An Interview with Susan Cox by E. B. Davis

Former party girl and society photographer Theophania Bogart

flees from London to San Francisco to escape a high-profile family

tragedy. But sudden death shines a light on her hiding place and she

learns she’s been providing cover for a sophisticated smuggling operation.

Her apartment is burgled, she starts to fall for an untrustworthy stranger,

and she’s knocked out, tied up and imprisoned. The police are sure she’s lying.

The smugglers are sure she knows too much. Her friends?

They aren’t sure what to believe.

 Theo needs to find a killer before her new life is exposed as an elaborate fraud.

But the more deeply entangled she becomes, the more her investigation is

complicated by her best friend, who is one of her prime suspects;

her young protégé, who may or may not have a juvie record; her stern and

unyielding grandfather, who exposes an unexpected soft center; and the

man on her washing machine, who isn’t quite what he appears, either.

http://susancox.net/

I belong to Net Galley and downloaded Susan Cox’s award-winning novel The Man on the Washing Machine. I contacted her publicist for an interview. Once in contact with Susan, I discovered she is a member of Sisters In Crime. I took the long way around to find her!

The Man on the Washing Machine won the 2014 Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition and is Susan’s first published novel. Although she is new to fiction, she is not a neophyte writer. Susan worked as a journalist prior to fiction writing.

Please welcome Susan Cox to WWK.                                                                                       E. B. Davis

Main character, Theo, tries to elude notoriety by changing her name. What is she running from?

*Theo’s English family is high-profile and wealthy, and 18 months before the novels opens her mother is murdered and her father commits suicide. With no particular plan in mind except to hide from the resulting media storm, she flees to San Francisco where she makes new friends and opens a business, all without revealing her family background or true identity.

You were born far from San Francisco. What was your introduction to the city and why did you set your novel there?

*My husband and I moved there, sight unseen, from the east coast, where we both went to university.  My first glimpse of the city came as we drove over the Bay Bridge. The sun was setting and reflecting off the tall buildings and I had an overwhelming feeling of coming home. That feeling has never left me.

Theo buys a derelict building, which is part of a HOA in a neighborhood called Fabian Gardens. Much of the action takes place behind the neighborhood’s buildings where there is an expanse of gardens with a tot lot, flowers/vegetables, and a compost heap. There are several Fabian Gardens, but none I found in San Francisco. Did you create the neighborhood?

*Fabian Gardens is all my own creation and I had fun doing it. I wanted to write a San Francisco mystery, but I also wanted an enclosed community for my characters, a “village” where they could work and make their homes. My first home in the city was in a neighborhood where the back yards were large and enclosed, but (except for mine!) they were rather neglected.  I’ve always loved to garden, and the Bay Area climate gave me the opportunity to grow a wide variety of plants. I used to imagine a sort of neighborhood pocket park taking up all that space and when I came to write my novel, that idea came back to me.  The name Fabian Gardens is a nod to George Bernard Shaw.

Theo’s new-found neighborhood provides a cast of characters, but it’s not without crime. Nat, a beautiful young gay man becomes her best friend when he saves her life. What happened?

*Before the action of the novel takes place, Theo is robbed by a knife-wielding thug. Things are about to get really ugly when Nat happens upon the scene and saves her.  By the time covered in The Man on the Washing Machine, Theo and Nat are close friends and confidantes.

Theo first meets Inspector Lichlyter when she sees a handyman of ill repute fall to his death from a building across from her own after an earthquake. She knows it wasn’t an accident or the result of the earthquake, and Lichlyter investigates the death. Inspector Lichlyter behaves untypically. How and why does she plant clues for suspects?

*The Inspector is convinced that the handyman’s death is connected to other crimes she’s investigating in Fabian Gardens (I can’t say more without spoilers.) When she discovers  Theo's false identity, her natural suspicions lead her to take a couple of unusual steps to force Theo’s hand. At one point she leaves behind a notebook containing some investigative notes, clearly hoping to panic Theo and her co-conspirators into making mistakes and revealing themselves.

How did you learn to plant red herrings so well?

*I credit Agatha Christie.  I love the Golden Age detective novels. Dame Agatha’s have always been my favorites and I’ve read each of them dozens of times.  Reading her is like a master’s degree in plotting and red herrings!

All the women seem to be agog over Kurt, the doctor. But he’s a cold fish, isn’t he?

*Theo learns early that Kurt is cold enough to give any woman frostbite.  But he’s a good looking, unattached surgeon, which makes him an appealing challenge, although he has secrets too. During the novel he gets his comeuppance, falling for someone who has her own reasons for keeping him at a distance.

My favorite character is Theo’s grandfather, who followed her to San Francisco. Has their tragedy made theirs a closer relationship?

*In the beginning of the novel their relationship is very formal, with a lack of understanding on both sides. They grow closer as the story unfolds and they begin to understand each other better.  

Derek, Nat’s live-in lover, is going bald. He experiments with oriental homeopathic cures. Rhino horns? I had no idea. How did you know? Is the value you placed on this item real? Explain the legal/illegal issue?

* Rhino horn is mistakenly believed to be a treatment for a variety of ills and conditions and people are willing to pay outrageous prices for it. The dollar value placed on it was accurate at the time of writing and, incredibly, continues to rise. The northern white rhino has been forced into extinction in the past five years and other varieties are close to the end.  The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) treaty, with about 180 signatory countries, forbids the import or export of animal products from animals deemed threatened or endangered, but rhinos are threatened all over Africa as poachers become more violent and bold.

Theo owns the building where they create the first-floor bath shop called Aromas, and Nicole provides the product, shampoos, soaps, lotions, etc., through a chemist friend of hers. But Nicole isn’t the stable business partner Theo wanted. When Nicole is murdered, why does Inspector Lichlyter suspect Theo?

*Inspector Lichlyter is suspicious of Theo largely because of Theo’s reluctance to reveal her true identity, and the tangled web of circumstances tying her, despite her innocence, to other criminal acts in the neighborhood.

Theo befriends a boy, Davie. His drunken father abuses him. She employs Davie at her shop. What is his unusual hobby? Why doesn’t he just give them fruit to eat?

*Davie keeps butterflies, growing them from caterpillars he collects.  He learned how to feed them on sugar water and special food by unrolling their (very, very long) tongues with a pin. (I didn’t mention this is the book, but butterflies sense food through their feet!)

What’s next, Susan? Are you planning to make this a first in a series book?

*I’m writing Theo’s next adventure, and have plans to write six or seven more.

Are you a beach or mountain woman, Susan?

*Neither! I don’t like extremes of weather or geography. I’d say I was more of a gently rolling hills woman.