Author Krich launches new hero
BY BETTY WEBB
Get Out
Nov. 19, 2002

Rochelle Krichs new best friend is named Molly Bloom. No, Molly isnt a character in a James Joyce novel shes the journalist/amateur detective in Krichs new mystery, Blues in the Night.

Molly just popped into my head, full-blown, as I was sitting at my computer, Krich says from her home in Los Angeles. The woman actually visited me, and yes, I know that it sounds like I need medication!

Krich admits shed always been a fan of Harry Kemelmans Rabbi Small novels (Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, etc.), and that with his death a few years ago, she felt a void. She decided to try to fill it.

The morning Molly Bloom came to visit, I realized what fun it would be to use her as a female sleuth who hooked up with a rabbi, something like Nick and Nora Charles in the 'Thin Man series, but with this Jewish touch, Krich says. I knew that the challenge would be to keep the romance sizzling when they finally got together.

In Blues in the Night, Molly is a freelance journalist who writes the Crime Sheet column for a Los Angeles newspaper. During one assignment, she runs across the case of Lenore Saunders, a woman wearing only a nightgown who was hit by a car and left for dead in an upscale neighborhood. Suspecting the story might develop into more than a mere news brief, Molly investigates and learns that Lenore had once shaken her newborn son to death, but escaped prison time by pleading postpartum psychosis.

When I started writing the book, Andrea Yates had already been arrested, Krich explains. Id been appalled and fascinated by her case. Was she telling the truth? Was she truly mentally ill or just a liar like Susan Smith? As the mother of six children of my own, I just couldnt imagine killing your children and then picking up the phone and calmly calling your husband and the police.

So that was the question I posed in Blues in the Night. Was Lenore a Susan Smith, or was she an Andrea Yates? I myself didnt have the answer for quite some time.

A haunting theme throughout the book is the song The Lady from 29 Palms, an Andrews Sisters hit based on the small desert city in which Lenore was raised.

A line from that song just stuck in my mind, Krich says. No one could get their arms around her, the lady from 29 Palms. That described Lenore to me. That was her.

Another theme in the book is Mollys orthodox Judaism, the religion of Krich, who is the child of two Holocaust survivors. Like Harry Kemelmans amateur detective, Molly uses lessons from the Torah to illuminate both her own life and the cases she is writing about.

Krich already was a highly successful writer of mystery and suspense before Molly Bloom came to visit. Her first book, Wheres Mommy, won a 1990 Anthony Award and was made into the movie Perfect Alibi, starring Terri Garr, Hector Elizondo and Kathleen Quinlan. Since then, Krich has published 10 more critically acclaimed novels, as well as short stores.

When asked how she is able to produce so many books while raising six children, Krich just laughs.
When you have six children you need an outlet!

IF YOU GO
Rochelle Krich discusses and signs Blues in the Night 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Poisoned Pen, 4014 N. Goldwater Blvd., Scottsdale, .