For readers who prefer their traditional mysteries with a touch of humor, a strong cast of characters, and not too much gore, Susan Cox’s latest release, The Man in the Microwave Oven, may be just the ticket. The premise: When the lawyer who threatens to expose her tragic past is murdered, Theo Bogart is unwillingly drawn into the investigation.
Interviewer: Christina Hamlett
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Q: First of all, I love the title of your book! How did you come up with it and what does it mean?
A: Title are famously difficult, and they’re not copyrighted, so I could have called my mystery The Sun Also Rises or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Quite often a title comes late in the process, prompted by something that happens in the book, but in the case of The Man in the Microwave Oven I thought of the title first. It came to me as a joke, really, while making a short presentation at Bouchercon. But once I got my laugh, I decided I really liked it and then I went about writing the scenes that made the title work. It’s quirky, but it follows up with the sinister appliance theme from the first book (The Man on the Washing Machine), and microwaves have always had this rather dangerous reputation. They’re in everyone’s kitchen and they’re such a benign little tool until you accidentally put the wrong thing in it and all hell breaks loose. That’s why I liked it—my novel is a traditional mystery with a bit of a twist, and I think the title is the same way. As for what it means, well—there’s a man in a microwave oven!
Q: What attracted you to the mystery genre?
A: I suppose it’s the sense of the rightness of things that attracts me to police procedurals, detective stories and amateur sleuths—I like to see the bad guys get their comeuppance and the good guys triumph. It may be why I like the Golden Age detective novels so much; there’s no moral ambiguity and no anti-heroes, just a fairly simple vision of the world and the people in it doing the right thing.
Q: The physical backdrops of a story often take on as much personality as the human characters who inhabit it. Was this the case governing your decision to use San Francisco as your setting for The Man in the Microwave Oven?
A: I lived in San Francisco for many years and love the city, partly because it’s so welcoming to such a wide variety of people and cultures. It’s one of those American cities, like New York and New Orleans that couldn’t be anywhere else. Its founding families weren’t landed gentry or from wealth going back generations; they were blue collar working people mixed with a few disgraced scions of wealthier families back east. Maybe for that reason, the city has always accepted people at their own valuation and allowed them to make a fresh start. I wanted to use that accepting attitude towards newcomers and give it an ironic twist because my heroine isn’t just making a new start, she’s hiding some dark secrets and she struggles with lying to everyone she knows.
Q: What was your biggest challenge in bringing this mystery to life?
A: My home was burgled, and my laptops, my external hard drive and even my thumb drive back-up were all stolen. I wasn’t backing up to the cloud at the time, which meant that The Man in the Microwave Oven, which I had recently finished, and several partially complete manuscripts were gone. It was devastating. I eventually rewrote the novel from scratch using my memory and some hand-written notes, but it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. The burglar was eventually caught, by the way, but my laptops, and the novels they contained, have never been recovered.
Q: Plotter or pantser? And why do you feel this method best suits your creative style?
A: Pantser. I’m not sure if it really suits my creative style, or if I just can’t do it any other way. For me, writing a novel isn’t a linear process; it’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
Q: How did your prior careers in journalism, safari park PR and fundraising for nonprofits hone your craft as an accomplished and award-winning author of mystery novels?
A: In one way or another, I’ve been a writer all of my life and, like with any skill, it’s practice that produces the best work.
Q: Tell us about your protagonist, Theo Bogart. What percentage of her life is fiction versus reality and how did this differentiation come about?
A: Like me, Theo is English, but that’s where we part company with reality; Theo is much more inquisitive, and much braver, than I am. She lives a very quiet, almost undercover life in San Francisco, but she had a very high profile past in London and her grandfather is the younger son of of an English Earl. I invented her friends, her business, and the community she lives in, to give her a background that makes it easy for her to get involved in a murder plot. The only “real” parts of her life are the parts where she interacts with the city which, because I know it so well, I make as accurate as I can.
Q: How do you approach the task of research?
A: I read local newspapers and magazines to stay current on things happening in San Francisco and California. I had a quandary in The Man in the Microwave Oven when a major character was arrested and I had him posting bail. I learned that the state was voting to eliminate the financial bail requirement for criminal defendants, but I couldn’t know which way the vote would go before the book was published. I decided, since we’re all familiar with the system after forty years of cop and lawyer TV shows, to leave the reference in as a sort of shorthand for what was happening.
Q: Do you allow anyone to read your chapters in progress or do you make everyone wait until you have typed “The End?”
A: I was lucky in the early days of writing my first mystery to know some wonderful writers who gave me invaluable help and advice. Now, I often have a trusted reader to help me along the way.
Q: Tell us about how, where and when your publishing journey began.
A: My first mystery, The Man on the Washing Machine, won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur books First Crime novel Award. It was a thrill and I couldn’t have asked for a better jump-start to my career as a mystery novelist.
Q: If you could invite any three of your favorite authors to dinner, who would be on the guest list and what would you most like to ask them?
A: Agatha Christie, Dick Francis and Peter Lovesey. I wouldn’t ask them anything, I’d just listen to them talk and try to remember everything they said!
Q: What is an ideal writing day like for you?
A: Three or four hours of writing in the morning and another couple of hours in the late afternoon. No distractions (no music or visitors), and plenty of tea!
Q: A brief segue to silliness. Rumor has it that you’re a Star Trek geek. (I, too, have a Starfleet communicator pin I bought at the National Air and Space Museum and used to wear on the lapel of my black wool coat. It always got noticed!) A totally off-the-wall question but which was your favorite Star Trek movie and TV series?
A: I have a Starfleet Academy decal on the back window of my car, too! I know it’s not a popular choice, but I loved the reboot with the new actors playing Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. It was fun to see their young selves and how they developed the bonds that made them such a close-knit ensemble. For me, it’s all about the characters!
Q: What brings you the most enjoyment about being an author?
A: The moments—and there are several in each book—when a problem that’s been causing a stumbling block in the plot is suddenly resolved and everything beings to flow again. There’s nothing like it!
Q: And the most frustration?
A: The length of time it takes me to write—I write and re-write, polish and improve until the original plating is almost worn away. It’s exhausting!!
Q: What’s next on your plate?
A: I’ve begun work on a third Theo Bogart novel. No title yet—I’m trying to think of a suitably sinister appliance!
Q: Anything else you’d like to add?
A: This was fun!
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