Forgotten Fridays: Janet Dawson

Janet Dawson

Forgotten Fridays, around the net, showcases books or authors that might have fallen by the wayside but deserve to be remembered. You can find a bunch of links for forgotten books today at Pattinase's blog at www.pattinase.blogspot.com.



I would like to post about crime fiction author Janet Dawson. She wrote a very good private eye series featuring Jeri Howard, a private investigator in Oakland, California from 1991 until 2000. Her books are told in first person POV and combine a smart woman detective with subtle social issues. This information is from www.stopyourekillingme.com, amazon.com, and her website. The books are:

• Kindred Crimes (1991) - Won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America contest for best first private eye novel, Finalist 1991 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, Finalist 1991 Shamus Award for Best First Novel, Finalist for Best First Novel Macavity

California PI Jeri Howard's new case seems straightforward: find Renee Mills Foster, nee Elizabeth Renee Willis, a wife who packed her bags, left her young son with her mother-in-law, emptied the joint bank account and took off. But the plucky and very resourceful Howard picks up a convoluted trail leading to a double murder committed 15 years earlier--a teenage boy's shooting of his own parents. Mark Willis, having confessed to the murders and served his time, is now trying to blend into a small-town community, an attempt made difficult by his sister's disappearance and Howard's investigation. To solve her case, Howard has to piece together events that led to the murders, determining where Mark's two siblings--Elizabeth and Karen, then 14 and nine, respectively--were when they occurred. Child abuse, adultery and
blackmail are just a few of the sins hidden behind both disappearance and murder.

Chapter One Exerpt:

Man, woman and child posed in front of a thick green Christmas tree, its branches laden with silver tinsel and gold balls. He stood behind her chair, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Her blonde hair fell in waves past the collar of her red dress. In her lap she held a cherubic toddler. They smiled at the camera, the image of a perfect middle-class nuclear family, caught forever in a five-by-seven glossy.
"When did she leave?" I asked.
"Wednesday morning," he said, his voice tremulous. He cleared his throat. "She left the baby with my mother, said she was going shopping. She never came back."
He was a slender fair-haired man of about thirty, well-dressed, with finely chiseled features. Now he put one hand to his pale face, as though to erase the lines etched by worry and strain. He sighed deeply. I waited for him to continue.
"I got home from work around six. Renee wasn't there, so I called Mom. She and Dad live just a few miles away. Mom told me Jason was there but she hadn't seen Renee since about ten that morning. Of course I was concerned."
He'd waited, an hour, then two, concern giving way to worry, plagued by visions of car accidents and abductions. Finally he called the police. They asked if Mrs. Foster left on her own. Of course she hadn't, he said. Then he looked in the closet, the dresser drawers, the bathroom. Her suitcase was missing. So were clothes, shoes, the things a woman would take with her if she planned to be gone for awhile. The next day the bank called him about a bounced check. Mrs. Foster had emptied the joint account.
"Can you find her, Miss Howard?"
"Are you sure you want me to?"
Philip Foster blinked his puppy brown eyes in surprise. "Of course I want you to find her. Why would you ask a question like that?"
"Your wife apparently left on her own. She may not want to come back." He winced. I felt as though I'd kicked the puppy. But he had to know and I had to tell him. "If I find her I can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do."
"I understand," he said. "But if I could just talk to her... I'm worried about her. I have to know that's she's all right."
I looked him in the eye for a long moment as I thought about this case and whether I should take it. Did Mr. Foster drink, take drugs, beat his wife or child? If that was the reason Mrs. Foster left, why didn't she take the kid? And why did I feel that Philip Foster was holding something back?

• Till the Old Men Die (1992)

A Filipino-American professor at California State University in Hayward has been murdered, his body found by Jeri's father, a colleague. Now, several months after the funeral, a mystery woman shows up, claiming to be the dead man's widow.

Chapter One Excerpt:

The woman with the scar on her chin had costumed herself for the role of a widow. Her wardrobe included a black silk dress, stylish and expensive, accented by a circular gold brooch and a chic little hat with a veil, anchored to her smooth black chignon by a wicked-looking hatpin. A wide gold band adorned the third finger of her left hand. The manicured fingers of her right hand clutched a single sheet of paper.
Unfortunately for her, she had failed the audition. That's why her brown eyes glared beneath the plucked brows and jade eye shadow, and her full lips, sleek with coral lipstick, twisted with anger. That's why, on this warm Monday morning in May, she stood in the middle of the History Department office of California State University at Hayward, swearing at my father and Dr. Isabel Kovaleski in a mixture of Tagalog and English. I don't understand Tagalog, but the venom behind the words was unmistakable. As for the English, I hadn't heard language that colorful since the last time I visited the Alameda County Jail.
The woman's tirade cut through class-break chatter and caused heads to turn in the corridor, where I stood next to the bulletin board. Professors in nearby offices appeared in their doorways, looking for the source of the racket. I fingered a notice about spring quarter finals and watched the drama in the office, mentally taking notes.
She was Filipina, her English good but accented, her voice throaty, almost guttural. Height five three, I guessed, weight about one ten, and I put her age as mid- to late thirties. I had noticed the scar right away, a thread of white along her left jawline, perhaps three or four inches long. It could have been caused by any number of things but my first thought was that someone had struck her. Otherwise she looked prosperous and well-kept, with a certain hard-eyed, calculating edge, and a high-handed attitude that told me she was used to getting her own way. Maybe that's why she was now angry enough to swear at the people she was trying to convince. She'd gone to a lot of trouble, but no one was buying her act.
She had been waving that sheet of paper under Dr. Kovaleski's nose. Now she shoved it into her black leather clutch purse, whirled and marched out of the office, pushing past me without a glance. Her high heels stacattoed the linoleum as she headed for the stairwell. I followed her.
Outside Mieklejohn Hall, she plowed a path through crowds of students like a battleship at full steam, moving up the hillside steps toward the campus bookstore. Before reaching the store she turned right and crossed the street to a parking lot where a white Thunderbird with California plates straddled the line between two spaces. She unlocked the door, hurled the purse onto the passenger seat, and slid in behind the wheel. The engine roared and she backed the car out with a jerk, narrowly missing a couple of students. One of them yelled something at her. She responded with the raised middle digit of her left hand and gunned the engine. The Thunderbird squealed down a row of cars and exited the parking lot at an entrance.
I wrote down the Thunderbird's license number, then retraced my steps to Meiklejohn Hall. When I got back upstairs Dr. Kovaleski was seated at her desk, a frown on her face and her fingers beating a tattoo on her desk blotter. My father, Dr. Timothy Howard, occupied one of the two chairs opposite her.
"What do you think, Jeri?" Dad asked, crossing one long leg over the other.
"Tell me again how all this started," I said, taking the other chair. Dad had given me bare bones on the phone last night, but I wanted to add some flesh to the skeleton.
"She says her name is Dolores Cruz Manibusan," Dr. Kovaleski said in her mittel-European accent. "She appeared quite suddenly Friday morning, demanding to see the head of the department. I'm acting chair, so I asked if I could help her. She announced that she was Dr. Manibusan's widow and she wanted his papers. That was the word she used-papers. I explained that Dr. Manibusan's office had been cleared out by his next of kin. She became quite angry and shouted at me. She said she was his next of kin and she'd be back today."
"Dr. Manibusan was murdered in January. This is the first week in May. It's been almost four months. Where," I wondered, "has the grieving widow been all this time?"
"Indeed." Isabel Kovaleski's voice was as dry as the sun-tindered grass on the hills surrounding the campus.

• Take a Number (1993)
  Wife abuse and the psychology of victims are themes. Ruth Raynor, planning to divorce her husband, Navy first-class petty officer Sam Raynor, asks Jeri to look for the $100,000 that she believes Sam has hidden. Although Sam denies the sum's existence, Ruth had seen a bank statement on which it appeared; under California divorce law, she is entitled to half of it. As Jeri follows standard procedures for tracing money--checking bank accounts, looking for aliases, seeking third parties who might be holding the funds--she sees Sam's new girlfriend driving a new, expensive car. After the car is reported stolen and a major insurance claim is filed, Jeri discovers that Sam's past conceals a previously unknown former wife who had divorced him for abuse. Jeri's next task, however, is hunting for evidence to clear Ruth of Sam's murder.



• Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean (1994)
  A week's vacation with her family in Monterey becomes a busman's holiday for Oakland PI Jeri Howard. First, she agrees to help a biologist cousin find out who is mutilating pelicans in the area. Then another cousin becomes a murder suspect when the body of his girlfriend washes up near the coast. Jeri also offers to help her mother, owner of Cafe Marie, discover who is behind recent incidents that are driving business away from the restaurant. Working on all three cases, Jeri learns that nearly everyone, from the dead girl's parents to her mother's new lover, has something to hide. Adrift in a swirl of leads and clues, she calls on her retired mentor, Errol Seville, with whose help she's finally able to link the disparate cases and solve the crimes.

• Nobody’s Child (1995)

Howard is hired by an alcoholic woman to find out if the body of a young woman recently found in a burned-out home is that of her daughter who had run away three years earlier. Determining that the victim was indeed her client's daughter, the PI also learns that the young woman, who had been living on the streets in Berkeley, had had a young daughter. The client seems uninterested in her grandchild, but the PI feels compelled to search for the little girl. As Christmas approaches, Howard mingles uneasily with the homeless in the cold damp East Bay winter, moving from street markets to a backstage tour of Oakland's historic Paramount Theater as she tracks the murder victim's associations with high-school friends, some kindly "old hippie" benefactors and an enigmatic drug dealer. On the way to the satisfying solution, characters trade observations on homelessness, HIV infection and race relations.

• A Credible Threat (1996)

A "credible threat" is a term from California's anti-stalking law. Vicki Vernon, Jeri's former stepdaughter and a student at Berkeley, shares a house with half a dozen fellow students. Vicki asks Jeri for help when a series of vaguely menacing phone calls and incidents of petty vandalism plague her housemates. Jeri figures the caller/vandal is probably a spurned boyfriend or practical joker, but when a pipe bomb is thrown through the window of the house, the ante is upped. Jeri begins looking into the backgrounds of Vicki's housemates, and her digging soon reveals that the case is rooted in a years-old unsolved murder that has dangerous repercussions for one of Vicki's friends.

• Witness to Evil (1997)
  Private investigator Jeri Howard can scarcely believe that someone is actually paying her to go to Paris, even if it is only to fetch a wild teenager home. But the wanderer, eighteen-year-old Darcy, turns out to have a serious reason for her unauthorized jaunt: to visit Holocaust memorials and to meet the French family who sheltered her grandmother as a girl from the Nazis.But back home in California, Darcy stumbles on evidence that Nazism is alive and well in the terrifying present. And Jeri has the deadly work of trying to extricate Darcy from the frightening consequences of her discovery.
  

• Where the Bodies Are Buried (1998)

Welcome to Corporate America. Where the CEOs make millions and the peons get squeezed. Where power corrupts and a seven-figure bonus may be worth killing for. When Jeri Howard's new client, Rob Lawter, takes a header through his living room window soon after he's hired her, Jeri is in a quandary. Lawter, a paralegal at Bates, Inc., a food-processing firm, had received a threatening anonymous note, sent because he was about to blow the whistle on some serious corporate cover-up. Since Jeri has already cashed the check, she feels she owes her dead, probably murdered, client his money's worth. So she goes undercover in Bates's legal department, determined to expose Lawter's killer.

• A Killing at the Track (2000)

Investigator Jeri Howard is fascinated by the beautiful horses and the zealous spectators at stylish Edgewater Downs. But behind the scenes, where the owners, trainers, jockeys, and grooms mingle, life is not so pretty. Someone is terrorizing owner-trainer Molly Torrance with sinister phone threats.

Dawson's website can be found at http://www.janetdawson.com/. She lives in Alameda, California and works as a legal secretary. In past lives she has been a newspaper reporter, as well as both an enlisted journalist and officer in the U.S. Navy. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Private Eye Writers of America, and Mystery Readers International.


Damn, now I want to re-read these. I haven't read these in years and this reminds me of a voice that crime fiction has been missing for a long time. I wish she would write again.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster