Tag: Death of a Brooklyn Landlord

Introducing Blackie, an unusual feline hero, and his companion Care in the first of this dark new mystery series.
Three figures, shadowy against the light. That’s all I remember from my past life, as I am dragged, dripping and half-drowned, from the flood. My saviour, a strange, pink-haired girl, is little help. She can barely care for herself, let alone the boy she loves. And although she has sworn to avenge the murder of her mentor, she must first escape the clutches of drug dealers, murderers and thieves. I would repay her kindness if I could. But we are alone in this blighted city – and I am a cat.

The past is an enigma to Blackie, the voice of Clea Simon’s dark new mystery. Combining elements of feline fantasy and cozy whodunit, The Ninth Life introduces this unusual hero and his companion, Care: two small creatures in a nightmarish urban landscape, fighting for their lives, and for the lives and memories of those they love.

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Q: It was only last August that we were here chatting about Code Grey. Welcome back and congratulations on The Ninth Life, which is a bit of a change in tone. Can you tell us about your protagonist?
A: “The Ninth Life” really has two protagonists, as the series name – A Blackie and Care Mystery – indicates. My narrator is Blackie, a feral black cat who observes the world around him closely, particularly as it affects Care, a pink-haired homeless girl whom he is strangely bonded to.
Q: How much of you is in Blackie and Care? How would you feel about them if you met them in real life?
A: Well, I’m neither a cat nor homeless, but there’s certainly some of me in both of these. In a way, Blackie is in the author’s role. Not only does he narrate the story, he’s in the position of watching what’s going on although he is unable to explain things to Care or to warn her. Meanwhile, if Blackie is the mind behind what’s going on, Care is in some ways the heart of the book – she’s a girl on her own in a very tough world. I worry about her!
Q: Will Blackie and Care change and evolve throughout the series?
A: This is the first book in the Blackie and Care series, so we’ll have to wait and see. But I do like to have my characters grow and evolve. People do, and so I think fictional people should too – readers would get sick of seeing the characters they are fond of making the same mistakes over and over again, wouldn’t they? I can tell you that both Blackie and Care learn a lot in this first outing. In particular, Blackie comes to understand something about his true nature.
Q: Have you ever thought of killing someone that you know in real life–on the pages of a murder mystery, I mean?
A: Of course! That’s the joy of writing mysteries. But you have to keep two things in mind: the first is that you want the reader to sympathize with the victim to some extent. Otherwise, why would anyone want to solve the mystery? And therefore your victim can’t be someone too awful. The other thing to keep in mind is that death and murder are very serious. Even in fiction, I believe we have to respect how serious a crime murder is.
Q: How realistic is your setting? Do you take liberties, or are you true to life?
My settings are as realistic as I can make them – always! – even if my characters are not always strictly speaking like people you would meet on the street. But while some of my books are based in real places (the Dulcie and Theda books are based in Cambridge, Massachusetts), “The Ninth Life” is set in a fictional city, which I don’t identify. But it is based on real places – specifically parts of Boston, New York, and New Orleans, although the geography is different from any of these. I want it to look and feel real. And sound and smell real, too.
Q: When the movie or TV series is made, who gets cast?
A: I haven’t figured that out for “The Ninth Life” yet. I know I want Angelina Jolie for Pru Marlowe and Clare Danes for Dulcie Schwartz. I think I want Bagheera from “The Jungle Book” for Blackie, but he’s a fictional character too…
Q: What’s the worst and best advice you’ve heard or received as an author?
A: “Write what you know” is both the best and the worst advice, I think. On one hand, you have to be able to visualize what you are writing about. You have to see the back of the buildings and know what the mud smells like when the puddles start to dry, even if your character is only walking down the sidewalk. In that way, you have to know your setting, just like you need to know your characters – what makes them tick and how they will react under pressure. If you don’t know these things, you won’t be able to write convincingly about them, to make the reader see and feel and relate to them as you do. But if you only write what you have experienced then you are limited to your real life. You can know things that you’ve only imagined – but you have to take the time and energy to imagine them fully. To think about contingencies – the if/then possibilities – and realize that not everything may be as neat and nice as you had originally wanted! So while “write what you know” can be good advice, it can also be very limiting. I think much better advice would be: know what you write! And if you don’t know it before you start writing, then be willing to learn!
Q: I hope you’ll come back to tell us a little more about these books when they’re available.
If I may, I’d like to close with a question of my own: What do you think about Blackie and Care? I’d love to hear! You can get in touch with my from my website http://www.cleasimon.com or on my Facebook author page at https://www.facebook.com/clea.simon.author

About The Author

Clea Simon is the author of 19 cozies in the Theda Krakow, Dulcie Schwartz, and Pru Marlowe pet noir series. The latter two are ongoing and include her most recent books, Code Grey (Severn House) and When Bunnies Go Bad (Poisoned Pen Press). The Ninth Life, the first book in her Blackie & Care mysteries, a darker series, will be published by Severn House on March 1. A former journalist and nonfiction author, she lives in Somerville, Mass., with her husband, the writer Jon Garelick, and their cat Musetta. She can be reached at http://www.cleasimon.com
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Death of a Brooklyn Landlord

When newly-widowed Lorraine McDuffy gets a call in the middle of the night, it’s not the ghost of her dead husband on the line, but the trembling voice of an old flame, Frank Rizzo, a local butcher. He’s found the battered body of rent-gouging Brooklynlandlord, Viktor Charnov. Felled by blunt trauma to the back of his head, the victim lies in the fetal position in the back of Frank’s shop, a pork chop clenched between his teeth.

Q: Susan Russo Anderson joins me today to talk about her latest Lorraine McDuffy mystery, Death of a Brooklyn Landlord. Aside from murder, what is the book about?

A: Hello Frankie. Thanks for having me, and thanks for such thoughtful questions. Being the first Lorraine McDuffy mystery, Death of a Brooklyn Landlord introduces us to Lorraine at a time when she is grieving for her husband’s death—his death was sudden and happened a year before the story starts. But she is also in the midst of resisting a new romance with an old flame. And she is heavy into the guilt of it. So it is about Lorraine’s reluctant romance and how grief and guilt, inseparable, change us. Lorraine is a baby boomer, so the book is also about the struggle we boomers have against becoming dispensable.
Q: What kinds of research have you done for this series?
A: I am always refreshing my knowledge of Brooklyn although my husband and I lived there for fourteen years. But Brooklyn changes so I try to visit every six months or so and I find that while many of its neighborhoods have changed, its core remains the same and when I walk the streets, I rediscover the part of me that still lives there. Beyond refreshing my intimate knowledge of place, I of course researched death by blunt trauma which is how the victim in this book has died.
Q: Your biography states that like Faulkner’s Dilsey, you’ve “seen the best and the worst, the first and the last.” Tell us about something you saw or experienced when you when you were researching or writing this series.
A: Like so many of you, I have experienced the sudden death of someone close to me. Before that, I was at the World Trade Center in 1993 when it was bombed, and I was there again on September 11. As I write this, I can still smell the acrid smoke, see the flames, hear the cries for help, feel the ground shake beneath my feet. We all have these moments: one second, life is fine; the next, it’s a searing rubble. Unforgettable. And I think it’s that sudden catastrophic change that reverberates and colors the way I experience everything and that caused me to begin writing mysteries. Because, in the end, mysteries explore the sudden alteration of life and the new world that is its aftermath.
Q: Do you have any personal experience with landlords like the one in this book?
A: Yes, and I’m sure I’m not alone! In one of our apartments, it was hard to get anything fixed: leaky faucets, running toilets, cracking plaster—these were the norm. But in retrospect, our landlady was not as bad as Viktor Charnov. However, one episode in Death of a Brooklyn Landlord is taken from life: the hall ceiling fell in one of our apartments. I wasn’t home at the time, but my husband was taking a shower when he heard the jarring crash. When he phoned the landlady to tell her, she accused Larry of knocking it down.
Q: Writing can be very solitary. How do you balance the need for solitude with the need to get out and be with people?
A: When I began writing mysteries, I was working in a large office in Manhattan. There were over two thousand of us spread over several floors, and I interacted a lot with people, but I wrote in between—on the train to and from work, while doing chores on the weekend. And I’ve always had a large group of friends. Now I live with my family and I take lunch and dinner with others, but my mornings are devoted to writing and research. And lots of times when I need to figure something out, I walk, usually six miles a day.
Q: What’s one great piece of advice for any aspiring writers reading this? Anything you wish you’d known earlier in your career?
A: I have times when I don’t write and at first that lack of getting words on paper scared me. I thought I’d never pick up a pen, but soon I let my subconscious do the work. When I gave myself space, the ideas and the words began to flow again. So this goal of writing so many words a day is fine for some writers, but it’s not for me. My process is eclectic. Some days I write, some days I don’t. And contrary to popular advice, I edit scenes as I write them, reworking plot, revising. But in the end, I produce full-length novels, at least two a year. What I’m trying to say, is if you’re meant to write, you will, and you’ll find your own process, so relax.
Q: What’s next?
A: A first for me: I’m plotting three books at once, each one in a different series—the fifth book in the Fina Fitzgibbons series, the second book in Lorraine McDuffy series, and a brand new YA mystery, the first book in the Brandy Liam series—she’s the main character in Missing Brandy. Now I’m not a compulsive plotter; I know beginning, middle, end, create other pivotal scenes; and along with the plotting, I develop characters who then plot the rest for me as I write and revise. But developing three stories all at once—this is a first for me and I’m loving it.
Q: I hope you’ll come back to tell us a little more about these books when they’re available.
A: Once again, thanks so much for having me, Frankie, and a big thanks to all of you for reading.

About The Author –

Susan Russo Anderson is a writer, a mother, a member of Sisters in Crime, a graduate of Marquette University. She’s taught language arts and creative writing, worked for a publisher, an airline, an opera company. Like Faulkner’s Dilsey, she’s seen the best and the worst, the first and the last. Through it all, and to understand it somewhat, she writes.
TOO QUIET IN BROOKLYN, the first in the Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn mystery series published December 2013. The second book in the series, MISSING BRANDY, published September 2014, and WHISKEY’S GONE completes a trilogy. Fina’s fourth book, THE BROOKLYN DROP, published August 2015.
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