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| Elissa D. Grodin |
Celebrated American author Elissa D. Grodin, a resident of Connecticut, began her literary career as a book and film reviewer with the belief, she says, that there are many different ways of looking at any given piece of work and that the more deeply we see into a thing, the more we learn about human nature.
Grodin initially wrote children’s books before crossing over into writing mysteries.
Jill: Why do you write?
Elissa: I write for the pleasure of self-expression, and for the satisfaction of crafting beguiling characters who are connected in various ways in the delicious web of a whodunnit. My mysteries are published by a small ppublisher.
Jill: How do you feel about social media?
Elissa: I have considerable ambivalence toward social media, mostly for the reasons that it contributes to a false sense of reality, and it compromises our privacy, but I do occasionally post on Instagram.
Jill: Does your education transfer to your books?
Elissa: Becoming a writer has been on my mind since I was a teenager. I think it was probably J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye that got me going. Years later, when I was a student at Dartmouth College, I would occasionally see Salinger in the library. I worked part-time in the English Department Library there, and also as a research assistant for a visiting professor who was writing a literary biography. The subculture of academia appealed to me – with its rarefied atmosphere, freedom of thought and expression (this was well before the PC era or cancel culture), and its currency of ideas and original thought, and I use Dartmouth and its environs as the setting for my murder mysteries, which feature Edwina Goodman, an assistant professor of physics as an amateur sleuth. In the first book, one of her colleagues in the Physics & Astronomy Department is murdered following a department party. This was great fun to write, as the victim is based on a lecturer I knew at University College London – a very eccentric man. Throughout the books, Edwina gradually becomes romantically involved with a police detective in town, and together, they make a terrific detecting team.
Jill: Whence came the passion for writing mysteries?
Elissa: I am drawn to reading and writing mystery novels above other genres. The satisfaction of mysteries is that they provide the reader and the writer with the happy task of creating order out of chaos – and for the writer, a chance to philosophize and muse on the world around us – while (hopefully) being diverting and entertaining. I think murder mysteries are an underrated literary form, inasmuch as they may instruct and enlighten us about the breadth and depth of human nature. Agatha Christie was a master at this. By making my main character a physicist, I am trying to underscore the importance of critical thinking – and the importance of following the science. It’s my tiny effort at staunching the flow of things like aery-fairy double-speak, and so-called ‘alternative facts, which I think are often corrosive and insidious.
Jill: It appears that your protagonist is your alter ego.
Elissa: The protagonist of my mysteries, Edwina Goodman, is certainly my alter ego. She is a (much younger) theoretical physicist of boundless curiosity and intelligence (whereas I am hopeless at mathematics, which are at the heart of the matter in physics). The appeal of Edwina puts me in mind of the Scottish proverb, ‘pride and grace ne’er dwelt in the same place’, because along with her brilliance, she has an excess of humility and grace. She is one of those lucky people who are captivated early on by what will become their life’s work. When her uncle gifts her a compass at the age of eight, Edwina is bewitched by the evidence of an unseen magnetic field – and she becomes smitten by the mystery of myriad invisible forces at work in the universe. What makes her an excellent amateur sleuth is her ability to make connections between seemingly unconnected events, the very skill theoretical physicists employ when they analyze the invisible forces at work in the universe that create cause and effect.
Jill: What is the connection between your second mystery, Death by Hitchcock, and Alfred Hitchcock?
Elissa: “Death By Hitchcock” is so titled because a murder takes place during the Hitchcock Film Festival on campus. Film studies is a subject near to my heart; I was a film studies student in college, and I went on to marry a film actor (Charles Grodin), and both my father (Stan Durwood) and grandfather were in the movie business. Alfred Hitchcock is probably my favorite filmmaker. his book was great fun to write. It is my love letter to movies.
Jill: What is your writing process?
Elissa: Virginia Woolf said, “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for the ages or only for hours, nobody can say.” As a writer, this is what I live by. I write what I enjoy writing – children’s books and murder mysteries. Before the term EQ (emotional intelligence) was coined, I wrote a children’s book called, The Little Book of Feelings. My aim was to posit the idea that all feelings deserve validation, and to draw a distinction for children between feelings and actions – the idea being, that feelings can’t be helped, and they should be allowed full expression, and never judged, by the grown-ups in children’s lives. On the other hand, actions should be chosen carefully.
Jill: How do you handle research?
Elissa: As far as doing research for my children’s books and mysteries, I read articles and listen to lectures and interviews on the internet, and I read lots of books.
Jill: Work-in-Progress?
Elissa: Currently I am at work on a fourth mystery novel. Each of my murder mysteries is a stand-alone book, and can be enjoyed without having to read the series in order.
character in her crime series, Jill was a reporter in Spain, Colombia, Thailand, and the U.S. She is a true crime author, ghosted a thriller, writes a column for Mystery People ezine, and freelances for My Cornwall magazine. She lives in Connecticut USA. Her most recent book isIn Terror's Deadly Clasp, published 16 July 2021.
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