Part of the Solution: A Mystery follows a New York professor who experiences a chance meeting that pulls her back into the 70s and brings her closer to a death that shook the community she once called home. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Setting Part of the Solution in 1978 was an easy choice because the very first version of the book was written in 1978! I had just finished a dissertation in English literature, and I’d survived graduate school by sneaking off to read murder mysteries when I couldn’t bear one more page of “serious” literature.  A few years ago, I reread my original manuscript and decided to rewrite it as a period piece. I thought it would be interesting to go back to that time and wrestle with who we “Boomers” were back in the day – idealistic, earnest, and hopeful but also very young and sometimes very silly.  The book is completely different now. In some ways, it’s a comedy of manners as much as it is a mystery.

Yet comedy of manners though it is, I don’t want to overemphasize the humor in the book.  In the process of rewriting, the mysterious death at the core of the original plot took on a deeper meaning. Now my main character, Jenifer, has had forty years in which she has had to live with what happened. The decisions she made at the time as the “amateur detective” have shaped her life in ways that she – and even I – could never have imagined at the time.

What is it that draws you to the mystery genre? 

I have a complicated relationship with the mystery genre.  I love the structure and discipline of the classic whodunit in which all the clues and red herrings line up in a way that plays fair with the reader.  I love the puzzle at the heart of the genre and, to quote the title of my book, the `solution’ that is revealed at the end. But I am also troubled by how much fun such mysteries are because death, even in fiction, shouldn’t be fun.  I worry that devouring mysteries the way a lot of us do ends up dulling our responses and thus numbing an important piece of what makes us human. I don’t want the characters, or even the reader, to get off scot-free.

In Part of the Solution, I tried to tell a story in which the characters don’t get off scot-free because they are changed forever by what has happened to them. I wanted them to have to wrestle on a deeply personal level with the issues that are raised. What does justice mean? What does loyalty mean? How do different people understand those terms, and what difference does that make?  Jennifer and Ford – the amateur detective and the official detective – have very different relationships to questions of justice and loyalty, and those questions matter to them both. The very different answers they come up with have never stopped haunting them.

How did the mystery develop for this story? Did you plan it before writing, or did it develop organically? 

The mystery plot was there from the beginning. I had a wonderful time inventing a set of wonky characters in an imaginary little hippie town in the Berkshires, with the challenge of trying to figure out who among these various peace activists, artisans and poets, leftwing intellectuals, and spiritual seekers would murder someone, and why.  Once I had the mystery structured, I could relax into writing the dialogue and the scenes. What were they listening to on the stereo? What were they arguing about? Laughing about? What were all of them wearing? How did they understand the world around them, and how were they trying to change it for the better?

What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?

I want to bring Jennifer and Ford back together in the present day.  They are both in their late ‘sixties now, and they meet up again at a conference during which someone dies mysteriously.  I have the plot lined up as well as most of the characters.  I haven’t gotten very far in the writing yet, but I’ve booked myself some time away this winter just to write, and I’m planning to have it done by the end of this coming year.