Today, I’m interviewing Zac Bissonnette. His debut cozy mystery, A Killing in Costumes, will be released tomorrow, August. 9 from Crooked Lane Books. It’s the first Hollywood Treasures book. That’s all I’m going to say about the book because Zac will answer questions about it.

I do have a special giveaway, though! Zac has offered one lucky reader an original Murder, She Wrote script, signed by Tom Sawyer, head writer and show runner of the show. So, this will go hand-in-hand with my regular weekly giveaways. Email me at Lesa.Holstine@gmail.com. Your subject line should read “Win Murder, She Wrote.” Please include your name and mailing address, and I’ll send the winner’s information to Zac on Thursday night. That means this giveaway will end Thursday, Aug. 11 at 5 PM CT. Good luck!

Thank you, Zac, for the giveaway, and for taking time to answer questions!

Interview with Zac Bissonnette

Zac, I’m guessing my readers don’t know you since this is your debut mystery. Would you introduce yourself?

Thanks so much for having me! I started out as a journalist–my first job out of college was on the investigative unit at CNBC, where I worked on not-so-cozy documentaries on things like Medicare fraud and money laundering. I wrote a few nonfiction books, most recently The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, and now my day job is in finance. I live in NYC with my partner and a cat named Perry Como.

Would you introduce us to Jay Allan and Cindy Cooper?

They’ve had unusual careers too! They were best friends in middle school, and performed in talent shows as a singing duo. They got married and had a brief career as a married couple on a major soap opera in the early 2000s. Then they both realized they were gay–and came out, which caused the end of their soap opera career. Cindy became a financial advisor and Jay moved to Las Vegas and played piano and sang in lounges. Now, twenty years after the end of their TV career, they’ve gotten back together, just as friends, to open Hooray for Hollywood–a Palm Springs movie memorabilia store.

Tell us about A Killing in Costumes, please, without spoilers.

Business at Hooray for Hollywood is slow, but hope of a turnaround arrives when a 90-year old former film star and prodigious costume collector approaches them with a chance at selling the seven-figure collection she’s built over the past fifty years. But when a VP at a major auction house, their competition for the deal, is found dead shortly after Jay and Cindy meet with him, they become prime suspects. So they have to clear their names to stay out of prison and hopefully land the deal that will save their dream business.

Why movie memorabilia as the background for this book?

The book was actually inspired by a piece I bought at auction: a portrait of Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher that was painted by a Hollywood studio artist for an episode of Murder, She Wrote!

When it arrived, I hung it in my bedroom–because really, is there any way to get a better night’s rest than Jessica Fletcher staring at you across the room?–and immediately the idea for a cozy mystery set in a Hollywood memorabilia store came into my mind and I started outlining within about five minutes of hanging the painting!

One of the things I’m really excited about is that later this year, we’re actually going to be doing an auction of that painting with 100% of the proceeds going to The Actor’s Fund, to help provide for the people who’ve devoted their lives to entertaining all of us when they fall on hard times. More on that soon!

Do you have plans for a second Hollywood Treasures mystery? Can you tell us anything about it, or your next book?

Well, we’ll have to see how this one does! I would of course love to write more Hollywood Treasures mysteries, but it’s up to the market whether I’ll have a chance to! Either way, writing this book was the most fun thing I’ve ever done and I’m just so excited to see and hear what people think of it.

Why did you decide to write a cozy mystery?

You know, I’ve loved cozies since I was in college–and they’ve helped m stay upright through some pretty sad times, most notably March, 2020, when I was in NYC. Everything was closed, the news was grim, and there was just a ton to be sad about. And it’s not that you want to be bury your head in the sand and ignore the misery in the world, but, sometimes, you do just need an escape. And the warm characters and justice and beautiful settings of so many cozies were just vital for me, and I think for so many other people.

There’s a beautiful letter Agatha Christie once wrote to a fan, where she talked about how the fan’s letter about how Ms. Christie’s books had helped with her depression had helped the author with her own sorrow and melancholy. I think that kind of exchange of comfort between writer and reader, which I’ve heard so much about in the cozy mystery community–I mean, what could be more important or better than that?

I don’t want you to upset any of your friends in the mystery community, so maybe you want to answer this from authors of the past. Who are your favorite crime fiction authors?

Well, I can’t help calling out two cozy writers who I’ve read I think every mystery they’ve written since I started reading them in college, and that’s Miranda James and Jenn McKinlay. Just two incredibly gifted writers who could write anything.

From the past, and it makes me sad to even think that this is the past, but I think Sheila Connolly’s books were such a window into worlds like Ireland and museums and growing apples–her enthusiasm for her interests was so intense it couldn’t help but rub off and I just adore her books. I know her daughter finished her final book and she did such a great job, so I’m really hoping there will be more books from the family.

Also: Dick Francis, Robert B. Parker, Agatha Christie, so many others. 

What were your favorite books as a child?

Boxcar Children, Goosebumps, Nancy Drew! 

What’s on your TBR pile?

I’m sitting here like a narcotized slot machine addict reloading the tracking info on the new Kate Carlisle Bibliophile mystery that I pre-ordered months ago.

Zac, I’m a librarian, so I like to end with this. Tell us a story about a library or librarian in your life.

Ooh! So when I was in elementary school, probably 3rd or 4th grade, we went on a class trip to a local library, and I have this vivid memory of the librarian showing us how to find the headlines about the sinking of The Titanic on microfilm.

Fast forward twenty-plus years, and I became friends with a retired librarian from my town on Twitter, and we’d like each other’s cat photos and Tweet about books and such. We met for lunch when she was visiting NYC and I started to tell her about how vividly I remembered this class trip, and just how cool the reference librarian was, and she said, “Oh, I remember that, I was that librarian!” 

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Thank you, Zac, and thank you for the giveaway as well! Good luck with the book!

Zac Bissonnette’s website is http://zacbissonnette.com/

A Killing in Costumes by Zac Bissonnette. Crooked Lane Books, 2022. ISBN 9781639100866 (hardcover), 320p.