Celebrating the Twentieth Molly Murphy Mystery

 RHYS BOWEN:  Today Clare and I are celebrating the publication of our new Molly Murphy book, IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW. It is the twentieth book in the series, so I'm jumping up and down with joy and amazement. Who would have thought that Molly could not only have survived so long but could have flourished?  In all those books she has had plenty of narrow escapes, been bombed, survived an earthquake, and a factory fire, met Houdini, French Impressionists and now has an adventure in the Catskills.

As you know I now write these books with my daughter Clare Broyles, so I thought I’d tell you a bit about my co-writer.

A year ago we were doing a book signing and someone asked  “How did you two hook up?” and I replied, “I made her.”

Yes, I conceived her because I knew I’d need someone to take over my writing legacy one day. (For those of you who take things literally, I’m just kidding).  If I’d really wanted a co-writer I’d have made her watch and study as I wrote, practice character development and plot twists from the time she could talk. But looking back I can see that she did indeed have a childhood that was helpful to a future writer.

We read to our kids from day one. She grew up in a house full of books. She was a precocious child and was reading The Hobbit in first grade. We had a to have a good talk when she wanted to read “Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret” when she was eight (years before I had planned to have THAT talk).  I never censored what books she brought home from the library and was pleased that she self-censored. “I took that one back,” she’d say. “I didn’t like it.”

There was always a lot of pretend play at our house. Clare would write plays. Dominic, the only boy, would always be the prince with a towel around his shoulders as a cape and a wooden sword. Clare, unfortunately, almost never got to be the heroine. Her two sisters would refuse to take part if they couldn’t be Cinderella etc and Clare wound up as the witch.

Story from when she was 11. She got a boyfriend, a nice boy called Mike. She brought him home. I left them alone in the family room. It became awfully quiet down there. I tiptoed down to spy and found them both lying on the floor… on their stomachs, playing with the Fisher Price castle and the Playmobil little people knights, ladies and dragons.

Clare has always been a true renaissance woman:

As a Freshman in high school she got the part of Anne in the diary of Anne Frank. Imagine how emotional it was for a parent to watch that!  She went to college pre-med, but decided she didn’t want to become a doctor and added an English and Spanish literature major. She did independent biology research into calcium binding proteins (way ahead of its time), was offered a fabulous job with Genentec but instead chose to volunteer at a homeless shelter in Juarez, Mexico. There she met her husband Tim and together they did great work in El Salvador, helping people get their lives back together after the civil war.

On her return she got a degree in Music, specializing in opera, wrote and produced a children’s opera. She has since written background music for the Arizona Theater Company and others, winning an Arizona Tony award. She now teaches music, math and the gifted program at a charter school.

So what’s it like working with Clare? Awful. (just kidding again). We work together so well—she has great ideas, we talk through scenes and spark creativity in each other. It gives us an excuse to chat every day. And we never fight. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been mad at Clare in her entire life. She is so sweet natured. And we laugh a lot. It’s very therapeutic.

Clare adores research. She reads the New York Times for every day we write about and find great snippets to add to our stories. When we started this book we knew we wanted to feature the early Jewish bungalow communities in the Catskills. Clare found there was a retreat center for professional women nearby(no men allowed),also a new state park and a bluestone quarry, creating a great gash in the earth. Such great motives for murder!

Our aim when we write, as well as telling a compelling whodunit, is to immerse the reader in real history, to transport to a time and place. We hope you’ll enjoy being in the Catskills this time. And if you go to our Reds and Readers Facebook group and comment on the live feed you’ll get a chance for a signed copy of the new book.