Please Welcome Author and Photographer Susan Oleksiw

with Susan Oleksiw

We are delighted to welcome author and photographer Susan Oleksiw to Omnimystery News.

Susan's latest mystery, For the Love of Parvati (Five Star Publishing; May 2014 hardcover and ebook formats), is the third to feature Indian-American amateur sleuth Anita Ray.

We asked Susan to tell us a little more about how photography plays a role in this series, and she titles her guest post for us today "The Photographer as Protagonist". (All photographs in this post are provided courtesy of Susan Oleksiw.)

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Writers often give their protagonist a skill or profession similar to their own. Lawyers write great legal thrillers, doctors terrify us with medical disasters, and social workers open doors to lives of poverty and crime. I am none of these professions but I am an amateur photographer and I have lived in India, where my series featuring Indian-American photographer Anita Ray is set.

Anita uses the camera to understand life, and that means the crimes she encounters. If the darkroom once took over the artist's life, today the computer is likely to do so. With the ease of working with a digital camera, any photographer can produce hundreds of shots and may spend hours sitting in front of a computer enhancing and cropping the image. This isn't very exciting for a mystery novel, so I have to find other ways to use Anita's skills and photography.

First, I record scenes and places that I might want to use in a story. In the first book, Under the Eye of Kali, Anita traces a missing hotel guest through the Kovalam resort along the beach before she turns up among the rocks. In this story most of the action takes place among restaurants and shops catering to the tourist. Some of it takes place in Anita's photography gallery. Anita is startled when a shopper is upset by what she sees on a bulletin board. The shopper leaves and Anita studies the bulletin board for a clue.

If I stay at a particularly interesting hotel or homestay, I'll photograph it to remind me later of details when I write. The setting in The Wrath of Shiva is based on a traditional home in central Kerala where I stayed over night. These homes are disappearing, unfortunately, but their designs offer innumerable opportunities for suspicious goings-on. In the novel this is where Anita's eldest female relative lives, and where Anita is almost murdered.

Second, when I'm visiting India I walk every day with my camera, making a point of visiting areas of the city I haven't seen before. I try to see the city through the eyes of someone like Anita, a young woman with a new and increasingly successful career. India is a land of color but it is also a land of energy and activity. Anita tries to capture it all, but she relies on her camera when she's investigating to get into areas considered out of bounds.

Third, Anita uses her camera to capture parts of a scene that contain evidence she may not have access to later. When she goes walking during a break in the monsoon in For the Love of Parvati, she discovers a corpse and immediately takes a photo. She can examine the picture more carefully when she is alone, and confirm what she saw first. No one else may have noticed, but Anita is certain she saw claw marks when the men removed the body from the flood debris.

Fourth, the camera is a tool as well as a way of seeing, and this is how I have used it in the fourth Anita Ray, not yet published. The camera becomes an object that can be used for more than taking pictures. It has openings that can be used to hide a slip of paper, or other physical clue. Its disk can be removed and replaced with an unknown one. The camera that seems an extension of Anita can turn into an alien object that lets her down, betrays her, and even endangers her life.

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Photo provided courtesy of
Susan Oleksiw

Susan Oleksiw writes the Anita Ray series featuring an Indian-American photographer living at her aunt's tourist hotel in South India. She is also the author of the Mellingham series featuring Chief of Police Joe Silva. Susan is well known for her articles on crime fiction; her first publication in this area was A Reader's Guide to the Classic British Mystery. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and numerous anthologies. Susan lives and writes outside Boston, MA.

For more information about the author, please visit her website at SusanOleksiw.com or find her on Facebook.

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For the Love of Parvati
Susan Oleksiw
An Anita Ray Mystery

In the foothills of South India a man struggles against ropes tying him to an old bridge while the monsoon rages and wild animals forage for food. In the valley below, Anita Ray and Auntie Meena are stopped at a roadblock while their car is searched.

When Anita and Meena arrive at their destination, Lalita Amma's household is in turmoil. During a break in the rain, Anita discovers a body washed into the riverbank. The police whisk away the corpse and refuse to answer questions.

Anita Ray is brought face to face with a killer determined to exact revenge for a code of honor broken, a lover determined to rescue his beloved, and a woman desperate to build a new life.