Moments In Crime

Liar, Liar...

I want to confess to the world--I am a good liar!

This morning I took part in a liar's panel at Left Coast Crime and I fooled the audience most of the time. We were asked questions and the audience had to judge whether we were lying or telling the truth.

My biggest triumph was a long tale about going to visit the royal family on Boxing day (day after Christmas) and the audience believed me! And didn't believe that I had dated a rock drummer--which happened to be true

The lying was in a good cause. Every time we didn't manage to fool the audience we put some money in to a local literacy charity. And I suppose that lying is a good skill for a fiction writer. it's what we do all the time--when Barry Eisler and I interviwed each other, he asked me how I could put myself into the mind set of someone who lived so long ago. I talked about research and visiting Molly's old neighborhood in New York, but actually a fiction writer has to get under the skin of a different person every time he or she writes. It's no harder to imagine myself an Irish immigrant in New York than it would be to imagine myself a Beverly Hills movie star or a Welsh policeman, for that matter. Every character we write about is someone else and we have to know that person well enough to make the reader believe that the character is real and lives a life full of real friends and real problems. I suppose we have the same skills as actors, only we put ours onto paper. 

Left Coast Crime has now come to an end--the party is breaking up, all of us sad to be saying goodbye and to be leaving paradise where the weather has been spectacular for the past two days. Bill and Toby Gottfried again proved that they know how to run a hell of a convention. I don't think I heard a single grumble or complaint, even when the weather was not behaving. We loved having the Aussies, delegates from Sweden and Austria and England. Now it's back to work and the next Molly book to finish.

I've enjoyed being part of Moments in Crime. See you again next year and in the meantime please visit my regular blogs at www.theladykillers.typepad.com and www.jungleredwriters.com as well as my website at www.rhysbowen.com for my news and events schedule.   

Rhys Bowen

author of the Molly Murphy Mysteries--In a Gilded Cage comes out March 17th!

Have we come a long way, baby?

  My new Molly Murphy book, IN A GILDED CAGE, is available here at the convention and I'm looking forward to talking about it at various bookstore events when I get back to California. Although it is set in the year 1903, its theme is particularly relevent today: the role of women in society.

The book opens with a suffrigists march that ends with the young ladies being arrested for disturbing the peace. It then traces the lives of several Vassar graduates. These are young women who leave college with great expectations and lively, alert minds. They want to study physics in Europe, find the source of the Nile, and instead they get married and are immediately reduced to what society and their husband expect of them--to be lovely adornments and mothers. My heroine Molly is particularly noticing this change as she is considering getting married and doesn't want to find herself in this position.

The point is that at that time women had very few rights--no right to vote and in many states no right to own property either. The "rule of thumb" allowed a husband to beat his wife with a stick no greater in diameter than his thumb. Of course we've come a long way in the Western world but there are still many countries where women have no rights. Their lives are dictated entirely by the male members of their family. Saudi women are not allowed to drive themselves. And even young Muslim girls born in Britain find themselves whisked off to Pakistan to be married against their will. Those who resist are often killed by their family members.

So it's good to remember that our own society went through this struggle for women's rights not too long ago.

And a brief report from Left Coast Crime in Hawaii. Finally some sunshine and I had a fun and delightful assignment to be in conversation with my co guest of honor, Barry Eisler. What a charming and modest and intelligent person he is! We laughed a lot and the audience had a great time too. Tomorrow is the awards banquet. I'll let you know the results....

Rhys Bowen

www.rhysbowen.com

Living in the moment

Rhys Bowen reporting from day two in Hawaii. Big news--the sun finally made an appearance briefly today, dramatically reducing the attendance at afternoon panels. I even managed to squeeze in half an hour's snorkeling.

Other big news was that I managed to stump the experts. I ran a panel game in which I presented a baffling crime scene to a panel with law enforcement and forensic expertise and they had to solve the crime. I was worried that the crime I picked was too obvious as I had tried it out on my daughter and son-in-law and they had solved it instantly. But my experts today didn't figure out whodunit. They figured out how it was done but it took the audience yelling out "what about the nephew?" before they were on the right track. Panels like this are always more. fun than the simple where I get my ideas from variety

Several people today asked me whether I was enjoying being guest of honor. It's rather a strange question, when you think about it. Did they really expect me to say no, I was hating it? But like a lot of momentous occasions in life, I think it will only really hit me when it's over what a cool experience this was. I remember thinking at my wedding that I should be feeling more overawed and overjoyed when instead I was worrying about details. When I got an Edgar nomination it didn't sink it for about a week and then suddenly I realized which big name authors had not been nominated that year and then it hit me what a big deal it was. 

One thing being guest of honor means is having to work hard. I have two panels or interviews every day. This afternoon I had a chance to read from "Tell Me Pretty Maiden," which is nominated for the historical mystery award. I always find it hard to choose a brief selection from a book that will convey the flavor and the suspense without giving too much away.. Tomorrow is my big moment when Barry Eisler and I interview each other. I think it's more entertaining to have two writers in converstaion rather than an interviewer posing questions. I plan to ask him questions he's never been asked before. I personally perform better when I am caught off guard. I'll let you know how it went.

And there are now only 8 days until In a Gilded Cage is officially in stores! More tomorrow.

Rhys Bowen

Reporting from Paradise, Day 1

Greetings from Rhys Bowen, reporting from sunny Hawaii.  That was how I intended to start this blog post, but it has turned out to be reporting from rather chilly and windy Hawaii. I only arrived with one very light jacket and one pashmina and they have both been used extensively so far. I’ve tried to find quilted or polar fleece but the Hawaians simply refuse to admit that the temperature ever falls below eighty so it appears that no warm clothes are stocked on the island!

Even the unexpectedly chilly wind can’t stop it from being beautiful, however. The riot of color from bougainvilleas spilling over walls, hibiscus the size of soup plates, plumerias , jacarandas, shower trees is just breathtaking. I know this is supposed to be a blog about books, but I wanted to set the scene first. I am actually here as guest of honor at the Left Coast Crime convention and I am still feeling embarrassed atA all the attention. I couldn’t believe it when Bill and Toby Gottfried invited me to be the GOH and then told me it was to be held in Hawaii. What more could one dream of? The Gottfrieds probably know how to run a convention better than anybody. They’ve done it twice before in Monterey with great success and this one promises to be even better—unusual, fun panels, plenty of events just to meet and mingle and a luau and beach party. Plus all your favorite West Coast authors—Laurie King, Aaron Elkins, Dana Stabenow and of course my co-guest of honor Barry Eisler. What more could a mystery fan want?

And miraculously, my new book, IN A GILDED CAGE, has managed to make it here for the convention, even though it’s not officially in stores until St. Paddy’s Day, March 17^th. So the attendees here are getting s sneak peek. St. Martin’s was also generous enough to send over copies of Tell Me Pretty Maiden for the book bags, so I hope I’ll make some new fans as well. Tell Me, Pretty Maiden is also nominated for one of the convention awards--so fingers crossed for me, please!

The convention started the right way with a reception called Desserts to Die For. When we had to introduce ourselves a noisy table of Aussies let their presence be known with the famous cheer Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi. And the official opening ceremony was at a luau last night. A Hawaiian priest gave the blessing, hula dancers performed and then we went on to a live stage performance of the Charlie Chan novel  House without a Key—set in Hawaii, of course.

More about the new  Molly book tomorrow, also a report on my attempt to stump the experts by presenting them with a baffling crime scene. See what fun mystery conventions are—even if the weather isn’t cooperating yet.

Here I am with Meg Chittenden, Lee Goldberg and Robin Burcell, laughing about a picture taken of us that cut off Lee's head!

Rhys Bowen,

www.rhysbowen.com

www.rhysbowen.com

Blogging This Week: Rhys Bowen

Rhys Bowen’s novels have received a remarkable number of awards, including the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards as well as the Bruce Alexander Historical Award and the Herodotus Award. She is also the author of the Royal Spyness series and the Edgar Award--nominated Constable Evan Evans mysteries. Born in England, she now lives in San Rafael, California, with her husband.

Irish immigrant Molly Murphy and her New York City P.I. business are in the midst of a sweeping influenza epidemic and a fight for women’s suffrage that lands her in jail. Her betrothed, Police Captain Daniel Sullivan, finds her, but he hardly has time to bail her out, what with Chinese gangs battling for control of a thriving opium trade. The only consolation Molly can take from her vexing afternoon in the clink is that it made her some new friends among the Vassar suffragists---and brought her a pair of new cases.

For the first, Emily Boswell is convinced her miserly uncle stole her inheritance and wants Molly to uncover the truth behind her parents’ lives and deaths. Second, Emily’s college roommate Fanny Poindexter wants Molly to find proof of her husband’s philandering so that she can leave him without one red cent. But when Fanny dies and her husband claims she’s a victim of the epidemic, it’s more than Molly’s conscience can take.

Rhys Bowen’s Agatha and Anthony Award--winning historical series continues to breathe life into the past with its wit and charm and its complete sense of early-twentieth-century New York, which makes In a Gilded Cage her most accomplished mystery yet.

Hey Lady, Wanna buy a book?

Rhys here on my last day of blogging on this site. If you've enjoyed reading my ramblings, then may I suggest that you check me out on www.theladykillers.typepad.com where I blog every Wednesday, along with some other talented ladies of mystery. (Doesn't that sound interesting, like the dance of the seven veils!)

On Tuesday my quiet writer's life is exchanged for my public writer,s life as Tell Me, Pretty Maiden hits the stores. Suddenly it's getting out my "famous author clothes" and my high heeled shoes and finding the make-up I hardly ever wear, and off on a plane to promote the book. I'll be in Scottsdale on Tuesday, Denver Wednesday thru Saturday, LA on Saturday and then back in the Bay Area by the next Wednesday. Then events in the Bay Area through most of April until I fly out to Washington DC and then Pittsburgh at the end of April. By my standards this is a mini-tour. This is the seventh book in the series so the promotion for each one is now winding down.

Sometimes it's tough to decide how much time and effort should be spent in promoting the book. We tour, we speak, we have bookmarks and giveaways made. We have websites, and blogs, and we post on Crimespace and My Space and Your Space and Godknowswho's space. Now we are encouraged to have video trailers made, to take out ads.  Some writers spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a private publicist.

So where will it all end? Full scale motion pictures of the book?

And the big question: is it all worth it? Probably not. Hardly any books make it to the NY Times bestseller list if they are not heavily promoted and pushed by the publisher. Essentially it is impossible to make yourself a star. So moderation is the key: getting out and meeting the fans, visiting the bookstores, handing out bookmarks never hurt any book. Making sure you have an online presence is also essential these days. But fully directed video trailers? Will the people who watch them be the same people who buy books?

It's all a crap shoot really. One does what one can. Sometimes a tiny piece of luck can tip the scales, like Laura Bush being interviewed and telling the world she was reading Jackie Winspear's Maisie Dobbs. You can't buy that kind of publicity. So should I be sending Barak Obama and Hilary Clinton a copy of Molly Murphy, just in case?

See you on the road, I hope. Oh, and do go and buy the book or check it out at your local library. It's a good read, I promise!

Rhys Bowen

Far Away and Long Ago

Hi, it's Rhys on Saturday, about to go out and enjoy the fabulous Arizona sunshine. Yesterday I went to see my San Francisco Giants in spring training. Not looking too promising as yet. But back to more relevant topics:

I know that I have definitely set myself a challenge by setting my mysteries in other countries and other times. Sometimes I tell myself how much easier it would have been to have discovered a body in Marin County California, which is the place I have lived for over thirty years and know like the back of my hand.
If my heroine had to run along a hiking trail on Mount Tam, I could do it in my sleep. Instead I have to travel to New York to check up on Molly and even further across the ocean to see what Evan or Lady Georgie might be doing. And I have to fill in all the details of their lives with research. What did automobiles look like in 1903? How much was a cup of coffee? What was the fashion that year? The most popular song? Get one thing wrong and I'll be deluged with emails pointing out my mistake.  It's funny that people absolutely love to catch an author out!

I've found that I rarely slip up with my Molly books. I suppose it's because I started off knowing very little and have had to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle as I go along. My real danger is with the books set in Wales or London, both places I know well. So I don't bother to double check those facts as carefully and have wound up putting a London hotel on the wrong street, much to my mortification. When I was writing Evan, I did go to Wales before each book, just to make sure they hadn't put a nuclear power plant in what I was describing as a beautiful valley.

It's funny that readers should be so angry about a small slip--after all it is fiction. I may have set the story in New York, but it is Molly Murphy's New York and she is a figment of my imagination. I could be like Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and have created a completely fictional and alternative New York. The point is with mystery novels that they have to read as reality or they don't work. Murder is a disruption of an ordered society so we have to fully believe in that society. It has to be right. We have to know the rules by which it works.

Sometimes I wish I'd cheated like Agatha Christie and created fictional towns for my stories. Oh wait,I did do that with Constable Evans. I created a village for him to live in. But I had to put it in a real geographical situation because the routes up Snowdon were important to my first story. So now everyone in that part of Wales knows where it is. A woman once said, "I have a bone to pick with you. When the car went off the cliff, why didn't he just run to the youth hostel?" To which I replied, "Because in my book I am God. I have obliterated the youth hostel."

I should try that approach more often with Molly when I worry about getting a street or a building wrong!

Have a great weekend!

Rhys

Kick-Ass broads

For some reason female readers took Molly Murphy to heart from day one. I have had fans come up to me, put their hands on my shoulders and literally shake me, saying, "I just love that woman!"
Why is this? I wonder. I suppose the answer is that she is the woman we'd like to be. She is not always wise in her decisions, especially concerning romance, but she doesn't back off or back down easily.
She says what she thinks. She steps in when she thinks an injustice has occurred. How many of us have wanted to intervene but decided to turn a blind eye instead? 

We'd all like to be the spunky, gutsy heroine, to take on the bad guys and win, wouldn't we?  Look  how instantly popular Kinsey Milhone was. A female packing a gun and living a man's life? How  exciting is that?  For Molly her role is even more outlandish as it goes completely against the image of Victorian womanhood. Women were supposed to be frail, delicate creatures who swooned if a man uttered the word "Damn" in their presence. They were supposed to be not very bright, to be led and guided by their lords and masters who knew about the ways of the world.

This image, of course, was created by men. It was their fantasy of womanhood, not reality. At the time I am writing about women had crossed the country in wagon trains, often giving birth along the route, sometimes burying children there too. Women had also crossed the great ocean, leaving the life they had known and making new lives for themselves in deplorable conditions in the tenements. A woman was about to embark on a voyage to the North Pole. Madame Curie was working on the discovery of radium. Schools like Vassar, Smith, Radcliffe were turning out graduates with keen minds and a desire to change the world. And yet women didn't have the vote and wouldn't for almost another twenty years. It seems impossible to imagine these days, doesn't it?

Life is not easy for Molly, trying to do a man's job in a man's world. First there are the physical limitations. How do you chase a suspect when you are wearing layers of skirts, petticoats, long bloomers and little pointed toe shoes? How do you escape by climbing a wall in all those garments. Of course, she is one of the few women who refuses to wear a corset, at least making it possible for her to breathe when she's running away!  And there are places she simply can't go. She can't follow a suspect into a tavern. The doorkeeper at a gentlemens' club will refuse to talk to her. Waiters won't divulge secrets to her. Police won't cooperate with her. She is a woman. She should be home having babies. Simple as that.

At least her new case takes her into the world of theater and she is able to move in disguise among the chorus girls. And theater folk are notorious gossips! But she has not yet learned when it would be wiser to leave well alone. At the end of the book she finds herself in a situation from which she might not be able to escape. Once again her life is on the line. Ah Molly. I guess she'll never learn. Maybe that's why fans like her. She's just like us!

Rhys Bowen
please visit me at www.rhysbowen.com

Tales of Old New York

Rhys here on a glorious Thursday morning. Now I know why I bought a condo in Arizona. The sun is streaming in through the window, the birds are singing and all is right with the world.

In my blog yesterday I revealed the driving force behind the Molly series. I was keen to write a kick-ass broad on Ellis Island. It was only when she stepped ashore near the end of the book (sorry about the spoiler. Yes, she does survive, as seven subsequent books will attest) that I realized how little I knew about old New York. I had saddled myself with research on every page for the rest of my writing life!

And thus it has turned out. If I have chosen to write about a place and time so well documented (there is a New York Times for every day of the period I'm writing about) then I have to get everything right--not just the big things, like the name of the mayor, but the little things too. Where would Molly buy a hair ribbon? Where would she drink a cup of coffee. These are not frightfully important to the story but they become a personal challenge.  I take my research seriously. I go to New York at least once a year. I browse the Historical Society, the Tenement Museum, the library, and I walk the streets that Molly walked. Luckily so much of Molly's New York still exists. Her little house on Patchin Place is still exactly as it was. In fact the current owner contacted me some time ago and sent me photos of the interior and garden as they are today. I was even invited to the Patchin Place annual Christmas party--I wish I could have gone but 3000 miles for one afternoon did seem a little extravagent.

And when I am away from New York, I have built up a large library of reference books, maps, photographs etc. Luckily this was the ero of the Brownie camera and all over the place photographers were snapping pictures. So I can find a shot of pretty much any street I'm writing about. I can see what was on the billboards, the name of the stores and whether the trolley was electrified or not. Along the way I have become something of an expert without knowing it: I was in the map room of the NY library on 42nd Street a year or so ago and the librarian had brought out several maps for me to look at. I stared at one and then called her over.
    "What makes you think this is 1902?" I asked.
    She leaned close to mutter," Because it''s written in pencil on the back."
    "But it''s not 1902," I said.
    She stared at me--a strange woman with an English accent telling her that her map was wrong.
    "Look," I said. "See the East River Bridge (now called the Williamsburg Bridge). It is shown as complete. It wasn't complete in 1902. I have a picture of two towers with a cable strung across but no roadway."
    "Oh," was all she could think of saying.

So if you need to know anything about old New York, just ask.
And if you want to see photos that I've taken of Molly's New York, please visit my website

More tomorrow
Rhys

The Birth of Molly

When I'm touring around the country, signing and speaking at bookstores, I'm often asked how I came up with the idea for Molly Murphy. I'm not always able to say where an idea came from: sometimes it comes from some tiny snippet or vague notion that gradually crystalizes into a story. But in Molly's case I can tell you, step by step, how she came into being.

I had been writing the Constable Evans series of mysteries--traditional British mystery set in the mountains of North Wales. I enjoyed writing them but Evan was beginning to annoy me because he was too polite. When his superiors were rude to him, he never talked back but went away muttering. I was itching to write about someone who would talk back, who didn't always know when to shut up and when to back down--someone a little more like me, I have to confess. I've always had a strong sense of justice and have never learned to keep quiet if I see some wrong that needs righting--these range from teachers who picked on students unfairly in my class at school to  someone cutting in front of me in line. I spent a lot of my school life standing outside the headmistress's office!

So I knew what sort of main character I wanted but that was all. Then I went to Ellis Island and was completely emotionally overcome with what I saw and felt there. The very walls were telling me that this had been a place of great joy and great sorrow. Some people had fled from unimaginable horrors and tragedies in Europe and reached Ellis Island. They passed through and were welcomed to the United States. They were free to make a new life. Their dreams had come true. Others had fled from similar horrors and when they reached Ellis Island their nightmare was just beginning. Guards rifled through their. belongings. Others hinted they could bribe their way through. And worst of all--one member of the family failed the medical inspection and was to be sent back to Europe. I tried to imagine a family to whom this happened. The mother and father would stare at each other blankly, not knowing what to do next. And they would look out across that stretch of water to the Manhattan Skyline and know that they would never make it to America. So near and yet so far. These were the feelings I wanted to convey in my Molly books. And of course, being a mystery writer, I saw the isolation of that island and knew that you could only get there in a government launch and I thought,"This is the perfect locked room mystery!"

So I made her an Irish immigrant who has had to flee from Ireland after she accidentally kills the land owner's son. She reaches Ellis Island under an assumed name. While she is there a man is brutally murdered and as the police investigate, the name under which she is traveling emerges as one of the prime suspects. Now she has to prove her innocence or be sent back to Ireland to be hanged.
A good start to a series, right?
This book was called Murphy's Law and it won three awards including the Agatha.
And of course, when Molly steps ashore she has all the stories of New York City waiting to be told.
But more about those tomorrow!
Happy Wednesday

Rhys Bowen
www.rhysbowen.com