Why I tried (finally) to write a mystery

Friends — did you know that my mom worked for a famous mystery editor? Yup.

Check out my little piece about her reposted from medium!

I have always loved reading — a love I got from from my mother and my maternal grandmother, who were also voracious readers.

Since childhood, I adored many different genres: fairy tales, fantasy, classic sf, poetry, memoir, novels about women and girls. But there was one genre that did not interest me as a young person at all. It was the genre that was my mother’s bread and butter. Literally.

Mysteries.

See, my mom worked as a secretary and assistant to one of the most important mystery editors of the latter part of the 20th century. You wouldn’t recognize my mom’s name, but if you know anything about the history of Random House, you’ll know the name of her boss. Why? Because she was one of the first women editors of any note who worked there! (I saw a source that said she was the first, but of course I can’t find it now).

Here’s a tiny bit about my mom’s boss, Lee Wright.

Lee Wright was a force of nature. And she loved my mom (it was mutual). I visited them at the office on several occasions, and Miss Wright (that’s how I knew her) was vivacious and hilarious all the while being a whirlwind of activity. There’s a funny 1977 article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel where she talks about going to a conference and telling writers not to give up, even if they’re probably terrible.

As a result of this job, my mom came home nightly with a stack of mysteries. Some were already published, some were in galley form, and some were bound together manuscript pages. They were always hanging around.

(I’ll bet my mom typed this letter from Lee Wright, mentioning “Hitch”)

(courtesy https://www.threeinvestigatorsbooks.com/KaneArt-HitchLetter.html)

One night my mom brought home a book she insisted I would like. “It’s different,” she explained. She was generally right about all things book-related so I thought I’d try it.

It was a novel about a young New York wife who lives in a kooky old apartment building on the west side. She has strange, overly-friendly older neighbors, and when she gets pregnant she feels sick all the time. She has odd visions and hallucinations, and at a certain point starts wondering if the nice older neighbors are in fact witches.

Things get weirder and scarier from there.

Do you recognize Rosemary’s Baby? My mom helped edit it and she’s in the acknowledgments of the first edition. (She said Ira Levin was a joy to work with and I remember her being involved with The Stepford Wives and This Perfect Day — both of which I read as galleys).

I liked Rosemary’s Baby a lot. But standard mysteries didn’t interest me until I hit middle age. And then, presto change-o, they started to speak to me. I think this is because mysteries have a drier, less sentimental, and often darker view of the world and as an older person I related to the world-weariness of writers like Sara Peretsky (who’s actually pretty cheerful a lot of the time), and Dashiell Hammett, and of course the incredible Raymond Chandler.

I’ve also gained a real appreciation for mystery movies, which can be surprisingly funny and feminist and politically progressive. Detectives can also be old — which I appreciate as I get older. Have you seen the Penguin Pool Murder? Absolutely hilarious.

And then there’s history. I’m currently reading the Sister Fidelma books by Peter Tremayne, which feature a 7th Century Irish nun detective. And I particularly love the mysteries by the French author Fred Vargas (pseudonym for a female French history professor who knows a lot of strange stuff about France). I personally know a couple of well known mystery writers, like my teacher Tod Goldberg and my wonderful friend Bonnie Hearn Hill. They are both masters of the genre.

Yours truly is not. But you have to start somewhere, right?

What appeals to me about writing a mystery?

By virtue of its formula and its necessarily tight structure, a mystery format can force a story into a certain compact yet dynamic shape. It’s not natural, but we recognize the form’s artistry and we can feel at home in it. That feeling is similar to the experience we have when we watch ballet. We recognize that ballet isn’t the way people really move, but when they CAN move like that, it’s mighty cool to watch, and when the dancers are really good, the movements feel natural. That’s what really good mystery writers can do.

It’s a fascinating challenge, and that’s why my lawyer friend Charlotte Morganti has written not one, but THREE mysteries — all part of her new series about a handsome ex-attorney spending time solving murders in a small Canadian town. Congratulations Charlotte!

So, Mom, Journey to Merveilleux City is for you. I finally get why you like these books so much! I’m glad I’ve got your name in my author name (Barbé). I just wish you were here to read it. ❤

Happy reading!