Sydney Graves is the author of the new novel The Arizona Triangle. Sydney Graves is a pseudonym for the writer Kate Christensen, whose books include Welcome Home, Stranger. She lives in Taos, New Mexico.
Q: Why did you decide to write this novel under the name Sydney Graves?
A: I love the cloak and dagger aspect of a pseudonym! It's a lot of fun to have a whole other persona as a writer, separate from my literary novels. I am by no means the first novelist to do this, so it's a bit of a tradition.
Q: The writer Peter Nichols said of your new book, “Sydney Graves has crafted a gorgeously written southwestern noir that straddles the line between literary and genre in a landscape whose spaciousness and light contrast sharply with the darkness of crime and the treacherous terrain of personal history.” What do you think of that description?
A: Oh, I love it, of course. I think he's very generously and articulately getting at something I tried to do with the landscape.
Arizona is where I grew up, a place I know in my bones. I love the contrast between the desert and the dark things that happen there, which is a hallmark of southwestern noir.
I'm thinking of Sue Grafton, Donald Westlake, Sara Gran. I took the contrasting dark light mood of their version of California and grafted it on to Tucson.
Q: What inspired you to write The Arizona Triangle, and how did you create your character Jo Bailen?
A: I was directly inspired by Grafton's great Kinsey Millhone alphabet series. I love the trope of the intrepid female detective with intimacy issues and family stuff to work out, a backstory that continues through the entire series.
I envision Jo as someone who is going to grow and change a lot as the books go on and she's forced to admit her own vulnerability and desire for connection.
Q: As you mentioned, the novel is set in Arizona--how important is setting to you in your writing?
A: It's everything. I don't know anything about a book until I know where it's set. I have set novels in New York City and upstate New York, in Maine, on a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and now Arizona.
Place and geography are crucial indicators of psychology and drama. I like to say that my books could not take place anywhere else but where they're set. Their settings are as much a character as any of the people in them.
Q: This is the first in a series--can you tell us anything about the next installment?
A: I'm just beginning to write it, so all I can tell you is that there's an immigration lawyer whose corpse has just turned up, and the corrupt Tucson police aren't doing enough to figure out what happened.
My working title is Saguaro City, and the only other thing I know is that Jo is going to work more closely with the other two female detectives in her agency.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I'm thrilled to be writing murders! I haven't had so much fun writing since I was a kid.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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