It all started with Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe for me - Now I'm writing the Sam-Cat Mystery Series

It all started with Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe for me; the art of loving mysteries and then mystery writing. 

It turned much darker after Hammett, Chandler & Caine.

The first mystery novel my mother let me read (got me to read - there is some controversy as to the accuracy of these facts) was Nero Wolfe. As a child, I did not sit much - too busy playing anything with a ball. However, between the obese, orchid-growing, genius detective; his townhouse; and his chef Fritz, not to mention his go-fer--body guard-detective Archie Goodwin, I was hooked. I read multiple Rex Stout mysteries until I discovered the Maltese Falcon via the movies first, and later Dashiell Hammett novels entered my field of vision. Sam Spade and then Nick and Nora held my interest when I was in high school and early during my college years. Although the married couple seemed lame, Spade was the entree of my reading meal. The Man and wife were at most an amuse-bouche . I also became acquainted with Raymond Chandler and Phillip Marlowe. He ran to the top of my reading list like Usain Bolt in a sprint.

Interesting to note that the eighth Marlow mystery was completed posthumously by Robert Parker who’s Spencer also held my interest for a while in my forties. 

With further reading I can upon the third in the hard boiled trinity, James Cain. Although I did my due diligence, I never loved The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity. His style just lost my interest. I never read Mildred Pierce, and maybe that would have change my mind. Never even watched the movie, oh well.

Since I have retired from orthopedic surgery, and have more time to read for pleasure, Walter Mosley and Lee Childs have gotten read, but they too have passed to the wayside. I even thought about reading Earle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason mysteries, but I am afraid his early fifties style will put me off now. However, I have incorporated court room drama in both novels in my Sam-Cat series so far. 

Over seven years ago, I wrote a Jim Butcher-esque mystery and had several agents give it a full read, I thought, I was on my way to getting published. However, my style for that paranormal murder mystery mixed romance and humor with the murders. This apparently put off the agents, whose comments were similar, “we are not sure where on the shelf this book would be placed, mystery, humor, paranormal. Three agents had the same opinion, so maybe I should believe the writing was up to par and not the cause of their refusal to represent me. With their comments echoing in my brain, I decided to write a hard boiled mystery ala the ones I loved in college and high school. So here we are, however, I did not want to copy the old masters as if I were re-writing that era. Life and the world have changed and today's audience wants more of today's world. I may be mistaken as their is a market for historical mysteries, but they are not my stein of beer. I would find my style of mystery writing and try very hard to stay in my lane, whether the lines on the road were broken or solid where I wrote. (An activity that seems impossible for my creative mind. Maybe all those years following the rules to reach a diagnosis and treatment made me want to liberate my efforts when no one will suffer from my deviations.)

My mind returned to the type of stories I read in high school and college. I loved the hard boilers, that TNS detective who was not afraid to take one on the chin so that his client gets justice, or even paybacks. However, it seemed that during the 1930’s and 1940’s the female side of the equation - the Lillian Hellmans / Mata Huri - type of the detective were ignored as subject matter. Feminism was not even a egg waiting to be sat on, much less hatched. Woman were an after thought in most plots unless they were the iconic Eve seducing men into E-VIL.

Remember Lillian? She wrote but she also was a spy leading up to world war ii. If her memoirs are correct, and Joan McCarthy had her doubts, Lillian was a Jewish woman who spied on the Nazi for America during the 1930’s. Pretty brave, and pretty tough. We are talking, she did the same work as that which made James Bond famous (possibly, her memoirs were as fictional as Ian Fleming’s). So I asked myself, where are the Mata Hari stories about the women who spied in that time. They do not seem to exist. If they do, they are called into doubt by many of the people of that era. I wanted to up-date the plot lines and write a female protagonist, and maybe have her overcome the cultural attitudes that often still restrain females in the work place even today.

So in my perverse manner, I decided to write a character who was a hard as nails female detective. She became Samantha (Sam) Cochran. (“Sam” ? a subconscious tribute to Mr. Hammett?) I wanted to twist the paradigm and make my detective a feminist who does not care about advancing the woman’s cause, because she is too involved advancing herself. Confident in her ability to succeed, she is a model, not a suffragette. And it seems Rex Stout wanted to influence me as well, because in my Sam-Cat novels, Sam works for a very rich lawyer who lives in a Fifth Avenue townhouse. A writer’s mind lives below the surface all the time. Innuendoes are our business. Old influences die hard, if they die at all. The court scenes that end the novels also draw on Earle Stanley Gardner. As an author, you are what you read.

Sam’s mother died during her birth and she was raised by her father a beat cop from Queens and was the youngest of three children. She has two older brothers who are both cops. Her father did not know how to raise a girl and could not be bothered learning. She was raised as his youngest son. She became a cop. The short story that I will be posting on this site in the very near future is a prelude to Identically Dead, the first novel in the Sam-Cat series. In the short story, Sam is still on the police force and solves her first case as a gold shield homicide detective. She has to manage herself with the boys, as she is the only and the first woman on the homicide squad. The male officers do not plan to make her life easy. 

An after thought; I think Sam takes some of her spirit ironically from Mary McCarthy, who would hardly be called Lillian Hellman’s friend. In fact, Nora Ephron’s play, Imaginary Friends is based on their feud, which ended with Hellman suing McCarthy for liable. And, as if written to suit dramatic fiction, the trial concluded shortly after Lillian Hellman died. Life is so complex, sometimes we cannot match its drama no matter how much we overwrite our plots.

Part two of the after thought: in my retirement, I have had time to read James Lee Burke, and his style of writing and his presentation of the story make me so envious. He is truly a Grand Master. However, I would not dare call his works hard boiled, they are literary pictures of a mystery. I strive to add a modicum of his descriptive atmospheric touch to my writing. I am sure I fail in this valiant effort. I probably should not try to mix his style into mine, because once again, I will leave myself no single place on the bookstore’s shelf. If that is so, then so be it, because I am enjoying my writing. I hope you will enjoy it too. You emulate who you admire in life, and James Lee Burke is the top of the line for me.

L.A. Preschel.