Death Cleans Up

The Detective
A devoted wife and mother of three, Lois Meade cleans houses in the quaint village of Long Farnden. When dastardly deeds are done Lois finds herself poking around her clients' houses for clues and uncovers some surprising secrets about this seemingly peaceful village.

After high school, I attended Louisiana Tech University and Nicholls State University as a music education major. My dream then was becoming a band director. Instead, I fell in love with my husband, David, and I'm still in love with him even after thirty years of marriage, three grown children and six precious grandchildren.

After college, my husband and I moved to a small suburb of New Orleans. What a change for both of us. Most people don't realize that there's a vast difference in the cultures of North Louisiana and South Louisiana. I truly love living near New Orleans. With its Creole French and Spanish influence, it's such a unique and interesting city. Strolling through the historical French Quarter and the Garden District is one of my favorite pastimes. The city is well over 200 years old, but each time I visit, I find something new and fascinating.

So how did I get started writing? A lot of people ask me that question, and the answer is both simple and complex. Simply, I was trying to be a good, conscientious mother. More complex, I've always loved to read, and according to my mother, I've always possessed a healthy dose of imagination as well as the belief that I could do anything I wanted to do if I set my mind to it.

When my oldest daughter was a young teenager, Harlequin Presents began arriving through the mail. Without my knowledge, my daughter had subscribed, and I decided I should read a few to make sure they were suitable for someone her age. I deemed that they were suitable, but a funny thing happened. The more I read, the more I wanted to read. Then I came to a point when I began to believe that I could write "one of those."
Believing I could write a book was half the battle. Actually writing one and getting published was the other half. Well, I did write one, then I wrote another one, then another, and I'm still writing fifteen years later. But even better, I'm published and get to share my stories with thousands of wonderful readers all over the world, including sixteen foreign countries as well as the United States and Canada.

Besides reading and writing mystery and romance books though, there are other fun things I enjoy too. I love shopping at the malls (grin), tennis, sailing, and traveling. But the most fun thing of all is playing with my sweet grandchildren.

The Detective
Charlotte won't tell you her age, but I will. She's fifty-nine and dreading the day when she turns sixty. A native of New Orleans, she owns and operates her own maid service, 'Maid for a Day', catering exclusively to clients in the Garden District.

Petitely built, Charlotte stands five-foot-three. She has sky-blue eyes and wears her slightly gray-streaked, honey brown hair in a no nonsense cut that's short but stylish. As a firm believer in keeping fit, she eats sensibly and takes a brisk thirty-minute walk each day.
At eighteen, Charlotte fell in love and became engaged. But Charlotte's fiancé was killed, one of the early casualties of the Vietnam War. Sadly, he never knew he had fathered a son.

Then, at age twenty, Charlotte's beloved parents were in a fatal accident, and Charlotte was left all alone to raise both her infant son and her fifteen-year-old sister as well. A kindly professor she knew told her that a good bit of extra money could be earned if she were willing to hire herself out to clean other people's homes and recommended Charlotte to several of her wealthy acquaintances. Because Charlotte was so thorough and dependable, her reputation soon grew to the point that she was forced to expand 'Maid for a Day' and hire help.

Except for her parakeet, Sweety Boy, Charlotte now lives alone and still resides in the Victorian shotgun double she inherited from her parents. She possesses a keen awareness for details due to her profession as a maid. A highly intelligent woman, she also possesses an analytical mind as well as an active imagination which is fueled by her love of reading, in particular, mystery books.
From Charlotte's keen awareness for details, she often picks up clues the police miss, and by reading mystery books, she's learned to channel her imagination into analytical conclusions.

Whether it's a dead body or simply a missing piece of jewelry, Charlotte seems to have a knack for solving mysterious crimes, a trait that amazes those who know and love her, but a trait that also constantly frustrates and aggravates the police.

Oh, I almost forgot. Charlotte's son, Hank, became a very successful doctor, but he's also just a bit embarrassed that his mother still works as a maid. Kids! You can't help but love them, but aren't they a pain at times?

African American mystery author Barbara Neely was born in the small Dutch community of Lebanon, Pennsylvania in 1941. Neely, the eldest of Ann and Bernard's three children, attended a Catholic elementary school and was the only child in her class of Dutch-speaking students to speak English fluently. She was also the only student of African American descent to attend her elementary and high school.

Neely had always dreamed of becoming an author and actually wrote short stories before turning to novel writing. In 1978, Neely received the inspiration she needed to pursue a writing career. After watching an old woman in San Francisco dance in front of a band, Neely was convinced to take her work to the next level. Neely recalls, "She [the dancing woman] started pointing to people, and when she turned and pointed to me, it seemed to me that she was saying, 'Do it today, because today is all you have.'"

In addition to her community activism, Barbara Neely is well known for her series of mystery novels about a character named Blanche White. Neely comments about the origin of her character, saying
I started writing and publishing short stories and then started writing a novel that is now buried somewhere in the middle of my basement... In the middle of working on that novel I started playing around with this character Blanche and thought "I'd like to write something about race and class that was funny," but for a good part of the book I was just doing it for my own amusement. Then I got a letter from an editor and an agent both asking me if I was working on a longer work. I told them about the other novel which I thought was going to be the great African American novel and at the end I sort of mentioned about this other thing I was playing around with. They both wrote me back about the other thing so the Blanche books moved to the front of the queue.

In 1992, Neely published her first mystery novel, Blanche on the Lam, which was widely heralded by critics. Barbara Neely won several awards such as the "Go On Girl!" Award from the Black Women's Book Club for the best debut novel, the Agatha Award and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, and the Macavity award for Best First Mystery Novel. Over the course of the next eight years, Barbara Neely wrote three more mystery novels featuring Blanche White.

The Detective
The first thing one notices about Blanche is that she is a very proud woman. She is a middle-aged, heavy-set, dark-skinned Black woman who is in the field of domestic work. Such a profession may seem like an ill fit for such a proud, independent, strong-willed, outspoken woman, but Blanche sees no disgrace in the work she does. She enjoys being in places where she can see how people in power really act and talk behind closed doors. However, this often causes Blanche to become embroiled in the social and political scandals that surround those with whom she comes in contact. Through her quick wits and her fearlessness, she is able to maneuver dexterously through a hostile white-dominated world.

An integral aspect of Blanche's persona is her curiosity and her innate ability to put together the bits and pieces of a mystery. Her experience in dealing with many types of people gives Blanche the capacity to reveal the true intentions behind people's actions and words. In addition to her intuitiveness, she exhibits a feistiness that never ceases when she is intent on finding out the truth. Blanche is a sassy and sexy woman who looks at urban life with blade-sharp eyes.

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