Did the butler do it?

Jane DiLucchioBurbank resident and Glendale Community College professor Jane DiLucchio’s first published novel is a thriller in the vein of Agatha Christie’s classics. Locals reading Glendale Community College professor Jane DiLucchio’s first published novel “Relationships Can Be Murder” will feel right at home.

Relationships and the secrets people in them keep are the recurring themes in this murder mystery that takes place in Glendale and Burbank.

Everyone in the book knows each other and are connected in some way, said DiLucchio, who lives in Burbank.

“The book covers the relationships the people have with each other, and, as they investigate the crime, they find out secrets about each other as well as the victim,” she said.

The author likened the tone of her book to that of Agatha Christie, the English writer of detective stories, featuring characters Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, from the early 1900s.

“My book has humor and is a fast read,” she said. “It’s much more than a police procedural or forensic investigation. You know the characters. There is no sex and the violence, for the most part, happens off stage.”

While the author and the main character, Dee DelValle, have some similarities, DiLucchio said Dee isn’t patterned after herself. But there is a little bit of the author in all the characters in the book, she said. All characters are fictionalized.

DiLucchio has been teaching continuing education courses at Glendale Community College for 18 years. Formerly, she taught elementary school in Burbank for 10 years.

Her main character also lives in Burbank and frequents sites familiar to residents. She jogs up and down Clark Avenue, uses the new Chandler Bike Path and the murder victim was a newscaster who worked out of Channel 8, located next to Channel 4. The character, Dee, is also an elementary school teacher for the Glendale Unified School District.

Dropping the names of places around town makes it fun for locals to read, said Kelly Kissell, grants manager at Glendale Community College.

“I thought the book moved at a very good pace and it kept pulling you in because she would side track and bring things in about Burbank and Glendale, places you would know,” Kissell said. “It’s a nice read for not being terribly heavy, even though it’s about murder.”

Christine Bell, co-owner of the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale, read the book and said DiLucchio has a great command of the English language and writes with a down-to-earth style and is not pretentious.

“She has very good descriptions of the characters, and her interpretation of the characters is much higher caliber than it usually is for a first-time author,” Bell said. “When the characters become real, that makes you want to read from beginning to the end and to learn more about the characters.”

DiLucchio was inspired to start writing murder mysteries after her third time serving as a juror on murder trials.

“As I sat in the jury room waiting to be called, I started thinking about why someone would murder someone else,” DiLucchio said. “And I thought about secrets and how someone would try to keep a secret.”

She is already working on the sequel and should complete it by January. If her publisher likes it, it should be released in December 2006, she said.

While in her home office writing, DiLucchio also gains inspiration from her roommates, her two cats Murphy Brown and Shania.