The Fragrance of Death (A Sally Solari Mystery) by Leslie Karst | Author Interview

Thanks for taking the time to share a bit about yourself with my readers and me!

Tell us a little about yourself.

The daughter of a law professor and a potter, I learned at a young age during family dinner conversations the value of both careful analysis and the arts—ideal ingredients for a mystery story. Putting this early education to good use, I now write the Lefty Award-nominated Sally Solari Mysteries, a culinary series set in Santa Cruz, California.

Originally from Southern California, I moved north to attend UC Santa Cruz (home of the Fighting Banana Slugs!) and, after graduation, parlayed my degree in English literature into employment waiting tables and singing in a new wave rock and roll band. Exciting though this life was, I eventually decided I was ready for a “real” job and ended up at Stanford Law School. For the next twenty years I worked as the research and appellate attorney for a civil law firm, but during this time, I rediscovered a passion for food and cooking and so once more returned to school to earn a degree in culinary arts.

Now retired from the law, I spend my time cooking, gardening, cycling, singing alto in my local community chorus, reading, and of course writing. My wife and I and our Jack Russell mix split our time between Santa Cruz and Hilo, Hawai‘i.

How long have you been writing?

If you count term papers, I’ve been writing since college. Then, after graduation, I started penning song lyrics for my band, as well as the kind of poetry typical of your angst-ridden, twenty-something romantic. But it was in law school that I truly learned to write, spending my days drafting persuasive motions and appeals to convince the judges to rule in our favor. And believe it or not, this ended up being terrific training for my post-lawyer career writing crime fiction, as it turns out that a murder mystery requires much of the same analytical, detail-oriented story telling as does a legal brief.

Did you always want to be an author? What made you choose the cozy mystery genre?

I think I first fell in love with writing when I starting penning song lyrics at age twenty-one. But it wasn’t until I retired from the law that I decided to try my hand at fiction for the first time. I was drawn to cozies because I’d grown up reading Golden Age mysteries, but also because of my love of food and cooking. What could be a more perfect combination of food and writing than the culinary cozy genre?

Do you prefer to read cozy mystery books, or do you have another favorite genre? What are you reading now?

In the crime fiction genre, I do tend to read mostly cozies and traditionals, as I prefer upbeat mysteries with a lighter tone than that found in suspense and noir. But I have to admit that I also love reading science fiction—the world-building and science involved utterly captivates me. I know, however, that I could never myself be a sci-fi author—I don’t have the sort of brain for that kind of writing.

Right now (in July), I’m still working through the stack of books that I purchased back in April at Malice Domestic, including Gigi Pandian’s clever locked-room mystery, Under Lock and Skeleton Key; Kellye Garrett’s terrific Like a Sister; and the hilarious Fogged Off by Wendall Thomas.

Do you have a favorite place to write?

The desk in my office, with large, sunny windows to the outside world (so I can get easily distracted from my work-in-progress, lol).

What’s on your desk (if you write at one!)?

Lots of knick-knacks, including a Steiff toy horse that I received for my fifth birthday, several beautiful ceramic pieces made by my potter mother, a collection of strange-looking rocks from my various travels, and (because everyone needs one!) an RBG action figure.

What is the first book you remember reading as a child? What was one of your favorite books you read as a child?

The first book I remember truly loving as a child is Boats Finds a House, by Mary Chalmers. It’s a picture book about a cat who’s retired from working as a mouser and ratter on a sailing ship, and is now looking for the perfect house in which to live—one with a fireplace, daisies in the yard, cows in the pasture, and friends nearby. I was absolutely captivated by this story when I was about five or six, which perhaps explains why I’m such a homebody to this day. (I still have the book, and thanks to your question, I have just now reread the story; it’s as darling as I remember it.)

Once a pre-teen, I became utterly obsessed with horse books (and everything “horse”), and my favorite was probably The Black Stallion by Walter Farley. I so wanted to live on a desert isle with a beautiful race horse!

Do you like audiobooks, physical books, or e-books better? Why?

Physical books, hands down! I love the feel of the paper on my hands, and the ability to flip back easily to an earlier part of the story while keeping your finger in your current place.

If you had the opportunity to live anywhere in the world for a year while writing a book that took place in that same setting, where would you choose?

Call me boring (or perhaps someone who knows what I want), but I would choose Santa Cruz, where I do in fact live and which is the setting for my Sally Solari mysteries. It’s a magical place, with its redwood forests, live oak meadows, artichoke and Brussels sprout fields, beautiful beaches, lively downtown, and historic Boardwalk and wharf, with a colorful history of Italian fishermen, farmers, hippies, and now hipsters and techies who’ve recently moved into town.

What or who has influenced you the most as a writer?

I’d have to say Sue Grafton. By the time I came upon her A is for Alibi, I’d read plenty of mysteries, but they’d all been either Golden Age traditional/cozies written by women (e.g., Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers) or hard-boiled/noirs by men (e.g., Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler).

So Grafton’s debut came as an awakening. Here was a book in the traditional “weary PI” style, yet written by and featuring a woman. And as I read on, I realized she’d created a sort of hybrid between the hard-boiled and the cozy—the story of a private investigator with no strings attached (“My apartment is small…. I don’t have pets. I don’t have houseplants.”) yet with a big heart (“I’m a nice person and I have a lot of friends.”). But most important, the novel was full of humor—a tad on the snarky side, yes, but who doesn’t love that?

Do you have any author friends who support you while you’re writing? Do you belong to any writing groups?

The crime-fiction community is an incredibly warm and supportive group of writers, and I’ve come to think of it as one big, wonderful family. Unless you include Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America (which are both terrific organizations), however, I don’t belong to any writing groups. But I am a member of two group blogs of mystery writers: Chicks on the Case and Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen. And getting to be a part of them is like having your own fabulous posse—we always have each others’ backs!

Finally, what are you working on now? Can you tell us a bit about it?

I’m finishing up the manuscript for book six in the Sally Solari series, in which the dining room manager of a restaurant/food and cooking bookstore is found murdered on the night of a benefit dinner, and the primary clue is the simultaneous theft of a boxed set of signed first editions of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

In addition, I’m excited to announce that a memoir I penned about planning and preparing dinner for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, entitled Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG, will be published in April of 2023. Think of it as a mash-up of Julie and Julia and Notorious RBG.

Thank you again for taking the time to answer my questions!

Thank you!!