As a prolific crime fiction writer who has reached the magic age of 70, Sandra Scoppettone doesn't hesitate to be a little prickly. She speaks her mind — even when it's about her own publisher, Ballantine.
"Do I sell a lot of books?" Scoppettone asked rhetorically during a telephone interview from her Long Island, N.Y., home. "No. There was no publicity at all for my last book, 'This Dame for Hire.' People didn't know it was out there.
"No big ads either, like the ones you see for Mary Higgins Clark or Janet Evanovich. They send those two on tour around the country, too. I've never understood that thinking. The best-selling authors go on tour — and they don't need it. They claim ads for the 'big' people is an ego thing. I just don't believe it."
Still, she loves her new publicist, Lindsey Benoit, who has set up several upcoming New York area appearances for her.
The author of 19 books, Scoppettone is originally from South Orange, N.J. She is a veteran writer with a brusque personal style, but she is not egocentric. She always worries that she will not sell any books, and she is always nervous about public appearances.
Her new book is "Too Darn Hot," a delightful, satirical 1940s crime story about a female detective. The book is especially strong on dialogue.
She also wrote a children's book, "Suzuki Beane," that has become a cult classic, and she won the prestigious crime writers' Shamus Award in 1984 for "A Creative Kind of Killer."
Scoppettone wrote a number of young-adult novels before moving into the crime genre at a time when few women were in the profession. After picking up a certain hostility from reviewers, she discerned that it was because she was a woman. So she wrote four books under the pseudonym Jack Early and used a detective called Fortune Fanelli. These books generally received rave reviews, said Scoppettone, "because they thought a man wrote them."
After that, she returned to her real name and put out five books about Lauren Laurano, a lesbian private eye from Greenwich Village. This may have been the first time a lesbian character was portrayed in a novel as a "normal" person. "I think four or five books in a series is enough — it gets stale after that. I said everything I wanted to say about that character."
In fact, she spoke out about a lot of hot-button issues that concerned her, such as rape, homosexuality and alcoholism. She was partly motivated by the fact that she is a recovering alcoholic, and a lesbian who "came out" in 1970.
The two books she has done about the 1940s, and her main character, wisecracking Faye Quick, a 26-year-old P.I., represent several months of solid research into that era. "There are a lot of books on the '40s — but the single most helpful thing for me was the Random House Thesaurus, because it provides information backwards. I liked being able to put in a word, like 'girl,' for instance, and get all kinds of slang terms."
Scoppettone insists that "Too Darn Hot" is more character-driven than plot-driven. I think it's a better mystery than the first one, 'This Dame for Hire.' I wanted it to be entertaining and light."
She has no contract as yet for a third Faye Quick novel; the publisher is watching the sales.
Writing is a mysterious experience for Scoppettone. She finds that "the characters speak to me and I especially love the music of the '40s. The characters spoke to me — it's very strange."
Even when she wrote under the male pseudonym and used a male private detective, "the male voice came to me." Scoppettone said Dorothy Hughes is the only woman mystery writer she can remember from those days. "The golden age of mystery writing came in the '80s when eight of us started 'Sisters in Crime,' which has hundreds of members now. There are more women mystery writers than men now — and women tend to buy most of the books. They like fiction more than men."
She said she has never written an outline before writing a novel — and never will. "When I write the first chapter, I don't know what will happen. And I never know the ending. It would be boring to know what will happen. I want to be with the reader. Well, maybe a tiny step ahead."
Early in the current book, a corpse falls out of a wardrobe. According to Scoppettone, "It was originally a woman, but it felt wrong. So on page 100, I changed it. I had gotten on a tangent and had to fix it. That doesn't happen often. But I'd rather write six books than write a two-page synopsis for a publisher."
She hears regularly from readers through e-mail. "They don't usually ask questions. They just say how much they enjoyed the book. A few point out mistakes I've made — and I want to punch them out. But I'm very nice when I write back."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com