by
Miranda James Aka Dean James
I
blame Nancy Drew for my life of crime. Reading it and writing
it, that is.
I was
ten when I borrowed The Secret of Shadow Ranch from
a cousin. It was the first mystery I ever read, and I was
hooked. Then, to my delight, I discovered this was only one
of a long series of adventures in which Nancy solved mystery
after mystery. Just as exciting, I soon found other amateur
mystery-solvers: the Hardy Boys, the Dana Girls, Judy Bolton,
Trixie Belden, and many more. By the time I began reading
adult mysteries, my love of the amateur detective was completely
entrenched.
When
I decided I wanted to write a mystery myself, I knew my main
character would be an amateur. After all, I’m not a
policeman, or a lawyer, or a private detective. But I do have
a healthy dose of curiosity about the world around me and
the people in it. Charlie Harris, the sleuth in my “Cat
in the Stacks” series, is just like me in that respect.
He’s also about my age (fiftyish, if you must know),
he’s a librarian, he grew up in Mississippi, and he
has a Maine coon cat. That’s as far as it goes, however.
(I have two cats, by the way, neither of which is a Maine
coon. Also, Diesel is much better behaved than my two.)
I wanted
to incorporate my knowledge of, and love for, these juvenile
series books into one of my own books, and in the new book,
The Silence of the Library, I have done so. I created
a series character in the mold of Nancy Drew and the other
girl detectives and called her Veronica Thane. The author
of the series, Electra Barnes Cartwright, was inspired by
Mildred Wirt Benson (the first writer, aka “Carolyn
Keene”, of the Nancy Drew series, Margaret Sutton, author
of the Judy Bolton series, and Julie Campbell Tatham, the
original author of Trixie Belden. In fact the book is dedicated
to their memories.
The most
fun part of writing this book for me was the “excerpts”
from the first Veronica Thane book. I reread some of my favorite
girl detective stories from the 1930s to get a sense of the
style in my head, and off I went. I hope readers will get
a kick out of this aspect of the story. Of course, The
Silence of the Library includes murder – a subject
that usually didn’t come up in the classic juvenile
series books. But when you get a number of rabid book collectors
together, with hints of a rare and highly collectible volume,
something deadly is sure to happen.
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