In The Heights

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Have you been to Brooklyn?  Part of my darling family lives there, and my agent, and SO many friends, and relatives of friends—it seems like such a small world!

Our dear friend of the Reds Triss Stein—we are always so thrilled to see you, dear Triss!—knows Brooklyn inside out. It’s her muse and her inspiration—and her new book reveals that In The Heights—well, let’s let her tell it!

In The Heights

   By Triss Stein

In many ways, big bad Brooklyn is really a collection of small towns. After four mysteries set in different neighborhoods, and capturing (I hope) their diversity, I realized I had never written one about Brooklyn Heights, where I used to live.

That first apartment was tucked under the roof of an elegant 19^th century town house. My roommate and I put our mattresses on the floor in the center of the room, because at the edges, the bedroom ceiling sloped all the way down to the floor. Through the tiny kitchen window, if we twisted just right, we could glimpse the bridge. At night, we heard the boats on the East River.

We loved it.

Truman Capote had lived down the street to the right. To the left, there was a serious witchcraft shop. WH Auden, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee had shared a house nearby. Across the street, there was a dorm for Jehovah’s  Witnesses employed at  their nearby headquarters. With their short haircuts and boring clothes, they were easy to pick out in that era of flowered bell bottoms.

There never was a question that this neighborhood could make a great background for a mystery. The question would be which Heights story to choose.

When I did some research, what I learned changed my book.

My plan was to write about the intense fight to create Brooklyn Heights as New York’s very first historic district. Everyone loves a David and Goliath story.  Then I read more about Brooklyn Heights right now. 

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, it turned out, owned a serious chunk of the neighborhood, and they were selling everything to move upstate. How would that affect everyone else in Brooklyn Heights? Who would miss the Witnesses, with their quiet ways and meticulous building maintenance? And who would say “Good riddance” to what they thought was a too powerful, too secretive cult? And yes, what about those mysterious tunnels connecting their buildings?

This was a current story demanding to be told. But that’s only a theme. A novel needs characters and events to come to life.  I had to maneuver Erica, my historian heroine, over to Brooklyn Heights and give her a reason to investigate a crime. And I needed characters who would be links back to some of Brooklyn Heights’ storied past, and also links forward into the future.

I got lucky. A perfect McGuffin dropped into my lap in the form of a long-lost bronze plaque, a portrait of Brooklyn’s own genius, Walt Whitman. It used to hang on a long-demolished Brooklyn Heights building, marking the site of Leaves of Grass first printing.

I could give Erica a work  assignment.  Off she goes for a scholarly consultation about that plaque. When an angry, elderly woman storms in, it turns out to be Louisa Gibbs, a famous neighborhood activist and an idol of Erica’s.  She is deep in a feud with her neighbors, the Witnesses. She is also still lives in the splendid house her great-grandfather built, a solid brownstone link back to the days when the harbor was full of sailing ships.

Louisa worked for my story, but I needed an antagonist. He turned out to be Daniel Towns, a mild-mannered, Witness manager, an unlikely fighter, an even more unlikely victim, and an absurd possible villain.

But something was still missing. The situation I created was more of a triangle, with the missing side being the anxious property buyer. Given the amount of land and money involved, that would be a big time property developer, not someone who would normally be any part of Erica’s world.

But – ah-ha!- I already had the answer in my fictional world. Her boyfriend is a contractor. He reminds her about a party invitation she had scornfully turned down, at a multi-million dollar apartment belonging to a big developer who wants to get bigger. She doesn’t like the people she meets there, but she now has a connection, and a bonus. I put the elderly founder of this real estate dynasty there and let him brag about how influential he was in the old days. He is a voice of the past.

My further research told me about Brooklyn Heights disastrous fires and about that witchcraft shop. Walks around the neighborhood told me those lovely antique streets are not immune to modern day problems of lost souls. Reading some of the Witnesses own writing on those topics opened up some surprising doors for the story.

There’s more to life, even in Brooklyn, than real estate. There is old love and new, undying feuds and undying losses, and hidden connections between unlikely characters.

 Some memories are hazy and drifting but I could finally use them to tell  a story of the clash of cultures that was Brooklyn Heights fifty years ago.

HANK: Tunnels? Tell us more!  Isn’t it fascinating how stories evolve? How about you, Reds? Any Brooklyn stories?  Let’s hear them!

And a copy of BROOKLYN LEGACIES  to one lucky commenter!

  

BROOKLYN LEGACIES

Murder strikes the neighborhoods of Brooklyn—the hip, the historic, and the hood

The search for a lost portrait of Brooklyn's own genius Walt Whitman sends urban historian Dr. Erica Donato into Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood of quaint and charming streets, family names out of history, and spectacular views of the harbor and the world-famous bridge. New York’s first suburb has long weathered political battles about neighborhood preservation and destruction. Is a new one shaping up?

Erica meets an idol, fiery community activist Louisa Gibbs, now locked in a dispute with the Watch Tower Society. One of Brooklyn’s biggest landowners, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are selling off their holdings. Then at a glittering party, Erica meets the threatening Prinzig clan who are trying to buy the Witness’s property adjoining Louisa's historic home.

The discovery of the Society’s Daniel Towns’ body in the Witnesses’ underground tunnels reignites old conflicts. Erica learns Louisa has made bitter enemies in her time while she becomes steadily better acquainted with a collection of characters young and old, sane and not-so-sane, living and dead. They all carry bitter secrets and old enmities.

The beautiful setting only hides them. Can Erica use her research expertise to expose a killer?

About the Author:

TRISS STEIN is a small-town girl who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident, which she uses to write mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home.