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Mysterious California - Author Panel with Laurie R. King, Kirk Russell, and Nadia Gordon

City of Burlingame

May 13, 2008

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Come join the Burlingame Public Library for an author panel on Mysterious California. The four mysteries chosen for this program represent a cross-section of crime fiction spawned by California’s locales. The writers and novels in the new program cover a large terrain geographically, historically, and culturally: Southland by Nina Revoyr, Shell Games by Kirk Russell, Sharpshooter by Nadia Gordon, and The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King.

In Southland, Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American law student, Jackie Ishida, discovers that four black teenagers were killed in her grandfather’s store during the Watts Riots of 1965, and that the murders were never solved or reported. In the process of piecing together the story of the boys’ deaths, Jackie unearths secrets of her family’s history. In the process of learning the truth about the crime, readers experience the satisfaction, and shock, of learning unknown stories about California’s past and the invisible influence the past plays on the present.

In Laurie R. King’s The Art of Detection, San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli is drawn into the surreal world of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, when one is murdered and it appears that an unpublished Holmes manuscript may be at the root of the crime. The novel's perspective shifts back and forth between Kate investigating the present-day crime and the unnamed narrator of the manuscript relating a tale of forbidden love and violent death. The novel beautifully evokes San Francisco in the early 20th century and in the modern day, in all its unpredictable, colorful variety.

Shell Games, the first of Kirk Russell's John Marquez novels, takes place along the northern California coast and features a unique sleuth: an ex-DEA agent who now heads a special investigative unit of the California Department of Fish and Game. As Marquez stalks the culprits in a multimillion-dollar abalone poaching ring, he runs up against an old nemesis from his DEA days.

Nadia Gordon takes us into the heart of food and wine culture in her Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mysteries. When the heir apparent to a major vineyard is shot dead in Sharpshooter, Sunny’s eccentric wine maker friend Wade is arrested for the murder. Sunny sets out to prove his innocence. Her investigation takes her into the tangled politics and personalities of the wine industry, and to the threat posed to the valley by an insect, the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

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  Tickets: Free

  Info Phone: 650-558-7444

• Dates & Times

  Dates:
  May 13, 2008

  Times:
  7pm

• Venue Info

  Burlingame Public Library

  480 Primrose Road Burlingame, CA 94010

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• Accessibility Info

  • Wheelchair Access

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