WHAT WE'RE WRITING: Julia on HID FROM OUR EYES

If you're at Malice Domestic, be sure to catch the Fifty Shades of Red Game Show tomorrow, Saturday, at 11:45! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm the lonesome Red at home this weekend; Rhys, Hank, Hallie and Lucy are in Bethesda, MD, attending the Malice Domestic Conference, Debs and Susan are both in England, researching, and here I sit in Maine, waiting for the forsythia to sprout and feeling sorry for myself. Except! I'm buckled down writing, writing, writing. (Okay, with occasional breaks for driving, cooking and helping the Model UN Representative for Venezuela pull together her position papers. Besides that, it's all writing.)

So, what I'm writing? No surprise, I'm still working on HID FROM OUR EYES. I had really better get it done before I wind up having to excerpt all of it right here on Jungle Red! Today, a look back to 1972, with Chief of Police Jack Liddle, who's picked up 20-year-old Russ Van Alstyne for...well, you'll see.

At the car, Russell had folded himself into the front seat. He had taken off his t-shirt and was pressing it against his face. Jack got in, slammed the door, and reversed down the drive. He went up the road a good half mile until they were well out of range of the farmhouse, then pulled over. “Let's see it, then.”

Russell lifted his head. Jack winced. The boy's nose was bleeding, as was a cut over one eye and his split lip. “God amighty, boy, your mother's going to think I worked you over with a lead-lined hose.” He shifted into drive and got back onto the road. “C'mon, we've got to get you home. If you don't get some ice on that, your face is going to puff up like a parade balloon.”

Russ grunted, which Jack took for agreement. “You surprise me. He certainly got the better of you in that tangle.”

Russell shook his head. “Nuh-uh.” He moved his injured lip carefully around the words. “Didn't know how to fight. This,” he spread his fingers above his face, “dun't stop you.”

“It doesn't stop you, huh? What does, then?”

Russell pointed. His gut, his balls. His knee, his elbow. Jack thought back to the hold the boy had on Isaac before he'd been hauled away. Russell, he realized, had been five inches away from dislocating Isaac's shoulder and shattering his elbow. He dwelt on that as he navigated though the rolling fields bright with indian paintbrush and loosestrife, over Veteran's Bridge and into town, traffic picking up on this Monday morning, then hooking onto Old Route One Hundred by the river, rising north and west toward the mountains and the rough, rocky beginnings of the Hudson. 

 

Finally, he said, “It wasn't a fair fight. I'm glad you didn't hurt him badly.”

Russell flashed him a look before letting his gaze drop to his hands. “I was afraid,” he mumbled.

Jack nodded. “You thought you might not be able to stop.”

Russell nodded. “If you... hand t' hand, you're not supposed to hold back.”

“But you did. You were angry, and surprised, and you still held yourself back.” He glanced over at the boy. “That's the mark of a man, Russell. Self-control. Without that, he's nothing but a bully and a brute.”

Russell nodded, slowly, then closed his eyes and sank into the seat. Even at that, there was still a wire strung tight through him, ready to lash him from rest at a moment's notice. Are you that afraid they've turned you into a killer, boy?

I do love Millers Kill, but maybe I need to start a second series set in, say, Aruba. Or the south of France. Somewhere I'll have to travel to regularly in order to research... hmm, maybe Nantucket? 

What We're Writing: HID FROM OUR EYES

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Still working on HID FROM OUR EYES, which, I'm afraid is going to be my "What We're Writing" update for the next few months. Today is a scene set in 1972, where a young Russ Van Alstyne is being interviewed by the then-chief of police, Jack Liddle. I'm thinking the setting is a little vague; in rewrite, I'll probably add in a few physical details to nail it down to the time and place.

One of the things I like to do is sketch out relationships very lightly. If there's any part of my writing that's show-not-tell, its in the emotions of and the dynamic between  characters. Tell me what you see in the meeting between the chief and Russ's mother (and let me know if I'm tipping my hand too much!)

There was a quick rap, but before Jack could say anything, the door burst open. Harlene looked frazzled. It was only eight-thirty, and she had already chewed the lipstick off her bottom lip. “Chief, Mrs. Van Alstyne is here. She's demanding to see her son.” Her voice dropped, as if Russell couldn't hear her if she whispered. “One of the men at the impound garage is her cousin, and he called her. I didn't know what to do.” 

 

The boy stood. “Sit down, Russell. You're not going anywhere yet.” Jack stood up. “I'll talk with Mrs. Van Alstyne.”

She was waiting for him at the front desk. “Where is he? What has he done? Is he hurt?” Her dark hair was in loose, unruly curls and she was drowning in a fisherman's sweater that must have been her late husband's. Beneath her skirt, her feet were thrust into unlaced boots. 

 

“Come into my office, Margy.” He ushered her down the hall, not actually touching her back. “Russell's okay. I'm not sure what he's done, but I don't think he's hurt anybody.”

“You don't think--?” She turned back to him. She clutched at his arm, hard, then let go instantly.

Jack closed the door behind them. “A young woman's died. He found her body on the road when he was coming home from Saratoga.”

Margy stared. “You can't imagine Russell had anything to do with that.”

“Based on what he's told me so far, no. I don't. We'll have to check out the places he's said he'd been to to firm up his alibi.”

Margy looked up at him. “He was drinking.”

Jack nodded. “He was drinking.”

Margy had the clear, fair skin of the Cossayuharie farm girl she had been, the kind of complexion that showed her every emotion. He watched as her cheeks flushed with a dull red color. “God damn it!”

He blinked. Margy Campbell Van Alstyne never swore.

“I'm sorry.” She pressed her hands against her cheeks. “I just – I'm so afraid he'll fall into a bottle. His body's home, but his head is still back in Viet Nam. He has no idea what to do with his life now he's out of the Army. And he certainly doesn't want to listen to me. I'm a middle-aged mother who's lived in the North Country her whole life, and he's spent the last two years shooting people in Southeast Asia. We have nothing in common anymore.”

“Really.” Jack leaned against his desk. “Seems to me you know all about fighting a war you can't win.”

Her cupid's-bow mouth curved into a sad smile. “You'd think watching his father drink himself to death would have taught him something, wouldn't you?”

“Some things can't be taught. You just have to learn them through experience.” Jack pushed himself away from the desk. “I'm going to release him to your custody. He needs to stay here in Miller's Kill until we've cleared him.”

“You can't actually require him to stay unless he's been charged and is out on bail.” Now she sounded more like the tart apple he was used to.

“You left out 'peacenik' and 'jailhouse lawyer' from your self-description,” he said.

She smiled a genuine smile.

“That's why I'm telling you. I trust you more'n a bail bondsman, anyway.” He opened the door for her.

“This girl.” Margy paused. “Her death is an accident. Right?”

Jack gave himself a moment to stand close, his arm holding the door in a simulation of an embrace. “No,” he said. “I don't think it was an accident. I think someone killed her. And I'm worried – I'm afraid – that whoever he is, he won't stop with her.”

And for those of you who were following along two weeks ago with my all-graduation-all-the-time blogging, here's a snap from the Big Day!

L to R: Youngest, The Boy, The Smithie, her Girlfriend, me and Ross, overlooking the Smith College Quad.

What I'm Working On: Julia Spencer-Fleming

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm a big believer in intertwining physical description with character. A lot of what I do in my books involves setting, whether it's the Adirondack mountains in a storm or the St. Alban's meeting room during a vestry conference. Descriptions of the setting, like everything in the story, should reveal character or advance the plot. (Literary writers, YMMV.) 

In this scene from HID FROM OUR EYES, Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne is checking out an abandoned house that may have seen some recent activity. I set this during a pleasant summer afternoon, but I may go back and recast it at night if I want to give the moment more of an ominous edge.                               

He decided to check out the old Cunningham house himself. He might have sent one of his officers, but it was on the way to his mom's and he could stop in and assure Mrs. Guthrie that no, the farmhouse up the road wasn't being used as a drug depot, or biker gang headquarters, or brothel. Actually, that last was a possibility, in that some teenagers might have discovered the shuttered house was the perfect sheltered spot to play a little slap-and-tickle.

There was no car at the end of the long drive, but the house had clearly been opened recently. Several windows were propped open with squared-off sticks, and old sun-faded drapes were puffing and flapping in the warm summer wind. One of the front steps had been pried clean off, the punky boards tossed in the grass next to a hammer and a can of nails. Russ tested the step above before putting his weight on it. The porch planking had also been decimated, empty spaces gaping, a hand saw left near the edge. Russ could see fresh cuts where someone had been sawing off the ragged, pulpy ends of the still-intact boards.

 

Balanced between the gaps, he knocked on the door. No answer. He tried the handle. It turned. He swung the door open onto a wide center hallway that was a hell of a lot cleaner than it should have been in a house that had been empty for over a decade. 

 

Either the place was the hangout of a gang of super-neat Girl Scouts, or it had been sold. He'd tell Mrs. Guthrie and she could come over with one of her god-awful pies and meet the new folks. When he got back to town, he'd double check with Roxanne Lunt – if the Realtor hadn't sold the property herself, she'd know who had.

He was stepping out of the house, watching his steps to keep from falling through, when he heard the voice.

“Hey, there. Find what you were looking for?”

Russ almost stumbled. He glanced up just long enough to see an old man in jeans and a plaid shirt. Keeping his eyes on his feet, he crossed the remains of the porch. “Sorry to trespass. Your neighbor up the road saw some activity and asked us to check it out.” He jumped off the steps and headed toward the man. “I'm Russ Van Alstyne, chief of--” The old man was grinning at him. Washed-out blue eyes, heavy grooves, thick-set shoulders - “Chief Liddle!” Russ felt himself straightening like a rookie at parade drill. 

 

“Nice to see you again, Russell.” Liddle shook his hand. “Nice to see you in the uniform. Suits you.”

What sort of fictional settings have you felt revealed the characters?

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.