Here at Casa Mysterioso, instead of recycled site-owner publicity, we offer interviews with other people in the arts--writers, musicians, actors, entertainers, and sometimes just plain characters. We add new ones all the time, and site visitors are invited to contribute. If we use your interview, we'll pay $35. Query by e-mail.

Interview with Jan Burke
Interview with Jeremiah Healy
Ben and Diane (An Interview with Stephen Booth)
Cold Days and Deadly Nights (An Interview with Steve Hamilton)
Mysteries (An Interview with Irene Marcuse)
The Stone Monkey (An Interview with Jeff Deaver)
The Salaryman's Wife (An Interview with Sujata Massey)
A Kiss Gone Bad (An Interview with Jeff Abbott)
Charlotte Justice (An Interview with Paula Woods)
Blood Money (An Interview with Rochelle Krich)
Letter From New Orleans: (An interview With Andy J. Forest)
The Lady From Charm City (An Interview with Laura Lippman)
Crescent City Views (An Interview with Anne Rice)

 

"Charlotte Justice"
(An Interview with Paula Woods)
by Andi Shechter

AS: Paula, you started out in mystery with an anthology - a GREAT anthology that featured African-American writers and characters. Was that what caused you to decide to create Charlotte Justice, or was she in your brain before then?

PW: After reading so many authors while I was researching Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, I began to think there was a voice I wasn't hearing. That was when the idea of writing about a savvy black homicide detective came to me.

AS: Charlotte Justice is a unique character, isn't she? Only Eleanor Taylor Bland and Judith Smith-Levin write black woman cops, but their characters aren't in big cities like LA. Why did you choose to write a cop, rather than, say, a private eye?

PW: I don't think it's an accident that so few African American writers feature cops as their protagonists. Historically, law enforcement has not been friendly to the African American community, so it's understandable that so many writers feature P.I.s or amateur sleuths who solve crime outside of law enforcement.

But I like a challenge, so I thought if I could create a sympathetic black female homicide detective-one you could have a drink with after work-I would have accomplished something unique. And, as you say, to make her a big city detective, dealing with the corruption, sexual harassment, and crime, was even more appealing.

AS: Talk about Charlotte's family, would you? They seem to be pretty high class, and yet with Charlotte, and her brother at one point, there were two cops in the family. How does that affect the family dynamic?

PW: The Justice family is upper middle class, driven by Charlotte's mother, Joymarie, one of those aging debutantes and social climbers who can exert a lot of pressure on her children for upward mobility. Perris, Charlotte's brother, who's an attorney now, was a cop many years ago, but as Joymarie proudly point outs, "that was just to avoid the draft."

Charlotte is both proud of the work she does as a detective, but also mindful of how her blue-collar profession stands out in with her white-collar family "like a cloth coat in a room full of mink." But Charlotte, the second and most rebellious child, became a cop for her own personal reasons, but I think perhaps to get back at her status-seeking mother. Which she does, in both dramatic and funny ways.

AS: Does your familiarity with the literature (the reviewing, the radio show you used to do) have a positive impact on your writing? Does it make it easier or harder to write when you've read so much and read critically?

PW: It does make me think about what I'm going to say, maybe much harder than I would if I were not a book critic. When I consider how many trees are sacrificed to make books, it makes me want to say something of lasting value. And, having read so many great authors who do have something important to say, I definitely want to be counted in that number.

AS: What's the best thing about writing for you?

PW: Getting to reveal contemporary Los Angeles history through my novels.

AS: What's the worst thing about writing for you?

PW: The rewriting. I'm compulsive about getting things right, which means I spend a lot of time self-editing. A necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless.

AS: Your books have a lot to say about social issues. You show the reader about racism and sexism in the LAPD. How do you write that? In other words, are you conscious of the issues you want to present, or do you just sit down and write the mystery?

PW: A little bit of both. I think the story is most important, for without a strong story, readers just want to throw the book across the room. But the mark of the good storytellers I've read is their ability to slip in the messages without the reader realizing it. It's a real art, one that I work to perfect in every book.

AS: Who do you like to read?

PW: Lots of people. Ross Macdonald, who was excellent at chronicling a fictional time and place which feel absolutely authentic. Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series, which was my first foray into contemporary mysteries more than fifteen years ago. Michael Connelly, S.J. Rozan, George Pelecanos' later novels. I've recently become reacquainted with the work of Faye Kellerman, which I'm enjoying. I also read a lot of African American mystery and non-mystery fiction-Toni Morrison, BarbaraNeely, Gar Anthony Haywood, Alice Randall's The Wind Done Gone-plus new writers of all persuasions. I also read non-fiction, but that's usually for research purposes.

AS: What's next? Would you ever do another anthology? A different kind of fiction? Short fiction?

PW: I'm working on the third Charlotte Justice, which I refuse to discuss because at this stage everything can change. Even the title. I might write non-genre fiction sometime in the future, but right now Charlotte's keeping me very busy.

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