Tuesday, March 19, 2024

A Bitter-Sweet Ending for Cara Black

RHYS BOWEN: This is a good week. I have dear friends with new books out, visiting us on Jungle Reds, and starting with one of my closest friends, Cara Black. Cara and I have had a book launch around the same time for many years and have previously toured together ( lots of fun, some strange adventures).
 Now I'm in Arizona and Cara is goodness knows where today, off on a book tour all over the country. But I was lucky enough to snag her before she set off and ask her to share details of the latest, and last in her beloved Parisian series.

CARA BLACK: Bonjour REDS! Rhys was recently over for lunch and reminded to get my post ready for you all. It’s a bit of a bittersweet one since it’s about my new Aimée Leduc book, MURDER AT LA VILLETTE, which is just out. Bittersweet, I’ll explain but first it’s exciting, too. 

Thrilling to bring readers to the 19th arrondissement, the underbelly of Paris on the canal. While working undercover in a start-up funded by the local 19th arrondissement initiative, Aimée Leduc, a computer security specialist PI, is unhappy at the toxic staff environment + treatment of local employees. Especially, Isabelle, a cleaner and former junkie, who’s gone clean in a program along with Aimée’s cousin, Sébastien, and who supports her brother disabled with muscular dystrophy. Aimée’s ex, Melac, formerly in the anti-terrorist brigade, and bio father of her 3 year old daughter Chloé, is insisting they move to Brittany and live on his farm. 

That train left a long time ago - Conflicted, she knows fresh farm life, sea air and nature would be wonderful for her child but stuck on a farm for how long? Aimée, a Parisienne, needs a cafe at the corner and Chloé’s in preschool, but is that being a good mom? As if this wasn’t tugging on her mind, Aimée’s in a new relationship with Loic Bellan. Juggling her undercover job, her detective agency with her partner René, being a mother, trying to maintain her relationship with Bellan is stressful enough without Melac hounding her to meet him and consider shared custody in Brittany. Melac, who's been stalking her, insists they meet after her work. When he leaves a cryptic message that ‘he’s just seen a ghost’ she knows that’s unlike him. Concerned, she looks for him by the canal where he usually waits/stalks her after work figuring to deal with this once and for all - she’s not sharing custody with Melac or moving to Brittany. 



What she discovers upends her life as events take a disastrous turn. Aimée realizes she’s been set up as a suspect in murder. She goes on the run, in a cat and mouse chase, donning disguises in the 19th arrondissement of Paris Up to her neck, Aimée realises she must take help where she can. If she doesn’t find the murderer she’ll face the consequences - lose her daughter, business, everything. Convinced she’s been set up she’s afraid to lose her daughter, never see her again. 

People often ask me why I write mysteries and thrillers, and I know the Reds and Readers will have their reasons, which I'd love to hear. I came up with three reasons: -
1st- There’s a real crime that intrigues me. Sometimes I read about this, a French flic tells me about one of her/his cases, or a miscarriage of justice happening to a friend. In M at LV - this was inspired by a serial killer who’d eluded the police for 30 yrs despite his composite sketch being on the Commissariat wall - his identity was in the papers the day I walked this street with my friend a policeman, where his first victim was discovered, a young girl. Echos of past in the community, weight of history, reverberations of crime thru generations. 
This idea leads me into ‘what would I do, if that were me?’ ‘would I be able to survive?’ and ‘what if…’ being curious + asking questions. I feel it’s important to show why historical crime fiction matters, and hopefully in 3 Hours, Night Flight I found ways how to breathe life into forgotten moments, lost voices, little told women’s stories and the timeless human experience and now, in small ways, in Aimée’s investigation in the 19th. -

2nd-I like that there’s a fight for justice, a wrong to be righted, a form of justice triumphs in a mystery that doesn’t often happen in life, it’s a resolution - but not every bow gets tied. I like mysteries and thrillers with high stakes - if character doesn’t solve the crime someone could die, or in a thriller; can a character get loose, escape? Can they accomplish their mission? In Aimée’s case she has no choice. If she doesn’t find the killer she faces prison + losing her child. Her life ruined. The killer gets away to strike again. -3rd-I like learning about forensics and police procedures in Paris, how the canal system works, going in the sewers to know how it feels, going on the rooftops, meeting detectives and seeing if female flics can run in heels. Finding the ambiance of this area. Research for this book took me to parts off the beaten track. Emigres have settled here over the centuries, it’s residential, formerly industrial because of it’s location on the canal. 

Working people can still afford to raise a family there. Ethnically and culturally it’s diverse, a large Orthodox Jewish population, those of North Africans and Arab descent, In the 1900’s Germans settled and established a church. There’s Résistance history - a female chemist who made bombs, the attack on the petit ceinture as Germans retreated, my friend’s father who was arrested outside the police station and sent to Struthof-Natzweiller camp. Charming pockets and feel of old Paris, how a cafe owner knew my friend and told stories, and so many memories held here. 

Right now, I know I’ve done more than what I dreamed possible in Paris and solving crime in all the arrondissements. Actually I goofed and set two books in one arrondissement, so there’s now 21. It’s defined my life for 25 years. Financed my Paris addiction. I’ve always gone to Paris feeling like a reporter hunting for Aimée’s next story

The Aimée Leduc mysteries have been the framework of my world and my family’s and now you might be wondering what might come next for me, but all I can say at this point is “Watch this space.” I don’t know if there will another story to tell or where it would happen. I don’t know if this is Aimée’s last bow, the closing novel in the series. For now I’ve written another book which is at my editor’s - of course set in France. 

Where should I go next? Somewhere else in France? What time period? I'll be giving away a signed copy of Murder at La Villette to the suggestion I like the best! 
I'm on tour right now ,so maybe I'll come to your neck of the woods.

Merci for having me, Reds and love to hear your thoughts! Cara http://www.carablack.com

RHYS: Where should Cara go next? She will be giving away a signed copy of the LAST Aimee LeDuc book! Add your comments to be included.

Monday, March 18, 2024

Thoughts on Poetry

RHYS BOWEN : I love the book Possession by Byatt, don’t you? It’s an absolute tour de force, especially the way she has created a whole body of poetry for two fictitious poets in the style of Tennyson and Christina Rosetti.

 Back in the day poetry was a big thing. There were court poets in the Middle Ages who lived well thanks to rich patrons. Homer was a celebrity. Everyone knew Keats and Shelley and Lord Byron. And Tennyson –he was even made a lord for his poetry. And Longfellow. So what has happened to us today? Why have we lost our love of poetry? The closest we have to poet celebrities is Leonard Cohen, who set his poems to music, perhaps Mary Oliver, although I doubt the average person has heard of her.

 We no longer value poetry, do we?. A poet can certainly not make a good living. Nobody goes to college and says “I’m going to be a poet,” without their parents tearing their hair out.

Why is this, I wonder.

 Maybe it’s because poetry was designed to be spoken aloud, and modern poets try to be too clever and esoteric:

 Stars at night

Falling. Boom. Crash. Thud.

Like stricken bodies

Into my tea cup

Why?

 (that’s not a real poem. I just made it up, but you get the gist) It creates an idea, a picture, a fleeting thought, but then it’s gone.

How many of us had to learn poems by heart in school?

 On either side the rive lie

Fields of barley and of rye

That clothe the world and meet the sky

And all the day the folk go by

To many towered Camelot…. 

 I can still recite so many of them: The Ancient Mariner, Hiawatha, The Forsaken Merman, lots of Robert Louis Stevenson and of course Shakespeare.

And do you know what? They all rhymed. They were all easy and fun to speak out loud.

 That is what we’ve lost. My great aunts used to recite poetry during evening soirees. So we’ve lost the occasions to do this. And perhaps the poets are still here, but they’ve put their poetry to music: Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Steven Sondheim…

 I don't think children learn poetry in school and longer. Only English majors will ever discover Keats, or Longfellow. Children will never sit in the back of cars chanting:

 Faster than fairies faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches,

Riding along like troops in a battle

All through the meadows, the horses and cattle…

 I loved it. I miss it.  I’d be a poet if I could make a living at it. My mother tells me that I wrote my first poem at 4.

I used to write lots of poetry in my teens. I'd sit in a darkened room, put a Tchaikovsky record on the radiogram and let my heart outpour. Come to think of it, many of them didn't rhyme either: But some did:

Sit, a stone, and survey

Until love and life pass away

Rest, a rock on the shore,

Until faith and death 

are no more.

Then, as a new moon, alone

Arise and face the unknown.

They were all pretty bleak and sad at that time, I think. i was a huge fan of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

So share your thoughts, dear Reds

Do you miss poetry? Did you have to learn it? Did you ever write any. What can we do to bring it back

HALLIE EPHRON: Goodness yes, I had to memorize poems in elementary school. Remember “Barare Frietchie?” (“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.) “Evangeline.” (“This the forest primeval…)

And then the ones I memorized just because I read them so many times and liked the way they sounded. (e. e. Cummings -anyone lived in a pretty how town. / (with up so floating many bells down)...

That’s the thing about poetry - so much of it is meant to be spoken and listened to. Though I confess a lot of poetry leaves me scratching my head and wondering what I’m missing. Is it ok to say that?  

JENN McKINLAY: I love poetry! WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS was published when I was a kid and I memorized so many Shel Silverstein poems. They were charming and clever and just delightful. Also, I grew up in New England so memorizing Emily Dickinson felt like a requirement.

I do believe poetry is alive and well in the younger generations. My nephew is a poet and writes and performs in poetry slams in local Boston coffee shops. When I was a teen librarian we hosted slams for teens by an outfit called Phonetic Spit. Some of the poems were angry, others broke your heart, and a few really made you think but the best part was that it was all written and performed by teens who’d discovered the use of poetry to deal with life’s joys and sorrows and it was wonderful. Also, we have Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb bringing poetry to a new generation, which is terrific. I think poetry, like music, has changed in tone and style over time but it’s still there and it’s still relevant and I don’t believe it will ever disappear completely. 

LUCY BURDETTE: I’m always envious of fiction writers that began as poets because I feel they have a better grasp of how to use language beautifully. My prose is more workmanlike than poetic. However, I will share something that makes me laugh when I think about it. I set my second book, DEATH IN FOUR COURSES, at a conference for food writers and one of the characters was a “culinary poet.” After the victim is found, they have a small wake-ish event and the poet is called upon to read. I had such fun writing this:

Fritz pushed his glasses to his forehead, unfolded a half sheet of lined paper, and smoothed it on the podium. He studied his audience with pale blue eyes, then turned his attention to the paper.

“The Butcher,” he said. “A poem to honor Jonah Barrows.”

 “Morning comes, the butcher’s wife hands him an apron, starched white.

Keep it clean, she says.

At night, he brings it home, layered with the detritus of his day.

A splash of blood from the rib eye steaks carved for the rich man on the hill.

A touch of green from lobsters cracked and cleaned for the fussy housewife,

Who will eat pink flesh but not green, no matter how good it tastes.

Marrow from hacked bones,

Distributed to fancy restaurants and slathering dogs alike.

And as the day goes by, the hues of the apron morph from red to gray.

I tried, he says, handing it to the missus come evening. I had to do my work.”

RHYS: I love this, Lucy!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Rhys, I adored Possession. I read it in one sitting–literally, on a ten-hour London to Dallas flight–and was just blown away. It definitely influenced me to write Dreaming of the Bones (in which I, like Lucy above, included poetry.) It was poetry that started me writing as a teen, in fact, and I read a lot. e.e. cummings, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, TS Eliot, Ezra Pound (why, I ask now!), Auden, Plath, Stevie Smith, Anne Sexton, Larkin, Wallace Stevens. And of course my beloved Dylan Thomas. I was never as good at memorizing, however, except for William Blake, who is forever engraved in my brain!

I hope poetry isn't lost! I think that exposure to language opens pathways in the brain that otherwise don't develop, and that makes our lives and our thinking so much richer and more nuanced. 

You've encouraged me to get back to my "poem a day" practice!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, I have a poem a day, too! I’m Yeats, Auden, Wallace Stevens. I had the honor of reading Czieslaw Milosz’s “On Angels” at my father's funeral, and highly recommend it as a source of peace and inspiration and wonder.  And, with a name like mine, I constantly think of Robert Frost's “Maple,” which begins sweetly, about a girl named Maple who everyone thinks is “Mabel,” and her search for her mother’s meaning in naming her before she died in childbirth,  and ends with a bitter twist.  

Thus had a name with meaning, given in death,

Made a girl's marriage, and ruled in her life.

No matter that the meaning was not clear.

A name with meaning could bring up a child,

Taking the child out of the parents' hands.

Better a meaningless name, I should say,

As leaving more to nature and happy chance.

Name children some names and see what you do.

(Maybe we should all remember this when we name our characters…)


RHYS: So who are your favorite poets?  I still adore Robert Frost, Auden, Walt Whitman, Mary Oliver, Keats... 



Sunday, March 17, 2024

Vicki, Donna, Trixie, and Cherry

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It was so much fun to chat with you all and the Reds and Readers happy hour on Thursday! And we are planning our next event right now. We'll let you know the date, and the winners are being chosen. Thank you so much for being there.

 


One of the things I loved about our discussion was the chat about the books we read when we were what, pre-teenagers?  Cherry Ames, and Trixie Belden, and of course Nancy Drew, but also Donna Parker and Vicki Barr. (These are on my bookshelf in my study. And the ones below, too.)

 

Wikipedia says: Vicki Barr is a popular mystery series for girls published by Grosset & Dunlap from 1947 to 1964. Helen Wells (1910–1986) wrote volumes #1-4 and 9-16, and Julie Campbell Tatham (1908–1999), the creator of Trixie Belden, wrote volumes #5-8.

 

Donna Parker is the protagonist of an eponymous seven-volume book series for girls that was written by Marcia Levin under the pseudonym Marcia Martin from the 1950s through the 1960s.

 

Cherry Ames is the central character in a series of 27 mystery novels with hospital settings published by Grosset & Dunlap between 1943 and 1968. Helen Wells (1910-1986) wrote volumes #1-7 and #17-27, and Julie Campbell Tatham (1908-1999), the creator of Trixie Belden, wrote volumes #8-16. Wells also created the Vicki Barr series. 

 


Hmm, Julie Campbell Tathham really changed our lives, right? And little did we know.

 

Julie Campbell Tatham (June 1, 1908 – July 7, 1999) was an American writer of children's novels, who also wrote for adults, especially on Christian Science. As Julie Campbell she was the creator of the Trixie Belden series (she wrote the first six) and the Ginny Gordon series. As Julie Tatham she also took over the Cherry Ames series and Vicki Barr series from Helen Wells.


 




Why did we love them? Here’s a page from Trixie Belden and The Mysterious Code. See how it starts with an inciting incident?


 

In Cherry Ames, Chief Nurse, Cherry gets her new assignment on page 8.





But “flight stewardess” Vicki Barr, who is about to embark on The Hidden Valley Mystery,  is all backstory and background...until chapter two.


 

So much fun to go back and look at these!  Did you read this kind of book? Why do you think we loved them so much? Which ones did you read?