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| Austin Starr's Hippy Suitcase from 1969 |
Kay
Kendall writes mystery/female amateur sleuth novels set in the 1960’s. Her book
titles show she’s a fan of Bob Dylan. Learn more about her and her books at her
Austin Starr and Kay Kendall websites.
The Travels of Austin Starr—Amateur Sleuth
My
mystery Rainy Day Women launched last
month. It’s the summer of 1969, and my 23-year-old amateur sleuth, Austin Starr,
has already done a fair bit of traveling in her young life. Born in a small
Texas town at the leading edge of the baby boom—1946—she had always wanted to
see the world, inspired by the adventures of her favorite fictional heroine,
Nancy Drew.
At
first she traveled around Texas with her parents to visit relatives. One set of
grandparents lived in nearby Houston, and aunts and uncles lived in Dallas.
Both cities offered more excitement than her birthplace of 12,000. Visits to
her other grandparents in another small town 500 miles north in Kansas were
pleasant, but she rued the long drive through rural Oklahoma and thought Kansas
wasn’t cosmopolitan enough to hold her interest.
During
college Austin grabbed at a chance to study a foreign language abroad. Here her
daring really took flight. Bored with her high school Spanish lessons, she
switched to Russian and spent a summer in the Soviet Union studying at a
university in Moscow. In the darkest days of the Cold War, she found this
exciting indeed, and upon return to college she secretly got recruited by the
CIA. During her senior year in college, she underwent training from the
mysterious Mr. Jones.
Like
many young women of her era, however, marriage scrambled her plans for the
future. When she married her college sweetheart David Starr after their
graduation, she never dreamed this would bring radical change to her life.
Ahead of a draft summons, David announced he would resist the Vietnam War era draft
and said they were moving north, far north—to Canada.
Book
one of the Austin Starr series, Desolation
Row, shows what happens to Austin and David during their first year in
Toronto. He is jailed for a murder he doesn’t commit, and naturally she solves
the case. Living in a foreign land unsettles her, but she makes friends with
her Russian history professor in graduate school and his daughter Larissa, who
is half Russian and half Canadian.
This is
all backstory to the second Austin Starr mystery, Rainy Day Women. Within 30 pages Austin is on a plane flying from
Toronto across Canada to Vancouver, with her three-month-old infant in tow. She
must respond to Larissa’s call for
help. Her best friend in Canada needs support because she’s suspected of
murdering an activist in a women's liberation group at the University of
British Columbia, where Larissa has taken a summer job.
Soon
another murder of a women’s lib member—this time in Seattle—sends Austin and
her baby south to see if the two murders are linked. The action takes place
right after the Manson murders in Los Angeles and during Woodstock. Travel was
different back then, and 1969—well, what a year! Talk about adventure.
These
days I’m sending Austin on even more travel adventures. In book three, Tombstone Blues, Austin and David will attend
his academic conference in Vienna. In this middle European city that played a
big part in World War II and the resulting Cold War, spies lurk on almost every
street corner. Austin has kept her CIA training a secret from David, knowing
full well he won’t approve. Once he finds out, both husband and wife tangle
with Soviet spies, and serious trouble ensues. Needless to say, this is great
fun to write. Stay tuned.
Rainy
Day Women
Book 2 of the Austin
Starr Mystery series
In 1969, during the week of the Manson murders and Woodstock, the
intrepid amateur sleuth, infant in tow, flies across the continent to support a
friend suspected of murdering women's liberation activists in Seattle and
Vancouver. Then her former CIA trainer warns that an old enemy has contracted a
hit on her. Her anxious husband demands that she give up her quest and fly back
to him. How much should Austin risk when tracking the killer puts her and her
baby's life in danger?
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2 comments:
Interesting time in history to use as a setting for your novels! Best wishes!!
Hi, Angela. I'm glad you think the era is interesting. I began writing about it before MAD MEN began on TV, and back then everyone was either bored with it or simply didn't care. After MAD MEN, it is easier to get people interested in the sixties, and I'm so grateful. Of course it was a time of enormous upheaval, and that makes those years ideal for settings for murder and deviousness in my mysteries. Thanks for your interest!
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