with Clea Simon
We are delighted to welcome mystery author Clea Simon to Omnimystery News today.
Clea is the author of several mystery series, with her most recent book — Panthers Play for Keeps (Poisoned Pen Press; April 2014 hardcover, trade paperback, large print, audiobook and ebook formats) — the fourth in her Pru Marlowe Pet Noir series.
We recently had a chance to catch up with the busy author to talk about her books.
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Omnimystery News: What is it about series characters that appeals to you as a writer?
Photo provided courtesy of
Clea Simon
Clea Simon: I love writing a series because I (and my readers) get to stay with a character as she grows over time. There's so much going on with any one particular book, in terms of plot and immediate action that you don't really get to spend too much time on who your character is. Yes, Pru grows and changes over the course of each book. She'd be dull if she didn't. But over the course of several books, I get to explore different aspects of her personality. Why did she become such a loner? What made her leave her hometown so young? How does her particular sensitivity — her ability to "hear" what animals are thinking — play into each and every one of her relationships. My main character is a troubled soul, and I'm hoping over the course of this series, readers will get to know and understand her — and maybe she'll find a little peace, too.
OMN: Into which mystery genre would you place your pet noir books?
CS: Amateur sleuth/cozy with a bit of paranormal to them. My Pru Marlowe is definitely an amateur sleuth. I think of her as a bit hard-edged. She's a tough girl, but the books are essentially cozies. And the fact that she can "hear" what animals are thinking? Well, that's paranormal. The only disadvantage is that these characteristics make the book hard to qualtify. But I love it when I hear that readers didn't expect to like "this kind of book" and find themselves loving it — and often laughing out loud.
OMN: Tell us something about Panthers Play for Keeps that isn't mentioned in the synopsis.
CS: While Pru is called in to help when a wild cat — possibly a rare Eastern mountain lion — surfaces in her small rural town, the truth is she has more sympathy for the poor, hunted wild creature than for the townspeople who would hunt it to its death.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
CS: I like to start with a problem. In this case, there was the basic crime — a woman is killed, apparently by an animal that may or may not be extinct. How could this have happened? What does this show us about the relationship between humans and the wild? I don't want to give too much away, but let me say that the ramifications were not what you'd expect. Once I have that basic problem — that situation — then I start thinking of who will populate the book, animal characters as well as people. And when I have a few things set up, I start to write. Invariably as I write other characters pop up or sometimes return from other books, as happened in this one with the gangster Benazi. I realized that high-end crime could figure in this adventure, and well, why not bring that dashing old gangster back to town?
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
CS: Well, the strange thing is that just before Panthers Play for Keeps came out, in a nearby town there were possible sightings of a cougar — the panther of the title. And so all the same debates that Pru is having suddenly started playing out in real life: Could it really be an Eastern cougar, or are they extinct? Does it pose any real threat to people or domestic animals? Should it be hunted or left alone? Other than that, I do a ton of research … I just never expected reality to mirror my fiction.
OMN: Speaking of research, how do you go about fact-checking the plot points of your stories?
CS: I spend a lot of time reading, but then I always try to talk to experts - both on the human side (I have a former state police detective on call) and animals (one of my good friends, Vicki Constantine Croke, is a wildlife expert who has written several books of her own). Plus, if I'm writing about an animal that is new to me, I always want to spend time with him or her. You want to know how the animal moves, what it sounds like when it walks or runs or greets you.
OMN: Your books are set in Massachusetts. How true are you to the settings?
CS: My books are set in a fictional Western Massachusetts town — a former mill town that has gotten run down and is now being revived by tourism. I use a lot of towns, from Pittsfield to Amherst and North Adams as models.
OMN: If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, to research a setting for a book, where would it be?
CS: Well, I'd probably spend more time in Western Massachusetts, in the Berkshires. That's not very exotic — not for me — but it's where my books are based.
OMN: What are some of your outside interests? And have any of these found their way into your books?
CS: Well, clearly I love animals! Other than that, I love to cook and read. Pru might read a bit, but she is fiercely anti-domestic, so none of that is going to show up in her adventures. I do enjoy a good cocktail, which Pru gets to indulge in too.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
CS: The best advice I received, I've heard over and over again. Most recently, was at Bouchercon, the mystery convention, when I got to chat with the great and brilliant Sue Grafton. She asked what I was working on, and I told her that I was starting on the fourth of my Pru Marlowe series — just getting started. And she leaned over and said, quietly, in my ear, "It's hard, isn't it?" And that's just it. It is always hard. And from that I got that we were all in this together. We all have to work. We all hit bad spots, and … ideally we all come out of them with great books.
OMN: Complete this sentence for us: "I am a mystery author and thus I am also …".
CS: I am a mystery author and thus I am in love with my characters and their sense of fair play.
OMN: What kinds of books did you read when you were young? Did any of these influence how and what you write today?
CS: I adored the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis as well as The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and I think they have snuck into my writing in the form of the animal characters. I was (and still am) a huge huge Lord of the Rings fan, but I don't know how that has influenced me, except that I love a good quest.
OMN: What do you read now for pleasure?
CS: These days, I find myself reading a lot of non-crime fiction that really allows the imagination to roam and that fully develops its characters. I adored The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and Death in Venice/Jeff in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer, and I will read anything by Hilary Mantel or David Mitchell. Their characters are just so real, I miss them when the books are over.
I just finished Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings and really enjoyed it — it's the story of five friends from their meeting at a summer camp as young teens up through their fifties. I read that after just loving a Laura Lippmann mystery The Most Dangerous Thing, which, coincidentally, was also about a group of friends.
OMN: Do you have any favorite literary characters?
CS: Mole from Wind in the Willows, Eowyn from The Lord of the Rings, and, oh probably Becky Sharpe from Vanity Fair. None of them are heroes. The first two are good-hearted strivers, who do the best they can. Becky is a striver, but she is not at all good-hearted. Still, she's fun!
OMN: Create a Top 5 list for us on any subject.
CS: Top 5 books you should read if you want to write fiction (Note: None of these are crime novels, but they all play with the form — and are great fun to boot!):
• The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein;
• A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel;
• Tom Jones by Henry Fielding;
• The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trolloppe; and
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
OMN: What's next for you?
CS: I'm already hard at work at the fifth in the Pru series, tentatively titled Kittens Can Kill. Pru is back and finds herself entangled with a very unpleasant family — who have dumped a kitten on her and on Wallis that may be more deadly than cute. After that, I have the next Dulcie Schwartz feline mystery due. (This will be the ninth, after Grey Howl and Stages of Grey for the Dulcie series, which is published by Severn House and features a literature graduate student studying Gothic novels whose life is complicated by the ghost of her late, great cat Mr. Grey.)
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Clea Simon is the author of three non-fiction books and three mystery series: Theda Krakow (Poisoned Pen Press), Dulcie Schwartz (Severn House), and Pru Marlowe Pet Noir (Poisoned Pen Press). Her essays are included in several anthologies and she is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at CleaSimon.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Panthers Play for Keeps
Clea Simon
A Pru Marlowe Pet Noir
When Pru Marlowe takes a dog for a walk, she doesn't expect to find a body. But Spot, a service dog in training, has too good a nose not to lead her to the mangled body of a young woman. Despite her own best instincts, Pru can't avoid getting involved.
The young woman seems to have been mauled by a wild cat — and Pru knows there have been no pumas in the Berkshire woods for years. Wallis, Pru's curmudgeonly tabby, seems fixated on the idea of a killer cat, but Spot suggests that the violent death was something more than a tragic animal attack.
As motives multiply, a cougar of a different sort sets her eyes on Pru's sometime lover, and another woman disappears. With panther panic growing, Pru may have to put aside her own issues — and her own ideas of domesticity — to solve a savage mystery.
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