Roberta's Blog

Dear Readers,

My publisher, Berkley Prime Crime, asked me to write their “Dear Reader” column this month. Here’s what I said:

Developing the heroine for a new mystery series is always an adventure! Like me, Dr. Rebecca Butterman (DEADLY ADVICE) is a clinical psychologist, in order to take advantage of my training and experience. But how could I help her stand out from today’s hordes of mystery characters?

I had become an advice column junkie well before attending graduate school. Even as a teenager, I studied Ann Landers and Dear Abby for nuggets of common sense and wisdom, imagining how I would counsel their troubled masses. And each month I rushed to the newsstand to buy the Ladies Home Journal, which contained my favorite feature: “Can this marriage be saved?” There was something very satisfying about watching these experts gently dissect their readers’ problems and then wrap them back up into tidy packages.

Why not make Rebecca Butterman an advice columnist as well as a psychologist? She would understand that while people’s problems are complex, they crave uncomplicated answers. By day, Dr. Butterman would work with her therapy patients, slowly unraveling their histories in order to understand their issues. But by night, she would don the cloak of her superhero, advice columnist Dr. Aster, and offer simple solutions to unhappy readers.

Aside from my sleuth’s background, the opening scene of DEADLY ADVICE is also rooted in my graduate school days. During my final year, I lived in an anonymous apartment complex with only a nodding acquaintance of the other residents. Each morning, my taciturn next-door neighbor left for work at 7:30, returning by six. Some nights she’d cook one hamburger on the grill outside her door. Medium well, I’d think, considering the time it sat on the coals. How sad, I’d think. Is that me? I’d wonder next.

One evening, I came home from the library and noticed a small U-Haul parked in front of her apartment. An older couple was loading the contents of her place into the van. Over coffee the next morning, I skimmed the newspaper as usual, and noticed a small article near the bottom of an interior page. Based on this paragraph, I realized that my neighbor had shot herself several days earlier. Her body had lain in the apartment next to mine for over forty-eight hours before someone found her.

I felt shocked and sad. Isn’t this every single woman’s worst nightmare – dead two days and no one even notices you’re gone? This incident has always stayed with me.

Years later, that’s where DEADLY ADVICE begins. When Dr. Rebecca Butterman returns home to find her neighbor an apparent suicide, she’s wracked with guilt. As a psychologist and advice columnist, she’s an expert! She should have been able to help the young woman. But the neighbor’s mother suspects foul play, and soon persuades Rebecca to investigate the possibility of murder.

I’ve loved writing about this new character – she’s wise and vulnerable all at once. I hope you’ll enjoy her adventures too.