Santa Cruz author Nina Simon has definitely found her niche. She writes murder mysteries that take place in western settings, featuring strong female characters with complicated familial connections.
Her first novel, Mother Daughter Murder Night, was set in the Elkhorn Slough area among three generations of women. Her follow-up, the new novel My Sister is Going to Kill Me, takes place on the rapids of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Two sisters — Mandy, a free-spirited art teacher, and Liv, a buttoned-up government agent — are on a river rafting trip hosted by Babette, the head of a health and wellness empire who has two siblings of her own. When Babette doesn't show up for the trip, the mystery begins.
Simon will have a book signing event at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Aug. 17. I spoke with her ahead of the event and began by asking her how she came up with the sibling relationship at the heart of My Sister is Going to Kill Me:
"I have a sister, just one — there's just the two of us — and we're extremely close. We went on a Grand Canyon rafting trip that helped inspire this story. One of the things I really noticed when I was on that trip with my sister was that it's pretty rare as adults to go somewhere and just be identified as the sisters, not with our parents, not with spouses, children, any of that kind of thing, but to be dropped back in to both the patterns of behavior and personalities that we've had forever, but also to be seeing each other as adults. So I wanted to play with that dynamic of, what is it like to be in adult sibling relationships that have such deep history, but I wanted two main characters who could have a lot of conflict because of being very different from each other. The fact that Liv is a State Department investigator. So, not a detective, but somebody who has some of those skills around analysis and data. Then Mandy being an art teacher — you know, artists are incredibly observant and incredibly creative about making unexpected connections — skills that might not be exactly what the detectives' department is hiring for, but could contribute to there being a credible attempt to solve the murder.
Click the audio player at the top of this story to listen to the interview or read the highlights below. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Simon on the sibling relationship that she wanted to explore in My Sister is Going to Kill Me:
"In my first novel, Mother Daughter Murder Night, which takes place in the Monterey Bay and Elkhorn Slough, I was really exploring mother-daughter dynamics, but also parent-child, and here in My Sister is Going to Kill Me, really dealing with siblings, and one of the things I always like to think about is, how can I use the murder to be kind of a mirror of the protagonist's own arc? If they are siblings grappling with their sibling relationship, how can the murder mystery also involve siblings, so that you can have both a family drama and story and a murder mystery without them feeling discontinuous."
Simon on finding her niche as a murder mystery author who focuses on complicated female familial relationships in western settings:
"I think that Mother Daughter Murder Night was absolutely inspired by my own mom and by the experience I had caretaking for her while she was dealing with cancer, which is something that happens right at the beginning of [the book]. It's about a tough LA Jewish businesswoman who is forced to move up to her estranged daughter's bungalow on the Elkhorn Slough in Moss Landing to convalesce.
"Now, of course, I could never get my real mom to leave Los Angeles, but it turns out in fiction you can just make people move where you want them to, so I want my mom to live in Santa Cruz County. She won't, that's okay.
"And then when I was working on what my next book would be, I was looking for another relationship that I feel like is as complex and rich as the mother-daughter relationship ... and one of those is sisterhood. My sister and I are so close. And I think also, you know, as a family of strong women, I think that I often have been exposed to books with female characters where there might be one strong female character whose sort of a 'queen bee,' or there might be two characters who are opposed to each other, but the family I grew up in, all the women are strong, all the women are opinionated, and a lot of our challenge is about how do we negotiate that together?
"So I think that's just a question that animates my life and is endlessly interesting. I don't know that I'll always write family books, you know. I'm a huge jock and I've really wanted to write a female sports team book. The book I'm working on right now is a chosen family book about two women who are hopping freight trains across the Southwest.
"I am an outdoor adventurer. I love the West. I feel so grateful to call the Santa Cruz Mountains home. Some people say write what you know. I'm a strong believer in write what you love. When I'm writing from a place animated by my love of the Grand Canyon, of my sister, of my mom, of Elkhorn Slough, you know, it creates an opportunity for me to want to dive all the way in and make it as fun and entertaining as possible."
Dylan Music: It sounds like maybe you're going to kind of stray away from the murder mystery niche a little bit?
Nina Simon: Oh, I think there's still going to be murder. Okay. It's a funny thing that we would find pleasure and entertainment from murder, which is obviously one of the most horrible things that can happen. But I think one of the things at least that draws me to murder mysteries is that so many of the mysteries in real life we never get a satisfying answer for. They're capricious. They're terrible. Bad people win, all that kind of stuff.
And I think that one of the beautiful things about a murder mystery, at least a traditional murder mystery like the ones I write, is it's not like nothing bad happens. The worst thing happens. But then the detectives are able to bring about a satisfying outcome. For me, living in a world that is chaotic where terrible things happen and I have no control over them,
I love reading a story where something terrible happens, but we're going to come to the end and we're going to be able to close it and say, ah, you know, everything got wrapped up and that really was satisfying and joyful to read.
Simon on the book event at Bookshop Santa Cruz on Aug. 17:
"It's going to be the launch of My Sister is Going to Kill Me. There's going to be a very special guest joining me and that is my own sister. And I'm excited that Morgan will be joining me. I will speak some about the book. we will be doing a Q & A session together. Then I—or we—will be signing books."
Santa Cruz author Nina Simon and her sister Morgan will be at a book signing event at Bookshop Santa Cruz on August 17th.