Vicki Delany: For the Love of Our Fictional Pets

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Today we're thrilled to welcome back Vicki Delany who, with a wink, calls herself a "one woman crime wave." And she truly is, having written more than forty books, including her latest, the new Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery, THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS.

Today she brings us some observations about that extra dimension NON-human characters can bring to a mystery novel. (No, we're not talking about robots.)

VICKI DELANY: If you live in the northern part of our planet, it’s cold and dark these days. The news of the world is glum, and people are recovering from their post-holiday highs, many not too happy when they check their credit card balance.

So, let’s talk about something fun: pets in mystery novels.

I believe animals add a lot to any fiction. It’s often said you can tell a great deal about a person by how they react to friendly dogs or cats. I don’t necessarily know if that’s true, but it does provide much used fodder in books.

 Certainly, anyone who snarls at a dog who just wants to be friendly, is unlikely to be a nice person. Unless they have a reason to be afraid of dogs, no matter how tail-wagging or small they might be. And that person would be unlikely to ‘snarl’ rather than cower in fear.

We know animals, cats and dogs in particular, have far more powerful senses that we mere humans do. Does that mean they can sense a ‘bad’ person versus a ‘good’ person? Probably not, particularly considering bad and good sometimes depend on your point of view. But again, logically or not, characters in fiction often rely on signals from their pets and this helps the plot move forward, Sometimes in the wrong direction.

Pets also provide much needed action to a scene. Imagine people sitting around a kitchen table talking over the case. That can get rather boring, but put a dog sniffing around looking for dropped crumbs, or a cat where it isn’t supposed to be, and you have some movement and action to accompany the dialogue.

And, again, a good opportunity to show how the characters interact with animals. Maybe that’s a clue!

A pet can add some humor, particular to lighter mysteries. In the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series, the shop cat, Moriarty, strongly dislikes our protagonist (and the ‘Sherlock’ character) Gemma Doyle.

Why is he antagonistic to her, who after all houses and feeds him, but friendly to everyone else? I see him as a master criminal trapped in an eight-pound body. She is the Sherlock Holmes to his Moriarty.

Unfortunately, being a cat there’s not much he can do about that other than occasionally try to trip her as she comes up the stairs.

Another way of using animals is to show a softer, perhaps kinder side of a character who might try to present a stern face to the world.

As Gemma is my interpretation of Sherlock Holmes as a modern young woman, she is sometimes blunt to the point of rudeness, scornful of others’ opinions at times, and inclined to interfere where she is not wanted. Too sure of herself, perhaps. I’ve tried to lighten Gemma’s character, soften her in the minds of my readers, with her loving interaction with her two dogs, Violet and Peony. Peony only came onto the scene, and into Gemma’s home, when his owner died and he was abandoned, and Gemma took pity on the little guy.

What’s not to love about that?

No matter the type of book, pets help move plots forward. In an earlier Sherlock Holmes Bookshop book, A Curious Incident, Gemma is walking the dog late at night when she sees a historical building on fire. And thus, the plot begins. Don’t forget what the curious incident was!

Walking her dogs gives Gemma time to think. She calls those late night dog walks ‘a two dog problem’ – comparable to Sherlock Holmes’ ‘three pipe problems.’

Of course, in cases where the pet has strong instincts about people, the writer has to use that very carefully. Otherwise, the moment the killer walks into the room, and the cat starts hissing, the reader knows who the killer is.

Violet, Peony, and Moriarty, don’t react like that, but the cat in the Lighthouse Library books I write under the pen name of Eva Gates, Charles (named for Mr. Dickens) does. Lucy Richardson is aware that Charles has strong instincts about people.

Sometimes she misjudges his reaction and sometimes she can be fooled. Did the bad guy slip treats to Charles and therefore gain his approval? You never know.

I love writing the animals in my books. Matterhorn, the Saint Bernard owned by Merry Wilkinson in the Year-Round Christmas books is a deliberate and amusing contrast to Ranger, her boyfriend’s Jack Russell terrier. If you’ve ever known a Jack Russell, you’ll know what I mean. Éclair, the labradoodle in the Tea by the Sea mysteries gives Lily plenty of opportunity to walk the BandB property at night, and her grandmother’s cat, Robert the Bruce, keeps a keen eye over goings on.

I love writing pets and I know many people can become very attached to the animal characters in books.

Do you have a favourite animal in fiction?

 HALLIE: I can't wait to see the animals our readers call out as their favorites.

Susan Stamberg's Pink Couch

 

HALLIE EPHRON: In 2025 Susan Stamberg died. She was, one of my favorite people, a true role model for women writers. 

She was a nationally renowned broadcast journalist, the first woman to anchor a nightly news program ("All Things Considered"), whose gravelly voice and raucous laugh were instantly recognizable. She was one of NPR's founding mothers, and she died soon after retiring from an illustrious 50-year career.

In 2007 I asked her if she'd consider writing a foreword to the then forthcoming 1001 BOOKS FOR EVERY MOOD. To my great joy she agreed. 

It was so generous of her and I adore the piece she wrote.

Sharing some of it with you now...

"SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME" by Susan Stamberg 

The pink couch in my parent’s living room was a refuge, growing up on 96th and Central Park West in Manhattan in the 1940s and 1950s. That couch was the launchpad for my adventures in literature. 

Now, as a journalist it behooves me to inform you that in truth the couch color was more rose than pink. And it was more a loveseat than a couch. But since some day I intend tattoo the motto “Never Let Facts Get In the Way of a Good Story” on a bicep, the small couch was pink because that’s how I remember it.

As a little girl I fit it neatly—head to toe, lying flat, shoes off, throw pillow under my head. Perfectly prone, I would read. And read. And read. First, after staggering home with a wobbly tower of slim hard-covers, on the pink couch I went through the entire Children’s section of the New York Free Circulating Library at Amsterdam Avenue and 100th Street. 

And when I finished the Children’s section, I moved on—the tower of books getting heavier, and wobblier—to two of the day’s real steamers, A Rage to Live, and Forever Amber. The librarian noticed I’d strayed too far from The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and prevented any further checkouts of “adult” literature. 

Eventually, I moved out of my parents’ house, away from the couch.

But my reading habits were by then ingrained, and I could turn a stiff wooden chair, an airplane seat, a park bench into that pink reading place.

Hallie Ephron is like the best, friendliest, hippest librarian you ever met. Her taste is exquisite, her writing’s a hoot, she’s done her homework, and it’s very clear that she loves, loves, loves books. She knows obscure ones like Dori Sander’s novel Clover, and prompts us back to classics we haven’t considered in years—Katherine Anne Porter’s Pale Horse, Pale Rider, W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage.

Hallie has fine factoids, too. Is it really possible that Bridges of Madison County eventually out-sold Gone With the Wind? Or that Flaubert and his editors were put on trial because Madame Bovary was, in the mid-nineteenth century, deemed morally offensive? How quaint! How current!

I bet there’s a pink couch in Hallie Ephron’s background. It probably sits in her Milton living room right now. And for her, as it was for me, that couch is less about literature and more about transportation—a passport out of the house, and into the Dust Bowl or West Egg, Long Island or the Edmont Hotel in 1950s New York where Holden Caulfield took refuge after being thrown out of Pency Prep.

HALLIE: Of course Susan Stamberg was right, although our couch in our Californa living room was not pink, it was a shiny red and green jungle print. 

My memory is of sitting nestled up against my mother as she read one of the OZ books to me. Or Eloise. Or Anne of Green Gables. Stories with little girls who are strong and defy stereotypes. 

Do you have memories of someone early in your life reading to you, or some special place that gave you a head start on a life filled with books?

In praise of pockets

 HALLIE EPHRON: I recently started going to my local Y and working with a trainer. Weights. Balance. Cardio. The works. And because I pay for it whether I show up or not... I show up. On time. Bright eyed and bushy tailed? Not so much...

An unexpected challenge has been getting out the front door with all the stuff (I (think) I need. 

Glasses, datebook, driver's license, credit card, cash, gloves, and of course the ever-present cell phone. And then figuring out where to stash it all when I get to the Y. I don't want to lug my purse around the gym floor, and they don't have nearly enough lockers.

Which got me musing about how my husband never ever hesitated a moment leaving the house because he needed a place for his stuff. That's because HE HAD POCKETS! Pants pockets. Side pockets, butt pockets. Shirt pockets. HE WAS ALREADY WEARING HIS "STUFF."

Men have pockets. They can just get up and go. Guys are hands-free all the time. While I linger doing the What-am-I-forgetting-now and Where-am-I-going-to-carry-it Tango.

I've noticed that women's clothing with pockets is more expensive than clothes without. Makes sense. Fortunately lots of workout clothes come with pockets. And then there are fanny packs. Practical but oh so nerdy.

I don't need exercise clothes. I need getting-to-exercise clothes. So that every time I leave the house, I don't have to go through a mental list of what I need to have with me because I'm already carrying it.

Turns out there's a fashion design we have to thank for (finally) designing women's clothing with pockets. (She also invented the ballet flat!) Claire McCardell, who graced the cover of TIME Magazine.

Do you have rituals to get yourself out of the house without having to turn around and head home for something you need? Or do you have POCKETS?! 

What would you like to see in clothing design (men's or women's) that you don't see today?