HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS BOOK, Rosemary Harris

How I Came to Write This Book

Anyone who's ever seen the movies Best in Show or Little Miss Sunshine know that shows and contests can get pretty cutthroat. And to an onlooker it can seem funny if the participants' struggles for perfection turn neurotic or obsessive. I take things one or two steps further in Slugfest, the fourth title in my Dirty Business mystery series and the action is set at a northeast flower show where more than just the plants are dying.

As a long-time volunteer at the legendary Philadelphia Flower Show I've had access to much behind-the-scenes information. I've seen the empty, airplane hangar-like convention center turn into a tropical paradise or an undersea garden in a matter of days. I've also seen some fairly hysterical behavior similar to that seen in the two movies I mentioned. Not wanting to incriminate or kill off any of my pals at the Philly Flower Show I created the fictional Big Apple Flower Show where there are so many mishaps exhibitors are starting to jokingly refer to it as the Javits Curse, but the laughter stops when one body is found at the foot of an unused escalator and another floating in the river. My amateur sleuth Paula Holliday accidentally holds a crucial clue to solving both murders and another, if she doesn't figure out who's taken off the gardening gloves and turned this genteel flower show into a slugfest.

Writers of traditional mysteries are frequently asked how they can marry humor with murder - after all, real crime isn't funny. It isn't. But people are. And they don't stop being who they are when bad things happen. (I swiped that line from none other than Carolyn Hart, who knows a thing or two about writing mysteries.) Even the most notorious villains in literature have delivered zingers. Think of Hannibal Lecter's "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." How much less chilling would it have been if he'd just said "I ate his liver"? Black humor to be sure, but still very funny.

There are no Hannibals and no cannibals in the Dirty Business books just an amateur sleuth drawn into sometimes challenging and dangerous situations armed with nothing more than her smarts, her sense of humor and the occasional power tool.

Rosemary Harris' debut novel Pushing Up Daisies was nominated for both the Anthony and the Agatha Award for Best First Novel 2008. Others in the series are The Big Dirt Nap, Dead Head and Slugfest (April 2011.) They've been called "a wild and funny ride" Crimespree Magazine, "hilarious" Kirkus Reviews and " the perfect summer read" NPR (CT.)

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