BACK IN THE USSR

My guest is mystery/suspense author, Joyce Yarrow. Joyce shares a bit about the background of the latest book in her Jo Epstein Mystery Series, The Last Matryoshka, and the travel she did to give it an authentic feel. 

I had reached a crossroads in my story – actually Jo Epstein’s story. Her Russian émigré stepfather was being pursued by demons from his past that he refused to unmask. Jo’s job was to prove his innocence— the only acceptable outcome given the vulnerable state her mother was in—but Nikolai had made this nigh impossible. His irascible nature and reluctance to share even the most basic information – for example, that he had a sister still living in Moscow—was driving her mad. And just when she finds some clues that might exonerate him, Nikolai foils her once again by fleeing the country.

It was a given that she would follow him – after all, I’m the writer and had planned this all along. But nonetheless, I was not as ready for this transition as I might have been. With shelves crammed with books about everything Russian, and in particular the class of criminals known as the vory, I was as confident of accurately writing the scenes set in Russia as a first-time skier who has mistaken Mt. Everest for the bunny slope.

So I went ahead and bought tickets for my then 16-year-old son and myself from Dublin to Moscow.  We would take our family vacation in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and then my husband would fly back to the States, leaving Ian and me to embark on our adventure.

This was not the first time I had traveled “in Jo’s shoes.” Although I grew up in New York, I live in Seattle and it seems that while I wasn’t looking, someone turned Manhattan into a foreign country. Which was why--during the writing of the first Jo Epstein mystery, Ask the Dead—I took so many trips back home to update myself I would have used up all the visa pages had my passport been required.

Oh yeah – I was talking about Russia. Every place that Ian and I explored in and around Moscow—from the Mayakovsky Metro Station (I loved the Moscow Subway!) to the Suzdal Monastery and the Matryoshka factory in Sergiev Posad—every nook and cranny in the Soviet-style apartment we stayed in near the University—made its way into the book. We were even treated to dinner in a Georgian restaurant by a Commander in the Russian Criminal Police. He blessed the plot I had devised—yes, sometimes we writers do our research and get it right—and then gave me his cell number just in case I had further questions. How lucky was that? And it was fascinating to hear him talk about the days when the vory battled the police in a fair fight and everyone followed the code. No so today!

My son was very tolerant—although he did panic a little when the doors of Vladimir Central Prison clanged shut behind us—the first Americans ever to tour this fearsome place. His paranoia rubbed off on me and Jo ended up spending some unexpected time incarcerated there.

I could have finished The Last Matryoshka using Google Earth and without ever leaving home – after all, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island while he was confined to his bed. But being a neophyte in Moscow alongside Jo was too good a chance to pass up. How else could I have learned that to avoid being recognized as an American in Moscow all one has to do is carry a plastic bag instead of a backpack? Or that certain underground monastery cells were once used to imprison heretics? Where else could I have experienced the chaos of airports where queuing up is for sissies only? And how else could I have met the model for Nikolai’s mysterious sister, Olga, who he wrongly believed had betrayed his parents to the KGB?

• Have you ever traveled someplace you never dreamed of in order to follow your dream?

• What's your favorite "travel tip" for blending in with the natives?

***

Available in hardcover and ebook 

The Last Matryoshka by Joyce Yarrow


A poetry-writing private investigator tries to save her Russian stepfather....

Full-time private investigator/part-time poet Jo Epstein travels to New York and eventually to Russia to help clear her emigre stepfather—who is framing him for murder and who is sending him threatening messages in Russian nesting dolls (matryoshkas). Her investigation takes her on a journey into her stepfather’s past and into the honor-bound code of the “vory,” a Russian criminal syndicate. Excerpt Book trailer

"Intricately layered like the Russian nested doll of the title..." Library Journal

Buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Istoria Books

***

Joyce Yarrow was born in the SE Bronx, escaped to Manhattan as a teenager and now lives in Seattle with her husband and son. Along the way to becoming a full-time author, Joyce has worked as a screenwriter, singer-songwriter, multimedia performance artist and most recently, a member of the world music vocal ensemble, Abráce.

Joyce is a Pushcart nominee, whose stories and poems have been widely published. Her first book, Ask the Dead (Martin Brown 2005), was selected by The Poisoned Pen as a Recommended First Novel and hailed as “Bronx noir”. Her latest book, The Last Matryoshka, takes place in Brooklyn and Moscow. It was published in hardcover by Five Star/Cengage and is now available for Kindle through Istoria Books. (www.IstoriaBooks.com)

Joyce considers the setting of her books to be characters in their own right and teaches workshops on "The Place of Place in Mystery Writing."


You can find Joyce on Facebook and at her Website.

You can read more about Joyce Yarrow’s writing journey, her P.I. brother, her childhood in the Bronx, her use of place as character in her books: http://istoriabooks.blogspot.com/2012/02/joyce-yarrow-from-crime-ridden-bronx-to.html

***

Look at other Istoria Books offerings here: http://www.istoriabooks.com

Istoria Books: eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay