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Death was in the Picture
Death was in the Picture by Linda L. Richards (St. Martin's Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books $27.95)
A classic noir mystery set in the Depression, Linda L. Richards' Death was the Other Woman introduced her heroine Kitty Pangborn, an ex-debutante whose father killed himself on the eve of the stock market crash of 1929. Having to make a living for herself for the first time in her life, Kitty took a job as a secretary for a hard-drinking gumshoe named Dexter Theroux.
Our unlikely Girl Friday now mixes with Hollywood glitz in the second Kitty Panghorn novel, Death was in the Picture. This time Dexter has been asked to help clear the name of leading man Laird Wyndham, the last person to be seen with a young starlet who has fallen from the big screen to the big house. Wyndham's a dreamboat, but that isn't the only thing that has Kitty hot under the collar. Her boss has already signed a client for this case-someone who wants him to prove Wyndham is guilty.
Death was in the Picture is Richards' fifth novel. "When you open your mind, when you open your heart, you don't always know what will come out,"; she says. "You can think you see the story, what kind of box it will be; what kind of magic it will hold. Then when you build the box, sometimes it will hold a different type of magic entirely.";
We asked Richards to reflect further on the writing process, and how she got embroiled in the crime fiction game.
I'm a decent journalist and I'm a good editor but, like a lot of writers, what I'd always wanted to do was write a novel. I made several starts on topics that were important to me, but was never able to ride it through to the end. I know that writing a book is a very different journey for everyone, but for me, the novel form is... well, it's not that it's difficult, exactly. But it's hard. It drains me. It takes exactly everything I've got. It took me a while to learn that. And it took me a while to learn how to get to that place of supreme letting go.
So there were all these false starts. Stories that were important to me. They were all too big for me, those stories. They were all too big for the writer I was then. But, one day, the shadow of a story crossed my heart and, finally, it wasn't too big. In fact, in those first moments (hours, days) I thought the words would add up to a short story. About 7000 words in, I realized I had something different. Maybe something more. And I kept going. Not heroically; it was never anything like that. But I was curious. I wanted to know whose life I was building. I wanted to know where the story would end up.
One day-not terribly far in -I realized I had a book. More: I realized it was a book I'd never thought about writing. Some of the people died. And though there was some laughter-life always has some laughter-sometimes bad things happened to the people in my book. I'd started out telling the story in my heart and ended up with a mystery; a novel of suspense.
Once the book was finished, I was Cinderella. I didn't have all the pain you hear about writers going through. Once I got down and did it-once I had a finished book in my hand-it all came together in amazingly stylish fashion. Almost the first agent that saw the manuscript was in New York and she wanted to represent it. Within a couple of months of her taking it on, we had a six figure, three-book deal with a major house.
There have been bumps: I have a different agent now and I'm with another house. And I've gotten better at finding the story. Better at building the box. Then delighting at the magic that sometimes-if I'm lucky-seems to flow out.
Born in Vancouver, Linda L. Richards is also the editor and co-founder of January Magazine, an on-line publication about books. Death Was In the Picture is distributed in Canada by HB Fenn. Richards lives in the Gulf Islands with artist and photographer David Middleton.
978-0-312-38339-8
[BCBW 2009]
A classic noir mystery set in the Depression, Linda L. Richards' Death was the Other Woman introduced her heroine Kitty Pangborn, an ex-debutante whose father killed himself on the eve of the stock market crash of 1929. Having to make a living for herself for the first time in her life, Kitty took a job as a secretary for a hard-drinking gumshoe named Dexter Theroux.
Our unlikely Girl Friday now mixes with Hollywood glitz in the second Kitty Panghorn novel, Death was in the Picture. This time Dexter has been asked to help clear the name of leading man Laird Wyndham, the last person to be seen with a young starlet who has fallen from the big screen to the big house. Wyndham's a dreamboat, but that isn't the only thing that has Kitty hot under the collar. Her boss has already signed a client for this case-someone who wants him to prove Wyndham is guilty.
Death was in the Picture is Richards' fifth novel. "When you open your mind, when you open your heart, you don't always know what will come out,"; she says. "You can think you see the story, what kind of box it will be; what kind of magic it will hold. Then when you build the box, sometimes it will hold a different type of magic entirely.";
We asked Richards to reflect further on the writing process, and how she got embroiled in the crime fiction game.
I'm a decent journalist and I'm a good editor but, like a lot of writers, what I'd always wanted to do was write a novel. I made several starts on topics that were important to me, but was never able to ride it through to the end. I know that writing a book is a very different journey for everyone, but for me, the novel form is... well, it's not that it's difficult, exactly. But it's hard. It drains me. It takes exactly everything I've got. It took me a while to learn that. And it took me a while to learn how to get to that place of supreme letting go.
So there were all these false starts. Stories that were important to me. They were all too big for me, those stories. They were all too big for the writer I was then. But, one day, the shadow of a story crossed my heart and, finally, it wasn't too big. In fact, in those first moments (hours, days) I thought the words would add up to a short story. About 7000 words in, I realized I had something different. Maybe something more. And I kept going. Not heroically; it was never anything like that. But I was curious. I wanted to know whose life I was building. I wanted to know where the story would end up.
One day-not terribly far in -I realized I had a book. More: I realized it was a book I'd never thought about writing. Some of the people died. And though there was some laughter-life always has some laughter-sometimes bad things happened to the people in my book. I'd started out telling the story in my heart and ended up with a mystery; a novel of suspense.
Once the book was finished, I was Cinderella. I didn't have all the pain you hear about writers going through. Once I got down and did it-once I had a finished book in my hand-it all came together in amazingly stylish fashion. Almost the first agent that saw the manuscript was in New York and she wanted to represent it. Within a couple of months of her taking it on, we had a six figure, three-book deal with a major house.
There have been bumps: I have a different agent now and I'm with another house. And I've gotten better at finding the story. Better at building the box. Then delighting at the magic that sometimes-if I'm lucky-seems to flow out.
Born in Vancouver, Linda L. Richards is also the editor and co-founder of January Magazine, an on-line publication about books. Death Was In the Picture is distributed in Canada by HB Fenn. Richards lives in the Gulf Islands with artist and photographer David Middleton.
978-0-312-38339-8
[BCBW 2009]
Submitted on September 3, 2009 in By David.
