Cara Black, interviewed by Peter Lovesey

Over the years, the NorCal East Bay chapter of Mystery Readers International has had many "At Homes" -- intimate evenings with favorite mystery writers. We've hosted Anne Perry, Lawrence Block, Sue Grafton, Elizabeth George, Janet LaPierre, Sharan Newman, Laurie King, Rochelle Krich, Carolyn Hart, James Ellroy, Steven Saylor, Janet Evanovich, Eddie Muller, Taffy Cannon, and many others. These events are held in private homes, and they're similar to Literary Salons. Since so many of our cyber members and friends aren't able to attend these intimate evenings, I thought it would be fun to have a "visiting" author each month interviewed by another "visiting" author. This month we feature Cara Black interviewed by Peter Lovesey. San Francisco author Cara Black's Aimée Leduc series, about a half-French, half-American detective, has captivated Francophiles and mystery fans since the first book, Murder in the Marais, was published in 1999. The seed of her first novel were planted during a 1984 trip to France, when Cara and a friend explored the Marais, an old district of cobblestone streets and dilapidated mansions. The Marais was originally built for the French nobility, but by World War II it had become a Jewish ghetto. Cara's friend told her the story of her mother, who, as a 14-year-old Parisian Jew, lost her parents when they were shipped to a concentration camp. The girl had been at school when the rest of her family disappeared; with no identity card or ration card, she had to fend for herself till the end of the German occupation. Her family never returned. Cara returned to Paris in 1994, and the details of her friend's haunting story came back to her. When she came home to San Francisco, she joined a writer's group and took mystery writing and poetry classes while she worked on what would become Murder in the Marais. She managed to sell her manuscript to Soho Press without an agent; Soho has published the subsequent books in the Aimée Leduc series, including the latest, Murder in the Bastille, and the Anthony Award-nominated Murder in the Sentier. Cara was born in Chicago, and attended Sophia University, a Catholic university in Tokyo where she met her Japanese husband-to-be, Jun Ishimuro. Cara and Jun have a teenage son, Shuchan. --Janet Rudolph

Peter Lovesey: Why Paris? Aren't here enough good French restaurants in San Francisco?

Cara Black: If only! Blame it on the old black and white French films and Tati's classic "Mr. Hulot's Holiday" that my father forced us to watch. Countless times. Now I appreciate it. He was a real Francophile. Or my uncle, who lived in Paris in the 50s and talked non-stop about his starving but red wine drinking art student days. The nuns spoke French in my elementary school, yet through no fault of theirs, I still mangle the language. The first time I visited Paris it felt familiar yet foreign, but I sort of sensed what Parisians would do next. And most of the time they did it. I lived in Basel, Switzerland (on the border of France). We biked to France all the time and I worked illustrious jobs like stadium bench cleaner, emptying the trash in the newspaper office, a market researcher for two days, and espresso-maker in the Basel train station buffet.

PL: Were you one of those kids who always wanted to be a writer?

CB: Deep down, yes. My dream was to write. But I was a coward. I love to read; most writers I meet do. Growing up, I spent afternoons holed up in the library reading the Bronte sisters. I wanted to write like them and realized my hopeless limitations. Shyness and laziness kept me from keeping a journal until I went to Europe for the first time. Then I was always keeping one and losing it down a sewer. After living in Europe I knew I had to write about that someday, and I'd have to do the hard work of keeping my derriere in the chair and doing it. But I delayed that as long as I could until my son got into preschool and I ran out of excuses.

PL: Paris has inspired so many writers. Are you influenced by any of them?

CB: Definitely, Hemingway, Colette, de Maupassant, Georges Simenon and Léo Malet. And even Dickens' Tale of Two Cities; I'm rereading it and does he have the page-turning technique down! Visual artists and photographers influence me also, like Man Ray, Jacques Lartigues, Doisneau and Atget. They captured a Paris long gone. Gives me a nostalgic feeling. And then there are those little corners one stumbles on in Paris where nothing's been remodeled or changed since 1830. And I feel I've been dropped in the past.

PL: How did you think up your main character, Aimee Leduc?

CB: Aimée had to be an outsider, since I'm not French and I can't even tie a scarf like a Parisienne. But I'm convinced they have a scarf-tying gene that the rest of the world doesn't. Raymond Chandler's detective was a lone wolf, and I see Aimée as a loner, neither fish nor fowl -- outside traditional French life and with American roots that she knows little about but wants to explore.

PL: Is she a self-portrait, or based on some other real person?

CB: Aimée's her own person -- spiky-haired, high-heel wearing, loyal, smart and with a penchant for bad boys. I interviewed three female detectives in Paris who had their own agency and I think Aimée possesses some of their qualities, also, in various degress. She's modern and lives in contemporary Paris so computer skills are part of her trade. All I know is that I'd love to have her apartment.

PL: Would you call yourself methodical? Are you an outliner like me, or a seat-of-the-pants writer?

CB: Very unlike you, Peter. I'm seat-of-the-pants, grab the moment and scribble a phrase or plot point on post-its type. What I overhear on a late night Paris Metro ride, or from the man at the corner tabac recounting his liver ailment -- and all Frenchmen seem to have a mysterious crisé of the liver at some time or other -- finds its way on the page. Of course, the quartier has to speak to me, then characters who live there come along and the story too. That's if the muse does her job!

PL: Up to now you've chosen to set your novels in some of the less fashionable districts of Paris.

CB: That's right -- in the 3rd, the 20th, the 2nd and the 11th arrondissements.

PL: Is this deliberate?

CB: Yes, and no. At one period, I spent a lot of the time in the Marais and hardly budged from there if I could help it. It's become quite fashionable now but it was a Jewish ghetto and run-down until the the late 70s. I never planned on writing about Belleville in the 20th but I happened to be staying there with a friend, a single mom, who kept asking "why don't you write about where I live," and she had a point. It's a vibrant and multi-ethnic quartier. I realized after helping her with errands like paying her gas bill and picking up her daughter from school that I was seeing another part of Parisian life, the gritty day-to-day. Right at that time, I met a man working in the Ministry of Interior who was kicking immigrants without papers out of a church where they claimed sanctuary. The story just came right off the Belleville cobblestones, so to speak.

The Sentier, the 2nd, was by complete chance... I missed the bus from the Marais and ended up walking through this garment district with dotcoms and hookers and just knew it was special... funky, ancient and amazingly untouched in the center of Paris. Another good friend works in the Bastille area. We met for lunch there one day at an outdoor café. In front of us, a blind man with a cane walked by into the Central Eye hospital of Paris, and my friend's boss came by the café and told us a serial killer, the Beast of Bastille, had attacked a woman in the adjoining passage. BANG, that got me going. Sometimes it's as if I just record what's going on while I'm in Paris and then come home and filter what I've seen, heard, smelled, touched and tasted through Aimée's take on things.

PL: "Research" suggests something rather clinical and organized, but you make it sound fun. Examples, please.

CB: Well, I've given you a few. Let's see, on my last visit, we received permission to join a cataphile -- a term used for fanatics who like exploring the old quarries and tunnels under Paris not always legally -- who led us to the old German air raid bunkers deep in the tunnels under the Luxembourg gardens. Pretty muddy and cold and fascinating. My son kept complaining but afterwards he admitted he thought it was pretty cool. One time I ended up backstage in the actors' make-up area of the Comedie Française before rehearsals and that has to go in a book somewhere. By the way, not to disappoint "Charade" film fans, but underneath the stage floor it's not like in the film (but to be fair, it looked like pretty new construction.)

PL: I believe the germ of Murder in the Marais was a true experience described to you.

CB: Yes, my friend took me to the Marais in 1984 and pointed out a decaying mansion where her mother lived during the German Occupation of Paris in WWII. Her mother, a young Jewish girl, had come home from school one day and found a vacant apartment. Her family were gone, rounded up by the French police under German orders. She stayed in the apartment hoping her parents would return, going to school and living on the charity of the concierge who shared food and coal ration coupons with her. But her family never returned. Years later, she found their names on the train convoy list bound for Auschwitz. This story haunted me. Later, I discovered this had happened quite often during the Occupation. Ten years later, after returning from a trip to France, I woke up in the middle of the night with jetlag and sat down at the computer and wondered what if? What if someone went back to after Paris fifty years and had to face secrets from the past? Shameful, painful secrets involving what they had to do to survive? These seeds had germinated for years from my friend's mother's story. It was as if the cobblestones had to talk and relate a story that could only have happened in Paris.

PL: Are your books all derived from real life and then turned to fiction?

CB: Pretty much. A lot of the story line and incidents come from stories I hear from friends in Paris or experiences their relatives had, or French newspapers or something I stumble on in the Police Archives. I fictionalize events to protect people's background. Especially in the Sentier book in the case of a man who refused to be interviewed. At first I thought this sank the story, but it turned out to be a blessing and gave me greater freedom to write what I thought could have happened which he would never confirm or deny.

PL: Is it true that you once got mistaken for Patricia Cornwell, and profited from it?

CB: Well, on a tour of the Police Préfecture in Paris a policeman kept coming up to me and saying "Aaah, Patreeecea Cornwaaal, oui?"... but I never made any money from it. They did invite me to see their scene of the crime clothing area. So that was riches beyond price.

PL: What appeals to you about the crime novel as a form of writing?

CB: Justice, in some form, is served. I enjoy a resolution that often doesn't happen in real life. Simply put, the villain's thwarted and it may be in grey tones, not black and white, but right not might whistles through. I love that you Brits call mysteries Crime Novels... wonderful, wish we used that term here. To me, these are novels with crime and murder at the core but again novels of realistic, flawed and fascinating characters.

PL: You once advised me to get my own website, and I must admit I haven't got around to it yet.

CB: Peter... you promised!

PL: Has yours brought any good surprises?

CB: It's fun to put up photos of Paris or of folks I met at conferences or Bouchercon (oops, haven't got to that yet.) It's a great way to stay in touch and exchange tips about Paris. People always send such wonderful advice about a great resto they've found, a little-known museum, a perfume blending factory in a courtyard or shop with the best socks in Paris... yes, important to have good socks (besides good shoes) when you pound those cobbles doing research.

PL: What's next after Murder in the Bastille?

CB: I'll tell you after I get #5 to my editor next week! Hint... Aimée's still on the right bank.

PL: Are you planning to cover all 20 of the arrondissements of Paris?

CB: That's the plan, four down and sixteen arrondissements to go. Someday she may actually cross the Seine and investigate the Left Bank. Unless, of course, she becomes the first female astronaut in the non-existent French space program, wins the lottery or gets pregnant, or...

PL: Or would you set a book nearer home?

CB: Maybe a stand-alone set in the streets of San Francisco, or a suspense thriller in Prague.

Archived At Home Online Interviews:
Track 1:
Val McDermid, interviewed by Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, interviewed by Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, interviewed by Michael Connelly
Michael Connelly, interviewed by Laurie R. King
Laurie R. King, interviewed by Dana Stabenow
Dana Stabenow, interviewed by Jan Burke
Jan Burke, interviewed by T. Jefferson Parker
T. Jefferson Parker, interviewed by Harlan Coben
Harlan Coben, interviewed by Laura Lippman
Laura Lippman, interviewed by S.J. Rozan
S.J. Rozan, interviewed by Qiu Xiaolong
Qiu Xiaolong, interviewed by Cara Black
Cara Black, interviewed by Peter Lovesey
Peter Lovesey, interviewed by Anne Perry
Anne Perry, interviewed by Carole Nelson Douglas
Carole Nelson Douglas, interviewed by Nancy Pickard
Nancy Pickard, interviewed by Carolyn Hart

Track 2:
Ken Bruen, interviewed by Reed Farrel Coleman
Reed Farrel Coleman, interviewed by Megan Abbott
Megan Abbott, interviewed by Theresa Schwegel
Theresa Schwegel, interviewed by Michael Koryta
Michael Koryta, interviewed by Steve Hamilton

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