MYSTERY AUTHOR HEATHER HAVEN ON WRITING A FEMALE PI IN 1940S MANHATTAN

Heather Haven is a multi-award winning mystery author. Her work includes the Silicon Valley based Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, the NYC trail-blazing WWII lady shamus of The Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries, a stand-alone mystery noir, and an anthology of stories. Her latest endeavor is Christmas Trifle, Book One of the Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Series. Learn more about Heather and her books at her website.

It’s uncanny how a set of circumstances can give birth to a series. The Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries came about after years of research for my stand-alone circus noir mystery, Murder under the Big Top. I didn't want all of the knowledge I'd gleaned of the nineteen-forties, particularly in New York City, to go to waste. Plus, I’d been challenged to write a mystery with a protagonist who wasn't an ideal beauty, i.e. young, svelte, and beautiful.

So I came up with Persephone (Percy) Cole, a character living and working in New York City during the early nineteen-forties, and one of Manhattan’s first female private investigators. Percy is thirty-five years old, considered middle-aged at the time, five-foot eleven, and a full-figured gal who loves her pistachio nuts. 

I discovered because I created a character larger and stronger than many men of seventy plus years ago, I was free to have a typical shamus of the time, only female. But this detective uses her brains as well as her brawn. Percy Cole is one smart cookie. She fits into a man’s world at a time when few women did.

My redhead gumshoe has the same hard-boiled, take-no-prisoners attitude as Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and Phillip Marlowe, with the addition of a wicked sense of humor. I wanted to give the character some softness, too, show another side of this tough lady sleuth. So enter her eight-year-old son Oliver, a child who gives her life meaning. 

As the author, these character attributes give me tremendous latitude. All of it makes perfect sense to me now, but it was one step in front of the other during the creative process. Frankly, that’s a writer for you. We often don’t know what we’re writing until we’ve written it. 

Pounding the streets of Manhattan with one of its first female detectives keeps me on my toes. Sometimes what I find out about the time period is surprising. For instance, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has taken place every year since nineteen twenty-four. The only exception was nineteen forty-two, the year the United States entered the war. The parade was cancelled out of respect for the gravity of the situation. 

Somehow, I overlooked that fact and had a sentence in the first book where Percy mentions attending the parade. A reader emailed me of the error – bless you - and I corrected it. Ever since then I try even harder to get the details accurate. It’s not a hardship, because I love learning the history of the time. And readers seem to be enjoying the Percy Cole series. I love that even more.

So far, I’ve penned three books in the Persephone Cole Vintage series, The Dagger Before Me, Iced Diamonds, and the latest, The Chocolate Kiss-Off.

On a personal note, I only wish I had Percy Cole’s self-assuredness. She never asks permission to do what she does. Like Davy Crockett, her philosophy is “First be sure you’re right—then go ahead.” What a woman!

Iced Diamonds

A Persephone Cole Vintage Mystery, Book 2

In late December 1942, Persephone (Percy) Cole, one of Manhattan’s first female PIs, has been hired to find out who killed a Santa Land elf and left his body in the storefront window of a swank 5^th Avenue jewelry store. Was it the spoiled heiress whose big buck handbag was found on the scene? Or was it the rat who broke out of the big house to settle a score? Shortly after, the corpse of the Christmas Angel is discovered stuffed in Mrs. Santa’s workshop. Will Santa Claus be next? 

With a penchant for Marlene Dietrich suits, pistachio nuts, and fedora hats, this working mother finds diamonds to the left of her, diamonds to the right, and skullduggery aplenty. Armed with her noodle and a WWI German Mauser, Percy is determined to solve these crimes or it just might be the “kiss off” for Christmas.

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MYSTERY AUTHOR HEATHER HAVEN ON THE INSPIRATION BEHIND HER WWII ERA FEMALE PI SERIES

Today we have a return visit from award-winning author Heather Haven, here to talk about how her Persephone Cole Vintage Mystery Series came about. Heather’s other series include the Silicon Valley-based Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, its off-shoot, Love Can Be Murder Novellas, and The Snow Lake Romantic Suspense Novels. Murder Under the Big Top, a Ringling Brothers’ Circus stand-alone docu-mystery, and an anthology, Corliss and Other Award-Winning Stories, round out her work. Learn more about Heather and her books at her website.

It’s odd what can give birth to a series. The Persephone Cole Vintage Mysteries happened after years of research for my stand-alone circus noir mystery, Murder Under the Big Top. I didn't want all of the knowledge I'd gleaned of the nineteen-forties to go to waste! But most importantly, I had been challenged to write a mystery with a protagonist who wasn't an ideal beauty, i.e. young, svelte, and beautiful.

So I came up with Persephone (Percy) Cole, who I believe fills the bill. Pushing forty years old - considered middle-aged back then – Percy is a five-foot eleven, full-figured gal, with a wicked sense of humor, and a take-no-prisoners attitude. Her one soft spot is her eight-year old son Oliver, a child who gives her life meaning.

I didn’t realize when I created a character physically larger than most men of seventy-plus years ago, I was offering up a woman who was quite comfortable with being a female Sam Spade. As one of the country’s first female private investigators, Percy fit into a man’s world at a time when few women did.

The first of the series, The Dagger Before Me, takes place over Halloween in a Broadway theater during a production of Macbeth. I chose a Broadway theater because I worked backstage in most of them for many years. I am very familiar with what is often considered an exotic job in an exotic world.

Iced Diamonds takes place in the Diamond District of Manhattan, although sadly, I don’t know diamonds nearly as well as I know Broadway. However, I found the idea of a dead elf in the storefront window of a jeweler’s during the Christmas season mad fun to write about.

The Chocolate Kiss-Off revolves around chocolate and murder. What could be better? Valentine’s Day is upon us and the owner of a gourmet chocolate factory in Brooklyn is found drowned in a huge vat of chocolate. As Percy notes, “Some would say there are worse ways to go.”

Taking place in New York’s Manhattan at the beginning of World War Two, the Persephone Cole Vintage series keeps me on my toes. Sometimes what I find out about the time period is surprising. I love that part. And the readers seem to be enjoying the Percy Cole series. I love that even more.

The Dagger Before Me 

Persephone Cole, A Vintage Holiday Mystery, Book 1

      

It’s 1942 and Persephone “Percy” Cole is pounding the pavement of Manhattan, bucking the odds as one of its first female private detectives. Halloween finds Percy backstage during the previews of the latest Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. There’s double, double, toil and trouble when an actor falls from an overhead catwalk and breaks his neck. Only the latest in a series of catastrophes, his death further serves to fuel the lore and superstition surrounding The Bard’s play and its supernatural forces since its creation in 1606.

With a shortage of manpower, due to the war overseas, the desperate producer takes a chance on a female PI to save the show from closing. But everyone has their secrets, from the director down to the lowliest spear thrower, and they all want Percy gone. After one more killing and a near-death scene for Percy, she’s not sure which is worse: someone trying to kill her or being foisted into the role of Witch Number Two.

Armed only with her noodle and a WWI German Mauser, Persephone Cole sets out to make things right, because that’s what lady dicks do.

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--JUDY PENZ SHELUK'S SLEUTH COOKS UP BRIE & ASPARAGUS QUICHE

Photo courtesy of Half Baked Harvest
(www.halfbakedharvest.com)

Judy Penz Sheluk is the author of the Glass Dolphin Mystery and Marketville Mystery series, and the editor of The Best Laid Plans: 21 Stories of Mystery & Suspense. Learn more about her at her website.

I’m not much of a cook, truth be told, but I have learned to live vicariously through my Marketville Mysteries’ protagonist Calamity (Callie) Barnstable. And while there are no actual recipes in my books, Callie can often be found making dinner (when she’d not ordering in Thai or cheese pizza with hot peppers and extra sauce). In A Fool’s Journey, Callie makes Asparagus & Brie Quiche, which she pairs with mixed greens with balsamic dressing, angel food cake with fresh strawberries and a dollop of strawberry whipped cream for dessert. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

Brie & Asparagus Quiche

Ingredients:

1 - 9” pie shell

3 eggs

1 small white onion, chopped

1tsp. butter or margarine

8 ounces Brie cheese, cut into wedges

½ cup milk

½ cup 18% table cream

8-10 asparagus spears, ends trimmed

Salt and pepper, to taste

Nutmeg

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 400°F

Melt butter and lightly fry the onion until clear.

Blanch asparagus in salted water for 3 to 4 minutes, then drain in ice cold water to retain color.

Cut the rind from the cheese and chop into small cubes.

Mix cheese, eggs, and milk into a food processor and blend until smooth. Add salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

Spread onions on the base of the pie shell, pour in cheese mixture, then place asparagus spears on top.

Bake thirty minutes until set and lightly browned.

Click here for a printable PDF of this recipe

A Fool’s Journey

A Marketville Mystery, Book 3

In March 2000, twenty-year old Brandon Colbeck left home to find himself on a self-proclaimed “fool’s journey.” No one—not friends or family—have seen or heard from him since, until a phone call from a man claiming to be Brandon brings everything back to the forefront. Calamity (Callie) Barnstable and her team at Past & Present Investigations have been hired to find out what happened to Brandon, and, if still alive, where he might be. As Callie follows a trail of buried secrets and decades-old deceptions only one thing is certain: whatever the outcome, there is no such thing as closure.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--INTERVIEW WITH PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR LEE ALVAREZ

Today we sit down for an interview with private investigator Lee Alvarez, the star sleuth of author Heather Haven’s Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries.

What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?

Soooo much better. I mean, she really has me running over rooftops, down and dirty in the mud, being shot at, etc. You name it; I do it. I can’t tell you how many of my shoes have been ruined since I met her. I keep asking her why she won’t let me sit in my client’s office snooping at online files, sipping a double latté, while wearing my latest Vera Wang find. I simply don’t get it! What did I ever do to her? For instance, in my last adventure I am in disguise as a dishwasher at a cooking school. I can’t tell you what that did to my nails. My manicurist sobbed like a baby.

What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?

The glass is always half full. I’m a positive, upbeat sort of person. I love life and everybody in it until they prove to me I shouldn’t. Which many of them do. That’s more or less a PI’s lot in life, the hardened criminal. Here I am, about as hard as a two-minute egg. But I don’t want to be any different. Embrace life, I say. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Take care of small animals and those less fortunate. Salute the flag. Let’s face it, I’m a walking Hallmark card.

What do you like least about yourself?

Sometimes I leap before I look, but I try to watch that. You don’t want to be leaping into something that could hurt your Jimmy Choos. And I’m impulsive by nature, hot-blooded, all that Latina stuff. I try to be even-tempered. I try.

What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?

In the latest book, The Culinary Art of Murder, she puts me in a disguise that makes me look just like Albert Einstein. I wear a salt and pepper wig, sort of like a Brillo pad on steroids, false buckteeth, and thick glasses. Baggy black pants, a huge white shirt, and imitation Crocks on my feet complete this ghastly getup. I am a real bow-wow. And then to add insult to injury, I get to stand on those feet and wash about a gazillion dirty dishes, pots, and pans while trying to find a killer. What I do for a living!

Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?

You’re kidding, right? Argue with Heather? Not me. I tend to roll over with all fours in the air and bark.

What is your greatest fear?

That people won’t read about me and my family’s adventures running a detective agency in the heart of Silicon Valley. I might have to go out and get a real job.

What makes you happy?

Well, I’m pretty blessed. I have a great life, a great job, barring a few scrapes and bruises here and there, and let’s not mention the time I was shot. But I got married recently to a wonderful guy who thinks I’m about as great as I know he is. I’m working on having it all. I mean, why not?

If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?

Well, there’s two things: One – I can’t sing worth a tinker’s dam, which is too bad. I love to sing. But my brother says I have a voice that can clear out a stopped up sink. And two – The biggest love of my life is ballet. Unfortunately, I wound up being a so-so ballerina, no matter how hard I worked at it. Not much of a choice – mediocre dancer or first-rate sleuth. But I still do a barre every day. At that time, I’m as good as Pavlova, if only in my mind.

Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?

My mother makes me crazy. I say this because Lila Hamilton Alvarez is perfect. Really, truly. All my life I have lived in the shadow of the most beautiful, in-control, stylish, intelligent, and knowledgeable woman on this planet, my mother. But there’s another side to her, which is really annoying. Example: I’m told I take after my father in nearly every way. Dark hair, twilight colored eyes, fiery temper. When I was a kid, everybody would say, “Lee’s got her daddy’s features and her mother’s fixtures.” But nobody ever said that around Mom. Way too crude. Gender-based innuendos are not made around L. H. Alvarez. She would be scandalized. My mother also can’t tolerate people who use abbreviations (like I just did) or nicknames, such as calling me “Lee.” She’s called me Liana, since I dropped out of the womb. Whoops. Scratch that remark. Back to being crude.

Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?

I don’t think anybody. My philosophy mirrors Oscar Wilde’s - Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.

Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?

I think Heather is a pretty nice lady when I can get past how she sends me out and nearly gets me killed every time I turn around. But she does let me wear designer clothes and I do have the occasional zinger to say. Now if she’d just get me valet parking wherever I go, we’d have something.

You can find Heather at her website. She loves it soooo much. Says it really shows who she is. And I’m featured nicely on it. Actually, all of us characters are. She’s real fair like that.

What's next for you?

Heather’s got me hopping! The seventh of the Álvarez Family Murder Mysteries will come out next year, Casting Call for a Corpse. She hasn’t started it yet per se, so I’m fairly safe for the moment. However, what she’s working on now is the second book of the spinoff series, The Lee Alvarez Mystery Novellas. This series features hubby, Gurn Hanson and me. We’re sort of a Nick and Nora Charles in today’s Silicon Valley. The first book, Honeymoons Can Be Murder, is already out. She’s merciless, almost getting me killed in book one, even though I had a sprained ankle. Now she’s writing Marriage Can Be Murder, book two. I’m crossing my fingers I’m going to make it through another one of her stories. Mercy, Heather, mercy!

The Culinary Art of Murder

Book Six of The Alvarez Family Murder Mystery

Lee’s Uncle Tío is smitten with the guest chef at a Silicon Valley culinary arts institute. When the woman is arrested for the murder of a fellow chef, a reluctant Lee agrees to help prove Tío’s lady love innocent. But Lee suspects the ambitious, southern belle of a cook might just be guilty. Undercover work at the institute proves to have more pitfalls than whipping up a chocolate soufflé. The killer isn’t done and tries to get Lee out of the way permanently. But just who is the murderer? The accused? One of her two sons? Another inmate from a cooking school with more to hide than dirty dishes? With secrets as plentiful as sauces, the nagging question remains, if Lee proves the lady chef guilty, will Tío ever forgive her for sending his new love to jail?

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A SEARS KIT HOUSE SLEUTH

The Yates model Sears kit house

Heather Weidner has been a mystery fan since Scooby Doo and Nancy Drew. Her short stories appear in Virginia is for Mysteries and Virginia is for Mysteries Volume II. Learn more about her and her writing at her website/blog. 

Secret Lives and Private Eyes

Between 1908 and 1940, homeowners could shop and purchase houses through the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The parts, including hardware and varnishes, arrived by railroad and were ready for assembly on the owner’s lot.

All materials arrived precut and fitted with instructions. Some homeowners hired contractors, while others assembled their own homes. The boards, molding, and pipes usually had markings still visible in many of the homes today. It was a great marketing plan by Sears to sell the home to buyers who would also need furnishings, household items, and lawn gear offered by their stores.

By 1937, according to the Sears Archives, home sales had reached $3.5 million. There were over 447 home models to choose from, and in 1923, Sears added barns to its offerings. During its run, Sears sold over 70,000 of these ready-to-be-assembled homes.

Private investigator, Delanie Fitzgerald in Secret Lives and Private Eyes, lives in a Sears Catalog home. While there are several of these houses in Hopewell, Virginia in the Crescent Hills neighborhood, I took the liberty of moving one to Chesterfield County for my character’s residence.

Delanie lives in the Yates model, which according to original advertising, “was a mellow house, pleasantly flavored with English-cottage characteristics.” Its first floor has four rooms and a bath. It also has a second floor with three bedrooms and a bath. The bungalow is quirky and quaint and matches her style. This model was marketed as a complete home on the first floor level. Buyers could finish the second floor at their leisure. In 1938, the Yates model originally cost between $1,812 and $2,058.

When my husband and I first moved to Central Virginia, we toured nearby Hopewell. I fell in love with the catalog homes that have lasted well over seventy years. It was the perfect residence for my spunky sleuth.

References

http://www.virginia.org/Listings/HistoricSites/SearsCatalogHomes/

http://searsarchives.com

http://www.arts-crafts.com/archive/kithome/rt-searskits.shtml

Secret Lives and Private Eyes

Business has been slow for PI, Delanie Fitzgerald, but her luck seems to change when a tell-all author hires her to find rock star Johnny Velvet. Could the singer whose life was purportedly cut short in a fiery car crash still be alive? And as if sifting through dead ends in a cold case isn’t bad enough, Chaz Wellington Smith, III, a loud-mouthed strip club owner, hires Delanie to uncover information on the mayor’s secret life. When the mayor is murdered, Chaz is the key suspect. Now Delanie must clear his name and figure out the connection between the two cases before another murder – probably her own – takes place.

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#TRAVEL WITH SERENA--GUEST AUTHOR NICHOLE CHRISTOFF AND THE NJ PINE BARRENS

NJ Pine Barrens Cranberry Bog
(photo by Andrew Leahey)

Award-winning, debut author Nichole Christoff is a writer, broadcaster, and military spouse who has worked on-air and behind the scenes producing and promoting content for radio, television news, and the public relations industry across the United States and Canada. Learn more about Nichole and her books at her website. 

A Private Eye in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens

When Jamie Sinclair, my private-eye-turned-security-specialist and protagonist of The Kill List, had to return to the army base where she grew up to take on the case that could break her heart, I knew exactly where that army base needed to be. It needed to be in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Really, driving across New Jersey in the daylight, it’s hard to imagine the Garden State’s pine forests could ever be seen as a threatening place. But go hiking at dusk through my favorite Pinelands’ playground, Double Trouble State Park, and you might whistle a different tune. The name says it all, doesn’t it? Double. Trouble.

In actuality, Double Trouble is like the rest of the Pine Barrens. It’s a lovely place of pine forests, swift streams, and cedar bogs. The wider Pine Barrens area covers about seven counties all in all. Sweet, small towns dot the woodlands. And the Atlantic City Expressway runs right through it. But it hasn’t always been that way.

Once upon a time, this part of the world was remote and for European settlers,

Jersey Devil

supernaturally scary. A variety of accounts point the year 1735 or ’36 when a farmer’s wife named Mrs. Leeds living in the Pine Barrens learned she was expecting a thirteenth child. Of course, life was tough in early America and with twelve other mouths to feed, Mrs. Leeds is said to have cursed her unborn infant. And the Devil himself complied with her request. Mrs. Leeds’ baby came into the world as a wicked, winged thing, part horse and entirely awful. It escaped up the chimney and fled deep into the pine forest before anyone could stop it. But don’t think Mrs. Leeds’ offspring has been forgotten over the centuries. Known as the Jersey Devil, travelers have sworn they’ve seen it in the woods and so have lifelong residents of the Pine Barrens’ towns.

Mrs. Leeds and her family gave their name to a number of those towns. However, the town in The Kill List isn’t one of them. My fictional Leeds plays host to an army post called Fort Leeds—which may or may not bear a resemblance to actual army installations found around the Northeastern United States. But the sandy, shady, swampy, spooky atmosphere of the Pine Barrens that surround it? I couldn’t make that up!

The Kill List: A Jamie Sinclair Novel

In this taut debut thriller, Nichole Christoff introduces a savvy private investigator with nerves of steel—and a broken heart.

As a top private eye turned security specialist, Jamie Sinclair has worked hard to put her broken marriage behind her. But when her lying, cheating ex-husband, army colonel Tim Thorp, calls with the news that his three-year-old daughter has been kidnapped, he begs Jamie to come find her. For the sake of the child, Jamie knows she can’t refuse. Now, despite the past, she’ll do everything in her power to bring little Brooke Thorp home alive.

Soon, Jamie is back at Fort Leeds—the army post in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens where she grew up, the only child of a two-star general—chasing down leads and forging an uneasy alliance with the stern military police commander and the exacting FBI agent working Brooke’s case. But because Jamie’s father is now a US senator, her recent run-in with a disturbed stalker is all over the news, and when she starts receiving gruesome threats echoing the stalker’s last words, she can’t shake the feeling that her investigation may be about more than a missing girl—and that someone very powerful is hiding something very significant . . . and very sinister.

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