NPR: Author Julie Smith on the secrets of New Orleans
Source: National Public Radio
"I've had people say to me: 'I always read mysteries before I got to a city because that's how I learn what's really going on there,' " says Smith. "I feel like that's my job, to tell what's really going on here. And until I figure out what's really going on here, I'm not sure how to write."
Smith says that the city has been irrevocably damaged on a scale that is still almost impossible to grasp three years later. She speaks of the thousands of houses and hundreds of lives ended, of an almost-impossible road back for a city that feels abandoned and betrayed by its own government. With all that, she wonders, who would want to read a book about the death of just one person, which is what a murder mystery is.
When asked how Skip would have handled the storm, Smith says her character would have stayed, would have have been heroic, but then she pauses:
"If I really think about it, I feel she would have gone into a depression afterwards," Smith says. "She would've gotten depressed for a period of time. But she would've got past that. She would've handled it."
Smith says she's handling it, too. It took her a while, but she's writing again, and she hopes that someday she'll begin to understand her changed city enough to have Skip Langdon uncover more of its secrets.
Skip Langdon is one of my favorite characters in detective fiction - follow the link to NPR for an excerpt of Smith's short story contribution to New Orleans Noir, a recent collection she edited.
