I Blame Nancy Drew by Dean James

Dean James, a seventh-generation Mississippi long transplanted to Texas, is the author of fifteen mystery novels under his own name and three pseudonyms, Jimmie Ruth Evans, Honor Hartman, and Miranda James.

He has also co-authored or co-edited six works of mystery non-fiction, co-edited a mystery story anthology, and published short stories in anthologies like _Delta Blues_ and the forthcoming _Lone Star Noir_. Currently he is a librarian in the Texas Medical Center.

Writing as Miranda James, he debuts the new "Cat in the Stacks" series which features a widowed librarian, Charlie Harris, and his Maine coon cat Diesel.

First in the series is _Murder Past Due_ (Berkley Prime Crime; $7.99), published August 3, 2010.

 

I Blame Nancy Drew

by Dean James

Nancy Drew is responsible for my life of crime. I must have been ten or eleven when I picked up a cousin’s copy of The Secret of Shadow Ranch and started reading. Up till then my staple fare from my public library’s collection was either mythology or biography (written especially for young readers – anyone besides me remember Augusta Stevenson?). But once I joined Nancy, Bess, and George on the hunt for that mysterious ghost horse, I never looked back. Nancy is still perhaps my all-time favorite mystery character -- followed closely by Albert Campion, Miss Jane Marple, and Amelia Peabody.

Though I’m eclectic when it comes to reading mysteries, when writing them I prefer the amateur detective. I have no desire to be a cop, and I’m not sure I really want to learn enough about police procedure to write a police procedural. I’d rather face the situation from the amateur point of view.

Critics of this kind of mystery point out that it is highly unrealistic for an amateur detective to solve a murder, let alone solve a long string of them (like Jessica Fletcher, aka the Harbinger of Violent Death and the Woman Most Likely to Get the Door Slammed in Her Face Because Someone’s About to Die). My response to that is, if I want realistic crime-solving, I’ll watch one of those reality cop shows on TV. It’s fiction, right? Where writers make stuff up to entertain readers?

Any writer of amateur detective mysteries relies on what Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined as the “willing suspension of disbelief” way back in 1817. If you can’t suspend disbelief long enough to think that a nosy librarian or a mystery bookseller or a cookie bakery owner might become involved in a murder investigation, then I would politely suggest you find something else to read.

Writers are by nature nosy; we have an avid interest in people and what makes them tick, even if we spend a lot of time alone in a room with a computer or a typewriter or a pad and pen. I therefore don’t have any problem with making my amateur detective nosy enough to become involved in serial murder investigations, all jokes about Jessica Fletcher Syndrome aside.

I read mysteries to escape. Occasionally I want to be thrilled and feel my stomach knot up because of the suspense. But most of the time I want a safer, less stressful escape, into a world where I know order will somehow be restored by the end of the book. It won’t be a perfect order, but it will be close enough - especially compared to what I see on the evening news.

Charlie Harris, the main character in my new “Cat in the Stacks” series is a widower, around fifty, who has moved back to his hometown of Athena, Mississippi after the death of his wife and his aunt. The latter left him her house, and with his two children grown and out of the nest, Charlie decides small town life is more appealing than staying in the big city, Houston. Shortly after the move, he finds a stray kitten in the parking lot of the public library. The kitten is a Maine coon with a rumbling purr, and Charlie names him Diesel. Charlie takes the cat with him almost everywhere, and Diesel soon becomes a familiar site in Athena.

I also made Charlie a librarian (specifically, a cataloger like me) because libraries are such wonderful places and librarians, who are naturally inquisitive, make excellent amateur detectives. Charlie and Diesel make their debut on August 3rd in Murder Past Due (Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99). If you like amateur detectives as much as I do, I hope you’ll give my new series a try.