JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's something of a truism: characters drive cars their authors wish they had. (Lee Child excepted - I don't imagine he yearns to own a Greyhound bus.) I confess, my lead character drove an iconic sports car, the Shelby, because I was stuck in a Goldfish-crackers-encrusted minivan. But in the case of our own Edith Maxwell/ Maddie Day, her heroine, Cece Barton, has the cars Edith had. Prepare to be drop-dead envious...
It’s a contemporary novel, so why is she driving such an old vehicle? I’m so glad you asked.
In general, cars in California last longer because they don’t have the stress of driving over ice heaves and rust-inducing salt on the roads. I have a friend in Berkely who still owns her 1966 red Mustang convertible.
I can’t find the photo of my young sons sitting in Mel’s Mustang after a visit to the Exploratorium in San Francisco, but they loved the experience.
As I might have mentioned in comments to a post here before, I wrote a proposal some years ago for a cozy mystery series set in California centered on auto mechanic Josie Jarvin, who owns and runs JJ Automotive. Josie only works on analog cars – vehicles made before about 1980, when computers made their way into the engine compartment. My editor didn’t go for it, but Josie is now Cece’s mechanic for her Mustang, and I’m delighted to have Josie play a starring role in this new book.
You might also reasonably ask why I’m so interested in cars of the 1960s and 70s. Don’t we all have a fondness for the cars we first learned to drive and first owned? Well, that’s my era. Growing up in southern California, you couldn’t get anywhere farther than a couple of miles away without an automobile. I got my driver’s license on my sixteenth birthday and never looked back.
After the 1954 Dodge station wagon and the 1964 Rambler station wagon, my family had two 1967 VW bugs, one baby blue, one white. My father taught me to drive in the white one, practicing in the parking lot of the Santa Anita race track when it was empty.
Perhaps more important, I worked full time at a Mobil gas station on Pacific Coast Highway (aka Route 1) in Newport Beach after I graduated from UC Irvine with a BA in linguistics. I know, it’s not the usual path to becoming a mechanic.
Analog cars were all there were. At age 21, I started out pumping gas and changing tires part time at my friend’s father’s station. Customers ranged from movie stars (I pumped Buddy Ebsen’s gas) to nude drivers. By the time I left, I was an official State of California headlight adjuster and smog device certifier, I could tune up American and foreign engines, and I’d tested third out of a hundred applicants (all the rest male) to be an Orange County heavy equipment mechanic.
Our shop looked a lot like Emory Automotive, the family-run place in Amesbury I take my car to now, which makes me happier than I can say!
Alas, love lured me away from the area to live in Japan. I did keep working on my own cars when I got back, including pulling the engine on my VW during graduate school in Indiana, with the help of major tools at the student-run car co-op. Anybody else use the Compleat Idiot’s Guide by John Muir?
Alas again, cars got too complicated for me to work on, and so did my life. Now we have two hybrid Priuses in the driveway (VERY complicated to work on except for simple oil changes, and I’m past that), and a few weeks ago I traded in my more than a decade-old little Prius C for a 2022 hybrid plug-in model, which I love.
But I’m always heartened to see people maintaining and driving their analog vehicles, and I love the Rust and Relics auto shop in my neighboring city of Newburyport, which we drive by on the way to catch the train into Boston.
I guess the love of old cars runs in the family. Last summer, my younger brother David drove his 1965 Rover out from California, a car our grandfather Richard Flaherty bought new. When I was a baby auto mechanic fifty years ago, I used to teach Davey things automotive. Not anymore!
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| David Maxwell investigates an odd noise... |
It’s been great fun bringing a bit of those memories into this new story. I hope you love Deadly Crush as much as I loved writing it. As a side note, if you aren’t caught up on the first book in the series, Murder Uncorked came out in paperback last month, and I hear it’s a hot seller at Barnes & Noble. Check out Blue on the cover!
Readers: What pre-1980 car do you know and love? What was your first drive? Anybody still own an analog vehicle? I’d love to give away a copy of the new book to one of you!
The
beginning of a new year for Cece Barton, widowed single mom and recent L.A.
transplant north, means green hillsides, flowing streams from winter rains,
pruned vineyards—and a murder to solve. She's shocked when she gets a call from
her mechanic, Josie, that she’s found her ex-husband crushed to death beneath
the lift in her automotive shop.
Cece convinces Josie to call the police, even though Josie is terrified. Electrician Karl was an abusive husband, was threatening her, and she has no alibi. Josie’s future is on the line, and maybe her own, so Cece starts her own investigation. With a bouquet of motives and unanswered questions, Cece is going to need the help of her twin, Allie, who owns a nearby B & B, as she dives into Karl’s past—before the killer catches up with her, and the lights go out for good . . .
Maddie Day pens the Country Store Mysteries, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries. As Agatha Award-winning author Edith Maxwell, she writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and short crime fiction. Day/Maxwell lives with her beau and their cat Martin north of Boston, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook. Find her at EdithMaxwell.com, wickedauthors.com, Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen, and on social media:
Congratulations, Edith/Maddie, on your new book . . . .
ReplyDeletePre-1980 cars? I had a Ford something-or-other that was my mom's; then a newer car [I have no idea . . . it was green] . . . .
I am not a car person . . . the only car I loved was my Saturn [not pre-1980, though]; over the years I had three different models . . . so sad that they stopped making them.
Congrats Edith/Maddie. I look forward to reading Deadly Crush.
ReplyDeleteMy first car I was able to drive was our family 1965 (?) Buick station wagon with the gears on the column of the steering wheel.
Then when I was 19 I had an early 1960's VW Bug. It didn't have a gas gage and if you ran out of gas there was a lever on the floor that you switched in the opposite direction and you had one more gallon to get you to the gas station.
My brother had a VW van (60's something) that he used for the proverbial surfing safaris he took to Mexico with his buddies.
We've had Priuses (love them) an now I have a boring but reliable Camry and hubby has a electric Honda which he loves.
Congratulations, Edith! I'm so envious of your automotive skills, not to mention your writing ones. I learned to drive in a 1974 Ford Maverick 2-door sedan, olive green with racing stripes. My older brother left it at our family home. I've been grateful to have learned on stick shift, as it has made my life with tractors, etc. much easier -- indeed, possible at all.
ReplyDeleteI have never had the car lust that many of my friends share. I am happy to drive an old minivan with AWD. However I'm do have truck lust. My last Chevy 1500 truck rusted out and became unsafe and with the crazy prices of second-hand vehicles these days I've been hesitant to look at another. Does a 65-year-old woman REALLY need a truck? But I have dearly missed having one. (Selden)