“Another train clattered through town, and its hooting whistle
sounded to me like the murderer jeering at me for not being smarter, not seeing
through his veils and machinations.”
Linda
Rodriguez
Every Hidden Fear (page. 198)
Impersonal murders by hit men aren’t my favorite type of
mysteries. In Linda Rodriguez’s Every
Hidden Fear, the kill is personal and evoked by passion and fear. The
villain-victim emotionally sucker-punched all the suspects. We hate the victim,
we’re glad he’s dead, and it almost seems a shame to punish the killer—my
favorite type of mystery. The reader wants to help eradicate the fear of the
suspects.
The insidious aspect of Linda’s book is her
demonstration that in our best attempt to love, we are our own enemy. I’ve
loved all of Linda’s books, but this one was personal and affects her MC, Skeet Bannion.
I found myself comparing my life to Skeet’s. I think you will, too. E. B. Davis
Here’s the jacket copy:
Skeet
Bannion's Cherokee grandmother has come to live with her and her teenage
ward Brian, and Skeet is still trying to adjust to the change while also
keeping the peace on the local college campus. Then Ash Mowbray, a bad boy
from the wrong side of the tracks, comes back to Brewster as a wealthy
developer, pushing plans to build a shopping mall on the outskirts of town that
will destroy the town square businesses. The town council is split on his
proposal, and emotions are running high.
Mowbray makes things worse by announcing that he is the real father of the high school athlete Noah Steen, having left Noah’s mother, Chelsea, pregnant as a teenager when he fled town after high school. Chelsea and her husband Elliott are horrified that Mowbray has publicized that Elliott is not Noah’s father and afraid that he will steal their beloved son from them. Noah is shocked to learn the truth of his parentage and furious with Mowbray. It’s not long before Mowbray turns up murdered with Noah as the prime suspect. Brian and Noah's girlfriend Angie turn to Skeet to find the murderer and save their friend. (http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/p/books.html)
Mowbray makes things worse by announcing that he is the real father of the high school athlete Noah Steen, having left Noah’s mother, Chelsea, pregnant as a teenager when he fled town after high school. Chelsea and her husband Elliott are horrified that Mowbray has publicized that Elliott is not Noah’s father and afraid that he will steal their beloved son from them. Noah is shocked to learn the truth of his parentage and furious with Mowbray. It’s not long before Mowbray turns up murdered with Noah as the prime suspect. Brian and Noah's girlfriend Angie turn to Skeet to find the murderer and save their friend. (http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/p/books.html)
Is hate the opposite of love?
Actually, I think hate and love make up a
circle. Love can turn into hate, especially love spurned or betrayed. In the
extreme, each is a passion, and passions burn brightly or destructively. One
can slide only too easily into the other.
Do you think love causes as many problems in
the world as hate? Is there an alternative?
There are so many kinds of love, and they’re
all terribly important to a world that needs more love in it than it has right
now. But love can and does cause problems. Think the smother love of
overprotective mothers or the possessive love of partners or parents. Think the
insecure, jealous love of Othello or the overly romanticized love of so many of
Jane Austen’s heroines’ unfortunate sisters. Think of Gov. Mark Sanford’s “love
of his life” for his Argentinian mistress that caused him to destroy his family
and fail in his duties as governor.
I do not think love causes as many problems
as hate. Love gives us so much that’s wonderful while
hate gives nothing to
anyone, except a spurious sense of power. But any emotion carried to an extreme
can be a problem.
In loving we become vulnerable. Why does
Skeet’s grandmother warn that choosing not to love is just as risky?
Gran quite rightly points out that closing
yourself off to love and to other people can be crippling and leave you in a
lonely, miserable situation when you grow old. Opening to the possibility of
love does leave you vulnerable to rejection, betrayal, manipulation, and many
other painful options. We have no guarantees when we give someone our love, but
to refuse to love because of our fear of pain is ultimately the greatest
failure. It’s like someone going underground to live in one of those 1950s bomb
shelters to be safe and staying there for the rest of his life, a terrible waste.
When gambling, most people try to make an
educated risk. But Charlie, Skeet’s father, doesn’t care about his odds. Why?
Charlie essentially locked himself into that
underground bomb shelter for decades. Now, he’s grown old and realizes what
he’s lost because of his fear. He knows that Marie may take advantage of him or
hurt him, but he’s decided to take that chance because he’s seen the deterioration
that comes with the refusal to take that chance on love.
Skeet
knows that she has to allow Brian to make his own mistakes. But loving at any
age involves risk. Does knowledge of that risk help to avoid the pitfalls of
love?
I don’t think so. Having been around the
block and had some of the naiveté knocked off may help us keep from rushing in where angels fear to
tread at a moment’s notice, but even older and wiser souls can fall into the
grip of a passionate love and find themselves saying and doing things they
never thought they would.
I was unfamiliar with three terms you used. Could
you define: Friend-zone (which my daughter and I discussed), Creator-signs, and
Blind-yonega?
Only one of those is an actual term in the
book—friend zone. It’s a term used by some of the men of the generations after
the Boomers to mean a man whom a particular woman will be friends with but
never have a sexual relationship with. Everything I’ve seen of it refers to the
idea that a man can pretend to be friends with a woman, but then if she won’t
have sex with him, he’s somehow allowed to feel aggrieved. Some men have even
suggested that such women are guilty of “suitor-abuse” and there should be penalties
for it under law.
The others are not actual terms I use in the
book. Skeet and her gran talk about being able to read the signs that the
Creator gives us in everyday life to guide us. The Cherokee don’t make vision
quests because we feel that daily life is full of these signs, and it’s our
gift and duty to read and interpret them. Yonega
is the word for “white man” in the Cherokee language, Tsalagi, and it’s also
the word for the English language. Gran says at one point in the book that the yonega are blind to the natural signs
around them, focusing too much on technology and material things.
One ignores, one tries to commit suicide, and
another kills in response to blackmail. Are you fascinated by how people react
in different ways to the same stimuli?
Absolutely! It has always been a wonder to me
to see how differently people react to the same stimuli—and often in the most
unexpected ways. It’s really noticeable
when you put people under stress. This is what makes writing fiction so
seductive. You’ve created these characters, but they often don’t do what you
think they should do when faced with stressful situations. It’s always a
surprise.
Train whistles form the background music of
your novel. Is it realism or symbolism?
The trains are both. They began as realism.
One of the small towns around Kansas City on which I based Brewster, Missouri—I
used favorite parts of several—is Parkville, Missouri, which has major train
lines running through the heart of the town. I added that background music as a
realistic detail to evoke setting, and then I used it to further
characterization through the ways in which Skeet interprets the train sounds.
Sometimes they sound cheerful to her, and sometimes they sound as if they’re
mocking her—and sometimes they sound ominous or mournful or angry. She is, of
course, projecting her own emotions on them. As I used them in this way through
the series, they began to take on a symbolic life of their own, as well.
When a heinous crime is committed by someone
who manages to evade our justice system, or that crime is a moral one outside
of the justice system, do we have the right to kill
them, stopping further destruction and protecting others?
No, I don’t believe we do. As every
little kid hears repeatedly, two wrongs don’t make a right. It is an appealing
idea, however, when we see so many miscarriages of justice, but once you start
down that road, anarchy and violent chaos are your final end points. Ash is a
man who’s done evil things and would probably continue to do them, but that
doesn’t mean that murdering him is allowable.
Men swirl around Skeet. One she loses,
one disappoints her, and another hurts and angers her. Skeet’s love life seems
a minefield. Is that an accurate analogy to real life?
Everyone I know, except a few blessed
souls who married their childhood sweethearts and lived happily ever after,
went through a romantic minefield before
finding the partner with whom they could be truly happy—if they have found that
person yet. Skeet’s definitely not in the “happily ever after” part yet but
rather the emotional minefield part. Her romantic situation is not made better
by closing herself off to love’s vulnerability. And that closing off is why she
finds men swirling around her. Humans, especially male humans, tend to want
what (or who) they can’t have.
Linda your cover art is fantastic. Who is the
artist?
The cover paintings for all of my Skeet
Bannion books are by Ross Jones of Deborah Wolfe Ltd. The jacket designs are by
David Baldeosingh Rotstein and include a font created just for these books that
was inspired by the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoiah. I feel very
blessed with these eye-catching covers. St. Martin’s/Minotaur has been
absolutely wonderful about cover art and design, consulting me every time and
giving me absolutely gorgeous-looking books.
I can’t wait for the next novel. What’s next
for Skeet?
In Skeet Bannion #4, tentatively called Every Family Doubt, Skeet receives a
call from her estranged mother wanting Skeet to come to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to
solve a murder and free her stepfather, who’s been jailed for it. Gran insists
she go, so she and Gran pack up Brian and head out for Tahlequah, capital of
the Cherokee Nation. There she will be faced with and have to come to terms with
all kinds of family entanglements and secrets—in her own family and with those
involved in the murder.
Don't
be fooled by Linda's placid demeanor!
Every Hidden Fear will publish on May 6th, and it’s getting good reviews. Library
Journal called it “engrossing.” It’s available for pre-order right now.
Everyone who pre-orders Every Hidden Fear and sends me some kind of
proof of pre-order (scan of receipt, email confirmation of order, etc.) at lindalynetterodriguez@gmail.com
with a subject line of PRE-ORDER CONTEST goes into the pot for the drawing for
the prizes. The grand prize is an original design, hand-knitted, multicolor
lace shawl made from various luxury fibers, such as baby alpaca, merino, silk,
and cashmere, many of which will be handspun and hand-dyed. I used to design
and make these one-of-a-kind shawls on commission for hundreds of dollars each.
I even made a special one for Sandra Cisneros. The second prize will be the
chance to have a character in my next book named after you, and there will be
two of these! And everyone who enters will receive a signed bookplate to go in
their copy of Every Hidden Fear. For pre-order links, reviews and blurbs
for Every Hidden Fear, and more details and photos on the shawl and
contest, visit my blog. http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2014/04/pre-order-contest-for-every-hidden-fear.html
Linda Rodriguez’s second Skeet mystery, Every Broken Trust, was a selection of
Las Comadres National Latino Book Club and is currently a finalist for both the
International Latino Book Award and the Premio Aztlan Literary Prize. Her first
Skeet novel, Every Last Secret, won
the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, was a
Barnes & Noble mystery pick, and was a finalist for the International
Latino Book Award. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” has been optioned for
film. Find her on Twitter as @rodriguez_linda, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LindaRodriguezWrites, and on blogs with The Stiletto Gang http: http://thestilettogang.blogspot.com/, Writers Who Kill http://writerswhokill.blogspot.com/, and her own blog http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com.