I've been trying to get to get to one of Cara Black's appearances for a couple of months now. Tuesday night Libby Fischer Hellmann was at M is for Mystery, but I couldn't make that either.
Yesterday, though, I schlepped up to the City and sat in the audience at Stacey's Bookstore on Market Strret with about four dozen women and three other men to listen to the two of them along with the peppery and prolific Rhys Bowen. What a treat! Three masters of the female P.I. novel. Now Cara has always written about the hip Parisienne detective, Aimee Leduc. Rhys started with police mysteries set in Wales, but her long-running Molly Murphy series features a detective in early twentieth-century New York City. With her latest, Libby resurrected Georgia Davis, a character from book three of her Ellie Foreman series, and turned her into a P.I.
Cara's been working hard publicizing her latest Parisian mystery, Murder in the Rue de Paradis. She was just back from the LA Times Book Festival where the mercury stretched up into the low 90's. Last year she and I sold together in a booth at the LATBF, and I've never had such a good time flogging books. She bragged to passersby about blogging Dot Dead (she has a very generous soul indeed) and I snagged potential buyers for her with a line (in truth, her line) about getting to Paris for the price of a book. We each sold out in about 20 minutes. Cara has a huge fan base in California, north and south. No surprise to see Murder on the Rue de Paradis on the San Francisco Bay Area bestseller list. She deserves it.
Libby and I were on a panel together at the late, lamented ConMisterio Conference a few years ago. Easy Innocence has been garnering terrific reviews and is into a second printing in both the hardback and paperback editions. Her hometown Tribune wrote that Georgia Davis "is tough and smart enough to give even the legendary V.I. Warshawski a run for her money." (BTW, I interviewed Libby myself for The Big Thrill.) While Cara was chatting with fans, Libby was pulling on her sleeve and saying, "Cara, we have to go. I have a plane to catch." She was on her way home to Chicagoland for one night before heading today to the Edgar Awards in New York. "Blue Note," a short story by the wonderful Stuart Kaminsky in the anthology Chicago Blues Libby edited, is up for an award. As a glance at her schedule proves, Libby's working hard .
So is Rhys. She's juggling two series and to keep her fans happy she writes a book in each every year. Her latest Molly Murphy, Tell Me Pretty Maiden, is just out and the second in her series about Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, an impoverished British royal in 1930's, is out in July. She's a dynamo in person, too.
Even with gas at $3.99 a gallon, listening to (and chatting with) these three was well worth the expedition north on US101.
Keith-Would you be able to recommend a book for my little blog project-Fridays Forgotten Books next Friday, May 9th?
If you're too busy, I'll catch you later.
Posted by: Patti Abbott | May 01, 2008 at 12:55 PM
OK. Next Friday. I'll come up with sumpin.
Posted by: Keith Raffel | May 01, 2008 at 02:39 PM
Many thanks. And I know it will be something I love because they always are.
Posted by: Patti Abbott | May 01, 2008 at 05:58 PM
Just a reminder and if you didn't have a chance to get to it, that's fine. Just tell me so I don't put up the link. Thanks, Patti
Posted by: Patti Abbott | May 08, 2008 at 04:31 AM
Patti, link away. It's up.
Posted by: Keith Raffel | May 08, 2008 at 03:54 PM