The People Next Door

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: When I was…oh, I guess sixteen, I was out on a sort-of “date.” Those  were few and far between and I remember nothing about it except: When I called at 10 to see if I could stay out later, my mother said: “Come home right now, the barn is on fire.”

When we arrived, there was a conflagration, and firefighters everywhere, and the ladies auxiliary had set up a picnic table in our front yard with hot dogs and lemonade. Weird, huh?

Anyway, turned out, we began to hear, the kid next door, a very strange 10 year old, had set the fire. The family soon left town.  

Yeesh.

These days--I realize—I know who lives right next door to us on both sides. And they are not pre-adolescent arsonists.  But the next houses? NO idea.

The wonderful Nancy Cole Silverman has her own “house next door” story.

Family Secrets and Urban Legends

By Nancy Cole Silverman

When I was a little girl, my family and I used to visit my grandmother’s home in Seattle. She had lived there since she had been a young bride and had many stories to tell about the neighborhood and times past.  

One of the more curious tales concerned a mysterious house next door, a turn of the century Craftsman with a large front porch and a view of Puget Sound.  Gramma said the house had once been the prettiest on the block with hanging fuchsias and Boston ferns, but that the lady who lived inside, hadn’t been seen in years.

Rumor was there had been a murder in the house. Some suspected the woman had killed her husband, other suspected something far more sinister.  

Whatever it was, my grandmother didn’t tell me. Only that it was something, a young girl didn’t need to worry herself about.  Grandma was like that.  If you didn’t have something nice to say, she didn’t say it.  

All I knew for certain was that the cops had come, the cops had left, and nobody – particularly the women in the neighborhood – were talking about it.  It was my first experience hearing about an unsolved crime and a recluse, and I was determined to see if I might spot her. 

I don’t know what I expected, probably something very Hitchcockian. Maybe a little, old gray-haired lady, dressed in black mourning clothes and carrying around a candle while peering out laced-draped windows.  Despite my staying up way past my bedtime and sitting by the guest bedroom window and straining my young eyes to see if I might catch a glimpse of her, I never did.  But my memory of my nighttime posts, and later some of the urban legends about reclusive old ladies and serial killers was seared in my mind. For years when I’d visit my grandmother, I couldn’t help but flash back to the memory of the strange house next door and wonder about its occupant. 

But time and distance faded those memories, and I hadn’t thought of that incident again until I started research for Room For Doubt, book four of the Carol Childs Mysteries.  About that time, there were a couple of stories  in the paper; one about a group of bad cops on the take and another where two sweet looking little old ladies had been accused of multiple murders. The story was slugged, Black Widow Murders: Two elderly women found guilty of conspiring to kill homeless men.

The story reminded me of Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace. 

Kesselring based his light-hearted mystery on the serial killings of Amy Archer-Gilligan, who was believed to have killed between 20 and 100 people, including several of her husbands.  Kesselring turned what was a horrendous news story into a popular piece of light-hearted fiction. 

The story triggered memories of the mysterious house next to my grandmother and its even more mysterious occupant.  Why hadn’t anyone followed up on the idea that she might have been a serial killer, and why hadn’t the police arrested her or at least conducted a more thorough investigation?  I couldn’t help but wonder, was there a reason why nobody dared speak of whatever happened inside that house?

Imagination, it’s a wonderful thing.  It got me researching all kinds of urban legends.  One of which was the basis for my new book Room For Doubt. 

How about you? Any childhood memories or urban legends influence the theme of your work?

HANK: And let me ask you this, Reds and readers—do you know who lives next door?

ROOM FOR DOUBT

Yes, showing it again, why not? xx Hank

When radio reporter Carol Childs is called to a crime scene in the Hollywood Hills at five thirty in the morning, she’s convinced it must be a publicity stunt to promote a new movie. That is, until she sees the body hanging from the center of the Hollywood sign. The police are quick to rule it a suicide, but something doesn’t add up for Carol. Particularly after a mysterious caller named Mustang Sally confesses to the murder on the air and threatens to kill again.

With the help of an incorrigible PI, her best friend, and a kooky psychic, Carol is drawn into the world of contract killers and women scorned. As she races to find the real killer, she finds herself faced with a decision that will challenge everything she thought she knew.

• NANCY COLE SILVERMAN
• Nancy Cole Silverman enjoyed a long and very successful career in radio before turning to print journalism and later, to fiction.
  As a graduate of Arizona State University with a degree in Mass Communications, Nancy was one of the first female on-air television reporters in her hometown of Phoenix. After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1970’s she turned to the business side of broadcasting, becoming one of the top advertising sales executives in the market. After stints at KNX, KFWB, KABC and KXTA radio, she was appointed General Manager at KMPC, making her one of only two female managers in America’s second-largest radio market.
  But in her heart of hearts, Nancy thought first of herself as a writer. In 2001 she left the radio business to found and edit The Equestrian News, a monthly publication for equine enthusiasts. “That’s when I really began to write,” said Silverman, “toggling between writing articles for the News and fiction I’d been thinking about for years.”
  Today Nancy is a full-time author. Her new series, The Carol Childs Mysteries, with Henery Press, is available in bookstores and online.

Welcome to Windy Corner. A visit from Katherine Bolger Hyde

RHYS BOWEN: One of the things I love about being part of Jungle Reds is meeting new writers or coming across new-to-me writers. Today I'm happy to introduce Katherine Bolger Hyde, whom I met earlier this year and now has a brand new first novel to tell us about. It's all yours Katherine.. 

KATHERINE: What’s your favorite place—real or fantasy—to read? The beach? A cozy chair by the fire with a cat on your lap? A well-stocked home library redolent of polished wood and old leather bindings?

I love the sound of all the above. But I don’t often get to enjoy those environments for my own reading. That’s one reason I chose to give my protagonist-sleuth, literature professor Emily Cavanaugh, regular access to all three.

Early in the pages of Arsenic with Austen, Emily inherits property in Stony Beach, a fictional small town on the Oregon coast. 

As a devotee of the traditional English country house mystery, I wanted my heroine to have a country house of her own, so I included one as part of her legacy from her great aunt Beatrice. A mansion on the scale of the typical English manor house would not be credible in a town like Stony Beach, so I scaled it down to a nice seven-bedroom Victorian with a tower overlooking the sea. In consideration of the climate of the Oregon Coast and with a tip of the hat to E. M. Forster, I named the house Windy Corner, after the Honeychurch home in A Room with a View.

Poring over floor plans is a favorite pastime of mine, and I wanted to have a vivid picture of the interior of the home in my own mind in order to be able to paint it for the reader. So I bought several books of authentic turn-of-the-century house plans and paged through them until I found a house with an exterior and a floor plan that matched almost exactly what I had imagined for Windy Corner.

Of course, this floor plan had to have a library. The room at the heart of the house, marked as the “Sitting Room” in the plan above, was the perfect candidate with its semicircular bay window looking out over the ocean. It’s a room filled with books that were not merely collected but loved. (Atmosphere of old bindings: check.)

Here Emily sits reading or knitting with her cats, Kitty, Levin, and Bustopher Jones, curled up nearby. (Cozy chair by the fire with cat: check.) Here she is visited by friends and foes alike; here much of the drama of her new life as an heiress and reluctant sleuth unfolds.

One tiny section of the library is represented on the cover of Arsenic with Austen (along with a cat that must be an intruder, since it doesn’t resemble any of Emily’s three).

The library of Windy Corner is a welcoming room where a fire is nearly always burning and high tea is nearly always being served. Emily and I do most cordially hope you will join us there.

The magic door to the Windy Corner library may be found at kbhyde.com.

Katherine Bolger Hyde has lived her life surrounded by books, from teaching herself to read at age four to majoring in Russian literature to making her career as an editor. She lives in California with her husband and varying numbers of offspring and cats. Arsenic with Austen is her first novel.

When literature professor Emily Cavanaugh inherits a fortune from her great aunt, she expects her life to change. She doesn’t expect to embark on a murder investigation, confront the man who broke her heart 35 years before, and nearly lose her own life. Emily travels to the sleepy coastal village of Stony Beach, Oregon, to claim her inheritance, where she hears hints that her aunt may have been murdered. Soon another murder confirms these suspicions. While she and Sheriff Luke Richards, her once-and-possibly-future love, reenact the plot of Persuasion, Emily uses her knowledge of Jane Austen's characters to analyze the suspects and bring the killer to justice.

The First Feminists? Or--maybe not...

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Okay, cutting to the chase. Isn't this a great cover? It's instant suspense, and you know there's a dilemma, a major choice, a desire, and whoever it is--is trying to find an answer through magic.

I am so happy to see this!  I critiqued Holly West's manuscript at CrimeBake ( I have no memory of what I said, specifically, but I know I liked it, a lot!) and now her debut MISTRESS OF FORTUNE is now out from Harlequin's Carina Press! Hurray!

She has an incredibly interesting take on a certain group of women--in fact, she wonders if they might be

The First Feminists? 

         by Holly West

HOLLY WEST: My debut historical mystery, Mistress of Fortune, is set in late 17^th century London and features amateur sleuth Isabel Wilde, a mistress to King Charles II who secretly makes her living as a fortuneteller. 

(HANK: Ooh. See?)

In truth, she’s a more of a charlatan.

(HANK: Ooh, even better, right?)

 In her world, women have few enough advantages and she’s more than willing to make the most of those that she has; namely, cleverness, beauty and good intuition.

I chose fortunetelling as her profession, not because of a personal belief that fortunetellers and the like possess a supernatural ability to predict the future or see the “other side,” but because I’m fascinated by the cultural traditions of soothsayers and healers, particularly “wise women.” During a time when medical science was in its infancy and only the rich could afford a physician, wise women were a valuable source of knowledge for the 17^th century housewife, especially in rural areas. 

They acted as doctors, midwives, counselors, and caregivers. They were, in many ways, feminists before their time. 

Though Isabel Wilde isn’t exactly a wise woman, she does recommend various healing herbs and concoctions to her customers and offers sincere, practical advice when she can.

If most women came to these professions with honest intentions, there were some whose motivations were not so pure. In my research, I came upon a French woman named Catherine Monvoisin (c. 1640-1680), nicknamed La Voisin. When her husband’s career as a jeweler went south, she turned to fortunetelling to support her family. While her paranormal abilities as a soothsayer might have been in question, her business acumen was not; she paid strict attention to her visitors’ requests and expanded her offerings to take advantage of their desires. 

She sold amulets filled with such mystical items as bones of toads, the dust of human remains, teeth of moles and Spanish fly. She prescribed “magic” rituals and arranged black masses so that her customers could worship the devil. She practiced medicine and midwifery, and performed abortions. Eventually, she began peddling poison.

La Voisin’s predecessor, Guilia Tofana, had perfected the science of poison twenty years earlier. She was an Italian woman who developed an odorless, tasteless poison (likely a solution of arsenic) labeled Aqua Tofana to sell to women who wanted to murder their husbands. Perhaps her conscience was eased by the fact that her customers were mainly women ensnared in abusive marriages, but when she was finally apprehended, she confessed (under torture) to killing more than six hundred men with her poison.

Both La Voisin and Tofana were immensely popular, so much so that when the papal authority called for Tofana’s arrest, a local church granted her sanctuary. La Voisin had many members of the aristocracy among her clients and became very rich as a result of her business. In the end, however, both women were executed; Tofana was put to death in the Campo di Fiori in Rome in 1659 and La Voisin was convicted of witchcraft and burnt in public at the Place de Greve in Paris on February 22, 1680.

Wicked as they may have been, these women were savvy and made their way in a society that often treated females no better than livestock. Given the circumstances, I’m not sure this is something to be celebrated, but their stories are interesting.

My heroine, Isabel Wilde, isn’t based on either La Voisin or Guilia Tofana, but the soothsayer who trained Isabel in the art of fortunetelling, Mary Bixby, is. But at heart, Isabel and Mary are both good people. It’s just that they understand their lot in life and can’t help pushing against their constraints. And, as crime fiction aficionados like us know, sometimes, that leads to murder.

HANK: And now you're hooked, right? And what're your thoughts on "women's intuition"? 

A copy of MISTRESS OF FORTUNE to one lucky commenter! (US only, please.)

************************************

Holly West is the author of the Mistress of Fortune series (Carina Press). The first in the series, Mistress of Fortune, was published in February 2014 and the second, Mistress of Lies, will be released in Fall 2014. She’s currently writing her third book, a stand-alone crime novel set in 1948 Philadelphia. Holly lives, reads, and writes in Los Angeles with her husband, Mick, and dog, Stella. 

Mistress of Fortune Synopsis:

Isabel, Lady Wilde, a mistress to King Charles II, has a secret: she makes her living disguised as Mistress Ruby, a fortune-teller who caters to London’s elite. It’s a dangerous life among the charlatans, rogues and swindlers who lurk in the city’s dark corners, but to Isabel, the risk is worth the reward.

Until magistrate Sir Edmund Godfrey seeks Mistress Ruby’s counsel and reveals his unwitting involvement in a plot to kill the king. When Isabel’s diary containing dangerous details of his confession is stolen, she knows she must find it before anyone connects her to Mistress Ruby. Especially after Sir Edmund’s corpse is discovered a few days later…

Isabel is sure that whoever stole her diary is Sir Edmund’s killer—and could be part of a conspiracy that leads all the way to the throne. But as she delves deeper into the mystery, not even the king himself may be able to save her.