Robin Hathaway: the Doctor is In

Robin Hathaway likes Malice. No, we’re not talking about a character flaw here. Malice Domestic is a convention for mystery readers and writers, held every year in Washington, D.C. At the 1997 convention, Hathaway won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Traditional Mystery Award for her unpublished mystery. And this year, The Doctor Digs a Grave took home Malice Domestic’s Agatha Award for Best First Mystery of 1998.

So what’s the recipe for a prize-winning puzzle? Learn more about the characters, the setting, and most important, the motive behind The Doctor Digs a Grave.

Crescent Blues: Dr. Fenimore, your lead character, is a fascinating combination of some very old fashioned and admirable characteristics — like his dedication to an older, more patient-centered practice of medicine — and his rather progressive social views. Was he based on any real-life models?

Hathaway: I didn’t have to look far for a model of Dr. Fenimore. My husband is a cardiologist, also in solo practice, who drives an ancient car and occasionally buys his clothes in thrift shops.

Dr. Fenimore is a very nice fellow. He is also an honorable physician who takes the Hippocratic oath very seriously. His most distinguishing characteristic is his almost religious respect for the individual — whether patient, murder victim, or even a murderer. He is old-fashioned in that he prefers to work alone rather than in a group or for an HMO. But his practice of medicine is as up to-date as the most recent issue of Journal of the American Medical Association or The New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Fenimore is sometimes plagued by self-doubt and questions his beliefs. “Should I join them?” he once asked his friend Jennifer, who happens to be an independent bookseller. “The day I join a chain store,” she answered. (This was written before You’ve Got Mail, by the way.)

I understand that The Doctor Digs a Grave is now out in paperback and a sequel, also featuring Dr. Fenimore, is in the works. Could you tell us a little bit about it?

My sequel is called The Doctor Makes A Dollhouse Call and will be published by St. Martin’s in February, 2000. It’s the story of two elderly sisters who live in a Victorian house by the sea. They have a dollhouse which is an exact replica of their real house — down to the last mini-pot in the kitchen. Dolls, resembling each member of the family, also live in the dollhouse. One day a niece-doll is found on the floor of the dining room. At first mice are suspected, a la Beatrix Potter. But when the scene is repeated, followed by the death of the real niece, Dr. Fenimore is called in to investigate.

Was there a particular reason you decided to write from a male point of view, and did you find it difficult?

I can’t account for choosing the male point of view. This character had been floating around in my head for many years, before he actually made it to the page. It never occurred to me to write about a woman. Contrary to some of my feminist friends, I don’t believe there is that much difference between the minds of men and women, especially today, when we are all confronted with the same challenges and life styles.

Women are no longer protected and supported. They are out there, alone and vulnerable, in a cold and hostile world, holding their own. Their thought processes are not going to be too different from their male counterparts. I think the mental gender gap is closing rapidly. As a result, writing about either sex, by either sex, is bound to become easier.

Did you have an ulterior motive in making your hero a doctor– for example, making it more plausible that he would become involved in a murder case?

I did think that a doctor would come into contact with unexplained death more often than, say, an architect or a stock broker. Also, being married to one, I knew my research would be much easier. When I needed to know a lethal dose of sleeping pills, all I had to do was turn over in bed and ask. (There’s your ulterior motive!)

I noticed that your mystery had a lot of technical medical information, but you made it palatable for the reader. Was this difficult?

Very. It was the hardest part of the book. I would tell my husband what I had in mind. He would research the problem and give it back to me in medical terminology. I would rewrite it in layman terms and give it back to him. He would check to make sure my changes hadn’t interfered with the medical accuracy, and so on.

We passed some passages back and forth over a dozen times. The goal was to make it easy to read and absorb while still remaining medically accurate. (My husband even suggested that he be made a co-author of the book. But I reminded him that the hero was a clone of him, and that should be enough.)

Did you think when you started that you would want to write more than one book about Dr. Fenimore, and if so, did you do anything differently than you would in a stand-alone book?

I always planned to write a series and this made me think very carefully about my characters — not just Fenimore but all his friends and relatives, because I knew (hoped) I would be seeing a lot of them and that they would be around for a long time. I wanted them to wear well.

Is there anything you did in the first book that you wish you’d done differently?

Yes. I wish I had remembered that National League baseball isn’t played in late October. In one scene the characters mention that it is, and every male reader confronts me with this. (I guess there are differences between men and women after all!)

Do you plan to continue with the Fenimore series, or branch out into another series or stand-alone book?

I will continue the Fenimore series as long as people want to read about him. But I am also working on a suspense novel featuring a young female doctor, Jo Banks. This might become a series, but I have to publish the first one first!

Dr. Fenimore discovers the body of a young Native American woman under circumstances that strongly suggest the burial rituals of her tribe, the Lenni-Lenape. Was this inspired by real incidents? And how did you go about researching the Lenni-Lenape culture?

The Lenni-Lenape theme was the direct result of living in an area of South Jersey (in the summer) where these people once lived. Some of their descendants still live there, including Night Cloud, one of the last remaining chiefs of the Nanticoke tribe.

I researched the book in many ways — interviewing the chief, attending pow-wows, visiting Indian museums, but mostly reading. You notice I use the politically incorrect term “Indian.” When I interviewed Night Cloud, I scrupulously used the term “Native American” until he burst out impatiently, “Don’t use that. Anyone who is born in this country is a Native American. I am an Indian.” Also, in an early draft, I had the body facing west, which is the wrong way. The right way is east. A Lenape scholar set me straight about that.

I had one other nasty research scare. For my knowledge of the Lenape, I relied a lot on a document called the “Walum Olum,” an account of the creation myth of the Lenape Indian. Scholars had referred to it for years. The translation was beautiful and I quoted from it freely in my book. One day, in my dentist’s office (when my book was already in galley form), I picked up a copy of “The Natural History Magazine”. The title of the lead article was “Walum Olum–a Hoax.” To my horror, the whole document had been proved to be one gigantic scam pulled off by some 19th century scoundrel! A lot of midnight oil was burned fixing that.

How did the Native Americans you met during your research feel about the idea of your writing about their culture, and how have they reacted to the book?

To be honest, the only Lenape I know who has read the book is Night Cloud, and he is very formidable. I’m afraid to ask him what he thought.

Your characters range from Main Line Philadelphia society matrons to the underprivileged ghetto youngster Fenimore adopts as a helper. Was this a deliberate attempt to cover a lot of different Philadelphia subcultures, or did that come naturally in writing about the city.

I was born in Philadelphia and lived there until very recently, and I know it pretty well. I didn’t deliberately set out to “cover a lot of Philadelphia subcultures.” In fact, there is very little about my writing that is deliberate.

I don’t make outlines. I’m not even sure who the murderer is when I begin. My main characters are little more than sketches or impressions that I try to develop into three-dimensional people as I write. For example, I had no idea when I began this book that Horatio, or “Rat,” would become a major character. But now I am so fond of him I have had to go back and put him in the other two books in the series.

Yes, the book that was published first was actually the third book. So I am working backwards. The second book is the second book. But the third book will, in reality, be the first book.

The nice thing is, when I introduce Horatio into any scene, I find he brings all the other characters alive. He acts as a kind of catalyst. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I have to be very careful not to overuse him or to let him grow up too fast.

Your book won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin’s Press Best First Traditional Mystery contest. Could you tell us something about that — how you came to enter, and how you felt when you learned you’d won?

The contest. Whew! I almost didn’t…enter. The application lay on by desk for weeks. Finally, one day, I noticed the deadline was coming up. I thought, “What the heck, nothing ventured, etc.” and sent in my manuscript. When I think how close I came to NOT sending it in, I get chills.

The day Ruth Cavin [senior mystery editor at St. Martin’s Press] called with the news is indelibly engraved in my mind. Whenever I’m feeling low or blue, I call it up, and the world becomes bright again. My first reaction was total disbelief. When she said, “I called to tell you you’ve won…” my first thought was the lottery. (I was a conscientious follower of Publishers Central Bureau!) When the truth finally penetrated, I got one gigantic migraine. It lasted three days. But it was worth every minute.

Have you always wanted to write mysteries?

I’ve always wanted to write. The mystery part came later. I wasted a lot of time writing a lot of very tragic short stories in an attempt to make it in the “literary” field. I wish I had a nickel for every story. However, I think writing that awful stuff helped me to write better.

I’m sure the mystery idea was planted in my mind at an early age, but didn’t surface until much later. We had a mystery writer in our family: Helen McCloy. She was very popular in the Thirties and Forties. I always admired her, and her work. Now, I believe that I always wanted to be like her. I guess today, she would be called a “role model.” But, so far, I’ve taken only one small step in that direction.

What writers — in or out of the mystery genre — have influenced your work?

Obviously, Helen’s writing influenced me. Others I have admired are Josephine Tey, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, Raymond Chandler. I like the traditional mystery but with a modern edge or bite. And that’s what I’m striving for. I have a long way to go. I also like mysteries with humor. I think that humor gives the serious and frightening parts of a mystery an extra edge, by contrast.

Tell us about your career outside of writing and how it influenced your books.

For 25 years I ran a printing/publishing firm called Barnhouse Press. One printing press was in the barn, another in the house. The kitchen, to be exact. My two daughters claim they were lulled to sleep by its pulsing beat.

I’ve always been a book nut. Anything to do with books was OK with me and I could never be too far away from them. I love the smell of them. I guess I’d eat them if they were digestible, but I’m getting carried away.

I would have been happy as a bookseller, a librarian — and I was happy as a printer. When I walk into a stationer’s shop, if I hear a multilith running and I smell ink, I’m drawn like a moth to light, to that back room to see what’s going on. I still have a collection of rare old type and a small hand printer. I keep meaning to set it up and ink it, but there isn’t time for everything. Sometime, I hope to include a printer as a character in one of my mysteries. Desktop publishing has almost eliminated those fine independent craftsmen. It would be nice to bring one back in a book.

You’ve established a Web site about your books. How did you get interested in doing this, and what kind of reaction has it received?

My daughter has a good friend, Elisabeth Roxby, who is a very talented Web designer. She offered to create my Web site for me. I am extremely grateful to her — as I didn’t have a clue how to go about it.

My only contributions to the site were the little cartoon drawings — and the back view of Fenimore. We hope to make the site more interactive in the future, include some excerpts of my new book to whet readers’ appetites, and invite them to comment on the books by email. I would really welcome their reactions and criticisms (as long as they don’t mention baseball!)

Did you have any motive for writing the Fenimore books other than to tell a good story?

You shouldn’t have asked that. Now I’ll get on my soapbox! In Dr. Fenimore I tried to create the kind of person I think a good doctor should be. Someone who is not only an expert in his field but who also cares for his patients and is loyal to the ethical tenets of his profession.

Medical care in this country is going through a very difficult time. In the process many doctors have become technicians who sometimes lack the more human qualities. It is not all their fault. There are many factors involved. But a “health care provider” cannot replace the family doctor who knew you from childhood. I hate to see that person disappear completely.

If there is a mission underlying the Fenimore stories it is to remind people that another kind of doctor did exist, in the hope that he/she should not be allowed to disappear from the health care scene entirely. (There, now I’ll get down.)

In closing, I would like to tell aspiring mystery writers not to go it alone. Join an organization like Sisters-in-Crime and Mystery Writers of America (MWA). The help of other writers can not be overestimated. I heard about the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Contest from a Sisters in Crime member. And the first few chapters of the book that won was edited by a skillful mentor at MWA. And, finally, don’t be afraid to get rejection slips. If you don’t get them you are not a professional writer. Nothing was ever published from a drawer!

Donna Andrews

Donna Andrews is the author of Murder with Peacocks, which won the St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Award in May 1998.