DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was heartsick last Saturday to learn of the sudden death of my dear friend Caroline Todd. I had just been talking with her a few weeks before, when she was a guest (always the best guest!) here on Jungle Red, and she was her usual bright and fizzy self. Caroline was not only a friend, she was a huge inspiration to me as a writer. She was a font of plots and ideas--she always had a dozen stories she thought I should tell about Duncan and Gemma and their crew. She would nag me, too, about finishing books ( which I very much deserved) and I hate knowing that she didn't get a chance to read the book in progress. I can only hope she would have liked it.
I was a fan of the Todds' books from the very first Rutledge novel, A TEST OF WILLS, but it was when we began to share the same publisher, William Morrow, that we started to do events and book tours together and really got to be friends.
We had so much fun together, sometime the three of us, sometimes just Caroline and me. Caroline had so much enthusiasm for everything. I took this photo of her in Charleston a good few years ago-- Caroline shooting Caroline-- and it has ever since been one of my favorite shots of her, because she always wanted to record everything!
All the tours blur together, but little disparate bits stand out for me. One was a visit to Lake Country, Florida, for a book festival; we were put up in a little Holiday Inn that seemed in the middle of nowhere. We had no transportation until the car service was to pick us up for the following day's event, and the only place to eat was a little shack of a place across the asphalt parking lot. We walked over for dinner in great trepidation, crossed a walkway over an alligator-infested inlet, and found ourselves on big deck overlooking a lake. The food, it turned out, was fabulous, and I can still hear Caroline raving about the smoked whitefish dip. We would always talk about that when we got together.
I can track the passage of time from the books in the photos, but Caroline never seemed to change.
RHYS BOWEN: I was utterly shocked and stunned to learn of Caroline Todd’s death last Saturday. On the day when she would have been feted as guest of honor at Bouchercon. What horrible irony.
Caroline was a dear friend. We didn’t see each other often, in the way that it is with the mystery community, but I usually managed to have lunch with her and Barbara Peters when she came to Scottsdale, or share a meal when we both attended the Tuscon Festival of Books. Of course I was on frequent panels with her as we both wrote similar historical series.
A word to sum her up. Lovely. She was a lovely, classy, warm lady. Full of enthusiasm. Always looking forward to the next trip to England and what they would discover there. Having just started to write a series with my own daughter I looked to the Todds as the role model for the perfect writing team. They brought out the best in each other. Their myriad fans will be heartbroken. I know I am.
DEBS: Would that all approached life with as much delight, grace, and wit as Caroline. My heart goes out to Charles and all of her family. Hers was truly a life well lived, and the world is a poorer place without her in it.
