Thanks for navigating your way to www.lindaleepeterson.com!
It’s very exciting to launch my first mystery out into the world, and even more exciting to hear from people who read it and have something to say. Early readers helped me ferret out pre-publication “oops.” For example, thank you, Jackie Winspear, for observing that transatlantic phone calls are bargains these days, and thank you, Jonnie Jacobs, for gently pointing out that the police officer leading a homicide investigation is an inspector, not a lieutenant.
So, here are some of the questions my early reader pals asked, just in case you wondered as well:
Q. Why a mystery?
A. I wrote a mystery because I love to read them. Life itself can seem awfully messy — closets that don’t get cleaned out, deer eat plants they’re not supposed to, elections don’t go exactly the way you wished — but in a mystery, everything usually gets sorted out at the end. Mysteries create hardships, and if your characters are interesting people, they become different as a result of engaging with those challenges.
Plus, I grew up reading mysteries. My dad loves mysteries, and got me hooked early on Dashiell Hammett, Eric Ambler, and Raymond Chandler. I discovered the Peter Wimsey mysteries, and spent a lot of time longing to be Harriet Vane. (Alert readers will note that I dealt with some of that longing by setting part of the EDITED TO DEATH backstory at Oxford.)
Q. Why San Francisco?
A. There are plenty of classic mystery towns — Boston, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, but San Francisco is one of the best. Whenever I venture into one of those old Market Street buildings that feature frosted-glass office doors, I still believe I’m going to find one that reads, Spade and Archer, walk across the threshold shake hands with Sam Spade. Plenty of contemporary mysteries are set here as well, because in a ddition to being, as the tourism bureau says, “Everybody’s Favorite City,” it’s one of the most mysterious as well.
Q. You’ve encumbered your amateur sleuth with a spouse and children. Doesn’t that slow her down?
A. Sure it does. Just like real life. In fact, married-with-children sleuths are relatively rare. (Though Jon Katz’ Suburban Detective series, Ayelet Waldman’s Mommy-Track Mystery series, and Robert Tannenbaum’s Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi series are wonderful exceptions). EDITED TO DEATH is a mystery, but it’s also a domestic “dramedy of manners,” about the way in which a violent act — a murder — changes a marriage and a family.
Q. What’s next?
A. Right now, I’m excited to be out talking to people about EDITED TO DEATH. But I’m also at work on the next Maggie Fiori adventure, THE DEVIL'S INTERVAL. Here’s a little preview:
A Death Row con nicknamed the “Limo Lothario” with a gift for jazz piano and an unfortunate taste for married women and fringe sexual pleasures. A mother who will do anything to derail her son’s date with a lethal injection. And the editor of a chic San Francisco magazine who finds herself oddly compelled by the “Lothario’s” plight.
Maggie Fiori, now editor-in-chief of Small Town, San Francisco’s leading city magazine begins by covering the Limo Lothario story and gets in far deeper than she should. Her adventure takes Maggie into the worlds of old money and new, the dark San Francisco private club scene, and forces her to confront all the secrets that fall into the unsettling “flatted fifth” sound of the Devil’s Interval.
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