Nevada Barr: Naked Came The Phoenix

© 2001

Chapter 1. Copyright © 2001 by Nevada Barr.

Chapter 2. Copyright © 2001 by Nora Roberts.

Chapter 3. Copyright © 2001 by Nancy Pickard.

Chapter 4. Copyright © 2001 by Lisa Scottoline.

Chapter 5. Copyright © 2001 by Perri O'Shaughnessy.

Chapter 6. Copyright © 2001 by J. A. Jance.

Chapter 7. Copyright © 2001 by Faye Kellerman.

Chapter 8. Copyright © 2001 by Mary Jane Clark.

Chapter 9. Copyright © 2001 by Marcia Talley.

Chapter 10. Copyright © 2001 by Anne Perry.

Chapter 11. Copyright © 2001 by Diana Gabaldon.

Chapter 12. Copyright © 2001 by Val McDermid.

Chapter 13. Copyright © 2001 by Laurie R. King.

The making of this novel has been, in every way, a collaborative effort.

First, to the thirteen amazing women who said "yes" when I called-Nevada, Nora, Nancy, Lisa, Pam, Mary, Judy, Faye, Mary Jane, Anne, Diana, Val, and Laurie-thank you for your talent, enthusiasm, cooperation… and patience.

To my agent, Jimmy Vines, for giving me the idea and sticking with me every step of the way while I ran with it-thank you for the countless hours you spent helping me put the project together and keeping it on track.

Thanks to Jennifer Weis at St. Martin's Press for giving us a good home.

And to the dozens of authors' agents and assistants who juggled a seemingly endless stream of contracts, schedules, correspondence, and e-mails… thanks, we couldn't have done it without you.

When my agent first suggested that I try my hand at putting together a novel like Naked Came the Manatee , a collaborative effort first serialized in the Miami Herald by a baker's dozen of top Florida journalists, including Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, and Edna Buchanan, I smiled. I remembered-because yes, I am that old-a 1969 literary hoax perpetrated on the reading public by Mike McGrady and twenty-four of his Long Island Newsday coworkers; an unabashed sexual romp entitled Naked Came the Stranger that succeeded beyond McGrady's wildest dreams. In fact, "Naked Came…" is now synonymous with a collaborative novel written serially.

"Penelope Ashe," Naked Came the Stranger's fictional suburban housewife/author, wasn't the first to pen such a collaboration, of course. The roots go back much further, to 1931 Britain and The Floating Admiral , written by "Certain Members of the Detection Club," including Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, and other giants of the mystery genre. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to assemble a group of modern mystery and suspense writers-all women-write such a novel, and donate a portion of our royalties to breast cancer research? I sketched a cast of characters, plopped them down in an exclusive health spa because, let's face it, there are dozens of interesting ways to bump off a character in a health spa, and Naked Came the Phoenix was born. Twelve women accepted my invitation, Nevada Barr picked up her pen, and six thousand words later, the game was afoot.

The rules were simple. Each chapter was to be written in the third person and, in the spirit of The Floating Admiral , with a definite solution in view, even though we were well aware that subsequent authors might take-indeed were expected to take-the plot in divergent directions. "It was dangerously liberating to know I didn't personally have to deal with the consequences of whatever I put in my chapter," wrote Nancy Pickard.

Although authors were cautioned to avoid cliff-hanger endings that would require Houdini-like efforts on the part of the next author (and our heroine), "the real fun" comes, according to Laurie R. King, "in seeing thirteen sweet-tempered lady crime writers stab each other thoughtfully in the back." Nancy, too, "loved the diabolical feeling of cooking up an outrageous plot twist and cackling, 'Heh, heh, heh, let's see what you do with this , Lisa!' " Because, as the game is played, there is no going back. No fair asking a previous author to change a clue. Against the rules to beg her to bring a promising character back to life. Pssst! Hide this bloody knife in the potted palm in chapter two, will you ? is simply not allowed. Each writer is left to plant a new clue, target a fresh victim, point the finger at another suspect, introduce a new character, catch another in a lie, overhear a heated conversation-on and on-until it falls to the hapless writer of the final chapter to pick up all the problematic threads and tie them off in a nice, neat solution. I am deeply grateful that Laurie R. King volunteered for this task and that she did it so brilliantly.

And we had fun. Anne Perry enjoyed the discipline of writing about characters already created and thinking, "What can I do with them to give the story a twist and stay within the bounds set?" For her and others, it was the chance to try out a completely different time and place setting-the present day United States, for example, as opposed to Victorian London or sometime in the future. Still others relished the opportunity to experiment with new characters and new voices. What I enjoyed most was borrowing a character from my Hannah Ives mystery series and giving him a job at Phoenix Spa. And, of course, we all felt it necessary to do exhaustive, firsthand research in luxury health spas all across the country.

As Naked Came the Phoenix goes to press, it pleases me to learn of a new link with The Floating Admiral . We have come full circle, with one of our sisterhood, Val McDermid, being elected to membership in the famed Detection Club.

Val's a professional. And as Laurie reminds me, it takes a professional to play the game well. I think you will find thirteen of them here.

MARCIA TALLEY

Annapolis, Maryland

May 2001

SHE WENT THROUGH LIFE LIKE AN open razor . Caroline couldn't remember where she'd read that phrase, but there was little doubt in her mind that it had been inspired by a woman like her mother. Maybe Hilda herself had been the muse. She cast a long shadow, Caroline knew firsthand; she and her father had lived in it, Hilda always center stage between them and the light.

Two weeks before, Hamlin Finch, Caroline's father, had finally been set free. Throat cancer, brought on, Caroline was convinced, by decades of angry words unspoken, had killed him. Now she hoped he was standing in the light. Hoped, not believed.

She toyed with the idea that her father watched them. Because Sunday school had left its benign scar across her psyche, she pictured him in his battered La-Z-Boy, Frosty, his beloved Siamese cat, across his knees, the newspaper in an untidy heap on the puffy white cloud supporting his chair. The sky above was impossibly blue, the clouds TV-commercial white, the sun gold and sentient.

Would he be pleased that after thirty-seven years of berating him for ruining her life, his wife had toppled into a bleak depression once he died? Or would he, like his daughter, wonder if it was another of Hilda's cunningly executed manipulations to get what she wanted?

This time what Hilda had wanted was a ten-day stay at one of the most exclusive-and expensive-spas east of the Rocky Mountains. And she'd gotten it. Douglas had paid for it.