The Istoriaphile’s Corner

Hang around book-nerds types long enough and you’ll hear them mention the word “subversive.”  Subversive themes, subversive protagonists, subversive…well, you get the picture.  Now, before you decide all English professors and book-club members need to be on some government watch list, what they’re talking about are the aspects of a story that make you rethink your assumptions. Part of this rethinking is part of any mystery or detective story. But some literary detectives succeed because they subvert the assumptions other characters make about them.  Like that lovely old snoop, Miss Jane Marple. Early Detective Subversives In Agatha Christie’s stories, Miss Jane appears to be the quintessential English Spinster.  She gardens, she bakes, she wears nothing but tweed (I think) and she lives in a small, English Village. The kind of lady most people expect is sweet and rather naive.  But beneath those fluffy curls and an abominable hat sits an observant and cynical brain. Not much gets past that shrewd, old dame. And when she comes up with some pithy, insightful observation, she subverts the other characters’ expectations.  See what I mean? But if Miss Jane set the standard of the unexpected detective, she’s had lots of followers since. One of my…

How often do you get to interview one of your personal heroes? The first time I saw Sue Ann Jaffarian, I was too afraid to even speak to her.  She breezed into the middle of our low-key seminars one day, a bubbly, confident woman with a terrific smile.  She talked about her work as a paralegal but I was blown away by her other career as a much-published novelist with editors, a fan-base and everything!  Book-nut that I am, my mouth and brain slammed shut in the presence of this “sure-nuff” novelist.  At least I had the presence of mind to pick up some of her books.Since then I’ve had a lot of fun reading Sue Ann’s work, particularly her series starring that plus-sized paralegal Odelia Grey (finally, a heroine that looks and thinks like me!) and the Granny Apples series set in Julian, Californa, a place near my grandparents’ home.  Thanks to social media and a mutual friend or two, I finally worked up the nerve to (virtually) meet Sue Ann and she’s been kind enough to answer some of the questions I didn’t have the nerve to ask years ago.  How nice can a real author be? I…

People have certain expectations about the genres they favor and mystery fans expect stories driven by a puzzle.  As interesting  or well-developed as some of the characters in these stories are, they still exist to serve the central plot and very few of them are driven by ideals.  Holiday stories, on the other hand, focus much more on character and these usually have an underlying moral code.  That’s what makes Sue Ann Jaffarian’s The Ghost of Mistletoe Mary such an unexpected delight.  She balances the requirements of both genres and then blends them to create a mystery with a heart.  Like Charles Dickens, Jaffarian has a keen social conscience for the downtrodden in our society.  Dickens noticed the growth of the Industrial Age also exploited the least protected in Victorian Society – the poor and children, in particular.  Jaffarian’s story takes us to Skid Row in Los Angeles and the dispossessed of our own era: the indigent, the addicts, the emotionally troubled, and all too often, the military veterans whose return to civilian life is hijacked by untreated traumas.   Because these people don’t fit in with society’s norms and because they tend to distrust the police, they are easy…

There are lots of books about young women.  And there are lots of books about gorgeous women.  There are books about tall women, women who don’t realize how lovely they are and too damn many books about women who stay thin or physically fit without effort.  Now a lot of these gals aren’t bad characters; heck, some of them are my long-time favorites but it does get tiresome to run into the same type of heroine, day after day.  Thank God for Sue Ann Jaffarian and her creation, Odelia Grey.  They’re the girls that break the cliches. Odelia may be fictional but she’s a girl after my own heart.  She’s not thin, she’s not young and (like me) she works for lawyers.  Not the usual girl on the book cover.  At the start of her first adventure, Too Big to Miss, Odelia’s life is a bit in the dumps.  Her good boss is retiring, the last date needed firing and skinny shop girls want to treat her like dreck.  Odelia knows how to stand up for herself and she gives as good as she gets but it’s sad living that much of life on the defensive and the death of…