The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Harlem After Midnight (A Canary Club Mystery) by Louise Hare

Episode Date: July 1, 2023

Harlem After Midnight (A Canary Club Mystery) by Louise Hare https://amzn.to/3XuQYxr A body falls from a town house window in Harlem, and it looks just like the newest singer at the Apollo...in this evocative, twisting new novel from the authorof Miss Aldridge Regrets. Harlem, 1936: Lena Aldridge grew up in a cramped corner of London, hearing stories of the bright lights of Broadway. She always imagined that when she finally went to New York City, she’d be there with her father. But now he’s dead, and she’s newly arrived and alone, chasing a dream that has quickly dried up. When Will Goodman—the handsome musician she met on the crossing from England—offers for her to stay with his friends in Harlem, she agrees. She has nowhere else to go, and this will give her a chance to get to know Will better and see if she can find any trace of the family she might have remaining. Will’s friends welcome her with open arms, but just as Lena discovers the stories her father once told her were missing giant pieces of information, she also starts to realize the man she’s falling too fast and too hard for has secrets of his own. And they might just place a target on her back. Especially when she is drawn to the brightest stage in town. About the Author Louise Hare is a London-based writer and has an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including This Lovely City, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common. This Lovely City was featured on the inaugural BBC TWO TV book club show, Between the Covers, and has received multiple accolades, securing Louise's place as an author to watch.

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We of course always have the most amazing authors And we don't allow anybody who's not amazing On the show So it's only amazing authors Except for me of course I just have a book or two And she is out with her latest book And these are hot books.

I mean, these sell a lot. Novels, they always do well. She is the author of Harlem After Midnight, A Canary Club Mystery. Comes out August 29th, 2023. And she's a multi-book author. Louise Hare is on the show with us today. She'll be talking to us about her latest, hottest book. And I guess

everyone just loves this thing. They bought a ton of the last ones. And so she's up again on deck. She is a London-based writer and has an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck University of London. Originally from Warrington, the capital is the inspiration for much of her work, including this lovely city, which began life after a trip into the deep level shelter below Clapham Common. This lovely city was featured on the inaugural BBC Two TV book club show Between the Covers and has received multiple accolades, securing Louise's place as an author to watch. Welcome to the show, Louise. How are you? I'm really well. Thank you. And it's wonderful as an author to watch. Welcome to the show, Louise. How are you? I'm really well, thank you.

And it's wonderful to have you as well. Congratulations on the new book. And give us a.com or social media, wherever you want people maybe to follow you on the interwebs. Yeah, so I have my website, which is just louisehair.com. And I'm also on Twitter and Instagram at LouRHair. There you go. And we got you coming to us from across the pond, as they like to say.

I don't know. And do people start saying God save the queen over there or king over there, or do people just not care? It's sort of confusing. I haven't been in a position where I've needed to sing the anthem since the queen died, but I think the first time I do, like the first time I go to like a sports event or something, it's going to be a little bit confusing.

Do they change the lyrics? Do you have to, you have to say God saved the queen or king? I'm so used to saying it. It should be easy, but you know, like she was queen for a long time. God saved the queen for decades to change it.

And then you're like, Oh, there you go. Yeah. And plus, you know, I mean, she seemed like a nice person. I don't know about the new guy, decades to change it. You're like, oh. There you go. Yeah. And plus, you know, I mean, she seemed like a nice person. I don't know about the new guy, but I guess you guys are working out over there. It sure is.

I mean, I'm just glad you guys stuck with a prime minister, you know, past a couple of weeks for a change now. So that's been working out, I think, pretty good for you guys. Anyway, enough about England, I guess, or London. Tell us what motivated you to write this latest book. So the latest book, I mean, obviously it's the second in a series, so the main motivation is continue the adventure.

So my first book, which is called Miss Aldridge Regrets, is about a British woman. She's mixed race, sort of compasses white, and it's a murder mystery set on the Queen Mary. At the end of that book, she's in new york so then you're thinking okay what happens to her next well she's in new york obviously she's going to go to harlem there's people that she meets on the on in the first

book who there's a reason that she goes to harlem anyway so i had those characters already built in and then um i've always been really fascinated as well with the book passing by nila larson and so i wanted to sort of pay a little bit of um tribute to that book um so there's so people that read that book will recognize a couple things in this book that i've included but it's just like a fun um murder mystery And I had a lot of fun sort of researching 1930s New York and actually sort of turn of the century New York. So I've got some chapters that are set in 1908, which was really interesting. New York changed a lot in those sort of 30 years. There you go.

An interesting time. And in your first book, she was on the Queen Mary then. Miss Aldridge Regrets, I believe. Yeah, that's right. There you go. Have you been on the Queen Mary? No. So I did email QNOD because I was like, is there any chance of a discount?

Because I can't really afford it. And they said no. It is a beautiful ship. I've spent hours there i used to go out with my camera and go jaunting as a photographer and i would spend hours photographing the ship and it's it's an extraordinary beautiful ship that's captured in time kind of gives you that feel the titanic um but uh it's beautiful so if you chance to go, make sure you go see the bar. The bar is such, what was the Art Deco? Whatever that 1920s sort of look is. There's a lot of it in LA,

but it's such a beautiful ship and there's a romanticism to it when you walk around it. I've just spent hours. They make a beautiful buffet breakfast too. But Harlem After Midnight, tell us a little bit more about your protagonist. I believe that's Lena? It is, yeah. So as I said, she's mixed race, but she's sort of spent a lot of her life running away from, I guess, her blackness. Because she can pass as white, it's sometimes been a lot easier for her.

And in London at that time, the black community was very small so when she's on the ship is the first time she's sort of learning to confront the reality of of what denying her roots has done to her and then now in this book she's sort of landing in Harlem staying with a black family and meeting all these different people and sort of discovering herself but then obviously there has to be um sort of a murder or slash accident um that happens like is it murder is it is it not um for her to sort of investigate she's not really an investigator but she's sort of always in the wrong place at the wrong time and people are dying sounds like my life on fridays i don't know what that means but don't look in my backyard uh so it's more it's a bit of a thriller a bit of a

mystery sort of novel yeah i think there's different there's mysteries from her past which is why there's sort of a dual timeline there's stuff her father was from new york originally and she's never been so she's trying to investigate him she knows there are secrets that she finds out about him in the first book that she's now trying to uncover but then something happens i mean it opens with a woman falling from a building that's how the book opens and you're and you don't know who the woman is yet um or what's happened to her or if she's in alive so that's the sort of start point um and then you sort of go back a couple of weeks to when Lena first arrives. There you go. A body falls from a townhouse window in Harlem.

Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far. We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com over there you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements if you'd like to hire me uh training courses that we offer and coaching for leadership management entrepreneur ism uh podcasting corporate stuff uh with over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as ceo and be sure to check out chris foss leadership institute.com now back to the show there you go so uh is it set in kind of the roaring sort of uh that early age of uh there

was like what was it the roaring 20s that were kind of in that whole genre era? So it's the mid-1930s, so it's 1936. So the Apollo Theatre is the Amateur Night, still a huge thing. There was like a tiny cameo from Ella Fitzgerald because I found out that she was playing in Harlem on the exact date that I needed to send Lena to a nightclub. So I was like, perfect. So yeah, I've sort of embraced that sort of era. So that sort of early Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong kind of music. That's the sort of soundtrack. And I guess part of the mystery is her love interest?

Yeah. So he's the love interest that she met in the first book. Um, and people just loved him. His name is Will. Um, and he's her connection to Harlem. So that's where he's from.

So she meets his family, his friends. Um, but of course, you know, it's a mystery. So it turns out he's got secrets of his own that he hasn't sort of told her. So she has to decide, like, does she trust him?

Does she not? You know, there's lots of question marks. The beauty and the beast. Everything revolves around the beauty and the beast story. Taming the beast with beauty and femininity i suppose uh it's it's interesting so uh what were what were did you did you base uh any of the characters on anyone uh did you just create an amalgamation or did you kind of just make them up as as you wanted them i mean for the most part i just sort of made them up as they worked um but I do think because I

guess it's sort of written in first person like you're reading everything from Lena's point of view um there's definitely some of me in her um so quite often she does she does some stupid stuff like she because she just panics and then she drinks a lot and she smokes and she does some stupid stuff like she because she just panics and then she drinks a lot and she smokes and she does all of this stuff that she shouldn't really be doing um and someone said to me a reader from the first book was like but you know like she's not very sensible and i i just said well i imagined myself in a situation with all these murders happening and i didn't know what was going on and what would i do and then i I was like, well, if there's a bar there, I'm probably going to go and get a drink first and then hope it all goes away. So sometimes that's what leader does.

It's like Fridays at my house too. Yeah. Once again. I was just being realistic. I was like, you know, most of us would do this. And then afterwards you would think, actually, this is not sensible. I should probably get out of the way or try and figure out what's happening. Well, the other thing is too, is, is if you, if you're going to be sensible, you know, and logical, I mean, it'd be a really short book. Where would the adventure be? Right? Exactly. That's what I think. So what do you see for this character in the series you're doing?

This is two of two in your uh canary club mystery series uh what do you what do you see uh do you see a future with what you're doing are you still working on are you working on our next book yet i we have some authors they pump out books like every three months it seems yeah um so i'm thinking about a third book i think there's lots of i mean each book can be read separately but I always like to have little threads that you can sort of pick up in the next book So for example is a best friend that she left back in London who did something terrible And that's not even talked about in the second book so I was like actually quite cool to sort of pick at that thread and see

See what happens with that and there's quite a lot of things that lena could do i mean she's sort of mid-20s she just got a passport for the first time before she came to new york so she's sort of you know the world is her oyster she could go anywhere and do anything potentially so yeah you know there you go it sounds like she needs to work on making better friends though i don't know. Maybe I'm just kidding. I mean, that's the beauty of the stories and adventures. And we like to see people go on that hero's journey where they have to meander through everything, go through cathartic times. And, you know, I mean, hang out with murderers.

You learn a few things or something. I don't know. It's not like Friday's at my house again. That's today's callback joke on the show. People are like, what's going on at Chris's house? Maybe there's a novel there. I don't know. So what do you

find readers really love about the character? It sounds like you've gotten some feedback and they really loved your first book, of course. It sold really well. What do you hear from your readers? It's kind of interesting how they kind of have their own take on everything, huh? Yeah.

Like I said, a lot of people were like, she's just not sensible. I think that's fine. I mean, it's a fair comment. I think what I've enjoyed is people seeing, because it's sort of a golden age mystery, like I was sort of angling for that sort of Agatha Christie sort of vibe. It's definitely not written in that style, just to warn anyone who's hoping for that. But it's that sort of vibe with the glamour.

And I love those, like the Poirot TV shows, when he's like on the Orient Express or, you know, Death on the Nile. So that's sort of the vibe that I think people have enjoyed. But also having a woman of colour in that situation where she's traveling in first class, I think it's just I like to take things that I love, but then put my own sort of spin on it. So I think some people have been enjoying that. And yeah, I feel like anyone who loves historical mystery has enjoyed it. So, yeah. There you go.

And I imagine someone of mixed race, you know, there's lots of different ways you can play that and go, especially in that era of time. Yeah. I mean, it was really fun sort of researching, for example, the differences between Massachusetts and the UK compared to the US at that time and her sort of deciding how to present herself in different situations so because she's traveling in first

class on the Queen Mary she basically someone goes oh you know you look sort of Italian and she just sort of goes with that because it's easier than trying to explain or someone has a problem but then sort of the love interest, Will, the reason that I sort of created him was I wanted her to have an ally and someone who knew who she was that she could talk to and be honest about stuff. And so that was why I sort of created him

because he wasn't in the original plan at all, but then it really worked. And I think a lot of readers have really loved that relationship and that aspect of that relationship. There you go. So what do you hope readers come back with as they read your book and come away with?

And can they read this as a standalone if they haven't read the first one or they need to go read the first one first? I think, I mean, I wrote it so that it would work as a standalone. So there's very few references to the first book. So the feedback I've had of early readers that few references to the first book um so the feedback i've had of early readers that haven't read the first book is that they still enjoyed this book so i think that should be all good um so yeah i mean it was hard to do it was really hard it's the first time i've ever written a sequel of anything but you know i decided early on it

needed to you've got to fulfill that need that the reader has. If they've read the first book, they get everything they want out of it. But then you also want people to be able to read it on its own. They really fall in love with the character. And what the character kind of does, their kind of whole modus operandi. And, you know, we have authors on the show. I think there's like 50 there's like 30 or 50 books they've written about this line of characters you know the tom clancy folks and stuff

have been on and and uh it's just extraordinary i'm like and people just love the character once they fall in love with the character they just eat it up and you can just keep making books on it and and uh it's it's it's great it's it's wonderful to have that sort of following yeah i mean it's just it's just so nice when you've sort of created a character that people love um it's so nice that's probably the best feedback is when people are like oh you know i want another lena book or i want to see more of lena because she's really fun to write and i think for me obviously writing is a job but it's just so much easier if it's fun and i'm enjoying it there you go and then why did you call it a canary club mystery um to be honest that's like a

publisher thing because they want to like be able to link i guess it's like for linking stuff and people online um so the canary club is the club that that Lena works at in the first book. So it's like a dirty nightclub in Soho in London. And everything sort of starts from there. And if there's a third book, I think I'm going to have some more mentions of that place because it's kind of, you know, the very first scene I was in in this place called the canary club um so that's why it's called that um whether anyone gets that or not but yeah there you go there you go well uh hopefully uh readers love the work is there anything you hope that they come away from when they read it um i just i mostly hope people enjoy it um know, it's supposed to be like a fun mystery.

But I learned so much doing the research. And actually my U.S. editor was saying, I never knew this, the elevated trains in New York, for example. So I hope people like learn something new that they never knew, especially if they're New Yorkers. I'd love a New Yorker to be like, I never knew that that place existed or that thing happened. So, yeah. There you go. There you go there you go well it's always a fun setting of course to uh have in there uh in that time period it was a roaring 20s and 30s it

was crazy time and it's not a romantic time i think when people look back on it although it's probably you know rife with all sorts of problems and issues but seems like that much hasn't changed since then. Writing historical fiction, it's amazing when you start doing research to see what's actually just repeating. Yeah, isn't it? One thing a man can learn from his history is that man never learns from his history.

So thank you very much, Louise, for coming on the show. Give us a.com so people can find you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, so louisehair.com. There you go. And thank you very much for coming on. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss,

linkedin.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss to see us on TikTok at chrisvoss1. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

And we'll see you guys next time.