Sweet and Lowdown

A story that will stay with the reader long after the book is closed Europe is at War. Nazi bombers are hammering London. Wendell Willkie is giving Roosevelt a run for his money. In Kansas City, Dorie Lennox and her partner Amos Haddam are trying to keep the blond and beautiful Thalia Hines from destroying herself. It's not easy. The girl has every reason to escape the cold stone mansion where her mother lies dying. Eveline Hines is a decorated war hero during the First World War. Now she's struggling to protect her only daughter from men who lust over her inheritance even more than her curves. In the rich milieu of a bygone time, an America preparing for war provides color for the intimate portrait of a powerful woman bearing witness to the destruction of all she loves. For the Hines family, nothing will ever be the same in this powerful story of maternal love and family secrets, and the disastrous attempts to mingle them. Sweet and Lowdown is a historical mystery full of darkness and peculiar heartache of the wayward child, a story that will stay with the reader long after the book is closed. "McClendon lightly handles all the threads, using a taut, staccato style that perfectly complements her edgy, skittish heroine. ("She lighted a Lucky and leaned against the wall by the ladies' lounge. She'd seen the inside of too many nightclubs. In the dark, where anything can happen, and usually did.") The author masterfully evokes the period, from details of dress to a rally for Wendell Willkie. This is a book to be savored read it too fast and you might miss something." - PW "Lise McClendon created the memorable [Dorie Lennox] in last year's One O'Clock Jump and brings her back for a lively second round in Sweet and Lowdown. McClendon turns the tables on some hardboiled cliches to great effect, but what really makes the book work is her unexpectedly moving characterizations, along with her ability to convey the simultaneous sorrow, uncertainty and excitement of wartime. Maintaining the tough attitude of a Chandler-era P.I. while building emotional depth is not an easy juggling act to pull off, but McClendon is up to the challenge." - The Washington Post
About the Author: PW Talks to Lise McClendon by Monica Whitebread PW: Why did you choose Kansas City as the setting for your Dorie Lennox series? LM: I lived in Kansas City for a couple of years and was always interested in its history. In the 1920s and '30s, it was like Chicago, a wide-open town run by a political boss. People disregarded Prohibition. I thought it had an untapped background for the crime novel. PW: Did Dorie, a college dropout who'd been to reform school, emerge full-blown, or did she develop gradually? LM: I didn't really do a lot of conscious development. I had Dorie grow up in Atchison [in Kansas] as a young girl when Amelia Earhart was doing her big flying adventures. Earhart was sort of an unconventional child. I drew also on the background of the Depression and all the problems that families had then, with fathers leaving and mothers being fairly desperate, and children being left pretty much to make their own way. As a private eye, Dorie needs to be self-reliant and not really tough, but toughened by life--enough that she won't be so frightened by situations that she can't act. PW: How unusual were female PIs back then? LM: There were female detectives in the Pinkerton Agency back in the '20s and '30s, so I decided that Dorie would be an unusual woman for that period, but not unrealistic. PW: Fascist activity plays a big role in Sweet and Lowdown. You must have done a lot of research. LM: There was an article and a picture in Life magazine in 1939 or 1940 of Brown Shirts meeting with some state or national official in Missouri. There was a strong democratic principle at work--that you have freedom of assembly, no matter what your beliefs. That principle of democracy held for quite a while, but as we got into the war, those principles went by the wayside. PW: What can you tell us about the Silver Shirts? LM: It was kind of scary, really, doing the research on the Silver Shirts. The man who started that movement, William Dudley Pelley, who was a popular novelist around World War I, had a huge following. He even ran for president. It's fascinating to explore fanatical minds, but you don't want to stay there too long. PW: You write about Kansas City with obvious affection. LM: Any place where you live and work and know people can be made interesting in fiction. It's the way you look at it. If you look at it as teeming with life, then it is.