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WORK TITLE: The Detective’s Garden
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.janycestefan-cole.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
Lives in Brooklyn, NY, and Freedom, NH. * https://www.authorsguild.net/services/members/43
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2011079179
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2011079179
HEADING:
Stefan-Cole, Janyce
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__ |a Hollywood Boulevard, c2012: |b ECIP t.p. (Janyce Stefan-Cole) data view (She lives in Brooklyn and New Hampshire. This is her first novel.)
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__ |a rg14
PERSONAL
Married; husband’s name Brandon Cole (a filmmaker).
EDUCATION:Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and visual artist. WG News + Arts, writer; FREEwilliamsburg.com, book editor; FLYPmedi, contributing writer.
AWARDS:Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, fellow.
WRITINGS
Contributor to literary media, including the Healing Muse and Knock Literary Arts Magazine.
Contributor to anthologies, including Dick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Had One?, edited by Fiona Giles, Villard, 1997, and Being Human: The Call of the Wild, edited by Gregory F. Tague, Editions Bibliothekos, 2012.
SIDELIGHTS
Janyce Stefan-Cole writes both fiction and essays and is a freelance journalist. She is a writer for WG News + Arts, a book editor at FREEwilliamsburg.com, and a contributing writer for FLYPmedi. She has published novels and contributed to the Healing Muse, Knock Literary Arts Magazine, and the anthologies Being Human: The Call of the Wild and Dick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Had One?
Released in 2012, Hollywood Boulevard is Stefan-Cole’s debut novel, which was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. In the story, movie star Ardennes Thrush quits her career at the height of her fame. She is living at the Hotel Muse in Hollywood, still upset over her devastating divorce. While she sneaks peeks at the ex-stripper in the apartment next door, she suspects that someone is stalking her. When she receives a bouquet of dead roses, she decides to call the cops. The handsome detective who arrives is better at hanky-panky than conducting an investigation. But soon both of them need to get serious when the stalker ups the ante. Booklist contributor Stephanie Zvirin characterized the story as “a little bit quirky, a little bit noir, and a little bit too coincidental,” but still found Hollywood Boulevard to be “an intriguing crime novel with a pitch-perfect narration” for its Hollywood setting.
Stefan-Cole’s next novel is The Detective’s Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder, set in Brooklyn in 1995. Retired New York police detective Emil Milosec is still grieving over his deceased wife, Elena, and is haunted by memories of a dark encounter long ago in his home country of Slovenia. A near recluse, he shies away from his neighbors, finding joy only in tending his garden, which Elena had loved. But even that is shattered when he discovers a woman’s severed finger in a hole he’s digging. Rather than tell the police, he decides to investigate on his own, suspecting that his drunken neighbor, Franco Montoya, is somehow linked to the finger. Through Emil’s plight, Stefan-Cole offers philosophical musings and commentary on gentrification.
In a review in ForeWord, J.G. Stinson remarked: “Into a story with themes of death, grief, retirement, and bottled-up emotions, Stefan-Cole weaves interesting elements, like Emil’s atheism and his obsession with the Garden of Eden story.” Finding the story’s pace leisurely yet convoluted and the plot twists surprising, a writer for Publishers Weekly said: “Crime fans can delight in mulling over all angles with Emil.” According to a Kirkus Reviews contributor, Stefan-Cole “has produced a parable that’s less a detective story than a story about a detective—dreamlike, ruminative, and filled with questions impossible to answer.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2012, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Hollywood Boulevard.
ForeWord, August 26, 2016, J.G. Stinson, review of The Detective’s Garden.
Publishers Weekly, July 25, 2016, review of The Detective’s Garden, p. 50.
Publishers Weekly, December 16, 1996, review of Dick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Had One?, p. 51.
ONLINE
Authors Guild Web site, https://www.authorsguild.net/ (May 22, 2017), profile.
Janyce Stefan-Cole Home Page, http://www.janycestefan-cole.com/ (May 22, 2017).
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (June 21, 2016), review of The Detective’s Garden.
New Pages, https://www.newpages.com/ (September 1, 2016), Valerie Wieland, review of The Detective’s Garden.
New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (April 10, 2012), Martin A. David, review of Hollywood Boulevard.
Works
Hollywood Boulevard
At once a noir novel and a psychological thriller about the conflicting emotions of a beautiful, modern woman trapped in a celebrity she never understood, Hollywood Boulevard is the track of a very real emotional journey. With a deceptively simple style, the novel takes a compassionate look at this complicated character.
Being Human: Call of the Wild
Why do we kill certain creatures while nurturing others? When do we draw the line between protecting our property and letting other creatures live and thrive? Twelve authors and fifteen stories on the nature of being human in both the natural environment and human-made world constitute this stimulating book.
Dick for a Day
Girls: What would you do if you had one?
JANYCE STEFAN-COLE
Janyce Stefan-Cole is the author of the novels, THE DETECTIVE'S GARDEN: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder; Unbridled Books, and HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD; Unbridled Books.
An occasional freelance journalist, before committing solely to writing, Janyce was a visual artist.
WORKS
Thedetectivesgardencover
The Detective's Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murderr
“It seemed to Emil that all gain in life was measured by loss.” Brooklyn, 1995: hipsters have arrived, developers smell blood and a housing bubble threatens to turn a sleepy semi-industrial waterfront into towers of glass and steel. Ex homicide Detective Emil Milosec figures he’ll be untroubled in his lush garden, alone with his pension and his memories. But a grim discovery in the pepper patch one hot June morning leads him down a path that disrupts those memories, suggesting his late wife, the Trieste beauty Elena Morandi, was not who he thought she was when he found her all those years ago in post-war Slovenia.
A heat wave, a gun, a smattering of science and a bit of Shakespeare, a half forgotten murder, and the nagging twists of Old Testament morality yield The Detective’s Garden, an urban tangle, both noirish and contemplative.
September 12, 2016
Hollywood Boulevard
2012
PRESS AND MEDIA MENTIONS
• “Stefan-Cole has produced a parable that's less a detective story than a story about a detective—dreamlike, ruminative, and filled with questions impossible to answer." Kirkus Reviews • “The Detective’s Garden is an engrossing journey into one man’s heart.” –Foreword Reviews • “Crime fans can delight in mulling over all the angles with Emil as the plot spirals toward a truly surprising revelation.” -Publishers Weekly
RedCube Productions Short: Hollywood Boulevard, featuring Mark Boone Junior and Susan Jeimes
4/12/17, 11(43 PM
Print Marked Items
The Detective's Garden; A Love Story and Meditation on Murder
J.G. Stinson
ForeWord.
(Aug. 26, 2016): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 ForeWord http://www.forewordmagazine.com
Full Text:
Janyce Stefan-Cole; THE DETECTIVE'S GARDEN; Unbridled Books (Fiction: Mystery) 18.00 ISBN: 9781609531331
Byline: J.G. Stinson
The Detective's Garden is an engrossing journey into one man's heart.
The Detective's Garden is the story of Emil Milosec, an immigrant living in Brooklyn and grieving for his wife, Elena. He maintains her garden because it brings him good memories and seems to embody Elena's presence.
After World War II, Emil met Elena in Slovenia, where he was searching for any surviving family members. Elena returned with him to New York, where they established a home, with a garden that Elena treasured, and that Emil came to love.
But Emil's reminiscing is interrupted after he fires two rounds from his service pistol in a fit of jealous rage, following his neighbor's shared memories of chatting with Elena. Digging up the fired shells, he finds a finger, wearing a ring that looks very much like one that belonged to Elena, in his pepper patch. Elena, Emil knows, wasn't missing any fingers when she was buried.
Into a story with themes of death, grief, retirement, and bottled-up emotions, Stefan-Cole weaves interesting elements, like Emil's atheism and his obsession with the Garden of Eden story, which contributes both to his lack of belief and to his love of gardening.
Emil discovers that Elena was hiding a family secret, one that poses a threat to him even after her death, and this becomes a potent vehicle for propelling the story forward. The novel has a brilliantly executed structure that ties its beginning to its conclusion, with evident connections throughout, though the final pieces are well hidden until the end.
The novel fulfills its role as a love story with elements of murder. The love that Emil and Elena had for each other is palpable, and Emil's reactions to discovering the lone finger are infused with affection. The question of whether Emil will bend the law to fit his grief is answered with subtlety, logic, and great compassion for the character.
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The Detective's Garden is an engrossing journey into one man's heart, making it an unusual and charming mystery novel.
J.G. Stinson
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Stinson, J.G. "The Detective's Garden; A Love Story and Meditation on Murder." ForeWord, 26 Aug. 2016.
PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA461870490&it=r&asid=278ec1f542f987d842a9dcf4c2cbcfa9. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A461870490
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The Detective's Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder
Publishers Weekly.
263.30 (July 25, 2016): p50. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Detective's Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder
Janyce Stefan-Cole. Unbridled, $18 trade paper (384p) ISBN 978-1-60953-133-1
Set in 1995, this leisurely yet convoluted thriller from Stefan-Cole (Hollywood Boulevard) opens with the philosophical musings of retired police detective Emil Milosec as he sits alone one June night in the garden of his Brooklyn house. He ponders the Garden of Eden and original sin ("Did Adam perform--not too fast, not too slow? Did Eve respond with all she had?"). The garden was a passion of Emil's late wife, Elena, for whom he still grieves. When a severed finger turns up in the garden, Emil's suspicions fall on his usually drunken neighbor, Franco Montoya. Clues hint at a shadowy real estate plot as gentrification sweeps into the neighborhood. Or could the finger have something to do with Emil's long ago trip to Slovenia, the old country, where he met Elena? Crime fans can delight in mulling over all angles with Emil as the plot spirals toward a truly surprising revelation. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Detective's Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder." Publishers Weekly, 25 July 2016, p. 50.
PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460285479&it=r&asid=c695d90aac5539188e7a4a81df5c52c7. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460285479
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Hollywood Boulevard
Stephanie Zvirin
Booklist.
108.14 (Mar. 15, 2012): p23. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2012 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Hollywood Boulevard.
By Janyce Stefan-Cole.
Apr. 2012. 352p. Unbridled, $25.95 (9781609530754).
Ardennes Thrush is adrift. Her failed marriage still haunts her; her decision to leave acting at the height of her career is a puzzle even to herself; and her second husband, a brilliant director, is totally wrapped up in his latest Hollywood project. That leaves Ardennes on her own, rehashing her past; taking solitary walks around the grounds of Hotel Muse, where the movie crew lives; and watching her neighbors, the most eccentric of which is the nosy old ex- stripper in the apartment next door. A string of odd phone calls, the unwanted attentions of a wannabe actor, and a bouquet of dead roses delivered to her door convince Ardennes to call the cops, but the hunky detective who investigates is slightly better at hanky-panky than solving crime. A little bit quirky, a little bit noir, and a little bit too coincidental, this is nevertheless an intriguing crime novel with a pitch-perfect narration that sucks you right into the peculiar business that makes Hollywood what it is--and the equally peculiar business of finding one's muse.-- Stephanie Zvirin
Zvirin, Stephanie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zvirin, Stephanie. "Hollywood Boulevard." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2012, p. 23. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA284551728&it=r&asid=720064e4baf32ca10d3c4052a58a3e5e. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A284551728
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Lost in paradise
Janyce Stefan-Cole
American Book Review.
26.5 (July-August 2005): p14. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Stefan-Cole, Janyce. "Lost in paradise." American Book Review, July-Aug. 2005, p. 14+. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA134651184&it=r&asid=e2848cfa4c567ce42301d11723e07049. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A134651184
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Dick for a Day: What Would You Do if You Had One?
Publishers Weekly.
243.51 (Dec. 16, 1996): p51. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1996 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
What Would You Do If You Had One? Edited by Fiona Giles. Villard, $12.95 paper (304p) ISBN 0-679-77353-3
Giles plays out a smart premise--ask various famous and less-famous women what they would do if endowed with male genitals for 24 hours--and gets surprisingly flaccid results. There are some funny one-liners (Terry McMillan: "First of all, I'd want to have a big one--and I'd show everybody"). But most of the humor here comes not from inventive use of the equipment but from quirky takes on the question. In a hilarious poem, Senator Sin imagines that by calling the number "1-800-YOR-DICK" she participates in a study in which women are given penises and then report the results (with the poignant coda, "A few/never returned/their dicks,/moved away/from family/and friends,/and are assumed/to be passing/as men."). Lisa Hill goes further and creates a world where women routinely have "the op" in order to become hermaphrodites. Rather than turning more macho, these newly endowed women head off to penis parlors where they subject their penises to painful waxing and other beauty treatments. Entries with a sexual angle, like Germaine Greer's plan to have sex with herself if length permits, are less successful and become pedestrian because there are so many of them. Like Janyce Stefan-Cole, many of the women writing here imagine that merely possessing male genitals would make them unable to resist sexual urges for women ("They were beautiful; even the plain ones held hope and destiny between their legs."). Others, however, do not imagine the genitals attached to their bodies at all, but akin to animated sex toys. Mary Mackey, for example, conjures up a penis that "hovered over me, still wearing his cunning little black leather chaps." Perhaps the unimaginative results of this volume indicate that women really do spend as little time thinking about the thing as they claim. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Dick for a Day: What Would You Do if You Had One?" Publishers Weekly, 16 Dec. 1996, p. 51. PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA18953675&it=r&asid=3ad35c7425d7c2830c283915bd9f5e5d. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18953675
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THE DETECTIVE'S GARDEN
by Janyce Stefan-Cole
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Half a lifetime after a formative encounter with evil on a dark street in Ljubljana, Slovenia, a retired New York cop sees it bookend his life when it catches up with him.
Emil Milosec has left almost everything behind. He left his homeland, which was disintegrating around him, shortly after mounting a brisk and uncharacteristic counterattack on an anonymous man who threatened him with a gun. He’s retired from the NYPD’s 10th Precinct, a place where he never seemed to make much of an impression despite his formidable detective skills. He’s buried Elena Morandi, the beloved wife he lost to cancer two years ago. He’s so disconnected from his Brooklyn landlord, Franco Montoya, and neighbors like pathologist Paulien Vandervell and restaurant manager CeeCee Noily that he might as well be living in solitary confinement. Just about the only thing left that he truly prizes is his garden, a legacy of Elena’s loving ministrations. Now even that’s poisoned by his discovery of a severed woman’s pinky in a hole he’s digging. And Emil proceeds to dig himself into an even deeper hole by his failure to share his discovery with the police, in the person of his unresponsive ex-colleague Bernie Bracco, and by his hounding of Dr. Vandervell, whose own pinky is seriously injured but obviously intact beneath the bandage he insists she remove. Given the misfit between Emil’s disturbing discovery and his congenital inability to keep his mind focused on the present, readers are well-advised not to hold their breath waiting for a revelation that will tie up every loose end.
Stefan-Cole (Hollywood Boulevard, 2012) has produced a parable that’s less a detective story than a story about a detective—dreamlike, ruminative, and filled with questions impossible to answer.
Pub Date: Sept. 12th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-609-53133-1
Page count: 320pp
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Review Posted Online: June 21st, 2016
The Detective’s Garden
A Love Story and Meditation on Murder
Image
Fiction
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Unbridled Books September 2016 ISBN-13: 978-1-60953-133-1 Paperback 384pp $18.00 Valerie Wieland
Prowl around Brooklyn back in 1995 and you’ll catch retired homicide detective Emil Milosec digging in his garden—well, actually, his late wife’s garden. What he unearths is a woman’s pinkie finger and an opal ring. The ring belonged to his wife. The finger didn’t. Such is the premise for Janyce Stefan-Cole’s novel, The Detective’s Garden: A Love Story and Meditation on Murder.
In this book, you’ll meet a strange assortment of neighbors, pretty much all the nosey type. There’s lazy Franco, who drinks a lot and is by turns annoying or helpful; Loretta the flirt; and Paulien, who may not be the person she appears to be. There’s also a mysterious prowler nicknamed Spider and a murdered cat. Flashbacks of Emil’s wife Elena and of his late partner Mike move the story along.
Though Emil is 58 and has been retired for some time, he can’t put the garden discovery out of his mind. “‘No,’ he said aloud, sloughing off a gnawing uneasiness. He no longer had to pay attention to every passing cue. But how does a guy stop being a cop?” and later, he found himself once again “staring into the jaundiced eye of a crime.”
He begins to wonder if the woman missing the finger is still alive. Who buried it in his garden, and why is Elena’s ring with it? “There was one solid clue he didn’t have to argue with: His house had been entered, Elena’s lingerie handled, her ring taken and placed on a severed female finger.”
Since retirement, Emil has let lapse the carry permit for his Smith & Wesson .38 Special, he has a badge he hasn’t turned in, and he continues his investigation covertly. It leads him to the morgue where he has Franco impersonate a detective while looking for a cadaver with a missing finger. All of Emil’s sleuthing arouses the suspicions of police detective Bernie Bracco, who Emil had once mentored.
Throughout the novel, Stefan-Cole has a winning way with dialogue. For example, Emil thinks back to when Elena told him that Franco recited poems to her in Spanish, so now Emil says to Franco:
“Recite me some poetry, Franco.”
“Poetry?”
“If you can. Or sing me a song.”
“No,” he muttered. “Am I Falstaff?”
“What did you say?”
“I am no monkey act. You have the wrong man. I am going for beer, una cerveza; you want one?”
Back when Elena was diagnosed with cancer, she started writing a letter a day to Emil, expecting him to read the day’s letter each night. The bulk of the 73 letters remained unread until two years after her death. Big mistake. They reveal things to him about their relationship and zoom in on a secret crime. Emil then realizes she must have been puzzled and hurt when the daily letters elicited no reaction from him. Imagine writing the following and getting no response:
My father did something, a bad thing, during the war. He was not completely to blame, there were circumstances. Sometimes there are tests, terrible tests, in life and the answer is not clear [ . . . ] But this trouble began after the war, [ . . . ] not the bombs and guns and noise anymore, but displaced people wandering like ghosts everywhere.
Among the last letters she wrote: “You came to help me once, and I think you did not know the bad people you helped as well. The man in the river … I mourn that man. I don’t know how bad he really was. How can we mend the past?”
Occasionally the pace of the book slacked off, and I fought the temptation to jump ahead. For instance, almost 200 pages pass between the time Emil finds the finger and when he finally puts it on ice. But those pages are filled in with background on Elena and Emil emigrating from Slovenia to escape the dangers of war. We become more familiar with Elena’s personality and her near-obsession with gardening. We learn about Mike, Emil’s partner on the police force, and get wind of how impending real estate dealings could affect Emil and his neighbors.
This is Stefan-Cole’s second novel, following Hollywood Boulevard written in 2012. She was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and her work is included in the anthology, Dick for a Day. If you’re a fan of cross-genre tales with memorable characters, The Detective’s Garden: A Love Story and Medication on Murder will be a satisfying read.
Review Posted on September 01, 2016 Last modified on September 01, 2016
Hollywood Boulevard
Image of Hollywood Boulevard
Author(s):
Janyce Stefan-Cole
Release Date:
April 10, 2012
Publisher/Imprint:
Unbridled Books
Pages:
352
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Martin A. David
“Janyce Stefan-Cole may not have had a tight hold on the reins in this novel, but there are numerous implied promises that there are stronger works waiting to roll off her keyboard.”
Hollywood Boulevard is a meandering novel that spends much of its time exploring the mind and existential angst of its narrator, a [SPOILER AERT] temporarily paused movie actress named Ardennes Thrush.
The storytelling meanders even though the tale takes place in a fairly confined geographical area, including a few days in a space not much larger than a prison cell.
The first half of the work has a choppy and almost cluttered feeling; nonetheless, in general Ms. Stefan-Cole has a writing style that is clear and flowing—but seldom exciting. The author doesn’t find her consistent stride until she is almost halfway through her 340-page work. We spend a lot of the earlier time in the actress’s head as she bounces between thoughts of her late father, her paused career, her ex-husband, her current husband, her neighbors, a possible stalker, a casual affair, and the story of another actress who may or may not have died in the same fading hotel where Ardennes lives while her movie director husband works on his latest film.
If this review sounds disjointed, it is. In fact, one could accuse the narrator of babbling aimlessly through many of the pages. Self-exploration and self-discovery are excellent topics for a novel. Unfortunately, the protagonist/narrator’s journey stays close enough to the surface to appear more like self-absorption.
Hollywood Boulevard is sometimes a mystery, sometimes a romance, and sometimes a morality play. Of course, all these elements can be blended to create a compelling story, but in this book, the reader is left with the feeling that the author needed to stir the pot a few more times to make the mixture coalesce. Many of the digressions are not well integrated and feel like padding.
The characters are often put into situations that, in spite of the author’s explanations, are illogical and unrealistic. For example, it is difficult to believe that misplaced good will, inertia, and an intimate relationship with a police detective are sufficient explanations for fairly serious crimes going unreported or covered up.
Flaws aside, Ms. Stefan-Cole’s book contains numerous entertaining moments. Such detective novel gems as, “Hollywood develops amnesia faster than a corpse forgets to breathe,” and poetic images of a Los Angeles downpour that clears both the L.A. smog and the narrator’s mental fog, remind us that the author is a nonetheless one to be reckoned with.
Janyce Stefan-Cole may not have had a tight hold on the reins in this novel, but there are numerous implied promises that there are stronger works waiting to roll off her keyboard.
Martin A. David is an author, dancer, choreographer, and former frequent reviewer for such publications as the Los Angeles Times.