An Early Halloween

 

Since stores now put up their Halloween displays around the Fourth of July, it's only fitting to feature an author who specializes in horror and paranormal suspense and has been nominated for a Bram Stoker award for best debut novel. Deborah Leblanc is also the president of the Horror Writers Association and active in the  Mystery Writers of America's Southwest Chapter and Sisters in Crime. In addition to being part of paranormal investigation teams, she's also own a funeral service business and is a licensed death scene investigator. I asked her a couple of quick questions about those items and her literacy program.

IRTM:  I understand you're a licensed death scene investigator, although that's not your primary living. What made you decide to get the license and what's involved in getting certified? Have you ever been called upon to use this experience outside of your books?

DL:  Curiosity and frustration caused me to look into death scene investigation. I've worked in the funeral service industry for a number of years now, primarily as a management consultant. When I first started, I had to earn my stripes by learning the trade from the ground up--no pun intended--in order to be accepted in that industry. Earning those stripes included assisting with removals, embalmings, casketing, cosmetizing and even schlepping flowers to gravesites. It took about two years before the industry finally recognized me as one of their own. But even after that 'trial by fire' period was over, I continued to help with the 'hands-on' duties whenever I can and still do today.

All that said, it was during that two year training period and doing removals that initially sparked my interest in death scene investigation. I'm overly curious by nature, so each time I helped remove a body from a homicide scene or one where the cause of death didn't appear clear-cut, a million questions raced through my mind. The 'who--what--when--where--how--and whys plagued me long after the body was embalmed. And so it went for five more years.

Then one day, as fate would have it, the Safety Director for the National Funeral Directors Assoc. , who also happened to be my mentor in the business and a priceless friend, handed me a brochure about a death scene investigation program that included licensure at a Georgia university. There was a prerequisite for licensure, however. The applicant had to have served in law enforcement for a minimum of ten years--or had to have worked in funeral service for at least seven years. Remember the fate I mentioned earlier? I had just finished my seventh year in funeral service, which made me eligible!

Before you could say CSI Miami, I signed up for the program and was soon elbow-deep in text books, lectures, and hands-on workshops that focused on blood spatter analysis, DNA testing, fingerprint analysis, profiling---it was Nirvana!

I've never been called upon to use this experience outside of writing, but it has served other purposes. It's allowed me 'behind the scenes', where I can question something I think has been overlooked, which occasionally has detectives looking in new, more productive directions to solve a case.

IRTM:  You also have worked in the funeral/mortician business? What types of
experiences has that involved, and how do those work their way into your
writing?

DL: Funeral service is a fascinating business to me, and I hold directors and embalmers (in many states they're one in the same) in high regard. It takes a special person to deal with death and the bereaved everyday and still maintain a positive outlook on life.

Being involved in this unique business has provided a treasure chest of experiences that would be invaluable to any storyteller.  Even if I lived to be a hundred, I'd never be able to pen enough novels to write about them all. From a writer's perspective, the best part about experiencing even the worst this death business has to offer is authenticity. It brings a ring of truth to my readers' ears.

When I write about a murder scene, you can bet all your bananas on the fact that you're reading the real deal. I'm recalling an actual murder scene I've witnessed--sights, sounds, smells. If a tale involves a shooting, not only can I give an accurate accounting of gunshot wounds and blood spatter, I know the weight and feel of the weapons used. I'm licensed to carry concealed, so I spend as much time as time allows on the firing range. Sometimes I target practice with a 9mm Glock, a 9mm Luger, and know all too well the rapid casing spray from an automatic M11.

If one of my stories takes you into an embalming room, chances are it'll read as if you're actually there--because I've actually  been there. You'll read secrets of the trade that few outsiders ever hear about.

I'm a stickler for details because my greatest desire is to have a reader truly experience my stories. I want him or her to feel as if they are standing right in the scene.

The same holds true when I write about paranormal experiences. You can bet most of what you're reading comes from a first- hand experience. I've been a paranormal investigator for over 15 years, and have found myself in some of the creepiest places on the globe.

I have to admit, though, that sometimes I can take this obsession for detail a tad too far. Like the time I had myself locked in a casket. I was writing GRAVE INTENT at the time, and since one of my main characters wound up locked and trapped in a casket--I HAD to know, instead of imagine, what that felt like. What were the movement limitations REALLY like inside a casket. What about the smell? Did ANY light filter through cracks? Did sound penetrate through a coffin? Yep, that adventure was a bit intimidating, to say the least--but it sure was a rush experiencing it!

IRTM: I'm very much interested in the organization you founded, Literacy, Inc., since I'm a firm believer in literacy for all ages. The Leblanc Literacy Challenge has cash incentives for reading--including this year a potential grand prize of a free college education--which involves reading some of your books and taking a quiz and writing an essay. Certainly, the scholarship and funds for the kids and their schools are a great idea, and I'm curious as to what response you've had thus far? Are you considering branching out and including other books in the future?

DL: The Literacy Challenge is now in its fourth year, and the program response has exceeded our wildest expectations. So you can witness the impact it's had first hand, I've included a few comments we've received from teachers, students and parents:  "The workshop was very enlightening to my students. It not only motivated them to read, but excited them about the challenge. I was thrilled by the way you were able to relate to the students, get on their level and share with them the boundless opportunities that await them if they only try." 

Deborah Leblanc's latest paranormal suspense novel is Water Witch. She's also currently writing a paranormal thriller for Harlequin Nocturne, part of a trilogy with Heather Graham and Alexandra Sokoloff.

 

A Thrilling, Tony Trio

 

Harper Collins recently published the latest novels from James Grippando, Jane Stanton Hitchcock and Paulo Coehlo, and sent along some copies. At first, I thought I might feature them separately, but then I realized they have a common theme running not only among the three books but also the three authors.

Coehlo's book, The Winner Stands Alone, zeroes in on society's fascination with the world of fame, fortune, and celebrity, something Coehlo himself knows first-hand, as a theater director, actor and lyricist in his native Brazil. His novel takes place over a 24-hour period at the Cannes Film Festival, with the "superclass" of producers, actors, designers, and supermodels juxtaposed against aspiring starlets, has-been stars and jaded hangers-on. The story focuses on a successful, driven Russian entrepreneur who will go to the darkest lengths, even murder, to reclaim his ex-wife, but it's as much a indictment of the excesses and shaky moral ground of the Hollywood and celebrity lifestyle as it is a thriller. (That particular theme turns out to be a bit ironic, considering at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008, Harvey Weinstein bought the rights to Coelho's best-selling The Alchemist and will be producing it with a budget of $60 million.)

Author Jane Stanton Hitchcock is no stranger to fame and fortune, either, her mother being noted actress Joan Alexander and her father (adoptive stepfather) a wealthy Volkswagen executive, who entertained lavishly in New York and the Hamptons with the likes of George Plimpton, Neil Simon, and Leonard Bernstein. In Hitchcock's latest novel, Mortal Friends, the high society-connected Reven Lynch joins forces with a DC detective, playing an "ersatz Mata Hari" navigating embassy dinners and charity balls to help catch a killer, the "Beltway Basher," who might be closer to home than Reven realizes; the most likely suspect is Reven's businessman love interest. Eventually, her efforts cause her social world to unravel, put an old friendship to the test and unleash quite a bit of scandal as Reven discovers nothing in either high or low culture is what it appears to be.

Although novelist James Grippando didn't start out in such rarified circles as Hitchcock, his legal career drove him on the fast track to becoming a partner at Steel Hector and Davis, the Miami law firm at which former Attorney General Janet Reno began her career. His latest novel, Intent to Kill, centers around a fallen baseball star, Ryan James, who uses his skills as Boston's king of sports radio to outwit a dangerous caller and prove the hit-and-run which killed his wife was no accident. With help from the dedicated prosecutor on the case, James tries to unravel a cover-up that reaches back to the night of his wife's death and could end up involving one of New England's richest and most powerful families.

Power, greed and fame — the getting and the keeping — are certainly prime fodder for crime, and these three novels make good use of that construct. As philosopher Francis Bacon pointed out, “Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid," or, as Hitchcock's protagonist Reven Lynch says in Mortal Friends, "This being Washington, and Washington being the capital of ambition, there are a lot of killers around here, believe me. I imagined quite a few people in that audience would be capable of murder if they thought it would advance their careers, or keep them in power."

A Little Lamb Lost

 

In the subgenre of amateur detectives, there seem to be no boundaries regarding a protagonist's vocation. Some tend to stretch credulity to its limits, but others, such as social work, provide the potential for a depth of material to mine. There haven't been many social worker sleuths in crime fiction, Irene Marcuse's Anita Servi series and Tom Schreck's Duffy Dombrowski, being two examples.

One of the most recent is the June debut novel by Margaret Fenton, Little Lamb Lost. From the "write what you know" school, Fenton, herself a child and family therapist, is married to a software developer in Birmingham, Alabama. In Little Lamb Lost, social worker Claire Conover gets drawn into a murder case after a child she recommended be returned to his reformed drug-addict mother is killed, allegedly by the mother. After the Department of Human Services and the press get wind of Claire's involvement, she tries to uncover the truth behind the boy's death and prove the mother innocent. Aided by a computer geek (and potential love interest -- see note above about the author's hubby), she pursues answers through the streets of Birmingham, identifying the child's child-abusing step-grandfather, a drug addict son of a rich area family and two boyfriends of the mother as potential suspects.

Fenton casts Conover as a sympathetic heroine, who honestly believes she can make a different in the world, despite the depressing life stories she's faced with on a daily basis and the troubled reality of the foster care system. Birmingham, Alabama, is also not a typical setting for a crime novel, with more opportunities for a fresh take on setting and sense of place. Publishers Weekly said in a review that "With her fine ear for regional speech, Fenton may do for Birmingham what Margaret Maron has done for rural North Carolina." (Speaking of Maron, the Women of Mystery are giving away a copy of her latest book, Sand Sharks. Click here.)

One interesting side note: Fenton has Anne George (who died in 2001) to thank for become a published author. As Fenton note, the pair "were on our way to a Sisters in Crime meeting one night and I was babbling on about Laura Lippman’s first book and how much I liked it when she said, 'Margaret, I don’t know why someone who loves mysteries as much as you do doesn’t try to write one.' I didn’t have a good answer for that. So the next day I started thinking about it. I am an LCSW and worked with child welfare for many years, so that seemed a good place to start."

Fenton is working on a sequel to the novel, titled Little Girl Gone, in what promises to become a new series.

Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts

 

In advance of the September release of the memoir Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts: True Adventures of a Female P.I. by CiCi McNair, Hachette Books is offering readers of In Reference to Murder in the U.S. and Canada five free copies of the book. To enter, send an e-mail with your name and complete mailing address to bv@bvlawson.com with "Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts" in the subject line, between now and midnight on August 31st. The five winners will be selected via random drawing and announced here the next day.

CiCi McNair fled a suffocating and emotionally-abusive childhood in Mississippi as soon as she could, taking a more traditional route at first with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history. She used that degree to good effect researching the award-winning CBC documentary Connections, about organized crime in Canada. That led to news anchoring in Rome and a news broadcast stint on Vatican Radio.

But that wasn't enough for McNair. After years traveling around Europe, she returned to New York in 1994, divorced, broke and "camping out in a  borrowed apartment with an open suitcase under a dining room table."  She impulsively decided to become a private detective and started calling agencies in the Yellow Pages starting with "A" and working her way down the alphabet, before she was hired on April Fool's Day by a firm willing to give her a chance. Since then, she's worked for an ex-homicide detective in Mississippi with her 84-year-old mother riding shotgun in the surveillance car, joined a zany private eye firm in Hell's Kitchen fighting counterfeiters, and worked undercover with New York City law enforcement investigating the Born to Kill gang in Chinatown and the Middle Eastern underworld west of Broadway.

Since 2003 she's been head of the international firm Great Star Investigations, first in Miami and now in Philadelphia. Her firm handles cases including counterfeit pharmaceuticals, missing persons, stolen art recovery, and murder. McNair herself also works as a court-appointed investigator handling capital and non-capital cases. 

Detectives Don't Wear Seatbelts often reads like a first-person novel, and McNair has a flair for storytelling, as well as plenty of insights into her male-dominated field. Of her encounters with the Feebs (FBI), U.S. marshals, NYPD, Jersey cops, and others she encountered while working undercover in Chinatown, she says

"There were always ex-cops coming in and out of the office and others on the phone. The worst of them were racist, sexist, dishonest, and dumb. The best of them had a genuine urge or even a need to be protective of others. They were savvy and resourceful, and if there's anything I ever want to be called--it's that. Their brains turned me on. In every way. But I never did more than fantasize about making love to a detective. It would have been far too dangerous for my future. Detectives are skeptics, paranoid, and gossip like mad when they're not putting two and two together on their own. But it wasn't just fear of damaging my reputation. It would have made incest look like breaking a diet."