Even the Writers Wonder Whodunit

It began with a conversation that Orange County Coastline Magazine publisher and executive editor Dave Bartlett had with author T. Jefferson Parker in a Laguna Beach restaurant.

They were talking about the burgeoning number of mystery writers the county has spawned in recent years when it struck Bartlett: Why didn’t his magazine publish a mystery serial set along the Orange coast, with each installment written by a different Orange County author?

Although Parker is unable to participate at this time, Bartlett rounded up eight of the county’s brightest literary stars who shared his enthusiasm for the project.

The result is “A Shot in the Dark,” which debuts in the new bimonthly magazine’s Spring issue (on newsstands next Thursday).

Chapter 1, by Newport Beach mystery writer Elizabeth C. Ward, is titled: “Deathly Tones of Grey.”

Subsequent chapters will be written by Costa Mesa screenwriter Terry Black, Costa Mesa short story writer Jo-Ann Mapson, and mystery writers Maxine O’Callaghan of Mission Viejo, Jean Femling of Costa Mesa, Elizabeth George of Huntington Beach, Robert Ray (formerly of Irvine and now living in Seattle) and A.E. Maxwell (the Laguna Niguel husband and wife writing team of Ann and Evan Maxwell).

A handful of the writers met initially with Bartlett to formulate the serial’s plot, and Ward developed the protagonist: Jeremy Greene, a 23-year-old struggling Newport Beach photographer from Ohio.

In Ward’s first installment, Greene meets Marie, a beautiful young stockbroker who takes an unusual interest in pictures he has taken near Newport Pier earlier in the day. As the chapter ends, Marie turns up dead in Greene’s bed, and a mysterious group of men are pursuing the baffled young photographer. It will be up to Greene to use his powers of detection to find out why.

“He’s absolutely different than all the detectives we have here in Orange County,” Ward said . “He’s young as opposed to old, and he’s not a cynic. He’s very optimistic like I think most of the people in Orange County are. And he has the Midwest values, which will, of course, win out in the end. We hope.”

Ward said she wasn’t given much to go on in setting the stage for the serial.

“They just said it started at the pier and there would be a picture taken, but they didn’t specify what the problem was,” she said. “I just did my best to establish a character and the situation. And I’m the one who’s going to be most interested in the next chapters to see how it turns out.”

“The fun thing about this,” she added, “is going to be Terry Black: He’s doing Chapter 2 and he does such far-out comedy. So my character, who’s fairly straightforward, is going to be turned into something quite different in the next chapter, I think.”

Elizabeth George, who is currently working on her fifth British mystery novel, is looking forward to having the literary baton passed to her.

“I just thought it sounded like a challenge, especially for me because I don’t write books about Orange County and I liked the idea of trying to use Orange County for a location for once,” she said.

George hasn’t been assigned a specific chapter yet, but she anticipates it will be “kind of fun to pick up the pieces of someone else’s story and weave all the threads together--pardon the mixed metaphor.”

As Jean Femling sees it: “You take the ball from wherever it comes. I have a sense it’s a ‘Perils of Pauline’ situation: You get the situation and do what you will.”

Given the county’s burgeoning writer’s community, the idea of assembling a group of local writers to create a mystery serial seems a natural.

“Primarily the reason I think it became a good project is because it utilizes all the good writers here in Orange County that are in the mystery field,” Bartlett said. “We make it fun for them. The writers are pretty much allowed to develop new characters and they can put any sort of new twist on it they want. But they recognize this is a serial so they can’t go too far out of bounds.”

Evan Maxwell said he was intrigued by the idea of doing the serial.

“The thing I liked about it, regardless of where it’s going, is kind of the ‘Rashomon’ quality: A number of people looking at the same problems,” he said. “Everybody has a different picture of what Orange County is.”

Although his wife, Ann, is busy with other writing projects and says she won’t be participating in the serial, Maxwell insists with a laugh: “She may not know it yet, but she’ll be part of it. That’s how we work.”

Saying he has never been particularly fond of group writing efforts, Maxwell recalled a “sendup romance” novel written by the staff of the Long Island newspaper Newsday in the ‘70s.

“It got a lot of ink because it was unusual, but the book was completely unsatisfying and artistically a flop as far as I was concerned,” he said. “So we’re just going to see how this thing plays out and have a little fun with it.”

Like the other writers involved with the serial, Maxwell is anticipating what the characteristically humorous Terry Black will come up with for Chapter 2.

Maxwell said with a laugh: “Terry will drive the rest of us crazy, no doubt. Nobody knows what to expect.”

Black, who wrote the screenplay for the movie “Dead Heat” and is writing a new episode for HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt,” acknowledged he’s having fun writing Chapter 2.

“It’s going to be good,” he said with a chuckle during a break from working on his installment earlier this week.

According to plan, Black will introduce a love interest for Jeremy Greene in his chapter, which will run in the magazine’s summer issue in June.

And, as anticipated, he is injecting a bit of Black humor into the proceedings.

“I find I’m unable not to,” he said. “I can’t tell a straight story. I’ve tried to tell a straight story, but gags always intrude whether you want them to or not.”

Book Signings: George Wright (“The Twisted Badge”) will sign from noon to 4 p.m. today at Waldenbooks in Huntington Center, Huntington Beach. . . . Children’s book author Babette Cole (“The Trouble With Mom”) will sign from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Lorson’s Books and Prints, 116 W. Wilshire Ave., Fullerton. . . . John Sanford (“Observing the Constellations”) will sign from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Rizzoli International Bookstore, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa.

Book Talk: Books About Ireland will be the topic of the Let’s Talk Books meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Orange Main Library, 101 N. Center St.

National Writers: Public relations writer Susan Linn will speak at the meeting of the Southern California chapter of the National Writers Club at 10 a.m. today at the Irvine Marriott, 18000 Von Karman, Irvine. Members, $10; nonmembers, $12.

Poetry Reading: Cafe of Dreams, a monthly meeting of music, discussion and poetry readings, will be held at 8 p.m. Monday at Diedrich’s Coffee, 474 E. 17th St., Costa Mesa. Featured will be poet Lee Mallory, members of Wounded Theatre and the Pivot Foots.

Send information about book-related events to: Books & Authors, Orange County Life, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626. Deadline is two weeks before publication.