Ayres Off to a Running Start : The Mission Viejo writer sold her first mystery after gleaning facts ranging from cop talk to autopsies from local sources.

Mission Viejo author Noreen Ayres wastes no time--or words--in getting her debut mystery novel off to quick start:

“First they shot him in the mouth. His tongue split down the middle like a barbecued hot dog. That was from the .22. Of course, we didn’t know that until the autopsy.”

That’s Smokey Brandon talking.

She’s the narrator-heroine in “A World the Color of Salt” (William Morrow; $19), the first in a planned series of mysteries featuring the Orange County Sheriff’s Department forensic specialist.

The sharp-witted and decisive Brandon has been on the job five years, but she’s a character with a past: She’s a 32-year-old ex-stripper, former Oakland cop and recent widow, who describes herself as “5-5, bland blonde, the right weight”--a normally “untouchable” woman who could observe an autopsy on a baby “and not cry.”

But the cold-blooded murder of the pleasant college kid at the mini market where she buys her morning coffee and doughnut hits Brandon hard, and she is determined to help bring the teen-ager’s killer to justice.

The crime lab and mean streets of Orange County may seem an unlikely milieu for Ayres, who prefers reading “literary” fiction and who began her own writing career in the mid-’80s by writing poetry and short stories.

In fact, except for the mysteries of fellow writing workshop members T. Jefferson Parker and Maxine O’Callaghan, Ayres had never even read a whodunit when she sat down to write “A World the Color of Salt” in 1990.

So why did Ayres, a former technical writer who quit her job to write fiction, join the burgeoning ranks of mystery writers?

“I chose it for the crass motive of wanting to write something for which I could be paid a decent sum,” said Ayres, 51, who earned a six-figure advance for her book--that after abandoning a previously written novel that was turned down by 36 literary agents and publishing houses.

In choosing to write a mystery, Ayres said, “I recognized that I have always been horrified by outrageous crime, and many readers of true crime, I’ve been told, are the most gentle people on earth. My theory is there are so many female mystery readers because women grow up with a sense of vulnerability that men generally don’t have.”

While writing “A World the Color of Salt,” Ayres said, “I realized that everything I wanted to say in the literary field I can say in the mystery genre.” (The novel’s title, taken from a line of poetry by Richard Hugo, refers to the hope that people will not live in a world without joy.)

Once Ayres decided to write a mystery, she signed up for a forensic science class at UC Irvine. In fact, she was driving home from her first class meeting in 1990 when that graphic first line of her novel came to her.

And when it did, she recalled, “I knew I was going to sell the book, and I can tell you why: because it would be a ‘felt’ book, one that I knew would tap all of the wounds in myself, one that would start the engine of all my hysterical yowlings, all my grief at the pain in the world.”

Since then, she’s taken another class in criminal investigation. The classes, she said, have been invaluable “not only for forensic details but for cop talk. The second one was taught at Irvine Valley College by working policemen taking on second jobs and there I went on field trips to a prison and viewed a double autopsy.”

Observing an autopsy was, she said, “your worst nightmare magnified, and I’ve saved the grossest (details) for the second book.”

Ayres said she did extensive research to provide the proper atmosphere and details for her novel. “I worked very hard,” she said. “I think it shows because people tell me it’s a very textured novel. I now have five half-inch binders of crime notes that I gleaned from all sorts of sources--magazines, the Los Angeles Times, cop shows on TV, conversations with police where I can find them.”

Because a forensic specialist is basically involved in lab work and is not a sleuth, Ayres said she has to find creative ways to get Brandon out in the field.

“That’s always the problem in fiction if you want to make it as close to life as possible,” she said. “I had a brilliant idea, I think, to get her out of the lab for the second book, but my editor nixed it. She said when readers come upon a series character they want the character to stay in the same locale and job until a few books down the road.”

As a character, Ayres said, Smokey Brandon is being accepted by readers “beyond whatever I could have imagined, particularly by women. She seems to really strike a chord for women. Over and over again they say, ‘I feel like I know this person.’ I think it’s that she’s intelligent and observant and as fractured in her life as the rest of us.”

Ayres said her novel contains more than the usual share of sex for a mystery.

“Women come up and whisper in my ear about the love scene and say, ‘You’ve really got that right.’ I think they like the mixture of sensuality and humor.”

Ayres is not sure what prompted her to make Smokey Brandon an ex-stripper.

“What’s curious is there have been a few bold people that I’ve met, mostly ex-reporters, who have come right out and asked me if I was ever a stripper. But my response is, ‘Why don’t they ever ask me if I was ever a cop?’ ”

Well, was she?

“I wish that I had been,” she said with a laugh. “It would have made good copy. And I thought about lying about it, but I couldn’t do it because that’s also part of the fun of fiction: It’s creating characters that you have not been.”

And was she ever a stripper?

“I could be coy and say ‘yes,’ ” she said, “but no, I was not.”

Ayres, who has a book of poetry, “Sorting Out Darkness,” due out in July by Tustin-based Pacific Writers Press, will discuss “A World the Color of Salt” at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at an American Assn. of University Women luncheon at the University Club at UC Irvine. Cost: $35. She joins poet Deborah Sperberg and authors Elizabeth George and Sue Kirby on the speaker’s panel. For reservations, call Alice Parsons at (714) 856-6400. Proceeds will go to the AAUW educational foundation.