The Lady Killers

Happy New Year

ing Rhys here,writing briefly as I only have a few moments to breathe today. Guests to dinner tonight, dental appt this morning and then we head back to Arizona on Friday. But I wanted to wish all our online friends a very happy, healthy and successful new year. And give you my new year's wish list.

I wish for world peace , just for once.

I wish for a great spirit of optimism with the new presidency.

I wish for a comprehensive health care system so that people like my laid-off daughter didn't have to pay $200 for the drugs she needs.

I wish for a more equible society so that the CEOs didn't get the 30 million bonuses and private jets and the people at the bottom didn't have to fall asleep worrying about bills each night

I wish we'd stop global warming and the artic ice wouldn't keep melting and the polar bears would thrive.

For my family I wish for a job for my daughter, unemployed for almost a year. If you're reading this and your in the movie business, contact me. She's a fab script editor and creative exec.

For myself I wish for more leisure time and a chance to enjoy the beautiful scenery in which I live. I wish for a chance to walk barefoot along a beach and let the waves run over my toes. I wish for moonlight picnics and long hikes over Mount Tam. I wish for much laughter and good friends and good company.

And now I'd better stop wishing and run to check the sprinkler system. Ah well....

Happy New Year

May 2009 bring you peace joy love and lots of flowers
Carola

It's almost 2009

Jane here, thinking about the New Year, and wondering whether the usual greeting of Happy New Year still sounds right as 2008 grinds to a halt. Unless you’re a hermit living on a desert island, you’re being continually bombarded at present with prophecies of gloom and doom about the global economy, not to mention the book business. For many of us, 2009 is not going to be easy. I believe this. And yet…

 

I like New Year, and I can’t stop liking it just because some pessimists proclaim that when I take my traditional Cup of Kindness for Auld Lang Syne, I may find the cup is half empty. I think that “half full” is a better description in such a situation, and the arrival of a new year has always been a cause for celebration in our family. I’ve never lived in Scotland, but any Scot would have felt at home in our part of East Yorkshire on December 31 when I was a child..

 

I blame two of my uncles: Uncle Whittaker had lived and worked in Scotland for years, so knew exactly how things should be done, including the custom of First Footing. A dark man must be the first guest in a house on New Year’s Day, that’s to say as soon after the midnight chime as possible, to bring a gift of bread, salt and coal, thus ensuring luck for the occupants. Uncle Harry was the darkest-complexioned man for miles, so he was duty bound to be First Foot over as many thresholds as he could manage, and of course the rest of us were duty bound to go with him. The people we visited couldn’t let us venture out into the night again without a glass of something to keep out the cold. It was a sort of mobile party and it went on most of the night. These old customs have much to recommend them, if you ask me.

 

There are other more serious reasons to welcome New Year. We have got past the shortest day of winter, and daylight hours start to lengthen, which is particularly welcome here in northern Europe. And somehow a change of date is more than simply an excuse for a new calendar or diary. It brings a feeling of fresh hope, a new start, a promise that, in spite of everything, things may be better this time around.

 

So I do wish everyone a Happy New Year, and a Cup of Kindness to celebrate with. Maybe I’m whistling in the dark, but in the words of a song from one of my all-time favourite shows, “I’m only a cock-eyed optimist...I’m stuck like a dope with a thing called hope.” I’ll keep on whistling till it gets light again.

 

back on line

I flew back from Dallas at Midnight on December 13th, barely making it through Salt Lake City, where the runways were getting icy.  December 14th it began to snow in Portland and I haven't been able to get my car out since.  My daughter and her friends finally made it over last night for Christmas Eve (we ignored the calendar).  It's finally melting and I hope to get out tomorrow or Monday at the latest.  One would think that being snowed in would be a perfect chance for a writer to get some work done.  No way.  I worked for ten minutes, went to look out the window, cleaned the kitchen floor, went back to work, looked out the window, swept (later shoveled) the front walk, went back to work and found I was still on the same sentence.  We soon lost track of days and I missed the Saturdays completely.  I have gone totally stir-crazy.  Also, there's been no mail for two weeks or garbage collection.  I foresee being totally overwhelmed with ads, cards, bills and catalogs on Monday. 
You can see the problem with getting up my driveway.  It actually got much worse than this. Since I couldn't get out to the store, our Christmas dinner was made up of whatever was left in the cupboard, but I'm grateful that there was plenty there, if an odd assortment.

I was horrified by Cara's information on French prisons.  They sound worse than the infamous Turkish ones.  However, I would like to point out that they are not  medieval.  They are modern, maybe Enlightenment or Renaissance.  Prisons didn't exist in medieval Europe.  Important people were held for ransom or to await trial like the Templars.  And in their case, there wasn't any place to hold most of them and they were parceled off to private homes.  Regular people were caught, tried within a day or two and either acquitted or punished, sometimes nastily but often with a fine.  I don't actually know when the idea of incarceration as punishment began.  Anyone? 

It has been a roller-coaster year and I hope the next one is smoother for everyone. 

Sharan

tis the Season!

Rhys on Christmas Eve, and I'm late getting to my blog because I've been baking all morning. At Christmas time I have to bake all the traditional things for the family. My mother always made sausage rolls and little mince pies so I am expected to make them too. And apple crumble as dessert, and my traditional Christmas Eve dish has become a chicken pot pie. They are all done and the house smells wonderful.

And tomorrow will be an easy day with just a turkey to be roasted and some veggies. My mother would have made a Christmas cake and plum pudding too but somehow I can't get the family interested too much in anything that fruity. I don't expect we'll starve.

So I'm interested to know what traditional foods you cook at this time and why is it so important to us to replicate the Christmasses of our childhood?

I'm wishing a Merry Christmas to everyone and a great year ahead.

Rhys

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Jane here, blogging on the wrong day because I’ve been away, on holiday in Cyprus. More about that later.

 

For now, I just want to wish everyone a very happy Christmas, or however you spend your holiday. I send my best wishes to my fellow Lady Killers, all our guests and visitors on this blog, and of course the readers with the excellent good sense and perfect taste to enjoy our books.

 

And since it’s Christmas, I’m even prepared to wish happiness to those who claim they don’t like mysteries. (There’s nowt so queer as folk, as we say here in Yorkshire.) Thinking about it, I suppose they won’t be reading this, but let’s hope that 2009 will be the year when they discover our kind of books, and realise what they’ve been missing.

 

Happy holidays, all!

Ann Parker here, Monday's child at the Lady Killers.
... As I prepare to cook a simple turkey on Christmas eve, here's a Christmas menu from the Tappan House in Leadville, Colorado, 1879, for your contemplation:

SOUP
Fresh Oysters Chicken broth
FISH
Cutlets of Salmon Trout, crumbled and fried in oil
Thin slices of fresh Mackerel, a la Maitre d’Hotel
OYSTERS
In small Patties Raw Crumbled and Fried
Fancy Roast Scalloped
ROASTS
Turkey, with Cranberry Sauce
Chicken with Oyster dressing
Premium Loin of Beef
Saddle of Pig Pork, Apple Sauce
Leg of South-Down Mutton
Loin of Veal, with dressing
BOILED
Chicken, Sauce a la Bechamel
Dupee Sugar-Cured Ham, Champagne Sauce
Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce
Buffalo Tongue, Sauce Perigord
GAME
Roast Blue-winged Teal Duck, Dish Gravy
Saddle of Venison, with Red Currant Jelly
Roast Rocky Mountain Elk, Apple Sauce
Breast of Prairie Hen, Smothered in Oysters
Haunch of Black-faced Antelope
Quail on Toast
ENTRIES
Breast of Spring Chicken, boiled l’Anglaise
Tenderloin of Veal, braised, aux Champignons
Coteletts Les Mutton, Petit Pois
Air Puffs, Lemon Cream Sauce
Poached Eggs, on Anchovy Toast
Loin of Venison, braised, a la Richelieu
Solmis of Giblets, a la Aberdeen
Round shoulders of Mutton, a la Financiere
Pineapple Fritters
Port Wine Sauce
COLD DISHES
Chicken Salad Pate de Fois Gras
Boned Turkey Ames’Sugar-Cured Ham
VEGETABLES
Mashed Potatoes Hashed Brown Potatoes
Asparagus Mushrooms with Cream
French Peas Sweet Corn
Lima Beans Tomatoes
RELISHES
Celery Cucumber Pickles Pickled Beets
Cold Slaw Horseradish Tomato Catsup
Worcestershire Sauce
PASTRY
Green Apple Pie Mince Lemon Meringue Pie
English Plum Pudding, Brandy Sauce
Spanish Cream Chocolate Macaroons
Lemon Jelly Port Wine Jelly
DESSERT
Pound Cake Jelly Cream Kisses
Coconut Macaroons Chocolate Macaroons
Lady Fingers Transparent Crescents
Marble Cake Fruit Cake
Candies, Tappan House Production
Maple Cream Slices Cream Fruit Slices
Chocolate Cream Slices Chocolate Bon Bons
Cream Slices
Nuts Fruits Raisins Tea and Coffee
Blancmange Assorted Almonds
———
WINE LIST
———
CHAMPAGNE
Krug & Co., quarts L. Roderer, Carte Blanche, pints
Krug & Co., pints Ike Cook’s Imperial, q’ts,
Ay Mousseul D’Hautville, quarts
Ike Cook’s Imperial, pints
Heidsick & Co., quarts, Red Seal, quarts
Heidsick & Co., pints, Red Seal, pints.
NATIVE WINES
Carte Blanche Pleasant Valley Wine Company, pints,
California Port, pints, St. Louis Imperial
American Wine Co., quarts,
Urbana Wine Co’s Imperial, pints,
California Angelica, sweet, pints

Celebrate Solstice!

Happy Holidays, everyone! May the new year bring peace, joy and hope to you and the world.

Not like Daisy's Christmas 1923:

Carola

Cara here on Friday,

I'd like to be of good cheer at this holiday time but I just saw a video feed from Le Monde, the French newspaper, of a video taken (in secret) by a prisoner in a French prison. The prison's Fleury-Mougis,notorious for the bad conditions and in this video you can see why. I know our prisons don't rank high but this place looks medieval! The video shows shots of the yard, the garbage, the mold infested bathroom where they bathe only 3 times a week and only a trickle of water from the showerhead, a cell where inmates cook over an open fire, what they call the yo-yo system tying sheets together to transfer soap out the window to another cell. It goes on.
My friend Donna, an American who's lived in Paris thirty years, visited Barry, an American man, who was arrested in France on trumped up drug charges. He served more than twelve years and she and her husband took it upon themselves to help him in the legal system (he didn't speak French) and visited him every month for at least ten years of his sentence. Donna took me once to Fresnes, a maximum security prison on the outskirts of Paris and even though I only got into the waiting room area I'll never forget it. But I've gone by La Sante prison, which is right in Paris not far from Montparnasse often and seen people throwing things up to the prisoners on the prison wall parapet; cell phones (which aren't allowed) and who knows what else. But being inside Paris, of course it has a VIP prison wing where all the bankers, CEO's and government folk serve their time...better food, in fact the best, special perks, if you can pay for it. And they do. Carlos the Jackal, remember him? serves his time in the VIP wing and has married his attorney. Its so cushy he doesn't want to leave, they say. Of course, after learning all this I had to use it...I mean a prison inside Paris with a VIP wing...what's not to use for material! And I do in Murder in the Latin Quarter, Aimee even visits a prisoner in La Sante.

On a more positive note for the holidays, Jan, a doctor and member of my writing group has a wonderful op-ed piece in the LATimes about being a street Santa.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-gurley17-2008dec17,0,69137.story
She's a doctor at a homeless clinic in San Francisco and offers great ideas. And it's simple.

Good weekend,
Cara

Dashing through the snow

Wednesday certainly rolls around quickly when there are too many things to do! There isn't much snow here in California, although it did freeze last night and there is a touch of white on the top of Mount Tamalpais, as seen from my balcony. But I'm certainly doing enough dashing at the moment.

I'm in the middle of shopping, wrapping gifts, hosting a luncheon for 12 people tomorrow, cooking and preparing for a houseguest--oh, and there's the small matter of researching my new book that I must start writing at the beginning of January if I want to make my deadline.

The problem with writing two books a year is that there isn't much breathing room.

I don't find the actual writing a book in three months a strain. If I write daily I can finish a book comfortably in three months. It just becomes hard when life intervenes into that daily writing routine. I'm not allowed to be ill, for one thing. And then I get invited to speak in far-flung places and they say, "We'll pay all your expenses" and it looks too inviting to turn down--so that's another weekend out of my three months.

Then, of course there is the research which has to be done before I start. That is where I am now. My next Molly book involves Houdini and illusionists, so of course I have been reading like crazy. fortunately the stuff that they did is so incredible that I'd never have to make anything up. Not just their illusions--if you saw the movie the Illusionist, you'll remember when he grew an orange tree on stage. There really was an illusionist who did that trick!--but also their incredible feuds and jealousies. Lots of good motives for murder floating around there.

So I'm trying to bone up on Edwardian illusions at the same time as making my mince pies, and going to parties and shopping etc etc etc.

What I need is one of those things that Hermione Granger had in Harry Potter, so that she could turn back time and re-live it, thus cramming twice as much into her day. Anyone know if I'd find one on E-Bay?

Take time out to enjoy your holidays, everyone!