LARCHMONT—It Takes a Village to House a Senator

People often ask novelists how they pick their book’s locations. Unlike the movie business, we don’t have location scouts, just our imagination and memories. I grew up in Bayside, Queens. My book’s heroine is from Bayside. Before moving to L. A., I lived in Manhattan for many years. My political thriller takes place in Manhattan. But other characters in my book also needed hometowns.

When I was growing up, my parents belonged to the Book of the Month Club. The bookcases surrounding the brick fireplace in our living room were filled with grown-up tales I couldn’t wait to read. Nancy Drew was fun, but she didn’t compare to Ivanhoe, Robin Hood and Maid Marian, or to Daphne Du Maurier heroines. England and France were romantic lands a zillion miles away… but then, so was Westchester County.

I discovered Westchester when I discovered John Cheever in my parents’ “library.” I think I was twelve. But that place Cheever wrote about, just a short parkway ride away, could just as well have been in Sherwood Forest. The towns seemed as exotic and as mystical as the ones in the fantasies that filled my family’s bookshelves.

Then my brother went to Concordia Prep in Bronxville (before Concordia became a four year college) and I got to explore Westchester and its various towns and villages. Larchmont became my favorite. With its grand homes and estates, quaint “Main Street” and lovely waterfront it became my gold standard. I know—Bayside has a waterfront (it’s not called Bayside for nothing)—and it has many beautiful homes and tree-lined streets. I lived on one of those streets. But Larchmont was different. It was more like the towns I loved in New England than those in Queens. It was homey and grand all at the same time.

So, when I began to write Freeze Frame, (my political thriller) and was looking for a New York home for my “old money” New York U. S. Senator, Larchmont was my only choice. I wanted to go back there, even if it was only in my imagination. And I did go back in my book’s climax when I sent my heroine, Lorna Raven, an innocent videographer, to Larchmont to find out why people were trying to kill her. She walks Post Road and brown bags lunch on the waterfront, then skirts the grounds of the Senator’s estate.

            “…As she made her way to town and looked around, 'Valley of the Dolls' popped back into her mind.  She wondered if Larchmont Village was used as the set for Anne Welles’ hometown.  Even with updating and new buildings, the village reminded her of an old-fashioned watercolor with its waterfront, beautiful tree-lined streets and old brick buildings… the aura of wealth and comfort.  Not that many miles away from Queens, but a million miles away in lifestyle.”           

So, if you want to know why a U.S. Senator from Larchmont is shot and falls into the East River and why Lorna’s life is in danger, click onto my Amazon site (link below) and take a peek inside the book’s cover where you can read the prologue and first chapter, as well as the book’s synopsis and reviews. Hopefully you’ll be hooked and will jump on a roller coaster ride of murder and mayhem with a stopover in the beautiful village of Larchmont.

"FREEZE FRAME"
www.amazon.com/dp/1466392150