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WORK TITLE: Three Strikes, You’re Dead
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.elenahartwell.com/
CITY: North Bend
STATE: WA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | no2009048915 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/no2009048915 |
| HEADING: | Hartwell, Elena |
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| 053 | _0 |a PS3608.A78767 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Hartwell, Elena |
| 670 | __ |a Plays and playwrights 2008, c2008: |b p. 197 (Elena Hartwell; b. in Bogata, Columbia; raised in San Diego) |
| 670 | __ |a One dead, two to go, 2016: |b t.p. (Elena Hartwell) page 229 (her writing career began in the theater, where she also worked as a director, designer, producer, and educator; productions of her scripts have been performed around the U.S. and abroad, with some of her plays available through Indie Theater Now and New York Theatre Experience, Inc.; lives in North Bend, Washington) |
PERSONAL
Born in Bogota, Columbia.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and playwright. Also, teaches writing workshops.
WRITINGS
Also, author of many plays.
SIDELIGHTS
Born in Colombia and raised in California, Elena Hartwell is a a writer and playwright. She is the author of the “Eddie Shoes Mystery” series.
One Dead, Two to Go
In 2016, Hartwell released the first book in the series, One Dead, Two to Go. In an interview with Jessica Driscoll, contributor to the Big Thrill website, Hartwell discussed her decision to switch from plays to books. She stated: “I’ve always wanted to write a novel. … I wanted something tangible. A book on a shelf instead of just the memory of a production.” Hartwell continued: “Mysteries can be done onstage, but it’s not that common. … Whereas, mystery novels and series are huge in the literary world. I wanted that experience.” She also highlighted other differences between writing plays and novels, stating: “As a novelist I’m writing in first person or third person limited. As a playwright, every character is written from their perspective because one living breathing actor is going to inhabit each character.”
In One Dead, Two to Go, Hartwell introduces her protagonist, Eddie Shoes, whose real name is Edwina Schultz. In the interview with Driscoll, Hartwell stated: “If Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton’s P.I.) and James Rockford (The Rockford Files) had a love child, she would be Eddie Shoes.” In an interview with Terri Nolan, another contributor to the Big Thrill website, Hartwell noted: “My protagonist was born on a road trip. My husband and I were driving across Washington State and for some reason he made up the name Eddie Shoes. I thought that’s a perfect name for a female private eye. I started to think about what this character would be like. What kind of person would be named Eddie Shoes? I realized she would be quirky and a little irreverent and not take life too seriously. She would also be independent and a bit suspicious of people. So that’s where I started with her.” Since she was a teenager, Eddie has had a tense relationship with her mother, Chava. She has never been close to her father, Eduardo Zapata, who left Chava before Eddie was born. As an adult, she works for a private investigator, learning the craft. When her mentor kills himself, she opens her own business in Bellingham, Washington. One of her clients is a woman named Kendra, who suspects that her husband, who owns a car dealership, may be cheating on her. Eddie tracks the husband to a motel, where she sees him with a woman named Deirdre. Deirdre is killed soon after, and her body is found the following day. As Eddie continues to investigate, she realizes that Kendra’s story may be more complicated than what she initially shared. Also, Eddie’s ex-boyfriend, Chance Parker, has recently become a homicide detective for the Bellingham police and is also investigating Dierdre’s murder. Meanwhile, Eddie must deal with her dysfunctional parents.
A reviewer on the NW Book Lovers website asserted: “Mystery readers can rejoice at this newcomer to this genre. Hartwell is a terrific new voice in the detective novel category.” “Hartwell has created quite a winner in the unique and clever Eddie Shoes,” commented Bridget Keown on the RT Book Reviews website. Keown also noted that the book featured “a twisting, turning, fast-paced plot.”
Two Heads Are Deader Than One
Two Heads Are Deader Than One finds Eddie having taken her mother in. She has also slowly begun to reconcile with Chance. Her life becomes more complicated when her best friend from her childhood in Spokane contacts her. The friend, Dakota, is asking Eddie to bail her out of the Bellingham jail. Eddie becomes concerned when she begins learning more about Dakota’s history. Dakota is claiming to have been framed for multiple crimes. Additionally, a mysterious person has been stalking her. Reluctantly, Eddie bails her out, and Dakota begins working at the tarot card reading business next door. A woman is found dead there, and evidence begins pointing to Eddie. She must clear her name and find out the truth about Dakota.
Diana Borse offered a favorable assessment of Two Heads Are Deader Than One on the Reviewing the Evidence website. Borse suggested: “There are enough quirks in the characters and twists in the development of the story to keep things satisfyingly interesting all the way through. Elena Hartwell has conjured up a plausible protagonist and done a good job of plunking her into a setting and plot that nicely suit her.” “Eddie Shoes is an interesting, strong protagonist. The story is well written and the plot moves you forward,” wrote L. Kane on the InD’tale website.
Three Strikes, You're Dead
Eddie returns in Three Strikes, You’re Dead. This volume finds her traveling with Chava to vacation in the Cascade Mountains. There, she has a dangerous encounter with a wounded man in the woods that leaves her in the hospital. Eddie is determined to find the wounded man’s daughter, as he asked her to do. Her father unexpectedly appears, and he and Chava help with the investigation. In an interview with Cathy Perkins, writer on the Big Thrill website, Hartwell discussed creating diverse characters in the series. She stated: “My hope is that through spending time with my fictional characters, readers will come away with a little more compassion for others in the real world. … I like to remind people that we have more in common than we realize with people who don’t look like us.” Hartwell told Perkins: “I get to write about the complexities of our culture in a different way than if my characters were white and middle-class. … Eddie looks like her father—dark hair, dark skin—but her upbringing was as a white person, which is how she identifies herself.”
A Publishers Weekly critic described Three Strikes, You’re Dead as “uninspired.” The same critic concluded: “Hartwell’s appealing portrait of rural Washington compensates only in part for the rickety plot.” However, a contributor to the Long and Short Reviews website remarked: “Hartwell did a really good job of making her characters come alive in this book. You begin to know them and to enjoy them due to the well-written and humorous dialog she creates between them.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018, review of Three Strikes, You’re Dead, p. 60.
ONLINE
Big Thrill, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (March 31, 2016), Jessica Driscoll, author interview and review of One Dead, Two to Go: An Eddie Shoes Mystery; (May 31, 2017), Terri Nolan, author interview and review of Two Heads Are Deader Than One; (March 31, 2018), Cathy Perkins, author interview and review of Three Strikes, You’re Dead.
Elena Hartwell website, https://www.elenahartwell.com/ (June 18, 2018).
InD’tale, http://www.indtale.com/ (May 27, 2018), L. Kane, review of Two Heads Are Deader Than One.
Long and Short Reviews, http://www.longandshortreviews.com/ (February 5, 2018), review of Three Strikes, You’re Dead.
NW Book Lovers, https://nwbooklovers.org/ (October 26, 2017), review of One Dead, Two to Go.
Reviewing the Evidence, http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/ (March 1, 2017), Diana Borse, review of Two Heads Are Deader Than One.
RT Book Reviews, https://www.rtbookreviews.com/ (May 27, 2018), Bridget Keown, review of One Dead, Two to Go.
Elena Hartwell
After twenty years in the theater, Elena Hartwell turned her dramatic skills to fiction. Her first novel, One Dead, Two to Go introduces Eddie Shoes, private eye. Called “the most fun detective since Richard Castle stumbled into the 12th precinct,” by author Peter Clines, InD’tale Magazine stated, “this quirky combination of a mother-daughter reunion turned crime-fighting duo will captivate readers.”
In addition to her work as a novelist, Elena teaches writing workshops. She also does developmental editing, working one-on-one with authors on novels, short stories, and plays. If you’re interested in working with Elena on a project, please contact her.
When she’s not writing or coaching, her favorite place to be is at the farm with her horses, Jasper and Radar, or at her home, on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River in North Bend, Washington, with her husband, their dog, Polar, and their cats, Coal Train and Luna, aka, “the other cat upstairs.” Elena holds a B.A. from the University of San Diego, a M.Ed. from the University of Washington, Tacoma, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia.
(Photo credit: Mark Perlstein)
QUOTED: "uninspired."
"Hartwell's appealing portrait of rural Washington compensates only in part for the rickety plot."
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Print Marked Items
Three Strikes, You're Dead: An Eddie Shoes Mystery
Publishers Weekly.
265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p60+. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Three Strikes, You're Dead: An Eddie Shoes Mystery Elena Hartwell. Camel, $15.95 trade paper
(288p) ISBN 978-1-60381-727-1
Hartwell's uninspired third mystery featuring Bellingham, Wash., PI Eddie Shoes (after Two Heads Are Deader than One) takes Eddie and her mother, Chava, a casino security employee, to the Wenatchee Valley Hot Springs Resort and Spa in the Cascade Mountains for a getaway weekend. During a hike, Eddie encounters a badly injured man at a campsite. Moments later, a wildfire sweeps toward them. As they flee the flames, the man begs her to find his missing daughter. The man collapses and dies. Before she can check his pockets for identification, Eddie loses consciousness. When she wakes up in the hospital, her father, Eduardo, "mastermind of criminal enterprises and cleaner for the mob," is at her bedside. After Eddie is discharged from the hospital, she seeks to find out what happened to the dead man and locate his daughter. Chava and Eduardo assist in an investigation that leads the three to a mysterious compound and a deadly confrontation with an unlikely killer. Hartwell's appealing portrait of rural Washington compensates only in part for the rickety plot. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Three Strikes, You're Dead: An Eddie Shoes Mystery." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 60+.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615495 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=c8c18235. Accessed 27 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615495
2 of 2 5/27/18, 12:34 AM
QUOTED: "I’ve always wanted to write a novel. ... I wanted something tangible. A book on a shelf instead of just the memory of a production."
"Mysteries can be done onstage, but it’s not that common. ... Whereas, mystery novels and series are huge in the literary world. I wanted that experience."
"If Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton’s P.I.) and James Rockford (The Rockford Files) had a love child, she would be Eddie Shoes."
"As a novelist I’m writing in first person or third person limited. As a playwright, every character is written from their perspective because one living breathing actor is going to inhabit each character."
Latest Books, Mysteries
One Dead, Two to Go by Elena Hartwell
March 31, 2016 by ITW
one_deadBy Jessica Driscoll
The woman that Private Investigator Eddie Shoes photographed kissing her client’s husband ends up dead. When Eddie’s client disappears, Eddie wonders if she is being stiffed her fee, if her client is in trouble, or if she is the killer. Solving this mystery leads Eddie straight into trouble, followed quickly by her adrenaline-junkie gambling mother. To make matters even more interesting, Detective Chance Parker, Eddie’s ex, has moved to Bellingham and is the lead investigator on the homicide.
While Elena Hartwell’s novel ONE DEAD, TWO TO GO (an Eddie Shoes mystery) is her first foray into the literary world, she has been a playwright for more than twenty years. “I’ve always wanted to write a novel,” Hartwell says. “I wanted something tangible. A book on a shelf instead of just the memory of a production.”
Hartwell is not only excited about the permanency of her new novel, but about the opportunity for growth a literary work offers. “Mysteries can be done onstage, but it’s not that common,” says Hartwell. “Whereas, mystery novels and series are huge in the literary world. I wanted that experience.” Readers can look forward to at least two more novels in the Eddie Shoes series.
Hartwell’s main character was born out of a road trip conversation with her husband John “JD” Hammerly. When he mentioned the name, “I said, that would be a great name for a Private Eye.” “If Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton’s P.I.) and James Rockford (The Rockford Files) had a love child, she would be Eddie Shoes,” Hartwell says. In contrast, two other characters in the Eddie Shoes series “do have their feet in the real world.”
Detective Chance Parker is modeled after Hartwell’s horse, Second Chance. Hartwell adopted Second Chance after he was saved from the kill pen. While initially physically and psychologically “far gone,” Hartwell says, “after a year of groundwork he became a completely different horse.” Detective Parker sports many of Second Chance’s characteristics, including his brown hair with red highlights and some of his physical attributes—such as “standing on his toes, vibrating with nerves.”
“This also includes the fact that Chance has to learn to trust Eddie again just like Second Chance had to learn to trust people,” Hartwell says.
The second character, Debbie Buse, will appear in Hartwell’s follow-up novel. Hartwell auctioned off a character during a Serenity Equine Rescue and Rehabilitation fundraiser. Hartwell named her character after her donator’s mother, “who is a lover of mysteries.”
“The real Debbie Buse is a bookkeeper, and my Debbie Buse owns a bookstore called The Book Keeper,” Hartwell says. Hartwell also plans to allow readers to propose names for a “certain canine (introduced in ONE DEAD, TWO TO GO) that is she going to continue to feature in the books.” Readers can visit Hartwell’s website for more information.
While Hartwell has found the actual writing of a novel relatively similar to writing a stage play, she certainly noticed the difference from the business side. “You can write a novel with a village, writing a play requires an entire country,” says Hartwell. While writing a novel might include some beta readers, a developmental editor, and someone to proofread a final copy, writing a play requires “various actors to read the various drafts, then, if you’re lucky you get an entire theatre company to produce a workshop.” From there, the search is on for theatres to produce a full production. “Even if you have an agent, you still have to keep finding theatres to produce your work or it remains unfinished,” Hartwell says.
“Another big difference,” Hartwell notes, “is point of view. As a novelist I’m writing in first person or third person limited. As a playwright, every character is written from their perspective because one living breathing actor is going to inhabit each character and they must feel as real as the next, and have their own point of view.”
Hartwell tries to complete her writing in the morning, when her “creative juices flow best.” “I like to have a cup of coffee with me,” she says. “Today I’m eating dark chocolate covered espresso beans, that might need to become a must have!” While Hartwell writes on a computer, she prefers to edit and do notes on hard copy. “I’m a person who writes for a bit, maybe twenty minutes, then I go get coffee. Or go play with the dog, then I come back and write another twenty minutes, and I’ll go on like that for a couple hours,” says Hartwell. Her favorite place to write is in hotel rooms.
Some of Hartwell’s primary literary influences include Sue Grafton, Michael Connelly and Tony Hillerman. She also enjoys psychological mystery authors like Stephen White and Jonathan Kellerman. Hartwell says her tastes are eclectic, with an overflowing nightstand that includes some books on Forensic Psychology, several books and pamphlets about horses, and one of her all time favorite books, a signed copy of The Life We Bury.
“Keep writing and take in feedback from smart people,” Hartwell offers as advice for new writers. “Finished, in my opinion, is another misunderstood concept. Rewriting is the craft of being a writer. Finishing a first draft is a wonderful achievement, but a lot of people, especially early career writers, don’t realize how much a book can change through thoughtful rewrites.” As for feedback, “I think we have to develop skills to let us know when a piece of feedback is helpful or not and not fall into either taking everything or ignoring everything.”
Hartwell’s favorite part of being a writer is the flexibility. While she’s always “working” on a current project, when she’s not sitting at her computer, Hartwell loves to spend time with her horses and to travel. Look for Eddie to also travel to various places in future novels in the series, Hartwell says. “I love having Bellingham as Eddie’s home base, but I’m excited about her getting to travel.”
*****
Hartwell_HeadshotElena Hartwell’s writing career began back in the ‘90s with the production of her first play, Playing Chess With Joey. Since that time, she’s had multiple productions of her dramas from San Diego to Seattle and across the country from New York City to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. She’s also had her work performed internationally in parts of Canada and the U.K.
A few years ago, she turned her interests to fiction. Coffeetown Press’s mystery imprint, Camel Press, will publish her first novel, One Dead, Two to Go on April 15, 2016. Two Dead Are Better Than One will launch in 2017, and Three Dead, You’re Out in 2018.
To learn more about Elena, please visit her website.
QUOTED: "Mystery readers can rejoice at this newcomer to this genre. Hartwell is a terrific new voice in the detective novel category."
One Dead, Two to Go by Elena Hartwell
October 26, 2017
One Dead Two to GoThis book was recommended to me by a longtime friend. I trusted her judgment when she told me I would enjoy this author and book. Elena Hartwell captured my attention with One Dead, Two to Go. This is the first book in a series featuring a Jewish (but not practicing) private investigator in Bellingham in the northwest corner of the state of Washington in the United States.
“Eddie Shoes” was born Edwina Schultz in Spokane Washington. Her mother Chava was a teenager when Eddie was born. Her father Eduardo Zapata deserted his family before Eddie’s birth. In her late teens, Eddie leaves her Mom and sees her irregularly thereafter. Her father is not in her life at all.
As the story opens, Eddie is a self-employed P.I. in Bellingham, on her own since the suicide of her Seattle based mentor a couple of years earlier. Her cases are relatively simple – she specializes in divorce related opportunities. While on a case involving a male owner of a Chevrolet car dealership, she sees him leave a seedy hotel with a woman, Deirdre, who is not his wife. Good news for Eddie, bad news for her client, Kendra, the wife. The next day, the Deirdre is found dead and stuffed behind a wall in a deserted building.
Eddie feels guilty because she may have been the last one to see her alive. Kendra keeps showing up in Eddie’s life for several days and is always in tears. As the story unfolds, Eddie realizes all is not what it appears to be. Her mother, Chava, shows up looking like she had been beaten up. Then her long lost father enters the picture as a Mafioso from Las Vegas, Nevada. An incredible story of money laundering and a financial scam then unfolds. To complicate matters even more, Eddie’s former “boyfriend” shows up in Bellingham as the new homicide detective for the Bellingham police and he is the investigator in Deirdre’s death. Most of the violence is off-screen except for the final three way shootout that is more Keystone Cops than Dirty Harry.
Mystery readers can rejoice at this newcomer to this genre. Hartwell is a terrific new voice in the detective novel category whom I plan to follow. If you like Janet Evanovich, you will find this author worth reading.
GO! BUY! READ!
–Jim Harris, retired book sales rep
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Posted in One Nightstand | Tagged books set in the PNW, books set in WA, detective novels, Eddie Shoes series, Elena Hartwell, Jim Harris, mysteries, One Dead Two to Go, pageturners, WA authors | 1 Response
QUOTED: "Hartwell has created quite a winner in the unique and clever Eddie Shoes."
"a twisting, turning, fast-paced plot."
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ONE DEAD, TWO TO GO
Author(s):
Elena Hartwell
Hartwell has created quite a winner in the unique and clever Eddie Shoes, and this first case features not only a twisting, turning, fast-paced plot, but also a number of nuanced, quirky relationships, making for a story that is fun and increasingly absorbing, especially as readers learn more about this headstrong heroine’s past. Though Eddie isn’t quite cynical enough to pull off the “hard boiled detective” voice she sometimes adopts, overall, this is a clever and well-paced mystery that will have plenty of readers eager for the next installment.
Private investigator Eddie Shoes thought that her most recent assignment only required photographing a client’s philandering husband. But when his mistress turns up murdered, Eddie realizes this case is a part of something much more dangerous. She’s used to working alone, but Eddie has to admit that having her thrill-seeking mother as an impromptu assistant is helpful in a case this twisted, especially when Eddie’s old flame turns up as the lead investigator. But as her life gets more confusing, Eddie knows that any kind of distraction in this case could prove deadly. (CAMEL, Apr., 240 pp., $14.95)
Reviewed by:
Bridget Keown
QUOTED: "Hartwell did a really good job of making her characters come alive in this book. You begin to know them and to enjoy them due to the well-written and humorous dialog she creates between them."
You are here: Home / Reviews / Mystery/Suspense / Three Strikes You’re Dead by Elena Hartwell
Three Strikes You’re Dead by Elena Hartwell
February 5, 2018 By completedreviews Leave a Comment
Three Strikes You’re Dead by Elena Hartwell
Publisher: Camel Press
Genre: Contemporary, Suspense/Mystery
Length: Full length (290 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Snowdrop
Private investigator Eddie Shoes heads to a resort outside Leavenworth, Washington, for a mother-daughter getaway weekend. Eddie’s mother Chava wants to celebrate her new job at a casino by footing the bill for the two of them, and who is Eddie to say no?
On the first morning, Eddie goes on an easy solo hike, and a few hours later, stumbles upon a makeshift campsite and a gravely injured man. A forest fire breaks out and she struggles to save him before the flames overcome them both. Before succumbing to his injuries, the man hands her a valuable rosary. He tells her his daughter is missing and begs for her help. Is Eddie now working for a dead man?
Barely escaping the fire, Eddie wakes in the hospital to find both her parents have arrived on the scene. Will Eddie’s card-counting mother and mob-connected father help or hinder the investigation? The police search in vain for a body. How will Eddie find the missing girl with only Eddie’s memory of the man’s face and a photo of his daughter to go on?
“Being a grown-up wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
That’s what Eddie Shoes, P.I., was thinking waking up in the hospital bed looking up at her two newly discovered parents. It’s sort of like everyone is getting to know one another in this book and it makes for a very entertaining story. Eddie and her parents create a rather odd trio of investigators. Having been on her own for a long, long time, she’s used to working on her own and making her own decisions. For that matter, the same seems to be true of each of her parents. This is a good plot with an ending I am sure you can’t predict.
Hartwell did a really good job of making her characters come alive in this book. You begin to know them and to enjoy them due to the well-written and humorous dialog she creates between them. Eddie (Edwina) Shoes is an interesting female private investigator and one tough cookie. She’s kind of stuck between learning to know newly met or finally found parents, wanting to please them and yet wanting to be herself. Utilizing a triangle of characters to help with an impromptu investigation, the author creates a lot of funny moments.
This one was hard for me to put down. I really enjoyed it. This is the third “Eddie Shoes Mystery” that Hartwell has written. Hope there are more to come.
Related
Two Heads Are Deader Than One by Elena HartwellMay 22, 2017In "Mystery/Suspense"
Between Friends by Lolita LopezJanuary 2, 2012In "Contemp"
A Rose is a Rose by Jet MyklesMarch 15, 2011In "Contemp"
Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: Camel Press, Contemporary, Four Stars, Full Length, Mystery/Suspense, Snowdrop
QUOTED: "My hope is that through spending time with my fictional characters, readers will come away with a little more compassion for others in the real world." ... I like to remind people that we have more in common than we realize with people who don’t look like us."
"I get to write about the complexities of our culture in a different way than if my characters were white and middle-class. ... Eddie looks like her father—dark hair, dark skin—but her upbringing was as a white person, which is how she identifies herself."
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Three Strikes, You’re Dead by Elena Hartwell
2 months ago by Cathy Perkins
By Cathy Perkins
On a mother-daughter getaway weekend, PI Edwina Schultz, better known as Eddie Shoes, stumbles upon a gravely injured man. Before he dies, the man begs her to find his missing daughter. But how will Eddie find the girl with nothing but her memory of the dead man’s face and a photo of his daughter to go on?
THREE STRIKES, YOU’RE DEAD is the third installment in playwright-turned-novelist Elena Hartwell’s Eddie Shoes private investigator series. Hartwell’s fast-paced mysteries have garnered praise from the likes of Paradox Unbound author Peter Clines, who called Eddie “the most fun detective since Richard Castle stumbled into the 12th precinct,” and InD’tale Magazine, which said, “This quirky combination of a mother-daughter reunion turned crime-fighting duo will captivate readers.” The Big Thrill caught up with Hartwell for a wide-ranging discussion about characters, the differences between mystery and suspense, and of course, her latest novel.
Asked about handling the backstory from the earlier novels, Hartwell says, “It’s a balancing act. Each novel needs to be a standalone and simultaneously, a continuation… [The challenge is] how to drop just enough information to pique the interest for a reader about what has happened in the past, without giving anything away.” For the most part, Hartwell focuses on events still impacting her characters. “I consider how what happened in the last book would still be in their thoughts or actions, and use that to bring in a little from the earlier books.”
Hartwell talks a lot about characters, which seem to be her forte. “I’ve always been intrigued by human interactions and relationships,” she says. “Why people do what they do is as interesting to me as what they do.” Starting with an idea about a character, who that person is, and what they’re doing, Hartwell develops a plot driven by what these specific people would do in any given moment.
Her unique protagonists, a mother/daughter crime fighting team, have created a special niche for Hartwell. “I like to joke that my PI, Eddie Shoes, is the love child of Kinsey Millhone and James Rockford [of The Rockford Files],” she says. “[James’ father] Rocky didn’t show up all the time, but that dynamic stuck with me. There was something funny to me about a parent wanting to participate in the child’s work life rather than the other way around. … Chava, Eddie’s mother, is my age. Eddie is a lot younger, so it allows me to have characters with the perspective of both my current and my former self. I understand [their personal journeys] on a visceral level because I’ve experienced them.”
Complex family dynamics, then, are a big part of this series. The family has evolved over the course of three novels, as more of their background and relationships are revealed in each installment. Eddie, a rules-follower, is the most cautious member of the family. Chava’s in the middle, a fun-loving risk-taker. Eddie’s mob-connected father, Eduardo, is at the far end of the spectrum—someone who lives outside the normal boundaries of society. “That continuum lets me play with going outside the law without my protagonist always having to be the one who crosses the line,” says Hartwell.
While Eddie drives the stories, Hartwell notes that her character is very aware of how much influence her parents have on her. “I believe in our twenties, we’re defining our work path,” says Hartwell. “In our thirties, we’re defining ourselves. In our forties, we’re defining our place in the larger world.” Chava considers the larger picture and how she fits, which is why she’s come back to re-engage with her daughter. Eduardo is more at peace with who he is and what the world is like. Extremely practical, he’s come full circle. Though he wasn’t around for Eddie’s childhood, he’s defining what he wants to do with the second half of his life and where being a father fits into it.
Having such diverse characters allows Hartwell’s themes to emerge naturally. “My hope is that through spending time with my fictional characters, readers will come away with a little more compassion for others in the real world,” she says. “I like to remind people that we have more in common than we realize with people who don’t look like us.”
Hartwell says Eddie’s half-Jewish, half-Latina heritage gives her a chance to explore cultural issues from different perspectives. “I get to write about the complexities of our culture in a different way than if my characters were white and middle-class,” she says. “Eddie looks like her father—dark hair, dark skin—but her upbringing was as a white person, which is how she identifies herself.”
She continues, “[During grad school,] we were having a discussion on race and a student surprised us by stating he saw himself as white.” The student, Hartwell explains, was Hispanic, but he was born in the U.S. to a Caucasian mother and lived in a predominantly Anglo community. “That moment stuck with me—how what people expect from us isn’t always how we feel,” she says. “While I can’t understand what it is to be brown-skinned or Jewish in a community that can be cruel to both, I can understand what it feels like to be judged.”
But Hartwell believes that racial and ethnic differences are only part of the picture. “Many parts of the human experience are universal,” she says. “Fears about aging. Trying to find love. Wanting our family members to be safe and healthy. Searching for meaning. Working toward justice. Those things can be experienced regardless of a person’s race. Simultaneously, what we look like on the outside impacts how people treat us, so some of the ‘universal experiences’ have different parameters based on our race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.” She hopes readers relate to and connect with the characters so when something negative happens to them, the reader feels that pain along with the character. “My hope is for readers to walk a few miles in my characters’ shoes and come out at the other end with the realization that the characters represented them, even if they aren’t identical.”
We wrapped with a discussion about whether mysteries need an element of suspense these days rather than focusing on the puzzle-story. Hartwell’s take is, “while we’re reading, we enjoy the twists in a plot. We love to try to solve the crime alongside the characters. But what brings us back to a series is the characters. We want to relate to them and what they’re going through.”
Hartwell urges writers to remember that a genuine, honest character—regardless of their gender, ethnicity, or any other characteristic that might outwardly define them—represents humanity. “If they are done well, any character can represent an aspect of us,” she says. “That might be how we’d react to danger or how we feel in a relationship or as a parent. … Suspense forces us to root for a character in a way solving a straight puzzle doesn’t.”
*****
After years in the theater, Elena Hartwell turned her dramatic skills to fiction. She writes the Eddie Shoes Mystery series. One Dead, Two to Go received four nominations for “best mystery of 2016.” Two Heads are Deader Than One launched April 15, 2017. InD’Tale’s five-star review: “…a delightful heroine in a story that promises pleasant romance and a hint of danger with a twist of an ending.” She can usually be found in the tiny town of North Bend, WA, with her hubby, their dog, two horses, and trio of cats.
To learn more about Elena, please visit her website.
Photography credit: Mark Perlstein
QUOTED: "My protagonist was born on a road trip. My husband and I were driving across Washington State and for some reason he made up the name Eddie Shoes. I thought that’s a perfect name for a female private eye. I started to think about what this character would be like. What kind of person would be named Eddie Shoes? I realized she would be quirky and a little irreverent and not take life too seriously. She would also be independent and a bit suspicious of people. So that’s where I started with her."
Latest Books, Mysteries
Two Heads Are Deader Than One by Elena Hartwell
May 31, 2017 by Terri Nolan
By Terri Nolan
Elena Hartwell is a novelist, a playwright, and a teacher. A renaissance woman. Her recent novel, TWO HEADS ARE DEADER THAN ONE, features private investigator Eddie Shoes, and is the second in the series.
Hartwell says if Kinsey Millhone and James Rockford had a love child, it would be Eddie Shoes. As homage to the noir private detective, Hartwell has taken that classic character—the hard bitten, loner, male PI—and, first, turned him into a woman who’s not so much hard bitten as she is practical and logical, and, second, not so much a loner as she is a person who was once on her own and now finds herself surrounded by friends and family. Eddie is a new classic.
TWO HEADS ARE DEADER THAN ONE begins with a plea for bail money from Eddie’s high school friend. Eddie’s decision to free her friend sets the stage for more trouble than she imagined. Humor brackets the serious aspects of the human experience explored in the novel. Readers will be thrilled and amused at the same time.
Introduce us to your protagonist. How was she “born”?
My protagonist was born on a road trip. My husband and I were driving across Washington State and for some reason he made up the name Eddie Shoes. I thought that’s a perfect name for a female private eye. I started to think about what this character would be like. What kind of person would be named Eddie Shoes? I realized she would be quirky and a little irreverent and not take life too seriously. She would also be independent and a bit suspicious of people. So that’s where I started with her.
If Eddie were attending a conference what would her fifty word bio be?
Eddie dropped out of high school in Spokane. After traveling up and down the West Coast she settled in Seattle and worked for a private investigator. During that time she earned her own PI license. After her mentor died she relocated to Bellingham, where she currently owns her own agency.
Tell us about your writing process. Do you outline? Are you a pantser? Where do you write?
I prefer organic to pantser. I spend a lot of time mulling over who the characters are and what they’re doing. When I do sit down to write, I don’t have a physical outline, but I have a sense of where I’m going. I know how things start and how they end, and I write those two sections then go back and figure out what happens in the middle. Then I start through a long series of rewrites, during which I hone my plot, figure out the subplots and connection between characters, and fill in the missing places.
I do most of my writing at my little desk in my little writing room in my house on the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River. I travel a lot for the series; conferences, book events, fairs. I teach workshops, and I love to write in hotel rooms. When I’m home there are so many things vying for my attention. When I’m in a hotel, outside of the time I’m actually at the event, I can focus on writing with no distractions.
You have a Ph.D. in dramatic theory and criticism. What is that exactly and what do you do with such a degree?
Basically, it’s a theater degree, with an overview of theater practices, but an inclusion of theory in the writing, production, and performance of theater, including theater history, and an understanding of how to look critically at a text or performance and analyze how it impacts the culture it’s embedded in.
Think of it as a way to understand theater as it is intertwined with people who create, watch, and sometimes fight it. I thought I was going to be a full-time tenured professor at a college, and write on the side, so that prompted the degree. Turned out that was not what I want to do with my life. I am lucky in that I’d always been writing and finally got to pursue the goal of being a full-time writer with teaching on the side. It’s a much better fit.
We are familiar with how a novel is published. How does one publish a play?
For a novelist, publishing is the career. For a playwright, productions are the majority of the career. Most publishers of playscripts won’t even consider publishing a play if it hasn’t had a production.
There are various ways to get a play into production. The playwright writes the script then gets together with some readers to hear it out loud. The playwright does rewrites and looks for a rehearsed reading in front of an audience. The playwright goes through the rehearsal hearing and gets thoughts and feedback from the director, actors, and audience. The next step might be what’s called a workshop production. This can range from scripts in hand, but with blocking and some minimal costumes/set pieces/lights, all the way up to a performance off-book (no scripts in the actors’ hands), like a mini-production.
After that, a playwright looks for a full production: a thre-to-five-week rehearsal schedule, a director with a concept, designers creating sets, lights, costumes, props, publicity, and inclusion in a theater’s mainstage production calendar. Armed with brilliant reviews, the playwright continues to market the play to additional theaters for future productions, after which a publication might happen.
It’s a tricky business to break in to, much harder than finding a publisher or literary agent. There are very few agents in the U.S. who represent play scripts. The catch-22 for playwrights is that to get into the majority of the large professional theaters you have to have an agent. An agent will typically only be interested in playwrights with a proven track record. Most playwrights are always networking and submitting to get their work produced. Scripts usually find their way on to a stage because the playwright has submitted them.
Elena, it was a pleasure meeting you. Thank you for spending time with us at The Big Thrill.
*****
Elena Hartwell spent years in the theater before turning her dramatic skills to fiction. She writes the Eddie Shoes Mystery Series. One Dead, Two to Go, Two Heads Are Deader Than One, and Three Strikes, You’re Dead (launching April 15, 2018). According to Peter Clines, Eddie Shoes is “the most fun detective since Richard Castle stumbled into the 12th precinct.”
Elena lives in Twin Peaks, called North Bend, Washington in the real world. The perfect place for a writer, especially one who kills people for a living.
To learn more about Elena, please visit her website.
Terri Nolan
Terri Nolan began her writing career as a newspaper and radio journalist. She has a degree in Radio/Television from the University of Texas at Arlington and is a freelance reporter. She is the author of three thrillers featuring investigative journalist Birdie Keane. The critically acclaimed and award nominated trilogy includes the novels BURDEN OF TRUTH, GLASS HOUSES, BLUE BIRD, and the short story HOBO JOE. Please visit her at www.terrinolan.com
No
QUOTED: "There are enough quirks in the characters and twists in the development of the story to keep things satisfyingly interesting all the way through. Elena Hartwell has conjured up a plausible protagonist and done a good job of plunking her into a setting and plot that nicely suit her."
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TWO HEADS ARE DEADER THAN ONE
by Elena Hartwell
Camel Press, April 2017
286 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 1603813136
Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada
No longer entirely on her own, private detective Eddie Shoes is sharing her home in Bellingham, Washington with her mother Chava who is temporarily between places to gamble for reasons mostly left unsaid, and an enormous dog named Franklin who may be her closest friend. Left behind are Eddie's unhappy childhood in Spokane and all of the relationships she had there, her long absent Mexican father, and a pretty terrific lover she abandoned when things went sour in her early career in Seattle and she fled to her present location.
Somehow the lover, a homicide detective named Chance Parker, has gotten an assignment in Bellingham and they have made tentative contact again. Although her new life is reasonably ordered and stable, Eddie is still more fragile than not and a phone call from the woman who was her best friend through school in Spokane is not very welcome. Dakota has somehow tracked down Eddie and managed to land herself in the Bellingham jail and concluded that Eddie will save her. Nothing Eddie quickly learns about Dakota's life since they last saw each other makes her want to have anything to do with the woman – Dakota has served a term in prison ("unjustly"), has a spooky stalker, and is at least being "framed" now for something else she claims she didn't do. However, old relationships have long tentacles and Eddie is guilted into posting a $1,000.00 bond to get Dakota out of jail and promising to look into the stalker situation for her.
The little business next door to Eddie's office, a tarot card reading establishment which is probably a house of prostitution, is where Dakota claims to have landed a temporary job while waiting for her fabulous position as a tv personality to open up. Unfortunately, the next time Eddie heads to her office, that business is deserted except for a gruesome dead body collecting flies. Ex-lover Parker is the police investigator and one of Eddie's former business cards is found on the body.
In fact, these cards – apparently fished out of the dumpster out back – start showing up at all kinds of unpleasant scenes and Eddie finds herself on the verge of being a prime suspect. Dakota lies and lies to her and then disappears entirely and while Eddie works at helping out the police department, she also does a ton of her own sleuthing in order to get herself off the hook.
Chava, the mother, is a hoot and Franklin is about as loyal and intelligent as a big dog can be. Chance, the now maybe lover, is attractive and the mystery is indeed mysterious pretty much up until the end.
There are enough quirks in the characters and twists in the development of the story to keep things satisfyingly interesting all the way through. Elena Hartwell has conjured up a plausible protagonist and done a good job of plunking her into a setting and plot that nicely suit her.
§ Diana Borse is retired from teaching English at Texas A&M University-Kingsville and savoring the chance to read as much as she always wanted to.
Reviewed by Diana Borse, March 2017
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QUOTED: "Eddie Shoes is an interesting, strong protagonist. The story is well written and the plot moves you forward."
Two Heads Are Deader Than One
Elena
Hartwell
Genre:
Mystery
https://www.amazon.com/Heads-Deader-Eddie-Shoes-Mystery/dp/1603813136?SubscriptionId=AKIAJUNAWUOLIRZOFMWQ&tag=intama-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1603813136
Private Investigator (Eddie) Shoes and her old friend Dakota haven't seen each other since high school when a horrific accident changed both their lives. Eddie dropped out of school and left town, creating a new life for herself. Nearly ten years later, Dakota reappears, calling from Bellingham jail and asking Eddie for help. She needs someone to bail her out and find the person stalking her. After Dakota is released, however, she disappears again, leaving Eddie with no clues other than the body in the office next door! The key to solving the mystery between Dakota and Eddie lies in the past. Eddie is now a person of interest, with her detective ex-boyfriend in pursuit. Eddie is forced to confront the past, and face her demons.
Eddie Shoes is an interesting, strong protagonist. The story is well written and the plot moves you forward. The author’s dialogue pulls the reader in while the scenes dump one straight into the belly of the whale, and directly into the story. The characters are likeable and believable and Chava, Eddie's card-dealing mom, is especially charming. It's impossible not to root for them all through the story. Author Elena Hartwell showcases a delightful heroine in a story that promises pleasant romance and a hint of danger with a twist of an ending. This will keeps one from ever putting this book down!
L. Kane