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Part Two
An Unusual Collaboration:
Contemporary Nancy Pickard
and the Late Virginia Rich
Few contemporary mystery
writers have been so highly acclaimed or so active in their genre
as Nancy Pickard. In addition to her many awards for short
stories, this past president of Sisters in Crime has received
the Anthony, Macavity and Agatha awards for five of the ten novels
in her popular Jenny Cain series.
Virginia Rich didn't start writing mysteries until she was in
her early 60s and was almost 70 before she was first published
in 1982. Yet, before she died in the mid-1980s, she accomplished
several feats that have had significant consequence on today's
mystery novelists. She created a female American sleuth
before such a heroine was as popular as she is today. (And
a SENIOR sleuth, at that!) She wrote about an amateur
crime solver when private eyes were all the rage. She set
her first story in small town mid-America when that just "wasn't
done." And, as Pickard puts it, she was the creator
of the "culinary mystery."
Rich wrote three books, "The Cooking School Murders" (1982), "The
Baked Bean Supper Murders" (1983), and "The Nantucket Diet Murders"
(1985), before her death. Her unfinished manuscript, "The
27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders," was continued by Pickard
and published in 1993.
Pickard explains how the unusual opportunity to continue someone
else's work came about in the foreword of her second Eugenia Potter,
"The Blue Corn Murders."
She says the collaboration "began as a result of an amazing
sequence of events that began in 1983. In that year, I read
a first mystery novel called "The Cooking School Murders"
by Virginia Rich. I loved it. My own first novel
("Generous Death") was being published that year, and I felt a
desire to write a fan letter to Mrs. Rich, who was, like me, a
mystery writer married to a cattle rancher. (I suspected
there could not be more than two of us in the world!)
"I received a charming note in which she mentioned that she was
already working on the 4th book in her series. But when
I wrote back, her nurse informed me that Mrs. Rich was too ill
to correspond. Soon after that, Virginia Rich died.
I was shocked and saddened, as were the thousands of readers of
her books.
"After her death, her husband, Ray Rich, came across a bittersweet
discovery; boxes full of her notes, written on yellow legal pads,
and newspaper clippings, all related to books his wife had
hoped to write one day. There were even a few first drafts
of chapters. Mr. Rich approached my editor at Delacorte
Press asking if the series might be continued by other writers.
That editor approached my agent who subsequently asked me, "How
would you like to complete a book called "The 27-Ingredient Chili
Con Carne Murders."
"It felt like fate to me.
"The Blue Corn Murders," is the second collaboration between Virginia
Rich and me, and a third is in the works. I would to thank
everyone concerned with these labors of love. Above all,
I thank Ray Rich and Virginia Rich.
"Working alone at her ranch without the network of writers to
support her that we have now, Virginia Rich became a trendsetter
simply by writing what was closet to her heart. I wish I
could have met her to say thank you from all of us who have followed
in her footsteps."
As evidenced in the "The Blue Corn Murders" preface, Pickard is
very fond of Mrs. Rich's style. During a delightful interview
in the wonderful Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Phoenix, Pickard
shared more about Virginia Rich.
"In the notes I got, I discovered a lot of things about her.
For one thing, my impression was that she was an enormously
thoughtful woman, and that she was genuinely loved by the people
who knew her.
But what really impressed me is that she was a one-woman Sisters
In Crime before we ever thought of it. Here she was,
alone on her ranch in Arizona, calling radio stations all over
the county to promote her book, sending out postcards pre-printed
with recipes announcing that her new book was coming out.
And she was doing these things way back then all by herself.
And she was doing this stuff while she was in very bad health."
Pickard also shared a revelation about the development of
"The 27-Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders."
"I inherited 30 pages of copy," she said. "That included
several scenes, and there was a complete outline of a story.
I wrote that book exactly the way Mrs. Rich had outlined it, using
her scenes. And it was awful. I had to throw it entirely
away.
"What had gone wrong was that I was trying to write her
book instead of just trying to capture her character. And
her plot was a little dated by the time I got to it. She
would have agreed.
"So having written that entire book, and being unhappy with it,
I set it to one side and started on page one again. What
I did was keep two or three of her major characters and just made
up my own plot. I kept Virginia Rich's recipes and, whenever
possible, would take paragraphs from the 30 pages she had written
and use those. There were paragraphs that had to do with
food and setting that I was able to use almost verbatim.
They are my favorite parts of the book!"
Pickard also shared the fact that the idea for "Blue Corn Murders"
did not originate from Rich's notes. Rather, it sprang out
of a hiking and exploration she participated in sponsored by the
Crow Canyon Archeological Center near Cortez, CO.
"That trip inspired this novel," she said. "After I had
so much trouble with that first book, I thought what I needed
to do was just try to capture Mrs. Potter.
"There were 19 other people on the trip of ages ranging from early
40s up to close to 80. Four people were far and away the
most vigorous -- the ones whose backs we were always looking at
because they were so far ahead of us. They were the oldest
people in the group.
"This got me to thinking about Mrs. Potter and how she could --
and probably should -- become more vigorous. When Mrs.
Rich was writing in the early 1980s, the perception of women in
their early 60s was different. And even though Mrs. Rich
herself was 63 when she started writing books, she was already
ill, so she had a different perception of a 63-year-old than you
or I would.
"So when I was seeing women who were older than that and in much
better shape than Mrs. Potter, I thought that to keep her up to
the times, I should have her getting younger instead of older.
It was an interesting challenge."
There's one more Mrs. Potter coming, "The Secret Ingredient Murders,"
but says Pickard, "this will probably be the last." However, Pickard
recently introduced a new protagonist, true crime writer Marie
Lightfoot. She debuts in "The Whole Truth," a chilling thriller which
is a fascinating combination of two books in one, a true crime
novel being written by Lightfoot and a real-time story relating
the events that comprise her book. Pickard told us she is
well into the next Marie Lightfoot novel, adding mischievously
that, while Marie is her third protagonist, she may not be her
last.
We certainly hope not.
