The Crime Cafe

This week’s episode of the Crime Cafe podcast features another great story from The Adventures of Philip Marlowe.

Feel free to check out the video version, too.

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Where ad-free episodes are a bi-weekly event!

Here’s a copy of the transcript in PDF.

Marlowe (01:17): Somewhere in the cold, persistent rain that made the city itself seem a thing of evil, a girl had disappeared and it was my job to find her, but before I did, I found death and a devil.

Narrator (01:31): From the pen of Raymond Chandler, outstanding author of crime fiction, comes his most famous character as CBS presents The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, and now with Gerald Mohr starred as Philip Marlowe, we bring you tonight's exciting story, "The Black Halo".

Marlowe (02:10): For three days, an ugly storm had lashed at the west coast from northern Oregon to the tip of lower California, and although it was only noon when I drove up to the sprawling red brick house just south of Santa Barbara to meet a new client of mine, the black that was in the sky and the driving rain that was everywhere left the day bleak and wet and cold. Left it the kind of day that made you feel that logs blazing in a fireplace and a warm dry robe were the only things that could matter to anyone. But when I got inside the house, Felix Drum, 350 uncomfortable pounds of executive in a wheelchair, who made his living importing perfumes, was very worried and not about the weather outside.

Felix Drum (02:52): Marlowe. Julia Perry is gone. I want you to find her and bring her back, and the sooner you do that, the better.

Marlowe (02:58): And the more I know, Mr. Drum, the easier it'll be. Exactly who is Julia Perry?

Felix Drum (03:02): My assistant, very capable girl who in the past six months has practically taken over my entire business. She handles most of the work from her cottage here on the grounds where she lives. She also has some little cubbyhole in Los Angeles where she keeps her files and some sample stock.

Marlowe (03:19): Do you have the address of that cubbyhole?

Felix Drum (03:20): If I knew the answer to everything, I wouldn't have hired you and anyway, it isn't important. Hand me that little bottle.

Marlowe (03:29): This one?

Felix Drum (03:31): Yes. Thank you.

Marlowe (03:43): When did you last see Julia, Mr. Drum?

Felix Drum (03:45): Three days ago. It was three days ago when she left on one of her regular weekly trips down to Los Angeles to bid on perfumes. Usually she stayed away overnight at the Beachwood Plaza Hotel most of the time, and she was back here by noon the next day.

Marlowe (04:02): I suppose you've already checked the Beachwood Plaza?

Felix Drum (04:04): Yes, of course. My man, Ruby, the one who showed you in has called the place a dozen times, but they only know that Julia registered there three days ago and hasn't been seen since.

Marlowe (04:14): Well, what about the girl herself, Mr. Drum? I mean her background, friends, family, that sort of thing?

Felix Drum (04:18): Yeah, as far as I know Marlowe, Julia has no friends, no family either. She's just a sweet but smart little girl from someplace in Kansas.

Marlowe (04:26): No beaus, not even nice ones, huh?

Felix Drum (04:28): I don't think she had the time. You see, when Julia first came to work for me, she wanted to get ahead and I gave her the chance. She made good. Today, she's as much my right arm as Ruby is my leg.

Marlowe (04:39): Mr. Drum, did you notice anything unusual about Julia's behavior lately?

Felix Drum (04:42): Yes, and that's the reason I'm worried. About two weeks ago I saw changes in the girl, Marlowe. She seemed less spry, more preoccupied. I figured it was overwork myself. Since the end of the year always means detailed annual reports, so I made no comment at the time.

Marlowe (05:00): I see. Tell me, Mr. Drum, what does she look like?

Felix Drum (05:03): Well, I have no pictures, but she's a blonde of medium height and was wearing a plaid raincoat and little circle of a hat when she left. Altogether, she's sweet and simple, if that's what you mean.

Marlowe (05:14): Yeah. Do you mind if I stop into the cottage on my way out?

Felix Drum (05:18): Marlowe, you turn the place inside out if it'll help any. Only since I'm certain that Julia's in some kind of bad trouble, you be quick and find her.

Marlowe (05:37): Julia Perry's cottage was strictly the 50-50 arrangement the Drum had mentioned with one room office and the other living quarters. In the office. I found everything in its proper place, so I moved to the other room. The moment I stepped over the threshold, the white fluff, the trim, the quilted bedspread, and the splash of color in the drapes said that Julia Perry had to be something soft and warm, and the half a dozen quietly tailored suits that were lined up in the closet like a squat of soldiers facing right, told me that she was also simple and neat. I ran through the pockets of her clothes and all the drawers and closets in the room trying to find something that would give me a lead that I was sure I had to have. After 20 minutes, I had found only a leather cigarette case, a package of peppermint lifesavers and a maroon and gold monogrammed book of matches, the cover of which was half torn off so that I could only be certain that the middle initial was a V and that an E or an F were on either end. But since the name and address of an LA novelty company was on the inside, I bought the matches as a starting point, dropped them in my pocket and headed for the door. When I opened it, I was surprised to find Ruby, Drum's right-hand man, purple scar and all standing in the rain. He was staring at me like my ears were spinning.

Ruby (06:49): You seemed to be a very thorough man, Mr. Private Detective,

Marlowe (06:52): And you seem to be a very nosy one. What do you want?

Ruby (06:54): To help Julia? Nothing else. Here's a postcard that came for her this morning. It was mailed in LA yesterday.

Marlowe (07:01): Yeah? Dear Julia, tried to reach you at Santa Barbara-1-1-8-1 both yesterday and today, but got no answer. I'm leaving. I'm leaving town tomorrow. As one little girl who fled life in Haven, Kansas to another, I would've enjoyed seeing you again for a bit before I moved on to who knows where. Anne. Santa Barbara-1-1-8-1. That the number here?

Ruby (07:28): Yeah, it's Julia's private business phone. What do you think of the postcard? Any help?

Marlowe (07:34): Possibly. Tell me, Ruby. Why didn't you show this to Mr. Drum?

Ruby (07:38): I forgot about it until just now.

Marlowe (07:40): You're a liar.

Ruby (07:42): Well, it's on account of the postcard was delivered here to the cottage.

Marlowe (07:45): Which is no man's land for you?

Ruby (07:47): Yeah, sort of. Mr. Drum doesn't like people who work for him mixing socially with each other.

Marlowe (07:53): Or maybe a sweet kid like Julia hasn't got any use for the passes you've been making at her.

Ruby (07:57): Hold it. I like Julia and even if she don't go for me, anything I can do to help her, I still do. Understand?

Marlowe (08:01): Yeah, I understand. I'm not so sure I believe. Goodbye, Ruby.

(08:11): It was pushing five o'clock and still raining by the time I got back to LA and over to the novelty company. Once there I presented the torn book of matches that I had found in Julia's cottage to a bald man with horizontal question marks for eyebrows and who at the crinkle of a $5 bill tore himself away from his racing form long enough to check the files for a set of maroon and gold initials that had a V in the middle and it was six o'clock before I had the answer, which was EVE and they weren't initials, but the front name of Mrs. Eve Bentley, who lived in a villa at the swank Sunset Terrace apartments. And according to the gentleman who said he knew his oats was a very classy filly. An hour later I was at Mrs. Bentley's front door, and while I made with the chimes and waited, I wondered just how much a guy who loves the ponies could know about women. But when the door opened, I had my answer.

Eve Bentley (09:00): Yes. What is it?

Marlowe (09:02): Mrs. Eve Bentley wasn't beautiful, but she was everything else, including a shimmering yard of gold hair piled high on her head and held in place by a knot of pearls that no Boy Scout ever tied. Her face was wide blue eyes and open red lips on a backdrop of soft, bare skin. She wore a black silk jersey dress that must have been sprayed on. She smiled when I said my name was Philip Marlowe and that I wanted to talk.

Eve Bentley (09:31): About what Mr. Marlowe?

Marlowe (09:33): Julia Perry. Ever hear of her?

Eve Bentley (09:35): No, I haven't.

Marlowe (09:37): So I'll try again. What do you know about Anne Somebody from Haven, Kansas.

Eve Bentley (09:41): Absolutely nothing.

Marlowe (09:43): This torn book of matches says otherwise. I found them in Julia Perry's cottage. Julia Perry is missing. I'm a private detective who was hired to find her and the matches turned out to be yours. Now, may I come in?

Eve Bentley (09:56): Why, yes.

Marlowe (09:56): Thank you. Well, Mrs. Bentley, maybe we ought to start all over.

Eve Bentley (10:00): No, wait just a minute. Mr. Marlowe. I may be able to help you. Did this Julia Perry deal in perfumes?

Marlowe (10:08): That's right. Now how did you know that?

Eve Bentley (10:10): Because I just remembered something and now I'm sure I can explain why my matches showed up where they did.

Marlowe (10:15): Just a minute. Just a minute. You know, whenever I'm talking to a beautiful woman, somebody's always creeping around in the kitchen. Who is it this time?

Eve Bentley (10:24): Really? Mr. Marlowe. There's a storm outside and there are windows and trees. If you put those three things together, that noise could have been a branch scratching on a glass pane.

Marlowe (10:34): Or somebody with squeaky shoes and a lot o

In this episode, Debbi Mack and F.R. Jameson discuss the classic film noir, Out of the Past (1947).

Directed by Jacques Tourneur; 

Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring; 

Based on Build My Gallows High (1946 novel) by Daniel Mainwaring; 

Produced by Warren B. Duff.

Our guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is crime fiction and true crime writer Amanda Lamb.

Join us as we discuss her career in journalism and how close she came to going to law school! Yikes! :) Good call, BTW.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today has worked for more than 30 years as a television news reporter. She now has four podcasts, has authored three books of crime fiction and three of true crime. She's also written family and children's books. She owns a company called Stage Might Communications. I am very pleased to have with me today the multi-talented Amanda Lamb. Hi Amanda. How are you doing?

Amanda: Good, Debbi. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Debbi: Well, I really appreciate your being here, and I am just amazed with the work you're doing. I love that you create podcasts the way I create blogs. You seem to not be satisfied with just one.

Amanda: Yes, I developed an interest in podcasting when I was working for my television station a couple years ago, and I really didn't have any idea what it was about. I had done a little bit of listening to podcasts, but I hadn't really ever worked on a podcast, and writing a narrative podcast is like writing a book, or it's like writing multiple documentaries because of the length of a True Crime podcast, for example. But I just really loved it and I really developed an interest in it, and now I'm doing more interview-based podcasts like yours, and I love that as well, because I'm curious about people. I'm interested in people, and it just really fits kind of where I am in my career.

Debbi: That is really cool, because I can really appreciate that, because I've often thought of doing other interview-type podcasts because actually I have a journalism background

Amanda: There you go. Well, you can try.

Debbi: It all started with that, you know. That's where really my writing in a sense, professionally started kind of.

Amanda: Yes

Debbi: It started with journalism school, let's say.

Amanda: Okay. Okay.

Debbi: And I didn't go quite the route you did. I went to law school instead.

Amanda: Well, you know, one of the things I'm learning - my podcast is called Ageless, and it's about women transforming personally and professionally - and I'm learning that nobody's life is linear. Everybody's life seems to kind of go in many different directions, sometimes to arrive at the same place, but there's nothing about life that's linear.

Debbi: Yes, I agree with you completely there. What was it that prompted you to start writing crime fiction and true crime?

Amanda: I became a focused crime reporter. Most people in TV don't specialize early on in their careers. You're a general assignment reporter, which means you cover a little bit of everything, but I was always interested, especially in the courtroom process and the criminal justice process. My parents were attorneys. My father was a district attorney, and so growing up, I actually went to several murder trials and I got an opportunity to see how the process worked. I always thought I'd be an attorney. That just seemed like the thing that I was going to do, given my family background.

I really loved writing, so in college I started to think more about how could I combine this love of writing with kind of this interest in criminal justice, specifically in the puzzles, because a case, a criminal case involves a puzzle, trying to put these different pieces together to try to understand how it happened, why it happened, who's involved, who's responsible. And so I really just became a crime reporter a couple years into my TV reporting career because by default, I was the one that was interested. I wanted to go to these trials that a lot of people thought were boring, and I just fell in love with it.

I think the thing that ended up keeping me involved in it was the fact that I could cover the incident, the crime, then the investigation, then the arrest, and then follow it all the way through to the trial, sometimes the retrial, and it really was fascinating to me. I was a crime reporter, so obviously writing true crime was a natural extension of that, and true crime books are tedious. I mean, you have to cross your t's and dot your i's. I enjoyed the process, but then at the same time, it felt like an extension of my work and not really something that was super creative to me. So I said, you know, I've got all these stories that I've never been able to tell.

I always say a TV reporter probably reveals five to ten percent of what they know in a story, and I had all these other stories that I wanted to share, but I had to do so in a way that was fiction. So that's how I started writing mysteries. I started taking a grain of something that really happened and then developing it into a story with my imagination.

Debbi: Totally. You get so much out of your own life experience in creating fiction.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Debbi: That's the funny part.

Amanda: I’ve got like … a tickle in my throat. Excuse me.

Debbi: No worries. I was just thinking, it's fiction and yet so much of it can be inspired by real life.

Amanda: Absolutely. And it's funny, it's to the point where my editors over the years of my fiction have said to me, some of their notes have been like, well, I don't think this could really happen, so maybe we need to change it. And I'm like, it kind of did happen. I'm very careful to take things out of the actual story that I was involved in, to change the characters so that we're talking about a compilation of a couple of different people, not necessarily one person in one case. I have that background, and so when I write crime fiction, I don't have to research. I don't have to ask police officers or medical examiners or lawyers or judges much at all. I mean, very occasionally I might reach out to somebody, but I've been doing it for 35 years, so I have a lot of experience. So I've enjoyed taking what I know and then putting it into fiction.

Debbi: That is awesome. That is really awesome. How would you categorize your crime fiction? Is it more mystery or thriller oriented?

Amanda: Oh, definitely more mystery. When I started writing the fiction a couple years ago - really before the pandemic but then kind of ramped it up during the pandemic - I knew as a TV reporter that I wanted to make my books clean because I had a reputation in the community and I had a responsibility to my company to make sure that whatever I did didn't reflect poorly on them, so I really decided I was going to write books that you could read on the beach, you could read on an airplane. They're fun and yes, I get into a little bit of things that you might get into in a book like that, an autopsy or there's some violence or whatever, but overall, they're really just supposed to be entertaining. I spent so many years mired in the darkness that I really actually think it's important to have humor in your books, and so I put a lot of humor into my fiction.

Debbi: Yes, I think humor is essential, really in a sense to almost all fiction. Even the darkest needs a little bit of light touch to give a little relief.

Amanda: Yes, and no criticism of anybody that wants to be very dark and macabre. I mean, that's fine. It's just I've actually seen all that stuff, and I don't necessarily want that to be part of my fiction, so I try to just make a good story and I try to have some suspense. My first three mysteries are a series, so you can read them alone, but if you are able to read them from the beginning, which is Dead Last, Lies That Bind and No Wake Zone, there's a backstory.

The main character, she's a TV reporter, and she is the adult survivor of a murder in her family, and so I've always been curious about that because I've covered so many cases with children who have had one parent murdered, and the other parent goes to prison for that murder, and I always wondered what that was like for them growing up, especially now when they can Google everything and find out everything. So I just thought that that would be a really interesting premise. So you learn more about her background, Maddie's background throughout the three books. I do revisit a lot of things so that you can easily catch up if you don't read them in order.

I have a new book coming out in the fall, with a totally new cast of characters. It is not actually titled yet , so I can't really ... I have a title. My editor doesn't love it, the publisher doesn't love it, so we're still working on that, but I just decided I wanted to do something new. This book is from four different points of view, and it has my main character who is a newspaper reporter in this book. It has my investigator, it has the husband of a missing woman, and it has the manager of this hotel where everything takes place. So I just said I want to try that. I want to see what that's like, and then each character dovetails into the next, so one person interacts with the next person, and then their point of view takes over.

Debbi: Ooh. I like when books do that. I like when stories go that way.

Amanda: Yes. It's just interesting. It's a little bit more interesting to write, to be honest. I was kind of getting tired of just being in one character's head, and I think that's why I took a break. I will definitely go back to that series because I left a lo

Our guest for this episode of the Crime Cafe podcast is Southern Gothic mystery writer Faye Snowden.

Check out our discussion of her Killing Series and what inspires her to write.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today I'm pleased to have with me the author of a series of dark Southern Gothic mysteries with strong and flawed female characters. She's going to give away a copy of her first book, A Killing Fire, and her second book A Killing Rain was named by CrimeReads as one of the best Southern Gothic mysteries of 2022. She also won and has been long-listed for various writing awards. So it is my great pleasure to have with me today Faye Snowden. Hi Faye, how are you doing?

Faye: Hi there. Fine, Debbi. How are you?

Debbi: Good, thank you. And I need to put you in the spotlight if I can manage to do that. I am just a technological mess today. There we go. That's much better. So, tell us about Raven Burns and the Killing Series, and what inspired you to write it?

Faye: Oh my. Certainly. This series was actually not my first. I had a mystery suspense series back in the day. But the Raven Burns series is, like you said, southern noir, complete mystery, dark mystery, and it is about a woman whose father was a serial killer. So in order to atone for his sins and to prove that she's a good citizen, she decides to become a homicide detective to right his wrongs in that small town, made up fictional town. She lives in Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana that seems for some reason have a lot of serial killers and she has to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing them. So the series is actually based on - what is it, the four? Is it the four? Oh, I'm kind of drawing a blank there. But it's based on fire, water, soil, and then air.

She lives in Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana that seems for some reason have a lot of serial killers and she has to spend an inordinate amount of time chasing them.

So the first book in the series is A Killing Fire, and then the second book is A Killing Rain, which is out now. I'm working on A Killing Breath as we speak, and then the last book is A Killing Soil. And in each book, Raven is going to learn something about herself that's either going to push her to be a good citizen of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana, or become more like her father.

And in each book, Raven is going to learn something about herself that's either going to push her to be a good citizen of Byrd’s Landing, Louisiana, or become more like her father.

Debbi: Oh, wow. I'm really hearing some interesting themes that people are basing their series on lately. I've heard the Seven Deadly Sins, now the Four Elements.

Faye: The Elements, right.

Debbi: Earth, wind, fire, water.

Faye: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Debbi: Wow.

Faye: I got the idea for the book because - I tell this story all the time, my poor dad - but I am a child of divorce. My mom, who's since passed away - she died in 2015 - but she did not have a fondness for my dad after the divorce, and she would disparage him in front of us. I looked a lot like my dad. I favored him a lot, and I used to look in the mirror and say, well, if my dad's a something and something, what does that make me? What kind of person does that make me? And you know, a writer's mind just takes off sometimes, the imagination. I said, oh, you know, that would be a neat character to write, but you have to up the stakes. So it's like, what if her dad's a serial killer? And so it just kind of snowballed from there and then I had an idea and a book and so forth.

Debbi: Wow. That is intriguing though, the premise there. The idea of a detective who's motivated by the fact that her father was a serial killer.

Faye: Yes.

Debbi: I thought that was very intriguing. So what are you working on now?

Faye: What I'm working on now is short stories, and I just think the short story form just really helps you hone the craft. I have a short story now that's out in the Best American Mystery and Suspense called “The Obsession of Abel Tangier”. I just try to do them in my spare time, but what I'm working on now as far as this series is concerned, I'm working on the third book in the series. It’s going to be called A Killing Breath. I am almost ready to submit the first 50 pages to my agent and my editor to see if it's a go. Let's hope that it is. But it's been just a joy to work on.

What I'm working on now is short stories, and I just think the short story form just really helps you hone the craft.

Debbi: That's great. That's wonderful. Is there kind of an overarching journey that you see Raven going on throughout the series? Does she reach a kind of closure at some point?

Faye: I do, and I'd like to think that it mirrors the journey that we go on through life, I mean, my journey. I can only speak from my perspective, but you know when you're young and you have all these doubts about who you are and you don't know who you are, I constantly ask myself, am I a good person? Am I kind of a good person? I think I'm a good person. I'm not sure. And then as you get older, you become more sure about that, more sure about who you are, more sure about your values until you reach a point. And I'd like to think I reached that point where you are okay in your skin. So the journey that Raven's going on is to determine, to get to that place where she's okay in her skin. However, what's going to be different from Raven is that, like I said at the end of the series, her moral compass may be way off from the moral compass of us law-abiding citizens. I mean, you may still want to go have a beer with her, but you may not want to trust her with your bank account.

I'd like to think that it mirrors the journey that we go on through life, I mean, my journey. I can only speak from my perspective,

Debbi: Wow.

Faye: So that's the arc, but I don't know how it's going to end because she is influenced by her father, and then by people constantly telling her that she's evil and her thinking that she's evil, and so she's got all of that to sort out. She's wrestling with that dark place inside her and trying to figure out how to kind of incorporate that into something useful.

Debbi: Interesting.

Faye: Yeah.

Debbi: So along with writing fiction, I see that you teach. You've been a guest lecturer for writing courses as well as teaching information technology. I thought that was intriguing.

Faye: Yes, my day job. I say it's the only job I know aside from writing is I've been in information technology my entire career. The last maybe 10 years or so, I've been in project management, so sometimes I'll teach a university course on project management. And then, because I'm still really in contact with my professors, they will ask me to come in and do a lecture on writing courses, on writing or the business of writing or just readings and those types of things.

Debbi: That's really interesting. I went to library school. I have a library science degree.

Faye: Oh wow!

Debbi: It's an old library science degree at this point, but nonetheless, so I am a fan of librarians, I have to tell you. And I am in awe of people who do good jobs on information technology, so well done, you.

Faye: Thank you.

Debbi: I was looking around for information about Southern Gothic mysteries, so I did a little Google search and this article pops up from CrimeReads, and I'm reading through it and it's like, whoa, this is so good. And I'm reading through it, and I get to the bottom and guess who wrote it? It was you. I have to say that was a nice article you wrote.

Faye: Oh, thank you. Yeah.

Debbi: Can you talk a little bit about what you said about Southern Gothic mystery in that article?

Faye: Oh, I certainly can. The origins of Southern Gothic of course has its origins in the Gothic stories that were told in England way back when, and it has certain elements. What I said in the article is that the genre traveled across the pond and of course, you know the Americans. We put our own little spin on it. So what the Gothic or the Gothic genre, the Southern Gothic genre does, usually stories that are set in the south, but it's really heavy on the subtext. So it's the kind of stories that will kind of make the reader feel uneasy because of what it is saying and what it's not saying, so there's an element of corruption in it, especially religious corruption. Like in Gothic stories, the action happening in some old haunted mansion, the whole south becomes that haunted place or that dark place where the stories happen. It's about the return of the repressed, things that as a society we don't like to think about or talk about, but it's there in the undertones of the story.

The origins of Southern Gothic of course has its origins in the Gothic stories that were told in England way back when, and it has certain elements. ... We put our own little spin on it. So what the Gothic or the Gothic genre, the Southern Gothic genre does, usually stories that are set in the south, but it's really heavy on the subtext.

For example, in the book A Killing Fire, the parish that the town is set in, the imaginary town, if somebody said, okay, Faye, what parish in Louisiana, because Louisiana has parishes, I would say in Caddo parish. And I read once - I don't know how true this is - but that area of the country had more lynchings than any other country. And yet we build a town on top of that....

In this episode, Debbi Mack and F.R. Jameson discuss the classic film noir, Double Indemnity (1944).

Directed by Billy Wilder

Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler

Produced by Joseph Sistrom [uncredited]

Our guest for this episode is thriller author Leanne Kale Sparks.

Check out the podcast to hear more about her Kendall Beck series and the authors who inspire her, amongst other things.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Our guest today had a short career in law before turning to writing a series of thrillers featuring FBI agent Kendall Beck. Her books are set in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, which is a really cool place. I love that. She currently resides in Texas with her husband and two dogs - a German shepherd named Zoe and her Corgi named Wynn. It's my pleasure to welcome today Leanne Kale Sparks. Hi, Leanne.

Leanne: Hi.

Debbi: I'm so glad you could be with us today.

Leanne: Me too. This is exciting.

Debbi: Excellent. Wonderful. I, too, had a career in law before I started writing full-time.

Leanne: I think there's a lot of us.

Debbi: I think there are quite a few of us who left the profession in a kind of "we gotta do something else" feeling. You were fortunate in making yours a short career though, as you've described it. How long were you practicing law, and what kind of law did you practice?

Leanne: Well, I did a little bit of everything in that short amount of time. I did a little bit of family law and ...

Debbi: Oh, God!

Leanne: I did a little bit of estates, but that was short-term. Mostly, it was criminal defense.

Debbi: Ah. I'm telling you, family law right there will turn you off to the idea of doing more.

Leanne: It's the most dangerous profession. Everybody thinks it's the criminal lawyers that get it. It's family law.

Debbi: Not at all, because at least the clients understand you're dealing with a certain type of system. People going through divorce, acrimonious ones just go temporarily insane. That's my theory. It's temporary insanity.

Leanne: And you're taking away kids and money, two of the things that people value the most. In criminal defense, most of your clients, they know they're guilty. They have probably been in the system before, and so they know what's going on.

Debbi: Their expectations are well managed right from the start. Oh my. What inspired you to write the Kendall Beck series?

Leanne: I lived in Maryland at the time, and I had a friend who had retired from the FBI, and he used to be the person that was in charge of the criminal part of the FBI, the investigations. I had gone online and looked, and there was this really interesting department or group within it, a unit, and they did Crimes Against Children. And so I talked to this guy and I'm like, Hey, can you get me in to see them or talk to them, or have somebody just answer some questions? He pulled some strings and I was able to meet up with some actual agents that work in the unit.

It was a while ago and it just always stuck with me, and I thought, I need to have a character. The Wrong Woman started out as a short story just to see if I could actually write a crime thriller, and get all of the red herrings. The first versions of this, it was just like this person died and then we investigated, and yay, I figured it out, so I had to learn a lot about red herrings and things like that, so it kind of evolved. But I really did want Kendall to be involved in the Crimes Against Children, because I really think it's important now. My books don't focus on that. I don't talk about any of the icky, really icky. I don't go in depth with any of it, but it's there and it's an important part. I loved the idea of Kendall and the more I got to write her and everything, the more she kind of just really blossomed and became the sarcastic FBI agent that she is.

The Wrong Woman started out as a short story just to see if I could actually write a crime thriller, and get all of the red herrings.

Debbi: Cool. So it's more about her being an FBI agent than necessarily the children angle.

Leanne: Yes. Well, it's usually a backstory. I say that in Book One, it's a backstory. It's like a subplot about her finding this girl and figuring out what's happened to her, and how that kind of all evolves, and it crossed paths with the murder of her best friend. And so we get this kind of unofficial partnership between Kendall Beck, who's the FBI agent, and then the homicide detective in Denver, Adam Taylor. They start working together to figure out who killed her best friend, Gwen. Then in Book Two, it is all about the kids and they're trying to find a missing child.

Debbi: Okay. So you've got two books so far out?

Leanne: There's two books in the series, yes.

Debbi: Excellent. And how many books do you plan to write? Do you have a plan for the series in terms of the number of books and where you want to go with it?

Leanne: When I started out, it was four, so when I get to that point, then I'll reconsider and see if people are still interested in hearing from Kendall and seeing what her and Adam can get up to, then I'll definitely keep writing it as long as people want to read it. But I did have a four-book series planned out, and a lot of that is because there's not a cliffhanger, but there's a dangler in one of the books that I finally take care of at the end.

I did have a four-book series planned out, and a lot of that is because there's not a cliffhanger, but there's a dangler in one of the books that I finally take care of at the end.

Debbi: Okay. So you have kind of a plan in terms of story arc for the four books.

Leanne: For the four books, yeah.

Debbi: Have you considered writing another series at any point?

Leanne: I have actually. I've started writing another series in the meantime. I guess, why not?

Debbi: Why not? Yes.

Leanne: There's still daylight. I can write another series, and it, of course, is also based in Colorado. It's a fictitious town in the mountains, so it's a small town, and of course you know how small towns are. They're apparently magnets for murders. So I'm working on that, so I think that is cool. She's a lot of fun too. She's not like Kendall, but I can't not write a sarcastic character, so she's got a little bit of sarcasm in her too, but she's a little bit more quirky in different ways than Kendall is.

Debbi: Well, I love sarcasm. It's great, great stuff in a protagonist.

Leanne: It's my second language.

Debbi: Awesome! Does the environment play a significant part in your stories, because you're sitting in this fabulous natural setting, the Rockies?

Leanne: I grew up in Colorado, so I've always loved it. I moved away when I got married. I was younger - in my twenties - and haven't lived back there since, so this is kind of my touchstone, plus it gets me to go back there for writing retreats and stuff like that, so it's really important to me. I really do love the setting. There's so much to do. I set Kendall Beck in Denver, and I did that because of what she does. There are two major interstates that go through Denver, and so a lot of trafficking can happen that way, so I thought that that was a really good place that I could do some things there. It's big enough that I could get away with faking things a little bit and playing around with them but yeah, it's definitely … I love the mountains. There's a reason they call it Colorful Colorado. It's gorgeous and so I'm still learning to pull it in more as a character. Book One, it was more about the characters, developing the characters and stuff. In Book Two, I think I pull in the scenery and the setting more, and trying to make that more its own character, a hard thing to do.

Debbi: And your idea for a mystery or whatever set in a small Colorado town in the mountains, I can easily picture that because my brother lived in a very small town on Peak to Peak Highway. I don't know if you are familiar.

Leanne: Oh, wow.

Debbi: Yeah. It was a tiny little place. He used to talk about mountain lions appearing in front of his house or whatever. It was like, what??

Leanne: Yeah. I grew up in Colorado Springs, and it's a big city now, but even now you can still get wildlife. When I was growing up, there were a lot of times where you would see wildlife and stuff, especially when you got outside of the city, if you lived outside of the city a little bit. So it's a lot of fun.

Debbi: Oh wow! Yeah. It's a cool place. I really love Colorado. How much research do you do when writing your books, and what kind?

Leanne: I do a lot. A lot of it is, unless it's something specific, I usually try to do Google searches, or I have a bunch of reference books that I use. I go to conferences. My favorite one is Writers' Police Academy because you get just so much information from there on real-life law enforcement and crime scenes and all sorts of things. I usually start with a Google search, and see what I can find from there. I have got a bunch of Facebook groups that I'm involved with, that you can ask a doctor or ask a law enforcement agent and if they don't know, they know how to get the information. Sometimes I reach out directly to someone that I know.

I do have a couple of law enforcement agents in Colorado that I can contact for Colorado law specific things. Sometimes you're like, hey, how would you do this? Would it be like this? And they're like, no, we would never do that or something like that. So, I think a lot of research, I'm a plotter. I'm a big plotter, so I tend to do a lot of research while I'm plotting out the book, and not as much when I'm writing it. I mean,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Melissa Yi.

Don't miss our discussion of her Dr. Hope Sze series and the Seven Deadly Sins!

And the play Terminally Ill!

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

The transcript can be downloaded here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is a doctor who studied emergency medicine and works in emergency rooms, I presume. She has received many accolades for her work, including a Derringer Award for best short story of 2023, and finalist for the Silver Falchion for best thriller. She also writes medical humor - which I find fascinating and want to know more about - and has won speculative fiction awards as well. It's my pleasure to have with me today Melissa Yi. Hi, Melissa. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Melissa: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me.

Debbi: Well, it's my pleasure to have you on, believe me, and your background just fascinates me. I used to be an EMT and my husband was a firefighter. He's retired now, so I can thoroughly appreciate the whole hectic thing involving emergency rooms, what that must be like. Do you still practice medicine?

Melissa: I do. Not as much as I did, but I still like to keep my hand in.

Debbi: Excellent.

Melissa: I just have to say good for you guys, because now you can sleep. The nights are so hard.

Debbi: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to go on calls and it was like, whoa! I mean, sometimes those five in the morning ones were the worst, right before the dawn. I would get into the back of the ambulance and would just feel nauseous. I couldn't explain that.

Melissa: Oh, that's because that's a very physical job also. For me, I would say 3:00, 4:00 AM is tough because you've been working so long, but there's still so much to go. To me, 5:00, 6:00 people are starting to wake up. Normal people are alive at this time, it's not so bad. You might start to get some sort of backup, but the middle of the night, really, you are it, and I just find that very tough and very bad for circadian rhythms.

Debbi: Oh, yeah. Yeah, really. I was much younger then, so I could adjust to it a little more easily, I suppose. But I've always been sort of in awe of people who go to medical school, because I went to law school and the med school was right down the street from me. And I was like, wow, I'm so overwhelmed with work, but what if I were in med school? Oh my God! You guys have to study all these bones, all these muscles, all these nerves. It just amazes me.

Melissa: I think law school is very cognitively taxing, though. I think there's so much involved, so that it's a different kind of stress.

Debbi: Very much so.

Melissa: Medicine is really holding people's lives in your hands. That's the stressful part of medicine.

Debbi: Yes, yes. That to me has always been … you guys are really in there, doing stuff, fixing people's medical problems, things like that. What is it that inspired you to create Dr. Hope Sze?

Melissa: Very good.

Debbi: Thank you.

Melissa: You know, for me, honestly, there were a few things. I'm from Ontario in Canada, and the medical system was relatively good when I went to medical school. People probably don't know this, but in Canada, the federal government has the money and then they give the money to the different provinces, and when you finish medical school, you get matched anywhere in the country. You don't have to apply everywhere, but a lot of people apply across the board so you could end up in Newfoundland to BC sort of thing. I ended up in Montreal, Quebec, which is actually not far from Ottawa, my hometown. It's only a two hour drive away. But for me, the medical system was mind-blowingly different because it's a different province.

First of all, the nurses had been on strike because they were amongst the lowest paid, so the morale was not good. They also had to draw all their own blood; there was no phlebotomist to do that. And I was like, wow, that's strange. Then they started coming onto me, okay, well you do the electrocardiogram. I'm like, oh, okay. I didn't realize that. I thought you were a nurse, sorry. She said, well, I am a nurse, and I said, oh, okay, but you don't do electrocardiograms? She said, not on this floor. So there were all these regulations that ended up ... Everything was being dumped on everybody, basically and it was really tough and for patients to just be waiting in the emergency room, and even if you're admitted, you still have to wait for days, maybe.

Everything was so stressful that subconsciously, I think it made me think of murder. I think also that, for me, I just wanted to be able to battle something that wasn't disease, that wasn't bacteria or viruses, to have some sort of thing that you could physically fight and find justice. So in my head, I was like, wouldn't it be great if there was a physician, a resident doctor like myself, who saves lives but also fights crime? And so that's when Dr. Hope Sze was born.

I just wanted to be able to battle something that wasn't disease, that wasn't bacteria or viruses, to have some sort of thing that you could physically fight and find justice.

Debbi: Oh, that is so cool. I see you have a kind of a separate subseries perhaps in - what is it called - the Hope Sze Seven Deadly Sins? Is that an offshoot?

Melissa: Yes, yes, yes. The first series is finished. Those are nine novels, and the difference is - and these ones obviously are about the Seven Deadly Sins - and they also have a supernatural element. Again, I just don't know how my mind works, but one of the main characters, Hope's best friend, basically just turned around and said, I can talk to ghosts. And I was like, what? You never mentioned this before, but Tori, she doesn't talk to people a lot. She keeps things very close to her chest, and so it took like seven or nine months before she told Hope that she could do this. So the last book, White Lightning, there are ghosts in it. This next series will just unleash the supernatural as well as medicine and thrillers, so just mashing everything up.

Debbi: That sounds fascinating to me. I love the idea of mixing these kinds of different genre elements in - supernatural, paranormal, mystery, medical thriller. Fantastic. I think that's great.

Melissa: Well, I'm glad that you're so flexible. I think for some people it would just be a big no, but for me, that's what makes it exciting, to be able to incorporate that.

Debbi: Exactly. I love that actually. I just think it's fantastic. Really, I love when people mix genres up. I mean, there are other books out there that I am wild about because they bring in other elements from other genres for that very reason. You obviously have a lot of professional experience working in the ER and so forth and in medicine, but are there areas that you still need to research when you write a novel?

Melissa: All the time! Oh my goodness, yes, for sure. The first book in the Seven Deadly Sin Series is Wrath. It's called The Shapes of Wrath, and it's set in the operating room. I was like, hey, everybody. It's been a long time since I have been on surgery or anesthesia. Can you help me? And so there are a group of women physicians who are wonderful, wonderful, and so they stepped forward to talk to me. And I'm just like, thank God there are all these people who are smarter than me, can just fact check me the whole time, and in fact, each other. Everybody has their own area of expertise, and one of them would be say well, if it were a patent peramenovali (sp?), and then I'm saying, no, no, that would cause this instead, and it will be a whole discussion, and I would just say the final answer is ...?

Debbi: Oh goodness. So where is it that you would ultimately see your series of books going? This latest one?

Melissa: Are you asking me which ...?

Debbi: What's your plan? Do you have a number?

Melissa: It's actually interesting to me because with my previous series, I would just let my subconscious go and somehow tie things together, which was pretty interesting. But now the Seven Deadly Sins so that's very helpful to give me something more concrete. And from the very beginning actually, I was really attracted to the idea of doing forensic psychiatry, again which I don't have a lot of knowledge of, and a doctor in North Bay asked if I would want to visit? I'm a forensic psychiatrist and you can stay at my house. Yes, I would like that very much.

Debbi: Wow.

Melissa: So I thought about it a lot, and you probably have heard of National Novel Writing Month, where you try before write a book in a month. And so last year what I did was I tried to write a little bit of all the sins, or of the ones that I hadn't done yet, to figure out what I was going to do for each book. I ended up deciding that I was going to do Pride last and that it was going to be forensic psychiatry. So the difference with this series is I know that some of the players from the previous novels in the series will come out and be involved in the final book,

Debbi: And what are you working on now?

Melissa: Sloth.

Debbi: Sloth. Yes.

Melissa: February 1st, I have Gluttony, which is Sugar and Vice, and that one was so much fun because I love to eat. It's one of my big passions in life. I am somebody who, like strangers have commented on my eating. So for example, Montreal is French and has a very strong French culture....

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Laurie Buchanan.

Among other things, we talk about her (planned) nine-book Sean McPherson series.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. My guest today is the author of the Sean McPherson series, and while Sue Grafton had her alphabet series, this author has picked one letter and stuck with it—the letter I. All the books in the series have one-word titles that start with I, which I think is really kind of cool. The latest one released is Impervious, and the next one will be called Iniquity. It's my pleasure to have with me today Laurie Buchanan. Hi, Laurie. How are you doing today?

Laurie: Hi, Debbi. I'm fine. Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to talking with you.

Debbi: Awesome. Well, I'm glad to have you here. The last time you were here, your first book was out, right? Indelible?

Laurie: Yes. Yes.

Debbi: And that established the story of Sean McPherson, who works at this kind of place where writers' retreats are held.

Laurie: Exactly. Pines & Quill is a writing retreat in the Pacific Northwest, and now by Iniquity, which comes out this April—it’s a premier now. It has had so many people, and now there's this huge waiting list and you need to be background checked and so on and so forth, because some murders have taken place there. Some from without and some from within. So they're being more than cautious. And the neighbors can see when first responders come, oh, what's going on there? There's paramedics, there's police, there's whatever it is. And then the news crews come over. So we've gotten now pretty far into the story, so Book Four Iniquity comes out in April, and Book Five is with the publisher. I just finished writing Book Six. It went to the beta readers, and I'm now starting Insidious, Book Seven.

Debbi: Oh my goodness.

Laurie: Yes. I'm on a nine-book contract right now. It went from one to three to five to seven to nine, and I suspect it will grow.

Debbi: Good heavens, nine books! Well, this is very interesting, because you have anticipated a few of my questions already. Well, we can talk about that, though. Boy. Nine books! How has the story of Sean McPherson developed over time so far?

Laurie: So we've gotten now where there's three very close friends—a private investigator, Sean McPherson, one of his two best friends, homicide Detective Joe Bingham, and then his other best friend, Sean Rafferty. Because there are two Seans, they go by their last name. Sean McPherson goes by Mick, Sean Rafferty goes by Rafferty, and he's an FBI special agent, and the three of them work together very well. Two of them, the homicide detective and the FBI special agent, have constraints, bureaucratic constraints. There are some things they cannot do because they are law enforcement agents. And because Sean is a PI in the state of Washington, he carries a gun. He doesn't have bureaucracy to answer to. He doesn't break the law, but he doesn't have the same constraints. So the three of them can get places and accomplish things that they wouldn't be able to do if they were all just police or all just FBI. So they've got this three thing going on.

Now where I'm at in the story, Sean McPherson in Impervious, which is the one that we're talking about today, Sean and Emma get married. They go to New Orleans, which is a destination location for weddings and horrific things happen there. Somebody who is near and dear to the readers' hearts while they're there dies in San Francisco, which stops the honeymoon and Sean leaves. Emma, his brand-new bride, stays for a different reason and things happen. And you can see the front cover here is a swamp and it's an alligator-infested swamp and things take place.

Debbi: It does have a very New Orleans vibe to it, or a Louisiana vibe.

Laurie: Louisiana. Absolutely!

Debbi: I can practically picture … What is that movie? The one with... The one that takes place in the swamps of Louisiana. It's really scary at parts.

Laurie: I'm thinking of Dueling Banjos, and I know that's not it.

Debbi: Not that one. It's the other one with Powers Boothe.

Laurie: Oh, I don't know.

Debbi: And it's just eluding me. Well, it's great. It's a great movie. That's all I know. I'll think of the name eventually, probably after this is over. Anybody who loves movies probably is saying the name and saying, “Debbi, Debbi, it's this one.”

Laurie: They're shouting it out.

Debbi: Yes. Your book descriptions always seem to mention the occupations of various characters who are at the retreat to write. How do you decide what your ensemble characters are going to do for a living?

Laurie: That's a great question, and in fact, for Book Seven, I had to create, I had to give birth to the four writers in residence that will be there. And I always want them to be something interesting, somebody who would actually be writing a book. So I just created, one of them is a standup comedian. Her book is—I always get to come up with their titles too. That's hard. You know how hard it is to come up for your own title. It's equally hard. Hers is called Unzipping My Genes In Public: A Humorous Look at Genealogy and Genetics. One is a former nun and hers is called Out of Habit, a memoir. One is Sarah Tedesco. She's an advocate for human rights, and she's a well-known author. She's in a wheelchair and she's continuing a series called In Cahoots for children, so that kids in a wheelchair with prosthetics don't succumb to bullying and they feel proud of themselves. And the final one is Jane Allen. She's a New York Times bestselling author who you will find out doesn't write her own books. She goes to writing retreats and murders someone there and steals their manuscripts and pawns them off as her own.

So we've got those. So it's fun for me to be able to come up with these characters and the titles of their books, making sure that they don't already exist on Amazon or anywhere. Who are they? Where could they be coming from? How can I use them in the book? And so every time I write a book, I have to write the entire book around that one I word that's four syllables long. So we have Indelible, Iconoclast, Impervious, Iniquity, Illusionist—I just turned it in. Hold on, let me, I'm cheating here—Illusionist, Innocuous, and now I'm writing Insidious.

So a lot of thought has to go around writing around one word, writing around the meaning of that word. What negative thing can take place around that word? And of course, when you write crime thrillers as you know, what does the protagonist have to lose you? You have to have that—what does the protagonist have to lose. And so as I write my character bible for each of these things, also for them—and it may not ever appear in the story—what is their secret that they don't want anybody to find out, because that's how they approach life. That's the set of lenses they look through. And it may again never be something that the reader finds out, but I write around that secret and that I word.

Debbi: That's fantastic. That's absolutely fantastic. You're kind of a natural for adaptation to television, frankly .

Laurie: Wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't that be fun?

Debbi: Wouldn't that be fun? She said with a smile. Hmm. Well, you have a plan for how the stories are going to go obviously, because you're all the way up to book what … Seven?

Laurie: Seven, yes.

Debbi: Lord! Do you have an idea of where you're going to go with Eight and Nine?

Laurie: Well, I won't write this one—I would love to—Indigenous. In the Pacific Northwest, there are reservations and so forth, but because I'm not Native American, I wouldn't want to step ... somebody else can write that book. But I am going to write Iditarod, which takes place in the month of March up in Alaska. Going to go do a lot of research for that. I'm also going to write Imitation. That's one of them that's coming down the line. That's going to involve Sean McPherson's mom, who's in her seventies and she's retired FBI so she knows exactly what she's doing and something horrific will be happening.

Now, as you know, writing the mystery series that you do, the McRae Mysteries, you have to be able to drop breadcrumbs previously and follow them up. I'm not a huge fan of red herrings. I don't trick the readers. I don't want to say, well a-ha! I want to have viable breadcrumbs that if they've been reading the series, they're like, oh my gosh. That's right. That happened. They saw this in the morgue when they opened that drawer, and there was the diver in that suit, and he had this Russian blade. And so it's something I can build on, but you have to have enough of an idea. I never know how any of the books is going to end. Haven't a clue. I just know the direction I'm going, and I use my character bible as my compass. That's my true north and I just follow it, but I know enough that if I'm going to be writing this, I better be dropping these hints now. I better do this.

I never know how any of the books is going to end. Haven't a clue. I just know the direction I'm going, and I use my character bible as my compass.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. Because if you want something to happen, say in Book Eight, and plant a seed for it in Book Three, you need that bible to kind of create that link.

Laurie: Exactly, and I do have a guy in a drawer that they took the wetsuit off of, and there was a particular tattoo,...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Jason Kapcala.

Check our discussion about his novel, Hungry Town, along with his other writing.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi, everyone. Today I have with me the author of two novels and numerous short stories that have been published in many magazines and literary journals. His latest book is Hungry Town. It's my pleasure to have with me, Jason Kapcala. Did I say that right?

Jason: Kapcala

Debbi: Kapcala. Jason Kapcala. Well, hello Jason. Thanks for being here. Thanks for spending time with me.

Jason: Thanks for having me, Debbi.

Debbi: It's my pleasure. Now, you have two novels, but you have many short stories. Did you start off writing short stories?

Jason: Yeah, I did. I kind of went the academic track. Went through an MFA program, and when I was there, started out learning to write stories, short stories, and actually my first book was a short story collection, but it was a linked collection so they all kind of tie in with one another, and it was all based around the town where I grew up, that area in Northern Pennsylvania where I was from. And then after that, I started moving into writing longer things, working on novels, and wrote my first novel, Hungry Town, and kind of got into that mode of writing about crime and police.

Debbi: Does your work tend to focus on small towns?

Jason: It does, yeah. I always write about a fictional place, but there's always elements of real life places that influence those towns. I just do that because I think I like the freedom of being able to put things where I need them, as the story demands it. So if I need to have a river here, I can put a river here, nobody's going to say, Hey, I'm from that town. There's no river there, but I'll go ahead and really base these towns on places where.... The first one was the place where I was from, but in other cases, places I know. So the town of Lodi in the novel Hungry Town, it's kind of an amalgamation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which was very close to where I grew up, and it was a steel town, of course, and had a large steel mill there.

Jason: It was really non-functional by the time that I was old enough to pay attention to it, but I still passed the ruins of it a lot. So it's sort of part that, and then part Athens, Ohio, where I did my Masters which was also formerly an industrial town turned college town. It had a brick factory and brick streets and everything. I don't know that there's really a town in existence that's quite like the one in my novel that would have a mill the size of the mill in the novel, but also a town as small as Athens. But I kind of went with that and ended up naming it Lodi, but it doesn't have any connection to the actual Lodi, Ohio. If anybody's from there, it's not your Lodi. It's a fictional one.

Debbi: That's interesting, because I kept thinking of Lodi, California.

Jason: Well, that's why I picked that name. Someone had said to me once they think there must be a Lodi in every state of the country. And so I was like, yeah, that does seem like a kind of an every town name, and so that's why I ended up going with it. Plus I like the Creedence Clearwater Revival song.

Debbi: Gotta love the Creedence. Do you have a preference for writing short versus long?

Jason: Oh, definitely long. I enjoyed writing short stories when I first started it, but I definitely liked the space to branch out and work longer forms and really tell my story, kind of, and take my time.

Debbi: It really allows you to set the scene, too.

Jason: Yeah, absolutely.

Debbi: Yes. So what is your latest novel about?

Jason: The one I just released, you mean?

Debbi: Yes, the one you just released.

Jason: It's actually a year now, but …

Debbi: Well, yeah, the one that I know of.

Jason: Right, right, right, because I'm working on one, so I didn't … So Hungry Town, it's really about … well, there's sort of two storylines that go through it. One is the story of two police officers Rieux and Mulqueen, and it sort of starts out with an accident that happens when they're investigating a silent alarm that goes off at the local abandoned steel mill. And they find some kids inside up to things they shouldn't be. They're joined by another police officer who gets a little too rough with the kids, kind of unnecessarily for no reason at all. He overreacts to the situation, and as a result one of the kids is hurt. I won't say too much more plot-wise, but it ends up having ramifications for the two characters, Rieux and Mulqueen, who weren't directly involved in that, but who were present and forces them to really question law enforcement, their jobs in law enforcement and what they're doing. They both end up taking different paths as they deal with the fallout of this.

And then running parallel to that is a story about a young woman named Darla who is on the run from her abusive ex-boyfriend. He has hired a couple of local guys to track her down, and those two stories, eventually by the end of the novel, they intersect with one another.

Debbi: Yeah. How would you describe your writing in terms of sub-genre? Is it more police procedural? Is it more noir-ish?

Jason: Yeah, I kind of would call it like country noir or I've heard people say Southern gothic. I don't really think it's southern per se, but it's the same notion, that sort of Rust Belt gothic or Rust Belt noir, sort of my interest. Appalachian noir or something along those lines—small towns, economically depressed, industrial towns, and taking a look at the darker aspects of that.

Debbi: Yeah. Yeah. Elmore Leonard, that's the name that comes to mind.

Jason: Yes, that's a perfect example.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely. He was great. How much research did you need to do before you started writing your novels?

Jason: I did quite a bit of research. I don't have a law enforcement background or anything like that, so I did do some research into that. I try not to do so much research where fidelity to detail and things like that become so persnickety and stuff that it gets in the way ,of the story. Where it feels like every page, you're just reading a laundry list of factoids that you knew the author researched or something, and it felt like they had to get in there. But I did do a lot of research into that. In a strange way, I did a lot of research into horse training, because Darla, the character of Darla, who I had mentioned is a horse trainer, and so kind of had to learn some things about that profession.

And then also, one of the characters, Mulqueen, he owns a hotdog stand, a hotdog shop, and so I always joke I did a lot of research into hot dogs. Ate at a lot of hotdog stands in the name of research, and that is something that was part of going to Bethlehem, Pa. They have a big food culture there, kind of a unique food culture there, and I used to go there with my dad and my brother, and we would go to some of our favorite hot dog stands—Yocco’s, Potts' and other places like that. And so that kind of found its way into the book in an unusual way too.

Debbi: Cool. Very nice. I love when local color works its way into writing. What authors have most inspired you?

Jason: Well, it is a laundry list of authors probably who I could say have inspired me, but in terms of this book in particular, probably the most inspiration came actually not a crime writer, but a writer by the name of Kent Haruf who wrote the book Plainsong, which was, I think, a National Book Award finalist maybe. I couldn't say I remember the year, but it's a book about ordinary people really who live in a fictional town of Holt, Colorado. They are school teachers, they are farmers, they are elementary school kids. They are women who work as waitresses in diners, and just sort of a novel about their lives and how they intersect with each other. Each chapter starts with a different character name and follows that character in that kind of William Faulkner style. That was a book that was really influential on me when I was writing this.

There was another book called Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You by Laurie Lynn Drummond, and it was a collection of short stories actually. She was a police officer in Louisiana, I believe, and wrote a collection of short stories. That was one where, I think probably the idea to write this book and to write it from the perspective of the police officers, I probably owe a bit of that to reading that book. If I were gonna say one more, I guess I would say at the time, I probably had written a draft of the book already by the time this came out, but there was a book American Rust by Philipp Meyer. I know he's written some other books. I know he has written The Son, which was turned into … I want to say a television series, but I don't know what station.

American Rust kind of got a lot of attention. It came out, it was doing very similar in the sense that it's a book that also opens with an accident in an abandoned steel mill, so when it came out that was one where I was like, oh, I have to read this book. This is kind of similar plot-wise to what I'm doing, and he writes very differently than I do. But it was a book that I loved. I think I felt connected to, and in whatever way that has influenced my writing, I'm sure it's only for the better.

Debbi: They all sound interesting. What are you working on now?

...

This episode of the Crime Cafe features my interview with crime writer Kim Hays.

Learn all about her Linder and Donatelli mysteries here.

Before I bring on my guest, I’ll just remind you that the Crime Cafe has two eBooks for sale: the nine book box set and the short story anthology. You can find the buy inks for both on my website, debbimack.com under the Crime Cafe link. You can also get a free copy of either book if you become a Patreon supporter. You’ll get that and much more if you support the podcast on Patreon, along with our eternal gratitude for doing so.

We also have a shop now. Check it out!

Check us out on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/crimecafe

Download a copy of the transcript here.

Debbi: Hi everyone. Today's guest is a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland. She's also the author of the Polizei Bern Series, featuring two detectives Giuliana Linder and Renzo Donatelli. Her work has been shortlisted for many awards and she has two books out in this series with a third coming next year, which is coming very quickly. It's my pleasure to have with me today, Kim Hays. Kim, hi. How are you doing?

Kim: I'm great, and thanks for having me.

Debbi: Well, it's my pleasure, believe me. It must be late there where you are. Switzerland, right?

Kim: Yes. Here in Bern, it's nine o'clock, but not too late. My eyes are wide awake.

Debbi: Still functional at nine. Very good.

Kim: Exactly.

Debbi: Good. You have a great website, by the way. I really love all the descriptions of Switzerland you have under the information tab about Bern in Switzerland.

Kim: Oh, thank you. I try to put in a lot of sort of strange and interesting facts, like that the Swiss flag is the only square flag besides the Vatican's flag. Every other flag in the world is rectangular. This is the sort of thing that nobody knows and why should they, but it's fun.

Debbi: Wow! I didn't know that. That's very interesting. So what was it that inspired you to write about the subjects that you picked, which are very topical subjects by the way. Pesticides and child labor?

Kim: Yes, and in the third book, I have homophobia as a topic too, so that's certainly … I have a lesbian activist who's killed in a hit-and-run, but I realize you haven't read that one. I have, of course, so I won't go into that. You know, I love to research and I like to learn, as you know most writers do, as most people do. So I guess I'm lucky that things turn out to be topical, but often I decide to put something in a book that I want to learn more about. I used to write articles here for a Swiss language magazine, and so I had done a short article on organic farmers, and when I started thinking about writing a mystery, I already started thinking about what background do I want to give it? And immediately I thought, well, what do I want to research? I knew that I would like to do more research on organic farming, and then of course, I had to think of a reason for an organic farmer to get murdered.

The second book, which involves a really terrible scandal in Switzerland—child labor—where children were supposedly fostered out, but really placed on farms almost as slaves from a very young age, into the late 1960s, early 70s. This was something I saw a museum exhibition on because it was just starting. The scandal was just starting. As late as the early 21st century, people were starting to be aware of it. And once I saw that, I thought it would be something very interesting to talk about. And certainly, one could easily imagine how murders or violence might occur as a result of something like that.

Debbi: Yes, absolutely. That's astonishing, I have to say. Linder is a really interesting character because she's always automatically picking up clues as she goes, and kind of filing them into her head, which is something I don't see a lot in mystery writing, the way she picks up these little details and kind of narrates them to you. I thought that it's an interesting approach to bringing the reader into the mystery solving part of it.

Kim: Well, thank you. I'm glad. I mean, obviously I don't want her to be a psychic, you know? So the clues have to be there for us readers. I mean, I'm also a reader as well as a writer, so a mystery reader. Readers want to get the clues, see where the clue is coming from, but it sounds like you're saying that it works. They are police procedurals, and I think that procedure and process is really interesting to me. In that sense, I think I'm more Swiss than the Swiss, or as Swiss as the Swiss since I've lived here 35 years. I think I really want to understand myself. I mean, I want to know how the crime gets solved, and I think that's what people who read police procedurals want to know. They want to see the process. I hope, anyway.

Debbi: I think the police are very attentive to that sort of thing. I think that's the thing. You really are creating sort of the experience of being a police officer or a detective, rather than a reader of something that is being solved, if that makes any sense.

Kim: Well, good. No, I'm very glad that you felt as a reader, that you were able to put yourself into that. I think something that's also important to me, because I'm interested in moral dilemmas. It's in part what I did my dissertation in sociology on, was to do with moral dilemmas. I'm not a police woman or a police person, but I think you must constantly have moral dilemmas unless you're really not a very thoughtful person. And so I think I want to show how the detectives also have to think, and worry even that they might have made a mistake.

Debbi: Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of thought that goes into it because the consequences are so great, potentially.

Kim: Exactly. Yeah.

Debbi: How did you become so familiar with police procedure? Did you contact the police, talk to police officers, do other types of research?

Kim: I did contact the police, and I have gone to the police station here. The very one. I give the real address, the real one that I talk about in my books. But I'm incredibly lucky that I live in a little, sort of a horseshoe cul-de-sac, and I have a very high-ranking police woman, who's higher up than a homicide detective by now, as a neighbor, just across the playground from me.

Debbi: How convenient!

Kim: It's incredibly convenient. So she reads my manuscripts, and I trust her in that she tells me, look, if there are some small things in here that aren't exactly what we do, it's artistic license. You know, it is fiction. But if you write something that would make any Swiss police person fall over laughing or that's egregious, that's really wrong, she fixes it for me.

Debbi: That's awesome.

Kim: I mean, I make them have a much bigger cafeteria in the building than they really have. So in that kind of thing, she doesn't correct me. It doesn't have to be accurate, but she doesn't let me make mistakes. And, also, I ask her constant questions.

Debbi: Wow. Well, that's good. That's great that you have somebody there.

Kim: So lucky.

Debbi: That is fantastic.

Kim: And a very nice person.

Debbi: Oh, that's cool. That's always good.

Kim: Yes.

Debbi: What are your plans for the series? Do you anticipate writing a lot more books, or do you have plans just to continue writing them as they come to you?

Kim: You know, it's interesting you should ask me that. The fourth one is already written. The third one is, and of course that sounds impressive, but in fact, you have to be ahead. People who try to bring out a book a year, and an incredible number of very good mystery writers do, this takes a lot of work and I'm going to have four, and then I'm going to take a break. So people will get through number four, and I'm not sure that number five will come out a year later. I shouldn't confess this, but I haven't confessed it to my publisher yet, but I need a little break.

Debbi: That's understandable.

Kim: But I do think there's a lot more that can be said about this couple of detectives. They aren't a couple, but as you know, this is a meta story over the series, which is that the older woman police detective and her assistant, who's about 12 years younger—she’s in her forties and he's in his thirties—they are very attracted to each other through working together, and they're both married with kids. So this is a big struggle for them.

Debbi: I was going to say this is a really interesting aspect of the books also that I wanted to get into. What made you choose that particular relationship for them?

Kim: Well, it's funny because what I first most wanted to do was give them both families. I love many police series with a loner detective, and of course, there are a lot of them, or detectives with alcohol problems or whose partners have left them, and because it's so difficult to live with a police man or woman, which I can imagine. But I wanted, like Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti, I don't know if you know her series set in Venice.

Debbi: Yes.

Kim: You know he has a lovely family and they're very important to him in his life and even in his conversations and when he is solving mysteries. I wanted both of my detectives to have families, but you know sometimes things just develop themselves. I didn't know at the beginning that I was going to do this, but as I had them working together, and it's what happens in real life. Two people who work very closely together, whose partners can't quite … in the case of police, you're not even allowed to really necessarily talk to your partner about exactly what you're doing, they become attracted to each other. So, of course, I had great fun having this younger, and as you know, very attractive man, become attracted to his 12 years older boss, I thought, you know what they say? What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, or something like that. I figured, this happens with younger women, so hey!

Debbi: I found it very believable and very interesting. I like the relationship....