Working Stiffs welcomes back our good friend, Kelli Stanley!
First,
I want to express my appreciation to Joyce, Bente (who is in all of my Miranda
books!), Annette, Paula and all my friends at Working Stiffs for letting me
hang out! You guys rock, and I consider myself lucky to get to spend some time
with you! :)
I’m
actually just popping in between different weeks of a book tour ... the CITY OF
SECRETS book tour, as a matter of fact. CITY OF SECRETS is the second Miranda
Corbie book (following CITY OF DRAGONS, which I’m thrilled to say won a
Macavity Award at Bouchercon last month!) We’re continuing to celebrate while
traveling, and next week I’ll be in various cool places from Scottsdale to
Thousand Oaks, California.
So,
the title of my newest book begs the question: what kind of secrets? San
Francisco secrets? Secrets about Miranda Corbie, the broken idealist and
hardboiled PI of the series? Or secrets about 1940 and the American past that
we didn’t learn in high school history books ...
The
answer is all of the above.
Miranda
Corbie is working the opening day of the second
San Francisco World’s Fair, held on beautiful Treasure Island in the
middle of the Bay. Stage hands find her in front of Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch,
where she works security, protecting the girls behind the glass wall from
everything other than eyes ... to use those, you pay a quarter. Use anything
else and you have to deal with Miranda.
Shaking
in shock and horror, the stage hands from Artists and Models—another peep show near
Sally’s, in which young women posed “tastefully” for people with cameras or
sketch pads, in pseudo-artist model style—inform
Miranda that the opening act, a young blonde named Pandora Blake, seems to be
... dead. Miranda finds the young girl with a long, deep stab wound, the kind
made by an ice pick. Blood trickles slowly down her white skin. And on her
stomach, written in blood, is a word: an anti-Semitic epithet.
Miranda
is plunged into a secret San Francisco that she—and many people today—didn’t
know existed. A San Francisco in which an organization of domestic terrorists
and racists can meet in a bar off Union Square, express their sympathies for
Hitler and hatred for Roosevelt and plot violence against the government.
The
fact is, San Francisco and the West Coast were home to many such groups in the
30s and early 40s.
Long before “right-wing militia” became a term in the 70s
and 80s—long before Timothy McVeigh was born—there were people who believed the
United States was becoming degenerate, too big, too encompassing, and too
tolerant. That the government was far too liberal. That the dictatorships and
totalitarian regimes were on the right track, and that Adolf Hitler was a man to
admire.
And
they were willing to back up their beliefs with violence.
These
groups weren’t Nazis. They considered themselves patriotic Americans, with
names like Defenders of the Christian Faith or The Musketeers ... which is the
group Miranda investigates.
And so
she does, uncovering more secrets. Secrets about eugenics, and the dangers of
California’s sterilization laws ... which in turn inspired Hitler. Secrets
about the bucolic and beautiful Napa Valley, and the sleep little town of
Calistoga, where claims of rejuvenation and health were made for the mud baths
and spa treatments at Nance’s Sanitarium. And even secrets about herself, as
echoes of the past reverberate unexpectedly through her investigation of two
murders.
The
background is a world at war. Belgium falls and France is falling. And through
it all, Miranda’s at war herself, chasing shadows, leafing through the
forgotten belongings of a dead girl, playing a mean game of roulette, and
ultimately facing her darkest decision while on the track of a vicious,
anti-Semitic killer.
Real
people make appearances in CITY OF SECRETS ... Sally Rand has a cameo in chapter
one, and threatened to walk away with the entire book. The second real person
is a surprise (no spoilers here). The
settings are real—from Nance’s to the Club Moderne to a nightmarish,
castle-like mansion in the Napa Valley.
It’s a
frightening, dark and thrilling noir, and the events of CITY OF SECRETS will
reverberate through future books. What isn’t a secret is how much I love to
write this series, and how I hope to continue writing Miranda forever.
So,
Working Stiffs ... what I want to know is this: have you uncovered any secrets
you want to share? Or do you have any questions you want to ask? Let’s play a
blog version of truth or dare, and let ‘er rip! :)
