Laura DiSilverio--Tara, Manderley and . . . the Chateau du Cygne Noir?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If we are celebrating the advent of fall, what better way to do it than to curl up with a good book? Not just any book, but the kind of suspense novel that got many of us reading, thrilling and enchanting us with a creepy setting, suspicious characters, and a heroine whose life might depend on figuring out the mystery just in time.

Well, you can make your cup of hot chocolate (or pumpkin latte) and enjoy THAT LAST WEEKEND, the brand new novel from our Jungle Red friend Laura DiSilverio! Laura gives us all of the above, plus not just one protagonist but four, searching for a murderer in the melancholy Chateau du Cygne Noir. 

AND Laura is giving away a copy to one of our commenters!

Every year for a decade, five college friends spent a weekend together at the atmospheric Chateau du Cygne Noir. Then, tragedy struck.
 

Ten years later, Laurel Muir returns to the castle for the first time since the accident, hoping to reconnect with her friends and lay the past to rest. When a murderer strikes, it rips open old wounds and forces the women to admit there's a killer in their midst. The remaining friends make a pact to unearth the truth, but suspicion, doubt, and old secrets threaten to tear them apart. Unsure who to trust, Laurel puts herself in harm's way, risking it all for friendship and long-delayed justice.

Just reading this gives me goosebumps. Laura, tell us more.

    

LAURA DISILVERIO:  In my high school years and early twenties, I devoured gothic novels where young governesses or secretaries accepted positions at moody mansions in remote locales and stumbled into secrets and dire peril. Murder, sinister retainers, ghosts and brooding men were staples of these books. I loved Daphne duMaurier, Dorothy Eden, Joan Aiken, Mary Stewart . . . I could go on and on. Gothic novels seem to have fallen out of favor, alas, but I have borrowed some elements for my latest release, THAT LAST WEEKEND, including the atmospheric old house.

           In THAT LAST WEEKEND, the house is the Chateau du Cygne Noir (Castle of the Black Swan), a French chateau relocated stone-by-stone from the Loire Valley to North Carolina where it's now a B&B. My protagonist, Laurel Muir, and her friends spent a girls weekend there every year for a decade, starting with spring breaks when they were in college. A tragedy occurs during that last weekend, and they don't assemble at the castle again for another ten years. I describe the chateau from several points of view, because it affects each character differently. Here is Geneva Frost's take on it:

            The Chateau du Cygne Noir bed and breakfast sign appeared suddenly. It featured elegant white script on a lavender background with a black swan. Wide stone pillars on either side of the driveway supported the decorative iron gate that was always open, and she turned in gingerly. The driveway’s sharp curves hid the castle until she came around the last bend and it burst into view. Its warm yellow stone seemed to soak up the sunlight and beam it back. Arched windows with their numerous small panes glinted. She’d loved the place the moment she set eyes on it that first spring break, almost as much as Vangie did. It had presence, a personality, the way the House of Usher or Manderley did. She knew Dawn would say “your English major is showing” if she shared her thoughts. The house wasn’t brooding, like Usher’s house, nor was it grand and forbidding like Rebecca’s Manderley, its stony façade repelling the nameless heroine. If Geneva were to assign an emotion to the chateau, she’d have to go with sad. No … melancholy. The stalwart home that should have been surrounded by fields of lavender and wine grapes, that had presided over the siege of Tournai and absorbed the blood of its scion on the cobbled courtyard and the screams of maidservants treated the way ill-disciplined armies treated women, felt displaced in this verdant corner of the New World. 

        Although THAT LAST WEEKEND is very much a modern suspense novel with four women in their late thirties trying to identify a murderer and reclaim a friendship that an old tragedy derailed, it's also an homage to the classic gothics, complete with sinister retainers (modernized as the B&B's managers) and the ghost of a young countess flung out of a window to her death. (Defenestration--I love that word!) It comes out this Friday, September 8th, and you can pre-order your copy right here. (Please.) 

         Did you read gothic novels? What were your faves? What houses/castles/mansions do you remember from books you've read? Do you ever think of the setting as a character in the novel?

        I'll be here to chat with you all day, and one lucky commenter will get a free copy of THAT LAST WEEKEND!

       

 Laura DiSilverio is the bestselling and award-winning author of 21 novels, including multiple mystery series and standalone suspense novels, and a Young Adult dystopian trilogy. She lives in Colorado where she is trying (with lots of home projects and Haagen Dazs) to come to terms with being an empty nester. 

DEBS: It seems to me that the gothic suspense novel is making a comeback, which couldn't make me happier. So interested to hear who else loved books like this.

And Now, My Pretty, I have you in my Power...

I've been re-reading a Mary Stewart book. I used to adore her when I was a teenager. Now I found her plot annoyingly improbable. Evil Nazi wants man dead so sends his mistress to marry him, make it look as if he killed his best friend and then to be hanged for it. Wouldn't it have been easier to hire a sharp shooter and finish him off through the window of his car?

I feel the same way when a brutal killer locks up the heroine, keeping her alive for no real reason other than that the book would finish earlier and less satisfactorily if he killed her. I think I have become less tolerant of illogical plots since I became a mystery writer. Ditto weak motives for murder. It would take something pretty terrible to make me kill--protecting my child, revenging my child maybe. I don't think I'd kill if a bad secret about me was about to be revealed--I suppose it depends how bad. I certainly wouldn't kill to get my hands on money, or someone else's husband. And certainly not to let my daughter make the cheerleading squad as some woman did in Texas.

I suppose we writers have to examine our plots in such meticulous detail that we're now aware of the flaws in others. For example although I adore Harry Potter I can see so many inconsistencies. For example characters can aspirate to move instantly from place to place, yet when the Order of the Phoenix members come to rescue Harry, they use broomsticks--surely a more dangerous way to escape. And why can't Harry point his wand at himself and improve his eyesight so that he doesn't have to wear glasses? Isn't there a "reparo" spell for shortsightedness? The point is that if it is a magic universe, then magic should be able to take care of everything, shouldn't it?

There are the obviously dumb plot twists, of course... the heroine going down to the basement, carrying a candle, in the middle of the night, when the phone lines are out in a storm... because she hears a noise... and there's a serial killer in the neighborhood. I hope I've never written anything like that. Please shoot me if I have.

Do other writers find that they get annoyed with illogical plots or plot inconsistencies, or can you overlook them if the story is good otherwise? And what about motives? I think the motive for murder is the first thing I come up with when I'm toying with a book idea--before deciding who my killer or victim might be.

HANK: I'll come back and write more when I stop laughing after thinking about why Harry can't fix his eyesight. OCULOSO!

HALLIE: Laughing too, about Harry Potter. Aspirate? What a lovely transposition of the term she uses, which I think is apparate (and its converse, disapparate). LOVE the Harry Potter vocabulary. Rowlings rivals the best of Roald Dahl (anyone remember 'frobscottle' in "The BFG? It's a fizzy drink with bubbles that float DOWN instead of up resulting in surfeit of 'whizzpopping.' Or disgusting snozzcumbers?)

Being a mystery writer sure takes the fun out of reading, with that little critic sniping away in my head. Illogical plot twists and dumb characters drive me nuts, not to mention stuff that only authors notice like sliding viewpoint. But oh, what pleasure when a book delivers!

RO: Can't weigh in on Harry Potter - haven't read and haven't seen.
Yes and no. A lot of us write amateur sleuths so our characters are by definition not going to do what a regular person would do. I hope I haven't ventured into TSTL territory (too stupid to live)but I'm not writing about myself so my character can and must be more adventurous. Simply calling the cops is not an option. I'm not going to have her take on a gang of bikers with only a weed whacker and a set of keys (oh, wait, she may have done that in book two...)but within reason she can get in and out of trouble.

It did bother me in one chapter of a recent read, but the rest of the book was so good I gave the author a bye. I'm still pretty new so perhaps I'm more forgiving. And I rarely finish mysteries I don't like, so perhaps it just doesn't come up that much for me.

Personally I'm relieved to learn it would take a lot to drive you to murder - some of my characters are not so well-adjusted.

JAN: So if we are being completely honest.....the answer is no. If the book is written in a realistic style, I can't forgive an illogical plot twist. I'm a total witch about it. (Comedic or stylistic books are a different story.)

This is one of the real reasons I don't read many thrillers, particularly male-written thrillers. They tend to start out brilliantly with a really interesting, fast action and logical plot. Then, at the end, as if there's some sort of ongoing contest these writers have to outdo each other, they go for ONE LAST PLOT TWIST. And frankly, I always find them preposterous.

Examples? I don't want to get too specific, or I'll ruin the books for anyone who hasn't read it. But since this one has already been made into the movie and widely seen... . I'll say that I absolutely loved Dennis Lehane's Gone Baby Gone, with its rich and brilliantly written characters until....The end. I found the final plot twist and motivation for the kidnapping, not just stupid, but preposterous. So illogical and unrealistic -- in a book written in a realistic style -- that It ruined the book for me. (My son saw the movie, and without us discussing the book first, came home with the exact same reaction.)

The worst part is that the final, irrational plot twist is usually completely unnecessary, just tagged on at the end. This has happened to me in at three other thrillers, each by a different best-selling male author.

HANK: Just chiming in--yes, the endings are so difficult! Because something BIG has to happen. And the proof of the difficulty is that so often the ending is outrageous. The worst ever: Angels and Demons. Sorry ,Dan. But you can't jump out of a...oh, I don't want to ruin it for anywone who hasn't read it. But trust me, it CANNOT happen.

ROBERTA: That "go down in the basement" thing is very hard to resist, though, especially with amateur sleuths as Ro points out. My agent is currently circulating a new book in which exactly that happens. But my character is a Realtor and someone left a light on in her client's basement. She HAS to go! the key may be building the character up clearly enough so that her motivation for doing something ridiculous hangs together and doesn't pull the reader out of the story.

I would say that I'm a pretty forgiving reader. I love Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford series but the plots have become more and more preposterous. But I read them anyway because I'm crazy about Doc.

RHYS: Sorry about the 'aspirate' versus apparate mix up. I have just blogged on my solo blog (www.rhysbowen.blogspot.com) that my brain and hands don't always coordinate which results in horrible typing bloopers. Example in point "she shook her fish at him."
I think the problem wish so many thrillers is that the writer comes up with a brilliant concept--wouldn't it be great if... but it's not thought through to a logical ending. Maybe there isn't a satisfactory outcome for the particular concept so you wind up with unbelievable endings.

So friends--how tolerant are you of improbably plot twists?