A Special Visit from Laurie King!

 RHYS BOWEN: Jungle Reds are so excited today to celebrate the launch of Laurie King's new book,

BACK TO THE GARDEN! And she's here today to visit us and give us insights into this new venture.

I'm sure, like me, you're all big fans of Laurie's work. I'm addicted to Mary Russell. 

Well--exciting news, everyone. This book is so different from Holmes and Russell. It's a thriller/suspense novel set in two time periods--the San Francisco area in the 1970s and the present. So 1970s now counts as historical, right?  The book introduces a new protagonist--Inspector Rachel Laing, a tough broad!

So without further ado:

RHYS: This book is quite a departure for those who love Mary Russell. What was your motivation to write a tense, more contemporary thriller?

LAURIE: I like to change things out regularly, when it comes to writing. If I don’t, I find that I’m doing increasingly awful things to my series characters. (Whether this is due to writerly instincts or some unconscious and pathological urge to hurt the people I love, I couldn’t say.)

A lot of writers are happy to work with the same characters year in, year out. Others of us—like you, Rhys—need to explore different settings, voices, and moods. We have stories to tell that don’t fit within the limitations of a given series. Writing about Mary Russell and her mentor-turned-partner Sherlock Holmes gives me wide scope when it comes to where they go and what issues they face, but there is always an underlying degree of whimsy that would strain a tense and realistic plot to the breaking point.

Plus that, writing a book such as Lockdown (2017) or Back to the Garden lets me return to Russell & Holmes with added enthusiasm. And less of an urge to hurt them….

RHYS: This story is clearly set in an area you know and love in Northern California (therefore delightful for me to read as I too know it well ). The Gardener estate—is it based on a real house? Heart Castle?

LAURIE: The Gardener Estate is very very roughly based on Filoli, a historic house and garden 25 miles south of San Francisco. My fictional estate is in more or less the same place, and it has a vaguely similar history, architecture, and grounds, but I didn’t want to be limited by the real thing. (In another life, I might have been an architect…if I’d had any math and geometry skills at all.) And you’re right, the Gardener Estate is indeed similar to Hearst Castle in its era and in the ambitions of an owner aiming to build a power base.

RHYS: Tell us about Raquel Laing, where she came from. Is this designed to be a stand-alone or may we see Inspector Laing in more adventures?

LAURIE: As I wrote Inspector Laing, I was surprised, and amused, to find strong elements of Sherlock Holmes settling into her bones, from an extraordinary ability to spot and analyze key elements in an investigation to a nature that might generously be called “aloof.” Yet she’s also a cop, and the police only function as a communal enterprise.  That pull creates some interesting tensions, in her and in her work.

Back to the Garden is definitely the first in a new series. I admit that when I first started writing the story, I thought of it as standing alone, only to realize how much more I wanted to know about the characters. Fortunately, my publisher agrees!

RHYS: Real life serial killers—there certainly were a lot of them in the 1970s in our part of California.  To what do you ascribe that? Are there really cold cases, serial killers still never caught?

LAURIE: So bizarre, isn’t it, to think of peaceable “Surf City, USA” Santa Cruz (my home town) as a place infected with murders? But it was, back in the 70s, with one spree killer and two serial killers all within the same period. It was that time that changed how the FBI investigated deaths that seemed to be unrelated, leading to nation-wide forensics units, a data base of criminal information such as fingerprints and DNA, and an encouragement of inter-agency communications, all of which together catch killers.

Estimates of how many serial killers are working today vary hugely, from a tiny handful to a couple thousand. And those who simply stop, such as Dennis Rader (“the BTK killer”) and Joseph DeAngelo (who gave rise to three separate nicknames), are the hardest to identify—DeAngelo’s crimes ran from 1976 to 1986, but he was only caught in 2018, in part because he was a cop and knew how to avoid detection. Others, as you say, will probably never be caught, or only identified after they are dead.

RHYS: What strikes me after reading this book is how multi-layered it is. As well as the mystery/thriller aspect we have underlying themes of wealth, corruption, the Vietnam war, etc. What was your aim in writing the story?

LAURIE: One of the joys of crime fiction is that it can be about anything, so long as the story moves forward exploring the crime. And like a lot of mystery writers, I revel in the possibilities for being subversive, slipping in ideas, facts, or episodes from the past that linger in the reader’s mind.

The best mystery novels—the best novels, period—open a door into an unexplored world of riches. On the one hand, my only aim is to entertain, creating interesting people and sending them off on a satisfying adventure. But if the reader closes the book reluctantly, suspecting that there might have been more on the pages than what they saw, well, I’ve done my job.

RHYS: did you write this planning that the garden would be a symbol? For healing? Beauty? Secrets?

LAURIE: The idea of “garden” does get a lot of play in this story, doesn’t it? The family name, the actual garden, the way changes in the estate’s identity are reflected in its garden—from a formal stage for a family out to establish a political dynasty in the 30s to a 70s commune’s joyous celebration of organic vegetables to a modern setting for tourists and wedding parties. There is also the theme of the garden of Eden, a place of innocence with a serpent in the background—Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel are glimpsed throughout. And of course, the title itself, evoking Joni Mitchell and the Woodstock era.

A person might almost think the author enjoyed gardening.

RHYS: Did you find it a challenge to write in two time periods?

LAURIE: Any cold case story has to choose how to weave together its then-and-now timelines. What you want—as a reader and as a writer—is two stories that come together as one, even if they’re separated by many decades. 

I also wanted the reader to see events as they happened, from the point of view of the people experiencing them at the time, with details that might be peripheral to the actual investigation.  Weaving “THEN” and “NOW” together, so that the reader learns things more or less simultaneously with the investigator, allowed me to give the cops the facts that they need to know, while filling in the wider picture for the reader’s deeper understanding. 

Which was, as you say, was a challenge.

RHYS: I've just read the book and I can say you are in for a treat!  Big thanks to Laurie and wishing her all the best for this new venture.

The Secret Life of Mrs. Hudson

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: True royalty on Jungle Red today!  I mean Laurie King, the queen of us all.  

Somehow in my conflated fiction/reality brain I can begin to believe that Laurie actually knows Sherlock Holmes. I mean, personally. And if there’s any group in which I can say that without hoots of laughter, this is the place. Right? 

She certainly knows Mrs. Hudson. Because listen to this:  she also knows Mrs. Hudson is not at all what we were led to believe by Dr. Watson.

Laurie’s most recent Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes novel, Riviera Gold, finds the former housekeeper living amidst the millionaires and retired party girls in 1920s Monte Carlo.

Mrs. Hudson! How can it be?

Here’s the fabulous Laurie to tell us all about it. And a—whoo hoo—giveaway below!

THE FEISTY OLD LADIES

Laurie R. King

I once knew a pair of aged anthropologists, man and wife, known for their detailed and subtle reports on various African peoples. The papers, books, and academic degrees were all in his name—but no one seemed to remark on how unlikely it was that this eminent academic always managed to ingratiate himself into the women’s world with so little fuss.

Of course, he hadn’t. Instead, his diminutive English wife would leave him by the men’s fire to slip into the women’s quarters, admiring a baby here, stirring a pot there, soothing a fallen toddler, then settling down to needlework, conversation, and note-taking.

Invisible, subtle, all-seeing.

Similarly the grey-haired ladies of crime fiction, especially those Golden-Age women rendered “superfluous”—the actual term used in newspapers and government reports—by the deaths of the Great War. Miss Marple and Miss Climpson, like the widows Pargeter and Pollifax of the next generation*, pull out their knitting, fumble for their spectacles, don a look of wide-eyed innocence, and come out with questions that would make a man stammer and blush.  Even Lord Peter Whimsy recognized what a terrible waste of talent this was.

One might think that a century later, with average life expectancy hovering near eight decades, the grey-haired lady detective might be coming into her own…

Well, no.

The feisty old lady has yet to have a #MeToo movement of her own, and is as blithely overlooked by society as ever she was.

But that doesn’t make her any less of a blast to write.

To be fair, the old lady I’ve been writing about this last year is not a detective, being far too occupied with beating crime off with a stick. 

And though this femme d’un certain âge is more limited than the story’s 25-year-old protagonist when it comes to physical strength and quickness of step, she is compensated by the migration of strength upwards to her heart and her wits. A woman in her seventieth year has seen enough of life to know what matters and what—or who—does not.  She knows when to go around barriers and when to confront them face-on, forcing an opponent into retreat. She knows how to bully and to charm, when to call on friends and when to strike out alone, when to warn and when to step back and let people make their own mistakes.

Writing an older woman also lets me put together scenes where the younger folk are as shocked—shocked, I tell you—by her uncompromising attitudes and her hitherto unseen skills as they are by the unexpected contents of her lingerie drawer.

Subversive, entertaining, colorful, and just a little thought-provoking: what more could a writer ask for, as she delves like an anthropologist into characters who keep her occupied for a year of writing? Especially when the writer is in her sixties herself.  Role model, anyone?

But I’m curious: if you’re in the neighborhood of 70, is it what you imagined? And if you live far from that neighborhood, what do you think you’ll be like when you get there?

(*Miss Marple is a long-lived character by Agatha Christie; Miss Climpson is in two Dorothy Sayers novels; the Mrs. Pargeter series is by Simon Brett, and Mrs. Pollifax comes from Dorothy Gilman.)

HANK:  Oh, what a fabulous question!  Yes, I am in that precise “neighborhood” of seventy. Is it what I thought it would be? In absolutely no way. I always burst out laughing when anchorpeople talk about “senior citizens” or “elderly people” who then turn out to be younger than I am. And I realize, full well, that I have no idea what I look like to the rest of the world. I do have clothing that I have donated away because it’s “too young for me”—but that’s not a disappointing thing. And when we go to the movies—er, when we used to go to the movies—I would always remind the cashiers I was due for the senior discount.

How about you, Reds and readers? And a copy of RIVIERA GOLD to one super-lucky commenter!

 Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels, with 16 in the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes series (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is "one of the 20th century’s best crime novels”—the IMBA.)  She has won an alphabet of prizes from Agatha to Wolfe and been guest of honor at several crime conventions. Laurie is active on Facebook & Instagram  and has a YouTube channel, a Virtual Book Club on Goodreads, & a Facebook Group called “The Beekeeper’s Apprentices.” Riviera Gold is her new one.

RIVIERA GOLD

The Jazz Age has hit the Riviera when the world’s greatest detective—with her husband, Sherlock Holmes—arrive in Antibes during the summer of 1925. When Mary Russell steps ashore, she is astonished to find everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Pablo Picasso there, baking in the sun. And among them, their long-time housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson. Mrs Hudson's racy past has already started to come out, but that doesn’t begin to explain the body of a beautiful young man in her front room…

Riviera Gold: June 2020. Excerpt, buy links, and book club extras are here.

Hot Pirates

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We are so pleased to welcome Laurie R. King! In fact, over at Jungle Red HQ, it was all we could do to keep fans from breaking down the sliding glass doors and knocking over the punch. And among her legions of fans, there was such a buzz--what was she doing with a sword and a parrot?

Turns out, me hearties, she's got a brand new book, PIRATE KING. (Which you can win! See below.) It's about...well, somehow, it inspired (?) me to burst into song. (With apologies to everyone involved.)

::Hank clears throat and, um sings::

She is the very model of a modern mys’try novelist
She’s written countless stories and her name’s on the best-seller list
She knows what Conan Doyle would do and even what he would have writ
(And now he’d be upset to learn he hadn’t ever thought of it.)


She’s very well-acquainted too, with stuff about the world of bees
Her character (Miss Russell) is now heading far across the seas
With pirates, toffs and criminals
It sounds just like a movie plot
But readers soon find out that what it seems--is just what it is not.

She’s very good at humor and she always has lot of fun
She knows the songs and lyrics of Sir Gilbert and Sir Sullivan
In short, in matters Sherlock Holmes, dear Laurie King’s our specialist
She is the very model of a modern mys’try novelist.

******

Maybe..we'll just let Laurie talk.

LAURIE KING: One of the phrases we’ve been tossing around here on the Laurie ARrrgh! King site this summer is, “Pirate is the new Vampire.”

(ed note: yes, that's a parrot on Laurie's head. She knows it's there. The pirate eye-patch, too. Arrrgh.)

This is partly because the spate of pirate movies, books and, for all I know, Lady Gaga songs seems to be overtaking the number of movies, books, and ditties about vampires. It’s also because vampires as the object of forbidden love is becoming a bit old hat, whereas Johnny Depp seems to be forever appealing.

Each generation discovers anew the eroticism of the forbidden. When I was in the first blush of my reading life, The Thorn Birds thrilled the world with a hot and un-celibate priest, played by sexy Richard Chamberlain. (And yes, it is odd to reflect both that un-celibate priests could be shocking, or that the much-facelifted Richard Chamberlain was sexy.) Our grandmothers’ generation went weak-kneed at The Sheik—first the book, later the movie—in which a feisty but wholesome young English girl is introduced to Sensation by an ardent foreigner (played—with fainting around the world—by sexy Rudolph Valentino.)

As Mary Russell, the protagonist of Pirate King, says upon encountering the novel by E M Hull (Hull being, at the time she wrote The Sheik, “a woman whose husband was at the Front. Whose husband had clearly been at the Front for a long, long time.”):
It was appalling. Not so much the writing itself (which was merely the lower end of mediocrity) nor the raw pornography (which it was,) but its blatant message that an independent and high-spirited young woman would be far happier if she were just slapped around a bit by a caring sadist. I read every word about fiery young Diana Mayo and her encounter with, abduction by, and ultimate submission to, Sheik Ahmed ben Hassen. Then I went to wash my hands, and took the novel back to Mrs Hatley, with a fervent plea that she not let any of the girls read it. She turned pink and said of course not—but had I enjoyed it?

Oh, Russell, we know you did, secretly.

We will skip for the present mention of the eternal appeal of the forbidden, and oddly priestly, Sherlock Holmes (played by any number of hot actors before Robert Downey and Benedict Cumberbatch) since in the present novel he plays a supporting role. Here, center stage is occupied by the Pirate King and his merry men.

The appeal of pirates is underscored by the Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa—who also plays a role in this book. Pessoa’s 72 separate “heteronyms” or distinct personalities (only one of them female) all of whom are poets as well (including the woman.) One of these personas works himself into a fever at the very notion of pirates (Portugal being a nation built on sea-faring and conquest.) First, he wishes to be a pirate:

To the sea!
Salt with windblown foam
My taste for great voyages!
Thrash with whipping water the flesh of my adventure,
Douse with the cold depths the bones of my existence,
Then he wants to be…well, a willing victim, ravaged by pirates, using language that can only be regarded as symbolic if one works really hard at it:
From my heart, make an admiral’s flag
Flown in a battle between old sailing ships!
…lash me against the mast, lash me!
…kiss with cutlasses, whips, and frenzy!

(I’m leaving a lot of it out—if you want the full effect, the poem is called “Maritime Ode.”)

However, I was afraid that all this eroticism—The Sheik, Sherlock Holmes, frustrated poets, young women on a boat with young men, and an entire crew of manly pirates—might place the book in a part of the store generally screened off to the impressionable [sic] young. However, Pirate King was meant to be a farce, a sharp change from the solemnity of the two previous books in the series. So, I decided to render all this hot-and-bother into something more airy-fairy by plunging it all into the chilly Victorian sensibilities of Gilbert & Sullivan.

After all, startling contrast is the very essence of the comic spirit.

HANK: And indeed, it is a glorious thing to host dear Laurie King... (Singalong, please....)

She'll be here to answer questions on pirates, mizzens, Sherlock, plank-walking, poetry and erotica. I mean--what else could anyone ask for? So give three cheers and one cheer more--for! The writer who we all adore.

(okay, stopping now...) (But! Jungle Red is giving away a copy of PIRATE KING to one lucky commenter!)

(Laurie R. King is the bestselling author of 21 crime novels, including the series with young Mary Russell and her slightly more famous husband, Sherlock Holmes. King’s upcoming novel Pirate King is set in 1924 London, Lisbon, and Morocco—and yes, there are pirates.)

Laurie King’s web site, with excerpts from Pirate King and loads of other entertainment, is at www.LaurieRKing.com. To order a signed copy of Pirate King, go to the Poisoned Pen shop, here. [LINK to: http://www.poisonedpen.com/products/hfiction/9780553807981/?searchterm=pirate%20king ]

LINK to Maritime Ode: http://books.google.com/books?id=6HLzBr8qCgUC&q=maritime+ode#v=snippet&q=maritime%20ode&f=false

Big Day at Bouchercon 2010...

This year, Bouchercon (the mega-mystery conference for fans and authors) is in San Francisco. Hank and Rhys, who are there partying and schmoozing and working their fannies off, took time off to report back on all the fun --

**NEWS BULLETIN from HANK** Do I sound happy? I am! My short story "On the House" won the Macavity for Best Short Story. How amazing is that? Many many thanks to everyone, including the wonderful Janet Rudolph and Mystery Readers International. Whoa.

HALLIE: Congratulations from all of us!!

So, ladies, how's it going out there at the Hyatt in the Golden State near the Golden Gate?

RHYS: Bouchercon for me started with a breakfast for first time attendees. I was asked to be a meeter and greeter and one of the first people I bumped into was Hank. So that was a nice start. Then I never made it up the escalator. I stood at the bottom and everyone I knew went past and we hugged and chatted. So it seemed like a good plan. Stand at bottom of escalator all weekend and the world will come to me!

HANK: Bouchercon is like Disneyworld for mystery fans. Something like that. Around every corner is something wonderful--get on the elevator and there's--Laurie King, or Lee Child, or Val McDermid. (Or Rhys Bowen!) Endlessly charming, endlessly generous, endlessly talking to awe-struck fans. It's pretty hilarious, really--the people you see on book covers, suddenly come to life in the hallways of the Hyatt.

And then the news pals--people from Jungle Red--Hi Christine! People from Facebook. People from DorothyL and 4MA. Guppies and SINC members. It's a lovely reunion.

HALLIE: So how's the weather? It's dark and cold and rainy here in New England...

HANK: It's hot! 89 degrees today. I can hear cable car bells out my hotel window and see the Bay Bridge. San Francisco! Very cool. But I have no idea what time it is. Time zones.

RHYS: The weather in San Francisco could not be more glorious--perfect temperature, sparkling blue water--and we're stuck inside a hotel all day. That's the trouble with conventions. Luckily this hotel has an interesting atrium and an open feeling to it so it's not as bad as some.

The opening ceremony was long. It started with a brilliant compilation of snippets from every film shot in San Francisco, but then there were a lot of speeches, introducing all the guests of honor and then the MacAvity and Barry awards. I had to leave as I had to attend my publisher's party at a restaurant on the Bay, but I was delighted to come back to find out that Hank won for best short story. Way to go, sister!

HANK: I am still in shock. But grateful and smiling.

So, let's see. Panels everywhere--the hotel is sneaker-friendly and not made for high heels, let me say. RJ Ellory brilliant and thoughtful, Jackie Winspear charming, Brad Parks adorable, Laurie King introducing her beautiful daughter, Reed Coleman (who won the Macavity/ with a sincere and touching speech, Christopher Rice hilarious, Kevin Guilfoile and Bryan Gruley (two new writers who you must read) fun and enthusiastic. Julia Spencer Fleming is back--hanging out with her is like being with a rock star. Kate White oh so glam. Everyone missing David Thompson--McKenna is here--so brave.

So many people--I couldn't possibly list. Nancy Martin. Molly Weston. Jen Forbus. Heather Graham. Attica Locke. Harley Jane Kozak. Our own Maddee James. Cathy Pickens got the seal as the new President of Sisters in Crime--she's terrific, Marcia Talley emeritus--she's really worked hard.

RHYS: I have to confess that I didn't go to many panels. I mean how many times can one listen to the same thing? So I only go to show support to friends these days.

These conventions actually turn into one long schmoozefest--which is great for me. I love hanging out with people I like, and a lot of my favorite people are at this convention. Had a long chat with guest of honor Lee Child, bumped into Jacqueline Winspear coming out of the ladies' room (after she'd gone into the men's room by mistake and was a little flustered by this). We had a nice Sisters in Crime get together and I was invited to a small party honoring McKenna, David Thompson's young wife, or rather widow (David being a well-respected bookseller who died suddenly aged 38 a month ago). Strangely he had emailed Lee Child and Val McDermid literally minutes before he died. He'd sent Lee a picture of the dog, called Reacher, saying he'd just bathed him and here was a picture of Reacher all wet and bedraggled. When McKenna came home to find him dead, the dog was still wet. So strange and sad.

Tomorrow I have a breakfast--why do these things revolve around food and drink? And then I have to go across the Bay to sign at the bookseller's convention taking place in Oakland. But then in the evening it's the Reacher's Creatures party.

Saturday ends with a disco ball. I'm not sure many people who attend mystery cons are of the age and shape to disco dance! Then there's the Anthony brunch on Sunday. I'll try to report in again.

HANK: Big day tomorrow--more to come. And next year--St. Louis!