Ashna Graves delights in taking neighborhood walks at that brief period of twilight when lamps are on but no one has thought to close the drapes. Wendy Madar would walk on by with no more than a glance, determined that privacy should be preserved even in the face of carelessness. It's easy to see why Graves is the mystery writer. She's the important one here, though more on Madar in a moment.
Ashna's mysteries star Jeneva Leopold, a general interest columnist on the Willamette Current, a job that gives full rein to those peeping-Sally tendencies that Leopold shares with the author. The job is a carte blanche to pry, nearly always with willing subjects. "Everyone loves to be interviewed," says Ashna. "It's like confession, or psychotherapy, or having your fortune told. What happens to the information afterward - - well, that can be a shock."
Though the first Jeneva Leopold mystery, Death Pans Out, is set at a gold mine, most take place in Willamette, Oregon, a small university town that had curbside recycling before nine-tenths of the country knew what it was, but that bars homeless people from the library reading room because they smell bad and snore.
The idle gold mine that is the setting for Death Pans Out is in high desert country near the Oregon-Idaho border. Following an illness, Neva goes to the mine in search of sun and solitude. That she finds a great deal more than renewed health, including the explanation for her uncle's disappearance fifteen years ago, may come as no surprise to readers, but Neva is amazed at just how busy and complicated the supposedly empty landscape of rocks and sagebrush can be.
The second mystery, No Angel, is set in Willamette, and tracks Neva over the course of several weeks following the murder of a street person who is a town favorite. The story opens with his surprising memorial service, and within hours Neva is drawn into the devilishly interwoven lives of a paranoid gardener, a debonair but evasive antiquities collector, a sculptor with a peculiar past, a ferociously grieving crone, and a homeless woman who watches over the vulnerable, including a host of feral cats.
As for Wendy Madar, she doesn't try to keep up with Ashna, but she did manage to write a photography memoir Through Another Lens: My Years with Edward Weston, co-authored with Weston's wife, model, and working partner, Charis Wilson. The creative crew at Northwest Documentary Arts & Media have used the memoir as the basis for a film, Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson. For a sneak preview, drop in at http://www.nwdocumentary.org/weston
