The Pregnant Sleuth

LUCY BURDETTE: At the end of my 15th Key West food critic mystery, THE MANGO MURDERS, my food critic sleuth Hayley Snow turns up pregnant. I hadn’t planned this, and to be fair, neither had she. But I had the sneaking suspicion that this book would be the end of the series. If it was, what better way to go out with a flourish than with the happy news of an upcoming baby? Except, it turned out, the series didn’t end and now I was weighted down by a pregnant sleuth. Oof.

As I began writing the 16th book, A DELICIOUS DECEPTION, Hayley is struggling through the ninth month of her pregnancy. She feels the loss of her autonomy, her usual spunk, and her privacy. Everybody has an opinion about what a very pregnant sleuth should be doing, beginning very emphatically with her protective police officer husband, Nathan. Hayley is known for being hot-headed and independent, but that only goes so far as a reasonable explanation in this situation. I had to work hard to give her a case that pulled so hard on her sense of justice that it would overcome her physical and psychological worries. I hope I did her justice!

Reds, it’s a sticky wicket;  it’s a natural progression for a young woman to want a family, but this makes it hard on the author. What have you learned by writing your pregnant sleuths, or why did you decide to skip this milestone?

RHYS BOWEN: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself ‘what was I thinking’ when I got my heroines pregnant? The problem is that writing about young women in the past, when they fell in love and got married there was no birth control or at least they didn’t know about it. So pregnancies were inevitable. I remember the book in which Molly Murphy has to flee to Paris with her new baby and then has a horrible mystery to solve concerning her two friends there and every four hours she has to rush home to nurse that baby.

The problem with having a female sleuth who is also a new mother is that I have to ask myself all the time, would I put myself into danger if I was responsible for someone else’s life? And so most of Molly‘s cases since she had her first child have been ones that concerned her, her family or close friends, and which  she had a moral obligation to help solve.

At least Lady Georgie has it slightly easier as she has a nanny. Not that that was always a good thing but now she can relax a little knowing her child is in good hands.

So my advice would be if you consider giving your heroin either a baby or a dog – don’t. Readers will write and tell you if you haven’t fed the dog for 10 pages. I will certainly notice if you’ve left the baby lying in a crib for three chapters.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I decided my co-sleuth, Clare Fergusson, would get pregnant because I wanted to explore the dynamics between her and her brand-new husband, who had agreed with her they WOULDN'T have any children. It added interesting layers to her character - she was always reckless, and had to deal with the fact anything that might happen to her would also affect her unborn child. There are, of course, the physical challenges of going after bad guys when your center of gravity has shifted and it's hard to bend over! The biggest and most dynamic change was the way others saw her - a visible pregnancy makes some observers more protective, and some willing to take advantage of her supposed vulnerability. 

At the end, the real challenge of having a pregnant sleuth, as in real life, comes AFTER the baby is born and you have to deal with it!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yeah, my heroines are not pregnant. They often have children, though, their own kids but young, or a child-adjacent character like a niece. As you say, Julia, after the child is born brings its own set of challenges (like they keep needing to EAT, for gosh sake, and they can’t even DRIVE) but that’s for another blog.

HALLIE EPHRON: There’s a reason Raymond Chandler quipped: “A really good detective never gets married.” Oy, the complications of child care. Pregnancy complicates things even further. But what fun, giving your sleuth problems!!

I did it with my first standalone, NEVER TELL A LIE. Domestic suspense, of course, my sweet spot. And Ivy Rose is 9-months pregnant when a woman from her past drops in on her yard sale (Ivy is nesting!) and turns her world upside down. (Pregnant Ivy muses “A fullly pregnant belly was pretty astonishing. Right up there with a prizewinning Hubbard squash.”)

The stakes are as enormous as the sleuth’s belly.

JENN McKINLAY: LOL, Hallie! Personally, I couldn’t write about a pregnant amateur sleuth and thus opted out of doing so. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to accept that a pregnant woman or the people who love her would be okay if she and the baby were put in harm’s way because she’s nosy. It's different if she's a cop/detective where it's her job, baby or not. That being said, If anyone can pull it off, Lucy, you can! Can’t wait to read it. I did end the cupcake series with a pregnant main character but my plan if I’d written another one was to have her staff take over the sleuthy part–rather like Archie Goodwin helps Nero Wolfe (leaving him to tend his orchid babies).

DEBORAH CROMBIE: When I first started my series I gave Gemma, then a single mum, a two-year-old. I knew I wanted to write about women in the job (policing) dealing with the things real women deal with, like juggling work and child care. Then a few books later, Gemma gets pregnant and it really upsets her new-found stability. Unfortunately, she loses that baby six months into the pregnancy, possibly due to a violent encounter with a villain, and it’s very difficult for her to regroup.

But I still think a pregnant sleuth, amateur or professional, makes for great plot opportunities, and I think Rhys and Julia and Hallie have handled it really well. Lucy, I can’t wait to see how Hailey manages!

RED READERS, please weigh in with your thoughts on the pregnant sleuth. Do you enjoy this life twist in your mysteries? Why or why not?

You’ll be able to read about Hayley’s adventures in this delicate condition beginning July 14. Please pre-order here! 

Or join me at RJ Julia booksellers on July 14 at 6:30 in Madison CT. You can also order a signed copy at the store. 203-245-3959

What I'm writing: Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I get the anchor spot because I'm still touring for THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS (but I'm almost home!) Touring for the newly-published book while working on the next one puts my head in an odd place: by day, I'm deep into the events of HID FROM THEIR EYES (working title for the 9th Clare and Russ book) and by night (or afternoon, if I'm doing a tea-time appearance) I'm talking about the writing of the last book. Sometimes I get confused, but no one can tell because confusion is my normal state.


So: HID FROM OUR EYES. It's a book about fathers and sons,  real and replacement, and the way young men look up to and model themselves on their older mentors. It's also about a series of deaths occuring in 1951 and 1972 and the present day (which is 2006 in the series) all of which appear to be identical. And of course it's about Russ and Clare and the tangled, angry relationship between officers Hadley Knox and Kevin Flynn. Here's a no-spoiler excerpt: 

     He had parked his cruiser in the muddy verge of the county highway, a little way from the circus that was going on up the road. That gave the Millers Kill chief of police the chance to surreptitiously twist and crack his back and flex his knees, which felt every one of his fifty-odd years after being hauled out of bed at four am. He never could have survived being a dairy farmer, that was for damn sure.

     He checked around to make sure no one had seen his display and tugged his wool cap down around his ears. His own cap, not MKPD-issued. He was here on courtesy, not on right, and he had tried to parse the difference with his clothing: his winter uniform blouse and departmental coat over heavy twill pants and his old boots.

     The state police had cordoned off the road coming and going and had two enormous lamps illuminating the crime scene. He trudged up the side of the road, past the other cop cars and the mortuary van, his footsteps uneven on the rutted, half-frozen mud. They had had a thaw the past few days, which he was experienced enough to know wouldn't last, and the bright fluffy snowbanks of January had shrunk into dirty hard obstacles, turning every patch of bare ground into a morass of slush and mud.

     He ducked beneath the tape and approached the scene. Two evidence officers: one the camera man, the other bent over searching for anything that might prove useful in the investigation. Which wasn't ever much – ninety-nine out of a hundred crimes were solved by knocking on doors until someone talked, in his experience. Two detectives in overcoats that made them look like they were headed for the executive offices at General Electric, smoking and talking. One uniform, the first man on the scene.

           “Hey!” A detective spotted him. He recognized the man; Stan Carruthers, a hotshot from downstate who was disgruntled by his exile , as he saw it, to the hinterlands of Troop G. “What're you doing here?” Carruthers glared at the uniform, whose charge was securing the scene and who should have stopped anyone from crossing the line. The trooper tried to appear innocent, and mostly got it right, since he was so young he looked as if he ought to be home sleeping in his mother's house, not guarding a corpse.

           “Who's this?” the second detective asked.

           “Harry McNeil, Millers Kill chief of police.” Harry held out his hand and the the other man shook it automatically. “Pleasure to meet you.”

           “There's no need for you to be here, McNeil.” Carruthers sounded more bored than upset. “We're almost finished up.”

     Harry got his first good look at the body. A young woman, barely more than a girl, sprawled face-forward in a tangle of limbs and hair. She was wearing a fancy dress, a party dress, with petticoats frothed up over her back. Bare feet. No stockings. It looked as if she had collapsed while walking down the road and fallen asleep. 

           “Any idea as to the cause of death?” Harry directed his question to the evidence officer.

     The man shook his head. “No signs of violence from here. We're about to move her, though, so maybe we'll see something from the front.”

           “It's obvious,” Carruthers said. “Some good-time girl, got liquored up and passed out and froze to death. I've seen it before.”

           “In Cossayuharie? In the middle of Route fifty-seven?” Harry looked around. On either side of the two-lane road, fields rolled away in silent darkness. To the west, the first Adirondack hills that would gather and crest a hundred miles away in the High Peaks showed black against the faint starlit sky. Not a single farmhouse light relieved the gloom.

     Carruthers waved his cigarette. “Maybe her john wouldn't pay up. They had a fight, she stumbled out of the car to show him what's what, he took off.”

           “Without her shoes and stockings. Or coat.”

     Carruthers frowned. “Drunks do stupid things, McNeil.”

The mortuary men had left the comfort of their wagon and were placing their stretcher next to the body. “Okay boys,” the evidence officer said. “Nice and easy.”

     They rolled the corpse over, depositing her neatly on her back. Everyone moved closer to get a look. Pretty. Young. No blood, no bruises, no scratches or ripped fabric or anything to indicate she might have been attacked.

           “See?” Carruthers took a last drag and flicked his stub away, a sure sign that he no longer considered this a crime scene. If he ever had. “She passed out and died of exposure.”

     Harry looked at the evidence man again. “Have you found anything? Shoes and stockings? Handbag?”

     The officer shook his head. “Nothing. And I did a thorough search, up and down the road.” His tone was bland, but his eyes shifted to the detectives for a moment. Harry could picture Carruthers yelling at the man to stop wasting his time and for God's sake just get the body bagged already. “Either side of the road as well, although we ought to go back over it in daylight to make sure.”

           “Oh, for Christ's sake. Can one of you geniuses give me any other reason she'd be here like this?”

     There was a pause as Harry turned the picture over in his head.

           “Murdered and dumped.” Everyone turned toward the speaker. It was the responding trooper.

           “Oh, great,” Carruthers said. “Now even the traffic cops are detectives. What's your theory of the crime, Sherlock?”

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November - for Julia's New Book!

 

RHYS BOWEN: Here at Jungle Red we're jumping for joy, tooting our horns, waving flags and generally behaving with extreme excitement because today, November 5th, Guy Fawkes Day back in England, celebrates the release of Red Julia's new book. So I'm handing the floor over to her to tell you all about it.

 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING:  I'm spasming with excitement because finally, finally, THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS is available in stores and online! Here's the cover copy:

     On a frigid January night, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne and Reverend Clare Fergusson are called to the scene of a raging fire. The extent of the tragedy isn't known until the next day, when the charred remains of a man and woman are recovered—along with evidence showing they were shot execution style.

     The last thing Russ needs are two potential homicides. He's struggling with the prospect of impending fatherhood, and his new wife is not at all happy with his proposal for their long-delayed honeymoon: a week ice-fishing at a remote Adirondack lake.

     St. Alban's Church is still in turmoil over the Reverend Clare Fergusson's news that she's five and a half months pregnant—but only two and a half months married. Worried her post-deployment drinking and drug use may have damaged the baby, she awaits the outcome of the bishop's investigation into her "unpriestly" behavior: a scolding, censure, or permanent suspension.

     Officer Hadley Knox is having a miserable January as well. Her on-again, off-again lover, Kevin Flynn, has seven days to weigh an offer from the Syracuse Police Department that might take him half a state away. And her ex-husband's in town—threatening to take custody of their kids unless Hadley pays him off with money she doesn't have.

     When Hadley discovers that the dead couple fostered an eight-year-old girl who was a recent liver donee, the search for the killer takes on a new and terrible urgency. With no access to immunosuppressant drugs, transplant rejection will kill the girl in a matter of days.

     As a deadly ice storm downs power lines and immobilizes roads, Russ and Clare search desperately for the truth about the missing child, but the hunters will become the hunted when they are trapped in the cabin beside the frozen lake and stalked through the snowbound woods by a killer.

I'm in Pawleys Island, SC today, appearing at Litchfield Books, and I'll be on the move for the next two weeks, visiting Massachusetts, Houston, Michigan, Chicago, Arizona, New York and of course, Maine. You can find my whole book tour at my website and under the Events section of my Facebook.  To celebrate, let's go all Oprah around here and give away three hot-off-the-presses hardcovers of THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS to three lucky commentors! You get a book! And you get a book! And you get a book!

Can't make it to one of my signings? No problem - my friends at WCSH TV have a great interview with me and anchor/207 host Rob Caldwell. (By the way, if you think my outfit looks good, you can thank Hank - she gave me tips on what to wear on TV!) And thanks to all my sister Reds and our Honorary Red community for the encouragement and support - during the 50 weeks a year when I'm not touring, writing is a lonely profession. It's beyond great to have friends for this daily kaffeklatch (with bodies.)

For those if you in the UK: THROUGH THE EVILS DAYS is being released today from Headline Publishing! Yes, all eight of the Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series are now available in the UK. So grab a light and a few of your friends and head down to your local bookshop to pick up a copy today!

I believe these are eager Britons marching to Waterstones to demand THROUGH THE EVIL DAYS.