stella. When creating women characters, physical strength must be considered. Julie pointed out that Stella has another weapon, a gun. Lily Ivory doesn't need a gun. And, Inez Stannert has guns, and her words.

According to Ann Parker, Inez is a woman with strong opinions, and she uses those against others' opinions. She said, if we think politics are bad now, the politics of 1880, as shown in Leaden Skies, included shady dealings. Grant was expected to run for a third term as president, but he didn't get the nomination. In 1876-77, there was a push for the woman's vote, but it didn't happen in Colorado. In 1880, there was a woman running a woman's newspaper, in Colorado, that was for woman's suffrage, and supported prostitutes. These are elements in Leaden Skies. Inez doesn't get suffrage. Characters were not interested in women's rights because they were making their own way.

The authors were asked about their writing schedule. Sophie said she had been a stay-at-home mom, and volunteered. Once her children were 12 and 14, she transferred her energies to writing. So, she gets up, writes, takes the kids to school, writes, picks the kids up, and she yells at them, and they yell at her, then she writes. Once she was published, the writing time was cut in half. It's important to be part of the book community. She works all the time, but, if she's not writing, she's working on promotion.

Juliet responded that it takes absolute determination to write constantly. She gets up at 4, and writes. She's a Peet's Coffee addict. It's a very strong coffee. She has no transition time. She just gets up at 4, and starts writing. Nobody talks to her at that time of morning. She's discovered nothing is open, so there are no distractions. She gets more done in those first two or three hours than later. She has a day job; she works for herself. She writes for several hours, gets her son up and off, works at her job, takes a nap at 2, and gets a second wind. She'll research later in the day, and does her blogging, Tweeting, and correspondence with her editor. She's president of her local chapter of Sisters in Crime. She spends time reading other people's manuscripts (as they all do). She doesn't watch TV. It's hard to tell friends that work (writing) is what she loves to do, and she'd rather write than go out with a friend. When writers get together, they talk writing.

Ann told the audience she doesn't write at the pace of the others. She has a job, two kids and a spouse. She said it takes a while for her to write. She's always motivated to write the book, and is all excited to start, and then she loses steam. Then life hits, and then she'll get a call or contract from her publisher that nudges her. Once she has a deadline, she's propelled by panic. She blasts through to the end of the book. When readers told her Leaden Skies was fast paced at the end, she knew it was because she was rushing when she wrote it. She has a friend, Margaret Grace, another writer, who lives nearby, and invited her to her house to get away and have the chance to write. So, she went to Margaret's house, disappeared into the guestroom, and wrote big chunks of the book on weekends.

When asked if they ever run out of ideas, Sophie said she wrote eight books before her first one was published, and they were all kinds of genres, inspirational, horror, everything but science fiction. She said as you learn one thing, other things fall into place. Now she understands more as to the process of writing mysteries. She has mental muscle memory. But, she won't run out of ideas.

Juliet said she has to trim back ideas, rather than worrying about running out of ideas. She does research, and said she could write 100 pages on a topic. Stephen King called it "killing your little darlings", saying there are sections of your writing that you loved, but they just don't fit. If it doesn't fit, you have to kill it. They said they all have files for rejects, thinking they'll use them someday. Juliet said she has scrap paper with ideas on them. It's only the new author who doesn't know what to write.

Ann Parker, Juliet Blackwell, and Sophie Littlefield are definitely a deadly combination. It was a treat to bring them to the audience at the Velma Teague Library.

Ann Parker's website is www.annparker.net

Leaden Skies by Ann Parker. Poisoned Pen Press, ©2009. ISBN 9781590585771 (hardcover), 298p.

Juliet Blackwell's website is www.julietblackwell.net

Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell. Penguin Group (USA), ©2009. ISBN 9780451227454 (paperback), 336p.

Sophie Littlefield's website is www.sophielittlefield.com

A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield. St. Martin's Press, ©2009. ISBN 9780312559205 (hardcover), 288p.

(left to right, Juliet Blackwell, Ann Parke, Sophie Littlefield 
and Lesa Holstine in the middle front! Photo by Cassandra Sollano)

lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

Authors @ The Teague presents Strong Heroines in Crime Fiction Panel

The Authors @ The Teague will present three authors to discuss "Strong Heroines in Crime Fiction" on Saturday, Aug. 15 at 2 PM. Join us for a panel discussion and book signing with three authors with varied backgrounds.

Ann Parker is the author of three historical mysteries set in Leadville, Colorado during the Silver Rush. Her latest book from Poisoned Pen Press is Leaden Skies. Once again, saloon owner, Inez Stannert, is caught up in murder and intrigue. This time, former President Ulysses S. Grant just happens to be in town.







Juliet Blackwell, who once wrote mysteries with her sister under the name Hailey Lind, has started a new series, beginning with Secondhand Spirits. Secondhand Spirits, first in the new Witchcraft Mystery Series, features Lily Ivory, a witch who opens a vintage clothing store in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco.






Sophie Littlefield's debut novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, is one of the most talked about debut mysteries of the year. Publishers Weekly called Sophie, "Spunky, unapologetically middle-aged and a tad cantankerous."


So, we have an author with three books in a historical mystery series, an author who is starting her second series, and a first-time author. It should be a fun discussion!

The Velma Teague Library is at 7010 N. 58th Ave., Glendale, AZ 85301. Call 623-930-3431 for more details. Hope to see you Saturday at 2 PM!

Review of Leaden Skies by Ann Parker

Who would expect that a book review would find me discussing bordellos, politics, saloons and murder? But, Ann Parker's new book, Leaden Skies, takes readers back to Leadville, Colorado, and Inez Stannert's world in 1880.

Leaden Skies follows hard on the heels of Parker's Iron Ties. Former U.S. President and Civil War general Ulysses S. Grant has arrived in Leadville, and it seems as if half the town of 30,000 turned out to welcome him, including someone who tried to assassinate him, since the former general isn't popular with some of the southerners who moved to Leadville after the war. But, Inez Stannert, owner of the Silver Queen Saloon, made her way in the mud and the muck to see him arrive by train. When the gun and fireworks go off, Inez loses control of her horse, and almost runs over a surveyor and mapmaker, Cecil Farnesworth. But, she's easily distracted when she sees a fire on State Street, where her saloon, and a bordello are located.

That fire is just the first of Inez' problems. The dark clouds that hang over the city during Grant's visit seem to hang over Inez' life right now. With her husband missing for a year, she's ready to file for divorce. And, the whole issue with her husband leaves her in limbo. She's uncertain about her share in the business, worried about the divorce, and yearning for her two-year-old son, living in the east with her sister. When she tries to make a business deal with Flo, the owner of the bordello, hoping to buy her property, Inez Stannert makes a deal with the devil, a deal that only leads to more trouble, as Flo is arrested, one of her girls in murdered, and another girl becomes a suspect. And, the trouble just seems to swirl around Inez. Even when she tries to help her lover, Reverend Sands, she puts herself in more danger, catching the attention of a policeman.

Ann Parker packs a great deal of social history into a mystery. Leadville, Colorado is a growing town in 1880, involved in politics, mining, and, even the suffragette movement. It's a mining town in which the saloons and bordellos play host to the men from the mines, as well as visiting dignitaries. And, it's a culture in which women who want to be independent business owners don't have a great deal of choices. Even when they hope to become independent, they still must deal with the powerful men who control the town.

Readers should really go back and read the previous two books in the Silver Rush mystery series, Silver Lies and Iron Ties. Most of us aren't familiar with this post-Civil War part of our history in the West. And, it's a fascinating part of our history. Parker skillfully, and vividly, portrays it. The Silver Rush in Colorado brought all kinds of people to Leadville, saints and sinners. And, they were all trying to make a killing of some sort. Parker's book is intriguing, both as a mystery, and, as a social history.

Once you've read these three books, pick up Vicki Delany's Gold Digger, and compare the lives of the two saloon owners, Inez Stannert during Leadville's mining days, and Fiona MacGillivray's during the gold rush in Dawson, Yukon Territory in 1898. The authors gave us two strong women, trying to make a living in a man's world. However, Inez Stannert is due for a break sooner or later, and it doesn't appear to be sooner. Ann Parker's character seems doomed to live her life under Leaden Skies.

There is a downloadable copy of the Author's Note that was omitted in the first printing. If you'd like to read it, go to http://www.annparker.net/book.htm, and click on "Click to read the Author's Note."

Ann Parker's website is http://www.annparker.com


lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

The Desert Hedge Murders by Patricia Stoltey

(left to right, Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Ann Parker Photo by Lesa Holstine)

The Deadly Combination of Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Ann Parker were a hit at the Velma Teague Library when they appeared to discuss "Strong Heroines in Crime Fiction". They themselves exemplify strong women showcasing their talents. And, it was obvious they're having fun touring together. They brought that sense of fun to the library program.

After introductions, they thanked me, and said how pleased they were to be at the Velma Teague Library. They said they told other people in the mystery community they were coming to Glendale, and everyone said, oh, you're appearing at the Teague. Sophie told the audience the library was lucky to have so much community support, and it was good to see people turn out for a library program.

Each author introduced their books and characters. Ann Parker said she
almost feels as if she's local because her publisher is Poisoned Pen Press in Scottsdale. She told the audience that she writes a historical mystery series set in Leadville, Colorado during the biggest silver rush in the world. People came from all over, but weren't prepared for Leadville. At 10,000 feet, it's winter for nine months of the year there. Some people thought they could just pick silver off the ground. Ann's character is a woman who runs a saloon in Leadville, Inez Stannert. She calls her a woman in a man's world. The three books in the series all have rhyming titles, Silver Lies, Iron Ties, and Leaden Skies. She said they've had a good time teasing her about future titles. She thought Golden Thighs might be going too far, but the others assured her it might be a hit.

Juliet Blackwell is actually Julie Goodson-Lawes. She said she wrote her first mystery series with her sister, using a family name, Hailey Lind. Those books made up the art forgery mystery series. The fourth book in that series will be out next summer, with a new publisher. The first book, Feint of Art, was nominated for an Agatha for Best First Mystery Novel, and then, after three books, the series was dropped. Juliet said she's writing her new books by herself. It's a paranormal series, beginning with Secondhand Spirits. Some readers have told Julie this is the first paranormal book they ever read.

Julie said Secondhand Spirits was fun to write. When she first decided to write a book about a witch, she said the only fun witch she knew was from Bewitched, and she didn't want to write Bewitched. But, her background is in anthropology, so she researched the history of witchcraft. There has been a lot of mystery, and atrocities still committed in the name of witchcraft. Witchcraft is important to women's issues because most people accused are women. Witchcraft is often associated with healing. The wise woman is respected in villages until things go wrong, and then she takes the blame. There are serious themes about witchcraft and culture. Juliet showed her cover, and said you can tell it's a fun book because of the sparkles on the cover. But, she said she thinks it's a little more serious than the cover indicates.

A Bad Day for Sorry is Sophie Littlefield's first published book. She said it's considered part of St. Martin's hardboiled publications. When she thinks of strong women, she thinks of the middle-aged woman, often overlooked by society. Stella Hardesty is fifty, and she suffered from domestic abuse. She kills her husband, and that unleashes a part of her she never knew she had. Sophie said she herself went through a mid-life crisis, and had a bad attitude. She was frustrated with her experiences, needing reading glasses, etc. She complained that no one warned her about changes - she can't see to put her mascara on. Women of a certain age are not respected by society.

The authors asked the audience what they thought when they heard "strong women". Responses ranged from determined, problem solver, goes against convention. Julie said if anyone watched The Closer or Saving Grace, the characters were more mature women. They said the people buying books are women, grown-ups. One woman in the audience commented, "We have time to read." Another word thrown out was flexibility. Julie said at one time women protagonists, such as Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, were just women put into the male role as a private investigator. Now, female characters are strong, and very individual. Sophie said that might have been the source of some of her irritation. She used to have to wear men's suits, with the floppy white bows that women wore. Now, books celebrate that women are themselves.

Juliet summed that part of the discussion up, saying women show strength in culture, family relationships, romantic relationships, physical, beauty and self-image, strong opinions and politics. Sophie said culture focuses on physical beauty. Her character, Stella, is twenty pounds overweight, ordinary-looking. She acknowledges that she's aging. Some agents were willing to take Sophie on as a client, but they wanted Stella to be more attractive. Fortunately, she found an agent comfortable with the character.

Juliet said her books always have an element of romance. She said a woman can still be strong with an interest in romance. Blackwell said she's willing to argue that men's fiction also has romance, but in a different form. She said readers want well-rounded characters, and life had romantic relationships, connections with friends and community. For a witch, romance is an issue, because women are the most dangerous when sexual. In Europe, the traditional belief is that the more sexually attractive one is, the more dangerous. Isn't it the sexy ones who are likely to kill you?

The Malleus Maleficarum was a witch-hunter's handbook that covered sexual magic. Part of the handbook covered those who believed in witchcraft, and those who didn't believe. The more people believed, the more likely they were to turn in their neighbors. If a witch cast a spell sexually, someone would fall for them.

Blackwell's character, Lily Ivory, is a natural witch. She was born with powers. Lily is afraid of romance and sex because it might stir up something primal in her. Her feelings are part of the character arc in the series. How do you let yourself become vulnerable? In her previous series, Hailey Lind wrote of a character with two love interests. It reflects contradictory desires and interests, and provides tension.

Ann Parker said she wanted to provide context for the world Inez Stannert lives in, her woman in a man's world. The 1870 census said there were 300 saloons in Leadville. Three of them were run by women. So, she plays around with assumptions when people come to town, assumptions that a female saloon keeper might be easy. It's a boomtown in Leadville, and, like Inez, people are coming from all over to make new starts and shed their pasts. In the 19th century, everyone came to Leadville, investors, prospectors, women who followed the miners, as prostitutes, bakers, launderers, and miners themselves. Inez walks a knife's edge. She is a saloon keeper, but she's also spiritual. She attends church, but can handle herself in a brawl at the saloon. Her husband disappeared. He's been gone eight months. People often disappeared back then, just took off, or fell down a mine. Inez doesn't know if she's a married woman or not. In Silver Lies, she meets a man, and almost has to seduce him. How does the outside world view her? She wants to make her position public with the man she's seeing. At the same time, she wants to be perceived as a successful business woman.

According to Juliet, when writing women in mysteries, family becomes an issue. It's better to have characters without small children, because a mother wants to protect her children. Lily Ivory, Blackwell's heroine, was run out of a small west Texas town at seventeen. She's spent her life traveling, looking for a place to settle. The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco is safe for a witch. Lily runs a vintage clothing store. The book, Secondhand Spirits, is about motherhood. Lily was rejected by her mother, raised by an elderly woman who was a witch herself, so was comfortable with one. She provided Lily with a sense of family. The book also includes La Llorona, a demon. Spanish-speaking cultures have variations of the legend about her, that she was a woman of humble means who had children with a man who left her. In Mexico, the story says he left her with the children, and she drowns the children in the river, and then herself. She wanders the riverbanks, calling for her children, and wailing. La Llorona means "the weeping woman", and she takes children if they're out at night. The stories of La Llorona are like the Bogeyman. In Secondhand Spirits, Lily deals with a mother of lost children, and comes to grips with her own fears.

Sophie Littlefield brought up Robert Crais' Elvis Cole. When she thinks of physical strength, she thinks of a bad ass such as Elvis. She said all of the male protagonists in crime novels are strong, and they never seem to work out. Littlefield's character, Stella Hardesty, tries to intimidate men into not being abusive. It's unrealistic for a fifty-year-old woman who hasn't worked out to have physical strength. So, Stella starts a fitness program. She looks for ways to handcuff men, so she buys herself bondage items for restraining men. Sophie said she knew her character needed to restrain them, and she was looking for the plastic handcuffs police use, but the Internet led her to bondage sites, and that's what happened with Stella. When creating women characters, physical strength must be considered. Julie pointed out that Stella has another weapon, a gun. Lily Ivory doesn't need a gun. And, Inez Stannert has guns, and her words.

According to Ann Parker, Inez is a woman with strong opinions, and she uses those against others' opinions. She said, if we think politics are bad now, the politics of 1880, as shown in Leaden Skies, included shady dealings. Grant was expected to run for a third term as president, but he didn't get the nomination. In 1876-77, there was a push for the woman's vote, but it didn't happen in Colorado. In 1880, there was a woman running a woman's newspaper, in Colorado, that was for woman's suffrage, and supported prostitutes. These are elements in Leaden Skies. Inez doesn't get suffrage. Characters were not interested in women's rights because they were making their own way.

The authors were asked about their writing schedule. Sophie said she had been a stay-at-home mom, and volunteered. Once her children were 12 and 14, she transferred her energies to writing. So, she gets up, writes, takes the kids to school, writes, picks the kids up, and she yells at them, and they yell at her, then she writes. Once she was published, the writing time was cut in half. It's important to be part of the book community. She works all the time, but, if she's not writing, she's working on promotion.

Juliet responded that it takes absolute determination to write constantly. She gets up at 4, and writes. She's a Peet's Coffee addict. It's a very strong coffee. She has no transition time. She just gets up at 4, and starts writing. Nobody talks to her at that time of morning. She's discovered nothing is open, so there are no distractions. She gets more done in those first two or three hours than later. She has a day job; she works for herself. She writes for several hours, gets her son up and off, works at her job, takes a nap at 2, and gets a second wind. She'll research later in the day, and does her blogging, Tweeting, and correspondence with her editor. She's president of her local chapter of Sisters in Crime. She spends time reading other people's manuscripts (as they all do). She doesn't watch TV. It's hard to tell friends that work (writing) is what she loves to do, and she'd rather write than go out with a friend. When writers get together, they talk writing.

Ann told the audience she doesn't write at the pace of the others. She has a job, two kids and a spouse. She said it takes a while for her to write. She's always motivated to write the book, and is all excited to start, and then she loses steam. Then life hits, and then she'll get a call or contract from her publisher that nudges her. Once she has a deadline, she's propelled by panic. She blasts through to the end of the book. When readers told her Leaden Skies was fast paced at the end, she knew it was because she was rushing when she wrote it. She has a friend, Margaret Grace, another writer, who lives nearby, and invited her to her house to get away and have the chance to write. So, she went to Margaret's house, disappeared into the guestroom, and wrote big chunks of the book on weekends.

When asked if they ever run out of ideas, Sophie said she wrote eight books before her first one was published, and they were all kinds of genres, inspirational, horror, everything but science fiction. She said as you learn one thing, other things fall into place. Now she understands more as to the process of writing mysteries. She has mental muscle memory. But, she won't run out of ideas.

Juliet said she has to trim back ideas, rather than worrying about running out of ideas. She does research, and said she could write 100 pages on a topic. Stephen King called it "killing your little darlings", saying there are sections of your writing that you loved, but they just don't fit. If it doesn't fit, you have to kill it. They said they all have files for rejects, thinking they'll use them someday. Juliet said she has scrap paper with ideas on them. It's only the new author who doesn't know what to write.

Ann Parker, Juliet Blackwell, and Sophie Littlefield are definitely a deadly combination. It was a treat to bring them to the audience at the Velma Teague Library.

Ann Parker's website is www.annparker.net

Leaden Skies by Ann Parker. Poisoned Pen Press, ©2009. ISBN 9781590585771 (hardcover), 298p.

Juliet Blackwell's website is www.julietblackwell.net

Secondhand Spirits by Juliet Blackwell. Penguin Group (USA), ©2009. ISBN 9780451227454 (paperback), 336p.

Sophie Littlefield's website is www.sophielittlefield.com

A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield. St. Martin's Press, ©2009. ISBN 9780312559205 (hardcover), 288p.

(left to right, Juliet Blackwell, Ann Parke, Sophie Littlefield 
and Lesa Holstine in the middle front! Photo by Cassandra Sollano)

lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

Julie & Julia by Julie Powell

I had no intention of reviewing Julie Powell's book since I thought everyone knew about it with the movie, Julie & Julia coming out with Meryl Streep. But, when a librarian friend told me she didn't know there had been a book, I thought I'd at least give a short summary.

Julie & Julia is subtitled "365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, & Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living". And, Julie Powell actually did risk all of that. At twenty-nine she was married, living in a small apartment in New York City, working a number of temp jobs that eventually turned into a secretarial job for a government agency. She had a group of odd friends, spent evenings drinking, worrying about having a baby before it was too late. Frankly, Julie's life was a little boring. On a trip home, she swiped her mother's copy of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the first step in a year-long project, without even realizing it. When she tried a recipe from it, and her husband, Eric, complimented her and suggested culinary school, she made the mistake of saying maybe she'd just cook her way through the book. And, then she started blogging about it.

Julie Powell is a disaster in this book. Her life, her apartment, her friends, and her language in the book and blog are disastrous. Her husband is the saving grace of the book, and of her life. With Eric's encouragement, she plows her way through the year, and the recipes. Somewhere along the way, she finds a cheering section on her blog, and attracts the attention of the media. And, she learns a lesson about looking for the joy in life.

To be honest, I read Julie & Julia because I want to see the movie. I can't wait to see Meryl Streep as Julia Child. Reading the book was like watching a NASCAR race, waiting for the giant crash. Even though you know it's not right to watch the crash, you can't look away, watching it over and over. It's a cliché that's been used often before, nothing original in that comment. But, Julie Powell's life was a disaster, and I agreed with some of her blog readers who tired of her language. She did a wonderful job, though, with the imaginary conversations between Paul and Julia Child. Julie & Julia is the story of a woman who triumphed, completed a tough goal with the help of her husband and friends. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I hope I can recommend the movie.

Julie Powell's blog is www.juliepowell.blogspot.com

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, & Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living by Julie Powell. Little, Brown & Company, ©2005. ISBN 9780641852169 (hardcover), 320p.

 
J. A. Jance - Photo by Lesa Holstine

The Foothills Branch Library in Glendale advertised the program as "An Afternoon with J.A. Jance." It was a delightful way for over 100 appreciative people to spend the afternoon, with a gifted, funny, storyteller.

Before the program even started, Jance was asked who she likes to read. She said she was reading Lee Child right now. She also mentioned Michael Connelly and Alexander McCall-Smith. Although she signed a number of books ahead of time, she was promoting her new mystery, Fire and Ice, and her autobiographical book of poetry, After the Fire. She said if you read that book you would know who she is, and where her characters came from.

J.A. Jance (Judith Ann) looked at the large audience, and said people who live in New York don't understand that Phoenix isn't a one-horse town. Just because she does a signing in Scottsdale doesn't mean she shouldn't do them elsewhere. She said she appreciates the Glendale Library allowing her to appear there.

As she started singing, "Another opening, another show...", she said she's two weeks into doing two or three events a day, so we might have to give her a second to connect. She said her website is at JAJance.com. On the site, readers will find the covers of her books, a schedule of all of her appearances. Her books are listed in order, because some people are Mr. Monk, and have to go back to the beginning and read everything. She also has a blog there. Jance said she loves writing books, and she's paid well to write them. But, she writes her blog because it's how writers process events in life. Her first blog entry was written three years ago when her son-in-law lost his nine year battle with melanoma. But, he was a light-skinned redhead who grew up in Tucson, had two terms in Iraq, and was Active Duty in the Coast Guard just prior to the disease. That entry was entitled, "Respect Must be Paid."

But, most of Jance's entries are lighthearted. She and her husband, Bill, have played a lot of golf this year. It's a miracle, because previous to golf, Jance's athletic endeavors were limited to jumping to conclusions. But, after her husband's knee problems were taken care of, they play golf three times a week. His golf scores are better. But, hers haven't improved.

She said she's used to writing around people, and can write anywhere. She was one of seven kids who did homework at the kitchen table. She usually sits in a chair in the living room with her laptop, and writes her books, and answers her email. She was sitting there one day, and heard a beep, beep, beep. She thought the smoke detector battery was going, but heard it again. Up above the bar, where her husband keeps his Rosenthal Lotus stemware, she found a trapped sparrow. She shooed it out of the bar to the living room. But, the living room has a high ceiling, and for the next forty-five minutes, she and her husband threw things at it, pillows, the dog's toys, noodles from the pool, trying to get it. Finally, when it tired out, and landed on an owl statue, she grabbed him, and took him outside and let him loose. She said he probably went back and told astonishing stories of people chasing him. But, her blog entry that day said, "I Got a Birdie!"

Jance said she doesn't discuss politics or economics on her blog. It's just a window an a writer's life. She's accessible via her website and email. People write to her. When Damage Control came out in paperback, there must have been a shipment to North Carolina Target stores that had the pages numbered wrong. Her readers didn't write to her publishers, because their email addresses aren't accessible. They wrote to her.

One woman who read the latest book, Fire and Ice,  complained about the ending of the book, that she must have been missing something. Jance went back, and said, no, that's how it ends. The woman immediately wrote back and told her all the aspects of the book that she felt had been left dangling. Judy said she has a quota of 100,000 words, and she'd already used up her quota.

According to Jance, when she writes a book, she writes them, and, once finished, prints two copies, one for her husband, and one for her agent. Once she gets them back, she sends the corrected manuscript to New York, the place that thinks Phoenix is small. They also think everything in Arizona is close together. Then she gets the editorial letter, telling her what needs to be changed to make it work. She sends that back quickly, because that's when she gets a check. When it comes back, it's been copy-edited. Jance's books are 400 pages long. Think of your worst English teacher nightmare with red letters, and magnify that by 400 times. Then more people read it, and it goes into galleys. Once the galleys go out, you can't make a lot of changes. After reading the galleys for Damage Control, there was no resolution to one problem. Fire and Ice came from needing to resolve it.

Last week, Jance did an interview with a young man from a newspaper. She said she can tell when someone has never read murder mysteries and disapproves of them, one of those on a murder mysteries aren't literature kick. He said, "Isn't combining two characters in one book a gimmick?" She said, "No, it's a sales tool." He asked if there was pressure to get her male and female characters in bed, and she said, no. She said she hasn't read the article, but it was a small paper.

Fire and Ice is J.A. Jance's 39th published book, and it appears on the New York Times Bestsellers List at #8 on Sunday. In 1964, she wasn't allowed in the the creative writing program at the University of Arizona because she was a girl. She was married to a man who was allowed in, but all he did was imitate Faulkner and Hemingway by drinking. But, he said there would only be one writer in the family, and he was it.

Hour of the Hunter is the story of a teacher who couldn't get into a writing program, but her husband did. Her husband is dead at the beginning of the book, and the crazed killer is a former professor in the creative writing program. This is Jance's favorite story because of the storyline.

Jance said she started to write books in the middle of March 1982. She was a single parent with two little kids, no child support, and a job selling life insurance. Her fortieth and forty-first books are written, and due to come out. Her first book was 1200 pages, but never published. It should have counted as three. It was the size of The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and then some.

Jance told us she uses real places in her books. She has spent half her life in Arizona, and half in Washington state. It's easier to remember real places, and it appeals to readers. The distances are real, and the books are plausible.

She uses her own life as background in the books. For instance, Ali Reynolds had a scholarship to attend NAU in journalism. In 1962, Jance had a scholarship, and was the first of seven children to go to college. She wouldn't have been standing at the library today without that scholarship. Ali has a loyalty to the people who gave her the scholarship, and that's how she gets involved. One reader wrote and complained about Ali and the scholarship business, that it was all filler. Jance replied that everything in books is filler; chapters are empty until the words get put there.

Then there was the email from a man in Tucson who said he liked the Joanna Brady books, but wouldn't read another until she got rid of the bitch who is her mother. That woman is patterned on Judy's own mother, who loved the character. She said she was the first woman in books who knows how the world really works. Jance told the man we have to deal with the relatives we have, rather than the ones we wish we had.

Here's another story of background to the books. Judy's second husband, Bill,the nice one, (He says her first husband was so bad, it made his life beautiful.) is a Formula One fan. So, she said, for his birthday, why don't we go to Monaco for the race at the end of May. He said, no. That made her mad. So, she called everyone, the children and grandchildren, and said, for Bill's birthday, I'm going to charter a jet, and we're all going to Disneyland. Then, she told him, this is what we're doing for your birthday. He could tell her no, but not the kids and grandkids. It was dreadful. Bill had been concealing how bad his knees were. He was in pain, and could go no further than 50 yards without having to sit down, or lean on something. So, her daughter had a two-year-old toddler with her, and she needed help. And, there was Bill, needing her help. He had both knees replaced last June, and went on tour with her last July. He said he wished he'd done it sooner.

So, in Fire and Ice, when J.P. Beaumont has his kids and grandkids at Disneyland, you know where that background came from. Jance has been writing about J.P. Beaumont since 1982. She enjoys writing about him because she doesn't write only about him; she writes about other characters. J.P. has an inner ear problem. Even the sight of a boat gives him sea sickness. So, when he goes to Disneyland and rides the Teacups, it's above and beyond.

J.A. Jance said she writes only one book at a time, but she's dealing with three at a time, creating one, editing one, and touring for a third. Before a book comes out, her daughter reads it, and talks about it with her so she can remember what's in the book. It was a little difficult this time, because with a daughter at 3 1/2, who is a "fire hose of conversation", the only time to talk was when her daughter was in the car on her way to or from work. Her daughter didn't like one of the stories used as background.

When Jance's son-in-law was sick, he watched a lot of Home & Garden TV. He knew he was dying, and wanted to make sure the little house was in good shape, so he was doing a kitchen/bathroom remodel when he was one step from hospice. But, he did get to see it before he died. He also wanted a working washer/dryer for the baby. So, they bought a top-of-the-line, front-loading, turquoise Kenmore. For two years it worked good. Then, they called the repairman, who must be much busier than the Maytag repairman. When he finally got there, and too it apart, he held up a bunch of baby socks, and said, these are supposed to go in a knit laundry bag, not washed alone. So, when Butch and Joanne's front-loading washer has problems, readers can now diagnose the problem - baby socks.

Jance said she used to be able to give her books titles, before she became a "Big Thing", such as debuting a book at #8 on the New York Times list. She's just a girl from Bisbee, Arizona. In publishing, the NYTimes is top of the heap. But, last night, at Changing Hands Bookstore, she met a woman who said she was reading the books to her mother, who has cancer and is undergoing chemo. The books mean a lot to them. Judy said talking to readers is the only way to find that out, the things that really count.

Now that she's a "Big Deal", she has a title committee, her editor and marketing staff. Since she has two publishers, she has two title committees, which is why she has two books in a row with "Fire" in the title. The funny thing is, the two editors who insisted on the titles are now gone. She would normally tell us the name of her next one, but not with the next one with the same word in the title. Instead, she'll just say the new Ali Reynolds book goes on sale on Dec. 2.

Queen of the Night is Jance's next thriller. The Tohono O'odham Tribe has a legend about the Night Blooming Cereus. It's the story of an old grandmother who retrieves her grandson to take him home to the desert people. She tires, but for her efforts, she's turned into a plant. And for one night a year, it's the most beautiful plant of the year, the Night Blooming Cereus. It grows on the Deerhorn cactus. The cactus has buds in the spring, and they bloom once a year. But, no one knows exactly when it will bloom, sometime in the middle of May to the middle of June. People can only predict within 48 hours when it will happen. At 6 PM, the buds open, all over the Sonoran Desert. By midnight, the flowers are as big as dinner plates, white with tinges of yellow. And, the scent is so beautiful it's called Ghost Scent. Only one moth knows when it will bloom, and it shows up to pollinate the flower. By 6 AM, it's gone.

Most of the time, Jance's books aren't based on real cases. Real people are affected by crime, and they date their lives before and after the crime. Queen of the Night deals with the legend of the old white-haired woman who brought back children. There's a whole group of brought back children in the book.

When Jance ended, and said she'd take questions, she warned the audience that she has hearing problems, and had dropped her hearing aid under a car recently, and hadn't put it back yet.

She was asked about not getting into the creative writing program at University of Arizona. She said the creative writing teacher, and her ex-husband were both dead by the time her first book came out. Her first husband died at 42 of chronic alcoholism the year after she divorced him. For a long time, she was really angry about not getting into the program. It's ironic that the publisher of her poetry book, After the Fire, is the University of Arizona.  She received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters a few years ago, but they never let her do the commencement speech.

Judy said, if she had managed to fight her way into that creative writing class, with a teacher that didn't want her there, he might have drummed that writing spark out of her. Instead, she stayed close to her storytelling roots.

Tony Hillerman once told her, "Literary fiction is where not much happens to people you don't like very much."

Why J. A. Jance? Her actual name is Judith Ann Jance, but, in 1983, Avon told her nobody would read police procedurals written by a woman. Her first six books had no biography or picture. The rumor in Seattle was that a retired Seattle cop wrote the books.

When asked if she keeps a chart of characters, Jance said she counted on her memory for a while. She now keeps a character file, but she didn't have one for the first couple Joanne Brady books. Desert Heat went all through the editorial process, and it took two readers to tell her she brought back a character she had killed in a previous book. She said it took her a few books to backtrack and explain that.

The final question was about what J. A. Jance reads. She said she reads murder mysteries, but she would tell us about three books she thinks are important.

The Madonnas of Leningrad - WWII, and the Allies headed to Leningrad. Museum workers lived in the museums. The paintings were gone, but they lived there, and even ate library paste to survive. The docents would look at empty frames, and describe what was in each picture. One of the docents was a woman who was responsible for the Madonnas.

Mr. Pip - There was a war of ethnic cleansing in a little island in the South Pacific. It was a war that really happened, but the world didn't really care because it was blacks killing blacks. The Anglos all left, except for one little man. He stayed on, and when the war was over, and the people realized there were no teachers for the school, he said he'd teach. He took over the job, and invited experts in as guest speakers, such as a fisherman to teach the children how to fish, and which fish were good. And, he would read to the kids from Great Expectations. And, when he finished, he would start over. So, there was the teacher reading to the kids about Dickens' England. When the revolutionaries found out, they took the book. So, the teacher and kids tried to reconstruct the story.

Last year, when Jance spoke at Changing Hands Bookstore, they offered her a book. She was too tired to say Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe was her favorite book, so they gave her one she hadn't heard of, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It told how the island of Guernsey was abandoned by the British in World War II, and taken over by the Germans. The people formed a faux literary society to get around the German curfews.

All three of the books deal with how art sustains us in hard times. Jance said, perhaps that's why her book sales are up 20%. People need a place to go that doesn't deal with politics or the economy. So, it's no surprise.

Beguile the time is the ancient charge of the storyteller. J. A. Jance is honored to do that.

J. A. Jance's website is www.JAJance.com.

Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance. HarperCollins, ©2009. ISBN 9780061239229 (hardcover), 352p.

Lesa Holstine and J. A. Jance Photo by Sarah Herlache





lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

VIDEO TO BE POSTED LATER SAT EVENING

Ed Sharpe - Publisher Glendale Daily Planet / KKAT-IPTV and  World Renowned 
Mystery Author J.A. Jance at the Foothills Branch of the Glendale Public Library

Tim Myers Appears for Authors @ The Teague

( 3 PM on Wednesday, Aug. 28 )   Tim Myers, on tour to promote his new mystery, A Slice of Murder, written under the name of Chris Cavender for Kensington Publishing, appeared at the Velma Teague Library. His appearance opened with a short biographical sketch.

Tim Myers is an Agatha Award nominated author who has published nineteen novels and has appeared on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association national bestseller’s list ten times, ranking as high as #2. Under the name Tim Myers, he writes the Lighthouse Inn mysteries, the Candlemaking mysteries, and the Soapmaking mysteries, as Elizabeth Bright the Cardmaking mysteries, and as Melissa Glazer the Clay and Crime mysteries. One of Tim’s books was chosen by The Mystery Guild as an Editor’s Choice, and was also named one of their Ten Most Wanted books. There have been ten large print editions of Myers’ books as well. In addition, he has published over 80 mystery short stories, and has been nominated for three Derringer awards for excellence in short mystery fiction. His short fiction has appeared in the anthologies The Haunted Hour, Mystery Writers of America’s A Hot and Sultry Night for Crime, and Murder Most Crafty. He is currently writing the pizza shop mysteries for Kensington as Chris Cavender, and has eight more books under contract with Kensington, St. Martin’s, and Penguin/Berkley Prime Crime.

Tim's presentation was quite funny at times. He said he got started as a writer because Dr. Seuss was driving him crazy. He never intended to become a stay-at-home dad, but, eighteen years ago, when his daughter was born, and he held her in his arms, he told his wife he wanted to be a stay-at-home dad. But, at that time in the South (North Carolina), it was unusual for a man to do that. He became alienated from all the groups he had belonged to, and most mothers didn't welcome him. Intellectually, it isn't very stimulating staying home to take care of a baby. So he decided to try to write. And, it was logical for him to try mysteries because he loves to read mysteries. At the age of nine, he discovered Agatha Christie. He surprised his father when he asked for a complete collection of Christie at that age. His father wasn't a mystery reader, and probably only read one of Myers' books before he died.

Myers said he tried to write, and his first efforts were derivative. But, one of his early short stories was accepted by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for its Department of First Stories. So, he thought he had it made. But, his next 123 submissions were rejected. Some stories were rejected multiple times. Tim told his wife when he hit 100 rejections, he'd be done. Then, when he passed 100, he told her he'd quit at 200 rejections.

Tim worked on short stories while his daughter napped. He and his wife had agreed he would go back to work when their daughter entered kindergarten. But, at that point, he told her he had the bug, and he would like to write. So, she told him to give it a year, and try to write a book. He wrote a couple that weren't any good. Every fall they would have "The Conversation" about what Tim would do for the rest of his life. His wife never lost faith in him.

One day, Myers thought about the fact that he loved lighthouses and mountains, so maybe he'd try to write a story about a lighthouse in the mountains. He drove to the Outer Banks, and took 200 pictures. He mentioned that North Carolina should really be two states because the Scots settled the western part of the state, and the English settled the east. Myers' family, who were Scots, were there for many generations. In writing the story, he wanted to put a lighthouse in the mountains, and had to come up with a reason for it. So, his lead character's great-great-grandfather had built the lighthouse for his wife, and she died in childbirth three days before the lighthouse was finished. Tim's wife read the book, and was upset when she reached that point, and hasn't read another one of his books.

Myers said, unlike his previous attempts, when he wrote this book, everything made sense. His characters started to behave logically. He was proud of the book. He sent it to his agent. Two weeks later, she called, and said she loved the book, but he had to take the lighthouse out of the mountains, saying he couldn't do that, and he would have to make a change. He said, you're right. I do have to make a change. If you don't understand the story, you're fired. So, he sent it to another agent, who accepted it. Myers wrote five of the lighthouse mysteries.

Craft mysteries were just starting to be published, and his agent asked if he could do any crafts. He said, sure, he did crafts. He was a stay-at-home dad. So, when asked if he could do candlemaking, he said sure. He admitted to the us that he never had, but he writes fiction, so people shouldn't believe everything he says. Myers went to a craft store and bought four kits and six books about candlemaking, and stayed up until 3 AM. He said he wasn't very good at it, so he couldn't pretend to be a professional. Tim tried to decide why someone who making candles who wasn't proficient, and realized if they inherited a business because a relative died it would work. Mystery = someone dies, so Harrison Black inherited At Wick's End candle shop from his great aunt. Tim killed her early in the book, At Wick's End.

Someone at NAL contacted Tim's agent, and said she loved Tim Myers' books, and did the agent know anyone who wrote like him for a crafting mystery. Tim said he's always made cards with his daughter, and he suggested card-making. But, the publisher wanted a female author because the audience for crafting mysteries tend to be female. Myers said he knows that 90% of his readers are female, and he said he could do it. The publisher was doubtful, but gave him a chance saying she wanted fifteen pages, written in first person, in a female voice. She didn't think he could do it. He came up with Jennifer Shane as the character, a spunky, young woman, not afraid to make mistakes. He likes Jennifer, and the publisher liked the synopsis, so wanted thirty to forty more pages. Tim said he heard Jennifer's voice in his head. They liked the material at NAL, but wanted him to use a female pen name. He hesitated since he's always said, if he gets arrested, he wants his name spelled right, Myers, with only one e. He likes to go into bookstores and see his name spelled right, and have former girlfriends from high school see his name on book covers. But, he decided his name on the cover wasn't as import as getting the books published. Those books were published under the name Elizabeth Bright. The Elizabeth was after his late friend, Elizabeth Daniels Squire. And, he went to a bookstore, trying to pick a last name. Tim said there was nothing between Lilian Jackson Braun and Rita Mae Brown, so he came up with Bright. He thought that was a good place to be in the alphabet. His degree is in marketing, and he said his business background has been invaluable in his writing career.

According to Myers, in publishing cozy mysteries, almost every time an author loses an editor, the next editor dumps him. He said his first three series had characters who were single, without many family connections or love interests. So, for his next series, he wanted to give his character a big family. Tim's wife is from a large family, so he observes their holidays and times together. Ben Perkins is the oldest of six who work in a soap factory. He's the troubleshooter of the family in books with titles such as Dead Men Don't Lye and A Pour Way to Die. But the editor of his soapmaking series left, and the new editor wanted a new series written under a new name. Myers, who had been in Vermont for a few hours, set a pottery series in that state, picked the name Melissa Glazer, and named his character Carolyn after author Carolyn Hart.

Tim said he had done lots of craft mysteries, and wanted to write a food one. He watched the Food Network, and decided a pizza place would  be great. A Slice of Murder, written as Chris Cavender, features Eleanor Swift, a widow who is fiercely independent. Tim, who has been married for twenty-eight years, and dated his wife for seven years before that, gave Eleanor that type of relationship. In contrast, he gave her a sister, Maddy, who is often-married, and often divorced. She's spunky, has tried all of the crafts that Myers' wrote about, and keeps Eleanor from taking herself seriously.

All of Myers' books are set in small towns based on towns near where he lives in North Carolina. He goes to the towns, takes pictures, draws maps, and moves shops and buildings around. In one town, he saw a group of shops, and one was painted a bright blue. He said that had to be the pizza shop, so he put the pizzeria in a blue building, and called it A Slice of Delight because that's what pizza is to him, a slice of delight.

Tim said he has a contract with St. Martin's, and all he can say is that it will be a food-related mystery that comes out sometime in the next fifty years. Then Berkley asked him to do a series. According to Myers, it's lots of work to do multiple series, so he wasn't sure he wanted to do it. But, Berkley bought his next idea, based on the first draft. So, he'll be doing another series for them as well.

Some reviewers have commented about the many levels in some of his books, including A Slice of Murder. Tim finds that funny because he said he makes up the stories as he goes along. He wants to see what

Garry Disher's Appearance for Authors @ The Teague

Blood Moon by Garry Disher

Garry Disher's Blood Moon is worth reading for a number of reasons. How many crime novels have you read lately set in Australia? How many of them have a well-developed cast of police in a modern police procedural? How many of those books are written by the winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Australian Crime Novel?

Even if you haven't read the four novels that preceded Blood Moon in the series, you can pick the storyline up easily. It doesn't take long to like Detective Inspector Hal Challis. He and Sergeant Ellen Destry just started living together. Since he's her boss, they are not yet sure what problems they'll face.

But, for the police department in Waterloo, on the Peninsula, southeast of Melbourne, the first problem they face is Schoolies Week. It's similar to our spring break, but students who just finished their twelfth year exams take off to the coastal communities to party. As students converge, the force tries to help with all of the typical crimes associated with students and townspeople, including date rape.

At the same time, they have a case that catches the attention of the press and politicians when the chaplain at a prestigious school is found beaten, in a coma, on his front lawn. The case of a missing woman seems minor, but the small force may find themselves with murder on their hands.

As in all good police procedures, the police deal with a number of crimes at the same time. As Disher tells of those stories, he skillfully develops the characters of different officers. And, he does an excellent job revealing Hal Challis' past and his character, in short glimpses. Challis didn't like attention. "He liked to slip through life unnoticed." And, his thoughts about his work are interesting. "The job promised continued human misery and droning days." Then there's the comment about "Paperwork that swamped his days and gave him a permanent low-level sense of anxiety and aggravation." But, maybe this is the most insightful comment that Hal was a private man whose "Daily work demanded that he uncover people's secrets."

Blood Moon is all about secrets. It's about Ellen Destry's secrets that might shock the reader. Other officers have secrets that are revealed in the course of the book. Then there are all the little secrets in people's lives that lead to violence. It's a powerful book about secrets that come to light under Australia's, and Garry Disher's, Blood Moon.



Blood Moon by Garry Disher. Soho Press, ©2009. ISBN 9781569475638 (hardcover), 386p.


lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

"Libraries are the best value you can get for your tax dollars." - Lorna Barrett, Bookmarked for Death

Annette Mahon for Authors@The Teague

It was a pleasure to host Annette Mahon for Authors @ The Teague. As an author, she spoke about her romances and mysteries. As a native of Hilo, Hawaii, she spoke of love for the island, although she now lives in Arizona. And, as a quilter, who uses her quilts in her books, she brought gorgeous quilts to discuss in conjunction with her books.

The audience was very impressed with Annette's Phantom of the Opera quilt. It's autographed by the cast members who appeared here at Gammage Auditorium, and the actor who signed as the Phantom, was playing the Phantom when Mahon saw it in NYC.



Mahon said she always brings quilts along to her talks because she is "all about them". Two recent romances, Dolphin Dreams, and Holiday Dreams, are the first two in "The Matchmaker Quilt Trilogy." She said she's way behind in the third book due to personal reasons. But, this is a series about three sisters that their mother called her gems. She named them Jade, Momi (Hawaiian for Pearl), and Ruby. An old Hawaiian quilt has been handed down in the family, through the female line. This is the first time the family has had three sisters in the family. When the first girl gets the quilt, she meets her true love.

Above the Rainbow, Mahon's first romance, featured a woman in a quilt shop. An architect was to renovate the building, and, naturally the tenants worry. So, this one was set up with conflict between the two main characters. Three books later, that woman's cousin took over the quilt shop, in Chase Your Dreams. When Mahon wrote that book, she described material used for a quilt. She was surprised to find material that met her description, so she made a quilt from it.



Annette Mahon's romances deal with Hawaiian culture. Her characters put themselves into their quilts, their spirit. And, then the Hawaiian ancestors come back and visit in dreams, giving them advice. The sisters in the Matchmaker Quilt series dream when the sleep under the heritage quilt made by their great-grandmother. In Dolphin Dreams, a dolphin is the aumakua, the family totem, and the main character dreams about them. Annette said she tries to write about the real Hawaii. The women are local, so they are multicultural. The heroes vary as to ethnicity.

The six books in Mahon's Secret Romance series all have pink covers. Those books are set in Malino, a fictional small town in Hawaii. Mahon said she likes that town, and she may return to it. Her characters include a wedding consultant, a waitress, a bank teller and a beautician. In the most recent book in the series, The Secret Correspondence, the heroine works in a care center, and secretly corresponds with the son of the one of the patients.

Annette Mahon writes and publishes with Avalon. She said all of her books are still in print, an advantage when writing for smaller publishers. The books are available for a long time. Avalon publishes for romances, traditional mysteries and westerns for the library market.

According to Mahon, she always liked romances and mysteries. She wanted to write a mystery about older ladies who quilted together, but the first book just went nowhere for her. Then, she came up with Maggie Brown, the driving force behind the quilt group. In the first mystery, A Phantom Death, an actor who grew up in the Phoenix area is found dead in the desert, and he was appearing in Phantom of the Opera. Maggie knew the young man, whose body was found near her former house. She now lives in Old Town Scottsdale.

Since so many mysteries include recipes, Mahon said she thought she'd include quilt blocks in her mysteries. Then, when she was working on it, Phantom of the Opera came to Gammage Auditorium in Tempe. So, Mahon stood at the stage door, and eventually had the cast sign the blocks for her quilt.



In Ominous Death, one of the members of the quilt group is in a care home. She knows how the "Angel of Death" has killed people in care homes, and she's convinced she's going to die. When someone else dies, she's a suspect, and the members of the St. Rose Quilting Bee have to prove that one of their own is not the killer. Annette said she enjoys making quilts to go with the books, including the lap quilt she made for this one, because lap quilts are perfect for a care center in a cozy mystery.



The third book in this series, Bits and Pieces, is scheduled for publication in January 2010. It's based on The Robert William Fisher case in Scottsdale, in which a woman and her children were killed when the house exploded, and the husband is the suspect, a fugitive. In this mystery, one of the members of the quilt group sees the husband in Big Mart, and follows him when he leaves the story.

When Annette was asked about her background, she said she was born and raised in Hawaii, and is third generation. She's from Hilo. When she went to Left Coast Crime in March, held on the Big Island, she decided she wanted to bring the quilters to the island. She'd like to set her next mystery there, and send the quilters to a quilt camp. She's working on how to bring her quilters to Hawaii because she has problems with taking the group. Do spouses go? Is it just the church quilt group, or other people from the church?

Annette said she went to Syracuse, New York to college. She went to library school, and she worked in public libraries. But, like so many women, she couldn't get a job in Hawaii. So, she got a job in New York, then met and married her husband. She said there are a lot of Hawaiians in the Valley, over 200 of them in a club. They hold the Aloha Festival in March in Tempe Town Lake, and tens of thousands of people attend.

When she was asked how she got started, Annette said she was always a big reader. When her husband met some of her classmates, he asked them what they remembered about her, and they said Annette always had a book. She said she loved the Beatles song, "Paperback Writer," and that was her pie in the sky dream, to have books in paperback. And her mysteries have come out in paperback.

Annette said she didn't start writing early. She went to parochial school, and had self-esteem issues. She started writing in her 40s, when her third daughter was born. She wanted to write romantic suspense in the heyday of romance, but her first book was only one third of the length it should be, and it will never see the light of day. Then she joined Romance Writers of America. She just never had a good idea for a romantic suspense novel, although she likes to read them.

She attended conferences, and had been writing partials, a synopsis and three chapters. Someone finally told her she needed to write the entire book. So, for her first book, she followed the advice, write what you know. She wrote a romance set in Hawaii, in a quilt shop. It sold, and then the editor wanted to know what else she had. The only thing she was working on was also set there, and she didn't think they'd want a second novel set in Hawaii, but she was wrong. They were looking for multicultural books set in Hawaii. In answer to a question, she said she'd never had an agent. According to Mahon, you don't need an agent for romance. She said you do for mysteries, but she's been trying, and she can't get one. It's harder to get an agent than to sell a book. She said you don't need an agent for the type of romances published by Avalon. They do romance, traditional mystery and westerns. At one time, they did career romances. Word count for Avalon is 50,000-70,000, with the mysteries and historical romances on the longer end of the scale.

Annette said she met her editor at a conference, and sent it the manuscript at her request. Then, she didn't hear, and when she contacted her, it turned out they had lost it. Mahon sent it in again, and they bought it. She said she doesn't make a lot of money; it barely covers expenses. And, if she goes to conferences, she goes in the hole. But, she always wanted to write.

Annette Mahon ended her program by saying in her "older years", she knows she's had a wonderful life. She answered a questionnaire from high school, "What did you want to do in high school? Did you accomplish it?" She wanted to graduate from college, have a family, and write. She's done all three, and Annette Mahon has sixteen books to her credit.

Hawaii, quilts, mysteries and romance. With Annette Mahon as the speaker, it was a successful Authors @ The Teague program.


lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

"Libraries are the best value you can get for your tax dollars." - Lorna Barrett, Bookmarked for Death

Valley of the Lost by Vicki Delany

There are some outstanding traditional mysteries coming out of Canada. Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mysteries immediately come to mind. Although I missed Vicki Delany's debut novel, In the Shadow of the Glacier, after reading Valley of the Lost, I'm willing to put her up there with the other Canadian authors who write intriguing police novels.

When Lucky Smith found a dead woman in the bushes near the Trafalgar Woman's Support Center, the former hippie brought home the baby that was beside her. Lucky's daughter, Molly, wasn't happy because as a police constable on probation, she needed her sleep. But, despite the baby that cried all night, Molly willingly teamed up with Sergeant John Winters to try to find the woman's killer. But, Ashley's past isn't easy to track down. No one knows her last name; she seemed to be off heroin, but died of an overdose. Is it just one more death to be attributed to the current rash of drug crimes in Trafalgar?

While Winters struggles with the case, his wife, Eliza, is struggling with her own issues. As a high-profile model, she's in demand to act as a spokesperson for a resort development that is tearing apart the community. And, since they only moved to Trafalgar after Winters left a job as a homicide cop in Vancouver, she'd like to fit into the community.

Delany's mystery combines the best of traditional mysteries with my beloved police procedurals. There is a focus on the investigation, but the author doesn't neglect the other people involved, Molly's parents, Winters' wife, a local newspaper reporter, Ashley's former roommate. Anyone could be connected when the police don't know who the victim is. Winters is very frustrated when he says, "A murder investigation starts with the victim....Who hated/feared/loved/had an accident with/even a chance encounter with the victim so that he or she ended up killing her? It all flows from there."

And, Vicki Delany successfully brings all of that flow together in a fascinating mystery, Valley of the Lost. Delany is an author to watch.

Vicki Delany's address is www.vickidelany.com

Valley of the Lost by Vicki Delany. Poisoned Pen Press, ©2009. ISBN 9781590585955 (hardcover), 312p.

lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com
Twitter @LesaHolstine

"Libraries are the best value you can get for your tax dollars." - Lorna Barrett, Bookmarked for Death

Cara Black Appears for Authors @ The Teague

Cara Black appeared at the Velma Teague Library to discuss her mystery books, the Aimée Leduc Investigation series. She introduced Aimée as half American and half French. She's the owner of a computer security firm, with her partner René, who is a dwarf. There is a DeLuc Detective agency in Paris, so Black reversed the name. Aimée inherited the business from her father. She rides a scooter, and likes bad boys.

Like Jacqueline Winspear when she appeared for Authors @ The Teague, Black referred to Stephen King's book, On Writing, when she talked about her latest mystery, Murder in the Latin Quarter. She said King talks about writers, where they get their ideas, and how it all comes together. She said she thinks of the process as rocks, several of them. First, you hear about an idea, and then something comes together. Rocks need to ignite and fuse together. That's how the ideas come together for a book.

Black's editor provided the first rock or idea for the latest book. She said Aimée Leduc has never had a case on the Left Bank, so maybe she should cross the river in this one. Cara rode her bike up and down a boulevard, but each area she saw was too different to provide one setting. Paris is divided into 20 districts.

The second rock came from a friend in Paris who had a daughter in high school. The students there met urban explorers who went in the underground tunnels in Paris. They explored them, and partied. Cara asked if she could go down in the tunnels. So, they received permission to go underground beneath the high school.

The third rock came from a friend, a Commissaire, a high-ranking inspector in Paris. Cara takes him to dinner when she goes to Paris, plies him with drinks, and asks what he is working on. She once asked him why he talks to her, and he said because he wants her to get it right. In 2007, he said he had just come back from his final testimony in England, where he spent five hours testifying in English. When she questioned for what, he said, oh, I guess I didn't tell you. He was in charge of the Princess Diana investigation, and this was the final inquiry in London. When asked, he said their findings were that the chauffeur was high on alcohol and drugs, and blood levels showed that.

Black decided then to set her story, Murder in the Latin Quarter, in September 2007, two weeks after the car crash, at a time when the world was still watching. The Aimée Leduc series is set in the mid-90s. And, people don't remember what was happening at that time.

In setting the book in the Latin Quarter, Black picked one of the oldest parts of Paris. The Gauls and Romans were there, and there is still a great deal of Roman influence left in Paris. There was a Roman road running through it. Black asked a man what the scallop shell on a building meant, and he said it was part of the old pilgrimage route to Spain. The Sorbonne is in the Latin Quarter. It was the first university, and everyone from Europe came there. They spoke Latin at the Sorbonne, hence the name, the Latin Quarter. The Grandes écoles were here. In order to get in, students must take competitive written and oral exams. The graduates became part of the old boys' network, the power base of France. Aimée would have hit against that wall.

After reading from Murder in the Latin Quarter, Black took questions. The first one was about her love of Paris. She said she grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and attended a French Catholic Girls' School. Her father was a Francophile, who liked art, and loved good food and wine. While Cara was in high school, she read a book by Romain Gary, the French author who won the Prix Goncourt twice. He was married to the actress Jean Seberg. Cara wrote a fan letter to Gary, and when she received a thank you note back, with his address in Paris on the back, she took it as a personal invitation to visit. When she was backpacking in Europe at 18 or 19, she went to Paris, and decided to go see Mr. Gary. She found the address, a beautiful building, and went up an elaborate staircase. When a man opened the door, she told him she had written a letter, and he answered. He told her just a minute, and slammed the door. When he reopened it, he said, how about coffee. They went down the street to a cafe, where there was an espresso and a cigar waiting for him. When asked, what about her, Gary replied, she'll have the same. So she had her first espresso and her first cigar, and tried to act sophisticated without getting sick.

When Black went back to Paris in the 1980s, a friend took her to the Marais, and showed her where her mother lived as a hidden Jewish girl during the Second World War. She wore the yellow star, and hoped she would be reunited with her family, but after the war, she found her family had died in Auschwitz. In the 90s, Cara went back to France, and had one night in Paris and went back to the Marais. This story led to the first Aimée Leduc Investigation, Murder in the Marais. Her friend's story was one of the rocks that led to the book. In addition, Black was reading P.D. James. She appreciated the psychological depth and social context of the books. She appreciated An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, the book that introduced Cordelia Gray, an investigator. She wanted to do something similar in her first book. She was asked if she knew of any French women detectives, and she said in 1994 there were three women who owned their own detective agencies in Paris, and Black met them all.

She was asked to go back and discuss the tunnels and catacombs under Paris. She said the catacombs had lots of piles of skulls and bones. She said you have to go deep under ground, and it's very tiring. The city is built on limestone, that was dug out to for buildings, and the bones were moved to the limestone pits. There are different levels under Paris; for the sewers, catacombs, metro level, and more.

Cara said her next book is done, and was sent to the editor yesterday. It takes place a month after Murder in the Latin Quarter, in October, 1997. It's called Murder in the Palais Royal. She said she didn't take that cover photo, but it's a great one, showing the arcade with its gilded fence. The fence is gold-tipped. And, it has a woman running in high heels. Cara Black said she could just see her character, Aimée Leduc.


Cara Black's website is at

Jacqueline Winspear & Rhys Bowen at Velma Teague Library

(photo: Rhys Bowen & Jacqueline Winspear)

Jacqueline Winspear, author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries, was our guest for Authors @ The Teague on Tuesday, Feb. 24. We were lucky that Rhys Bowen picked her up at the airport, so the author of the Molly Murphy, Lady Georgiana (Georgie), and Evan Evans mysteries was able to speak to our audience as well.

Jacqueline started the program by saying since she writes mysteries, she always has to decide what she should say, and not say, so she doesn't reveal too much. She said maybe it's obvious that the reader will encounter madness in her new book,
Among the Mad.

So, in order to provide the background to her book, she turned to Stephen King's book, On Writing, to find out what to say. He said when inspiration comes to an author, it comes from two ideas coming together.

So, Winspear's life provided the inspiration for the background of Among the Mad. She said there were three main sparks. The first came at the age of sixteen, when she changed schools to take her A levels, specialized exams in England. While she attended that school, from 16 to 18, the students were required to do community service on Wednesday afternoon. She chose the social services group. On Wednesdays, she would visit what, at that time, was called the Mental Hospital. At the time it was built in the 1800s, it was known as a lunatic asylum. It's what we would now refer to as a Psychiatric Care Facility. The walls were cement, with glass on top, to discourage people from going over the top. When Jacqueline visited, the gates were open, but at one time they were kept closed to keep patients in, and others out. The building was typical of its time, a Gothic, grey granite building, with a bell tower, and bars on the windows. There was no doubt it was once a lunatic asylum.

Jacqueline's job was to sit and offer companionship. She would do puzzles with the patients, read to them or listen to them read, write letters, and just provide companionship. She started to wonder, even then, where the dividing line was that got some people in, and kept others out. She isn't sure where the idea came from. But, there was one man, in his forties or fifties, who was very intelligent. She had eye surgery then, and he would question her as to whether or not they did this procedure or that test. So she mentioned to a nurse that he seemed so smart. He was a renowned physician, and a murderer. He had been found guilty of justifiable homicide because he killed someone who had broken in, but he went mad after the killing.

There were also three women in their eighties. Since this was about 1971, they had been born in the late 1800s. And, they always seemed just fine to Jacqueline. When she mentioned that to a nurse, she was told they were fine, but they all had children out of wedlock, and in the early twentieth century, those women were institutionalized, and then it reached the point where they could not live outside an institution.

The next event that sparked Winspear's imagination occurred at the end of the 70s or the early 80s. She had a job in London, where Maisie Dobbs' office is now located, that allowed her flexibility to come and go. She used to take lunch in Regent Square where there was a bandstand, and she could listen to the band play music. But, those were years of on-going domestic terrorism. And, one day the IRA set off bombs in eight places in London. One bomb went off under that Regent Square bandstand, killing band members, families, and children. Jacqueline Winspear was on the way to the park, and heard it. She remembers hearing the bomb, and it didn't sound like you think it does. It sounded like a sharp, loud crack. Then there was silence afterward. For a teeny split second, it felt as if humanity was never going to breathe again. There was that silence, and then the sirens. It was a time when people had to be vigilant for themselves, and take responsibility for their own security if you were working in London.

Winspear's third spark was the memories of her grandfather. In 1916, he was in the Battle of the Somme. He came back shell-shocked, and he had been gassed. For the rest of his life, he had a sensitivity to sound. He was emotionally vulnerable. It was a hallmark of young men who were shell-shocked that their mind went from the sound; the percussion of battle was too much.

Jacqueline's grandfather was registered as wounded because he was actually wounded, so he received a pension as an old soldier. By 1915, there were cases of shell-shocked soldiers who couldn't get treatment from neurologists or doctors fast enough. The government was registering the wounded soldiers for pensions, but there were so many that they would not register the mentally wounded as wounded if they were only shell-shocked. Instead, they were sent home to families who often couldn't deal with them, and ended up putting them in asylums. Jacqueline has great memories of her grandfather.

Winspear said when she writes mysteries, Maisie Dobbs is always the mystery. She puts her in situations, and she has to react and change. She has love and lost, gone to war, and has a career.

She went on to read an excerpt from Among the Mad. In the scene, Maisie and her assistant, Billy Beale, had just witnessed a man take his own life. Then, the shopkeepers set out chairs, and made tea for people, because a good cup of tea got the British through everything. After reading, she introduced author Rhys Bowen.

Rhys Bowen said she was really there to act as chauffeur for Jacqueline. But, the books by the two authors parallel each other. March 17  is release date for the eighth Molly Murphy mystery, In a Gilded Cage. Molly is a private investigator at the beginning of the 20th century who came from Ireland to New York. The previous
Molly Murphy mystery is coming out in March in paperback. Tell Me, Pretty Maiden ends in an insane asylum. A girl had been committed against her will, and Molly wants to get her out. It was a time in which men would sometimes commit their wives, if they were interested in another woman. And the concept of psychiatry didn't exist. To treat insanity, they often introduced highly infectious diseases to patients. Sometimes typhoid would induce a fever, and its affect would change the brain. And, sometimes the patient didn't recover.

Bowen said Molly needed a story that was quite as heavy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the role of women was changing. In a Gilded Cage begins with a suffragists march of Vassar graduates. They suffered from verbal abuse, and had mud thrown at them. Bowen said she traces this to a group of Vassar graduates. Her spark was a visit to an eighty-year-old woman who had a book about Vassar graduates and their travels. These women had great hopes they could do anything.

Those that married and shrank to fit their husband's vision of their role lived In a Gilded Cage. In contrast there is a young woman working for a pharmacist, who hopes to be a pharmacist some day. The book discusses the difference in expectations, and what happens.

This role is very important to Molly's life. Molly is considering marrying her longtime boyfriend, Daniel Sullivan. But his expectations are that she'll give up her work. Is that what she wants?

When the two authors took questions, I mentioned that the atmosphere in London during that time, with a bad economy, soldiers returning, people out of work, reminded me of our current situation. Jacqueline Winspear quoted James Joyce as saying, "History is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake." She said photographers were not allowed to take pictures of the caskets brought home from Iraq. She said England also tried to keep from the people the human cost of war. The economic depression mirrored the collective depression. The people celebrated the end of the war, and then a few days later, they realized their boys were never coming home. The men of entire factories, streets and towns, such as Acton, were wiped out in the First World War. Eighty to ninety percent of some towns were killed at the Somme, many from Pals Regiments.

In 1914, lots of men joined up because it was patriotic. By 1915, when they realized what war was about, they thought maybe they wouldn't join up. So, the British government encouraged Pals Regiments. Join up with your pals from school, or factory, or street, or whole towns. However, when entire neighborhoods were wiped out, the country couldn't hide the losses. Now, the government no longer allows too many people from one region to be in the same unit. The First World War left whole gaping holes in communities. That war was a collective ache for the country.

Rhys Bowen went on to talk about the large loss of life because the generals fought by sending men over the top, and lost 5000 men to gain a short distance. Just as in Iraq, the background was missing. The generals looked at the map, and never saw the the actual terrain. They sent in the cavalry, and there was fifteen feet of mud. Men and horses drowned. And, when messages were sent saying they can't advance because of the mud, the generals couldn't understand. They made the mistake of planning a war based on the most recent one England fought, with cavalry charges. They should have looked at the American Civil War to see the rise of the machine gun.

Jacqueline Winspear answered a question, saying she was from England, and came to California in her early 30s, planning to take a vacation of three or four months. She had a brother there. But, there was a company there that had broken off from the firm she worked for, and they offered her a job. So, she stayed in California.

It was the perfect ending to answer a question about the name Maisie Dobbs. Winspear said the idea for the books came to her when she was driving along. She just knew her character's name was Maisie Dobbs. She's an everywoman. She's a woman of her generation, the first generation to go to war in modern times.

Jacqueline Winspear's website is www.jacquelinewinspear.com

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear. Henry Holt and Company, ©2009. ISBN 9780805082166 (hardcover), 320p.

Rhys Bowen's website is www.rhysbowen.com

Rhys Bowen blogs at www.jungleredwriters.com

Tell Me, Pretty Woman by Rhys Bowen. St. Martin's Press, 2009, ISBN 9780312943752 (paperback), 336p.

In a Gilded Cage by Rhys Bowen. St. Martin's Minotaur, ©2009. ISBN 9780312385347 (hardcover), 288p.

lholstine@yahoo.com
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com

"Libraries are the best value you can get for your tax dollars." - Lorna Barrett, Bookmarked for Death

Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline Winspear's newest Maisie Dobbs book, Among the Mad, is one of the most thoughtful, timely mysteries you will read this year, even though the main action is set in one short week in December, 1931. And, it's scary.

On Christmas Eve, Maisie Dobbs, Psychologist and Investigator, is running errands with her assistant, Billy Beale, when she notices a man who appears to be homeless. As she turns around to give him money, he blows himself up. Detective Inspector Richard Stratton of Scotland Yard arrives at the scene, and collects Maisie and Billy as witnesses. When the government receives threatening letters, Scotland Yard calls on Maisie to work on the case, since her name was mentioned in the letter, and there is a possibility of connection to the suicide.

Dobbs, herself a veteran of the war, recognizes the despair in the letter. The writer wants the government to alleviate the suffering of the unemployed, or threatens more than one suicide. She, herself, knows that London can be "a desperate place," with people out of work, returning vets with no jobs, mentally scarred men and women trying to cope with the aftereffects of war. However, even as the threats and dangers escalate, Maisie knows it's like looking for a needle in a haystack to look for one man who is mentally scarred, out of a nation of hundreds of thousands of people who are wounded.

In one short week, Maisie and Scotland Yard face a human time bomb. Winspear allows the reader to feel Maisie's mounting fear and anxiety, along with the deteriorating condition of the author of those threats.

It is a post-war England, suffering from a poor economy, where returning vets suffer from homelessness, shell-shock, and desperation. Winspear uses Maisie and her best friend, Priscilla, as well as the tragic story of Billy Beale's wife, to show the raw emotions of everyone in the country, the fear, and, at times, lack of hope in the future.

Winspear quietly ratchets up the tension in the novel until Maisie Dobbs faces a killer, and her own turmoil, on New Year's Eve. Among the Mad is a thought-provoking, masterful novel.

Jacqueline Winspear's website is

2008 Agatha Award Nominees

Mystery Author Rosemary Harris at Velma Teague Library

Leighton Gage's Return to Velma Teague

Leighton Gage was one of the first authors to appear at the Velma Teague Library for the Authors @ The Teague series, when he spoke last January about his first Mario Silva mystery, Blood of the Wicked. On February 8, he returned to talk about Brazil, the setting of his books, and the second title, Buried Strangers.

Gage started the program by saying if you stood on the upper floor of an office building in São Paulo looking out the window, there would be a smudge in the distance. That smudge is a mountain range, covered by jungle. The jungle is so intense that a small plane went down there in 1956. People knew where it went down, searched for it, and it still took over thirty years to find the plane.

So, if you were a serial killer, and had the typical problem of a serial killer, where do I put the bodies, you couldn't pick a better place than that jungle. In Buried Strangers, the second book in the Mario Silva series, bodies are found in the jungle, in the Serra de Cantareira.

Blood of the Wicked, the first book in the series, deals with land wars, that are still going on in Brazil. It also deals with Liberation theology. Gage said very few people outside of Brazil know about these issues, so his intention is to entertain and inform.

He commented that facts about Brazil are not well known in the United States. It's a country larger than the continental U.S. It has 185 million people, and the eighth largest economy in the world. It's a very rich country with large numbers of poor people. It's also the fourth most corrupt country in the world, following two African countries and Guatemala, all much smaller than Brazil. The corruption has invaded the police and the judicial system. No one is arrested for 70% of the crimes. Of the 30% prosecuted, only 1 in 10 ever serve time. It's a country of violent crime. Fifty thousand people are murdered there per year.

The man who told Gage about the explosion of murders is one of two cops in São Paulo who are the basis for the cops in the books. Gage's books have three main characters; Mario Silva, the old wise fox, his nephew, Hector Costa, and Silva's sidekick, Amaldo Nunes. Gage made them Federal police so they can move around the country, and be involved in different types of crimes. Blood of the Wicked is set in the countryside. Buried Strangers is set in Brazil's largest city, São Paulo, and the third book, Dying Gasp, will be set in the Amazon region.

Dying Gasp will be out from Soho Press next January. That book deals with the problem of prostitution of young children. Europeans take sex tours to Brazil's northern cities to have sex with young girls. There are tours from Germany and Holland. Thailand used to be the center of sex tourism, but, now it's northern Brazil.

The Federal police is the force that police the ordinary police of the country. A few years ago, there were 126 police arrested for corruption. An honest cop is hard to find. The Federal police receive decent wages, but the local police can't make a living wage.

Leighton Gage said he tries to bring the cross-cultural nature of Brazil to his books. There is a town there called Americana. It was settled by immigrants from the United States after the Civil War. Pedro II needed people to work in the cotton industry, so he sent agents to the U.S., where they approached southern plantation owners, who moved their entire families because they knew how to work with slaves. There is even a Confederate monument there, listing names of officers and soldiers from the Confederacy.

Along with the North American influence, there is a strong European one. The Germans had a colony there prior to WWII. The SS even sent expeditions to Brazil.

There are presently 600,000 Brazilian Indians, but it's estimated that 40,000 natives live in the jungle, and they've never had contact with civilization.

The biggest influence on Brazil was the slaves. There were 600,000 slaves in the U.S. There were more than 3 million slaves brought into Brazil. They also brought their religion, and that has been intermingled with the Catholic Church. The dance, martial arts, and music all influenced the country.

Upon request, Gage related some of the history of Brazil, beginning with Portuguese expeditions, and the Pope giving Brazil to the Portuguese. In 1500, they started to colonize. The country was originally named The Land of the Holy Cross, but there was a hard wood called brazil that made a fine sawdust. That sawdust made a pigment that added red color to oil paints, and it was used by Renaissance painters. The vast quantities of wood were sent to Europe for the red pigment, and the country began known as the Land of Brazil (wood), and then, Brazil.

The original capitol was in the north, where most of the slaves worked sugar cane fields. It was called Salvador. But, when John VI of Portugal escaped the continent after Napoleon invaded, he moved the capitol to Rio de Janeiro. He stayed for fifteen years, but returned to Portugal when his older son started agitating to take over the throne there. Once he was gone, his younger son declared the independence of Brazil, and declared himself Emperor.

São Paulo has even a greater mix of people. When slavery was eliminated in the late 1800s, they still needed people to do manual labor. They imported Japanese to do that. São Paulo has the third largest Japanese population in the world, after Tokyo and Osaka. There are also more Lebanese in São Paulo than in all of Lebanon.

Gage said his grandfather, who was a sea captain, said the three most beautiful cities to see by sea are Sidney, Cape Town, and Rio de Janeiro. Leighton agreed, and said, the most beautiful is Rio.

But, Brazil does have a high crime rate. It's the biggest city in the world for armored vehicles. The wealthy move into armed communities, behind high walls, with gates and security. They're safe in there. It's the same in most major cities.

Gage's Chief Inspector Mario Silva mysteries bring the rich history and culture of Brazil to life, so it was appropriate that he end his discussion of Brazil answering questions about the people and the food. He said Brazilians are the nicest people in the world, warm, and they know how to have a good time. Their food reflects their appreciation of their past. Although they are big meat eaters, the national food is a bean dish, that descended from slave food. Cane spirits, made from fresh sugar cane juice is the drink.

It was a treat to welcome Leighton Gage back to Velma Teague. His books, filled with grit and crime, are lessons in Brazilian life.

Leighton Gage's website is www.leightongage.com

Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage. Soho Press, ©2009. ISBN 978-1-56947-514-0 (hardcover), 320p.

Buried Strangers

Leighton Gage successfully takes advantage of an urban legend in his latest Chief Inspector Mario Silva crime novel. Gage's novels highlight all of the dirty politics and gritty life in Brazil, while examining the country's crime and history. And, all of this is done in the framework of Silva's police investigations.

When a dog found a bone in the rain forest outside São Paulo, it led to the discovery of an unmarked cemetery. Mario Silva, Brazil's top cop, was called in because the clandestine cemetery contained thirty-seven corpses, many of them children, and the bodies were buried in family groups. Silva realized, even if his boss didn't, that they might be looking at one of Brazil's all-time great serial killers.

But, in Brazil, nothing is what it seems. Silva and his team work clandestinely, hiding the investigation from his boss. What do all of the bodies have in common, and what is the link to the medical community? One pathologist is afraid to suggest that body parts are missing. When one policeman is blown up, and one of Silva's team disappears, he's determined to bring the case to a successful conclusion.

Silva successfully maneuvers through the corrupt politics and life in Brazil, a country where bribes are a way of life, hundreds of policemen are killed by political groups and criminals, people live in poverty in shantytowns, and medical care can be bought by the highest bidder. Gage's novels are successful because of the character of Silva, a man trying to find justice in a corrupt world. If the police didn't share that dark humor common among those working with life and death, these novels might be too depressing. But, the comic relief allows for alleviation of the tension of the stories.

Buried Strangers, like Blood of the Wicked, allows the reader to follow an intense investigation, knowing Mario Silva will take us safely through the dangers and traps of Brazil.

Leighton Gage's website is

This is not an unbiased book review. I'm a big fan of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mysteries. In the first books, beginning with the award-winning Still Life, she introduced us to Gamache, the Chief Homicide Inspector for the Sûreté in Quebec, and the timeless village of Three Pines. She's taken us through three seasons filled with murder investigations, and a emotionally draining threat hanging over Gamache's head. We were ready for a break, right along with her detective.

A Rule Against Murder takes Gamache and the readers into an Agatha Christie traditional vacation, with the dark overtones that Penny masters. For thirty-four years, Armand and his wife, Reine-Marie, have taken their summer vacation to coincide with their wedding anniversary on Canada Day. This year, as always, they planned their retreat at Manoir Bellechasse, a quiet resort in the woods, with a wonderful chef, a superb maître d', and a beloved owner. They weren't planning on the disruption of the Finney family reunion, or an unusual death.

As in a Christie mystery, Penny's tribute is a story set in an isolated lodge, with a limited group of suspects, family members and retainers, with the detective on the spot. Fortunately, Armand Gamache has the added expertise of his squad, familiar characters to readers. And, two members of the Finney family are familiar, when Three Pines residents, Peter and Clara Morrow, show up late for their reunion.

Penny's story has extra layers that always make her mysteries fascinating. Readers who hungered for more information about Reine-Marie will be pleased with the time spent on Armand's family life. His family is quite a contrast to the divided, unhappy Finneys.

The conversations in Penny's books are always treasures. The owner's comment that there is a rule against murder at the Manoir Bellechasse leads to a telling story. The sculptor, Pelletier, has a provocative comment, that God is a serial killer. And, there's my favorite comment, when Gamache talks about his wife, a librarian. "But you want murderous feelings? Hang around librarians," confided Gamache. "All that silence. Gives them ideas."

Louise Penny is a master of the traditional mystery. Armand Gamache might have been forced to take a busman's holiday, but it was a vacation readers will treasure, in A Rule Against Murder.

Louise Penny's website is www.louisepenny.com

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny. St. Martin's Minotaur, ©2009. ISBN 9780312377021 (hardcover), 336p.

lholstine@yahoo.com

book blog:  http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com

 

Book Launch for Donis Casey at The Poisoned Pen

It was a nice crowd that showed up at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale for the book launch of Donis Casey's The Sky Took Him, the fourth Alafair Tucker mystery. And, few of them knew there would be pies - chocolate pie from a recipe from Casey's new book, and vinegar pie from her next one.

Barbara Peters, bookstore owner, and Casey's editor, held a free-ranging conversation with Casey, while they waited for the audience to gather. They discussed the name of an earlier book, Hornswoggled, and even library budget problems. Peters does a television show for the Scottsdale Library, working for $1 a year, but that was even under discussion for budget cuts. The show was defended to city council, but is still in jeopardy since the entire cable department might be eliminated. Donis then said it's a shame that libraries face budget cuts during times of bad economies, because people turn to their libraries, and library use goes up at times like this.

To start the discussion of The Sky Took Him, Peters mentioned that the book had received a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Donis said she loves this book. She put so much effort into making it smooth, trying not to put in too much information. She had so much information she could have put into the book.

Alafair travels in this book. In the first three books in the series, Alafair lives in Boynton, in eastern Oklahoma. In this one, she takes the train to Enid, OK with her oldest daughter, Martha, and her youngest, Grace. Enid, in the northwestern part of the state, is a whole new world. It's still the Wild West, while the eastern part of the state was very southern. In 1894, Enid opened with a land run. By 1915, the timeframe of this book, it was a well-to-do town. Enid still celebrates Pioneers Day, but in 1915, it was called Founders Day, a celebration of the founding of the town twenty-two years earlier.

The Cherokee Strip was prairie, flat grasslands, owned by the Cherokee, who rented the land to cattle ranchers. The Cherokee finally sold the land to the United States. The strip, and the town, was opened up with a land run. People were allowed to go in ahead of time, and pick out land they would like to own. If they claimed it, they could own 160 sq. acres for a homestead. On, Sept. 16, 1894, at noon, people lined up on the starting line. When the gun was fired, they took off, on foot, horseback, and Conestoga wagon, trying to run to the land, and stake a claim, by driving a stake into the property. Then they would have to live on it for two years. There were some people who snuck in early, and, they were called Sooners. This is the background for The Sky Took Him.

At the beginning of the book, Alafair does her family duty, going to visit her sister whose husband is dying. Something that happened twenty-two years earlier, from the time of the land run, comes back to influence current events. Casey said she used descriptions of the Founders Day parade from the newspaper at the time, the Enid Daily Eagle. She said the descriptions were some of the things she had to leave out. Peters said that's why some authors use afterwords, for stuff they don't want to let go.

Casey said Enid was rich at the time, with cattle, land and an oil boom in the early 1900s. Alafair's niece's husband had sunk money into a wildcat oil well. Casey set it in the field where one of the largest oil strikes came in.

She said oil wells would get gummed up. To clear out the well, they would send a torpedo down, made from nitroglycerin. Men who specialized in this were called shooters. Often, they had one eye, or one hand. They received extra pay, and no one would insure them. Donis thought this would be an interesting way to kill someone. So, she did research, although she said with Homeland Security, she was worried about doing research on nitroglycerin and explosions from home. (She joked and said she did her research on the Tempe Public Library's computers - one more reason to be grateful for libraries.) She found an expert who recommended a book called Is There Nitroglycerin in This?, about explosions.

Barbara Peters mentioned that she was glad to see Alafair get out of town. Donis said when Hornswoggled came out Peters told her to be careful about having all her murders occur in a small town. She needed to avoid the "Cabot Cove syndrome".

Casey told the audience how she started The Sky Took Him. She and her husband went to Enid to visit his sister, and they went to a restaurant called Pastimes Restaurant, converted from an old laundry. On the walls, there were pictures of Enid from 1910. One street scene showed Klein's Department Store. While her husband and sister-in-law bickered over the check, Donis zoned out, and suddenly she could see Alafair and Martha walk into Klein's. She wondered what they were doing in Enid, and why they were shopping. The first scene she wrote was the shopping trip to Klein's.

Barbara Peters commented that Alafair needed a trip, because of the backbreaking work in her life. As the mother of ten, and a rancher's life, her life consisted of hard work, and meals. Casey agreed, saying that she thinks Alafair appreciated the break. When she first saw the guest room at her sister's, she was struck by the luxury and size of the room. But, she started to appreciate it.

An audience member mentioned Alice, one of Alafair's daughters, saying there had been trouble between Alice and her mother because Alice wanted to marry a rich man. Donis said that Alice had seen her mother's hard life, and she didn't want to marry a poor farmer. This caused a rift between the two in Hornswoggled. Casey hinted at a future book, saying Alice's story isn't over.

She also said there are certain themes she carries through all of the books. And, she said Alafair might take another trip, since she had mentioned in this book that her other sister lived in Tempe.

Peters, as her editor, cautioned Casey to watch her timeframe, saying she'd gone from 1908 to 1915 so far, and she didn't want to move too fast. However, after discussion, Casey said she could take the series up to World War II, with an aging Alafair. They agreed that a writer has to continue writing interesting stories that people enjoy.

The discussion ranged back to the work that Alafair did. An early book had a chapter about laundry for twelve people. In another book, Alafair was hanging clothes. They said soap making is coming back, so maybe she could discuss that. Casey mentioned butchering, and food preservation. She said her grandfather used to butcher one hog a year, and they used every bit of the hog. She mentioned future books set during WWI could deal with austerity, since there were meatless Mondays.

It's hard to pick and choose the historical facts to deal with, according to Casey, who said she isn't writing history books. Alafair is only concerned with the news that affects her personally. There's no TV, to bring the world closer. The draft only started in 1917, after the U.S. was in the war. And, one of her sons, Gee Dub, will be 21 then. At first they only took single men, 21-38, then the war expanded so they took anyone they could get. In this book, The Sky Took Him, Alafair and her sister mention the sinking of the Lusitania, and Alafair's German prospective son-in-law.

In many ways, the rural area in the earlier books, and the city of Enid in the present one is almost like having two centuries going on at the same time. Enid was a city, with indoor plumbing, electricity, and refrigeration. Peters said Alafair had to have been changed by the experience. Donis Casey said Martha had been changed by the experiences of Hornswoggled. Martha is a more modern woman than Alafair. She works, and she's interested in Women's Suffrage. A lot of the relationship between Martha and Alafair is similar to that between Donis and her own mother.

When Barbara said she would give extra points to anyone who guessed the ending, she said it's her business to read mysteries, and she had been surprised. Donis said she herself had been surprised by something in the ending.

Peters commented that one of the greatest joys of being an editor is the relationship with authors, and getting to help them. Casey responded that good editors are worth their weight in gold. Barbara said when one of the Poisoned Pen mysteries gets a bad review, she takes it personally. What did she miss? On the other hand, sometimes she edits it so much that she no longer cares.

Peters also said technology is the enemy of the mystery. Cell phones, GPS, and DNA make it difficult to write crime novels. One of the audience members said, on the other hand, it makes historic mysteries more appealing.

When she was asked about Alafair's name, Donis said it was her great-grandmother's name. All of the family names are taken from Donis' family. And, she showed us the cover of The Sky Took Him. The picture of the oil well is an actual well, taken from an Enid Historical Society picture. And, the picture of the girl? Donis Casey.

Donis Casey's website is www.doniscasey.com.

The Sky Took Him by Donis Casey. Poisoned Pen Press, ©2009. ISBN 978-1-59058-571-9 (hardcover), 252p.

lholstine@yahoo.com

book blog:  http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com

"Reach librarians, and you reach the world." Betty Webb

The Sky Took Him

No other mystery author brings the American past to life for me as Donis Casey does. Her new book, The Sky Took Him, is the fourth in the fascinating Alafair Tucker series. Her books are always intriguing, and this one is particularly complicated, but it's what she does with everyday life in Oklahoma in the early twentieth century that continues to draw me back.

When the story opens, Alafair and two of her daughters, her oldest, Martha, and her youngest, Grace, are on the train to Enid, Oklahoma. Alafair's younger sister, Ruth Ann, asked her to come because Ruth Ann's husband, Lester, is dying. When they arrive, they find that Lester is as bad off as everyone said, but there are other family problems. Ruth Ann's son-in-law, Kenneth, has disappeared on a business trip just when his wife, Olivia, and the family, need him the most. Ruth Ann and Olivia are confident he'll be back shortly, but the longer Alafair stays, the more she learns about Kenneth's business problems, and his dealings with a ruthless man in town, the more concerned she grows. And, she and little Grace seem to share some troubling dreams.

As usual, Casey provides mystery readers with a complicated story. But, she also tells the story of life in the early twentieth century. Martha is a modern working woman, proud of her job, and unwilling to give it up for marriage. Casey tells of the changing role of women, the Oklahoma oil fields, and, in this book, the story of the run for land in Oklahoma. It's hard to believe that at the time of the book, 1915, Enid was just celebrating twenty-two years as a city with a Founder's Day Jubilee.

The Sky Took Him has mystery, a little romance, history, recipes, and Founder's Day. The book contains fine details of daily life, and family life, in 1915, as well as the foreshadowing of war. It's hard to believe it's just two weeks in Alafair Tucker's life because The Sky Took Him is so rich in detail. Donis Casey continues to grow as an author of fascinating historical mysteries.

Donis Casey's website is www.doniscasey.com. Casey will be discussing The Sky Took Him at the debut program at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale on Saturday, Jan. 17 at 2 p.m. Hope to see you there!

The Sky Took Him by Donis Casey. Poisoned Pen Press, ©2009. ISBN 978-1-59058-571-9 (hardcover), 252p.

lholstine@yahoo.com 
book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com 

"Reach librarians, and you reach the world." Betty Webb

Ding Dong Dead

Deb Baker writes two mystery series. One is her Yooper series, books set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, featuring Gertie Johnson. It's fun, but I prefer the Gretchen Birch Dolls to Die For series. This doll collecting mystery series is set in Phoenix, and the humor isn't quite as broad. The books are still funny, including Baker's latest one, Ding Dong Dead.

Gretchen is quite hopeful about her developing relationship with Police Detective Matt Albright, but he always seems to be called away at inopportune times. Just as things are getting a little cozy, he's called to a cemetery, and has to take her along. There, they find the body of a woman, who turns out to be an old friend of Gretchen's mother, and the scrawled message, "Die, Dolly, Die".

Gretchen knows she shouldn't get involved, but her aunt, Nina, had read the tarot cards, and only saw danger in her future. She warned her not to continue on her present ways, which meant helping with the new museum for the Phoenix Dollers, or directing their fundraising play. Gretchen scoffs at her eccentric aunt when she insists they should check out the museum for a ghost. But, maybe there is something to Nina's worries. The Birch women are threatened, and they find a body. Gretchen just knows Matt could use a little help on his investigation; help that she, Nina, and Gretchen's mother, Caroline, could provide.

Baker's strength in both series is her characters. Sixty-six-year-old Gertie is a unique character, quite an oddball in Baker's Yooper series. She's also one of Gretchen Birch's aunts, which is makes a connection between the two series. The other aunt, Nina,in this series, is eccentric, with her ability to train miniature dogs, and her obsessions, such as tarot and ghost hunting. Caroline is actually the rational character in the Doll books, a well-known writer and doll restorer. Gretchen is more insecure, and scared, but she was involved with a tragedy earlier in life.

This is one more cozy series, though, in which the main character pokes into her police detective boyfriend's investigation. It's not a book for those who can't suspend disbelief. It's almost a rule in cozies - amateur sleuth dates a cop, and pries, despite the wishes of the police. Like other cozies from Berkley Prime Crime, it has a hobby theme, in this case, doll collecting. And, the books include very interesting facts about dolls.

Ding Dong Dead offers fun characters, a cozy plot, and interesting facts about hobbies. And, Baker does an excellent job describing the Phoenix setting. What more do you want in a cozy?

Deb Baker's website is www.debbakerbooks.com

Ding Dong Dead by Deb Baker. Berkley Prime Crime, ©2008. ISBN 9780425225028 (paperback), 272p.

Jana Bommersbach's Appearance 
at Velma Teague Library

The Velma Teague Library was fortunate to host Jana Bommersbach for the latest Authors @ The Teague program. Bommersbach is an award-winning journalist, and the author of the true crime book, The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd. Now, she has a new true crime book, another one about a Phoenix murder, Bones in the Desert.

Bommersbach began the program by saying people ask her how a fun-loving, happy person like her could write about murders. She said she's fascinated by murders involving women. Her first book, The Trunk Murderess, is her beloved book, the love of her life. But, it came out in 1992, and it took her that long to find another book to write, a story that spoke to her.

Bones in the Desert is the story of Loretta Bowersock, mother of Terri of Terri's Design and Consign. It was reported that Loretta died, then her boyfriend, Taw Benderly, said she disappeared. Loretta went missing, and then Taw killed himself, which was the final insult to the family. He left no note saying where Loretta's body was. It was an insult to everyone who loved Loretta.

This case became famous in Arizona. Terri was well-known, and anyone who knew Terri, knew her mother. People had a real sense of personal connection to them because of their TV commercials. They had a sense they knew someone who had been murdered. People felt grief for Terri, that she did not have a body to bury. There were lots of pieces of this case that upset people.

Bommersbach was in North Dakota with her own parents over Christmas when this crime happened. It was in January, after her return, that she heard Terri on TV talking about her mother missing in the desert. Jana immediately called Terri, and spent an hour talking to her on the phone. Terri was the first person Jana knew in her life who had a parent murdered. Bommersbach asked Terri if she could write about it, and what had been discovered. Terri said, oh you wouldn't believe what they had discovered.

Phoenix Magazine carried Bommersbach's first article about the crime, called "Where Is My Mother?" Thirteen months later, Loretta's body was found. Hundreds of people had searched the desert. Jana was so close to her own mother that this case disturbed her. A family doing rock hounding found Loretta's bones in the desert, and called the police, and waited. The autopsy and teeth revealed the body was Loretta's.

"He Buried My Mother By a Blue Motel" was the second story that ran in Phoenix. Psychics flocked to the story. Dozens of them were interested in helping Terri. Some were well-meaning; some helpful; some not. Terri was grasping for answers. The police said Taw was the suspect. He was dead, so they were satisfied, and walked away from the case. The police went on, and Terri was left on her own.

Psychics said they saw a lot of blue around Loretta. Bommersbach said anyone who knows the Arizona desert knows the desert "wears yellow and purple like school colors." There are different colors, but the only blue in the desert is the sky. When they finally found the body, it was near a hotel on I-8 on the road to San Diego. Jana said there must have been a sale on blue paint that year, because everything around the hotel was blue, including an old truck. Terri's brother was skeptical, saying psychics always pick a primary color. But, two police said one psychic was right on target. A New York agent liked the story, and contacted Bommersbach to see if she would develop it into a book.

Jana Bommersbach said Loretta's case was a classic case of elder abuse, and this was a way to tell the story of elder abuse. Phoenix, and Arizona, are #1 in a lot of bad things. But, they have the first and only shelter devoted to elder abuse in the nation. Doves Shelter was opened by the Area Agency on Aging. Terri operates a small shop with all profits going to Doves. When Bommersbach wrote a column about Doves, she met the local cops assigned to elder abuse. Only Phoenix and San Diego have units assigned to it. She discovered that elder abuse is very long term; it goes on for years, and it could be verbal, physical, emotional or sexual, or a combination. It can go on for years until something crashes, and the victim needs a break.

Loretta discovered the treachery of her boyfriend of eighteen years. She discovered the level of his exploitation. Loretta was professionally dressed that day, but with her shoes off, as so many people are who work at home. She tried to confront Taw and throw him out. They surmise she had a violent, angry response to his treachery because of the type of person she was. Both people are now dead who were involved. There is a thin line between abuse and murder. Taw crossed it when he put a bag around Loretta's head, and strangled her.

Jana Bommersbach's dream is that someone will read Bones in the Desert while barefoot, put on their shoes, and walk out the door. She wants them to read the book, and see there is a way out. Jana said it was a difficult book to write. She prayed for a different ending for it the entire time she wrote the book. Since then, she's heard from famous women in Phoenix who said they were in that situation, and got out. She did a recent signing with Terri, and someone bought 9 copies, saying she had sisters and friends who needed to read it.

Bommersbach said she wrote the book while she was in Brainard, Minnesota. She never spends summers in Arizona. But, two summers ago, in 2007, she found a house on a lake to rent. It was a wonderful summer. Her parents came, and celebrated her father's 85th birthday there. Her brothers both married, and honeymooned there. Jana's dad died the following spring, so she's grateful she had a magnificent summer with her family while she wrote the book. She finds it incongruous that she was writing about a family torn apart, while she had a magnificent summer with hers.

Bones in the Desert is doing extremely well. It was #2 on the list of bestselling crime books. Terri and Jana are trying to get on Oprah. Terri's been on before, as a successful businesswoman who was dyslexic. They're hoping that contact will help. Billie Jean King and Lily Tomlin both read the book. It's been well-received in Arizona. The publisher is printing another 4,000 copies. Jana said she's hoping people are buying and learning from it.

Jana was asked about her background, so she gave us her biography. She was born in Fargo, North Dakota on Dec. 5, 1945. She's a product of North Dakota, and the women's movement. She went to the University of North Dakota, and her first job after graduation was in urban Michigan, in Flint. She said she had a lot of growing up to do, and received quite an education living there. She was from a white community, where she didn't know any blacks, and hadn't lived in a city. She won her first national award while in Flint.

Bommersbach went to grad school for journalism at the University of Michigan. She was student body president, winning against a law school student. She discovered she didn't like politics, and she'd rather be a reporter reporting on politics than on the other side.

When she graduated, she had hoped to go east, and work for the Washington Post. But, it was hard to get a job, and she was offered a job at The Arizona Republic. So she drove out, and found Arizona was a weird place. She was a Democrat who had campaigned against Barry Goldwater. She met him, and came to love Goldwater. But, it was weird out here, and The Arizona Republic was a conservative paper. She asked herself what she was doing here. She finally decided they needed her her. She helped to organize a union. She finally left because she couldn't work for them anymore. She went to New Times, and worked there for twelve years, and was even owner for a while. In 1992, she wrote about Winnie Ruth Judd, and she left to write the book. She got an interview with Ruth. She is proud that The Trunk Murderess was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best nonfiction that year.

Then, Bommersbach started a column for Phoenix Magazine. She's been writing that for fifteen years. She did commentary for Channel 3 for seven years at 7:15 AM, but had to get up at 4 AM, read three newspapers, and then go on at 7:15 to talk about three things that ticked her off that day. After 9/11, she was laid off at Channel 3. She still had her Phoenix Magazine job, and she did "Books and Company," for the local PBS station, Channel 8, for five or six seasons. Now, she's freelancing. She does a column for True West Magazine. Then this book, Bones in the Desertt, came along. She's still finding a way to pay the rent.

When asked if she'd ever write about the murder of Arizona Republic reporter, Don Bolles, Bommersbach said everyone expected her to write it. She got into the hospital that night with his wife, who heard Jana's voice in the hall, and insisted they let her in. Don was a good friend. But, she never covered the stories in 1976 when his car was blown up. In 1996, at New Times, she did a retrospective. They did a special report about the murder that opened up new avenues. But, the crime is so old that people have served time, and walked away. There are so many holes in the story, and Bommersbach said she doesn't know where else to look to write that book. But, the police tend to cling to a decision because they don't want to face reality. This case is always an open case. There have been twenty-five bad books about it, but she sees no reason to write about it until the case is solved.

Bommersbach was asked if Loretta was an unusual victim for this type of violence, and she said, no. Domestic violence happens all the time. That generation of women always had someone tell them what to do for their entire lives. The first time they were independent was when they were widowed. But, many of them felt it was better to have a bad man that to be alone.

She was asked if any family members suspected Loretta would be murdered, and she said no. Prior to the murder, one sister watched every episode of America's Most Wanted, thinking Taw would show up. He was nice, good-looking, a gourmet cook with a great voice. But, the family suspected he would bankrupt Loretta, not kill her.

Within hours of the death, psychics sought out Terri. Terri and her mother were estranged because of Taw, and they had just started getting together. Loretta fought with Terri over Taw. Terri had a tough time on various levels. Bommersbach said Terri was "Searching in death for a mother she'd already lost in life."

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It was a pleasure to host Jana Bommersbach at the Velma Teague Library. She drew the largest crowd we have ever had for an Authors @ The Teague program. Bette Sharpe, our Programming Librarian, presented Jana with a thank you gift, the new Authors @ The Teague mug.

(Photo - Lesa Holstine, Jana Bommersbach, and Bette Sharpe - copyright Ed Sharpe, CouryGraph Productions)

Jana Bommersbach's website is www.janabommersbach.com 

Bones in the Desert: The True Story of a Mother's Murder and a Daughter's Search by Jana Bommersbach, ©2008. St. Martin's True Crime, ©2008. ISBN 9780312947415 (paperback), 278p.

The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd by Jana Bommersbach, Poisoned Pen Press, published 2003, ISBN 9781590580646 (paperback), 280p.

lholstine@yahoo.com  book blog: http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com 

"Reach librarians, and you reach the world." Betty Webb

Jana Bommersbach - Authors @ The Teague  - Story and video in prep stage! What a night!  She discussed and signed her latest true crime book, Bones in the Desert.

It’s a special December Authors @ The Teague program when award-winning journalist and author, Jana Bommersbach, appeared at the   Velma Teague Branch Library on Dec. 4 at 6:30 PM.  Bommersbach  discussed and signed her latest true crime book, Bones in the Desert.

Bones in the Desert is the story of Loretta Bowersock and her daughter, Terri, who ran a multimillion dollar furniture store based in Tempe.  These two women seemed to be living the American Dream…until one man decided to destroy it. 

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 Jana's debut book, "The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd," was nominated for the prestigious Edgar Allan Poe Award and won Arizona's only literary prize.   

    Her commentaries for public television won two national awards, while her reporting on commercial television won a Rocky Mountain Emmy.

     She has been honored with the Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Award and by the Arizona Chapter of the ACLU for her leadership in bold, honest commentaries.  Besides, she gives great parties, is a gourmet cook, has never seen a hobby that doesn't interest her and is a fanatic about Christmas.
 

Authors @ the Teague Brings Jana Bommersbach to Glendale’s Downtown Library on December 4

 

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Jana Bommersbach, a well-known author and journalist, will be stopping by Velma Teague Branch Library, 7010 N. 58th Ave., at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4 to talk about her latest book, “Bones in the Desert: The True Story of a Mother’s Murder and a Daughter’s Search.”

In December 2004, Loretta Bowersock, mother of prominent businesswoman Terri Bowersock of Terri’s Design and Consign stores, disappeared. Mother and daughter had been extremely close, starting Terri’s namesake multimillion dollar business together. In 1986, Loretta met the man of her dreams, but those dreams eventually turned into a nightmare…and cost Loretta her life.

Bommersbach will share what she discovered while investigating this tragic story.

She is also the author of “The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd,” which was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and won Arizona's only literary prize. She has been Arizona's Journalist of the Year, won a Regional Emmy for her television writing and has been honored with two lifetime achievement awards for her newspaper and magazine reporting. She lives in Phoenix.

Books will be available for purchase. For reservations and information about this program, call 623-930-3431.

Brent Ghelfi for Authors @ The Teague
It's hard to believe that Brent Ghelfi writes dark thrillers set in Russia. He is one of the nicest authors to appear at the Velma Teague Library for the Authors @ The Teague series.

Ghelfi grew up in Phoenix and went to college at Arizona State University, majoring in business. He went to Law School in Tucson, and now lives in Phoenix with his wife, Lisa, and their two children. And, he answered a question librarians always want to know, about his library experience. Brent said he grew up using the Yucca Branch of the Phoenix Public Library regularly. He said he's always been a reader.

So, how did a Phoenix resident become the writer of thrillers set in Russia? As a student, he went to the U.S.S.R., and it was a gray, drab country. The people were rigid, and didn't want to talk to foreigners. Of course, the tour guides were monitored by the KGB. They couldn't stray off script, and they had to file reports. If they strayed or submitted an erroneous report, they were reported by their monitors. The U.S.S.R. was such a drab, gray country that Ghelfi never thought of it as fascinating.

In the 1990s, he went back to Moscow on business. It was as if someone had turned on a light. The country had been dark and foreboding, but now Red Square was brightly lit. There was American-style consumerism. Now, he regularly goes back to Russia, but if you stray outside the big cities, it's still desolate and poverty-stricken, not that different from life there in the Middle Ages.

In the 2000s, Ghelfi was in Moscow, writing other books. He stayed at the National Hotel, which had a beautiful view over Red Square. During the Communist years, the CIA used to get rooms in the National Hotel, and monitor the May Day parades from there, watching to see where the leaders stood in relationship to each other to determine the power structure. Ghelfi had one of those rooms overlooking the Square. One night, he saw a man walking on the wall, who cut through security with no one stopping him. Then he disappeared. Ghelfi wondered about the man. Who was he?

Ghelfi then came up with the sentence that introduced Alexei Volkovoy, known as Volk. In Volk's Game, he describes himself. "Dead mother, disappeared father, late-era Soveit poverty, and five years of killing and worse in Chechnya." Volk is a metaphor for modern-day Russia. He's part of the modern military, and the illegal gangsterism that has spread throughout the world in the form of the Russian Mafia. These strains both course through Volk, a dark conflicted character who is broken in many ways. Ghelfi uses his books to loke at modern-day Russia, with a character that represents Russia.

Volk's Game, the first book in the series, was about the theft of a picture from the Hermitage. It's a self-examination of Volk and the country, how they treat people, the country, and art. The book was well-received. It was a finalist for the 2008 Barry Award for best thriller, and it received excellent reviews. It's set in today's world, a violent world that has extremes of very wealthy people and very poor people. The poor were devastated when the U.S.S.R. fell. Pensioners who could live on 300 rubles a month paid at the old rate, couldn't buy a loaf of bread a month later. This is the setting of the book, and the person of Volk.

Ghelfi said he continues to go back to Russia. It has similar problems to the U.S. His current book, Volk's Shadow, is a distorted look at us. Russia has a terrible terrorism problem. During the 1990s, and the Chechen Wars, there were apartment blasts, subway blasts, and people killed. In 1995, Russia sent tanks into Chechnya and obliterated it. It made the problem worse. Volk's Shadow deals with terrorism, and an oil company that is blown up. Volk has to discover who did it.

Brent Ghelfi went on to say that Putin discovered that the person who controls the pipelines controls everything. Russia has been aggressive in Chechnya because there's a major pipeline there. They want to control the distribution of oil.

One other theme of the book is based on the Rostov Ripper, who brutally murdered 52 people in a ten to fifteen year spree. The authorities turned a blind eye to the similarities of the crimes, denying there was a serial killer operating in Russia. The police in Russia were political enforcers rather than criminal investigators. Finally, they caught someone, and executed him, but they had put someone else to death for the crimes earlier, and the murders continued. So, they actually put two people to death for the killings. In Volk's Shadow, Volk has to deal with similar murders. He explores all those old issues, since he was a Communist and a member of the Secret Service. He's questioning what's happening, and his role.

Ghelfi said the Volk series is not published in Russia. It is published in countries all along the border, but not in Russia itself. Volk's Game was optioned six months ago for a movie. But, lots of books are optioned, and the movies are never made. He does think the Volk movies might succeed right now because of the darkness of the character. Dark movies are popular lately, and the grainy, fast pace would work. Ghelfi's agent said they should have a script by the end of the year. Volk is a terrific character, but the hesitation might come because Hollywood is ethnocentric. They like American settings and characters.

He was asked if the thriller genre was appropriate for the current times. Brent said in the early to mid-80's, with MTV, television went from leisurely to fast-paced. Readers expect what they read to mirror that. Even literary authors, such as Cormac McCarthy, have gone to faster paced books. His book, The Road was an Oprah selection, so it's accessible. Ghelfi said the best thrillers are literary, and have subtext.

Ghelfi said he couldn't write about Russia without writing about violence. The most ruthless, brutal men took over companies after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many were ex-KGB. Members of the First Chief Directorate were sophisticated men who spoke multiple languages, and, since they were responsible for foreign operations and intelligence, they had contacts in other countries. Many became billionaires from oil. Kidnapping is common in Russia. Criminals learned on the ground that often a dead body is worth more than a live one after a kidnapping because the burial rituals are important, and they can ask more money. Rape, murder and theft were common in Chechnya. We like to think it happened years ago with the Nazis or Stalin, but this is still happening in our time. Putin's response to Georgia was to roll tanks into the country. That's the same response Hitler had to Czechoslovakia, and Putin used the same excuse, Russians in Georgia were not being treated well.

How did Ghelfi get into writing? He was always a huge reader. He read all his life, since he was a kid. He had a break after selling a company. He wrote a medical thriller that never sold, although Hollywood is looking at it now.

Brent Ghelfi has a contract for two more Volk books. The next one, called The VENONA Cable, has been sent to his editor. It arises out of World War II, and cables that went to New York and Moscow. The Americans broke the code, and continued the program working with code until 1980. Ghelfi referred us to the National Security Agency's website for information about the actual VENONA story. That site says, "On 1 February 1943 the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service, a forerunner of the National Security Agency, began a small, very secret program, later codenamed VENONA. The original object of the VENONA program was to examine, and possibly exploit, encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications. These messages had been accumulated by the Signal Intelligence Service (later renamed the U.S. Army Signal Security Agency and commonly called "Arlington Hall" after the Virginia location of its headquarters) since 1939 but had not been studied previously. American analysts discovered that these Soviet communications dealt with not only diplomatic subjects but also espionage matters." The next Volk book is about a dead body found on Volk's property, with a cable.

He went on to discuss the codebreakers and spies. Julius Rosenberg was definitely guilty of the crimes he was executed for, spying and sending information to Russia. He discussed Churchill's visit to the U.S. to discuss a second front in Europe, and Stalin knew the answer because officer sent the information from New York. The codebreakers in Arlington Hall in Virginia dealth with 3000 cables.

The fourth Volk book will deal with college age students murdered in Russia. Ghelfi has that one outlined.

In response to a question, he said he doesn't speak Russian, but he fell in love with the Russian authors, and read them. He said he receives comments sent from his publishers blogs, but he can't read German or other languages, so he can't send those readers appropriate answers.

There's a lot going on in the Volk thrillers, and they're fast-paced. Readers can read them for the action and the pace. Or they can read them on a deeper level, for the history, culture and information about modern day Russia. Brent Ghelfi said Volk is very good and very evil, trying to navigate his own life, and reconcile his sides, trying to learn who he is.

Brent Ghelfi? He's an outstanding speaker, and talented thriller writer. We're lucky to have the author of Volk's Game and Volk's Shadow here in the Valley. We're very lucky he was willing to speak for Authors @ The Teague.

Brent Ghelfi's website is http://www.brentghelfi.com

Volk's Shadow by Brent Ghelfi. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., ©2008. ISBN 9780805082555 (hardcover), 320p.

Volk's Game by Brent Ghelfi. Henry Holt and Company, Inc., ©2007. ISBN 9780805082548 (hardcover), 320p.

Larry Karp & Michael Bowen for Authors @ The Teague

 Lesa Holstine Glendale Daily Planet Book Topics Editor

Mystery authors Larry Karp and Michael Bowen recently appeared for the Authors @ The Teague series at the Velma Teague Library. Larry Karp kicked off the program.

Karp's recent book is The King of Ragtime. One hundred years ago, Scott Joplin and Irving Berlin both called themselves "The King of Ragtime." Berlin's big hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," was written in 1911. Scott Joplin moved to New York City in 1907, wanting to legitimize ragtime. He wrote an opera, "Treemonisha", and couldn't get it published. He submitted it to Irving Berlin's publishing company, but it was rejected. When Joplin heard "Alexander's Ragtime Band," he said it was his song. The opening of his song, "A Real Slow Drag" sounds like "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Was it plagiarized? Years later, Joplin's widow said he had to rewrite it before publishing so he didn't get accused of plagiarism.

Between 1911 and 1916, Joplin was sick with cerebral syphilis