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Tales behind mysterious dogs and feline sleuths
By Kim Campbell Thornton
January 24, 2009
I used to love the serendipity of the card catalog and now I find the same pleasure in surfing the web. I have the assignment of planning the sessions for the annual Cat Writers Association conference this year, so I’ve been looking for fiction writers to contact who have a clear interest in dogs or cats. There’s Rita Mae Brown, of course, CWA members Clea Simon and Susan Conant, and Jeffery Deaver. One of my favorite mystery writers is Laura Lippman, who has two canine characters: Esskay, a greyhound, and Miata, a Doberman. So I Googled her name and dogs and found an essay she’d written for an old issue of Mystery Readers Journal. It starts out:
I write rovers a clef.
There are two characters inspired by real-life dogs in my mysteries. Most people know only one: Esskay, a rescued racing greyhound introduced in my second book, Charm City (Avon, 1997). In describing the first meeting between private investigator Tess Monaghan and Esskay, I fell back on real life and simply transcribed my first encounter with Dulcie, the greyhound who came into our family five years ago.
“It was a dog, a bony, ugly dog with dull black fur and raw patches on its hindquarters. The brown eyes were vague and unfocused… the shoulders hunched in an uncanny imitation of Richard Nixon.”
Okay, not quite love at first sight. But let me tell you, putting ointment on a dog’s bedsores accelerates the bonding experience.
Read the rest, and a couple of other essays on cats and dogs of mystery, here.
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One of my very favorite series of books are the Joe Grey cat mysteries by Shirley Rousseau Murphy. Her website is http://www.joegrey.com/
I own and have read all of the Joe Grey books that are in print and wait impatiently for the next one to be printed.
Comment by Deb — January 25, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
OT, but the mayor of Lancaster is one scary SOB
http://www.latimes.com/news/lo.....full.story
Comment by JenniferJ — January 26, 2009 @ 9:03 am
And yet, when I posted that the drive to ban/kill all pit bulls is as much about the desire to ban/kill people many fear or don’t like as anything else, I was told I was wrong.
This mayor is doing exactly that: Targeting a kind of dog because he can’t target a kind of people.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — January 26, 2009 @ 9:25 am
Well you won’t find me contradicting you on that one.
This kind of mentality scares the beejeejus out of me in an elected official.
Glad some of his constituents are happy with his actions, so long as he only goes after “those people”. Sounds familiar. 7th grade world history kind of familiar.
Can’t wait to see what he’ll sacrifice for the greater good next.
Comment by JenniferJ — January 26, 2009 @ 10:28 am