Rachel Howzell Hall
In Land of Shadows, Los Angeles Homicide Detective Elouise ‘Lou’ Norton catches a case: a seventeen-year old girl is found hanged at a construction site. Lou’s partner, Colin Taggert, fresh from the Colorado Springs police department, assumes it’s a teenage suicide. But Lou doesn’t buy the easy explanation. For one thing, the condo site is owned by Napoleon Crase, a self-made millionaire… and the man who may have murdered Lou’s missing sister thirty years ago.
As Lou investigates the girl's death, she discovers links between the two cases. She's convinced that when she solves the teenage girl’s case she will finally bring her lost sister home. But as she gets closer to the truth, she also gets closer the killer.
Please tell us about the character of Elouise Norton.
Lou is not your traditional fictional detective a la Harry Bosch, Harry Dresden or John Rebus. She is not a renegade. She won't go out of her way to break rules. She can't be, primarily because she's a thirty-something-year old African-American woman. A double minority, especially in a traditionally white male field. And race and sex determines privilege—who gets to color outside the lines and be forgiven and even lauded. She comes from the ghetto, has relationships there, understands the people better—and these elements create conflict between her existence as a member of the powerless and a member of the powerful (the police department).
In many ways, Lou is me – grew up in working-class neighborhoods but had parents and a community that pushed for better. She is a sorority girl like me – which means life-long friendships and women that she leans on for support and love, wake-up calls and plenty glasses of wine. Also pettiness. Cuz we can be petty and exhausting and complicated.
For the most part, Lou has her act together – even in her messy marital life, it’s a decidedly messy marital life because of deliberate decisions she’s made. She can laugh at herself and also know that, sometimes, she can be a complete fool.
How much has your degree in English and America Literature helped you to write fiction?
I got to read everything! I was mandated to read everything! And because I went to University of California at Santa Cruz, known for being ‘off-the-beaten path’ and lost somewhere in the 1960s, I read the traditional canon (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Hemingway and the rest) but also Richard Wright and Sandra Cisneros, Angela Carter and June Jordan. Black lit, world lit, LGBT lit, women’s lit (which is totally different from Chick Lit), Russian lit... And so I was introduced to new ideas and new thoughts and different ways of writing. Having a degree in Literature and loving words means I read the greats, the wordsmiths who knew how to turn a word, create memorable characters.
All of the writing world was introduced to me and today, I aim to write like that. I believe that you have to read, and read broadly to write well. And so my personal library and Kindle is stocked with almost every genre… except romance. I don’t read romance. No one’s perfect. So, I’m basically a book slut.
Right now, I’m actively reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King, The Abominable by Dan Simmons, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett, Dead Souls by Ian Rankin and Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden. And I’m convinced—convinced, I say—that some concept or idea or something from these books will somehow ‘butterfly effect’ my future writing.
You worked in a variety of jobs after college, so at what point did writing come to the forefront for you?
I’ve always loved writing and words but didn’t know until recently that you could get paid doing it. Until that realization, though, I was committed to spending my 9 to 5 doing mission-oriented work. Social change-type work, all the while working on my personal writing. My first true job was at PEN Center USA West, which is an organization that advances writing and free-speech issues, here in the States and abroad. There, I got to work with writers who were also committed to saving the lives of writers in jeopardy as well as engaging and nourishing a community of writers. At PEN, my desire to be a published novelist was stoked. It took me a few years to learn how to write a novel and finally, in 2002, my first novel (A Quiet Storm) was published. I’ve been writing regularly--almost every day—since.
You have received praise from some big names in the industry- so how does it feel to hear such positive feedback form the likes of Lee Child?
When my editor at Forge (Kristin Sevick) emailed me with my first blurb, the subject line was ‘Are you sitting down?’ And I read it, and I SCREAMED and SCREAMED and my fingers and face numbed because LEE CHILD? The Lee Child? And then Hank Phillippi Ryan and Hilary Davidson and Gary Phillips? Unbelievable. I’ve admired each of them so very much and for them to, first of all, read the doggone thing, and then, send positive feedback? A dream come true. I wish that I had been living in the ‘Big Brother’ house or something so that I can watch the tapes of those moments when my heroes wrote that they enjoyed Land of Shadows.
This is your first UK published book, so how does it feel to have such a wide audience for your work?
Again, totally crazy and unbelievable. The folks at Titan are incredible and they’re working so hard to promote LAND OF SHADOWS in the UK. The world knows about some parts of Los Angeles, and I’m thrilled to share with the UK audience the Los Angeles that I love and hate and miss when I’m not there. We Yanks may spell ‘grey’ with an ‘a’ and put ‘the’ in front ‘hospital’ but love, loss, family drama and marital disappointment are international.
Please tell us about the inspiration behind this story.
This story came from two inspiration points. First, my own life – again, a trope that transcends race, nationality and class: GOOD GIRLS LIKE BAD BOYS. From now until the zombie apocalypse, this will always be. Sometimes, good girls survive the bad boys and find reliable, safe men to spend their lives with. Sometimes, though, good girls do not survive walking on that wild side. So there’s that general idea.
Land of Shadows really took form when Los Angeles’ former police chief’s granddaughter, a good girl, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Hanging out with bad boys. People were shocked that she had been killed this way, and many expressed shock that she knew bad boys – her grandfather was the chief of police! But girls, hell, people are shadows – you think you see all of them but there’s a part of them that’s hidden.
What is next for you?
I’m working on #3 of the Lou Norton series. I won’t say much about it except this: there’s a dead body. And it didn’t get dead naturally. Geez, I’ve said too much….