AUTHOR INSPIRATION WITH MYSTERY WRITER NEIL S. PLAKCY

The author and his father from back in the day

Neil S. Plakcy is the author of more than thirty mystery and romance novels, but more importantly (at least to them), he is Papa Neil to two rambunctious golden retrievers who inspire the antics of crime-sniffing golden Rochester – though so far the only dead bodies they have discovered are an unfortunate squirrel and a slow-moving raccoon. Today he discusses how his father inspired some of writing. Learn more about Neil and his books at his website. 

Steve’s Father… and Mine

A lot of the characteristics of Steve Levitan’s father come from my own. As I did, Steve grew up Jewish in the suburbs across the Delaware River from Trenton, New Jersey. His father, like mine, was an engineer and a handyman, with a full shop in the basement.

I moved to Florida in 1986, and my parents decided to follow me soon after. If you’ve ready any of the books, you’ll know that Steve’s parents were pack rats – as were mine.

One of the first things my father agreed to give up when my parents began talking about moving was his collection of metal sheets and tubes. He used to bring home scraps from the Boeing Vertol aircraft plant where he worked in Philadelphia, and he also bought supplies for projects that never materialized.

For example, when our house was built, my father planned to install a full bathroom in the basement, so he’d put aside copper pipe for it. Twenty-eight years after we moved in, the bathroom was still a fantasy, but the copper pipe was a reality.

After four trips to the scrap yard, we had sold 125 pounds of lead, two hundred pounds of aluminum, and smaller amounts of brass, copper and mysterious alloys which I had never heard of but which were apparently used in aircraft manufacture, and were highly prized by the scrap man.

We spent many of my childhood Sundays at the flea market in Lambertville, where Steve and Lili go in one of the books. It’s still going strong, years later. My father would walk up to a table of random tools and pick one up. “What does this do?” he’d ask.

Usually the person behind the table would say, “Damned if I know.”

My father would usually then say, “How much?” and if the price was right, he’d take it. As he got older, he suffered from peripheral neuropathy, and couldn’t work with his hands as he had. By the time we held the first of our yard sales, selling off whatever my parents didn’t want to take to Florida, there was a thin coating of dust on his workbench.

We had a chance to chat with a lot of customers as they browsed, and many of them were as curious as my father. It made me laugh when he had to admit that he’d never figured out what most of those unfamiliar tools were. 

One of our customers was an insurance agent with an office on Main Street in Yardley, who gave us a down payment on the circular saw.

 His son was working on becoming an eagle scout, and had to build a project that necessitated the saw.  They couldn't take it away, though, because the car was already loaded for a hiking trip they were taking the next morning, a practice hike in the Appalachians in preparation for a ten-day hike in New Mexico with the Boy Scouts later in the summer.

While the agent and his son were in the cellar examining the saw, I asked my father if he'd have gone hiking with me in the Appalachians when I was a teenager, back before he had both his hips replaced and his arthritis set in. He said, ''Don't be ridiculous," and began to look for the instruction manual for the saw.

That was my dad, and it gives me a lot of pleasure to bring his personality in when I describe Steve’s.

Dog’s Green Earth

A Golden Retriever Mystery

When his golden retriever Rochester discovers a body during one of their nightly walks, reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan must look to his neighbors for suspects. Could a killer be lurking along the oak-lined streets?

Steve inherited his townhome from his father, and it’s more than just a house to him—it’s the place where he recovered from the loss of two miscarried babies, the pain of losing his parents and the misery of his brief incarceration. Now that he has a new sweetheart, and a loving dog, protecting his home is even more important.

Could someone in the homeowner’s association be sabotaging efforts to keep River Bend a well-maintained place to live? It’s up to Steve and Rochester to dig up the clues to bring a murderer to justice, and protect the place they call home.

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MYSTERY AUTHOR NEIL S. PLAKCY ON HOLIDAY GIFTS FOR FICTIONAL FRIENDS

Neil S. Plakcy’s golden retriever mysteries have been inspired by his own goldens, Samwise, Brody and Griffin. Neil and his partner live in South Florida, where Neil is always writing, and Brody and Griffin are either sleeping or chewing one of their collection of dozens of plastic and rawhide bones. Learn more about Neil and his books at his website. 

Holiday Gifts for Fictional Friends

Come the holidays it’s often a struggle to come up with the perfect gift for not only our nearest and dearest, but the maid, our kids’ teachers, the letter carrier, and others. When I was a kid, my mother had contacts in the jewelry business in New York, so all my teachers got gold pins in the shape of a circle, which I’m sure went over better than perfume or scarves.

Pictured above is the first menorah I bought for myself, with the Lion of Judah at its base, all ready for the start of Hanukkah. The blue candle is the shamash or leader; you light that one first, and use it to light the others. The white candle is in place for the first night-- just as Hebrew is read from right to left, that's the way we insert candles (though we always light the newest candle first.)

It takes a lot of thought to go into the perfect gift—and it’s that much harder when your friends are fictional rather than real. But when you write a cozy mystery set at the holidays, like my Dog Have Mercy, there have to be gifts. Not only do they need to be relevant to the giver and the recipient, they also ought to have some larger resonance to the plot.

A lot of work for a few words on the page, right?

The protagonist for my (now) nine-book series is Steve Levitan, a forty-something guy who served a year in prison in California for computer hacking. He returned to his hometown, Stewart’s Crossing, Pennsylvania, with his tail between his legs, and he’s been trying to rebuild his life.

His partner in crime (solving) is his golden retriever, Rochester. It’s pretty easy to come up with gifts for the dog—Steve gives Rochester ropes for tugging and bones for chewing, as I give to my two goldens.

Steve also has a live-in love, photographer and college professor Liliana Weinstock. Since both of them are Jewish, their gift-giving takes place at Hanukkah. I admit, I was a spoiled only child. I got small gifts every night for eight nights—a book, a Toblerone bar, a box of my favorite cookies. I got my big gifts on Christmas day—bicycles, chemistry sets and so on.

I decided that Steve and Lili would exchange their gifts on the first night of Hanukkah, as my partner and I do. Steve’s a computer guy, and around that time my partner had given me my first iPad. It seemed like a great gift for Lili to give Steve.

Here’s what Steve gives Lili:

I handed her the square box, which I’d wrapped in paper festooned with menorahs and dreidels. She carefully slit the seam, and I said, “Go on, rip the paper. You know you want to.”

She laughed. “Fine.” She ripped it open. “It’s a lens for my iPhone!”

“Four lenses in one,” I said. “I know you take pictures sometimes with your phone when you don’t have a camera with you. This way you’ll have a 10x magnifier, a 15x, a fish-eye, and a wide-angle, all in one.”

“I love it!” she said. I got down from the chair and we kissed. “Thank you! I can’t wait to try it out.”

“Well, there’s a dog on the stairs who loves to have his picture taken.”

*

I tried to make the gifts relevant to each character, and of course at the end to tie them back to Rochester, who believes he’s the star of the books. And no one’s going to tell him he’s not!

Dog Have Mercy

A Golden Retriever Mystery, Book 6

In the sixth golden retriever mystery, Dog Have Mercy, Christmas and Hanukkah approach and reformed hacker Steve Levitan tries to help a fellow ex-con now working at the vet’s office in Stewart’s Crossing. His curiosity, and the crime-solving instincts of his golden retriever, Rochester, kick in when liquid potassium ampoules are stolen from the vet and Steve’s new friend is a suspect.

Is this theft connected to a drug-running operation in North Philly? Or to a recent spate of deaths at the local nursing home? And can Steve continue to resist his computer-hacking impulses or will his desire to help others continue to lead him into trouble?

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